to be the agent of the Most High, whose will respecting the descendants of Abraham he was commissioned to execute.

Having brought the numerous band of emigrants to the close of their long pilgrimage, he cites them to a grand review. The chief is about to resign his commission; for he and they must part before they cross the boundary of the promised land. His warfare is ended; he has fought his last battle; he will soon be at rest forever. At this point he addressed a farewell message to his countrymen, in the celebrated song, composed by divine command, of which the text forms a portion. He rehearsed the dealings, promises and threatenings of God respecting the Hebrews. He exhorts them to obedience by a review of God's mercies; and in this connection occur the words of the text: "Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: ask thy father, and he will show thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee."

He sends them for instruction to the past, while their gaze is intently fixed on the immediate future. The brilliant prospects opening before them might cause them to forget the lessons which their long abode in the desert should convey. The words of admonition were therefore timely and important. In all their career, they had never more needed the counsels of wisdom, and the guidance of God, than when they were about to enter upon their long expected possessions. The occasion demanded a careful review of the principles which they had adopted, and a reverent compliance with the will of that beneficent Being, who had chosen them for His peculiar people from among all the nations of the earth. By such a retrospect, they would discover the hand of God in the disposal of every event; and be able to trace, amidst the agitated and conflicting affairs of time, the steady current of an all-wise Providence in "the days of old," and throughout "the years of many generations." Their fathers could show them this unvarying course in the government of God: their elders could tell them of His revealed plans, His promises, and His faithfulness.

Occasions frequently arise, not only in the progress of nations, but also in the life of individuals, which justify the wisdom of retrospection. And we are naturally led to "remember the days of old," by the particular occasion which we have this morning assembled to honor with our mournful respect for the dead. It invites us to examine what our fathers have shown us, and listen to what our elders can tell us. We look with filial respect upon the man whose head is silvered by the ninety-third winter of his life. He is the remnant of an age gone by. The span of his existence sweeps the circle of a century. He stands by the wayside of passing generations an oracle to be consulted, a monument to be revered. His is a voice from the heroic age of our country, relating from memory the narrative of events which

have long been the themes of history. No descendant of the revolutionary fathers can remain unmoved in the presence of one of their compatriots in arms, whose protracted life, embracing the manhood of three generations, brings vividly to view his compeers long since departed. The heart glows with gratitude to God when we read the record of those times of battle and of victory for the unalienable rights of man: but the sight of a relic of the old Continental Line that pressed onward through reverses, destitution and self-sacrifice, up to final triumph and independence, stirs the heart with unwonted emotion, for it is the glorious past speaking eloquently to the present, not in the page of history, but with the living voice. It leads us to "remember the days of old," when the American colonists resisted the invasion of their natural and chartered rights: when the question was, whether they should remain subjects of the British constitution, or become vassals of the British throne.

It would ill become this day or this place to consider principally the secular issues which were involved in the momentous struggle that followed. We shall find an appropriate theme in the RELIGIOUS INTERESTS which were at stake. The claims set up and the pretensions made by many who have since come in for a share of freedom's blessings, require that our countrymen should be reminded that the war for independence was not ex clusively a contest for civil liberty. The dear-bought rights of conscience were remotely jeopardized, and more directly the princi ple of religious liberty. The belief is well-founded, that if the Colonies had been subdued, the Church Establishment of England would have been declared by law the established church of all the Colonies, as it had been already in many of them. The confiscation of church property belonging to those who were called Dissenters, to the use of the established church, had already been perpetrated in some instances by the king's officials; and the power of a proud conqueror, supported by a mercenary Par liament, would not have scrupled at any pretext to accomplish an object, cherished by the temporal and spiritual aristocracy of the mother country. "No bishop, no king," a maxim first expressed by a sovereign of England, was a favorite saying of the nobility. And if the principle of "taxation without representation" had triumphed in the defeat of the colonists, this country would no doubt have been covered with lords spiritual as well as lords temporal, church lands as well as crown lands, church and crown united, and that monstrous system of ecclesiastical robbery called tithes, by which a man is compelled to pay for the support of a sect which he disapproves. A rich and worldly State church lording it over God's heritage, would have driven the colonists back into the wilderness again, to be enslaved as soon as their advancing prosperity should tempt the rapacious cupidity of kingly power.

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This result was justly feared by many of the colonists whose fathers had escaped, or who had themselves fled from religious oppression in the old world; and they were like the elders of the children of Issachar, "men having understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do." Among them were descendants of the Huguenots of France, who "remembered the days of old," when their ancestors were tormented with savage barbarity, or tortured to death, because they would not give up their Bible and their God; and who did not forget that night of old-that night of unequalled horrors-which followed the eve of St. Bartholomew's. Among them were representatives of the brave Hollanders, who asserted their independence and maintained their Protestant Christianity against the most formidable popish powers of Europe. Among them were children of the Scottish covenanters, who met to worship God in desolate retreats-who hid in dens and caves of the earth to escape outrages and death at the hands of a brutal soldiery, obeying a more brutal king. Among them were descendants of Cromwell's warriors, to whom Englishmen are at this day indebted for some of their most valued privileges, and who had victoriously fought in defence of the Reformation on the plains of Europe, and had thus learned to oppose tyranny by force. With one threatening word, their master stopt the bloody persecution of the Waldenses; and thenceforth, during the life of Cromwell, persecution was at an end. Among them pre-eminently were the honored Puritans of England, who feared God rather than king or prelate, and were therefore exiled from their country, and compelled to carve a home out of the wild forests of America.

