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 A SERMON 
 
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 By JOSEPH P. THOMPSON, D D 
 
 L. 8. Harrison, £oo7c ^ Job (Printer 
 
 80 & 82 DUANE STREET. 
 
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[published by request.] 
 
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 ?a JOSEPH P. THOMPSON, D. D 
 
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 80 & 82 DUANE STREET. 
 1863. 
 

SERMON, 
 
 Text. — " Let the saints be joyful iu glory : let them sing aloud upon their 
 beds. Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and a two-edged 
 sword in their hand ; to execute vengeance upon the heathen, and 
 punishments upon the people." — Ps. 149 : 5-8. 
 
 Undisturbed repose, joyful confidence, devout gratitude, 
 manly courage, unflinching resolve, should characterise 
 the people of God, amid those great commotions that make 
 bare His arm and vindicate His righteousness. The 
 psalm is assigned to the time of Nehemiah, when the 
 Jews, restored from captivity, rebuilt their capital in face 
 of the enemy, working sword in band, and singing halle- 
 lujahs. The contrast of this reviving of national life and 
 spirit with their previous despondency, runs by suggestion 
 through every strophe of the psalm. Let those who had 
 hung their harp upon the willows, now " sing unto the 
 Lord a new song ;" let the children of Zion, who wept 
 when they remembered her beside the rivers of Babylon, 
 again " be joyful in their king ;" let those who gave their 
 nights to lamentations, " now sing aloud upon their beds.' 
 
For two generations they had been cowed by a haughty, 
 insolent foe ; now, their nationality was restored, the 
 martial spirit was revived, and victory was assured by 
 their cause and by the promise of God. " They built the 
 wall, every man with a weapon in his hand," and with 
 sentinels and trumpeters posted to give the alarm of 
 an invasion. "When Sanballat, and Tobiah, and the 
 Arabians, and the Ammonites, and the Ashdodites, heard 
 that the walls of Jerusalem were going up, and that the 
 breaches began to be stopped, then they were very wroth, 
 and conspired all of them together to come and to tight 
 against Jerusalem, and to hinder it : Nevertheless, we 
 made our prayer unto our God, and set a watch against 
 them day and night. And Nehemiah said to the nobles, 
 and to the rulers, and to the rest of the people, 'Be not ye 
 afraid of them ; remember the Lord which is great and 
 terrible, and fight for your brethren, your sons, and your 
 daughters, your wives, and your houses.' And the builders, 
 ever} 7 one had his sword girded by his side, and sobuilded." 
 "When the wall was finished, a day of thanksgiving was 
 observed by a grand military procession, the priests and 
 Levites leading, singers and trumpeters 1 leading each 
 column, and all the people marshaled in the ranks, " with 
 the high praises of God in their mouth, and a two-edged 
 sword in their hand." 
 
 The animus of the psalm is this blending of the martial 
 spirit with the spirit of devotion ; the saints trusting, 
 hoping, rejoicing in God, while arrayed for the conflict 
 with his enemies ; the saints girding themselves for battle, 
 with the praises of God upon their lips — ready to sing or 
 
to fight under the inspiration of His cause, under the lead 
 of His providence. As Dr. Watts has paraphrased it — 
 
 Then His high praise shall fill their tongons, 
 Their hands shall wield the sword ; 
 And vengeance shall attend their songs— 
 The vengeance of the Lord. 
 
 The very fervor and intensity of their religious devotion 
 tires their hearts and nerves their hands for the defense of 
 what God has given them in trust for his kingdom and 
 for mankind. They sing a hallelujah war song, and keep 
 Thanksgiving under arms. 
 
 By a day of thanksgiving in this time of war, we are 
 not simply honoring a usage of the days of peace, nor 
 keeping up the remembrance of departed blessings ; nor 
 are we driven to seek such grounds of thanksgiving as 
 remain, notwithstanding the war — an abundant harvest, 
 public health, domestic security, and the general comfort 
 and order of societv. If we were at war with some foreign 
 power upon a question of comity or of commerce, a war 
 involving no vital principle, and evoking no moral senti- 
 ment, having no justifying motive or worthy aim, a war 
 which was neither a virtue nor a necessity, a war brought 
 on by the ambition or the folty of rulers, or the jealousies 
 and passions of races ; — if we were in a war which we were 
 compelled to regard as needless, wasteful and even wicked ; 
 then, while deploring the war itself as only an evil and a 
 calamity, we might well seek occasion for thanksgiving in 
 such mercies as would remain to mitigate the judgment. 
 But we are not called to-dav to seek some offset to 
 
