verse provide to protect mankind from destruction by savage passions. And our blind statesmen go up and down, with committees of vigilance and safety, hunting for the origin of this new heresy. They will need a very vigilant committee indeed to find its birthplace, and a very strong force to root it out. For the arch-Abolitionist, older than Brown, and older than the Shenandoah Mountains is Love, whose other name is Justice, which was before Alfred, before Lycurgus, before Slavery and will be after it. The Virginia Scaffold. Rear on high the scaffold altar! all the world will turn to see How a man has dared to suffer that his brother may be free! Rear it on some hill-side looking North, and South, and East, and West, All the world will turn to see him; from the pines of wave-washed Maine And from clear Superior's waters where the wild swan loves to sail, Every heart will beat the faster in its sorrow or its scorn, For the man; nor courts, nor prison, can annoy another morn! And from distant climes and nations men shall westward gaze, and say, "He who perilled all for Freedom on the scaffold dies to-day." Never offering was richer, nor did temple fairer rise For the gods serenely smiling from the blue Olympian skies; They may hang him on the gibbet; they may raise the victor's cry, Christ, the crucified, attend him, weak and erring though he be; Edna Dean Roctor A I. SERMON BY REV. GILBERT HAVEN.* NEW act opens in the great drama of the rights and destiny of humanity, which is now being performed by this nation, in the presence of an astonished world. It opens with a sound of war, a cry for blood. Is it the last act of the tragedy, when deaths are frequent; where the innocent first full, the wicked follow; or is it but a slight interruption to the former movement, and without effect on that which shall come after? Let us consider it in the great light that falls upon us from Heaven; let us dwell upon it in no frivolous spirit, but in deep solemnity. 66 Things now That bear a weighty and a serious brow, Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe; Such noble scenes as draw the eye to flow, We now present." -the violent en Let us keep before us the great fact slavement of forty hundreds of thousands of our kindred in the flesh and in the Lord, in Adam and in Christ. Let us not * Entitled, "The Beginning of the End of American Slavery;" preached at IIarvard Street Methodist Episcopal Church, Cambridge, Nov. 6, 1859 : "Surely oppression maketh a wise man mad." Eccl. vii. 7. "I am not mad, most noble Festus." Acts xxvi. 25. "So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun : and behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power, but they had no comforter. Wherefore I praised the dead which are already dead, more than the living which are yet alive." Eccl. iv. 1, 2. 11* (125) forget what this system is and does; how it thrusts its miscreated front athwart the path of all national and religious progress, breaks churches to pieces, rules and ruins great Christian charities; and above, beyond all this, sets its satanic foot on man, created in the image of God, crushes out his freedom, his culture, his piety, his every God-given right and privilege. Connect with this defiant, triumphant onmarching institution of perdition-this little act of a score of men — and see if, and how, such a small stone can indeed sink into the forehead of the mighty Goliath and smite him to the dust. And may God help us to speak and hear in all sincerity and godly fear. You all know the published history of the transaction. About twenty men, led by one before famous, now immortal, seized a few slaveholders, and a United States arsenal, delivered a few score of slaves, were taken, most of the number instantly killed, a few captured, their leader tried, condemned, and sentenced to be hung. That is all. How can this, you may say, be the beginning of the end of American Slavery? A glance at the excitement it has created may guide you to a perception of this great fact. Not less than three orations upon it were published in the papers of last week; every journal has abounded with editorials upon it; every political speech has been burdened with attempts to fasten it upon their opponents and ward it off from themselves. Within a month, ten thousand thanksgiving sermons will dwell upon its lessons. Even now every ear and tongue, from Galveston to Eastport, is burning alive to every item pertaining to it. Never has any single event in our annals so inthralled the whole nation. The court of justice instantly takes up the wondrous tale. With an astounding speed it connects itself with the moans of the wounded and bereaved, drags its bleeding prisoners to its bar, refuses all demands for needed and brief delay, heeds no claim of judicial impartiality, but drives its deadly business |