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ple of popular sovereignty in the territories, when according to the bill, the rights of the people in the territories were hedged in many ways by executive influence, and the power was entirely withheld from the territorial legislature to prohibit slavery, if they desired. When we add

that the bill was conjured up, advocated, and passed by men who had solemnly pledged themselves to keep the slavery agitation out of Congress, the list of absurdities and iniquities connected with it is fitly crowned. If argument based on history, public interest, plighted faith, and the confessions and pledges of the prominent movers themselves, could have availed in a deliberative assembly, the Nebraska measure would have been buried with infamy in a week after it polluted the senate chamber. But truth and honor could not avail against the interests of the chivalric section of the Union and the seeming necessities of party, and so a majority of votes was obtained in favor of the rupture of public engagements and the deliberate falsehood of a party to its recorded vows.

The American people owe lasting gratitude to the prominent opponents of the measure for the dignity and ability of their discussion, as well as for their fidelity to a holy cause. The speeches of Messrs. Sumner, Seward, Chase, Upham, Eliot, Walley, Washburn, Hunt and others of the opposition, show that there is some care taken yet for the literary proprieties of congressional debate. Mr. Seward's argument is a master-piece for compactness, condensation, vigor, dignity of tone and senatorial strength of diction. It is a worthy utterance of a great State, in a council where States, and not demagogues, are expected to open their lips and declare their judgement. Would that he might at least be taken as a model of the industry, patience, and conscientious care with which a statesman should prepare himself to speak upon national measures and to the national ear! We cannot refrain also from an expression of admiration and gratitude towards a representative who has sometimes contributed to this Review, for his strenuous and fervent devotion to the honor of the country and the interests of liberty. If we had room to quote from any address or argument that has fallen in our way, the most condensed and vigorous exhibition of the falsehood of the Nebraska bill to the pinciples of nonVOL. XI. 23

intervention and popular sovereignty which it professes to uphold, we should lay before our readers the fifth and sixth pages of the published speech of Hon. Israel Washburn, Jr., of Maine.

We notice that plans are maturing for a movement to repeal the Nebraska bill. Perhaps they will succeed. We have doubts and fears. The North must work and pay for the rights that have been betrayed. Colonization of Kansas and Nebraska by free laborers that detest slavery, and that will guard the State codes against its recognition is the duty of the hour. Heaven save our country from the guilt and the convulsion that will threaten its prosperity and its union, if the black banner shall float over any State which shall hereafter ask admission to the confederacy from soil once pledged "forever" to freedom.

T. S. K.

ART. XVII.

Repentance.

Ir is a little remarkable that both John the Baptist and Jesus himself began their ministry in the same manner: both preached repentance and urged its necessity; both announced the approaching kingdom of God; and both blended these two thoughts together. Men were called upon to repent, because this kingdom was at hand, this day of deliverance was drawing nigh. And so from that time to this, the great work of the Christian ministry has been to preach "repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ:" and thus must it continue till the whole world is redeemed from sin, and every heart is made holy by the influences and graces of divine truth. Its inculcation stands foremost among the duties of the preacher of the gospel, as its practice does upon all men who would enter upon and steadily pursue the Christian life.

In the farther prosecution of the subject now intro

duced, let us consider, 1. The nature of repentance. 2. the necessity of it.

I. I need not here say that the primary meaning of the original Greek word, rendered to repent, is, "to perceive afterwards,"" to have an afterview;" in other words, to reflect or reconsider.

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It is more or less the habit of all men, no doubt,—a habit growing out of the very constitution of the human mind, to pass in review the trains of thought they have indulged, the arguments they have employed, and the conclusions to which they have been brought. In short, all their intellectual processes and operations are thus made the subject of subsequent reflection. In the same manner do they review their conduct-for conduct is only thought expressed in action. It is only the inward life made outward and manifest. For every man who acts rationally, acts according to his convictions and purposes. There is a cause for his acting as he does, and this cause is nothing but his own will, nothing but himself. And hence the wisdom and accuracy of the proverb: "as a man thinketh so is he." It is our thoughts that determine our character, as they also govern our conduct.

