E 
 179 
 
 T56 
 
 The Hand of God 
 in American History 
 
 A Study of Divine Providence as Seen 
 
 in the Life and Mission of 
 
 a Nation 
 
 By WILBUR FISK TILLETT, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 Professor of Christian Doctrine in tlie School of Religion, and Dean 
 
 Emeritus of the Theological Faculty in 
 
 Vanderbilt University 
 
The Hand of Qod in 
 Americdn Ristori] 
 
 bi3 IPilbur Fisk Tilletl, D.D., hh.D. 
 
 Dean Emeritus of the Theological Facultij 
 in Uanderbilt Uniuersilij 
 
 11-)AS RALPH WALDO EMERSON 
 LL/ justified in calling America "the last 
 and noblest effort of Divine Providence in 
 behalf of the human race"? 
 
 In what way has the history of the 
 United States exemplified the Divine Law? 
 
 What deeds can America appeal to in 
 proof of the truth of her claim that she 
 had a providential origin, a providential 
 history, and a providential mission in the 
 world? 
 
 Board, 35 cents; paper, 25 cent* 
 
 A benevolent layman of Virginia, impressea with the 
 great value of this study of American history, has pre- 
 sented a copy of it to every member of the House ol 
 Representatives and of the United States Senate. 
 
 Na 
 
 Class „&1T9 
 
 lidoK 
 
 ith 
 
 PliKSKNTCI) BY 
 
3H3ttl| tl|e compHinents af 
 
The Hand of God 
 in American History 
 
 A Study of Divine Providence as Seen 
 
 in the Life and Mission of 
 
 a Nation 
 
 By WILBUR FISK TILLETT, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 Professor of Christian Doctrine in the School of Religion, and Dean 
 
 Emeritus of the Theological Faculty in 
 
 Vanderbilt University 
 
 PUBLISHING HOUSE M. E. CHURCH, SOUTH 
 
 LAMAR & BARTON, Agents 
 Nashville, Tenn. Dallas, Tex. Richmond, Va. 
 
Reprint from "The Methodist Quarteriy Review" for October, 1922 
 with some additions 
 
 
THE HAND OF GOD IN AMERICAN 
 HISTORY. 
 
 A Study of Divine Providence as Seen in the Life and 
 Mission of a Nation. 
 
 "The last and noblest effort of Divine Providence in behalf 
 of the human race" is what Ralph Waldo Emerson calls the 
 United States of America. The word "America" has come to 
 be used throughout the world as a designation of this one large 
 and influential republic of the North American Continent; 
 and if we so use it, it is simply in compliance with accepted 
 usage and widespread custom, and not because we fail to 
 recognize the importance and greatness of other countries and 
 nations in North and South America. 
 
 I. God's Use of Nations. 
 
 If God does his work in this world through men, as indeed 
 he ever does, he needs men collectively as well as individually 
 for the accomplishment of his purposes. If human govern- 
 ments and nations are, as indeed they are, a necessity in the 
 world, they are a necessity to God as well as to men. Has 
 anything short of Divine Omnipotence such power for good as 
 a holy nation whose government Is founded upon the princi- 
 ples of righteousness, and which Is conducted so as to pro- 
 mote intelligence and righteousness among Its own people and 
 throughout the earth? To answer these questions, as they 
 must be answered, affirmatively, means that nations no less 
 than individuals, even more than Individuals, are instru- 
 ments of Divine Providence. Never before in the history of 
 the world have the power and Influence of nations, alike for 
 evil and for good, been so manifest as they are to-day: and 
 never before has there been a time more fitting than the 
 present, for the profitable study of the providential mission of 
 a nation. If men will do, when collectively organized into 
 (3) 
 
4 THE HAND OF GOD IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 corporations and governments, what they will not do as in- 
 dividuals, and this we know to be true, it is of the highest 
 importance that along with national consciousness there 
 should be developed a national conscience. In studying God's 
 providential government of nations and his relations to civil 
 governments, we must never lose sight of the fact that govern- 
 ments and nations are not impersonal things and passive 
 puppets in the Hand of Omnipotence, but free human beings 
 collected in groups and organized in masses, and that God's 
 providential government of them is subject to all the condi- 
 tions and limitations involved in his government of individuals 
 as free beings. 
 
 Among the eminent philosophers of the world who have 
 believed in Divine Providence, none was more pronounced and 
 outspoken in expressing his convictions than Hegel. He re- 
 garded "history as a spacious book of Providence recording 
 how the deeds of men and nations have helped or hindered the 
 purposes of God." He believed that the providence of God 
 was exercised on a "large and grand scale," and protested 
 against that "peddling view of Providence" which sees the 
 Hand of God in the comparatively unimportant and trifling 
 details of individual life, but not in the large and great affairs 
 of nations and of the universe. His "Philosophy of History" 
 is one long protest against the position, on the one hand, of 
 those who limit the guiding Hand of God to the life and needs 
 of individuals (for example, when help has unexpectedly come 
 to an individual in great perplexity), and on the other hand, 
 of those who believe in Divine Providence only in general, but 
 not in the particulars and details that are involved in the proc- 
 esses of life alike of individuals and of nations. When the 
 lives of individuals and the histories of nations are thus 
 viewed, they become not only a record of human annals, but 
 a study of Divine Providence in things both small and great. 
 
 We desire to point out some providential facts and circum- 
 stances in the history of America, drawn, not to any consider- 
 able extent from its religious and ecclesiastical history, but 
 mainly from its civic life and what it is common to call secular 
 history, finding perchance something sacred in the secular and 
 much that is divine in what is most human. 
 
A STUDY OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE. 5 
 
 II. Christopher Columbus the Christ-Bearer. 
 
 Among the many facts and circumstances that prove that 
 this nation had its inspiration and origin in the hearts and 
 consciences of those who beheved in Divine Providence and in 
 Christ as the rightful Ruler of men and nations, we call atten- 
 tion first to its discovery in 1492. 
 
 Christopher Columbus regarded himself as engaged in a 
 distinctly Christian mission, when, after committing himself 
 and his company in prayer to the guidance of God, he went 
 forth to discover whatever unknown worlds might lie between 
 Spain and the East Indies. "Christopher," his baptismal 
 name, means the "Christ-bearer," and he ever regarded him- 
 self as being, by his very christening, "the called of God." 
 He regarded his voyage of discovery as a kind of missionary 
 journey. "God made me," he says, "a messenger of the new 
 heavens and the new earth." And when this New World was 
 discovered, he lost no time in claiming it for Christ. Erecting 
 a cross on landing, he christened the new world ' ' San Salvador ' 
 (St. Saviour), joined with his companions in singing the 
 "Gloria in Excelsis," and began at once proclaiming Christ 
 to the new and strange people whom he found here. 
 
 Joaquin Miller, the American poet, although approaching 
 and interpreting the mind and mission of Columbus from a 
 different angle, makes him thereby no less an instrument of 
 Divine Providence than do they who call attention to the 
 religious faith and motives that characterized him. Miller's 
 poem titled "Columbus" is in every way worthy of his theme, 
 and of quotation in this study of the providential events and 
 lessons in American history: 
 
 Behind him lay the gray Azores, 
 
 Behind the gates of Hercules; 
 Before him not the ghost of shores, 
 
 Before him only shoreless seas. 
 The good mate said: " Now must we pray, 
 
 For lo! the very stars are gone. 
 Brave Admiral, speak, what shall I say?" 
 
 "Why, say: 'Sail on! sail on! and on!'" 
 
