Every event is the result of necessity. Others advocate a complex theory. National calamities God orders and controls, great men for important crises he raises up and guides. But there is no eye ever watching over the multitude, no hand providing for their wants, administering to their happiness and soothing their sorrows. It needs but little reflection to perceive the absurdity of this theory.
Great events are but the aggregate result of innumerable trivial causes.
Distinguished characters spring from a long line of unnoted ancestry. The revolution in which our fathers battled with Great Britain for their birthright of freedom, and which gave existence to a nation late so prosperous and happy, but now dismembered and groaning under wrong and oppression, even as the pen of history traces its origin, sprang from no one mighty iniquity, but from a long continued series of comparatively slight grievances. It is alike the doctrine of reason, and of God's word, that God governs the world. By general laws, and by direct Page 3 interpositions, he works out his purposes. He doeth his pleasure in the armies above and in the earth beneath.