UPON the first announcement of the proposition that all war is
sinful, the mind of the Bible reader instantly reverts to the Jew-
ish economy, and to the fact that the chosen people of God were
often engaged in war; and this, too, with express divine sanction.
This is the first resort for objections to the proposition, and objec-
tions from this source almost invariably suggest themselves to
those with whom the question is a new one. At the same time,
those advocates of war who have studied the question most ma-
turely, find in the same fact the ground of one of their most
potent arguments. It is proper, therefore, that we should begin
our discussion of the question by considering this argument, and
by setting forth the exact bearing of Old Testament precedents
upon the whole subject.
   The argument to which we refer may be stated, in its most
popular as well as its most ingenious form, as follows: God can
not sanction that which is morally wrong. But God has sanc-
tioned war; therefore war is not morally wrong.
   We are not disposed to make haste in the consideration of this
argument, but prefer to linger upon it until its merits are fully
exhibited and made quite familiar to the mind of the reader.
We will not, therefore, attempt its refutation in the most direct
method, until after we shall have approached it somewhat in-
directly. The advantages of this course will be apparent, we
trust, as we proceed.
   It is sometimes well, in considering an argument, to first note
the consequences involved in the supposition of its validity. Such
a course quite frequently reduces to a very bald absurdity an

                  8

114         Jewish Wars as Precedents for Modern Wars.         [April,

argument which, in any other way, can be refuted only by uncom-
mon logical skill. Observe, then, some of the consequences in-
volved in the argument just stated. If valid at all, it must be so
in reference to the character of the wars included in the minor
premise, as certainly as in reference to war in the abstract. For
if God can not sanction that which is morally wrong, he certainly
can not and has not sanctioned wars which are wrong in their
character. In other words, God can not sanction a wicked war;
and to the full extent that his sanction justifies war, it justifies
wars of the same character with those which he has sanctioned.
If such wars are justified, then nations, and even Christians, may
innocently engage in them. But the very first war which the
Jews were commanded to undertake was a war of invasion, con-
quest, pillage, and extermination. They entered the land of
Canaan not in self-defense, but to exterminate the native tribes,
to seize or destroy their movable property, and to take per-
manent possession of their country. They came to cultivate vine-
yards which they had not planted, and to dwell in houses which
they had not built. In a subsequent age King Saul, with the
sanction of God, undertook a similar war against the Amalekites,
sparing neither age, sex, nor condition, but putting the whole
population to the sword. But our argument justifies such wars;
and if a nation in which Christians live were now to undertake a
war of this character, they could innocently take part in it; for
God commanded his chosen people to wage such wars, and what
God has commanded or sanctioned can not be morally wrong.
Where is the Christian advocate of war who is willing to abide
this inevitable result of his own logic?
   In the second place, this argument, if valid in reference to the
main question, must be equally so in reference to the causes which
justify war. If God can not sanction that which is morally
wrong, he can not and has not sanctioned a war undertaken for
an unjust purpose or an insufficient cause. But the Jewish war of
extermination against the Canaanites was not provoked by a
single act of hostility, or even of unkindness. There had been no
intercourse between the parties for generations previous, and they
had, just previous to the war, scarcely a knowledge of each other's

