passionately invoked, come forth out of the very scenes of bereavement, desolation, and carnage that have littered the land with ruins; and show himself the Zerubbabel of a larger captivity than that which followed Nehemiah and Ezra from the Euphrates to the Jordan? Is not the residue of the Spirit with him, but awaiting the ascent of prayer, then to descend in showers of benediction over a regenerate, accordant, and prosperous nation? Those celestial and God-given influences wait not for man's permission to take their free and mighty course. He cannot curb them or exclude them more than he can shut out heaven's dropping rains, or returning daylight. A "HIGHER” power overrides earthly schemings, and barriers, flooding and dominating them, like "morning spread on the mountains." Reminded how terribly may be exacted the vast arrears of long unpunished sin, let us put promptly and thoroughly away the relics, habits, and spirit of oppression. Admonished how suddenly the paths of worldly ambition and activity may terminate in the tomb, should not the young, the busy, and the eager, and the giddy be startled, amid these funeral solemnities, to bethink themselves of that eternity, of which we are but too easily and generally forgetful? Was there not wisdom in his time, and is there not equal wisdom for our time, in the prophet's decision: "And I will wait upon the Lord that hideth his face from the house of Jacob, and I will look for him.* Has he not, and by the same Isaiah, replied to such a quest at such a time: "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."+ "And *Isaiah viii. 17. + Isaiah liv. 8. it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us; this is the Lord; we have waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation."* In the days of his incarnation he seemed sheltering himself from the prayers of the Syrophoenician mother, importunate in her pleadings for her child; but the withdrawal was but in kindness, to make more signal the faith that persisted in praying, and more exuberant the benediction which descended on that persistent, undaunted trust. High, therefore, and yet "higher" let the intercessions of the home, the closet, and the sanctuary arise, that, out of this crisis and agony of the national life, may yet revolve untold deliverances, and enduring and pervasive reformation. Is it not a refreshment and a delight to remember that the Jesus whom we preach, and in whose name your prayers and hymns mount heavenward, and who is now exalted to the throne of supremest dominion, was himself once the maligned, the sacrificed, and the blasphemed? But in his rejection and entombment he was but preparing the overthrow of unbelief, and the triumph of his own gospel and kingdom. "Light is sown for the righteous." Christ reigns in this very day of our nation's mourning; and this Christian nation lives, whoever of its trusted captains falls; and this Christian freedom rises vindicated, consecrated, and necessitated by every gash and bulletwound made in her confessors. When from under the altar the souls of those slain for the truth of God were heard asking, "How long, O Lord?" the infinite faithfulness of that most high and Holy One was heard, *Isaiah xxv. 8. admeasuring the time, and assuring the ultimate victory, however long delayed. We cannot but believe, that the nobler minds of the South will themselves recoil from a cause that has such patrons as the conspirators and assassins, now betraying their hand-that the new crime will, by God's gracious alchemy, furnish a test which shall clear from clinging delusions many of the better intellects and nobler hearts of the southern States. If, in others of that population, it but precipitate a new and darker ferocity, it pillories their own cause; and sentences the fanatical tyranny to a more general reprobation, and a speedier and more irrevocable overthrow. And as of old Pentecost came in the wake of the last Passion, may we not well hope, and should we not earnestly pray, that the Holy Spirit, the Enlightener, and the Renewer, and the Consoler-will go forth over the very track of devastation, unspent in his infinite energy, on his errand of enkindling, and renovating, reconciling, sanctifying and restoring? May not his own churches, rejoicing in the life, inaccessible and indestructible, of this Blessed Friend, entrust cheerfully to his guardianship their own earthly lives, so soon and perchance so suddenly to close? It is his right not only, but it is his wont, to confer a peace which no earthly wars or commotions can shatter, and a life for the human soul, which death itself can not spill, but only enhance and defecate. He waits for the prayer of Zion; and he responds victoriously to her trust. Be the Lord's, that you may be all the more truly and more effectively classed among your country's guardians and bulwarks. Free by his grace, the man who is the Lord's freeman-be his worldly infelicities what they may-is at the last free as a denizen of the New Jerusalem, beyond and above these lower scenes of carnage, strife, woe and sin. This Captain of salvation may be hidden from the worldly, careless and impenitent; and seem effectually concealed beneath the thick vails of Nature and Providence, which neither wholly reveal, nor yet wholly disguise his worldly pathway. But, if hidden to them who believe him not and seek him not, he tenderly and habitually reveals himself to the eager inquirer, the praying disciple, and the obedient follower. Sweet are the glimpses which faith and hope and love win of him, in the earthly pilgrimage; but what shall be the full-orbed manifestation of that Saviour seen in his heavenly mansions, not for a time but forevermore. "We shall be like unto him, for we shall see him as he is." Some, even in the judgment, shall, like Balaam, see him "but not near," and, repelled from his throne, shall be sentenced to a yet greater removal, and to the long, sad exile of an endless night and a hopeless sorrow. What a hiding shall that be, on the part of a long refused Saviour, now clothed in all the tremendous majesty of an incensed Judge, withdrawn entirely and eternally from the sufferers who steadily spurned his consolations, and the sinners who slighted, defied and forfeited the grace which would fain have blessed and rescued them. In outraging him, they missed pardon and flung away the glory and repose and felicity of Paradise. "They are hidden from thine eyes," was his own lament over obdurate Jerusalem. Let not ours be the stubborn ingratitude and unbelief that eclipses the Light of Life, and leaves us the heirs of such a wrath and such a ban, as the rejected Saviour must pronounce against the rejecting sinner. SERMON II. REV. HENRY WARD BEECHER. "And Moses went up from the plains of Moab, unto the mountain o Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, that is over against Jericho; and the Lord showed him all the land of Gilead, unto Dan, and all Naphtali, and the land of Ephraim, and Manasseh, and all the land of Judah, unto the utmost sea, and the south, and the plain of the valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees, unto Zoor. And the Lord said unto him, this is the land which I swear unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, saying, I will give it unto thy seed: I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over thither. So Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord.”—DEUT. xxxiv. 1–5. THERE is no historic figure more noble than that of the Jewish lawgiver. After so many thousand years, the figure of Moses is not diminished, but stands up against the background of early days, distinct and individual as if he had lived but yesterday. There is scarcely another event in history more touching than his death. He had borne the great burdens of states for forty years, shaped the Jews to a nation, filled out their civil and religious polity, administered their laws, guided their steps, or dwelt with them in all their journeyings in the wilderness; had mourned in their punishment, kept step with their march, and led them in wars, until the end of their labors drew nigh. The last stage was reached. Jordan only lay between them and the promised land. The pro |