14 ourselves into the hands of men; to suffer whatsoever God hath appointed us to suffer,for the perfecting of the commandments of God and a clean conscience before the command' ments of men. Not despising men, therefore, but trusting in God only, we seek to serve him with a clear conscience so long as we shall live here, assuring ourselves that the things- tuat we shall suffer for so doing shall be a testimony to the world that great reward is laid up for us in Heaven, where we doubt not but to rest forever with those that have before our days suffered for the like.” Contrast these sentiments, so profoundly self-renouncing and reverential of God, with the blasphemous egotism of the French revolutionists of 1798, and contrast also the slowly formed and slowly maturing, but always multiplying and ripening fruits of the Puritan reformation, with the blasted and shriveled benefits of that other great modern convulsion, and you have an instructive and memorable lesson upon the elevation and purity of spirit which alone can advance human progress. Increase of wealth and commerce, and the enlargement of empire, are not truly primary objects of the American patriot. These are, indeed, worthy of his efforts. But the first object is the preservation of the spirit of freedom, which is the soul of the Republic itself. Let that become languid, and the Republic itself must languish and decline. Let it become extinct, and the Republic must disastrously fall. Let it be preserved and invigorated, and the Republic will spread wider and wider, and its noble institutions will tower higher and higher. Let it fall, and so its example fail, and the nations will retrograde. Let it endure, and the world will yet be free, virtuous, and happy. Hitherto, nations have raised monuments to survive liberty and empire. And they have been successful. Egypt, Assyria, Greece, and Italy, are full of those monuments. Let our ambition be the nobler one of establishing liberty and empire, which shall survive the most stupendous material structures which genius can devise, or art erect, with all the facilities of increasing knowledge and public wealth. Here my reflections on a subject infinitely suggestive come to an end. They will not be altogether fruitless, if I have been at all successful in illustrating the truths that continual meliorations of society and government are not only possible, but certain; that human progress is slow, because it is only the unfolding of the divine providence concerning man; that the task of directing and aiding that progress is rendered the most difficult of all our labors, by reason of our imperfect knowledge of the motives and principles of human conduct, and of countless unforeseen obstacles to be encountered; that this progress, nevertheless, must and will go on, whether favored or resisted; that it will go on peacefully if wisely favored, and through violence if unwisely resisted; that neither stability, nor even safety, can be enjoyed by any State, otherwise than , by rendering exact justice, which is nothing else than pure equality, to all its members; that the martial heroism, which, invoked after too long passiveness under oppression and misrule, sometimes achieves the deliverance of States, is worthy of all the honor it receives; but that the real authors of all benign revolutions are those who search out and seek to remove peacefully the roots of social and political evils, and so avert the necessity for sanguinary remedies; that the Puritans of England and America have given the highest and most beneficent illustration of that conservative heroism which the world has yet witnessed; that they have done this by the adoption of a single true and noble principle of conduct, and by patient and persevering fidelity to it; that they thus overcame a demoralizing political and social reaction, and gave a new and powerful impulse to human progress; that tyranny is deceitful, and mankind are credulous, and that therefore political compromises are more dangerous to liberty than open usurpation; that the Puritan principle, which was so sublime and so effective, was nothing else than the truth that men retain in every state all the natural rights which are essential to the performance of personal, social, and religious duties; that the principle includes the absolute equality of all men, and tends to a complete development in pure republican systems; that it has already modified the institutions of Europe, while it has brought into existence republican systems, more hr less perfect, throughout
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