World Organization Secures World Peace

by R. L. Bridgman

published in The Atlantic Monthly, 94:563, pages 349-364
1904-04

OVER fifty years have passed since the first world’s peace congresses met. Seven in all were held, and in them the impulse of the peace movement attained its full force as a motive for the welfare of the world. The first of these congresses was that in London in 1843. Then came the great gatherings in Brussels in September, 1848; in Paris in August, 1840; in Frankfort in August, 1850; in London in July, 1851; in Manchester in January, 1853; and in Edinburgh in October, 1853. These demonstrations had the freshness and the enthusiasm of the Washingtonian temperance movement. All the moral, humanitarian, industrial, social, and financial reasons which are now massed so conclusively against war were urged then, with the only difference from the present attack that modern statistics were lacking, and that the illustrations from recent warfare were not available. But the vision of the pioneers of those days, of Elihu Burritt, of Victor Hugo, of Henry Richard, of Frédéric Bastiat, of Richard Cobden, of Émile de Girardin, of John Bright, and of many others, was as far-seeing as that of their successors, and their thunders against the evils and the follies of war were as loud.

But dark days followed. The Crimean War engrossed the attention of Europe. Then our own civil war banished from our minds the hopes of the first effort, and the early congresses lost their initial force. Only in recent years is their prodigious momentum once more felt.

Peace societies, however, continued their work within national limits. But not until 1878, at the World’s Exhibition in Paris, was another international gathering held to promote the concord of the nations. Seeds were then sown of larger work, and in 1889 began the present series of universal peace congresses of which the session in Boston in October will be the thirteenth.

Practical means have been the purpose of these agitators. They have aimed to combine sentiment with accomplishment, and the successive congresses have labored steadily for the prevention of war, and for the substitution of reason for force in the settlement of differences between the nations. Arbitration has been the great theme which has rung from the platforms of these congresses year after year, whether the session has been in some European capital or in Chicago. Kindred topics have been debated with all the vigor and earnestness that enthusiastic apostles of the reform could command, and an immense pioneer work has been done in educating the nations for peace. International relations are, doubtless, far more friendly to-day than they would have been had it not been for the self-sacrifice, for many discouraging years, of these world benefactors.

Insistence upon the brotherhood of man has been constant. On that foundation have been discussions of disarmament of the nations, of the diffusion of peace principles in all public schools, of the negotiation of arbitration treaties, of industrial arbitration, of prevention of military drill in public schools, of an international peace bureau, of the codification of international law, and of many other propositions tending toward the consummation of the great purpose.

Such have been the conditions antecedent to the meeting of the Universal Peace Congress in Boston in October. The progress for peace has been wonderful in recent years, in the opinion of those who have followed it in detail. The arbitration conference at Lake Mohonk this year was attended by a larger number of enthusiastic men and women than any preceding session. Anxiety for the establishment of universal peace was never greater than now, when the war in the Far East illustrates the evils against which the Congress is working, and when menaces upon our own liberty and political institutions, as a consequence of our last war, are filling the minds of many of our patriotic citizens with apprehension.

Under these conditions, it is timely to turn to another movement, which has already a strong standing in Massachusetts and in Pennsylvania, and see what promise it has for assistance toward the peace of the world.

World-peace is the object of the coming Universal Peace Congress World organization, beginning with a world legislature, or a “stated international congress,” is the object of an effort before the Congress of the United States, proposed to it by a resolution of the Legislature of Massachusetts, as well as by private citizens. The proposition here advanced is that world-organization includes world-peace, and vastly more. Therefore. to employ a military term in speaking of the effort for peace, the peace of the world may be secured most quickly and permanently by a flank movement, not attacking the difficulties directly in front, but approaching them by way of the organization of the world. When the greater shall have been secured, the less will be found one of the rewards of the effort, and such broad and deep foundations will have been laid for the future that the superstructure cannot be overthrown.

By putting mankind into its true position as an organic whole, permanent conditions of peace will be established. It may occur that some outburst of human passion will flare up, making a commotion for a time. But that will not change the general truth, nor overthrow the fact that the best possible conditions for permanent peace have been established. The crust of the earth is a fairly stable place upon which to live, in spite of earthquakes and volcanoes. Earth’s forces break out at times; men’s passions might overcome restraint occasionally, but the fitting of the nations into the unity of mankind would be the best possible preventive of such outbreaks, the most likely to compel them to be of short duration, and the most powerful energy to force the insubordinate elements into their due subordination.