6 
 
 calamity as matter for gratitude ; to eke out thanksgivings 
 by such remnants of blessings as the war has spared to us ; 
 to limit our praises to such material as compensations and 
 contrasts could furnish ; to consider that even in a state of 
 war, and in spite of it, we have enough of good left us to 
 turn the scale for a day of thanksgiving rather than a day 
 of fasting; no, while we have to-day in our personal. 
 social and public condition, in respect to homes, health, 
 comfort, plenty, outward material good, as much upon the 
 whole to be thankful for as ever in the palmiest days of 
 peace — we have, also, in and through the war itself, grounds 
 of thanksgiving higher than peace has ever furnished. 
 Never, since the establishing of our national independence, 
 had the people of God in this nation such cause of devout 
 exultation, of calm assurance, of lofty hope, of heroic trust, 
 as in these days through which we are passing. It is a 
 time for the saints to " look up and lift up their heads, 
 knowing that the kingdom. of God is nigh at hand." It is 
 a day for the Hallelujah Psalm. " Let the children of 
 Zion be joyful in their king. For the Lord taketh pleas- . 
 ure in his people : he will beautify the meek with salva- 
 tion. Let the saints be joyful in glory : let them sing 
 aloud upon their beds. Let the high praises of God be in 
 their mouth, and a two-edged sword in their hand." 
 
 I. — Note first, as matter of thanksgiving, the grand and 
 commanding exhibition this war is making of the direct 
 action of God's providential government upon human 
 affairs. The people of God are identified in thought, feel- 
 ing, desire, interest, expectation, with the Kingdom of 
 
God, its manifestation in power, its recognition among men, 
 its consummation in glory ; they believe in that kingdom ; 
 they accept it as a reality; they approve its principles; 
 they own its authority ; they rejoice in its supremacy. To 
 that kingdom they give their homage, their substance, 
 their endeavors, praying continually, " Thy kingdom 
 come, Thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven."' 
 The true child of God can have no interest apart from 
 this ; no desire that does not spring from and center in the 
 kingdom and the glory of God. Now, this kingdom, while 
 in its essence and life it is inner and spiritual — the alle- 
 giance of the inmost heart to the throne of an invisible 
 Sovereign — is furthered and developed by outward 
 methods of Providence ; and the devout mind believes that 
 in, through, or over all events, God is guiding, working, 
 controlling, for his kingdom of truth and holiness. To 
 such a mind nothing is more painful than the general dis- 
 regard of God in the thoughts and doings of men. " The 
 wicked through the pride of his countenance will not seek 
 after God. God is not in all his thoughts : Thy judgments 
 are far above out of his sight.'' His god is a cloud divin- 
 ity, a metaphysical abstraction, a mechanical law, that has 
 no living personal concern in the affairs of men. There- 
 fore, as he goes on in his deceit and fraud, his mischief and 
 vanity, his injustice and oppression, he chuckles over his 
 success, saying, "God hath forgotten ; He hideth his face ; 
 He will never see it." This profane, reckless disregard of 
 God, this abounding, insolent atheism, the devout heart 
 mourns over as for wounds inflicted upon a father. "Rivers 
 of waters run down mine eyes, because they keep not Thy 
 law" 
 
8 
 
 And this pain and grief at man's disregard of God are 
 aggravated by God's seeming disregard of human wicked- 
 ness ; by the absence of striking, convincing marks of God's 
 sovereignity. "Why standest thou afar off, O Lord, why 
 hidest thou thyself in times of trouble? My tears have been 
 my meat day and night, while they continually say unto 
 me, Where is thy God ?" When, therefore, after a long in- 
 terval of atheistic folly and wickedness, when men have 
 grown bold in sin, and the name and government of God 
 have either fallen into derision or have passed out of mind, 
 there comes of a sudden some turn in human affairs that 
 startles men with the conviction that there is a Higher 
 Power, seeing, ruling, judging — and there passes over the 
 gay, the giddy, the godless, an awe of this invisible Pres- 
 ence — then the saints who in secret places have been mourn- 
 ing and sighing for the obscured and disregarded kingdom, 
 sino- aloud in their beds and praise God in the congrega- 
 tion. 
 
