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Let facts speak on this point. Who disenthralled half a continent from papal bondage? Who roused the mass of British minds to crush slavery and slave-trade? Who led the van in the cause of missions, of temperance, and every kindred work? Who are still the chief agents in sustaining all the great moral enterprises of the day? Ministers of the gospel. We challenge you to show one that has reached any considerable degree of success without their hearty and zealous cooperation.

The cause of peace is equally under their control. It is peculiarly their own; and it is obviously in their power to set at work a train of influences sufficient to extirpate war from cvery Christian land. Let them gird themselves in earnest for this work; let them pray, and plan, and toil for it as one of the main objects of their ministry; let them concentrate upon it their utmost energies, and use aright every means within their reach; let them all unite as one man in this blessed cause, and make every pulpit on earth echo the Sermon on the Mount; and ere long would they revolutionize the war-sentiment of all Christendom, and put an end forever to its trade of robbery and blood.

Such is the power of the pulpit; and devoutly do we hope that this power will ere long be put forth in behalf of Peace. No other theme can be more appropriate to its high mission; and in no other way can preachers of the gospel more honor their Master in heaven, the Prince of Peace, or commend their religion to the world.

A MILITARY CHAPLAIN'S LOGIC.-"On board a steamer in Virginia," says a peaceman, "I found, during the Mexican War, an intelligent looking gentleman on his way back from Mexico, who seemed from his discourse before the passengers colleetively, to have been a chaplain in the American army, and was extolling the profession of arms as worthy of the attention of his hearers. After the meeting was concluded, I took a private opportunity to speak with him on the subject I asked if he did not declare himself a minister of the gospel! He answered, 'Yes, sir, I am.' Then how can you, as minister or a servant of the Prince of Peace, uphold war? Quoting some passages in the New Testament, he replied, 'I take the word of God as a whole,' with some other words intimating that he believed the law which made nothing perfect,' was equally binding on Christians since the death of the Lord Jesus, as they were before. He would have me believe that the Bible sustained the principle of War just as much as it does that of Peace."

Our friend seemed startled at this, as well he might; but the logic of the chaplain was necessary for the justification of his employment, and a like necessity will be found to be the key to many an inconsistency in the faith and practice of professed Christians. Such weak, loose, flippant logic is very common, and just shows how little conscience or thought there is on the subject.

HOW MINISTERS CAN PROMOTE PEACE.

Numberless are the ways in which preachers of the gospel might serve the cause of Peace. They might introduce the subject into seminaries of learning, ecclesiastical bodies, and religious publications. These are the great centres of moral influence; and the main-springs at work here, are mostly in the hands of Christian ministers, and might be so wielded as ere long to exorcise the war-spirit from all Christendom. Our seminaries are nearly all under their management or influence; and they might, if they would, make every one of them a nursery of peace to train up a generation of peace-makers. The religious press, an engine of vast and increasing power, is mainly under their control; and, if they would employ it in the diffusion of pacific influences only as much as they have done in the cause of temperance, and some other departments of benevolence and reform, we should soon witness in all reading communities a marked change of opinion and feeling on this subject. The press has already lent us important aid; it is ready to perform almost any amount of service we may ask; and, if well qualified friends of peace could be found in the vicinity of these great moral laobratories to furnish able, popular articles on the subject, nearly every religious paper in the land would cheerfully open its columns. But on whom shall we rely for such aid? Few but ministers can render it; and earnestly do we hope they will ere long make every religious, if not every secular, periodical in Christendom teem with appeals in behalf of this cause.

The pulpit, however, is our chief ally; and fain would we press all its incumbents into zealous co-operation. They ought to preach peace not as a mere result of Christianity, but as one of its grand elements; not as one of its twigs or leaves, but as a portion of its very root and trunk. So did our Saviour preach; and his ministers, in imitation of such an example, should enforce the principles of peace as faithfully as they do repentance or faith.

How this can best be done, every preacher must determine for him. self: but the subject is so imperfectly understood, and yet so impor tant in its principles, connections and bearings, that we think an entire discourse should be devoted to each of its main points, and others be introduced into sermons on ordinary subjects by way of illustration and inference. Passing allusions and incidental remarks, however good in their place, will never suffice. There must be thorough discussion; a full distinct exposition of principles; a clear, forcible, spirit-stirring exhibition of the whole subject. The different aspects of this cause are suffi

ciently various, important and interesting to furnish all the subjects a preacher can ask. While some of these will call for extended discussion, a great variety of common topics will be found by an intelligent, wakeful friend of peace to admit and even require an incidental application to the cause; and we know of no way more likely to correct misconception, to eradicate error, and establish truth. In neither case should a subject so prominent in the instructions of our Saviour, be thrust, as if it were a theme unfit for the Sabbath, into a fast or a thanksgiving. Some of its secular aspects should indeed be presented on such occasions; but its main points, being strictly and highly evangelical, ought to be discussed, like any other part of the gospel, during the ordinary services of the sanctuary.

But ministers should not stop with the instructions of the pulpit. They can often weave this subject into lectures before a Bible class, into exhortations in the conference-room, into reports or addresses at the monthly concert, into exercises at other religious meetings, into their daily interviews with their people from house to house. There is need of reiterated inculcation, line upon line; and they should lose no favorable opportunity of calling attention to this long-forgotten part of the gospel.

