The Cincinnati daily star. [volume] ([Cincinnati, Ohio]) 1875-1880, 1878-10-31
WARS.

There rs war In self-defense; kind Of
war that instantly recommends itself both
to the heart and conscience of mankind.
The burning of Moscow has not yet ceased
to strike the imagination of the world us a
nations grandest protest against an inso-
lent tyranny; and, what is still more to the
purpose, o successful one. Even here,
however, the rule is not absolute. In the
time of ZedeEiah it was Israel's duty not
to draw the sword in defense of Zion, but
to sheathe it. When Titus encamped on
Scopus, and surrounded the city over
which Jesus had wept in vain, God was on
the side of the invaders and against the
invaded. Jerusalem was to be trodden
down by the Gentiles, until the times of
the Gentiles should be fulfilled. There
are wars of Independence, when nation
strikes quick and hard and noble blow
for her liberties wars about which it is
usually hard to know at the moment if
they are justifable, since only success can
justify them; made too soon or with made.
quate provision, they provoke a terrible
revenge; retard, it m"y be for generation,
'the cause ut heart, and sometimes set the
houses Of neighbors on fire. That
great Republic on the other side of the
Atlantic fopght'out her freedom; who in
England grudges it her now? There are
wars for civil and religious liberty. AN
the world knows of those wars; England
has felt the keen agony of them, to- day
enjoys the happier result of them. They
are grand objects to fight for if anything
deserves blood, and pain, and life, liberty
does. Here, too, selhshness sometimes
filings up the solid cap of liberty to get a
share of thespoils in the general scramble
If by waiting a few years you can secure
liberty i'll the end without fighting for it,
| pause before you make wives widows and
children orphans before the time. Wars
of conquest are sometimes utterly unprin-
| cjpled; sometimes the inevitable result of
circumstances which no one can control,
and which simply prevent greater evils
that would otherwise be sure to happen.
The great wars of Napoleon were, as most
men now admit, the unprincipled efforts Of
an indisputable but perverted genius,
| blinded by what he called glory, to take
| from other nations what property belonged
to them, simply to make an Empire for
himself. Our own Indian Empire, stained
as it has been in the past by crime, and
by policy so shamelessly of this world
that few of the natives consent to credit us
with the belief in God at all, las been
very much forced on US by the power of
circumstances; aud were we to resign India
to morrow, the result might be hideous
anarchy that would make kind of hell.
Once more, there are wars, such as We
have seen a good deal of in the last 10
years, the object and end of which is the
resettlement and consolidating of king
aoms, matters which it is the interest of
society at large to get settled, though in
dividual interests for the moment suffer,
wars Which, in the felicitous thought of a
great theologian, are the action of secret
spring in the machinery of nations, and
which, when once over and done with,
leave the stirred elements of strife slowly
to settle down into a permanent, because
equitable, repose. Tile Bishop af COLCHESTER
IN Good Words.