Rest from war.
These words bring us a grateful sense of relief. We are weary of reading the long catalogue of bloody victories—how of one city after another it is said, "They smote all the souls that were therein with the edge of the sword, utterly destroying them; there was not anything left to breathe." We are ready to say with the Prophet, "O thou sword of the Lord, how long will it be ere thou be quiet?" (Jeremiah 47:6). If it were not for our conviction that an all wise and righteous Divine purpose determined all this (Carlyle's distinction between the "surgery" of God's judgments and "atrocious murder"), we should turn with loathing from the sickening tale of slaughter. Certain thoughts about war are suggested.
I. THE CAUSES OF WAR. The baser passions of human nature are the sources from which it always more or less directly springs. These are the root of all its practical wickednesses. "Whence come wars and fightings among you? Come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?" (James 4:1). Vain ambition, the desire for territorial aggrandizement, the thirst for power, jealousy, revenge, etc.—these are the demons that kindle its destructive fires. Other and more plausible motives are but the false veil that hides their hatefulness. There is no real exception. Self defence is no doubt an imperious instinct of nature, and there are interests (liberties, sanctities of social life, principles of eternal righteousness) which it may often be a noble thing for a nation, even by utmost force of arms to guard. But there would be no need to defend if there were no lawless lust or cruel wrong to endanger them. These "wars of the Lord" are no exception to the rule. They were waged by the Divine command, but their cause lay in the moral evil that cursed the land—those foul iniquities which, to the view of Infinite Wisdom, could be wiped out only by such a baptism of blood.
II. THE MISERIES OF WAR. It is the very symbol of almost all the woes of which human nature is capable, and that can darken with their shadow the field of human life.
(3) the cruel rending of natural ties,
These are some of the calamities that follow in the track of wax. Their sadness and bitterness cannot be exaggerated.
III. THE POSSIBLE BENEDICTIONS OF WAR. It is a marvellous proof of the Divine beneficence that reigns supreme over all human affairs that even this deadly evil has something like a fair side to it, and is not unmixed with good.
"softening and concealing,
And busy with its hand in healing,"
the rents and ravages the sweep of the destroyer may have made.
IV. THE CURE FOR WAR. There is no cure but that which is supplied by the redeeming influence of the Prince of Peace.