has simply gone forever out of a sane man's mind. What an advance
a year has made! We have been hurried past the place of argument
against slavery. We are done with all that; the books and the
pamphlets, the documents and the statistics are growing quickly
obsolete, for they have done their work; we need not be careful of
them for our future use. We shall not need them except as relics
of a well fought field.

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