THE CENTRAL PRINCIPLE.
AN ORATION
DELIVERED BEFORE
THE NEW-ENGLAND SOCIETY OF NEW-YORK,
DE$2M[BER 22 1853.
BY
MARK HOPKINS, D.D.
PRESIDENT OF WILLIAMS COLLEGE.
NEW-YORK:
E. FRENCH, 12 BIBLE HOUSE, ASTOR PLACE.
1854.




JoHN A. GRAY, Printer and Stereotyper,
95 and 97 Cliff street, N. Y.




NEW-YORK, Jan. 7, 1854.
DEAR SIR: We have the pleasure to communicate herewith some resolutions of the New-England Society. The request contained therein we beg
you will early comply with, that we may be able to gratify the desire of our
members to possess themselves of copies of your address.
We are, dear sir, very truly yours, &c.,
CHAS. A. PEABODY,
WM. CURTIS NOYES,
L. B. WYMAN,          Committee.
HENRY A. HURLBUT,
PAUL BABCOCK,
REV. MARK HOPKINS, D.D.,
Pres. Williams College, &c., &c.,
Williamstown, Mass.
AT a meeting of the Board of Officers of the "New-England Society, in
the City of New-York," held at the Astor House on the fifth day of January,
the following resolutions were adopted:
"Resolved, That the thanks of the New-England Society, in the city of NewYork, be presented to the Rev. Dr. Hopkins for the very able and instructive address. delivered on the 22d December last, and that he be requested to furnish a
copy for publication.
"Resolved, That the Committee of Arrangements be requested to communicate to
Dr. Hopkins a copy of the foregoing resolutions, and that they be authorized to
publish such number of the address as they may deem expedient."
M. I. GRINNELL, President.
EPITRAIM KINGSBURY, Secretary.
WILLIAMS COLLEGE, Jan. 13, 1854.
MY DEAR SIR: In accordance with the resolutions of the Board of Officers
of the New-England Society forwarded by you, and with my acknowledgements for the kind manner in which it is spoken of, the address delivered by
me on the 22d ult. is hereby placed at their disposal.
Most respectfully and truly yours,
MARK HOPKINS.
C. A. PEABODY, ESQ.








ORATION.
THE celebrations and amusements of a people indicate their character.  A populace, such as despotism and
superstition produce and imply, require to be amused
by pageants, and processions, and sports, and masquerades. Giving up the care of their government to the
king, and of their salvation to the priest, what have
they to do but to convert their holy-days into holidays,
and when a prescribed formality has satisfied the conscience, to follow a monkey, or a tumbler, to visit the
cock-pit or the gaming-table, to be gay, and, shall I say,
happy? —no, not happy-but to be amused and managed like grown-up children. To such, the idea of a
Sabbath as a day of holy rest, is inconceivable.
A people, on the other hand, reflective, self-governed,
feeling their individual and immediate responsibility to
God, will create an atmosphere stifling to all pageantry
and mummery. They will keep their Sabbaths; their
festivities will be irradiated by a rational joy, and their
celebrations and holidays will not be without something
to strengthen  principle, and nourish the affections.
These days will be consecrated to the progress of the
peaceful arts; they will commemorate the bounties of




6
Providence, the struggles and triumphs of freedom, the
piety and heroism of Pilgrim Fathers.
Pilgrim Fathers! What wealth of hallowed associations is garnered in these words! By what others in
the English language should we prefer to designate our
ancestors?
They were Pilgrims-and  such  Pilgrims.  They
sought no shrine already hallowed.  Not by superstition, or fanaticism, or the love of adventure, or
desire for gain, singly or combined, were they moved;
but, like Abraham, they went out in the grandeur of
simple faith, not knowing whither they went.  They
went, as they themselves say, " with the great hope and
inward seal they had of laying some good foundation
for the propagating and advancing the kingdom  of
Christ in these remote parts of the world.*
That the object assigned by them was their great object, God has been careful to make evident, not from
testimony alone, but precisely as he did in the case of
the Apostles and first Christians.  So close indeed is the
parallel, in circumstances, in. character, and in results,
that the same language will apply to both.
It was only through long inward struggles, and
searchings of the Scriptures, and much prayer, that both
were brought to separate themselves fiom a Church in
which they were born, but which had substituted the
traditions of man for the word of God, and the forms
of religion instead of its spirit.  And in making this
separation, the temper and sincerity of both were tried
* Young's Chronicles.




to the utmost.  Both were forbidden to preach or to
teach under heavy penalties, were imprisoned, deprived
of their property, put to death, driven from  their
country and scattered abroad by persecution. Both
were placed socially under ban, and utterly scorned by
all that passed for refinement in their day-were regarded as " the filth of the earth, and the off-scouring of
all things." Against both, Providence itself and, the very
elements sometimes seemed to conspire, as when Paul
was imprisoned for years, and was shipwrecked, and
was a night and a day in the deep; and when the Pilgrims attempted to leave England, and the enemy
came upon them  and divided. their families, and the
storm arose.
But in these trials they were alike patient and confident in God. Paul could say, "I know whom I have
believed."' John Penry could say just before his martyrdom, "I testify unto you for mine own part, as I
shall answer it before Jesus Christ, and his elect angels,
that I never saw any truth more clear and more undoubted than this witness wherein we stand."  Paul
could say, "I am ready to be offered."  Penry could
say, "And I thank my God, I am not only ready to be
bound and banished, but even to die for this cause, by
his strength."' Paul could say, " I am in a strait betwixt
two, having a desire to depart and be with Christ,
which is far better"-but added-"Nevertheless, to
abide in the flesh is more needful for you." Penry could
say, " I greatly long, in regard of myself, to be dissolved
and to live in the blessed kingdom  of heaven with
Jesus Christ and his angels."  And he too could add,




