surrounded it at dead of night; but before striking a single blow, they sought the poor widow's house, and placed there a guard, lest some of the warriors should, in their ignorance or heedless rage, wreak upon their friend a vengeance aimed only at their foes. This done, they went to their work of fire and blood; nor did they stay their hand until the settlement was in flames, and most of its inhabitants, save the widow and her children, were butchered or made captives.

Such is the influence of peace over savages; can it be less influential over civilized men? To this we might quote many an answer from the ferocious and terrible rebellion of 1798, in Ireland. Seldom has there been warfare more savage, passions more fierce, or the spirit of revenge more blood-thirsty and remorseless. It was a fiendish conflict, the death-struggle of neighbor against neighbor, of brother against brother. The gangrene prevaded the whole community; every body was required to take sides, and none allowed in safety to remain neutral. Yet the Quakers, firm in their faith, did continue neutral and pacific, friends to all, enemies to none. Anticipating the storm, they had prepared to meet it by girding themselves anew with their principles, by destroying whatever weapons they chanced to have in their possession, and by exhorting each other to stand fast in their peaceful faith. The storm came, and Ireland was drenched in fraternal blood. The Quakers, in going to their places of worship, were sometimes obliged to pass over fields of dead bodies; and repeatedly did each party in turn threaten to burn their meeting-houses over their heads, or butcher them in their own homes. The bloody strife raged 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 on purpose to kill them; and often did it seem well nigh impossible for them to escape a general massacre. Still the Quakers trusted in God and were safe. Persisting in their ordinary attendance on his worship, in their refusal to take any part in the contest, and in their habits of equal kindness to sufferers from both factions, they came ere long to be respected, trusted and loved by all, and their houses became places of refuge to fugitives from each party. Their faith made them at length the mediators, the guardian angels, of a warring community; and the badge of a Quaker, regarded at first as a sure precursor of death or violence, came in the end to be a sort of talisman, a

passport to safety and universal confidence. Their principles proved, under God, a far better protection than the sword; for they lost only one of their number, and that one 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 regimentals for safety; and then he was shot, not as a peace-man, but as a man of blood. How strongly does such an exception confirm the general rule!

The same principles insured equal protection to others during the Irish Rebellion. The rebels, who had long meditated an attack upon the Moravian settlement at Grace Hill, marched at length a large body of men into the town; but the Moravians, true to their principles, offered no resistance, and no means of violent defence. God was their trust. Assembled in their chapel, they besought him to be their shield in that hour of their danger; and he gave at once a most signal answer to their prayers. The infuriated soldiers were astonished at a sight so contrary to their expectations; they paused and listened to the devotions of their intended victims; they heard the Moravians imploring mercy for their expected murderers; such an exhibition of the Christian spirit, of the peace principle, disarmed their rage; and, after lingering in the streets a day and a night, they turned and marched off without killing or injuring a single individual.

The principle, too, is just as safe for communities as for individuals. "I have read," says Mrs. L. M. Child, "of a certain regiment ordered to march into a small town, (in the Tyrol, I think,) and take it. It chanced that the place was settled by a colony who believed the gospel of Christ, and proved their faith by works. A courier from a neighboring village informed them that troops were advancing to take the town. They quietly answered, if they will take it, they must.' Soldiers soon came riding in with colors flying, and fifes piping their shrill defiance. They looked round for an enemy, and saw the farmer at his plough, the blacksmith at his anvil, and the women at their churns and spinning-wheels. Babies crowed to hear the music, and boys ran out to see the pretty trainers with feathers and bright buttons, 'the harlequins of the nineteenth century.' Of course none of these were in a proper position to be shot at. 'Where are your soldiers?' they asked. We have none,' was the brief reply. But we have come to take the town,' 'Well,

friends, it lies before you.' 'But is there nobody here to fight?' 'No we are all Christians.' Here was an emergency altogether unprovided for by the military schools. This was a sort of resistance which no bullet could hit; a fortress perfectly bombproof. The commander was perplexed. If there is nobody to fight with, of course we can't fight,' said he. It is impossible to take such a town as this.' So he ordered the horses' heads to be turned about, and they carried the human animals out of the village as guiltless as they entered, and perchance somewhat wiser. This experiment on a small scale indicates how easy it would be to dispense with armies and navies, if men only had faith in the religion they profess to believe."

THE ITALIAN WAR.

We do not wish to dwell now on the rise, progress or probable results of this great conflict between nearly a hundred millions of men calling themselves Christians; but the mere fact of its occurrence in the heart of Christendom, and beneath the meridian blaze of the nineteenth century, is pregnant with most important lessons of wisdom and warning. Of all these lessons we would call attention for a moment to only a single one the obvious and pressing necessity of far more effort in the cause of Peace.

