the great Abolitionists of the age! They meant to build up a great slave-empire; yet God meant to break down their whole system, and this purpose he is fast accomplishing. Look at Maryland with her free Constitution; look at Missouri, content with nothing short of immediate emancipation; look at Western Virginia adopting freedom as her motto; look at Arkansas and Louisiana marching to the music of freedom; see the hundreds and thousands of slaves organized into fighting regiments, and doing a good service in the cause of the country; note the depreciation and insecurity of slave property; behold public sentiment at the North, touched by the inspiration of God, and rising like an overflowing flood to the demands of this great crisis; observe the South gravely proposing, in the very extremity of the contest, to replenish the Rebel armies with able-bodied negroes ;study this grouping and this order of events; and who then, premit me in all candor to ask, can be so blind to facts, or so lost to the impulses of a generous humanity, as not to hail the era and the hour with the most exultant gratitude to Almighty God? He has wrought this wonder. It is the Lord's doing, and marvelous in our eyes. True, it has been accomplished by the agency of men yet not the less true that it is an appointment of the Sovereign God. For this appointment, for the way in which Providence has led this nation, and for what that Providence promises in the future, I call upon you as just men, as the lovers of equal rights, as the friends of your country, to say in the language of the poet, Great God of nations! now to thee Our hymn of gratitude we raise ; The Jubilee of Liberty is near at hand. Its dawning light already paints the sky. Hail, sacred radiance! God is in thy rising beams. Christianity has been long waiting for thee. The sighs and tears of the bond-man have wept many a prayer for thy coming. The philanthropy of the civilized world is looking on with delight. Angels in heaven shout thy praises. God on his throne greets thee as the bright effluence of his own attributes. Men on earth welcome thee as an angel of mercy and justice. Shine on, thou serene and holy orb of moral day! History, with her eager pen, shall, in the ages to come, tell of thy conflicts and thy triumphs. Philosophy, in after days, shall ponder thy processes. Upon thine altars poetry shall consecrate her song. Eloquence shall find in thee her theme for thoughts that glow, and words that burn. Yes, thou art welcome to the world, welcome to this country, welcome as the guest of down-trodden millions, and welcome as the harbinger of good to all mankind. We thank the God of grace for thy coming; and we pray the same God to continue thy march across the national heavens till the chains of slavery shall fall from every limb, and every man stand erect under the broad banner of freedom regulated by just and equal laws. Away with that miserable conservatism, which, stealing a name, and perverting the thing, draws its creed from the errors. and depravities of the past rather than the providences and duties of the present! Away with those stupid logomachies,-mere wars of blind prejudice about words, that prevent men from seeing what God is doing, and what he would have them do! Away with those political organizations that seek to impede the car of freedom! Away with those sermons that in the name of God justify slavery! These things belong to other days: the light has come, and the age has gone beyond them. Let me say, in conclusion, that I cannot tell precisely what is before the American people, or through what trials we may have to pass ere the goal of our efforts shall be finally reached. The future is with God. We may meet with serious disasters; we may have dark days ere peace shall wave her wand over all the land; yet be this as it may, I this day solemnly exhort you to stand firmly by your c untry's cause in all places, under all circumstances, and at all times. Never yield to despondency. Never doubt your own powers. Boldly and manfully face all the foes of your country; reason them down; vote them down; and, when necessary, fight them down. Gather in solid and serried array around the charter of our national unity:- with one hand. upon the Bible, and the other upon the Constitution, and with the flag of the Union floating over your heads, swear an undying allegiance to the cause; hold on to the Ship of State; and in due season she will bring you all into port with not a plank lost, or a star blotted from her emblem. Let the Republic live, whatever else dies. Esto perpetua-let this be the motto of every man, woman, and child. Trusting in God, and doing our duty, we can save the Republic. We can, and with God's help we will, break the arm of this treason, destroying its military power, and uniting all the people under one Constitution and one Government. Then we shall be ready for peace. Till then we must yield to the necessity and accept the duties of war. Till then we can have no peace to which the loyal people of this country will ever give their assent. We must conquer a peace; we must absolutely break down the armed forces of the Rebellion; the necessity is upon us; we cannot avoid it if we would, without surrendering our geographical and national integrity; and hence war, persistent, and earnest,and finally triumphant, is now the only means of our salvation. And since it must be war, let every man stand in his place, and every man do his duty. Let all unite with one heart and soul to crush treason and traitors wherever they may be found. May the God of nations defeat the wrong, and prosper the RIGHT! SERMON II. (FOR THE NEW YEAR.) BY REV. ELEAZAR THOMPSON FITCH, D. D. FORMERLY PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY AND PASTOR OF THE CHURCH IN YALE COLLEGE, NEW HAVEN, Conn. THE WORLD NOT OUR PERMANENT HOME. "Here have we no continuing home."