and we hope never to cease from our efforts until we see peace, as an element of our religion, going hand in hand with the gospel over the whole earth.

Still we do not expect materially to change our course. Our influence has always gone against the whole war-system; and we shall only continue our past efforts with a more distinct avowal, and a more direct vindication of the views we have all along entertained. The work of general reform is necessarily slow; we can expect no person to come at a single leap over ground which we have ourselves been years in traversing; and, while we hold up to the public view what we conceive to be the teachings of the Bible on this subject, we shall seek merely or mainly to furnish materials for a right conclusion, and then leave our friends to work it out for themselves. We ask them not to embrace our principles because they are ours, but to satisfy themselves by bringing these principles to the test of the gospel. We wish not to dogmatize, but to inquire and discuss. We mean not to be belligerent for peace. We design to wield no weapons but truth and love. We shall hope to be frank, but liberal; firm, yet conciliatory. We disavow a Procrustean spirit; we have no iron bedstead on which we intend to put honest minds to the rack; but we shall invite all the friends of God and man to a kind and fair consideration of this whole subject in the light of a common guide. We shall denounce none merely for not coming fully up to our views; but we shall urge all to follow faithfully the light they have, and to lend us their aid in abolishing a custom which they regard, equally with ourselves, as the greatest sin and curse of Christendom. Our object is a common one; and no diversity of opinion respecting the lawfulness of wars called defensive, should keep us from cordially uniting our prayers and efforts in this great work of a world's pacification.

IV. PLAN OF OPERATION.

On this important point we wished to dwell at some length; but we must reserve it for a future occasion, and shall for the present merely say, that we seek to effect such a change in

public opinion as shall secure a right and universal application of the gospel to the intercourse of Christian nations. This is all we shall ever attempt; it is all that human instrumentality can do; and, when we have thus applied God's only remedy to this deep and dreadful gangrene of our race, we must, in faith and prayer, leave the result with Him who hath the hearts of all so entirely in his hands, that he can turn them even as the rivers of water are turned.'

For the production of such a change in public sentiment, we would set at work, and keep at work, all the mainsprings of moral influence, the pen and the tongue, the press and the pulpit, the church, the family, the Sabbath school, all seminaries of learning, all the great nurseries of knowledge and character in Christendom.

Thus we propose to reach the public mind only through the ordinary channels of influence. We seek reform with as little agitation as possible. We wish to effect a peaceful change on this subject by the moral suasion of the gospel addressed to the community in ways to which they are already accustomed. This has been our uniform course. We have first obtained the sanction of our highest ecclesiastical bodies; our agents are expected invariably to act in concert with pastors; and we pray for such measures of wisdom and grace from on high, as will enable us to deserve the continuance of their cheerful coöperation in this great work assigned to his church by the Prince of peace.

We cannot well give in few words a better view of the agencies we wish to enlist in our cause, than by the following extract from a very brief tract which the society issued the past year as a manifesto of its principles, aims and measures:

'Public opinion is the mistress of the world; and, could it through all Christendom be arrayed against this custom, as it is in New England against the kindred practice of duelling, such a public opinion would soon restrain rulers from settling their disputes by powder and ball. We can reach politicians solely or mainly through the people; and, to imbue the latter with the spirit and principles of peace, we would use such means as the following:

1. THE PRESS, an engine of vast moral power; and we wish to hear its ten thousand tongues speak on this subject, in the ear of all reading communities, through books, and pamphlets, and tracts, and newspapers, and every class of periodicals.

2. THE PULPIT should cry aloud, and declare "all the counsel of God" concerning the guilt of war, and the obligations of peace. Ministers can, if they will, exert such an influence as would ere-long banish wars from every Christian country. We urge them all to do this by preaching peace as a part of Christianity itself. The living voice is needed to awaken inquiry; if ministers will not do this for their own people, special agents must be employed for the purpose; and then the press alone can furnish nearly all that will be requisite to enlighten the public mind.

3. PEACE SOCIETIES should be organized in some form (the simpler the better), wherever there is a sufficient degree of intelligence and interest on the subject to sustain them with vigor. Organization is indispensable to the success of any enterprise; and we wish our friends to organize themselves in some way wherever they can with prospects of success.

4. CHRISTIAN CHURCHES of every name should consider themselves as societies divinely appointed for the universal spread of peace and good-will. Every church should examine this subject till their views are settled, and then tell the world plainly what they think respecting the incompatibility of war with their religion. This they owe to themselves, to the world, to the gospel itself, to their Master in heaven. They should also train up all under their care in the principles of peace, and pray much for its prevalence through the world. Let them all do merely these two things, and the wars of Christendom would soon come to an end.

