Produced by Jared Fuller

FIVE SERMONS

BY THE RT. REV. H.B. WHIPPLE, D.D., LL.D. BISHOP OF MINNESOTA

1890

PREFACE

My only excuse for printing these sermons is the request of friends whocould not secure copies of them. They are printed as delivered, and therepetition of incidents was a part of the historical statement. TheThird and Fifth Sermons were preached without notes and reported by astenographer. H.B.W.

I. SERMON AT THE OPENING SERVICES OF THE GENERAL CONVENTION, OCTOBER 1889

II. SERMON AT THE FARIBAULT CELEBRATION OF THE CENTENNIAL OF THE INAUGURATION OF GEORGE WASHINGTON, 1789-1889

III. SERMON AT THE SECOND ANNUAL MEETING OF THE MISSIONARY COUNCIL IN WASHINGTON, D.C., NOVEMBER 1888

IV. ADDRESS IN LAMBETH CHAPEL, AT THE FIRST SESSION OF THE LAMBETH CONFERENCE, JULY 3, 1888

V. SERMON AT THE FOURTH ANNUAL CONVENTION OF THE BROTHERHOOD OF ST. ANDREW, IN CLEVELAND, OHIO, SEPT. 29, 1889

I. SERMON AT THE OPENING SERVICES OF THE GENERAL CONVENTION, OCTOBER 2, 1889.

"We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us, whatwork Thou didst their days, in the times of old."—PSALM xliv. I.

Brethren: I shall take it for granted that there is a visible Church;that it was founded by Our Lord Jesus Christ, and has His promise thatthe gates of hell shall never prevail against it. We believe that oursis a pure branch of the apostolic Church; that it has a threefoldministry; that its two sacraments—Baptism and the Supper of the Lord—areof perpetual obligation, and are divine channels of grace; that thefaith once delivered to the saints is contained in the Catholic creeds,and has the warrant of Holy Scripture which was written by inspirationof God. On this centennial day I shall speak of the history and missionof this branch of the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ.

It was a singular providence that this continent, laden with the bountyof God, was unoccupied by civilization for thousands of years. Americawas discovered by a devout son of the Latin Church, whose name—Christopher, Christ-bearer, and Columbus, the dove—ought to have beenthe prophecy that he would bear the Gospel to the New World. It was ata time when Savonarola, with the zeal of a prophet of God and theeloquence of a Chrysostom, was laboring to awaken the Church to a newlife. No nation ever had a nobler mission than Spain. That mission wasforfeited by unholy greed and untold cruelty. It was lost forever.Other nations claimed the continent for their own. In the providence ofGod; this last of the nations was founded by the English-speaking race.I reverently believe that it was because they recognize as no otherpeople the two truths which underlie the possibility of constitutionalgovernment, i.e., the inalienable rights of the individual citizen, andloyalty to government as a delegated trust from God, who alone has theright to govern. These lessons are intertwined with two thousand yearsof history. They reach back to the days when the savage Briton came incontact with Roman civilization and Roman law, and have been deepened bycenturies of Christian influences which have changed our savage fathersinto truth-speaking, liberty-loving Christian men.

More marvellous are the providences intertwined with the history of theChurch. It was planted by apostolic men, and numbered heroes like St.Patrick and St. Alban before the missionary

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