L.w.e/r5ov\^ oo%epvv. aassZ4/^ Book I I OUR NATIOK AN ADDRESS BEFOKE THE / vT ARCHZIAN UNION OF BELOIT COLLEGE. Delivered. FeT^riaary 28, 1862. BY PROF, J; EMERSOK BELOIT, WIS.: .TOI'RN'.Vr, AM) COUIUKK I'HINT. 1S02. COERESPONDENCE. Beloit Collkge, March 3d, 1SG2. Pkof. J. Emerson: — Dear Sir: — It is with gratification that we transmit to you a copy of a Resolution of the Archaean Union, adopted at a special meeting held this evening, expressing their estimation of your Address, delivered on the evening of the 28th of February, and request a copy of it for publication ; hoping it will meet your pleasure to comply with the request. ^^ Resolved, That we regard the Address delivered by Professor Emerson before this Society, on Friday evening, February 2Sth, as an impartial exposition of our external and ititcrnal, political aud social rchitiaiis ; an Address not only National, but Universal ; and cansidering it the result of an unbounded love and reverence for "Our Nation," we feel greatly indebted to him for the honor of its delivery before the Society. Believing that its publication would gratify both those who heard it and many who did not, we respectfully request a copy of it for this purpose." Yours, with much respect, Hexry S. OsnonxE, Thomas S. McClellaxd, Sam'l D. II.vsTixas, Ju., Comiiiitlce. Beloit College, March 4th, 18(32. Gextlemex : — Your polite Qote, requesting, in behalf of the Arch;uan Union, a copy of the lecture of Friday evening, is before me. The aim of the Address was to lay before the members of the Society and of the communit}', certain principles which seemed to me important at the present crisis, when our people are rapidly coming to conclusions which will be of lasting influence upon the future of our country and of the world. I am gratified that those principles have been Aivorably re- ceived by the young men to whom thoy were presented, and if, in tko judgment of the Society, the publication of the Address wonld further promote thena, it is at their service. Very truly your.?, J. Emeksox, J/c6's;*». OnhornCf McClelland and Jfastlni/n, Committee Arc/tcvan Union, OUR NATION. Our Nation ! And what is a nation ? ^^'e think of a nation as composed of people united under one government ; and yet we do not call the English, the Irish, the Hottentots, and the Hindoos, one nation, though they are under one government ; and we do call the Germans one, though under many governments. The ancient Greeks were one nation in many states ; and the old Pkoman Empire com- prised many nations under one conjniand, "What, then, is the unity of a nation ? Locality and language and kindred blood have much to do with it. Yet the master and the .slave, on one plantHtion, are not of one nation. The Jews, scattered through all lands and speaking all languages, are yet one nation. In our own land, English and Irish, who never could coalesce across the sea, and Germans and Italians^ rally side by side with native Americans under the Stars and Stripes, and all look up to that glorious banner as their own — their own as no other banner ever had been or could be; while native Americans, even those who a little while ago were joining in the cry of "America for the Americans," have shown, by their treason, that they never had the moral right to call that banner theirs. " America for the Americans !" Most certainly ! The word comes back to us purified in this burning atmosphere of war. "Amer- ica for the Americans I" So mote it be! So shall it be ! But who is the American ? Shall we recognize him by his Anglo-Saxon blood and pedigree ? Or is that man an American, in whose heart is the love of those principles of liberty and law, which are the soul of the Ameri- can life ? Is not every man, of whatsoever race or language, who accepts in his heart our Declaration of Independence, our country- man and our brother ? and is not whosoever rejects it an alien or a traitor ? So I think we must define the term nation, as aiJiilied ta us. The unity of our nation is a unity of sympathy . There are those who seem to think that a nation is a kind of part- nership, entered into by mutual consent, and dissolvable at tlie plea- sure of any party, so that any body of men, or any spoiled child, might vote itself a nation. Is it so? Is a nationalify a thing of human creation, or is it a work of God ? Did not He, that made the worlds, " make of one blooil all nations () OT:R NATION. of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and determine the times before appointed, and the hounds of their habitation; that they might seek after the Lord, if haply they might find him, though he be not far from every one of u.s ?" There you have the key of history. The nations, like the fimilies of men, are centers of sympathy, by which God is teaching our Ishmaelitish nature to live in kindness and in law, and to rise to enough of purity of heart, and symmetry and development of mind, to seek for and to recognize and to unite itself to that Fatherly au- thority, — that Brotherly love and Spiritual communion of the one God, which is always " not far from every one of us," and which is ever yearning to receive us into the fellowship of that kingdom of God, which itself shall be the realization of the ideal of a nation. A nation, then, is not the product of a whim or of a day ; uor is it to be blotted out by a battle, or even by jeavs of oppression. This is true even of those comparatively minor nations, which differ from those about them, only as dialects of the same language differ. The Poles, the 3Iagyars, the Irish, tlie Italians, hold their own national sympathies unconcjucrable, even in bondage. But, if I mistake not, ours is a nation in a different sense from that in which the Poles or the French are nations. For all shall find these particular nationalities grouping in larger aggregates or systems of nations, like that Christendom which hurled itself upon the 3Ios- lem in the Crusades. A true chart of the history of the world should present these grand national wholes. Certain bounds of national habitation have remained or re-established themselves with wonderful persistence. No changes of dynasty, or even of faith, could efface them. The Tigris, the Hellespont, and the Adriatic, have formed dividing lines, beyond which it seemed that nations could not mingle. But, looking iipon the work of the World-builder, we should see Him not only letting in the seas to separate Europe from Africa and from Asia, but also spreading out a vast ocean between all that conti- nent and another, which for thousands of years was to be hidden from the Old World. Every night, while those old nations were sleeping, the sun visited it, and found it still in native wiidness, wait- ing *' the time before appointed," when its chosen j)eople should come and erect there a nation worth the waiting. So patiently worketli He, at whose least word a universe would spring into instant being, or would pass away and be no more. He is reducing a rebellion. He is restoring the kingdom of God, in a world disorganized by treason. His heart is in the work. There is no treason in Him, nor loitering, nor indecision. He presses on the war of restoration with all His skill, and all His energy, and all His resources. And yet four thousand ycai's of anarchy and wretchedness passed away before He sent His Son to speak, so that men could un- derstand it, that word of deliverance, " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," which is the only foundation of true society among men. And even He came not with hosts of victor angels to strike off every bond, and to cast men with ihv'w alienated hearts inlo a chaotic Jib- OUR NATION. crly, equality and malignily. So perhaps 3Iicliaol would liavc done, but not so the AlMvise. He knew His world too well, mid the race He meant to save. And so He spoke on earth that ((uict word, and wrote it indelibly with His blood, and ascended up on hi-ih, '-Lcadint,' captivity captive," though there was not a slave the les.s on earth. But the word of deliverance was spoken and printed by the Spirit upon the hearts of men, and it was sure of its fultillment. It was a new law among men. All old constitutions were founded not on eijuality, but on prerogative ; not on rights of man, but on rights of masters. We talk of the old republics. In Athens and Attica were 100,000 freemen and 400, UOO slaves. South Carolina is a free state in com- parison. But, the word of freedom once spoken, He, who sceth the end from the beginning, was content to cherish His work in its long fulfillment. It was nearly 1500 years more before He deemed it time to conduct the ship of Columbus across the ocean, and to reveal the habitation which he had prepared for the first of earth's nations. I say the first ; for, in an important sense, we may say that there never was a real nation on earth until the declaration of American independence. Because, until then, the true fundamental principle of national life was nsver made the forming and creative principle of a people's life. •' By the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water." By ivords^ in an intelligent universe, is every thing made that ever was made. Words nerve and words corrupt the soul. '' The word of Caesar might have stood against the world," because in Ca3sar's word there was vigor enough to inspire an army, which could conquer the world. A few w^ords expressing potent ideas, like (Jod, country, duty, mercy, home, liberty, law, &c., make up a whole system of watchwords by which the entire order of human life is going forward to its future hopes. So the word, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,'' went sink- ing silently down into the minds of men for centuries. And, all the while, the whole world was organized upon the idea that men arc made to be masters and slaves, and to look up one to another, and not to look up every man frankly into the face of God, as He looketh down upon us with a human countenance in Christ, our prophet, priest and king. England has more liberty than any other old land ; and yet whatever is done in that government is done "in the gracious pleasure of her majesty," and the people are called subjects, not citi- zens. There still stands the form of the idol, of that image in which all royalties and all oligarchies have their place, as part of the political idolatiy, which must perish before a really genuine nation can be in any land. It is most true that in England, and in all the states Avhich have grown out of the old lioman I'^mpire, tlie princii)lc of human rights spoken by Christ has in a great degree disorganized