36 RELIGIOUS PROCJRESS AND CHRISTIAN CULTURE. 



fearful baptism of war. And after the war, and consequent upon the inev- 

 itable letting down of moiT..s which war brings with it, there came in that 

 worse than pestilence of French infidelity. Infected by the poisonous 

 vapors that steamed up and floated over the sea from the cauldrons heated 

 by Montescjuieu, Voltaire and Rousseau, little knots of men in East- 

 Hampton, Southampton and Southold, formed themselves into infidel 

 clubs, and both spurned the name, and threw off the restraints of Christ- 

 ianitv. But thanks to that same " Great Awakening," the infection di I not 

 spread far or take deeply. Than at the close of its first century, Religion 

 in Suffolk county never presented an aspect more fair, more hopeful, more 

 radiant, since the days of the first settlement. 



The religious character of our second century may be broadly and 

 o-enerallv distinguished from that of the first, by saying. in a word that le- 

 lio-ious thought was now brought into more intimate relations to practical 

 life. And tliis may be fearlessly said in view of facts, notwithstanding that 

 the men of a hundred and fifty years ago if they were to visit us now, would 

 probably think that the children had become sadly recreant to the princi- 

 ples and example of their fathers. The world at large has been growing 

 better for two hundred years, and we believe that Suffolk county has not 

 been an exception to the general rule. As we look about us now from the 

 height of this Bi-centennial year, notwithstanding all that we see of politi- 

 cal trickery and self-seeking, of intemperance and Sabbath breaking, of al- 

 leo"ed tyranny of capital and unreasonable and mutinous temper of labor, 

 of profanity of speech, aind what is worse, profanation of the most sacred 

 relationships of life, the words of the wise men are nevertheless emphati- 

 cally appropriate, " Say not thou what is the cause that the former days 

 were better than these, for thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this. ' 



It does not come within my province to speak of the growth of wealth, 

 the developeiiK nt of agriculture and commerce, the advance of society in 

 the amenities of civilization and the refinements of living, the immense 

 progress of the arts and sciences of invention and discovery, the means of 

 rapid transit and of more rapid compiunication of thought, which have 

 made our once insulated borders to be as closely knitted to the rest of the 

 cont'nent as any inland county. But there are greater, brighter, better 

 thin"-s than these to be chronicled, without which, all these would be but 

 an increasing and burdensome curse. With all th's there has been a pro- 

 portionate and even-stepping advance in those virtues and graces which 

 constitute the Chrisdan Culture, which, as I said in the beginning, is the 

 true outcome of Religious Progress. 



There is the fruit of Charity in greater abundance and of finer quality 

 than our fathers ever dreamed of producing, from the stock of their relig- 

 ious institutions. A hundred years ago a single denomination had things 

 all its own way. The Congregational Order, or as it had then become 

 in Suffolk county, the Presbyterian church, was virtually the 'established 

 church of the Northern and Eastern colonies. And if it did not imitate 

 the established church of old England in actual persecution of dissenters, 

 it did imitate it in the feeling of contempt for those who refused to ac- 

 knowledge its exclusive right. There are those in this assembly who can- 

 not forget how, as one after another little knots of Christian believers, de- 

 sirous of a freer expression, and a more elastic method of worship, and a 

 more exalted enthusiasm than the old forms seemed to permit, separated 

 themselves from the ancient folds, they were looked at with suspicion, or 



