fession that the God who has given us the what seems a strange chance-but what was

one of the most signal mercies of God's in- | lion itself, in all its broad sweep of mischiefs, terference in our war has been that appoint- will be overruled for the higher purity, ment which put that vessel just in that place, strength, and prosperity of this nation; inand just in that hour. deed, generally in his works of Providence and redemption, his pathway is “dark though brightness all along."

The first event of our war to be brought under special notice is that in which open hostilities commenced-the capture of Fort Sumter. Up to that time, as the result of

And this may be taken as a representative fact. In like manner, a wise and ever watchful Providence is directing all the occurrences of this fearful struggle. The same skilful, divine strategy lays and executes the whole plan of divine conduct herein. And on such grounds we lay our thanksgivings, which as-previous political sympathies, a large porcend to God, when the shouts of victory roll over our mountains and plains.

tion of the Northern people were sensitive to the plea against "coercion" of the South. The secessionists had indeed made great reliance on this sympathy at the North, as their encouragement to begin the rebellion. Our Government had need to move with all caution, lest too bold a step should increase and confirm this Northern sympathy. Hence they were kept from those strong and decisive measures which otherwise might have nipped the evil in the bud. They allowed forts, and arsenals, and mints to be seized and held without attempts by force to re

God's hand is upon our nation now, in a great work. He is making vast changes in the structure of the moral and political elements here-and so in the face with which this nation will look out upon the world, and the power it will exert abroad after this war is done. There is great unbelief as to the great moral and spiritual changes foreshadowed in prophecy. But need we doubt of such changes, while other nations and our own are in the midst of changes and convulsions so vast, changes touching moral inter-cover them, lest the application of force ests so vitally?

should create fatal divisions at the North. They forbore even to enlist a soldier, or procure arms to supply the place of what had been carried South, for fear that a seeming

GOD'S HAND AGAINST THE REBELLION. of forcible resistance would create a revul

ASSAULT ON FORT SUMTER.

EVERY one of us has a great interest in the issue of the pending struggle against the rebellion. But God has a greater. It is more to him than it can be to us. And he is doing more to bring it forth. Our commanders have their plans laid no doubt in far reaching wisdom to accomplish the end. But he has a plan to which every movement of every army is made to conform, and which runs through and controls all human plans. And it will be profitable for us to mark the evolution of his plans, and see wherein he has wrought for us, even where he seemed to be working against us. We purpose, in a few brief articles, to touch upon some of the events in which his hand especially appears.

We intend to note some of the events in the history of this nation for a year now gone, which show a marked interposition of Providence to deliver us from the threatened wreck. As God often works salvation by events seemingly adverse, so in remarkable instances has it been here; yea, to an extent which will justify the hope that this rebel

THIRD SERIES. LIVING AGE. 874

sion here in favor of the rebels. In short, the fear of a divided North, and the needful care against it, held the Government in inaction, while at the South troops were drilling and mustering for the field. Then the whole question on which the life or death of the nation turned was, whether the people of the loyal States would unite to suppress the rebellion. To command that Union, was beyond the power of Cabinets, or Senates, or Presidents. At that critical moment, had it not been for the Lord who was on our side they would have swallowed us up quick. At this moment when a nation's destiny trembled in the balance, the God of our fathers interposed. He withdrew his restraints upon the rebellious councils, and suffered their rebellion to body itself forth in the unprovoked assault upon the starving garrison that upheld the national banner. This outrage stood forth to the nation's eye in such monstrous shape and colors as at once to extinguish sympathy for the rebels and secure for the most part a united North. On this small pivot turned the nation's destiny.

It was the Lord's doings and marvellous in our eyes. Neither the President nor his counsellors could have contrived and secured such an issue. Nor would the most shrewd statesmanship have thought of securing a nation's life by an event so prostrating and humiliating to all national feeling. Who would have dreamed that the cannon that sounded the death-knell of our Union was to be also the resurrection trumpet to summon it to a new life. For in that triumph over us of the powers of darkness, we seemed to ourselves to be approaching the shades of death. Our Union was broken, our national consciousness and pride went down to the dust. We anticipated the taunts and jeers of rival nations, and the rejoicings that would go round the world with the report, that this mighty nation had fallen by its own suicidal hand. Nay, all of us felt personally, as well as nationally, humiliated and broken.

every department he was surrounded by traitors and spies. The prestige and the moral power of his office, hitherto so great, had vanished. The whole South resounded with threats of traitors in arms. The traitor chief officially vaunted of "Southern powder and Southern steel." And more fearful were the mutterings of Southern sympathy which came upon every breeze from the North. Even the Mayor of the commercial metropolis cheered on the rebellion by intimations that his own city would cut loose from the State, if need be, and take part in it. The national Legislature had progressed far in disintegration. Seat after seat in the Senate and House was vacated by Legislators gone out to take up arms against the Government. And State after State ceased to be represented in the national councils. Even the judiciary was tainted-that high court of the nation, where national law sat enthroned to frown upon treason, had begun to succumb to the sirocco that blew from the South. The army and navy, the sworn protectors of lawful authority had become the serpents to sting the Government that had warmed them into life.

