Excerpt from The State of the Nation: Considered in a Sermon for Thanksgiving Day, Preached at Melodeon, November 28, 1850
See the increase of material wealth; the buildings for trade and for homes; the shops and ships. This year Boston will add to her possessions some ten or twenty millions of dollars, honestly and earnestly got. Observe the neatness of the streets, the industry of the inhabitants, their activity of mind, ’the orderliness of the people, the signs of comfort. Then consider the charities of Boston; those limited to our own border, and those which extend farther, those beautiful charities which encompass the earth with their sweet influence. Look at the schools, a monument of which the city may well be proud, in spite of their defects.
But Boston, though we proudly call it the Athens of America, is not the pleasantest thing in New England to look at; it is the part Of Massachusetts which I like the least to look at, spite of its excellence. Look farther, at the whole of Massachusetts, and you see a fairer spectacle. There is less wealth at Provincetown in proportion to the numbers, but there is less want; there is more comfort; property is more evenly and equally distributed there than here, and the welfare of a country never so much depends upon the amount of its wealth as on the mode in which its wealth is distributed. In the State there are about one hundred and fifty thousand-families - some per sons, living with a degree of comfort which, I think, is not anywhere enjoyed by such a population in the Old world. They are mainly industrious, sober, intelligent and moral. Everything thrives; agriculture, manufactures, commerce.
The carpenter encourages the goldsmith; he that smites the anvil, him that smootheth with the hammer. Look at the farms where intelligent labor wins bread and beauty both out of the sterile soil and a’climate not over-indulgent. Behold the shops all over the State the small shops where the shoemaker holds his work in his lap, and draws his thread by his own strong muscles; and the large shops where machines, animate with human intelligence, hold with iron grasp their costlier work in their lap, and spin out the delicate staple of Sea Island cotton. Look at all this; it is a pleasant sight. Look at our hundreds Of Vil lages, by river, mountain and sea; behold the comfortable homes, the people well fed, well clad, well instructed. Look at the school-houses, the colleges of the people; at the higher seminaries of learning; at the poor man’s real college farther back in the interior, where the mechanic’s and farmer’s son gets his education, often poor, still some thing to be proud of. Look at the churches, where every Sunday the best words of Hebrew and Of Christian saints are read out Of this Book, and all men are asked, once in the week, to remember they have a Father in Heaven, a faith to swear by, and a Heaven to live for, and a Conscience to keep. I know the faults of these churches. I am not in the habit of excusing them, still I know their excel lence, and I will not be the last man to acknowledge that. Look at the roads of earth and iron which join villages together, and make the State a whole. Follow the fisher man from his rocky harbor at Cape Ann follow the mari ner in his voyage round the world Of waters; see the industry, the intelligence, and the comfort of the people. I think Massachusetts is a’ State to be thankful for. There are faults in her institutions and in her laws, that need change very much. In her form Of society, in her schools, in her colleges, there is much which clamors loudly for alteration, -very much in her churches to be Christian ized. These changes are going quietly forward, and will in time be brought about.
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