World-organization must grow out of the essential unity of mankind. It cannot be a federation, or any agreement which has in itself the seeds of nullification or secession or any implication that the conditions were created by men and may be destroyed by men at will. The fundamental reality in the existence of mankind was not created by men and cannot be destroyed by men. Recognition of this fundamental truth, the unity of mankind, is the preliminary of world-organization. Effort for world-peace, therefore, should act along the line of omnipotent truths, and not endeavor to advance along a line of options created by men.

World-organization will be found much easier than it now seems to most people if they will only practice what they know, or believe, to be true. One of the inconsistencies which every observing man must notice is not only (as the world generally complains) that Christians do not act as if they believed what they say they believe, but that it is just as true of people generally; they seems to distrust the universality and undeviating force of eternal principles. With many people it is as if the multiplication table ran after this fashion: “5 times 5 are 25; 6 times 5 are about 30; 7 times 5 are between 34 and 36; 8 times 5 are in doubt, but most mathematicians hold that the answer approximates 40; 9 times 5 are uncertain, authorities differ, the public is in doubt, and it is a question which may well be left to a referendum.” Building on the eternal foundation of the unity of mankind (and those who dispute it are a negligible quantity for this discussion), the steps which are in order for the organization of the world into one political body are coming to be seen more and more distinctly in the near future.

We take the world as it is to-day, more or less occupied by nations more or less near together, every producer trying to enlarge his market and to bring the world closer to himself, — except where statesmen are using the tremendous powers of government to put obstructions in the way of trade, and to make each country an isolated economic factor. Though nations have many relations to one another, and more to-day than ever before, yet they want many more than they have now. People in incalculable numbers in every quarter of the earth wish to do business with other people in every other part of the earth, and all sorts of persons, in all sorts of places, have a desire which would be uncontrollable, if they had the money to satisfy it, to see all the other sorts of persons and places upon the earth. World-unity is a fact to-day. But unity of the world under a government of men is not a fact. Narrowness of view, conservative ideas of progress, timidity regarding the future, selfish jealousy lest others get more than we if we throw down all barriers which shut us out from our place in the organic total of mankind, — these factors stand in the way of the accomplishment of formal political unity, and, in every nation, hold back those who are already fit and otherwise ready for political union.

At our present rate of progress, considering the enterprise, push, and optimism of men, this unstable condition cannot exist much longer. World-forces are rapidly bringing mankind to its birthright as a united whole, working together in harmony, and then the wonder will be how men could have been so foolish as to have opposed or ridiculed such a consummation.

Organization, for a political person, means that it most have organs whereby it can know its environment, what its body is, what its surroundings are, what its nature demands, what its circumstances permit, and so on, as far as the functions of a knowing organ are concerned. It must have the means of expressing its will after it has learned what its conditions demand. It must have an organ for carrying the will into action. It must have an organ to determine how far the expressed will applies to particular cases. In other words, it must have a legislative department, an executive department, and a judicial department.

Nations have these organs now. To that partial extent mankind is organized already. But mankind, as a whole, has not yet any such organs established and recognized by the nations. The nations deny that there is any sovereignty over them. It is true that developments have already occurred, remarkable in number and wonderfully significant in idea, proving the unity of mankind, and that the nations are coming to recognize it. But hitherto not only has each nation rightly denied that any other is more sovereign than itself, but each has refused to admit the sovereignty of the whole over itself. That is, mankind, as a whole, is not vet organized. Fragmentary organization, equipment with organs by sections, known as nations, is the highest point of development thus far.

Now, in the relations of nations to one another, as proved by their treaties and code of international law, certain truths are recognized which involve the very nature of mankind as a created whole. That is, there is a world-constitution, unwritten, not called by that name, but existing as truly as the animal creation existed before it was named by man. and as independent of his recognition and his naming as the animal creation was independent of human recognition. Though that world-constitution has remained obscure and unrecognized, yet world-progress toward its formal expression has been wonderfully rapid in recent years.

In the first place, that constitution is bringing about the formal existence of an organ for the use and for the expression of the intelligence and the will of the world. Nations, repeatedly, in separate congresses, upon special subjects, have expressed their intelligence and their will, and have entrusted to the nations severally the duty of carrying out that will, as is most perfectly illustrated in the case of the Universal Postal Union. That is, the nations are creating a world legislative department.

