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Show 32 THE GOLDEN HOUR. Wilkes announces that our frowning down the P. R. has crippled our rnilitary energies as a nation, and that it n1ust be restored. Logic seconds his motion. · Here is Christianity it elf, the civilization of religion: for its 1norc genial teaching the worl<l gave up the gods of battles, Jah and Jove ·with their thunderbolts, Mars with his spear, Odin with his sword. But War bids it recede : " You have heard that it hath been said, ' Thou shalt love thine cnen1y ,' but I, War, say unto thee, 'Kill thine enemy.'" Thus one by one these crown-jewels of our llumanity must be dim1ncd or exchanged for paste. War stands before us to-day a fatal despot, knowing no law but the passion of the moment, prostrating the Century before the llour ; takes the pen and plough from our hand, and gives us a sword; melts types into L ullets ; takes away the Golden Rule, and ro-c tablishes the law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. With a new, wild joy all true hearts in this land were thrilled when the millions of the North rose up and declared to Slavery, Here shall thy waves be stayed ! There were many reasons for such joy : first, that there was a North, when we feared there was none; next, that the disease of the country, ·which we had feared was chronic, had as u1ncd an acute form ' which is always more hopeful. \V e were glad, because we knew that this war was really the most pacific state of things which this country had ever known. We THE TvVO EDGES OF TJill SWORD. 33 knew also that a single day of Slavery and its rule in this country "\vitnc ·sed more \vrong, violence, corruption, 1norc actual "\var, than all that civil war even could bring ; (which conviction in 1ny own n1ind, as one having livc<l all 1ny life in the n1iclst of or ncar that institution, I here declare uu ·hakcn by any di~astcrs we have encountered.) A o·ori1la is an adtnirablc anin1al, looked at prospectively fro1n the crocodile point of view ; and so \vhcn a nation \Yhich had for years been crawling in the mud before an in ·olent usurper leaped to its feet, and forgot in a great 11101nent the wretched prey for which it had cra"\vlcd, it "\\ras an hour for proans only. Every principle had bccu paicl down for outwarJ unity,- a unity pre 'Cl'Ving UOth hanus, both feet, only t o cuter with both into hell-fire; but no"\v a line \Vas graven on the earth, and the nation dcclarccl it "\YoulJ perish rather than co1npro1nisc again. The fir t grand step was to have the nation comn1ittcd to an uncon1pro1ni ·ing attitude to,vard this rebellion ; to 1nakc the determination to ovcrcon1e it, at whatever physical cost, irrevocable. So much gained, the bet 1ncthocl of overcoming the rebellion \vould. be arrived at by further reflection and discus ·ion. The war, in its proper time and place, was noLle, because spontaneous and heroic ; but in this age and land it could only be an embryonic phase, to pass away before higher phase.·, which under its quick heats would speedily be developed. Every higher being must, ere it is born fro1n the c |
