Barbarism 1 1) c first 0 auger 
 
 A 
 
 DISCOURSE 
 
 FOR 
 
 HOME MISSIONS, 
 
 BV 
 
 HORACE BUSHNELL, 
 
 pastor of the north ceurce. Hartford, Cokh 
 
 N EW- YORK: 
 
 PRINTED FOR THE AMERICAN HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY. 
 BY WILLIAM OSBORN, SPRUCE-STREET, CORNER OF NASSAU. 
 
 18 4 7 
 
The following Discourse was delivered in New-York, Boston and 
 other places, in May and June, 1S47, and is now yielded to the Ameri- 
 can Home Missionary Society, in whose behalf it was prepared, for 
 publication. 
 
 H. B. 
 
DISCOURSE. 
 
 JUDGES XVII. 13. 
 
 THEN SAID M1CAH, NOW KNOW I THAT TIIE LOUD WILL DO ME GOOD, SEEING I HAVE 
 A LEVITE TO MV PRIEST. 
 
 A very unimportant chapter of biography is here pre- 
 served to us — save that if we take the subject as an ex- 
 ponent of his times, we shall find a serious and mo- 
 mentous truth illustrated in his conduct. He lives in the 
 time of the Judges, that is, in the emigrant age of Israel. It 
 is the time, when his nation are passing through the struggles 
 incident to a new settlement, a time therefore of decline to- 
 wards barbarism. Public security is gone. The people 
 have run wild. Superstition has dislodged the clear sove- 
 reignty of reason. Forms are more sacred than duties, 
 and a costly church furniture is taken as synonymous with 
 a godly life. It is at just such times that we are to look 
 for the union of great crimes and scrupulous acts of devotion. 
 The villain and the saint coalesce, without difficulty, in one 
 and the same character ; and superstition, which delights 
 in absurdities, hides the imposture from him who suffers 
 it. Thus Micah enters on the stage of history as a thief, 
 having stolen eleven hundred shekels of silver from his 
 mother ; but before the scene closes, he becomes, at least 
 in his own view, quite a saint ; and that too, if we may 
 judge, without any great detriment to his former cha- 
 racter. 
 
 Finding that his mother has invoked a solemn curse 
 upon the thief, whoever he may be, that has stolen her 
 money ; and also, which is more frightful still, that she 
 
 1 
 
4 
 
 had actually dedicated the money, before it was stolen, to 
 a religious use, even to make a molten image for himself, 
 the superstitious fancy of the barbarian begins to worry his 
 peace. To have stolen the money was nothing specially 
 dreadful, but to have a parent’s curse hanging over his 
 head, and sacred money hid in his house — both consider- 
 ed to involve the certainty of some impending mischief 
 that is fatal — is more than he has courage to support. 
 Moved, of course, by no ingenuous and dignified spirit of 
 repentance, but only by a drivelling superstition, he goes 
 to his mother and chokes out his confession, saying : “ The 
 silver is with me, I took it” ! And what a beautiful evi- 
 dence of piety, thinks the glad mother, that her Micah 
 was afraid to keep the sacred money ! So she pours out 
 her dear blessing on him, saying : “ Blessed be thou of the 
 Lord, my son” ! Then she takes the silver and from it has 
 a molten image cast for her worthy and hopeful son, which 
 he sets up in “ the house of Ins gods,” among the tera- 
 phim and other trumpery there collected. And as Micah 
 is now growing religious, he must also have a priest. 
 First, he consecrates his own son ; but his son not being a 
 Levite, it was difficult for so pious a man to be satisfied. 
 Fortunately, a young Levite — a strolling mendicant pro- 
 bably — comes that way, and he promptly engages the youth 
 to remain and act the padre for him, saying : “ Dwell with 
 me and be a. father unto me.” Having thus got up a reli- 
 gion, the thief is content, and his mental troubles are quiet- 
 ed. Becoming a Romanist before Rome is founded, he 
 says : “ Now know I that the Lord will do me good, 
 seeing l have a Levite to my priest. - ' 'That it would 
 do him any good to be a better man, docs not appear to 
 have occurred to him. Religion, to him, consisted rather 
 in a line silver apparatus of gods and a priest in regular 
 succession ! 
 
 Set now the picture in its frame, the man in connection 
 with his times, and you have in exhibition a great practi- 
 cal truth, which demands your earnest study. Nothing is 
 more certain, as you may see in this example of Micah and 
 his times, than that emigration, or a new settlement of 
 the social state, invoices a tendency to social decline. 
 There must, in every such case, be a relapse towards bar- 
 
barism, more or less protracted, more or less complete. 
 Commonly, nothing but extraordinary efforts in behalf of 
 education and religion, will suffice to prevent a fatal lapse 
 of social order. Apart from this great truth, clearly seen as 
 enveloped in the practical struggles of our American history, 
 no one can understand its real import, the problem it involves, 
 or the position at which we have now arrived. Least of 
 all, can he understand the sublime relation of home mis- 
 sions, and other like enterprises, to the unknown future 
 of our great nation. He must know that we are a people 
 trying out the perils incident to a new settlement of the 
 social state ; he must behold religion passing out into the 
 wilds of nature with us, to fortify law, industry and good 
 manners, and bear up our otherwise declining fortunes, 
 till we become an established and fully cultivated people. 
 Just here, hang all the struggles of our history for the two 
 centuries now past, and for at least another century to 
 come. 
 
 We shall also discover, in pursuing our subject, in what 
 manner we are to apprehend danger from the spread of 
 Romanism. If you seem to struggle, in this matter of Ro- 
 manism, with contrary convictions ; to see reason in the 
 alarms urged upon you so frequently, and yet feel it to be 
 the greatest unreason to fear the prevalence here of a re- 
 ligion so distinctively opposite to our character and institu- 
 tions ; if you waver between a feeling of panic and a feel- 
 ing of derision ; if you are half frighted by the cry of Ro- 
 manism, and half scorn it as a bugbear ; you will be able to 
 settle yourself into a sober and fixed opinion of the subject, 
 when you perceive that we are in danger, first, of something 
 far worse than Romanism, and through that of Romanism 
 itself. Our first danger is barbarism — Romanism 
 next ; for before we can think it a religion, to have a 
 Levite to our priest, we must bring back the times of the 
 Judges. Let us empty ourselves of our character, let us 
 fall into superstition, through the ignorance, wildness and 
 social confusion incident to a migratory habit and a rapid 
 succession of new settlements, and Romanism will find 
 us just where character leaves us. The real danger is 
 the prior. Taking care of that we are safe. Sleeping over 
 that, nothing ought to save us ; for if we must have a 
 
6 
 
 wild race of nomads roaming over the vast western terri- 
 tories of our land — a race without education, law, manners 
 or religion — we need not trouble ourselves farther on ac- 
 count of Romanism ; for to such a people, Romanism, bad 
 as it is, will come as a blessing. 
 
 I shall recur to this question of Romanism again. I 
 only name it here as a preliminary, that may assist you to 
 apprehend the true import of my subject. Let us now 
 proceed to the question itself, How far emigration and a 
 continual re-settlement, as in this country, involves a ten- 
 dency to moral and social disorganization ? In the dis- 
 cussion of this question, I shall draw principally on the 
 facts of history ; I only suggest here, as a preparative and 
 key to the facts that may be cited, a few of the reasons 
 why such a decline is likely to appear. 
 
 First of all, the society transplanted, in a case of emi- 
 gration, cannot carry its roots with it ; for society is a vital 
 creature, having roots of antiquity, which inhere in the 
 very soil — in the spots consecrated by valor, by genius 
 and by religion. Transplanted to a new field, the emi- 
 grant race lose, of necessity, a considerable portion of that 
 vital force which is the organific and conserving power of 
 society. All the old roots of local love and historic feeling — 
 the joints and bands that minister nourishment — are left 
 behind ; and nothing remains to organize a living growth, 
 but the two unimportant incidents, proximity and a com- 
 mon interest. 
 
