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do it. We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. 'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe that this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved, I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the states, old as well as new-North as well as South." After quoting this paragraph, methinks I hear a flourish of trumpets on the part of Northern special pleaders, but it is only of short duration, as on page 77 of Lincoln's Campaign Book, Lincoln says, "When I made my speech at Springfield, of which Judge Douglas complained, and from which he quotes, I really was not thinking of the things which he ascribes to me at all. I had no thought in the world that I was doing any thing to bring about a war between the free and slave states. I had no thought that I was doing any thing to bring

about a political and social equality of the black and white races; but I must say, in all fairness to him, if he thinks I am doing something which leads to these bad results, it is none the better I did not mean it. It is just as fatal to the country if I have any influence in producing it, whether I intend it or not." Such anti-slavery progress needs no comment.

We have said that deep strategy was also resorted to. This is seen in the word physical, introduced by Mr Dowe, not contained in the original and repudiated by implication or otherwise by Lincoln himself. Why, then, should Mr Dowe resort to such an artifice ? He probably wished to impress the British public with a sense of the absolute necessity and justice of the late war. Hence the trick. To what desperate expedients and shifts men are reduced sometimes to cover up and defend what they know to be wrong.

We cannot therefore unite with Neale Dowe in his commendation of the late Federal war, or follow him with complacency into these terrific scenes, where fathers, brothers, sons, lay rotting in their bloody shrouds.

In an address recently given in the Friend's Meeting House, Bishopsgate Street, the Rev. C. H. Spurgeon said that "the Baptists and Presbyterians, becoming alive to the fact that they might put their hands on the carnal sword, grasped it and fell from their right place." If this be so, have our war

Christians, so called in America, lifted themselves into their right place by the use of the sword, or Spurgeon's intimate and chosen friends who abet them, maintained their right place in the presence of God or man?

A paragraph which savours of unaccountable eccentricity has been brought under our notice, in a lecture on George Fox by the Rev. C. H. Spurgeon. It reads as follows, "I have a notion that all denominations of Christians have in their time persecuted except the Society of Friends and the Baptists, and it has been shrewdly hinted that we Baptists have never done so because we have never had the chance, but this is scarcely correct, for Roger Williams certainly had an opportunity in Rhode Island to have set up a Baptist state religion, but he spurned the thought. We have both of us a very clear history to look back upon with regard to that." We have no state religion in America, but the thickening leaves in our eventful history, reveal some dark pages where those sections of the Christian Church claiming to be the most favoured and honoured, have displayed a spirit of intolerance which made them more heathen than Christian, and more savage than human. As, however, our testimony may be rejected by some who have put themselves into the hands of "dearly beloved brethren" possessing "great reputations," and are influenced thereby to show the carnal spirit and arm, we will call the reader's attention to a lecture published by

Wm. Loyd Garrison, called the "Infidelity of Abolitionism," in which he says, when referring to a period not very remote, "we perceive by the revelations of the hour, that the religious forces on which we have relied, were all arrayed on the side of the oppressor," and amongst these he enumerates Baptists as well as orthodox and Hicksite Quakers. And when presenting the abolitionist in his relationship to those who adopted the science of exigency, better known as the damnable doctrine of expediency, he sums up their indictment against him as follows," He cannot be a good citizen, for he refuses to be law abiding, and treads public opinion, legislative enactment, and governmental edict alike under his foot. He cannot be sane, for he arraigns, tries, and condemns as the greatest sinners and the worst criminals, the most reputable, elevated, revered, and powerful members of the body politic. He cannot love his country, for he declares it to beladen with iniquity' and liable to the retributive judgments of Heaven. He cannot possess humility, for he pays no regard to usage, precedent, authority, or public sentiment, but defies them all. He cannot be disinterested, for it is not supposable that he is not actuated by any higher motive than the love of notoriety, a disposition to be factious, or the consummation of some ulterior design. He cannot be virtuous, for he is seen in the company of publicans and sinners, and is shunned by the chief priests, scribes, and Pharisees. He cannot be reli

giously sound in the faith, for he impeaches whatever is popularly accounted piety, as but an empty observance, a lifeless tradition, a sanctified villany, or a miserable delusion. He ought not to live for "it is better that one man should die than that a whole nation should perish." What an indictment against the abolitionist, by men who made the sun dark with the arrows of persecution shot against him! We might, however, bring Mr Spurgeon nearer home and refer him to the spirit of tion and persecution evoked amongst the Baptists and Quakers against Governor Eyre; and also to the carnality which now and then crops out from beneath what is spiritual in his own nature, but we forbear.

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Is it any wonder there should be such a labyrinth in connection with American questions or subjects, when great and good men should make such egregious blunders, and lamentable mistakes? On no topics have the press, pulpit, or platform reeked with greater falsehood, or been associated with wilder or stronger delusions, all of which, had the moral and civil tests been applied, would have brought out the real character of our people, the true condition of Society, the causes of the late war, and the present difficulties connected with re-construction.

When pointing out the contrast between those who had cast their war clubs and spears away, and renounced them in honour of King Jesus, and those who had made Christianity a means of inciting men

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