Delivered May 8, 1850on the occasion of the anticipated sailing of missionaries
to California; among whom was a member of his church.
Mr. CHAIRMAN:-The object we contemplate to night contrasts very strikingly with the enterprise of our countrymen in founding the State of California. It illustrates that saying of Christ, "My kingdom is not of this world."
I fear, after what you have heard from our two brethren, whom you are sending to that field, and after the solemn charge they have received, that you will hardly listen to me with patience. But I wish to invite your attention to this contrast; to the unlikeness of the two movements, the settlement, and the evangelization of this new State.
In order to understand any movement, we must first separate, from their accidental connexion and circumstantial embodiment, the purely abstract and governing ideas which direct it. A shovel full of Sacramento alluvium can look little better than any other shovel full of earth. Its superlative value appears when you have sifted and washed it. It is not at the outside of this missionary movement we must look for the golden idea which is in it. For, sir, what is the sending of two or three men to California these days, when our steamers are crowded with emigrants, and the sails of our passenger ships whiten every degree of latitude from this point to the Horn. Why, sir, there was nothing in the outside of the man you sent to California, by the way of New Mexico which could win for him, or even for his suffering wife, a decent respect from his fellow wagoners. But that noble commandant he met at Santa Fe was a sort of Joseph, a man who "can certainly divine." He had skill to penetrate to the true intent, idea and purpose of the man of God. And he said to him, "Abide with us, and the Lord shall abide with you, and bless us. Silver and gold have we none. In all this territory there is scarce a miner who digs for the precious metals. But under the surface of our society, under the roughness of our border barbarism, and the rule of Spanish priests, there are an hundred thousand souls - and not a minister of the Gospel in the province. Abide with us and save them. Give us of your wisdom! ‘The gold and the silver cannot equal it. It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx and the sapphire. No mention shall be made of coral or of pearls, for the price of wisdom is above rubies.’ " I wish that the church had as much of the spirit of divination.
I said that your present movement, in behalf of the religious interests of California, is an illustration of Christ's words: "My kingdom is not of this world." And why? Because of the comparative feebleness of the means you are to employ, and because of the moral grandeur of the principles which direct the movement. If mind be the standard of the man, motive is of man's doings. And I ask anyone to consider how this humble attempt to send the Gospel to California disdains comparison with the brilliant spectacle, which is now presented to the View of the civilized world, in this settlement of a State upon the Pacific.
Let me do no injustice to the enterprise of our people. Sir, I am astonished at the daring, the gigantic undertakings, and heroic achievements we are witnessing. The founding of that State is the great event of this century, by which this century will be marked, in political annals, among the great eras of modern history. No other State was ever settled in this way. Our Western States were of comparatively slow growth. Emigrants took possession of untilled lands, and waited long for the first returns from their labor. They left behind them the luxuries of life, and only hoped that their children might enjoy them. But here the people have risen up in the old seats of commerce and culture, luxury and learning, and have transported the arts of civilized life with them, and are building up a State upon a grand scale, with the accompaniments of modern ornament and luxury - just as, of old, Aladdin built his palace one night, or as the Massachusetts people built the city of Lawrence the other day, and are now building another and larger one at South Hadley.
Viewed as the result of individual enterprise, this work knows no parallel in modern history. I can think of nothing like it since the Crusades. That, like this, was the heroic event of its age: "a movement at once individual and general - national and yet unregulated - where all classes of society abandoned themselves to one impulse; acting in immense masses, and yet freely and spontaneously, without political intention or combination."* Thus our people have been acting. Home and its delights have been surrendered without a sigh by thousands who have never before been fired by the love of adventure, who had never traveled or voyaged.
Look upon a map of the world. A narrow belt of land separates North from South America. The commerce of the world has beat upon that spot for centuries vainly trying to force a passage through, but was compelled to go thousands of miles off around the great Southern promontories. The reason was that the world's commerce was not great enough. But everything seems to yield to the demands of this Californian emigration. It is laying for itself rail tracks across the Isthmus, and will ere long open a channel where the tides of the Atlantic and the Pacific will mingle. But these are only the means and accidents of the thing from which we may judge of the thing itself, as a workman's tools disclose the nature of his occupation. These tokens mean that a great nation is rising into existence upon the Pacific shores, not as of old nations grew, but born a nation, born in a day complete in the attributes of sovereignty, freedom, capacity and strength.
