Class ^J^SjZ^J^y- CopyrightN iSAL^ COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. ORATIONS and ADDRESSES ...BY... RICHARD SALTER STORRS, D.D., LL.D. Author of " The Divine Origin of Christianity Indicated by its Historical Effects," etc. BOSTON TOe flMlarfm press CHICAGO ,55" THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, Two Copies Receives JUL 8 1903 3 Copyright Entry class a- XXc. No J" 3 & I £ COPY B. Copyright, 1 90 1 ,' THE PILGRIM PRESS Publishers' Note Most of the following orations and addresses were separately published soon after they were delivered, but several of them are now out of print. The emi- nence of the late Dr. Storrs as an orator upon special occasions has_in the judgment of the publishers made it desirable to bring together in a single volume the most important of his written discourses. Others, which made an even deeper impression on the audi- ences which listened to them, like the two lectures on " The Ottoman and the Muscovite — Their long Duel," and the lecture on " European Libraries," were deliv- ered from notes only, and cannot be reproduced. The lecture on " Chrysostom " has never before ap- peared in print. Two or three briefer speeches are added from stenographic reports, as examples of his more informal and popular manner. Contents i Abraham Lincoln 1 II The Early American Spirit and the Genesis of It 63 HI The Declaration op Independence and the Effects of It 121 IY The Recognition of the Supernatural in Letters and in Life 195 V John Wycliffe and the First English Bible . . . 245 YI The New York and Brooklyn Bridge 315 YII Manliness in the Scholar 343 5 6 CONTENTS Till The Broader Range and Outlook of Modern Col- lege Training 369 IX The Puritan Spirit 409 X The Sources and Guarantees op National Progress, 457 XI John op Antioch (Chrysostom) the Great Preacher op the Fourth Century 507 XII Commerce an Educator op Nations 555 XIII Forefathers' Day 567 XIY Consolidation of Brooklyn with New York . . .579 I ABRAHAM LINCOLN An Oration delivered at Brooklyn, N. Y., June 1, 1865, at the re- quest of the War Fund Committee. I ABRAHAM LINCOLN Ladies and Gentlemen : In February, 1861, amid the chills and sleet of the unfinished winter, and while the gloom of a prescient fear, more oppressive than of any physical season, over- shadowed the hearts of the thoughtful and troubled American people, a number of persons, with one quaint, homely figure in the midst of them, took their de- parture from Springfield, Illinois, to proceed by grad- ual stages to Washington. Neighbors and friends were hurriedly assembled to witness the departure ; and a few simple and touching words of greeting and farewell were addressed to them by him who was cen- tral in the group, and whose kindly face and earnest voice had there, for twenty-four years, been familiar. Other assemblages, hastily convened, of personal ac- quaintances and political friends, with here and there some generous or curious political opponents, were afterward encountered, as the company proceeded from city to city, along the railways which then as now overlay and defined their winding route. At Buffalo, Albany, New York, Philadelphia, and at other points, men came together to see and hear, some to welcome, and some as well to criticise or to warn, the man to whom, by the voice of a plurality of his fellow-country- men, the conduct of the government for four years to come had been committed. There was much curiosity 9 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES to be satisfied concerning him. There was a natural eagerness to hear what he might say, that involved any pithy or pregnant suggestion as to what his course was likely to be. But those who remembered the great convocations which in other years had greeted the chieftains in statesmanship as they made their progress through the country, could not but contrast with the numbers and enthusiasm of such previous assemblages, the meagerness and the dulness of those now con- vened. And when at last the tall, uncouth, but dominant figure which had been central in these as- semblages disappeared from sight at the capital of Pennsylvania, to reappear suddenly in a hotel at "Wash- ington, there was with a few a feeling of relief that suspense was over, and he was safely housed at the Capital ; there was with many a feeling of shame that any such precautionary privacy should have been deemed to be needful, and that the small degree of state till then maintained should have been so wholly and abruptly relinquished before he had reached his final goal. Four crowded and fateful years have passed, during which the nation for the first time in its history has breasted the shock and tasted the bitterness of a fierce civil war ; during which a half -million of men have fallen, dead or maimed, in skirmish and in battle; during which a hundred and fifty thousand households have been shrouded in the gloom that rises only from the grave of the beloved; during which arbitrary measures and policies, unknown to our previous history, have been authorized and enforced ; and during which seasons of clamorous expectation and unjustified hope, have been followed by others of utter despondency, 10 ABRAHAM LINCOLN and the passionate reproaches of which this is the parent, — four years have passed, and another company starts from Washington, to bear back to the quiet and distant Springfield all that remains of that form now prostrate, that face and eye now sealed and sightless. Amid the shining April days, while springing grass and greening boughs proclaim that summer draweth nigh, they leave the Capital — which never before has been so shaken with pain and grief and righteous rage — they take the same route which he had traversed when coming in life to his high place, and bear him forever from the scene of his eventful sway. And as they go, the great capitals of the land welcome with such demonstrations of honor as no preceding ex- perience has witnessed, the shrunken, discolored and pulseless frame. The city through which he passed before in a sheltering privacy, now crowds tumultuous, in tearful affection, around his bier. The great me- tropolis — whose mob then hated him, the leaders of whose fashion turned from him with contempt, and whose authorities sought to insult him — now pours from every street and lane, the intent and sad proces- sion of his mourners. Its whole business is suspended ; its houses are hung, from base to roof, with funeral weeds ; its pavements are thronged with silent, patient, unmoving crowds; its windows gleam with pallid faces ; as through the hushed expectant avenues winds, hour by hour, while bells are tolling and minute-guns with measured boom are counting the instants, that vast, unreckoned, unparalleled procession. Not capitals only, but States themselves, become his mourners. Churches put off their Easter emblems, to hide pillar and wall and arch in sable woe. Each rail- 11 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES way is made a via dolorosa. The spontaneous homage of millions is offered, through the uncovered head, the crape, the wreath, through all the somber insignia of grief, as the train with its precious burden speeds. The country shrouds its weeping face, and all the blooms of spring around can bring no flush to its changed countenance ; the song and sparkle, and the sweet impulse of which the very air is full, can stir no pulse of gladness or of hope, while still that spectacle haunts its gaze. For over every loyal heart there broods a sorrow as if the most revered had fallen ; as if the shock of personal bereavement had smitten, separately every household. It is to give the reason of this change that we are gathered here to-day. It is to tell why this amazing contrast appears ; which would be yet incredible to us, if our eyes had not seen it, if freshest memories did not to-day remind us of it. Nay, not of this only must we give explanation. When Abraham Lincoln left his home for that still re- cent journey to Washington, his name was only known to his countrymen through its association with late and local political discussions. It was utterly unknown, except as it appeared on the ballots of those who had chosen him President, to the other civilized peoples of the world. And when their eyes were unexpectedly turned to him, they saw in him only a village attorney, who had hardly before been responsibly associated with great affairs, whom his friends believed to be honest and sagacious, but whom his opponents described as a rough rail-splitter, of humble origin, of no early advantages, without experience, without signal ca- pacity, and more remarkable than for anything else 12 ABRAHAM LINCOLN for his fondness for coarse and pungent jokes. It was therefore with a natural and utter indifference that the multitudes heard his unmusical name. It was with a smug self-satisfaction that the aristocratic leaders of opinion, in England and on the Continent, pointed to the election of such a man to administer the govern- ment at a critical time, as the final condemnation of democratic institutions. And it was with a quick and rational anxiety that even educated liberals in Great Britain and France rehearsed what they heard that was favorable to him, and awaited the first indications of his policy. This was only four years ago. And now, from the entire civilized world arises the chorus of respect for his powers, of admiration for his character, of horror and grief at his untimely end. No other American name since Washington's has become so familiar, or has won such esteem, among the progressive peoples of Europe. It is henceforth a name to charm with, in Italy and in England, on the boulevards of Paris, in the studies of Germany, and among the precipitous passes of the Alps. The presses and the men that once made shifty apologies for him, have honored him for years as one of the leading statesmen of the world. Even the papers which month after month insulted him without stint, now eagerly applaud his prudence, his fortitude, his commanding ability. The English Punch, whose ridicule was so bitter that it seemed to have in it a personal malice, confesses its error, and atones for its jeers in lofty and pathetic lines. And with the voices of eulogy and homage rising from his still sorrowing countrymen, — rising not only from the millions he has ruled, and the other millions whom he 13 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES has emancipated, but even from the impoverished States over whose acres his armies swept, and whose most practised and crafty commanders his patient wis- dom utterly defeated, — with these rise also, in kindred homage, the voices of all the intelligent leaders of opinions and affairs throughout Christendom. Par- liaments, as well as peoples, bring their tribute to his memory. The halls of national assemblies are draped in sad commemoration of his worth and of his death. And debates are suspended, and diplomacy waits, while emperors and queens clasp hands with us before his bier. It is one of the strangest contrasts in history ; and it is of this contrast, as well as of the other, that we to- day are to give explanation. The phenomenon is astonishing. It demands at our hands an adequate solution. But that solution is not difficult to find. A singularly critical and eminent position, singularly improved ; immense, and almost unparalleled responsi- bilities, modestly assumed, and with rare capacity and a rarer patience and magnanimity fulfilled : — here is the key to this strangest sequence. The only eulogy that need be pronounced on him is that which sets just this before us. Observe, first, his Position : Nations are more and more plainly every year the grand, organized, almost personal Powers, to whom is committed the future of the world. With the steady advances of civilization, individuals are comparatively less influential over the opinion and action of mankind, except as they affect the nation they are part of. But the nation itself becomes every year a mightier pres- ence, a more distinct, efficient actor, amid the system 14 ABRAHAM LINCOLN of allied peoples. And to those which fill with their institutions, and outline with their boundaries, the map of Christendom, is the moulding of the destinies of mankind entrusted. Their origin is explained, and shown to be not acci- dental but providential, as we look at them from this point. Slowly emerging, like the heads of continents, from the waste chaos of the earlier centuries, each one has been unfolded, all have been arranged, on an orderly plan ; a plan that contemplates results so vast that we even yet can scarcely predict them. It is not topography, climate, soil, it is not altogether the kin- ship of blood, it is God, in his eternal wisdom, who has set these nations in their places, and with divine prescience and patience of skill has nursed and nurtured their tiny germs, has succored their growth, and has built them to their majestic strength, that, through their final combined might, his plans may be realized. The same thought interprets the permanence of these nations ; the constantly increasing unity of each within itself, the sharper lines that discriminate each from every other. The tendency of our times, with all the advance of individual liberty which has prominently marked them, is not toward the disintegration of em- pires, but toward their more thorough organization, their more profound internal oneness. And while forms of government, throughout Europe for example, have been subject to sudden and violent mutations during the two-thirds now elapsed of the present cen- tury, it is a fact full of significance that none of its great national organisms has been destroyed; that none of them has been seriously changed in its boun- daries or impaired in its strength. The most impor- 15 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES tant changes among them have been the increased strength of Prussia, and the emerging into substantive existence of the kingdom of Italy. The progress of free thought within their boundaries has not dissolved but has only developed them. The progress of inven- tion, overleaping those boundaries and making neigh- bors of distant peoples, has not obliterated or even ob- scured the historic lines that stand between them. The centripetal force within each has the mastery; and in its more intimate self -centered coherence each stands more clearly apart from the rest. The public life in- corporated in it, — from whatsoever ancestry derived, by whatsoever influences trained, through whatsoever ex- perience developed, and in whatsoever legislations, let- ters, or arts revealed, — maintains its identity, and only perfects its force, and is prepared always for a larger impression upon the progress and culture of the world. Yet while this development within each is going on, the equilibrium of all is only thereby more firmly es- tablished, and the relations between them become vital and constant. Diplomatic alliances only tardily and partly represent the progress of their moral sympathies. Because it is separate, each acts on the others with which it is allied, with more freedom, directness, and positive force. It acts and reacts. It gives and it gathers. It makes its own peculiar contributions, of art, thought, commercial exchange, moral power ; and it receives those which are brought to it in return. And through this continual reciprocity, more vital than treaties, more effective than international con- gresses, each assists the progress of every other, and all work together, whether consciously or not, toward general results. 16 ABRAHAM LINCOLN Into the ultimate power of Christendom goes there- fore a force derived in part from every people. The influence of each is made cosmopolitan. And it be- comes more evident constantly that not by individuals, but by these nations,;— so separate yet associated, al- ways more unlike, but always also more intimately al- lied, — is gradually to be reared the world-wide struc- ture of a universal civilization ; that as the great Per- sons of the continents and the ages, they are to elab- orate the welfare of mankind, and accomplish His plans who is the ruler and architect of all. There is nothing that more clearly sets God before us in the scope of his designs, that more vividly un- folds the significance of history, that more sublimely impresses on our thoughts the grandeur of the times in which we live, than this view of nations, as the ever-renewed and cooperative workers, whose power and patience are to build up the future. The earth is illustrious through their presence upon it. The future is secure through the mighty concurrence with which they march toward it. And the' brain that swings yonder suns into systems is not so unsearchable as that which orders this mighty plan. And now among these vast, historic, almost personal Powers, it is not presumptuous or idle to feel that this of which we ourselves are part, is to have a special and an eminent place. We feel it instinctively. An audible undertone in European society shows the world aware of it. » Placed on a continent where it stands by itself, and from which its influence passes continually, across both oceans, to affect all peoples whom commerce reaches, all tribes indeed whose languages are known ; founded B 17 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES at the beginning, as, Chatham said, "upon ideas of liberty," and prepared by the very blood that went into it, as well as by its subsequent training, to illus- trate the capacity of Christianized men to organize and maintain a democratic autonomy ; with a vast force of thought, will, feeling, faith, of all that makes the in- tensest moral life of a nation, inherited by it, and con- tinually nourished by scho6ls, presses, churches, homes, by all the labors it has had to perform, and all the hopes that have strengthened its heart, — it cannot be but that this nation shall affect with still increasing power the other civilized peoples of the earth. In a degree it does this already ; and when its energies shall cease to be concentrated, as they hitherto have been, on the preparation of the country itself for its habitation, and the swift and mighty mastery of its riches, and on the fashioning and the upbuilding of its own institutions, — when the educational influences that mould it shall have come to their fruition, and the spirit of the nation shall be finally formed and declared, — it must pour abroad, through constant channels, an infinite influence. Either with distrust, then, anxiety, fear, or with confidence, affection, expectation, the thoughtful minds throughout the world must look upon the peo- ple here established : whose existence is so recent, its development so rapid, its history so remarkable, and whose future hitherto has seemed so uncertain. It is not , one fact, or another, by itself, that secures this inter- est of the civilized world in our Republic. The whole drift of civilization makes it inevitable. For good or for evil there is here a power that must affect the en- tire system of associated nations, to make or mar the 18 ABRAHAM LINCOLN future they are building. And yonder ocean may as easily be withdrawn from the sight of our eyes, the continent itself may as easily be obliterated from the map of the world, as the sense of the connection of the development of this people with the destinies of the race be stricken from our minds, or from the gen- eral judgment of Christendom. When, then, a terrific crisis suddenly appeared in our public experience — when a wide-sweeping and passion- ate rebellion threatened to become a complete revolu- tion, to split the nation into fragments, and to change the course of its development forever — it was not wonderful, it was only inevitable, that more than by any other event of modern times the thoughts of mankind should be occupied with it ; that here not only but all abroad it should be felt that the palpable leaves of destiny were turning ; that forces were evolved than which none others more portentous had broken upon the world since the modern nations of Europe were born. It was inevitable that with di- verse hopes and opposite predictions not Americans only but the peoples of Christendom should look to see what the issue was to be. No man on this continent, therefore, since Washing- ton's day, has had such room as was given to him whose death we mourn, to manifest all of power and character which he possessed ; to manifest this to the eyes of the nation, to the eyes of mankind. No other man has had the chance to so utterly wreck himself and bury his name in an absolute ignominy amid the sinking fortunes of his country. And, on the other hand, to no other man has been given the opportunity to make for himself a place forever in the inmost heart 19 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES of the nation which he saved ; to make for himself a world-wide fame ; to touch the centuries still to come, and gild their skies with higher splendor. And it is because he proved himself equal to the critical, provi- dential, unparalleled position, — because he so bore him- self in his grand office that all men saw him a man to be loved, a statesman to be trusted, a patriot to be fol- lowed through darkest perils without dismay, — there- fore it is that eulogies now make the continents vocal ; that those eulogies take the poetic form which only intensity of feeling produces; and that one of the grandest names of the world is to be henceforth, while history continues, the plain, untitled, and recent name of Abraham Lincoln. So much for his Position. Observe now the per- sonal Character and Power which he brought to his office and the Work which he wrought in it. Of course the full exhibition of these would take vol- umes, not paragraphs, and be the occupation of months of leisure instead of a few hurrying hours. Yet we may notice the leading traits, and recognize briefly the more prominent powers of mind and will, by which he became so apt for his work ; and may glance, at least, at the principal features of the great work itself. It is an impulse of the heart with every one who speaks of him to delineate first his moral properties ; and though these may be dwelt upon so exclusively as to seem to involve an injurious forgetfulness of the great intellectual abilities he possessed, yet the course of discussion thus suggested is the one which every one still must take if he would not violently constrain and divert his own mental processes ; if he would not 20 ABRAHAM LINCOLN repulse the public heart. The moral, which should be supreme in every man, was so, to a degree almost un- exampled, in President Lincoln. It made the prime impression of the man on those who approached him. It shines most prominently before us to-day, through- out that crowded and turbulent history along whose dizzy paths he has led us. It will be spoken of first and most fondly wherever future American parents repeat his sayings, rehearse his traits, and tell to their children the story of his career. Of this then, first, we may, and we must, with propriety speak. And yet it is impossible to speak of it as we would, because it is impossible to comprise in words that sub- tile, essential spirit of character, which was paramount in him ; and because — when we analyze, as we say, such a character, and distribute its single though com- plex beauty into the traits which made it up — it is like fracturing the diamond to exhibit it ; it is like unbraid- ing the strand of light, to show the sunbeam's inmost splendor. So far, however, as any formula can ex- press what must, by virtue of its spiritual nature, elude the grasp and surpass the compass of verbal proposi- tions, it may be said that a deep, unselfish Sympathy with Men, a profound Conviction of the validity and authority of certain great principles of Equity and Liberty, and an abiding personal Faith in the over- ruling Providence of God, were the principal and per- manent constituent forces in the Character which he showed. The genesis of this, the influences by which it was rooted and formed in him, it must be left to the biog- rapher to unfold. The character itself, which these 21 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES elements composed, is as distinct as it is also great ; and the memory of it will live forever. Wholly individual, utterly genuine, — so independent of outward circumstances that obscurity had not at all embittered it, and investiture with the vast preroga- tives of office only gave it new development through immenser opportunities, — it was the essential moral force on which the nation for four years hung, as on a very power of nature ; from which, more than from anything else, it has drawn its present stability and hope ; and by reason of which the death of him in whom it was revealed has thrilled with new and strange emotion the civilized world. His Sympathy with Men was shown not only in his singularly warm personal attachments, to his family and his friends, to all who for any considerable time were confidentially associated with him ; it was shown as well in that kindness to the poor, the sorrowful, the imperilled, with instances of which the journals of the country, for four years past, have been running over. The wearied, sick or wounded, soldier found always a friend in him as solicitous for his welfare as if he had been his kinsman by birth. The little chil- dren in the Home for the Destitute were touched by the tearful tenderness and dignity, the instructive clearness and the quickening playfulness, with which he addressed them. The poor freed people — who had escaped from the slavery through which his armies crushed their way, but had escaped to communities that seemed less friendly than those they had left, and had passed from a bondage which at least had given them shelter and food, to a liberty that threatened to doom them to idleness and to overwhelm them in an 22 ABRAHAM LINCOLN absolute want — it was not with ostentatious charity, it was with no splendid philanthropical theory, it was with a tender, welcoming respect, that he heard their story, examined their condition and opened the way for escape from their fears. After four years of incessant, bloody, desperate struggle, he entered Eichmond, with characteristic un- ostentation, — not at the head of marshalled armies, with banners advanced and trumpets sounding, but as a private gentleman, on foot, with an officer on one side, holding the hand of his boy on the other. An aged negro met him on the street, and said, with the tears streaming down his face, as he bowed low his un- covered head, " God bress you, Massa Lincoln ! " The President paused, raised his hat on the instant, and with a hearty " I thank you, sir," acknowledged with a bow the greeting. Instinctively he recognized the poorest as his peer, and the black man as his brother. On each of two days, in all his brief and burdened weeks, he gave some hours to receiving the petitions of those who sought from him any personal favor. He took upon himself, with glad alacrity, the labor of investigating claims for relief which had been always under other administrations, which should have been under his, referred at once to subordinate officers. He did it because he could not help it. His nature de- manded it ; and that nature could not be expelled with a pitchfork. No trophies won by legislators or gen- erals ever disturbed, for the tenth of a minute, his healthful slumbers. But the mere recollection of a case of suffering which he had not relieved, of an in- stance of anxiety which he had not soothed as quickly as he might, would keep him tossing for many hours 23 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES on an unrestful bed. And it was not a burden, but always a relief to him, to turn from eminent public affairs to talk with the poor who sought his aid, and to bind up with assiduous skill the wounds of the sor- rowful. The same spirit was revealed, in a more unique exhibition, in his sympathetic regard for his opponents. He laughed at the jokes which were made about him- self ; was tolerant, to a degree before unexampled, of attacks on his policy ; and never took a particle of venom into his nature from all the virulent assaults that were made on him. While holding tenaciously to his own views and plans, he never failed to do generous justice to the reasons and the motives of those who combated them; to recognize in them wherever he could, and sometimes where none of his colleagues could, a patriotism as genuine as his own, and a purpose as true to secure and promote the gen- eral welfare. He talked with, reasoned with, wrote to them, in this spirit ; was not moved from his posi- tion of friendliness toward them by their misconcep- tions or their abuse; and never could believe them traitorous in their hearts till the overt act had com- pelled him to see it. Toward even those who had dangerously offended against the laws, he hardly could bring himself to adopt any course save one of the utmost clemency and gentleness. He pardoned with so much eagerness that one of his own cabinet officers declared that the power of pardoning should be taken from him. The military discipline of the army itself was more than once in danger of decay through his inability to order the final penalties inflicted on those who had incurred 24 ABRAHAM LINCOLN them ; and spies and traitors Avithin the Capital were shielded, more than was easily reconciled with the safety of the government, by his unwillingness to have them subjected to any harsh measures. Of course his sensibilities came gradually to be under the control of his judgment, while the counsels of others constrained him sometimes to a severity which he hated ; so that at length the order for the merited restraint or punishment of public offenders was frequently, though always reluctantly, ratified by him. But his sympathy with men, in whatever con- dition, of whatever opinions, in whatsoever wrongs in- volved, was so native and constant, and so controlling, that he was always not so much inclined as pre-deter- mined to the mildest and most generous theory possi- ble. And something of peril, as well as of promise, was involved to the public in this element of his nature. He would not admit that he was in danger of the very assassination by which at last his life was taken, and only yielded with a protest to the precautions which others felt bound to take for him ; because his own sympathy with men was so strong that he could not believe that any would meditate serious harm to him. The public policy of his administration was con- stantly in danger of being too tardy, lenient, pacific, toward those who were combined for deadly battle against the government, because he was so solicitous to win, so anxious to bless, and so reluctant sharply to strike. Sic semper tyrannis, shouted his wild, theat- ric assassin, as he leaped upon the stage — making the ancient motto of Yirginia a legend of shame forever- more. But no magistrate ever lived who had less of 25 * ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES the tyrant in his natural or his habitual temper. In all the veins of all his frame no drop of unsympathetic blood found a channel. When retaliation seemed the only just policy for the government to adopt, to save its soldiers from being shot in cold blood, or being starved into idiocy, it was simply impossible for him to accept it. And if he had met the arch-conspirators face to face, — those who had racked and really en- larged the English vocabulary to get terms to express their hatred and disgust toward him individually, those who were striking with desperate blows at the na- tional existence, — it would have been hard for him not to greet them with open hand and a kindly welcome. The very element of sadness, which was so in- wrought with his mirthfulness and humor, and which will look out on coming generations through the pen- sive lines upon his face, and the light of his pathetic eyes, came into his spirit, or was constantly renewed there, through his sympathy with men, especially with the oppressed and the poor. He took upon himself the sorrows of others. He bent in extremest personal suffering under the blows that fell on his countrymen. And when the bloody rain of battle was sprinkling the trees and the sod of Yirginia, during successive dreary campaigns, his ■ inmost soul felt the baptism of it, and was sickened with grief. " I cannot bear it ! I cannot bear it ! " he said more than once, as the story was told him of the sacrifice required to secure some result. No glow, even of triumph, could expel from his eyes the tears occasioned by the suffering that had bought it. And yet through this native sympathy with men he gained a large part of his immense power over his 26 ABRAHAM LINCOLN country and his times. From it in part came, no doubt, the sublime temperateness of his spirit. He lived in times when a man without this must now and then have flamed into passion at the arrogant ferocity that taunted and smote him. But no man remembers an hour in his life when passion made his accents tremble. He hated slavery with a life- long abhorrence, and wrestled with it for four fierce years in deadly grapple ; and many men, not hating it more, not feeling it so much, had come not un- naturally to transfer to persons their wrath against the system, and had been embittered through their just indignation. He kept the utter sweetness of his spirit, as if he had been a child by the fireside. His blood was not heated in the desperate struggle ; and even conscience offended could not make him acrimo- nious. He gained another power through this sympathy with men. Not only by it did he come to be en- deared, so as no President preceding him had been, to the universal heart of the nation, to its women and children as well as its men ; not only did its rare vital force surpass our boundaries and make the humble abroad his friends ; — he came, by virtue of it in great measure, to be the Representative Man of the people. It brought him into spontaneous correspondence with the average thought and feeling of the country. He did not depend on witnesses and counselors. He " knew in himself " what the " plain people " wanted, whom he honored and believed in, to whose ranks he expected soon to return, and who, as he said, were willing and able to save the government if the gov- ernment would do its part indifferently well. 27 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES Through a process imperceptible to himself, no doubt, in its methods and modes, but natural to his sympathetic constitution, he came to dwell in such ac- cord with the public — not with any one party, or any one set of leaders and thinkers, but with the collective spirit of the nation — that when he spoke it felt its thought articulated through him ; and his ultimate de- cision, on almost any question, announced and sealed the public judgment. The independence of his policy had its origin here. He was always ready to hear and consider any opin- ion. The most conservative, the most violently radi- cal, were equally at home with him. Yet the eloquent or ingenious advocates of a theory often found, to their surprise, that they had less influence over his counsels than over those of men whom they thought his supe- riors. The truth is, the entire public was his teacher. His nature drew, through secret ducts, the wisdom of the nation into itself ; and the roots of his matured opinions were as wide as the country. His policy was plastic, too, and legitimately pro- gressive as well as independent ; because it represented, in successive stages, the popular mind. And where any man with a fixed and inflexible personal theory, which he must carry out, would inevitably have found it too narrow and rigid to encompass the crisis, and would have seen it hopelessly shattered in the progress of events, his policy was modified and expanded with time, because he kept abreast with the people he ruled. He carried their purpose and thought in himself. He grew with their growth, and shared in their advancing wisdom ; and so, to the end, his plans were elastic, and the nation gave, to realize those plans — which did but > 28 ABRAHAM LINCOLN incorporate its wisest opinions — its whole tremendous and unreserved power. But with this element of sympathy with men we must combine, in inseparable union, the others I have named, to get an adequate impression of his character. He had a profound and enduring conviction of the value and authority of certain great principles of equity and of liberty ; while nothing was more vital or positive in him than his faith in the rule and the provi- dence of God. From these elements his character took firmness, greatness, an individual force and majesty. He was kept from becoming a mere sensi- tive exponent of the popular feeling, and became in- stead a noble Chief Magistrate, instructed by all, yet more instructing them in return. They who thought him only a shrewd politician were singularly mistaken. He was that, no doubt ; but history will certainly rank him also among our most philosophical statesmen. The great ethical prin- ciples which, though invisible, are primitive, organific, in our national development, by which our history has been vitally moulded, and through which that history becomes important to the world — these had to him essential reality, and an incomparable value. His love for the very system of government of which he became the grand defender, had its origin in its relation to these principles ; its actual approximate correspondence with them ; its capacity to be shaped to express them more perfectly ; its fitness and power to extend them. "Without rhythm in his sentences, or any taste for esthetic art, the ideal in the state moved him more than the material, and was always an educating pres- ence to his mind. 29 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES Sprung from the soil, a child of the teeming and wealthy "West, it might have been expected that the mere physical greatness of the country would have al- lured and toned his thought ; that its vast expanse, with its prodigal progress in wealth, population and all resources, would have been to him, as they had been to many others of our statesmen, both from the East and from the West, the occasion of his grateful and proud admiration. But, on the other hand, he seems hardly to have thought of them. He took them for granted ; only casually referred to them ; and was scarcely sustained or moved in his work by any con- siderations derived from them. The effort of the con- spirators in league against the government to wrench apart what God had bolted together with mountains, and had laced inextricably into one by the marvelous system of western rivers, — their effort to sever the national domain, and to build two empires where cli- mate, race, topography, language, combined to demand that there should be but one, — this does not seem to have roused him against it. So far as appears he never was stirred by the natural and not unlaudable ambi- tion to have the country remain as of old, surpassing others in its physical extent, and outshining them with its more splendid treasures. But the principles involved in the national institu- tions were to him inexpressibly sacred and dear ; and against the warfare made upon these, on behalf of an ambition which instinctively hated them, he set his kindly face like a flint. Even the historic recollections of the nation were chiefly important or significant to him as connected with these principles ; and the moral unity derived from these was that which in his thought 30 ABRAHAM LINCOLN knit the present to the past, and made our diverse peo- ples one. So he said at the West, in 1858, of the Ger- mans, Irishmen, Frenchmen, Scandinavians, who have come here since the war of Independence : " If they look back through our history to trace their connec- tion with those days of blood, they find they have none; they cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch, and make themselves feel that they are part of us. But when they look through the Declara- tion of Independence, they find that these old men say that ' we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal ; ' and then they feel that that moral sentiment, taught in that day, evidences their relation to these men ; that it is the father of all moral principle in them ; and that they have a right to claim it, as though they were blood of the. blood, and flesh of the flesh, of the men who wrote that Declaration. And so they have. That is the electric cord that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together ; that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men." So he said afterward, in 1861, substantially at Tren- ton, and more fully at Philadelphia : " It was not the mere matter of the separation of the colonies from the Mother-Land, but it was that sentiment in the Declara- tion of Independence, which gave liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but I hope to the world, for all future time. It was that which promised that in due time the weight would be lifted from the shoul- ders of all men ; " — adding, with what now looks like prescience, " If this country cannot be saved without giving up that principle, I was about to say, I would rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it." 31 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES From this conviction of the essential authority and value, and the enduring cosmical importance, of the principles he maintained, came in part, no doubt, his singular freedom from personal assumption, from all personal greed for pleasure or gain. He was called, by one who knew him well, " the honestest man he had ever known ; " and certainly no man's pecuniary honesty has been tested more thoroughly — with un- counted millions at his command, and a secret service, responsible to him, which swallowed gold as thirsty sands soak up the rain. But his honesty was not a separate trait, set mechanically into his nature and governing what was alien to it. It was a part, living and inseparable, of his conscientious and ingenuous mind. He believed in the Right, for himself and for others. Its rules were clear to him, its authority per- fect ; and it governed him in small things as well as in the greatest. From this came also his singular patience, and his unwearied courage, in regard to the issue of the terrible contest. Sadly as he felt the sacrifice it involved, in- clined as he was to distrust himself, and knowing as none beside could know with what manifold perils the cause was beset, he seems never to have doubted the final result. The mind of the public, fixed chiefly on the visible forces engaged, wavered often, sometimes violently oscillated, between the utmost confidence of success and the most extreme depression and fear. He held with marvelous steadiness on his way ; never ex- asperated, never over-elated, yet always expecting sure victory in the end, if it took a lifetime to attain it ; because his hold on the principles involved was utterly infrangible, and their ultimate victory he believed to 32 ABRAHAM LINCOLN be certain. He saw the divine forces which, all un- heard by mortal ear, were still contending on our side ; and he knew that till Christianity went down, slavery could not succeed against liberty. The " rapture of battle " he never felt. The " courage of conscience " he always knew ; and the key to all his policy is found in one sentence of one of his speeches, before he was President : " Let us have faith that Right makes Might ; and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it." The same element in his character, the same un- swerving confidence in principles, gave a true moral unity to his administration. It imparted a certain philosophical tone, almost a religious, to much of his statesmanship; a tone most emphatic in his latest address. A latent enthusiasm was bred in him by it ; an enthusiasm that rarely was wrought into utterance, but that kept all his powers in most complete exercise, while it sometimes made his sentences throb with its inward fervor. He became, in some sense, to his own consciousness, a consecrated man ; consecrated to the championship of principles of government, " by which," as he said, " the Republic lives and keeps alive," and in which the whole human race has a stake. Hence came the undertone that thrilled through his short address at Gettysburg, which is more henceforth to the American people than the stateliest oration preserved in its ar- chives. Hence came, in part, the tranquillity and the scope of his high-leveled policy. It was to himself an inspiration ; while it gave him a power over the en- lightened reason of the people which no other presi- dent since Washington has had. "With this came also, in intimate agreement, that C 33 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES sense of the presence and providence of God, which seems never to have wavered, from the time when he went forth from Springfield for Washington, asking the friends whom he left to pray for him, till the time when he said, in his latest address, " As was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, ' the judg- ments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'" Without the least taint of fanaticism, his belief in God's regard for the principles which he was defending was so earnest and constant, and at last so devout, that the whole long war became to. him a sacred war. He rec- ognized the guidance of Providence throughout it, in our reverses as well as our successes, and saw the fore- cast that had shaped it. Reverently, practically, he felt himself but an instrument in God's hand ; and knew that when the divine consummation had been attained, the mystic and awful tragedy would be over. " Let us be quite sober," he said ; " let us diligently apply the means, never doubting that a just God, in his own good time, will give us the right- ful result." Hence came the crown of dignity on the character in which sympathy with men, and conscientious fidelity to principles, had been before so intimately blended. No man can be morally great whose soul does not rest on God as its center, and does not draw from com- munion with him its inmost life. Especially when the leader in great affairs stands face to face with the possible speedy wreck of his country, — when he treads a path all hidden and perilous, without precedent to govern, or parallel to direct him, and sees the con- tracting horizon around shot through with blood and all aflame, — the only thing to keep him staunch, 34 ABRAHAM LINCOLN serene, clear-visioned, is trust in the Highest. It was the life within his life to him whom we mourn. Not uttering itself in any set phrase, not prompting much to religious ceremonial, it gave him a steadiness almost invincible. It made him expectant of a future as grand as the way that led to it was bloody and dark. It united his soul with all that was highest in the heart and conscience of the people which he ruled. It was this alone which enabled him to say, in clos- ing his second inaugural address, in words that illus- trate the whole character of the man, and that will live while the language in which they were uttered endures : " With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on, to finish the work we are in ; to bind up the nation's wounds ; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphans ; to do all which we may to achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations." Combine now, with all these loftier elements, a nat- ural mirthfulness that was constant, exuberant, that sparkled into jest and story, arid kept his faculties al- ways fresh ; — remember that these so various traits were melted together into a character utterly simple, utterly personal, in which was nothing copied from antique models, and nothing imported from foreign ex- amples, which was wholly an American product, born of the influences that had moulded his youth, and nourished by the woods, the river and the prairie, as modern as the West, and as native as its oaks ; — re- member that through the whole atmosphere of the times this character daily radiated influence, in some 35 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES quaint word or comic story, so that all saw the iden- tity of it, and felt that, as was said of him once, " if he were passed through all hoppers in the universe, and ground into dust a million times, when put to- gether again at the end he would come out simply Abraham Lincoln." And then remember that what the country needed and craved, a thousand times more than splendid talents, was such thorough and perma- nent goodness in its head, honesty, fidelity, patience, magnanimity and an unsuspicioned integrity of pur- pose, and you have in part the explanation of that prodigious hold which he gained on the country which he ruled, and on the world which watched that country. The magnetism that held the nation steadfastly to him had here its vital source and seat. He made mis- takes ; men did not defend, did not feel it very neces- sary to apologize for them. He was not omniscient, and his judgment might sometimes be in error. But his character was what the people wanted ; too lenient, sometimes, but kindly, tolerant, patient, always ; with- out a trace of arrogance or of passion ; as little imperi- ous as the air or the sunshine ; as little likely to be crazed with ambition as the clouds, from which drop the showers of spring, to distil their kindly dews into venom. And a character like this was incomparably more to the imperiled and anxious people than the ut- most ability without it would have been. There is such a thing as moral genius — a temper so wholly individual and original, so vitally compact of various excellences, and so alive with personal force, that it sustains and attracts more than do splendid in- tellectual powers. And it was this moral genius 36 ABRAHAM LINCOLN which America wanted, which he supplied. By virtue of it, he seemed to fill the land with his example. He incarnated not only, but instructed and inspired, the temper of the people, till it had more confidence in him than it had in itself. Amid arbitrary arrests and damaging defeats, its trust in his temper never yielded. "His very mistakes," as one has said, " become omnip- otent." For, through the whole of his strange term of office — after the nation had come to know him — it was a source to it of central joy that one so faithful, sympathetic, conscientious, was supreme in the gov- ernment; that a will so earnestly trustful in Provi- dence was guiding the forces which Providence had evolved ; that hands so pure had been found to bear, across the stony wilderness of fear, and through the mounting seas of blood, the civil Constitution, which is to the Eepublic its consecrated ark. But character alone, even one so original and so eminent as his, could never explain the singular place attained by Mr. Lincoln in the respect of the country and the world ; could never wholly account for the work which he accomplished. Intellectual power, ex- ecutive faculty, a large capacity for skilful and labori- ous administration, are also implied in such master- ship as his ; and aside from these, amid such times as ours have been, he must have proved a simple drift-log on the current, unable to govern it, only rushing with it toward the abyss. As we turn, then, to consider his nature in this view, we shall find, I think, that a remarkable faculty for exact and discriminating thought was combined in him with immense common sense and great practical sagacity ; while his execu- tive force was imparted by a will yielding in small 37 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES things, but tenacious in great, and capable of long-con- tinued exertion. These were the instruments through which his patient spirit wrought to its great issues. They made the force, not splendid, but practical and effective, which took from his character " the consecration and the gleam," and of which that which we have derived from him is the permanent fruit. The exact and incisive habit of his mind was con- stantly shown in his papers and speeches, and even in his unstudied utterances. His jests were always more remarkable than for anything else for their absolute fitness to the point illustrated. The fun that was in them, even when it was coarse, was weighted with meaning, and edged with sharp thought. They were what Lord Bacon says proverbs are — " the edge-tools of speech, which cut and penetrate the knots of af- fairs." His discriminations were always accurate ; and no sophistry could stand before the fire of his analysis. Where has the essential unwisdom of secession, even supposing it wholly successful, ever been more suc- cinctly exposed than it was by him in his first inau- gural : " Physically speaking, we cannot separate. "We cannot remove our respective sections from each other, nor build an impassable wall between them. . . . Is it possible then to make our intercourse more advan- tageous, or more satisfactory, after separation than before ? Can aliens make treaties, easier than friends can make laws ? Can treaties be more faithfully en- forced between aliens, than laws can among friends ? " "Where has the argument against the constitutional right of secession been more tersely, yet more com- pletely set forth, than in these words : " Perpetuity is 38 ABRAHAM LINCOLN jmplied if not expressed in the fundamental law of all national governments. . . . Continue to execute all the express provisions of our national Constitution, and the Union will endure forever ; it being impossible to destroy it, except by some action not provided for in the instrument itself." And where has ever the ab- surdity of the argument for the right of secession, derived from the general doctrine of State Rights, been more sharply exhibited than in a sentence or two of his first message : " If all the States save one should assert their right to drive that one out of the Union, it is presumed the whole class of seceder poli- ticians would at once deny the power, and denounce the act as the grossest outrage upon State Rights. But suppose that precisely the same act, instead of being called driving the one out, should be called the seceding of the others from it, — it would be exactly what the seceders claim to do ; unless, indeed, they make the point," he adds with an irony not less cut- ting because it is gentle, " unless they make the point, that the one, because it is a minority, may rightfully do what the others, because they are a majority, may not rightfully do." In his entire treatment of the right of secession, the same sharp and destructive analysis is shown. Thus : " A part of the present national debt was contracted to pay the old debt of Texas. Is it just that she shall leave, and pay no part of this herself ? If one State may secede, so may another ; and when all shall have seceded, none is left to pay the debts. Is this quite just to creditors ? " How his lips must have smiled as he wrote the question ! " Did we notify them of this sage view of ours when we borrowed their 39 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES money ? " Again : " The Constitution provides, and all the States have accepted the provision, that the United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government. But if a State may lawfully go out of the Union, having done so it may also discard the republican form of govern- ment. So that to prevent its going out, is an indis- pensable means to the end of maintaining the guaran- tee mentioned ; and where an end is lawful and obli- gatory, the indispensable means to it are also lawful and obligatory." As further illustrative of the same property and tendency of his mind, remember a sentence or two from his letter to those in Kentucky who though loyal to the government objected to the Emancipation Proc- lamation, and wished it recalled : " It shows a gain of a hundred and thirty thousand soldiers, seamen, and laborers [for the Union cause]. Now let any Union man who complains of the measure test himself, by writing down in one line, that ' he is for subduing the Rebellion by force of arms ; ' and, in the next, that ' he is for taking these hundred and thirty thousand men from the Union side, and placing them where they would be but for the measure which he condemns.' If he cannot face his cause so stated, it is because he can- not face the truth." So, in a letter written much earlier, to those at the West who objected to his policy : " You say that you will not fight to free negroes. Some of them seem to be willing to fight for you, but no matter. Fight you then exclusively to save the Union. I issued the proc- lamation on purpose to aid you in saving the Union. Whenever you shall have conquered all resistance to 40 ABRAHAM LINCOLN the Union, if I shall urge you to continue fighting, it will be an apt time for you to declare that you will not fight to free negroes. I thought that in your struggle for the Union to whatever extent the negroes should cease helping the enemy, to that extent it weak- ened that enemy in his resistance to> you. Do you think differently ? I thought that whatever negroes can be got to do as soldiers, leaves just so much less for white soldiers to do in saving the Union. Does it appear otherwise to you ? But negroes, like other people, act upon motives. Why should they do any- thing for us, if we will do nothing for them ? If they stake their lives for us, they must be prompted by the strongest motive, even the promise of freedom. And the promise, being made, must be kept." It is evident that before a mind so careful, so per- spicuous, so analytic as this, there was but little chance for sophisms to stand ; and that whatever se- cured the assent of one so accustomed to logical proc- esses, and to clear discriminations, was likely at least to have much in its favor, if not to be finally accepted and ratified by the public judgment. But the faculty of careful ratiocination is not synonymous with prac- tical sagacity ; and a mind addicted to the logical exercise may be even fatally narrowed thereby — los- ing in general perceptive sensibility, in administrative skill, and in breadth of reason, while it gains in par- ticular dialectical force. In attempting to explain, then, the unrivaled personal position attained by Mr. Lincoln, the singular power exercised by him, not only over public affairs, but over the sentiments and con- victions of the people, and over the general mind of mankind, it is of cardinal consequence to observe, that 41 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES with this careful precision of thought he combined a really supreme common sense ; a practical sagacity, so intuitive and enlightening that, though it did not keep him from committing mistakes, it kept him from any fatal error, and justified always that confidence in his plans which at first it inspired. His mind possessed scope, as well as sharpness. He looked on the right hand and on the left, before he smote. His reason saw before and after ; and in the clear comprehension of results, and of the methods by which to attain them, his judgment showed itself as discursive and prescient as his power of analysis was trenchant and fine. Here Was really the center of his strength ; the fruitful source of his success as a states- man. And when associated, as it was, with the char- acter we have sketched, and with a tenacious and pa- tient will, it goes very far toward explaining his power and interpreting his work. There is a showy but dangerous kind of mind some- times employed in the offices of statesmanship, whose power lies, and also its peril, in what may be called intellectual constructiveness. It deals largely with the abstract. It is mighty in making paper govern- ments. Its schemes express ideal conceptions ; and it counts it almost a degradation to stoop to consider practical necessities. It theorizes splendidly on what ought to be, and insists that the facts shall correspond with the theory ; or, if either must give way, that the facts shall be displaced to make room for the theory. The vast, intricate, gradual administration of public affairs, which contemplates many interests, and has to deal with great masses of men, it would mould relent- lessly by preconceived metaphysical plans ; and it is 42 ABRAHAM LINCOLN always unsatisfied until the two distinctly corre- spond. There is much that is striking in this style of mind. It is apt to win a large share of admiration, especially among the studious and refined. It is an important ele- ment, no doubt, in public counsels : because, when ar- rayed, as it usually is, in a speculative opposition to the actual governing forces in a nation, its criticisms are helpful. They tend to expand the horizon of rulers, and to lift toward the austere levels of reason what might otherwise sink to the plane of expediency and political tactics. If its shining air-palaces do not become solid terrestrial successes, they yet hold before men the ideal forms of public development ; and the workers beneath may build better and higher for having surveyed them. But when such a mind is placed itself at the head of affairs,— unless it has that reach of vision, with that vividness of perception, which belong only to the highest genius, and unless possessed of a knowledge of facts that is well-nigh omniscient, — it is sure to be found incompetent to its task. Especially in difficult and critical times, — when great elemental forces are evolved beneath and overhead, when the whirlwinds of passion are loosed from their chambers, and sudden currents, which no chart shows, are hurled to and fro with fierce velocity, while the nation drifts and drives before them in unexpected directions, — such a mind as this is the poorest of pilots. Its beautiful schemes no more match the emergency than ingenious theorems arrest the typhoon. It wants tact, invention, insight, hardihood. Losing sight of the headlands, it fails to make allowance for variations of the compass. It does not hear the boom of the surf on the rocks to 43 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES leeward. The awful volume and onset of the storm are too much for its theoretic navigation ; and the crew must mutiny, and put a more practical man at the head, or crew and ship will go to the bottom. Not such, certainly, was the mind of Mr. Lincoln. Men quarreled with him sometimes, because he had not more of this wholly intellectual and ethical tend- ency. But if he had had more, the nation and the world might not to-day have been his mourners. There is, on the other hand, a cheap and sterile species of shrewdness, which often calls itself common sense, — which sometimes even passes for such, when it is installed in positions of influence, — which makes nothing of principles, but everything of what it con- ceives to be "facts." It has no ideal; but takes its suggestions from the newspapers, from the caucuses, from the last man who speaks. Its plans are moulded by no ethical harmonies, by no fitness even to serve great ends, but by immediate personal influences. It prides itself on being exclusively practical ; on aiming to conserve what already exists, to hold parties to- gether, to smooth away differences, and to reconcile by a dexterous manipulation antagonistic interests. It discredits the higher nature of the people, and thinks anything can be carried by a skilful and timely han- dling of conventions. It has faith in one thing — polit- ical management. It knows one rule — to do what is popular. It is constant to one purpose — to keep things quiet. It sometimes achieves in peaceful days a tran- sient success, and wins, perhaps, from the more un- thinking, a superficial applause. But its end, even then, is generally failure ; since it never awakens a generous impulse, and never inspires any general con- 44 ABRAHAM LINCOLN fidence. And in times of imminent public peril, it is not insufficient only, but essentially dangerous. Trivial by nature, when the pressure comes upon it, it first becomes trickish, and then becomes treacherous. Losing head altogether, in the final crisis, it is likely to carry everything that depends on it into sudden and uttermost wreck. Such has been the style of mind too often exhibited among those who have ranked as political leaders, on one side or the other, in our country and time. Such was, perhaps, the style of mind men feared would ap- pear in President Lincoln, before they had had ex- perience of him. But such, thank God ! was as far as possible from being the type or the parallel of the mind which by degrees was brought out in him. Not addicted to theorizing and dogmatic specula- tion, in no sense a doctrinaire, he was not either a man of expedients ; a simply shrewd, unfruitful manager of political affairs. Clear-sighted by nature, he had kept his judgment healthy and strong by intercourse with men and by a pure and manly life; and so he was ready without being rash, wary and cool without the slightest timidity. Quick to perceive, he was slow to decide, offering liberal hospitality to all discreet coun- sels, and determined to discover what was best on the whole, whether it agreed with any theory or not. And when immense exigencies suddenly confronted him, he kept his balance ; he was not bewildered in the crisis ; and if he did not show that marvelous genius which illuminates all things with one broad flash, he showed an intuitive and large common sense ; a calm, persist- ent, wide-sighted sagacity ; that quality of mind which enables its possessor to see principles clearly, but to see 45 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES also the governing practical necessities amid which those principles must be unfolded ; which makes him wise in selecting his methods, and sure, if not swift, in accomplishing his ends. He showed, in other words, not indeed in an absolute degree but in a very high and remarkable degree, precisely that species of men- tal ability which an intelligent democracy craves in its ruler ; precisely that which was needed for the times ; precisely that without which a showy faculty for theo- rizing, or a mere trained political shrewdness, would infallibly have brought us to speedy destruction. Through this he did his unequaled work for the land and the world. And this will always shine paramount in him, while his history is read. Observe what illustration it found in his action ; how continual, and how manifold. When he came into power the nation was as a com- pany lost in the woods : with sudden gulfs sinking before it ; with stealthy robbers lurking near ; with utter darkness overhead ; the sun gone down, the light of all the constellations quenched. No man knew cer- tainly what to do, which way to turn, on whom to rely. There was danger in advancing, perhaps greater in delay ; danger that everything precious might be lost ; danger, even, that the travelers themselves, in their dark fear and furious haste, might turn on each other with deadly blows. You remember what an in- finite jargon of counsels, from all presses, forums, in- dividual speakers, rent and vexed the gloomy air ; with what passionate eagerness the public sought on every side for some avenue of escape — urging the adoption of one course to-day, and of another, its opposite, to- morrow. All voices sounded strange in the darkness ; 46 ABRAHAM LINCOLN all paths were obliterated; all bearings lost. There was a prodigious power in the nation ; but it was fever- ish, headstrong, chaotic. There was a terrific onset to be met. The past showed no instances by which to instruct ; the future no outlet, toward which to invite. It seemed impossible that any one man should be able to hold and lead the country ; especially that one with- out wide fame, without large experience, without the prestige of previous leadership, should be able to guide it into safety. Measure then the results to which we have come, against the conditions in which we stood, and say if anything short of a sagacity that seems providential could have brought us out of darkness into day ; along precipice and pitfall, and through the valleys of strife and woe, to the sunlighted summits on which we rest. There is nothing accidental in this result. ~No happy chances secured it for us. The unusual wisdom of him who led us is demonstrated by it — a wisdom more re- markable, because more rare, than any specific mental faculty ; more lofty than eloquence, more illustrious than song. And when we examine the path which he trod, how- ever at the time we criticized his steps, our impression of this great property in him becomes more vivid. You can hardly touch a point in his policy where it does not appear. The tentative nature of his early administration, — his delays to act, by which men were irritated, and at which they sneered, as showing his want of a positive purpose, — yet proved in the end to have been indispen- sable to make the action, when it was taken, univer- sally acceptable. In the particular form of his meas- 47 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES ures, as much as in the measures themselves, in the very times at which they were initiated, this sagacity is discovered. His radicalism showed it ; for it was always conservative and rational, not startling the timid, His conservatism showed it ; for it was always intelligent, not blind, liberal and persuasive, and never imperious. Reviewing at a glance the whole series of his policy in these swift- whirling and perilous years, we may say that in these five points especially, his sagacity was re- vealed. First : in his early perception of the fact that compromise was impossible, and that, with the exist- ing views and temper of the rebel leaders and the dis- loyal people, the issues at stake between them and the government had got to be settled by the stern and fearful arbitrament of battle. Second : in his imme- diate determination that the war should commence through some unjustified act of aggression on the part of the revolt, and not through any offensive display of purpose and power on the part of the government. Third : in his tenacious adherence, from first to last, to the one great end to be secured by the war — the maintenance of the government in all its prerogatives, the maintenance of the republic in its territorial and legal integrity ; and in his strict subordination to this of all that he did, of all his refusals to take any action. Fourth : in