Westward empire

by Elias Lyman Magoon

The Lutheran reformation was the dissolution of popery, which constructed the church on false principles, rather than the restoration of the church constructed on true principles. The system superseded at the end of the Leoine age, had achieved the civilization of mankind, but true Christianization it was not competent to attain. Milton felt this when he wrote as follows: "Truth, indeed, once came into the world with her divine Master, and was a perfect shape most glorious to look on, but when he ascended, and his apostles after him were laid asleep, then straight arose a wicked race of deceivers, who, as that story goes of the Egyptian Typhon, with his conspirators, how they dealt with the good Osiris, took the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely form into a thousand pieces, and scattered them to the four winds. From that time, ever since, the sad friends of Truth—such as durst appear—imitating the careful search that Isis made for the mangled body of Osiris, went up and down, gathering up limb by limb still as they could find them. We have not yet found them all, lords and commons, nor ever shall do till her Master's second coming. He shall bring together every joint and member, and shall mold them into an immortal feature of loveliness and perfection." Coincident with this cheering prophecy, and in the region where it was uttered, arose the Moravian brethren, with their disciples John Wesley and George Whitfield, to teach the despairing world and the dissolute or impotent churches, what real Christianity is, and to show reflecting Christians how little true power exists in national establishments and their crippled machinery. Whitfield, like the embodiment of seraphic zeal, fulmined from the interior of Oxford to the outer borders of our young republic, and having poured all the worth of his spirit into the fountain of religious life in America, gave his body to our soil, and now sleeps near Pilgrim Rock. Wesleyism did much to regenerate the effete theology under whose ponderous impotency it originated, but is now fast losing its power by an increased assimilation to the surrounding curse of universal formalism. In the eastern portion of our own land, too, where her first foothold was gained, and the grandest conquests in fervid simplicity were secured, that communion is losing strength, we fear; but in the great West, the billows of heavenly fire augment as they advance, and millions of beautiful, as well as fruitful plants will hereafter spring, in consequence of the yet wider and freer spreadings of the celestial flames. Glory be to God, a westward fusion of races has begun, an assimilation of nations is in progress; all arbitrary frontiers are giving way; distances diminish; provincialisms disappear; sects and forms of worships are brought into contact, and are modified by every advantage flowing from salutary emulation, while they regard each other on a closer view with less animosity or reserve. Partisans whose views are short, and whose minds are narrow, may look with regret upon the disappearance of the differences which characterize absolute social systems. But fear not, men and brethren, we are spectators of a delightful and auspicious exhibition. Let nationalities disappear, and in their stead leave mankind free in the presence of their heavenly Father! They have tried long enough to form themselves into ameliorating leagues, and friendly alliances, under the sway of legislative force; the best alliance is that of the family, the equally free and unitedly loving family of Christ.

The heart of young America is not altogether in the past, but like the youth of all progressive peoples, it fondly anticipates a millennium to come. There is much new spiritual wine springing on our soil, and no wise husbandman will attempt to conserve it in old bottles. In the age which now is, has appeared an increased degree of independence and self-help, a growing opinion that man should select his own credo, construct his own opinions, pay no great deference to ancient usages, nor venerate any thing save honorable worth. This doctrine set in with the Sermon on the Mount, and no party or power on earth can arrest its universal adoption. We envy not the formalisms of that worship which vaunts itself amidst cathedral ostentation, where the organ and choir perform their mountebank mouthings over ashes, bones, and dead marble; gorgeous edifices, comparatively empty, which give back the sounds of weekly mummery, while hundreds of thousands live unrecked of, and die uncared for.

