Pfef^

•^a • r <^'ti'..f-t.'*x.\

1.: ¦¦sj-r ?¦ r>~- ¦¦:.}
^=.iTi?...r-!T ¦ .:*
A-.-.i !--:.¦-£ .-¦:; J- «.

IVri'i'S'-.-li.ii '•

Yale University Library

39002002220680

YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

1968
Anonymous Fund

GOD'S HA KB

AMERICA.

BY THE REV. GEORGE B. CHEEVER.
ill
'WITH AN ESSAY,
BY THE REV. DR. SKINNER.

NE'W-YORK:
M. W. DODD, brick CHURCH CHAPEL.
LONDON:
ViriLEY & PUTNAM.
1S41.

Entered according to the act of Congress, in the year 1841,
BY THOMPSON AND OTIS,
In the Clerk's office of District Court of the Southern District of
New-York.

PRINTED BY
WILLIAM OSBORN,
88 William-Street.

ADVERTISEMENT.

This volume is given to the press at the
request of others, and in aid of a benevolent
object. The author makes this statement, not
by -way of apology for the publication of a
book, of -which the theme alone should excite
the deepest interest, but with the hope that by
increasing its circulation he may be instru
mental of a two-fold benefit.

Change wide, and deep, and silently performed,
This Land sliall witness; and, as days roll on,
Earth's universal frame shall feel the effect,
Even till the smallest habitable rock,
Beaten by lonely billows, hear the songa
Of Christianized society, and bloom
With civil arts, and send their fragrance forth,
A grateful tribute to all-ruling Heaven.
The Excursion. Book IX-

ESSAY.

It has been groundlessly objected to the
Ethics of Christianity, that they deny Patriot
ism a place among the virtues. Although
there is no specific inculcation of this senti
ment in the New Testament, it should not be
hence inferred that the Gospel either disowns
or underrates it, as one of the modifications
of that love which is the fulfiUing of the law.
The Jews were now in a state of vassalage
to Rome, and appeals to the love of country,
in their circumstances, would have been under
stood by them as a summons to rebellion
against the estabhshed government ; and had
Christianity made such appeals, it would have
taught disobedience to one of its sternest
precepts, — that which demands submission to
the civil authorities. Again ; this unhappy
people were, at this time, the subjects of a
fanaticism which made malignity towards
other nations a duty in their eyes, and ad
dresses to patriotism would, in their case, have
1*

VI ESSAY.
been, in effect, only supplying fuel to the fire
of an already rancorous hatred of mankind.
But more than all, this disobedient and gain
saying nation, whose history from the begin
ning had been little else than a record of
abuses of miraculous mercy, had only to per
petrate the murder of Christ, in order to fill
the measure of their guilt, and bring on them
selves those unexampled visitations of the
Divine wrath, by which their political exist
ence was destroyed ; and our blessed Saviour,
who was well aware of the gathering of the
stonn, and of the desolation it would produce,
was too deeply moved with compassion, to be
instilling lessons of patriotism into their breasts,
while every thing in their condition demanded
alarms and calls to repentance.
The time, moreover, had arrived when the
dispensation of Liberty was about to super
sede that of Restraint, and all nations, in re
spect of religious privileges, to be placed on
the same level. The middle wall of separa
tion between Jews and Gentiles was in the
process of demolition, and exhortations to the
love of country, either in the one or the other,
would have had no other tendency than to
engender mutual antipathies, and thus prevent
the accomplishment of the gracious design.

ESSAY. VU
But the silence of Christianity on that topic,
at such a time, no more implied either hostility
or indifference to patriotism, universally and
absolutely, than our silence as to the sin of
intemperance, on a sacramental occasion,
supposes us indifferent to the guilt and ravages
of that sin.
The Gospel indeed proclaims peace and
good will to the world ; it seeks to make all
men, in reference to earth, pilgrims and
strangers, to unite them in one holy and
happy brotherhood, and to subject them to
new and celestial relationships strong and last
ing as eternity, and embracing, in their wide
scope, the entire universe of the virtuous and
the good, both on earth and in heaven. But
the reasoning which would hence infer any
inconsistency in the spirit of the Gospel with
the highest degrees of devotion to the welfare
of our country, would make Christianity sub
versive of the foundations of society ; and
opposed not to nationality only, but to the
continuance of the human race. For if the
love of country be excluded by the predomi
nance of that heavenly-mindedness which the
Gospel inculcates, so are the love of neigh
borhood, and the love of domestic relatives,
and all the endearments of friendship, and

VIU ESSAY.
all local attachments, and the pursuits of busi
ness, and labors for a household provision,
and whatever else is necessary to the con
tinued existence of man in this world.
It is admitted that Philanthropy, and not
patriotism, is the comprehensive expression of
the spirit of the Gospel, in reference to man
kind. But there may be expansion without
inconsistence ; and there may be limitations
and degrees, and various forms of interest
and affection, along with the most perfect
harmony and unity of spirit. A philanthropy
which has no particular localities, no definite
spheres of labor, no fixedness of regards, no
specific tasks, no preferences, no individual or
vicinal trials and pleasures, is a mere abstrac
tion : why then may not the love of country
consist -with, nay be a genuine modification of
the lore of man 1 Nothing is more manifest,
than that the same law of nature, which unites
us, in different degrees of affection, -with diffe
rent portions and individuals of our kind, must
originate a peculiar love of country, in every
unperverted, undebased heart ; and therefore
to make the spirit of Christianity opposed to
patriotism, is to make it unnatural.
There is a species of patriotism, so called,

ESSAY. IX
which the Gospel does not approve. It was the
maxim of Themistocles, that whatever is ad-
vjuitageous to one's country is just; but as that
self-love is criminal which pursues its purpose
in violation of another's rights, so is that love
of country, if it must be so termed, which
wantonly interferes with the peace and inde
pendence of other nations. Christianity has
no encouragement for the darings, no sympa
thy with the spirit, of an Alexander or a
Napoleon, or of any one of the great con
querors, whose exploits history has recorded
or poetry sung. On the contrary, language
has no terms of reprobation, strong enough to
express its hostility to all, whether individuals
or nations, who trench on the peace and liberty
and inalienable rights of others, to aggrandize
themselves. A plundering army is, in the
sight of God, but an association of robbers and
murderers, -whose individual retributions, -will
be neither stayed nor alleviated, in the day of
judgment, because they were banded together
and headed by a brave and skilful chief.
The triumphs of the Roman generals, which
filled the imperial city with exultation, moved
Heaven with purposes of exterminating vsrrath
against the nation.
The religion of Christ, is also opposed to

X ESSAY.
the vaunted patriotism of the spirit of party.
The Gospel obliges us to seek the country's
good ; not the success of one portion of the
community, in opposition to another. It may
be, that the interests of the party and of the
country, are identical; in which case, while
Christianity requires us to pursue those in
terests, it forbids our doing so vrith the feel
ings of rivalry ; and, if we disregard the pro
hibition, however successfiil we may be, it
denies us the praise of love to the nation.
Good may come to the country by our means,
but our condemnation will be just, unless an
honest zeal for the nation's happiness,, not the
party's triumph, be the motive of our conduct.
It has been questioned whether Christians,
and especially ministers of the Gospel should
not stand aloof from all pohtical contests, and
either not vote at elections, or conceal their
votes, so that their preference among rival
candidates for office shall not be known. But
it is a purely selfish and time-serving pru
dence which ordinarily suggests this course.
There may be rare occasions, when reserve
and even inaction may be demanded ; and our
moderation and equanimity should always, be
exemplary ; but the cause of our country is
in all respects too important, and especially

ESSAY. XI
too closely connected with the interests of
rehgion, to permit any one who is controlled
by principle and the spirit of the Gospel, to
be, in common cases, either negative or un-
knov7n,in the infiuence which he exerts. Shall
the interests of the nation be abandoned to the
blind and headlong action of partizan zeal 1
Where the State, as with us, deprives no man
of the elective franchise, no man should deprive
himself of it ; and if public sentiment is any
where opposed to a clergyman in the calm
and regular exercise of this privilege, he ought
therein to be opposed to public sentiment ;
showing that he loves his country and his
Saviour too well, and is too sensible of his
final responsibility to God, to consent to the
perpetual disuse of any talent, which has been
put into his hands.
A patriotism, governed in its exercises by
the precepts of the Gospel, cannot be revolu
tionary, so long as government is administer
ed according to legitimate authority or the
commission granted by the laws. We may
have, and frankly express, our opinions of
cabinet measures and legislative enactments.
Under our responsibility to God, we should
examine, and judge whether the executive
head of the nation, and all subordinate officers,

xu ESSAY.
act in their reppective stations, with or without
authority ; and if the limits of power are
traiLsgressed by them, we are not bound
either to silence or to passive submission. A
peculiarity of circumstances may render re
sistance unavailing, and therefore inexpedient;
but to maintain that non-resistance is univer
sally our duty in such cases, is to place God
on the side of absolute tyranny, and to deny
the permanent obligation of patriotism, unless
it be the invariable fact, that the interest of
the country demands that magistrates, do what
they may, should be left unmolested. But so
long as the government which is administered
is that which has been established, and so
long as the administration is constitutional and
regular, however imperfect in other respects,
the spirit and proceedings of true patriotism
will be anti-revolutionary; and while it may
regret and censure freely, the want of wisdom,
firmness, clemency, and principle, in the
powers that be, will not only obey, but sustain,
if need be with ai-ms, those duly constituted
powers, against all rival ones, foreign or do
mestic ; and this it will do from regard at
once to the country's welfare and the will of
God, who has declared the established authori
ties to be his own ministers, and those who
resist them to be adversaries to his ordinance.

ESSAY. XUI
It is said that Christianity forbids the use of
arms, and every form of war, and thus makes
martial courage, if not patriotism a sin. But
though the Gospel would beat swords into
ploughshares, and spears into pruning-hooks,
and fill the world with love and peace and
joy, and though it employs a tone and em
phasis of teaching against wars and fight
ings, which makes the responsibility for them
dreadful, yet it gives no ground for the con
clusion, that it is unchristian or unlawful
to serve one's country in the camp or on
the field of battle. When we consider what
is written conceming the four centurions ;
and the advice of John the Baptist to the
soldiers ; and that the principle which so ex
pounds the scriptures in question, as to draw
from them testimony against arms, has not its
limit in that inference, but equally condemns
all punishments of crime, and either takes the
sword from the magistrate, or makes him
bear it in vain, if it does not render govem-
mentitself a crime, — we find ourselves obliged
to protest against this interpretation of the
Gospel, as in the highest degi-ee rash, fanatical
and injurious. Great as are the horrors of
war, the same principle which vindicates the
Divine Government, in permitting these and
infinitely greater evils, namely, that the high-
2

XIV ESSAY.
est good of the whole must be maintained
against all opposers, at whatever hazards or
consequences, — vindicates and demands the
use of weapons of war in support of the gov
ernment of the country, legitimately adminis
tered, against all assailants from without or
from within.
The spirit of true patriotism is one with
the spirit of all just government in seeking as
its last end, not the good of the rulers but
the ruled. And because this is not to be
identified with increase in numbers, or terri
tory, or wealth, or magnificence, but with in
telligence and virtue, the only ground of solid
and permanent happiness ; and because these
are to be secured in their highest measures
only by the prevalence of religion, through
the land, therefore, while an enlightened love
of country must zealously promote the cause
of popular education, it must be mainly
intent on the evangelization and. conver
sion of all the inhabitants. They unquestion
ably are the nation's best friends, who by holy
living, and missionary labors and sacrifices,
are infusing the leaven of the Gospel into the
mass of the population. In this country, the
State caimot use the public treasure in ad
vancing Christianity, but that every statesman

ESSAY. XV
and ruler, and judge, should be a Christian
in all his conduct, private and oflicial, and
should particularly be a zealous and liberal
patron of Home missions, is demanded alike
by patriotism and by rehgion.
One of the greatest duties that we owe to
our country, is Prayer for those who are
in authority over it. If they are wise and
holy men, they certainly have a claim on the
nation's prayers, and much more if they are
not. It is a good thing among the English,
though their enforcing it by law is not good,
that their established Church never performs
the divine service, without a distinct and
solemn and supplicatory mention of the chief
magistrate, and the legislature of the nation;
and it is also a good and a patriotic thing, that
the branch of the American Church which
uses a hturgy, has obliged itself to do the
same in respect to the civil authorities of
this country. If any christian denomina
tion be wanting in this particular, they are
reproved by these examples. But it should
content no one, in this high matter, to offer
¦with others, ceremonious prayer, however
solemnly and constantly. In the hands of
those who hold the high places of magistracy,
legislation and judgment, lie the springs of

XVI ESSAY.
the national weal, and they cannot be touched
without consequences of good or evil to every
interest, civil and spiritual, throughout the
whole land. There is not a village, nor a
church, nor a family, nor an individual, whose
interests are not committed to the country's
head and council ; and though the Christian's
life be hid with Christ in God, and though the
final triumph of the Church be certain, and
though the country's purest and best men
have the management of its affairs, yet it is.
only presumption to expect that the happiness
of either country, church or christian, is safe,
if importunate and continual prayer be not
offered on behalf of those who bear the re
sponsibilities, burdens and temptations of go
vernment. The most earnest prayer for them
is specifically and urgently demanded of every
indiridual ; and he is the true patriot who
meets the demand.
Though the Church in this land be separate
from the State, there is no power which can
be brought into action in favor of the nation's
happiness, equal to that of the Pulpit. The
energies of this divine means of every good
to man, are greatly increased with us, by its
disconnection from all civil advantages and
aids. If it receive no support, it is under no

ESSAY. XVU
obligations but those of love. If it stand
alone, yet it is independent and free ; while
there is no place near or remote, no person
high or low, no subject-matter, whether of
pohtics, legislation, morals, religion, science
or art, to which it may not boldly apply its
appropriate influence, under protection of the
government, so long as it violates no one's
civil rights. This pri-rilege has the American
pulpit : — its field is boundless, its way is unob
structed, it may make a full experiment of
its powers, and if it does this, the proof to
the coimtry vrill be perfect, that the Gospel is
the best friend to all human interests, national
and individual, temporal as well as eternal ;
the State -will reverence and cherish, though it
cannot espouse the Church, and the peace of
our rising and spreading republic vrill flow as
a river, and its righteousness as the waves of
the sea.
The volume, from which this essay has too
long detained the reader, shows that its au
thor is aware of the breadth of his proper
sphere as a minister of Christ. He supposes
himself empowered to treat other subjects be
sides those to which the assiduities of the pul
pit are generally given. In his character as a
clergyman, he has felt himself authorized,

XVUl ESSAY.
to address his fellow citizens, as in the 2:)ages
of this book, on relations and responsibilities
of infinite moment, involving every interest of
their o-wn and their posterity. And while he
has endeavored to enlarge their view of the
ulterior influence of the country, on the wel
fare of the world, he has added new and
overpowering force to every other motive to
the discharge of all individual and national
obligations. We owe the author our thanks for thus
duecting our attention to God's Hand in
America. That Hand has been progressively
revealing itself from our commencement as a
people, until at length in vi-rid distinctness,
and in great power of instruction, admonition
and promise, it is lifted high before the eyes
of the world. In the operations of Prori
dence, no man can fully understand the begin
ning till the end is known. It has been pro
foundly remarked, that as there is nothing
in the universe, not even the minutest atom
which floats in the sun-beam, nor the dew-
drop whicli covers the most secret flower, that
stands alone, but all blends with all ; so indi
vidual existence and indiridual phenomena
can only be explained by explaining the
whole. The progress and connexions of

ESSAY. XIX
things however, discover vrith increasing light,
that the divine agency in them is ever directed
by reference to a definite purpose and a settled
plan; and " men of wisdom" perceive with the
liveliest interest the traces of design as they
gradually unfold themselves, and like the
angels, have a holy desire to know as much
as possible before-hand, conceming the final
result. This country is yet in its early youth,
but the steps of Pro-ridence toward it have
been so remarkable, that it stands in the
world almost as a finished monument of the
divine power, and from the opposite shores
of the Atlantic, " the eyes of the oppressed
are even now turning -vristfuUy to the land
of freedom, and the kings of the continent
already regard with awe and disquietude the
new^ Rome rising in the west, the foreshadows
of whose greatness, yet to be, are extending
dark and heavy over their domimons, and
obscuring the lustre of their thrones."
Nevertheless, no principle of God's admi
nistration hath receivedmore signal illustration
from the past, than that privileges imply du
ties ; and well does this book remind us that,
ihe Divine Being might m,ake a short -worh upon
the earth, and -yet -witMn its limits there might
he traced the overthrow cmd destruction of a

XX ESSAY.
nation like our own, hecavsc of our ingratitude,
and the selection and pieparation of another
people for the accomplishment of the Divincpur-
poses qf viercy to the ivorld. The Jews them
selves had scarcely greater reason to fear that
the vials of the -wrath of God, would be
emptied upon them if they should prove re
bellious, than have the inhabitants of this land,
if they fail to recognize and fulfil their pecu
liar obligations as the most favored of man
kind.