the monarchical principle, so that although tlic form of the old master- ship continues, yet it is easy to sec that the iron is mingled with clay, — such clay as it has been standing upon and despising, and that the whole is ready to full and to crunible. g OUll NATION. Yet tlic Director of Events does not hasten its fall. For tlie world lias need of it yet. The nations that are to be when the world shall need kings no more, will forever owe a debt to Cyrus and to Alexan- der, to Cresar and to Alfred, to lion-hearted Richard and to Queen Elizabeth, and to Napoleon. A great blessing is a true king to a people that needs a king ; and every people does need a king which has not learned to look up, with an intelligent mind as well as with a reverent and obedient heart, to the " King Eternal." By that law of Christ, " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," and by that question, "Who is my neighbor?" was the seed of our nation sown 1800 years ago. That seed was committed to the conscience of man. It passed into Europe, where liberty had been an old and mighty, though a somewhat unmeaning name, and it gave it power and significance. It melted away slavery, and is melting monarchy. It took deep root in the strong manhood of northern Europe, especially in the races whose enterprise brought them to the extreme point of European land and of European progress in Eng- land. I shall not pause to eulogize the Anglo-Saxons. God has made them great in these ages, for great purposes ; and they are sufficiently aware of their greatness. And when we remember the Assyrians, Persians, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Span- iards, we may be reminded that it is wisdom for a leading race to be not high-minded, but to fear, and to do its work well in its day. But we may remember, thankfully, how well that seed of hope was cher- ished in the English nation, taking root in old Saxon times, buried under the Norman bondage as under the winter snow, springing up in Magna Charta, slowly developed until it came to maturity in the Puritans, when it was, by a most propitious severity, reaped and threshed, and cast across the seas, to become, upon a continent which had been waiting for it since time began, the right seed for the first of the nations. And here the nation was in being, and was maturing its strength and developing its principles for 150 years before 1776. Nor let us, if we claim to be more truly and fully a nation than any before, ever forget that it was only through the long labors of those old nations that our nation became possible. Especially, as we would " that our days may be long upon the land which the Lord our God giveth us," let us always honor with filial aftcction that land from ■which our nation sprung, — our mother J<]ngland. God be thanked that we may call her mother. For is she not the glory of the king- doms, the choicest and most perfect fruit which the civilization of the C)M World, through its thousands of years of labor, has borne, or, upon that soil, could bear? There she stands, aloof from the Old World, and leaning toward the new. For a thousand years she has been gathering, and is gathering to-day with a broader sweep than ever, the moral riches of all old lands and times ; and for centuries she has l)een pouring them, and is pouring them to-day with more lavish liand than ever, into the lap of her daughter. Whatsoever is thought or said or done in i^higland worth llie hearing, is hoard by more Americans than Endishmcn. In the most distant seas, and in lands OUR NATIOX. <) tliut but ycsterdny were barbarous and oannil)al. our eoiuincrce is sheltered by bcr law, and our travelers and our missionaries arc protected by bcr consuls or aided by the generous benevolence of her sons. In a mutual intercourse, wliich reaches to every harbor and almost to every inland village, not only of the_ twolands, but of the ■whole earth, it would be very strange if no difficulties arose between the two nations. It is very strange that they are so fcw.^ When iMiiiland was engaged in her terrible conflict with the first Na})ole(Mi, her'people could liardly be pleased to see the daughter-land finding an occasion to enter the ([uarrel against the mother; and when Ire- land threatened rebellion, we may remember that the son of the President of the United States Avas ostentatious in public demonstra- tions of sympathy. At a time when all the mind of this nation is absorbed in that earnest tension of soul which is crushing this rebel- lion, it is not strange that we should difler upon some great and urave points of public law and right, wliich might divide honest and deep read men. And we Americans are very ready to judge all such matters. There are very few of us who, if angels were to be judged, would have any scruple as to our own qualifications to sit upon the bench ; we would only raise the question whether we could get the appointment. Not that I find any fault with this universal and infinite self-reliance of our countrymen. I glory in it. It is the sanguine heart of youth, which feels itself e(iual to all things. And so \t is. There is more truth and victory in our wildest hopes than in our wariest fears. And because I see our nation ready to think, ready to speak, ready to act upon any matter and in anything, I know that there is a great future before us. 80 let us go on, assuming and exercising our prerogative to think and to judge, — each individual man of us with that own mind of his, which God gave him to be a man with,— upon every question, especially upon every great ques- tion, which our times present. Just so shall we become a great nation, by virtue of the individual greatness of millions of minds, all trained to act earnestly, intelligently and independently, iipon great questions and great thoughts."