An evangelical ministry, the security of a nation : a sermon, preached in behalf of the American Home Missionary Society, in the Bleecker Street church, New York, January 2, 1848

,v

lots

AN

EVANGELICAL MINISTRY,

SECURITY OF A NATION

A SERMON,

PREACHED IN BEHALF OF

THE AMERICAN HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY,

Jn the Bleeeker Street Church, New York,

J A N V A R Y 2 , 18 4 8

REV. ERSKINE MASON, D. D

PASTOR OF Tilt; CHURCH.

PUBLISHED BY BEQUEST.

NEW YORK:
PRINTED BY WILLIAM O S B O R N ,

SPRUCE STKEKT, COISXER OF NASSAU.
1 S 4 3 . '

AN

EVANGELICAL MINISTRY,

SECURITY OF A NATION

A SERMON,

PREACHED IN BEHALF OF

THE AMERICAN HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY,

In the Blcccker Street Church, New fork;

JANUARY 2, 1848

REV. ERSKINE MASON, D. D

PASTOR OF THE CHURCH.

PUBLISHED BY REQUEST

NEW YORK:

PRINTED BY WILLIAM OSBORN

SPRUCE STREET, CORNER OF NASSAU.

1848.

<3 Q

A SEKMON

BUT THE PEOPLE THAT DO KNOW THEIR GOD SHALL BE STRONG.

DANIEL, XI. 32.

If the object of the following discourse, were to illus-
trate the doctrine of the text, in reference simply to in-
dividual character, the task before me would be com-
paratively easy. No proposition, I imagine, admits of
a demonstration, at once so simple and so perfectly
conclusive as this — -" The righteous is more excellent
than his neighbor." It little matters, so far as the
clearness and completeness of the proof are concerned,
what may be the points of the instituted comparison
between them, or in what relations you may choose
to look at them. You elevate the views of man as an
individual, raise his tone of feeling and standard of
character, put him in possession of the elements and
sources of the purest, and most rational enjoyment, in
proportion, as you bring him to an intimate, personal
and practical acquaintance with God.

As a member of the social compact, the confidence
of his fellows in him, and*his consequent influence over
them, will, all other things being equal, correspond in
degree with his manifested Christianity; while in
regard to his hopes for the future, the objects which

they respect, and the foundation upon which they
rest — the ground of his confidence and dependence —
no other men will pretend for a moment to compare
with him — " for their rock is not as our rock, our ene-
mies themselves being judges." Thus, is every God-
fearing man in our world, a living illustration, and a
standing, unanswerable proof of the sentiment of my
text, that " the people who do know their God shall be
strong." But if the doctrine of my text, in this relation,
admits of no dispute, am I treading upon questionable
ground, when I affirm that the history of nations as
such, will furnish its no less clear and convincing illus-
trations 1 What is true of men as individuals, must
be true of the same men as members of the social com-
pact. The distinction between organic and individual
life, if indeed there is any distinction, is certainly too
transcendental to be used for any practical purpose.
We can hardly conceive of a community, separate from
the individuals who compose it, and I shall not be
called upon to prove, that when individual life ceases
universally, organic life must be extinct. So we can-
not separate national character from the character of
those who go to make up the nation. Paralyze the in-
dustry of men as individuals, and you dry up the re-
sources of the community — depress the tone of morals
universally, and you have a wide-spread scene of na-
tional degeneracy; and whatever influence predomi-
nates, so as to regulate the feelings, aims and pursuits
of men, must determine the organic character of the
nation to which they belong.

I am not sure, my brethren, but that we stand upon
firmer ground, when we assume the advocacy of our
doctrine in its relation to communities, than when

we attempt to demonstrate it in its application to indi-
viduals. It would, I think, be rather difficult to make
out our case, were it necessary to show that there never
had been, in a worldly point of view, a well condi-
tioned, successful, prosperous atheist, or ungodly man.
True, we might clearly evince, that he owed his pros-
perity to the very state of society, which he would
revolutionize if he could, and to the prevalence of prin-
ciples, the influence of which he does all in his power
to counteract ; while we could not deny the possibility
or the reality of such a case. But a nation of atheists,
a community whose individual members have thrown
off the restraints of moral obligation, never yet has been
prosperous, never yet has had even a permanent ex-
istence. It may have seemed for a moment to have
risen to splendor, but the very vices which have con-
tributed to its apparent exaltation, have produced its
destruction. So that we stand upon the authority of
facts, as well as of revelation, when we say " The peo-
ple," and they only, " who do know their God shall be
strong."

