CHAPTER XV. Homicide in General (continued)

HOMICIDE IN GENERAL (continued)

CHRISTIANITY introduced into Europe a higher regard for human life than was felt anywhere in pagan society. The early Christians condemned homicide of any kind as a heinous sin. And in this, as in all other questions of moral concern, the distinction of nationality or race was utterly ignored by them.

The sanctity which they attached to the life of every human being led to a total condemnation of warfare, sharply contrasting with the prevailing sentiment in the Roman Empire. In accordance with the general spirit of their religion, as also with special passages in the Bible, they considered war unlawful under all circumstances. Justin Martyr quotes the prophecy of Isaiah, that "nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more," and proceeds to say that the instruction in the word of God which was given by the twelve Apostles "had so good effect that we, who heretofore were continually devouring each other, will not now so much as lift up our hand against our enemies." Lactantius asserts that "to engage in war cannot be lawful for the righteous man, whose warfare is that of righteousness itself." Tertullian asks, "Can it be lawful to {346} handle the sword, when the Lord Himself has declared that he who uses the sword shall perish by it?" And in another passage he states that "the Lord by his disarming of Peter disarmed every soldier from that time forward." Origen calls the Christians the children of peace, who, for the sake of Jesus, never take up the sword against any nation; who fight for their monarch by praying for him, but who take no part in his wars, even though he urge them. It is true that, even in early times, Christian soldiers were not unknown; Tertullian alludes to Christians who were engaged in military pursuits together with their heathen countrymen. But the number of Christians enrolled in the army seems not to have been very considerable before the era of Constantine, and, though they were not cut off from the Church, their profession was looked upon as hardly compatible with their religion. St. Basil says that soldiers, after their term of military service has expired, are to be excluded from the sacrament of the communion for three whole years. And according to one of the canons of the Council of Nice, those Christians who, having abandoned the profession of arms, afterwards returned to it, "as dogs to their vomit," were for some years to occupy in the Church the place of penitents.

A divine law which prohibited all resistance to enemies could certainly not be accepted by the State, especially at a time when the Empire was seriously threatened by foreign invaders. Christianity could therefore never become a State-religion unless it gave up its attitude towards war. And it gave it up. Already in 314 a Council condemned soldiers who, from religious motives, {347} deserted their colours. The Fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries did not altogether disapprove of war. Chrysostom and Ambrose, though seeing the difficulty of reconciling it with the theory of Christian life which they found in the New Testament, perceived that the use of the sword was necessary to preserve the State. St. Augustine went much farther. He tried to prove that the practice of war was quite compatible with the teachings of Christ. The soldiers mentioned in the New Testament, who were seeking for a knowledge of salvation, were not directed by our Lord to throw aside their arms and renounce their profession, but were advised by him to be content with their wages. St. Peter baptised Cornelius, the centurion, in the name of Christ, without exhorting him to give up the military life, and St. Paul himself took care to have a strong guard of soldiers for his defence. And was not the history of David, the "man after God's own heart," an evidence of those being wrong who say that "no one who wages war can please God"? When Christ declared that "all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword," He referred to such persons only as arm themselves to shed the blood of others without either command or permission of any superior or lawful authority. A great deal depends on the causes for which men undertake war, and on the authority they have for doing so. Those wars are just which are waged with a view to obtaining redress for wrongs, or to chastising the undue arrogance of another State. The monarch has the power of making war when he thinks it advisable, and, even if he be a sacrilegious {348} king, a Christian may fight under him, provided that what is enjoined upon the soldier personally is not contrary to the precept of God. In short, though peace is our final good, though in the City of God there is peace in eternity, war may sometimes be a necessity in this sinful world.

By the writings of St. Augustine the theoretical attitude of the Church towards war was definitely settled, and later theologians only reproduced or further elaborated his views. Yet it was not with a perfectly safe conscience that Christianity thus sanctioned the practice of war. There was a feeling that a soldier scarcely could make a good Christian. In the middle of the fifth century, Leo the Pope declared it to be contrary to the rules of the Church that persons after the action of penance--that is, persons then considered to be pre-eminently bound to obey the law of Christ--should revert to the profession of arms. Various Councils forbade the clergy to engage in warfare, and certain canons excluded from ordination all who had served in an army after baptism. Penance was prescribed for those who had shed blood on the battle-field. Thus {349} the ecclesiastical canons made in William the Conqueror's reign by the Norman prelates, and confirmed by the Pope, directed that he who was aware that he had killed a man in a battle should do penance for one year, and that he who had killed several should do a year's penance for each. Occasionally the Church seemed to wake up to the evils of war in a more effective way; there are several notorious instances of wars being forbidden by popes. But in such cases the prohibition was only too often due to the fact that some particular war was disadvantageous to the interests of the Church. And whilst doing comparatively little to discourage wars which did not interfere with her own interests, the Church did all the more to excite war against those who were objects of her hatred.

