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WHAT IS THE CHIEF EVIL OF WAR?

away human multitudes as insects; tramples them down as grass; mocks at their rights; and does not deign a thought to their woes.

These remarks show us the great evil of war. It is moral evil. The field of battle is a theatre, got up at immense cost, for the exhibition of crime on a grand scale. There the hell within the human breast blazes out fiercely and without disguise. A more fearful hell in any region of the universe cannot well be conceived. There the fiends hold their revels, and spread their fury.

Suppose two multitudes of men, each composed of thousands, meeting from different countries, but meeting not to destroy but to consult and labour for the good of the race; and suppose them, in the midst of their deliberations, to be smitten suddenly by some mysterious visitation of God, and their labours to be terminated by immediate death. We should be awe struck by this strange, sudden, wide-spread ruin. But reflection would teach us, that this simultaneous extinction of life in so many of our race, was but an anticipation or peculiar fulfilment of the sentence passed on all mankind; and a tender reverence would spring up, as we should think of so many generous men coming together from so many different regions, in the spirit of human brotherhood, to be wrapt in one pall, to sleep in one grave. We should erect a monument on the solemn spot; but chiefly to commemorate the holy purpose which had gathered them from their scattered abodes; and we should write on it, "To the memory of a glorious company, suddenly taken from God's ministry on earth, to enter again a blessed brotherhood, on a higher ministry in heaven." Here you have death sweeping away hosts in a moment; but how different from death in a field of battle, where man meets man as a foe, where the countenance flashes rage, and the arm is nerved for slaughter, where brother hews down brother, and where thousands are sent unprepared, in the moment of crime, to give their account. When nature's laws, fulfilling the mysterious will of God, inflict death on the good, we bow, we adore, we give thanks. How different is death from the murderous hand of man!

Allow me to make out another supposition, which may bring out still more strongly the truth on which I now insist, that the great evil of war is inward, moral; that its physical woes, terrible as they may be, are light by the side of this. Suppose then, that in travelling through a solitary region, you should

WHAT IS THE CHIEF EVIL OF WAR?

catch the glimpse of a distant dwelling. You approach it eagerly in the hope of hearing a welcome after your weary journey. As you draw nigh, an ominous stillness damps your hope; and on entering, you see the inmates of the house, a numerous family, stretched out motionless and without life. A wasting pestilence has, in one day, made their dwelling a common tomb. At first you are thrilled with horror by the sight; but as you survey the silent forms, you see on all their countenances, amidst traces of suffering, an expression of benignity. You see some of the dead lying side by side, with hands mutually entwined, showing that the last action of life was a grasp of affection; whilst some lie locked in one another's arms. The mother's cold lips are still pressed to the cheek of the child, and the child's arms still wind round the neck of the mother. In the forms of others you see proof, that the spirit took its flight in the act of prayer. As you look on these signs of love and faith, stronger than the last agony, what a new feeling steals over you! Your horror subsides. Your eyes are suffused with tears, not of anguish, but of sympathy, affection, tender reverence. You feel the spot to be consecrated. Death becomes lovely like the sleep of infancy. You say, Blessed family, death hath not divided you!

With soothed and respectful sorrow you leave this restingplace of the good, and another dwelling, dimly described in the horizon, invites your steps. As you approach it, the same stillness is an augury of a like desolation, and you enter it, expecting to see another family laid low by the same mysterious disease. But you open the door, and the spectacle freezes your blood, and chains your steps to the threshold. On every face you see the distortion of rage. Every man's hand grasps a deadly weapon: every breast is gored with wounds. Here lies one, rived asunder by a sword. There, two are locked together, but in the death-grapple of hatred, not the embrace of love. Here lies woman trampled on and polluted, and there the child, weltering in its own blood. You recoil with horror, as soon as the sickness of the heart will suffer you to move. The deadly steam of the apartment oppresses, overpowers you, as if it were the suffocating air of hell. You are terror-struck, as if through the opening earth you had sunk into the abode of fiends; and when the time for reflection comes, and you recall the blessed habitation you had just before left, what a conviction rushes on you, that

WHAT IS THE CHIEF EVIL OF WAR?

nothing deserves the name of wo, but that which crime inflicts. You feel that there is a sweetness, loveliness, sacredness in suffering and death, when pervaded by holy affections; and that infinite wretchedness and despair gather over these, when springing from unholy passion, when bearing the brand of crime.

