all through our
bones and marrow. The camp is deprovincializing us very fast. Brave
Winthrop, marching with the city elegants, seems to have been a little
startled to find how wonderfully human were the hard-handed men of the
Eighth Massachusetts. It takes all the nonsense out of everybody, or
ought to do it, to see how fairly the real manhood of a country is
distributed over its surface. And then, just as we are beginning to
think our own soil has a monopoly of heroes as well as of cotton, up
turns a regiment of gallant Irishmen, like the Sixty-ninth, to show us
that continental provincialism is as bad as that of Coos County, New
Hampshire, or of Broadway, New York.

Here, too, side by side in the same great camp, are half a dozen
chaplains, representing half a dozen modes of religious belief. When the
masked battery opens, does the "Baptist" Lieutenant believe in his
heart that God takes better care of him than of his "Congregationalist"
Colonel? Does any man really suppose, that, of a score of noble young
fellows who have just laid down their lives for their country, the
Homoousians are received to the mansions of bliss, and the Homoousians
translated from the battle-field to the abodes of everlasting woe? War
not only teaches what man can be, but it teaches also what he must not
be. He must not be a bigot and a fool in the presence of that day of
judgment proclaimed by the trumpet which calls to battle, and where a
man should have but two thoughts: to do his duty, and trust his Maker.
Let our brave dead come back from the fields where they have fallen for
law and liberty, and if you will follow them to their graves, you will
find out what the Broad Church means; the narrow church is sparing of
its exclusive formulae over the coffins wrapped in the flag which the
fallen heroes had defended! Very little comparatively do we hear at
such times of the dogmas on which men differ; very much of the faith and
trust in which all sincere Christians can agree. It is a noble lesson,
and nothing less noisy than the voice of cannon can teach it so that it
shall be heard over all the angry cries of theological disputants.

Now, too, we have a chance to test the sagacity of our friends, and to
get at their principles of judgment. Perhaps most, of us, will
agree that our faith in domestic prophets has been diminished by the
experience of the last six months. We had the notable predictions
attributed to the Secretary of State, which