escutcheon with the best blood of the republic. And even then, after two years of terrible fighting and tremendous sacrifice, its hold upon the nation was loosened as a military necessity, and not an act of principle or of justice. The first part of the Declaration, as a statement of their belief, was manifestly untrue, with the latter clause stricken out, and slavery still existing among them. Hence a difficulty has ever arisen in interpreting the Constitution which soon followed, embodying the Declaration of Independence as adopted.

On the circling rim of the old bell in Independence Hall, which was rung to announce to the expectant people that the Colonial Congress had adopted a Declaration of Independence, was inscribed these prophetic words: "Proclaim liberty throughout all the land." But this was not the doctrine of the adopted Declaration, and the old bell that was expected to ring out the glad news to the waiting hearts of the people, broke down in the first effort, and was cracked for very shame at being called upon to proclaim such a falsehood as was involved in the action of that Congress. But the victory for slavery was only apparent. Truth and Justice are never defeated. They may be overcome for the time being by the action of men, but in the end they must and will conquer. Carlyle says: "Lying is not permitted in this Universe." The battle was only transferred to a broader field of action, to make the victory more complete, and the defeat more utter, and the rout more hopeless.

Perhaps it was well enough for us to share with our fathers the burden. They demonstrated by the Revolutionary war, inspired by this Declaration, that self-government was possible, and that kingly oppression would no longer be endured: and we in our late war, supplementing and reaffirming all they had achieved, established forever the first clause of the Declaration: "That all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness;" and we have just completed the needful legislation to perpetuate this doctrine as long as we have a flag and are a power among the nations of the earth. Gladstone says of the merits of the Constitution that soon followed this Declaration: "The American Constitution is the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man."

The 4th of July, 1776, was a glorious day, in spite of all

I have said, seeming to censure the noble souls that wrought at the greatest problems that ever engaged the attention of men. It was the bright morning of a day that shall know no night to the race of men. It was the gathering up of the forces of all time, and the giving birth to a progeny that shall never grow old, and that shall never die. It was then, for the first time, that a great nation rose up to seize the idea of immortality in its form of government. Kings and queens may rot out and run out; empires and monarchs may lose their power, decay and perish, but the people never die. If the government is in them, and of them, and for them, then it must be coextensive with them, and can only die when the people perish from the face of the earth.

In England, when the king dies, the great bell from St. Paul's rings out to the waiting crowds of London the solemn news; and a herald immediately proclaims, "The king can never die," announces the successor, and the people accept the fiction. But with us, no bell shall ever ring the knell of our royalty, or herald announce a new line of succession. It is an ever glorious reality that our royalty never dies, and that the kingly pulsations of power forever throb through all the hearts of the people.

The spirit of the old union gathered from the Declaration and the Constitution was of necessity one of compromise. We have fully realized what Jefferson feared at the time when he said: "I tremble for my country when I remember that God is just." We have sadly experienced, too, the truth of the statement of George Mason-a member of the same convention that framed the Constitution: "That by an inscrutable chain of cause and effect, Providence punishes National sins by National calamities."

Our fathers seemed to forget that Justice never sleeps; that her vision is omniscient, and striking with infinite certainty, never misses her mark, whether it be a nation or an individual, a king or a pariah. They forgot that nations are not soulless corporations and that the Divine law ever is, "The sinning soul must die;" that there are no clocks in the Divine economy, and that time, as man computes it, is not the essence of moral contracts, and that sooner or later punishment must follow disobedience to moral, and therefore eternal, truths.

John Rutledge, of South Carolina, the father of compromises, replied to the statements of Jefferson and Mason:

"Oh no, gentlemen; religion and humanity have nothing whatever to do with the question." "Interest is the governing principle of nations." "In this world we must compromise." "Compromise is the very essence of government."

Assent to this false theory was the fatal step in the old Union. They should have limited this spirit of compromise. It may be well enough at times to compromise on questions of corn or cotton, cattle or minerals, currency laws or territorial limitations; but never on questions involving moral principles which are absolute and eternal, and are the same whether involved in national laws or individual life. You may stretch the India rubber if you please, but not the diamond a hair's breadth. The paper currency, it is possible, may be counterfeited beyond detection; but the gold, never.

Compromise was the sword that drew the heart's blood of the old Union. All her great statesmen, with their false theories, went down under this spirit. On this rock the brilliant talents and hopes of Webster, Clay and Calhoun were wrecked forever. Like a miasma, it blasted their better life, as it did that of their beloved country. On the very day that Henry Clay, sorrow-stricken and disappointed in his life's aspirations, left the United States Senate, Charles Sumner, the morning star of the new era, took the seat of Daniel Webster, the noblest statesman of the old order, who, broken-hearted, had been killed by this demon of evil. Massachusetts uttered her protest and lifted the voice of her conscience in Charles Sumner; and whatever else may be said of him, he will forever shine in history as the most noted and the most gifted embodiment of conscience in law, and as the central figure, around whom crystallized the principles of justice to all in the new Union. And though his noble form went down in blood on the Senate floor, vindicating this doctrine, yet he rose again, and lived to see it permanently fixed in the administration of the new order of national life.

