TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE

This little book[1] has been compiled, with considerable care, with the hope that it may be useful in promoting the most sublime enterprise of philanthropy that ever engaged the labors and affections of man: peace on earth.  War is certainly the greatest and most horrible evil that ever cursed our world.  It is so enormous and abominable that any other, however heinous and terrible, is mild in nature and moderate in dimension in comparison with it, being the frightful embodiment of crime.

But warriors are not themselves guilty for engaging in war and loving military glory.  So are civilians and the common people generally, who encourage these things by honoring men of war as the greatest and noblest of mankind.  Warriors are what public opinion makes them, in principle and character.  Therefore, it is not proper to call them by hard and contemptible names that brand them as being the primary cause and the only vile participants of war.

In making the selections for this calendar it was not my design to show the horrors and cruelties of war, but its great criminality – its contrariety to the Gospel as illustrated in the teachings and life of Christ and his inspired apostles.  War’s most shocking and revolting scenes and soul-harrowing agonies have been intentionally omitted.  It may be stated here that, if war is compatible with the Gospel, then its cruelties, however agonizing to the pitying heart and terrible to man’s tender frame, must be cheerfully borne and fully approved.  If the Gospel allows war, it allows its entire legion of unavoidable destructions and agonies.  They are part and parcel of the Gospel, just as much as its beautiful love, pity, kindness, mercy, gentleness, forbearance, benevolence, patience, and peacefulness.  Then, if war in agreement with the Gospel, it cannot be separated from it without essentially marring its justice, strength, glory, beauty, and loveliness.  If war were right for Christians now, it would have been right for the apostles and even Christ himself.  But, blessed be God, we are not left in darkness and doubt on this mighty question, for the immaculate Messiah has told us with his own lips that his work on earth was to be, as it always was, a work of peace and love only.  He said, as he in kindness and faithfulness rebuked his erring disciples, “You know not what manner of spirit you are of, for the Son of Man came not to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.”  Let it never be forgotten that he left us an example, that we should follow his steps; and let it always be remembered that he has left us no examples of cruel violence, war, and bloodshed.  The meek and teachable saint can find no place in the Gospel for the sole of his foot except Peace forever, and War never!

In preparing this work I have sometimes found it necessary to take sentences and parts of sentences from different parts of a paragraph, and even different paragraphs, but I have been careful to give the exact and full sentiments of the various authors, except in two cases.  In the passage for July 5, it is written simply war, instead of an unjust war.  Now, as all war must always be more or less unjust in its prosecution, if not in its purpose, there is no such thing as a just war.  The object of a war may be noble and holy, but in itself it is always unjust and atrocious.  In the poem for December 25, the fifth and sixth lines of the last verse are changed, but it is hoped for the better.  Occasionally the noun is given instead of the pronoun for which it stood.  Once or twice a word or two is used instead of a cumbersome phrase or part of a sentence.  In one case the words “The Great American Republic” are used instead of “Our Country,” as being in that instance more appropriate.  But excepting these cases, no alterations have been made in language or sense.[2]

The reader will here find prose, poetry, history, anecdotes, letters, facts, arguments, opinions, sentiments, and more, written by some of the wisest and best men that the world has produced.  The most of the authors were not only eminent for knowledge and wisdom, but also for virtue and piety, and the opinions of such persons on Peace and War are well worthy of the careful consideration of all who desire the best welfare of the human family.  Here will be found the Jew, the Christian, the Pagan, the Muslim, and the Infidel – all giving their testimony in favor of the duty and beauty of Peace, and the criminality and hatefulness of War.  A few of the persons from whom selections have been made were not men of good morals and principles.  Yet, in their views and feelings, they agree with eminent and devout Christians in regard to the nature and effects of Peace and War.  Their sentiments, therefore, being honestly and carefully embraced, are well worthy of the attention of all, as they add to the weight of evidence that goes to prove that Peace is sublimely lovely and important, and War the greatest curse and sin that ever afflicted and disgraced our fallen world.  It is sad to be obliged to say that the lives of some of the authors in this book were not always consistent with their principles, especially during the American Civil War.

The object in arranging the different passages in the form of one for every day of the year is to attract and fix the attention more carefully, and also, it is hoped, to amuse as well as inform and improve the mind and conscience on this infinitely momentous subject.  Manuals of this arrangement have a kind of novelty about them, which render them more interesting than those in many other forms, both to superior as well as to common minds.

It is earnestly hoped that no person – old or young, of either sex, and especially no Christian – will lay aside this little book without very carefully and candidly considering the sentiments of the many writers.  Let them be attentively and honestly compared with “the glorious Gospel of the blessed God,” and contemplated, not only in their bearings on the temporal and spiritual affairs of mankind on this earth, but also in the grand and awful openings and decisions of the Last Day, and the infinitely august and momentous concerns of eternity.

The evil effects of war on earth in all its manifold forms, enormous as they are and far beyond the power of human computation, are “but as the small dust of the balance” in comparison to their consequences, which stretch with awful power and magnitude into man’s immortality.  What Christian, worthy of the name, can view with composure the terrible fact that War, with a mighty and skillful hand, throws the shuttle, “weaves the winding sheet of souls, and lays them in the arm of everlasting death.”

John Hemmenway

Brighton, Maine

May 1875

JANUARY

January 1 – Peace is no new theme.  Ancient prophets foretold it as one of the peculiar glories of Messiah’s reign, and the angels, sent to announce his advent, sang over his manger-cradle, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will to men!”  Peace was thus the birth-song of Christianity, and its principles, fully embodied by our Savior in his Sermon on the Mount, and thickly scattered through the New Testament, were so strictly put in practice by the early Christians that not a few of them went to the stake rather than bear arms.  The Church, however, relapsed into a deep, protracted degeneracy on this and many other subjects.  For more than a thousand years after her fatal union with the State in the fourth century under Constantine, she gave her sanction to the custom of war with scarcely a thought of its glaring contradiction to her religion of peace.  Still, she was not entirely without witnesses on this point.  The Waldenses bore their testimony in the very midnight of the dark ages, and Erasmus, the day-star of the Reformation, wrote on behalf of Peace with an eloquence worthy of the first scholar of the world.  Everyone knows the noble testimonies borne against war for the last two centuries by George Fox, William Penn, and their followers, but it was not until near the downfall of Napoleon that any general or effective efforts were made for the specific purpose of abolishing this custom.  David L. Dodge, a pious and philanthropic merchant of New York, was the pioneer of these efforts in America.  The first effectual appeal to the public at large, however, was made by Noah Worcester in his Solemn Review of the Custom of War, published in December 1814.  In August 1815, the first Peace Society of modern time was formed in New York City.  The Massachusetts Peace Society followed the next December, and the London Peace Society followed in June 1816.  These actions among the friends of Peace, in the two hemispheres, were without any knowledge at the time of each other’s movements or designs, and thus gave striking proof that the hand of an all-controlling Providence was at work to call forth and concentrate the benevolent energies of Christendom for the removal of this terrible scourge.  Similar societies multiplied.  The American Peace Society was organized in 1828 under the auspices of its venerable founder, William Ladd, and kindred efforts have been made in France, Switzerland, and other portions of Christendom. – *George C.  Beckwith.

January 2 – War and Christianity are like the opposite ends of a balance, of which one is depressed by the elevation of the other. – Jonathan Dymond.

January 3 – Alas!  If Christianity, as the Church now exhibits it, were to become universal, it would leave the nations of the earth still in the allowed use of all their terrible preparations for mutual slaughter.  And would such a result be that day of glory which the prophets have described?  Surely, something must be done to spread a Christianity of a better form than her professors have practiced for sixteen centuries, or the lion and the lamb will never lie down together. – *Laurens P. Hickok.

January 4 – War, in all cases, is accompanied with dreadful evils.  We are apt to consider them but the heavy and only expense of war, and forget the sufferings and miserable deaths of such multitudes of human beings, though every one of them is a murder committed by the authors of the calamity. – *Thomas Secker.

January 5 – So long as merely offensive wars are the object of detestation, with no attack on the war system itself, the war on our side will be approved as defensive.  Such has been, and will be, the utterance of every nation.  No dogma that the Papal See ever inculcated can surpass the war-system in absurdity.  The burning of heretics to purify the church is cast into the shade by it. – Samuel W. Boardman.

January 6 – The example of the Jews affords no justification of the wars of Christians.  We are under another and a better dispensation: that of Christ, the Prince of Peace, whose object was to promote peace on earth.  The practice of the Jews will no more justify war than it would polygamy, sacrifices, or circumcision.  Christ is our master.  Christ is our example. – *George Burder.

January 7 – Christ has commanded his servants to go and preach the Gospel of Peace to all nations.  He never commanded them to preach the use of the cannon and the sword.  God is love.  He never sent men, with fire and sword, to destroy their brethren.  Christianity is peace. – *Edward T. Taylor.

January 8 – If peace is the doctrine of the New Testament, how much it is to be lamented that multitudes, who profess to be Christians, are opposed to it both in sentiment and practice!  If we trace wars to their origin, the Apostle James tells us what that is, and it is so bad that it ought not to find one advocate among those who name the name of Jesus.  But alas!  Most of them enter as keenly into the quarrels of nations as any of the men of the world. – *David Bogue.

January 9 – Humanity, religion, conscience, and the fear of God are absolute hindrances in the work before the soldier.  He is taught that to kill, and to be nearly killed, are the fulfilling of the whole law. – *Rufus W. Clark.

January 10 – Happy are the peacemakers who not only avoid contention, but labor to extinguish it wherever it prevails.  Though mistaken men may ascribe such a gentle disposition to cowardice and meanness of spirit, they shall have the honor to be called the children of the God of Peace, and be owned by him in that dear relation, as they resemble him in the benevolence of their characters. – *Philip Doddridge.

January 11 – All wars are follies – very expensive and very mischievous ones.  There never has been, nor ever will be, any such thing as a good war or a bad peace.  Better for mankind to settle their difficulties even by the cast of a die, than by fighting and destroying each other. – Benjamin Franklin.

January 12 – Are we forever to contemplate with admiration and applause the science of war, which sharpens the intellect to acquire the skill of murder?  Are we to look with pleasure upon all the methods employed to deform the body and to bring about the work of destruction?  No.  The pacific principle is spreading.  Nothing can withstand the purpose of the Lord of Hosts, and surely there must be something defective in our Christianity if, believing what we profess, we continue inactive in such a cause as this. – *Robert Vaughan.

January 13 – A Christian cannot inflict evil upon others for his own good.  Now, the very object of war is to inflict evil upon others for our gain.  It is the choice that others should suffer rather than ourselves.  In this is its inherent sin; in this it is anti-Christ.  But war deals not only with the infliction of natural evil.  It is a dreadful combination of physical suffering and moral degradation, and of evil both to the bodies and the souls of men.  A man ready for war has already taken moral evil to his heart.  Whenever he has decided that he is willing to gain by the injury done to his brother man, he has inflicted a blow upon his own soul. – Samuel E. Coues.

January 14 – Christianity looks upon the entire human race as children of the same Father, and wishes them equal blessings.  In ordering us to do good, to love as brethren, to forgive injuries, and to study peace, it quite annihilates the disposition for martial glory and utterly debases the pomp of war.  – *Richard Watson.

January 15 – War is an evil to all who engage in it.  It is the business of the soldier to cause suffering and death.  Yet the religion of the Savior forbids us to harm others, even by the thought of enmity. – Lydia H. Sigourney.

January 16 – Professors of religion, when we look into your houses, how frequently do we see your walls hung with pictures of battles and portraits of generals?  Are the books in your children’s hands of that description which cherish military ardor, and give them a thirst for military glory?  Are their very toys of a warlike character?  These things ought not to be so.  There ought to be some difference between the professors of the peaceable religion of Jesus Christ and those who worship the God of this world.  By such conduct you sanction war, with all its horrid consequences.  You lower the standard of Christian perfection, and bring a reproach on that holy name by which you are called. – William Ladd.

January 17 –

January 18 – The evils of war are too terrific for human eloquence to depict.  They cover the whole surface of human life and stretch into eternity.  How can Christians, who read that Jesus Christ commanded them to love each other as he has loved them, reconcile the principles of the Gospel with the practices of war?  If there is any custom on earth entirely at variance with Christianity, that custom is war. – *Ezra S. Gannett.

January 19 – We talk exultingly of a “splendid charge,” yet very few will think of the hideous particulars these two airy words stand for.  The “splendid charge” is a headlong rush of men on horses urged to their fullest speed, riding down and overwhelming a mass of men on foot.  The reader’s mind goes no further, being content with the information that the enemy’s line was “broken” and “gave way.”  It does not fill up the picture.  When the “splendid charge” has done its work, there will be found a sight very much like the scene of a frightful railway accident.  There will be the full complement of broken backs, arms twisted off, men impaled on their own bayonets, legs smashed up like bits of firewood, heads crunched by iron hoofs of horses, faces trampled out of all likeness to anything human – and so the dismal catalogue runs on. – Charles Dickens.

January 20 – Are governments to do nothing to perpetuate peace?  Is individual enterprise to do everything for the security of peace?  Shall our governments still linger in the old armor and battlefields of war, in standing armies and millions spent for defense in time of peace?  Thus lingering in the old ideas, they continue to talk about the possibility of war and pay the annual millions to be ready for war, long after the public would have sustained rulers in ratifying treaties of everlasting peace.  Perpetual peace is a richer theme of eloquence than any that has been in debate by any legislative body in the history of nations.  The debate would review the progress and result of wars, and present them in such an aspect as would compel the conviction that there must be a better way than war to settle national differences. – *Aaron Foster.

January 21 – Wars have been a disgrace to that Christianity which the nations profess. – Lord John Russell.

January 22 – Shall not peace societies succeed?  Will not their friends be roused to new and vigorous efforts in their behalf?  Will not those who have yet coldly looked on them examine their claims with a patriot’s eye, a philanthropist’s hope, and a Christian’s faith, and see that by the simple process of enlightening and influencing public opinion, and eventually, in this way, reaching the governments, the war-spirit may be subdued, and another umpire than an appeal to arms be found to settle international difficulties?  That Gospel which breathes “Peace on earth and good will toward men” holds out for universal observance its golden rule of doing to others as we would have others do to us. – *Thomas H. Gallaudet.

January 23 – There is no war among men but what arises from some vice, covetousness, ambition, or an immoderate love of glory. – plutarch.

January 24 – We boast of the civilization and refinement of our age, but a future generation, when it shall look upon the monuments, institutions, and literature that we shall leave behind us, will regard us as just emerging from the darkness of six thousand years into the light of that joyous era when moral and intellectual worth alone shall receive the love and admiration of men.  In the most enlightened and most Christian nations we still see much barbarism.  The standard of human action is yet low, and hence prevails an admiration of warlike achievements discreditable to the Christian character. – *Alpheus S. Packard.

January 25 – The only effectual argument against war is that war is sin.  This will lay hold on the conscience; this will justify Christian interference.  The churches have not duly considered this subject.  Let them remember that they are the children of peace, and that their religion breathes peace, not only on a nation, but also on the world.  Let them glorify their religion by banding together as an army of pacificators.  Let them raise their voices to be distinctly and calmly heard above all the clamor of war.  Nothing would be more worthy of them, nothing would so efficiently promote the advancement of religion and virtue, and nothing would so forcibly place the future, which would be the history of benevolence and peace, in contrast with the past, which is the history of blood-shedding and murder. – *Andrew Reed.

January 26 – The earth has been desolated by pestilence, famine, earthquakes, deluges, and inundations, but no desolation has ever been so terrible and destructive as that of war.  And, as an aggravation of the evil, it does not, like the others, result from the operation of the great laws of the physical world, but it is the invention of man.  What a history is involved in every war!  Families are broken up, bad principles are disseminated, vice is set loose with the freedom of licentiousness, and religion is desecrated!  Let the immeasurable value of man, as the Gospel exhibits him, be fully set forth.  In this light he will appear as a being, not born to destroy and be destroyed, but as destined by his Maker to employ his existence in preparing himself and his fellow men for another and a better existence in a future world. – William W. Ellsworth.

January 27 – When I denounce war, I denounce all war.  I do not single out particular wars, as if some might be justified.  A just cause of complaint, and a just cause of war, are very different.  The suffering party may be justified in complaining, and in using all proper, possible, moral force to obtain redress, but not in seeking redress by force of arms. – *James Hargreaves.

January 28 – War produces and encourages every sort of evil and wretchedness, and destroys and discourages every kind of good and happiness.  This is essential to its nature as war and cannot be separated from it.  War, in every shape, is entirely contrary to the spirit and precepts of Christianity. – *Calvin E. Stowe.

January 29 – There is no question of present advantage, no question of remote difficulty, which I would not have passed over, compromised, or adjourned, rather than sanction any measure of a warlike tendency that should appear. – George Canning.

January 30 – I preached yesterday on the subject of Peace.  I endeavored to show that, as far as the audience sympathized with the war-spirit, they were guilty of the murders committed.  This made some of them stare.  My zeal in the cause has kindled not a little [opposition], and I look with amazement on the apathy of good men. – *Thomas A. Merrill.

January 31 – For rational beings, possessing immortal souls, to be systematically trained to kill each other is in itself so utterly opposed to, not only the Christian religion, but to the dictates of humanity, that nothing but the natural depravity of the human heart, the form of education, and long familiarity with war can account for the general prevalence of this monstrous system. – Joseph Sturge.

FEBRUARY

February 1 – “Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.”  Can that be “pure and undefiled religion” which makes widows and fatherless children by the thousand?  Do war-makers and those who support them keep themselves unspotted from the world?  Can anything be farther from the apostle’s description of “pure and undefiled religion” than what commonly appears in men devoted to arms?– *Noah Worcester.

February 2 – War is a fearful game to play, and a dreadful one to lose.  Stand not as unconcerned spectators, and share not, by your silence, in the crimes of a system in which conquest is full of calamity, and victory ought only to be celebrated by tears.  Listen to the dictates of reason, and denounce a system that, as an appeal to physical strength, only approximates man to the brute.  Let us persevere in the dissemination of Christian pacific principles, convinced that they alone can turn the instruments of war into the implements of husbandry, and fill the world with all the blessings of universal peace.– William Hunt.

February 3 – there are unavoidable evils that ought to be submitted to with resignation.  But the evils of war are wanton and gratuitous.  Misery is merely accidental to other arts, but the very design of war is the production of misery– and only misery.  War will continue to be what it has been.  Those who would escape its curses must avoid the offenses that lead to it and discourage the maintenance of armies and navies, which provoke its declaration.– *Eliphalet Nott.

February 4 – May not whole communities of men be seized by an epidemic madness, as well as individuals?  Yes, it certainly must be so, or else nations would not rush, without thought, into the misery of war.– *Joseph Butler.

February 5 – War produces every woe known to man.  War sets at naught the example of Jesus.  No warrior thinks of making Christ his pattern.  How, then, can a follower of Christ overlook the inconsistency between the profession of religion and the profession of arms?– *Howard Malcom.

February 6 – When I first formed the resolution of withdrawing from the naval profession, I was impressed with an idea, perhaps a rather confused one, that, though wars of conquest and aggression were clearly unjustifiable and wicked, yet that wars of defense were not so.  For individuals or nations to engage in these, I considered as not merely lawful, but as highly honorable and meritorious.  However I may subject myself to scorn and contempt, I now feel no hesitation in declaring my conviction that warfare of any kind, offensive or defensive, national or individual, is most plainly interdicted by the spirit, if not by the letter, of the Gospel.  It is absolutely irreconcilable with the characteristic precepts of Christianity.– Thomas Thrush.

February 7 – If one should attempt to weigh the past miseries occasioned by war, and to estimate the results of permanent peace on the production of wealth, morals, and religion – that is, on the improvement of society, on the comfort and happiness of man, and on the perfection of the human character – a clear view of these consequences could not fail to give unceasing energy to the toils of philanthropy in this cause.– *William Allen.

February 8 – I firmly believe that war – the sending of thousands of our fellow creatures to cut one another to bits – will one day be reckoned far more absurd than if people were to settle an argument over the dinner table with their knives.  This is a logic that, indeed, was once fashionable in some places in the “good old days.”  The world has seen the absurdity of that practice; why should it not come to the same conclusion with respect to violence on a larger scale?– Leigh Hunt.

February 9 – He who commands the army is the one to whom the highest deference must be paid.  He is to be obeyed rather than God.  None may disregard his edicts with impunity.  It matters not how grossly these edicts may violate the humane feelings of the soldier or his sense of right; they must be implicitly obeyed.  Thus are the rights of conscience ruthlessly trampled under foot.  Insubordination to the will of the military chief is the highest crime a soldier can commit.  He may more safely disobey all the commandments of the Decalogue than refuse submission to his superiors.  A soldier is required to merge himself, body and soul, into the plans of his human masters.  Clearly seeing the thing commanded to be wrong, he must, nevertheless, do it.  Such is the doctrine upon which the military system rests.  Such is the doctrine that is accepted throughout Christendom.  The Church of Rome never set herself up above God so explicitly as does the military department of every human government.  How wicked, how impious, then, is it for any man to become a soldier.  He ought to refuse to submit to the degradation, as did the early Christians.  He ought to refuse, though it should cost him his life.  Better to die a martyr at the stake, faithful to principle, than to be a soldier.– *Samuel J. May.

