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PALING ENESY 
 
 NATIONAL REGENERATION 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 REV. T. M. POST, D.D 
 
 Delivered by invitation at the 
 
 W ASHIN^TON UNIVERSITY, 
 
 NOVEMBER 4, 1834. 
 
 Phonographically Reported for the Missouri Republican. 
 
 ST. LOUIS: 
 GEORGE KNAPP & CO., PRINTERS AND BINDERS. 
 
 1864. 
 
.n 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 The following correspondence explains the 
 nature of Dr. Post's Address, and the reason 
 of its delivery: 
 
 St. Lours, October 20th, 1864. 
 Rev. Dr. Post— Dear Sir: The patriotism, wis- 
 dom and eloquence which you have always exhibited 
 in the discussion of public questions, inspire us with 
 the liveliest desire to hear the oration on "National 
 Regeneration," which you recently pronounced at 
 the Commencement of Middlebury College. Believ- 
 ing that an expression of your views upon the resto- 
 ration and renovation of the Union would be of pub- 
 lic service, we cordially invite you to deliver that 
 Address at the Hall of Washington University. The 
 encouragements to loyalty which are based upon po- 
 litical philosophy, enforced by historic example and 
 pervaded by Christian sentiment, cannot fail to be 
 eminently useful. 
 
 We solicit an early compliance with this request. 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 W. G. Eliot, C. S. Greeley, 
 
 George Partridge, James E. Yeatman, 
 
 Wayman Crow, 
 
 James Richardson 
 
 S. C. Davis, 
 
 Henry Hitchcock, 
 
 F. B. 
 
 Chamberlain, 
 S. B. Kellogg, 
 J. P. Collier, 
 S. Waterhouse. 
 
 St. Louis, October 22d, 1864. 
 Messrs. Eliot, Waterhouse, and others. 
 
 Gentlemen : I feel highly honored by your invi- 
 tation to re-present the address delivered by me last 
 summer at the anniversary of Middlebury College. 
 A request from such a source would ever induce a 
 compliance, if in my power. But it would be im- 
 possible for me to reproduce tho address in exact 
 form, as it was not reduced to writing. 
 
 Its theme was the Palingenesy, or the Reconstruc- 
 tion and Renovation of Nations and Civilizations , 
 with special reference to our own country and time. 
 
 It deals with the ideas which must be the primor- 
 dial and organic forces of such renovation and recon- 
 struction, rather than with an attempted programme 
 of political measures. 
 
 It aims to indicate the great principles which alone 
 can revitalize our nationality or civilization, which 
 must be the norm of any political or social order that 
 can be beneficent or permanent, and, disregarding 
 which, any scheme of reconstruction can only ulti- 
 mate in deeper and gloomier ruin. 
 
 The address was originally delivered before a re- 
 ligious and philanthropical organization. This, to- 
 gether with my own convictions of the ideas which 
 must preside over our own National Palingenesy, 
 give to the discussion the aspect and color of an ar- 
 gument from a Christian stand-point. 
 
 If, with this statement of the spirit and aim of the 
 address, you still think it expedient to reproduce it, 
 I shall take pleasure In doing so at any time you 
 may indicate. 
 
 I have the honor to be, gentlemen, 
 
 With high respect, truly yours, 
 
 T. M. POST. 
 
 The Address was delivered on the evening 
 of November 4th, to a large and appreciative 
 audience. 
 
 The satisfaction which the rich learning, 
 profound reasoning and fervid loyalty of the 
 speaker afforded the assembly, expressed itself 
 in a general and urgent demand for the publi- 
 cation of the discourse. "With this request the 
 courteous consent of Dr. Post and the phono- 
 graphic skill of Mr. L. L. Walbridge have 
 enabled the Committee to comply. 
 
PALINGENESY. 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen: As has been al- 
 ready stated, I appear before you this evening 
 at the kind solicitation of very much valued 
 and trusted friends; but at the same time, it is 
 4ue to these gentlemen to state, that they are 
 Dot responsible at all for what I may say 
 here, as they have none of them heard 
 the address -which I propose to deliver, and I 
 suppose have been induced to extend the invi- 
 tation to me from favoring rumor. I will state 
 ilso, tttat I apprehend there may be something 
 nf a disappointment in the tone and manner of 
 the address. It is hardly in keeping with the 
 'ervid and fierce philippics to which you are 
 some of you nightly treated in this week be- 
 fore the election. The address was originally 
 lelivered before a literary and philanthropical 
 issociation, and in some respects belongs to 
 ;he philosophical chamber more than it does to 
 ;he hall of political harangue. The term also 
 ivhich I use to indicate the topic that is to en- 
 gage us this evening, may be liable to misap- 
 prehension. It is an unfamiliar term, but it 
 lesiguates better than any single word that I 
 jan find in our language, the theme upon 
 srhich I propose to speak, and which I think 
 represents to this nation the great question of 
 ;he hour. 
 
 The term *Palingenesy is employed by our 
 Saviour to denote social regeneration, and from 
 ihis has passed in classic usage to designate the 
 second birth of nationality or civilization ; not 
 simply reorganization or reconstruction, but 
 ;he renovation of the vital and organic forces 
 ;hemselves; the revivification and reinvigora- 
 ;ion of modes of thought and feeling which 
 nust constitute the primordial and organic 
 torces of any restoration. 
 
 *Note.— Vide Mat., 19:28, where it is translated, 
 ' regeneration." 
 
 The times I think call for this discussion ; for 
 not only our Government, but our very civili- 
 zation is menaced. Not only our institutions 
 are assailed, but the ideas which created them— 
 ideas which, with our fathers, held the place of 
 first truths, and were to them the most practi- 
 cal convictions, and for which tbey braved 
 the axe and faggot, imprisonniont and 
 exile and battle— overturned thrones, crossed 
 seas, founded empires, achieved revolutions, 
 organized society and government— these have 
 become terribly shaken by the shock of our 
 present rebellion. Old heroic traditions seem 
 perishing. Old and time-honored thoughts 
 and maxims seem passing out of the nation's 
 life. The principles, organic and vital, oi our 
 social and civil order, seem well nigh death- 
 stricken by various causes, bat especially by the 
 subtle poison diffused through the national mind 
 by the institution which has caused this war. 
 
 You are familiar with the fact that these ideas 
 and maxims — these principles of belief which 
 have guided and directed our society and civ- 
 ilization heretofore, and had become a passion 
 and a faith— almost a religion, with this na- 
 tion—have been termed in some quarters "glit- 
 tering generalities" — mere vapid, general plat- 
 itudes" —to be sneered out of the world. Up- 
 on this topic, therefore, I have thought it best 
 that we should converse together awhile this 
 evening. 
 
 I fear that there is a sinking of political 
 faith in this American people — that we are be- 
 ginning to distrust these opinions that have 
 been regarded as "self-evident truths" by us, 
 and that have come down consecrated by the 
 wisdom of past ages, vindicated by martyr and 
 heroic blood in the high places of battle on 
 this continent and in the Old World— that 
 there is a want of faith in the principles of 
 
political liberty — a want of faith in the possi 
 bility of a free, social order; and a want of 
 faith in the institutions, the government, and 
 civilization of the land. 
 
 We meet this evening amid the clangor of 
 partial national ruin. Of our dome of empire 
 not only some of the arches are fallen, but a 
 shock has been imparted which has caused the 
 entire structure to totter. The old regime, so- 
 cial, ideal, ecclesiastic, financial as well as po- 
 litical, has, in many sections of the Republic, 
 passed away, never to return. 
 
 Now, what must be our national regenera- 
 tion? our Palingenesy? Or is there none for 
 us? Is our nation a hopeless failure? our civ- 
 ilization already in process of decay? And 
 here meets us a very solemn question. 
 
 There are many that contend there is no 
 such thing as political regeneration. They 
 point us to Niebuhr's picture of Greece, after 
 the Peloponessian war, and it is indeed a mel- 
 ancholy picture. Greece was "living Greece" 
 no more after that fratricidal strife. The old 
 Hellenism had passed away forever lite a 
 beautiful and heroic dream. He describes it 
 as a land already in hopeless decay. The na- 
 tional and ethnic sentiment had fled. Its early 
 faith, its heroism, its enthusiasm for liberty 
 and country were gone. It was a land with- 
 out hope, without a future. There was for it 
 no renovation. 
 
