Sacred history, and the institutions which it unfolds, have their life and glory from the good and great men whom the providence and Spirit of God raised up and qualified for their varied and important missions. "In nothing does the superiority of the Bible over all other books appear more manifest than in its graphic and inimitable delineations of human character. From first to last it opens to our view, besides poets and orators, a magnificent succession of living characters,-kings and statesmen, heroes and patriarchs, prophets and apostles," who constituted the glory of the age and nation in which they acted, and whose character and influence are a rich part of the political and moral wealth of the world.

The American republic, like the Hebrew commonwealth, has its chief glory from the good and great men who have adorned its civic and Christian history, and were the active agents in building up the organic forms of the social and political life of the republic. The Puritans, and the men of colonial history, were stalwart, noble Christian men. The men antecedent to and actors in the eventful drama of the Revolution were, most of them, men whose minds were illuminated by divine influences, and whose characters and lives bore the superscription and the image of Christ. All were not public professors of the Christian religion, but almost all acknowledged its divinity and necessity to the existence, welfare, and stability of the state. Their Christian faith and characters not only constitute the enduring glory of our republic, but are also the sources of the Christian features of our civil institutions.

The true and lasting fame of the American nation-its political and moral glory-consists in the eminent and illustrious characters which have, in each successive age of the republic, adorned the state and directed its political destinies. Trained in a Christian school and formed under Christian influences, and deriving their ideas of civil and religious liberty from the Bible, their practical faith led them to adopt it as the rule of life and to consult it as the source of their civil and political views and principles, as well as of their religious belief and hopes. The monument of these men of Puritan and Revolutionary times is in the great Christian ideas and truths they elaborated and incorporated into the civil institutions of the nation, and in the Christian virtues, public and private, which they bore as the fruits of their Christian faith.

The leaders of our Revolution were men of whom the simple truth is the highest praise. They were singularly sagacious, sober, thoughtful, wise. Lord Chatham spoke only the truth when he said to Franklin of the men who composed the first Colonial Congress, "The Congress is the most honorable assembly of statesmen since those of the ancient Greeks and Romans in the most virtuous times. They were most of them profound scholars, and studied the history of mankind that they might know men. They were so familiar with the lives and thoughts of the wisest and best minds of the past, that a classic aroma hangs about their writings and their speeches; and they were profoundly convinced of what statesmen know and mere politicians never perceive,—that ideas are the life of a people,— that the conscience, not the pocket, is the real citadel of a nation."

"Events," says a living American divine, "march in the train and keep step to the music of that divine Logos which was, and is, and is to come. In order to act the right part in them, and in order to understand them when they do come to pass, our intelligence must be in vital sympathy with that of their invisible Author and Arbiter. The divine purpose which is forcing its way into existence, and preparing for itself a local habitation and a name, must be reproduced in our own consciousness and embodied in our own life. This is the only way for men to become coworkers with the Most High in executing his sovereign behests.

"This is the ancient method by which from age to age mighty nations, and all the elect spirits of the race, have comprehended their heaven-appointed missions, fulfilled their tasks, and rendered themselves illustrious in human annals. This is the secret of that sacred enthusiasm which transformed Eastern, shepherds and nomads of the desert into venerable patriarchs, seers, warriors, and kings, which changed fishermen into apostles and evangelists, and which is able still to bless the world with heroes, saints, and martyrs.

"It is the prevalence of some divine idea in the soul, actuating the whole being and illuminating the path of life. Let a man grasp, in honest conviction, a real thought of God, and spend his days in striving to realize it, and he is on the highway to glory, honor, and immortality. Let a whole people grasp, in honest conviction, some sacred cause, some principle of im

mortal justice, and consecrate themselves to the work of vindicating that cause and enthroning that principle, and we have the grandest spectacle ever witnessed on earth."

The grandeur of such a spectacle was seen in the faith and purpose of the fathers and founders of the American republic. These men, as well as the people, did grasp a great and "real thought of God," and devoted themselves to its glorious realization; and the result was the vindication of eternal right and justice, and the creation and establishment of civil institutions in conformity to the principles and teachings of the Christian religion. It is in the light of this great historic fact that the faith and labors of the Puritans and the men of the Revolution are to be read and studied.

This summary of the Christian facts and principles which belong to the history, formation, and progress of the civil institutions of the American republic impresses the patriotic and pious duty of giving diligent attention and study to the annals of our nation and the origin and genius of our institutions.

