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 tl £nter into his gates with thanksgiving y and into 
 
 his courts with praise ; l<f thankful unto him and bless 
 his name. " 
 
 Psalm c : iv. 
 
 In the governmental appointment of a clay to 
 be religiously observed there is something exceed- 
 ingly gratifying to a man who, while not believing 
 in a State religion, believes in a religious state. 
 Religion has from the first been the clandestine 
 foundation of our Republic, and the most reticent 
 symptoms of that fact are always grateful to the 
 hearts of such as feel that it is upon the religious 
 sanctions that we have to ground the hopes of our 
 national-weal and perpetuity. 
 
 The evidences that we are nationally religious 
 do not require to be specially conspicuous. It is 
 not necessary that the foundation of a building of 
 marble or stone should be placed above the 
 ground and crowded obtrusively into view, but 
 you must have noticed that the more massive a 
 structure is, the greater the pains taken to have 
 the lower courses of the superficial masonry so 
 architectured, so broadened toward the base, as to 
 be suggestive of the massiveness and solidity of 
 the substructural undergirding. 
 
 And so, as said, we find great comfort in the 
 symptomatic designation by governmental author- 
 
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ity of a day that is appointed to express our 
 dependence, individual, social and civic, upon the 
 God of the American people. It amounts to a 
 form of national confession of faith in Jehovah. 
 
 And it follows along naturally enough there to 
 say that, profoundly possessed of that sentiment, 
 as doubtless the majority of the American People 
 are possessed of it, we feel to resent any move- 
 ment, in whatsoever quarter made, that even looks 
 in the direction of repealing any of those evidences 
 that are suggestive to us of the divine foundation 
 upon which as a people we rest. That it might 
 not be wise to inaugurate any new intimation of 
 our " trust in God " may well be. But it is an- 
 other thing to efface such suggestions as are 
 already in force. Done in the way in which it has 
 just been done it is the arbitrary obliteration by 
 one individual, — for he is only one in spite of the 
 fact that he is the chief executive, — it is the arbi- 
 trary obliteration by an individual of a tradition 
 in regard to which eighty million people may be 
 supposed to have some very decided views, and 
 views that are liable, quite liable, to be as valuable 
 as those of the chief executive: — a point that is 
 made all the more pointed by the fact that the 
 motto which now stands upon our coin is there by 
 legislative action. 
 
 And farthermore if the author of this action 
 had studied into the science of numismatics as pro- 
 foundly as he lets us suppose he has studied into 
 the science of natural history, he would have dis- 
 covered that when in 1861 Hon. Salmon P. Chase, 
 Secretary of the Treasury, wrote, — " No nation 
 can be strong except in the strength of God, or 
 
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safe except in his defence; the trust of our people 
 in God should be declared on our national coins," 
 — I say if he had studied into the science of numis- 
 matics he would have discovered that Secretary 
 Chase in so writing was simply thinking in line 
 with the ancient thought of classic Greece and 
 Rome, with whom religion and monej were bound 
 into the bundle of a single individual conception, 
 and their coinage stamped with the images and 
 superscriptions of gods and goddesses. 
 
 In a recent Episcopal convention when this 
 matter was discussed and a resolution adopted 
 disapproving- the act of the- Executive, one mem- 
 ber objected on the ground that such resolution 
 was a criticism upon the government. Very truly; 
 but it must be remembered that we are not living 
 in St. Petersburg, nor in Constantinople, nor even 
 in Berlin. We are citizens of a republic, where it 
 is one of the perquisites of citizenship to express, 
 — in a careful and considerate way, of course, — 
 opinions upon all questions of public interest, and 
 if that perquisite were more freely, — and perhaps 
 sometimes more considerately, — availed of, it 
 would doubtless be to the advantage both of the 
 people and of the government. One thing against 
 which, as citizens of a free and generous republic we 
 must carefully guard is, the assuming of any attitude 
 which shall even seem to accord to an)- individual 
 a monopoly either of wisdom or of power. I speak 
 that simply out of impassioned devotion to the 
 genius of a republican form of government. 
 
 Another matter, in some respects similar, that 
 I feel moved to give a moment to in this connec- 
 tion, is this. Last February, — as has, at this late 
 
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date, become publicly known, — action was taken 
 by the Board of Education of this city, aiming to 
 exercise restraint in the matter of Christmas exer- 
 cises in our public schools. Without wishing to 
 antagonize any foreign nationality represented in 
 our own citizenship, especially a nationality that I 
 took such pleasure in warmly eulogizing from my 
 pulpit two weeks ago, there are still certain features 
 of the existing situation that demand passing 
 attention. 
 
