marks the Epoch of the United States of America— an
Epoch indissolubly connected with the three preceding.
The Idea was Christian, was Protestant, was of New Eng-
land. Plymouth was becoming national, Protestantism
going into politics; and the Sentiments and Ideas of
Christianity getting an expression on a national scale.
The Declaration of Independence was the American profession of faith in political Christianity.
This day is consecrated to freedom; let us look, therefore, at the Aspect of Freedom just now in America.
In 1776, there were less than three million persons in the United States. Now, more than three million voters. But, alas! there are also more than three million slaves. Seventy-six years ago, slavery existed in all the thirteen colonies; but New England was never quite satisfied with it; only the cupidity of the Puritan assented thereto, not his conscience. Soon it retreated from New England, from all the North, but strengthened itself in the South, and spread Westward and Southward, till now it has crossed the Cordilleras, and the Pacific Ocean is witness to the gigantic wrong of the American People.
But, spite of this growth of slavery, the American Idea has grown in favour with the American people, the North continually becoming more and more democratic in the best sense of the word. True, in aU the great cities of the North, the love of slavery has also grown strong, in none stronger than in Boston. The Mother city of the Puritans is now the metropolis of the Hunkers. Slavery also has entered the churches of the North, and some of them, we see, when called on to choose betwixt Christianity and slavery, openly and boldly decide against the Law of God, and in favour of this great crime against man. But simultaneously with this growth of Hunkerism in the cities and the churches of the North, at the same time with the spread of slavery from the Delaware to the Sacramento, the Spirit of Liberty has also spread, and taken a deep hold on the hearts of the people.
In the material world, nothing is done by leaps, all by gradual advance. The land slopes upward all the way from Abington to the White Mountains. If Mt. Washington rose a mile and a quarter of sheer ascent, with perpendicular sides from the level of the ocean, only the
