THE WISCONSIN FARMER.



may not make the coming year more fruitful
of social improvement than the past. The cir-
cumstances are likely to try us more severely
than ever before; may none be found wanting.
               TEZ COUNTRY.
  Our country! What is not comprehended
in those two words? The all there is of home,
of kindred, of institutions, of nationality, of
present and future glory is embraced-things
all the more dear, just now, for that they are in
peril of being lost.
  We had become a sordid people, unworthy
the sublime sacrifices of our immortal sires,
and another half century of rapid growth and
unexampled prosperity would, probably, have



ruined us as a nation forever. Even now, ere
the close of the first century of our national



existence, there is too much ground to fear
that the virtue of the people is less than equal
to the crisis through which the Republic is
passing.
  It is now almost two years since the red
hand of Treason was lifted to smite down the
beneficent and glorious government of our
fathers-a government so beneficent and so
glorious that all peoples and kindreds have re-
joiced in its light and flocked to its standard-
and yet the nation is to-day virtually under
the power of a degrading and wickedly disloy-
al sentiment, the very antipode of that lofty
and pure patriotism  which alone can save us
from utter ruin.  And to make the case still
more desperate, the fires of dissension have
been lighted upon our Northern altars by base,



unscrupulous partizan leaders, to whom the



gratification of party ambition and the aggran-
dizement of self are of paramount worth. It



is these fires that must first be put out before
we may hope to extinguish the lurid fires of
the Southern Rebellion.
  It makes no difference whether God deals
with us in special or in general providences;
nothing can be truer than that we are doomed
as a nation unless there be virtue enough in
the people of the free North to hold their lead-
ers to a strict account, even to the compelling
a subordination of every other interest to the
one great end-the vindication of the authority



of the Government and its firmer establishment
upon those pure and noble principles on which
it was originally based. And if there be not
patriotism enough in the land to ensure this,
then must it be true that wd are Simrthy of
our rich inheritance, and equally inevitable
that it should pass away from us. But it is
not alone the Government we love that would
be lost with that passing away. With it would
go the hope of millions in other lands, who
are looking to-day with a trembling and an
agony of anxiousness to see the final result of
this grand " experiment." If we fail, it is not
we alone; Freedom and Humanity will fail
with us, and eternity can never fully repair



the injury inflicted upon the struggling race.
We are to-day fighting the world's greatest bat-



tIe, let us not be mean enough to think we can
settle it upon the narrow and contemptible
ground of temporary expedient.
  We have given freely of our substance, and
of the blood of our dearest kindred to make
sure the grand result ; so let us continue to
give, though demanding of the Government
and exacting of our military leaders that our
sacrifices be not in vain.
  President and people have learned a lesson
from the sad mistakes of the past year: God
grant that they fall not into even greater er-
rors in the months to come.
                 THE RACE.
  But there is a grander word than patriotism,
and yet akin.  It is p/Lilanthropy. Not that
poor and soulles, ..entimentalism which too oft-



en wears the name and so brings a reproach



upon the genuine love of. man as man, but that
pure, unselfish sentiment of the all-embracing



soul which ignores the narrow boundary lines
of nations, and labors for the whole human
race. Christ was the grandest and sublimest
representative of this sentiment the world ever
saw. His vast out-reaching love knew neither
circumstances of birth, nor of religious creed,
nor of country, nor of race. He was brother
to every human soul, and his life's work was
for the equal blessing and saving of all.
  The race is full of needs, material, social,
spirituaL Let us bear this in mind; remem-



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