To us, indeed, it seems strange that there should be any occasion to enfore a point so plain. This cause has been in progress more than forty years; but in all this time how very little has been attempted in comparison with the magnitude of the work to be done, or of the object to be gained! It is no exaggeration to say that there ought to have been spent in this great Christian Reform a hundred, if not a thousand times more effort than has been; and, if there had been used from the first, means at all adequate to the exigencies of the case, they would, with moral certainty, have averted the deluge of crimes and woes sure to flow from the present war.

Look at a few patent facts. In less than two months from the commencement of this war, there were marshalled, for deadly strife in northern Italy, three quarters of a million of troops, at a daily expense to the parties of perhaps two million dollars a day, and an incidental loss of still more in the destruction of property, as well as life, and in the suspension or derangement of

all kinds of business. Had a single week's cost and waste of this conflict been spent with a wise economy in efforts, during the last forty years, to enlighten in season the general mind of Europe on the subject of peace, the present deplorable spectacle could never have been witnessed, but in its place we might have seen assured peace and prosperity all over the Old World, and such a reduction of standing armaments as would have saved ere this thousands on thousands of millions of treasure. One million a year, spent in season and aright, in the cause of peace, might have done all this. When will good men wake to the claims of this cause?

It may perhaps be said, that it is now too late for such arguments. To the millions involved in this struggle, it may be; but to the spectators of the scene, the world at large looking on the bloody strife, now is just the time to reflect on its suicidal folly, and devise means to avert like crimes and calamities from themselves. Used aright, it would be a very effective argument against the whole practice of nations appealing to the blind and brutal arbitraments of the sword; and the friends of God and man will be quite inexcusable if they do not at once turn it to such account in pressing the claims of peace. Such arguments it is every day working out at a terrible rate; and, though the immediate combatants are too hot and furious in the work of mutual slaughter to pause for reflection, outsiders may and should use them with greatly increased effect in dissuading from the custom of war.

Such ought to be the use made of the present war; but how is it in fact treated? Does the press or even the pulpit denounce or much deplore it as a fearful crime or calamity? No; they nearly all speculate upon it as a problem, whose character is to be determined by the results, good or evil, to which it may in time lead. On this contingency they suspend their verdict, and wait to see whether they shall praise or blame, rejoice or mourn. If a better state of things in Italy, or in Europe at large shall result from this vast and fearful accumulation of crimes now perpetrated before earth and heaven by the armies representing a hundred million of nominally Christian people, they will laud deeds that outrage every principle of the gospel, and every instinct of an enlightened humanity. Strange perversion and infatuation! If fifty or a hundred thousand men, well organized and drilled for their informal work, were, in spite of law and its

officers, to pass, with a sword in one hand, and a torch in the other, through the streets of London or New York, spreading on every side indiscriminate slaughter and conflagration, what should we think if the press and the pulpit should unite in a chorus of exultation at the prospect or hope of ultimate good from such wholesale villainies, and prepare chaplets of immortal renown for the triumphant leaders? It seems to us that presses and pulpits are treating very much in this way the war now raging in Italy; presses and pulpits that claim to advocate a pure Christianity, and really believe that the gospel, as received and taught by themselves, will one day put an end to all war!

Alas! how slow we all are to learn the wisdom taught by God in his word and his providence! Most devoutly do we hope that the present war, in every view so inexcusable, and fraught with so many evils, may open the eyes of Christians at least to the folly and wickedness of the custom, and rally them to a hundred fold greater efforts than they have yet made for its abolition. Outside of the combatants, there never was a better time to work in this cause; and shall we not promptly seize the occasion, and turn it to the best account possible? In England our co-workers are doing so; and we would earnestly commend their example to our friends here.

SOME PROGRESS IN PEACE:

AS SHOWN BY FACTS CONNECTED WITH THE PRESENT WAR.

1. THE first is the stand taken by England against any complicity, direct or indirect, with the pending struggle. On this point both her people and her rulers seem now to be united and firm. How different from her course for centuries! Scarcely a war, certainly not one of any considerable note, has occurred on the Continent for ages, but she plunged into it, or mixed herself with it by diplomacy, and poured out her treasures and blood like water. Hundreds and even thousands of millions has she, within the last century alone, spent in sustaining such wars. It is a change in her policy as strange as it is auspicious, and due chiefly to the wise, able and persistent efforts made by the associated friends of peace to enlighten the public mind there on the subject.

2. Another significant and hopeful fact is found in the endeavors of the British Government to have the dispute between