# The Collected Works of Theodore Parker/Volume 04/Discourse 01

I.
A SERMON OF WAR, PREACHED AT THE MELODEON, ON SUNDAY, JUNE 7, 1846.
"THE LORD IS A MAN OF WAR," Exodus XV. 3. "GOD IS LOVE." 1 John iv. 8.
I ask your attention to a Sermon of War. I have waited some time before treating this subject at length, till the present hostilities should assume a definite form, and the designs of the Government become more apparent. I wished to be able to speak coolly, and with knowledge of the facts, that we might understand the comparative merits of the present war. Besides, I have waited for others in the churches, of more experience to speak, before I ventured to offer my coimsel; but I have thus far waited almost in vain! I did not wish to treat the matter last Sunday, for that was the end of our week of Pentecost, when cloven tongues of flame descend on the city, and some are thought to be full of new wine, and others of the Holy Spirit. The heat of the meetings, good and bad, of that week, could not wholly have passed away from you or me, and we ought to come coolly and consider a subject like this. So the last Sunday I only sketched the background of the picture, to-day intending to paint the horrors of war in front of that "Presence of Beauty in Nature," to which, with its "Meanings" and its "Lessons," I then asked you to attend.
It seems to me that an idea of God as the Infinite is given to us in our nature itself. But men create a more definite conception of God in their own image. Thus a rude savage man, who has learned only the presence of ​ power in Nature, conceives of God mainly as a force, and speaks of Him as a God of power. Such, though not without beautiful exceptions, is the character ascribed to Jehovah in the Old Testament. "The Lord is a man of war." He is "the Lord of hosts." He kills men, and their cattle. If there is trouble in the enemies' city, it is the Lord who hath caused it. He will "whet his glittering sword, and render vengeance to his enemies. He will make his arrows drunk with blood, and his sword shall devour flesh!" It is with the sword that God pleads with all men. He encourages men to fight, and says, "Cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood." He sends blood into the streets; he waters the land with blood, and in blood he dissolves the mountains. He brandishes his sword before kings, and they tremble at every moment. He treads nations as grapes in a wine-press, and his garments are stained with their life's blood. ​ A man who has grown up to read the Older Testament of God revealed in the beauty of the universe, and to feel the goodness of God therein set forth, sees Him not as force only, or in chief, but as love. He worships in love the God of goodness and of peace. Such is the prevalent character ascribed to God in the New Testament, except in the book of "Revelation." He is the "God of love and peace;" "our Father," "kind to the unthankful and the unmerciful." In one word, God is love. He loves us all, Jew and Gentile, bond and free. All are His children, each of priceless value in His sight. He is no God of battles; no Lord of hosts; no man of war. He has no sword nor arrows; He does not water the earth nor melt the mountains in blood, but " He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust." He has no garments dyed in blood; curses no man for refusing to fight. He is spirit, to be worshipped in spirit and in truth! The commandment is: Love one another; resist not evil with evil; forgive seventy times seven; overcome evil with good; love your enemies; bless them that curse you; do good to them that hate you; pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you. There is no nation to shut its ports against another, all are men; no caste to curl its lip at inferiors ; all are brothers, members of one body, united in the Christ, the ideal man and head of all. The most useful is the greatest. No man is to be master, for the Christ is our teacher. We are to fear no man, for God is our Father.
These precepts are undeniably the precepts of Christianity. Equally plain is it that they are the dictates of man's nature, only developed and active; a part of God's universal revelation; His law writ on the soul of man, established in the nature of things; true after all experience, and true before all experience. The man of real insight into spiritual things sees and knows them to be true.
Do not believe it the part of a coward to think so. I ​ have known many cowards; yes, a great many ; some very cowardly, pusillanimous, and faint-hearted cowards ; but never one who thought so, or pretended to think so. It requires very little courage to fight with sword and musket, and that of a cheap kind. Men of that stamp are plenty as grass in June. Beat your drum, and they will follow; offer them but eight dollars a month, and they will come—fifty thousand of them, to smite and kill. Every male animal, or reptile, will fight. It requires little courage to kill; but it takes much to resist evil with good, holding obstinately out, active or passive, till you overcome it. Call that non-resistance, if you will ; it is the stoutest kind of combat, demanding all the manhood of a man.
I will not deny that war is inseparable from a low stage of civilization; so is polygamy, slavery, cannibalism. Taking men as they were, savage and violent, there have been times when war was unavoidable. I will not deny that it has helped forward the civilization of the race, for God often makes the folly and the sin of men contribute to the progress of mankind. It is none the less a folly or a sin. In a civilized nation like ourselves, it is far more heinous than in the Ojibeways or the Camanches.
War is in utter violation of Christianity. If war be right, then Christianity is wrong, false, a lie. But if Christianity be true, if reason, conscience, the religious sense, the highest faculties of man, are to be trusted, then war is the wrong, the falsehood, the lie. I maintain that aggressive war is a sin; that it is national infidelity, a denial of Christianity and of God. Every man who understands Christianity by heart, in its relations to man, to society, the nation, the world, knows that war is a wrong. At this day, with all the enlightenment of our age, after the long peace of the nations, war is easily avoided. Whenever it occurs, the very fact of its occurrence convicts the rulers of a nation either of entire incapacity as statesmen, or else of the worst form of treason: treason to the people, to mankind, to God! There is no other alternative. The very fact of an aggressive war shows that the men who cause it must be either fools or traitors. I think lightly of what is called treason against ​ a government. That may be your duty to-day, or mine. Certainly it was our fathers' duty not long ago; now it is our boast and their title to honour. But treason against the people, against mankind, against God, is a great sin, not lightly to be spoken of. The political authors of the war on this continent, and at this day, are either utterly incapable of a statesman's work, or else guilty of that sin. Fools they are, or traitors they must be.
Let me speak, and in detail, of the Evils of "War. I wish this were not necessary. But we have found ourselves in a war; the Congress has voted our money and our men to carry it on; the Governors call for volunteers ; the volunteers come when they are called for. No voice of indignation goes forth from the heart of the eight hundred thousand souls of Massachusetts; of the seventeen million freemen of the land how few complain; only a man here and there! The Press is well-nigh silent. And the Church, so far from protesting against this infidelity in the name of Christ, is little better than dead. The man of blood shelters himself behind its wall, silent, dark, dead, and emblematic. These facts show that it is necessary to speak of the evils of war. I am speaking in a city, whose fairest, firmest, most costly buildings are warehouses and banks ; a city whose most popular Idol is Mammon, the God of Gold; whose Trinity is a Trinity of Coin! I shall speak intelligibly, therefore, if I begin by considering war as a waste of property. It paralyzes industry. The very fear of it is a mildew upon commerce. Though the present war is but a skirmish, only a few random shots between a squad of regulars and some strolling battalions, a quarrel which in Europe would scarcely frighten even the Pope—yet see the effect of it upon trade. Though the fighting be thousands of miles from Boston, your stocks fall in the market; the rate of insurance is altered; your dealer in wood piles his boards and his timber on his wharf, not finding a market. There are few ships in the great Southern mart to take the freight of many ; exchange is disturbed. The clergyman is afraid to buy a book, lest his children want bread. It is so with all departments of industry and trade. In war the capitalist is uncertain and ​ slow to venture, so the labourer's hand will be still, and his child ill-clad and hungry.
