33. General observations
If the evidence that we possess does not satisfy us of the expediency of confiding in God, what evidence do we ask, or what can we receive?
We have his promise that he will protect those who abandon their seeming interests in the performance of his will, and we have the testimony of those who have confided in him that he has protected them.
Can the advocate of war produce one single instance in the history of man, of a person who had given an unconditional obedience to the will of heaven, and who did not find that his conduct was wise as well as virtuous, that it accorded with his interests as well as with his duty?
We ask the same question in relation to the peculiar obligations to non-resistance:
Where is the man who regrets that, in observance of the forbearing duties of Christianity, he consigned his preservation to the superintendence of God?
And the solitary national example that is before us confirms the testimony of private life, for there is sufficient reason for believing that no nation in modern ages has possessed so large a portion of virtue or of happiness as Pennsylvania before it had seen human blood.
I would therefore repeat the question: What evidence do we ask, or can we receive?
This is the point from which we wander:
We do not believe in the providence of God.
When this statement is formally made to us, we think, perhaps, that it is not true;
but our practice is an evidence of its truth, for if we did believe, we should also confide in it, and should be willing to stake upon it the consequences of our obedience.
We can talk with sufficient fluency of “trusting in Providence,” but in the application of it to our conduct in life, we know wonderfully little.
Who is it that confides in Providence, and for what does he trust him?
Does his confidence induce him to set aside his own views of interest and safety, and simply to obey precepts that appear inexpedient and unsafe? This is the confidence that is of value, and of which we know so little.
There are many who believe that war is disallowed by Christianity, and who would rejoice that it were forever abolished; but there are few who are willing to maintain an undaunted and unyielding stand against it.
They can talk of the loveliness of peace, yes, and argue against the lawfulness of war, but when difficulty or suffering would be the consequence they will not refuse to do what they know to be unlawful, they will not practice the peacefulness which they say they admire.
Those who are ready to sustain the consequences of undeviating obedience are the supporters of whom Christianity stands in need: She wants men who are willing to suffer for her principles.
It is necessary for us to know by what principles we are governed:
Are we regulated by the injunctions of God or are we not?
If there is any lesson of morality that it is of importance to mankind to learn, and if there is any that they have not yet learned, it is the necessity of simply performing the duties of Christianity without reference to consequences.
If we could persuade ourselves to do this, we should certainly pass life with greater consistency of conduct, and as I firmly believe, in greater enjoyment and greater peace. The world has had many examples of such fidelity and confidence.
Who have been the Christian martyrs of all ages, but men who maintained their fidelity to Christianity through whatever consequences? They were faithful to the Christian creed.
We ought to be faithful to the Christian morality, for without morality the profession of a creed is vain.
No, we have seen that there have been martyrs to the duties of morality, and to these very duties of peacefulness. The duties remain the same, but where is our obedience?
I hope, for the sake of his understanding and his heart, that the reader will not say I reason on the supposition that the world is what it is not;
and that although these duties may be binding upon us when the world shall become purer, yet that we must now accommodate ourselves to the state of things as they are.
This is to say that in a land of assassins, assassination would be right: If no one begins to reform his practice until others have begun before him, reformation will never be begun.
If apostles, martyrs, or reformers had “accommodated themselves to the existing state of things,” where would Christianity be now?
The business of reformation belongs to him who sees that reformation is required. The world has no other human means of amendment.
If you believe that war is not allowed by Christianity, it is your business to oppose it;
and if fear or distrust should raise questions on the consequences, apply the words of our Saviour: “What is that to thee? Follow thou me.”
Our great misfortune in the examination of the duties of Christianity is that we do not contemplate them with sufficient simplicity:
We do not estimate them without some addition or abatement of our own; there is almost always some intervening medium.
A sort of half transparent glass is hung before each individual, which possesses endless shades of colour and degrees of opacity, and which presents objects with endless varieties of distortion.
This glass is coloured by our education and our passions.
The business of moral culture is to render it transparent.
The perfection of the perceptive part of moral culture is to remove it from before us.
