tire extermination of Protestantism in Germany." The brave and generous King of Sweden threw himself into the struggle solely that he might rescue the Reformed Faith from a danger so imminent; on this plea he rallied to his standard the hesitating Protestant princes of Germany; combined their counsels and their forces, and led them to signal and inspiring victories; and though after his fall at Lützen, the conflict raged long and terribly and with varying fortunes, yet the sword that Gustavus Adolphus unsheathed was the "sword of the Lord" for the deliverance of his people, and achieved for the Evangelical Faith in Germany a position of freedom and of security that made the work of the Reformers "legally impregnable." The thirty-years' war was a new struggle between Michael and the Dragon; and out of it there came "salvation and strength, and the kingdom of our God and the power of his Christ."

The civil war of Cromwell, though followed by a reaction in the interest of civil and religious absolutism, was a mortal blow to the powers of darkness that had thought to force back England into the arms of the Papacy. The logical sequence of that war, in the Revolution of 1688, was the final overthrow in England of that Spiritual Despotism which for almost a century had endeavored to suppress free inquiry and free worship by the faggot and the gibbet; it was the enlargement of free and spiritual Christianity through the emancipation of the Anglo-Saxon race. And thus the great law repeats itself that wars for Right have their beginning in heaven, and their end in the kingdom of God.

Without further reference to historical illustrations of this fact, we may read in the war which the people of the United States have been called to wage, primarily for the defense of constitutional government and for the unity of the nation, the signs of another conflict of the powers of Light and Truth with the powers of Darkness and Evil. Beginning the war upon political grounds, we have been compelled to advance it to grounds. Beginning the war with a policy, on the part of rulers and generals, that looked to the conservation of slavery as well as of the Union, both rulers and generals, and soldiers and people, have been taught that the Union can be

moral

preserved only through the destruction of slavery. Beginning the war as a measure of self-defense forced upon us by the wicked deeds of others, we are compelled to carry it on for the deliverance of the enslaved, and for the advancement of righteousness. We could not have it otherwise if we would. We have no choice in the matter and have had none from the first. It was slavery that prompted the Rebellion; it was slavery that was to profit by the war; it was the slave-power that would arise upon the ruins of the Constitutional Union and Liberty; and to save these we were compelled to smite the smiter and to destroy the destroyer. Slavery had so far triumphed over the politics of the country, over the commerce of the country, over the literature and even over the religion of the country, that only a war which should exterminate its roots from the soil could check its growing supremacy. The war was rendered a necessity by the alarming encroachments of that huge organic iniquity that lifted itself against all the forces and aims 'of modern civilization.

But while for us it was a necessity of our national existence, how manifest has it become that it was also an ordinance of Almighty God for the destruction of a strong hold of Satan from which nothing else could have cast him out. We to whom these blasts of war seem so terrible, are only in the edge of that whirlwind of contending powers where Michael and his angels fight with the dragon and his angels, till that old serpent which deceiveth the whole world shall be cast down and trodden under foot in the last hateful seat of his dominion. And, from this conflict of arms representing and reproducing that conflict of spiritual powers, there shall come forth new strength and enlargement for the kingdom of God. Once more, in the sight of all nations, is the Prince of this world judged, that the Son of Man may be glorified. Not simply by the overruling Providence of God after the war, nor in the way of incidental benefits snatched from a necessary evil, but as the direct and patent result of the war itself, and as the manifest design of God in and through the war, the kingdom of Christ shall be strengthened and enlarged in this land and among all nations.