6 THE HAND OF GOD IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 "My men grow mutinous, day by day, 
 
 My men grow ghastly wan and weak." 
 The stout mate thought of home; a spray 
 
 Of salt wave washed his swarthy cheek. 
 "What shall I say, brave Admiral, say, 
 
 If we sight naught but seas at dawn?" 
 "Why, you shall say at break of day, 
 
 'Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!'" 
 
 They sailed and sailed, as winds might blow. 
 
 Until at last the blanched mate said: 
 "Why, now not even God would know 
 
 Should I and all my men fall dead; 
 These very winds forget their way, 
 
 For God from these dread seas is gone. 
 Now speak, brave Admiral, speak and say" — 
 
 He said: "Sail on! sail on! and on!" 
 
 They sailed. They sailed. Then spake the mate: 
 
 "This mad sea shows his teeth to-night. 
 He curls his lip, he lies in wait. 
 
 With lifted teeth, as if to bite! 
 Brave Admiral, say but one good word: 
 
 What shall we do when hope is gone?" 
 The words leapt like a leaping sword: 
 
 "Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!" 
 
 Then, pale and worn, he kept his deck, 
 
 And peered through darkness. Ah, that night 
 Of all dark nights! And then a speck — 
 
 A light! a light! a light! a light! 
 It grew, a starlit flag unfurled! 
 
 It grew to be Time's burst of dawn. 
 He gained a world; he gave that world 
 
 Its grandest lesson: "On! sail on!"* 
 
 III. The Faith of Our Fathers. 
 
 We think that facts can be adduced to prove that no great 
 nation in the history of the world has ever been founded under 
 conditions and influences so distinctly moral and religious, 
 and by persons so thoroughly Christian in their ideals, mo- 
 tives, and aims, as we may with confidence claim is true of 
 America. Bishop Galloway has truly said, in his volume en- 
 titled "Christianity and the Nation": 
 
 *Copyrighted by Whitaker & Ray-Wiggin Company. Printed by permission. 
 
A STUDY OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE. 7 
 
 The deepest and mightiest thing in any nation's heart is its religion; 
 therefore as is the religion, so is the nation. I hesitate not to affirm that the 
 temple at Jerusalem was built by a no more sacred patriotism or under the 
 benedictions of a no more favoring Providence than were the colonial 
 governments of this new world. Christian teachings were the seed thoughts 
 of our political constitutions. 
 
 The years that Intervened between the departure of 
 Columbus from these shores and the Declaration of Indepen- 
 dence in 1776 were years of providential preparation in which 
 were laid, in the peoples that came hither, and in the ideals 
 and motives that actuated them, the foundations of a nation 
 that may be justified in claiming to be an "elect nation of 
 God" if it shall prove itself such, not by self -righteousness, 
 but by service to God and man. 
 
 The people who settled in this country in the first instance 
 were the picked Christian men and women of the civilized 
 world. They constituted the sturdy stuff out of which the 
 noblest type of Christian citizenship and the most heroic type 
 of Christian manhood and womanhood are made. Many mo- 
 tives prompted the coming of the colonists to this country, but 
 it can easily be shown that the greatest of them all was reli- 
 gion, the desire for religious and civil freedom to make pos- 
 sible the highest development of moral character and per- 
 sonality in themselves and their children. 
 
 In the first settlement made by the English in North Amer- 
 ica in 1606 (that in Virginia) the charter of the new colony 
 gave special emphasis to the large place which the Christian 
 religion was to have in the life of the new colony. The charter 
 declared of the colony at Jamestown that it was designed that 
 "under the providence of God it might tend to the glory of 
 his Divine Majesty in propagating the Christian religion to 
 such people as yet live in darkness and miserable ignorance 
 of the true knowledge and worship of God." The first build- 
 ing erected by the young colony in Virginia was a house for 
 Christian worship. The "Mayflower Compact" of 1620 de- 
 clared that, foremost among the objects that brought the 
 "Pilgrim Fathers" to this country was " the glory of God and 
 the advancement of Christian faith." The "Articles of Con- 
 federation of the New England Colonies," 1643, begin with 
 
8 THE HAND OF GOD IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 these words: "Whereas we all came into these parts of Amer- 
 ica with one and the same end and aim, namely, to advance 
 the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to enjoy the liber- 
 ties of the gospel in purity and peace ; and whereas in our set- 
 tling, by a wise providence of God, we are further dispersed 
 upon the seacoasts and rivers than we at first intended, etc." 
 — words which show their recognition of and dependence upon 
 the guiding Hand of God. 
 
 The Huguenots who came to this country were the very 
 flower of the Christian manhood and womanhood of France. 
 Driven by persecution from their native land, they found a 
 welcome home in the Carolinas and elsewhere in America. A 
 country never welcomed a finer type of Christian character 
 and heroism to its shores than that of the French Huguenot. 
 In the face of both royal and ecclesiastical despotism, they 
 dared to contend for freedom of conscience, freedom of worship, 
 and freedom of speech, the three essential principles of all reli- 
 gious and civic liberty; and not being allowed to hold such 
 sentiments in France, they turned to the one and only land 
 that gave such sentiments and those who held them a hospi- 
 table welcome. Henry Cabot Lodge says that in proportion 
 to their numbers the Huguenots have produced and given to 
 the American republic more men of character and ability than 
 any other class of early settlers in this country. 
 
 "The State of Georgia was colonized expressly as an asylum 
 for imprisoned and persecuted Protestants." So writes Dr. 
 Baird, the Church historian. "No colony of all the thirteen 
 had a more distinctly Christian origin than this. Godly 
 Moravians from Germany, devout Churchmen and pious 
 Puritans from England, brave Highlanders from Scotland, 
 the heroic Salzburgers from the Alps — all found a cordial 
 welcome here." The history of these Salzburger colonists 
 Bishop Hurst refers to as "one of the most remarkable records 
 of a patient, pure, and uncomplaining religious body in the 
 whole history of the Christian Church." 
 
 The Scotch- Irish who settled in the upper valleys of Vir- 
 ginia and in the Piedmont sections of Virginia and North 
 Carolina were the very embodiment of sturdy and con- 
 scientious Christian manhood. In the fiber of their moral 
 
A STUDY OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE. 9 
 
 character they were made of granite, of flint, of iron. They 
 stand to-day, and have always stood, for all that is best in our 
 Christian civilization. 
 
 The Dutch who settled in New York were not so distinctly 
 and avowedly religious as the other early settlers in the mo- 
 tives that led them to come to this country; but their domi- 
 nant motives were moral and civic, and not commercial, and 
 they had back of them a history full of moral heroism, as 
 shown in the long struggle for civil and religious liberty that 
 made them just such a type of sturdy, solid Christian man- 
 hood as was needed in the New World to lay the foundation 
 for what has since become the metropolis of the nation. These 
 Dutch settlers take pride in claiming to have built "the first 
 free church and the first free school in America." 
 
 Even the Roman Catholic colony, which was established by 
 Lord Baltimore in what became the State of Maryland, be- 
 came the most liberal and progressive type of Roman Catholi- 
 cism which the world has ever seen. Their charter, obtained 
 from the Protestant King of England, guaranteed perfect 
 religious liberty, an almost unheard-of thing for Roman 
 Catholicism to do In that day. 
 
 The contrast in character between these early settlers, be- 
 tween these heroic and high-minded men and women who 
 came to these shores and created our republic, and the hu- 
 man riffraff that is now drifting into this "melting pot" of 
 the Western world is painful to contemplate, and calls for 
 the most serious consideration and the wisest possible legis- 
 lation, lest we as a nation in discharging our duty to others 
 find that instead of our lifting these immigrant hordes up, we 
 allow them to pull the nation down with their low. Godless, 
 un-American ideals and social vices. 
 