In the next place, the establishment of The Hague Court of Arbitration is doubtless, the beginning of the establishment of a judicial department which will include other duties than the settlement of causes dangerous to the peace of nations. Lastly, the formal establishment of some world-executive will not long lag behind the creation of the legislative and the judicial departments. The world is moving rapidly toward political organization as one body, and the situation must soon reveal itself to present doubters.

United States history throws a powerful light upon the wider truth of the relations of the nations to one another. After the Revolution came the Federation. Subject colonies, having thrown off the government of England, were independent states, or sovereign powers, in their relations to one another and to the world. So they said. But the Nature of Things, asserting itself through a disorganized currency, industrial distress, political antagonisms, and the decrepitude of the central government, said to these self-styled sovereigns: “You are fools. You must recognize me. You are one. You must recognize your unity in me. Throw away your theories. Admit the truth which existed before you, which shaped your being, and which holds you in its inexorable grasp.” The wisdom of the framers was shown in their recognition of the folly of the federation, and in their willingness to become subordinate to the Nature of Things.

Yet the sovereignty of each state was recognized, such were the exigencies of the times, to the extent that it could come under the Constitution or not, at its will. Years passed before the slowest and dullest and most selfish of them recognized the fundamental fact that they were in the grip of circumstances, and in relations over which they had no sovereignty, and then they formally adopted the Constitution.

What the Nature of Things will yet do with the United States remain to be seen. As far as our Constitution is in accord with the supreme, unwritten constitution, it is in an impregnable stronghold, and no might of man can destroy it. But wherever it is not in accord, or is so interpreted as not to be in working accord, then the Nature of Things will have no more regard for the written Constitution than a tornado has for the straws in its path. Fundamental rights of man and the true obligations and responsibilities of nations lie in the world-constitution back of all written agreements or treaties or human understandings whatever, and they will triumph at last, provided men are unselfish enough and brave enough to die for their rights, — and martyrs have never yet been lacking when the cause was clear. So we can turn to the history of the United States and get a bright illumination upon present conditions and duties.

States of the United States do not have wars with one another. It is true that the great civil strife occurred, but the Nature of Things proved that the bond over the warring parts was stronger than the repellent forces whose presence together was due to the introduction of a falsehood contradicting the truth of human freedom, which was one of the fundamental and eternal principles upon which the nation was established. But civil war between different individual states is impossible, though there are diversities of interests and of local sentiment between some of the states greater than the diversity between the northern tier of states and the interests and sentiment of the people of Canada. States of the United States have no tariff wall between them. Though the nation covers such immense territory that the good of one section is gained under our tariff by direct and admitted loss to another, — as in the case of the duty on hides and leather, — yet the states which suffer for the benefit of the others continue in their friendly relations, and there is no possibility of war. The original colonies have submitted to the Nature of Things. They have abandoned forever their claim of absolute sovereignty, and they enjoy permanent peace and friendship with one another.

They are in organic relations with one another. Politically they are one. One flag it over them. One legislative body, composed of representatives of all sections, makes laws for the whole, and promotes the development of the weakest parts. One judiciary department has jurisdiction over cases which arise between the different states, or between the states and the general government, or between citizens of different states. Settlement of all differences it assured according to forms of justice which are the same in all parts of the country. One executive, in the choice of whom all the parts have a voice, enforces the will of the representatives and carries out the decisions of the courts. The political machinery is built for the just settlement of causes of differences, and for the harmonious growth of all parts of the living whole. Law is respected. An army is needed, internally, for police purposes only for the savage and lawless communities.

Yet these amicable and prosperous relations for the individual states have not been secured by any direct agreements between them individually since the adoption of the Constitution. Maine has no treaty relations with California, nor even with Vermont. Formal relations have been rendered needless forever because the Nature of Things has been recognized. That determines the relations of the states to one another. When they have once come into the relations which are in accord with the higher powers, then further arrangements have been superfluous. The greater has included the less, and a vault full of treaties and agreements and codicils and explanations and ratifications could accomplish no more than is secured forever in the whole, and in detail, by the simple act of recognizing the fundamental unity of the states in the superior nation.

