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rivers, dive through its mountains, and bring its most distant cities into vicinage?—until leviathan stood waiting to plough the ocean, and bring the nations into brotherhood?- until the fiery steeds of heaven were being harnessed to fly with tidings in a single instant across the continent or under the ocean? Why was the beginning of our national history delayed until the doctrines of civil and religious liberty a thousand times strenuously asserted and bravely defended-had emerged into prominence and power, so that the American freeman of to-day stands upon the shoulders of thirty generations of heroic battles for the right?

"No candid man can ponder these thoughts without wondering what God designs for this young giant which he has so located on the surface of this globe, and on the scale of the centuries.

"The thesis I shall defend is this: God designated the United States of America as the model Republic and the great evangelizer of the world. The questions I have just propounded suggest a line of argument which will prove this proposition, and by proving it, devolve upon us here in this country a responsibility, the like of which has never been laid upon any nation. Let me premise two things essential to the argument: America is certainly the observed of all observers. The eyes of all nations are upon her. This free government, this 'experiment at free government,' as European absolutists have sneeringly termed it, fixes the gaze of the whole world. There is no nation, no tribe, civilized or semicivilized, on the whole earth, that does not look this way, and feel that humanity has a stake in this land. This Hercules, who, when in his cradle, bearded and defeated the British Lion; who, in his callow youth, repeated that feat on those watery plains, where, till then, the foe had ranged acknowledged lord, and who has just now, in his vigorous manhood, throttled and slain the many-headed hydra of rebellion,- this Hercules, somehow, has come to be gazed upon by all lands, and, somehow, the oppressed of every nation. on the face of the earth have reached the conviction that he is their champion.

"The other preliminary thought is this: In stating the mission of America, I have mentioned two things,- that God meant it to be a model Republic, and the great evangelizer, and these two are one.

"The historian utters this reflection: Whether true or false,

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HE NEW YORK LIC LIBRARY

NOR AND

AMERICA'S DIVINE MISSION

73

sublime or ridiculous, men must have a religion.' Later, and with deeper meaning, Perrier, successor to Lafayette as prime minister to Louis Philippe, said on his death-bed: 'France must have religion.' So I say to-day concerning that better faith which overthrows what Romanism sets up, which breaks the shackles Romanism binds on, which is the only security of national permanence, America must have religion. In order to be the model Republic, she must be the great evangelizer.

"The two evangels of civil and religious liberty are ours. There are two great methods by which God indicates his will concerning a nation,- by the providential training he bestows upon it, and by the resources he puts within its reach. Now, in the light of these two criteria, let us look at this country, and see if God does not proclaim his will as plainly as though he had written it in letters of fire on the sky over every American sunset, or deeply graven it in rocky characters on the crest of every American mountain: My will is, that on this new continent, the nation I plant here shall be the model Republic and the great evangelizer of the world.'. . .

"America was discovered just after the art of printing had begun its marvelous quickening of the human mind. Now who shall settle it? Papists? They found it. Spaniards? Frenchmen? Both wanted it. No; God's plan will be imperiled unless colonists of a certain language, and of a certain religious faith, shall be the first settlers of the land. The settlers must have the truest religious faith there is on the earth, and must speak only that language which, more than any other language, is full of the inspiration of liberty. They come and for what? With the noblest motives that ever inspired the bosom of an emigrant, see them land from the Mayflower' upon the frozen beach, amid the storms of winter, dropping tears which froze as they fell, and yet tears of gratitude.

"What sought they thus afar?

Bright jewels of the mine?

The wealth of seas? the spoils of war?-
They sought a faith's pure shrine.

Aye, call it holy ground,

The spot where first they trod;

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They left unstained what there they found

Freedom to worship God.'

--

Mrs. Iemans.

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Landing of the Pilgrims, Dec. 21, 1620

"They had trouble enough from the aborigines to drive them together, and to drive them to God. They had the utmost simplicity of manners, the utmost reverence for the Bible, and the utmost detestation of tyranny, whether in the church or state. They had not for the love of freedom left their homes in the Old World to become slaves in the New. The God who instituted the colonies molded their history. He kept them connected with the mother country until they were strong enough to stand alone among the nations, and then he overruled the manner of their breaking away so as to inspire them with a perpetual hatred of all oppression. Why the British Parliament should have passed the Stamp Act, and why, in repealing it, it should have reasserted the false principles underlying it; why it should have so long persisted in treating Englishmen here as Englishmen there would never have submitted to be treated at all, no man can explain on any other hypothesis than this: that England was judicially blinded, in order that America might be free.

"And this is not merely the opinion of Americans spoken a century after. It was the opinion of British statesmen at the The halls of Parliament, the whole realm, rang with

time.

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