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THE ELEMENTS OF NATIONAL GREATNESS. 
 
 AN 
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 BEFOKE THE 
 
 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 CITY OF NEW YORK, 
 
 December 22, 184:2. 
 
 BY REV. GEORGE B.' CHEEVER, 
 
 PASTOR OF THE ALLEN STREET PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, NEW YORK. 
 
 ■^ of v/aaKx^^ 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 JOHN S. TAYLOR & CO., 145 NASSAU ST. 
 
 18 4 3. 
 

 Entered according to tlic Act of CongrcBs, in the year 1843, by 
 
 N. S. PRIME, 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the 
 
 Southern District of New York. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 Hopkins unci Jennings, I'rinlei-s, 
 111 Fulton ^trftt. 
 
Now York, Dec. 31, 1842. 
 
 Rev, George B. Cheever, 
 Sir: — 
 As a Committee appointed on behalf of the New England Society, in 
 the City of New York, and whose individual opinions render the service 
 in every way agreeable, we return to you the sincere thanks of the Society, 
 for the Address delivered by you before them at the Tabernacle, on the 
 22d inst. ; and earnestly request, that a copy of an Address, so full of the 
 spirit and principles of our forefathers, may be given the Society for pub- 
 lication. 
 
 We are, very respectfully, 
 
 Your Friends and Servants, 
 
 Thomas Fessenden, 
 H. P. Peet, 
 Edward S. Gould. 
 
 New York, Janunry 10, 1843. 
 
 Gentlemen : 
 
 I thank you sincerely for your very kind note, requesting for publica- 
 tion a copy of the Address delivered before the New England Society, on 
 the 22d of December, and have great pleasure in complying with your 
 request. 
 
 I have the honour to be, with great respect, 
 
 Gentlemen, 
 
 Your Friend and Servant, 
 
 GEORGE B. CHEEVER. 
 
 Messrs. Thomas Fessenden, ^ 
 
 H. P. Peet, > Committee. 
 
 Edward S. Gould, S 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 Sir William Jones, among the multiplicity of his com- 
 positions, has left an ode commencing with the following 
 question : What cotistitutes a State ? This question com- 
 preliends ray subject. I propose to dwell upon the Elements 
 of National Greatness. We are certainly entered on a new 
 cycle in the affairs of men ; for a nation might, in times 
 past, have become great by means which now are altogether 
 inadequate. The city which Cain built, though it bore the 
 stamp of the first murderer, became, before the deluge, a 
 mighty city, and the heart of a great Empire. But no king- 
 dom in the antediluvian world was truly great. What con- 
 stitutes a State ? Let the poet and legislator first answer. 
 
 Not high-raised battlement or laboured mound, 
 
 Thick wall or moated gate ; 
 Not cities proud with spires and turrets crowned ; 
 
 Not bays and broad-armed ports, 
 Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride ; 
 
 Not starred and spangled courts 
 Where low-browed baseness wafts perfume to pride. 
 
 No : men, high-minded men. 
 
 Men, who their duties know 
 But know their rights, and knowing dare maintain. 
 
 These constitute a State, 
 And Sovereign Law that State's collected will. 
 
Men constitute a State, and the character of the State de- 
 pends upon the character of the men. One of the most im- 
 partial foreign judges of our own country is reported to have 
 Sfiven, as the result of his study and observation, that the 
 American institutions are good, but the people not good 
 enough to support them. We pray God that this may not 
 prove to be true. But let us run over some of the Elements 
 necessary to National Greatness, and see what among them 
 we possess, and of what we are destitute. 
 
 1. In the first place, a good parentage is requisite. 
 Hereditary qualities may be traced in nations as in individuals. 
 The forty years' history of the Hebrews in the wilderness 
 teaches a lesson of importance. It was necessary that that 
 generation should all die, that they should turn, return, and 
 toil upon their pilgrimage, till the whole race of hereditary 
 bondmen had become extinct ; and even then the taint of 
 idolatry and slavery remained in them. Now we may justly 
 love to speak of our parentage as a people. And we may 
 take courage in dwelling upon the love of God in rocking 
 tlie cradle of our ancestry by storms and discipline, instead 
 of the syren lullaby of a sensual court and a gorgeous hierar- 
 ^0^ chy. If a man is ever to be one of God's great instruments 
 of good to his race, the preparation must be made in laying 
 the foundations of his character. It is too late to seek to 
 form new men for the occasion when the crisis has come, 
 and the habits are already no more than those of ordinary 
 manhood. A man's discipline must commence and go for- 
 
ward with the other causes, which God is making to operate 
 for the world's changes, or it cannot be produced in a night. 
 No man can go to sleep a common man, to awake, on the 
 morning of a political or ecclesiastical revolution, a hero or 
 a deep Christian. Napoleon's character was forming with the 
 silent progress of the causes which prepared the French revo- 
 lution. And Luther's character, by as much greater than Na- 
 poleon's as his cause was nobler and holier, was cut as with 
 the point of a diamond, and wrought into its unchanging, 
 steadfast, reliable qualities, in lonely spiritual discipline, in 
 the cloisters at Erfurth. What is true of men is true of na- 
 tions. The "yoke" must be "borne in the youth," if we 
 would have qualities that shall awe the world in manhood. 
 
 The discipline of our ancestors in laying the foundations of 
 many generations in this country, was what we might sup- 
 pose it would be, if God intended that in the coming era of 
 glory in the world we should be found among the number of 
 his favoured nations, when, in a national sense, God shall 
 " make up his jewels." If ever a free people wrought out an 
 inheritance of liberty through trials, it was our pilgrim ances- 
 tors. They went out from one fire into another fire that 
 seemed ready to devour them. What the wolves of despot- 
 ism and church tyranny had left undone in one hemisphere, 
 the wolves and savages of the woods in another seemed 
 ready to finish. By trials they were prepared for trials. They 
 were the best part of the population of Europe ; but it was 
 necessary that in Europe itself they should put off their Eu- 
 ropean taint, and receive those germinating principles, which 
 
should be transplanted with them, to rise in a fresh soil 
 above that great growth of underweeds, which otherwise in 
 Europe would have overpowered them. 
 