February 10 – I would recommend the members of the peace society, when they are engaging in their work, to take a view of Calvary.  I do not see how a man can claim discipleship if he does not follow his Master in proclaiming peace throughout the world– *Richard Knill.

February 11 – “Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace and good-will toward men.”  How different that is from some who profess to preach the Gospel and at the same time go forward with the Bible in their pockets to slay their fellow men!  How different!  O how different this is from my feelings at this time!– Jesse Moon.

February 12 – If men were the subjects of Christ’s law, they could never go to war with each other.  As contrary as cruelty is to mercy, and tyranny is to charity, so is war to the meekness and gentleness of the Christian religion. – *Jeremy Taylor.

February 13 – Peace is a distinctive promise and possession of Christianity.  Christianity cannot be where peace is not.  There is nothing elevated which is not exalted by peace.  It has been said of wisdom, “All her ways are pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.”  Peace has ever been the longing and aspiration of the noblest souls, whether for themselves or their country. – Charles Sumner.

February 14 – One law Jesus Christ claimed as his peculiar law, and it was the law of love.  What practice among mankind violates this law so grossly as war?  Christ salutes his followers with the happy omen of “Peace.”  Examine every part of his doctrine and you will find nothing that does not breathe peace.  And, as he knew that peace could not be preserved unless those objects for which the world contends with the sword were considered as vile and contemptible, he ordered us to learn from him to be meek and lowly. – erasmus.

February 15 – The sound of battle causes me to cry to the Prince of Peace to sway his mild scepter and hush the nations to rest.  O, my soul, how far removed from the horrors of war is the spirit of the Gospel!  Christ has said, “I come not to destroy men’s lives, but to save them!”  – Fanny Newell.

February 16 – There seems to be the same absurdity in a nation erecting monuments of its victories, as an individual erecting a statue of himself.  To me, such a monument appears like the gravestone of departed philanthropy. – William Ladd.

February 17 –

February 18 – War suspends the rules of moral obligation, and what is long suspended is in danger of being totally abrogated. – Edmund Burke.

February 19 – Everyone can exert an influence against war, and everyone can seek enlarged influence.  Neglecting this, each must attach to himself a portion of the guilt that surrounds and augments the calamities of war.  Neglecting this, each must endure the torturing reflection, “I saw my country seizing the weapons of destructive hostility, but I did not reach out a hand to arrest their descent.”  Do you not see this guilt extensively diffused?  Say not, “It is in the magistrate, or in the soldier.”  It is in you.  It is in us.  It is in us so long as, by our apathy, a tacit conspiracy is going forward against the virtue and lives of millions. – Thomas T. Stone.

February 20 – In matters of moral duty, everyone refers to the Scriptures.  In the prophets, I find that to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God are the concentrated representation of duty.  Does war do that?  War is doubly hideous: hideous from the oppression practiced at home, and from the destruction effected abroad.  Whether the question is regarded from a religious or a political point of view, no man can better befriend his country than by advocating peace. – James S. Buckingham.

February 21 – War is out of harmony with all the highest interests of mankind.  To prepare for war is to foster the elements of ruin and wretchedness.  It is for the good of all that there be no more war.  In order to accomplish this there must be organized peace.  To provide a substitute for war is surely as much the interest as it is the duty of the great commercial fraternity of modern times.  No substitute is so simple, so practicable, and so economical, as a permanent Court of Nations. – Elihu Burritt.

February 22 – For the sake of humanity, it is devoutly to be wished that the manly employments of agriculture and the humanizing benefits of commerce should supersede the waste of war and the rage of conquest, that swords might be turned into plowshares, and, as the scripture expresses it, that the nations learn war no more. – George Washington.

February 23 – War is only fit for wild beasts, and is below the reason and dignity of man. – Thomas Clarkson.

February 24 – I have studied the subject of Peace and War for twenty-five years, with a good deal of care.  The individual among us, be he minister or layman, who can talk to us gravely about the lawfulness of resisting violence by violence, has in him the spirit of war.  And, as far as this spirit prevails in him, he has not the spirit of Christ.  Has such a man studied Christ?  The great misfortune is that we are trained to war from the very first dawn of infancy to the close of life, for life itself I regard as a mere school of education.  The whole spirit of our education is a war-spirit.  Of course, I will not say that this training to war is by design.  I say that such is the fact. – William A. Alcott.

February 25 – Christ taught not his disciples to fight with a sword of iron.  As Christ was the meekest of men, so he was most drawn from the world.  The Captain of our battle is Christ, both God and man. – John Wickliffe.

February 26 – The Gospel requires men to do good.  The very business of war is mischief.  The Gospel requires men to forgive their enemies.  Revenge is often the chief design of war.  The Gospel commands men to feed the poor and comfort the afflicted.  The sword robs the poor.  Truth and sincerity are precepts of the Gospel.  The warrior glories in the work of destruction by artifice, delusion, and stratagem.  The acknowledged design of the Christian religion is to induce men to be like Jesus Christ.  Is it possible for such a man to seize the sword and rush to battle?  Can he bid the artillery to blaze?  Can he become the angel of death?  In the vicinity of war, no sound is heard but the riot of victory, the shout of revenge, the sigh of misery, the shriek of horror, or the groan of death.  But another portion of the human family, whose gentle voice cheers the distressed, whose kindness binds up the wounds of an enemy, whose piety soothes the anguish of his last moments – Woman – is often overwhelmed in the miseries of war.  How often may it be said, “All her beauty is departed.  Her tears are on her cheeks.  Among all her lovers, she has none to comfort her.  She has fallen by the sword.” – *Elijah Parish.

February 27 – To slay a Christian is to smite Christ himself.  To slay an unbeliever is to plunge a fellow being into hell.  What a terrible alternative!  Yet all who fight not only strike such a blow, but also expose themselves to the risk of dying in the very act of striking it.  May all Christians soon acknowledge the universal obligation of the command, “Love your enemies, and do good to those who hate you.”  Without waiting for others, may they, at least, by obeying the precepts of the Sacred Book, fulfill its predictions and “beat their swords into plowshares,” thus manifesting that Christianity is indeed as the angels heralded it, “Peace on earth and good-will to men.” – *Newman Hall.

February 28 – It is, doubtless, a question that may well give pause to the moralist, whether the current opinions of mankind in regard to the duty of self-defense do not stand related to the custom of war, with all its horrors, precisely as did, a few years since, the general sentiment in respect to moderate drinking to the habit of intemperance? – *George Bush.

February 29 – I for one would gladly join the cadence of hammer-strokes that shall beat swords into plowshares. – Ruskin.

MARCH

March 1 – Let public sentiment be so directed and improved that men shall begin to realize the existence of national glory in its truest sense: in the diffusion of knowledge, the spread of correct moral sentiments, and the preaching of the Gospel.  It is in elements like these that we find the basis of a true and abiding glory, which angels can behold with pleasure and which God himself can approve.  As the millennial day approaches, it is glory of this kind that is destined to arise, extend itself, and gather strength and brightness from age to age, while military and all other spurious forms of glory will sink and be blasted forever. – *Thomas C. Upham.

March 2 – For those who follow the Lamb wherever he goes, war is never right.  The great law of Christ is the law of love, and since no kind of war can ever consist with this love, it is indisputable that where love prevails as it ought, war must entirely cease. – Joseph John Gurney.

March 3 – Parents, and those who have the charge of youth, should impress on their minds an abhorrence of war.  The causes, the sinfulness, and the misery of war should be explained to them, and they should be trained up with the love of man and the love of peace. – *William Cogswell.

March 4 – War is the concentration of all human crimes. – *William E. Channing.

March 5 – Surely we cannot say anything bad enough about war.  It is a word that includes all that is bad. – *Ingram Cobbin.

March 6 – Would that I could address the professed friends of the Lord Jesus Christ.  How earnestly would I beseech them to be the fast, active, and devoted friends of universal peace!  Do we, dear friends, think often enough on this subject?  Do we often enough pray over it?  Do those of us who are God’s ambassadors preach often enough on the sinfulness of war and the duty of Christians in regard to it?  I greatly fear that the Church, as a whole, is far from being awake to the importance of embracing the principles of peace, and of diffusing them among their fellow men until war shall be feared and loathed as heartily as are robbery and murder, and until the Christian shall not be heard to apologize more for the former than the latter. – *James S. Green.

March 7 – War is the fruitful parent of crimes.  It reverses all the rules of morality.  It is nothing less than a temporary repeal of the principles of virtue.  It is a system out of which almost all the virtues are excluded, and in which nearly all the vices are included.  The morality of peaceful times is directly opposite to the maxims of war.  The fundamental rule of the first is to do good; of the latter it is to inflict injuries. – *Robert Hall.

March 8 – How vast, incomprehensibly vast, is the loss of life by war!  And how immense is the loss of property that is so indispensable to the enjoyment and usefulness of life!  But there is an unspeakably greater loss than this with which war is also chargeable.  I refer to the damage that morals and religion suffer from it.  All I need add on this point is that the power of war to demoralize the world, and to corrupt the purest religion in the world, is abundantly manifest in the fact that the moral and religious sense of even good men is not shocked by war.  No stronger argument can be brought against war than the fact of its power to conform the morals and religion of the world to war. – Gerrit Smith.

March 9 – There are those who say – and professed Christians too – “When you can get all the rest of the world to adopt the peace principle, we will do the same.”  It might as well be said, “Just make all the world honest, and we will be honest too,” or, “Make all the world truthful, and we will be truthful too.”  But the argument should be this to all Christian men: if every other man in the world is a rogue, you should be honest; if every other man is a liar, you should be truthful; if every other man in the world is a warrior, you, at least, are bound to be a man of peace. – N. Cosham.

March 10 – I hail the establishment of peace societies as one of the most auspicious signs of the present eventful era of the world.  Since war has been universally advocated and applauded by nearly all classes of men, it appears to me that it is not optional for any to remain silent on this great question.  Those remaining silent must be considered as belonging to the war party.  I have for some time determined to make whatever efforts were necessary to comply with the dictates of conscience and wash my hands of the blood that is shed in war.  I beg the privilege of being a member of the Massachusetts Peace Society.  I consider the enrolling of my name among the members of a peace society as virtually saying that I regret the crime and blood with which the miserable race of man has been deluged from age to age.  I repent of whatever expressions or acts in my past life may have fostered the war spirit in myself or others.  I repent that I have so long delayed to enter any protest against the practice of war by some overt act, a measure that appears to be, in the present state of things, the indispensable duty of every Christian.  And I resolve that hereafter I will endeavor to diffuse the sentiments of peace as far as lies in my power. – *Adoniram Judson.

March 11 – I am a Christian, so I cannot fight.  I cannot fight, even if I should die.  I cannot fight for any earthly consideration.  I am now a Christian. – maximilian.

March 12 – I appeal to the experience of every Christian: when the Savior appears precious to your soul, and when strong sensations of love for him expand your heart with a desire that all mankind might behold the same excellent glory, do you feel a wish to stain your hands with the blood of your enemy?  To see Christians, whose religion consists in benevolence, who profess to be followers of Christ, and whose instructions are to love their enemies, engaging in murderous war is truly amazing. – *Elijah Jones.

March 13 – We know of but one anthem composed and sung by angels, and that most harmoniously combines the glory of God in the highest with peace and good-will to men on earth. – Hannah More.

March 14 – Men see and understand guilt a little when it starts upon them in a new and unexpected form, while they are entirely blind to far greater enormities that they themselves have assisted to make common.  The whole city of Boston was shocked by the disclosure a scene of vice and cruelty.  It was cock fighting.  Unrelenting wretches prepared their victims for the contest by sawing off their spurs and fastening deadlier ones of steel upon the bleeding trunks.  Then, having forced the innocent animals to a quarrel, they sat around to enjoy the spectacle.  But when the same experiment is tried with men, the world looks on calmly.  Military leaders bring men together by the thousand, men who have no quarrel and would gladly live in peace.  They drive them up together, front to front, and having armed them with weapons of torture and death, which Nature never made, they succeed, by compulsion and malicious art in getting the first blows struck and the first blood flowing.  This they call getting the men engaged!  There is no trouble after that.  The work goes on – a work of unutterable horror!  And what does mankind say to this?  Why, a few Christian moralists object, but the great majority of men gather around the scene, as near as they can get to it by history and description, and admire the systematic arrangements of the battle.  They watch the progress and the maneuvers of the hostile armies as they would the changes of a game of chess.  But when it comes to sawing off the spurs of a game cock and exasperating him against his fellow, Oh!  That is shocking cruelty!  That, they cannot bear! – *Jacob Abbott.

March 15 – Suppose that, by a miracle of Divine grace, a soldier should be converted.  He loves God.  He loves all God’s creatures, and his whole soul goes out in benevolent feelings toward the whole human race.  How can he, in such a state of feeling, plunge his bayonet into a sinner and send him to everlasting perdition?  However others may conceive the abstract idea of loving an enemy and praying for him, and at the same time sending his soul to hell – to my mind, it is perfectly inconceivable. – William Ladd.

March 16 –

March 17 – The sword, the very instrument of destruction, the protection of a nation!  A sure protection, indeed, when pointing it toward others invariably brings its point to our own bosom!  The sword, the only arbiter of justice!  A righteous judge, indeed, for it is used equally by both contending parties!  The sword, our only sure defense against the selfish and violent, when the selfish and violent wield it with equal strength against us!  Even if life would not be altogether safe were we to abandon the sword, even if peace principles expose the nations to loss, let the loss come.  If blood must flow as the price of safety to others, let it flow – but as it flowed from Jesus, willingly, for the good of the world.  The martyr spirit is more Christ-like than the heroic.  Shall armies of hundreds of thousands be found ready to peril their lives for their country and their pay, and shall the Christian cower and tremble at a less danger, which may arise from adherence to his faith? – Samuel E. Coues.

March 18 – One of the most evil consequences of war is that it tends to render mankind callous to the feelings and sentiments of humanity. – Charles J. Fox.

March 19 – The news of war, of victories won, and of men killed is a poisonous moral influence.  They paganize a Christian people.  They make them forget the Sermon on the Mount, and the Prayer on the Cross. – *A. A. Livermore.

March 20 – Why is it that wars still disgrace the self-styled Christian world?  It is owing to the doctrine of expediency.  If Christians had boldly looked in the face of their duty, as developed in the New Testament, this senseless infernal system of wholesale butchery must long ago have ceased. – Robert Southey.

March 21 – Wars interrupt industry, the parent of wealth.  And however great the resources of a nation may be, they cannot long outlast the interruption of industry – an interruption that is nearly as great in the nation that conquers as in that which submits.  We rest in most cases with an estimate of the money expended by the belligerent parties.  But notwithstanding the enormous amount of expenses embraced in these estimates, they are actually but a fraction of the loss sustained.  Wars draw wealth from the body politic, as diseases waste the strength of the natural body.  Among the greatest inroads made by war, in the wealth of a nation, is the destruction of full-grown men.  We forget that it requires the care and expenditure of many successive years to replace the full-grown man, who may be destroyed by a bullet in an instant. – William M. Holland.

March 22 – It has been said that war is the great instrument of international justice.  Is that justice which appeals to force, and in its execution constantly confounds the innocent with the guilty? – Joseph Crossfield.

March 23 – War in every case must be deemed the triumph or the harvest of the first great murderer, the devil. – *Thomas Scott.

March 24 – Surely it is time to inaugurate a new system for the settlement of national and international difficulties, if not to obviate them altogether.  There can be no kind, unselfish, and reciprocal deliberation while fortifications frown with cannon and the drawn sword is at hand.  The “might makes right” doctrine must be transposed to “right makes might” – and being morally right, there is victory without shedding blood and without the humiliation or abandonment of a single principle. – Alfred H. Love.

March 25 – Shall Christians assist the prince of hell, who was a murderer from the beginning, by telling the world the benefit of war? – *John Wesley.

March 26 – In peace, homicide is a crime; in war, it is an honor. – Horace Mann.

March 27 – The Messiah disarms his followers so that they may overcome.  “If my kingdom were of this world,” he himself said, “then would my servants fight.”  But observe that he took from them the weapons of war.  The advent of Christ was so far from carrying with it any appearance of war, that the nations at the time lay bathed in the tranquility of universal peace.[3]  O, Divine Peace!  How lovely and how pleasant you appear! – *George Horne.

March 28 – I rejoice to bear testimony that one Christian denomination – the Friends – has uniformly protested against war.  They are an example to the world, and I almost envy them the high ground on which they stand in this matter as a model to all others.  Christians must be united in the cause of universal peace. – *William Jenks.

March 29 –

March 30 – The lovers of peace should never abandon their holy and sublime cause through any neglect of it by a sensual generation, almost exclusively devoted to the advancement of physical improvements and interests.  There can be no adequate cause for despondence, abandonment, indolence, or backward steps as long as the Redeemer shall regard his kingdom. – *Timothy Flint.

March 31 – With some few exceptions, he is the ablest general who can practice the greatest deceit and support it by the greatest violence.  Might is his right, and artillery is his argument.  Pillage and murder seem to lose their horrors in precise proportion to the magnitude of their scale and the multitude of their victims.  A consummate captain must have courage, or at least be thought to have it, for courage covers a multitude of sins. – Caleb C.  Colton.

APRIL

April 1 – Christianity, with its present principles and obligations, is duty-bound to produce universal peace.  It becomes, therefore, an absurdity, a simple contradiction, to maintain that the principles of Christianity allow war, when they alone are to eradicate it.  If we have no other guarantee of peace than the existence of our religion, and no other hope of peace than in its diffusion, how can that religion sanction war?  The conclusion that it does not sanction it appears strictly logical.  I do not perceive that a demonstration from Euclid could be clearer, and I think that, even if we possess no other evidence of the unlawfulness of war, there is contained in this a proof which prejudice cannot deny, and which sophistry cannot evade. – Jonathan Dymond.

April 2 – When our Savior appeared on earth, he was proclaimed from heaven as bringing and personifying peace.  All his doctrine was and is perpetually peace.  When he departed, he breathed upon his followers, for all time, the inheritance of peace.  It is the main element of the Gospel, the chief object of man’s cultivation here, and his chief promised reward hereafter.  It demands love toward every enemy, whether of individuals or of nations.  The severest persecutions of persons and nations must be submissively born rather than infringe upon the sanctity of peace.  Hostility and Christianity can no more exist together than can the service of God and mammon. – Sir Horace St.  Paul.

April 3 – The true hero is the great man of duty.  And if we must have wars to make them, there is none so brilliant as a war with wrong, and no hero so fit to be sung as he who has gained the bloodless victory of truth and mercy. – *Horace Bushnell.

April 4 – A triumphant Gospel, such as is now preached and practiced in Christendom, would not put an end to war, but such a Gospel as his apostles preached and practiced would speedily abolish it. – *Baron Stow.

April 5 – While the individual citizen does not touch the life of him who maligns and robs him, societal man, combining his individual conscience with that of millions and transferring to them all but an infinitesimal bit of his own responsibility, consigns thousands of his fellow creatures, who have neither wronged nor insulted him, to a bloody grave.  The great duty of nations – the great duty of man – is to promote the moral and physical improvement of his race.  Humanity enjoins it; religion enjoins it.  When war is in the ascendant, all the springs of society are shaken loose.  Art and science are summoned from their peaceful labors to fabricate new weapons of destruction.  The institutions of charity and philanthropy are paralyzed in their labors of love, and the missionary and the schoolmaster carry on their blessed work with more limited means and within a narrower range.  How deep is the obligation upon each of us to teach the lessons of peace in our families, and to propagate them wherever our influence

extends.  The duty of enforcing the great Christian precept to “follow peace with all men” lies heavily on you who are the teachers of youth in the school or in the sanctuary. – Sir David Brewster.

April 6 – Let the friends of peace manifest the true spirit of Christianity, which does good to all and evil to none. – *D. O. Morton.

April 7 – Swords, when sharpened at great expense, will usually find employment.  If they cannot find it abroad they will find it at home. – *Noah Worcester.

April 8 – National honor does not consist in refusing to acknowledge wrong, or in always insisting that what has been done has been right.  True national honor, like true personal honor, consists in being ready to do justice in all things, and, when the point of justice is doubtful, to give it against yourself rather than for yourself. – Sir Stafford Northcote.

April 9 – The spirit of war must expire.  By two guardian angels – Christianity on my right hand and Science on my left – methinks I am conducted to an eminence, from which I survey the surrounding and subjected world.  The freshness of Eden covers the scene, and the smile of heaven gilds the prospect.  The trumpet of carnage is blown no more, nor does the crimson flag ever again unfurl itself to the breeze.  The ensanguined field is no more covered with the mangled bodies of the slain.  The wife is no more hastened into widowhood, nor her babes to the orphanage.  The bow of victory is broken, the spirit of death is cut asunder, and the chariot of conquest is burned in the fire.  This is a consummation devoutly to be sought, and an enterprise that may command our most vigorous efforts while we live.  Its successful termination will deserve to be perpetuated by a monument as high as heaven. – *Nathan S. Beman.