 However desirable Christian unity may be and however 
 objectionable and hurtful a needless multiplication of reli- 
 gious denominations may be, we count it a fortunate thing 
 that there were many different and independent types of 
 Christian experience, character, and faith that met together 
 here in those early days. This tended to make the resultant 
 type of Christian civilization and government that was devel- 
 oped in this country singularly free from bigotry and sectarian 
 
10 THE HAND OF GOD IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 narrowness, and more genuinely liberal than could have been 
 the case had all been of one type of religious faith. The fact 
 that there are and have always been in this country many 
 different religious denominations is not a thing to be deplored 
 as wholly evil. The different Churches have influenced each 
 other for good, and have tended to make each other broad and 
 chartiable, and have thus helped to create and maintain that 
 ideal of civil and religious liberty which is the crown and glory 
 of our republic. The growth of Christianity in this country 
 and the contribution of American Christianity to world evan- 
 gelization—neither of which has ever before been equaled 
 in any country in any period of history — are in no small degree 
 a resultant of the facts and conditions here referred to and 
 are, as much as anything can be, a proof of the Hand of God 
 in our history. But of this phase of our providential history 
 we are not here writing in detail. 
 
 The Declaration of Independence, 1776, recognized in un- 
 mistakable terms the Divine Being and the need of the new- 
 born nation for his blessing as they claimed for themselves 
 the inalienable rights which they were entitled to "under the 
 laws of Nature and Nature's God," such rights as all men had 
 been "endowed with by their Creator." It was "with a firm 
 reliance on the protection of Divine Providence" that they 
 "pledged to each other their lives, their fortunes, and their 
 sacred honor." In the "Articles of Confederation," drawn 
 up a year later, reference is made to how "it hath pleased the 
 Great Governor of the world to incline the hearts of the Legis- 
 latures to the articles of confederation and perpetual union." 
 At a time like this there was but one step between what might 
 turn out to be the highest patriotism, in one event, and the 
 crime of treason, if it ended otherwise. "There is but one step 
 between me and death," said a young man once who became 
 later Israel's greatest king. One of these revolutionary pa- 
 triots facetiously said: "Unless we all hang together, we are 
 sure to hang separately." But the sequel proved that God's 
 hand was at the helm, and that some political revolutions 
 are providential. 
 
 The Colonial Congress, which was the highest governing 
 body in this country from the Declaration of Independence in 
 
A STUDY OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE. 11 
 
 1776 to the inauguration of George Washington as President 
 in 1789, recognized repeatedly, in public utterances addressed 
 to the people, "the government of Almighty God," "the 
 merits and mediation of Jesus Christ," and the value of the 
 Christian religion as the best means "for the promotion and 
 enlargement of that kingdom which consisteth in righteous- 
 ness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost." This Congress (in 
 1782) passed a resolution that recognized the sanctity of the 
 Holy Scriptures and their great value to the nation. 
 
 At the historic Federal Convention which met in 1787 to 
 make a Constitution for the new government of the United 
 States, George Washington being in the chair, the venerable 
 Benjamin Franklin made a motion that the exercises of the 
 Convention be opened daily with prayer, declaring as he did 
 so, in the following memorable words, his faith in an over- 
 ruling Providence : 
 
 I have lived, sir, a long time, and the longer I live the more convincing 
 proofs I see that God governs in the aflFairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot 
 fall to the ground without his notice, is it possible that an empire can rise 
 without his aid? We have been assured, sir, in the sacred writings, that, 
 "except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it." I firmly 
 believe this, and I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall suc- 
 ceed, in this political building, no better than the builders of Babel. 
 
 If a man like Benjamin Franklin could feel and talk thus, 
 we may be sure that there was a multitude of believers in 
 God's Providence in that critical and constructive period in 
 the life of the young Republic who in faith and prayer com- 
 mitted to the Hand Divine the ship of state which they were 
 launching on the perilous sea of history. 
 
 While ethical ideals and spiritual forces have most to do 
 with the making of a great nation, and with its fulfillment of 
 a great mission, it is also true that national greatness is not 
 independent of natural and physical conditions. Spiritual 
 treasures are in earthen vessels, and a people, in order to be 
 great and do great things, must have a land to live in and cul- 
 tivate which is favorable to their highest and best develop- 
 ment. And so we find that Robert Ellis Thompson in writing 
 of the Hand of God in American history calls attention to the 
 rare combination of physical features and conditions that are 
 
12 THE HAND OF GOD IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 found in the United States, and declares them to be a part and 
 a proof of the Divine Providence that has designed and prepared 
 America for a providential mission in the earth : 
 
 The natural resources of our three millions of square miles are such as to 
 constitute this the most valuable division of the earth's surface possessed by 
 any people. It contains more land capable of human cultivation, more 
 navigable waters in its lakes and rivers, more extensive mineral deposits, 
 and larger pastures, than does any other national area. . . , Providence 
 seems to have kept the most valuable thing in the New World from notice, 
 until the fit people was ready to occupy this region which now exceeds all the 
 rest of the continent in the numbers of its population, its accumulations of 
 wealth, its diffusion of intelligence, and its high standard of living. 
 
 IV. The Religious Faith and Moral Character of Our 
 
 Presidents. 
 
 If nations are instruments of Divine Providence, the faith 
 and character of rulers is a matter of vital moment. Under 
 a free democratic system of government, where the people 
 choose from among themselves periodically their own rulers, the 
 moral ideals of the people find expression in the type and char- 
 acter of the men chosen as rulers; and these leaders and repre- 
 sentatives of the people, therefore, are in turn, in a sense, an 
 expression of the moral character of the people whose public 
 servants they are. This at least is here true in democracies to 
 an extent that cannot be true where thrones are inherited 
 and rulers are born rather than selected by the people in view 
 of their qualities and fitness for leadership. If "like people 
 like priest" was said of Israel, "like people like president" 
 may be said of a democracy like America. 
 
 An examination and study of the representative rulers and 
 chief magistrates of the American people will reveal the fact 
 that the men selected to fill the office of President, taken as a 
 whole, embody, in no small degree, in their private life and 
 personal character, and also in their public and official acts, 
 the ethical ideals of the Christian religion. No debauchery 
 and basely immoral use of office such as has often made in- 
 famous the annals of the royal families of the world in the 
 past has ever blackened the history of our Presidential office. 
 We can select only a few for special study — and our highest 
 and greatest these will be, but in moral character and fidelity 
 
A STUDY OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE. 13 
 
 to duty no better than others. If a Divine Hand guidevS a 
 nation, it must be upon the rulers who determine and shape 
 its policies. 
 
 George Washington, our first President, was a devout and 
 consistent member of the Protestant Episcopal Church. In 
 his first official utterance as President appears the following 
 declaration of his faith in an overruling Providence: 
 
 It would be peculiarly improper to omit, in this first official act, my fervent 
 supplication to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who pre- 
 sides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aid can supply every 
 human defect that his benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happi- 
 ness of the people of the United States, a government instituted by them- 
 selves for these essential purposes, and may enable every instrument em- 
 ployed in its administration to execute with success the functions allotted to 
 his charge. In tendering this homage to the great Author of every public and 
 private good, I assure myself that it expresses your sentiments not less than 
 my own, and those of our fellow-citizens at large not less than our own. No 
 people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible Hand which 
 conducts the affairs of men more than the people of the United States. Every 
 step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation 
 seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency. 
 