But it will not do for me to dwell on this point. I turn from it to ask you to contemplate the subject of the Christian influence you are proposing to exert over the character and destinies of that rising republic.
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* Guizot’s History of Civilization in France.
It is only in its remote connexions and religious aspect, that this mission to California can rise to a comparison with the other view I have suggested. For what are these two men, good and able men as they surely are, among so many? And what is your pecuniary investment in their lives and fortunes in these days of risks and enterprise?
Nevertheless, the principles which govern you, the results at which you aim, the Christian agencies you employ, all go to invest your undertaking with an attractiveness for the philosopher, the statesman, the philanthropist and the Christian. There is a conviction in every mind that these few missionaries are capable of exerting the widest influence, and of effecting the most lasting results. That persuasion rests on a general confidence in the power of the truth they carry with them, and of the spirit they bear. They go there for the sole purpose of doing good to others. Of the thousands who are now there, how many, think you, have gone with any such disposition as this? How many have preserved a decent measure of the neighborhood kindness and brotherly feeling which make the charm of American civilization? Why, sir, when this emigration began, it was upon the modern, socialist principle. They formed companies, joint stock associations. They entered into solemn league and covenant to be kind to one another. They bound themselves by promise and penalty. All were to share equally in the apportionment of the golden manna. The sick should not lose his portion, nor he who acted the parts of doctor and nurse his. "An omer for every man according to the number of their persons. He that gathered much should have nothing over, and be that gathered little should have no lack." But, Sir, they did not calculate on the strength of the selfish principle when called into full activity. When those companies landed these bonds snapped asunder like reeds and rushes. The clans were instantly dissolved, and their members resolved into the great mass of unformed society there. Who is not glad that it was so? A Republican State, a Christian Church, cannot be formed out of clans. The clans must first be broken up, and every man must acquire a higher interest in the general good, before State can be founded, and Christian institutions established, and society governed by law. But what does the fact show? It is one of the faintest illustrations of that intense spirit of selfishness and worldliness which prevail there, where every man is for himself and for the State only as the means of self-defence.
Sir; I do not imagine our brethren will allay this spirit of selfishness at once and alone. But Divine Providence will be before them in this very work, and will prepare the way for them to accomplish much. Time and disappointment, sickness and sorrow, are laboring there in advance, and these men will enter into their labors. The hand of Providence will put away the lump of gold before men's eyes, and then, sir, our brethren can instruct the disappointed ones how to look into eternity. Sir, it is impossible for us to calculate the value of a disinterested and competent Christian minister, surrounded by the circumstances which are now forming in that territory. I believe that it is impossible for us to compute the value they will bear in the estimation of the people themselves. They will confess the higher character of this effort of your society by the respect they will show to your representatives. Where all are only intent on gain they will yield a silent, and often an open, admiration, of the man who disdains it. A gentleman, who is a member of my own congregation, was present at the sale of lots in San Francisco; when your missionary was outbid in the purchase of a church lot; and he witnessed the generous act of the man who rescued it from the cupidity of a sordid speculator and then nobly gave it to Mr. Wheeler. "Sir," said this friend of mine to me the other day, "those men would have skinned each other's teeth, but not a man of them, save that outbidding speculator, would have hurt a hair of Mr. Wheeler's head."
But there is another light in which I regard this Christian effort in behalf of California. I mean that of its timeliness. The time for sowing seed is in the Spring. We have too many examples in point, which show that intelligence, and schools, and commerce, and republicanism, are no protection against a general repugnance towards evangelical sentiments in communities which have acquired age and fixed habits. We know how it is in Delaware, and Maryland, and New Orleans. To some extent it may be said, of schools and of books, that the natural growth of society will demand them. But the natural growth of society, although it may demand ministers, will never demand ministers after God's own heart. If there is a tide in the affairs of nations, as in those of individuals, it must be taken at the favoring flow.
