onies in general and the inhabitants of their province in particular, should stand firm as one man to support and maintain all their just rights and privileges." Essex County and our old town has written many a page of purest history.

Men who had cleared these fields and trod these highways and sailed on this river, stood with Warren at Bunker Hill until he fell : the echoes of their muskets rolled off from Mount Defiance to Mount Hope, over the waters of Champlain : and they tracked the snows of Valley Forge with blood drawn from their shoeless feet by the lancets of ice. We have reason to remember these men to day,the gift of old Chebacco to the nation.

But more than this! golden deeds spring from golden ideas. Call the blood of the martyrs at Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill, if you will, the seeds of liberty; yet before they fell the soil was made ready for such a sowing. The conflict of battle is only an incident in the conflict of ideas. The desire for independence existed before the Boston Massacre of 1770 quickened the Colonial pulse, In the order of human events the Faneuil Halls antedate the Bunker Hills. Patrick Henry in the Virginian House of Burgesses rang the alarum bell eleven years before the "Great Virginian" unsheathed his sword. James Otis, fifteen years before Bunker Hill became famous, heralded the dawn of the coming day in his masterly speech against the "Writs of Assistance."

Where, then, was liberty born? Was it in the Virginian House of Burgesses? Was it in Faneuil Hall or the Old South? Was it born when the old bell of Philadelphia first rang out its weird tones a hundred years ago to day? Whose was the voice which first heralded the great idea? Was it that of statesman or philosopher? American Liberty was not born in Faneuil Hall; nor in the Quaker City. Its herald was not the silver tongued Otis, nor the calm, deliberate, Franklin, nor the impassioned Patrick Henry. The birth place of our national liberty was old Chebacco. The tones of the herald's voice were struck from our old hills of granite until they were echoed and reechoed from the pine forests of Maine to the magnolian groves of the South. Let the bells ring out their peals to day; but we must not forget that to John Wise, preacher in this old parish, the nation looks as "the first man in America ever known to oppose the idea of taxation without representation;" and whom England imprisoned because of his daring act.

As we cross the threshold of the second century of American Liberty, it is well that we notice the sources of the national strength. Three buildings in every New England town declare them :— -the Meeting House, the School House and the Town House,―save as the Meeting House served often as the Town House.

Fears

First; The Meeting House. The Pilgrim's grand aim was,-freedom to worship God; and a house for such a purpose was among the first to be built. Go through the villages and towns of New England, and observe how prominent a position was always chosen for its site,usually upon some hill. The central attraction of many a provincial history has been the old meeting house. We may think of it upon some cold, wintry, morning without carpet or fire to welcome the neighbors who came up to worship God. Faithful men were these, guarding each his family with his musket on the way thither. of the wild beasts and the savages were assuaged as the numbers of those on the way were augmented. A rare scene it was,- -the stacks of muskets and pikes before the door, guarded by sentinels chosen for the day while the worshipers were within. Faithful men were they stipulating that in proportion as the pastor fell short of an hour in his sermons a deduction should be made from his yearly support. (We do not learn, however, that if he exceeded the hour he received any increase of salary.)

It is not for us to condemn even the discomforts which they allowed. "In the settlements which grew up on the margin of the greenwood," says the historian Bancroft, "the plain meeting house of the congregation for the public worship was everywhere the central point. ✶✶✶✶ In every hand was the Bible; every home was a house of prayer; in every village all had been taught. **** The town was the religious congregation." Our fathers worshiped God.

In one of the dark days of the late war the heart of President Lincoln was full of sadness. There had been defeat after defeat through incompetency and neglect. In that hour of sadness the great War Secretary Stanton asked if he forgot that in every church, prayers were ascending to heaven in behalf of liberty; and the verv suggestion chased away the looks of sadness and brought to his weary face the old time joys.

When Britain had branded Samuel Adams and John Hancock as worthy of death, their hiding place was the old parsonage at Lexington.

The first man on the ground at Concord gun in hand after the ringing of the church bell, calling to battle, was Emerson the faithful pastor. It is said of Pastor Cleveland whose grave makes more sacred yonder field of the dead that "he preached all the men of his parish into the army and then went himself." Throughout our history the purest patriots have been they who have loved righteousness the most.

Second; The School House. "To the end that learning may not be buried in the graves of our forefathers" it was ordered that a school should be established in every town. We recall the fact that until 1647 no free public school had ever been seen on the earth. In that year the Massachusetts Colony gave out the new idea, and built the first school common to rich and poor of whatever religion or nationality, the first free and public school since the world began. Daring and wise men were such as they, and the trial of the almost 230 years has proved them right. They wrought for the future and they builded well,-anticipating what Horace Mann afterwards said, "A Republican form of government without intelligence in the people must be on a vast scale what a mad house without superintendent or keepers would be on a small one;-the despotism of a few succeeded by universal anarchy, and anarchy by despotism, with no change but from bad to worse."