-HEB. Xiii : 14. THE Hebrews, to whom the apostle first addressed these words, it is supposed, were now about to experience the calamity that had been predicted by the Saviour to impend over their beloved city, Jerusalem. They were to leave their possessions and homes, and flee, as the Saviour had directed them, into the mountains; or if they were inhabitants of other cities, were to sympathize with their brethren who should thus suffer. The apostle reminds them in these circumstances of trial, that they were not to consider any residence on earth as designed for permanence. They might grieve at the ruin of their beloved city; but they ought not to be immoderately attached to the place that had served as a home to them and their fathers, because no residence on earth was intended to be the permanent dwelling of men. No city on earth could they call 'a continuing city;' for they could dwell in none but a few years before they entered into eternity. The instruction of the apostle is as applicable to us, as it was originally to the afflicted Hebrews; and we need as much reminding, as did they, if not for consolation especially under expected trials, yet for a spiritual improvement of our privileges, that we have upon earth no continuing city. This truth, at all times momentous, deserves peculiarly our consideration, at the season when we have just bidden adieu to another year of our lives, and are greeting a new one, with its uncertain prospects. Let us, then, enter with seriousness into the contemplation of the fact, that the world is not our permanent dwelling. The certainty we feel respecting it, is derived from the evidence we possess of our own approaching deaths, which will remove us out of the world, and the evidence we also have that our being will still continue after death, for an eternity. From these sources we have been accustomed, from childhood, to consider the fact, whenever it has recurred to our minds, as certain beyond all question, that our dwelling on earth has no permanence com compared with the eternity of our being. I shall say nothing, therefore, to establish a fact of which we all feel a perfect moral certainty; but shall take advantage of the moral certainty we all feel about it, to speak. I. Respecting some means that are calculated constantly to remind us of the fact : II. Respecting some evidences of our great blindness to the fact; and, III. Respecting some practical results we should derive from the fact that 'here we have no continuing city.' I. I am, first, to mention some means that are adapted constantly to remind us that we have no permanent abode on earth. We have such a means then, in the fact, that we have received our privileges from those who have already left the world. Almost all our privileges are associated thus with the mortality of others who have been instrumental in conveying them over to our possession. Other men have labored here before us; we have entered into their labors. In the city of our residence we are always walking amidst the monuments of preceding genera tions-the works of immortal beings, who, as strangers here before us, tarried but for a day. The houses we inhabit, the streets we walk, the sanctuaries we frequent, the scriptures of truth, all bespeak to us the agency of other beings, who have been on earth before us; who took up no settled abode; who quickly passed through it to eternity. All our privileges are thus put into our hands with the loud language of the dead to us for monition, that we do not take them into permanent possession. Everywhere, then, in the city of our residence on earth, are such mementos to remind us constantly how short is to be our dwelling here. We have such a memento, again, in the fact, that others who have been sharing with us in our privileges, are constantly leaying the world They who dwell with us in the city of our residence on earth,-beings of immortalty;-are constantly bidding us adieu, and entering into eternity. All our privileges thus become associated with the memory of former companions, who once had their abode below. They dwelt with us but a few days; they scarcely made themselves known to us; when they gave the farewell look, pressed the parting hand, bade adieu, and entered on an abode in eternity;-the tolling bell, the mournful procession, the grave of their relics, the erected monument, signalized their departure:-and now all around the city of our abode, are the traces of their former presence, reminding us of our having no continuing residence here. We look back at the days they passed with us before they entered into eternity, and they appear to us but an hand-breadth; and, from their dwelling in eternity, we seem to hear them say, as we miss them from the scenes in which they once mingled with us, that these are scenes where pilgrims to eternity tarry but a day. When in the habitations where they once dwelt with us, or the streets where they walked with us, or the sanctuary to which they went with us in company, or at the mercy seat where they once bent with us the knee of devotion, or by the scriptures before which they once listened with us to the words of Jesus Christ, we look for them, but they are gone ;-the place they once occupied at our side is vacant;-they are far from us in their eternal dwelling; and the places where we once knew them, are now so many monuments, that we ourselves have here no continuing city. We have another constant memento of this fact, in the ad. vancement we are constantly making ourselves towards eternity. Every thing in the city of our residence on earth, reminds us that we are never stationary in it, but are always advancing toward the period of final departure. We have entered into a scene of divine wonders, but we cannot delay to spend our existence here in gazing upon them ;-we are constantly in motion, urging our way through them to an eternal dwelling. Each breaking morn, each radiant noon, each shadowy eve, as they pass us make no tarrying, but pass us never more to return. The jocund spring, summer with his swarms of life, autumn with her golden harvests, winter with his icy sceptre and his snowy robes, as each year they pass us, are in constant motion; and while we greet them, take their leave of us forever. Each changing scene of life arrests our minds-enlists our feelings; then takes its final leave of us, the sons of eternity. Creeping infancy, merry boyhood, aspiring youth, industrious manhood, decrepit age, we meet in swift succession; just greet, and bid adieu for eternity. In the midst of all the privileges of the city of our residence below, do our advancing steps towards the eternal world serve constantly to remind us that here we have no permanent dwelling. The aggregate of days that have passed by us, the yearly seasons, the scenes of life, and periods of age, since we came into possession of our privileges since we first knew our dwellings, and walked our streets, and visited our sanctuaries, and heard the words of God,-are so many advances toward eternity; and tell, as they thicken on the path we leave, how soon we reach the close of our pilgrimage and enter upon unknown worlds. We have another constant memento of the fact again, in our inability of prolonging our eontinuance in the world. We have constant notices around us of our frailty and inability to continue to ourselves our present privileges for the future. Ev er in the city of our privileges below, do we see ourselves hu |