No
one who heard Baker's peroration that night will ever forget it. His
dark eyes blazed, his form dilated, and his voice was like a bugle in
battle.
"They tell us that the Jew is accursed of God. This has been the plea of
the bloody tyrants and robbers that oppressed and plundered them during
the long ages of their exile and agony. But the Almighty God executes
his own judgments. Woe to him who presumes to wield his thunderbolts!
They fall in blasting, consuming vengeance upon his own head. God deals
with his chosen people in judgment; but he says to men, Touch them at
your peril! They that spoil them shall be for a spoil; they that carried
them away captive shall themselves go into captivity. The Assyrian smote
the Jew, and where is the proud Assyrian Empire? Rome ground them under
her iron heel, and where is the empire of the Caesars? Spain smote the
Jew, and where is her glory? The desert sands cover the site of Babylon
the Great. The power that hurled the hosts of Titus against the holy
city Jerusalem was shivered to pieces. The banners of Spain, that
floated in triumph over half the world, and fluttered in the breezes of
every sea, is now the emblem of a glory that is gone, and the ensign of
a power that has waned.
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