Thus the United States is an illustration to the entire world of the peace and prosperity which follow the accomplishment in political life of the unity of mankind, as far as our Union embodies and expresses that unity. When Connecticut expanded into the great West it was not necessary that she should conquer larger areas. The exact contrary actually occurred, and the survival of the name of the Connecticut Reserve will proclaim to the world, as long as those hear who have ears to hear, that political supremacy is needless for the spread of a colonizing people. New York capitalists did not declare war upon Montana when they wished to invest their capital in the deposits which dazzled the imagination of the covetous by the fabulous richness of their ores. Yet the local laws of Montana were materially different from those of New York. Ohio has not made war upon Louisiana because the latter has control of the mouth of the Mississippi and prevents access to the ocean. Massachusetts has not carried fire and sword into South Carolina in order to invest her capital there in cotton manufacture, not did New Hampshire desolate the plains of Kansas with the carnage of innocent women and children, and beyond the horizon with the smoke of burning homes in order to make sure of her investment in Western farm mortgages. Pennsylvania has not established concentration camps of the helpless non-combatants of her sister states in order to open a market for her iron and coal, nor has Minnesota transported the people of Rhode Island to some remote confinement in order to open up the little state to her superabundant wheat. Expansion has been the practice in our country from the beginning, free and constant expansion, without the accompaniment of political conquest, even where the people and the laws to which the expansionists went were totally different from those which they left behind them. The Southwestern states, with their Mexican antecedents and population, illustrate the power of supreme political conditions to preserve the peace, and to open all possible sources of profitable investment without resort to force, to say nothing of resort to outrage, oppression, and slaughter.

No one has ever been heard to say in these times that this system of political relations is less beneficial than would be a system whereby each state might be an independent sovereignty, each having a high tariff wall against its neighbor, each staggering under a standing army to repel invasions from its stronger neighbors, and to plunder its weaker ones, where each workman toiled with a soldier strapped to his back in order to maintain an unstable equilibrium, and where the passions and jealousies of each state were in constant exercise against each and every one of its neighbors. Yet such would be the condition of the states of our country to-day if they had not recognized the Nature of Things and surrendered a seeming sovereignty, which they never had in fact, in order to rise to a higher plane of existence as subordinate pats of one organic whole, one self-governing nation.

This is no mere human order which is supreme in our country to-day. It is no result of cunning wits planning out a political machine and fitting the parts together like a marvelous mechanism so framed that it never breaks down and never develops excessive friction. Our present system is strong because it recognizes the foundation truths which lie in the relations of free and independent human brings to one another. Our statesmen have recognized and applied the eternal truths in the Nature of Things. The inevitable consequences have followed that recognition. Similar consequences will follow similar recognition in the relations of the nations to one another.

But there are other forces which work for the unity of our courts. Sons of New England become loyal sons of the Western states in which they have their present homes, yet they are none the less loyal to the homes of their fathers. Old Home Week is conclusive proof of the strength of the bond which holds the dwellers on the prairies to the hills and valleys of the ancestral states. Sons and Daughters of the Revolution are equally loyal, whether they live on the Atlantic, Pacific, Gulf, or Lake coast. It has been proclaimed as one of the blessings of the war with Spain (not admitting or denying here the assumption that war has blessings) that it brought together once more Southerner and Northerner under the Stars and Stripes. Fraternal orders have their members in every part of the country. Great expositions demonstrate that there is a brotherhood among all our people, whether they come from the East or West. Freedom of intercourse, frequency of personal contact, intimate association in trade and pleasure, familiarity with one another’s peculiarities, appreciation of the humanity which is deeper and stronger than peculiarities and circumstances, all these influences weld our people into one great family, between whose members conflict is becoming more and more impossible, not only because our political system prevents it, but because our political system promotes something higher than political relations, and because the brotherly affection between our people will find some way other than war by which to settle any differences which may arise out of their common weaknesses and passions.

Now apply the illustration of the United States to the nations of the world. Suppose that the first object of world-statesmen is to secure perpetual peace. We have shown the world how. Our slates have formally surrendered their claim to absolute sovereignty. They have voluntarily taken their place as subordinate parts in a larger whole, and the crushing might of the stronger states coercing the weaker ones by fire and sword, by slaughter and rapine, was not necessary preliminary of the new relation. The states reserved for local self-government the details in which local administration can secure more accurate justice and larger liberty for each person than the broad and less discriminating power of the central government.

