NEGenWeb Project
Resource Center
Church

     PSALMS cxiv. 15.--" Happy is that people that is in such a case: yea, happy is that people, whose God is the LORD."

     Every age has its great problems, its decisive events, its lessons for succeeding ages.

     In the physical world there is constant change: the shore lines of continents are shifted, mountain chains are pushed up, plains are broken into hills and valleys, rivers change their course, sterile wastes are converted into fertile soil, and fertile regions are degraded into desert wastes. Yonder the earth is denuded of its forests, and its springs dry up; here the forests begin a new growth and springs break forth in the valleys.

     Islands arise out of the ocean, and extended districts are sunken by earthquakes. Thus the face of the earth is changed.

     Similar changes occur in the social world. Cities are built and overthrown by man; countries are peopled and depopulated; governments arise, flourish, decay, and cease to exist; social doctrines prevail and affect the social life of great communities, then fall into discredit and pass away, and religions are established or displaced.

     On the whole, the physical changes have been in the direction of a more habitable earth; arid, on the whole, man's progress has been in the direction of a broader, deeper, and higher culture.

     This is especially true of the later ages, and in respect of the natural sciences, the mechanical industries, political economy, and the development of international intercourse.

      In the departments of morals and religion the case may not seem so clear, for the innate depravity of human nature is the same in all ages, and the moral conduct of men of all degrees of æstgetic culture and scientific research is much affected by the natural bent; still, we think that the progress of the religious world has been toward a higher and a better religious life. There is such a thing as characteristic religious progress, such progress as distinguishes one age from another age.

     It is a grand privilege to live in the later times, with the volume of the ages open before us; we note the type of each and the causes which produced it, and it is our fault if we learn not the lessons which the history teaches.

     Especially it behooves us to take account of the immediate past, for in it lie hidden the seeds of the future--of the good which we are to cherish and of the evil that we are to eradicate.

     We are now at the threshold of a week of years--the centennial of a nation towards which, more than toward any other nation, the heart of humanity turns with expectation.

     Forgetting that the name is continental; or, possibly, with prophetic instinct, men call this land America, and the people of this land Americans: and already, in all lands, American citizen is as honored a title as was Roman citizen in Rome's best days.

     It seems but fitting that we pause on this highland of time, and cast our eye along the way we have come and mark the characteristics of the age, and gather up its great lessons.

     It will scarcely be possible to limit our retrospect by the century. Our vision will inevitably embrace the period of colonial life beyond.

     What causes produced the American revolution? Not the stamp act and the tax on tea; not all the causes set forth in the declaration of independence. These were incidents which precipitated it. A new form of social life had grown up on this continent which promoted the spirit of individual independence and self government, which must inevitably have produced an independent nation at some time.

     In the royal grants of territory in America, the old feudal principle had been recognized; vast baronial estates, cultivated by tenants might have been the result. But, very early, the policy of making the colonists freeholders was adopted. Nothing was so well calculated to inspire them with a sense of their own individual importance as this policy, and nothing so stimulates patriotism as the consciousness of proprietorship of the soil.

     This policy, first adopted by the Plymouth colony, by making each person the owner of one acre of land, was the occasion of so much prosperity that the quantity was increased to twenty acres.

     The Virginia policy was feudal for many years, but was obliged to give way, and every actual settler was allowed a patent for fifty acres of laud. Wm. Penn sold his lands at about ten cents an acre, and reserved a quit rent of about a quarter of a cent per acre. Other colonies conveyed the lands subject to a quit rent, but this policy was gradually abandoned and the Americans became possessed of their lands in fee-simple, and thus the instinct of independence was allowed development through the custom of dignifying all the people as freeholders. It could not be otherwise. Tenantry was kindred to vassalage. A freehold was kindred to lordship.
     4

     The idea of self-government was developed very early. The Puritans were the first to give it full expression, and they did it before they touched the soil of the new world. Perhaps it would be the exact truth to say that the modern idea of popular constitutional government originated and took its first practical form in the cabin of the Mayflower.

     In the Virginia colony the planters were permitted a representation by delegates in the Governor's Council, but it was of comparatively little value, except that it fostered the representative principle, and contributed to the growth of the spirit of freedom.