But men are not merely intellectual beings; they are moral also. Hence it is difficult, perhaps we should say impossible, to review their thoughts and actions, without considering them in a moral light, that is, without comparing them with some moral standard, more or less elevated, and judging of their agreement or disagreement with it. We all have such a standard, which we have adopted as the rule of our life, or which in the secresy of our hearts we acknowledge ourselves bound to observe. There is no man to whom the terms, right and wrong, are not familiar, and who does not distinguish some tempers, purposes, and actions, as right and others as wrong. To those born and educated in a Christian land, the moral law of God as it is exhibited in the gospel, is this standard, and by it they more or less rigidly try themselves. They observe their own thoughts and actions. If upon examination they find them to agree with the law of God, which they recognize as the standard of morality, they are satisfied and feel self-approved. If on the other hand they disagree with this standard, they are unsatisfied and dspleased with themselves.

Out of this displeasure naturally grows a feeling of regret, which is a second element of repentance. We are pained that we have felt and purposed and acted as we have; we complain of ourselves for not intending and acting otherwise. We reproach ourselves for our folly. We accuse ourselves of wrong-doing; and a consciousness of wrong-doing is allied with a sense of ill-desert, so that in our very souls we acknowledge ourselves worthy of blame, and deserving of punishment. Conscience reproves and condemns us, and we feel ourselves humbled and abased under the conviction of the wrong done. We confess, for we cannot at such an hour deny,—we are too serious for that; our case is too real and too near to admit of hair-splitting distinctions and learned apologies,— we confess that we have sinned; that we had the right before us, and yet perferred the wrong; that we were conscious of our duty, and refused to perform it. We cannot conceal from our own hearts that we have done violence to morality, to our better nature, reason and concience, and that in so doing we have sinned not only against God but also against our own souls. We remember that when the light was before us, we chose darkness rather than light. Two paths stood open for us to tread, both inviting us to walk in them, both promising us their blessing and joy, and yet we abandoned the good and followed the evil. What is worse, we know that our. choice was not innocent. We knew this at the very moment. We knew that the path of sin was false and seductive, that a serpent lurked within it, and that however pleasing might be its promised shade, still it was wrong and beset with dangers. All this we knew when we first turned our feet from the path of duty into that of sin. Had we only been innocent, unsuspecting, misled; could we only say to our hearts, and to the world, and to God, "I meant to do right; my choice was honestly made; I really thought this was the true path and that I ought to walk in it;" how much pain it would save us, how it would hush every reproving murmur of our own souls, and blunt the severest censures of a condemning world! Sin then would be only an innocent mistake, unfortunate indeed like an unsuccessful speculation, like an injudicious credit given by a tradesman, like

a thousand accidents and errors into which our ignorance and want of foresight betray us almost daily. But it is not so. Sin is no mistake. No man ever committed sin without knowing it, without being admonished of it and warned against it. Sin is something that we do with our eyes open, and conscious of the wrong. It therefore brings guilt with it. The thief never persuades himself that it is right for him to steal. The liar knows that lying is base and wrong. The debauchee needs not be told of the claims of virtue; he knows them already. The sacred writer strongly sets forth this consciousness of sin among those who engage in wrong-doing. "The murderer rising with the light killeth the poor and needy, and in the night is as a thief. The eye also of the adulterer waiteth for twilight, saying, No eye shall see me; and disguiseth his face. In the dark they dig through houses, which they had marked for themselves in the daytime. They know not the light. For the morning is to them as the shadow of death; if one know them they are in the terrors of the shadow of death." The accuracy of this picture of criminal life is clear and striking. It is the history of evil doers in all ages and all nations. The darkness of night, silence and secresy, are to-day, as they were in the days of Job, the chosen circumstances for the commission of sin. And this fact betrays, as no confession could, the inward thought and sense of bad men. Honest men in the pursuit of laudable objects do not need the concealment of night, nor shrink from the light of day.

Now this sense of condemnation, the shame we naturally feel when we have done wrong, fills us with bitterness and regret. We mourn over our dereliction from the path of duty, and wish, often, O with how much earnestness, that we could but retrace our steps, that we could recall a single word or undo a single act, This sense of sorrow, this feeling of regret is sometimes and properly enough called repentance. It is the first result of our afterthought and review. It springs up in the heart upon the reflection we indulge on our dispositions and conduct. It is an inward moral emotion, painful indeed, but not without its benevolent aspects. It does not come merely to torment and make us miserable. It has

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