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A DISCOURSE

DELIVERED AT

THE PLYMOUTH CHUKCH,
BROOKLYN, N.Y.
UPON
THANKSGIVING DAY,
NOVEMBER 25th, 1847.

HENRY WARD BEECHER.

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C ojr ty

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A DISCOURSE

DELIVERED AT

THE PLYMOUTH CHURCH,
BROOKLYN, N.Y.

THANKSGIVING DAY,
NOVEMBER 25th, 1847.

HENRY WARD BEECHER.

[JJttblisljei) bg request.]

NEW YORK:
CADY & BURGESS, 60 JOHN STREET.
1848.

SERMON.

I will praise the Lord with my whole heart, in the assembly of the upright, and in
the congregation. — Psalms csi. 2.
A people that cannot find reasons for Public Thanks to
God, must have been deplorably wretched, or singularly
ungrateful. Nothing is more becoming than gratitude, or
more salutary than the expression of it ; nor can any suf
ficient reason be given why public benefits should not have
a public recognition. A day of Public Thanksgiving is
regarded with jealousy by some, because based upon the
recommendation of civil rulers. Tbe slightest recognition
of religious truth, the remotest observance of religious
usages, on the part of political bodies, is suspiciously pon
dered, as the first coy approach toward an alliance. One
would suppose that our danger did not threaten from
that direction. Eminent in many excellencies, our public
men have not made religious veneration to be their chiefest
virtue. It is more to be feared that we shall fall asunder
for want of religion, than that we shall grow fanatical by-
its over inspiration.
Others urge the duty of daily thahkfulness as supersed
ing the necessity of a more formal and ostentatious Thanks
giving. With the same propriety might the Sabbath be set aside,
because men worship God every day ; social and family
worship might cease, because men ought to pray always.
Ought / But is performance, of course, always equal to
obligation'? Between them a great gulf lies, across

which few would pass, were it not for both the ordinary
and the special means of grace.
Among the Jews, whose worship was arranged by God
himself, Public Thanksgivings were specially emphasized.
Labor ceased in all its forms. The plow rested in the furrow,
and the bullock, in the pasture. The young broke loose,
and their guardians smiled an indulgent welcome to all
their gay sallies. The whole land arose and went forth in
shouts of joy. Harvested valleys heard the Vinter's shout
from the hill-side, and sent back the sound to the very
mountain's top. In the whole length of Canaan, song
met song, from Jordan to the sides of Lebanon. The fruits
of the field were culled ; a part were distributed in cheer
ful charities ; a part lay upon the burdened altar ; a part
gladdened the festive board.
Nor did He who framed the mind misjudge the tenden
cies of special thanksgivings. Sympathy always increases
emotions of devotion, and sometimes produces them. Pa
triotic ardor, enthusiastic enterprise, political fervor, aug
ment their volume by the concert of many. The autumnal
fires which sweep the prairies, burn gently at first among
the browsed grass and sparse stems upon which the hunter
has spread his frugal meal; but when they reach the un.
trodden thicket of reedy grass and rank weeds, the flames
burst forth into an ocean, and shoot fiery columns far up the
very heavens.
There are many whose religious emotions, naturally
feeble, depressed, and chilled, never melt in single sunny
days, and only in the general warmth of early summer.
These may catch from others what they could not have
originated ; and that which begins in sympathy may end
in devotion.
Nor are the most devout without need of more abound
ing thanksgivings than belong to every day. Besides the
dew and gentle rain, we hail the abundant waters which
overflow the banks, and sweep out of the channel all
gathered obstructions; nor any less does the sluggish
heart need a swell, high above its common current, to cleanse

its selfish accumulations. It is good for men at times
to give themselves up to their generous feelings ; to let the
heart have its own way ; to allow it to spread itself with
out dike or dam. And although the malignant passions
ravage when let loose, the better feelings of joy, praise,
and thanksgiving, leave a blessing wherever they flow.
If one should look only upon the evil-faced aspects of
our times, its oppressions, wars, tumults, unmannerly inno
vations, he would have no heart for thanksgiving. But if,
with less sombre eye, he look only upon the face of prosper
ous events, he will equally err in favor of our transcendant
blessings. In the one case, the cloud would be seen with
out the bow ; in the other, the bow without the cloud ;
whereas the brightness and hope of the one is spanned
upon the darkness and threat of the other. At no former
period, perhaps, were the elements of evil and good more
earnestly at strife. Hitherto, religion has struggled for its
life. But now it is no longer a child. It has thrown down
the gauntlet to every evil that has a champion ; and every
abuse and iniquity, in turn, is doing battle for its life.
The theatre is wide. The causes at work are complex.
Although the issue is not doubtful, there are many counter-
strokes to be received before we shout in the final rush and
charge of victory. We are full glad to believe that the
progress of right, of humanity, of virtue and refinement,
national and private, is decisive.
It will be impossible to discuss systematically the blessings
which flow from our condition, our institutions, and our
voluntary exertions. A few separate topics will be select^
ed, rather on account of their special importance than of
their logical connexion.
I. We do not enough reflect how much of our prosperi
ty arises from the possession of such and so much Soil.
It is difficult for the imagination to conceive of its ex
tent, its variety, and its capacity. Books may detail its
bounds, and travellers recite its wonders ; but it is not until