 Education must, for a long time, be imperfect in degree 
 and partial in extent. There is no literary atmosphere 
 breathing through the forests or across the prairies. The 
 colleges, if any they have, are only rudimental beginnings, 
 and the youth a raw company of woodsmen. Hurried 
 into life, at the bar, or in the pulpit, when as yet they are 
 only half educated, their performances are crude in the 
 matter and rough iu the form. No matter how cultivated 
 the professional men of the first age, those of the second, 
 third and fourth will mix up extravagance and cant in all 
 their demonstrations, and will be acceptable to the people 
 partly for that reason. For the immense labors and 
 rough hardships necessary to be encountered, in the way 
 
7 
 
 of providing the means of living, will ordinarily create in 
 them a rough and partially wild habit. 
 
 Then, as their tastes grow wild, their resentments will 
 grow violent and their enjoyments coarse. The salutary 
 restraints of society being, to a great extent, removed, they 
 will think it no degradation to do before the woods and 
 wild animals, what, in the presence of a cultivated social 
 state, they would blush to perpetrate. They are likely 
 even to look upon the indulgence of low vices and brutal 
 ploasures, as the necessary garnish of their life of ad- 
 venture. 
 
 In religion, their views will, of course, be narrow and 
 crude, and their animosities bitter. Sometimes the very 
 life of religion will seem about to die, as it actually would, 
 save that some occasional outburst of over-wrought feel- 
 ing or fanatical zeal kindles a temporary fire. Probably 
 it will be found that low superstitions begin to creep in, a 
 regarding of dreams, a faith in the presentation of scrip- 
 ture texts, in apparitions and visions, perhaps also in 
 necromancy. 
 
 Mean time, if we speak of civil order, it will probably 
 be found that the old common law of the race is not trans- 
 planted as a vital power, but only as a recollection that 
 refuses to live, because of the newness of the soil, and 
 the varied circumstances which, in so many ways, render 
 it inapplicable. It asks for loyalty where there is no de- 
 mesne, offers a jury before there is a court, and sancti- 
 fies a magnet charta where no plain of Runnymede is ever 
 to be known. Hence, the need of much new legislation, 
 consequently much of confusion and a considerable lapse 
 of time, before the new body of law, with its tribunals and 
 uses, can erect its trunk and grow up into life from a na- 
 tive root. Mean time it is well, if the social wildness and 
 the violent resentments of the people do not break over 
 all the barriers of legal restraint, and dissolve the very 
 bonds of order. 
 
 If now, beside all the causes here enumerated, the 
 emigrants are much involved in war to maintain their pos- 
 sessions, or if they are gathered from many nations hav- 
 ing different languages, laws, manners and religions, the 
 tendency to social decline is, of course, greatly aggravated. 
 
8 
 
 Indeed, where all the forms of habit, prejudice and opinion 
 are found to impinge upon each other, and every recol- 
 lection of the past, every peculiar trait of national feeling 
 and personal character requires to be obliterated, before it 
 is possible for the new elements to coalesce, what can 
 save a people, we are tempted to ask, from being precipi- 
 tated downward even below society itself? 
 
 Having glanced, in this rapid manner, at the causes of 
 decline theoretically involved in emigration, (for emigra- 
 tion works no mischief by itself, but only as it provokes 
 the malignant action of other causes,) let us now pass 
 to some historic illustrations. And I begin with the emi- 
 gration headed by Abraham, where the facts are already 
 familiar, so that when you are engaged in tracing their im- 
 port as illustrations of my subject, your minds will be dis- 
 tracted by no effort of attention to conceive the facts them- 
 selves. 
 
 There was never an emigration conducted under bet- 
 ter auspices. As in the original settlement of New Eng- 
 land, the aim and purpose of the movement were strict- 
 ly religious. The emigrants too, were shepherds in their 
 habit, never attached to the soil, but accustomed to move- 
 ment. They came out also as a family, for Lot appears 
 to have been only a ward of Abraham ; and in the family 
 state — which is itself a patriarchate, the simplest and most 
 unquestionable of all governments, as it is closest to 
 nature — they had <a complete frame of social order already 
 provided. Though trained as a nomad and manifestly 
 ignorant of certain moral distinctions familiar to us, 
 Abraham yet evinces, in his character, a degree of 
 beauty and princely dignity, such as seldom can be found 
 under the politer forms of civilization. In his heroic pur- 
 suit and slaughter of the kings to rescue Lot, in the sin- 
 gular dignity of his meeting with Melchisedec on his re- 
 turn, in the generous and conciliatory terms by which he 
 sought to avoid the quarrel already begun between Lot’s 
 herdsmen and his own, in his hospitality at the tent door 
 in Mamre, in his burial of Sarah, in the whole manner of 
 his life in short there is a grand, massive nobility of cha- 
 racter, which, if we cannot call it civilization or refine- 
 
9 
 
 raent, is yet only so much higher and more charming, as 
 it is closer to nature, more original and older than the 
 days of accomplished heartlessness and drawing-room pre- 
 tence. It is the pure, virgin character of a great and 
 primitive manhood, which, in the simple, godly life of the 
 east country, was not yet spent. 
 
 See now what a mass of barbarism is shortly developed 
 out of this fair beginning. The character of Lot is not 
 strongly fortified by religious principle, and the restraints 
 of society being now removed, he soon falls into loose 
 habits of virtue and, in the end, brings himself and his 
 family to a very sorry figure. Thus out of Lot springs 
 the wild race of the Moabites, a race as degraded in cha- 
 racter, as the abominable and filthy rites of their god 
 Baal Peor require them to be — enemies, of course, to Je- 
 hovah and th.e kindred stock of Israel, in all after times. 
 The Ammonites are a branch of the same stock. 
 
 Mean time, Abraham himself is throwing off upon the 
 world, in his son Ishmael, another stock of barbarians. 
 Driven out with his mother, to seek his fortune as he may, 
 among the wild tribes of idolaters that infest the country, 
 the lad, we are told, grows up in the wilderness and be- 
 comes an archer. By which it appears that he betook him- 
 self to some secret cave or fastness, in the south, and there, 
 by the use of his bow as a hunter and robber, maintained 
 himself, and became the father of the Bedouin race. 
 There he trained up the young Ishmaelites, otherwise call- 
 ed Arabs — a name which, according to some, signifies 
 westerners — a prolific, talented and powerful race of men, 
 whose nature it has been to this hour to live by plunder, 
 whose hand is against every man and every man’s hand 
 against them. Thus you have another wild people, a 
 cruel, treacherous, lying stock of thieves and idolaters de- 
 veloped out of the emigration. 
 
 One generation later, viz. : — out of the family of Isaac, 
 comes another. I speak of the persecuted Esau and the 
 Idumeans or Edomites descended of him. These were 
 a warlike and ferocious race, governed by dukes or great 
 captains, and for long ages the sturdiest of all the ene- 
 mies of Israel. 
 
 It is remarkable too that, when David is giving the roll, 
 
10 
 
 in one of his Psalms, of the great league of nations that 
 were conspiring, at that time, against his country, he puts 
 at the head of all precisely these three fierce and barbar- 
 ous people, descended of Terah, the common ancestor both 
 of them and of his countrymen. “ For they have con- 
 sulted together with one consent, they are confederate 
 against thee, the tabernacles of Edom and the Ishmaelites, 
 of Moab and the Hagarenes.” Then follow the other na- 
 tions who are led by these. 
 
 Mean time, if we consider the dastardly conduct of 
 the ten brothers of Joseph, who for jealousy sell him into 
 slavery, and then, by a solemn lie, convince their father 
 that he is dead — remembering also and holding in com- 
 parison Abraham’s noble and magnanimous treatment of 
 Lot — we shall see that there has certainly been a very 
 great falling off toAvards barbarism, in the chosen family 
 itself. 
 
