interchange of the courtesies and of refined life, they will most assuredly be more than ever unwilling to draw the sword against each other. And, as to the Continent, though the day dawning is exceedingly dark, still we will hope for the best. It was a custom among the Romans to split in two, and divide between themselves and foreign visiters who shared their hospitality, a small token called the tessera hospitalis, which was preserved from generation to generation in the two families who formed the friendly alliance. It became an heir-loom to remote descendants. So in the great gathering of the nations in the Industrial Mansion, the tessera hospitalis has been divided, and borne off to the East and to the West and to the North and to the South, over mountains and continents and oceans throughout the old and the new world, to be cherished through long years to come. Every article of art and of commerce bought or exchanged, and carried away from the Great Exhibition by the people of one nation from the stalls of another, connected as it is, and ever will be, with the associations of that Exhibition, becomes a Rahab scarf in the hands of the Knights of Jericho to prevent the destructions of war. The Exposition has made it apparent to all, that the different forms of industry mutually support each other; and, therefore, in a commercial, social, and political aspect, its influence will produce wide-spread and longenduring benefits.

It pro

It is a monument of the peacefulness of the age. claims the supremacy of law, the exhaltation of that invisible and hallowed guardian of civil rights which sits upon the throne of the public mind. It indicates the improved condition. of the people in education, intelligence, and taste, which is the result of agencies that have been doing their silent work through hundreds of past years, the chief of which is the Gospel of Christ. "These are the true victories, which cause no tears to flow," said his late Majesty, the King of the French, as he gazed on the trophies of French ingenuity and skill in the magnificent Place de la Concorde, in 1839. And Napoleon said of a similar exposition in Paris, even while flushed with his early victories—“Our manufactures are the arsenals which will supply us with the weapons most fatal to the British power."

Finally. Let us briefly consider a few of the lessons taught by the World's Fair. And

First, The unspeakable advantages of international and domestic peace. Without the protection of law and the security of property and life, and the pursuits of agriculture, mechanics and commerce guaranteed by Treaties of Peace, no such exhibition could ever have taken place, nor could its costly and precious furniture have ever been made. While, therefore, the results of the Exhibition must tend to the civilization of the human race, it is at the same time a most impressive lesson on

the importance of cultivating the arts of peace, and the reciprocities of national brotherhood.

A second and higher lesson is, The existence and beneficence of an Ineffable Creator, the Father of mankind, whom all should adore and obey. We have seen that human art is but an imitation of the Creator's works. He reads to us from the flower, the cloud, the mountain, the skies and the ocean, lessons of the greatest importance. The universe is the handiwork of an Allwise and supremely benevolent God. The grand transparent Hall of Industry was not the result of a poet's dream, although Chaucer's poetic soul had "a dream which was not all a dream," of an island whose walls and gate were all of glass. It is, indeed, true, that every beautiful work of art was once a sort of dream--that is, it floated in the imagination before it was fixed and made visible by the hand. This picture or that splendid painting is Correggio or Ruben's dream transferred to canvas. The Apollo Belvidere-what is it but the sculptor's evening vision, carved in marble? Milton's "Paradise Lost" is a poet's high communings with the Invisible committed to paper. Glorious Karnak is an architect's thought some 3000 years ago, built up in stone and lotus-crowned colonnades. The Palace of glass is the thinking of an architect, consolidated most wonderfully into wood, iron and glass-rapid in its construction as the growth of the Victoria Regia-yet pervaded by unity of design and well compacted together. The parts were all prepared before they were brought together, like Solomon's Temple-great and complicated and varied machinery was employed-thousands of men were engaged in its erection, and the structure served as a scaffold for itself. And within its long aisles and galleries we have seen exhibited the productions of every art of every clime-works of strength and skill for necessity and convenience for comfort and luxury--for ornament and display-things carved and moulded and woven-vast and minute, bold and elegant, simple and elaborate, running through all the conceivable departments and grades of inventive industry. Groups, heaps, masses of all manner of cunning work, covering nine miles of table room, yet classified and arranged according to the taste of the respective nations, from America to the distant "Ind." But this Repository of the peaceful spoils of all the earth is no fancy sketch--no mere poet's vision-no caprice of chance. It is the production of the human mind, whose constructive skill is singularly exhibited in the edifice itself-a cleareyed intelligence that could survey, consider, contrive, adapt and fashion, and out of sand and ore and wood cause to rise up such a vast and magnificent pile-and then fill it with an almost infinite and diversified number of objects of art. If such a collection of earth's choice things could not be brought together without contrivance, much less could this universe of suns and stars and systems create and arrange itself in such wondrous

harmony. If this incarnation of order and method prove the existence of human thought; much more does human thought and the world, and all that is in it, prove the being, power, wisdom and goodness of an Ineffable Creator, who is self-existent and eternal," in whom we live, and move and have our being." And remembering how man in art imitates the Creator-how completely dependent he is for success on Divine Providencehow appropriate-looking up through the uncurtained transept of the Crystal Palace to the heavens, from the works of man to the Infinite and Eternal Worker, God-are the lines of Milton:

"These are thy glorious works, Parent of good!
Almighty! thine this universal frame,

Thus wondrous fair. Thyself how wondrous then!
Unspeakable, who sitt'st above these heavens,
To us invisible, or dimly seen

In these thy lowest works. Yet these declare

Thy goodness beyond thought and power divine."

