and we were all bathed in tears." When the Psalms for the day were
read, it seemed as if Heaven was pleading for the oppressed: "O Lord,
fight thou against them that fight against me." "Lord, who is like Thee
to defend the poor and the needy?" "Avenge thou my cause, my Lord, my
God." On the 4th of July 1776, Congress published to the world that
these colonies were, and of right ought to be, free. We believe that a
majority of those who signed this declaration were sons of the Church.
The American colonists were not rebels; they were loyal, God-fearing
men. The first appeal that Congress made to the colonies was "for the
whole people to keep one and the same day as a day of fasting and prayer
for the restoration of the invaded rights of America, and reconciliation
with the parent State." They stood for their inalienable rights,
guaranteed to them by the Magna Charta, which nobles, headed by Bishop
Stephen Langton, had wrung from King John. The English clergy had at
ordination taken an oath of allegiance to the British Crown. Many who
sympathized with their oppressed country felt bound to pray for King
George until another government was permanently established. Others,
like Dr. Provost, retired to private life. For two hundred years an
Episcopal Church had no resident Bishop. No child of the Church
received confirmation. No one could take orders without crossing the
Atlantic, where one man in five lost his life by disease or shipwreck.
At one time the Rev. William White was the only clergyman of the Church
in Pennsylvania. Even after we had received the episcopate, the
outlook was so hopeless that one of her bishops said, "I am willing to
do all I can for the rest of my days, but there will be no such Church
when I am gone." When William Meade told Chief Justice Marshall that he
was to take orders in the Episcopal Church, the Chief Justice said, "I
thought that this Church had perished in the Revolution." Of the less
than two hundred clergy, many had returned to England or retired to
private life. In some of the colonies the endowments of the Church had