EXTRACTS FROM THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn; for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek; for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness; for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful; for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart; for they shall see God. Blessed are the peace-makers; for they shall be called the children of God. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven; for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.

Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill, shall be in danger of the judgment. But I say unto you, that whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause, shall be in danger of the judgment; and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, thou fool, shall be in danger of hell-fire. Therefore, if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift. Agree with thine adversary quickly, while thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. Verily I say unto thee, thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing,

Ye have heard that it hath been said, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy; but I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them which despitefully use you and persecute you, that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven; for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? Do not even the publicans so? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

NEITHER SEPARATION NOR WAR THE PROPER WAY. Physically speaking, we cannot separate. We cannot remove our respective sections from each other, nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced, and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other; but the different parts of the country cannot do this. They cannot but remain face to face; and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them. It is impossible, then, to make that intercourse more advantageous or more satisfactory after separation than before. Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws? Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens than laws among friends?

Suppose you go to war, you cannot fight always; and when, after much loss on both sides, and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical question, as to terms of intercourse, are again upon you. This country,

with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.-Pesident Lincoln's Inaugural.

THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY.

War is always wrong. Sometimes, as now, it is relatively necessary, but never absolutely. It is necessary only because, like the city over which Jesus wept, our nation knows not the things that belong to its peace.

The victories of Peace require so much more courage than those of war that they are rarely won. To proclaim every slave in America free, would disband the Southern armies, would pin every rebel to his home,-would make any force but a Home Guard, impossible at the South,—would end the war without another battle.

Our Government has not the courage to touch that unmitigated crime and curse. Seven thousand young noble-browed men have been some time ago, sacrificed to slavery. Seventy times seven may follow. America stands with her sons upon the altar, and the angel Peace cries, "Stay thy hand!" and points at the BRUTE that God hath prepared for the sacrifice. America prefers that Isaac shall bleed in preference to Slavery over there caught in the thicket.

M. D. C.

EMANCIPATION CHEAPER THAN WAR.-Moral causes almost, if not quite, invariably require much time to work out their legitimate results; and if we would avert war, we must in season throw the anchor of such influences far to the windward. "The advocates of Peace on Christian grounds," says The Friends' Review, "are sometimes asked, after the commencement of a war, how their principles are now to be applied? The answer may properly be, that a timely application of those principles would have prevented the war; and thus the responsibility rests upon those who, refusing to act upon such principles, entered into hostilities.

Whatever the result of the present conflict shall be, the question may be pertinently asked, whether, during the long years of its threatening, it might not have been a just and wise policy, seeing that the North as well as the South was implicated in the guilt of slavery, for the former to have made an overture for a satisfactory settlement of the whole question. Such an overture, we believe, would have been found in the plan of "National Compensation," as repeatedly advocated in the Review, and earnestly urged upon by our friend Elihu Burritt. If Congress had passed the proposed law a few years ago, there can be ilttle doubt that Delaware, and probably Maryland and Kentucky, would have accepted its provisions before this time, and been numbered with the Free States. The favorable influence of this course would also have been great upon the South. But the proposition was at once met by the objection, that the expense involved would be beyond endurance; "it would cost," exclaimed some, a thousand millions of dollars." Now, we are told, if the Union can be restored as it existed at the beginning of the rebellion, slavery and all, it will be worth the expenditure by the North, not only of that vast sum, but of any amount of blood and treasure. Taking into the estimate the expense incurred by the Slave States, and the losses of the whole country by the prostration of all kinds of business, how overwhelming seems the result! The prime cause of the rebellion remaining untouched, after the contest is over, what guarantee can we have that the conflict will not be renewed?

66

FOREIGN VIEWS OF THE REBELLION.

