or Commonwealth side fought and prayed at the same time, with the sword in one hand and the Bible in the other. It is a fact, probably without a parallel in the history of war, that early in the contest an attempt was made to raise some new regiments for the Parliament's army, to be composed chiefly of truly religious men. This was done at the suggestion of Cromwell, who, as he held at that time a subordinate military station, proposed the measure to the celebrated Hampden. The latter at first thought the plan impracticable, but still seems to have carried it into effect by means of Cromwell's assistance. Cromwell says, that when he first went into engagement, he saw his men beaten on every side; but afterwards, when he had "raised such men as had the fear of God before them and made conscience of what they did," he was always successful against the enemy. But these are obviously rare instances, and are justly to be regarded as exceptions to the general statement. As a general thing, it is true beyond all question, that among soldiers, particularly in large armies, there is a deplorable laxity both of moral and religious principle and feeling. But it is certainly a reasonable conclusion, that such a state of things could not so generally exist, unless there were something in the very situation of a soldier, which is opposite and fatally opposite to the cultivation of principles and feelings of this kind. * But without resting satisfied with this general statement, it is proper to enter into the examination of some particulars. And in the first place, the soldier is removed from those many favorable and powerful influences, which result from domestic life and from the general relations of society. The young man, who remains at home beneath his father's roof, surrounded by his relatives and friends, is encircled on all sides by chords, in • Godwin's History of the Commonwealth of England, Bk. IV. Chap. 23d. visible indeed to the eye, and so light in their pressure as to be scarcely perceptible, which have an immense power in restraining the ebullitions of the passions and improprieties of conduct. He knows, that the ever watchful and affectionate eye of his father and mother is upon him; he knows that a sister's love is feelingly and deeply alive to every thing he says and does; he knows that his numerous relatives and friends, whom he meets at almost every hour of the day, have an interest in his deportment and character, which he cannot disregard, without a violation of every sentiment of honor and benevolence. The influence from these sources is far stronger than is sometimes imagined; and we should hardly go too far in saying, that it constitutes one of the greatest sureties and supports of civil government. But the soldier is removed, in a great measure at least, beyond the reach of this propitious control. Separated from his home, and from all those restraining and regulative influences, of which home is the great centre and source, he finds himself in a situation, where he can indulge his passions without being subject to any observation of which he stands in awe, and give loose to improprieties of deportment, without so clearly perceiving and feeling, that he himself is dishonored, and that his dearest friends are injured by it. He is transplanted from a scene and a situation, where every thing is rendered sacred by domestic affection, and oftentimes by the observances and benign spirit of religion, to a soil and atmosphere, that give birth and nourishment to every thing noxious and pestilential. No father's warning voice checks him in his mad career; no mother's tear gives strength to the suggestions of virtue; no brother's or sister's hand compulsively yet kindly withholds him from the haunts of dissipation and vice; but on the contrary he finds himself launched suddenly on the great ocean of temptation and vice, under a full press of sail, and left at the entire mercy of the winds and waves. But the soldier is not only removed from those influences of domestic life, so favorable to a course of virtue ; but is placed directly under the pressure of other influences of a wholly opposite character, tending directly to vice. In other words, he is surrounded by men, whose character is essentially vicious, and constantly breathes the deleterious atmosphere of their example and advice. It is a just remark of Dr. Doddridge in respect to the military life, "the temptations are so many, that it may seem no inconsiderable praise and felicity to be free from dissolute vice, and to retain what in other professions might be regarded a mediocrity of virtue."* It is not our object to go into the particulars of those vices, which are undoubtedly prevalent, in a very high degree, in all armies. It is sufficient for our purpose merely to allude to them. Among other vices, which display themselves openly and are constantly disseminating their pernicious contagion, are intemperance, profanity, gambling, sabbath-breaking, &c. which of themselves, without being accompanied by others of so depraved and impure a nature as hardly to admit of being named, are enough to corrupt and ruin any body of men. A young man is taken from the bosom of a family, where he had been accustomed to hear the name of God mentioned with reverence, where the Sabbath had been seriously and scrupulously regarded, and where every thing around him had breathed of uprightness and purity, and is plunged at once in this sea of sin. And can we expect, that he will remain there, without deep and dreadful contamination? We do not say, that it is absolutely impossible. But can we rationally expect it? His ear becomes habituated to profaneness; the Sabbath's light, *Doddridge's Remarkable Passages in the Life of Colonel James Gardiner. that once had a degree of sacredness, has ceased to bring its customary stillness and its solemnity and its religious instructions; every thing around him invites to the prostitution of his faculties and to vicious indulgences; and after some feeble efforts to sustain a propriety and decency of character, he falls the ruined victim of the pernicious influences, under which he is placed. Furthermore, there is something in the very nature of a military life, even if all the concomitant influences were unexceptionable, which tends to moral evil.-Even if it could be shown, that war is in some cases justifiable and right, (a matter upon which we do not here propose to express an opinion,) it would still remain true, that the military life has, in itself considered, a pernicious tendency. The appropriate business of the soldier is bloodshed, the taking away of human life. But this sanguinary business, whatever plausible reasons may sometimes be brought forward to justify it, jars violently upon all the finer feelings and susceptibilities of our nature. If a person can be made to feel, that it is right to cut down his fellow-man, to mar and destroy that image which God alone could make, he will be in a fair way to believe that any thing and every thing whatever may be either right or wrong; in other words, to believe that the doctrine of moral distinctions is altogether unfounded and false. But the fact is, that a large proportion of the soldiers, perhaps nine tenths of them, never form an opinion, founded on a careful and candid examination of all the facts in the case, of the justice or injustice of the war, in which they are engaged. They slay their fellow-men, without having formed any deliberate opinion whether the action in that particular case is right or wrong. They imbrue their hands in blood with much the same carelessness and indifference, with which a butcher sheds the blood of an ox or a lamb. To a large portion of the soldiers it is butchery, and nothing but butchery; and from their inability to inquire into the full merits of the war, must necessarily be so. Military life, therefore, when we properly analyze it, becomes to the common soldier the mere dreadful business of the butchery of human beings; nothing more and nothing less. Now we assert, that this business, so abhorrent to all the kindly feelings of our nature, necessarily tends to undermine the moral character. It requires no remarkable clearness of perception to see, that the butchery, the putting to death of our fellow beings in the way which has been mentioned, will fill the mind with a sort of instinctive abhorrence. No soldier, who fights without having satisfied himself of the entire rectitude of his cause, (a state of things which as we have seen is for the most part wholly out of the question,) slays another in battle for the first, second, or third time, without hearing a warning voice within him, which denounces it as a deed of murder. Nature will be found to assert her rights, even in the bosom of military men. She will not fail to speak, and to speak in such a manner as to make herself heard; but her remonstrances will be in vain; the subject of them will at once place himself in the attitude of resistance; the pressure of his situation will compel him to harden himself against the calls of sympathy and of moral right; and, although they are heeded for a time, as they must necessarily be, they are ultimately silenced. This is the natural, and we may add, the inevitable course of things. The life of a soldier is necessarily a continued and rapid process of moral induration; so much so that not unfrequently he, who went forth from his father's home a human being, endued with human feelings, returns with the guilt and cruelty and stupidity and hardness of a monster. It is not our intention here, nor in any part of this work, to make statements at |