We want no chief priests to lounge in the senate, robed in purple and fine linen, faring sumptuously every day, and ambitious of laying their presumptuous hands on the advancing ark of truth only to retard it. The men of sacred functions whom our age and country demand, are those who hail the spirit of the times with joy, as the expanding soul of humanity, with its lightnings striking down the throne of tyranny and the altar of priestcraft. In fertilizing co-operation they waken arts and sciences, and bid them advance to bless the people, by erecting homes of comfort and culture amid prairies where the panther roamed, or on heights where the eagle propagated his glorious strength. With sanctified indignation they repel the arrogant claims of antique bigotry, and cease not revising the laws of property, the creeds of religion, the rights of the citizen; making the whole land a temple, a university, a lecture-room, a congress. Originating opinions, they render them free and prevalent as the national atmosphere; canceling the indentures of hereditary governors and teachers, popularizing all languages, with the richest treasures of each, exploring every ocean and cave, analyzing all substances, ransacking all libraries, they tend always and in every thing to discover and apply whatever is conducive to the health, comfort, and freedom of man. These are not rapid and speculative theorists, but the practical and beneficent workers for God and man. Passing amid the agitated and destitute crowds, they recognize in them the mighty woof of humanity, and teach each brother to throw his shuttle across the loom of time, and with fraternal delight weave the needful robe. A terrific power is indeed sleeping or waking in the vast multitudes now gathering in the West, and that which of all things is most requisite there and everywhere, is a high and pure moral education. Give them that under the eye, and for the glory, of that Father who overlooks the world, and with cheerful congratulations we may greet the changes which wait upon each revolving year, and walk unperturbed in presence of the sublime destinies of this mighty Union. When Columbus sailed toward the new and boundless world, while mutiny was in the vessel, and round him spread the wild and threatening billows, muttering despair, we are told that flowers, weeds, and stray leaves, floated near the ship, and resting on the mast-head came birds of the most beautiful and gorgeous plumage, and as the sun gleamed on their variegated wings, they seemed like the angels of hope beckoning across the watery waste. So to us in the midst of occasional tempests, and selfish cliques, appear the intimations of the promised land, fruitful of all good, to which we are hastening; and we only need to remind one another of these pleasant omens, which are too full of the promised triumph to allow the spirit of the Cape to either depress or destroy.

The education of "the Brigham girl," deaf, dumb, and blind, was a characteristic achievement of New England enterprise. The "Maine Law," and other kindred efforts for the prevention as well as cure of evils incident to fallen human nature, are worthy of the cause they serve, and honor that merciful God by whom they are inspired. The "Ragged School" has also traversed new shores of philanthropy and transformed the "Old Brewery" into the school-house of intelligence, and the temple of religion. In rooms where the master formerly taught young proficients how adroitly to pick pockets, and precocious lusts rioted in the most loathsome orgies, orphanage now practices the lessons of honorable industry, and rescued penitents bow in virtuous prayer. By hundreds the heirs of misfortune and involuntary victims of vice are gathered from the purlieus of our great eastern cities, in the bosom of judicious piety, and are instinctively borne to the far West as the asylum which affords a home for the protection and healthful exercise of each faculty and limb, be it young or old, feeble or strong. In the East we have heard much of the refinement of the college, and are glad, on a much broader and brighter scale, to see spreading the refinement of the cottage. The schoolmaster of the masses is the great minister for whom the mightiest generations wait. With increased effulgence they will arise to reflect and augment the brightness they have received; and, as in the Grecian race of old, they will cast onward the torch from one to another, till spiritual gloom and vassalage shall no more be found. Over all our vast western domain the rays of commingled truth and righteousness will eventually fall, like blessed flakes of beautiful light, penetrating, subduing, transforming into the image of Christ. The spirit of Christianity is vital and mighty, because it is the spirit of eternity, constituting that wholeness and heartiness which the world most needs. Without measure, the spirit of man will yet receive liberty, intelligence, religion, health; and to this end the old forms in which the word and Spirit of God have been immured and enshrined, as they move westward, will become increasingly unclasped, so that permanent power, free from the transient robe and chain, may go forth as the apostle of peace and herald of good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people.