the constant flexibility of his methods, his readiness to try one thing or another, to see which in- strument would be most effective for accomplishing the work in which there was neither rule to guide nor example to instruct him ; and in his constant recogni- tion of the fact that the march of events was govern- ing him, while he in turn was influencing it, and that 48 ABRAHAM LINCOLN his highest wisdom was to discern what Providence meant to accomplish, and to move in the line of its battalions. And, finally : in the absolute fixedness of purpose with which he avoided foreign complications, and, postponing everything else, held the nation to its one work of subduing rebellion, and making the gov- ernment everywhere supreme. Take all these related facts into view — observe how early they began to appear, and how consistent, stead- fast, deliberate, was that administration of public af- fairs which they represent ; how largely this was orig- inal with himself, how freely at any rate he accepted it, and how persistently he carried it out, — and surely his immense sagacity can need no other demonstration. It was his policy. The symmetry of it shows the singleness of the brain by which it was moulded. He surrounded himself with eminent counselors. It was one fruit of his wisdom that he did so. And they no doubt often influenced him, while in turn instructed or corrected by him. But he was always the head of the cabinet ; so that it sometimes was matter of com- plaint that he did not yield, as others would have done, to the different preferences or the adverse deci- sions of those combined in it. The truth is, his policy had to be his own. He took light gladly, but he could not take law, from other minds. And while his coun- selors must always have a share, and that a large one, in the credit and renown which belong to his policy, his name must be always first and supremely identified with it. He adopted it because he saw it the best ; and, whatever opposition or whatever applause it af- terward encountered, when his mind was made up it never seems to have subsequently wavered. He d ;49 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES knew his plan, what the issue proved it, the wisest thing. His sagacity was shown, almost as much as in his policy itself, in the modes and means, in the very forms of statement and illustration, by which he presented it to the public. He could be eloquent, if he would. Remember the close of his Ohio letter : " Peace does not appear so distant as it did. I hope it will come soon, and come to stay ; and so come as to be worth the keeping. It will then have been proved that among freemen there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet, and that they who take such appeal are sure to lose their case, and pay the cost. And then there will be some black men who can re- member that with silent tongue, and clenched teeth, and steady eye, and well-poised bayonet, they have helped mankind on to this great consummation ; while I fear that there will be some white men unable to forget that with malignant heart, and deceitful speech, they have striven to hinder it." But generally the most marked feature of his style was its utter simplicity. The usual plethoric platitudes of state-papers were curiously contrasted by his simple and sinewy sen- tences. If an editor wrote to him, he wrote back to the editor, and published his answer. And when the people had got over their astonishment at his audacity, they believed all the more in his utter sincerity. No man ever lived who spoke more directly to the heart of the people. Critics might quarrel with his rhetoric sometimes ; but critics themselves could not gainsay the fact that his homely and pithy words had a power beyond all ornate paragraphs. With what absolute 50 ABRAHAM LINCOLN completeness and precision was the origin of the war explained by him, and the course of the people con- cerning it justified, in this one sentence : " Both parties deprecated war. But one of them would make war, rather than let the nation survive ; and the other would accept war, rather than let it perish ; — and the war came ! " His very colloquialisms were mighty for his service. " We must keep still pegging away," he said, in the gloomiest period of the war ; and every plain man saw his duty and was nerved to perform it. " One war at a time : " — all the orators could not answer it ; a unan- imous press could not have overborne the impression it made. " The United States Government must not undertake to run the churches : " — the dictum is worth a half-dozen duodecimos on the complex relations of Church and State. " You need' n't cross a bridge until you have got to it : " — if men's minds were not relieved of their fears concerning the effect of a general emanci- pation, they were at least widely persuaded to post- pone these, by the pithy advice. " The central idea of secession," he said in one of his messages, " is the es- sence of anarchy : " and elaborate pages could not have said more than that one apothegm. It is a head-line for copy-books, for all time to come. Always, the sagacity which had selected his policy, and which usually chose with great final correctness the men and the times for putting it in practice, was shown as well in the homely phrase, or proverb, or anecdote, which made it familiar throughout the land. More than his opponents knew at the time, more than the people themselves were aware, he argued the ques- tions of his administration, he carried the public judg- 51 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES ment to his conclusions, by those quaint words which all remembered, and which were repeated with laugh- ing satisfaction at thousands of firesides. His max- ims were more effective than his messages ; and a score of presses could not have rivaled the service of some of his stories. "With intuitive skill he selected his policy. With a skill almost equal he made the people aware what it was. And when it had been adopted by him he car- ried it out, as I said before, with a power of will per- haps as remarkable as was the sagacity which had planned it. He had not certainly what is called " an iron will." Well for him that he had not ! It might have involved the destruction of his influence, and the sacrifice of the interests he was set to conserve. For iron breaks when it is bent ; and no man lives, or ever lived, who could have kept his will unbent, amid such times as we have passed. Accumulated defeats, disheartening opposi- tions, complaints without reason, intolerable delays, — the resolution that boasts itself inflexible might have been fractured beneath the burden, and the very pil- lars of the government have been unsettled. But President Lincoln had what was better ; a will like strands of tempered steel ; flexible in small things, elas- tic, pliant, and always sheathed in a playful gentleness, but not liable to be snapped, however it was bent, and springing back from every pressure in its primitive toughness. Men called him undecided, vacillating, uncertain ; and so he was in minor matters — in great things, even, till the argument was closed and his mind was made up. But when it was, the same men called him obstinate, headstrong ; for nothing could change 52 ABRAHAM LINCOLN him. He dismissed more than once his most promi- nent generals ; and all the pressure of persons or par- ties could no more change his purpose afterward than it could shake the base of the Alleghanies. He re- tained his cabinet, against the threat of serious divi- sions in the party which had chosen him. He would not go to war with England, in the case of the Trent, he would not get involved in a controversy with France, on the question of the French occupation of Mexico, though friends insisted on his taking high ground, and enemies sneered without stay or stint because he did not. He launched the bolt of his Proclamation against the slavery which had nourished rebellion, though a thousand voices prophesied dis- aster. Deliberate, till at times he almost seemed dilatory — unwilling to commit himself till all sides of a question had been thoroughly canvassed, and ready, to the very verge of a fault, to hear to the last the humblest repre- sentative of any interest or any opinion — he was yet as staunch as the ribs of the Ironsides when his course was decided ; and it was like pulling against gravita- tion to try thenceforth to detain or deflect him. The tenacity of his will was like that of his muscle, which could hold out an axe at arm's length without a quiver when others drooped. Its influence reminded one of the suck of the under-drif t on a sea beach : which does not appear upon the surface, and makes no visible wrestle with the waves, but which carries everything" into its current, and compels the strongest and skil- fulest swimmer to yield himself vanquished. Let one other fact, then, be brought to view, and the secret of his power is perhaps all before us. It is 53 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES that his powers were so simple, native, and unostenta- tious, that they hardly impressed men while he was living as so great as they were ; they excited no jeal- ousies ; they started no fears ; and the popular trust in them was unapprehensive. At the same time they were so original, constitutional, so independent even of training, much more of adventitious aids, that they always were ready for instant use, and only grew more adequate to their work, as its pressure upon them became more tremendous. So, again, he had a power which more brilliant men, or more literary men, would certainly have wanted ; and all his force became most effective. If genius had taken the place of his sagacity, men might have been afraid of him, as they are of the light- ning. It is splendid, but fitful ; and its bolts may drop where they were not expected. But his force was so quiet, patient, pervasive, that it wrought like the vital force in nature, which is not exhibited in any flash, but which streams unheard through the breasts of the earth, and comes to its expression with certainty though with silence, in bud and fruit and an infinite verdure. If it had been the result of education and political practice, or of special accomplishments, there would have been something precarious in it. It would have depended somewhat on circumstances. It would have been liable to be shaken, if not shattered, when new and great emergencies were met. But being so native and intrinsic as it was, so wholly the result of his special constitution, it not only gave no sign of yielding, it became ever more thorough and masterly, as it was summoned by grander cares to new exhibition. His nature grew only larger, and more capable, as time Went 54 ABRAHAM LINCOLN on. His faculties were not wearied by the work they were put to, and remained to the end unworn and fresh. This essential naturalness, this silentness and con- stancy, marking his powers, were not favorable perhaps to his instant hold on the public admiration. Men were not surprised by him into bursts of applause. They nowhere saw one mighty figure, cloud-enveloped, iris-crowned, riding with splendid supremacy on the storm, or heard a voice as of Jove himself commanding peace ; and for the time they felt disappointed. But his power was more universal in its reach because it was quiet ; and now that it is gone we honor it the more because it was essential, not artificial, serene and patient, not impulsive and scenic. As the sunshine draws less admiration than the pic- ture, but is recognized still as a far grander good ; as the river is not so much praised as the fountain, but with its inexhaustible current is a millionfold more mighty and precious ; as the stars do not interest our fancy so much as the glittering fireworks which cor- ruscate beneath, while yet they hold the earth itself on its calm poise, — so other statesmen have won more applause than was given to him. In times of paroxys- mal excitement they have seemed to show a more supreme and sudden power. But now that he is gone, we miss the sagacity which lighted up intricate paths like the sunshine. We miss the deep and constant currents of thought and will which bore great burdens without a ripple. We feel how grandly secure we were while the star, now hidden in higher splendors, held up with its unfailing influence the very structure and frame of the government. Ladies and Gentlemen : — Such was the man for 55 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES whom we mourn ; and such the position in which Providence had placed him. Think then a moment of the work which he wrought in it, and all our reasons for gladness and for grief, on this day set apart to commemorate him, will be before us. "With the character I have sketched, to give him at once impulse and law, with such effective powers for its instruments, with so many trained and skilful minds eager to help him, and amid the unparalleled opportunities which by his times were opened to him, it might have been expected that his work should be a great one. It could not even be matter of surprise that it should have a colossal character — like the reach of the river, along which he had guided his flatboat in his youth ; like the stretch of the prairies, on which he had builded his home as a man. And yet how far, in its actual development, it transcended even such expectations ! How singular it is among the recorded achievements of man ! How plainly is revealed in it a higher than any human will, laying out and arranging the mighty scheme ! When he took in hand the reins of the government, the finances of the country seemed hopelessly de- ranged ; and after many years of peace it was difficult to raise money, at unprecedented interest, for its daily use. And when he died — after such expenditures as no man had dreamed of, through four long years of devastating war — the credit of the Kepublic was so firmly established that foreign markets were clam- orous for its bonds, and the very worst thing which could have happened, his own destruction, did not de- press by one hair's breadth the absolute confidence of our own people in them. "When he came to Washing- 56 ABRAHAM LINCOLN ton, the navy at the command of the government was scattered, almost beyond recall, to the ends of the earth, and was even ludicrously insufficient for instant needs. He left it framed of iron instead of oak, with wholly new principles expressed in its structure, and large enough to bind the continent in blockade, while it made the national flag familiar on every sea which commerce crosses. He found an army remotely dispersed, almost hopelessly disorganized, by the treachery of its officers ; with hardly enough of it left at hand to furnish a body-guard for his march to the Capital. He left a half-million of men in arms, after the losses of fifty campaigns, — with valor, discipline, arms, and generalship unsurpassed in the world, and admonitory to it. He found our diplomacy a byword and a hissing in most of the principal foreign courts. He made it intelligent, influential, respected, wherever a civilized language is spoken. In his moral and political achievements at home, he was still more successful. He found the arts of indus- try prostrated, almost paralyzed, indeed, by the arrest of commerce, the repudiation of debts, the universal distrust. He left them so trained, quickened and developed that henceforth they are secure amid the world's competition. He came to Washington, through a people morally rent and disorganized — of whom it was known that a part at least were in full accord with the disloyal plans ; and concerning whom it was predicted by some, and feared by many, that the slightest pressure from the government upon them would resolve them at once into fighting factions. He laid heavy taxes on them, he drafted them into armies, he made no effort to excite their admiration, he seemed 57 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES to throw down even the ancient muniments of their personal liberty ; and he went back to his grave through the very same people so knit into one, by their love for each other and their reverence for him, that the cracking of the continent hardly could part them. At his entrance on his office he found the leaders of the largest, fiercest and most confident rebellion known to history, apparently in all things superior to himself — in capacity, in culture, in political experi- ence, in control over men, in general weight with the country itself. And when he was assassinated, he left them so utterly overthrown and discomfited that they fled over sea, or hid themselves in women's clothes. A power it had taken thirty years to mature, a power that put everything into the contest — money, men, harbors, homes, churches, cities, states themselves — ■ and that fought with a fury never surpassed, he hot only crushed but extinguished in four years. A court that had been the chief bulwark of slavery he so re- organized as to make it a citadel of liberty and light for all time to come. He found a race immeshed in a bondage which had lasted already two hundred years, and had been only compacted and confirmed by inven- tion and commerce, by arts, legislations, by social usage, by ethnic theories, and even by what was called religion ; he pretended to no special fondness for the race ; he refused to make war on its behalf ; but he took it up cheerfully in the sweep of his plans, and left it a race of free workers and soldiers. He came to the Capital of an empire severed by what seemed to the world eternal lines ; with sectional interests, with antithetic ideas, with irremovable hatreds, forbidding reconstruction. He left it the 58 ABRAHAM LINCOLN Capital of an empire so restored that the thought of its division is henceforth an absurdity ; with its unity more complete than that of Great Britain ; with its ancient flag, and its unchallenged rule, supreme again from the Lakes to the Gulf. Nay : he found a nation that had lost in a measure its primitive faith in the grand ideas of its own constitution ; and he left that nation so instructed and renewed, so aware of the supremacy of principles over forces, so committed to the justice and the liberty which its founders had .valued, that the era of his power has been the era of its new birth ; that its history Avill be nobler and more luminous forever for his inspirations. Not public achievements are his only memorial. His influence has come, like the " clear shining after rain," on the lesser interests, on the private career, on the personal character of the people whom he ruled. He educated a nation, with the Berserkers' blood in it, into a gentleness more strange than its skill, and more glorious than its valor ; a gentleness which even the sight of starved men could not sting into ferocity. Through his personal spirit he restrained and exalted the temper of a continent ; and our letters are to be nobler, our art more spiritual, our philanthropy more generous, our very churches more earnest and free, be- cause of what we have learned from him. The public estimation of honesty is brighter. The sense of the power and grandeur of character is more intimate in men's minds. We know henceforth what style of man- hood America needs, and in her progress tends to pro- duce. We have a new courage concerning the future. We have a fresh and deeper sense of that eternal Providence which he recognized. 59 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES "Not to our country has his work been confined. Across the sea extends his influence. It vibrates this hour around the world ; and despotic institutions are less secure, the progress of liberty throughout Europe, throughout Christendom, is more rapid and sure, by reason of that which he has wrought. The peoples are more hopeful, and the bayonets are more thought- ful. The millennium of nations is nearer than it was. The race itself is lifted forward toward the gates of mingled gold and pearl that wait to swing, on silent hinges, into the age of freedom and of peace. All this is his work. Of course he has had immense forces to work with ; great counselors to suggest, great captains and admirals to accomplish ; a million brains to be his helpers ; a people full of thought and zeal to inspire his plans and push them on. Of course God's power, in which he trusted, has gone before and wrought beside him ; and he himself, aided by it, has " builded better than he knew." But still the work continues his : since he has accomplished it, while an- other man, with different powers and a different temper, in the same position, could not have performed it. Without signal genius, or learning, or accomplish- ments, but with patience, kindness, a faithful will, a masterly sagacity, — planted in times filled full of peril, yet opulent also in immense opportunities, working with instruments so manifold and mighty as have been hardly before entrusted to man, and never before so nobly used, — it has been his to do this work : to make his country one and grand ; to make the principles, in which it has its highest glory, supreme forever; to make the world more hopeful, and more free ! In this, then, is the final vindication of his fame ; 60 ABRAHAM LINCOLN the grandest memorial of his character and power which it has yet been given to any man to build on earth. He did it so naturally that hardly at any point does it give us the impression of extraordinary exertion. He did it so silently that the world was startled with extremest surprise when it found it ac- complished. He did it so thoroughly that even his death could not interrupt it, could onlyjxmiplete and crown the whole. He might well leave a work so grand when the capstone had been placed upon it. The flag just lifted anew on Fort Sumter, — symbolic as it was of the war concluded, of the nation restored, — might well be the signal for his departure. More than almost any other man, he could say with the Lord, looking back on his ministry, " It is finished ! " Eeviewing this work, so vast, so enduring and so sublime, and looking up unto that which is now for him its consummation, all eulogy is inadequate, if it be not in vain. The monuments we may build — and which it is our instinct and our privilege to build, in all our cities as well as at the Capital, in this city by the sea, as well as in that where his dust sleeps — are not needful to him, but only to the hearts from which they arise, and the future generations which they shall instruct. From the topmost achievement yet realized by man, he has stepped to the skies. He leads, henceforth, the hosts whom he marshaled, and who at his word went forth to battle, on plains in- visible to our short sight. He stands side by side once more with the orator, so cultured and renowned, with whom he stood on the heights of Gettysburg ; but now on hills where rise no graves, and over which march, in shining ranks, with trumpet-swells and palms 61 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES of triumph, immortal hosts. He is with the fathers and founders of the Eepublic ; whose cherished plans he carried out, whose faith and hope had in his work their great fruition. He is with all builders of Christian States, who, working with prescient skill and will, and with true consecration, have laid the foundations of human progress, and made mankind their constant debtor. The heavens are his home, but the earth and its records will take care of his fame. For of all whom he meets and dwells with there, no one has held a higher trust ; no one has been more loyal to it ; no one has left a work behind more grand and vast. And so long as the government which he reestablished shall continue to endure ; so long as the country which he made again the home of one nation shall hold that nation within its compass, and shall continue to attract to its bosom the liberty -loving from every land ; so long as the people which he emancipated shall make the palmetto and the orange-tree quiver with the hymns of its jubilee ; so long as the race which he has set forward shall continue to advance, through bright- ening paths, to the future that waits for its swift steps — a fame as familiar as any among men, a char- acter as distinguished, and an influence as wide, will be the fame, the character and the influence, of him who came four years ago an unknown man from his home in the West, but who has now written' in letters of light, on pages as grand and as splendid as any in the history of the world, the illustrious name of Abraham Lincoln. 62 II THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT AND THE GENESIS OF IT An Address delivered before the New York Historical Society at the celebration of its seventieth anniversary, April 15, 1875. II THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT AND THE GENESIS OF IT Me. Peesident : Membees of the Histoeical Society : Ladies, and Gentlemen : — The anniversary by which we are assembled marks the completion of the seventieth - year of the useful life of this Society. It is an occasion of interest to all of us, if regarded only in this relation. There are some present who remember still the founders of the Society : Egbert Benson, its first President, John Pintard, Brockholst Livingston, Dr. John M. Mason, Drs. Samuel L. Mitchill and David Hosack, Rufus. King, Samuel Bayard, Daniel D. Tompkins, DeWitt Clinton, and others whose names are less familiar. There are many present to whom are recalled memo- rable faces, by the names of those who in subsequent years received its honors, or shared its labors, who are not now among the living : John Jay, Albert Gallatin, John Duer, Dr. McVickar, Gulian Yerplanck, Charles King, Dr. John W. Francis, William L. Stone, Edward Robinson, Luther Bradish, Romeyn Brodhead, Dr. De Witt. All of us, who are of a studious habit, have enjoyed the labors and the influence of the Society, and have been encouraged and quickened by it, as well as more directly aided, in the small excursions which we have made into the domain of historical knowledge. It is a source, therefore, I am sure, of unfeigned sat- E 65 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES isfaction to all of us to be able this evening to con- gratulate the honored President of the Society, its of- ficers and its members, on the success which it has ac- complished, and on the promise of increasing prosper- ity with which its future here salutes us. In its in- corporeal and continuing life, it has the dignity of age, without its decays. Its seventy years have brought larger fame, ampler resources, wider responsibilities ; but it has still the privilege of youth — the fair and far outlook of existence in its prime. It projects our thoughts, from this eminent anniversary, over the periods which it anticipates, as well as over that which it reviews ; and we shall joyfully unite in the hope that its coming career may be only more full of glad- ness and growth than has been its past, and that its influence may constantly extend, as the years augment its possessions and its fame. Such institutions are beneficent powers in civiliza- tion. Whatever transports us from the present to the past, from the near to the remote, widens the mind as well as instructs it ; makes it capacious and reflective ; sets it free, in a relative independence of local impulse and of transient agitation ; gives it, in a measure, a character cosmopolitan, and a culture universal. What- ever recalls to us eminent persons — their brilliant and engaging parts, above all, their fortitude, wisdom, self- sacrifice — reenforces our manhood, encourages our virtue, and makes us ashamed of our indolent self-in- dulgence, of our impatient and fitful habit. A community like ours — restless, changeful, abound- ing in wealth, vehemently self-confident — especially needs such inspiring impressions from a more austere and temperate past. A Society which presents that, 66 THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT through libraries and lectures, is ethical, educational, and not merely ornamental. In larger proportions, with more copious ministry, it fulfils the office of the statue of Erasmus, standing always, with a book in its hand, in the market-place of Rotterdam, amid the in- tricate network of canals, and in the incessant roar of traffic. It materializes again the shadowy forms. It breathes upon communities, languid or luxurious, an ennobling force, from vanished actions and silent lips. Presenting, as to immediate vision, the patient and achieving years into whose conquests we have entered, ' it makes us aware of the duty which always matches our privilege, and of the judgment which coming time will strictly pronounce upon our era. It ministers to whatever most aspires in man, to whatever is wor- thiest in civilization. And so it concerns the public wel- fare that this Society should long fulfil its important office, while the city expands to wider splendor, and the years fly on with accelerating haste ; that this an- niversary should be one in a series, stretching forward beyond our life, beyond the life of those who succeed us, while the country continues the inviting and afflu- ent home of men. But this anniversary is not the only one to which our thoughts are to-night directed. By the irresistible progress of time, we are set face to face with others which are at once to occur, the succession of which, during several years, is to make large claim upon our attention ; and these are anniversaries, in comparison with whose significance, and whose secular importance, the one which assembles us would lose its dignity if it were not itself associated with them. History can but picture events ; setting forth, in a 67 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES measure, their causes and consequences, and indicating the varieties of action and of character which were in- volved in them. It is, as has been said, " the biog- raphy of communities." These societies which pro- mote historical studies have it for their function to collect the materials, cultivate the tastes, assist the minute and complex investigations, out of which comes the ultimate enlightening historical narrative. Their office is therefore subordinate and auxiliary, though quickening and fine. The office of the his- torians whom they instruct, is commemorative only, not creative. They are the heralds who marshal the procession, not the princely figures who walk in it. They exhibit actions which they did not perform, and describe events in producing which they had no part. "When, then, the events themselves are before us, the mere narrative of which the student writes and the library assists, our chief attention is challenged by them. Contemplating them, we lose sight, compara- tively, of the instruments which had made their out- line familiar, forgetting the processes before the vitality and the mass of the facts to which these had brought us. It is with us as with the traveler, who ceases to remember the ship which carried him across the seas when he treads the streets of the distant town, watches its unfamiliar manners, hears the dissonance of its strange speech, and looks with a surprised delight on its religious or civil architecture. So we, in front of the great events, the signal actions, the mean or the illustrious characters, to which the historical narrative has borne us, forget for the time the narrative itself, or only remember the intellectual grace which moulded its lines, the strength of proof which confirmed its 68 THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT conclusions, the buoyant movement with which it bore us across intervening floods of time. We stand, as a people, in the presence of a com- manding Past, and shall continue so to do in succeed- ing years of our national experience. One centennial anniversary, dear to the thoughts of every lover of English eloquence and American liberty, has passed already ; and you will pardon me, perhaps, if I pause upon that, because it has suggested the theme on which I would offer some remarks. It was just one hundred years ago, on the twenty- second of March last, that Edmund Burke delivered in the British Parliament that speech on " Conciliation with the Colonies," which, of itself, would have assured the fame of any speaker. The profoundest political and legislative wisdom was presented in it with per- spicuous clearness, and enforced with an eloquence which Burke himself never surpassed. In eager and majestic utterance, he recited the circumstances which had led him to seek, with impassioned ardor, to pro- mote the reconciliation of the colonies to the govern- ment of Great Britain ; and to do this by repealing the acts of Parliament against which resistance had here been aroused, and by adjusting future legislation on the plan of getting an American revenue, as England had got its American empire, by securing to the colo- nies the ancient and inestimable English privileges. The speech is, of course, familiar to you ; yet a rapid indication of its compact and coercive argument may serve, perhaps, to revive it in your thoughts, as a couplet sometimes recalls a poem, as the touch of even an unskilful crayon may set before us the wide out- reach of a landscape. 69 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES The circumstance to which he first referred, was the rapid, increase of the colonial population ; an increase so swift, and so continuing, that, in his own words, " state the numbers as high as we will, whilst the dis- pute continues, the exaggeration ends. . . . Your children do not grow faster from infancy to manhood, than they [of the colonies] spread from families to communities, and from villages to nations." The second circumstance which impressed his mind, was the commerce of the colonies : " out of all propor- tion, beyond the numbers of the people ; " in respect to which " fiction lags after truth ; invention is unfruit- ful, and imagination cold and barren." Of their ex- panding agriculture, he said : " For some time past the Old "World has been fed from the JSTew. The scarcity which you have felt would have been a desolating famine, if this child of your old age, with a true filial piety, with a Roman charity, had not put the full breast of its youthful exuberance to the mouth of its exhausted parent." Of the fisheries of the colonies, especially of the whale fishery, he spoke in words whose fame is coextensive with the English tongue, as carried to an extent beyond that reached by " the perseverance of Holland, the activity of France, or the dexterous and firm sagacity of English enterprise ; " and this by a people " who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood." Still more important, however, before his view than either the increasing population of the colonies, their agriculture, or their commerce, was the temper and character of the people who composed them ; in which a love of freedom appeared to him the predominating 70 THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT feature, distinguishing the whole. The people of the colonies were descendants of Englishmen. They were, therefore, " not only devoted to liberty, but to liberty according to English ideas ; " and so they were funda- mentally opposed, with all the force of immemorial tradition, to that taxation without representation, against which the English lovers of freedom had al- ways fought. Their popular form of government, through provincial assemblies, contributed to foster this attachment to liberty. Their religion gave to this civil influence complete effect. " The people," he said, " are Protestants ; and of that kind which is the most adverse to all implicit submission of mind and opinion. . . . Their religion is a refinement on the principle of resistance ; it is the dissidence of dissent, and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion." If this were not strictly true in the southern colo- nies, where the Church of England had wider estab- lishment, yet the spirit of liberty was there only higher and haughtier than in others, because they had a mul- titude of slaves ; and " where this is the case," he affirmed, " in any part of the world, those who are free, are by far the most proud and jealous of their free- dom. . . . The haughtiness of domination com- bines with the spirit of freedom, fortifies it, and ren- ders it invincible." The education of the colonies, particularly the ex- tent to which the study of the law was cultivated among them, contributed to their untractable spirit. It led them, not, "like more simple people, to judge of an ill principle in government only by an actual grievance," but to " anticipate the evil, and judge of the pressure of the grievance by the badness of the principle." 71 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES The last cause of the disobedient spirit in the colo- nies, to which he called the attention of Parliament, was " laid deep in the natural constitution of things " — in the remoteness of their situation ; the three thou- sand miles of ocean forever intervening between Eng- land and them. From all these sources, the ever- widening spirit of liberty had grown up in the colonies, now unalterable by any contrivance. " We cannot," he said, " we can- not, I fear, falsify the pedigree of this fierce people, and persuade them that they are not sprung from a nation in whose veins the blood of freedom circulates. . . . I think it is nearly as little in our power to change their republican religion as their free descent ; . . . and the education of the Americans is also on the same unalterable bottom with their religion ; " while, if all these moral difficulties could be got over, " the ocean remains. You cannot pump this dry. And as long as it continues in its present bed, so long all the causes which weaken authority by distance will continue." His inference from all was, that no way was open to the government of Great Britain, but to " comply with the American spirit as necessary ; or, if you please, to submit to it, as a necessary evil." " My hold of the colonies," he said, " is in the close affection which grows from common names, from kindred blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection. These are ties, which, though light as air, are strong as links of iron. Let the colonies always keep the idea of their civil rights associated with your govern- ment ; — they will cling and grapple to you ; and no force under heaven will be of power to tear them from 72 THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT their allegiance. . . . The more they multiply, the more friends you will have ; the more ardently they love liberty, the more perfect will be their obedience. . . . It is the spirit of the English constitution, which, infused through the mighty mass, pervades, feeds, unites, invigorates, vivifies every part of the empire, even down to the minutest member." If I were in the least ambitious, ladies and gentle- men, to attract your attention to any imagined skill of my own in presenting a subject, I should not have ventured thus to recall to you the magnificent scope, the pervading power, the instinctive and harmonious splendor, of that memorable oration with which, a hundred years ago last month, the oaken rafters of St. Stephen's rang. The perfect apprehension of remote facts, as when the distant seas or summits are seen by an eye which needs no glass, through a wholly trans- parent air ; the vast comprehension, which took into immediate vision all facts and principles related to the subject, tracing at a glance their inter-relations, as one traces the lines of city streets from a " coigne of van- tage " above the roofs, and sees the rivers on either hand which kiss the piers ; the opulence of knowledge ; the precision and force of argumentation ; the fervor of feeling, the energy of purpose, which modulated the rhetoric to its consenting grace and majesty ; the lucid and large philosophy of history ; the imperial imagina- tion, vitalizing all, and touching it with ethereal lights : — we look at these, and almost feel that elo- quence died when the lips of Burke were finally closed. One's impulse is to turn to silence ; and not even to offer his few small coins, more paltry than ever before the wealth of such regalia. 73 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES But I have no desire at all, except to stand with you a few moments at the point of view at which the oration of Burke has placed us, and to seek, with you, to revive in our thoughts, with a little more of fulness in detail, the origin and the growth of that essential and prophesying spirit which he from afar discerned in these colonies. For in that lies the secret of our subsequent history. It is not certain that Burke him- self, looking at the matter through the partial lights of English narrative and treating the subject for im- mediate practical influence upon Parliament, has fully set forth either the sources or the strength of the tem- per which he saw. But the complete understanding of these is most important to whomsoever would read our annals. The remark was long ago made by Macchiavelli, 1 that " States are rarely formed or re-formed save by one man." Certainly, however, it was not so with ours. The spirit shaped the body, here, according to the Platonic plan. The people formed its own com- monwealths, its ultimate nation; and "the people," says Bancroft, looking back to the peace of 1782, " the people was superior to its institutions, possessing the vital force which goes before organization, and gives to it strength and form." 2 This vital force, therefore, in the pre-revolutionary American people, this inher- 1 " It must be laid down as a general rule, that it very seldom or never happens that any government is either well-founded at first, or thoroughly reformed afterward, except the plan be laid and conducted by one man only, who has the sole power of giving all orders, and making all laws, that are necessary for its establishment. ' ' — Political Discourses, upon Livy, Book I., chap. ix. 2 History of the United States, Vol. X., p. 593. 74 THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT ent and energizing life, early developed, largely trained, acting at that time, and acting ever since, on our organized public development — this is the subject which I hope you will accept, as deserving your atten- tion, and not unsuited to this occasion. At the time when Burke saw the meaning, and in- terpreted the menace, of this distinctive American spirit, it had all the force which he ascribed to it ; and the effect of it was shown, only more speedily, in larger and more energetic discovery, than he expected. It can scarcely be doubted that if the counsels of his wise statesmanship had been listened to by the Parlia- ment on whose unheeding ears they fell, and by the Court which passionately repulsed them, the separation, which was inevitable, between England and the colo- nies would for a time have been postponed ; and some of us might have been born, on American shores, the loyal subjects of King George. But those counsels were not heeded ; as those of Chatham, six weeks earlier, in the House of Lords, had not been ; and just four weeks after they were uttered, before report of them could probably have reached this country, on the 19th of April, at Lexington and at Concord, out of the threatening murk of discontent, shot that fierce flash of armed collision between the colonists and the troops of Great Britain, beyond which reconciliation was impossible ; of which the war, and the following Independence, were the predestined sequel. Not quite a month later, as you remember, on the 10th of May, Ticonderoga, with Crown Point, was taken by the provincials ; and on the very day of the capture — as if to justify the name " Carillon," given by the French to Ticonderoga, and to make its seizure 75 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES the striking of a chime of bells l — the Continental Con- gress reassembled at Philadelphia, with the proscribed John Hancock soon at its head, and entered on the exercise of its long authority ; an authority vague and undefined, as such an occasional authority must be, but made legitimate, and made comprehensive, by the voluntary submission of those whom the Congress represented. Washington was appointed Commander- in-Chief. As indicative of the tendencies of public opinion, before the end of May, the citizens of Meck- lenburg County, in North Carolina, by public action disowned allegiance to the British Crown, and adopted their declaration of Independence ; and on the 17th of June, at Breed's Hill, the ability of the provincials to throw up redoubts under the cannon-fire of a fleet, and to make grass fences, with men behind them, a sufficient barrier to repeated charges of British veterans, was fully proved ; and the great drama of our seven years' war was finally opened. During the years immediately before us, these events, with those which succeeded, will be fully re- cited ; and eloquence and poetry, the picture and the bronze, will again make familiar what the bulk and the prominence of intervening events had partly hidden from our view. The evacuation of Boston by the British ; the bloody fight on the heights behind Brooklyn, so nearly fatal to the American cause ; the crossing of the Delaware ; the night attack on the Hessians at Trenton ; Princeton, and Germantown, 1 "To Ticonderoga, the Indian 'Meeting of Waters,' thfey [the French] gave a name apparently singular, ' Carillon, ' a Chime of Bells."— Egbert Benson's Mem.; Coll. of the N. Y. Hist. Soc, 2d Series: Vol. 2, page 96. 76 THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT with the frightful winter at Valley Forge ; the battles of Monmouth, Saratoga, Camden, King's Mountain, and Eutaw Springs ; the final surrender of Cornwallis, at Yorktown — all will in their turn be described, as their centennial anniversaries occur. The past will come back to us. We shall hear again the pathetic an$ heroic story which touched the commonplace life of our childhood with romance and with awe. And with this will be repeated the narrative — not less impressive — of the civil wonders which accom- panied the long military struggle ; of the separate constitutions adopted by the colonies ; of the great Declaration, which raised those colonies into a na- tion ; of the marvelous state papers, which seemed to Europe prepared in the woods, yet on which the highest encomiums were pronounced, by eminent Englishmen, in Parliament itself ; of the Articles of Confederation, which prepared the way for an organic Union ; of the French alliance, which brought sol- diers of a monarchy to fight for a republic, and sent back with them a republican spirit too strong for the monarchy ; of the money, so worthless that a bushel of it would hardly buy a pair of shoes ; of the military stores, so utterly inadequate that barrels of sand had to represent powder, to encourage the troops ; of the final adoption, after the war, of that now venerable Constitution of government, which recent changes have expanded and modified, but under which the nation has lived from that day to this. All these will hereafter be recited. It cannot but be regarded as a fortunate circum- stance — fortunate for himself, and for those to whose means of historical study he has made such large and 77 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES brilliant contributions — that the concluding volume of his history has just been published by Mr. Bancroft, whose relations to this Society have been so intimate ; and that down to the peace of 1782 he has completed his elaborate and shining narrative. The enthusiasm of youth has survived in him, to animate and enhance the acquisitions of age ; and those who read, in their own youth, his earlier volumes, and admired alike their strength and polish, will rejoice that his hand has placed the capital upon the tall and fluted shaft. " Worthy deeds," said Milton, " are not often destitute of worthy relators ; as by a certain fate, great acts and great eloquence have most commonly gone hand in hand, equalling and honoring each other in the same ages." l It is, of course, not my purpose to ask your atten- tion to any of the particulars of that remarkable and fascinating history whose jutting outlines I have traced. ISText week, at Lexington and at Concord, eloquent voices will open the story. Others will fol- low, in swift succession, till every field, and each principal fact, has found celebration. My office is merely preparatory to theirs. The subject before me is not picturesque. It hardly admits of any entertain- ing or graphic treatment. But it nevertheless is of primary importance ; and all who follow will have to assume what I would exhibit. There was a certain energizing spirit, an impersonal but inherent and ubiquitous temper, in the people of the colonies, which lay behind their wide and sudden Revolutionary move- ment ; which pushed that movement to unforeseen ends, and which built a republic where the only result sought at the outset was relief from a tax. Burke dis- 1 Hist. Brit., Book II. 78 THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT cerned this before it had been exhibited in the field, or had done more than give its own tone to debates and state papers. From that time on, to the end of the war, it was constantly declared — brooding and brightening in the obscurest air, giving Congress its authority, giving conflict its meaning, inspiring lead- ers, restoring always the shattered and the scanty ranks. It was this invulnerable, inexpugnable force, which no calamities could ever overwhelm, which was sure, from the start, of the ultimate victory. It is this, and this only, of which the world ever thinks in connection with the time, or of which the permanent history of the country will take much ac- count. The incidents are trivial, except for their re- lation to this. It surprises us to remember how small were the forces, on either side, in that " valley of de- cision " in which questions so vital to us, and to man- kind, were submitted to the arbitrament of battle; that Burgoyne's army numbered at its surrender less than six thousand English and German troops, and had never contained more than eight thousand, with an uncertain contingent of Canadians and Indians ; that at Camden, Gates had but six thousand men, only one-fourth of them Continentals, and Cornwallis but two thousand; that the force which capitulated at Yorktown was but seven thousand; and that the whole number of troops sent from England to this country, during the entire continuance of the war, was less than a hundred and thirteen thousand. Compare these numbers with those of the large and disciplined armies which Frederick II, twenty years earlier, encountered at Rossbach and at Leuthen ; com- pare them with those which, thirty years after, 79 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES swarmed forth from France, under Napoleon, — and they are the small dust of the balance. Compare them with those of France, on the one hand, or of Germany on the other, in their tremendous unfinished duel, and the largest battles in which our fathers took part seem skirmishes of outposts. Nay, compare them with the forces, from the North and the South, which fought each other in our late civil war, and the Revolutionary musters become nearly imperceptible. It was the spirit behind the forces, which wielded the instruments, and compelled the events, which gave these any importance in history. Impalpable, inde- structible, omnipresent in activity, self -perpetuating, there was this vital impersonal temper, common to many, superior to all, which wrought and fought, from first to last, in the. Congress, on the field. In some respects it was a unique force, without precise parallel among peoples, breaking in unexpectedly on the courses of history. A more or less clear rec- ognition of the fact has given to that time its rela- tive prominence before mankind. A distinct appre- hension of the nature of the force so victoriously re- vealed, is necessary to show how the Revolution be- came as complete and fruitful as it was, and how that small American struggle, going on in a country re- mote and recent, and succeeded by events incom- parably more striking, has taken its place among the significant and memorable facts in the history of the world. What was that force, then ? and whence did it come ? If I mistake not, it was ampler in its sources, more abundant, more secular, and more various in its energy, than we have often been wont to conceive. 80 THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT There was certainly nothing of the ideal heroic among the ante-revolutionary people of this country. They did not live for sentiment, or on it. They were not doctrinaires, though they are sometimes so repre- sented ; and nothing could have been further from their plans than to make themselves champions of what did not concern them, or to go crusading for fanciful theories and imaginary prizes. They were, for the most part, intelligent, conscientious, God-fearing people — at least those were such who gave tone to their communities, and the others either accepted the impression, or achieved the imitation, of their govern- ing spirit. But they were plain, practical people, al- most wholly of the middle class, who lived, for the most part, by their own labor, who were intent on practical advantages, and who rejoiced in conquering the wilderness, in making the marsh into a meadow, in sucking by their fisheries of the abundance of the seas, and in seeing the first houses of logs, with mud mortar, and oiled paper for glass in the windows, giv- ing place to houses of finished timber, or imported brick, with sometimes even mahogany balustrades. When the descendants of the settlers at the mouth of the Piscataqua replied to a reproof of one of their ministers, that the design of their fathers in coming thither had not been simply to cultivate religion, but also largely to trade and catch fish, they undoubtedly represented a spirit which had been common along the then recent American coast. 1 The Plymouth Colony was exceptional in its character. To a large extent, the later and wealthier Massachusetts Colony was animated by sovereign religious considerations ; 1 Adaras' Annals of Portsmouth, page 94. F 81 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES and so were those of Khode Island and Connecticut. But they are certainly right who affirm that even these men, or many of them, showed a tough and per- sistent secular enterprise combining with their re- ligious zeal. It was indeed an indispensable element to the soundness of their character. It kept them from wide fanatical excesses. It made them hardy, sagacious, indefatigable, inflexible in their hold on the fields and the freedoms which they had won. As compared with our more recent pioneers, who have peopled the territories, subdued the mountains, and opened toward Asia the Golden Gate, the relig- ious element was certainly more prominent in those who earliest came to this country. But even they were far from being blind to material advantages, and far enough from being willing to live as idle enthusiasts. "Give me neither poverty nor riches," was their con- stant prayer; with an emphasis upon "poverty." They meant to worship God according to their con- sciences ; and woe be to him who should forbid ! But they meant, also, to get what of comfort and enjoyment they could, and of physical possession, from the world in which they worshiped ; and they felt themselves co-workers with God, when the orchard was planted, and the wild vine tamed; when the English fruits had been domesticated, under the shadow of savage for- ests, and the maize lifted its shining ranks upon the fields that had been barren ; when the wheat and rye were rooted in the valleys, and the grass was made to grow upon the mountains. It is eas}^, of course, to heighten the common, to magnify the rare and superior virtues, of men to whom we owe so much. Time itself assists to this, as it 82 THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT makes the mosses and lichens grow on ancient walls, disguising with beauty the rent and ravage. It is easy to exaggerate their religious enthusiasm, till all the other traits of their character are dimmed by its excessive brightness. Our filial pride inclines us to this ; for, if we could, we should love to feel, all of us, that we are sprung from untitled nobles, from saints who needed no canonization, from men of such heroic mould, and women of such tender devoutness, that the world elsewhere was not worthy of them ; that they brought to these coasts a wholly unique celestial life, through the scanty cabins which were to it as a manger, and the quaint apparel which furnished its swaddling-clothes ; that airs Elysian played around them, while they took the wilderness, as was said of the -Lady Arbella Johnson, " on their way to heaven." I cannot so read their history. Certainly, I should be the last in this assembly to say any word — in what- ever haste, in whatever inadvertence — in disparage- ment of those who, with a struggle that we never have paralleled and can scarcely comprehend, planted firmly the European civilization upon these shores. I remember the hardness which they endured, and shame be to me, if, out of t.he careless luxury of our time, I say an unworthy word of those who faced for us the forest and the frost, the Indian and the wolf, the gaunt famine and the desolating plague. I re- member that half the Plymouth colonists died the first winter, and that in the spring, when the long- waiting Mayflower sailed again homeward, not one of the fainting survivors went with her, — and I glory in that unflinching fortitude which has given renown to 83 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES the sandy shore ! Our vigor is flaccid, our grasp un- certain, our stiffest muscle is limp and loose, beside the unyielding grapple of their tough wills. But what I do say is, that the figures of even the eminent among them were not so colossal as, they sometimes appear, through the transfiguring mists of Time; that of culture, as we know it, they for the most part had enjoyed very little ; that even in char- acter they were consciously far from being perfect. They were ■ plain people, hard-working, Bible-reading, much in earnest, with a deep sense of God in them, and a thorough detestation of the devil and his works ; who had come hither to get a fresh and large oppor- tunity for work and life ; who were here set in cir- cumstances which gave stimulus to their energy, and brought out their peculiar and masterful forces. But they were not, for the most part, beyond their asso- ciates across the seas in force or foresight ; and they left behind them many their peers, and some their superiors, in the very qualities which most impress us. " Not many wise, not many noble, not many mighty," — then, as aforetime, that was true of those whom God called. The common people, with their pastors and guides, had come to the woods, to labor, and pros- per, and hear God's word. And upon them He put the immense honor of building here a temple and a citadel, whose walls we mark, whose towers we count, and to which the world has since resorted. But it is, also, always to be remembered that the early settlers of this country were not of one stock merely, but of several ; and that all of them came out of communities which had had to face portentous problems, and which were at the time profoundly 84 THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT stirred by vast moral and political forces. They were themselves impregnated with these forces. They bore them imbedded in their consciousness ; entering, whether articulately or not, with a dominant force into their thought, into their life. They transported to these coasts, by the simple act of transferring their life hither, a power and a promise from the greatest age of European advancement. They could not have helped it, if they would. They could more easily have left behind the speech which they had learned in child- hood, than they could have dropped, on their stormy way across the ocean, the self-reliance, the indomitable courage, the constructive energy and the great aspira- tion, of which the lands they left were full. This, it seems to me, is hardly recognized as clearly and widely as it should be : that the public life of a magnificent age — a life afterward largely, for a time, displaced in Europe, by succeeding reactions — was brought to this continent, from different lands, under different languages, by those who settled it ; that it was the powerful and moulding initial force in our civilization ; and that here it survived, from that time forward, shaping affairs, erecting institutions, and making the Nation what it finally came to be. They may not themselves have be*en wholly aware of what they brought. There was nothing in the out- ward circumstance of their action to make it distin- guished. They had no golden or silver censers in which to transport the undecaying and costly flame. They brought it as fire is sometimes carried, by rough hands, in hollow reeds. But they brought it, never- theless ; and here it dwelt, sheltered and fed, till a continent was illumined by it. Let us think of this 85 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES a little. Let some rapid suggestions call up to us the times, the new and unmeasured energies of which swept out to this continent, when the colonists came ; all the forces of which — political, social, and not merely religious — found here their enlarging arena. At the time of the seizure of New Netherland by the English, in 1664, the main elements of the popu- lation afterward composing the thirteen colonies, were already on these shores. Subsequent arrivals brought increase of numbers, except in 'New England, where the English immigration was then at its end. Impor- tant colonies, as Pennsylvania and Georgia, date their existence from a time more recent. But the principal nationalities of northern and northwestern Europe, from which our early population was derived, had already representatives here ; and what followed con- tributed rather to the increase than to the change of that population. It was said, you know, that eight- een languages were spoken before then in the thriv- ing village which Stuyvesant surrendered, and which is now this swarming metropolis ; * and we certainly know that Englishmen, Dutchmen, Swedes, Germans, French Huguenots, Scotch Presbyterians, Quakers, and Catholics, were at that time upon the American coast. From that point, then, it is well to look back, and see what was the governing spirit, the diffused and moulding moral life, which the steady immigration of 1 This surprising statement appears to have been first made as early as 1643, by the Director-General Kieft, to Father Jogues, the Jesuit Priest, escaped from the Iroquois, who was then his guest. It was afterward repeated by Father Jogues, in his Description of New Nether- land.— Coll. N. Y. Hist. Soc, 2d Series, vol. 3 : page 215. 86 THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT sixty years, back to the date of the building of James- town, had been bringing hither. For these sixty years, in comparison with the hundred and ten which fol- lowed, were like the first twenty-five years in one's personal life, compared with the fifty which succeed. They gave the direction, projected the impulse, pre- scribed the law, of the subsequent development ; and they, of course, surpass in importance any other equal period, in showing how the nation came at last to be what it was. But these sixty years, also, were vitally connected with the forty or fifty which had gone be- fore them ; since in those had been born and morally trained the men and women who subsequently came hither. Out of those had come the vivifying forces which the settlers at Jamestown, and they who came later, transferred to this continent. "We shall not have reached the tap-roots of our history till we have gone back to their beginning. Look back, then, from the surrender of New Am- sterdam to the date of the coronation of Queen Eliza- beth, in 1558 — less than fifty years before Jamestown began, little more than fifty years before Adrian Block built on this island its first small ship, 1 and named it " The Restless," — and you have before you the remark- able century, out of which had broken the settlements 1 This was in 1614; but another ship had been previously constructed on the coast. "Mr. Cooper, in his Naval History, speaks of Block's yacht as ' the first decked vessel built within the old United States. ' But the honor of precedence in American naval architecture must fairly be yielded to Popham's unfortunate colony on the Kennebec. The 'Virginia,' of Sagadahoc, was the first European-built vessel within the original thirteen States. The ' Eestless, ' of Manhattan, was the pioneer craft of New York." — Brodhead's Hist, of New York. Vol. I, page 55. (Note.) 87 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES on these shores, at the end of which they all had passed under British supremacy. That was the birth-time of our public life. From its great spirit, from its ener- getic and vivid experience, fell a splendor and a power on the embryo people which finally became the Amer- ican Nation. It was a munificent, a heroical century ; in which, for the first time, the immense vigor of popular en- thusiasm entered decisively into national development, and forced acceptance from statesmen and kings; which was, accordingly, the boldest in plan, the widest in work, the most replete with constructive energy, which up to that time had been known in Europe. Fruitful schemes, strenuous struggles, extraordinary genius, amazing achievement, the decay of authority, the swift advance of popular power — these so crowd the annals of it that no brief narrative could give a summary of them. Long repressed tendencies came to sudden culmination. Hidden forces found vast de- velopment. The exuberant and outbreaking energies of Christendom could no more be restrained within ancient limitations, than the lightnings, elaborated in hidden chambers of earth and sky, can be locked in the clouds from which they leap. The invention of the movable type, a hundred years earlier, at Harlem or at Maintz, had made books the possession of many, where manuscripts had been the ' luxury of the few. Knowledge was distributed, and thought was interchanged, on this new vehicle, with a freedom, to a breadth before unknown. The found- ing of libraries, the enlargement of universities, had given opportunity for liberal studies ; and the ancient world drew nearer to the modern, as the elegant letters 88 THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT of Greece and Rome made the genius and the action again familiar with which their times had been illus- trious. At the same time, the discovery of this conti- nent had expanded the globe to the minds of Euro- peans, and had opened new areas, the more exciting because undefined to their enterprise and hope. The popular imagination, in the early part of that age, was stirred by tales of sea-faring adventure as it had never been by the wildest fiction. The air was full of ro- mance and wonder, as savage forests, dusky figures, feathered crests, ornaments of barbaric gold, strange habitations, unheard-of populations, were lifted before the gaze of Europe, along the new western horizon. Almost nothing appeared incredible. Grotius himself, scholar, jurist, statesman as he was, cautious by nature, and trained in courts, was inclined to believe in an arctic race whose heads grew beneath their shoulders. El Dorado was to Raleigh as real a locality as the duchy of Devon. Even Caliban and Puck seemed almost possible persons, in an age so full of astounding revelations. But neither the magical art of printing, nor the dis- covery of the transatlantic continent, had stirred with such tumultuous force the mind of Christendom as had the sudden Reformation of religion, starting in Germany, and swiftly extending through Northern Europe. To those who accepted it, this seemed a re- vival of Divine revelations. It brought the Most High to immediate personal operation upon them. As in the old prophetic days, the voice of speech came echo- ing forth from the amber brightness which was as the appearance of the bow in the cloud. The instant privilege, the constant obligation, of every man to 89 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES come to God, by faith in His Son ; the dignity of that personal nature in man for which this Son of God had died; the vastness of the promises, whose immortal splendors interpreted the cross; the regal right of every soul to communion, by the Word, with the Spirit by whom that "Word was given : — these broke, like a flash from heights celestial, not only on the devout and the studious, but over the common life of nations. Before the force so swiftly and supremely inspired, whatever resisted it had to give way. It not only re- leased great multitudes of men into instant independ- ence of the ancient dominant spiritual authority; it loosened the ligatures, or shattered the strength, of temporal tyrannies ; and its impulses went more widely than its doctrines. In Italy and Spain, as well as in England, in the parts of Germany which retained their ancient allegiance to the pontiff, as well as in those which had thrown this off, there was an unwonted stimulation in the air ; and the forces of learning, of logic, or of arms, which fought against the Reforma- tion, were themselves more eager and more effective because of the impulse which it had given. Commerce was extending, as letters and liberties were thus advancing. Inventions followed each other almost as swiftly, with almost as much of startling novelty, as in our own time ; and the ever-increasing consciousness of right, of opportunity, and of power, the sense of liberation, the expectation of magnificent futures — these extended among the peoples, with a rapidity, in a measure, before unknown. It was an age, therefore, not so much of destruction, as of paramount impulse to wide and bold enterprise. Yast hopes, vast works, imperial plans, were native to 90 THE EARLY AMERICAN 7 SPIRIT it. It was an age of detonating strife, but of study, too, and liberal thought; of the noblest poetry, the most copious learning, a busy industry, a discursive philosophy, a sagacious statesmanship ; when astonish- ing discovery stimulated afresh magnificent enter- prise ; when great actions crowded upon each other ; when the world seemed to have suddenly turned plastic, and to offer itself for man's rebuilding ; when each decade of years, to borrow an energetic expres- sion of Brougham, " staggered, under a load of events which had formerly made centuries to bend." So far as the South of Europe is concerned, it is represented to us chiefly, certainly most pleasantly, by the great names, in literature or in fine art, by which it is distinguished ; Tasso, crowned at Rome, and Galileo, condemned ; l Cervantes, Calderon, Lope de Yega, in Spain ; Tintoretto, with his audacity of genius and the lightning of his pencil ; Cagliari, bet- ter known as Paul Veronese, Guido Eeni, the Caracci ; Yelasquez, Murillo, and Salvator Rosa. It saw the close of Titian's life, and of Michael Angelo's. It saw the completion of the dome of St. Peter's. In Northern Europe great clusters of names also 1 The traveler to Kome, visiting the church of S. Maria sopea Mineeva, will hardly fail to feel the propriety of its name, if it is recalled to him that in one of the halls of the monastery attached to it, then occnpied by the Inquisition, Galileo met his sentence, and pronounced his retraction: "I abjure, curse, and detest, the error and the heresy of the motion of the earth, ' ' etc. It startles one to remember that this was at as late a date as June 22, 1633 ; five years before Harvard College was founded. The Inquisition itself has since seen the truth of the more celebrated words which the aged philoso- pher is said to have uttered, in an undertone, when rising from his knees. 