A third lesson, and growing out of the preceding, is the immortality of the human mind. Among the numerous objects of art exhibited in London, were many that embodied man's "longing after immortality"—that spoke of his lifting himself up to a loftier sphere-that told of his wish to be surrounded with a halo more brilliant and enduring than can attach to material things. A deep, though dim consciousness of a higher existence prompted the artist to task his powers to conceive and execute what might approach to his idea of a brighter and higher bliss than earth affords. The spiritual is therefore seen struggling with the physical, and though often defeated, still struggling for the victory. And what is this but the essence of the soul asserting superior existence? This struggling through material forms, and rising out of them to communion with spiritual beings-this longing after immortality-this enriching of the soul with the spoils of time as its furniture for the great future, is nothing but the educating of the Divine offspring within usthe creation of God in his own image, and for the enjoyment of Himself where the spirits of just men are perfect. This glimpsing at things purer, nobler, and more enduring than the things of earth, is proof of man's higher and nobler nature. In the ambition of the artist to produce a work which his admirers vainly call immortal, we see a craving for some future existence. This is, however, a very limited view of the intellectual domain. The empire of the emotions, social affections, moral feelings, and religious capacities of the soul, are yet untouched. Nor is any account here taken of conscience, and of the capability of knowing and loving and serving the Creator; and yet even from this partial view of the subject, no slight conviction is derived of the immortality of the nature that possesses such attributes. It cannot be that there is no difference between the Crystal Palace and the minds that built and filled

it. It cannot be that the artist expires when his workmanship ceases. It cannot be that a being possessed of unbounded capacities for improvement, is destined to advance only a few steps in his proper career, and then be arrested in his course forever. It cannot be that a life of thought and feeling which contains the germs of higher thoughts and feelings, awaiting, as essential to their full development, other influences than those that are shed on earth, is to be succeeded by eternal unconsciousness and oblivion; and that a soul which finds in the present life a range too narrow for the full and vigorous scope of its nascent powers and feelings, is to be disappointed in its earnest longings and deep-seated hopes. The difficulties involved in such a supposition are even greater than the mysteries connected with immortality. To say that man perishes as the brute, is to charge the Creator with having begun a design, which He has thrown aside as useless-with having given a promise that is broken-as though the great Architect had constructed a portico to a magnificent temple, and then stopped short in his work, and breaking it down, scattered its beauty in the dust. It is true that absolute certainty of a future existence is attained only by believing the testimony of God, which is two fold, internal consciousness, and his written Revelation. It is by the Gospel of the blessed God that life and immortality are brought to light; still such a construction as the Palace of Glass with its contents, is a palpable, world-wide acknowledgment of the superiority of mind over matter, and that superiority indicates a greater destiny hereafter. Through its multitudinous corridors, Immortality rises upon the age of reason in the hazy distance, and in the Word of Eternal Truth, found within its precincts, Eternal Life is carefully revealed.

If the vast material Universe bears witness to the existence and character of the Great First Cause-if the invisible things from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, and if the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork, how much more does the soul of man, with all its powers and capacities, its intellect and genius, and above all, its moral and religious susceptibilities, bear testimony to the being and attributes of the Creator! The whole universe is an illuminated volume of God's thoughts, written out for the benefit of his intelligent creatures. The great or beautiful that is in man's imagination, and the curious, elegant and admirable work of his hands, fashioned according to the intellectual type within him, runs back to the infinite source of intelligence and to the ineffable origin of mind. Man has nothing-earth, though full of beauty and goodness, has nothing innate or self-created. All is derived from above. What then must that unrevealed fount of beauty and goodness be, of which all the choice thoughts and beautiful imaginings of the best and greatest men from the beginning are

but as drops to the ocean. What must that glory be that eye hath not seen, nor human heart conceived of? I would mention

as

A fourth and last lesson that seeing we are the creatures of an ineffable Creator who has formed us for happiness and immortality, we should as our first and highest duty fear Him and keep all His commandments. We should appreciate our blessings, social and political, and cultivate charity and gratitude. We are a spectacle. The principles of civil liberty, of religious freedom, and of a free government under well defined, clearly written constitutional laws, are entrusted to our keeping. Whatever may become of other nations in the coming struggle of Europe, Americans must be true to themselves and be equal to the occasion. No obscure part of the world's great drama is to be acted by us. Our banner is on the outer wall, and what we do must be done in the face of an eager world. We must be true to the great cloud of witnesses that encompass our path of duty.

The heroes and statesmen of our short but glorious past, by their wisdom, prudence, treasure and blood, have bequeathed to us the priceless patrimony of a healthful, vigorous, political constitution and free institutions. We must be true to coming ages -to the countless millions that are stretching their hands from the bosom of time and calling on us for help. And by being true to our fathers and to ourselves, and to the solemn interests entrusted to us, the Union shall be preserved inviolate

""Till wrapt in flames the realms of ether glow,

And Heaven's last thunder shakes the world below."

Our origin and history, our constitution and laws, though in their infancy, our army and navy, our growth, expansion, increase in numbers, and our wealth, present points of interest, forms of grandeur, specimens of activity and devolopments of powers, which are an astonishment to the other and older cultivated portions of our race-themes which they are studying as great theorems in the science of civilization;-while our brethren of distant regions, in Africa and Asia, and the islands "afar off upon the sea," still savages or half barbarous, as they gaze on the signs of our glory, or listen to the tale of what we are and where we are and what we do, are filled with a vacant and bewildering kind of wonder. The position Providence has assigned to us is one we cannot shrink from. It would be treason to the principles and hopes we represent to falter or fail in our duty. We must be the model nation for the world, of self-governed, law-abiding, honest citizens. And in order to this, eternal vigilance must be given to the cause of popular educationknowledge, secular and religious, must be universally diffusedthe Gospel of Christ be everywhere preached-the Bible have