 Now, never in all history, has there been a more marked 
 and impressive manifestation of a divine Providence in 
 human affairs, than in the origin and the events of this war. 
 I need not argue this ; hardly need I instance it. For this 
 is the one phenomenon that overtops all others in the 
 history of the past two years, and that has come to be so 
 dominant in everything that we are watching for it at 
 every turn. From the day when the bombardment of 
 Sumter roused the North as one man, to the day when 
 the divisions of the North at the polls aroused the Govern 
 ment and the Army to new life and vigor ; from the day 
 when the slaveholders planned secession and rebellion to 
 
9 
 
 [deserve their darling institution, to the day when that re- 
 bellion called forth the proclamation giving freedom to all 
 slaves throughout its area; from the day when the Trent 
 aroused Great Britain to a frenzy of retaliation, to the day 
 when the Monitor cooled her below even the line of medi- 
 ation ; through all the successive acts, the gains and losses, 
 the victories and reverses of this strange drama of tire and 
 blood, we have felt, at every rising of the curtain, the aw- 
 ful Presence that we could not see nor hear, could not 
 measure nor shun. " Gentlemen," said a political orator, 
 whose party life had been identified with Southern in- 
 terests, "you know I never cared a for the negro, and 
 
 / don't care for him now ; but, it is pretty evident that 
 Providence does ; and if we wish to win, we must get on 
 the side of Providence." Thus, even the irreligious and 
 profane do homage to that divine assurance : " For the op- 
 pression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy, now 
 will I arise saith the Lord. T will set him in safety from 
 him that puffeth at him.' 1 
 
 The providence of God in our affairs has* been as marked 
 in our disasters as in our successes, in our defeats as in 
 our deliverances, in the dilatoriness of Government as in 
 its decision, in the mystifying inaction of our Generals as 
 in their most brilliant achievements. If the testimony of 
 returned prisoners and of our enemies is to be credited, not 
 a battle have we lost that we might not have won ; not a 
 movement has failed that might not have succeeded — if 
 certain facts had been known, if certain steps had been 
 taken. But, then, we should have swollen with pride, have 
 o-loried in our wisdom and our strength, have boasted the 
 
10 
 
 power of our institutions, the energy of our race, the supe- 
 riority of our Government ; we should have made idols of 
 our Rulers and Generals, and have gone on headlong in the 
 career of material greatness, regardless of justice and of 
 the cries of the oppressed. But the Lord meant it not so ; 
 and, therefore, neither the plans of political conventions 
 nor of peace congresses were able to avert the war ; nor was 
 the wisdom of rulers, the strategy of generals, the valor of 
 soldiers able to ensure victory. The Prince de Joinville, 
 with the sagacity of a true soldier, has discerned our weak- 
 nesses, and, with the fidelity of a true friend, has pointed 
 out our mistakes. At the outset, he says, " the North felt 
 itself the stronger, and saw no reason for troubling itself 
 prematurely. Moreover, in the last resort, the North 
 counted on the several hundred thousand Volunteers set 
 down in the almanacs as representing the military force of 
 the country, and supposed by the popular mind to be ir- 
 resistible. But after Bull Run there was no room left for 
 illusion. Ilumilation had opened all men's eyes. With 
 the superiorit}* t of population and wealth, the right and 
 legality of the question on their side, the North was com- 
 pelled to the pain of wounded self-love. A great war was 
 before the country.'''' A mysterious Power was shaping 
 movements and measures by His will ; and so politicians, 
 rulers, generals, people, have been more and more con- 
 founded, and the war has gone on enlarging its proportions, 
 multiplying its perplexities; yet,, always giving clearer 
 shape and prominence to its real issues, until all men feel 
 the impotence of human wisdom to grasp it, of human 
 power to control it, and the men of faith and prayer stand 
 
11 
 
 still to see the salvation of God. Let God be exalted, 
 though who will go down ; " let God be true, though every 
 man a liar." 
 
