KING'S CHAPEL

THE EVACUATION OF BOSTON,

HENRY WILDER FOOTE.

CM

KING'S CHAPEL

THE EVACUATION OF BOSTON.

A DISCOURSE

HENRY WILDER FOOTE,

GIVEN IN KING'S CHAPEL, SUNDAY, MARCH 12, 1876.

PRINTED BY REQUEST.

BOSTON:
GEORGE H. ELLIS, No. 7 TREMONT PLACE.
1876.

Press of Geo. H. Ellis.

DISCOURSE.

Psalms xliv. , i : "We have heard with our ears, O God ; our fathers have told us,
what work thou didst in their days, in the times of old."
Such passages of Scripture as this — and there are
many of them — form one of the most inspiring charac
teristics of the Bible. They do so in this regard, that
they make it speak not of God alone, nor of man alone,
but that they bring God and man together. They
affirm the great fact of Divine Providence in the grand
est way, making it not only to be over individuals, but
over humanity ; they affirm the great fact of human
dependence in the grandest way, making it to be from
one generation to another, lifting us up out of our sepa
rate and lonely lives into a share in the life of the race,
and giving us the only reason for thinking it worth
while to have this share, because we see that the life of
the race is lived under the eye of God. Such an appeal
to the historic faithfulness of God accords with the
thoughts which I would bring to your mind at this
time. The peculiar associations of this old church with the
Revolutionary chapter of our city's history seemed to

KING S CHAPEL AND THE

make it desirable to mark here to-day a significant land
mark in connection with the evacuation of Boston one
hundred years ago. The last service held here during
the siege of the city is a picturesque moment in the
history of a "lost cause," and it also marks a transitional
point in the religious position of this church. The real
congregation of to-day and the shadowy congregation
of one hundred years ago stand face to face for this
hour. In what I have to say, I must needs touch in part on
facts already known to those who have heard the dis
courses given here some winters ago, on the history
of this church. It is a portion of that history which
for many years after the Revolution was obscured by
the intensity of the popular feeling. The very name of
"Kings" Chapel was changed on the popular tongue to
that of the " Stone " Chapel, until a wise thought dis
cerned that it could be called the Church of the " King
of kings." There was a time when it would have been
thought unpatriotic for us not to be ashamed of the fact
that King George's officials and the Tory gentry went
here to church. But that day is long past, I trust, when
we should not be able to speak with respect of many of
them. Loyalty to their king and fidelity to their ordi
nation or other official oath compelled them — many of
them with an absolutely pure and single mind— to leave
their country for conscience' sake ; and having left it
they had to suffer pains of loneliness and an aching
heart, to be strangers in the proud old land which they

EVACUATION OF BOSTON. 5
had been accustomed to call "mother country" and
" home," to endure supercilious patronage or cool indif
ference from those ruling powers for which they had
sacrificed everything, to eat the bread of poverty and
grudging charity from the British treasury, to know that
they were declared aliens by the land of their birth, their
property confiscated, and they made ruined men, and to
say with Hamlet : —
" O, what a wounded name,
Things standing thus unknown, I leave behind me."
Besides, the fact is, that the majority of pew-holders
here were on the patriot side, and the first minister after
the war had been a prisoner of war in a British receiving-
ship. And if the church had still needed to prove its
American heart, let yonder monument testify of that,
with its roll of martyrs in our own war— longer than
that of any other church with which I am acquainted.
This year, however, is called the year' of reconciliation,
and if it is to mark the extinction of the embers which
have burned so furiously in our own time, surely it may
see the flowers of forgiveness bloom over those which
have been extinguished for a century.
We stand here among the monuments of a generation
utterly gone and of ways of life of which this is well-nigh
the only memorial. So far as I am aware, King's Chapel
and Christ Church are now the only historical buildings
remaining unchanged from before the Revolution of all
those in which Boston was once so rich. This church
has been received by the present generation as a pre-

