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the adorable Benefactor, who had made him so great, and admire and adore himself as the principle and the first source of his grandeur, but that Divine Goodness has been quick to secure him from this danger, by graving in his being a law of dependence, of original infirmity, of which it is impossible for pride itself to efface the celestial imprint.

And so has Nature been commissioned to render up her secrets and her treasures with a reluctant hand, one by one, at the price of harassing labors and profound meditations; to make man feel, at every movement, that if she is obliged to succumb to his desires, she yields less to his will than to his exertions; -a sure sign of his dependence. And so shall there be no progress, no conquests for man, which are not at once a signal proof of his strength and his weakness, and which do not bear the indelible impress at once of his power and his insufficiency.

11. FORTITUDE AMID TRIALS.- – Anonymous.

O, NEVER from thy tempted heart
Let thine integrity depart!
When Disappointment fills thy cup,
Undaunted, nobly drink it up;
Truth will prevail, and Justice show
Her tardy honors, sure though slow.
Bear on- -bear bravely on!

Bear on! Our life is not a dream,
Though often such its mazes seem;
We were not born for lives of ease,
Ourselves alone to aid and please.
To each a daily task is given,
A labor which shall fit for Heaven;
When Duty calls, let Love grow warm;
Amid the sunshine and the storm,
With Faith life's trials boldly breast,
And come a conqueror to thy rest.

Bear on

bear bravely on!

12. THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE. - Original Translation.

From Victor Hugo's Presidential Address at the Peace Congress, 1849.

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A DAY will come when you, France, you, Russia,—you, Italy, you, England, -you, Germany, - all of you, Nations of the Continent, shall, without losing your distinctive qualities and your glorious individuality, blend in a higher unity, and form a European fraternity, even as Normandy, Brittany, Burgundy, Lorraine, Alsace," all the French provinces, have blended into France. A day will come,

*Pronounced Alsass.

when war shall seem as absurd and impossible between Paris and London, between Petersburg and Berlin, as between Rouen * and Amiens,† between Boston and Philadelphia. A day will come when bullets and bombs shall be replaced by ballots, by the universal suffrages of the People, by the sacred arbitrament of a great sovereign Senate, which shall be to Europe what the Parliament is to England, what the Diet is to Germany, what the Legislative Assembly is to France. A day will come when a cannon shall be exhibited in our museums, as an instrument of torture is now, and men shall marvel that such things could be. A day will come when shall be seen those two immense groups, the United States of America and the United States of Europe, in face of each other, extending hand to hand over the ocean, exchanging their products, their commerce, their industry, their arts, their genius, - clearing the earth, colonizing deserts, and ameliorating creation, under the eye of the Creator.

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And, for that day to arrive, it is not necessary that four hundred years should pass for we live in a fast time; we live in a current of events and of ideas the most impetuous that has ever swept along the Nations; and at an epoch when a year may sometimes effect the work of a century. And, to you I appeal,- French, English, Germans, Russians, Sclaves, Europeans, Americans, what have we to do to hasten the coming of that great day? Love one another! To love one another, in this immense work of pacification, is the best way of aiding God. For God wills that this sublime end should be accomplished. And, see, for the attainment of it, what, on all sides, He is doing! See what discoveries He causes to spring from the human brain, all tending to the great end of peace! What progress! What simplifications! How does Nature, more and more, suffer herself to be vanquished by man! How does matter become, more and more, the slave of intelligence and the servant of civilization! How do the causes of war vanish with the causes of suffering! How are remote Nations brought near! How is distance abridged! And how does this abridgment make men more like brothers! Thanks to railroads, Europe will soon be no larger than France was in the middle ages! Thanks to steamships, we now traverse the ocean more easily than we could the Mediterranean once! Yet a few years more, and the electric thread of concord shall encircle the globe, and unite the world!