 So of the old Roman world under the latter 
 Caesars. I know of no picture of mankind 
 more melancholy— a world in hopeless decrepi- 
 tude ; old ideas upon which they had built he- 
 roic action, dead; and the mind of earlier times 
 gone forever ; heroic passion and virtue forgot ; 
 heroic memories faded into myth; civilization 
 in dissolution. The human race itself seems 
 old and dying. And there are those who uni- 
 versalize this fact; and they tell us these as- 
 pects of decay of Greek and Roman civilization 
 represent stages inevitable in all national life ; 
 that all nations have their climacteric beyond 
 which they can only descend to the grave. 
 They point to Assyria, China, India and 
 Egypt as examples. There was no second 
 youth for Persian or Phoenecian, the Latin or 
 Hellenic races; Babylon had none; nor Athens 
 nor Magna Grecia; nor fair Ionia; nor Rome; 
 nor Jerusalem. Ancient history presents in 
 whole or in part no such rejuvenescence. 
 Nor will they admit in modern history any 
 certain examples. Indeed, there is a school 
 that theorize all history into fate— a 
 mere game of inexorable necessity. They 
 find its programme witten in Physical 
 Geography; on land, flood and sky ; the con- 
 figuration of continents, the courses of rivers, 
 the nature of soils, the belts of latitude. Soci- 
 
 ety, they claim, is the mere creature, the vic- 
 tim of nature. Nations, societies, civilizations, 
 they moreover assure us, are all mortal. The 
 shadows of death are on their cradles. Life 
 with them, as with the plant or tree, is limited 
 by the ethnic germ. History is a circle ever 
 returning upon itself— a birth, growth, climac- 
 teric, decline and death in a course as fixed as 
 that of the seasons. And progress, that of 
 which we speak so hopefully, is with them but 
 an eddy, ever turbidly whirling; or an endless 
 oscillation between two opposite polarities; a 
 vibration between reform and counter reform. 
 
 But is this so? Is history but the endless 
 labor of a Sisyphus? a web of Penelope, ever 
 woven, but only to be raveled and rewoven? 
 Is society eased in a mechanism of adamantine 
 fate, where genius and heroism, passion and 
 achievement, and all that we admire as most 
 powerful and free in humanity, are only forces 
 to hasten the motion along the grooves of an 
 eternal necessity? And to die — is it with na- 
 tions as with men and animals, only the debt 
 of nature? 
 
 I thank my God I confess to no such gloomy 
 creed. Both my logic and faith revolt from it. 
 History is no eddy, though embracing 
 many such. It is a Mississippi, bear- 
 ing all eddies with refluent or affluent whirl, 
 ever to the great ocean. It exhibits in itself, 
 it is true, perpetual oscillatory movement; but 
 the oscillation is of the pendulum below, that 
 is ever moving the index hand above, on the 
 horologe of the ages, ever nearer to the morn- 
 ing hour. 
 
 Its movement, too, presents also periodicity 
 and rotation; but it is the rotation not of the 
 circle but of the cycloid; or the curve des- 
 cribed by a point in the periphery of a car- 
 riage wheel in onward motion 3 which point as- 
 cending or descending never retrogrades; but 
 ever in each revolution starts in each ascent 
 in advance of its last descent, and falls in each 
 descent in advance of its last ascent. Or per- 
 haps its movements may be better likened to 
 the epicycle in the Ptolemaic system of as- 
 tronomy — a device by which they attempted 
 to explain the apparent retrograde motion of 
 the superior planets, representing their orbits 
 as described on a crystalline sphere that ever 
 moved stars, planets and epicycles together, 
 along in its great revolutions. 
 
 I believe in no necessary mortality 
 of states or civilizations, at least in the 
 present or future. The forces of social pro- 
 gress are immortal; and by properly applying 
 them, society may itself become immortal. 
 These forces are eternal ideas — inextinguish- 
 able instincts of the human soul blending with, 
 and consecrated by, the imperishaole princi- 
 
pies of the Christian faith. The apparent fail- 
 ures and deaths of civilization in the past, are 
 owing to defect, distortion or disproportion 
 of these forces. Society was imperfect 
 in its vital or constituent elements, and, like 
 all imperfect things, having wrought to the 
 measure of the capacity of these elements, 
 was d<- stined to change or death. Ancient civ- 
 ilization lacked the full idea of Humanity in 
 it as well as of Christianity. Having wrought 
 to its measure without these elements, the fate 
 of decay was necessarily on it. The periodic 
 or cyclical movement in history proves not the 
 mortality of these vital forces, hut rather 
 the reverse; it proves their perpetuity and om- 
 nipotence. For it is the incompleteness, the 
 neglec+ or the violation of these forces, that has 
 slain states and civilizations entombed in the 
 past. The power of a life — principle is demon- 
 strated as much hy the death that ensues on 
 its withdrawal or violation, as by the life that 
 attends on its presence. This cycloidal and os 
 dilatory movement, amounting to reform or 
 revolution, or to dissolution and new creation, 
 must go on till society attains its full comple- 
 ment of constituent elements and forces— that 
 is, until the imperfect has reached the perfect, 
 rndeed the millennium itself seems, in the pro- 
 gramme of Revelation, to he only the most 
 brilliant and enduring of the cycles of time, 
 but mortal like its predecessors, and hearing 
 the race in its descent to the final revolt and 
 bo the foot of the throne of doom. But these 
 rotations or revolutionary movements I believe, 
 aeed not 3trike so low as the death shade, but 
 mav simply achieve reform within the circle 
 rf life. 
 
 Indeed, in one aspect the rapidity and power 
 jf these vital forces and of the social life are 
 represented by the rapidity of these rotations, 
 rhey mark revolutions of the wheel of pro- 
 gress. In the dim and distant past, the strokes 
 )f that wheel are heard only at vast intervals, 
 ike the leap of Hesiod's horses of the gods : 
 vhich, making one bound, awful ages have 
 jassed away. So of the car of social progress- 
 ;he wheel strokes at first fall on the ear solemn 
 md slow over the vast and twilight profound. 
 But, quickening with time, they grow more 
 md more rapid as they approach, till at length 
 hey become indistinguishable, and sweep by 
 is with the continuous rush of the steam car, 
 lurrying storm-like to its goal. 
 
 In this respect the rotary movement of mod- 
 rrn history finds its analogue in the cyclone, 
 ir tornado, which has a double movement; one 
 otary on its own axis, the other projected 
 Jong the great circle ©f the storm — the ra- 
 >idity of the one measuring that of the other. 
 
 We are dealing in this question with no pro- 
 
 blem of speculative philosophy, nor in the spir- 
 it of merely curious inquiry, hut earnestly and 
 anxiously, as we would feel the pulses of a dy- 
 ing friend. The hour is awful with destiny. 
 A mortal crisis, such as comes only once in 
 ages, is upon our country. Shall it live or die? 
 Philosophy, the most profoundly and widely 
 speculative, is here intensely practical. 
 
 What remedy, then, may a search guided by 
 such philosophy discover for our national dis- 
 aster? What revitalization from decay ? What 
 restoration from ruin? In some diseases the 
 malady itself discloses both the cause and the 
 cure. So it is with societies. Social convul- 
 sions are a social apocalypse. Revolution is 
 revelation. The upheaval and overturn reveal 
 what smoother and tranquil times never dis- 
 close — elements and forces ever at work in the 
 deeps, but commonly hidden and voiceless. 
 