 They were a race that grew out of the noblest principles 
 of the Reformation. Until the Reformation had begun to 
 purify the world, there was no such race in existence ; God 
 and man might have looked about in vain for the materials of 
 a virtuous colonization of this country. We cannot help re- 
 marking how wonderful was that Divine Providence, which 
 turned aside the ships of Columbus from the Northern Coasts 
 of this great Continent ; which kept the forests and the rocks 
 of New England hidden from the world at a time when no- 
 thing but the auri sacra fames, the accursed thirst of gold, 
 occupied men's souls ; at a time when there was neither re- 
 ligion nor patriotism to colonize a new country, but avarice 
 bigotry, and despotism to oppress it ; hidden, until a race of 
 men should be ready for His purposes. " Had New England 
 been colonized immediately on the discovery of the American 
 Continent," says the accomplished native historian of our own 
 country,* " the old English institutions would have been 
 planted under the powerful influence of the Roman Catholic 
 religion ; had the settlement been made under Elizabeth, it 
 would have been before the activity of the popular mind in 
 religion had conducted to a corresponding activity of mind in 
 politics. The Pilgrims were English Protestants ; they were 
 exiles for religion ; they were men disciplined by misfortune, 
 cultivated by opportunity of external observation, equal in 
 
 ♦ Mr. Bancroft. 
 
rank as in rights, and bound by no code but that of religion 
 or the public will." I should add to this, that the public will 
 would no more have bound our Puritan ancestors than pri- 
 vate despotism, had they felt it to be opposed to the dictates 
 of religion. And I must reiterate, what we ought never to 
 forget, when the character of the Puritans is in question, 
 that remarkable eulogium bestowed upon them by Hume, — 
 that amidst the absolute authority of the Crown, " the pre- 
 cious spark of liberty had been kindled, and was preserved 
 BY THE PURITANS ALONE ; and it is to this sect that the 
 English owe the whole freedom of their constitu- 
 tion." I wonder at this historian, and with my whole heart 
 I thank him, that with all his partialities and prejudices, he 
 should have penned concerning the Puritans a paragraph 
 of such high, bold, undaunted truth. 
 
 As natives of New England, we are proud of the claims of 
 a Puritan and a Protestant ancestry. These two appellatives 
 have comprehended about as much virtue, nobleness, free- 
 dom, and piety, as the world is ever likely to witness in 
 combination. And as to the sterner virtues of our Puritan 
 ancestors, which it has become fashionable in some quar- 
 ters to depreciate, — I do not wonder that a sensual world 
 and a self-indulgent spirit carp at them. " Indeed," said the 
 great Edmund Burke, on a great occasion, " the whole class 
 of the severe and restrictive virtues are at a market almost 
 too high for humanity." Nevertheless, it is by the spirit of 
 those virtues alone, that our institutions can be preserved, 
 or that we. as a people, can be made, what we hope we yet 
 
 2 
 
10 
 
 may be, the salt of freedom and religion to the world. Our 
 Puritan ancestors were disciplined by self-denial ; this com- 
 prehends the whole foundation of their character; for self- 
 denial is, and to fallen beings ever must be, the ground of 
 all virtue. The inheritance which, in the exercise of " the 
 severe and restrictive virtues," they procured for us by suf- 
 fering, can be preserved by us, or imparted to the world, 
 only through a participation in the same discipline. Luxury 
 on our part, and sarcasms on our fathers' virtues, will never 
 do it. 
 
 2. One of the qualities which distinguished our Puritan 
 ancestors was a high regard for the Word of God and 
 high views of its inspiration. This is one of the qualities, 
 by which, as the world approaches its state of glory, nations 
 must be distinguished as well as men. This quality must 
 be a national element, above all sectarianism, entering into 
 all developements of national life, in whatever organizations, 
 but especially in Common Schools. Our common schools are 
 to the nation what the lungs are to the body ; and any foul or 
 bitter elements that enter into them will be followed by disease 
 and paleness in our national existence. A pure atmosphere 
 of divine truth is as necessary to the health and life of these 
 national vitalities, as a due quantity of oxygen to the physi- 
 cal play of the lungs. Suffer your schools to be turned from 
 their noble purposes for party ends, or to be defrauded of 
 the Word of God, and you put the seeds of consumption in 
 the vital organs of your country ; sooner or later the fruits 
 
11 
 
 will make their appearance ; — the hectic fever, the wild 
 pulse, the breaking up of the system, must follow. 
 
 3. In addition to this, I may next remark, that the grand 
 principle of Protestantism, which is private judgment 
 OF THE Scriptures, must characterize a nation, as well as 
 high views of their divine authority. This is one of the 
 elements of freedom of thought. Bind a man in his religion, 
 and you have bound him essentially, and may do with him 
 what you please. The Romanists know this. Chain a 
 man's religious opinions to any court, church, council, or 
 canonized father, to any thing but the Bible, and your fetters 
 are upon his liberty, your iron has entered into his soul. 
 
 From spiritual despotism to civil and political the path 
 is short, easy, inevitable. Hence, we cannot but view with 
 the most jealous distrust the progress of that anti-Protest- 
 ant tendency which has been stealing upon us from a 
 monarchy and a Church-Establishment. We should look 
 upon this matter in the spirit of no sect, but in the light 
 of an interest dear to us all as the common light of day, 
 whether we be Christians or infidels. This interest is that 
 of every man of this Republic, who is not ready to give up 
 the grand principle of republicanism, the right of private 
 judgment and action in regard to the men, principles, and 
 measures of the administration of his country's government. 
 Dearly as I might love my church, were I indissolubly bound 
 to any form of church government, I would rather it were 
 in the bottom of the salt sea sunk, than made a machinery 
 
12 
 
 of manacles and fetters for the souls of men. I am sure 
 that this growing^ scorn of the Reformation, and this depre- 
 ciation of the grand principle of private judgment in matters 
 of religion, springs not from a new form of piety, but from 
 the ever vital spirit of despotism in the old world. And if 
 anywhere I could trace the proofs of that foreign conspiracy, 
 which has been asserted, against the liberties of this country, 
 and against all mankind through our subjection, I could 
 find it here. 
 
 Private judgment in matters of faith, private judgment in 
 matters of liberty, — these are two kindred rights and pos- 
 sessions. The destruction of them both constitutes a per- 
 fect despotism. Take away either, and you endanger the 
 other ; but the bridge is more easily thrown up from the de- 
 struction of the first to that of the second, and then your 
 spiritual despotism may march her troops across into your 
 civil territory almost without notice, because it takes us on 
 our noble side. We are not apt to suspect our religion of 
 endangering our liberties ; and hence this union of spiritual 
 and civil despotism may be going on, may have been con- 
 summated, and a people yet be scarcely aware that it is done, 
 or how it is done. This noble Protestant principle therefore 
 is to be sacredly preserved and guarded as an element of na- 
 tional greatness. No where in the world is there a more 
 complete subjection of the national mind, a thicker covering 
 of the fire of liberty with frosty ashes, than where this prin- 
 ciple is disregarded or repudiated. 
 
