There is a family economy sometimes practiced on a small scale, by which one party throws out with a teaspoon as fast as the other can throw in with a shovel. But this economy is prudence itself compared with the "armed peace" policy of nations. Two hundred millions of pounds sterling a year, in mere preparations for war! Let the farmers of Christendom revolve this fact in their minds in seed time and harvest. The whole agricultural produce of Great Britain and Ireland, including all the horned cattle, horses, sheep, swine, poultry, butter, cheese and eggs, were estimated in 1840 at £197,455,375; or less than the cost of the armed peace establishment of Europe for that very year! or, in other words, all the land, labor, capital and skill, invested in agriculture in Great Britain and Ireland, does not produce enough to support the fighting men and other instruments of war belonging to the peace armament of Christendom! And does not the soldier throw out with the point of his bayonet as fast as the farmer can throw in with his shovel? Take two neighboring nations, and see how they are affected by this economy. The whole rental of fertile England falls short of the annual cost of the peace amaments of Great Britain and France! -E. B.

SIEGE OF GENOA.

IN 1800, Genoa, occupied by 24,000 French troops, was besieged at once by a British fleet, and a powerful Austrian army. We will not detail the horrors attendant on the sallies and assaults; but let us look at the condition of the soldiers and citizens within. The former, worn down by fatigue, and wasted by famine, had consumed all the horses in the city, and were at length reduced to the necessity of feeding on dogs, cats and vermin, which were eagerly hunted out in the cellars and common sewers. Soon, however, even these wretched resources failed, and they were brought to the pittance of four or five ounces a day of black bread made of cocoa, rye, and other substances ransacked from the shops of the city.

The inhabitants, also, were a prey to the most unparalleled sufferings. The price of provisions had from the first been extravagantly high, and at length no kind of grain could be had at any cost. Even before the city was reduced to the last extremities, a pound of rice was sold for more than a dollar, and a pound of flour for nearly two dollars. Afterwards beans were sold for two cents each, and a biscuit of three ounces weight, when procurable at all, for upwards of two dollars. A little cheese, and a few vegetables, were the only nourishment given even to the sick and wounded in the hospitals.

The horrors of this prolonged famine in a city containing above 100,000 souls, cannot be adequately described. All day the cries of the miserable victims were heard in the streets, while the neighboring rocks within the walls, were covered with a famished crowd, seeking in the vilest animals, and the smallest traces of vegetation, the means of assuaging the intolerable pangs of hunger. Men and women, in the last agonies of despair, filled the air with their groans and shrieks; and sometimes, while uttering these dreadful cries, they strove, with furious hands, to tear out their ravening entrails, and fell dead in the streets! At night, the lamen tations of the people were still more dreadful; too agitated to sleep, and unable to endure the agonies around them, they prayed aloud for death to relieve them from their sufferings.

Dreadful was the effect of these protracted calamities in hardening the heart, and rendering men insensible to anything but their own disasters.

Children, left by the death of their parents in utter destitution, implored in vain the passing stranger with tears, with mournful gestures, and heartbroken accents, to give them succor and relief. Infants, deserted in the streets by their own parents, and women who had sunk down from exhaustion on the public thoroughfares, were abandoned to their fate; and, crawling to the sewers, and other receptacles of filth, they sought there, with dying hands, for the means of prolonging their miserable existence for a few hours. In the desperation produced by such long-continued torments, the more ardent and impetuous rushed out of the gates, and threw themselves into the harbor, where they perished without assistance or commiseration. To such straits were they reduced, that not only leather and skins of every kind were devoured, but the horror at human flesh was so much abated, that numbers were supported on the dead bodies of their fellow-citizens !

Still more cruel, horrible beyond all description, was the spectacle presented by the Austrian prisoners of war, confined on board certain old vessels in the port; for such was the dire necessity at last, that they were left for some days without nutriment of any kind! They ate their shoes; they devoured the leather of their pouches; and, scowling darkly at each other, their sinister glances betrayed the horrid fear of their being driven to prey upon one another. Their French guards were at length removed, under the apprehension that they might be made a sacrifice to craving hunger; and so great did their desperation finally become, that they endeavored to scuttle their floating prisons in order to sink them, preferring to perish thus, rather than endure any longer the tortures of famine.

Pestilence, as usual, came in the rear of such calamties; and contagious fevers swept off multitudes whom the strength of the survivors was unable to inter. Death in every form awaited the crowds whom common suffering had blended together in the hospitals; and the multitude of unburied corpses which encumbered the streets, threatened the city with depopulation, almost as certainly as the grim hand of famine under which they were melting away. When the evacuation took place, the extent of the suffering which the besieged had undergone, appeared painfully conspicuous. On entering the town,' says Thiebault, all the figures we met, bore the appearance of profound grief, or sombre despair; the streets resounded with the most heart-rending cries; on all siues death was reaping its harvest of victims; and the rival furies of famine and pestilence were multiplying their devastations. In a word, both the army and the inhabitants seemed fast approaching their dissolution.""

