THE

DUTY OF MINISTERS

WITH RESPECT TO THE

CAUSE OF PEACE.

I. RELIANCE OF THE CAUSE ON MINISTERS.

THE cause of peace has been for some time before the public. Its sole object is the abolition of war; and this object it hopes to accomplish only by the influence of the gospel rightly applied. Its principles, pervading more or less the whole New Testament, we regard as an integral part of Christianity, and binding, equally with its other truths, on all the followers of Christ. These principles, too generally neglected for ages, we wish to have re-enforced, "line upon line, precept upon precept," until they shall leaven all Christendom, and cause its nations to cease from the art of war forever. Our measures all aim at this single object. We wish, mainly through the pulpit and the press, to illustrate the guilt and the evils of this custom, and thus form a public sentiment which shall lead to the establishment of some permanent tribunal for the peaceful adjustment of all difficulties between civilized nations.

Here is a proper field for specific effort. The object distinct, and vastly important; the main principles clear, and well settled in the word of God; the measures simple, practicable and efficient; the long continuance, wide diffusion, and deep inveteracy of the evils we seek to do away; the slumbers of the Christian world over them age after age; the necessity of special, combined, vigorous efforts for their removal; the perfect certainty of success guarantied by the promises of God;-all these considerations conspire with others to enforce upon us the claims of this cause as indispensable to the world's entire and thorough conversion.

Success here depends chiefly on the ministers of Christ; and to them we confidently look for spontaneous and effective coöperation. They are our main allies; they are our chieftains; and under their banners it is that we wish to rally in this cause. It is preeminently their own; and they must lead its van, or it never can succeed. Ambassadors of the Prince of Peace, it is their appropriate business, their imperative duty, to foster this cause, and become its pioneers and champions.

Nor will the ministers of Christ disappoint the confidence we thus repose in them. Their character and their office pledge them to the cause of peace. Leaders in every other good work, they will not long neglect this. They need only the light requisite to full conviction; and we beg their candid, earnest, prayerful attention to the special claims of this cause on all preachers of the gospel.

II. PEACE A PART OF THE GOSPEL.

Peace is the very motto of our religion. It forms one of its marked and most glorious peculiarities. It is one of its grandest objects, a point to which its precepts, provisions and influences confessedly tend as their final result. Its spirit pervades the New Testament. The whole Bible

is a statute-book of peace. Our heavenly Father is the God of peace. Our Redeemer is the Prince of Peace. The Holy Ghost is the Spirit of peace. Heaven is the abode of perfect and everlasting peace. Peace was a leading theme in the instructions of Christ, and a prominent trait in his character. His entire doctrine was peace; his spirit was the very essence of peace; his whole life was an exemplification of peace; peace was the special legacy he bequeathed to his disciples; and, just before bowing his head in death on the cross, he prayed for his murderers, and thus set an example for all his followers down to the end of time.

War is implicitly condemned even in the Old Testament. We grant that the Israelites were expressly commanded to wage against the Canaanites wars of aggression, conquest and extermination; but their example in this respect can no more sanction the custom of war than that of Abraham sacrificing Isaac could justify infanticide, or the polygamy and concubinage of patriarchs could license us to indulge in the same practices. Such cases cannot be drawn into precedents to nullify God's plain, unequivocal commands; and in the precepts even of the Old Testament, you will find nothing to justify the wholesale robberies, murders and devastations legalized in war. Our Savior teaches us, that the sum of the law and the prophets is to love the Lord our God with all the heart, and our neighbor as ourselves; but every form of war contravenes both of these comprehensive precepts, and uniformly leads, if it does not compel, its agents to tread them under foot.

Every command of the Decalogue is a virtual prohibition of this custom. The first three prescribe our duties to our Maker, and require us to have no other gods before him, never to take his name in vain, and neither to worship nor make an idol of any object in the universe; but war, the offspring of a barbarous paganism, and the nurse of impiety and blasphemy, most notoriously violates each of these precepts. The fourth commandment, auxiliary alike to our social and our religious duties, bids us "remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy;" but war refuses to acknowledge any Sabbath, and even compels its servants, at the point of the bayonet, to disregard and desecrate this day of God. The other six commandments require us to honor our parents, and to abstain from murder, and adultery, and theft, and false witness, and covetousness; but does not every body know that war is a direct violation of all these precepts, and lives only by the very sins here prohibited? It is utterly impossible to reconcile war with any part of the Decalogue; and a strict enforcement of its requisitions would constrain the nations to cease from this savage custom forever.

