poverty, and
deserting the duty and dwelling where God has placed him. But waking
in the next world, the man perceives a letter on the way to himself
announcing a large inheritance which would have been his had he but
been patient. Therefore the great novelist affirms that God makes such
a man begin over again, only under harder conditions, the existence
that here he has willfully shattered. What a tragedy is his who, to
save the present good, will lose the higher life. Whittier expressed
the fear that Daniel Webster saved his life only to lose it. In his
works the poet recalls the time when for genius of statesmanship and
weight of mentality Webster's like was not upon our earth. But in an
evil hour the statesman saw that the presidency was a prize that could
be gained by giving the fugitive slave law as a sop to the South. In
that hour his character suffered grievous injury. In the attempt to
save men's votes he lost men's higher respect. In deepest sorrow his
admirers, abroad and at home, cried out: "O, Lucifer, thou son of the
morning, how art thou fallen!"

The law of sacrifice is also the law of progress and civilization.
When history exhibits as dead the nations that have been
pleasure-seekers it declares that the state that saveth its life shall
lose it. In our own land the bankruptcy and gloom that have for years
overshadowed the South speak eloquently of a national gain that is a
loss. One hundred years ago the North freed its slaves. Later, when
the constitution was adopted, many statesmen believed that slavery was
losing its hold in the South. Jefferson said: "When I think that God
is just I tremble for my country." In that hour the statesman
prophesied that slavery would soon melt away like the vanishing snow of
April. But when Whitney invented his gin and the raising of cotton
became very lucrative slavery took on new life. It was Lord Brougham
who first said that when slavery brought in 100 percent, while it was
seen to be immoral, not all the navies of the world could stop it.
Later, when it brought in 300 percent, it became a peculiar
institution, patterned after the system of the patriarchs. But when it
brought in 300 percent master and slave became a Christian relation,
and slavery was baptized with quotations from the Old Testament.

But avarice could not forever blind men's eyes to scenes of sorrow, nor
stop their ears to sounds of woe. When the horrors of the slave-market
and t