In the late war with England, many of you remember the condition of your fisheries, of your commerce; how the ships lay rotting at the wharf. The dearness of cloth, of provisions, flour, sugar, tea, coffee, salt; the comparative lowness of wages, the stagnation of business, the scarcity of money, the universal sullenness and gloom—all this is well remembered now. So is the ruin it brought on many a man.
Yet but few weeks ago some men talked boastingly of a war with England. There are some men who seem to have no eyes nor ears, only a mouth ; whose chief function is talk. Of their talk I will say nothing ; we look for dust in dry places. But some men thus talked of war, and seemed desirous to provoke it, who can scarce plead ignorance, and I fear not folly, for their excuse. I leave such to the just resentment sure to fall on them from sober, serious men, who dare to be so unpopular as to think before they speak, and then say what comes of thinking. Perhaps such a war was never likely to take place, and now, thanks to a few wise men, all danger thereof seems at an end. But suppose it had happened—what would become of your commerce, of your fishing-smacks on the banks or along the shore? what of your coasting vessels, doubling the headlands all the way from the St. John's to the Nueces? what of your whale-ships in the Pacific? what of your Indiamen, deep freighted with oriental wealth? what of that fleet which crowds across the Atlantic sea, trading with east and west, and north and south? I know some men care little for the rich, but when the owners keep their craft in port, where can the " hands" find work, or their mouths find bread? The shipping of the United States amounts nearly to 2,500,000 tons. At $40 a ton, its value is nearly $100,000,000. This is the value only of those sea-carriages; their cargoes I cannot compute. Allowing one sailor for every twenty tons burden, here will be 125,000 seamen. They and their families amount to 500,000 souls. In war, what will become of them? A capital of more than $13,000,000 is invested in the fisheries of Massachusetts alone. More than 19,000 men find profitable employment therein. If each man have but four others in his family, a small number for that class, ​ here are more than 95,000 persons in this State alone, whose daily bread depends on this business. They can- not fish in troubled waters, for they are fishermen, not politicians. Where could they find bread or cloth in time of war? In Dartmoor prison? Ask that of your demagogues who courted war!
Then, too, the positive destruction of property in war is monstrous. A ship of the Kne costs from $500,000 to $1,000,000. The loss of a fleet by capture, by fire, or by decay, is a great loss. You know at what cost a fort is built, if you have counted the sums successively voted for Fort Adams in Rhode Island, or those in our own harbour. The destruction of forts is another item in the cost of war. The capture or destruction of merchant ships with their freight, creates a most formidable loss. In 1812 the whole tonnage of the United States was scarce half what it is now. Yet the loss of ships and their freight, in "the late war," brief as it was, is estimated at $100,000,000. Then the loss by plunder and military occupation is monstrous. The soldier, like the savage, cuts down the tree to gather its fruit. I cannot calcidate the loss by burning towns and cities. But suppose Boston were bombarded and laid in ashes. Calculate the loss if you can. You may say, "This could not be," for it is as easy to say No, as Yes. But remember what befeU us in the last war; remember how recently the best defended capitals of Europe, Vienna, Paris, Antwerp, have fallen into hostile hands. Consider how often a strong place, like Coblentz, Mentz, Malta, Gibraltar, St. Juan d'Ulloa, has been declared impregnable, and then been taken; calculate the force which might be brought against this town, and you will see that in eight and forty hours, or half that time, it might be left nothing but a heap of ruins smoking in the sun! I doubt not the valour of American soldiers, the skill of their engineers, nor the ability of their commanders. I am ready to believe all this is greater than we are told. Still, such are the contingencies of war. If some not very ignorant men had their way, this would be a probability and perhaps a fact. If we should burn every town from the Tweed to the Thames, it would not rebuild our own city.
But, on the supposition that nothing is destroyed, see the loss which comes from the misdirection of productive ​ industry. Your fleets, forts, dockyards, arsenals, cannons, muskets, swords, and the like, are provided at great cost, and yet are unprofitable. They do not pay. They weave no cloth; they bake no bread; they produce nothing. Yet, from 1791 to 1832, in forty-two years, we expended in these things $303,242,576, namely, for the navy, &c., $112,703,933; for the army, &c., $190,538,643. For the same time, all other expenses of the nation came to but $37,158,047. More than eight-ninths of the whole revenue of the nation was spent for purposes of war. In four years, from 1812 to 1815, we paid in this way, $92,350,519-37. In six years, from 1835 to 1840, we paid annually on the average $21,328,903 ; in all, $127,973,418. Our Congress has just voted $17,000,000, as a special grant for the army alone. The 175,118 muskets at Springfield are valued at $3,000,000 ; we pay annually $200,000 to support that arsenal. The navy-yard at Charleston, with its stores, &c., has cost $4,741,000. And, for all profitable returns, this money might as well be sunk in the bottom of the sea. In some countries it is yet worse. There are towns and cities in which the fortifications have cost more than all the houses, churches, shops, and other property therein, This happens not among the Sacs and Foxes, but in "Christian" Europe,.
Then your soldier is the most unprofitable animal you can keep. He makes no railroads; clears no land; raises no corn. No, he can make neither cloth nor clocks! He does not raise his own bread, mend his own shoes, make his shoulder-knot of glory, nor hammer out his own sword. Yet he is a costly animal, though useless. If the President gets his fifty thousand volunteers, a thing likely to happen—for though Irish lumpers and hodmen want a dollar or a dollar and a half a day, your free American of Boston will enlist for twenty-seven cents, only having his livery, his feathers, and his "glory" thrown in—then at $8 a month, their wages amount to $400,000 a month. Suppose the present Government shall actually make advantageous contracts, and the subsistence of the soldier cost no more than in England, or $17 a month, this amounts to $850,000. Here are $1,250,000 a month to begin with. Then, if each man would be worth a dollar a day at any productive work, and there are 26 work-days ​ in the month, here are $1,300,000 more to be added, making $2,550,000 a month for the new army of occupation. This is only for the rank and file of the army. The officers, the surgeons, and the chaplains, who teach the soldiers to wad their muskets with the leaves of the Bible, will perhaps cost as much more; or, in all, something more than $5,000,000 a month. This of course does not include the cost of their arms, tents, ammunition, baggage, horses, and hospital stores, nor the 65,000 gallons of whiskey which the Government has just advertised for I What do they give in return? They will give us three things, valour, glory, and—talk; which, as they are not in the price current, I must estimate as I can, and set them all down in one figure = 0; not worth the whiskey they cost.
