156 NINTH ANNUAL REPORT OF 



LECTURE V. 



BY PROFESSOR HENRY REED, OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 



[The publication of these lectures will awaken in the sympathizing 

 hearts of many of their readers a painful reminiscence of" the loss in 

 the Arctic of their amiable and gifted author.] 



THE UNION. 



FIRST LECTURE. 



The subject upon which I propose to address you is the growth of 

 th'e American Union during the colonial era of our history. In treating 

 such a subject, at the present time, it is my desire to say, in the first 

 place, that I shall purposely forbear speaking of the Union as it now 

 exists, with its manifold and countless blessings, its present estate, and 

 its prospects. It is the retrospect which I intend to turn to, and in 

 that retrospect there is abundance both of admonition and encourage- 

 ment lor all after time, much to inspire a thoughtful loyalty to the 

 Union, and a deep sense of responsibility for each generation coming 

 to live within that Union, and to transmit it unimpaired to posterity, 

 such as it has grown lo be, not by man's will or sagacity, but by the 

 providential government of the world, which may be traced in the his- 

 tory of our race. 



In speaking of history as making manifest such providential govern- 

 ment of the world, I do but recognise and follow one of the highest 

 principles which we owe to the improved culture of historical science 

 in the present century. That improvement is not alone in more labo- 

 rious and dutiful habits of research, in the more studious use of origi- 

 nal documents, but in a truer philosophy of history, not such as in a 

 former age, arrogating the title of philosophy, contracted its vision 

 within the scant range of scepticism, but a philosophy which reverently 

 traces on the annals of the human race marks of more than human 

 agency — an overruling Providence. As in that wliich is especial!}' de- 

 nominated '■^sacred history" the purposes of the Creator are expressly 

 revealed, so in that which is styled, in contradistinction, ^'- iirofane his- 

 tory," as purposes of the same Creator must needs exist, the thought- 

 ful student may gain at least some glimpses of them, and yet refi-ain 

 all the while from rash interpretation of the Divine will in the guidance 

 and government of man and of the races of man to whom the earth is 

 parcelled out. 



It becomes more practicable to trace the providential purposes 

 when we look over long tracts of time. The history of Rome, for in- 

 stance, with its twelve centuries of growth, and decay, and ruin — in one 

 point of view, what is it but a purposeless record of strile, external 

 and internal — conquest and the domestic feud of patrician and plebiin — 