 As the geologist, in his researches into the 
 dynamic laws and structure of the earth's 
 mass, takes a position, not where the smooth 
 champagne spreads out in level lawns and 
 rich gardens, smiling with fruit and flower; 
 but in fields of ruin and the disaster of nature; 
 where the earthquake has torn open the earth's 
 bosom, and, gazing down the rent, he may 
 read her interior constitution and forces, 
 and may trace the awful subterranean powers 
 which build or destroy her structure, vitalize or 
 waste her surface, which have left their finger 
 prints on the rent marble or the molten gran- 
 ite on the dingy sides of the chasm, or are still 
 stirring the eternal fires below: so we may now 
 taRe position beside the abyss that has opened 
 in our American society, and trace powers, laws 
 and elements heretofore but dimly disclosed 
 under our smooth and beautiful prosperity. A 
 wrong, hoar and mighty, has heaved under our 
 foundations. The deeps have been torn open 
 and their secrets disclosed. Frightful and in- 
 fernal forms — passions and powers undreamed 
 of by us, the grisly and goblin troop of Death 
 and Hell— are emergent from Erebus; come 
 back as from asres of fabulous corruption and 
 crimes, to affright the fair world again. 
 The rent abyss also reveals the enduring 
 demiurgic forces of society; the forces crea- 
 tive, organic, conservative and destructive — 
 Brahma, Vishnu and the dreaded Siva— all are 
 there, and all are one. Tehse demiurgic forces, 
 these world-builders and destroyers, are Ideas ; 
 eternal and profoundest constituents of our 
 humanity. Normally and legitimately at 
 work, like the impalpable forces of nature, 
 they elaborate order, beauty and life; but, 
 suppressed and disturbed, they breed the tem- 
 pest and the earthquake. They are the ideas, 
 primordial, organic and vital, to our civiliza- 
 tion and institutions ; powers invoked by our 
 
fathers at the beginning, and by them inaugu- 
 rated over the Empire they founded. It is 
 ideas— resi stifled and im- 
 
 prisoned, which have upheaved in this ruin. 
 
 ' now what shall we do? Shall we re- 
 ! we cast away the 
 
 nnciples of our civilization? the archi- 
 genius of our institutions? Sh;ill we 
 discard our theory of popular liberty as a chi- 
 mera and a curse? Surely not. Our fathers 
 
 to political dreamers or fanatics. The 
 avoked were et ;rnal truths, 
 
 1 immortal instincts of humanity, ap- 
 pointed of God to vitalize and guard 
 social progress; powers that utter them- 
 
 m the spirit of the age; that bear on 
 our modern civilization ; powers that are im- 
 perial, omnipotent— the Lords of History. 
 They are stronger than empires, longer lived 
 than the centuries. Thoy will shape the 
 order of the millennial cycle itself. 
 No! Our fathers rightly invoked these 
 to their aid, a3 immortal and Heavr-n- 
 appomted architects. They will live whether 
 we live or die. If we live we live by them. 
 But if we live by them, we must respect their 
 authority and the conditions of their beneficent 
 action; and that, constantly and consistently, 
 through all political and social life and order. 
 Collision, limitation or exception will destroy 
 us, even as they are destroying us now. 
 
 ven's gifts of power are all conditioned. 
 A power for good may be a power for evil. 
 
 ve, therefore, abaudon them? Shall we 
 cast away the gift of fire, because neglected or 
 abused when we introduce it into 
 our dwellings, it may burn them 
 up? Or shall we discard that power 
 by which alone the ship may breast the wind. 
 wave and current, because not rightly guarded 
 or unduly repressed, or generated in too feeble 
 a receiver, it will blow up the ship? Gunpow- 
 der explodes the muzzled cannon. Shall we. 
 
 re, abandon its aid in art and battle? 
 These ideas we have brought into our system 
 and installed as sovereigns over it, but we have 
 disregarded the conditions of their beneficent 
 action and transgressed their ordinances. "We 
 obstructed, repressed, and attempted to muzzle 
 and stifle them. An explosion has ensued 
 that has filled land and sea with our ruin. 
 "What society needs now is not their expulsion, 
 but the removal of obstructing and antagonis- 
 tic elements from our social and political system . 
 Their power to vitalize, restore and conserve, 
 is demonstrated by their very power to destroy 
 when resisted and outraged. This present re- 
 bellion is a was oe ide as : started because of no 
 actual sufferings, such as make nations mad, 
 nor because of alleged actual oppression and 
 
 materia] wroDgs; but in the name of resistance 
 to ideas. Ideas have sprung up in the form of 
 in of armed men, who go forth to battle 
 ! for no vulvar and material interests such as 
 have moved in the common wars of history, 
 but in the name of principles, abstract and 
 universal. 
 
 But let us explain what we mean by ideas, 
 such as are concerned in the 
 q, organization and conduct of society. 
 By ideas, then, vve mean original, universal 
 and immortal sentiments or convictions of 
 the human soul Original, not necessa- 
 rily in the -cusp of innate, but as hav- 
 ing their origin in the constitution of 
 the soul, and developed immediately on ap- 
 plication to affairs. Universal, because found 
 wherever man is found on such application to 
 affairs, and uttered, unless stifled by usage and 
 force. Immortal, as an imperishable part of 
 our humanity, and incapable of lasting defeat 
 or death by default or prescription, or by en- 
 forced disuse and silence; under a woild's 
 weight of repression for ages still continuing 
 to live and ready to burst forth; born anew 
 with every new-born soul, and not to be extin- 
 guished save with the extinction of humanity 
 itself. 
 
 - concerned in political order arc of two 
 viz: 
 
 First. Those of the Bights of Liberty, or 
 ■ights we are wont to speak of, as the 
 eights of man; as for example, my right to 
 myself, my person, my hards, my senses. These 
 I feel are my rights from the necessity of my 
 nature, as soon as I arrive at self-r- 
 and self-reflection, as against the claim of aTiy 
 fellow-man. I ;ecl this; nstinctively, immediate- 
 ly, immortally. So of the right of thought, belief, 
 conscience, speech, ard the like. So of pi 
 and the fruits of my labor, and of the pursuit 
 of happiness. These ideas constitute the foun- 
 dation and forces of freedom. They are an 
 essential part of the definition of human- 
 ity. "We shall term them by way of classifi- 
 cation in this argument, Human Rights, ok 
 the Bights or 
 
 The second class springs up immediately on 
 the right apprehension of a God, and are a 
 part of the definition of His name. "When 
 man looks around on nature and being, he feels 
 there is a power above him who has e 
 and endowed, and who sustains, and min- 
 isters to him; and who ; therefore, owns him, 
 and ba<- rightful claim to him and alibis facul- 
 ties and works. To Him, therefore, appertains 
 the right of authority, command, rule. 
 This right attaches also to all whom 
 He may depute or constitute as r;;!ers. 
 This class of ideas, therefore, I term, 
 
for the sake of classification, as well as from a 
 regard to the person to whom these are prima- 
 rily fine, the Eights of God, or Divine 
 Rights. It is true all rights ultimately centre 
 in God, and look to Him as vindicator. 
 But 1 use the term selected, for the sake of 
 stroii -.!/ marked antithesis. 
 
 This second class of ideas are those 
 creative, organic and conservative of 
 government, and are, like their correl- 
 atives, instinctive and immortal. The 
 two combined are the factors of all civil liberty, 
 of all free, permanent and beneficent social 
 or political order. They were designed of 
 Heaven to organize and rule society in joint 
 regnancy— mutually complimentary, and brac- 
 ing each other to greater strength, like the op- 
 posite sides of the arch. As in case of the two 
 forces that keep the earth in its path through 
 the ecliptic, so their co-action is requisite, and 
 in fit proportion and direction, to keep society 
 in its sphere and course. As in the solar sys- 
 tem, either of the two forces fading or dis- 
 torted, the earth would rush into the central 
 flame or the outward abysses of night and 
 frost ; so, either of the social forces failing or 
 distorted, society rushes upon anarchy or des- 
 potism. So, either side of the arch built up by 
 itself, or overtopping the other, the structure 
 falls in ruin, crushing those who seek shelter un- 
 der it. But the two classes of ideas, co-acting in 
 joint and harmoniously adjusted rule, society 
 were perfect and immortal. 
 
 It would seem as though some arch device 
 of a god of evil had struck through all past 
 history, so constantly and universally these 
 forces have been made to antagonize or have 
 been thrown out of harmony and proportion, 
 making civil liberty impossible, and converting 
 society into a Bastile or a Bedlam. 
 
