qualities. Their success in war is tantamount to saying that in one
great field of genius, which civilization honors, they not merely
distinguished themselves, and gained a proud fame which will never die
out of the memory of man, but that they have had no equals in any age.
War enabled them to build up a vast empire, which empire gave a great
impulse to ancient civilization.

[Sidenote: Providence seen in the ascendency of great nations.]

There is something very singular and mysterious in the results of wars
which are caused and carried on by unprincipled and unscrupulous men.
They are made to end in substantial benefits to the human race. The
wrath of man, in other words, is made to praise God, showing that He is
the Sovereign ruler on this earth, and uses what instruments He pleases
to carry out his great and benevolent designs. However atrocious the
causes of wars, and execrable the spirit in which they are carried out,
they are ever made to subserve the benefit of future ages, and the great
cause of civilization in its vast connections. Men may be guilty, and
may be punished for their wickedness, and execrated through all time by
enlightened nations; still they are but tools of the higher power. I do
not say that God is the author of wars any more than He is of sin; but
wars are yet sent as a punishment to those whom they directly and
immediately affect, while they unbind the cords of slavery, and relax
the hold of tyrants. They are like storms in the natural world: they
create a healthier moral life, after the disasters are past. Those
ambitious men, who seek to add province to province and kingdom to
kingdom, and for whom no maledictions are too severe, since they shed
innocent blood, rarely succeed unless they quarrel with doomed nations
incapable of renovation. Thus Babylon fell before Cyrus when her day had
come, and she could do no more for civilization. Thus Persia, in her