New England is quite a new country. Seven generations ago it was a wilderness; now it contains about 2,500,000 souls. If you were to pay all the public debts of these States, and then, in fancy, divide all the property therein by the population, young as we are, I think you would find a larger amount of value for each man than in any other country in the world, not excepting England. The civilization of Europe is old; the nations old, England, France, Spain, Austria, Italy, Greece ; but they have wasted their time, their labour, and their wealth in war, and so are poorer than we upstarts of a wilderness. We have fewer fleets, forts, cannon, and soldiers for the population, than any other "Christian" country in the world. This is one main reason why we have no national debt; why the women need not toil in the hardest labour of the fields, the quarries, and the mines; this is the reason that we are well fed, well clad, well housed; this is the reason that Massachusetts can afford to spend $1,000,000 a year for her public schools! War, wasting a nation's wealth, depresses the great mass of the people, but serves to elevate a few to opulence and power. Every despotism is established and sustained by war. This is the foundation of all the aristocracies of the old world, aristocracies of blood. Our famous men are often ashamed that their wealth was honestly got by working, or peddling, and foolishly copy the savage and bloody emblems of ancient heraldry in their assumed coats of arms—industrious men seeking to have a griffin on their seal! Nothing is so ​ hostile to a true democracy as war. It elevates a few, often bold, bad men, at the expense of the many, who pay the money and furnish the blood for war.
War is a most expensive folly. The revolutionary war cost the general Government, directly and in specie, $135,000,000. It is safe to estimate the direct cost to the individual states also at the same sum, $135,000,000; making a total of $270,000,000. Considering the interruption of business, the waste of time, property and life, it is plain that this could not have been a fourth part of the whole. But suppose it was a third, then the whole pecuniary cost of the war would be $810,000,000. At the beginning of the Revolution the population was about $3,000,000; so that war, lasting about eight years, cost $270 for each person. To meet the expenses of the war each year there would have been required a tax of $33*75 on each man, woman, and child!
In the Florida war we spent between $30,000,000 and $40,000,000, as an eminent statesman once said, in fighting five hundred invisible Indians! It is estimated that the fortifications of the city of Paris, when completely furnished, will cost more than the whole taxable property of Massachusetts, with her 800,000 souls. Why this year our own grant for the army is $17,000,000. The estimate for the navy is $6,000,000 more; in all $23,000,000. Suppose, which is most unlikety, that we should pay no more, why, that sum alone would support public schools, as good and as costly as those of Massachusetts, all over the United States," offering each boy and girl, bond or free, as good a culture as they get here in Boston, and then leave a balance of $3,000,000 in our hands! We pay more for ignorance than we need for education! But $23,000,000 is not all we must pay this year. A great statesman has said, in the Senate, that our war expenses at present are nearly $500,000 a day, and the President informs your Congress that $22,952,904 more will be wanted for the army and navy before next June!
For several years we spent directly more than $21,000,000 for war purposes, though in time of peace. If a railroad cost $30,000 a mile, then we might build 700 miles a year for that sum, and in five years could build a railroad therewith from Boston to the further side of ​ Oregon. For the war money we paid in forty-two years, we could have had more than 10,000 miles of railroad, and, with dividends at seven per cent., a yearly income of $21,210,000. For military and naval affairs, in eight years, from 1835 to 1843, we paid $163,336,717. This alone would have made 5444 miles of railroad, and would produce, at seven per cent., an annual income of $11,433,569-19.
In Boston there are nineteen public grammar-schools, a Latin and English High school. The buildings for these schools, twenty in number, have cost $653,208. There are also 135 primary schools, in as many houses or rooms. I know not their value, as I think they are not all owned by the city. But suppose them to be worth $150,000, then all the school-houses of this city have cost $803,208. The cost of these 156 schools for this year is estimated at $172,000. The number of scholars in them is $16,479. Harvard University, the most expensive college in America, costs about $46,000 a year. Now the ship "Ohio," lyiiig here in our harbour, has cost $834,845, and we pay for it each year $220,000 more. That is, it has cost $31,637 more than these 155 school-houses of this city, and costs every year $2000 more than Harvard University, and all the public schools of Boston! The military academy at West Point contains two hundred and thirty-six cadets; the appropriation for it last year was $138,000, a sum greater, I think, than the cost of all the colleges in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts, with their 1445 students.
The navy-yard at Charlestown, with its ordnance, stores, &c., cost $4,741,000. The cost of the 78 churches in Boston is $3,246,500; the whole property of Harvard University is $703,175; the 155 school-houses of Boston are worth $803,208; in all, $4,752,883. Thus the navy- yard at Charlestown has cost almost as much as the 78 churches and the 155 school-houses of Boston, with Harvard College, its halls, libraries, all its wealth, thrown in. Yet what does it teach?
Our country is singularly destitute of public libraries. You must go across the ocean to read the history of the Church or State; all the public libraries in America cannot furnish the books referred to in Gibbon's "Rome," or ​ Gieseler's "History of the Church." I think there is no public library in Europe which has cost three dollars a volume. There are six: the Vatican, at Rome; the Royal, at Paris; the British Museum, at London; the Bodleian, at Oxford; the University Libraries at Gottingen and Berlin—which contain, it is said, about 4,500,000 volumes. The recent grant of $17,000,000 for the army is 3,500,000 more than the cost of those magnificent collections!
There have been printed about 3,000,000 different volumes, great and little, within the last 400 years. If the Florida war cost but $30,000,000, it is ten times more than enough to have purchased one copy of each book ever printed, at one dollar a volume, which is more than the average cost.
Now all these sums are to be paid by the people, "the dear people," whom our republican demagogues love so well, and for whom they spend their lives,—rising early, toiling late; those self-denying heroes, those sainted martyrs of the Republic, eating the bread of carefulness for them alone! But how are they to be paid? By a direct tax levied on all the property of the nation, so that the poor man pays according to his little, and the rich man in proportion to his much, each knowing when he pays and what he pays for? No such thing; nothing like it. The people must pay, and not know it; must be deceived a little, or they would not pay after this fashion! You pay for it in every pound of sugar, copper, coal, in every yard of cloth; and if the counsel of some lovers of the people be followed, you will soon pay for it in each pound of coffee and tea. In this way the rich man always pays relatively less than the poor ; often a positively smaller sum. Even here I think that three-fourths of all the property is owned by one-fourth of the people, yet that three-fourths by no means pays a third of the national revenue. The tax is laid on things men cannot do without,—sugar, cloth, and the like. The consumption of these articles is not in proportion to wealth, but persons. Now the poor man, as a general rule, has more children than the rich; and the tax being more in proportion to persons than property, the poor man pays more than the rich. So a tax is really laid on the poor man's children to pay for ​ the war which makes him poor and keeps him poor. I think your captains and colonels, those sons of thunder and heirs of glory, will not tell you so. They tell you so! They know it! Poor brothers, how could they? I think your party newspapers, penny or pound, will not tell you so; nor the demagogues, all covered with glory and all forlorn, who tell the people when to hurrah, and for what! But if you cipher the matter out for yourself you will find it so, and not otherwise. Tell the demagogues, whig or democrat, that. It was an old Roman maxim, "The people wished to be deceived; let them." Now it is only practised on; not repeated—in public.