 Over the vast realms of the Orient — from 
 where the Yellow Sea washes the coasts of 
 Eastern Asia, to the cataracts of the Nile 
 theocratic organization of society has prevailed 
 from the morning of history — an organization 
 in which the rights of God have been usurped 
 by priest, patriarch, pontiff, monarch or caste, 
 and then turned as a "devilish enginery" to 
 crush and smother the rights of man. An ar- 
 rogated Divine despotism has left no room for 
 human liberty. China, India, Assyria, Persia, 
 Syria, and Egypt, have been subjected to this 
 stifling pressure of theocratic despotisms, old 
 and ponderous as their mountains, and high 
 as the heavens, presenting through forty cen- 
 turies vast dungeon-houses of mind ; dungeon- 
 houses bttilt and garrisoned by the gods them- 
 selves, and divided into separate compart- 
 ments, where the millions ground on, in gloom; 
 cut off from the solace of mutual sympathy 
 by castes, and locked, each in separate cells, 
 
 which mortal hand might not open ; for the 
 keys had been borne off by the celestials. 
 Through these vast and magnificent climes, 
 humanity dared not look up. Unman Rights 
 were not— at least had no utterance, no breath. 
 Their very idea had been extinguished, were it 
 not essentially immortal. Indeed, throughout 
 the Orient, through all the past, civil liberty 
 seems to have had no existence — even no 
 idea; save, to some extent, in the commercial 
 cities o£ the Phoenician stock; and among the 
 Hebrews, who, though in theocratic organiza- 
 tion, were delivered from theocratic d 
 tism, by the fact that the Invisible king never 
 delegated his authority to prophet, priest, 
 monarch or order; and consequently popular 
 freedom was conserved, not smothered, under 
 the Rule of God. 
 
 Ancient occidental civilization, though 
 escaping the clamps of hereditary caste, 
 caste, and of patriarclnsm and priest-rule, fur- 
 nishes a case but little more favorable for the 
 rights of humanity. Here the State was God, 
 and before its usurpation of the Divine Pre- 
 rogative there were no Human Rights, sacred 
 or indefeasible. The rights of man as man were 
 unknown. The boasted liberties of Greece and 
 Rome were only the civil equality of the lordly 
 few among themselves, and their equal liberty 
 to dominate the millions below. But in the 
 presence of the State, the mightiest as 
 well as the meanest, Eupatrid and Patrician, 
 a Themistocles and Epaminondas, the Fabii, 
 the Cernelii, the Scipios, and the Bruti, were 
 alike slaves. Indeed, the idea of humanity 
 with the individual sanctity and sovereignty 
 of prerogatives in each human soul, seems to 
 have had no place in ancient occidental civili- 
 zation, save in connection Avith Christianity. 
 And Christianity entered that world, not in time 
 to save it, but to seed it for a far future. When 
 the old world fell, the barbarism in which it 
 sank was a social ruin— a confusion of all rights 
 and wrongs, where no principle was dominant, 
 where there was in continuance neither despo- 
 tism nor liberty— a chaos of anarchies surging 
 on under the night, momently crystalizing in- 
 to despotic forms, and momently dissolving 
 what it had created. 
 
 From these ages of wild violen :e the nations 
 sought pity and shelter from the Heavens. 
 Even spiritual despotism was a refuge; a#d 
 for a spiritual despotism the times were ripe. 
 Christian faith, it is true, still lived in the 
 heart of the world, as it must ever live, with a 
 life immortal. But as a public power, Chris- 
 tianity had crossed the gulf of ruin, chiefly as 
 a superstition and a hierarchy; and from the 
 barbaric violence, the crimes and wretched- 
 ness of the times, the spiritual usurpation 
 
10 
 
 grew like an exhalation from Hell-soil. Over 
 province, diocese, nation ana continent, the 
 hierarchical structure rose in many-storied 
 gloom, arch on arch, and vault o'er vault, till 
 it culminated in a central dome that loomed 
 through the pale night o'er the nations, like 
 the palace of infernal Dis. And the ghostly 
 power enshrined therein, and fulminating, in 
 the name of the Heavens, over mankind, was 
 saying to itself: ''I will ascend up: I will he 
 
 the evil power to leave the body he has pos- 
 sessed so lODg. 
 
 Such — so disastrous, so perpetual, so univer- 
 sal, has been the perturbing force of the usur- 
 pation of Divine Rights antagonized against 
 those of man, in the history of the world; so 
 wide has it driven society from its proper free 
 orbit 
 
 But against this war of Divine right upon 
 Human, there has been often a recoil, and the 
 recoil has been as the pressure, often desper- 
 
 '• as God: I stay the morning star in his deep 
 
 " course: I beat back the day with my beams I at6j exasperated, explosive, ruinous— cot less 
 " of night." The earth shuddered and ! aisaatawufl to civil liberty than the oppression 
 crouched below; Human Eights shrivelled j again j t which it T0S ^ j^ eternal ideas of 
 and shrank away in such a presence. : humanity suppressed, stifled, crushed down in 
 They were driven frem their last citadel in J darkness and deeps, manacled, blinded for 
 the human soul itself. Even there humanity : a?es bave at time5 burst ^^ prison-house: 
 wore the chain. Even there men trembled at and like tbe children of Old Night, have 
 their own free thoughts, and asked pardon for j emer ged— a power of blind rage— into the su- 
 having dared to think them, from the terrible . perio r realms. Like the giants of ancient fable, 
 despotism that grasped both worlds. They bound under Erebus, with the closures of the 
 felt guilty in their secret conscience for having mon irtainB above them, but at last bursting 
 ever harbored any dream of human rights, and their c hains, upheaving the rent earth as they 
 confessed themselves as deserving therefor the ro?e _ and 5tan( iing before the sun. stalwart, grim 
 vengeance of temporal and eternal fires. So and vast blinded with the sudden light 
 deeply was human liberty, in those gloomy acd ^^ rage; tben ras hi n g with the 
 ages, crushed down under usurped Divine broken bars of Tartarus and the seized thun- 
 Prerogative ! ders of j 0Te> oc Olympus, and driving the su- 
 
 Xor did the insurrection of nations against perior gods to the outer abysses — so these 
 that usurpation effect a deliverance from this eternal forces of humanity, long prisoned un- 
 vicious and ruinous antagonism of Human and der night, often bloodily beat back in attempted 
 Divine Eights. By it nations were emancipa- uprisings, have at times upheaved against the 
 ted, but souls, to a gTeat extent, left enslaved, pressure of despotisms piled higher than 
 The central, universal, spiritual monarchy, JEtnas upon them; and overturning thrones 
 broke into a multitude of mimic, bastard papa- and empires and civilizations as they rose, 
 cies. whose tyranny, as it was leas logical, was in have emerged into the realms of power. 
 
 lence, in many regards, more vexations The earth has shuddered at their ruinous 
 and oppressive than that of the Imperial ^^xh. and their million-handed strength: and 
 Mother. They stimulated and tempted a Kb- Qie ^g h ones ba ve fled from their Beats in ter- 
 erty by their theories, for which they burned ror . Maddened and Minded by ages of night and 
 and beheaded men in practice. j wrong, trodden down and crushed in the name 
 
 In those parts of Europe that broke from the of God, finding the Heavens apparently 
 Papal See. despotisms over mind passed from banded with their oppressors, the Church 
 Eome to the National Capitals, to Privy Conn- conspiring with the State, they have rased 
 cils. Consistories and Star-Chambers: and na- alike against the thrones of Earth and Heaven; 
 tions were borne down under the double brandishing their broken manacles both in the 
 pressure of Church and State, now for mutual face of God and the king. 
 gain, allied in joint conspiracy against the So [t ba? oft<?n ^n ^ m ^ detI1 historv. So 
 rights of man. Against this poKtico-eoclesi- it was , si g naJ i v . ^kb. France at the close of 
 astacal -yranny. the ideas of liberty have since the last centary. Humanitv. with its con- 
 been gradually protesting, and vindicating sciousne , 5 of imprescriptible right, long borne 
 themselves; though fragments of it stillre- down% pin i one d and prisoned by Church and 
 mainain most of the States of even Protestant State in ma hgn alliance, at length upheaved 
 ■ iss^rts itself in penalties * once, against God and the Bourbons. An 
 
 temporal or spiritual, or lingers in the dogma abT5? open ed under the most brilliant civiliza- 
 >f the fright Divine of kings to govern tion in Christendom, and the pride and beauty 
 WT0D S- and glory, not only of France, but of Europe, 
 
