Page:Modern Eloquence - Volume 1.djvu/67

20 What remains but to wish you a long-continued life, crowned with health and prosperity, with happiness and honor? Live on till you hear your children's children rise up and call you blessed. Live on for the sake of us, your old associates, for whom life would lose much of its luster in losing you as a companion and friend. Live on for your own sake, that you may enjoy the better day of which your eye already catches the dawn. Where faith discerned the Saviour of the world, the unbeliever looked only on a man of sorrows, crowned with thorns, and tottering under the burden of the cross on which He was to die. The social sceptic sees America sitting apart in her affliction, stung by vipers at her bosom, and welcomed to the pit by "earth's ancient kings;" but through all the anguish of her grief, you teach us to behold her in immortal beauty, as she steps onward through trials to brighter glory. Live to enjoy her coming triumph, when the acknowledged power of right shall tear the root of sorrow out of the heart of the country, and make her more than ever the guardian of human liberty and the regenerator of the race. [Applause.]