The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 | Page 8

be such and so great as to throw down the golden calf from his throne and make the place of honor the reward of true merit alone, then shall we have cause, for the remotest generations, to thank God for this seeming calamity which has fallen upon us.
And these same facts, standing out as shining lights in the darkness, tend to show that we are, after all, not quite so sordid as we seem; that, with all our worship of the money god, there is yet, away down in the great American heart, a wealth of strong, true, generous feeling, ready at the first call of sorrow and of suffering to spring forth and scatter its golden blessings even beyond the seas. It is not alone that, years ago, when we were at peace and at the height of prosperity, many ships left our shores laden down with food, the voluntary contributions of the American citizen to his starving brethren of the Emerald Isle; though this of itself was enough to place our civilization on a level with that of the most polished nation of the Old World. But even now, when we are struggling for our very existence, when every energy and every material resource is being exerted to stem the tide of internal dissensions and crush out the hydra of internal treason; at a time when the mother country has gone to every length short of open war to aid and assist those who are striving for our downfall, and her press is exhausting every epithet of vituperation and scurrilous abuse of us, who are battling so earnestly in our own defence, and who are entitled by every truth of human nature to her warmest sympathy--a press which, adopting the phraseology of its Secession friends and allies, scruples not to place the civilization of the slaveholding States far in advance of that of the 'Northern mudsills'--even now, when the cry of the starving operatives of the English mills comes to us across the water, forgetting for the time all the abuse and maltreatment we have received, all the enmity and bitter hostility which the traitorous perfidy of England has engendered, more than one full-freighted vessel has left our ports bearing grain to those whom their own proud aristocracy is either powerless or too niggardly to sustain. Is this not evidence of a civilization considerably advanced beyond any which history has yet recorded?--a civilization based upon the golden rule of Christianity, and upon that still more precious command: 'Love those that hate you, and do good to those that persecute you.' For it is in its moral aspect that every civilization must in the end be judged; and that society which develops such noble principles and feelings as these, which manifests itself in this higher region of spiritual excellence, in the exercise of these finer feelings of the heart, is certainly nearest to perfection, in that it follows most closely the law of God, the truths of divine revelation. When instances such as these occur on the part of any of the older nations of the world, it will do for them to boast of a civilization superior to ours; but until their faith is shown by their works, suffering humanity the world over will accord to us the palm. Nor will it answer to ascribe to us an unworthy motive in this matter--a desire to win credit in the eyes of the world. An individual might, with some degree of plausibility, fall under such an imputation, but a great people does not move spontaneously and unitedly in one direction from such a motive, since none but a pure and just principle can produce unity in the masses. Such an unworthy and degrading motive is the property of individuals, not of nations, even if it were possible for such an idea to be conceived at one and the same time by a multitude of minds. No! it was the spontaneous expression of a deep and pervading principle of American society--of American humanity--a free outpouring of the American heart; and as such it will stand upon the page of history as the evidence of a civilization behind none of its age.
Nor is this the only mark of the moral awakening of our people. Instances are every day appearing in our midst of this truest of charity, not the least of which are the 'wood processions' of the Western cities and towns; those long lines of wagons laden with fuel and provisions for the families of the absent soldiers, whose sole object and motive is the comfort of those whose protectors and supporters are sustaining the country's honor in the field; evidences more striking than the founding of charitable institutions or benevolent societies, since the latter may, and too often does,