government having an actual and legitimate existence, has from God, under certain limitations and restrictions, delegated authority to do such acts as may be necessary to the maintenance of its powers and the performance of its appropriate functions as a government; he being, indeed, the chief and primary source whence emanate its rights. According therefore precedency to this source of its authority, and claiming for this department of its representative character the greatest weight and importance, we may not be forgetful that every truly legitimate government is also on the other hand repre sentative of the people over whom it exercises its sway. As a consequence of this, it is bound to act in the interest and "for the benefit of the governed." And this consequential fact is not, we apprehend, obscurely hinted at in the statement that "it (the power) is the minister of God to thee (that is, the subject) (ɛiç τ0 ȧyavov) for good,” (advantage, benefit.) It is not to be understood that a government represents the opinions and desires, the will, of every particular individual that lives under its authority or within its realm; for there may be those who in public as well as private sentiment may differ from it and would desire its overthrow. But every legitimate government must be representative of the influential and predominating will of the people its constituents, and must rule by their consent, either tacitly in passivity given, or actively expressed, according to such laws and regulations, and under such limitations and restrictions, as receive in some way a mutual sanction and acceptance on the part of both governed and governing. Thus acting, it is the representative of the people. It may, indeed, be considered but the people in collective mass by their and God's minister acting in accordance with divine law and exemplar, and subordinate to these, in accordance with principles, customs, forms, laws, and regulations which they accept, submit to, or authorize as those by which they will or consent to be governed. It may be possible that under other circumstances the will of the people might be different, and might, indeed, be wholly opposed to the now existent government; and that in some cases the predominant will of the people is simply a choice of submission and support of the state of things then in being in preference to the suffering, danger, and evil which might be the consequence of the effort to throw FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XVII.—12

off the then ruling authority, or to change the character of the government. This twofold representative character is, as we conceive, necessary to the legitimacy as well as the stability of every government, and this representative character absolutely requires that it should possess the war-making power. Without it, a government could have no power to make its authority respected and feared, and no means for the enforcing of its laws and the punishing of offenders, the disobedient, and the rebellious, and it could in no complete sense be a representative of God. Without power to do for its people what each individual in the absence of all government has a right to do for himself, namely, protect its subjects, individually and collectively, and secure to them their persons and possessions, and the enjoyment of their rights, privileges, and immunities, it could in no proper sort be the representative of the people; and yet we know that the performance of these functions is largely dependent upon the certainty which men have that the government "beareth not the sword in vain ;" that underlying whatsoever of moral influence it may have, there is the power and right, as well as the will, to use the sword in sustaining its authority and vindicating its laws, and securing the integrity of its domain. Indeed, without this power in the present state of moral and intellectual culture of the human race, no government could long exist. We say not what may be the case hereafter under a different and higher culture or status, and it matters not for our present purpose; for as we have seen, what may be hereafter under a wholly different moral and mental status cannot be used as an argument against what may be needful in the present existent circumstances, no more than the state of heavenly rest and peace, yet future to the believer, can be an argument to prove that he need not now in his militant pilgrimage "watch, and fight, and pray." Let a nation lay aside this right; let it be understood that in no case, under no possible provocation, would it appeal to the military arm and venture the wager of either offensive or defensive battle, and its nationality must speedily disappear. It could not long be safe as against its own people or subjects. It might, perhaps, answer where every subject was a member of some religgious organization, whose authority he recognized under the influence of religious and moral principle, and whose authority

was identical or closely connected with the civil state, as in the partial instance of Pennsylvania; but if any one chose to throw from him the authority and sanctions of religion, and betake himself to violence under the strong temptations which non-resistance would offer, it does not appear how such a case could well be met. Hence a change in the character of its citizens did at length necessitate a change in the "peace platform" of Pennsylvania. Such a government would, indeed, be at the mercy of a bold, reckless, and lawless few. Any small and otherwise contemptible number could perpetually, and with comparative impunity, without damage to themselves, disturb, embroil, rob, and pillage an entire nation. Resistance to authority must in the nature of things become common. Government officers would become objects of mockery and contempt. It would be in such a country as in Canaan when there was "no king in Israel." Predatory, roving bands, anarchy, dismay, and confusion, must speedily bear destructive sway. Nor could it be safe as against foreign nations. It is possible that a nation of savages-where the desire for conquest and rule, ambition, is not so much the impelling or motive power as is that of revenge for injury and the desire for plunder-might abstain from warfare with a people situated as were the colonists under Penn, where they received pay for everything which they transferred to the colonists, and were not resisted in any demands which they made upon them; and such a people might, perhaps, for a time have exercised over them a civil government, at least while protected, by the military power of the nation of which they formed a part, from the aggression of nations existent and acting under the influence of our civilzation; but the maintaining of this subordinate nationality must be attributed rather to their identification with a supreme government which had given incontestible proofs of its willingness to fight, and emphatic demonstrations of its power to defend its subjects from all outside or foreign aggressors. So long as there is ambition among men, so long as the "lust of power" exists, so long as selfishness and passion may subordinate right and moral principle, in brief, so long as sin rules and reigns, so long will nations require this "war power," and find occasions for its rightful exercise.