8
"I would indeed, if it be his good pleasure, live yet
with you to help you bear that grievous and hard yoke
which ye are like to sustain, either here or in a strange
land."  And if the Apostle had had a wife and children, he could hardly have committed them with stronger
faith to exile and the promises.  "And here," says
Penry, " I humbly beseech you, not in any outward regard, as I shall answer it before my God, that you would
take my poor and desolate widow, and mess of fatherless
and friendless orphans, with you into exile whithersoever you may go, and you shall find, I doubt not, that
the blessed promises of my God made to me and mine
will accompany you. * * x- Only I beseech you, let
them not continue after you in this land, where they
must be forced to go again into Egypt."
Such was their spirit. Persons of all conditions and
of all ages were thus sustained through years of destitution and suffering. Some dying in prison, as Neale
says, " like rotten sheep," and some enduring the perils
and hardships of the wilderness; but all cheerful and
confident in God..
Nor were these persons, as a body, more than the
early Christians, narrow, or bigoted, or sour, or fanatical,
or turbulent, or seekers of novelties. Says Robinson:
"As they that affect alienation from others make their
differences as great, and the adverse opinion or practice
as odious as they can, thereby to further their desired
victory over them, and to harden themselves and their
side against them, so, on the contrary,. they who desire
peace and accord, both interpret things in the best part
they reasonably can, and seek how and where they may




9
find any lawful door of entry into accord and agreement with others: of which latter number I profess
myself, by the grace of God, both a companion and a
guide, especially in regard of my Christian countrymen *' ~ accounting it a cross that I am compelled, in
any particular, to dissent from them, but a benefit and
matter of rejoicing when I can in any thing, with good
conscience, unite with them in matter, if not in manner,
or, where it may be, in both."  " We uphold," says he,
" whatsoever manifest good we know in the Church of
England, whether doctrine, ordinance, or personal grace,
to our utmost. We do acknowledge in it many excellent truths of doctrine which we also teach without
commixture of error; many Christian ordinances which
we also practice-being purged from  the pollution of
Anti-Christ-and for the godly persons in it, could we
possibly separate them from the profane, we would
gladly embrace them with both arms."t How noble this
in a persecuted and exiled man! So far were they from
seeking novelties, that he says:  But we, for our parts,
as we do believe, by the word of God, that the things.
that we teach are not new, but old truths renewed, s-o
are we no less fully persuaded that the church constitution in which we are set is cast in the apostolic and primitive mould, and not one day nor hour younger, in the
nature and form of it, than the first Church of the New
Testament."T
Our fathers had no " mad rage" against what Hume
calls " inoffensive observances, surplices, corner-caps
* Works, vol. iii., pp. 354.   t Works, vol. ii., pp. 14.   t Works, vol. iii,, pp. 43.




10
and tippets."   They contended for a great principle,
precisely as Paul cid. As a matter of expediency,Paul
took Timothy and circumcised him. He cared nothing
about circumcision one way or the other, but when it
was attempted to impose circumcision as binding, and
the great principle of religious liberty was at stake, he
"gave subjection to them, no, not for an hour."  He
was then as precise as any Puritan ever was, and would
have gone to prison and to death for a thing indifferent
in itself, just as the Puritans did. When a great principle is in question, it matters little what brings the
conflict on. It may be a sixpenny tax, or a pound of
tea, or a tippet, or a surplice. No body cares any thing
about the tea or the tippet; but we than]k God that
there have been men who would set a continent on fire,
and spend millions of money, and lay down their lives,
rather than pay that sixpenny tax when its payment
would have conceded the right to exact it; and we
thank God that there have been men who, rather than
wear a tippet or surplice, when to have done so would
have compromised the great principle of religious liberty,
would go to prison and to death.
But those who urge that the Puritans were over-scrupulous, may not perceive that that is a two-edged sword;
for if the points were thus indifferent, what shall we
say of the intense bigotry and narrowness of those who,
for want of conformity in things indifferent, could turn
two thousand ministers from their pulpits, and imprison
men, and put them to death    No, both parties under* See the Puritans and their Principles, by Dr. Hall Int. Lect.




11
stood well what they were contending for, and if the
Puritans had submitted to the imposition of tippets and
surplices, this continent would have had another history.
And this leads me to say, that the seal of God in the
success and moral glory that have crowned their enterprise has not been less unequivocal in the case of our
fathers than in that of the early Christians. In each
case there was but " a handful of corn in the earth, and
God made the fruit thereof to shake as Lebanon." The
sun does not look down upon better results of a pure
Christianity in families, in churches, in schools and colleges, in missions, and in civil freedom, than can be
traced directly and wholly to their sufferings and labors.
If we consider their feeble beginnings, and the obstacles they had to encounter, the world has seen nothing
like it.
Nor is it in this country alone that the fruits of their
principles are seen. The civil liberty of England was
from them alone. Not to mention the explicit passage
so often quoted from Hume, Lord King says: "As for
toleration, or any true notion of religious liberty, or any
general freedom of conscience, we owe them not in the
least degree to what is called the Church of England.
On the contrary, we owe all these to the Independents
in the time of the commonwealth, and to Locke, their
most illustrious and enlightened disciple."' I fearlessly
confess it," says Lord Brougham, as if it required even
yet no little courage to speak the truth of the Puritans,
" with whatever ridicule some may visit their excesses,
or with whatever blame others, they, with the zeal of