     I wish that I could add, that the absolute freedom of religion was one of the fundamental popular ideas which preceded and produced the American revolution, but I cannot. Even in Massachusetts men were imprisoned and their property was seized for non-payment of the ministers' tax so late as 1751.

     In Connecticut 398 acres of land were sold for this tax in 1770, and it was not until 1834 that religious freedom was fully established by law in all New England.

     In Virginia, so late as 1774, four men were imprisoned in jail in one county for no other crime but" preaching the gospel of the Son of God" contrary to the Virginia law. In that year James Madison wrote: "There are at this very time, in the adjacent county, not less than five or six well-meaning men in close jail for publishing their religious sentiments, which in the main, are very orthodox."

     Taxation for the support of the clergy was only abandoned in 1779, and marriages solemnized by dissenting ministers were legalized only in 1780. Even in Pennsylvania it had been provided that those only that "professed faith in Christ," should be allowed to become freemen with the right of suffrage.

      The Constitution of the United States provided that "No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." Here is the dawning of the day of universal religious liberty.

     The first amendment to the Constitution goes further, and provides that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

     Thus religion is free. Opinion is free. Worship is free. Every man is free to choose any religion or no religion. This whole matter is remanded to that jurisdiction whose government relates to the inner life of man as well as the outer. There are no disabilities because of religion, and in the propagation of religion, reliance must be put entirely on the power of truth, and the divinity that is in it.

     But to us this day the questions of highest interest are these:

     What has the Republic done to justify the hopes of its founders?

     What has Christianity done in this nation to justify the hopes of mankind under the better conditions which have arisen here?

     The answers to these questions will involve a review of the material, social, and political progress of this nation. It will also bring to view some of the grandest achievements of Christianity itself, in many lands, through agencies sent forth from the churches of this land.

     First of all let us take account of the marvellous growth of the nation itself.

     From a population of 3,000,000 it has come to be one of 45,000,000. Look also at the original area occupied by civilization; a narrow strip stretching along the Atlantic coast. Great cities it had none. Boston contained less than 40,000 people, New York less than 30,000, and Philadelphia only about 50,000. Schenectady was a frontier town. Western Pennsylvania, comprising the old French post, Fort DuQuesne, numbered about 10,000 people in 1790. There was no town west of the great valley of Virginia. Detroit was a remote trading post and mission in the north-western wilds. Buffalo, Rochester, Harrisburg, Cincinnati, Columbus, Louisville, Nashville, Chicago, and a multitude of others, at present cities of importance, had no existence then. The Ohio was shadowed by unbroken forests. The Mississippi was the western boundary of the Republic. Beyond this, stretching away to the Pacific was the French province of Louisiana. On the south, between the colony of Georgia and the Gulf; lay the Spanish province of Florida, while at the southwest, beyond Louisiana, lay that most interesting of all the Spanish American, possessions, Mexico. The total area of the Republic was about 750,000 square miles, now it exceeds 3,000,000 square miles. Louisiana is no longer French. Eight States and six organized territories are now comprised within the limits of the old Louisiana. Thriving cities have arisen within them, and a busy population has converted much of the waste wilderness into fruitful fields.

     The old Spanish Mexico became an independent nation, and afterwards nearly one half of its entire territory was annexed to the United States. Florida had come to us before.

     Even Russia, Ursa Major of the nations, has contributed to our territorial enlargement an area equal to two-thirds of that of the original Republic.

     Geographically, no country was ever more favorably situated.

     Stretching from ocean to ocean, her eastern ports invite the commerce of the old world, and her western ports are open to the commerce of India, the prize so eagerly sought for ages by the nations of the west. Never was a land so favored by natural advantages for commerce with all the world. She ought to be the friend of all the nations, and she ought to make all the nations her

friends. Territorial enlargement is one form of increase of wealth. Most of these accessions, however, were wildernesses.

     It was ours to redeem the wastes, and give them value. The settlement of the wilderness by man, the cultivation of tile soil, the development of its mines, the navigation of its lakes and rivers, the opening up of great highways, the building of villages and cities, the utilization of all native resources by labor, create so many forms of wealth and make up its great aggregate.