It has been suggested that the transition from the peaceful tenets of the primitive Church to the essentially military Christianity of the crusades, was chiefly due to the terrors and the example of Islam. "The spirit of Muhammedanism," says Mr. Lecky, "slowly passed into Christianity, and transformed it into its image." Until then, "war was rather condoned than consecrated, and, whatever might be the case with a few isolated prelates, the Church did nothing to increase or encourage it." But this view is hardly consistent with facts. Christianity had entered on the war-path already before it came into contact with Muhammedanism. Wars against Arian peoples had been represented as holy wars, for which the combatants would be rewarded by Heaven. The war which Chlodwig made upon the Visigoths was not only undertaken with the approval of the clergy, but it was, as Mr. Greenwood remarks, "properly their war, and Chlodwig undertook it in the capacity of a religious champion in all things but the disinterestedness which ought to distinguish that character." Remigius of Reims assisted him by his countenance and advice, and the {350} Catholic priesthood set every engine of their craft in motion to second and encourage him. In the Church itself there were germs out of which a military spirit would naturally develop itself. The famous dictum, "Nulla salus extra ecclesiam," was promulgated as early as the days of Cyprian. The general view of mediæval orthodoxy was, that those beyond the pale of the Church, heathen and heretics alike, were unalterably doomed to hell, whereas those who would acknowledge her authority, confess their sins, receive the sacrament of baptism, partake of the eucharist and obey the priest, would be infallibly saved. If war was allowed by God, could there be a more proper object for it than the salvation of souls otherwise lost? And for those who refuse to accept the gift of grace offered to them, could there be a juster punishment than death? Moreover, had not the Israelites fought great battles "for the laws and the sanctuary"? Had not the Lord Himself commissioned them to attack, subdue, and destroy his enemies? Had He not commanded them to root out the natives of Canaan, who, because of their abominations, had fallen under God's judgment, and to kill man and beast in the Israelitish cities which had given themselves to idolatry, and to burn all the spoil, with the city itself, as a whole offering to Yahveh? There was no need, then, for the Christians to go to the Muhammedans in order to learn the art of religious war. The Old Testament, the revelation of God, gave better lessons in it than the Koran, and was constantly cited in justification of any cruelty committed in the name of religion.

It was thus in perfect consistency with the general teachings of the Church that she regarded an exploit achieved against the infidels as a merit which might obliterate the guilt of the most atrocious crimes. Such a {351} deed was the instrument of pardon to Henry II. for the murder of Becket, and was supposed to be the means of cure to St. Louis in a dangerous illness. Fighting against infidels took rank with fastings, penitential discipline, visits to shrines, and almsgivings, as meriting the divine mercy. He who fell in the battle could be confident that his soul was admitted directly into the joys of Paradise. And this held good not only of wars against Muhammedans. The massacres of Jews and heretics seemed no less meritorious than the slaughter of the more remote enemies of the Gospel. Nay, even a slight shade of difference from the liturgy of Rome became at last a legitimate cause of war.

It is true that these views were not shared by all. At the Council of Lyons, in 1274, the opinion was pronounced, and of course eagerly attacked, that it was contrary to the examples of Christ and the Apostles to uphold religion with the sword and to shed the blood of unbelievers. In the following century, Bonet maintained that, according to Scriptures, a Saracen or any other disbeliever could not be compelled by force to accept the Christian faith. Franciscus a Victoria declared that "diversity of religion is not a cause of just war"; and a similar opinion was expressed by Soto, Covarruvias a Leyva, and Suarez. According to Balthazar Ayala, the most illustrious Spanish lawyer of the sixteenth century, it does not belong to the Church to punish infidels who {352} have never received the Christian faith, whereas those who, having once received it, afterwards endeavour to prevent the propagation of the Gospel, may, like other heretics, be justly persecuted with the sword. But the majority of jurisconsults, as well as of canonists, were in favour of the orthodox view that unbelief is a legitimate reason for going to war. And this principle was, professedly, acted upon to an extent which made the history of Christianity for many centuries a perpetual crusade, and transformed the Christian Church into a military power even more formidable than Rome under Cæsar and Augustus. Very often religious zeal was a mere pretext for wars which in reality were caused by avarice or desire for power. The aim of the Church was to be the master of the earth rather than the servant of heaven. She preached crusades not only against infidels and heretics, but against any disobedient prince who opposed her boundless pretensions. And she encouraged war when rich spoils were to be expected from the victor, as a thankoffering to God for the victory He had granted, or as an atonement for the excesses which had been committed.

