Criminality is not always obvious, in proportion to its extent.  The sin of the traffic in intoxicating liquors, was, until the last few years, almost universally unfelt and unperceived.  But now, we meet with men, who, though it was “in all good conscience,” that they were once engaged in it, would not resume it for worlds; and who see more criminality, in taking money from a fellow man, in exchange for the liquor which intoxicates him, than in simple theft.  However it may be with others, in this employment, they now see, that, for them to traffic in intoxicating liquors, would be to stain themselves with the twofold crime of robbery and murder.  How is it, that good men ever get into this employment?—­and, under what influences and by what process of thought, do they come to the determination to abandon it?  The former is accounted for, by the fact, that they grow up—­have their education—­their moral and intellectual training—­in the midst of a public opinion, and even of laws also, which favor and sanction the employment.  The latter is accounted for, by the fact, that they are brought, in the merciful providence of God, to observe and study and understand the consequences of their employment—­especially on those who drink their liquor—­the liquor which they sell or make, or, with no less criminality, furnish the materials for making.  These consequences they find to be “evil, only evil, and that continually.”  They find, that this liquor imparts no benefit to them who drink it, but tends to destroy, and, oftentimes, does destroy, their healths and lives.  To continue, therefore, in an employment in which they receive their neighbor’s money, without returning him an equivalent, or any portion of an equivalent, and, in which they expose both his body and soul to destruction, is to make themselves, in their own judgments, virtually guilty of theft and murder.

Thus it is in the case of a national war, waged for conquest.  Christians have taken part in it; and, because they were blinded by a wrong education, and were acting in the name of their country and under the impulses of patriotism, they never suspected that they were doing the devil, instead of “God, service.”  But when, in the kind providence of God, one of these butchers of their fellow beings is brought to pause and consider his ways, and to resolve his enormous and compound sin into its elements of wickedness,—­into the lies, theft, covetousness, adultery, murder, and what not of crime, which enter into it,—­he is amazed that he has been so “slow of heart to believe,” and abandon the iniquity of his deeds.