The marvel of nations. Our country: its past, present, and future, and what the Scriptures say of it.

Front matter

H r..

THE MARYEL OE 1^ATI01[S.

OUE COUNTRY.

CHAPTER II. A century's progress

Testimony of Emile de Girardin, the Dublin (Ireland) Nation, Mitchell — First settlements — Population — Close of the Revolution — Territorial growth — Increase of Population — Development of cities — Industrial growth — First cotton-mills and railroads — Great American inventions — Agriculture — Cotton industry — Live stock — Manufactures — Iron and other metals — Mining — The gold discovery — Commerce — Banking and insurance — Arts and sciences — Literature — Printing — Postal and telegraph service — America the great cattle raiser — Lumber interests — The great coal producer — Most notable structures in the world — Progress in one generation 22-70

CHAPTER in.

POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE OF THE NATION.

Civil and religious liberty — Constitutional guarantees — A

[vii]

viii CONTENTS.

nation on a new model — The magnet of America — The asylum of the oppressed — Morality and religion — Organ ized liberty — Constitution-making — Our Constitution pronounced in England the most sacred political document in the world — American literature abroad — Stability of our government — The model republic 71 -8b

CHAPTEE lY.

IMPORTANT PROBABILITIES CONSIDERED.

A miracle of growth — Providence conspicuous in our history — Why nations are mentioned in the Bible — Why should not our own be mentioned ? — Survey of Biblical symbols — Conclusions 89-38

CHAPTEK y.

A CHAIN OF PROPHECY.

Second symbol of Revelation 13 — The prophecy located — The Church of God the prominent object — Symbols explained — Historical facts considered — Chronology, location, character, work, continuance, and overthrow of two important symbols 94-104

CHAPTEE YI.

LOCATION OF THE GOVERNMENT REPRESENTED BY THE SECOND SYMBOL OF REVELATION 13.

Leading symbolic features — Religious elements — Not in the Eastern Hemisphere — The ten kingdoms of Western Europe — Testimony of Machiavelli, Bishop Kewton, Faber, and Dr. Hales — Time's noblest offspring — The Western Hemisphere — The eyes of all Europe upon us — Sayings of Talleyrand ^ 105-113

CONTENTS. ix

CHAPTEE YIL

WHEN MUST THE GOVERNMENT INDICATED BY THIS SYMBOL

ARISE ?

Chronology an important consideration — The head of the government — Rome's seven forms of government — A deadly wound — Papal overthrow in 1798 — Testimony of Geo. Croly, A. M. — Three important chronological proofs — Survey of the Western Hemisphere — The United States the leading nation here 114-123

CHAPTEE YIIL

THE UNITED STATES HAS ARISEN IN THE EXACT MANNER INDICATED BY THE SYMBOL.

Comes up in a new territory — Comes up peacefully — Yiew of J. P. Thompson, LL. D. — Burke on the American Revolution — The expression used by the Apostle John — Gr. A. Townsend's testimony — Edward Everett on English exiles — Corroborated by statistics of progress 124-130

CHAPTEE IX.

THE TWO GREAT PRINCIPLES OF THE GOVERNMENT.

How the Scriptures symbolize power and strength — A Church without a pope and a State without a king — Civil and religious liberty — Republicanism and Protestantism — A youthful power — Declaration of Independence — A noble profession — Law of symbols 131-135

CHAPTEE X.

INCONSISTENT UTTERANCES.

Points made — Religious bigotry of the past — Danger of ecclesiastical power — How a government speaks— Dan-

Contents

gerous tendencies — Opposition to dissenters — ^A warning by D'Aubigne — Political corruption — Spirit of the Dark Ages still alive — Cbarles Beecher on Protestant apostasy — Principles of the French Revolution — Time the teacher 136-145

CHAPTER XI.

HE DOETH GREAT WONDERS.