6
the eye has beheld, and the feet, through many a
parallel, have traversed woodland and prairie, hill-country
and river-vale, stretching for thousands of miles, that one
begins to feel the magnitude of our territory. Sofa r does
it reach toward the pole that summer smiles faintly and
but briefly upon its northern limit ; while its southern limit
pushing toward the tropics, is seldom cooled by winter frosts.
So far is the east removed from the west, that they have
neither morning nor evening together ; and their harbors
look out upon different oceans, upon opposite sides of the
globe.* A pure religion and liberal civil institutions would have
done much for us ; but it has been the accident of an abun
dant soil which has given them so fair a field. Men have
found room to move as religious liberty inspired them, with
out lifting or fighting a thousand superimposed customs.
Religion and liberal influences, in Europe, have been like
winds upon ships embayed or threading narrow channels ;
which, though they urged them forward, drove them at
every furlong toward shoals or rocks of old customs and
laws. But we have had the broad ocean. Let us exa-
* If a million of people should annually pour into the single State of
Indiana, for fifteen years, the soil could sustain them. I shall be thought
extravagant by tho.se only who have not reflected, when I say, that, if not a
kernel of grain were raised in any other State of the Union, Indiana, if
put to its full capacity, could easily supply every one. At twenty bushels
to Ihe acre, Indiana might yield, if wholly tilled, an annual crop~ of
500,000,000 bushels of wheat. If Illinois were to yield only Indian corn, at
the rate of fifty bushels per acre, her annual crop of Maize might become
1,920,000,000 bushels! These two States alone might annually supply
twenty millions of people, respectively, with twenty-five bushels of wheat
per head, and nearly one hundred bushels of corn. It is manifest, that this
supply is so greatly above the want, that it might be reduced in favor of all
other products needed for the sustenance and comfort of men and beasts.
The absolute capacity of an acre of soil has never yet been tested. The
nearest approximation has^een made under the allotment system of Great
Britain, the soil being cultivated entirely by the spade. From some esti
mates founded upon the results of that system, it is not wide of the truth to
say that Indiana upon her 23,000,000 acres could sustain a population of
90,000,000 ! That it would be desirable to crowd the soil so near to its
extreme capacity is far from being proved, except as the less of two evils,
as amidst the redundant population of Europe.

mine more in detail the influence of ample soil uppn national
character and prosperity.
There is no pursuit which more directly conduces to
health, industry, sobriety, temperance, personal independ
ence, and political stability, than husbandry. Since the
world began, the soil has been the mother and nurse of
sound and healthy-hearted men ; and cities are only saved
from physical degeneracy by large annual drafts from the
rural population.
The effects of sound health and of particular occupations
upon morals is great. Pursuits which thrive by competition
sharpen men's wits, and give force to enterprise ; but too
often, at the expense of simplicity, truthfulness, and sensi
tiveness to honor and integrity.
More than anywhere else, men are trained on the soil to
industry, self-reliance, and enterprise, without paying for
prosperity by their morals. While the farm underlays all
commercial and manufacturing interests, and by its products
maintains all other forms of industry, yet, after all, its best
crop is the men it yields.
In other pursuits men may be men. Other avocations
enlarge the understanding, task the ingenuity, grind off
the roughness of nature, and give polish arid beauty. But
there is not another department of society which enables so
many men to live as independent principals. In almost all
other pursuits men are, as employers and employed, woven
into the fabric, so that no thread can be separated without
violence to the whole. The mechanic, honorable and use
ful, is affiliated to others for livelihood, and to some extent
must fluctuate with them. The clothier cannot eat his fa
brics, nor the carpenter wear his structures, nor the
mason sleep upon his brick and mortar, nor the smith feed
hungry mouths from his anvil. These are all grouped to
gether in interdependence. They are not the separate
trees of the forest, each growing by its own root ; but they
are those trees felled, squared, morticed and fitted together.
The husbandman alone can find in his province the ele
ments of living — food, raiment, shelter, and the raw ma-

terial for almost every physical want. Other processes aug
ment the value of these rude elements. But if worse comes
to worst, the farmer can best live within himself. The dis
asters of speculation ; the flux and reflux of commerce ; the
sharp competition of traffickers ; the feverish ambition, and
the unwholesome public morals — courage without consci
ence, and seldom conscience with courage, enterprise
without scruple, plausible avarice, sleek and greedy dis
honesties, circumspect deceits, religion in form and de
pravity in fact — these are not the offspring of the soil, but
of the street, the exchange, the shop, the office, and the
store.* Any land that has a large proportion of its citizens upon
the soil, will not, in emergency, lack sturdy men. Nor
will their influence stop within themselves ; for, as an ice-
mountain cools the sea and air for many a league around it,
so a vast substratum of temperate, healthy-minded, indus
trious men, will send up a powerful though imperceptible
influence into all the superincumbent classes of society.
The effect upon the character of being a subordinate or
a principal is great. In a sense of responsibility, in taxa
tion of intellect, in providence, in making provision for
others ; in short, in developing the man, by putting him
upon his own foundation, and both tempting and com
pelling him to work by his own head, his own hands ; — to
* It may be, that, in a better state of things than now exists, a separate
estate may not be deemed so great a good as it now is ; or interdependence
be subject to sucti or so many ills. But whatever union may be desirable,
it should he the union of independent men ; nor should it ever destroy
their individuality, or self-reliance, or self-development. It is a union
of strength that begets strength, not the grouping of imbecile dependence.
While it is tbe duty of the strong to bear with the weak, it is the duty of
the community to multiply the number of its strong and to diminish the
number of its weak. What problem a future day and crowded popula
tion may have to solve, we know not. But in our day it is manifest that
men would be made or saved, if our cities could be swept with a besom,
and hundreds of thousands of lily hands made' acquainted with the plow,
and thousands of necessitous expectants dispossessed of a mean shame for
honest labor and self-earned livelihood.