Out of this union between war and Christianity there was born that curious bastard, Chivalry. The secular germ of it existed already in the German forests. According to Tacitus, the young German who aspired to be a warrior was brought into the midst of the assembly of the chiefs, where his father, or some other relative, solemnly equipped him for his future vocation with shield and javelin. Assuming arms was thus made a social distinction, which subsequently derived its name {353} from one of its most essential characteristics, the riding a war-horse. But Chivalry became something quite different from what the word indicates. The Church knew how to lay hold of knighthood for her own purposes. The investiture, which was originally of a purely civil nature, became, even before the time of the crusades, as it were, a sacrament. The priest delivered the sword into the hand of the person who was to be made a knight, with the following words, "Serve Christi, sis miles in nomine Patris, Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, Amen." The sword was said to be made in semblance of the cross so as to signify "how our Lord God vanquished in the cross the death of human lying"; and the word "Jesus" was sometimes engraven on its hilt. God Himself had chosen the knight to defeat with arms the miscreants who wished to destroy his Holy Church, in the same way as He had chosen the clergy to maintain the Catholic faith with Scripture and reasons. The knight was to the body politic what the arms are to the human body: the Church was the head, Chivalry the arms, the citizens, merchants, and labourers the inferior members; and the arms were placed in the middle to render them equally capable of defending the inferior members and the head. "The greatest amity that should be in this world," says the author of the 'Ordre of Chyualry,' "ought to be between the knights and clerks." The several gradations of knighthood were regarded as parallel to those of the Church. And after the conquest of the Holy Land the union between the profession of arms and the religion of Christ became still more intimate by the institution of the two military orders of monks, the Knights Templars and Knights of St. John of Jerusalem.

{354} The duties which a knight took on himself by oath were very extensive, but not very well defined. He should defend the holy Catholic faith, he should defend justice, he should defend women, widows, and orphans, and all those of either sex that were powerless, ill at ease, and groaning under oppression, and injustice. In the name of religion and justice he could thus practically wage war almost at will. Though much real oppression was undoubtedly avenged by these soldiers of the Church, the knight seems as a rule to have cared little for the cause or necessity of his doing battle. "La guerre est ma patrie, Mon harnois ma maison: Et en toute saison Combatre c'est ma vie," was a saying much in use in the sixteenth century. The general impression which Froissart gives us in his history is, that the age in which he lived was completely given over to fighting, and cared about nothing else whatever. The French knights never spoke of war but as a feast, a game, a pastime. "Let them play their game," they said of the cross-bow men, who were showering down arrows on them; and "to play a great game," jouer gros jeu, was their description of a battle. Previous to the institution of Chivalry there certainly existed much fighting in Christian countries, but knighthood rendered war "a fashionable accomplishment." And so all-absorbing became the passion for it that, as real injuries were not likely to occur every day, artificial grievances were created, and tilts and tournaments were invented in order to keep in action the sons of war when they had no other employments for their courage. Even in these images of war--which were by no means so harmless as they have sometimes been represented to be--the intimate connection {355} between Chivalry and religion displays itself in various ways. Before the tournament began, the coats of arms, helmets, and other objects were carried into a monastery, and after the victory was gained the arms and the horses which had been used in the fight were offered up at the church. The proclamations at the tournaments were generally in the name of God and the Virgin Mary. Before battle the knights confessed, and heard mass; and, when they entered the lists, they held a sort of image with which they made the sign of the cross. Moreover, "as the feasts of the tournaments were accompanied by these acts of devotion, so the feasts of the Church were sometimes adorned with the images of the tournaments." It is true that the Church now and then made attempts to stop these performances. But then she did so avowedly because they prevented many knights from joining the holy wars, or because they swallowed up treasures which might otherwise with advantage have been poured into the Holy Land.