 This demonstration of a direct Providence in human 
 affairs came just when the age and the country had most 
 need of it ; when the nation was in clanger of that intoxi- 
 cation of material empire that lured Rome to destruction — 
 an intoxication that is fatal alike under all civilizations, 
 ancient or modern. Pagan or Christian. It came when the 
 positivism of Comte and the social laws of Buckle were 
 asserting themselves as the true theory of society, and the 
 philosophers of Nature and of Progress were relegating 
 the Deity to some obscure unknown — to some forgotten 
 Past. Like the plagues of Egypt to the haughty and 
 stubborn king, like the confounding of tongues to the au- 
 dacious builders of Babel, like the handwriting on the 
 wall to the impious revelers at Shushan, has been this 
 interposition of divine Power; baffling all calculation, 
 defeating every hope, abasing all pride, crossing every 
 plan, turning wisdom into foolishness, power into weak- 
 ness, boasting into contempt, and making wickedness in 
 its fury and hate do the work of righteous retribution 
 against itself. Men speak no more of fate, of chance, of 
 ,; the logic of events", of proximate causes, of the laws of 
 development, of manifest destiny : but, as in the Arab 
 legend, when the vases of gold and amber are broken and 
 their treasures spilled, and only the poor vessel of clay 
 remains, ther find in this the name of God ! This is that 
 deliverance and triumph of the children of faith that was 
 foretold by Esaias, the Prophet : " And it shall be said in 
 
13 
 
 that day, Lo ! this is our God ; we have waited for Him, 
 and lie will save us : this is the Lord : we have waited for 
 Him, we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation." 
 
 II. — There is cause for thanksgiving in the ascendancy 
 the war has given to moral and spiritual ideas over 
 material interests. I use the terms moral and spiritual 
 in no technical sense of philosophy or theology, but to 
 describe that which pertains to man's higher nature in 
 distinction from mere material interests, whether personal 
 or public. With ns, as a nation, material interests had 
 become so engrossing, that we were known throughout 
 Christendom as worshippers of the Dollar. The grand 
 scale of our physical geography, our mountains, coasts, 
 lakes, rivers; the rapid increase of our population, and with 
 this, of agriculture, manufactures, commerce and all in- 
 dustrial arts ; the wealth of our mines, forests, streams ; the 
 amplitude of our area on the one hand and of our resources 
 on the other, had bewildered us with the idea that physi- 
 cal development was national success. We worshipped 
 the Census. We measured corn fields by the square mile 
 and railroads by parallels of latitude. The genius of 
 America bestrode a steam plough to furrow her path of 
 eonquest to the Rocky Mountains. But a nation cannot 
 live by bread alone. Materialization is in the end destruc- 
 tive of progress. It is of the earth earthy. That which 
 is born of the flesh is flesh ; dust to dust, ashes to ashes, 
 earth to earth. The last discovery at Pompeii is a touch- 
 ing comment upon this inevitable law. In an extreme 
 corner of the inner room of a house, as if they had crouched 
 there for protection from the storm of hot ashes without, 
 
13 
 
 lay the skeletons of five persons — one apparently a mother, 
 with her infant at her side. There were armlets or brace- 
 lets around these fleshless bones, and near by lay what 
 were evidently the remains of a purse, its contents still to 
 to be counted in a little heap of silver Roman coins. 80 
 perished that most luxurious, sensuous, civilization ; its 
 life, its wealth, its adornments,- mingled in one common 
 
 dust, and nothing left to witness for its identity but the 
 
 p 
 skeleton/ impressions of its decay. 
 
 A little before the catastrophe at Pompeii, Paul landed 
 at the quay of Puteoli, and passed, almost unnoticed, 
 despised Jewish prisoner oft his way to a felon's prison 
 and a felon's death at Pome. But the moral ideas that 
 Paul promulgated from his very prison against the vices 
 and crimes of that sensual and atheistic age, live as an 
 ever-growing power in society, renovated and Christianized. 
 When Count de Gasperin, twenty years ago, stood up in 
 the French Chambers to urge the final abolition of slavery, 
 he said : " Gentlemen, let us not lower this discussion ; 
 you have talked of commerce, of navigation, of the pro- 
 ducts of the colonies ; but, above all these material inter- 
 ests, there is one greater question — the greatest that can 
 be brought to our notice — a question of civilization and 
 of liberty. Of all illusions the most sad and foolish is that 
 which makes the future of a country and its development 
 consist in material interests. I believe that the smallest, 
 idea, the least particle of genuine principle, will have 
 more influence upon the destinies and the progress of this 
 country, than all the railroads you have voted during this 
 session. I summon France to her true honor and glory ; 
 