On the 14th of August, 1837, a statue to the memory of Guttenberg, the inventor of printing, was opened to the public at Mayence. High mass was performed by the bishop, and the first printed Bible was displayed. What a suggestive incident! Amid the imposing pageantries of Romanism, wherein popular worship is conducted in an unknown tongue, and by which the revelation of God is in great part kept a sealed book, that first printed copy was displayed, the germ of millions of Bibles which have spread the light of Christianity throughout the habitable globe. The two most influential eras of all authentic history stand most intimately connected with a more fundamental view of this incident—the diffusion of the Scriptures. The Septuagint version followed, and arose out of, the culmination of the Periclean age; and the formation of modern Bible Societies, was cotemporaneous with the inauguration of Washington. The former coincided with the perfection of the Greek language, then about to pervade the entire East, through the agency of Alexander; and the latter arose simultaneously with English supremacy in both hemispheres. All that is in the Bible will yet be in the world, realized by and for progressive amelioration, and every omen indicates that the ultimate fullness of knowledge and righteousness will be attained by mankind through the medium of our mother tongue. The free criticism of the sacred writings during the last fifty years has done infinitely more to advance than to prevent the understanding of the divine substance of them, not only in the New Testament, but also in the Old. The dead rationalism of the eighteenth century bore its own corpse to the grave, except where it has been preserved as a mummy in state churches, and cherished as a dead household god by effete hierarchies. But Christianity is the religion of the Spirit, and "the Spirit is Truth." Life only proceeds from life, and a corpse is none the more potent when wrapped in brilliant drapery. The pool of Bethesda imparted its healing properties only when the waters were moved. Earnest searching of the Scriptures, and repeated trials at a more perfect rendering of their saving import can result in nothing but good. Where life is, there is also spirit, a liberty which is enhanced and controlled by the mightiest spiritual life; but where life is not, there must be death, and by nothing can vitality be produced. Timid and slavish fears may still protest against improved criticism, and against this, as to all other religious progress, oppose that Medusa-head called the danger of rationalistic interpretation. But it is too late in the dawn of blessed experience and expectation to suffer ourselves to be petrified. As the free personal sacrifice of Christ offered once for all, was the central event of universal history, so is the full and free unfolding of his word, under the broad and unobscured sky-light of his Spirit, the central source of all sanctifying truth.

The great religious movement of our age is breaking up deeper and deeper strata each succeeding year, and the upturning of a still profounder and broader stratum is yet to come. Never before was the future apprehended with such excited desire and hope as by the present generation, for they most generally feel that a more radical regeneration is possible which shall contain within itself the fundamental element of a newer, better, and more durable social order. Not that in these United States we are in danger of relapsing into a Priest Church, or of becoming consolidated into a State Church, but that it is our peculiar mission, under God, to organize the People's Church, with Christ for our only legislator, teacher and judge. We believe that this divine Master would have no successor of Caiaphas to lord it over his flock, and no successor of Pontius Pilate or Tiberius, whether professedly in or out of the discipleship. He, our sympathizing friend, and merciful God, will have all men come to the knowledge of the truth, and then he will himself come again without sin unto salvation. If tyrants will not surrender their chains, and bigots refuse to modify their creeds in timely preparation for that final advent, the gigantic and flaming characters written on heaven and earth, as foretokens of approaching fulfillment, may nevertheless remain, that the obdurate may read them in the glare of retribution, if they refuse to recognize their warning through the light of reason.

