Nashville patriot. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1858-1860, 1859-07-19
The Great Lesson.

It has been the reproach Of our age that ii
is material that its triumphs are over the
blind forces of nature, not over mind aud
spirit-that it is objective not subjective
that is it great in is supremacy of man over
his accidents, and not over man himself. We
trust we are lucid.
But the reproach is wiped cut. 1t is indi-
viduals who make ages. Generations die, but
the memory of the man OF the generation
lives and makes the age. Thus the past has
Its Moses, Plato, Cromwell. Washington,
Napoleon. and other representative men. We
have Sickles. We trust we do not put too
fine point upon it, <fE tfE =
The virtue Of semi barbarism is physical
courage-pirtus The crown of Christian
civilization is forgiveness and mercy The
highest Christian idea is reach, when the
strength and valor of man is united with the
love and tenderness OF woman. This is the
true marriage of the human and divine which
makes the perfect humanity 1t was reserved
Tor us to attain it. Our age has its future in
its representative man.
Only little while ago. frail and fallen
woman confessed to her -bosom's lord ~ that
for many months she had been faithless to her
marriage VOWS, and had dishonorrd the bid OF
the wife and mother. In broad daylight she
had gone many times, through admiring
crowd. to the place of assignation, was re-
ceived in tie arms of paramount, not once.
but many times, constrained, not 10y auoiher's
will. not hy love, but by uncomfortable lust
What said the husband The same planet
could not hold the partner of her sin and
himself SO, on ''sweei Sabbath he sought
aud killed the man whose deed every Negro
in town was talking about "-kilied him of
from the face Of the earth, aud went joyfully
to the prison to answer, if need be, to the
offended laws of his country. but bowed down
in an unutterable agony over the sham and
the sin of conjugal infdelity-the continent
and faithful husband mourning over the in
continent and iaithless wife and mother.
jury of his countrymen approved the deed
1t was done in the very spirit Of the heroism
of the chivalric ages. which, conscious ct thu
loftiest and sterncst virtue, could not brook
even the breath of dishonOr aud scOrn. Il
was the assertion of that divine justice which
the judge, irreproachable and pure. measure.
out TO the guilty and the weak, by a higher
law than that embodied in human statutes
He who had never sinned, be whose soul turn
ed pale st the thought of wrong so horrible
was fit minister of this divine justice.
But his duty was not completed. Next tC
divine justice comes divine forgiveness and
mercy There is now but one bosom or
which the fallen woman can lay Der head
aud into which she may weep tears of peni
! t,.nce and shame and find the unuiterabl,
blessing of forgiveness. He calls her thitheI
almost before the worms have begun thei
| feast on the form which she had tonded ant
on which he had wreaked his great revenge
J The dishonored sheets have been washed il
/ blood; new love, borne Of tenderness ant
! forgiveness, waits on the second nuptials
, The "negroes" knew before, and dealt
wiped out dishonor. Now miuistering angel
watch around the couch where pardon j
( sealed, and the world learns the great lessor
s.tn fh., oil fhirva nj pa nu ~ an
/ that mercy as we'll as punishment is sublime
N T. Tribune