Upon the strength of this general principle, I appear
before my hearers to-day, to insist upon the necessity
of giving permanency and extension to the religious
influence of our land. I am happy in the assurance,
that they whom I am called to address do not demand
of me any lengthened illustration of the principle itself,
which lies at the foundation of the argument. We
have read the inspired record, and have found in the
Jewish commonwealth, a convincing illustration of our
doctrine. The peculiarities which marked their con-
dition grew out of their relation to God. Their know-
ledge of his character, his will and his ways, isolated

them from all around them, and placed them on a com-
manding eminence above them. The light which
made them so conspicuous amid the surrounding dark-
ness, and the influence which shed such a smiling as-
pect over their natural as well as moral scenery, came
from the inner shrine of the tabernacle, where God
resided.

The same principle has ever since been receiving its
illustrations. The unmeasured superiority of Christian
over unevangelized nations, is universally acknow-
ledged. Whatever may be men's philosophical opin-
ions, we are certain there must be a universal agree-
ment as to the fact, that in all which gives true glory
to a people, which defines and defends human rights,
all that tends to promote public prosperity and to secure
peace and happiness to the families of a land, there is
no comparison to be instituted, between those who have
and those who have not, a knowledge of God, as re-
vealed in his word. We are willing to leave it to the
most inveterate enemy of the Gospel to say, whether
the institutions of a professedly Christian country could
be exchanged for those of the most exalted of other
lands, without the loss of what we hold most valuable
in our condition, and the surrender of what gives its
greatest security to our homes.

Surely I need not argue to such an audience as the
present, the point, that in the possession of Christianity
alone is to be found the reason of the difference be-
tween ourselves and other nations, whom we have out-
stripped. Men may talk of the advance which has
been made in political science and in that of jurispru-
dence, in every thing in short which tends to give
fixedness to a country ; but these are only proximate

causes, which themselves need an explanation, and for
which, we are driven by necessity to the influence of
revealed truth. The possession and influence of
Christianity alone, accounts for the difference between
ourselves and other nations of ancient and modern
times. " We have not finer natural powers than they.
We have not a higher and purer patriotism. We do
not excel them, in the fire of genius and the vigor of
intellect; Ffor even now they are our teachers, in the
melody of verse, and the strictness of reasoning, and
the mightiness of oratory ; and we would sit at their
feet when we would learn to be mentally great. We
are still the pupils of the dead sages of ancient states.
We light our torches at their inextinguishable lamps ;
and if we even think of rivalling their literature, we are
never vain enough to imagine that we surpass it."

The secret of our prosperity and advancement, is
found in the influence of divine truth over the mind
and heart. There is a pervading public sentiment, in-
spired by the teachings of the sacred oracles, which
acts as a regulator of the varied forces, which are at
work in the general system, and which, in proportion
to its power, keeps the whole machinery steady.
Whatever influence avarice may have had in peopling
this land, moral principle, and a deep, strong, effective
sense of right, as taught in the word of God, gave
character to its institutions. The influence of our
forefathers' piety, shaped our course as a nation, and
was woven into the very texture of our system. We
feel it to this day, as we enjoy its fruits in the institu-
tions of education and religion, in our schools, our
colleges, our sanctuaries, our Sabbaths and our
preached Gospel. The republics of our southern con-