INTRODUCTION.

The bearing of the political and social
relations of the world at the present mo
ment upon the advancement of the Re
deemer's kingdom, is a topic so fruitful in
interest and instruction, that whatever
thoughts, in a reverential spirit, may be
thrown out upon it, can scarcely fail to find
a welcome. The series of experiments
and demonstrations in truth and error, of
which this world has been for thousands
of years so grand a theatre, there is some
reason to believe is drawing towards its
close, and is soon to be followed by the per
fect reign of righteousness on earth . There
appears to be an enlargement of the move
ments and indications of Divine Provi-
3

22 NATIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES
dence, from particulars to generals ;
and there is a concentration of inter
est upon our own country, looking a few
years in advance of our present position,
which invests the study of the principles
of the divine conduct with the most ab
sorbing importance.
A general view of the grounds of na
tional responsibility and retributive pro
vidence may fitly precede a more par
ticular examination of the divine provi
dential dealings and indications towards
us as a people. This current of thought
the author has pursued in two discourses,
delivered in the Allen-street church, the
first on occasion of the day of public
thanksgiving in this State, and the other
on the first Sabbath evening in the year,
the evening previous to the day of prayer
for the world's conversion. The second
discourse was also repeated in the Mer
cer-street church, in this city.

AND RETIIIBXJTIVE AWARDS. 23
The substance of these discourses is
now presented in a shape somewhat
different, but adapted to exhibit more
impressively and clearly the unity and
importance of the theme. The general
propositions traced in its first division
may be enumerated as follows :
I. That God is governor araong the
nations. II. That he deals with nations on the
same priweiples as with individuals.
III. That the responsibllites and duties
of nations as individuals, are commen
surate with their capabilities, opportuni
ties, and mercies.
IV. That the; disregard and violation
of this principle will be followed with
the divine retribution, and if persisted
in, must result in national degradation and
ruin. V. That in the light of these prin
ciples an enumeration of the elements of

24 NATIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES, ETC.
national gratitude, is an exceedingly so
lemn and admonitory service.
These propositions may occupy two
or three of the following chapters, and
afterwards the main subject to which they
are introductory will be discussed, viz :
The opportunities and responsibilities of
this country for its own and the world's
evangelization. Here opens that most
striking aspect of providence and duty, to
which I have referred in the general title
of this volume ; a title which maybe par
doned for its apparent singularity and
quaintness, in consideration of its con
densed expression of a most compre
hensive and important theme.

PART FIRST.
A GOVERNING AND RETRtBCTrVE PROVIDENCE
AMONG THE NATIONS.

Vengeance will sit nbovo our faults ; but till
She there do sit,
We see her not, nor them. Thus blind, yet still
We lead her way ; and thus, whilst we do ill,
Wo suffer it, Donne.

CHAPTER I.

GOD THE GOVERNOR AMONG THE NATIONS.— UNI -
VERS.AL DISREGARD OF THIS TRUTH.

There ai'e a few passages in Scripture
where the rule of God's providence, and
the mode of his dealings among the na
tions, are quite as explicitly revealed, as
the precepts of the divine law in the deca
logue. Of this nature is that most remark
able passage in the xviiith chapter of the
prophecy of Jeremiah, of which the ninth
and tenth verses constitute an important
portion. Considered in connection with
the xxvth chapter of the same prophecy,
and the illustration of it, on so vast
and awful a scale, in the destruction of

28 NATIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES
the Jewish people, it becomes exceedingly
solemn. At what instant I shall s'peak con
cerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom,
to build and to ^lant it, if it do evil in my
sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will re
pent of the good wherewith I said I will bene
fit them.
Here there is a light, by which one may
read the history of the world with great
clearness and advantage, a key to the in
terpretation of raany volumes of the divine
providence otherwise inscrutable. There
is clearly the reason of the instability of
human things, and the secret of those per
petual overturnings amidst kingdoms and
empires, the record of which forms the
great body of the annals of all history. Hu
man affairs are unstable because they do
not please God, they are not in accordance
with his will, and they must be changed
until they become so. When they be
come so, then there shall be rest and per-

AND RETRIBUTIVE AWARDS. 29
manence among the nations ; but at pre
sent there is no peace, nor any possibility
of it.
The proposition that God is governor
among the nations, it would seem as
if no man in his senses could possibly
deny. A man might as well disbelieve
that God made the world, as that God
governs it. And yet the doctrine of a
divine superintending providence, the
doctrine of God's personal presence
and agency in the affairs of this world,
although it be so clearly revealed in the
Scriptures, has the smallest possible hold
upon men's minds. Even among Chris
tians there is but a very indefinite know
ledge or belief of its truth. And among
men of the world, among the nations at
large, there is such a practical disregard
and denial of it, and of the divine proprie
tary claim in human affairs, that the
honest assertion and application of it in

30 NATIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES
any deliberative public assembly is very
likely to be ridiculed as the dotage of a
superstitious mind.
There is a perpetual practical atheism
among men, so that however God may be
acknowledged as the object of individual
worship, he is, in fact, thrust out, in men's
minds, from the world of his creation.
And in truth the nations are so accustomed
to regard existence as merely earthly in its
principles, purposes, and enjoymentSj.and
to attach a sense of truth, value; and im
portance only to things connected ¦ with
their temporal interests, that there has
come to be a complete divorce between
tbe maxims of worldly expediency and
those of Christianity, a relinquishment of
temporal and state policy to the god of
this world. That very expression, the
god of this world, shows most impressively
the world's condition in rebellion against
its Maker. The spirit of rebellion runs

AND RETRIBUTIVE AWARDS. 31
through the whole body of its international
law and policy, and infects even the
volumes of its domestic statutes. This is
so very generally the case, that the indi
vidual conscience is warped by it, and
men come to inquire in reference to a
particular employment, decision, orlineof
conduct, not, — Is it right ? Is it in accord
ance with God's will .'' — but. Is it legal ?
Huraan law, law suggested and promulT-
gated by the- god of this world, is often
thus enthroned in the place of God to the
conscience. The laws for the protection
and maintenance of the system of slavery
are a striking example of this fact. The
law of divorce is another. Nothing can
be more explicit than the legislation of
our blessed Lord on this subject. " Who
soever shall put away his wife, saving
for the cause of fornication, cau seth her
to commit adultery ; and whosoever shall
marry her that is put away, committeth

32 NATIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES
adultery." And in the apparently extreme
strictness of this provision, it cannot be
doubted ihatthe Divine Being pursued the
very course which he knew to be requi
site, if he would regulate and train
society to its most perfect state of order
and happiness. Now the statutes in
nearly all our courts are utterly neglect
ful of this revealed law, if not point-blank
contrary to it. In some of them a divorce
can be obtained for so slight a reason,
that if you were to draw your conclusions
of the sacredness of the marriage contract
from such legislation, the harem usages
of the Turks would be quite as respect
able. This supreme enthronement of human
law is sanctioned sometimes, even by the
professed and public expositors of the
divine law, declaring, in particular cases
of iniquitous legislation, cases where the
human and divine governments clash,

AND RETRIBUTIVE AWARDS. 33
that we ought to obey men rather than
God, inasmuch as the powers that be are
ordained of God, and therefore in obey
ing men we do obey God ! With what
vast displeasure must the Divine Being
look upon such a condition of things, ex
isting in the world even under the light
of revelation ! There was a period when
nothing better could be expected, and the
times of this ignorance God winked at,
but now commandeth all men every
where to repent.
No nation, in its national capacity, has
yet beenirought under the full influence of
the divine law. Perhaps the Sandwich
Islands come nearer to such a realization
of Christianity than any other comraunity ;
but the Baptism of the Nations has never
yet taken place. A glorious spectacle
indeed it would be, if any one kingdom,
even the smallest, basest, most despised,
should become so imbued with divine
4

34 NATIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES
grace, so subjected by the principles-of
allegiance and love to God, as to regard
him in all its operations ; to serve him as
a reflex picture on earth of angelic obe
dience in the hierarchies of heaven ; de
voting its revenues to the accomplishment
of his purposes ; sending out its ships for
missionary enterprise and discovery, and
regulating its policy with other nations
by a celestial disinterestedness and
nobleness of principle. What a blessed
picture for the imagination of a sanctified
mind to dwell upon, could we think of
this country, for example, with a govern
ment like tbe constitution of a holy family
for its simplicity and sacredness, its go
vernmental altar of prayer and praise
morning and evening, a sentiment of sin
cere love to God in all hearts connected
with it, and a sacred regard to the divine
glory in all the circumstances of its policy.
This indeed is supposing the consumma-

AND RETRIBUTIVE AWARDS. 35
tion of blessedness to the world. It
would be the Saviour's prayer illustrated
and fulfilled, " Thy kingdom come, thy
will be done on earth as it is in heaven."
It would be the realization of the brightest
visions of prophecy. It would be God
governing among the nations. And this
would be that union of Church and State
which will spring inevitably from the
presence of the Spirit of the Lord. Not
the embrace, legislation and protection of
the Church by the State, but the adop
tion and sanctification of the State as a
portion of the Church — the unity, and not
the mere union of both. To this, it is to
be hoped, all things are tending ; we
know that they are in the end, when the
times of the restitution of all things spoken
by the prophets shall have come ; and we
have fondly hoped that this blissful era
was near, even at the doors. But if we
were to stop where we are now, little or

86 NATIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES, ETC.
no advance has been made towards that
millennium of glory, in which the king
doms of this world shall have become the
kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ.
What, at present, is the State .'' An en
gine of worldly, selfish, atheistic, and
often reckless, oppressive and despotic
policy and expediency. What ought it
to be ? An institution as sacredly regard
ful of God's glory, and of man's highest
happiness, as the Church itself.

CHAPTER II.
PRINCIPLES OF GOD'S DEALINGS WITH THE NATIONS.
There can be no doubt that God deals
with nations on the same principles as with
individuals. The application ofhis laws is
the same. Their accountability to him is
the same. The principles of truth, holiness
and justice, in each direction, are the same.
Morality is not one thing in an individual,
and a different thing in a nation. A nation
may, by its own statutes, render a course
of conduct lawful, but it cannot raake it
right. There may be legality, even in
hell, under the laws of Satan's dominion;
but not righteousness. Then, too, the
dispensations of God's providence are as
definitely, and with as much selection and
4*

38 NATIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES
meaning, directed toward the nations as
to individuals. They too are under a
system of discipline mingled out of the
treasures of mercy and chastisement.
They have a hfe to lead, a career to run,
a probation to accomplish. The means
of usefulness, the opportunities of hap
piness, are placed at their disposal. They
have a collective moral agency and obli-'
gation, a national as well as an individual
conscience, and a national obedience to it,
or violation of it. The national existence
and responsibility is not a mere figment
of the mind, not a mere collection of in
dividual responsibilities and existences,.
but a great and awful reality, and as such.
God deals with it. As such he has pro
vided for it a system of principles and
statutes in his Word, a revelation to the
nations as well as to individuals.
I am glad to justify this position by
the declaration of a very profound and

AND RETRIBUTIVE AWARDS. 39
original thinker, though neither theo
logian nor statesman, (the author of the
Aids to Reflection,) that "as the New
Testament sets forth the means and con
ditions of spiritual convalescence, with
aU the laws of conscience relative to our
future state and permanent being, so does
the Bible present to us the elements of
'public prudence, instructing us in the true
causes, the surest preventives, and the
only cure, of public evils. The autho
rities of Raleigh, Clarendon and Milton,
must at least exempt me from the blame
of singularity, if, undeterred by the con
tradictory charges of paradoxy from one
party, and of adherence to vulgar and
old-fashioned prejudices from the other,
I persist in avowing my conviction that
the inspired poets, historians> and senten-
tiaries of the Jews are the clearest teach
ers of political economy : in short, that
their writings are the Statesman's best

40 NATIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES
Manual, not only as containing the first
principles and ultimate grounds of State
policy, whether in prosperous times, orin
those of danger and distress, but as sup
plying likewise the details of their appli
cation, and as being a full and spacious
repository of precedents and facts in
proof." It follows, of course, that the respon
sibilities and duties of nations, as
of individuals, are commensurate with
their capabilities, opportunities, and mer
cies. These all are the result of
God's sovereign disposing Providence.
" He hath made of one blood all the
nations of men, for to dwell on all the
face of the earth, and hath determined the
times before appointed, and the bounds of
their habitation, that they should seek the
Lord." All circumstances wherein thej^
differ, all forms of language, all conver-
gencies of events, all inventions and dis-

AND RETRIBUTIVE AWARDS. 41
coveries, all varieties of climate, all
aspects of earth and heaven, all things
and influences that may train them up to
glory and happiness, he dispenses to each
as he pleases, just as he allots the gifts
and varies the circumstances of individual
life. To one nation he gives one talent,
to another two, to another five or ten, so
that nations as well as individuals are but
the stewards of his mercies, for the use of
which he will require a strict account.
It was a saying of Mr. Coleridge that
the word privilege is the correlative of the
word duty ; in other language, that every
privilege has a corresponding duty con
nected with it. This is true ; for if no
other duty were required but that of gratis
tude, every privilege from the greatest to
the least, involves that, and indeed grati
tude to God comprehends every duty.
All our mercies are foundations of respon
sibiUty, and the greater they are,, the

43 NATIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES
greater our obligations become, and the
more God expects of us. This is in every
respect as true of nations as of individu
als. It is as solemn and awful a thing,
whether for a man or for a nation, to be
greatly favored of God, as it is to be
greatly tried and afflicted. The enjoy
ments of civil and religious liberty, of the
opportunities of education, of the word of
God, of the Christian Sabbath and the Gos
pel in its purity, lay a mighty weight of
obligation upon any people ; they trace a
pathway of responsibility and duty. In
which a failure must be as dreadful as
success is glorious.
These principles are exhibited and
sanctioned, not only in the whole course
of the Divine discipline with the Jews,
that people whom God seemed to have
selected as a lasting example of the ope
ration of his laws in their application to
the nations, but in definite and very fre-

AND RETRIBUTIVE AWARDS. 43
quent passages of Scripture. The climax
of national blessings enjoyed among the
Jews, was the possession of the written
word of God. " He showeth his word
unto Jacob, his statutes and his judgments
unto Israel. He hath not dealt so with
any nation." But then, in consequence
of this discipline of mercy, came another
discipline, introduced by their abuse of it.
" You only have I known of all the nations of
ihe earth; therefore you will I punish
FOR ALL YOUR INIQUITIES." And precisely
the same strictness of judgment is applied
by our blessed Lord to communities in his
own day, which, in their disobedience and
rejection of the Gospel had manifested a
greater degree of wickedness, than the
most ancient and depraved among the cities
of the Gentiles. " Wo unto thee Chora-
zin ! wo unto thee Bethsaida ! And thou,
Capernaum, which art exalted unto hea
ven, shalt be brought down to hell : for

44 NATIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES
if the mighty works which have been
done in thee had been done in Sodom, it
would have remained until this day."
And If the pages of revelation had been
continued down to modern times, and the
names of other nations had been record
ed visibly in the places which, though
unrecorded and invisible to us, they do
actually occupy in the scale of God's dis
cipline of judgment, we should have had
a history of the world as full of sacred
instruction in the retributive interpositions
of God, marked out and noticed for uS)
as ever was the history of the Hebrews
in the highest and most instructive inspi
ration of its pages. Touched by such en
chantment, the profane and atheistic
atmospheire of a work like Gibbon's would
have been filled with angels to our view,
the revealed and busy messengers and
causes of divinely appointed degradation
and decay.

