us, invite our slaves to assume their freedom, give them arms to defend that freedom, and even slay those who seem to oppose it, and yet we dare not hang him. Why? Because we know he is right, and we are wrong." They can never defend their system again if John Brown is allowed to live.

If he dies, if he mounts the scaffold for Freedom, which may Heaven prevent, he will slay the monster which seems thus to slay him. He will make the scaffold in this land as sacred and potent as it became in England when Vanc, and Sidney, and Russell mounted it. Such a thrill of indignation and remorse will freeze the soul of every man, North and South, slaveholder and abolitionist, as never struck through the heart of a great Christian nation before. Let John Brown's great words be fulfilled: "Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children, and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I say, let it be done."

Out of that death life will leap: life for those miserable millions now worse than dead. To his memory honors will be paid; statues will bear his stern, mild features to posterity; and when Virginia is free,-as free she will be,-one of her first acts will be to erect a monument to his memory, on the very spot where disgrace, defeat, and death now overwhelm him as one of the first acts of this Commonwealth, after she had achieved her liberty, was to raise the lofty memorial to the "monomaniac" Warren, and his slain and defeated comrades, rebels, like these, against a legal but tyrannical power.

May God help us all to give ourselves to Him, in the consecration of a holy heart and life, and then to the great moral warfare with every vice, chiefest of which, in the cry of the down-trodden, and the crime of the down-treader, is American Slavery.

NOTHER date has been added to our national history to the history of the world. Next to July 4, 1776, is to stand in the world's chronology, against the name of America, December 2, 1859. None between them can be placed beside them. These will stand with the two dates immediately preceding the former, April 19 and June 17, 1775,-and with two preceding that October 10, 1492, and December 22, 1620the Discovery of the Continent and the Landing of the Pilgrims, as the chief days of her history unto this hour. The striking of the clock of Humanity only happens when events of mighty influence on the destiny of nations and races occur. Solferino, as the moment when Italy came out of its grave of centuries, may have such honor. Waterloo, because it had no moral nor national significance, will descend from its high place, and rank only with Philippi, Actium, Cannæ, New Orleans, when dynasties are affected, not

races.

An address prepared for a public meeting arranged to be holden at Malden, Mass., on the evening of the execution of John Brown. The meeting was not held, and the address was published in "Zion's Herald," December 8, 1859.

This day is not only in its events, but in in its physical character, a national day. It is a Virginia winter's day, so warm and sunny in this region that we have sat without fires and with open windows; a halcyon day, when the bird of freedom broods in its nest; a day, probably, almost identical in character from New Brunswick to Mexico. It would seem as though Providence had made the universal feeling, calm, warm, unusual, infect the day.

Everybody gathered about that gallows; everybody saw that gallant man march serenely to his grave; everybody felt to say, "Let us also go, that we may die with him." We knew, South and North, slave and slaveholder, we knew in our inmost hearts that he was being crowned by the Divine Lover of all men, the Divine Sufferer for all men, with glory, honor, immortality, eternal life.

Some say he He took the

Why this interest? Why this conviction? was mad; some say he was bloody-minded. sword; it is right that he should perish with the sword. Was he insane? Was he a monomaniac? Did he labor under a mental hallucination? So some of his many friends represent; but if so, why this mighty, instinctive, irrepressible approval? Why do our hearts belie our lips? Why do we have to put our nature under the hatchways when we condenin him? Let us look at him as our children will a half a century hence ay, as we shall ere a decade of years passes over us. We have read the affidavits which were said to prove his insanity, and though we condemn the Virginia court that slew him for many of its rulings, we think it showed good sense in excluding that testimony. His madness, according to that record, consisted in feeling that he was called upon to oppose slavery. He only lived to kill that murderer. If that is insanity, we shall find no madhouse large enough to contain a tithe of his companions. He was not mad. However erroneous his judgment, as to his resources or his expectations, he was a cool, shrewd,

sane man; and they who now, from terror or ignorance, brand him with insanity, will, ere many years have flown, acknowledge the greatness of his wisdom.

But whether his undertaking was wise or foolish in a politic, worldly sense, was it right? We as Christians can defend no act which does not stand on this foundation. The question is more important; is it more difficult? It seems to be, by the utterances which have gone forth concerning it. "It is destiny," says one. "It is divine sovereignty," says another. "It is an inscrutable Providence," says a third. They see the handwriting, but cannot interpret it any more than the terrified Belshazzar. But it ought not to be a hard thing to understand John Brown. It is not hard to see through every other deed of that transparent life, whether those by which he saved Kansas from the clutch of slavery, when he from the robber rent that prey, or those by which he has won all hearts since his capture. His words are so plain that he that runs may read them. Why is not this central act apprehensible? Simply because we have not yet dared to study it. We have been as afraid of it as they of him. He was too ripe for us, but not for the cause. The instinct of every heart declares the latter; the perplexitics of every head the former.

Be

Now, this country has not gone crazy over a madman; it has not forgotten its Christianity in the fascinations of a great murderer. The men and women that love and praise him are pious, humble, God-fearing, man-loving, war-hating men and women. Why do they praise and love him? cause he did simply this: He gave the slaves their freedom, and means to defend that freedom; that is all. Not a pike nor pistol was for aggression, for murder or rapine, but for defense against their otherwise murderous masters. This was the only new thing about this enterprise. Hundreds have been run off without arms of defense. Torrey has preceded Brown to martyrdom for doing, in this way, as he

would be done by. Brown merely added weapons of defense. His own assertion, repeated over and over again, establishes this. He was not like Warren, to whom he has been compared, in all respects, though he was in many. Warren armed himself and his men with the intention of fighting. Brown armed himself and his slaves with the intent to prevent bloodshed. Was this wrong? Our Master says, "He that hath no sword, let him sell his coat and buy one." Not that His disciples should engage in aggressive or vindictive war, but that they should defend themselves, their families, and their liberties, against the enslaving armies of their enemies. The church has never adopted the doctrine of nonresistance it never will. As long as man feels that he has a right to raise his hand to protect his head against the murderer's blow, he will feel that he has a right to mail that hand, to arm that hand, for this sole purpose. For this alone he gave his slave brethren weapons. Can we say he had no right to give them?

But it may be said "all such interference is unjustifiable." Then we are verily guilty if we aid a fugitive to escape; for the law holds him in slavery here. If we say armed intervention on the soil puts a very different aspect on the case, let us ask ourselves what we have said of Louis Napoleon's armed intervention in Italy. Not like John Brown's, a war of defense alone, but purely and intentionally from the beginning a war of offense. How peans went up to him as long as he was faithful to that cause! How he was honored with the title of the Liberator of Italy! And did Italy call Napoleon with half the imploring voice that Virginia called Captain Brown? Were the Italians suffering what our brethren in that country are suffering? Did the Austrian sell the Venetians into hopeless bondage far into Southern Italy? Did he steal the Milanese peasant from his wife? Did he seize their dark-eyed daughter, and sell her to his light-haired German neighbor for purposes too horrid to think