Page:Picture of war (2).pdf/4



4 her myriad's of murdered souls; and ungrateful Ambition, forgetting the blood by which victory was purchased, dwells only with rapture on the glory of her conquests! Oh! that the great ones of the earth were but a little more inclined to the reflection! what conquest was ever worth the useful lives lost to accomplish it? what battle was ever fought that did not hurry thousands of trembling and unprepared souls into the presence of their offended Redeemer?

O God! when thou makest inquisition for blood upon whom wilt thou lay the guilt of those torrents of blood, that have been shed for no earthly purpose whatever, but to gratify the detestable and insolent ambition of a few poor puny creatures like ourselves.

At the conclusion of a spirited and long contested war, there is scarcely a cottage to be met with that does not bear visible marks of its fruits. In one miserable hut you may behold, seated at their scanty meal, a mother and her tribe of half-starved children; but father you will find none; death met him in the field of battle, and in a moment, made his children fatherless, and his wife a widow.

Here you view an aged couple, bent double with infirmities and years, and God knows! but little capable to sustain a protracted journey through the winter of life, yet hoping still to see better days, when the war is ended, and their children returned. Time, that at length brings all things to bear, finishes the war; but time does not bring back their children,