nd
gave to them the deep faith which they have expressed--that their power
was favoured and assisted by the Almighty.--These words are not uttered
without a due sense of their awful import: but the Spirit of evil is
strong: and the subject requires the highest mode of thinking and
feeling of which human nature is capable.--Nor in this can they be
deceived; for, whatever be the immediate issue for themselves, the final
issue for their Country and Mankind must be good;--they are instruments
of benefit and glory for the human race; and the Deity therefore is with
them.

From these impulses, then, our brethren of the Peninsula had risen; they
could have risen from no other. By these energies, and by such others as
(under judicious encouragement) would naturally grow out of and unite
with these, the multitudes, who have risen, stand; and, if they desert
them, must fall.--Riddance, mere riddance--safety, mere safety--are
objects far too defined, too inert and passive in their own nature, to
have ability either to rouze or to sustain. They win not the mind by any
attraction of grandeur or sublime delight, either in effort or in
endurance: for the mind gains consciousness of its strength to undergo
only by exercise among materials which admit the impression of its
power,--which grow under it, which bend under it,--which resist,--which
change under its influence,--which alter either through its might or in
its presence, by it or before it. These, during times of tranquillity,
are the objects with which, in the studious walks of sequestered life,
Genius most loves to hold intercourse; by which it is reared and
supported;--these are the qualities in action and in object, in image,
in thought, and in feeling, from communion with which proceeds
originally all that is creative in art and science, and all that is
magnanimous in virtue.--Despair thinks of _safety_, and hath no purpose;
fear thinks of safety; despondency looks the same way:--but these
passions are far too selfish, and therefore too blind, to reach the
thing at which they aim; even when there is in them sufficient dignity
to have an aim.--All courage is a projection from ourselves; however
short-lived, it is a motion of hope. But these thoughts bind too closely
to something inward,--to the present and to the past,--that is, to the
self which is or has been. Whereas the vigour of the human soul is from
without and from futurity,--in breaking down limit, and losing and
fo