Year: 1861

of describing great profaneness. This vice
is fashionable among soldiers, and is es-
teemed by some of them, the badge of
gentleman. For private to describe some
feat of valorous daring, performed by him.
self, or give forth an expression of opinion
as to his enemy; or for an officer to give o.
ders, without interlarding their language
with oaths, would be considered vulgar and
unmanly. The battle field always resounds
with blasphemies, and its air is filled with
horrid oatbs and imprecations. 1t is
shame and reproach to humanity, that men
whose calling leads them to the very jaws
of death, should delight in swearing and
cursing and yet such is the fact, whether
attributable to the peculiar atmosphere in
which the warrior moves, or to the exam
pie of desperadoes, who in every army gain
notoriety by their rashness and wickedness,
and whom by a strange perversion of lam
guage, men call brave men and noble. AS
an eloquent living Divine has said, "That
ruuy creature of the dust, born to-day and
gone tomorrow, should have the audacity
to pour contempt, by profanity, upon that
glorious name which seraphs adore with
rapture, is enough to astonish the heavens
and convulse the earth. Yea, still more
astonishing is that miracle of patience
which endures the monsters, when one word
would arm all nature against them make
heaven terrible above them; the ground
treacherous beneath them; and hell ready
to meet them at their coming. The mag
nitude of the sin cannot be exaggerated.-
1t is enough to make the blood curdle, to
think of the name of God banded about
as the bauble and plaything of fools, to
point jest, to scorn obscenity, and to gar
nish tale"


And yet this very vice, so erroneous, so
excuseless, is one to which to which the
soldier is notoriously addicted. Nothing
then but the power of religious sentiments
and habits can enable the individual to re.
sist what the multitude is infected with.


To the above, let it be added, that the
militia system has been stronghold Of in
temperance. Whether due to the previ-
ously formed habits of those who compose
our armies, or to the call of stimulants oc-
casioned by the exposure and irregularity
of such life, or to the fact that the troops
live, much of the time, in the face of the
enemy, and SO, demand something to arouse
their passions, or cause insensibility to their
condition. Yet it is indisputably true, that
intemperance controls, to an alarming ex-
tent, in such companies as can fud access
to the Intoxicating beverage. As speci-
men of what is common where the thing
is permitted by the officers, it is said that
'sin one of the engagements of the Crlmea,
the Russian soldiers were all 'as drunk as
fdders' aud fought like madmen. About
FIVE hundred prisoners were taken, all, al
most too drunk to stand upright" And
from what is known Of the camp carousals,
and even the battle fields of our country,
perhaps our armies may be no exception
upon the item Of temperance. Now, no
darkly drawn picture Of the horrors and sin
of drunkenness, is needed from this pen.
That it brutalizes the body, infuriates the
mind, dethrones reason, and depraves the
soul, curses the family, and 6nalIy over
whelms the whole man with unutterabIe and
irretrievable ruin, has been thousand times
truthfully said. Ought not then the man
who is tempted into its vortex, and liable to
be victimized by its ravages, to be furnish
ed with some armor of defence, and what
is so good as the fear of God and due
sense Of his responsibility?


The only other sin that is here signalized
is the vio1atioa Of the Sabbath. War and
its accompaniments are subversive of the
Sabbath. The sauctity of this day is pro-
famed on every hand, either by dissipation
and revelry, or by marches, or drilling, or
erecting fortifcatious, or collecting stores of
provisions, and often even by battles fought,
| (of the last an example is found in cases of
Waterloo and Inkerman). Uuscrupulous
and Godforgetting Officers have most fear
full accountability in this. 1t is no ordina-
~ crime to cause men to violate one of the
Ten Commandments, to rob them of day
to be devoted to holy rest and employments,
and open thus hoodgatc of iniquity and
transgression, as Sabbath proclamation always
proves itself to be. Dearly purchased is