We need not look again to our history or our prospects, to gather evidences of a different destiny, although such evidences might not be wanting. Yes, we might find the evidences which, duly weighed, would make us shudder in view of our possible or probable future. We might come to think it very problematical whether our country has sufficient vital force to work into good American citizens the hordes of infidels, paupers, criminals, cast upon our shores from the nations of the old world;--whether our country has sufficient wisdom to guide its own vexed domestic questions to a proper and satisfactory issue, and to balance and regulate the rival and numberless interests of a country widening indefinitely in extent;--whether--but no, we do not need thus to forecast the future to ascertain our probable destiny. We may determine the question by the teaching of God's word. "Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord." And blessed is that nation alone. Here is the solution of the question of our destiny. It is in making the Lord the God of our country, that we are safe--that we are prosperous--that our glorious destiny becomes inevitable. Our destiny is left to ourselves. The means of its glory are placed in our hands. We may use them or not, as we will. And now, I utter it to you, my hearers and fellow-citizens, as the solemn testimony of the Lord our God, that so surely as ignorance and moral corruption and lust of power, become generally prevalent, and popery and infidelity attain the supremacy among us, it matters not at all that we have had a ballot-box, and a free press, and free schools, and the whole circle of liberal institutions,--these will become but the insignia of our shame; it matters not that we have had a boundless territory, and a teeming soil, and mighty cities, and universal commerce,--the grass will grow again on our prairies,--the red man return to his forsaken forests,--our cities become black with desolation, and the sails of our commerce be rent on the seas, or the hulks of our commerce rot at our wharves; it matters not that God has been wonderfully gracious to us as a nation,--the more wonderful the grace, the deeper the insult and crime of our despising it, and the deeper our doom;--this, this is our manifest destiny. And it is only as America teaches her children to fear God and do their duty; it is only as our virtuous citizenship escape from the chains of corrupt party and procure for themselves a fair representation in the offices of government--exerting themselves for the purification of corrupt men, rather than for the promotion of their evil designs; it is, in a word, only as the power of our blessed religion shall go out from the hearts of the truly pious in our land, leavening the mass of the population and bringing them under its sway;--it is only as we truly make the Lord our country's God, that we can hope to be blessed, and can, with any just confidence, await our country's future glory.