 But Ave must follow them further, even into this book of 
 Judges, Avhere they come to make their final settlement 
 in the land. In Egypt they had become acquainted with 
 agriculture, Avith cities and the settled modes of life ; 
 though degraded, to some extent, by their temporary sub- 
 jection to slavery. But their freedom, connected with their 
 strong legal discipline under Moses, the neAV sentiments 
 and iicav social capacities, which had been formed under 
 this protracted discipline of forty years, during which the 
 old generation of slavery had become extinct, had pre- 
 pared them to enter the country appointed and make a 
 fair beginning. They took their places ; for a time all 
 AA r as well. Still they Avere a people without roots, and they 
 began, ere long, to fall into social anarchy. They served 
 the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the 
 ciders that had overlived Joshua and had seen all the 
 great works of the Lord that he did for Israel, and Avhen 
 that generation Avere gathered unto their fathers — so 
 says the history — There arose another generation, which 
 kncAv not the Lord, nor yet the works which he had done 
 for Israel. Now came the dark time; for in every emi- 
 gration, the moral and social trial commonly falls, not on 
 the first generation, but more frequently on the second, 
 third and fourth. So it Avas here, and it really seemed 
 
11 
 
 that the nation must utterly die, before it could get root. 
 Three times it is said in the history, that “ there was no 
 king in Israel and that every man did what was right in 
 his own eyes.” By which we are to understand, not that 
 royalty was discontinued, for it had not existed ; but that 
 there was no civil head, that government was utterly dis- 
 solved. It was, in truth, the paradisaic age of no gov- 
 ernment ; a day when they had it, not for a theory, but for 
 a fact. Wrongs were redressed by uprisings of popular 
 impatience, by assassination or private revenge. In one 
 case of outrage, which may betaken doubtless as a good 
 specimen of the barbarity of the times, the tribes were 
 roused to vengeance, in the manner of a riot, by sending 
 round, as a proclamation, the pieces of a murdered wo- 
 man’s body ! If at any time they had a government, it 
 was commonly the government of a usurper, who butch- 
 ered, as he came into power, after the method of the 
 Turks, all the families that had any semblance of right 
 to civil precedence, or any possible hope of succession. 
 The roads were destroyed, and there was no passage 
 through the country, save in by-ways, or across the fields 
 and mountains. The arts perished ; there was not even a 
 smith left in the land, and they were obliged to go down 
 to the Philistines to get an axe or a mattock sharpened. 
 In one case, they fought a battle with ox goads, because 
 they had no better implements. Their religion being all 
 one with the laws, fell of course into the same confusion 
 w r ith them. As we see in the case of Micah, Jehovah and 
 the gods, all stand upon a par ! They have their molten 
 images set up together in “ the house of the gods,” to be 
 smoked by the same incense ; and Micah’ s Levite probably 
 has it for his duty to practice before them all ! Such is 
 the decline suffered by this emigrant nation, in the process 
 of colonizing a new region and building up a new social 
 fabric. But dismal as the picture is to which they have 
 descended, w r e have it for our comfort, that they are not 
 utterly lost. After they have sounded the lowest notes of 
 misery and social debasement, a Samuel appears, collects 
 the scattered elements, works them gradually towards or- 
 der, and the new nation, taking root, begins to rise. 
 
12 
 
 Passing over now the instructive lessons that might 
 be drawn from the Egyptian, Grecian, Carthaginian and 
 Roman colonies, we descend to the great American ques- 
 tion itself. That the Mexican and the South American 
 States have actually lost ground, since the emigration ; 
 that they have been descending steadily towards barbar- 
 ism, in the loss of the old Castilian dignity, in the decay of 
 society and manners, and the general prostration of order, 
 is well understood. But it is commonly supposed, I be- 
 lieve, that our North American settlements, especially those 
 of New England, have never suffered any similar retrogra- 
 dation ; that they have, on the contrary, steadily advanced 
 or ascended to their present state. No impression could 
 be more opposite to the real facts of history. Probably 
 never before did any emigrant people resist, with so great 
 promptitude and effect, the inherent causes of decline in- 
 volved in a new state of society. Nor can it be said that 
 the issue was ever doubtful. Indeed I am not sure that, 
 if we consider the rough amount of character in the whole 
 community, any real diminution was ever suffered. For if 
 much was lost in the complete finish of the higher class, 
 something was also gained in the sharpness, vigor and 
 capacity of the lower. And iff there was even a decay of 
 virtue and good manners in all classes, there was yet a gain 
 in all, as regards spirit, self-reliance, physical endurance 
 and other like traits, which are essential as the staple of a 
 perfect manhood. If there was more coarseness, so possi- 
 bly there was more volume. If there was less of learn- 
 ing, there was also a more perfect deliverance from the 
 restraints of learning. If they had less of society, they 
 had as much more of action. If they finished nothing, 
 they created more. But in taking such a view as this, 
 which is the most favorable permitted us, it is implied, as 
 will be observed by all, that there was, in certain very im- 
 portant respects, a marked decline. 
 
 This decline was most evident in the higher class, and 
 in the cultivated manners and tastes, brought over by the 
 emigrant families. The leading spirits of the first age 
 were truly great and cultivated men — cedars of Lebanon, 
 nay, the topmost branches of the cedars, that God had 
 brought over to plant by the waters of the new world. 
 
13 
 
 They were many of them scholars, who had received at 
 the English universities, the highest advantages of culture 
 furnished in that age. Their minds were matured and 
 polished by severe study. They knew society. Some of 
 them were persons who had travelled in foreign countries, 
 who had figured in civil stations and were not unskilled 
 even as courtiers. They were fellow disciples and com- 
 patriots with such men as Owen, Howe, Milton, John 
 Hampden, Oliver Cromwell and tin* other great spirits, 
 who were struggling in that age for the civil and religious 
 emancipation of their country. Rut they came into the wil- 
 derness, as it were to be tempted of the devil, throwing 
 themselves and their families, for a whole century to come, 
 upon the severest struggles of toil and warfare, to provide 
 and fortify their new home. For a long time, they had no 
 market. In their modes of dress, their residences and 
 their furniture, they were many of them restricted to sup- 
 plies that were coarse and rude. Their means of educa- 
 tion for the youth were defective, in that which is neces- 
 sary to a finished and really accomplished character, though 
 sufficient to give a good degree of rudimental force. And, 
 more than all, society, that indefinable but powerful some- 
 thing, which gives a tone of refinement to literary tastes, 
 and without which, feeling cannot rise to its highest dig- 
 nity — this was a want, which no industry or care could sup- 
 ply. The trials and exposures were rough, the great world 
 was far away, petty strifes and bickerings — always en- 
 veloped in the ill nature of the race, but restrained among 
 a great people under the established forms of cultivated 
 life — broke out and raged in their little communities. A 
 painful subsidence of manners soon began to appear. In 
 many families, a certian flavor of refinement passed, by 
 tradition, and in fact was never wholly spent. Still it 
 was evident, after the first race was gone, and the second 
 and third had come into their places, that character had 
 fallen to a lower type. The educated men were, in com- 
 parison, a rude or, at least, partially cultivated race. Their 
 English style is loose. Elegance, well chastened thought, 
 dignity of feeling do not appear. The spelling is even 
 more irregular and capricious than it had been. And the 
 public proceedings of courts and churches, if the records 
 
14 
 
 are referred to, exhibit a certain rawness, that is quite 
 characteristic. We feel, in short, that we have descended 
 to an inferior race. It is somewhat as if a nest of eagles 
 had been filled with a brood of owls. 
 
