War in Heaven

“ His hand is pressed on his aching brow, And veils his eyes' dark light, And a twinkling cresset's dim red glow, When the lightning pales, doth sadly flow O'er locks where many a thread of snow Tells of time's troubled flight. He stands—a fading, a clouded star, Half-hid in the rack of heaven's war; Or, like a vanquished warrior, one Whose heart is crushed, whose hopes are gone After many a gallant fight. ”

“ Whence in perpetual fight they needs must last
Endless, and no solution will be found:
War wearied hath performed what war can do,
And to disordered rage let loose the reins
With mountains, as with weapons, armed; which makes
Wild work in Heaven, and dangerous to the main.
Two days are therefore past, the third is thine;
For thee I have ordained it; and thus far
Have suffered, that the glory may be thine
Of ending this great war, since none but Thou
Can end it. Into thee such virtue and grace
Immense I have transfused, that all may know
In Heaven and Hell thy power above compare ”

“ It is her last resource, long evaded, long postponed; the bitter cup which Heaven would not permit to pass away from her; and now, in the face of Europe, in the face of America, in the face of our kindred and our race, in the face of our Great Creator, we declare that this war is just and necessary; that men may enter upon it with a free conscience, and a full assurance that it is Heaven's work. ”

“ Among the blessings of this happy period, shall be that of a universal and everlasting peace. There shall be no more contention and bloodshed upon earth. “Nation shall no more lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” The arsenals shall empty their contents into the foundries and blacksmith-shops, and the weapons of war shall be converted into scythes and plowshares. O, glorious day! when heaven shall be seen upon earth, and earth itself shall seem like heaven! Behold the ferocious wolf dwelling with the gentle lamb ”

“ With war’s cessation?
If God’s eyes know tears,
Methinks He weeps more for the wasted years
p. 79And the lost meaning of this earthly life—
This big, brief life—than over bloody strife.
Yea; there are mean, lean sins God must abhor
More than the fatted, blood-drunk monster, War.
Looking from His place, looking from His high place among the stars, God saw a peaceful land—
A land of fertile fields and golden harvests—and great cities whose innumerable spires pierced the vault of heaven, like bayonets of an invading army. ”

“ The peace of heaven is theirs that lift their swords In such a just and charitable war. ”

“ Ye that follow the vision
Of the world's weal afar,
Have ye met with derision
And the red laugh of war;
Yet the thunder shall not hurt you,
Nor the battle-storms dismay;
Tho' the sun in heaven desert you,
"Love will find out the way." ”

“ If you know the enemy and know yourself, your victory will not stand in doubt; if you know Heaven and know Earth, you may make your victory complete. ”

“ Or, if there were a sympathy in choice,
War, death, or sickness, did lay siege to it,
Making it momentary as a sound,
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream,
Brief as the lightning in the collied night
That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,
And ere a man hath power to say 'Behold!'
The jaws of darkness do devour it up;
So quick bright things come to confusion. ”

“ Our prayer and wail are lifted. Not alone
Upon the battle's seared and desolate track,
Nor with the sword and flame, is it, O God,
That Thou hast smitten us. Around our hearths,
And in the crowded streets and busy marts,
Where echo whispers not the far-off strife
That slays our loved ones; in the solemn halls
Of safe and quiet counsel--nay, beneath
The temple-roofs that we have reared to Thee,
And 'mid their rising incense--God of Peace!
The curse of war is on us. Greed and hate
Hungering for gold and blood ”

“ Men had dreamed of peace and good will, of strong nations hailing each other with a "God speed" across the waters, a world of quickened life and promise and progress. And suddenly, out of a clear sky, as it seemed, had come blackening, devastating war. Men who had smiled like friendly gods snarled and hissed and rolled each other in the dust like brute beasts. ”

“ God made such horrors? Count that word a lie.
God made the pleasant river, clear and blue,
Peace is His handiwork, and love, and joy,
While man makes sewers and artillery,
Grim bayonets, and howitzers and shell,
The battle-squadron surging through the tides,
Ten thousand hecatombs of reeking red
And all the vile magnificence of War. ”