1868.]       Jewish Wars as Precedents for Modern Wars.       115

existence. The only exciting cause between the parties was a
desire on the part of the Jews to possess the land, and a determin-
ation on the part of the Canaanites to repel an unprovoked in-
vasion. The same may be said substantially of Saul's war against
the Amalekiies. The only complaint of the Jews alleged in the
history is, that the ancestors of the Amalekites, nearly five hun-
dred years before, had attacked the ancestors of the Israelites as
they were passing through the wilderness. (1 Sam. xv., 1-3.) The
attacking party had then met with a severe defeat, but now their
descendants, of a remote generation, must be slaughtered, men,
women, and children, without any new offense to the invading party.
Yet, if our argument is a sound one, Christians may now, as the
Jews did then, invade the territories of a neighboring nation, and
slaughter the inhabitants, without even a complaint against them.
God has sanctioned such wars, and what he has sanctioned can not
be morally wrong. Those who insist that such wars are wrong,
must admit that God himself has sanctioned wrong. How unfor-
tunate for the world's great warriors that this argument was not
sooner discovered! It would have justified all the conquests of
Alexander, Caesar, Tamerlane, and Napoleon, and even the rav-
ages of every savage chief who ever burned a peaceful village and
slaughtered its inhabitants. It gives them all the sanction of
divine approbation; yet, strange to say, it is the argument of men
who deny the innocence of any but defensive war. There is no
escape from this conclusion; for the fact that God has sanctioned
wars of extermination does most unquestionably prove that such
wars are not, necessarily, because they are such, and for no other
reason, morally wrong. That such a conclusion springs legiti-
mately from an argument employed by those who deny the inno-
cence of all offensive wars, should make them suspect that it is
fallacious, for it proves too much for their own cause. They are
certainly right in condemning offensive wars in general; and
when we come to see in what way they may be condemned, with
these divine precedents before us, we will see clearly the defect in
the argument which we are considering.
   But this argument involves the parties who employ it in an
inconsistency still more gross, if possible, than the above. Con-

116         Jewish Wars as Precedents for Modern Wars.         [April,

demning offensive war, and declaring the innocence of defensive
war, they go to the divinely sanctioned wars of the Jews for an
example in proof, when lo, they find their exemplars engaged in
the very warfare which they condemn, while the enemies of the
Jews are waging the wars which they justify. No people on
earth ever waged more strictly defensive wars than did the Ca-
naanites. They fought in defense of their country, their property,
and the lives of their women and children, against an enemy to
whom they had given no cause for offense. No Christian advo-
cate of defensive war, had he then lived in Canaan, could have re-
fused to enlist, like the prophet Balaam, in the ranks of the invad-
ed nations. He might have objected that they were a very wicked
people, who, if they had their deserts at the hand of God, would
be severely punished; but then it would have been demanded:
"What right have these refugees from Egypt, whom neither we
nor our fathers have offended, to pronounce judgment on us, and
undertake our extermination? Have we not a right, so far as
they are concerned, to worship what gods we please, and to regu-
late our own domestic institutions? And when they come to de-
prive us of this right, and not only so, but to consign us without
conditions and without mercy to utter extermination, who will
deny to us the right of self-defense?" I confess, that as an advo-
cate of war, I could not have answered these questions, except by
granting that right and justice between the partics was all on the
side of the Canaanites. Such must be the judgment of the world,
when the parties are considered only in their relations to one an-
other, the only way in which parties to any war can now be con-
sidered, and therefore the only way in which these facts can fur-
nish precedents for the present day. How wild and reckless, then,
the logic by which the Jews, whom to imitate now would expose
any nation to the execration of mankind, and held up as furnish-
ing an example, in the matter of war, for the imitation of Chris-
tians! The advocate of defensive war should pause here, and de-
liberate, before he reads further. If he is capable of thinking
consistently, he will find himself involved in some confusion.
   There is still another unlooked for conclusion to which our
argument necessarily leads us. If God can not sanction that