 Warmly welcomed and hospitably entertained 
 as has been the imported element of our American 
 citizenship, we should suppose that such adventi- 
 tious citizens would experience a degree of delicacy 
 in crowding their imported notions, social, moral 
 and religious, upon thoroughbred natives. That 
 is not spoken out of disrespect for people foreign 
 born or born of foreign parents, but only at the 
 impulse of this rather natural feeling that there are 
 certain prior rights pertaining to original tenants 
 that do not seem so immediately to belong to 
 those who were admitted into the house after the 
 furniture had been moved in and the housekeeping 
 operations had commenced. 
 
 The institutions of this country had taken 
 rather definite shape before our friends from con- 
 tinental Europe had begun to congregate in great 
 numbers on this side of the water. Matters of 
 social custom, of Sabbath observance, and of re- 
 ligious faith, had already assumed forms quite well 
 defined, forms however against which continental 
 peoples have thrust themselves with an insistance 
 unrelieved by any symptoms of modesty or com- 
 punction. 
 
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Having Forgotten seemingly that they were 
 admitted into the American family only on suffer- 
 ance, they have in many instances officiously let 
 about to reorganize the housekeeping and in some 
 cases even gone so far as to pitch the original 
 householders out of the back door, as in the 
 present instance where the protest made by parents 
 of foreign extraction is that our schools should be 
 
 regulated to meet the wants of 20 per cent, of the 
 school children. It is not a question of animosity 
 on our part, hut of simple every da)' fairness. If 
 you take a stranger into your home you will tender 
 
 to him the hospitality of a room that he can con- 
 sider his, and if he has an)- little eccentricities o\ 
 habit you will let him feel free to go off into his 
 room and exploit them, but you will not propose 
 to have those eccentricities interfere with the es- 
 tablished regulations of your household, and if he 
 is a gentleman he will not want them to interfere. 
 And the feeling of respect that I have for the 
 Hebrew people in our midst is such that I do not 
 believe that it is more than a small minority of 
 them that are responsible for the present disturbed 
 situation. 
 
 The City Superintendent is reported as saying 
 that there is no occasion for what he politely styles 
 the present "rumpus." I would only say in reply 
 to that that it looks exceedingly much as though 
 it were the present "rumpus" that has thus far 
 prevented his communicating to the teachers of 
 the public schools the contents of the resolution 
 adopted by the Hoard of Education last February; 
 and it is not too much to expect perhaps that the 
 influence of that same "rumpus" will operate to 
 
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hold him to the same Fabian policy of delay till 
 after the 25th of December.* 
 
 Only a single word more relative to this general 
 matter. It is faith in God, and faith in God as 
 revealed to us by Jesus Christ, that lies at the basis 
 of our national history and of our national pros- 
 perity ; so that any man or men who has come to 
 us from abroad with a desire to better his condi- 
 tion, but who seeks to blacken the face of God or 
 to obliterate the name of Christ, to that extent 
 seeks to destroy the very influence that has pro- 
 duced the prosperity that he has come across the 
 Atlantic to have a share in. 
 
 Now, — to dismiss all that matter, — I have been 
 far longer time than I intended in reaching my 
 main purpose of specifying two or three occasions, 
 general occasions, of devout gratitude. 
 
 And I mention first our chief federal executive, 
 the President of the United States. Leaving out 
 of view all those points of temperament and of 
 policy that some of us, perhaps all of us, would be 
 disposed to criticize, there remains the fact of Mr. 
 Roosevelt's unquestioned, and I should say, un- 
 questionable, integrity. A man of that character 
 standing as the representative head of a great 
 nation is an enginery of personal uplift beyond the 
 power of language to express or even of thought 
 to compute. Nobility of character when raised 
 upon a pedestal of such commanding position tells 
 tremendously for national dignity, social better- 
 ment and individual ennoblement. Virtue, even 
 
 * The foregoing was written two days ago. The action taken by the Board of 
 Education yesterday, as reported in the papers this morning, shows that I was correct in 
 my prognostication. From the amiable breadth of sentiment evinced by the Board at its 
 yesterday's session one might infer that the poor little innocents in our schools are to be 
 free to worship God according to either the Christian, Jewish, Mohammedan or Confucian 
 ritual. There is great virtue in agitation. 
 
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inconspicuous virtue, is always elevating, but it is 
 virtue, purity of purpose, become evident and 
 working along lines oi large procedure that 1 
 arrests the attention, commands the respect, and 
 lifts the tone of the common life. 
 