6 KING'S CHAPEL AND THE
cious trust to be guarded carefully for those who are to
come after us, and, let us hope, to be prized aright by
the whole community which possesses it! When we
joined in our forms of worship this morning, I read the
prayers in part from the old liturgy which was on this
reading-desk one hundred years ago, stamped with the
blazon G. R., for King George, and now containing the
alterations of the service in the handwriting of James
Freeman. The interior, as well as the outside of the
building, is almost identically the same as when the
Revolution began. Only the stately Governor's pew is
gone. All other things remain.
Chief among these is the noble organ still standing
opposite, procured from England by subscription of
members of the church in 1756. It cost in London
,£500 sterling, and with all charges here, ^637. The
bill of lading, still preserved among our papers, is inter
esting from its pious formula : —
" Shipped by the Grace of God in good order and well
conditioned, by Thomlinson, Trecothick & Co., in and
upon the good ship called the Pultney, whereof is Master
under God for this present voyage Thomas Farr and
now riding at anchor in the River Thames and by God's
Grace bound for Boston New England; to say forty-four
cases and parcells containing an organ, etc., etc., etc.
"And so God send the good ship to her desired port
in safety. Amen." A prayer which many lovers of
the church must have breathed. The Boston Gazette
and Country Journal of August 30, 1756, announced

EVACUATION OF BOSTON. J
to its readers : " We 'hear that the organ which lately
arrived from London by Capt. Farr for King's Chapel
in this town, will be opened on Thursday next in the
afternoon, and that said organ (which contains a variety
of curious stops never yet heard in these parts) is
esteemed by the most eminent masters in England, to
be equal, if not superior, to any of the same size in
Europe. There will be a sermon suitable to the occa
sion. Prayers to begin at four o'clock." "There is a
very current tradition respecting this organ," says Dr.
Greenwood, "that it was selected by Handel himself.
Taking into consideration the above reference to 'the
most eminent masters in England,' we receive this tradi
tion as founded in truth. And, moreover, as the organ
was designed for the King's Chapel in New England, we
may readily suppose that His Majesty's favorite musician
would at least be desired to give his opinion of its merits,
and that this opinion, being favorable, might be called a
'selection,' even if the 'mighty master' gave himself no
further trouble with its purpose. Handel died in 1758,
and was blind eight years before his death. But sight
was not at all necessary in the office supposed to be
consigned to him, and though his eyes never could have
measured the external proportions of this organ, his ears
most probably have judged of its tones and powers, and
his own hands rested on its keys." The organ still
retains enough of its personality to be the same which
has helped the devotions of this house for one hundred
and sixteen years. It has been repaired again and again.

8 KING'S CHAPEL AND THE
In i860 it was greatly enlarged, and at that time the old
key-board on which Handel's hands may have> rested was
taken away. According to the custom of the period, the
keys which now are white were then made of ebony, and
the keys which now are black were made of ivory. The
outside case, and many of the pipes, and some of the
sweetest stops in the instrument remain unchanged.
I shall not attempt to tell the story of the great
events of" which Boston was the scene and centre in
those momentous years, from the times when it heard
its last king proclaimed by trumpet from the Old State
House balcony, and rejoiced over in King's Chapel, to
the day when these walls echoed to the retreating
drums of the British troops, and saw the Continental
army enter the town in triumph. Three out of the
four Royal Governors of this stormy time attended
worship in this church, and sat in yonder Governor's
pew, — Sir Francis Bernard, Gen. Gage, and Sir William
Howe. Gov. Hutchinson was a member of the Brick
Church at the North End, but he was friendly to the
church, and it is entered in our records, Dec. 1, 1772,
that he received the thanks of the church "for pro
curing the King's Donation for a service of plate and
pulpit Furniture for the King's Chapel." Here came
Gov. Bernard to hear Dr. Caner's sermon on "The
Great Blessing of .Stable Times," on the conclusion of
the treaty of peace between Great Britain and France
in 1763,— the peace which freed our fathers from the
fear which had been over them from their first settle-

