Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1864-08-04


an armed doctrinaire2 He theories with bayo-
nets He dOgmatizes in blood" A great writer
has said of such zealots that "they regard men
no more than mice in an air pump, and would not
hesitate to sacrifice half generation to one of their
experiments in social systems Their systems,
like the code of Draco are written in blood"
Phe cause of humanity is the cause Of God But
it is precisely for this reason that men may not
rashly presume within the sphere of civil society
to desert the rghtful ends of political government
for the purpose of propagating moral aud social
truth by violence and the shedding of blood. A
wsr perverted from the only lawful objects of war
is an abomination in the sight of Heaven, and such
ours has become precisely in proportion as it has
been detected from the right line of the Oonstitu-
ton and the laws and turned into crusade against
social evils existing at the South. The evils of
slavery no body may deny, but these evils have
been intensified and that system has been strength
ened by the infatuated counsels which have dark
ened the understanding of many who have sup
posed themselves to be doing God and their country
good service while following only the igmes Jatii
of their own distempered fancies. The light that
has led them astray was only the more bewilder-
ing becausei.it has seemed to them light from
heaven.
1t is singular as it is notifying that at this
age of the world, and in the present progress Of
humanity among Christianzed nations, there should
be any necessity of enforcing Determinations like
these, either in the domain of speculation or Of
practical life. And yet we find many who are ap-
parently SO little acquainted with the genius Of
Christianity, and whose ideas respecting the APP
pointed sphere of the civil ruler SO underlined,
that they mingle the motives of the missionary
with those of the magistrate, and, with the in
fatuaton Of sincere prosecutors for opinions sake,
suppose that they hep the cause of God and the
country when they confound distinctions which lie
at the very basis of moral and civil government.
1t is indeed most true, as we have repeatedly had
occasion to say during the progress of this war,
that, by the ordinations of the Divine providence
which superintends the affairs Of men, the plans and
policies of States often conducted to conclusions
which the actors in them little foresee and little in
tend Where man means to defend civil law the
Supreme Ruler may mean to prepare the way for
the removal of social evils aud for the nstallment
of His kingdom. But the Prince of Peace has no.
where commissioned His disciples to take the
sword for the propagation of humanity or civil
lization. The civil ruler has indeed his sphere
assigned to him as Minister of God" but it is
as ga revenger to execute wrath upon him that
doeth evi1" He is commissioned to deal with the
overt acts of men in the figure of socety-main-
tanning order and REFRESHING violence. But he
cannot step outside of this sphere, and undertake
to wield carnal weapons in the name of spiritual
forces, without doing violence to the latter, by
bringing rcproach on the very Of moral law.
And this reproach we are daily bringing on the
moral law just in the degree in which we are al
lowing the war to be diverted from its only lawful
objects Does any one doubt that for this perversion
the nation is held responsible by the moral Gov
ernor of the Universe, or is it supposed that He
to whom vengeance belongeth will not make inqui-
,tiop for all the blood that is shed outside of the
legitimate objects for which blood may be shed
Our readers will remember that the war had
hardly begun before class of soothssyers arose in
the church and in the State who assumed to declare
in the name of Jehovah, that He could not and
would not smile upon US in our struggle against
|" the South" until we made the war avowedly and
directly war for the emancipation of slaves.
All who resisted this theory, being equally
incompatible with imperative considerations of
political duty and of moral right, were denounced
and reviled as lovers of slavery more than lovers
Of God and humanity, until in the end the self
appointed interpreters of the Divine mind and pur-
pose were permitted in wrath to impress theirviews
on the conduct Of the war And now lohere do zoe
stand to-doys Let the very men who, in the
words of Jeremiah, have prophesied according !" to
the deceit Of their own hearts" give answer. One
of the chief among the secular oracles Of this de-
lusion--we allude to the New York Tribune--in
its number of yesterday is frank enough to declare
that, since the night of Arnolds treason, no black
er clouds have gathered around the prospects of
the country than those which now cnvelop the
horizon, amidst the deepening gloom Of military
disappointmcnts and the thickening omens Of APP
pretended disaster. The counsels of Fanaticism
have come like blight over the energie, of the
nation. And it wa, fitting that those who have
contributed to deluda and misead the people should
now be among the first to faint and fail in heart
for the fear of the thing, yet to come on the land
But those who, by reason of use, have their
a. hotb ood ,nJ