The times. (Owosso, Mich.) 1882-1897, 1882-12-08

spread with needed food to meet
their pinchiDg wants. A strange
journey was that; journey to be
taken only by men who feared God
and who sought place where they
might worship him according to the
dictates Of their consciences. 1t was
God who had protected them from
the dangers of the ocean and so when
they landed, they knelt on that
Plymouth rock and gave God thanks.
We cannot contemplate the landing
of the Pilgrims and their first act of
worship as expressive of their faith,
without contemplating also the vast
results of that faith upon the life and
character of the nation they were
founding. How very different to-
: day had been the condition of this
; country if, instead of the worship
those Pilgrims then and there offered,
they had met and formerally voted
that there is no God and chance
alone had. protected them. That
man is not an immortal being, but
will die like the brute that the Bible
is fiction and death is an eternal
sleep, and heaven and hell and the
judgment are only the vagaries of
weak intellects. No, they were Gods
men who landed there and to such
men he gave this land. 1t was he
who brought this vine out of Eng
land, who cast out the heather and
planted it, who caused it to take root
and grow, till its boughs have filled
the land.
The christian citizen loves his
country for what it is in itself. And
if the physical resources of ancient
Palestine were such as to inspire
gratitude TO God in the hearts of his
people, who rehearsed them in the
songs OF their temple service, SO
should the greater resources of this
modern Palestine call notes of pro.
found gratitude from our lips. Those
resources are vast, beyond our power
to estimate. Stretching from the
great lakes of the north 10 the great
gulf on the south, and from the At
lantic west one. sixth of the earth's
circumference it contains 1896
100000 acres of land, enough to
settle two hundred million of people,
giving ten acres TO each man, woman
and child. So vast is the scale on
which this home of ours is projected.
Its soil is varied and rich beyond the
possibility Of exhaustion. Its climate
is most salubrious, embracing ali
qualities and temperatures that con-
duce to the highest degree of health.
It's almost boundless forests, once the
terror Of the new world, are now its
glory and its wealth. And now that
iron bands have linked the shores of
the continent together and steam has
opened ferries across the ocean the
timbers of America are sought unto
by the builders Of London, of Paris,
of Amsterdam and Constantinople.
Its numberless lakes and rivers afford
navigation to the very interior of the
country so that vessels are loaded at
the farms and granaries OF the in
land and unloaded on the other side
of the world. There are no vast
tracts of land shut out from naviga-
tion and inaccessible to commerce.
There are no vast tracts of sandy
desert, unfavorable alike to vegetable
and human life. There are no vast
mountain ranges covered with per-
petual snow, from whose submits the
blasts chill half the continent. In
short there is no other such land
whose mountains and valleys, whose
hills and plains are SO wisely inter-
spersed and so kindly arranged as
to favor the highest degree Of civil
zation and human happiness. Not
the least in its physical resources are
its mines and its minerals. Hidden
is its bosom are doubtless treasures
enough to enrich the world and it is
marvellous how great their variety and
exhaustless their supply We walk
over vast apartments filed with the