 In some countries it has passed to tbe realms descended into it before it could be elosed. 
 purely ideal and moral : to the tyranny of Tbe millions arose in blind fury against men- 
 public opinion, or that of majorities; so loth ie | archy and religion that jointly oppressed and 
 
11 
 
 tortured them. Human rights raged against 
 Divine; Liberty against Christianity, to the in- 
 finite disaster of both. So it has been in other 
 European upheavings and revolutions, since, 
 and so it must ever be, as long as a tyrannical 
 Church leagues with a tyrannical State. The 
 emancipation of nations will become insurrec- 
 tion against God, and civil liberty impossi- 
 ble. For, as De T'ocqueville most wisely utters, 
 "nations to be free must believe." This is the 
 despair of European politics at this hour: 
 placed between the sad alternatives of devout 
 tyranny on the one hand, and impious and in- 
 fidel liberty on the other; of freedom without 
 authority, or authority without freedom; of 
 rights without duties, or duties without rights; 
 superstition consecrating despotism, or skep- 
 ticism unloosing anarchy ! It is Christian in 
 the valley ot the shadow of death— on one side 
 the bottomless infernal bog, on the other the 
 flames grinning and shrieking with goblins 
 and fiends. 
 
 Christianity seems to have been to the Euro- 
 pean mind, in the mass, an orb of perturba- 
 tion — not of illumination — swaying it as the 
 moon does the water to a tidal movement, as 
 well on the unillumined as the illumined side 
 of the earth. It has stirred the sense of right 
 in millions which it hag but imperfectly illu- 
 mined. The light of Christianity has touched 
 them as the morning twilight strikes through 
 some noisome cavern, arousing to activity all 
 the creatures of night — bats, serpents, and all 
 foul and venomous things, which more light 
 will disperse. 
 
 A stronger illumination is required for Eu- 
 ropean emancipation; an illumination that 
 shall show them that a hierarchy is not Chris- 
 tianity ; and Christ a liberator, not an oppres- 
 sor of nations. "More light!" is the cry from 
 the million, baffled and groping, amid forms 
 half -revealed or phantoms— "more light!" like 
 the despairing prayer of Ajax in the drama— 
 "Light, light, light, O gods! and in the light 
 even let me die." 
 
 So disastrous has been the antagonism of 
 these two classes of ideas, these two eternal 
 social forees in history. The arch built up on 
 one side only, has fallen on the millions below. 
 Society, driven from its fitting orbit of law and 
 liberty, has rushed upon the abysses of despot- 
 ism or anarchy. Civil liberty in perpetuity 
 has seemed impossible. 
 
 Christianity relieves this despair of history. 
 Bhe is the term of reconcilement between the 
 two. She weds human right to divine. She 
 puts these two forces of the social system in 
 adjustment and harmony. She does this by 
 giving divine origin, authentication and inau- 
 guration, to both orders of ideas— those of lib- 
 
 erty and those of authority. She derives both 
 from God; baptizes, consecrates and crowns 
 both. She does this for Human Eights, or those 
 of liberty, by express command, by implica- 
 tion and by institution. 
 
 1st. By command — expressly enjoining the 
 exercise of private judgment, the assertion of 
 individual liberty in the mightiest, most perva- 
 sive and most primordial of all interests, in the 
 sphere central to all life, thought and being — 
 that of religion. By the ordinance to the indi- 
 vidual to " prove all things," to " call no man 
 master upon earth," &c, she emancipated 
 the mind, and ultimately the State and society,. 
 2d. By implication. She established rela- 
 tions, duties and responsibilities that of neces- 
 sity implied liberty. Individual accountability 
 to God, for example, was freedom from man. 
 When she placed man before the Eternal 
 Throne for final judgment, she broke the des- 
 potism of Pontiff or Prelate, of Council, Con- 
 sistory, Synod or Star Chamber. If, according 
 to my free belief and act, I am to stand or fall 
 before the Last Judgment, let no one arrogate 
 to stand between me ana my reason and con- 
 science now, that cannot stand between me 
 and the Judge then. 
 
 3d. By institution. She has instituted a 
 society of disciples which she organizes, frames 
 and administers on the principles of liberty, 
 equality and fraternity. 
 
 Thus she first freed men in spirituals. But 
 freedom, of necessity, passed thence to the tem- 
 poral realm and to all life ; from religion to 
 politics, from ideas to institutions. This is a 
 necessity of the unity of mind, of truth and of 
 affairs. Mind is one, and carries the same 
 habits of will and the same methods and instru- 
 ments of reasoning into all departments of 
 thought and action. There cannot be in the 
 same mind a chamber of light and liberty fast 
 by one dark and clanking with chains. "We 
 must be free everywhere, or soon find we are 
 free nowhere. Truth is one, and we soon find 
 we cannot pursue her freely at all, unless we 
 do it universally. One thread grasped freely 
 soon brings up the whole web. Truth must 
 advance freely as a whole, or it cannot advance 
 far. I am stopped as surely by a tether of my 
 little finger as of my whole body. 
 
 Again, affairs are one. Spiritual and tem- 
 poral interlace and interlock, till " each seems 
 either." Legislation cannot hunt down heresy 
 without hunting down civil freedom. Ths 
 tyranny of the keys requires the tyranny of th« 
 sword, and the right of free belief will ulti- 
 mately vindicate that of free suffrage. Edicts 
 of uniformity will require edicts of ship-money. 
 A Jeffries and a Laud will not be far asunder; 
 
12 
 
 nor a Luthrr and Prince of Orange, in histori- 
 cal succession. 
 
 Thus history shows us the Lutheran Refor- 
 mation beginning as an insurrection against 
 the central spiritual despotism of Christendom, 
 and ending in the political independence of 
 the States of the European system; the Eng- i 
 lish Revolution commencing in non-conform- 1 
 ing Puritanism, and ending in the Bill of 
 Eights. Eeligious persecution, it was, that 
 forced the Netherlands to political independ- 
 ence and maritime empire. Ihe American 
 Revolution, also, it is now manifest, crossed 
 the ocean in the Mayflower. 
 
 In like manner Divine Eight, or that of au- 
 thority and government, is vindicated and in- 
 augurated by Christianity, by express precept 
 and implication. She commands and she en- 
 joins on her ministers to teach subjection to 
 'the powers that be; to Kings, Governors and 
 Magistrates, not only for wrath, but also for 
 jake." She vindicates the rights of 
 social order and the majesty of the law, recog- 
 nizing civil government as an ordinance of 
 God; resistance to which brings on itself 
 'damnation." And this under the reign of a 
 V ro. Even under him, the Imperial rule had 
 not abdicated entirely the scriptural and pro- 
 per idea of a government. It was in the main 
 a government of law, and was the only barrier 
 between the empire and anarchy. It was far 
 better than that Inferno ; and was probably 
 on the whole as good a government as the 
 world was then capable of. 
 
 But when Government departs f r om its es- 
 sential idea and becomes a power of sheer law- 
 3S and crime — not "a terror to evil doers 
 or a praise to them who do well," and bearing 
 the sword in vain, except for injustice and 
 cruelty— then it is pure diabolism, an ordi- 
 nance of Satan. And Christianity chains the 
 nations to no such tyrannies. She guards her 
 commands to submission with qualifications 
 and definitions and litnitations that protect the 
 race from eternal enslavement to Satanic pow- 
 er. She does not forbid nations fro'm reform- 
 ing or changing governments. But govern- 
 ment, true to its idea, legitimately established 
 or accepted by a nation, she arms with the au- 
 thority of Heaven. 
 
