From every
ritual of worship, from every variety of speculative creed, earnest
minds have reached the same practical ground of labor for the freedom
of man. Such minds realize that Christianity can approximate its
exact application only as the machinery of human society is rightly
comprehended. The Gospel, acting through the church, the meeting-house,
the lecture-room, and the press, is demanding the redemption of master
and slave from the mutual curse of their relation. Every affliction and
struggle of this civil war may be sanctified, not only to the moral
improvement, but also to the material prosperity of our land.
Great events are required to inspire a people with great ideas. _Sicut
patribus sit Deus nobis_ is the motto of the city whence the "Atlantic"
goes forth to its readers. Let all who adopt this aspiration remember
for what they ask. God was with our fathers, and sent them hardship,
peril, defeat, that, battling painfully therewith, they might become
great and fruitful men. Not otherwise can He be with us. From the misery
of our civil strife we may educe a future happiness, as well as a
present blessedness. The fierce excitement of physical action has been
contagious to the heart and intellect of the time. Realities have
presented themselves which can be met only by ideas. In the seeming
distant years of our old prosperity, a few men and women sought to
abolish slavery because it oppressed the inferior race; today, the
nation deals with it because it has rendered the superior race
hopelessly violent and corrupt.
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