12
martyrs, and the purity of early Christians, the skill and
courage of the most renowned warriors, obtained for
England the free constitution she enjoys."
If, then, we except miracles, what seal which God set
upon the labors and sufferings of the early Christians
has he withheld from those of our fathers?  We claim
for them no perfection, but we see in them serious, earnest, prayerful, intelligent, self-denying Christians, witnesses for God, and on the whole, the best representatives and truest successors of the Apostles and early
Christians then on the earth. We even venture to question whether John Penry, a minister regularly ordained,
with so many points of resemblance to the Apostle
Paul, and like him laying down his life for the cause of
Christ, was not quite as much in the true line of apostolical succession as the Archbishop who signed his
death-warrant.
Our fathers, then, in coming to this country, were
pilgrims of the highest order; not simply wanderers,
but wanderers as Abraham  was, because they too
"sought a city that hath foundations."  As such we
venerate them.  We rejoice at the incorporation into
their designation of a term which also designates the
sublimest feature of human existence, and which should
teach us and each of' their descendants to say, " I am a
pilgrim, and I am a stranger on the earth."
And the Pilgrims were also Fathers. Far beyond any
other founders of states does this title belong to them.
Their purpose was to lay foundations. They brought
* The Puritans and their Principles, Int. Lect.




their families with them. They had tenderness, and forethought, and self-denying labor, and prayerful anxiety.
No characteristic was wanting that could entitle them
to that tender and venerable name.
They were Pilgrims, and they were Fathers; travellers
towards a better country, that is, an heavenly; and
the fathers and founders of a mighty empire on the
earth.
As Pilgrim Fathers, their immediate gift to the world
was New-England. From them  and their institutions,
in connection with their maritime position, and the climate and soil and scenery of the country, has originated
the general type of character which belongs to her people. These institutions, this general type of character,
we accept as ours, and rejoice in them. In the light
of history, which shows the tendency of the sterner and
the more hardy virtues to deteriorate where the soil is
fertile and the climate genial, we are thankful that our
fathers were directed to a land that necessitated industry and frugality, and stimulated enterprise and invention; fitted, much of it, as has been said, to produce
nothing but ice and granite.
This land we love. We love her scenery, her green
mountains, her transparent streams, her long summer
days, her gorgeous autumns, her clear, sharp, frosty
mornings, her winter evenings, her tasteful and thriving
villages, her district school-houses, her frequent spires,
and her quiet Sabbaths. We glory in her people; in
their system of free schools, in their general intelligence
and shrewd practical sense, in their inventions, their economy that saves to give, their true-hearted kindness,




14
their enlarged and far-seeing benevolence, their care for
the insane and the deaf and dumb and blind, in their
religious missions that circle the globe, in their love of
a rational liberty, and in their general reverence for the
law under its simplest formis.
Nor are we over sensitive to the provincialisms and
uncouthnesses of here and there a " live" and unmitigated
Yankee, though he may flatten the ou, and whittle,
and ask questions, and boast absurdly.  Others smack
of the soil they grew in as strongly as he. If he do
whittle, he will commonly whittle his way; his questions are apt to be to the point; and if he boasts that
he is going to "cut all creation out," who more likely to
do it?
If, then, the fathers had simply given the world
New-England, it might have been well for her sons to
associate themselves, as do others, to cherish local associations and family traits, and to keep alive that homefeeling, which is an ornament and a pleasure to the individual, while it narrows neither his vision nor his heart
to the perception or love of all that is peculiar and good
in other forms of society.
But if this had been all, this day had not been celebrated as it has been, with persistency and enthusiasm,
from Plymouth rock to the shores of the Pacific.  We
do not honor' the Pilgrims simply as the Fathers of
New-England, but because they were the depositories
and best representatives then on the earth of the one
central principle on which the hopes of the race rest,
the progress of which measures the world's progress,
and gives unity to its history.




15
Here a wide field at once opens before us, but the
time will permit us only to inquire1st. Whether there be such a principle of unity.
2d. What it is' and
3d. Whether its ascendency would secure to society
all that is desirable.
Is there, then, indeed, the unity just spoken of in the
history of this world? Is there any one central principle from their relation to which the early dispersion of
families, the settlement of continents, the rise and fall
of kingdoms, the waxing and waning of civilizations,
and the transfer of the seats of empire have derived
their chief significancy?  Have they been parts of a
great whole, subservient to some one end?
That they have we can not doubt, though we may be
unable to see the connection with it of remote, and decayed, and lost races. The early limbs of the pine
perish, and leave no trace on the smooth shaft when
cehturies have gone by, and it lifts itself a hundred feet
into the air; but doubtless they contribute to make it
what it is. Such a unity we can trace in all the fixed
combinations, and circular and improgressive movements of the works of God. These have evident reference to an end beyond themselves, as the loom with its
recurring movement to the pattern it finishes and passes
on. The earth stands now, and the seasons revolve,
and day and night succeed each other as they did six
thousand years ago. The force of gravitation, the light
of the sun, the capacity of the earth and air, of fire and
water, to minister to vegetable and animal life, are the
same now as then. These fixed combinations and re