It is the same principle that led Paul to acknowledge himself a debtor to the Jews, who had imprisoned, and persecuted, and finally killed him. It was that he had a higher life, a nobler wealth of soul, and a broader charity, a sweeter sympathy, and a better knowledge of God and man to impart to them; and this was his debt to them. And theologians tell us that even Christ himself must suffer not only

all that man could suffer in the life of flesh and temptation, but he must go as low down in the very forms of death and suffering as it is possible for the vilest sinner to go, before he can save to the uttermost; and so he went into the conditions imposed upon the vilest criminals, even under the Roman Cross, that he might exalt the worst of the race to thrones of everlasting life. And it is this spirit of fraternal love that characterizes our government, and that has never characterized any other. Even England, the most distinguished of all trans-Atlantic powers for a generous philanthropy, has for her ensign the most cruel and most powerful beast of prey that roams in the forest. Earthly power is the idea. While ours is the bird of the steadiest and most rapid wing, whose eye can pierce the noon-day sun, and whose home is in the skies.

The idea so prevalent in our day among the would-be reformers, that the great and good have perished from among men, and lived only in the distant past, was utterly dispelled by our last war. With rude and bloody hands the war rent forever the veil that covers with a romantic halo of glory, and undue praise, the legends and achievements of the past. It showed that the baser and more corroding passions for wealth, and our unparalleled material growth and development had not eaten away the nobler sentiments of our political and individual life; but when the crisis came and the occasion demanded the martyrs, they were ready, and marched forth in solid columns, the wonder and admiration of us all, to the bloody struggle and the exalted honor of a patriot's grave. They went out from among us boys, who were thought incapable of bearing a gun, and men, some of whom had never before found their places in life's great struggle, fell into line and saw at once that they had been born to defend the Republic. We counseled and encouraged them to sign that enlistment roll of honor, which authorized them to strike for the nation's life, and to shed the sacrificial blood, that it might be redeemed and live, and at the same time be lifted up themselves into fellowship with the world's noblest names, to shine forever in their galaxy of beauty. Stars may fall from the heavens, and eclipses may darken the sun; but their names shall know no eclipse, and are indelibly enrolled with the gods of the earth, and they will shine with ever increasing lustre as the centuries move on. Fifteen years ago they were unknown, save to their

families and a few friends. To-day their history and names are upon the tongue of every nation under the sun. Washington and his gallant supporters of the Revolution, and Lincoln and his mighty host of blood-stained heroes, rejoice together over a common country saved, and the legacy of a free government bequeathed by them to all future ages, as they look down upon a grateful people from the Paradise of the good. The martyrs are still with us, and the honest face of Abraham Lincoln looks to-day into the eyes of more people than any man that ever lived, and is held in more loving and worshipful respect by more hearts in every land than any mortal the race has ever seen before. He sits, not so much in the palaces of power-though you will find him there—as over the altar in the hamlets of the poor. Like the Judean Savior, he went from the bottom to the top of the race, from the fullest experiences of the most lowly to the highest positions of power and fame that can be given to man on earth-possessing at the same time the respect and reverence of the cultured and powerful, and the grateful and undying affections of the poor and lowly.

Centuries hence, the student of history will read with eager interest the grand events that make beautiful the history of Salamis, Thermopylae, and Marathon. But his heart will kindle with a new enthusiasm as he comes to Bunker Hill and Gettysburg, Chattanooga and the Wilderness-the battlefields of '76 and '61. He will recognize a similarity in the Grecian and American struggle. The noble Greeks battled with wonderful persistency to save the highest civilization of the past from being blotted out by the barbarians of the East. The no less noble and brave Americans fought against the barbarism of slavery and for self-government. His quick intuitions will leap over the chasm of intervening centuries, and see that the Grecian heroes that perished on those battlefields that have been centers of poetic, historic and patriotic inspiration in all ages, are fully equalled in the objects for which our armies fought, and the heroic sacrifices they made in their attainments. In all future history and poetry Washington, Lincoln and Grant, Putnam, Sherman and Sheridan, Perry, Farragut and Foote, Jefferson, Stanton and Seward, Lafayette, Adams and Chase, with the brilliant hosts who supported them on land and sea, will stand out as conspicuously as Pericles and Alcibiades, Themistocles