1868.]       Jewish Wars as Precedents for Modern Wars.       117

which is morally wrong, then all his decisions upon the question
of war must be regarded as infallibly right. We have seen that
he could not sanction war for a wrong or insufficient cause; and
we now conclude, that, if our argument is valid, whatever causes
God regarded as insufficient to justify war must really be insuffi-
cient. But, upon examination, we find that causes which all ad-
vocates of defensive war now declare to be entirely sufficient for
taking up arms, were entirely insufficient then. In the days of
King Saul, Judaea was invaded, without provocation, by the Philis-
tines. Saul, instead of attacking them at once, which he was not
at liberty to do, waited so long for the prophet Samuel to give
him God's permission to fight, that his men became alarmed and
deserted him, until his army was reduced to six hundred men.
Some unauthorized skirmishing undertaken by Jonathan, resulted
in the rout of the Philistines, and the rallying of Israel; but when
Saul again applied for divine permission to lead forward his army,
it was again withheld, and he was constrained to disband his
forces. (I Sam. xiii. and xiv.)
   Later In the reign of Saul, the Philistines once more invaded
his kingdom with no wrong to redress, and when he applied for
divine permission to repel them, "The Lord answered him not,
neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets." But so anx-
ious was he to fight, that he induced the witch of Endor to call
up the dead prophet Samuel, that he might ask permissiom through
him. When the spirit of Samuel appeared, Saul said to him: "I
am sore distressed; for the Philistines make war against me, and
God has departed from me, and answers me no more, neither by
prophets nor by dreams; therefore I have called you, that you
may make known to me what I shall do." The prophet replied:
"Why do you ask me, seeing the Lord has departed from you and
become your enemy?" He gave him no permission to fight, but
Saul did fight, and his army was totally routed, himself and his
three sons faIling in the battle. (I Sam. xxviii., 3-20 ; xxxi., 1-6.)
   Again: in a still later period of Jewish history, the armies of
Nebuchadnezzar invaded Judaea, and laid siege to Jerusalem
itself; yet Zedekiah, the king, was forbidden to resist them,
though told by the prophet that he himself was about to be taken

118                  Jewish Wars as Precedents for Modern Wars.             [April,

captive and carried away to Babylon, (2 Kings xxv. Jer. xxi.)
In all these cases, right and justice between the parties were on
the side of Israel, while their enemies were, in each instance, ruth-
less invaders, whose only objects were conquest and plunder. The
fact that in these cases the Jews were forbidden to fight, shows
conclusively that in the judgment of God even unprovoked inva-
sions like these do not in themselves constitute a sufficient cause
for war. Thus again, and in the opposite direction, does the argu-
ment from Jewish precedents prove too much for our modern
defenders of defensive war.
   But an insurrection for the avowed purpose of dismembering
the nation was no more sufficient cause for war than an invasion.
When Rehoboam came to the throne, ten tribes dictated to him
conditions on which they would continue to submit to the estab-
lished government, saying: "Thy father made our yoke grievous;
now, therefore, make thou the grievous service of thy father, and
his heavy yoke which he put upon us, lighter, and we will serve
thee." The young king foolishly followed the advice of the young
men who had grown up with him, in preference to that of the old
men who had stood before his father, and threatened them with
heavier burdens and greater severities than Solomon had inflicted.
Upon this the ten tribes revolted. Rehoboam, indignant at an at-
tempt to dismember the nation, destroy its military resources, and
degrade it in the eyes of the world, assembled an army of one hun-
dred and eIghty thousand men, to bring the rebels back to a sense of
duty. But Shemaiah, the prophet of God, commanded that the army
should be disbanded," and they returned every man to his house."
(1 Kings xii.) The revolution was effected without the shedding,
of blood, and the proud young king was compelled, by the express
command of God, to swallow his wrath, and submit quietly to the
loss of much the greater part of his kingdom. This shows that a
revolt against an established government is not in itself a suffi-
cient cause for war, even when the revolting party has no better
cause than the fear of future oppression at the hands of their
rulers. If insufficient in onec case, it is insufficient in every other
case; and if such war is ever justifiable, it must be made so by
some consideration not found in the nature of the quarrel. Here,

1868.]            Jewish Wars as Precedents for Modern Wars.             119

then, is another cause of war held sufficient by all the modern
defenders of war, but proved entirely insufficient by the very
preccdents to which they appeal.
   It may be objected to the argument, from these cases of invasion
and insurrection, that the Jews were forbidden to resist the
former because they had sinned against God and deserved to be
punished ; and that Rehoboam was forbidden to resist the latter
because, as the prophet told him, "this thing is from the Lord."
But this explanation only confirms our previous conclusions, for it
shows that a justifying cause for war, under the Jewish economy,
had to be found in some circumstance entirely distinct from the
conduct of the parties toward each other. In the absence of that
other circumstance, neither invasion nor insurrection, however
unprovoked they might be, could justify an appeal to arms.
   If the justifying circumstance referred to, in case of invasion,
were the innocence of the invaded party, so that when they were
conscious of no guilt in the sight of God they might repel an
invasion, this would not enhance the practical value of the prece-
dent for modern nations, for there is no nation free from sin
against God, or undeserving of punishment at his hand, and
therefore there could still be no resistance to invasion under this
precedent. And if, in case of insurrection, the question of resist-
ance depended upon the further question, whether or not the
insurrection were "from the Lord," no insurrection could, in
modern times, be suppressed; for God has ceased to inform men
what insurrections are from him, and men are now able to know
it only by the result. If an insurrection is successful, men are apt
to conclude that it is from the Lord; but if it fails, they pro-
nounce it from the devil. This is rather a superficial method of
judging; for God might accomplish good by an unsuccessful in-
surrection, as a successful one might subserve the purposes of the
devil; but granting its correctness, it leaves nations utterly un-
able to know at the outset of a given insurrection whether it is
from God or not, and therefore the precedent binds them to
non-resistance. This is unquestionably true, unless God, in the
New Testament, has given some standard by which we may know
whether given insurrection and invasions are sanctioned by him.

