For what is this mighty influence thus rousing in all nations and languages those groanings that cannot be uttered, for man’s freedom and equality?

O, Church of Christ, read the signs of the times!  Is not this power the spirit of Him whose kingdom is yet to come, and whose will to be done on earth as it is in heaven?

But who may abide the day of his appearing? “for that day shall burn as an oven:  and he shall appear as a swift witness against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger in his right:  and he shall break in pieces the oppressor.”

Are not these dread words for a nation bearing in her bosom so mighty an injustice?  Christians! every time that you pray that the kingdom of Christ may come, can you forget that prophecy associates, in dread fellowship, the day of vengeance with the year of his redeemed?

A day of grace is yet held out to us.  Both North and South have been guilty before God; and the Christian church has a heavy account to answer.  Not by combining together, to protect injustice and cruelty, and making a common capital of sin, is this Union to be saved,—­but by repentance, justice and mercy; for, not surer is the eternal law by which the millstone sinks in the ocean, than that stronger law, by which injustice and cruelty shall bring on nations the wrath of Almighty God!