Simple obedience without reference to consequences is our great duty.
I know that philosophers have told us otherwise:
I know that we have been referred, for the determination of our duties, to calculations of expediency and of the future consequences of our actions,
but I believe that in whatever degree this philosophy directs us to forbear an unconditional obedience to the rules of our religion, it will be found that, when Christianity shall advance in her purity and her power, she will sweep it from the earth with the broom of destruction.
The positions, then, which we have endeavoured to establish, are these:
1. That the general character of Christianity is wholly incongruous with war, and that its general duties are incompatible with it.
2. That some of the express precepts and declarations of Jesus Christ virtually forbid it.
3. That his practice is not reconcilable with the supposition of its lawfulness.
4. That the precepts and practice of the apostles correspond with those of our Lord.
5. That the primitive Christians believed that Christ had forbidden war, and that some of them suffered death in affirmation of this belief.
6. That God has declared in prophecy that it is his will that war should eventually be eradicated from the earth, that this eradication will be effected by Christianity, and that it will be effected by the influence of its present principles.
7. That those who have refused to engage in war, in consequence of their belief of its inconsistency with Christianity, have found that Providence has protected them.
Now, we think that the establishment of any considerable number of these positions is sufficient for our argument.
The establishment of the whole forms a body of evidence, to which I am not able to believe that an inquirer, to whom the subject was new, would be able to withhold his assent.
But since such an inquirer cannot be found, I would invite the reader to lay prepossession aside, to suppose himself to have now first heard of battles and slaughter,
and dispassionately to examine whether the evidence in favour of peace is not very great, and whether the objections to it bear any proportion to the evidence itself.
But whatever may be the determination upon this question, surely it is reasonable to try the experiment of whether security cannot be maintained without slaughter.
Whatever might be the reasons for war, it is certain that it produces enormous mischief:
Even waiving the obligations of Christianity, we have to choose between evils that are certain and evils that are doubtful, between the actual endurance of a great calamity, and the possibility of fewer calamities.
It certainly cannot be proved that peace would not be the best policy;
and since we know that the present system is bad, it is reasonable and wise to try whether the other is not better.
In reality, I can scarcely conceive of the possibility of greater evil than that which mankind now endures; a moral and physical evil of far wider extent and far greater intensity than our familiarity with it allows us to suppose.
If a system of peace does not produce less evil than this system of war, its consequences must indeed be enormously bad;
and that it would produce such consequences, we have no warrant for believing either from reason or from practice – either from the principles of the moral government of God or from the experience of mankind.
Whenever a people shall pursue, steadily and uniformly, the pacific morality of the gospel, and shall do this from the pure motive of obedience, there is no reason to fear for the consequences.
There is no reason to fear that they would experience any evils such as we now endure,
or that they would not find that Christianity understands their interests better than themselves and that the surest and the only rule of wisdom, safety, and expediency is to maintain her spirit in every circumstance of life.
“There is reason to expect,” says Dr. Johnson, “that as the world is more enlightened, policy and morality will at last be reconciled.”
When this enlightened period shall arrive, we shall be approaching, and we shall not until then approach, that era of purity and of peace when “violence shall be no more heard in our land, wasting nor destruction within our borders” – that era in which God has promised that “they shall not hurt nor destroy in all his holy mountain.”
That a period like this will come, I am not able to doubt:
I believe it because it is not credible that he will always endure the butchery of man by man, because he has declared that he will not endure it, and because I think there is a perceptible approach of that period in which he will say, “It is enough.”
In this belief I rejoice:
I rejoice that the number is increasing of those who are asking, “Shall the sword devour forever?” and of those who, whatever may be the opinions or the practice of others, are openly saying, “I am for peace.”
Whether I have succeeded in establishing the position that War of every kind is incompatible with Christianity, it is not my business to determine; but of this, at least, I can assure the reader:
that I would not have intruded this inquiry upon the public if I had not believed, with undoubting confidence, that the position is accordant with everlasting truth –
with that truth which should regulate our conduct here, and which will not be superseded in the world that is to come.