12 evoked new races into life, summoned constituent assemblies, framed constitutions, convoked parliaments, commanded armies. Under it, all the old helpers of oppression have been dying— feudalism, the divine right of kings, patrician prestige, papal infallibility, tradition, superstition, military conquest, foreign intervention, the balance of power, diplomatic craft. All this, too, in spite of the terrible anomaly, the shameful stigma, of our maintaining African slavery. Cleared of this accursed i^proach, and accredited by the demonstration that a free government is not only the happiest but the strongest and most secure of all governments, we shall exercise an influence, after winning this contest, vastly beyond anything ever before realized. It will literally be irresistible ; and the progress of the race will thenceforward go on with strides of which hitherto we have had no conception. Such is a scant index of our responsibilities as the peculiar American generation which now stands in the breach to save the territorial area of the nation; to save the essential life of the nation ; to save the very soul of the nation, which is but another name for the spirit of Progress everywhere. It is impossible for the human mind to gauge these responsibilities. They stretch almost to infinitude. Were the tremendous destinies depending, under Providence, upon our faithfulness, in this our generation, set before us in anything like their actual reality, the boldest and the calmest would shrink appalled. The exclamation from every lip would be, “ Who is sufficient for these things ?” The universal feeling would be that finite hands are not fit for such measureless trusts; and the universal impulse a look for some.miraculous interposition from heaven. But there can be no miracle vouchsafed. It is God’s way to act in this world through human agents. He has elevated us to the dignity and the responsibility of being co-workers with him. We must stand to the lot he has assigned us, in the assurance that if we are only true, he will give us strength as we need it. It is not necessary that we shall have a complete conception of all the consequences of our faithfulness or of our unfaithfulness. We could not if we would. But we should
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