12 INTRODUCTION. 



Dr. Wm. Blackburn, of Missouri, used to return from their 

 conflicts with the multiform varieties of Western infldelity to 

 thrill the hearts of Christian assemblies at the East with their 

 pictures of Western greatness, and Western perils. Those 

 were the palm ydays of '"May Anniversaries." The ideas 

 which the veterans of the platform set on fire and left to burn 

 in our souls were three: The magnitude of the West in 

 geographical area ; the rapidity with which it was filling up 

 with social elements, many of them hostile to each other, 

 but nearly all conspiring against Christian institutions ; and 

 the certainty that Christianity must go down in the struggle, 

 if Eastern enterprise was not prompt in seizing upon the then 

 present opportunity, and resolute in preoccupying the land for 

 Christ. Again and again Dr. Beecher said, in substance, on 

 Eastern platforms: "Now is the nick of time. In matters 

 which reach into eternity, now is always the nick of time. 

 One man now is worth a hundred fifty years hence. One 

 dollar now is worth a thousand then. Let us be up and doing 

 before it is too late." 



From that time to this the strain of appeal has been the 

 same, but with accumulating volume and solemnity of warn- 

 ing. The fate of our country has been in what Edmund 

 Burke describes as " a perilous and dancing balance." Human 

 wisdom could at no time' foresee wdiich way the scales would 

 turn. Every day has been a day of crisis. Every hour has 

 been an hour of splendid destiny. Every minute has been 

 " the nick of time." And this is the lesson which this volume 

 emphasizes by an accumulated array of facts and testimonies 

 and corollaries from them, the force of which can scarcely be 

 overstated. Fifty years of most eventful history have been 

 piling up the proofs of our national peril, till now they come 

 down upon us with the weight of an avalanche. Such is the 

 impression which the argument here elaborated will make 

 upon one who comes to it as a novelty, or in whose mind the 

 facts have become dim. 



One is reminded by it of the judgment wiiich has been 

 expressed by almost all the great generals of the world, from 

 .Julius Csesar to General Grant, that in every decisive battle 

 there is a moment of crisis on which the fortunes of the day 

 turn. The commander who seizes and holds that riOge of des- 

 tiny wins the victory. The conflict for the w^orld's salvation 

 partakes of the same character. And the facts and their 

 corollaries massed together in this book show that nowhere is 

 it more portentously true than in this country. Our whole 

 history is a succession of crises. Our national salvation 