14 
 
 to raise herself to the sublime attitude of doing right ; to 
 perform a great duty, to discharge a great debt, to repair 
 a great crime; this, this is the essential honor and ad 
 vancement of the nation." Who does not feel the truth 
 and the force of such a plea ? Yes, we answer, whatever 
 elevates a people in the moral and the spiritual, whatever 
 sentiments of honor, whatever deeds of virtue mark their 
 history — this is a mure vital growth, a more sura develop- 
 ment, than any increase of population, of territory, of ma- 
 terial resources, of political dominion, of military strength. 
 Victor Hugo, from quite another stand-point in moral phi- 
 losophy, satirizing this steam'epoch, of " which a tea kettle 
 contains the power," says with his inimitable antithesis : 
 " This period will pass away, it is already passing away ; 
 we are beginning to understand that, if there may be force 
 in a boiler, there can be power only in a brain — that what 
 leads and controls the world, is not locomotives, but ideas. 
 Harness the locomotives to the ideas — that is well ; but do 
 not take the horse for the horseman"; above all do not 
 imitate the Orleans King of J 830, in "making of the pet- 
 tiness of realities an obstacle to the immensity of ideas." 
 See, now, how the war has heaved up into shape and 
 view the great ideas that underlie our national life; even 
 as the fires and earthquakes of the inner globe have 
 heaved up the everlasting granite for its pillars. 
 
 Government. — We hardly knew the word before the 
 war. We had politicians, parties, administrations, but that 
 impalpable entity called Government, that sublime moral 
 idea that stands for order, for justice, for protection, for 
 
15 
 
 the collective rights, liberties, welfare of the whole — how 
 little have we realized of this ! Hitherto, the political ad- 
 ministration at Washington has been regarded by one 
 party as a tool to be used for its own aggrandizement, and 
 by another as a rival to be overthrown at the next election. 
 And so public policy has vibrated between the antagonisms 
 of parties, and the State has been a mere convenience for 
 the distribution of office and patronage. Xow, men feel 
 that banks, ships, stocks, railroads, houses, merchandise, 
 lands, are nothing without a Government that can rise 
 above both the interest of party and the hostility of fac- 
 tion, and maintain and enforce the laws in its own right 
 From the seething chaos of rebellion the granite pillars of 
 Government are emerging, to bear up society itself above 
 the flood. 
 
 Patriotism. — That intangible feeling that binds a man to 
 his country as to a mother ; a something that we cannot 
 analyze into mere attachment to the soil, the birth-place, 
 the associations and institutions of our native land; that 
 we cannot define by any set phrase of speech ; that we can- 
 not inculcate by any formulas of philosophy ; that mys- 
 terious chord that ties us tD a nation as to our other soul- 
 how little of a living power has this sentiment been among 
 us. We have had pride, vanity, boasting, self-conscious- 
 ness, self-sufficiency enough — but little patriotism. 
 
 For one, I have known what it was to be proud of the 
 institutions of my country — its free ballot, free press, free 
 trade, free churches, free schools ; its successful harmonizing 
 of the independence of the individual with the solidarity 
 
16 
 
 of right and privilege for the many — when I have com- 
 pared its political and social state with that of other lands. 
 I have known what it was to be proud of the flag of mv 
 country, when I have seen it defy Austria in the harbor of 
 Smyrna,* and command the respect of Turk and Arab on 
 the Nile and in the Desert. But when, yesterday, a me- 
 chanic humbly toiling for his daily bread, said to me, " I 
 have sent my six sons to the war ; some of them have been 
 in eleven battles, but thank God they're all safe; and if it 
 is necessary, to save the country, I will give all my earn- 
 ings and then go myself" — I felt another and a deeper chord 
 vibrate for my country and her cause than was ever 
 stirred by her pride or fame abroad. AVho does not feel 
 himself the richer, manlier, nobler, for the touch of such n 
 sentiment ? 
 