When I consider all that Providence has done for us, and all that politicians have done against us, a melancholy consideration presents itself. We learn, from the statistics of Europe, that she now spends annually, for the maintenance of her armies, the sum of five hundred millions of dollars. If, for the last thirty-two years, this enormous sum had been expended in the interests of peace, America meanwhile aiding Europe, - know you what would have happened? The face of the world would have been changed. Isthmuses would have been cut through; rivers would have been channelled; mountains † Ahmeeang.

* Pronounced Rooang.

tunnelled. Railroads would have covered the two continents. The merchant tonnage of the world would have increased a hundred-fold. There would be nowhere barren plains, nor moors, nor marshes. Cities would be seen where now all is still a solitude. Harbors would have been dug where shoals and rocks now threaten navigation. Asia would be raised to a state of civilization. Africa would be restored to man. Abundance would flow forth from every side, from all the veins of the earth, beneath the labor of the whole family of man; and misery would disappear! And, with misery, what would also disappear? Revolutions. Yes; the face of the world would be changed. Instead of destroying one another, men would peacefully people the waste places of the earth. Instead of making revolutions, they would establish colonies. Instead of bringing back barbarism into civilization, they would carry civilization into barbarism.

13. THE PEACE CONGRESS OF THE UNION.- Edward Everett. June 17th, 1850.

AMONG the great ideas of the age, we are authorized in reckoning a growing sentiment in favor of peace. An impression is unquestionably gaining strength in the world, that public war is no less reproachful to our Christian civilization than the private wars of the feudal chiefs in the middle ages. A Congress of Nations begins to be regarded as a practicable measure. Statesmen, and orators, and philanthropists, are flattering themselves that the countries of Europe, which have existed as independent sovereignties for a thousand years, and have never united in one movement since the Crusades, may be brought into some community of action for this end.

They are calling conventions, and digesting projects, by which Empires, Kingdoms, and Republics, inhabited by different races of men, tribes of Slavonian, Teutonic, Latin, and mixed descent, speaking different languages, believing different creeds,-Greeks, Catholics, and Protestants, men who are scarcely willing to live on the same earth with each other, or go to the same Heaven,

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can be made to agree to some great plan of common umpirage. If, while these sanguine projects are pursued, while we are thinking it worth while to compass sea and land in the expectation of bringing these jarring nationalities into some kind of union, in order to put a stop to war, if, I say, at this juncture, the People of these thirty United States, most of which are of the average size of a European Kingdom, destined, if they remain a century longer at peace with each other, to equal in numbers the entire population of Europe; States, which, drawn together by a general identity of descent, language and faith, have not so much formed as grown up into a National Confederation, possessing in its central Legislature, Executive and Judidiary, an efficient tribunal for the arbitration and decision of controversies, an actual Peace Congress, clothed with all the powers of a common Constitution and law, and with a jurisdiction extending to

the individual citizen (which this projected Congress of Nations does not even hope to exercise), if, while we grasp at this shadow of a Congress of Nations, we let go of-nay, break up, and scatter to the winds-this substantial union, this real Peace Congress, which, for sixty years, has kept the country, with all its conflicting elements, in a state of prosperity never before equalled in the world, we shall commit a folly for which the language we speak has no name; against which, if we, rational beings, should fail to protest, the dumb stones of yonder monument would immediately cry out in condemnation !

14. THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE ADVERSE TO WAR.-Rev. G. C. Beckwith.

WAR will yet cease from the whole earth; for God Himself has said it shall. As an infidel, I might doubt this; but as a Christian, I cannot. If God has taught anything in the Bible, He has taught peace; if He has promised anything there, He has promised peace, ultimate peace, to the whole world; and, unless the night of a godless scepticism should settle on my soul, I must believe on, and hope on, and work on, until the Nations, from pole to pole, shall beat their swords into ploughshares, their spears into pruning-hooks, and learn war no more. Yes, Sir; I see, or I think I see, the dawn of that coming day. I see it in the new and better spirit of the age. I see it in the Press, the Pulpit, and the School. I see it in every factory, and steamship, and rail-car. I see it in every enterprise of Christian benevolence and reform. I see it in all the means of general improvement, in all the good influences of the age, now at work over the whole earth. Yes; there is a spirit abroad that can never rest until the war-demon is hunted from the habitations of men. The spirit that is now pushing its enterprises and improvements in every direction; the spirit that is unfurling the white flag of commerce on every sea, and bartering its commodities in every port; the spirit that is laying every power of nature, as well as the utmost resources of human ingenuity, under the largest contributions possible, for the general welfare of mankind; the spirit that hunts out from your cities' darkest alleys the outcasts of poverty and crime, for relief and reform; nay, goes down into the barred and bolted dungeons of penal vengeance, and brings up its callous, haggard victims, into the sunlight of a love that pities even while it smites; the spirit that is everywhere rearing hospitals for the sick, retreats for the insane, and schools that all but teach the dumb to speak, the deaf to hear, and the blind to see; the spirit that harnesses the fire-horse in his iron gear, and sends him panting, with hot but unwearied breath, across empires, and continents, and seas; the spirit that catches the very lightning of Heaven, and makes it bear messages, swift, almost, as thought, from city to city, from country to country, round the globe; the spirit that subsidizes all these to the godlike work of a world's salvation, and employs them to scatter the blessed truths of the Gospel, thick as leaves of autumn,

or dew-drops of morning, all over the earth; the spirit that is at length weaving the sympathies and interests of our whole race into the web of one vast fraternity, and stamping upon it, or writing over it, in characters bright as sunbeams, those simple yet glorious truths, the fatherhood of God, and the brotherhood of man ; is it possible for such a spirit to rest until it shall have swept war from the earth forever?

15. MOSES IN SIGHT OF THE PROMISED LAND.-W. B. O. Peabody. B. 1799; d. 1847.

THE legislation of Moses! Let me ask, what other legislation of ancient times is still exerting any influence upon the world? What philosopher, what statesman of ancient times, can boast a single disciple now? What other voice comes down to us, over the stormy waves of time? But this man is at this day, -at this hour, — exerting a mighty influence over millions; the whole Hebrew Nation do homage to his illustrious name. Though the daily sacrifice has ceased, and the distinction of the tribes is lost, though the temple has not left one stone upon another, and the altar-fires have been extinguished long ago, still, wherever a Jew is found, and they are found wherever the foot of an adventurer travels, he is a living monument

of the power which this great Hebrew statesman still has over the

minds and hearts of his countrymen.

And now let us take one glance at this prophet, at the close of a life so laborious and honored. Up to his one hundred and twentieth year, his eye was not dim, nor had his strength abated. But now, when he stands almost on the edge of the promised land, his last hour of mortal life is come. To conduct his People to that land had been his daily effort, and his nightly dream; and yet he is not permitted to enter it, though it would never have been the home of Israel, but for him. He ascends a mountain to die, and there the land of promise spreads out its romantic landscape at his feet. There is Gilead, with its deep valleys and forest-covered hills; there are the rich plains and pastures of Dan; there is Judah with its rocky heights, and Jericho with its palm-trees and rose-gardens; there is the Jordan, seen from Lebanon downward, winding over its yellow sands; the long blue line of the Mediterranean can be seen over the mountain battlements of the West. On this magnificent death-bed the Statesman of Israel breathed his last. Lest the gratitude which so often follows the dead, though denied to the living, should pay him Divine honors, they buried him in darkness and silence; and no man knoweth of his sepulchre, unto this day.

16. NECESSITY OF LAW.-Richard Hooker. Born, 1553; died, 1600.

THE stateliness of houses, the goodliness of trees, when we behold them, delighteth the eye; but that foundation which beareth up the one, that root which ministereth unto the other nourishment and life,

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