CHAPTER XXII.

THE GLORY OF AMERICA.

FOR America there is reserved a peculiar glory in the

history of mankind.

We seem to see starting from the fountain-head of history two great streams of civilization. One tends westward. Its course is marked by a succession of empires, each arresting its flow and spreading its waters out into a wider area, yet existing but for a few centuries. Such were Babylon, Egypt, Phoenicia, Persia, Greece, Rome, the Arabs, Venice, Spain. There is a distinct progress through a succession of forms of political life, intellectual culture, advancement of the arts and relig ious experience. At last it is barred by the shores of the Atlantic. The leading purposes of the great Ruler of nations were chiefly accomplished in it four hundred years ago.

A second stream tends eastward. In two great reservoirs, in the South and in the East of the continent, it collects its waters. Each of these, China and India, develops within itself a characteristic and vigorous, but entirely different, style of life, sentiment and religious worship. Whatever the empires of the West have boasted of themselves, no one of them has equaled in all respects either of these two. To-day England styles

India one of her colonies, but the mistress contains forty millions of people, the colony a hundred and sixty. China contains four hundred millions. And with the exception of the advance which the West owes to the power of Christianity, purifying and sweetening all the relations of man to man, as well as of man to God, and to that of the more true and penetrating scientific acquaintance with the works of God and its direct practical fruits, it is questionable whether European society has on the whole excelled that of China.

The world four centuries ago was ready for the final expansion of the Divine purpose. The navigators Diaz and De Gama open the way to India and China; precisely at the same time Christopher Columbus opens that to America. Spain, enticed by its riches, presses forward to occupy this immense new field which God has manifestly prepared in harmony with his designs. She performs her allotted part, and is set aside. France in turn attempts, in vain, to occupy a large place here. England sends tardily, carrying in their hands an open Bible and the articles of political and religious liberty, a handful of humble believers in Christ. Now the English language and institutions control the whole continent. A homogeneous, free, mighty republican nation stands prepared for whatsoever work the Almighty, whom she spiritually serves, calls upon her to perform.

The past few years have witnessed a mighty acceleration of the great end. A series of events more strange than any romance suddenly compels our nation to colonize the Pacific shore, enriches her with unprecedented wealth in all the precious metals, exposes the vast agricultural capacity of the soil, spans with railroads and

telegraphs the breadth of the continent from ocean to ocean, and connects the western shore with China by regular mail steamships. It seems like a hurried and startling dream, but a dream in which the voice of God is heard.

Let us look at what the almighty Worker is doing at the same time on the opposite Asiatic shore. The series of recent events there is as full of meaning-the termination of the East India Company's charter, the Opium War, the translation and circulation of the Scriptures, the Tai-ping rebellion, the second war, the severe pressure of European powers on every border and coast, the opening of the whole empire to commerce and the preaching of the gospel, the Burlingame embassy to the West, and the steps toward the acceptance of Western and Christian civilization.

It was in that year of marvels, 1848, when the thrones of half the kings of Europe were successively shaken to the foundation, and the pope of Rome fled from his seat in the disguise of a footman, that the sovereign Ruler of the nations unveiled his plan upon our Pacific coast. Unnoticed at the moment by the multitudes who were intently gazing upon the commotions of Europe, he commenced there a more wonderful work. The sudden uncovering of the gold of California was the means by which the immigration of the Chinese was to be turned to this New World. For centuries past the most philosophic minds have predicted the vast consequences which should ensue when the two opposite currents of empire, going the one eastward, the other westward, since the beginning of time, should at last meet and flow together. Upon our Pacific coast this consummating event of the history of the world has now commenced.

The immediate political effects must be very great both to Europe and to Asia. Humboldt said a result of this nature was "important to all Europe." "The problem of the communication between the two seas. . . is of the greatest interest for the balance of commerce and the political preponderancy of nations." It must revolutionize the character of the governments of Asia. The Isthmus of Panama, a mere "neck of land, the barrier against the waves of the Atlantic ocean, has been for many ages the bulwark of the independence of China and Japan." He says, in relation to the subject of the free communication between the two oceans, "Then only can any great change be effected in the political state of Eastern Asia." But it does not seem to be necessary, because caste-ridden India could only be regenerated by European conquest, that the same should be the case with China and Japan. We may rather expect that the interests of both America and Europe will be better subserved and the renovation of those empires be most peacefully accomplished by the maintenance of their independence and the application of such stimulus as they need to their own capacities and resources.

1

It is the appointed office of America to be the ground in which the best benefits of European institutions shall be planted and be improved and indefinitely multiply, but which the toil, the experience and some of the peculiar products of Asia shall assist to enrich and to beautify.

The religious results of this final commingling of the opposite courses of civilization we can only conceive or describe by taking the language of inspiration. That

1 Political Essays on the Kingdom of New Spain, book i., chap. ii,

plainly reveals the prospect of a period when there shall be a great coming together of nations, spiritually all believe and literally most scholars also concede, which shall cause the heavens to sing, the whole earth to be joyful and the mountains to break forth into songs of gladness.1 And a large share of this rejoicing of the worlds above and below shall be because "these shall come from far; and lo, these from the north and the west, and these from the land of Sinim," or China, the last and largest and stoutest nation among all that have resisted the truth.

The office of the continent of America in the Divine plan for re-ennobling humanity and planting again on earth the reign of holiness and innocence, as that plan has in recent ages become more plain to us, has powerfully affected many of the greatest minds both in the Old and in the New World. Berkeley was one of whom Sir James Mackintosh wrote: "His works are, beyond dispute, the finest models of philosophical style since Cicero. Perhaps they surpass those of the orator in the wonderful art by which the fullest light is thrown on the most subtile of human conceptions." Nor was he liable to the charge of being a mere visionary speculator and scholar. The same eminent critic says of a brief tract of his of a political character, "Perhaps the Querist contains more hints, then original, still unapplied in legislation and political economy, than are to be found in any equal space. His whole character was so elevated that even the cynical Pope ascribed "to Berkeley every virtue

1 ISAIAH, chap. xlix.

Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy, sec. vi., pp. 147-151. The tract is contained in BERKELEY'S Works, vol. ii., pp. 237–280.