April 10 – Christians seem to engage in warfare upon the principle of doing evil that good may come, for Christians admit that war is an evil.  “But may we not meet the enemy to preserve our homes and our government from violence and destruction?”  War itself is violence and destruction.  “But war saved our homes and our government in the rebellion.”  But war did not save our neighbors’ homes, and what does our King say?  “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” – Daniel Hill.

April 11 – If God has determined and declared that, in his own appointed time, war shall be banished from the earth and peace shall universally prevail, then the object which the associated friends of peace are endeavoring to effect is inseparably connected with the accomplishment of Divine predictions, their members and patrons are not romantic visionaries, and the ultimate success of their exertions is infallibly certain.  The only question to be decided is: does the success of their exertions involve the fulfillment of Divine predictions?  Blessed be God, the question cannot be asked more easily than it may be answered.  The answer has been written in characters of light on many pages of the inspired volume.  In it we are assured that the kingdom of Christ, which consists of righteousness, peace, and holy joy, shall universally prevail. – *Edward Payson.

April 12 – Independently of its inhumanity, atrocity, and contrariety to Christianity, there is an absurdity in war as an arbiter of national disputes which is a disgrace to beings endowed with rational faculties. – *Thomas Dick.

April 13 – War is now at variance with both Dispensations, for clearly it wants the commission of the Old, and as plainly it possesses not the sanction of the New. – William Stokes.

April 14 – The horrid outrages committed by the brutal fury of the conquerors on the innocent and defenseless give us a view of the nature of the pride of war – that pride of which we are accustomed to speak as constituting the soldier’s glory.  However stained by cruelty, perfidy, or injustice, he is henceforth transformed into a hero and dignified by all the epithets expressive of admiration.  The reader – the young reader especially – is thus apt to be surprised into the approval of deeds that, if stated in their native deformity, his soul would have abhorred. – Elizabeth Hamilton.

April 15 – All our noble studies, all our reputation at the bar, and all our professional diligence are stricken from our hands as soon as the alarm of war is sounded.  Wisdom itself, the mistress of affairs, is driven from the field.  Force bears sway.  The statesman is despised.  The grim soldier alone is caressed.  Legal proceedings cease.  Claims are asserted and prosecuted, not according to law, but by force of arms. – cicero.

April 16 – War introduces, in a single year, a series of evils and those habits and customs of wickedness which the Gospel cannot rectify and remove in half a century. – *Gardiner Spring.

April 17 – War is not only the crime of nations; it is also the lunacy of nations – a contagious, epidemic madness.  But this evil would not continue in Christian communities a day longer, if only the good Christian men of every country were once to recognize and acknowledge its monstrous criminality.  I, therefore, do solemnly arraign the professed Church of Christ in all its divisions, except for a few small bodies that have borne a faithful testimony in this regard.  I arraign the churches of Christendom as guilty of all the crime and woe that the continuance of this barbarous institution entails upon the world.  The white robes of the bride of Christ should be pure and spotless, but they have been dragged in blood.  War seems to aim at setting up the kingdom of Satan in the earth, and yet the Church is its very bulwark.  It says God speed to the warrior as he sets out on his mission of death.  On this subject it is not Christian, but Pagan.  I charge upon the professing Church the responsibility for all the evils that war inflicts upon society, for one word from her would stop them all.  I make this charge with no bitterness and in perfect charity.  But I make it in all seriousness and solemnity. – Thomas Chase.

April 18 –

April 19 – Can we possibly conceive of the meek, benevolent Jesus assuming the character of a soldier?  “Blessed are the poor in spirit; blessed are the merciful; blessed are the peacemakers.”  These are his beatitudes.  Nowhere does he bless the war-maker or the hero; and in no instance can his example or his precepts be tortured into an approval of the “military virtues.”  His last command, before he suffered, was to put up the sword.  His last denunciation was against those who take the sword, and his last prayer was for his enemies.  Who can study the character of Christ without acknowledging that it is directly opposed to the character of the soldier?  In the name of the Prince of Peace, I call on the Church, which he has redeemed with his own blood, to promote the holy cause of peace and abolish the unchristian custom of war. – William Ladd.

April 20 – Christ was meek and gentle, even to his enemies.  He blessed those who cursed him.  He did good to those who hated him.  Go and do likewise.  In this way you shall heap coals of fire upon the heads of your enemies.  This is the only revenge that we can find any warrant for, either from the precepts or the example of Christ. – *Moses Hemmenway.

April 21 – The most noble of all ambitions is that of promoting peace on earth and good-will to men. – James Madison.

April 22 – War ought to cease among the followers of the Lamb, who taught his disciples to forgive and love their enemies, and not to war against them and kill them.  Nor would the worst of men easily be brought to hurt those that they really think love them. – William Penn.

April 23 – The expedient of preserving a state by the spirit of conquest is not to be tolerated for a moment when considered on principles of universal justice. – William Wilberforce.

April 24 – The highest demonstration of Christianity that a man can give is to forgive his enemies.  But when war makes it a capital crime to exercise this capital virtue of Christianity, shall we long debate whether war is in accordance with the mind of Christ and the spirit of Christianity? – Elihu Burritt.

April 25 – Peace is the grand design of the Gospel.  One of the greatest objections made against embracing Christianity by the heathen, the Muslims, and the Jews is the war-spirit among Christians.  I once gave a Turk, who was a Muslim, the Gospel to read.  And, to show him the beauty of the doctrine, I read to him the fifth chapter of Matthew.  “But,” said he, “you Christians are the greatest hypocrites in the world.”  “Why?” said I.  He replied, “Here it is said ‘Blessed are the peacemakers,’ and yet you, more than any others, teach us to make war.  How can you be so shameless, when I know that you Christians are the greatest warriors in the world?”  Literally true!  A Jew, in London, once said to me, “You go to war, and yet you call the Lord Jesus Christ the Prince of Peace and you pray to him, as the Prince of Peace, to aid your warriors to vanquish your enemies.”  How important it is that we pray for

the success of Peace.  O, this great mistake in the Church!  Why should Christians stand aloof from a society whose object is the promotion of peace on earth? – *Joseph Wolff.

April 26 – No man has a right to destroy his own life, and he, therefore, cannot delegate the power to destroy it to a government or community of men.  Reviewing the events in other countries of recent years, and in our own, and looking upon what is now taking place around us, we are strengthened in the belief that all war an all destruction of human life, under whatever plea of policy or necessity, and with whatever object, is utterly opposed to the religion of Christ and the true welfare of mankind. – Samuel Rhoads.

April 27 – War is as contrary to the spirit of Christianity as murder.  Nothing can justify nations in shedding each other’s blood. – *Adam Clarke.

April 28 – Religion, knowledge, freedom, virtue, and happiness, in all their manifold forms, depend upon peace.  Sustained by peace, they lean as upon the Everlasting Arm.  In the name of religion profaned by war, of knowledge misapplied, of freedom crushed to earth, of virtue dethroned, and of human happiness violated, I call upon you to unite to establish the supremacy of peace.  Let the old, the middle-aged, and the young combine in a common cause.  Let the pulpit, the school, the college, and the public street all be moved to speak on its behalf.  Preach it, minister of the Prince of Peace!  Let it never be forgotten in conversation, in sermon, or in prayer; nor any longer seek, by subtle theory, to reconcile the monstrous war-system with the precepts of Christ!  Instill it, teacher of childhood and youth, in the early thoughts of your precious charge; exhibit the wickedness of War and the beauty of Peace.  Scholar!  Write it in your books.  Poet!  Let it inspire to higher melodies your Christian song.  And to you, statesman and ruler!  Let the principles of peace be as a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.  Let the abolition of war and the overthrow of the war-system be your constant aim. – Charles Sumner.

April 29 – I will say, as one of the deepest convictions of my soul, that war, with its bleeding horrors, will never cease until the Church testifies against it by doctrine and practice. – *Titus Coan.

April 30 – A battle is a terrible conjugation of the verb kill.  I kill, you kill, he kills, we kill, they kill, all kill. – Thomas Carlyle.

MAY

May 1 – In the policy of nations, no maxim is more universally received, with undoubting confidence in its truth, than “to preserve peace we must prepare for war.”  But the wisdom of man is foolishness with God.  And upon few maxims of worldly wisdom has Providence more indelibly impressed the stamp of folly and falsehood. – William Jay.

May 2 – When a war ended and armies have disbanded, what does war give back to society?  The principles, feelings, and morals that are discharged from the camp are brought home to contaminate, pollute, and poison.  Government is besieged by a throng of beggars, who exhibit their shattered constitutions, maimed limbs, and wounded bodies as passports to the door of the treasury.  Happy, indeed, for society, if the baneful effects of war could be limited to inroads upon the bodies of its agents and victims.  But mangled minds, depraved hearts, vitiated appetites, and brutalized passions – on what pension roll shall these be placed? – Tyler Bigelow.

May 3 – Having gone through the painful process in my own mind, a process continued through years of anxiety, I am bound to acknowledge that I can find no rest for my soul, no satisfactory conclusion, which, as a professed disciple of Christ, I dare adopt but that all war is inconsistent with the nature and spirit of the Christian religion.  I cannot make any war, even that which men have been in the habit of deeming the most justifiable, compatible with the genius and principles of the Gospel.  The individuals acting in offensive war must exert themselves to kill, burn, and destroy.  Those who carry on defensive war must act in the same manner.  As a disciple of Christ, I am brought to that most important question: can I, for any earthly consideration, take away the life of a fellow creature in order to preserve my own property or life?  When I endeavor to put the question as in the sight of God, I feel that the spirit of Christianity, the example of its blessed Author, and his wondrous act of stupendous love in dying for his enemies will not permit it. – *John Pye Smith.

May 4 – We advocate the cause of arbitration in lieu of fighting for the settlement of disputes, and surely, anybody above the rank of savages would say that it is a desirable end to accomplish. – Richard Cobden.

May 5 – Look at that majestic ship, “walking like a living thing” upon the bosom of the ocean, its sails all white as love, kissing the sky.  See the thousand human beings on board, their bosoms swelling with hope.  In the distance a flag is seen streaming upon the edge of the water.  It is the enemy’s.  The running to and fro, the hustle, the confusion – all tell what deeds are to be done.  One short hour, and the beautiful ship is sinking beneath the waves.  Word is passed that the enemy is foundering, a shout of victory goes up, and they go down, victor and vanquished, a thousand fathoms into the boiling ocean.  What a triumph this is!  What a work this is for Christian hands to be engaged in!  What a dying hour this is for a disciple of the Prince of Peace!  What a condition this is in which to meet him who died for his foes!  Need I pause to ask whether the feelings that produce such actions are in accordance with Christianity?  Christianity cannot be uttered in the same breath with war, without sullying its unspotted purity.–*Rufus P. Stebbins.

May 6 – Can one who professes the peaceable doctrine of the Gospel be a soldier, when it is his duty not so much as to go to law?  And shall he who is not to revenge his own wrongs be instrumental in bringing others into chains, imprisonment, torment, and death?  Jesus Christ, by disarming Peter, disarmed every soldier afterward.  We are but of yesterday, and by today we have overspread [the Roman] empire.  We would be prepared for any war, if our religion did not require us to be killed rather than to kill. – tertullian.

May 7 – Ferocious and terrible was the rebellion in Ireland, 1798.  Seldom has there been warfare more savage.  It was a conflict of neighbor against neighbor, brother against brother, and none allowed to remain neutral.  Yet the Quakers, firm in their faith, did continue neutral, friends to all and enemies to none.  In going to their places of worship, they were sometimes obliged to pass over fields of dead bodies.  Repeatedly did each party in turn threaten to burn their meetinghouses over their heads, or butcher them in their own homes.  The bloody strife waged week after week all around them and up to their very doors.  Their own domestics were instigated to destroy them.  Their houses were entered by exasperated soldiers with the intent to kill them.  Still the Quakers trusted in God, and were safe.  Persisting in their refusal to take any part in the contest, and in equal kindness to sufferers from both factions, they came ere long to be respected, trusted, and loved by all.  Their principles proved, under God, a far better protection than the sword, for they lost only one of their number.  And that one was a victim, not to his principles of peace, but to his own folly in renouncing them.  Losing his confidence in their power to protect, he dressed himself in a regimental uniform for safety, and was shot, not as a man of peace, but as a man of blood.  How strongly does such an exception confirm the general rule!–*George C. Beckwith.

May 8 – I thoroughly detest all war, believing it to be barbarism, at once irrational and cruel, of which the common sense of the nineteenth century ought to be heartily ashamed.–Lydia Maria Child.

May 9 – The equipment of armies and ships of war is simply a note of defiance.  Its import is, “Come on, if you dare.”–George Combe.

May 10 – War is the greatest evil of evils that we can conceive to be remedied.  It attacks all classes of society and all ages.  It attacks them with no insidious weapons and under no disguise, but with open massacre, starvation, and ruin – a mischief from which no one is safe.  It threatens every man’s life and every man’s children’s lives. – J. R. Seeley.

May 11 – The mighty theme of universal peace may well awaken the most powerful strains of human eloquence – the tongue of the learned, the pen of the writer, and even the song of angels.  When they were permitted to announce the reign of peace, they seized the moment with raptures of bliss.  Shall not the angels of the churches, in the same spirit, proclaim peace on earth?  Does not the subject afford encouragement to multiply peace societies?  Peace, with all its blissful effects, must be produced by human exertions.  No miraculous voice will silence the fury of war.  No, the blessings of peace must be obtained as other blessings are.  These societies are powerful means.  They embody a mass of sound principles, facts, and arguments.  Do you wish more domestic sorrows, more public calamities, more sighs and groans to load the air, and more tears to water the world?  If not, then enroll your name among the friends of peace, and join in the song of angels, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace and good-will toward men.” – *Elijah Parish.

May 12 – Government worship and hero worship are worse than the worship of Juggernaut.[4]  With “our country” as a god, and bloody heroes as apostles, men go out to the work of human slaughter.  They undervalue human life.  Life is man’s chief earthly blessing.  Without life, man can neither do, nor be, nor enjoy anything.  It is his [time of growth and development] for both worlds.  What will the airy nothing called “national honor” profit a man who is slain in battle? – William G. Hubbard.

May 13 – War is the culmination of human depravity and crime, the “abomination of desolation.”  Our vaunted Christian civilization – what has it done to quench the flames of war and relieve humanity from its woes?  No nation, no branch of the church even, with one or two slight exceptions, is vitalized with a radical anti-war sentiment.  The dazzling glitter of military pomp has outshone the sun of righteousness, and hero-worship has supplanted the true worship.  Oh, for that Christian manhood, which, for the next two centuries after Christ, chose the crown of martyrdom rather than go to war!–Francis Gillette.

May 14 – The glory of our Christian profession of faith lies in our business on earth resembling the work the Father gave Christ to do.  But how unfavorable the profession of arms to this!  Brother, how totally incompatible it is with it!  Christianity says, “Love your enemies;” the maxims of statesmen are, “Kill them off.”  Christ says, “Resist not evil;’’ the statesman says, “Fight, and leave the reasons to me.”  Now, my friend, either our religion is a fable, or, if it be true, there are unanswerable arguments against war and the military profession.–*William Ward.

May 15 – As far as the Gospel prevails it makes men peaceable, for such is the wisdom from above.  It is gentle and easy to be entreated.  Those who were first brought into the Gospel church were all of “one heart and of one soul.”  And it was observed of the early Christians how well “they loved one another.”  Those who delight in war are lost to all the sacred principles of humanity and Christianity.– *Matthew Henry.

May 16 –  “Women are the mothers of men,” and they can give the tender mind an inclination to war or peace.  What they approve we follow; what they condemn we abandon.  Mind governs matter and, though woman may be the weaker vessel so far as it respects physical force, in mind she often shows herself to be the strongest.  Many a man has not the moral courage to plead for peace, for fear he shall be accused of effeminacy and cowardice.  Woman has no such fear.  To be the advocate of peace is congenial to her character.  She who was “last at the cross and earliest at the grave” of the great Prince of Peace can still plead for his cause.  There is something peculiarly appropriate in woman’s undertaking the cause of peace.  Men make war; let women make peace.  Use your first influence for the promotion of the cause of peace in your own family on your husbands, brothers, and sons.  On all suitable occasions point out the sin, folly, and miseries of war.  I request my fair countrywomen to examine the conduct of their past lives and their present feelings.  If you fail in a known duty you are as answerable for the consequences of such neglect as though you had committed the actual crime.  If another war should sweep over our land, with all its demoralizing, soul-destroying consequences, can you clear the skirts of your garments from the blood of souls unless you do something to prevent it?  In moral revolutions women have equal power, if not superior, to men.  It is in the power of the church of Christ, of which women compose the greater part, to put a stop to war in Christendom, whenever it shall choose to exercise that power. – William Ladd.

May 17 – The founders of Rome went to a festive assembly in the Sabian hills, carried off the maidens, and made them their wives.  Afterward, when war broke out between the Sabine territory and Rome, and the warring hosts encountered each other in battle, the daughters of the Sabines, now Roman matrons, rushed in between their Roman husbands and their Sabine kinsmen, forbade the war, and obliged the hostile tribes to make peace and dwell together thereafter in amity.  If the women of this age can do for the civilized world what those women did for the Sabine territory, they will lay mankind under a debt which the fervent gratitude of all succeeding generations will but partly repay.  Women come and bind up the wounds of those whose bodies are torn by cannon and grapeshot.  They tend them in hospitals.  They watch night and day by the bedside of those who are delirious with pain, and they smooth the pillows of the dying.  Shall the office and ministry of women be limited to this?  Are they to make no effort to prevent the evil they so tenderly seek to mitigate?  Must they always wait until the mischief is done, and then seek to repair it, which they can only do in small part by sympathy and gentle personal attention?  Is there no hope, that, by standing on the threshold, they may resist this great evil and forbid its entrance?  This is a question that, perhaps, the present age may solve, and let us hope that it will be solved in the interests of peace. – William Cullen Bryant.

May 18 – Christians – that is, those who are truly saints – have crucified the affections and lusts of the flesh.  Therefore, they cannot indulge them by waging war. – Robert Barclay.

May 19 –

May 20 – I know the early use of a gun is recommended in our country to teach young men the use of firearms, and thereby to prepare them for war and battle.  But should we inspire our youth, by such exercises, with hostile ideas toward their fellow creatures?  Let us rather instill into their minds sentiments of universal benevolence to men of all nations and colors.  Wars originate in error and vice. – Benjamin Rush.

May 21 – No nation has yet attained such a height of grandeur as will attach to that one which shall be the first to propose and carry out a plan for the abolition of war.  The time is coming when that nation shall be esteemed the most glorious that has dared to go forth as the pioneer of the path of universal peace.  It will receive the plaudits of men and angels, and its name will be repeated with joy and gratitude by coming generations.  To have been the first to propose and effectually carry out a scheme for staying the effusions of human blood will be a far higher honor to any land than to have discovered a continent, or made the lightning subservient to human agency.  Upon such a nation will be breathed the heavenly benediction, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.” – *Joseph A. Collier.

May 22 – The day is coming, I trust, when Christians will look back with gratitude and affection on those men who, in ages of conflict and bloodshed, enlisted under the banner of philanthropy and peace, cherished generous hopes of human improvement, withstood the violence of corrupt opinion, held forth amidst general darkness the pure and mild light of Christianity, and thus ushered in a new and peaceful era in the history of mankind. – * William E.  Channing.

May 23 – The injunctions contained in our blessed Savior’s Sermon on the Mount have such a direct tendency to prohibit discord, and to promote peace and love to mankind, that they alone appear as arguments sufficiently cogent to convince a considerate mind that all wars are repugnant to the Gospel of Jesus. – Richard Dykes Alexander.

May 24 – War, in any shape, from any motive, and carried on in any mode is utterly indefensible on Christian principles, and utterly irreconcilable with a Christian spirit.  When will the disciples, and above all, the ministers of the Prince of Peace, acknowledge this great and solemn truth in theory and practice?  There was a time when the distinguishing mark of Christians was that they would not bear arms.  But for more than fifteen centuries Peace has been the lost Pleiades in the constellation of Christian virtues. – Thomas S. Grimke.

May 25 – Very plain it is that war is a mark of the apostasy and that it stigmatizes man as fallen from God in a degenerate, revolted state.  It is the horrid issue of men’s having forsaken God, and of their being abandoned by him to the folly of their own furious lusts and passions. – *John Howe.

May 26 – The impotency of the peace sentiment lies only in its want of development.  Let the friends of peace appear and countenance each other, and they will be surprised at their own strength.  Let not, then, the Christian friends of peace, in faithless cowardice, shrink from their sublime mission of universal and perpetual peace.  When the predominance of the peace or war principle is placed in our hands, we are appalled at our responsibility for human destiny. – Joshua P. Blanchard.

May 27 – “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you.”  I appeal to the heart and judgment of every man whether it would be possible for him to obey this precept were he actively engaged on the field of battle, supporting the part essential to the reputation of a valiant soldier? – *Ezra B. Kellogg.