16
curring movements are subservient to vegetable and
animal life. Moreover, in every individual plant, and
in every animal, are parts that minister to the wellbeing of the whole, and then that whole thus ministered
unto, offers itself to minister to somewhat higher, till
we reach man, who tales up into himself every faculty
and law in all below him, thus crowning the whole, and
showing that it is in subserviency to his well-being that
it all finds its unity. How beautiful and grand this
permanent order and subserviency, this circling of day
and night, and of the seasons, and this ministration from
age to age of the heavens and the earth, to the successive generations of men!
And is there a unity so vast and perfect in this fixed
and improgressive order of things, that is but secondary,
and shall there be none in the flow of time, in the succession of the generations, in the onward sweep and
termination of the great current of providential movements?   Shall there be no thought or purpose, or
informing idea of God, giving its unity to this vast onward movement, and which is ultimately to protrude
itself as the blossom from the stem, and then be recognized as the end toward which every secret process
and the slow changes of the ages had been tending?
We believe there is such a central idea-it is the teaching both of Scripture and of reason-and if so, then in
that, and in that alone, will be found the key to all
history; and from  their relation to that, the significancy and grandeur of events, however splendid or
humble in their outward aspect, will be estimated.
We next inquire then, what that principle is?  It




17
can not be the religious freedom so often spoken of in
connection with the Pilgrims; for that may be where
there is no religion, but in its stead indifference and infidelity. Such a freedom could avail little. That which
is to bless the world is not mere freedom of any kind,
but true religion putting itself forth in freedom, and
vindicating, in the name of God, all the rights and means
necessary to its full expansion. The central purpose and
principle in the onward movement of this world we suppose then to be, thfe vital union of man with God in
moral conformity to him, and so in preparation for an
eternal life. So only do we find an extension of the
unity and subserviency we see in all things, by linking
earth and time to heaven and an eternal progression.
This is the principle-for this the world stands; but for
this, religious freedom will be needed, and the demand
for that will bring men into such relations to human
governments that that will be the thing immediately
contended for-the point around which the conflict will
be waged. It has been no love for freedom in the abstract, but of freedom for the sake of religion that has
walked in the fiery furnace, and gone into the lion's
den, and said to rulers, " We ought to obey God rather
than men," and so has drawn on and sustained a resistance to oppression that has been the basis of all the
civil freedom now in the world, All other freedoms
have died out, and will die. This alone has the sap of
an immortal life.
The object of religion must be the free expansion and
perfecting of that in man by which he is capable of religion. If, then, the religious nature be central in man,
2




it must be that for which all things are preparing a
final expansion and appropriate sphere.
That this is so appears because the religious nature is
that which is central in the unity of the individual man.
IEach man has in himself a unity no less than nature
and the whole onward scheme of things, and the one is
analagous to the other.  In the powers that upbuild
and sustain the body, as those of nutrition and circulation, man has a circular and improgressive system, that
goes on from the beginning to the end of the life of the
individual-as the movements causing day and night,
and the seasons go on in nature till the end of the life
of the race; and this improgressive system in each man
is to the unfolding and progressive life of his mind what
the movements of nature are to the unfolding and progressive life of the race. This system is for the sake of
the intellect with its perceptions and deductions; and
this again for the emotions, as of beauty and sublimity
when we regard things, and of complacency and love
when we regardpeirsons. But of the emotions, the highest are those which are involved in the love of man,
and in worship-in the love and worship of the Infinite
One; and thus that love of God and of man, in which
the Bible declares true religion to consist, is precisely
that the capacity for which philosophy will show lies
deepest in our nature, and gives it its unity.  It is the
central blossom, as in the palm  tree, without the expansion of which no individual reaches his full development.  But what is thus true of the individual, must be
true of the race.
It may be observed, too, that as the natural order of




19
the growth of the individual is, first the physical powers,
then the intellect, and then the religious nature; so
in the history of the world there has been, first,
the ascendency of physical prowess, then of intellect;
and that now, when the whole world is known, and
commerce and science are bringing all parts of it together, religion is casting the eye of faith over it all
and preparing for its conquest.
That the religious element is central, appears also
from the necessity of a true religion to any permanent
progress or elevation of the race. How can man be
elevated except as there is that above him of which he
may lay hold, and with which he may commune? We
must be gradually transformed into the likeness of that
with which we commune voluntarily and with pleasure,
and whoever reaches a point where he supposes there
is nothing, or'communes with nothing higher and better than himself, has reached a point where all elevation
must cease. Hence a man can do nothing so fatal to
the best hopes of the race as to lower the character of
God, or to weaken the impression it is adapted to make
on the minds of men. No heathen nation can make
permanent progress.
The same thing appears from the absurdities which
men have received, and the impositions to which they
have submitted in connection with religion. You may
connect a heavy burden with the child on the back of
the Indian mother, and she will bear it if you can make
her believe, either that it is only the weight of the
child, or that they are so inseparably connected that if
she would get loose from the one she must abandon the




