standing armies, palaces, pride, and aggrandizement of lands and houses, will be scattered like Charlemagne's bones, so that none shall gather them. The movements in England against primogeniture and for manhood suffrage * will triumph soon after we shall subdue the rebellion, and then the family of the Conqueror will bid a long farewell to all its greatness. There is no other possible solution for that ever-recurring problem, if we win. And we shall win.

"This fine old world of ours is but a child

Yet in the go-cart. Patience! Give it time

To learn its limbs; there is a Hand that guides."

Great as is our impiety, our insolent scorn of God and His children, our infidelity, our worldliness, our crime, yet He will spare us. He will redeem us. The world's future

shall not be blotted out with our destruction. As He spared His rebellious people in the wilderness, not for their sake, but for the sake of the world, so will He now spare us. As He punished that generation with destruction for their unbelief, so He may this; but our children, growing up without our prejudice, with more than our patriotism, shall preserve this land for liberty, for fraternity, for God and His Christ. They shall dwell together, unmindful of color and of origin. They shall be one in love, and in life. As in heaven, so in earth, this region of all nations, kindreds, tribes, and tongues shall dwell together in unity-Asiatic, Afric, European, American; Chinese, Negro, Indian, and all; one people, the people of God, with one law, one liberty, one destiny; the founders of the New World, wherein dwelleth righteousness. "For a small moment have I forsaken thee, but with great mercies will I gather thee. In a little wrath I hid My face from thee for a moment, but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer."

Her victory for suffrage was won in three years after our war ceased, that of freedom of lands will soon follow.

"BEHOLD, THIS ONE IS SET FOR THE FALL AND THE RISING AGAIN OF MANY."- Luke ii. 34.

AMERICA proclaimed war against the thrones of Europe when she declared her Declaration. The irrepressible conflict began at that moment. It has continued ever since. It is increasing to-day. It may come to blows to-morrow. The babe Christ, as Simeon told Mary, was set for the fall and the rising again of many in Israel, that the. thoughts of many hearts should be revealed. Herod's palace and Hell's palace felt His presence. Great disputes, greater wrath raged in both. The events were noised abroad in hill, country, and valley; from shepherds to Eastern magi and kings. Not only were the events a subject of discourse; issues sharp, violent, deadly, instantly arose from them. The massacre of the babes and the flight into Egypt were but the beginnings of a warfare that has gone on, unceasing and without truce, even to this day. How many empires have fallen; how

* A sermon preached on the occasion of the Annual State Fast, in Boston, April 4, 1864.

many have risen since that hour! Not always were His allies flying or Himself in flight. The Babe was triumphant, even in seeming disaster. Gods, devils, and sinners were alike controlled by Him.

"They feel from Judah's land

The dreaded Infant's hand;

The rays of Bethlehem blind their dusky e'en;

Our Babe, to show his Godhead true,

Can in His swaddling bands control the damnéd crew."

So was it with the American nation in its infancy. When born it amazed tyrants. When but a child it confounded the doctors of monarchical political philosophy, and now, when tyrants, doctors, and the ruthless mob of sycophantic priests and press cry "Let it be crucified!" they cry in vain. Christ only once yielded His life to His murderers. Death hath no more dominion over Him. No more hath it over His. In His Church and in His State, whereof the Church is the soul, — shall He quering and to conquer.

go

the body

forward con

The words which announce my theme should not affright you. Many people are very fearful of a war with Europe. "Don't proclaim the possibility of a war with England. Have not we enough on our hands to-day?" My friends, we are at war with England. We have been at war with her for almost a hundred years. We must continue it till one or the other is subjugated. It is a war of ideas, a war of principles. Whether or not it shall clothe itself in armor and flow in blood, God knows. He ordained the conflict, He will conduct it to its divine, triumphant issue. Let us on this day of national humiliation and prayer consider these most vital, national questions.

Gifts and duties We are required

Man cannot escape his responsibilities. are born together, by the creation of God. to-day to view those gifts, not in their own blessed light, but

in the shadow and more serious glooms of their attendant duties. The Christian, when he first feels the pulses of the divine life rising in his soul, fancies his life is to be a Gaudama paradise of the perpetual contemplation of his delight. He soon finds that not only must he fight if he would reign, but he must fight if he would live. So we long fancied that we were to enjoy the blessings of our wonderful system of Union and Liberty without disturbance from within or without. We were aroused from our luxurious trance by internal enemies rushing fiercely upon us, disarmed and enervated in body and soul. We leaped to our feet, and looked hither and thither for aid; and, lo, the very faces that smiled so blandly upon us an hour ago, how cold, how scowling now! What hauteur, what undisguised contempt, what sensitiveness to the remotest and most unintentional interference on our part with their pretended rights and dignities! What hastening to cast loving side-glances at our foes!

Did we say, "France is our old ally. Surely she will sympathize with us?" We were compelled to read, as a response, the imperial letter, declaring our dissolution essential to the safety of Europe. Did we say, "England, our mother, our commercial ally, who boasts in her liberty, and boasts in her abolitionism, she will carnestly espouse their cause who represent this liberty and abolitionism in the fiercest struggle to which they ever have or can be subjected?" We were surprised to behold her, in advance of all others, proclaiming not merely the desirableness, but the fact of our dissolution, conceding our rebels belligerent rights, and aiding them with vessels, armaments, men, means of subsistence, and far from least, unceasing words of compliment and encouragement, through Parliament, the platform, and the press?

They were consistent, we not. They were wise in worldly wisdom, we fools. But we have acquired wisdom in the

painful school of experience the only school in which it can be learned. They saw that an earth so small as to have five World Conventions of its industry in ten years, whose ocean channels, bridged with multitudinous ships, would practically disappear when the telegraphic wire should make both hemispheres throb with one pulse; whose industrial wares and devices were simultaneously sold in India, Europe, America, and Australia: such a pent up Utica could not endure two radically and bitterly hostile systems of government in equal supremacy. The American Idea appeared among these throned powers and pretensions, as the Nazarene among the gods of Greece and Rome. It could allow their existence neither as equals nor inferiors. No niche in the Pantheon satisfies its claims. One or all must die.

Their wisdom will be the more clearly seen, if we notice how vital are the differences between the two systems of society. What is this man-child of America, against which, from its infancy, the kings of the earth have instinctively set themselves, and the rulers taken counsel together?

I. Three ideas were born into organized society in the birth of the American nation.

1. A successful revolution in favor of human rights. Other revolutions have transpired in the world's history, not a few. This was the first that appealed to the world in behalf of the world. "A decent respect for the opinions" of mankind is in the inaugural sentence of the Declaration. It is fittingly completed in the enunciation of certain "inalienable rights not of themselves merely or chiefly but of "all men." Rev. Jonas Clark, who heralded the Revolution by brave words, that were half battles, spoken often in the church on Lexington green, which his flock was strengthened to begin the armed strife, by brave deeds there, was permitted at the close of the

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