"O what a fall was there, my countrymen ! Then I and you, and all of us fell down, Whilst bloody treason flourished over us." But then we were most peculiarly in God's hand, so we did not stumble that we should fall; but that through our fall we might be Thus did the whole national fabric seem thrown upon ground where we should be strong to rise again. God opened before us to be crumbling; and every day revealed our grave, that in that grave we might bury new disasters till that dark day when Charlesour party strifes and divisions, and come ton cannon sent their report abroad, anforth with one heart and soul to vindicate nouncing the war begun. From that moour national authority and life. Thus did ment commenced a mighty reaction carrying God in that dark and trying hour, work out back life and power to every department for us one of our most difficult problems, from which they had fled. And as the reand give to the work of national regenera-sult of that reaction in less than a year what The chief execution a united people, and in that united peo- a contrast do we now see. ple the recovered strength of our national tive of no nation on earth sits more safely in Government. Before this the hand of the his seat. All the departments whose power national administration was bound. And was so palsied by swarms of traitors within that was one of the most alarming and hu- them, are now purged and reinvigorated, miliating views of our case, that both our working with an energy before unknown. out-going and in-coming President seemed Our Congress, though far from being what equally powerless to help us. A palsy had it should be, and would be if it were to be smitten all the functions of Government. chosen now, has vastly improved by the abOur new President went to Washington to sence of the traitors, and is for the most . commence his work in peril of his life part loyal, and has made a good beginning under a disguise to escape the blade of the towards purging the Augean stable of corassassin, and barely escaped it. All the ruption, in tracing out the network of politSouth was united in cursing him as a mon- ical frauds, yea, that corruption in which the ster, and at the North he had not a majority gigantic treason had its beginnings. in full sympathy with him. When he entered upon his office how did the ground crumble under his feet at every step. In

Here are some of the results of the reaction of national life and unity which God's providence secured for us, by allowing the

rebels to commit that huge blunder in opening the drama of the rebellion. Thus at that early day did God give us the pledge and proof that though he saw cause to put us under a severe chastisement, his hand of mercy and kindness was under us with a design to bring us forth in peace.

From The Boston Recorder, 1 May.

THE BULL RUN DISASTER AND THE TRENT
AFFAIR.

men.

event indeed was as full of instruction as it was of humiliation, and the humiliation was as much needed as the instruction. And God's wisdom and goodness now can be clearly seen in appointing us that overwhelming defeat. For the salutary issues of it are manifest and abundant. The instruction cost us dear. Rich was the blood that flowed upon those rugged fields. But the advantages purchased by it were untold. That event revolutionized the whole spirit of the nation's mind-the whole character and process of the war. From that point was seen the necessity of beginning anew and upon new principles, and of meeting the enemy with different expectations.

God's merciful hand was the more manifest in that disaster in that while it produced the needed impression on the nation's heart,

IN tracing God's hand to form the mind of this people for the desperate struggle before them in putting down this gigantic rebellion, we have seen how the tragedy in Baltimore served the grand purpose of an all-sufficient motive for the enlistment of But there was another requisite. The feeling was still prevalent that the war never could be that serious matter which it has it brought with it no discouragement, no since become. We felt that because we of the North had the vast preponderance of numbers and of wealth, the sinews of war, we could meet the enemy at every point with such odds against him that he would retire from the field. We little knew to what extent he had been before us, and how he had employed years of previous preparation, and now had troops mustered and drilled so as to be able to outnumber us at every point. Unaware of the real state of facts, our men went forth in the delusive expectation of finishing the war in a few weeks by merly playing soldier and showing the greatest number on every field where battle should be offered. Of course the nation's mind had not set itself to the work at all as the occasion demanded. Some powerful impression was needed to arouse it and adjust its energies to the real occasions of the war.

