redemption? And when the proper time has come, will we dare to proclaim him a man? and, standing by the shrines of freedom which our fathers reared, to swear by our fathers' God that, to the full extent of our power, he shall be protected, like other men, in the enjoyment of all God-given rights-protected alike from the haughty rapacity of southern oppressors, and from the meaner and more cruel prejudice and jealousy of his fellow-laborers at the North? As God himself is true and noble and great, the vindicator of the oppressed and the refuge of the poor, so truly do I believe that on this question hangs the fate of the nation. If we cannot muster strength to meet it-I was about to say, God help us! But God will not help those who thus refuse his instructions and trample on his law of love. If we can, and do, then I believe the victory already won. When the heart of this people is right towards the negro, rather let me say, towards God IN the negro-his great controversy with America will be at an end; and thenceforth the track of her future will be like the fabled road along which, in the Oriental mythology, the perfected Gaudama journeyed through chaos to the celestial seats of wisdom and repose. Mountains of difficulty will subside into smooth and level plains; golden bridges will shoot across the yawning chasms of peril; wild beasts and savage men who seek her ill, will glare along the track, spell-bound and impotent; all things will conspire to greet and assist her progress: while from the whirling axles of her triumphant chariot new stars shall sparkle forth with ceaseless iteration, and plant themselves serenely in the heaven of a glorious and enduring prosperity.-J. H. Raymond, 1863.

THE POWER OF HEROIC EXAMPLE.

WE must not forget the specific and invaluable influence exerted on the spirit of a people by those examples of signal heroism and chivalrous self-devotion for which a magnanimous war gives occasion, and which it exalts, as peace cannot, before men's minds. /

Almost five centuries ago, under the tumbling walls of Sempach, where Leopold stood with 4,000 Austrians to crush the 1400 Swiss who dared to confront him, when again and again each rush of the mountaineers had failed to break the line of pikemen, and the liberties of the cantons seemed reeling into hopeless ruin, with sublimest self-sacrifice, one, springing

upon the foe with wide-spread arms, gathered into his breast a sheaf of spears, and made a way above his body for that triumphant valor which pierced and broke the horrid ranks, and set a new and bloody seal to the rightful autonomy of the mountain republics. And till Mont Blanc ceases to greet with earliest smiles the purpling dawn, and till the Rhone runs back to flood its glacial source-the hardy Switzer will not forget the daring deed and magic name of Arnold Winkelried!

More than half way from our day to the flood,—before Herodotus read his history, before Nehemiah rebuilt Jerusalem, before Cincinnatus was dictator at Rome,-under the shadow of Mount Eta, upon the road from Thessaly south towards Athens and towards Argos, a thousand men, Spartans and Thespians, fell, to a man, unwilling to retreat before the invader.

The stone lion that afterwards stood there was not only the emblem of what they were, but of what they made all Greece to be. Of that stern valor the stranger did" tell," according to the inscriptions, not alone the "Lacedemonians,” but all the world, that they "lay there obeying their laws."

Springs of salt and iron remain to mark the spot, welling around the steps of the traveller, as if they had sprung from that hot steel so fiercely wielded; as if they would symbolize the thought that has flown from that centre of heroism through the history of mankind. It is not even irreverent to say, that save one cross, beneath which earth herself did shiver, no other hath lifted its head so high, or flung its arms so wide abroad to scatter inspiring influence, as did that cross on which the Persian nailed in fury the dead Leonidas. So it has been in all time since. There is a contagion in such examples that smites the souls of generous men. Conscience and

reason, and every sympathy accepts their lesson. The veil is lifted a new height, where time no more is its narrow domain; the earth no more its only area; where moral greatness is more than wealth, and the supreme glory of personal sacrifice attracts, rewards the great endeavor. The cavalry charge at Balaklava-it may have been in its origin a mistake; but the impetuous rush to death of those six hundred across the flood of sheeted flame that Russian batteries poured upon them, will not pass, in its great influence, from English history, till the fast-anchored isle has been scuttled and sunk. The palace is richer, and the cottage is comelier in the light of the fact.

Such examples as these become great powers in civilization. History hurries from the drier details, and is touched with

enthusiasm as she draws near to them. Eloquence delights to rehearse and impress them. The songs of a nation repeat their story, and make their triumph sound again through the silver cymbals of speech. Legends prolong and art commemorates them. Language itself takes new images from them; and words that are themselves "half-battles," are suddenly born at their recital. The very household life is exalted; and the humblest man feels his position higher, and expresses his sense of it in a more dauntless bearing, as he sees that heroism still lives in the world; that men of his own race and stuff, perhaps of his own neighborhood even, have faced so calmly such vast perils. /

And by and by we shall see more clearly than now we can, the great influence thus exerted on our own national career. When at last from the thunder and flame on the top of the mount the nation comes, as come it will, with its very face shining from the heat and the splendor which it there has encountered, then shall it appear as it cannot before, that no life hath been more productive than that which closed before its prime, sprinkling with blood the stony steeps of this ascent! Then shall it appear that the delicate hands which have changed silk gloves for iron gauntlets have swept thereby the chords which vibrate into answers that distant ages still shall hear! Yea, then shall it appear that never yet was forum reared, or senate chamber builded to be the fit and equal theatre for eloquence so thrilling and so majestic as that imperial eloquence of great deeds which shook the soul of the whole people from the thundering bluffs this side of Leesburg! Better than new Californias every year are such examples to a nation that would be noble! Its very language and life must be lost before their force shall have ceased to inspire it. R. S. Storrs, Jr., 1863.

