from that national decree. The work is not yet accomplished. Our brothers yet pine in prison-houses, and suffer unto death on the bloody field. The foe is yet stiff-necked and rebellious. It may be long ere the high lands of perpetual peace are reached. We may see days as dark as any which have covered us. Yet the end is sure. The grand uprising assures its coming. Does it also that higher, that diviner end to which the whole creation moves? Will the nation, will the Church, will every Christian, every minister, every man gird himself for this greater task? If so, that higher glory will speedily dawn. The sun will rise that knows no setting. The kingdom of Christ will be established. The whole earth, one family, will dwell in Him, knit together in love, in labor, in faith, in joy; while over it all will bend the cloud of witnesses, with celestial faces, the martyred and sainted dead of every age and clime, not the least in honor and happiness those of our own age and clime, reliving happiest lives in their more saintly children, the inheritors of their sacrifices, their grace, their renown. "For all they thought, and loved, and did, And hoped, and suffered, is but seed THE VIAL POURED OUT ON THE SEAT OF THE BEAST.* "AND THE FIFTH ANGEL pourED OUT HIS VIAL UPON THE SEAT OF THE E have often been summoned to the sanctuary, in the progress of the great controversy so near its end, at times to exult, but chiefly to mourn. We W have been constrained to set forth the national sin and the national danger; to point to the cloud charged with God's thunderbolts, that hung black and fiery over a vain and careless land, and to urge upon the Church and the nation the tears, the words, the deeds of repentance. We have seen that cloud gather blackness as the nation and the Church went plunging from sin to sin, until at last it broke forth in such a storm as has not fallen upon any land since the fiery shower fell upon Sodom. Under that cloud, through that sea, we have waded forward, slowly and tremblingly, * A sermon preached in Boston on the occasion of the Fall of Charleston, March 5, 1865. stumbling often in the mire of our own corruptions, refusing often to listen to the command of God, which ordered us onward, trusting in arms of flesh, in compromises, in pride, in self, in sin. But as these fancied helps broke under the weight with which our weakness compelled us to burden them, we found ourselves sinking, with a faintness almost unto death, upon the only Arm that could save. The unwelcomed duty sounded dreary as a funeral knell in our frightened ears, and only to preserve ourselves from destruction did we heed its hated summons. A merciful God granted us salvation even under such undeserving circumstances. Though with great and sore chastisements, with misery and death multiplied manifold, He saved us from utter extermination. He is bringing us out into a wealthy place. We are, we hope, on the verge of complete victory. The last steps to this divine consummation are being taken. One more, and the goal is reached. That step must, ere long, follow, and the arch-rebel flees for life through the regions where for years he has ruled in power and great glory, and where he fancied his glory was to be perpetual. In the progress of these achievements we have reached one event that ought not to pass unnoticed. The fall of Charleston will be more memorable to the future student of this war than that of any other city. Its capture will surpass in interest that of all its rivals in iniquity, from New Orleans to Richmond. In the ruin that has overwhelmed it, God has written out in the eyes of all the world His just displeasure, His inevitable vengeance against sinners. In dwelling upon this theme we are raised to the hights of the divinest truth, where the dread vision of a sovereign God, exercising His power in justly punishing willful, persistent, and awful transgressors, stands forth before our awe-struck eyes. The angels of His vengeance are flying in the midst of heaven. The vials of His wrath are poured upon the air. We see the fearful devastations; we see the Lord, strong and mighty, sad, and solemn, and serene, quietly casting His enemies into destruction. Let us draw near this mount that burneth with fire, that is enshrouded with blackness, that trembles, and rocks beneath the footsteps of a descending God. Standing afar off we behold the fearful spectacle. As the shells drop bursting upon the doomed town, it seems as if they were lightnings darting from the very heavens. That cannon's roar is but the muttering of the voice of God in angry thunder. As Abraham, from the distant hills of Hebron, beheld the smoke of Sodom go up as the smoke of a furnace, so may we behold the smoking ruins of the haughtiest and wickedest town that has existed in this generation on the face of the whole earth. Nowhere has there been such sin, nowhere such just and terrible punishment. In considering this subject, let us study more closely the sin and punishment of this city, and draw from this divine act such lessons of national and individual duty as it is intended to teach. I. Its sin. The Seat of the Beast. No place in modern history has achieved so infamous distinction as the city of Charleston. Rome is supposed by many to be in the eye of the revelator when he wrote this vision. That city has truly been drunk with the blood of the saints. It has been full of pride, and malice, and murder. Its inquisition stands beside its cathedral. Tortures fill its walls with stifled cries. Dungeons and death bury the victims of liberty and truth alive in their ponderous and marble jaws. It has sent its emissaries and influence throughout the world, and repeated its pride and cruelty in every clime and age. Yet Rome has never equalled Charleston in crime. Paris is a worldly, sensual, wicked town. It fosters vanity and vice. It is the seat of a ruler who is subtle, comprehensive, active, bold. He marches forth his armies into Italy and Mexico to subdue liberty in the name of Liberty. It is the seat of the most powerful foe of European rights that Europe contains. Yet Paris is Paradise compared with Charleston. London is a mighty mass of swollen wealth and pride, poverty and corruption. She keeps millions of her natives poor, ignorant and disfranchised, downtrodden and despised, that bloated thousands may strut the lordlier. The crime of London, as the centre of the ruling forces of England, is written with the point of a diamond. It will, unless it repents, assuredly feel the awful judgments of God. Yet London is heaven by the side of Charleston. The metropolitan city of America is far from being perfect before God. It is given into the hands of wicked men plundered by its officials, abandoned to pleasure, to avarice, to crime. And yet New York is spotless before the little city by the sluggish streams and amid the sultry marshes of Carolina. She is preeminently the Seat of the Beast. What is the pride of London or of Rome to hers? They boast, the one of its commercial, the other of its spiritual supremacy. They despise others. Their population is largely paupers or beggars. Their political prisons yet immure or threaten the lovers of liberty with their hated walls. But they do not forbid the lowly citizens from acquiring the rudiments of knowledge. They do not compel them to work without any wages. Their leading merchants do not take these rewardless toilers to their centers of trade, causing them to mount the auction-block, and, sitting haughtily around, despite the strong crying and tears of their victims, knock them down to the highest bidder. The Jews' quarter at Rome is nightly shut with iron gates; but its occupants are not rung to their dens by the bells of St. Peter's, nor is one of them who is found without seized and cast into prison, horribly scourged, and more horribly sold into bondage. They are not subject to unutterable crime, boastingly wraked upon them by their disdainful lords and owners. They are not shipped in chains, or driven |