Farewell to the First Congregational Church in Norwalk, Conn. (bound with other addresses)

fied with the cause of truth and freedom in the des- tinies of this vast continent. I need not tell how God wrested Canada from its grasp, and freed our fathers from a subtle and dangerous foe on the North ; how he ' defeated its designs on the Ohio ; how he severed this land from the mother country when her help was no longer needed, and when her power and designs were hostile to the growth of the colonies, and to their enjoyment of true religious Kberty. Then God took Louisiana from the control of the Pope ; a domain large enough for kingdoms ; a loss to the man of sin eventually greater than to lose several of the most important kingdoms of Eu- rope. Then Florida was added to the area of free- dom and ..truth. Then Texas ; then New Mexico and California; alas, I -say not by what measures and what injustice on the part of man ; I speak only of the manifest and merciful designs of the Lord, who causeth the wrath of man to praise him, and the remainder of wrath he will restrain. Observe, also, the hand of the Lord in another respect. In the early days of the colonies, their remoteness, and the difficulties of their situation se- cure their religious liberties. When they become independent the dense forest shuts in their Western border. Population must advance slowly^ with in- describable toil ; this gives time for our new insti- tutions to become consolidated, and for the native population to multiply to such an extent as not to be overwhelmed by an immense and promiscuous emigration from foreign lands. At length the na- tion comes into such a state, that with almost any 8 possible amount of emigration it shall remain Ameri- can, and our institutions and religious liberties be pre- served. By the time that this is accomplished, then the tide of emigrants has reached the great lakes, and is rushing through the passes of the Mississippi. It spreads abroad over the immense prairies all ready for the culture of the plough. Just at this period, famine and oppression stir up sev;eral of the nations of "Europe, so that nothing but the lack of ability, and the limited means of transportation, prevents their landing in solid masses upon our shores. And now, also, the Lord has designs to be accomplished on the borders of the -Pacific, and probably among the Asiatic nations beyond. It is needful to bring with all speed an immense population to California. For this purpose, as it appears. He has, from the creation, stored up the treasures of gold, which, when the time has come, shall draw countless mul- titudes thither. In two short years these multitudes have crossed the plains, and poured through the passes of the Rocky Mountains. They have doubled the Southern Cape ; they have poured in streams across the isthmus ; they have ascended the waters of the Pacific ; they have formed an American State on the shores of the ocean that unites the West with the East. In all these great designs, so linked together, and so adjusted to each other in time, the Lord appears to have some great and good purpose to accomplish for the nations of the earth, and for his cause, by means of this American land ; and to us he commits the great work of making this land Christian. "What, tlien,, is this land ? wliat are its capacities and prospects? Here are twenty-four millions of people ; yet the one strong impression of an inhabit- ant of the Eastern shore as he travels Westward, is, that the land is well-nigh vacant. Ohio, that within the recollection of many here present was almost an unbroken wilderness, now pushes hard upon two millions of inhabitants ; yet as the stran- ger passes through the central parts of the State, from her beautiful city on Lake Erie to her metro- polis on the Ohio, he finds, for a hundred mUes toge- ther, a forest, broken at distances by now and then a clearing aad a settlement; a dense, primeval fore§t of trees whose height and magnitude fill him with wonder, even after a famUiar acquaintance with the primitive forests yet remaining in the North and East. He passes down the waters of the Ohio, winding among hills and dales interspersed at dis- tances with bottom lands of exceeding richness and beauty ; he passes by numerous towns and villages ; but the great impression that remains on his mind is, that the land is -weU-nigh vacant. Onward he passes for hundreds of miles : at times the hills seem to recede and to disclose an unlimited prospect of the valleys and plains of. Indiana on one side, and of Kentucky on the other ; but the impression re- .mains that the land is weU-nigh vacant. As he en- ters the Mississippi, he catches a glimpse of the broad and rapid stream, rolling its deep current downward between two immense walls of forests. The steamer meets the current as it turns to the North, and quivers at every joint. With difficulty 10 she struggles onward against a stream every where boiling, eddying, and rejoicing in its might, and every where bordered by an immense dark forest. Onward the traveller passes, his heart swelling with strange emotions of loneliness and grandeur. He passes amid solitudes so vast that it seems to him as ■ though a New England State might be laid down there and lost, till it should be forgotten. The smoke of St. Louis at length appears rising above the forests in the distance. On the one side rise the castellated rocks and bluffs of Missouri, on the other spread out the vast intervale", or bottom lands of Illinois ; nearly equalling in extent, and rivalling in richness the land of Egypt when it was the gran- ary of the world. He enters the great State, and crosses the great river