Let us deal justly even with war, giving that its due. There is one class of men who find their pecuniary advantage in it. I mean army contractors, when they chance to be favourites of the party in power ; men who let steamboats to lie idle at $500 a-day. This class of men rejoice in a war. The country may become poor, they are sure to be rich. Yet another class turn war to account, get the "glory," and become important in song and sermon. I see it stated in a newspaper that the Duke of Wellington has received, as gratuities for his military services, $5,400,000, and $40,000 a-year in pensions!
But the waste of property is the smallest part of the evil. The waste of life in war is yet more terrible. Human life is a sacred thing. Go out into the lowest street of Boston; take the vilest and most squalid man in that miserable lane, and he is dear to some one. He is called brother; perhaps husband; it may be, father; at least, son. A human heart, sadly joyful, beat over him before he was born. He has been pressed fondly to his mother's arms. Her tears and her smiles have been for him; perhaps also her prayers. His blood may be counted mean and vile by the great men of the earth, who love nothing so well as the dear people, for he has no " coat of arms," no liveried servant to attend him, but it has run down from the same first man. His family is ancient as that of the most long- descended king. God made him; made this splendid universe to wait on him and teach him; sent His Christ to save him. He is an immortal soul. Needlessly to spill that man's blood is an awful sin. It ​ will cry against you out of the ground—Cain! where is thy brother? Now in war you bring together 50,000 men like him on one side, and 50,000 of a different nation on the other. They have no natural quarrel with one another. The earth is wide enough for both ; neither hinders the sun from the other. Many come unwillingly; many not knowing what they fight for. It is but accident that determines on which side the man shall fight. The cannons pour their shot—round, grape, canister; the howitzers scatter their bursting shells; the muskets rain their leaden death; the sword, the bayonet, the horse's iron hoof, the wheels of the artillery, grind the men down into trodden dust. There they lie, the two masses of burning valour, extinguished, quenched, and grimly dead, each covering with his body the spot he defended with his arms. They had no quarrel : yet they lie there, slain by a brother's hand. It is not old and decrepid men, but men of the productive age, full of lusty life.
But it is only the smallest part that perish in battle. Exposure to cold, wet, heat; unhealthy climates, unwholesome food, rum, and forced marches, bring on diseases which mow down the poor soldiers worse than musketry and grape. Others languish of wounds, and slowly procrastinate a dreadful and a tenfold death. Far away, there are widows, orphans, childless old fathers, who pore over the daily news to learn at random the fate of a son, a father, or a husband! They crowd disconsolate into the churches, seeking of God the comfort men took from them, praying in the bitterness of a broken heart, while the priest gives thanks for "a famous victory," and hangs up the bloody standard over his pulpit!
When ordinary disease cuts off a man, when he dies at his duty, there is some comfort in that loss. "It was the ordinance of God," you say. You minister to his wants; you smooth down the pillow for the aching head; your love beguiles the torment of disease, and your own bosom gathers half the darts of death. He goes in his time, and God takes him. But when he dies in such a war, in battle, it is man who has robbed him of life. It is a murderer that is butchered. Nothing alleviates that bitter, burning smart!
Others not slain are maimed for life. This has no eyes; ​ that no hands; another no feet nor legs. This has been pierced by lances, and torn with the shot, till scarce anything human is left. The wreck of a body is crazed with pains God never meant for man. The mother that bore him would not know her child. Count the orphan asylums in Germany and Holland; go into the hospital at Greenwich, that of the invalids in Paris, you see the "trophies" of Napoleon and Wellington. Go to the arsenal at Toulon, see the wooden legs piled up there for men now active and whole, and you will think a little of the physical horrors of war.
In Boston there are perhaps about 25,000 able-bodied men between eighteen and forty-five. Suppose them aU slain in battle, or mortally hurt, or mown down by the camp-fever, vomito, or other diseases of war ; and then fancy the distress, the heart-sickness, amid wives, mothers, daughters, sons, and fathers, here ! Yet 25,000 is a small number to be murdered in " a famous victory ;" a trifle for a whole. "glorious campaign" in a great war. The men of Boston are no better loved than the men of Tamaulipas. There is scarce an old family, of the middle class, in all New England, which did not thus smart in the Revolution; many, which have not, to this day, recovered from the bloody blow then falling on them. Think, wives, of the butchery of your husbands; think, mothers, of the murder of your sons!
Here, too, the burden of battle falls mainly on the humble class. They pay the great tribute of money; they pay also the horrid tax of blood. It was not your rich men who fought even the Revolution; not they. Your men of property and standing were leaguing with the British, or fitting out privateers when that ofiered a good investment, or buying up the estates of more consistent tories; making money out of the nation's dire distress. True, there were most honourable exceptions; but such, I think, was the general rule. Let this be distinctly remembered, that the burden of battle is borne by the humble classes of men ; they pay the vast tribute of money; the awful tax of blood ! The " glory" is got by a few; poverty, wounds, death, are for the people! Military glory is the poorest kind of distinction, but he most dangerous passion. It is an honour to man to be ​ able to mould iron; to be skilful at working in cloth, wood, clay, leather. It is man's vocation to raise com, to subdue the rebellious fibre of cotton and convert it into beautiful robes, full of comfort for the body. They are the heroes of the race who abridge the time of human toil and multiply its results; they who win great truths from God, and send them to a people's heart; they who balance the many and the one into harmonious action, so that all are united and yet each left free. But the glory which comes of epaulets and feathers; that strutting glory which is dyed in blood—what shall we say of it? In this day it is not heroism; it is an imitation of barbarism long ago passed by. Yet it is marvellous how many men are taken with a red coat. You expect it in Europe, a land of soldiers and blood. You are disappointed to find that here the champions of force should be held in honour, and that even the lowest should voluntarily enrol themselves as butchers of men!
Yet more: aggressive war is a sin ; a corruption of the public morals. It is a practical denial of Christianity; a violation of God's eternal law of love. This is so plain, that I shall say little upon it to-day. Your savagest and most vulgar captain would confess he does not fight as a Christian—but as a soldier; your magistrate calls for volunteers—not as a man loving Christianity, and loyal to God; only as governor, under oath to keep the constitution, the tradition of the elders ; not under oath to keep the commandment of God. In war the laws are suspended, violence and cunning rule everywhere. The battle of Yorktown was gained by a lie, though a Washington told it. As a soldier it was his duty. Men "emulate the tiger;" the hand is bloody, and the heart hard. Robbery and murder are the rule, the glory of men. "Good men look sad, but ruffians dance and leap." Men are systematically trained to burn towns, to murder fathers and sons; taught to consider it "glory" to do so. The Government collects ruffians and cut-throats. It compels better men to serve with these and become cut-throats. It appoints chaplains to blaspheme Christianity ; teaching the ruffians how to pray for the destruction of the enemy, the burning of his towns; to do this in the name of Christ and God. ​ I do not censure all the men who serve; some of them know no better; they have heard that a man would "perish everlastingly" if he did not believe the Athanasian creed ; that if he questioned the story of Jonah, or the miraculous birth of Jesus, he was in danger of hell-fire, and if he doubted damnation was sure to be damned. They never heard that such a war was a sin; that to create a war was treason, and to fight in it wrong. They never thought of thinking for themselves; their thinking was to read a newspaper, or sleep through a sermon. They counted it their duty to obey the Government, without thinking if that Government be right or wrong. I deny not the noble, manly character of many a soldier—his heroism, self-denial, and personal sacrifice.
