We pause, oppressed by the sacred lesson. What are its teachings?

1. It teaches us that no greatness is aught against God. How these men once boasted! How they defied the nation that made them great! With what insolent self-confidence they paraded the streets of their slave metropolis! Not the patrician of Venice who stood beneath the corridors of the Doge's palace, where no plebeian was allowed to walk, was so contemptuous as the patricians of Charleston to their white and black slaves. But as Austrian soldiers freely tread those desolated pavements, so do the slaves of Charleston march where late their masters rode.

Great and mighty are thy judgments, O Lord God of Hosts. Thou bringest man to destruction, and sayest, Return, ye children of men. His pride, as his years, are as At Thy rebuke he flees. At the nothing before Thee. breath of Thy nostrils he vanishes away.

ness.

2. It teaches us the regeneration of the earth. Charleston is not to be destroyed. It is to be rebuilt in righteousThe church of St. Michael, so long perverted to hideous uses of pride and sin, will become the ministrant of truth and love. That name is not inapt. Michael, the archangel, triumphed over the dragon. It was the favorite picture of ancient and enslaved Christendom. It betokened their deliverance from the grasp of their tyrants. So does it those who have heard for generations its bells with horror. To them Michael may mean their deliverer, the slayer of the dragon of Slavery. He has fought with the devil for the souls and bodies of these children of the Father, and has won their salvation.

These freedmen shall renew that beautiful region in righteousness. They shall not build and another inhabit. They shall not plant and another eat, as they have for these hundreds of years, but they themselves shall long enjoy the work of their hands. Those excellent school-houses their

children shall enter. In those spacious churches they shall worship a God who shall be well pleased with their humble, happy offerings. Those marts shall flourish in legitimate traffic. They shall be rulers where they have been slaves. Happy, happy, happy day! Already it breaks upon them. They look on their deliverers as the Messiah himself. And they are. Jesus is yet walking the earth incarnate in this. Republic, breaking these heavy chains, opening these prison doors, and bringing to these, His children, the great and acceptable year of the Lord.

3. Take warning from this awful punishment. If God spares not these, no more will He spare you, though He bear long with you. With these He has borne for two hundred years. Their iniquity is full. The day of vengeance is come. And yet they are unrepentant. No sorrow fills those sinners' souls for their dreadful guilt. Those ministers, Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Baptist, Papal, are as bitter in their hatred of the first law of the Gospel as when they flourished in power and authority at the head of the community. We have seen no penitent bishop of that apostate Church. We have heard no churches moaning for their sins. They faithfully follow the words of our text: "They gnaw their tongues for pain, and blaspheme the God of heaven, because of their pains and their sores, and repent not of their deeds." Beware lest you fall under like shocks, with like anguish and like impenitence. We may sin as fearfully against God here as they there. In your bodies, in your souls, in pride, in passion, in unbelief, in carnal-mindedness, in pursuit of the world. You may reject Christ, and be rejected of Him. As a church member, you may fall into the lowest hell. Many of them were such. So were the Israelites of the wilderness. So were Caiphas and Judas. So may you be. Watch, pray, strive, agonize, or you will plunge into s, into everlasting destruction. Behold, the Judge standeth at the door!

4. Remember that this great work is not accomplished. The saddest, most solemn, most religious message ever delivered by an American President, was spoken at his inauguration by the great and good man, who, for the second term, has begun his arduous duties. Let me read to you some of those weighty words.

"Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

How they infold the past, the present, the future. How they point to our only success God and duty. Our armies in the field, our legislation in Congress, our principles at home, our God in all of these, through them all, above them all - these are our salvation. Only by adhering to the right shall we triumph the whole right. We must uproot from our hearts that most unchristian and inhuman sentiment which makes us distinguish between man and man, between Christian brethren, on account of certain outward traits. These must be swept away, or the wrath of God will again rest upon us. The Seat of the Beast may be transferred from Charleston to Boston. We may feel this outpouring of divine displeasure. May this fate be averted by our earnest embracing of the whole truth as it is in Jesus. May our victories speedily be consummated, the greater victory of right be equally accomplished, and the Holy Spirit renew every heart, and all the land, in the purity, and peace, and brotherhood of heaven.

JEFFERSON DAVIS AND PHARAOH.*

"AND THE LORD SAID UNTO MOSES, RISE UP EARLY IN THE MORNING, AND STAND BEFORE PHARAOH, AND SAY UNTO HIM, THUS SAITH THE LORD GOD OF THE HEBREWS, LET MY PEOPLE GO, THAT THEY MAY SERVE ME. FOR I WILL AT THIS TIME send all MY PLAGUES UPON THY HEART, and upon THY SERVANTS, AND UPON THY PEOPLE; THAT THOU MAYEST KNOW THAT THERE IS NONE LIKE ME IN ALL THE EARTH. FOR NOW I WILL STRETCH OUT MY HAND, THAT I MAY SMITE THEE AND THY PEOPLE WITH PESTILENCE; AND THOU SHALT BE CUT OFF FROM THE EARTH. AND IN VERY DEED FOR THIS CAUSE HAVE I RAISED THEE UP, FOR TO SHOW IN THEE MY POWER; AND THAT MY NAME MAY BE DECLARED THROUGHOUT ALL THE EARTH.' Ex. ix. 13-16.

H

ISTORY sometimes reproduces herself with photographic accuracy. Past and present then are The very man who molded that dusty past

one.

after his image and likeness, seems to be stirring in the disturbed elements of the present, and fashioning them after the same form. Plutarch sought for such a parallel between the chief men of Greece and Rome. The present Napoleon has set up his great ancestor and the first Cæsar as of like lineaments, labors, and, he might have added, fate. Yet none so strikingly in their rise, rule, and fall resemble each other as Pharaoh and Jefferson Davis.

* A sermon preached in Boston on the occasion of the State Fast, Thursday, April 12, 1865.

Living thousands of years apart, under different skies, institutions, and religions, they have had a history and will have a fame well nigh identical. Their resemblances and contrasts will be the theme for our consideration.

We may properly engage in such contemplations, because the hosts of our Pharaoh are cast into the sea. On the triumphant shore stand victorious our Aaron and Moses, Lincoln and Grant; with their hardly less grand associates, Sherman and Sheridan, the Caleb and Joshua of the hour; while a rescued country, and the liberated millions for whose especial deliverance God hath raised up both Pharaoh and Moses, lift up glad hands in exultant hallelujahs to Him whose right arm hath gotten Him the victory.

With overpowering emotions of thankfulness and praise we crowd His courts to-day. Our fasting is turned into feasting. The bridegroom is with us how can we fast? The bands of wickedness are broken why should we fast?

"Let the hills clap their hands, let the mountains rejoice,
Let all the glad earth raise a jubilant voice."

With our eyes fixed upon the ingulfing waves, that have drowned forever the great rebellion and its greater cause; fixed yet more steadily and gratefully upon Him at whose command the waters disparted to let His people go over dry shod, and then closed eternally over their mighty oppressors, let us dwell upon the analogies our subject suggests. We shall find in them fresh cause to adore the wisdom, power, and goodness of Him who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will; who, never interfering the least in the freedom of His creature, still holdeth the reins of sovereignty, and guideth the affairs of the universe.

The proper way to contemplate the great struggle, which seems so near its end, is to take our stand by the side of God, and look upon i from His point of observation. We have, as a nation, chiefly observed it from the side of Union.