CHAPTER III.
NATURE AND EXECUTION OF THE DIVINE RETRI
BUTIVE PROVIDENCES.
We are brought to the consideration
of our fourth proposition, that the disre
gard and violation of the principles we
have been contemplating will be followed
by the divine retribution, and if persisted
in, must result in national degradation and
ruin. " The nation and kingdom that
WILL NOT SERVE THEE SHALL PERISH ;
yea, those nations shall be utterly ¦wasted.''^
This most absolute and tremendous decla
ration may be accomplished in two ways.
First, there is a connection as natural and
inevitable between the evil courses of na-
5

46 NATIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES
tions and their own destruction, as be
tween the iniquities and the miseries of
individuals. If, therefore, God shall speak
concerning any nation as concerning his
people of old : " Israel would none of me,
so I gave them up unto their own hearts'
lusts, and they walked in their own coun
sels :" — then the destiny of that nation is
settled, its race is run. For doubtless
there is no more possibility of the repent
ance of a nation, exce-pt the divine grace
intervene, than there is of an individual.
And therefore no farther penal infliction,
or retributive justice, is really requisite on
the part of the Divine Being, than just to
leave a nation in the unrestrained indul
gence of its sins. Luxury, avarice, pride,
injustice, cruelty, work the overthrow of
empires, as well as the fiat of the Almighty.
Tbey are sometimes the very means of
fialfilling that fiat, the very accomplish
ment of God's predictions of evil against

AND RETRIBUTIVE AWARDS. 47
a disobedient people. These dreadful
ministers of wrath work with so much
certainty, except repentance for the ini
quity that issued their commission inter
vene, that oftentimes you may read its
fate in the countenance of a nation, as
palpably as you may the death of the
drunkard in his fiery features. It needs
no divine inspiration in such a case to
paint the judgment of an evil kingdom ;
the sins of the people are the prophets of
dieir coming woes.
On the other hand,, if governments are
luxurious and selfish, then there is a case
pending not only between them and God,
but between them and the people ; in the
progress of things, the people must inevita
bly be victorious, and those forms, of emr
pire have insured their destruction. So
far as the constitution and the measures of
human governments run counter to God's
word, they also run counter to the, inte-

48 NATIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES
rests of mankind ; they oppose a perfect
state of society ; they maintain causes of
discontent and revolution. There is this
selfish disregard to the ordinances of God
and the interests of the subject all over
the world. There is at the same time a
ceaseless struggle towards happiness and
rest, an instinctive, irrepressible tendency
and movement in the chaos of society to
wards order, in the prison of society to
wards liberty ; but the divine order being
the only possible one, the existence of this
is impossible, so long as the maxims of
worldly governments move contrary to
the principles of God's word ; and the di
vine liberty being the only possible one,
the enjoyment of this is impossible, so long
as the people themselves are undisciplined
and vile. In the eloquent language of
Edmund Burke, " It is written in the
eternal constitution of things that raen of
intemperate minds cannot be free. Their

AND RETRIBUTIVE AWARDS. 49
PASSIONS FORGE THEIR FETTERS." Until,
therefore, the word of God becomes both
the rule of the citizen and the Statesman's
Manual, the volcanoes of political revolu
tion will continue to disgorge their fires.
The prediction runs with the reality, and
is the assertion of a necessary principle.
" I will overturn, overturn, overturn, till
He shall come, whose right it is, and I
will give it Him."
There is also, in the second place, a direct,
divine retribution. It has been remarked
that this world is the judgment place for
national sins. There is truth in this ; and
yet it is in the power of God in the future
world to mete out strict and impartial jus
tice to nations as well as individuals, and
to make the universe see and admire the
process. God knows the precise share of
every individual in forming the character
and conduct of the nations, and whatever
the amount of guilt contracted by any na-
5*

50 NATIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES
tion at any given period, or through its
whole existence, he can assign to each in
dividual of all the millions of its inhabi
tants his exact proportion, and whatever
be the punishment due, he can distribute
its sufferance in the same manner. This
is the only way conceivable in which the
judgment of nations in eternity could be
conducted. The judgment of individuals
themselves must be in some sense a na
tional judgment, since it is by individuals
that every national crime is deliberated
upon, and carried into execution. The
making of unjust laws and treaties is an
act of national guilt, in which it is very
easy to see how every individual con
cerned in passing and executing such en
actments may be arraigned and punished
in eternity. The appropriation to indi
viduals of the guilt incurred in maintain
ing those laws is a more difficult thing.
As in individuals, so in nations, acts and

AND RETRIBUTIVE AWARDS. 61
habits of sin, with their consequences, are
more easily avoided before they are com
mitted, or inwrought into the system, than
repented of and renounced afterwards.
It is easy for one man to kindle a confla
gration, which a thousand cannot master.
The life of a nation is a unity and con
tinuity of generations. It is made up of
a stream of existence, in which you can
not mark the point where one generation
begins and another ends ; like a woven
fabric, in which you cannot tell where one
thread ends or passes into another. There
are habits of feeling, opinion and conduct,
therefore, that belong to the same nation
for ages, and in reference to which the
whole continuous stream of generations
from beginning to end must be judged,
just as the responsibility of every part of
a man's course of conduct is his own
through his whole life. Then again the
sins which a nation completes In one gene-

52 NATIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES
ration may have been resolved upon and
commenced in another ; it would there
fore be manifestly unjust to judge merely
that part of the existence of the nation
into which the actual commission of the
crime fell, while the previous generation
is left unjudged or unpunished. If, for
example, our own nation were now to be
judged for the sin of slavery, and punished
to the uttermost, we cannot suppose that
this would be all, or that the share of the
previous generation in permitting and en
tailing this guilt would be unnoticed.
In this world the retributive conse
quences of national guilt are not expe
rienced sometimes till all the actors have
passed from the stage of existence. While
they lived, the nation might have been en
joying the fruits of its fraud, tyranny, in
justice, as yet uninterrupted by the retri
butive providence of God, so that when
that providence at length is unfolded, not

AND RETRIBUTIVE AWARDS. 53
a being may remain in existence, who bore
any part, direct or indirect, in the com
mission of those crimes. This is mysteri
ous, but not more so than the visiting the
iniquities of the fathers upon the children.
In such cases it is not to be supposed that
the generation of actual sinners, who died
while flourishing like a green bay tree,
have escaped the divine vengeance.
That part of the nation certainly must be
judged in eternity, and one ground of
judgment will be the miseries they have
entailed upon posterity. Now it is no
more inconsistent with the justice of the
divine government that posterity should
suffer for the sins of a nation, than that
children should suffer for the sins of their
parents, or an innocent wife and family
for the drunkenness of the husband. In
all such cases it is to be reraerabered that
the suffering inflicted, though produced
by the sins of others, falls, not upon the

54 NATIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES
guiltless, but upon those who deserve it
all and more than all, on account of their
own sins, and oftentimes by similar trans
gressions. Something of this is to be regard
ed in the denunciation of our Saviour
against Jerusalem. " That upon you
may corae all the righteous blood shed
upon the earth from the blood of righteous
Abel to the blood of Zacharias. Verily
I say unto you, it shall be required of this,
generation." This was not saying that
preceding generations would, escape, but
simply that the crisis, in which the divine
retributions were to be experienced in this
world, was deferred till the measure of
iniquity should be full ; and those crimes
for which, frora generation to generation
vengeance had been denounced, but no
repentance exercised, were at length all
visited upon an unrepenting generation,
who themselves were guilty of the greatest
crime in the whole annals of the race,

AND HETRIBtTTIVE AWARDS. 55
The retributive providence of God is
sometimes evolved in the sure though dis
tant operations of natural causes, which
he does not interpose to prevent ; as, for
example, the unjust conquests of the
Romans were followed by the introduc
tion of habits that led to the ruin of the
empiTe. And the iniquitous conduct of
Spain, in the discovery and possession of
the South American continent, though for
a time it fiUed the nation with wealth, is,
by natural causes, connected with her
present miseries. Just so, an unjust ac
cumulation of wealth by individuals,
though it may go unpunished during a
man's lifetime, is not unfrequently fol-
lowEd by evil courses in his children;
the sins of the fathers ate visited upon the
children, in being made the progenitors of
their sins; with their own concurrence,
certainly, and aguilty concurrence, butnot
the less a visitation, and a dreadful one,

56 NATIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES
from God ; for had those parents been
virtuous, then those very same children,
in all hkelihood, had been virtuous also.
And this proverb, " he that is greedy of
gain troubleth his own house," is as true
of nations, as it is of individuals.
The retributive providence of God
may be prevented by repentance, nor
would it, in any of those cases where it
has been so signally and awfully illus
trated, have received such an iUustration,
if repentance had intervened. " At what
instant I shall speak concerning a nation,
and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up
and pull down, and destroy it, if that na
tion against whom I have pronounced,
turn from their evil, I will repent of
THE evil THAT I THOUGHT TO DO UNTO
THEM." Here stands out a great and
most merciful provision in God's national
statute book. Sincere repentance pre
vents the threatened evil, in nations as

AND RETRIBUTIVE AWARDS. 57
well as individuals. There is, besides,
another wondrous shield that stands be
tween God's wrath and the nation that
deserves It, and that is his own consti
tuted church, and the prayers of his
redeemed people. The Sodoms and Go-
morrahs of our day would doubtless flame
up to heaven in their ruin, as they cry up
to heaven in their sins, were It not for the
righteous raen, that by God's grace, in
stead of five or ten, answer his requisition
to Abraham sometimes by hundreds and
thousands. How beautifully is this truth
conveyed in those lines of the poet Cow-
per, which I love to repeat and dwell
upon, descriptive of the world's depend-
ance, for its happy existence, upon the
living presence of the Christian !^ —
"Perhaps the self-approving haughty world,
That, as she sweeps him with her whistling silks,
Scarce deigns to notice him, or, if she see.
Deems him a cypher in the works of God,
Receives advantage from his noiseless hours,
6

68 NATIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES
Of which she little dreams. Peitaps she owes
Her sunshine and her rain, her blooming spring.
And plenteous harvest, to the prayer he makes,
When, Isaac-like, the solitary saint
Walks forth to meditate at eventide.
And think on her, who thinks not for herself"
Sometimes the Church herself becomes
participator in the sins of a rebellious
people, and then the shield against God's
wrath proves its conductor. It is a fear
ful climax of evil when this is the case.
This, in truth, especially in the Oriental
world, reads the history of raore than one
nation, once Christian, but now blotted
frora existence, or lost In heathenism.
Sometimes the long suffering of God is
carried so far, that it seems as if there
were no cognizance taken of national
crimes, iniquities being committed at
which the heavens and the earth cry out
for their enormity, and yet God's justice
sleeps. This makes the nations hardy in
their sins ; they laugh at the predictions

AND RETRIBUTIVE AWARDS. 59
of God's wrath, and scornfully ask,
where is the promise of his coming? The
Antediluvians did this, and when Enoch
preached with such prodigious eloquence
and power, like the outpouring of the
seven vials, his predictions of the deluge
of divine vengeance, he was assailed with
the fury of unbelief and wrath. The fa^
cility with which nations become atheists
in their public capacity, and scorn the
idea that God interposes in human affairs,
is partly because some mighty and as
tounding interposition, enough to compel
the awe of the universe, does not take
place in their own generation. They are
more obtuse in their discernment, and
blind in their unbelief than hardened Iti-
dividuals, and the most terrific of the
divine judgments being sometimes slow
in their progress, and unperceived, un
noticed, except by spiritual observers,
have little power to arrest the deep tide

60 NATIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES
of profligacy. They are the more dread
ful because unrecognized.
God's retributive providence may be
Invisible as the angel of death, and gra
dual as the remorseless tide that steals its
march for centuries, or the malaria that
depopulates cities, and makes the very
sight of thera the dread of the traveller.
One might, with almost as much impunity,
go Into the tomb of a plague-stricken mor
tal, as linger among the beautiful remains
of some of those buried cities, whose in
quest would rightly be written, died by
THE VISITATION OF GoD ! — and yet that
visitation unknown and unacknowledged
even by the sufferers. Sometiraes a series
of retributive providences is unfolded, uo
one of which, by itself, excites alarm or
surprise, till in the lapse of ages the
solemn work is done, the nation has
passed from existence, and historians
write its epitaph, and philosophize upon

AND RETRIBUTIVE AWARDS. 61
the causes of its fall. A lingering decay
may be far worse than a sudden over
throw ; so that, In such a case, the com
mon lamentation of mankind may be
deeper for the degradation that remains,
than the glory that has departed. It is
the same with individuals. And this
perhaps was the meaning of that raelan-
choly breathing of the poet : —
*' Thus fares it still in our decay ',
And yet the wiser mind
Mourns less for what age takes away,
Than what it leaves behind."
A nation dies when the spirit of every
thing good and noble dies in it. The
name may live, when the elements of
life and beauty have departed. God may
suffer the sins which a nation is cherish
ing to consume its energies, till the gan
grene becomes incurable, and then his
abused mercies work their own revenge.
How solemn, in such a case, are the re-
6*

62 NATIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES
cords and the proofs of the divine indig
nation — the prediction and the fulfilment
seen and read together !
I have stood beneath the walls of the Co
liseum in Rome, the Parthenon in Athens,
and the Temple of Karnak in Egypt : —
each of them the mighty relic of majestic
empires, and the symbol of the spirit of the
most remarkable ages in the world. The
last, carrying you back as in a dream
over the waste of four thousand years,
might be supposed to owe its superior
impressiveness to its vast antiquity ; but
that is not the secret of the strange and
solemn thoughts that crowd into the
mind ; it is the demonstration of God's
wrath fulfilled according to the letter of
the Scriptures ! No ruins of antiquity are
so overwhelming in their interest as the
gigantic remains of that empire, once the
proudest in the world, and now, accord
ing to the very letter of the divine predic-

AND RETRIBUTIVE AWARDS. 63
tion, " the basest of the kingdoms."
From the deep and grim repose of those
sphinxes, obelisks, and columns, — those
idols broken at the presence of God, — as
the mind wanders back to the four hun
dred years of Israel's bondage in Egypt,
methinks you may hear the wail of that
old and awful prophecy, with the linger
ing echo of every successive prediction —
THE NATION WHOM THEY SHALL SERVE
WILL I JUDGE ! Who would havc be
lieved it possible, four thousand years
ago, amidst the vigor and greatness of
the Egyptian kingdom, that after that
vast lapse of time, travellers should come
from a world then as new, unpeopled,
and undiscovered, as the precincts of
another planet, to read the proofs of God's
veracity in the vestiges at once of such
stupendous glory and such a stupendous
overthrow ! And now, if any man, con
templating the youthful vigor, the energy,

64 NATIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES, ETC.
the almost indestructible life of our own
country, finds it difficult to believe that
the indulgence of the same national sin,
under infinitely clearer light, may be fol
lowed with a similar overthrow, let him
wander on the banks of the Nile, and
think down hours to moments in the
silent sanctuaries of its broken temples.

