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Show £)4 TilE GOLDEN IIOUR. XVI. A POSSIBLE BABYLON. w no can 1nisrcad or doubt the prophecies written broadly over all tho mountains, prairies, savannahs, lakes, and riYcrs of this superb continent? vVhat heart can have a 1ni giving that these grandeurs have been rcparcd for a race of slaves ? Docs Niagara thunder ~f the great era of slave-coffics? Docs the Mississippi suggest a race of clay-caters on its shores? Do the great rivets between North and South, tho Rocky, tho .A.lleghany, the Blue Ridge mountains, foretell that the rivets of moral and political union on this contincn t arc to be perpetual fear on one side and menace on the other, as they have been for years,- a union crumbling through very roitcnnc s? Every hill-top in America is a Pisgah, from which can be seen the Promised Land of Liberty, "\vhich this nation is sure sooner or later to en tor. But 1neanwhile there are dreary forty-year wander-ings in desert places, which 1nay have to come ere we are worthy to enter our Canaan of Freedom and Prosperity. "\V orsc than all, there is a possible Babylonish captivity toward which it were well for this generation anxiou ly to look. The fearful retribution which befell Israel for its idolatry i · never absent fr01n the paths of such nations as turn aside fro1n their A POSSIBLE BABYLON. 95 own God to worship alien idols. Sl a very 1· s for this nation the alien idol, and its worship may yet have to be lntrnt out of us l>y a similar fiery trial. There is a current phrase which sa<- y , "T111· s war 1· s bound to be the death of lavery." It scc1ns to me a very thoughtless speech. IIow do we expect c1nancipation to co1nc ? I. it to bo as a shower of gold? The proverb says, " vV.hat will you have, quoth God; pay for it and take it." \V c shall have frccclon1 from our national cur c, not by any luck, but ·when \VC are up to paying the fair price; if there is enouo·h humanity and co1nmon sense in the country to dcstr~y Slavery, it will be destroyed, and not otherwise. N 0 doubt Slavery will end, but this govcrnn1cnt may never live to sec the day. W c actually hear people saying, " When this war is ended, we can have a convention, and agree upon some plan for the gradual abolition of Slavery." Wlten this war is ended ! rrhis is much as when Paddy, after vainly endeavoring to put on a pair of new boots, remarked that he feared. be would never be able to get those boots on until he had worn them a day or two. Perhaps the highest secret which the Oriental philosophy hit upon was the peri taltic movcn1cnt of the univcr c. The idea was that the visiule univcr ·c was the integument of a great livin<r soul, and that, in its on ward progress, the vi tal form from time to tin1c shed ' |