20
other. How else but by connecting them with that
which is deepest and dearest, could men have been made
to submit to the absurdities and impositions of Brahminism and of Popery?
Again, as has been said, it is only through this that
this world can become a part in the unity of one great
moral system, the existence of which -is indicated by
analogy, and confirmed by Scripture, and to which the
vast physical universe revealed by the telescope must
be wholly subordinate.
Once more, if we search history for the cause of the
most earnest and pervading movements in the past, we
shall come to the same conclusion. From religion indeed has proceeded the only movement that has been
continuous from the beginning. What but the religious
element could have kept the Jews a distinct people for
4000 years? What else could have caused the Christian movement? Think as we may of the religion, the
amount of thought and labor, and of expenditure, both
of money and of life, that have sprung from it, the
revolutions it has wrought, not only in religion, but in
philosophies, in art, in government, in social life and
the forms of civilization, and that too in spite of the
fiercest opposition, show the power of an element like
one of the great forces of nature, that " spreads undivided, operates unspent."  What but this could have
produced the Mohammedan movement, so volcanic,
resistless and persistent? To this day it is not spent,
but still stands so sturdily and glares so fiercely on all
who would attack. it, that Christian missionaries turn
aside to more hopeful fields. In the present war be



21
tween Turkey and Russia, we all know what will infuse
into the conflict its fiercest, most destructive and unmanageable elements. Through what slumbering element
but this could all Europe have been precipitated in the
crusades, like a fiery flood upon Asia? What else could
have produced the intense movement of the Reformation, and drawn the sharp lines of division that have
sprung from it?  These are the great movements of
the race-the continents in the sea of history, embosoming the lesser movements which spring from  divisions into races, and the love of conquest, and personal
and family ambition.
Nor has the influence of the religious principle been
less where it has not been ostensibly the dominant element.  By all lawgivers and despots, whose immediate
object has been power, religion has been so incorporated
into the state as to be subservient to the purposes of
ambition, and has really been the cement of all enduring despotisms. It has been the art of king-craft and
of priestcraft to identify the interests of the clergy with
those of the ruling powers, and so to train the religious
sentiment as to make the support of despotism  obedience to God. Hence, James of England, though he had
in Scotland professed himself a Presbyterian, said he
hated the Independents worse than he did the Catholics.
Hence the affinity of every reactionary and monarchical government in France for the Jesuits, and the fact
that Protestantism has been uniformly persecuted there.
It is felt that the religious liberty which it implies and
cherishes, especially in searching the Scriptures, the
thought which it requires, the direct responsibility to




22
God which it teaches, and the power of a free conscience which it educates, are antagonistic to the spirit
of despotism.  And so they are.  Religious freedom
would fit men for civil freedom, and eventuate in
that.
And here I may remark, that it is this want of congruity between Protestantism in its true spirit and the
forms of government in Europe that, more than all other
causes, has prevented its more rapid and wider spread
there, and that has enabled the Pope to recover regions
once lost. The rulers have not heartily seconded its
efforts; they have feared it, and do now. They watched
its first risings; they counter-work and stamp it out as
they would fire. It is the presence of this in Turkey
that Nicholas fears, and its suppression has more to do
with the politics of Europe than appears on the surface.
It would appear, then, that even where place and
power have been primarily sought, the controlling element has still been the religious one. This philosophers
and statesmen have sometimes scorned as a weakness
and superstition, but they have never been able to disregard it with impunity, and often they have been astonished and baffled by its flaming up where they least
expected it.
ANow it was the growth of this in freedom, that was
the great idea or principle that was in our fathers, and
wrought in them, and has come down through them to
us.  We are not of those who disclaim  antiquity and
discard transmission and succession, and fail to connect
ourselves with a vital and organized past.  If we be



23
lieve less than some in the regular succession of the
Popes, and in the transmission for eighteen hundred
years, often throughl murderous hands, of spiritual virtues and powers, we do believe in the perpetual presence
of the Spirit of God as of the Shekinah, in his Church,
and in a succession for six thousand years, in one unbroken line from the first martyr, through Moses and Daniel and the Apostles, of those who have inherited the
promises and died in faith; and in the transmission
through them, so that they have always lived and
glowed somewhere, of the great ideas of God's supremacy, and of man's right to worship him according to
the dictates of his conscience. In this line our fathers
stood, these ideas flaming up in them like a beacon-light;
they stood, worthy successors of those of old in the
same line, who " wandered in deserts, and in mountains,
and in dens, and in caves of the earth." In this line we
would stand.
The religious element being thus the central one in
the history of this world, our next inquiry is, whether
its free and legitimate expansion Twould secure all that
belongs to the well-being of society.  Is it through this
that the Divine idea must find its realization and counterpart?
That this is so we believe, in the first place, because we believe in the word of God, and that says it
is so.
Again, we believe it because God has so constituted
this world, and, doubtless, the universe, that he who
aims at and secures the highest good in any department
or sphere, will also incidentally, and so best, secure the.