Chapter III. Political And Religious Influence Of The Nation

^HE great instrument which our forefathers set forth as their bill of rights — the Declaration of ^^ Independence — contains these words : —

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal ; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights ; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." And in Art. IV., Sec. 4, of the Constitution of the United States, we find these words : " The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government." A republican form of government is one in which the power rests with the people, and the whole machinery of government is worked by representatives elected by them.

This is a sufficient guarantee of civil liberty. What is said respecting religious freedom .'* In Art. VI. of the Constitution, we read : " No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office of public trust under the United States." In Art. I. of Amendments of the Constitution, we read : " Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

In reply to questions as to the design of the Constitution, from a committee of a Baptist society in Virginia, George Washington wrote, Aug. 4, 1789, as follows : —

[TIJ

Y^ THE MARVEL OF NATIONS.

" If I had tlie least idea of any difficulty resulting from the Constitution adopted by the Convention of which I had the honor to be the President when it was formed, so as to. endanger the rights of any religious denomination, then I never should have attached my name to that instrument. If I had any idea that the general government was so administered that the liberty of conscience was endangered, I pray you be assured that no man would be more willing than myself to revise and alter that part of it, so as to avoid all religious ]3ersecutions. You can, without doubt, remember that I have often expressed my opinion, that every man who conducts himself as a good citizen is accountable to God alone for his religious faith, and should be protected in worshiping God according to the dictates of his own conscience."

In 1830, certain memorials for prohibiting the transportation of the mails and the opening of post-offices on Sunday were referred to the Congressional Committee on Post-offices and Post-roads. The committee reported unfavorably to the prayer of the memorialists. Their report was adopted, and printed by order of the Senate of the United States, and the committee discharged from the further consideration of the subject. Of the Constitution they say : —

"We look in vain to that instrument for authority to say whether the first day, or seventh day, or whether any day, has been made holy by the Almighty.

"The Constitution regards the conscience of the Jew as sacred as that of the Christian, and gives no more authority to adopt a measure affecting the conscience of a solitary individual than of a whole community. That representative who would violate this principle would lose his delegated character, and forfeit the confidence of his constituents. If Congress should declare the first day of the week holy, it would not convince the Jew nor the Sabbatarian. It would dissatisfy both, and consequently convert neither. ... If a solemn act of legislation shall in one point define the law of God, or point out to the citizen one religious duty, it may with equal propriety define every part of revelation, and enforce every religious obligation, even to the forms and

POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE, Y3

ceremonies of worship, the endowments of the church, and the support of the clergy.

"The framers of the Constitution recognized the eternal principle that man's relation to his God is above human legislation, and his right of conscience inalienable. Reasoning was not necessary to establish this truth ; we are conscious of it in our own bosoms. It is this consciousness, which, in defiance of human laws, has sustained so many martyrs in tortures and flames. They felt that their duty to God was superior to human enactments, and that man could exercise no authority over their consciences. It is an inborn principle which nothing can eradicate.

"It is also a fact that counter memorials, equally respectable, oppose the interference of Congress, on the ground that it would be legislating upon a religious subject, and therefore unconstitutional."

Hon. A. H. Cragin, of New Hampshire, in a speech in the House of Representatives, said : —

"When our forefathers reared the magnificent structure of a free republic in this Western land, they laid its foundations broad and deep in the eternal principles of right. Its materials were all quarried from the mountain of truth ; and as it rose majestically before an astonished world, it rejoiced the hearts and hopes of mankind. Tyrants only cursed the workmen and their workmanshi23. Its architecture was new. It had no model in Grecian or Roman history. It seemed a paragon let down from Heaven to inspire the hopes of men, and to demonstrate God's favor to the people of the New World. The builders recognized the rights of human nature as universal. Liberty, the great first right of man, they claimed for ' all men,' and claimed it from ' God himself.' Upon this foundation they erected the temple, and dedicated it to Liberty, Humanity, Justice, and Equality. Washington was crowned its patron saint. Liberty was then the national goddess, worshiped by all the people. They sang of liberty, they harangued for liberty, they prayed for liberty. Slavery was then hateful. It was denounced by all. The British king was condemned for foisting it upon the colonies. Southern men were foremost in entering their protest against it. It was then everywhere regarded as an evil, and a crime against humanity."

