Great as they are, and greater far to be, the United States, too, are
but a series of steps in the eternal process of creative thought.
And here is, to my mind, their final justification, and certain
perpetuity. There is in that sublime process, in the laws of the
universe--and, above all, in the moral law--something that would make
unsatisfactory, and even vain and contemptible, all the triumphs of
war, the gains of peace, and the proudest worldly grandeur of all the
nations that have ever existed, or that (ours included) now exist,
except that we constantly see, through all their worldly career,
however struggling and blind and lame, attempts, by all ages, all
peoples, according to their development, to reach, to press, to
progress on, and ever farther on, to more and more advanced ideals.
The glory of the republic of the United States, in my opinion, is
to be that, emerging in the light of the modern and the splendor of
science, and solidly based on the past, it is to cheerfully range
itself, and its politics are henceforth to come, under those universal
laws, and embody them, and carry them out, to serve them. And as only
that individual becomes truly great who understands well that, while
complete in himself in a certain sense, he is but a part of the
divine, eternal scheme, and whose special life and laws are adjusted
to move in harmonious relations with the general laws of Nature, and
especially with the moral law, the deepest and highest of all, and the
last vitality of man or state--so the United States may only become
the greatest and the most continuous, by understanding well their
harmonious relations with entire humanity and history, and all their
laws and progress, sublimed with the creative thought of Deity,
through all time, past, present, and future.
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