appeal of mere softness and sweetness, but they will rise up to the call of danger; they will not follow the dove, but they will follow the eagles.
Why is this? Is it a bad thing, or a good thing? But is it not the very spirit of the heroism of the Cross? Is it not the very fire of the Holy Ghost, which drove the Apostles forth to meet prison, and storm, and shipwreck, and the sword? Is it not the spirit of the missionaries to-day who lay down their lives every year, and the spirit of those Christians who but last year perished at the hands of the Turk by the hundred thousand rather than renounce their faith?
War is most horrible. But one thing is worse— unrighteous peace, the peace of selfishness, carelessness, luxury, injustice, the peace of the oppressor and of the men who grind the faces of the poor; and one thing only is better—the peace of God, which is itself a war, a ceaseless spiritual war against unrighteousness and all the lies 'that comfort cruel men'. It is a war—
'In ire and exultation,
Aflame with faith and free.'
Our fair young men crowded out to the hideous battlefields; and their parents, agonizing, had to let them go. They laid down their twenty years, of life without a doubt or question. Is not this most truly religion, whatever else it may be? Yet human war is unchristian, devilish, loathsome. How can
