Is this so strange then? It is only in agreement with the great truth, that the best men endure the strongest temptations. He who was sinless endured and overcame what no mere mortal could have borne for an instant. So the highest truths have ever encountered the most violent opposition. The most salutary reforms have had to struggle the hardest to obtain a footing; in a word, the higher and holier the heaven from whence blessings descend to earth, the deeper and more malignant is the hell that rises in opposition. With the truly-sought aid of Him, however, who alone has all power in heaven, earth, and hell, victory is certain to be achieved in national no less than in individual trials. But in both national and individual difficulties it is indispensable, in order that courage may not waver, that hope may not falter--it is indispensable that there should be, as already urged, a clear intellectual comprehension of the full nature of the good thing for which battle is waged. The brilliant vision of attainable good must be preserved undimmed--ever present in sharp and radiant outline to the mental eye; and so its lustre may also fall in a flood of searching light on the evil which is battled against, clearly revealing all its hideousness. A clear understanding by the people at large, of what that is in which the value of the Union consists, is only next in importance to the Union itself; since the preservation of the Union hangs upon the nation's appreciation of its value. Then only can we be intensely, ardently zealous; full of courage and motive force; full of hope and determination that it shall be preserved at whatever cost of life or treasure. But without the deep conviction of the untold blessings that lie yet undeveloped in the Union and its Constitution, without the hearty belief that this Union is a gift of God, to be ours only while we continue fit to hold it, and to be fought for as for life itself (for a large, free individual life for each one of us is involved in the great life of the Union), without this deep, rock-rooted conviction in the heart of the nation, we shall tend to lukewarmness--to an awful indifference as to how this contest shall end; and begin to seek for present peace at any price. We say _present_ peace, for a permanent peace, short of a thorough crushing of the rebellion, is simply a sheer impossibility--a wild hallucination. Nor is it a less mad fantasy to suppose that the rebellion can be effectually crushed without annihilating slavery, the sole and supreme cause of the rebellion. Such lukewarmness and untimely peace sentiments, widely diffused through the loyal States, would be truly alarming. Those who feel and talk thus, are like blind men on the verge of a fathomless abyss; and should a majority ever be animated by such ideas, we are gone--hopelessly fallen under the dark power, never perhaps to rise again in our day or generation. But we have no fears of such a dismal result; the nation is in the divine