120         Jewish Wars as Precedents for Modern Wars          [April,

   We now repeat the question :  By what strange perversion of
reason is it that the authorized wars of the Jews are appealed to
as a precedent for Christians, when, as a precedent, they so utter-
ly condemn the party that makes the appeal? There is not an
advocate for war now living, with any pretensions to Christianity,
who would justify in modern nations wars like some of those
waged by the Jews, or who would not justify now an appeal to
arms against such invasions and rebellion as they were forbidden
to resist; and yet, in the same breath, the Jewish wars are
appealed to as a justifying precedent. A more glaring incon-
sistency could scarcely be imagined. It is proof conclusive that
the Jewish wars are not yet understood-that the lesson they
teach has not yet been learned by the religious world.
   We must here remark, that we by no means wish to make the
impression that the Jews never repelled invasion nor suppressed
rebellion. They often did the former, and once, in the case of
the Benjamites (Judges xx.), they did the latter. This fact might
strike the mind of the objector as furnishing an offset to the argu-
ment which we have based upon their mode of dealing with other
invasions and insurrections. For example :  it might be urged
that the suppression of the Benjamite insurrection by the com-
mand of God, proves that insurrection was a sufficient cause for
war. But this would be to represent God as acting capriciously,
as permitting war at one time and forbidding it at another, when
the cause for war was in both cases the same. Such a representa-
tion is inconsistent with the character of God. Undoubtedly he
acted in both cases from some uniform principle, and the reason
of the difference is, that in the one case the justifying circum-
stance to which we have referred above was present; in the
other it was absent. This very diversity of conduct, therefore,
shows that neither the invasion nor the insurrection was in itself
the justifying cause for war.
   Neither, in showing that the Jews waged wars of extermination
which would be shocking to the moral sense of mankind at the
present day, would we intimate that their conduct in so doing is
really inexcusable. But our object is to show that the argument
in favor of modern wars, deduced from these facts, is fallacious,

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

122         Jewish Wars as Precedents for Modern Wars.         [April,

made you go up out of Egypt, and have brought you to the land
which I swore to your fathers, and I said, I will never break my
covenant with you. And you shall make no league with the
inhabitants of this land; you shall throw down their altars; but
you have not obeyed my voice. Why have you done this?
Wherefore I also said, I will not drive them out from before you;
but they shall be as thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be
a snare to you." (Judges ii., 1-3.) Again :  when King Saul un-
dertook to follow his own judgment in the war with Amalek,
sparing Agag and the best of the cattle and the sheep, the conse-
quence of his disobedience was the forfeiture of his throne. (I
Sam. xv., 10-28.)
   The same principle controlled them in their dealings with all
enemies, both foreign and domestic. The reason why they sup-
pressed the revolt of the Benjamites, but permitted that of the
ten tribes to go unresisted, was not because the latter was more
excusable than the former, but because God, by his prophet, com-
manded them in the latter case: "Ye shall not go up, nor fight
against your brethren the children of Israel; return every man to
his house;" but in the former case, when they asked God "Shall
I go up to battle against Benjamin my brother?" the Lord said:
"Go up against him." (I Kings xii., 24; Judges xx., 18, 23, 28.)
If the revolt of the Benjamites were the only one which occurred
in Jewish history, it might suggest the conclusion that God re-
garded revolt as a sufficient cause for war; but the fact that the
revolt of the ten tribes was not resisted prohibits this conclusion,
and shows that while the people had to act upon the decision of
God in each case, God's decision was formed from premises dis-
tinct from those furnished by the quarrel between the parties.
   In the cases of invasion mentioned above, God forbade them to
resist for reasons of his own; and when the whole nation was
tributary to surrounding tribes, as was often the case during the
period of the Judges, they quietly submitted to oppression till
"the spirit of the Lord came upon Othniel," or upon Gideon, or
Jephthah, or Samson; or till some prophet, or some prophetess
like Deborah, called out the armies of Israel in the name of the
Lord. In the period of the kings, when war was contemplated, a

