oers and maintaining order at home, on the one hand,
and prepared, on the other, to resist hostile invasion, is in reality,
notwithstanding his deadly weapons and warlike garb, an officer or
instrument of peace. A day is coming--alas! with the roar of cannon
booming across the ocean, how far distant it seems!--when Christianity
shall exert a paramount influence throughout all the world: then,
tyrants having ceased to reign, and slaves to groan, and nations to
suffer from the lust of gold or power, this beautiful picture of the
prophet shall become a reality: "The whole earth," said the seer, "is
at rest, and is quiet; they break forth into singing." Till then,
paradoxical though it appears, the cause of peace may be pled with
most effect by the mouths of cannon. Fitness for war is often the
strongest security for peace; and a nation whose wishes and interests
both run in the direction of peace, may find no way of warning
restless and unprincipled and ambitious neighbours that it is not to
be touched with impunity, but by showing itself, thistle-like, all
bristling over with bayonets. "Necessity," said Paul, "is laid on me
to preach." It may be laid on a people to fight. Nor, when the sword
has been drawn in a good cause, has God refused His sanction to that
last, terrible resort. It was He who imparted strength to the arm
before whose resistless sweep the Philistines fell in swathes, like
grass to the mower's scythe. It was He who guided the stone that, shot
from David's sling, buried itself in the giant's brow. It was He who
gave its earthquake-power to the blast of the horns which levelled the
walls of Jericho with the ground. And when night came down to cover
the retreat of the Amorites and their allies, it was He who
interposed to secure the bloody fruits of victory--saying, as
eloquently put by a rustic preacher, "'Fight on, my servant Joshua,
and I will hold the lights;' and 'the sun stood still on Gibeon, and
the moon in the valley of Ajalon.'" Admitting war to be an awful
scourge, these cases show that the duties of a soldier are not
inconsistent with the calling of a Christian.

Yet it was over no battle-field, the most sacred to truth and liberty,
these angels hovered; no blazing homesteads nor burning cities shed
their lurid gleam on the skies they made radiant with light; nor was
it where their sweet voices strangely mingled with the clash of arms
and the shouts of charging squadrons that they sang of glory,