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Show M. D. Conway. man! I have followctl thee dreami11g anrl waking with my eye . I haYe list ·ned to the wonl of' vi<:to rions ii.tith whi<'h came from thy prison; carne ::;aying," Go(llw~ pro~ pen·d me," a ~ thy w ·B-served .1\Iaster said in hi ' darkc~t hour, "Now nm I o-lorified." I have followed thee to tl1e scaffold, where, a~J the · ileut thunders of God, which were bur:ting Ol·cr t!H~ land, thou answered "nothing;" and I felt that like ont· fathers, we also were passing into a Red Sea., and have prayed that we too should be baptized to our l\Io ~cs , to ou r Freedom, in the cloud and in the sea! 'Vho is so purulind as to say that the man who e deed has summed up a century's workwho has sealed with his blood the death-warrant of SlaYcry, has failed? A clear eye may read in red l etter~ FAILUiu: on the front of the capitols in Virginia or \Vashington; but it will read on the gallows of Brown, succESS. 'Vhen such heroi. m fails, the divine power is bankrupt! You have heard the great tory of Arnold of 'Vinke1ricd, the second Leonidas and more: how, when all other hope was fled, and his companions sh!'ank before the warm of Au· trians, to whom they were a' nothing in number, he had rccouJ"C to an ally un ccn, but invincible,- namely, a heroic heart. He rushed forward to a ure death. He gathered in his ide the "fatal sheaf of Au trian spears," and peri~hed before them. He made every follower a hero,- hi deed was tronger than an army; his foe had not counted on s uch opponents. So does heroism fulfil the old prophccic , and carrying the arm of God with it, one elm es a thou and, and two put ten thousand to flight. 1Ve, too, have seen our Arnold die before us to break the pa s ; and where there was one God-fearing and man-loving heart in this land, there arc now a thou and. J ohn Brown i not dead; last Friday he was born in a million hearts. l1or this is a time when nothing should uc di gui. cd, and men mu t confront unwelcome but stubborn fact . Our speech must be by the rule of vera pro gratis- the true instead of the pleasa::1t. When, by a sudden touch, as of Ithuricl's spear, a disguised monster shows itself in its real M. D. Con\vay. 357 form, we know that the antipathy to it, hitherto disgui cd, will become equally open nnd real. 'Vhcn on one side of a river, free thought, and free ~peech, and free pr 's prevail, and 011 the other free presses ar ·cast into tlw riv 'r, and free men warned from their home ; wh n martial Jaw is <l<·elared and the highways arc imprc :; <.l; wh ·n a State tnrns highwayman, and imprisons the suhj<· t::; of other States without wa1Tant; when the political inqui~ iti on is revived in a Ht'jHiulic - then, my friends, it is an error to 8ay we are on the verge of ci,·il war; we arc in the mid ·t of civil war, whe ther much blood be yet shed or not. La t Priday the wind wa3 sown : soon or late the whirlwind mu:t be reaped. It is idle to talk of p ity for that slain man; we cannot pity one who looks down on us from such a height. 'V e sl10ulu rathe1· approach his pri~on a a palace, ltis gallows as a throne,- 11 For whether on the scaffold hi~h, Or in the battle's van, 0 The fitte. t place where man can die Is where he dies for man." We have now only to live and do a manly Cbristian part in the development of his deed, and in controlling it, le~t it pas out oft he lawful realm of the Prince of PEA<.; E. It: immediate rc ·ul ts may creep. In the E~yptian l<' o-e nd, at the end of every five hundred years, the divine bird, the Phamix, comes to tlJC altat· of the Sun and burns him elf to ashe . On the fir t day after this, men find in the a.~ he , a. worm; on the second day, an unfledged bird; and on the thil'd day af'tel', the full g1·own Phrenix flies away. Out of the ashes of our martyr a Revolution must come. I t may creep the first day; it may be weak the second day ; but at last its fi·ec pinion will strike the air, and it will ri. e up to brood over this land, until the progeny of Freemen arise to crown America's de tiny. 1\Iay we all, as we pass uuder the cloud and through the sea, be baptized afresh to the cause of LIBERTY, Ilul\IAN· ITY, and Goo! ~.b. |