“ IV—CHRISTMAS IN AN AUSTRIAN HOSPITAL
Christmas Eve: peace on earth and good will toward men. And all through "the still night, the holy night," the sound that means killing goes on almost continuously. How can any one say prayers for a world which is at war, or for himself that is a part of it? May God, who knows everything, help each of us to bear our part and not disgrace Him, and make us instruments to the end that He wishes. ”

“ The heroes on the battlefield are calm in death,
Their fighting o'er;
They feel no more the fevered breath
Of battle's war;
They hear at last the voice that saith
"Fight on no more."
But oh, the heroes on the grander field of peace,
Who know no rest!
Whose hearts ne'er feel the full release
From mortal quest,
Nor breathe the air where struggles cease
The soul to test.
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For such we mourn, O purifying soul of life,
For such we pray.
Let Nature free them from the strife
Of falsehood's way,
And Love through every struggle rife
Have free, full play. ”

“ Beneath a burning sky:
He bivouacs; the night comes on;
His comrades 'round him lie—
O memories of the years long gone!
O years that now go by!
The vintager of Earth is War, is War whose grapes are men;
Into his wine-vats armies go, his wine-vats steaming red:
The crimson vats of battle where he stalks, as in a den,
Drunk with the must of Hell that spurts beneath his iron tread. ”

“ Let us, if we would turn this occasion to due account, look up for a while from the human thunders and lightnings by which the earth and sea are now shaken; let us raise our eyes and our hearts to the Psalmist’s vision of God sitting on His throne, above all these earthly and human struggles and sufferings, and though clouds and darkness are round about Him, yet controlling them by His righteous judgment.
Let us look into this general consideration a little more particularly. War is the result of human passion, human error, and human sin. ”

“ The streams run red with waves of war!
“If in the fight we fall, so best!
Bathed in our blood—a baptism blest—
With joyous hearts we’ll take our rest.
“If we but fall where we have fought,
As Christian men and Bretons ought,
Such death is ne’er too early sought.” ”

“ We long, indeed, for the cessation of this war, and, kindled by the flame of divine love, we burn for entrance on that well-ordered peace in which whatever is inferior is for ever subordinated to what is above it. ”

“ What an awful thing is war! Here lay, almost within cannon-shot of one another, eighty or ninety thousand men—brothers of the same race and nation, many of them [149] blood relations; thousands of them believing in the same Saviour, and worshiping the same God, their prayers meeting that night at the throne of Heavenly Grace;—yet waiting for the light of the holy Sabbath that they may see how most surely to destroy one another! ”

“ O FOR a voice like thunder, and a tongue
To drown the throat of war! When the senses
Are shaken, and the soul is driven to madness,
Who can stand? When the soul of the oppress'd
Fight in the troubled air that rages, who can stand?
When the whirlwind of fury comes from the
Throne of God, when the frowns of His countenance
Drive the nations together, who can stand?
When Sin claps his broad wings over the battle,
And sails rejoicing in the flood of death ”

“ They have been able to see God through the cloud of smoke raised by shot and shell, and the Presence of the Divine has not been obscured by the horrors of war. Conscious of the seriousness of the work in which they are engaged, feeling every moment the nearness of eternity, our soldiers have in no craven spirit, but with a due remembrance of their relationship to God and to eternity, turned to religion as a stay in the hour of conflict.... ”

“ We are come here this evening to offer our earnest prayers and supplications to God for His help in this grievous and dangerous crisis of our national life, to entreat Him to grant the victory to our King and his Allies, and to deliver our nation, our Empire, and the world from the violence and oppression with which they are threatened by the enemy. In order that we may do so aright, it is necessary we should realize distinctly what is God’s special concern with the war, and what is our own relation to Him in respect to it. ”

“ The army of the foe surges around them; and they know that ghastly death is grinning at them from every glade which opens from the dark center to the blacker depths beyond, and whispering to them upon every wind that stirs the odorous branches. But they fear no blow from a foeman's shaft—that noble death is but the chance of war. ”

“ You will now shortly hear of wars, and rumours of wars. When wars are, they will be heard; for every battle of the warrior is with confused noise, Isa. ix. 5. See how terrible it is (Jer. iv. 19) , Thou hast heard, O my soul, the alarm of war! Even the quiet in the land, and the least inquisitive after new things, cannot but hear the rumours of war. See what comes of refusing the gospel! Those that will not hear the messengers of peace, shall be made to hear the messengers of war. God has a sword ready to avenge the quarrel of his covenant, his new covenant. ”

