too great a gift for us. For history seems to teach, as its one grand
lesson, confirming, as always, the revelation in Christ, that men cannot
take care of themselves; and that God leaves them to their own ways long
enough to satisfy them that human agency is inadequate to solve the
question of reform, and then, when the times are ripe, He takes the
reins into His own hand, and starts society anew. It is the patient
process of education by centuries, or by ages--only to be made perfect
in the millennial age. So it is that the world moves. It moves by the
free agency of man, kept in its balance by the guiding hand of God.

I. THE VEXED QUESTION OF THE NEGRO.

Thus it is that the second American revolution is settling for us the
vexed question of the negro. What should be done with him, or for him,
or to him, had been the disturbing element in our political system ever
since the African slave trade expired by limitation of the Constitution
in 1808. The devices of human ingenuity (inspired, as we fervently
believe, by the purest patriotism) to stave off the inevitable final
settlement of this account, innumerable as they were, and only limited
by the predestined decree of Supreme Benevolence (which is Supreme
Justice), were, at last, exhausted. The statesmanship of '50 had been
outgrown. The giants of those days had gone, one by one, to their reward
ere yet the first breaths of the revolution that has opened the decade
of '60. Nought remained to their lesser associates, who still survived,
but to bow reverently before the storm, 'as seeing in it Him who is
invisible.' Such recognition, indeed, is the measure of men's patriotism
to-day. The man who so perverts his mind and reason as to shut out the
evidence of the stars and his own consciousness (the German
metaphysician's proof of Deity), and deny that God is, is simply a fool;
and every reflecting mind is ready to sanction and adopt the Psalmist's
word: 'The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.' Equally a fool
is he who shuts his eyes to the overwhelming facts of the last two
years, refusing to be taught by the Providence behind them. Such and so
vast is the revolution by which God has intervened in our history. Such
is the Providence that still guides and guards the nation ordained by
Him to be. Such is the revolution that has swept away the slave system,
and opened for us a new path, and given us a new power of progress.

Now, these views need not make one a