the most memorable epoch in the history of America; to be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival, commemorated as the day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty, from one end of the continent to the other, from this time forward forever more. You will think me transported with enthusiasm, but I am not. I am well aware of the toil, and blood, and treasure that it will cost to maintain this declaration, and support and defend these states. Yet, through all the gloom, I can see the rays of light and glory; that the end is worth all the means; that posterity will triumph in this day's transaction, even though we should rue it, which I trust in God we shall not.

By this language, gushing warm from the profoundly moved soul of its author, we are enabled to apprehend the spirit of that time, and to appreciate the men who made its history. Every sentence reveals an unshaken confidence in the righteousness of their cause; their consciousness of rectitude renders possible and inspires faith in God. With this unshaken faith in God and the right are allied an incorruptible public virtue, an uncompromising moral honesty, and a devotion that shrinks from no possible sacrifice. It was this faith, this virtue, this honor, this consecration, that inspired the closing paragraph of the "Declaration": "For the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor."

In their trust in God and the right, and their honoring devotion to both; in their public virtue, honesty, and integrity were also found the elements of that "righteousness that exalteth a nation;" the righteousness that gave them victory. The Colonists were not strong in numbers, nor in human alliances, realized or anticipated, nor in wealth nor equipments. God was their ally. They were strong through him and the invincibility of a just cause.

What stronger breast-plate than a heart untainted!
Thrice is he armed who hath his quarrel just.

All that the most far-seeing anticipated of suffering and of sacrifice was more than realized in the history of the struggle for independence. Hot indeed was the furnace of our fathers' trial. The reward was a corresponding political purity. Our nation has been highly favored. Through a series of trials God has led her to a succession of triumphs.

To-day, as borne on the popular current thought goes back over our history, we are forcibly reminded of God's injunction and warning to a people peculialy but not more really his than we :—

Remember all the way which the Lord thy God hath led thee. Keep the commandments of the Lord thy God, to walk in his ways, and to fear him. For the Lord thy God brought thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains, and depths that spring out of valleys and hills; a land of wheat and barley, and vines; a land where thou shalt eat bread without scarceness-thou shalt not lack anything in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass. When thou hast eaten and art full, then thou shalt bless the Lord thy God for the good land which he hath given thee. Beware that thou forget not the Lord thy God, in not keeping his commandments, and his judgments, and his statutes. Lest when thou hast eaten and art full, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therein; and when thy herds and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold are multiplied, and all that thou hast is multipled; then thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the Lord thy God; and thou say in thine heart, My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth. But thou shalt remember the Lord thy God, for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth. And it shall be if thou do at all forget the Lord thy God, and walk after other gods, and serve them, and worship them, I testify against you this day that ye shall surely perish.

This language, addressed to emancipated Israel more than three thousand years ago, is as applicable to us now as though uttered today by the articulate voice of Jehovah, in accents audible to every citizen within the broad limits of this great land. There is a range of anticipation in this sacred Word that presses on beyond Hebrew experience; and, reaching down through the centuries, by the peculiar fitness of its description, its timely injunction, and merciful warning, demands our attention. And why not apply this language to ourselves? The history of the Jewish nation, while it reveals the impotence of the law to save, and presents ùs with the necessary antecedents to the introduction of Christianity, also furnishes us with an illustrative example of God's method of dealing with nations.

The Israelites were a peculiar people, for a peculiar purpose, and to answer special ends. But there was nothing in their distinguishing characteristics that could exempt them from the common frailties and necessities of humanity—nothing that could exclude them from sympathy with the race. The pride of the Jew was human pride; his infidelity was human infidelity; his passions, his cherished vices, his carnal tendencies, were all human, and as catholic as the race. God dealt with this "peculiar people" as with men, and (aside from the specific end which it was designed in his Providence to answer) he dealt with the Jewish nation as he has dealt and will deal with all nations.

That people is wisest which most thoroughly learns and most

faithfully applies the principles of political economy and of national security found in this inspired history. It is a narrow, false, and most dishonoring view of God's providence that confines his care to a mere handful of his creatures, and presumes to exempt from his allembracing government the great masses of mankind. Our God is the God of nations; not of one, but of all; and the destinies of all are in his hands, and are determined by uniform laws.

Our review, then, has a higher authority than mere inclination, a stronger incentive than the natural suggestiveness of the time. It is not enough for memory to drift carelessly back upon the surface of the popular current of thought. In obedience to the "Remember all the way the Lord thy God hath led thee," we must carefully search and diligently study the past. Retrospection becomes a positive duty, a duty of the nation as well as of the individual citizen. It is wise to look back, not with childish longing for the things that are forever gone, but so to commune with the past that its successes shall inspire hope and courage for the future, and its failures beget a wise and prudent caution for the time to come.