^ A nation so made of thinking and speaking uiind.s must have a voice like the sea; and as it thinks aloud, the alternatives which it presents to itself, its tides of feeling and of reason, necessarily roll anelt of "country was " determined," by the King of kings, for the habitation of a people who should take the principles of old English liljerty, and deveiop them in a free nation, whose greatness .and whose purity should deliver not that nation only, but old Eng- land also, and, in their time, all the nations of the earth ? Let us remember, then, that we have these principles of liberty, and this rising national greatness, not of ourselves, but that they are the Icijacy of all the nations that have struggled, and of all the mar- tyrs tiiat have died. They are part of the gifts which the dying Son ^ of Man received for men. And they are ours, not for ourselves, but J for all mankind. * In our Declaration of Independence was Christ's golden rule first proclaimed to the world, as a law of national life. It was a beacon of hoi>e for all mankind, and all nations are flowing unto it. They come because they are attracted by its princii)les ; because that principle of its charter calls the allegiance of their hearts. Aijd .';o they come as coming home. Fur no nation until this has been in its principles and in its form a home for man, as such. Of course they come with many crude or visionary ideas as to what a land of liberty may be. But they come to be citizens of the land of ld.)erty, and will be apt scliolars in the conditions of liberty. Is it not right that they should come ? For do we not owe our liberty to their na- tions as well as to our Enulish fathers and to ourselves '.' And le not 12 orn NATION. tliat syiiipatliy, wliicli bring-s tl'iein liove, tl'ic true nml suffieieiit cer- tificate of their birtli-right to Gitizensliip in the nation of the free 'f And if more title were needed, is it too much to say that our country owes its success in the present struggle to the true and prompt loyalty of citizens of foreign birth ^ They first rallied in force around the* standard of the Union in the border States, and to them, more than to the native population, must we look for loyalty in the rebel States, Thus, our country presents the spectacle of a nation forming aboat a principle — the principle of the equal rights of man. Whoever upon our soil is true to that principle, is a true American. Whoever upon our soil is not true to that principle, is not a true American. But still, Bo long as he docs no act of treason, the nation does not cast him out. It lets him live within its great heart, and cherishes li-im within its warmth and its wealth. Its great throbbings go forth for him, securely trusting that, if there be the seed of manhood in him, it shall yet make a man of him ; and if there be not, — if he be utterly an apostate, so that he cannot live under and in the Declaration of Independence, and feel it working, like the advancing sun of spring its steady and sure victory, it lets him find it out for himself, and lets him choose his time to secede and to grapple with the law of God and the conscience of mankind. " Eternal vigilance," says Jeff'erson, '• is the price of liberty." If eternal vigilance means eternal suspicion, we must think that tbiS maxim is a false and fatal one. Its great author Avould have been a greater and a better man if he had known how to co-operate in gene^ rous confidence with such men as Washington and Hamilton and Jay and the elder Adams. If man cannot have confidence in man, there can be no such thing as free government. Suspicion in the state, like jealousy in the house, is bondage. The rattlesnake, or the dripping sword, is not the emblem, nor is " Sic seinper tyrannis" the motto for a truly free commonwealth; but rather, '' Ense petit pla- cidam sub hhertate quielem," or the peaceful vine with the legend, " Qui transtiilit siistinet." Liberty is, in theory and in practice; inseparable from that charity, which '■ believeth all things, hopetli all things, endureth all things." And if it is not, and is not to be, safe in this world to believe and hope and endure thoroughly, theu the rule of charity is a rule of folly, and the '• perfect law of liberty'" is forever a vain hope. If we can have liberty at all, it must be upon the basis of mutual confidence, and mutual confidence rest^ upon truth and good will. An over-confidence may expose liberty to some attacks from abroad, and to some treason within, but a mutual suspicion is in itself death in the heart. So there was something great in that might, whicli has risen so terrible, yet so collected, to vindicate the law of our nation, when treason had risen in such form that it could no longer be mistaken. Yet, is there any greatness in it greater than the light which it makes to shine through that darkness, which had preceded it, when for those days and months, which were years and ages, the nation kept mi beuriiii.