Ii.
It seems to be the will of Heaven that nations must work out their own salvation
as nations. The final Court of Appeals, to which even the uneducated conscience points its indexing finger, will judge the individual, not the community.
When nations pass away, they never return.
We survey their wrecks stranded on the shore of time, merely to read some commentaries on their history,— their rise and development, their decline and fall.
But civilization, which means progression towards the just, the great, the safe and sublime, was the law God instituted for Society.
Great thoughts never die. They go among the eternal archives of human hope and security, to which the treasures of successive ages are committed.
In the literature and arts of the ancients, we have most of the finest thoughts of the finest minds,—the chief records of the noblest deeds of the noblest men. And thus the torch of light is safely transmitted from age to age.
All its effulgence was shed over us from the hour our country was born.
We had inherited all the earth could give us, with the fairest and broadest field for its
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use and development.
The Creator had looked on us benignantly, as our fathers sailed for a new home beyond the sea to find a resting-place for earth's children.
Thus high did Heaven seem to fix its purpose on
North America,—thus sublimely did our founders comprehend the fact.
