which for more than a thousand years | great majority of them, from among our have been the centre of the civilization of the world. selves, and carrying the spirit and the love of our institutions, and the desire to remain in political union with us; this will not of itself be enough to make those territories a permanent integral portion of the United States, and to secure those stupendous, world-embracing historical consequences of which we have spoken. For if communication is to be maintained between the Atlantic and Pacific shores only by long voyages around Cape Horn, or even by the shorter route through a foreign state, across the Isthmus by Chagres to Panama, it seems scarcely possible that a permanent political union can be preserved. The action of our central And how stands it with our nation, considered as the possessors, the occupiers of this vast territory? In less than three quarters of a century, within the memory of men now alive, we have grown from three millions of people to more than twenty millions; and at the same rate of increase, many now alive may live to see us grown into a hundred and fifty millions. That immense region of our country which we have hitherto been accustomed to call the West a term which has gone on constantly receding and extending in its application from the Ohio to the Missouri, and to the foot of the Rocky Mountains-government can scarcely in this way that immense region has become full of life and of men; innumerable steamboats swiftly meet and pass each other on the great rivers, where not long ago the solitary ark floated down the stream; and all along their banks, where the hunter and the trapper but yesterday sought their game, great towns and cities have sprung up all astir with the multitudinous hum of men, and resounding with the din of labor and of traffick; receiving and exchanging the products of a thousand millions of acres of those vast fertile plains, through which those mighty rivers flow-plains where the sturdy labor of ten thousand thousand strong-armed settlers has made the tall prairie grass give place to waving fields of corn and wheat. But what has hitherto been our Great West, must cease to be so now. Our true West has passed over the Rocky Mountains, and lies along the shores of the Pacific from Oregon to California. And the question now arises, whether those vast territories are to be filled up rapidly with people, and to remain an integral part of our nation, standing in a living social and political union with the States this side the Rocky Mountains? Of this, we think there can be no doubt. As to the rapid settlement of the country, this seems likely to be secured by the golden attractions that are drawing thousands and thousands thither from the Atlantic shores, from all parts of our country and from other quarters of the world. But this alone, the mere filling up of the country by settlers, going, even the stretch itself to embrace and keep the whole in a true political connection. The great Rocky Mountains, and the deserts said to lie between the two sides of the nation, will form a barrier to prevent the sense of oneness, the preservation of national feeling, and of true social and political union. But let the stupendous results of modern science be applied, let the great projected lines of railroad communication connect the two sides of the continent; let the telegraphic wires electrically unite them; and how different the case. Yet there is nothing impracticable in this; nothing visionary; nothing near so wonderful in the prospect of its speedy accomplishment as in what has already been actually accomplished in the recent past. And there are causes, commercial and political, which are as sure to work out its speedy accomplishment, as the sun is sure to rise and set. And how easily then, under God, is the problem solved of binding and keeping together, in a living social and civil union, the eastern and the western shores of the continent. The Rocky Mountains, as to all practical effect, will sink down. The barriers of time and space will be annihilated. The tide of emigration, setting in from all parts of the country, can roll through the mountain passes; and men can transport themselves from our eastern shores to settle on the Pacific in one quarter of the time, and with one-tenth of the hardships that were involved in emigrating from New York to Ohio fifty years ago, or to the more western States even twenty years ago. Re presentatives from Oregon and California can reach their seats in the Capitol more quickly and more easily than representatives came from New Hampshire once. Add to this the communication of thought, passing literally with the speed of lightning to and fro across the continent, and from the central seat of government to the remotest points in the circuit of the nation; and how different is the problem of binding together in a central union immense and remote states, from what it was in the time of the Roman Empire. It took more days, and we do not know but we may say more weeks, for the central government of Rome to communicate with its remote provinces, even along the great military roads (those prodigious monuments of Roman grandeur) than it will take minutes to carry the action of our central government to the shores of the Pacific, and to any other remotest point in the nation. Add again to this the sameness of language, institutions and laws, which will prevail throughout the States; the effect of the reserved sovereign rights of the several States in securing all local interests and satisfying all local sense