CHAPTER IV.

ELEMENTS OF NATIONAL GRATITUDE AND RESPON
SIBILITY.— THE WORD OF GOD.— THE CHRISTIAN
SABBATH.— A CONVERTED MINISTRY.- THE HOLY
SPIRIT.- A GOOD GOVERNMENT.— FREEDOM OF OPI
NION  COMMON SCHOOLS.

We are now prepared to realize the
truth of our fifth proposition, that the
enumeration and acknowledgment of
the causes of national gratitude is an ex
ceedingly solemn service. It becomes so
just in proportion to the number and im
portance of our blessings. What then
are the elements of national gratitude .''
We can notice but a few of the
most important, but in doing this we
shall find a most impressive picture of

66 NATIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES
our own national responsibilities. The
first to be mentioned is the possession of
the word of God, in our own language,
and without restriction on the reading or
the publication of it. Let any man tra
vel in Catholic countries, and he will feel
the importance of the two latter adjuncts
of this blessing. To possess the Scrip
tures, but in a dead and foreign tongue, is,
for the mass of the people, equivalent to
being deprived of thera. To possess-
thera in the vernacular, but with the ban
of the church against their perusal, is, if
possible, still worse. The free gift of the
Holy Scriptures to any people is one, the
greatness of which, as of the responsi
bilities connected with it, is not to be des
cribed in language.
Next to this blessing is that of the
Christian Sabbath ; and connected with
it, the gospel preached in its purity by a
holy and enlightened ministry. The word

AND RETRIBUTIVE AWARDS. 67
of God itself would do us little good, if
the Sabbath were blotted from existence,
or if the constituted expounders and teach
ers of the word were unconverted men,
or falsifiers of its doctrines. Without
doubt the gospel is preached in this
country with a siraplicity and plain
ness more accordant with its nature, and
by men more generally of experimental
piety, than in any other country in the
world. The greatness of this blessing,
again, we cannot adequately appreciate.
The gift of the Holy Spirit, in con
nection with the proclamation of the gos
pel, is another vast and incalculable bless
ing, without which indeed, those alrea
dy mentioned, though they might benefit
the temporal condition of our race, would
be of no avail for their highest interests.
The effusion of the Spirit of God, to
render divine truth effectual in the con
version of men, is the culminating gift in

68 NATIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES
the series of blessings purchased by the
crucifixion of the Saviour. It is the last
object of prayer, the only possible ground
of the advancement of the Redeemer's
Kingdom, the only hope of individual or
national salvation. In the continued out
pouring of the Spirit, and the revivals of
religion consequent upon It, we are enjoy
ing the highest possible proof of the divine
favor, the highest possible assurance of
our country's safety, and the highest pos
sible raeans of usefulness. Our moral
power over the natrons is increased and
enhanced in an incalculable degree, and
our preparation for the mighty part which
we fondly hope God destines our nation
to take in the world's evangelization, must
become, by the continuance of this bless
ing, well-nigh perfect. Our responsibili
ties are greater than those of any other
nation, just in proportion as we precede
the rest of the world In the enjoyment of

AND RETRIBUTIVE AWARDS. 69
this new and marvellous element of na
tional gratitude, the Baptism of the Spirit.
These are the fou r highest elements of
mercy and responsibility, our four great
est blessings, because they are religious
blessings, and constitute, in their union,
the perfect gift of our religion. Three
other elements may be named, compre
hending our political and social interests.
A wise and good government well
administered. A governraent raay be
good in its constitution, but spoiled in its
administration. It may be evil in its con
stitution, and therefore evil in its admin
istration, even though conducted with all
the wisdom and benevolence of which it
is capable ; and it may be both bad in
itself and badly administered. Most go
vernments in the world come under this
last description, for they have generaUy
been but so many organized systems of
despotism and oppression ; the power and

70 NATIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES
luxury of the few, built upon the crushed
minds, hearts, and hopes of the many. In
such a world of violence and misrule, a
good government is a gift of God's mercy
of inappreciable value, an element of na
tional gratitude and responsibility as pre
cious as it is rare. A good government
Is an essential requisite for a grand and
lasting instrumentality in the world's
evangelization. Most governments are
so wicked in their very essence, that the
kingdom of Christ will have to be es
tablished on their ruins. Now we thirjk
it must be admitted that there are fewer
evils In the theory and administration of
the government of this [country than of
any other in the world. It is perhaps the
best adapted to the growth of a people in
knowledge, usefulness, and holiness.
At any rate, in comparison with the un
happy constitution of other governments,
it is of such supreme exceUence and

AND RETRIBUTIVE AWARDS. 71
blessedness, as to constitute for us an
immense ground of thanksgiving and
responsibility. A sixth element of national gratitude
is freedom of opinion. I mention, this as
being the surest index and the raost ira-
portant result of civU and religious liber
ty. We can scarcely appreciate this
blessing in our own country, for, like the
air that wc breathe, it has been round
about us from our infancy. But the pages
of history are a perpetual record of wars
and persecutions on account of opinion.
Political opinions, religious opinions, and
even philosophical opinions, when they
have been supposed to run counter to the
tenets- of the Church, have been prose-r
cuted as crimes. Our discourse would
be filled with names only, should we at
tempt to enumerate even a small part In
the list of the martyrs of opinion. But
are not all men free to think.'' it may be

72 NATIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES
asked. Yes ! as much as a prisoner in his
cell is free to go the length of his chain,
or to walk from one wall to the other. But
can outward shackles or threats of per
secution stop the freedom of opinion .'' Most
assuredly. They induce the habit of slavish
thinking ; they make the mind's habitual
state a state of bondage ; they raake it
think, not freely, but according to received
rules and dogmas, and paths traced out.
The interdict against the free pubUcation
of opinion is an interdict also upon the
formation of opinion, for it is as true, as it
is beautifully expressed, that
 Thoughts shut up want air,
And spoil, like bales unopened to the sun; 
and so, in a very short time there will be
no wholesome thought at all. The mind
suffocates in such a prison, just as a light,
put beneath an air-tight receiver, is extin
guished. Even in this country, free as it is,
there is yet the element of bondage and

AND RETRIBUTIVE AWARDS. 73
of persecution. Even here there are so
many adverse influences, that in raaking
your investigations in dark quarters with
the torch of truth, you need to have a safe
ty lamp, Uke Sir Humphrey Davy's in
vention, which you may thrust, with its
Ught, into the midst of the irapurest gases,
or the moment it touches them they will
hlow you up- StiU, there is a freedom of
opinion in this country greater and mcpre
absolute than any where in the, world- It
constitutes a most important element in
our causes of national thanksgiving.
The seventh and last element, which I
shaU mention, is that, of good commo^ji
schools. I take this as the ci;iteriofi,of
excellence and unlversaUty in a, national
education. No language can tell the great?
neas of this blessing. In the possession
and the right use of it, any country would
rise to, greatness and prosperity. Good
common schools, the comraon schools of
7*

74 NATIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES
New-England, are a mighty and blessed
discipline to the mind, the heart, the con
science. They put the elements of power
into every hand, and teach every mind to
govern them. It were to be wished that
a vast deal more of care and attention
were devoted to them in this state and
city. We have only to step over into
England, and we may there see, for want
of that comraon blessing of our land, com
mon schools, the benefit of that other great
blessing, Sabbath schools, in a great
degree unknown. For the Sabbath
school in England is merely two hours of
the common day school of this country
turned into the Sabbath, to give to the
poor the miserable apology for that inesti
mable blessing, from the enjoyment of
which they are excluded d uring the week.*
It is a good element in our common
school instruction that it is not sectarian.
* Note A.

AND RETRIBUTIVE AWARDS. 75
And it ought never to become so. In
countries the least enUghtened, and the
most despotic, it is ; the genius of the
Roman Catholic religion makes it so.
And, truly, I wonder that the advocates
of that religion in this country should
have had so Uttle of their wonted saga
city as to be wilUng to expose and obtrude
into notice so obnoxious a feature in their
system. I wonder that they do not also
clainithat a particular portion of heaven's
atmosphere be walled up from the rest
of the canopy that overhangs our city,
and consecrated to their exclusive posses
sion. The air that we breathe is not more
the free, unmortgaged, unprejudiced, and
equal property of all, than ought to be the
element of common school instruction.*
With these grand elements of national
blessedness and thanksgiving, a world
might be up in arms against us, and we
• Note B.

76 NATIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES
could Stand the shock ; a world might be
sunk in wretchedness, and we could
bless, redeem, and save It. We are
bound to see to it, that we do not neu
tralize the power and benefit of these
blessings, and the power of our own ex
ample over the nations, by the practice
of iniquity among ourselves; of iniquity,
perhaps, which every civilized nation
under heaven has abandoned. It is to
be fondly hoped that God will not per
mit us so to thwart his goodness.. In the
atrocious iniquity committed by the. Eng
lish nation in its attack upon the Chinese
Empire, for the defence of the privilege
of poisoning the natives of that Empire
with smuggled opiura, we can see' how
far even a professedly Christian people
may go in acts that renders Its moral
power over others a nuUity and a laugh
ing stock. We are bound to avoid such
monstrous inconsistencies, and not only

AND RETRIBUTIVE AWARDS. 77
to take care, for ourselves, of the bless
ings God has bestowed upon us, but to
use them as the means of blessedness to
the world. We are bound to watch over,
for ourselves and others, the element of
freedom of opinion, that it do not dege
nerate into licentiousness and atheism ;
of a free government, that it be justly ad
ministered ; of comraon schools, that they
be well taught and every where provided
for ; of the word of God, that it be every
where disseminated ; of the Gospel, that
it be preached in purity ; of the Sabbath,
that it be not desecrated and abused ; of
revivals of religion, that they be not,
through the sins of the people, and the
lukewarmness of the Church, permitted
to cease from existence.
Perhaps there is not another nation in
the world that possesses together all
these elements of blessedness, these
merciful tokens of God's peculiar favor.

78 NATIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES
I am sure there is no other people pos
sessing them to the degree that we do.
Nor is it in the power of language to des
cribe, or of the mind to measure, the ex
tent of obligation and responsibility with
which they load us as a nation. They
open before us, and urge upon us, a ca
reer of benevolence and glory, such as
no other people ever entered on, such as
no other can command. They mark as
distinctly a great design of God in regard
to us, as if some aged prophet of the
Lord — sorae raajestic, heaven-inspired
Isaiah — three thousand years ago, had
written down, as in the case of Cyrus,
our very name and character in the scroll
of his predictions. The thought of the
possibility of a waste and abuse of these
mercies, a failure of these high purposes
of God in regard to us, is painful in the
extreme. How much more so, if the
view of our obstinately cherished sins, our

AND RETRIBUTIVE AWARDS. 79
forming habits, and the festering evils in
our system, render it in the least de
gree probable. Surely, there is a voice
to us, as there was to ancient Israel,
from the bright array of our spiritual
mercies especiaUy, and in reference to
their peculiarity — " YOU only have I
known of all the nations of the earth,
therefore YOU will I punish for all your
iniquities !" And God has preserved
that degraded and all but annihilated
people, with the marks of his wrath upon
them, in the sight of the nations, as it
were Uke a lost archangel with the deep
thunder scars of his fall entrenched in
his once bright countenance, to teach
surviving empires, on a most rnlghty and
terrific scale of vengeance, the aw'ful
consequences of despised mercies, guilt
persisted in, and vast responsibilities
abused. Let me repeat the lesson,

80 NATIONAL RKSPONSIBILITIES, ETC
copied by the instructive genius of Cow-
per, from the pages of inspiration :
Their glory faded, and their race dispersed,
The last of nations now, though once the first,
They warn and teach the proudest, would they learn,
Keep wisdom, or meet vengeance in your turn ;
If we escaped not, if Heaven spared not us,
Peeled, scattei'cd, and exterminated thus ;
If vice received her retribution due,
When we were visited, what hope for you ?
When God arises, with an awful frown,
To punish lust, or pluck presumption down,
When gifts perverted, or not duly prized.
Pleasure o'er valued and his grace despised,
Provoke the vengeance of his righteous hand,
To pour down wrath upon a thankless land,
He will be found impartially severe,
Too just to wink or speak the guilty clear-
" Behold, therefore," says the apostle
Paul, ia reference to the same grand and
tragic lesson ; "behold, therefore, the good
ness and severity of God ; on them which
fell severity, but towards thee goodness,
if thou continue in his goodness : other
wise, THOtJ ALSO SHALT BE CUT OFF."

PART SECOND.
INDICATIONS OF THE DIVINE PROVIDENCE CONCERN
ING THE DESTINY AND DUTY OF THE
UNITED STATES.

The time of rest, the promised Sabbath, comes !
Six thousand years of sorrow have well nigh
Fulfilled their tardy and disastrous course
Over a sinful world ; and what remains
Of this tempestuous state of human things,
Is merely as the working of the sea
Before a calm, that rocks itself to rest: —
For he, whose car tho winds are, and the clouds
The dust that waits upon his sultry march,
When sin hath moved him, and hia wrath is hot, —
Shall visit earth in mercy ; shall descend
Propitious in his chariot paved with love ;
And what his storms have blasted and defaced
For man's revolt, shall with a smile repair.
The Task. Book VI.