EVACUATION OF BOSTON. 9
ment of the country. Here came Gov. Bernard in
other darker and more ominous times, and his suc
cessors in days blacker yet. As I pore over our old
records, the votes of the proprietors and of the vestry,
and the long and crowded pages which record the
never-ending procession of the dead — pages for the
most part utterly silent concerning the events which
were rocking Church and State with earthquake throes,
— their very silence sometimes speaks more loudly than
any words. Now I come to some name famous here
then, but never spoken for nearly one hundred years,
except as a part of that momentous history; and now
again it is the date of a year and month, perhaps even
of the day, which marks one of the eras in that great
time. When the Stamp Act was passed in 1765, and
the mob wrought its wild ruin in Lieutenant-Governor
Hutchinson's house, they first swept through the house
of one of the prominent members of this congrega
tion; and the name of another is forever associated
with one of those half-grotesque, half-terrible displays
of popular wrath at the famous " Liberty Tree," the
great elm at the corner of what is now Washington and
Essex Streets, where unacceptable persons were wont
to be hung in effigy. Those were the last years of the
old-fashioned stately courtliness which had been so
associated with the chapel where the viceroy and his
little court worshipped. These old walls saw the
various costumes of that picturesque period gathered
here. Chariots with liveried black footmen brought

I0 KING'S CHAPEL AND THE
titled gentlemen and ladies hither, and the square pews
were gay with modes of dress which live for us in
Copley's pictures, — the ruffled sleeve and powdered
wigs and swords, the judges' robes, the satins and
velvets. And now, ever since the passing of the Tea
Act in 1767, many a scarlet uniform was seen here too ;
for the Common had been for nine years whitened with
the tents of British troops, sent over to enforce that
law. We are left only to imagination for our picture of
the varied moods of the congregation which gathered
here while that passionate, popular " sea wrought and '
was tempestuous " ; for while some were royal officials,
and not a few were loyal subjects of Great Britain, the
major part of the congregation was native born, and
must have been largely in sympathy with the wild
beating of the popular pulse. I doubt not that hearts
as true as ever loved their country here ached, when the
March night in 1770 heard the fatal shots ring out in
King Street which echoed through the continent ; and
if they counselled moderation, when the South Church
yonder was thronged with the people whom Faneuil
Hall could not contain after that " Massacre," and when
again in 1773 that church saw the great assembly from
which the band of men went forth to throw the tea into
Boston harbor, — if they dared not counsel resistance it
was not because, they did not love their country, but
because it seemed such madness for this little town to
challenge the resistless power of the British Empire.
Their judgment was deceived, and they paid the bitter

EVACUATION OF BOSTON. I I
price of exile and ruin. Surely we can do them the
bare justice now of remembering their loyalty and
constancy to their own conscience, and in not a few a
love of the land which cast them out, which was stronger
than exile, and unembittered by poverty and wrong.
Stormily closed the ministry of my predecessor in
this place, the last Church of England rector of the
King's Chapel, Dr. Henry Caner. His political senti
ments were ardent loyalty, as he would have termed
them, — - obstinate Toryism, as the people of Boston soon
came to consider them. But if there were any question
what his sentiments were, they are indicated in these
sentences which I quote from a short prayer before a
printed sermon of his on Thanksgiving for the General
Peace, August n, 1763, — on "The Great Blessing of
Stable Times," etc : " Continue thy favor to our sov
ereign lord King George  Let no unhappy divisions
disquiet his reign, or interrupt the internal harmony of
his government."
Infirm with bodily infirmities, and in his seventy-
seventh year, his age and his position placed Dr. Caner
at the head of the Church of England clergy in this part
of the country. This church, too, had been attended by
the officers of the British army and navy stationed in
Boston, which had brought the old minister into yet
closer bonds of sympathy and fellowship with these
representatives of the king whose church he served.
Their red coats were to his eyes the honored uniform
of a proud service, while to the popular imagination the

