around the slave-pens of Richmond, Alexandria, Baltimore, and the great multitude of similar prison-houses of death. The saintly victim within hears their notes of blasphemous glee, and, learning the cause, his faint hopes fall, and despair

"Closes around, above him as a shroud."

Christian, what is your duty? to contend about tariff or free trade? to hold back, in Pharisaic pride, from association with publicans and sinners, as you call those of the party opposite your own? to strive about words to no profit but to the subverting the utter and eternal subverting of their hearers and speakers? Is it to say, "That party which represents freedom is bigoted, fanatical, of one idea?" Better have one idea than none. Do you declare, "I have ridiculed and fought it. I cannot now join myself to it. I have friends and kindred involved in this crime. I cannot openly oppose their course or wound their feelings"? "Whosoever loveth father or mother, husband or wife, brother or sister, more than Me, cannot be My disciple." Is not the slave, too, your father and mother, your brother and sister? Does not this very tie of blood bind you to the oppressed as closely as to the oppressor? In Adam, in Noah, you are of one blood; in Christ, of one redemption.

Will you see this gigantic cruelty marching northward, invading your threshold, subduing your State, possessing confessedly, triumphantly, our whole land and our whole life? Christian man, Christian woman, ask for the straightest path of duty, and follow it, whatever sacrifices it may require of pride, of former opinions, of friendship, of kindred, of reputation, of life itself. Let not the platform of action be made narrow by intolerance. If it be of one plank, and that not an inch in breadth, leap upon it, labor on it, seek to widen it, never desert it until all the land stands erect upon its broad base. Toil until the mus

tard seed becomes a mighty tree, the stone by rolling enlarges and fills the whole earth. The stone which the builders so disdainfully reject shall yet become the head of the corner, the capstone of universal liberty and joy. Fear not the names that are flung at you, as if of themselves abominable. They are good words, and will yet be the most choice and honored titles of this hour. The brave Senator Wade, of Ohio, said, in that fight in the night and with the night, that until this warfare was ended by the triumph of the right, "I am an Abolitionist at heart while in the slave-cursed atmosphere of this capital, whatever I may be at home. But here pride and self-respect compel a man either to be a doughface, flunky, or an abolitionist, and I choose the latter. I feel that my hatred to slavery justly entitles me to wear it- a name which I never yet denied, and which present, passing events are fast rendering glorious." Be an abolitionist at Washington, at home, everywhere. It is the highest title to-day of honor from God, and will be to-morrow of like honor from men.

Finally, forget not prayer. This kind cometh not forth but by prayer and fasting.† If it has fascinated the nation by its wealth, its strength, its culture, and its statesmanship, if it has gained possession of our greatest men, it can be expelled. They can again become clothed and in their right mind—the mind which one had at Chicago, when he declared himself "opposed to the extension of slavery;" of another§ at New Boston, when he said, "The Fugitive Slave Law is a great evil; " of another || at Newburyport, when he wrote letters

* This word was afterward printed in the Congressional Globe in Italics, as if it was, as it was, an extraordinary expression of boldness. It is possible that this was the first adoption of this title by a member of Congress in his seat.

+ Frequent national proclamations of prayer and fasting were made during the war, beginning with that of President Buchanan, in the winter before his administration terminated.

Stephen A. Douglas. § Edward Everett.

Caleb Cushing.

full of the warmest, noblest sentiments of freedom. Who knows but that this mind may return?

Perhaps the final act by which this iniquity is consummated may yet be stayed. Perhaps compunction may paralyze the hand that would subscribe the death-warrant of the nation. Pilate's wife may perhaps successfully warn her husband to have nothing to do against this most just cause - to sign no decree which shall consign millions of sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty, whom Christ has declared to be his brothers, and sisters, and mothers, to shames, and agonies, and welcome deaths.

-

If the national governor's wife should fail in duty, or in success; if Herod, and Caiaphas, and Pilate the Senate, the House, and the President unite in this crucifixion of Freedom; if it lies in its sepulcher, pierced and lifeless, before a mocking South, a tearful, timid North, an amazed world, still let us pray. Death cannot bind it forever. God will not suffer this holy one to see corruption. It will rise again. It will come forth in greater glory than it ever wore before. With powers then vailed, but now disclosed, it shall sit in the seat of judgment. It shall be itself Congress and President. It shall fill its votaries with praise and might, and its enemies with shame and everlasting contempt. Its foes shall be its footstool. With our great Senator, at that midnight hour of its passage, may we say, "Sorrowfully I bend before the wrong you are about to perpetrate. Joyfully I welcome all the promises of the future.” *

Roll away the stone from the door of the sepulcher! Be vigilant. Be tearless. Be prayerful. Be believing. We shall triumph, not through disunion, not with perpetual feuds, but through the help and Spirit of God. Some Washington or Jefferson will yet arise, who will lead North and South to the battle and the triumph of true freedom and

Charles Sumner.

true democracy. The South will not forever keep back, and our Jerusalem, the seat of this death, shall be the seat of its revival in perfect power and glory.

While, therefore, we weep over this death and burial of national righteousness, as David, when the government fell into the power of apostate sons and priests, went weeping up Olivet, and looked back on the sacred city left desolate, let us also weep with a purpose and hope of regaining the lost sovereignty. Labor in the closet, at the family altar, in the community, at the polls, with prayer, and speech, and purse, and vote. Labor with a largeness of soul that seeks not only this grand and spacious land for freedom, but freemen everywhere in a free land. Labor till every yoke is broken and every family unbroken, until the feet of tender women no more sow blood along the paths their taskmasters drive them, until their hearts no more sow richer drops of sacred blood over sundered families and desolate households, soon to be reaped in what terrible judgments upon our nation, ourselves, our posterity, God only knows, and the future alone can tell.

We may go into deeper blackness, but we shall come forth into brighter light. May every soul be a worker together with God in this the hour and power of darkness, that he may rightfully be a partaker in the glory that shall follow.

THE STATE STRUCK DOWN.*

BUT THOSE HUSBANDMEN SAID AMONG THEMSELVES, THIS IS THE HEIR; COME, LET US KILL HIM, AND THE INHERITANCE SHALL BE OURS."- Mark xii. 7.

AST Sabbath many of us I would it had been all - ate the body and drank the blood of the great Martyr of Humanity, of Deity. In grateful,

solemn, humble devotion, we commemorated that event which at the time seemed, and was, the victory of hell. A band of men, eminent in station, armed with swords and staves, came upon that Martyr, in the dusk of a Thursday evening, in the retirement of a garden. They beat Him with deadly blows, they thrust in His head the cutting thorns, they mock Him, spit upon Him, murder Him! All for what? Professedly for blasphemy. False hypocrites! Great zeal theirs for their National Religion, for the Constitution of their fathers, for the quiet and harmony of their nation. This was the reason: "Then gathered the chief priests and the Pharisees" (President and Senators)," a council, and said, What do we? for this man doeth many miracles. If we let Him thus alone, all

* A sermon preached at Westfield, Mass., June 11, 1856, on the occasion of the assault on Hon. Charles Sumner. See Note II.