May 28 – Of all the calamities that afflict and disgrace the human race, I believe war is the greatest.  Indeed, it may be regarded as the aggregate of evil, and one feels astounded that the people of any civilized country can sanction such a remnant of barbarism.  There are wonders in the world, but the greatest wonder in my mind is that the people have so long continued to sanction that which is the cause of so much oppression and misery to all ranks of society. – J. Brotherton, M.  P.

May 29 – Our Savior spoke with authority.  He spoke as no man has ever spoken.  He gave positive and broad precepts.  The whole spirit of war, violence, and retaliation is prohibited in language so direct, so comprehensive, and so unqualified that, if it does not prohibit all war, it is difficult to conceive of any words that will. – *E. B. Hall.

May 30 – He who is “Love” cannot be imagined to complacently view the violence of human hostility.  We are fully warranted by every view of his character as revealed to us to believe that He will not fail to forever exterminate that great “Abomination of Desolation,” which, in the production of crime and misery, has thrown all other sources of evil into the shade by comparison.  As Christians and philanthropists, let us then encourage hope and be moved to action.  The eyes that behold our present endeavors to attain this blessing of universal, permanent peace may be closed in death before its happy era, but they may now beam with hope in its anticipation.  The present magnitude of the evil against which we contend is no grounds for despair, but, while it invests the enterprise with a paramount grandeur and interest, it leaves open a wide path to success and presents to our delighted view a boundless prospect of beneficent glory. – *Henry Ware, Jr.

May 31 – I long for the whole Christian world to combine its forces against war.  Peace seems to me to be an object not nearly enough striven for, which lies at the root of all other good. – Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton.

JUNE

June 1 – The Rainbow!  How vast the extent, and how delicate the texture of that majestic arch!  Elegant in its form and rich in its tinctures, it writes in radiant hues what angels sang in harmonious strains: “Peace •on earth, good will toward men.” – *James Hervey.

June 2 – To William Penn belongs the distinction, destined to brighten as men advance in virtue, of being the first in human history establishing the Law of Love as a rule of conduct in interaction of nations.  He declined the superfluous protection of arms against foreign force, and “aimed to reduce the savage nations, by just and gentle manners, to the love of civil society and the Christian religion.”  His serene countenance, as he stood with his followers, all unarmed, beneath the spreading elm, forming the great treaty of friendship with the untutored Indians – who filled the surrounding forest as far as the eye could reach with savage display – not to wrest their lands by violence, but to obtain them by peaceful purchase, is to my mind the proudest picture in the history of our country.  “The great God,” said the illustrious Quaker, “has written his law in our hearts, by which we are taught and commanded to love, to help, and to do good to one another.  It is not our custom to use hostile weapons against our fellow creatures, for which reason we have come unarmed.  Our object is not to do injury, but to do good.  We have, then, met in the broad pathway of good faith and good will, so that no advantage can be taken on either side, but all is to be openness, brotherhood, and love, while all are to be treated as of the same flesh and blood.”  These are words of true greatness.  The flowers of prosperity smiled in the blessed footprints of William Penn.  His people were unmolested and happy, while – a sad contrast – those of other colonies, acting upon the policy of the world, building forts and showing themselves in arms, not after receiving provocation but merely in anticipation or from fear of danger, were harassed by perpetual alarm and pierced by the sharp arrows of savage war.  This pattern of a Christian commonwealth never fails to arrest the admiration of all who contemplate its beauties. – Charles Sumner.

June 3 – There is no one subject on which men have been more wicked than in regard to war.  There has been no one subject on which they have been, and are more befooled.  There is no one thing on which the sentiments of the world are more certainly destined to be changed.  There is no one thing on which so much reputation has been gained which is to be reversed. – *Albert Barnes.

June 4 –

Insatiate War!  From you what evils rise!

Your band can disunite the tenderest ties;

Can make a dreary waste, a desert wild,

Where virtue bloomed, and cheerful plenty smiled.

Not so the precepts which the Savior taught,

Whose breast with pure benevolence was fraught;

“Glory to God!  Peace and good-will on earth,”

Were sung by cherub legions at his birth.

How strange, that they who bear the Christian name

Should e’er exult war’s triumphs to proclaim!

Nor heed the declaration of their Lord

That they, who take shall perish with the sword.

Father of all!  Look down with pitying eye,

To realms of endless night let discord fly,

Bid fierce and angry passions cease,

And Jesus reign triumphant, Prince of Peace.

– Charlotte Richardson.

June 5 – The armies of peace, like the hosts of war, must have an advance guard, a forlorn hope, which may fall while leading the way to assault and victory.  But in this, as in other cases, the post of danger is the post of honor.  And who would not wish to share this honor?  Who, after the glorious victory shall be won, will not wish to have been among the few who first unfurled the consecrated banner of peace? – *Edward Payson.

June 6 –

The cause of Truth and human weal,

O, God above!

Transfer it from the sword’s appeal

To Peace and Love.

Peace!  Love!  The cherubim that join

Spread their wings o’er Devotion’s shrine.

Prayers sound in vain and temples shine

Where they are not.

– Thomas Campbell.

June 7 – What in principle is war?  It is an adjournment of questions of international right or courtesy, from the bar of temperate discussion to the bar of mere force.  Alas!  Alas, that eighteen hundred years after the coming of the Prince of Peace, this relic of barbarism should still be clung to by nations calling themselves Christians. – *Alonzo Potter.

June 8 – Opinions, if they are founded in truth and justice, will, in the end, prevail against the bayonets of infantry, the fire of artillery, and the charges of cavalry. – Lord Palmerston.

June 9 – The thought of universal peace is one of grandeur and of immense interest to all.  Why any Christian or benevolent mind should not appreciate its magnitude, is hard to explain.  A state of war is the greatest violation of reason that can be conceived.  – *George B. Cheever.

June 10 – If, by the Jewish law, an involuntary murderer was obliged to flee to a place of refuge, and if God prohibited David from building a temple to him because his hands were defiled with blood, who does not see, especially a Christian man, how wretched and ill-fated a thing war is? – grotius.

June 11 – Should the whole church awake and put on the armor of the Gospel, those who delight in war would soon be scattered.  The church has been blinded, deluded, secularized, enslaved, degraded, and impoverished by the god of war for fifteen hundred years.  That the veil has been taken from the eyes of some is an occasion for rejoicing. – *Jonathan Cogswell.

June 12 – The history of war never has been written, and from the necessity of the case never can be.  We may get a glimpse here and there, where its thunderclouds are parted, and we may look upon the ground strewn with the dead and dying.  Or, we may walk through its long range of hospital wards and see ghostly faces start up at the sound of our steps.  But its physical manifestations, like its other evils, are too vast to be comprehended by a finite mind.  In looking at the tremendous devastations of war, let us remember that they all fall on individual human beings, and not on soulless corporations, insensible nations, or geographical names. – *A. A. Livermore.

June 13 – The principle of peace in which our trust is only in the Lord, and in which our minds are weaned from a dependence on the strength of armies, is very precious to me.  I often feel strong desires, that we (the Friends) who profess this principle may so walk as to give no just cause for any of our fellow creatures to be offended by us, and that our lives may evidently manifest that we are redeemed from that spirit in which wars are fought. – John Woolman.

June 14 – Let us go on.  We may do nothing more than collect the materials and lay the foundation of this Temple of Peace, but it will assuredly rise.  It may rise like the first Temple, noiseless and without the sound of a hammer, but it will assuredly rise, and its heaven-lit spire will be hailed by the nations of the earth as the reappearing of the Star of Bethlehem.  And if the first proclamation of the great principle of our Society, “Peace on earth,” was hailed with the songs of celestial spirits, how will its final triumph be celebrated!  What anthems of gladness will roll through the heavens!  How the morning stars will sing together, and all the sons of God shout for joy! – Henry Barnard.

June 15 – Christianity said, “Love your enemies.”  Now what sort of love does that man bear toward his enemy if he runs him through with a bayonet?  The distinguishing duties of Christianity must be sacrificed when war is carried on.  The question is between the abandonment of these duties and the abandonment of war, for both cannot be retained.  We willingly grant that not all the precepts from the Mount were designed to be obeyed literally in the course of life.  But what then?  To show that their meaning is not literal is not to show that they do not forbid war.  We ask in our turn, what is the meaning of the precepts?  What is the meaning of “Resist not evil”?  Does it mean to allow bombardment, devastation, and slaughter?  If it does not mean to allow this, then it does not mean to allow war.  What, again, do the objectors say is the meaning of “Do good to those who hate you”?  Does it mean to ruin their commerce, sink their fleets, plunder their cities, and shoot through their hearts?  If the precept does not mean to allow this, then it does not mean to allow war. – Jonathan Dymond.

June 16 – Looking around this meeting of the London Peace Society in 1835, my eye caught a little boy, apparently about nine years of age.  He appeared to have been brought here by his mother.  Now, sir, the appearance of that child led my mind back to a meeting very different from this – a meeting to which a father brought his son, nine years of age, to swear eternal enmity to the Romans on the altar of Jupiter.  I thought this mother had brought her little boy, not to the temple of Jupiter, but to the temple of God, to vow, not enmity, but eternal love to every son of man.  I would that every mother, and every father, having a son nine years of age, should do the same.  If mothers intelligently take up the principles of the Peace Society and train their children up in these principles, then we shall indeed gain a triumph. – *Thomas Timpson.

June 17 – We must show that war is wrong, totally wrong.  We must show that war is necessarily a state of malice, and that it can no more exist without malice than hell can exist without malice.  We must show that Jesus Christ, our Master, forbids it; that Christians will not fight in the Millennium; and that what will be right in the Millennium, is also right now, and is the only efficient and Christian principle of action. – *George Trask.

June 18 – We Christians think ourselves highly civilized because we do not use poisoned weapons, like savages, though we do make use of artifice, deception, falsehood, treachery, the ambush, the mine, and the torpedo to kill and destroy the enemy.  In justification of these means, it is said that war cannot be carried on without them.  This we acknowledge, and hence we infer that war cannot be carried on without a dereliction of the fundamental principles of the Christian religion.  The only way to abolish these savage customs is to abolish the custom of war itself.  When war is once commenced, retaliation and revenge will justify every means, however atrocious.  To expect to carry on war without the violation of the precepts of our holy religion – to expect to regulate the passions of man, when once let loose in war – is like setting fire to a powder magazine and expecting to regulate the explosion. – William Ladd.

June 19 – I cannot look into the New Testament without being brought to the conclusion that I am not permitted, under any existing or conceivable circumstances, to engage in war with my fellow men.  The whole Gospel is anti-war. – George Thompson.

June 20 – The individual has, by the law of God, no right to return evil for evil.  Men connected in societies are under the same moral law as individuals.  Hence it would seem that all wars are contrary to the revealed will of God, and that the individual has no right to commit to society, nor society to commit to government, the power to declare war.  Such, I must confess, seems to me to be the will of our Creator.  Therefore, to all arguments brought in favor of war, it would be a sufficient answer that God has forbidden it, and that no consequences arising from keeping his law are so terrible as those which must arise from violating it. – *Francis Wayland.

June 21 – Look at warring Christendom!  What smallest drop of pity toward sinners is to be found in it?  Or how could such a hellish spirit more fully contrive to hasten their destruction?  It stirs up and kindles every passion of the fallen nature that is contrary to the meek, all-loving, all-forgiving, all-saving spirit of Christ.  It unites, drives, and compels nameless numbers of unconverted sinners to fall murdering and murdered. – *William Law.

June 22 – The war-system is intensely undemocratic.  True democracy elevates man into a self-governing, responsible being.  War depresses and degrades him.  It robs him of the right of private judgment.  He must stand where he is posted, wheel right, left, backward or forward as he is bidden. He must go wherever, and against whatever and whomever he may be sent, with as little discretion or volition as a cannon ball.  And like the cannon ball, his only appropriate function is to crush and destroy.  To such a condition does the war-system reduce millions of thinking, morally accountable men! – William P. Allen.

June 23 – The maxim, “In peace prepare for war,” is a standing excitement to war, performing the double office of provoking aggression and prompting inconsiderate and rash resistance to it.  There is, however, a preparation for war that does not invite it.  It is the preparation of simple, uniform fairness and justice, the exhibition of a stronger solicitude to do right than to exact it from others, and a sensibility that habitually feels that the stain of dishonor is inflicted, not by suffering wrong, but by doing it.  The nation that shall cultivate this spirit, which shall fairly gain the reputation of The Just, will possess a defense more sure than the combined power of fortifications, armies, and navies. – William Slade.

June 24 –

Drying up a simple tear has more

Of honest fame than shedding seas of gore.

Oh war!  War!  War!  What, what are you?

All that the mind would shrink from of excesses;

All that the body perpetrates of bad;

All that we read, hear, and dream of man’s distresses;

All that defies the worst that tongue expresses.

– Lord Byron.

June 25 – We wish to present war as it is, and peace as it is, divesting the one of all its deceitful glare and borrowed splendor so that it may forever be abolished, and clothing the other in all its purity and moral grandeur so that it may reign forever.  But this grand object will not be gained at once.  Like the breaking light of the morning, it will make a gradual progress to meridian splendor.  And Oh!  How blessed at the hour of death to feel that it will come, that our hands have helped on the dawning of such a glorious era, and that we shall leave behind us an influence that shall be helping it still, when our souls shall be resting on those quiet shores where wars and fighting will never come! – *Laurens P.  Hickok.

June 26 – The Bible foretells not only the fact of universal peace, but also the voluntary actions of men in connection with this fact.  “They shall beat their swords into plowshares.”  Here is a prediction of human instrumentality.  The great change under God shall be the result of means, not miracles.  “Neither shall they learn war any more.”  Here, again, is a voluntary stand of the people.  They will refuse to study the science of human butchery, as they had done.  To deny this is to deny the Bible.– *Cyrus Yale.

June 27 – In the time of John Wesley, one of his preachers, named John Nelson, was pressed into the army, but he adhered firmly to the Gospel of peace and refused to fight.  He was taken before a court-martial by a file of musketeers with their bayonets fixed.  When questioned by the court, Nelson answered, “I shall not fight, for I cannot bow my knee before the Lord to pray for a man and then get up and kill him when I have done.  I know God both hears me pray and sees me act, and I should expect the lot of a hypocrite if my actions were to contradict my prayers.” – London Herald of Peace.

June 28 – War is an incarnate demon.  War is wholesale murder, and it is impossible for murder to come from Him who had said, “You shall not kill.”  Is war, then, never justifiable?  Let those who believe it, prove it from the New Testament if they can.  I know that the more often some conscientious men attempt it, the more difficult they find the task to be. – *Heman Humphrey.

June 29 – Proper men, well proportioned, carefully brought up, able and sound, both in body and mind, are led like so many beasts to the slaughter, in the flower of their years, pride, and strength, without remorse or pity, and killed as so many sheep, by thousands at once.  For many ages, nothing has been so familiar as this hacking and hewing massacre, murder, and desolation.  Who can be sufficiently amazed at their flinty hearts, obstinacy, fury, and blindness? They (often), without any likelihood of good success, hazard poor soldiers and lead them without pity to the slaughter.

Every nation has its Hectors, Scipios, Caesars, and Alexanders.  Our Edward the Fourth was in twenty-six battles, and he glories in it, as they all do.  These are the brave spirits, the gallant ones of this world, who are alone admired and alone triumphant.  These have statues, crowns, pyramids, and obelisks to their eternal fame.  Why should creatures born to live, to mercy, and to meekness, rave and rage so like beasts?  God’s and man’s laws are trampled under feet, and the sword alone determines right and justice.  Father fights against son, brother against brother, and Christian against Christian.  Infinite treasures are consumed, towns are burned, flourishing cities are sacked and ruined, goodly countries are depopulated and left desolate, ancient inhabitants are expelled, trade and traffic are destroyed, and whatever other torment, misery, or mischief that can be invented follow in this train of ruin.  War is such an abominable thing, the cause and effect of sin.  David asks, “Why do the heathen rage so furiously?”  We may ask, “Why do the Christians rage so furiously? – Robert Burton.

June 30 – Our banner bears a motto, destined to claim the loyalty of the race: Peace on earth!  There it floats, displaying, in three words, a benefit that no imagination can overstate, and appealing to every principle of tenderness, interest, honor, and religion.  – *Howard Malcom.

JULY

July 1 – Professed Christians have not only made war on each other, but have attempted to sanctify all the horrors and crimes of war by religious ceremonies.  Not, indeed, the ceremonies of the bloody and revengeful religion of pagans, but the ceremonies of the benign and peaceful religion of Jesus Christ. – *Noah Worcester.

July 2 – We cannot make a more lively representation and emblem to ourselves of hell than by the view of a kingdom in war. – Lord Clarendon.

July 3 – We, who in times past killed one another, do not now fight with our enemies.[5] – justin martyr.

July 4 – Mark the spirit and conduct of the early Christians!  They joyfully endured the spoiling of their goods.  They were in close imitation of him who, when reviled, did not revile in return.  When he suffered, he did not threaten in return.  Theirs was the spirit which imitated the Savior, when bearing his cross to Calvary and breathing itself out in the dying prayer, “Father, forgive them.”  They loved their enemies, rendering blessing for cursing and good for evil.  They sent forth some of their number to relate the story which subdued pride, envy, hatred, selfishness and revenge – the story of the cross of Christ – not to assert rights, but to exhibit a gentle spirit, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits.  Their spirit was not the spirit of this world.  It was not the too often boasted “Spirit of Seventy-Six.”  That spirit let no Christian pray and let no church of Christ harbor it.  The spirit we need is the spirit of the day of Pentecost, the spirit of the Gospel of Christ, the spirit of heaven. – Percy Chapin.

July 5 – Let us, if we must have wars, not think of making a prayer to be used before murder.  Bad actions are made worse by hypocrisy.  War is in itself so bad a thing that there is only one way of making it worse, and that is by mixing religion with it. – Letitia Barbauld.

July 6 – The nations called Christian are the most powerful upon earth.  They profess that religion which alone prohibits war.  With them, therefore, rests the responsibility for the continuance of this most savage custom.  With what propriety and justice to the name and spirit of Jesus can a nation call itself Christian, so long as it rejects or refuses to obey the peculiar and the distinctive principles of the Great Teacher? – *Samuel J. May.

July 7 –

A gallant form is passing by,

The plume bends o’er his lordly brow;

A thousand tongues have raised on high

His song of triumph now.

Young knees are bending round his way,

And age makes bare his locks of gray.

Fair forms have lent their gladdest smile;

White hands have waved the conqueror on,

And flowers have decked his path the while

By gentle fingers strewn.

Soft tones have cheered him, and the brow<

Of beauty beams, uncovered now.

The gallant steed treads proudly on;

His foot falls firmly now, as when

In strife that iron heel went down

Upon the breasts of men;

And foremost in the ranks of strife,

Trod out the last dim spark of life.

Dream they of these – the glad, the gay,

That bend around the conqueror’s path:

The horrors of the conflict day,

The gloomy field of death,

The ghostly slain, the severed head,

The raven swooping o’er the dead?

Dark thoughts and fearful!  Yet they bring<

No terrors to the triumph hour,

Nor stay the reckless worshiping

Of blinded crime and power;

The fair of form, the mild of mood,

Do honor to the men of blood.

Men!  Christians!  Pause!  The air you breathe

Is poisoned by your idol now;

And will ye turn to him, and wreathe

Your chaplets round his brow?

Nay, call his darkest deeds sublime?

And smile assent to giant crime?

– Chambers’ Edinburg Journal

July 8 – So soon as the character of man has the last finish of Christian principle thrown over it, from that moment all the instruments of war will be thrown aside, and all its lessons will be forgotten. –  *Thomas Chalmers.

July 9 – I know the argument for strictly defensive war is plausible, strong, and apparently logical.  In fact, it looks almost like a demonstration.  But, after all, I dare not trust it.  It is not the Gospel; it is not Christ-like.– * Titus Coan.

July 10 – War is a conflict in which the parties endeavor to do to each other all the harm they can.[6] – Thomas Jefferson.

July 11 – I have heard non-resistants ridiculed, but nations need non-resistance with a witness.  Rulers declare war at pleasure and then expect the people, without resistance, inquiry, or reflection, to submit and go forth to kill and be killed.  Here is non-resistance with a vengeance!  Submission not only to the endurance of evil, but to the perpetration of the most atrocious crimes!– Samuel E. Coues.

July 12 – Until 1806, when I moved from Hartford to New York, I do not recollect that I ever found an individual who did not advocate defense with carnal weapons.  In New York I met with two persons, beside those who belonged to the Society of Friends, who advocated pacific sentiments.  I continued my inquiries and investigations until 1808.  I was then visited with the spotted fever and was so low that, at one time, my physician informed me that I should probably live but a few hours.  In this situation, my mind was calm and lucid.  The question of war and self-defense came in review before my mind, and, in the light of the Gospel, I had not a remaining doubt of the unlawfulness of all kinds of carnal warfare.– David L. Dodge.

July 13 – Can anyone deny that our Lord’s plain precept, “Love your enemies," virtually abolishes the warfare of the world, both for individuals and for nations?  Is it possible for us to love our enemies, and to simultaneously destroy them?– Joseph John Gurney.