CHAPTER V.
PARTICULARS OF THE DIVINE PROVIDENCE.— OUR
ORIGIN.— OUR GOVERNMENT.— OUR PREVIOUS AND
SUCCESSIVE DISCIPLINE.— FREEDOM FROM A REU
GIOUS ESTABLISHMENT.
It would be difficult to find a more
solemn and definite announcement of the
rule of God's providence towards us as a
people, than is contained in the passage
adduced at the close of the preceding
chapter. There can be no doubt that it
is addressed to nations as well as indivi
duals ; to the Gentile nation in contradis
tinction from the Jewish nation. We are
admonished by the fall of the Jews, the
rejection of the natural branches of the
olive, to beware, lest on account of our

84 DISCIPLINE, DESTINY, AND DUTY
sins, God reject us also, who at best, are
only grafted in upon the original stock.
For eighteen centuries the experience of
nations has been commenting upon this
text ; and even that of England and Ame
rica may yet have to be annexed to it, in
the course of the divine indignation on
account of national sins. Doubtless, there
is ample time and verge enough within
the scope of the vast circle of prophecy,
for such an additional iUustration of God's
justice on a mighty scale. The Divine Be
ing might make a short work upon the earth ,
and yet within its limits there might be
traced the overthrow and destruction of a
nation like our own, because of our in
gratitude, and the selection and prepara
tion of another people for the accomplish
ment of the Divine purposes of mercy to
the world. Nevertheless, we hope that
in regard both to our own and the whole
world's evangelization, the commands

OF THE UNITED STATES. 85
laid upon us, are no greater than God will
yet bestow the power, the willingness, and
the grace to accomplish. In this hope,
after the survey we have taken of the
more general methods of God's providence
among the nations, and of the more im
portant elements of national gratitude and
responsibility, let us now endeavor to
trace a little more closely the tenor of
God's discipline in regard to ourselves,
and the grand divine purpose indicated
by it.
Among the circumstances that combine
to put a great degree of moral power into
our hands, and to invest us with great re
sponsibilities, we may enumerate the fol
lowing particulars.
1. Our origin as a people has been no
ble. We are made out of the sternest
materials the world could furnish. Our
ancestry were self-denying, heroic, ener
getic, pious. The older the world grows,
8*

86 DISCIPLINE, DESTINY, AND DUTY
the more will it honor the name of Puri
tan. That title will be a synonyme for
all that is illustrious in patriotism, fearless
in liberty, devoted in piety. Our Puritan
fathers were the best spirits of England.
Born in agitated times, nursed in the iron
cradle of persecution, freemen of the freest
country then upon earth, and freemen by
a yet nobler title, with the liberty that
Christ gives to his people.
A truly virtuous parentage, is the no
blest inheritance of individuals. The son
of Edmund Burke would have been
moulded by the spirit, and animated by
the memory, and mantled around with
the moral power of so illustrious a father.
It is still nobler for a whole people. None
can teU the prodigious moral power we
derive from habits induced, and senti
ments instilled into the common mind in
the childhood of our existence, by men
that walked with God. They kept the

QF THE UNITED STATES. 87
Sabbath ; and to this circumstance is
owing the superior sacredness of that
day's observance in this country, com
pared with its almost universal desecra
tion in other countries. You may call it
a prejudice, if you will, that extreme vene
ration of feeling and strictness of practice,
but to be girded in our infancy by such
prejudices, is to have an iron constitution
for God's service in our manhood.
In every respect our origin imposes
upon us vast obligations. It was so extra
ordinary as to fix upon us the gaze of
nations. Born of such parents, it is
demanded, it is expected, that our whole
existence shall be a lofty course of freedom
and piety, expansive as the world, and
lasting as the continent we inhabit. Our
ancestors were men of prayer. Their
supplications gird us about, even now,
like a wall of adamant. They offered
them in faith and fervor, amidst trial and

88 DISCIPLINE, DESTINY, AND DUTY
distress ; they probably behold an answer
every day, in the blessings that we re
ceive. By the power of such prayers
they are, as it were, still in the midst of
us, a band of righteous men, for whose
sake we may be spared and redeeraed,
though our own guilt threatens destruc
tion. 2. To such a discipline in our parent
age God has superadded the great and
blessed gift of a free government, simple
in its constitution, and emanating frora the
people. It was necessary to prepare a
people for such a gift by such a disci
pline. It could not have been bestowed
upon any other people already in exist
ence, and educated under the power of
principles, habits, and manners, at va
riance with it and inadequate to its sup
port. It grows out of and is adapted to
our circumstances ; our poUtical freedom
springs from our reUgious freedom ; and

OF THE UNITED STATES. 89
a form of government beneath which any
other people would run wild, or else
would soon convert it into some iron
form of despotism, fits us in its spirit and
texture as a coat of flexible mail fits the
body, and forms an instrument of prodi
gious power in all our moveraents.
We have a government that leaves us
at leisure to prosecute our purposes ; it
is a part of ourselves. In most cases
the government and the people, in theory
if not in practice, are at variance, just as
if the one were in essential enmity and
jealousy against the other. Hostility of
course arises, and nations have too much
to do with their own poUtical struggles
to look after the world's spiritual interests.
With us it is not so. Our government is
the people's government, and in it they
are secure. Whatever dispute there
may be as to the theoretical merits of
different forms of government, whether

90 DISCIPLINE, DESTINY, AND DUTY
the monarchical or the republican form
be the best, the question for us is settled
by a degree of happiness and prosperity
resulting from our republican constitution
unexampled in the whole world.
I beUeve that a repubUc, with that pre
paration for it which God has granted us,
is better fitted than any other form of
government forthe accomplishment ofhis
spiritual purposes of mercy to the world.
Its unostentatious frame-work and the
simplicity of its aim, adrait of a perfect
alliance with the spirit and precepts of
our religion. Most governments, being
in their very constitution nothing but con
trivances of individual or oligarchical
luxury, power, and pride, the religion of
the gospel cannot mingle with them, but
is compelled to stand aloof, and at the
uttermost can only do something to neu
tralize and mitigate their evil. The Bap
tism of the Nations wiU doubdess be

OF THE UNITED STATES. 91
vouchsafed to those first that are best pre
pared for it ; and in our view a republic
rightly administered constitutes a State,
in which there are the fewest obstacles in
the way of such a regeneration. Invete
rate national prejudices, antique che
rished abuses, and unjust practices
indulged, constitute aground of resistance
to the Holy Ghost in nations as weU as
individuals. The various establishments
of Great Britain are opposed to such a
National Baptism by the Divine Spirit as
has been referred to. The simplicity of
our institutions, on the other hand, favors
it. 3. The discipline by which we were
prepared for such a government has been
foUowed by a discipline in its establish
ment equaUy adapted to honor and sus
tain it. The character of our revolution
was worthy of the character and struggles
of our Puritan ancestors. The same lofty

92 DISCIPLINE, DESTINY, AND DUTY
principles were involved in it, and deve
loped, and estabUshed by it, in the sight of
all the world. It was a great thing, be
sides the blessing of a Puritan ancestry,
to be honored with the gift of such a being
as Washington for the second father of
his country. We came into existence as
an independent people under the most
favorable circumstances. Our birth was
not premature, nor were we rocked and
dandled into manhood. We were disci
plined by adversity, and had enough of
storm to indurate, without breaking our
frame. Our revolutionary contest is
known to have been sustained by prayer;
the formation of our constitution is asso
ciated with pious recollections ; for that,
too, was built up under the influence of
prayer. The more our history becomes
known, the more we shall be expected to
exhibit, wherever we go, a model of piety

OP the united states. 93
to God, as well as freedom and fearless
ness towards man.
Our atmosphere is the natural mountain
air of Uberty and piety, and as fast as
other nations become sufficiently enlight
ened and religious, our institutions, in es
sence and in spirit, will probably prevail.
As fast as wise revolutions take place in
other countries, as fast as thrones crum
ble, and tyranny breaks up, and the peo
ple grasp the power, they will look to us
with more earnestness, and a deeper
veneration. We shall have a hold on the
esteem and affections of the world, which
nothing but our own betrayal of their con
fidence by a career of crime can diminish.
Our very existence, in freedom and hap
piness, under a government more purely
popular and republican than has ever pre
vailed among civUized men from the be
ginning of the world, exerts, of itself, a
power over the nations utterly incalcula-
9

94 discipline, destiny, and duty
ble. All Europe would be in a very dif
ferent condition, if, from the influences
that have made Europe what it is, you
could abstract merely the example of the
continued existence of this nation.
4. In granting us the blessing of a free
governraent, God has also graciously sepa
rated his Church in this country, from a base
and unnatural dependance on the State,
and has granted us the blessing of a free
and independent church organization. He
has blessed us with a freedom from church
establishments, such as the world has not
seen, nor the church known, for many cen
turies. He has not permitted that politi
co-spiritual incubus to weigh us down ;
that source of pride, contention, worldli
ness, and vainglory to exist among us.
The deliverance of the Church from this
monstrous evil, it has cost longtime, and
a world of patient labor to work out. It
was no part even of the Reformation to

OF THE UNITED STATES. 95
accomplish this blessing. A refuge in the
wilderness of this western world must be
provided, and a band of holy men driven
into it by persecution ; and even now it
is only a few years since the perfect sepa
ration of the Church from the State was
accomplished in this country. The era
was worthy of a place in the chronology
of the most remarkable events in the
world's history ; for the perfection of
religious freedom is as rare and won
derful a possession as the perfection
of civil freedom. Indeed, till within
a few years its very existence has been
supposed impossible, and what men have
termed the voluntary principle, has been
regarded with the utmost horror, as if it
were the very annihilation of religion
among men, the disorganization and de
struction of aU religious societies.
The idea that God has instituted a
Church which cannot stand without the

96 DISCIPLINE, DESTINY, AND DUTY
arm of the civil governraent to lean upon,
is but part of that system which supposes
the people to exist for the pleasure of their
rulers, and not the rulers at the will and
for the good of the people. ReUgion being
the dearest of all human possessions, if
the civil government can tyrannize over
that, its despotism over all other things is
unlimited and secure. Tbe idea, therefore,
that religion is not a great governmental
estabUshment, but a popular and volun
tary thing, annihilates an old and sanctified
prejudice, and strikes down one of the
strongest buttresses of tyranny. In truth,
voluntary associations of any kind, con
tain within themselves the germ of civil
and religious freedom. If men can do one
thing without the intervention either of a
bench of bishops or a bench of peers, they
can another, so that voluntary associa
tions do, sooner or later, carry in them
selves the death warrant both of civil and

OE THE UNITED STATES. 97
ecclesiastical despotism. In the success
ful example and experiment of the Church
in this country, a monstrous and tyranni
cal prejudice has been shaken and rooted
from its foundation, which, under what
ever goodly name or form, has filled society
with persecution, bloodshed, and bond
age, and which, if not overthrown, would
have rendered the complete triumph of
the Gospel, in the accomplishment of the
world's evangelization, impossible.
To show, in one particular direction,
the nature of establishments, as an obsta
cle against the spread of the Gospel, —
the unalterable essence of the spirit of
bigotry, domination, and exclusiveness
connected with them, — it is enough to
notice the following fact. A clergyman
of the Church of England, being on hea
then ground, proposed attending a prayer-
meeting held by the missionaries of the
American Board. He . was threatened
9*

98 DISCIPLINE, DESTINY, AND DUTY
by another Episcopal clergyman, though
not of the Church of England, but of this
country, and it would seem outrunning
even his brother of the establishment in
the comprehensive energy and despotic
consistency of High Church principles,
that if he did dare attend the unhallowed
conventicle, he should be complained of
to the established authorities of his Mother
Church. Rather than make difficulty, the
divinely ordained servant of the estab
lishment, exorcised of the inconsistent
spirit of liberality and lowliness, submis
sively repressed his yearnings after com
munion with his missionary praying
brethren, and inasmuch as that was all
that an establishment could there do to
show its superiority, or to maintain the
exclusive divine right and dignity of
Episcopal ordination, left the unanointed
missionaries to pray alone ! Poor, forlorn,
proscribed disciples ! Had it been a

OF THE UNITED STATES. 99
little earUer in the world's history, instead
of quietly pursuing your holy work, with
silent pity for the arrogant assumptions
of your brethren, and the exhibition of
a spirit so inconsistent with the business
of the world's conversion, you would have
expiated your offence perhaps within
the walls of a prison ! In the good
providence of God, it is mainly through
the existence of a Church without an
establishraent in this country, that it
has come to be possible for a society of
Christians not only to pray alone and un
molested any where, but even to be
honored and revered of men, and sanc
tioned and glorified in the descent of
the Divine Spirit, though untitled, and
unsanctioned, either by the seal of
Pope or Bishop, King or Queen.
What could be supposed, as to the pros
pect of the world's evangelization, if the
spirit of the gospel, instead of being that

100 DISCIPLINE, DESTINY, AND DUTY
free, unshackled, benevolent, ethereal
essence that it is, had been the narrow,
proud, exclusive, dictatorial, persecuting,
papistical spirit, that constitutes the
essence of a prelatical, and, — in reference
to the war it has waged against all sects
not within its own bosom, I had almost
said — piratical establishment ! To con
vert this world unto Christ, a religion is
needed, not of forms and ceremonies, and
arrogant assumptions and titles, but a
reUgion of humility, meekness, and love ;
a religion that can, if need be, become all
things to all men, and not a religion
which, even on heathen ground, would
rather part with the spirit of the gospel
itself, than relinquish a solitary jot of its
unhallowed, haughty, bigoted pretensions.
I regard the delineation of the New Jeru
salem, in the Book of John's revelation, as
a remarkable description of the nature
of that religion which is to fill the world.

OF THE UNITED STATES. 101
I SAW NO Temple therein : for the
Loud God Almighty and the Lamb
ARE the Temple op it. A most signi
ficant indication is here presented of the
liberty, universality, and omnipresence,
like the all-penetrating and surrounding
air, of that worship of God, which is one
day to fill the earth with its blessedness.
There will be no mediatorial images,
crosses, liturgies, or exclusive ceremonies,
to come between the soul and God ; or
to monopolize and stereotype the expres
sion of its piety ; no self-assumptive
titles, or arrogant pretensions to the sole
divine sanction ; no cathedrals or orato-
tories where God so exclusively abides,
that none can rightly worship but within
their sacred precincts ; but a presence
and a worship that gathers, not sects and
churches merely, nor Presbyterian, nor
Episcopal, nor prelatical establishments,
but whole nations into its bosom !

CHAPTER VI.

PARTICULARS OP THE DIVINE PROVIDENCE CONTI
NUED.— A REGENERATED AND EDUCATED MINIS
TRY.— REVIVALS OF RELIGION.— PREVALENCE OF
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

5. Next to the blessing of freedom
from a religious establishment may be
named, as fitting us for a great share in
the world's evangelization, an enlightened
and converted ministry, and a high stand
ard of theological education. For the
last great conflict with the powers of
darkness, a ministry is needed possessing
the spirit and conversant with the riches
of God's word, a ministry girded with tbe
armor of righteousness on the right hand
and on the left, and of practised skill in
the use of it. Now there can be no doubt

OP the uniped states. 103
that theological education is advancing
to a perfection in this country, the educa
tion both of knowledge amassed and
practical experience gained, such as it
has reached in no other ; a circumstance
that may encourage us to believe that we
are destined for an instrumentality in the
advancement of the Redeemer's King
dom among the nations, not local or tem
porary, but universal and perpetual.
6. Next to this, and in close connection
with it, is to be named the gift of the Holy
Spirit in revivals of reUgion. Year after
year we may hope they are becoming
wider, deeper, more constant. We may
hope in the divine mercy, that throughout
the nation this leaven of blessedness wiU
continue to work, till the whole is leaven
ed ; nay, we have soiiie reason to believe
that God wUl make even us> as a people,
his first example of a great nation wholly
penetrated with the influence, and obe^

104 DISCIPLINE, DESTINY, AND DUTY.
dient to the principles of Divine Grace.
At any rate, the moral power which
revivals of religion continued must
give, is immense ; the responsibility they
lay upon us cannot be conceived. To
what extent it may please God to work
speedily, in the same glorious manner, in
other countries, we cannot tell ; we may
hope he is preparing the way ; and doubt
less, if we are humble and prayerful, he
will continue the blessing to us, and make
revivals here the forerunners and instru
ments in producing them elsewhere.
Thus, while religion flourishes at home,
our reUgious power abroad will be mag
nified to a gigantic extent. As the foun
tain deepens and widens here, we may
multiply its streams throughout the earth ;
not only to carry salvation to the heathen,
but to refresh, invigorate, and purify the
old and corrupt estabUshments of all
Christendom.

