felicities, the joy of joys, the crown of their rejoicing, a joy unspeakable and everlasting, to have as the reward of their care and labour for those given to them on earth and whom they had loved as they loved their own souls, all given to them again in heaven and for eternity. It should be remembered, too, when they are faint-hearted and ready to complain, that if their responsibility and work be great, so also is the help in co-operating agencies which God has provided for them. The promise of God, as we have seen, is to them and their children. When

they do as He has ordinarily given them the power of doing, the law of God, of which that promise is the declaration, and which regulates natural and spiritual influences, is on their side. The Spirit of God is on their side. The Church of God is on their side. It is not for them to be faint and weary, far less to complain. They may well take courage and rejoice in the very greatness of their trust and work. They that are for them are more than they that are against them.

It

FIRST. I never had a doubt, but now I am more than sure, that slavery was the real cause of the war. was to preserve that, it was to extend that, that the South drew the sword. They had no grievance, they had no shadow of excuse besides; the offence was that civilisation was lighting her lamps too near them; that Christianity, with her ten commandments and her spirit of impartial and universal love, would not sanction her "peculiar institution," would not become a lying spirit," and connive at her rank injustice and cruelty; and if I cannot in conscience say, that it was expressly to uproot and destroy slavery that the North so vigorously resisted, I can say this, as it was expressed to me by an honourable citizen of Boston, that

66

"they felt slavery beneath the whole conflict, and that they struck at the vile system as soon as public law and constitutional honour and fairness would allow them to do so." There may be two opinions as to the legitimacy of having a national constitution in this nineteenth century, holding slavery, or allowing slavery at all within its bounds or States. But, such a constitution existing, it has its rights which must be respected as long as the constitution exists. These rights prevented the North from making any direct attack on slavery at the beginning of the war; but as soon as they saw the fair and honourable chance of striking it down, they did not pity or spare, they did not withhold the blow,-it came with

crushing force. And as the vile system, wounded, bleeding, and staggering blindly on through its last dishonoured days, without one penitential tear or pang as long as it lived, holding its blood-stained whips, and muttering its sullen curses to the last, fell at last to rise no more, the darkest and most gigantic criminal the world has ever seen, there was a sigh of relief, as I was assured, from sea to sea through those vast Northern States, and from many lips came the thankful exclamation, felt by all, "Thank God it is now gone!"

I am entirely confirmed in the opinion that they could not make peace with the South until they had conquered that peace with the sword. When those terrible battles were going on which appalled and sickened us all, seeming, as they did sometimes, scenes of mere fruitless carnage, the question was often put-put even by the friends of the North,-" Why do they not make peace ? Could anything that might come be worse than this?" The answer was then and is now, "They could not make peace.' It was simply an impossibility. Peace with a system like that lying close and hard upon them! peace with a slave-frontier of 3,000 miles and more peace with slavery dictating the terms for she must have done that, else there could have been no peace. Who were to catch the runaway slaves? Who were to make the laws to catch them? The men of the North, of course; and if they had not done so, if instead of doing so they had opened, as in that case they would have done, additional lines of underground railroad; if they had had their very children instructed, as in that case they would have had, to

tell any dusky questioners that might ask them, where shone the North star-who that reflects sees not that peace in such a case meant either continual war, or the loss of the Northern liberty in the setting up of the so-called Southern independence? Accordingly, they felt that they were really fighting for all that they had achieved in two centuries of development—for their institutions, their liberty, their homes.

6

Bear with me on this point; I believe a right understanding of it is vital to the cordiality of our future intercourse. The question with them over yonder is, "Are we regarded by our brethren as having yielded to passion, resentment, and the injured pride of place' and power among the nations, in striving as we did at such cost and sacrifice for the end which we have achieved? Or do they see, or at any rate in trustfulness believe that we saw, the necessity of our course to be as inevitable and authoritative as it was awful and distressing?" The difference in the two cases will be something like this. In the one case they were our Christian brethren bearing the burden of the Lord through sorrow and blood for four long years; baptised with such a baptism as the Master has seldom given to the disciple, but taking it and feeling it as His. In the other case they were but men giving blow for blow, demanding an "eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," and settling questions of human liberty and right by mere power and numbers. I confess that if I adopted this latter part of the alternative I should not care to renew intercourse with these men very cordially or very soon. Since I adopt clearly the former part

of the alternative I plead earnestly with my brethren who yet have lingering doubts, to look to this point more fully, and according to the measure of their convictions to do our brethren the justice which is all they ask at our hands. I understand Dr. Vaughan in the British Quarterly to allow (page 494), that "the North had been shut up to this course by the South; they were bound to take it." If I am not misinterpreting, and that is really granted-("Hear, hear," from Dr. Vaughan)-that is everything. That is the whole case; and I thank Dr. Vaughan for the frankness of the admission.

My brethren, I believe that none of us know the blackness of the darkness of that system that has been overthrown, and therefore how disgraceful it would have been to have made peace with it and how runious in the end. I do not suppose that the slaves were treated cruelly, as animals, in the main, although any slave at any time might become the victim of the most heartless cruelty. But the utter violation of all the domestic ties and of all the laws of purity-the utter corruption of morals therefore among the whites as well as among the blacks-the moral degradation of the masters and their sons, as well as of the slaves, beggars description and almost exceeds belief. real character of slavery is seen, I think, more strikingly in its effect on the best men, in exceptional and critical times, than in its normal. operations in the lives of the worst men, although those of course are horrible. If there is one man who more than any other has been universally accepted as the very pink and pattern of the Southern chivalry,

The

that man is General Robert Lee. And I believe that he is organically all that he has been regarded, and that but for his complicity with slavery, he would be a gentleman and a hero without a stain. But that man, immediately before the breaking out of the war, did what he had never done before, for he had never had a slave flogged on his estate; he had a girl, a virtuous girl, a confidential maid of Mrs. Lee, flogged in his own presence. She thought she had the right to liberty, not only as God's gift, but by law, as the bequest of her former master. She took it by running away. She was apprehended some time after, taken down to a house that I saw, a house standing alone in a field, and there flogged severely. When told to strip she indignantly refused, and-tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon!-the great Southern General with his own hands stripped the girl to the waist and stood by while she received her punishment. I heard the girl's own sister tell the story, most unwillingly, for she seemed to have a great regard for her old master, and she told these things only in reply to the questioning of a colonel of the army who was with us. The system is so bitter and bad, that when it touches even a noble nature it turns it sour, and burns all the gentler feelings out of it.

