cause it happens conveniently to gather up under a few heads a number of contemporary tendencies. For the present purpose the superficiality of the description is part of its value, if it has any, and questions of the accuracy of the arrangement, and of the inherent truth of one or another philosophical system, are irrelevant. What is important to notice is that every one of the leading thinkers and original founders of these several schoolsas Kant, Hegel, Comte, Bentham, and the two Mills-devoted a prominent place in his system to the moral duties arising from International relations, and sketched out, with greater or less distinctness and minuteness, the lineaments of a great international Society, of which permanent Peace should be the essential basis and most beneficent feature. Each of them treated of politics as the climax of ethics, and International politics as the sublimest department of general politics. Each of them conceived man as gifted with a nature which can only find its adequate development and satisfaction in reciprocal intercourse, extending over the widest field, and directed to purposes conterminous with man's habitations on the face of the earth. These thinkers differed much from one another, and some of them had little in common with any of the rest. common to dif- The English Utilitarians, especially, exhibited the most striking opposition, or even antagonism, at almost every point, to the metaphysical spirit of Kant and Hegel, and to the intensely moralizing and systematizing habits of Comte. But in respect of the claims of a true international morality, of the possibility of constructing a true Society of States, of the conception of a human intercourse overstepping the limits of any purely national society, and which would be wholly incompatible with the interruptions of War-they were absolutely at one. Whatever the general influence of these writers may have been, and may yet be, the weight of that influence is likely to be greatest where it is all in the same direction, and this is against War, and in favor of lasting Peace. As

Pacific tendency

ferent schools

of thought.

this influence filters down to larger classes of society, it is not possible to assign a limit to the practical consequences which may ensue from it. It is the philosophers who teach the schoolmasters, and the school-masters who educate the public writers and politicians.

(5.) With respect to the influence of religious ideas, it is Religion antag- more difficult to speak with confidence, because it onistic to War. may truly be said that religion in Europe has undergone no remarkable transformation of late years, and that the past experience of professed Christianity certainly shows it to be compatible with every phase of the warlike spirit, and, indeed, to afford the occasion, or the pretence, for the bitterest of all Wars. Nevertheless, it will not be denied, at any rate by professed Christians, that it is mainly due to Christianity and its ecclesiastical institutions that those modifications have been introduced into the practice of

Christianity has modified the character of War.

War which nobly distinguish the Wars waged by European States—at least as among themselves-from the Wars waged among more backward communities. Mr. Ward, in his "Origin and History of the Law of Nations," has described in glowing terms the services which the organization of the Christian Church rendered in the Middle Ages to the cause of humanity, in taming the ferocity of warriors, protecting prisoners of War, and enforcing the observance of treaties. Indeed, the efforts and Institutions of the Christian Church are always, and properly, ranked among the most notable of the sources of the Modern Law of Nations.

mately tend to Peace.

It also must be confessed that the essential doctrines and Christian prin- principles of Christianity, as held by almost every ciples must ulti- Christian sect, tend far more to draw men and nations together than to dissociate them, though no doubt a sad experience has shown that there is also a centrifugal tendency, due to minute variations of belief or practice. But

professed Christians, at least, must hold that, as time goes on, the essentially pacific principles of their religion must dominate over, and finally expel, the accidental, bellicose, and separative accretions to it, and that every genuine religious effort for good of any sort, whether private or public, makes the hour of this victory nearer at hand.