be fertile in invention, to provide means for the execution of
plans ; to forecast, arrange, and discriminate for himself,
— in all these respects, what other vocation has such power
as that of ', husbandry1?
Europeans, naturally, on hearing of the looseness and
casual lawlessness of new settlements ; of riots or brutal
rencounters; of immense excitements in political cam
paigns, believe, either that we must soon come under
coercive restraint, or go to pieces. The prediction would
be true of any other people. It would be true of us if so
large a portion of our new population were not independent
land-holders. They are not like European peasants,
trained to work under the direction of other minds, and made
dizzy the moment they are left to their own ; but are trained
from boyhood to act under the guidance of their own judg
ment without easing themselves by leaning upon others.
Excitement may make them drunk for a night, but rea
son and repentance come with the morning. That very
freedom which provokes to irregular action, also limits its
evils. A freshet only inundates the level country ,in which
rivers have a wide vale on either hand ; but rends and tears
with irrepressible force when pent up in narrow limits.
It is not the loss of popular equilibrium that is dangerous,
but the want of elasticity to recover it again. A marble
column, if bent by the tornado, falls ; the tree, springs
back again. When was there ever such a blow dealt upon
a people as we have received from the commercial em
barrassments of the last ten years ? Trade almost ceased.
In many portions of the land money was unknown and
barter was universal. There was sale for almost nothing that
the soil produced ; the plow rusted, the fat ox, unyoked,
wrought no more, nor went bellowing to any market, where
nothing could be had for beef, bone, hide, or tallow. It
was during such a prostration (as tornadoes are engendered
in barren and parched deserts), that the political contests
of singular power and excitement were bred which swept
over the land. Close upon this, as if evoked from the
vast and gloomy cave of storms, came stalking the gaunt

10
and hideous spectre of Repudiation. Its brood . came too,
stay laws, bankrupt laws, valuation laws. What a condition
was this. In our vast agricultural basin were poured
together the thousands and millions of discordant, hetero
geneous emigrants from every quarter of the globe. Before
they had taken root, in the midst of half-cleared farms,
upon villages of log-cabins, came in one storm, commer
cial disasters, political convulsions, State and personal
bankruptcies. What has been the issue? A night of
horrid storms has shut in upon a gallant ship, and the
last light disclosed her amid dangerous currents and
sinuous channels. We wait for morning, sure that she
has gone to pieces. The storm has lulled, the sun comes
up clearly ; we hasten to the shore to find the masts,
spars, and drowned mariners; when lo ! there she rides be
fore our eyes, some sails rent^ some spars gone, but victo
rious over, the storm, and seeking with full canvas the now
open harbor.
Out of all these fierce dangers our rural population
have come forth, more industrious, more circumspect of
debt, more frugal, more independent and self-sustained.
The exuberance and abundance of our soil makes per
sonal want, to any extent, a result of gross criminality,
and public suffering from poverty almost impossible.
So vast is our territory — stretching through so many
zones — that never is there a similar season common to all.
If the winter is rigorous in New England, it is often mild on
the Mississippi. If drought parches the farms of the North,
the streams of the South are often overflowing with prodi
gal waters. In smaller territories, as in Great Britain, a
season which dries up the resources of one portion, cripples
all. But with us, the mischiefs of the worst season are
partial ; there is a good season in some part of our domain ;
and the abundance of other latitudes in our own land,
flows in by ready commerce to relieve the want.
Nor is it a matter unworthy of regard that soil, climate,
and the habits of our people, multiply the varieties of pro
duct on every farm, beyond what is elsewhere known. In

11
Ireland vast masses of the people lived upon one esculent,
and that the cheapest. If any crisis occurred, being al
ready at the bottom of the scale, there was no room
for change. When a plague smote the potato-field;
there was nothing left; there was nothing so cheap; no
thing so abundant as the potato ; no poorer food below it ;
no place of temporary retreat ; nothing but the abyss of
starvation. But if our wheat fails, how many grains stand ready to
compensate. There are six or eight staple articles below
wheat (which is the universal edible,) from one to another
of which we can retreat if disaster falls upon our harvest
fields. In short, the abundance of soil puts the average
distance between ordinary plenty and want at so many de
grees, that famine is a thing hardly possible in America.
Indeed, we are to the world what Sicily was to Italy ; what
Egypt was to Canaan.
No words can ever convey a measure of this blessing to
our understanding. We have never felt famine ; never seen
wasting men and pining children in supplicating agony for a
morsel of bread to expel from the stomach the torments of
hunger. We have never wandered on the beach to search
for bitter roots, nor parted the spoils of the forest with the
swine. Because we have always had abundance, it seems
no peculiar blessing more than the air which we breathe,
the water that we drink. But, oh, of what value is one
poor gasp to a dying man ! How precious one drop of
water in a burning desert !
If we except one or two small territories, the United
States is the only place on earth, where all, down to the
very bottom of society, we fully fed and well clothed. We
are to remember that our abundance is not extraordinary ;
contrariwise, it must annually increase. As more land is
reduced to tillage, as every part of it is better cultivated,
as science more thoroughly directs the farmer's hand, and
new instruments of agriculture are invented, the harvests
must wave broader and heavier, the scythe and the sickle
grow brighter in the long labor, and the barn and granary