Closely connected with the feudal system was the practice of private war. Though tribunals had been instituted, and even long after the kings' courts had become well-organised and powerful institutions, a nobleman had a right to wage war upon another nobleman from whom he had suffered some gross injury. On such occasions not only the relatives, but the vassals, of the injured man were bound to help him in his quarrel, and the same obligation existed in the case of the aggressor. Only greater crimes were regarded as legitimate causes of private war, but this rule was not at all strictly observed. As {356} a matter of fact, the barons fled to arms upon every quarrel; he who could raise a small force at once made war upon him who had anything to lose. The nations of Europe were subdivided into innumerable subordinate states, which were almost independent, and declared war and made treaties with all the vigour and all the ceremonies of powerful monarchs. Contemporary historians describe the excesses committed in prosecution of these intestine quarrels in such terms as excite astonishment and horror; and great parts of Europe were in consequence reduced to the condition of a desert, which it ceased to be worth while to cultivate.

The Church made some feeble attempts to put an end to this state of things. Thus, about the year 990, ordinances were directed against the practice of private war by several bishops in the south of France, who agreed to exclude him who violated their ordinances from all Christian privileges during his life, and to deny him Christian burial after his death. A little later, men engaged in warfare were exhorted, by sacred relics and by the bodies of saints, to lay down their arms and to swear that they would never again disturb the public peace by their private hostilities. But it is hardly likely that such directions had much effect as long as the bishops and abbots themselves were allowed to wage private war by means of their vidames, and exercised this right scarcely less frequently than the barons. Nor does it seem that {357} the Church brought about any considerable change for the better by establishing the Truce of God, involving obligatory respite from hostilities during the great festivals of the Church, as also from the evening of Wednesday in each week to the morning of Monday in the week ensuing. We are assured by good authorities that the Truce was generally disregarded, though the violator was threatened with the penalty of excommunication. Most barons could probably say with Bertram de Born:--"La paix ne me convient pas; la guerre seule me plaît. Je n'ai égard ni aux lundis, ni aux mardis. Les semaines, les mois, les années, tout m'est égal. En tout temps, je veux perdre quiconque me nuit." The ordinance enjoining the treuga Dei was transgressed even by the popes. It was too unpractical a direction to be obeyed, and was soon given up even in theory by the authorities of the Church. Thomas Aquinas says that, as physicians may lawfully apply remedies to men on feast-days, so just wars may be lawfully prosecuted on such days for the defence of the commonwealth of the faithful, if necessity so requires; "for it would be tempting God for a man to want to keep his hands from war under stress of such necessity." And in support of this opinion he quotes the first Book of the Maccabees, where it is said, "Whosoever shall come to make battle with us on the sabbath day, we will fight against him."

It seems that the main cause of the abolition of private war was not any measure taken by the Church, but the increase of the authority of emperors or kings. In France the right of waging private war was moderated by Louis IX., checked by Philip IV., suppressed by {358} Charles VI. In England, after the Norman Conquest, private wars seem to have occurred more rarely than on the Continent, probably owing to the strength of the royal authority, which made the execution of justice more vigorous and the jurisdiction of the King's court more extensive than was the case in most other countries. In Scotland the practice of private war received its final blow only late in the eighteenth century, when the clans were reduced to order after the rebellion of 1745. Whilst, then, it is impossible to ascribe to the Church any considerable part in the movement which ultimately led to the entire abolition of private war, we have, on the other hand, to take into account the encouragement which the Church gave to the warlike spirit of the time by the establishment of Chivalry and by sanctioning war as a divine institution. War came to be looked upon as a judgment of God and the victory as a sign of his special favour. Before a battle, the service of mass was usually performed by both armies in the presence of each other, and no warrior would fight without secretly breathing a prayer. Pope Adrian IV. says that a war commenced under the auspices of religion cannot but be fortunate; and it was commonly believed that God took no less interest in the battle than did the fighting warriors. Bonet, who wrote in the fourteenth century, puts to himself the question, why there are so many wars in the world, and gives the answer, "que toutes sont pour le pechié du siecle dont nostre seigneur Dieu pour le pugnir permet les guerres, car ainsi le maintient l'escripture."