8

tinent were founded by men of another spirit and
stamp. Vastly superior to our forefathers, in mere na-
tural advantages of soil and climate, they were vastly
inferior to them, in every thing which goes to constitute
true moral greatness ; and the results have varied ac-
cordingly. Even now, they have borrowed from us
much that is valuable, in our laws, in our civil and po-
litical institutions — they have borrowed every thing but
our religion, and they maintain at best but a sickly
existence. The heart of the system is unhealthy, and
irregular in its pulsations, and with all the natural
elements of progress, there is nothing to secure, or to
regulate their development. Had our forefathers been
men of a different stamp, of a less stern morality, and
less practical deference to the teachings of the word
of God, they had transmitted to us a like sickly consti-
tution, a like heritage of ignorance and imbecility.
Never should we have stood higher than they, in all
those respects, in which confessedly they are immea-
surably distanced, had we not been blessed with the
influence of the enlightened religion of the Bible.
We can summon then every man, even the greatest
enemy of religion, as a witness on the side of that
which he openly denies, and he cannot keep back his
acknowledgment, that no agency is, to any degree,
comparable with that of Christianity, when the ends to
be compassed, are the best interests of man in all his
relations.

If the principle I have just laid down is the correct
one, it seems to follow by necessary consequence, that
our security as a people, is to be found only in the con-
tinued and permanent influence of the same principles,
in which our institutions originated, and which have
thus far secured our prosperity. Whatever may be

said of other communities, crushed under the iron hand
of despotism, too ignorant to understand all their rights,
and too debased and enervated to assert those which
are known, we can never flourish without the influence
of the Gospel. The dangers to which we are exposed,
grow out of those very peculiarities, which, rightly
directed and controlled, furnish the brightest promise of
our increasing greatness. A vast and enlarging terri-
tory, giving rise as it must to different and conflicting
interests, requires more than iron bands to prevent it
from breaking by its own weight. In proportion as you
enlarge any sphere, and bring into it new and different
influences, you must increase the great central power
which binds the whole together, and prevents the diffe-
rent parts from flying off under the action of their own
uncontrolled force. The rapidity with which informa-
tionis diffused — the varied, and generally enjoyed means
of mental development, are at once the brightest and
darkest omens in our national firmament. Every thing
depends upon the direction which educated mind shall
take, and the ends to which it shall devote its energies.
" Knowledge is power." An untaught people are
harmless, for they are too debased to know their
strength, and can generally be controlled by the in-
fluence of the enlightened few, or certainly by the
physical force which those few know well how to apply.
But an enlightened people are mighty for any thing
to which they may put their hand — mighty for evil or
for good, according to the point to which their energies
may be turned. And whether the means so generally
employed for raising up an intelligent community, and
in which we pride ourselves, as constituting one of our
peculiar glories, are promises of days of increasing

10

light, or presages of approaching moral darkness, re-
mains yet to be determined.

I am not to be understood as depreciating mental
culture, or pleading for popular ignorance as furnish-
ing a characteristic of the best type of society, when I say
that our system of public education is as yet an experi-
ment, for the results of which our best and wisest men
are looking with the most trembling anxiety. Educa-
tion is a good, the diffusion of knowledge is a good ;
we would not set a limit to the one, nor raise any
barriers or checks to the other. And so is a vigorous
constitution a blessing, and so likewise is muscular
strength ; but a man had better be a puny, sickly
thing, than a being of wondrous powers, devoting all
his strength to perpetrate acts of violence and crime.
And a man had better be ignorant, than know only how
to be wicked — better remain untaught, than be edu-
cated for purposes of iniquity. Our popular systems
of mental discipline, (I need not prove it to any of my
hearers,) provide only for the culture of intellect and
the attainment of knowledge, but furnish no security
for the right direction of the powers which they nourish
into strength, nor for the right use of the knowledge
they are designed to impart. They are as perfect illus-
trations, as could well be imagined, of the entire divorce-
ment of mental from moral training— preparing men for
action, without determining the nature of that action —
gifting them with great energies, and yet leaving their
application wholly an uncertainty. It is thus the fear-
fully hazardous experiment is going on, of communi-
cating power without the disposition to use it rightly —
running the risk of making men fools in attempting to
make them wise-— elevating them, without giving them

11

what can alone prevent them from becoming giddy at
their height ; and in view of the well known tendencies
of human nature, it seems to be, not only preparing
the way for evil, but like giving the strength of a giant
to the sinews and muscles of wickedness. In short,
education without moral influence, while it can be
looked upon as the offspring only of infidelity, can be
regarded as the parent only of anarchy.

