How many Cains since then,-and crowned ones too! Have swept-by thousands, human life away Such instruments of Death,--they may be few, But, while the world rolls on, they shall to Cain be true. LX. Ah! mark significant !-could we but see To hold the murderer to scorn, yet give him sway!— Such instruments of death,-they may be few, X. 'Tis not the murder on the lonely moor, Nor thirsty hatchet in the silent cell, Nor jealous hatred of the sullen boor, On which the brand was set when Abel fell. No! these are but the ministers of Hell! 'Tis War! red-handed War! which Heaven ordains, Race against race, in town or dreary dell; While two shall live, though Brothers 3 in their veins, One welds the links in blood, or, groaning wears the chains! Lord said unto him, Therefore, whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him seven-fold. And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him." But, at this early stage of the world's history, I am at a loss to know who was to "slay" Cain. However, according to Moses, it gives God's flat against capital punishment. 1 "For Banquo's issue have I fyled my mind."-Macbeth. "Let there be light!' said God, and there was light! The fiat of this spoil'd child of the Night (For Day ne'er saw his merits) could decree More evil in an hour, than thirty bright Summers could renovate, though they should be For war cuts up not only branch but root."-Don Juan. 3 But we cannot wonder at this when Moses makes the Lord God of Israelbut, thank truth, only the "Lord God of Israel"-say, in Exod. xxxii., "Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go through the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour, And the children of Levi (the Levites were the priests) did according to the word of Moses: and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men.' And for what? merely because the poor ignorant "stiff-necked" people were "dancing and singing" before the very golden calf, made out of their own ear-rings, which Moses' own brother Aaron made for them! And, as already observed in my preface, Luke makes even Jesus say, if a man hate not his father and mother, and brother and sisters, he cannot be His disciple, or, according to Paul, you must either Believe, or be damned." In the bloody, if infallible, hands of Popery this dreadful doctrine has been but too well used for poor, suffering, credulous humanity! XI. So saith the Book-no vain prophetic word, And scatter all his theories 2 to wind! 1 Jesus said, “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I am come not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household."-Matt. x. Yea! and practical Christianity tells us that this is "too true an evil.” 2 However, "Our days are too brief for affording Space to dispute what no one ever could Know very clearly-or at least lie still."-Byron. ""Tis wonderful what fable will not do! "Tis said it makes reality more bearable, Religion? Yes! but which of all her sects?"-Ibid. So little do we know what we are about in This world, I doubt if doubt itself be doubting."-Ibid. But in case these might be thought to savour of infidelity, I shall quote another, from the same deep-thinking source. "Experience is the chief philosopher, But saddest when his science is well known; "Was it not so, great Locke? and greater Bacon? And thy pure creed made sanction of all ill? In a note to this, Byron states, "As it is necessary to avoid ambiguity, I say that I mean, by Diviner still,' CHRIST. If ever God was man---or man God He was both. I never arraigned His creed, but the use- or abuse-made of it. Mr. Canning one day quoted Christianity to sanction negro slavery, and Mr. Wilberforce had little to say in reply. And was Christ crucified, that black men might be scourged? If so, He had better been born a mulatto, to give both colours an equal chance of freedom, or at least salvation." Campbell too embodies the same idea, in his beautiful poem, the Pleasures of Hope." "Yet, yet, degraded men! th' expected day That breaks your bitter cup, is far away; Trade, wealth, and fashion, ask you still to bleed, And holy men give scripture for the deed." Scan all the deeds that flit on winged News,1 XII. See proud Columbia's yet virgin soil, Still reeking red from streams of kindred vein! To fight for Empire neither shall attain? The South, she boasts for Freedom! fights for Slaves!- Will sacrifice her peace, and still she craves For Empire God ne'er gives, and digs her children's graves! 2 1 The little word News is an appropriate title, as it contains the initials of the four winds, viz.- North, East, West, and South. In The Poland of America is to be found in Kentucky, where a man has been placed in command who combines the worst qualities of all previous tyrants, and adds new ones of his own. General Mouravieff, the Russian tyrant, has found his equal in Brigadier-General Paine, who rules over the western districts of that afflicted State. On assuming command in July 1864, he addressed a deputation of leading citizens, whom he knew to be opposed to the war urged by Mr. Lincoln against the South. He said, "Talk to me about your rights! Why, you have no rights to talk about. Loyal men are the only people who have rights at this time; talk to me of giving you a banking privilege! Great God! the Devil might as well ask the Almighty for a front seat in heaven. your prosperity you despised this great and good government, you shall