Is not this promise now in a course of actual fulfilment? Yes, "already is the process begun, by which Jehovah is going to fulfil the amazing predictions of his Word. Even now is the fire kindled at the forges where swords are yet to be beaten into plough-shares, and spears into pruning-hooks. The teachers are already abroad who shall persuade the nations to learn war no more. If we would hasten that day, we have only to throw ourselves into the current, and we may row with the tide. There may be, here and there, a counter-current; but the main stream is flowing steadily on, and the order of providence is roll. ing forward the sure result."

WHAT HAS THE CAUSE OF PEACE DONE?

Very little, we grant, in comparison with what needs to be done, only a small part of its great work; and yet has it already accomplished far more than could reasonably have been expected of it in so short a time, and with such slender means.

Look at some of its results patent to every eye. Mark the general peace of Europe for forty years from its origin—from the battle of Waterloo, in 1815, to the rise of the Crimean war; a longer period of rest from the sword than Christendom had ever known before. True, its nations were all this time armed to the teeth; but, with sporadic cases of conflict between rulers and their subjects, there was still nothing that could be strictly called war, no conflict by the sword between any of its governments.

During most of this time our own country enjoyed similar repose. In 1835, we were seriously exposed to war with France; in three marked instances were we on the brink of war with England; and in all these cases our escape was owing chiefly to the altered tone of popular sentiment on both sides of the Atlantic, created by efforts in this cause. Often had provocations not half as great led to long and bloody wars. Our deliverance, too, from a conflict with Mexico, in 1838, was publicly attributed by John Quincy Adams to our labors; and, had public opinion been what it was fifty years before, we could hardly have avoided a war with England either about Canada in 1838, respecting our north-eastern boundary in 1840, or about Oregon

in 1846.

If facts like these do not prove success, what ever can prove it? These results were as fairly attributable to efforts in the cause of peace, as the spread of Christianity among the heathen is to the mis

sionary enterprize, or the triumphs of temperance to labors in that cause. On any other subject, such proof would be deemed perfectly decisive. Had no duel been fought in any of our Southern States for twenty-five years, would not this alone have proved a steady and sure decline of that practice? Had there been in our whole country no case of intoxication for forty years, would not this single fact have shown the cause of temperance to have become signally successful? Why then should not the general peace of Christendom for forty years, be regarded as equally decisive of success in this cause? Nor is this al; for we have really begun the process of abolishing this custom. We are gradually undermining its fundamental, essential principle. We are seizing the very hinges on which it turns. We are gradually training nations to settle their difficulties by other means. Such a change is full of hope. We might stop a hundred duels, or keep a thousand drunkards from a fit of intoxication, without making any effective impression on the general practice of duelling or of intemperance. We must break up the usage; nothing else will suffice. So on peace; we must change the prevalent modes of thought and feeling on the subject, and accustom nations, like individuals, to settle their disputes without bloodshed.

Mark how far we are actually doing this by the substitution of reference in place of the sword. A dispute between ourselves and Great Britain was submitted, in 1822, to the Emperor of Russia; a similar one between the same parties to the King of the Netherlands, in 1827; and various matters in controversy between us and Mexico, to the King of Prussia, in 1838. Not that the result in any of these cases was entirely satisfactory, a thing never to be expected; but it did secure its great object-it prevented war. This practice has been slowly yet surely extending, and winning general favor, till our own government has begun to form treaties on this principle; and from the memorable Congress of Paris, (April, 1856,) which terminated the Crimean war, we hear the voice of all Europe in its favor: "The plenipotentiaries did not hesitate to express, in the name of their governments, the wish that States, between which any misunderstanding may arise, should have recourse to the good offices of a friendly power." Thus is arbitration gradually taking the place of war, and superseding its long supposed necessity.

Meanwhile, we see a gradual yet sure mitigation of the evils once inseparable from war. When we began our labors in 1816, privateering was no less a part of the custom than its sieges or its battles; but at the

close of the Crimean war, the Paris Congress unanimously decreed its perpetual abolition. Was not here a signal success? Yet only one of the many meliorations we have secured. The same Congress decided, among other improvements in the law of nations, that there shall be no blockade without a force sufficient to enforce it; that all neutrals shall pass unmolested alike in war as in peace; that the flag of a country shall protect whatever it covers, and that nothing shall be liable to capture except articles strictly contraband of war. Simple, but farreaching principles; and, once carried into general practice, they would take from war no small part of its evils.

With such facts before us, we have a right to claim that something has already been gained in the cause of peace, vastly more indeed than could have been expected from the small means thus far used We challenge the world to name any other enterprize that has done more in proportion to the means employed. Look at some of the facts. For twenty years from its origin, the entire receipts of this cause did not average five thousand dollars a year, while the war system was costing Christendom some thousand millions a year; more in one hour on the war-system, even in a time of peace, than for the cause of peace in twenty years! Yet has this mere pittance, spent in the use of moral, Christian means, done more to preserve peace in Christendom, than all the myriads wasted, year after year, upon her war-system.