 Queen Victoria was not probably the mere 
 figure-head that she was at one time supposed to 
 be, but was a very considerable factor in British 
 and also in international politics. It w.is, howe 
 the exalted and queenly character of the- woman, 
 quite as much as her statesmanship, that has 
 stamped her impress upon British and Continental 
 life. And so of Mr. Roosevelt. As the German 
 poet has said: "It is personality that prevails." It 
 was the irresistible sovereignty of personality that 
 enabled him to achieve what will probably prove 
 to be the crowning act of his theatrical life, the 
 mediation that brought to a conclusion the Russo- 
 Japanese War. 
 
 And I doubt if there is any young man in this 
 country, especially if unincumbered by political 
 and partisan prejudices, to whom manhood does 
 not count for more because of what Theodore 
 Roosevelt has been and is, simply as a man, vigor- 
 ous, generous and pure. And it is tremendously 
 to our credit, the tense bonds of warm attachment 
 which bind us to him. Men are to be measured 
 by the quality of the things that they admire and 
 and love, and by that token the common devotion 
 of the American heart to "Teddy" discloses the 
 fine, sweet quality of the American heart. 
 
 As the second ground of devout gratitude I 
 would mention the Chief Executive of our own 
 State, Gov. Hughes. The instances have been 
 
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exceedingly rare in our political history where a 
 man untrained in political experience has forged 
 to the front with the expedition of Mr. Hughes, 
 and as quickly as he won for himself so large a 
 place in local regard and even in national thought. 
 We all remember the tender solicitude expressed 
 in certain quarters lest his political immaturity 
 might prove a fatal handicap when he should 
 come to the practical discharge of gubernatorial 
 obligations. The idea has probably occurred to a 
 good many of us since that time that the greener 
 a man may be as a politician the riper it may be 
 possible for him to become as a statesman ; that 
 practical politics has nothing in common with 
 statesmanship, and that large effectiveness in pub- 
 lic life is liable to be precluded by a preliminary 
 training- in its small subtleties. Better be almost 
 anything than an expert. 
 
 Although we are a republic and the people, 
 therefore, supposed to be the determining factor, 
 the interesting feature of his election was that the 
 greatest obstacle lying between him and the gov- 
 ernorship was the fact that nobody but the people 
 cared for him. The experts, — the men without 
 visible means of support, and with whom politics 
 is a business, — had taken the accurate measure of 
 the man, and were averted from him by the large- 
 ness of his proportions, the distinctness of his per- 
 ceptions and the cleanliness of his impulses. It 
 was, therefore, left to the people to nominate him, 
 left to the people to elect him, left to the people 
 to stand by him, — a loyalty which the Governor 
 has magnificently reciprocated. And while there 
 is not that passionate affection for Mr. Hughes 
 
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that sometimes subsists between a people and its 
 rulers, there is that intense confidence felt in the 
 man, not simply in his integrity, which is as per- 
 l. ( t, probably, as in the instance of Mr. Roosevelt, 
 — but iu those supplementary qualities needed to 
 accompany integrity in order that its possessor 
 may be qualified to fill positions of large and deli- 
 cate public tru >t. 
 
 There is, for instance, in our Governor's method 
 of approaching difficult questions and meeting em- 
 barrassing situations, a quiet poise of mind which, 
 while yielding results less dramatically entertain- 
 ing, and less volcanic either in the amount of 
 blinding illumination thrown into the air or 
 scorching ruination furrowing the ground, accom- 
 plishes the ends had in view, in a manner both 
 effective and sanitary. 1 le would not be a man to 
 mend a delicate Swiss watch in the use of a sledge- 
 hammer. His method of operation might require 
 more time than would be expended by a black- 
 smith, but when he got through mending there 
 would be some of the watch left. 
 
 So far as I know we have never had an official 
 who more perfectly accommodated himself to the 
 genius of American institutions, who filled more 
 completely and devotedly just the position consti- 
 tutionally created for the executive to fill, without 
 symptoms of any nervous and impetuous ambition 
 to enlarge that position to a wider area. 
 
 He has, therefore, for a year been settled down 
 to the arduous but straightforward business of 
 caring for the interests of the State* of New York 
 in its entirety and in its individual citizenship. 
 He made it clear, in an address recently delivered 
 
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here, that he considers a public official to be not a 
 ruler of the people but a servant of the people, 
 and, therefore, — to use his own words, — "strictly 
 accountable to the people for every departure 
 from the democratic ideal of office." Which is 
 substantially the same thing as saying to the State 
 at large and to each individual member of the 
 State, " If in your judgment I have erred in my 
 discharge of the duties which you have imposed 
 upon me, be entirely frank to tell me so." 
 