of importance; while, at the same time, membership in the Union secures innumerable advantages not otherwise attained, and gratifies the larger sense of national importance. Put these things together, and we do not see why, under God, we may not remain centrally united as a nation, though we grow to be fifty States and three hundred millions of people. The action of all historical causes, political, social, commercial, seems to tend more clearly to this than to any contrary result. We can see but one disturbing cause to cast the shadow of ill omen over these bright auguries, and that is in the institution of slavery in the Southern States, and in the hostile feelings it has engendered. But the smallness of the area where slavery exists, or ever can exist, as compared with the whole area of the country; the diminished relative political importance of the South in the future great growth of population in the free States; the increasing conviction in the lave States that slavery makes them Door, (a conviction which the contrast etween the growth of the slaveholding of the adjacent non-slaveholding States forces more and more strongly home;) the importance of the Union to the South, equal at least to that of the South to the Union; and finally, the progress of moral convictions on the subject in the South, and the predominance of wise and conciliating counsels at the North, will we trust, under God, solve this problem without rupture, by the gradual ultimate dying out of slavery at the South, in the same way that it has died out at the North; a result which, we believe, would have already been substantially realized in the more northern slaveholding States, but for the exasperation of feeling produced in the South by the fanatic violence displayed in some quarters at the North. But however this may be, the question of slavery will not retard the rapid filling up of the country on the Pacific Ocean. The great lines of railroad communication will be made, and the telegraphic wires will be set up along the track. This may be held for certain. And the accomplishment of this vast, yet simple and altogether outward and physical result, is of profounder importance, and must be so regarded by every one who knows how to estimate events in their true historical significance, than all the revolutions in the States of Europe, which have made the year 1848 a year of wonders in the chronicles of the world. Its effect will not be limited to the binding together, in a true national union, the two sides of our continent. It must work a change in the whole commercial relations of the globe. The trade of China, and of a large portion of Asia, must find its way across the western ocean to our Pacific shores, building up great towns and cities there, and thence across the continent to the Atlantic coast, there to meet the trade of Europe coming over the Atlantic on its western route. And thus for Europe the old problem of a western passage to the Indies will be solved in a way that Columbus never dreamed of, when he set out to find it across the trackless, unknown seas. New York will thus lie within twenty-five days of China, and ten days of Europe; and must become the great entrepot of the world. Thus we see how the connection between the eastern and western coasts of our continent (which is certain, sooner or later, to be accomplish- | humanity, as truly as in the life of nature; ed,) must change the commerce of the globe. And this change involves other changes, affecting the whole course and character of the history of humanity, social, political and moral. This is a point that needs not be argued to any one familiar with the history of the world, and competent to appreciate the working of historical causes. Always the stream of the world's history has been drawn into the course of the great lines of commercial communication; and this must be more than ever the case in the present and coming age. America must become the centre of the world; and that not in a merely physical or commercial way, but in a deeper, true historical sense-a sense not to gratify an overweening national pride and vain-gloriousness, whereof we have already more than enough, but a sense full of momentous responsibilities, involving infinite possibilities of evil as well as of good. Our country has entered on a new epoch in its history. From this year we take a new start in national development; one that must, more than ever before, draw the world's history into the stream of ours. This enlargement of our own national sphere takes place, too, remarkably enough, just at the time when the whole old-settled order of things in Europe is breaking up and passing forever away; and the old world turns its eyes to the new with a sense never felt before, that its destiny is bound up with ours. The life of Europe seems destined also to pour itself upon our shores, as never in times past, and to help form that yet unformed national character which the coming age must determine for us. Now, for what purpose has the providence of God conducted our nation unconsciously through the events of the last three years, to the edge and prospect of such a stupendous, startling future? We say the providence of God; and we say this, not as mere words of coursea customary phrase, without meaning. For as certainly as Divine Providence is recognized for a truth at all, it must be recognized that there are two elements in history, a Divine element as well as a human element; that a Divine idea is ever realizing itself in the historical life of in the events of human history, as in the phenomena