Dr. Lyman Beecher, as quoted by Lorenzo Dow, said:
“There is a state of society to be formed by an extended combination of institutions, religious, civil and literary, which never exists without the co-operation of an educated ministry.”
Rev. Charles Beecher, in his sermon at the dedication of the Second Presbyterian church, Fort Wayne, Indiana, February 22, 1846, said:
“Thus are the ministry of the evangelical Protestant denominations, not only formed all the way up, under a tremendous pressure of merely human fear, but they live, and move, and breathe, in a state of things radically corrupt, and appealing every hour to every baser element of their nature to hush up the truth, and bow the knee to the power of apostasy. Was not this the way things went with Rome? Are we not living her life over again? And what do we see just ahead? Another General Council! A world’s convention! Evangelical alliance, and universal creed!”
In a speech delivered in New York, Mr. Havens said:
“For my own part, I wait to see the day when a Luther shall spring up in this country who shall found a great American Catholic Church, instead of a great Roman Catholic Church; and who shall teach men that they can be good Catholics without professing allegiance to a Pontiff on the other side of the Atlantic.”
The Northwestern Christian Advocate, of December 10, 1862, of the President’s message says:
“The Chief Magistrate sees in the dogmas of the quiet past, nothing equal to the stormy present. He sees that history must be made. He sees further, that the Union may be saved, if Christianity and statesmanship may join hands.”
There are movements already inaugurated to form a great union of the popular churches. Rev. J. S. Smart (Methodist), in a published sermon on the “political duties of Christian men and ministers,” says:
“I claim that we have, and ought to have, just as much concern in the government of this country as any other men.... We are the mass of the people. Virtue in this country is not weak; her ranks are strong in numbers, and invincible from the righteousness of her cause. Invincible if united! Let not her ranks be broken by party names.”