“ Of peace I know and can speak,—of peace, with its solace of love, plenty, honor, fame, happiness, and its pathetic tragedy of poverty, heartache, disappointment, tears, bereavement. Of war I know nothing, and never shall know; it is not in my heart of for my hand to break that law which God enjoined from Sinai and Christ confirmed in Galilee. I do not know of war, nor can I tell you of that battle which men with immortal souls fought one glorious day in a fertile country with vineyard hills all round about. ”

“ One would say, standing upon an eminence, and surveying the smiling landscape, that this lovely plain was fashioned by the hand of the Creator as the abode of plenty and eternal peace. Yet a poet, remembering that it is not peace, but war that man loves, could not, in his dreams, picture to himself a more beautiful battle-field. ”

“ Thus for nearly the whole of that Sabbath day the battle raged, the huge struggling mass of humanity fighting like demons, and many times during that fatal day did the fortune of war waver in the balance: sometimes the White Rose trembling and then the Red, while men fought each other as if they were contending for the Gate of Paradise! ”

“ GAUDENS This is the soldier brave enough to tell The glory-dazzled world that 'war is hell': Lover of peace, he looks beyond the strife, And rides through hell to save his country's life. ”

“ And I, at Heav’n’s appointed hour, may find
Your warlike ensigns waving in the wind.
Meantime the rites and fun’ral pomps prepare,
Due to your dead companions of the war:
The last respect the living can bestow,
To shield their shadows from contempt below. ”

“ The smoke of battle will clear: the scarred fields will mantle again with springtime verdure: the fighting hosts will once more find their way to peaceful pursuit. Time the Healer will wipe out the wounds of war. ”

“ Does such an one as you march in the ranks of rebels? Does a minister of the Gospel preach war, and that against the Lord’s anointed?”
“Against the person of the King we do not war: we fight against his false and dangerous friends. The sword of the Lord is with us, and it must go through the land; but we march as mourners to the field of blood. ”

“ Now, now the fight's done, and the great god of war
Lies sleeping in shades, and unruffles his care.
Love laughs at his rest, and his souldiers alarmes,
He drums, and he trumpets, and struts in his armes ”

“ Dear brethren, these events are rapidly rolling in the fiery wheels down the descent of time; and although the nations must first drink the vials of divine wrath and the battle of God Almighty must first be fought, yet the time is at hand when we shall no more hear the sound of war, and of garments rolled in blood, for man will cease to be the enemy of man, and every one will sit quietly under his own vine and under his own fig tree ”

“ I believe in the God of Battles, Maker of the rulers of the earth, who giveth the victory to those who shrink from nothing and no means in order to attain it. I believe in terrorism and pillage and destruction and death. ”

“ But the war cry he strikes with is, ‘conquest or death!’
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Then pour thy broad wave like a flood from the heavens,
Each son that thou rearest, in the battle’s wild shock,
When the death-speaking note of the trumpet is given,
Will charge like thy torrent or stand like thy rock.
Let his roof be the cloud and the rock be his pillow,
Let him stride the rough mountain, or toss on the foam,
He will strike fast and well on the field or the billow,
In triumph and glory, for God and his home! ”

“ Every living thing on earth is described as taking part in this awful conflict. The heavens and earth shake in this mighty war; voices and thunders, lightnings and earthquakes, fish and fowl, beast and birds, men and worms, blood and fire, plague and pestilence, rain and hail, all commingle in this last great throe of expiring nature. How awful is the scene described by these two prophets! ”

“ The Spirit of the Holy One never comes to breathe on the dry bones of the slain when the valley echoes with the neighing of the horses, and the rattling of the chariots of war. Wars must be made to cease, the bow must be broken, and the spear cut in sunder—the chariots must be burned in the fire, and the tranquillity of unruffled peace must reign over the whole scene, ere he descends to unite the disjointed parts, and animate the lifeless body. It is to the influence of the Holy Spirit over the mind that we are to ascribe that portion of vital religion which we enjoy. ”