of the material world; an idea not realized, nor to be apprehended, in the developments of a day or a year, but in the flow of generations and ages. The disciplinary education of the human race-this, we believe, is the divine idea that underlies the whole history of the world. We have divine commentaries to this effect upon some of the most significant portions of the history of the ancient world. Herein is the great and peculiar interest of the most ancient historical records. They contain not only the authentication of the idea, but its authentic application to the course of events. They enable us to see what otherwise we might not be able to see in any such determinate way. They disclose to us the providence of God, interposing with a special moral purpose in events which, to all outward appearance, were the mere results of the ordinary laws of nature and of the working of ordinary historical causes. Behind the series of outward events we are made to see the Supreme Disposer touching the springs of human action, permitting or thwarting the outward results of men's free determinations, and swaying with absolute grasp the agencies of nature. And, beyond question, the great purpose for which these historical records, enlightened by these divine commentaries, have come down to us, is to teach impressively, for all nations. and for all times, the great truth that the providence of God is the genius of human history. If we had similar commentaries on the world's whole history, the same great truth which is so impressively taught in those records would doubtless be seen with equal clearness on the face of all the history of the world. the records of all nations, in all ages, were accompanied with like authentic interpretations, we should then see clearly the Divine as well as the human element in history. If But none the less is it necessary to a right conception of history that we should recognize the idea of Divine Providence, even where we lack the clear, authentic application of the idea to the interpretation of events. The mind and the hand of the Almighty, as well as the mind and the hand of man, have been in all the fates and fortunes of the nations-in the rise and fall of empires, the revolutions of dynasties, the wars and conquests, battles and sieges, negotiations and treaties, with which the pages of history are filled. Invisibly, in and behind the visible procession of events, the Supreme Disposer has presided over the course of events which have made the last year memorable in the annals of the old world and of the new. And we say it is HE that has brought the course of history to one of those great epochs, when we cannot help looking both ways-backward on the past, and forward to the future. And though we may be quite unable to pronounce, in any determinate way, upon the Divine purpose in regard to the coming period, yet still the question is one we cannot well help framing to ourselves, and one which, in the way of reasonable conjecture, and probable interpretation, we cannot well help attempting to answer. We have seen that all causes portend a new centralization of the nations; and that our country seems destined, in the coming age, to be the new historical centre of the earth the mediator between both sides of the old world. And it seems no less clear that God intends to give here, on this continent, a scope for human energies of thought and will, such as has never yet been seen since the days before the flood; to let here be seen the freest, widest, most diversified and powerful display of what man's science and skill can accomplish, in subduing the elements, in controlling and applying the tremendous forces of nature; in overcoming and annihilating the old limitations of human endeavor; in unfolding the physical resources of the earth; in the creation of boundless wealth and a boundless sphere for action and enjoyment-a movement that shall draw the whole world around it and along with it in its gigantic march. All this seems portended in the coming age, and to an extent of which we can now probably frame no adequate conception. Forty years ago he who should have predicted the results that man's science and man's energy have now brought to pass, and made so familiar to us that we cease to wonder at them, would have been laughed at for a madman. How do we know what new wonders man's science and man's energy is destined to bring to pass in the next forty years to come? It is quite likely we should count him equally a fool who should describe to us what will be familiar matters of fact to our children. But here the great and solemn question springs up, is this boundless physical development to subserve the moral and spiritual perfectionment of man and of society; or is it, on the contrary, to lead to a godless, self-willed, gigantic wickedness? Of one thing we may be sure; no mere commercial and political centralization of the world, can accomplish the true fraternization of the nations of the earth. It is not in mere forms of government; not in the fullest, world-wide development of democratic institutions, to save and regenerate the world. Men must learn to reverence something higher than money and themselves; they must learn that the spirit of self-will is not the genius of true freedom. It is not in popular education, as it is called-mere intellectual culture, and the diffusion of knowledge; men must be wise and good as well as sharp and knowing. No widest extension of suffrage, and largest possession of political rights; no marvels of scientific discovery and application; no increase of wealth; no