186 The Evolution of Arms and Armor. 



developing more eyes and ears, with which to see and hear 

 the right, rather than more teeth and claws with which to 

 put down the wrong, and organizing not so much a better 

 police as a better people. It is this which is the funda- 

 mental idea of Christianity ; this, what it means by its 

 doctrine of faith as opposed to law ; this, that it has come 

 back to in all its great reformations, from that of Luther 

 down ; this, the goal at which it joins hands with science ; 

 this, very singularly, that is the real meaning to-day of a 

 word almost too hateful for utterance, the blossom in 

 society of religion's most cherished teaching and the 

 outcome in morals of Nature's divinest struggle for life. 

 Its shortest expres'sion, " liiglit its own best weapon," is a 

 Damascus-blade that what battle-tires have tempered and 

 battle-blows hammered out ! Not poetry alone, is it, but 

 sober fact, that "Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel 

 just." To put on "the breast-plate of righteovisness," " the 

 shield of faitli," "the sword of the spirit" and "the whole 

 armor of God," is the injunction of Hoplology not less tliau 

 of Scripture. And it is as true of social safety, as of national 

 defense, that 



"Were half the power tliat fills the world with teiTor, 

 Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts, 

 Given to redeem the human mind from error, 

 There were no need of ai-senals and forts.*' 



The whole subject, thus looked at, is a good illustration 

 of how, tlirougliout the entire universe alike of matter and 

 mind, and often amid the greatest apparent contradictions, 

 it is possible that one increasing purpose runs. There is 

 nothing in Nature w^hich at first sight is more dishearten- 

 ing than the awful warring of its creatures one against 

 another, provided for, as it is, in their very structure; 

 nothing which to many persons so militates against tlio 

 idea of a loving God as the awful cruelties of that struggle 

 for existence into which, with no choice of theirs, all 

 organic beings are plunged ; nothing Avhieh could seem less 

 the purpose of things, especially Avhile the monsters of the 

 geologic ages were being brought forth ever more and 

 more terrible, than that the meek and the righteous should 

 inherit the earth. Yet Avith the points of tooth^and claw, 

 "red in ravin," as j)ens, and the blood of her myriad 

 creatures dying in battle, as ink, she lias been writing all 



