PEACE A PART OF THE GOSPEL.

Few are aware how largely the spirit and principles of peace enter into the gospel. There is hardly any view that must not enforce its claims upon every Christian. Take the duty of evangelizing the world. The substance of all the precepts on this point is forcibly condensed into our Saviour's last command, bidding us preach his gospel, his whole gospel, to every creature. What is that gospel? A patron, an ally, an instigator of war? -war burning with malice and revenge, reeking with pollution, and steeped in blood and tears? The bare supposition outrages all common sense; for the gospel is directly, most glaringly repugnant to every shred of a custom so foul and vindictive.

We are not now discussing a disputed point. We do not here allude to the vexed question, whether a war strictly defensive, if there can be such, is ever justifiable en Christian principles; a point about which there is diversity of opinion among good men, and we leave them to settle it, each one for himself, in the light of the Bible. We are assailing the custom itself; and no man in his senses can fail to see the absolute inconsistency of such a practice with a religion of universal peace and good-will. Look at its details, and tell us, what part of this foul and horrid custom does the gospel sanction? Ascertain its objects, and analyze its motives; mark the spirit it cherishes, and the passions it kindles into a blaze; trace its progress in guilt, and its results in mischief and woe; go to its fleets and its camps recking with

pollution, to its battle-fields raging with hellish malice and wrath, to its hospitals resounding with groans, and curses, and blasphe. mies; and in all these, which alone constitute war, what can you find compatible with a religion of peace, purity and love?

There is no view you can take of such a custom that will not prove its direct contrariety both to the New Testament and the Old. We do not shrink from an appeal even to the Old Testament; for, if you separate its precepts from its somewhat mysterious history, you will find the former almost as much opposed as the gospel itself to the practice of war. It enjoins piety, and love, and truth, and meekness, and a variety of other duties and graces utterly inconsistent with this trade of blood.

Glance at the great moral code of Sinai. Thou shall have no other gods before me. War, pagan in its origin, pagan still in its spirit, and always requiring soldiers to obey their superiors, right or wrong, rather than God himself, does virtually dethrone Jehovah from the hearts of an army, and put in his place a general or a prince, the idol of patriotism, or the phanton of military glory. War was the origin of nearly all the demigods ever worshipped; most of them were warriors deified; had Napoleon lived two thousand years earlier, he would have been the very Mars of the world; and we seriously doubt whether the sticklers for war pay half as much respect to the Almighty, as they do to this modern monster, this ravager of a continent, and murderer of millions.-Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. Every one knows war to be a nursery of irreligion, a school of profaneness and blasphemy.-Thou shalt not commit adultery. War is a hot-bed of the foulest, most brutal licentiousness.-Thou shalt not steal. War is a system of legalized national robbery and piracy.-1 hou shalt not kill. War seeks to kill as its grand aim, and is in fact the most terrible engine ever devised for the wholesale destruction of mankind. Look through the Decalogue, through the whole of the Old Testament; and you will find war absolutely compelling soldiers to violate not a few of its plainest, most important precepts.

But the gospel, repealing the ancient law or license of retaliation, and putting in its place the principle of universal goodwill, is still more repugnant, if possible, to the custom of war. Thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself. Can the soldier do this, and still continue his trade of human butchery? Love as yourself the very man on whom you are trying to inflict the greatest