j 2 KING'S CHAPEL AND THE
scarlet seemed to be branded by Scripture itself as the
livery of sin. Our records show abundantly the pastoral
labor which devolved upon Dr. Caner in his relations
with his military congregation. The last burials record
ed by his trembling hand are those of three soldiers of
His Majesty's 65th Regiment of Foot. It may well be,
then, that the first rumor of the evacuation of Boston
smote on his ear like the breeze that stirs the air before
a thunder-storm bursts. He seemed to hear the hoarse
voice of the dreaded mob already surging round his
house, and crying as Amaziah said to the prophet Amos :
" O thou seer, go, flee thee away into the land of Judah,
and there eat bread, and prophesy there : But prophesy
not any more at Bethel : for it is the king's chapel, and
it is the king's court." Dr. Caner* s escape from Boston
is thus described by himself, in a letter dated Halifax,
May 10, 1776: —
"As to the clergy of Boston, indeed, they have for
eleven months past been exposed to difficulty and
distress in every shape ; and as to myself, having deter
mined to maintain my post as long as possible, I contin
ued to officiate to the small remains of my parishioners,
though without a support, till the 10th of March, when I
suddenly and unexpectedly received notice that the
king's troops would immediately evacuate the town. It
is not easy to paint the distress and confusion of the
inhabitants on this occasion. I had but six or seven
hours allowed to prepare for this measure, being obliged
to embark the same day for Halifax, where we arrived

EVACUATION OF BOSTON. 1 3
the 1st of April. This sudden movement prevented me
from saving my books, furniture, or any part of my
interest, except bedding, wearing apparel, and a little
provision for my small family during the passage.
" I am now at Halifax with my daughter and servant,
but without any means of support, except what I receive
from the benevolence of the worthy Dr. Breynton."
I turn now to his hearers on his last Sunday. Gen
eral Gage, who came in May, 1774, as Captain-General
and Governor of Massachusetts, had been a good church
goer, and doubtless his successor was so. Gage heard
here one sermon, whose text, at least, well pondered,
would have saved seven years of war and hundreds of
thousands of lives. For in September, 1774, Rev. Mr.
Fayerweather, of Narragansett, records in his diary that
he preached in King's Chapel, Boston, before General
Gage and his officers, and a very numerous and polite
assembly, from the text, " Be kindly affectioned one
toward another in brotherly love." The commentary
was written at Lexington and Bunker Hill.
And now let us look into this church as it may have
appeared on the last Sunday before the evacuation of
Boston by the British troops, and try to call up to our
mental vision the faces of those adherents of the losing
cause who were gathered here to pray for King George,
and that he might have victory over all his enemies.
Out of the one hundred and thirteen pews in the church
forty were owned by the church itself. Of the fam
ilies owning or occupying the remaining seventy-three

14 king's chapel and the
pews, about thirty were so absolutely on the loyal or
Tory side that they had to fly in the great evacuation,
the other forty-three being probably on the patriot side.
Let us stand in this pulpit with Dr. Caner, and look with
his dim eyes in the faces of this portion of his flock who
on the next Sunday will be lying with him on shipboard
in some of the long line of British vessels that will be
lying in Nantasket Roads, so heavily freighted with
humiliated pride and disappointed hopes. Thanks to
Mr. Sabine's admirable History of the American Loyal
ists, we can trace the fortunes of these defeated men.
There, then, they sit in these very pews, men whose
names, many of them, were hissing on patriotic Amer
ican lips, yet to whom now we can often do better
justice than the hard measure which our fathers meted
out to them. If time would allow, I could tell you the
history of almost all of them. But it will be sufficient
for me to call back the memory of three or four repre
sentative men among them.
An example of the extreme Tories is Charles Paxton,
in pew No. 4, with his family of five. Mr. Paxton's
thoughts may well be busy, after the roaring cannon
ade from the rebel works, which has suffered neither
him nor any other dweller in Boston to sleep during
that dreadful night of Saturday, March 9. He may well
be thinking how much of all this is his own work. He
is a gentleman "remarkable for finished politeness and
courtesy of manners," but the Whigs have cared nothing
for that. He has had the honor of being hung in effigy