The world is coming to juster views of the struggle in which our country is embarked. We give a few specimens:

JOHN BRIGHT, the eloquent Quaker member of Parliament: -"I saw a letter the other day from an Englishman, resident for twentyfive years in Philadelphia, a merchant there, and a very prosperous merchant. He said: 'I prefer the institutions of this country (the United States) very much to yours in England; but,' he says if it be once admitted that here we have no country and no government, but that any portion of these United States can break off from the central government whenever it pleases, then it is time for me to pack up what I have and go somewhere where there is a country and a government!' Well, that is the pith of the question. Do you suppose that if Lancashire and Yorkshire thought they would break off from the United Kingdom, that those newspapers which are now preaching every kind of moderation to the government of Washington, would advise the Government of London to allow these two counties to set up a special government for themselves? When the people of Ireland asked that they should secede, was it proposed in London that they should secede peaceably? Nothing of the kind.

I am not going to defend what is taking place in a country that is well able to defend itself; but I advise you, and I advise the people of England, to abstain from applying to the United States doctrines and principles which we never apply to our own case. At this moment, when you are told that they are going to be ruined by their vast expenditure, why, the sum they are going to raise in the great emergency of this grievous war is not greater than we raise every year during a time of peace. It is said they are not going to liberate slaves. No; the object of the Washington Government is to maintain their own Constitution, and to act legally as it permits and requires.

No man is more in favor of peace than I am, no man has denounced war more than I have, probably, in this country; few men in their public life, have suffered more obloquy-I had almost said, more indignity-in consequence of it. But I cannot for the life of me see, upon any of those princi ples upon which States are governed now-I say nothing of the literal word of the New Testament-I cannot see how the state of affairs in America, with regard to the United States government, could have been different from what it is at this moment. If the thirty-three or thirty-four States of the Union can break off whenever they like, I can see nothing but disaster and confusion throughout the whole of that continent. I say that the war, be it successful or not, be it Christian or not, be it wise or not, is a war to sustain the government, and to sustain the authority of a great nation; and that the people of England, if they are true to their own sympathies, will have no sympathy for those who wish to build up a great empire on the perpetual bondage of millions of their fellow men."

London Patriot. "No more causeless and utterly wicked rebellion was ever known in history. The slave power, which, at the adoption of the Constitution, spoke with bated breath and whispering humblness' of the institution of slavery, and professed to regard it as fated to a gradual decay, has long since changed its tone, and swollen with pride, lust and greed of gain, has from time to time advanced claims on its behalf, which the compromising spirit of the Free States has granted, till at last it utters its blasphemies against the spirit of the Gospel of Christ, declares its system

is the heaven-appointed means of evangelizing the African race, and putting bitter for sweet, light for darkness, it madly seeks to found an Empire on the souls and bodies of four millions of men, unblushingly declaring by the mouth of one of its arch-traitors, that the corner-stone' of that Empire which the builders' of the Constitution' rejected,' is Slavery. Surely a rebellious power, which can only exist by the denial of free opinion or free speech, which tar-and-feathers, when it does not scourge or hang, those who will not bow down to its black Dragon, which passes ordinances without even the show of a popular election, or where, as in Virginia it grants the barefaced mockery of one, forewarns those who might think of voting for the Union, that their so doing would be considered treason.' and they themselves dealt with as traitors,-a rebellious power, whose leaders and chief officers are robbers and perjurers-men who plundered by wholesale the Government whose pay they were receiving, and whom they had sworn to uphold, and who, to the meanness of living on the unpaid labor of others, now decree that their adherents are bound to repudiate the debts they owe to the North,-surely every honest, liberty-loving Briton is bound to express his sympathy with the Free States in their struggle with such a despotism. Surely a power which declares slavery to be its corner-stone, and daringly boasts of its cause as the cause of God, must meet with the sternest reprobation of every Christian British heart. The very gorge of one's soul rises to think that men like these are counting on the sympathy and help of Britain; and that they insultingly believe our boasted championship of the slave will yield to our desire for cotton, our love of human freedom to our love of gold. Let them see that for their treason and slavery, 'the worst crime known in government, and the worst cause known in history, we have nothing but the utmost abhorence."

