and its precepts, so often and earnestly requiring us to love even our enemies, to return good for evil, and overcome evil only with good, they deem utterly incompatible with the moral characteristics inseparable from war. Whatever may be the legitimate powers of government in other respects, whether capital punishment be right or not, whether force may be rightfully used or not in executing the laws against wrong-doers, they believe it clearly, utterly wrong, on the principles of the gospel, for nations to perpetrate upon each other the nameless atrocities and evils of war for the settlement of their disputes.

4. There is still another class of peace-men, more numerous than all the preceding, who think it right to draw the sword in what they vaguely term self-defence, yet view the custom of war with abhorrence, and are sincerely intent upon its entire, perpetual abolition. Their arguments are various, social, moral and religious, political and financial, but all conspiring to brand it as a master-piece of folly, an enormous crime and curse, the great sin, shame and scourge of every age and clime.

Now, through all this diversity and occasional conflict of arguments, there runs a common hostility to the war-system. They condemn the practice of nations relying on brute force for the settlement of their disputes. They unite in opposing war as wrong, foolish and suicidal, hostile to the best interests of mankind, and condemned by religion, reason and common sense. They all aim at the same ultimate object -the entire, perpetual abolition of the custom; and these different modes of viewing the subject must serve to concentrate upon it a greater amount of facts, arguments and influences. All such coworkers, whether we like their logic or not in every respect, we welcome as contributing more or less to insure the grand consummation we seek-the extinction of war from the world.

MISCONCEPTIONS OF PEACE.

What can we do at such a crisis as this for the cause of Peace ? Nothing? Must we lie down, and let the storm blow over us, without an effort to withstand its fury, or turn it to any good account? It is clear we cannot just now get the people's ear to the full merits of our cause; but we certainly may take this occasion to disabuse the public mind of misconceptions respecting it, and thus prepare the way hereafter for a more effective presentation of its claims.

These misconceptions meet us at every turn, and prove how little attention even good, intelligent men have yet given to the subject.

"The first gun fired at Fort Sumter," says one who ought to have known better, "scattered to the winds the theories of the Peace Society." What theories? Certainly none that we entertain. We challenge any man to show a single principle, argument, or essential fact of our cause, that has been put to flight or peril by the present conflict. It may, as we trust it will, scatter not a few of the crude, strange caricatures of it, like this one, long current in the community; but, so far from shaking, it serves only to confirm all our main positions. We find not the slightest reason for abandoning this great Christian reform, but only new and stronger motives for prosecuting it with far greater zeal than ever.

But you may ask, of what practical avail is Peace at such a time as this? What can it do? How would the Peace Society deal with this gigantic rebellion?' Such questions mistake the province of the Peace Reform. Why not ask what the Temperance Society shall do in the case? The Temperance Society!' you exclaim, that has nothing to do with such evils; its whole object is to do away Intemperance.' Very true; and so is the cause of Peace equally restricted to the single purpose of doing away war, the practice of nations settling their controversies by the sword. It never proposed to cure or touch any other evil of society. It is not a catholicon, a remedy for all social evils, but an effort to do away a single specific evil, the custom of international war.

Here is no new position. We said all this at the start; and in its stereotyped documents you will find our Society distinctly telling you that it does not inquire how murder, or any offences against society, shall be punished; or in what way any controversy between a government and its own subjects, shall be adjusted. It concerns itself merely with the intercourse of nations, for the single purpose of abolishing their practice of war. Such is the sole province of the Peace Society; nor is it any part of its mission to say what shall be done with men charged with the monstrous crime of rebellion against such a government

as ours.

Have the friends of peace, then, nothing to do with so grave a question? Certainly they have much to do; but it is as citizens, rather than as members of a Peace Society. We do not profess to be agreed on any subject but that of doing away the custom of war; but we cannot conceive it possible for a true peace man ever to be a rebel. With his principles and habits, he cannot be otherwise than loyal to government; and however much opposed to war as unchristian, and however

much averse to shedding blood in any case, he must nevertheless lend his whole influence to the support of its authority, and the due enforcement of its laws. However strong for peace, we hold no views that we deem inconsistent with bringing offenders, whether few or many, one murderer or a thousand, to condign punishment. On such questions, however, the Peace Society claims no control over its members, but leaves them all to think and act each for himself, and insists merely that they co-operate in abolishing the custom of war. Those who regard all use of physical force as wrong, or believe in the strict inviolability of human life, are of course unable to come into these views in the way of giving any active support to the execution of laws that take or endanger life; but a believer in the doctrine of all war contrary to the gospel, may still deem it right for government to punish the assassin or rebel with death, or with any other penalty it may think best. Such questions, however akin, are all outside of the Peace Society; and its members are left to decide them each for himself. They are all loyal, but may differ about the proper mode of dealing with offenders.

WAR AN INSTITUTION.

When the friends of peace plead for the abolition of war, they are often interrupted in their efforts by the introduction of extraneous themes. Let it then be distinctly understood, that the appropriate sphere of the Peace Society's operations is not with the wars of the Hebrews, in the way of either censure or applause. Though God saw fit, through the instrumentality of Israel, to triumph over the heathen, and to bring into contempt their patron gods by means of war, and subsequently to display His justice on Israel's rebellion in their signal defeat, we find no example in this to sustain the present war-system. Nor are we particularly concerned with ancient heathen wars, though from the days of Cain downward, essentially the same spirit has lain at the foundation of all war. Neither is it the business of the Peace Society to prescribe rules or means for defence against violent assault; nor yet to guide, restrain, or aid legitimate authori ty in the enforcement of law. However interesting or important these themes, they are not the appropriate field of the Society's labor, What it proposes is, to deal with the present existing system of war; and that not to modify, correct or improve it, but to abolish it.

