this case as in a domestic insurrection. It is to call out a force sufficient to capture and punish these aggressors. It is to hold that commander-in-chief, and his subordinates, responsible for every infraction of our laws. If a battle is fought, and our citi zens are killed, then treat the aggressors as murderers. A well regulated government might hang some dozen or twenty of the principal officers, and perhaps with safety pardon all the inferior officers and soldiers, unless known to have been wantonly guilty of murder.

But in order to pursue such a course, the government must be able to show clean hands. We must renounce the idea of invading foreign territory ourselves, or what is equally criminal, and infinitely meaner, connive at private, unauthorized military expeditions, fillibustering. All that I have supposed might be done in regard to an invading army without war. An armed force may be raised, battles may be fought, the invaders may be victorious or defeated, and yet, while our efforts are confined to their ejection, capture or destruction, it is not war, but upholding the supremacy of law. Thus far our rulers maintain the supremacy of law, and permit none, whether of our own citizens, or intruders from abroad, to molest those who live peaceably in our own territory, without punishment. Between the duty of government to protect its peaceable citizens in the enjoyment of their rights, unmolested by any persons, whatever authority they may plead, or wherever they may originate, and strict nonresistance, the denial of all right to resist wrong-doers by physical force, I am unable to discover any tenable position. This is not war, as we understand its proper definition; or if every contest where arms are used, and blood is shed, has been so called, let us learn to discriminate between the enforcement of law, and an appeal to brute force to decide a public quarrel. They differ as much as individua' self-defence, when one is unexpectedly attacked by a bully, and formal arrangements for fighting a duel.

We have now trodden on the verge of what may properly be termed War. What then is necessary to convert the above named foreign invasion into real war?

1. It is for our government to recognize the right of another nation to invade our soil, if they are able to do so, without subjecting the invaders to the same penalties that we would consider their just due, were they citizens, or mere private adventurers. Should the commander-in-chief be taken, he would demand the treatment due not to the leader of a gang of pirates or banditti, but to a gentleman of rank. Should the soldiers be taken prisoners, they might look perhaps for confinement and scanty fare; but the officers would expect to be released on their parole of honor, and be treated as gentlemen who have simply discharged their duty. For the bloodshed, and other outrages they have committed, they hold themselves as guiltless as the sheriff, who, in arresting a gang of criminals, should in self-defense wound or even kill

several of these desperadoes, before he succeeded in taking them into custody. What then, is war but a tacit agreement between two hostile governments to suspend the operation of their respective civil laws in favor of their enemies? It is for government to allow a foreign invader to enact, without due punishment, crimes that would subject its own citizens to the gallows. The only boon required for this generosity to a national enemy, is, that this government may be permitted in time to make reprisals, without fear of condign punishment to individual offenders. This is war. Now, what can be more absurd than such a course? If it be said that, were we to hang the highest officers of a captured army, retaliation would follow, we think it very likely, nor would we shrink from such a recoil of our principle. We claim no immunities for our own officers above those of other nations. If it be a wrong and an outrage for a hostile army to enter our territory, can it be any thing less for ours to invade that of our neighbor? 'But an invading army might treat our own citizens, taken on our own soil, in the same way.' Certainly, and so might a band of robbers. But do we consent to treat these as honorable men, because they may retaliate, if we thrust those we arrest into prison, try them by the laws of our land, and either send them to the penitentiary, or even hang them! The government that should thus compromise its authority, and crouch to open rebels against its laws, would soon find its power at an end, and its authority held in derision.

Such a course would operate as a strong check and defense. Any foreign government would pause in its course, if fully assured that, as a matter of principle, another nation should steadfastly refuse either to invade a foreign territory, or to make any terms whatever with aggressors upon its own, and would hold them all individually responsible, just like any other criminals, for their offences against life and property.

War between nations is in its nature the same as a duel between individuals. It is an appeal to combined skill and brute fore to inflict a deadly injury upon a party with whom we are at variance, at the risk of receiving a similar injury ourselves. A resort to deadly weapons in either case has no tendency to procure redress for past injuries. By so doing, the party aggrieved degrades himself to the level of the aggressor. Within the memory of men of middle age, the duel has sunk into disrepute, and the laws of honor no longer require one to give or receive a challenge, for the good reason that only evil can result from a hostile meeting. It settles no disputed question. It brightens no man's tarnished honor. It has no tendency to repair an injury, or to prevent a greater. So may it soon be with war.

L. C. R.

PEACE AS A PRACTICAL TEST.

From a long tried and very intelligent friend of our cause, we have received the following communication, with a request that we would "present the leading thought at the proper time to our Board, or a meeting of the Society." We deem it fairest, and every way best, to let him speak for himself. We hope every Christian reader, more especially every preacher of the Gospel, will ponder well the issue here presented.-ED.

Has not the time arrived when the Peace Society should appeal to the evangelical churches of our land to give the doctrines of Peace a place among their articles of Christian faith, and insist on their practical observance by their members? Especially, should not the clergy be called upon to set forward and prosecute such a work? We have the example of the faith of primitive Christians for the first three centuries, with all its efficiency. We have the assurance of ancient prophecy, that the success of the latter-day church should be the concomitant of the reign of peace; all the teachings of Christ and his apostles corroborate the same truth; and the arguments of your varios publications demonstrate, beyond a rational doubt, that war is unchristian in all its motives, in all its tendencies, and in all its effects. worse; it is antagonistic to Christianity in all these, a fearful destroyer of souls, and a clog to missionary operations every where. You have clearly shown that all the most plausible arguments in favor of war are futile, and only expose its deleterious character. You have received the concurrent approbation of large bodies of the most distinguished clergy in various evangelical denominations, reiterating these truths. What, then, remains but to bring these sentiments into practical use in the church?

