Personal. Since the August No. of the Bond went to press, I have walked through interesting portions of Essex, Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, Northamptonshire, Rutlandshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Yorkshire. The weather has been beautiful, and the scenery most picturesque and delightful. Indeed, I feel well repaid in enjoyment for the exertion of such a walk, and hope to reach John O'Groats by the 1st. of October, thus passing through a good deal of Scotch scenery. I am now attending the meetings of the British Association at Newcastle-on-Tyne, where I intend to spend a week, then resume my walk northwards, hoping to be able to make about 100 miles a week during the rest of the journey. As I am taking notes, and gleaning facts which may perhaps appear in a book form, here, or in America, I usually occupy the forenoon of each day in writing, thus resting awhile for the afternoon's walk.

E.B.

Bond of Brotherhood.

SEPTEMBER, 1863.

The Future the Harvest of Faith.

If men were not mortal, man would die. His physical existence, humanly speaking, would not have been possible, if his life was to be one continuous manhood for all time's duration, without infancy, or age and its weaknesses. The earth could not have fed nor held an immortal mankind a thousand years ago. Indeed, the mind cannot conceive the condition of things, if Adam and his posterity had gone on multiplying and filling the earth with undying generations of men and women up to this day. No one ventures to contemplate such a possibility; so the most speculative have seldom if ever founded any theory upon it.

If men were not mortal, man would die as a moral being. The past would always overpower the present by a tremendous majority on every moral question. A hundred living generations, with all their vices, passions, ignorances and errors in full activity, would block the way of all true progress. What would the voice and opinion of young humanity avail, if any it had, against such an overwhelming influence! Nothing-verily nothing. So, from this black nettle of mortality we pluck the fairest flower of hope and promise. "The young man said to the Psalmist" a bold and seemingly unsympathetic word, when he said,

"Let the dead past bury its dead."

It would be bolder and more irreverent still in him to say, "Let the present die, and be gathered to its fathers." But it will die, without wishing, and be buried with the dead past; and the better future, to which we hopefully turn our eyes and hearts, shall take to itself a working and shining soul, and become a living present. But will that future be a better present than this living now, when it comes to the meridian? In many and noble attributes, this we look upon and live in has been the grandest age that humanity ever saw. Not in sheer forces of science and civilization has it been all this. Not in girdling the continents with railways, and threading the hemispheres with electric telegraphs, has been its chief glory; nor in planting germs of great and Christian nations in wide territories, unexplored fifty years

ago. Above and beyond all this, as a moral triumph, is the development and mighty organization of Christian philanthropy which the world has seen and felt in the last quarter of a century. The Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Men has been mounted upon a thousand banners, and borne aloft by the missionaries of Christ's Evangel through the darkest jungles and fastnesses of paganism. If science and civilization proper have made the wilderness blossom as the rose, this Evangel has set thousands upon thousands of heathen lips to the music of its holy songs; thus adding to the beauty of that rose the brightness and breathing of Christian life and society. At home and abroad, this age of ours has performed and witnessed wonders. It.has produced nearly all the Benevolent Societies the world ever saw; Sabbath Schools by the hundred thousand; philanthropic institutions and efforts innumerable. There has been one great, simultaneous uprising against all the vices, evils and errors that make mischief and misery in the world. Here are a thousand societies, at least, of different grades, working with most praiseworthy faith and devotion, against Intemperance, and all the customs and proclivities that lead to that evil. Here are societies working with equal hope and zeal for the downfall of slavery the world over. Here are societies for the protection of all sorts of friendless people and friendless animals, even; so that a British nobleman and his neighbours cannot pit their game cocks against each other in the seclusion of a country park, without being brought to the bar of legal justice and of public opinion for the offence against morality.

A warm and vigorous faith, as well as sense of duty, is at the heart of all these movements; a faith that works by love, it is true; but also works by sight, too, the sight of tangible realizations, of achievements and progress already won. Such is this age of ours. Such is the legacy which it is about to hand over to its heir and successor. Never since the Saviour of mankind finished his mission on earth, did one age give to another such a dowry. Never did a future come to the morning horizon of humanity with such auspicious antecedents. But, we fear that future, when it takes on the present, will find one tremendous anomaly passed over into its hands; will find that the life and vital vigour of all the evil dragons decapitated by our age have all been given to the beast of War. This transmigration of evil spirits is clear enough now to eyes that look steadily at the process and result.

For instance, look at what is this moment going on in America, in Europe, and all over the world. Would it not seem clear to every honest mind, that the legion of bad spirits which have been exorcised, through so much prayer, fasting, faith and arduous working, from intemperance, slavery, ignorance, error and the social vices, have gone into the body corporate of the War system? When did that system ever have such sweep and rule as at this moment, in the face of all the great moral triumphs which Christian philanthropy and effort have won in these latter years? When did that system so swallow up the industrial earnings of Christendom, and agitate its communities, as at this very day, otherwise so bright with hope and promise? We talk about dark ages and middle ages; but Bellona is the Madonna of this, apparently.

