eld of
battle, strewn with the dying and the dead; the hospital where brave
suffering men were groaning under the surgeon's knife; the sick chamber,
where his friend was dying.

"And I, too," he thought, "have become the craftsman of Death, training
my arm and intellect to be cunning in the butchery of my fellows!
Wearing the instrument of torture at my side, and using the faculties
God gave me to mutilate His image. Yet, from the pulpit and the
statesman's chair, and far back through ages from the pages of history,
precept and example have sought to record its justification, under the
giant plea of necessity. But is it justified? Has man, in his
enlightenment, sufficiently studied to throw aside the hereditary errors
that come from the past, clothed in barbarous splendors to mislead
thought and dazzle conscience? Oh, for one glimpse of the Eternal Truth!
to teach us how far is delegated to mortal man the right to take away
the life he cannot give. When shall the sword be held accursed? When
shall man cease to meddle with the most awful prerogative of his God?
When shall our right hands be cleansed forever from the stain of blood,
and homicide be no longer a purpose and a glory upon earth? I shudder
when I look up at the beautiful serenity of this autumn sky, and
remember that my deed has loosened an immortal soul from its clay, and
hurled it, unprepared, into its Maker's presence. My conscience would
rebuke my hand, should it willfully shatter the sculptor's marble
wrought into human shape, or deface the artist's ideal pictured upon
canvas, or destroy aught that is beautiful and costly of man's ingenuity
and labor. And yet these I might replace with emptying a purse into the
craftsman's hand. But will my gold recall the vital spark into those
cold forms that, stricken by my steel or bullet, are rotting in their
graves? The masterpiece of God I have destroyed. His image have I
defaced; the wonderful mechanism that He alone can mold, and molded for
His own holy purpose, have I shattered and dismembered; the soul, an
essence of His own eternity, have I chased from its alotted earthly
home, and I rely for my justification upon--what?--the fact that my
victim differed from me in political belief. Must the hand of man be
raised against the workmanship of God because an earthly bond has been
sundered? Our statesmen teach us so, the ministers of our faith
pronounce it just; but, oh God! should it be wrong! When the blood is
h