ORGANIZED, MAY, 1828.

Irs object, as stated in its Constitution, is "to illustrate the inconsistency of war with Christianity, to show its baleful influence on all the great interests of mankind, and devise means for securing universal and permanent peace." For this purpose it seeks to form a public opinion in favor of superseding war by rational, peaceful expedients more effectual for the great ends of international security and justice, such as Occasional Reference,. Stipulated Arbitration, and a Congress of Nations. These expedients, identical in principle with the system of laws and courts provided by every government for its own subjects, we would have extended, with suitable modifications, to the brotherhood of nations, for the settlement of their disputes in essentially the same way that individuals and minor communities do theirs The Society prints and circulates pamphlets, tracts and volumes, holds public meetings, and maintains correspondence with the friends of peace in other countries, watches against the approach of national hostilities, and strives to prevent them by timely remonstrance. It endeavors, also, to enlist in this cause the Christian pulpit, the entire periodical press, and all seminaries of learning, as the chief engines for creating or controlling public opinion; and by such means it hopes in time to induce governments to exchange their present war-system for peaceful, Christian methods of settling their difficulties. It invites the co-operation of all who are willing to aid in thus promoting peace on earth and good-will among men

1

FUNDS. In carrying on these operations as they should be, there will be needed, at least for a time, quite as large an amount as in the Bible Society. Besides an office and a Periodical as its organ, the Society ought to establish in all great centres of business depositories of peace publications, and employ in every State, one or more lecturing agents to keep the subject constantly before the whole community, but more especially to bring it before ecclesiastical bodies, seminaries of learning, and State and national governments.

748

the

29

SOURCES OF INCOME. Besides collections, donations, legacies, and the sale of publicatiors, there are Life-Directorships, $50; Life-Memberships, $20; Annual Membership, $2; to all which the society's periodical is sent without charge, and for a year, also, to every donor of $1, or more, and to every pastor who preaches on the subject and takes up a collection.

ADVOCATE OF PEACE. - Devoted to the Peace Question in its manifold bearings, and containing discussions of principles, and measures connected with the peace movement, statistics, anecdotes and illustrations from history, biographical sketches of distinguished friends, reviews of books on the subject, and general facts respecting the progress of the cause through the world. Monthly, or a double number once in two months, making a volume in two years; $1.00, or ten cents a number. To auxiliary societies, or clubs of not less than ten. 30 per cent. discount.

THE

ADVOCATE OF PEACE.

JANUARY AND FEBRUARY, 1866.

.

A STRANGE INCONSISTENCY.

THE continuance of war among Christians must be regarded as a startling inconsistency. Followers of the Prince of peace, professing a religion that we all believe fitted and destined one day to spread permanent peace over all the earth, we still, in this last half of the nineteenth century since the birth of our Saviour, lend our connivance, if not our active support, to a war-system that contradicts every one of its peculiar principles, and occasions even in time of peace an amount of evils which no arithmetic can fully compute.

Look at some facts patent to every eye. When our Saviour was born, "a multitude of the heavenly hosts" sang "glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace." These " tidings of great joy to all people," Christians of every name accept as an incipient fulfilment of the promises uttered more than seven centuries before by Isaiah and Micah, "Out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem; and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war no more."

Such is our faith as Christians; but what is our practice? What are we doing to hasten the fulfilment of such promises as these? No prophecy fulfils itself without appropriate means; and what means are we now using in this case? What more are we doing as Christians than might be expected of pagans equally civilized? For the fulfilment of other promises, like that for the world's evangelization, we are em

ploying, with more or less zeal, the means that God has appointed for the purpose; but what have we yet done, what are we now doing, or purposing to do, towards hastening the day when at least nations reputedly Christian shall actually cease from learning the art of war any more? Means are just as indispensable in one case as the other; but how dif ferently do we act in the two cases! Christendom is contributing millions of dollars every year to do away the abominations of paganism, but not a hundredth part as much to do away among ourselves an abomination little less revolting that still lingers within the shade of her own sanctuaries.

The war

On a point so well known to all men of ordinary intelligence, there can be little need of accumulating either proof or illustration. The great facts in the case stare us in the face at every turn. system, though a constant libel on our religion of peace, is still allowed to remain the great characteristic institution of Christendom, resting as a mammoth incubus upon all her population. It drags into its service, and keeps them there in peace as well as in war, four or five millions of men, and in payment for past wars, and preparation for wars to come, spends not less than one thousand million dollars every year; a larger amount of money and moral power than would suffice, with God's blessing, to evangelize half a score of such worlds

as ours.

