blest work of God--an honest man.

If we add another test of truthfulness, by increasing the number of the
witnesses, comparing a number of letters referring to the same events,
written by persons of various degrees of education, and of different
occupations and ranks of life, resident in different countries, acting
independently of each other, and find them all agree in their allusions
to, or direct mention of, some central facts concerning which they are
all interested, no one can rightfully doubt that this undesigned
agreement declares the truth. But if, in addition to all these
undesigned coincidences, we happen upon the correspondence of persons
whose interests and passions were diametrically opposed to those of our
correspondents, and find that, when they have occasion to refer to them,
they also confirm the great facts already ascertained, then our belief
becomes conviction which can not be overturned by any sophistry, that
these things did occur. If Whig and Tory agree in relating the facts of
James' flight, and William's accession, if the letters of his Jacobite
friends and those of the French ambassador confirm the statements of the
English historian, and if we are put in possession of the letters which
James himself wrote from France and Ireland to his friends in England,
does any man in his common sense doubt that the Revolution of 1688 did
actually occur?

When, in addition to all this concentration and convergence of
testimony, one finds that the matters related, being of public concern,
and the changes effected for the public weal, the people have ever since
observed, and do to this day celebrate, by religious worship and public
rejoicings, the anniversaries of the principal events of that
Revolution, and that he himself has been present, and has heard the
thanksgivings, and witnessed the rejoicings on those anniversaries, the
facts of the history come out from the domains of learned curiosity, and
take their stand on the market-place of the busy world's engagements. We
become at once conscious that this is a practical question--a great fact
which concerns us--that the whole of the law and government of a vast
empire has felt its impress--that our ancestors and ourselves have been
molded under its influence, and that the religion of Europe and America,
under whose guardianship we have grown to a prominent place among the
people of earth, and may arrive at a better prominence among the nations
of the save