the solid unity of the republic as the strongest
existing fact in the political world. The very great aggrandizement of
the nation has been an affair of the last sixty years; but already it
has recorded itself throughout the vast expanse of the continent in
monuments of architecture and engineering worthy of the national
strength.

The ecclesiastical history which has been recounted in this volume,
covering the same territory and the same period of time, runs with equal
pace in many respects parallel with the political history, but in one
important respect with a wide divergence. As with civilization so with
Christianity: the germs of it, derived from different regions of
Christendom, were planted without concert of purpose, and often with
distinct cross-purposes, in different seed-plots along the Atlantic
seaboard. Varying in polity, in forms of dogmatic statement, and even in
language, the diverse growths were made, through wonders of spiritual
influence and through external stress of trial, to feel their unity in
the one faith. The course of a common experience tended to establish a
predominant type of religious life the influence of which has been
everywhere felt, even when it has not been consented to. The vital
strength of the American church, as of the American nation, has been
subjected to the test of the importation of enormous masses of more or
less uncongenial population, and has shown an amazing power of digestion
and assimilation. Its resources have been taxed by the providential
imposition of burdens of duty and responsibility such, in magnitude and
weight, as never since the early preaching of the gospel have pressed
upon any single generation of the church. Within the space of a single
lifetime, at an expenditure of toil and treasure which it is idle to
attempt to compute, the wide and desolate wilderness, as fast as
civilization has invaded it, has been occupied by the church with
churches, schools, colleges, and seminaries of theology, with pastors,
evangelists, and teachers, and, in one way or another, has been
constrained to confess itself Christian. The continent which so short a
time ago had been compassionately looked upon from across the sea as
missionary ground has become a principal base of supplies, and
recruiting-ground for men and women, for missionary operations in
ancient lands of heathenism and of a decayed Christianity.

So much for the parallel. The divergence is not less impressive. I