of? Were the Italians fettered and lashed, driven from Venice to Rome, or carried in slave ships from Genoa to Naples, as they are to-day from Richmond' to Memphis, from Baltimore to Mobile? Before we judge John Brown we must judge every attempted liberator of his own or another people from tyrannical servitude. Let us cast the beam out of our own eye, and then shall we see clearly to take the mote out of our brother's eye. We shall cast it out. We shall see clearly. We shall unitedly say cre many days that this man, whom all call a Christian, has violated no Christian obligation in this remarkable undertaking.

If it was the work of a sane and pious man, was it that of a wise one? This seems to demand two answers. Wisdom is sometimes gauged by success, sometimes not. Kossuth has always been called a wise man, though he failed; so Warren; so Socrates. Did Brown fail? The day of his death was the day of his greatest victory. Two things were in his heart. God gave them to him: Inspiration of the slave with such a desire for freedom as will make him ready to die to obtain it; and inspiration of the pretended owner, with such a conviction of his sin, and such fear to continue in it, as will make him haste to escape from it. The first will appear. All who know the slaves, and dare to speak, know how this deed has inspired them. The last is already his. Every eye sees it; every slaveholder's heart feels it. Conviction of duty, and the terrible danger of neglecting it, have gone through that whole Southern land like an earthquake. They may appear very confident; they may shout over his gallows, "Abolitionism is dead; long live Slavery!" But the terrible Nemesis, shod with wool, suddenly stands behind them, and whispers in their affrighted ears,

"If the red slayer thinks he slays,

Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways

I keep, and pass, and come again."

The slain knew he was not slain. No man ever went to a martyr's death with such assurance of success; no man ever had better grounds. And that red slayer, the slave power, that has driven Governor Wise to wash his unwilling hands in this saintly blood, already beholds the dread Avenger come again. They are not eating their festal feasts of victory without secing the terrible spectre, and they cry, with chattering teeth,—

"Hence, horrible shadow!

Unreal mockery, hence! The times have been
That when the brains were out the man would die,
And so an end. But now they rise again

With twenty mortal murthers in their crowns

To push us from our stools."

They surround the gallows with an army. Also propitious; for thus they bring the first citizens of Virginia from every section of the Commonwealth to escort their captive to his crown. And those clear-eyed, strong-minded soldiers could not have witnessed that wonderful death without feeling that he and his cause were right, and would triumph. They must have said, hundreds of them, in their hearts, like Balaam before Israel, "May I die the death of that righteous man, and may my last end be like his !"

Then, too, the fact that this institution could only be upheld by the bayonet, shows it is near its end. No cause in this land can long stand which requires such support. That very display, which was not for us, not to keep their prisoners in their toils, but to inspire terror in the slave, shows that the cause that asks its aid is dying. We hail the omens; the sacrifice is slain on the altar of Slavery ; the auguries foretell the speedy destruction of that abomination.

Let us not murmur at this deed, or its doer. So murmured some of our fathers at the mad enterprise of Prescott, and Putnam, and Warren. "Foolhardy men," they doubt

less said, "to throw themselves against a force so far above them in numbers, equipment, and training! What property destroyed! What lives lost! And he, our Commander-inChief, has flung himself most foolishly away." Not so murmurs the sea of applause that beats around that great deed to-day from the vast ocean of humanity, even as the waves of every clime murmur at the base of its immortal hill. The Charlestown of Virginia shall stand forever beside, and yet above, the Charlestown of Massachusetts.

Let Slavery then proceed to the bloody end of her unnatural revenge. Let her crunch her remaining captives, as she has their great leader, in her dripping jaws, grin horribly a ghastly smile, settle down upon the burning marl, and gloat over the miserable victims that daily feed her hellish maw. Let her use their survivor to decoy the anti-slavery leaders to her den, so that they, too, served up by Judge Lynch, may tickle the delicate palate of this eater of men. Will the haughty slavocracy cease the less to fear her slaves? Cowards fear the dead more than the living. She fears both. She is fast rushing to her grave. Great signs in the religious, the political, the social heavens, betoken her overthrow. All forces are uniting against her, Church and State, society and civilization, and like every tyrant, she loses everything, and loses it instantly, if she loses her Waterloo. Ere long she will lose Waterloo. Within this first century of our national life she will disappear. Then will all men unite in praising this Samson who first tore down the pillars of this soul-devouring Dagon. Then will Virginia set aside the judgment of her courts against these brave and true men who loved her better than her rulers, better than she loved herself, and will place beside her Washington, him whom she has just hung, and whose dead body she has spewed out of her land.

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Let every one measure this whole character and career by the true Christian standard, and let them so far obey

the voice of duty and of God in their hearts as he did in his.

We shall be compelled by our conscience to utter the whole truth to the master; to withhold no word of sympathy and rightful succor from the slave. We shall be required by the Father of all, the Sacrifice for all, the Illuminator of all, to feel our oneness with this race. Almost John Brown's last act was one whose fitness none can question, whose large lesson all must learn. As he left the jail, he saw a slave woman and her babe near its door, and, as she, with a smiling countenance, addressed him, he, stooping over, kissed her babc. Who of that crowd could have done that? Who of the readers of the story? IIc, face to face with his coffin, face to face with his God, recognizes the cause for which he was to die, and teaches us the lesson this nation is set to learn, and to teach all other nations - the union and fraternity of Man.

Let the bells toll, then, on the return of this great day. Soon will their knell be changed to merry peals of gladness over the glorious consummation of Universal Emancipation, for which he laid down his heroic life, and received his eternal crown.

"I WILL SING UNTO THE LORD, FOR HE HATH TRIUMPHED GLORIOUSLY. THE HORSE AND HIS RIDER HATH HE THROWN INTO THE SEA." Exodus xv. 1.

"BUT PROMOTION COMETH NEITHER FROM THE EAST, NOR FROM THE WEST, NOR FROM THE SOUTH. BUT GOD IS JUDGE: HE PUTTETH DOWN ONE, AND SETTETH UP ANOTHER." - Ps. lxxv. 6, 7. "JESUS SAITH UNTO THEM, DID YE NEVER READ IN THE SCRIPTURES, THE STONE WHICH THE BUILDERS REJECTED, THE SAME IS BECOME THE HEAD OF THE CORNER; THIS IS THE LORD'S DOING, AND IT IS - Matt. xxi. 42.

MARVELOUS IN OUR EYES.

NE year ago last Sabbath evening, we assembled in this house to meditate on the beginning of the end of American slavery. A fortnight before, a score of men had made a descent on a national arsenal, freed some slaves, been captured by the soldiers of the Federal Government, their leader tried, condemned, and sentenced to be hung. You well remember the month that

* A Thanksgiving sermon delivered in the Harvard Street Methodist Episcopal Church, Cambridge, Sunday evening, November 11, 1860, on the occasion of the first election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency of the United States.

The following dedication was appended to the sermon when published:

"To the HONORABLE CHARLES SUMNER, Who has spoken the bravest words for Liberty in the most perilous places; who has suffered in behalf of the Slave only less than those who (177)

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