Thus, then, a government recognizing Christianity as the

religion of the land, and "Holy Scripture" as the real and ultimate rule of its proceedings, may rightfully wage a warfare for just cause. True, reason as well as Christianity demand that nations as well as individuals should "live peaceably with all men, as much as lieth in them," "if it be possible," since peace is the normal and proper condition of man, and wars should be a means to that end; but reason surely does not require that to secure peace and avoid war, every principle of right and justice shall be held in abeyance, or be abandoned, or be trampled under foot of the wicked and lawless; and that every species of indignity should be endured. Christianity, by her own express hypothesis "if it be possible," more than intimates her conviction that after all our effort, peace with "all men" cannot be maintained, and by her own express limitation, "as much as lieth in you" (rò è vuv) may be supposed to suggest the employment of whatsoever means may lie within reach, not for purposes of vengeance-that she expressly forbids-but to secure peace and quietness, attaining thereto by moral dissuasives and influence such as it possesses, if thus it may be attained; but if not, by the use of such other means as may "lie in them," as may belong unto them. And it "lieth not" in any nation to be an unresisting and unassisting spectator of the invasion of the rights and the compulsory subjugation of those who rely upon it for protection and have committed themselves and their interests to its care. Compulsory process and military force, "as much as lieth in her," all she may possess, may be the only means whereby a stable peace can be obtained. Thus when causeless, unjust, persistent, and otherwise invincible rebellion shall occur; a rebellion in the interest of barbarism, servitude, degradation, and sin, for the support and maintenance of the mother of harlots and abominations; shall it be admitted that Christianity, the religion of a true civilization, the assertor of human equality, the elevator, the antagonist of sin, the unyielding foe to whatsoever is abominable or maketh a lie, gives no power for its suppression, no authority to "crush it out," withholds its consent to the use of means which God and man place at its disposal applicable for this purpose, and trammels or renders futile thus the effort to defeat the nefarious designs of wicked or mistaken men? And shall we suppose that when nothing

else will answer, where rebel hands have already begun the combat and struck the blow; where the power at the disposal of the government is in all human judgment sufficient, and the resources ample for the emergency and to compel the restoration of the peace which rebellion has disturbed, that Christian principle will not allow this power and these resources to be employed? This would be for God in his providence to put into our hands means to no purpose. This would be emphatically "to bear the sword in vain." We may not teach thus. The necessities of our national existence to-day forbid such teaching. Patriotism demands that the sanctions of our holy religion shall be given to its combat for humanity, freedom, unity, and stable peace; and the strong and vigorous arms of its soldiery must not be palsied, their earnest hearts must not be chilled with doubts as to the religiousness of their vocation. Let us gratefully record, that the multitudes of heroic slain, whose blood flowed so freely on every battle-field of our present struggle, by their gallant uprising and their noble daring in grasping the weapons of the carnal warfare at their country's call, were not obeying commands which the nation might not rightfully issue by authority of the religion of our hope and joy. To these heroic dead-PEACE! If in the good "fight of faith," they have acquitted themselves with as much of manliness, if in other respects they have "warred as good a warfare," then for the wearing and wielding of the carnal weapon in this contest, and their standing up for the mastery on these fields reddening with the blood of humanity's martyrs, under the call of their sorrowing country, the voice of “the man of sorrows will utter no word of condemnation. Even from fields of gore and of carnage the peans of another triumph shall ascend, and from fields of disaster there shall go up the victorious warrior. Accessions shall be received from among earth's soldiers slain to the hosts of the robed and glorified who people Heaven's bloodless homes, and shout glad jubilees in the streets of the city of the King Invisible. To the marshaled hosts living, success! For the rebellious, even for "the children of Benjamin our brother," in the "sin which they have sinned," pleadings, supplications to THEE MOST HIGH, that their hearts"may be turned as the streams of the south," to repentance of their iniquity, to submission to their true rulers,

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