EXCUSES FOR WRONG. No crime habitually committed, however revolting it may be, is without excuse, or even justification, in the minds of those guilty of it. The Barbary States deemed piracy as honorable and as justifiable as modern civilized nations deem war; the so-called Christians of a few centuries back felt it a duty to persecute, harrass and slay Jews; slave-holders find arguments to justify themselves in holding slaves; and the slave-trader, whose infamous and diabolical business has made Africa a terrestrial hell, knows how to persuade himself that his atrocious guilt is perfect innocence. So the dealer in intoxicating drinks, by a violent wrenching of logic, knows how to make his business as innocent as that of raising potatoes, and how to sever himself from all connection with the beastly drunkenness of his victims, and the squalid poverty, the broken-heartedness, the unutterable misery which his traffic sends into their families. So we may go the rounds of vice and crime; and all will find apologists and defenders in those who practice them.

DESECRATION OF THE SABBATH BY WAR.

The occupation of soldiers on the Sabbath, even when at home, are greatly at variance with its observance as a time appropriated to solemn worship, and profitable retirement from secular engagements. How frequently are troops marched from town to town, or embarked on board ship, on the Sabbath? It is notorious that these are times of general disorder and profligacy. Even in their usual procession to a place of worship, with drums beating, fifes playing, and so forth, they are commonly followed by a rabble of boys and girls, much to the annoyance of sober people, and often to the disturbance of other places of worship. Indeed, the misappropriation of the day by the military often involves the whole town in disorder and dissipation.

A recent number of a religious newspaper, prominent in its advocacy of war, contains a long editorial article on the desecration of the Sabbath by musical bands, and the like, while in another column of the same paper it very complacently notices, without a word of reproof, that, "Her Majesty and the Prince Consort, with the royal family and suite, as is customary on Easter Sunday, were present at the promenade on the Grand Parterre of Windsor Castle. The bands of the Royal Horse Guards and Scots Fusilier Guards played on the occasion. The terrace was unusually crowded by fashionable company."

These are some of the most innocent forms of Sabbath desecration by the army; but the occupations of our soldiers on the Sabbath, when they are in an enemy's country, embrace such deeds as we may imagine to be the employments of infernal spirits. It was characteristically observed by the French Admiral, in reference to the French and English acting together at the bombardment of Sweaborg, that "every one had but a single object, that of trying who should do the utmost possible injury to the enemy." The bloody battle of Inkerman was fought on the Sabbath day; and we were told that at that very time the Christians (?) of Constantinople, the missionaries in particular were praying that the arms of the Allies in the Crimea might be successful. This coincidence, with the victory gained by the Allies, was triumphantly brought forward by a Sabbath-advocating newspaper, as a remarkable answer to prayer. Wonderful that men, professing to believe that "God is love," and that " He who loveth God should love his brother also," can suppose He delights in such sacrifices on the Sabbath, or on any other day! The same paper informs us that "Sir Henry Havelock's letters show how entirely he was a soldier and a patriot, all the braver, and all the more patriotic, for being altogether a Christian." It then quotes the following passage from his letters: "I did see your Crystal Palace when I was in England, though hastily. No; you must have no Crystal Palace open on the Sabbath, if you value the small amount of piety to be found in the nation." On this, the said paper comments thus: "Still there is hope we shall have no Crystal Palace open on the Sabbath, and Havelock's condemnation of such a sin remains written down to testify against it."

The same paper contains extracts from Havelock's military career in Scinde and Affghanistan. Of the manner in which the soldiers, engaged in that unrighteous and barbarous war, spent their Sabbaths, some specimens are given in the diary of a chaplain who accompanied them. On one occasion he says, "I regret to say that Sunday was selected for sending a working party into the town of Cabul, to blow up and destroy the central buildings of the bazaar! This was the signal for European soldiers, sepoys, followers, all who could get away from camp, to commence plundering-a melancholy and disgraceful scene! The next day every kind of disgraceful outrage was suffered to go on in the town, and this after we

had replenished the commissariat supplies by the help of these poor people who had returned to their shops upon an express proclamation of protection in the event of their doing so!"

"Sunday, Aug. 28. — We turned to a fort from which an attack on our grass-cutters was said to have been made. The men rushed in; and one of those painful scenes ensued, which are more or less common to all warfare. Every door was forced, every man that could be found was slaugh tered; they were pursued from yard to yard, from tower to tower, and very few escaped. One door, which they refused to open upon summons, was blown in by a six-pounder, and every soul bayonetted! If any remained concealed in the buildings, they must have perished in the flames, for it was one mass of blazing ruins before we left it." What occasioned all this? "It was melancholy" says the chaplain, "to see fields of wheat, the hopes of the year, trampled down and destroyed by thousands of camels, horses, tattoos, and bullocks. Such are the miseries of war! All hands were employed in cutting the green wheat and barley; and their crops destroyed, and villages burnt, they have a fearful prospect for the coming year. It may truly be said, The land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness.' Oh! what a day!"

