1868.]       Jewish Wars as Precedents for Modern Wars.       121

by showing, as we have most conclusively done, that it proves too
much.
   We can now state the principle running through all the history
of the Jews, which justified them in waging wars of invasion and
extermination at one time, yet, at another time, submitting, with-
out resistance, to invasion and conquest; the principle which
made it right for them to suppress one rebellion, yet wrong to
suppress another equally unprovoked. This principle is not
found in the modern conception that defensive wars are right and
offensive wars are wrong; for it is a principle by which, at times,
both were tolerated, and at other times both were forbidden. It
is not found in the nature or the offense given by the enemy; for,
with the same offense, it required them at different periods to
pursue lines of policy as different as submission and resistance.
It is a principle which could make any war right, and without
which no war could be right. It is the principle of implicit
obedience to God. Sometimes, as in the case of the Canaanites
and of the Amalekites, it was God's will expressly revealed to
them, that they should invade and exterminate nations who had
done them no injury. To do this without a command from God
would have been a most infamous crime; but under his command
it became a solemn religious duty. God himself, for reasons of
his own, decided that these nations should be exterminated, and
he made the Jews the executioners of his will. They undertook
war not by their own volition, or at the instance of their own
judgement; and they found it hazardous to have any will of their
own in reference to its prosecution or its termination. Because
they objected to invading Canaan when God first commanded
them to do so, they were condemned to wander forty years in the
wilderness, till every fighting man among them, but two, should
perish. When they turned afterward to obey the command they
had refused to obey when it was given, they were beaten back
with great slaughter. (Num. xiv., 26-45.) The children of these
men at last invaded the land, and when they had prosecuted the
war to an extent which they thought sufficient, they made peace.
But the displeasure of God was pronounced against them in pro-
phetic words which were afterward fulfilled to their sorrow :  "I

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