[1] What a vision of destruction! Think of all that tormented
and desolated the earth during the long period of the fall
of the Roman Empire,--of that inundation of revenge and
death, the progress and utmost extension of the Mahomedan
power; of the mighty account of slaughter in the Spanish
conquest of America; of the almost incessant wars among the
states of civilised Europe down nearly to the present hour.
Think even of the bloody wars within our own island,
especially on the border between its northern and southern
divisions; the hundreds of remaining fortresses, monumental
of war. And to complete the account--as if the whole solid
earth were not wide enough--the sea has been coloured with
blood, and received into its dark gulf myriads of the
slain, as if it could not destroy enough by its tempests
and wrecks!--_Foster._
[2] Almost four or five years since, our Government had a war
with the Pindarees--a terrible assemblage of outlaws,
robbers, and murderers, to the number of fifty thousand,
occupying a strong and almost inaccessible tract on the
northern frontier. Thence with impetuous rapidity, they
rushed down, all horsemen, on the country, inhabited by a
population of cultivators; seized whatever could easily be
carried off, and with furious eagerness demolished, burnt,
destroyed the rest. But far more than this, they were
universally possessed with the spirit of murder; they
killed the people without regard to sex or age. Not only
so, but when sufficiently at leisure for such amusement,
they inflicted excruciating tortures previous to death.
Now, when the Governor-General had intelligence of
this--_what was he to do? what,_ acting as a Christian?
_Nothing?_ What, as a great magistrate, did he "bear the
sword" for? What was he Governor at all for? To lie in
splendid state, and number and tax the people? Or was he to
direct that prayer should be made in the churches for
something very like a miracle? And on failure of that,
prayers that the wretched people he governed might be all
meekly resigned to their fate? and that even should the
fell and fiendish legion, being unresisted, choose to
pursue their way all down to Calcutta, all the people in
their tract could not escape, and at last himself and the
people of the city, might be enabled calmly to submit to a
sovereign dispensation of Providence?
He did not do this. He chose rather to set out on the rule
of his appointment, to be "a terror to evil-doers," "a
minister of God, a revenger, to execute wrath upon them
that do evil" (Rom. xiii. 4). But if war is in all possible
cases wrong, he perpetuated an enormous crime against
Christianity in marching his armies with a celerity
unparalleled in that climate, and encountering,
intercepting, and exterminating the murderers, so that the
surviving people could feel themselves in peace.
* * * * * * *
Put the stronger case of an immense host of northern
barbarians being landed on our coasts (Tartars, Cossacks,
Calmucks), and joined there by the legions of the Popish
states, what would happen if we all, as Christians, judged
it wrong and wicked to fight? Unless, indeed, we should
suppose a divided opinion in the nation with respect to the
Christian principle of the case, and that so a very large
and powerful proportion was resolute to resist in all the
array and action of war. Now, while with the utmost
sacrifice and peril they were doing so, and suppose
successfully, what a remarkable phenomenon would be
presented! namely, the other division of the people
deploring these very proceedings and successes by which
their houses are saved from ravage and
desolation,--deploring them as an awful outrage against
Christian rectitude,--praying for the instant _conversion_
of these deluded men to a right apprehension of Christian
duty,--that they might immediately throw away their arms
and allow the barbarian inundation to burst forward! Or,
having failed in this prayer (and a mighty victory having
finally cleared the land of the infernal irruption), then
lamenting that a dreadful national violation of Christian
principles had been irretrievably consummated! And as
success purchased by crime can in the result be little else
than a calamity and a judgment, they might be alarmed and
dismayed to find themselves still in possession of their
former freedom of worship, of speech, of action, and of all
their rights as citizens.--_Foster._ (Written in 1823.)
[3] It is difficult to realise the fact to our imagination. No
fighting on the face of the whole earth! no armies, no
military profession, no garrisons, nor arms, nor banners,
nor proclamations! No leagues, offensive or defensive; no
guarding of frontiers; no fortresses; no military prisons!
No celebrating of victories in gaudy pomps and revelries
for the vulgar, or in prostituted poetry for the more
refined! A wondering what kind of times those could be in
which mankind accounted it the highest glory to kill one
another! Truly this is a state of things we are ill
prepared even to conceive!--_Foster._
[4] Such things will be _included,_ certainly, in whatever
process can and shall reduce the world at length to peace;
they will be taken as accessories and subsidiaries to the
Master Power in operation. But whoever would reckon on such
things alone should be strangely mortified, one thinks, in
adverting to many facts of old and recent history. What,
for example, is he to do with the history of Greece? or of
the Italian Republics? Or nearer home, Britain and France
account themselves the most enlightened and civilised
states in the world; they have not been, with all their
might, fighting and slaying each other and neighbouring
nations for centuries, almost without intermission, down to
this time! In the French revolutionary government, which,
after a time, became essentially warlike, there were more
philosophers, speculative, literary men, than ever in any
other. In our own country, through the last half-century,
the enlightened and civilised people (often so described
and lauded at least) have needed but a little excitement,
at any time, to rush out into war. Our institutions of
learning, and even theology, have constantly abetted the
spirit. An ever-flowing, impetuous stream there has been of
oratory, poetry, and even pulpit declamation, mingling with
and inspiriting the coarse torrent of the popular zeal for
battles and victories. We have had both poets and divines
actually sending the most immoral heroes to heaven, on the
mere strength of their falling in patriotic combat. All
this tells but ill for the efficacy of civilisation,
literature, refinement, and the instruction of experience
to promote the spirit of peace, without the predominance of
some mightier cause.--_Foster._
[5] What will the natural consequences be in respect to war?
Will it not be coldness towards that pernicious phantasm,
martial "glory";--a loathing of that sort of eloquence and
poetry that are making a god of it;--a hatred of the very
name of ambitious conquerors;--horror at the image of vast
masses of men waiting to destroy one another;--a sense of
the flagrant absurdity, as well as iniquity, of the
avenging some little wrong at the cost of so mighty a
portion and variety of misery;--and a faith that Providence
has not so abandoned the world that we are not to wait one
moment for any interposition from it in favour of justice,
but, the instant the scales of justice are poised, we must
throw in the sword? Such would be the spirit and temper of
a nation predominantly Christian.--_Foster._