things of the world, and things which are despised, yea, and things
which are not, to bring to nought things that are!' What a stinging
example of time's revenges, to be sure, that negroes should have a part
in bringing to nought the rebellion of negro-holders! that they should
be found fighting for the very Government whose power had aided to keep
them in bondage to these negro-holders! In face of such facts, will any
one impiously declare that fate, or blind chance, rules the affairs of
men!

We might well pause at this point to consider the philosophy of
revolutions. It would be an interesting study to investigate the
efficient or radical causes of these singular phenomena of God's
providence--these crises in history, when 'the fountains of the great
deep are broken up,' and the experience of centuries is crowded into the
limits of a single year, and we see the old landmarks all swept away
before the overwhelming tides of a new era. Then it is that precedents
avail us nothing, and we are driven to lay hold of those principles of
justice and right which are alone eternal. For in the storm and wreck of
revolution those principles are our sure beacon lights, shining on, like
the stars, forever. Thus philosophizing, the question would be: Have
revolutions a fixed law? Is there a recurring sequence in the mighty
'logic of events,' that will enable us to define a formula for the
revolutions of systems in society? So science has demonstrated a law for
the revolutions and changes of systems of worlds in infinite space. Or,
are the revolutions of history, like the volcanic disturbances of our
planet earth, in a sort, abnormal? They seem to come, like the _deus ex
machina_ of the Roman poet, to cut the Gordian knots that perplex
statesmen and bewilder nations. The affairs of men get so tangled up
sometimes, that to prevent anarchy and chaos, God sends revolutions,
which sweep away the effete institutions and old, worn-out systems, to
replace them with new and living systems. And thus there is a perpetual
genesis, or new creation, of the world. Let any one read Carlyle's vivid
description of the badness of the eighteenth century, 'bad in that bad
way as never century before was, till the French Revolution came and put
an end to it,' and he will understand something of this question of
revolutions. It suggests the old scholastic dispute of the free agency
of man, and looks as though, granting that freedom, it were, after all,