12
overcharged, refuse to hoard the immoderate abundance oi
the soil.
i The world is to be fed at our hands. And famine
shall be borne away, as a bird of prey upon a mighty
wind, when the songs and shouts of our harvest-fields
shall roll over the abodes of foreign wretchedness.
II. We shall find ample matter of congratulation, encou
ragement, and devout thanksgiving, in the upward and pro
gressive tendency qf the great elements of good.
When a physician anxiously treats a patient, it is
of no comfort, to him that there are no convulsions, no
throes, no pains, if all the symptoms are downward, and a
general but gradual sinking of the vital powers is apparent.
Neither, if the system is thoroughly agitated, and fugitive
spasms, or critical discharges, or painful eruptions occur, is
it alarming,0if all the signs point upward, and the system
is manifestly righting itself.
Even so is it with the body politic. There be some who
call nothing prosperity which has a struggle in it. To be
peaceful is their idea of health. A sluggish community,
a sluggish church, a dull and dozy morality, are congenial
only to phlegmatic piety. When God's providence sends
popular agitations, when strong controversies break forth,
when violent agitations shake the community, many can
discern nothing but harm.
It is the part of wisdom to observe the direction and ten
dencies of movements, rather than the mere circumstances
which rise like a dust about them.
There is a great deal of most melancholy aspect ; there
are many changes decidedly for the worse ; there is much
to be deprecated ; and some few things which would alarm
us, if We regarded them separated from their connexion
with the movements of the age. But, upon the whole,
we believe the tendencies of our age are in the right direc
tion. There is a steady progress in the course of popular edu
cation. There is a progress in ideas and in the execution of

vs
them. There never before was so distinct a purpose formed as
now animates multitudes ; there never was before so well de
fined an object, nor so many noble spirits self-devoted to its
execution. In all, or in the most of our older States, there is a
great improvement, and a tendency still to improve, in com
mon-schools. There are more and better high schools than
before. Their number and their excellence are inclined to
increase and not to diminish. There was never so much
value put upon colleges and universities. Their system of
instruction, is becoming broader, their endowments more
liberal, which, in some cases, are already munificent.
Nor is this a casual thing. There is a tendency, more de
veloped every year, to build up our educational institutions
with the most liberal endowments, and to place them in the
hands of the ablest men.
While such is the condition of things in the East, there
is even more effort in the West. I do not hesitate to say
that the West is doing more for itself than the East is for it
self! If the newness of the settlements, the rudeness of
the population, their remarkable dissimilarities, the varie
ties even of mother-tongue, the crude state of their social
organization, the rude and almost savage state of their
soil, where the plow bounds oyer the yet green roots of
the forest, be compared with the efforts which they are
making for common-schools and collegiate education, I
verily believe that no other community on which sun ever
shone, could exhibit such a tendency ; tendency, I say : for
as yet the development is too incomplete to bear much ex
amination of details. Schools are yet in the rudest log-
cabins, but so are the people ; academies are in embryo, but
so are the States themselves ; colleges are but little better
than our high-schools ; but they are as good as it is useful
or necessary that they should be, compared with the state
of the community. In what other nation can you find
schools, and academies, and colleges in the woods 1 Nor
does it detract from the matter, that much help has been
sent thither from the East. A hundred men are sent, whose

14
families are to be educated, where one dollar is sent,
wherewith to do it.
Nor should I omit another token of good. Our daugh
ters and sisters, with a heroism which is inspired by Chris
tianity, and which is worthy of it, tired of useless ease at
home, have begun to go forth, in bands and singly, to seek
out waste-places where they may devote themselves to the
instruction of the young. I do not, because, in the be
ginning, the number is small, ask, " What are these
among so many 1" but rejoice to see that any understand
the high mission of human life ; that so many are putting
the words of Christ to the proof, whether it is more blessed
to give than to receive ; and that women, whose patience,
singleness of generous purpose, deep enthusiasm, and ever
living affection, make them teachers above all others, are
accepting the mission with noble self-devotion. I rejoice
that Christians are disposed to take the West to their hearts ;
to aid in the endowment of colleges ; efficiently to sympa
thize ih popular education ; and while they send thousands
thither to shear away the forest, and give to the sun and
plow a soil never touched before by either ; to dig the
mines, to thread the rivers or subdue them to the mill, and
to vex the lakes with restless enterprise — I rejoice that
they do not forget to send also those who shall rear schools
in the wilderness, churches in every village, and leaven the
growing multitudes with religion and education.
From expediency we should do it, if not from principle ;
for our own sake, if not for theirs. The fate of the West
is to be the fate of this Confederacy. The scale will go
down there, heavy with surpassing numbers ; and there will
be the seat of popular power. The preponderation we
cannot stop. We cannot circumscribe the territorial bounds
which God hath appointed, nor diminish the swelling
flood of population which rushes there to find its level.
But again, through our instrumentality, Christ may pre
side upon the troubled waters, and the winds and waves.
obey him. That cloud and storm which can cover the West,
will brood over a hemisphere, and sweep the whole hori-