 I have seen this. Travelling across the Tyrol Alps, where 
 
13 
 
 the forms of Hofer and his noble band might seem to be at 
 every step around the traveller, where the spirit of freedom 
 seems a quality in the bracing air, and the very mountains 
 are uttering to the storms the chant of man's liberty and 
 immortality, even there, as I enter the city of Innspruck, 
 cradled as it is in among mountains, that with every 
 glance upward flash defiance to the tyrant, I see the open 
 mouths of brazen cannon planted across the public square, 
 and I, a citizen of the United States, am defended at the 
 point of the bayonet from stepping beyond the line of their 
 enclosure, even in a time of profound peace ! Why was 
 this? I know of but one solution, one meaning in the vigi- 
 lance of tyranny. That public square, lynx-eyed despotism 
 had fixed upon as the place, in the heart of that city, whither 
 its patriots would rush to the rescue, if at any time the 
 spirit of liberty should grow too strong for its restraints. It 
 was in an Austrian region that I had to conceal my Italian 
 Bibles, which I wished to carry as a present from a friend 
 to a friend in Italy, lest I might get into difficulty from being 
 found with such an instrument of religious and civil free 
 dom upon my person. All tyrants know, with the instinct 
 of despotism, that if Faith instead of superstition gets posses- 
 sion of the people, there is an end to their power of bondage. 
 The principle of private judgment would overturn the gor- 
 geous structure of civil and religious tyranny from its foun- 
 dation. Men have bound the world in a civil and religious 
 frost like iron; — well may they be afraid of Faith ; it is a 
 spring thaw, that loosens the avalanche. 
 
14 
 
 The State alone has impressed despotism enough upon 
 men, but the State alone has usually left the religious be- 
 ing of mankind free. The State in union with the Church 
 developes another form of despotism, and carries tyranny 
 into the spiritual world, and thence back again with addi- 
 tional strength into the political world. The union of Church 
 and State not only supplies religious fanaticism with political 
 power, but it arms political tyranny with the sanctions of the 
 unseen world. 
 
 A sect united with the State is sure to persecute : the 
 power of persecution must be taken away, and kept away 
 forever. It is not that the Romanist, the Congregationalist, 
 the Socinian, or the Prelatist, has not the perfect right to 
 choose his own religion, and to worship in it with a freedom 
 like the air that he breathes ; but it is that he has not the 
 right to enforce his religion upon me, or to make the unhal- 
 lowed and arrogant assumption, that his Church alone is 
 the Church of Christ on earth, and that all others are to be 
 consigned over to God's " uncovenanted mercies," especially 
 when this enforcement is grounded on the possession of cer- 
 tain arbitrary forms, instead of the truth as it is in Jesus. 
 Do you wish to see the tendency of such assumptions ? I will 
 read to you a passage from a British Review of high authori- 
 ty, a passage worthy of the palmiest state of Popery in the 
 noon of the world's night : " All the members of a State 
 ought to belong to one established Church ; and wherever 
 the contrary is the case, it proves a source of weakness to 
 that State, which then ceases to live by its internal vitality, 
 
15 
 
 and must seek its support from without. Wliere, however, 
 the number of Dissenters is small, and the State powerful, 
 the danger is less imminent. Strictly speaking, religious 
 sects can only be tolerated in a State, and the rank they hold 
 in it can be only one degree higher than that held by Jews " ! 
 These are detestable sentiments ; I only say, God forbid they 
 should ever get root in this country, which they would do, 
 should the spirit of Romanism prevail. The very word 
 toleration is a disgrace to the English language ; it is a re- 
 proach to the tongue of any free people to utter it in refer- 
 ence to religion, for it comprehends the whole essence of 
 despotism. Religious toleration ! Nor is the word dissent 
 in our country, a whit better, justly exposing any sect that 
 shall undertake to fling it out to others, to the ridicule and 
 reproach of Christendom. 
 
 4. Intimately connected with this principle of private judg- 
 ment of the Scriptures, and freedom in religious opinion, is 
 another truth, which, in its combination with the being of 
 nations, passes into a quality and a characteristic ; and must 
 henceforth be an indispensable element of national greatness, 
 the great truth of Justification by Faith. Here, again, 
 1 speak the language of no sect, but of that universal wisdom 
 which is above all sects, and by which all sects, that do not 
 mean to die, must live. And I fearlessly affirm that this 
 principle is as essential to the true greatness of a nation, as 
 it is to the salvation of an individual soul. 1 affirm that it 
 is, if only on the ground that this principle is at once the 
 
16 
 
 principle of true spiritual freedom, and the source of a pure 
 morality ; a morality that takes a man's being, and a coun- 
 try's being out of self into disinterestedness ; a morality not 
 of mint, anise, and cummin, but of noble deeds springing from 
 noble hearts ; the spontaneous offering of forgiven children 
 to a forgiving parent ; not to buy forgiveness, but as its fruit ; 
 not to he forgiven, but because forgiven. As to the essence 
 of freedom, Mr. Burke once said, with singular energy as 
 well as truth, " he that fears God, fears nothing else ;" but 
 the fear of God, which takes away every other fear, comes 
 only out of Faith ; and perfect freedom is possible on no other 
 conditions but those which make God our Father and us 
 His children. We cannot believe that that principle, which 
 binds together the whole family in earth and heaven, which 
 shall be the constituting element of principalities and powers 
 that are to endure when creation shall have passed away, 
 can be of no importance in our national existence upon 
 earth. In truth, we are but as the grub, the low chrysalis, in 
 our present state, in comparison with that transfiguration, 
 which is to take place through the pervading power of this 
 principle in our social, political, and literary existence. This 
 is that cup of immortality, which, whatsoever nation drinks 
 it, shall pass into a permanence of glory, no more to be 
 eclipsed, shadowed, or dissolved, till the final conflagration. 
 
 This principle was Luther's Articuliis stantis vel cadentis 
 Ecclesice. It is just as much so in politics and literature as 
 in religion. We have had on this earth a long trial without 
 it, without the preserving elements of a national existence. 
 
17 
 
 This world has been the theatre of a mighty experiment ; 
 whether nations could be prosperous and permanent in pride 
 and sin. The result has been overwhelming. Empire after 
 empire has fallen to the ground. I have passed over the 
 ruins of dead and buried kingdoms, have seen the shades of 
 departed monarchies, and conversed with them, haunting 
 the spots of their former glory ; and the hollow voice, as if 
 the wind were moaning from earth's central sepulchres, has 
 spoken in the words of Scripture, deep unto deep, in my hear- 
 ing, THE NATION AND KINGDOM THAT WILL NOT SERVE 
 THEE SHALL PERISH j YEA, THOSE NATIONS SHALL BE 
 
 UTTERLY WASTED. It is a solcmn thing to stand in the Co- 
 losseum at Rome, beneath the shadow of the Parthenon at 
 Athens, within the crumbling shrine of the temple of Karnak 
 in Eo-ypt, and to listen to the echo of those awful words. 
 These historical materials and monuments, are so many 
 intelligent chords, which men's iniquities have wrought for 
 that great Harp of the Past, across which God's Spirit sweeps 
 with its majestic, awful utterance ! God grant that the his- 
 tory of our nation may not add another tone of wailing to 
 the melancholy voices of dead empires. 
 
