lf-consciousness, it shall exert to the utmost its matured and
mighty energies?

Thus are we accustomed to talk. Our destiny is manifest--our glory is
inevitable. It is pleasant to talk thus, and it is unpleasant to talk
otherwise. Yet we ought to desire to see and know the truth.
Self-flattery is an odious folly. Is our destiny, then, manifest? Is
our glory inevitable? Has God so conspicuously favored us that he
cannot but continue to bless? Ah! It is our self-flattery and odious
folly to think so.

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
de