1868.]       Jewish Wars as Precedents for Modern Wars.       123

prophet of God was consulted, or, in the absence of a prophet, an
appeal was made to God by the high-priest in the temple. Thus
the authority of God, revealed in reference to each particular
war, was their only justifying excuse for taking up arms, and
their only guarantee of success. This express revelation of God's
will not only justified them, but left their enemies without excuse.
Whilst the law of defense against unprovoked invasion would
justify the Canaanites in their resistance, and would have enlisted
every advocate for defensive war in their favor, the principle
which governed Jewish wars condemns their resistance. They
had committed crimes worthy of death; not, indeed, against the
Israelites who assailed them, but against God; and the fact that
it was God who ordered their extermination, is the consideration
which made it their duty to quietly submit. They were in the
condition of a condemned criminal led to the gallows by an
executioner who has no quarrel against him, and who rightly
takes his life under authority of law, though the same act without
such authority would be as inexcusable as the conduct of the
criminal himself.
   In order to see how these Jewish precedents affect the right of
nations to wage war at the present day, we must consider them as
if they were the only precedents known to us. We must take the
nations back under Jewish law, and suppose them, while under
that law, to wage just such wars as they now do. Or, to effect
the same object in another way, we must suppose that revelation
ceased with the Old Testament scriptures, and that nations are
now living under that law. This supposition is necessary in
order to prevent confusion of thought, and to enable us to see
these precedents in their own light alone. It places us in this
singular condition, - under a law which justifies us in waging any
kind of war which God may specifically authorize, but forbids
to wage any war for which he does not grant specific authority.
In addition to this, we find that he has absolutely ceased to com-
municate authority to undertake any particular war, and has
thereby deprived us of the one only cause which can justify us in
fighting even in self-defense. If there had been left to us a
general grant upon the subject, this might have obviated the

124         Jewish Wars as Precedents for Modern Wars.         [April,

necessity for a special grant in each individual case; but, what-
ever may be thought of New Testament revelation in this respect,
it is absolutely certain that no such general grant is to be found
in the Old Testament, and it is the force of its precedents that we
are now considering. The true and proper effect, therefore, of
applying to modern nations the law which governed Jewish war-
fare would be to render it impossible for them to wage any war;
for it would render insufficient the best causes which they can
have, unprovoked invasion and insurrection, while it would throw
them back for excuse upon one which they can never have, the
will of God specially revealed for the occasion. The Jewish
wars were certainly justifiable, and all wars precisely like them
would be equally so; but no modern wars can be like them in the
one only particular which made them innocent; therefore no
modern wars, judged by Jewish precedents, are innocent, or can
possibly be so.
   We have now exhibited the insufficiency of the argument for
war under consideration in two different ways. By first sup-
posing its conclusion to be granted, we have shown that it in-
volves the absurdity of justifying wars of unprovoked invasion
and extermination, and yet would prevent resistance to wars of
the same kind. This absurdity involved in the argument proves
that it must be fallacious. In the sccond place, we have shown
that the wars, upon the use of which, as precedents, the validity of
this argument depends, were such that, as precedents, they con-
demn all modern warfare. This fact again proves that there
must be a fallacy lurking in the argument. We have now only
to point out that fallacy, and dismiss the argument from further
consideration.
   Plausible as the argument appears, it contains no less than two
fallacies; first, a false assumption in the major premise; second,
an ambiguous use of the minor term. To speak of the latter first,
it is clear that the term war is used in a broader sense in the con-
clusion than in the minor premise. God can not sanction that
which is morally wrong :  he has sanctioned war; therefore war
is not morally wrong.
   Now it is not admitted, nor does the minor proposition assume