With adequate means, how much might have been accomplished! Not that any amount of efforts could abolish war at once; for the very laws of the human mind, of society and government, forbid the hope. Such a consummation can be reached only by wise, vigorous, long-continued efforts. We must wait and work for it. Yet how much more might have been done than has been! Had the Christian community from the first heeded the claims of this cause only as they have some others; had the church and her ministry all along rallied spontaneously to its generous, habitual, effective support; had the press, in the ubiquity and power of its influence, lent its full, earnest, persistent advocacy; had we been furnished with half the funds needed to bring the cause aright before our rulers, before our seminaries of learning, before ecclesiastical bodies, and the community at large; - yes, with only a single one of the thousand million dollars spent by Christendom upon her war-system, we might ere this have effected such a change as would have sufficed, under God, to insure henceforth her general and permanent peace.

Our work, however, is only begun. The war-system still remains in full force, a vast magazine of mischief. The war-spirit, so far from

being extinct, merely sleeps, and waits only a sufficient provocation to unkennel its blood-hounds, and send them howling over the fairest fields of Christendom. We have as yet no real security; nor can we have till nations shall give up the war-principle of adjusting their dif ferences by the sword, and come to establish in its place a system of rational, peaceful adjudication.

WHY NO MORE PREACHING ON PEACE.

If ministers of the gospel would render the cause of peace any essential service, they must qualify themselves for the work. They must take a deep interest in it as an element of the gospel, and as a part of the instrumentalities requisite for the world's conversion. They must imbue their own minds with the spirit of peace, and study the Bible until their views are brought fully into accord with its teachings. We cannot wonder at the apathy of ministers who pay no attention to this subject. Can we expect them to write, or preach, or converse upon what they do not understand? Can they understand what they have never examined? Will they plead for an object whose claims they never felt, or labor for a cause they neither value nor love?

Here is the explanation of nearly all that indifference about the cause of peace which is so disreputable to many a reputed minister of Christ. They do not understand it! And will they ever understand this or any other subject without examination? Their views are not settled upon it! And do they expect or desire to settle them without inquiry? But they do not feel a sufficient interest! And how are they to acquire such an interest? By continuing to neglect the whole subject? How did you become a friend, an advocate, a champion of the temperance or the missionary cause? You read, you conversed, you reflected, you prayed, you wrought it into your very soul, and made it & part of yourself. Do the same in the cause of peace; and you will ere long have such views of its importanee, such a conviction of its claims, such strong desires for its speedy and universal success, as will never let you sleep over it again.

EXCESS OF FEMALES IN ENGLAND.-There is in England an excess of 800,000 females over males. The disparity is caused by wars and standing armies, by the drain of men for the mercantile and naval marine, and by the greater number of males who emigrate to the colonies and to the United States.

HOW FAR IS THE PULPIT RESPONSIBLE FOR WAR?

Power and opportunity are the measure of responsibility; and, tried by this test, the pulpit has a fearful responsibility for actual war, and for the rise or continuance of the war-system in Christendom. If true to her high and sacred trust, if faithful in using the mighty power she holds in her hand, if alive to seize and turn to the best account her manifold opportunities for restricting, gradually abating, and eventually abolishing this master-evil, she might in time, if not ere long, banish it forever from every land blest with the light of the gospel.

The power of the Pulpit is proverbial, and pervades, more or less, the whole mass of society. Preachers of the gospel claim to be heralds of God's truth, and ought to be leaders of the people in every good cause. Their character, their office, their relations to society, all arm them with a vast amount of moral power. Their talents, their learning, their eloquence, their high repute for virtue, piety and benevolence, enable them to give tone to public sentiment on all moral and religious subjects.

Such is the design of their office. God has appointed them as spiritual guides to the people. They are pioneers of truth, righteousness and salvation. They are chosen for the very purpose of moulding opinion and character to the will of God. Mark their peculiar facilities for this purpose. They speak in God's name, on God's day, from God's word. They can reach the individual and the general conscience. They are welcomed to the bridal throng, to the quiet fire-side, to the sick chamber, to the bed of death, to the group of weeping mourners. Almost every mind is open to their influence. They have the ear of parents and teachers; and these are scattering, thick and fast, the seeds of character through the community. They have access to the mother's heart; and her children will reflect the form and hue of her own image. Old and young, high and low, male and female, come every week, if not every day, under their influence. They touch the mainspring of the moral world. Their influence is felt in the farthest and minutest ramifications of society. They wield in the gospel an instrument of vast power over the understanding, conscience and heart. They are the chief depositories of moral power; they hold in their hand the helm and the main-spring of nearly all the instrumentalitieg employed for the spiritual renovation of mankind; and, without their cooperation, no enterprise of benevolence or reform can ever work its way to complete success.