Still, after all proper allowance is made for a few individuals, the whole system of war is unchristian and sinful. It lives only by evil passions. It can be defended only by what is low, selfish, and animal. It absorbs the scum of the cities—pirates, robbers, murderers. It makes them worse, and better men like them. To take one man's life is murder; what is it to practise killing as an art," a trade; to do it by thousands? Yet I think better of the hands that do the butchering than of the ambitious heads, the cold, remorseless hearts, which plunge the nation into war.
In war the State teaches men to lie, to steal, to kill. It calls for privateers, who are commonly pirates with a national charter, and pirates are privateers with only a personal charter. Every camp is a school of profanity, violence, licentiousness, and crimes too foul to name. It is so without sixty-five thousand gallons of whisky. This is unavoidable. It was so with Washington's army, with Cornwallis's, with that of Gustavus Adolphus, perhaps the most moral army the world ever saw. The soldier's life generally unfits a man for the citizen's. When he returns from a camp, from a war, back to his native village, he becomes a curse to society and a shame to the mother that bore him. Even the soldiers of the Revolution, who survived the war, were mostly ruined for life—debauched, intemperate, vicious, and vile. What loathsome creatures so many of them were! They bore our burden: for such were the real martyrs of that war, not ​ the men who fell under the shot! How many men of the rank and file in the late war have since become respectable citizens?
To show how incompatible are War and Christianity, suppose that he who is deemed the most Christian of Christ's disciples, the well-beloved John, were made a navy-chaplain, and some morning, when a battle is daily looked for, should stand on the gun-deck, amid lockers of shot, his Bible resting on a cannon, and expound Christianity to men with cutlasses by their side! Let him read for the morning lesson the Sermon on the Mount, and for text take words from his own Epistle, so sweet, so beautiful, so true: "Every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God, for God is love." Suppose he tells his strange audience that all men are brothers; that God is their common father; that Christ loved us all, showing us how to live the life of love; and then, when he had melted all those savage hearts by words so winsome and so true, let him conclude, "Blessed are the men-slayers! Seek first the glory which cometh of battle. Be fierce as tigers. Mar God's image in which your brothers are made. Be not like Christ, but Cain who slew his brother! When you meet the enemy, fire into their bosoms; kill them in the dear name of Christ; butcher them in the spirit of God. Give them no quarter, for we ought not to lay down our lives for the brethren; only the murderer hath eternal life!"
Yet great as are these threefold evils, there are times when the soberest men and the best men have welcomed war, coolly and in their better moments. Sometimes a people, long oppressed, has "petitioned, remonstrated, cast itself at the feet of the throne," with only insult for answer to its prayer. Sometimes there is a contest between a falsehood and a great truth; a self-protectiag war for freedom of mind, heart, and soul; yes, a war for a man's body, his wife's and children's body, for what is dearer to men than life itself, for the unalienable rights of man, for the idea that all are born free and equal. It was so in the American Revolution; in the English, in the French Revolution. In such cases men say, "Let it come." They take down the firelock in sorrow; with a prayer they go forth to battle, ​ asking that the right may triumph. Much as I hate war, I cannot but honour such men. "Were they better, yet more heroic, even war of that character might be avoided. Still, it is a colder heart than mine which does not honour such men, though it believes them mistaken. Especially do we honour them, when it is the few, the scattered, the feeble, contending with the many and the mighty; the noble fighting for a great idea, and against the base and tyrannical. Then most men think the gain, the triumph of a great idea, is worth the price it costs, the price of blood.
I will not stop to touch that question. If man may ever shed the blood of man. But it is plain that an aggressive war like this is wholly unchristian, and a reproach to the nation and the age.
Now, to make the evils of war still clearer, and to bring them home to your door, let us suppose there was war between the counties of Suffolk, on the one side, and Middlesex on the other—this army at Boston, that at Cambridge. Suppose the subject in dispute was the boundary line between the two, Boston claiming a pitiful acre of flat land, which the ocean at low-tide disdained to cover. To make sure of this, Boston seizes whole miles of flats, unquestionably not its own. The rulers on one side are fools, and, traitors on the other. The two commanders have issued their proclamations; the money is borrowed; the whisky provided; the soldiers—Americans, Negroes, Irishmen, all the able-bodied men—are enlisted. Prayers are offered in all the churches, and sermons preached, showing that God is a man of war, and Cain his first saint—an early Christian, a Christian before Christ. The Bostonians wish to seize Cambridge, burn the houses, churches, college-halls, and plunder the library. The men of Cambridge wish to seize Boston, burn its houses and ships, plundering its wares and its goods. Martial law is proclaimed on both sides. The men of Cambridge cut asunder the bridges, and make a huge breach in the mill-dam, planting cannon to enfilade all those avenues. Forts crown the hill-tops, else so green. Men, madder than lunatics, are crowded into the asylum. The Bostonians rebuild the old fortifications on the Neck; replace the forts on Beacon-hill, Fort-hill, Copps-hill, levelling houses to make room for redoubts and ​ bastions. The batteries are planted, the mortars got ready; the furnaces and magazines are all prepared. The three hills are grim with war. From Copps-hill men look anxious to that memorable height the other side of the water. Provisions are cut off in Boston; no man may pass the lines; the aqueduct refuses its genial supply; children cry for their expected food. The soldiers parade, looking somewhat tremulous and pale; all the able-bodied have come, the vilest most willingly; some are brought by force of drink, some by force of arms. Some are in brilliant dresses, some in their working frocks. The banners are consecrated by solemn words. Your church-towers are military posts of observation. There are Old Testament prayers to the "God of Hosts" in all the churches of Boston; prayers that God would curse the men of Cambridge, make their wives widows, their children fatherless, their houses a ruin, the men corpses, meat for the beast of the field and the bird of the air. Last night the Bostonians made a feint of attacking Charlestown, raining bombs and red-hot cannon-balls from Copps-hill, till they have burnt a thousand houses, where the British burnt not half so many. Women and children fled screaming from the blazing rafters of their homes. The men of Middlesex crowd into Charlestown.
In the meantime the Bostonians hastily repair a bridge or two; some pass that way, some over the Neck; all stealthily by night; and while the foe expect them at Bunker's, amid the blazing town, they have stolen a march and rush upon Cambridge itself. The Cambridge men turn back. The battle is fiercely joined. You hear the cannon, the sharp report of musketry. You crowd the hills, the housetops; you line the Common, you cover the shore, yet you see but little in the sulphurous cloud. Now the Bostonians yield a little, a reinforcement goes over. All the men are gone; even the grey-headed who can shoulder a firelock. They plunge into battle, mad with rage, madder with rum. The chaplains loiter behind.
