Here is all we ask-such an application of the gospel as shall secure the actual abolition of war in every Christian country. We dream not of extending peace a single span beyond the influences of the gospel; but we do plead earnestly for the restoration of those principles which our Saviour himself taught, his apostles everywhere preached, and his disciples, down to the war-degeneracy of the Church, continued to exemplify, like all other Christian graces, in their lives. We ask on this point for the very gospel that fell from the lips of him who " spake as never man spake." Only let its principles of peace once more be taught by every minister, and put in practice by every Christian, as they unquestionably were by all the first teachers and professors of Christianity; then, but never till then, will peace, as an element of the gospel itself, prevail, just like repentance and faith, wherever Christianity itself prevails, and the world thus be what it never yet has been in the case of a single nation, though it ought to have been in every case, converted to peace as fast as it shall be to God.

A COURT OF NATIONS.

The friends of peace place before the world a distinct plan for the establishment and preservation of universal peace. We propose that five or six of the great nations of the earth, elect each an able lawyer or statesman to meet as a "CONGRESS OF NATIONS," Somewhere in Europe, and spend a few years in digesting a code of international law. We now refer to Vattel, or Montesquieu, or Grotius; but these men have no other authority than as great writers. We want an admitted, authoritative and detailed code for the regulation of nations in their intercourse with each other. Such a code, once formed and ratified by the few high powers of earth, would be, what as yet does not exist, a system of international law.

The decision of disputes according to this code would belong to a permanent body of judges, elected like the members of the Congress, and forming a "COURT OF NATIONS." These might either meet as occasion required, or sit statedly. What an august tribunal! How would such men as Webster and Clay shine there by the side of Brougham and Guizot! How much more probably would justice be obtained there by a wronged nation, than if the decision were made to result from a pitched battle!

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I see no objection to the plan, as an abstract question of debate; none as to its practical workings. We have much history, much experience to encourage the attempt. The Amphictyonic Council preserved peace to the States of Greece. The Germanic Diet was a court of nations to more than thirty free states and cities. The Cantons of Switzerland, though differing in language, religion and intelligence, live peaceably under a similar compact. The united provinces of Holland maintained entire peace by such an arrangement for two hundred years. These United States, free and sovereign, have agreed to settle their disputes before a Supreme Court, and have forever renounced the right to go to war with each other. Who then will say that a plan which has worked well in so many instances, may not be successful on a larger scale?

The plan of referring disputes between nations to the arbitration of a neutral power, is found to produce the happiest results, and is very often tried. Yet how inferior to this plan! The monarch who arbitrates, may not have time or inclination to examine details. Or he may have selfish inducements to lean to one side. And at best he has not, as our court would have, an admitted code to govern his decision.

I love to anticipate the formation of a court of nations. Round such a tribunal would shine a splendor resembling, more than aught earth ever saw before, the glory of the throne of God! There would sit a bench of peace-makers, dispensing tranquility, confidence and safety, not to cities only, or to nations, but to the world. From them would go forth, under God, unnumbered blessings to the whole family of man. Before them, petty despots, and blood-thirsty aspirants, would be crushed in their beginnings. Earth would no more be stained with the blood of the brave. The horrors of the conscription and the press-gang would cease. Commerce would spread her free and fearless sails on every sea, and navies would dwindle to a mere police.

What can be said why such a court should not be established? I know of only this-such a court could not enforce its decisions. But this is not so. What enforces law in Kentucky or Vermont? Not an army, but public opinion. No military force can coerce a nation or community contrary to public opinion. This is a new element in political economy not known in former ages, but now omnipotent. No king can now wage a war if public opinion be against him. When we get our court of nations, public opinion

as to war will be right, and the spirit that creates the tribunal, will carry out its decisions. We have laws now which lie dormant-a dead letter-just because public opinion is against them now. But when the people are earnest in favor of a law, they want no army to dragoon them into obedience.

Total non-intercourse with a refractory nation would soon reduce it to submission. Civilization now makes all nations dependent on each other for absolute necessaries. But what nation would refuse the reparation which such a court ordered? None would be so mad. No award would tax it so heavily as a year's war. Public opinion, once formed on peace principles, would render war as impossible as it is unnecessary. The case would be the same as in regard to duelling and profane swearing, which authority never could abolish, but which are being abolished by public opinion. It is far from being difficult to affect public opinion. See the effects of a few abolitionists constantly declaiming against slavery. A hundred such cases may be named. We have only to argue and exhort a few years, and earth will enjoy the incalculable blessings of a COURT OF NATIONS.

H. M.

PEACE A PIONEER OF THE GOSPEL.

If the gospel must have access to men, as of course it must, before it can convert or sanctify them, how many obstacles does the custom of war oppose to its progress and saving power? A multitude of these have been scattered, age after age, over the whole earth by the martial character of Christendom. . Its wars, however unjust the charge, are actually charged by the heathen upon our religion, as one of its supposed fruits; and thus have they for ages reared all round the unevangelized world a barrier of prejudice very like the wall of China. Their ports, their ears, their hearts are closed fast against us. Christians are still regarded with terror; and Christianity itself, though an angel of peace and love, has thus become, all over the earth, a hissing and a scorn.