     In 1850 the total valuation of the real and personal property in this nation was a little more than seven billions of dollars. In 1860 the total valuation was over sixteen billions of dollars. In 1870, notwithstanding the waste of uncounted millions by the devastation of five years of civil war, the valuation was over thirty billions. During those five years the foreign commerce of the nation received a disastrous cheek. American merchant ships in great numbers were captured by the armed vessels of the enemy, and many were destroyed. It was with the utmost peril that a foreign merchant flew the American flag, and so a large portion of our commercial marine was transferred to foreign ownership. In eighty years we had taken rank among first-class commercial nations. Five years of war left us among the second class, but, with the return of peace, there is the return of commercial energy, and again the vigor of American character asserts itself. Again the American flag flies in the breezes of all the nations, and our commerce goes with the flag.

      2. From commerce, one of the chief sources of wealth, let us turn and contemplate the intellectual progress of this nation. There were intellectual giants at the beginning; there were brilliant orators, sagacious statesmen, far-seeing economists. The early colonists evinced their estimate of education by founding schools, some of which remain as monuments of their wisdom. But the grandest thing they did was this--they laid the foundation for a liberal system of public instruction. Laying the foundation in the common district school, and building upwards through the High School and the University, the system has grown to such completeness as promises to be the guaranty of the nation's prosperity and glory. Nothing else could take the heterogeneous foreign elements and shape them to the American type of character. Even this may not do it with the old, but it does it with the young. In 1871 there were in the United States 368 colleges, over 2,500 classical and technical schools, and 125,000 public schools, giving instruction to more than six millions of pupils. It is the boast of Americans that education is free; and a public sentiment has grown up that reckons it a shame for an American to be illiterate. Such a stimulus was probably never applied to the popular mind in any age of the world as is found in a system of universal education;.

and never has there been such an awakening of the people to independent thought and research. The age has been specially fruitful in scientific discoveries. What has America contributed to the increase of knowledge? Not so much as some other nations, yet enough to render her name illustrious in the annals of true progress. It was American scientific adventure that made known the existence of the Antarctic continent. It has done its full share in exploring the Arctic regions. Its coast survey has aided in making known not only. the character of our own coasts, and the geographical changes gong on, but also the waters and coasts of the island groups in adjacent regions and in distant seas. Under the auspices of this nation the ocean currents have been traced, their temperature noted, and their influence oil climate observed. The world has confessed its indebtedness to the genius of American observers for its best charts of aerial currents, by which navigation has been greatly benefited. The laws of storms have also been made a special study. The signal service, though yet in its infancy, has already accomplished much good. Geological surveys have been made over vast regions, and their results have been given to science.

      Nor have the American people been without interest in other departments of Natural History. A century ago not more than 8,000 species of animals were known; now, not less than 250,000 living species are known, and an equal number of fossil species mark the succession of life through the past ages.

     Much of this progress has conic through the labors of American naturalists, and under the direction or with the aid of the government, or of the Smithsonian Institution. The names of Audubon and Agassiz--household words the world over--have much of their lustre from their achievements under the auspices of the American Republic.

     Among the sciences none possesess (sic) higher interest for the devout mind than the science of astronomy. The century which we commemorate has added to no other department of knowledge greater wealth of discovery than to this; true, Newton had announced the laws of gravitation, Copernicus had detected the true structure of the Solar system, Galileo had seen the diurnal motion of the earth, and Kepler had published his three great laws of planetary motion, yet a hundred years ago the vision of man had penetrated but a little way into the depths of the universe. The world had waited for Herschel to lead the way. With the construction of his great telescope in 1789, a new era may be said to have opened.

     The naked eye penetrates into the celestial spaces far enough to perceive a star, from which light requires 120 years to travel, moving at the rate of 148,000 miles in a second of time. But the great telescope of Herschel penetrates 192 times as far; and that

of Lord Rosse 500 times as far. America has never matched these great reflectors; but she has done better--she has the honor of producing refracting telescopes of equal if not greater power. And thus, to the view of this generation, the visible universe is enlarged, and millions of flaming suns, and thousands of nebulæ blaze in the firmament where, to the unaided eye was only blank space. And the true system of the universe is hinted to us in the discoveries of our times. We know that our sun is moving in space and carrying the planets with him; we know the direction and the rate of his flight. Even the centre of his amazing orbit has been indicated. Many of the stars, which we call fixed, are known to be in motion. Moreover, by means of the spectroscope, another marvellous (sic) instrument belonging exclusively to our age, the constituents of planets and the sun and stars have been made known. Subtract from the science of astronomy all the discoveries of the last hundred years and behold how meagre it would be.

