THE

ADVOCATE OF PEACE.

MAY AND JUNE, 1860.

WILLIAM JAY:

LATE PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN PEACE SOCIETY.

Extracts from the Discourse on his Virtues and public Services, by Geo. B. Cheever, D. D.

We have reason to thank God for every good man, whose life and character death has sealed, secure from change, for posterity. We have reason to thank God for every measure of greatness, intellectual, and of position and influence, circumstantial, which are as the propelling forces and machinery of a rocket that carry the light high into the heavens. The beneficent lustre of a good man's example, placed so loftily by position and influence, does not fall when the scaffolding is taken away, but remains, and shines the brighter and more independent and permanent.

From beginning to end, the life of Judge Jay was a great and precious example of public and private virtue. He was one of those whose timely presence might have saved an outcast nation. "Run ye to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, and see now, and know, and seek in the broad places thereof, if ye can find a MAN, if there be any that executeth judgment, that seeketh the truth; and I will pardon it." Such a man was Judge Jay; one who, like Abraham, might plead for Sodom; a man of incorruptible principle, a man of tried and steadfast in

tegrity and courage; a man who feared God, and fearing God, feared nothing else; a man who aimed in all things to live as ever in his great Taskmaster's eye; a steward of large abilities and opportunities, good and faithful, through a period of trial and difficulty; a diligent laborer for God and man, when he might have been, with good reputation, a self-indulgent idler, or a busy trifler, or merely a prudent manager of his own household affairs, accumulating and enjoying his revenues.

He was born in the year 1789, and we find him at the age of fifteen in Yale College, a close and successful student, and four years afterwards pursuing his law studies in the office of John B. Henry, Esq., of Albany. Here his application to his books was interrupted by a weakness of the eyes, which gradually increased to such an extent, that at length he was compelled to abandon his work, and relinquish all idea of the law as a profession.

*

In 1812, he married, and in 1818, was appointed to the office of Judge of the County of West Chester, which he continued to hold for a quarter of a century, until 1843. He declined every other public office, but was always active in every station and effort of public or private benevolence. He assisted in the organization of the American Bible Society, was one of its founders, wrote in its defence, was one of its Vice Presidents, and, until he felt compelled to rebuke its complicity with the sin and system of slavery in its silent submission to those wicked laws which render the Bible a sealed book to millions, gave to its management his entire confidence, and the efficiency of an ctive and earnest support.

He was chosen President of the American Peace Society in 1847, and by his able addresses and essays, as well as the weight of his general character and influence, contributed greatly to the spread and power of its principles. It is highly proper that in the analysis of his qualities, in the consideration of what we owe him as a Christian, a Patriot, a Philanthropist, and a Reformer, we should begin the sketch with his position, efforts and principles in connection with this Society. He brought to that connection the whole knowledge of justice and of law, gained from the long study and administration of its principles, and the whole power and activity of opinions grounded on the Word of God, and confirmed by experience, observation, and the knowledge of history. The whole system, science and work, the

beginning, continuance and end of his life and labors, were in that Song of the Angels, whose profound eternal argument and philosophy of benevolence and reform, are at once the impreg nable foundations, and the irresistible agencies of this Society.

"GLORY TO GOD IN THE HIGHEST, AND ON EARTH PEACE, GOOD WILL TO MEN." The first ascription in this sentence struck the keynote of his piety and humanity, commanding the whole depths and motives of his being. His labors were all for God and his righteousness; for God as revealed in his Word, for God as the alpha and omega of all glory and goodness, for God with complete submission to God's Word as the supreme, authoritative, all-sufficient guide; for God in the highest, and therefore and of necessity for Him, and by His Word, in the lowest, and with the motives, encouragements, arguments, promises, and fundamental truths of theology as in his Word revealed; for God with all boldness, perseverance, patience, long-suffering, confidence calmness, and conquering energy and assurance in all the agitating conflicts against wicked men and oppressors.

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace; such peace, and on such grounds, and by such means secured and maintained as God's glory can admit. On the question of Peace, Judge Jay was not a mere theorist, but was remarkably practical, and with great definite purposes ever in his eye, as those best know who are most conservant with his writings and his labors. By his suggestive views, he was the originator of some of the most prominent and effective measures that have been pursued in this great cause of benevolence for the last fifteen or twenty years. He in fact gave rise to all our Peace Congresses, and by his proposition of STIPULATED ARBITRATION, opened a method by which disputes, in every case, may be settled between contending nations without the last mad resort of war, which makes the world a hell on earth in every respect of sin, except its penal inflictions.

Judge Jay's special interest in this cause began at an early period, and was manifested, in his connection with this Society not only by the performance of official duty, but by various able addresses and publications of a practical and masterly character, on the subject of Peace and War. His abhorrence of War, and his earnestness in behalf of Peace, were the result of heart-felt principle and conscience, guided by the Word of God. One of

the earliest of his productions on this subject was the admirable " ESSAY ON WAR and PEACE; the Evils of the first, and a Plea for preserving the last," published in 1848. He developed, in a powerful manner, the unmitigated wantonness and wickedness of War, its unalleviated miseries, its perpetuated evil consequences, its failure ever to accomplish any pretended good result paraded as its object or excuse. He examined the wars of this century, from that of our Revolution to the French, with those of the vast and tremendous career of Napoleon, to the last of the wars of Great Britain then on record, the unprincipled and inhuman war upon China for the protection and enforcement of the trade in opium. He exposed the pretence of the necessity of maintaining the national honor even by war. Alas! for Great Britain; for at the very time these words were uttered, she was waging against China one of the most dishonorable and detestable wars that has ever stained her annals. Indeed, it is difficult to point to a war recorded in history, waged more directly against the health, morals and happiness of a numerous people, or from motives more basely sordid, than the British opium war; and yet, he who is now the prime agent and director of this war, talks of the safety of Great Britain as resting on the maintenance of her honor!"

"Would to heaven this rant about national honor was confined to those who are now at the point of the bayonet easing the Chinese of their purses. But we also have politicians who are far more concerned for the honor than for the morality of the nation; and these gentlemen have just made the extraordinary discovery that the honor of the Republic requires that her flag shall prove an ægis to villains of all nations who may think proper to traffic in human flesh."

"Perhaps the most sublimated wickedness and baseness in degree, although limited in extent, perpetrated by any civilized government at the present day, is practiced in the city of Wash ington. There, in the boasted citadel of American liberty, native-born American citizens are seized and imprisoned on suspicion of being fugitives from bondage; and when the suspicion is disproved by the non-appearance of a claimant, the prisoners are sold as slaves for life to raise money to pay their jail fees!!"

Judge Jay presented in this volume some impressive and humiliating statistics as the basis of an appeal to Christians in