_Sonnet 4._ In the city of Paris, ten years ago, I was one of a large company of hundreds of the Friends of Peace from different nations. We presented to the Emperor,――then only a President,――an Address against War. In the present year by his inroad into Italy and conflict with Austria he has fixed upon his soul the unmeasurable guilt of several tens of thousands of murders.
_Sonnet 5._ After the existence of one God there is no truth so astonishing and holding such a power over the human heart, as the death of the Son of God on the cross for the sins of men. For who was the Son of God? He was indeed in the form of a man, born of the virgin Mary; but he came down from heaven to tabernacle in human flesh. Let us raise our eyes from the earth to the worlds above us, of enormous magnitude compared with this little globe of ours. Suppose now the glorious sun is inhabited by a race of intelligent beings as much exalted above man, as the sun is greater and more resplendent than the earth. If the highest of the sun's inhabitants had come to this low world and dwelt in human flesh――it might have been a most amazing event in our eyes; yet he would not have been the Son of God. Suppose among the countless worlds of light there is one world vastly transcending all others and the dwellers on it transcending in their faculties and endowments all other world-dwellers; and the first among them had come to dwell in man's form; yet he would not have been the Son of God. We read of angels and archangels in heaven――in the place of God's more especial abode. Suppose the brightest archangel had descended to this ball of earth and animated a human form, and appeared as a man; yet he would not have been the Son of God. For the Son of God is he, by whom God created the sun and moon and stars of light, with all the intelligent dwellers upon them and the dwellers in the heavenly mansions. It was this Son of God inconceivably exalted and glorious, who came down from heaven and appeared as the Son of Mary. And not only so; but he actually was subject to the evils, which man suffers; he could feel pain, and anguish, and the agonies of the cross,――and did encounter them,――if the plain language of scripture is no delusion,――in order to atone for our sins and to achieve the work of our redemption. Now, did we believe this: did this most sublime and wonderful truth plant itself in our inmost persuasion,――unalloyed and unweakened or not destroyed in its influence by any of our speculative theories;――were we deeply and thoroughly convinced of this great fact;――then who of us could fail to exclaim,――"God forbid, that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world?"