THE ANGEL OF PEACE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2695, 8 November 1905, Page 71

THE ANGEL OF PEACE.

By a Banker.

After holding sway foi mow than 16 months — months of horror, months of gruesome, corroding sufferings and of gnawing heartache and lamentation — the dread, grirn-visaged spectre of war has at length happily winged his flight to those nether regions of darkness and of woe whenoe he came forth, and the bright angel of peace now stretches her silvery wings over those vast levies of fierce combatants. Now are their speaTS changed into pruning hooks and their swords into ploughshares^ ,uc>-?r those mighty, deadly weapons, instead of .discharging their death-dealing bolts into the serried ranks of the enemy, overwhelming huge nia-sses in * destruction as though -a discharge- of hot thunderbolts from high heaven had been launched against them, belch forth- in resounding tones a hoarse acclaim in honour of peace; ancT those who the day before were flying at each other's throats in derdly conflict, each in a wild paroxysm of rage and fury engaged in a frenzied life-and-death struggle with the foe, now sink their animosity deep down in oblivion, and offer each to the other the. hancTof friendship and esteem.

Aye,- but while the livid angel of drcath was hovering over those stricken fields, or was flapping his ink-black wings over the wild ocean where those crapulous incompetents wore fleeing madly, panic struck, before their -valorous, splendid conquerors, who, with iheir well-airned-missiles, were sinking their mailed vessels, one after the other, right </own to th* dark chambers of the deep, what scenes of fiery horror, what spectacles of dii/sst, tormenting agony and of writhing toi'/ure and pain were continuously being enac'.ed. And, too, not only on those sanguinary fields and on that incarnadined ocean did human misery and anguish hold way. For hundreds of thousands of widows bereft of their loved helpmeet, or of mothers whose sods were struck down, or of maidens left to mourn the loss of those to whom they had plighted their troth, and who had joyfully looked forward down the long vista of life in the hope of a halcyon, blithesome destiny hand in hand with those who had claimed their young hearts — all these were crushed down with a gnawing, corroding grief, a grief so piteous and so woeful that even Time itself, with its all-healing hand, will oft-times scarce staunch or annul.

But now peace is assured, the angry combatants no longer go forth to slaughter and to destroy; no more wives, and mothers, and maidens will be left desolate and disconsolate, and the valiant conquerors no longer fear that their hearths and homes will be destroyed by a cruel and sanguinary foe.

But there axe multitudes who cry Peace v/k-etn. there is no peace; who fatuotisly think they can attain an inheritance in the Paradise of God in their own way, which they consider more sensible than the only way indicated by the Word of God—viz., by coming to Him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and who suffered, the Just for the unjust. But if they resolutely will not do so, they will inevitably find those gates of Paradise barred by g, flaming sy/ord^