ken the meaning of the words of the
famous sermon upon the Mount. These words teach us the noble lesson,
that it is more consistent with the character of a Christian to forgive,
than to resist an injury. They are, it is said, wholly of private
import, and relate solely to private occurrences in life. But the
Quakers have extended the meaning of them beyond private to public
injuries or wars.

The Quakers, in answer to this observe, that they dare not give to the
words in question a less extensive meaning. They relate to every one who
reads them. They relate to the poor. They relate to the rich. They
relate to, every potentate who may be the ruler of a land. They relate
to every individual of his council. There is no exception, or
dispensation to any one, in favour of any case.

That they relate to public as well as private wars, or that they extend
themselves naturally to those which are public, the Quakers conceive it
reasonable to suppose from the following consideration. No man, they
apprehend, can possess practically the divine principle of loving an
individual enemy at home, or of doing good to the man who hates him, but
he must of necessity love his enemy in any and every other place. He
must have gone so for forward on the road to Christian perfection, as to
be unable to bear arms against any other person whatsoever, and
particularly when, according to the doctrines of the New Testament, no
geographical boundaries fix the limits of love and enmity between man
and man, but the whole human race are considered as the children of the
same parent, and therefore as brothers to one another. But who can truly
love an enemy and kill him? And where is the difference, under the
Gospel dispensation, between Jew and Gentile, Greek and Barbarian, bond
and free?

That these words were meant to extend to public as well as to private
ware, the Quakers believe again from the views which they entertain
relative to the completion of prophecy. They believe that a time will
come, in one or other of the succeeding ages, "when men shall bent their
swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks, and when
nation shall not lift up sword against nation, and they shall not learn
war any more." Now other Christians, who differ from them in the
interpretation of the words in question, believe equally with them, that
the times thus predicted will come to pass. The question then is,
whether the more enlarged interpretation of t