Surely these are startling facts; but is it not the most wonderful of all that the mass of real Christians should still slumber so quietly over such facts, and show so little sympathy or respect for those who are laboring to do away this master sin and scourge? We would indulge no reproaches that we do not take to ourselves for past neglect; but, with our views of duty in the case, we cannot refrain from pressing this long and strangely neglected subject upon the attention of the Christian public, especially through the Christian pulpit and press, in the full belief that the men controlling these great engines of moral power can, if they will, set at work influences sure in due time to christianize public opinion on this whole subject, and thus lead nations blest with the light of the gospel to supersede their war-system by far better expedients for securing their respective rights and interests.

It is in this hope we propose sending gratuitously the Advocate of Peace, and perhaps some of our stereotyped publications, to as large a number as possible of our leading periodicals, and of influential ministers and laymen. If we had the means, we would send them to a hundred times as many as we do. We trust that those who receive them

will give the subject a candid and careful examination, and will, when they see their way clear to such a result, co-operate with us in whatever way they can by pen, type or voice, by labor or by contribution.

THE CAUSE OF PEACE:

ITS SPECIFIC AND SOLE AIM THE CUSTOM OF WAR.

THE object of this great Christian reform may be stated in few words. The friends of peace, associated in the American and other Peace Societies, restrict their efforts to the single purpose of doing away the custom of war, or the practice of nations appealing, as their last resort, to brute force for the settlement of their difficulties. Here is our whole aim. This reliance on the sword as the only recognized arbiter of their disputes, so prevalent from time immemorial over all the earth, we wish, through the power of a christianized public opinion, to supersede by the introduction of other means, more rational, and more likely to vindicate their respective rights, to redress their wrongs, and promote in numberless ways their common and mutual interests.

may

Such has ever been our sole aim, distinctly avowed from the start, and kept constantly before the public. In one of our tracts stereotyped nearly twenty-five years ago, we said,*"All the social relations of mankind be reduced to three classes: the relation of individuals to one another; the relation of individuals to society, of citizens to government; and the relation of one society or government to another. The principles of peace are applicable to all these relations; but the cause of peace is concerned only with the intercourse of governments, and aims merely to prevent war between nations."

We published soon after another which began thus: "The cause of peace seeks, as its only object, the entire abolition of war. It has nothing to do with capital punishment, with the strict inviolability of human life, or with the question whether the gospel allows physical force in the government of states, schools and families. On such subjects we leave men to think as they please, and ask them merely to aid us in putting an end to that custom which lexicographers define to be " contest by force between nations." It is not only a conflict unto death, but a conflict between governments; and neither a teacher punishing his pupil, nor a parent chastising his child, nor a father defending his No. 1, Cause of Peace.

family against a midnight assassin, nor a magistrate inflicting the penalties of law upon a criminal, can properly be termed war, because the parties are not nations or governments alone, but either individuals, or individuals and governments. Such questions may be important; but associated solely for the abolition of war, we restrict ourselves to this single object."*

Some years later we gave in another tractt a still farther statement of the specific and sole purpose sought in this reform: "Its precise object is to do away the custom of war. It does not inquire how murder, or any offences against society, shall be punished; how force shall be used for the suppression of mobs, and other popular outbreaks; by what specific means government shall enforce its laws, and support its rightful and indispensable authority; to what extent an individual may protect himself or his family by violence against murderous assaults; how a people, deprived of their rights, shall regain and preserve them, or in what way any controversy between a government and its own subjects shall be adjusted. With such questions, however important, the cause of peace is not concerned; but concerns itself solely with the intercourse of nations for the single purpose of abolishing their practice of war. It is peace in this sense alone that it seeks, and thus labors to abolish merely the practice of nations settling their disputes by the sword.”

To these views and this policy we have steadily adhered from the first; and when our late rebellion came as a fiery trial of our firmness and consistency, we merely made, as we needed nothing more for our vindication, a re-statement of our object, and means by which we seek, its attainment. In our Society's last report, we say,

"While restricted to the single object of doing away the custom of war between nations by the substitution of rational, peaceful means in its place, we still recognize civil government as necessary for the welfare, if not for the very existence, of human society, and abstain from interference with its ordinary, legitimate functions in dealing with its own subjects. If a real government, it must of course have the right, a discretion, to enact laws and put them in execution. By recognizing its existence we concede to it the exercise of all these powers; and a due enforcement of law, whether against one offender or a million, we regard as a proper and necessary measure. of peace, and no more to be stigmatized as war than would be an effort to arrest and bring to condign punishment the leaders of a mob, or a gang of robbers, incendia

*No. 34. Claims of Peace on all Christians. We have, in all, stereotyped nearly 100 tracts from four to twenty-four pages each. † Sketch of the Cause of Peace.