Crown, the last great speech delivered in Athens, you may remember the frequency and force of such allusions; that trumpet-toned adjuration, for exexample—“I swear it by your forefathers, by the combatants at Marathon, by those who took the field at Platea, by those in the sea-fight at Salamis, and those at Artemesium: never can you have erred, O Athenians, by undertaking battle for the freedom and safety of all."

And such recollections live freshly from age to age. When, thirty years ago, the Greeks rose for their independence, the names of their great men who died long before the existence of this land was known, worked like a spell even here; and our quick, warm sympathy went over the wave, to the children of such sires, and the land they had rendered dear.

The history of the Jewish people illustrates also the same point. It was a part of their religion to preserve and transmit the records of the past. The aged were diligently to teach the young what God had done for them. The names of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, their patriarchs; of Samuel, Daniel, Isaiah, their prophets; of David and Solomon, their kings, were household words; and so, when carried into captivity, they turned their faces to Jerusalem as they prayed, and wept when they remembered Zion;-and now, scattered in every land, speaking various tongues, every where

oppressed, they cannot be disunited or destroyed; they repeat the old, familiar names; they cling to their departed glories; in all their degradation, proud; a distinct people, though mingled with every other, turning their eyes still to Palestine, and hoping for a brighter day.

II. But it is time to notice how this truth of the power of the past, applies to us. Let me, then, remind you, as I proceed, that our early history is of marked purity and dignity.

The first act of Columbus, when he landed here, was to raise the symbol of the Christian's faith. Was it not, in God's providence, an act declarative of his purpose, that here the cross should prevail? Others probably, piratical voyagers of the North, had landed before; but they brought no cross with them, and their enterprise came to nothing. The land was reserved for a Christian people. And when those whom we call more distinctively our Fathers, emigrated, how noble the motive! They sought not, as did the colonists of ancient Greece, to extend commerce and trade; they brought not, as did the colonists of Rome, the ensigns of military dominion;-they were a company of men, women, children, infants, braving the terrors of wintry seas; leaving a land they loved, and which they called, in their last, sobbing farewell, "Dear Mother England;" seeking a home in a waste,

howling wilderness, for love of freedom and of truth. These they could not, as they believed, enjoy in their native land; and so, not in sudden anger, not with the breathing of imprecations, but calmly, sadly, yet with fixed purpose, persuaded it was duty and the will of God-they came to lay the foundations of a new state.

"Nor love of conquest's meteor beam,
Nor dazzling mines of fancy's dream,
Nor wild adventurer's love to roam,
Brought from their fathers' ancient home,
O'er the wide sea, the Pilgrim host."

Cicero has said, in the recently found treatise 'de Republica,' that "in nothing does human virtue approach nearer the divine, than in the founding or preservation of states;" and when, there fore, this greatest work is done from the purest motives, the height of human achievement is reached.

The patience, also possible only through the Christian's faith-with which all the sufferings of their lot were endured, was of the highest heroism. During that winter after their landing, so many sunk under the pressure of an ever-present distress, that the graves of the dead exceeded in number the houses of the living. The wives of Bradford, Winslow, Allerton, Standish, their chief men, thus found relief; and these cherished ones, and others, were laid to rest, with no marble tablet to chronicle their virtues and the survivors' sorrow; but

the sand of the sea-shore smoothed above their graves, that the hostile Indians might not notice how many there were. Yet when, in April, 1621, the Mayflower sailed on her return voyage, not one of all that company, suffering thus, far away from sympathy and the applause of men—not one was found, enfeebled by famine, dejected by sorrow, despairing through manifold dangers, who wished to go back in her. When she had gone, they would be left five hundred miles from any white men, and with no other means of crossing the tempestuous sea; yet they all chose to remain, for life or for death, as it pleased God. If I sought a subject of surpassing heroism, I would paint that band watching the departure of the ship-their ranks thinned by death-the faces of the survivors furrowed by care, emaciated by want of foodtheir locks turning gray-their breasts heaving with yearnings after friends they should see no more; yet lifting their eyes to heaven in fullest confidence, and, without one hesitating thought, refusing to depart.

Let me add a word, also, respecting their wisdom. To lay the foundation of a commonwealth, so that it shall be stable, and the edifice upon it shall rise square and true, is no easy work. A mistake, seemingly slight, may be fatal to permanent security. Now our Fathers were striking out a new plan. They were conservatives, but not anchored

to the Past; they were progressives, but not restless innovators. Considering calmly, and with reliance on a higher wisdom than their own, the exigencies of their position, they dared to introduce changes wherever needed.

They

Among the first were legal reforms. have been sneered at, I know, for their adherence to the Hebrew laws; but by this course, let it be remembered, they at once abolished the unrepublican rights of primogeniture, and reduced the catalogue of crimes punishable by English law with death, from one hundred and fifty down at once to eleven -"the greatest and boldest improvement which has been made in criminal jurisprudence by any one act since the dark ages." To the legal reforms they introduced, we owe, at least indirectly, what is of peculiar excellence in our present system; and it has been asserted, by one better qualified than myself to judge, that "there is scarcely an improvement called for by Lord Brougham in his great speech on Law Reforms in the House of Commons in 1828, but what may be found among the enactments of legislatures or the practice of courts in our Eastern States."

Take as another illustration of their wisdom, the establishment of free schools for all. It was one of their earliest purposes, that the School-house should stand in every village beside the Church.