'That the human race is in a real sense one--that its efforts are common, and tend to a joint result, that its several members may stand in the eye of their Maker, not only as _individual_ agents, but as contributors to this joint result--is a doctrine which our reason, perhaps, finds something to support, and which our heart readily accepts.' This Christmas peal rings to us as it has never rung before: let it awaken our consciousness of what God means us to be upon this planet, and touch our heart. It has at last reached the ear of the emancipated African, after pealing nearly nineteen hundred years for the more favored part of humanity; and, thanks to the mercy of God and our own manhood, the most oppressed of the brethren of Christ may now feel themselves men. The dark wife, in her new right to be faithful, is at last a woman; her dusky children are now her own, and cannot be torn from her arms at the dictates of one who has bought at the human auction block the right to torture the body and soul. Is not humanity newborn among us? Is the negro of the accursed race of Ham? It is we who curse, not God, whose very name is Love! Well may our Christmas bells ring on so merrily, for our age is great and glorious. It is a pupil of the entire Past, the heir of all its knowledge, the inheritor of all its wisdom. The Future is its own. _The sphere of politics must be redeemed from the demons of expediency and interest which have so long ruled there; it is to be vitalized and purified from all iniquity._ It is an Augean stable we have to clean, but Hercules was one, and we are many. The People are at last sovereign. Every man who works for humanity has God upon his side; he cannot fail, for the might of Omnipotence is with his puny arm. This is the task now set before us: it lies directly in our onward path--we cannot take a step really in advance until it is achieved. If we fail now, all is lost. Our dead heroes will not rest in their graves until the task is done, and their young lives will have been a vain sacrifice. This crimson year is dying fast; bury with it all past wickedness! May our long civil war die out with its knell, the corpse of Slavery be laid in its bloody grave, and the vain attempts of assembled despots to destroy our glorious nationality perish forever! Bury with this blood-red year all malice and uncharitableness, all sectarian suspicion and distrust, all partisan political violence and hatred, and let the new year ring in one faith, one hope, one country undivided and _indivisible_. Our Union means all this, and a great many things more which it has not yet entered into the heart of man to conceive. We can effect wonders if we will, for the _individual_ effort makes the _universal_ all. Who would prove recreant in such a cause? Come! it is pleasant to work for humanity; fatigue itself seems sweet, the strength of the race nerves the individual arm, labor grows into prayer, human sympathy and communion become godlike and