 The principle of Faith is yet to make a new Literature 
 for nations and the world. The materials are among us, but 
 the eye of genius has been heavy with slumber. The film 
 and frost of custom conceal a thousand open truths. Almost 
 the whole secret of discovery in science is the' perception 
 and qiiestionmg of what is customary in a new light. 
 There are now floating in our atmosphere of knowledge 
 
 3 
 
18 
 
 many common facts and observations, with connexions hid- 
 den by the veil of custom, and concealed like the future it- 
 self, but which are only waiting for a single question from 
 some awakened mind, in some blessed mood of genius, in 
 which this frosty veil is lifted, a single question like that ad- 
 dressed by Newton to the fall of an apple, which may well" 
 nigh open another universe of wonders. Now I apply this 
 to the literature which is yet to be created out of the mate- 
 rials of Divine Truth and the workings of our spiritual be- 
 ing. And I am reminded of Mr. Coleridge's beautiful defini- 
 tion of genius : " To carry the feelings of childhood into the 
 powers of manhood, to combine the child's sense of wonder 
 and novelty with appearances, which every day for, perhaps, 
 forty years has rendered familiar, — 
 
 With sun and moon and stars throughout the year, 
 And man and woman, — 
 
 this is the character and privilege of genius, and one of the 
 marks, which distinguish genius from talents." If we apply 
 this to religious things, we cannot but see that a state of 
 mind is requisite in every man analogous to the experience 
 of genius with common truth in its freshness, in regard to 
 the perception of divine truth ; and that this spiritual sense 
 of the power and beauty of divine truth is essential to the 
 perfection of a nation's literature. There is therefore a 
 cause of illimitable power in the awakening and discipline 
 of the mind of nations, as yet very little developed, but 
 which is becoming every day more powerful. It is indi- 
 
19 
 
 vidua] regeneration by the Spirit of God, which is to the 
 perception, relish, and influence of divine truth what genius 
 is to the wonderful influence of nature. This is yet to do 
 more in disciplining the mind of nations, and in creating 
 and energizing the world's literature, than all other causes. 
 The operation of this cause is absolutely essential to the 
 perfection of literature. All the forms of literature hitherto 
 known have been deformed and lifeless, in comparison with 
 the beauty and glory of those it shall assume beneath the 
 baptism of the Spirit of God, when its material becomes di- 
 vine truth, or earthly truth transfigured with celestial glory. 
 
 It is not to be supposed for a moment that the presence or 
 the absence of a religious atmosphere of thought and feeling 
 would not create an entire difference in the productions of 
 human genius. You might as well suppose that the vegeta- 
 tion at the bottom of the sea can be no way different from 
 that, which, beneath the bright sun, or the dewy stars, in- 
 vests the earth's surface with its fragrant, flowering verdure. 
 As great a difference will there be between the literature of a 
 world embalmed with the Spirit of Him who died to redeem 
 it, and that which is the growth of ages that have gloomily 
 rolled on in the rejection of that Spirit, as between the sweet 
 bloom of creation in the open light of heaven, and the rough, 
 dark recesses of submarine forests of sponges and corals. 
 Such as is indicated in this last image has much of the 
 world's literature proved hitherto ; and in it sea-monsters 
 have whelped and stabled. 
 
 Now are we to behold a literature so full of all qualities 
 
20 
 
 of loveliness and purity, such new regions of high thought 
 and feeling before unimagined opened up in it to the mind, 
 that to the dwellers in past days it should have seemed 
 rather the production of angels than of men. Nor is this 
 an imaginary view. The world and its literature, in its life 
 without the Spirit of God, might powerfully remind the 
 thoughtful observer of Plato's cave, and of the thoughts of 
 its darkened inhabitants ; and when, from a higher eleva- 
 tion, the spirit gets a glimpse of reality, then, looking over 
 the works and businesses of this great ant-hill of humanity, 
 our globe, we seem to see bands of chained men, even as 
 Plato describes them, counting the shadows of subterranean 
 fires, and making idols of popularity, out of the subtle in- 
 tellects that most clearly distinguish and describe those 
 shadows. These things must have an end ; and when men 
 learn, beautifully and truly remarks one of our great native 
 poets,* the outward by the inward to discern, the inward by 
 the Spirit, they shall win 
 
 Their way deep down into the soul. The light 
 Shed in by God shall open to the sight 
 Vast powers of being ; regions long untrod 
 Shall stretch before them filled with life and God. 
 
 All things shall breathe an air from upper climes. Then 
 men listening, with the inward ear, — 
 
 The ocean of eternity shall hear 
 
 Along its coming waves ; and thou shalt see 
 
 Its spiritual waters as they roll through thee. 
 
 ♦ Mr. Dana. 
 
21 
 
 5. The next possession and element of National Great- 
 ness, which I must notice, is the Christian Sabbath. 
 We possess this blessing through the goodness of God, in a 
 greater purity perhaps than any other people. The perma- 
 nence of our institutions, the perpetuity of our freedom, de- 
 pends greatly upon the carefulness with which we guard and 
 preserve it. Here I am compelled to say, that there is a great 
 insensibility to the preciousness and the preserving power of 
 this blessinof. A thousand times better the austere strict- 
 ness, with which our Puritan ancestors observed the holiness 
 of this institution, than the looseness which too often charac- 
 terizes their descendants in regard to it. In general, a na- 
 tion's prosperity has been and is proportioned to the sacred- 
 ness with which it keeps the Sabbath. The reasons are as 
 simple and plain as the daylight. Wherever the Sabbath is 
 kept, it makes holy and well educated families. It infuses 
 into the poor and ignorant a sense of the blessings of cleanli- 
 ness, knowledge, and virtue, and an ambition to possess 
 them. It links the weeks of households, villages, cities, 
 communities, with a golden chain of order and of love run- 
 ninar through them. It is the education of a nation, where, 
 one-seventh portion of our time, we are all at school to- 
 gether. It promotes industry, and yet checks it from over- 
 tasking the tired frame of the labourer or the working mind 
 of the student, by the obligation of a heavenly leisure inter- 
 vening. By recalling the busiest worshippers of Mammon 
 from the vortex, and the din, and the strife of our external 
 world of selfishness and avarice, to the quiet fireside, as 
 
22 ^ 
 
 well as the solemnity of the Sanctuary, it increases our sense 
 of the blessedness of home, makes homely blessings more 
 precious, quickens the pulses of affectionate hearts in the 
 ties of the family constitution, and prevents the utter wean- 
 ino- of the heart from home, in men who would otherwise 
 live in the world and be of the world entirely.* 
 " But this is not all : — our Sabbath is a day of sacred rest, 
 but not of indolence ; it is a day of intellectual and spiritual 
 awakening ; a day in which a great, onward, lofty impulse 
 is given simultaneously to the minds of a whole people, in 
 the bringing of themes before them, which are a study for 
 the intellect of angels. So that the Sabbath, as God has in- 
 