 Liberty. — What a new birth, a new baptism, has liberty 
 received in the nation that boasted freedom as its birth- 
 right ! Yes, we have had liberty — in our school histories, 
 in Fourth of July orations, in Buncombe speeches, a thing 
 of constitutions and traditions; but, when the nation 
 declared at the polls that its Constitution, its territory, its 
 Government should not be used for the extension and sup- 
 port of slavery, and, after the slave power defied the peo- 
 ple's verdict by the sword, backed up its decision by a 
 million men in arms, there was a realization of the sublime 
 idea of liberty that even the Declaration of Independence 
 fails to express. It is worth all it costs to feel that thrill 
 of a great idea in this mammon-seeking age. These 
 
 • The author happened to be at Smyrna during the excitement of the Kozsta 
 case. 
 
17 
 
 .rand, impalpable, spiritual entities-Government Patriot- 
 L Liberty-are felt to be the true interests of society, 
 worth more than treasure, more than business, more tban 
 blood. 
 
 Ill —We should be grateful that the war has so far per- 
 fected the moral unity and fraternity of the Nation. In- 
 deed, it might almost be said that the war has created us 
 , Nation ; it ha* at least brought us to the conscousness 
 of nationality. Before the war we were States, sections, 
 races, native Americans, Irish. Germans, Protestants, 
 ( , l!ll0i ics, Jews, with many rival and jarnng interes s 
 and some mark* tendencies toward social «^" 
 But as the Crusades united the Christendom ot the Middle 
 Ages-the Latin and Teutonic raees-in one spontaneous 
 confederacy ; so that, as Mihnan notes, those who would 
 otherwise •'have fallen in nearer and more intestine wars. 
 wars waged for a less generous and unselfish end, tol- 
 „etting European animosities and cmmt.cs o racn to- 
 JL"- strewed the plains of Hungary and o. Asia Minor 
 with their bones, and for above a century watered the 
 .oil of Palestine with their blood ;"-as those religious 
 wars which drank up the best blood of two continents and 
 reatencd to exhaust the very life of Christendom, never- 
 theless renovated Europe and created a new social orde,, 
 wXring up petty fiefs, petty domains and petty proprie- 
 tors l-ing rise to great civic communities, drawing peoples 
 2L in nmtnal approximation, lifting society on of 
 f narrow shackles into broader and freer paths ; so that, 
 
18 
 
 as Guizot has noted, wars that were undertaken for the 
 conquest of the infidel Turk, " began that transformation 
 of the various elements of European society into govern- 
 ments and nations, which is the characteristic of modern 
 civilization" — even so this war of ours, begun for the sub- 
 jugation of a sectional rebellion and the restoration of a 
 political Union, has so mixed and fused together all sec- 
 tions, interests, races, men, that henceforth there will be 
 upon this soil a Nation in a sense before unknown, throb- 
 bing with one conscious life, which absorbing into itself 
 the juices of all stocks, native or transplanted, shall show 
 a manhood, a vigor, a puissance, a breadth, a culture, a 
 cosmopolitan humanity, and vet a concentrated unity, such 
 as Home conld never reach, by conquering and absorbing 
 all nations into her empire. In conquering the spirit of 
 disunion, we conquer unity for ourselves. 
 
 IV. — We may well give thanks t<> God for the marvel- 
 lous development of Immune and generous sentiments by 
 the war. Marvellous, indeed ! when towns, villages, 
 neighborhoods ; financial corporations and charitable socie- 
 ties; churches, schools, and families; the affluent and the 
 humble ; young men and maidens, old men and children, 
 vie with each other in multiplying the comforts and re- 
 lieving the sufferings of the soldier and increasing the 
 resources of the war. The whole country is turned, as it 
 were, into a hospital, and the whole nation are its servitors. 
 Such a training is of immense moment to the morale of 
 a nation. Hitherto our national character has been a 
 curious compound of shrewdness and extravagance, of the 
 
