This is my wish. And I can promise you one thing, I will not detain you by many words.
“For what purpose are you going to America—what do you desire to see there?” was the question which you and many other of my friends in Denmark put to me before I embarked. I desired to see—the approaching One.
For One there is who has silently advanced onward through time, from the beginning. Bloody ages, brilliantly splendid epochs, are merely dissimilar chambers through which he advances, silently, calmly, becoming more and more distinct, through the twilight veil, until he reaches that period on the threshold of which he now stands, contemplated by many with rapture, by many, too, with fear. And if it be asked, whose is the form before which thrones totter, crowns fall off, and earthly purple grows pale, the reply is, Man!—Man in his original truth, formed in the image of God.
In all realms of Christendom, people are becoming aware of his presence; are speaking of him, combating for him, combating against him, and—preparing for him a way. For his day is at hand, and he will come with it.[1]
I wished to see humanity as she presented herself in the New World, now that she had cast off all dominion of courts, forms and uniforms, which had become oppressive burdens in the Old World; now that she had there, on the new soil, erected for herself a kingdom and an asylum for all nations, according to no other law than that promulgated in the Christian revelation and within her own breast. That was the form of humanity which I desired
- ↑ As a beautiful proof of this it seems to me, may be instanced, that ready, cordial homage which free nations at the present time pay to noble and liberal-minded rulers, such as Leopold, Victoria, Oscar. What triumphal procession of antiquity can indeed be compared to those noble human thanksgiving festivals which were this year celebrated, in Sweden and Norway, for the restored health of King Oscar; homage as much due to the man as to the monarch!
