THE CHRISTIAN EXAMINER.

NO. XXXIV.

NEW SERIES-NO. IV.

SEPTEMBER, 1829.

ART. I.-1. An Oration delivered on the Fourth of July, 1829, in the City of Boston. By JAMES T. AUSTIN. Boston. J. H. Eastburn. 1829. 8vo. pp. 26.

2. An Oration delivered before the Citizens of Nantucket, July 4, 1829. By WILLIAM MORSE. Boston. Putnam & Hunt. 1829. 8vo. pp. 16.

SINCE the publication of our last number, the great political anniversary of the country has passed, and has been hailed with all those demonstrations of public rejoicing which the sage Adams so vividly foresaw, and so well described, at the very moment when he was putting his hand to the solemn instrument that declared us a free people. There is, in the affairs of men, a time to act, and there is a time to meditate. There is a time to conceive bold projects, and to execute them without fear or doubting; and there is an after time to consider their results, to guard the treasure which has been gained, to keep with diligence that which has been achieved with valor; a time to discriminate, to weigh, to watch, and to fear. Our revolution was a season of high resolve and undaunted actions. In the battle that summoned our fathers from their homes, no man's heart was to be shaken by doubts or foreboding; distrust and admonition had no place there; fear would have been cowardice. So men must act; they cannot be everything, or embrace everything at once. But now, the season of calm reflection and reasonable solicitude has come; now, fear is wisdom; now, the harder battle is to be fought, which demands

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moderation, and temperance, and patience, and virtue that endures unto the end. Then, it was proper that freedom should be regarded chiefly as a blessing, that it should be worshipped as a divinity. Now, it is meet that we should look upon liberty as a trust; and if as a divinity, yet as a divinity like that Providence which dispenses all its best blessings on strict and severe conditions.

We have adverted to the late anniversary of our independence, and have placed at the head of this article some of the addresses which this occasion called forth, chiefly to give a direction to the thoughts of our readers. It is not our purpose to comment on this occasion, or on these addresses; nor will our remarks be confined to this country, though they are particularly designed to bear upon our duties as freemen, both in politics and religion. The cause of civil and religious liberty is the cause of human welfare. It binds itself with all our thoughts of the probable advancement of the human race in virtue and happiness. In this march of improvement our own country, indeed, may be considered as occupying the foremost place, and therefore deserves special notice as the great leading example. But the subject, in our apprehension, is limited to no one country. It embraces the best interests and hopes of all mankind. We look upon this world, indeed, as the field for a great moral experiment. A trial is passing upon its mighty theatre, and it is the trial of human souls. It is the conflict of knowledge with ignorance, of truth with error, of virtue with temptation, of piety with worldliness. The great end of the trial, so far as man is concerned, is to see whether he will work out his own welfare; whether, with moral faculties bestowed, with Providence teaching him, with Heaven's aid offered to assist him, he will become wise, good, and happy. This, to our view, is the grandest, the most comprehensive, the most momentous aspect of this world's history. And we confess, that when we look upon this history, when we look upon the crowded paths of past generations, and the struggling multitudes of men that have walked in them; when we survey the dark clouds that have hung over them, that have gathered into thick darkness over fields of blood, over cities plunged into vice and licentiousness, over empires of despotism, over burning altars of superstition, and mournful regions of ignorance,- —we confess that our hearts have sunk within us; and we have felt that it were meet for every reflecting man to say, in

the words of the holy lamentation, ""Oh! that my head were waters, and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep for the slain"-for the broken and bowed down, for the sinful and miserable of my kindred and people!' And, indeed, if we believed that this world were designed to finish the moral education of men; if it were anything more than, so to speak, the primary school for moral and immortal creatures; if there were no further scene of improvement, we should still feel that the great problem of moral probation, and the mystery of Providence, and the experiment on human welfare, had no solution.

In this great moral experiment, our own position as a nation, we repeat, is one of a most interesting character. It is a singular and unprecedented state of things on a large scale, that here is a people to whom the task is committed, without compulsion, without prescription, without any heritage of antiquated and superannuated laws, or institutions, or usages, freely to work out their own weal or wo; that here is a people, who are undertaking to think, to form opinions, and to act for themselves, on all subjects and matters touching their political, social, and religious welfare. This, at least, is the theory of our intellectual and moral condition; and it is going into effect far enough, at least, to justify a very deep and sober solicitude for the future. For let us say what we will about the just place which human interests occupy when deposited in the hands of the parties whose welfare is involved; let us repeat the maxims as often as we may, that truth is powerful and will prevail,' that 'freedom is the richest boon of Heaven,'' that knowledge is safe,' that intellectual light is moral promise, still we maintain, that this experiment is not safe, and cannot come to a happy issue, without great care and exertion and fidelity on the part of those to whose hands it is committed. And we solemnly believe, that it is scarcely too much to say, that he who would be faithful to these times, and to this country, must be faithful to them with a zeal falling nothing behind that of apostles and martyrs. It is not they alone, who have poured out their blood upon their country's altars of whom this fidelity was demanded; but it is equally demanded of those who are now fighting the battle with vice and ignorance, with superstition and intolerance, with headstrong passion and unscrupulous selfishness, and every foe to human welfare.