! ,i 
 
 economist and the spendthrift. We have been grasping 
 with one hand, while we have been lavish with the other. 
 But profuseness of expenditure is not generosity of heart. 
 The war is teaching ns to economize upon ourselves, that 
 we may be generous to others ; to give play to our finer 
 sympathies, where we had indulged only our pleasures or 
 our tastes; to be self-denying to-day that we mav be un- 
 selfish to-morrow; to be a people of heart as well as ot 
 nerve; to abandon our isolated egoism for the service ot 
 
 humanity. , 
 
 What generous and heroic sentiments, too, are abroad 
 ;„ the air, caught by our young men, breathed at the fire- 
 side, made to palpitate over all the land, when the fars hush 
 upon some hotly contested field enables us to catch the 
 courage and devotion of the dying, or the faith and pa- 
 tience of the wounded. If the Crusades constituted the 
 heroic age of Christianity," which with all its violence 
 and rudeness, exhibited "the grandeur, the valor .daring, 
 endurance, self-sacrifice, wonderful achievement ot the 
 Homeric age, intensified by religious faith and fervor 
 much morel this the heroic age of Liberty, when men „ 
 every period and condition of life come by the thousand 
 to that altar of freedom where Hampden and Sidney, 
 Warren and Otis are inscribed as martyrs, and demand to 
 be baptized for the dead. We are astonished at the moral 
 acuity of our common people, who under this heroic in- 
 J Jon have given their lives for the country, we are 
 aLnished at the manly virtue of our own sons, who grow 
 Ltb heroes in a day ; like that beardless boy, who, before 
 g oin. into battle, said to his older comrade, I want to 
 
20 
 
 light for the flag, and I mean to be brave ; but I can't tell 
 what I may do under fire. If you see me falter, cheer me 
 on. If I hold back, speak my mother's name ; and if after 
 that I play the coward, shoot me on the spot.' 1 His brave 
 soul would rather face death than that his weak nerves 
 should dishonor the flag. Ah, this is that which was 
 spoken by the Prophet Joel : " Your sons and your 
 daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see 
 visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.' , Once 
 more the great and notable day of the Lord has come. 
 
 V. — But our highest ground of rejoicing in the war is 
 its vindication of the moral government of God in His 
 judgment upon slavery, and its furtherance of justice and 
 liberty in the land. That the annihilation of slavery as a 
 power, as a system, and, we trust, also as a fact, will be the 
 substantial result of the war, is the accumulating evidence 
 of every day. The Prince de Joinville has divined 
 our whole struggle, when he says, that " the North 
 have the sacred trust of the Constitution to defend against 
 a factious minority, which only took up arms to defend 
 slavery ;" that the South is " a military despotism sustained 
 by an oligarchy of three hundred thousand slaveholders ;" 
 that the defeat of the North, or peace on Southern terms, 
 " would be the conspicuous triumph of slavery, when the 
 glorification and extension of slavery would be the com- 
 mon watchword." And what this sagacious and impartial 
 observer is so quick to perceive, even the slowest and most 
 obstinate among ourselves are beginning to discover. 
 Every blow struck in battle tells against slavery ; every 
 
21 
 
 movement and measure, for what end soever designed, 
 tends toward the overthrow of slavery ; so that the popu- 
 lar instinct of the North, and the spontaneous fears of the 
 South, agree in representing slavery as already doomed ; 
 doomed by visitation of God; doomed in such a way, that 
 it stands condemned and smitten by the Almighty in the 
 sight of all nations. His truth and righteousness are all 
 the more signally vindicated after this long delay, and by 
 this culmination of treachery and treason against human- 
 ity, in a self-destroying war. Is there a saint in all the land, 
 is there one that aspires to fellowship with angels, who 
 will not join in hallelujahs when that great Babylon of 
 iniquity is fallen ? There is no such saint in Heaven. 
 Wherefore, in the near advent of the day when this na- 
 tion shall no longer recognize a slave, " Let the saints be 
 joyful in their beds," preventing the dawn with their hal- 
 lelujahs. " Let the high praises of God be in their 
 mouth." 
 
 But the very gratitude for which the war gives such oc- 
 casion, summons us to continued valor in defense of what 
 we have received in trust from God. It is His honor that 
 we are commissioned to vindicate, not our own ; it is His 
 vengeance we are commissioned to inflict, not our own ; 
 therefore, the justice of our cause alone should inspire us ; 
 and, therefore, we should keep it just. We have no right 
 to wage this w r ar for mere territorial conquest. If this 
 were a question about the boundary line of Maine or of 
 Oregon, it were foolish, it were wicked, to waste blood 
 upon it. We are not warring for sectional pride and 
 power. If this were a mere test of the relative strength 
 
and prerogatives of Korth or South, East or West, it were an 
 unpardonable waste of life. We are not warring merely 
 tor a political Union upon a given area. If there is no 
 broader, deeper question, than the numerical size and the 
 superficial extent of a Commonwealth of States, the sac- 
 rifice is far too great. 
 