     At the threshold of the century stood the gaunt form of an old mercenary system of research into the mysteries of nature; it sought not for truth for the truth's sake, but it sought after the means of transmuting the baser metals into gold. The old Alchemy carried on its work in secret places, safe from intrusion, suspicious of all men, hoping to extort from nature her great secret, yet fearful that other men should steal the secret as soon as gained. Thus, with the miser's greed, were the facts hoarded; but the time came when men inquired after truth for the truth's sake, and truths discovered were studied in their relations, and thus the science of chemistry was born. It is, as an exact science, the child of this century; and what a wonderful development it has had, and what an interesting progeny of arts have grown out of it.

      Photography hangs our walls with the faithful likeness of our friends and of the distinguished persons of the age, and this it does so cheaply that the poor may indulge in the luxury as well as the rich. Human cupidity adulterates our food; chemical science enables us to detect the adulteration. It has multiplied remedies for disease, and taught us the mode of their action; it has brought to our knowledge the means of preventing pain in the most critical surgical operations, and in a thousand ways has ministered to human comfort.

     The art of telegraphy is dependent upon it, and this art alone is sufficient to distinguish an age. Who can estimate the value of this single discovery? The nations are brought near together; they whisper to each other across great oceans. A great convulsion of nature happens in Asia; tomorrow it is known in Europe and America. A great cyclone strikes the earth and moves forward to desolate cities and overwhelm navies, but the lightning speeds ahead of the cyclone and gives friendly warning.

     A great crime is committed and the perpetrator takes refuge in flight; but justice goes before him in the harnessed lightning and awaits his arrival in the distant city. Misfortune overtakes the innocent among strangers, the telegram informs friends far away, and the return message brings relief. The crisis of a great battle has come and a word sent over the wire a thousand miles, changes the fate of the day. A bishop of our own church lies at the gates of death, the telegraph informs a conference hundreds of miles away; prayer is offered for his precious life and he is restored. A great joy is this marvelous telegraph to the world. The church may well hail it the child of Providence to hasten the universal reign of Christ. In thus glancing at the progress of science during this century, I conceive that I do not transcend the province of this discourse, and my only regret is, that the time permits only a glance where the facts invite a long continued meditation.

     Let us now consider briefly the economical progress of our age. Invention has constantly tended to facilitate all human industries, to make them more productive and to diminish the expenditure of manual labor. The invention of machinery by means of which horse-power could be substituted for man-power, was a great advance. The application of the engine to the navigation of our rivers was a wonderful achievement. But its application in the ocean steamer is more wonderful still. Add to this the locomotive and the iron rails, and the rapidity of transportation, and then try for a moment to comprehend all the economical, social, and moral results of the introduction of the steam engine into the work of the age. Yet nowhere has it affected all interests more powerfully than in America, for here it has had a direct agency in developing the country itself. What changes have also been wrought in the implements and methods of domestic industry! Planters, drills, mowers, reapers, headers, harvesters, and separators, are names that have come to have a new meaning within half a century.

     The old song of a shirt is losing its significance in the music of the modern Singer, and steel fingers do more knitting in an hour than the most thrifty housewife can do in a month.

     The printing press affords a marked example of the progress of the age in mechanical improvement. The old hand press of Benjamin Franklin now stands in its place among the national relics in Washington, a representative of the art of printing as it was in his day. How toilful and how slow were time operations of that old press and all of its class. It is supposed that there were about forty of them in the colonies when they became independent. The presses of America are now numbered by tens of thousands, and the rapidity of their work is astonishing.

     Among the issues of the American press are 774 daily and 6,287 weekly newspapers. Who can tell the number of books published in a year? The American Bible Society alone issued 1,330,640 volumes in 1874.

     But time would fail to enumerate all the monuments of material progress that have distinguished this age and this land.

     Canals connect the great waters; great steamers ply the great rivers and lakes; railroads extend from the northern lakes to the southern gulf, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean.

     Mountains are tunnelled (sic) to make way for the locomotive. The largest rivers are spanned with bridges, masterpieces of engineering skill, which excite the admiration of the world. But the grandest monuments of progress are the 141,000 schools, the 63,000 churches, and the liberal culture secured to the people by all other agencies that abound among us.