 Especially in case of a government like our 
 own; one so beneficent, so legitimate and 
 '■'clear in its great office," all metaphysical 
 questionings about the rights cf rebellion and 
 revolution become a rocious. Her 
 
 nature and claim are clear as the sun in Hea- 
 ven. And insurrection against such a Govern- 
 ment; one so founded, so constituted, and so 
 administered ; so gentle and benign ; and one 
 sheltering a prosperity so vast and so brilliant, 
 
 and garnering in itself such destinies of mil- 
 lions numberless, present and to be— yea, of the 
 race of man — insurrection against such a Gov- 
 ernment — against so much happiness, so much 
 promise and power of good, is beyond historic 
 parallel, and requires some new term in the 
 nomenclature of recorded crime. It is a con- 
 spiracy against all liberty; against christian 
 civilization ; yea. against human nature itself. 
 
 Moreover, not only does Christianity inau- 
 gurate and set in harmonious co-action, these 
 two orders of ideas, creative and organic, of 
 free society; it also mini-ters to the continuance 
 or renewal of social life, by ministering a palin- 
 genesy — a new birth— to the ideas themselves. 
 
 The genius of libei ty has not always been 
 humane, gentle, just; as regardful of duties as 
 of rights; as considerate of others' claims as 
 ready to assert her own. Arrogant, violent, 
 clannish, selfish, has often been her manifes- 
 tation in history. Through these vices her po- 
 litical creations have often perished. But 
 Christianity breathes on her the breath of a 
 new life — that of love and of sympathy with 
 universal humanity — and a love and sympathy 
 kindling to the power of a passion, because 
 communing with no abstract philosophy, but 
 with the person of a living Christ. In con- 
 sequence, these ideas will be themselves 
 mightier, and their work more enduring. For 
 liberty that is partial or selfish, and does not 
 assert herself for all men, is illogical and sui- 
 cidal; she perishes herself, through the viola- 
 tion done to humanity in the classes she does 
 not vindicate. Liberty to he immortal must 
 be universal. 
 
 The ancient Republics are styled "classic." 
 So, in a certain sense they were in liberty as 
 well as in literature, and in their general civ- 
 ilization. These were of a class only, and for 
 a class, with no sympathy for the masses. 
 "Odiprofanum vidgus, arceo." 'T hate the 
 profane rabble and keep them off;" the ut- 
 terance of the most genial of Latin lyric 
 poets is characteristic of the "classic" civi- 
 lization. 
 
 It had no sympathy with the rights 
 of man as man, and on this rock 
 it suffered shipwreck. But of our social 
 order, among the most hopeful signs, is a 
 sympathy extending down more and more 
 to the masses from all departments of cur civ- 
 ilization. Our institutions, our political econ- 
 omy, our laws and our literature, in all its di- 
 visions—Philosophy, Poetry, History and Ro- 
 mance — as also Art — mechanic and fine— are 
 all more and more of and to and for the mil- 
 lion. 
 
 By this I feel that civilization gives assur- 
 ance of its perpetuity and its approach to the 
 
l; 
 
 Better Era, in that its circle of sympathy is 
 becoming more and more commensurate with 
 all humanity. 
 
 In like manner, the sentiment of Divine 
 Eight, or of authority, which has, for the most 
 part, been too wont to bear itself haughty, in- 
 solent, oppressive and hard of heart, is, by 
 Christianity, imbued with a new li 
 made gentle, reverent, conscientious, and of 
 quick aud genial sympathy. It cannot but 
 conduce to this result that the mightiest and 
 meanest, the wearer of purple as of rags, gov- 
 ernors, lords, emperors, as well as slaves, must 
 each kneel in prayer, morning and evening; 
 must sue for mercy, living, and in the dying 
 hour, and look for doom, in the Great Judg- 
 ment, to one who, in this world, was a poor 
 man, a laborer, a carpenter, a Galilean peas- 
 ant. 
 
 Christianity also ministers to the eternal 
 youth of society, by opening perpetually a 
 fountain of self-sacrificing and self-devoting 
 benevolence in it. This it does in establishing 
 in it the Church— an association expressly or- 
 ganized on the principle of self-consecration 
 to the public good. 
 
 No society can permanently live on the 
 mere selfish principle. Organize and frame 
 constitutions never so perfectly, if left to 
 mere egoism, they will at last run down. 
 Spite of multitudinous individual acts of self- 
 devotion and of an extraordinary prevalence 
 of public spirit in the republics of antiquity, 
 they at last died of this vice of our nature — 
 a vice which Christianity aims to check and 
 expel. 
 
 Finally, Christianity ministers new life, pri- 
 mordially and elementally, to nations, by min- 
 istering new life perpetually to individual 
 souls. 
 
 Standing thus on the height of these princi- 
 ples, with the lights of history behind me, 
 thr jwing illumination on the future, T see in 
 the vast ruin around me demiurgic forces, 
 potent to restore, and to eternize what they re- 
 store. These forces are immortal ideas of the 
 human soul, authenticated, revitalized and 
 consecrated by our Christian Faith, i. c. Hu- 
 manity touched of God. These are the essen- 
 tial and primordial principles of our political 
 structure ; the vital and organic powers of our 
 institutions and of our social order; the quick- 
 ening, pervasive, plastic genius of our civiliza- 
 tion. In them our national "life-stream tracks 
 its parent lake." In them our Fathers trusted, 
 and in their name they wrought. 
 
 First, then, ©f restorative means. "The 
 heart of the children must be turned to the 
 fathers," or the land is smitten with a cur re 
 evermore. Our faith in them must be renewed 
 
 and revived and the national mii,^ 
 
 i their principles. F 
 live, must rebuild and garrison, and d 
 what we rebuild. If they 
 
 othered by fal 
 must renounce such prac;; 
 our life spirit and our present terrilile disorder 
 
 srenciee 
 antagonist and to them, it ; 
 
 ous we must eliminate from our so< ' 
 
 1 system bui h 
 elements, aud brine society to conform anew to 
 our essential life-principles. We must recast 
 our institute I our thought, 
 
 after their model and in their spirit. 
 
 This we must do; for these are arbiters in the 
 solemn National problem btfore us. They are 
 lords of our National life and destiny; indeed, 
 lords and arbiters of the future of society, < n- 
 throned over it by the Power that throi 
 stars in Heaven, whose sway we can shake off 
 no more than a sky. They belong to immortal, 
 sovereign laws, which society cannot cast 
 away pooner than tear out its own conscious- 
 ness ; and which it may not dare disregard or 
 de'.y: and whose rule will be more and more 
 absolute with the progress of time and social 
 enlightenment. 
 
 One of the most hopeful auguries for our 
 National future, is found in the fact that the 
 shock and agony of these times are tending so 
 extensively to a revival and reasssrtion of these 
 principles; that the Nation seems startled 
 anew to the consciousness that its existence is 
 bound up with the vindication and harmonious 
 maintenance of both of the classes of rights 
 above defined, wedded to Christianity— the co- 
 ordinate rule of universal liberty, and univer- 
 sal law and love. 
 
 In the second place, we must endue society 
 with a quick consciousness of the great vital 
 organic law that springs from this co-ordinate 
 rule — the resultant of the combined action of 
 the two orders of ideas above indicated. 
 
 "We need, in everv way, to make profound 
 and universal this conviction; and in every 
 way to arm the National mind with a quick 
 and. clear intelligence, that shall recognize and 
 guard ever this great central truth ordained 
 by these co-regent principles, viz : that the 
 voice of constitutional majorities pronounced 
 in legal constitutional forms, and in accord- 
 ance with constitutional provisions, is, under 
 God, the Supreme Law. The public mind 
 must be thoroughly and profoundly impressed 
 with the conviction that the absolute rule of 
 this principle, saving only the Divine Suprem- 
 acy, is the only shelter for the liberty and pros- 
 perity of as all; tie only barrier between us 
 and Chaos and Old Night. 
 