I do not mean to deny that the physical sufferings of war are great, and should incite us to labour for its abolition. But suffering, separate from crime, coming not through man's wickedness, but from the laws of nature, are not unmixed evils. They have a ministry of love. God has ordained them, that they should bind men to one another, that they should touch and soften the human heart, that they should call forth mutual aid, solace, gratitude, and self-forgetting love. Sorrow is the chief cement of souls. Death, coming in the order of nature, gathers round the sufferer sympathizing, anxious friends, who watch day and night, with suffused eyes and heart breathed prayer, to avert or mitigate the last agonies. It calls up tender recollections, inspires solemn thought, rebukes human pride, obscures the world's glories, and speaks of immortality. From the still death-bed, what softening, subduing, chastening, exalting influences proceed. But death in war, death from the hand of man, sears the heart and conscience, kills human sympathies, and scatters the thought of judgment to come. Man dying in battle, unsolaced, unpitied, and a victim to hatred, rapacity, and insatiable ambition, leaves behind him wrongs to be revenged. His blood does not speak peace or speak of heaven; but sends forth a maddening cry, and exasperates survivors to new struggles.

Thus war adds to suffering the unutterable weight of crime,` and defeats the holy and blessed ministry which all suffering is intended to fulfil. When I look back on the ages of conflict through which the race has passed, what most moves me is not the awful amount of suffering which war has inflicted. This may be borne. The terrible thought is, that this has been the work of crime; that men, whose great law is love, have been one another's butchers; that God's children have stained his beautiful earth, made beautiful for their home, with one another's blood; that the shriek, which comes to us from all regions and ages, has been extorted by human cruelty; that man has been a demon, and has turned earth into hell.

POETRY.

Poetry.

THE ROYAL REPAST;

OR, THE EASTERN QUESTION.

BRUIN, the rugged Russian beast,
Can see no evil in a feast.

If tempted out by human gore,
He treads a path long trod before,
The way is old, and old the work,
That swallows Chinaman or Turk.
That Eagle* circling now so gay,
Suck'd Roman blood a live-long day;
And spread on Algiers' sands a brood,
That made a turban'd host their food.
The carcase slain they take their fill,
And prove their nature rav'nous still.
The roaring Lion,† King of Beasts,
Makes lordly meals at human feasts.
The weak Hindoo, the Affghan brave,
The Caffre, and the Burman slave,
The Dyak, Scind,' and China fair,
Proclaim who takes "the Lion's share."

But these are Lords,-and must they starve
While Bruin claims his turn to carve ?
Shall they vacate the royal seat,
And see him all the "Turkey" eat?
No, never! or he'll learn to play,
Their fav'rite game some other day.

Feast on right Royal "Diners out,"
Drive back the Bear with furious shout;
Feast quickly on, make short the work,
For light is breaking on the Turk.
At his own board he'll take his place,
Nor wait for you to "say the grace."

Nor he alone, but other prey,
Waits on the wing for coming day.
A calmer morn is rising fast,
Haste! or the feast will be your last.
One other storm, one struggle o'er,
And man shall be your food no more.
Birmingham.

* France. + England.

W. S.

ANECDOTES AND SELECTIONS.

Anecdotes and Selections.

CANNOT FIND TIME.-He who cannot find time to consult his Bible will find, one day, that he has time to be sick. He who has no time to pray must find time to die. He who can find no time to reflect is most likely to find time to sin. He who cannot find time for repentance will find an eternity in which repentance will be of no avail. Let us, then, under the influence of the Divine Spirit, seriously reflect under what law we came into the world: "It is appointed for all men once to die, and after death, the judgment." Is it not obvious, then, that the design of life is to prepare for judgment; and that, in proportion as we employ time well, we make immortality happy? Hannah More.

THE HOLY DAY.-It is a blessed thing to have the sabbath devoted to God. There is nothing in which I would recommend you to be more strictly conscientious than in keeping the sabbath holy. By this I mean not only abstaining from all unbecoming sports and common business, but from consuming time in frivolous conversation, paying or receiving visits, which among relations often leads to a sad waste of this precious day. I can truly declare that to me the sabbath has been invaluable. Wm. Wilberforce.

THE RESTING DAY.-Order and obedience, morality and power, are all in Britain connected with the observance of the sabbath. Amidst the activity which pervades all things, the bustle of the towns, and the energy with which the inhabitants pursue their earthly callings, what would become of them if they had not a day's rest in which to recruit themselves, and laying aside things temporal, which are seen, to look forward to things eternal, which are unseen? Dr. Merle D'Aubigné.

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EDUCATION needs a religious element; for it is not education alone that will save us, but will merely train a skilful race of gladiators for the arena of political strife. The only source of that element of safety is the Word of God. And if you take the Word of God from your common schools, you are teaching infidelity and practical atheism to the whole nation. You are filling the mind with elements that, without the safeguard of Divine truth, are sure to become fiery, bitter, and poisonous. Dr. Cheever.

THE BEST BOOK.-The Bible is, beyond all controversy, the best book of education in the world. It is the best book for the formation of children's minds; the best book for their acquisition of a pure style in their native language; the best book to promote and secure the purposes of family government; the best book to make our children enlightened and good citizens of the republic; the best book, in fine, to preserve them from all evil and train them up in all good. Dr. Cheever.

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