     Having taken this rapid survey of the progress of this nation, I wish to go back again to the beginning and look at some of the great problems of government that then waited solution.

     In the first place, self government itself on so large a scale, and through so complicated an organism, was a great problem. Many of the wisest men of our own land entertained grave doubts of the practicability of holding together such a great system of States. That problem may be considered solved. But self-government was not the only problem.

     On this continent, and within the jurisdiction of the Republic were three races of men; one of these races had obtained its independence, and bad become a dominant race. In its first great State paper, its declaration of independence, it had declared the equality of all men and the right of all men to freedom; yet there was then living on the same soil a race of slaves. There was also another race, which, while individually free and theoretically independent, were in fact, in the most equivocal relations to the Republic. The Indian question became, from the first, one of great difficulty. On the one hand the tribes were recognized as independent, and as the owners of the soil; on the other hand the Republic asserted its own sovereignty over all the Indian country. The title to all the territory to the Mississippi, between Canada and Florida come from Great Britain; yet Great Britain had never extinguished the Indian title. The title to Louisiana came from France, yet France had never extinguished the Indian title. Our title to Florida came from Spain, yet Spain had never extinguished the Indian title. We now call these vast territories ours, yet the Indian has never consented to our claim, and notwithstanding our claim of sovereignty over all, we go on making treaties with the Indian, as if we had no sovereign rights at all in these territories. It is a strange anomaly in government, and has been the source of

infinite trouble and vexation. The Indians have a rightful jurisdiction over these lands or they have not. If they have, it is an act of robbery to take possession of the lands without their consent. And it cannot sanctify the crime to say that it is done in the interest of Christian civilization.

     But on the other hand, if the Indian has no title, then we need no cession by treaty. It may be a question whether the Indian is in actual possession; he makes no permanent settlement, builds no permanent abodes, makes no improvements, cultivates no land, and does not even mark any boundary lines between tribal possessions. Different tribes assert the right of hunting on the same round, and hence arise tribal enmities and destructive wars. Civilization comes and occupies the land, cultivates the soil, subdues time forests, reclaims the wilderness, builds permanent structures, and thus attaches itself to the soil. Thus the real tenure, by which civilization holds the lands, is actual possession and actual use. And yet the Republic has never avowed this principle. It has assumed a jurisdiction, yet it continues to make treaties, and so the Indian question is continued. There is little to place to the credit of our own nation in this connection; there is little to place to the credit of Christian civilization itself. Not only do the greater portion of the Indian race remain heathen, the vices of civilization have been added to their heathenism. Drunkenness and licentiousness in their worst forms have become habitual. And now, after a hundred years trial, the Indian question remains not only unsettled but more than ever complicated.

     I see but one way to reach a solution. The government of the United States must enforce the sovereignty it asserts. It must compel the wild tribes to make permanent settlement, and then with considerate kindness it must lead them to the adoption of the modes of civilized life, and the church of Christ must point them to the Lamb of God.

     Another great problem, regarded in the beginning with grave concern, has received a partial solution in our times.

     The same year that inaugurated free, constitutional democratic government in the cabin of the Mayflower witnessed the introduction of African slavery into the colony of Virginia. Here were the germs of antagonistic institutions, which, after the lapse of a hundred and fifty-six years, were to confront each other, and raise the question of possible co-existence. How our fathers adjusted what have been called the compromises of the constitution we all know; and we know also, how vain were all the adjustments that were made. Asserting the natural right of all men to be free, yet entering into bonds to recognize and maintain the slavery of a race, they incorporated "the irrepressible conflict" in the very heart of the Constitution. At the very moment that they declared it to be

a self-evident truth that "all men are created equal," and "endowed by their Creator with the inalienable right to liberty" there was not a single colony that secured the enjoyment of this right to all, for in every colony there was slavery.

     Let us give the mother country her due. Let it be known that the responsibility for American slavery does not lie at her doors.

     The celebrated Somerset case was decided by an English court, under English law, four years before the Declaration of Independence. In that decision it was held that slavery was contrary to English law, and that the colonial. legislature had no capacity to legalize it. Yet, in all the colonies, slavery was a fact, and it was not until three years after the Declaration of Independence, that Massachusetts, by a decision of her courts, based on her bill of rights, took the lead in the movement of universal freedom.

     Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire followed in 1790. New York, New Jersey, and Delaware some years later.

     It is with sorrow that we reflect on the continuance of slaver and the extension of its influence over the land. What a triumph of the Christian religion would it have been, had the slaveholders themselves, for the love of Christ, given freedom to all. But the world was not permitted to witness an achievement so sublime. The goal of universal freedom was reached by the nation at last, not through the awakened conscience or compassion of the slaveholders, or through State enactments based on the doctrine of the natural rights of' man, but through the fire and smoke and shock of battles. The nation was first baptized with blood and awful agony, and then freedom came at last as a military expedient justified by the exigencies of the military situation. And when freedom came at last, there came also other great problems for this generation to solve. Freedom alone, suddenly conferred on a servile race, is not an unmixed good. Education and religious guidance are necessities of the new situation. Just here is one of the most important missions of Christianity. Happy will this nation be, if it see and recognize this truth, and acquit itself wisely in the work which Providence has thrust upon it. It is a great work. The difficulties are enormous; but it is manifestly a providential occasion.

      In retrospecting the first century of our national life, other great questions come into view, and we cannot avoid noticing how they have been treated. Perhaps no single evil has been more general than that of intemperance. It is confessedly the parent of all other vices, and yet it has been promoted by the action of the people, in various forms of legislation. The traffic in intoxicating drinks--a traffic not less execrable than the old slave trade--a traffic that ought to be punished with forfeitures and penitentiary dis-

cipline--has received the sanction of the people, and is carried on under the authority of a license. Thus under the shelter of the laws, schools of vice are kept open day and night; young men are seduced from sobriety and honor; the worst classes are afforded places of rendezvous, where they may plot and conspire against the best interests of society; want and beggary and crime are propagated; the judicial ermine is polluted; legislatures are debauched, and misery and vice stalk abroad over the land. It is terrible, but it is true.

     The Centennial itself will be celebrated, as every anniversary of our independence has been celebrated, with indecent revelry, stimulated by vile mixtures of brain poisons. Yet we think that some progress has been made toward a better state. The traffic is under the ban of the churches. It was not always so. In some States it has been branded as infamous. Recently a great religious movement has carried the case directly to God, and a great national Christian Union has entered the field.

     But I turn from the contemplation of evils and vexatious to the contemplation of the real progress of Christianity during the century. We have seen that the policy of wedding the State to some particular church was repudiated by the founders of the Republic. In this they gave no verdict against Christianity itself; they simply declared that it was no part of the functions of the State to define and enforce a religion, or to say which is and which is not a true church. Opinion should be free; investigation should be free. Every conscience must be supreme in its own sphere.

     Human laws prescribing opinions never yet succeeded. Opinions elude the laws. What Christianity wants is a clear field and a fair, free fight with its foes. It. it cannot win its own way, no state alliance can help it. Its only trust must be in the Lord. How then stands the case of the Christian religion in this land where truth and error, religion and irreligion are alike free? In answering this question we must take account of all the facts as far as possible, and the first fact is that of national growth. The national growth has arisen largely from immigrations; but have the immigrations contributed to the increase of evangelical influence in America? No. Evangelical Christianity has had comparatively little help from abroad. Ireland has sent us a large immigration, but the larger proportion of it has been ignorant, superstitious, and drunken. Of the German immigration fraction has been Lutheran and evangelical, another fraction has been Roman Catholic, but the larger number have been rationalistic and infidel. In the German mind the Sabbath has little real sanctity. Sabbath processions, with bands of music, and gatherings in public places with music and dancing, the beer hall and the beer garden, are among the things that have come with the German immigration.