1868.]       Jewish Wars as Precedents for Modern Wars.       125

that God has sanctioned war in general; but merely that he has
sanctioned some particular wars waged by the Jews. As these
particular wars are all that the minor premise embraces, they are
all which can be embraced in the conclusion. But the term war
in the conclusion is employed in its general sense, and therefore
the argument is fallacious. This can be seen still more readily
by comparing it with the following, which is parallel to it. God
can not approve sinful beings. God has approved men; there-
fore men are not sinful beings.
   Here the minor term men is employed with the same ambiguity
which attaches to the term war in the argument above. The men
whom God has approved are not men in general, as would be re-
quired by the conclusion; but certain men whose sins had been
forgiven, and who were leading righteous lives. The premises
would justify the conclusion that some men are not sinful beings,
but they can prove no more than this. So the argument on war
proves that some wars, viz., those Jewish wars which God sanc-
tioned, were not morally wrong; and it might be employed to
prove that no wars precisely like them are morally wrong; but it
can prove no more than this. We have already seen, that to
prove this much would not serve the purpose of the defenders of
modern wars, seeing that none of the latter are, or can be, pre-
cisely like the approved Jewish wars, because they have not that
special revelation of God's approval which made those wars inno-
cent, and without which they would have been sinful.
   But the major premise contains a false assumption. God has
sanctioned some things which are morally wrong. Our opponents
themselves admit that wars of extermination are morally wrong,
yet we have seen that God has sanctioned some of them. Again:
treason is morally wrong; but God sanctioned that in the case of
Rahab, '"who received the spies, and sent them out another way."
The murder of one's own child is morally wrong, yet God com-
manded it in the case of Abraham. That which is morally wrong,
is known to be so by the precepts of God's moral law. But God
has seen fit, at times, to command, for special reasons of his own,
the performance of deeds which his moral law forbids. In such
cases the positive command sets aside the general moral precept,
and must be obeyed in preference. But a positive law can set the

126         Jewish Wars as Precedents for Modern Wars.         [April,

moral law aside only to the extent of its positive requirements;
so that such a command given to a man on a special occasion
could not justify him in the same act on another occasion, nor
could it justify the same act in another man on any occasion. No
man can argue the general right to sacrifice our children, from the
command to Abraham; nor the general right to betray our native
city to its enemies, from the justification of Rahab. (Jas. ii., 25.)
Some of the Jewish wars, viz., their wars of extermination, are
admitted to be of this same class of actions, and it is further ad-
mitted that they can not be used as precedents to justify any other
nations in waging similar wars; nor could the Jews have used
them as precedents for exterminating any other tribes than those
whom they were specially commanded to exterminate. But all
their wars, whether of offense or defense, were governed by the
same law; they were justified only by special grants of divine
authority; therefore no one class of them more than another can
be used as general precedents.
   We have now fully exhibited, both directly and indirectly, the
fallacy of the argument under consideration. It has deserved
the amount of space we have devoted to it, only in consideration
of the astonishing influence which it has exerted over the minds of
men. From the twilight which preceded the dark ages, through
all the succession of wars which have been waged by Christian
nations and applauded by preachers of the gospel down to the
fierce struggle through which our own country has just passed,
these wars of the Jews have been appealed to as justifying prece-
dents by both parties, with a confidence which would be almost
sublime were it not so utterly unfounded. It is time that the
world were waking from this dream of ages, and beginning to see
the true light which shines from these pages of Jewish history.
They would doubtless have seen it long ago, but for the blinding
effect of passion, and for the readiness with which men catch at
even the appearance of argument, to support them in a course
which they are determined, at all hazards, to pursue. With the
advance of a severer and more logical study of the word of God,
which is beginning to dispel the darkness of ages, we may expect
to see this subject, like many others, come forth into new light
before the world.                                                            M.