The field for untrammeled evangelism in this country will be greatly enlarged by means of the war. In all the region where slavery ruled, the gospel existed rather by sufferance than with authority. It was under bonds to keep peace with the great controlling iniquity of society and of the State. Neither by speech to their fellowmen, nor in prayer to Almighty God, could its ministers express a just abhorrence of that iniquity or suggest its abolition. Social and legal restrictions curtailed the influence of Christianity and impaired its purity. The very word of God was bound. In many States it was forbidden by law, in others by a no less tyrannical public opinion was it forbidden to teach the toiling millions of the South to read. And while the teaching of the slaves was prohibited, the teaching of the poor whites was purposely neglected, so that there are millions in the South more ignorant than the slaves-whose susceptible natures have imbibed. knowledge from contact with their masters, whose yearning for freedom has quickened their intelligence, and whose simple believing spirit has led them to God without book or preacher— millions of whites there are more cursed by slavery than its immediate victims. Of three hundred rebel prisoners confined at Alton, Ill., only one in twelve could read; of two hundred and eighty in the Gratiot st. prison, St. Louis, only one in seventeen; of hundreds of white refugees at Cairo, only one in ten, over twelve years of age, could read; among three hundred refugees, mostly women and children, gathered in a single barrack at Nashville, not one in twenty, over twelve years of age, was able to read. These statistics are derived from actual count by trustworthy agents of the American Union Commission. They furnish a fair average of the intellectual condition of the "poor white trash." To very many of these the Bible has been a sealed book. The missionary, the evangelist, the colporteur, have not been suffered to teach its blessed words in all their fulness and freedom; the Sabbath school teacher has been restricted to oral instruction-and that with a prescribed limitation of topics-and every agency of evangelism has been watched with jealousy and kept under bonds. The pulpit has been hampered by the presence of slave-masters; the discipline

of the church has been hindered by their threats. Nowhere in all that region has the word of God had free course that it might be glorified.

But the war will open that vast territory to an untrammeled evangelism. With the overthrow of slavery, every legal, and for the most part every social, restriction upon the work of the gospel will be removed. It will no longer be an offense at the South to read God's word; it will no longer be an offense to declare that God "hath made of one blood all nations," and that "there is no respect of persons with Him;" it will no longer be an offense to insist that marriage shall be held sacred; that labor shall be fairly compensated; that speech and conscience shall be free. The South will become what the West has been, as a field of evangelical labor.

Already the States of Maryland and Missouri are open to this new light of freedom and regenerating Christianity. In Baltimore, where a Torrey and a Garrison were imprisoned for abetting the escape of slaves, the verdict has gone forth that slavery shall be no more. In St. Louis, where peaceable men have been mobbed for advocating universal freedom, a minister can now say to applauding multitudes: "Let us build our society anew with the eternal ideas of Right as our agents and standard. Let us do this for the sake of Peace. We want Peace not so much with rebels, but Peace with Humanity, with Christianity, with the genius of Liberty and Law; with the immortal forces of the human soul, with the civilization of Christendom and the Spirit of the Age; and with the government of God.”*

The war has acquainted us with the social condition and the moral wants of the masses at the South, which were concealed in a great measure behind the bastions of slavery. And surely never before was disclosed to the compassionate gaze of Christianity a more pitiable spectacle than those non-descript specimens of our common humanity which even oppressed negroes have been wont to despise as "poor trash." Here are

Rev. T. M. Post, D. D., in his admirable address, entitled Palingenesy, or National Regeneration.

millions at our very doors to be raised from the lowest depths of ignorance and barbarism.

And this revelation of ignorance and wretchedness has awakened in good men a yearning for a better order of things. We mean in good men at the South;-true patriots and sincere Christians, though heretofore intimidated, or blinded, or perverted by slavery. Such men in Tennessee, in Missouri, in Louisiana, and already in Georgia, begin to perceive and to confess that all their hope as patriots and Christians, for the regeneration of Southern society, lies in the enfranchisement of knowledge and of the gospel, and in the admission of that free civilization which has so favored the once hated North.

The very calamities of war, that have sent adrift thousands of homeless creatures, are preparing our access to the poor and the degraded of the South, through the intercourse of sympathy and charity. We who would have carried to the South a free gospel, free schools and a free press, have been shut out, lest we should inspire the masses with a love of liberty. Now those masses are beginning to know us as their friends and benefactors. The black race know this; the poor whites are learning it. Cast upon us for food and shelter and clothing, they find us ready to minister to their relief without questioning their antecedents. This is as wise as it is Christian. If the fathers, in their ignorance and blindness, have been fighting in the rebel ranks, we will make patriots of the sons, by teaching them the blessings of freedom. When the Prince of Orange found himself the victorious head of the Protestant armies of the Netherlands, instead of visiting upon the Catholic population the cruelties of Alva, and avenging the 20,000 Protestants whom that wretch had murdered in cold blood, William declared his utter repugnance to the persecution of Catholics. He wrote to his most confidential agent: "Should we obtain power over any city or cities, let the communities of papists be as much respected and protected as possible. Let them be overcome, not by violence, but with gentle-mindedness and virtuous treatment." In like manner, when we have conquered the rebel forces, and have visited condign