The Hand of God in American History

Concurred. S. N. GIFFORD, Clerk. SERMON. “Tiie Lord our God be with us, as he was with our fathers: let him not leave us, nor forsake us.” 1 Kings viii. 57. When St. Paul stood before that famous court, of which the poets and orators of Greece tell such proud things, he proclaimed to them the God they knew not, filling up the inscription to r the unknown God with the name of Jehovah. He tells them more of God in a few minutes, than Plato had done in all his life. He brings the matter closely home to them, and makes them feel as if in contact with God; not with an ideal merely, but with a living, personal Being, whose providence is directed at once to the individual interests of men, and the highest interests of nations. " Seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things : and hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation ; that they should seek the Lord, if haply they The Hand of God in American History . might feel after him, and find him.” Such is the divine basis of that institution which we call the State, and such the ultimate religious end of its existence. Hot in force, nor in any mutual com¬ pact, nor yet in the family, does the State have its origin. The family and the State may seem to be more intimately related, but they are in fact totally distinct from each other. The State cannot he the natural product of the family, for it is animated by another kind of spirit. The family is the sphere of alfection and custom, the State is the sphere of justice ; the family is the product of nature, the State is not simply the product of nature, but is evolved under the action and control of Providence, and the tendency of its history, both as to its limitations and powers, is to lead it to God, who exercises that provi¬ dence, and is the source of that spirit of justice which is its root and life. The more thoroughly a nation deals with its history, the more decidedly will it recognize and own an overruling Providence therein, and the more religious a nation will it become; while the more superficially it deals with its history, seeing only secondary causes and human agencies, the more irreligious will it be. If the history of any The Hand of God in American History. nation is the development of the latent possibili¬ ties existing in its special nature, it is also the record of a Divine Providence furnishing place and scope for that development, creating its op¬ portunities, and guiding its progress. History is not a string of striking episodes, with no other connection but that of time. It is rather the working out of a mighty system, by means of regularly defined principles as old as creation, and as infallible as divine wisdom. With this truth in view, we approach our chosen theme, — The Hand oe God in American History. Not inappropriate do we deem it, that we trace along the line of our history how God was with our fathers, and recall and reaffirm in this presence the truth of our increasing depend¬ ence upon him for the continued prosperity of our country and people. 1. Observe the hand of God in the wise and beneficent timing of events in the dawn of our history. The events of history are not accidents. There are no accidents in the lives of men or of nations. We may go hack to the underlying cause of every event, and discover in each God’s overruling and intervening wisdom. It has been The Hand of God in American History. said that history is the biography of communities; in another, and profounder, sense, it is the auto¬ biography of him " who worketh all tilings after the counsel of his own will,” and who is gra¬ ciously timing all events in the interests of his Christ, and of the kingdom of God on earth. Tracing the history of men, we find the most trivial and seemingly fortuitous things issuing beyond all human expectation or intention in the sublimest events ; we see men planning and working with only their own more immediate and material interests in view, and yet a power be¬ hind them is noiselessly and effectually, though possibly for generations unobserved, overruling their action to the furtherance of higher, more widely extended, and more permanent purposes. Human freedom and human responsibility in bringing about either good or evil, are not to be pushed aside; providence is not fatalism; but, on the other hand, man’s free activities do not prove the despotism of a blind chance, shifting as man’s caprice may dictate. Neither social order, moral progress, nor a Christian civilization, can spring out of clfance. These demand a prevision and adjustment of causes keener and mightier than man with his wisest forethought and highest The Hand of God in American History. 11 intelligence can exercise. There are influences which man can wield, and should control, aright; there are others which God alone originates and shapes. There are, again, other influences which are under human management, but which become mighty for good only by their timing ; and this timing is sometimes a visible, but more frequently an invisible, interposition of God’s overruling care, only truly seen after many generations have passed away. God’s hand is seen in the starting, speeding, retarding, and matching such coincident and colliding influences as mark the progress and constitute the varied crises of history. …