July 14 – War adds to suffering the unutterable weight of crime.– *William E. Channing.

July 15 – When the inhabitants of Sumatra killed three of our seamen, our government sent out a frigate to chastise that nation, punishing the innocent with, or rather instead of, the guilty.  But when two of our beloved Christian ministers were murdered – Lyman and Munson, who visited Sumatra to carry the Gospel to that benighted nation – why didn’t the government send out another force to chastise them?  The very supposition strikes the reader with surprise.  But why does it?  It is because every man, almost instinctively, perceives the discrepancy between war and Christianity.  As well might the devil unite with Christ, as war with his religion.  It would be utterly incongruous, and our consciences tell us so.  Otherwise, we should as soon think of defending our missionaries, or avenging their death by the sword, as we should of doing the same thing for our seamen. – William Ladd.

July 16 – The Prince of Peace is the God Incarnate.  No man, by reading the New Testament, could ever arrive at the abstract idea of war.  And a man might search from one end of the New Testament to the other, and not find in the whole compass of its instructions one precept to guide the Christian in his war duties. – *Mackenzie.

July 17 – As a member of the universal church of love and brotherhood, I cannot but declare my most vigorous opposition against war in all its forms.  I have come to a Christian country in order to study all the varied and numerous phases of Christian thought, feeling, and action; but I must say, candidly, I cannot understand how Christians, as Christians, can fight so brutally as they often do.  As a Hindu, I cannot understand.  I look upon it as a great anomaly in Christendom, how, year after year, the most deadly weapons and engines of torture and war are being invented in order to carry the art of slaughtering our brother man to perfection.  These are barbarities – brutal things which have cast a slur upon a Christian nation, and which, for the honor of a Christian nation, ought to be removed immediately.  I really cannot tell how the followers of the Prince of Peace can ever go to war.  I cannot, for one moment, believe that men can live and die as true Christians without doing all in their power to check and arrest the growth and spirit of war.  The demon of war must be crushed down immediately and in every possible way.  Oh, for the day when the din of battle shall no longer be heard upon the earth! – baboo keshub chunder sen.

July 18 – The truth is, if nations learn war and prepare for war, they will have war.  If they study the things that make for peace, and prepare for peace, they will have peace.  Is it not high time for them to begin in good earnest the study of and the preparation for peace? – *James B. Miles.

July 19 – All the tendencies of war go to depress, into insignificance, individual virtue and intelligence, and, in the general effervescence of society, the most vile ingredients frequently attain a scum-like eminence.  The effervescence of society perturbs, but does not purify.  War renders the mass of society unsettled, polluted, and corrupt. – William M. Holland.

July 20 – Peace is the hope of liberty; peace, consecrated as the standing fundamental policy of the world. – Hugh S. Legare.

July 21 – Educate for peace, not for war.  Give Jesus and his apostles as instructors and models.  The virtues of Jesus Christ are the very reverse of what are called the heroic virtues of classic antiquity.  Give the education of peace to the religion of peace, and its victory is sure.  Give the education of war and violence to it, the influence of heathen heroism and glory, and while these prevail it can never conquer.  The lion and the lamb do indeed lie down together, but the lamb is the slave or the victim of the lion.  Christianity has been the victim of war and the warrior.  And why?  Because its professors, and above all its holy ministry, have not vindicated its authority against war and the warrior in every form, cost what it might.  They have not held property, life, liberty, and character as nothing in comparison with fidelity to the peace principles of Jesus Christ. – Thomas S. Grimke.

July 22 – Instead of listening to the counsels of Divine Mercy and concurring in the design of a kingdom of heaven set up on earth in righteousness, peace, and joy, the spirit of warlike discord tends to bury every such idea.  It tends rather to set up something like a kingdom of hell and a reign of violence, where destruction is the grand enterprise, where the means of death and desolation are cultivated as a science, where invention is twisted to produce ruin, and where the performance of it is ennobled by public applause. – *Richard Cecil.

July 23 – There are now (January 1870) more than five millions of men in the standing armies of Europe, and these men are suffering a bondage worse than the slaves of South Carolina or Alabama ever knew. – William G. Hubbard.

July 24 – What curse is so dire that this one – war – must be embraced as its only and better alternative?  Ah, sin has caused many an evil to our race, but none that requires so terrible a remedy.  It has not brought us to such straits that war has become one of the necessaries of life.  Men have suffered for the want of peace, but never for the want of war. – *Joseph A. Collier.

July 25 –

Now let mankind no more complain

Of war, or mad ambition’s reign;

Themselves encourage, foster, feed

The hydra ‘neath whose fangs they bleed.

Withhold the meed of high renown;

Pull the triumphal column down;

The trophied arch, the sculptured bust,

And hurl the banner in the dust.

Mark with the brand of infamy

Each bloodstained name in history;

Guard ardent youth against the verse

Where bards with praise their deeds rehearse.

Let not the bold historic page

Infect their souls with glory’s rage;

Nor, whilst their breasts with life are warm

Thrill with the war-song’s wakening charm.

And laurels will turn sear and brown,

Will wither on the conqueror’s crown,

For ‘tis not love of slaughter draws

The warrior’s sword – ’tis fame, applause.

These are the laurels that lead him out;

’Tis glory wakes the battle shout;

And oft less cruel they who roam

To fight than he who keeps at home.

– Thomas Bailey.

July 26 – What would be said to you by an army, were you to exhort them, upon the eve of a battle, to love their enemies?  Would not many a lip of scorn be curled?  Would not the commander order you to be seized for preaching treason to his troops?  I ask, where in the code of war do you find the broad, deep, unbounded love of the New Testament inculcated to the soldiery? – *Rufus P. Stebbins.

July 27 – Our Messiah, when he comes, will establish a system of mercy, peace, and kindness upon earth; while among you Christians, nothing but disputes, animosities, and cruelties mark your passage through the world.  If the prophets of our Sacred Volume speak true, the conduct of man toward his fellows will be the reverse of what it is now: every man shall sit under his own vine and fig-tree, nation shall not lift sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more, the wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and a little child shall lead them.  Has this happy period, this golden era of peace and private love, ever yet been witnessed?  Speak, Christian: has it been once seen through the last 1800 years? – zecker lacharchan[7]

July 28 – It has been said, “Make men Christians and you make them peace men, and you cannot do it before.”  There is, it must be confessed, a plausibility in this reasoning, and there is a degree of truth in it.  But it is fundamentally and fatally deceptive, if it is designed to quash the efforts of the Peace Society or to detract from its paramount importance.  Leave this question, in its abstract principle, undiscussed and unsettled before the world, and Christian nations will still terminate their differences by the sword and at the mouth of the cannon – and in all good conscience before God. – *Calvin Colton.

July 29 – If people had never seen war kindled in countries and between neighboring nations, they could hardly believe that men would engage in battle for another.  Let us pray to God, not for the destruction of our enemies, who are still our brethren, equally with ourselves through the purchase of our dear Redeemer’s blood, but for reconciliation with them. – anthony benezet.

July 30 – The spirit of war is in direct hostility to that of Christianity.  It demolishes what Christ builds up, and builds up what Christ demolishes.  Woe to the peaceful and benign religion of Jesus when the demon, War, rides through the land on his red horse.  It is unknown in history that the religion of Jesus has prospered in war.  The noise and tumult of war drown the voice of conscience and the voice of God.  Eternity is forgotten. – *Hubbard Winslow.

July 31 – Nothing can be worse than the general feeling on the subject of war.  The church, the state, the ruling few, the subject many – all seem to have combined in order to patronize vice and crime in their very widest sphere of evil. – Jeremy Bentham.

AUGUST

August 1 – Whatever may be done by the cradle-side or the hearthstone to promote the spirit of peace and amity, let us do.  Let us breathe into unfolding infancy the soul of love.  Let us touch for our daughters the key-tone of the angel’s song.  Let us point our young sons to the rock of St. Helena,[8] and tell them that the glory of the warrior is but remorse when God takes away the soul. – Lydia H. Sigourney.

August 2 – Let Christians say to war-making rulers, “We cannot, we dare not, lend the least approval to this wholesale butchery of mankind.  We believe it to be the climax of human wickedness, and can have no share in its sins.  We must, in conscience, teach all under our care or influence to hold it in the deepest abhorrence.  We will write against it, preach against it, talk against it, pray against it, and bear our testimony against it through life and in death.  No demands, threats, or tortures shall turn us from this purpose.  You may make us martyrs to our faith, but never recreants or traitors!  Seize, if you will, our property, load us with chains, and drag us to prison or the gallows.  We will offer our necks to the halter and bare our bosoms to your steel, but never will we stain our consciences and peril our souls by aiding in this work of pillage, murder, and conflagration.”  Such a stand, taken by the church, would surely and speedily remove the disgrace of war from our religion, and ere long sweep the custom itself from every land where the influence of Christianity is predominant. – *George C. Beckwith.

August 3 – Christians have changed their swords and lances into instruments of peace, and they know not how to fight. – irenaeus.

August 4 – A more fatal error was perhaps never adopted by a rational being than that which supposes all the guilt of a war is to be imputed to the party that was first in offending – an error which is resounded through every land as though it were unquestionable truth.  But where is the man of common sense so ignorant as not to know that the doctrine is false when thus applied?  It is very common, in the course of a contention, that the first offender is, on the whole, less guilty than his antagonist.  If the principle were correct, a man might innocently take the life of his neighbor in revenge for one reproachful word.  Yet this monstrous doctrine has been popular with the rulers of Christian nations, and with the greater portion of their subjects.  On this principle, men have indulged the worst passions and perpetrated the worst crimes that ever disgraced the human character. – *Noah Worcester.

August 5 – Evil is evil, sin is sin, and the consequences cannot alter the moral complexion of an act.  The Infinite Providence, in which all worlds are embosomed, may work a greater good than man thought of out of the bitter woes of war, but God’s goodness, instead of excusing our wickedness, only makes it appear the more guilty and shocking. – *A. A. Livermore.

August 6 – Let the following sentence be inscribed in letters of gold over the doors of every statehouse and courthouse in the United States: “The Son of man came not to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.” – Benjamin Rush.

August 7 –

Oh! First of human blessings and supreme,

Fair Peace!  How lovely, how delightful you are!

By whose wide tie the kindred sons of men

Like brothers live in amity combined

With unsuspicious faith, while honest toil

Gives every joy, and to those joys a right,

Which idle, barbarous rapine but usurps.

Oh, Peace!  You source and soul of social life,

Beneath whose calm, inspiring influence

Science his views enlarges, Art refines,

And swelling Commerce opens all her ports.

Blest be the man divine that gives you to us!

Who bids the trumpet hush his horrid call,

Nor blow the giddy nations into rage;

And every vigor from the work of death

To grateful industry converting, makes

The country flourish and the city smile.

– James Thomson.

August 8 – The peace policy is a Christian duty.  The precepts of our Lord on this subject are as explicit and strong as language can make them: “Resist not evil,” “Love your enemies,” “Do good to those who hate you,” etc.  Vain is the attempt to explain away the force of these injunctions by making them figurative and by setting against them the faithless instincts of fear or the depraved promptings of resentment.  The most unbounded licentiousness and the grossest vices might be advocated on such grounds.  It is equally idle to say these precepts, given for private Christians, are not applicable to nations, unless it should be maintained that men, acting in a political capacity, are not subject to the authority of God. – Joshua P. Blanchard.

August 9 – In 1745, during the war between the French and the English, one John Haywood was seized with sudden illness and carried to the hospital.  The battle of Fontenoy occurred during his sickness.  A young man was brought in wounded and placed on a bed near Haywood.  He was in great mental agony, loudly and continually bewailing his departure from his principles.  Haywood at last called to him, “Young man, what are your principles?”  He said that he was brought up in the Society of Friends.  “But,” repeated Haywood, “what are your principles?”  He then explained that the principles of Friends were against wars and fighting, and not to kill but to love your enemies.  Conviction of the excellence of these principles was sealed upon Haywood’s mind.  He recovered and returned to the camp, and on a day of great parade, to the utter astonishment of the soldiery, he stepped forward out of the rank and laid down his gun.  The amazement was heightened when two others, with whom there had been no collusion, also stepped forward and laid down their guns.  They were placed under arrest.  The sentence of death was passed upon them by a court-martial.  Haywood was visited and urged to retract, with promises of pardon.  He told them he was ready to lay down his life.  He was convinced that war was inconsistent with Christianity, and he could not retract.  The time of execution came.  Their old comrades pointed their muskets and took aim, waiting the command to fire, while they, the most tranquil of all present, were strengthened from heaven as if by spirits sent forth to minister to those who shall be heirs of salvation.  At that moment their pardon was proclaimed.  Their case having been presented to King George II, he gave orders that they should be tested to the very last.  “But,” said he, “God forbid that any man should be put to death for conscience sake under my reign.”  Haywood afterward narrated that he was already in heavenly places, his soul being filled with peace and ready to depart.  He returned to England, joined the Quakers, became an eminent minister, and died at a good old age. – William J. Allinson.

August 10 – Christian men and women seem to undergo an entire change of nature under the influence of the war-spirit.  The forgiving become resentful, the gentle are violent, the kind malignant, and the peaceful warlike. – *E. B. Hall.

August 11 – Who can contemplate practical exemplification of Christian non-resistance and not be ravished with the excellence and loveliness of the sublime doctrine?  Can we turn around and gaze on the battlefield, the hospital of mangled mortality, the gaudy military parade, or into the retaliations and endless quarrels of a world infatuated with resisting violence?  Can we look on these things without heart-sickness and disgust?  “Oh, my soul, do not enter into their secret; my honor, do not be united with their assembly.”  How base, despicable, and abhorrent are they all, compared to the moral bravery, the glorious self-sacrifice, and the life-preserving, soul-redeeming works of genuine Christianity. – Friends’ Review.

August 12 – If there be anything clear in scripture, it does seem to me that it is for a Christian to have nothing to do with carnal weapons.  And how it is that the great mass of Christendom does not see this, I cannot understand.  Purely, it must be through the blinding influences of the society in which the Christian church is cast. – *Charles H. Spurgeon.

August 13 – The spirit of the age tends to peace.  He is not the friend of man who would not do all that lies in him to give force and energy to this spirit, and who would not rejoice to see it infuse itself into the councils of nations. – William L. Marcy.

August 14 – The greatest curse that can be entailed on mankind is a state of war.  All the atrocious crimes committed in years of peace, and all that is spent in peace by the secret corruptions or by the thoughtless extravagance of nations, are mere trifles compared with the gigantic evils that stalk over this world in a state of war.  God is forgotten in war, and every principle of Christianity is trampled upon. – Sidney Smith.

August 15 – Tell not man of impossibilities, when human improvement is the theme.  Nothing can be impossible which may be effected by human will.  Why should not war be abolished?  This total abolition of war is an improvement in the condition of man, entirely dependent on his own will.  The ills of war are all of his own creation. – John Quincy Adams.

August 16 – We hold many errors yet.  We have far, very far to go before we arrive at the purity of the early church, when Christians did not take the sword, either for offense or defense.  War was almost the first error that crept into the church, and it let in a legion of others.  War must be banished from the church before it can expel the others. – William Ladd.

August 17 – War is the strongest hold of Satan on this earth.  To destroy it we have only to arouse the Church from her lethargy.  What is the practical duty of the Church in this regard?  To place war on the blackest catalogues of crimes, to denounce it with all the most awful penalties of religion, and to ordain that no church-member can in any shape or manner participate in war or warlike preparations, or in any acts favorable or accessory to war, without incurring her censure and receiving the severest penalties of her discipline.  Let it be proclaimed, unmistakably, that no man can be at the same time a soldier and a member of the church.  I charge it upon a blind and slumbering church, that it has not educated its own members and the community aright on this matter.  It has taught men that they can be, at the same time, warriors and followers of the Prince of Peace. – Thomas Chase.

August 18 – Nearly all sects, parties, and classes, not excepting professed reformers, are enthusiastic for the sword, rifle, and bayonet as indispensable means of overcoming evil-doers and bettering the condition of this wicked world.  Treasures enough have been expended to render the earth a paradise of intelligence, virtue, and beauty.  Enough human beings have been slain to people twenty such earths.  When will the morals of the world be so amended, under the administration of its present death-dealing leaders, that peace will become practicable?  Absolutely never! – Jonathan Whipple.

August 19 – War is a tornado that gathers into itself all the ailments of human passions and prejudices as it sweeps over the scene of its fury.  It is a tempest full of the lightning and thunder, of wild and mad indignation.  All the strong and impetuous forces of hate, anger, and jealousy, and all the worst vices of a nation’s mind are drawn into it.  Then, all the romantic histories and ambitions of military fame, the unreasoning impulses of patriotism, and lower ideas and interests give a kind of variegated halo of attraction to the gathering storm. – Elihu Burritt.

August 20 – The Quaker lecturer, William G. Hubbard, who discourses on the subject of Peace, has carried the war into this city, the place where the biggest guns are forged.  The strongest point of Mr. Hubbard is his practical one.  The successful existence of the Quaker sect for two centuries proves, he claims, that the non-resistant doctrine is practicable and applicable to the conditions of human life at the present time.  If the Quakers can act upon it, and not only live but flourish thereby, the rest of the world can safely do likewise, if it will.  This is a tough nut for Christians to crack, we think. – Pittsburg Dispatch, January 13, 1870.

August 21 – If it be said that Christianity allows to individuals some degree and kind of resistance, and that some resistance is therefore lawful for states, we do not deny it.  But if it be said that the degree of lawful resistance extends to the slaughtering of our fellow Christians, and that it extends to war, we do deny it.  We say that the rules of Christianity cannot, by any possible latitude of interpretation, be made to extend to it. – Jonathan Dymond.

August 22 – Might not historians be more useful if they distinctly related the wickedness and miseries of war?  With alluring eloquence and all the magic charms of style, they describe the march of armies, the splendor of their arms, and the valor of their commanders.  In all the pomp of lighthearted description, the field of action rises in distant view.  The columns move; the banners wave.  We hear the thunders of the battle, and the shout of victory.  The grandeur of the exploits delight the imagination, and you applaud the murderers of your brethren.  But you do not hear the cries of the wounded or see the shattered limbs, the mangled bodies, and the convulsive agonies of the dying. – *Elijah Parish.

August 23 – By the exertions of wise and good men, the feudal system, the inquisition, the slave trade, and many other evils have been nearly banished from the earth.  By the same means, we may confidently anticipate that God will put an end to war, a much greater evil than all those evils combined.  But to expect that wars will cease without our endeavors is as futile as to expect to become wise without using the necessary means to attain wisdom. – Thomas Thrush.

August 24 – Why fold our arms and wait for a miracle to remove war, when we take a different course in respect to other great evils that result from human choice?  Why expect the Gospel, in its ordinary ministrations, to do the work, when this has not excluded war hitherto from the brightest spots in Christendom?  On what principle will it do more for all the earth in future than it has yet done for the nations embracing it, unless some specific measures are taken to show its bearing on this evil? – *Cyrus Yale.

August 25 – It is an indelible disgrace to nations in modern times, which designate themselves as civilized and enlightened, that such a mode of settling disputes should be resorted to as that of warfare.  It is glaringly unchristian.  It is atrocious and inhuman.  It is a violation of the fundamental laws that unite the moral universe.  It is subversive of the wealth and prosperity of nations.  And, it carries an absurdity in the very idea of it. – Thomas Dick.

August 26 – No brother can win “glory” from the death of a brother.  Cain won no “glory” when he slew Abel; nor would Abel have won “glory” had he, in the exercise of strict self-defense, succeeded in slaying the wicked Cain.  The soul recoils in horror from the thought of praise or honor as the reward of any such melancholy, hateful success.  And what is true of a contest between two brothers is equally true of a contest between many.  No army can win glory by dealing death or defeat to an army of brothers.  Since all men are brothers, the irresistible consequence is that all war must be fratricidal.  And can glory come from fratricide?  No!  Tell me not, then, of the homage that the world yet offers to the military commander.  Tell me not of the “glory” of war.  Tell me not of the “honor” or “fame” won on its murderous field.  All is vanity.  It is a blood-red phantom, sure to fade and disappear.  Nobler aims, by nobler means, shall fill the soul.  A new standard of excellence shall prevail, and honor, divorced from all deeds of blood, shall become the inseparable attendant of good works alone.  Far better, then, shall it be, even in the judgment of this world, to have been a doorkeeper in the house of Peace, than the proudest dweller in the tents of War. – Charles Sumner.

August 27 –

Down the dark future, through long generations,

The echoing sounds grow fainter and then cease;

And like a bell with solemn, sweet vibrations,

I hear once more the voice of Christ say “Peace!”

Peace!  And no longer from its brazen portals

The blast of War’s great organ shakes the skies,

But beautiful as songs of the immortals

The holy melodies of love arise.

– Henry W. Longfellow.

August 28 – War is directly contrary to the whole scope and spirit of the Gospel. – *Heman Humphrey.

