The daily republic. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1853-1853, 1853-08-04

in advance.
GIDEON L co. Washington, d. c.
(. When we contrast the heart stricken company
which on that day knelt and wept on the quay at
Delft Haven, till the impaAsive spectaton-ignor-
ant of the language in which their prayers were
offered and the deep fountains Of grief from which
their sorrows flowed, were yet fam to melt in sym
pathetic tears-whcn compare them with the
busy, prosperous millions OF our present New Eng
land, we seem to miss that duo proportion between
results and their causes, which history delights to
trace. But deeper and a more sPpreciauve
study reveals the secret.
There are two master ideas, greatest Of tho
spiritual images enthroned in the mind Of man,
the only ones, comparatively speaking, which de-
serve a name among men, springs OF all the grand
benefcent movements of modern times, by whose
influence the settlement Of New England may be
nationally explained. You have anticipated me,
descendants Of the Pilgrims--these great ideas
God and Liberty. II these that inspired our
fathers, by these that their weakness was clothed
with power, that their simplicity was transmitted
to wisdom by these that the great miracle Of their
enterprise was wrought.
am aware that to ascribe such result, even
in part, to the influence Of religion, will sound
like weakness and superstition. in this material
age; an age ut once supremely akepticsl aud SUI
premely credulous, which is ready TO believe in
everything spiritual rather than God, and admits
all narveis but the nterpositon of His Providence
an age which supposes it thing Of every days
occurrence to evoke from their awful rest the
spirits of the great and good, and believes that
master intellects, which while they lived--ob-
structed with these organs of sense-ravished tho
ears with ssthe tongues of men, /" and have now
cast off 'sthis muddy vesture Of decay" and gone
where they speak with "the tongues OF angels,
can vet find no medium of communication from
the eternal world but wretched inarticulate rap
pings and Gatherings, which pot-house clowns
would be ashamed to use in their intercourse with
each other--as if our matchless Choate, for in
stance, who has Just electrified the land with a
burst of e1oquence not easily paralleed in the line
of time, if sent with message from higher stage
of being, would come skulking and rapping be-
hind the wainscot, instead Of coming in robes of
light, with voice like the music of the spheres;
an age, say that believes all this, and yet doubts
and sneers ut the wonder-w0rking fervors OF earn
est men, swayed by the allpowerful influence Of
sincere faith.
1t believes-yes, in the middle of the nineteenth
century it believes-that you can have the attrac-
ton Of gravitation, which holds the universe to-
gether, suspended by Snowman for dollar, who
will make table dance round the room by an act
of voliton, (forgetfl of the fact that, if the law
of gravtation were suspended tor the tWinkAng
of an eye by any other power than that which or
dained it, every planet that walks the armament,
yea all the starry suns, centres of the countless
systems unseen Of mortal eyes, which fill the UNI
fathomed depths of the heavens, would crumble
back to chaos, y but it can in the Pilgrims no.
thing but handful of narrow-minded bigots,
driven by discomfort from the old world to the
new; and can find nothing in the majestic process
bv which United America has been established as
a grand temple of religious end civil liberty-a
general refuge of humanit y--but a chapter In po-
ltica history which neither requires nor admits ex-
PLANTATION.
Mr.. President, this may sound like philosophy,
but it is the philosophy of the Sadducee. 1t
quenches the brightest glory of our nature. The
as have Just said, has given the first impulse to
all the great movements Of the modern world
mean profound religious faith. They had the
frailties of humanity. This exalted principle it
self was combined with human weaknesses. 1t
was mingled with the prejudices and errors of
are and country, and sect; it was habitually
gloomy; it was sometimes ntolerant; but it was
reverent, sincere all-controlling. 1t did not in
fuence it possessed the soul. It steeled the heart
to the delights of life; it raised the frame above
bodily weakness; it enabled the humble to brave
the frowns of power; it trumphed over cold and
hunger, the prison, and the scaffold II taught un
educated men to speak with persuasive fervor; it
gave manly strength and courage to tender and
delicate women In the admirable letter OF Rob-
irlson and Brewster--whom call great men, Mr.
President-wrtten to Sir Edwyn Sandys in 1911,
whom, they pathetically say, "under God above
all persons and things in the world we rely up
on'!-among the suggestions which they make to
encourage him to further their undertaking is
this
ssWe do verify believe and trust that the Lord
is with us, unto whom and whose service we have
given ourselves in many trials, and that he will
prosper our endeavors, according to the
simplicity of our hearts"
The men who can utter these words with sim
cerity, and who are embarked in just cause,
nave already succeeded They may not gather
The fruit but they have planted the seed; others
may build, but they have laid the foundation. This
IS the spirit which in all ages has wrought the
moral miracles of humanity; which rebuked and
overturned the elegant corruption of the classical
polythism, as it did the darker and fercer rites of
Thor and Woden--which drove back the false and
centious crescent into Asia, and held Europe to-
yether through the night Of the middle ages;
which limited neither to country, communion, or
sex, despite of human weaknesses and errors, in
Sandwich Islands, in Winthrop, in Penn, and in
Wesley; in Eliza Seton and Mary Ware, has ac-
complished the benehcent wonders of Christian
faith and love.
But, sir, our fathers embraced that second
grand idea of Civic Liberty with not less fervor
than the first. Ii was kindred fruit of the same
stock. They cherished il with a zeal not less in
tense and rcsolute. This is n topic for volume,
rather than for the closing sentence of speech at
the dnner-tabe. | will only say that the highest
in English history-Hume, Hallam,
Macaulay--neither of them influenced by sympa-
thy with the Puritans, concur in the opinion that
England was indebted to them for the preserva-
ion of her liberties in that most critical period of
her national existence, when the question between
and law, absolute authority and con-
government, was decided forever.
In coming to this country our fathers most GER
,ainly contemplated not merely safe retreat be-
yond the sea, where they could worship God ac-
cording to the dictates of their own conscience,
but local government founded on popular
choice That their foresight stretched onward
through the successive stages of colonial and pro-
vincial government which resulted IN the estab-
would be extravagant to pretend; but from that
primitive and venerable compact signed on board