^ and i'urbcariu;;; '.' Knowing the deep truth of its OUR NATIOX. If, own heart, it could not and would not believe that tuns, who liad shared the tender love of such a mother, could be preparing a dagger for that mother's heart. Their forbearance was not so disloyal as it might seem, for in it lay not only the deep love which that mother had taught them, but also a sure confidence that the mother, having her home in hearts like theirs, was immortal and invulnerable. And when, at the stroke, they rose, the rising was as majestic as the wait- ing. It was, if I know the heart of this people, not in passion, but in truth. It is a great saying of one whose greatness has been ])rought out by this struggle, and to wliom, as much as to any other living man, we owe its success, that " this is a tear of duty." Where else shall we find a people so mighty, and yet so self-com- manding, — so full of truth unconquerable, and yet so balanced by good will undyint; ? It seems like the shadow of that love of Heaven which bends, age after age, over this poor rebel Earth of ours, never giving over the hope that even such a world could yet be sa\'^d, — the love of Ilim, who would not strike for vengeance until He had died to save. And is the comparison a profane one ? For is not our nation a part of the unfolding of that great plan of salvation---of the re-organi- zation of mankind under His own royal law, — the law of liberty '{ Just in that power to command self, as well as to conquer enemies, lies the assurance of the ability of our people to be a free people. The issue turns almost simply on our ability to be true to the princi- ples of our national life. The doctrine that men are made to be free and equal, created our nation, and has made us great. Such a doc- trine has a double application. There is in it a duty as well as a privilege. It was not so much for us to maintain our own rights under it in our first Revolution, when we were small, as it is for us to maintain our truth in it, now that we are grown great. We have been put to the test in the case of negro slavery, and because the heart of this people would not approve of such a system, but fixed its frown, more mighty than any law, upon it continually, and more and more, this present war is upon us. It will be, in its immediate or ultimate results, our deliverance I'rom that danger of falling liom the principle of our life. And we may trust that, in the questions which are to arise out of the war, the just and generous truth of the nation will find its safe and glorious way, remembering those noble parting- words of the father ot our country : " It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and, at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous but too novel example of a people alway.s guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. " In point of material greatness, I think we have not fallen behind the anticipations of Washington. You will not find upon the earth's surface another land so fit for the rich and ample home of a great nation as ours, nor another population so full of the elements of national greatness as this which is filling this great land, nor another principle which can make a true living nation except that which live* 54 Ul-li NATfitX. in us. If we can hold our faith In God. and our i'lthlt in man. smi uur own truth of heart, we are safe. The principle of our nation does not allow us to have subjects, so that an Empire, like that of l^riiain, we cannot have. Yet, in our own way, we have empire, too. " Britain rule.'? the seas," they used to say ; and yet, do you know that the commercial marine of these United States is to-day greater than that of Britain lierself, w^hilc the fleets of all other nations together would not equal half the ton- nage of cither branch of the great Anglo-Saxon power. ]Jut this is not our Empire. Britain holds millions of barbarians uuiler the fear of her power. America holds millions of enlightened men, in every civilized country, bound to her by a true and deep allegiance to the principle of American liberty. Lafiyette, and Steuben, and Kosci- usko, and Chatham, were not solitary specimens of their kind ; nor is the race extinct. Go to Washington, and you shall find among the chief ornaments of our nation the legacy of James Smithson, a stran- o-er. Another, who, like Smithson, never set foot upon our soil, but whose love for our nation led him to devote his life to our history, said : " As Hannibal was taught by his father to hate the Romans, so was I trained by mine to love the Americans.'' So are many fathers in the Old World training their sons. Where was ever seen before such a spectacle of empire, — that one nation, not by any power of arms, not by any craft of policy, but by the magnetism of simple truth, should draw to itself the attachment of whatsoever is wise and true throughout the world ! Nor is this true of individuals only. Whole peoples love America wHh an alfection which their own gov- ernments do not conciliate. Ho Germany, and Ireland, and Italy, and Poland, have been, and are ©urs. And other peoples cherish our name beside our own. So