War is Unwise | 5

5. War Is Unwise,
As It Diminishes the Happiness of Mankind

Happiness is the professed object that most men are striving to obtain. Alas! Few, comparatively, seek it where it is alone to be found.

But that happiness which flows from the benevolent spirit of the gospel is to be prized far above rubies. It is a treasure infinitely surpassing anything that can be found merely in riches, honours, and pleasures.

But war always diminishes the aggregate of happiness in the world. When nations wage war upon each other, all classes of their inhabitants are more or less oppressed.

They are subjected to various privations: prosperity declines, and external sources of happiness are mostly dried up.

Anxiety for friends, loss of relations, loss of property, the fear of pillage, severe services, great privations, and the dread of conquest keep them constantly distressed. They are like the troubled sea that cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.

Those actually engaged in war generally suffer privations and hardships of the severest kind. Even the sage counsellors who declare wars are often in so great anxiety and pain as to the result of their enterprises as to be unable quietly to refresh themselves with food or sleep.

All the rejoicings occasioned by military success are fully counterbalanced by the pain and mortification of the vanquished

and, in short, all the interest and happiness resulting from war to individuals and nations are dearly bought, and are at the expense of other individuals and nations.

It is because war has no tendency to increase, but does in fact greatly diminish, happiness that it is so universally regarded and lamented as the greatest evil that visits our world.

Hence fasting has generally been practiced by warlike Christian nations to deplore the calamity, to humble themselves before God, and to supplicate his mercy in turning away the judgment.

Though fasting and deep humility before God are highly suitable for sinners, with a hearty turning away from their sins and humble supplication for God’s mercy through the mediation of Christ,

yet those fasts of nations, who have voluntarily engaged in wars and are determined to prosecute them until their lusts and passions are gratified, do not appear to be such fasts as God requires.

Does it not appear absurd for nations voluntarily to engage in war, and then to proclaim a fast to humble themselves before God for its evils,

while they have no desire to turn away from those evils, but, on the contrary, make it an express object to seek the divine aid in assisting them successfully to perpetuate the very evils for which they are fasting?

We often see contending nations, all of whom cannot be right on any principle, proclaiming fasts, and chanting forth their solemn Te Deums, as each may occasionally be victorious.

Though such clashing hymns cannot mingle in the golden censer, yet few Christians seem to question the propriety of quarrelling and fighting nations each in their turn supplicating aid in their unhallowed undertakings and returning thanks in case of success.

Doubtless many would consider it as solemn mockery to see two duellists before their meeting, supplicating God’s blessing and protection in the hour of conflict, and then to see the victor returning thanks for his success in shedding the blood of his brother;

and yet, when nations carry on the business by wholesale (if I may be allowed the expression) it is considered a very pious employment.

The Lord has said, “And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you. Yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear, for your hands are full of blood.”

Penitent Christians may weep and mourn with propriety for their own sins and the sins of the nations,

with a hearty desire not only to forsake their own iniquities, but that the nations may be brought to confess and forsake their sins and turn from them to the living God.

It is true that war is a judgment in God’s providence. It is also a sin of the highest magnitude and ought to be repented of.

It is a crime so provoking to Heaven that other calamities generally attend it. The famine, fire, and pestilence often attend its horrors and spread distress through a land.

War, with its attending evils, unquestionably diminishes the aggregate of happiness in the world, and is therefore unwise.