sustained.--Who does not recognise in this presentation a visible
affinity with deliverance, with patriotism, with hatred of oppression,
and with human means put forth to the height for accomplishing, under
divine countenance, the worthiest ends?

Such is the burst and growth of power and virtue which may rise out of
excessive national afflictions from tyranny and oppression;--such is the
hallowing influence, and thus mighty is the sway, of the spirit of moral
justice in the heart of the individual and over the wide world of
humanity. Even the very faith in present miraculous interposition, which
is so dire a weakness and cause of weakness in tranquil times when the
listless Being turns to it as a cheap and ready substitute upon every
occasion, where the man sleeps, and the Saint, or the image of the
Saint, is to perform his work, and to give effect to his wishes;--even
this infirm faith, in a state of incitement from extreme passion
sanctioned by a paramount sense of moral justice; having for its object
a power which is no longer sole nor principal, but secondary and
ministerial; a power added to a power; a breeze which springs up
unthought-of to assist the strenuous oarsman;--even this faith is
subjugated in order to be exalted; and--instead of operating as a
temptation to relax or to be remiss, as an encouragement to indolence or
cowardice; instead of being a false stay, a necessary and definite
dependence which may fail--it passes into a habit of obscure and
infinite confidence of the mind in its own energies, in the cause from
its own sanctity, and in the ever-present invisible aid or momentary
conspicuous approbation of the supreme Disposer of things.

Let the fire, which is never wholly to be extinguished, break out
afresh; let but the human creature be rouzed; whether he have lain
heedless and torpid in religious or civil slavery--have languished
under a thraldom, domestic or foreign, or under both these
alternately--or have drifted about a helpless member of a clan of
disjointed and feeble barbarians; let him rise and act;--and his
domineering imagination, by which from childhood he has been betrayed,
and the debasing affections, which it has imposed upon him, will from
that moment participate the dignity of the newly ennobled being whom
they will now acknowledge for their master; and will further him in his
progress, whatever be the object at which he aims. Still more inevitable
and momentous are the results,