IN THE THIRD PLACE, TO MAKE AN APPLICATION OF THESE THOUGHTS TO THE AFFAIRS OF OUR OWN COUNTRY AT THE PRESENT MOMENT.-I am not here to preach politics in the low, party sense of the term. I never did this in the pulpit; and I think I never shall. Nor am I here to make any apology for my utterances. I have but one rule in preaching; and that is to speak what I think, leaving the people to judge for themselves.

The times, in my judgment, imperatively demand, that the Christian pulpit should have a distinct and clear ring. It is no hour for God's servants to hide themselves, and practice ambiguities for the sake of being unintelligible. The tremendous and appalling drama of events which Divine Providence is now enacting in this land, should bring every man to the altar of prayer, and then carry him from that altar to discharge the du ties he owes to God, his country, to posterity, and the world. What is now the great American question, has sent its thrill over all Europe. It will, either for weal or woe, cast its shadows on the path of coming centuries. With a single exception, it is more radical and more fundamental, and involves larger interests, than any other upon which mortals or immortals ever fixed the gaze of thought. God, I believe, is in this question. "There is a divine reason in it. There is a divine justice in it"; and we may be sure that there is a divine purpose to be answered by it. Providence is in the crisis of the hour.

As I survey the matter, there are three radical principles, crowded by the God of Providence upon this nation, and demanding our solution. The first is one of national life; the second is one of moral justice; and the third is one of an enlarged and generous Christian philanthropy. On each of these points I wish to say a word, beginning—

First, with the question of national life. It would be folly either to underrate or misunderstand our foe. He means to destroy this noble Union of States. His plan if successful, is perfectly fatal. Secession is the theory; but destruction is the end. Rebellion and fighting, robbery and pillage are the means of this gigantic crime against the Constitution and peace of our common country.

Our

What have we to do in such premises? Shall we talk about peace-measures, and compromise-measures in the presence of an armed rebellion? Shall we call those our political brethren who are our public enemies, who are traitors to the Constitution, and who are putting the knife to the very throat of our national existence? Shall we by party strife, and for party purposes, seek to foment discord in our own ranks? No-never-NEVER. duty is to put down this rebellion, to crush it absolutely, using all the means which God and nature have placed in our hands for this purpose. Our duty is to blast and brand with eternal infamy the theory of secession, and prove to the world that this Union "is a government in the highest sense of the term, the enforcement of whose laws, at whatever cost, is a fundamental article of its creed, just as fundamental as liberty itself." This we must do, or die as a nation. I hence regard this war for the Union as an imperative necessity. I regard it as a holy war. The sword was never drawn in a more sacred cause, and should never be returned to its scabbard till the end is gained. What shall be done with the rebels when they are conquered, is an after-question. Let us first conquer them. Let us beat them on the battle-field, as we can do, and I believe, we will do, dispersing their armies, and bringing them to absolute submission. This, I know, is a very radical measure; the land groans under the tread of contending legions; blood flows, and families weep; yet, in the circumstances of our position, no other measure meets the case. No other measure will give the death-blow to the wicked theory of secession. No other measure will preserve the integrity, the dignity, and glory of this government. No other measure will prove, that we are what we claim to be-a NATION. No other measure will settle this controversy upon a lasting basis. We must conquer the rebels, or be conquered by them. We must lay the military axe at the root of the tree, with an earnestness and decision that leave no doubt as to our purpose.

The second point is one of moral justice. We have practiced a great iniquity in this land. We have continued to practice it year after year, and generation after generation. In the bosom of the freest government on which the sun ever shone, we

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have the institution of human slavery. We have tolerated it, fostered it, legislated for it, bought territory for its extension, till it has grown to its present fearful and appalling dimensions. Not a few in this country have gone so far as to call it right. And not a few who think it wrong, have desired to say but little about it. The Southern people by one of the most extraordinary apostacies in morals to be found in the history of man, and contrary to the faith of their fathers, have canonized the institution of slavery.