have the privilege to love it in your adversity. And, more than that, you shall fight for it. You are able-bodied men, but think yourselves too good to fight. We shall see about that. You keep harping about your rights, that miserable insane idea! My second commandment to you is, that all of you notorious rebels get out of your houses and leave my district, so that Union men may come and take your places, and help me to redeem this country. I shall shoot every Guerilla taken in my district; and if your Southern brethren retaliate by shooting one Federal Soldier, I will walk out five of you rich bankers, brokers, and cotton men, and make you kneel down and shoot you. I will do it, so help me God! If a Union man is murdered by Guerillas here, the same fate awaits five of you; I have sworn it, and it shall be done. I am going to manage this district so that, when I am done with it, the men and women who remain can come together in the name of the Lord, and say, 'We belong to the United States.'"-New York Corr, of the Times. Is this not fearful blasphemy in the nineteenth century? The spear seems to be a long way off yet from being turned into a pruning-hook, or the sword into a ploughshare. But why marvel at this, when the Holy Bible itself not only incites to war, but tells us that God is angry if robbery and murder even are not carried out with the utmost rigour? For instance, Sam. xv. makes God say to King Saul, "Thus saith the Lord, Go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass. And Saul smote the Amalekites, and utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword." But because he spared Agag their king, and the best of the sheep and oxen, Samuel said, "The Lord hath rent the 8 XIII. But shall we sing of War, to honour Crime? kingdom of Israel from thee, and given it to a neighhour better than thou, even to David" (who fulfilled the Lord's commands to the very letter, as the bloody axes, saws, and harrows, and burning brick-kilns of Rabbah can testify). "The Lord sent thee on a journey, and said, Go, utterly destroy the Amalekites, and fight against them until they be consumed. Wherefore then didst thou not obey the voice of the Lord? And Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord in Gilgal, and the Lord repented He had made Saul king over Israel." According to Sacred Scripture, the Lord never forgave Saul for his sympathy for Agag, but harassed him so much that, even when Samuel was in his grave, And when this he had to appeal to some Witch of Endor, who, it seems, had power to raise the dead, to see if the "prophet could tell him what to do." singularly wonderful, almighty witch actually raised the old prophet out of his grave, "Samuel said to Saul, Why hast thou disquieted me, to bring me up? Then said And Saul answered, I am sore distressed; for the Philistines make war against me, and God is departed from me, and answereth me no more. Samuel, Wherefore dost thou ask of me, seeing the Lord is departed from thee, and become thine enemy? It is because thou obeyedst not the voice of the Lord, nor executedst His fierce wrath upon Amalek, therefore hath the Lord done this to thee this day." See Sam. xxviii. Now what was the cause of all this horrible slaughter, and "fierce wrath" of Almighty God? Simply because Agag and his fellow-countrymen tried to oppose the fearful march of rapine and invasion, and stem the tide of murder and robbery! The same as Tell did successfully against Austria, Bruce against England, and Kosciusko tried, in vain, against-the too true copyist of Sacred Scripture-Russia. But Moses makes the Lord even more horribly cruel, because the Midianite women were not all either murdered or debauched, for he kindly tells us, "The Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Avenge the children of Israel of the Midianites. And the children of Israel took all the women captives, and their little ones, and all their cattle, and all their flocks, and all their goods, and burnt all their cities. And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive? Now, kill "But all the women every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him" (a rather difficult task to know). children, that have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves." Is not this hellish doctrine? So they were all murdered in cold blood, "with the exception of thirty and two thousand persons in all, of women who had not known man by lying with him," these being, of course, reserved for the private use of those immaculate children (scoundrels rather) of Israel. See Numb. xxxi. The Sacred Volume not only inculcates the teaching of war, but actually makes a jest of murder. Judges iii. says, "These are the nations the Lord left to prove Israel, even as many as had not known all the wars of Canaan, that the generations of the children of Israel might know and teach them war, at least And Deut. ii. makes God exultingly insuch as before new nothing thereof." cite to murder and spoliation, for He says, "Rise up! take your journey, pass over the river Arnon: behold! I have given into thine hand Sihon the Amorite, king of Heshbon, and his land; begin to possess (say steal) it, and contend with him in battle. And the Lord our God delivered him before us, and we smote him, and his sons, and all his people. And we took all the cities, and utterly destroyed the men, and the women, and the little ones of every city; we left none |