The heavenly ladder is revealed to weary humanity, even while slumbering heavily at its feet on pillows of stone. But the hour is near when with refreshed wakefulness, the blessing of triumphant deliverance so long wrestled for will be obtained. A new civilization has already been born, in which all the treasures of literature, art, science, philosophy and religion, the richest heritage from antecedent mind, will here blend in highest purity, to enjoy progress amid constantly decreased impediments, and display ultimate splendors without a spot. Charity will have fully combined with enthusiasm, and that hope which is the attribute of republics, and which finds its legitimate fortune wholly vested in the advance of its conscious mission, will be most divinely realized in the universal sovereignty of unadulterated faith. We are to remember, however, that the moral progress of our planet is slow. But in this particular it only resembles the general economy of the whole natural world, wherein the law evidently obtains that, the higher the value and the more important the nature of a given product, the slower is its march toward perfect development. Not a few sad features at present mark the general view. What boundless wastes of land are there without a temple or a school, the region of the inaccessible jungle and tangled woodland, haunted by savage beasts, and by nearly as savage men. What millions enter the pagodas of cruelty and lust, and shrink from the blaze that glitters along the marble, with strange emotions, or transfix themselves in the agonizing postures which cruel devotion or blank superstition requires. Coming to so-called civilized lands, what thousands lie confined in cells, where despots incarcerate the brave, who wait for the relief afforded by death, and leave behind them, with the memory of their sufferings, a gleam to lighten posterity. What thousands, slaves of cupidity, drive on the unheeding hour, and pray from the wretched cottage and the famished heart, "How long, oh Lord, how long?" What millions of lonely hunters pursue their way across the prairie and over the mountain, clothed in the savage skin, with the weapons of war in their hand for a defense. But all this only attests the youthfulness of our civilization, and affords the highest encouragement to our hope. The predestined and perpetual amelioration can not fail. Our sun, and system over which he presides, is so moving from his present position in space, that earth will one day be surrounded by skies whose nightly brilliancy shall infinitely transcend our present firmament; and though countless ages will pass away before the event fully transpires, yet, by an inevitable law, it must come.

Nations speaking the English language seem to be the appointed propagators of that Christian civilization upon which the future destinies of mankind depend, and which, once spread and rooted, will be everlasting. No other people have yet reached the degree of intelligence, liberty, reason, and power requisite to the exalted mission. Anglo-Americans have already attained the highest point of excellence possible to imperfect progress, and prove their great advance by the accurate test of superior invention. Thus occupying the head of modern culture, they are an exemplar to all nations, and the vanguard of humanity in its onward course. The deliberate but sure aggression of constitutional liberty and moral improvement will inevitably work out their beneficent consequences here and everywhere. The symptoms of tranquil progress and established freedom multiply and become more evident every day. There is good reason to believe that leading minds in every calling increasingly appreciate the blessings connected with the highest improvement, aware that the grandeur and permanency of a nation depend wholly on a social state founded on true religion, on a just and humane organization of industry, under the auspices of rational freedom.

The great movement, in which all Christian people more or less participate, and will henceforth participate to a much greater extent, has its origin in causes over which man has no power. It proceeds from Jehovah, who has willed that society at large should advance perpetually toward a goal, not indeed to be actually attained on earth, but which may be constantly approximated. Happy for us that our destiny has for its indestructible principle that primary and fundamental law by virtue of which humanity always tends to fortify its energies and perfect its growth; so that, in proportion as intelligence is exalted by Christianity, the juvenile man expands and develops himself into all the maturity of age. What is true of the individual is true also of the community in general; it is required to traverse all the phases and successive conditions of life, in order to arrive in the unity of faith and knowledge of the Son of God, to the state of perfected humanity (Eph. iv. 13), at that grand era which the apostle termed the age of the fullness of Christ; and which, consummated through sublunary discipline as far as is possible, will reinstate us in the possession of those primitive rights and sacred liberties under the favor of which we shall realize that regenerated nature which the divine Saviour came to produce.

We have no occasion to despair of Providence. Having found God abundant in goodness and mercy as it respects all that has preceded us, we may expect that he will be found yet more manifest in what is to follow. To use the expression of a great German poet, in judgment and heart, "We are citizens of the time to come!" Firmly believing in the wise disposal of all events by the great and only Sovereign, the faith of confiding Christians survives the despair of the boldest secular heroes, knowing that the stream as it passes only goes nearer to the sea. The astronomer loses no confidence in a star at the time of an eclipse. The destiny of man is often determined by the very passions which seem designed to reverse it. Augustine went to Milan, intending to teach rhetoric, but it was to be converted by Ambrose, and thus to verify the saying of Anselm, that we are led "through vanity to truth." But let us not forget that neither the holiness nor heroism of former times will avail us and our posterity, if a lofty spirit, dignity, and innocence be not transmitted; that vain and worthless will be self-applause, and the most abundant material prosperity, if the grace of that Being is forfeited, who can pull down the mighty, confound the proud, and in the balance of unerring justice determine the fame and destiny of nations.