The first elective assembly of the New World met in 1619. It was opened by prayer. Its first enactment was to protect the Indians from oppression. Its next was to found a university. In the first legislative assembly which met in the choir of the Church in Jamestown, more than one year before the Mayflower left the shores of England, was the foundation of popular government in America. Time would fail me to tell the story inwrought in the lives of men like Rev. William Clayton of Philadelphia, the Rev. Atkin Williamson of South Carolina, and the Rev. John Wesley and the Rev. George Whitefield, also sons of the Church in Georgia. The Church of England had no rights in the English colony of Massachusetts. The Rev. William Blaxton, the Rev. Richard Gibson, and the Rev. Robert Jordan endured privation and suffering, and were accused "as addicted to the hierarchy of the Church of England," "guilty of offence against the Commonwealth by baptizing children on the Lord's Day," and "the more heinous sin of provoking the people to revolt by questioning the divine right of the New England theocracy." An new life dawned on the Church in America when, in 1701, there was organized in England "The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts." It awakened a new missionary spirit. Princess Anne, afterward Queen of England, became its lifelong patron. The blessed work among the Mohawks was largely due to her, and when these Indians were removed to Canada and left sheperdless, their chief, Joseph Brant, officiated as lay reader for twenty years. The men sent out by the society--the Rev. Samuel Thomas, the Rev. George Keith, the Rev. Patrick Gordon, the Rev. John Talbot, and others--were Christian heroes. No fact in the history of the colonial Church had so marked influence as the conversion of Timothy Cutler, James Wetmore, Samuel Johnson, and Daniel Brown to the Church. Puritans mourned that the "gold had become dim." Churchmen rejoiced that some of the foremost scholars in Connecticut had returned to the Church. I pass over the trials of the Church in the eighteenth century, to the meeting of the Continental Congress in 1774. It was proposed to open Congress with prayer. Objections were made on account of the religious differences of the delegates. Old Samuel Adams arose, with his white hair streaming on his shoulders,--the same earnest Puritan who, in 1768, had written to England: "We hope in God that no such establishment as the Protestant episcopate shall ever take place in America,"--and said: "Gentlemen, shall it be said that it is possible that there can be any religious differences which will prevent men from crying to that God who alone can save them? I move that the Rev. Dr. Duché, minister of Christ Church in this city, be asked to open this Congress with prayer." John Adams, writing to his wife, said: "Never can I forget that scene. There were twenty Quakers standing by my side,