SECTION V. Reflections of the Author on the foregoing subject— Case of a Superior Being supposed, who should reside in the planet nearest to us, and see war carried on by men no larger than the race of ants -his inquiry as to the origin of these wars-their duration-and other circumstances supposed answers to these questions-new arguments from this supposed conversation against war. - I HAVE now stated the principal arguments, by which the Quakers are induced to believe it to be a doctrine of Christianity that men should abstain from war; and I intended to close the subject in the last section. But when I consider the frequency of modern wars,-when I consider that they are scarcely over before others rise up in their place; when I consider, again, that they come like the common diseases, which belong to our infirm nature, and that they are considered by men nearly in a similar light, I should feel myself criminal, if I were not to avail myself of the privilege of an author to add a few observations of my this subject. own upon Living as we do in an almost inaccessible island, and having therefore more than ordinary means of security to our property and our persons from hostile invasion, we do not seem to be sufficiently grateful to the Divine Being for the blessings we enjoy. We do not seem to make a right use of our benefits, by contemplating the situation, and by feeling a tender anxiety for the happiness," of others. We seem to make no proper estimates of the miseries of war. The latter we feel principally in abridgements of a pecuniary nature. But if we were to feel them in the conflagration of our towns and villages, or in personal wounds, or in the personal sufferings of fugitive misery and want, we should be apt to put a greater value than we do upon the blessings of peace. we should be apt to consider the connection between war and misery, and between war and moral evil, in a light so much stronger than we do at present, that we might even suppose the precepts of Jesus Christ to be deficient, unless they were made to extend to wars as well as to private injuries. And I wonder what a Superior Being, living in the nearest planet to our earth, and seeing us of the size of ants, would say, if he were enabled to get any insight into the nature of modern wars. It must certainly strike him, if he were to see a number of such diminutive persons chasing one another in bodies over different parts of the hills and valleys of the earth, and following each other in little nut-shells as it were upon the ocean, as a very extraordinary sight, and as mysterious, and hard to be explained. He might at first consider them as occupied in a game of play, or as migrating for more food, or for a better climate. But when he saw them stop and fight, and destroy one another, and was assured that they were actually engaged in the solemn game of death, and this at such a distance from their own homes, he would wonder at the causes of these movements, and the reason of this destruction; and, not knowing that they possessed rational faculties, he would probably consider them as animals destined by nature to live upon one another. I think the first question he would ask would be, And from whence do these fightings come? It would be replied, of course, that they came from their lusts;—that these beings, though diminutive in their appearance, were men ;-that they had pride and ambition ;-that they had envy and jealousy ;-that they indulged also hatred, and malice, and avarice, and anger;—and that on account of some or other of these causes they quarrelled and fought with one another. Well :-but the Superior Being would say, Is there no one on the earth, which I see below me, to advise them to conduct themselves better; or are the passions you speak of eternally predominant and never to be subdued? The reply would of course be, that in these little beings, called men, there had been implanted the faculty of reason, by the use of which they must know that their conduct was exceptionable, but that in these cases they seldom minded it. It would also be added in reply, that they had a religion, which was not only designed by a Spirit from heaven, who had once lived amongst them, but had been pronounced by him, as efficacious to the end proposed; that one of the great objects of this religion was a due subjugation of their passions; and this was so much insisted upon, that no one of them was considered to have received this religion truly unless his passions were subdued. But here the Superior Being would inquire, whether they acknowledged the religion spoken of, and the authority from whence it came. To which it would of course be replied, that they were so tenacious of it, notwithstanding their indulgence of their passions, and their destruction of one another, that you could not offend them more grievously than by telling them that they did not belong to the religion they professed. It is not difficult to foresee what other questions this Superior Being would ask; and probably the first of these would be, the duration of the lives of these little beings, and the length and frequency of their wars. It would be replied to these, that their lives were but as a vapour, which appeareth for a little time and then vanisheth away, and that a quarter and sometimes half of their time on earth was spent in these destructive pursuits. Their Superior Being would unquestionably be grieved at this account, because he would feel that they really frustrated their own happiness, or that they lost by |