15
zon. If the West shall become like Egypt, let not New
England hope to be left as the land of Goshen.
The gladness which we have for the spread of educa
tion is saddened by the aspect of the South. Educa
tion is not there making the progress, which it experiences
in the North and West. Nor can it, while the elements of
popular good are so grievously oppressed by slavery. It
is in vain to call conventions, to pass resolutions, to found
ample Universities, to have nominal common-schools, in
States which have, in fact, no common-people. The dis
ease is not on the skin, but in the bones and heart ; in the
political and social system. The South has made slavery
to be its heart. And while the laws and customs and in
stitutions hedge in the servile mass, they all receive in turn
a deadly infection. For if the slaves cannot resist, they can
corrupt"; they have no power to break their chains, but they
put worse ones on the keepers ; they cannot enlighten them
selves, but they can darken those around them ; they can
not preserve their own moral purity, but they can make
others participators of their degradation ; they cannot be
free, but they can disgrace free-labor, extinguish popular
enterprise, entail upon generations the curse of indolence?
and luxury, and license. Themselves denied the privilege
of manhood, how awful is that Divine retribution by which
those who approve and those who abet, are made to lag
behind the march of civilization, and to see the whole world
running past them in social elevation, popular intelligence,
and industrial enterprise. If a people will have slavery,
they must have its results. It is not by accident that evil
accompanies despotism, and that good attends upon liberty.
So God ordained it to be. If it be better to employ men
as brutes, all usages must be adapted to the grade and
range of brutes. If it is best for a State to have its peculiar
institutions on the foundation of human degradation, then
public sentiment, public law, and the fabric of social life
must be adjusted thereto. A system which is obliged to
make knowledge in any class a crime, and the impartation

16
of it a penitentiary offence, cannot diffuse a powerful im
pulse for popular education. The burden„of popular edu
cation is as heavy as can be borne in States where religion
and philanthropy stimulate every energy ; where trades
abound, commerce flourishes, and free husbandry enriches
every acre with honored labor. What then can be ex
pected in communities where religion and philanthropy
stumble at the threshold over oppression 1 where free labor
is a disgrace ; idleness, a coveted prerogative ; where know
ledge is not free ; and where the force required to exclude
it from a part, deadens the; whole community 1
But a better day is coming : the contrast which exists be
tween free and slave States pleads too efficaciously to be al
ways resisted. Indeed, against servitude and vassalage there
is no such convincing argument as the well-doing of freedom.
Every abuse of liberty — its arrogance, intolerance, selfish
ness, lawless violence are arguments for despotism ; as the
peace and prosperity of free-labor is unanswerably logical
against slave-labor. Wherefore, the gradual return of kind
ness in the public mind in free States ; the deeper religious
tone that animates their councils ; a more considerate sym
pathy with those who are, unwillingly involved in the sys
tem — themselves bound as much as the slave ; these things,
together with reasons of political economy, lead us to an
ticipate an auspicious day. And upon the retreating foot
steps of slavery ere long shall advance the benign institu
tions of learning !
We cannot dismissthe subject of education without re
marking upon that peculiarity of our day by which know
ledge has become the food of all, not the prerogative of a few.
The end of superior knowledge is superior usefulness. Men
become scholars that they may become benefactors. In other
lands, where the rigor of political rule forbids them to meddle
directly with the affairs ofthe people, scholars have been shut
up to mere knowledge ; they have been forced to hoard their
stores, or to impart them to a narrow circle. Their mis
fortunes should not be our model. Nor, if we remember
the sad socia.1 state out of which they grew, shall we heed

17
the complimentary reproach of having in America no Edu
cated Class. Every reason of honor and conscience and
reputation, which elsewhere secludes the scholar, here
brings him into active life. He pioneers and engineers for
the army of citizens which follow7 slowly in his steps. The
body of educated men should stand so far above the level of
society as shall give them scope to exert their greatest
attractive force. If privileged at all, it is as the clouds are
privileged to rain in gracious showers what they have gather
ed up ; as the sun's satellites are, to reflect light. " Let
them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven, to give
light upon the earth." To hoard knowledge is no less
selfish, though it may be less sordid, than to hoard gold.
He who confines the benefits of wealth, intelligence, or
refinement to himself, is unworthy of them. He only has
a right and blessing in them who employs them for the
general good.
A class of men, gathered by the selfish affinities of know
ledge, wifh hearts circumscribed by a. petty circle, with
thoughts, pleasures, enterprises, and aspirations, turned in
ward upon themselves ; who live in and for each other, is
a privileged class of the guiltiest kind. Such are much
more nearly allied to the spirit of Plato and Seneca, than
to the spirit of Christ. The one spirit diffuses and the
other absorbs knowledge. As the effect of real progress in
knowledge is to humble us by enlarging our conception of
the bounds of unattained truth; so through that humility it
inspires compassion, not contempt, for those who are igno
rant. We do not so much admire the calm superiority of
Christ's intellect over all that approached him, as we do the
direction in which that supereminent mind moved itself.
His most familiar path was amid men's degradation and
miserable sorrows ; and he resolutely refused to be drawn
or driven thence. For this purpose, once, a crown was
offered him. He did not ostentatiously resent the insult ;
but poured contempt upon selfish eminence hy humbling
himself into the form of a servant. It was Christ, first, who
2