 After eight years at the head of our national government 
 Washington retired, and in doing so delivered a farewell ad- 
 dress that has been pronounced one of the most masterful 
 State papers ever written by any ruler. It contains words no 
 less significant of the estimate which he placed upon religion 
 than the above words uttered at the beginning of his presi- 
 dency: 
 
 Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, reli- 
 gion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man 
 claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pil- 
 lars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. 
 The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and cherish 
 them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public 
 felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for repu- 
 tation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are 
 the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with cau- 
 tion indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without reli- 
 gion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on 
 minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to ex- 
 pect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. 
 
 These are golden words. Could a Christian nation ask from 
 its first, most honored, and most representative ruler a better 
 
14 THE HAND OF GOD IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 declaration than this of faith in Divine Providence and in reli- 
 gion as the foundation of national morality and greatness? 
 
 "In fortitude, justice, and equanimity," says Walter Savage 
 Landor, "no man ever excelled George Washington. No 
 exemplar has been recommended to our gratitude, love, and 
 veneration, by the most impartial historian, or the most 
 encomiastic biographer, in whom so many and so great virtues, 
 public and private, were united." 
 
 Thomas Jefferson is frequently referred to as a skeptic in 
 i^eligious opinions. But one of his most recent biographers 
 says in an introduction to a late reprint of what is known as 
 "the Thomas Jefferson Bible" that this impression is alto- 
 gether erroneous. This "Jefferson Bible" is the best possible 
 proof that could be given of Jefferson's profound reverence for 
 Christ. He titled it "The life and morals of Jesus of Nazareth 
 extracted textually from the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, 
 Luke, and John." He prepared it in French, Greek, and Latin 
 as well as in English. This biographer says of him: 
 
 Thomas Jefferson was from early life a close student of the Bible. It was 
 of the Bible that he wrote: "There never was a more pure or sublime system 
 of morality than is to be found in the four evangelists." His further inter- 
 est in it is clearly shown by the original copy of the so-called "Jefferson 
 Bible," now preserved with so much care in the National Museum at Wash- 
 ington, it having been purchased by the United States government as a 
 memento of the author of the Declaration of Independence, and is now a 
 priceless relic of that great man. It is a little leather-bound volume re- 
 sembling in appearance an old account book, and on its pages may be read 
 the life of Christ, prepared bj' arranging chronologically all of the verses from 
 the four Gospels that pertain to the career of our Lord, omitting, however, 
 "every verse or paragraph that to his mind was ambiguous or controversial, 
 and every statement of fact that would not have been admitted as evidence 
 in a court of justice. "... Jefferson was an indefatigably zealous student 
 of the Bible, and was infinitely more conversant with it than the bulk of 
 professed Christians. The framing of the Declaration of Independence re- 
 veals a strongly religious mind. His religious belief has been questioned, 
 and yet he was a member of the Episcopal Church in Charlottesville, Va., 
 contributing regularly to its support and serving as a member of its vestry. 
 He wrote of himself: "I am a Christian in the only sense Christ wished any 
 one to be — sincerely attached to his doctrines in preference to all others." 
 
 Jefferson expressed the wish toward the close of his life that 
 he might be remembered by posterity simply as "the author 
 of the Declaration of Independence, of the statute in Virginia 
 
A STUDY OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE. 15 
 
 for religious freedom, and the Father of the University of Vir- 
 ginia." 
 
 While Abraham Lincoln was not a member of any Church, 
 those who knew him best in later life declare confidently that 
 he was a true Christian. He took occasion often to declare 
 his faith in the overruling providence of Almighty God and 
 in the efficacy of prayer. He said once to an intimate friend : 
 "When any Church shall inscribe over its altars as its sole 
 qualification for membership the Saviour's condensed state- 
 ment of the substance of both law and gospel, ' Thou shalt love 
 the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy mind, 
 and thy neighbor as thyself,' that Church will I join with all 
 my heart and all my soul." In the Lincoln Museum at Wash- 
 ington is an old Bible whose well-thumbed pages show that it 
 was much used by the owner. The owner's name is plainly 
 written on the inside of the cover: "A. Lincoln, his own book." 
 He was all through his life a devout student of this Book, 
 and from it he made more quotations in his conversation and 
 in his speeches than from any and all other sources. He came 
 into the presidential office under the most trying conditions 
 that ever confronted any President, and the profound sense 
 of responsibility which he was under and which almost over- 
 whelmed him at times drove him to realize the need of God's 
 help and guidance and made him a man of faith and prayer. 
 When on his way to Washington City to be inaugurated, he 
 uttered the following impressive words: 
 
 I go to assume a task more difficult than that which has devolved upon 
 any other man since the days of Washington. He never would have suc- 
 ceeded but for the aid of Divine Providence, upon which he at all times re- 
 lied. I feel that I cannot succeed without the same divine blessing which sus- 
 tained him, and on the same Almighty Being I place my reliance for support. 
 And I hope you, my friends, will all pray that I may receive the divine 
 assistance without which I cannot succeed, but with which success is certain. 
 
 A confident and zealous clergyman once remarked to Mr. 
 Lincoln during the war: "I am sure we are going to win, be- 
 cause we have God on our side." "My friend," Mr. Lincoln 
 replied, "what I want to be sure of is, that we are on God's 
 side. That is the all-important thing for us to know." They 
 who fought for "States' Rights" and "State Sovereignty" 
 
16 THE HAND OF GOD IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 may have contended for a legitimate principle of government 
 and a worthy cause; but whosoever, in any land at any time, 
 fights for the perpetuation of human slavery, is fighting 
 against the sun and the stars of heaven and against the sure 
 Providence of God. No section of the United States is more 
 devoutly thankful than the South is to-day that God in his 
 Providence brought slavery to an end and preserved the 
 union intact. The whole nation, however, and not the South 
 alone, was responsible for the institution of slavery. In the 
 earlier days of the Republic it existed in New England and else- 
 where in the North, and when the slave owners there, after 
 due experiment, found slavery unprofitable because of rigorous 
 climatic conditions and growing antipathy to the institution, 
 they sold their slaves to cotton planters of the South, and the 
 sentiment against slavery thereafter rapidly developed through- 
 out all the nonslaveholding States. Even Peter Faneuil, 
 the founder of the "Cradle of Liberty," after whom the his- 
 toric " Panel il Hall" of Boston, famous for its anti-slavery 
 meetings and pronouncements, was named, was at one time 
 a slave-trader. In the meantime it can be said — though it is 
 no justification of the institution of slavery to say it — that 
 among all the millions of negroes in the world those who live in 
 America to-day, taken as a whole, enjoy more of the comforts 
 and blessings and privileges of life than those found in any 
 other land. If the North as well as the South is responsible 
 for this blemish upon our history, it is also true that the 
 people of the South to-day no less than those of the North 
 count it providential that slavery was long ago brought to 
 an end and rejoice in the Providence that removed this moral 
 incubus and obstacle to progress from the body politic of our 
 nation. 
 
 No greater misfortune ever happened to the South, in 
 connection with the Civil War, than the death of Abraham 
 Lincoln at the time and under the conditions in which he 
 died. Many things that followed the war in the South 
 would have been less odious and grievous to the Southern 
 people if he had lived. It is doubtless true that the successful 
 termination of the war for the abolition of slavery and his 
 
A STUDY OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE. 17 
 
 tragic death at the end of it had the inevitable effect of 
 making him, in the eyes both of the American nation and of 
 the whole world, an even greater hero than he would have 
 been adjudged to be, had he lived and served the country in 
 a period of peace. While this is true, it is also true that it 
 was a long time before the people of the South, especially 
 the older generation that took part in the Civil War, could 
 do justice to Lincoln and appreciate him for his real and true 
 worth. But there are few Southerners left to-day who can 
 read without sympathetic emotion and profound appreciation 
 the tribute which was paid to him at his death by Walt 
 Whitman in the finest poem he ever wrote : 
 
 O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done; 
 The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won; 
 The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, 
 While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring: 
 But O heart! heart! heart! 
 
