s hands the control
of their own affairs, we cannot tell,--nor yet the authentic shape
which that righteous insurrection will take unto itself. But we know
that when the great body of any nation is thoroughly aroused, and
fully in earnest to abate a mischief or to right a wrong, nothing can
resist its energy or defeat its purpose. It will provide the way, when
its will is once thoroughly excited. Men look out upon the world they
live in, and it seems as if a change for the better were hopeless and
impossible. The great statesmen, the eminent divines, the reverend
judges, the learned lawyers, the wealthy landholders and merchants are
all leagued together to repel innovation. But the earth still moves
in its orbit around the sun; decay and change and death pursue their
inevitable course; the child is born and grows up; the strong man
grows old and dies; the law of flux and efflux never ceases, and lo!
ere men are aware of it, all things have become new. Fresh eyes look
upon the world, and it is changed. Where are now Calhoun, and Clay,
and Webster? Where will shortly be Cass, and Buchanan, and Benton, and
their like? Vanished from the stage of affairs, if not from the face
of Nature. Who are to take their places? God knows. But we know that
the school in which men are now in training for the arena is very
different from the one which formed the past and passing generations
of politicians. Great ideas are abroad, challenging the encounter of
youth. Angels wrestle with the men of this generation, as with the
Patriarch of old, and it is our own fault if a blessing be not
extorted ere they take their flight. Principles, like those which in
the earlier days of the republic elevated men into statesmen, are now
again in the field, chasing the policies which have dwarfed their sons
into politicians. These things are portentous of change,--perhaps
sudden, but, however delayed, inevitable.

And this change, whatever the outward shape in which it may incarnate
itself, in the fulness of time, will come of changed ideas, opinions,
and feelings in the general mind and heart. All institutions, even
those of the oldest of despotisms, exist by the permission and consent
of those who live under them. Change the ideas of the thronging
multitudes by the banks of the Neva, or on the shores of the
Bosphorus, and they will be changed into Republicans and Christians in
the twinkling of an eye. Not merely the Kingdom of Heaven, but the
kingdoms