Without, we have the
happiness of nearly three millions of the human race; the honor,
as well as the best interests of our whole country; and the
universal consent of all good men whose moral vision is not
obscured by the mist of a low, misguided selfishness: while we
seem to hear, as it were, the voices of the great and the good,
the patriot and the philanthropist, of a past generation,
calling to us and cheering us on. But, above all these, and
beyond all these, we have with us the highest attributes of God,
Justice and Mercy. With such allies, and in such a cause, who
can doubt on which side the victory will ultimately rest.

"May He who guides the destinies of nations, and without whose
aid 'they labor in vain that build,' so incline your hearts to
exert your whole influence to place in all our public offices
just and good men, that our country may be preserved, her best
interests advanced, and her institutions, free in reality as in
name, handed down to the latest posterity."

Is not the love of God and man ingrained in every line of this writing?
Yet let us see how it was received by the most Christian (?) body in
this city.

I need hardly say that my father's mind had been largely impressed, from
earliest manhood, with the highest subject human thought can touch. His
library records his wide religious reading; but he could not see an
honest path towards the profession of any definite views till 1836. The
change wrought in him then, can best be gathered from his own simple
words (under date, 1842) written in a fly-leaf of "The Unitarian
Miscellany:" "Though I humbly trust that God made my trials in 1836 the
means of bringing me to true repentance, yet I have kept these books as
monuments of what I once was, and to remind me how grateful I should be
to Him for having snatched me as a 'brand from the burning,'" Such a
faith as this, born of the spiritual travail of years, what a life it
always has for the heart that forms it! It tells not of a persuasion,
but of a conviction; a disproof of skepticism through the gathered
forces of the soul; a struggle, through epochs of doubt and dismay, into
an attitude of positive vital faith. Its process is the only one that
gives real right to ultimate peace. In comparison with the method and
measure of such a conviction, what matters its specific form? Self-truth
is the point,--the fact for starting, the line