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.

Yet it was over no battle-field, the most sacred to truth and liberty, these angels hovered; no blazing homesteads nor burning cities shed their lurid gleam on the skies they made radiant with light; nor was it where their sweet voices strangely mingled with the clash of arms and the shouts of charging squadrons that they sang of glory, good-will, and peace. This had been out of keeping with the congruity which characterises all God’s works of nature, and which will be found equally characteristic of His works of providence and grace. As was meet, the glad tidings of peace were announced to men who were engaged in an eminently peaceful occupation; who passed tranquil lives amid the quietness of the solemn hills, far removed alike from the ambitious strife of cities and the bloody spectacles of war. Lying amid the solitudes of the mountains, where no sounds fall on the ear but the bleating of flocks, the lowing of cattle, the hum of bees, the baying of a watch-dog from the lonely homestead, the murmur of hidden rills, the everlasting rush of the waterfall as it plunges flashing into its dark, foaming pool, pastoral are eminently peaceful scenes. Indeed, the best emblem of peace which a great painter has been able to present he owes to them—it is a picture of a quiet glen, with a lamb licking the rusty lips of a dismounted gun, while the flocks around crop the grass that waves above the slain.

Apt scholars of the devil, wicked men have used Holy Scripture to justify the most impious crimes. Others, with more fancy than judgment, have drawn the most absurd conclusions from its facts; but we seem warranted to conclude, that by selecting shepherds to receive the first tidings of Jesus’ birth, apart from the circumstance that they were Christ’s own favourite types of Himself, God intended to confer special honour on the cause, and encourage the lovers and advocates of peace. Deer are furnished by nature with horns, dogs with teeth, eagles with talons, serpents with poison, and bees with stings; but men have no weapons of offence. Yet, acting under the dominion of their lusts, men have a passion for fighting, and, easily fired with the spirit, and dazzled with the glory of war, are ready to abandon arguments for blows; and I cannot but think that He who would not permit David, the man after His own heart, to build Him a house because he had been a man of blood, conferred this honour on these humble shepherds because they were men of peace. Whether it be with Himself or our own consciences, in the midst of our families, among our neighbours, or between nation and nation, He enjoins us to cultivate peace: in His own emphatic words, we are to “seek peace and pursue it.”