of battle! Undoubtedly the men whose names have come down to us
with the loudest shouts of ages stand now before the tribunal of eternal
justice condemned as murderers; and the victories which have been
thought to encircle a nation with glory have fixed the same brand on
multitudes in the sight of the final and Almighty Judge. How essential
is it to a nation's honor that it should engage in war with a full
conviction of rectitude!

But there is one more condition of an honorable war. A nation should
engage in it with unfeigned sorrow. It should beseech the throne of
grace with earnest supplication that the dreadful office of destroying
fellow-beings may not be imposed on it. War concentrates all the
varieties of human misery, and a nation which can inflict these without
sorrow contracts deeper infamy than from cowardice. It is essentially
barbarous, and will be looked back upon by enlightened and Christian
ages with the horror with which we recall the atrocities of savage
tribes. Let it be remembered that the calamities of war, its slaughter,
famine, and desolation, instead of being confined to its criminal
authors, fall chiefly on multitudes who have had no share in provoking
and no voice in proclaiming it; and let not a nation talk of its honor
which has no sympathy with woes, which is steeled to the most terrible
sufferings of humanity.

When recently the suggestion of war was thrown out to this people, what
reception did it meet? Was it viewed at once in the light in which a
Christian nation should immediately and most earnestly consider it? Was
it received as a proposition to slaughter thousands of our
fellow-creatures? Did we feel as if threatened with a calamity more
fearful than earthquakes, famine, or pestilence? The blight which might
fall on our prosperity drew attention; but the thought of devoting as a
people, our power and resources to the destruction of mankind, of those
whom a common nature, whom reason, conscience, and Christianity command
us to love and save,--did this thrill us with horror? Did the solemn
inquiry break forth through our land, Is the dreadful necessity indeed
laid upon us to send abroad death and woe? No. There was little
manifestation of the sensibility with which men and Christians should
look such an evil in the face.

As a people we are still seared and blinded to the crimes and miseries
of war. The principles of honor, to which the barbarism and infatuation
of dark ages gave b