Y4: THE MARVEL OF NATIONS.

Again, the Bible, and the Bible alone, is the Protestant rule of faith ; and liberty to worship God according to the dictates of one's own conscience is the standard of religious freedom in this land ; and from the quotations herewith presented, it is evident that while the government pledges to all its citizens the largest amount of civil freedom, outside of license, it has determined to lay upon the people no religious restrictions, but to guarantee to all liberty to worship God according to the Protestant principle.

It is these heaven-born principles, — civil and religious liberty, — so clearly recognized, so openly acknowledged, and so amply guaranteed, that have made this nation the attraction it has been to the people of other lands, and which have 'drawn them in such multitude to our shores.

Townsend ("Old World and New," p. 3il) says :—

"And what attached these people to us? In part, undoubtedly, our zone, and the natural endowments of this portion of the globe. In part, and of late years, our vindicated national character, and the safety of our institutions. But the magnet in America is that ice are a republic — a republican people ! Cursed with artificial government, however glittering, the people of Europe, like the sick, pine for nature with protection, for open vistas and blue sky, for independence without ceremony, for adventure in their own interest ; and here they find it ! "

Thorhpson (" United States as a Nation," p. 29) gives this view of the religious element that entered into this organization : —

" In the movements in the colonies that prepared the way for the Revolution, the religious spirit was a vital and earnest element. Some of the colonies were the direct offspring of religious persecution in the old country, or of the desire for a larger freedom of faith and worship ; and so jealous were they of any interference with the rights of conscience, that their religion was

POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE. 75

fitly described [by Burl^e in his Speech of Conciliation] as ' a refinement on the principle of resistance, the dissidence of dissent, and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion.' And the colonies that were founded in that spirit of commercial adventure, or for extending the realm of Great Britain, became also an asylum for religious refugees from all nations, and by the prospect of a larger and freer religious life, attracted to themselves the men of different races and beliefs who had learned to do and to suffer for their faith."

On page 31, he further says : —

" Thus it came to pass that the religious wars and persecutions of Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, were a training school for the political independence of the United States of America in the eighteenth century. Diverse and seemingly incongruous as were the nationalities represented in the colonies, — Dutch, French, German, Swedish, Scotch, Irish, English, — they had all imbibed, either by experience or by inheritance, something of the spirit of personal independence, and especially of religious liberty. Gustavus Adolphus designed his colony of Swedes for the benefit of 'all oppressed Christendom.' Penn, the Quaker, established Pennsylvania as ' a free colony for all mankind,' where the settlers 'should be governed by laws of their own making.' The first charter of the Jerseys — which were largely peopled by Quakers and Scotch and Irish Presbyterians — declared that ' No person shall at any time, in any way, or on any pretense, be called in question, or in the least punished or hurt, for opinion in religion.' And Oglethorpe's Colony of Georgia was founded to be a refuge for ' the distressed people of Britain, and the persecuted Protestants of Europe ;' then the German Moravian settled side by side with the French Huguenot and the Scotch Presbyterian under the motto, ' We toil not for ourselves, but for others.'

" Pere Hyacinthe, after a tour in New England, said he had remarked in every town three institutions that epitomized American society, — the bank, the school, and the church. A true picture. And you see the intellectual and the spiritual are two to one against the material, — the bank, the store-house of gains and savings, the school and the church, the distributing reservoirs of what is freely taken from the bank and given to those educating and spiritualizing forces of society.

Y6 THE MARVEL OF NATION'S.

