United States, with leisure to study their life, can fail to perceive that they are within themselves possessed of a common creative principle of life, which is vital in the highest degree, and this is their religious and civil consciousness.
It is this which everywhere erects churches, organises social institutions, and those still more powerful free associations; this it is which gives the bent to education, which determines the character of the home; this which finds its way into literature, into all great social movements, the watchword of which is everywhere that of the genuinely divine commandments: “Love God above all things, and thy neighbour as thyself.” Nowhere, indeed, on the face of the earth has the Christian consciousness of true human freedom attained to so full a recognition as in the United States; nowhere has it expressed so universally and still continues to express, both by word and deed, the doctrine that pure religion is the foundation and fortress of sound morality; that the true worship of God is the true love of man; that the most acceptable sacrifice which can be presented to the Father of Nations, is the sight of a free, pious, and happy people, all of whom have equal rights and equal opportunity to acquire the highest human worth, the highest human happiness.
This consciousness is the centre of gravity in the cultivation of the New World throughout the northern States. Everything else, whether it be statesmanship, material development, science or art, are subordinate to this, and must voluntarily or involuntarily obey it. There are separate corps, and separate leaders, and many different names, but there is one commander-in-chief whom all must obey and follow, and this is the great humanity; humanity in its highest individual and social development. The leading principle of this idea is, that each and all must serve. This it is which must be realised in every individual human being, and in society at large.