91 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES shine on the century, of men preeminent in science, letters, or the fine arts ; Kepler, Tycho Brahe ; Moliere, Racine, Rochefoucauld, Pascal; Rubens, Rembrandt, Yan Dyke, Claude Lorraine. Edmund Spenser, the " Prince of Poets," as his monument describes him, filled his career in it ; Richard Hooker, Philip Sidney, Walter Raleigh, Francis Bacon, John Selden, Isaac Casaubon. It bears upon its brow, as it moves in the great procession of historic periods, the dazzling diadem of the name of Shakespeare. It saw the youth of Leibnitz, and of JSTewton. It heard the music of Milton's verse. It saw the entire life of Descartes, the middle manhood of Spinoza. It watched Grotius from his birth to his burial, in the city of Delft. The telescope came to light in it, and brought to men's view vast whirls of suns, as if recreating for them the heavens. The microscope was so perfected as to carry the sight, almost without exaggeration, from the infinitely great to the infinitely little, and to show the marvels of organization in creatures so minute that a speck of dust is a mountain beside them. The thermometer, the barometer, the air-pump, the nature and use of electricity, the circulation of the blood — these are among its great discoveries. The mariner's compass was improved and illumined till it became almost a new instrument. The first English newspaper had its origin in this century. Logarithms were invented. The Royal Exchange was opened in London. The Dutch and English East India Com- panies were established. The globe was explored on every meridian, by the search of its discovery. It gained new luxuries, as well as new arts, and was the 92 THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT first century sweetened in Europe by the manufacture of refined sugar, or soothed and stimulated by tobacco and coffee. Things like these are the surface indications of pro- digious forces working beneath ; like the specks or wreaths of glittering spume which are flung into the air, when immense currents rush into collision. But the intensity and the breadth of these forces are better represented by the national changes which the century witnessed. To look only at the states of Northern Europe, it saw the magnificent reign of Elizabeth, the great English Rebellion, the execution of Charles I, the ten years of the Commonwealth, the final return of Charles II. It saw the Huguenot struggle in France, the stormy youth and the brilliant govern- ment of Henry IY, the following reign of Louis XIII, the earlier successes of Louis XIY ; the long ministry of Sully, on whom Henry leaned with such justified confidence ; the triumph of Riche- lieu, who broke the power of feudalism on the one hand, of political Protestantism on the other, and who " made his royal master," as Montesquieu said, " the second man in France, but the first in Europe ; hum- bling the king, while he exalted the monarchy." It saw the ministry, the marriage, and the death, of Car- dinal Mazarin. The forty years' reign of Philip II filled nearly half of it. It witnessed the amazing revolt of the Netherlands, their successful resistance of all the Span- ish fleets and forces, their final establishment of a Protestant republic. It saw the regeneration of Swe- den ; and it included, in its extraordinary and com- 93 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES prehensive annals, the whole course of the Thirty Years' War, with the sorrow and sacrifice which that involved, the heroic energies which it revealed, till it closed in the welcome peace of Westphalia. Another century so energized by great emergent opinions, so suddenly full of a vehement and conquer- ing public life, so prolific in enterprise, so swarming with productive force, one must look long to find. When we reach it in history we are conscious of step- ping out of the Past into the modern life of Christen- dom. The patience, skill, inventive daring of our civilization were more vitally a part of it than were its longest and fiercest conflicts. It fought to get more room for work. Elemental rages darkened the heavens. The concussion of ethereal forces was con- stant. Yet the work of construction went always for- ward, and on the broadest national scale. New liber- ties were asserted and organized. New states came rounding into form. The descendants of the Batavians made the scanty lands which they had rescued from the wash of the sea, the seat of a history more majestic in its elements, both of tragedy and of triumph, than the Continent had seen, and the center of a commerce which flung its tentacles around the globe. The Eng- lish fleets, in which Catholic jind Protestant fought to- gether, scattered the Armada, under skies that seemed to conspire for their help, and hit, as with ceaseless lightning strokes, the ships and coasts and power of Spain ; while all the time went widely on, with only indeed augmented impulse, the labor of inventors, the studies of scholars, the voyages of discoverers, the theo- logian's discussion, the painter's pencil, and the states- man's plan. 94 THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT So full of immense movement was the century, so opulent in achievement, so mighty in impulse, that the earth seemed freshly alive beneath it, the skies bur- nished with prophetic gleams. The common people, for a time at least, had mastered their place in politics and society ; and the whole mind of Northern Europe was full of an intense stimulation. Education was wide. Plain men, like Governor Bradford, never trained in any university, were easy masters of five or six languages. 1 Farmers' sons, like Francis Drake, became great admirals. The enterprise of the time was not reckless or vague, but was the expression of this abounding, exuberant life, instructed by research, and guided by courageous wisdom. There was noth- ing factitious in the force of the century, as there is nothing deceptive in its fame. Alive in every fiber, with an exultant and stimulated life, Northern Europe sent forth its freshly-awakened, world-sweeping ac- tivities, as streams are shot into sudden motion when the Easter sun unlocks the ice. This was the century out of the midst of which the early settlers of this continent came ; whose eager en- ergies came here with them. They were not its. splen- did representatives. No fleets of galleons brought them over. They came in coarse clothing, not in rai- 1 "He was a person for study, as well as action ; and hence, not- withstanding the difficulties through which he passed in his youth, he attained unto a notable skill in languages : the Dutch tongue was be- come almost as vernacular to him as the English ; the French tongue he could also manage ; the Latin and the Greek he had mastered ; but the Hebrew he most of all studied, ' because, ' he said, ' he would see with his own eyes the ancient oracles of God in their native beauty.' " —Mather's Magnalia. Book 2, Chap, i, § 9. 95 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES ment of velvet, or gilded armor. They attracted little attention at the time. They only seemed to them- selves to be doing a work which somehow had fallen to their lot, and which must be done ; and that the century which they represented would be more illus- trious by reason of their action was certainly a thought which never occurred to them. But they shared its life, if not its renown ; they brought its vigor, if not its wealth. Their small stockades, at Jamestown and Plymouth, at New Amsterdam and Port Orange, were the points on our coast where that energetic and sov- ereign century, then passing over Europe, set up its banners. We never shall understand them, or their work, ex- cept this be before us. Recall, then, the England which the colonists left and represented. Elizabeth herself had been dead four years when they landed at Jamestown, and seventeen years when they settled at Plymouth ; but the image of her imperious face was on most of the coins which they brought hither, and the memories of her reign had a force more vital than the actual power of her successor. The middle-aged could well remember the camps, the watch-fires, the universal excitements of the year of the Armada. The young might have read, upon broad sheets, her " Golden Speech " to her last Parliament. l The older might have sailed with Fro- 1 "There seemed for a moment to be some danger that the long and glorious reign of Elizabeth would have a shameful and disastrous end. She, however, with admirable judgment and temper, declined the con- test, put herself at the head of the reforming party, redressed the grievance, thanked the Commons, in touching and dignified language, for their tender care of the general weal, brought back to herself the 96 THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT bisher or Drake, or themselves have borne arms under the famous admirals and captains, who, at her inspira- tion, had fought with a triumphant energy on sea and land. The very temper which now strove to displace that earlier spirit only contributed to make it signal. Raleigh was beheaded October 29th, 1618 ; eleven years after Jamestown commenced, two years before the Mayflower's voyage. That was the last passion- ate blow of the vanquished Spain at the age of Eliza- beth, whose energy and whose chivalry he represented. It showed the unsleeping animosity of the Spaniard ; but it also brought into startling exhibition the weak- ness and wickedness which were now on the throne from which the great daughter of Anne Boleyn had lately passed ; and the spatter of his blood smote every heart, which was loyal to the Past, with pain and rage. Carlyle has suggested that Oliver Crom- well was perhaps at that time living in London, a student of law, and may have been a spectator of the scene. Many others, who were afterward in this country, must have seen the gallant and cultured man whose youthful grace had attracted Elizabeth, and whose life had imaged the splendor of the age ; and a sharp sense of the Nemesis in history may well have startled them when the son and successor of the royal assassin bowed his reluctant and haughty head be- neath the axe, in front of "Whitehall. The daring and inspiring spirit which had marked hearts of the people, and left to her successors a memorable example of the way in which it behooves a ruler to deal with public movements which he has not the means of resisting." — Macaulay : Hist, of Eng- land. Vol. I, page 63. G 97 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES the preceding half-century was not destroyed by the murder of one of its representatives, or by the treachery of another. A year after the landing at Plymouth, Thomas Wentworth, afterward known as Earl of Strafford, that "great, brave, bad man," whom Macaulay has pictured with a pencil so exquisite and so unrelenting, declared in Parliament, with vehement emphasis, that " the liberties, franchises, privileges, and jurisdictions of Parliament, are the ancient and undoubted birthright and inheritance of the subjects of England." That was then a passionate conviction in the House of Commons. Twenty years later, when he who then uttered it had been for twelve years its fierce antagonist, it caught him in its grasp, and swept him to the scaffold. The pre-revolutionary struggle of our fathers had its prophecy in that sentence. Its seminal principle involved their whole contest. Before the Pilgrims sailed from Holland, he whom Elizabeth, forty years before, in the superb promise of his youth, had called her " young Lord Keeper," was Chancellor of England. His "Novum Organum" might have come to our shores with Bradford and Carver; his later writings with Winthrop and Hig- ginson. His immense influence on human thought synchronizes completely with the English settlements on our coast. The then new English version of the Scriptures was just in time to gild with its lights, of Hebrew story and Christian faith, the rude life on savage shores. Shakespeare had died, untimely, in 1616 ; and the first collected edition of his plays was published in the year of the settlement of this city. How far the impulse and renown of his genius had preceded his death we cannot be sure ; but the chil- 98 THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT dren of those who had never read, who certainly had not seen his plays at the Blackfriars' or the Globe, have been debtors ever since to that supreme and visioned mind which reanimated the past, interpreted history, and searched the invisible spirit of man as if it were transparent crystal. Milton was a lad twelve years old when the Plymouth colony began, having been born, in 1608, in Bread street, London, under the armorial sign of the " Spread Eagle " ; and his public life was wholly accomplished within the period now under review, though it was not till later that the " Paradise Lost " was published in London, and the chequered and lofty life of the poet was closed in sleep. These names make the age which presents them majestic. But their chief importance to us, at this moment, is derived from the fact that they represent a popular life which preceded themselves, and which quickened the personal genius that surpassed it. The authors were the fountain-shafts, through which shot up, in flashing leap, the waters flowing from distant heights. With the various beauty, the incomparable force of their differing minds, they gave expression to impalpable influences of which the age itself was full. The same influences wrought in humbler men w~ho could not give them such expression. They were the vital inheritance of our fathers. The men of the Eng- lish middle class, — they were the men from the loins of whose peers, and whose possible associates, Kaleigh and Shakespeare and Milton had sprung. They could not, many of them, read the Latin of the " De Augmentis." They might not appreciate the cosmic completeness of Shakespeare's mind, or the marvelous 99 LofC. ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES beauty of Corrms and L' Allegro. But they incorpo- rated, more than others, the essential spirit of that pro- lific, prophetic age, which had found its voice in these supreme writers. They had breathed from infancy that invigorating air which was full of discovery, en- terprise, hope, of widened learning, popular enthu- siasm, a fresh and vivid Christian faith. They had felt the inrush of that vehement life which for sixty years had been sweeping over England ; and the irrepress- ible temper of the time, which gave birth to the let- ters, impulse to the discovery, law to the statesman- ship, life to the religion, of the age of Elizabeth, was as much a part of them as their bones and their blood. They came, in large part, because they represented that spirit ; because it seemed to them likely thence- forth to be less common and governing in England ; and because they would rather encounter the seas, and face the perils and pains of the wilderness, than tarry in a country where James was king, and George Yilliers was minister. When Endicott cut out the cross at Salem from the banner of England, he ex- pressed a temper as old and as stubborn as the fights against Spain. When Wadsworth, fifty years later, seized the charter of Connecticut, and hid it in the Wyllys' oak, he did precisely what the English tradi- tions of a century earlier had enjoined as his duty. And when the discerning Catholics of Maryland ac- cepted religious freedom in their colony, they only expressed anew the spirit in which their fathers had fought the Armada, though the pontiff had blessed it, in their loyalty to a Queen against whom he had pro- claimed a crusade. It is never to be forgotten that that wonderful cen- 100 THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT tury, which saw at its beginning the coronation of Elizabeth, and at its end the death of Cromwell — the age of Grenville, Raleigh, Drake, of Bacon, Shakes- peare, and the manhood of Milton — that was the cen- tury, in which the arts and arms of England, its reso- lute temper, and its sagacious and liberal life, were solidly planted upon these shores. The powerful element brought from Holland, by the Dutch and the Walloons, was only the counter- part of this. An eminent American has made it fa- miliar, in our time, to all who admire heroism in action, and eloquence in story. Mr. Motley has said of William the Silent, that " his efforts were constant to elevate the middle class ; to build up a strong third party, which should unite much of the substantial wealth and intelligence of the land, drawing constantly from the people, and deriving strength from national enthusiasm, — a party which should include nearly all the political capacity of the country; and his efforts were successful." 1 "As to the grandees, they were mostly of those who sought to 'swim between two waters,' according to the Prince's expression." The boers, or laborers, were untrained and coarse, not the material with which to erect an enduring commonwealth ; and on this stal- wart middle class, trained by churches and common schools, skilful in enterprise, patient in industry, fer- vent in patriotism, unconquerable in courage, the illustrious patriot depended, under God, for the safety of his country. Among the inhabitants of the province of New 1 Rise of the Dutch Republic, Vol. Ill, page 219. 101 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES Netherlancl, when it came into the English possession, were many representing this class. The early servants of the West India Company had been succeeded by farmers and traders. The patroons of the vast and indefinite manors had, for the most part, tarried at home, and their titles had largely been extinguished. The colonists then here — agriculturists, mechanics, sail- ors, dealers — represented fairly the commercial, polit- ical, social spirit which was prevalent in Holland ; and while wolves and Indians filled the forests, which then extended from Canal Street to Harlem, the life in the two separated settlements was much the same as in the equal contemporaneous villages of the Fa- therland. Maurice — for whom the Hudson River had first been named — was Stadtholder of the Nether- lands, when the permanent settlement was made here ; and the clouded luster of his great name was still vivid with a gleam from the past. Only two years before, the contest with Spain had recommenced. During the preceding twelve years' armistice, the United Netherlands had passed through a disastrous interval of religious dissension, ambitious intrigue and popular tumult. But that was now ended; and the first stroke of the Spanish arms, under Spinola, had revived the magnificent tradition of the days when, as their historian has said, " the provinces were united in one great hatred, and one great hope." The interval of peace had not softened the stubbornness of their pur- pose to be free. They were ready again "to pass through the sea of blood, that they might reach the promised land ; " and all that was inspiring in the an- nals of two preceding generations came out to instant exhibition, as hidden pictures are drawn forth by fire. 102 THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT The earlier years of Maurice himself, when the twig was becoming the tree — " tandem fit surculus arbor ; " his following victories, when the renowned Spanish commanders were smitten by him into utter rout, as at Meuport and at Turnhout ; the fatal year of the murder of his father, when the " nation lost its guid- ing-star, and the little children cried in the streets ; " the frightful " Spanish fury " at Antwerp ; the siege of Leyden, and the young university which commemo- rated the heroism of those who had borne it ; the siege of Harlem, and all the rage and agony of its close : — these things came up, and multitudes more — the whole panorama in which these were incidents — when the Spaniards sought, in 1622, to open the passage into the North by capturing the town of Bergen-op-Zoom, and when Maurice relieved it. The temper which this tremendous experience, so intense and prolonged, had bred in the Hollanders — the omnipresent, indestructi- ble spirit, not wholly revealed in any one person, but partly in millions — this was again as vigorous as ever, throughout the Kepublic which it had created, when the thirty families came to this island, when the two hundred persons were resident here, in 1625. Some of those then here, more who followed, were of the same class, the same occupation and habit of life, with those who had fought for sixty years, on sea and land, against the frenzied assaults of Spain ; who, under Heemskirk, had smitten her fleet into utter de- struction, beneath the shadow of Gibraltar ; who had fought her ships on every wave, and had blown up their own rather than let her flag surmount them ; who had more than once opened the dykes, and wel- comed the sea, rather than yield to the Spanish pos- 103 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES session the lands thus drowned ; who had ravaged the coasts, and captured the colonies, of the haughty Pen- insula ; and who, in the midst of all this whirlwind of near and far battle, had been inaugurating new forms of government, cultivating religion, advancing education, developing the arts, draining the lakes, and organizing a commerce that surrounded the world. When the four Dutch forts were established — at this point, at Harlem, at Fort Orange, on the Delaware, — this spirit was simply universal in Holland ; and those who came hither could not but bring it, unless they had dropped their identity on the way. They came for trade. They came to purchase lands by labor ; to get what they could from the virgin soil, and send peltries and timber back to Holland. But they brought the patience, the enterprise and the courage, the indomitable spirit and the hatred of tyranny, into which they had been born, into which their nation had been baptized with blood. Education came with them; the free schools, in which Holland had led the van of the world, being early transplanted to these shores ; a Latin school be- ing established here in 1659, to which scholars were sent from distant settlements. * An energetic Chris- 1 "It is very pleasant to reflect that the New England pilgrims, during their residence in the glorious country of your ancestry, found already established there a system of schools which John of Nassau, eldest brother of William the Silent, had recommended in these words: ' You must urge upon the States General that they should establish free schools, where children of quality, as well as of poor families, for a very small sum, could be well and Christianly educated and brought up. This would be the greatest and most useful work you could ever accomplish for God and Christianity, and for the Netherlands them- selves. ' . This was the feeling about popular education in the 104 THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT tian faith came with them, with its Bibles, its minis- ters, its interpreting books. Four years before, Grotius, imprisoned in the castle of Louvestein, had written his notes upon the Scriptures, and that treatise on the Truth of the Christian Religion, which, within the same century, was translated from the original Dutch into Latin, English, French, Flemish, German, Swedish, Persian, Arabic, the language of Malacca, and modern Greek. He had written it, he says, for the instruction of sailors ; that they might read it in the leisure of the voyage, as he had written it in the leisure of confinement, and might carry the impression of that Christianity whose divinity it affirmed, around the globe. Copies of it may easily have come hither in the vessels of the nation which had no forests, but which owned more ships than all Europe beside. The political life of the Hollanders had come, as well as their commercial spirit, and their decisive re- ligious faith. They loved the liberty for which they and their fathers had tenaciously fought. They saw its utilities, and understood its conditions ; and if you recall the motto of the Provinces, in their earlier struggle — "Concordia, res parvce crescunt; Discordia, maxima dilabuntur " — and if you add a pregnant sen- tence from their Declaration of Independence, made in July, 1581, I think you will have some fair impres- sion of the influences which afterward wrought in this land, transported hither by those colonists. " When the Prince," says that Declaration, "does not fulfil Netherlands, during the 16th century." — Mr. Motley's Letter to St. Nicholas Society ; quoted in address of Hon. J. W. Beekman, 1869, pages 30, 31. 105 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES his duty as protector, when he oppresses his subjects, destroys their ancient liberties, and treats them as slaves, he is to be considered not a Prince, but a Tyrant. As such, the Estates of the land may lawfully and reasonably depose him, and elect another in his place." 1 They did not elect another to the place ; but, renounc- ing their allegiance to Philip, as their children did afterward to George III, they founded a republic which lasted on those oozy plains two hundred years. The very temper which afterward spoke in the pub- lic documents issued from Philadelphia, had been ut- tered in Holland two centuries earlier; and they who came hither from that land of dykes, storks and wind- mills, had brought it as part of their endowment. No masterpieces came with them, of Rubens or Rem- brandt, whose genius flourished in the same century, under the skies lurid with battle, and on the soil fat- tened with blood. No wealth came with them, like that which already was making Amsterdam, " the Yenice of the North," one 1 of the richest towns in Europe. They built a stone chapel in 1642 ; 2 but they could not reproduce on these shores a single one of the scores of churches, stately and ancient, which they had left, nor any of those superb civic palaces in 1 Rise of Dutch Republic, Vol. Ill, page 509. 2 " A contract was made with John and Richard Ogden, of Stam- ford, for the mason-work of a stone church, seventy-two feet long, fifty wide, and sixteen high, at a cost of twenty -five hundred guilders, and a gratuity of one hundred more if the work should be satisfac- tory. The walls were soon built ; and the, roof was raised, and covered by English carpenters with oak shingles, which, by exposure to the weather, soon ' looked like slate.' " — Brodhead's History of New York, Vol. I, pages 336-7. 106 THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT which the Netherlands cities were rich. But amid whatever straitness of poverty, amid whatever simplic- ity of manners, however unconscious of it themselves, they brought the immanent moral life which had made the morasses at the mouth of the Khine the center of a traffic more wide and lucrative, the scene of a history more majestic, than Europe before had ever seen, and the seat of the first enlightened republic on all the circuit of its maritime coast. To these two elements, the English and the Dutch, was added a vivid and graceful force by those who came from the fruitful Protestant provinces of France. It is sometimes forgotten that the Huguenots consti- tuted the larger and wealthier part of the population of New Amsterdam, after the Dutch ; so that La Montaigne had been in a measure associated with Kieft in the government here, as early as 1638; so that public documents, before 1664, were ordered to be printed in the French language as well as in the Dutch. They brought with them industry, arts, re- finement of letters, as well as the faithful and fervent spirit which had been infused into them in the ckam- bres ardentes of their long persecutions. They were, probably, more generally a cultivated class than were the colonists from either England or Holland. The Huguenot movement had begun in France, not among the poorer people, but in the capi- tal and in the university. The revival of letters had given it primary impulse. It was scholastic, as well as devout, and so was fitly signaled and served by the most philosophical system of theology elaborated in Europe. Its ministers were -among the most learned and eloquent in that country and century of eloquent 107 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES preachers. It had counted distinguished nobles in its ranks; Conde and Coligni among its leaders. Mar- guerite, Queen of Navarre, had been in her time the center of it. It was intimately connected with the high politics of the realm. It had control of abundant wealth. The commerce of the kingdom, and its finest manufactures, were largely in the hands of those who composed the eight hundred Huguenot churches found in France in the early part of the seventeenth century. The families of this descent who were early in New York — some of them as early as 1625 — and who were afterward in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Yirginia, South Carolina, brought with them thus an ancestral influence of education, refinement and skilful enter- prise, as well as of religious fidelity. The French vivacity blended in them with a quick and careful sense of duty. They brought new arts and graceful industries, a certain chivalric and cultivated tone; while the right to freedom, in the worship of God and in the conduct of civil affairs, was as dear to them as to any of those whose fortunes they shared. This spirit had compelled respect in the land which they left, from those who hated it most intensely. For nearly ninety years it had made it indispensable to maintain there the edict which secured to them re- ligious rights. When that was repealed, with the frightful dragonnades which met such ghastly retribu- tion in the streets of Paris, a hundred years after, half a million of the citizens of France pushed across its guarded frontiers into voluntary exile, while the fiery spirit of those who remained blazed forth in the war of the Camisards, unextinguished among the Ce- verines for twenty years. 108 THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT Such an element of population was powerful here beyond its numbers. Its trained vitality made it effi- cient. It is a familiar fact that of the seven Presidents of the Continental Congress, three were of this Hugue- not lineage : Boudinot, Laurens and John Jay. Of the four commissioners who signed the provisional treaty at Paris, which assured our independence, two were of the same number : Laurens and Jay. Faneuil, whose hall in Boston has been for more than a hun- dred years the rallying-place of patriotic enthusiasm, was the son of a Huguenot ; Marion, the swamp-fox of Carolina, was another ; Horry, another ; Huger, another. It was a Huguenot voice, that of Duche, which opened with prayer the Continental Congress. It was a Huguenot hand, that of John Laurens, which drew the articles of capitulation at Yorktown. Be- tween these two terminal acts, the brilliant and faith- ful bravery of the soldier had found wider imitation, among those of his lineage, than had the cowardly weakness of the preacher; and two of those, who thirty years after, in 1814, signed the treaty of peace at Ghent, were still of this remarkable stock — James Bayard and Albert Gallatin. Whenever the history of those who came hither from La Rochelle, and the banks of the Garonne, is fully written, the value and the vigor of the force which they imparted to the early American public life will need no demonstration. The Swedes and Germans, who also were here, though in smaller numbers, represented the same essential temper, and were in radical harmony of spirit with those by whose side they found their place. Gustavus Yasa had given to Sweden comparative 109 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES order and initial prosperity ; leaving it, at his death, with various industries, a . considerable trade, and im- portant institutions of education and religion. Gus- tavus Adolphus gave to the country thus partially re- generated an eminence as signal as it was brief in European affairs. A typical Northman, with his fair skin, clear gray eyes, and the golden hair which crowned his gigantic stature, he broke upon Germany in the midst of the agony of its Thirty Years' "War, beat back the imperial banners from their near ap- proach to the German Ocean, and, in two years of rapid victory, turned the entire current of the strife. He swept fortresses into his grasp, as the reaper binds his sheaves. The armies of Tilly were pulverized be- fore him. He entered Munich in triumph ; Nurem- berg and Naumburg amid a welcome that frightened him, it was so much like worship. And when he died, accidentally killed in the fog at Liitzen, in 1632, he left the most signal example in modern times of heroic design, of far-sighted audacity, of the conquer- ing force which lies in faith. "When he left Sweden he said to his chancellor: " Henceforth there remains for me no rest, except the eternal ; " and it was true. But, before he left, he had not only founded a university at home, and given large impulse to industry and to commerce, but had chartered a colony fo# this country, with liberal pro- vision, and an unbounded faith and hope. After his death, the great minister, Oxenstiern — most prescient and masterful of the statesmen of the time — furthered the colony, and would have built it into greatness, but for the subsequent decline of the kingdom, under the eccentric and self-willed Christina. Then it was ab- 110 THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT sorbecl, as you know, by the Dutch. But so far as it contributed, as to some extent it did, to the early civilized life on these shores, it simply augmented the previous forces of personal energy, public education, constructive skill, and a free faith, for which the woods had here retired to make room ; and the fact that it was planned by him whose flashing fame filled Europe with amaze, connects it with heroic memories, and casts a certain reflected splendor upon our early popular life. The Germans, who speedily followed the Swedes, though their large immigration was later in beginning, were of the same spirit. The war, which had covered a whole generation, in which three-fourths of the people had perished, and three-fourths of the houses had been destroyed, — which had given, as Archbishop Trench points out, the new word " plunder " to the English language, 1 and which had been marked by atrocities so awful that history shudders to recite them, — had not, after all, exterminated the temper at which it was aimed. It had given, as Trench has also ob- served, the largest contribution of any period to the Protestant hymn-book of Germany. Those who survived it, while fiercer than ever against the tyran- nies which they had fought, were more eager than ever to replace the prosperities which the war had destroyed. The wilderness around them, which man had made, was less inviting than the wilderness be- yond seas, which God had left for man to conquer. 1 ' ' This "War has left a very characteristic deposit in our language, iu the word ' plunder, ' which first appeared in English about the year 1642-3, having been brought hither from Germany by some of the many Scotch and English who had served therein ; for so Fuller as- sures us." — Lect. on "Social Aspects of the Thirty Years' War." Ill ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES So they came hither ; bringing with them the courage, the purpose and the hope, which all the fire that ran along the ground, and the iron hail that had broken the branches of every tree, had only burned and beaten deeper into their minds. They came for expanded opportunity ; for liberty of development, and the chance of a more rewarding work. Wherever they touched the American coast they set the seeds of that new civilization which had found in Germany its early incentives, and for which they and their fathers had fought, through a strife without precedent in severity and in length. The same was true of the Scotch and Scotch-Irish, who came in rapidly increasing numbers after the close of the seventeenth century. The Earl of Stirling had received, by royal charter, as early as 1621, a grant of the territory still known to the world as " Nova Scotia," and had subsequently sent some colo- nists to its shores ; but the small settlement soon dis- appeared, and those who afterward emigrated from Scotland, for many years, were inclined to seek homes in the north of Ireland, rather than on these distant coasts. The comparatively few families from the lowland shires, who had come hither before 1664, had mingled inseparably with the English emigrants, whom they closely resembled, and are scarcely to be discriminated from them. 1 '"The population of Scotland (1603), with the exception of the Celtic tribes which were thinly scattered over the Hebrides, and over the mountainous parts of the northern shires, was of the same blood with the population of England, and spoke a tongue which did not differ from the purest English more than the dialects of Somersetshire and Lancashire differed from each other." — Macaulay, History of Eng- land, Vol. 1, page 65. 112 THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT The four or five hundred Scotch prisoners whom Cromwell sent to Boston, in 1651, after the battles of Dunbar and Worcester, were, of course, discontented in their involuntary exile, and appear to have left no permanent impression on the unfolding life of the colonies. When Kobert Barclay, of Ury, was gov- ernor of New Jersey, in 1683, he secured the emigra- tion of numbers of his countrymen to that attractive and fertile province, though, it is said, " with some difficulty and importunity. For, although the great bulk of the nation was suffering the rigors of tyranny, for their resistance to the establishment of prelacy, they were reluctant to seek relief in exile from their native land." 1 But when the hundred and twenty families came, in 1719, to Boston, Portland, and elsewhere, the an- cestors of whom, a century before, had emigrated from Argyleshire to Londonderry and Antrim in the north of Ireland, and by part of whom Londonderry, in New Hampshire, was speedily settled, — and when others followed, as to Georgia in 1736, to North Carolina in 1746, to South Carolina in 1763, — they came to stay. They changed their skies, but not their minds. They brought the exact and stern fidelity to religious con- viction, the national pride, the hatred of tyranny, the frugal, hardy, courageous temper which were to them an ancestral inheritance. Their strong idiosyncrasy maintained itself stubbornly, but their practical spirit was essentially in harmony with that of the colonists who had preceded them ; and when the hour of sum- mons came, no voices were earlier or more emphatic 1 Gordon's History of New Jersey, Chap. iv. S. 113 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES for dissolving all connection with Great Britain than were those of the men whose ancestors, in 1638, had eagerly signed the " National Covenant " in the Grey- friars' churchyard, or forty years afterward had faced Claverhouse and his dragoons at Loudon-hill, or Monmouth and his troops at Both well-bridge. So, also, the Bohemian Protestants, who were here in 1656 ; the "Waldenses, who were on Staten Island and elsewhere in the same year ; the German Quakers, by whom Germantown, in Pennsylvania, was settled, in 1684 ; the three thousand Germans, sent out to the Hudson Eiver in 171 0, and who afterward established their prosperous homes at Schoharie, and along the inviting Mohawk meadows ; the Salzburg exiles, who had crossed Europe from Augsburg " singing psalms," and who finally found a home in Georgia, in 1734 : — all were essentially similar in spirit, industrious, or- derly, devout, faithful to their religion, with a resolute purpose to live and work in unhindered freedom. Each small migration added its increment to the swell- ing force of the various but sympathetic population of the colonies. Each element had its separate value, its proper strength ; and all were ready, when the final fires of war broke forth, to combine with each other, as the many metals, fused together and intimately commingling, were wrought into one magnificent amalgam, in the famous and precious Corinthian brass. Even the rough and rapid outline of this fragmen- tary review illustrates the extent to which the century passing so signally over Europe impressed its charac- ter on this continent. Twenty-five years after New Amsterdam had been submitted to the English, at least two hundred thousand Europeans are computed to 114 THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT have had their home in this country, representing, for the most part, the several peoples which I have named. The future nation was then fully commenced. It had only thenceforth to work and grow. It was formed of plain people. Its wealth was small and its culture not great. It had been hardly noticed, at first, amid the swift changes of states and dynasties with which Europe was dazzled. But the forces which it contained represented an illustrious ancestry. It is no exagger- ation to say that the most energetic life of the world, up to that era, w r as reproduced in it. We have thought of it, too commonly, as composed of men who had simply come here in zeal for an opinion, or to escape the fierce inquest of tyranny. It was a broader tem- per which brought them, an ampler purpose which they came to serve. The push of a century was be- hind them; eager, aggressive, sweeping out to new conquests on unknown coasts. It had seen such changes in Northern Europe as only its vehement en- ergy could have wrought ; and now, with seemingly careless hand, using the impulse of various motives, it had flung into space a separate people, infused with its temper, alive with its force. In its constituent moral life, that people was one, though gradually formed, and drawn from regions so remote. It was fearless, reflective, energetic, construct- ive, by its birthright ; at once industrious and martial ; intensely practical, politically active, religiously free. There was, almost, a monotony of force in it. It ac- cepted no hereditary leaders, and kept those whom it elected within careful limitations. It gave small prom- ise of esthetic sensibility, with the dainty touch of artistic taste ; but it showed from the outset a swift 115 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES and far-sighted common sense. It was vital with ex- pectation ; having the strongest ancestral attachments, yet attracted by the Future more than by the Past, and always looking to new success and larger work. It was hospitable, of course, to all newcomers, giving reception in New England, as well as here, to even the Jesuit and his mass ; * but it absorbed only what har- monized with it, was indifferent to the rest. It was sensible of God and his providence over it ; but en- tirely aware of the value of possessions, and profoundly resolved to have the power which they impart. It was the heir to a great Past. It had before it the perilous uncertainties of an obscure Future. But any philoso- pher, considering it at that point, with a mind as in- tent and reflective as Burke's, would have said, I think, without hesitation, that its Future must respond to the long preparation ; that the times before it must match the times out of which it had come, and take impress from the lands whose tongues and temper it combined. If that strong stock, selected from so many peoples, and transferred to this continent at that critical time, was not destined thenceforth to grow, till the little one became a thousand, and the small one a strong na- tion, there is no province for anticipation in public affairs, and " the philosophy of history " is a phrase without meaning. The after-training which met it here was precisely such, you instantly observe, as befitted its origin, and carried on the development which was prophesied in its nature. It was an austere, protracted training ; not beautiful, but beneficent ; of labor, patience, legisla- J See Parkman's "Jesuits of North America," pages 322-7. 116 THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT tion, war. As the colonies had been planted according to the wise maxim of Bacon — " the people wherewith you plant ought to be gardeners, ploughmen, laborers, smiths, carpenters, joiners, fishermen, fowlers, with some few apothecaries, surgeons, cooks, and bakers," 1 — so they were trained for practical service, for long endurance, for the arts of industry, not of beauty, for ultimate oneness as a nation, and a powerful impres- sion upon mankind. Incessant labor was their primary teacher ; universal in its demands, in effect most salutary. If they had been idle men, supplied with abundant resources from abroad, a something mystical and dark would have penetrated their spirit, from the pathless forests which stretched around, from the lonely seas which lay be- hind, from the fierceness of the elements, from their sense of dislocation from all familiar historic lands. There was, in fact, something of this. Certain pas- sages in their history, certain parts of their writings, are only explained by it. It would have been general, and have wrought a sure public decline, except for the constant corrective of their labor. They would have seen, oftener than they did, phantom armies fighting in the clouds, fateful omens in aurora and comet. 2 The 1 Essay xxxiii; " of Plantations. " 2 "The Aurora Borealis, the beauty of the northern sky, which is now gazed upon with so much delight, was seen for the first time in New England in 1721, and filled the inhabitants with alarm. Super- stition beheld with terror its scarlet hues, and transformed its waving folds of light, moving like banners along the sky, into harbingers of coming judgment, and omens of impending havoc. Under its brilliant reflection, the snow, the trees, and every object, seemed to be dyed with blood, and glowed like fire." — Barstow's Hist, of New Hamp- shire, Chap. vii. 117 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES dread of witchcraft, still prevalent in the old world, would more widely have fevered their minds. The voice of demons would have oftener been heard, in the howl of wolves, or the winds wailing among the pines. But the sweat of their brows medicined their minds. The work which was set for them was too difficult and vast to allow such tendencies to get domination. A continent was before them to be subdued, and with few and poor instruments. With axe and hoe, mattock and plough, they were to conquer an unde- fined wilderness, untouched, till then, by civilized in- dustry ; with no land behind to which to retreat, with only the ocean and the sand-hills in the rear. It was a tremendous undertaking ; greater than any infant people had ever encountered ; greater, for- tunately, than they themselves knew at the time. Plutarch tells us that Stasicrates once proposed to Alexander to have Mount Athos carved into a statue of himself ; a copious river flowing from one hand, and a city of thousands of people in the other ; the iEgean archipelago stretching outward from the feet. Even the ambition which decreed Alexandria, and made Asia its vassal, might have pleased itself with a fancy so colossal. But it was trifling, compared with the work which the colonists of this country were called to take up ; as a Macedonian bay, compared with the ocean on which their rugged continent looked. Upon that continent they were to impress the likeness of themselves. What Europe had only partially realized, after its centuries of advancing civilization, the}^ and their children were suddenly to repeat, fashioning the wilderness to the home of commonwealths. The strain of the work was prodigious and unceas- 118 THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT ing. ~No wonder that the applications of science have always had a charm for Americans ! ~No wonder that " impossible " has ever since seemed here a foolish word ! But the muscle which was built, in both body and will, was as tough and tenacious as the work was enormous. They had to secure, — by invention, where English policy permitted, by purchase, where it did not, — what- ever they needed for the comfort of life, and whatever means of culture they possessed. Their fisheries were pushed along the jagged, tempestuous coasts, till they struck the icy barriers of the pole. Their commerce was cultivated, against the jealousy of the English legislation, till, in Burke's time, you see to what it had grown. They had to establish their own free schools ; to found and enlarge their needed colleges ; to supplv themselves with such literature at home as could be produced, in the pauses of their prodigious labor ; to import from the old world what their small means en- abled them to buy. They had their chartered liberties to maintain, against royal hostility, in the face of governors who hindered and threatened, if they did not — like Andros — compel the clerks of their assemblies to write " Finis " midway on the records. 1 So it happened to ia His Excellency, Sir Edmund Andros, Knight, Captain-General and Governor of his Majesty's Territory and Dominion in New Eng- land, by order from his Majesty, King of England, Scotland, and Ire- land, the 31st of October, 1687, took into his hands the government of this colony of Connecticut, it being by his Majesty annexed to the Massachusetts and other Colonies, under his Excellency's government. FINIS." — Secretary Allyn's record; quoted by Palfrey, Vol. Ill, page 545. 119 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES them, according to Milton's ideal plan for a perfect education. " The next remove," he says, " must be to the study of politics ; to know the beginning, end, and reason of political societies ; that they may not, in a dangerous fit of the Commonwealth, be such poor, shaken, uncertain reeds, of such a tottering conscience, as many of our great counselors have lately showed themselves, but steadfast pillars of the State." The plain men who had come here from Europe, and who had before them a wilderness to be conquered, were trained according to this generous philosophy. A large practical sovereignty had to be in their hands, from the beginning, for their self-preservation. They established offices, enacted laws, organized a militia, waged war, coined money ; and the lessons which they learned, ' of legislative prudence, administrative skill, bore abundant fruit in that final Revolution which did not spring from accident or from passion, which was born of debate, which was shaped by ideas, and which vindicated itself by majestic state papers. Their military tuition was as constant as their work. Against the Indians, against the French, somewhere or other, as we look back, they seem to have been always in arms — so uncertain and brief were their in- tervals of peace. Not always threatened violence to themselves, sometimes the remote collisions and en- tanglements of European politics, involved them in these wars — as in that great one which commenced in the question of the Austrian Succession, and which swept through our untrodden woods its trail of fire ; when, as Macaulay says of Frederick, " that he might rob a neighbor whom he had promised to defend, black men fought on the coasts of Coromandel, and red men 120 THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT scalped each other by the great lakes of North America." Precisely as the colonies grew, any power hostile to Great Britain was incited to attack them. At some point or other, therefore, the straggling and interrupted line of their scanty possessions was lighted with conflagration, vocal with volleys, dripping with blood, clown almost to the day of the Revolution. But from this incessant martial training came prac- tised skill in the use of weapons, a cool courage, a supreme self-reliance, — the temper which looks from many portraits, which faced emergencies without a fear, and whose fire withered the British ranks at Concord bridge and on Breed's Hill. There is not much that is picturesque in the annals which cover the hundred years after New Amsterdam became New York. They look, to the world, perhaps to us, for the most part, commonplace. Volcanic regions are the more picturesque in landscape forms, because of the sudden violence of the forces which have shattered and reset them. The legends cling to rugged peaks. The pinnacles of Pilatus incessantly attract them, while they slide from the smoother slopes of Righi. So a convulsive and violent history, full of reaction, fracture, catastrophe, appeals to the imag- ination as one never does that is quiet and gradual, where a people moves forward in steady advance, and the sum of its accomplishment is gradually built of many particulars. There was not much in the career of the colonists, in the hundred years before the Revolution, which poetry would be moved to cele- brate, or whose attractive pictorial aspects the painter would make haste to sketch. But the discipline answered its purpose better than 121 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES if it had been pictorial, tragic. It was apt to the in- born temper of the colonists. It fortified in them that hardy and resolute moral life which they had brought. It guarded the forces which were their birthright from waste and loss. The colony of Suri- nam, under tropical skies — where mahogany was a fire- wood, and the Tonquin-bean, with its swift sweet- ness, perfumed the air; where sugar and spices are produced without limit, and coffee and cotton have re- turned to the planter two crops a year — this seemed, at the time, a prodigal recompense for the colony of New Netherland. But Guiana demoralized the men who possessed it; while the harder work, under harsher heavens, gave an empire to those who adhered to these coasts. No unbought luxuries became to them as dazzling and deadly Sabine gifts. No lazy and voluptuous life, as of tropical islands, dissolved their manhood. Their little wealth was wrested from the wilderness, or won from the seas ; and the cost of its acquirement measured its permanence. They were, as a people, honest and chaste, because they were workers. Their ways might be rough, their slang perhaps strong. But no prevalence among them of a prurient fiction inflamed their passions ; no fescennine plays blanched the bloom of their modesty. Their discipline was Spartan, not Athenian ; but it made their life robust and sound. The sharp hellebore cleansed their heads for a more discerning practical sense. They never had to meet what Carlyle declares the present practical problem of governments : " given, a world of knaves, to educe an honesty from their united action." As their numbers increased, and their industry be- came various, the sense of independence of foreign 122 THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT countries was constantly nurtured. The feeling of in- ward likeness and sympathy among themselves, the tendencies to combine in an organic union, grew al- ways more earnest. Patriotism was intensified into a passion ; since, if any people owned their lands, cer- tainly they did, who had hewn out their spaces amid the woods, had purchased them not with wampum but with work, had fertilized them with their own blood. And, at last, trained by labor and by war, by educational influences, Christian teachings, legislative responsibilities, commercial success, — at last, the spirit which they had brought, which in Europe had been resisted and thwarted until its force was largely broken, but which here had not died, and had not de- clined, but had continued diffused as a common life among them all, — this made their separate establish- ment in the world a necessity of the time. "Mon- archy unaccountable is the worst sort of tyranny, and least of all to be endured by free-born men " — that was a maxim of Aristotle's politics, twenty centuries before their Congress. It had been repeated and em- phasized by Milton, while the ancestors of those as- sembled in the Congress were fighting for freedom across the seas. 1 Holland had believed it, and Prot- 1 Milton had added other words, in the same great discourse of Lib- erty, which might have served as a motto for the Congress convened at Philadelphia, just a hundred years after his death : " And surely they that shall boast, as we do, to be a free nation, and not to have in themselves the power to remove or to abolish any gover- nor, supreme or subordinate, with the government itself upon urgent causes, may please their fancy with a ridiculous and painted freedom, fit to cozen babies, but are indeed under tyranny and servitude, as wanting that power which is the root and source of all liberty, to dis- 123 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES estant German} r , as well as England. It became the vivid and illuminating conviction of the people here gathered ; and in its light the Republic dawned. The foregleams of that were playing already along the horizon, while Burke was speaking. Before his words had reached this country, the small red rim was pal- pable on the eastern sky, showing the irresistible up- spring of that effulgent yet temperate day which never since has ceased to shine. All this was the work of that early distinctive American Spirit, so rich in its history, so manifold in its sources, so supreme in its force. It had not been born of sudden passion. It was not the creature of one school of theology. It had had no narrow insular origin. It was richer and broader than Burke himself discerned it to be. Holland and France, as well as England, had contributed to it. From the age of Elizabeth, and of William the Silent, of Henry TV and Gustavus Adolphus, it had burst forth upon these shores. It had here been working for a century and a half, before the Stamp Act. It had wrought in Europe for three generations, before the first hemlock hut sheltered a white face between Plymouth and Jamestown. It had been born of vehement struggle, vast endurance, sublime aspiration, heroic achieve- ment : and on this reserved continent of the future God gave it room, incentive, training. Assault did not destroy it here. Reaction did not waste it. It flourished more royally, because transplanted. At pose and economize in the land which God hath given them, as mas- ters of family in their own house and free inheritance." — The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates. 124 THE EARLY AMERICAN SPIRIT last it sent back of its inherent, perennial life, to re- vive the lands from which at the outset it had come. The work of that spirit is what we inherit. It was that which got its coveted relief from paying three- pence a pound upon tea, by erecting another empire in the world. It was that which counseled, wrought, and fought, from the first Congress to the last capit- ulation. It is that which every succeeding reminis- cence, in the coming crowded centennial years, will constantly recall. It is that which interlinks our annals with those of the noblest time in Europe, and makes us heirs to the greatness of its history. It is that which shows the providence of Him who is the eternal Master-builder of states and peoples, and the reach of whose plan runs through the ages ! The patriot's duty, the scholar's mission, the phil- anthropist's hope, are illustrated by it. For as long as this spirit survives among us, uncorrupted by lux- ury, unabated by time, no matter what the strife of parties, no matter what the commercial reverse, in- stitutions which express it will be permanent here as the mountains and the stars. "When this shall fail, if fail it does, it will not need a foreign foe, it will not ask domestic strife, to destroy our liberties. Of them- selves they will fall ; as the costly column, whose base has rotted ; as the mighty frame, whose life has gone ! May He who brought it, still maintain it, that when others are gathered here, a hundred years hence, to review the annals not yet written, they may have only to trace the unfolding of its complete and sov- ereign life ! 125 Ill THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE AND THE EFFECTS OF IT An Oration delivered before the citizens of New York in the Academy of Music, at the celebration of the Centennial Anniversary, July 4, 1876. Ill THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE AND THE EFFECTS OF IT Me. Pkesident : Fellow Citizens : The long-expected day has come, and passing peacefully the impalpable line which separates ages, the Republic completes its hundredth year. The pre- dictions in which affectionate hope gave inspiration to political prudence are fulfilled. The fears of the timid, and the hopes of those to whom our national existence is a menace, are alike disappointed. The fable of the physical world becomes the fact of the political ; and after alternate sunshine and storm, after heavings of the earth which only deepened its roots, and ineffectual blasts of lightning whose lurid threat died in the air, under a sky now raining on it benignant influence, the century-plant of American Independence and popular government bursts into this magnificent blossom, of a joyful celebration il- luminating the land ! With what desiring though doubtful expectation those whose action we commemorate looked for the possible coming of this day, we know from the records which they have left. With what anxious solicitude the statesmen and the soldiers of the following gener- ation anticipated the changes which might take place before this centennial year should be reached, we have I 129 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES heard ourselves, in their great and fervent admonitory words. How dim and drear the prospect seemed to our own hearts fifteen years since, when, on the fourth of July, 1861, the Thirty-seventh Congress met at "Washington with no representative in either house from any State south of Tennessee and "Western Vir- ginia, and when a determined and numerous army, under skilful commanders, approached and menaced the Capital and the government, — this we surely have not forgotten ; nor how, in the terrible years which followed, the blood and fire, and vapor of smoke, seemed oftentimes to swim as a sea, or to rise as a wall, between our eyes and this anniversary. " It cannot outlast the second generation from those who founded it " was the exulting conviction of the many who loved the traditions and state of mon- archy, and who felt them insecure before the widen- ing fame in the world of our prosperous Kepublic. " It may not reach its hundredth year " was the deep and sometimes the sharp apprehension of those who felt, as all of us felt, that their own liberty, welfare, hope, with the brightest political promise of the world, were bound up with the unity and the life of our nation. Never was solicitude more intense, never w T as prayer to Almighty God more fervent and constant — not in the earliest beginnings of our history, when Indian ferocity threatened that history with a swift termination, not in the days of supremest trial amid the Revolution — than in those years when the nation seemed suddenly split asunder, and forces which had been combined for its creation were clenched and rocking back and forth in bloody grapple on the question of its maintenance. 130 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE The prayer was heard. The effort and the sacrifice have come to their fruitage ; and to-day the nation — still one, as at the start, though now expanded over such immense spaces, absorbing such incessant and di- verse elements from other lands, developing within it opinions so conflicting, interests so various, and forms of occupation so novel and manifold — to-day the na- tion, emerging from the toil and the turbulent strife, with the earlier and the later clouds alike swept out of its resplendent stellar arch, pauses from its work to remember and rejoice ; with exhilarated spirit to an- ticipate its future ; with reverent heart to offer to God its great Te Deum. Not here alone, in this great city, whose lines have gone out into all the earth, and whose superb progress in wealth, in culture, and in civic renown, is itself the most illustrious token of the power and beneficence of that frame of government under which it has been realized ; not alone in yonder, I had almost said ad- joining, city, whence issued the paper that first an- nounced our national existence, and where now rises the magnificent Exposition, testifying for all progress- ive States to their respect and kindness toward us, the radiant clasp of diamond and opal on the girdle of the sympathies which interweave their peoples with ours ; not alone in Boston, the historic town, first in resistance to British aggression, and foremost in plans for the new and popular organization, one of whose citizens wrote his name, as if cutting it with a plough- share, at the head of all on our great charter, another of whose citizens was its intrepid and powerful cham- pion, aiding its passage through the Congress; not there alone, nor yet in other great cities of the land, 131 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES but in smaller towns, in villages and hamlets, this day will be kept, a secular Sabbath, sacred alike to memory and to hope. Not only, indeed, where men are assembled, as we are here, will it be honored. The lonely and remote will have their part in this commemoration. Where the boatman follows the winding stream, or the wood- man explores the forest shades ; where the miner lays down his eager drill beside rocks which guard the pre- cious veins ; or where the herdsman, along the sierras, looks forth on the seas which now reflect the rising day, which at our midnight shall be gleaming like gold in the setting sun — there also will the day be regarded, as a day of memorial. The sailor on the sea will note it, and dress his ship in its brightest array of flags and bunting. Americans dwelling in foreign lands will note and keep it. London itself will to-day be more festive because of the event which a century ago shadowed its streets, incensed its Parliament, and tore from the crown of its obstinate King the chiefest jewel. On the boule- vards of Paris, in the streets of Berlin, and along the leveled bastions of Yienna, at Marseilles and at Flor- ence, upon the silent liquid ways of stately Venice, in the passes of the Alps, under the shadow of church and obelisk, palace and ruin, which still prolong the majesty of Rome ; yea, further East, on the Bosphorus, and in Syria ; in Egypt, which writes on the front of its compartment in the great Exhibition, " The oldest people of the world sends its morning-greeting to the youngest nation ; " along the heights behind Bombay, in the foreign hongs of Canton, in the " Islands of the Morning," which found the dawn of their new age in 132 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE the startling sight of an American squadron entering their bays — everywhere will be those who have thought of this day, and who join with us to greet its coming. No other such anniversary, probably, has attracted hitherto such general notice. You have seen Rome, perhaps, on one of those shining April days when the traditional anniversary of the founding of the city fills its streets with civic processions, with military display, and the most elaborate fireworks in Europe ; you may have seen Holland, in 1872, when the whole country bloomed with orange on the three-hundredth anniver- sary of the capture by the sea-beggars of the city of Briel, and of the revolt against Spanish domination which thereupon flashed on different sides into sudden explosion. But these celebrations, and others like them, have been chiefly local. The world outside has taken no wide impression from them. This of ours is the first of which many lands, in different tongues, will have had report. Partly because the world is narrowed in our time, and its distant peoples are made neighbors, by the fleeter machineries now in use; partly because we have drawn so many to our popula- tion from foreign lands, while the restless and acquisi- tive spirit of our people has made them at home on every shore ; but partly, also, and essentially, because of the nature and the relations of that event which we commemorate, and of the influence exerted by it on subsequent history, the attention of men is more or less challenged, in every center of commerce and of thought, by this anniversary. Indeed it is not unnatural to feel — certainly it is not irreverent to feel — that they who by wisdom, by 133 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES valor, and by sacrifice, have contributed to perfect and maintain the institutions which we possess, and have added by death as well as by life to the luster of our history, must also have an interest in' this day ; that in their timeless habitations they remember us beneath the lower circle of the heavens, are glad in our joy, and share and lead our grateful praise. To a spirit alive with the memories of the time, and rejoicing in its presage of nobler futures, recalling the great, the beloved, the heroic, who have labored and joyfully died for its coming, it will not seem too fond an enthusiasm to feel that the air is quick with shapes we cannot see, and glows with faces whose light serene we may not catch ! They who counseled in the Cabinet, they who defined and settled the law in decisions of the Bench, they who pleaded with mighty eloquence in the Sen- ate, they who poured out their souls in triumphant effusion for the liberty which they loved in forum or pulpit, they who gave their young and glorious life as an offering on the field, that government for the peo- ple, and by the people, might not perish from the' earth — it cannot be but that they too have part and place in this Jubilee of our history ! God make our doings not unworthy of such spectators ! and make our spirit sympathetic with theirs from whom all selfish passion and pride have now forever passed away ! The interest which is felt so distinctly and widely in this anniversary reflects a light on the greatness of the action which it commemorates. It shows that we do not unduly exaggerate the significance or the impor- tance of that ; that it had really large, even world- wide relations, and contributed an effective and a val- uable force to the furtherance of the cause of freedom, 134 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE education, humane institutions, and popular advance- ment, wherever its influence has been felt. Yet when we consider the action itself, it may easily seem but slight in its nature, as it was certainly commonplace in its circumstances. There was nothing even pictur- esque in its surroundings, to enlist for it the pencil of the painter, or help to fix any luminous image of that which was done on the popular memory. In this respect it is singularly contrasted with other great and kindred events in general history ; with those heroic and fruitful actions in English history which had especially prepared the way for it, and with which the thoughtful student of the past will always set it in intimate relations. Its utter simplic- ity, as compared with their splendor, becomes im- pressive. "When, five centuries and a half before, on the fif- teenth of June, and the following days, in the year of our Lord 1215, the English barons met King John in the long meadow of Runnymede, and forced from him the Magna Charta — the strong foundation and stead- fast bulwark of English liberty, concerning which Mr. Hallam has said in our own time that " all which has been since obtained is little more than as confirmation or commentary,' 1 — no circumstance was wanting, of outward pageantry, to give dignity, brilliance, impress- iveness, to the scene. On the one side was the king, with the bishops and nobles who attended him, with the Master of the Templars, and the papal legate be- fore whom he had lately rendered his homage. * On the other side was the great and determined majority of the barons of England, with multitudes of knights, 15, A. D. 1213. 