Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/471

Rh by the circulation of works which will meet the approval of all evangelical Christians.

The American Tract Society has thus made the press subserve for the evangelising of America. The best of the religious and moral literature of England and America is collected in these popular works, which are handsomely printed and furnished with beautiful woodcuts. Many hundred colporteurs are sent out to diffuse these over the whole Union, over its most remote portions, among foreigners, and in the wildernesses; and thus the evangelical church continues to the present day to scatter a gentle rain of manna over the land, as seed from the hand of the Great Sower; and the good which is thereby produced, and which springs up especially in the hearts of childhood and youth, is incalculable.

And if we turn from this great institution for the scattering of evangelical seed—which has now been imitated in many of the Northern States—to popular schools, to establishments for neglected humanity, for the criminal, for the sick, for the unfortunate of society; and above all to the increasing attention to these, and the labour which is bestowed upon them in the United States, it cannot be denied that they above all deserve the name of Christian States.

But you will say that this is merely one side of the picture, that you know very well that another life increases also in these states, a worship and a church which are not of God. I know it well also. The old serpent lives also on the soil of the New World. And call it Mammon-worship, slavery, despotism, mobocracy, or by whatever name you please, indicative of the principle of selfishness and lies, it lives, it grows there, as the tares among the wheat. Yes, it seems to me that the most essential impulses of the human spirit, for good as well as for evil, and which, during the ages of history, have sprung up and nourished in Asia and in Europe, have sprung up