It was natural that ancient Heathen, strangers to the sentiment of Human Brotherhood, should limit their regard to the narrow circle of country,—as if there were magical lines within which strife and bloodshed are shame and crime, while beyond this pale they are great Glory. Preparing for battle, the Spartans sacrificed to the Muses, anxious for the countenance of these divinities, to the end that their deeds might be fitly described, and deeming it a heavenly favor that witnesses should behold them. Not so the Christian. He would rather pray that the recording angel would blot with tears all recollection of the fraternal strife in which he was sorrowfully engaged.
This conclusion, however repugnant to the sentiment of Heathenism or the practice of Christian nations, stands on the Brotherhood of Man. Because this truth is imperfectly recognized, the Heathen distinction between civil war and foreign war is yet maintained. To the Christian, every fellow-man, whether remote or near, whether of our own country or of another, is "neighbor" and "brother"; nor can any battle, whether between villages or towns or states or countries, be deemed other than shame,—like the civil wars of Rome, which the poet aptly said could bear no triumphs:—
"Bella geri placuit nullos habitura triumphos."[225]
The same mortification and regret with which we regard the hateful contest between brothers of one household, kinsmen of one ancestry, citizens of one country, must attend every scene of strife; for are we not all, in a just and Christian sense, brethren of one household, kinsmen of one ancestry, citizens of one country,—the world? The inference is irresistible, that no success in arms against fellow-men, no triumph over brothers, flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone, no destruction of the life which God has given to his children, no assault upon his sacred image in the upright form and countenance of man, no effusion of human blood, under whatever apology of necessity vindicated, can be the foundation of Christian Fame.
Adverse to the prejudices of mankind as such conclusion may be, it must find sympathy in the refined soul and the inner heart of man, while it is in harmony with those utterances, in all ages, testifying to the virtue whose true parent is Peace. The loving admiration, so spontaneously offered to the Christian graces which adorned the Scipios, hesitates at those scenes of blood which gave to them the unwelcome eminence of "the two thunderbolts of war." The homage freely accorded to forbearance, generosity, or forgiveness, when seen in the spectral glare of battle, is a tacit rebuke to the hostile passions whose triumphant rage constitutes the Glory of arms. The wail of widows and orphans, and the sorrows of innumerable mourners refusing to be comforted, often check the gratulations of success. Stern warriors, too, in the paroxysm of victory, by unwilling tears vindicate humanity and condemn their own triumphs. More than one, in the dread extremities of life, has looked back with regret upon his career of battle, or perhaps, like Luxembourg of France, confessed that he would rather remember a cup of cold water given to a fellow-creature in poverty and distress than all his victories, with their blood, desolation, and death. Thus speaks the heart of man. No true Fame can flow from the fountain of tears.
The achievements of war and the characters of conquerors have been exposed by satire, under whose sharp touch we see their unsubstantial renown.
"Heroes are much the same, the point's agreed,
From Macedonia's madman to the Swede."
Nobody has done this more plainly than Rabelais, who, in an age when Peace was only a distant vision, gave expression to those sentiments, often vague and undefined, which have their origin in the depths of the human soul. In the Life of Pantagruel, that strange satire, compounded of indecency, humor, effrontery, and learning, one of the characters, after being very merry in hell, talking familiarly with Lucifer, and penetrating to the Elysian Fields, recognizes some of the world's great men, but changed after a very extraordinary manner. Alexander the Great is mending and patching old breeches and stockings, and thus obtains a very poor living. Achilles is a maker of hay-bundles; Hannibal, a kettle-maker, and seller of egg-shells. All the knights of the Round Table are poor day-laborers, employed to row over the rivers Cocytus, Phlegethon, Styx, Acheron, and Lethe, when, according to Rabelais, "my lords the devils have a mind to recreate themselves upon the water, as on like occasion one hires the boatmen at Lyons, the gondoliers of Venice, or oars of London,—but with this difference, that these poor knights have for their fare only a bob or flirt on the nose, and in the evening a morsel of coarse, mouldy bread."[226] Such is the wretched contrast between the judgment of earth and that other judgment, which cannot be arrested when earth has passed away.