Those of us who have for a life time been doing what we could to hasten forward this day, who have spoken and written and suffered for it, in the new atmosphere which we breathe are like men that dream. We know that it would come, we hoped to live long enough to see the day. We see it and are glad, we did not think to see it soon, it has come so suddenly, it shines so broadly and with so rich a promise that we recognize it as God's day; we see his wonder-working power moving marvellously, making--was it ever shown so before?--the wrath of man to praise him; we behold how God has taken the work into his own hand; how he has made slavery destroy itself. More than human wisdom, and beyond human guidance is here, the thick night would not have gone so wondrously had not He rolled it away, we hail the light. This is the day the Lord hath made, we will rejoice and be glad in it. But like all of God's gifts, it demands work and gives responsibility, responsibility and work proportionate to the boon. He has given us a day, but it brings with it work of which perhaps we have gotten only a mere glimpse. It is well that we should endeavour to understand and appreciate what that work is, for it is no holiday that He has given us. We have asked in many a prayer that it might come, and having come we must see what is to be done, and manfully deal with it. It is easy to talk of emancipation, but he has thought loosely and ill who sees no great difficulties in bringing it to a happy issue; who has not questions arise in his mind to give him pause when he contemplates a social change so vast in state of a race of twelve millions of men. Let not the reader suppose a mistake in the figures, we mean twelve millions, and not four; there are, indeed, four millions of slaves to be made free, but a change is to be wrought in the social state of the eight millions of the whites, which is only less than that of the blacks. To alter radically, to remodel the whole social fabric of a great and numerous people, to shift the foundation stones, remove them, and place others in their palaces, without racking the edifice or tumbling it in a hideous ruin, is the work of no inexperienced or careless architect. The gigantic war which has been desolating one half of this land, has been, as we have said, simply the mighty frantic effort of a social state to establish itself; of a peculiar civilization to consolidate its power. The result of the war will be the total defeat of this attempt; the very endeavor, the waging of the war has shaken its foundation, its end will remove it entirely. This civilization, whose basis is slavery, has chosen to risk its existence on the issue of the war: it must accept the alternative which it has raised, and be content to pass away.