 * The notice given by Wilberforce, of the suicide of Lord Castlereagh, 
 as proceeding from the overtasking of his faculties on the Sabbath as on 
 the week day, is strikingly in point : 
 
 "He was certainly deranged — the effect probably of continued wear and 
 tear of mind. But the strong impression of my mind is, that it is the effect of 
 the non-observance of the Sunday, both as abstracting from politics, from the 
 constant recurrence of the same reflections, and as correcting the false views 
 of worldly things, and bringing them down to their true diminutiveness. Poor 
 Castlereagh ! I never was so shocked by any incident. He really was the last 
 man in the world who appeared likely to be carried away into the commission 
 of such an act ! So cool, so self-possessed. It is very curious to hear the 
 newspapers speaking of incessant application to business, forgetting that by 
 the weekly admission of a day of rest, which our Maker has graciously en- 
 joined, our faculties would be preserved from the effects of this constant strain. 
 I am strongly impressed by the recollection of your endeavour to prevail on the 
 lawyers to give up Sunday consultations, in which poor Romilly would not 
 concur. If he had suffered his mind to enjoy such occasional remissions, it is 
 hishly probable the strings would never have snapped as they did, from over, 
 tension. Alas ! alas ! poor fellow ! I did not think I should feel for him so 
 very deeply." — Life of Wilberforce, Vol. 5, page 134. 
 
23 
 
 stituted it, does more to enlarge and invigorate a nation's 
 mind, than all other causes. It is like a periodic inundation 
 of the Nile, after which the week itself is sown and harvest- 
 ed with virtues and blessings. This, most certainly, is ihe 
 grand reason for the intellectual superiority of Protestant 
 over Catholic countries, where the Sabbath is merely a waste 
 and dissipation of the national mind, and concurs, with other 
 causes, with the multiplicity of other Feast Days, to sap the 
 energies and morals of the people. In proportion as we 
 neglect the Sabbath, we open the door to the same evils 
 which every where meet the traveller in Romish countries. 
 
 This institution then is the constituted safeguard, in Di- 
 vine Providence, of all our blessings. No nation can care- 
 lessly permit the habits of neglect and profanation of its 
 sacredness to creep upon her cities, and not be deeply in- 
 jured. Those Sabbath nuisances, that from time to time 
 spring up through the profligacy of individuals, ought to be 
 destroyed as soon as attempted. I have witnessed much 
 profaning of the Sabbath, and in many forms ; in countries 
 where such profanation was esteemed a virtue, and where, 
 though allowed, it was esteemed a sin ; but, all things con- 
 sidered, I have never seen a more disgraceful form of such 
 profanation, than here in this city, under the very eye of the 
 authorities, prevails in the daily Sabbath sale of polluted 
 and polluting public journals. 
 
 6. Connected with the Christian Sabbath, another element 
 not merely of national greatness, but, considering the peculiar 
 
24 
 
 nature of our institutions, of national existence, is tiiat of a 
 Christian Education. Education alone will not save us. 
 Much has been said, and justly, on the necessity of general 
 intelligence as the ground-work of republican institutions ; 
 and alarming facts are arrayed as to the increasing ignorance 
 of the people of the United States. But intelligence alone is 
 not the qualification which the peculiar nature of our insti- 
 tutions renders necessary. Goodness, moral goodness, is re- 
 quisite, integrity of character, sincere patriotism. That this 
 is that part of a Christian education, which is needed more 
 than knowledge, I hesitate not to affirm. Without it, the 
 universal diffusion of knowledge will but prepare this coun- 
 try to become a mere gladiatorial arena of contending parties, 
 where pride, selfishness, passion in every shape, may have 
 room to battle for the victory. Now, it is not Common 
 Schools alone that can make a Christian education ; if they 
 be separated from the Gospel, or the Gospel separated from 
 them, it is plain that they do but train the evil in men's 
 hearts for a more skilful, desperate, unprincipled conflict for 
 victory, and what are called the spoils of victory. 
 
 There are two things needed in the common education of 
 this country more than in that of any other country on earth ; 
 a religious morality .^ and that great and noble quality, which, 
 in spite of the priceless excellence of our institutions, and 
 their claims upon our affections, we are in danger of losing, 
 A LOFTY patriotism. The education demanded is one of 
 self-discipline, self-government, and the merging of private 
 ends in the common welfare. It is already proved that in 
 
25 
 
 no country in the world are there so many temptations to 
 private selfishness as in this ; temptations to convert our 
 country's sacred service into a mean and miserable scramble 
 for office. In other countries the frowning buttresses of 
 despotism will stand, though private selfishness prevails and 
 rages ; but our institutions are so open and etherial, and yet 
 so complicated, and so delicate in their adjustment, they sup- 
 pose so much sterling principle, such forgetfulness of self, 
 such regard to truth and righteoushess, that without these 
 qualities they are nothing ; they cannot last, they are not 
 fit for the government of a people destitute of self-discipline. 
 Our government is indeed the government not so much of 
 the people, as of themselves by the people ; and it would 
 be a new thing indeed in the world, if a mass of men, by 
 the mere circumstance of being massed together, should de- 
 velope qualities, which they do not possess personally and 
 singly. Our government is an attempt to disprove the bitter 
 sarcasm of tyrants, that mankind cannot govern themselves ; 
 and in truth mankind have generally been so destitute of 
 moral principle, that they have had to appoint perpetual 
 dictators against the violence of their own passions. Be 
 assured that if men had been fit to govern themselves, they 
 would have done it ; despots would have been monsters 
 unknown. Most fearlessly do I assert that men do not 
 know how to govern themselves except by the guidance 
 of God's Spirit. This fits men for self-government, but we 
 know of nothing else that will. A common school educa- 
 tion which consists in mere intelligence, will never produce 
 
 4 
 
26 
 
 this fitness. I repeat it, a Christian Education is sup- 
 posed, as absolutely necessary, as the ground of perma- 
 nence and success in our institutions. Let a single genera- 
 tion grow up without it, and though ever so saturated with 
 knowledge, we are lost. If our common schools and other 
 educational interests be penetrated with the influences of 
 the Gospel, we are saved. The Sabbath and the Pulpit con- 
 stitute a most essential part of the education, as well as the 
 manly discipline, of this country. The Pulpit, the Sab- 
 bath, and the Common School, will all have to unite in the 
 incessant application of holy influences, as well as the com- 
 munication of knowledge, if our country's institutions are to 
 be preserved. 
 