Similar opinions have retained their place in the orthodox creeds both of the Catholic and Protestant {359} Churches up to the present day. The attitude adopted by the great Christian congregations towards war has been, and is still, to a considerable degree, that of sympathetic approval. The Catechism of the Council of Trent brings home that there are on record instances of slaughter executed by the special command of God Himself, as when the sons of Levi, who put to death so many thousands in one day, after the slaughter were thus addressed by Moses, "Ye have consecrated your hands this day to the Lord." Even quite modern Catholic writers refer to the canonists who held that a State might lawfully make war upon a heretic people which was spreading heresy, and upon a pagan people which prevented the preaching of the Gospel. Again, when the Protestant Churches became State-Churches, their ministers, considering themselves as in the service of the State, were ready to champion whatever war the Government pleased to undertake. As Mr. Gibb observes, the Protestant minister was as ready with his Thanksgiving Sermon for the victories of a profligate war, as the Catholic priest was with his Te Deum; "indeed, the latter was probably the more independent of the two, because of his allegiance to Rome." The new Confessions of Faith explicitly claimed for the State the right of waging war, and the Anabaptists were condemned because they considered war unlawful for a Christian. Even the necessity of a just cause as a reason for taking part in warfare, which was reasserted at the time of the Reformation, was subsequently allowed to drop out of sight. Mr. Farrer calls attention to the fact that in the 37th article of the English Church, which is to the effect that a Christian at the command of the magistrate may wear weapons and serve in wars, the word justa in the Latin form preceding the word bella has been omitted altogether.

{360} Nor did the old opinion that war is a providential institution and a judgment of God die with the Middle Ages. Lord Bacon looks upon wars as "the highest trials of right; when princes and states that acknowledge no superior upon earth shall put themselves upon the justice of God, for the deciding of their controversies by such success as it shall please Him to give on either side." Réal de Curban says that a war is seldom successful unless it be just, hence the victor may presume that God is on his side. According to Jeremy Taylor, "kings are in the place of God, who strikes whole nations, and towns, and villages; and war is the rod of God in the hands of princes." And it is not only looked upon as an instrument of divine justice, but it is also said, generally, "to work out the noble purposes of God." Its tendency, as a theological writer assures us, is "to rectify and exalt the popular conception of God," there being nothing among men "like the smell of gunpowder for making a nation perceive the fragrance of divinity in truth." By war the different countries "have been opened up to the advance of true religion." "No people ever did, or ever could, feel the power of Christian principle growing up like an inspiration through the national manhood, until the worth of it had been thundered on the battle-field." War is, "when God sends it, a means of grace and of national renovation"; it is "a solemn duty in which usually only the best Christians and most trustworthy men should be commissioned to hold the sword." According to M. Proudhon, it is the most sublime phenomenon of our moral life, a divine revelation more authoritative than the Gospel itself. The warlike people is the religious people; war is the sign of {361} human grandeur, peace a thing for beavers and sheep. "Philanthrope, vous parlez d'abolir la guerre; prenez garde de dégrader le genre humain."

In order to prove the consistency of war with Christianity appeals are still, as in former days, made to the Bible; to the divinely-sanctioned example of the ancient Israelites, to the fact that Jesus never prohibited those around Him from bearing arms, to the instances of the centurions mentioned in the Gospel, to St. Paul's predilection for taking his spiritual metaphors from the profession of the soldier, and so on. According to Canon Mozley, the Christian recognition of the right of war was contained in Christianity's original recognition of nations. "By a fortunate necessity," a universal empire is impossible. Each nation is a centre by itself, and when questions of right and justice arise between these independent centres, they cannot be decided except by mutual agreement or force. The aim of the nation going to war is exactly the same as that of the individual in entering a court, and the Church, which has no authority to decide which is the right side, cannot but stand neutral and contemplate war forensically, as a mode of settling national questions, which is justified by the want of any other mode. A natural justice, Canon Mozley adds, is inherent not only in wars of self-defence; there is an instinctive reaching in nations and masses of people after alteration and readjustment, which has justice in it, and which arises from real needs. The arrangement does not suit as it stands, there is want of adaptation, there is confinement and pressure; there are people kept away from each other that are made to be together, and parts separated that were made to join. All this uneasiness in States naturally leads to war. Moreover, there are wars of progress which, so far as they are really necessary for the due advantage of mankind and {362} growth of society, are approved of by Christianity, though they do not strictly belong to the head of wars undertaken in self-defence. A doctrine which thus, in the name of religion, allows the waging of wars for rectifying the political distribution of nationalities and races, and forwarding the so-called progress of the world, naturally lends itself to the justification of almost any war entered upon by a Christian State. As a matter of fact, it would be impossible to find a single instance of a war waged by a Protestant country, from any motive, to which the bulk of its clergy have not given their sanction and support. The opposition against war has generally come from other quarters.