135 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES armed vassals, and retainers. l "With them in purpose, and in resolute zeal, were most of those who attended the king. Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canter- bury, the head of the English clergy, was with them ; the Bishops of London, Winchester, Lincoln, Roches- ter, and of other great sees. The Earl of Pembroke, dauntless and wise, of vast and increasing power in the realm, and not long after to be its Protector, was really at their head. Robert Pitz-Walter, whose fair daughter Matilda the profligate king had forcibly ab- ducted, was Marshal of the army — the "Army of God, ahd the Holy Church." William Longsword, Earl of Salisbury, half-brother of the King, was on the field ; the Earls of Albermarle, Arundel, Gloucester, Here- ford, Norfolk, Oxford, the great Earl Warenne, who claimed the same right of the sword in his barony which William the Conqueror had had in the king- dom, the Constable of Scotland, Hubert de Burgh, seneschal of Poictou, and many other powerful nobles, — descendants of the daring soldiers whose martial valor had mastered England, Crusaders who had fol- lowed Richard at Ascalon and at Jaffa, whose own liberties had since been in mortal peril. Some bur- gesses of London were present, as well ; troubadours, minstrels, and heralds were not wanting; and doubt- less there mingled with the throng those skilful clerks 1 " Quant a ceux qui se trouvaient du cote des batons, il n'est ni n6- cessaire ni possible de les enumerer, puisque toute la noblesse d'An- gleterre reunie en un seul corps, ne pouvait tomber sous le calcul. Lorsque les pretentions des revoltes eurent ete debattues, le roi Jean, comprenant son inferiorite vis-a-vis des forces de ses barons, accorda sans resistance les lois et liberty qu'on lui demandait, et les confirma par la charte. "— Chronique de Matt. Paris, trad, par A. Huillard- Br6holles. Tome Troisieme, pages 6, 7. 136 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE whose pens had drawn the great instrument of freedom, and whose training in language had given a remarkable precision to its exact clauses and cogent terms. Pennons and banners streamed at large, and spear- heads gleamed, above the host. The June sunshine flashed reflected from inlaid shield and mascled armor. The terrible quivers of English yeomen hung on their shoulders. The voice of trumpets, and clamoring bugles, was in the air. The whole scene was vast as a battle, though bright as a tournament ; splendid, but threatening, like burnished clouds, in which lightnings sleep. The king, one of the handsomest men of the time, though cruelty, perfidy and every foul passion must have left their traces on his face, was especially fond of magnificence in dress ; wearing, we are told, on one Christmas occasion, a rich mantle of red satin, embroidered with sapphires and pearls, a tunic of white damask, a girdle lustrous with precious stones, and a baldric from his shoulder, crossing his breast, set with diamonds and emeralds, while even his gloves, as in- deed is still indicated on his fine effigy in Worcester cathedral, bore similar ornaments, the one a ruby, the other a sapphire. Whatever was superb, therefore, in that consum- mate age of royal and baronial state, whatever was splendid in the glittering and grand apparatus of chivalry, whatever was impressive in the almost more than princely pomp of prelates of the Church, — The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, And all that beauty, all that wealth can give, — all this was marshaled on that historic plain in Surrey, where John and the barons faced each other, where Saxon king and Saxon earl had met in council before 137 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES the Norman had footing in England; and all com- bined to give a fit magnificence of setting to the great charter there granted and sealed. The tower of "Windsor — not of the present castle and palace, but of the earlier detached fortress which already crowned the cliff, and from which John had come to the field — looked down on the scene. On the one side, low hills enclosed the meadow ; on the other, the Thames flowed brightly by, seeking the capital and the sea. Every feature of the scene was English, save one ; but over all loomed, in a porten- tous and haughty stillness, in the ominous presence of the envoy from Eome, that ubiquitous power, surpassing all others, which already had once laid the kingdom under interdict, and had exiled John from church and throne, but to which later he had been reconciled, and on which now he secretly relied to annul the charter which he was granting. The brilliant panorama illuminates the page which bears its story. It rises still as a vision before one, as he looks on the venerable parchment originals, preserved to our day in the British Museum. If it be true, as Hallam has said, that from that era a new soul was infused into the people of England, it must be confessed that the place, the day, and all the circum- stances of that new birth were fitting to the great and the vital event. That age passed away, and its peculiar splendor of aspect was not thereafter to be repeated. Yet when, four hundred years later, on the seventh of June, 1 1 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, Charles I, 1628-9. Kushworth's Hist. Coll. Charles I, page 625. It is rather remarkable that neither Hume, Clarendon, Hallam, De 138 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 1628, the Petition of Eight, the second great charter of the liberties of England, was presented by Parlia- ment to Charles the First, the scene and its accessories were hardly less impressive. Into that law — called a Petition, as if to mask the deadly energy of its blow upon tyranny — had been collected by the skill of its framers all the heads of the despotic prerogative which Charles had exer- cised, that they might all be smitten together, with one tremendous destroying stroke. The king, en- throned in his chair of state, looked forth on those who waited for his word, as still he looks, with his forecasting and melancholy face, from the canvas of Yan Dyck. Before him were assembled the nobles of England, in peaceful array, and not in armor, but with a civil power in their hands which the older gauntlets could not have held, and with the mem- ories of a long renown almost as visible to themselves and to the king as were the tapestries suspended on the walls. Crowding the bar, behind these descendants of the earlier barons, were the members of the House of Commons, with whom the law now presented to the Lolme, nor Macaulay, mentions this date, though all recognize the capital importance of the event. It does not appear in even Knight's Popular History of England. Miss Aikin, in her Memoirs of the Court of Charles I, gives it as June 8, (Vol. I, p. 216) ; and Cham- bers' Encyclopaedia, which ought to be careful and accurate in regard to the dates of events in English history, says, under the title "Petition of Eights : " "At length, on both Houses of Parliament insisting on a fuller answer, he pronounced an unqualified assent in the usual form of words, 'Soit fait comme il est desire,' on the 26th of June, 1628." The same statement is repeated in the latest Revised Edition of that Encyclopaedia. Lingard gives the date correctly. 139 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES king had had its origin, and whose boldness and tenac- ity had constrained the peers, after vain endeavor to modify its provisions, to accept them as they stood. They were the most powerful body of representatives of the kingdom that had yet been convened; pos- sessing a private wealth, it was estimated, surpassing threefold that of the Peers, and representing not less than they the best life, and the oldest lineage, of the kingdom which they loved. Their dexterous, dauntless and far-sighted sagacity is yet more evident, as we look back, than their wealth or their breeding ; and among them were men whose names will be familiar while England continues. Wentworth was there, soon to be the most dangerous of traitors to the cause of which he was then the champion, but who then appeared as resolute as ever to vindicate the ancient, lawful and vital liberties of the kingdom; and Pym was there, the unsurpassed statesman, who, not long afterward, was to warn the dark and haughty apostate that he never again would leave pursuit of him so long as his head stood on his shoulders. 1 Hampden was there, considerate and serene, but inflexible as an oak ; once imprisoned already for his resistance to an unjust taxation, and ready again to suffer and to conquer in the same supreme cause. Sir John Eliot was there, eloquent and devoted, who had tasted also the bitterness of imprisonment, and who, after years of its subsequent experience, was to die a martyr in the Tower. Coke was there, seventy-seven years of age, but full of fire as full of fame, whose vehement and unswerving hand had had chief part in framing the Petition. Selden 1 Welwood's Memorials, quoted in Forster's Life of Pym, page 62. 140 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE was there, the repute of whose learning was already continental. Sir Francis Seymour, Sir Kobert Philips, Strode, Hobart, Denzil Holies, and Valentine — such were the commoners ; and there, at the outset of a career not imagined by either, faced the king a silent young member who had come now to his first Parlia- ment, at the age of twenty-nine, from the borough of Huntingdon, Oliver Cromwell. In a plain cloth suit he probably stood among his colleagues. But they were often splendid, and even sumptuous, in dress ; with slashed doublets, and cloaks of velvet, with flowing collars of rich lace, the swords with flashing hilts by their sides in embroidered belts, their very hats jeweled and plumed, the abundant dressed and perfumed hair falling in curls upon their shoulders. Here and there may have been those who still more distinctly symbolized their spirit, with steel corselets, overlaid with lace and rich embroidery. So stood they in the presence, representing to the full the wealth and genius and stately civic pomp of Eno-land, until the king had pronounced his assent, in the express customary form, to the law which con- firmed the popular liberties; and when, on hearing his unequivocal final assent, they burst into loud, even passionate acclamations of victorious joy, there had been from the first no scene more impressive in that venerable Hall, whose history went back to Edward the Confessor. In what sharp contrast with the rich ceremonial and the splendid accessories of these preceding kindred events, appears that modest scene at Philadelphia, from which we gratefully date to-day a hundred years of constant and prosperous national life ! 141 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES In a plain room, of an unpretending and recent building — the lower east room of what then was a State-house, what since has been known as the " In- dependence Hall " — in the midst of a city of perhaps thirty thousand inhabitants — a city which preserved its rural aspect, and the quaint simplicity of whose plan and structures had always been marked among American towns — were assembled probably less than fifty persons to consider a paper prepared by a young Virginia lawyer, giving reasons for a Resolve which the assembly had adopted two days before. They were farmers, planters, lawyers, physicians, surveyors of land, with one eminent Presbyterian clergyman. A majority of them had been educated at such schools, or primitive colleges, as then existed on this continent, while a few had enjoyed the rare advantage of training abroad, and foreign travel ; but a consider- able number, and among them some of the most in- fluential, had had no other education than that which they had gained by diligent reading while at their trades or on their farms. The figure to which our thoughts turn first is that of the author of the careful paper on the details of which the discussion turned. It has no special maj- esty or charm, the slight tall frame, the sunburned face, the gray eyes spotted with hazel, the red hair which crowns the head ; but already, at the age of thirty-three, the man has impressed himself on his associates as a master of principles, and of the lan- guage in which those principles find expression, so that his colleagues have left to him, almost wholly, the work of preparing the important Declaration. He wants readiness in debate, and so is now silent ; 142 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE but he listens eagerly to the vigorous argument and the forcible appeals of one of his fellows on the com- mittee, Mr. John Adams, and now and then speaks with another of the committee, much older than him- self — a stout man, with a friendly face, in a plain dress, whom the world already had heard something of as Benjamin Franklin. These three are perhaps most prominently before us as we recall the vanished scene, though others were there of fine presence and cultivated manners, and though all impress us as substantial and respectable representative men, how- ever harsh the features of some, however brawny their hands with labor. But certainly nothing could be more unpretending, more destitute of pictorial charm than that small assembly of persons for the most part quite unknown to previous fame, and half of whose names it is not probable that half of us in this assembly could now repeat. After a discussion somewhat prolonged, as it seemed at the time, especially as it had been con- tinued from previous days, and after some minor amendments of the paper, toward evening it was adopted, and ordered to be sent to the several States, signed by the president and the secretary; and the simple transaction was complete. Whatever there may have been of proclamation and bell-ringing appears to have come on subsequent days. It was almost a full month before the paper was en- grossed and signed by the members. It must have been nearly or quite the same time before the news of its adoption had reached the remoter parts of the land. If pomp of circumstances were necessary to make 143 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES an event like this great and memorable, there would have been others in our own history more worthy far of our commemoration. As matched against multi- tudes in general history, it would sink into instant and complete insignificance. Yet here, to-day, a hundred years from the adoption of that paper, in a city which counts its languages by scores, and beats with the tread of a million feet, in a country whose enterprise flies abroad over sea and land on the rush of engines not then imagined, in a time so full of exciting hopes that it hardly has leisure to contem- plate the past, we pause from all our toil and traffic, our eager plans and impetuous debate, to commemo- rate the event. The whole land pauses, as I have said; and some distinct impression of it will follow the sun, wherever he climbs the steep of heaven, until in all countries it has more or less touched the thoughts of men. Why is this ? is a question, the answer to which should interpret and vindicate our assemblage. It is not simply because a century happens to have passed since the event thus remembered occurred. A hundred years are always closing from some event, and have been since Adam was in his prime. There was, of course, some special importance in the action then accomplished — in the nature of that action, since not in its circumstances — to justify such long record of it ; and that importance it is ours to define. In the perspective of distance the small things dis- appear, while the great and eminent keep their place. As Carlyle has said: "A king in the midst of his bodyguards, with his trumpets, war-horses, and gilt standard-bearers, will look great though he be little ; 144 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE only some Roman Cams can give audience to satrap ambassadors, while seated on the ground, with a woolen cap, and supping on boiled pease, like a common soldier." * What was, then, the great reality of power in what was done a hundred years since, which gives it its masterful place in history — makes it Roman and regal amid all its simplicity ? Of course, as the prime element of its power, it was the action of a people, and not merely of per- sons ; and such action of a people has always a momentum, a public force, a historic significance, which can pertain to no individual arguments and appeals. There are times, indeed, when it has the energy and authority in it of a secular inspiration ; when the supreme soul which rules the world comes through it to utterance, and a thought surpassing man's wisest plan, a will transcending his strongest purpose, is heard in its commanding voice. It does not seem extravagant to say that the time to which our thoughts are turned was one of these. For a century and a half the emigrants from Eu- rope had brought hither, not the letters alone, the arts and industries, or the religious convictions, but the hardy moral and political life, which had there been developed in ages of strenuous struggle and work. France and Germany, Holland and Sweden, as well as England, Scotland and Ireland, had con- tributed to this. The Austrian Tyrol, the Bavarian highlands, the Bohemian plain, Denmark, even Por- tugal, had had their part in this colonization. The ample domain which here received the earnest im- 1 Essay on Schiller. Essays : Vol. II, page 301. j 145 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES migrants had imparted to them of its own oneness ; and diversities of language, race and custom, had fast disappeared in the governing unity of a common aspiration, and a common purpose to work out through freedom a nobler well-being. The general moral life of this people, so various in origin, so accordant in spirit, had only risen to grander force through the toil and strife, the austere training, the long patience of endurance, to which it here had been subjected. The exposures to heat and cold and famine, to unaccustomed labors, to al- ternations of climate unknown in the old world, to malarial forces brooding above the mellow and drain- less recent lands — these had fatally stricken many ; but those who survived were tough and robust, the more so, perhaps, because of the perils which they had surmounted. Education was not easy, books were not many, and the daily newspaper was un- known; but political discussion had been always going on, and men's minds had gathered unconscious force as they strove with each other, in eager de- bate, on questions concerning the common welfare. They had had much experience in subordinate legis- lation, on the local matters belonging to their care ; had acquired dexterity in performing public business, and had often had to resist or amend the suggestions or dictates of royal governors. For a recent people, dwelling apart from older and conflicting states, they had had a large experience in war, the crack of the rifle being never unfamiliar along the near frontier, where disciplined skill was often combined with savage f ury to sweep with sword or scar with fire their scat- tered settlements. 146 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE By every species, therefore, of common work, of discussion, endurance and martial struggle, the de- scendants of the colonists scattered along the Ameri- can coast had been allied to each other. They were more closely allied than they knew. It needed only some signal occasion, some summons to a sudden heroic decision, to bring them into instant general combination ; and Huguenot and Hollander, Swede, German and Protestant Portuguese, as well as Eng- lishman, Scotchman, Irishman, would then forget that their ancestors had been different, in the su- preme consciousness that now they had a common country, and before all else were all of them Ameri- cans. That time had come. That consciousness had for fifteen years been quickening in the people, since the "Writs of Assistance" had been applied for and granted, in 1761, when Otis, resigning his honorable position under the crown, had flung himself against the alarming innovation with an eloquence as blast- ing as the stroke of the lightning which in the end destroyed his life. With every fresh invasion by England of their popular liberties, with every act which threatened such invasion by providing oppor- tunity and the instruments for it, the sense of a com- mon privilege and right, of a common inheritance in the country they were fashioning out of the forest, of a common place in the history of the world, had been increased among the colonists. They were plain people, with no strong tendencies to the ideal. They wanted only a chance for free growth; but they must have that, and have it together, though the continent cracked. The diamond is formed, it 147 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES has sometimes been supposed, under a swift enor- mous pressure of masses meeting and forcing the carbon into a crystal. The ultimate spirit of the American colonists was formed in like manner ; the weight of a rocky continent beneath, the weight of an oppression only intolerable because undefined pressing on it from above. But now that spirit of inestimable price, reflecting light from every angle, and harder to be broken than anything material, was suddenly shown in acts and declarations of conven- tions and assemblies from the Penobscot to the St. Mary's. Any commanding public temper, once established in a people, grows bolder, of course, more inquisitive and inventive, more sensible of its rights, more de- termined on its future, as it comes more frequently into exercise. This in the colonies lately had had the most significant of all its expressions, up to that point, in the resolves of popular assemblies that the time had come for a final separation from the king- dom of Great Britain. The eminent Congress of two years before had given it powerful reinforcement. Now, at last, it entered the representative American assembly, and claimed from that the ultimate word. It found what it sought. The Declaration was only the voice of that supreme, impersonal force, that will of communities, that universal soul of the State. The vote of the colony then thinly covering a part of the spaces not yet wholly occupied by this great State, was not, indeed, at once formally given for such an instrument. It was wisely delayed, under the judicious counsel of Jay, till a provincial Congress could assemble, specially called, and formally author- 148 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE ized, to pronounce the deliberate resolve of the colony ; and so it happened that only twelve colonies voted at first for the great Declaration, and that New York was not joined to the number till five days later. But Jay knew, and all knew, that numerous, wealthy, eminent in character, high in position as were those here and elsewhere in the country — in Massachusetts, in Yirginia and in the Carolinas — who were by no means yet prepared to sever their connection with Great Britain, the general and governing mind of the people was fixed upon this, with a decision which nothing could change, with a tenacity which nothing could break. The forces tending to that result had wrought to their development with a steadiness and strength which the stubbornest resistance had hardly delayed. The spirit which now shook light and impulse over the land was recent in its precise demand, but as old in its birth as the first Christian settlements ; and it was that spirit — not of one, nor of fifty, not of all the individuals in all the conventions, but the vaster spirit which lay be- hind — which put itself on sudden record through the prompt and accurate pen of Jefferson. He was himself in full sympathy with it, and only by reason of that sympathy could give it such con- summate expression. Not out of books, legal re- searches, historical inquiry, the careful and various studies of language, came that document; but out of repeated public debate, out of manifold personal and private discussion, out of his clear sympathetic observation of the changing feeling and thought of men, out of that exquisite personal sensibility to vague and impalpable popular impulses which was in him innately combined with artistic taste, an ideal 149 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES nature, and rare power of philosophical thought. The voice of the cottage as well as the college, of the church as well as the legislative assembly, was •in the paper. It echoed the talk of the farmer in homespun, as well as the classic eloquence of Lee, or the terrible tones of Patrick Henry. It gushed at last from the pen of its writer, like the fountain from the roots of Lebanon, a brimming river when it issues from the rock ; but it was because its sources had been supplied, its fulness filled, by unseen springs ; by the rivulets winding far up among the cedars, and percolating through hidden crevices in the stone ; by melting snows, whose white sparkle seemed still on the stream ; by fierce rains, with which the basins above were drenched ; by even the dews, silent and wide, which had lain in stillness all night upon the hill. The Platonic idea of the development of the State was thus realized here; first Ethics, then Politics. A public opinion, energetic and dominant, took its place from the start as the chief instrument of the new civilization. No dashing maneuver of skilful commanders, no sudden burst of popular passion, was in the Declaration; but the vast mystery of a supreme and imperative public life, at once diffused and intense — behind all persons, before all plans, beneath which individual wills are exalted, at whose touch the personal mind is inspired, and under whose transcendent impulse the smallest instrument becomes of a terrific force. That made the Declaration ; and that makes it now, in its modest brevity, -take its place with Magna Charta and the Petition of Right, as full as they of vital force, and destined to a parallel permanence. 150 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE Because this intense common life of a determined and manifold people was not behind them, other documents, in form similar to this, and in polish and cadence of balanced phrase perhaps its superiors, have had no hold like that which it keeps on the memory of men. What papers have challenged the attention of mankind within the century, in the stately Spanish tongue, in Mexico, New Granada, Yenezuela, Bolivia, or the Argentine Republic, which the world at large has now quite forgotten ! How the resonant procla- mations of German or of French Republicans, of Hungarian or Spanish revolutionists and patriots, have vanished as sound absorbed in the air! Elo- quent, persuasive, just, as the} 7 " were, with a vigor of thought, a fervor of passion, a fine completeness and symmetry of expression, in which they could hardly be surpassed, they have now only a literary value. They never became great general forces. They were weak, because they were personal ; and history is too crowded, civilization is too vast, to take much impression from occasional documents. Only then is a paper of secu- lar force, or long remembered, when behind it is the ubiquitous energy of the popular will, rolling through its words in vast diapason, and charging its clauses with tones of thunder. Because such an energy was behind it, our Declara- tion had its majestic place and meaning ; and they who adopted it saw nowhere else So rich advantage of a promised glory, As smiled upon the forehead of their action. Because of that, we read it still, and look to have it as audible as now, among the dissonant voices of the 151 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES world, when other generations, in long succession, have come and gone ! But further, too, it must be observed that this paper, adopted a hundred years since, was not merely the declaration of a people, as distinguished from eminent and cultured individuals — a confession before the world of the public State-faith, rather than a political thesis — but it was also the declaration of a people which claimed for its own a great inheritance of equitable laws, and of practical liberty, and which now was intent to enlarge and enrich that. It had roots in the past, and a long genealogy ; and so it had a vitality inherent, and an immense energy. They who framed it went back, indeed, to first principles. There was something philosophic and ideal in their scheme, as always there is when the general mind is deeply stirred. It was not superficial. Yet they were not undertaking to establish new theories, or to build their state upon artificial plans and abstract speculations. They were simply evolving out of the past what therein had been latent; were liberating into free exhibition and unceasing activity a vital force older than the history of their colonization, and wide as the lands from which they came. They had the sweep of vast impulses behind them. The slow tendencies of centuries came to sudden consummation in their Declaration ; and the force of its impact upon the affairs and the mind of the world was not to be measured by its contents alone, but by the relation in which these stood to all the vehement discussion and struggle of which it was the latest outcome. This ought to be, always, distinctly observed. The tendency is strong, and has been general, 152 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE among those who have introduced great changes in the government of states, to follow some plan of po- litical, perhaps of social innovation, which enlists their judgment, excites their fancy, and to make a comely theoretic habitation for the national household, rather than to build on the old foundations, — expanding the walls, lifting the height, enlarging the doorways, en- lightening with new windows the halls, but still keep- ing the strength and renewing the age of an old familiar and venerated structure. You remember how in France, in 1789, and the following years, the schemes of those whom Napoleon called the " ideolo- gists " succeeded each other, no one of them gaining a permanent supremacy, though each included impor- tant elements, till the armed consulate of 1799 swept them all into the air, and put in place of them one masterful genius and ambitious will. You remember how in Spain, in 1812, the new Constitution pro- claimed by the Cortes was thought to inaugurate with beneficent provisions a wholly new era of develop- ment and progress ; yet how the history of the splen- did peninsula, from that day to this, has been but the record of a struggle to the death between the Old and the New, the contest as desperate, it would seem, in our time as it was at the first. It must be so, always, when a preceding state of society and government, which has got itself estab- lished through many generations, is suddenly super- seded by a different fabric, however more evidently conformed to right reason. The principle is not so strong as the prejudice. Habit masters invention. The new and theoretic shivers its force on the obsti- nate coherence of the old and the established. The 153 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES modprn structure fails and is replaced, while the grim feudal keep, though scarred and weather-worn, the very cement seeming gone from its walls, still scowls defiance at the red right-hand of the lightning itself. It was no such rash speculative change which here was attempted. The people whose deputies framed our Declaration were largely themselves descendants of Englishmen; and those who were not, had lived long enough under English institutions to be impressed with their tendency and spirit. It was therefore only natural that even when adopting that ultimate measure which severed them from the British crown, they should retain all that had been gained in the mother- land through centuries of endurance and strife. They left nothing that was good ; they abolished the bad, added the needful, and developed into a rule for the continent the splendid precedents of great former occasions. They shared still the boast of Englishmen that their constitution " has no single date from which its duration is to be reckoned," and that " the origin of the English law is as undiscoverable as that of the Nile." They went back themselves, for the origin of their liberties, to the most ancient muniments of English freedom. Jefferson had affirmed, in 1774, that a primitive charter of American Independence lay in the fact that as the Saxons had left their native wilds in the north of Europe, and had occupied Britain — the country which they left asserting over them no further control, nor any dependence of them upon it — so the Englishmen coming hither had formed, by that act, another state, over which Parliament had no rights, in which its laws were void till accepted. 1 1 Works, Vol. I, page 125. 154 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE But while seeking for their liberties so archaic a basis, neither he nor his colleagues were in the least careless of what subsequent times had done to com- plete them. There was not one element of popular right, which had been wrested from crown and noble in any age, which they did not keep ; not an equitable rule, for the transfer or the division of property, for the protection of personal rights, or for the detection and punishment of crime, which was not precious in their eyes. Even chancery jurisdiction they widely retained, with the distinct tribunals, derived from the ecclesiastical courts, for probate of wills ; and English technicalities were maintained in their courts, almost as if they were sacred things. Especially that equality of civil rights among all commoners, which Hallam declares the most prominent characteristic of the English Constitution — the source of its permanence, its improvement, and its vigor — they perfectly preserved ; they only more sharply affirmatively declared it. In- deed, in renouncing their allegiance to the king, and putting the United Colonies in his place, they felt them- selves acting in intimate harmony with the spirit and drift of the ancient constitution. The Executive here was to be elective, not hereditary, to be limited and not permanent in the term of his functions ; and no established peerage should exist. But each State re- tained its governor, its legislature, generally in two houses, its ancient statute and common law ; and if they had been challenged for English authority for their attitude toward the crown, they might have re- plied in the words of Bracton, the Lord Chief-Justice five hundred years before, under the reign of Henry III, that " the law makes the king ; " " there is no 155 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES king, where will, and not law, bears rule ; " " if the king were without a bridle, that is the law, they ought to put a bridle upon him." 1 They might have replied in the words of Fox, speaking in Parliament, in daring defiance of the temper of the House, but with many supporting him, when he said that in declaring In- dependence, they " had done no more than the English had done against James the Second." 2 They had done no more; though they had not elected another king in place of him whom they re- nounced. They had taken no step so far in advance of the then existing English Constitution as those which the Parliament of 1640 took in advance of the previous Parliaments which Charles had dissolved. 1 Ipse autem rex non debet esse sub homine, sed sub Deo et sub Lege, quia Lex facit regem. Attribuat igitur rex Legi quod Lex attribuit ei, videlicet dominationem et potestatem, non est enim rex ubi dominatur voluntas et non Lex. — De Leg. et Cons. Angliae ; Lib. I, cap. 8, page 5. Eex autem babet superiorem, Deum. Item, Legem, per quam factus est rex. Item, curiam suam, videlicet comites, Barones, quia comites dicuntur quasi socii regis, et qui babet socium babet magistrum ; et ideo si rex fuerit sine fraenb, i. e.sine Lege, debent eifraenum ponere ; etc. — Lib. II, cap. 16, page 3. Tbe following is still more explicit : "As tbe head of a body natural cannot change its nerves and sinews, cannot deny to the several parts their proper energy, their due proportion and aliment of blood ; neither can a King, who is the head of a body politic, change the laws thereof, nor take from the people what is theirs by right, against their consent. . . . For he is appointed to protect his subjects in their lives, properties, and laws ; for this very end and purpose he has the delegation of power from the people, and he has no just claim to any other power but this." — Sir John Fortescue's Treatise, De Laudibus Legum Angliae, c. 9, [about A. D. 1470,] quoted by Hallam, Mid. Ages, Chap, viii, part III. 2 Speech of October 31, 1776: "The House divided on the amend- ment. Yeas, 87 ; nays, 242." 156 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE If there was a right more rooted than another in that Constitution, it was the right of the people which was taxed to have its vote in the taxing legislature. If there was anything more accordant than another with its historic temper and tenor, it was that the authority of the king was determined when his rule became tyrannous. Jefferson had but perfectly expressed the doctrine of the lovers of freedom in England for many generations, when he said in his Summary View of the Rights of America, in 1774, that " the monarch is no more than the chief officer of the people, appointed by the laws, and circumscribed with definite powers, to assist in working the great machine of government, erected for their use, and consequently subject to their superintendence ; " that " kings are the servants, not the proprietors of the people ; " and that a nation claims its rights, " as derived from the laws of nature, not as the gift of their chief magistrate." 1 That had been the spirit, if not as yet the formu- lated doctrine, of Raleigh, Hampden, Russell, Sydney — of all the great leaders of liberty in England. Mil- ton had declared it, in a prose as majestic as any pas- sage of the Paradise Lost. The commonwealth had been built on it; and the whole revolution of 1688. And they who now framed it into their permanent or- ganic law, and made it supreme in the country they were shaping, were in harmony with the noblest in- 1 Rulers are no more than attorneys, agents, and trustees for the people, and if the cause, the interest and trust, is insidiously betrayed, or wantonly trifled away, the people have a right to revoke the au- thority that they themselves have deputed, and to constitute abler and better agents, attorneys and trustees. — John Adams. Dissertation on Canon and Feudal Law ; 1765. Works : Vol. Ill, pages 456-7. 157 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES spirations of the past. They were not innovating with a rash recklessness. They were simply accept- ing and reaffirming what they had learned from lu- minous events and illustrious men. So their work had a dignity, a strength and a permanence which can never belong to mere fresh speculation. It inter- locked with that of multitudes going before. It de- rived a virtue from every field of struggle in Eng- land ; from every scaffold, hallowed by free and con- secrated blood ; from every hour of great debate. It was only the* complete development into law, for a separated people, of that august ancestral liberty, the germs of which had preceded the Heptarchy, the grad- ual definition and establishment of which had been the glory of English history. A thousand years brooded over the room where they asserted heredi- tary rights. Its walls showed neither portraits nor mottoes; but the Kaiser-saal at Erankfurt was not hung around with such recollections. No titles were worn by those plain men; but there had not been one knightly soldier, or one patriotic and prescient statesman, standing for liberty in the splendid centu- ries of its English growth, who did not touch them with unseen accolade, and bid them be faithful. The paper which they adopted, fresh from the pen of its young author, and written on his hired pine table, was already, in essential life, of a venerable age ; and it took immense impulse, it derived an instant and vast authority, from its relation to that undying past in which they too had grand inheritance, and from which their public life had come. Englishmen themselves now recognize this, and often are proud of it. The distinguished represent- 158 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE ative of Great Britain at Washington may think his government, as no doubt he does, superior to ours ; but his clear eye cannot fail to see that English lib- erty was the parent of ours, and that the new and broader continent here opened before it, suggested that expansion of it which we celebrate to-day. His ancestors, like ours, helped to build the Eepublic ; and its faithfulness to the past, amid all reformations, was one great secret of its earliest triumph, has been one source, from that day to this, of its enduring and prosperous strength. The Congress, and the people behind it, asserted for themselves hereditary liberties, and hazarded everything in the purpose to complete them. . But they also affirmed, with emphasis and effect, another right, more general than this, which made their action significant and important to other peoples, which made it, indeed, a signal to the nations of the right of each to assert for itself the just prerogative of form- ing its government, electing its rulers, ordaining its laws, as might to it seem most expedient. Hear again the immortal words : " We hold these truths to be self- evident ; . . . that to secure these [unalienable] rights, governments are instituted among men, deriv- ing their just powers from the consent of the gov- erned ; that whenever any form of government be- comes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundations in such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." This is what the party of Bentham called " the as- 159 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES sumption of natural rights, claimed without the slightest evidence of their existence, and supported by vague and declamatory generalities." This is what we receive as the decisive and noble declaration, spoken with the simplicity of a perfect conviction, of a natural right as patent as the continent ; a declara- tion which challenged at once the attention of man- kind, and which is now practically assumed as a pre- mise in international relations and public law. Of course it was not a new discovery. It was old as the earliest of political philosophers ; as old, in- deed, as the earliest communities, which, becoming established in particular locations, had there devel- oped their own institutions, and repelled with vehe- mence the assaults that would change them. But in the growth of political societies, and the vast expan- sion of imperial states, by the conquest of those ad- jacent and weaker, this right, so easily recognized at the outset, so germane to the instincts, so level with the reason, of every community, had widely passed out of men's thoughts ; and the power of a conquer- ing state to change the institutions and laws of a people, or impose on it new ones, — the power of a parent state to shape the forms and prescribe the rules of the colonies which went from it — had been so long and abundantly exercised, that the very right of the people, thus conquered or colonial, to consult its own interests in the frame of its government, had been almost forgotten. It might be a high speculation of scholars, or a charming dream of political enthusiasts. But it was not a maxim for the practical statesman ; and what- ever its correctness as an ideal principle, it was vain 160 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE to expect to see it established in a world full of kings who claimed, each for himself, an authority from God, and full of states intent on grasping and governing by their law adjacent domains. The revolt of the Netherlands against Spanish domination had been the one instance in modern history in which the in- herent right of a people to suit itself in the frame of its government had been proclaimed, and then main- tained ; and that had been at the outset a paroxysmal revolt, against tyranny so crushing, and cruelties so savage, that they took it out of the line of examples. The Dutch Kepublic was almost as exceptional, through the fierce wickedness which had crowded it into being, as was Switzerland itself, on its Alpine heights. For an ordinary state to claim self-regula- tion, and found its government on a plebiscite, was to contradict precedent, and to set at defiance European tradition. Our fathers, however, in a somewhat vague way, had held from the start- that they had right to an autonomy; and that acts of Parliament, if not ap- pointments of the crown, took proper effect upon these shores only by reason of their assent. Their charters were held to confirm this doctrine. The conviction, at first practical and instinctive, rather than theoretic, had grown with their growth, and had been intensified into positive affirmation and public exhibition as the British rule impinged more sharply on their interests and their hopes. It had finally be- come the general and decisive conviction of the col- onies. It had spoken already in armed resistance to the troops of the king. It had been articulated, with gathering emphasis, in many resolves of assemblies K 161 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES and conventions. It was now, finally, most ener- getically, set forth to the world in the great Declara- tion ; and in that utterance, made general, not par- ticular, and founding the rights of the people in this country on principles as wide as humanity itself, there lay an appeal to every nation: — an appeal whose words took unparalleled force, were illuminated and made rubrical, in the fire and blood of the following war. "When the Emperor Ferdinand visited Innsbruck, that beautiful town of the Austrian Tyrol, in 1838, it is said that the inhabitants wrote his name in im- mense bonfires, along the sides of the precipitous hills which shelter the town. Over a space of four or five miles extended that colossal illumination, till the heavens seemed on fire in the far-reflected up-stream- ing glow. The right of a people, separated from others, to its own institutions — our fathers wrote this in lines so vivid and so large that the whole world could see them ; and they followed that writing with the consenting thunders of so many cannon that even the lands across the Atlantic were shaken and filled with the long reverberation. The doctrine had, of course, in every nation, its twofold internal application, as well as its front against external powers. On the one hand it swept with destroying force against the notion, so long maintained, of the right of certain families in the world, called Hapsburg, Bourbon, Stuart, or whatever, to govern the rest ; and wherever it was received it made the imagined divine right of kings an obsolete and contemptible fiction. On the other hand, it smote with equal energy against the pretensions of any mi- 162 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE nority within the state — whether banded together by the ties of descent, or of neighborhood in location, or of common opinion, or supposed common interest — to govern the rest ; or even to impair the established and paramount government of the rest by separating themselves organically from it. It was never the doctrine of the fathers that the people of Kent, Cornwall, or Lincoln, might sever themselves from the rest of England, and, while they had their voice and vote in the public councils, might assert the right to govern the whole, under threat of withdrawal if their minor vote were not suffered to control. They were not seeking to initiate anarchy, and to make it thenceforth respectable in the world by support of their suffrages. They recognized the fact that the state exists to meet permanent needs, is the ordinance of God as well as the family ; and that He has determined the bounds of men's habitation, by rivers, seas and mountain chains, shaping countries as well as continents into physical coherence, while giv- ing one man his birth on the north of the Pyrenees, another on the south, one on the terraced banks of the Ehine, another in English meadow or upland. They saw that a common and fixed habitation, in a country thus physically defined, especially when combined with community of descent, of permanent public in- terest, and of the language in which thought is inter- changed — that these make a people ; and such a peo- ple, as a true and abiding body politic, they affirmed had right to shape its government, forbidding others to intermeddle. But it must be the general mind of the people which determined the questions thus involved ; not a dicta- 163 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES ting class within the state, whether known as peers or associated commoners, whether scattered widely, as one among several political parties, or grouped to- gether in some one section, and having a special inter- est to encourage. The decision of the general public mind, as deliberately reached, and authentically de- clared, that must be the end of debate ; and the right of resistance, or the right of division, after that, if such right exist, is not to be vindicated from their Declaration. Any one who thought such government by the whole intolerable to him was always at liberty to expatriate himself, and find elsewhere such other institutions as he might prefer. But he could not tarry, and still not submit. He was not a monarch, without the crown, before whose contrary judgment and will the public councils must be dumb. While dwelling in the land, and having the same opportunity with others to seek the amendment of what he disap- proved, the will of the whole was binding upon him ; and that obligation he could not vacate by refusing to accept it. If one could not, neither could ten, nor a hundred, nor a million, who still remained a minority of the whole. To allow such a right would have been to make government transparently impossible. Not separate sections only, but counties, townships, school districts, neighborhoods, must have the same right ; and each individual, with his own will for his final law, must be the complete ultimate State. It was no such disastrous folly which the fathers of our Republic affirmed. They ruled out kings, princes, peers, from any control over the people ; and they did not give to a transient minority, wherever it might 164 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE appear, on whatever question, a greater privilege, be- cause less denned, than that which they jealously withheld from these classes. Such a tyranny of irre- sponsible occasional minorities would have seemed to them only more intolerable than that of classes, or- ganized, permanent, and limited by law. And when it was affirmed by some, and silently feared by many others, that in our late immense civil war the multi- tudes who adhered to the old Constitution had forgot- ten or discarded the principles of the earlier Declara- tion, those assertions and fears were alike • without reason. The people which adopted that Declaration, when distributed into colonies, was the people which afterward, when compacted into states, established the Confederation of 1781 — imperfect enough, but whose abiding renown it is that under it the war was ended. It was the same people which subsequently framed the supreme Constitution. " We, the people of the United States," do ordain and establish the following Consti- tution, — so runs the majestic and vital instrument. It contains provisions for its own emendation. When the people will, they may set it aside, and put in place of it one wholly different ; and no other nation can intervene. But while it continues, it, and the laws made normally under it, are not subject to resistance by a portion of the people, conspiring to direct or limit the rest. And whensoever any pretension like this shall appear, if ever again it does appear, it will undoubtedly as instantly appear that, even as in the past so in the future, the people whose our govern- ment is, and whose complete and magnificent domain God has marked out for it, will subdue resistance, compel submission, forbid secession, though it cost 165 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES again, as it cost before, four years of war, with treas* ure uncounted and inestimable life. The right of a people upon its own territory, as equally against any classes within it or any external powers, this is the doctrine of our Declaration. We know how it here has been applied, and how settled it is upon these shores for the time to come. We know, too, something of what impression it instantly made upon the minds of other peoples, and how they sprang to greet and accept it. In the fine image of Bancroft, " the astonished nations, as they read that all men are created equal, started out of their lethargy, like those who have been exiles from childhood, when they sud- denly hear the dimly-remembered accents of their mother-tongue." * The theory of scholars had now become the maxim of a State. The diffused ineffectual nebulous light had got itself concentered into an orb ; and the radi- ance of it, penetrating and hot, shone afar. You know how France responded to it ; with passionate speed seeking to be rid of the terrific establishments in Church and State which had nearly crushed the life of the people, and with a beautiful though credulous un- reason trying to lift, by the grasp of the law, into in- telligence and political capacity the masses whose training for thirteen centuries had been despotic. No operation of natural law was any more certain than the failure of that too daring experiment. But the very failure involved progress from it ; involved, un- doubtedly, that ultimate success which it was vain to try to extemporize. Certainly the other European powers will not again intervene, as they did, to restore 1 Vol. VIII, page 473. 166 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE a despotism which France has abjured, and with for- eign bayonets to uphold institutions which it does not desire. Italy, Spain, Germany, England — they are not republican in the form of their government, nor as yet democratic in the distribution of power. But each of them is as full of this organific, self-demonstrating doctrine, as is our own land ; and England would send no troops to Canada to compel its submission if it should decide to set up for itself. Neither Italy nor Spain would maintain a monarchy a moment longer than the general mind of the country preferred it. Germany would be fused in the fire of one passion if any foreign nation whatever should assume to dictate the smallest change in one of its laws. The doctrine of the proper prerogative of kings, de- rived from God, which in the last century was more common in Europe than the doctrine of the centrality of the sun in our planetary system, is now as obsolete among the intelligent as are the epicycles of Ptolemy. Every government expects to stand henceforth by as- sent of the governed, and by no other claim of right. It is strong by beneficence, not by tradition ; and at the height of its military successes it circulates appeals, and canvasses for ballots. Revolution is carefully sought to be averted, by timely and tender ameliora- tion of the laws. The most progressive and liberal states are most evidently secure ; while those which stand, like old olive-trees at Tivoli, with feeble arms supported on pillars, and hollow trunks filled up with stone, are palpably only tempting the blast. An alli- ance of sovereigns, like that called the Holy, for re- constructing the map of Europe, and parceling out the passive peoples among separate governments, would 167 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES to-day be no more possible than would Charlemagne's plan for reconstructing the empire of the "West. Even Murad, Sultan of Turkey, now takes the place of Abdul the deposed, " by the grace of God, and the will of the people ; " and that accomplished and illus- trious Prince, whose empire under the Southern Cross rivals our own in its extent, and most nearly ap- proaches it on this hemisphere in stability of institu- tions and in practical freedom, has his surest title to the throne which he honors, in his wise liberality, and his faithful endeavor for the good of his people. As long as in this he continues, as now, a recognized leader among the monarchs — ready to take and seek suggestions from even a democratic republic — his throne will be steadfast as the water-sheds of Brazil ; and while his successors maintain his spirit, no domes- tic insurrection will test the question whether they re- tain that celerity in movement with which Dom Pedro has astonished Americans. It is no more possible to reverse this tendency toward popular sovereignty, and to substitute for it the right of families, classes, minorities, or of inter- vening foreign states, than it is to arrest the motion of the earth, and make it swing the other way in its an- nual orbit. In this, at least, our fathers' Declaration has made its impression on the history of mankind. It was the act of a people, and not of persons, ex- cept as these represented and led that. It was the act of a people, not starting out on new theories of gov- ernment, so much as developing into forms of law and practical force a great and gradual inheritance of freedom. It was the act of a people, declaring for others, as for itself, the right of each to its own form 168 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE of government, without interference from other na- tions, without restraint by privileged classes. It only remains, then, to ask the question how far it has contributed to the peace, the advancement, and the permanent welfare, of the people by which it was set forth ; of other nations which it has affected. And to ask this question is almost to answer it. The answer is as evident as the sun in the heavens. It certainly cannot be affirmed that we in America, any more than persons or peoples elsewhere, have reached as yet the ideal state, of private liberty com- bined with a perfect public order, or of culture com- plete, and a supreme character. The political world, as well as the religious, since Christ was on earth, looks forward, not backward, for its millennium. That Golden Age is still to come which is to shine in the perfect splendor reflected from Him who is ascended ; and no prophecy tells us how long before the advanc- ing race shall reach and cross its glowing marge, or what long effort, or what tumults of battle, are still to precede. In this country, too, there have been immense spe- cial impediments to hinder wide popular progress in things which are highest. Our people have had a con- tinent to subdue. They have been, from the start, in constant migration. "Westward, from the counties of the Hudson and the Mohawk, around the lakes, over the prairies, across the great river, — westward still, over alkali plains, across terrible canons, up gorges of the mountains where hardly the wild goat could find footing, — westward always, till the Golden Gate opened out on the sea which has been made ten thou- sand miles wide, as if nothing less could stop the 169 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES march, — this has been the popular movement, from almost the day of the great Declaration. To-morrow's tents have been pitched in new fields ; and last year's houses await new possessors. "With such constant change, such wide dislocation of the mass of the people from early and settled home associations, and with the incessant occupation of the thoughts by the great physical problems presented, — not so much by any struggle for existence, as by har- vests for which the prairies waited, by mills for which the rivers clamored, by the coal and the gold which offered themselves to the grasp of the miner — it would not have been strange if a great and dangerous deca- dence had occurred in that domestic and private virtue of which Home is the nursery, in that generous and reverent public spirit which is but the effluence of its combined rays. It would have been wholly too much to expect that under such influences the highest prog- ress should have been realized, in speculative thought, in artistic culture, or in the researches of pure science. Accordingly, we find that in these departments not enough has been accomplished to make our prog- ress signal in them, though here and there the eminent souls "that are like stars and dwell apart" have illumined themes highest with their high inter- pretation. But History has been cultivated among us, with an enthusiasm, to an extent, hardly, I think, to have been anticipated among a people so recent and expectant ; and Prescott, Motley, Irving, Tick- nor, with him upon whose splendid page all Ameri- can history has been amply illustrated, are known as familiarly and honored as highly in Europe as here. We have had as well distinguished poets, and have 170 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE them now ; to whom the nation has been responsive ; who have not only sung themselves, but through whom the noblest poems of the Old World have come into the English tongue, rendered in fit and perfect music, and some of whose minds, blossoming long ago in the solemn or beautiful fancies of youth, with perennial energy still ripen to new fruit as they near or cross their fourscore years. In Medicine and Law, as well as in Theology, in Fiction, Biography, and the vivid Narrative of exploration and discovery, the people whose birthday we commemorate has added something to the possession of men. Its sculptors and painters have won high places in the brilliant realm of modern art. Publicists like Wheaton, jurists like Kent, have gained a celebrity reflecting honor on the land ; and if no orator, so vast in knowledge, so pro- found and discursive in philosophical thought, so af- fluent in imagery, and so glorious in diction, as Ed- mund Burke, has yet appeared, we must remember that centuries were needed to produce him elsewhere, and that any of the great Parliamentary debaters, aside from him, have been matched or surpassed in the hearing of those who have hung with rapt sym- pathetic attention on the lips of Clay, or of Rufus Choate, or have felt themselves listening to the mighti- est mind which ever touched theirs when they stood beneath the imperial voice in which Webster spoke. In applied science there has been much done in the country, for which the world admits itself our grate- ful debtor. I need not multiply illustrations of this, from locomotives, printing-presses, sewing-machines, revolvers, steam-reapers, bank-locks. One instance suffices, most signal of all. 171 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES When Morse, from "Washington, thirty-two years ago, sent over the wires his word to Baltimore, "What hath God wrought," he had given to all the nations of mankind an instrument the most sen- sitive, expansive, quickening, which the world yet possesses. He had bound the earth in electric net- work. England touches India to-day, and France Algeria, while we are in contact with all the continents, upon those scarcely perceptible nerves. The great strat- egist, like Yon Moltke, with these in his hands, from the silence of his office directs campaigns, dictates marches, wins victories ; the statesman in the cabinet inspires and regulates the distant diplomacies ; while the traveler in any port or mart is by the same mar- vel of mechanism in instant communication with all centers of commerce. It is certainly not too much to say that no other invention of the world in this cen- tury has so richly deserved the medals, crosses and diamond decorations, the applause of senates, the gifts of kings, which were showered upon its author, as did this invention, which finally taught and utilized the lightnings whose nature a signer of the great Declara- tion had made apparent. But after all it is not so much in special inventions, or in eminent attainments made by individuals, that we are to find the answer to the question, " What did that day, a hundred years since, accomplish for us?" Still less is it found in the progress we have made in outward wealth and material success. This might have been made, approximately at least, if the British supremacy had here continued. The prairies would have been as productive as now, the 172 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE mines of copper and silver and gold as rich and ex- tensive, the coal-beds as vast, and the cotton-fields as fertile, if we had been born the subjects of the Georges, or of Yictoria. Steam would have kept its propulsive force, and sea and land have been theaters of its triumph. The river would have been as smooth a highway for the commerce which seeks it; and the leap of every mountain stream would have given as swift and constant a push to the wheels that set spindles and saws in motion. Electricity itself would have lost no property, and might have become as completely as now the fire-winged messenger of the thought of mankind. But what we have now, and should not have had except for that paper which the Congress adopted, is the general and increasing popular advancement in knowledge, vigor, as I believe, in moral culture, of which our country has been the arena, and in which lies its hope for the future. The independence of the nation has reacted, with sympathetic force, on the personal life which the nation includes. It has made men more resolute, aspiring, confident, and more susceptible to whatever exalts. The doctrine that all by creation are equal — not in respect of phys- ical force or of mental endowment, of means for cul- ture or inherited privilege, but in respect of immortal faculty, of duty to each other, of right to protection and to personal development, — this has given manli- ness to the poor, enterprise to the weak, a kindling hope to the most obscure. It has made the individuals of whom the nation is composed more alive to the forces which educate and exalt. There has been incessant motive, too, for the wide 173 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES and constant employment of these forces. It has been felt that, as the people is sovereign here, that people must be trained in mind and spirit for its august and sovereign function. The establishment of common schools, for a needful primary secular training, has been an instinct of Society, only recog- nized and repeated in provisions of statutes. The establishment of higher schools, classical and general, of colleges, scientific and professional seminaries, has been as well the impulse of the nation, and the furtherance of them a care of governments. The immense expansion of the press in this country has been based fundamentally upon the same im- pulse, and has wrought with beneficent general' force in the same direction. Eeligious instruction has gone as widely as this distribution of secular knowledge. It used to