Especially should pastors encourage prayer for the universal prevalence of peace. They could easily train the church to remember this cause in the closet, around the family altar, at the monthly concert, in the social meeting, in the house of God. And is it too much to ask from the disciples of the Prince of Peace a general concert of prayer once a year for the spread of peace through the world? It will depend upon the pastor to say whether such a concert shall be well attended, or even observed at all. He might, by a discourse on the Sabbath preceding, and by statements at the meeting, give it an interest sufficient to call out large numbers. He might breathe through his whole church a spirit of prayer as habitual and as earnest for this as for any other object. Such prayer is just as indispensable to the peace as to the conversion of the world.

In many other ways could ministers easily aid us; but a heart-felt interest in the cause would be the best suggester of means and methods. They can lend it their countenance on all proper occasions; they can start and guide inquiries concerning it; they can introduce the subject into lyceums for dissertation and debate; they can circulate publications on peace among their people; they can, a thousand ways scatter light, awaken interest, and give the cause favor and currency through the community.

EXCUSES FOR NEGLECTING PEACE.

1. The cause of Peace belongs to Christians.'-True; and it is for this reason we press its special claims upon them. It certainly is a cause peculiarly, pre-eminently their own; and they must lead its van, or it can never reach the goal of its promised triumph. God has chosen them as his special agents in this work, and furnished them with ample means of success; and if they will just do their whole duty in the case, war may and must cease ere long from Christendom, and in due time from the whole earth.

done it yet. Is she doIf so, she will be right

2. Peace is the work of the church; and whatever needs to be done for this cause, let her do it.'-So we say, let her do it; and we are just trying to make her do it. Clearly she has not ing it now, or girding herself in earnest for it? glad to be reminded of its claims upon her. Had Christians as a body always done their whole duty on this subject, there could have been little, if any, need of peace societies; and whenever they shall come to do it, they will of course supersede the necessity of such organizations.

Is the Peace Society, however, an alien to the church? No more than the Tract, the Bible, or the Missionary Society. Like these, it was organized by the advice of her leaders; it has attempted nothing more than to carry into operation the very measures they have publicly recommended time and again; and from the first it has been sustained almost entirely by her efforts, prayers, and contributions. It is in fact, an instrument of her own for promoting this cause very much in her own way; and heartily should we rejoice to have her take the whole reform out of our hands, if she would, and thus annihilate peace societies by doing their work herself.

3. There is no need of any special efforts for this object, either in or out of the church.'-Who says this?-any one familiar with the facts of the case? Eighteen centuries of the gospel itself gone by without the extinction of war in a single country on earth; Christendom often drenched in blood, and bristling constantly with four or five millions of bayonets; more money spent by reputed Christians for the support of their war-system, five hundred times over, than in endeavoring to evangelize the heathen; the church herself gangrened more or less with the war-spirit, and impeded by the war-system in all her plans for the salvation of men both at home and abroad; Christianity libelled, souls ruined, and the world's conversion retarded for ages by this custom; and yet, after all this, no need of any efforts in the cause

of peace! If this be a specimen of the strange logic that drugs nearly the whole Christian world to sleep over this subject, it surely is high time to break their slumbers by oft-repeated appeals from pulpit and

press.

4. 'There is no need of specific, associated efforts in the cause of Peace. This excuse contradicts nearly all experience in the work of social reform. Review the history of kindred enterprises, and we challenge you to name a single one that ever gained its object in any other way. Did the private wars of feudal times cease, or was the slavetrade brought under the ban of public opinion, the ravages of intemperance seriously checked, or any great enterprise of benevolence or reform successfully carried on, without such efforts? Yet in no enterprise are snch efforts more needed than in the cause of Peace.

5. Preach the gospel; and that will do all that can ever be done, for the removal of war, or any other evil.'-True, we must in this case, as in every other, rely on the gospel, but never without a right, specific, effective application of its principles to the evil to be removed. Here is an atheist, there an infidel; and would you think to reclaim them without arguments from the gospel applicable to their case? Would you shun such particulars as repentance and its fruits? Would you never dissuade the drunkard from his cups, or the profane swearer from his blasphemies, or the debauchee from his profligacies, or the pagan from his worship of idols, or the warrior from his trade of robbery and murder? How was the slave-trade put under ban, or slavery itself abolished in the British Empire? Only by the gospel directly and effectively applied to the case. Such an application has not yet been made to war; and until it shall be, the custom will of course continue in every Christian land.

6. We are to expect peace among nations, and the abandonment of their war-system, as a general, incidental result of Christianity, without any specific application to the case.'-A very general idea, but utterly false and fallacious. Common sense forbids such a hope. Medicine, cure a disease to which it is not applied? Absurd; and if a remedy were prescribed for a particular malady, would you scatter its fumes in the air, and think to be cured by its general influences inhaled from the passing breeze? All experience, too, contradicts this indolent preposterous theory. No great evil, at all resembling that of war, was ever done away by the gospel, without a specific application of its principles to the case. The requisite application may, indeed, have been the result of a change in public opinion so gradual as not to be per

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