Opposed to this is a species of cosmopolitanism, which sometimes claims the Scriptures as being on its side. The opinion, however, will not stand the test of fair interpretation. The Bible, it is true, enjoins love to all mankind, but not as a blind and abstract philanthropy which would pass over all the intermediate gradations that Infinite Wisdom has appointed. Love of "the fathers," love of family, love of kindred, love of "our own people"--"our own, our _native_ land"--our "own Zion," nationally, as well as ecclesiastically, are commended, not only as good in themselves, but as the foundation of all the other social virtues, as the appointed means, in fact, by which the circle of the affections is legitimately expanded, and, at the same time, with a preservation of that intensity of feeling which is never found in any inflating abstract cosmopolitan benevolence. In no book, too, do we find more distinctly set forth that idea which we have styled the root of all true patriotism--the idea of the national continuance from generation to generation, as a living, responsible whole--as one ever-flowing stream, in which the individual parts are passing away, it is true but evermore passing to that "congregation of the fathers" which still lives in the present organic life. It is presented, too, not as any difficult or transcendental or mystical conception, but as a thought belonging everywhere to the common mind, and necessarily underlying all those dread views the Scripture so often give us of national accountability and national retribution. Every country distinguished for great deeds has ever been proud of its ancestors; has ever gloried in the facts of its early history; has ever connected them with whatever was glorious in its later annals has ever made them the boast of its eloquence, the themes of its poetry, and the subjects of festal rejoicings. In the preservation of such feelings and such ideas, our annual Fourth of July celebrations instead of being useless, and worse than useless periods of noisy declamation, as some would contend, are, in fact, doing more to preserve our union than the strongest legislative acts. This may hold when every other cable in the vessel has parted. The bare thought that our glorious old Fourth of July could never more be celebrated in its true spirit (and it would be equally gone for each and every sundered fragment) is enough to check the wildest faction, and to stay the hand of the most reckless disunionist.