The national mind has
been quickened, the national heart has been opened, the national
disposition prepared, but there remains the important work of
dissipating the mists that still linger, of brushing away these
wild theories and fancies, and of enabling it to form a clear
and intelligent judgment of itself, and a true and just
appreciation of its own constitution tendencies,--and destiny;
or, in other words, of enabling the nation to understand its own
idea, and the means of its actualization in space and time.
Every living nation has an idea given it by Providence to
realize, and whose realization is its special work, mission, or
destiny. Every nation is, in some sense, a chosen people of God.
The Jews were the chosen people of God, through whom the
primitive traditions were to be preserved in their purity and
integrity, and the Messiah was to come. The Greeks were the
chosen people of God, for the development and realization of the
beautiful or the divine splendor in art, and of the true in
science and philosophy; and the Romans, for the development of
the state, law, and jurisprudence. The great despotic nations of
Asia were never properly nations; or if they were nations with a
mission, they proved false to it--, and count for nothing in the
progressive development of the human race. History has not
recorded their mission, and as far as they are known they have
contributed only to the abnormal development or corruption of
religion and civilization.
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