"Pious men, whom duty brought,
To dubious verge of battle fought,
To shrive the dying, bless the dead!"
The battle hangs long in even scale. At length it turns. The Cambridge men retreat, they run, they fly. The houses burn. You see the churches and the colleges go up, a stream of fire. That library—founded amid want and war, and sad sectarian strife, slowly gathered by the saving of two centuries; the hope of the poor scholar, the boast of the rich one—is scattered to the winds and burnt with fire, for the solid granite is blasted by powder, and the turrets fall. Victory is ours. Ten thousand men of Cambridge lie dead; eight thousand of Boston. There writhe the wounded; men who but few hours before were poured over the battle-field a lava flood of fiery valour—fathers, brothers, husbands, sons. There they lie, torn and mangled; black with powder; red with blood; parched with thirst ; cursing the load of life they now must bear with bruised frames and mutilated limbs. Gather them into hasty hospitals—let this man's daughter come tomorrow and sit by him, fanning away the flies; he shall linger out a life of wretched anguish, unspoken and unspeakable, and when he dies his wife religiously will keep the shot which tore his limbs. There is the battle-field! Here the horse charged; there the howitzers scattered their shells, pregnant with death; here the murderous canister and grape mowed down the crowded ranks; there the huge artillery, teeming with murder, was dragged o'er heaps of men—wounded friends, who just now held its ropes, men yet curling with anguish, like worms in the fire. Hostile and friendly, head and trunk are crushed beneath those dreadful wheels. Here the infantry showered their murdering shot. That ghastly face was beautiful the day before—a sabre hewed its half away.
"The earth is covered thick with other clay,
Which her own clay must cover; heaped and pent,
Eider and horse, friend, foe, in one red burial blent."
Again it is night. Oh, what a night, and after what a day! Yet the pure tide of woman's love, which never ebbs since earth began, flows on in spite of war and battle. Stealthily, by the pale moonlight, a mother of Boston treads the weary miles to reach that bloody spot; a widow she—seeking among the slain her only son. The arm of power drove him forth reluctant to the fight. A friendly ​ soldier guides her way. Now she turns over this face, whose mouth is full of purple dust, bit out of the ground in his extremest agony, the last sacrament offered him by earth herself; now she raises that form, cold, stiff, stony, and ghastly as a dream of hell. But, lo! another comes; she too a woman, younger and fairer, yet not less bold, a maiden from the hostile town to seek her lover. They meet, two women among the corpses; two angels come to Golgotha, seeking to raise a man. There he lies before them; they look. Yes, it is he you seek; the same dress, form, features, too; it is he, the son, the lover. Maid and mother could tell that face in any light. The grass is wet with his blood. The ground is muddy with the life of men. The mother's innocent robe is drabbled in the blood her bosom bore. Their kisses, groans, and tears recall the wounded man. He knows the mother's voice; that voice yet more beloved. His lips move only, for they cannot speak. He dies! The waxing moon moves high in heaven, walking in beauty amid the clouds, and murmurs soft her cradle-song unto the slumbering earth. The broken sword reflects her placid beams. A star looks down, and is imaged back in a pool of blood. The cool night wind plays in the branches of the trees shivered with shot. Nature is beautiful—that lovely grass under- neath their feet; those pendulous branches of the leafy elm; the stars, and that romantic moon lining the clouds with silver light! A groan of agony, hopeless and pro- longed, wails out from that bloody ground. But in yonder farm the whippoorwill sings to her lover all night long ; the rising tide ripples melodious against the shores. So wears the night away,—Nature, all sinless, round that field of woe.
"The mom is up again, the dewy mom, With breath all incense and with cheek all bloom.
Laughing the clouds away with playful scorn,
And living as if earth contained no tomb,
And glowing into day."
What a scene that morning looks upon! I will not turn again. Let the dead bury their dead. But their blood cries out of the ground against the rulers who shed it,—"Cain! where are thy brothers?" What shall the fool answer; what the traitor say?
Then comes thanksgiving in all the churches of Boston. ​ The consecrated banners, stiff with blood and "glory," are hung over the altar. The minister preaches and the singer sings: "The Lord hath been on our side. He treadeth the people under me. He teacheth my hands to war, my fingers to fight. Yea, He giveth me the necks of mine enemies; for the Lord is His name;" and "It was a famous victory!" Boston seizes miles square of land; but her houses are empty; her wives widows; her children fatherless. Rachel weeps for the murder of her innocents, yet dares not rebuke the rod.
I know there is no fighting across Charles River, as in this poor fiction; but there was once, and instead of Charles say Rio Grande; for Cambridge read Metamoras, and it is what your President recommended; what your Congress enacted; what your Governor issued his proclamation for; what your volunteers go to accomplish: yes, what they fired cannon for on Boston Common the other day. I wish that were a fiction of mine!
We are waging a most iniquitous war—so it seems to me. I know I may be wrong, but I am no partisan; and if I err, it is not wilfully, not rashly. I know the Mexicans are a wretched people; wretched in their origin, history, and character. I know but two good things of them as a people—they abolished negro slavery, not long ago; they do not covet the lands of their neighbours. True, they have not paid all their debts ; but it is scarcely decent in a nation, with any repudiating States, to throw the first stone at Mexico for that!
I know the Mexicans cannot stand before this terrible Anglo-Saxon race, the most formidable and powerful the world ever saw; a race which has never turned back; which, though it number less than forty millions, yet holds the Indies, almost the whole of North America; which rules the commerce of the world; clutches at New Holland, China, New Zealand, Borneo, and seizes island after island in the furthest seas ; the race which invented steam as its awful type. The poor, wretched Mexicans can never stand before us. How they perished in battle! They must melt away as the Indians before the white man. Considering how we acquired Louisiana, Florida, Oregon, I cannot forbear thinking that this people will possess the ​ whole of the continent before many years ; perhaps before the century ends. But this may be had fairly ; with no injustice to any one; by the steady advance of a superior race, with superior ideas and a better civilization ; by commerce, trade, arts; by being better than Mexico, wiser, humaner, more free and manly. Is it not better to acquire it by the schoolmaster than the cannon ? by peddling cloth, tin, anything rather than bullets ? It may not all belong to this Government, and yet to this race. It would be a gain to mankind if we could spread over that country the idea of America—that all men are born free and equal in rights, and establish there political, social, and individual freedom. But to do that, we must first make real these ideas at home.
