INTRODUCTION. 



This is a powerful book. It needs no introduction from 

 other sources than its own. Its great strength lies in its facts. 

 These are collated with rare skill, and verified by the testi- 

 mony of men and of documents whose witness is authority. 

 Tlie book will speak for itself to every man who cares enough 

 for the welfare of our country to read it, and who has intelli- 

 gence enough to take in its portentous story. 



It is worthy of note that almost all the thinking which 

 thinking men have given to the subject for the last fifty years 

 has been in the line of the leading idea which this volume 

 enforces— the idea of crisis in the destiny of this country, and 

 through it in the destiny of the world. The common sense of 

 men puts into homely phrase the great principles which under- 

 lie great enterprises. One such phrase lies under the Chris- 

 tian civilization of our land. It is "the nick of time." The 

 present hour is, and always has been, " the nick of time" in 

 our history. The principle which underlies all probationary 

 experience comes to view in organized society with more 

 stupendous import than in individual destiny. This book puts 

 the evidence of that in a form of cumulative force which is 

 overwhelming. 



Fifty years ago our watchful fatbers disoenied it in their 

 forecast of the future of the Republic. The wisest among 

 them even then began to doubt how long the original stock of 

 American society could bear the interfusion of elements alien 

 to our history and to the faith of out ancestrj^ The convic- 

 tion was then often expressed that the case was hopeless on 

 any theory of our national growth which did not take into 

 account the eternal decrees of God. Good men were bopeful, 

 only because they had faith in the reserves of might which 

 God held secret from liuman view. 



Those now living who were in their boybood then, remem- 

 ber Avell bow such men as Dr. Lyman Beecber, of Ohio, and 



