1785] REV. WILLIAM SMITH, D. D. 20/ 



untrod by any but savage beasts or man as savage as they. I hear the 

 voice of happy labor and behold towery cities growing into the skies. 



How remarkable, too, is that passage in a letter of his, written 

 A. D. 1785, nearly a century ago: 



Surely in large towns and cities (of which America will have many 

 in a hundred years more) the good old custom of week-day prayers will 

 not be laid aside. 



Did he foresee Chicago ? Was De Koven, the Rector of 

 Racine, revealed to him ? Thank God, the day which he waited 

 for — though he died without the sight — has arrived ; and from 

 churches everywhere in our land, and most of all from the very 

 church which he dedicated,* and that elder one in which he 

 oftener preached, f the voice of confession, and prayer, and thanks- 

 giving, and praise now ascend every morning and evening daily 

 throughout the year. 



So soon, therefore, as the Church in America became indepen- 

 dent of the Church in England, which — since and so long as that 

 latter Church was a part of the State and under the control more 

 or less of a British Parliament and British statutes — deprived of 

 its independence — its wings clipped and its limbs manacled — our 

 said Church in America necessarily did become — Dr. Smith con- 

 templated it "in all its ripened glory" before him! He saw the 

 Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America 

 spread over the whole continent ; half of Mexico already annexed, 

 and all of Canada soon to be. What were the English bishops — 

 lords of parliament though they were — to that consecrated host 

 which assembles in our upper ecclesiastical house? What the 

 English laymen — in no office whatever, ecclesiastically speaking — 

 to our body of lay representatives in General Convention with 

 clergy triennially assembled ? Dr. Smith had no idea of subjecting 

 the Church in this New World to a liturgy, to orders of service, 

 or to articles which had been made in England only under the 

 greatest difficulties ; which were a temporary compromise between 

 extreme parties on opposite sides ; which had never proved satis- 



* St. Peter's, Philadelphia, in which, by the efforts of the then youthful Odenheimer 

 (now with God), the daily service and frequent coramunions were established. 



•}• Christ Church, Philadelphia. Indeed through the zealous work of the present 

 Rector, Dr. P'oggo, that church is now open all through the day for either public or 

 private prayer. 