 But there is a deeper, a more vital question. Our Con- 
 stitution, our territory, our Union, derive their value from 
 their relation to ideas and principles committed to us in 
 trust for mankind. The life of. this nation, as " a political 
 person," embodying within itself the idea of regulated 
 liberty ; the sacred legacy of Constitutional freedom, be- 
 queathed by the martyrs of English liberty and by our 
 Revolutionary sires ; the garnered hopes and yearnings of 
 the nations for a higher and purer social life ; the grand 
 prophesy of a just and equal commonwealth of all peoples 
 and races, upon this soil — these are the things we are 
 asked to defend by the sword, Avhile giving thanks to God 
 for this high and sacred mission. And these are questions 
 that cannot admit of arbitration or compromise. Ques- 
 tions of boundary, of comity, of political division, of in- 
 ternational law, may be submitted to arbitration. But 
 you cannot have an arbitration upon the life of a nation — 
 inquest is the word ; for when such a measure comes, its 
 life is already gone. You can compromise a question of 
 territory ; you cannot compromise the question whether 
 the nation shall keep its integral life. That life goes with 
 the compromise. You may divide States and territories. 
 You cannot divide the heart and life of the nation. But 
 the life of this nation is so bound up in its territorial unity. 
 
23 
 
 its political union, its organic laws, its indefeasible Consti- 
 tution, that the only division possible is " the distribution of 
 the butcher, who kills what he divides." We must live 
 as one people — a free, a growing, a glorious, a perpetual 
 life, or we must die, utterly, miserably, hopelessly. 
 
 You are at liberty to give up all your debts in the South, 
 to purchase peace at her hands. You cannot give up one 
 of the rights of your children under this Government, for 
 these are not yours to give. Nay, these are yours in trust 
 to be maintained ; and God will require it at your hand. 
 You may barter away your own privileges, if you are base 
 enough for that ! You may go down upon your knees to 
 the slave oligarchy and promise to vote only for such can- 
 didates as they shall nominate, or to accept such as they 
 shall impose. But you cannot barter away my liberties 
 chartered by the Constitution ; you cannot barter the 
 liberties of mankind pledged in our Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence and our national history ; you cannot barter the 
 heritage of ages gone, the hope of ages yet to come ; you 
 cannot crush the budding of liberty in the hearts of four 
 millions of men made free by the act of God. Should 
 you barter these for peace, the treacherous coin would 
 bring curses upon your house, upon your head ; it would 
 burn through flesh and bone to your marrow ; it would eat 
 out your vitals ; and if to get rid of its plagues, you should 
 go out and hang yourself, they would return to disquiet 
 your grave. 
 
 God has drawn the sword and placed it in our hands 
 for the defense of Eight, of Freedom, of Law. We must 
 not, we dare not, hold it back. By all the worth of the 
 
24 
 
 blessings He has given us in this favored land ; by the 
 value of that freedom which was baptized for us in the 
 blood of our sires ; by all the martyrs of the English race, 
 who in the good old cause of liberty have suffered and 
 died; by all the prayers and vows registered on high for 
 the triumph of Christ's kingdom here; by all the cries of 
 the oppressed, that have entered into the ear of the Lord 
 of Sabaoth; by all the rights, the hopes, the duties, the 
 powers, given to free Christian men, that they may be co 
 workers with God in the august triumphs of His truth — 
 we must defend the right: we must stand by the ark of 
 liberty. 
 
 "We go forth, now, under a new inspiration. The Proc- 
 lamation of Emancipation has challenged all the powers 
 of darkness to defeat it. Unclean spirits, like frogs, seem 
 to swarm out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the 
 mouth of the beast and of the false prophet. But we 
 cannot be dismayed. We will still march on with the 
 psalter on our tongue and the sword in our hand ; for soon 
 the seventh angel shall "pour out his vial into the air, 
 and there shall come a great voice out of the temple of 
 heaven, from the throne, saving, 
 
 "IT IS DONE." 
 

 . 
 
 LIBRAE OF COHgSS 
 
 B 012 028 250 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 012 028 250 5 
 
 peRmalipe® 
 pH 8.5