America: A Sketch of the Political, Social, and Religious Character of the United States of North America in Two Lectures

THE present work has grown out of two discourses, which I delivered, by request during a visit to the capital of Prussia, on the 20th and 30th of March 1854, before a select-assembly of ladies and gentlemen, as part of the course of weekly lectures held there on various topics by Drs. Hoffman, Nitzsch, Stahl, Hengstenberg, Tholuck, Miiler, Schmieder, Ritter, and other distinguished scholars for the benefit of the Berlin Evangelical Society for inner missions, in the Oranien Strasse, N. 106. I had at first not the most distant thought of their publication, and so made no written preparation except a general outline. But they were received by the highly respectable and accomplished audience, which the King of Prussia and other members of the royal family occasionally honor with their presence, with an interest to me altogether unexpected, although some of the most intelligent hearers considered them-perhaps not without reason-too favorable to the land of my adoption. Aud as a number of eminent divines and professors of the University such as the venerable Dr. C. Ritter, the acknowledged standard authority in all that relates to the earth and its inhabitants, earnestly solicited their publication, I felt it a duty to yield to such honorable requests; the more, since the other addresses, delivered in behalf of the Inner Mission at Berlin during the last two winters, have also been given to the press. So I wrote the discourses as nearly as I could remember them the first, in Berlin and at a neighboring country-seat; the second partly in Potsdamn under the hospitable roof of my honored friend, the Court-preacher, Dr. Krummacher (who was once called to the same professorship in Pennsylvania, which I have now held for ten years), and partly in Carlsbad, and Vienna. The views and the train of thought remain the same; but I have taken the liberty, especially in the second address, to add and expand in many places for further illustration, as I would have done in the delivery, if time had permitted. But instead of treating the German churches of America, as I did in Berlin, as briefly as the symmetry of the discourse required, my publisher thought it more to the purpose to devote to these a separate part.