I do not know of any way but one, in which we can
convert these omens of evil, into harbingers and means
of good. In view of our national peculiarities, and the
state of public sentiment which prevails, I do not see
how we can infuse a decidedly Christian sentiment into
any of our legally established systems of education.
The most that we can do, or as I imagine, should at-
tempt to do, (and the thought is by the way worthy of
the attention of every right-thinking Christian man,) is
to keep these sources of influence away from the con-
trol of those who would poison them ; and if we cannot
infuse into the fountains whence our youth are drinking,
the salt of Christian truth, we ought at least carefully
to watch them, and prevent their being polluted by the
foreign dangerous admixtures of infidelity and error.

We need, however, and must have, something more
than prevention. Human nature is not in that vigorous
and healthy state which requires only care to avoid
evil, but it is actually diseased, and demands positive
remedial agents to effect a cure, or at least to check
the progress of the malady. The salt of the earth is
the religion of the Bible. The only safeguard of all
we hold dear — our comforts for time and our prospects
for eternity — is found in the diffusion of evangelical in-
fluence. There must be some provision made for

12

throwing a controlling power over human passions,
which a thousand circumstances combine to inflame,
and for giving a right direction to those energies, which
we are nourishing into giant strength. The pride, and
ambition, and covetousness, and sensuality of man,
must be brought under the restraining power of the
Eternal throne. The " Sampson of infuriate lust" will
break asunder, with perfect ease, all cords but those with
which Almighty God alone can bind it ; and over the
scene which these mighty passions are describing, must
evangelical truth shed down its precious influence — the
only effectual check to their working — the only security
against their dreaded result.

It seems to me, however, a work of supererrogation
to argue this point before Christians ; or before men,
who, though they may not be Christians themselves,
yet can feel the indirect influence of Christianity, and
can trace all their present earthly blessings, and all
their favorable, spiritual circumstances, to their source
in the religion of their forefathers. Assuming then this
point as granted, we turn our attention to the inquiry —
the great practical inquiry after all — How are we to
provide for the extension of religious principle, and
secure the permanent ascendency and control of reli-
gious influence 1

In agitating this question, I would not under-
rate any agencies, wisely constructed and plied for
bringing the mind of our population in to contact with
religious truth. But while each one is important in its
sphere, and may be indispensable in view of the imme-
diate end it contemplates, we must fall back upon the
stated ministry of the truth, as the prime and most effec-
tive agency, and the one which in reality gives value

13

and efficiency to all the rest. Every part in a watch,
is essential to the perfectness of the whole. You must
have all of them to constitute the time-piece entire, and
faithfully to indicate the movements of the hours ; but
if the main-spring is not there, the rest are useless.
And what that main-spring is to the movements of a
watch, is the regular, stated ministry of the word to all
the religious movements of the age.

It is a truism, almost, to say, that God's appoint-
ments are the wisest and the best. And when I read
that he has " ordained by the foolishness of preaching
to save them that believe ;" when I find, that he has
thus made the pulpit a central point of light and moral
power — selected it as his special agency to throw the
influence of his truth over the minds of men, I know
that it cannot be dispensed with. I could not bring
myself to put such an affront upon God, as to give any
other instrumentality the precedence. Mighty as is the
power of the press — and that power is felt from one end
of our land to the other — it is not the power of the pul-
pit ; nay, in a religious point of view, the latter gives its
influence to the former. Bibles, and books, though
multiplied a hundred fold, and scattered with assidu-
ous industry over the whole length and breadth of our
land — Bibles without preachers — would be, to a lamen-
table extent, Bibles without readers. Nay, all other
agencies of whatever kind for the diffusion of religious
truth, owe their very existence to a stated ministry, and
would no longer be effective, or even be put forth,
were the prophets to cease out of the land ; and the
arrest which would at once be put upon the pro-
pagation of divine knowledge, in the event of the
closing of our churches and the silencing of our minis-

14

ters, would furnish a most striking illustration of the
truth, that "the foolishness of God is wiser than men,
and the weakness of God is stronger than men."