In 1671 Sir Wm. Berkeley, Governor of Virginia, and a hater of Puritanism, wrote of his own Colony "I thank God there are no free schools nor printing; and I hope we shall not have these hundred years;" but though he thus spoke, the Puritan idea has prevailed and become what DeWitt Clinton avowed "the palladium of our freedom." Our work in respect to these is not done especially when we learn from the statistics of the last census that of the 28,228,945 persons in our nation ten years of age and upwards, 5,658,144 cannot write, giving us the ratio throughout the nation of one person in every five-ten years of age and upwards-who cannot write his name. Thus for the future, as in the past, to repeat the terse words of President Grant the great question is between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.”

Third; The Town House; or (shall we say?) the Town Meeting. Our fathers did their own thinking and made their own laws. Free speech was not allowed them in the Mother Country, but they found it here. The Town Meeting was a democracy; aud New England was

an organization of democracies; and it has not lost its character. An interdict of England was laid upon the Colonies that no town meeting, besides that for transaction of the annual business, should be held except by permission of the colonial governor; yet every town held its meeting every month, each meeting adjourned from the last. Said Gen. Gage to the Selectmen of Boston "this meeting is contrary to the law." "It is only an adjourned one" the Selectmen replied. "By such means," he said, "you may keep these meetings alive these ten years." Every town has held its meeting ever since, in spite of England.

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The Meeting House! The School House! The Town House! the three great roots of the Tree of Liberty, under the shadow of whose outspreading branches the men and women of a nation stood, notwithstanding General Gage had said, "aim a musket at them and they will run." The Sons of Liberty were made of sterner stuff. They were men of personal power, unawed by priest, unawed by king. They were men of culture, educated for a noble work. They were men of Hampden's stamp, consecrated to a divine leadership, believers in the great doctrine, "Righteousness exalteth a nation,"- and this is the meaning of patriotism. The patriot denies himself for the public good, exerts himself to extirpate the wrong, labors to uphold the truth.

The time of war does not furnish the only tests of patriotism. The mere fact that one enlists in an army is not a sure sign. It makes a great difference what army it is. Mere office-holding is not patriotism. Belknap, although in the Cabinet and titled honorable, was not a patriot. Patriotism means far more than the defence of one's birth place. The Southern army defended their homes. The patriot loves his country and devotes himself to the public weal and not to his own aggrandizement. But the welfare of any nation is conditional upon an obedience to the principles of righteousness. In other words, every people is bound to heed the laws of truth and justice. Apply this fact to the late war. The South made slavery its corner stone, and boasted that at some time Bunker Hill would sanction calling a slave roll from its sacred soil. But in order to give a semblance to their cause the greatest efforts were made to prove (1) that God sanctioned slavery ; and (2) that slavery was a benefit to the land;—an attempt to make slavery appear as righteousness to exalt the nation. A defence of sin is

not right; a defence of iniquity in the land is not patriotism, because sin and iniquity work ruin. Tested by this principle the Southern army in our late conflict were not patriots of the Nation. The Northern armies fought in order to keep this country undivided; to guard their own liberty and to give freedom to four million slaves. It was no sectional controversy; and surely it was not an attempt to cover up iniquity. We were contending for truth and justice. The men who fought to hold this land were patriots. Patriotism means more than a defence of so much soil and gravel, so many acres, and so many people. The patriot contends for what is right. He is recognized in time of peace as truly as in time of war. Now look into Wall Street! Great and wealthy cliques hoard up gold to the detriment of the nation, they do it for selfish ends. Black Friday was as great an injury to this Nation as any single attack of the Southern army. The man who wilfully injures his country in any respect is not a patriot.

Thus looking from the threshold of a second century it ill becomes us to forget our own obligations while we recount the deeds of the past. The great questions pending are moral questions. They touch the very life of our educational schools, never more dangerously threatened than now. Is it becoming in us to destroy the great free school system by instituting sectarian schools? This is a question we must meet; and let the words of President Grant, words born in the old Puritan idea be sounded far and near, “Resolve that neither the State nor Nation, nor both combined shall support institutions of learning other than those sufficient to afford every child growing up in the land, the opportunity of a good common school education, unmixed with sectarian, pagan or atheistical tenets."

Another and serious question confronts us at this very hour; Shall the Nation redeem its pledges? It is a question of honor. Shall we solemnly promise to pay, and then cheat the creditor? Is he a patriot who can substitute rag money for gold?

The great evil of intemperance is a problem for our cancellation, and we must meet it that we may stop our wasted resources, and save to the Nation the 100,000 who are annually dropping into their unhonored graves.

Whatever exalts a nation is included in righteousness; and righteousness is very broad.

The true patriot is morally righteous himself,