Great, indeed, is the privilege, and most honorable and useful is the career, of a Christian American statesman. He perceives that civil liberty came from the freedom wherewith Christ made its early martyrs and defenders free. He recognises it as one of the twelve manner of fruits on the Tree of Life, which, while its lower branches furnish the best nutriment of earth, hangs on its topmost boughs, which wave in Heaven, fruits that exhilarate the immortals. Recognising the state as God’s institution, he will perceive that his own ministry is divine. Living consciously under the eye, and in the love and fear of God; redeemed by the blood of Jesus; sanctified by His Spirit; loving His law; he will give himself, in private and in public, to the service of his Saviour. He will not admit that he may act on less lofty principles in public, than in private life; and that he must be careful of his moral influence in the small sphere of home and neighborhood, but need take no heed of it when it stretches over continents and crosses seas. He will know that his moral responsibility cannot be divided and distributed among others. When he is told that adherence to the strictest moral and religious principle is incompatible with a successful and eminent career, he will denounce the assertion as a libel on the venerated Fathers of the Republic――a libel on the honored living and the illustrious dead――a libel against a great and Christian nation――a libel against God himself, who has declared and made ‘godliness profitable for the life that now is.’ He will strive to make laws the transcripts of the character, and institutions illustrations of the providence of God. He will scan with admiration and awe the purposes of God in the future history of the world, in throwing open this wide continent, from sea to sea, as the abode of freedom, intelligence, plenty, prosperity, and peace; and feel that in giving his energies with a patriot’s love, to the welfare of his country, he is consecrating himself, with a Christian’s zeal, to the extension and establishment of the Redeemer’s kingdom. Compared with a career like this, which is equally open to those whose public sphere is large or small, how paltry are the trade of patriotism, the tricks of statesmanship, the rewards of successful baseness! This hour, this scene, the venerated dead, the country, the world, the present, the future, God, duty, Heaven, hell, speak trumpet-tongued to all in the service of their country, to _beware_ how they lay polluted or unhallowed hands ‘Upon the ark Of her magnificent and awful cause!’