The position taken up by the Friends, or Quakers, though hard to adapt to the actual exigencies of modern States, cannot be charged with being an illogical consequence of the theory that the populations and Governments of Christian countries are, what they call themselves, Christian, and bound to save each other's lives, even at the sacrifice of their own, and not to destroy them. The truth is that the populations and Governments are the reverse of what they call themselves, and a truly Christian population and Government have yet to be seen-if, indeed, they ever can be seen. But, so far as people believe in the ultimate, and not indefinitely remote, triumph of Christian principles, and also hold that such a triumph cannot be reconciled with the permanence of War, to that extent must it become a fixed conviction that War must some day cease. There are, no doubt, at the present moment large classes of persons to be found who, simply on such religious grounds as these, pertinaciously uphold this belief, and, in fact, indignantly resent the opposite of it. If these classes of persons grow in numbers and influence-as there is every sign they will-it may be found. that while economists are hesitating, oppressed men and women are impotently complaining, statesmen are debating and faltering-another War has already become impossible, simply because a dominant section of European society in all countries have unanimously declared that War is morally wrong, and, therefore, no longer defensible.

Before quitting the subject of the relation of Christianity to War, it is necessary to notice certain strange vagaries of religious

opinion in reference to War, which owe their existence to causes wholly independent of the religious character of those who profess them, but which undoubtedly derive no small weight and influence from that religious character.

Church toward

War.

It is needless to point out that the policy of the Roman CathAttitude of the olic Church on the Continent at the present day, Roman Catholic when it no longer has that undisputed predominance which in the Middle Ages made it free to give reins to its unsuppressed Christian instincts, is of so unaccountable and incalculable a nature that it may be expected, in the case of a warlike policy, to throw its sympathies on the side of Peace or of War, and on one side or another of the struggle, without reference to any considerations other than those which actuate the most keenly diplomatic secular government.

the War spirit

among the

The Established Church of England occupies a very different Sympathy with position; and yet, from causes peculiar to itself, and in some measure the product of the history of English clergy. the Christian Church, its most eminent authorities are often found to be as eager in favor of prosecuting a war as the leaders of the Government who advocate it; and generally, in discussing the fortunes of a War, or the prospects of Peace, it will be found that, whereas with Non-conformists an almost overwhelming presumption is always admitted in favor of any policy which will terminate hostilities, or prevent them, in the case of ordinary clergymen the prospects of prolonged War are not more morally unattractive than those of any other assigned political condition.

In proof of some of these statements it may be noted that, in spite of the presence of the Bishops in the House of Lords, a public remonstrance on the part of any one of them against entering on War from some regard to the general interests of religion and humanity is, it is believed, unknown. In the case of the China War of 1857, there were only four bishops who sided with the majority against Lord Palmerston's Government, which

had initiated as reckless and needless a War as England had ever committed itself to. Some of the most eminent bishops of the present day, as the Bishop of Gloucester (Ellicott) and the Bishop of Peterborough (Magee), have, on well-known occasions, gone out of their way to protest against the intrusive. rhetoric of philanthropic advocates of Peace, and to call especial attention to the virtues and excellences incident to War and to the military profession. The late Professor Charles Kingsley, full of enthusiasm at the time of the Crimean War for the self-denying spirit and energy which it revealed, as still existing in aristocratic, and even in commercial, circles of society, in one passage of a playful kind ranks "peace-mongers" with the most odious of mankind. The late Professor Mozley, of Oxford, in a remarkable lecture which attracted great attention—and which for its logical and comprehensive survey of the subject deserved that attention-entered upon an elaborate defence of War on purely Christian grounds. He intimated that the scheme of Christianity distinctly contemplated War as an essential remedial agency in the progress of society; that the existence of War was a necessary complement to the existence of government and organized society; and that in the struggle of War the human conscience was destined to find the same healthy nutriment as it discovers in the spectacle of a Court of Justice distributing, with authority delegated from on High, such penalties as human skill and wisdom, with all their imperfections, unhesitatingly assign. The causes of this state of mind must be briefly examined, or Relation of the else the arguments of such men would be fatal to much of the reasoning which has been here con

Church to the State favors a taste for War.

ducted. In the first place, the Church of England, especially in reference to the institution of the Episcopate, is not only a State Church, but is a State Church the traditions of which have bound it up in a peculiar and personal connection with the Monarchy, and by means of a tie which owes much of