Carlyle's "Cromwell" and the Bible. "In Russia, in Ireland, in Rome, and
in prison, Lowell's poems have been my constant companions." The poet
used the story of Moses emancipating the Hebrew slaves as an
illustration of the abolitionist as the unknown leader whom God would
raise up to lead the three million black men out of Southern slavery.
"What God did for the Egyptian bondsmen, he believed God would do;
because what God was, God is. He goes on:--

"From what a Bible can a man choose his text to-day! A Bible which needs
no translation; and which no priestcraft can close from the laity,--the
open volume of the world, upon which, with a pen of sunshine and
destroying fire, the inspired Present is even now writing the annals of
God. Methinks the editor who should understand his calling, and be equal
thereto, would truly deserve that title that Homer bestows upon princes.
He would be the Moses of our nineteenth century; and whereas the old
Sinai, silent now, is but a common mountain, stared at by the elegant
tourist, and crawled over by the hammer of the geologist, he must find
his tables of the new law here among factories and cities in this
wilderness of sin, called the progress of civilization, and be the
captain of our exodus into the Canaan of a truer social order."

Certain stanzas of Lowell, also, were quoted even more widely, and were
ever upon the lips of college students. Many a soldier boy who went to
battle from the forest and factory, the fields and the mines, scarcely
knew that his inspiration--like Phillip's oratory--was embodied in
Lowell's poem, "The Present Crisis":--

"Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight,