This war has inaugurated a new era when earnest, honest thought, and bold straightforward speech alone can effect any thing. It is the time for fearlessness and straightforwardness if there ever was one in our history. We have a great war in hand, and great political reforms and measures of tremendous importance are crowding thickly around it, while others, not less mighty, are looming dimly behind them. The great principles of Republicanism, of man's capacity for self-government, of freedom and of progress, have been brought to 'the struggle for life,' and it depends upon our national American energy and _honesty_ to determine whether they shall live. If they _are_ to live, we shall be first among nations, not in the narrow, wretched sense of old-fashioned diplomacy, but in the high Christian sense of aiding all oppressed humanity in their hopes of attaining their rights. But if these principles are to perish--better would it be for this whole land to become a wilderness, and every life a death, than that we should survive the degradation. We have not yet sunk so low that there is no truth left worth dying for. There was a time when men, women, and children were martyred by countless thousands for their fidelity to the faith that extended the same religious rights to all, and now that time has come again to us, calling for fresh sacrifices to the same principle as regards earthly rights and the common happiness of mankind. But we believe that the truth will prevail, after a sore trial, and that we shall be rewarded to the full. 'No cross, no crown.' But there is a crown after the cross, and God will give it to us. We are passing through the baptism of fire--and verily we needed it, both South and North. The South had become mad with vanity and aristocracy; the North was, is still, corrupt and rotten beyond all healthy life, with such villainy in 'politics,' and such indifference to all that was noble and honorable through the greed of gold, that honest and able men were cast aside, or at best, used as mere tools by the 'intelligent.' Now we are in the struggle for life, and rascals, whether of the Union or of the confederacy, will sooner or later be tried, tested, and rejected. The people are very patient, and they can be for a long time fooled with this or that man's reputed honesty and ability. But we have come to the time of trial, and the people will soon find who is false and what is _true_.