in the Lord; and again I say, rejoice." And this is true of nations as well as individuals. There is no people upon the earth, whatever may be their condition, who have not received from God infinitely beyond their deservings. He maketh his sun to shine upon the evil and the good, and sendeth his rain upon the just and the unjust, and therefore the gates of the temple of thanksgiving should never be shut, either in prosperity or adversity, either in peace or in war.

As a nation, we have certainly to be grateful for abundant harvests, for universal health, and for amicable relations with the other nations of the earth. These blessings were never more bountifully bestowed upon us than at this very moment. But we are at war among ourselves. Tens of thousands of our fellow countrymen have been hurried to the judgment seat of God; hundreds of thousands of hearts are bleeding for the loss of husbands, fathers, and sons; and millions of national wealth have been destroyed. What is there connected with this civil war in the United States of America that can possibly be matter of thankfulness? Is there Is there any silver lining to this black cloud ?

That there is

enough for fasting and humiliation in the present state of the country, none will dispute. But is

there anything in the present contest that furnishes matter for devout and intelligent thanksgiving to Almighty God? We propose to answer this question. Fully alive to the evils of the war, and believing that it is one of those "offences" which our Lord affirms must "needs come" in a world of sinful and passionate men, and upon the authors of which he denounces a woe, temporal and eternal, we think, nevertheless, that there are some features and results of it, for which it becomes all the loyal people of the land to be thankful. We think there are some characteristics in this contest that warrant every loyal American in saying: "The Lord is on my side; I will not fear: what can man do unto me? The Lord taketh my part with them that help me therefore shall I see my desire upon them that hate me."

1. In the first place, we should give thanks to God, because this war has been the occasion of deepening and strengthening the feeling of nationality.

The

The relation of the individual to the State, of the American citizen to the American Union, never had a fuller or a deeper significance than now. present civil war, and the existing struggle for national existence, throw a flood of light upon a class of truths which have been almost lost out of sight

in the past years of peace, plenty, and increasing luxury. Since the War of Independence, by which we became a nation, and the naval war with England, by which our nationality was made respectable before the world, the people of the United States have been too little tried by severe and sharp experiences for a solid and well-compacted growth. The nation has made too rapid territorial advance for the best prosperity, and the Prophet Isaiah might say of us as he did of his own people: "Thou hast multiplied the nation, and not increased the joy." The same inexorable laws of national wellbeing have operated in our instance, as they did in that of ancient Rome. So long as the Roman could carry his nationality along with his conquests; so long as the energy of the Latin people was able to pervade the new elements that were received by the subjugation of provinces, and could assimilate them-so long all was well. But when the bulk became too large to be thus permeated by the forces that issued from that wonderful nucleus of national life that was established on the Seven Hills, by the union of the Latin with the Sabine blood; when the extent of conquered territory became so vast that it must be controlled and managed by standing armies, and so complex that it embraced all varieties

of religion and civilization, then it fell apart by its own weight. While Rome was a kingdom and a republic, she was a nation, and possessed a national life and strength. When she became an empire she lost her nationality, and her decline and fall came on apace.

Our nationality has not yet been destroyed, but it has been weakened by the operation of similar causes. We have added greatly to our territory, and not in every instance in that just and Godfearing manner in which the Pilgrims obtained possession of Massachusetts, and William Penn obtained Pennsylvania. The Old World has poured in upon us its tens of thousands. This influx of foreign elements has been imperfectly assimilated, and, what is far worse, has been the occasion of engendering great political corruption by the continual endeavor of political parties to secure their weight and influence in the ever recurring elections of the country. The original diversity of interests, occupations, and institutions, between the North and the South, the two great halves of the one great whole, instead of disappearing, as was expected and desired by the fathers of the Constitution, became intense and exaggerated. Internal migration itself ran upon lines of latitude, and not in the least upon

lines of longitude, so that the country presented to the eye of the foreign spectator two streams of population, and of tendencies, directly antagonistic, and which, refusing to blend, flowed side by side, as the Ottawa flows beside the St. Lawrence. From these causes our nationality grew feebler from year to year, and was rapidly becoming, as one of the old grammarians remarks of the style of Seneca, "sand without lime." This imperfect consolidation of the Federal Government, and this growing diversity of feelings and interests between the two geographical sections, became the occasion of an open rupture and a civil war.

But that war has wakened anew the declining consciousness of nationality in the American people. It is the only unifying principle that now binds them together in their agony, and their victory. Destroy it, and the army breaks ranks immediately, and "resolves its mystic unity into the breathing atoms,” that were gathered at the call of the bugle from the whole surface of the land. Destroy the sense of a national life, wider than that of the individual, and higher than that of any one of the single minor sovereignties that compose the American UNION, and anarchy immediately begins. is this simple, grand, master feeling that now

It