hundred men and women.

I sometimes think that

our retaliation was not more rational, or more like Christians than theirs.'

"Will you please,' said I, 'to tell me what sort of revenge would be like Christians?'

"He hesitated, and said it would be a hard question to answer. 'I never felt pleasantly about that affair,' continued he; 'I would not have killed her if I had known she was a woman.'

"I asked why he felt any more regret about killing a woman than killing a man?

"I hardly know why myself,' answered he. 'I don't suppose I should, if it were a common thing for women to fight. But we are accustomed to think of them as not defending themselves; and there is something in every human heart that makes a man unwilling to fight in return. It seems mean and dastardly, and a man cannot work himself up to it.'

666

'Then, if one nation would not fight, another could not,' said I. 'What if a nation, instead of an individual, should make such an appeal to the manly feeling, which you say is inherent in the heart?'

"I believe other nations would be ashamed to attack her,' he replied. 'It would take away all the glory and excitement of war, and the hardiest soldier would shrink from it, as from cold-blooded murder.'

"Such a peace establishment would be at once cheap and beautiful,' rejoined I; and so we parted."

To the pointed question of Mr. Ballou, "What revenge would be like Christians?" some of the previous illustrations have supplied some answer. We have seen in what way the Christian may disarm his enemies, in what way he may kill them; and to those who would retort in reference to some of the opinions advanced here, that they are Utopian or extravagant, we can only reply, that in so far as they have yet been tried, they have been proved to be thoroughly practical and effective in producing all the results that we could desire.

IV

Motives for Love to Enemies.

"The quality of mercy is not strained;

It droppeth, as the gentle rain from Heaven,
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blessed;
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes."

SHAKSPEARE.

N

O command in the whole New Testament is more simple and unambiguous than that which says, "Love your enemies; do good to them who hate you; and pray for them who despitefully use you and persecute you." A hard duty truly, yet one incumbent on all, and in the honest and sincere fulfilling of which there is great reward. It is a hard duty, we say, as indeed are all Christian obligations and duties to the unregenerate heart; yet it may be still more correctly named an easy duty, for, once begun, all obstacles disappear. If you have an enemy, and wish to love him, do him a kindness, perform towards him some generous act of liberality and

self-denial; try to make him better, freer, happier, and you will at once find that he has become an object of interest to you instead of one of fear or hate. Nay more, it is by no means improbable that you also will become very speedily an object of kindly interest to him; and thus a change is brought about in the moral world akin to that which in the natural world converts the arid desert, or the waste and desolate moor, into smiling gardens and richly-laden harvest fields. Love never fails; it disarms enemies, it overcomes all obstacles, it achieves the most noble and glorious of all triumphs, since in its rejoicings there are no mourning captives. They that have been subdued are alike victors with those who have vanquished them—both participate in the gain, divide the spoils of the victory, and share in the triumph.

Few examples of the good policy of true Christian uprightness and singleness of purpose have been more manifest in the history of nations, than is shown in the early career of the Pilgrim Fathers, who planted the colony and state of New England on the American continent. They had hardly established a footing on the wild shores of the New World, when the selfishness of one of the merchant adventurers, under whose auspices they had gone out, threatened to involve them in total ruin. Not content to wait for the returns of their honest and patient industry, Mr. Weston had gathered together a body of needy and unprincipled

adventurers, whom he sent out to rival these pioneers of colonization, to thwart their projects, undermine their schemes, and rob them of the fruits of their negotiations and agreements with the natives. Had the pilgrim colonists been content to take as their guide and rule of conduct the maxim propounded by them of old time-" Ye shall love your neighbour, and hate your enemy," their policy would have seemed sufficiently simple, and they might speedily have exterminated their enemies by merely leaving them to starve. But they acted on a nobler principle, and reaped a better reward, though the sufferings they were involved in by their unprincipled rivals compelled them to try to the utmost their faith and perseverance, ere they realized the promise, "Be not weary in well doing, for in due season ye shall reap if ye faint not." The pilgrims had placed no slight reliance on Mr. Thomas Weston; but the first notice they had of his shortsighted selfishness was from the chance communication of the crew of a boat belonging to the Sparrow, a fishing vessel despatched by Mr. Weston in the first movements of his impatient eagerness to reap the promised harvest of the new plantation. This fishing vessel, the Sparrow, with its unfriendly shallop and crew, proved but the forerunner of evils that threatened utterly to overturn the whole labours of the New England colonists, pursued with such unwearied constancy in defiance of every obstacle. A letter received by that opportunity,