tramping straight behind you-don't you catch, sometimes, away ahead there, the muffled music of their coming feet? The fanaticisms of yesterday are the reforms of to-day and the splendid victories of to-morrow. I am no prophet, yet I dare claim that before the head of the youngest here is gray, there will be placed in some national museum here in America, beside the rope with which a witch was hanged in Massachusetts, beside the block from which a mother and her child were sold into slavery in South Carolina, the license by which in this Centennial year freemen have legalized the cup of death. If you, women of Canada, are before us in realizing your grand idea of Home Protection, then shall you again furnish a refuge for our slaves, and the North Star shall be the guiding light to the more glorious freedom guaranteed by enforced prohibitory law. In the race for that consummation so devoutly to be wished, remember, we on this side of the line are emulous, not envious; aspiring, not ambitious; and should you earliest win, we shall be reenforced with the enthusiasm which caused a Grecian hero to exclaim, "The laurels of Miltiades will not suffer me to sleep." Dear friends, let me summon to your thought those who have fought and won in other fields. Look backward along the shining corridors of history and learn again the lesson of courage and of faith. Yesterday see Luther standing before his fierce accusers with his outstretched hand upon the Book whence has radiated our Christian civilization. Listen to his words: "Here I stand, I can do no other; God help me, Amen." To-day see Protestantism traced on the world's map by free pulpit, free press, free schools, even as a June day is traced by sunshine. Yesterday William Wilberforce rising in the House of Commons and repeating amid jeers and scoffs what for twenty years he had been saying: "I move the abolition of Slavery in his Majesty's colonies." To-day William Wilberforce raised to the peerage of England's proudest and most sacred names. Yesterday, William Lloyd Garrison, egged in the streets of Newport, dragged through the streets of Boston with a rope around his neck, but declaring in that famous editorial in the Liberator: "I will not excuse, I will not equivocate, I will not retreat a single inch and I will be heard." To-day, William Lloyd Garrison, while yet alive, crowned with the laurels of immortal gratitude. Yesterday, John Brown, going to the scaffold, the victim of what then seemed the lost cause; to-day, John Brown's soul marching on in the loving memories of four millions of enfranchised slaves, and his name the emblem of a nation's victory "Though sometimes depressed and lonely, Let your fears be laid aside When you but remember only Such as these have lived and died." But as the stars grow dim when the splendor of sun-rise fills the firmament, so all others who have labored to elevate humanity drop from our thoughts when we turn to the wide-armed cross upon a lonely hillside and recall His words who said, "And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me." Christ is the magnet of the race he has redeemed. Let us go hence carrying in loyal hearts his blessed pledge, "Lo, I am with you always," and seeking grace to make our own the loving prayer "Oh to be nothing, nothing, Only to lie at His feet; |