THE

ADVOCATE OF PEACE.

SEPTEMBER AND OCTOBER.

THE CHIEF DISCOURAGEMENT IN THE PEACE CAUSE. A GOOD friend of our cause lately accompanied his annual donation with a brief note to our Secretary, from which we copy a few sentences as texts for some passing remarks of our own :

"Labor on, my dear Sir, if you can have courage and patience; but how can you? According to your own statements, the re-action against you, for the last eight or nine years, has been discouraging. Meanwhile the war-spirit is increasing, and the nations seem mad. Nothing but the promises of God, I am sure, can sustain you.

"So many cold friends, too, you have. Why, our own minister here in one of the very best ministers, seems to have but little faith in anything being done in the cause of Peace. We can observe the concert of prayer for colleges, but no time to observe a season of prayer for the cause of Peace! There is a general coolness some exceptions in our church towards the Peace Society; yet all think they disapprove of war, and no one doubts but his own sentiments are right on the subject!"

Our friend seems to think it strange that we can have courage or patience to labor on' in the teeth of so many obstacles 'the re-action of the last eight or ten years, increase of the war-spirit, and madness of the nations.' And what of all these? In none of these, however, do we see any reason "to abate a jot of heart or hope." We laid our account from the first with meeting them all, and even more. They

are just what we expected as a matter of course; and even had they been thrice as great, we should have been ashamed of ourselves as Christian Reformers, if we could for a moment have either wavered in our faith, faltered in our purpose, or relaxed in our zeal. God's promise of peace we believe just as we do his promise of the world's conversion, or of heaven to the penitent believer in Christ. Does the Christian doubt either of these, because he sees now so many obstacles in the way of their accomplishment? No more do we, no more should any Christian, doubt that Peace will ultimately triumph in accordance with God's unequivocal and oft-repeated promises. We know much better than our friend can, the obstacles that lie across the pathway of this cause; but during the nearly twenty-five years that we have spent in its service, we have never had one hour of distrust or fear respecting its final prevalence. Our hopes of peace rest on the word of God; and, whatever encouragement or discouragement we may meet from other sources, our faith finds here a sure, unfailing anchor.

We cannot, however, see in the past history, or the present prospects of our cause, any reason for despondency, but much for encouragement and hope. True, in this enterprise, as in every kindred one, far less has been accomplished than could have been wished, yet more than could have been reasonably expected, a hundred-fold more than enough to compensate for all the time and money spent. Public opinion on the subject is widely different from what it was one century ago; difficulties that would then have involved nations for ten or twenty years in blood, are now adjusted often with scarce a serious thought of appealing to arms; other and better means for the settlement of their disputes are gradually coming to supersede the blind, brutal arbitrament of the sword; the general peace of Europe, that in former ages seldom lasted more than ten or fifteen years at a time, continued for a wonder nearly forty years from the date of special efforts in this cause, from the fall of Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815, to the rise of the Crimean war in 1854; a longer period of general peace than Christendom had ever enjoyed before, and very much as the result under God of the influences set at work by the associated friends of peace. It would be difficult to find, in any enterprise of Christian benevolence or reform, more decisive proofs of success, a case where the same amount of means has accomplished an equal amount of good. We do not by any means admit that the cause of Peace is a failure, but claim that it has already reached such a degree of success as ought to encourage and stimulate a large increase of effort in its behalf.

But why do the obstacles in the way of this cause seem to many so

disheartening? Very much because they have never duly considered its inherent difficulties. They had apparently supposed that the slight efforts already put forth in its behalf, would have sufficed ere this to do away no small part of the evil; and, finding it still entrenched so strongly in the public mind, and nations so ready to rush into war, they hastily leap, in their chagrin, to the sweeping conclusion that nothing to any serious purpose has yet been, or ever can be, accomplished in this reform! Their logic is radically wrong. They never really counted the cost of this great Christian enterprize. A custom so long continued, so deeply rooted in the worst as well as the strongest passions of our nature, and wrought into the very texture of every society and government on earth, can never be abolished without a hundred-fold more effort than has yet been made. It is vain to hope for such a consummation without more adequate reasons. There is not on the wide world another evil, paganism alone excepted, so inveterate, or so difficult of cure, as the war-mania. How little has yet been done to abolish or abate this master-evil! Could a mere handful of co-workers in the cause of Peace, with only a few thousand dollars a year at their command, do away or seriously check a practice triumphant all over the earth for more than fifty centuries, and still upheld throughout Christendom itself by the whole power of all its governments, and by an expenditure of nearly one thousand million dollars every year? For every dollar given in the last forty-three years by the friends of peace to abolish this custom, full two hundred thou. sand have been spent for its support. Could any man in his senses expect to see it in less than half a century brought to an end, or any decisive impression made upon it, by such a beggarly pittance of means?

Here is our chief discouragement

the strange lack of knowledge or sympathy betrayed by Christians on this subject. What have they as a body done for this cause? How much money, labor or zeal have they spent upon it? The hearth, the school, the church, the pulpit, the Christian press what have they all done? A hundred times have we called upon them for co-operation; but what response have they returned? They believe God's prophecy of Peace; but what have they done, or what are they now ready to do, for its fulfilment ? He promises no result without proper and adequate means; and, while neglecting to use these means, can they hope ever to secure the consummation so devoutly wished by every friend of man? This mighty work, second only to the world's conversion, can they expect to see accomplished without vastly more effort? Not one church in a