OF THE UNITED STATES. 105
Our revivals are a display of God's
mercy and grace, that already has stirred
up the dormant energies of the English
church, and has excited the wonder, the
investigation, the prayers, and the imita
tion of pious men throughout Great Bri
tain. Then, too, the greatest revival of
religion in modern times, the revival in
the Sandwich Islands, has taken place by
God's mercy, under the instrumentality of
our missionaries. The influence of these
things must be felt, wherever they are
heard of, and the transaction of reUgious
phenomena so wonderful, so glorious, will
make the nations be looking for a vast in
crease of our pious enterprise and activity.
And while these effusions of the Spirit
must, of necessity, rouse such an expecta
tion, they will give us the power, provided
we keep at the foot of the cross, where
only our safety lies, amply to fulfil it.
They are, indeed, a consolation amidst all
10

106 DISCIPLINE, DESTINY, AND DUTY
our fears ; they call for unceasing grati
tude to God, of whose patience, forbear
ance, and infinite compassion, they are so
astonishing an exhibition. Notwithstand
ing the dark signs of the times, they hold
out to us the animating hope, that he de
signs this country to be yet the main
instrument in the world's regeneration ;
and that he is beginning to prepare the
American church, by a vast access to her
numbers, elevation of her purity, and in
crease of her light, for the magnificent
scale of exertion on which her enterprises
are hereafter to be cond acted.
7. We speak a language containing vast
treasures of reUgious wisdom, and verna
cular, more or less, over a large portion of
the globe, and for this and other causes,
perhaps destined to become an organ of in
ternational communication more universal
than any other tongue. The students at
the missionary seminary at Basle in Ger-

OF THE UNITED STATES. 107
many, well denominated the English lan
guage the missionary language. It might
almost be called the language of reUgion,
in reference to the vast treasures of theo
logical science, the mines of religious
truth, and above all, the inestimable works
of practical piety, of which it furnishes
the key. There is in it a capital of specu
lative and practical theology, rich and
deep enough for the whole world to
draw upon. From time to time, God
himself has especially honored it, and
prepared it raore and raore for his glory,
by giving to the world, through its me
dium, such works as the Pilgrim's Pro
gress and the Paradise Lost. It is the
language of Protestantism, the language
of civil and religious freedom, the lan
guage of commercial enterprise, the lan
guage spoken by the greater portion of
seamen in the world. It is the language
of the two freest, most enterprising, most

108 DISCIPLINE, DESTINY, AND DUTY
powerful, and so far as the appellation
can at present be admitted in a national
sense, most truly Christian nations on the
globe. The EngUsh tongue owes so much of
its power and beauty to the Scriptures,
that for this reason alone it is almost a
sanctified instrument for the Church to
work with. The common translation of
the Bible, both in Germany and England,
exerted the most beneficial influence in
mould ing the language, as well as the mind
and morals of the people. Perhaps it has
done more in the formation of our lan
guage, and the preservation of its purity,
than all other causes. Bunyan is the
most remarkable example of its agency in
the development of genius. It was his
intense study of the English Bible that
gave him the command of a style of such
native, idiomatic, simplicity and beauty.
For him the Scriptures were his mind's

OF THE UNITED STATES. 109
sole storehouse, both of words and images,
and his sensibilities opened beneath their
influence, as the flowers open to the sun.
To the sarae ennobling inspiration the
greatest of the English poets were indebt^
ed almost as much as he. So were the
best prose-writers. Their minds were aU
baptized in the same cloud of glory, and
aU passed through the same invigorating,
shining sea. And indeed, if we could
suppose the whole of that part of British
literature drawn away, which, in thpught
and imagination, in feeling and energy,
sprung from the ' same fountain, there
would remain hardly the skeleton of its
living beauty. It would be like the
lifeless, inexpressive canvass of a vast
painting, from which you have destroyed
the whole perspective, and blotted out
the imaginative Ughts and shades.
Taking all these influences into con
sideration, there is not another language
10»

110 DISCIPLINE, DESTINY, AND DUTY, ETC.
in the world so sacred, so connected with
holy associations, and, for the treasures
of religion which it embalms, so import
ant to man's highest interests, as the
English language. We therefore cannot
but regard its increasing prevalence as a
great and special indication of the provi
dence of God. The time is not far dis
tant, other causes being supposed to main
tain their influence, when this language
shall have become an organ for the world's
literature ; and in addition to this, if we
mistake not, the world's religious book-
mart, and most elevated and important
literary centre, will be found in America.
The probability of this will be made more
evident in the light of the next grand
topic in our enumeration.

CHAPTER VII.
ENUSrERATION CONTINUED.— RAPID INCREASE OF OUR
POPULATION.— OUR COMMON SCHOOL EDUCATION.—
OUR RELATIVE GEOGRAPHICAL POSITION.
8. The imraense population, speaking
the English language, which is soon to
sweU the census of the United States, is
another point of God's providence and
discipline towards us, of incalculable im
portance. It gives to every other consi
deration a hundred fold weight in our
view. It gives magnitude even to trifles.
The tide of our population rolls on with
tremendous rapidity and power. When
Mr. Evarts committed the last gift of his
devoted spirit to the church of Christ in
this country, in that sublime, prophetic,

112 DISCIPLINE, DESTINY, AND DUTY
and almost inspired production, on the
Moral Destiny of the United States, he
made the calculation, based on the safest
and most probable positions, that in one
hundred and seventy years frora that day,
the descendants of the present inhabitants
of the United States would amount to one
THOUSAND millions ! If any one is
startled at such an assertion, this being a
number greater than the present entire
population of the globe, let it be remem
bered that it has been computed, after a
careful estimate of the capabilities of
America, that, with the present degree of
knowledge, and without any reUance upon
future discoveries in agriculture and the
arts, this whole continent will sustain at
least two thousand millions of inhabitants
in circumstances of comfort.
But the extreme nearness of this vast
population to ourselves, and t^e conse
quent incalculable power which the insti-

OF THE UNITED STATES. 113
tutions and the spirit of this present gene
ration are to exert in moulding its charac
ter and destiny, constitute the grand point
of importance in every benevolent mind.
Within the period when the grand-chil
dren of those now upon the stage of ac
tion shall be the actors and spectators in
our stead, the population of this country
wiU have nearly or quite reached the sura
of two hundred milUons. In all human
experience, no community were ever
placed, by their mere relative position on
the banks of the stream of time, at a point
of such commanding, such overwhelming
influence and responsibility. The drama
which successive generations have been
playing on the theatre of existence, be
comes a transitory, dream-like mockery,
when compared with the seriousness and
lasting importance of ours.
Our p^ulation doubles once in twenty-
three years. But to keep within the

114 DISCIPLINE, DESTINY, AND DUTY
most probable limits, and on this side
reality, we may best take the period for
doubling at twenty-five years. Our
population may now be safely assumed
at eighteen millions. In twenty-five
years from this time, in the year 1865, it
will therefore be thirty-six millions. In
1888, in fifty years from this present period,
it will be seventy-two millions. In se
venty-five years it will amount to one hun
dred and forty-four millions. And in one
hundred years, there will be in these
United States, and by the good pleasure
of God, under the same government that
now blesses us, and speaking the same
language which we speak, two hundred
and eighty-eight milUons of human beings.
Going one step further in the calculation,
in the space of only one hundred and
twenty-five years from this day, five
hundred and seventy-six miUions of im-

OF THE UNITED STATES. 115
mortal beings will form the tremendous
mass of the population of this country !
The thought becomes so overwhelm
ing, that it seems wUd, chimerical, incre
dible. And yet, allowing the ratio be
tween holiness and wickedness to remain
even as it is, and that there be no increase
in the proportion of piety in our land,
even on such an unfavorable supposition,
except God himselfinterpose, with sorae
vast and awful judgment, the computa
tion is sure. Methinks now we are ready
to exclaim that the welfare of such a
future population of our own is an object
of quite as vast importance, as the evan
gelization of the whole world besides.
And this is most true. But it is equally
true that, so far as we are concerned, the
two enterprises of this country's and the
world's evangelization must advance or
fluctuate, stand or fall together. Our
own destiny is not more indissolubly

116 DISCIPLINE, DESTINY, AND DUTY
linked with the one than with the other.
If we do our part for the evangelization
of the world, we save ourselves ; if we
neglect that, we destroy ourselves. The
two experiments are before us, and the
one is just as completely under our con
trol, as the other.
If the influence exerted over the throng
ing multitude of our posterity be such,
that holiness shall grow up among us as
fast as our knowledge and population, it
is easy to see that the whole world's evan
gelization through our instrumentality is
within our reach. We may soon com
mand the moral machinery of all the
globe. Not the most distant and the
wildest of earth's inhabited regions, but
must be moved and shaken by the im
pulse, whenever we touch the spring.
We may take whole nations by the hand,
and raise them up to civil and religious
liberty, and, under God, infuse into their

OF THE UNITED STATES. 117
very frame-work the vital spirit of the
gospel. No alliance of tyranny and
superstition will be able to stand before
us ; by a single look we might almost
frown down the strongest combinations
of wickedness. By the pure, simple,
blessed, legitimate influence of united
knowledge and holiness, we may exert
over all nations a power more absolutely
despotic, and for its spirituality, infinitely
more glorious, than Rome, with all her
legions, ever possessed, in the most uni
versal extent of her empire. Let the
bare existence of a truly christian nation,
with a population of five hundred mil
Uons be supposed, and the whole world's
evangelization follows almost inevitably.
On the other hand, if wickedness prevail,
while population and knowledge increase,
what iraagination can picture the tumultu
ous frightful reign of anarchy and crime.
It will be as if the infernal fiends had
11

118 DISCIPLINE, DESTINY, AND DUTY
moved up from heU to earth, and made
this the grand scene oftheir most gigantic
operations. 9. In the light of this last topic of the
increase of our population may be viewed,
in the ninth place, the real iraportance of
that great gift of God's providence to this
country, the universality of a good com
mon education. There is araong us an
universal diffusion of knowledge, which
is unexampled in the world. If this be
continued, and the salt of divine grace be
cast into our common schools, we have a
security for order and happiness among
ourselves, and a sure foundation of intel
ligent benevolent effort throughout the
earth. There is no way in which we can
do more for our future welfare, more to
accomplish God's designs of mercy, and
in the language of Scripture, raise up the
foundations of many generations for the
divine glory, than by devoting the most

OF THE UNITED STATES. 119
scrupulous, unremitting, religious atten
tion to our common schools.
10. In the tenth and last place in this
enumeration, the geographical position of
our country must be considered as not
the least among the circumstances favor
able to the vast extent of our moral
power. Our situation with respect to other
countries and political powers, gives us
security and repose. The state of all Eu
rope is in the highest degree critical and
uncertain. In the calmest times there are
tremendous causes at work, volcanoes
that may break forth at any moment. In
a time of profound peace, I have passed,
in European cities, through pubUc squares
faced with cannon, and have been pressed
by the soldiery on guard, within, the Une
of enclosure which I had transgressed.
Whence was this .'' Was it because, in a
period of excitement, or with causes ex
isting to produce it, those squares would

120 DISCIPLINE, DESTINY, AND DUTY
become the places of assemblage, and
therefore must be fortified in terrorem, be
forehand.^ Men walk, in that part of the
world, over hidden, hot embers, suppositos
cineri doloso, seemingly dead and covered
with ashes, but ready at any moment to
burst into a devouring flame. The ele
ments of democracy are at work, a repub
Ucan tendency and struggle is manifest,
the day of retribution for ages of misrule
and oppression is yet to come. Envy and
discontent, the consciousness of misery
and tyranny, and the desire of change,
are at work in the lower ranks, without
knowledge and virtue to balance and to
guide. Many overturnings must take
place, and perhaps an universal breaking
up of the established order of things in
Europe, before the preparation neces
sary for the coming of Christ's king-
dora in power and permanence shall be
found among the nations.

OP THE UNITED STATES. 121
In comparison with ourselves, Europe is
Uke a region at the base of a volcano.
How narrowly have the nations just es
caped being hurried into universal war!
War is their passion and their habit, and
the slightest cause may prom pt it ; and then
the kingdoms that have heretofore bee.o
most actively engaged in the enterprises
of christian benevolence, may be thrown
back in piety, and paralyzed in their spir
itual energies, to an unspeakable degresi
We look on, from this distant side of
the world, in quiet and security. We
are now, and unless the curse cornea upon
us for our ingratitude, and we be smitten
with madness and blindness and astonish
ment of heart, so as to rush uncalled into
the battle, we may keep ourselves to the
end of time, utterly aloof frora the wars
and fightings that agitate and tear the
bosom of the continent of Europe. We
hear the din of their quarrels, the shock
11*

122 DISCIPLINE, DESTINY, AND DUTY, ETC.
of their contending armies, but have no
motive whatever to engage in the commo
tion. We may go on rapidly and silently,
and peacefully in the great work to which
the Lord our God hath called us, over
shadowed by his wings, and supremely
blessed in being raade his instruments to
carry the glad tidings of salvation even to
the ends of the earth. As the tribe of
Levi was separated from araong the rest
of the tribes of Israel, and consecrated
to the exclusive service of Jehovah, so
may this great people, while other nations
are waging bitter strife, or absorbed in
earthly pursuits, advance in an uninter
rupted career of holy benevolence, and
become God's priesthood to a world!

CHAPTER VIII.
DESIGNS OF GOD IN OUR DISCIPLINE, AND THE
BLESSEDNESS OF THEIR FULFILMENT ON OUR
PART. Having endeavored to trace some
of the circumstances of God's discipline
in regard to us, and to weigh the degree
of moral power over the nations which
those circumstances conspire to put
into our hands, it is hardly necessary
to ask what are the designs of God
in laying upon us such responsi
bilities. The responsibihties them
selves indicate a mighty design, and
mark out a magnificent career of duty.
The. blessings that constitute the founda
tion of our responsibilities, constitute also
the revelation of God's will concerning

124 DISCIPLINE, DESTINY, AND DUTY
US, and afford, at the same time, the
means of fulfilling it. That the discipline
of the divine providence in our case has
been peculiarly grand, intense, and
blessed, it would require the stupidity
and bUndness of an atheist to deny. We
may say with as much propriety as
Israel of old, " He hath not dealt so with
any people." That this peculiar disci
pline indicates a peculiar and equally
important purpose is just as mani
fest ; and it is difficult to believe
that God will suffer the raoral, intellec
tual, and physical training of this peopleon
so magnificent a scale, and with such vast
and glorious objects to be accomplished
by it, utterly to fail. Nevertheless, the
voice of warning issues from the sacred
word, with a solemnity deepened by the
fall of the chosen people of God, after a
majestic training and probation of more
than a thousand years, — " At what instant

OF THE UNITED STATES. 125
I shall speak concerning a nation and con
cerning a kingdom to build and to plant
it, if it do evU in my sight, that it obey
not my voice, then I will repent of this
good wherewith I said I will benefit them."
And the echo of this solemn declaration
comes to us from the New Testament,
" Behold therefore the goodness and
severity of God ; on thera which fell,
severity, but towards thee goodness, if
thou continue in his goodness, otherwise
THOU ALSO SHALT BE CUT OFF !"
We think there are indications which
show two great lines of the Divine Provi
dence converging. One is in the mani
fest general preparation going on among
%e nations for the accomplishment of
God's great purposes, as revealed in his
word ; the other is in the corresponding
discipline of our own country in particular.
We are Uttle more than a half century
old, and yet in this time we have become

126 discipline, destiny, and duty
a strong nation, and as a church, able,
perhaps, to do more than any other
in the world. The blessing of youth
as a nation, at such a period as
this, it is difficult to realize. Com
pared with the stiffness and rigidity of
age in some nations, and the marks of
decay in others, our spirit is as fresh and
elastic, our strength as vigorous, and our
mind as ductile, as if ours were indeed
the glow of unperverted childhood. We
have no national habits or prejudices
formed under the old order of things, and
difficult to be relinquished, and there is in
us a quickness and ability to embrace
opportunities and conjunctures, which in
the nature of things other nations cannot
possess. Our religious enterprises and
our benevolent societies, as well as our
secular and business undertakings, have
the same glow of life and activity, and
almost every train of influences that could

OF THE UNITED STATES. 127
be desired is in some way or other in
operation. All this has taken place suddenly ; we
being like a nation born in a day, and at
a time which constitutes a great crisis, a
radiating point, a magnetic pole, as it
were, in the world's history. There is a
universal moveraent in society, a new ar
rangement of its elements, an increase of
its inventions and discoveries, the casting
up of a grand highway of the Gospel
among the nations. There is a cluster of
events and thoughts, in the present aspect
of things, of great power and significance.
It is but three or four centuries since tbe
very first discovery of this continent by
Columbus. In connexion with that world-
awakening event, and as if on purpose to
secure it from being turned into the ser
vice of the Man of Sin, then ascendant
and triumphant through the nations, carae
the great religious irradiation, the Refor-