There have been, and still are, Christian sects which, on religious grounds, condemn war of any kind. In the fourteenth century the Lollards taught that homicide in war is expressly contrary to the New Testament; they were persecuted partly on that account. Of the same opinion were the Anabaptists of the sixteenth century; and they could claim on their side the words of men like Colet and Erasmus. From the pulpit of St. Paul's Colet thundered that "an unjust peace is better than the justest war," and that, "when men out of hatred and ambition fight with and destroy one another, they fight under the banner, not of Christ, but of the Devil." According to Erasmus "nothing is more impious, more calamitous, more widely pernicious, more inveterate, more base, or in sum more unworthy of a man, not to say of a Christian," than war. It is worse than brutal; to man no wild beast is more destructive than his fellow-man. When brutes fight, they fight with weapons which nature has given them, whereas we arm ourselves for mutual slaughter with weapons which nature never thought of. Neither do beasts break out {363} in hostile rage for trifling causes, but either when hunger drives them to madness, or when they find themselves attacked, or when they are alarmed for the safety of their young. But we, on frivolous pretences, what tragedies do we act on the theatre of war! Under colour of some obsolete and disputable claim to territory; in a childish passion for a mistress; for causes even more ridiculous than these, we kindle the flame of war. Transactions truly hellish, are called holy wars. Bishops and grave divines, decrepit as they are in person, fight from the pulpit the battles of the princes, promising remission of sins to all who will take part in the war of the prince, and exclaiming to the latter that God will fight for him, if he only keeps his mind favourable to the cause of religion. And yet, how could it ever enter into our hearts, that a Christian should imbrue his hands in the blood of a Christian! What is war but murder and theft committed by great numbers on great numbers! Does not the Gospel declare, in decisive words, that we must not revile again those who revile us, that we should do good to those who use us ill, that we should give up the whole of our possessions to those who take a part, that we should pray for those who design to take away our lives? The world has so many learned bishops, so many grey-headed grandees, so many councils and senates, why is not recourse had to their authority, and the childish quarrels of princes settled by their wise and decisive arbitration? "The man who engages in war by choice, that man, whoever he is, is a wicked man; he sins against nature, against God, against man, and is guilty of the most aggravated and complicated impiety." These were the main arguments of reason, humanity, and religion, which Erasmus adduced against war. They could not leave the reformers entirely unaffected. Sir Thomas More charged Luther himself and his disciples with carrying the doctrines of peace to the extreme limits {364} of non-resistance. But, as we have noticed, these peaceful tendencies only formed a passing phase in the history of Reformation, and were left to the care of sectarians.

Among these the Quakers are the most important. By virtue of various passages in the Old and the New Testament, they contend that all warfare, whatever be its peculiar features, circumstances, or pretexts, is wholly at variance with the Christian religion. It is always the duty of Christians to obey their Master's high and holy law--to suffer wrong, to return good for evil, to love their enemies. War is also inconsistent with the Christian principle that human life is sacred, and that death is followed by infinite consequences. Since man is destined for eternity, the future welfare of a single individual is of greater importance than the merely temporal prosperity of a whole nation. When cutting short the days of their neighbour and transmitting him, prepared or unprepared, to the awful realities of an everlasting state, Christians take upon themselves a most unwarrantable responsibility, unless such an action is expressly sanctioned by their divine Master, as was the case among the Israelites. In the New Testament there is no such sanction, hence it must be concluded that, under the Christian dispensation, it is utterly unlawful for one man to kill another, under whatever circumstances of expediency or provocation the deed may be committed. And a Christian who fights by the command of his prince, and in behalf of his country, not only commits sin in his own person, but aids and abets the national transgression.

