National Character | Page 7

territories? Our internal resources have only begun to be developed. What shall prevent their utmost and magnificent development? The commerce of the Pacific waits to be ours. How long till Pacific railroads shall bind our eastern and western coasts together, and our country, standing in the midst of the earth and reaching out its arms on either hand, clasp the entire sphere in its embrace? Our country is in the dew of its rejoicing youth, and has but the dimmest consciousness and dream of its own strength, and who can predict the glory of its manhood, when in the fullest self-consciousness, it shall exert to the utmost its matured and mighty energies?
Thus are we accustomed to talk. Our destiny is manifest--our glory is inevitable. It is pleasant to talk thus, and it is unpleasant to talk otherwise. Yet we ought to desire to see and know the truth. Self-flattery is an odious folly. Is our destiny, then, manifest? Is our glory inevitable? Has God so conspicuously favored us that he cannot but continue to bless? Ah! It is our self-flattery and odious folly to think so.
We need not look again to our history or our prospects, to gather evidences of a different destiny, although such evidences might not be wanting. Yes, we might find the evidences which, duly weighed, would make us shudder in view of our possible or probable future. We might come to think it very problematical whether our country has sufficient vital force to work into good American citizens the hordes of infidels, paupers, criminals, cast upon our shores from the nations of the old world;--whether our country has sufficient wisdom to guide its own vexed domestic questions to a proper and satisfactory issue, and to balance and regulate the rival and numberless interests of a country widening indefinitely in extent;--whether--but no, we do not need thus to forecast the future to ascertain our probable destiny. We may determine the question by the teaching of God's word. "Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord." And blessed is that nation alone. Here is the solution of the question of our destiny. It is in making the Lord the God of our country, that we are safe--that we are prosperous--that our glorious destiny becomes inevitable. Our destiny is left to ourselves. The means of its glory are placed in our hands. We may use them or not, as we will.
And now, I utter it to you, my hearers and fellow-citizens, as the solemn testimony of the Lord our God, that so surely as ignorance and moral corruption and lust of power, become generally prevalent, and popery and infidelity attain the supremacy among us, it matters not at all that we have had a ballot-box, and a free press, and free schools, and the whole circle of liberal institutions,--these will become but the insignia of our shame; it matters not that we have had a boundless territory, and a teeming soil, and mighty cities, and universal commerce,--the grass will grow again on our prairies,--the red man return to his forsaken forests,--our cities become black with desolation, and the sails of our commerce be rent on the seas, or the hulks of our commerce rot at our wharves; it matters not that God has been wonderfully gracious to us as a nation,--the more wonderful the grace, the deeper the insult and crime of our despising it, and the deeper our doom;--this, this is our manifest destiny.
And it is only as America teaches her children to fear God and do their duty; it is only as our virtuous citizenship escape from the chains of corrupt party and procure for themselves a fair representation in the offices of government--exerting themselves for the purification of corrupt men, rather than for the promotion of their evil designs; it is, in a word, only as the power of our blessed religion shall go out from the hearts of the truly pious in our land, leavening the mass of the population and bringing them under its sway;--it is only as we truly make the Lord our country's God, that we can hope to be blessed, and can, with any just confidence, await our country's future glory.
Need I, my hearers, deduce and enforce the exhortations of this subject? Or do they not lie upon its surface, and do they not make their own appeal to every patriot's and Christian's heart?
The God of nations, looking forth upon our happy land this day, may be conceived as breathing the benevolent desire once expressed in behalf of his ancient people, "O that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them and with their children forever."
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N. B. In the