18
appropriated his whole personal excellence and wisdom to
enlighten the ignorant, to encourage the fallen, to cheer
the repentant, and to give hope to the publican even and
the harlot.
A learned class, separated from the mass of men in pur
suit, in sympathy, in interest ; whose knowledge bears no
fruit in other men's happiness ; whose head and. heart
have not kept pace together, " have need that some one
teach them which be the first principles " of truth. They
cannot exist except upon the ignorance of the masses. Like
any other privileged class, they are greater than others only
because they have taken their birth-right. A few have had
the banquet, and the multitude scarcely the crumbs.
It is the tendency of our time, largely imbued with the
Spirit of the Gospel, to look outward; to labor, not from
without toward a centre, but from a centre outward. This
is no longer peculiar to the Church. The effect of religion
has at length imbued the community with prime ideas of
benevolence to such a degree that, while companies or cor
porations for commercial or sesthetical good are not disre
putable, yet all associations aspiring to public favor and
dependent for existence upOn public sympathy, must set
forth a benevolent end. Reforms are no longer odious, as
they were. To be better is the constant strife.' The lazy
maxim " let well enough alone " may rest and rust on the
sluggard's shield, but the sharp dints of active enterprise
have long since battered it off from good men's escutcheons.
There is no such thing as " well enough," so long as the
future has in it anything better than the present.
But, it is asked, is there nothing, then, fixed ; have we
gained nothing, settled nothing 1 I reply, that very much
is settled, or we should have no base-line to work from ;
much is fixed ; truths have been evolved ; many applica
tions have been made. There are always two battles over
truth : first, whether the ideas of truth — the theory — shall
be cleansed from dross, and set forth in opposition to reign-

19
ing error ; and, in this contest, they fight whose pride is
involved in the advocacy of error. Then comes the second
battle — whether the truth shall be practically applied, and
whether usages Or fixed things which have been conformed
to the old error shall be reformed upon the new truth ; and
the chief opponents are those whose interests lie in the old
investments. When the unknown heir of long occupied
property appears, he will not easily serve ejectments upon
the present holders of his estate. It is only in this view that
we can understand the belligerent words of the Prince of
Peace, " I. came not to send peace on earth, but the sword."
It is not in the discovery of new and before unsuspected
religious truths, that we expect Progress ; but in very un
expected practical applications of the long known and sim
plest truths of the Bible. The world is able to bear the
doctrine of Christ; but nothing would convulse it so soon
or so profoundly as this day to insist upon the utmost prac
tical fulfilment of that doctrine. It is sufficiently difficult
to inspire men with the idea of high spiritual truth ; but this
is much easier than to procure their ¦ practical assent to the
Golden Rule. The most radical book on earth is the Bible.
Let the absolute requirements of the . New Testament be
peremptorily laid upon JBusiness, Pleasure, Social Usage,
Political Economy, and the whole of Public Procedure, and
it would be like the letting loose of tornadoes in. the forest.
Let an Angel of God come down to measure the ways of
men, and to change all that disagreed with the Golden Rule,
in the family, in the shop, in the ways of commerce, in social
and political life, and the clamor of resistance would fill the
heavens ! What has been the occasion of all the heat and
fury which has gone forth upon the slavery question, but
the simple endeavor to procure for a despised class the sim
plest element of justice1? Yet our ears are annually vexed
with redundant arguments or eulogies of Fourth -of- July-
justice. The whole mighty fermentation of England, the
irrepressible throes of Italy, are but the result of the sim-

20
plest truths of the New Testament. Let Rulers who love
absolute authority cast the Bible out of their dominions. It
is as full of revolutions as the heaven is of stars. Little by
little it leavens the lump. Each encroachment upon em
bodied and organic selfishness brings on a battle. Behold,
indeed, the axe is now laid at the root J and every tree
which bringeth not forth good fruit shall be hewn down and
cast into the fire !
Without doubt important changes are to be made slowly.
There is too much human happiness involved in every form
of social usage to justify rash experiments or sudden changes,
which may be from bad to worse. Nevertheless, no age
will be allowed to shrink from the application of ascer
tained truths to known imperfections or misusages. For
ever to pray " thy kingdom come," and forever to fight
each step of advance as a rash innovation, is the wisdom of
conservatism. Some would be glad if God's kingdom would
descend, as the rainbow comes, in the air ; a thing for the
eye ; a picture on the clouds which shines over a world
without changing it. Yes ! it will come like a rainbow ! —
the sweep and the scowl of the storm first, which rends and
purifies, and then the peaceful bow on the retiring cloud.
The coming will be seen in the growing humanity of the
public mind ; in the application of religious justice to the
processes of society; in the eradication of all errors; and
the subversion of all hoary evils of established fruitfulness,
by which the progress of men in knowledge and goodness
has been restrained.
Nor are the excesses of reformers an argument against
reformation. The irreligious tendencies of many schemes
of Progress should not make the word odious, or prejudice
us against any collateral good which they produce.
We are so calmly certain that the religion of Christ con
tains the germ of all right reformation, that we await, with
sure prescience, the disaster of all reforms which spurn or
neglect it. Honest men will come back from their vain
efforts at reformation to the real spirit of Christianity, with

