Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Lessons of Our National Conflict: Address to the Alumni of Yale College, at Their Annual Meeting, July 24, 1861
We have a notion widely prevalent, and arrogating to itself the claim that it is the only true development of the teachings of the law of God, that even defensive war is criminal, con demmed by the morality of the New Testament; that a Christ ian people has no defense against the exactions and oppressions of men of violence and blood, but argument and persuasion. We have a popular text-book on moral philosophy from the pen of one of the most venerated divines and distinguished educators of our country, which teaches and defends this doctrine. A distinguished philanthropist of our country, known in this and foreign lands, alike for the extent and variety. Of his linguistic lore, and the fervor of his philanthropy, has proposed to put an end to war in Christendom, by obtain ing from every man a solemn pledge never to bear arms, just as it is proposed to banish the vice of drunkenness from human society by obtaining from every individual a pledge never to drink any thing which has an intoxicating quality. Such a pledge of universal brotherhood has been signed by thousands of women, and some men. Many of as have been invited to sign it perhaps some of us have signed it. If we have not, I hardly think it probable we shall do so, just at the present time.
Many persons carry the same notion with them to the read ing of the Bible. Many a tender-hearted enthusiast is quite shocked at the Psalms of David, and cannot understand how a good man can have been so vindictive. There are not a few of our reformers who are hurried into the conclusion, that the Old Testament cannot have been inspired of God because of its warlike spirit. They judge of the utterances of those glorious old warriors and prophets of the Lord in the light of the modern doctrines of non-resistance, and condemn them as vindictive and revengeful in spirit.
This same notion is extended not only to war, but to the punishment of crime. Paul, in his good old robust view of things, spoke of the civil magistrate as he that beareth the sword. But these modern interpreters of the morality of Paul's adored Master, would take away the sword from the magistrate, and represent the taking of human life as exceed ing the powers which governments are competent to confer on their agents. They do not seem to perceive that such a denial undermines government itself, that it is a denial of its right to be; for no government can sustain its own existence for a twelve month, when deprived of the power of life and death over its subjects. This morbid sympathy for the wicked is undermining the foundations of society itself; it is affecting disaster-ously the decisions of judges and the verdicts of jurors it is disqualifying the minds of millions to receive those doctrines of retributive justice, which lie at the foundation of all government, human and divine, of all social virtue, and of that very Christian religion, from which men profess to derive a morality from which the idea of retribution and penalty is excluded.
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