Coming before Him in these solemn circumstances, and with this momentous petition, it becomes us to ask ourselves whether we are doing so in a spirit, and with a cause, in which we can expect His blessing, and a favourable answer to our prayers. “If I incline unto wickedness with my heart,” says the Psalmist, “the Lord will not hear me.” If we are to offer our prayers with a believing and confident heart, we must have our conscience clear; and before men ask God’s blessing in so tremendous an issue as that of war, they must consider with the most solemn earnestness whether they can feel assured that what they are doing and asking is in accordance with His will. As to the lawfulness of war itself, though some good Christian minds are troubled by the question, the answer seems clear and simple. War is justifiable for the same reason that it is lawful to put men to death for great crimes, like murder and treason. The conscience of mankind at large, the conscience of Christian States at large, has uniformly wielded the sword of justice in avenging and averting, by the punishment of death, such crimes of violence and treachery as destroy the very frame of Society. That use of the sword of justice, moreover, has the express support of Revelation, for St. Paul has declared that the ruler “beareth not the sword in vain; he is the minister of God, an avenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.” But if it is lawful to use the sword of justice against individuals, it must be equally lawful to use it against a community of individuals--in other words, against a society, or a nation, who are unjustly destroying or threatening the lives and the peace of another society or nation. The use of the sword--which is an elementary name for war--has been shown by thousands of years of experience to be, in the last resort, the only effectual means of punishing and preventing unjust violence. It is vain to argue what might be possible or desirable if man were an uncorrupt creature. He is, as a matter of fact, a sinful creature; and, as St. Paul plainly says, it is God Himself who has put the sword into the hands of human authority to punish, and to restrain, the effects of that sinfulness.