In the general issue between this race and that, we are in the right. But in this special issue, and this particular war, it seems to me that we are wholly in the wrong; that our invasion of Mexico is as bad as the partition of Poland in the last century and in this. If I understand the matter, the whole movement, the settlement of Texas, the Texan revolution, the annexation of Texas, the invasion of Mexico, has been a movement hostile to the American idea, a movement to extend slavery. I do not say such was the design on the part of the people, but on the part of the politicians who pulled the strings. I think the papers of the Government and the debates of Congress prove that. The annexation has been declared unconstitutional in its mode, a virtual dissolution of the Union, and that by very high and well-known authority. It was expressly brought about for the purpose of extending slavery. An attempt is now made to throw the shame of this on the democrats. I think the democrats deserve the shame; but I could never see that the whigs, on the whole, deserved it any less; only they were not quite so open. Certainly, their leaders did not take ground against it, never as against a modification of the tariff! When we annexed Texas, we of course took her for better or worse, debts and all, and annexed her war along with her. I take it everybody knew that; though now some seem to pretend a decent astonishment at the result. Now one party is ready to fight for it as the other! The North did not oppose the annexation of Texas. Why not? They knew they could ​ make money by it. The eyes of the North. are full of cotton; they see nothing else, for a web is before them; their ears are full of cotton, and they hear nothing but the buzz of their mills; their mouth is full of cotton, and they can speak audibly but two words—Tariff, Tariff, Dividends, Dividends. The talent of the North is blinded, deafened, gagged with its own cotton. The North clamoured loudly when the nation's treasure was removed from the United States Bank; it is almost silent at the annexation of a slave territory big as the kingdom of France, encumbered with debts, loaded with the entailment of war! Northern governors call for soldiers; our men volunteer to fight in a most infamous war for the extension of slavery! Tell it not in Boston, whisper it not in Faneuil Hall, lest you waken the slumbers of your fathers, and they curse you as cowards and traitors unto men ! Not satisfied with annexing Texas and a war, we next invaded a territory which did not belong to Texas, and built a fort on the Rio Grande, where, I take it, we had no more right than the British, in 1841, had on the Penobscot or the Saco. Now the Government and its Congress would throw the blame on the innocent, and say war exists "by the act of Mexico!" If a lie was ever told, I think this is one. Then the "dear people" must be called on for money and men, for "the soil of this free republic is invaded ;" and the Governor of Massachusetts, one of the men who declared the annexation of Texas unconstitutional, recommends the war he just now told us to pray against, and appeals to our "patriotism," and "humanity," as arguments for butchering the Mexicans, when they are in the right and we in the wrong! The maxim is held up, "Our country, right or wrong;" "Our country, howsoever bounded;" and it might as well be, "Our country, howsoever governed." It seems popularly and politically forgotten that there is such a thing as Right. The nation's neck invites a tyrant. I am not at all astonished that northern representatives voted for all this work of crime. They are no better than Southern representatives; scarcely less in favour of slavery, and not half so open. They say: Let the North make money, and you may do what you please with the nation ; and we will choose governors that dare not oppose you, for, though we are descended from the Puritans, we have but one ​ article In our creed we never flinch from following, and that is—to make money; honestly, if we can; if not, as we can!
Look through the action of your Government, and your Congress. You see that no reference has been had in this affair to Christian ideas; none to justice and the eternal right. Nay, none at all! In the churches, and among the people, how feeble has been the protest against this great wrong. How tamely the people yield their neck—and say: "Take our sons for the war—we care not, right or wrong." England butchers the Sikhs in India—her generals are elevated to the peerage, and the head of her church writes a form of thanksgiving for the victory, to be read in all the churches of that Christian land. To ​ make it still more abominable, the blasphemy is enacted on Easter Sunday, the great holiday of men who serve the Prince of Peace. We have not had prayers in the churches, for we have no political Archbishop. But we fired cannon in joy that we had butchered a few wretched men—half-starved, and forced into the ranks by fear of death! Your peace-societies, and your churches, what can they do? What dare they? Verily, we are a faithless and perverse generation. God be merciful to us, sinners as we are!
But why talk for ever? What shall we do? In regard to this present war, we can refuse to take any part in it; we can encourage others to do the same; we can aid men, if need be, who suffer because they refuse. Men will call us traitors: what then? That hurt nobody in '76! We are a rebellious nation; our whole history is treason; our blood was attainted before we were born; our creeds are infidelity to the mother-church; our Constitution treason to our fatherland. What of that? Though all the governors in the world bid us commit treason against man, and set the example, let us never submit. Let God only be a master to control our conscience!
We can hold public meetings in favour of peace, in which what is wrong shall be exposed and condemned. It is proof of our cowardice that this has not been done before now. We can show in what the infamy of a nation consists; in what its real glory. One of your own men, the last summer, startled the churches out of their sleep, by his manly trumpet, talking with us, and telling that the true grandeur of a nation was justice, not glory; peace, not war.
We can work now for future times, by taking pains to spread abroad the sentiments of peace, the ideas of peace, among the people in schools, churches—everywhere. At
​ length we can diminish the power of the national Government, so that the people alone shall have the power to declare war, by a direct vote, the Congress only to recommend it. We can take from the Government the means of war, by raising only revenue enough for the nation's actual wants, and raising that directly, so that each man knows what he pays, and when he pays it, and then he will take care that it is not paid to make him poor and keep him so. We can diffuse a real practical Christianity among the people, till the mass of men have courage enough to overcome evil with good, and look at aggressive war as the worst of treason and the foulest infidelity!
Now is the time to push and be active. War itself gives weight to words of peace. There will never be a better time till we make the times better. It is not a day for cowardice, but for heroism. Fear not that the "honour of the nation" will suffer from Christian movements for peace. What if your men of low degree are a vanity, and your men of high degree are a lie ? That is no new thing. Let true men do their duty, and the lie and the vanity will pass each to its reward. Wait not for the churches to move, or the State to become Christian. Let us bear our testimony like men, not fearing to be called traitors, infidels; fearing only to be such.
I would call on Americans, by their love of our country, its great ideas, its real grandeur, its hopes, and the memory of its fathers—to come and help to save that country from infamy and ruin. I would call on Christians, who believe that Christianity is a truth, to lift up their voice, public and private, against the foulest violation of God's law, this blasphemy of the Holy Spirit of Christ, this worst form of infidelity to man and God. I would call on all men, by the one nature that is in you, by the great human heart beating alike in all your bosoms, to protest manfully against this desecration of the earth, this high treason against both man and God. Teach your rulers that you are Americans, not slaves ; Christians, not heathen; men, not murderers, to kill for hire! You may effect little in this generation, for its head seems crazed and its heart rotten. But there will be a day after today. It is for you and me to make it better: a day of peace, when nation shall no longer lift up sword against ​ nation; when all shall indeed be brothers, and all blest. Do this, you shall be worthy to dwell in this beautiful land; Christ will be near you; God work with you, and bless you for ever!
