At the last anniversary of the American Home Missionary Society, Rev. John P. Gulliver made an eloquent address on the duty of bringing the American people under the full influence of Christian principle, in an argument drawn from the bearings of our national example on the people of other lands. Christianity, he said, alone can make the nations free. We fully believe in this sentiment. In answer to the question, How is Christianity to effect this result?—Mr. Gulliver’s answer was: America is to be the agent.

Other nations, he thought, might do much in working out this great result; but the chief hopes of the friends of freedom, he suggested, are centered upon this country. The world needs an example; and he pointed to what the example of this nation has already done, imperfect as it is. “It is doing, at this moment, more to change the political condition of man than all the armies and navies,—than all the diplomacy and king-craft of the world.” If it be so, if, as the speaker declared, “the battle of the world’s freedom is to be fought on our own soil,” it would be interesting to look at the obstacles in the way. The United States must present a very different example from that exhibited the last twenty-five years, and now exhibited, before this country will be the agent of Christianity in evangelizing the world. Think of three millions of our countrymen in chains! Think of the large numbers held by ministers of the gospel and members of churches! Think of the countenance given to slave-holders by our ecclesiastical assemblies, by Northern preachers, by Christian lawyers, merchants, and mechanics! Think of the platforms, adopted by the two leading political parties of the country, composed partly of religious men! Think of the dumbness of those that minister at the altar, in view of the great national iniquity, and then consider the effects of such an example upon other nations, Christian and Heathen!

Dr. Hawes is stated to have said at the last annual meeting of the A. B. C. F. M., that Dr. John H. Rice said, in his hearing, more than twenty years ago: “I do not believe the Lord will suffer the existing type or character of the Christian world to be impressed on the heathen.” We also heard the remark, and believe that Dr. Rice, in alluding to the state of religion in this country, said, “it was so far short of what Christianity required, that sanguine as many were that the United States was speedily to be the agent of the world’s conversion, he did not believe, for one, that God would suffer the Christianity of this country, as it then was, to be impressed upon the heathen world.” If the character of our religion was thus twenty years ago, what is it now? As a religious people we have been boastful. We have acted as if we thought God could not convert the world without the instrumentality of this country. It is far more probable that the converted heathen will send missionaries to the United States to teach us the first rudiments of Christianity, than that this country, at the present low ebb of religion, will be the agent of converting heathen nations to God.

Dr. Hawes believed “that if the piety of the church were corrected and raised to the standard of Paul, God would soon give to the Son the heathen for his inheritance.” No doubt of it. Such piety would do away with chattel slavery, with caste, with slavery platforms, with ungodly rulers, with Indian oppression, with divorcing Christianity from the ballot-box, with heathenism at home. Let us pray for such piety; and that hundreds of such men as Rice and Hawes may lift up their voices like a trumpet, and put forth corresponding action, until the nation shall be regenerated and become fit to enlighten, and, through the grace of God, save a dying world.