24
greatest amount of subordinate good. This is the general law, and whatever exceptions to it there may seem
to be are accidental and temporary. In this principle
lies the secret of the unconscious power wielded by our
fathers.
Upon the general illustration of a proposition so broad
as this we can not now enter.  It must suffice to notice
its application in organic systems where there is mutual
relation and interaction of parts.  In these that which
is highest is iindeed formed by the lower, but when
formed it reacts upon that lower and becomes necessary
to its perfection. Thus the brain, the highest and most
central part of the body, is that to which all the other
parts are subordinate; but this reacts, and ministers a
pervading and vital influence to every inferior part, essential both to their functions and growth, and the perfection of the brain will both imply and secure that of
every inferior part.
So in the tree.  For the purposes of its own growth
and well-being it forms the leaves highest and last; but
it is only as these expand freely in the air and sunlight
that the roots will strike themselves deepest, and the
trunk be enlarged, and the vitality prolonged. The tree
grows from its top. And here is the model of political
and social growth.  Society is built up like an individual.  Like a tree, it grows from its top.  Let the nutritive and circulatory movements of society flow freely
on and up to the quickening and expansion of an intellectual life, and that will so react-as we see it doing in
our day, by the application of science to art-as to give
to the material interests themselves a range and power




25
entirely unknown before. And then let the top still
expand into the higher air and purer light of beauty,
and of moral and religious truth, and in every fibre at the
root will be felt the upward movement; and there will
descend nutritive power and regulative principles, causing a growth that will defy the touch of time, that time
will only strengthen and enlarge. The elaborated wisdom of sages will descend and diffuse itself into all the
currents of thought, and reach the springs and motives
of action, and will eliminate evils by those gradual organic revolutions which come on like the tide, but which
no human power can set back.
The difficulty with past civilizations has been that they
did not form  an adequate top. The products of the
physical and intellectual life circulated in and for themselves, and hence plethora, stagnation, debility, spasms,
and dissolution. This is the stereotyped round in which
families and nations perish through prosperity. But if
these products might flow on and up, if the affections
might distribute them  rather than appetite, benevolence rather than ostentation, and principle rather than
fashion and caprice; if they might minister to a pure
and spiritual religion, and be controlled and distributed
by that, it is not for the imagination to depict the
beauty and blessedness that would pervade society.
Particularly do we believe that there would spring
from  this a higher culture of all that pertains to
beauty; and only from this a permanent civil liberty.
There has been an impression that the virtues of our
fathers were stern and repulsive of beauty. And so is
the mountain-top stern, where the storms wrestle, and




26
the snow abides, and the ice congeals; but from that
mountain-top comes the beauty that looks up at its base,
and that skirts the stream on its long way to the ocean.
So will the sterner virtues always melt into beauty
when the storms and cold with which they have to contend have passed away.'Beauty is of God, and it can
not be that he who has woven the web of light in its
colors, and so wrought its golden threads into the tissue of nature, who paints the flower, and unfurls the
banner of sunset, should not delight in all beauty, and
that it should not proceed from  all godlikeness. We
believe, indeed, that only as there are with God himself,
the high and stern mountains of a holiness and justice
unapproachable, does there proceed fiom him the smile'that makes the violet glad. Neither Christ nor his
apostles concerned themselves with art; they did not
even speak of it. The struggle with moral evil was too
earnest. Let this be overcome, and the alliance between the arts and the baser passions dissolved, and
there would spring up in connection with the industry
and science and wealth that religion would produce, a
diffused beauty in nature and in art of which we have
now no conception.
That there can be permanent civil liberty only
through the religious nature is evident, because it is
only through this that the true idea of a state, and of
its relation to the individual will ever be seen. Through
the awakening in each mall, and the growth of those
powers by which he is connected with God and with
immortality, and is bound above all things to conform
his spiritual nature to its law, the individual becomes




an end in himself, and thus finds a ground for demanding that nothing shall exist, whether in Church or in
state, that may stand between him and the freest, and
highest expansion of these powers; nothing which shall
make use of him for its own sake, and so degrade him
from a person into a thing.  This is the principle contended for by our fathers.  On this ground man has a
right to claim that outward institutions civil and religious, shall be for the individual; shall be means and
conditions of growth to his higher powers, as the
air, and light, and food are of the growth of the body;
and if they are not so, or are obstructive of that end,
then, on the same ground, he has a right to remove and
destroy them.  The' Church and the state can become a part of the beautiful unity in the Divine plan,
and have a right to be, only as they fit the individual
who comes under their agency for a higher sphere; and
they are perfect, and from God, just in proportion as
they furnish the best possible conditions of individual
growth in all that belongs to a true manhood. In the
light of these powers man is seen to have worth and
dignity, rights to have sacredness, and the life of the lowliest is invested with a solemn grandeur. Here, indeed,
is the basis of rights, and so of that freedom which
springs from rights and respects rights, which has God
for its author, the good of all through that of each for
its end, and for which, in the light of reason and conscience, a man may lay down his life.
Now what we ask, and all that we ask is, institutions,
both civil and religious, pervaded by this freedom, flexible to the demands of individual growth; and the right




28
of the people to judge what modifications that may
require. Especially do we demand, in the name of humanity and of God, religious freedom.  Upon that
all other freedom rests. On this subject especially do
we demand the right of free action and of free speech,
not only in the church but in the street, and the day is
not yet when that can be taken from us.
We believe that government and rulers are for
the people, the church and the clergy for the laity,
and that God has given to men the right, as in their
civil, so in their religious capacity, honestly using all
the light he has given them, whether of reason or of
revelation, so to organize themselves, both in Church
and state, as will best secure civil rights and spiritual
growth; and organizations so originated and so resulting we believe to be of God. They are not rebellion,
they are not schism; they are component parts of God's 
one great and fiee kingdom which he will love, and own,
and bless, and they ought to be recognized as such.
His sun has not shone less brightly, nor his rain and
dew  descended less bountifully upon  these United
States since they organized themselves thus, than when
governed by one who was " king by the grace of God;"
nor have the sunshine of his love, and the rain and
dews of his grace been less abundant upon our churches
than upon those governed and blessed by popes and
prelates.
Opposed to the free and flexible systems which this
principle would form  are those-and they include all
others-wvlch have an end in themselves, to which the
individual is squared, and hewed, and bent, and made