As the traveller, from some hill-top, lifted high above the dust and obscuring irregularities of his path, looks back to take in, in one allembracing view, the wide extent of country which he has before seen only in fragmentary detail, and to note more accurately the way over which he has passed, so should we, as a nation, from our present commanding eminence, from the summit of this closing century, look back over the path from which the fogs and obscuring mists of human prejudice, passion, and intrigue have now lifted, and mark the way by which the "Lord our God has led" us. It is in the past that we discover most clearly the leading of the Divine hand. It is when we gather into one comprehensive view the compass of centuries, that we discern the presence and the plannings of a higher than human wisdom and the operation of more than human power, so overruling man's ignorance, and error, and passion, as to evolve blessings from what seemed most threatening evils. The pointings of Providence are as plainly visible in the discovery of this continent as were the pointings of the compass that guided the persevering mariner of Genoa. God provided here an asylum where those who had attained to the conception of the rights of conscience might find a partial relief from the galling fetters of arbitrary state restriction, and ultimately inaugurate a government characterized by the broadest religious liberty. In the discovery of the continent, in colonial history, in the struggle with and ultimate victory over Old Word prejudices, in the conception of and struggle for independence, in the success of the government

established, in all the nation's progress through great trials to great triumphs, the leadings of His hand are apparent.

Thus having rapidly reviewed the past, stepping from summit to summit of the crises of our national history, we proceed to the more difficult task of sketching

II. OUR PRESENT POSITION. There is a very general impression, both at home and abroad, that the American people have an adequate conception of their greatness and their power. Some even think that they have detected evidences of national vanity, and have not hesitated to charge us with a habit of boastfulness. The annual oratorical effervescence, with its froth of thoughtless and therefore meaningless extravagance, has given a seeming foundation to the charge. But it is only seeming; for we are persuaded that the masses of the people, notwithstanding the graphic and oft-repeated delineations of patriotic orators, have never attained to any just conception either of the material or of the moral forces of the nation. To thousands of our citizens the capabilities of the nation for good or for evil have never become a subject of serious thought. This fact accounts for their failure to appreciate the privileges and responsibilities, and to discharge the duties of citizenship.

It is important that the citizen should have a sober and intelligent conception of the magnitude and beneficent possibilities of his country. Neither false modesty, nor fear of the charge of national vanity, should deter us from candidly admitting to ourselves, and manfully claiming for our country, all that the faithful history of the past and a just estimate of the facts of the present accord to her. When we declare the greatness of America, the assertion is not boastful but truthful; it is not made in the interest of vanity but of veracity.

Geographically, ours is a great country. Whether we consider the extent of territory, or the rapidity of the changes that affect it, the claim is alike vindicated. Immigration and multiplication defeat all efforts at accurate census-taking. Agriculture is pushing its beneficent triumphs with unprecedented energy. All over our wide and fertile territory, in answer, not to Satan's tempting test, but in response to the inarticulate cry of human need, God, by the secret alchemy of vegetation, is converting the stone into bread. Here, with a population no more dense than that of England now, 1,300,000,000, may find a home, to which the extent of our territory, variety of climate, and fertility of soil, all invite them. The mineral wealth of the country is another element that must be included in the estimate of present greatness, and of future possibilities. This, already great, is constantly augmented by new discoveries.

In

mechanical industries we have been peculiarly successful. In rapidity of numerical increase, in development of natural resources, and in the progress of mechanical arts, America is peerless. And her great material realizations are only suggestive of greater possibilities. Surely we should bless the Lord our God for the good land he hath given us—this land of brooks of water, of fountains, and depths; this land of wheat, and barley, and vines; this land in which we have eaten bread without scarceness, in which we have not lacked anything; this land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills we have digged brass.

To an inherited literature we have made honorable and worthy contributions. The world recognizes the ministry of American men in advancing the frontier of scientific truth. And notwithstanding the brevity of our history, the strong utilitarian tendency of the time, and the absorbing character of rapidly succeeding political events, we are honorably represented in the world of art.

This great land is the theatre upon which we are to act, and these truely measureless appliances are the materials with which, under Divine guidance, we are to construct the nation's future. But that is a sadly deficient picture of the time that presents only its material and intellectual features. Another and more difficult impression remains to be taken-the moral phase of the age, particularly as it reveals itself in political life. Whither shall we turn our instrument? Shall we adjust its focus to the recently exposed gigantic frauds of the late municipal government of our national metropolis? Shall we place before us, as types of the time, the moral portraits of those magnificent swindlers, whose boundless cupidity laid its controlling grasp upon city and state legislation? These are colossal specimens, and must be regarded as the extreme culminations of recognized and prevalent tendencies. They are fair exponents of a class, but not of the people. Let the instrument be turned and its lens adjusted to the Forty-second Congress. Here, by the concentrated light of even a partial investigation, we have cast upon the canvas of the passing age a scene upon which the virtuous patriot must ever look with shame a scene whose conspicuous wrecks of reputation should awe into honesty the politican of all future time. Some of the most eminent men of the nation, men who had been honored, trusted, loved by the people, men upon whose fair fame no taint had hitherto fallen, are arraigned for complicity in a corporation created and ingeniously managed to defraud the government. Equivocation and positive denial are resorted to, but they fail to annul the evidence, or to hide the wrong; and the shameful prevarication and falsehood of the