THE KING OF DAHOMEY AND JEFFERSON DAVIS.

THERE is a country called Dahomey in Africa. The government is a despotism, pure and simple-hell-born, God-defying without disguises or pretensions to be other than it is. The king has founded his commercial prosperity upon the slave-trade. He makes war upon the neighboring tribes, thus procuring slaves for exportation. His people manufac ture spears, swords, daggers, clubs; but his chief staple is men, women, children, and young girls. The royal bedchamber is paved with skulls; the roof is adorned with jawbones of chiefs he has slain in battle. A few years ago he

caused to be built a reservoir, and collected human beings for sacrifice-enough to fill it with blood-so that he could appear on those gory waves in a boat, and his admiring subjects behold him in all the greatness of his power and the beauty of his glory.

Ladies and gentlemen, I stand here to defend the king of Dahomey. When this dark ruler shall be asked at the bar of his Maker, "Why hast thou done this ?" I believe he will answer, "I had no light-I had no Christ. Father, forgive me!" And will not the Infinite Mercy cover him with its mantle? Ladies and gentlemen, there is another land, where the word of God flows in streams broader than the greatest river. Yet in that land, almost on the estate of Washington, by order and under the very eye of Jefferson Davis, ten thousand prisoners of war, who have given their lives for Christian liberty and for the right of free labor, whose only crime is defending their legitimate government, are held in Libby Prison in Richmond by a usurped, vindictive, tottering, poverty-stricken authority, so that many of them are starving to death!

I have placed the king of Dahomey and Mr. Davis together, because they belong together. The two gentlemen are associates in business. They do the same work, deal in the same article, and in the same spirit-the spirit of savage despotism, and the lowest pecuniary speculation. The king of Dahomey sweeps the adjoining territories with his armies, in order to procure a supply of the glorious staple, while Mr. Davis has organized this rebellion for the purpose of creating a large demand. The firm consists of three parties: the king of Dahomey is the resident agent in Africa; Mr. Davis, the head partner, resides, for the present, in Richmond; the third partner, of inferior rank, but equal utility and merit, is the slave-trader-the ferocious pirate who carries the human cargo from Africa to Cuba, and whom the success of the rebellion would admit into the ports of New Orleans, Charleston, New York and Boston. Both empires have the same object, and are built on the same corner-stone. If Mr. Davis succeeds, it will consolidate and extend the empire of Dahomey. If the king of Dahomey and his compeers be suppressed, the whole enterprise of Mr. Davis must fail for want of supply.

It is true the bed-chamber of Mr. Davis is not paved with human skulls; but has not his gigantic crime laid a hundred thousand-yes, three or four hundred thousand-heads in the dust, and carried anguish into almost every family of the country? It is true he has not filled a cistern at Richmond with blood, and thus outwardly revealed himself to his ad

miring followers in a boat; but the waves of blood upon which he has attempted to float his barque into power-are they not far greater in quantity than was ever shed by his royal partner? They are marked by the Christians of the earth; and God has doubtless noted them in that great book out of which, we are told, "the dead shall be judged according to their works."-Hon. Theo. S. Fay, 1863.

OUR TERRITORY A TRUST.

THE religious-minded among our people feel that in the territory committed to us there is a high and solemn trust― a national trust. We are taught that in some sense the world itself is a field, and every Christian nation acknowledges a certain responsibility for the moral condition of the globe. But how much nearer does it come when it is one's country! And the Church of America is coming to feel more and more that God gave us this country, not merely for material aggrandizement, but for a glorious triumph for the Church of Christ. Therefore we undertook to rid the territory of slavery. Since slavery has divested itself of its municipal protection, and has become a declared public enemy, it is our duty to prevent it from blighting this far western territory. When I stand and look out upon that immense territory as an individual man, as a citizen, as a Christian minister, I feel myself asked, "Will you permit that country to be darkened by this cloudy storm-will you permit the cries of bondmen to issue from that fair territory, and do nothing for their liberty ?" What are we doing? Sending our ships round the globe, carrying missionaries to the Sandwich Islands, to the islands of the Pacific, to Asia, to all Africa. And yet when this work of redeeming our continent from the heathendom of slavery lies before us, there are men who counsel us to give it up to the devil, and not try to do a thing. Ah! independently of pounds and pence, independently of national honor, independently of all merely material considerations, there is pressing on every conscientious Northerner's mind this highest of all considerationsour duty to God to save that continent from the blast and blight of slavery. Yet how many are there who up, down, and over all England are saying, "Let slavery go-let slavery

go ?"

It is recorded, I think, in the biography of that most noble of your own countrymen, Sir. H. Fowell Buxton-that on