128 DISCIPLINE, DESTINY, AND DUTY
mation through the instrumentality of Lu
ther, the discovery of a new world of
piety and intellect for raen's souls to dwell
in. About the sarae period, and as if on
purpose to fulfil the designs of God in
those events, the invention of printing rose
into useful and alraost universal applica
tion. Immediately upon these things, al
most as suddenly as report succeeds re
port in the earthquakes that shake the
physical world, foUowed the preparation
and planting of a church of Christ and a
Protestant nation growing out of it in this
country ; a church and a nation whose in
crease and results are watched with an
intense interest, in comparison with which
the whole continent besides, from north
to south, scarcely attracts attention.
Meanwhile, knowledge is every where in
creasing, steamships traverse the ocean,
the barriers material and moral, between
the nations, are breaking down, and old

OP THE UNITED STATES. 129
systems, religious and political, are fast
giving way.
Bringing thus into one view some of
the most grand and prominent events in
the world's recent history, and remember
ing that at this moment our own popula
tion has reached a census, from which it
is to rise with a suddenness that is almost
startling, to the highest amounfadmissible
in the nature of things upon this continent,
we cannot but feel that we are upon the
very eve of a development of great gran
deur and importance.
The lines of prophecy are converging,
and the trains of God's providence are
growing nearer and more crowded, as if
deepening to a great centre, and indica
ting some mighty consummation, just as
the near approach to a vast metropolis is
indicated by the multiplied avenues, the
augmented crowds, and the increasing
grandeur of the buildings. With every
12

130 DISCIPLINE, DESTINY, AND DUTY
division and variety of its processes
concentering to one subUme purpose,
the plan of God moves forward to
its completion. Empires and armies,
wars, whirlwinds, and pestilences, evil
men and devils, good institutions and bad
ones, commotions and revolutions, all pre
pare his way. He goes on overturning,
and overturning, and overturning, and
when about to revive his work, and in
wrath remember mercy, sometimes the
signs among the nations are more full of
commotion and terribleness than ever.
There is certainly no presumption in
the supposition that God has created, is
educating, and will sustain a peculiar
people to accomplish his great purposes
at such a crisis. Whether there be any
presumption in the supposition that we
ourselves are marked and destined for so
great and glorious an instrumentality, de
pends much upon our own manifestation
of character thus far, beneath the divine

OF THE UNITED STATES. 131
discipline, and upon the right study and
interpretations of the divine providence.
We cannot but hope, looking at the pre
sent state of the globe, and at the peculi
arities of our own national and ecclesias
tical history, that God is preparing the
poUtical and social relations of the world
for the philanthropic movements of a na
tion and a church so constituted and dis
ciplined. The divine providence has as marked
and definite a meaning in regard to nations
as to individuals, and sometiraeseven more
manifest. In this view, there is, ifl may so
speak, the comraenceraent of a new phase
of prophecy, and the grandeur of the scrip
tures, in their national proclamations, will
arrest every mind. A change passes over
the prophetic canvass ; it is filled with
grand and august figures. Godiscomingto
use nations like individuals, for the fulfil
ment of his purposes. His long rejected

132 DISCIPLINE, DESTINY, AND DUTY
people, the Jev^^s, begin to appear in the
picture, and those two great lines of pro
phecy, running consentaneously upon
them and other nations, seem ready to
unite in that point of glor^' indicated by
the great apostle to the Gentiles, when the
coming in of the fulness of the Gentiles and
the salvation of the Jews together, as mu
tual cause and effect, shall fill the world
with righteousness, and hasten the scheme
of redemption to its completion.
Let us look, for a moment, at the bles
sedness of the fulfilment, on our part, of
the great designs of the divine providence,
so marked and manifest in regard to us.
On the supposition, that, as a people, we
fulfil our personal duties to God, and grow
in hoUness in proportion as we grow in
power, the only supposition on which tbe
church ought to act ; the supposition, in
deed, which the church is bound to real
ize ; the picture that unfolds before the

OP THE UNITED STATES. 133
mind of the Christian, is such an one as
might employ the pencil of Isaiah. We
may realize, indeed, the brightest visions
of holiness, mercy, and happiness, con
tained in the scriptural delineations of the
reign of the Prince of peace. As indi
vidual Christians, we may sit each under
his own vine and fig tree, and devoutly
study our Bibles and grow in grace be
neath the influences of the sanctuary, and
no war shall desolate our habitation, or
grieve away the Spirit of the Lord. We
may walk about Zion, and tell the towers
thereof, and glory in her increasing
strength, and mark well her bulwarks,
and consider her palaces, and meet to
gether to pray and consult for the ad
vancement of the cause and kingdom of
our Saviour, and none shall molest us or
make us afraid.
As a nation of Christians, we may be a
crown of glory in the hand of the Lord,
12*

134 DISCIPLINE, DESTINY, AND DUTY
and a royal diadem in the hand of our
God. We may increase in spiritual wis
dom and humility, and universal devoted
ness to God, till holiness shall be written
even on the bells of our horses ; till our
officers become peace, our exactors righte
ousness, and every place religion. We
may cover our land with goodly temples
rising to the peaceful worship of Jehovah,
till from every elevation the eye may rest
upon their consecrated spires. We may
multiply societies of benevolence till
misery shall scarcely be known, and allure
ments to reformation, till hardly a prison
shall rear its black walls to the sight. No
slave shall then breathe in our air, or
trerable, in this laud of freedom, beneath
the rod of a taskmaster. Every yoke
shall be broken, every evil statute can
celled, and the oppressed shall go free.
Violence shall no more be heard in our
land, wasting nor destruction in our bor-

OF THE UNITED STATES. 135
ders ; we may call our walls salvation,
and our gates praise. We may build up
the schools of the prophets, and send the
Bible to every faraily, and a faithful, af
fectionate pastor to every hamlet, tUl the
days of our mourning shall be ended, and
the cry of the spiritually destitute no more
heard among us ; till indeed it shall be
said of us, " Thy people are all righteous."
Then no ordinance in our country's
statute book shall legalize the national
violation of the Sabbath, and no rude
noise of secular business intrude upon its
heavenly repose. Here I cannot forbear
a quotation from the sublime language of
that eloquent production of the former
Secretary of the American Board , to which
I have already referred. Speaking of the
time " when all the happy millions of this
continent shall live together as brethren,
adoring their Creator and Redeemer,"
" Then," said Mr. Evarts, " wiU be a day

136 DISCIPLINE, DESTINY, AND DUTY
of glory, such as the world has never yet
witnessed. As the sun rises on a Sab
bath morning, and travels westward from
Newfoundland to the Oregon, he will be
hold the countless millions assembling, as
if by a common impulse, in the temples
with which every valley, mountain, and
plain will be adorned. The morning
psalm and evening anthem will commence
with the multitudes on the Atlantic coast,
be sustained by the loud chorus of ten
thousand times ten thousand in the Valley
of the Mississippi, and prolonged by the
thousands of thousands on the shores of
the Pacific. Throughout this wide ex
panse, not a dissonant voice will be heard.
If, unhappily, there should be here and
there an individual whose heart is not in
unison with this divine employment he
wUl choose to be silent. Then the taber
nacle of God wiU be with men. Then
wiU it be seen and known to the universe,

OF THE UNITED STATES. 137
what the religion of the Bible can do even
on this side the grave, for a penitent, re
stored, and rejoicing world."
But this is not all ; it is the spirit of
MISSIONS which constitutes the spirit
and power even of a vital home religion.
Happy in the care of Him, who visits and
redeems his people, blest with civil and
religious freedom, and enioying all the
privileges of the sanctuary ourselves, we
may carry forth these blessings to the
darkest and most sorrowful corner of the
earth. We may enlarge and strengthen
our missionary societies, till their power
is felt through the habitable world, tUl
their ministers of mercy go forth to tell
the farthest and saddest outcasts of Israel
that Christ died to redeem them. With
no foreign armaments to support, and no
exhausting wars to drain us of our wealth,
we may pour incalculable riches into
the Lord's treasury for the heathen.

138 DISCIPLINE, DESTINY, AND DUTY, ETC.
We may in literal truth cause the out
goings of the morning and of the evening
to rejoice at the footsteps of our benevo
lence. We raay becorae the main instru
ment, in the hands of Jehovah, of accom
plishing the day and the state of univer
sal millennial glory. In the sweet lan
guage of Isaiah, whenever he speaks of
such a period, the wilderness and the
solitary place shall be glad for us, and
the desert shall rejoice and blossom as
the rose. We may apply to ourselves
the blessed predictions of the prophet, in
all their fulness and sublimity.
What we ¦may do is but the index of
what we ought. What God, in his provi
dence, has given us the ability and the
opportunity to accomplish, becomes our
duty to perform. For it is as true of na
tions as of individuals, that to him that
KNOWETH to do GOOD, AND DOETH IT NOT,
TO HIM IT IS SIN.

CHAPTER IX.
INTEREST AND GRANDEUR OF THE DIVINE EXPERI
MENT WITH US AS A PEOPLE.— CONDITIONS OF
SUCCESS.— CAUSES AT WORK TO DISTURB AND
THWART IT.
We cannot conceal from ourselves,
nor would we wish to do it, that the res
ponsibilities of every kind resting upon
this country are mightier than those which
belong to any other nation in the world.
Especially is this the case with the reli
gious responsibilities of a Christian
church which God has so remarkably
blessed. If we redeem them, it will be
glorious for us and glorious for the world.
It is good for us, on this mount of vision,
commanding on all sides an imraense
moral view, to call to mind our multipUed
responsibilities, and see what subUme

140 DISCIPLINE, DESTINY, AND DUTY
motives animate us onward. We stand
upon a lofty and imposing situation.
We are compassed about by a great cloud
of witnesses, being made a spectacle,
not only to the world, but to an innumera
ble company of angels and the spirits of
the just made perfect. It may be no
dream of the imagination, but an un
doubted reality, that higher orders of in
telligences are watching our movements
with intense interest, and that Paul, and
Peter, and John, and all the beloved
apostles of our Saviour, and all who have
since trod in their footsteps, and through
toil and pain and death inherited the
promises, are looking down upon us,
and waiting, 1 had almost said with pain
ful anxiety, the result of this mighty ex
periment. It seems as if Heaven had
placed our country in this situation to try
us ; to see whether we would faithfuUy
use the incalculable power in our hands

OF THE UNITED STATES. 14]!
for speeding forward the world's regene^-
ration, and if not, how many accumu
lated blessings we could waste and
reject. In conteraplating the picture of our
happiness in a course of national piety,
and in making such an enumeration of
our national talents for a wide moral influ
ence, we are not to forget that it is only
through a probation of severe and holy
discipline, that vve can hope to arrive at
the attainment of such glory. Nor must we
for a moment let the remembrance pass
from our minds, that it is "not by raight,
: nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith
THE Lord op Hosts," that the great work
is to be accomplished. We may have had
the noblest and most pious ancestry on
earth ; we may possess the freest institu
tions, the strongest physical power, the
most inexhaustible wealth, the highest
foreign influence and reputation ; we may
13

142 DISCIPLINE, DESTINY, AND DUTY
enjoy the most universal diffusion of
knowledge ; and what is more than all,
the Spirit of God may be poured out upon
us for a time in accumulated revivals of
religion ; and yet we may turn every one
of our vast capabilities to ruin, except
God keep us humble, and preserve in us
a spirit of deep contrition and depend
ance on him.
Besides, there Is another and a widely
different view of our whole subject.
There Is a gloomier prospect in the pro
babiUties of our country's future destiny.
There is at least one dark spot In our
moraland political horizon. Yet we cannot
suffer ourselves to believe that God will
permit, with the growth of our nation in
populousness and power, the continuance
of the enormous evil of slavery, the Indul
gence of that great sin, which would in
evitably prove the destruction of all our
hopes of usefulness and glory. If he

OF THE UNITED STATES. 143
should do this, and give us over, like his
ancient people, to our own heart's lusts
then we should indeed become a signal
and terrible example of God's holy indig
nation. Then, in the prophetic language
of Milton, and with allusion to our past
extraordinary history, " as If God were
weary of protecting us, we shall be seen to
have passed through the fre, that we might
perish in the smoke," For we cannot our
selves remain free, and yet persist in im
posing bondage on others. " And It
usually happens," (that great writer pro
foundly reraarks In his Second Defence
of the People of England,) " by the
appointment, and as it w^ere retributive
justice of the Deity, that that people
which cannot govern themselves, and
moderate their passions, but voluntarily
crouch under the slavery of their lusts,
should be delivered up to the sway of those
whom they abhor, and made to submit to

144 DISCIPLINE, DESTINY, AND D^UTY
an involuntary servitude." But If after
aU our loftjr privileges and excitements to
glory, we do deny God, and turn from
following his pleasure, to follow our own
depravity, and fill up the measure of our
iniquities, then our fall and punishment
must be a second Jewish tragedy on a
wider and more awful scale, and all the
curses written In the book of the law
cannot but descend upon us. " And It
shall come to pass that the generation to
corne, that shall rise up after us, and the
stranger that shall come from a far land,
shall say, when they shall see the plagues
of this land, and the sicknesses which the'
Lord hath laid upon it, and that the
whole land is brimstone and salt, and
burning, that it is not sown, nor beareth,
nor any grass groweth therein, like the ¦
overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah,
Admah and Zeboim, which the Lord
overthrew inhis anger and in his wrath ; —

OF THE UNITED STATES. 145
even all nations shall say. Wherefore
hath the Lord done thus unto this land .''
What meaneth the heat of this great
anger .'"'
Perhaps we are in danger of indulging
a sort of indolent pleasure in the expec
tation that the millennium is soon to open,
on the world, without reflecting how great
must be the increase of personal piety for
a long previous period, how deep, severe,,
and self-denying must be the probation
ary discipline of the church, and how
little we know what unexpected means
God may take to signalize the glorious
scheme of redemption, or what may be
the duration or the nature of the scene
that Is yet to come of his moral adminis
tration on this globe. For aught we
know, the passions of mankind may
yet again be let loose to rage and devas
tate through a long and dreary duration
of moral gloom ; the fountains of the
13*

146 DISCIPLINE, DESTINY, AND DUTY
great deep may be broken up, and a
deluge of wickedness heave its vast
surges over the earth, till scarce a vestige
of the great moral landmarks even of
Christianity itself can be discovered.
This raay take place after a universal,
diffusion of every kind of knowledge, the'
speculative knbwledge even of the Scrip
tures not excepted, that It may be shown
on a scale as broad as the earth, that
the highest and most widely diffused In
tellectual refinement without regenera
tion will be no sort of barrier to the vio
lence of human depravity, but on the con
trary, by increasing its ingenuity, aug
ment tenfold Its dire and untameable
fury. God may offer the precious gift of the
Gospel to every nation under heaven, and
It may be in turn proudly and awfuUy re
jected by thera all ; and after leaving it to
be demonstrated bythe universal wicked-

OF THE UNITED STATES. 147
ness of men that of all modern ages and
nations, with all their boasted superiority
and improvements, there Is not one but
will outdo in depravity that ancient
people, so long an astonishment and a by
word, he may take the cup of trembling ,
from them, and raake every christian
people drink it to the dregs. He may leave
their own infuriated wickedness to sweep ,
from all Christendom the light of holy
truth, and then, when the Bible is a pro-,
scribed book, to be read only by stealth,
and when earth seems about to become ,
the empire of Satan, he may appear In
his glory, and build up Jerusalem, and
bring back from their dispersion his
ancient covenant people, and use them
as the willing, grateful Instruments in
carrying the religion of that Saviour
whom their fathers crucified, forth from
the scene of his sufferings into every
quarter of the globe.