Joyfully do we hail every effort that is made to rescue
man from ignorance and degradation. The varied in-
fluences which are at work to stem and turn back
the current of vice and infidelity — which, unchecked,
would bear down all things, a wreck upon its foaming
and boiling waters — are our signs of promise, and our
warrants for hope. But, the ministry of the truth —
that, after all, is the great palladium of safety ; and when 1
look upon our wide spread valleys and scattered villages,
teeming with a busy population, I cannot rejoice, unless
I know that the Church is there, and the Sabbath is
there ; and whatever be the means of improvement
they may enjoy, we cannot depend upon them, unless
we see the spire pointing heavenward ; for that, and
that alone, indicates a centre of civilization, whence
humanizing influences go out to our fellow men — a
focus, whence diverge the rays of a moral illumina-
tion, lighting up the darkness, showing men the path
of earthly peace, and leading the wanderer to the only
refuge for the sinner and the lost.

If we were to confine our attention to the simple
inculcation of divine truth in the sanctuary, which is
after all, the peculiar work of the ministry, we should
have enough to justify all the remarks we have made.
But we must not overlook the fact, that around the
Church and its ordinances, cluster, as round their
life-giving centre, their living heart, all those in-
stitutions which ennoble man and shed a beauty upon
society. Our forefathers were as marked for their
practical wisdom, as for their implicit deference to the

15

will of God. In their organizations, provision was
first made for the preaching of the Gospel, and from
their well ordered churches, came, as off-shoots, all their
institutions of learning and benevolence. The latter
never could have been originated without the former;
they cannot now, without them — if they live at all — main-
tain any but a sickly existence. But I care not where
you go, nor what the character of the population of any
given spot, if you can but plant a church, with its re-
gular ministry in the midst of them. There may be no
great outward demonstration, but there will certainly
spring up there a school, and one by one, the varied
means of culture and improvement ; and when, after
a while, you visit the scene, you will find a wonderful
change ; the physical aspect of nature itself will seem
improved, to be in keeping with the great moral revo-
lution which has been effected ; you will see a well
ordered community ; and as you look at the intelli-
gent and well directed and effective industry around
you, and see the domestic beauty which sheds its
blandishments over households, you can have but
feeble pretensions to the name even of a philosopher,
if you do not associate all the marks of improvement
and progress, with the songs which have been ' sung,
the prayers which have been offered, and the truth
which has been preached in the sanctuary.

The power of an enlightened and sanctified ministry,
has been too fully acknowledged in every age of the
world, to allow us to look upon it as a problem remaining
yet to be solved. Friends and foes have alike given their
testimony, and that of the latter has been none the
less powerful, because indirectly given, or reluctantly
wrung from them. Around such a ministry, the men

16

who fear God and love righteousness have gathered,
as though all then* hopes of good were identified with
its maintenance ; while men of a different spirit and
opposite tendencies, have made it the objects of their
first and strongest attacks, as though it stood in the
way — the most formidable barrier to the prosecution of
their unhallowed schemes. No man can write the his-
tory of our own, or any other evangelized country,
without bringing in the influence of the Church and
a preached Gospel, as identified with all that has been
bright and blessed ; and the dark pages of the volume,
presenting nothing upon which the eye can love to look,
show the absence of evangelical power, because it tells
of vacant pulpits, and a paralyzed ministry. The glory
of our own New England emanates from her churches,
and the institutions to which those churches have given
birth, and which they now sustain ; and as we feel
that he who should tear down her turrets and her
spires, and desolate her sanctuaries, would be the
enemy of all she holds dear, we have in that very
feeling a demonstration, stronger than any logic could
furnish, of the mighty, conservative power of a stated
ministry.