The immigration from France has contributed nothing to our evangelical progress. Spain has contributed only the decayed remnants of the old Spanish Roman superstitions by which in the new world she was wont to burlesque Christianity. England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland have sent its valuable accessions to our evangelical forces. Sweden and Norway have sent an intelligent and virtuous class of immigrants. From the west has come a considerable immigration f heathen with their gods and their false worship. But tilt great mass of the immigration has been infidel and Romish--and so far as true religious progress is concerned--they might as well be infidel as Romish. It may, therefore, be said, with little qualification, that the progress of evangelical Christianity in this nation has been a native growth. When we consider the greatness of the immigration, and the smallness of the enlightened Christian elements that were in it, it furnishes us an occasion of gratitude and wonder that we have made any progress at all. But there has been grand progress. Christianity, in America, has evinced unexampled vitality; it has met all these foreign antagonistic threes fairly; it has evaded no issue presented by superstition on the one hand and by infidelity and irreligion on the other. It has not merely contested the ground and held its own; it has advanced all along its lines, and wrested victory from the hands of its foes, so that it never has been relatively so strong as it is to-day. It has dotted the land with churches; it has built and endowed colleges and schools; it has built up great publishing houses and enlisted the press directly in the service of God. Like the leaves of autumn, its newspapers, magazines, reviews, etc., multiply. It has provided a literature for childhood; it has led the way in scientific research; it has distinguished itself by its broad, deep, and pure literature. In all movements, looking to the higher culture of man, it has kept the advance. But above all these things, the divine energy has been evinced in its effects on individual characters and lives. The preaching of the Gospel has continually resulted in awakening and converting sinners.

      The history of America has been a history, of great religious revivals; nothing has been more characteristic than this. In no age of the world have there been more marked and signal manifestations of divine power attending the preaching of the word; not only is this true as to our own land. It is also true as to all lands to which missionaries have gone from us. Never was there so entire dependence on God; no state patronage has aided or hindered. The Christian heart has learned to rest only on the Divine arm. The word of God is the "Sword of the spirit;" here it has been literally an unsheathed sword. I point you to the churches, and I remind you again that they are all a legitimate growth from

small beginnings; they are not simply masses formed by accretion of materials: they represent a religion of divine power in human experience. Have, they kept pace with the nation, 01' have they fallen behind? Remember the nation has not simply grown; it has enlarged by great immigrations. The churches have grown by assimilation of material, through the converting grace of God.

     And those great movements that have originated here, and are supported by American liberality in other lands--movements which look to the conversion of the world--are the outgrowth of true spirituality. The spirit of missions is the yearning heart of Christianity, unselfish and unsectarian; and it produces development at home as manifestly as it makes conquests abroad. Look at the facts. In 1783 there were, in all the States, 1,400 ministers, or one to 2,142 of the population; in 1870 there were 43,874 ministers, or one to every 900 of the population. In 1783 there were 1,900 churches, or one to 1,578 of the population; in 1870 there were 63,082 churches, or one to every 611 of the population, and these churches provided twenty-one and a half millions of sittings; so that it is safe to say that one-half the entire population of the United States could be seated at once in the churches. But even this does not fully represent the activity of Christianity in America. There are hundreds of settlements where there are no church edifices, and yet there is regular divine service and regular religious organization. Time progress of Christianity is shown in the numerical growth of the churches; we may cite a few of them only. The Presbyterians number probably 750,000; the Baptists probably 1,500,000; the Methodists over 2,500,000. The list of churches is large; the advance made by thorn has been wonderful. The benevolence of the churches is a form of development of their real vitality. The voluntary contributions of the Congregational church during the last year amounted to the sum of one and a quarter millions of dollars. The Presbyterian church contributed over $900,000 for education, and nearly a million and a half for other causes, besides supporting pastors and building churches. The Methodist church, whose glory it has been that she sent the gospel to the poor, in time most wilderness places, and whose membership, for this very reason may be presumed to average much lower in worldly wealth, contributed nearly a million of dollars for those causes, besides supporting the pastors and building churches.

     I would gladly give you the facts touching the benevolent contributions of many other churches, had I time and a collation of the facts. One thing has received confirmation during the century which had been confirmed many times before, i. e., that "He that soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully.'' for the churches that are doing most for others are prospering most themselves. In the work of instructing the children the church has made great

progress. It would probably be within bounds to say that eight millions of the people of the United States, including the little children, are in the Sunday school every Sabbath. This work enlists the talent of the church as no other work can, and the fact that the children are so generally instructed is not a greater occasion of rejoicing than the fact that so large a corps of instructors is rendered necessary by our Sunday school system. It is a characteristic of the age; we have sought in vain through the history of the past for anything like it. It is the only realization of the idea of the church "terrible as an army with banners" to be found in all the annals of Christianity. And it is a full realization of this idea only where the sanctified talent of the church is generally enlisted in the work. Passing from the contemplation of our home growth as churches, our church building, our Sunday schools, our seminaries and colleges, the most significant fact in our evangelical history is the mission work of the churches. The grandeur of the missionary movement of the last fifty year is beyond all precedent or parallel. It is the direct expression of the highest Christian sentiment, "Good will to man." Assailing the ignorance, the superstition, and the degrading vices of the heathen nations, it carries in its hands a proffer of emancipation to all the people.