Let each nation now, in the pursuit of world-peace, recognize in like manner the Nature of Things. It was supreme over our original state. It is equally supreme over all the nations combined, and it will continue to load them down with the enormous burden of their ignorance and their blunder until they open their eyes and admit the prime fact in their existence.

Our states established a political organization to fit their needs. That is, they set up, with all the wisdom they could gather from their experience, enlarged by their rare genius for political constructiveness, a legislative department for their central government, an executive department, and a judicial department. Every necessary organ was provided. Organs are indispensible to bodies which expect to do anything, and it would be as foolish to suppose that the world, as a political body, can act without world-organs as to suppose that we could have a central government for the United States without organs whose field for exercise covered the entire country. The world has not yet got its head. It has no organ of intelligence. It far from having any means whereby it can formulate or express its will, and further still from a means of enforcing it. A world-legislature, then, and a world-executive and a world-judiciary must come in due time, before mankind will be fully organized for any simple act as a world-organism. If we face the situation squarely we see that it does not require either impossibilities or absurdities. It offers promise of reward beyond our imagination to comprehend, yet within the ability of the nations to secure without loss to any, and with immense credit and benefit to all. More than this, the signs of the times point to the certain realization of the predictions of political world-unity.

Already the world has made material progress toward the consummation of this great ideal, though the skeptics are many in spite of a profusion of facts. World-peace may be much nearer than the hopeless and the doubters suppose. Humanity is even now becoming organized into one whole. The proposition for a world-legislative body, with regular sessions for such business as may come before it (though the point of reference to the home governments for ratification of its acts is conceded), has already been heard by the House Committee on Foreign Affairs of our national Congress, and the representatives of the American Peace Society who presented the case were accorded such a favorable reception that they believe that their movement will find approval. The idea of world-unity is stronger to-day than it ever was before. Expectation of the realization of the inspiring ideal is spreading among those who watch the signs of the times. Familiarity with the facts only strengthens this confidence. The example of the United States is in itself such a proof that it will do much to convince the political leaders of our country, and to persuade the statesmen of Europe, Asia, South America, and other lands that the truth is applicable to all mankind, and that in the realization of this ideal will come permanent peace and prosperity, with practical enjoyment of the brotherhood of man.

Absolute sovereignty having been waived by the agreement of the nations to enter into a regular international congress, there would follow participation in regulations tending to establish similar conditions around the world among all nations represented in the Congress. In the United States over thirty states and territories have joined the effort for larger unity in state procedure by the appointment of Commissioners on the Uniformity of Legislation. Effort in a similar direction would be one of the earliest necessities felt by a world-legislature. Indeed, there is in sight already, in this and other fields, abundance of material for world legislation for several sessions.

One of the conditions which promotes peace between the states of the United States is that, wherever any citizen may be, he is free to enjoy whatever form of religion he prefers. He may be a Christian, Mohammedan, or pagan, as he pleases, only he must preserve the peace and live a decent life. World-peace will be unspeakably promoted if there prevails such a system of world-law that when a man goes into any part of the world, he will be free to worship God after any form he prefers. Other liberties, now not known in all countries. may be expected in the growing toleration and homogeneity of the world.

But world-law which secures personal rights and liberty having been established, there will arise a far greater freedom of movement among the peoples of the world. Mutual concessions will be made for the sake of securing to each the advantages given to the citizens of the most favored nation. Thus trade and profit would become increasingly possible. National belief that it was necessary to expand by conquest in order to find security for religion, for Trade, or for property rights, would dissipate in the presence of universal toleration and universal opportunity. Japan could expand into Korea without feeling that she must dominate it politically. Russia would find her ice-free seaport without becoming a menace to Japan. England could trade in India without holding hundreds of millions of people her political subjects. The United States could sell cotton cloth and machinery in China without incidentally holding against their will a nation of 7,600,000 Filipinos. The Boers could govern themselves, meeting the outlander issue under local conditions, without being forced into the British Empire. So much, and much more like it, would be accomplished under a system of world-law.