The ancient republics regarded it as a high political necessity and duty to educate their citizens into the history and spirit of their peculiar institutions. "The young men of the Roman empire," says Gibbon, "were so devoted to the study of the genius and structure of Roman law and government, that the celebrated Institutes of Justinian were addressed to the youth of his dominion who had devoted themselves to the science of Roman jurisprudence, and they had assurances from the reigning emperor that their skill and ability would in time be rewarded by an adequate share in the government of the republic."

"The Greek citizen," says Grimké, "was subjected, from the cradle to the grave, to the full, undivided, never-varying influence of the peculiar institutions of his own country. The spirit of those institutions was forever living and moving around him, was constantly acting upon him at home and abroad, in the family, at the school, in the temple, on national occasions. That spirit was unceasingly speaking to his eye and ear; it was his very breath of life; his soul was its habitation, till the battle-field or the sea, banishment, the dungeon, or the hemlock, stripped him equally of his country and his life."

If these duties were so faithfully discharged by the people of the ancient republics, how much higher and more important

that the American people should know the history and nature of the civil institutions of their Christian republic, and live under their constant and full power, and thus be qualified to discharge with fidelity and conscientiousness all the duties of an American citizen!

"Be assured," says Grimké (changing a word of the passage), "if the American citizen rightly comprehends the genius of Christianity, the spirit of our institutions, the character of the age in which he lives, he must be deeply imbued with the benign, masculine, thoughtful spirit of religion. Let me commend to the profound study of every American citizen the institutions of their country, and the noble illustrations of them to be found in the writings of our historians and statesmen, judges, orators, scholars, and divines. Let me commend to their reverence, gratitude, and imitation the character of Washington, the noblest personification of patriotic duty, dignity, and usefulness that men ever have seen. Let me commend to them to enter with a deep seriousness, yet with a glowing enthusiasm, into the spirit of their institutions and of the age in which they live."

Nothing would have a happier influence on the public men and politics of our day, nothing raise, expand, and purify them, nothing would so exalt their conceptions and aims, or give them higher significance or greater weight, than a thorough and candid study of the Christian faith, characters, and actions of the great and good men who founded our civil institutions and watched over their history and development.

This duty, if faithfully discharged, would unfold the divine source of our civilization and system of civil government, give a higher appreciation of the inheritance received from our fathers, and a firmer purpose to preserve and transmit them, unimpaired, in their original purity and glory, to future ages and generations.

This study would impress the fact stated by Sir William Jones, a great English jurist, who said, with great truth and beauty, that "we live in the midst of blessings till we are utterly insensible of their greatness and of the source from whence they flow. We speak of our civilization, our arts, our freedom, our laws, and forget entirely how large a share is due to Christianity. Blot Christianity out of the pages of man's history, and what would his laws have been? what his civili

zation? Christianity is mixed up with our very being and our daily life; there is not a familiar object around us which does not wear a different aspect because the life of Christian love is on it, not a law which does not owe its gentleness to Christianity, not a custom which cannot be traced, in all its holy, healthful parts, to the gospel."

CHAPTER II.

GOD IN HISTORY-VIEWS OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE BY VARIOUS AUTHORS-SETTLEMENT OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT-DISCOVERED BY COLUMBUS-FIRST ERA OF COLONIZATION-PREPARATORY MEANS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY-RELIIGIOUS ACTS AND CHARACTER OF COLUMBUS-HIS FORMAL CONSECRATION OF THE CONTINENT TO CHRIST HIS WILL-WEBSTER'S VIEW OF COLUMBUS.

GOD in human history is the key that solves the problem of human destiny and sheds a true and satisfactory light on the pathway and progress of nations. "In history," says D'Aubigné, "God should be acknowledged and proclaimed. The history of the world should be set as the annals of the government of the Sovereign of the universe. God is ever present on that vast theatre where successive generations of men and nations struggle. The history of the world, instead of presenting a confused chaos, appears as a majestic temple, in which the invisible hand of God himself is at work, and which rises to his glory above the rock of humanity.

"Shall we not recognize the hand of God in those grand manifestations, those great men, those mighty nations which arise and start as it were from the dust of the earth, and communicate a new form and destiny to the human race? Shall we not acknowledge him in those great heroes who spring from, society at appointed epochs,-who display a strength and an activity beyond the ordinary limits of humanity, and around whom, as around a superior and mysterious power, nations and individuals gladly gather? And do not those great revolutions which hurl kings from their thrones and precipitate whole nations to the dust,-do they not all declare aloud a God in history? Who, if not God? What a startling fact, that men brought up amid the elevated ideas