multiplication of the means and refinements of earthly enjoyment, can work the regeneration and perfection of the social state, and secure the permanent well-being of humanity. A godless self-willed world, armed with the more than gigantic powers over nature which modern science gives, may rear heavenclimbing towers, only in the end to be crushed in the fall of their own toppling erections. Nothing, in the long run, can save our country and the world from a fate worse than that of the old Titans-nothing but the living power embodied in the constitution of Christianity permeating and sanctifying this prodigious material, civilization. We say this not merely as Christians; it goes upon a principle which no man can deny who is at all competent to estimate the historical causes of human progress, and upon a fact as undenied by any one, as it is undeniable. No competent historical philosopher but admits the principle, that the fates and fortunes of nations are determined, not merely by material, but by moral causes; causes lying in the inmost mind and heart, in the character | either in its own nature, or in the likelihood of its organic incorporation into modern civilization, can for one moment be regarded as equally adequate, or at all approaching to the solution of the problem of so permeating and sanctifying the elements of high physical civilization, as to secure the permanent welfare and true perfection of the social state. and spirit of the people; and that, of all these causes, the religious convictions and systems of a people, resting as they do upon one of the most deep-seated sentiments of human nature, are the most powerful. Equally undeniable and undenied is the fact that Christianity, considered as a special constitution of religion, not only has had an historical existence for near two thousand years, but in nearly all that time has been one of the most significant facts in the history of the world. At the present moment, it is the religious constitution prevailing throughout nearly the whole of the civilized portion of the earth. It is wrought more or less into the civil and social life, into the convictions and habits of our own nation, and of the nations of Europe, into the course of whose history the rest of the world is destined to be drawn; and no sane man can for a moment believe that it is to be superseded in the ages to come by any other special religious constitution. If there is to be any religion in the coming age, it is to be the Christian religion. Now, what we have to say is, that if Christianity is to exist to any good purpose in the new and grand career of development on which the world is entering, it must exist not as a mere formula, not as a mere outward institute, but as a true moral power, an organic life power in the historical life of the world. It must exist as a counteracting power to the naturally destructive tendencies resulting from any prodigious, unchecked overgrowth of the mere intellectual and physical elements in the life of the people. Grandeur and wealth, luxury and corruption, dissolution and ruin, this is the brief but accurate summary of the history of the extinct, but once most powerful, empires of the ancient world; and he has read history to but little purpose, and has but little competency to read it to any good purpose, who does not know that without some adequate conservative moral power, our national history will sooner or later be summed up in the same words. And we may safely challenge any man to deny that Christianity, in the proper working of its spirit and principles, is that adequate conservative power. We may safely challenge any an to imagine any other power which, We say Christianity, in the proper working of its spirit and principles; for as a spiritual, a moral power, it can work only as it is let work; it may be thwarted, resisted, perverted. Hence it is, that the history of Christianity enters into that which constitutes the deepest theme, the inmost sense of the world's whole history-the struggle between good and evil. This we must bear in mind, or we cannot form a right historical appreciation of it. For eighteen hundred years it has been struggling with the powers of darkness and evil. And if it has not yet brought humanity to a state of social perfection, if it has not accomplished the social perfectionment of any nation where it has obtained a footing, one thing is undeniable; it has carried Christendom to a higher point of social and moral development than any nation of Pagan antiquity ever attained. To its power is due all that distinguishes modern civilization, all that makes it superior to the civilization of the Old World. This has been accomplished in spite of the resistance which pride and self-will, and selfishness, and passion, oppose to its proper influence. And during this time we have had a memorable demonstration, in a true historical way, of the futility of all schemes for the perfection of the social state proceeding in a hostile repudiation of Christianity. In the eighteenth century human. reason, (as it called itself,) having plundered from sacred tradition every point and particle of truth and wisdom, which made it wiser than human reason in the pagan ages of the world, saw fit to set up for itself, to proclaim its independence of divine instruction. At this stage it did not announce itself in atheistic or immoral hostility to Christianity. It only talked of separating philosophy from theology, of vindicating for the former its proper province and rightful independence. But it did not stop here. It began before long |