of our living, let no one turn a deaf ear, and say I am talking politically now, because I refer to considerations of a public, and if you please, of a political character, to urge home upon your reason and your consciences your sacred duty as men, and as Christians, to take a hearty, intelligent, self-sacrificing interest in what is going on on the public theatre of the nation to which you belong, and of the world to which you belong as well, and in whose fortunes, we are every one of us so deeply interested.

But this is no hour for apologies. This is no time for grown-up men to be dodging and hiding, and evading a great duty, under words and phrases. Political! what if I am political? what if every pulpit in the land should be ringing in these days with political events? God knows there is need. We should be lost to the ordinary feelings of men, if we could remain silent when political events are arresting and absorbing public attention, and threatening to rouse all the passions of the human heart, and to shake the earth out of its place. This present time, in which we are living, is no holiday, when a man can throw himself down in the shade, and dream his soul away. The fires, that are kindling on the earth, flash their portentous light into the inmost retirement of private life. The world is resounding with great events. And cold indeed must be our hearts, we are not worthy to live at so momentous, so unprecedented a period, if we refuse to be reminded of those indissoluble ties of a common nature and a common interest, which the course of things is laying bare to all men's view. As you are men, human beings, your hearts must beat with a new and stirring sympathy for the great Public of Christendom, of which you are each an inseparable portion, when you see the second great nation of Europe, after all the terrible experience of the last three-quarters of a century, again falling prostrate in the dust beneath the blow of a base usurper, with no great exploits at his back to extenuate the insolence of the brutal deed; again laid low beneath a despot's feet by that vulgar instrument of power, a standing army. I think there can hardly be found in modern history any parallel to this outrage upon truth, freedom, and humanity—to this implied contempt for human rights and human nature. A robber-hand has seized the great French nation, and flung it down into the dust to be trampled upon at pleasure. At such startling tidings, what man is there so humble or so weak, who can repress the solemn appeal to God, which must rise instinctively from every heart of flesh? Who can help having his attention arrested and engrossed? Who does not long to be saying something, doing something, or suffering something, for the outraged rights, the imperilled interests of our Common Humanity, our One Nature?

But above all, who that has seen, who that has heard the great Hungarian exile, who has come to us, bringing his unhappy country in his heart, that does not feel his kindred to his oppressed brethren everywhere? I have looked full into those large, sad eyes, in which one seems to look into the great deep of a nation's sorrows. I have heard that voice, coming from his inmost soul, with which he pleaded for his dear native land, and I cannot so much as try to tell you of the profound impression which he made on me. I can set no limits to the power of such a man as I have just seen and heard. It may be (God grant it!) that it is not a mere transitory emotion of enthusiasm that he is awakening among the people of this land. It may be that the influence he is exerting is yet to penetrate the rock of our selfishness and insensibility, and call forth, in full flood, like one of our own great rivers, the mighty stream of our sympathy that shall sweep away from our land and from the earth, every vestige of oppression. Such a thing seems almost possible,