than churches and Sabbaths. It is full of
sermons. It is a perfect gospel, a whole Bible of
mind-enlightening, heart-cleansing, soul-saving truth. How much
light has it thrown for me on the page of the New Testament!
What a profound significance has it disclosed in the precepts
and parables of Jesus Christ! How do His words burst out with a
new meaning! How does it help us to appreciate His trials and
the Godlike spirit with which He bore them!"

The dark winter of 1860 broke gloomily over all abolitionists; perhaps
upon none did it press more heavily, than upon the small band in
Philadelphia. Situated as that city is, upon the very edge of Slavery,
and socially bound as it was, by ties of blood or affinity with the
slave-holders of the South, to all human foresight it would assuredly be
the first theatre of bloodshed in the coming deadly struggle. As Dr.
Furness said in his sermon on old John Brown: "Out of the grim cloud
that hangs over the South, a bolt has darted, and blood has flowed, and
the place where the lightning struck, is wild with fear." The return
stroke we all felt must soon follow, and Philadelphia, we feared, would
be selected as the spot where Slavery would make its first mortal
onslaught, and the abolitionists there, the first victims. Dr. Furness
had taken part in the public meeting held on the day of John Brown's
execution, to offer prayers for the heroic soul that was then passing
away, and had gone with two or three others, to the rail-road station,
to receive the martyr's body, when it was brought from the gallows by
Mr. (afterwards General) Tyndale and Mr. McKim, and it was generally
feared that he and his church would receive the brunt of Slavery's first
blow. The air was thick with vague apprehension and rumor, so much so,
that some of Dr. Furness's devoted parishioners, who followed his
abolitionism but not his non-resistance, came armed to church, uncertain
what an hour might bring forth, or in what shape of mob violence or
assassination the blow would fall. Few of Dr. Furness's hearers will
forget his sermon of December 16, 1860, so full was it of prophetic
warning, and saddened by the thought of the fate which might be in store
for him and his congregation. It was printed in the "Evening Bulletin,"
and made a deep impression on the public outside of his own church, and
was reprinted in full, in the Boston "Atlas."

"But the trouble cannot be escaped. It