No age ever gave more genius, artistry and enthusiasm to the pictures and statuary and worship of the Virgin, than this gives to War. How all the science and genius and practical ingenuities of our day is laid under conscription to perfect iron clads, steam rams, steel-cased forts, Whitworth guns, Minie rifles, and all the enginery of human slaughter! How war-talk and war-training prevail, the world over, but more especially in Christendom, just as if War was the normal condition of mankind, and the necessary and natural forerunner of the millennium! Indeed, the opinion seems to be gaining ground among Christians of all denominations, and of active zeal in good works, that the abolition of War must be left for the Millennium itself to achieve, and that it is hopeless and superrogatory to labour for its earlier extinction. But while saying and believing this, they are not willing that idolatry, or intemperance, or slavery shall live on until the millennium. They even believe and confess that these and other sinful systems must be abolished before the world can expect to see the advent of the millennium.

Whoever looks observingly at this great incongruity of our day, must see that the genius of a past age, not of the present, pervades the policy and attitude of all the nations of Christendom. The men who helm these Governments are following the maxims of a by-gone century.

The rudder does not yet feel the impulse of this higher civilization which has been wrought out by such Christian effort and enlightenment. Governments are the largest and slowest bodies in the world, necessarily and always; and always the slowest men, apparently, are at their helm. The leaders must always be far a-head of the mass to be moved, and the square of the distance between them and it will be the measure of its dimensions and weight. Thus, these War-worshipping Governments and Nations will not feel the strain of these new influences until perhaps the middle of the next generation. It should be cheering to us to believe that they will feel and obey it then. The work of the individual man is measured by the year; the work and movement of peoples by the generation. The future is the harvest season of the present. We have reapt the sowing of our predecessors; let us be content that those to come after us shall reap ours.

Herein, then, there are hope and cheer. The Cobdens of to-day shall be the premiers of Christendom in the next generation. That is as near to the helm of national policy as we can hope to see him, and those who share his views. In that coming age, if he should live to act in it, he would doubtless be regarded as one of its conservatives, and a fit and proper man to conduct the Government. But some one of his views will doubtless fill that place and carry out his policy of stipulated Arbitration, mutual and general Disarmament, and other measures for the Peace and well-being of mankind. Then, we may also believe that future will have its own Cobdens, who will insist that the Cobden of 1860 was well enough in his day and generation, but not quite up to the spirit of progress which should distinguish the first years of the twentieth century. And the Palmerstons of that day will call the new reformer a visionary and impracticable enthusiast, an unsafe and irresponsible hobby-rider. And that Cobden of the second millennium,

will perhaps be coughed or voted down, and even ousted from his seat in Parliament, and go down to his grave a disappointed man. But another will come up in the succeeding generation, and the visionary ideas of 1925 will become practical and working realities in 1950.

Hence, then, from the dark nettle of mortality pluck we this fair flower of promise. The men that now are putting the Governments and peoples of Christendom on this War-footing represent a past age, almost necessarily. Their rule cannot last through another quarter of a century. The better spirits of this age will then come to the helm, and then will commence the harvest for which we are now sowing in this trial season of our faith. So let us "Learn to labor and to wait." E. B.

The Press on War.

From the Times, August 19th, 1863.

Laying aside all party aspects, the war in America, looked upon simply as a war, ought to put human nature in this nineteenth century to shame. It is not even war on modern civilized dimensions; it is war upon a barbaric scale. It is ancient war revived Its carnage, its devastations, its famines, its pestilences are barbaric. Its battlefields are upon an old plan, in which the slaughter is out of all proportion with the strategy. The engines of war are modern, but the angel of destruction which fires them is the same destroying angel which laid low Assyrian, Chaldean, and Persian armies. MILTON has given us a picture of ancient war conducted with modern instruments, and has bodily introduced the thunders of field guns into the very earliest fight on record. This war combines the newest military inventions with the oldest type of horror and destruction.

