curse, not God, whose very name is Love! Well may our
Christmas bells ring on so merrily, for our age is great and glorious.
It is a pupil of the entire Past, the heir of all its knowledge, the
inheritor of all its wisdom. The Future is its own. _The sphere of
politics must be redeemed from the demons of expediency and interest
which have so long ruled there; it is to be vitalized and purified from
all iniquity._ It is an Augean stable we have to clean, but Hercules was
one, and we are many. The People are at last sovereign. Every man who
works for humanity has God upon his side; he cannot fail, for the might
of Omnipotence is with his puny arm. This is the task now set before us:
it lies directly in our onward path--we cannot take a step really in
advance until it is achieved. If we fail now, all is lost. Our dead
heroes will not rest in their graves until the task is done, and their
young lives will have been a vain sacrifice. This crimson year is dying
fast; bury with it all past wickedness! May our long civil war die out
with its knell, the corpse of Slavery be laid in its bloody grave, and
the vain attempts of assembled despots to destroy our glorious
nationality perish forever! Bury with this blood-red year all malice and
uncharitableness, all sectarian suspicion and distrust, all partisan
political violence and hatred, and let the new year ring in one faith,
one hope, one country undivided and _indivisible_. Our Union means all
this, and a great many things more which it has not yet entered into the
heart of man to conceive. We can effect wonders if we will, for the
_individual_ effort makes the _universal_ all. Who would prove recreant
in such a cause? Come! it is pleasant to work for humanity; fatigue
itself seems sweet, the strength of the race nerves the individual arm,
labor grows into prayer, human sympathy and communion become godlike and
open heaven. We are none of us so little that we can do nothing; we are
all necessary to the good of the whole. The highest individuality and
freedom should generate the widest social love and charity. No labor is
really irksome that helps the masses of our fellow men. If we have the
Promethean fire, let it burn to light and warm them. The race is one,
nor can we be happy while its members suffer. The moment we have done
one duty faithfully, another and a higher awaits us. To be condemned to
work only for ourselves were the true hell, the self-kindled fire of
everlasting to