21
faith even firmer than if they had not been a " night and a
day in the deep " without it. We are more than willing to
see the experiments proposed for the regeneration of society
tried upon a scale, which, while it does not endanger the
peace of society, shall put to proof, at their own proper
peril, the reasonings _of Reformers. If Associations, under
any name or form, can essentially benefit men, we bid them
God-speed. Our faith in any great and constant Progress
rests chiefly upon one Association, the Church, when she
shall become the exponent of the benevolence of the Gos
pel, and the representative of the spirit of Christ. The truth
which she has so long preached to the dull ear is beginning
to be heard. Nor should the Church be the one to suspect
or oppose that progress which has sprung from her own
preaching. The great truths of religion and humanity are
abroad in the world. Let him who wishes shame and, dis
aster oppose them.
We mention with gladness the growing solicitude of so
ciety for the condition of the laboring classes. In our own
land, the necessity is not so great as in Europe. There,
one cannot look upon the state of the masses without
horror, and dismay. Before the gospel can be fully estab
lished in men's practice and in the procedure of the State,
the very frame-work of society must be, dissolved. If
gradual and voluntary changes are not speedily permitted,
there will come explosions and revolutions ; and the
blame will not be in the violence of outraged suffering, but in
those who hold down such heavy weights upon the sufferers.
Often the least valued, and the least valuable thing, is man !
What government is thoroughly christian, under which a
rabbit, a dog, a horse, is better off than man; under which
the honest poor envy the convict ; where a prison is sweeter
than a home ; where men are not educated, nor permitted
to own property, or even to labor. Birth is their mis
fortune ; to grow up in bitter privation ; to know nothing,
to suffer all things ; a prey of ignorance, of oppression, of

22
disease, and of desolating famine ; to weep when they
think of life, and to rejoice only when they think of death ;
this is the condition, not of a village, a neighborhood, but
of whole classes underlaying whole States. If this is right,
if this is religious, if this is the promised peace on earth,
and the good will toward men, then I am an Infidel. But it
is not. Against every limb, and feature, part and particle
of this state of things, the heart of the Gospel protests.
To be sure it is, of a long time, the light shining into the
darkness, and the darkness comprehending it not. It is
the Sun shining obliquely and remotely upon the Pole.
But there is a movement. Long and wearisome will be
the struggle ; there will be martyrs as always before ; some
one's blood must be shed to stop the flow of others' tears ;
some one must endure, yea, and be sacrificed, that others may
profit by it. God is preparing the way.
God be thanked that in this land, the work is not need
ed as it is abroad. The peculiar aspect of this move
ment with u^, is, not to save from destruction, from grinding
Avant, but to give education and development to the labor
ing classes ; not to give them knowledge, but more know
ledge, more social comfort, and to augment the power of the
State, by making each of its elements of more importance.
Although I have alluded to Slavery, I must give it a
separate and distinct mention.
No man can fail to discern the signs of progress. Thefe
is a change steadily going forward in the public mind.
After every effort has been made to check it, this topic has
mingled itself with the consideration of every interest.
Once, the subject could hardly be spoken of on the house
top. Under hardship the spirit grew bold; it crept forth;
it appeared in places of public resort ; stealthily it entered
the newspapers ; it, began, with gentle knock, to solicit
admission into the councils of the Church ; it understood
no refusal ; it was often cast down, but never destroyed ;
storms made it able to bear storms ; it advanced toward the

23
forum ; it entered the capital : and now, where is there an
avenue, a place of resort, a hall of discussion, a channel of
news, in which the subject of slavery is not discussed?
I do not look upon the tumults and riots and disorders,
to form a judgment from them. But I rather ask by what
power has this advocacy of the oppressed waxed so strong?
Against public sympathy, and public wish, and long prece
dent ; against power and wrealth ; against stately wisdom
in high places ; against the rebuke of the politician ; be
neath the frown of authority ; without efficient sympathy
from embodied religion ; under the ban and sentence of
multitudes of churches it has steadily, moved forward,
gathering strength, until its enemies have well-nigh be-
comerits footstool. Such a swelling spirit as this is not a
wind from a desert. It is the breath of God. It is the
sublime progress of God's decree, " As ye would that men
should do to you, do ye even so to them."
In conclusion : 1. Our situation is such as will concen
trate upon us the most intense motives to vanity, to pride,
and to that heartless infatuation which is the offspring of
these bad parents. Such exuberance of soil, and so much
of it; such favors of climate ; such activity and enterprise ;
such universal and persevering industry and such extraordi
nary abundance in return for exertion, from the heavens
above, from the sea and rivers, from the soil and the mines
that lie beneath it ; — villages expanding to towns, towns
growing into cities, cities augmenting to the population of
States — with such physical and economical thrift we shall
be a remarkable exception if we escape the arrogance of
pride, and the garrulousness of vanity. If we fix our eyes
upon the blessings, and not upon Him who conferred them,
nothing can save us. When men are walking at a great
height from the earth, if they look down, their head will
whirl, their foot grow unsteady and soon slip. But, if they
will keep their eye upward, they will find less danger. It
is signally so in walking upon the high places of Prosperity.

