doubts have been coming up in my mind, and until they are solved I shall be unhappy. You tell me 'to rejoice evermore,' and 'pray without ceasing.' I can do neither, for I seem to believe nothing. O! the misery, the agony I endure, you cannot imagine; and sometimes I wish I had died when I thought I believed, rather than live to become (as I fear I shall) an infidel. I would like to believe if I could. I know some will call me fickle, changeable, and ridicule me; but I am coming home to you like the prodigal son, and hope that you, at least, will not reproach me. Meanwhile, ask the Saviour you believe in, if he be true, to convince me." We believe that this experience will be of great benefit to young men in our literary institutions, who either from the progress of their own studies, or under the influence of bold but undisciplined minds, fall into scepticism, and keep their doubts to themselves, as ashamed of them, or convinced by them. There is no danger greater to a young man, than scepticism thus secretly entertained. The frankness of Stearns, his manly grappling with his doubts by the might of prayer, and his complete victory over them in a serene faith, and a life of heroic self-sacrifice growing out of it, and sustained by it, will help many a youth in like peril to the same gracious issue. Biographies are useful, as they are natural and unexaggerated; what we want for the stimulus and guidance of our youth, is not a shining example of seraphic virtue from the start, but lofty endeavor in the midst of temptations "common to man," and felt to be actual, and the eventual achievement to which Divine Grace conducts by the humble methods of faith and patience.

We have reached the limits assigned this Article, and we return to the thought with which we begun, the dignity of selfsacrifice, the compensations of this war, the reënacting of the great mystery of redemption, the head suffering again in his members! We did not know that we had such elements of character among our people; the air was so filled with lamentations over our covetousness and corruption, our luxury and materializing tendencies, we feared the very stock of our national life had been infected; but this civil war has revealed virtues, which, in the darkness of our public crimes

shine like the stars, and make the night of our history more beautiful than day! We are impressed, also, by the fact, a fact uniting the providence with the word of God, and striking into the profoundest mysteries of both, that it is the men who have brought into this war the rarest endowments and the purest hearts, who have been the first to feel its bitterness, and sheathe its thunders in their own persons. While it is true "no man liveth and sinneth not," and none of our people can claim exemption from God's primitive visitations, but must acknowledge they are lighter than their sins; still, as respects the causes that have brought on this war, some are comparatively innocent, yet these have not only suffered with the guilty, but have stood in the forefront of the battle, and been the first and freest to shed their blood. It is a suggestive fact that this young patriot, who was so ready to fly to arms, and with a presaging calmness to offer up his life, brought to the strife nothing of the bitterness of party-spirit, but from his quiet study, foreseeing the impending collision, examined the subject thoughtfully and conscientiously, and in a spirit which, had it been universal, would have rendered the fratricide impossible, counseled a moderation commendable, we will not say in a boy, but a statesman, and with patriotic and Christian magnanimity would have shared the costs of emancipation between North and South. "From early youth," says Professor Tyler, in his funeral discourse, "he had taken a deep interest in the history and prosperity of his country. And as those perilous times drew near, which foreshadowed the rebellion and the war, his mind dwelt so much upon those perils, that amid the dreamy wanderings of his long sickness in 1859, he proposed plans, not unworthy of a sound and mature understanding, for the national safety. Especially he urged with great earnestness, that his father should write articles for the most patriotic papers, and to the most judicious men of the country; not the extreme or the party men, but to the honest, fair-minded and good, to bring them together for consultation, and try to have the right men sent to Congress, who would take up the slavery question honestly and kindly, and propose that the Government and the Nation

should offer to bear a reasonable part of the expense of emancipation." We have not a word now to say about the wisdom of this expedient, or the possibility, even, of averting the history that has ensued; but we call attention to the spirit of this youthful student, nor can we think, even now, how the patriot and the Christian could have counseled better, and we ask, where breathed there one less deserving the bullet shock and the agony of death upon the battle-field? Yet, thus it has pleased God! By such blood-shedding is our country to be redeemed; by such fellowship with Christ in suffering is the new life of our countrymen to be generated; the short life and early death of young Stearns will accomplish all that any human life and death can, by kindling a like spirit in the hearts of his countrymen, of devotion to God and Father-land, "though dead, yet speaking," though ascended, yet incarnate in the bosoms of the young men, who are to make the future of the American continent what the world needs, and Christ demands!

ARTICLE VII.-EMANCIPATION.

The Ordeal of Free Labor in the British West Indies. By WM. G. SEWELL. pp. 325. Harper & Brothers. 1861.

The West Indies as they Were and Are. Edinburgh Review, April, 1859.

Compendium of the Seventh Census. pp. 400. Washington, 1854.

Slavery in the United States. An Address by GEO. M. WESTON. Washington, 1861.

Message of President Lincoln, March 6th, 1862.

THE Message of President Lincoln, sent to congress in March last, for the first time lisping from the seat of government the word Emancipation, combined with the course of events during the last few months, has removed the question of the abolition of slavery in the United States, from the almost exclusive possession of speculatists, philanthropists, and the hitherto hated abolitionists, and set it up as the chief practical question for the consideration of the nation. What the War of 1812 was; what the Bank, and Tariff, and Subtreasury questions have been since; such is now the question of Emancipation and such it is to remain until settled.

In what we have to say we shall use the terms Emancipation and Abolition as being of like signification. For, although they are in themselves distinct, and neither necessarily implies the other, yet, as a practical matter, relating to us at the present time, we think they are inseparably combined. If the slaves held in bondage by us shall be emancipated, whether by act of congress or the swifter act of military power, such is the state of public opinion that we cannot doubt that the abolition of slavery, as an institution, will quickly follow. Nor, on the other hand, do we believe that the abolition of slavery is likely to be effected, whether by act of the

general government or that of the separate states, without its being accompanied by the emancipation, within a reasonable time, of the existing slaves. As a matter of convenience, therefore, we shall use the terms interchangeably.

The slavery question presents itself to our consideration in several distinct, though related aspects, such as the moral, the political-including the social, and the economic or financial. On moral grounds it would seem easy to determine the question. And yet, until recently, it might have been debated whether the moral feeling of the nation as a whole was as generally arrayed against slavery as it was half a century ago. The patent proofs of this may be found in the formal deliverances of ecclesiastical bodies at the South, and in the purpose, publicly avowed at the outbreak of the present rebellion, to make human slavery the corner-stone of the proposed southern confederacy. It is not to be denied, either, that in the northern portion of the country the moral sentiment of the people has not been arrayed against slavery as it should have been. Among those composing the churches, of all denominations, we have no doubt there has been a growing and decisive opposition. But among those not actuated by distinctively religious motives, such progress has been less manifest. Partly through political intrigue, and partly through the blinding influence of the pecuniary gains accruing to northern trade from the products of slave labor, there has been bred extensively a disinclination to look upon slavery in its true character, or to treat it as it has deserved to be treated. The moneyed interest of the North has been on the side of slavery, and has frowned upon the expression of right opinion in regard to the subject. And then there has been a large inert mass, as there is in every community, having no positive opinions about anything of a moral nature, and whose opinions upon any subject are not based upon well considered facts or truths; who have served, as such masses always do, to block the wheels of moral advancement by their simple dead inertia, rather than by any decided or intelligent opposition.

But even among a portion of the pious and the humane,