 O the bleeding drops of red, 
 Where on the deck my Captain lies, 
 Fallen, cold, and dead! 
 
 O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells! 
 Rise up! for you the flag is flung, for you the bugle trills. 
 For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths, for you the shores a-crowding. 
 For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning: 
 Here Captain! dear father, 
 
 This arm beneath your head! 
 
 It is some dream that on the deck 
 
 You've fallen cold and dead! 
 
 My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still; 
 My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse, nor will: 
 The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done; 
 From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won! 
 Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells! 
 
 But I with mournful tread, 
 Walk the deck my Captain lies. 
 Fallen, cold, and dead.* 
 
 Let us hope that the Providence that turned the selling of 
 Joseph into slavery and the four centuries of Hebrew bondage 
 in Egypt into ultimate good for the whole world as well as for 
 the slaves themselves, even though it was meant by men for 
 
 *Copyrighted by Small, Maynard & Co. Printed by permission. 
 
18 THE HAND OF GOD IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 evil, will in some way overrule the apprenticeship in slavery 
 which some of the negro race have served in this country to the 
 ultimate intellectual, moral, and social good of their entire 
 race, not only here, but in darkest Africa and elsewhere through- 
 out the world. 
 
 A Southern Confederate soldier-poet, writing of the battle 
 of Gettysburg, speaks for others as well as himself when he 
 sees the Hand of God in the final issues of that bloody battle 
 and of the civil war, and uses these true and beautiful words : 
 
 They fell who lifted up a hand, 
 
 And bade the sun in heaven to stand; 
 
 They smote and fell, who set the bars 
 
 Against the progress of the stars, 
 And stayed the march of Mother-land. 
 
 They stood who saw the future come 
 On through the fight's delirium; 
 
 They smote and stood, who held the hope 
 
 Of nations on that slippery slope, 
 Amid the cheers of Christendom. 
 
 God lives! He forged the iron will 
 
 Which grasped and held that trembling hill; 
 
 God lives and reigns; he built and lent 
 
 Those heights for Freedom's battlement, 
 Where floats her flag in triumph still. 
 
 Fold up the banners, smelt the guns! 
 Love rules, her mightier purpose runs. 
 
 The mighty Mother turns in tears 
 
 The record of her battle years. 
 Lamenting all her fallen sons.* 
 
 Among the State papers on file in the archives of our na- 
 tion's history, there is perhaps none that could be more fitting- 
 ly selected to set forth the high ethical ideal of the American 
 people in matters of international ethics, than the message 
 which President Grover Cleveland sent to Congress just after 
 the forcible, and what he believed to be unwarranted, military 
 occupation by United States soldiers of the Hawaiian Islands 
 in 1893, which occupation Mr. Cleveland believed to be a 
 
 *These lines were written by William H. Thompson, who fought as a 
 private in a Georgia regiment, and himself took part in the battle concerning 
 which he writes. 
 
A STUDY OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE. 19 
 
 breach of both national and international ethics. It was not 
 a question, as he conceived it, to be settled by the poHtical 
 aspirations and desires and the commercial interests of the 
 United States (both of which rendered desirable the annexa- 
 tion of the Islands), but it was rather, as he insisted, an occa- 
 sion when a Christian nation should subordinate selfish inter- 
 ests to that standard of Christian ethics which ought to be the 
 first and highest law for the regulation of a nation's dealings 
 with another nation — and all the more so if this other nation 
 be, as was the case in this instance, at the mercy of the larger 
 and more powerful nation. 
 
 A few quotations from this document will suffice to justify 
 our high estimate of it as an expression of the ethical ideals of 
 the nation. 
 
 I suppose that right and justice should determine the path to be followed 
 in treating this subject. If national honesty is to be disregarded and a 
 desire for territorial extension, or dissatisfaction with a form of government 
 not our own, ought to regulate our conduct, I have entirely misapprehended 
 the mission and character of our Government and the behavior which the 
 conscience of our people demands of their public servants. . . . The 
 queen knew that she could not withstand the power of the United States, but 
 she believed that she might safely trust to its justice. . . . It has been the 
 boast of our Government that it seeks to do justice in all things without re- 
 gard to the strength or weakness of those with whom it deals. I mistake 
 the American people if they favor the odious doctrine that there is no such 
 thing as international morality; that there is one law for a strong nation, and 
 another for a weak one, and that even by indirection a strong power may 
 with impunity despoil a weak one of its territory. ... A substantial 
 wrong has thus been done which a due regard for our national character as 
 well as for the rights of the injured people requires that we should endeavor 
 to repair. . . . 
 
 The law of nations is founded upon reason and justice, and the rules of con- 
 duct governing individual relations between citizens or subjects of a civilized 
 state are equally applicable as between enlightened nations. The consider- 
 ation that international law is without a court for its enforcement and that 
 obedience to its commands practically depends upon good faith instead of 
 upon the mandate of a superior tribunal only gives additional sanction to 
 the law itself, and brands any deliberate infraction of it not merely as a 
 wrong but as a disgrace. A man of true honor protects the unwritten word 
 which binds his conscience more scrupulously, if possible, than he does the 
 bond a breach of which subjects him to legal liabilities; and the United States, 
 in aiming to maintain itself as one of the most enlightened nations, would do 
 its citizens gross injustice if it applied to its international relations any other 
 than a high standard of honor and morality. On that ground the United 
 States cannot properly be put in the position of countenancing a wrong after 
 its commission any more than in that of consenting to it in advance. 
 
20 THE HAND OF GOD IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 It is needless to discuss here the circumstances and condi- 
 tions that brought about later the annexation of these Islands 
 to the United States, or to explain that if any wrong was done 
 to the dethroned queen by such annexation, it seems to have 
 been providentially overruled for the greater good of the 
 Hawaiian people. These facts, however, cannot detract 
 from our recognition and appreciation of the clear and dis- 
 criminating statement of our ethical ideals as a nation that is 
 contained in this message of Mr, Cleveland. 
 
 Theodore Roosevelt found many occasions in his public 
 career to refer to the Christian religion as the inspiration and 
 foundation of the highest civic and national morality. Many 
 of his public utterances could be delivered with the utmost 
 propriety from any Christian pulpit. Take as a specimen the 
 following, which is but one among many similar utterances 
 which came from him, to show the high estimate which he 
 placed upon religion in the life of a nation: 
 
 I cannot understand any American citizen who has the faintest feeling of 
 patriotism and devotion to his country failing to appreciate the absolutely 
 essential need of religion (using it in its broadest and deepest sense) to the 
 welfare of this country. If it were not that in our villages and towns as they 
 have grown up the Churches have grown in them, symbolizing the fact that 
 there were among the foremost workers men whose work was not for the 
 things of the body but for the things of the soul, this would not be a nation 
 to-day; because this country would not be an abode fit for civilized men if 
 it were not true that we put our material civilization, our material prosperity, 
 as the base only upon which to build the superstructure of the higher spirit- 
 ual life. 
 
 A man of clean, pure life and unblemished record, of un- 
 usually sturdy, robust, and manly Christian character, of lofty 
 Christian ideals for himself as a ruler and for the people over 
 whom he ruled, he was indeed an honor to the nation. 
 
