The highest view of the profession of arms is, that the soldier, deterring evil-doers and maintaining order at home, on the one hand, and prepared, on the other, to resist hostile invasion, is in reality, notwithstanding his deadly weapons and warlike garb, an officer or instrument of peace. A day is coming--alas! with the roar of cannon booming across the ocean, how far distant it seems!--when Christianity shall exert a paramount influence throughout all the world: then, tyrants having ceased to reign, and slaves to groan, and nations to suffer from the lust of gold or power, this beautiful picture of the prophet shall become a reality: "The whole earth," said the seer, "is at rest, and is quiet; they break forth into singing." Till then, paradoxical though it appears, the cause of peace may be pled with most effect by the mouths of cannon. Fitness for war is often the strongest security for peace; and a nation whose wishes and interests both run in the direction of peace, may find no way of warning restless and unprincipled and ambitious neighbours that it is not to be touched with impunity, but by showing itself, thistle-like, all bristling over with bayonets. "Necessity," said Paul, "is laid on me to preach." It may be laid on a people to fight. Nor, when the sword has been drawn in a good cause, has God refused His sanction to that last, terrible resort. It was He who imparted strength to the arm before whose resistless sweep the Philistines fell in swathes, like grass to the mower's scythe. It was He who guided the stone that, shot from David's sling, buried itself in the giant's brow. It was He who gave its earthquake-power to the blast of the horns which levelled the walls of Jericho with the ground. And when night came down to cover the retreat of the Amorites and their allies, it was He who interposed to secure the bloody fruits of victory--saying, as eloquently put by a rustic preacher, "'Fight on, my servant Joshua, and I will hold the lights;' and 'the sun stood still on Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon.'" Admitting war to be an awful scourge, these cases show that the duties of a soldier are not inconsistent with the calling of a Christian.