Such are the scenes common in all warfare in which all soldiers are engaged on the Sabbath in the time of war. Yet we hear no protest from religious newspapers, or from Sabbath Observance Societies, against this wicked profanation of the day. They appear to consider such an occupation perfectly in harmony with the character of men altogether Christian! W. N. in Lond. Her. of Peace.

THE value of kindness, as a remedy for the ills of life, is beginning to be appreciated. It is now the established specific for insanity; it is the only mitigation of madness. Where a spark of reason is left to the raving maniac, though invisible to every other human eye, it is fanned into life, and soon perceived by the messenger of mercy. It is but a few years since the most atrocious cruelties were perpetrated by good people against those bereft of reason. The age of cruelty is giving way to that of mercy. Kindness is known to be a specific for many forms of disease, and kind nursing for many more. Christ's whole ministry was one of personal kindness. Charity is the great lever of Christianity; by it the messengers of the gospel can open the eyes of Pagan blindness; by it the ears of the most obstinate and hardened can be unstopped; by it reason can be restored and life saved; by it every human ill can be alleviated; by it all obstacles to the progress of Christianity can be removed or diminished. Men are selfish, unfeeling, and prone to the abuse of power and wealth; yet, where charity appears in her simplest garb, she is hailed as a heavenly visitant, and the message which accompanies her deeds of kindness is received as the voice of Heaven.

It is time the virtue of this remedy were tried in the name of Christianity upon the whole mass of humanity. Try it upon the poor, upon paupers, upon prisoners, soldiers, sailors, servants, laborers; try it upon infidels, socialists, reforming zealots, revolutionists; try it upon all men, and the result will be happy beyond all our present conceptions.-S. Colwell.

CHRIST'S LIFE A COMMENTARY ON HIS TEACHING.

We have an infallible rule by which to interpret the instructions of the Divine Teacher. and that is his own life and example. Was it "moderate wrongs" only that he "suffered with patience, rather than hastily resent them?" Turn to that wonderful story, and what do we find! We find, on the one hand, a life of matchless purity and benevolence; and, on the other, ingratitude, insult, slander, torture, agony, and death. We find him who went about doing good, who walked among men like the almoner of the divine mercy, scattering blessings wherever he trod, opening the eyes of the blind, loosening the tongue of the dumb, healing all manner of diseases, restoring vigor to the paralyzed limb, and sanity to the distracted intellect, unlocking even the iron gates of death, to restore the lost ones to the bleeding bosom of bereaved affection, bringing sudden light into the house of mourning and despair, and making the widow's heart to sing for joy, to say nothing of the message of infinite love and joy which he came to reveal from the Father-we find Him, who did all these things, dogged through life by scorn, and wrath, and grinning contempt. We find him charged with sedition against the civil power, with blasphemy against God, with being in alliance with infernal spirits, with setting up pretensions which served only to mislead and delude his ignorant followers to their own destruction. We find him pursued incessantly with the bitter enmity of those whom he came to bless and save, and perishing at last, his body writhing in pain, his mind and his heart broken by reproach, and his name blasted by calumny. Surely these were not very "moderate" wrongs to endure! And how did He endure them? "He was oppressed, and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth; He was taken as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he opened not His mouth."

But we may be told that He thus suffered in order to fulfil great and mysterious purposes connected with his advent and death, and that we are not expected in this respect to take Him as our example. Not so taught those who had received their instructions from his own lips, who had been with Him in the Holy Mount, and were supposed to have drunk most deeply of his spirit. Here are the words of one of them: "If when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God. For even hereunto were ye called; because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that ye should follow his steps; who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth; who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, He threatened not, but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously."

ARGUMENT FROM THE INSTINCT OF SELF-PRESERVATION. We hear much of this instinct as a plea for war; but what is its real value? Its value depends entirely on a series of assumptions, -1. That the natural law of self-preservation necessarily leads men violently to confront and assail any agency by which their life may be imperilled;-2. That such a method of defence is the best and wisest and most effectual, because it is instinctive;-3. That we are at liberty, in such emergencies, to obey our instincts, as if they were a revelation from heaven, without consulting either reason or conscience.

1. Now, we deny all these assumptions. We deny that the instinct of selfpreservation would necessarily impel a man to "strike out" at any unknown danger to which he may be exposed. We believe that the natural instinct is to flee from danger, and that the disposition to resist is, at least in the great majority of men, an acquired and highly artificial habit which has to be cultivated with the most sedulous care, and which, with all the powerful