A DISCOURSE.

I. Deut. 8:22: And thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these forty years.

II. 1 Kings 8:57: The Lord our God be with us as he was with our fathers, let him not leave us nor forsake us.

III. Levit. 25:10, 11: And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year. A jubilee shall that year be to you.

Our fathers! where are they?

They are with us still.

With us their names shall live
Through long succeeding years,
Embalmed with all our hearts can give,
Our praises and our tears.

Saint after saint they here

Have lived and loved and died;

And as they left us one by one,

We laid them side by side.

We laid them down to sleep,
But not in hope forlorn;

We laid them but to ripen there,
Till the last glorious morn.

We long to hear their voice,

To see them face to face,

To share their crown and glory then,
As now we share their grace.

Our fathers who were they?

Our fathers were patriots. They did not come to this country to learn liberty but because they loved it and would. here enjoy it more abundantly. They were patriot sons of patriot sires of the men who had fought under many a gallant leader and won many a hard earned victory. The blood of the men who sustained amid incredible hardship the Siege of Derry, and the ruthless barbarities of the Irish rebellion ran in their veins. With them resistance to oppression was obedience to God. Proud though poor, and cherishing liberty more than life, they have ever and everywhere been found firm, faithful and true, honest and honorable, indomitable in will, uncompromising in principle, and clinging to their rights with unconquerable tenaciy. They have always been a peculiar people. Pious without puritanic severity, jealous of their honor and chivalrous in their daring, they were always found equally reliant and reliable. Their piety, principles, and patriotism were a transmitted inheritance. They were found in the Waldenses and have among them preserved and perpetuated pure religion and political independence. They were found in ancient Scotland and maintained in its heath-clad mountains and inaccessible

glens an asylum for the truth as it is in Jesus and a rampart against Rome's tyrannous usurpations until the dawn of the reformation. They made Ireland for centuries the light of science and the garden of the Lord, and the heroic defender of the faith. They were revived by Wickliffe in England and by Jerome in Germany, until Luther in Saxony, Calvin at Geneva, Zwingle at Berne, Knox in Scotland, and our forefathers in North Ireland kindled with them such a flame of religious and civil freedom that it has never gone out, but is still illuminating with diffusive lustre the Eastern and Western continents.

In this country they have played a notable part. Their blood enters largely into the cementing material of the foundation on which it has been constructed. You will find their names among the master spirits who struggle for liberty in the church and in the State and contended anew unto blood. They drew up the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence a year before the National voice was heard, and they not only made declaration, they became independent; originated a government; instituted laws and appointed officers. Now the men who consummated this revolution were, to a man, Scotch-Irish Presbyterian ministers, elders, and church members. But even this was but the end of an effort made as early as 1725 to unite in combined and determined opposition to the impositions of the mother After long prevention by the existing authorities this led to the formation of a general Synod in 1764, which was the first body in the country to declare itself in favor of resistance, and an appeal to arms. To them was attributed all the blame of that revolution which was called rebellion in which they were prominent and even foremost. "A Presbyterian loyalist," says Mr. Reed, "was a thing unheard of." To the Standards and covenants of the Presbyterian church we owe the spirit, order, and, to some extent, even the words of the Declaration of Independence; and as Chief Justice Tigman says of the Constitution itself, It is also well known that Witherspoon, Alexander Hamilton and Joseph Reid, in whom more than any other man Washington confided, were Presbyterians, and that a large proportion of the heroes of the revolution were Presbyterians. Generals Morgan and Pickens and Colonels Campbell, Cleaveland, Shelby, Sumpter, Hayne and Morrow and many others, were Presbyterians and several of them ruling elders. Marion and Huger were also as Huguenots-Presbyterians. The chief framer of the Constitution of Pennsylvania-the first to proclaim universal and free toleration of religious opinion was a Presbyterian and the overthrow of the then existing establishment of religion in Virginia and in South Carolina and the complete divorce of the church and the State, was mainly owing to the efforts of the Presbyterian church.

In the war of 1812 which was made renowned by the victory of New Orleans by Gen. Jackson, who was a Presbyterian, when the lines of our city-now fast disappearing-were thrown up in expectation of a land attack it is pertinent to remark that your first pastor Dr. Andrew Flinn was in the habit of going from this pulpit, on the Sabbath, to exhort and pray with the citizens at work upon them.

In our present crisis the man who gave voice and volume to the spirit of Secession and inaugurated revolution is a Presbyterian. Dr. Thornwell whose eloquent and profound appeals are yet ringing in the ear of the whole people, Dr. Palmer, whose Patrick Henry oration aroused to impetuous action Louisiana and contiguous States, Van Dyke, whose bugle notes are still echoing through every mountain and valley in the land, and a host of other champions for the right, are Presbyterians. Judge Nesbit of Georgia who offered the resolution for secession in the convention and drew up their published address, is a ruling elder in the church at Macon, as Mr. Cobb is in the church at Athens.*

When therefore it is asked of our fathers where and what are they? We can answer: Their names are on the roll book of patriotic fame; and their perished doubt finds a shrined and tranquil grave where many of them fought and fell "by all their country's wishes blest."

Our Fathers! We may say of each of them what is-by his request-preserved as a perpetual memorial of a recently living and honorable member of this congregation, the last United States Judge but one who saw our cherished elder and Sabbath School Superintendent, with Simonton, Moffett, Budd, Bird, Whitney, McElroy, Clarke, Miller, Mustard, McNiels, Quigley, Robinson, Baker, and some fifty more connected with the congregation who have been in the ranks of our citizen soldiery performing the drudgery and risking all the danger demanded by our perilous position-"he loved his country and would have cheerfully died for it."

Gone are the great and good,
Who here, in peril stood
And raised their hymn,
Peace to the reverend dead.
The light that on their head
These fifty years have shed
Shall ne'er grow dim.

NOTE. The "Game Cock" State, as South Carolina is called, has colonized so much that it is quite propable she will, after a while, "rule the roost." As an instance, I will state that of the seven Governors of the seceding States, five are from the land sacred to the Palmetto; of the members of the late Texas Legislature, the majority were either born in the land of Nullification, or were removed only one generation from it, while the secession element now so active in Arkansas is wafted along mainly by those who have emigrated from South Carolina.