 The decline of manners and mental cultivation, conse- 
 quent on a life in the woods, carried with it a correspondent 
 decline of morals and religion. And the natural down- 
 ward tendency was aggravated, by the wars in which they 
 were compelled to engage. Thus, after the bloody war 
 with Philip, the synod of Massachusetts, convened to de- 
 liberate on the state of virtue and religion, set forth the 
 following mournful particulars : “ a decay of godliness 
 and secret apostasy among professors “ pride and con- 
 tention a “ want of truth and promise breaking a 
 “ neglect of family prayer “ profane swearing “ in- 
 temperance “ a common practice of travelling on the 
 Sabbath day “ inordinate passions and breaches of the 
 seventh commandment.” Allowing all that may be ne- 
 cessary for exaggeration in this picture, we are still obliged, 
 when they speak of a common practice of travelling on 
 the Sabbath day, to acknowledge that there must have been 
 a very marked decline in their moral habit. Following 
 too into the war the four companies, for example, of Con- 
 necticut Rangers, we find them quite at home in the woods, 
 displaying, in their modes of warfare and their wild, rough 
 spirit, the full grown Texan habit. On going to the church 
 and court records of this period and onward, for the next 
 fifty or seventy years, we discover mournful evidences of 
 incontinence, even in the respectable families. As if, 
 being cut off from the more refined pleasures of society, 
 their baser passions had burnt away the restraints of deli- 
 cacy, and the growing coarseness of manners had allowed 
 them finally to seek, in these baser passions, the spring of 
 their enjoyments. Shortly after this war, the wretched 
 scenes of infatuation enacted at Salem, furnish us the 
 proof that religion is dwindling towards superstition. Not 
 that a belief in witchcraft was peculiar to New England, 
 or to that age of the world, but only that a want of thorough 
 mental discipline in the ministry and the courts, connected 
 with a general taint of superstition contracted in the woods 
 by the whole people, aggravated the public delusion and 
 
15 
 
 finally suffered the whole body of society to go mad, in 
 scenes which it is even horrible to contemplate. 
 
 Still the way is downward till we come to the “ great 
 revival,” so called, and the times of the French wars. 
 And here we find a period of thirty or forty years, where 
 the dregs of decline and the seeds of new life are so 
 intermixed, and the signs so crossed, one by another, that 
 we hardly know what judgment to hold. Over and above 
 all patriotic motives that may be conceived, there was a 
 readiness to enlist in these wars, that indicates an adven- 
 turous and partially wild habit. The little State of Con- 
 necticut, containing at that time probably about 75,000 
 people, raised and equipped over 5,000 men, for three 
 years in succession. As might be expected, when these 
 two wars were over, the people were found to be reduced 
 to a miserable state of poverty, and, what was yet worse, 
 it was also discovered that their habits of industry and 
 virtuous thrift had received a fatal shock. Then it was, that 
 the people of New England seemed, for once, to want a 
 spur to their creative activity, and a society was organized 
 “For the Promotion of Industry” — a society which brought 
 out three hundred women with their spinning-wheels on 
 Boston common, to give an example to the other sex, of a 
 virtue which they had so nearly forgotten. Mean time, 
 the whole community, I may almost say, was unconsciously 
 steeping itself in drink ; and this also conspired with the 
 wars, to break down the thrift of the people. In Massa- 
 chusetts alone, when she had only 150,000 people, fifteen 
 thousand hogsheads of mm were distilled every year, and 
 a very large share of it was consumed by her own citi- 
 zens ; a fact in which you will see — what the living men of 
 that day did not — a certain doom of decline, towards social 
 misery and brutality. 
 
 At the same time, when it even seems, in one view, that 
 all the foundations are dissolved, and that every hope of a 
 new American civilization has perished, there begin to 
 rise symptoms of order, and possibly of a new era. If 
 the masses have been unsettled, they have also been made 
 conscious of power. Or if they have been corrupted, in 
 the same wars which have robbed them of their virtuous 
 habits, certain great men, afterwards to be distinguished as 
 
16 
 
 leaders in our history, have also had their apprenticeship 
 — learned to be leaders, felt the elevation of power, re- 
 ceived new impulses, prepared themselves to act with ad- 
 dress and vigor in scenes of yet higher moment. Reli- 
 gion, too, has been reviving, and re-asserting its power, not 
 of course in demonstrations the most unexceptionable or 
 respectable, but in such as the times of the Judges will 
 suffer. It is the wild chant of Deborah, or better still, it 
 is the nail that was driven by Jael’s hammer — not the oint- 
 ment ministered by the graceful hand of Mary. This new 
 quickening accomplished, in fact, for religion, what the 
 French wars accomplished for liberty ; it broke up the age 
 of frost, and brought in a new era of power. We begin,' 
 therefore, shortly to discover that a new spring has been 
 given to character. An upward motion is visible, which up- 
 ward motion has continued even to the present time, save 
 as the war of the Revolution produced a temporary decline. 
 
 Pardon me now, if I venture to fill out the view of my 
 subject, by saying that New England society is still in the 
 transition state. Compared with some portions of the old 
 world, and in certain points of view, we are still in the 
 rough — presenting to the eye a healthy living aspect, snch 
 as the old world cannot any where offer, but still a raw, 
 unfinished aspect, which it remains for the next century to 
 civilize and bring into full ornamental perfection. For as 
 our history now begins to live on its own root, and to send 
 up a vitalizing power into the social body ; as wealth is un- 
 folded ; as schools and colleges are perfecting their stand- 
 ards of learning; as literature and art advance 1o maturity, 
 we are rising steadily into noon, as a people socially 
 complete. 
 
 But the great problem of American society is not solved, 
 however much it may be illustrated, bv the history of New 
 England. Still we are rolling on from east to west, 
 plunging into the wilderness, scouring across the great 
 inland deserts and mountains, to plant our habitations on 
 the western ocean. Here again the natural tendencies of 
 emigration towards barbarism, or social decline, are dis- 
 played, in signs that cannot be mistaken. The struggle 
 through which we have passed, is continually repeating 
 
17 
 
 
 itself, under new modifications. We see the same experi- 
 ment involving similar jeopardies ; and we draw out of our 
 own experience warnings to make us anxious, and en- 
 couragements to make us hopeful for our country — a 
 double argument of fear and hope, to make us doubly 
 faithful in our Christian efforts for its welfare. 
 
 In some respects, this westward emigration is secured 
 by advantages which our own colonial emigration had not ; 
 in others, it is beset by disadvantages quite as decided. 
 Among the advantages are these — First, a better and more 
 available market for the sale of its products, and hence, a 
 much greater facility in rising to a state of outward com- 
 fort. Secondly, a good and well established government, 
 able to protect the beginnings made, exerting also an im- 
 portant moral constraint over all tendencies to lawlessness 
 and public disorder. Thirdly, a connection with the east- 
 ern and older portions of the country, by which they are 
 made to feel the moral effect of association with a more 
 advanced state of manners, of social culture and religious 
 virtue. Fourthly, a history ; for it is not as when our fathers 
 forsook a history to plant themselves in this new world ; 
 but the emigrant, wherever he strays, remembers that he 
 is an American still. He looks out from his hut of logs 
 on the western border, and feels the warmth of a distinct 
 nationality glowing round him, like the clear warm light of 
 day itself. On the other hand, these manifest advantages 
 are counterbalanced by disadvantages. First, the west- 
 ern emigration is not religious, but is instigated by mere 
 personal interest and adventure. Secondly, it does not 
 carry with it a homogeneous or a well educated people. 
 Together with a portion of enterprising, well qualified 
 young men, who are rushing westward after their fortune, 
 it gathers in the rude minded and ignorant masses of 
 western Pennsylvania; the luckless and impoverished fami- 
 lies flying from slaver)’ in Virginia, Kentucky and Ten- 
 nessee ; together with such hordes of foreigners, as the 
 over-populated countries of Europe are obliged to spare — 
 men of all habits, characters and religions — and these it 
 pours along in a promiscuous flood, to people the new 
 world, and settle into social order as best they may. Then, 
 thirdly, a considerable portion of the new west, has a 
 
 2 
 
18 
 
 social and historical connexion with slavery, which is con- 
 tinually doubling the inherent perils of emigration itself. 
 
