Laurens P. Hickock — The Cause of Peace Demands the Specific Attention of Christians

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The Cause of Peace Demands the Specific Attention of Christians

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by  Laurens P. Hickock
American Advocate of Peace, 1835, Vol. 2, No. 9, pp. 17—27.*

“There is not one generation of the church which has slumbered over the evils of war that can stand guiltless.”

IF war could be abolished, and peace universally secured, the combined voice of mankind would admit it were a consummation devoutly to be wished.

But notwithstanding this admission, to some the whole subject of peace is but an Utopian scheme. To others, who admit the truth of inspired prophecy, universal peace is something that will take place in some distant age, but like the beauty of a fair morning, or the blessings of a fruitful season, it will be the absolute gift of God, exclusive of all human agency. Some entirely despair of its accomplishment, and feel that war, though terrible, is as inevitable as the tempest and the earthquake. Others stand aloof, and gravely rebuke its friends because they propose no one simple, undisputed principle, around which all may gather for common adoption and combined action. And others again seem to feel that no special effort is necessary, imagining that the general advancement of philosophy and Christianity will do the work.

We are persuaded that these views are fraught with no little danger to the whole cause of Christian benevolence and philanthropy.  Their influence, so far as it extends, (and this in some of the above forms is over a wide portion of the community,) discourages all distinct attention to the cause of universal peace on earth.  The first point is, to convince the advocates of Christian benevolence that something can, and ought to be done in the way of specific and direct action.   The evils of war, in all their dreadful detail, should be exposed to view, its effects upon social enjoyment, national prosperity, civil liberty, life, morals, religion, and every thing which enters into the composition of human happiness, should be effectually exhibited, for the purpose of awaking and directing the feelings of mankind; but still the great object now is to bring the Christian community to feel obligation and be excited by a sense of duty and responsibility.  In our view, the church, (and we use the word as including all who believe and love the gospel), must put forth efforts with specific reference to the cause of peace, or war will forever remain spreading its mourning and woe over the face of the earth, and laying its obstacles before every movement of the good, in their efforts of humanity and benevolence.

Full and deep is our persuasion, that the church will soon see, and be obliged to admit, that the cause of benevolence most fearfully, and perhaps fatally, labours under the weight which the spirit of war is from every side throwing upon it. But alas! so far is the church from this position, that if Christianity, in form and feeling as she 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 the slaughter of each other. And would such a result be that day of glory which the ancient Prophets have so exultingly described? Surely, something must be done to spread Christianity through the earth, a better form than her professors have practiced for sixteen centuries, or the leopard and the kid, the lion and the lamb, will never lie down together. Good men, who love the gospel, and believe its predictions, must be brought to act together, on this subject, with zeal and energy. The time is coming when nation shall no more lift up sword against nation, but like every other predicted good to man, it involves the obligation of his own direct agency; and it is time that with the prediction in view, and the way of its fulfilment clearly seen, the Christian world were up and moving on in firm faith to its accomplishment.

Many reasons combine their influence in urging to such a direct and specific effort in the cause of peace.