14 
 
 And again, while we aim to revitalize and 
 rear, k'orate the Ideas of the Rights of Liber- 
 ty and of Authority, and to diffuse and deepen 
 tlie conviction of the necessity of their joint 
 sovereignly; especially we must strive also 
 to imbue them with a Christian intelligence 
 and a Christian spirit; and to draw them more 
 and more into communion and sympathy with 
 Jesus Christ. So shall we render them both 
 more commanding and more beneficent. So 
 soriety will be stronger and purer, and human- 
 ity more God-like and more free. 
 
 In the name and by the force and model of 
 these principles of human and Divine right, 
 we in nst rebuild and reanimate the Nation, 
 or our nationality and civilization must both 
 perish. To iernore or violate them in our social 
 and political reconstruction, were as infatuated 
 asd impracticable as to essay some splendid 
 achievement of architecture, discarding or de- 
 fying the law of gravitation. "We but build for 
 ruin. We must also see to it that we guard 
 them hy constant, consistent practice; that we 
 render them constantly, true and universal 
 loyalty; that we do not paralyze or slay them 
 by exceptional and class limitations. A prin- 
 ciple must be sovereign, or soon it is nothing. 
 Its authority perishes in presence of constant 
 or frequent violation in practice. 
 
 We must, therefore remove any such offence 
 or discrepancy from our social or political sys- 
 tem or action. We must enforce consistency, 
 simplicity, unity and harmony in theory and 
 practice, or else we must perish by paralysis or 
 explosion. We must cease to fear our own 
 principles. Having embraced and inaugu- 
 rated them, we must trust them. Faith is our 
 safety. A half-way obedience ruins all. Of 
 the opposite course, of attempting to combine 
 together principles and practice irrepressibly 
 repugnant, this American Nation has made 
 trial enough, and that under conditions the 
 most favorable conceivable, for success. The 
 result is seen in our present disaster, showing 
 the utter and hopeless futility of our attempt, 
 and the terrible strength of those ideas which 
 we at first invoked to preside over our national 
 life, and which we have since attempted to re- 
 press or limit. 
 
 We have thought to incorporate in our social 
 and civil order with eternal rights— human 
 and divine— a vast wrong most audaciously 
 and flagrantly violative of both. We have 
 thought to do this — to bind up the torch 
 and magazine together — and that with the 
 p,elf-cr of the nineteenth century 
 
 burning and kindling upon it. As well lock 
 up the earthquake or muzzle the volcano. 
 
 The explosion has filled land and seas with 
 our ruin. We have made a signal experiment 
 
 of the irrepressible forces of the human mind 
 and of the christian faith, fast bound in our po- 
 litical system by constitutional clamp and rivet 
 with a crime they eternally abhor. And here, 
 fellow-citizens, let us speak freely. It is time 
 to do so as in a question of National Life. We 
 are wont to speak of our National History as 
 a grand experiment of liberty, of free institu- 
 tions. It is a grand experiment of slavery — 
 the grandest, the mest awful one the world 
 ever saw. It has been a trial, not of the 
 power of freedom to live in singleness and su- 
 premacy, but of the power of liberty and 
 slavery to live in the same constitution and 
 society; of gunpowder and fire t) dwell to- 
 gether. Now, if slavery, with all the strength 
 and brilliancy of our civilization and empire 
 to sustain it ; with the prestige of hoary time 
 and place and power; the guarantees of our 
 Constitution to defend it; if, entrenched in po- 
 litical economy, in fashion, in politics, finance 
 and religion, it still could not abide the spirit 
 of liberty and Christianity yet living among us, 
 how and where can it live unless Christianity 
 and humanity be stifled? 
 
 We have simply attempted an impossibility 
 in the nature of things; have attempted to 
 combine principles,utterly,immortally, invinci- 
 bly and explosively Tepugnant. A Government 
 utterly dark and despotic may live awhile by 
 evil consistency. So one purely light and free, 
 may live immortally with the life of humanity 
 and of Christianity. But one attempting to 
 combine liberty and slavery together, ties up 
 the tempest in its bosom. An explosion is 
 certain as a law of nature ; and the danger and 
 force of such explosion must increase with 
 progressive civilization and Christianity, as 
 such progress will make antagonist principles 
 more quickly conscious of each other's pres- 
 ence and mutual antagonism. Eternal unrest, 
 anarchy and war must be the consequence, 
 till one or the other is extinguished. So that 
 if our experiment has failed in the past, it is 
 still more hopeless in the future. 
 
 If in these circumstances it has produced an 
 upheaving that has well nigh destroyed us, it 
 is proof,not of the feebleness but of the strength 
 of our vital ideas, and of the inability of our 
 institutions to endure a strain which no mor- 
 tal strength could bear; that there are forces 
 in the moral world mightier than the force and 
 cunning of man, resisting which, institutions, 
 constitutions and empires must go down. This 
 fact is no disparagement of free institutions, any 
 more than their impotency to bind up the laws 
 of gravitation, and stay the earth in her orbit. 
 It is not the failure of freedom, but the failure 
 of slavery, which we witness. 
 
15 
 
 It is no failure of free institutions, but the 
 eternal failure of attempting to combine them 
 with slavery in the same political system. This 
 failure was signal, final, conclusive. It is hardly 
 possible to conceive of a case in which slavery 
 could enter with greater advantages upon a trial 
 of its ability to live in compact or companionship 
 with the principles of a democratic govern- 
 ment, or with the ideas of modern christian 
 civilization. The strength of its position 
 among us can hardly be over-estimated. Com- 
 merce, finance, political power, governmental 
 place and patronage, time-consecrated usage 
 and opinion, habit intertwined with manners, 
 modes of thought and policy, and all domestic 
 life, ecclesiastic position and sanction ; consti- 
 tutional guaranty and legislative compromise; 
 a bold, brilliant, gifted championship — the 
 strength of all these was hers. 
 
 To all these must be added, social amenities 
 and graces, a generosity and refinement of 
 class culture and sentiment that often invest 
 with a charm an aristocratic order, and spread 
 a superficial brilliancy over popular degrada- 
 tion and decay. To these we are grateful to 
 join the presence of many manly and christian 
 excellencies, that, by the force of favoring na- 
 ture and culture, often suboist in connection 
 with vicious and wrongful institutions, in mul- 
 titudes conscious of no complicity of wrong, 
 but which excellencies and virtues such insti- 
 tutions are wont to claim as their own product. 
 Armed with all these, moreover, through her 
 grasp upon our National Constitution, she 
 wielded all the force of our empire and the 
 energy of our free and christian civilization for 
 repression at home, and for a shield against 
 the public opinion of the world. 
 
 Thus intrenched, nothing can exceed the 
 haughty confidence, the arrogancy of strength 
 with which she trampled on rights — human 
 and divine — and sent forth her defiant 
 challenge to the genius of American liberty 
 and the moral sentiment of mankind. She 
 disdained to plead at the bar of modern civili- 
 zation. She thought to turn back the courses 
 of history, and to lead captive its ruling ideas. 
 She opened not her prison doors at the behests 
 of any rights of man or of God. She endured 
 no arbitration of earth or Heaven between her 
 and her victims. 'They are mine," was her 
 utterance, "and no power may take them out 
 of my hands. I alio w no sanctuary for them. 
 I drag them alike from the temples of justice 
 and the Church of God. I scoff at your cant 
 of philanthropy, your glittering generalities of 
 liberty, your vapid platitudes of lights, 
 your fanatical drivel of humanity. My law is 
 might, and the strength of my right arm. I 
 forbid all question of myself. I lock up the 
 
 lips of the eloquent and the piou.«. I shut up 
 the school. I muzzle the press. I repel popu- 
 lar enlightenment. 1 invoke the power of 
 darkness. I lead the forces of Freedom and 
 Christianity themselves captive in my train." 
 ! The Highest heard — heard also the wail from 
 the deeps; and He who is no respecter of per- 
 sons, pitied the hapless and hopeless millions 
 in the prison-house of ages. He touched and 
 commissioned in their behalf the immortal 
 forces of history — the imperishable ideas of 
 humanity — ever liviug in the heart of the mil- 
 lions. They arose to the rescue and plead the 
 cause of the victims. The Dark Power against 
 which they rose in moral warfare, stung, mad- 
 dened by assaults it could not avert or re- 
 pel, in rage at the impalpable and immortal 
 assailants, struck in blind fury at the Union 
 I itself— that Union at once her shield and in- 
 strument. The stroke broke open the closures 
 i of her dungeon-house. 
 
 j It is the hate and dread of immortal ideas, 
 ; and of their utterance through spt-ech and the 
 I press, and through public opinion and Biii- 
 : rage, that has led Slavery to btrike at the 
 I file of the country. She thereby con- 
 ! fesses her inability to live with free 
 thought and free speech. Therefore she 
 i has broken asunder the Blessed Seals of 
 Peace, let loose desolation and murder and 
 massacre on the land, and turned our magnifi- 
 cent prosperity into the Shadow of Death. 
 