of Missouri. He ascends the table lands which overlook the valleys of the three great rivers, the Missouri, the Mississippi, and the Illinois. He gazeSj till on every side vision is lost in the distance, over thje widespread fertile plains. But though St. Louis is at his feet with her almost one hundred thousand inhabitants ; though here and there large and lovely villages dot these plains, the impression remains, that the land is well-nigh va- cant. Here the streams of emigrants that pour in countless numbers along the valley of the Missis- sippi and over the great lakes, spread themselves out and are lost. The traveller once more pursues his way. He passes along the Eastern border of Iowa, now and then climbing the bluffs that skirt the river, to the table lands from fifty, to two hun- dred feet above ; and though he has advanced some 11 hundreds of miles, he sees every where spread out that same interminable rolling prairie, with its waving grass, and its occasional groves of trees ; but the land is weU-nigh vacant. He ascends beyond the limits of the vast State of Illinois — he has coasted along its Western shore for six hundred miles, and most 6f the way her fertile plains have been spread out before him like one vast natural garden. He reaches Wisconsin. The river which below him re- ceives the accession of such streams as the Ohio, the Missouri, the Des Moines and the Iowa, seems scarcely to have abated any thing of its breadth or volume. He passes the romantic Dubuque, and the lovely Prairie du Chien ; he leaves the abodes of civilized man ; he enters the Mississippi Highlands, where the broad river spreading wide its surface, and embosoming numberless islands of green grass and groves of trees, winds between bluflfe wrought, as if by the hand of art, into every possible form of variety and beauty ; now the smooth conical hill, covered as if with a shaven lawn, and tufted at the summit with a cluster of .trees ; now rising iuto a broad mountain side, still covered with a smooth lawn, and dotted with trees like an orchard ; now a steep conical mound crowned with rocks seeming like the magnificent ruins of some ancient castle. Now a deep ravine opens far back into the land, disclosing ravine Opening into ravine in the distance, and valley opening into valley, bordered by cliffs, ter- minating, and^ succeeded by other valleys and cliffs in endless succession. Now he passes clusters of islands, and now the mouth of a broad river. Now 12 the river expands into a lake, along whose shores receding at a distance rise romantic cliflfe, softened into tints of beauty by the smoky atmosphere of summer, and fringed at their bases by continuous forests. Onward he passes amid scenery whose mingled wUdness and beauty, and whose exhaustless variety never suffer the eye to rest for nearly two hundred mUes ; but, where, save now and then an In- dian village, or a solitary woodcutter's hut, or a cou- ple of log cabins in a woody ravine, already digni- fied as a county seat, all is a wilderness. From now and then a roving way passenger he learns, that as you pass up these raviaes and reach the table land above, the same expanse of prairie and timber, and the same gently rolling surface of fertile lands spread out in interminable prospects, as he saw it so many hun- dred miles below. The voyage of a thousand miles from the mouth of the Ohio is at length completed. He ascends the high bluff to the flourishing town of St, Paul's. He hffcs up his eyes, and how immense the fields of forest and prairie which are spread out be- fore him there ! He passes the hills that skirt the rear of the town ; he crosses the prairie where the eye scarcely reaches the dim forest that bounds the Eastern horizon. He reaches the Palls of St. Antho- ny, where he meets again a New England village, with every token of thrift, order and comfort ; while the smooth green native meadow spreads round them like an ocean, with dim island forests in the distance. -He descends the stream, and climbs the high bluff where stands Fort Snelling, on a site un- .surpassed for the richness of the field spread out 13 before the vision on every side. He gazes upon the valley of the Minnesota ; with what beauty do the mingled prairies and woodlands slope down to the peaceful river, natural parks and meadows, equalling the most beautiful and best cultivated portions of the valley of the Hudson or of the Connecticut, and extending in endless succession tiU vision fades away in the distance ; but in all this region, looking West- ward, save the abodes of a few missionaries, there is no dwelling of civilized man. Here a tract of land larger than New England, has recently been ac- quired by treaty from the aborigines ; and here, fifty years hence, will be another New England in the West. And now the traveller pauses and thinks of the regions around him. Below him the Mississippi opens a navigation of twenty-two hundred miles to the Gulf of Mexico. The Minnesota, the river at his feet, takes rank in length before the Hudson ; and, at high water, is navigable Westward for three hundred miles. North of him is the colony of Pem- bina, whose people come down to trade, a journey of seven hundred miles. And he remembers that at St. Anthony he heard the hiss of the steamer which plies on the waters of the Mississippi, above the falls one hundred miles ; a distance which the removal of some obstructions is to increase to four hundred miles. He thinks of the Missouri stretch- ing its way to the West more than two thousand miles. He calls to mind its magnificent entrance into the Mississippi, and the immense volume which it pours through the State of Missouri^ He thinks 14