But the world-court would carry the probability of peace to a certainty. As our national courts have jurisdiction over issues involving parties other than the residents of one state, so the world-court would be a tribunal before which national differences could be tried and settled by the highest judicial ability the human race could produce. Nations would be in their organic relation to one another as parts of the common whole. Occasion for differences would be reduced to such minor matters that not only would the honor of each contestant be satisfied by the court procedure, but the material interests of each would be promoted far more than by any possible resort to force. For it must be remembered, in connection with the truth that only minor matters, compared with present issues, would come before that court, that, in the relations of the nations, there could arise no question of the destruction of one nation by another. World-law would remove. by its free opportunities for race expansion into territories of other races on the part of all who desired to trade or travel or live elsewhere, all pretext for resort to force. More than that, as has actually occurred under the Concert of Powers in Europe, there would be such jealousy to maintain the status quo territorially that the public opinion of the entire world would be against any one Power which should undertake to destroy the existence of any other, however small. And the Concert itself illustrates the growing and tremendous strength of world-opinion, especially when backed by the moral law.

Other questions than existence or integrity of territory would be settled by the world-court, and the public opinion of the world would be powerful to influence the losing side to accept the verdict without resort to force. In any event, acceptance would not involve dishonor in the eyes of others, because it would be a verdict by the world-court, and acceptance would certainly entail less loss of prestige or property, to say nothing of life, than a resort to arms.

The details of the development of the world executive are not essential to the taking of the first steps for world-organization for the sake of world-peace. Present arrangements, such as exist in the case of the special world-congresses which have acted upon particular subjects, suffice for present needs. The main elements needed first are the legislative and the judicial departments, and these are already so near realization that recognition of the situation by the nations a will promote the disposition of the people everywhere to hasten what is so surely approaching.

With world-organization secure there would disappear some of the present problems which destroy the financial health of Europe and put a burden upon the United states. With the danger removed that national existence might be destroyed, with the preservation of territorial integrity assured, with substantial justice (even with the risk of occasional errors) promised by a world-court, the problem of disarmament would be solved. This, of itself, would be of incalculable worth. The revival of industry, the decline of militarism, the decay of national jealousies, the promotion of international intercourse, the exchange of national products on better terms, and other widespread consequences, would follow the recognition by the nations of the Nature of Things.

The Universal Peace Congress can help much to hasten the solution of the problem of how to end war. Every forward step which it can take to promote knowledge of this American movement in the home nations of the members respectively will be so much direct help toward the unity of the world as one political body. To this consummation there is no doubt — -so believe those who are active in this movement — that the world will ultimately come. They are not prophesying whether that consummation is near or remote. That it is coming and that it will be of incalculable benefit when it does come are sufficient premises upon which to build the most diligent work possible for its speedy coming. While there must be a ripening of events for this end, and while time must elapse for the operation of forces beyond our control, yet it is no less true that much depends upon direct human agency. The law of opportunity improved holds as fully in this field as in others, as in the establishment of The Hague arbitration court, for instance. The curse of opportunity neglected hangs over those who counsel neglect as truly as over any others who fail to rise to the full height of their opportunity and responsibility. Subjects are waiting in abundance for the action of the regular congress of nations, or the world-legislature. Obstacles are no more insurmountable than they were for The Hague court. Indeed, the success of that effort guarantees and prophesies success in this. The cause itself is momentous enough, magnificent enough, and inspiring enough to call out patient, untiring, and self-sacrificing effort.

Fitting it is that Boston should be the place of the gathering of the Congress which promises to be the largest and most influential in the history of the peace movement, for Boston has been in the fore-front of the agitation for world peace from the beginning. It was at a meeting of the American Peace Society, at its Boston home, on July 26,1841, that the proposition was first made by Joseph Sturge, an Englishman, which resulted in the entire series of international peace congresses. Charles Sumner’s famous oration, “The True Grandeur of Nations,” — a convincing plea for peace which still has living force, — was the public Fourth of July oration in Boston in 1843. In Park Street Church, in 1849, Sumner delivered his powerful indictment against war, — “The War system of Nations.” Almost all the anti-slavery leaders were pronounced peace men, especially Channing, Garrison, and Sumnner, and the Massachusetts Peace Society was organized in Channing’s study on December 26, 1815. Boston, for many years, has been the home of the American Peace Society. Among the first twenty-two members of the Massachusetts Society were the governor of the state and the president of Harvard College. Boston has always been so conspicuous in the peace crusade that her friends look to her now to see a new and great advance made in consequence of the meeting within her gates.