 And here, since this institution of slavery, entering into 
 the fortunes of our history, complicates, in so many ways, 
 the disorders we suffer, I must pause a few moments to 
 sketch its characteristics. Slavery, it is not to be denied, 
 is an essentially barbarous institution. It gives us too 
 that sign, which is the perpetual distinction of barbarism, 
 that it has no law of progress. The highest level it 
 reaches, is the level at which it begins. Indeed, we need 
 not scruple to allow that it has yielded us one considerable 
 advantage, in virtue of the fact, that it produces its best 
 condition first. For while the northern people were gene- 
 rally delving in labor, for many generations, to create a 
 condition of comfort, slavery set the masters at once on a 
 footing of ease, gave them leisure for elegant intercourse, 
 for unprofessional studies, and seasoned their character 
 thus with that kind of cultivation which distinguishes men 
 of society. A class of statesmen were thus raised up, 
 who were prepared to figure as leaders in scenes of pub- 
 lic life, where so much depends on manners and social 
 address. But now the scale is changing. Free labor is 
 rising, at length, into a state of wealth and comfort, to 
 take the lead of American society. Meanwhile, the foster 
 sons of slavery — the high families, the statesmen — gra- 
 dually receding in character, as they must under this 
 vicious institution, are receding also in power and influ- 
 ence, and have been ever since the revolution. Slavery is 
 a condition against nature ; the curse of nature therefore 
 is on it, and it bows to its doom, by a law as irresistible as 
 gravity. It produces a condition of ease which is not the 
 reward of labor, and a state of degradation which is not 
 the curse of idleness. Therefore the ease it enjoys can- 
 not but end in a curse, and the degradation it suffers 
 cannot rise into a blessing. It nourishes imperious and 
 violent passions. It makes the masters solitary sheiks 
 on their estates, forbidding thus the possibility of public 
 schools, and preventing also that condensed form of so- 
 ciety, which is necessary to the vigorous maintenance of 
 churches. Education and religion thus displaced, the 
 dinner table only remains, and on this hangs, in great part, 
 
19 
 
 the keeping of the social state. But however highly we 
 may estimate the humanizing power of hospitality, it can- 
 not be regarded as any sufficient spring of character. It 
 is neither a school, nor a gospel. And when it comes of 
 self-indulgence, or only seeks relief for the tedium of an 
 idle life, scarcely does it bring with it the blessings of a 
 virtue. The accomplishments it yields are of a mock 
 quality, rather than of a real, having about the same re- 
 lation to a substantial and finished culture, that honor has 
 to character. This kind of currency will pass no longer ; 
 for it is not expense without comfort, or splendor set in 
 disorder, as diamonds in pewter ; it is not airs in place of 
 elegance, or assurance substituted for ease ; neither is it 
 to be master of a fluent speech, or to garnish the same 
 with stale quotations from the classics ; much less is it to 
 live in the Don Juan vein, accepting barbarism by poetic 
 inspiration — the same which a late noble poet, drawing out 
 of Turks and pirates, became the chosen laureate of 
 slavery — not any or all of these can make up such a style 
 of man, or of life, as we in this age demand. We have 
 come up now to a point, where we look for true intellectual 
 refinement, and a ripe state of personal culture. But 
 how clearly is it seen to be a violation of its own laws, for 
 slavery to produce a genuine scholar, or a man, who, in any 
 department of excellence, unless it be in politics, is not a 
 full century behind his time. And if we ask for what is 
 dearer and better still, for a pure Christian morality, the 
 youth of slavery are trained in no such habits, as are 
 most congenial to virtue. The point of honor is the only 
 principle many of them know. Violence and dissipation 
 bring down every succeeding generation to a state con- 
 tinually lower ; so that now, after a hundred and fifty years 
 are passed, the slave-holding territory may be described as 
 a vast missionary ground, and one so uncomfortable to 
 the faithful ministry of Christ, by reason of its jealous 
 tempers, and the known repugnance it has to many of the 
 first maxims of the gospel, that scarcely a missionary 
 can be found to enter it. Connected with this moral de- 
 cay, the resources of nature also are exhausted, and her 
 fertile territories changed to a desert, by the uncreating 
 power of a spendthrift institution. And then, having 
 
20 
 
 made a waste where God had made a garden, slavery 
 gathers up the relics of bankruptcy, and the baser relics 
 still of virtue and all-manly enterprise, and goes forth to 
 renew, on a virgin soil, its dismal and forlorn history. 
 Thus, at length, has been produced what may be called 
 the bowie-knife style of civilization, and the new West 
 of the South is overrun by it — a spirit of blood which 
 defies all laws of God and man ; honorable but not honest ; 
 prompt to resent an injury, slack to discharge a debt ; 
 educated to ease, and readier, of course, when the 
 means of living fail, to find them at the gambling-table 
 or the race-ground, than in any work of industry — pro- 
 bably squandering the means of living there, to relieve the 
 tedium of ease itself. 
 
 Such is the influence of slavery, as it enters into our 
 American social state, and imparts its moral type of bar- 
 barism, through emigration, to the new west. Hence, the 
 Mexican war, which has its beginning and birth in what 
 I have called the bowie-knife style of civilization — a war 
 in the nineteenth century, which, if it was not purposely 
 begun, many are visibly determined shall be, a war for the 
 extension of slavery. It was no one political party, as 
 some pretend, who made this war, but it was the whole 
 southwest and west rather of all parties, instigated by a 
 wild and riotous spirit of adventure, which no terms of 
 reason or of Christian prudence and humanity could check. 
 And if this war results, as probably it may, in the acquisi- 
 tion of a vast western territory, then is our great pasture 
 ground of barbarism so much to be enlarged, the room 
 to run wild extended, the chances of final anarchy and 
 confusion multiplied. 
 
 We are now prepared to complete our view, by passing 
 directly to the subject of western emigration itself. And 
 what are the moral and social results here preparing 1 
 That I can draw a picture of western society, which will 
 be universally approved, is more than 1 have any right to 
 expect. I can only give such a sketch as the facts seem 
 to require, and without exaggeration ; observing, however, 
 that if any western man should be dissatisfied, it will, by 
 no means, convince me that I am wrong ; for to conceive 
 
21 
 
 a people rightly it is not sufficient to know them ; they 
 must be viewed from a stand point without. And just as 
 the character of New England cannot be rightly drawn, 
 save as it is viewed from abroad, so no western or west- 
 ernized man, coming directly out from the scenes of west- 
 ern life, is qualified, on that account, to estimate their 
 social standing and prospects. On the contrary, he may 
 even be partially disqualified, by the experience under 
 which he has fallen. At the same time, let it be under- 
 stood, that in what I may say, however the public may re- 
 ceive it, I do not consider myself as reflecting any neces- 
 sary dishonor on the west, or on western society. It is no 
 dishonor in them, any more than it was to New Eng- 
 land, to suffer what they must, from the very laws of so- 
 ciety itself. On the contrary, if the west puts forth a 
 manly struggle to breast the laws of decline involved in a 
 new social state, it may even display the more heroic quali- 
 ties, because of the adverse elements it has the spirit to 
 master. Much the same allowances, too, are to be made 
 here, that were supposed to hold in reference to the de- 
 cline of New England. It is not general or universal. It 
 includes only a portion of western society, and this portion 
 only in regard to certain particulars. Probably there is 
 no decline, but an improvement rather, if we take in all, 
 and regard what I have called the total amount of charac- 
 ter. Many of the emigrants from Pennsylvania, Virginia, 
 and yet further south, were at a very low point of character 
 when they removed, and these, brought within the reach 
 even partially of schools and churches, are rapidly im- 
 proving. If the emigrants from New England lose ground, 
 in manners, piety and habits of intelligence, they also gain 
 in spirit, freedom, self-reliance, and other qualities that are 
 certainly desirable. Besides, we are making strenuous 
 efforts to save the west from the decline that would other- 
 wise appear ; so that, while there is a certain tendency to 
 barbarism in their new condition of society, that tendency, 
 we may believe, is held in check and, in many cases, dis- 
 placed, even from the beginning, by signs of improve- 
 ment. 
 