 7. Here then we have developed another element of national 
 greatness, which hitherto the world has utterly neglected, but 
 without which, though nations may be great in despotism 
 and misery, and the grandeur which attends them, they can- 
 not be great in liberty and happiness. This element is the 
 presence of the regenerating Spirit of God. Without 
 this, we cannot exist in our present form of government, 
 though we may exist, split into despotisms, contending 
 and warring, enacting over again the same scenes that have 
 filled the history of Europe for ages. The lovers of liberty 
 and the friends of their race in Europe have been looking to 
 us with bright and steadfast hope ; but they cannot look to 
 us, if they do not look to God. We have indeed a glorious 
 framework, if the Spirit of God imbue it : but how little do 
 
27 
 
 they think of that. They have been looking to our institu- 
 tions, as we have ourselves, for salvation ; but already their 
 courage begins to fail, not from any thing disastrous in the 
 institutions, but from what they see in the people. Now our 
 institutions can no more make a free and noble people, than 
 a church liturgy can make a holy church. It is the people 
 that must breathe the life of freedom into their institutions, 
 as it is the heart that must breathe its piety into prayer, or 
 no form can create it, though it were moulded by the hand 
 of God. It may be that God means to demonstrate to the 
 world, by permitting our passions, our selfishness, our athe- 
 ism, to make the dreadful experiment, how perfectly ineffica- 
 cious without the Divine Spirit, are the very best institutions, 
 which the cultivated wisdom and piety of ages could discover 
 or frame, to restrain men's wickedness or to make them free 
 and happy. God grant the world may be spared so fearful 
 a demonstration ; six thousand years have been filled with 
 such developements ; and yet this may be necessary as a last 
 one, and a most significant and solemn lesson it would read. 
 We grasp at shadows, we weary ourselves in vain, we lean 
 upon a broken reed, which will pierce us, if we look any 
 where below God. I have been told that recently the great 
 French statesman and philosopher, M. Guizot, has written to 
 a friend in this country, imploring him, if possible, to give the 
 anxious friends of liberty in the old world some hope. But 
 Guizot does not dream of God's Spirit ; and his friend should 
 tell him, what multitudes in this country have yet to learn, 
 that without the baptism of that Spirit, though instead of the 
 
28 
 
 dark clouds that seem to his vision to be gathering, all indi- 
 cations were as bright as the sun, and placid and pure as a 
 day in midsummer, if the whole hope of the world centred 
 in our institutions, it would fail. Chains, says Cowper, 
 
 Chains are the portion of revolted man, 
 Stripes and a dungeon : — 
 
 and he finds them all three, the Christian poet adds, in his 
 own body, in his own being, until he turns to God. This 
 is the truth inculcated in Burke's powerful language, — It 
 is written in the eternal constitution of things, 
 that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. 
 Their passions forge their fetters. 
 
 There is then no hope for us, but in the outpouring of 
 the Spirit of God ; for this it is the duty of every Christian 
 patriot to plead, to be " night and day praying exceedingly." 
 
 To corroborate this view let us now glance for a moment 
 at some of the dangers which threaten us, some of the influ- 
 ences, which are working, both secretly and openly, to blast 
 our hopes. Wherever God has been sowing good seed in 
 the world, the enemy has been sowing tares. Into the seed- 
 corn, which God took out of Egypt, the Enemy threw his 
 handful ; it was enough ; and after forty years winnowing 
 in the wilderness, still it was there. It grew betimes into a 
 strong overpowering crop, so that while the corn was 
 dwarfed and sickly, the tares, as in their native soil, rose up 
 a dark, dense forest. This time it was Idolatry. It was an 
 
29 
 
 infusion from the habits of demon worship on the Nile. 
 Three thousand years after this, the seed which God took 
 out of Judea was the best in the world. But the Enemy was 
 there. With stealthy, noiseless tread he passed among the 
 churches, dropping his germs of evil, and with luxuriant 
 growth they filled all nations, their overshadowing foliage 
 shutting out the light, and baleful dews and fruits dropping 
 from the branches. This time it was Popery. It was an in- 
 fusion of germs from the eifete traditions of Judaism. Once 
 more — the seed which God collected to sow in this Conti- 
 nent was the best in the world. For some of it He winnowed 
 three kingdoms ; and yet, the Enemy was there. This time 
 it was not Idolatry, it was not Popery, it was Slavery. 
 He dropped his seed quietly into the earth, and went his 
 way. Two hundred annual suns have ripened it. It is a 
 question yet to be decided : Will it destroy our institutions? 
 Manifold are the dangers which arise out of it, fearful are 
 the evils which it brings in its train. 
 
 There is a rule, according to which every government 
 should be framed, and all national policy determined, as 
 strictly as individual conduct. Our government, more than 
 any other in the world, professes to regard it. " Whatsoever 
 ye would that men should do to you, do ye'even so to them." 
 We are but beginning to feel the evils, which the violation 
 of this rule must work among us, if it be persisted in. In- 
 deed, there is no infraction of this rule, but, sooner or later, 
 will work its revenge. There is no injury to the feelings, 
 but makes its mark upon the universe. The universe is as 
 
30 
 
 a sort of electric telegraph, to take up the moans of the 
 helpless, and to write them in letters indestructible even by 
 the final conflagration. Nor is there a plaint ever falls from 
 injured humanity, but it falls into the ear of God, and waits 
 its appointed time of judgment. Thou, O man, that walkest 
 amidst the ruins of thine own producing, that seestbut thine 
 own will before thee, and waterest thy backward path with 
 the tears of those that come lamenting after, thou shalt walk 
 again amidst these scenes of thine own carelessness and self- 
 indulgence ; thou shalt, led by the Erynnys of thine own 
 mind, the serpent-haired slave-driver of oppressors, retrace 
 the desolate spots of trampled rights and injured feelings, 
 where every step shall be as over a burning marie, but ten 
 thousand times more agonizing, than if thou wert treading 
 amidst the penal fires of fallen angels. 
 
 This is a sad subject, and yet there is hope, even in the 
 evils we may suffer. There is a discipline of nations as of 
 individuals ; and with nations, as with individuals, there is a 
 precious jewel in adversity. It is a mistake to suppose that 
 uninterrupted national prosperity is the path to national 
 greatness. Here as well as there, nationally as well as in- 
 dividually, the beautiful language of Cowper may be applied: 
 
 The path of sorrow, and that path alone, 
 Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown. 
 
 Men must be tried, nations must be tried ; and the evil 
 that will not be persuaded out of them must be burned out 
 of them. Especially must this be the case, if God is going 
 
31 
 
 to use them remarkably for his purposes. The temper of 
 the weapon must be proved, the latent flaws must be de- 
 veloped and worked off, the evil tendencies, that in a new 
 and untried scene of being v/ould break out and disappoint 
 a noble design of its execution, must be revealed and extir- 
 pated. When the design is on the eve of its accomplish- 
 ment, there must be no springing of the materials, no break- 
 ing of the instruments, no turning of their edges. 
 
 Now it may be that God will work this evil of slavery 
 out of us, by the great evils which it causes us to suffer. 
 With nations as with individuals, God may use their own 
 sins as the meq,ns of chastising and correcting them, even 
 while he spares them, and means still to use them for his 
 own glory. Here is our hope ; and I confess that in some 
 aspects of the subject, it seems to be our only hope. 
 