" 'The Americans,' says De Tocqueville, ' show by their practice that they feel the high necessity of imparting morality to democratic communities by means of religion. ... In the United States, on the first day of every week, the trading and working life of the nation seems suspended ; all noises cease ; a deep tranquillity, say rather the solemn calm of meditation, succeeds the turmoil of the week, and the soul resumes possession and contemplation of itself. Upon this day the marts of traffic are deserted ; every member of the community, accompanied by his children, goes to church, where he listens to strange language, which would seem unsuited to his ear.' This last expression shows that even the ^philosophical acumen of De Tocqueville had failed to penetrate to the secret of religious life in America. That is no 'strange language ' to which the American banker, merchant, farmer, mechanic, listens when he goes to church on Sunday; it is the language he was accustomed in childhood to hear from his parents ; the language that perhaps he himself has used in his own family every day of the week at morning prayer ; the lessons that he inculcates to his children, — ' of the finer pleasures which belong to virtue alone, and of the true happiness which attends it.' It is not on Sunday alone, as De Tocqueville imagined, 'that the American steals an hour from himself, and laying aside for a while the petty passions which agitate his life and the ephemeral interests which engross it, strays at once into an ideal world, where all is great, eternal, and pure.' Thousands upon thousands of the busiest men in America do this every day with undeviating regularity. This is their life, — in that ideal world ; and they bring from this springs and motives to action in the world of affairs."— /(i., pp. 219, 220.

The success of the United States in erecting at once a permanent and stable form of government has been an astonishment to other nations. Edouard Laboulaye, one of the foremost patriots and publicists of France, just after the revolution of 1848 said : —

" In the last sixty years we have changed eight or ten times our government and our constitution ; have jjassed from anarchy to despotism ; tried two or three forms of the republic and of monarchy ; exhausted proscription, the scaffold, civil and foreign

POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE. "l^J

war ; and after so many attempts, and attempts paid with tlie fortune and the blood of France, we are hardly more advanced than at the outset; The constitution of 1848 took for its model the constitution of 1791, which had no life ; and to-day we are agitating the same questions that in 1789 we flattered ourselves we had resolved. How is it that the Americans have organized liberty upon a durable basis, while we, who surely are not inferior to them in civilization — we who have their example before our eyes — have always miscarried ? "

Thompson ("United States as Nation, "p. 107) quotes the foregoing from " Etudes Morales et Politiques," p. 285, and spends a few moments considering a proper answer to this question which the Frenchman in so much astonishment asks. He makes the answer to consist principally in the fact that the Americans conceived and adopted a superior constitution — a constitution which has sprung from the noble principles which have given this nation its political and religious influence, as noticed in this chapter. He says :t-

" But in this point of constitution-making, it will also be seen that the Americans, with a rare felicity, succeeded in incorporating the constitution of the nation, which is its life principle, with the national constitution, which gives to the national life its definitive form and expression. They not only achieved independence, but, in the happy phrase of the French critic, they 'organized liberty.' This success was due to training, to methods, and to men, or rather to that mysterious conjunction of men and events that make the genius of an epoch akin to inspiration."

The value and influence of this constitution is shown in the fact that " to-day a leading organ of opinion in England pronounces the Constitution of the United States ' the most sacred political document in the world.' " — Id. p. 160.

The growing influence of American opinions and ideas is still further shown in the recognition of American literature abroad. Says Thompson (p. 231), " Many of us can remember the sneer of the Edinburgh Review, 'Who reads an American book?' The laugh is turned, now that everywhere in England one sees the railway book-stalls, and the shelves of circulating libraries, crowded with American books in ready demand ; that one can count up scores of American authors reprinted in England (in the catalogue of a single London publisher, I lately sawtwelve American names) ; that in * The International Scientific Series,' published at London and Leipzig, the names of Cooke, Dana, Draper, Flint, Whitney, appear side by side with Bain, Carpenter, Huxley, Lubbock, Spencer, Tyndall, Bernstein, Lisbreich, Lenckart, Steinthal, Virchow ; that every leading English review now has its department of American literature. The Athenceiun finds much to praise, and even the hypercritical Saturday Review, now and then throws us such tidbits as these : ' Hawthorne is one of the most fascinating of novelists. Whittier's " Mabel Martin " is enough to make the reputation of any poet.' True we have given birth to no Shakspeare nor Byron ; but with the list of contemporary English poets, from Tennyson down to Swinburne, we need not hesitate to compare our list from Bryant down to Whitman, each after his kind."