This present trouble with Mexico may be very brief; surely it might be even now brought to an end with no unusual manhood in your rulers. Can we say we have not deserved it? Let it end; but let us remember that war, horrid as it is, is not the worst calamity which ever befalls a people. It is far worse for a people to lose all reverence for right, for truth, all respect for man and God; to care more for the freedom of trade than the freedom of men; more for a tariff than millions of souls. This calamity came upon us gradually, long before the present war, and will last long after that has died away. Like people like ruler, is a true word. Look at your rulers, representatives, and see our own likeness ! We reverence force, and have forgot there is any right beyond the vote of a Congress or a people ; any good beside dollars; any God but majorities and force. I think the present war, though it should cost 50,000 men and $50,000,000, the smallest part of our misfortune. Abroad we are looked on as a nation of swindlers and men- stealers! What can we say in our defence? Alas! the nation is a traitor to its great idea,—that all men are born equal, each with the same unalienable rights. We are infidels to Christianity. We have paid the price of our shame.
There have been dark days in this nation before now. It was gloomy when Washington with his little army fled through the Jerseys. It was a long dark day from '83 to '89. It was not so dark as now; the nation never so false. There was never a time when resistance to tyrants was so rare a virtue; when the people so tamely submitted to a wrong. Now you can feel the darkness. The sack of this city and the butchery of its people were a far less evil than the moral deadness of the nation. Men spring up again like the mown grass; but to raise up saints and heroes in a dead nation corrupting beside its golden tomb, what shall do that for us? We must look not to the many for that, but to the few who are faithful unto God and man.
I know the hardy vigour of our men, the stalwart ​ intellect of this people. Would to God they could learn to love the right and true. Then what a people should we be, spreading from the Madawaska to the Sacramento, diffusing our great idea, and living our religion, the Christianity of Christ! O Lord! make the vision true; waken thy prophets and stir thy people till righteousness exalt us! No wonders will be wrought for that. But the voice of conscience speaks to you and me, and all of us: the right shall prosper; the wicked States shall die; and History responds her long amen.
What lessons come to us from the past! The Genius of the old civilization, solemn and sad, sits there on the Alps, his classic beard descending o'er his breast. Behind him arise the new nations, bustling with romantic life. He bends down over the midland sea, and counts up his children—Assyria, Egypt, Tyre, Carthage, Troy, Etruria, Corinth, Athens, Rome—once so renowned, now gathered with the dead, their giant ghosts still lingering pensive o'er the spot. He turns westward his face, too sad to weep, and raising from his palsied knee his trembling hand, looks on his brother genius of the new civilization. That young giant, strong and mocking, sits there on the Alleghanies. Before him lie the waters, covered with ships; behind him he hears the roar of the Mississippi and the far distant Oregon — rolling their riches to the sea. He bends down, and that far ocean murmurs pacific in his ear. On his left are the harbours, shops, and mills of the East, and a fivefold gleam of light goes up from Northern lakes. On his right spread out the broad savannahs of the South, waiting to be blessed; and far off that Mexique bay bends round her tropic shores. A crown of stars is on that giant's head, some glorious with flashing, many-coloured light; some bloody red; some pale and faint, of most uncertain hue. His right hand lies folded in his robe; the left rests on the Bible's opened page, and holds these sacred words—All men are equal, born with equal rights from God. The old gays to the young, "Brother, beware!" and Alps and Rocky Mountains say, "Beware!" That stripling giant, ill-bred and scoffing, shouts amain: "My feet are red with the Indian's blood; my hand has forged the negro's chain. I am strong; who dares assail me? I will drink ​
* ↑ Isaiah lxiii. 1—6.—Noyes's Version. The People. 1. Who is this that cometh from Edom ? In scarlet garments from Bozrah ? This, that is glorious in his apparel, Proud in the greatness of his strength ? Jehovah. I, that proclaim deliverance, And am mighty to save. The People. 2. Wherefore is thine apparel red, And thy garments like those of one that treadeth the wine-vat? Jehovah. 3. I have trodden the wine-vat alone. And of the nations there was none with me. And I trod them in mine anger. And I trampled them in my fury, So that their life-blood was sprinkled upon my garments; And I have stained all my apparel. 4. For the day of vengeance was in my heart, And the year of my deliverance was come. 5. And I looked and there was none to help. And I wondered that there was none to uphold, Therefore my own arm wrought salvation for me, And my fury, it sustained me. 6. I trod down the nations in my anger: I crushed them [in my fury. And spilled their blood upon the ground.
* ↑ To show the differences between the Old and New Testament, and to serve as introduction to this discourse, the following passages were read as the morning lesson: Exodus xv. 1—6 ; 2 Sam. xxii. 32, 35—43, 48; xlv. 3—5; Isa. Ixvi. 15, 16; Joel iii. 9—17; and Matt. v. 3-11, 38, 39, 43—45.
* ↑ Such was the price offered, and such the number of soldiers then called for.
* ↑ See the appropriate forms of prayer for that service by the present Bishop of Oxford, in Jay's Address before the American Peace Society, in 1845.
* ↑ Form of Prayer and Thanksgiving to Almighty God. "O Lord God of Hosts, in whose hand is power and might irresistible, we, Thine unworthy servants, most humbly acknowledge Thy goodness in the victories lately vouchsafed to the armies of our Sovereign over a host of barbarous invaders, who sought to spread desolation over fruitful and populous provinces, enjoying the blessings of peace, under the protection of the British Crown. We bless Thee, merciful Lord, for having brought to a speedy and prosperous issue a war to which no occasion had been given by injustice on our part, or apprehension of injury at our hands! To Thee, O Lord, we ascribe the glory! It was Thy wisdom which guided the counsel! Thy power which strengthened the hands of those whom it pleased Thee to use as Thy instruments in the discomfiture of the lawless aggressor, and the frustration of his ambitious designs! From Thee alone cometh the victory, and the spirit of moderation and mercy in the day of success. Continue, we beseech Thee, to go forth with our armies, whensoever they are called into battle in a righteous cause; and dispose the hearts of their leaders to exact nothing more from the vanquished than is necessary for the maintenance of peace and security against violence and rapine. "Above all, give Thy grace to those who preside in the councils of our Sovereign, and administer the concerns of her widely-extended dominions, that they may apply all their endeavours to the purposes designed by Thy good Providence, in committing such power to their hands, the temporal and spiritual benefit of the nations intrusted to their care. "And whilst Thou preservest our distant possessions from the horrors of war, give us peace and plenty at home, that the earth may yield her increase, and that we, Thy servants, receiving Thy blessings with thankfulness and gladness of heart, may dwell together in unity, and faithfully serve Thee, to Thy honour and glory, through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with Thee and the Holy Ghost, belong all dominion and power, both in heaven and earth, now and for ever. Amen."—See a defence of this prayer in the London Christian Observer for May, p. 319, et seq., and for June, p. 346, et seq. Would you know what he gave thanks for on Easter Sunday? Here is the history of the battle:— "This battle had begun at six, and was over at eleven o'clock ; the hand-to-hand combat commenced at nine, and lasted scarcely two hours. The river was fall of sinking men. For two hours, volley after volley was poured in upon the human mass—the stream being literally red with blood, and covered with the bodies of the slain. At last, the musket ammunition becoming exhausted, the infantry fell to the rear, the horse artillery plying grape till not a man was visible within range. No compassion was felt or mercy shown." But, " 'Twas a famous victory!"
* ↑ Mr. Charles Sumner.