HE ember hours of the nineteenth century are here. The gloaming time of this cycle of a hundred years is upon us. Shall the ship of state be held upon the course which God through the Fathers set for her, or shall the brilliant star of her peace and power be allowed to be diverted, be made to grow dim and to lose its heavenly luster ? 66 'That a dark time of trouble is before this land and before the world, and is swiftly closing in upon the sons and daughters of men, is evident to many of different faiths, both spiritual and secular. We hear the mutterings of the storm, the distant roar of the angry billows of strife in things religious and civil. The tempest will surely break, but let it be our holy glory, our sacred joy, that although we may be broken by it, we shall never bend before it. Infinitely happier is the man who is defeated in a good cause than the man who is victorious in a bad one. "But the tempest produced by transgression in things individual and things national will not last forever; it cannot last for long. Sin and transgression are terrible things; but they carry in their breasts a poison which not only destroys all that it touches, but ultimately breeds destruction to themselves. In sin and wickedness Providence has fixed an evolution unto death. "After the night there will come the glorious dawning of the better morn. It will be for the good and the pure. We may differ as to how it will come, but that it will come we all believe. Soon will be heard the great voice in heaven saying: 'The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever.' "The citizens of that blest kingdom will be those who have known the power of being-of being true as steel to priceless principle of right in things national as well as in things personal. For the kingdom of God itself is founded upon the principle of right, founded upon the consent of the governed, and the voices of the redeemed will whisper gently among the amaranthine flowers, saying: 'Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power.' "Therefore let us work for right principles while it is day, for the night cometh when no man can work. Let us gird up the loins of our minds, and be sober, and hope to the end for the grace which is to be brought unto us at the coming of Jesus Christ."-MAGAN. "It is an incontestable truth that there is more havoc made in one year by men of men than has been made by all the lions, tigers, panthers, ounces, leopards, hyenas, rhinoceroses, elephants, bears, and wolves upon their several species since the beginning of the world, though these agree ill enough with each other and have a much greater proportion of rage and fury in their composition than we have. But with respect to you, ye legislators, ye civilizers of mankind, ye Orpheuses, Moseses, Monoses, Solons, Theseuses, Lycurguses, Numas! With respect to you be it spoken, your regulations have done more mischief in cold blood than all the rage of the fiercest animals in their greatest terrors or furies has ever done or ever could do!"-BURKE. "Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep and shaking her invincible locks; methinks I see her as an eagle, muing her mighty youth and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam; purging and unscaling her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance; while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means, and in their envious gabble would prognosticate a year of sects and schisms."MILTON. |