Then, on the other hand, it is a fact of no doubtful
significance, that the enemies of the public good have
always been most bitter in then* opposition to a preached
Gospel. The persons of the priests had never been
incarcerated, nor would their blood ever have flowed
upon scaffolds, in the dark days, when human passions
revelled amid the ruins which their unrestrained and
unhallowed excitement had produced, had not their in-
fluence been supposed at least, to interfere with the
hellish rites which unbridled lust was practising, and

17

the sacrifices which it demanded for its polluted altar.
And who does not know, as he looks abroad over our
own land, at the present moment, that men of visionary
views, and evil designings, find in an enlightened minis-
try of the oracles of God, the greatest hinderance to the
prosecution of their plans. Men who inveigh against
the established order of society, who would break up
foundations, and put things to rights, by reconstructing
society upon new principles — men, upon whom won-
drous light has been breaking in these latter days, who
have discovered truth which our fathers never knew,
and which Jesus Christ was not competent to reveal,
do not hesitate to avow their opposition to the Church
of God, and all the institutions to which it gives birth,
as the only formidable obstacles to the successful prose-
cution of their destructive and Utopian schemes. The
political demagogue, who feels that he must muzzle
the pulpit before he can accomplish his purposes— the
raving fanatic who must overthrow the church and its
ministry, before he can overthrow the laws and govern-
ment of his country — the infidel statesman who
pointed to the spire of a village church as a public
nuisance, because but for it he might gain currency for
his liberalizing views — all give their testimony to the
conservative power of a preached Gospel. Nay, more, if
they were honest, they would confess that to the in-
fluence of the Church of Christ and of the principles
inculcated in these public nuisances of our land, they
owe their personal safety, while they are promulgating
their disorganizing views, and endeavoriug to compass
their disorganizing plans. They are right ; they must
prostrate the sanctuary, before they can succeed.
Neither is history silent nor observation blind to the

2

18

results which follow from a dearth of sanctuary in-
fluence. Where the priests' lips are silenced, or cease to
keep knowledge, where there is no ministry, or an ig-
norant and unsanctified one, the scene is any thing but
pleasant to look upon. You do not expect to find there
the elements of success, the marks of industry and
thrift, nor any of those virtues which shed a beauty
over the domestic circle, and give its greatest orna-
ments to society. Not to say any thing of lands lying
in moral darkness, we point you to others. The
famous act of uniformity, by the operation of which two
thousand of England's most enlightened and effective
ministers were silenced, or at least shut out from the public
exercise of their office, was followed, and that very
speedily, by a great and most manifest deterioration of
public morals, and diminution of the securities of person-
al safety. In our own land, the scenes of lawlessness
and crime which make us often tremble, are enacted far
away from the sound of the church-going bell, among
those who have left our older communities and have
pressed onward to our distant forests, carrying with them
all the passions of unsanctified humanity, and leaving
behind them the only influences which can hold them
in check. There are, I admit, exceptions to the re-
mark, but they do not affect the truth of our general
statement, those exceptions themselves furnishing illus-
trations of the power of sanctified influence from the
consequences of its absence.

It is in view of these general thoughts, that I put in
my plea for a regular ministry, and for a hearty co-
operation in all those efforts, which contemplate as their
object, the giving of this ministry to every portion of
our land. We look upon the movements of this nation

19

with peculiar anxiety; and borrow light from the history
of the past, to throw upon the darkness of the future*
The wonderful elements of progress which belong to
us, and the indomitable spirit of enterprise which marks
our people — exciting as they do the astonishment of the
beholder— predict some wonderful destiny. The cha-
racter of that destiny is dependent upon the event of re-
ligious influence keeping pace with our civil and
political advancement. The scene of our action is con-
tinually widening ; our people are going farther and far-
ther on, and the waters, which but yesterday were
only rippled by the movement of the light canoe, are
now ploughed by the freighted vessel ; and where are
now smiling villages and the busy hum of industry, but
yesterday was heard nothing but the echo of the wood-
man's axe. The animating spirit of this wondrous
movement, is mainly a lust for power, or a lust for
wealth ; and unless the influence of an enlightened min-
istry goes along with our people, we must look very
shortly for precisely such a state of things, as these un-
restrained passions may develope. If you can imagine
what would be shortly the result here, were our sanc-
tuaries all closed, and our Sabbaths all forgotten, you
can easily imagine what must be the result in the
coming history of our country, if the influence of a
preached Gospel does not keep pace with the other
movements of our people.