     I would be glad to make mention in detail of the part which each of the churches is taking in this grandest of all movements, but time will not permit. Suffice it to say that evangelical missions dot all the continents. India, China, Japan, and the South Sea Islands, are memorable openings, and the gospel has already won greater victories there than ever attended the arms of Alexander or Cæsar. Not only is heathenism challenged in the very shadow of its temples, in the presence of its altars, its shrines, and its false Gods; it is convicted as a lie and a fraud from its own sacred books. It is the glory of our age and of Christian scholarship that it exposed those sacred books to the understanding of the common people; yet it requires the Gospel to save, and in India, and in the islands of the sea, the Gospel has been the power of God. Canibalism (sic) has gone down before it; caste is going down; humanity is going up. In this grand movement of this age the churches of America have borne, and are still bearing, an honorable part. And while Christianity is thus overturning the systems of heathenism in many lands, it is surely moulding the character of governments in lands that are nominally Christian. The people are becoming a more and more important factor in government. Dynasties are of less and less account; thrones exist for the people, not people for the thrones. Such is the force of public opinion in this age, that princes deliberate long before resorting to war. Arbitration settles great questions and adjusts claims between great nations. International law becomes more and more an ex-

ponent of Christian civilization. Even in the shock of battles, the gentle ministries of our holy religion have come to the wounded as never before, and the old-time routine of the hospital has given way so far as to admit the holy influence of unveiled Christian women. It was reserved far our age to produce a Florence Nightingale. It was reserved for America to prove that thousands of Florence Nightingales waited, under the auspices of religious freedom, to minister most divinely to the wounded and sick. Perhaps no other age ever witnessed a civil war of such magnitude as was ours; certainly no other age ever witnessed such a spectacle of national magnanimity and clemency toward the conquered. These are the fruits of the Christian sentiment of the age, and, in a special sense, of our own land.

     And yet Christianity is not unresisted in America. There be men who would, if they could, bring in a dispensation of heathenism. The bigots of Romanism and the bigots of rationalism, would alike proscribe the Bible and cast it out of our schools. The genius of Christianity answers back to both classes of bigots, Let freedom reign. We demand freedom for science, freedom for philosophy, freedom for religion. We proscribe no sect, no party, no book. We do not advocate toleration; we advocate liberty.

     We admit your pagan classics into the curriculum of our colleges; we do not object to them in our public schools. Bring in, also, the Vedas and the Analects if you wish; Christianity asks no favors; it demands only fair play, but as it proscribes none, so it refuses to be proscribed in a free land. The American nation is yet young; it has not yet become continental. No man can tell what will be the type of national character one hundred years hence. Now the Anglo-Saxon character predominates. But Tenton, and Celt, and Dane, and Swede, and Russian, and Italian, and French, and Spaniard, meet on this soil, and mingle and modify each others' lives, and so they build up a new type of national life. By and by, these heterogeneous elements will unite their blood, the original traits will be blended, and a new, more comprehensive national character will be evolved 'out of the old types; but what shall it be? A higher, nobler, purer national character, or a degenerate one? This is the question far the Christian people of the land to answer. American Christianity ought not to push its victories less vigorously in foreign lands, but it ought to double its diligence in setting its stakes and stretching its lines on this continent. Here is the grandest opportunity the world ever saw. Let American Christianity seize it and turn it to the highest account. Undoubtedly we shall go on enlarging; population will increase; great cities will be built; railroads will be extended; schools, colleges, and churches will abound. The nation will wax mightier and mightier. There may be deeds of daring, more illustrious than

the past; but shall Christ reign over us as a nation? Shall the cities be filled with righteousness Shall the land consecrate its harvest to him? Shall the telegraph be wholly sanctified to God? Shall a pure, vigorous, stalwart public virtue prevail? Then shall the nations call us blessed, for we shall be that happy people whose God is the Lord.

© 2003 for the NEGenWeb Project by Pam Rietsch, Ted & Carole Miller.