August 29 – Robert Yowitt, Esq. – Dear sir: Perhaps you may remember a few words of conversation between us, on the subject of Peace, when casually meeting un the street a little while ago.  At your request I promised to think of it, and now I have to say that I have thought, prayed, read, and conversed on the subject.  The result is, a deep, solid, and comfortable persuasion that war, in every shape, is contrary to the spirit and precepts of the Gospel of Christ.  In adopting the principle of peace, I enjoy an increase of inward peace, and I feel as if I had advanced a step in the knowledge of Christ.  When the lovely principle of peace had nearly captivated my own mind, I thought it right to bring it before my missionary brethren, as a scripture subject deserving inquiry.  We entered into it with spirit, but most thought that nothing was more easily defended than defensive war.  After the first meeting, two or three of us made a full surrender, and after the next meeting, two or three more.  I heartily wish that many others, through your means, may derive as much light and comfort as my brethren and myself by having their attention drawn to the subject.  I am, dear sir, very respectfully, yours. – Samuel Barbour, January 27, 1844.

August 30 – The Christian, having the peace of the Prince of Peace in his conscience and in his heart, is disposed to follow peace with all men.  Peace is his legacy and his employment, and to be peaceable and a peacemaker are his distinguished characteristics. – Thomas Scott.

August 31 – Those who have power over their own spirits have a dominion greater than that of empires. – William Penn.

SEPTEMBER

September 1 – Give me the money that has been spent in war, and I will purchase every foot of land on the globe.  I will clothe every man, woman, and child in attire that kings and queens would be proud of.  I will build a schoolhouse upon every hillside and in every valley over the habitable earth, and I will supply that schoolhouse with a competent teacher.  I will build an academy in every town and a college in every state, and fill them with able professors.  I will crown every hill with a church consecrated to the promulgation of the Gospel of Peace.  I will support, in its pulpit, an able teacher of righteousness so that, on every Sabbath morning around the earth, the bells on one hill should answer to the bells on another, and the voice of prayer and the song of praise should ascend like a universal sacrifice to heaven. – *Rufus P. Stebbins.

September 2 – Morality and religion forbid war in its motives, conduct, and consequences. – *Vicesimus Knox.

September 3 – I hail the Peace Society as the herald of the Prince of Peace.  I consider it as resembling John the Baptist, going forth in the wilderness of this world, crying, “Prepare the way of the Lord!  Make straight a highway for our God in the desert!”  Reason, humanity, and revelation all speak in favor of the object that the Peace Society has in view.  The Society is worthy the support of every Christian, and that there are not more Christians belonging to it is to their shame and their disgrace.  I believe it arises from want of thought.  Not too long ago, I had myself traveled unmoved over fields of slaughter, and had no other reflections arising from it than those of  “glory.” – *Ingram Cobbin.

September 4 – The trade of war is calculated to degrade man as an immortal being and to obliterate the broad line of distinction, drawn by the hand of our Master, between human beings and the inferior ranks of animated nature.  Let a person become habituated to see human bodies mangled and trampled under foot, or treated with as little ceremony as the carcasses of slaughtered herds, and he imperceptibly forms a habit of depreciating the character of man.  He speaks of hundreds or thousands, who fell in battle, with as little emotion as he would mention the same number of trees that had been cut down in a forest. – *Jesse Appleton.

September 5 – Some deeds, which are considered as villainous while capable of being prevented, become honorable and glorious when they rise above the control of law.  Enormities forbidden in private persons are actually required by legislatures, and every species of barbarity are authorized by decrees of the senate and votes of the people.[9] – seneca.

September 6 – A peace man inquired of a military officer, “Could you, after a battle in which you had stained your hands with the blood of your brethren, ask God to forgive you as you had forgiven your enemies?”  “I am not a Christian,” said he, “nor do I profess to forgive the wrongs done to me and my country.  But I know I would be a hypocrite and a blasphemer, if I should ask God to forgive me as I had forgiven my enemies, after I had been killing them.  When I ask God to forgive me as I have forgiven my enemies, I will cease both to kill them and to encourage others in doing so.” – Book of Peace.

September 7 –

O no, no – let me lie

Not on a field of battle when I die!

Nor let the blood-stained knife

That I have drawn against a brother’s life

Be in my hand when Death

Thunders along, and tramples me beneath

His heavy squadron’s heels

Or the gory felloes of his cannon’s wheels.

From such a dying bed,

Though o’er it float the stripes of white and red

And the bald eagle brings

The clustering stars upon his spreading wings

To sparkle in my sight,

Oh, never let my spirit take its flight.

– *John Pierpont.

September 8 – The very idea of war involves the suffering of those who are engaged in it.  Its direct and only object is to bring an enemy to terms by the injuries it does to him. – Elisha B. Perkins.

September 9 – Following peace with all men will tend to preserve to us the comfort of a peaceable and friendly society.  Men seldom quarrel long when they quarrel alone.  A man of true greatness of mind is ashamed to betray that littleness of spirit which is the origin of those turbulent measures which break the peace of the world.  The proud, restless disturbers of the world may be admired and flattered as heroes and worthies.  But God, who views the tempers and actions of men with an impartial eye, and judges of them according to their true nature and worth, esteems the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit as of great price. – *Moses Hemmenway.

September 10 – War brings into play all the worst passions of our nature.  It is followed by fraud, robbery, rapine, and unbridled licentiousness and cruelty.  Above all, it tramples on the sacredness of human life, mocks the doctrine of man’s immortality, and is full of murder. – Joseph John Gurney.

September 11 – Let your voice, wherever you are, be lifted up to spread the principle of “Peace on earth.”  Blessed principle!  You cannot err in trying to spread its influence.  You cannot err in lending your aid to banish war from the earth – a monster, of pride, corruption, destructiveness, misery, and murder.  Take your stand as the advocate of peace.  Give no countenance to a system that could not continue a moment, were the spirit and precepts of Christianity to prevail on earth.  Let all around you understand that you are as conscientiously peaceful as you are honest or pure. – *Howard Malcom.

September 12 – It is but too evident, that nominal Christians, and even great numbers of real Christians, are not duly impressed with the deep criminality and great enormity of the war spirit.  Instead of bearing testimony against it by all proper means and on every suitable occasion, they partake of the general and murderous enthusiasm.  They cherish the same antipathies and are actuated by the same vengeful, proud, ambitious spirit as the people of the world.  They defend the wars that arise as just and necessary, read the details of battles as avidly, boast of the victories that are obtained with as much exultation, and enter as deeply into all the ardor of the hostile passions.  It is as though they were the worshipers of Mars, the god of war, instead of Jehovah, the God of love. – *John Angel James.

September 13 – The question of Abner to Joab three thousand years ago, “Shall the sword devour forever?” still waits for a negative answer.  Christianity, through nearly nineteen centuries of struggle and conflict to gain the victory, has utterly failed to put down war.  Mars, the grim war-god, still triumphs over Jesus the meek Pacificator.  Nations, claiming him as their Lawgiver and Master, without a single exception, still rush to mutual slaughter as recklessly and unscrupulously as they had done before God clearly revealed himself to men and promulgated his law of peace and love.  The great American Republic, in which it is claimed that the Christian religion is more rife and potential than in any other, is still smoking from the volcanic fires of one of the bloodiest wars that has ever distressed humanity.  While, therefore, it must be admitted that the Cross has sadly failed to establish peace over the sword, the alternative is inevitable: either this impotency is inherent and constitutional, or the religion of the New Testament has not been faithfully applied as an adequate and sovereign antidote to the sin and calamities of war.  Faith accepts the latter alternative, and bids our drooping hopes to revive. – Francis Gillette.

September 14 – Tell me, is the character of the warrior to be admired?  Or, rather, can it be loved?  Is not he in reality the truest patriot who fills up his station in private life well – he who loves and promotes peace, both public and private? – Jane Taylor.

September 15 – I have always found that there is no more dependence on the stability of the peace principles of a man who holds that any war is consistent with the Gospel, than there is in the reformation of an inebriate who holds to the necessity of occasional drinking. – William Ladd.

September 16 – War is necessary only as every other sin is necessary.  War is murder.  No species of plausible reasoning can prove it to be other than a clear violation of the command, “You shall not kill.”  The facts that it is deliberate, and sanctioned by the custom and authority of a nation, so far from palliating its guilt, only increase it. – *Joseph A. Collier.

September 17 – Christianity and War!  What those words represent can never be forced into union.  The one is a constellation of virtues; the other, a mass of crimes.  The Christian who is faithful to his religion has nothing to do with war but to lament it, to protest against it, and to join his prayers and efforts for its abolition.  In a military camp, he cannot do to others as he would want them to do to him, and therefore he has no business in a camp.  He worships the God of peace and prays for the universal extension of peace.  Such prayers, with the weapons of death in his hands, would be blasphemy. – John Bevans.

September 18 – Lying, murder, the deceiving of men to their injury, forcibly taking their property from them, mutilating their bodies, destroying their lives – all of this is accursed of God.  And do not these very acts, committed for gain and advantage, constitute war?  Our reasoning, therefore, brings us to the conclusion that war, in no case whatever, is justifiable at the bar of God, for the very argument, the only one ever offered in its defense – its necessity for our own good – is its condemnation. – Samuel E. Coues.

September 19 – It passes my comprehension how any man can talk glibly of war.  Is war either a rational or a Christian way of settling the differences, which, so long as there are many men of many minds, must occasionally fall out between nations as between families or individual men?  No man but a lunatic would say that it is.  The issues of a battle or campaign never settle who is the wronged and who the wrong-doer, no more than in some field where two bulls are goring each other to death. – *Thomas Guthrie.

September 20 – Love endures all things.  This completes the character of one who is truly merciful.  He cannot only do, but also suffer all things through Christ who strengthened him.  All he suffers does not destroy his love or impair it in the least.  It triumphs over all.  It never fails.  You may bemoan the loss of true, genuine love in the world – lost, indeed!  You may well say, but not in the ancient sense, “See how these Christians love one another!”  These Christian kingdoms tear out each other’s bowels and desolate one another with fire and sword!  These Christian armies quickly send each other by thousands and tens of thousands into hell!  Who follows only after the things that make for peace, and things with which one may edify another?  Oh God!  How long shall your promise fail?  Fear not, little flock; surely the inhabitants of the earth shall learn righteousness.  “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war any more.” – *John Wesley.

September 21 – War, that scourge and crime which includes all others.  Put together all the vices of all ages and places, and never will they come up to the mischiefs and enormities of a single campaign.  You bungling soul-physicians!  To bellow for an hour or more against a few flea-bites, and not say a word against that horrid distemper which tears us to pieces!  Burn your books, you moralizing philosophers!  Of what avail is humanity, benevolence, modesty, temperance, mildness, discretion, and piety, when half a pound of lead shatters my body!  When I expire under unspeakable pains and amidst thousands in the same miserable condition!  When my eyes, at their last opening, see my native town all in a blaze, and the last sounds I hear are the shrieks and groans of women and children expiring among the ruins![10] – voltaire.

September 22 – The New Testament breathes the notes of peace and love.  It enforces forbearance, patience, and forgiveness.  Men – and Christian men – are slow to admit this, though David Hume, with his keen eye, saw the bearings of the Gospel on war.  He gives us to understand that he despised the Gospel because it inculcated the mean virtue of meekness, and because it would not permit its adherents to fight for their rights.  It would have been happy for the world if Christian nations, churches, and ministers had seen the truth with half the clarity of that arch-foe of revelation.  Then, Christians would not be reproached as being the most sanguinary warriors who ever fought.  The Jew would not tauntingly say, “The Messiah has not come, for the Messiah is the Prince of Peace.” – *George Trade.

September 23 –

Fountain of life, Omnipotent, Supreme,

Robed in perfection, crowned with glory’s beam,

Oh, send on earth your consecrated dove

To bear the sacred olive from above;

Restore again the blest, the halcyon time,

The festal harmony of nature’s prime;

Bid truth and justice once again appear,

And spread their sunshine o’er this mundane sphere;

Bright in their path let wreaths unfailing bloom,

Transcendent light their hallowed fane illume;

Bid war and anarchy forever cease,

And kindred seraphs rear the shrine of Peace.

Brothers, once more; let men her empire own,

And realms and monarchs bend before the throne,

While circling rays of angel mercy shed

Eternal haloes round her sainted head.

– Felicia Hemans.

September 24 – Let the Christians of Christendom say to the world, that all war is a vast and unmitigated violation of the spirit and precepts of the Gospel, and the principalities and powers of the earth would soon bow to the name of Jesus, and nations would learn war no more. – Elihu Burritt.

September 25 – The only warrior, if I may venture the term, whom Christ acknowledges, is the martyr. – Thomas S. Grimke.

September 26 – Philanthropy is looking mournfully on fields of martial slaughter and the sufferings, privations, sorrows, and countless evils of war.  It now sees that the assertion of national safety, rights, and honor has always been the pretense for the perpetration of all these horrors.  Domestic society has suffered more from patriot defenders than from foreign foes. – Joshua P. Blanchard.

September 27 – The war with Russia gave us a saint: Captain Hedley Vicars, a young man, always talking about wanting to “have a brush with the Russians.”  He could piously say, “Amidst the carnage of the battlefield, after the roar of the cannon has ceased and the deadly strife of war is over, there are wounded men who have souls to save, and dying men to be told to look to Jesus.”  Very cool, this!  The man who has been helping with all his might to make “the carnage and the deadly strife,” just deliberately plunges his sword into his brother, and then kneels and asks him to look to Jesus.  This young saint did run his sword through two of his fellow beings, and was in the act of killing a third when he himself was cut down.  If the two men whose lives he took were not converted, he sent them to the bar of God in their sins.  If they were converted, he smote two of God’s children.  Yet, ministers and teachers in Sabbath schools have held up this man of blood as an example of Christian piety. – John Ashworth.

September 28 – War is an ordinance of man, pregnant with every evil.  War is a terror to those who do well by confounding in its punishment both the innocent and the guilty. – Thomas Clarkson.

September 29 – The nations called Christian are the most powerful on earth.  They profess the religion that alone prohibits war.  With them, therefore, rests the responsibility for the continuance of this most savage custom. – *Samuel J. May.

September 30 – Can any one suppose that the “martial spirit” is that “meek and quiet spirit which is, in the sight of God, of great price?” – *Noah Worcester.

OCTOBER

October 1 – Let any man reflect upon the amount of pecuniary expenditure, and the awful waste of human life that the wars of the last hundred years have occasioned, and then I will ask whether it is not self-evident that the one percent of this expense and suffering, if employed in the honest effort to render mankind wiser and better, would not, long before this time, have banished wars from the earth and rendered the civilized world like the Garden of Eden.  If this is true, it will follow that the cultivation of a military spirit is the cultivation of a great curse to a community. – *Francis Wayland.

October 2 – All the entertainment and talk of history are of almost nothing but fighting and killing.  The honor and renown that are bestowed on conquerors, who, for the most part, are mere butchers of mankind, mislead growing youth, who, by these means, come to think slaughters are the laudable business of mankind and the most heroic of virtues. – John Locke.

October 3 – To kill your enemy, whether in personal combat or in associated millions, is not to love Him. – *Titus Coan.

October 4 – Because I am a Christian, I have abandoned my profession of a soldier. – tarachus.

October 5 – Oh, God! we devoutly exclaim when we think of battle scenes.  Can this be the work of your human children, and of brothers?  Can the tender frames that were once borne at a mother’s breast make a living parapet against the cannon’s mouth?  Can the hand that once grasped a tenderer hand, and vowed the vow “for better or for worse,” swing the cleaving sword or urge the piercing bayonet?  War has brought all these horrors to pass. – *A. A. Livermore.

October 6 – It is among rulers as it is among individuals.  Few have the wisdom to acknowledge, or the courage to act, on the noble and lovely principles of Christian peace.  The battleship and the tented field, the sword and the cannon, the science and the stratagems of war – all are at once the symbols of power, the proofs of courage, the logic of statesmen, and the eloquence of patriots.  For myself, I trust that I hold with an inflexible conviction the sentiment that the character of the warrior, from any point of view, is unchristian, and in civil contest is absolutely and unchangeably anti-republican. – Thomas S. Grimke.

October 7 – The Indian revolt, when the Indians were trying to drive the invader out of their own country, furnished us with another war-saint, General Havelock.  Lord Hardinge said, “General Havelock was every inch a soldier.”  Mr. Brock, minister of Bloomsbury Chapel, London, said in a funeral sermon he preached, “ General Havelock was every inch a Christian,” and “godliness inlaid his entire character.”  Moved by conscience, Mr. Brock was forced to say that “the reconcilability of war with Christianity had been a moot point from the first day until now, but this is not the proper occasion on which to discuss such a question.”  No – stand aside, Christianity, until Mr. Brock glorifies General Havelock.  If a warrior can be every inch a Christian, if his whole life is inlaid with godliness, how can it be a moot point?  What can be more destructive of the plain teachings of the New Testament than that professing Christians, and even ministers of the Prince of Peace, can so basely prostitute their high calling, so miserably forget that they are ambassadors in Christ’s stead, as to elevate men of blood, men whose very calling, deliberately chosen, is diametrically opposed to the word of God? – John Ashworth.

October 8 – War inevitably produces a state of things most unfavorable to the advancement of knowledge.  Literature and science can flourish only amid the calm security of peace.  The war spirit awakens too much excitement, and brings ferocious passions into too powerful action, to allow cultivation of the intellect.  The public mind becomes a stormy sea, engulfing everything that cannot live in a tempest. – *Edward Hitchcock.

October 9 – I never heard a warrior attempt to justify war by an appeal to the law of love. – *Henry C. Wright.

October 10 –

But not by insulated precepts, strewn

Throughout the Gospel, war is proved to be

Unlawful.  That unlawfulness is shown

By Christianity’s whole tendency.

This should be happiness and harmony.

For all its doctrines uniformly prove

How genuine is its holy sympathy,

With peace and gentleness, and joy and love,

To all on earth below, and all in heaven above.

– Bernard Burton.

October 11 – I ask, are not all military establishments, particularly military academies, incitements to war?  Must they yet exist?  Where, then, shall they be established?  In our cities, where better principles of peace and commerce prevail; or near our colleges, to pervert the study of the liberal sciences and poison the waters of the sanctuary?  No!  Do not I hear you all say, “Rather let these seminaries of blood, these colleges of misery and murder, be erected far from the region of domestic felicity and the pleasant walks of social life, on some mountain’s lofty top, in the region of eternal winter, where the blossoms of spring are never seen, amid the brew of storms and the howling of tempests; or on the side of a smoking volcano, in the suburbs of death and destruction, where lightning flashes and thunder bursts.  There let the gloomy walls of the military academy rise.  Let tombs and graves and bones mark the path to this dismal spot.”  As these men of war proceed, instead of supplication and praise, let the war cry, the song of death, and the roar of artillery announce their morning toil and their evening rest.  Their passions, thoughts, studies, and dreams are stained with blood.  They are studying the volumes of death, deceptions, and stratagems of murder and destruction.  Instead of making men happy by cultivating the useful arts and extending the news of salvation, they are ripening their plots, sharpening their swords, and hardening their hearts to make themselves adept in the trade of blood and misery.  Most devoutly do we pray that the time may be hastened when these mansions, like Babylon, may be left desolate. – *Elijah Parish.

October 12 – The conduct and dispositions upon which Christ pronounced his solemn benedictions are exceedingly remarkable.  They are these, and in the following order: poor in spirit, mourning, meekness, desire of righteousness, mercy, purity of heart, peacemaking, and sufferance of persecution.  Now let the reader try whether he can propose eight other qualities that shall be more incongruous with war.  Of these benedictions, I think the most emphatic is that pronounced upon peacemakers.  “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.”  No man can receive higher praise or a higher title.  Can we believe that Christ, who distinguished the peacemakers with peculiar esteem, could have sanctioned his followers in destroying one another? – Jonathan Dymond.

October 13 – It is acknowledged by all that war is an evil and that it is by far the most terrible evil that has desolated our world.  Who that claims to be considered as a disciple of the Prince of Peace, who that professes to be a friend of the human race, can justify himself in withholding his aid from the attempts being made to free them from the terrible evils of war, which God declares shall be removed? – *Edward Payson.

October 14 – During the Revolutionary war, a church in Vermont near the Canada line, composed of members from both sides, sat down together at the Lord’s table on the Sabbath, and before the next Sabbath they were shooting and stabbing one another.  The communion was never refused to them by other churches, for the state sanctioned the murder and the churches conformed to the world.  Some may be startled at this, but do they not know that this is always the case?  What do we mean by “the communion of saints?”  Is it not the union of the Church and of the body and blood of Christ?  It is, therefore, one table and one sacrament.  Even though the communicants may be separated by ever so many oceans and continents, it signifies no more to the great Head of the Church than the aisles of the meetinghouse or the railings of the pews.  That war should be sanctioned by the Church of Christ implies awful guilt somewhere.  Even most men of the world think that all war is murder on one side or the other.  I believe that the law of Christ makes a cool and deliberate declaration of war to be deliberate and cold-blooded murder, on either side.  But the Church, as a body, stands aloof, and the millennium can never come so long as she does so.  In the mean time, all the blood that shall be shed will be found in the skirts of those professed followers of the Lamb, who countenance the soul-destroying customs of the world.  God has put it into the power of his Church to hush the storm of war whenever she chooses to exercise it, but that never can be done while the Church sanctions war.  I do not believe that it ever was the mind and will of Christ that his followers should ever engage in war on any emergency.  I do not believe that the same God, who sent his only Son into the world to suffer and die for the redemption of

precious souls, has ever, since that offering, authorized a custom which makes that sacrifice of no effect to millions who, but for war, might have been saved. – William Ladd.

