painful as their effects may be, we should not break one link of that chain which binds them to sorrow, pain, death, as their inevitable results. And so with respect to war. It is one of the consequences which the divine mercy has ordained for the correction of the evil passions from which it springs. Let not the curse be separated from its source. So long as the love of unhallowed power or fame is a part of the national character, and men look up with reverence to their destroyers, so long let war, like a visible hell, following upon the footsteps of crime, Scourge it out from the earth.

It is only as the agents of a higher spirit that outward influences can accomplish their true end. Christianity must go forward with them, must purify, direct, inspire them in their work. Without this no desirable revolution can take place. War, if banished, will only make room for evils more dreadful than itself. The love of power, which marches to its throne through blood, is less to be feared than the ambition which, by civil means, by bribery and corruption, by appeals to low and sinful passions, builds its greatness, not on the wreck of armies, but on the ruin of the soul itself; which gathers strength not by the waste of fields and villages, they may be restored, but by the desolation, beyond hope, of all that is pure, and true, and just in immortal principles of the soul.

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We have endeavored to hold up some of the evils of war. They are such as no tongue can tell. Yet all these things must be, and this is the point which we would most solemnly urge, all these things, or worse than these, must be, until a higher tone of moral sentiment shall prevail. No reformation, which rests on a mere change in the outward currents of society, can ever succeed. One evil is put down only that another, worse than itself, may spring up.

Who

Suppose that we should now be plunged into a war. would be accountable for its ravages? Not merely those by whom the first acts of hostility were begun; not merely the government that sanctioned, or the enemy that provoked, them. Their responsibility indeed is great. On this subject we have already spoken. But then governments must conform to the spirit of the age. Their morality seldom rises above the standard morality around them. And if they would, they cannot carry out the principles of peace unless supported by the community. The responsibility of war rests upon every man, whatever may be his views upon the subject, who directly or

indirectly countenances the wrong passions, the injustice or pride, which, gathering their jarring elements in secret, while all seems calm, suddenly come down with a rage which no human hand can stay. Then it seems like an angry visitation from heaven. But all its power is borrowed from ourselves.

Only as we breathe freely the atmosphere of Christianity, as our thoughts and actions are pervaded by its truths, can we rightly extend that influence, which, according to the prediction of prophets, shall, in its final results, put an end not only to war, but to all those social evils, through which peace so often presses like a stifling cloud upon society.

A higher order of things, we believe, is approaching. No one of the present generation has contributed more to its advancement than the author of this discourse. In the application of his principles he may have been sometimes mistaken. Like most reflective men, he may have attached to particular discussions and measures an importance which the event has not justified. But we believe that he has done more than any other writer of the age, to bring the great principles of moral and religious truth into the activity of public and private life. With him religion and virtue have been something more than stars in heaven, looking down with mute, unsympathizing purity on human suffering and crime. He has shown their connexion with every subject on which he has written. He has brought them into the abodes of men; he has pointed out their true place, at the head of public affairs, in the removal of social evil. And lest a spurious religion or virtue should mislead men's minds, he has urged, with not less constancy and power, the great tests by which they are to be tried. He would establish the authority of reason and conscience, the central faculties of the soul. That which is inconsistent with them is wrong, and must fall, though the reverence of an hundred generations should uphold it. That which is seen through any other light than theirs is seen through a false medium, and cannot be understood. No institutions of government, no conventional forms or prescriptive rights, neither the established usage of centuries nor the popular caprice of the day is allowed to usurp their place. No authority in church or state may shelter men from their blazing eye. The individual, wherever and however employed, can never throw off his allegiance to them. His highest honor, be he slave or monarch, consists in wearing bright these sure insignia of his greatness. Whatever would tarnish or degrade,

stand aloof or screen itself from them, seals thereby its own character and fate.

Few men have written upon a greater variety of topics than Dr. Channing; or brought to each subject richer and more varied stores of knowledge; but everywhere it is the same mind, marked by the same features, moving on in the same. firm and solemn gait. The workings of a mind in harmony with itself, under the convictions of duty, turned aside by no levity, passions, or fears, however strong may be their strugglings within, bear always the same stamp. In this respect they are like the countenance of Washington. A Garrick may have an hundred likenesses taken, all exact, yet you would hardly recognise any two as belonging to the same face. But whereever Washington stands, by the Delaware, in the Capitol, parting with his officers, or giving orders to his troops, in youth or age, whatever the act or feeling of the moment, there is that fixed in the countenance beyond the reach of temporary emotions, which, once seen, can never be forgotten or mistaken. It is as if the eternity of his character were impressed upon the countenance itself. Not that it never varies. It has an unusual variety of expression. But the leading features of the face, like those of the mind, remain everywhere unchanged.

