First, a man must carry into political life a sense of God as the Source of power and privilege. The air and the light are not more truly his gifts than are the civil institutions which we enjoy. We are fond of describing the virtues and deeds of our ancestors; our grandsires are regarded with mingled admiration and gratitude. It is well that we turn back to those days of fortitude and energy, and seek there the springs of our present prosperity. But our gratitude must not rest in the men of that period. They were but the instruments of a higher will, the agents of a mightier strength than their own. Those patriots of the revolution, and their progenitors who planted the seed of liberty wherever they took up their habitation on this soil, were the last men to have claimed for themselves the praise, as if in their own self-derived wisdom or force they had achieved the works which history will connect with their names. "Not unto us, not unto us," would have been their cry, if they could have foreseen the sentiments of their posterity, "but to thy name, O Lord, be the glory." Nay, such _was_ their language. The Pilgrims, with all their faults--for faultless they were not--were men of an ardent piety, whose faith rose up to heaven with an almost profane confidence and laid hold on the arm of God as their sustaining and guiding power. The heroes of the revolutionary struggle--that struggle which began long before blood was shed on yonder height--looked up to Heaven to approve their cause, and when He whom they invoked had crowned it with success poured out their thanksgiving at his altars. And shall we, their sons, forget the God whom our fathers acknowledged? It is a good thing to celebrate their deeds and keep their memories hung round with fresh tributes of love; but let them not receive our final homage. Oh no! Let that pass beyond them to the Eternal Fountain of good, from whom our liberties and our institutions have been received through these channels which his Providence selected. Look abroad, my hearers, upon this great land, with its spreading population. See what a country is yours,--washed by two oceans, and stretching from the arctic to the torrid zone. Note its immense resources; its mountains reaching to the skies, its vallies nestling in the bosom of sunshine, its rivers on which a nation's traffic may be borne, and its lakes on which the navies of the earth might ride. Mark its capacities in their as yet incipient state of development; its various fertility, its mineral wealth, its gigantic promise of support for future generations. Survey the people of this Union, pursuing their several branches of enterprise and industry, with none to hinder or molest. Ponder the statistics of your country's growth. See the iron rods of communication along which the electricity of life will be transmitted from the Atlantic shores to the distant West. Examine the architecture of that social order under whose security you live, simple, yet firm,