October 15 – Will nations never devise a more rational umpire of differences than force?  War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong. – Thomas Jefferson.

October 16 – It is a most melancholy consideration that even the civilized world, and, I may almost say, the Christianized world, still continues to adopt the military life as an object of eager desire.  It is with pain that we see whole communities, disregarding their Christian character, highly applaud and reward with public honors and emoluments those who are foremost in butchering their fellow heirs of immortality. – Elias Boudinot.

October 17 – In the first two centuries, when Christianity was the purest, there are no Christian soldiers on record.  The war degeneracy of the church began very early in the third century, and went so far in the fourth that, under and after Constantine the Great, Christians engaged in war, and they generally have ever since. – Thomas Clarkson.

October 18 – While we are warriors, with all our pretensions to civilization, we are savages. – *Vicesimus Knox.

October 19 – War crushes, with a bloody heel, all beneficence, all happiness, all justice, and all that is godlike in man.  It suspends every commandment of the Decalogue.  It sets at naught every principle of the Gospel.  It silences all law, human as well as divine, except only that blasphemous code of its own: the Laws of War. – Charles Sumner.

October 20 – I abominate war as unchristian.  I hold it to be the greatest of human crimes.  I deem it to include all others – violence, blood, rapine, and fraud – everything that can deform the character, alter the nature, and debase the name of man. – Lord Brougham.

October 21 –  “Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example, that we should follow his steps.”  (1 Peter 2:21)  If we do not follow his example, of what use was it?  If we do follow it, it is certain we cannot avenge our own cause, or any other cause by violence.  And if we cannot do this without rejecting his example, it is equally certain we ought not to do it.  The example of Christ, his precepts, and the precepts of his apostles go conclusively to prove that war, with its multitude of inseparable crimes, both of spirit and of practice, is in no case reconcilable with the Gospel, but is strikingly opposed to the whole genius and tenor of the Gospel. – *Ezra B. Kellogg.

October 22 – The amazing inconsistency of war with Christianity will never be appreciated until the subject is thoroughly and dispassionately discussed; and discussed, too, in such a manner, with such ability, in such forms and to such an extent as shall compel the world to see its error.  And here is the point.  The public opinion of the world is entirely wrong; it must be radically changed.  Can this be done without a great, combined, mighty, and untiring effort?  The evil spirit that is to be vanquished is the ruling spirit of the world.  Everything valuable and precious on earth is in its power and liable to be desolated before its ravages. – *Calvin Colton.

October 23 – We read of twenty thousand men killed in a battle with no other feeling than that “it was a glorious victory.”  Twenty thousand, or ten thousand – what do we know of their suffering?  The hosts who perished are evidence of the completeness of the triumph.  Four or two figures give us no more sentiment of pain than one figure, while they add marvelously to the grandeur and splendor of the victory. – Jeremy Bentham.

October 24 – If God permitted national war, it would not invariably degrade the moral character of the nations who engage in it.  The discharge of duty – an act which God approves – never injures the cause of religion or reduces the morals of the people. – Samuel E.  Coues.

October 25 – The whole substance, genius, and tendency of Christianity is pacific.  The God whom we worship delights in mercy and is infinitely benevolent.  The character of Christ, who is our example no less than our atonement, is formed of all the meek and gentle virtues in the greatest perfection.  The precepts of Christian morality forbid wrath, anger, malice, and revenge of every kind or degree, and enjoin us, in no case, to render evil for evil.  Let any man think of the crimes committed, and the miseries inflicted by a single battle, and surely, if he has read only one of the Gospels or one of the Epistles, he must be convinced that a hatred of war is an essential feature of practical religion. – *John Angel James.

October 26 – There is a class of Christians who Judaize when Christ fails them; they go back to Moses.  “God commanded the Israelites to go to war, so we may fight.”  Admit the fact of the original command.  If the contrary is commanded, or clearly implied in Christianity, whom will you follow: Christ or Moses?  Furthermore, if this command to go to war is so urgently imperative or widely permissive, what shall be done with other commands to the Israelites that are equally, if not more explicit?  Will such Christians be consistent, and obey them all?  Here is one: “If a man has a stubborn son who will not obey the voice of his father, all the men of the city shall stone him with stones until he dies.”  Will our young men, who adhere to Moses as an authority in justification of war, also adhere to him as an authority for punishment of filial disobedience?  This illustration is of itself a sufficient refutation of the impotency and inconsistency of all Christian reasoning from the Old Testament in favor of war. – *Rufus P. Stebbins.

October 27 – Where is love in the battlefield?  Does its soft voice speak in the roar of artillery?  Does love aim the fatal shot and direct the bayonet to human hearts?  Does love wound, maim, and kill intelligent creatures of God, and hurl undying souls into perdition?  No, for “love does no harm to its neighbor.” – *Joseph A.  Collier.

October 28 –

Peace was the song the angels sang

When Jesus sought this vale of tears;

And sweet the heavenly prelude rang

To calm the watchful shepherds’ fears.

War is the word that man has spoke,

Convulsed by passions, dark and dread;

And Pride enforced a lawless yoke

Where the Gospel’s banner spread.

Peace was the prayer the Savior breathed,

When from our world his steps withdrew;

The gift he to his friends bequeathed,

With Calvary and the cross in view.

Redeemer, with adoring love

Our spirits take your rich bequest;

The watchword of the host above,

The passport to their realms of rest.

Lydia B. Sigourney.

October 29 – The pacific Lamb of God is named to excite in men the undaunted and unreflecting ferocity of wolves and tigers while these men are engaged in destroying such as he came to save.  Most sincerely do we hope that the time is at hand when the Christian religion will be better understood, and more clearly distinguished from the sanguinary religion of Muslims[11] and Pagans – when it will be known that the blood of Christ and the gracious promises of the Gospel were designed for nobler ends than that of encouraging men to fight and devour one another.  The crown of glory which the Messiah has promised is laid up for those who follow him – for those who “overcome evil with good” – and not for those who overcome by rendering evil for evil. – *Noah Worcester.

October 30 – What strained arguments are used to reconcile war with the Christian religion!  But, in my opinion, it is exceedingly clear that dueling, having better reasons for its barbarous violence, is more

justifiable than war, in which thousands go forth without any personal quarrel and massacre each other. – Dr. Johnson.

October 31 – It cannot be that war is a necessary evil.  It is a custom so unnatural and wasteful, so unwise and inhuman, at variance with the Gospel, opposed to the progress of Christianity, and greatly ruinous to souls.  If this is a necessary thing, the worst forms of sin are necessary. – *Cyrus Yale.

NOVEMBER

November 1 – If war is right for us, it must have been equally so for our Savior.  But can you conceive of the Prince of Peace, or one of his apostles, leading forth an army to their work of plunder, blood, and devastation?  Is there a Christian way of burning villages and plundering cities, of perpetrating the wholesale butcheries of the battlefield, and hurling thousands upon thousands of guilty souls into eternity?  Does the Gospel tell us how to do such things aright? – *George C. Beckwith.

November 2 – The example of Christ and his apostles affords a practical proof of the pacific efficacy of the Gospel and of the universal love it breathes to the human family.  Christian virtue can no more be bent from its firm and upright position, to suit the petty views of the cunning and malicious, or even the specious views of political expediency, than the main pillar of a temple can be bent from its perpendicular without endangering the ruin of the whole edifice.  The elements of peace are in their nature supremely virtuous; the elements of war are highly vicious.  There is nothing of seeming contempt which can rob the first of its excellence, nor of gorgeous display that can hide the deformity of the last and confer upon it real glory. – Thomas Hancock.

November 3 – Universal and permanent peace belongs to the laws of nature and of nature’s God, to the genius and vital spirit of Christianity, and to the liberty, justice, and prosperity of nations.  It is indispensable to the true interests of all mankind, and claims the prayers and united efforts of the human race. – John Quincy Adams.

November 4 –  “We no longer take up the sword against any nation, neither do we learn any more to make war.  We have become, for the sake of Jesus, the children of Peace. – origen.

November 5 – The demon of war may be advantageously assailed by many different weapons, and in different ways.  It may be useful to strip him of that deceitful luster by which thousands are dazzled and blinded, and expose the monster unveiled to the eye in all his naked deformity, steeped from head to foot in human gore, gorging his insatiable maw with the yet quivering limbs of mangled victims, and feasting his ears with the wailing of the disconsolate widows and their helpless orphans, while the flash of cannon, the glare of bombs, and the red blaze of cities wrapped in conflagration furnish the only light which illuminates his horrid banquet.  Such is in reality the idol whom the votaries of war adore.  Such is the Moloch on whose altars men have exultingly sacrificed, not hecatombs of beasts, but millions of their fellow creatures; on whose worshipers Beauty has lavished her smiles and Genius its eulogies; and whose horrid triumphs, fit only to be celebrated in the infernal world, painters, sculptors, poets, and historians have combined to surround with a blaze of glory and crown with immortality. – *Edward Payson.

November 6 – The strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast – ambition, avarice, vanity, and love of fame – are all in conspiracy against the desire and the duty of peace. – James Madison.

November 7 – As for war, you may mark me for a thorough Quaker.  I believe it to be utterly opposed to the spirit of the Gospel for man, in any case, to draw the sword and stab his brother. – *Gordon Hall.

November 8 – Dr. Gregory, Professor at Oxford, having received for examination the model of an invention for rendering artillery more destructive, exhibited it to Sir Isaac Newton to obtain his opinion of it.  Sir Isaac was much displeased with it, saying, “If it tended as much to the preservation of mankind as to their destruction, the inventor would have deserved a great reward; but as it was contrived solely for destruction, he rather deserved to be punished.” – Edinburg Encyclopedia.

November 9 – I must be permitted to add an expression of the sense I entertain of the great value of the efforts of the friends of peace, through the organization of peace societies, in dispelling the delusions so-long prevalent in regard to war, exposing the anti-Christian principles on which it has so long rested, and showing the extent to which it has paralyzed the industry, wasted the wealth, corrupted the morals, brutalized the passions, blasted the hopes, and vitally injured the highest interests of men.  The result, thus far, of the quiet and persevering efforts of these associations, has furnished a most gratifying illustration of the silent power of truth, in the hands of Christian benevolence, to reform and save the world. – William Slade.

November 10 – In our age there can be no peace that is not honorable, and there can be no war that is not dishonorable. – Charles Sumner.

November 11 –

What folly now,” the faithless critic cries,

With sneering lip, and wise, world-knowing eyes,

“To dream of peace amidst a world in arms,

Of swords to plowshares changed by scriptural charms;

Still shall the glory and the pomp of war

Along their train the shouting millions draw,

Still dusty Labor to the passing Brave

His cap shall doff, and Beauty’s kerchief wave;

Still shall the bard to Valor turn his song,

Still hero-worship kneel before the Strong,

And Church for State, and State for Church shall fight,

And both agree that Might alone is right!”

Despite of sneers like these, O faithful few,

Who dare to hold God’s word and witness true,

Still keep the path which duty bids you tread,

Though worldly Wisdom shakes the cautious head;

No truth from heaven descends upon our sphere

Without the greeting of the skeptic’s sneer;

Still lives for earth, which fiends so long have trod,

The great hope resting on the truth of God,

Evil shall cease and violence pass away,

And the tired world breathe free through a long Sabbath day.

– John G. Whittier.

November 12 – The interests of science, civilization, and Christianity implore the governments of the world to suppress wars. – Joseph U. Underwood.

November 13 – War is a state into which the mass of mankind rushes with the greatest enthusiasm, hailing official murderers in scarlet, gold, and cocks’ feathers as the greatest and most glorious of human creatures!  It is the business of every wise and good man to set himself against the passion for military glory, which really seems the most fruitful source of human misery. – Sidney Smith.

November 14 – We need go no further than, this chapter – 1 Corinthians 13 – to prove that the warlike passion, even in the least degree, is opposed to Christianity.  It is high time for the followers of the meek and lowly Jesus, in every part of the world, to study the genius of their religion.  It is a shame upon what is called the Christian world that it has not long since borne universal and indignant testimony against that enormous evil which still rages, not merely among savages, but among scholars, philosophers, Christians, and theologians. – *John Angel James.

November 15 – Shall those who ought to be “the light of the world” and the “salt of the earth” dishonor their high calling and defile their garments by engaging in the conflicts of human ambition, violence, and revenge?  Shall they admire the splendors of martial idolatry and delight themselves in acts of mortal cruelty?  If risen with Christ, ought they not to seek the things of Christ, inhale the perfumes of his spirit, and follow in his footsteps?  Is it for them to fly from the dangers of Gethsemane, to look with despair from afar on the non-resistant cross, and make themselves one with a mutually defiant and destructive world? – Friends’ Review.

November 16 – The practice of Christians in times past is no proof that war is compatible with the spirit of Christ.  Even one of the immediate followers of our Savior, whose eyes had rested upon his benignant countenance, whose ears had drank in the melody of his voice, would have called down fire from heaven to consume his Master’s enemies.  “He knew not,” said Jesus, “what spirit he was of.”  The practice of professing Christians is no test of duty; it cannot be depended upon as a proof of the right.  By it you would draw the white robe of Christianity over all the errors, crimes, and corruptions of Christendom.  The banner of the Cross has floated heavily, blood-soaked, over rapine and violence all over the earth, making the name of Jesus a by-word and reproach to the infidel and the heathen.  Oh, bring not the deeds of professing Christians as your defense of war. – Samuel E. Coues.

November 17 – One of the most formidable obstacles to the cause of peace in this country is the glory of the Revolutionary war.  Had the American Revolution failed, it would have been a bloody rebellion.  Since it succeeded, we call it a glorious Revolution.  But the end should not sanctify the means.  We should look at it by the light of eternity.  Did it not send many a poor soul to his last account “with all his imperfections on his head?”  Would anyone give his own soul for all the advantages of the Revolution?  If such a person can be found, then he can easily answer the question of Christ, “What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” – William Ladd.

November 18 – How can love consist in doing harm?  Love works no ill to his neighbor.  Did Christ ever encourage his disciples to do evil, or perform deeds of cruelty of the utmost malignity, that they might thereby cherish the feelings of love, long-suffering, and kindness?  Such a doctrine never fell from his lips.  It is contrary to philosophy, both human and divine.  What!  Encourage men to mangle and hew each other to pieces, and also to cherish the spirit of love!  Lead men out to fight, array them face to face, and teach them to gash and shoot each other in order to make them forgiving and tender-hearted!  Tell it not to human beings that men who are plunging the bayonet into the bosoms of their fellow beings are filled with love. – *Rufus P. Stebbins.

November 19 – Must force, fear, and pain always rule the world?  Are the kingdom of God and the reign of truth, duty, and love never to prevail?  Must the sacred name of brethren be only a name among men?  Can you and I, my friends, do nothing to impress a different character on the future history of our race?  Perhaps we speak against war; but if we speak from tradition, if we echo what we hear, if peace is only a word on our lips, then our words are just hot air.  Our own souls must bleed when our brethren are slaughtered.  We must feel the infinite wrong done to man by the brute force that treads him in the dust.  We must see, in the authors of war, monsters in human form.  Go forth, friends of mankind; give faithful utterance to the principles of universal justice and love. Give utterance to your deep, solemn, irreconcilable hatred of the spirit of war. – *William E. Channing.

November 20 – War has been employed to empty earth and people hell; to make angels weep and fiends triumph over the deplorable guilt and debasement of the human character. – *Timothy Dwight.

November 21 – How often have the men of peace been met with the reply that “Colonel Gardiner was a Christian.”  And there is no doubt that the unthinking have been led astray by it.  Doddridge labors hard in two hundred pages to cast a halo of piety around the soldier; but not forgetting to tell us that the colonel often expressed it as his desire, “that if it were the will of God, he might have some honorable call to sacrifice his life in defense of religion and the liberties of his country.”  He expressed a “most genuine and noble contempt of life” – either of his own life, or the lives of others, it seems.  In his last moments he killed a fellow creature, and went down with him to a bloody grave.  If it is asked, “But was not Colonel Gardiner a Christian?” our answer is that he did not follow in the footsteps of Christ nor obey his commands, for he said, “Love your enemies.”  Colonel Gardiner killed them. – John Ashworth.

November 22 – Can war cease while Christians themselves are its advocates?  If this world is to be delivered from war by the Gospel, the Gospel must be applied for the purpose.  Would the Gospel ever convert the heathen from idolatry, if Christians should themselves encourage idolaters by a compliance with their customs?  But as little may we expect the Gospel will make wars cease without the exertions of Christians, and while they countenance the custom by their own example. – *Noah Worcester.

November 23 – No political change is worth a single crime. – Daniel O’Connell.

November 24 – If we take into consideration the number, not only of those who have fallen in battle, but also of those who have perished through the natural consequences of war, it will not perhaps be overrating the destruction of human life if we affirm that one-tenth of the human race has been destroyed by the ravages of war. – Thomas Dick.

November 25 – There is a song that expresses an end for which this wonderful being, man, was made.  It is an old song.  But we know that sometimes the deepest philosophy is evolved in song.  The phrase by which this old song indicates man’s end is “Glory to God in the highest; on earth peace, good-will toward men.” – *Mark Hopkins.

November 26 – Were there a people who would lay aside the weapons of carnal warfare and proclaim the principles of universal peace, return good for evil, and diligently promote the welfare of all men, I am fully persuaded that such a people would not only dwell in absolute safety, but would be blessed with eminent prosperity and endowed for every good and wise purpose with irresistible influence over surrounding nations. – Joseph John Gurney.

November 27 – The wars waged by Christian nations are the most notorious offenses against the law of nature, against the sixth commandment, and against the Christian religion. – *John Jortin.

November 28 –  “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks.  Nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war any more.” – Isaiah 2:4.

November 29 – The great principle of Christianity is to suffer for others rather than make them suffer.  The great fault of civil government has been that it has acted like an angry, vindictive parent.  Although I allow that physical force may be used to a great extent without violating the law of love, I do not think that it ought to be carried, in any case, to the extent of depriving a fellow creature of his life and sending his soul into a miserable eternity.  No circumstances whatever can justify it under the Gospel dispensation. – William Ladd.

November 30 – The law of violence is the law of murder to others, and of suicide to ourselves. – Thomas S. Grimke.

DECEMBER

December 1 – To my mind, one of the most painful phases of the conflict in our country[12] is the attitude of Christian churches in the two sections toward each other.  In the great revival of 1857, the lightning fingers of the telegraph, now busy with the plans and doings of war, transmitted intelligence of noonday prayer meetings in the various towns and villages of the Union and of the conversion of tens of thousands among all classes of the people.  Now, thousands of those converts, fresh from the affecting memorials of the sacrament-table, are marching toward each other – not to the music of that hymn sung by their Savior and his disciples on the Mount of Olives, but to the sound of the fife and drum, with fixed bayonets, to the work of mutual slaughter.  And the churches to which they belong are cheering them on and praying for their triumph.  How sad and saddening is all this!  Is Christ divided?  Are his teachings, his Spirit, and his life susceptible of such antagonisms as these?  Until those who profess to be actuated by the Spirit, and who claim to live by the rules of Christian faith, shall be enlightened to see that it excludes them from all participation in war, we shall see, when the trial comes, just such a scene as the country now presents. – Elihu Burritt.

December 2 – For the first time, three hundred years after Christ, the meek and peaceful Jesus became a god of battle; and the Cross, the holy sign of Christian redemption, became a banner of bloody strife.  This irreconcilable incongruity between the symbol of universal peace and the horrors of war, in my judgment, is conclusive against the miraculous or supernatural character of the transaction: the vision that resulted in the adoption of the Cross as the symbol of war by the Emperor Constantine). – Henry H. Milman.

December 3 – If we can contend in love, in Christian love, where love to God and love to man, where the sweet benevolence of the Gospel constitutes the animating and controlling passion, where wrath and malice and unholy ambition are laid aside, then such warfare is evidently right.  Let it go on, land be carried beyond the skies so that it may innocently reign in heaven.  And if we can point to any war in this age, or in past ages, in this land or in other lands, conducted on this evangelical principle, such a war was right.  But if any war was not thus conducted, as I interpret the scriptures, it was wrong, essentially wrong, with Jesus Christ himself being Judge. – *George Trask.

December 4 – Real Christians should come out, be separate, and touch not the unclean thing.  Let them become, not only the friends, but also the advocates of peace.  Let them echo back in their several spheres the angels’ description of Christianity: “Peace on earth, good-will to men.”  Let ministers from the pulpit, writers from the press, and private Christians in their interaction with each other and with the world inculcate a fixed and irreconcilable abhorrence of war. – *John Angel James.

