be grafted
upon with a shoot from the tree of life which is in the Paradise of
God.

So the beginning of this eventful 1865, which finds us still treading
the wine-press of our great conflict, should bring with it a serene
and solemn hope, a joy such as those had with whom in the midst of the
fiery furnace there walked one like unto the Son of God.

The great affliction that has come upon our country is so evidently
the purifying chastening of a Father, rather than the avenging anger
of a Destroyer, that all hearts may submit themselves in a solemn and
holy calm still to bear the burning that shall make us clean from
dross and bring us forth to a higher national life. Never, in the
whole course of our history, have such teachings of the pure abstract
Right been so commended and forced upon us by Providence. Never have
public men been so constrained to humble themselves before God, and to
acknowledge that there is a Judge that ruleth in the earth. Verily his
inquisition for blood has been strict and awful; and for every
stricken household of the poor and lowly hundreds of households of the
oppressor have been scattered. The land where the family of the slave
was first annihilated, and the negro, with all the loves and hopes of
a man, was proclaimed to be a beast to be bred and sold in market with
the horse and the swine,--that land, with its fair name, Virginia, has
been made a desolation so signal, so wonderful, that the blindest
passer-by cannot but ask for what sin so awful a doom has been meted
out. The prophetic visions of Nat Turner, who saw the leaves drop
blood and the land darkened, have been fulfilled. The work of justice
which he predicted is being executed to the uttermost.

But when this strange work of judgment and justice is consummated,
when our country, through a thousand battles and ten thousands of
precious deaths, shall have come forth from this long agony, redeemed
and regenerated, then God himself shall return and dwell with us, and
the Lord God shall wipe away all tears from all faces, and the rebuke
of his people shall he utterly take away.

XIII

THE NOBLE ARMY OF MARTYRS

When the first number of the Chimney-Corner appeared, the snow lay
white on the ground, the buds on the trees were closed and frozen, and
beneath the hard frost-bound soil lay buried the last year's
flower-roots, waiting for a resurrection.

So in our hearts it was winter,--a winter of patient suffering and
e