 Now the existence of that sort of spirit is what 
 is going to save us from drifting in the direction 
 of government monarchically administered, a tend- 
 ency that is always so quick to assert itself in any 
 republic, and a tendency, too, that even at present 
 is exciting among us an amount of silent misgiving. 
 There is nothing, then, in the administration of 
 such a man as our Governor as would even suggest 
 a comparison between him and Czar Nicholas, or 
 even between him and Emperor William. So that, 
 if we were any of us to take sharp exception to 
 some executive act of his, we should never be trem- 
 blingly solicitous lest he or any of his friends 
 should lodge against us a charge of "conspiracy." 
 
 In all these references I only want that we 
 should gratefully realize the distinguished privilege 
 and advantage that this State enjoys in having as 
 its chief executive a man who by his word expresses, 
 and in his administration embodies, the American 
 idea of "government 0/the people, by the people 
 andyW the people." 
 
 Mr. Hughes' disposition to accommodate him- 
 self to the position constitutionally created for 
 the executive is farthermore evinced and, in 
 
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view of the circumstances <>f the times, strikingly 
 
 evinced, by the scrupulous way in which he holds 
 
 himself inside that one particular department of 
 government which he was chosen to fill. What I 
 mean is that he does not tryto be the whole thing. 
 
 Not onl\ does h«- not impair the dignity of his 
 
 high office by mixing indiscriminately in questions 
 that lie quite outside the domain <»l government, 
 and questions touching which his opinion would 
 have no more intrinsic value than would that of a 
 thousand or ten thousand other men from among 
 
 his constituents, hut even inside the governmental 
 domain he neither trespassed upon the functions 
 of legislation by usurping legislative prerogative 
 nor upon the functions of the judiciary by putting 
 upon statutes or upon the State constitution an 
 interpretation in pursuance of his own aims and 
 ends. All I mean is that he understands that he 
 was elected to a specially designated service, and 
 the whole energy of the man is devoted to ren- 
 dering that specially designated service, without 
 bordering his proper function by a miscellaneous 
 fringe of activity constitutionally relegated to 
 spheres of official responsibility for which he is 
 himself in no manner accountable. 
 
 It lies quite in line with that to observe for an 
 instant the attitude of serenity and of undistracted 
 devotion to official duty which the Governor is 
 maintaining in just these days when so much is 
 being said and so much more is bein<»- thought 
 that bears so directly upon him personally and 
 upon his future. It is the limit, if I may so say, 
 it is the very acme of Spartan self-mastery for a 
 Governor of the State of New York to do nothing 
 
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LIBRARY OF CONGREJ 
 
 013 981 064 8 
 
 but mind his own business with unabated and un- 
 flustered industry at a time when millions of Am- 
 erican voters are earnestly and enthusiastically 
 considering him as a presidential possibility. In 
 the moral sense of the word, it is simply colossal. 
 There is nothing in his case, — is there? — to remind 
 us of that chronic candidate who now, for nearly 
 a decade, has kept himself ostentatiously dangling 
 before an indeterminate public. There is nothing 
 in his case either that would warrant even a Jus- 
 tice of the Supreme Court in charging him with 
 "playing hide and seek." "Hide," yes; but not 
 "seek." The attitude of Mr. Hughes at the pres- 
 ent time is to me most impressive. There is in 
 his attitude an irresistible dignity, an unimpeachable 
 self-mastery, a gigantic aversion to the idea of 
 making personal capital out of responsible oppor- 
 tunity, that more than any other one quality of 
 the man challenges my inexpressible respect and 
 confidence, and makes me long and pray that the 
 time may come when we may be even more 
 thankful than we are to-day, and when Divine 
 Providence, speaking through the suffrages of the 
 people, shall say to him : " Thou hast been faithful 
 over a few things, I will make thee ruler over 
 many things." 
 
 And yet, dear friends, these are not the things 
 we think of most when in the stillness and privacy 
 of our own hearts we offer sacrifice of thanks- 
 giving upon the altar of our devotion. It is then 
 that the large matters of the outer world recede 
 from view and that our loves rest caressingly upon 
 the quieter and closer mercies that make living to 
 
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a? 
 
 
 be sweet and beautiful, whether upon o/ir ace 
 tomeil blessings that are so numerous ai*l sorm 
 
 them so precious, or upon some newly arrived 
 luxury of experience thai adds yet .mother touch 
 
 of fineness to our life ami yet another ray of 
 
 brightness to our hope. 
 
 For all these things, small and great, old and 
 
 mw, manifest or hidden, we render Thee thanks, 
 Good Father, who art ever mindful of Tin children 
 
 and whose thoughts toward us are always thoughts 
 of lovingkindness and tender mercy. 
 
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