freely from beginning to end without gloss or commentary, without the church to tell them how, but with the illumination of God's Spirit in their hearts;there you have had an indomitable yeomanry, a state that would not have a tyrant on the throne, a government that would not have a slave or a serf in the field. Wherever the Bible has been allowed to be free, wherever it has been knocked out of the king's hand, and out of the priest's hand, it has carried light like the morning sun, rising over hill and vale, round and round the world; and it will do it again! And yet there come up in our midst men that say that the Bible is in favor of slavery. And as men that are about to make a desperate jump go back and run before they jump, so these men have to go back to the twilight of creation and take a long run; and when they come to their jump, their strength is spent, and they but stumble!

It is in consideration of this wanton change which has taken place (and which ought never to have been permitted to take place, in view of the instruments that God put into our hands, and in view of the solemu responsibility that he has put upon us), it is in consideration of this change which has taken place in the moral condition of the country, and in the opinions of this people respecting the great doctrine of liberty, and the worse change which has in part corrupted the Church at its very core, that I argue to-day the necessity of humiliation and repentance before God.

I shall first confess my own sin. Sometimes men think I have been unduly active. I think I have been indolent. In regard to my duty in my personal and professional life, I chide myself for nothing more than

because I have not been more alert, more instant in season and out of season. If sometimes in intemperate earnestness I have wounded the feelings of any, if I have seemed to judge men harshly, for that I am sorry. But for holding the slave as my brother; for feeling that the Spirit of God is the spirit of liberty; for loving my country so well that I cannot bear to see a stain or a blot upon her; for endeavoring to take the sands from the river of life wherewith to scour white as snow the morals of my times, and to cleanse them to the uttermost of all spot and aspersion, — for that I have no tears to shed. I only mourn that I have not been more active and zealous, and I do not wish to separate myself from my share of the responsibility. I am willing to take my part of the yoke and burden. I will weep my tears before God, and pray my prayers of sincere contrition and penitence, that I have not been more faithful to liberty and religion in the North and the whole land.

But be sure of one thing: He that would not come when the sisters sent, but tarried, has come, and the stone is rolled away, and he stands by the side of the sepulchre. He has called, "Liberty, come forth!" and, bound yet hand and foot, it has come forth; and that same sovereign voice is saying, "Loose him, and let him go!" and from out of the tomb, the dust, the night, and the degradation, the better spirit of this people is now emerging at the voice of God. We have heard his call, we know the bidding, and Death itself cannot hold us any longer; and there is before us, we may fain believe, a new lease of life, a more blessed national existence. That there will not be concussions, and perhaps garments rolled in blood, I

will not undertake to say: there may be some such things as these; but, brethren, this nation is not going to perish. This Union is not going to be broken and shivered like a crystal vase that can never be put together again. We are to be tested and tried; but if we are in earnest, and if we stand, as martyrs and confessors before us have stood, bearing witness in this thing for Christ, know ye that erelong God will appear, and be the leader and captain of our salvation, and we shall have given back to us this whole land, healed, restored to its right mind, and sitting at the feet of Jesus.

Love God, love men, love your dear fatherland; to-day confess your sins toward God, toward men, toward your own fatherland; and may that God that loves to forgive and forget, hear our cries and our petitions which we make, pardon the past, inspire the future, and bring the latter-day glory through a regenerated zeal and truth, inspired by his Spirit, in this nation. Amen, and amen.

IV.

THE BATTLE SET IN ARRAY.*

"And the Lord said unto Moses, Wherefore criest thou unto me? speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward." - Exod. xiv. 15.

M

OSES was raised up to be the emancipator of three millions of people. At the age of forty, having, through a singular providence, been reared in the midst of luxury, in the proudest, most intelligent, and most civilized court on the globe, with a heart uncorrupt, with a genuine love of his own race and people, he began to act as their emancipator. He boldly slew one of their oppressors. And, seeing dissension among his brethren, he sought to bring them to peace. He was rejected, reproved, and reproached; and finding himself discovered, he fled, and, for the sake of liberty, became a fugitive and a martyr. For forty years, uncomplaining, he dwelt apart with his father-in-law, Jethro, in the wilderness, in the peaceful pursuits of a herdsman. At eighty the time when most men lay down the burden of life, or have long laid it downhe began his life-work. He was called back by the voice of God; and now, accompanied with compan

* Preached April 14, 1861, during the siege of Fort Sumter.

ions, he returned, confronted the king, and, moved by Divine inspiration, demanded, repeatedly, the release of his people. The first demand was sanctioned by a terrific plague; the second, by a second terrible judgment; the third, by a third frightful devastation; the fourth, by a fourth dreadful blow; the fifth, by a fifth desolating, sweeping mischief. A sixth, a seventh, an eighth, and a ninth time, he demanded their release. And when was there ever, on the face of the earth, a man that, once having power, would let it go till life itself went with it? Pharaoh, who is the grand type of oppressors, held on in spite of the Divine command and of the Divine punishment. Then God let fly the last terrific judgment, and smote the first-born of Egypt; and there was wailing in every house of the midnight land. And then, in the midst of the first gush of grief and anguish, the tyrant said, "Let them go! let them go!" And he did let them go; he shoved them out; and they went pell-mell in great confusion on their way, taking up their line of march, and escaped from Egypt. But as soon as the first effects of the grief and anguish had passed away, Pharaoh came back to his old nature,—just as many men whose hearts are softened, and whose lives are made better by affliction, come back to the old way of feeling and living, as soon as they have ceased to experience the first effects of the affliction,

and he followed. on after the people. As they lay encamped-these three millions of people, men, women, and children — just apart from the land of bondage, near the fork and head of the Red Sea, with great hills on either side of them, and the sea before them, some one brought panic into the camp, saying, "I see the signs