December 5 – The soul and spirit of the Gospel is love – love that no sectional feeling can subdue and no national boundary can limit.  Love, even to enemies, is the distinguishing feature of our faith.  Its birth-cry was “Peace on earth.”  Write the words of our Savior, that they may meet the eye distinctly.  Everywhere, where duty calls, you will find appropriate the teachings of the Gospel.  But write not on the martial banner, engrave not on the cannon, and affix not on the warrior’s tent His peaceful words: a blessing upon the meek, the poor in spirit, the merciful, and the peacemaker!  It would be blasphemy; it would be a mockery of the words of the Prince of Peace.  If the very letter of the Gospel thus frowns upon the trade of blood, can its inner spirit be in harmony with the deeds of war?  No!  No!  War can never be justified by the teachings of Christ. – Samuel E. Coues.

December 6 – The following conversation occurred between me and a young woman, a member of the Society of Friends, during the Revolutionary war in America:

“You have, of course,” said she, “neither wife nor children in Europe, since you have left your country and have come such a distance in order to carry on the hateful trade of war?”

“But it is for your sake,” I replied, “that I have left all that is dear to me, and it is to defend your liberties that I come to fight against the English.”

She answered, “One ought never to meddle with other people’s affairs, except in order to settle them amicably and to prevent the shedding of blood.”

“But my king,” I replied, “has commanded me to come here and to bear his arms against your enemies and his own.”

“Well, then,” said she, “your king has commanded you to do what is unjust, inhuman, and contrary to the command of your Maker.  You should obey your God, and disobey your king, for his kingly power is only given him to save, and not to destroy.” – Count Segur.

December 7 – If the Bible is to be quoted as the sanction of war, without an explicit command from God, then wars of aggression, which mingle gray hairs and helpless infancy in one common slaughter, are just.  The whole spirit of the Bible is directly opposed to war, except where God has given the explicit command in judgment on the wicked.  Never can it be brought to sanction the bloody combats of Christian nations.  It affords no ground of presumption that we may shed the blood of our fellow men, just because God once commanded his people to go out to battle. – *Laurens P. Hickok.

December 8 – Are we distinguished by our peace, as the followers of the Prince of Peace?  Are we renowned for our eagerness to save?  Eternal warfare!  Is that Christianity?  The most abominable international laws!  Are they Christianity?  Nations of men standing with jealous eyes on the perpetual watch on each other, with arms in their hands!  Are these Christians?  We term ourselves Christians, but, one thousand and eight hundred years after his death, we have yet to adopt the plainest injunction of Christ: “to love our neighbors as ourselves.”—William Howitt.

December 9 –

O, brother man!  Fold to your breast your brother;

Where pity dwells, the peace of God is there;

To worship rightly is to love each other,

Each smile a hymn, each kindly deed a prayer.

Follow with reverent steps the great example

Of Him whose holy work was “doing good;”

So shall the wide earth seem our Father’s temple,

Each loving life a psalm of gratitude.

Then shall all shackles fall; the stormy clangor

Of wild war-music o’er the earth shall cease;

Love shall tread out the baleful fire of anger.

And in its ashes plant the tree of Peace!

Forgotten be the bugle’s blast,

And battle-music of the drum;

A little while the world may run

Its old mad way with needle-gun

And iron-clad, but truth, at last, shall reign;

The cradle-song of Christ was never sung in vain!

– John G. Whittier.

December 10 – A military officer, pacing the piazza of a station house, beheld a venerable man with a placid countenance “on which the dove of peace sat brooding.”  The man was attired in the clothing that marks a Quaker, and the officer at once regarded this as a quiet attack on his military profession.  He stood before the Friend and commenced a tirade in favor of defensive war.  At length he paused, his whole attitude courting argument and challenging reply.  “Well, friend,” replied the other, calmly, “I hope you would take care to do it all in love.”  Incensed at the answer, he went off as before, supposing cases of aggression too hard to be borne, saying what he would do, and waxing fierce and more fierce in telling of the stabs and blows with which he would repel and punish the invader.  When exhausted, he again paused for the argument that he was determined to provoke.  The meek response was still the same: “I hope you will be sure to do it in love.”  The officer was incensed with the simple, and, as he at first thought, stupid reply.  Fight in love!  Stab a man to the heart in love!  Blow out his brains in love!  But the simple expression stuck with him like a nail fastened in a sure place.  He had been a student of theology and had read his Testament accurately, and he now saw that what could not be done in love could not be done scripturally.  Resigning his military commission, he entered the moral warfare as a peace advocate, and became the author of that sweet tract, A Kiss for a Blow. – William J. Allinson.

December 11 – The tradeoff the warrior is to injure, his duty is to harm, and his office is to destroy.  It may be said that this evil is done that good may come out of it.  Do evil that good may come!  Not so, thought Paul.  This is the rule of Christianity, do good – only good.  Doing harm, not good, to those who injure us is the avowed purpose of war.  Tell me if Christ’s religion teaches men to do this?  Tell me if

he taught the sword to devour, or the bullet to mangle God’s image?  Tell me if loving ever covered a field with slaughter?  – *Rufus P. Stebbins.

December 12 – The example of the Divine Founder of Christianity is abundantly illustrated and substantiated both by the various precepts of his religion, and the genius and spirit breathed through them as a whole.  What did he?  He might have commanded armies, or he might have crushed all the rulers and coercive powers upon earth, if he pleased.  But he did not avail himself of such power.  Christ surrendered himself, a passive and harmless lamb.  But it may be said, and said truly, that Christ was placed in very peculiar circumstances; that no human being ever was, or ever could be in his situation; and that he was then giving himself a ransom for mankind.  But, while this is fully admitted, we are told by one of his apostles that, in the very act of his sufferings for the human race, he left us an example so that we should follow his steps.  Hence, all perplexity is taken away by that single expression.  – *John Pye Smith.

December 13 – Let all the disciples of the Prince of Peace range themselves round the banners of Peace.  Let all who profess to believe the scriptures furnish the world with new proof of their truth by hastening the fulfillment of those predictions which foretell the universal prevalence of peace.  – *Edward Payson.

December 14 – How can meekness, mercy, love of enemies, and forgiveness of injuries be practiced in war?  How can those who are poor in spirit and peacemakers, who resist not evil, who do to others as they would be done by, who flee from persecution rather than resist it, who feed their enemies when hungry and give them drink when thirsty, who bless those who curse them, who when struck on one cheek turn the other, who recompense to no man evil for evil but instead overcome evil with good, who are not vain-glorious but instead are long-suffering and gentle and meek, who as they have opportunity do good to all men, who put away all bitterness and wrath and clamor, who are kind and tender-hearted and forgiving to one another, who take pity on others, who honor all men, who walk in love, who do nothing through strife or vain-glory but instead in lowliness of mind esteem others better than themselves, who have hearts full of mercy, who ever follow the things that make for peace and things wherewith one may edify another, who follow peace with all men and abstain from all appearance of evil, who have the spirit of Christ in them, and who suffer for enemies rather than make them suffer – how can people such as these ever engage in war? – William Ladd.

December 15 – It is a sad day for humanity when the heroes are the destroyers, and hosannas are sung to those whose weapons are not love and truth, but are instead fire and sword.  Every pain is taken to make soldiers and officers think that they are the greatest and best of their day.  If our hearts and our consciences were alive, we should reject with horror the idea of making a military man the great man of the nation, and enthroning him aloft as our grand representative before the eyes of both Christendom and heathendom.  We implicitly say by such an act that that is our highest ideal of what a great and good man is.  Nothing shows more distinctly the low and coarse nature of modern civilization than the choice of warriors to conduct the affairs of Christian nations.  – *A. A. Livermore.

December 16 – To sacrifice our lives for the liberties, laws, and religion of our native land are undoubtedly high-sounding words – but who are those who will do it?  Who is it that will sacrifice his life for his country?  Will the senator who supports a war?  Will the writer who encourages patriotism?  Will the minister of religion who recommends the sacrifice?  Take away war and its fictions, and there is not a man of them who will do it.  Will he sacrifice his life at home?  If the loss of his life would procure just as much benefit to his country as the loss of one soldier’s in the field, would he be willing to lay his head on the block?  Is he willing, for such a contribution to his country’s good, to resign himself to the executioner without notice or remembrance?  Alas for the fictions of war!  Where is such a man?  Men will not sacrifice their lives at all except in war, and they do not sacrifice them in war from motives of patriotism.  In no rational sense, therefore, can it be said that the soldier “dies for his country.” – Jonathan Dymond.

December 17 – Let it not be forgotten that the virtues that shed their charms over War’s horrors are all borrowed from Peace; they are the emanations of the Spirit of Love.  The flowers of gentleness, kindness, fidelity, and humanity, which flourish unnoticed in the rich meadows of Peace, receive undeserved admiration when we discern them in war.  They are like violets shedding their perfume on the perilous edges of the precipice, beyond the borders of civilization.  God be praised that Sidney, on the field of battle, with dying hand, gave the cup of cold water to the dying soldier.[13]  That single act of self-forgetful sacrifice has consecrated the name of the gallant Sidney beyond any feat of his sword, and beyond any triumph of his pen!  But there are lowly supplicants in other places than on fields of blood.  Everywhere there are opportunities for deeds of like greatness.  Know well that these are not the products of war.  They do not spring from enmity, hatred, and strife.  They spring instead from those benign sentiments whose natural and ripened fruit of joy and blessing can be found only in peace.  Let me not be told, then, of the virtues of war.  Let not the acts of generosity and sacrifice, which have blossomed on its fields, be invoked in its defense.  No true good can come from such a giant root of bitterness. – Charles Sumner.

December 18 – War is one of the greatest plagues that can afflict humanity; it destroys religion, it destroys states, and it destroys families.  Any scourge is preferable to it.  If Adam had seen in a vision the horrible instruments his children were to invent, he would have died of grief.  Christians fight not with sword and rifle, but with sufferings and the cross. – luther.

December 19 – Paul tells us that “love is the fulfilling of the law” because it “does no ill to its neighbor.”  But the soldier’s whole business is to do him all the ill he can.  “Do good to all men.”  War goes upon the avowed principle of doing them evil as the only means of accomplishing its objects.  War seeks to kill as its grand aim, and in fact is the most terrible engine ever devised for the wholesale destruction of mankind.  “ You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  Can the soldier do this, and still continue his trade of human butchery? – *George C. Beckwith.

December 20 – War can never long prevail without the physical and moral aid of Christians.  I feel distressed that the professed followers of the Prince of Peace – the meek, patient, lowly, and forgiving Lamb of God – do not feel their individual responsibility in this cause, and by coming out from this sin, throw their whole power on the side of peace, truth, and love.  Where are the ministers of the sanctuary?  Where are the precious sons and daughters of Zion?  Oh earth!  Cover not the blood that soaks your soil, and conceal not the slain who have covered your fields, until the disciples of the Great Peacemaker, the Church of the bleeding Lamb, shall awake to her duty and wave the Peace Banner of her Prince over the world. – *Titus Coan.

December 21 – Was there ever an object of greater importance proposed to the world than “Peace on earth, and good-will among men”?  And shall the practical language of most Christians continue to be “Millions for war, but not a cent for peace”?  How can anything better than war be expected from such a principle?  Are there not many men of wealth who are not only able but also willing to make donations to promote the cause of peace?  Are there not gentlemen and ladies, near the close of life, who will give their dying testimony against war by bequeathing something to effect its abolition?  How can any good person think of leaving the world, having done nothing to promote a cause so noble and benevolent? – *Noah Worcester.

December 22 – It is a solemn act to sign a pledge of total abstinence from war.[14]  It is no less than a deliberate engagement to obey the injunction of our Savior, “Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you.”  We hold this to be the acme of human virtue and the highest point of Christian attainment.  It is, or has been, no small affair to sign a pledge of total abstinence from all intoxicating drink.  But to promise never to fight or countenance appeal to the sword, where the war principle is so deeply engrained into the philosophy, politics, and religion of the age, is certainly one of the most daring acts to which a man can commit himself.  It is as noble as it is daring.  If it is cutting loose at once and forever from all the false maxims and anti-Christian principles of society in regard to war, and standing out boldly on the side of Love, it is an act that tells with tremendous effect upon every system based on brute force. – Amasa Walker*

December 23 – As to war and violence, in every shape, I am as confident that it is utterly contrary to the spirit of the Gospel as I am that any immorality is.  Just look at this command: “Clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ.”  (Romans 13:14)  Be holy and harmless as he was: meek, lowly, gentle, and inoffensive.  Love your enemies, pray for them, and do them good as he did.  Such is the character we are to put on, and never for a moment put it off.  Now can the man who puts on Christ, abides in Christ, conforms to Christ – can he draw his sword and take the life of his fellow man, and hurry him to the judgment seat of God?  It is our duty to pray that wars may cease, but how would such a prayer sound on the lips of a man armed with a sword? – *Gordon Hall.

December 24 – What wars, bloodshed, plunders, fires, and desolations are committed by Christians of the same faith and church!  Oh the fires, murders, and rivers of blood that lie at the doors of professed Christians!  If this is godly, then what is devilish?  If this is Christian, then what is paganism?  What is anti-Christian?  What need is there of any other demonstration that Christendom is foully apostatized from the doctrine and example of Christ Jesus, who said, “By this shall all men know that you are my disciples if you love one another”?  And it is not to be supposed that they kill one another in love, for murder is not the effect of love.  Oh Christendom!  How fallen are you from the doctrine of Christ! – William Penn.

December 25 –

It came upon the midnight clear

That glorious song of old,

From angels bending near the earth

To touch their harps of gold:

“Peace on earth, good-will to men,

From heaven’s all gracious King!”

The world in solemn stillness lay

To hear the angels sing.

Yet with the woes of sin and strife

The world has suffered long;

Beneath the angel-strain have rolled

Two thousand years of wrong.

And men, at war with men, hear not

The love-song that they bring;

Oh!  Hush the noise, you men of strife,

And hear the angels sing!

For lo!  The days are hastening on

By prophet-bards foretold,

When with the ever-circling years

Comes round the age of gold;

When Peace shall cover all the earth,

And Jesus be the king,

And the whole world send back the song

Which now the angels sing.

– Edward H. Sears.

December 26 – The wisest system of international politics ever taught is that of the New Testament: “On earth peace, good-will toward men.” – Edward Everett.

December 27 – No act or precept of Christ favors carnal warfare.  On the contrary, his teaching and life, active and passive, without the exception of a single act or precept, agree in the inculcation of doctrines and duties, the belief and practice of which render war, either aggressive or defensive, an impossibility.  To lay down life for the cause of Christ in the manner and spirit of Christ or Stephen, and in abjuration of the sword, which has been rebuked forever to the sheath – only this is the way a Christian should lay down that life which, whether living or dying, belongs to Christ.  This only is victory and glory.  If standing in such a position, in such a spirit and with no weapons that are carnal, will not secure the defense of life, then that life must be given in defense and illustration of the Christian religion.  He who loses his life thus shall find it. – *Sidi H. Browne.

December 28 – If we admit that defensive wars are allowable on Christian principles, then we grant, for all practical purposes, everything that the advocates of war wish.  The true doctrine is that war, in every shape and for every purpose, is wrong, absolutely wrong, and wholly wrong.  Let every Christian consider well how he judges in this matter. Let him come to the investigation with true meekness of disposition.  If Christians come to this inquiry in the spirit of war, it will not be surprising if they imagine they find war.  If they come in the spirit of peace, they will undoubtedly find peace.  And as Christians go, the whole world will sooner or later go with them. – *Thomas C. Upham.

December 29 – There are a great number of inconsistencies in this world of ours, but I do not know of one so startling and barefaced as the inconsistency that we see when people, professing the religion of Jesus Christ, engage in, defend, or connive at war.  Now, in regard to the teachings of Christ on this subject, we must say it is perfectly clear and unmistakable.  There are many doctrines with regard to which the scriptures seem to contradict each other, but there is no mistaking the peace-loving character of Christ and the peace-promoting character of his teaching.  One of the most important questions to Christians is: has Christianity fulfilled its mission, or is it now fulfilling it?  It promises that men under its influence shall beat their swords into plowshares and learn war no more.  It behooves Christians to answer this question.  Christians fighting, ready to fight, or justifying fighting are far more dangerous arguments in the hands of skepticism than any of those skeptical writings about which Christian people get into such a state of indignation and alarm. – *Hugh Stowell Brown.

December 30 – Our plan is composed of two parts: a Congress of Nations and a Court of Nations.  Either might exist without the other; but they would tend much more to the happiness of mankind if united in one plan, though not in one body.  A Congress of Ambassadors from all those Christian and civilized nations who should choose to unite in the measure is highly desirable to fix the fluctuating and various points of international law.  By the consent of all the parties represented, it would make the law of nations so plain that a court composed of the most eminent jurists of the countries represented at the congress could easily apply those principles to any particular case brought before them.  Such a congress would provide for the organization of such a court, but it would not constitute that court.  The court would be permanent, like the Supreme Court of the United States, while the congress would be transient or periodic, with a change of members like the Congress of the United States.  It is not proposed that the legislative and judiciary bodies would be united.  The Congress of Nations, therefore, would be one body, and would create the Court of Nations, which would be another distinct body.  No objection could be brought against a Congress and Court of Nations that would not be equally valid against all legislative and judicial bodies.  This system would be safe for all forms of government, its expense is not worth naming, and it is altogether preferable to individual judgment, sine it would concentrate the public opinion of the whole civilized world, and would be able to enforce its decrees and decisions by moral power alone.  It is an incontrovertible axiom that everything of a moral nature which ought to be done, can be done.  I do not say that so great an enterprise as a Congress of Nations can be accomplished in a day.  It will probably be of slow growth, like the trial by jury.  There is the greater need, therefore, that those who favor the object should begin the work without losing time.  War is called “the last resort of kings,” simply because there has never been an international tribunal on an extended scale.  Every man who refuses to lend his aid in bringing forward a Congress and Court of Nations neglects his duty to his country, to the world, and to God, and does not act consistently with the character of a statesman, philanthropist, or Christian.  It is time that Christian nations should be ashamed to attempt to settle disputes by physical force, like bullies and boxers.  It is time they had more compassion for human suffering, and more respect for the precepts of Christ. – William Ladd.

December 31 –  “Shall the sword devour forever?”  We scan the narrow horizon of earth for a reply, but the question comes back unanswered.  Only its echo salutes the ear, mockingly shouting in the din and clangor of wars and rumors of wars, “Forever!”  But look up, oh world of sufferers!  Look up to heaven, and you shall hear a still small voice: “I will break the bow and the sword, and remove the battle from the earth.”  It is the same voice that once said, “Let there be light," and there was light.  It is enough. – *Joseph A. Collier.

[1] Transcriber’s note – The original title was The Daily Remembrancer…

[2] Transcriber’s note – I have also taken the liberty of making small changes for the sake of readability, while also being careful to preserve the meaning of the text.

[3] Transcriber’s note – The Pax Romana was a period of relative peace and minimal military expansion that lasted from about 27 BC to 180 AD.  However, it should be remembered that “peace” was maintained by the sword in conquered territories, and that Christ himself lived under military occupation.  Israel and Samaria were at “peace” with Rome in Christ’s day simply because their ability to resist had been destroyed.  And later, when they did resist, the Romans re-conquered Jerusalem and destroyed the temple in 70AD.

[4] Transcriber’s note - A crude idol of Krishna worshipped at Puri and throughout Orissa and Bengal in India. The idol is wheeled through the town on a gigantic chariot at an annual festival, and devotees are supposed to have formerly thrown themselves under its wheels

[5] The Greek word for fight used here means to fight as in war, and the Greek word for enemy means an enemy of the State. – Thomas Clarkson.

[6] Can it be right for men “to do to each other all the harm they can”?

[7] In 1819, a clergyman and well-known advocate of the Society for the Conversion of the Jews was scheduled to preach at Falmouth, England, and the foregoing paper was found attached to the door of the church by a Jew.

[8] Transcriber’s note – The island of St. Helena is where the British exiled Napoleon Bonaparte.

[9] Alas!  Christian England and America are now, in regard to the atrocious crimes of war and the vain love and esteem of military glory, as low, irrational, and vile as pagan Rome.

[10] What a melancholy and mortifying truth from a non-Christian pen.  Hang thy head in shame, you Christian advocate of war!

[11] Transcriber’s note – It appears to me that Muslims are no more sanguinary than their Christian brothers.

[12] Transcriber’s note – The American Civil War.

[13] Transcriber’s note – While fighting in the Netherlands in 1586, the wounded Sir Philip Sidney felt faint and called for water. As he lifted it to his mouth he saw a dying soldier staring at it, whereupon Sidney handed it to the soldier, saying, “Friend, your necessity is greater than mine.”

[14] The following is the pledge referred to, which was written by Elihu Burritt in 1846 and, in the course of several years, was signed by many thousands of persons in the United States and in Great Britain:

“Believing all war to be inconsistent with the spirit of Christianity and destructive of the best interests of mankind, I do hereby pledge myself never to enlist or enter into any army or navy, or to yield any voluntary support or sanction to the preparation for or prosecution of any war by whomsoever, or for whatsoever [purpose] proposed, declared, or waged.”

What Christian or common lover of the human race would presume to say that it would not be a glorious deed for every person, and especially every young man, to sign and keep such a pledge?