 And now that Slavery has with her own 
 hand broken the pact that protected her, and 
 has forfeited her guaranty of the Constitution, 
 and confessed herself an immortal and im- 
 placable enemy of our vital principles, shall 
 we, in the work of reconstruction, restore and 
 reinstate her? Shall we reincorporate the 
 plague into our system? Shall we take up the 
 blazing timbers, now scattered in the explosion 
 of public ruin, and attempt to rebuild them 
 into the National Structure? If so, we but la- 
 bor in the very fire. We challenge fate. We 
 build conflagration, explosion, ruin, into our 
 architecture. A mightier agony, a deadlier 
 fall, a deeper abyss, a ruin still more ruinous, 
 awaits us in the future. 
 
 Slavery — the sighs from her vast prison house 
 of past ages, swollen with the rage 
 and agony of this civil war, following her 
 like a tempest — now stands before us, 
 the confessed enemy of our national life — 
 reaching hands for readmittance across the 
 gulf of public rum, and over the gravt-s of half 
 a generation. Shall we clasp those hands 
 again, reeking with the blood of a million 
 of our countrymen? A mighty army of mel- 
 ancholy, heroic shadows, forbid. 
 
16 
 
 Shall we again build up the torch and the 
 magazine together, and hope to bind up explo- 
 sion? We attempt an impossibility. We are 
 in conflict with eternal and re.-istless forces. 
 We might sooner wrestle with the stars in 
 their courses. We grapple with Omnipotence. 
 
 Let us build anew, and purely of Tiuih, 
 Bight, and of Eternal Ideas. Let us 1T0 it for 
 the sake of the human race Their hope is gar- 
 nered in our trial. If that fails, if freedom 
 stricken down with us, by our adhesion to 
 slavery, perishes on this continent, then the 
 shadow is turned back on the dial-plat of 
 time for a gloomy cycle. The hopes of millions 
 in other lands— long looking to us— become, for 
 ages, a flat despair. 
 
 Let us do this for the sake of Peace— beauti- 
 ful, blessed Peace! I long for peace. But I 
 know we cannot have it while incorporating 
 elements immortally repugDant, into our sys- 
 tem, political and social. We cannot have 
 peace while infolding a crime that draws on 
 ns the malediction of mankind and the curse 
 of Heaven; whil^ at war with the imperisha- 
 ble instincts of humanity and the sentiments 
 of religion. With these eterr.al forces not at 
 rest, all peace is a mockery and impossibility. 
 For the sake of Peace, then, let us have sim- 
 plicity in our reconstruction and reorganiza- 
 tion. 
 
 Let us eliminate from our social and politi- 
 cal life the element that drives us upon the 
 hopeless conflict. Let us build with the eter- 
 nal ideas of Right as our agents and standard. 
 Let us do this, I repeat, for the sake of Peace. 
 We want peace, not so much with rebels, but 
 peace with Humanity, with Christianity, with 
 the genius of Liberty and Law; with the im- 
 mortal forces of the human soul, with the civi- 
 lization of Christendom and Spirit oi the Age; 
 and with the government of God. Not in ac- 
 cordance with these, all peace is a mockery; it 
 will be endless agony and fever. In accord 
 with them, we shall have a peace garrisoned 
 by the angels of Christianity and the human 
 soul. The powers of civilization will be ap- 
 peased; the long agitation will cease, and the 
 Nemesis of an oppressed race will cease to 
 wander through our empire. Otherwise, 
 peace, spite of negotiations and reconstruc- 
 tions, is hopeless, except over the grave of the 
 nation, or of civilization itself. 
 
 Let us do this for the sake of the martyrs of 
 this war. When we think again to wed 
 American Liberty to American Slavery, a mil- 
 lion of foims start from their bloody graves to 
 the bans. "Give us," they cry, "our 
 guerdon— the reward of our toil and pains and 
 blood ; give us a Republic, all free— of consti- 
 tutional liberty, not constitutional slavery. 
 
 For this — for this we have given freely youth 
 and hope, sweet home, the gladness of this fair 
 world, and the joy to behold the sun. O! let 
 it not be in vain." 
 
 Refuse to hear that cry, and it becomes a 
 mighty despair — wailing, like the night- wind 
 from the melancholy climes of the South, the 
 diige of National Honor, Liberty, Life, and 
 heroic glories, lost evermore. Let us hear 
 their cry and give them their guerdon. On 
 their heroic graves let us build an arch of Lib- 
 erty and Law; of Rights — Human and Di- 
 vine — every explosive and alien element re- 
 moved; an Arch Triumphal, under which coin- 
 ing free nations may march on to new achieve- 
 ment and glory. 
 
 The martyrs of the Republic rest in stone- 
 less, nameless graves. They sleep lone and 
 afar. No footsteps of love and sorrow may 
 visit thir place of rest; no sister's eye may 
 drop a tear over their repose. In grass-gi own 
 tumuli of multitudinous and promiscuous sep- 
 ulture, or shrouded in autumn haves in the 
 lone forest dell, in the dank everglade, or the 
 cypress gloom, or where the orange groves 
 sigh over the uureturning brave; along 
 many a sad stream, rushing purple to the 
 Southern Gulf, or those which roll the 
 forms of heroes to the Atlantic main; 
 in high mountain solitudes, or in the depths 
 of ocean, they sleep until the resurrection 
 morn. 
 
 Nature guards the mystery of their repose, 
 the solemn winds breathe of it to forest and 
 ocean ; the lone stars of night look down upon 
 them, and morn and even drop their dewy 
 tears. But, from the knowledge of living men, 
 not only their forms, but their graves are hid 
 forevermore. Their being fades into the vast and 
 shadowy past; their dust blends with the air 
 and earth and flood, and mingles with uni- 
 versal nature. Blessed peace shall come again 
 to deck these climes with beauty; but for our 
 martyred heroes it will find no monument, no 
 tomb. 
 
 Let us build them more than Pyramid, or 
 Mausoleum, or Westminster — a temple of 
 Living Liberty, overarching a continent, 
 where the spirits of the true, the loved, the 
 gifted, the brave, may come back and walk 
 with the memories of holy and heroic souls of 
 all time, and with the genius of American 
 liberty through the ages. So it best fits. 
 Be this great Continental Republic their mon- 
 ument as it is their grave; their Temple, where 
 the battle-hymn of heroes, and the sweet 
 psalm of the Saints shall mingle with the 
 clank of no chain, the sigh of no slave. 
 
 Let us build for eternal time. 
 
IT 
 
 So built, our structure shall stand, guarded 
 for aye, as never was Eden by "limitary 
 cberub," by the immortal forces of the human 
 soul and the Christian Faith; yea, o'erwatched 
 perpetually by the Sabbaoth of God. So con- 
 stituted and guarded, it shall have no principle 
 of decay. It shall be in accord with eternal 
 powers. It shall stand through earth's better 
 era. With God's favor it shall defy the cor- 
 rosions of time. Its starry symbol, now torn of 
 the battle-storm, and beset with treason and 
 
 hate and the powers of darkness, floating aloft 
 far above their impotent rage, shall stream on 
 and on, in the skies of beautiful peace beyond, 
 till the archetypal constellations shall 
 selves fall from Heaven. And thus our p< !iti- 
 cal structure — the House of Libert v and Law 
 and Love— shall abide, till its jslorj ol 
 and spire and dome shall blend with the 
 thyst and chrysolite and sapphire ol fch 
 Jerusalem. 
 
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