Schuyler, and many others were removed, or removed themselves. Above all, cabals flourished against the commanderin-chief. He was for a time less popular than Gates with Congress and the nation, and came near losing his command through the violent conflicts that raged around him.

In these minor yet not unimportant points we see how much more kindly Providence has dealt with us. No starvation has wrought mutiny in the camp; no jealousies and feuds among the officers have proceeded to blood; no cabals have materially weakened our cause; no sectional jealousies have separated the soldiers. The flags of every State have waved together in the smoke of battle, filling their followers with a common enthusiasm, which has only provoked them to love and good works. If we consider how frequent were personal encounters in the West and South before the war, and how intense were sectional jealousies and animosities, especially against New England, we have great reason to thank God and take courage at the marked harmony and cordiality of men and States during the fearful struggle.

"After the fathers shall be the children." In duty, in suffering, in reward we are the rightful descendants of these patient, persistent, triumphant heroes. Our cause is as holy, our success as sure. We may be called to emulate their virtues amid yet greater sacrifices. We may see our wealth melt away. National bankruptcy may be our experience also. Our credit may vanish from foreign markets and our own. Our tables may be thinly spread with the poorest fare; our garments may be of the coarsest fabric; our wharves, vessels may rot at them; and before our cities foreign armaments may hover. The dead may lie in every Still the great queshouse, and mourning fill all the land.

tion is before us. Shall we prove our right to the blessings God has conferred upon us? Will we show ourselves heroic sons of heroic sires?

To that state our foe is reduced.

What is their money

worth? Yet do they fight less strenuously? And for what? An empire of sin and hell-freedom to iniquity of every kind and of every degree of baseness; to overthrow the government and the institutions upon which hang the hopes of the world; to establish despotism here, to establish it everywhere; to put Maximilian safe upon his stolen seat; to abolish liberty in Chili and Peru; to extirpate democracy in Europe and America. If they succeed, we die. Crushed by enormous debts, distracted by standing armies, by burning animosities and divisions, we shall crumble into fragments, and the millennial glory that seemed breaking upon the earth will fade away, while the darkness of death will enshroud the people. Then let the minions of tyranny exult.

"Shout, through your dungeons and palaces, Freedom is o'er!"

What are our losses, actual or possible, to such a catastrophe ? Shall Boston and New York be as Hamburg, mere commercial towns, with no influence beyond their suburbs? Shall rent and rending States tear each other in their mutual ferocity? Shall liberty become servitude, and the world be thrust back into the cave of despair, from which it is emerging? Then let us whine, and talk of ruin, because gamblers crowd gold toward three hundred per cent. Ruin? Well would it be if this insane thirst for wealth that is maddening the people were instantly ruined. Well would it be if trade should retire to the legitimate channels that it has so fearfully and destructively overflowed. Well would it be if our conceit and arrogance were ruined. But not our cause, nor our country. Of these we must say, "I am persuaded that neither poverty nor anguish, neither false friends nor fierce foes, neither treason nor death, shall separate me from the grand, eternal principles of our fathers, of our fathers' God."

Upon us the ends of the world have come. We are the depository of the civil principles of the millennium. There is nothing more theoretically perfect in the secrets of

Divine Wisdom for the construction of human society than has been given to us. If we shall abandon them through love of gain, or fear of poverty, we shall be accursed of God and all mankind, as were his chosen people for like treason. The American name, now the highest, will be the lowest in all the earth. The American flag will be the enblem of dishonor. Did England ask, How much will it cost to defeat Napoleon? Reverse after reverse for a score of years did not daunt her purpose. A Nelson slain, and the supremacy of the seas slain with him, an impoverished currency, distractions at home and disaster abroad, these made her not waver. She persevered unto the end; and for what? To overthrow democracy in Europe, in England, in the world. Shall we be less faithful to the truth than she was to error? Shall we cringe, and crawl, and submit to disunion or a viler reunion because politicians plot for perfidious peace, and speculators press prices to fabulous hights? Not if they multiply their stratagems and their prices a thousand fold.

There may be worse years before us, as there were before our fathers at the close of the summer of 1779. Our loans may fail, our currency depreciate, distress and death may stalk through the land. What matters it? If faithful to God, He will give us the victory. The work will be done. Slavery shall die. Our foes shall be made our footstool. Our fathers shall not disdain their sons. Let us be of good courage, and take joyfully the spoiling of our goods, knowing that there is in store for us a more abundant recompense.

"O, well for him whose will is strong;

He suffers, but he will not suffer long;

He suffers, but he cannot suffer wrong.

For him nor moves the loud world's random mock,

Nor all calamity's hugest waves confound,

Who seems a promontory of rock,

That compassed round with turbulent sound,

In middle ocean meets the surging shock,

Tempest-buffeted, citadel crowned."

THE CRISIS HOUR.*

"TURN YE, TURN YE, FROM YOUR EVIL WAYS: FOR WHY WILL YE DIE, O HOUSE OF ISRAEL?"-Ezekiel xxxiii. 11.

HREE years of war! The three months which we were told at the beginning, by the most influential man in the nation, was to see its completion, have been painfully stretched into years. Again and again, and yet again, have our harvests of brave men been swept down by the reaper Death. Myriads of souls of heroes have descended untimely to Hades, and still the bloody sickle is thrust in, and still the dreadful harvest is gathered.

A nation that had almost ceased to believe in war, where peace societies flourished, and peace ideas were in authority, where a uniform was a bauble pleasing chiefly to the eye of children, where soldiering had become the synonym of folly and extravagance, where every one was fancying that the era of armed settlements of difficulties had passed, at least for this country, and that the Supreme Court and the ballotbox were its permanent substitutes in such a land has raged for forty months the most terrific, the most bloody,

* A sermon preached in Boston on the occasion of the National Fast, August 4, 1864.

the most costly, the most violent war of the age, we may truly say, with the great Napoleon's campaigns before us,— of the century and of civilization. For that great captain, in the same space of time, neither mustered nor mastered such mighty armies, neither swept over such breadth of territory nor slaughtered so many milliards of men. Not less than three millions, probably three millions and a half, of men have been engaged in active strife on this lately most peaceful soil. A number almost exactly equal to that of the victims whose cries to God caused the conflict, have thus been busily and too successfully striking at each other's hearts. Strange coincidence! Nay, a marvelous Providence, rather a revelation of the righteous judgment of God. He saw His children writhing under the lash, and the lust of their oppressors, under the neglect, and scorn, and contumely of the whole nation. He has meted out a measure according to our sin. "There are four millions crowded into that black hole of America," He says "four millions of My dear, despised children. Thirty millions walk proudly the upper deck, lift up haughty eyes to heaven, and present a daily prayer that My soul hateth. Lord, I thank Thee that I am not as this negro.' The four millions of their brethren also, daily, from the depths of their darkness and distress, cry to Me." And the Lord hearkened and heard. He descended from heaven. He set the battle in array. He made brother spring at the throat of brother, until, to the number of the enslaved, including even their wives and little ones, the mighty men are set against the mighty, while death and mourning fill all the land.

For the fourth time since this collision cast its bloody blackness athwart the heavens, have we been summoned by the National Executive to prostrate ourselves at the footstool of God in penitence and prayer for the salvation of the nation. Each time the wail has been deeper, as if the fear increased rather than diminished with each year; as if