which was in the founders of these commonwealths, when peril did not frighten or hardship discourage them, and when their rude daily experience took from the Bible a consecration and a gleam. If this shall continue, vitally integrating, nobly animating, perennially renewing the nation which started from their seminal work, no bound appears to its possible progress. It will have the continent for its throne, the ages for its inheritance. But if this fails, all fails. Multiplying riches will not then protect, will only, indeed, more fatally expose us. Democratic institutions will show no power of self-support. Any eloquence of speakers, or of the press, can only add a glitter to decay. Alienation and collision, confusion and division, will follow swiftly on moral decline; and our history will have to be written as that of other peoples has been, as signalized at times by great advance, and passing through periods of splendid achievement, but as closing at last in disaster and dishonor.

We may confidently hope that this is not to be. I am certainly no pessimist. I would not be rash, but I cannot despond. I have profound faith in God's purposes for the people which He so wonderfully planted and trained, and which He has conducted to such marvelous success. I have a strong faith in the people itself. I do not wonder that political theorists stand aghast before this huge, unmanageable, democratic nation, which defies precedent, traverses disdainfully speculative programmes, and lurches onward with irresistible energy in spite of whatever philosophical forecasts. But I believe, after all, in the distributed American people. It means to be honest; it is not afraid of what man can do; and it is capable of

surpassing enthusiasms. Pessimism may spring from a scholarly temper, which shrinks from rude contacts, and is offended by vulgar boasts, which insists on immediate accomplishment of ideals, and would have the Golden Age sent by express, which is therefore impatient and easily discouraged if a nation cannot be instantly turned, like a school or a parish, to better ways. But, practically, pessimism in this country, so far as I have observed, is a fashion with condescending critics, not commonly born among us, whose residence is too recent, their stake in the general welfare too slight, to allow much weight to their opinions; or else it is the weak cant of a native, dudish class, despising the work which was honored by the fathers, shining in clubrooms rather than in warehouses or on the exchange, with no animating sense of the verities of faith, too sensitive to noise to enter a caucus, too dainty of touch to handle ballots, and wanting everything, from trousers to statutes, to be "very English." The vigorous and governing mind of the nation is not pessimistic, and those who with shrill and piping accents utter prophecies of alarm have as little effect on its courageous confidence and hope as so many sparrows on the housetops. I think, for one, that the nation is right. Party spirit, often violent, sometimes brutal, may start fear in the timid; but party spirit, with whatever of either vulgarity or venom, is not as intense and not as threatening as it was in this country a half-century ago. Political chicanery may . frighten some, as if the foundations were out of course; but it cannot work effects as disastrous as have been some which the nation has survived. Our rulers may not always be ideal men, as heroes or prophets, any

more than are their censors, but they are fairly capable and faithful, and whether elected by our votes or not, we may reasonably expect that the Republic will take no detriment from them. The nation is still morally sound, at the centers of its life: intelligent, reverent, law-abiding. Its rulers and policies are on the whole as far-sighted as they ever have been. Its readiness to apply the principles of ethics to social usage, and to law, is as keen as at any time in the century. Its spirit is as full of resolute courage. Its future is bright, I cannot but think, with stellar promise.

But if a time shall ever come when labor ceases to have honor among us, with the bread earned in the sweat of the brow, when a passion for sudden wealth, no matter how gained, becomes paramount in the land, and luxurious surroundings stir the strongest desire in eager spirits-when high mental exercise fails to attract men, and general education ceases to be held a vital condition of public welfare-when plans of salutary social reform are left to amuse the leisure of the few, but fail to engage the popular heart or to stir with fresh thrills the public pulse; if a day shall come when the nation is content to live for itself, and to leave other peoples without the help of its benign influence, when patriotic aspiration is lowered accordingly to the flat levels of commercial acquisition and party success, when men of the higher capacity and character cease to concern themselves with political duty, and leave it to professional leaders and expert traders in votes, when laws therefore come to be matters of purchase, and, ceasing to represent public judg ment and conscience, cease to possess moral authority; if a time shall come, in other words, when self-indul

gence and moral inertness take the place in the country of the earnest, faithful, strenuous spirit which built this hamlet, and all the others out of which the nation has grown-then we shall do dishonor to the fathers, and the history which began in unflinching toil and a superb sacrifice will close in shame. It is not at all as a minister of religion, but as an independent observer of society that I add my conviction that if such a time shall ever come, it will be when the Bible shall have lost its power for the general mind, and the day which hallows all the week shall have no more sacredness or prophecy on it for the popular thought; when the supreme vision of God and his government, and of his designs concerning this nation, shall have failed to move and uplift men's souls as it did beneath the Puritan preaching; and when that desire to glorify Him, and to hasten the coming of the kingdom of His Son, which in all the loneliness and the poverty of the fathers was to them an inspiration, shall have failed to instruct and ennoble their children. If this shall be, the physical will not survive the moral. The coal and copper, the silver and wheat, will not assure the national greatness if the illustrious organific ideas shall have vanished from its sky. It will be the old story repeated: of decaying wood at the center of the statue, beneath casings of ivory, plates of gold. The wood gives way, and the shining fragments of costly covers, broken in the fall, are scattered far.

It is for us, and for each of us in his place, to do what we may, and all that we may, to avert an issue so sad and drear! We must do it in the spirit which here of old set village and church in charming beauty amid what then were forest shades. If we do not ac

Let

cept all the laws of the fathers, we must, like them, have the armor of righteousness on the right hand and the left. Whether or not we worship according to their precise forms, we must hold as they did to the supreme facts which give glory to the Scriptures. Our fight will not be with enemies like theirs, the gray wolf, the painted savage, but it must be as unyielding as theirs against whatever of evil surrounds us. us try so to stand in our place in the world as they would have stood if to them had been appointed our present relations to the country, to mankind. Let our highest love, next to that for God and for the household, be for the nation which they baptized in tears and struggle, "with water and with blood." Let us always remember that next in honor, and in importance of work, to those who are called to found commonwealths, are those to whom, in milder times, with ampler means, but in the same unshaken spirit, it is given to maintain them! And may the blessing of Him whom they saw, like one of old, an unconsuming Splendor in the wilderness bush, be upon us, as it was upon them, till the expanding prosperity of the nation which had its seed-field in their cabins widens and brightens into such consummations as even their majestic faith could not expect! And unto Him, their God and ours, be all the praise!