Morever, that slavery is the cause of this rebellion, the great root and ground of our present troubles, is as plain as the sun in the heavens. The chief watchwords of the rebellion have been the sanctity and perpetuity of slavery. The leaders have hung out the flag of slavery. They have declared it to be the chief corner-stone of a political edifice, that is to be built on the eternal wretchedness of an oppressed and subjugated race. When they discovered by the census of 1860, as well as by the last Presidential election, that the political power of this country was passing into the hands of freemen, and out of the hands of slaveholders, and that they were to be no longer the ruling power in the national government, then according to the programme of Mr. Calhoun, of more than thirty years standing, they rent the contract by which they had hitherto been bound. The whole meaning of this civil war so far as the South is concerned, is the preponderance of slavery, and of the obligarchy which is founded upon this institution. Slavery for its own dire purposes has decreed that the nation shall die. There is no use in blinking this point, or mis-understanding it. Public opinion, the common sense of men, and the philosophy of the facts, as well as the confessions of the rebels themselves, are not, and cannot be, in error on this point. Back of all other causes lies the slave power as the chief cause of this rebellion. And but for it no such diabolical scheme would have ever been conceived, or if conceived, attempted.

What then, we enquire, are the signs of the times as written upon the sky of God's providence? We have all been hoping and even predicting, that this rebellion would prove the death

see.

RADICALISM AND THE NATIONAL CRISIS.

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knell of slavery-just how and when, we have not been able to Had the rebellion been less persistent and formidable, had it been conquered with but little fighting, had the armies of the Union been far more successful, had slavery proved, as many* supposed, an element of weakness, and not as the facts show, an element of very great strength-:had this been the order of Providental events, to all human seeming this war would have ended without reaching the slavery-question in any very essential and radical form. Such however has not been the order of Providence. We have had serious disasters and delays. We have had time to collect our thoughts, and reflect upon what is right. We have had a severe discipline. Providence has thrown several thousands of slaves upon our hands. We have found it necessary to use them, and to make some provision for them. While we have vacillated in our policy, sometimes looking in one direction, and sometimes in another, sometimes seeming to have no policy, the government scarcely knowing what to do, Providence, by the stern force of events, has been slowly but steadily crowding the slavery-question upon public attention. The effort to ignore it has been constantly bringing it to the surface. We have not been able to get rid of it. In whatever way the President looked, this question met him. It has floated on every breeze, and drifted in every current. In the outset of the struggle, I confess myself to have been rather cautious in my thoughts: I scarcely knew what I did think: I had no desire that the President should be hasty or hurried in his final policy on this subject: I thought I saw that he needed time to think, and also that the public mind needed discipline and training by the course of events-: yet now, in the existing circumstances, looking at the past, taking into view the character of the struggle, and above all, studying the principles which govern the righteous providence of God, permit me to say very frankly, that I have reached my conclusion. I am in favor of employing the whole military strength of this nation, to carry into practical execution the purposes expressed by the President in his recent Proclamation. The measure, I know, is radical; yet there are times, and we have fallen upon them, when radical measures are the wisest.

As a war-measure, as the means of reaching a Constitutional end, which is the only aspect of the case presented in the President's Proclamation, I do not see how any reasonable man can doubt his right to adopt it. He has a right as "the Commanderin-Chief of the army and the navy," to do any thing justified by the usages of civilized warfare, which, in his judgment, may be necessary to the conquest of the rebellion. This is involved. in the very nature of the war-power; and surely it is Constitutional to use the whole strength of this power to maintain the government of these United States. I am not able to see what there is in slavery so sacred, that it should be exempted from the ordinary incidents of war, especially a war provoked by itself. Let it take the consequences of its own acts. Slavery is giving great aid and comfort to this rebellion; the slave-population furnishes the producing force which feeds the army in the field; a portion of it accompanies the army in the character of servants, and diggers of trenches; the rebels themselves are using this power to great advantage; and surely if we may do anything to weaken and destroy them, if we may take away their property, and if necessary, bombard their cities, then in the state of war, we may strike down that institution for whose ascendency they are fighting, and on which they rely as one element of strength. If they want to escape the blow, let them lay down their arms; and the President's Proclamation will not touch them. They are now simply warned by the Proclamation, "that on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State, or any designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then THENCEFORWARD and FOREVER FREE, and the executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their ACTUAL freedom." Let the rebels lay down their arms before the first day of January; and this Proclamation will not disturb the institution of slavery. It becomes effective only in the event of their persistence in the war. It offers them a day of grace.