Two hundred years have gone by since this completed organization of
our noble commonwealth. Her free and liberal principles then still
remained in large measure to be learned by some of the other American
colonies. From the very start she was the chief conservator of what
was to be the model for all this grand Union of free States--a
character which she has never lost in all the history of our national
existence. Six generations of stalwart freemen has she reared beneath
her shielding care to people her own vast territory and that of many
other States, no one of which has ever failed in truthfulness to the
great principles in which she was born. Always more solid than noisy,
and more reserved than obtrusive, she has ever served as the great
balance-wheel in the mighty engine of our national organization. Her
life, commingled with other lives attempered to her own, now pulsates
from ocean to ocean and from the frozen lakes to the warm Gulf waters,
all glad and glorious in the unity and sunshine of constitutional
government in the hands of a free people. With her population drawn
from all nationalities to learn from her lips the sacred lessons of
independent self-rule, she has sent it forth as freely to the westward
to build co-equal States in the beauty of her own image, whilst four
millions of her children still abide in growing happiness under her
maternal care. Verily, it was the spirit of prophecy which said, two
hundred years ago, "_God will bless that ground_."
That blessing we have lived to see. May it continue for yet many
centennials, and grow as it endures! May the faith and spirit of the
men through whose piety and wisdom it has come still warm and animate
the hearts of their successors to the latest generations! May no
careless or corrupt administration of justice or "looseness" or
infidelities of the people come in to bring down the wrath of Heaven
for its interruption! May the sterling principles of our happy freedom
be made good to us and our posterity by the good keeping of them in
honest virtue and obedience, and in due reverence of Him who gave
them, and who is the God and Judge of nations! May those sacred
conditions of the divine favor "which descend not with worldly
inheritances" be so embedded in the training and education of our
youth that the spirit of the children may not be a libel on the faith
and devotion of their fathers!
Centuries have passed, but the God of Gustavus Adolphus, of the
Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock, of William Penn, and of the hero-saints of
every age and country still lives and reigns. Men may deny it, but
that does not alter it. His government and Gospel are the same now
that they have ever been. What he most approved and blessed in their
days he most approves and blesses in ours. And may their fear and love
of him be to us and our children a copy and a guide, to steer in
safety amid the dangerous rapids of these doubtful times!
"And thou, Philadelphia, the virgin settlement of this province, named
before thou wert born! what love, what care, what service, and what
travail has there been to bring thee forth and preserve thee from such
as would abuse and defile thee! My soul prays to God for thee, that
thou mayest stand in the day of trial, that thy children may be
blessed of the Lord, and thy people saved by his power."