evacuation of boston. 15
on the Liberty Tree on Gunpowder-plot day, " between
the figures of the Devil and the Pope," with the label,
" Every man's humble servant, but no man's friend."
He has been " active beyond his associates as one of the
Commissioners of Customs." John Adams says of him,
that he appeared at one time " to have been Governor,
Lieutenant-Governor, Secretary, and Chief-Justice."
He has the misfortune to be a courtier of Charles
Townshend. Does he think to-day of the quarrel with
James Otis in 1769; of the flight of the customs' officers
to Castle William to escape the mob after seizing one of
John Hancock's vessels for smuggling wine ; of the
coming of the first troops to Boston, largely at his insti
gation ; of the King Street massacre near his Custom
House ; of the popular rage when Dr. Franklin sent
home copies of the letters which he and others had writ
ten privately to England ? Never more will he collect
customs here or elsewhere. He will die in England,
aged eighty-four, in 1788, his name under ban and his
property confiscated here. But there are not a few far
more gracious names than his.
In pews Nos. 7, 8, sit the family of Dr. Sylvester
Gardiner. Dr. Gardiner has been Senior Warden of
King's Chapel at intervals for twenty years. An educated
physician, a man of great wealth, the proprietor of vast
estates to the eastward, which he has done great things
to improve, respected by all, and now in his seventieth
year, he has no will to leave his home. But the young
wife, sitting beside him, has so compromised him with

j6 king's chapel and the
the Royal party, by her ardent zeal on that side, that he
must go. Crowded on the vessel which will bear his
family to Halifax, poorly fed, proscribed, and banished
in 1778, he yet loves his native country so much that he
will voluntarily leave behind him his valuable stock of
medicines and drugs for Washington's army to use, — an
act which will be rewarded by Massachusetts after the
war, by the gift of tickets in the State Land Lottery,
from which Dr. Gardiner's heirs will derive the benefit
of six thousand acres of land in Washington County,
Me. The memory of this prominent man is perpetu
ated by the name of the town of Gardiner, Me.
In No. 10 sits Isaac Royall, long a member of the
Council of the Province, but who had not been sworn
into office as a Mandamus Councillor. His noble farm
in Medford lies within the rebel lines to-day. He will
flee with the rest, and his name will appear among the
proscribed and banished in 1778. He must taste the
bitterness of neglect from Lord North and Lord Ger
main, and must die in England in October, 1781, and
never lay his dust beside that of his wife and his
parents in his beloved Medford. But he is large
enough to forgive his country for casting him out, and
to bequeath two thousand acres of land in Worcester
County to found the first Law Professorship in Harvard
University. A genial, generous, hospitable man.
No. 76 is occupied by John Vassall, one of that dis
tinguished family who have now left here only their
graves in the Cambridge burial-ground, marked by the

evacuation of boston. 17
Vas and Sol, their coat of arms, and the fine old
monument, erected in this church by John's kinsman,
Florentius Vassall, of Jamaica, in 1766. Mr. John Vas-
sall has been living in Boston since early in 1775, having
been driven by mob from his beautiful home in Cam
bridge. That stately house is occupied as the head
quarters of George Washington, Esq., commander of
the rebel muster, and Mr. Vassall's uninvited tenant.
And it is to have a new glory, a century later, in being
the home of one of New England's most beloved and
sweetest poets.
To pews Nos. 31-32 belongs a special history. Here
was the State pew, raised on a dais, curtained with crim
son ; here had been seen Shirley and Bernard and Gen
eral Gage ; and here now the dark and warlike face of
Sir Wm. Howe looked" sternly forth.
And yet one more remains to speak of, occupying
No. 91, a woman beautiful still, though now in middle
age, and wearing widow's weeds. The romantic story
of Lady Frankland has been told in exquisite verse by
one of our own poets. It is a story of sin and peni
tence, of wonderful escape and strangely varied fortune,
such as no poet's imagination could ideally surpass.
And so they went forth from these doors, those repre
sentatives of a lost cause, leaving the church, as Dr.
Caner supposed, to silence. In his note, in the Register
of Marriages, he wrote : —
"March 10 [1776]. An unnatural Rebellion of the
Colonies against his Majesties Government obliged the