24
If we take God for the mark, and walk with a gaze intent
upon Him, we shall ungiddily advance from strength to
strength. But if we satiate our avarice by gazing upon our
abundance, we shall, in the hour of our might, and amidst
all our multiplied treasures, be as was the Oriental Mon
arch, whose ear was smitten with his sentence and his
doom, in that very hour when he stretched forth his hand
in exultation, saying, " Is not this Great Babylon which I
have built for the house qf my kingdom, by the might qf my
power, and for the honor of my Majesty /"
2. Let us remember that our safety will not be enhanced
' by glossing over our dangers, and varnishing our advan
tages. He who shrinks from a knowledge of his embar
rassments, and puts off an uncongenial examination, will
suddenly be destroyed and that without remedy. Let us
be sure that so much prosperity, flowing like the waves of
the sea ; that so extraordinary an increase, past all experi
ence or computation, cannot take place without proportion
ate dangers. Let us reflect that the institutions which
embody the long-hidden rights of the whole people are to be
controlled by, and to be developed among men, who, by
nature, are selfish, and prone to pervert their blessings. Is
it an untimely warning that we ring out ? Is it putting
ourselves in the place of alarmists when we say, that only
the utmost vigilance, pure, religious, earnest vigilance can
save us from being corrupted by this wide expanse of
liberty and its overflowing abundance 1 But if I would, I
cannot forget the character of the race to which we be
long. I cannot hide from my eyes the errors which are
repeated to us by every century in which men have lived ;
nor can I suppose that men who have not scrupled
to overtread the Divine Law, will scruple to overturn
their own ; that a race which, when raised by redemption
from that overthrow, so lightly esteemed that redemption;
who put their feet upon the charter and guarantee of their
own immortal rights of heaven, and upon their title of in-

25
heritance undefiled and unfading, will be untempted to do
violence to their civil polity, and leave unharmed the glo
rious inheritance of laws and free institutions. Though we
be free, though we are republican, though we are descend
ed from a noble ancestry, though we are educated with every
name and appellation of liberty upon our lips ; even if
we wear on frontlets between our eyes every sacred watch
word of liberty, and write upon broad phylacteries the max
ims of civil rights and duties, we are still men — the de
generate offspring of a corrupted stock. We have human
hearts ; we have the abyss of passions out of which have
rolled the lava of destructions in all past time : and unless
God's grace restrain that, vain are remembrancers, and
maxims, and phylacteries, and frontlets. For, when the
collected fires within have gathered strength, and are ready
for eruption, what matters it if the mountain's side is ruffled
with vineyards to the crater's neck, and terraced and tilled
to the bottom, and forested all around with ruddy orchards.
One thunder-quake, one fiery gust, one boiling overflow,
and where is vine and tree, cluster and fruit, orchard and
and garden, cottage, and him that dwelt therein?
It is therefore an ill-omen to us, when he who solaces us
with our pleasant- prospects is greatly welcome, and he
scowled upon, who, upon so fair a dream, thrusts in the ugly
nightmare of our dangers. Why are we so sensitive when
told that dishonesty is alarmingly prevalent? Why are
we so unwilling to hear that a system of servile oppression
is eating out the springs pf prosperity as it never has failed
to do in any age of the world 1 Why are we so afraid to
be told that our government has been sadly stained with
injustice toward the Indians ? Why are men so sensitive,
when, with the backing of Christ's whole Gospel, we deplore
an unjust and foreign war, in which, by God's decree,
every laurel will be made of a branch plucked from our
own prosperity, and every honor will be paid for at the
price of sure demoralization ?
I cannot sympthise with those who believe that such ex-

26
traordinary opportunities as ours can be had without dan
gers of a corresponding magnitude. I will not listen to
those who attempt to put soft names on hard things. I
hate Iniquity, let it wash its face never so much. I abhor
the Devil a great deal more when he flaunts as an angel of
light than in his own murky vestments. No necessity of
parties ; no repose of somnolent quietists ; no prudential
timidity in or out ofthe Church, ought to incline anyone to
justify or to fail to perceive the wickedness, and the triple
and multiplying dangers to which a free people are subject
when they are inclined to deceit, to lawlessness, to public
injustice, to unprincipled avarice ; when, under the fostering
care of these, our people are taught to smooth down and
kiss the ugly face of War, and to put wreaths of honor
round the rugged brow of bleak oppression.
But in all these things, while we rise Up in the heroic
honesty of men enlightened by Christ, and refuse all
allegiance to arrogant and usurping iniquity, let our
dissent be manly, patriotic, dignified. If we refuse to
put forth sentinels ; or if we put them forth charged to
raise no alarm or disturb our repose, .whatever may betide ;
to cry peace, peace, when there is blood and war and des
potism at hand ; we shall have, and deserve to have, the
fate of all those who hope to cross the ocean with golden
freight, unchased by storms, unbeaten by waves, undiverted
by thwarting currents. They will see no gathering cloud,
will feel no rising wind which sighs a warning; and though
the clouds rise and steadily sweep out one star after an
other from the heavens, they take no heed. Alas ! when
the tempest smites the staggering ship, and surprises ever}''
sail outspread, then there will be a fear as delirious as was
the security.
Let it be our part heedfully to survey the wide extent of
God's mercies to us; ever putting those in chiefest estima
tion which ennoble the heart and spirit of man. And if we
behold, in this state of trial and discipline, that in things
public, as in private experience, there is nothing to be had

• 27
without laborious earning and persevering defence when it
is gained ; and if we see, lurking around us and in us, the
flitting forms of danger, let us neither rush to a passion, nor
remain supine. But with the deliberation of men firmly
resolved, with an open eye, an understanding instructed
by God, a heart purified by the Gospel, a courage both In-:
spired and moderated by God's Spirit, let us fearlessly face
our dangers. Let us take both prosperity and danger with
open arms ; — arms open to embrace the one, and to wrestle
with and cast down the other.