It is in connexion with the evident application of this principle to the case in hand, that I wish to say a word, in conclusion, respecting our duty and the duty of our churches to sustain this mission. I will not attempt to compute the advantages of an early occupation of all the prominent points in this new territory, over a feeble, expensive, and tardy effort, after the country has been filled up, and the people are contented to live without churches and ministers. But I do say that we know enough of the difference, we can derive lessons enough from our Western States on this point, to come directly to the conclusion that a wise economy, a prudent foresight, an enterprising Christianity, are summoning us to try to keep even pace with this mighty emigration - to be abreast of it, and, if possible, to be in advance of it.
It is not with this mission as it is with our missions to the East. There the population is fixed and the institutions of the land are established. Even the men you appoint next year to labor in our Western States will find things much as they are now. You can calculate upon a stated supply for many years to come. But here, other principles come in. We are colonizing a country, and we are doing it at once. Your missionaries must take society, not in its acquired, nor even in its transition state, but in its forming state.
Besides it has been ascertained that up to a certain point of supply, which has not yet been reached, the men you send there will be taken off your hands and welcomed at once to the most inviting fields of usefulness. Never was there such a year as this for a little generous enterprise, for borrowing a little wisdom from the children of this world, for much prayerful consideration of our duty to God and to our country. Sir, there is a sense in which, as Christians, we must adapt ourselves, our movements and our policy, to the demands of the age. The Tract Society, with its colporteur agency, which is, as you know, only a modification of the old Baptist practice in England of lay preaching, is doing it with astonishing success. Our colleges are doing it. Only yesterday the corporation of one of our oldest and most honored colleges in New England voted to do it. They said, in effect, "The age demands something which we are not giving it, and, the people helping us, we will answer that demand. Our college shall no longer be a Protestant monastery. The iron rule, the fixed curriculum of a four years' course shall be broken. We will no longer stand upon our academic dignity. We will not subtract from our former teaching, but we will add to it. He who cannot stay four years may stay one. He who would stay twice four years shall not be turned away. What the people need, and what the people ask for, in this new age, we will give them. We will open our Pyrean Spring to the weary one who wants but a single draft. Our muzzin shall no longer give his daily sing-song dole, morning, noon, and night, ‘Great is Allah! and Mahomet is his prophet,’ but we will change him into an evangelical crier, the burden of whose song shall be ‘Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters!"
Sir, we need not to change our principles, though colleges do. All that is required of us is to act upon old and admitted principles. All that we have to do is to keep our eyes open to what is going on in the world, upon the waving banner of our Lord, and the distant field to which He summons us.
I have not spoken of the relations which Christian California, a few years hence, will sustain to the great missionary movement of Christendom. The lines of that little diagram you printed in your Home Mission Record, those diverging lines, leading off to the Islands of the sea, to China and Japan, to Sumatra and Java, and India, are only the foreshadowing and reasonable promise of what will yet be accomplished for the conversion of heathen lands, if, in this your hour and crisis, you, and the churches you represent, are found faithful.
I will only add, that I hope this society will rely upon the confidence and support of our people in prosecuting this mission with zeal and earnestness. You have that to appeal to now which you have never had before, which you will wait long for before you have again. No village your agent visits is without its representatives in California. There is scarce a city church which has not members there. Imagine how many wives, and mothers, and fathers, and pastors, have mentioned fond names to these our two brethren, and have asked their care and sympathy for the roving loved ones. Your appeal will be to the tenderest feelings of the family, and to the most enlightened Christian philanthropy. If Congress cannot agree on the political character and relations of this new State, all can agree to aid you in laying the foundations of religion and in rearing institutions which shall survive when the rivers' beds are washed of their gold, and the mountain's rock is exhausted of its solid ore.
And if, indeed, our Atlantic States are to be torn from each other's close embrace; if sedition, insane and intolerant sectionism, are to rend this nation in twain, and this glorious Union, cemented by the blood of our fathers, is to be accounted an unholy thing; if the monarchies of the old world are to be strengthened by the fall of this republic, then on the peaceful shores of the Pacific, separated by mountains and deserts from the din or our ensanguined and warring States, another republic shall again try the experiment of freedom, unspotted by some of our national sins, warned by our failure, and cherishing among the most powerful conservators of its liberty and glory, the Christian men, the Schools, the Churches, the Gospel, yon are now planting on those shores.
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