 Permit me once more on this point to refer you to a man, 
 whose pages I can never open without admiration, whose 
 wisdom I can never contemplate without reverence ; a man 
 who, though born and educated the most chivalrous and loyal 
 of monarchists, promulgated sentiments that our Republic 
 would do well to build upon ; — the illustrious Edmund 
 Burke. "There is a time," he says, "when men will not 
 suffer bad things because their ancestors suffered worse. 
 There is a time, when the hoary head of inveterate abuse will 
 neither draw reverence, nor obtain protection, I do most 
 seriously put it to administration, to consider the wisdom of 
 a timely reform. Early reformations are amicable arrange- 
 ments with a friend in power ; late reformations are terms 
 
32 
 
 imposed upon a conquered enemy : early reformations are 
 made in cool blood ; late reformations are made under a 
 state of inflammation. In that state of things the people be- 
 hold in government nothing that is respectable. They see 
 the abuse, and they will see nothing else. They fall into 
 the temper of a furious populace, provoked at the disorder of 
 a house of ill-fame ; they never attempt to correct or regu- 
 late ; they go to work by the shortest way. They abate the 
 nuisance, they pull down the house," 
 
 A second danger which I shall mention arises from the 
 base and unprincipled means and instruments employed in 
 this country by the demon of Party Spirit. Men will soon 
 become debauched and unprincipled themselves, who will 
 resort to unprincipled helpers. The materials of this evil 
 come to us from abroad. The North and the South ought 
 to have united in protecting this country from the shoals of 
 ignorant and vicious emigration that pour in upon us from 
 the old world. The admission of them as native elements 
 is like opening a vein and injecting a virulent poison in the 
 system. The most iron constitution would sink beneath 
 such a process. But to think of these dregs from the putrid 
 sinks of Europe being bought at a price, being ravenously 
 snatched at by the Spirit of Party ! It is a most enormous, 
 most insufferable wrong. 
 
 I am not willing to be misunderstood, nor am I afraid of 
 it by any candid mind. I do not forget, no patriot ever can, 
 how much we owe to the disinterested friendship of intelli- 
 
33 
 
 gent and virtuous foreigners. We have iiad n Lafayette to 
 fight side by side with Washington the battles of our native 
 land, in the hour of our peril ; and when he came to his 
 adopted country, to see its prosperity, in his old age, we re- 
 ceived him with the joy and filial reverence of children 
 towards a long absent parent. No ! we love to enumerate 
 all that we owe to the patriotism of foreigners ; but we love 
 to remember that they have been patriots, not hirelings. 
 We love the virtuous and intelligent families of foreigners, 
 domesticated and naturalized among us. Some of them are 
 among our own most true and valued personal friends. We 
 love to consider our Country as the asylum of liberty for 
 the oppressed in all the world ; but not an asylum for the 
 wicked, the abandoned, the profligate, the " unwhipt of jus- 
 tice," for those who, in their own country, would only fill 
 the poor-houses and the jails. It is a very different thing to 
 make this country an asylum for the oppressed, and to make 
 it the Botany Bay of all Europe. How often have we heard 
 the sarcasms of foreigners on the riots that have broken out 
 among us ! How often, nay, how constantly have the ma- 
 terials of such riots, the materials of our disgrace in the eyes 
 of Europe, been found in the sediment of that torrent of 
 emigration, which they themselves have poured over iis ! 
 
 It seems a melancholy thing that we could not, for a sea- 
 son, have been shut out from all communication with the 
 old world, and left to grow up and knit into manhood with 
 our native materials. It is a most undeniable fact, that in 
 many respects persons are not fitted to take part in our 
 
 5 
 
34 
 
 government even as voters, who have not been, for some 
 good period at least, educated among us. There is needed 
 some little practical knowledge of our institutions, some sort 
 of acquaintance with their workings, some insight into the 
 relative action of parties, and some knowledge of the many 
 and complicated currents of influences among us, over 
 which a patriotic and intelligent voter must keep watch, if 
 he would not be the mere tool of others. I have been 
 pleased with a recent conversation on this point with a most 
 enlightened and patriotic foreigner, one who loves his own 
 country and therefore loves ours, and who looks with deep 
 anxiety on the tide of foreign emigration that sets, at the 
 direction of our enemies, into our ballot boxes. Gladly, 
 said he, would I relinquish my privilege as a voter, could 
 I help you to ward oiF the evil that I see you suffering from 
 the multitudes of foreign paupers and venal masses of men, 
 that threaten to undermine your institutions. 
 
 Another intelligent and excellent foreigner expressed the 
 opinion that twenty-one years' residence in this country 
 ought to be required by law before voting ; at least as long 
 as a native citizen is obliged to spend from the birth, before 
 he can enjoy this privilege. In fact, without some such 
 requisition, we degrade ourselves in comparison with all 
 other nations. We put a premium upon the foreigner, and 
 we open our dearest interests to the undermining efforts of 
 all forms of Jesuitism in the world. Little would there be 
 to fear from the efforts of Roman Catholics among us, if a 
 
35 
 
 twenty-one years' residence, or the half of it were necessary 
 before foreigners con Id vote. The temptation to buy votes 
 and to sell them, to bribe and to be bribed, and to drag 
 foreign paupers to the polls as soon as they are landed, 
 would be in great measure taken away. The greatest 
 sources of evil in our elections would be cut off, and the 
 whole play of our affairs would be easier and fairer. 
 
 In general, it is a fact that those affinities which lead men 
 to emigrate to this country do not indicate the right sort of 
 character for our institutions. The radicalism of Europe is 
 not what we want. The Radicals of Europe are not fit to 
 be Republicans. Loyalty is a virtue ; but those v/ho pour 
 in upon us from Europe are too often loyal to nothing but 
 ignorance and unsettled principles. I would a thousand 
 times rather have a tide of emiarration from the strongfest 
 tories ; for a man who is not loyal to his king in a country 
 like England, will have no patriotism at all in a Republic 
 like ours. If the kingdoms of Europe had conspired for our 
 destruction, they could not have adopted a more judicious 
 plan, than to roll over us a ground-wave from their own 
 uneducated population. The ignorant, venal, miscreant 
 character of a great portion of it, forms one of our greatest 
 dangers. This is an evil that increases ail our native evils, 
 whatever they may be. 
 
 Another evil which I must notice is this, — the want of a 
 sense of national responsibility, the want of a national con- 
 science. We are not worse than England in this respect. 
 