 One other honored name will be mentioned later among the 
 presidents who have helped to make a later epoch in history 
 providential. 
 
 V. Our Ethical Idealism and Altruism. 
 
 Only that nation can consistently claim that an overruling 
 Providence directed its origin, and that the Hand of God has 
 been constantly manifest in its history, which continually 
 
A STUDY OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE. 21 
 
 brings forth deeds worthy of such a high claim. What deeds, 
 now, can America appeal to in proof of the truth of her claim 
 that she had a providential origin, and has had a providential 
 history, and has a truly providential mission in the world? 
 Surely such deeds only as bear the marks of a high standard 
 of Christian ethics, and will bear the further and harder test 
 of sincere and unquestioned altruism, can be named as worthy 
 fruits of a tree that claims, like the vine from Egypt trans- 
 planted in Canaan, to have been planted by a Hand Divine. 
 The noblest deeds both of men and of nations are often done 
 in quietness and obscurity, unnoticed in the ordinary round of 
 life's incessant duties, the actors themselves being uncon- 
 scious of anything save the conscientious discharge of duty. 
 And this is none the less true because it is customary to cite 
 (as we shall do) only such deeds as are conspicuous and well- 
 known instances and examples of high ethics and genuine 
 altruism. 
 
 The spirit of America, of the real and true and ideal Amer- 
 ica, is best described by four words: faith, freedom, ethics, 
 altruism — (1) faith that shows itself in recognizing and rev- 
 erencing God's Providence; (2) freedom, both civil and reli- 
 gious, that never turns liberty to do good into license to do 
 evil ; (3) the ethical ideals of Christ the standard of conduct 
 and character, not only for individuals, but for the nation 
 as well, and (4) altruism that Is made manifest in disinterested 
 service for others. Altruism — using knowledge to help the 
 ignorant, power to help the weak, wealth to help the poor, 
 health to help the sick, and virtue to help the sinful — is a 
 law of life, obligatory not more upon the individual than it 
 is upon the nation; and in these righteous scales Jehovah 
 weighs nations as well as individuals. By these ethical stand- 
 ards let us judge our nation in the past, and determine our 
 duty for the future. That much in our past history falls far 
 short of this ethical ideal must be confessed. And yet this has 
 been, and is, and must in the future be, our ideal — even 
 though it be, as ideals always are, something that moves above 
 and ahead, up to which the nation looks and toward which it 
 ever moves as its goal. 
 
22 THE HAND OF GOD IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 Three notable episodes in our history may be referred to as 
 peculiarly expressive of the real and true spirit of America, 
 and as instances of our fully measuring up to the high 
 ethical and altruistic ideal of the nation. 
 
 The motives that led the American people into the Spanish- 
 American War were in the highest degree ethical and altruis- 
 tic. Judged by the incidents and events of that war — the un- 
 broken series of victories on one side, and of defeats on the 
 other — no war in biblical history, no war in all history, ever 
 furnished more conspicuous evidence that Providence wrought 
 for one nation and against the other, than was everywhere and 
 all the time evident in this war. Evidence was never wanting 
 that the Lord who loveth truth and righteousness, and the 
 freedom which they alone can give, made his Providence to 
 favor the nation that fought unselfishly for the rights of a 
 downtrodden and unjustly oppressed people. But perhaps the 
 finest exhibition of ethics and altruism that was furnished by 
 that war, came when it was over, and the victorious nation 
 had the conquered nation at its mercy. Did any nation ever 
 do a finer, a more generous and magnanimous thing than to 
 treat a conquered and prostrate nation as the United States 
 treated Spain and her captive soldiers at the end of that war? 
 It was then that America gave Spain and the world such an 
 exhibition of genuine and generous altruism as no nation had 
 ever furnished before, while, at the same time, it gave to Cuba 
 her independence and the pledge of whatever financial and 
 other help might be necessary for her national upbuilding. 
 And this was done under conditions and circumstances that 
 would have probably led any other conquering nation in the 
 world to make this war the occasion for annexing Cuba to 
 the United States, a thing which self-interest rendered most 
 desirable but which the ethical and altruistic ideals of the 
 American people prevented us from doing. 
 
 Another deed worthy of a nation with a high moral ideal was 
 furnished in the Chinese Boxer war, when the verdict of the 
 foreign nations whose financial and other rights it was claimed 
 had been invaded by the rebellious Boxers and not properly 
 protected by the Chinese government, assessed enormous 
 and, what many outsiders regarded as outrageously unjust, 
 
A STUDY OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE. 23 
 
 indemnities against China — and this was done in spite of 
 America's insistent and unyielding protest. Then again came 
 an opportunity, not indeed for magnanimity and generosity, 
 but rather for simple ethics and justice on the part of America. 
 Out of the millions awarded our government by the foreign 
 Powers that exercised jurisdiction in the case, our govern- 
 ment paid reasonable compensation for damages done to 
 Americans and their property, and then returned to China in 
 a lump sum well-nigh all the millions that had been awarded 
 to us — and in so acting America stood absolutely alone 
 among the nations involved. Such unselfishness had its rich 
 moral reward in the gratitude that was felt by the Chinese 
 people for a deed so out of keeping with prevailing diplomatic 
 national custom and so in keeping with America's high stan- 
 dard of international ethics. It is not a matter for surprise 
 that, following that memorable episode in our relations with 
 the Chinese government, the hearts of the people of China 
 should have become peculiarly open to Christian missionaries 
 and teachers from Amei ica as well as to the representatives of 
 our civil government. The money returned to them was used 
 in a manner most agreeable both to China and to America, to 
 educate a select number of Chinese young men and young 
 women in American colleges and universities, all of whom in 
 returning to their homeland have borne back with them not 
 only the good will of America, but the Christian ethical ideals 
 of our people. 
 
 But during the century and a half that has elapsed since 
 our nation began its career, there has been no epoch and no 
 event in our history, and indeed in the history of the world, so 
 momentous, and so demanding the exercise of high ethics 
 and generous altruism on the part of men and nations, as the 
 quadrennium embraced in the late world war (1914-1918) 
 into which the voice of Divine Providence and a suffering 
 world called our nation by many infallible signs and tokens. 
 From the Declaration of Independence to the present time 
 there has never been such an arousing of the moral conscious- 
 ness of the American people, such a clear vision of simple, 
 stem, inescapable duty, such singleness of aim and unity of 
 action, such genuine altruism and self-forgetfulness, such a 
 
24 THE HAND OF GOD IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 spirit of self-sacrifice, such enthusiasm for humanity, as char- 
 acterized the people of the United States when in 1917, fol- 
 lowing what they believed to be the leadings of Divine Provi- 
 dence, they entered the world war and flung themselves with 
 self-effacing abandon into the fight for human freedom — for 
 the freedom of all nations and all men in all nations. 
 