But the gospel is still more decisive. Its spirit, its object, its principles, its means, its motives, all are the very reverse of those which characterize every form of war. It requires in the Christian, qualities which no soldier can possess without ceasing to be a soldier. It enjoins duties absolutely incompatible with his alleged obligations. It forbids the very things which constitute the character and business of the warrior. It condemns all the moral elements of war.

We cannot stop here to illustrate these positions at length; but just glance at the first ten verses of Christ's Sermon on the Mount. The blessings of heaven he there pronounces upon the poor in spirit, and them that mourn; upon the meek and the merciful; upon the pure in heart, and those who hunger and thirst after righteousness; upon peacemakers, and those who rejoice in the unresisting endurance of persecution for righteousness' sake. Does any one of these qualities properly belong to the warrior? Is not the want of them all his best qualification for the trade of human butchery? Can he possess them, and still continue his work of pillage and murder?

Recall a few passages of the New Testament. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Do good unto all men. Never do evil that good may come. Avenge not yourselves. Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them. Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, and do good to them that hate you. Have peace one with another. Follow peace with all men. Be gentle, showing all meekness unto all men. Lay aside all malice. Put off anger, wrath, malice. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil-speaking, be put away from you, with all malice. See that none render evil for evil. Recompense to no man evil for evil. Resist not evil; but overcome evil with good.

We have no space for a critical examination of these passages; but is it possible for any degree of exegetical ingenuity or perverseness to torture them into the least approval of war? This custom contravenes every one of them; for it proceeds on the very principle of hating our enemies, of taking vengeance into our own hands, of overcoming evil with evil, of doing unto others just what we would not have them do to us, of cherishing, instead of laying aside anger, and wrath, and malice, and the whole circle of malignant passions.

But do you doubt the import of such passages, and ask for an infallible commentary upon them? Then go to the example of our Savior himself, and trace the corresponding practice of his apostles, and his followers as a body during the purest era of our religion. Christ never lifted a finger of violence to preserve even his own invaluable life; he frowned instantly upon the disciples for proposing to call fire from heaven, and destroy his enemies; he rebuked the generous ardor of Peter in drawing the sword for his defence; and from the time that he bade the impetuous apostle put up his sword, and forewarned the world, that all those who "take the sword, shall perish by the sword," we hear of no Christian killing his enemies under any pretext, till near that fatal era when the church was united with the state early in the fourth century. Even German critics, and infidel historians aver, that the doctors of the church before that time were for the most part absurd enough to insist on the utter inconsistency of war with Christianity.

We are not now debating the question of strict self-defence. On this point there is an honest diversity of opinion even among good men; and we leave them to settle it for themselves in the light of revelation. But we utterly repudiate the idea, that the gospel sanctions a shred of the war-system. They are antagonist principles. War is the very antipodes of Christianity; and you can unite them no better than you could mix oil with water, blend light with darkness, or commingle heaven itself with hell. War is a cluster of sins. It repeals or violates the very first principles of morality and religion. Scrutinize every one of its moral elements; scan its aims, its motives, and its means; see what guilty passions it every where kindles into a flame, what deeds of horror it perpetrates as necessary for the accomplishment of its purposes; trace its origin, its progress, the whole train of its legitimate, inevitable consequences both for time and for eternity; and can you point us to a single aspect of this custom that is congenial with a religion of perfect purity, peace and love?

We insist, then, on the duty of all preachers to enforce this part of Christianity. Christ bade his apostles "go into all the earth, and preach the gospel to every creature, teaching all things whatsoever he hath commanded." This command is the standing directory of his ministers down to the end of time, and requires them, on peril of his high displeasure, to preach the pacific as well as all the other principles of his gospel. They are certainly a part of the "all things whatsoever hath commanded." They are as truly a part of the gospel as the