If there are signs of evil, and omens of coming ca-
tastrophe— and wise men and good men see them con-
tinually increasing in numbers and magnitude — they
are neither reasons for unconcern, on the one hand, nor
warrants for despondency on the other. The distant
mutterings of the thunder storm bid us flee to our shel-

20

ter, and look well to our conductors; and the signs
which appear in our political horizon charge us to be
active, in preparations to meet the storm, and to arrest
and scatter the destructive fluid. We have our secu-
rity, and our only security, and our sufficient security,
in the influence of an educated ministry.

If the history of the past presents us with startling
predictions, as to our rapid growth for the future, it
teaches also, how we may effectually provide against
those emergencies which we have reason to dread.
But a short time since, within the recollection perhaps
of some who hear me, our own State has been densely
populated. Fears were indulged, and predictions of
evil were uttered ; but by means of the same instru-
mentality which to-day I advocate, we have shed over
the scene the influence of a preached Gospel, and those
predictions have been falsified, and those fears have
proved unfounded. And when you cast your eye
abroad over your own State, and see every where its
thriving, and intelligent, and orderly population ; as you
see its churches every where gathering our people with-
in their walls, Sabbath after Sabbath, and feel that the
crisis with us is past, and that we are safe ; I beg you
to remember that we are indebted for this happy re-
sult, to " Home Missionary" operations, whose claims
I plead before you to-day. A faithful agent is not on
fight grounds to be thrown aside ; a well-tried, effective
instrumentality, is not to be displaced to make room
for untried, doubtful experiments. We would stand by
this agency, and plead for it as for the life and salva-
tion of our country. We wish to send the Sabbath,
with the Church and its appointed ministry, wherever
our people have gone. Let us compass this result, and
we will not fear. Tell me what you may of our ex-

21

posure ; magnify and multiply as you please the evi 1
influences which are at work; unravel the dark
schemings of infidelity, and error, in all its Protean
forms ; talk of the designs of foreign ambition, and
the mighty agencies of a foreign spiritual despotism —
and what of them all 1 Their name may be legion,
and their array may terrify the timid and the nervous ;
but give us this one thing, the influence of an en-
lightened and sanctified, stated ministry, co-extensive
with our population, and the result is certain. Noth-
ing can make headway against such an agency. Error
can thrive and do its work, superstition can gather up
its victims and throw overthemits chains, only where that
ignorance prevails, which the light of this agency scat-
ters. Anarchy cannot rear its unsightly head under
the eaves of the sanctuary, nor vice show its unblushing
countenance in the broad sun-light of the Gospel.
Wherever men go, let the truth go with them. Let
sanctified energy rear a church and establish its ordi-
nances, wherever worldly enterprise gathers a commu-
nity and rears a village, and who can doubt that our
interests are safe, and that our destiny will be glorious,
as our energies are irrepressible.

At this very moment, we are feeling the influence and
reaping the fruits of this effort. The one thousand
educated ministers, which this Institution, through your
suffrages, sustains on their varied fields of labor, are not
toiling for nothing. We should perhaps better appre-
ciate their value, and understand the effects of their
doings, should their toils all at once be suspended.
And if we could well sustain them, and make to their
number daily those additions, which constantly increas-
ing necessities and an enlarging sphere of labor de-
mand, we should be satisfied, that as we were depend-

