I know that, at this moment, there is no object upon earth so attracting the gaze of the intelligent and civilized nations of the earth as this great Republic. All men look at us, all men examine our course, all good men are anxious for a favorable result to this great experiment of republican liberty. We are on a hill and can not be hid. We can not withdraw ourselves either from the commendation or the reproaches of the civilized world. They see us as that star of empire which, half a century ago, was predicted as making its way westward. I wish they may see it as a mild, placid, though brilliant orb, making its way athwart the whole heavens, to the enlightening and cheering of mankind; and not a meteor of fire and blood, terrifying the nations.
GENIUS OF THE WEST.
John Greenleaf Whittier, the distinguished American poet. Born at Haverhill, Mass, December 17, 1807. From his poem, "On receiving an eagle's quill from Lake Superior." By permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Publishers, Boston.
I hear the tread of pioneers,
Of nations yet to be;
The first low wash of waves, where soon
Shall roll a human sea.
The rudiments of empire here
Are plastic yet and warm;
The chaos of a mighty world
Is rounding into form.
Each rude and jostling fragment soon
Its fitting place shall find—
The raw material of a state,
Its muscle and its mind.
And, westering still, the star which leads
The New World in its train
Has tipped with fire the icy spears
Of many a mountain chain.
The snowy cones of Oregon
Are kindling on its way;
And California's golden sands
Gleam brighter in its ray.
GOD SAVE AMERICA.
Robert C. Winthrop, an American statesman and orator. Born in Boston, Mass., May 12, 1809. From his "Centennial Oration," delivered in Boston, 1876.
Instruments and wheels of the invisible governor of the universe! This is indeed all which the greatest men ever have been, or ever can be. No flatteries of courtiers, no adulations of the multitude, no audacity of self-reliance, no intoxications of success, no evolutions or developments of science, can make more or other of them. This is "the sea-mark of their utmost sail," the goal of their farthest run, the very round and top of their highest soaring. Oh, if there could be to-day a deeper and more pervading impression of this great truth throughout our land, and a more prevailing conformity of our thoughts and words and acts to the lessons which it involves; if we could lift ourselves to a loftier sense of our relations to the invisible; if, in surveying our past history, we could catch larger and more exalted views of our destinies and our responsibilities; if we could realize that the want of good men may be a heavier woe to a land than any want of what the world calls great men, our centennial year would not only be signalized by splendid ceremonials, and magnificent commemorations, and gorgeous expositions, but it would go far toward fulfilling something of the grandeur of that "acceptable year," which was announced by higher than human lips, and would be the auspicious promise and pledge of a glorious second century of independence and freedom for our country. For, if that second century of self-government is to go on safely to its close, or is to go on safely and prosperously at all, there must be some renewal of that old spirit of subordination and obedience to divine, as well as human, laws, which has been our security in the past. There must be faith in something higher and better than ourselves. There must be a reverent acknowledgment of an unseen, but all-seeing, all-controlling Ruler of the Universe. His word, His house, His day, His worship, must be sacred to our children, as they have been to their fathers; and His blessing must never fail to be invoked upon our land and upon our liberties. The patriot voice, which cried from the balcony of yonder old State House, when the declaration had been originally proclaimed, "stability and perpetuity to American independence," did not fail to add, "God save our American States." I would prolong that ancestral prayer. And the last phrase to pass my lips at this hour, and to take its chance for remembrance or oblivion in years to come, as the conclusion of this centennial oration, and as the sum and summing up of all I can say to the present or the future, shall be: There is, there can be, no independence of God; in Him, as a nation, no less than in Him, as individuals, "we live, and move, and have our being!" God save our American States!
A VOICE OF WARNING.
From "Things that Threaten the Destruction of American Institutions," a sermon by T. De Witt Talmage, delivered in Brooklyn Tabernacle, October 12, 1884.
What! can a nation die? Yes; there has been great mortality among monarchies and republics. Like individuals, they are born, have a middle life and a decease, a cradle and a grave. Sometimes they are assassinated and sometimes they suicide. Call the roll, and let some one answer for them. Egyptian civilization, stand up! Dead, answer the ruins of Karnak and Luxor. Dead, respond in chorus the seventy pyramids on the east side the Nile. Assyrian Empire, stand up! Dead, answer the charred ruins of Nineveh. After 600 years of opportunity, dead. Israelitish Kingdom, stand up! After 250 years of miraculous vicissitude, and Divine intervention, and heroic achievement, and appalling depravity, dead. Phœnicia, stand up! After inventing the alphabet and giving it to the world, and sending out her merchant caravans to Central Asia in one direction, and her navigators into the Atlantic Ocean in another direction, and 500 years of prosperity, dead. Dead, answer the "Pillars of Hercules" and the rocks on which the Tyrian fishermen spread their nets. Athens—after Phidias, after Demosthenes, after Miltiades, after Marathon—dead. Sparta—after Leonidas, after Eurybiades, after Salamis, after Thermopylæ—dead.