In 1862, again, it went across the land.  In 1863 again.  In 1864 again.  Then the sharp instrument was incased and put away.  Never in the history of the ages was any land more thoroughly shaved than during those four years of civil combat; and, my brethren, if we do not quit some of our individual sins, national sins, the Lord will again take us in hand.  He has other razors within reach besides war:  epidemics, droughts, deluges, plagues—­grasshopper and locust; or our overtowering success may so far excite the jealousy of other lands that, under some pretext, the great nations of Europe and Asia may combine to put us down.  This nation, so easily approached on north and south and from both oceans, might have on hand at once more hostilities than were ever arrayed against any power.

We have recently been told by skillful engineers that all our fortresses around New York harbor could not keep the shells from being hurled from the sea into the heart of these great cities.  Insulated China, the wealthiest of all nations, as will be realized when her resources are developed, will have adopted all the modes of modern warfare, and at the Golden Gate may be discussing whether Americans must go.  If the combined jealousies of Europe and Asia should come upon us, we should have more work on hand than would be pleasant.  I hope no such combination against us will ever be formed, but I want to show that, as Assyria was the hired razor against Judea, and Cyrus the hired razor against Babylon, and the Huns the hired razor against the Goths, there are now many razors that the Lord could hire if, because of our national sins, He should undertake to shave us.  In 1870, Germany was the razor with which the Lord shaved France.  England is the razor with which very shortly the Lord will shave Russia.  But nations are to repent in a day.  May a speedy and world-wide coming to God hinder, on both sides the sea, all national calamity.  But do not let us, as a nation, either by unrighteous law at Washington, or bad lives among ourselves, defy the Almighty.

One would think that our national symbol of the eagle might sometimes suggest another eagle, that which ancient Rome carried.  In the talons of that eagle were clutched at one time Britain, France, Spain, Italy, Dalmatia, Rhactia, Noricum, Pannonia, Moesia, Dacia, Thrace, Macedonia, Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Phoenicia, Palestine, Egypt, and all Northern Africa, and all the islands of the Mediterranean, indeed, all the world that was worth having, an hundred and twenty millions of people under the wings of that one eagle.  Where is she now?  Ask Gibbon, the historian, in his prose poem, the “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”  Ask her gigantic ruins straggling their sadness through the ages, the screech owl at windows out of which world-wide conquerors looked.  Ask the day of judgment when her crowned debauchees, Commodus and Pertinax, and Caligula and Diocletian, shall answer for their infamy?  As men and as nations let us repent, and have our trust in a pardoning God, rather than depend on former successes for immunity!  Out of thirteen greatest battles of the world, Napoleon had lost but one before Waterloo.  Pride and destruction often ride in the same saddle.