Hospital Transports. A Memoir of the Embarkation of the Sick and Wounded from the Peninsula of Virginia in the Summer of 1862. Compiled and published at the Request of the Sanitary Commission. Boston: Ticknor and Fields.
If pure benevolence was ever organized and utilized into beneficence, the name of the institution is the Sanitary Commission. It is a standing answer to Samson's riddle, "Out of the strong came forth sweetness." Out of the very depths of the agony of this cruel and bloody war springs this beautiful system, built of the noblest and divinest attributes of the human soul. Amidst all the heroism of daring and enduring which this war has developed, amidst all the magnanimity of which it has shown the race capable, the daring, the endurance, and the greatness of soul which have been discovered among the men and women who have given their lives to this work shine as brightly as any on the battle-field,—in some respects even more brightly. They have not the bray of trumpets nor the clash of swords to rouse enthusiasm, nor will the land ever resound with their victories. Theirs is the dark and painful side, the menial and hidden side, but made light and lovely by the spirit that shines in and through it all. Glimpses of this agency are familiar to our people; but not till the history of its inception, progress, and results is calmly and adequately written out and spread before the public will any idea be formed of the magnitude and importance of the work which it has done. Nor even then. Never, till every soldier whose last moments it has soothed, till every soldier whose flickering life it has gently steadied into continuance, whose waning reason it has softly lulled into quiet, whose chilled blood it has warmed into healthful play, whose failing frame it has nourished into strength, whose fainting heart it has comforted with sympathy,—never, until every full soul has poured out its story of gratitude and thanksgiving, will the record be complete; but long before that time, ever since the moment that its helping hand was first held forth, comes the Blessed Voice, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."
An institution asking of Government only permission to live and opportunity to work, planting itself firmly and squarely on the generosity of the people, subsisting solely by their free-will offerings, it is a noble monument of the intelligence, the munificence, and the efficiency of a free people, and of the alacrity with which it responds when the right chord is rightly touched. It is, however, not unnatural that doubts should exist as to the success of a plan so far-reaching in its aims and hitherto so untried. Stories have been circulated of a mercenary disposition of its stores and trickery among its officers. Where these stories have found considerable credence, they have been tracked to their source and triumphantly refuted; but it would indeed be hardly less than miraculous, if an institution ramifying so widely, with agents so numerous, and resources so extensive, should have no knaves among its servants, and no waste in its circulation. The wonder is, that more [pg 405] leakage has not been proved than has ever been suspected. All that is necessary to remove floating doubts, to convince all heads of the wisdom which projected this Commission, and to warm all hearts up to its continued and sufficient support, is a knowledge of what it has done, is doing, and purposes to do. This information the Commission has, at different times, and by piecemeal, furnished: necessarily by piecemeal, since, as this book justly remarks, the immense mass of details which a circumstantial account of its operations in field and hospital must involve would prove nearly as laborious in the reading as in the performance. In this little volume we have, photographed, a single phase of its operations. It consists simply of extracts from letters and reports. There is no attempt at completeness or dramatic arrangement; yet the most elaborate grouping would probably fail to present one-half as accurately a picture of the work and its ways as these unpretending fragments. It delights us to see the—we can hardly say cheerful, as that savors too much of the "self-sacrifice" which benevolence sometimes tarnishes by talking about—but, rather, the gay, lively, merry manner in which the most balky matters are taken hold of. Men and women seem to have gone into the service with good-will and hearty love and buoyant spirits. It refreshes and strengthens us like a tonic to read of their taking the wounded, festering, filthy, miserable men, washing and dressing them, pouring in lemonade and beef-tea, and putting them abed and asleep. There is not a word about "devotion" or "ministering angels," (we could wish there were not quite so much about "ladies,") but honest, refined, energetic, able women, with quick brains and quick hands, now bathing a poor crazy head with ice-water, to be rewarded with one grateful smile from the parting soul,—now standing in the way of a procession of the slightly wounded, to pour a little brandy down their throats, or put an orange into their hands, just to keep them up till they reach food and rest,—now running up the river in a steam-tug, scrambling eggs in a wash-basin over a spirit-lamp as they go,—now groping their way, at all hours of the night, through torrents of rain, into dreadful places crammed with sick and dying men, "calling back to life those in despair from utter exhaustion, or again and again catching for mother or wife the last faint whispers of the dying,"—now leaving their compliments to serve a disappointed colonel instead of his dinner, which they had nipped in the bud by dragging away the stove with its four fascinating and not-to-be-withstood pot-holes;—and let the sutler's name be wreathed with laurel who not only permitted this, but offered his cart and mule to drag the stove to the boat, and would take no pay!
The blessings of thousands who were ready to perish, and of tens of thousands who love their country and their kind, rest upon those who originated, and those who sustain, this noble work. Let the people's heart never faint and its hand never weary; but let it, of its abundance, give to this Commission full measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, that, wherever the red trail of war is seen, its divine footsteps may follow,—that, wherever the red hand of war is lifted to wound, its white hand may be lifted to heal,—that its work may never cease until it is assumed by a great Christian Government, or until peace once more reigns throughout the land. And even then, gratitude for its service, and joy in its glory, shall never die out of the hearts of the American people.
The History of the Supernatural, in all Ages and Nations, and in all Churches, Christian and Pagan, demonstrating a Universal Faith. By WILLIAM HOWITT. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co.
There has been a great change of late years in connection with the science of Pneumatology and with the manner of treating it. There was a revolution of opinion on this subject in the middle of the last century; there is a counter-revolution to-day.
The superstitions and credulities of the Middle Ages eventuated, during the course of the eighteenth century, in the Encyclopædism of French philosophy. The grounds upon which the Church based her doctrine of the supernatural were fiercely attacked. The proofs brought forward to prove the insufficiency of such grounds were assumed to prove more than lack of logic in the Church; they were taken as proofs, that, in the nature of things, there [pg 406] is no evidence for the supernatural, in any sense of the term; in other words, that there is no knowledge within the reach of mortals, except that which relates to the physical,—to this earth, as the only phase of existence,—to the vital body, as the all of the human being. Emotional and intellectual phenomena were but results of material organization, as heat is the result of combustion: they exhibited themselves so long as vitality continued; they disappeared when death supervened, as the warmth from a fire dies out with the cessation of combustion. No hypothetical soul was needed to account for the thousand phenomena of thought or of sensation. Pneumatology was no science, but the mere fancy of an excited imagination.
Not to the literature and the social life of France alone was this materialistic influence confined. The mind of Germany, of England, and, more or less, of the rest of Europe, and of America, was pervaded by it. The tendency, all over the civilized world, was towards unbelief, not merely in miracles, but in all things spiritual. Science, with her strict tests and her severe inductions, lent her aid in the same direction.
It does not seem to have occurred to the philosophers of the Encyclopædian school that a doctrine is not necessarily false because an insufficient argument is brought forward to prove it. It does not appear to have occurred to skeptical physicists that there may be laws of Nature regulating ultramundane phenomena, as fixed, as invariable, as those which decide the succession of geological phenomena and the products of chemical combinations.