l8 KINGS CHAPEL AND THE
Loyal Part of his subjects to evacuate their dwellings
and substance, and to take refuge in Halifax, London,
and elsewhere; By which means the public Worship
at King's Chapel became suspended, and is likely to
remain so, till it shall please God in the Course of
his Providence to change the hearts of the Rebels, or
give success to his Majesties arms for suppressing the
Rebellion." Within a month of that date King's Chapel was opened
again for an impressive solemnity, as if to pledge it for
ever to the American cause.
For here were held the solemn obsequies of Dr-
Warren, when his remains were disinterred from the
soldier's grave which he found on Bunker Hill, so soon
as order was restored to the liberated town. To this
church they were borne with every mark of honor, and
here were gathered the noblest and best' representa
tives of the patriot cause, while an eulogy was spoken
over them from this pulpit. And then the hospital
ity of the church was freely given for more than five
years to the Old South Church, by the majority of
our proprietors remaining here, — an act of poetic
reparation for the wrong done almost a hundred
years before that to the Old South by Sir Edmund
Andros. That church and congregation worshipped
here, their own house of prayer having been marred by
its use as a riding-school for the British soldiers, and
the part of the King's Chapel congregation that remained
worshipped with them, and in this pulpit was ordained

EVACUATION OF BOSTON. 19
at that time one of the ministers of the Old South, the
Rev. Joseph Eckley. I may add here that, in commem
oration of these interesting historical affiliations of the
two churches, your wardens and minister invited the
ministers of the Old South Church to represent it here
to-day, and to take part in this service, — a part which
they were both very reluctantly compelled to decline by
imperative preaching engagements.
I have dwelt purposely on this portion of the history
associated with the memorable events which fell in the
week just opening one hundred years ago, in the little
town of Boston, because it is a chapter of the history
not usually dwelt upon. Our sympathies as true Ameri
cans are with those who entered the town with Wash
ington, not with those who left it with Howe. There
are probably very few of us here to-day who are not
descended from men who then took their lives in their
hands as rebels, either in places of conspicuous service,
or at least with the shouldered musket. There can be
no one here to-day who does not rejoice that those farm
ers and sailors of this distant colony had a truer vision
than the rulers of the empire, and than those who shared
their blindness on this side of the water. But the good
of looking back after one hundred years is, that We can
do justice to both sides. And while we shall have fre
quent occasion in these coming days to commemorate
what our fathers won, we will at least to-day also remem
ber all that was upright and self-sacrificing and true to
conscience in those men who went out from this church

20 KING'S CHAPEL AND THE
with sorrowing hearts, but unreturning feet. They paid
for what was mistaken in their action and spirit with
poverty and exile. But their example of fidelity and
patience we cannot afford to lose.
And yet to-day our thoughts turn with a pride untem-
pered by any pity to those our fathers, those who were
still the majority of this congregation, those to whom
we owe the memories that thrill our blood in our
national history, those to whom we owe it, under God,
that we have a country. They did a work so large and
generous, in calling this nation into life, that all the
other nations of the earth could not but share its bless
ing. Even the proud people from whom we sprang,
and from whom that War of Independence tore us free,
have long seen that our fathers were really fighting their
best battle not less than ours. On the hundredth anni
versary of the Battle of Bunker Hill, the London Times
said : —
" Not only the Americans, however, but England and
the world, have far more substantial reasons for a grate
ful remembrance of the day. The gain to all sides is
great and unquestionable. The greater part of the
American contention in that war was equally shared by
the British people. The principles of . popular repre
sentation, and no taxation without it, self-government
by popular municipal institutions, the independence of
the judicial bench, and complete responsibility in the
exercise of all power and patronage, were equally at stake
on both sides of the Atlantic. No doubt the sense of

