Society is of God, as well as nature and religion. Man has received his life from the Creator,
and no one has the right to take it from him, unless he is a violator of the
most precious rights and privileges he has conferred upon him. – Even the
Guilty and the wicked should not suffer the extremity of the law, but for
crimes involving the life and peace of society.
No one has the right to shed the blood of his fellow, unless for reasons
the highest and most sacred, derived from the word of God and the original
constitution of our nature. Government
holds a sword, and that sword is the gift of God. Without it, society would be exposed to the
lawlessness of the unprincipled and base, and would be like a human body without
arms. God has the power to take away
human life, as he does by sickness, famine, and death; and he has put the sword
into the hands of human governments, to be used when the necessity of the case
demands it.
He is called the Lord
of hosts, or armies, and the reason is, that among the heathen the nation
most successful in arms was supposed to have the most powerful God! Jehovah entered the lists against the Lords
many and Gods many of the idolatrous nations, and was always successful, when
his chosen people, the Jews, cast themselves upon his arm, and thereby proved
the eternal sovereignty.
The history of the struggles of the Revolution shows the
special care of Providence over our great leader, Washington. He rode in the thickest of the fight, and was
never injured. Four bullets made as many
holes in his coat, and two horses fell dead under him in a single battle, yet
he escaped without a wound. He, himself,
regarded it as a special interposition of the hand of God.
The following incident is reported of him: In the battle of Monongahela – the defeat of
Braddock – a distinguished warrior swore it was impossible to bring Washington
down by a bullet. His reason was, that
he had taken steady aim at Washington seventeen times, but could not once hit
him, and he gave up believing he was invulnerable. Washington’s work was not then
completed. An unseen hand defended him;
and every soldier is under the special care of Him, who recognizes His
authority. Let every one who goes out to
defend the sacred rights of his country, look to God for aid and counsel. He is a present help – a refuge in
distress. If he fall in battle, he falls
in a good cause; and even the more wicked and desperate are cut off from the
evil to come, and are saved from additional years of crime and guilt. God does not permit war to be an undeserved
and lasting injury to any one.
War should lead us to look to god as the Supreme Arbiter and
Judge of nations, and make us feel our dependence upon Him, at home and in the
field of battle. Each father and mother,
who has sent a son into battle, should pray as Moses did for Judah: “Hear, Lord, the voice of Judah, and bring
him unto his people. Let his hand be
sufficient for him; and be thou an help
to him from his enemies.” Let every
warrior, like Judah, call upon the Lord; and let every parent and friend
remember Judah on the field of battle.
God uses war as a purifier of the world. It is often the scourge of a nation’s
wickedness and impiety. It makes the
proudest heart to quail, and humble itself under his mighty hand. It shows how vain is the help of man. The neglect of a single officer may turn the
tide of war against us, and after a successful campaign, bring us into
unexpected disasters. God is now
reminding us of His authority, and teaching the nation that not in statesmen,
nor in captains or great generals, but in Him alone there is ever-lasting strength.
The following incident is recorded in a private letter from
Ft. Donelson by a soldier in the fifteenth Illinois regiment:
I visited the battle-field on the day of the surrender; here
indeed can one truly see the “horrors of war.”
I would not sicken you by detailing the horrible sights I witnessed, but
I cannot refrain from mentioning one incident.
In passing among the wounded and dead of the enemy, I came to the body
of a young man, lying partly on his side; he belonged to the Second Kentucky
Regiment, and was an exceedingly handsome man.
It was the expression of his face, so different from the rest, which
first attracted my attention. One of his
hands rested upon his breast just beneath his coat; slightly removing this, I discovered
the cause of that expression: tightly grasped in his hand was a Bible. My curiosity was so great that I could not
resist the temptation of learning his name, but it was with no little
difficulty that I succeeded in obtaining it, so tightly had his fingers
stiffened in their grasp. I opened the
book, and on the fly leaf was written: “Presented
to Robert Reeves by his affectionate mother,” and then immediately beneath
these words were “My dear son, when
troubles and temptations assail you, here alone can you find comfort and consolation.” What a consolation would it be to her poor
heart if, when she hears of the death of her dear son, could she but know that ’midst
the din and roar of battle, and with death slowly but surely creeping over him,
he had sought and found that comfort and consolation in the teachings of a
redeeming Savior. * *
– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette,
Davenport, Iowa, Monday Morning, May 5, 1862, p. 2