 It may be that our nation should have heard and responded 
 to the call of God and humanity sooner than it did. It may be 
 that many of our people ignobly commercialized their patriot- 
 ism and fought more to gain gold for themselves than to se- 
 cure life and liberty for others. It may be that the demoraliza- 
 tion and surging waves of selfishness and commercialism and 
 lawlessness which have followed the war and engulfed our own 
 and other nations, have made it hard to maintain that a really 
 high and unselfish altruism ever did actuate us in entering the 
 war. It may be that our people have had occasion to hang 
 their heads in shame over what our nation has failed to do 
 since the war ended. All this may be true. But no man can be 
 true to the American people and to the facts of history, and 
 say that our people were not as a whole actuated by the 
 loftiest and most altruistic of motives when in 1917, with their 
 hearts beating as the heart of one, they went into that awful 
 struggle across the sea, believing that it was no less a part of 
 their providential mission as a nation to make this fight for 
 humanity their own than was the fight for their independence 
 in 1776, or for the preservation of the Union and the abolition 
 of slavery in 1862. Dr. Henry Churchill King has shown that 
 not only all true Americans but many representatives of other 
 nations also were quick to recognize and declare the truth and 
 justice of these statements concerning America's altruism in 
 this war: 
 
 There is no mistaking the rare and lofty idealism with which America 
 entered this war. America made her decision to enter the war on high 
 ethical and essentially Christian grounds. Not for territorial or commercial 
 gains; objuring all idea of later indemnities; practically unmoved, it must be 
 stated, by thoughts even of self-defense; after every righteous effort to pre- 
 serve peaceful relations with Germany had been exhausted; when the great- 
 ness of the issues had become plain; in the face of fixed American traditions; 
 in marvelously unified fashion; and across three thousand miles of sea — 
 America threw her whole self, with every resource, into this struggle, for the 
 sake of righteousness, of humanity, of civilization. It was a singularly im- 
 
A STUDY OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE. 25 
 
 pressive moral movement. No wonder that the distinguished litterateur, 
 Hughes de Roux, voiced his conviction by declaring that "history had never 
 before seen a great nation moved to war by so completely unselfish and ideal- 
 istic motives;" nor that Mr. Balfour should describe the entry of the United 
 States into the war as "the most magnificent and generous act in all history." 
 "And they came," said Henry Bergson, the noted French philosopher, 
 "with no designing aim, stirred neither by selfish interest nor by fear, but by 
 a principle, by an ideal, by the thought of the mission they were called upon 
 to fulfill in the world." 
 
 But, lest America should be exalted above measure and be 
 filled with pride and self-esteem because of her own altruism, 
 Providence, quickly after the war, suffered days of disillusion- 
 ment and retrogression to come to the nation — days which, 
 whether it should be so or not, have sadly discounted and 
 discredited, in the eyes of all nations, the high claims made 
 for ethical idealism and altruism on the part alike of our 
 soldiers abroad and our people at home preceding and accom- 
 panying our participation in the war. But even days of dis- 
 illusionment have a providential mission and teach a needed 
 lesson that will not be learned in any other way, and that is, 
 that lofty ethical idealism will not remain in the high air of 
 itself, and that altruism will not remain disinterested and 
 unselfish of itself. The same moral free will and personal 
 power that called them into existence are necessary to keep 
 them in existence. When the engine that took the aeroplane 
 on high ceases to furnish power, engine and airplane fall to 
 earth. When the heart ceases to send forth its currents of 
 blood throughout the body, the heart and body die. Eternal 
 vigilance is the price not only of liberty but of all progress; 
 and moral progress is something which, however providential 
 it be, is yet conditioned on human cooperation : it will not 
 take care of itself. The keeping up of the never-ending fight 
 necessary to hold what has been gained in moral progress, 
 and to keep the progress perpetually progressing, is the great 
 problem of Christian civilization in periods of peace. To 
 win this ceaseless fight for moral progress, and keep it won, 
 demands nothing less then a full moral equivalent of war. 
 However justifiable a nation's entrance into a given war may 
 be, and no matter how ethical and altruistic its motives, it 
 must not be forgotten that moral progress is the achievement 
 
26 THE HAND OF GOD IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 of peace and not of war. Peace, then, and not war is the 
 best testing period of ethics and altruism in a nation, and 
 furnishes the best opportunity for their cultivation and ex- 
 ercise. The nation has been great in ethics and altruism in 
 time of war; it should be greater still in times of peace. 
 
 It is not wise, as a rule, to attempt to interpret any man's 
 life and work as they are related to providential history until 
 he is dead and his work is done. But we cannot close this 
 study of the Hand of God in our history without referring to one 
 President who is yet living. The man who voiced the senti- 
 ments of the American people and led the nation in the late 
 world-war crisis in our history, out of the shadows and perils of 
 which we have not even yet passed, is destined, we believe, 
 to take and to hold a permanent place in the front rank of 
 those providential leaders that have made our nation morally 
 great in the past and upon whose leadership the nation must 
 depend in no small degree for great moral achievements in the 
 future. Woodrow Wilson seemed, in the providence of God, 
 to have "come to the kingdom for a time like this," and com- 
 ing years will not diminish but deepen the world's appreciation 
 of the great service he rendered our own and other nations at 
 this moral crisis in the history of nations. Many of his public 
 utterances during the eventful years of 1914-1919, when he 
 was the moral leader and spokesman not only of the Ameri- 
 can people, but of multiplied millions in other lands, are 
 worthy to be placed, along with those of Washington, Jefferson, 
 Lincoln, and Cleveland, among the official documents and 
 state papers which we must rely upon to prove the truth of the 
 claim that we are here making that God has blessed us above 
 all other nations in giving us God-fearing and divinely guided 
 men as leaders and rulers, and that, under the leadership 
 vouchsafed to us by Providence, our nation has been called to 
 fill in the past, and is called yet more fully to fill in the future, 
 an altogether unique, important, and responsible mission 
 among the nations of the earth. 
 
 Among the many utterances of President Wilson expressing 
 our ethical idealism as a nation we quote the following, each 
 paragraph being taken from a different address, but all of 
 
A STUDY OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE. 27 
 
 them characterized by a common idea that brings them into 
 unity in setting forth the ethical ideal of the American nation : 
 
 If America stands for one thing more than for another, it is for the sov- 
 ereignty of self-governing people, and her example, her assistance, and her 
 encouragement, have thrilled two continents in this Western world with all 
 those fine impulses which have built up human liberty on both sides of the 
 water. She stands, therefore, as an example of independence, as an example 
 of free institutions, and as an example of disinterested international action 
 in the maintenance of justice. 
 
 Why is it that every nation turns to us with the instinctive feeling that if 
 anything touches humanity it touches us? Because it knows that ever since 
 we were born as a nation, we have undertaken to be the champions of hu- 
 manity and the rights of men. Without that ideal there would be nothing 
 that would distinguish America from her predecessors in the history of na- 
 tions. 
 
 But the final test of the validity, the strength, the irresistible force of the 
 American ideal has now come. The rest of the world must be made to realize 
 from this time on just what America stands for; and, when that happy time 
 comes when peace shall reign again, and America shall take part in the un- 
 disturbed and unclouded counsels of the world, it will be realized that the 
 promises of the fathers, and the ideals of the men who thought nothing of 
 their lives in comparison with their ideals, will have been vindicated, and 
 the world will say: "America promised to hold this light of liberty and right 
 up for the guidance of our feet, and behold she has redeemed her promise. 
 Her men, her leaders, her rank and file, are pure of heart; they have purged 
 their hearts of selfish ambition, and they have said to all mankind: Men and 
 brethren, let us live together in righteousness and in the peace which spring- 
 eth only from the soil of righteousness itself." 
 
 And my dream is this: that as the years go on and the world knows more 
 and more of America, it will also drink at these fountains of youth and 
 renewal, that it will also turn to America for those moral inspirations that 
 lie at the base of human freedom, that no nation will ever fear America un- 
 less it finds itself engaged in some enterprise inconsistent with the rights 
 of humanity, and that America will come into the full light of that day when 
 all shall know that she puts human rights above all other rights, and that 
 her flag is the flag not only of America but the flag of humanity. 
 