148 DISCIPLINE, DESTINY, AND DUTY, ETC.
Though this be all hypothetical and
visionary, yet we do not know that there is
any thing in the record of prophecy to con
flict with the supposition or the possibility
of such an additional scene in the great
instructive drama, which God Is permitting
to be played in this world, and which he
will suffer to be played out without inter
ruption. At any rate, however far the
designs of God's providence may seem
manifested and in process of execution in
regard to ourselves, and however import-
aht the instrumentality of a nation and
a church so trained and disciplined might
appear in the midst of aworld sodepraved
and degraded, it becomes us to remeraber
that as God out of the stones in the
streets of Jerusalem could have raised up
chUdren unto Abraham, so he can now
just as easily accomplish his purposes
and his prophecies without our aid.

CHAPTER X.
LESSONS OF INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY AND DUT Y.—
A HIGH STANDARD OF PIETY.— A HOLY EDUCA
TION.— THE RIGHT USE OF PROPERTY.— THE RIGHT
USE OF PRAYER.— CONCLUSION.
In the mirror of this great subject we
behold reflected the solemnity and re
sponsibility of our position as individual
Christians. It teaches the necessity of
an immediate elevation of our individual
standard of piety.
The resolution of the mighty problem :
as to the world's evangelization by us,
rests more entirely on the holiness of in
dividual Christians than any of us can ;
possibly conceive. Wherever there is an
eminently holy saint In our country, there
is one of the pillars of our greatness.
When such an Individual dies, if there be

150 DISCIPLINE, DESTINY, AND DUTY
none to take his place, the shock sustained
in his departure is irretrievable. Look
ing back upon the American Church in all
her past history, we shall find, In every
period, that her advancing strength has re
sulted from the eminent piety of a few dis
tinguished Christians. Blot out. If it could
be done, the name and memory of Braln-
ard and Edwards, and draw off from our
system by a mighty moral exhaustion the
influence which their characters have ex
erted in building up our country's church,
and we should blot out sorae of the fairest
of her christian graces ; we should draw
away the very life-blood in her veins.
Let the sarae be done with a few other
holy individuals, and though diminished
as to numbers, but little in every ten
thousand of our ranks, we should be left
faint, exhausted, prostrate in the dust, and
able to prosecute hardly the smallest of
our present widely-extended enterprises.

OF THE UNITED STATES. 151
Great numbers do but encumber our
moral vigor, unless holiness increases In
a greater ratio. Doubtless, the piety of
many is so low, that the holy minority
could do better without them. It would
be better to proclaim, as when God
sent Gideon against the Midianltes,
" whoever is fearful and afraid, let
him return and depart early;" and if
then only the efficient part were chosen
out, there would hardly remain, as on that
occasion, three hundred out of every
thirty-two thousand.
We do not sufficiently consider, that to
sustain great operations abroad, we must
have a deeper piety at home. The self-
denial of our missionaries, must be sus
tained by the self-denial of the Church ;
nor ought we to be willing to live at ease
in America, and deny ourselves only by
proxy In Africa or Asia. Moreover, the
power and success of our missionaries

162 DISCIPLINE, DESTINY, AND DUTY
among the heathen will depend upon
the power in prayer and holy living
possessed by the churches that sus
tain them. But a small portion of
our work is done, even when we have
provided the men, and sent them abroad
with the gospel of life in their hands ; they
are still connected with us, and greatly
dependent on our piety :
" They drag at each remove a lenglhenirg chain,"
and if we do not communicate an electric,
life-giving impulse, it will prove a per
petual clog. They are the clouds that
take the water of life from this contineqt,
and wafted by the breath of prayer, sail
away to pour It down on the thirsty land
of the heathen. If the fountains here be
shallow, it can faU there only in scanty
and inconstant showers.
It is to be feared that we are daily and
hourly departing wider and wider from

OP THE UNITED STATES. 163
the searching, self-examining, closet piety
of our fathers, and becoming more and
more exclusively external in our efforts.
We are living on the patrimony that has
descended to ns, without continuing to
increase it by the same labor, with which
it was acquired. It raay be all gone be
fore we are aware ; and if we do not keep
up the fires beneath, our whole machinery
wiU suddenly stop.
It is by no means a matter of course,
that the next generation of Christians will
be more devoted, more holy, and self-de
nying than we. The next generation wiU
be moulded by the spirit of our piety, and
if they should grow up in our external
and undevout habits, there would be even
less of spirituality in them than in us. The
natural course of things, owing to the
powerful tendency of the heart to de
part from God, is downwards; declen
sion, not advancement; a truth which
14

154 DISCIPLINE, DESTINY, AND DUTY
is not more perfectly displayed in the
history of the Hebrews, than in that
of the whole GentUe Church ; and tbe
grand lesson we are to derive from it,
is the necessity of a high standard of
individual piety. Even in the midst of
external prosperity, we must enter into
our closets, and shut the door, and pray
to our Father In secret. What we admit
speculatively, we must feel and acknow
ledge practically, that the missionary
work, in all its departments, from the
foundation in Christendom to the com
pletion amidst heathenism, is a jmrely
spiritual work, and demands spiritiml instru
ments. It demands, not grand and powerful
societies merely, but self-denial, deadness
to the world, spiritual habits, clear views
of eternity, knowledge of the Bible, con
sciousness of the value of the soul, an
affecting sense of tbe Insignificance of
earthly things, deep love to Christ, strong

OF THE UNITED STATES. 155
and panting desires after the glory of
God. It demands that the Church, like
the soul, should rise out of the vanities of
time Into the riches of eternity, and take
hold on God by faith, with a moral cou
rage and an endurance of fatigue, of
which we have Uttle conception. If the
Church will not learn this in sunshine,
perhaps God will teach it in persecution,
for the work of missions cannot go for
ward without deep piety. It would be a
falsification of the whole spirit and tenor
of the Gospel, if it were found that men
or Churches can engage in the labors of
Christianity, and obtain its glorious re
wards, without self-denial, deadness to
the world, spirituality of heart and life,
incessant prayer ; without partaking
somewhat in the trials as well as the
enjoyments of the apostolic Christians ;
without the elements In action of the same
enduring faith and dauntless moral cou-

156 DISCIPLINE, DESTINY, AND DUTY
rage, which in them burned so brightly.
It is one of the signets of the Christian
Religion, which we may well believe God
will never suffer to be entirely blotted out,
that through much tribulation we miist enter
into the kingdom of Heaven.
It Is in the light of such a survey as we
have taken of the divine discipline towards
us, and especially of our rapidly advan
cing population, that I love to view our in
dividual responsibilities and duties. It
gives to every movement of benevolence
and piety, especially if connected with
the training of the rising generation, an in
describable dignity and Iraportance. The
business of preparing the raaterials for the
fulfilment of the divine purposes, the busi
ness of moulding the minds and hearts of
those whose character and conduct are
to decide this grand experiraent, places
those engaged in it at the very springs of
our country's future greatness ; it raakes

OF THE UNITED STATES. 157
them the guardians of the vast hopes
which the gracious indications of God's
providence lead us to form for ourselves
and for the world. Never before. In the
history of the world, have great results
been brought so near to their apparently
trifling causes. If an angelic visitant to
our globe, or a being from another planet
were in the midst of us, desiring to be
made acquainted with the sources of our
future destiny, I would take him to some
of the most unostentatious and unnoticed
spheres of industry and piety ; he should
visit an unpretending common school,
a Sabbath school, a tract-distributor's
prayer-meeting. Viewed in their results,
and looking a few years onward, these
humble spheres of duty becorae the cen
tres of a mighty influence and responsi
bility. The teacher of a common school in
this country, bringing before his mind the
14*

158 DISCIPLINE, DESTINY, AND DUTY
period which he can almost touch and
mingle in hiraself, when the pupils whose
raoral and intellectual frame he is mould
ing, shall stand amidst seventy millions
more In the strife of existence, to be the
parents of those with whom there shall
stand up four hundred millions, cannot
but feel that there Is a soleran responsi
bility as well as a blessed privilege con
nected with his duties. The Sabbath
school teacher, who pursues his sacred
round of duty faithfully, In love and
prayer, looking to the nearness and Incal
culable glory of Its results, may wonder
at the grace of God in permitting him to
occupy a post of so much importance and
blessedness. The mother, who seeks, in
humble dependance on the grace of Christ,
to find the reflection of his blessed Image
In the opening mind even of her infant
offspring, and to train her beloved chil
dren from their earliest hours. Into habits

OF THE UNITED STATES. 159
of obedience and piety, is doing a work
for the happiness of her race, the salva
tion of the world, and the glory of the Re
deemer, which angels might envy for its
simplicity, its beauty, and Its grandeur.
And in every sphere of influence that can
be mentioned, we are made to feel the
mingled blessedness and responsibility of
occupying a place in the world at such a
crisis; — a period when every movement
tells so directly in great results, both for
time and eternity.
The consideration of this subject, teaches
us the right use of property, and the great
value of it, when devoted, at such a crisis,
to God. It is rarely, if ever, in the world's
history, that an opportunity has been
offered to the rich, of engaging, by their
wealth alone, in moveraents of such In
tense glory. The Divine Being ordinarily
avoids even the appearance of magnifying
the instrumentality of wealth In human

160 DISCIPLINE, DESTINY, AND DUTY
estimation. He caUs us to stand beside
his treasury, and as our eye scans the per
sons of the comers, and the costliness of
their offerings, he teUs us that this poor,
unnoticed widow, whose loving heart con
secrated in two mites her whole living,
hath cast in more than they all. So it Is
In every age ; and every widow's mite,
as well as the precious incense of her
prayers, is needed, and at a time like this,
goes Immediately to a result of practical
utility, of Incalculable Importance.
Nevertheless, to those Christians whom
God has permitted to amass wealth, a
post of usefulness is now offered, in the
support of theological and missionary in
stitutions languishing by pecuniary pres
sure, which, considered in the magnitude
and nobleness of Its results, is truly sub
lime, and which, if they beheld it with
the eye of faith, they would exult, like the
angels of God, with gratitude and praise

OP THE UNITED STATES. 161
to occupy. And the Churches of Christ in
this country are called upon to give a
steadiness to the Missionary Enterprise
by the steadfast abundance of their offer
ings, and not to leave the sacred cause
to fluctuate, and the hearts of those en
gaged in it to sink and die within them,
in the perpetual prospect of poverty and
disaster. Is it possible that in the midst
of aU our responsibiUties and opportuni
ties of glory, we can consent to leave our
benevolent societies to languish and die
from pecuniary starvation, and that, too, at
a period which is the very harvest time of
the world .'' God forbid that we should
be guilty of so dishonorable a betrayal of
the trust committed to our care !
Above all, we are taught by this great
subject, the necessity of fervent prayer.
It is nothing but God's grace that can ena
ble us to redeera the responsibilities that
rest upon us ; nothing but his Holy Spirit

162 DISCIPLINE, DESTINY, AND DUTY
poured out in revivals of religion that can
save us from absolute and most tremen
dous destruction. That Christian there
fore, who is doing raost for the promotion
of a revival of religion In his own church,
and that church which is laboring most
fervently for a revival In Its own village
or city, Is doing most, and most directly,
for the conversion of the world. O ! in
the Ught of our advancing population, who
can estimate the importance of one revi
val of piety ! And here the poorest,
most unlettered Christian may bear a
part, and a great part, in the advance
ment of the Redeemer's kingdom. This
surely is our grand field of labor, and the
consumraation of predicted glory waits
for the Church of Christ to enter upon It.
Let it be reraerabered that every Chris
tian in this country possesses as much
powerto Intercede for the mlUionsof China
as he does for the children of his own house-

OF THE UNITED STATES. 163
hold or the families in his own neighbor
hood. Blessed Is he who realizes the
privilege of prayer and uses it accord
ingly. The period will arrive when, for
every half hour given to the business of
intercessory communion with God, the
Christian will wish hebad given days, and
for every little sacrifice made In this cause
he will wish he had raade a thousand.
The time will come, when the memory of
the shortest interval so spent, of the smaU
est sacrifice so made, will be a possession
of glory to the soul, which he would not
part with for the riches of the material
universe !
Blessing, and honor, and glory, and
POWER, BE unto HIM THAT SITTETH UPON
THE THRONE, AND UNTO THE LAMB FOR
EVER AND EVER !

NOTES.

Men well governed should seek after no other liberty, for there
can be no greater liberty than a good government Sir Walter Raleigh.
Tbe distinguishing part of our constitution is its liberty. But
the only liberty I mean, is a liberty connected with order ; a iiheriy
that not only exists along with order and virtue, but which cannot
exist at all without thera. Burke.

Note A.

It has been a melancholy consequence of
the neglect of common school education in
England, that the sacredness of the Sabbath
should have to be violated in teaching the most
common rudiments of knowledge. " Some
of our friends of the independent class," says
a member of the committee in an attempted
vindication of this system in one of the large
cities, "have forsaken us because we teach wri
ting and accounts on Sundays. We would
vsdllingly teach these on week-day evenings,
15

166 NOTES.
but the factory hands work so late that we have
found it imi>racticahle ; therefore wc put this
on the score of works of necessity and mercy,
considering our Saviour as sanctioning the
pulling out of sheep from the pit on the Sab
bath." The difliculty is, that they themselves
put the sheep into the pit on the week-days,
and on the same days should do the work of
pulling them out. Here is the spectacle of
the richest nation in the world tasking its im
mortal energies so fearfully in the pursuit of
wealth, as not to allow its children time to gain
the lowest rudiments of education ! Work
ing them in the service of mammon all the
week, and then stealing a portion of the sea
son of spiritual rest to shut them up to the
study of writing and arithmetic I

Note B.
The question as to the alienation of a por
tion of the school fund in this state from a
common and impartial to a sectarian disposal
has beeu happily set at rest for the present,
and we trust will never again even be looked at.
The proposition was one, which we really
believe if it had come from any other sect

NOTES. 167
than that of the Catholics, would have been
treated vsdth contempt, as a most rampant and
disgusting exhibition of bigotry. It has been
remarked with equal severity and justice,
that " the conduct of the priests and lead
ing men in holding Irish catholic meetings,
for the purpose of subverting the institu
tions of this country, and getting posses
sion of its school funds, is impudence of no
ordinary cast, and shows that something has
stultified their perceptions. What scorn would
Americans justly bring upon themselves, were
they to make such attempts upon the monas
teries of Spain, or the domestic institutions
of any other country of Europe. What scorn,
if instead of sending missionaries unarmed
to teach justice and temperance from the
Bible, they should send their ships of war to
force Protestantism and brandy on the heathen
at the cannon's mouth!" This allusion to
the tyranny exercised over the Sandwich
Islands in the violent introduction and estab-
raent of the Roman Catholic religion, with the
trade in brandy, by the aid of French ships
of war, is appropriate. Who can doubt that
similar measures would be pursued for the
same ends by the same sect in this country,
if it were but sufiicientiy powerful ?

168 NOTES.

Note C.
We have referred to the publication by Mr.
Evarts of the paper on the Moral Destiny of
the United States. It is one of the most
grand and eloquent productions ever issued
in any shape from the American press. We
well remember the electric thrill of feeling,
and impression of the moral sublime pro
duced by its first ajjpearance as a Report of
the American Board of Commissioners for
Foreign Missions. It was written .shortly
before the author's death, and seems to glow
not merely with the spirit of piety, but of
prophecy. Its closing paragraphs are worthy
of a place in the Yade Meeum of every Chris
tian Pilgrim in America.

-ALE UNIVERSITY

i390(

hi

M&i