It must be added that views similar to these are also found independently of any particular form of sectarianism. According to Dr. Wayland, all wars, defensive as well as offensive, are contrary to the revealed will of God, aggression from a foreign nation calling not for retaliation and {365} injury, but rather for special kindness and good-will. Theodore Parker, the Congregational minister, looks upon war as a sin, a corrupter of public morals, a practical denial of Christianity, a violation of God's eternal love. W. Stokes, the Baptist, observes that Christianity cannot sanction war, whether offensive or defensive, because war is an "immeasurable evil, by hurling unnumbered myriads of our fellow-men to a premature judgment and endless despair." Moreover, those who compare the state of opinion during the last years with that of former periods, cannot fail to observe a marked progress of a sentiment antagonistic to war in the various sections of the Christian Church. Yet, speaking generally, the orthodox are still of the same opinion as Sir James Turner, who declared that "those who condemn the profession or art of soldiery, smell rank of Anabaptism and Quakery"; and war is in our days, as it was in those of Erasmus, so much sanctioned by authority and custom, that it is deemed impious to bear testimony against it. The duties which compulsory military service imposes upon the male population of most Christian countries presuppose that a Christian should have no scruples about taking part in any war waged by the State, and are recognised as binding by the clergy of those countries. With reference to the Church of England, Dr. Thomas Arnold asks, "Did it become a Christian Church to make no other official declaration of its sentiments concerning war, than by saying that Christian men might lawfully engage in it?"

The protest against war which exercised perhaps the widest influence on public opinion came from a school of moralists whose tendencies were not only anti-orthodox, but distinctly hostile to the most essential dogmas of Christian theology. Bayle, in his Dictionary, calls Erasmus' essay {366} against war one of the most beautiful dissertations ever written. He observes that the more we consider the inevitable consequences of war, the more we feel disposed to detest those who are the causes of it. Its usual fruits may, indeed, "make those tremble who undertake or advise it, to prevent evils which, perhaps, may never happen and which, at the worst, would often be much less than those which necessarily follow a rupture." To Voltaire war is an "infernal enterprise," the strangest feature of which is that "every chief of the ruffians has his colours consecrated, and solemnly prays to God before he goes to destroy his neighbour." He asks what the Church has done to suppress this crime. Bourdaloue preached against impurity, but what sermon did he ever direct against the murder, rapine, brigandage, and universal rage, which desolate the world? "Miserable physicians of souls, you declaim for five quarters of an hour against the mere pricks of a pin, and say no word on the curse which tears us into a thousand pieces." Voltaire admits that under certain circumstances war is an inevitable curse, but rebukes Montesquieu for saying that natural defence sometimes involves the necessity of attack, when a nation perceives that a longer peace would place another nation in a position to destroy it. Such a war, he observes, is as illegitimate as possible:--" It is to go and kill your neighbour for fear that your neighbour, who does not attack you, should be in a condition to attack you; that is to say, you must run the risk of ruining your country, in the hope of ruining without reason some other country; this is, to be sure, neither fair nor useful." The chief causes which induce men to massacre in all loyalty thousands of their brothers and to expose their own people to the most terrible misery, are the ambitions and {367} jealousies of princes and their ministers. Similar views are expressed in the great Encyclopédie:--"La guerre est le plus terrible des fléaux qui détruisent l'espèce humaine: elle n'épargne pas même les vainqueurs; la plus heureuse est funeste. . . . Ce ne sont plus aujourd'hui les peuples qui déclarent la guerre, c'est la cupidité des rois qui leur fait prendre les armes; c'est l'indigence qui les met aux mains de leurs sujets."

However vehemently Voltaire and the Encyclopedists condemned war, they did not dream of a time when all wars would cease. Other writers were more optimistic. Already in 1713 Abbé Saint-Pierre--whose abbotship involved only a nominal connection with the Church--had published a project of perpetual peace, which was based on the idea of a general confederation of European nations. This project was much laughed at; Voltaire himself calls its author "un homme moitié philosophe, moitié fou." But once called into being, the idea of a perpetual peace and of a European confederation did not die. It was successively conceived by Rousseau, Bentham, and Kant. But on the other hand it met with a formidable enemy in the awakening spirit of nationalism.