If any one was not satisfied of this from former descriptions he might have been from the results of the battle of Gettysburg, as just now more fully and accurately reported. We call it the battle because it was to all intents and purposes one battle. We have there in one battle 40,000 killed and wounded-i. e., a whole army put hors de combat. Of these 10,000 are killed on the spot. Fancy such a solid mass of slaughter to be the work of one battle. Ten thousand dead bodies on one field! Is it a scene of a civilized, mercantile, cotton-growing, cotton-spinning age,—an age which boasts itself a peaceful age, an age which has discarded the pride of the soldier for the triumphs of the social improver, and adopted "Exhibitions as its victories! Or is it a scene of the age of ALARIC or ATTILA? We need not take our readers through the interminable rows of the hospital. It is impossible for any one to realize what the effect of the sight of thousands of gashed and disabled men is, unless he does actually see it. Indeed, all these accounts are mere words to many, without the aid either of the eye or of a vivid imagination. Reason, however, must come to the rescue if imagination fails, for it is nothing less than a duty for people to endeavour to enter into these facts, and take in the dreadful amount of human misery which is comprised in these scenes. It is a revolting idea that these frightful events should be taking place, and that they should pass over us without creating even the sense of a contrast-the contrast of our situation with that of these unfortunate cousins of ours. Here we are in this island of ours,-we never look on war; we do not know what war is as a spectacle. We are at war, indeed, sometimes; we make war, but we never see it; we do not catch a glimpse of it; we are never touched by the faintest stir of its most distant skirts. Our troops know what war is, but we only know it by our pockets being a little lighter than usual. We pay for war, but we keep our creditor at a distance, and send him his money by check, What a difference it would make if war made one day his appearance among us, not in the shape of a Chancellor of the Exchequer's Budget, but in propria persona! How would his rugged visage horrify us! Cannot we guess how we should feel at passing through "the lines," at catching sight of a battery on the brow of the next hill, at meeting files of troops and trains of artillery and military baggage as we went to pay our visit

of business to the next town, or our call of condolence upon some mourning relation? At the first sight of a sentinel pacing on some hitherto tranquil rural path our whole image of comfortable, secure, ploughing and sowing England would crumble into fragments, and we should feel ourselves in another country. We should feel that a tie had broken, and that we had lost the England of our birth. Can we fancy the rails torn up between Slough and Reading, or between Rugby and Leicester, or between fifty other couples of towns? Can we raise an image of bridges, which had spanned the Thames, or the Trent, or the Avon from time immemorial, blown up, of telegraph wires cut, and of the communication both of persons and news changed from its present likeness to a law of nature to the irregularity of chance and luck! If we can, we can see what a very extraordinary England that England would be, and how difficult to recognize under its altered look and circumstances. Or can we picture to ourselves what the news of a battle would be, fought at Maidenhead or Dorking, on Salisbury Plain, or on the Hog's Back, and how strange the very announcement would sound to our ears, as if a law of nature had been broken in the fact of an engagement between two armies having really taken place on English soil? If we can, then we may feel how striking is the contrast between the situation of the Americans and ourselves, and what the miseries and horrors are from which we are hitherto preserved. In parts of the United States the population is being literally fed on rations." Between Vicksburg and Jackson "the country is conpletely devastated. No subsistence of any kind remains. Every growing crop was destroyed where possible. Wheat was burnt in the barn and stack, whereever found. All subsistence was brought off or destroyed. Live stock was used or brought away everywhere. Thousands are applying for food to sustain life. General GRANT is opposed to all opening of trade for the present. His experience has been that trade retarded military operations."

The Battle of Gettysburg does indeed appear to have presented some of the grandest scenes of the horribly sublime kind that have been seen in any war. Our correspondent, describing the charge of the Confederates up the Cemetery Hill, held by the Federal centre, writes:-"I should have fancied that no such scene had ever before reached mortal eye or ear. A thick canopy of smoke, constantly rent by bright, darting flashes of flame, cast its dense pall over the struggling, bleeding thousands who toiled and died in its centre, while out of the opaque gloom, as though from the bowels of the earth, one deep, prolonged, bellowing roar never ceased to issue. Through the deepening twilight, and on far into the night, the fierce struggle continued, until in the gloom the dazzling parabolas of flame, bursting into sparkling jets and coruscations, as the shells cracked and exploded, made a ghastly pyrotechnic display." The first day, however, was exceeded by the second, "The thunderiug roar of all the accumulated battles ever fought upon earth, rolled into one volume, could hardly have rent the skies with fiercer or more unearthly resonance and din. Far back into the mountains the reverberations rolling from hillside to hillside startled strange and unmusical echoes. Vast cumuli of cloud, such as would have shrouded 10,000 Homeric goddesses, floated over the strife; horses, the suffering and tortured ministers of man's fury and wrath, lay thickly dead or horribly mutilated upon the ground; constantly from out of the white pall of vapour issued wounded and mangled men, and rumours that this or that General was killed, that this or that regiment was reduced to a corporal's guard, traceable to no authentic source, neither believed nor disbelieved by the listeners, rose, as it were, out of the ground." Such is war, and, with this before them, there is unquestionably an appetite for fighting which the continuance of war produces. War certainly does bring out a class of fine qualities in human nature, and brings them out in a way in which no other life can. Unfortunately in the great mass it produces a counterbalance. The very man who is a hero on the field is a brute when the battle is over. He is insolent, farrogant, and selfish, and his government is a curse to the soil he has won. There is a flash of heroism while the storm of the battle lasts, but the steady temptations of every-day life in a hostile country sap a moral foundation which was never strong, and make the soldier too often a grasping tyrant.