The stability of our government through the changes and vicissitudes wdiich have revolutionized if not overthrown other governments, is a further evidence of the solid political and religious basis on which its foundations are laid. On this point we

POLITICAL AND RELIOIOUS INFLUENCE. 79

quote again from the same volume from which the last few extracts are given, p. 1-iS : —

"Frederic the Great died ; and, twenty years after, the Prussia that he had created lay dismantled, dismembered, disgraced, at the dictation of Napoleon. Napoleon abdicated ; and France has wandered through all forms of government, seeking rest and finding none. Washington twice voluntarily retired from the highest posts of influence and power, — the head of the army, the head of the State ; but the freedom he had won by the sword, the institutions he had organized as president of the Federal Convention, the government he had administered as President of the Union, remained unchanged and have grown in strength and majesty through all the growing j^ears. "

American missionaries have gone to all the world, and in numbers and activity hold an equal place with those of any other nation ; while the American Bible Society, in the extent of its operations, sending out millions of copies of the Scriptures in all the leading languages of the world, stands next to the original society of the mother country.

This country has now come to be looked upon as the model, after which other governments may profitably pattern. Under the title of " The Model Republic," Cyrus D. Foss, pastor of St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal Church, New York, preached a sermon, which appeared in the Methodist, in December 1867, from which the reader will be pleased to read the following extracts, which may fitly close the present chapter : — •

"Let every thoughtful American bless God that he lives in this age of the world, and in this country on the globe ; not in the dark past, where greatness and even goodness could accomplish 1 so little ; not in the oriental world, where everything is stiffened and is hard as cast-iron ; but now wiiere such mighty forces are at work for the uplifting of humanity, and just here at this focal point of power.

" In no vainglorious spirit, but with a sincere desire to awaken your gratitude to Almighty God for his astonishing mercies to us as a people, I propose this inquiry : What is the place of America in history ? God gives each nation a work to do. For that work he bestows adequate and appropriate endowments, and to it he summons the nation by a thousand trumpet calls of providence. If those calls are unheeded, if the nation is hopelessly recreant, he dashes it in pieces like a potter's vessel. Witness Assyria ; witness the Jewish people ; nation after nation — a long procession — has faded away at the blast of the breath of his nostrils.

"I maintain to-day that God has signalized this great American nation, this democratic republican nation, this Protestant Christian nation, above all the nations that are or ever have been upon the face of the globe, by the place and the work he has assigned it. Look at its place on the globe, and its place among the centuries. What a magnificent arena for a young nation to step forth upon and begin its march to a destiny inconceivably glorious •. Suppose an angel flying over all the earth two hundred years ago, looking down upon the crowded populations of Europe and Asia, and the weak and wretched tribes of Africa, perceiving that humanity never rises to its noblest development, save in the north temperate zone — turning his flight westward across the Atlantic, there dawns upon him the vision of a new world — a world unpopulated save by a few scattered and wandering tribes of aboriginal savages, and by thirteen sparse colonies of the hardiest and best of immigrants along the Atlantic coast. He beholds a continent marvelously beautiful with unlimited resources to be developed ; its rivers open all parts of the country, and bring all into communication with two great oceans and with the tropic gulf. He sees a soil inexhaustibly fertile ; he sees the mountains (for an angel's eye can search their treasures) full of gold, silver, copper, iron, and coal. He sees a country insulated by three thousand miles of ocean from all the nations, needing contiguity with none — a Cosmos in itself. Would not this angel-gazer say, ' My God has assuredly made and endowed this peerless continent for some glorious end. The rest of the world is occupied, and the most of it cursed by occupation. Here is virgin soil ; here is an arena for a new nation, which, perchance, profiting by the mistakes of the long, dark past, may, by the blessing of God, work out for itself and for humanity a better destiny ' ?

POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE. 81

" Note again the place of America in the scale of the centuries. Why was this continent hid from the eye of Europe so long ? And why, after its discovery, was it kept unsettled for a century and a quarter longer, the thought of it all that time being only a disturbing leaven in the mind of Europe ? Ah ! God would not suffer it that tyrannical ideas of government or religion should take root here. He veiled the New World from the vision of the Old, until the Old had cultivated a seed worthy to plant the New. No crowned despots, no hooded monks, were to flourish here. No hoary superstitions, no ancient usurpations, were to take root here. Why was the era of this nation's birth coeval with that of the development of inventive genius ? Why was it that this land was comparatively unsettled until the iron horse was ready to career across its plains, leap its rivers, dive through its mountains, and bring its most distant cities into vicinage? — until Leviathan stood waiting to plough the ocean, and bring the nations into brotherhood ? — until the fiery steeds of heaven were being harnessed to fly with tidings in a single instant across the continent or under the ocean? Why was the beginning of our national history delayed until the doctrines of civil and religious liberty — a thousand times strenuously asserted and bravely defended — had emerged into prominence and power, so that the American freeman of to-day stands upon the shoulders of thirty generations of heroic battles for the right? Why — most remarkable coincidence of all — why does it occur that just at the time of the vigorous infancy of this favored nation, the church of God should awake from the slumber of ages, acknowledge the universal bond of brotherhood, and begin in this age, within the lifetime of men here present, those sublime evangelizing agencies which are the chief glory of the century, and which are to bring this world to the feet of Jesus ? * No candid man can ponder these thoughts without wondering what God designs for this young giant which he has so located on the surface of this globe, and on the scale of the centuries.

" The thesis I shall defend is this : God designated the United

* We should be glad if we could sympathize with the speaker in this view. But we are not able to find in the Scriptures any evidence that the world is all to be brought into obedience to Christianity before the second coming of Christ.

States of America as the Model Republic and, the great evangelizer of the world. The questions I have just propounded suggest a line of argument which will prove this proposition, and by proving it, devolve upon us here in this country a responsibility, the like of which has never been laid upon any nation. Let me premise two things essential to the argument. America is certainly the observed of all observers. The eyes of all nations are upon her. This free government, this 'experiment at free government,' as European absolutists have sneeringly termed it, fixes the gaze of the whole world. There is no nation, no tribe, civilized or semicivilized, on the whole earth, that does not look this way, and feel that humanity has a stake in this land. This Hercules, who, when in his cradle, bearded and defeated the British Lion ; who, in his callow youth, repeated that feat on those watery plains, where, till then, the foe had ranged acknowledged lord, and who has just now, in his vigorous manhood, throttled and slain the many-headed hydra of rebellion — secession, treason, and slavery — this Hercules, somehow, has come to be gazed upon by all lands, and, somehow, the oppressed of every nation on the face of the earth have reached the conviction that he is their champion.

"The other preliminary thought is this : In stating the mission of America, I have mentioned two things — that God meant it to be a model Republic, and the great evangelizer, and these two are one. We cannot consider them separately, and draw out entirely distinct lines of proof. It is idle for any nation at this age to expect greatness without acknowledging God, and falling into the ranks as an obedient subject of his kingdom. In ancient times, the case was different ; but now Christian nations control the world, and depend upon it, brethren,' the hands will never go backward on the dial. France tried to get on without a God in the time of her first revolution, but Napoleon, for reasons of State, restored the Catholic religion. His most appreciative historian, M. Thiers, gives us a deeply interesting account of this singular passage in his history. Napoleon said : " For my part, I never hear the sound of the church bell in the neighboring village without emotion." He knew that the hearts of the people were stirred by the same deep yearnings after God which filled his own, and so he proposed to restore the worship of God to infidel France. The savans of Paris ridiculed the proposal, laughed it to scorn, declared it was weakness in him to yield to a superstition that had