The Napoleonic oppression called forth resistance. Philosophers and poets sounded the war trumpet. The dream of a universal monarchy was looked upon as absurd and hateful, and the individuality of a nation as the only possible security for its virtue. War was no longer attributed to the pretended interests of princes or to the caprices of their advisers. It was praised as a vehicle of the highest right, as a source or national renovation. {368} By war, says Hegel, "finite pursuits are rendered unstable, and the ethical health of peoples is preserved. Just as the movement of the ocean prevents the corruption which would be the result of perpetual calm, so by war people escape the corruption which would be occasioned by a continuous or eternal peace." Similar views have been expressed by later writers. War is glorified as a stimulus to the elevated virtues of courage, disinterestedness, and patriotism. It has done more great things in the world than the love of man, says Nietzsche. It is the mother of art and of all civil virtues, says Mr. Ruskin. Others defend war, not as a positive good, but as a necessary means of deciding the most serious international controversies, denying that arbitration can be a substitute for all kinds of war. Questions which are intimately connected with national passions and national aspirations, and questions which are vital to a nation's safety, will never, they say, be left to arbitration. Each State must be the guardian of its own security, and cannot allow its independence to be calmly discussed and adjudicated upon by an external tribunal. Moreover, arbitration would prove effective only where the contradictory pretensions could be juridically formulated, and these instances are by far the less numerous and the less important. And would it not, in many cases, be impossible to find impartial arbiters? Would not arbitration often be influenced by a calculation of the forces which every power interested could bring into the field, and would not war be resorted to where arbitration failed to reconcile conflicting interests, or where a decision was opposed to a high-spirited people's sense of justice? These and similar arguments are constantly adduced against the idea of a perpetual peace. But at the same time the opponents of war are becoming more numerous {369} and more confident every day. Already after the fall of Napoleon, when there was a universal longing for peace in the civilised world, the first Peace Societies were formed; and the idea of Saint-Pierre, from being the dream of a philosopher, has become the object of a popular movement which is rapidly increasing in importance. There is every reason to believe that, when the present high tide of nationalism has subsided, and the subject of war and peace is no longer looked upon from an exclusively national point of view, the objections which are now raised against arbitration will at last appear almost as futile as any arguments in favour of private war or blood-revenge. There is an inveterate tendency in the human mind to assume that existing conditions will remain unchanged. But the history of civilisation shows how unfounded any such assumption is with reference to those conditions which determine social relationships and the extent of moral rights and duties.

It is said that, though Christianity has not abolished war, it has nevertheless, even in war, asserted the principle that human life is sacred by prohibiting all needless destruction. The Canon, 'De treuga et pace,' laid down the rule that non-resisting persons should be spared; and Franciscus a Victoria maintained not only that between Christian enemies those who made no resistance could not lawfully be slain, but that even in war against the Turks it was wrong to kill children and women. However, this doctrine of mercy was far in advance of the habits and general opinion of the time. If the simple peasant was often spared, that was largely from motives of prudence, or because the valiant knight considered him unworthy of the lance. As late as the seventeenth century, Grotius was certainly not supported by the spirit of the age when he argued that, "if justice {370} do not require, at least mercy does, that we should not, except for weighty causes tending to the safety of many, undertake anything which may involve innocent persons in destruction"; or when he recommended enemies willing to surrender on fair conditions, or unconditionally, to be spared. Afterwards, however, opinion changed rapidly. Pufendorf, in echoing the doctrine of Grotius, spoke to a world which was already convinced; and in the eighteenth century Bynkershoek stands alone in giving to a belligerent unlimited rights of violence. In reference to the assumption that this change of opinion is due to the influence of the Christian religion, it is instructive to note that Grotius, in support of his doctrine, appealed chiefly to pagan authorities, and that even savage peoples, without the aid of Christianity, have arrived at the rule which in war forbids the destruction of helpless persons and captives.

The prevailing attitude towards war indicates the survival, in modern civilisation, of the old feeling that the life of a foreigner is not equally sacred with the life of a countryman. In times of peace this feeling is usually suppressed; it appears in no existing law on homicide, nor does it, generally, find expression in public opinion. It dares to disclose itself only in the form of national aggressiveness, under the flag of patriotism, or, perhaps, in the treatment of the aborigines of some distant country. The behaviour of European colonists towards coloured races only too often reminds us of the manner in which savages treat members of a foreign tribe. It was said that the frontier peasants at the Cape found nothing morally wrong in the razzias which they undertook against the Bushmans, without any provocation whatsoever, though they would consider it a heinous sin to do the same to their Christian fellow-men. In Australia {371} there are instances reported of young colonists employing the Sunday in shooting blacks for the sake of sport. "The life of a native," says Mr. Lumholtz, "has but little value, particularly in the northern part of Australia, and once or twice colonists offered to shoot blacks for me so that I might get their skulls. On the borders of civilisation men would think as little of shooting a black man as a dog. The law imposes death by hanging as the penalty for murdering a black man, but people live so far apart in these uncivilised regions that a white man may in fact do what he pleases with the blacks. . . . In the courts the blacks are defenceless, for their testimony is not accepted. The jury is not likely to declare a white man guilty of murdering a black man. On the other hand if a white man happens to be killed by the blacks, a cry is heard throughout the whole colony."