 Western cnaracter has many powerful and promising 
 qualities, but it wants the salt of religious virtue, the so- 
 
22 
 
 briety of discipline, and the modesty of true intelligence. 
 It is frank, bold, earnest and positive, but somewhat rude 
 and extravagant, and specially destitute of the genial sen- 
 timents which enrich the more settled and cultivated forms 
 of society. A very large portion of the western commu- 
 nity, it is well known, are already so far gone in ignorance, 
 as to make a pride of it, and even to deciy education as an 
 over-genteel accomplishment. They hold, of course, their 
 manhood in their will, not in their understanding ; which is 
 the same as to say that law is weak, and passion violent. 
 Hence, the many public murders, committed in the newer 
 states of the west and south, which are never legally in- 
 vestigated. Or, perhaps you will even see an ambitious 
 young city, mustering itself in a military mob, to murder an 
 inoffensive Christian minister and citizen ; and when it is 
 done, when the fit of passion is over, the law, instead of 
 rising up to re-assert its rights, as we see it do in older 
 and less barbarous communities, still sleeping in its violated 
 majesty. Or, if you will discover how near it is possible to 
 come, and within how short a time, to a complete dissolu- 
 tion of civil order, you may see the executive power of a 
 a sovereign state standing by, for six months, to look on, as 
 a spectator, while two organized military parties of its own 
 citizens are prosecuting an open war, one to defend, the 
 other to capture an American city ! Where shall such 
 disorders stop ? and what is the limit towards which 
 they run 1 If, in the days of the Judges, Pennsylvania 
 rebelled against the excise of whiskey, and now Illinois 
 substitutes the camp and the siege, in place of justice it- 
 self and the ordinary methods of legal redress, what shall 
 by and by appear, in some new state as far west of Illi- 
 nois, as tliat is of Pennsylvania 1 What are we to expect 
 as this reign of passion, spreading onward across the vast 
 regions yet unoccupied, grows yet more violent as it is 
 deeper in ignorance, and wilder still, as it is more remote 
 from the haunts of Christian civilization ! Is it not well 
 understood that a partially wild race of men, such as can- 
 not any longer be properly included in the terms of civili- 
 zation, is already formed ? I speak of what is sometimes 
 called the pioneer race. They roll on, like a prairie fire, 
 before the advance of regular emigration ; they have no 
 
23 
 
 fixed habits, and do not care to appropriate the soil, con- 
 sequently have no education or religion. They live 
 mainly by hunting and pasture; and, when a regular set- 
 tlement begins within an hour’s ride, they feel the proxi- 
 mity too close, quit their hut of logs, which is in fact only 
 their tent, and start on, by another long remove, into the 
 wild regions beyond them. These semi-barbarians too, 
 are continually multiplying in numbers, and becoming 
 more distinct in their habits. Ere long, there is reason to 
 fear, they will be scouring in populous bands, over the vast 
 territories of Oregon and California, to be known as the 
 pasturing tribes— the wild hunters and robber clans of the 
 western hemisphere — American Moabites, Arabs and 
 Edomites ! 
 
 Or if it seem extravagant to speak of any such result, 
 let it not be forgotten that one emigrant family of the 
 Saxon race has already sunk into barbarism, since our 
 history begun. I speak of the Dutch Boers in South 
 Africa. They are Calvinistic Protestants ; they began 
 their settlement at Cape Town, in the year 1651. And 
 now they are virtually barbarians ; for they are scarcely 
 less wild in their habits than the Hottentots themselves. 
 They subsist by pasture, roving from place to place. 
 Lynch law and private revenge are the principal methods 
 of redressing injuries. Their habits are filthy. Their 
 women do the work. Education is forgotten, and the cru- 
 elties they practice in their sanguinary wars, are such as 
 resemble them to beasts of prey. They are now a race 
 of nominally Christian barbarians — barbarians under the 
 synod of Dort, a standing proof that Protestants, and they 
 too of the Saxon blood, may drop out of civilization, and 
 take their place on the same level of ignorance and social 
 brutality with the barbarous tribes of the earth. Let no 
 American that loves his country refuse to heed the ex- 
 ample. 
 
 Many are accustomed to regard the exposure of our 
 western country to Romanism with extreme horror, re- 
 garding a possible lapse into this corrupt form of religion 
 as the climax of all possible disasters. In that opinion 
 there is quite as little to approve, as there is in the over- 
 confident opinion of those who declare that Romanism 
 
24 
 
 cannot spread in this country. Nothing is necessary to 
 make room for Romanism, but to empty us of all opposing 
 qualities ; and it will not take a long period of ignorance 
 and religious anarchy to do that. Nor do I mean to im- 
 ply, in thus speaking, that Romanism can co-exist only 
 with barbarism, much less to sharpen a point of satire 
 against the Romish church. Under this we know are 
 gathered many great and accomplished men, and many 
 nations farther advanced, in some respects, than we. I 
 only mean, that while it is possible for a people brought 
 up in Romanism to become socially advanced under it, a 
 free minded people, brought up in mental and moral 
 habits wholly opposite, never can be led into it, save 
 through the gate of superstition ; which gate of supersti- 
 tion never can be opened, save by a loss of knowledge, 
 social order and religion, such as approximates to bar- 
 barism. There may be cases where a cultivated man, 
 wearied out and lost in the mazes of fantastic speculation, 
 throws up suddenly the prerogatives of reason, and takes 
 it for certain that God will do him good, if he has a Le- 
 vite to his priest. There may be truly godly men — men, 
 so to speak, of an overgrown religious sentiment, who see 
 no consistent issue short of Romanism to assumpt ions alrea- 
 dy made, and whose nerves are too weak to go back and 
 manfully sift these assumptions — there may be such, who 
 fall a prey to their own delicate illusions, and drop into the 
 Romish church to settle their peace. But these are only ca- 
 prices, accidents, idiosyncracies, which support no general 
 conclusion, save that between opposite superlatives,! lie sub- 
 limities and follies of mankind, there is often a natural bro- 
 therhood. Thus, over-cultivation may sometimes join hands 
 at the church door with barbarism, both entering as fellow 
 proselytes together. Thus over-speculation will some- 
 times throw up private judgment in disgust, and place 
 itself on a par, with those who have no private judgment 
 to lose. But the great danger of Romanism, the only 
 danger of any moment, is from the multiplication of the 
 latter class — those who have no private judgment to lose ; 
 and it is a real danger. Man is a religions being, and if 
 he cannot come to God through his intelligence, he will 
 come to what sort of God his superstitions oiler him. 
 
