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dread so much. It is impossible to deny that Christianity, 
which has implanted in our breasts a strong repugnance to the 
infliction of suffering, has brought about a strong feeling of the 
guilt of war, of the crime and sin of being responsible for the 
frightful amount of misery which the most humanely conducted 
war is sure to produce.* And if we grant that a part of the 
indisposition to war is produced by the commercial pursuits 
to which mankind are now for the most part addicted, to an 
impatience of the expense, the burden of taxation, the inter- 
ference with trade, which are its invariable concomitants, 
we may still place these facts to the credit of Christianity. For 
what else has weaned mankind from those warlike pursuits in 
which from the earliest ages it has taken delight, but the 
influence of the Christian religion ? Hume tells us, almost in 
a tone of complaint, of the decline of military enterprise pro- 
duced by Christianity among our Saxon forefathers and no 
candid person can deny that the weight of Christian influence 
rrom the first century of the Christian era to the nineteenth 
has been, on the whole, exerted in this direction. 
12. Were we to stop here, we should have enumerated no small 
number of triumphs which Christianity has obtained over the 
passions and weaknesses of mankind. *But the list is not yet 
exhausted. We should not be justified in leaving the subject 
without alluding to the immense growth of mutual kindness 
and consideration which it is the object of Christianity to 
pioduce, and which it has produced to so amazing an extent 
among us at the present day. Compare the state of our prisons 
now with their state as described in Goldsmith’s Vicar of 
Wakefield, or at the time when Howard and Sarah Martin and 
Mrs. Fry devoted themselves to an amelioration of the condition 
of prisoners. Compare our penal code now with the penal 
code of fifty years back, when men were hanged for forgery and 
sheep-stealing. Can we help acknowledging in these facts the 
working of such Christian principles as were laid down by Sir 
Ihomas More in the beginning of the sixteenth century, J though 
It is interesting to observe how this spirit works, even among those who 
are hostile to Christianity. A newspaper well known for its sceptical tone 
as lately been deprecating the warlike tendency shown by many of the 
c ergy. But its arguments are entirely Christian in their tone and spirit, 
anr it succeeds best in pointing out the deep antagonism between Christi- 
anity, properly understood, and the infliction of pain and suffering. 
T Hist, of Eng., c. 1. The Kingdom of Wessex. 
i Sir T. More, Utopia, book i. “ There are dreadful punishments enacted 
against thieves, but it were much better to make such provisions as would 