22

ing upon God's own agency for good, we should not
fail of the blessing which would result from the honor
which God puts upon his appointed instrumentality.
We are living, my brethren, now, not for ourselves
alone. The plans which we adopt, and the efforts we
put forth, are to tell upon those who shall come after
us, and upon the world at large. Of the fruit of the
trees which we are planting, our children are to eat ;
and that fruit will be bitter or sweet, according to the
seed we may sow, and the culture we may give it. Our
fathers have handed down to us a fertile and joyous
land, and privileges inestimable, and means to pre-
serve and perpetuate them. We feel that they have
done their part, and have left for our imitation an
example of faithfulness to those who shall come after
us. We owe a debt to our ancestry, equalled in mag-
nitude only by that which we owe to posterity. God,
too, has done great things for us, whereof we are glad.
Our heritage is a goodly heritage. But it is with na-
tions as with individuals, the nature of the blessings
conferred, no less distinctly intimates the nature
of the obligation imposed, than does the magni-
tude of those blessings its weight. We have, as a
people, a mission to execute. Would to God, that we
might not mistake it. The period, and the circum-
stances in which this land was discovered, the events
which led to its settlement, the character of the men
who first planted our soil, the institutions which they
gave us, seem not only to indicate that God has great
purposes to execute through us, but to intimate also
the nature of his design. Our mission, is not a mission
of carnage, and conquest, and blood. For such an
errand we are wholly unfitted ; there is nothing in the
genius of our land to qualify, but much to unfit us for

23

such a work. There have been men, whom God seerm
to have flung into the world to curse it ; there have
been nations, whom God seems to have raised up to
execute his vengeful and inscrutable purposes ; and
they have risen upon others' ruin, and triumphed in
others' woe. But such an errand is not ours, the exe-
cution of such a commission would be fatal to none
more than to ourselves. The power of this nation is to be
felt by the world, but in another way, and in other
forms. It is by the moral influence of free institutions,
and an enlightened people, that we are to execute our
design. If we can judge of the intention of Provi-
dence, from its arrangements and the agencies which
it rears, we cannot doubt that we are connected inti-
mately with the execution of God's purposes of mercy
in our world ; for never have any people been placed in
circumstances so well calculated to illustrate the value
of Christian principle, and the mighty power of an un-
tramelled Gospel. Already is our history beginning to
teach the nations lessons which they have never be-
fore learned. The importance of man, as an indivi-
dual, in distinction from the importance of men in
masses, is the great truth which our institutions illus-
trate— the great principle, which fully carried out, is to
revolutionize the globe. But that principle can never
be seen as a true and a safe one, except as the influence
of the Gospel prevents its perversions and defines its
proper limitations. Hence the importance, not only to
ourselves, but to the nations generally, and to the
kingdom of Christ, of a general prevalence of Gospel
influence through our country. It is a fact of no little
interest, that the destinies of the world are, at this mo-
ment, in the hands of the two nations where this great
principle is carried out, under the restrictions and

24

direction of the Gospel of Christ. The hopes of
unborn generations in every part of our earth, their
hopes for time, and their hopes for eternity, hang upon
England and America. Every where, from the rising
to the setting sun, is their influence felt. The agita-
tions and heavings, which are every where distinctly
visible, are the results of a motion communicated by
ourselves. The power we are exerting is every day
becoming greater, and more manifest in its effects, as
our strength is increased, and our resources are de-
veloped. What the world shall be, ere the present cen-
tury shall have completed its cycle, depends very much
upon what we shall be ; and what we shall be, depends
upon the suspension, or extension of gospel influence.
We are acting, therefore, now, not for ourselves alone,
nor yet for our own immediate posterity, but for
the world, and for the general interest of the Re-
deemer's kingdom. If we act well our part, all is
safe; but if not, all is lost. It is, therefore, not
Christianity alone, but patriotism and philanthropy,
which summon us to the work of disseminating the
knowledge of God and of his grace. If we fail in our
mission, the secret of our decline, will be found in our
neglect of him, who raised us to greatness, to make us
the instrument of good. And whatever causes men
may propose, as an explanation of our downfal from the
summit of privilege, they will be the sound reasoners,
who refer the decline of our strength to the decline
of our Christianity ; and who point to our text, as ex-
plaining the change, maintaining that we had never
been reduced to subjection and vassalage, but through
a forgetfulness of what is written in the Bible — " The
people who do know their God shall be strong."

We ask your help to-day, to prevent so dire a
catastrophe.

Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide
Treatment Date: Sept 2005

PreservationTechnologies

A WORLD LEAOER IN PAPER PRESERVATION

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive
Cranberry Township, PA 16066

L1BRARY OF

CONGRESS

0 014 670 780 4

v-:-

. ':

I

jggtigg

mm

m