25 
 
 When, therefore, I consider how certainly an ignorant soul 
 is prepared to superstition, remembering also the vast 
 amount of ignorance that prevails among the western 
 people, I want no other proof that superstition has already 
 a wide and terrible sway over the western mind. Or if I 
 sutler a doubt, the great Mormon city and temple rise as 
 proof visible before me — proof, however, that does not 
 accrue as against the west alone, save that it shows how 
 all fantastic errors and absurdities will assuredly congre- 
 gate there. Who could have thought it possible that a 
 wretched and silly delusion, like that of the Mormons, 
 could gather in its thousands of disciples in this en- 
 lightened age, build a populous city, and erect a tem- 
 ple, rivalling in grandeur, even that of the false prophet at 
 Mecca ! And when we see, in facts like these, how readily 
 material may be gathered to represent the times of the 
 Judges, it is vain to imagine that Romanism can find no 
 affinities prepared among us, or that none can be found, 
 who will think it a religion, to have a Levite to their priest. 
 Romanism can do any thing in this country which we will 
 help it to do, and we ought not to complain if it does no 
 more. Or if we persist in training a barbarous people 
 for its use, let us indulge no regrets that Romanism gives 
 them such a religion as they are capable of receiving. 
 
 I have led you thus over a wide field, and yet the sub- 
 ject is not exhausted. But I can pursue the argument no 
 farther. If now you ask what is to be the conclusion of the 
 great problem we have on hand ; shall we go clear, at last, 
 of all these perils ; shall we rise into order, law, intelli- 
 gence and religion ; or will parts of the nation go down, at 
 last, below the capacity to rise l I care not to answer that 
 question. Indeed it is a question to be answered, not in 
 speeches or conjectures, but by our works ! The answer 
 hangs, not on what we may think or reason, but on what 
 we shall do ! We can make it what we desire ; we can 
 make it as bad as we have power even to fear ! Enough 
 that we understand the magnificence of the problem, and 
 the tremendous perils incident thereto, viz : that we have 
 it on hand to struggle up, for a half century or a century 
 
26 
 
 to come, against the downward currents of decline, and 
 bear up the nation with us, into a settled condition of 
 Christian culture and virtue ; which, if we do, the critical 
 point of our destiny is turned. We are then to be the 
 most august and happiest nation that has ever appeared 
 on earth, the leading power of the world’s history. Was 
 there ever a struggle offered to the good and great of man- 
 kind, so fit to kindle enthusiasm, or nerve the soul to pa- 
 tient sacrifices ! 
 
 What, then, shall we do 1 
 
 First of all, we must not despair. There is no cause 
 for despair. Dark as the picture is that I have given. I do 
 not, for one, suffer a misgiving thought. In many por- 
 tions of the field, the crisis is already past. In others, it 
 soon will be. And every new state, or section added to the 
 parts already secure, brings an accession of aid and a 
 more preponderant weight of influence. Of the new re- 
 gions, we may say that Vermont, Western New York, and 
 a part of Ohio, are already gained, and are now side by 
 side with us, helping us to support the downward pressure 
 of the emigrant masses. We have only to make sure, in 
 like manner, of all the States this side of the Mississippi, 
 and then the critical point is, in my estimation, past. 
 Much will remain to be done ; but the result will lx; sure. 
 For when once the vast region this side of the Mississippi 
 is seen to be ascending with us into order and Christian 
 refinement, the regions beyond will scarcely lx; able to 
 drag themselves down into anarchy. The die of our 
 destiny is cast. Seeing then the momentous perils that 
 hang about us, let them only quicken ns to a more fixed 
 and heroic devotion. It must be a faint heart that cannot 
 bear up, in a struggle so evidently temporary. Nothing 
 is more certain than that, if we deserve to triumph, we 
 shall triumph ; and if that be not enough to sustain our 
 courage, we are worthy of no such cause as this. 
 
 And what next? Wc must get rid, if possible, I an- 
 
27 
 
 swer, of slavery. It aggravates every bad tendency we 
 suffer. We cannot, as American Christians, be at peace 
 with it longer. Not forgetting the moderation that belongs 
 to every just cause, we must lift our voices against it, and 
 must not desist from all proper means to secure its re- 
 moval, till the work is done. 
 
 We must also return, as soon as possible, to a condi- 
 tion of peace, and maintain it, as the only hope of moral 
 and social progress in our country. War is the proper 
 work only of barbarians — the bane, therefore, of all social 
 order and virtue. Even New England itself, as 1 have 
 shown you, came near sinking into a fatal debauchery of 
 character in the wars she encountered. For a war exas- 
 perates all the evils incident to emigration, postpones all 
 settled habits, and turns all sobriety to madness. 
 
 If something could be done to civilize the manner of 
 American politics, to abate the rudeness of political ani- 
 mosities, to establish candor and courtesy and dignity of 
 feeling between opposing parties and their leaders, it 
 would greatly expedite the progress of refinement in our 
 people. And I know of no more ready or proper expe- 
 dient, than for every Christian man to look at the most in- 
 terior merits of every cause or question, and stand ready to 
 support the right, bear what name it may. 
 
 Be it also understood, that the sooner we have rail- 
 roads and telegraphs spinning into the wilderness, and 
 setting the remotest hamlets in connexion and close proxi- 
 mity with the east, the more certain it is that light, good 
 manners and Christian refinement, will become universally 
 diffused. For when the emigrant settlements of Mine- 
 sota or of Oregon feel that they are just in the suburb of 
 Boston, it is nearly the same thing, in fact, as if they act-, 
 ually were. 
 
 Education, too, is another and yet more sacred interest 
 which we are to favor and promote by every reasonable 
 means. Colleges are a great and pressing want ; but we 
 want only a few. Indeed, we have enough already for 
 the next twenty years, if only they were fully organized 
 and sufficiently endowed. Subordinate schools, and espe- 
 cially rudimental schools, are a much more pressing want ; 
 but these, in order to have any value, must be created and 
 
28 
 
 supported principally by the people for whose benefit they 
 exist. The most, therefore, which can be done is to stimu- 
 late the demand for such schools, in every convenient 
 manner. 
 
 This brings me to speak, last of all, of that which is 
 really the chief, the all-important work, viz : to provide a 
 talented and educated body of Christian teachers, and keep 
 them pressing into the wilderness, as far as emigration it- 
 self can go. These mixing with the families, and enter- 
 ing into their new struggles, will stimulate the demand for 
 instruction, assist in the founding of schools and acade- 
 mies, and become the guardians of every good interest. 
 We must throw ourselves out, therefore, upon Howe Mis- 
 sions as the first and sublimest Christian duty which the 
 age lays upon us. 
 
 ( Religion is the only prop on which we can lean with 
 any confidence; and Home Missions are the vehicle of re- 
 ligion. In no form of human society is there any law of 
 self-support and self-conservation. There is no shape of 
 society, least of all any shape of new society, that will 
 not rot itself dow r n and dissolve, unless there descend upon 
 it from above, a conservating power which it has not in 
 itself. Nothing but religion, a' ligature binding society 
 to God, can save it. No light, save that which is celestial, 
 no virtue but that which is born of God, no pow r er of mo- 
 tivity, but that which is drawn from other worlds, can 
 suffice to preserve, compact and edify a new social state. 
 It was religion that sustained and finally turned the crisis 
 of New England. It was religion, dispensed by the old 
 Missionary Society of Connecticut, and other sister insti- 
 tutions of a later date, which finally turned the crisis of 
 Vermont, Western New York, and Eastern Ohio. Among 
 these later institutions, and as the most vigorous and 
 powerful too of all, we are to class the Home Missionary 
 Society, for which I now speak — a Society which is now 
 hovering over Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, 
 and other new regions beyond, as once it did over the 
 regions just named. It has now a spiritual army six 
 hundred strong, in these fields, and waits to make its 
 hundreds, thousands. For it has undertaken the most 
 magnificent work ever yet appropriated to any human 
 