What, then, is the institution of war? Says Vattel, "War is that state in which a nation prosecutes its rights by force;" that is, the act of so doing is war. Says Lord Bacon, " War is one of the highest trials of right; for as princes and states acknowledge no sovereign upon earth, they put themselves upon the judgment of God by an appeal to arms." As friends of

peace, we deny that war is a trial of right, or that men, by declaring war, put themselves upon the judgment of God any more than they were before. Again Vattel says, "The glory of a nation depends entirely upon its powers. Valor is the firmest suppoct of a Sate." We say, a due regard for justice is the glory of a nation, and the firmest support of a state. Again Vattel says, "It is always necessary, to authorize the having recourse to arms, that all the methods of reconciliation have been expressly rejected . . . . In things doubtful and not essential, if one of the parties will not listen to either conference or accommodation, negotiation or compromise, the arms of the other are just against so unreasonable an adversary." We say these doctrines are the essence of anarchy. Vattel again says, "Two things are necessary to make a war in due form-first, that on both sides it should be by authority of the sovereign, and that it should be accompanied by certain formalities, as demand of just satisfaction, and declaration of war on the part of him who attacks. On a declaration of war, a nation has a right of doing toward the enemy whatever is necessary to bring him to reason, and obtain justice. . . . . The lawful end gives right to the means for obtaining such end." Again, "War in form, as to its effects, is to be accounted just on both sides. ... What is permitted to one by virtue of a state of war, is also permitted to the other." Legalized anarchy indeed! And yet again, "The troops, officers and soldiers, all by whom the sovereign makes war, are only instruments in his hands; they execute his will, not their own. . . . . . They are not responsible. . . . . The arms and apparatus are only instruments of an inferior order." This maxim we would recommend to the notice of those who regard war as the source of civil liberty.

I have quoted thus from authors long and extensively credited, to show that international war is an accredited institution, and to show also its character. Quotations equally absurd might be multiplied indefinitely; but I shall add but one more. "If a general of the enemy has, without any just reason, caused some prisoners to be hanged, a like number of his men, and the same race, will be hanged up, signifying to him that this retaliation will be continued for obliging him to observe the laws of war."

Such are the maxims of civilized warfare, falsely so called; and, corrupt and absurd as they are, they are no more so than the nature of war requires. No nation, claiming a stand among the civilized, dare, at the hazard of its reputation, engage in war without respect to such a code; and every man who palliates, justifies or approves the institution of war, lends his aid to the support of such sentiment, whether he knows it or not. We may, then, ask of any intelligent Christian, are not these maxims, and consequently, international war, in direct contrast with the precepts of the Prince of Peace? We talk of the refinements of civilized warfare. As well might we speak of refined corruptions or civilized barbarity! While the nations of the earth have made great advance in civilization, in retaining war they have retained that which is in its essence barbarity; and no rules, modifications or appendages can change its real character.

But we are met with the plea, that wars have been made the great instrumentality of improving the world, and so it appears, from analogy at least, if not from prophecy, that it ever will be hereafter. We acknowledge that our world has improved, greatly improved, despite its wars, and that its history is essentially a history of war. But what then? Has war been the grand agent of progress and improvement? Not at all. We might as well commend the plague or the cholera as a source of human health by conducing to the improvement of the medical art. The god of this world has ruled it by war and despotism, and so by physical force, while the kingdom of Christ has, by moral force, been making progress against him ; but we may not look to despotism for liberty, or to diabolical influences for the world's reform.

I pity the man, especially the theologian, who expects war is to be the redeemer of our world. Have not fifty years of partial peace, by means of the gospel, done more for the world's improvement than five centuries of war ever did? It has so brought into requisition the elements of nature, by the railroad, the press, and the telegraph, as well nigh to annihilate time and space. It has virtually opened the eyes of the blind, unstopped the ears of the deaf, and extensively set at liberty him that was bound. Yes, the institutions of Christian benevolence, with the missionary enterprise at their head, and with small pecuniary means, have done more, not only for the benighted heathen, but for the promotion and extension of knowledge at home, than centuries of war, with their hundreds of thousands of men slaughtered, and hundreds of millions of sacrificed money.

While we are called upon to sustain the majesty of the law by physical force, let us not forget that civil or moral law, not physical force, is the criterion of right, and that the exercise of ligitimate government over insurrectionary subjects is not war. If we would not be misled into wicked compliance with the popular war-delusion by passing occurrences, let us be careful to distinguish the precious from the vile, and earnestly pray that "the mountain of the Lord's house may soon be established in the top of the mountains, and all nations may flow into it." Middlebury.

S. W. B.

QUAKERS ON THE REBELLION.

The Friends of the New York Yearly Meeting, faithful to their principles, lately issued "An Address" to encourage Friends to conduct themselves as followers of the Prince of Peace. Of this timely and well expressed document, we quote nearly the whole :—

"The breaking out of civil war in our beloved country has filled our minds with sorrow; and it needs that we carefully guard against the prevailing excitement, lest we be led to participate in practices which our consciences entirely condemn. Under the most severe trials, we must ever remember that we are brethren by a more sacred bond than that which makes