WIIAT THE AOE OWES TO AMERICA. 
8ol 
ment, rests all the firmer on the rock on which its founder built it. 
The great mass of our countrymen to-day find in the Bible — the 
Bible in their worship, the Bible in their schools, the Bible in their 
households — the sufficient lessons of the fear of God and the lov’^e 
of man, which make them obedient servants to the free constitution 
of their country, in all civil duties, and ready with their lives to 
sustain it on the fields of war. And now at the end of a hundred 
years, the Christian faith collects its worshipers throughout our 
land, as at the beginning. What half a century ago was hopefully 
prophesied for our far future, goes on to its fulfillment: “As the 
sun rises on a Sabbath morning, and travels westward from New- 
foundland to the Oregon, he will behold the countless millions as¬ 
sembling, as if by a common impulse, in the temples with which 
every valley, mountain and plain will be adorned. The morning 
psalm and the evening anthem will commence with the multitudes 
on the Atlantic coast, be sustained by the loud chorus of ten thou¬ 
sand times ten thousand, in the valley of the Mississippi, and be 
prolonged by the thousands of thousands on the shores of the 
Pacific.” 
STEENGTH OF OUR SYSTEM. 
What remains but to search the spirit of the laws of the land, as 
framed by and modeled to the popular government to which our 
fortunes were committed by the Declaration of Independence? I 
do not mean to examine the particular legislation, state or general, 
by which the affairs of the people have been managed, sometimes 
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wisely and well, at others feebly and ill, nor even the fundamental 
arrangement of political authority, or the critical treatment of great 
junctures in our policy and history. The hour and the occasion 
concur to preclude so intimate an inquiry. The chief concern in 
this regard, to us and to the rest of the world, is, whether the proud 
trust, the profound radicalism, the wide benevolence, which spoke 
in the “ declaration,” and were infused into the “ constitution ” at 
the first, have been in good faith adhered to by the people, and 
whether now these principles supply the living forces which sustain 
and direct government and society. 
He who doubts, needs but to look around to find all things full of 
the original spirit, and testifying to its wisdom and strength. We 
have taken no steps backward, nor have we needed to seek other 
paths in our progress than those in which our feet were planted at 
