LECTURE I.

THE BEING OF A GOD.

HISTORY teaches us that in all past time the earth has been owned, and knowledge and power have been monopolized, by the few, while the people, the laboring classes, the great body of mankind, have been left to grope their way in darkness and slavery, tilling the earth they did not own, on the borders of starvation, and liable by a few days' sickness to become paupers. Some, supposing that this unequal condition was fostered by Christianity, have regarded it as the enemy of man. But, instead of this, all history teaches that degradation and oppression have existed in proportion as men have departed from the Bible, and that in the same degree in which men have come under its influence, they come out from darkness and bondage, to intelligence and Christian civilization.

It is now three hundred years since commerce and the arts and sciences have exerted their powerful tendencies to equalize the condition of men, so that the many should not bear the burdens of life for the few. No nation has ever been placed in circumstances so favorable to the consummation of this experiment as ours; and though very much remains to be done, yet there is a wider diffusion of intellectual culture and general intelligence among us than among any other people, and we stand higher than any other as to liberty and equality. And yet there is not a nation upon earth

where the Bible has been so extensively circulated and so intelligently read, and has exerted so great a power in forming institutions and moral character, as in our own.

It might, therefore, as well be insisted that the sun is unfriendly to light, and that it is a cause of darkness, as that the Bible is unfriendly to civil and religious liberty.

By Liberty, I do not mean independence of law, but the right of self-government, by our own laws. Freedom for every one to do as he chooses, without regard to the rights of others, is anarchy, and not liberty.

By Equality, I do not mean that each one should have the same amount of property as every other; nor that all should have the same calling. To demand this would be as if we should ask that the earth might be all hill, or all valley.

The most perfect state of civilization includes innumerable parts, which no individual or family can supply, and which constitute innumerable honorable, useful, and indispensable vocations of society. There must be diversity of condition among men, so long as there are diversities of character and capacity, and different ends to be achieved, in civilized society. By equality, I do mean that all shall be equally protected in their rights, and have the opportunity to rise by industry and well-doing, according to their several abilities, and their honest, faithful action.

We have no despotic government, costing an hundred-fold more than sufficient to sustain a republic. We have no landed aristocracy, no union of church and state, and no sinecure priesthood. No minister can be forced upon his people, without their suffrage and voluntary support. Each pastor stands upon his own character and deeds, without anything to break the force of his responsibility to his people; and is,

in his calling, urged by as powerful motives and necessities as is the farmer or mechanic. Our soil is owned in fee simple by the cultivator, and our constitution and our laws are our own; they were made and are sustained and enjoyed by ourselves, and by all who choose to place themselves under them.

There never was a people of so much intelligence and enterprise, on such a luxuriant and boundless soil; and never, since earth was made, have men been let loose under the stimulus of such high hopes, and the pressure of such high motive to successful action. We are a wonder to many, and a wonder to ourselves.

The nations of antiquity, as well as those of more modern days, have faltered and failed through the power of voluptuousness; wealth being chiefly in the hands of the aristocracy, the corruption descended through their veins, till the feeble nerve and degenerate spirit exposed them to conquest or revolution by barbarian or plebeian power. But, with us, having no entailed estates, what the improvident children of the rich scatter, the children of the poor gather, while the enfeebled offspring of a voluptuous parentage go down to the laboring classes, and wait their turn to rise.

But, as it is easier to amass wealth than to keep it, so it is easier to obtain liberty than to maintain it.

How to per

petuate our institutions and liberties, is a problem not yet, perhaps, entirely solved. Other republics have taken liberty by storm; but their light, like the meteor athwart the sky, has gone down in endless night. Shall it be so with us? Has our sun arisen so full-orbed and clear only to make the darkness of his setting the more terrible? We believe no such thing, but rather that our light will shine more and more to the perfect day, till earth's inhabitants, cheered by

it and encouraged, shall burst their chains, and walk erect and free upon the fair earth which God has given them.

When, at first, we set up for independence, the priesthood and kings and nobles looked upon us with surprise and contempt. "What do these feeble Jews?" they said. "If a fox go up, he shall even break down their stone wall." Next, they pitied us. "Poor orphans," they said, "that have no kings, nor church and state, to take care of them!" And they doubted not that we should go back to threelegged stools and skins and acorns. But we have kept along for more than three-quarters of a century, and have had several skirmishes upon land and sea in defence of our liberties, and in that time have made considerable corn and wheat, and beef and pork, and some to spare, cotton, also, and woollen cloths, and a few chairs, and knives and forks and spoons, and farming utensils;-and, under the banner of God and liberty, we have faith to believe that we shall hold on, till the Gospel has done for all nations what it has done

for us.

There are, it is true, some among us who are not willing to "let pretty well alone," and are anxious to try the exper-iment of making us more free and happy. They have discovered, they think, that there is no God; that the Bible is a fable, and civil government a usurpation of human rights; that separate families and separate property are a curse; that it is a vile monopoly for any man to have any wife in particular, or for a son to know and love his father; that modesty is an insult and persecution, and brass the inherent right of woman; that liberty is the right of every man to do as he pleases, and equality the right of every man to be as tall, and as strong, and handsome, and wise, and witty, as his neighbor; and to dress as well, and enjoy as fine a house and

equipage, and to eat and drink as much by weight and measure, as his neighbor.

You remember, I suppose, the dog with a marrow-bone in his mouth, who swam the river, and, to grasp the shadow, lost the substance. And you, I trust, will not imitate his example, by giving up the greatest blessings ever bestowed by Heaven, not for a shadow, but for the greatest sufferings that ever came upon a guilty nation. You will think it best, I doubt not, to wait until some other nation has made a more successful experiment on the principles of Atheism, before you abandon God and the Bible, and the civil and religious institutions of your country.

Atheism was the rod of God's anger, by which he overturned and dashed in pieces the governments and hierarchies of Europe, who took counsel against the Lord and his anointed.

But the wild power which destroyed thrones and feudal systems and ecclesiastical dominions in Europe, would blow to atoms our republic, rulers, priests and people, and introduce, first, anarchy intolerable, and then an everlasting despotism. It is for want of the Bible, and the moral government of God, in Europe, that liberty is struggling for life between revolutions and anarchy and despotisms; and when in our nation religion and liberty and constitutions and laws shall be, by the people, identified with European despotisms, and regarded with hate, not kings and priests only, and temples and Sabbaths, will be swept away, but the whole generation will be involved in a vortex of fire and blood. "In that day shall kings, and great men, and rich men, and chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bond-man, and every freeman, hide themselves in dens and in the rocks of the mountains; saying to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us