metaphysical creeds, insisted upon their authority, and pronounced anathemas upon all who thought differently.

Further, as the Roman Church grew rich and strong under imperial favor, with the conversion of Constantine that Church became proud and arrogant, ambitious and self-seeking, asserting dominion over other churches, adding new dogmas and superstitions to the faith, and making the pope another Cæsar, with the triple crown of the sword, the purse, and the keys of heaven. I would not do injustice to Greek and Latin Christianity, or withhold respect and honor from the Greek and Latin fathers who were shining lights in the early centuries. But their great services lead me the more to deplore, that under the shelter of their names the Greek Church and the Roman Church were given over to intolerance and bigotry, to superstition and despotism. In the East and in the West, those churches, instead of flooding their respective regions of the globe with the light of truth, and the knowledge of the Sun of Righteousness, made religion more and more a matter of dogma and ritual, a concern of prelates and popes, a political union of Church and State. They introduced among the people the worship of images and relics. They provoked the rise and spread of Mahomedanism, which devoured the original seats and strongholds of Christianity. The condition of Russia to-day illustrates what I have said as to the degeneracy and autocracy of the Greek Church, and history shows that a somewhat similar condition existed in the countries of southern and western Europe so long as they were vassals of Rome.

The experiment of an imperial and royal Church, with magisterial authority, with high dignitaries, with immense revenues, with splendid temples and grand cathedrals, with gorgeous equipages, have been tried and tested. It has developed ambition, avarice, arrogance, intolerance, among popes and prelates, among emperors and kings, with a few honorable exceptions in those

offices. Instead of carrying the light of truth and the knowledge of salvation around the globe, and sending forth hosts of men like Francis of Assisi to make peace on earth, and good-will among men, they have sent forth armies and made wars of conquest and spoil. And alas, in this twentieth century of Christ, great nations that bear his name are building heavier battleships than ever in a propaganda of trade, in armed rivalry with each other, to make spoil of Africa, India and China, and their multitudinous populations. Instead of the golden rule and the open door and the open hand, in a world-wide communion and fellowship with all mankind, each nation seeks its own, and cares only for its own advantage.

America, it is said, is now the richest country in the world. But that is nothing to our honor, unless we are the most just and the most charitable. The origin of our nation was in the humble beginning made by Captain John Smith at Jamestown in 1607, and at Plymouth by the Pilgrim Fathers in 1620. "The Pilgrim Fathers," says Goldwin Smith, "were the living image of the first two centuries, in a real sense the founders of the new world." They planted the nation, not upon the model of Greece and Rome, but upon the principles of the Christian religion, in the interest of the conscience and reason of mankind, of human liberty, of human brotherhood, and of human well-being. The Puritans, the Huguenots, the Dutch, the Scotch-Irish, the Quakers, who were the principal people among the founders of the different colonies, were followers of the Reformation. There were only a few members of the Roman Church, and they were under Lord Baltimore, the founder of Maryland, a man of liberal mind, the pronounced enemy of intolerance and bigotry. Many had suffered under religious persecution in the countries from which they came. They brought with them the Bible. They knew no higher authority. They made it their rule of faith and of life. It was the living word of their God and Saviour. They read it

in family worship. It furnished a text for every sermon. They differed in their interpretation of many passages, but the appeal was always to the law and the testimony, and with freedom of inquiry, and liberty of conscience, and the right of private judgment, it was universally conceded that every man should be fully persuaded in his own mind. They organized themselves into different and independent societies and the churches managed their own affairs. They remembered the Sabbath day and built their humble meeting-houses for public worship and the ministry of the Word.

From the beginning American Christianity was wholly apart from the Roman obedience. The words of the Lord Jesus, "One is your master, and all ye are brethren," reverberated as loudly upon our shores as when they were first spoken in the land of Israel. Equally obnoxious to our ancestors, to American Christianity from the beginning, was the royal supremacy in the Church of England. Henry VIII was no more worthy of esteem or entitled to obedience than Leo X. Both were usurpers. The apostolical succession of English bishops was equally a figment with the papal supremacy. American Christianity, like primitive Christianity, knew them not. The Anglican Church sent missionaries into the Colonies. They had the support of the royal governors, and they received large glebes of land from the crown, as in the city of New York. But the people generally were in other churches. There was no Anglican or Roman bishop in the land until after the Revolutionary War. In that war the Anglican clergy, with some noble exceptions, were on the British side; many left the country. When we became a nation, there was more liberty of conscience and freedom of worship in America than in any other part of the world. Every church had the right to manage its own affairs, choose its own officers, and keep the unity of the spirit in the bonds of peace. The origin of all the religious denominations in our country was in the coming together

of congregations previously organized, and independent of each other, and establishing those denominations, at first in small ecclesiastical bodies, which have since grown into "general" synods, conferences, assemblies, conventions, as they are variously called. The economy of the American Church has been the same as that of the American commonwealth. As the principle of local self-government in town and city and country organization is carried out here to the greatest possible extent, in opposition to the centralization and consolidation of power is the larger state and national organizations, and we have here such an equality of personal and political rights and responsibilities as never existed before in any country, and growing out of it an ever elastic tendency to equality of conditions, and the advancement of society; so the strength and honor and advancement of the Christian religion among us depends originally and chiefly upon the fidelity of the individual and self-governed churches to the cause of truth and goodness, to the spirit and principles of Christianity, in their respective communities. The people, the Christian men and women, have the primal charge of the moral and religious order of those. communities. So it was in the beginning of Christianity in America, as described by one who had made it a profound study. "The voluntary support of schools and churches and benevolent institutions, is one of the most remarkable characteristics of the American people. On the spot where the first trees of the forest were felled, near the log cabins of the pioneers, are to be seen rising together the church and the schoolhouse. So has it been from the beginning," said Daniel Webster, in 1851, and we will join in his prayer, as he added, "God grant that it may thus continue."

"On other shores, above their mouldering towns,

In solemn pomp the tall cathedral frowns;
Simple and frail, our lowly temples throw

Their slender shadows on the paths below.

Scarce steal the winds, that sweep the woodland tracks,
The larch's perfume from the settler's axe,

'Ere, like a vision of the morning air,

His slight-framed steeple marks the house of prayer.
Yet Faith's pure hymn, beneath its shelter rude,
Breathes out as sweetly to the tangled wood,

As where the rays through blazing oriole pour
On marble shaft and tesselated floor."

So it was in Iowa sixty and seventy years ago, whether the worship of God was celebrated in log houses or under the great dome of the sky. Wherever we met it was a sanctuary, a Bethel, and every place was hallowed ground. I came to the territory in

1 A devout bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church, after looking reverently at twelve of the English cathedrals, and sharing the stately worship in several of them, upon returning to his diocese, said to his clergy: "I can testify in all sincerity that a plain service in any one of our least elaborate churches or mission chapels touches a tenderer place in my affections, and wakens a warmer sympathy, than the pillars and arches, the marble and the gold, the carvings and memorial tablets of the grandest of them." 1

1 Memoir of Frederic Dan Huntington, p. 381.