_People of the United States_; Have you ever been invited to an enterprise of such grandeur and glory? Do you not value the Holy Scriptures? Value them as containing your sweetest hope; your most thrilling joy? Can you submit to the thought that _you_ should be torpid in your endeavors to disperse them, while the rest of Christendom is awake and alert? Shall _you_ hang back in heartless indifference, when princes come down from their thrones, to bless the cottage of the poor with the gospel of peace; and imperial sovereigns are gathering their fairest honors from spreading abroad the oracles of the Lord your God. Is it possible that _you_ should not see, in this state of human things, a mighty motion of Divine providence? The most heavenly charity treads close upon the march of conflict and blood! The world is at peace! Scarce has the soldier time to unbind his helmet, and to wipe away the sweat from his brow, ere the voice of mercy succeeds to the clarion of battle, and calls the nations from enmity to love! Crowned heads bow to the head which is to wear "many crowns," and, for the first time since the promulgation of Christianity, appear to act in unison for the recognition of its gracious principles, as being fraught alike with happiness to man, and honor to God. What has created so strange, so beneficent an alteration. This is no doubt the doing of the Lord, and it is marvelous in our eyes. But what instrument has he thought fit chiefly to use. That which contributes in all latitudes and climes to make Christians feel their unity, to rebuke the spirit of strife, and to open upon them the day of brotherly concord--the Bible!--the Bible!--through Bible Societies! [Footnote 6: A Presbyterian clergyman of great distinction, long settled in New York; rarely surpassed in controversial acuteness, and in religious eloquence.] * * * * * =_19._= THE RIGHT OF THE STATE TO EDUCATE. No sagacity can foretell what characters shall be developed, or what parts performed, by these boys and girls who throng our streets, and sport in our fields. In their tender breasts are concealed the germs, in their little hands are lodged the weapons, of a nation's overthrow or glory. Would it not, then, be madness, would it not be a sort of political suicide, for the commonwealth to be unconcerned what direction their infant powers shall take, or into what habits their budding affections shall ripen? or will it be disputed that the civil authority has a _right_ to take care, by a paternal interference on behalf of the children, that the next generation shall not prostrate in an hour, whatever has been consecrated to truth, to virtue, and to happiness by the generations that are past? * * * * * =_Timothy Dwight, 1752-1817._= (Manual, pp. 479, 504.) From "Travels in New England," &c. =_20._= THE WILDERNESS RECLAIMED.