SECONDLY. I am thoroughly persuaded that on the whole the Americans are a peaceful people. They are very active in habit, fertile in resource, in general temper somewhat audacious, even as we should say irreverent; but most quickly sensible to kindness, and to a just appreciation of their character and motives;

and

prone to abide by the law, and (so far as I saw or could judge) very unwilling to encroach upon the laws liberties of other nations. I speak of the people generally whom I saw and talked with, not of the fools to be found all through the States, who write sensation paragraphs in newspapers, who raise up tall talk at public meetings, to match whom we have plenty of the same kidney here at home; and if the destinies of the two nations were in the hands of such persons we should be at war in a few months. But my candid opinion is, formed after a very anxious scrutiny of this matter during all the weeks of my stay among them, that they are by nature, and by habit, and from interest, a peaceful people, that therefore the world has nothing, or very little, to fear from the growth of their power. Their power is not essentially a military power; their spirit is not a spirit of encroachment. The plough, the axe, the machine, the ship, the warehouse, the pen, the pulpit, or the platform rather-these are their instruments. These are our instruments too. We have fleets and armies which we don't wish to use, which all wise men among us wish to see reduced when it can be done with safety. I told them over yonder that we are incapable of fear in what touches our honour as a people. And now I tell you here that they are not only as fearless as we, but, I believe, as just. I testify here this day that during the six weeks of my talking with them, I felt in the men a fine strong sense of justice. "That is

in the main. I am sure it is the ruling principle, at present, in the heart of her great common people, and, therefore, believing thus in justice and a peaceful spirit here, in justice and a peaceful spirit yonder, I will not believe that there is going to be war between the peoples now or ever. In refusing to believe this we help to make it impossible. Difficulties no doubt exist, which cannot be discussed here,-questions of right and precedent of the most delicate kind affecting all the future. But we have the right here to say this much as citizens of the British Empire, as servants of the Prince of Peace, and we think it our duty to press what we say upon our rulers; even as they have the right, and, I believe, will feel the duty over yonder, of pressing upon their rulers and guides, the importance and necessity of finding out some peaceful as well as just solution of these questions. If there are not precedents, they must make one-make what will be a precedent to all coming time. They must not touch the honour of either nation, and they must keep the peace. Our people don't want to become soldiers, I am sure; their people didn't want to continue soldiers. I saw the poor fellows returning by the ten thousand to their homes; I saw them in every part of the country where I was, going north and west, worn, wearied, many of them wounded. But they were all glad to get back to peaceful pursuits, and to their homes. I found that in returning to their native town or village they did not care about entering in the soldier's uniform; they preferred to doff the military blue, and to return in the citizen's dress in which they left. There

never has been such an army on the whole since our liberties were won by citizen soldiers in the civil war. There never has been in the history of war a nobler sight of its kind, nor, perhaps, one so noble, as the disbanding of that vast army, so far as it has yet gone; as Beecher happily said at Boston, "like the melting of the snows of winter when April gives advice." They sink back into society peacefully as the waves sink into the ocean after the storm.

"No longer hosts encountering hosts,
Shall crowds of slain deplore;
They hang the trumpet in the hall,
And study war no more."

I trust that at least between our brethren and ourselves there will now be a good understanding, ever growing into clearer cordiality and warmer mutual trust as the years roll by. I have done what I could to promote an end so unspeakably desirable. You took me as one of your busy men

from the ranks, to be associated with one of your more colossal men, who by long and honourable toil has won his place among the highest on our serenest heights. In his presence, and in your presence by whom I was sent, and in the presence of brethren from beyond the sea, who may be said to represent those to whom I was sent, I now declare that neither yonder nor here have I uttered one word intended to give pain to a living man. I have tried to speak and act everywhere and in everything with a constant, and often an anxious view, to an end for which, more than for almost anything else just now, statesmen should strive, and journalists should write, and ministers on fit occasion should preach, and even merchants should buy and sell,-viz., a cordial understanding,―more, a loyal loving league of inseparable friendship,-between England and

America.

GOOD REPRODUCING GOOD.-It is a German legend, that the emperor Charlemagne comes from his grave, every spring, to bless the land. Up and down the Rhine he walks, flinging his blessing on gardens, vineyards, and fields, to make the seed spring up and to multiply the vintage and the harvest. So the departed good, in the reformations which they effected, in the principles which they taught, in the institutions which they founded, reappear in the scenes of their life-long interest, to quicken every healthful growth, and multiply the ingathering of human joy.-Samuel S. Harris, D.D.

CHARLES WESLEY'S POETRY.-The interest which attaches to the Wesleyan poetry is not due merely to its intrinsic excellence. It is the product, not only of a great mind, but of a rare day, and wonderful doings. No hymns were ever so autobiographic and historical. They groan under the mortal anguish of repentance; they throb and quiver with the throes of the new birth; they swell with the triumphs of faith, the full glories of a present salvation. The whole vitality, not only of the poet, but of his people and the Lord's, is in them. The life-blood of the time flows through them; they are big with the