All our blessings, natural and spiritual, are enjoyed by us only in the degree of our free and voluntary cooeperation with the intentions of the Divine Giver. No good thing is forced upon us, and nothing that we ought to have is withheld if we put forth the power granted us to obtain it. The atmosphere surrounds us, but the lungs must open and expand to receive it. The food is before us, but the mouth must open, and the hands convey it thither, or it is of no service. Light flows from the sun, but the eye must open to enjoy it. And so with the blessings which we enjoy in the Union; we must use our active powers to profit by them; and at this crisis we must not only act to enjoy them, but must strain every nerve to preserve them. The nation is now on its trial, to be tested, as to whether it adequately values the divine gift of the Union. If it does thus value it, it will use diligently and carefully all the abundant resources which lie around it and within it, like an atmosphere--wealth, population, energy, intelligence, mechanical ingenuity, scientific skill, and all the needed _materiel_ of warfare. It is rich in all this, far more so than the South. All this, Providence lays at the feet of the nation. It can do no more. The nation, as one man, must now do _its_ part, or continue to do as it has done; it must cooeperate, must put forth a determined _will_--a will tenfold more resolute, more fixed and immovable to preserve the Union, than is that of its enemies to destroy it. This will cannot exist without a clear, intellectual appreciation of the worth of the Union; of its value as an agent, which, if rightly employed, will continue to develop increasing power to humanize and Christianize men, and to elevate, to broaden, and intensify human life and happiness more than any form of political institution that the world has ever witnessed. Full of this conviction, we shall then, individually and collectively, be resolved that this noble continent, stretching three thousand miles from ocean to ocean, and opened like a new world to man, just at an epoch when religious and political liberty, starting into life in Europe, might be transplanted into this virgin soil, where thus far they have developed into this fair republic--we shall then be resolved that this broad, rich territory shall be forever devoted To man's development--not to his debasement. To liberty and free order--not despotism and forced order. To an ever-advancing civilization--not to a retrograding barbarism. To popular self-government--not to the rule of a slave-holding oligarchy. To religion, education, and morality--not to irreligion, ignorance, and licentiousness. To educated and dignified labor--not to brutalized labor under the lash. To individual independence and equal rights--not to individual subjugation to caste. To peace--and not to border wars between conflicting States.