The growing tendencies of mankind have been quickened by the character of the present war, and the unexampled publicity with which it has been waged. Never before were all nations, even those separated by great spaces, whether of land or ocean, the daily and excited spectators of the combat. The vast amphitheatre within which the battle is fought, with the whole heavens for its roof, is coextensive with civilization itself. The scene in that great Flavian Amphitheatre, the famous Colosseum, is a faint type of what we are witnessing; but that is not without its lesson. Bloody games, where human beings contended with lions and tigers, imported for the purpose, or with each other, constituted an institution of ancient Rome, only mildly rebuked by Cicero, [Footnote: "Crudele gladiatorum spectaculum et inhumanum nonnullis videri solet: et hand scio an ita sit, ut nunc fit."_--Tusculanae Quaestiones_, Lib. II. Cap. XVII. 41.] and adopted even by Titus, in that short reign so much praised as unspotted by the blood of the citizen. [Footnote: Suetonius: _Titus_, Cap. IX. Merivale, History of the Romans under the Empire, (London, 1862,) Ch. LX., Vol. VII. p. 56.] One hundred thousand spectators looked on, while gladiators from Germany and Gaul joined in ferocious combat; and then, as blood began to flow, and victim after victim sank upon the sand, the people caught the fierce contagion. A common ferocity ruled the scene. As Christianity prevailed, the incongruity of such an institution was widely felt; but still it continued. At last an Eastern monk, moved only by report, journeyed a long way to protest against the impiety. With noble enthusiasm he leaped into the arena, where the battle raged, in order to separate the combatants. He was unsuccessful, and paid with life the penalty of his humanity. [Footnote: St. Telemachus, A. D. 401. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed. Milman, (London, 1846,) Ch. XXX., Vol. III. p. 70. Smith, Dict. Gr. and Rom. Biog. and Myth., art. TELEMACHUS.] But the martyr triumphed where the monk had failed. Shortly afterwards, the Emperor Honorius, by solemn decree, put an end to this horrid custom. "The first Christian Emperor," says Gibbon, "may claim the honor of the first edict which condemned the art and amusement of shedding human blood." [Footnote: Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, _ubi supra_.] Our amphitheatre is larger than that of Rome; but it witnesses scenes not less revolting; nor need any monk journey a long way to protest against the impiety. That protest can be uttered by every one here at home. We are all spectators; and since by human craft the civilized world has become one mighty Colosseum, with place for everybody, may we not insist that the bloody games by which it is yet polluted shall cease, and that, instead of mutual-murdering gladiators filling the near-brought scene with death, there shall be a harmonious people, of different nations, but one fellowship, vying together