London News. "The crime is as flagrant as any treason ever was since society was organized. The more the case is examined, the more clearly it will be seen that the secessionists are wholly and absolutely in the worng; that they are guilty of treason, carried on by conspiracy of the basest sort, and aims which are incompatible with the peace of the world. They have made no attempt to retire on fair terms of separation, and with a legal award of their share of property. They have absconded from the Union, with all the cash they could bribe the servants to help them to; and they have since assaulted the Government which they had pillaged. This is the plain state of the case; and it is not to the credit of our knowledge that there should be any among us who attempt to defend or excuse the course of action, more or less. It can be only through ignorance that any English

man can do so.

British Standard, London.-After characterizing Dr. Russell's account of Southern society as absolutely horrible-" acts not to be tolerated in the worst days of Corsican vendette, and which must be put down, or the countries in which they are unpunished, will become as barbarous as jungles of wild beasts"; says, "for our own part, we do think the less the civilized world has to do with the Secession States the better. We can scarcely conceive of any class of human kind, no matter by what means collected, in whom we should place less confidence. It puts us strongly in mind of the fraternity of robbers and their leader, Signor Rolando, who villainously boasted, in rehearsing his terrible career, that God had given him grace to grow old in his profession, in spite of the dangers to which it was exposed. The God of these ruffians is the Devil! It makes the blood run cold to think of a new kingdom founded in Slavery, and ruled by such sons of perdition!"

OUR SOCIETY'S POSITION.

We endeavored, in our last number, to state as exactly as we could, the grounds uniformly taken by our Society from its origin; and we subjoin a few extracts from correspondents to show how far those expositions meet the views of our most intelligent and most reliable friends :

"As to the sentiments contained in the last Advocate, they have long been my own. I think there is nothing in it but what I can heartily subscribe. The present war, with all its peculiarities, has done nothing to shake my faith in the peace principles, but has rather served to confirm it. The sentiments of this September Number are what I think we should labor to keep before the public mind at this crisis; a crisis which exhibits the great majority of the clergy, both South and North, diligently at work to stimulate their churches, and those within their influence, to engage in mutual homicide, as a course of Christian duty, a course approved by God, regarding war as God's method of settling national controversies!

8. W. B.

"I have read with great interest," says another " your articles in the last Advocate. In my view they are not only very able, but are candid and just, and place the position of the Peace Society just where I always understood it to be. There are undoubtedly some friends and supporters of the Society who go further in their views; some who hold to the inviolability of human life, except as the extinction of life may sometimes be undesignedly incidental to the use of milder measures. But, however this may be, there can be no doubt in my mind that you have stated correctly the basis on which the Peace Society, considered as a permanent and effective organization, contemplates the modification and extinction of war among nations; but there can be no nations without government, and no government without the ability to meet and subdue rebellion."

T. C. U.

"I have," says another, "perused repeatedly the last two numbers of the Advocate, and with earnest attention, to see how far the doctrines and tone of the articles are safe and just in the present state of the country. Only in one respect do I discover any likelihood of misunderstanding or condemning the attitude of the Advocate. It is that several of the pieces were written before the South had proceeded to open violence, and announced its intention to overturn the government of the United States, seize the Capital, and lay waste our Northern cities. Some of the sentiments now look as if the writers inculcated absolute non-resistance to assassins, bridge-burners, and infuriated invaders; but, read in the light of the time of writing, they require no such interpretation. * * The present struggle can be called war only in view of its large proportions. The rebels clutch at the nation's throat, and avow a purpose to take the nation's life-to make slavery, in every sense, national, and to substitute a 66 strong government" instead of a Republic. They avow personal, intense and immortal hatred of Yankees, as they call all free State people.

I see no sufficient reason for the Peace Society to strike its flag, or mask its batteries. Our sole aim is to supersede national duels, by fixed, plain, comprehensive, authoratative international law. We have in our ranks every variety of political economists, and moralists. So have Temperance Societies, and all other benevolent societies. But I believe we have no