1.  The world will not free itself from war spontaneously.

Evils seldom cure themselves by their own operation. However terrible be the consequences which spring from the lusts of men, we never witness such a phenomenon as the rising of the mass of mankind spontaneously, and throwing off their vices, and thus shaking themselves loose from the despotism of their own appetites. The examples are all the other way. Unless some bold and zealous reformer has risen up, and with unsparing rebuke and faithful warning aroused the people, and in persuasive eloquence led them away from their delusions, they have gone on like the old world, filling the earth with violence; or like Sodom augmenting their wickedness before the Lord “exceedingly,” until his judgments have “cut short the work in righteousness by an awful extermination.” War presents no exception to this general rule. The years of the present century which have already passed, afford no encouragement in regard to the future, when left to its own course. In this term of thirty-five years, are included almost all the wars of Buonaparte, with the horrours of the Russian campaign, the bloody battle of Borodino, the passage of the Beresina, and the final consummation on the field of Waterloo—the wars with Greece, with the massacre at Scio—the war of America with Great Britain—the civil wars of Spain and Portugal—the invasion of Turkey by the Russians, with many other wars of less note, in South America, Europe, and Asia. How loudly do they proclaim that the savage thirst for blood is still unslaked, and that deeds of butchery are not yet foresworn, even by those who bear the Christian name! The present moment, it is true, is more calm; the future prospect is more bright, but it is not by any means the result of the mingled action of the vices and passions of men, working themselves pure from their defilements, by their own motion. The men of peace, and the still more widely diffused principles of peace, though unseen, are abroad in the earth; prayer and labour go hand in hand, and the public mind, unconscious whence it comes, begins to feel their influence. So by the silent influence of the dew of heaven, the air is softened and purified, and a fresher green is spread over the face of nature. But let these few hands hang down, through weariness and despondency, because the professed disciples of Christ refuse any encouraging cooperation, and the nations, unchecked, will pursue the course to which pride, revenge, selfishness, and mad ambition, urge, and the present calm be of but short duration; it will prove but the stillness before the storm. The tempest of war will again sweep over the land, and spread its mangled and bleeding victims over a thousand battle fields.

2. The deep delusion which prevails on this subject.

The public mind seems in nothing to be led on more passively, without rational conviction, and without inquiry, than the subject of war. For ages a deep delusion has rested on the nations, and led millions to the field of battle, unconscious of the cause, and regardless of the reasons of the war, like beasts to the slaughter. The ranks are filled by a thousand expedients. The bounty and pay, the hope of plunder, the freedom from moral restraint, change, excitement, fame, discontent, caprice, conscription, intoxication, all are used to allure or compel the man to become a soldier; and when once enrolled, the force of martial discipline controls and directs him, as passive to all the purposes of rational self-government as the weapon he wields. He is henceforth a simple instrument in the hand of another, to be used in the most effective way for human destruction. An hundred thousand men on a side are thus arrayed against each other; all made in the image of God, responsible to him for every act, at the price of eternal retributions, giving up their reason, and conscience, and submitting to be used by one ambitious or angry man, according to his own unquestioned order, and in blind compliance therewith turning all their force upon each other, to wound, and maim, and kill, in the greatest possible degree, till, in a few hours, half of them have fallen on the field, and their souls by thousands, in all their uncancelled guilt, have gone to the judgment. Where is there delusion so deep and dreadful as this, except it be that which permits the world and the church to look on and see the destruction of their brethren, with no inquiry into its necessity, no examination of its cause, no efforts to avert its certain and frequent recurrence? Here is one of the most astonishing instances to how dreadful an evil the human mind can be exposed, and yet from the force of long continued and deep seated delusion, slumber in guilty neglect and indifference.

A thousand things conspire to perpetuate this delusion. War appeals to all the bad passions of human nature, and also administers to the gratification of what is styled the nobler qualities of man. There is not only revenge and rapine and licentiousness for the depraved, but splendour, and distinction, and power for the ambitious.  Deeds of heroic courage and intrepid valour, and sometimes even of generous sacrifice and patriotic endurance spread a magic charm around this work of butchery, dazzling and deluding the mind, while poetry and its kindred arts lend their aid to heighten the effect. The option so generally imbibed, that this whole subject is beyond the reach of common hands, and in the keeping of legislators and national cabinets, as if they were sacred retreats from the influence of public sentiment, and the intrusion of injunctions of divine authority, with the power of precedent and habit, serve to bind this curse upon the world as with “bands of iron and brass.” Those who “will not touch it with one of their fingers,” bind the burden without resistance or rebuke on others, whose wealth, and sons, and blood, must be put in contribution to sustain it. And can such an evil be removed by efforts having no distinct aim or specific direction?