All these classes had been sufferers for conscience' sake under the power of despotic kings, although in some of these cases the royal authority was obedient to an ecclesiastical power that claimed to be superior to all the monarchs of the earth. Hence these classes of colonists were suspicious of every encroachment of the crown on their chartered rights, as jeopardizing or invading their religious privileges. To the effect of this conviction, the success of the American Revolution is directly traceable. While many engaged in the contest mainly for the defence of civil rights, many were moved to the same measure to maintain the supremacy of a free Gospel in connection with civil liberty. And hence, on the main issue, a general harmony of counsels and of effort prevailed throughout the Colonies.

But it was the Puritan spirit which reigned over all that mighty contest. It has been well said that God sifted the kingdoms for wheat wherewith to sow the virgin soil of America. And the same God suffered not the old monarchies to reap the precious harvest. The Puritan spirit was transplanted into the new world, and here found an ample field, a fertile soil, and a vigorous growth. The Spirit of the Lord was in it, and "where the Spirit

of the Lord is, there is liberty." Its birth-place was Geneva. It was cradled in France, and rocked in the storm of persecution. It was nurtured among the rugged glens of Scotland. It grew to man's estate under the heavy hand of oppression in England. The dungeon could not confine it. The faggot and the sword could not destroy it. And from this baptism of blood it crossed the ocean, and trod the free shores of the new world with the activity of a strong man armed.

Its foundation principle was, the Word of God, the only infal lible rule of faith and practice. Its leading doctrine was, justifi cation by faith in the atoning merits of Christ alone, resting on the covenant of an unchanging God. Its ministry was of equal authority, to be called of God and not of man, and to show by their doctrine and their deeds whether they were in the line of succession from the Apostles. Its ordinances were Scriptural, carefully excluding every ceremony which was not enjoined by the Word of God. It yielded nothing to mere human authority: it subjected every thing to the divine command. It declared by the mouth of one of its disciples, " In matters of the Church, there may be nothing done but by the Word of God." And again, "It is not enough that the Scripture speaketh not against them, unless it speak for them." As the Scriptures hold every soul accountable to God, hence the right and duty of every soul to possess and study the Word of God; and hence also the right, not of private interpretation, but of private judgment on what the Will of God or dains. Any denial of these doctrines, and any abridgement of these rights the Puritans considered an infringement of the authority of Christ, the Supreme Head of his Church, the King of kings, and the Lord of lords.

In this general statement, we discover the foundation of human rights, the natural equality of man, the seeds of just and equal laws, the true end and aim of all civil government. For the mind once emancipated from spiritual despotism, pants for civil liberty, through which alone religious freedom can be fully enjoyed. And the man who traces all human authority to Christ, and acknowledges none which does not descend from Him, will not easily yield to despotic power, whether it be exerted in Church or in State, by priest or king.

These views were held, almost without exception, by the great Reformers of the sixteenth century; they were eminently advocated by the leading spirits at Geneva: and hence the Reformation not only brought back a hidden Bible and a buried Gospel, but it also gave birth to modern liberty. This system of doctrines obtained its full practical development in the American colonies. It prevailed throughout the country. And this fact is sufficient to account for the union of the colonies in the war of independence. And in this view of the case, we are not surprised to learn that ministers of the Gospel preached the duty of forcible

opposition. In their minds, "resistance to tyrants was obedience to God." Large numbers of their people were accordingly found in the patriot assemblies and armies; and when the decisive struggle had begun, they themselves did not hesitate to exchange the sanctuary for the camp, in order to preserve among the troops, by their preaching and their example, the spirit of piety and the love of liberty. They exerted a widespread and salutary influence, which was well understood and acknowledged at the time; and their services should never be forgotten. Their voice was also heard in the halls of legislation; and while Timothy Dwight, afterwards the honored President of Yale College, was a chaplain in the army on the Hudson, John Witherspoon, the President of the College of New Jersey, was a member of the Continental Congress, and affixed his signature to the immortal Declaration of Independence. And the forerunner and model of that Declaration, be it known, was the production of the old Puritan spirit, which always vindicated the rights of man. It was drafted and adopted by a convention composed mainly of refugees from religious oppression in the old world, assembled at Mechlenburg in North Carolina, in the month of Ápril, 1776, a few months prior to the adoption by Congress of the great Declaration, in many respects identical with it. The mind is struck with the grandeur of the subject when we read the beginning of that document--" We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness"--and when we remember that praying men, Godfearing men, first gave these glorious truths to the world.

When the Virginia House of Burgesses adopted resolutions of forcible resistance, next to the eloquent Patrick Henry, who was the principal instigator of that step, stood Mr. Muhlenburgh, a Lutheran Minister, who afterwards led his parishioners to the

war.

The descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers had so long enjoyed comparative freedom in civil and religious affairs, that they could not quietly submit to the tyranny of either king, parliament, or priesthood; and hence the spirit of opposition in New England was universal.

Without mentioning many other instances equally deserving of notice, the foregoing will serve to illustrate the fact that Christian men and Christian ministers endangered their fortunes and their lives in that decisive conflict: and this fact finds the principal explanation in their adherence to those sacred principles which we have already mentioned. Confiding in the protection of Heaven, they committed themselves to Him that judgeth righteously; and the result justified their faith and rewarded their highest expectations. Without the cordial co-operation of these praying men, it cannot be supposed that the colonies could have been successful;