To meet that occasion the sad disaster at Bull Run was appointed to us. Never did a nation suffer a greater disappointment and reversal of all its high-raised expectations. When our armies went forth to that battle, we felt sure of a victory that would end the war. But the sad disasters of that day opened a new revalation, and put wholly a new face upon the war. Then for the first time we began to realize what was before us, and that we had on hand a war in serious earnest. Here was an end to all our short enlistments for playing soldier, and all expectations of vigor and valor in the field without a previous and laborious drilling of our men. That

flinching from the high resolve to put the rebellion down at any cost. A shout of triumph went up from all the rebel coasts and echoes came back from every unfriendly nation, and the world looked on with the expectation that we should here give up the contest. But in no loyal heart in all this nation was there a faltering for a moment. The event served both to show us how great and difficult was the work that needed to be done, and to give us the purpose to spend a proportionate strength upon it.

That loss was also a gain in another respect. It brought us as much advantage by means of the impression it produced on the rebels. This has been confessed by one of the rebel generals now in Fort Warren, who in the battle at Fort Donelson had experience of some of the fruits of the Bull Run battle. He tells us that that victory inspired the Southern troops with a false confidence in their own valor, and contributed more than anything else, to the numerous defeats which they have recently experienced.

Every way then, as we now look back upon that bitter experience, we see that God meant it for good to us. It has served our cause better than would a decisive victory. While the rebels themselves confess that the advantages of the battle enured to us, and it was to them a disastrous defeat, we should be most stupid and ungrateful if we failed to see God in that dark day working behind the cloud for our deliverance. As the merciful guardian of this nation-the God of our fa

thers ever mindful of our national life and true prosperity, even when he causes us to smart for our sins, he was then doing a work of kindness of which we little dreamed. We had been praying that he would take our cause in hand and in his own way work our deliverance. And just that thing he did. But his own way was in the sea and his path in the great waters and his footsteps were not known. Little did we dream that he would give us all the fruits of victory, when he caused us to bite the dust in defeat.

gorical decision, whether to yield to a demand which was coupled with threats of war.

But after the demand had gone over the sea and it had been put to us to decide whether there should be peace or war, the sober second thought of England came to the rescue. The public mind began to awake to all the evils that England would suffer from the war. In that towering passion that awoke her first hasty resolve upon war, she thought of the crushing force of her imperial navy sent against our commerce, our commercial cities; and she thought how broken and distracted we were by our rebellion, and what an easy prey we might be to her superior strength, and how it was the nick of time to cut us in two and extinguish forever all the fears that had haunted her of our disputing her supremacy among the nations. But when the pregnant message conceived in these views, and so likely to awake a warlike response, had gone over the sea, the hour of reflection came. The common mind, while awaiting the rcsponse from us, naturally thought that there were blows to be taken as well as given— that the commerce of England as well as ours was to be swept from the seas, and that even her success in the war against her best customers would be fatal to her commerce, and a deadly blow to her future prosperity. Then her repentings were kindled together. But what could she do? The message conceived in a war spirit and for a war purpose

Another crisis in which God's interference was manifest to bring advantage from our 、 perils and trials was that which came from the arrest of the rebel commissioners in a British vessel. Previous to that event, we were slowly but most surely drifting towards a war with England. The preponderant sympathies of the English mind were with the South, in spite of all its abolition professions. It was irritated in view of the suffering which our war had caused in England-not so much by cutting off supplies of cotton, as by a general interruption of commerce and closing American markets against England. The English press had opened a war upon us in a most wicked and malicious spirit; and the replies elicited from the American press were far from being as oil upon the troubled waters. In short, a mutual chafing and irritation between the two nations were evidently preparing the way for war. If things had been suffered to move steadily onward in that channel, the minds of the two nations, by a gradual and unnoticed progress, would ere long have come to such a state as to have necessitated a war. We were upon a current that was carrying us imperceptibly and surely into such a state, that both nations would have madly rushed into a war with a good will. We were saved from it by the suddenness of the lurch which our ship made towards it. The pear was plucked before it was ripc. That affair of the Trent acting on the Eng-cost. And it awaited the response to its lish mind so predisposed to take offence, caused an immense explosion of wrath and indignation. And that wrath rushed prematurely into a resolve upon war. No doubt in the hasty passion of the hour, war was really meant. Hence the demand for redress was so accompanied with threats as to make our compliance with honor, exceedingly difficult. The whole question of war or peace was made to turn on our instant and cate

a message that judging us by herself she had every reason to expect would rouse us to war, had gone over the water to do its work. That interval of suspense to the English mind was one of intense anxiety. The nation had now come to look war in the face as a prospective reality near at hand. Passion had given place to sober reason. And though it had not abated one whit of its desire to check the growth of this nation, it had a deep realizing of what that luxury would

challenge in great dread, and in little hope of escaping the calamities it had invoked.

It was in these searchings of heart which were occasioned by the Trent affair and by England's passionate resentment of it, that we found our escape from a doubling of the calamities of our war. So what for a time many feared would be the means of involving us in a war with England, was in fact the means of our escape from it. And our