That credulous heart which has expected such a result, from such means, will meet with certain disappointment. The evil, in its length and breadth, must be measured, and the overwhelming sum of misery and death which it occasions, must be told, with direct purpose to awaken the slumbering millions that they may understand it, and arouse themselves to effort. In no other way will the least ray of hope dawn upon the future.

3.  Peace is important not only as an end, but as a means.

While the final triumph of religion is sure, it is not to be expected that the cause of peace will have no distinct agency in accomplishing this triumph. That it is simply to be combined with other blessings, and not itself to be a powerful agent in the accomplishment of other benevolent aims, is an opinion violating all probability. No subject seems to have filled the minds of ancient Prophets with more ecstacy than this. On no occasion do they pour forth their fervid emotions in more glowing language, than when describing the profound and holy peace which is to pervade the nations under the gospel. Whatever may be the state of the church now, prophets and apostles of old, held this fact in the most prominent and conspicuous point of view. The sons of peace, and the nations of peace, were to be the direct instruments of advancing still farther the principles and blessings of the gospel.

Thus the cause of peace is to be viewed not merely as an item in the last triumph, but as one of the essential agents in securing it.

The common knowledge of the wars of Christendom is one of the greatest obstacles to the success of Christian missionary work. The taunting and cutting remark has been made to more than one missionary— look at home!  The traditions of the bloody Crusades, and the remembrance of the invasion of Egypt by the French, are still retained by all the inhabitants on the plains of Turkey and Persia. Oh! how deep rooted must be the prejudices in many a non-Christian mind, throughout Asia, and suffering Africa, against any gift from nations whom they know to be so often, and so deeply stained with blood. We shall never win their confidence while in one hand we bear the gospel which reveals it, and in the other, hold a sword. Whatever may be the spirit and principles of the new religion, the practice of those nations who profess it will be felt the first, and strike the deepest. No miracle is needed to carry conviction to non-Christian minds that the religion of the Bible is from heaven. It is enough that it be sent to them by a people who practice according to its pure and peaceful principles.

4.  To clear the church from the guilt of war.

In morals and religion, we are responsible for the evils which we might have prevented, as well as for those which we immediately occasion. There is not therefore one generation of the church which has slumbered over the evils of war, that can stand guiltless before God. Though in times of general ignorance, God may have “winked at it,” yet now most emphatically, is the call to repent, and to “bring forth fruits meet for repentance.” Light has been shed upon the evils, and the absurdity of war as a redress for national grievances, both from nature and the Bible. Whatever may be said of the very few wars in self defence, for national existence, the great proportion of all wars, (the exceptions are so few as not to modify the general rule)—can be characterized only as bloody, savage, guilty transactions. Every injury inflicted, evil incurred, and life lost, cries aloud to heaven for justice, to be executed somewhere. And if the church of God, by slumbering at her post, is giving occasion to evils which she might prevent, she cannot stand acquitted at the bar of her final Judge. Judgment will “begin at the house of God” for it. It may be in the shape of abortive efforts, and fruitless charities, and unanswered prayers. God will speak till his voice be heard, and his meaning understood; and if his professed people refuse then to obey, there remaineth no other judgment but utterly to “destroy both them and their fathers’ house, while enlargement and deliverance shall arise from another place.” The church cannot, therefore, without fearful guilt and danger, refuse fairly to consider this subject, and solemnly and deliberately as in the sight of her Redeemer, decide what she ought to teach—how she ought to act—and where she ought to throw her light and influence. Her missionaries, and those to whom they go, her future sons and daughters, her coming prophets and evangelists, the whole world, need the full announcement of her creed, and this illustrated by her practice. All feeling which approaches the subject of war, other than that of the most serious and prayerful frame of mind, betokens an indifference to its enormities, worthy of all rebuke from both the church and her divine Lord and Master.

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* Another item from the 19th century anti-war movement literature.  Minor edits have been made for the benefit of modern readers — the webmaster.