116         Jewish Wars as Precedents for Modern Wars.         [April,

demning offensive war, and declaring the innocence of defensive
war, they go to the divinely sanctioned wars of the Jews for an
example in proof, when lo, they find their exemplars engaged in
the very warfare which they condemn, while the enemies of the
Jews are waging the wars which they justify. No people on
earth ever waged more strictly defensive wars than did the Ca-
naanites. They fought in defense of their country, their property,
and the lives of their women and children, against an enemy to
whom they had given no cause for offense. No Christian advo-
cate of defensive war, had he then lived in Canaan, could have re-
fused to enlist, like the prophet Balaam, in the ranks of the invad-
ed nations. He might have objected that they were a very wicked
people, who, if they had their deserts at the hand of God, would
be severely punished; but then it would have been demanded:
"What right have these refugees from Egypt, whom neither we
nor our fathers have offended, to pronounce judgment on us, and
undertake our extermination? Have we not a right, so far as
they are concerned, to worship what gods we please, and to regu-
late our own domestic institutions? And when they come to de-
prive us of this right, and not only so, but to consign us without
conditions and without mercy to utter extermination, who will
deny to us the right of self-defense?" I confess, that as an advo-
cate of war, I could not have answered these questions, except by
granting that right and justice between the partics was all on the
side of the Canaanites. Such must be the judgment of the world,
when the parties are considered only in their relations to one an-
other, the only way in which parties to any war can now be con-
sidered, and therefore the only way in which these facts can fur-
nish precedents for the present day. How wild and reckless, then,
the logic by which the Jews, whom to imitate now would expose
any nation to the execration of mankind, and held up as furnish-
ing an example, in the matter of war, for the imitation of Chris-
tians! The advocate of defensive war should pause here, and de-
liberate, before he reads further. If he is capable of thinking
consistently, he will find himself involved in some confusion.
   There is still another unlooked for conclusion to which our
argument necessarily leads us. If God can not sanction that

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