The writings of Dr. Channing, as they relate to almost every subject, so with the subject the manner varies. There is great copiousness of thought and illustration. They are by turns cheerful or grave, gentle or indignant, finished or bold, almost to rudeness; yet these qualities, which are of themselves enough to make the fortune of a common writer, are so subdued by the few central truths which everywhere attend them, that we almost forget their existence. In the continual flow of the stream, which rolls on through a thousand leagues, we forget the endless variety of trees, shrubs, and flowers; of mountain, cliff, and plain; of cloud, lightning, and calm, rich skies, which have marked its progress from the frozen lakes of the north to the wide savannahs, through which it pours itself out, loaded with the produce of half a continent, which its own branches have watered.

The Lecture on War is one of a series of productions, which have come from the same author at intervals, through a period of more than thirty years. During that time, hardly any exciting question of general interest has escaped his notice. On many subjects our opinions might not coincide with his; and

where we admit his conclusions we do not always accede to the correctness of his reasonings. But for his deep and clear intuitions; for his large and comprehensive view of things; for the sublime confidence with which he leans on principles alone; for the serene and lofty tone of moral feeling which pervades his works; for the earnestness with which he siezes upon the right and true wherever found, he cannot be too highly honored. These are what constitute his peculiar greatness; and they will give a charm and vitality to his works long after the temporary events, which called them out, shall be past and forgotten.

J. H. M.

MISCELLANY.

SCENES IN JUDEA.

I.

PRAISE to the God of Abraham. The locusts are flown. The land, which they found flourishing and verdant as a garden, they have changed to the barrenness of a desert. The cities and the villages, but now so full of people, are become the region of desolation and death. Even the very city and house of God are level with the dust, and the ploughshare has gone over them. And here, upon the hill of Olives, I sit, a living witness of the ruin. By reason of the wonderful compassions. of God, which never fail, I am escaped as a bird from the net of the fowler. Yet I take little joy in this. For why should the days of one like me be lengthened out, when the mighty and excellent of the land are cut off? I rather rejoice in this, that the spoiler is gone; the armies of the alien have ceased to devour; and those who are fled, and who are hidden in caves and dens of the rocks, may come forth again to inhabit the land and build up the waste places. A multitude which no man could number have fallen before the edge of the sword, or

by famine, and the air is full of the pestilential vapors that steam up from their rotting carcases. But a greater multitude remains; and it may well be that ere many years have passed, they shall fill the land as before, and gathered into one by him who, though long delaying, will come, pay back, and more, the measure they have received. That time will surely come. Even as the Assyrian could not finally destroy, but the hand of the Almighty was put forth, and the city and the temple grew up again from their ruins to a greater glory than before, so shall it be now. The Roman triumph shall be short. Messiah shall yet appear; and Jerusalem clothed in her beautiful garments shall sit upon her hills, the joy and crown of the whole earth.

But for me, my eyes shall not behold it. Before that day these aged limbs shall rest in the sepulchres of Beth-Harem, and these walls will have fallen and mingled with the common earth. It is not to-morrow, nor the day after, that the kingdom shall come. Impatient Israel will not wait the appointed hour; she will not remember that with the Lord a thousand years is as a day, and a day as a thousand years. She will reign today or never. Her mad haste has drawn upon her this wide destruction. Deceivers, and those who had deceived themselves, fools and wicked men, have led her to the precipice, down which she hath fallen, and now lies, as a potter's vessel, broken in fragments. And I, alas, am not clear in the great transgression. The rage which filled the people was in my heart also. I too gave heed to lying prophets, and bent my knee before him who called himself a Son of God, and licked the dust at his feet, and bound myself for life and for death to his chariot wheels. May he whose compassions are infinite pity and forgive his servant. It is with my soul low in the dust before him, that I turn to the long past, and remember the early errors of my life. And why will ye of Rome press upon me the unwelcome task? My kinsmen might well forego the pleasure they may reap for the pain that will be my only harvest. Yet not my only harvest. The memory of the days which were spent where Judith and Onias dwelt will bring with it pleasant thoughts, if many bitter and self-reproachful also. Happily of this portion of my life, of which ye are chiefly desirous to hear, the record already exists; from which I need but draw in such fragments as shall impart all that I may care to reveal. That record lies before me just as it went forth from full heart, and was poured into the bosom of that more than VOL. XXVII. 3D S. VOL. IX. NO. I.

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