Liberty, we repeat, whether civil or religious, whether of

conscience or of action, whether for the mind or for the body, is a trust. This is our text; and we would that we had opportunity and power to preach a doctrine from it, that should reach to the highest, and penetrate to the lowest classes of society; that should cause itself to be felt from the loftiest seat of magistracy and the bench of justice, to the humblest exercise of suffrage and dispensation of equity between man and man; a doctrine, too, that should govern the most exalted minds in their moral reasonings, and the lowest minds in their too often untempered resistance to religious domination. This blessed boon of Heaven, like all its noble gifts, is a solemn charge, of whose fulfilment or neglect God will require an account, and man must feel the consequences. On this point everything turns; on the feeling, to make ourselves distinctly understood, and that feeling carried into practice, that liberty is a trust. We have heard its praises justly and eloquently expressed; we have heard its fruits and advantages set forth in glowing colors; we have heard much inflated language, indeed, on this favorite theme, but we have gone away, saying, 'All this is but a sound and a name, if the people, by a sober, and faithful use, do not make liberty to be that boon which it is so constantly represented to be.'

And what we are now saying, let us be permitted to add, goes beyond the ordinary admissions on this subject. It is common to admit, that 'the freedom of a nation depends upon its intelligence and virtue.' This is one of those vague and general maxims, that press upon everybody alike, and affects nobody in particular. It is not made a personal and private conviction and motive. It does not come home. It is like saying to children, 'You must be good children, for a great many good things are bestowed upon you, and if you are not good, all these things will be taken away;' very excellent sayings, conveying, indeed, a vague sense of responsibility, and an indistinct apprehension of coming evil, but not conveying the home-felt conviction, that happiness is put into every one's care and keeping. That, in truth, is the great office of freedom-to put every one's happiness into his care and keeping. And it addresses a strict and serious language to us. We do not think it enough to say to a family, 'Your welfare, your domestic happiness, depends on your intelligence and virtue ;' we go into particulars. We say, 'It depends on such and such virtues. It depends on your fidelity and forbearance towards

one another, on your disinterested affection, and seeking of the common good.' And thus must we speak to the great political family. It is time that the morality, the morale of civil trusts, and of courts of justice, and of all political functions, in one word, that the duties of freemen. should be more thoroughly discussed among us; for these things are only regarded in the general.

And if our views go beyond the common admissions on this subject, we must say, also, that they go against the common and popular impressions. The prevailing, and almost the only idea of liberty, is, that it is a blessing. We shall endeavour, before we have done, to show in what respects it is indeed an invaluable good. For the present, we observe, that the idea of it as a blessing, is almost the only one that enters into the general estimate. It is this that constitutes the burden of so many of our anniversary orations, though we are glad to hear from this quarter a tone of greater sobriety and caution. It is this that is proclaimed when the trumpet to the cannon speaks, the cannon to the heavens.' It is this that rings out from the merry chime of bells that welcomes the anniversary morning. It is this that blazes forth from all the glare and splendor of our public celebrations. Now we are willing frankly to say, at whatever hazard of being thought to look coldly upon the cause of liberty, that we distrust the feeling that enters into these rejoicings. We are afraid that many look upon this boasted freedom as a liberty to do what they will, and not to do what they ought. The man who celebrates his freedom till he becomes licentious and noisy, and has lost the government of himself, can have little credit with us, for the value he puts upon this heavenly gift. Our very celebrations have doubtless too commonly shown, that, as a people, we have anything but a just estimate of our transcendent privileges.

But we now take up again the burden of our doctrine. Give freedom to any mind, and you put that mind to a severe trial of its character. Give freedom to any people, and you subject that people to a test, which no nation under heaven has ever been able to bear.

In the beautiful tales of Berquin, our readers will recollect the story of the children who would be their own masters. Freedom places man in the same condition. It makes them their own masters, and they must be no longer children, but men indeed, if they would safely bear the trial. We hold