Read at the reception in Boston of the English delegation representing more than two hundred members of the British Parliament who favor international arbitration.

AMESBURY, 11th Mo., 9, 1887.

IT is a very serious disappointment to me not to be able to be present at the welcome of the American Peace Society to the delegation of more than two hundred members of the British Parliament who favor international arbitration. Few events have more profoundly impressed me than the presentation of this peaceful overture to the President of the United States. It seems to me that every true patriot who seeks the best interests of his country and every believer in the gospel of Christ must respond to the admirable address of Sir Lyon Playfair and that of his colleagues who represented the workingmen of England. We do not need to be told that war is always cruel, barbarous, and brutal; whether used by professed Christians with ball and bayonet, or by heathen with club and boomerang. We cannot be blind to its waste of life and treasure and the demoralization which follows in its train; nor cease to wonder at the spectacle of Christian nations exhausting all their resources in preparing to slaughter each other, with only here and there a voice, like Count Tolstoi's in the Russian wilderness, crying in heedless ears that the gospel of Christ is peace, not war, and love, not hatred.

The overture which comes to us from English advocates of arbitration is a cheering assurance that the tide of sentiment is turning in favor of peace among English speaking peoples. I cannot doubt that whatever stump orators and newspapers may say for party purposes, the heart of America will respond to the generous proposal of our kinsfolk across the water. No two nations could be more favorably conditioned than England and the United States for making the "holy experiment of arbitration."

In our associations and kinship, our aims and interests, our common claims in the great names and achievements of a common ancestry, we are essentially one people. Whatever other nations may do, we at least should be friends. God grant that the noble and generous attempt shall not be in vain! May it hasten the time when the only rivalry between us shall be the peaceful rivalry of progress and the gracious interchange of good.