Nay,

The time has certainly come for an application of our principles. I ask a clergymau to patronize the cause of peace with his influence, his money, and his personal efforts. He says, 'I believe our people are about right on this subject. The cause of peace has been forty years before the public, and its friends have done what they can; but its main object, the abolition of war, has not been reached-it is intangible.' And yet we see professed Christians, of nearly all denominations, ready to aid a war, "right or wrong," simply on the ground that it is a war of our country, and ready with their suffrages to aid in promoting to the highest honors of our nation, the man who shall have most distinguished himself by military achievments even in a war they disapprove! The best apology for such an act is, we vote not for the war-feature of the man's character, but only in view of his availability.' Still, however, reluctantly the vote may be given, it is nevertheless a vote in honor of military achievement, and in support of this pernicious availability. Such complicity is inconsistent with Christian character.

6

How different the course taken by early followers of Christ!

With the puritan church of the first centuries was not intrusted, as with us now in effect, the control of the question of war or peace; and yet they sustained the position, that all wars are unlawful, and would sooner suffer martyrdom than fight. At the present day the question of war or peace, especially between Christian nations, may be regarded as indirectly at the option of the church, and still more especially and directly so in our own nation. I think there can be no doubt that, if professed Christians of all evangelical denominations held and sustained the true Christian position relative to war, a speedy stop would be put to the practice. Only withdraw from it religious support, and it would sink of its own weight.

War assumes a prerogative of God, that of disposing of human life. Hence the religious sanctions that have been drawn about it by blood-thirsty conquerors to blunt the conscience of the soldier. Hence the profane practice of making it an appeal to the Lord, and the prayers offered for its success. Hence, also, the promises of future blessedness to the soldier for his daring deeds of blood. Indeed, so repulsive are the moral features of war to the natural conscience of man, that religious sanction of some sort, Pagan, Mahometan or Christian, has been thought essential to its successful prosecution.

But, alas! that our church members, who participate in the sovereign power of the nation, should have the honors bestowed on war. Already we see and feel its pernicious effects. Our nation, by the Declaration of Independence, first came out before the world, and took its stand on sound political and Christian principles, and many of the States have in a good degree sustained the position. But the Federal Government, whose elections have been so much marked with this spirit of complicity with war, and its bantling, slavery, has strangely degenerated from these first principles. This degeneracy may be most obviously traced in the decision of the supreme court in the Dred Scott case; a decision which professes to be, and the President claims it, to be settled law. The Declaration makes the rights of men, all men equally, the bestowment of the Creator; but that decision makes a large class of persons, though native freeborn Americans, a subjugated class, possessing no rights, but what the dominant race see fit to grant them. The Declaration makes it the object of government to secure to all men their inalienable rights, such as life, liberty, and the privilege of pursuing happiness; that decision makes it one prominent object of government to secure the dominion of the dominant over the subordinate race. The Declaration makes governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed; while that decision divides the persons of the United States into a victorious and a vanquished race, who hold each their respective positions by hereditary heirship. The Declaration asserts its principles as selfevident. The decision in support of its opinions goes back to

Grecian and Roman history, and finds its support among the fragments of pagan and despotic mythology. Thus are the fundamental principles of both our government and our religion, subverted by our complicity with the doctrine, that power makes right.

It must be obvious to every discreet observer, that there is political power enough in the members of our churches to lay a veto on such a course of things. Is there not, also, religious and moral courage enough to do it? We trust there is. And we should lose no time in calling it forth. The schemes for farther enlarging our public domain, are fast maturing, and we may soon see the scenes of Texas and the Mexican war re-acted, and perhaps in a far more bloody and horrid form. The churches should forestall such an event; but should the work linger, and meet strong opposition from influential members both among the clergy and laity, the cause of peace can lose nothing from the agitation. Such agitation would be far preferable to the present state of torpor on the subject. I ardently desire to see the experiment tried. It is more than time to make the trial. When, if not now, or where if not here, can it ever be made? How much longer must we wait? More than eighteen centuries have passed; and, at this rate when is peace ever to come, or Christians as a body to take any peculiar stand in its behalf? If the Gospel is God's appointed method of redeeming the world from war, and the church is God's appointed bearer of the gospel as the "light of the world," how shall the human race be redeemed from war while the Church gives a false light on the subject? If our food be fresh, we find salt to season it; but, "if the salt have lost its savor, wherewith shall it be seasoned?"

B.

FUTURE CHANGE OF OPINION ON PEACE.

There has already been, especially since the rise of Peace Societies, a very marked advance of public sentiment on the subject of Peace; but we have the best reason to expect in due time still greater and more decisive changes in the same direction. We should be horrified at modes of thought and feeling once common all over Christendom; and future ages will doubtless look back with equal amazement on not a few of the views now prevalent among the very leaders of public opinion alike in state and church.

Take a specimen of opinions current in past ages on the kindred topic of duelling. "The author of a curious old "History of Duelling," while comdemning the practice, quotes a writer as arguing thus in its favor:'Without the spirit of duelling, there would be no living in a populous nation. It is the tie of society-there has been no virtue which hath proved half so instrumental to the civilizing of mankind. There are now many thousands of mannerly and well-accomplished gentlemen in Europe, who would have turned out very insolent and insupportable cox-combs, without so salutary a curb. Is it not somewhat strange, that a nation