29
subservient. Under these there will be, not true freedom, but a mixture of license and restraint. Those
who manage them are willing that the productive faculties of man should be sharpened to any extent; they
favor caste, or something equivalent, for that purpose.
They give full scope to the sensitive and sensuous nature; they patronize and subsidize the fine arts; they
provide processions, and games, and books of sports for
the people, and they have standing armnies to oeep them
in order. If the sugar-plum will not do, they have the
whip. But, recognizing instinctively the main doctrine
of this discourse, they uniformly either dwarf or pervert the religious nature.  They intervene in every possible way between man and his Maker, assuming ghostly
powers, and constructing conduits and channels by which
the grace of God may be conveyed to the profane
people who may not have immediate access to Him.
This is their great resource. This done, they may mock
at revolution and bide their time, knowing that when the
Louis Philippe, or the Louis Napoleon, or Santa Anna, that
is sure to come shall appear, the bewildered and helpless
people will relapse into monarchy. They think little of
the crimes and vices which spring from the depraved appetites and passions; and if the clergy will pray according to the rubric and conform to the canons, they may be
indolent, inefficient, dishonest, licentious, profane, without rebuke. But if a clergyman cannot wear a stole, or a
surplice, or a white gown, or a black one; if a few
Christians meet, in a private house even, for the study
of the Scriptures and for prayer; if the Madiai read
the Bible; if Miss Cunningham  distribute a Bible and




30
Pilgrim's Progress, then come confiscations, imprisonments, banishment, death. It is for those who do these
things that the dungeon, and the slow fire, and the rack
are prepared.  It is these whom  malice pursues after
death, and casts out and buries with the burial of a dog.
Those who use missals and say prayers, they like; those
who read the Bible and pray, they persecute.
There is no book that they so fear as they do the
Bible; none that they are so afraid to have the childrZe
read. They keep it out of their schools, and of their
seats of power, as they would the plague. They burn
it. They can evade any thing, and stand before any
thing but the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word
of God.
Such systems, whether called Christian or heathen,
are essentially the same. They wish to use man as a
thing, and so intervene between him and God. Under
them civilization may advance far, and aggregate power
accumulate, and endure long, but man will deteriorate,
and destruction from without or within is certain. Still,
when one system is destroyed, another will arise. Forms
may be changed, but the spirit will be the same; revolution may succeed' revolution, till they shall have as
little significance as street brawls, and there be as many
days of July as there are days in July, but there will
be balanced, and permanent freedom  only as there is
religion in liberty.
As might be anticipated from what has been said,
the special support of all such systems, aside from physical force, has been in an appeal to the religious nature. An exclusive divine right has been claimed.




31
That of prelates the Pilgrims rejected; that of kings
they conceded. Now, that of kings is exploded, at least
here. We put it on the same footing as the Divine right
of constables.  That of prelates, being more closely
connected with that religious nature from which is all
our hope, but into which every superstition strikes its
roots, is still conceded by many, and is at this moment
the one antagonistic element among us to the spirit and
principles of our fathers.  The Pope and certain bishops claim a divine right, received by transmission in an
unbroken line from the Apostles, to govern the Church;
and in connection with this they claim the power either
to change bread into flesh and  wine  into  blood,
or to communicate some virtue to the sacraments which
they would not have if administered by persons appointed for that purpose in some other way. Is this
claim  valid?  If so, then Popery and Puseyism  are
right, and all Protestants, Church of England and all,
are schismatics and heretics.  If so, there are blessings
in Christianity which we cannot have by going directly
to God. These men hold them in their hands, and the
whole race is at their mercy. If so, Christ is not the
only priest under the new dispensation, and the beneit
of the sacraments will not be wholly from him through
faith, but partly, at least, from a mysterious virtue in
the elements which these persons only can give. This
claim we reject utterly.  We say that Christ has made
all his people " Kings and priests unto God," and nothing shall take from us the right to go directly to God
through the one great High Priest. All systems based
on this claim are and must be exclusive and intolerant,




32
and have always been connected with an ignorant and
oppressed people.
Our principles, on the other hand, forbid exclusiveness, and whatever of this we may have, is due, not to
them, but to personal infirmity.  They call upon us
to exercise a large charity. Give us those essential
conditions through which the spiritual nature may be
best developed; give us the right of private judgment;
give us the Bible;-and here I wish the time would permit me to repeat to you fully the recent words of the
Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of England, pressed
from him in his conflict with Popery, in which he stands,
not for " the Bible interpreted by the prayer-book," —
that would not do for him,-but for the Bible alone,
and  says, "Whatever is not absolutely  declared
therein, and yet claims to be implicitly received, I
look upon with suspicion," thus sanctioning the very
principle contended for by Robinson, and all that
he contended for;-'Give us, I say, the Bible, and
that alone as our standard; and the doctrine of justification by faith so far as to exclude all priestly intervention between us and God, and we can feel that we stand
shoulder to shoulder with the multitude of our brethren
of every name-with the Hollanders who had the same
spirit with the Puritans-with the Huguenots, those
nobles in God's kingdom than whom none were ever
nobler-with the Presbyterians, whose fathers struggled in Scotland, as ours did in England-with the
the great company of Methodists and Baptists, and
also with our Episcopal brethren, so far as they
will permit us.  "We would gladly embrace  them