be thought that a Church dissevered from the State must be feeble. "Wanting wealth of endowments and dignity of titles — its clergy entitled to no place among the peers, its revenues assured by no legal enactments — it must remain obscure and poor; while the absence of any external limitations, of parliamentary statutes and a legal creed, must leave it liable to endless division, and tend to its speedy disintegration into sects and schisms. It seemed as hopeless to look for strength, wealth, be- neficence, for extensive educational and missionary work, to such churches as these, as to look for aggres- sive military organization to a convention of farmers, or for the volume and thunder of Niagara to a thousand sinking and separate rills. But the work which was given to be done in this 174 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE country was so great and momentous, and has been so constant, that matching itself against that work, the Church, under whatever name, has realized a strength, and developed an activity, wholly fresh in the world in modern times. It has not been antagonized by that instinct of liberty which alwaj^s awakens against its work where religion is required by law. It has seized the opportunity. Its ministers and members have had their own standards, leaders, laws, and sometimes have quarreled, fiercely enough, as to which were the bet- ter. But in the work which was set them to do, to give to the sovereign American people the knowledge of God in the Gospel of his Son, their only strife has been one of emulation — to go the furthest, to give the most, and to bless most largely the land and its future. The spiritual incentive has of course been supreme ; but patriotism has added its impulse to the work. It has been felt that Christianity is the basis of republi- can empire, its bond of cohesion, its life-giving law ; that the manuscript copies of the Gospels, sent by Gregory to Augustine at Canterbury, and still pre- served on sixth century parchments at Oxford and Cambridge — more than Magna Charta itself, these are the roots of English liberty ; that Magna Charta, and the Petition of Right, with our completing Declara- tion, were possible only because these had been before them. And so in the work of keeping Christianity prevalent in the land, all earnest churches have eagerly striven. Their preachers have been heard where the pioneer's fire scarcely was kindled. Their schools have been gathered in the temporary camp, not less than in the hamlet or town. They have sent their books with lavish distribution, they have scattered 175 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES their Bibles like leaves of autumn, where settlements hardly were more than prophesied. In all languages of the land they have told the old story of the Law and the Cross, a present Redemption, and a coming Tribunal. The highest truths, most solemn and in- spiring, have been the truths most constantly in hand. It has been felt that, in the highest sense, a muscular Christianity was indispensable where men lifted up axes upon the thick trees. The delicate speculations of the closet and the schools were too dainty for the work; and the old confessions of Councils and Re- formers, whose undecaying and sovereign energy no use exhausts, have been those always most familiar, where the trapper on his stream, or the miner in his gulch, has found priest or minister on his track. Of course not all the work has been fruitful. NTot all God's acorns come to oaks, but here and there one. Not all the seeds of flowers germinate, but enough to make some radiant gardens. And out of all this work and gift, has come a mental and moral training, to the nation at large, such as it certainly would not have had except for this effort, the effort for which would not have been made, on a scale so immense, except for this incessant aim to fit the nation for its great experi- ment of self-regulation. The Declaration of Inde- pendence has been the great charter of Public Edu- cation ; has given impulse and scope to this prodigious missionary work. The result of the whole is evident enough. I am not here as the eulogist of our people, beyond what facts justify. I admit, with regret, that American manners sometimes are coarse, and American culture often very imperfect; that the noblest examples of 176 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE consummate training imply a leisure which we have not had, and are perhaps most easily produced where social advantages are more permanent than here, and the law of heredity has a wider recognition. We all know, too well, how much of even vice and shame there has been, and is, in our national life ; how slug- gish the public conscience has been before sharpest ap- peals ; how corruption has entered high places in the government, and the blister of its touch has been upon laws, as well as on the acts of prominent officials. And we know the reckless greed and ambition, the fierce party spirit, the personal wrangles and jealous animosities, with which our Congress has been often dishonored, at which the nation — sadder still — has sometimes laughed, in idiotic unreason. But knowing all this, and with the impression of it full on our thoughts, we may exult in the real, steady and prophesying growth of a better spirit toward dominance in the land. I scout the thought that we as a people are worse than our fathers ! John Adams, at the head of the War Department, in 1776, wrote bitter laments of the corruption which existed in even that infant age of the Republic, and of the spirit of venality, rapacious and insatiable, which was then the most alarming enemy of America. He declared him- self ashamed of the age which he lived in ! In Jeffer- son's day, all Federalists expected the universal domin- ion of French infidelity. In Jackson's day, all Whigs thought the country gone to ruin already, as if Mr. Biddle had had the entire public hope locked up in the vaults of his terminated bank. In Polk's day, the ex- citements of the Mexican War gave life and germina- tion to many seeds of rascality. There has never been L 177 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES a time — not here alone, in any country — when the fierce light of incessant inquiry blazing on men in pub- lic life, would not have revealed, forces of evil like those we have seen, or when the condemnation which followed the discovery would have been sharper. And it is among my deepest convictions that, with all which has happened to debase and debauch it, the na- tion at large was never before more mentally vigorous or morally sound. Gentlemen : The demonstration is around us ! This city, if any place on the continent, should have been the one where a reckless wickedness should have had sure prevalence, and reforming virtue the least chance of success. Starting in 1790 with a white pop- ulation of less than thirty thousand — growing steadily for forty years, till that population had multiplied six- fold — taking into itself, from that time on, such mul- titudes of emigrants from all parts of the earth that the dictionaries of the languages spoken in its streets would make a library — all forms of luxury coming with wealth, and all means and facilities for every vice — the primary elections being always the seed-bed out of which springs its choice of rulers, with the in- fluence which it sends to the public councils — its citi- zens so absorbed in their pursuits that oftentimes, for years together, large numbers of them have left its affairs in hands the most of all unsuited to so supreme and delicate a trust — it might well have been expected that while its docks were echoing with a commerce which encompassed the globe, while its streets were thronged with the eminent and the gay from all parts of the land, while its homes had in them uncounted thousands of noble men and cultured women, while its 178 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE stately squares swept out year by year across new spaces, while it founded great institutions of benefi- cence, and shot new spires upward toward heaven, and turned the rocky waste to a pleasure-ground fa- mous in the earth, its government would decay, and its recklessness of moral ideas, if not as well of political principles, would become apparent. Men have prophesied this, from the outset till now. The fear of it began with the first great advance of the wealth, population and fame of the city; and there have not been wanting facts in its history which served to renew, if not to justify, the fear. But when the War of 1861 broke on the land, and shadowed every home within it, this city, — which had voted by immense majorities against the existing ad- ministration, and which was linked by unnumbered ties with the vast communities then rushing to assail it, — flung out its banners from window and spire, from City Hall and newspaper office, and poured its wealth and life into the service of sustaining the government, with a swiftness and a vehement energy that were never surpassed. When, afterward, greedy and treacherous men, capable and shrewd, deceiving the unwary, hiring the skilful, and moulding the very law to their uses, had concentrated in their hands the government of the city, and had bound it in seemingly invincible chains, while they plundered its treasury,— it rose upon them, when advised of the facts, as Sam- son rose upon the Philistines ; and the two new cords that were upon his hands no more suddenly became as flax that was burnt than did those manacles' imposed upon the city by the craft of the Ring. Its leaders of opinion to-day are the men — like him 179 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES who presides in our assembly — whom virtue exalts, and character crowns. It rejoices in a Chief Magis- trate as upright and intrepid, in a virtuous cause, as any of those whom, he succeeds. It is part of a State whose present position, in laws, and officers, and the spirit of its people, does no discredit to the noblest of its memories. And from these heights between the rivers, looking over the land, looking out on the earth to which its daily embassies go, it sees nowhere be- neath the sun a city more ample in its moral securities, a city more dear to those who possess it, a city more splendid in promise and in hope. What 'is true of the city is true, in effect, of all the land. Two things, at least, have been established by # our national history, the impression of which the world will not lose. The one is, that institutions like ours, when sustained by a prevalent moral life through- out the nation, are naturally permanent. The other is, that they tend to peaceful relations with other states. They do this in fulfilment of an organic tendency, and not through any accident of location. The same tend- ency will inhere in them, wheresoever established. In this age of the world, and in all the states which Christianity quickens, the allowance of free movement to the popular mind is essential to the stability of public institutions. There may be restraint enough to guide, and keep such movement from premature ex- hibition. But there cannot be force enough used to resist it, and to reverse its gathering current. If there is, the government is swiftly overthrown, as in France so often, or is left on one side, as Austria has been by the advancing German people ; like the castle of Heidelberg, at once palace and fortress, high-placed 180 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE and superb, but only the stateliest ruin in Europe, while the rail-train thunders through the tunnel beneath it, and the Neckar sings along its near channel as if tower and tournament never had been. Revolution, transformation, organic change, have thus all the time. for this hundred years been proceeding in Europe ; sometimes silent, but of tener amid thunders of stricken fields; sometimes pacific, but oftener with garments rolled in blood. In England the progress has been peaceful, the popular demands being ratified as law whenever the need became apparent. It has been vast, as well as peaceful ; in the extension of suffrage, in the ever-in- creasing power of the Commons, in popular education. Chatham himself would hardly know his own Eng- land if he should return to it. , The Throne continues, illustrated by the virtues of her who fills it ; and the ancient forms still obtain in Parliament. But it could not have occurred to him, or to Burke, that a century after the ministry of Grenville the embarkation of the Pilgrims would be one of the prominent historical pictures on the panels of the lobby of the House of Lords, or that the name of Oliver Cromwell, and of Bradshaw, President of the High Court of Justice, would be cut in the stone in Westminster Abbey, over the places in which they were buried, and whence their decaying bodies were dragged to the gibbet and the ditch. England is now, as has been well said, " an aristocratic republic, with a permanent executive." Its only perils lie in the fact of that aristocracy, which, however, is flexible enough to endure, of that permanence in the executive, which would hardly out- live one vicious prince. 181 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES What changes have taken place in France, I need not remind you, nor how uncertain is still its future. You know how the swift untiring wheels of advance or reaction have rolled this way and that, in Italy and in Spain; how Germany has had to be recon- structed ; how Hungary has had to fight and suffer for that just place in the Austrian councils which only imperial defeat surrendered. You know how preca- rious the equilibrium now is, in many states, between popular rights and princely prerogative ; what armies are maintained, to fortify governments ; what fear of sudden and violent change, like an avalanche tum- bling at the touch of a foot, perplexes nations. The records of change make the history of Europe. The expectation of change is almost as wide as the con- tinent itself. Meantime, how permanent has been this Kepublic, which seemed at the outset to foreign spectators a mere sudden insurrection, a mere organized riot ! Its organic law, adopted after exciting debate, but arous- ing no battle and enforced by no army, has been inter- preted, and peacefully administered, with one great exception, from the beginning. It has once been as- sailed, with passion and skill, with splendid daring and unbounded self-sacrifice, by those who sought a sectional advantage through its destruction. No mon- archy of the world could have stood that assault. It seemed as if the last fatal apocalypse had come, to drench the land with plague and blood, and wrap it in a fiery gloom. The Eepublic, — pouring, like the tide into a breach, With ample and brim fulness of its force, 182 THE DECLARATION OE INDEPENDENCE subdued the rebellion, emancipated the race which had been in subjection, restored the dominion of the old constitution, amended its provisions in the contrary direction from that which had been so fiercely sought, gave it guaranties of endurance while the continent lasts, and made its ensigns more eminent than ever in the regions from which they had been expelled. The very portions of the people which then sought its overthrow are now again its applauding adherents — the great and constant reconciling force, the tran- quillizing Irenarch, being the freedom which it leaves in their hands. It has kept its place, this Eepublic of ours, in spite of the rapid expansion of the nation over territory so wide that the scanty strip of the original states is only as a fringe on its immense mantle. It has kept its place, while vehement debates, involving the pro- foundest ethical principles, have stirred to its depths the whole public mind. It has kept its place, while the tribes of mankind have been pouring upon it, seeking the shelter and freedom which it gave. It saw an illustrious President murdered by the bullet of an assassin. It saw his place occupied as quietly by another as if nothing unforeseen or alarming had occurred. It saw prodigious armies assembled for its defense. It saw those armies, at the end of the war, marching in swift and long procession up the streets of the Capital,' and then dispersing into their former peaceful citizenship, as if they had had no arms in their hands. The general before whose skill and will those armies had been shot upon the forces which opposed them, and whose word had been their mili- tary law, remained for three years an appointed offi- 183 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES cer of the government he had saved. Elected then to be the head of that government, and again re- elected by the ballots of his countrymen, in a few months more he will have retired, to be thenceforth a citizen like the rest, eligible to office, and entitled to vote, but with no thought of any prerogative de- scending to him, or to his children, from his great service and military fame. The Republic, whose triumphing armies he led, will remember his name, and be grateful for his work ; but neither to him, nor to any one else, will it ever give sovereignty over itself. From the Lakes to the Gulf its will is the law, its dominion complete. Its centripetal and centrifugal forces are balanced, almost as in the astronomy of the heavens. Decentralizing authority, it puts his own part of it into the hand of every citizen. Giving free scope to private enterprise, allowing not only, but ac- cepting and encouraging, each movement of the pub- lic reason which is its only terrestrial rule, there is no threat, in all its sky, of division or downfall. It can- not be successfully assailed from within. It never will be assailed from without, with a blow at its life, while other nations continue sane. It has been sometimes compared to a pyramid, broad-based and secure, not liable to overthrow as is obelisk or column, by storm or age. The comparison is just, but it is not sufficient. It should rather be compared to one of the permanent features of nature, and not to any artificial construction : — to the river, which flows, like our own Hudson, along the courses that nature opens, forever in motion, but forever the same ; to the lake, which lies on common days level 184 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE and bright in placid stillness, while it gathers its ful- ness from many lands, and lifts its waves in stormy strength when winds assail it ; to the mountain, which is shaped by no formula of art, and which only rarely, in some supreme sun-burst, flushes with color, but whose roots the very earthquake cannot shake, and on whose brow the storms fall hurtless, while under its shelter the cottage nestles, and up its sides the gardens climb. So stands the Kepublic : Whole as the marble, founded as the rock, As broad and general as the casing air. Our government has been permanent, as established upon the old Declaration, and steadily sustained by the undecaying and moulding life in the soul of the nation. It has been peaceful, also, for the most part, in scheme and in spirit ; and has shown at no time such an appetite for war as has been familiar, within the century, in many lands. This may be denied, by foreign critics ; or at any rate be explained, if the fact be admitted, by our iso- lation from other states, by our occupation in peace- ful labors, which have left no room for martial enter- prise, perhaps by an alleged want in us of that chivalric and high-pitched spirit which is gladdened by danger and which welcomes the fray. I do not think the explanation sufficient, the analysis just. This people was trained to military effort, from its beginning. It had in it the blood of Saxon and Nor- man, neither of whom was afraid of war ; the very same blood which a few years after was poured out like water at Marston Moor, and JSTaseby, and Dun- 185 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES bar. Ardor and fortitude were added to its spirit by those whose fathers had followed Coligni, by the children of those whom Alva and Parma could not conquer, or whom Gustavus had inspired with his intense and paramount will. With savages in the woods, and the gray wolf prowling around its cabins, the hand of this people was from the first as familiar with the gun-stock as with mattock or plough ; and it spent more time, in proportion to its leisure, it spent more life, in proportion to its numbers, from 1607 to 1776, in protecting itself against violent assault than was spent by France, the most martial of kingdoms, on all the bloody fields of Europe. Then came the Revolution, with its years of war, and its crowning success, to intensify, and almost to consecrate this spirit, and to give it distribution ; while, from that time, the nation has been taking into its substance abounding elements from all the fighting peoples of the earth. The Irishman, who is never so entirely himself as when the battle-storm hurtles around him ; the Frenchman, who says, " After you, gentlemen," before the infernal fire of Fontenoy ; the German, whose irresistible tread the world lately heard at Sadowa and Sedan, — these have been en- tering, representatives of two of them entering by millions, into the Republic. If any nation, therefore, should have a fierce and martial temper, this is the one. If any people should keep its peaceful neigh- bors in fear, lest its aggression should smite their homes, it is a people born, and trained, and replen- ished like this, admitting no rule but its own will, and conscious of a strength whose annual increase makes arithmetic pant. 186 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE What has been the fact? Lay out of sight that late civil war which could not be averted, when once it had been threatened, except by the sacrifice of the government itself, and a wholly unparalleled public suicide, and how much of war with foreign powers has the century seen ? There has been a frequent crackle of musketry along the frontiers, as Indian tribes, which refused to be civilized, have slowly and fiercely retreated toward the West. There was one war declared against Tripoli, in 1801, when the Re- public took by the throat the African pirates to whom Europe paid tribute, and when the gallantry of Preble and Decatur gave early distinction to our navy. There was a war declared against England, in 1812, when our seamen had been taken from under our flag, from the decks indeed of our national ships, and our commerce had been practically swept from the seas. There was a war affirmed already to exist in Mexico, in 1846, entered into by surprise, never form- ally declared, against which the moral sentiment of the nation rose wildly in revolt, but which in its re- sult added largely to our territory, opened to us Cali- fornian treasures, and wrote the names of Buena Yista and Monterey on our short annals. That has been our military history ; and if a people, as powerful and as proud, has anywhere been more peaceable also, in the last hundred years, the strictest research fails to find it. Smarting with the injury done us by England during the crisis of our national peril, in spite of the remonstrances presented through that distinguished citizen who should have been your orator to-day, — while hostile taunts had incensed our people, while burning ships had exasperated com- 187 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES nierce, and while what looked like artful evasions had made statesmen indignant, — with a half-million men who had hardly yet laid down their arms, with a navy never before so vast, or so fitted for service, — when a war with England would have had the force of pas- sion behind it, and would at any rate have shown to the world that the nation respects its starry flag, and means to have it secure on the seas, — we referred all differences to arbitration, appointed commissioners, tried the cause at Geneva, with advocates, not with armies, and got a prompt and ample verdict. If Can- ada now lay next to Yorkshire it would not be safer from armed incursion than it is when divided by only a custom-house from all the strength of this Kepublic. The fact is apparent, and the reason not less so. A monarchy, just as it is despotic, finds incitement to war ; for preoccupation of the popular mind ; to gratify nobles, officers, the army ; for historic renown. An intelligent Kepublic hates war, and shuns it. It counts standing armies a curse only second to an annual pestilence. It wants no glory but from growth. It delights itself in arts of peace, seeks social enjoyment and increase of possessions, and feels instinctively that, like Israel of old, " its strength is to sit still." It cannot bear to miss the husbandman from the fields, the citizen from the town, the house- father from the home, the worshiper from the church. To change or shape other people's institu- tions is no part of its business. To force them to ac- cept its scheme of government would simply contra- dict and nullify its charter. Except, then, when it is startled into passion by the cry of a suffering under oppression which stirs its pulses into tumult, or when 188 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE it is assailed in its own rights, citizens, property, it will not go to war ; nor even then, if diplomacy can find a remedy for the wrong. " Millions for defense," said Cotesworth Pinckney to the French Directory, when Talleyrand in their name had threatened him with war, " but not a cent for tribute." He might have added, " and not a dollar for aggressive strife." It will never be safd to insult such a nation, or to outrage its citizens ; for the reddest blood is in its veins, and some Captain Ingraham may always ap- pear, to lay his little sloop of war alongside the offending frigate, with shotted guns, and a peremp- tory summons. There is a way to make powder in- explosive ; but, treat it chemically how you will, the dynamite will not stand many blows of the hammer. The detonating tendency is too permanent in it. But if left to itself, such a people will be peaceful, as ours has been. It will foster peace among the nations. It will tend to dissolve great permanent armaments, as the light conquers ice, and summer sunshine breaks the glacier which a hundred trip-hammers could only scar. The longer it continues, the more widely and effectively its influence spreads, the more will its be- nign example hasten the day, so long foretold, so surely coming, when • The war-drum throbs no longer, and the battle-flags are furled, In the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World. Mr. President : fellow citizens : — To an extent too great for your patience, but with a rapid incomplete- ness that is only too evident as we match it with the theme, I have outlined before you some of the reasons why we have right to commemorate the day whose 189 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES hundredth anniversary has brought us together, and why the paper then adopted has interest and impor- tance not only for us, but for all the advancing sons of men. Thank God that he who framed the Decla- ration, and he who was its foremost champion, both lived to see the nation they had shaped growing to greatness, and to die together, in that marvelous co- incidence, on its semi-centennial! The fifty years which have passed since then have only still further honored their work. Mr. Adams was mistaken in the day which he named as the one to be most fondly remembered. It was not that on which Independence of the empire of Great Britain was formally resolved. It was that on which the reasons were given which justified the act, and the principles were announced which made it of secular significance to mankind. But he would have been absolutely right in saying of the fourth day what he did say of the second : it " will be the most remarkable epoch in the history of America ; to be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival, commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to Al- mighty God, from one end of the continent to the other." It will not be forgotten, in the land or in the earth, until the stars have fallen from their poise ; or until our vivid morning-star of republican liberty, not los- ing its lustre, has seen its special brightness fade in the ampler effulgence of a freedom universal ! But while we rejoice in that which is past, and gladly recognize the vast organific mystery of life which was in the Declaration, the plans of Providence which slowly and silently, but with ceaseless progres- sion, had led the r way to it, the immense and enduring 190 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE results of good which from it have flowed, let us not forget the duty which always equals privilege, and that of peoples, as well as of persons, to whomsoever much is given, shall only therefore the more be re- quired. Let us consecrate ourselves, each one of us, here, to the further duties which wait to be fulfilled, to the work which shall consummate the great work of the fathers ! From scanty soils come richest grapes, and on severe and rocky slopes the trees are often of toughest fiber. The wines of Rudesheim and Johannisberg cannot be grown in the fatness of gardens, and the cedars of Lebanon disdain the levels of marsh and meadow. So a heroism is sometimes native to penury which luxury enervates, and the great resolution which sprang up in the blast, and blossomed under inclement skies, may lose its shapely and steadfast strength when the air is all of summer softness. In exuberant resources is to be the coming American peril ; in a swiftly increasing luxur}'- of life. The old humility, hardihood, patience, are too likely to be lost when material success again opens, as it will, all avenues to wealth, and when its brilliant prizes solicit, as again they will, the national spirit. Be it ours to endeavor that that temper of the fathers, which was nobler than their work, shall live in the children, and exalt to its tone their coming career ; that political intelligence, patriotic devotion, a rever- ent spirit toward Him who is above, an exulting ex- pectation of the future of the world, and a sense of our relation to it, shall be, as of old, essential forces in our public life ; that education and religion keep step all the time with the nation's advance, and the School and 191 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES the Church be always at home wherever its flag shakes out its folds. In a spirit worthy the memories of the Past let us set ourselves to accomplish the tasks which, in the sphere of national politics, still await comple- tion. ¥e burn the sunshine of other years, when we ignite the wood or coal upon our hearths. We enter a privilege which ages have secured, in our daily enjoy- ment of political freedom. While the kindling glow irradiates our homes, let it shed its luster on our spirit, and quicken it for its further work. Let us fight against the tendency of educated men to reserve themselves from politics, remembering that no other form of human activity is so grand or effect- ive as that which affects, first the character, and then the revelation of character in the government, of a great and free people. Let us make religious dissen- sion here, as a force in politics, as absurd as witch- craft. 1 Let party names be nothing to us, in compari- son with that costly and proud inheritance of liberty and of law, which parties exist to conserve and en- large, which any party will have here to maintain if it would not be buried, at the next crossroads, with a stake through its breast. Let us seek the unity of all sections of the Eepublic, through the prevalence in all of mutual respect, through the assurance in all of local 1 Cromwell is sometimes considered a bigot. His rule on this sub- ject is therefore the more worthy of record : "Sir, the State, in choosing men to serve it, takes no notice of their opinions ; if they be willing faithfully to serve it, that satisfies. . . . Take heed of being sharp, or too easily sharpened by others, against those to whom you can ob- ject little, but that they square not with you in every opinion concern^ ing matters of religion. If there be any other offense to be charged upon him, that must, in a judicial way, receive determination." — Letter to Major-General Crawford, 10th March, 1643. 192 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE freedom, through the mastery in all of that supreme spirit which flashed from the lips of Patrick Henry, when he said, in the first Continental Congress, " I am not a Virginian, but an American." Let us take care that labor maintains its ancient place of privilege and honor, and that industry has no fetters imposed, of legal restraint or of social discredit, to hinder its work or to lessen its wage. Let us turn, and overturn, in public discussion, in political change, till we secure a Civil Service, honorable, intelligent, and worthy of the land, in which capable integrity, not partisan zeal, shall be the condition of each public trust ; and let us resolve that whatever it may cost, of labor and of pa- tience, of sharper economy and of general sacrifice, it shall come to pass that wherever American labor toils, wherever American enterprise plans, wherever Amer- ican commerce reaches, thither again shall go as of old the country's coin — the American Eagle, with the en- circling stars and golden plumes ! In a word, fellow citizens, the moral life of the na- tion being ever renewed, all advancement and timely reform will come as comes the bourgeoning of the tree from the secret force which fills its veins. Let us each of us live, then, in the blessing and the duty of our great citizenship, as those who are conscious of un- reckoned indebtedness to a heroic and prescient Past : — the grand and solemn lineage of whose freedom runs back beyond Bunker Hill or the Mayflower, runs back beyond muniments and memories of men, and has the majesty of far centuries on it ! Let us live as those for whom God hid a continent from the world, till He could open all its scope to the freedom and faith of gathered peoples, from many lands, to be a nation M 193 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES to His honor and praise ! Let us live as those to whom He commits the magnificent trust of blessing peoples many and far, by the truths which He has made our life, and by the history which He helps us to accomplish. Such relation to a Past ennobles this transient and vanishing life. Such a power of influence on the dis- tant and the future, is the supremest terrestrial privi- lege. It is ours, if we will, in the mystery of that spirit which has an immortal and a ubiquitous life. With the swifter instruments now in our hands, with the land compacted into one immense embracing home, with the world opened to the interchange of thought, and thrilling with the hopes that now animate its life, each American citizen has superb opportunity to make his influence felt afar, and felt for long ! Let us not be unmindful of this ultimate and inspir- ing lesson of the hour ! By all the memories of the Past, by all the impulse of the Present, by the noblest instincts of our own souls, by the touch of His sover- eign Spirit upon us, God make us faithful to the work, and to Him ! that so not only this city may abide, in long and bright tranquillity of peace, when our eyes have shut forever on street, and spire, and populous square; that so the land, in all its future, may reflect an influence from this anniversary; and that, when another century has passed, the sun which then as- cends the heavens may look on a world advanced and illumined beyond our thought, and here may behold the same great nation, born of struggle, baptized into liberty, and in its second terrific trial purchased by blood, then expanded and multiplied till all the land blooms at its touch, and still one in its life, because still pacific, Christian, free ! 194 IV THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPER- NATURAL IN LETTERS AND IN LIFE An Oration delivered at Cambridge, Mass., before the Phi Beta Kappa Society in Harvard University, July 1, 1880, and repeated in substance in New York, at the request of the Association for the Ad- vancement of Science and Art, at the meeting of the Association, April 11, 1881. IV THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNAT- UKAL IN LETTERS AND IN LIFE Me. Peesident : Gentlemen of the Society : It is a brilliant and prophetic enthusiasm of our times which finds its incentive in the advancing mas- tery of man over external nature. To an extent not always equaled in political, military, or religious en- thusiasms, it justifies itself by what man has positively achieved, in his long wrestle with the vast and ener- getic physical system in which he is placed. He knows more of it : through the widened range of geo- graphical exploration, through the broader scope and the finer exactness of scientific inquiry, through the occasional surprising insight of poetical genius, seizing the secret rhythm of its laws, and anticipating the more gradual discoveries of research. He uses it, ac- cordingly, with clearer intelligence, a more assured and fruitful freedom. The impulse to govern has certainly had no fairer field or nobler exhibition, than it has with the mod- ern student of nature. Not content with climbing the lucent steeps, by lens and analysis, that he may follow the stars in their courses, may measure their masses, prefigure their motion, and even detect their forming elements, or with making the rocks give up their fossils, unroll their records of fire-mist and of 197 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES glacier, and show how they are arched and wedged to maintain the continents — not satisfied to explore the physical constitution of the animal tribes, though hidden miles deep beneath the sea-surface, to interpret the physiology and chemistry of plants, or to search for the secret origin of life, and trace its development in the manifold marvels of organization — he com- mands admiration by making the forces, vital or me- chanical, which his search ascertains, contribute to assist human progress, in deft, elastic, unwearied serv- ice. His successes in this direction give ever-fresh surprise to the century : as the vapor which fire smites from the water pulls his trains, or pushes his vast iron- framed hulls over the sea ; as the magical wire trans- mits his thought, without interval of time, to distant lands; as sunbeams paint instantaneous pictures, of faces, palaces, landscapes, clouds, while hurtless light- nings begin already to illuminate his towns ; as vege- tables and minerals, whose virtues lately were unsus- pected, yield medicines for his sickness, tonics for his weakness, balms for his pain. Man seems approaching, with no dilatory steps, the point where he shall have supremacy, by reason of his knowledge, and of the instruments with which skill supplies him, over the forces hitherto hidden in the great complex of what we call Nature ; when his alert and indefatigable will, not aspiring to arrest or rad- ically change the vast and subtle cosmical energies, shall be able to use them with easy and secure control. Already, in part — hereafter, it seems probable, with a completeness only indicated now — he is to have at his command, under the beneficent primitive laws which no ingenuity can amend or avoid, the physical powers 198 THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNATURAL that play like thought, yet work with an energy dem- iurgic, in the structure of the globe. Then the planet shall be subjected to him, whose direct muscu- lar hold upon its mass is so insignificant : presenting its forces for his employment, its wealths for his pos- session, its secrets of beauty for his gladness and cul- ture, while it also bears him in silent smoothness amid the vast aerial spaces. It is natural that the advance thus realized, and the further advance which seems predicted, should be re- garded with an animating pride, and that their effects upon civilization should be anticipated with fond ex- pectation. Already those effects have been manifold and im- portant. Not only have we better houses in conse- quence, softer clothing, more elaborate furniture and more various foods, quicker passage from point to point, larger opportunities for making leisure agree- able and labor productive, — this ampler mastery of man over nature tends to the increase of general in- telligence, to the liberalizing of governments, and the wider establishment of popular freedoms. While it gives incessant motive to invention, it encourages as well the far ventures of commerce. While it keeps the chemist busy in his laboratory, the mineralogist with his hammer, or the civil engineer with his exact and immense calculations, it expands the range and augments the equipment of institutions of learning. It tends as well to brace and exhilarate the spirit of peoples, making each person whose life is embraced in their composite unity more conscious of the common sovereignty over whatever furthers enterprise. It brings nations into neighborhood, and gives growing 199 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES intimacy to their moral and jural relations with each other ; thus tending at last to realize the ideal of a Race compacted of many peoples, each with its idioms of law, custom, art, language, but all united in com- mon endeavors and a common aspiration. The progress thus in part achieved, and which looks for completion, is one in which all must rejoice who recognize the relation between an improved outward civilization and a wider and more practical popular training ; who see how arts, industries, freedoms, in- spire and sustain the public tone of hopefulness and of courage. Perhaps nothing else in the brilliant history of human endeavor illustrates better the dig- nity and the undaunted boldness of the spirit in man, than does the fact that he can so explore and domi- nate the serviceable system, of physical forces amid which he stands. It was the signal of unrivaled em- pire, in the day of Kome's power, when tribute came to the conquering city from peoples of whom the gen- eration just passed had not even heard. It sets a superb crdwn upon man that so many sciences and practical arts, unknown to our childhood, now bring to him ensigns and troops, spices and gold. But while this is true, it is true also that one effect follows, though not perhaps in necessary consequence, from this progressive control of man over natural forces, whose promises are not of the best. It is seen in the feebler impression which he takes of anything grand, powerful, even real, above and beyond this apparent and sensible frame of things ; in the doubt which comes by degrees to possess him whether there be any over-world, invisible but transcendent, with which he stands in essential relations. Certainly the 200 THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNATURAL apprehension of such surpassing realms of being, in- accessible to man's search, though not eluding the reach of his thought, has been more vivid in other times than it is at present, among other peoples than it is among us. The mass, and the multiform attrac- tion, of the physical, now pull the thought from ethe- real heights. Men are too busy with the proximate provinces of construction and energy to think of any outlying realms which railways cannot reach, and with which telegraphs do not communicate. Present phenomena sensibly concern them. Measurable forces directly subserve their convenience or their enterprise. The practical and controlling regard of society thus fastens upon these. The " positive philosophy " only formulates and elaborates a diffused thought, out of which it has sprung ; and they are in danger of being regarded as fanciful enthusiasts who seriously affirm that the immaterial is more permanent than matter, the spiritual more stupendous than all which the visi- ble heavens exhibit : that there are, or may be, illim- itable spheres of personal power, and of a supreme vital experience, whose light has as yet but dimly dawned on the most aspiring soul of man, but with which each, by the make of his spirit, is essentially allied, and in comparison with which the furthest ex- pansion, the most commanding or fruitful energy, of that which is natural becomes insignificant. There have been times when the existence of such manifold and imperative systems of life, above the present, was an axiom in thought. Undoubtedly there are those who hold it now, with as clear a con- ception, with a confidence as profound. But the pop- ular literature takes slight account of it, while the 201 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES general mind, in civilized lands, is only more firmly anchored to the earth by every drill which cuts the rock, by every spade which uncovers the mine, by every fresh terrestrial force which is engaged for human use. It tends to hold in abeyance, if not to deny, the tremendous proposition of the existence and presence of a governing God. It somewhat doubts if consciousness be not a mere function of the brain, and if there be any personal career awaiting the spirit be- yond the grave. And it wholly ignores, if it does not even scornfully reject, the existence of multitudinous persons and powers — like the Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms of Milton — beyond the reach of its the- orems or tubes. We cannot fail, I am sure, to recognize the tend- ency, whether it has our sympathy or not ; or to see that it advances with civilization, and is there most energetic and governing where the special knowledges marking our time have fullest development. And as civilized lands affect others with more and more power — making the impression not of their arts or wealths alone, but of their prevalent moral life — this tendency widens in the world. It seems to bid fair to become universal. Then those supersensible spheres of being from which, or from the impression of which, has come large influence upon man, will cease to at- tract his forecasting thought. The solid globe, on which cities are builded and governments framed, over which are flung the myriad lines of railway and wire, and the smallest crinkle along whose coasts has been measured and mapped, this will be to the race which dwells on it the ultimate object of inquiry and regard. The advancing control over physical energies will 802 THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNATURAL satisfy aspiration ; and the strange supernal grace and gleam which have at times indisputably shot from realms beyond all reach of sense, upon the spirit and life of the world, will fail to affect the coming times. In some of . its obvious and familiar relations it is not my office to combat this tendency, or to offer critical comments upon it. But it stands connected with large departments of thought and experience, in which we all must feel an interest ; and I cannot but think that it threatens a loss, in certain directions, which we shall all desire to avoid. It may be that we, as scholarly persons, have duties to perform which are relative to it, and whose authority we shall concede. It is evident at once that the failure to recognize any sovereign reality in spheres and systems of spirit- ual energy, transcending the nature which science in- vestigates, has essential bearing upon religious thought and life ; that it sharply antagonizes that scheme of Christianity which has for centuries been in the world, whose influence has been admitted by most to be largely beneficent, and which many of us have been wont to regard as the underlying force beneath what is best in civilization. Whether or not miracles are held to be essentially associated with the substance of Christianity, it will scarcely be denied that this claims to come from a Being supreme, through those whom He had instructed and quickened, and that its prom- ises contemplate a life on higher levels, in nobler asso- ciations, than we yet know. If, then, there be no realms above us, with which we are connected, the so-called Evangel becomes a Galilaean fancy ; and the faith in which many have found hitherto their utmost wisdom and inexhaustible solace has disappeared, like 203 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES the cloud of chrysolite and opal dissolved into mist. But in this relation it is not iny purpose now to con- sider this tendency of the time, since the theme might not wholly suit the occasion. It has relations, how- ever, almost as plainly, to the soul of man, in its in- trinsic force and sensibility, and to some chief forms in which that soul expresses its life : to art, letters, government, history, to social science, philanthropic endeavor, as well as to religion ; and in these connec- tions it is clearly our province to seek to anticipate and to measure its effects. I cannot but feel that it threatens a loss to much which is 'of value in civilization; that the recognition of spheres of being above our sense — the positive and practical recognition of such, in the minds from which others take uplift and impulse — is quite indispensable to whatever is noblest in thought and life ; and that when this passes, if it shall pass, from the general con- sciousness, an immense force will be deducted from the powers which have wrought for man's advance- ment. It may be therefore part of our business, not to suppress, but certainly to supplement, the now active tendency of thought, by bringing nearer to the aver- age mind the things superior, which pass the limits of what we call Nature. I would offer, with your per- mission, a brief plea for the fresh and controlling rec- ognition among us of what is essentially supernatural : which cannot be the object of present demonstration, yet whose reality is suggested by many facts, and the glory of which man may in a measure prophetically feel, though only its vague outlines can he see. I would do this, not so much in the interest of religion, as of letters, philosophy, the fair humanities, the political 204 THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNATURAL and social elevation of man. Unless I am wholly mis- taken in my judgment, there is a duty here for us. It is at once to be observed how native to the mind appears to be the imbedded impression of something transcending the reach of Nature, as we understand that ; of realms of existence, surpassing sight, yet of substantive verity, and to whose abounding intenser life the highest which we know on the earth is partial and rude. So evident is this, that we are prepared to expect beforehand the part which this impression must have played in thought and history ; how much must have been distinctly derived from it in the spirit and the work of illustrious persons or of eminent peoples. And we ought clearly to recognize this, even if we are henceforth to feel that nothing is real but the rich lit- tle planet on which we dwell, with the groups of stars to which it is bound. Max Miiller seems to state the fact with only tem- perate force in his " Science of Keligion," when he says : " There will be and can be no rest till we admit, what cannot be denied, that there is in man a third faculty " — apart, that is, from the faculty of sense, or of reason — " which I call simply," he adds, " the fac- ulty of apprehending the Infinite, not only in religion, but in all things ; a power independent of sense and reason, a power in a certain sense contradicted by sense and reason ; but yet, I suppose, a very real power, if we see how it has held its own from the be- ginning of the world — how neither sense nor reason have been able to overcome it, while it alone is able to overcome both reason and sense." 1 Or, as Mr. Lecky has expressed the thought in his History of European 1 Lectures on the Science of Keligion, page 14. 205 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES Morals: "Mysticism, transcendentalism, inspiration and grace, are all words expressing the deep-seated belief that we possess fountains of knowledge apart from all the acquisitions of the senses ; that there are certain states of mind, certain flashes of moral and in- tellectual illumination, which cannot be accounted for by any play or combination of our ordinary faculties." 1 He finds in harmony with this the Neo-Platonist prin- ciple, that, in divine things, the task of man is not to create or to acquire, but to educe ; that the means of his perfection are not dialectics or research, but medi- tation and silence, with whatever may overawe and elevate the mind, and quicken the realization of the Divine Presence. Such a deep and quick sense of the realness and su- premacy of things above the visible forms and physical forces with which we are invested — such an apprehen- sion of reciprocal relations between the life which we have on earth and the transcending life on high, and of the possibility of the mind's attaining strange con- sciousness of that in its occasional superlative states — this seems to be as instinctive with man, I had almost said, as the sense of personality. It is not the late fruit of an over-stimulated civilization. On the other hand, it lies nearest man's primitive experience, and marks most distinctly his earlier development. Con- cerning this, at least, it is true that " trailing clouds of glory " doth he come. All ethnic religions involve this fundamental idea, the rudest as well as the most elaborate ; and the fetish of the barbarian, the fantas- tic idol of the Indian temple — with its eyes of glitter- ing stones, and its grotesque combinations of abnormal 1 Vol. I, page 348. 206 THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNATURAL images of fierceness and strength — these, as well as stately temples, Egyptian or Hellenic, illustrate the activity, and the general distribution, of that instinct in man which affirms the primacy over all that is visi- ble of what eye hath not seen, nor the human spirit wholly conceived. The religions of the world have not been suggested, however they have been used, by craft and ambition. They have sprung from instinctive aspirations in the soul, reaching toward persons and realms supernatural, as surely as geysers, flinging their strange and steam- ing columns through icy airs, have taken their impulse from profound and energetic subterranean forces. If anything, therefore, seems native to man, it is this tendency to affirm the invisible, and to reach in desire toward systems of being surpassing ours. As the frame of the bird prepares it for flight, and foreshows that as its function and joy — as the automatic impulse of the fish propels it as by a physical force through the paths of the seas — so the intimate and continuing con- stitution of the soul appears to ordain man to accept and reach after what passes the limits of sense and time. If the instinct, so general, is not a real one, or if there is nothing in the facts of the universe which furnishes foundation and argument for it, it is hard to infer anything with confidence from such a deceptive mental constitution. It is obvious, too, that what even barbarism thus suggests, a careful and searching psychological analy- sis affirmatively repeats. The philosophy of the mind is certainly not an attenuated counterpart of the phys- iology of organization. The moment we recognize human personality, we front a marvel which sets man 207 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES apart, in essential distinction, from the physical system in which he is enveloped ; which makes the spirit more than balance any masses or mechanics of matter; which locates its imperial origin in the purple cham- bers of a divine purpose ; and which almost predicts for it a destiny august, as it certainly allies it with whatever powers or spheres may be ultimate. So, in all its higher activity, the spirit affirms its in- dependence of occasions, its intimate relations with what is sovereign and primordial. It is not only that in ecstasy or in agony it transcends situations, finds no complete image of its intense life in anything physical, and in its bright or awful solitude is con- scious only of timeless relations, and of being affined to imperial spirits ; there are spontaneous intuitions of reason, there are imperative moral affirmations, which cannot be confused with careful conclusions of the practical understanding, which discern the reality of things unseen, and declare them immutable. We have to affirm the authority of that intellectual vision which seizes the absolute, the unconditioned — we have to admit that the moral nature, with its supreme sense of a moral order radiant and regnant without limit of time, is somehow related to a system above — even though we do not concede to the mystic that there are transient unspeakable states in which the spirit communes directly with unchangeable essences, and is in fellowship with minds and a life above the earth. Philosophy must say, as well as religion, that the highest light comes from above. Only the uni- versal interprets the individual. Each balanced dew- drop implies the suns. Each simplest fact has its basis in a principle valid for all the constellations ; and each 208 THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNATURAL human mind must rest on a mind sympathetic, crea- tive, and eternally young. Pantheism itself, which destructively absorbs the mind into God, yet attrib- utes to it this transcendent origin. And, on the other hand, how vehemently soever the soul may assert its separate sovereignty, when reason and conscience are purely illumined they carry in themselves a spiritual certitude of something in the universe immutable and unspeakable, yet related to us — a certitude as majestic as any moving column of cloud, though its fleecy folds should be inlaid with heavenly fire. 1 It is not, therefore, needful to make mysticism our Gospel to affirm the organic relation of the soul, by its deep and delicate and unsearchable constitution, with infinite realms of law and life. The energies and the splendors combined in such may well surpass our utmost thought, while the realness of their exist- ence may be as apparent to the sensitive spirit, on its supreme heights, as is the hardness or the color of objects of sense. Indeed, I do not see why any philosophy should deny this, even the most aggressively agnostic. It 1 "This Universal, which is the idea, he [Plato] conceives as sepa- rate from the world of phenomena, as absolutely existing Substance. It is the heavenly sphere, in which alone lies the field of truth, in which the gods and pure souls behold colorless, shapeless, incorporeal Existence ; the justice, temperance, and science that are exalted above all Becoming, and exist not in another, but in their own pure essence. The true Beauty is in no living creature in earth or heaven or any- where else, but remains in its purity everlastingly, for itself and by itself, in one form, unmoved by the changes of that which participates in it. The Essence of things exists absolutely for itself, one in kind, and subject to no vicissitude." — Zeller: " Plato und die alter e Aka- demie ; " Trans, of S. F. Alleyne and A. Goodwin, pages 240-1. N 209 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES may hold it in abeyance, but why should it deny ? Though one should believe that in primal atoms in- here " the promise and potency " of mind — that there has been, even, spontaneous evolution of nothing into force, that the only efficient causes are mechanical, and that living things are directly derived, by natural means, without break of continuity, from lifeless mat- ter — he must admit that somehow or other it has come to pass that a cosmos is here : which is not a conge- ries of unassociated facts ; in which is constant prog- ress upward, from the oldest Laurentian protozoon to the brain of a Humboldt or a Goethe ; in which the eye of the gnat, and the shimmering outstretch of the ocean, equally indicate methodical force ; and to which, so far as we can discern, no limit is assignable, in space or in time. Why, then, is it not probable, even thus, that outside what we know of existence — beyond the earth, which we measure by tons, and whose pathway in space we reckon by leagues — may be outlying grander systems, in which forces have come to a finer consummation, yet with which our system stands in relation ? It can be only a hypothesis, perhaps, on such basis of reasoning. I see not why it should not be such, and one with a practical effect on the mind. The supernatural of the savage is brought within the har- monies of law, as science advances. What seems to us to wholly surpass or contrast nature, as we know that, may be moving in like manner to yet higher melodies of plan and rule, if the universe be as extended and various as it appears. Our ignorance, certainly, af- fords no warrant for a contrary judgment ; and no man who has not traversed the immensities can fairly 210 THE RECOGNITION OE THE SUPERNATURAL deny those majestic and manifold realms of life toward which the spirit, in the restlessness of an expectant prevision, natively aspires. In fact, it is the conception of these which makes the harmonious orbs of the heavens, as every night declares them to us, alluring to thought. The physi- cal combinations of the heavens are stupendous. But what really matters it, to the contemplating mind, whether there be one world, or twenty, or twenty millions, if in their relation to life they are the mere equivalents of ours ? or if they are so dissevered from us that we can look for no association with what in their life is more subtle and regal ? We aim to rise, always from the lower to the higher ; from science to art ; from history to philosophy ; from the study of books to sympathetic conference with masterful minds ; from culture to character, and a nobler expe- rience. The soul craves, and in prophetic moments it expects, in like manner to rise from lower levels, now familiar, to further and grander ranges of activity, and to contact with nobler forms of life. It wants the final " vision divine," for which faculty has been given it; and immortality would lose its attraction if the courageous and eager spirit were there forever to be treading the round of preceding discoveries, and making acquisitions only counterparts of its present. Ascension toward the unreached — an ultimate com- panionship with what at present transcends observa- tion, and overtops thought — is man's instinctive im- pulse and hope. Whatever denies that, or lures or drives from it the thought of the world, will lower the heights of human aspiration, and throw discredit on a 211 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES spiritual instinct than which none nobler has been shown. It will do more than this, as I have suggested. For this impulse which reaches toward realms of life above the present has not been a feeble or transient force, only sufficient to stir vague desire, or to animate fancy. It has been one of the most energetic of all the forces affecting our mysterious life ; and the large incitement of which it has been the vital and peren- nial source is conspicuous in history. If it has not disciplined the practical understand- ing, as have studies in science, or metaphysical analy- sis, it has certainly given such scope and stimulation as nothing else could to the royal force of the Imagi- nation — that faculty which seems most nearly akin to higher forms and powers of existence, and from which falls transfiguring luster on all subordinate mental activity. Whatever exalts and invigorates this, and opens to it appropriate range, has to do with the noblest intellectual development ; and it is always the unattained, believed to exist, yet inaccessible to pre- sent research, which most allures and animates this. What lies beyond the snowy or verdurous circle of the hills, within which one's narrow life is passed — what lay beyond the mysterious seas, with their monotone of murmured monition or complaint,, be- fore the daring keels of commerce had challenged and crossed them — what lies amid or above the stars, now that man has measured and weighed the earth, and hung it in its lowly place amid the constellations — that it is, surpassing discovery, eluding equally re- agent and spectroscope, of which no ephemeris can be computed, which stirs this commanding faculty in the 212 THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNATURAL mind. It is not satisfied with recalling the past, or invoking the dim and distant figures which tower on future earthly fields. It seeks to seize the shapes of power, the intensities of experience, yet unapproached, and to people with them ethereal realms. If such an outreach be denied, its finest and highest incitement fails, and discouragement and debility must take the place of exuberant impulse in this loveliest and lord- liest faculty of the mind. Indeed, all the intellectual powers must share, in their measure, in such depression, or such stimulation. For the mind is not a bundle of faculties, loosely asso- ciated, but a vital and energetic unity, wherein each force has its completeness in the sympathy of others, and shares in their augmented power. The sense of native nobleness in the soul is essential to the perfect energy of each faculty ; and that sense of nobleness is inevitably exalted by the conception of relations to what transcends the definite and imperious system of nature. Whatever carries us far from ourselves tends to broaden and exalt intellectual power. The mind which surveys, with a true apprehension, great periods in history, is invigorated and widened, as well as instructed, by that splendid exercise. Its very con- sciousness seems to expand, its intimate energy to be reinforced, as it matches itself, in sympathetic re- flection, with noble persons and surpassing careers. So the student contemplating with interpreting in- sight remote problems of philosophy, is more aware of the fineness and greatness of his power, for every sure and victorious hold which is realized by him on the principles there involved ; and it is a majestic office of science — ranging in its view from the in- 213 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES finitely little to the indefinitely great, and infolding the creation in its reconciling thought — to stimulate and enhance intellectual faculty, by making it master, in thought at least, over force and law, as well as phenomena. But most of all do we become sensible of the royal place which belongs to the spirit, most sure and effi- cient becomes the impulse thus imparted to the mind, when we rise in thought to what in essence surpasses the utmost elevation and range of physical nature, yet with which we are in vital alliance. The cottage or the college overarched by the vast and shining star- domes, may sink to nothing in the comparison, as be- ing in fact less when so measured than the speck of dust floating amid uncalculated azures. But the spirit, if there be one, in cottage or in college, which can pass beyond the luminous worlds or the unresolved nebulae, and feel itself akin to whatever personal powers are on them, and to whatever tragedy or triumph they witness, that will be only sublimed by the action. In such a supreme apocalypse of thought it will find inspirations which were else inconceivable. The long, mechanic pacings to and fro, The set gray life, and apathetic end, will not be for it. Intensity of life will then be real- ized, in which each force is at its best : as marvels of discourse sometimes amaze us, poetic images flash upon us, from minds before on the common level, when they are passing — as they feel at least — through the shadows of death into the expanses of unimagi- nable light. The humblest mind, thus related in its 214 THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNATURAL consciousness to unattained splendors of life, becomes august in the sublimity of its thought. An influence so surpassing, as it enters into life, af- fects of necessity every faculty. The constructive understanding takes alertness and enterprise, and is set upon larger and more fruitful activity. The fancy works with gladder grace. Even humor is gayer, and wit becomes more tenderly bright. The reason rises to clearer vision, and is enthroned in serener com- mand. That consummate point in experience is reached where the child-nature inseparably infuses matured power, in which appears the element of gen- ius. The consciousness of proximity to a life in the universe vaster than ours, whose circles involve but sweep beyond us, melodious, ethereal, and without limitation — whoever has this, has in him the boy still father of the man. He, — by the vision splendid, Is on his way attended ; and the light in which the earth is appareled fades not for him into the common light of day. In ex- hilarating freedom he walks thenceforth upon the high places. Expectation and success are the heritage of his mind. The scholar investigates with more dis- cursive and rewarding inquisition. The inventor's thought plays more freely amid the occult combina- tions of force. Jurist and journalist, chemist and geologist, artist and explorer, each must respond to the stimulating power from that apprehended over- world ; while, in the spirits most sensitive and pro- found, ineffable forces are brought into action. Then 215 t ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES come to such majestic silences ; the sabbaths of con- templation ; the visioned hours of the spirit on its Patmos ; when it no more is fretted with monotonous trifles, or wasted of its superlative life in the ceaseless tumult of visible things ; when it sees itself connected with immensities and eternities, and is inwardly con- scious of immortal vitality. Out of such moods comes what is noblest in thought ; and the secret force which lifts men to them drops always from higher spheres, only seen as yet in far foregleam. When these cease to be recognized by man, the mind will miss the grandest force which yet has reached it. 1 Nor may we omit to notice, also, the inspiration which comes from the same high source to whatever is stateliest, loveliest, sovereign, in the domain of character. I do not refer, of course, to any special graces or forces ascribed to special forms of religion, but to the gen- eral moral effect of the clear recognition of spheres supernal upon the personal spirit in man. Tranquillity is born of it. So are gentleness, gravity, and a grand aspiration. It is the condition of those august hopes 1 "Thought is best when the mind is gathered into herself, and none of these things trouble her — neither sounds, nor sights, nor pain, nor any pleasure ; when she has as little as possible to do with the body, and has no bodily sense or feeling, but is aspiring after being. . . . In this present life, I reckon that we make the nearest approach to knowledge when we have the least possible concern or interest in the body, and are not saturated with the bodily nature, but remain pure until the hour when God is pleased to release us. Then the foolish- ness of the body will be cleared away, and we shall be pure, and hold converse with other pure souls, and know of ourselves the clear light everywhere ; and this is surely the light of truth." — Socrates, in the Phaedo, 65, 66. 