in England, it was confessed that the joy with which some men viewed our civil strife, was because they were jealous of the admiration of Englishmen for America. Yet we ought "not to think, as we are apt to do. that all kings and nobles hate us. For a king is a man — and may be a true man ; and the generous kindness for us which inspired the last public act of Prince Albert of England, and the hearty sympathy of the Russian Czar for us as a people, struggling like himself for the emancipation of slaves, ought to satisfy us that the same human heart beats in the monarch as in the subject or citizen, and that if we be true to man, mankind will be true to us. If the ordeal through which we are passing shall deliver us from that system which has been our reproach, without leaving u? filled with internal heart-burnings and hate, so that wc shall stand as a truly free and felf-governing people, will not the acceptance of American principles, tlu^ true empire of America, be as broad and onduring as the name of Washington — as broad as the mind, and lasting as the memory of man ? Our nation, then, is not of ourselves or to ourselves. It is an attempt of mankind to realize a vision of liberty which has been float- iW'T in the mind of man since iho fall. The attempt is in its charac- OUR NATIOX. 15 Icr vlsiuiiury; and tlie v,-orkl has lonp; ago learned that it is fouH.sh to be chasing visions. And yet mankind never would give it up. They have always insisted upon hoping that the vision would yet come true, and though it tarries long, thoy wait for it. They v.'ill cha.«c the rainbow. They will believe that liberty and lavr shall yet be one upon the earth. Even to the very last day.n liie young men M'ill continue to see that vision, and the old men vrill dream that dream. And dreams are true. They work tlicir ovrn fulfillment. This vision of liberty has been building its fabrics from age to age, and as they have seemed to fall, they have ri-sen again. America itself is such a fabric; and if it should pass away, and man wake to disappointment again, his mind will renew the same dream, until it shall be true. Eut it hopes that this time it will not be mocked. Believing in the word of God, believing in the hope of glorious liberty, written bv Grod in the mind of man, — that hope which has sustained a groaning creation iii all its long bondage, — it cannot give up the looking for a free state. And if such a hope is ever to be fulfilled, when and where and how should it ever be, if not here, and in the development of tliis republic ? Is there another continent to be discovered '{ Is therc another stock from which to constitute the nation of the free, if they who have been called from all the wisest and best nations of men shall fail ? Is there another principle more pure and true than that of the equal rights of men under the law of God ? All these seem to be grounds of hope, not only such as never were before, but such as never can be again. Accordingly, we have often heard the remark that this is the last hope of liberty upon earth. It is a saying of good omen. If it be so — if this is the last hope of liberty — then it is a sure hope. For the hopes of man and the promi.scs of God are not going to fail of their fulfillment. They must not die I they cannot die I Mankind shall not have it to say, that it reposed its hopes in our nation and was disappointed. But how shall we succeed ? what are the dangers ? Trom abroad, we may say — none ; the sympathy and the support of the world arc with us, if wc are true to it; and we have already strength enou"-h to maintain our own right in the world. And what are our dangers from within ? "We are in the habit of providing defcn.ecs and safe- guards and anchors, as if all we had to do was to save as much as wc might of what we already have. The fact is, that we are trying to realize a vision ; and we must be visionaries, and must build up. and build with the only true living and lasting material, and that is, with '• such stuiF as dreams are made of." I'or it is a cloud-land, '• the kingdom of heaven," which we arc building up ; and we cannot build that Avith the materials f)r by the rules of this world. Tlie Jerusalem which is free, and the mother of us all, is not founded on or built of this world's granite. It is from above, and mu.st be built of living stones. We need positive elements. And first among them we may name Hope. As our nation is the child of flu' linpcs of luankind. so it is onlv by being full of those hupcs in their mo«f ;izii:v liuc^ ibaf v,-.