83
with both arms."  We do not object to Episcopacy
as a form  of government preferred by the people,
but to its being imposed upon us as exclusively of
divine right, and to that spirit of the clergy generally,
and of the laity increasingly, which says, "Stand by
thyself, I am holier than thou."  "I belong to a church,
and you do not."  "I have a right to preach and to
administer the sacraments, and you have not." "There
are blessings in Christianity which you can have only
by coming to us,"-" an all-grasping" spirit "which gives
no quarter, allows no truce, but demands an unconditional submission." If history did not instruct us in the
uniform tendency of this exclusive principle, we might
be surprised to hear the excellent and venerable bishops
in their late address, while they claim a middle place
between the Romanists and us, complain of the treatment they receive from them, and then turn at once and
treat us in the same manner, not allowing that we are
Churches at all, or bodies of Christians even, but only
"forms of error."  " On the one hand," say they, "we
behold an all-grasping Romanism which gives no quarter, allows no truce, but demands an unconditional submission. On the other hand are various forms of error
still pervaded, more or less by the true spirit of Christianity, but constantly breaking into fragments, and
steadily tending to latitudinarianism and infidelity."* In
exclusiveness and unconscious misrepresentation can
any thing go beyond this?  Here it is-no quarter, no
truce, but unconditional submission-and that, too, to
* Triennial Convention, New-York.




34
those who hold precisely the same relation to the Romanists that we hold to them-unconditional submission, or we mustibe given over to "uncovenanted mercies,"
and infidelity and perdition. Now all this we greatly
regret. Most gladly would we stand shoulder to
shoulder with them and try to do the work of our common Master. We will try to do it still; we too have a
ministry and ordinances that we think are of divine
institution; we have an open Bible and a merciful God
and Saviour. If He shall show us that we are wrong,
that he doesnot intend to work in accordance with the
general principle and scheme of freedom of which I
have spoken, that the labors and sufferings and great
promise of the past were all vain and delusive, we will
abandon our cherished associations for the dear sake of
Him whom our fathers at least sought to follow. We
will then give in our unconditional submission.
But to us the prospect is not altogether dark. We
are encouraged by the remembrance of the blessing of
God in the past, and we hope he will continue to bless
us. We do not believe, as they seem to think, that his
past signal blessings have been an unaccountable mistake which he will rectify in future; but rather, if we
shall not prove recreant, that they are but earnests of
greater blessings to come. If we see among us tendencies to be struggled against, requiring wisdom and
prayer, surely we are not alone in this. We had supposed that we were gaining strength, and not only we,
but the great body of kindred churches. We suppose
so still, and that-the prospect for the diffusion and ultimate triumph, substantially, of the great principles of




35
religious and civil freedom held by the Puritans, was
never more encouraging. Those principles that were
cabined in the May Flower-the same once inclosed by
the walls of an upper chamber in Jerusalem-and that,
two hundred and thirty-three years ago, this day, were
first breathed into the atmosphere of this continent from
Plymouth Rock, have seemed to abide in it there as a
mighty spell, and have so diffused and mingled themselves with it every where, that the whole people
breathe them in as with the very breath of their life;
and so that no chemistry of tyranny, civil or ecclesiastical, can ever get them out. They were never as strong
as they are to-day. They make little show of unity by
great convocations. They affect no pomp, and provide
no prizes for a worldly ambition. They are in the
world under the same aspect and conditions as Christ
himself was-as spiritual Christianity, and truth, and
civil liberty have always been. Wealth does not gravitate toward them; fashion has no affinity for them.
The votaries of these more often detach themselves and
float to other centres. In their simplicity they stand,
like the heavens, unpropped by visible pillars. They
seem, if not born, yet as it were born again for this continent and this age, and for that oceanic breadth and
depth of movement which is clearly before society and
the Church. They ally themselves with all that is peculiar in our free institutions, with all that is most
simple and grand in the works of God, with all that is
free and mighty in the movements of the elements,
with all that is comprehensive in charity, and great in
effort and self-sacrifice. Like the electric fluid, they are




.36
subtle and pervasive, often working silently, and seen
only in their effects as they quicken the growth of the
plants of righteousness, and crystallize the gems that
are to be set in the diadem  of the Redeemer. But
when the storm shall come, if come it must, that final
storm that is to shake "not the earth only, but also
heaven," "that those things which cannot be shaken may
remain, then they will be abroad in their might; now
imperceptibly controlling affinities, and now flashing out
in their brightness, and speaking in thunder-tones in the
moral and political heavens. To the ears of the oppressed in every land those tones will be as music. To
the grave where freedom may still be buried, they will
be as the trump of God. She will hear them and come
forth clothed in the garments of her immortality, and
the nations shall walk and dwell with her.
These principles we receive.  We wish no antagonism with any body, or any thing, except that which
would be necessitated by faithfulness to them. We
wish to know where, and through what it is that God
is working, and to work with him. This we would do
in peace, and without being persecuted, or reviled, or
cast out, if we may: but at all hazards we would work
with Him. This it is, and not mere freedom, civil or
religious, that is to save us; and we receive these principles because we believe that God is working through
them, and that by them, as by the sling and stone, deliverance is to come. We receive them  because we
believe that the might of Omnipotence is in them; and
that the promise of the Immutable One is theirs