nced, and other shouts have risen than those of happy
reapers bearing some blushing, sun-browned maid on their broad
shoulders at the Harvest Home. The tall gray stones, the hoary cairns,
tell how on other days these quiet scenes were disturbed by the roar
of battle, and lay red with another dye than that of heath or purple
wild flowers. Go wherever our foot may wander, we find tokens of war;
and select what age soever we may, since Abel fell beneath a brother's
hand, we find in man's first death, and the earth's first lone grave,
a bloody omen of future and frequent crimes. What a commentary is
human history on these words of Holy Scripture, "The whole creation
groaneth, and travaileth in pain till now!--nor shall it cease to
groan, or hail the day of its redemption, till the Prince of Peace is
enthroned in the heart of all nations, and the labours of missionaries
have extended that kingdom to the ends of the earth, whose triumphs
are bloodless--whose walls are Salvation and her gates Praise."

Without disparagement to the happy influence of education, the
extension of commerce, and the efforts of benevolent men, the real
Peace Society is the Church of God; the olive branch which the Spirit,
dove-like, is bearing on blessed wing to a troubled world, is the
Word of God; and the gospel's is the voice which, like Christ's on
Galilee's waves, shall speak peace to a distracted earth, and change
its wildest passions into a holy calm. Till all nations receive the
Bible in its integrity and own it as their only rule of policy, till
kings reign for Christ and lay their crowns at His feet, a lasting
peace is an idle dream. Treaties will no more bind nations that lie
under the influence of unsanctified passions, that chains him who
dwelt among the tombs, and within whom dwelt a legion of devils. Till
other and better days come, the best cemented peace is only a pause--a
truce--an armistice; the breathing-time of exhausted combatants. Alas,
that it should be so: yet true it is, that that nation dooms itself to
disaster, if not destruction, which, pursuing only the arts of peace,
leaves its swords to rust, and its navies to rot, and forts with empty
embrasures to moulder into ruins. The trumpet of the world's Jubilee
has not yet sounded, nor have all the vials of the Apocalypse been
emptied of the wrath of God. And so, till the nations have emerged
from spiritual darkness; till God's Word is an open book, and duly
honoured in all l