the Humanity itself, against
religion, where the daring criminals, striding over all lower spheres,
break into the circles of the living God. To tear asunder a state of
merely human creation, generated only by human interests and passions,
would be a political crime, but to wish to dismember and murder a
God-given nationality, when the realization of the idea of humanity on
the planet cannot be filled without it, is a rebellion against the
eternal truth of God--it is a sacrilege! The recognition of such
violation were participation; opposition to such impiety is religion!'

Our very origin teaches us union. We have sprung from so many races that
it is throbbing in our very life-pulse, and is written on the red
tablets of our hearts. It runs and dances in our blood, tingles along
our nerves, colors our thoughts, tones our emotions, and determines our
affections. All the old and bitter European animosities die in us, for
its Peoples are fused in our _one_ life pulse. A little child of our own
household now unites in the sacred oneness of American life, English,
Scotch, Irish, Welsh, Dutch, German, French, Saxon, Bohemian, and Polish
nationalities. What lessons we have in our multiform descent, if we will
but heed them; what inner teachings of sympathy and love, if we will but
learn them! Distinctive nationalities, giving such beautiful variety to
the _earth_, here join in the individual, imparting the greatest
complexity and variety to internal _character_. Such nationalities,
still existing unimpaired abroad, are here formed into _one_ of
unequalled breadth and grandeur; their scattered rays of light are here
concentrated into _one_ great focus; the blood of the various Peoples
pours through _one_ great heart, and the common gifts, hopes, creeds of
the separated and warring nations meet in the holy mystery of _one_
grand national life. Here, indeed, is the widest variety in the closest
unity, the life of the warring Past melting into that of the
myriad-pulsed Present, the certain hope of a harmonious Future.

The maturity and highest powers of other nations being necessary as its
germs, what wonder that our nationality should be the latest born on
earth, or that in view of the broad love stirring in its soul, because
of its manifold descent, its first articulate accents should be ALL MEN
ARE BORN FREE AND EQUAL! This is a union in the laboratory of
assimilative nature, such as has never before been dreamed of, vital and