help God's cause not merely with
prayer and pen, but with sharp shot and cold steel. A day of judgment
has come, which has divided the light from the darkness, and the sheep
from the goats, and tried each man's work by the fire; and, behold, the
devil's work, like its maker, is proved to have been, as always, a lie
and a sham, and a windy boast, a bladder which collapses at the merest
pinprick. Byzantine empires, Spanish Armadas, triple-crowned papacies,
Russian despotisms, this is the way of them, and will be to the end of
the world. One brave blow at the big bullying phantom, and it vanishes
in sulphur-stench; while the children of Israel, as of old, see the
Egyptians dead on the sea-shore,--they scarce know how, save that God
has done it, and sing the song of Moses and of the Lamb.

And now, from England and the Netherlands, from Germany and Geneva, and
those poor Vaudois shepherd-saints, whose bones for generations past

"Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;"

to be, indeed, the seed of the Church, and a germ of new life, liberty,
and civilization, even in these very days returning good for evil to
that Piedmont which has hunted them down like the partridges on the
mountains;--from all of Europe, from all of mankind, I had almost said,
in which lay the seed of future virtue and greatness, of the destinies
of the new-discovered world, and the triumphs of the coming age of
science, arose a shout of holy joy, such as the world had not heard
for many a weary and bloody century; a shout which was the prophetic
birth-paean of North America, Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific
Islands, of free commerce and free colonization over the whole earth.

"There was in England, by the commandment of her majesty," says Van
Meteran, "and likewise in the United Provinces, by the direction of the
States, a solemn festival day publicly appointed, wherein all persons
were solemnly enjoined to resort unto ye Church, and there to render
thanks and praises unto God, and ye preachers were commanded to exhort
ye people thereunto. The aforesaid solemnity was observed upon the 29th
of November: which day was wholly spent in fasting, prayer, and giving
of thanks.

"Likewise the Queen's Majesty herself, imitating ye ancient Romans, rode
into London in triumph, in regard of her own and her subjects' glorious
deliverance. For being attended upon very solemnly by all ye principal
Estates and officers of her Realm, she was carried thr