29 
 
 institution, with a zeal proportioned to its grandeur. Tn 
 this institution, for I speak this evening only to its friends, 
 we are enlisted, as I trust, with whatever of Christian 
 determination God permits us to exercise. Here we feel 
 that we have the future in our charge, and we mean to 
 see the trust faithfully fulfilled. To save this mighty 
 nation ; to make it the leading power of the earth ; to 
 present to mankind the spectacle of a nation stretching 
 from ocean to ocean, across this broad continent ; a nation 
 of free men, self-governed, governed by simple law, with- 
 out soldiers or a police ; a nation of a hundred millions 
 of people, covering the sea with their fleets, the land with 
 cities, roads and harvests ; first in learning and art, and 
 all the fruits of genius, and, what is highest and best of 
 all, a religious nation, blooming in all the Christian virtues ; 
 the protector of the poor ; the scourge of oppression ; the 
 dispenser of light, and the symbol to mankind, of the enno- 
 bling genial power of righteous laws, and a simple Christian 
 faith — this is the charge God lays upon us, this we ac- 
 cept and this, by God’s blessing, we mean to perform, 
 with a spirit worthy of its magnitude. I say not that we 
 must forsake other and more distant fields of duty. God 
 will never call us to that. I only say that there can be no 
 other duty at all comparable to the duty of saving our coun- 
 try ; none that God so manifestly imposes. What less 
 than a romantic folly could it seem, to any sober mind, if 
 such indeed were the alternative, to be pouring out our 
 mercies into the obscure outposts of heathenism, and 
 leaving this great nation, this brightest hope of the ages, 
 to go down as a frustrated and broken experiment ! 
 
 ( It is time also to understand, that if we are to fill this 
 great field with Christian churches and a Christian people, 
 we must have a spirit of life in our breasts, and a tone of 
 Ch risti an devotion such as we have not hitherto exhibited. 
 Here is the^bhly real cause of discouragement I know. 
 It is not money, it is not men, it is no mere human out- 
 lay that can bear up such a work as this. We want the 
 unworldly spirit; that which knits us, and through us knits 
 our great country to God. And then also, we want that 
 intense and Christ-like humanity, which will attract the feel- 
 ing of our whole country towards us. For it is not in op- 
 
30 
 
 positions, it is not in raising a crusade against Romanism, 
 or filling the air with outcries of any sort, that we are to 
 save our country. We must rise upon it as the morning, 
 in the tranquillity of love. We must rain righteousness 
 upon it, as a genial shower. 
 
 It is beautiful also to see that God designs, by the very 
 work we undertake, to fill out and finish our own Chris- 
 tian type of character and society. In the case of our 
 fathers, it seems probable that nothing but the strong pil- 
 lars of high Calvinism held them up, or could have held 
 them up, till the critical point of their history was passed. 
 There were no missionaries coming over unto them. 
 Nothing could hold them up but an internal force, 
 such as they had in these doctrines — doctrines that were 
 incorporated in their souls, as the spinal column in their 
 bodies. Thus, when their manners were grown wild, 
 their sentiments coarse, and their ill-trained understand- 
 ings generally incapable of nice speculation, still the 
 tough questions of their theology kept them always in 
 action ; still they could grasp hold of the great iron pil- 
 lars of election, reprobation and decrees, and their clum- 
 sy-lianded thoughts were able to feel them distinctly. 
 Whoever could distinguish a thunderbolt could surely 
 think of these, and it mattered not so much, whether they 
 thought exactly right, as that they kept thinking, and in 
 their thinking brought down God upon their souls. So 
 they took hold of the iron pillars that held up the theo- 
 logic heavens, and climbed and heaved in huge surges of 
 might, and kept their gross faculties in exercise, till the 
 critical hour of their trial was passed. The themes they 
 handled kept them too before God. They dwelt in the 
 summits of divine government. They looked upon the 
 throne, they heard the thunders roll below, and felt the 
 empyrean shake above, at the going forth of God’s de- 
 crees. Such a religion as they had could not be distant, or 
 feeble. It had power to invest the coarse mind with a di- 
 vine presence, and make Jehovah felt as an element of 
 experience. Never was there a better foundation for a 
 grand, massive character in religion ; and now God means 
 to finish out this character, by uniting in it the softer 
 shades of feeling, and the broader compass of a more 
 
31 
 
 catholic and genial spirit. We go forth now to a people, 
 who unite all manner of opinions, and we go in company 
 with Christians of other names and other creeds, who are un- 
 dertakers also in the same great work. We cannot, there- 
 fore, spend our strength now upon exclusive and distinct- 
 ive dogmas, but we must proceed in a catholic and com- 
 prehensive spirit. Otherwise we shall be at war with 
 each other, and shall only spend our force, in demolishing 
 all the force we have. ^Thus, the Methodists, for example, 
 have a ministry admirably adapted, as regards their mode 
 of action, to the new west — a kind of light artillery that 
 God has organized, to pursue and overtake the fugitives 
 that flee into the wilderness from his presence. They 
 are prompt and effective in action, ready for all service, and 
 omnipresent, as it were, in the field. The new set- 
 tler reaches the ground to be occupied, and, by the next 
 week, he is likely to find the circuit crossing by his door, 
 and to hear the voice of one crying in the wilderness, 
 “The kingdom of God is come nigh unto you!” Our 
 Methodist brethren have put on their armor too against 
 the enemies of learning among themselves. They are 
 building colleges, and one among the number, which they 
 mean to make the most complete and best endowed uni- 
 versity in the west. If sometimes their demonstrations 
 are rude, and their spirit of rivalry violent, still it is good 
 to have such rivals, for their labor is still ours, and when 
 they have reached the state of intelligence they are after, 
 they are sure to become effectually, if not formally, one 
 with us. Therefore let there be, if possible, no contro- 
 versy with them ; but let us rather encourage ourselves in 
 a work so vast, by the fact that we have so vast an army 
 of helpers in the field with us. So of all the other Chris- 
 tian families, who are going into the field to do a work 
 for their Master. There should be not only concord of 
 spirit, but also an actual understanding ; so that we may 
 cover together as much ground as possible. And then 
 we should all go forth together, to calm the angry divisions 
 of controversy and sweeten the bitter prejudices of secta- 
 rian strife. Earnest for the truth, we must also remem- 
 ber, that truth itself is catholic and comprehensiv^fc We 
 must shun that vapid liberalism, which instead of mtract- 
 
32 
 
 ing us into unity, will only dissolve us into indifference, 
 and yet we must be willing to stretch our forbearance and 
 charity even to Romanists themselves, when we clearly 
 find the spirit of Jesus in their life. In this manner, God 
 will instruct us by our work, and make our work itself 
 our reward. Engaging with our utmost ardor to save the 
 wilder portions of our country, we shall carry on thus our 
 own noble beginnings to completiqn, and finish out a cha- 
 racter, as earnest in its sacrifices ami catholic in its chari- 
 ties, as it is firm in its original elements. May we not al- 
 so hope to draw down from the skies, upon us and upon 
 all the regions for which we labor, such a baptism of love 
 as will melt both us and them, and all the families of 
 Christ in our land, into one Christian fraternity. 
 
 Thus will we go on and give it to our sons and 
 daughters to come after us. We will measure our strength 
 by the grandeur of our object. The wilderness shall bud 
 and blossom as the rose before us ; and we will not cease, 
 till a Christian nation throws up its temples of worship on 
 every hill and plain ; till knowledge, virtue and religion, 
 blending their dignity and their healthful power, have 
 filled our great country with a manly and a happy race of 
 people, and the bands of a complete Christian common- 
 wealth are seen to span the continent. 
 
 And now, Jehovah God, thou who by long ages of watch 
 and discipline, didst make of thy servant Abraham a 
 people, be thou the God also of this great nation. Re- 
 member still its holy beginnings, and for the fathers’ 
 sakes, still cherish and sanctify it. Fill it with thy Light 
 and thy Potent Influence, till the glory of thy >^on breaks 
 out on the western sea, as now upon the eastern, and 
 these uttermost parts, given to Christ for a possession, 
 become the bounds of a new Christian Empire, whose 
 name the believing and the good of all people shall hail 
 as name of hope and blessing ! 
 
 t 
 
 III