all over Europe; this Reformation created a most imperative necessity for a place of refuge to which the persecuted and oppressed of all lands could fly, and find safety and repose. And where were these to be found but in the new world just discovered? Was not the hand of God in all this? and is his hand less visible still? And what would have been the fate of those who embraced the Reformation and its spirit of liberty, had America then been unknown? Whither could they have fled, and to what point of the compass looked for hope and safety? Persecuted to the death they must have been; and liberty, finding no home and resting place on earth, would have fled to her native heaven, and left the world one frightful waste of the most hideous and appalling despotism. And now behold the wisdom of God in placing this continent, liberty’s own soil and home, so far away from the other grand sections of the earth.
Were America as contiguous to the other three quarters of the globe as they are to each other, then she could not and would not have been what she has proven herself to be—the home and abiding place of liberty—because she would be in character and condition like all the others, possessing the same or similar forms of despotic government and religion, ruled by the iron rod of despotic power. But how wisely has God, who alone sees the end from the beginning, arranged all things, and rules and directs all events; making the physical arrangements of the world to harmonize with its moral contingencies and necessities. What so fortunate as the discovery of America, at the very time it was discovered!—and how well it suited the state of things in Europe, and met the circumstances and necessities of the times! And what so fortunate for the safety, progress and development of liberty, as the remote locality in which God placed this continent from the seat of all oppression and despotism!
Human foresight and wisdom could as little have foreseen all these contingencies, as human power could have provided for them. Oh, how much is here for meditation and reflection, and to fill the American with gratitude, pride and joy; filling us with assurance that God is on the side of liberty and the rights of humanity, and that we are now his peculiar people, called in his providence to work out the redemption and regeneration of the world.
