put their hands on the very spot where bold men spoke, or brave men died; shall we tear in pieces the roof that actually trembled to the words which made us a nation? It is impossible not to believe, if the spirits above us are permitted to know what passes in this terrestrial sphere, that Adams and Warren and Otis are to-day bending over us, asking that the scene of their immortal labors shall not be desecrated or blotted from the sight of men.

Consecrate it again, in the worship and memory of a people! Consecrate it, in order that, if another rebellion breaks out against the flag; if our young men need once more to have their hearts quickened to the sublime significance of the Republic which protects them; if once more we must rally flags and marshal ranks for the protection of liberty, the young men shall be able to look up to Faneuil Hall and the Old State House and these walls, as a quickening inspiration, before they leave these streets to go down and show themselves worthy of their fathers. Let these walls stand, if only to remind us that, in those days, Adams and Otis, advocates of the newest and extremest liberty, found their sturdiest allies in the pulpit; that our Revolution was so much a crusade that the Church led the van.

Summon it again, ye venerable walls, to its true place in the world's toil for good! Give us Mayhews and Coopers again; and let the children of the Pilgrims show that religious conviction, veneration for "the great of old," and a stern purpose that our flag shall everywhere and always mean justice, are a threefold cord holding this nation together, never to be broken. We have a great future before us, how grand, human forecast cannot measure, - yes, a great future endangered by many and grave perils. Our way out of these, faith believes in, but mortal eye wisdom to summon every ally, to

-

cannot see. It is

save every possible

help. Educate the people to noble purpose. Lift them to the level of the highest motive. Enforce by every possible appeal the influence of the finest elements of our nature. Let the great ideas - self-respect, freedom, justice, self-sacrifice - help each man to tread the body under his feet. This worship of great memories, noble deeds, sacred places, the poetry of history, — is one of the keenest ripeners of such elements. Seize greedily on every chance to save and emphasize these.

Give me a people freshly and tenderly alive to such influences, and I will laugh at money-rings or demagogues armed with sensual temptations. Men marvelled at the uprising which hurled slavery to the dust. It was young men who dreamed dreams over patriot graves, enthusiasts wrapped in memories! Marble, gold, and granite are not real; the only actual reality is an idea.

--

Gentlemen, I remember, Mr. Chairman, you will remember, also, that some six months ago the mayor and aldermen debated how they should use some eighteen or twenty thousand dollars left them by Jonathan Phillips to ornament the streets of Boston; and then the city government decided and decided very properly

that they could do no better with that money than place before the people a statue of the great mayor, Josiah Quincy, to whom this city owes so much. It was a very worthy vote under those circumstances; but if the great mayor were living to-day, he would be here with the Massachusetts- yes, he would be here, Mr. Chairman, with the Massachusetts Historical Society in his right hand, and the Mechanic Association in the other, and he would protest against the use of a dollar of that money for his personal honor until it had been first used to save this immortal legacy. I wish that I had a voice in that aldermanic corps; I would propose, with no

1

discredit to the great mayor let no one tear a leaf from his well-earned laurels! but it was the mechanics of Boston that threw tea into the dock; it was the mechanics of Boston that held up the hands of Sam Adams; it was the mechanics of Boston, Paul Revere one of them, that made the Green Dragon immortal, and I would take that eighteen thousand dollars and add fifty thousand more, and let the city preserve this building as a Mechanics' Exchange for all time. The merchants have their gilded room, fit gathering place for consultations ; but the men that carried us through the Revolution, caulkers! why, some men think we borrowed caucus from their name! - the men that carried us through the Revolution were the mechanics of Boston. Where do they gather to-day? On the sidewalks and pavements of Court Street, in the open air! We owe them a debt, in memory of what this grand movement, in its cradle, owed to them. I would ally the Green Dragon Tavern and the Sons of Liberty with the Old South, the grandsons, and great grandsons, and representatives of the men who made the bulk of that meeting before which Hutchinson quailed, and Colonel Dalrymple put on his hat and left the Council Chamber.

It was the message of the mechanics of Boston that Sam Adams carried to the governor and to Congress. They sent him to Salem and Philadelphia; they lifted and held him up till even purblind George III. could distinguish his ablest opposer, and learned to hate with. discrimination.

Shelter them under this roof; consecrate it in its original form to a grand public use for the common run of the people, the bone and muscle. It will be the normal school of politics. It will be the best civil-service reform agency that the Republican party can adopt and use to-day.

The influence of these old walls will prevent men, if anything can, from becoming the tools of corruption or tyranny. "Recall every day one good thought, read one fine line," says the German Shakspeare. Yes; let every man's daily walk catch one ray of golden light, and his pulse throb once each day nobly, as he passes these walls! No gold, no greed, can canker the heart of such a people. Once in their hands, neither need, greed, nor the clamor for wider streets will ever desecrate what Adams and Warren and Otis made sacred to the liberties of man!

THE BIBLE AND THE CHURCH.

I.

Address at the New England Antislavery Convention at the Melodeon, Boston, May 28-30, 1850. A clergyman by the name of Corliss having expressed his fears that some of the advocates of the slaves were lacking in a due appreciation of the Bible, and were therefore tending toward infidelity, Mr. Phillips rose and said:

I

WISH to say one word in regard to the remarks

which have been addressed to us, in order that the Antislavery enterprise may stand aright before this audience. It might be judged from the tone of the last speaker, that the Abolitionists see an enemy and an obstacle in the Bible. He has been entreating us to have greater regard for the Bible. He has been endeavoring to impress upon us reverence for that book. You might draw the inference that we needed such entreaties.

Now, in behalf of the Abolitionists, let me say, we have nothing to do with the Bible in regard to its merits or its faults, except in one point: does it sustain or rebuke slavery? If any speaker wanders beyond that, he speaks on his own responsibility; he speaks that for which this society is not amenable. Perhaps it may be impossible for him to avoid expressing his private opinion of the Bible as to other points, in the course of illustrating some Antislavery topic. Yet you are to take them as illustrations. And when my friend Foster introduced