"5. We rely much on pious parents, on teachers in Sabbath schools, and instructers in all Christian seminaries of learning, from the highest to the lowest. Here are the great nurseries of peace; and in these must one day be trained up a generation of such peace-makers as will spontaneously keep the world in peace.

5. We look especially to pious women. Our main hope is with the young; and their character is moulded by female hands. If they will infuse the principles of peace into the mind of every child under their care, wars must of necessity cease with the next generation.'

Our system of measures cannot be sustained without funds, and personal efforts from the friends of peace. Our cause demands not indeed so much money as Home or Foreign Missions, but quite as much as tract operations in our own land. We need for the present, an average of one agent to every State in the Union; and, besides gratuitously furnishing our periodical to those ministers who are pledged to preach on the subject of peace, it would cost nearly five thousand dollars to put a single tract at only one cent a-piece in every family in New England, and thirty thousand for the whole country. The community are strangely mistaken in seeming to suppose that this cause will take care of itself without funds. These are just as necessary here as in any other enterprise of benevolence or reform; and the society were very moderate in saying, at their late anniver

sary, that there will be needed the present year, at least ten thousand dollars for the support of lecturers, and the circulation of publications on peace.'

Now, we ask the ambassadors of the Prince of peace, and all the sons and daughters of the God of peace, if they will not in every one of these ways lend the utmost aid in their power to a cause so closely linked, so perfectly identified with the best interests of mankind for time and eternity. We are only their organs in this work; we can accomplish little, if any thing without their prompt and zealous coöperation; and it remains very much with them to say how fast the wheels of this great and godlike enterprise shall be rolled forward the present year towards that more than golden era when 'swords shall be beaten into ploughshares, and spears into pruning-hooks, and the nations learn war no more.'

ARTICLE II.

THE COST OF WAR.

THE incidental losses of war are from three to five times as great as its direct expenses; and yet its ships, and fortifications, and arms, and ammunition, and other engines of death and devastation, cost an incredible amount of money.

The expenses of a single war-ship in actual service are more than one thousand dollars a day; and there are in Christendom between two and three thousand such ships. England lavished upon Lord Wellington, for only six years' services, nearly $5,000,000. In twenty years from 1797, she expended an average of $1,143,444 every day—more than a million of dollars a day for war alone; and in one hundred and twenty-seven years, her war-debt grew from less than five millions to more than FOUR THOUSAND millions of dollars. She spent in our revolutionary war about $600,000,000; and the wars of Christendom, during only twenty-two years from 1793, cost barely

for their support, beside many times more in incidental losses, nearly FIFTEEN THOUSAND MILLIONS OF DOLLARS! six or eight times as much as all the coin in the world!!

Just think how much good might be done with such a sum. To keep every family on earth supplied with a Bible at one dollar a-piece, would not take $10,000,000 a year; the expenses of a common education for all the children on the globe, would not exceed $250,000,000 a year, nor those for the higher branches, $150,000,000; ministers of the gospel, with an average salary of $500 each, could be furnished one to every thousand souls for $400,000,000,-in all, $810,000,000; while the bare interest at six per cent. on the war-expenses of Christendom for only twenty-two years, would bring an annual income of $900,000,000; ninety millions more than would be requisite to support the institutions of learning and the Christian religion for the whole world!

Did you ever inquire how much we have spent for war? In eighteen years from 1816, a period of peace, we paid for war purposes nearly $400,000,000, and less than one-sixth of that sum for the peaceful operations of government. In forty-one years from 1791, our entire expenses amounted to more than $842,000,000, of which only a little more than 37,000,000, one twenty-third part of the whole, were for civil offices. The war-system costs us, in one way and another, not less than $50,000,000 a year even in peace; an average of more than $137,000 every day! All the expenses and losses of war to our nation since the beginning of our revolutionary struggle must be more than TWO THOUSAND MILLIONS OF DOLLARS!—the very interest upon which, amounting at six per cent. to $120,000,000 a year, would more than defray all our necessary expenses of education, religion, and government without the war-system!

Who pay all this? Who endure all the other evils of war? Who can, if they will, put an end to this fell destroyer? THE PEOPLE. And will they not do it? Let them ALL resolve to have it cease, and it will cease.