216 THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNATURAL which are essentially helpful to virtue. Chivalric dis- regard of danger and pain is as natural to it as the lift of the waves when the moon hangs above them. Out of it has streamed an invincible courage into the will, in the time of imminent earthly peril. From it have sprung the irresistible enthusiasms, which have matched and mastered the ferocities of power. It has been the stimulant to heroic consecration, which no resistance could daunt or break, any more than grape- shot can shatter the sunshine. Martyrdom certainly affords no proof of any doc- trine, only of the martyr's confidence in it. Mission- ary or monastic devotion may illustrate nothing be- yond the height to which the human will can rise in its disdain of ordinary motives. But mission and mar- tyrdom are at least grand facts in exhibition of char- acter ; and no one can question that they are most familiar where the sense of vital powers and realms above the present is vivid and practical. Let Nature, as we see it, become to a man all that there is, pinning thought to the earth, and narrowing experience within sharp time-limits, and the will may still be stubbornly set to accomplish a purpose ; but the joy in labor un- requited, the victory in lonely suffering, the eager self- sacrifice for the unseen — these will pass, with the ardor of a devotion no longer legitimate, and the splendor and solace of a lost expectation. All really superb and delightful character must find, as it has found, motive and help in such apprehension of things transcendent. Coulanges has shown how rooted in the antique state was the thought of the Family, as vitally related to spheres beyond, with wor- ship due from it to the spirits of those from whom its 217 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES transmitted life had come. This was, in fact, the con- servative force in the ancient society. So the Family among us has sacredness upon it, because standing in immortal relations, having its basis in a divine plan, and making its sweet domestic loves the microcosm of all charity and worship. The Church, too, exists — according to its ideal, at least — with its vital fellow- ships in sacrament and service, to cherish whatever is chiefest in character, because of its fundamental premise of a life waiting beyond the present ; and no society for grand and illustrious ethical culture can permanently continue on a slighter foundation. The general estimate of spiritual values must be highest, the ideal of them most complete, where the universe appears an open field for human experience, beginning now, to continue through unreckoned cycles. If there be other beings than man, and sublimer do- mains of life than those which we see, it may well be that all the powers which we possess shall seem insig- nificant when brought to comparison with those be- yond; that our small knowledges shall there disap- pear, as tinted clouds, absorbed amid surpassing lights. But whatever of pure and high character is in us must still be worthy of affection and homage. The morally great is equally great on whatever parallel, or if on planes above them all. Spaces are nothing, circum- stances nothing, to the loving, intrepid, magnanimous spirit. "Wherever in the universe are light and beauty, duty and grace, there must be the home of the soul which with them is in final accord. Here, therefore, is the inexhaustible impulse to an intrinsic and beautiful nobleness. It is not from laws, teachings, examples, the maxims of prudence, or the 218 THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNATURAL dictates of conscience — it is from, this immense con- ception of the timeless relations of the spirit in man, and of its possible coming association with persons and spheres surpassing thought, that the subtlest and strongest incentive comes to what is august and sur- passing in virtue. If one had. the chance to write a poem for spirits to read in higher realms — to mould the marble into lovely forms of ecstasy and passion for them to contemplate — to paint the picture whose beauty should show no pallid tint or tremulous line beneath the searching heavenly lusters — with what in- finite pains would he strive at his work ! That he can make his character worthy the free acceptance of those whose feet, sandaled with light, have trodden only ethereal paths, is the grandest benefit of grace which God, if there be a God, has bestowed. It is as- suredly the consummate expression of the power of protoplasm, if that it be which has built the creation ! And when the thought of such a result rises within one, the supreme law of character which dominates the world from Galilee and from Calvary needs no word to interpret, and no argument to defend it. This has been shown, in examples uncounted. Be- cause an Infinite Life has been recognized, supreme in character as in power — with illustrious spirits, wise, effulgent, and immortal in beauty — men have sought with an ardor beyond that of scholar, soldier, miner, for the whiteness of purity, and the moral glory of self-consecration. That virtues have appeared among those to whom all this was a dream, is of course also true. But the contrast offered by their examples, always pathetic, is often tragic. Their very ideal has wanted firm outline, and luminous supremacy over the 219 DILATIONS AND ADDRESSES soul. Celestial attractions have imparted no uplift to the hard-set and strenuous will. Without ardor of spirit, or the glad exhilaration of anticipating minds, they have toiled to satisfy moral judgment. There is little to animate, though much to admonish, in their impatient and sad endeavors ; and nothing is more sure than that if the conception be displaced from the gen- eral mind of lucid and unwasting spheres with which our life is interlinked, the most vigorous incentive to a superlative virtue will fail from society, as the waters recede from bay or bar when the swing of the sea is no longer behind them. Because such profound instincts in the soul, and such energetic forces, are addressed by the impression of what vastly outreaches the tangible and temporal system around us, it cannot surprise us that great in- fluence should have come from it into civilization : so that to remove what it has imparted to human achievement would be to impoverish the record of the race. ~Not only have schemes of Religion been born of it — many of which have been, no doubt, of limited value, if not of positive spiritual detriment, to human society — but into nearly everything illustrious in work the same invisible force has entered, and from it that work has taken distinctive quality and worth. "What would the history of philosophy be, except for the light and the loftiness which are in it by rea- son of such an intuitive apprehension of the soul's re- lation to vital systems grander than the present, and to One above all, who is only disclosed to the love which adores Him, while He writes the unfading records of His rule in the rush of orbs and the flash of star fires ? Under the plane-trees of the Academy 220 THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNATURAL — beneath the shadow of that Parthenon which as- suredly no accident had builded — Plato portra}^ed the world of phenomena as having origin and subsistence in and by a supernal series of divine thoughts ; 1 and from his day onward, in the field of philosophy, the idealists have been masters. No mechanical phi- losophy has had secular supremacy ; and that form of speculation which reduces the personal spirit in man to physical terms, making thought itself, volition, passion, the result of simple molecular action, and binding the race in a sterner fatalism than any theolo- gian ever imagined — it has spurted into sight in dif- ferent communities, but it nowhere has reached abid- ing power. With whatever boldness it now may as- sert the practical equivalence of physics and psychol- ogy, the identity of the mind with the encephalic brain-mass, it cannot command human consent. The spiritual consciousness refuses its authority. It knows that not out of such a philosophy has come, or can come, true impulse to fine spiritual endeavor, or any satisfaction to the soul's aspirations. Invisible in- 1 "Every one will see that he [the Artificer of the world] must have looked to the eternal, for the world is the fairest of creations and he is the best of causes. And since it is of such a nature, the world has been framed by him with his eye fixed upon that which is appre- hended by reason and mind, and is unchangeable, and if this be ad- mitted, it must of necessity be a copy of something." " Until the creation of time, all things had been made in the like- ness of that which was their pattern ; but in so far as the universe did not include within itself all animals, in this respect there was still a want of harmony. This defect the Creator supplied by fashioning them after the nature of the pattern ; and as the mind perceives ideas or species of a certain nature and number in the ideal animal, he thought that this created world ought to have them of a like nature and number." — Timteus, 29, 39. 221 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES stincts, as real and ready as impalpable atmospheres, pull it to the ground, an extinguished meteor, smok- ing and sterile. But that account of the soul in man which recog- nizes in it elements and relations that connect it in- dissolubly with unseen and paramount spiritual pow- ers, and which expects for it a more vivid life, in spheres beyond our present experience — centuries and countries become memorable by this ! Its teachers and champions have been the really illuminating minds, from whom letters and liberties, laws and arts, have taken inspiration. They have flung upon the earth a light so supreme that even they who were unapt for such high speculation have felt the shadows growing transparent upon their path. The Stoics as well as the Platonists : — with their Semitic affinities, their ethical spirit, and their comparative disdain of physics — were thus impelled to set the soul in a kingly place, and to gird it about with vast relations. So, only, could Stoicism have survived, not as a temper, but as a philosophy, as giving a measure of probable explication to the mysterious spirit in man. Haunted as this is with strange reminiscences, that almost hint at preexistence, alive as it is with august expectations, capable of moods of which no language can be the interpreter, feeling itself in kinship of na- ture with minds which surpass it, and with ranges of experience not yet attained, it must at least have a universe for its home, such as Seneca or Antoninus offered, if it may not be sure — as they were not — of transcendent personalities, and a creative and holy Will, with which to stand in spiritual communion. 1 1(i A great and generous thing is the human soul. It suffers nq 222 THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNATURAL But whoever makes this final conception of its nature and place signal and governing to man's thought, ex- erts an influence over fine minds more commanding than that of soldier or statesman ; and the records of his interpreting discourse are more quickening to such than those of any arts or empires. Whatever takes the exalting influence of the spheres supernatural, and of our intrinsic relation to them, out of philoso- phy, can only strip it of its essential grace and re- nown. I need scarcely remind you what ethereal elements, graceful and noble, have been imparted by the same immense force to all best forms of human expression, in poetry, art, or the eloquence which has swayed and exalted men's minds ; or what energies have flowed from it into history and society, giving them, in fact, whatever they possess which holds to them permanently the admiration of mankind. bounds to be set for it save tbose wbicb are common to it with God. . . . Its country is whatever the highest universe includes in its compass. . . . It does not allow limitations of time. 'All years,' it says, ' are mine ; ' no age is closed against great spirits, all time is pervious to thought. . . . One day the secrets of nature shall be disclosed to thee, the darkness shall be dispersed, a shining light shall smite upon thee from every side. Think how great the brightness shall be of so many celestial bodies, mingling their luster ! No cloud shall trouble the clear serene ; each side of heaven shall shine with equal splendor ; day and night are but vicissitudes of the lower at- mosphere." — Seneca, Ep. Mor., cii. "Whithersoever thou turnest thyself, thou shalt see him [God] meeting with thee ; nothing is void of him ; he himself fills all his work. Call him Nature, Fate, Fortune : all are names of the same God, variously exercising his power." — Seneca. De Benef., Lib. iv., cap. viii. Compare "Meditations of Marcus Aurelius," xi. 1 ; ix. 28. 223 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES The supernatural element in the mechanism of poems is certainly not needful to their highest effect. It may, perhaps, repulse the mind, as an over-bold effort to bring the supernal into such a contact with our palpable sphere as its august supremacy forbids. Yet even this is not always without its impression on the sensitive spirit, which meets it with indefinite throbs of response, as cavern-waves tremble in sym- pathy with far-off tides. The wine-colored waters breaking around the high- beaked ships, the camp-fires glittering on the plain, the splendor of armor shining in the air as with the flash of mountain fires, the troubled dust rising in mist before the tramp of rapid feet, greaves with their silver clasps, helmets crested with horsehair plumes, the marvelous shield, with triple border, blazoned with manifold intricate device, and circled by the ocean- stream, the changeful and impetuous fight, the anguish and rage, and the illustrious funeral-pile — not by these, though moving before us in epic verse, and touched with iridescent lights by the magic of genius, is the mind held captive to the Iliad, as by its shadowy morning-time spirit of " surmise and aspiration " ; by the tender and daring divine illusions, which see the air quick with veiled Powers, and the responding earth the haunted field of their Olympian struggle and debate. 1 1 " We talked of Homer. I remarked how real and direct the inter- position of the gods seems. ' That is infinitely delicate and human, ' said Goethe, ' and I thank heaven that the times are gone by when the French were permitted to call this interposition of the gods ' ' ma- chinery. ' ' But, really, to learn to appreciate merits so vast required some time, for it demanded a complete regeneration of their modes of culture.' " — Eckermann's Conv. with Goethe, Feb. 24, 1830. 224 THE RECOGNITION OP THE SUPERNATURAL The circles of hell into which Dante entered, be- neath the dim and sad inscription — in which he heard with fainting spirit the story of Francesca, whose city of fire, and river of blood, and sterile plain with scorching flakes, he pictured on immortal verse — the snow-white rose, of saintly multitudes, with faces of flame and wings of gold, which he beheld when in the upturned gaze of Beatrice he had seen the day new- risen on the day, the Eternal Glory which he was at last permitted to touch with unconsumed sight, and of which he would leave some sparkle for coming time — we know how the genius of Michael Angelo, austere and vast, was impressed by all this ; how it reappears in spirit on the walls which he glorified ; * how other masters have shown the same impress, at Florence and at Pisa. It were certainly wholly too much to affirm that in its bold and terrible ministry to the sense of something outlying time, and of transcendent reality, lay nothing of that magnificent power over Italy and Europe which only rose in ascension when the stately tomb closed at Kavenna. And so in Milton : the floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire with which the rebellious are over- whelmed, the burning marl vaulted with flame, the battle on aerial plains, where spirits are armed in ada- mant and gold, while the Messiah rides sublime, on sapphire .throne, in the crystalline, sky — surely it 1 "How deeply the study of Dante influenced his art appears not only in the lower part of the ' Last Judgment ' : we feel that source of stern and lofty inspiration in his style at large ; nor can we reckon what the world lost when his volume of drawings in illustration of the Divine Comedy perished at sea." — Symonds' " Eenaissance in Italy," Appendix II, page 514. o 225 (DILATIONS AND ADDRESSES hardly can be denied that something of unsurpassed splendor and power has streamed from thence into English letters. The very construction of the great poems which mark eras in history thus incorporates the conception of realms unseen, whose energies images only suggest, whose vastness is too wide to even loosely " zone the sun." In fanciful discovery, or mysterious adumbra- tion, they people the air with glooms or glories be- yond the measure of human thought ; and this is part of their hold on the world. The ^Eneid has been called, not unjustly, a " religious epic." But deeper and more intimate is the power which enters into the inmost life of poetry from the spiritual cognizance of spheres above sense. It would be pre- sumptuous for me to say this, before these honored and laureled poets, if it were not their presence, with the lesson of their work, which prompts the saying. Poets sing best, according to the illustrious Greek master of thought and style, when carried out of themselves by a divine madness, and possessed by an influence which then their words impart to others. 1 1 "For all good poets, epic as well as lyric, compose their beautiful poems, uot as works of art, but because they are inspired and pos- sessed. . . . They tell us that "they gather their strains from honeyed fountains, out of the gardens and dells of the Muses ; thither, like the bees, they wing their way ; and this is true. For the poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses, and the mind is no longer in him : when he has not attained to this state, he is powerless and unable to utter his oracles. . . . For in this way the God would seem to indicate to us, and not allow us to doubt, that these beautiful poems are not human or of man, but divine and of gods ; and that the poets are only the interpreters of the gods, by whom they are severally possessed. ' ' — Ion, 533-4. 226 THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNATURAL And. this surpassing mystical afflatus conies with ut- most power upon them when the high intimations of realms beyond the empyrean surprise their souls. In silence, oftenest, though sometimes as with convulsing force, the transfiguring power falls on the spirit at- tuned to song. Then even nature is more clearly interpreted, in its deeper meanings ; because, as Joubert says, the poet with rays of light so purges and clarifies material forms, that we are permitted to see the universe as it exists in the thought of its author. 1 Even the beauty which picturesque verse loves to celebrate depends for its tender and supreme recogni- tion on such spiritual insight. It is a recent notion of physicists that beauty is never an end in itself, in the outward and evident scheme of things, but exists only to serve utilities. The notion, I must think, has its root in another — that the system has originated, not in intelligence and beneficent purpose, but in the de- velopment of mechanical forces. The apprehension of a prescient ordaining mind, behind all phenomena, loving beauty for its own sake, and delighting to lodge it in the curl of the wood or the sheen of the shell, as well as in the petals and perfume of flowers, the crest of waves, or the prismatic round of the rainbow — this is indispensable to the clear recognition, or the sympa- thetic rendering, of even the outward beauty of na- ture. Then only does this stand in essential correla- tion with spiritual states, which find images in it; 1 " Or, que fait le poete? A l'aide de certains rayons, il purge et vide les formes de matiere, et nous fait voir l'univers tel qu'il est dans la pensee de Dieu menie. II ne prend de toutes choses que ce qui leur vient du ciel." — Pensees, 285. 227 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES while then alone does it knit the present, on which it casts its scattered lights, with vanished paradises, and spheres of beauty still unapproached. There is a transcendent mood of the spirit wherein the meanest flower that blows awakens thoughts too deep for tears ; when the grass blade is oracular, and the common bush seems " afire with God," and when the splendors of closing day repeat the flash of jasper and beryl. It is when the soul is keenly conscious of relations to systems surpassing sense, and to a creative personal Spirit by whom all things are interfused. Aside from that, the yellow primrose is nothing more ; and the glory of the sunset — seen from Sorrento, or seen from Cambridge — fails from the hues of lucid gold or glowing ruby, because there fall no more sug- gestions, from all their splendors, of realms beyond the fading vision. But if this be true of outward nature, how much more clearly of the spirit of man ! Then only can this be manifested to us in the mystery of verse, with any just interpretation of what is profound and typical in it, when it is recognized as personal, moral, of divine origin and divine affiliations, with unsounded futures waiting for it ; when, in other words, it is set in rela- tion with immense and surpassing realms of life. I may not properly illustrate from the living, but one example irresistibly suggests itself. Hawthorne's genius did not utter itself in rhyme, but how solitary, high-musing, it moves in this atmosphere of the essen- tial mystery of life, as in the tenebrous splendor of somber clouds, all whose edges burn with gold ! "Without something of this, poetry always is com- monplace. Outward action may be vividly pictured. 228 THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNATURAL Tragical events may find, fit memorial. The manifold pageants, popular or imperial, may march before us, through many cantos, as on a broad and brilliant stage. But these, alone, are as the paltry plumes of fire weed, taking the place of the burned forest, whose every tree-stem was " the mast of some great ammiral." The grand and imperative intuitions of the soul, which affirm the ideal, and are prophetic of things above na- ture — the "thoughts that wander through eternity," the love, prayer, passion, hope, which have no ulti- mate consummation on earth, and which in themselves predict immortality — these, which must furnish the substance of poetry, are only represented, in the most ductile and musical verse, upon the basis of the spirit- ual philosoj)hy. Poets differ, as do the colors which astronomy shows in the radiant suns — blue, purple, gold — bound in the firm alliances of the heavens. But a sun black in substance, and shooting bolts of dark- ness from it, were as easily conceivable as a Comtist Shakespeare or an agnostic Wordsworth. To all forms of art, in its higher departments, the same majestic supersensible influence is as obviously vital. Music — we cannot even imagine it, in sym- phonies and sonatas as those of Beethoven, in masses as of Haydn or Mozart, in fugue, oratorio, or the solemn Gregorian chant, except as it voices feeling and thought which are not fettered to the level of the earth ; except as it catches a secret inspiration from hopes, visions, supreme aspirations, which are free of the universe, and which overtop Time. This subtlest tone-speech, which, with its infinite wail or triumph, gives voice as language never could to what is pre- cious and passionate in us — this, if nothing else, de- 229 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES clares man's relation, in the ultimate reach and revelry of his spirit, to something beyond the search of sense. No form of Keligion has been more dependent than is this august and delicate art on suggestions whose echo, except for it, no ear might hear. The triumph of Eesurrection, the awful chords of the Dies Irse, are themes for its mysterious ministry. Dr. Channing well said that it is " inexplicable " ; and that " the Christian world, under its power, has often attained to a singular consciousness of Immortality." Heard in the twilight, how often, with us, has it carried the spirit above shadow and show into immeasurable brightness and calm ! So in painting. We know what glory fell on the canvas when the supernal story of the Gospels streamed, with lights that seemed to come from above the earth, on the minds which moved the early pencils. From the Convent of Assisi, and from the inspiring legend of St. Francis, went the strong im- pulse of the Umbrian school. It is the middle-age spirit, feeling itself proximate to the gates of either heaven or hell, which breaks into expression in Cima- bue or Giotto, or in the figures of Fra Angelico — " embodied ecstasies," as they have been called, " upon a background of illuminated gold." The great col- lections find always among the works so inspired their masterpieces. It is not the portrait of Pontiff or Em- peror, or of any lovely matron or maid, it is not the vivid and elaborate picture of scenes of human coro- nation or debate, but it is the lucid and tranquil splen- dor that lies still on the Transfiguration, it is the solemn majesty of the Supper, or the vast and un- searchable tragedy of the Cross, thick with mysterious 230 THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNATURAL glooms — to which the observer always hastens, and the memory of which interprets art to him, as lifting the spirit toward realms transcendent. The Holy Night of Correggio illuminates the gallery. The Magdalen, or the Master, the shining wave of seraphic wings, or the gleam of the trumpet of final summons, are in the atmosphere of pinacothek or palace where Italy and Germany assemble their treasures. Cheru- bic faces glow on the canvas where Raphael enthrones the Virgin Mother. The earthly spirit of Rubens himself loses its grossness, his pencil becomes exalting and tender, in saintly sadness, when he confronts the Descent from the Cross. So marbles rise to immortal renown, not in the busts of Aristides or Antoninus, of Cato or Trajan, or of the builder of Roman empire, but in the forms which perpetuate among men the early visions of su- pernatural grace and majesty, in the virginal Diana or the Apollo. The stone itself seems almost quickened into poetry or music, when angelic figures, apostolic raptures, the majesty of the lawgiver taught of God, break palpitating through it. And when Thorwald- sen has moulded it at last into the perfect image of the Christ, as his mind discerns that, he feels at once that his genius is failing. His satisfaction is his sen- tence ; since his conception of that to which nature is only the vassal no more transcends his imitative touch. So in lordliest buildings — it is always their connec- tion with what is unseen which gives the final majesty and rhythm. It is not the palace, with splendid fa- cade, and internal wealths of mosaic and marquetry — it is not the fortress, the theater, or the bourse, which .331 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES best expresses or animates the genius whose subduing thought sets in motion the quarry. One must build to the praise of a Being above, to build the noblest me- morial of himself. The thought of the something un- searchable and immense, toward which all human life is tending — the thought of domains of mysterious height, and unhorizoned expanse, with which the ex- pectant soul in man has already relations — this must exalt and sanctify the spirit, that it may pile the stub- born rock into superb and lovely proportions. And with it must come a sense of intervention front such higher realms, to lift the environed human spirit to- ward that which transcends it, and to open the paths to immortal possession. Then Brunelleschi may set his dome on unfaltering, piers. Then Angelo may verily " hang the Pantheon in the air." Then the un- known builder, whose personality disappears in his work, may stand an almost inspired mediator between the upward-looking thought and the spheres overhead. Each line then leaps with a swift aspiration, as the vast structure rises, in nave and transept, into pointed arch and vanishing spire. The groined roof grows dusky with majestic glooms ; while, beneath, the win- dows flame as with apocalyptic light of jewels. An- gelic presences, sculptured upon the portal, invite the wayfarer, and wave before him their wings of promise. Within is a worship which incense only clouds, which spoken sermons only mar. The building itself be- comes a worship, a Gloria in Excelsis, articulate in stone ; the noblest tribute offered on earth, by any art, to Him from whom its impulse came, and with the in- effable majesty of whose spirit all skies are filled ! Not art, alone, feels this vast impulse which falls in 232 THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNATURAL its quickening splendor from above. It enters into human life ; gives conquering courage to human soci- ety ; develops what is noblest of power in the race, and becomes the spring of its grandest endeavors. With illustrations of the energy which has been poured from it, into the action of persons and of peoples, his- tory is vivid. How it looms before us in the vast panorama of the Crusades — setting nations in move- ment, shattering feudalism, opening the way for Inter- national Law, augmenting men's knowledge and giv- ing positive expansion to their minds, bringing Europe and Asia face to face, and pushing men forth on those restless quests which at last picked up this continent from the seas ! Plainly, such movements were possi- ble only as fealty to beings and to interests of a par- amount authority appeared to demand them. Their banners could do nothing else than bear the emblem of a world supernatural. We need not go back to times mediaeval. It was the same incalculable force which burst into almost equal exhibition in the terrible struggle of the ISTetherland burghers against the power and rage of Spain — which one of your recent illustrious members has celebrated in a prose rich and melodious as an epic. That fierce and almost unending fight on sea and land, the des- perate self-devotion which cut the dykes, and would give the drowned plains to the sea rather than yield them to the invader, the absolutely unconquerable will which defeat could not daunt nor delays weary, nor the death of the leader fatally break, the final reck- lessness of all pain and all assault, which bore starva- tion and did not flinch, and which never would yield while a hand remained to light a match, or an arm 233 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES was left to lift a lance — all which makes the story sublime, and in fame immortal, came from a faith in things unseen. It was in the measureless energy of that, that the weak at last conquered the strong, and impassioned peasants, citizens, women, expelled from their coasts the richest and most insolent power of the world. Hardly another scene in history is more sig- nificant or impressive than that of the starving people, when the siege of Leyden had been suddenly raised, staggering to the church to offer their faint but prais- ing worship, before their lips had tasted bread. 1 The same force was shown in the Huguenots as well — whose distinguished descendants have had high honor in our history ; and the same, as clearly, by the Puritans of England. The invincible Ironsides who bore without shrinking the shattering shock of Ru- pert's charge, were plain house-fathers, susceptible as others to fear or pain, and with no rare supremacy of nature. But they thought, at least, that they knew One in whom they had believed ; that He was a King who in righteousness did make war ; and that for His 1 "Magistrates and citizens, wild Zealanders, emaciated burgher guards, sailors, soldiers, women, children — nearly every living person within the walls — all repaired without delay to the great church, stout Admiral Boisot leading the way. The starving and heroic city, which had been so firm in its resistance to an earthly king, now bent itself in humble gratitude before the King of kings. After prayers, the whole vast congregation joined in the thanksgiving hymn. Thousands of voices raised the song, but few were able to carry it to its conclusion ; for the universal emotion, deepened by the music, became too full for utterance. The hymn was abruptly suspended, while the multitude wept like children. This scene of honest pathos terminated, the nec- essary measures for distributing food and for relieving the sick were taken by the magistracy." — The Eise of the Dutch Eepublic, Vol. II, pages 576-7 T ?34 THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNATURAL faithful, amid the circles of sublimer existence, crowns were reserved. No angels hovered, " clad in white samite," upon their dim and murky skies. No celes- tial panoplies were ranged in front of their grim lines. But " the good old Cause " for which they stood, to their apprehension, was related not only to liberties below, but to welfares immortal overhead. They strove for interests so supreme that all the spheres had a stake in the struggle ; and, in the unsubduable strength which thence possessed them, they conquered great captains, flung their challenge to the haughtiest powers, and set the foot on the neck of their king. Wherever conscientious and consecrated men have been ranged in stern battle for the liberty and the law which to them were divine, the same energy has appeared. The intimate sense of personal freedom is based most securely on the radical sense of human re- lationship to perennial systems of power and life. Democracy there has its surest foundation; the dif- ferences of social position and training becoming im- perceptible beneath the height of this relation, as the different heights of house-roofs disappear, when meas- ured against Canopus or Orion. In our own protracted Revolutionary struggle there was not wanting this impulse from on high, though it was scarcely, as signal, perhaps, as it else- where has been. But religious conviction, as well as political instinct or theory, had its part in the contest. Sermons and prayers were as really engaged, on be- half of Independence, as were muskets and howitzers. To many of the nobler leaders of thought it seemed apparent that the scattered populations who had been so singularly brought here and trained, in seeking 235 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES their final separation from Great Britain, were mov- ing on the lines of a strategy above man's, and had forces of Providence for their mighty pioneers. The feeling grew stronger as the struggle went on. It was scarcely, I think, so vivid and impressive with those who almost without expectation fought and fell on yonder hill, that bright June day, as it came to be afterward — with those who carried their banners unbent after the frightful Long Island disaster, with those who sternly outwatched the winter at Yalley Forge, with those who yet waged the wasting bat- tle, until at Yorktown they saw its end. They were mechanics, laborers, farmers, who had seemed to have no chance whatever against disciplined troops. But aids unexpected had come to them from afar. On the edge of defeat they had more than once snatched surprising victory. And while, no doubt, "a hundred motives intermingled to keep them faith- ful, there grew an impression, of which they par- took, that the divine plan was somehow connected with their success, and that the developed inde- pendence of the country had relation to schemes, moral and Christian, in which the future should exult. One hears the diapason of such a supreme conception of things rolling beneath the crash of guns and the flurries of debate. It is that concep- tion, in thoughtful minds, which ever since has lifted that struggle to the higher levels of historical signifi- cance. Assuredly such a sense of relation to ideal interests, and to welfares more permanent than any of Time, was essentially involved in our late Civil War. It was out of no atheistic philosophy, it was under no 236 THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNATURAL overshadowing impression of the sole reality of that which is physical, that the vast enthusiasms of that supreme time sprang up and bloomed. The young glad life which went down in blood on ghastly fields, — of which you have here so many memorials ! — it was offered at the summons of interests so illustrious that all the suns are only their fleeting physical basis. It recognized man, on behalf of whom it was given, as related to worlds beyond the sweep of human sense, and as so having indefeasible rights of culture and of worship. An ethical system found its voice in the long cannonade — sovereign in the earth, because sov- ereign for all spheres. The supremacy of the spirit which rose over dangers, dungeons, deaths, had its source in the sense of a spiritual universe, in which all grand and lovely souls are powers and peers. The sacrifice was too great, the following anguish too over- whelming, if such a universe does not exist. Only from it, and from our essential relationship to it, could have come the paramount moral impulse, suffi- cient at once to inspire the daring and heal the grief. Nor is it in such vast contests alone that the im- pulse has been shown of this recognition of vital realms surpassing the bounds of space and time. In the moral impression made on the world by teachers like Edwards, or like Channing — frail, but majestic in spiritual force — it has been manifest, as clearly as afore- time in Bernard or Anselm. Universities have sprung from it, and in it have found their vitalizing force. They were founded, no doubt, in a credulous time, when many things seemed real and sure which to us are grotesque. None the less, however, were they founded, in the old world and here, upon the con- 237 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES viction of vast and unseen vital domains, to which man is related ; upon the sense of divine dignities thus investing the soul; upon the impression that Time is great only as bearing in its scant round the quickening seeds of further destiny, that the earth is great only as associated with more sublime realms, and that wealth and wisdom both are regal when they serve the welfare of that on-looking and inestimable spirit beside which the stars are painted dust. It was natural that under impressions like these the humble school of William of Champeaux should grow to the great University of Paris; that out of obscure conventual institutes should rise the many affiliated colleges of Cambridge and Oxford. It was natural that in the utmost poverty of the early ISTew England this great and distinguished university should be founded — for Christ and the Church, or for the Truth. As long as such convictions continue, con- necting man by the frame of his being with the vast and enduring over-world, discerning in the mystery of his life divine energies and immortal predictions, the institutions which were born of them will remain, expanding still to larger proportions, and chronicling the centuries with their concentric rings of growth. But if the time should ever come when materialistic or monistic theories shall supersede the ancient thought — finding in mind only a result of mechan- ical force inducing a certain stream of feelings, dis- crediting existence amid the immensities, and either denying a personal Spirit who frames the creation, or relegating the thought of Him to the regions of an uncertain hypothesis — universities may continue, and possibly for a time may be physically enlarged, but 238 THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNATURAL the glory will have vanished from library and labora- tory, as well as from chapel. There may be still those obstinate questionings Of sense, and outward things ; but the serene and large contemplation, the profound introspection, the deep delight in art, philosophy, heroism, song, the far-exulting sweep of the spirit in its vital expectation, over eons and spheres yet unrevealed — these will depart. The earthly figure alone will con- tinue, without aegis or aureole ; and ■ the short-lived animal, whose spirit is to turn to dust with his brain, will hardly look without amazement upon the service and sacrffice of the fathers. So it is, by an unchangeable law, that the Christian Keligion, through the frankness, breadth, simplicity, grandeur, with which it affirms the supernatural, and makes that apparent to the mind of the world, becomes the chief patron of such universities, and pours from its unwasting force a supreme inspiration on every en- deavor for mental and for spiritual culture. Men may criticize its records, and variously interpret some of its doctrines ; but wherever it goes, there breathes an in- fluence into the total air of society out of unsounded depths of age and space, and from spheres bright with illuminated souls ; and the tree will bourgeon in sun- less wastes, sooner than any great school of learning will blpom in abundant perennial vigor without the light of Bethlehem upon it. Gentlemen, of the Phi Beta Kappa Society : In the measure of whatever power we have, it surely belongs to us to endeavor, if only as considerate of 239 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES true secular welfare, that this recognition, profound and prophetic, of the greatness of the personal spirit in man, and of its relation to sublime realms of uni- versal life, shall not pass away from our eager and commanding American society. Here is the sudden assembling of the nations, attracted by opportunity, compacted in liberty. Here is the wealth, of furrowed field and forest height, of river-beds gleaming, and hills crowded, with waiting metals. The land rever- berates with the roll of swift wheels, and waters echo the throb of the engine, while mechanisms spring from the virile and fruitful life of the people, almost as roses from out the juicy shoots of June. But everything in the future of whatever is best here depends on the maintenance of this sense of relationship, in our imme- diate incipient life, to domains of experience of which no telescope gives us a hint, but which send out to meet us august premonitions. Art, poetry, a noble philosophy, as really as theology, have here their con- dition ; even generous liberties, copious and continu- ing public charities, whatever is truly distinguished in government, whatever is morally great in history. We stand surrounded by no such monuments of an eminent Past as are centers of fine incitement abroad. All the more is it needful, on this unsheltered conti- nent, that we recognize the enduring systems of life, older than suns, above cities and states and stellar spaces, and feel, as Pascal said, that " then only is man great and incomparable, when considered according to his end. 35 1 The searching of nature goes on all .the time, with accelerating speed, and the noblest success. 1 "Thoughts of Pascal," Chap, ii, Sec. 14. 240 THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNATURAL All the more, I judge, should it be ours, in whatever profession, of whatever communities or special opin- ions, to see that man is not " lost," as one has said, " in the bosom of the immensity and splendor of na- ture " ; to maintain the preeminence of the sovereign personal spirit in him overfall nerve-tissues, with all cerebral convolutions ; to maintain the accordant su- premacy in the universe of the spiritual order over the physical, the immutable sublimity, the superlative splendor, of realms of existence to which the prophesy- ing spirit points, as having with them already, in its mysterious and prophetical life, embryonic connection. If that impression does not remain on this intrepid and powerful people, into whose veins all nations pour their mingling blood, it will be our immense calamity. Public action, without it, will lose the dignity of con- secration. Eloquence, without it, will miss what is loftiest, will give place to a careless and pulseless dis- quisition, or fall to the flatness of political slang. Life, without it, will lose its sacred and mystic charm. So- ciety, without it, will fail of inspirations, and be drowned in an animalism whose rising tides will keep pace with its wealth. It is the delightful assurance of Science that the tear and the star are equally embraced in an infinite scheme — " the glowworm, and the fire-sea of the sun " — and that one law regulates the phyllotactic arrangement of leaves upon stems and the vast revolutions of the planets in the heavens. In like manner it is our pre- rogative to feel that the humblest life, which has in- tellect and will in it, is associated intimately with un- reached cycles, surpassing thought, to which it has organic relation. On the full assurance of this funda- p 241 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES mental scheme of the universe has rested hitherto the philosopher's enthusiasm, the martyr's self-sacri- fice, the hero's endurance. On this affirmative and solid impression has securely been builded whatever has been grandest and most charming in the past. Only that which shall make the same conviction as wide and controlling in the centuries to come can give to them true power and beauty, esthetic grace, intel- lectual vision, moral wisdom. It is for us, then, personally to live in the clear ap- prehension of that unmeasured over-world, the shadow of whose glory fell not on Hebrew hills alone, but on Grecian, Persian, Indian heights, some echoes of whose magisterial harmonies have been heard in all superior spirits, and the touch of whose far-shining prediction on any pure mind makes hope elate and purpose high. We do not doubt this, I am sure. But high contem- plation, with a deep and delicate moral experience, alone can give us that certainty of it which the great souls have had. Retreating inward, we shall ascend upward, till the vital realms surpassing Nature become luminous to our thought ; and then — as jewels have sometimes been fancied to become impenetrated in their sensitive substance with the splendor of sun- shine, till they emitted a subsequent luster through darkening shades — our spirits, steeped in this supreme vision, shall brighten others with irradiating glow. Nothing nobler than this can be proposed to any man. It is the supremest human office, in whatever relations, and whatever position, rising above the in- vesting physical forces and laws, discerning the in- tensity and the boundlessness of life with which the spirit in man is allied, to make these also inspiring to «42 THE RECOGNITION OF THE SUPERNATURAL others: that thus through us may be transfused a glory from them into the minds which we affect ; that we may cast from our brief years something of this transfiguring light upon the life of coming times ; that we may honor as we ought that visioned and master- ful spirit within, whose thought and love bear in them- selves immortal presage; that we may honor Him above, in whose unseen infolding life the universe rests, And make our branches lift a golden fruit, Into the bloom of heaven. 243 Y JOHN WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE Ari Oration delivered in the Academy of Music, New York, Decem- ber 2, 1880, at the invitation of the Board of Managers of the Ameri- can Bible Society. JOHN WYCLIFFE AND THE FIKST ENGLISH BIBLE Mr. President : Ladies, and Gentlemen : On the left bank of the Rhine, on the site of the ancient Roman camp, afterward an imperial colony, which is associated in history with Tiberius and Ger- manicus, with Agrippina, mother of Nero, and with the early fame of Trajan, has been recently completed a magnificent work of religion and of art, of which more than six centuries have witnessed the progress. After delays immensely protracted, after such changes in society and government, in letters, arts, and in prevalent forms of religious faith, that the age which saw its solemn foundation has come to seem almost mythical to us, by contributions in which peoples have vied with princes, and in which separated countries and communions have gladly united, the cathedral of Cologne has been carried to its superb consummation, and the last finial has been set upon the spires which at length fulfil the architect's design. Attendant pomps, of imperial pageantry, were naturally assembled on such an occasion ; but they can have added no real impressiveness to the struc- ture itself, with its solid strength matching its lofty and lovely proportions, the vast columns of the nave lifting upon them plume-like pillars, the majestic 347 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES choir, of stone and glass, with its soft brilliance and exquisite tracery, beautiful as a poet's dream, the soaring openwork of the spires, absorbing and mould- ing hills of rock in their supreme and ethereal grace. It seems impossible not to apply to it the words which Gibbon applied to St. Peter's: "The most glorious structure that ever has been applied to the use of religion." 1 It is impossible not to rejoice that the common sentiments of beauty and of worship survive the changes of civilization, so that distant centuries join hands in the work now finished and crowned, and the completion of this grandest of ca- thedrals in Northern Europe fitly attracts the atten- tion of Christendom. It is a work at first sight insignificant in compari- son with this, which we have met to commemorate this evening : the translation of the Scriptures into the common English tongue, begun by John Wyc- liffe five centuries ago, and brought to completeness in these recent days by the hands of English and American scholars. It may seem that the vision of the majestic cathedral is too stately and splendid to be set in front of a story so simple, and in parts so familiar, as that which we are here to recall. But I think it will appear that the work which we celebrate is the nobler of the two ; that from all the costly and skilful labors, now completed on the banks of the Rhine, we arise to this : even as there one advances to the altar, supreme in its significance, through the decorated doorways, along the vast nave, and under the rhythmic and haughty arches. To us, at least, the voice of God becomes articulate through the book; 1 " Decline and Fall," Vol. VIII, page 466. 248 WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE while the building only shows us the magnificent achievement of human genius, patience and wealth, bringing to Him their unsurpassed tribute. It is, however, a very plain tale which I have to tell ; and the interest of it must lie in its substance, not in any ornaments of language or of thought as- sociated with it. In order to tell or to hear it aright ,we have to recall many things which lie back of it, which alone can set it clearly before us. That the governing authorities in the Christian world should have ever refused to the revered Scrip- tures, on which the common faith was founded, the widest distribution in the various languages spoken by the peoples holding that faith, is a fact so peculiar that we easily ascribe it to a crafty ambition or an arrogant self-will, and dismiss it as thus superficially explained. We forget how deeply rooted it was in an immense system of thought and of government, and through what silent organic processes it came to evolution into custom and rule. Of course it contradicted the earlier usage and plan of the Church. The Hebrew and Chaldaic Scriptures had been written in the dialects familiar to the people among whom and for whom they were prepared, be- fore and after the Eastern captivity. When Greek became a customary speech with those dispersed in distant cities, the Alexandrian version of these Scrip- tures was made ; and, as we know, in the time of the Master, it was commonly read and reverently ex- pounded by the teachers of religion, as it afterward long continued in use with Christian converts. The Evangelists and Apostles, after the Lord had left the earth, wrote accounts of his life, with argu- 249 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES ments of doctrine, precepts, promises, and prophetic admonitions, in the language familiar to themselves and their disciples — the vigorous, copious, Hellenistic Greek, to which the commerce of the time had given wide distribution, while the Septuagint had given it consecration. They sought to reach not scholars only, or lettered persons, but all peoples who shared in the general culture, and all classes of people, with the writings upon which their souls were engaged, and in which they felt themselves moved and helped by the Divine Spirit. The preference of St. Paul was shared by all ; it was his preference when dictating or tracing the large and slow characters, as well as when preaching : " I had rather speak five words with my understanding, that by my voice I might teach others also, than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue." And it was by these Scriptures, in the language which then had chief currency in the world, and in which the Roman Law itself was subsequently written, that the knowledge of Him in whom is the light and the hope of mankind was soon distributed over vast spaces. Yet again, as subsequent need arose that the Scrip- tures be put into other languages, to reach more di- rectly remoter peoples, this was done without opposi- tion, with encouragement indeed, of Church author- ities. So came the early Latin versions, for use in North Africa or in Italy, in the second century. So came the later translation of Jerome, from the originals, which became afterward practically the Bible of "Western Christendom. The Syriac version, which before the end of the second century carried the Scriptures to the Euphrates, followed by others §50 WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE in the same tongue ; the Thebaic, and Memphitic, which made them equally at home on the Nile ; the ^Ethiopic, of the fourth century ; the Gothic, of the same period, made by Ulphilas ; the Armenian, of the fifth century ; the Arabic, Persian, and all the others, to the Sclavonic of the ninth century, reveal the same impulse of wisdom and zeal, as all are designed to bring the quickening Word of God into contact with those to whom the Hebrew and the Greek were not familiar. Certainly, for centuries after the Ascension, it would have seemed as absurd to restrain the Scrip- tures to languages not understood by the people, as it would have been on the crest of Olivet to thrust veils of darkness beneath the cloud which received the Lord, and to leave the disciples uncertain of His glory. The latest and fiercest Roman persecution, under Galerius and Diocletian, aimed especially to destroy the Church by destroying its sacred and life-giving books. Perhaps nothing else more signally shows the novel and alien character of the power which in subsequent centuries grew up in Christendom than does the fact that it wholly departed from these primitive traditions, and wrought against them, of settled purpose, with restless energy, by an instinct of its nature. I need not repeat the story of its rise. I may only remind you how its portentous physical development allied itself naturally with a peculiar doctrine and temper, as the primitive popular church organization, whose picture is ineffaceably preserved on immortal records, gave place by degrees to the splendid and vast imperial system, enthroned in the capital which still fascinates the fancy and awes the imagination of the cultivated 251 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES world, having prelates for its princes, and extending its sway more widely over Europe than had the empire which it followed and surpassed. This system was by no means wholly for evil. Un- doubtedly, certain needs of the time found in it their special supply, and important benefits to medieval society are fairly ascribed to it. It held the tumultu- ous populations of Europe to some degree of civilized order, amid stupendous changes and strifes, the fall of the empire, the inrush of barbarians from wood and waste, the utter breaking up of the ancient governing order of things. When the sovereignty of force threatened to become the law of the planet, it asserted the supremacy of the spiritual order over the secular, in divine adjustments. It built monasteries, for those who sought equally seclusion and society, with indus- try, study, and the worship of God. It defended those monasteries by sanctions of religion, which even breasts that wore mail, and hands that held lances, had to regard. It preserved in their libraries the scattered remains of the classical literature, as well as the Scriptures ; and by the labor of monks it multiplied copies of what thus was preserved, and transmitted them to us. It built cathedrals, and abbey-churches, vast poems in stone, which inspire the fond admiration of Christendom by their melodious and consecrated beauty. It established universities, for the teaching of its doctrines, but with an inevitably wider effect on the culture of mankind. It proclaimed the " truce of God," to mitigate and restrain, where it might not prohibit, the savage and sanguinary combats of men. It loosed the bonds of human slavery from multitudes of victims, and honorably refused to recognize distinc- 252 WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE tions of bond or free among its officers. It made the stoutest baron tremble, in the ecstasy of his passion, before the invisible energy of the curse with which it could blast his cruelty or his lust. Sometimes, indeed, upon kings themselves, when their tyranny was most fierce, it laid a hand far heavier than theirs, and held them in enforced and reluctant submission. Surely it was something to have peoples thus taught that there was an authority higher than of princes, a right more imperative, a tribunal more august. And I cannot but think it beyond dispute that a power was exerted from the banks of the Tiber, in different directions, between the fifth and the fourteenth cen- turies, to restrain some of the most malign evils, and encourage some of the germs of good, in that fateful and perilous time. It taught the nations, however obscurely, their Christian relationship to each other, and prepared the way for International Law ; while the out-ranging missions of Europe, for the conquest of the heathenism which still girt it about, took steadiness, ardor, and a regulating order, from this vast Church authority, and smote with more effective impact upon the mighty ring of darkness. The whole system which thus took the place in Europe of the earlier, simpler Christian economy, and whose existence was for many generations the sover- eign fact in the history of the Continent, appears now an anachronism, as truly as tournaments, feudal keeps, or iron helmets. The terrible crozier, before which baton and lance went down in fear, has no more place for such use in our times than has scale-armor, or the Genoese crossbow. But then it had a great purpose to serve ; and one who discerns the salutary ends 253 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES which the Church as imperially organized accom- plished, may admire anew the patience and the wisdom whose silent grasp no power eludes, and which even man's wrath at last must praise. But now it is obvious that with this system of or- ganization had grown up one of doctrine and of wor- ship, and had been developed spiritual tendencies, whose effects were widely and dangerously evil; against which Christians had at length absolutely to rebel, to maintain or regain the Gospel of Christ. And here it was that the Scriptures met their deter- mined antagonist. The solemn setting apart of men to offices of per- manent prerogative and control, in a vast, ancient, and dominating Hierarchy, almost inevitably induced the assumption that the Church was in them, as Louis of France declared himself " the State," and that men must abide in communion with them on peril of losing eternal life. In their view, it had commission, this priestly Church, with affirmative voice to declare and unfold, even to supplement, what was taught in the Scriptures. It had power, as well, to communicate grace, transmitted through it by its Divine Head, on effectual sacraments : giving in baptism the germinant principle of spiritual life; restoring it in penance; nourishing and renewing it in other sacraments, most of all in the Eucharist. It was in orderly develop- ment of this system that the very body and blood of the Lord were at last affirmed to be in the wafer * — the infinite in the finite, the personal presence and glory of the Redeemer in material particles ; and that thenceforth the chief vehicle of grace to the soul 1 At the Lateran Council, A. D. 1215. 254 WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE which received it was held to be not the word of the Master, but this figure of bread, over which thauma- turgic words had been spoken, and behind whose accidents was the hidden splendor and life of God's Son. With this came naturally a form of worship pic- torial and spectacular, rather than instructive; an homage paid to the hierarchies above ; the increasing adoration of the " Mother of God " ; and all the forms of doctrine and practice still presented by the modern representative of the middle-age Christendom. The entire system, in its gradual expansion to its ultimate surprising symmetry and vigor, rises before one in the pages of history as plainly as the chain of the Cor- dilleras on a recent ample topographical map. It corresponded with the vast politico-religious organiza- tion in which it was formulated. It seemed to supply the reason for that ; and it wrought, with and through it, with an energy seemingly inexhaustible. Of course, by its nature, the entire system was profoundly adverse to the popular reading of the Scriptures. It was surely conscious of many things, — in the worship of Saints, or of the Virgin, in the efficacy of sacraments, the traditional functions of prelates or the Pontiff — for which no warrant could be found in the "Word, if that did not distinctly con- tradict them, and foretell their mischiefs. To allow men to search the Scriptures for themselves was prac- tically to suspend the function of the Hierarchy, as the authorized expositor of the Divine teaching. All divisions of opinion might then be apprehended. A man might even come to feel that he had no further need of a priest, as the mediator between Christ and 255 OKATIOHS AND ADDRESSES his soul, but could go himself, in sorrow for sin or in petition for favor, to Him whose mind had touched his in the Gospel. It could not, indeed, have seemed inconceivable that an entire scheme of doctrine, based on the idea that faith in the Lord is that which jus- tifies, and that such faith has in it the power of the life everlasting, might thus finally appear in the world. And the whole pontifical organization would be in peril if such an exposition were given to the argument of the Pauline epistles. It must be observed, too, that what we hold — justly, we think — the evil effects of a long withhold- ing of the Scriptures from the people, came to furnish fresh argument for it. The fourfold significance rec- ognized in those Scriptures could only be discerned by devout and competent spirits. If then it had come to pass, as plainly as it had, that neither intellectual nor spiritual insight was commonly to be found in religious assemblies — that the people who bowed in adoration to images, less graceful than the Greek and less august than the Koman, who trusted in the wood of the Cross, who rang bells in the night to frighten the demons from the air, and who only felt the sanc- tity of an oath as it had been taken on ancient relics and unauthenticated bones, that these could scarcely be expected to feel the sublime pathos of the gospels, or to follow the excursions of Paul's inspired and rapid reason — all the more was it certain to those in authority that it would be casting pearls before swine, intoxicating weak and unprepared souls with precious cordials, to freely open the Scriptures to all. Un- doubtedly often, to devout minds, it seemed a token of reverence for these to keep them apart from ig- 256 WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE noble hands ; while it seemed equally a tenderness to those who might be seduced, through misconceiving the Word, into dangerous error. So it came to pass, in no flash of petulant arro- gance, by no inexplicable frenzy of councils, but by a logical moral progress, certain and governing, that the early plan of putting the writings in which Chris- tianity was declared to the world into the hand of every reader, for his guidance to the Master, or for his sweeter wisdom and grace, was suspended and antago- nized by the later plan of keeping all teaching in the hands of the priesthood, and reserving to a language understood by only the educated class the sacred books. Keverence for these books had preserved them in the monasteries with effectual care. It had caused them to be often transcribed by the monks, to be splendidly ornamented, superbly bound, embossed and enriched with gold and gems, till a copy was almost worth in commerce the price of a castle. l But it had hidden them from the touch of the laity with as jealous a care ; and the tendency to that was as unreturning as the steady slip of the stream to the sea. A distinct prohibition of the Scriptures to the 1 The Abbot Angilbert gave to the Abbey of St. Eiquier, in A. D. 814, a copy of the Gospels, "in letters of gold, with silver plates, marvellously adorned with gold and precious stones. ' ' Louis Debon- air gave to a monastery at Soissons a copy of the Gospels ' ' written in letters of gold, and bound in plates of the same metal, of the utmost purity." In A. D. 1022 the Emperor presented to the monastery of Monte Casino a copy of the Gospels " covered on one side with most pure gold, and most precious gems, written in uncial characters, and illuminated with gold." Many other like instances of costly copies of the Scriptures, or of parts of them, are noted in monastic records. — See Maitland's "Dark Ages,", pages 205-220. q 257 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES people wa^ promulgated at Toulouse, A. D. 1229. 1 It had been a rule of the Greek Church before. But particular decrees only uttered a rule which lay back of all, and was inherent in the system of thought from which they sprang. As that system became perfected, its tone grew sharper and more imperious. It watched its domains with a vigilance unsleeping. And he who thereafter would place the Scriptures, in a language familiar, before the people, must cross swords with the power which had kings for its vassals, their armies for its troops, and upon the plates of whose alleged supernal armor the fiercest chieftains had shivered their blades. But now it is also to be observed that against this tendency had been at least occasional resistance, by many of the best among the people, and of the priest- hood ; and that this had been as manifest as anywhere in that earlier England, which, after a frightful paraly- sis of its powers, had come, at just the time of Wyc- liffe, to its incipient resurrection. "We have to trace this history, also, to get his work, in its impulse, its meaning, and its fruitful effect, fully before us. The movements toward a more spiritual faith which at different times had appeared on the Continent — represented in part by the Paulicians, by Claude of Turin, by Peter de Bruys, by Arnold of Brescia, or, more largely, by Waldo and his followers — these seem 1 " We also forbid the laity to possess any of the books of the Old or New Testament, unless, perhaps, the Psalter or Breviary for the Divine Offices, or the Hours of the Blessed Virgin, some, out of devo- tion, may wish to have ; but that any should have these books trans- lated into the vulgar tongue we strictly forbid [arctissime inhibe- mus]." 258 WYCL1FFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE to have made slight impression on the peoples in Eng- land. Their relations with the Continent were not close ; and thought passed slowly, in those sluggish times, from one state to another. But among the German peoples themselves, who had conquered Britain, there had been developed at different times a practical tendency toward freedom in religion, and especially toward a more personal and general ac- quaintance with the Scriptures. Of course their history, after settling in England, had been very largely one of strife. It startles us to remember that more than one year out of two, in the whole six centuries of their growing domination, had been occupied in struggle : against the preceding in- habitants of the country, among themselves, or against the roving tribes which had followed ; while the breaking in of the still pagan Danes, upon the state which was painfully striving toward Christian order, immensely retarded its moral progress. Yet the ac- tive and strenuous spirit of the Saxons, after they had accepted the Christianity which Gregory sent, by the Abbot Augustine and his forty monks, had never ceased to work toward better and larger knowledge, and a more secure freedom. The name " Saxon " may not have come, as some have derived it, from the short sword-axe, or " Seax," which they carried ; 1 but the weapon certainly well represented their self-asserting and resolute temper, to which war was familiar, and which sought utility as the prime good in instruments. There was nothing very fine or ethereal about them. 1 Thierry seems to accept this : ' ' Saxons, or men with the long knives ; " " Sax, saex, seax, seex, knife or sword. Handsax, poniard. (Gloss, of Wachter)." — Nor. Conq., Vol. I, page 9. 