We see that large principles are more extensively agreed upon than ever before--more manifest to all eyes, from the very absence of a hero to work them, since they are every hour showing how irresistibly they are making their own way. We see that the tale of the multitude is told as it never was told before--their health, their minds and morals, pleaded for in a tone perfectly new in the world. We see that the dreadful sins and woes of society are the results of old causes, and that our generation has the honour of being responsible for their relief, while the disgrace of their existence belongs, certainly not to our time, and perhaps to none. We see that no spot of earth ever before contained such an amount of infallible resources as our own country at this day; so much knowledge, so much sense, so much vigour, foresight, and benevolence, or such an amount of external means. We see the progress of amelioration, silent but sure, as the shepherd on the upland sees in the valley the advance of a gush of sunshine from between two hills. He observes what the people below are too busy to mark: how the light attains now this object and now that--how it now embellishes yonder copse, and now gilds that stream, and now glances upon the roofs of the far-off hamlet--the signs and sounds of life quickening along its course. When we remember that this is the same sun that guided the first vessels of commerce over the sea--the same by whose light Magna Charta was signed in Runnymede--that shone in the eyes of Cromwell after Naseby fight--that rose on 800,000 free blacks in the West Indies on a certain August morning--and is now shining down into the dreariest recesses of the coal-mine, the prison, and the cellar--how can we doubt that darkness is to be chased away, and God’s sunshine to vivify, at last, the whole of our world? Is it necessary, some may ask, to be sick, and apart, to see and believe these things? Events seem to show that for some--for many--sequestration from affairs is necessary to this end; for there are not a few who, in the hubbub of party, have let go their faith, and have not to this moment found it again. If there are some in the throng who can at once act and anticipate faithfully, we may thank God for the blessing. But they are sadly few.