 The final results accomplished by the recent "Disarmanent 
 Conference" held at the invitation of our Government in the 
 city of Washington are not yet ready for appraisement, but 
 are even now sufficiently apparent to justify us in feeling that 
 the leadership of our nation in bringing about and promoting 
 the work of this conference are in keeping with our traditional 
 record, ethical and altruistic, which commits us to using our 
 influence and best offices for promoting peace among all 
 nations. But America, if she be true to the ethical ideals of the 
 
28 THE HAND OF GOD IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 past, will not be content to stop with this effort for world 
 peace. 
 
 "The Master is come, and calleth for thee," are words that 
 may be as fittingly addressed to a nation to-day as they were 
 to the young woman of Bethany in the lifetime of our Lord; 
 and the things to which He calls cannot be misunderstood by 
 any one that hears his voice. It is to altruistic service, not to 
 isolation and self-centeredness, that God calls the America of 
 his Providence. This great nation, the helm of whose history 
 his Hand has guided in the past, cannot be true to its divine 
 call in this new day of world needs and world opportunities, 
 if it closes its ears to the cry of the nations and its eyes to the 
 vision of their needs. If famine, or pestilence, or flood, or 
 earthquake, or any other disaster has befallen the people of 
 any land at any time, the American government and people 
 have never failed to do the ethical, altruistic, and generous 
 thing as needed. The gift of money and of men and women for 
 helpful and sacrificial service, whenever and wherever needed, 
 has always answered without delay the call of humanity — 
 and this to such an extent that America has become the syn- 
 onym among all nations for generosity and helpfulness. This 
 is as it should be ; and this is the best proof of the presence of 
 God's Hand in our history. Nor should the commercialism 
 and profiteering of money-loving and money-making men in 
 our country be allowed to blind any man's eyes to the recogni- 
 tion of the splendid altruism that belongs, and has always 
 belonged, to our people. Nowhere else in all the world have 
 so many men and women of great wealth turned their accumu- 
 lated millions into the service of humanity at home and 
 abroad, as here in America. Whenever anything is to be done 
 in the world, two things are necessary, money and men. 
 Money is needed and much of it, and needed for everything; 
 and this means that it is the duty and providential mission of 
 some men and some nations to make it, to make it that it 
 may be used for the service of humanity. The commercialism 
 whose accumulated coin is turned into currency for the serv- 
 ice of mankind is in its ultimate aim ethical and altruistic. 
 If America controls the wealth of the world, and is herself 
 ruled by gold, it is the providential mission of her ethical 
 
A STUDY OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE. 29 
 
 idealism and altruism to turn this rule of gold into the golden 
 rule. 
 
 A great nation has never perhaps in the history of the 
 world had so great an opportunity, by virtue of its unprece- 
 dented possession both of wealth and of moral influence, to 
 practice with generous altruism the golden rule and the law 
 of love toward unfortunate and suffering sister nations as 
 has the American nation to-day. Not only is it true that 
 "man's extremity is God's opportunity," but it is also true 
 that the world's extremity is a Christian nation's great op- 
 portunity to serve mankind and bless the world by giving 
 practical proof that the golden rule and the law of love can 
 be practiced by nations as truly as by individuals. It was 
 in the darkest days of Hebrew history that prophetic opti- 
 mism and universalism burst into glorious song, inspired by 
 the vision of the coming Messiah; and in and through the 
 Hebrew nation the Messiah came in spite of the wreck and 
 ruin of empires that seemed for the time to make vain all 
 hope and promise of his coming. Happy would we be if 
 America might become the servant of Jehovah in this our 
 day through whom the Messiah's golden rule and law of love 
 should be made real in the world. It was with America's 
 opportunity for this Messianic service in mind that the fol- 
 lowing lines were written: 
 
 Whene'er with faith we dare to hold 
 That golden rule, not rule of gold, 
 Shall be for men and nations, too, 
 The rule of life the whole world through; 
 
 When rich and poor alike shall see 
 From golden rule no man is free; 
 When greed of gold and jealous hate, 
 O'ercome by love, and shame, abate; 
 
 When we dare seek with all our heart 
 To serve all men, and do our part 
 Through love that shares in generous deed. 
 And joys to meet another's need; 
 
 Then earth will see the day at hand 
 
 When all true souls in every land 
 
 In league of love for right shall stand; 
 
30 THE HAND OF GOD IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 When all one golden rule shall own, 
 And love on earth shall claim the throne, 
 And Love in heaven as God be known. 
 
 For faith can never know defeat 
 That has in power of love its seat.* 
 
 VI. What Makes a Nation Great? 
 
 What, then, shall we say, in view of these facts, is the voca- 
 tion of the American nation ? What is the task which Provi- 
 dence has assigned to us as a people, discharging which we 
 will fill our place among those favored nations who are "the 
 called according to God's purpose" — called to serve, not 
 themselves only, but others also, and perchance all mankind? 
 We answer our own question in language partly furnished by 
 one of our own great Presidents: It is our mission to main- 
 tain in the world that form of government which is best 
 adapted to promoting the highest good of all its citizens, in- 
 tellectually, morally, and socially; to lift needless and un- 
 natural burdens from all shoulders; to clear the paths of all 
 worthy and laudable pursuits and throw them open to all who 
 are prepared to enter them, and to afford all an unfettered 
 start, and as far as government can make it so, a fair and equal 
 chance to achieve success in the race of life. And then, having 
 done this for its own people — indeed, while doing this for its 
 own people — to use its moral influence and material power to 
 secure similar conditions and advantages for all other peoples 
 without regard to race or residence. 
 
 The final proof of the Hand of God in a nation's history 
 then is not found, if this answer be true, in its unequaled 
 wealth, or its commercial supremacy, or political prestige or 
 military power, but in the moral metal of its manhood and the 
 moral worth of its womanhood — in the goodness and greatness 
 of its people, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall 
 make you free" — knowledge, truth, freedom, personality — 
 these are the things provided by Providence to make individ- 
 uals and nations great. And when this greatness has been 
 attained, "he that is greatest among you shall be the servan 
 
 *Nashville Christian Advocate, November 28, 1919. 
 
A STUDY OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE. 31 
 
 of all " — this is the test and proof of greatness in the eyes of God 
 for nations as well as for individuals. Knowledge and culture, 
 ethics and character, service and altruism, personality and 
 power — these are the credentials furnished by God to men and 
 nations who, submitting to his providential guidance, seek 
 for honor and glory and immortality. The American sage 
 who furnished the words with which we began our study of 
 God's Hand in our history at its beginning, has no less happily 
 described for us the providential aim and end of that history in 
 a little poem titled "The Nation's Strength," which needs 
 often to be quoted that it may aUke warn us of our danger 
 and inspire us to seek for national greatness and glory where 
 alone it is to be found : 
 
 What builds a nation's pillars high 
 
 And its foundations strong? 
 What makes it mighty to defy 
 
 The foes that round it throng? 
 
 It is not gold. Its kingdoms grand 
 
 Go down in battle's shock; 
 Its shafts are laid on sinking sand, 
 
 Not on abiding rock. 
 
 Is it the sword? Ask the red dust 
 
 Of empires passed away; 
 The blood has turned their stones to rust, 
 
 Their glory to decay. 
 
 And is it pride? Ah, that bright crown 
 
 Has seemed to nations sweet; 
 But God has struck its luster down 
 
 In ashes at his feet. 
 
 Not gold, but only men can make 
 
 A people great and strong, 
 Men who for truth and honor's sake 
 
 Stand fast and suffer long. 
 
 Brave men who work while others sleep. 
 
 Who dare while others fly — 
 They build a nation's pillars deep 
 
 And lift them to the sky.* 
 
 ♦Copyrighted by Houghton, Mifflin & Company. Printed by permission. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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