259 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES They were not distinguished for brightness of fancy, or moral delicacy, or for unusual spiritual insight. But they had a sense of personal right, which Avas vital and strong, with a certain robust practical intel- ligence ; while they readily received whatever forms of foreign culture they could assimilate. They had gained written codes, as one effect of their new religion. They had gained a force from the world at large, to expand and lift the insular spirit. Archbishop Theodore, an Asiatic Greek from Tarsus, in the seventh century brought to Canterbury an ex- traordinary library, containing Greek authors as well as Latin. He established important schools in the kingdom, and himself taught arithmetic, astronomy, medicine and divinity. The African Abbot, Adrian, who accompanied him, was of a like spirit; and in less than a century from the landing of the monks, Caedmon of "Whitby was reciting to the Abbess Hilda and her scholars the first English song — of Creation, of Judgment, and of what lies between ; Aldhelm, of Malmesbury, was inventing the organ, and writing the earliest Latin verse ; while the eloquence and the sanctity of Cuthbert seemed to open heaven to the eyes of those to whom he preached. In the following century Offa, the king, not only struck coins and medals, and built an abbey and a palace, but he framed laws to promote Christian morals, drew closer the relations of England to the Continent, and corresponded with Charlemagne, on matters of commerce and educa- tion. Alfred, of the ninth century, by consent of all one of the leading figures in history — not great in oppor- tunity, but great in mental and moral force — is the 260 WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE typical Saxon. He had been upon the Continent, and had there had experience of a higher civilization than existed in England. He sought to assemble learned men at his court, as Grimbald from St. Omer's, and Asser from St. David's. He learned Latin himself, in the intervals of a life crowded with care and thick with battles, that he might open its treasures to others. He translated from it Orosius' History, with additions of his own ; Gregory's treatise on the Duty of Pastors ; Boethius, on the Consolation of Philoso- phy ; the Ecclesiastical History of Bede, and parts of the writings of St. Augustine. He personally trans- lated parts of the Scripture, and was engaged at his death on a Saxon Psalter. Historians find a striking illustration of the range of his thought in the fact that he sent ambassadors from England to the ancient Christian churches in India. A clearer illustration appears in the fact that he founded schools at Win- chester and Oxford — the latter of which has not un- reasonably been considered the germ of the later uni- versity ; that he sought a higher education for girls, as well as for boys ; and that he expressed the kingly wish that all the free-born English youth should some time read with correctness and ease the English Scrip- tures. Athelstane, his grandson, was hardly behind him in his desire to further learning and promote moral welfare ; and he also pressed the translation of the Scriptures into the common English speech. The " Durham Book," of Latin gospels, with Saxon glosses interlined, the most beautiful example of Saxon callig- raphy, is perhaps of his time. In spite, therefore, of tides of battle ever rising and slowly receding, a true progress had been realized in 261 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES England, in the direction of those attainments which have given to the nation its subsequent fame. Men for the time distinguished by their accomplishments began to appear. The Abbot Benedict brought costly books, and works of art, on his return from each of his journeys to Eome. - The Yenerable Bede, in the eighth century, found learning, teaching and writing, as he said, a constant delight. 2 He learned Greek, as well as Latin, with something of Hebrew, and quoted Plato and Aristotle, as well as Seneca, Cicero, and Yirgil. He left forty-five books to attest his industry, on science, philosophy, as well as theology ; and is said to have first introduced the use of the Christian era in historical writing. He drew to him- self six hundred scholars ; and he died, as we know, while engaged in translating the Gospel of John into the stubborn Saxon tongue. Burke calls him "the Father of the English learning " ; and, though denying him genius, credits him with "an incredible industry, and a generous thirst of knowledge." 3 1 "He brought treasures back with him, chiefly books in countless quantities, and of every kind. He was a passionate collector, as has been seen, from his youth. He desired each of his monasteries to possess a great library, which he considered indispensable to the in- struction, discipline, and good organization of the community." — Montalembert, " Monks of the West," Vol. IV, page 443. 2 "Cunctuni vitse tempus in ejusdem monasterii habitatione pera- gens, omnem meditandis Scripturis operam dedi ; atque inter obser- vantiam disciplinse regularis et quotidianam cantandi in ecclesia curam, semper aut discere, aut docere, aut scribere dulce habui." — See Giles' "Life of Ven. Bede," Vol I, page lii. 3 " Abridg. Eng. Hist." Works, Vol. V, page 532. Sharon Turner says of Bede, somewhat extravagantly, that he " col- lected into one focus all that was known to the ancient world, except- 262 WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE Alcuin, who came later, the friend and instructor of Charlemagne, had been educated at York, where the library collected by Archbishop Egbert was already so rich that he remembered it with delight and regret from his more brilliant Southern home, and' longed that " some of its fruits might be placed, in the Para- dise of Tours." Dunstan, of the tenth century, though of a fiery arrogance of temper, supremely de- voted to the Papacy, was also an assiduous student, a designer and painter, a skilful musician, with taste in the arrangement of jewels and the illustration of books, a judge even of embroidery, and fond of rich architecture. The literary eminence of the Saxon clergy was then acknowledged by other nations. The schools, at York, and at Jarrow on the Tyne, were celebrated ; and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, of the time of Alfred, remains, with the exception of Ulphilas' translation, the most venerable monument of Teutonic prose. The general moral progress of the nation, though not rapid or signal, appeared thus secure. Industries were multiplied ; gardens and orchards began to re- place the forests, swamps, and pasture-lands ; articles of taste came to be frequent, musical instruments, cups of twisted glass, or of gold or silver, curiously wrought, which were often exported. The walls of churches were hung not unfrequently with pictures and tapestries, and silver candelabra were on the altars. The even-song of the monks at Ely floats to us over the centuries, and the Danish Canute's enjoy- ing the Greek mathematicians, and some of their literature and phi- losophy, which he had not much studied." — "Hist. Ang. Sax.," Vol. Ill, page 356. 363 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES merit of it has been commemorated in lovely lines by a great English poet. 1 "Woman had relatively a high position in the Saxon communities, 2 and freedom was general. Kingship had been born of battle ; but the kings were little more than elective war chiefs, and the national council could depose them. Assemblies of freemen consulted and decided on public questions. County courts, which we have inherited, took cogni- zance of all cases, whether temporal or spiritual. Slavery was limited in extent, and the body of the people were proprietors or free laborers. Those of lower ranks could rise to the higher, like the great 1 " A pleasant music floats along the Mere, From monks in Ely chanting service high, "While-as Canute, the King, is rowing by : * * * * * The Eoyal Minstrel, ere the choir is still, "While his free barge skims the smooth flood along, Gives to that rapture an accordant Ehyme. ' ' "Wordsworth, "Eccl. Sonnet," XXX. The remaining fragment of this ' ' Ehyme ' ' is said by Turner to be the oldest specimen left of a genuine ballad in the Anglo-Saxon lan- guage. — "Hist. Ang. Sax.," Vol. Ill, page 249. 2 ' ' They were allowed to possess, to inherit, and to transmit landed property ; they shared in the social festivities ; they were present at the Witenagemot and the Shire-gemot ; they were permitted to sue and be sued in the courts of justice ; their persons, their safety, their liberty, and their property were protected by express laws. " — Sharon Turner, "Hist. Ang. Sax.," Vol. Ill, page 59. They were famous in Europe for their skill in gold embroider} 7 . The mother of Alfred was his earliest and best teacher. His daughter inherited his genius and spirit, and was the "wisest woman in Eng- land." It might have been said of many a Saxon woman, in refer- ence to the sturdy stock from which she sprang, as it was said of Edith, daughter of Godwin, who was singularly lovely in person and character, and of many accomplishments, "Sicut spina rosam, genuit Godwinus Editham." 264 WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE Earl Godwin. Towns and parishes were more numer- ous than on the Continent. Allodial properties were widely distributed; and the Witenageniot, or As- sembly of Wise Men, including king, clergy, nobles and gentry, held the government of the kingdom in its strong and liberal hand. In spite, therefore, of wide illiteracy, and of unre- fined manners, the Saxon people, at the time when Edward the Confessor completed his work of fifteen years in building Westminster Abbey, were compara- tively self-governed, energetic and prosperous. They had liberty of access, laymen as well as priests, to copies of the Scriptures, where these existed. The Gospel and the Epistle were read in English in the churches, and the sermon was so preached. 1 Other parts of the Scriptures were in their own tongue. iElfric, in the tenth century, had given an epitome of the Old and New Testaments, and had translated por- tions of them, besides quoting in his homilies numer- ous texts. The " Eush worth Gloss," like the Durham, gave the Latin of the gospels, with a Saxon transla- tion ; and still another translation of the same sacred records is known to have preceded the Conquest. It seems nearly certain that if the progress thus com- menced had continued unhindered, long before the day of Wycliffe, the Bible, in the speech of the peo- ple, would have been the possession and rich inherit- ance of our rough, but robust, aspiring and hopeful English ancestors. At this point, however, breaks in upon their history a fracturing force, which certainly long retarded this progress, and which seemed for a time wholly to for- iLingard, "Hist, of Eng.,» Vol. I, page 307, 265 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES bid the final attainment. I refer, of course, to the Norman Conquest. The difference between the Saxon and the Norman was not one of blood, since both represented the Teu- tonic stock; but it was fuller of meaning and of menace for that very reason, because the Scandinavian stuff had taken in the Normans a peculiar develop- ment, which made them at once despise and hate their ancient kinsmen. Their long career as rovers of the seas had perfected in them the native fierceness from which the Saxons had been emerging into a more domestic habit. Settling in France, in the ninth cen- tury, and wresting lands and cities from its king, these restless pirates — whom Charlemagne, even at the height of his power, had seen and feared — entered into alli- ance with the Southern civilization, and became its chiefest Northern champions. Dropping their own religion and language, they adopted the religion, the language, and the manners, which preceded them in France. Its feudal system, in the utmost completeness, they joyfully accepted. Its rites of chivalry, which the Saxons had tardily and partially adopted, were prac- tised by them with eager devotion, as well as with prodigal splendor and pomp. They became the exult- ing, if not always the patient, adherents of the Papacy, whose far-ascending orders of rank surpassed their elaborate feudal distinctions, whose majestic cere- monial was more sumptuous and brilliant than that of their tournaments. And a century and a half after their first settlement in France, there was no province, from the Channel to the Gulf, more alive than was theirs with the spirit and forms of the peoples speaking the Romance tongues. The martial fire burned as ever 266 WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE in their veins ; but their constitution was feudal, their language French, the whole tone of their society had been caught from the South. Descendants of renowned and irresistible conquerors, " the silver streak " interposed but slight barrier be- tween this people and the fertile farms and thriving towns every rumor of which reexci ted .their greed. Their influence had been largely augmented in England during the reign of Edward the Confessor. It came to its terrific consummation when on Christmas day, a. D. 1066, a few weeks after the victory of Hastings, William of Normandy was crowned King of England, in that Westminster Abbey whose vast extent, massive pillars, and cruciform structure showed already the Norman impress. His conquest was not fully com- pleted till some years after ; but from that time the old order of things was practically ended, and a new and dreadful era began. The destruction of properties in the kingdom was enormous. The destruction of life, happiness, hope, not only in battle, but in the fierce outrage and rapine which broke as a fiery flood upon the land, is some- thing which cannot be pictured in speech. It is not wonderful that men fancied long afterward that fresh traces of blood appeared supernaturally on the battle- ground near Hastings, as if to show the writhing of the land in its immense anguish. In the time of Stephen, the Chronicle said, one might travel a day and not find one man living in a town, nor any land under cultivation. " Men said openly that Christ and his saints were asleep." 1 The feudal system, in all its \ x See Hallani, " Mid. Ages," Vol. II, page 316. " Between York and Durham every town stood uninhabited ; their 267 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES rigor, took the place of the simpler Saxon institutions ; and it was reckoned, in the third generation after the Conquest, that more than eleven hundred castles had already been erected. The Saxon clergy, endeared to the people by their general steadfastness for the popu- lar cause, were driven with violence from their places, to be succeeded by Norman monks. "Wulfstan, of Worcester, was, after a little, the only Bishop of English blood left in his place. The supremacy of the Pontiff, who had sent to William his consecrated stand- ard, and who had followed his invasion with the first Papal legates in the island, appeared finally exalted above all local Episcopal rights ; and the freedom of the Church seemed to have fallen, with that of the State, in final ruin. Even venerated Saxon saints were displaced from the calendar, as if heaven itself were a wholly Norman institution. The language of the people was banished from the Court, the councils, the public records, and the North- ern dialect of France took its place. The native English were despised without measure, and despoiled without mercy. Many fled across the sea, into the streets became lurking-places for robbers and wild beasts. . . . Men, women, and children died of hunger ; they laid them down and died in the roads and in the fields, and there was no man to bury them. . . . Nay, there were those who did not shrink from keeping themselves alive on the flesh of their own kind." — Freeman, Hist. Nor. Conq., Vol. IV, page 293. " England was now a scene of general desolation, a prey to the rav- ages both of natives and foreigners. Fire, robbery, and daily slaughter, did their worst on the wretched people, who were forever attacked, trampled down, and crushed. . . . Ignorant upstarts, driven almost mad by their sudden elevation, wondered how they arrived at such a pitch of power, and thought that they might do whatever they liked. "— Orderic Vital. Eccl. Hist., B. IV, chs. iv, viii. 268 WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE service of foreign kings, or of the Greek Emperor. Becket — made Chancellor, and Archbishop, under Henry Second — was the first Englishman to rise to any distinguished office ; l and during the intervening century it seemed as if the earlier nation had been literally crushed, by the fierce onset of overwhelming power, into a helpless and hopeless subjection, from which there could be no release. It could not but be long, under, circumstances like these, before the tendencies, active before, had a chance to reappear, seeking again a freer faith, and wider acquaintance with the Scriptures. But these tendencies, like those to freedom in the State, were radical and perennial ; and the stubborn struggle through which they at last rose to supremacy makes the pages which record it of interest to the world. In spite of this tremendous overthrow, which had fallen like a whirlwind full of thunder and flame on the English people, and in spite of the organized mil- itary oppression under which they long suffered, many things remained, and after a time reasserted their right. The old language remained; and gradually, though slowly, it crowded back the Norman dialect, while from that it gained important additions. The old laws continued, among the people, and the early local institutions. These gradually attacked the fabricated strength of the feudal establishment ; and every prince who would win popularity found his readiest resource in ratifying the laws of Edward the 1 It is extremely doubtful if Becket was of Saxon descent ; (see Milman, Lat. Christ., Vol. IV, pages 309-312) ; but that he was re- garded by the English as their representative, in a sense in which none of his predecessors had been, is beyond question. 269 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES Confessor. The old life of the people remained, un- broken by the desolating strokes it had suffered, and with an unconquerable tenacity of purpose waiting its time to conquer its conquerors. Meantime, it grew evident that many things had come with the Conquest, to expand, enrich and lib- eralize this life, and to make the nation ultimately no- bler, in knowledge and in hope. The monastic school of the Bee, in Normandy, was famous throughout Europe, and the great archbishops, Lanfranc 1 and Anselm, who came thence to Canterbury, established schools, quickened thought, and fostered learning. A more uniform church-service was established in the kingdom, making worship more attractive with its statelier harmonies. 2 Our very word " Bible," as de- scribing the Scriptures, came with the ]STormans into England. New learnings were absorbed from the now nearer Continent. The civil and the canon law became the subjects of careful study. Distinguished scholars acquired a European fame : John of Salis- 1 "To understand the admirable genius and erudition of Lanfranc, one ought to be an Herodian in grammar, an Aristotle in dialectics, a Tally in rhetoric, an Augustine and a Jerome, and other expositors of law and grace, in the sacred Scriptures. Athens itself, in its most flourishing state, . . . would have honored Lanfranc in every branch of eloquence and discipline, and would have desired to receive instruction from his wise maxims." — Orderic Vital., Eccl. Hist., B. IV, ch. vii. 2 ' ' Hereupon Osmund, Bishop of Salisbury, devised that ordinary, or form of service, which hereafter was observed in the whole realm. . . . Henceforward the most ignorant parish-priest in England, having no more Latin in all his treasury, yet understood the meaning of secundum usum Sarum, that all service must be ordered ' according to the course and custom of Salisbury church.' " — Fuller, Church Hist, of Brit., B. Ill, Sec. 1, § 23. 270 WYCLIFEE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE bury, with William of Malmesbury, in the twelfth century ; Matthew Paris, the historian, and sharp critic of Rome, in the thirteenth, with Roger Bacon, greatest of medieval philosophers, and Robert Gros- tete, Bishop of Lincoln, most distinguished of prel- ates; 1 Occam, the " invincible" and the "unique," in the fourteenth century, with Thomas Bradwardine, profound in mathematics as well as in theology. Churches and monasteries were built in great num- bers: the cathedrals of Canterbury, Durham, Roch- ester, Chichester, Norwich, Winchester, Gloucester, and others. The Norman spirit and manner of treat- ment gave from the first a new character to such buildings, which afterward flowered into delightful exhibition in the pointed arches or the lovely flowing window-tracery of later cathedrals, as Salisbury, or Wells, or in the Westminster chapel of St. Stephen. The Universities were organized at Oxford and Cam- 1 Matthew Paris' description of him is worth quoting for its sim- plicity and force, and as incidentally illustrating the spirit of the time : ' ' Pendant sa vie, il avait r^primande publiquement le seigneur pape et le roi, corrige les prelats, r6forme~ les moines, dirige les pre- tres, instruit les clercs, soutenu les £coliers, preche devant le peuple, pers^cutd les incontinents, fouill6 avec soin les divers Merits, et avait ete le marteau et le contempteur des Eomains. ... II avait gagne le respect de tous par son zele infatigable a remplir les fonctions pontificales. " Lorsqu'il mourut, a savoir la nuit ou il monta vers le Seigneur, Foulques, 6veque de Londres, entendit au plus haut des airs un son tres-doux, dont la rnelodie pouvait a juste titre r£creer et charmer les oreilles et le coeur de celui qui l'entendait. . . . Alors l'6veque : Par le foi que je dois a Saint Paul, je crois que le v6ndrable eveque de Lincoln, notre pere, notre frere, et notre maitre, a pass6 de ce monde, et est deja place dans le royaume du ciel. " — Chron. de Mat. Par. trad, par Huillard-Breholles, Tome VII, page 445. 271 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES bridge, and attracted wide public attention. x An im- mense enthusiasm for study prevailed among the young. In the thirteenth century Oxford was second only to Paris in the number of its students. Thirty thousand are said to have been there at one time, to learn, as Hume says, "bad Latin, and worse logic," but to gain enlargement and vigor of thought from even such imperfect studies ; and it was the logic of Aristotle which came there, through Edmund Rich, afterward Archbishop. The arts of music and picto- rial illustration took a fresh impulse. The use of pa- per, instead of parchment, multiplied manuscripts. The first really English book, the travels of Sir John Mandeville, appeared in the middle of the fourteenth century ; and libraries then began to be gathered by private persons. Better than all, the Norman and the Saxon elements, so long exasperated into mutual hate, began to assimilate and to come into union, to form the ultimate English people ; and so the old spirit, which had survived Bede and Alfred, and had outlived the Conquest, was ready again, with larger training, ampler instruments, a more complete strength, to take up its interrupted work. Already, in the reign of Henry II, the Norman had begun to cease to be conqueror, while the Saxon began to rise from subjection. He " initiated," it has been said, " the rule of Law." Early in the thirteenth century Magna Charta was won, by the people as well 1 ' ' Giraldus Carnbrensis, about 1180, seems the first unequivocal witness to the resort of students to Oxford, as an established seat of instruction. But it is certain that Vacarius read there on the civil law in 1149, which affords a presumption that it was already assuming the character of a university." — Hallam, Lit. Hist. Europe, Vol. I, page 16. The first charter of Oxford was granted by Henry III, A. D. 1244. 272 WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE as by barons and clergy, in the interest of all ; and distinctions of descent thenceforth in large measure disappeared. Under Henry III was added the mem- orable Charter of the Forest, while the Great Charter was solemnly reaffirmed. How frequently afterward it was so reaffirmed, every one knows : by the weak king, needing popular support; by the strong king, wanting money for wars. Edward III reaffirmed it fifteen or more times, in his single reign. Within two centuries after the Conquest, a. d. 1265, Parlia- ment included citizens and burgesses, with nobles and prelates. Its name was Norman, its substance Eng- lish. In the fourth year of Edward III it was or- dained that its sessions should be annual ; and it con- stantly insisted on conditions precedent before making its grants, these conditions being the enlarged and se- cured liberties of the realm. Under the Edwards im- mense progress was thus made in the law ; and the Royal prerogative, in spite of the glamour cast upon it by the later French victories, sensibly declined. The treatise of Glanville, the earliest probably on English law, had been written before ; and that of Bracton had followed it, under Henry III. The famous treatise known as " Fleta," of the reign of Ed- ward I, composed probably by order of the king ; the tract of Britton, in Norman French ; the " Mirror of Justice," written perhaps a little later, and probably by a Saxon — these show the progressive activity in legal discussion. Year-books, containing authentic re- ports of adjudged cases, preceded the reign of Edward II. 1 A great number of fruitful new laws came 1 Blackstone says : ' ' The reports are extant in a regular series from the reign of Edward the Second, inclusive; and, from his time to that R 273 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES into existence under Edward III, and on points of capital importance. The power of the people was more clearly recognized. They had shown their prow- ess on Continental fields, and the skilled archers, to whose English muscle the Norman arrow had given a swift and terrible weapon, had won the day for belted knights at Crecy and at Poictiers. Even the enfran- chisement of the villain-class was steadily advancing ; and the near insurrection, headed by Wat Tyler, only manifested in sudden and riotous fury the spirit which had long preceded and impelled it. The English language, now enriched from the French, came again to its place, not among the people only, but at the Court. In A. D. 1258, two centuries after the Conquest, was first issued a royal proclama- tion in English. The Chancellor's speech was made in of Henry the Eighth, were taken by the prothonotaries or chief scribes of the court, at the expense of the Crown, etc. , etc. ' ' — Comment, on Laws of England, Cooley's edition, A. D. 1871 ; Vol. 1, page 71. The same statement is repeated, in substance, in Reeves' Hist, of Eng. Law, near the end of Chap, xn, Vol. 2, page 357 ; in "The Re- porters," by John William Wallace. Third Edition, Phila. , A. D. 1855, pages 62-65 ; in Bouvier's Law Dictionary, A. D. 1870, art. "Year Books; " and in B. V. Abbott's Law Dictionary, A. r>. 1879. Five volumes of "Year Books of Edward First " have however been published in England, under the direction of the Master of the Rolls, since A. r>. 1863. The learned editor and translator of these, Alfred J. Horwood, of the Middle Temple, does not seem confident that the re- ports contained in them were^prepared by any authorized officer of the court, though they clearly show, as he affirms, that "one reporter, and sometimes more than one, was a constant attendant in court. ' ' [Pref- ace, pages xxi, xxiii.] But the recently published reports corre- spond closely, in form and extent, with those found in the familiar Year Books ; and they at least make it evident, as the editor says, . ' ' that there was no attempt to conceal the proceedings of the Judges, ' ' certainly as early as the latter half of the reign of Edward First. 274 WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE Parliament in the same tongue, a century later, a. d. 1363. But, a year before, it had been ordered that pleas in court should be pleaded and judged in English, though laws and records continued to be written in Latin or in French. This was at once a sign and a stimulant of the revived national spirit, which had come once more to animate the kingdom ; and this had its ultimate menace toward the Pope, as well as toward immediate secular oppressions. The exactions of the Papac}^ in the thirteenth cen- tury had been nearly intolerable, in spite of the fact that Magna Charta had interposed its shining shield to protect in a measure the national Church. The Norman work had been only too thoroughly done. The richest benefices were held by foreigners. One half of the real estate in the kingdom belonged to the Church. Yast sums were annually sent from it, to pass out of sight through the lavish treasury of Kome or Avignon. The finances of the Crown were embarrassed thereby, while the popular indignation grew vehement and wide. The removal of the Papal throne into France, early in the century, had shaken the English allegiance to it. The long Schism of the "West, which closed the century, in which England and France favored rival pontifical claimants, struck a heavier blow at the popular regard for the office itself. The drift of English legislation became therefore sharply and stubbornly adverse at least to the secular claims of the Pope. In the seventh year of Edward I, the statute of Mortmain limited the acquisition of properties by the Church. In the eighteenth year of Edward III, this was renewed and its execution more fully assured. In 275 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES the twenty-fifth year of the same signal reign the statute of " Pro visors " forbade Papal encroachment on the rights of those who should present to church- offices ; and two years after, this was brought to a cutting edge by the sharp writ of " Praemunire " — a barbarous name for a righteous procedure — which was further defined and reinforced in the sixteenth year of Richard II, by what the Pope not unnaturally called " an execrable statute " : x which put out of the king's protection any who should procure at Rome translations, processes, excommunications, bulls, or other instruments, against the king and his dignity, forfeiting their goods, attaching their persons, and subjecting them to imprisonment at the king's pleasure. It was the flash of a naked blade, warning the Pope to keep his hands off from England ; and this same writ of " Praemunire " became a weapon of terrible effect, two centuries after, in the furious grasp of Henry YIII. 2 It is apparent, then, that we at last have reached a point where many conditions were favorable in Eng- land to the revival of the earlier movement toward freedom in religion, and toward unhindered popular 1 "Quamvis dudum in regno Anglise jurisdictio Romanse eoclesige, et libertas ecclesiastica fuerit oppressa, vigore illius execrabilis statuti, ' ' etc. — Letter of Martin Fifth, to the Duke of Bedford. 2 A very ample and clear analysis of the famous statutes of " Provi- sors" and "Praemunire" is given in Reeves' "History of the English Law," Vol. II, pages 259-269. Fuller's comment is, as usual, quaint and vigorous : "Some former laws had pared the pope's nails to the quick ; but this cut off his fingers, in effect, so that hereafter his hands could not grasp and hold such vast sums of money as before." — Church Hist, of Brit., B. IV, Sec. 1, I 33. 276 WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE acquaintance with the books of the Scripture. Yet it must not fail also to be noticed that two forces were moving, distinctly, and with violence, in the opposite direction, which were in fact only deepened and made swifter by the general obvious progress toward free- dom. The one was the jealous, excited, passionate spirit of leading prelates, like Wykeham or Courtenay, whose power was still subtle and immense, and who were more strenuous for the spiritual place and pre- rogative of the Church, as they felt the State crowd- ing upon their secular establishment. The other — in some respects the more dangerous force — was the jealousy of landowners, as the peasants around them were seen to be rising toward larger liberties. The repeated breaking out of the plague in England, with its terrible ravages — cutting off, it is supposed, nearly half the population — had unsettled all condi- tions of labor, and men were lacking to do necessary work, while harvests rotted on the ground, and cattle wandered at their will. Successive statutes, beginning in A. d. 1349, had sought to compel the service of laborers, and to regulate prices ; but they constantly failed, for forty years, and the fear and wrath of pro- prietors were aroused against the turbulence re- excited and extended by these very laws. Any influ- ence which promised additional impulse to the peasant class must therefore encounter their fierce resistance ; while, as I have said, the prelates, bred in the traditions of Rome, were only more watchful against every threatened moral assault because they had to yield and bend to the will of Parliament concerning the enlarge- ment of their temporal estates. This was substantially the state of England in the 277 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES middle of the fourteenth century; and it is in the midst of this excited, fermenting life — on the front of this old, yet ever-new movement, toward freedom, nationality, and a more intelligent popular faith — be- tween these sharply threatening perils — that the figure of John Wy cliff e confronts us. It is obvious, I think, that he appeared at a critical time ; that many forces had contributed to determine his spirit and aims, and to assign him his work in the world ; and that that work, although it came in the fulness of time, was one of the most difficult, as well as of the largest, yet entrusted to any man. I think it will appear, too, that he was of singular fitness for it, and did it with a supreme fidelity ; and that the fruit of it never has passed from English history. In some respects, cer- tainly, his is one of the most impressive of all the figures which his time presents. The Saxon and the Norman were singularly combined in the great Eng- lishman, at once scholar and statesman, philosopher and ambassador, devout recluse and determined re- former. And we, to-night, may well be conscious of real and rich indebtedness to him. The principal outward incidents of his life are suffi- ciently familiar. He was born in Yorkshire, not far from Richmond, famous for its noble castle, on an estate which had belonged to his family from the time of the Conquest. The earlier elements of the English population had continued in that district in larger numbers, and had clung to the old traditions of the kingdom with greater tenacity, than in the midland and southern counties, 1 though "Wy cliff e's own f amity, 1 ' ' The Norman successors of the Bastard dwelt in full safety in the Southern provinces, but it was scarcely without apprehension that they 278 WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE to the end of its history, remained attached with peculiar zeal to the Roman Church. It seems, indeed, to have carefully covered the natural traces of his inheritance in it, to whose fame alone it owes remem- brance. In the year 1324, according to the common state- ment, or, more probably, a little earlier, the boy John was here born. Of his instruction in childhood, we have no special knowledge, as indeed he has told us almost nothing of his life, at any point, being too great for egotism, and too much engrossed with public work to perpetuate the incidents of his personal his- tory ; but probably about the year 1335, he went to Oxford, and entered one of the five colleges then there existing — either Merton or, as seems more probable, Balliol, with which he was certainly afterward con- nected, and which had been founded by a family whose estates lay near his home. He was at the uni- versity a " Borealis," 'or member of the northern " nation," which had its own proctor, and which rep- resented whatever was freest in the spirit of the place ; and the whole university — which was then simply a vast public school — constituted a democratic cosmopolitan society, in which knowledge gave lead- ership, and in which the scholars of different countries were equally at home. Richard of Armagh, not yet archbishop, was in Oxford at the time, of whom ISTeander speaks as "a forerunner of Wycliffe, by his journeyed beyond the Humber ; and a historian of the twelfth century [William of Malmesbury] tells us that they never visited that part of their kingdom without an army of veteran soldiers. It was in the North that the tendency to rebel against the social order established by the Conquest longest endured." — Thierry, "Nor. Conq.," Vol. I, page 294. 279 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES freedom of thought ; " 1 and Thomas Bradwardine had recently been there, who anticipated Edwards in his doctrine of the will, and whose vigor of character made all his speculation energetic and impressive. How far the young student was in contact with such teachers cannot be affirmed; but doubtless the fine and fervid spirit which emanated from them affected all minds as responsive as his, and all hearts as deeply touched with a sense of religion. He became, of course, familiar with Latin, as then used among scholars, but not with Greek, which was not yet at home in Oxford; and the liberal arts, grammar, rhetoric, and logic — the " Trivium," — arith- metic, astronomy, geometry, and music — the " Quad- rivium," — we know that he successfully pursued. The physical and mathematical studies, indeed, appear to have had for him quite as strong an attraction as the logical and speculative. He passed from them all to the study of Theology, including the interpretation of the Old and New Testaments, as found in the Vul- gate, the reading of the Fathers, and of the Scholastic Doctors, with the study of the canon law. That he studied also the civil law, then or afterward, is equally certain, with the history and the canonical law of his own kingdom. And these were to bear large fruit in his life. In such pursuits probably ten years were occupied, and by A. d. 1345, or thereabouts — the year before Crecy, four years after Petrarch had been crowned at the Capitol — he was fitted for larger university work, as a teacher and a Master. It is not necessary to fol- low his course for the twenty years afterward, which were years with him of silent growth, in preparation 1 Hist, of Church, Vol. V, page 134. 280 WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE for a service which he could then have scarcely ex- pected. After A. d. 135T he was for some time a Fel- low of Merton College; in a. d. 1361 he was Master of Balliol ; and the same year he was nominated by his college Rector of Fylingham, a Lincolnshire par- ish, which allowed him to continue in connection with Oxford. For a short time he was Warden of Canter- bury Hall, appointed by the Archbishop, its founder, on account of his excellences of learning and of life, 1 but soon removed by the successor of the prelate ; and in a. d. 1366 he first appeared upon the stage of na- tional affairs, and began to gather that broader bright- ness about his name which was finally to become a shining and enduring splendor. To understand his at- titude and course, at that time and after, we must re- call their particular and controlling public conditions. In the year before, 1365, Urban Y had made claim upon Edward for the payment of a thousand marks, as the annual feudal tribute promised by John to Innocent III for the kingship of England, and also for payment of large arrears due on such tribute. Edward, in whose reign it had never been paid, re- ferred this to Parliament ; and that body was assem- bled in the following May. Its prompt and emphatic decision was, that such a tribute should not be paid ; that John had had no right to pledge it, and had vio- lated his oath of Coronation in the act ; and that, if the Pope should prosecute the claim, the whole power 1 " Ad vitse tnse et conversationis laudabilis honestatem, literarum- que scientiam, qui bus personam tuam in artibus magistratum altissi- mus insignivit, mentis nostrae oculos dirigentes, ac de tuis fidelitate, circumspectione, et industria plurimum confidentes," etc. — Quoted by Vaugban, "Life of Wyoliffe," Vol. I, page 417. 281 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES of the kingdom should be set to resist him. This de- fiant decision was sufficient for its purpose, and the claim was never again presented. From that time on, England stood free from any pretense of vassalage toward the Pope, and had its path more clear than be- fore to future freedoms. It is probable that "Wycliffe was a member of this Parliament, representing the clergy, or summoned by the king. 1 He was, at all events, so prominent an ad- vocate of its decision, that a champion of the Papacy made upon him a vehement assault, in reply to which he gives the reasons urged in Parliament, by temporal lords, against such a tribute. Prom these he con- cludes that the treaty of John had been invalid and immoral ; and he so presents the reasons for this as to show his profound sympathy with them, if he had not himself suggested and shaped them. He calls .him- self, at the outset of his tract, " an obedient son of the Church of Pome ; " and such, no doubt, he then felt himself to be. But the vivid spirit of nationality and of liberty which appears in the tract, with the habit of referring to permanent equities as properly controlling in public affairs, was prophetic of much ; and the instinct of the Papacy must already have felt in him its future effective and intrepid assailant. He was, at this time, you observe, perhaps forty-five years of age, a distinguished scholar, according to the best standard of the time, famous as a philosopher, an in- 1 The facts which make this probable are clearly and largely stated by Lechler ["John Wiclif," etc., Vol. I, pages 200-214], and the subsequent increasing influence of the Keformer, with the Court, and in the country, seems naturally to start from such an early position of special public trust and prominence. 282 WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE fluential churchman, prominently connected with the leading university. Now that his spirit was clearly declared, equally fearless, searching and sagacious, now that the expert and practised logician had shown himself also skilled in affairs, it might justly be ex- pected that his work would widen, and his influence become a large and beneficent national force. Academical and royal distinctions soon came to him, as he was made Doctor in the faculty of The- ology, and, perhaps, royal chaplain; and in A. D. 1374 he was appointed by the king a member of the com- mission sent to treat with a Papal embassy, at the city of Bruges, on matters of grave and long dispute. His name stands second on this commission, follow- ing that of the Bishop of Bangor ; and the members were empowered to conclude a just compact on the matters in question ' with the Papal nuncios. The commission was associated with a large and brilliant civil embassy, at the head of which was the Prince's brother, the Duke of Lancaster, with the Earl of Salisbury and the Bishop of London. Then, probably for the first time, "Wycliffe saw a foreign city, and one which presented as striking a contrast to anything in England as did perhaps any town on the Continent. The busy, wealthy, populous Bruges was then at the height of its middle-age fame : with the picturesque building just erected, whose belfry-chimes still ring in the square, and are echoed in poetry, with twenty ministers of foreign kingdoms having hotels within the walls, and with companies of merchants there established from all parts of Europe ; while, at the time of Wy cliff e's visit, were gathered there also royal princes and nobles of France, with 283 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES prelates from Italy, Germany and Spain. Wycliffe was brought there into closer relations with John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, whose friendship was afterward important to him ; and it well may be that a fresh impression of the lovely and austere majesty of the Gospel, and of the simplicity of that earlier development of Christianity in the world with which his studies had made him familiar, came upon his spirit, while he saw, as in microcosmic view, the os- tentation and pride, the practical unbelief, and the hardly veiled license, which were the abounding fruit in Europe of undisputed Pontifical rule. One cannot but think that many convictions, which were govern- ing with him in subsequent life, took emphasis if not origin from his brief residence in the gay and luxuri- ous Flemish town. The general result of the labors of the commission was not of importance. Some of its members were soon promoted by the Pope, and it is not perhaps a violent inference that they had been acting from the first in his interest. Wycliffe certainly was not pro- moted, save as he was lifted to fresh prominence and influence by the sharp prelatical attacks made upon him ; and this may warrant us in presuming that he had been faithful to king and realm, in the exciting scenes and service. In A. d. 1374 he was made by the king Kector of Lutterworth, with which his name was ever after to be connected ; and, as I have said, the steadfast stuff of which he was made, his ability, energy, and loyalty to freedom, were soon further tested in public affairs. In A. d. 1376 the Parliament, afterward known as " the good Parliament," was assembled, before which 284 WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE came the complaints of the kingdom against the Papacy, and by which these complaints were presented to the king. The continued intrusion of foreign clergy into English church-livings, the scandalous character of many who bought these from Papal brokers, the decay of religion consequent upon it, with the pecuniary exhaustion of the kingdom by the sums drained from it to be spent in dissolute pleasures abroad — these were some of the vehement complaints ; and the fact that in England was a Papal collector, gathering tribute to be sent to the Pope, and claiming the first-fruits of church-livings, was specialty pre- sented, with sharp remonstrance. It is probable that "Wycliffe was a member of this parliament, and that its complaints were shaped by his hand. The very language in which they are framed seems marked with his idiom, and the relation suggested between moral disorder and the physical calamities which troubled the realm, is exactly in his spirit. In the following year, 1377, he attacked Gamier, the Papal collector, with indignant intensity, and, passing beyond the subordinate agents, with profound moral earnestness he challenged the system which made them possible. He came thus at last into that personal grapple with the Pontiff which might from the first have been foreseen : maintaining that he can sin ; that what he does is by no means right because he does it ; that he is bound to be preeminent in fol- lowing Christ, in humility, meekness and brotherly love ; implying, plainly, that otherwise he is no Pope at all. The crowning doctrine here appears that Holy Scripture is for the Christian the rule and standard of the truth, and that what conflicts with 285 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES it has no authority. He is steadily advancing on the path of the principles to which study, reflection, pub- lic service have brought him, without looking back. He has won, already, a high place in England, and he uses his power for freedom and truth with an un- reserved outlay of strength which recalls the Saxon times and blood. It will evidently not do to leave him alone. At this point, therefore, breaks upon him the first onset of that Papal assault which was never afterward to cease to pursue him till his books had been prohibited and his bones had been burned. In February, A. D. 1377, he was summoned to ap- pear before the Convocation, obviously on account of the stand which he had taken against prelatical and Papal aggression. "When the Convocation assembled at St. Paul's, the Duke of Lancaster, and Percy, the Grand Marshal of England, with armed retainers, ap- peared with him, as friends and defenders ; together with several personal friends, and some theologians who had come as his advocates. An altercation in- stantly arose, between the Marshal, with the Duke, on the one hand, and the imperious Bishop of London ; the result of which was that Wycliffe was withdrawn from the tribunal without having had occasion to open his lips. Whatever purpose had been cherished against him, for the time at least had utterly failed, and he went out as free as before. Immediately, how- ever, the English bishops, or some of them, collected propositions affirmed to be his, forwarded them to Eome, and sought the Papal interposition. Of the nineteen propositions so presented, five referred to legal matters, as the rights of property and inherit- ance ; four concerned the right of rulers to withdraw 286 WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE from the Church its temporal endowments, if these should be abused ; nine related to the power of church discipline, with its necessary limits ; and the closing one maintained that the Pontiff himself, being in error, may be challenged by laymen, and overruled. The "power of the keys," according to this clear- sighted witness, is only effective when used under the law of the Gospel ; and no man can really be excom- municated unless by himself— unless, that is, he has given for it sufficient occasion. On the basis of these articles Gregory XI, in May, A. d. 1377, issued five bulls against their author. Three of them were addressed to the Archbishop, with the Bishop of London, commanding them to ascertain if such propositions had been in fact affirmed by Wyc- liffe, in " a detestable insanity," and if so, to imprison him until further instructions ; commanding them also to cite him publicly, lest he should seek to escape by flight ; and requiring them to bring the obnoxious ar- ticles to the notice of the king. Another bull was ad- dressed to the king, informing him of the commission, and requiring his aid ; and still another to the Chan- cellor and University of Oxford, enjoining them, on pain of loss of all their privileges, to commit Wycliffe and his disciples to custody, and deliver them to the authorized commission. The death of Edward III, with the accession of Eichard II, which presently occurred, and the spirit opposed to the Papal court which appeared vividly in the following Parliament, made it expedient to delay taking action under these instruments ; and it was not until the end of the year, after Parliament was prorogued, that proceedings commenced. Mean- 287 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES time, Wycliffe had drawn up an opinion, for the king and council, on the right of the kingdom to restrain its treasure from being carried to foreign parts, in defi- ance of Papal censure. With utmost emphasis he, of course, affirms this right : on the several grounds of the law of nature, the law of the Gospel, the law of conscience ; and it is not likely that this opinion ren- dered any less fierce the hostility to him which was already intense at Eome. A week before Christmas, the bull addressed to the university was sent to the Chancellor, with the demand that he ascertain if Wycliffe had propounded the al- leged theses, and if so, to cite him to appear in Lon- don before the commission. The marked difference f between this mandate and the sharper terms of the Papal bull shows a doubt of the temper which might prevail in the university, with a fear of probable pop- ular sympathy with the accused. The heads of the university seem to have taken no action whatever on the Papal bull, but to have so far responded to the commission as to serve upon Wycliffe the required cita- tion. Early, therefore, in a. d. 1378, the vigorous and undaunted theologian appeared before the archbishop and bishop, and made written answer for the theses. But he did not come in his own strength alone. He was now recognized as the faithful representative of a wide English feeling. The widow of the Black Prince, now Queen-Mother, sent an officer to the commission, charging the prelates to pronounce on him no sen- tence. The people of London forced their way into Lambeth Chapel, and showed their purpose to defend him. The result of the proceeding bore, therefore, no proportion to its threatening commencement; for, 288 WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE though he was forbidden to teach the specified theses — on the ground that they would give offense to the laity — he left the court, for the open air of streets and fields, with his freedom unfettered, with his promi- nence and power only increased, by the futile assault. The successive attacks of those who hated him had given him a distinction which he never seems to have sought for himself. At just this time began that long "Western Schism, in which Urban YI was acknowledged by England, Clement YII by France ; in which, subsequently, there were three Pop.es at once, almost equally detest- able, with equal violence anathematizing each other ; and which was not closed till thirty years after Wyc- liffe's death. An immense impression was made upon him by this event ; and from that time, not ceasing to be a diligent scholar, a patriotic counselor, a devout theologian, he more and more came to the front as a radical and devoted Church reformer. The thin, tall figure, the sharply-cut features, the penetrating eye, the firm-set lips and flowing beard, which his portraits present, the thoughtful, earnest, dignified presence, of which all men took note, were thenceforth to be found in the perilous van of the long English battle for a liberated Church and a Scriptural faith. In this supreme period of his life, a marked and even a rapid progress is to be observed in his judgments of truth, leading him toward, if not wholly to, the ulti- mate ground of the Protestant Eeformation. The Lutheran doctrine of Justification by faith alone, he never reached ; * but his mind detached itself rapidly 1 " Turning now to the other side of faith, Wiclif evidently assumes that the kernel of faith is a state of feeling, a moral activity, when, in s 289 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES and surely from many entangling previous opinions ; it sought for truth on every side, with eager care and fruitful fervor ; and as fast as he reached any certain conclusion he flung the most strenuous energy of his soul into the work of conveying it to others. His time was short ; his work was noble and prolific. A skilful, acute and practised logician, a realist in philosophy, yet a theologian largely made by the heart, he took Reason and Authority as the sources of all re- ligious knowledge : " Reason " representing the intui- tive and instructive mind and conscience ; " Authority " representing the Divine Scripture. To the claim of the latter on human submission he admits no limit. It is superior to all traditions and decrees ; the funda- mental charter and law of the Church. It is a book for every man ; to be interpreted by the Christian for himself, with prayerfulness and humility, with a rea- sonable regard for the general Christian judgment of its contents, and especially for that of the great Church-Fathers, but with an implicit personal reliance on the present aid of the Holy Ghost to make evident its meaning, as Christ had opened it to his disciples. He was himself a profound and constant student of the Scriptures, quoting from them freely, showing comparison of part with part, and so saturating his accord with the theology of his age, and agreeably to Aristotelian metaphysics, he lays particular stress upon the fides formata, and de- fines faith to be a steadfast cleaving to God or to Christ in love ( per amor em caritatis perpetuo adhssrerc). . . . For this reason, we can hardly expect beforehand to find Wiclif doing homage to the Paul- ine Keformation-truth of the justification of the sinner by faith alone." — Lechler, ''John Wiclif," etc., Vol. II, page 79. 290 WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE mind with even their language that the Biblical phrase clings to his pen when it is set in freest motion. He sought always the spiritual sense, yet for that very reason was attentive to minute particulars of expres- sion, and to the thought suggested by these in the highest moods of feeling. He found the very life of his spirit in the Word, and more and more, to the end of his career, engaged his sou] in the study and the love of what he declares the most true, faultless, perfect and holy Law of God. In the doctrine derived by him from the Scriptures he was substantially Augustinian, though of unfet- tered thought, and differing at some points from the illustrious Nuniidian. The Law of God is to him the basis and the measure of all dominion, in the State and in the Church ; and in Redemption is the key to Creation. Salvation is of grace alone, not merited by good works, and the Lord Jesus Christ is its only Mediator. He is divine in nature and work, yet also the center and head of Humanity, set forth as such with manifold fulness ; and the dignity of man's na- ture, with the realness and the reach Of his moral responsibility, appears from the fact that a Being so august has intervened to redeem him. 1 Of the Virgin Mary the utmost which he affirms, in later years, is that she was probably sinless, but that it is folly to contend on the question, since belief in her sinlessness is nowise essential to salvation. Toward homage to 1 "It was the worth of human nature, as arising from these facts [that God had made man in his likeness, and that Christ had died to save him 'unto the bliss of Heaven'] which rendered Wy cliff e so much the foe of war, and so much devoted to the religious welfare of men."— Vaughan, " Life of Wycliffe," Vol. I, page 328, 291 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES images, and prayers to the saints, he became pro- nounced in his antagonism, discerning the danger of idolatry to the image, and holding any devotion to a saint only of value as it may nourish piety to the Lord. He did. not indiscriminately recognize saints — denying vehemently the power of the Church to can- onize many concerning whose holiness she could not have been certain. He held the doctrine of the Church Invisible — the body of the Elect — in which the impure can have no place, however distinguished in prelatical rank, they belonging to the " Church of the Malignants " ; and in this true Church the priest- hood is common to believers, and every priest set apart to the office has right to administer all the sac- raments. The celibacy of the clergy — -though it was his own rule — he indignantly denounced, when im- posed upon others, as " unscriptural, hypocritical, and morally pernicious " ; and if, as he conceives to be possible, all church-officials should give themselves to evil ways, the laity would compose the Church, and must displace and judge their rulers. Of only two sacraments does he treat, Baptism and the Supper ; and against the doctrine of transubstan- tiation he flung his whole force, in reverberating as- sault. Till a. d. 13Y8 he had received it, as tradition- ally taught. An interval of questioning evidently followed. "With all his power, in utmost energy of speech and spirit, after a. d. 1381 he repels and denounces it : as contrary to God's Word ; contrary to the early tradition of the Church ; as pregnant with all evil effects ; the most dangerous of heresies ever " smuggled into the Church by cunning hypocrites." 1 1 Lechler, " John Wiclif," etc., Vol. II, pages 177-184. 292 WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE He held in substance, from that time, the Lutheran doctrine of the eucharist : no local corporeal presence of Christ in the consecrated wafer, but a spiritual presence, to be spiritually discerned. Yet, though the glorified body is in heaven, and is not re-created by any priest, or bruised by the teeth of any recipient, l there is a certain energy from it in the elements, as there is a certain presence of the soul in all parts of the body ; and the believing communicant is the one for whom this has its efficacy. He finds no warrant for any sacrament except in express words of the Scripture ; and the preaching of that is to him a true sacrament. Yery briefly, and of course imperfectly stated, this is substantially the doctrinal system held by Wy cliff e, in his mature and final thought ; and when we recall his resolute spirit, his fervent zeal and sovereign cour- age, with his deep sense of the calamities of the time, and his hope for the final reformation of Christendom, we easily see how inevitably he stood, by reason of it, toward the Papacy, as an enemy, definite and unspar- ing ; toward the Scriptures, as counting no labor too great, and no sacrifice too costly, for their widest distribution. In his relation to the Papacy three stages are ap- parent. Till a.d. 1378 he had recognized the primacy of the Bishop of Rome, while holding him by no means infallible, or possessed of plenary spiritual power, and 1 As Eaymond Lull expressed it : " Fuit unquam ullum mirabile vel ulla humilitas, quae cum ipso possit comparari, . . . quod tuum corpus adeo nobile se permittat manducari et tractari ab homine peccatore misero"? — See Neander, "Hist. Church," Vol. IV, page 336 (note). 293 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES sharply rejecting his right to intermeddle with state legislation. From that time till a. d. 1381 he less and less esteemed the Papacy, as having any divine au- thority, and came to think it desirable for the Church to dispense with both Popes, then clamoring for alle- giance. And from A. D. 1381 to the day of his death, the Pope was to him the veritable Antichrist ; the pontifical claims were flatly blasphemous ; the Papal office had been a device of the Adversary of souls, and the homage paid to it was detestable idolatry. No words of the Reformers of the sixteenth century were ever more sweeping in severity toward the Papacy than were the words of this churchman of England, this eminent leader in its foremost university, five hundred years since ; and all men might be sure that if ever a Pope should get opportunity, the sword or the flame would have one swift victim ! In connection with this assault on the Papacy he came to conflict with the Mendicant Orders, to attack whom at that time was to make the kingdom bristle with enemies. He had had with them mainly pleasant relations till A. D. 1378, and had rather exempted them from the fiery censures which he even then visited on the secular clergy; but from that time, especially after A. D. 1381, as his opposition to tran- substantiation became more vehement, and his temper toward the Pope took on its intensity, he opened a combat with these Orders which only grew in its un- sparing energy till his death. The absolution against which he revolted had in them its ubiquitous messen- gers ; and he smote at them, as well as it, with sen- tences that cut like the blows of a blade. It was a combat from which they never fully recovered, and 294 WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE which their subsequent defenders and apologists have never forgiven. 1 This was the necessary destructive side of his im- mense and incessant activity, after his work had fully opened. But the positive side, which gave to his efforts enduring and upbuilding power, was in the new teaching of Scriptural truth, and especially in that circulation of the Bible to which his whole character, all the aims of his life, and all his convictions, with a necessary force, inspired and impelled him. It is by this that he rises to real preeminence in his times ; that he suddenly consummates, in a supreme action, the long preceding tendencies of history ; that he hurled at the vast religious imperialism then domina- ting Europe the one weapon which it could not with- stand ; that he shot forth a force still felt in our age, and which will not cease to extend itself in the world till the history of that has reached its conclusion, amid the ultimate prophesied brightness. It was his princi- pal earthly work ; and it gives him his final and grand renown. I have spoken already of his fine and large acquaint- ance with the Scriptures, and of his profound spiritual sense of their majestic and tender meaning. It was always observed of him as a preacher that his discourse was rooted in the Bible ; that while others preached 1 The full discussion by Lecbler of the date of Wycliffe's controversy with the Mendicant Orders — usually assigned to A. d. 1360 — justifies his declaration that "there is no truth in the tradition that Wiclif, from the very first, was in conflict especially with the Mendicant Orders. . . . But from the year 1381 ... he opened a con- flict with the Mendicant Monks, which went on from that time till his death with ever-increasing violence." — "John Wiclif," etc., Vol. II, pages 140-146. 290 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES " chronicles of the world, and stories from the battle of Troy," he clung to the Scripture, and derived from that his illuminating lessons. " The highest service that man may attain to on earth," he says, "is to preach God's Word." " O marvelous power of the divine Seed," he says again, "which overpowers the strong man armed, softens obdurate hearts, and changes into divine men those who were brutalized in sin, and removed to an infinite distance from God." He insisted on simplicity, clearness, energy, in de- veloping and applying the message of the Word ; on devout feeling in the ministry of it, since, "if the soul be not in tune with the words, how can the words have power ? " But ever it is the "Word itself which is to him "the Life-seed, begetting regenera- tion and spiritual life ; " and in all proclamation of the Gospel the aim must be so to flash its light on the spirit as to bend the will to its obedience. Chaucer's picture of the good country priest, which has often been conceived to portray Wycliffe, repre- sents him as diligent and benign, rich in holy thought and work, who has caught the words of life from the Gospel. 1 Whether or not the poet thought of this 1 " A good man was ther of religioun, And was a pore Persoun of a town ; But riche he was of holy thought and werk. He was also a lerned man ; a clerk That Cristes gospel gladly wolde preehe ; His parischens devoutly wolde he teche. Benigne he was, and wondur diligent, And in adversite ful paeient. * * -x- * "This noble ensample unto his scheep he yaf, That ferst he wroughte, and after that he taughte, Out of the gospel he tho wordes caughte, 296 WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE special preacher, he has aptly described him. He had seen the Lord ; and the words which he had heard from divine lips were law and life to his en- thusiastic and resolute spirit. He would make them the power of God to others. So he sent forth his itinerant preachers, without shoes, in unbleached rus- set, to traverse the kingdom, and to make these words familiar in it. Probably these went out from Oxford as early as A. D. 1378 — many of them with no clerical ordination, " Evangelical men," colporteurs we should say ; with God's Law for their theme, their manner of preaching plain and simple, their contact with the people constantly close. He who sent them was an- ticipating Wesley, in the means which he used to evangelize England. He was multiplying his voice a hundredfold, and planting his convictions, with an instant success, in multitudes of minds. But now, as the greatest of all instruments for this supreme work, he would have God's Word itself translated into the common tongue of the people, and reproduced in manifold copies, till the peasant might have it, while the rich should gain through it a rarer treasure than jewels of price. This was not a mere measure of policy, for promoting a cause. It was the fruit of a Christian instinct, as deep in his soul as life itself. He had felt the inexpressible power of the Scripture, to uplift and expand, to cheer ***** "A bettre preest I trow ther nowher non is, He waytud after no pompe ne reverence, Ne maked him a spiced conscience, But Cristes lore, and his apostles twelve, He taught, and ferst he folwed it himselve." — Prol. to Cant. Tales, Aid. Ed., Vol. II, page 16. 297 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES and inspire the human spirit. He had felt, as pro- foundly as had Bernard, the overwhelming sense of the awfulness of life in its relation to unseen eterni- ties, and the supreme ministry of the gospel to this. It was thus an impulse irresistible within him to make the message which had come from the Most High accessible to all, till precept and promise, prophecy and truth, should be to men a presence as familiar as the sunshine in which they had their physical image. So he gave to his country the first English Bible, 1 to be multiplied only in manuscript copies, to be read, perhaps, only by stealth, but to be thenceforth the possession of England, and to put an influence into its life, and into the life which has subsequently flowed from it, across either hemisphere, which can- not be outlined in any discourse, or measured in thought. It was not only the greatest work at- tempted in the age, and in its effect the most benefi- cent ; it was one of the most fundamental and momentous done in the world since the day when Paul took up his illustrious mission to the Gentiles. Of the parts of the Bible known to the Saxons, I have previously spoken. It needs only to be added that the " Ormulum," so called, a paraphrase in verse of the Gospels and Acts, had been made in the thir- teenth century, which seems, however, to have been confined to a single copy ; that in the fourteenth 1 Sir Thomas More claimed, to have seen copies of an English Bible earlier than Wycliffe's. He doubtless mistook, for such, copies of Wycliffe's first translation, before the revision. No trace remains of any complete version earlier than that ; and those who suffered on account of that never justified themselves for having it by appealing to the existence of one preceding it. — See Ed. of Wycliffe's Bible, by Forshall and Madden, Preface, page xxi (note). 