36 
 
 Ood forbid ! — but this gives us no high character : and it 
 is to be remembered that a degree of wickedness, which in a 
 monarchy and a profligate aristocracy is expected, and 
 hardly noticed, and which is but as another coating of moss 
 over the weather-beaten castles of oppression, may shake 
 our institutions to pieces, " The best governments," said 
 Lord Bacon, in one of his excellent aphorisms, " are always 
 subject to be- like the fairest crystals, wherein every icicle 
 or grain is seen, which in a fouler stone is never perceived." 
 A disregard of rectitude and a violence and cruelty of inva- 
 sion on our part, like that which has marked the unprincipled 
 career of England in China and Aflghanistan, would have 
 turned the whole world against us. 
 
 We have the evil of a national conscience warped by con- 
 flicting interests among State governments. At the iniquitous 
 suit, and under the rapacious out-cry of one of our States, a 
 national treaty with the Indians is no more regarded than a 
 parchment of the dark ages. One or two acts of public 
 fraud upon large masses, allowed or connived at by the 
 government, will go far to compromit its principles ; and be- 
 sides, will set an example to the State governments that 
 cannot fail to be followed. If the government of the United 
 States begin with injustice and oppression, no matter upon 
 what class, or for what supposed necessity, the government 
 of the States will continue the career in public repudiation^ 
 and then private corporations will follow the example in 
 enormous acts of swindling, and private individuals and 
 fraudulent bankrupts and defaulters will complete the game. 
 
37 
 
 Corruption thus may spread to the heart's core, while yet 
 every thino- external looks fair and fiourishins:. This mon- 
 strous form of public debauchery, the repudiation of State 
 debts, rivals the catalogue of State vices all the world over. 
 The burninof indisfriation and sarcasm of a Juvenal would 
 have found nothing to surpass it in meanness, in cowardice, 
 in falsehood, in iniquity, even among the rotting corruptions 
 of public and private morality in the carcass of the Roman 
 Empire. And what argues, and no wonder that it should, 
 to the mind of observers from abroad, a portentous derelic- 
 tion of moral principle and public conscience throughout 
 the whole country, is the callousness, the apathy, the cool 
 endurance, with which the proposition of such perfidious, 
 such swindling, such sweeping insolvency has been received. 
 Surely, if we go on in this way, we shall become a by-word 
 to the nations. It will no longer be Punica fides that points 
 the moral of the school-boy, and tips the arrow of the public 
 satirist with gall. 
 
 Another evil which I shall notice, and a great danger, be- 
 cause it springs partly out of the freedom we enjoy, is to 
 be found in the nature, prevalence, and power of our News- 
 paper Literature. It is left in great measure to chance, or 
 to the upturnings of political party scum, who shall be its 
 leaders, and what may be its shape ; and yet there is nothing 
 that should be guarded w^ith more watchfulness, nothing 
 into which the spirit of a pure morality and high political 
 honour, and true patriotism, is more needful to be breathed. 
 
38 
 
 There is nothing of such mio^hty power among us, no ma- 
 chinery that will exert a more inevitable influence either to 
 bless or to destroy. The influence of our newpapers upon 
 our higher literature is deplorable ; but this would be nothing 
 if the public utterances of our newpapers were utterances of 
 truth. They are becoming a school of Sophists worse than 
 ever were bred in the literature of Greece. As to the 
 Sophists in that country, the opinion of Schlegel that the 
 political purity of the Grecian governments was at last en- 
 tirely overthrown by them is deeply to be pondered ; for the 
 same sophistry may reign here, which there had the merit 
 of creating a spirit of corruption and debasement, which 
 neither party-strife, nor protracted wars, nor foreign bribery, 
 nor bloody revolutions, had been able to produce. No 
 Sophists ever walked beneath the open air of that delicious 
 clime, and taught the people, whose influence was to be 
 compared to that of the daily issues of the newspaper press 
 in this country. Nor can we speak the painfulness of our 
 emotions, when we see these daily schools of thousands of 
 our people under the care of mere hirelings ; when we see 
 some of the leading journals of our land in the hands of 
 men utterly destitute of moral principle. 
 
 I shall mention but one more danger ; it is connected 
 with the prevalence of Romanism. Men have sometimes 
 descanted on the danger of an imperium in imperio. Look- 
 ing at the universal nature of Romanism as developed in the 
 world's history, I confess that I am afraid of it. The Ro- 
 
39 
 
 manists move in close phalanx. There is a power in the 
 Vatican at Rome, which they still acknowledge ; they are 
 proud of it ; and never yet has one of the assumptions of 
 that MAN OF SIN, who still " sitteth in the temple of God 
 showing himself that he is God," been laid aside. It is an 
 amusing picture that Bunyan has drawn of the Pope in his 
 cave, as a rheumatic old giant, biting his lips, and mumbling 
 between his teeth to the passing pilgrims, " You will never 
 mend till more of you are burned." There are signs in some 
 quarters of Giant Grim's rheumatism being cured. At all 
 events, he still has an arm long enough to reach across the 
 Atlantic ; and if it be true that the Roman Catholic voters 
 in this country will move at his bidding, then, since it is 
 true that the phalanx of such voters is strong enough to 
 sway the balance between parties, there may be some proba- 
 bility in the assertion that ten years will not pass away, be- 
 fore the President of these United States will be nominated 
 in the Vatican. That Romanism is the same in this coun- 
 try as in the old world, is sufficiently manifest from its 
 hostility against the Scriptures. We have witnessed in this 
 very State a monstrous act of sacrilege in an Auto da fe of 
 Romanists for the burning of the Word of God, and two 
 hundred Bibles were committed to the flames ! I confess 
 that I am afraid of the action of Romanism upon my coun- 
 try's liberties. I am afraid of the influence of whatever is 
 afraid of the Bible. If there be a sect that lives by shutting 
 out the light, in a country like ours, such a system is dan- 
 gerous. It has been remarked with great point and power, 
 
40 
 
 on the occasion of the recent Biblical Conflagration, that the 
 only light, which the system of Romanism would willingly 
 shed from the Bible on the people, is " the light of its holy 
 leaves on fire," 
 
 Gentlemen of the New England Society ; — I am grateful 
 for the opportunity of addressing you on this occasion. We 
 all recognise and venerate the New England privilege of 
 speaking one's mind. .Sent ire quid velis, et quod sentias 
 dicere, to think what you please, and to speak what you 
 think, we hope will ever be an element in the civil, social, 
 and religious atmosphere of that beloved native region of 
 ours, where no slave breathes, and if the genius of New 
 England can prevent it, never shall ! Suffer me to close 
 with THE Memory of our Pilgrim Fathers, and with 
 the grateful recognition of the truth, that as they did what 
 never had been done in Europe, founded an Empire in self- 
 denial, suffering, and the most unwavering trust in God, so 
 we, more than any other nation in the world, two hundred 
 years after the landing of the Pilgrims, are thrown entirely 
 upon the Spirit of God for the success and stability of our 
 institutions. A Despotism may stand by the very misery of 
 its subjects ; a free and happy Republic can stand only by 
 the blessing and the help of God. 
 
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