Forrest now purchased a house in New York, and established his home there. He took a pew in the church of the Rev. Orville Dewey, the brilliant Unitarian divine, on whose pulpit ministrations he was for a series of years a regular attendant whenever he was in the city. The attraction of this extremely original and eloquent preacher had drawn together the most intellectual and cultivated congregation in New York; and his influence, silently and in many an unrecognized channel, has been diffusing itself ever since. The bold, rational, poetic, yet profoundly tender and devout style of thought and speech which characterized the sermons of Dewey had a great charm for Forrest, and they were never forgotten by him. He always believed in a God whose will is revealed in the laws of the material universe, and in the rightful order of human life, and he bowed in reverence at the thought of this mysterious Being, though often perplexed with doubts as to particular doctrines, and always a sworn enemy to religious dogmatism.
The next event which interrupted the regular movement of his professional and private life was the delivery of the oration at the celebration, in the city of New York, of the sixty-second anniversary of the Declaration of the Independence of the United States. The celebration was held under the auspices of the Democratic party. Party feeling was intense at the time, and to be the orator of the day on the Fourth of July, in the chief metropolis of the land, was an honor greatly coveted. The choice of Forrest showed the estimation in which he was held, while, on the other hand, his personal celebrity and magnetism lent unusual interest to the occasion. The popular desire to hear him had been fed and fanned to the highest pitch by the opposing newspaper comments, called out by the singular incident of a political party selecting a tragedian as their orator. The services were held in the old Broadway Tabernacle. Five thousand tickets of admission had been given out, but the multitude rushed resistlessly in, regardless of tickets, till the enormous building was stuffed to suffocation. The oration, in its sentiments, its style, its delivery, was extraordinarily successful. It was hailed with the most extravagant admiration and praise. In thought and feeling it was really creditable to its author, but its fervid rhetorical sentences and popular temper were so exactly suited to the tastes of those who heard it, that their estimate of its literary rank and philosophic value was stimulated to a level that must seem amusing to any sober judge of such things. The author's own opinion of it was modest enough, as appeared in the apologetic preface he prefixed to it when published. Yet it expressed his honest convictions and those of his auditors with so much picturesque vigor, and those convictions were so generous and so genuinely American, that the popularity of the oration was no matter of wonder. It was printed in full in numerous journals, and many thousands of copies in pamphlet form were distributed. Two or three extracts from it are appended, to serve as specimens of its quality and indications of the mind and heart of the author.
"Fellow-Citizens,—We are met this day to celebrate the most august event which ever constituted an epoch in the political annals of mankind. The ordinary occasions of public festivals and rejoicings lie at an infinite depth below that which convenes us here. We meet not in honor of a victory achieved on the crimson field of war; not to triumph in the acquisitions of rapine; nor to commemorate the accomplishment of a vain revolution which but substituted one dynasty of tyrants for another. No glittering display of military pomp and pride, no empty pageant of regal grandeur, allures us hither. We come not to daze our eyes with the lustre of a diadem, placed, with all its attributes of tremendous power, on the head of a being as weak, as blind, as mortal as ourselves. We come not to celebrate the birthday of a despot, but the birthday of a nation; not to bow down in senseless homage before a throne founded on the prostrate rights of man, but to stand erect in the conscious dignity of equal freedom and join our voices in the loud acclaim now swelling from the grateful hearts of fifteen millions of men in acknowledgment of the glorious charter of liberty our fathers this day proclaimed to the world.
"How simple, how sublime, is the occasion of our meeting! This vast assemblage is drawn together to solemnize the anniversary of an event which appeals not to their senses nor to their passions, but to their reason; to triumph at a victory, not of might, but of right; to rejoice in the establishment, not of physical dominion, but of an abstract proposition. We are met to celebrate the declaration of that inestimable principle which asserts the political equality of mankind. We are met in honor of the promulgation of that charter by which we are recognized as joint sovereigns of an empire of freemen; holding our sovereignty by a right indeed divine,—the immutable, eternal, irresistible right of self-evident truth. We are met, fellow-citizens, to commemorate the laying of the corner-stone of democratic liberty.
"Threescore years and two have now elapsed since our fathers ventured on the grand experiment of freedom. The nations of the earth heard with wonder the startling principle they asserted, and watched the progress of their enterprise with doubt and apprehension. The heart of the political philanthropist throbbed with anxiety for the result; the down-trodden victims of oppression scarce dared to lift their eyes in hope of a successful termination, while they knew that failure would more strongly rivet their chains; and the despots of the Old World, from their 'bad eminences,' gloomily looked on, aghast with rage and terror, and felt that a blow had been struck which loosened the foundation of their thrones.
"The event illustrates what ample cause there was for the prophetic tremors which thrilled to the soul of arbitrary power. Time has stamped the attestation of its signet on the success of the experiment, and the fabric then erected now stands on the strong basis of established truth, the mark and model of the world. The vicissitudes of threescore years, while they have shaken to the centre the artificial foundations of other governments, have but demonstrated the solidity of the simple and natural structure of democratic freedom. The lapse of time, while it dims the light of false systems, has continually augmented the brightness of that which glows with the inherent and eternal lustre of reason and justice. New stars, from year to year, emerging with perfect radiance in the western horizon, have increased the benignant splendor of that constellation which now shines the political guiding light of the world.
"How grand in their simplicity are the elementary propositions on which our edifice of freedom is erected! A few brief, self-evident axioms furnish the enduring basis of political institutions which harmoniously accomplish all the legitimate purposes of government to fifteen millions of people. The natural equality of man; the right of a majority to govern; their duty so to govern as to preserve inviolate the sacred obligations of equal justice, with no end in view but the protection of life, property, and social order, leaving opinion free as the wind which bloweth where it listeth: these are the plain, eternal principles on which our fathers reared that temple of true liberty beneath whose dome their children congregate this day to pour out their hearts in gratitude for the precious legacy. Yes! on the everlasting rock of truth the shrine is founded where we worship freedom; and
'When the sweeping storm of time
Has sung its death-dirge o'er the ruined fanes
And broken altars of the mighty fiend