OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 24, 1859

OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE.

THE following intensely interesting extracts we take from a communication of Dr. Cheever to the Independent of November 10. Speaking of John Brown, and his attempt to liberate the slaves, at Harper's Ferry, he says:

"It is exceedingly interesting to watch the operation of men's minds, and note the expression of their thoughts and feelings, in various portions of the country, in regard to this tragedy, the sound of which comes up from the great caverns of the great wickedness, like an alarm-gong, or the roar of an unexpected volcano. Many feel that it is but a preliminary warning, that God is about take off his restraints from the ministers of vengeance, and to let loose his avalanche. It might have been prevented by the church and the ministry doing their duty with the word of God; but repentance itself, when merely forced by terror, is too late. Woe to thee that spoilest, and thou wast not spoiled; and dealest treacherously, though they dealt not treacherously with thee! When thou shalt cease to spoil, thou shalt be spoiled, and when thou shalt make an end to deal treacherously, they shall deal treacherously with thee. *

"The mind and heart of the country are being stirred in their depths, conscience is being roused up, the vast domain of sentiment and reasoning, and of abstract principles, concerning the rights of men, so long repressed and stagnant under political platforms, caucuses, presidential horse-races, party quarrels, struggles for patronage, spoils, and power, is agitated and heaving as at the outbreak of the French Revolution; and as at that time those who threw themselves upon the safety-valves, determined still to press the tyranny of old conservatism, were blown into the air among the fragments of the government, so will it be now with those who are endeavoring to keep down the volcano by the repression of freedom and refusal of right. God himself is about to uncap the volcano, if an insensate, hardened people persist in the violation of his law. And we present, as the language and the convictions of another large portion of reflecting Christian men in our country, the following resolutions, communicated to us from another quarter, which men would do well to ponder and discuss.

""Resolved, That the recent rash attempt at insurrection in Virginia, while it calls for our sincerest commiseration with its author, whom repeated wrongs at the hands of the slave power have evidently goaded to madness, should also teach us that the only way to prevent the recurrence of such disastrous attempts, with all their bloody issues, is for the church earnestly to undertake the deliverance of the enslaved, as the legitimate work of Christianity, by means purely moral and peaceful.'

""Resolved, also, that fearing, as we do, from the continued deferring of emancipation, and refusing to render to the African race in our land that which is just and equal, a violent termination of slavery under

the retributive providence of Almighty God, (in regard to which Mr. Jefferson said, fifty years ago, 'I tremble for my country, when I remember that God is just, and that his justice will not sleep for ever,') we feel that the church of Christ should immediately bring its influence to bear upon the conscience of the slaveholders, by refusing them its fellowship unless they repent of and abandon the sin of slaveholding; and that if the church and the ministry do not faithfully interpose between the oppressed and the oppressor, the tragedy at Harper's Ferry will prove but the beginning of horrors.'

'Good resolutions; but what if even the church should awake too late, after having been, by its most treacherous and pernicious silence and sanction of the sin, the great instrument of desolation? What if, in regard to a people driven to untimely action only by terror, God should say, There remaineth no place for repentance after the selling of your birthright for a mess of pottage, though it be sought carefully with tears!'"