He then pointed out the steps that must be taken in the going forward. They were, deepening and cleansing our convictions, making them more earnest and religious; drawing the lines; cherishing feelings of benevolence, and aiming at a peace built on foundations of God’s immutable truth, so solid that nothing can reach to unsettle it. To show the spirit which he cherished in those days, we cannot do better than give one of the familiar lecture-room discussions which were so frequent between him and his people. It was immediately after the death of Colonel Ellsworth, which took place May 21, 1861: ”_Ques._ Will you please explain one point? I am so much a natural man as not to be able to obey the injunction which calls upon me to love my enemies; and when I stand on Broadway in New York, and see men in regiments which are bound for the field of battle, having been taken from their homes, their wives, their children, and all that is dear to them on earth, by the conduct of miscreants, I cannot understand how you can have such feelings as you express. I wish you would speak on that subject.” “I have no doubt that the brother feels just as he says he does, and I have no doubt that I do not feel a bit so. When I consider the interests of God’s advancing kingdom of justice, and judgment, and mercy, and purity, and truth, and liberty, I think that all the things in the earth are of no value at all in the comparison, and that the earth might melt with fervent heat, the elements dissolve, and the globe vanish away rather than that this kingdom should not prevail. ‘Let God be true, but every man a liar.’ Let the nations perish, let everything go, but let the eternal treasures of God—truth, liberty, mercy, judgment, and purity—be preserved. I feel lifted up to a sovereign height of inspiration when I conceive of the majesty of these treasures, effluent from the heart of God, which He is seeking to embody in our time, in our earth, in this nation. Therefore, when I see justice put down I feel like a lion. When I see a great moral principle overborne there are no bounds to my indignation. When I see a great humanity trodden under foot I long to be a champion for it. And when I look on the face of an ignorant, erring, wicked multitude, I think of a great many things besides....