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Show 234 George B. Cheever. of so walking with God infuses into the soul, as well as the might and sover eignty \\ ith which it invcl:it ' it. \Ve have here a character magllificcnt on principle. We haYe a man submis ively r egardful of God's \Vord as the expr ession of His supreme and sovereign righteou ne-s and will. \Ve have a man sympathizing with God, j ealous for God; not a man of mere sympathy,- above all, not of sympathy with the oppressor, but with the oppressed. ·we have the grave characteristic of j ealousy for God's great justice and righteousness - jealousy for God's law, against every law and practice that violates it. This type of character is of the old Puritan l\fayflowcr stamp. It would seem as if the plates of that character mu t have been stolen mvay from that fir t generation and buried; but now, after two hundred years, a new, frel:llJ, vivid impression i before us. Perhaps God is going to cast in the furnace, just now kindled, a new set of plates. At any rate, God has renewed, for our admiration aiH.l for the slave power to hate and hang, the marvel, in thi5 age, of an old, stern, brave, yet courteous and Iovin!Y Puritan hero. The character is God'- work, not man' , and it fills us with admiration to see so commanding a form ri 'e up in this age of expediency, and mere cheap sensibility and tears: so commanding a manifestation of rig hteous principle towermg above aU expediency, and of sympathy in behalf of the en laved, where ve ted rights in them as property are claimed as so legitimate and holy, that no law of God nor . . ' JU tice, nor benevolence, can have any right to interfere with them. . ~uch a character shows the power of prayer, and such a cns1 shows the need of 1·t. WI1 a t cou ]u·1 J o1m B rown have ~ccomplishecl, had he not been a man of prayer? And were 1t not for the belief men have in l1is Chri:--tian character before God, how vain wou lcl have been his letters his word:-; h . ' '' IS grand utterances ; how ineffectual, but for the as urance of his Chri::;tian integrity, but for the depths of Christian George B. Cheever. 235 experience out of which those utterances i'prang. L ook how his familiarity with Gou's \Vord, and the po ession of his whole bcin CY with the sen e of God's attributes, God's pre - b cnce, God's truth ar:d ju, tice, carry a wC'ight, a power, a majc:-)ty in his cxpres ions that nothing can equal. Before uch demonstrations of the power and teaching of God's \Vonl in his heart the most glowing eloquence is poor and feeble. l\Ien feel that it would haYe been impossible to have conceived or framed this man's singularly simple, forciblr, and sacred ·peeches and letter s, under such awful circumstances, but by more than mortal teaching, out of the habit of a soul, who:;e re -ting place was God, and God his rock and r efuge. The habit of prayer and communion with God's '\Vord seem to have made him what he was, and uch pa sages a the 4 Gth Psalm might have been the habitual hymn of his sancti-fied nature. That such a man should have been hanged by a profe. ed-lv civilized and Christian State, for the benevolent attempt to 1~cscu e a few of his oppres cd and en laved fellow-beings from the bondage and cruelties of t:ilavery; and hanged on the pretence that he had committed trea -on again t the State and the government; and hanged on the principle of expediency announced by Caiaphas of olu, that if he were permitted to live, the State was in danger; all this brings both the State and the crime of hanging such a victim into a dreadful rc -emblance with the Jewish murderers of Chri t, on the plea that it was expedient that one man should die rather than the whole nation stand in danger of perishing. Doubtlc s the death of John Brown is the beginning of the end. God jn his infinite mercy g rant that through the faithfulne s of his ervants with hi \Voru, attended by his Spirit, the end may come in a peaceful emancipation of the slaves, and not in a whirlwind of the Divine vengeance. |