EVACUATION OF BOSTON. 21
this added to the reckless and inhuman obstinacy with
which the British Government persisted in the struggle,
long after every man at liberty to use his senses and
reason on the question saw that it was hopeless.
" Fortunate was it for England that the question was
fought so far from its shores. The triumph of Ameri
can Independence inaugurated a great but bloodless
work at home in the shape of popular reforms, or, rather,
in the fuller development of those democratic institu
tions by which it has been said the British throne is
surrounded. Whatever the Americans have gained, we
have gained also, and now possess substantially all that
they fought for."
Why was it, let me ask you, that those plain men,
bred in a provincial college, or at the plough or the print
ing press, were able to lay the foundations of an empire,
and to see the duty of the hour as the rich and wise
could not see it ? It seems to me that it was something
deeper than a passion for liberty, something nobler than
a sense of their wrongs, nothing less than the burning
conviction which they had inherited from their fathers,
that America was a providential people, a nation in trust
with the great ideas of Christianity.
It is well, then, that we should hail as significant the
grand anthem by Handel which has been sung in our
service to-day, — the same anthem which half a century
ago was sung at the commemoration in Faneuil Hall of
the two Presidents of the United States who passed from
earth on the fiftieth anniversary of their signing the

22 KING'S CHAPEL AND THE
Declaration of Independence. We catch and echo the
lofty words: "Their bodies are buried in peace, but
their soul liveth forevermore."
That which was at the heart of all they did was
faith in the invisible power and greatness of Hinr
who is the only "stability" of a people's greatness
and power, — a profound sense of being a providential
people, called to do a special work in the ages, with
the solemn consecration upon it of a mighty destiny.
Such a faith lies, indeed, at the heart of every Chris
tian State, and if it were not more or less clearly held
by the best men everywhere, nations and commonwealths
would crumble to pieces like ropes of. sand. But only
once before in all history, among the Hebrew race, has
any people had so clear conviction and testimony of
being called and chosen to a high and peculiar work for
the Lord as our fathers had. It was, as has well been
said, the old faith in prayer, the old faith in God, the
spirit which led the Pilgrims across the sea, the spirit
which nerved the hearts of the men of God who fought
at Naseby and Marston Moor, the spirit of Israel of
old against the Philistines, of David with his stone
and sling against the giant of Gath with his armor of
proof. Now, is it only the fond dream of an American heart
that these principles of a Christian Commonwealth belong
to us still from our fathers ? Or are we justified in
believing that the sense of the sanctity of law, the pos
sibility of pure justice, the quickness of public con-

EVACUATION OF BOSTON. 23
science, the sacred humanities of Christ's gospel, the
deep consecration of a peculiar work for God, are given
to us as a holy trust ?
Fain would we believe it. Nay, will it not be faithless
ingratitude to the God of our fathers if we allow our
selves to doubt?
Whatever public shames cause the patriotic boast for
our country to grow dim in this Centennial hour, we will
guard against the sin of desponding, — far more against
that of growing faithless to our trust. In the faith of
those great truths the fathers of this land did their
work. And, as it is always, the great conviction filled
them, and lifted them up to the full height of their prov
idential opportunity, inspired by the American idea,
which is in truth the idea of Christianity itself. Well
will it be for us if their faith in God and in man, their
spirit of conscience and fidelity and consecration, may
quicken us, and our memory of them write itself in
larger, deeper, more faithful lives.
" Among the nations bright beyond compare ?
What were our lives without thee ?
What all our lives to save thee ?
We will not dare to doubt thee,
But ask whatever else, and we will dare ! "

VALE

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