The Second Revelation. IN meditation rapt, in wonder lost, The man of science stood. Before him lay The unsealed volume traced by God's own hand, A revelation not less grand than that The hoary-headed man of God beheld On Patmos' lonely Isle, when heaven was oped The seals were broke! six thousand years had passed, Lost in thought he reads The upheaved hills, the mountains stratified, Those everlasting masonries of God, The grand old sea, with all its countless tombs, The earthquake's fearful chasm;-these are his words. Eternity, creation, growth of worlds, Down through unnumbered cycles of the Past, Life, death and God,-these are his themes sublime. No wonder if he strange should seem to men Of common thought. He stands alone with God, Back, far back in the Past's eternity, And as unnumbered ages roll away The clouds in silence shrink, and hide themselves In caverns of the weary wastes of sea, And land appears. And still upon the rocks Another leaf Is turned. The theme is changed; the dawn of life Is wrote with diamond point upon that leaf. Like some vast monster, float awhile, then sink, Each leaf new wonders tell; And new existences, a countless host, Roam o'er the earth gigantic beasts, and those And thus this earth was one grand charnel house, Ere man had pressed its soil or breathed its air. And so 'twill be at last in that great day When Christ shall break the seals of that dread book And there, when mortal life is not, read forth The secret history of immortal souls; When every thought and word and deed of ours That have been traced in living characters Indelibly upon the hearts of men, And changed their lives for weal or else for woe, Great Crises. Ar times, the waters from mountain springs leap and dance over hillside and plain, and thence are mingled with the streams which supply the peaceful rivers, along whose banks countless mills and manufactories flourish. Again the swollen torrent sweeps away its accustomed banks, malevolently digs new channels, inundates field and dwelling, bearing death and destruction in its course. We have a parallel in great events. At one time the surface of society is unruffled; the husbandman rejoices in possibilities to be realized in the incoming harvest; there are no gratings in the enginery of mercantile pursuits; the judge on the bench dispenses justice; the physician fosters the waning life of the aged;-colleges and schools thrive, and the men of God, as the sacred spires, point the people upward. But hush! a crisis bursts upon the land. The waves of excitement heave in commotion, and the community swings off from its moorings, on an angry sea of prejudice and passion. The plowman quits the furrow; the hamlet and village are no longer the abodes of domestic quiet, but apprehension and alarm are depicted on every countenance. What a change! This has crept over the land like the shades of night over the face of the deep. The great pendulum of society is deranged. This we call a crisis. Great crises are the landmarks of history; milestones by which humanity may count its marches. We do not propose to speak of any particular crisis, as the Christian era; the reformation, or the French Revolution; but to notice some characteristic features, alike common to all crises. And as the first thought, we notice that they are effects not causes. Great crises run back, like the links in an endless chain. One has very quaintly remarked, that a great crisis is a most sacred and epic poem, in which God is the author, humanity the hero, and the historian, the philosophical interpreter. In nature, there is the season of decomposition and decay; of disintegration, and varied and intricate chemical processes, before we see the effect in the perfected fruit. So ideas are evolved; they begin to grapple with prejudice and counter influences; then comes the preparatory labor of educating and pre-occupying the minds of the people in their favor, and finally, we see the result, when the country is electrified by their universal prevalence. The latent fires of the American rebellion were smouldering for half a century, before the fullness of time came, when great principles were to be contested at the point of the bayonet. And mark their unexpected visitation. The doomed inhabitants of Herculaneum and Pompeii were dwelling in calm security up to the very moment when the boiling lava of Vesuvius swallowed them up. The sun of April 13, 1865, set upon a people full of hope and assurance, but before its next rising, the news fell from the wires like a thunderbolt, that their President's life had passed away, and behold a nation sat in tears. And so, to the end of the chapter, " man proposes but God disposes," and human plans are turned away back ward and brought to nought. But great crises are necessary. In society-life as a discipline. Society, in all its distinctive features, needs a governor as much as the engine, which, without it, either has no efficiency, or is burst asunder by its own accumulated force. The commander who has been performing a successful voyage under sunny skies and free from storm, withholding the needed precaution in approaching the coast, is hurled a wreck upon the beach and lost, while he whom rough and stormy seas have compelled to sail with canvass reefed and anchors lashed aprow, rides the breakers, and in safety enters port. We do not usually hail with approbation the approaching storm; still, it is as necessary to the proper adjustment of the elements, as the law by which all bodies gravitate towards a common central influence. Thus great epochs equalize the functions of society; throw restraint upon the ambitious and selfish; foil malicious designs; encourage the patriotic and liberty loving; eradicate evils; and plant, upon immovable bases, the abiding principles of liberty, humanity and God. Again they are necessary to develop the true man. As a rule, we have a very vague knowledge of men. The man of wealth, and dwelling in princely magnificence, may already feel the humility and remorse of cringing bankruptcy. He in whose character we repose implicit confidence, may be but a painted sepulcher. Innocence to-day, may be the impersonation of guilt to-morrow. Judas was, perhaps, very little worse before than after he became a traitor. The delivery of Christ to Pilate was simply the touch stone by which the rebel was known. Benedict Arnold professedly worshipped at the shrine of his country; yet, enticed by its glitter, he sold his country for British gold. In 1860, Toombs, Stephens, Lee and Jefferson Davis, with multitudes of traitors North and South, so far as the shortsightedness of many could see, were honorable representatives of the principles of our Republican institutions, yet even then stood ready to plunge the steel into the bosom of liberty. And as crisis succeeded crisis, in the march of events, masks were removed, revealing venality and putrefaction. Loyalty had no affinity for treason. The patriot's patronage was withdrawn from the parasite and sycophant; business, and all industrial pursuits were revolutionized; men who had been truckling to public opinion, and were cajoled to any principles, through a desire for popularity, could not abide the expansion and contraction of the shock; statesmen were transformed into demagogues; preachers into mercenary officials; philanthropists and reformers into the embodiment of hypocrisy. But the relation of great men to great events, is the more pleasing aspect of the subject. The measure of a man's greatness is the epoch in which he lives. Men are great, in proportion as they meet the demands of the age when they live. Had Pericles enunciated and defended his theories of national polity in the 19th century, rather than when he did, like a small star amid the great constellation, his light would have been eclipsed. Hence it is that the pioneers of incipient principles are greater than their subsequent exponents. Every intelligent observer knows, that there are always men in process of education for prospective great events; yet of these the world may have no intimation. When the first great lesson of religious freedom was to be taught, marvelous deliverance for the oppressed was wrought out by Moses, who had been miraculously rescued from death in infancy, for this glorious consummation of his manhood. So, in process of time, Samson wrested from their foundations the pillars of the temple, when the land of the Philistines was redolent of the praise of Dagon, rather than Israel's God; and there was a Delilah, too, when the mighty was to be shorn of his strength; a Leonidas or an Anderson, when a Thermopylæ or a Sumter were to be defended; Demosthenes or a Henry to kindle the fires of resistance, when aristocratic monopoly was presaging a reign of terror; a Cicero or a Sumner in the Senate, when traitors were plotting treason; a Gracchus and Lincoln to reach down to the substratum of Society, |