"I tremble for my country," said an American statesman, in a sentence, which, though awfully ominous in the connexion in which it was uttered, does equal honor to his head and his heart, "I tremble for my country when I remember that God is just." In that sentence are involved the principles of that higher statesmanship before which the expedients of merely expert men dwindle into nothing. He knew not how, or where, or when, the blow might fall; but he knew that there was always a joint in the harness of injustice, where the arrow of retribution, though it might seem to be speeding at a venture, would surely find its way. The higher movements of Divine Providence include the lower. Sooner or later all particular, and for a time apparently anomalous cases are brought under its general rules, and he has read the history of the past with little benefit, who has failed to see how the giant machinery of that Providence, in the intermediate spaces of which there is ample room for the free play of human agency, takes up the results of that agency as they are wrought out, and applies them to the execution of its own uniform laws, and the accomplishment of its own predicted purposes. These purposes, as declared by those divine records whose prophecies have now become history, were often such as no human sagacity, looking merely at second causes, could have anticipated, such as no human power then existing could have effected. Still, they were wrought out in conformity with that higher, and uniform, and all-encompassing movement with reference to which he who stands at the helm should guide the state, but to ascertain which, he must not take his bearings from the shifting headlands of circumstances, but must lift his eye to those eternal principles which abide ever the same. On this subject there is written upon the walls of the past a lesson for statesmen that needs no interpreter. Look at Babylon. Who is it that stands before its walls, and utters its doom? It is a despised Jew. And who is he that walks in pride upon those walls, and as he points to that mighty city as the centre of civilization and power, as combining every advantage of climate and of commerce, mocks at that doom? It is a politician of those days. The voice of the prophet is uttered, and it seems to pass idly upon the wind. The eye of sense sees no effect. No clouds gather, no lightnings descend. But that voice was not in vain. The waters of desolation heard it in their distant caves, and never ceased to rise till they had whelmed palace and tower and temple in one undistinguished ruin. Even now that voice abides there, and hangs as a spirit of the air over that desolation, and the Arabian hears it, warning him not to pitch his tent there, and the wild beast of the desart and the owl and the satyr hear it, and come up and dwell and dance there. Look at Jerusalem. Who is he that stands upon mount Olivet and weeps as he