We cannot well conceive how far the wars of Christendom have set the great mass of unevangelized minds sternly against the religion of the cross. Not only does the infidel cast them in our teeth, and the Jew insist that the Messiah, promised as the

Prince of Peace, cannot have come, since nations reputedly Christian have been almost incessantly engaged in war; but even the follower of the false prophet calls us "Christian dogs," and taunts us for our glaring hypocrisy.

The result is inevitable in checking the spread of Christianity. How came the gospel to meet in the Sandwich and South Sea Islands, a reception comparatively so cordial, and a degree of success so glorious? Other causes doubtless conspired; but a principal one was found in the fact, that the wars of Christendom were little known to the natives, and they saw Christianity exhibited before them, first in the lives of its humble, peaceful misionaries. On the other hand, why were the Jesuit missionaries so indignantly expelled from China? Whence such rancorous hatred of the gospel in Japan, that every man, woman and child was required to go once a year through the ceremony of publicly trampling in scorn on the cross, and no Christian was allowed to put his foot on the shores of that island without first renouncing his religion? They had heard of Christian naticns crimsoning their path by sea and land with blood; and they very naturally suspected those Jesuits of having come to involve them, some how or other, in the same calamities that nominal Christians had so often inflicted upon one another. The countries all round the Mediterranean, traversed by Apostles, and covered with primitive Churches, have been for ages filled, mainly in consequence of fierce, bloody wars so long waged between Mahommedans and reputed Christians with such deep and bitter prejudices as centuries more can hardly suffice entirely to remove. Such prejudices spread more or less over the globe, must be removed before its myriads can ever be evangelized.

NOTHING IN WAR LIKE CHRIST.

Every true Christian must be like his Great Master. His acts are not the fruits of the spirit of the old man, but of the new man in Christ Jesus. No one can be a fruit-bearing disciple any longer than he abides in him as a branch in the vine; and while thus abiding, the actions of his life, in all their variety and different degrees of development, will be transfused with his spirit. Every action in its inception and issue; every duty, social, public, or private; every emotion, weak or strong, will bear witness to the spirit that was in Christ. In estimating the value of a diamond, we say that it is of such or such a water. In analysing the purity of a Christian action, we may say that it is of such or such a spirit; that in the ore of

grosser motives, are contained, as it were, so many grains of the spirit of Christ.

Now, is war at all like Christ? "Whence come wars and fightings ?" Whence the emotions that fill the heart in the act of inflicting upon a fellow-being atrocities which no brute inflicts upon its fellow-brute—in the act of thrusting his maddened soul into the presence of its God on the point of the bayonet, of maiming and mutilating his body, and stamping it in the mire of its own blood into the earth? In emotions and actions like these, is there any of the spirit of Christ? Follow him from the manger to the cross, through every trial he was called to endure, through all the bitter obloquy and persecution that were heaped upon him, through all the indignities which he daily suffered. Stand by him at the crowning scene of ignominy and malice, when at Pilate's bar he was spit upon and buffeted by the malignant mob. Watch the expression of his countenance when the crown of thorns was placed around his temples, whilst he was staggering up the hill of blood under the weight of his cross, when the nails were driven, and when he breathed forth the last impulse of his spirit upon his red-handed murderers, and cried, FATHER, FORGIVE THEM! Father, FORGIVE THEM! Observe him at any point of these fierce temptations, at any lone moment of his agony, at his night-wrestlings in the garden when he sweat, as it were, great drops of blood in view of the last scene of his suffering. See what were the fruits of his spirit in these "extreme cases." When there was none to see and hear but God, did a thought of ill-will to any human being steal into his heart, as the long catalogue of injuries he had received from his countrymen pressed upon his memory? Did a shade of anger cross that grief-marred countenance under cover of the night ? Did a tone of unkindness strengthen the emphasis of his midnight prayer?

Such was Christ. Is the disciple greater than his Master? Are his temptations greater, the "extreme cases" to which he is exposed, more extreme than were those of his Master? If the Christian is a branch of such a vine; if he abides in such a vine; if his heart is grafted into the heart of Christ, and thence receives the vital fluid of its spiritual existence; in short, if he have the same spirit that was in Christ breathing and begetting life in his soul, then in the extremest cases of sudden and fearful trial into which a human being may be thrown, he will act, speak and pray like his Master-like the Captain of his salvation, who was made perfect through suffering. The godless governments of this world may rule and rage as they please; but "neither principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come," can separate the true, living Christian from the love of God which is in Christ. They cannot dislocate his heart from the heart of Christ; and while that vital connection exists, he cannot fight, unless a malignant element be first infused into the fountain from which he draws his life-spirit. Never until the powers and principles of this world shall change the attributes of the Son of God can the Christian fight, or hate, or curse, or injure, or scorn his brother man. His moral inability to indulge these passions, and to perpetrate these deeds, is fixed upon him by a law as irrepealable as the elements of God's being.