- ciin 16 OUR NATION. lead oil to their fulfillment. Do not be afraid to hope. No rawe-tlnt that man ever saw yet in the western sky, and no Aurora in tho north, has been equal to the loving brightness with which the whole arch of heaven is yet to smile upon a cleansed earth. And in no small degree shall our nation and our world be saved by that very hope. And another clement of success v»'ill be Fai'Ji. Faith in (ilod, by whose own plan and power all these things arc going forward in which we are permitted to be instruments, and whose heart is in them. Faith in man, who is showing xis so abund- antly that his heart is with us, so far and so long as we are true to the cause of man. It seems a hazardous reliance; and yet, as wo have seen, hero all the question turns. If man cannot trust in man, there cannot bo free government, there cannot be society, — we would not care to have life. And it is a safe trust. Individual men may be dishonest. Very few men are like Washington ; and yet, in this nation, or in any other nation, or in mankind as a whole, the great public heart is an honest heart, and it will exact honesty of its agents. Dishonesty is the child of suspicion. Confide in man, and. as a rule, man is yours. " This is the victory which ovcrcometh the world, even our faith." AVe must have faith in man, nnd faith in man's destiny. That faith, clear and unwavering, is the only condition of success. To doubt, to look back, is to fail. So the poetry of man (which is his second sight, looking into real truth,) has always been conscious. You know the fable of Orpheus, the old minstrel, who went to the dusky realm of death to recover his loved and lost Eurydice. ITis soni;- charmed dark Pluto and Proserpina, and they granted that she should follow him to the light of day, provided that the minstrel should not look back. But the poet lost his faitli. He looked, and saw the form that he loved flee back despairing into the darkness. Can you read the fable ? Eurydice is Eureia dike — that icide jus- tice, which is loved and lost to man, and Orpheus is man, the orphan, bereft of that truth, which was the blessedness of his life. ]3ut he has left to him the poetry of his nature, which can still lament the loss, and which still has power to restore the lost, provided that poetry can so ravish our souls that wc shall go right on, singing that song of truth, which is in unison with the song of the just, looking from the darkness and toward the light, until we come fully into the light; and then, when we come to be children of the light, the form we love will be by our side, the companion of our truth and of our bliss forever. But while we are yet in the darkness it cannot be ours. If Ave turn back the vision fades; we arc still unjust citizens of an unjust world. Again, we must have Charili/ ; a generous heart toward every nation and toward every man. Our strength as a nation does not lie in tho tenacity with which we can cling to every foot of soil, or to our own interpretation of every accidental point of controversy ; but it lios iu the contidcncc of mankind in oiir fidelity to man. If OIR NATION. 17 we will stoj) to think of it, we sliall seo that our foreign power i.s totiilly different from that of any other people. It is a moral power. All other. goverments have appealed to patrioti-un ; that is, an attach- ment to their own soil, and an alienation from every other ; tliat is •• thou shall love thy neighbor and hate thy enemy." AVe rest upon the broad basis of humanity. We love our country, not only as our own, Ijut as the sanctuary of the rights and hopes of man ; and as such a .sanctuary, all mankind will love it, if we will let them. One clear lesson of this winter's collision with England was this, that the English people could not be excited to war with us, except by the. impression that we wished war with them. When they saw that wo desired peace and truth they grasped the olive brach with joy. We do not need, and cannot afford, like the old governments of force, to depend upon the character of the bully. We are great enough to luive the right to set to the world the novel example of a nation which, in its public relations, can practice the principles of Christi- anity and humanity. The hearty good will of the masses of tho English people is worth more to us — and through us to man — than a victorious war with the British monarchy. Lot all the world see that ■we honor and love man as num, and that we desire the good of every nation as a nation ; that we have not, as surely we need not have, any jealousy of any, — and then, if there were upon the earth a govern- ment inclined to war with u.s, tliere would be not a people that would suffer its government to lead them into such a war. For a free na- tion the best policy for security at home is a policy of peace. For war itself is despotism. I know that a great bard has written : '* Oh Freedom ! thoii art not, as poots dream, A fair young girl, with light and delicate limbs, And wavy tresses gushing from the cap AVith which the Roman master crowned his .slave When he took olf the gyves. A bearded man, Arm'd to the teeth, art thou." " A bearded man," indeed I And was it for love of a bearded man that man has been struggling and sighing ever since his fall ? No I the dream of poets is the dream of man. It is of '' the moun- tain nymph, sweet Liberty," whose virtue, stern enough to repel all violence, is only the dignity of a loveliness attractive enough to win and rule and bless all liumanity. " Peace on earth, good will toward man," angels sang, when the De- liverer was born J and "Peace on earth, good will to man," must be the motto of the nation that is to lead the world's deliverance. How to be true to our principles at home, is now, as it always has been and always will be, the great and difficult problem. How to do justice to that race which is lifting to us that appeal, '"Am 1 not a man and a brother y in all the associations in which (Jod has jilaccd us to work out this experiment of a free government, is a (|uesti(>n ^\•hil:h has en