39S WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE century two translations of the Psalms had been made, and that these were followed, after a time, by one of the Epistles of Paul. But up to a. d. 1360 the Psalter was the only book of the Bible rendered into the common speech ; and copies of this were certainly very rare. "Within the next quarter of a century there came into the English language the entire Bible ; and it came, by the witness of both adversaries and friends, through the impulse and the labor of the great " Re- former before the Reformation." How far he him- self translated its books is not wholly certain. That he did so largely, is undisputed. A Harmony of the Gospels, first translated, seems to have led the way to the rest. The Apocalypse, with its incessant attrac- tion for spirits like his, in times like those, was prob- ably among the first of the books to engage his hand. Others followed : most of the New Testament being rendered by himself, doubtless with partial aid from friends, the Old Testament, probably, in good part, by Nicholas Hereford, an intimate friend and colaborer with him. Hereford, however, seems to have been suddenly arrested in the work, and the rest to have been done by another, probably by "Wycliffe. Of course, all the translation had to be made from the Latin of Jerome, the Hebrew and Greek being al- most unknown. It was, in other words, the version of a version, and so exposed to peculiar imperfection. But it must be remembered that Jerome had had early Greek manuscripts, earlier than any known until recently to the scholars of Europe, and that so in translating him Wycliffe stood at but one remove from the originals, while his perfect acquaintance with the Latin gave him ample opportunity to make 299 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES his translation energetic and full as an English equiv- alent. He completed it probably as early, at the latest, as a. d. 1382 ; and copies of it were rapidly made, by the hands of skilled and eager scribes. But Wycliffe himself no doubt was aware that the work had been too rapidly done for its highest value or best effect, and planned the revision, at once com- menced, Avhich finally appeared from the hand of John Purvey, in a. d. 1388, or four years after the master's death. Of this, more than a hundred and fifty manu- scripts still remain, in whole or in part ; many writ- ten on vellum, with elaborate care, to be the pos- session of churches, or of the wealthy, and not a few bearing the marks of long use, and of the concealment into which they were hurried in times of trouble. 1 All these were written, probably, within forty years after Wycliff e's death ; and if we remember what de- structive search for them was made in the day of persecution, how many went across the sea, how many shriveled in the fires of war, how many were burned, with those who had read them, in public squares, how many may yet wait to be discovered, we shall see how extraordinary their number at first must have 'In the "List of Manuscripts" prefixed by Forshall and Madden to their edition, one copy is described as " in an upright, large char- acter, written with great care and neatness, about 1400 " : another, as having ' ' initials to the books, in gold, upon coloured grounds, and to the chapters blue, flourished with red " : another, with initials to the books "in colors and gold, branching into well-executed borders," etc. : one, as bound "in black silk, with silver clasps of the XVth century ' ' : another, ' ' in green velvet, with brass bosses and clasps ' ' : one, as "much stained in parts " : another, as having "suffered from damp" : another, as "in parts much mutilated, torn, and soiled." Pages xxxix-lxiv. 300 WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE been. Only a spirit intense and determined could have driven so swiftly so many pens. 1 Of the effect of this translation on the English language many have written. The judgment of Lechler is undoubtedly just, that " it marks an epoch in the development of the English language, almost as much as Luther's translation does in the history of the Ger- man tongues. The Luther Bible opens the period of the new High German. Wycliffe's Bible stands at the head of the Middle English." 2 The most recent his- torian of the English people speaks of him as the " Father of our later English prose." 3 Forms of expression still familiar in our version come directly from his : as the beam and the mote, the trampling of swine and the rending of dogs, the Comforter for the Paraclete, the Saxon exclamation " God forbid ! " Mr. 1 Westcott speaks of ' ' about one hundred and seventy copies of the whole, or part, of the Wycliffite versions which have been examined " — thirty, or more, of the first translation, the rest of Purvey's revision. He adds the interesting fact that ' ' nearly half the copies are of a small size, such as could be made the constant daily companions of their owners." — "Hist. Eng. Bible," page 24. 2 "John Wiclif," etc., Vol. I, page 347. 3 " If Chaucer is the father of our later English poetry, Wyclif is the father of our later English prose. The rough, clear, homely English of his tracts^ the speech of the ploughman and the trader of the day, though colored with the picturesque phraseology of the Bible, is, in its literary use, as distinctly a creation of his own as the style in which he embodied it, the terse vehement sentences, the stinging sarcasms, the hard antitheses which roused the dullest mind like a whip." — Green's "Hist, of Eng. People," Vol. I, page 489. "The vocabulary of the reformers . . . is drawn almost wholly from homely Anglo-Saxon, and the habitual language of religious life, while the lays of Gower and Chaucer are more freely decorated with the flowers of an exotic and artificial phraseology. " — Marsh, "Lects. on Eng. Lang.," page 168. 301 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES Marsh may state the matter too strongly when he calls the accomplished and diligent Tyndale " merely a full- grown Wycliffe " ; adding that he " not only retains the general grammatical structure of the older version, but most of its felicitous verbal combinations, and, what is more remarkable, he preserves even the rhyth- mic flow of its periods." * It may be said in reply, as it has been, that much of what is common to the ver- sions came into both out of the Yulgate, by which one was determined, the other influenced. Still it is true that what Mr. Marsh elsewhere calls " the sacred and religious dialect " which has continued the language of devotion and of Scriptural translation to the pres- ent day, was first established in England by the "Wycliffe version ; 2 and that what Mr. Froude has characterized as the peculiar genius, of mingled ten- derness and majesty, of Saxon simplicity and preter- natural grandeur, which breathes through the latest translation, 3 had its example, and partly its source, in the earliest. Tyndale, Coverdale, Rogers, Cranmer, the Geneva translators, King James' revisers, have all contributed something to the work, but they only heighten, without obscuring, its early luster ; and the final revision for which we look, with all the aids which the most untiring scholarship has gathered, must still abide, in its vocabulary, and in much of whatever charm it may possess through noble and harmonious forms of verbal combination, on. the prim- itive foundations of five hundred years since. How vast the impression produced by the version 1 Lects. on Eng. Lang., page 627. 2 Lects. on Origin and Hist. Eng. Lang., page 365. 3 Hist, of Eng., Vol. III., page 86. 302 WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE which thus burst into use, not on language only, but on life, in the whole sphere of moral, social, spiritual, even political experience, who shall declare ! To the England of his time, confused, darkened, with dim outlook over this world or the next, the Lutterworth Rector brought the superlative educational force. He opened before it, in the Bible, long avenues of history. He made it familiar with the most enchant- ing and quickening sketches of personal character ever penciled. He carried it to distant lands and peoples, further than crusaders had gone with Richard, further than Alfred's messengers had wandered. It saw again the " city of palms " in sudden ruin, and heard the echoes of cymbal and shawm from the earliest temple. The grandest poetry became its possession ; the sovereign law, on which the blaze of Sinai shone, or which glowed with serener light of divinity from the Mount of Beatitudes. Inspired minds came out of the past — Moses, David, Isaiah, John, the man of Idumea, the man of Tarsus — to teach by this version the long-desiring English mind. It gave peasants the privilege of those who had heard Elijah's voice in the ivory palaces, of those who had seen the heaven opened by the river of Chebar, of those who had gathered before the "temples made with hands " which crowned the Acropolis. They looked into the faces of apostles and martyrs, of seers and kings, and walked with Abraham in the morning of time. They stood face to face, amid these pages, with One higher than all ; and the kingliest life ever lived on the earth became near and supreme to the souls which had known no temper in rank save that of disdain, no 303 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES touch of power which did not oppress. Not only again, in lucid column, the pillar of fire marshaled God's hosts. ]STot only again were waters divided, and fountains made to gush from rocks. Angelic songs were heard once more, above the darkened earthly hills. Again, as aforetime, the Lord of Glory walked as a brother from Nazareth and from Bethany, strew- ing miracles in his path, yet leading the timid to the mount which burned with peaceful splendor, showing the penitent his cross, walking with mourners to the tomb. From the paradise of the past to the paradise above, the vast vision stretched ; and gates of pearl were brightly opened above the near and murky skies. The thoughts of men were carried up on the thoughts of God, then first articulate to them. The lowly English roof was lifted, to take in heights beyond the stars. Creation, Providence, Kedemption, appeared, harmonious with each other, and luminous with eternal wisdom ; a light streamed forward on the history of the world, a brighter light on the vast and immortal experience of the soul ; the bands of darkness broke apart, and the universe was effulgent with the luster of Christ ! Of course this influence was not all felt by many minds ; perhaps not in its fulness by any. But it was thenceforth at home in England ; at home, to stay. It smote with irresistible energy on the rings and fetters of Pontifical rule. It contributed a force of expansion and uplift to every soul on which its quickening blessing fell. It became an instrument of popular liberty, as well as a means of elevation and grace to personal souls. There was the English Re- naissance ! Leighton, and Owen, and Jeremy Tay- 304 WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE lor, became possible afterward ; Bacon and Hooker, Shakespeare and Milton, Dry den and Wordsworth, and Robert Burns. The world of letters had found a language for the majestic periods of Burke, for Ad- dison's or Macaulay's prose, for Gibbon's sentences, moving as' with the tread of an imperial triumph. The world of life had received to itself a transfiguring energy. Celestial forces mingled thenceforth, more vitally, widely, with human thought ; and the inde- structible holy influence, though often interrupted, never ceased, till it came to its final inevitable fruition in the perfect liberty of the Scriptures in England. 1 The subsequent months of Wycliffe's life were like the stormy afternoon, whose turbulence ceases, whose glooms are scattered, in the sunset's golden tranquil- lity. An ecclesiastical assembly at London — called by him " the Earthquake Council," because it was shaken by a tremble of the planet — condemned his doctrines, but left him untouched, apparently because of the spirit of the Commons. 2 Oxford repelled or evaded the attacks repeated upon him, but at last yielded to a royal mandate, and his long connection with it was 1 Hume speaks slightingly of Wycliffe — as might have been ex- pected from a blind giant, discoursing of distant electric flames — but in no small measure he owed his opportunity to weave choice words into a pleasing and perspicuous narrative to him of whom Dr. Vaughan has temperately said, that " his writings contributed, far more than those of any other man, to form and invigorate the dialect of his coun- try."— Life of Wycliffe, Vol. I, page 243. 2 His characteristic comment on the assembly was: "The Council charged Christ and the Saints with a heresy ; hence the earth trembled and shook, and a strong voice answered in the place of God, as it hap- pened at the time of the last Passion of Christ, when he was condemned to bodily death."— See Neander, "Hist, of Church," Vol. V, page 162. T 305 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES closed. In November, A. D. 1382, he again defended his doctrine before the Provincial Synod assembled in Oxford, and again escaped personal sentence or assault. The weight of his character in the country was too great, his following was too large, to be challenged without danger. A vigorous memorial ad- dressed to Parliament, against the English crusade for Urban, was one of his last public papers, though many brief tracts were written and distributed to the end of his life, and his sermons went forth as leaves on the wind. Three hundred of them still remain. He expected martyrdom, * and others as surely ex- pected it for him. But he was of that iron temper which fire hardens into steel. His courage mounted with occasion ; and he found it as true in his own time as it ever had been, " the nearer the sword, the nearer to God." In point of fact, he was never sub- jected to blade or brand. He wrought in patience at his rectory, making it a center of impulse to England. He stood to his convictions, whether the Pope cited him or not, though even the powerful John of Gaunt fell from his side, till a stroke of paralysis a second time smote him, as he was engaged in divine offices, on the day of the Holy Innocents, at the close of the year 1384 ; and on the final day of that year, as reckoned by us, he passed out of earthly struggle and care, and entered his immortal rest. Ladies and Gentlemen : — I would not exagger- ate anything in this man, but I am sure we must feel 1 " We have but to preach consistently [constanter] the law of Christ, even before the prelates of Caesar, and a blooming martyrdom will promptly come, if we abide in faith and patience. " — Trialogus, 111, ch. 15. 306 WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE that it is with one of the heroical persons, making nations greater and histories splendid, that we have walked for a little this evening. Of course by his translation of the Scriptures he stands in most obvious relation to us. But the brightness of his fame in this connection may have concealed from the common thought the various and preeminent ability of the man, the large place which he filled in his time, the breadth and energy of his manifold influence. He does not loom into large proportions because we see him through morning mists. The more closely we study him, from different sides, the more surely will he win our admiring honor. It is not often that a man without note, except among scholars, steps forward suddenly to a principal place in public counsel. He breaks into sight, amid the turmoil of his time, as a preordained leader, simply pushed to the front by an imperious impulse of nature. It is not often that a man addicted to subtle and large philosophical speculation proves practical and acute in the sphere of affairs. He was recognized as first among scholastic philosophers, 1 1 Henry Knighton, Canon of Leicester, and vehemently opposed to Wycliffe, yet spoke of him thus : ' ' Doctor in Theologia eminentis- simus in diebus illis. In philosophia nulli reputabatur secundus ; in scholasticis disciplinis incbmparabilis. Hie maxime nitebatur aliorum ingenia subtilitate scientise et profunditate ingenii sui transcendere, et ab opinionibus eorum variare. ' ' — See Vaughan's ' ' Life of Wycliffe, ' ' Vol. I, page 24? (note). Neander says of him : "In his pervading practical bent, we rec- ognize a peculiarity of the English mind which has constantly been preserved. But to this was joined, in the case of Wiclif, an original speculative element ; an element which, in those times, was also es- pecially developed among the English, though at a later period'it re- tired more into the background." — Hist, of Church, Vol. V, page 135. 307 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES yet none surpassed him in political discussion, for force of statement, for grasp of principles, for sagacity or for daring. It is not often that one trained from childhood to familiar use of unclassical Latin becomes an attractive or a competent writer in a different tongue. He created an English style, rugged, idiomatic, whose sentences crash on the ear like grape- shot, whose words are half-battles, which has an oc- casional subtle charm, in the fine beauty of phrase and rhythm. Blameless, reserved, ascetic in life, 1 he was humor- ous, too, with jests that were arguments, and with a severe, though a beneficent, sarcasm ; as when it was said that the Scripture does not recognize friars ; " but it does," was his answer, " in this text, ' I know you not ! ' " He was radical in his views, in Church and State, while a revered leader in a great University. Of knightly blood, and bred among students, till his alleged errors were attributed by his enemies to his subtlety of mind and inordinate learning, he judged the plain people more correctly than themselves ; he interpreted the prophecy of their vague aspiration, and was not afraid of the final effect of even their wantonness. He had a deep sense of human sinful- ness ; but a nobler eulogy on human nature than ever was spoken was that wrought into action in his en- deavor to make common to men the thoughts of God. The rector of a parish church, he organized a mission 1 "His austere exemplary life has defied even calumny : his vigor- ous, incessant efforts to reduce the whole clergy to primitive poverty have provoked no retort as to his own pride, self-interest, indulgence, inconsistent with his earnest severity." — Milman, "Lat. Christ.," Book xiii, ch. vi. < 308 WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE which moulded the moral life of the kingdom, till every second man was a Lollard. In the solitude of his study, he dared to question the faith of ages, to plant himself on spiritual certainties, and to balance his mind, in the tranquillity of reason, against the whole shock of church authority. Apparently neither seeking nor shrinking from contest, he smote the Pope with tremendous anathemas, at a time when heresy was more odious than treason, and when reverence for the Pontiff was the religion of Christendom. With instinctive prescience he saw the immense op- portunity of the time ; and living in an age when prelates were humbled, and armies were awed, before the impalpable power of Rome, without helmet or miter he stood invincible for pure freedom of soul. He was equally great in intellectual force, and in the more vital and sovereign energy of character and will. His whole personality went into his work, with an utter consecration. It was this which made him so momentous a force in the great discussion and stir of his time. It was this which set him in living fellow- ship with great souls of the past. It was not Brad- wardine, or Grostete, alone, whom he represented. The freedom-loving archbishops of England had in him an unprelatical successor. Augustine, Bernard, Thomas Aquinas, Peter Lombard, — their thought he had mastered, and wherever their spirit had been most royal he also had felt it. Even Dominic and Francis had given to him of the fire of their souls. 1 The ia In one passage he even places St. Francis of Assisi with his mendicancy, side by side with the Apostles Peter and Paul, with their hard labor. . . . And in other places he expresses himself in such terms as to show that he looks upon the foundations, both of St. 309 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES Saxon Church found in this priest of Korman descent the sympathizing champion of its long-struggling and unsatisfied zeal. So his life had the roots, and his in- fluence took the reach, which transcend the limita- tions of individual force, which belong to essential moral powers, successively impersonated, never des- troyed, and at home in all ages. The years which followed him in his own country were years of darkness, almost of death, to the cause with which he identified his life. Almost singly, for a time, he had held antagonist forces at bay. With the withdrawal of his grand personality, the powers which he had arrested for the time gained volume and velocity, while they learned a new cruelty both from previous fear and from later success. His followers were scattered, and multitudes of them were ruthlessly flung to the flood or the flame. In the Convocation of A. D. 1408, it was forbidden to translate the Scrip- tures or to read any version of them- composed in his time. 1 After the Council of Constance, by which all his writings were condemned, his bones were burned, and their very ashes strewed on the stream, that Avon might carry them to Severn, and Severn to the sea ; Francis and St. Dominic, as a species of reformation of the Church, yea, as a thought inspired by the Holy Ghost himself.'* — Lechler, "John Wiclif," etc., Vol. II, page 143. 1 " Therefore we enact and ordain that no one henceforth do, by his own authority, translate any text of Holy Scripture into the English tongue, or any other, by way of book or treatise; nor let any such book or treatise now lately composed in the time of John Wycliffe, aforesaid, or since, or hereafter to be composed, be read in whole or in part in public or private, under the pain of the greater excommunica- tion." — Quoted by Vaughan, "Life of Wycliffe," Vol. II, page 44 (note) . 310 WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE but it was, as his disciples said, that the World might be his sepulchre, and Christendom his convert. There came a time, even in England, when the fatal laws against his adherents fell dead in their places, and when the almost anarchic frenzy which attended the long wars of the Roses gave way to a peace in which liberty thrived. That was the time for which his quickening thought had waited ; and having brooded silent in the air it then burst into voice, as if touching a thousand souls at once. Still earlier on the Conti- nent, in Bohemia, and in Italy, had been felt his vast impulse. John Huss, Jerome of Prague, Savonarola, repeated the onset of his fearless spirit on the system which, like him, they fought to the death, with their differing powers, with their equal consecration ; and no one of all died in vain. 1 In a copy of the Missal containing the ancient Hus- site Liturgy, in the library of the " Clementinum " at Prague, richly illuminated by loving hands, Wycliffe is pictured at the top, kindling a spark ; Huss, below 1 "Huss himself declares, in a paper composed about the year 1411, that, for thirty years, writings of Wicklif were read at Prague Uni- versity, and that he himself had been in the habit of reading them for more than twenty years." — Neander, "Hist, of Church," Vol. V, page 242. The Eoman Catholic Lingard says of him: " Wycliffe made a new translation, multiplied the copies with the aid of transcribers, and by his poor priests recommended it to the perusal of their hearers. In their hands it became an engine of wonderful power. Men were flat- tered by the appeal to their private judgment; its new doctrines in- sensibly gained partisans and protectors in the higher classes, who alone were acquainted with the use of letters; a spirit of inquiry was generated; and the seeds were sown of that religious revolution which in little more than a century astonished and convulsed the nations of Europe. "—Hist, of Eng., Vol. Ill, page 311. 311 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES him, blowing it to a flame ; Luther, still lower, waving on high the lighted torch. It is a true picture of that succession in which others followed, with brightening luster, this " Morning Star of the Reformation," till the sky was glowing, through all its arch, with the radiance of the upspringing light ! Out of that Reformation issued the new prophetic age whose ample brightness is around us. It lifted England to its great place in Europe. It wrenched powerful states from the Papal control. It gave a wholly new freedom to spirit and thought. It filled this land with its Protestant colonies. It opens to us opportunity and hope. It is on the work accom- plished by Wycliffe, and by those who followed, that our liberties have been builded. They are not acci- dental. They have not been based on diplomacies, or on battles, however these may have sometimes con- firmed them. They have not been framed, in their solid strength, by the theories of philosophers, or the inventive devices of statesmen. They are founded on the Bible, made common to all. They have been wrought to their vast, enduring, symmetrical propor- tions — more lovely than of palaces, statelier than cathedrals — by their wisdom and patience who had learned from the Bible that human power has no au- thority over the conscience ; that man, through Christ, has inheritance in God ; and that, by reason of his immortality, he has a right to be helped, and not hin- dered, by the government which is the organ of society. If the England of Yictoria is different from that of Richard Second, if the present Archbishop of Canterbury is a holy apostle by the side of Courtenay or Arundel, if the story of what the kingdom then 312 WYCLIFFE AND THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE was appears to men now a ghastly dream — it is be- cause the Bible was made, through toil and strife and agony of blood, the common possession of the people who dwelt " on the sides of the North." 1 Thank God ! that the Book, which at Oxford and Lutterworth was first transferred, in its whole extent, to the English tongue, which this Society has so widely distributed, and for whose final revised trans- lation we now are looking, has been, is now, and shall be henceforth, the American Inheritance: expounded from the pulpit, taught in the household, at home in the school. It is not ours by our own effort, but by this struggle of many generations. It is not ours for our own time alone, but for the centuries which shall follow. The half-millennium which has passed since Wycliffe, the millennium since Alfred founded his " Dooms " on its Commandments, have not wasted its force. With a divine energy it works to-day, on every hand, for grace and greatness. No future age will cease to need its law, and truth, and inspiration. To us is given the humbler work of making it gen- eral and permanent in the land, as others for us have made it free. In the measure of our indebtedness to them, are we responsible for this future. Let us not be unmindful of the great obligation ! Let us rival, at least, their zeal for freedom, their devotion to truth, if we may not rival that invincible courage which 1 ' ' Almost a hundred and fifty years before Luther, nearly the same doctrines as he taught had been maintained by Wyckliffe, whose dis- ciples, usually called Lollards, lasted as a numerous, though obscure and proscribed sect, till, aided by the confluence of foreign streams, they swelled into the Protestant Church of England." — Hallam, "Const. Hist, of Eng.," Vol. I, page 57. 313 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES shrank not from prisons, and was friendly with Death : that these our years of noisy whirl may have in them still the moral forces which gave to theirs majestic renown ; that the frame of free government, and of spiritual worship, builded on their immortal foundations, may be worthy the grand and costly life which cemented its base; that the latest age of American History still may repeat those words of Wycliffe, written amid the heavy glooms which now are scattered, and in the front of menacing perils which now are not : " I am assured that the truth of the gospel may, indeed, for a time, be cast down in particular places, and may, for a while, abide in silence, in consequence of the threats of Antichrist ; but extinguished it never can be. For the Truth itself has said, ' Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall never pass ' ! " 314 VI THE NEW YORK AND BROOKLYN BRIDGE An Oration delivered at the Opening of the Bridge, May 24, 1883. VI THE NEW YOEK AND BROOKLYN" BRIDGE Mr. Chaikman — Fellow-Citizens : It can surprise no one that we celebrate the com- pletion of this great work, in which lines of delicate and. aerial grace are combined with a strength more enduring than of marbles, and the woven wires pro- long to these heights the metropolitan avenues. After delays which have often disturbed the popular pa- tience, and have oftener disappointed the hopes of the builders, we gratefully welcome this superb consum- mation: rejoicing to know that " the silver streak" which so long has divided this city from the continent, is conquered, henceforth, by the silver band stretching above it, careless alike of wind and tide, of ice and fog, of current and of calm. To the mind which, for fourteen years, has watched, guided and governed the work, looking out upon it through physical organs almost fatally smitten in its prosecution, we bring our eager and unanimous tribute of honor and applause. He who took up, elaborated, and has brought to fulfilment the plans of the father, whose own life had been sacrificed in their further- ance, has builded to both the noblest memorial. He may with truth have said, heretofore, as the furnaces 317 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES have glowed from which this welded network has come, in the words of Schiller's " Lay of the Bell " : Deep hid within the nether cell What Force with Fire is moulding thus, In yonder airy towers shall dwell, And witness wide and far of us. He may, at this hour, add for himself the lines which the poet hears from the lips of his House-Master : My house is built upon a rock, And sees unmoved the stormy shock Of waves that fret below. It must be a superlative moment in life when one stands on a structure as majestic as this which was at first a mere thought in the brain, which was after- ward a plan on the paper, and which has been trans- ported hither, from quarry and mine, from wood-yard and workshop, on the point of his pencil. He would be the first to acknowledge also, if he were speaking, the intelligent, faithful, indefatigable service rendered in execution of his plans by those who have been associated with him, as assistant engi- neers, as master mechanics, or as trained, trusted and experienced workmen. On their knowledge and vigi- lance, their practised skill and patient fidelity, the work has of necessity largely depended for its com- pleted grace and strength. They have wrought the zealous labor of years into all parts of it ; and it will bear to them hereafter, as it does to-day, most honor- able witness. Some of our honored fellow-citizens, who have borne a distinguished part in this enterprise, are no more here to share our festivities. Mr. John H. Prentice, 318 THE NEW YORK AND BROOKLYN BRIDGE for years the Treasurer of the Board, wise in counsel, of a liberal yet a watchful economy, of incorruptible integrity, passed, from the earth two years ago ; but to those who knew him his memory is as fresh as the verdure above his grave at Greenwood. More lately, one who had been from the outset associated with what to many appeared this visionary plan, to whose capacity and experience, his legal skill, his legislative influence, his social distinction, the work has been always largely indebted, and who was for years the President of the Board, has followed into the silent land. It is a grief to all who knew him that he is not here to see the consummation of labors and plans which for years had occupied his life. But his face and figure are before us, almost as distinctly as if he were present ; and it will be only the dullest forgetful- ness which can ever cease to connect with this Bridge the name of the accomplished scholar, the experienced diplomatist, the untiring worker, the cordial and ever- helpful friend, Mr. Henry C. Murphy. But others remain to whom the work has brought its burdens, of labor, care and long solicitude, some- times, no doubt, of a public criticism whose imperious sharpness they may have felt, but who have followed their plans to completion, without wavering or pause ; who have, indeed, expanded those plans as the progress of the work has suggested enlargement ; and who, to-day, enter the reward which belongs to those who, after promoting a magnificent enterprise, see it ac- complished. Among them are two who were asso- ciated with it at the beginning, and who have con- tinued so associated from that day to this — Mr. William C. Kingsley, Mr. James S. T. Stranahan. 319 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES The judgment cannot be mistaken which affirms that to these men, more than to any other citizens remain- ing among us, the prosecution of this work to its crowning success is properly ascribed. They are the true orators of the hour. We may praise, but they have builded. On the tenacity of their purpose, of which that of these combining wires only presents the physical image, — on the lift of their wills, stronger than of these consenting cables, — the immense struc- ture has risen to its place. No grander work has it been given to men to do for the city, which will feel the unfailing impulse of their foresight and "courage, their wisdom in counsel, and their resolute service, to the end of its history ! Mr. William Marshall and Gen. Henry W. Slocum, were also connected with the work at the outset, and, with intervals in the period of their service, have given it important assistance to the end ; while others are with us who have joined with intelligence, enthusiasm and helpfulness in the councils of the Board at different times. We rejoice in the presence of all those who, earlier or later, have taken part in the plans, at once vast and minute, which now are realized. We offer them the tribute of our admiring and grateful esteem. We trust that their remem- brance of the work they have accomplished, and their personal experience of its manifold benefits, may con- tinue through many happy years. And we congratu- late ourselves, as well as them, that the city will keep the memorial of them, not in yonder tablets alone, but in the great fabric above which those stand, while stone and steel retain their strength. But, after all, the real builder of this surpassing and 320 THE NEW YORK AND BROOKLYN BRIDGE significant structure has been the people ; whose watchfulness of its progress has been constant, whose desire for its benefits has been the incentive behind its plans, by whom its treasury has been supplied, whose exultant gladness now welcomes its success. The people of New York have illustrated anew their magnanimous spirit in cheerfully supplying their share of the cost, though not anticipating from such large outlay direct reliefs and signal advantages. The people of Brooklyn have shown at least an intelligent, intrepid and far-sighted sagacity, in readily accept- ing the immediate burdens in expectation of future returns. Such a popular achievement is one to be proud of. St. Petersburg could be commenced one hundred and eighty years ago — almost to a day, on May 27th, 1703 — and could afterward be built, by the will of an autocrat, to give him a new center of empire, with a nearer outlook over Europe ; its palaces rising on arti- ficial foundations, which it cost, it is said, one hundred thousand lives in the first year to lay. Paris could be reconstructed, twenty-five years ago, by the mandate of an emperor, determined to make it more beautiful than before, to open new avenues for guns and troops, to give to its laborers, who might become trouble- some, desired occupation. But not only have these cities of ours been founded, built, reconstructed by the people, but this charming and mighty avenue in the air, by which they are henceforth rebuilt into one, is to the people's honor and praise. It shows what multitudes, democratically organized, can do if they will. It will show, to those who shall succeed us, to what largeness of enterprise, what patience of pur- u 321 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES pose, what liberal wisdom, the populations now ruling these associated cities were competent in their time. It takes the aspect, as so regarded, of a durable monu- ment to Democracy itself. We congratulate the mayors of both the cities, with their associates in the government of them, on the public spirit manifested by both, on the ampler oppor- tunities offered to each, and on those intimate alliances between them which are a source of happiness to both, and which are almost certainly prophetic of an organic union to be realized hereafter. And we trust that the crosses, encircled by the laurel wreath, on the original seal of New Amsterdam, with the Dutch legend of this city, " Union makes Strength," may continue to describe them, whether or not stamped upon parch- ments and blazoned on banners, as long as human eyes shall see them. The work now completed is of interest to both cities, and its enduring and multiplying benefits will be found, we are confident, to be common, not local. We who have made and steadfastly kept our homes in Brooklyn, and who are fond and proud of the city — for its fresh, bracing and healthful air, and the bril- liant outstretch of sea and land which opens from its Heights; for its scores of thousands of prosperous homes ; for its unsurpassed schools, its cooperating churches, the social temper which pervades it, the in- dependence and enterprise of its journals, and the local enthusiasms which they fruitfully foster ; for its gen- eral liberality, and the occasional splendid examples of individual munificence which have given it fame ; for its recent but energetic institutions, of literature, art and a noble philanthropy ; and for the stimulating 322 THE NEW YORK AND BROOKLYN BRIDGE enterprise and culture of the young life which is com- ing to command in it — we have obvious reason to re- joice in the work which brings us into nearer connec- tion with all that is delightful and all that is enriching in the metropolis, and with that diverging system of railways, overspreading the continent, which has in the commercial capital its natural center of radiation. We have no word of criticism to speak, only words of most hearty admiration, for the safe and speedy water-service on the lines of the ferries which has given us heretofore such easy transportation from city to city, without delays that were not unavoidable, and with remarkable exemption from disaster. So far as human carefulness and skill could assure safety and speed, in the midst of conditions unfriendly to both, the management of these ferries has been peerless, their success unsurpassed. To them is due, in largest measure, the rapid growth already here realized. They have formed the indispensable arteries, of supply and transmission, through which the circulating life-blood has flowed, and their ministry to this city has been constant and vital. But we confess ourselves glad to reach, with surer certainty and a greater rapidity, the libraries and galleries, the churches and the homes, as well as the resorts of business and of pleasure, with which we are now in instant connection ; and the ho- rizon widens around us as we touch with more immedi- ate contact the lines of travel which open hence to the edges of the continent. If we have not as much to offer in immediate re- turn, we have, at least, a broad expanse of uncovered acres within the city, for the easy occupation of those who wish homes, either modest or splendid, or who 323 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES shall wish such as the growth of the metropolis multi- plies its population into the millions, crowds its roofs higher toward the stars, and makes a productive silver mine of each several house-lot. And to those who visit us but at intervals we can open not only yonder park, set like an emerald in the great circular sweep of our boundaries from the waters of the Narrows to the waters of the Sound, but also their readiest approach to the ocean. The capital and the sea are henceforth brought to nearer neighborhood. Long Island bays and brooks and beaches are within readier reach of the town. The winds that have touched no other land this side of Cuba are more accessible to those who seek their tonic breath. The long roll of the surf on the shore breaks closer than before to office and mansion, and to tenement chamber. The benefits will, therefore, be reciprocal, which pass back and forth across this solid and stately frame- work ; and both cities will rejoice, we gladly hope, in the patience and labor, the disciplined skill, the large expenditure, of which it is the trophy and fruit. New York has now the unique opportunity to widen its boundaries to the sea, and around its brilliant civic shield, more stately and manifold than that of Achilles, by the aid of those who have wrought already these twisted bracelets and clasping cables, to set the glow- ing margin of the ocean-stream. This work is important, too, we cannot but feel, in wider relations ; for what it signifies, as for what it secures, and for all that it promises. Itself a repre- sentative product and part of the new civilization, one standing on it finds an outlook from it of larger cir- cumference than that of these cities. 324 THE NEW YORK AND BROOKLYN BRIDGE Every enterprise like this, successfully accomplished, becomes an incentive to others like it. It leads on to such, and supplies incessant encouragement to them. We may not know, or probably conjecture, what these are to be, in the city or the state, in the years that shall come. But, whatever they may be, for the more complete equipment of either with conditions of hap- piness and the instruments of progress, they will all take an impulse from that which here has been accom- plished. Such a trophy of triumph over an original obstacle of Nature will not contribute to sleep in oth- ers ; and whatever is needed of material improvement, throughout the state of which it is our pride to be citi- zens, will be only more surely and speedily supplied because of this impressive success. It is, therefore, most fitting to our festival that we are permitted to welcome to it the Chief Magistrate of the State, with those representing its different regions in the legislative councils. We rejoice to remember that the work before us has been assisted by the favor- ing action of those heretofore in authority in the state ; and we trust that to those now holding high offices in it, who are present to-day, the occasion will be one of pleasant experience, and of enlarged and reinforced expectation. Indeed, it is not extravagant to say that the future of the country opens before us, as we see what skill and will can do to overleap obstacles, and make nature subservient to human designs. So we gladly welcome these eminent men from other states ; while the pres- ence of the Executive Head of the Nation, and of some of the members of his cabinet, is appropriate to the time, as it is an occasion of sincere and profound 325 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES gratification to us all. "Without the concurrence of the national government, this structure, though pri- marily of local relations, as reaching across these navigable waters, could not have been built. "We feel assured that those honorably representing that gov- ernment, who favor its completion with their attend- ance, and in whose presence political differences are forgotten, will share with us in the joyful pride with which we regard it, and in the inspiring anticipation that the physical apparatus of civilization in the land is to take fresh impulse, not impediment or hindrance, from that which here has been effected. The day seems brought distinctly nearer when the nation, equipped with the latest implements furnished by science, shall master and use as never before its rich domain. Not only the modern spirit is here, even in emi- nence, which dares great effort for great advantage ; but the chiefest of modern instruments is here, which is the ancient untractable iron, transfigured into steel. It was a sign, and even a measure, of ancient de- generacy, when the Age of Gold was followed if not forgotten by one of Iron. Decadence of arts, of learning and laws, of society itself, was implied in the fact. The more intrepid intelligence, the more versa- tile energy, amid which we live, have achieved the success of combining the two : so that while it is true now, as of old, that " no mattock plunges a golden edge into the ground, and no nail drives a silver point into the plank," it is also true that, under the stimulus of the larger expenditure which the added supplies of gold make possible, the duller metal has taken a fine- 326 THE NEW YORK AND BROOKLYN BRIDGE ness, a brightness and hardness, with a tensile strength, before unfamiliar. The iron, as of old, quarries the gold, and cuts it out from river-bed and from rock. But, under the alchemy which gold applies, the iron takes nobler properties upon it. Converted into steel, in masses that would lately have staggered men's thoughts, it becomes the kingliest instrument of peoples for subduing the earth. Things dainty and things mighty are fashioned from it in equal abundance : — gun-carriage and cannon, with the solid platforms on which they rest ; the largest castings, and heaviest plates, as well as wheel, axle and rail, as well as screw or file or saw. It is shaped into the hulls of ships. It is built alike into column and truss, balcony, roof and springing dome. To the loom and the press, and the boiler from whose fierce and untiring heart their force is supplied, it is equally apt ; while, as drawn into delicate wires, it is coiled into springs, woven into gauze, sharpened into needles, twisted into ropes ; it is made to yield music in all our homes ; electric currents are sent upon it, along our streets, around the world ; it enables us to talk with correspondents afar, or it is knit, as before our eyes, into the new and noble causeways of pleasure and of commerce. I hardly think that we yet appreciate the significance of this change which has passed upon iron. It is the industrial victory of the century, not to have heaped the extracted gold in higher piles, or to have crowded the bursting vaults with accumulated silver, but to have conferred, by the sovereign touch of scientific invention, flexibility, grace, variety of use, an almost ethereal and spiritual virtue, on the stubbornest of common metals. 327 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES The indications of physical achievement in the future, thus inaugurated, outrun the compass of human thought. Two bridges lie near each other, across the historical stream of the Moldau, under the shadow of the ancient and haughty palace at Prague — the one the picturesque bridge of St. Nepomuk, patron of bridges throughout Bohemia, of massive stone, which occupied a century and a half in its erection, and was finished almost four centuries ago, with stately statues along its sides, with a superb monument at its end, sustaining symbolic and portrait figures ; the other an iron suspension-bridge, built and finished in three years, a half century since, and singularly contrasting, in its lightness and grace, the somber solidity of the first. It is impossible to look upon the two without feeling how distinctly the different ages to which they belong are indicated by them, and how the ceremonial and military character of the centuries that are past has been superseded by the rapid and practical spirit of commerce. But the modern bridge is there a small one, and rests at the center on an island and a pier. The struc- ture before us, the largest of its class as yet in the world, in its swifter, more graceful, and more daring leap from bank to bank, across the tides of this arm of the sea, not only illustrates the bolder temper which is natural here, the readiness to attempt unparalleled works, the disdain of difficulties in unfaltering reliance on exact calculation, but, in the material out of which it is wrought, it shows the new supremacy of man over the metal which, in former time, he scarcely could use save for rude and coarse implements. The steel of the blades of Damascus or Toledo is not here needed ; nor that of the chisel, the knife-blade, the watch-spring, 328 THE NEW YORK AND BROOKLYN BRIDGE or the surgical instrument. But the steel of the medi- eval lance-head or saber was hardly finer than that which is here built into a Castle, which the sea cannot shake, whose binding cement the rains cannot loosen, and before whose undecaying parapets open fairer visions of island and town, of earth, water and sky, than from any fortress along the Rhine. There is inexhaustible promise in the fact. Of course, too, there is impressively before us — installed as on this fair and brilliant civic throne — that desire for swiftest intercommunication between towns and districts divided from each other, which belongs to our times, and which is to be an energetic, enduring and salutary force in moulding the nation. The years are not distant in which separated com- munities regarded each other with aversion and dis- trust, and the effort was mutual to raise barriers between them, not to unite them in closer alliance. Now, the traffic of one is vitally dependent on the industries of the other ; the counting-room in the one has the factory or the warehouse tributary to it es- tablished in the other ; and the demand is imperative that the two be linked, by all possible mechanisms, in a union as complete as if no chasm had opened be- tween them. So these cities are henceforth united ; and so all cities, which may minister to each other, are bound more and more in intimate combinations. Santa Fe, which soon celebrates the third of a mil- lennium since its foundation, reaches out its connections toward the newest log-city in "Washington Territory ; and the oldest towns upon our seaboard find allies in those that have risen, like exhalations, along the Western lakes and rivers. 329 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES This mighty and symmetrical band before us seems to stand as the type of all that immeasurable, com- municating system which is more completely with every year to interlink cities, to confederate States, to make one country of our distributed imperial domain, and to weave its history into a vast, harmonious con- texture, as messages fly instantaneously across it, and the rapid trains rush back and forth, like shuttles upon a mighty loom. It is not fanciful, either, to feel that in all its his- tory, and in what is peculiar in its constitution, it be- comes a noble, visible symbol of that benign Peace amid which its towers and roadway have risen, and which, we trust, it may long continue to signalize and to share. We may look at this moment on the site of the ship- yard from which, in March, 1862, twenty-one years ago, went forth the unmasted and raft-like " Monitor," with its flat decks, its low bulwarks, its guarded mech- anism, its heavy armament, and its impenetrable revolving turret, to that near battle with the " Merri- mac," on which, as it seemed to us at the time, the destiny of the nation was perilously poised. The material of which the ship was wrought was largely that which is built in beauty into this luxurious lofty fabric. But no contrast could be greater among the works of human genius than between the compact and rigid solidity into which the iron had there been forged and wedged and rammed, and these waving and graceful curves, swinging downward and up, al- most like blossoming festooned vines along the per- fumed Italian lanes ; this alluring roadway, resting on towers which rise like those of ancient cathedrals ; this 330 THE NEW YORK AND BROOKLYN BRIDGE lacework of threads, interweaving their separate deli- cate strengths into the complex solidity of the whole. The ship was for war, and the Bridge is for peace : — the product of it ; almost, one might say, its express palpable emblem, in its harmony of proportions, its dainty elegance, its advantages for all, and its ample con- venience. The deadly raft, floating level with waves, was related to this ethereal structure, whose finest curves are wrought in the strength of toughest steel. We could not have had this except for that unsightly craft, which at first refused to be steered, which bumped headlong against our piers, which almost sank while being towed to the field of its fame, and which, at last, when its mission was fulfilled, found its grave in the deep over whose waters, and near their line, its shattering lightnings had been shot. This structure will stand, we fondly trust, for generations to come, even for centuries, while metal and granite retain their coherence; not only emitting, when the wind surges or plays through its network, that aerial music of which it is the mighty harp, but representing to every eye the manifold bonds of interest and affec- tion, of sympathy and purpose, of common political faith and hope, over and from whose mightier chords shall rise the living and unmatched harmonies of con- tinental gladness and praise. While no man, therefore, can measure in thought the vast processions — forty millions a year, it already is computed — which shall pass back and forth across this pathway, or shall pause on its summit to survey the vast and bright panorama, to greet the break of summer morning, or watch the pageant of closing day, we may hope that the one use to which it never will 331 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES need to be put is that of war ; that the one tramp not to be heard on it is that of soldiers marching to battle ; that the only wheels whose roll it shall not be called to echo are the wheels of the tumbrils of troops and artillery. Born of peace, and signifving peace, may its mission of peace be uninterrupted, till its strong towers and cables fall ! If such expectations shall be fulfilled, of mechanical invention ever advancing, of cities and states linked more closely, of beneficent peace assured to all, it is impossible to assign any limit to the coming expansion and opulence of these cities, or to the influence which they shall exert on the developing life of the country. Cities have often, in other times, been created by war; as men were crowded together in them, the better to escape the whirls of strife by which the un- walled districts were ravaged, or the more effectively to combine their force against threatening foes. And it is a striking suggestion of history that to the fright- ful ravages of the Huns — swarthy, ill-shaped, fero- cious, destroying — may have been due the Great Wall of China, for the protection of its remote towns, as to them, on the other hand, was certainly due the foun- dation of Yenice. The first inhabitants of what has been since that queenly city, along whose liquid and level streets the traveler passes, between palaces, churches and fascinating squares, in constant delight — its first inhabitants fled before Attila, to the flooded lagoons which were afterward to blossom into the beauty of a consummate art. The fearful crash of blood and fire in which Aquileia and Padua fell smote Yenice into existence. But even the city thus born of war must afterward 332 THE NEW YORK AND BROOKLYN BRIDGE be built up by peace, when the strifes which had pushed it to its sudden beginning had died into the distant silence. The fishing industry, the manufacture of salt, the timid commerce, gradually expanding till it left the rivers and sought the sea, these, with other related industries, had made Venetian galle3 T s known on the eastern Mediterranean before the immense rush of the crusades crowded tumultuously over its quays and many bridges. Its variety of industry, and its commercial connections, turned that vast movement into another source of wealth. It rose rapidly to that naval supremacy which enabled it to capture piratical vessels and wealthy galleons, to seize or sack Ionian cities, to storm Byzantium, and make the south of Greece its suburb. Its manufactures were multiplied. Its dockyards were thronged with busy workmen. Its palaces were crowded with precious and famous works of art, while themselves marvels of beauty. St. Mark's unfolded its magnificent loveliness above the great square. In the palace adjoining was the seat of a dominion at the time unsurpassed, and still brilliant in history ; and it was in no fanciful or exaggerated pride that the Doge was wont yearly, on Ascension Day, to wed the Adriatic with a ring, as the bride- groom weds the bride. Dreamlike as it seems, equally with Amsterdam, the larger and richer " Yenice of the North," it was erected by hardy hands. The various works and arts of peace, with a prosperous commerce, were the real piles, sunken beneath the flashing surface, on which church and palace, piazza and arsenal, all arose. It was only when these unseen supports secretly failed that advancement ceased, and the horses of St. Mark 333 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES at last were bridled. Not all the wars, with Genoa, Hungary, with Western Europe, the Greek Empire, or the Ottoman — not earthquake, plague, or conflagra- tion, though by all it was smitten — overwhelmed the city whose place in Europe had been so distinguished. The decadence of enterprise, the growing discredit put upon industry, the final discovery by Yasco da Gama of the passage around the Cape of Good Hope, divert- ing traffic into new channels — these laid their silent and tightening grasp on the power of Venice, till the salt seaweed Clung to the marble of her palaces, and the glory of the past was merged in a gloom which later centuries have not lightened. There is a lesson and a promise in the fact. New York itself may almost be said to have sprung from war ; as the vast excitements of the forty years' wrestle between Spain and its revolted provinces gave incentive, at least, to the settlement of New Nether- land. But the city, since its real development was begun, has been almost wholly built up by peace ; and the swiftness of its progress in our own time, which challenges parallel, shows what, if the ministry of this peace shall continue, may be looked for in the future. When the Dutch traders raised their storehouse of logs on yonder untamed and desolate strand, perhaps as early as 1615 ; when the Walloons established their settlement on this side of the river, in 1624, at that " Walloons' Bay " which we still call the Wallabout ; or when, later, in 1626, Manhattan Island, estimated to contain 22,000 acres, was purchased from the Indians for $24, paid in beads, buttons and trinkets, 334 THE NEW YORK AND BROOKLYN BRIDGE and the Block House was built, with cedar palisades, on the site of the Battery, it is, of course, common- place to say that they who had come hither could scarcely have had the least conception of what a career they thus were commencing for two great cities. But it is not so wholly commonplace to say that those who saw this now wealthy and splendid New York a hundred years since, less conspicuous than Boston, far smaller than Philadelphia, with its first bank es- tablished in 1784, and not fully chartered till seven years later ; with its first daily paper in 1785 ; its first ship in the Eastern trade returning in May of the same year; its first directory published in 1786, and containing only 900 names ; its Broadway extending only to St. Paul's ; with the grounds about Reacle Street grazing-fields for cattle, and with ducks still shot in that Beekman's Swamp which the traffic in leather has since made famous : or those who saw it even fifty years ago, when its population was little more than one-third of the present population of this younger city; when its first mayor had not been chosen by popular election ; when gas had but lately been introduced, and the superseding of the primitive pumps by Croton water had not yet been projected — they, all, could hardly have imagined what already the city should have become — the recognized center of the commerce of the continent ; one of the principal cities of the world. So those who have lived in this city from childhood, and who hardly yet claim the dignities of age, could scarcely have conjectured, when looking on what Mr. Murphy recalled as the village of his youth, " a ham- let of a hundred houses," that it should have become, 335 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES in our time, a city of nearly 70,000 dwelling-houses, occupied by twice as many families ; with a popula- tion, by the census rates, of little less than 700,000; with more than 150,000 children in its public and private schools; with 330 miles of paved streets, as many as last year in New York, and with more than 200 additional miles impatiently waiting to be paved ; with 130 miles of street railway track, over which last year 88,000,000 passengers were carried; with nearly 2,500 miles of telegraph and telephone wire knitting it together; with 35,000,000 gallons of water, the best on the continent, to which 20,000,000 more are soon to be added, daily distributed in its houses, through 360 miles of pipe ; with an aggregate value of real property exceeding certainly $400,- 000,000 ; with an annual tax levy of $6,500,000 ; with manufactures in it whose reported product in 1880 was $103,000,000 ; with a water-front, of pier, dock, basin, canal, already exceeding twenty-five miles, and not as yet half developed, at which lies shipping from all the world, more largely than at the piers of New York ; and, finally, with what to most modern com- munities appears to flash as a costly but brilliant dia- mond necklace, a public debt, beginning now to di- minish, it is true, but still approaching, in net amount, $37,500,000 ! The child watches, in happy wonder, the swelling film of soapy water into whose iridescent globe he has blown the speck from the bowl of the pipe. But this amazing development around us is not of airy and vanishing films. It is solidly constructed, in marble and brick, in stone and iron, while the proportions to which it has swelled surpass precedent, and rebuke 336 THE NEW YORK AND BROOKLYN BRIDGE the timidity of the boldest prediction. But that which has built it has been simply the industry, manifold, constant, going on in these cities, to which peace offers incentive and room. Their future advancement is to come in like man- ner: not through a prestige derived from their his- tory ; not by the gradual increments of their wealth, already collected; not by the riches which they invite to themselves from other cities and distant coasts ; not even from their beautiful fortune of location ; but by prosperous manufactures prosecuted in them ; by the traffic which radiates over the country ; by the foreign commerce which, in values increasing every year, seeks this harbor. Each railway whose rapid wheels roll hither, from east or west, from north or south, from the rocks of Newfoundland or the copper deposits of Lake Superior, from the orange groves of Florida, the Louisiana bayous, the silver ridges of the "West, the Golden Gate, gives its guaranty of growth to the still young metropolis. On the cotton fields of the South, and its sugar plantations ; on coal mines, and iron mines ; on the lakes which winter roofs with ice, and from which drips refreshing coolness through our summer ; on fisheries, factories, wheat-fields, pine forests; on meadows wealthy with grains or grass, and orchards bending beneath their burdens, this en- larging prosperity must be maintained ; and on the steamships, and the telegraph lines, which interweave us with all the world. The swart miner must do his part for it ; the ingenious workman, in whatever de- partment ; the ploughman in the field, and the fish- erman on the banks ; the man of science, putting Nature to the question; the laborer, with no other v 337 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES capital than his muscle ; the sailor on the sea, wher- ever commerce opens its wings. Our Arch of Triumph is, therefore, fitly this Bridge of Peace. Our Brandenburg Gate, bearing on its summit no car of military victory, is this great work of industrial skill. It stands, not, like the Arch famous at Milan, outside the city, but in the midst of these united and busy populations. And if the tranquil public order which it celebrates and prefigures shall continue as years proceed, not London itself, a century hence, will surpass the compass of this united city by the sea, in which all civilized nations of mankind have already their many representatives, and to which the world shall pay an increasing annual tribute. And so the last suggestion comes, which the hour presents, and of which the time allows the expression. It was not to an American mind alone that we owed the " Monitor," of which I have spoken, but also to one trained in Swedish schools, the Swedish army, and representing that brave nationality. It is not to a native American mind that the scheme of construction carried out in this Bridge is to be ascribed, but to one representing the German peoples, who, in such enrich- ing and fruitful multitudes, have found here their home. American enterprise, American money, built them both. But the skill which devised, and much, no doubt, of the labor which wrought them, came from afar. Local and particular as is the work, therefore, it re- presents that fellowship of the nations which is more and more prominently a fact of our times, and which gives to these cities incessant augmentation. When, by and by, on yonder island the majestic French statue 338 THE NEW YORK AND BROOKLYN BRIDGE of Liberty shall stand, holding in its hand the radiant crown of electric flames, and answering by them to those as brilliant along this causeway, our beautiful bay will have taken what specially illuminates and adorns it from Central and from "Western Europe. The distant lands from which oceans divide us, though we touch them each moment with the fingers of the telegraph, will have set this conspicuous double crown on the head of our harbor. The alliances of nations, the peace of the world, will seem to find illustrious prediction in such superb and novel regalia. Friends and Fellow-citizens : Let us not forget that, in the growth of these cities, henceforth united, and destined ere long to be formally one, lies either a threat, or one of the conspicuous promises of the time. Cities have always been powers in history. Athens educated Greece, as well as adorned it, while Corinth filled the throbbing and thirsty Hellenic veins with poisoned blood. The weight of Constantinople broke the Roman Empire asunder. The capture of the same magnificent city gave to the Turks their establishment in Europe for the following centuries. Even where they have not had such a commanding preeminence of location, the social, political, moral force proceeding from cities has been vigorous in impression, immense in extent. The passion of Paris, for a hundred years, has created or directed the sentiment of France. Berlin is more than the legislative or administrative center of the German Empire. Even a government as autocratic as that of the Czar, in a country as un- developed as Russia, has to consult the popular feeling of St. Petersburg or of Moscow. In our nation, political power is widely distributed, 339 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES and the largest or wealthiest commercial center can have but its share. Great as is the weight of the ag- gregate vote in these henceforth compacted cities,. the vote of the state will always overbear it. Amid the suffrages of the nation at large, it can only be reck- oned as one of many consenting or conflicting factors. But the influence which constantly proceeds from these cities — on their journalism, not only, or on the issues of their book-presses, or on the multitudes going forth from them, but on the example presented by them of intellectual, social, religious life — this, for shadow and check, or for fine inspiration, is already of unlimited extent, of incalculable force. It must increase as they expand, and are lifted before the country to a new elevation. A larger and a smaller sun are sometimes associated, astronomers tell us, to form a binary center in the heavens, for what is, doubtless, an unseen system re- ceiving from them impulse and light. On a scale not utterly insignificant, a parallel may be hereafter sug- gested in the relation of these combined cities to a part, at least, of our national system. Their attitude and action during the war — successfully closed under the gallant military leadership of men whom we gladly welcome and honor — were of vast advantage to the national cause. The moral, political, intellec- tual temper, which dominates in them, as years go on, will touch with beauty, or scar with scorching and baleful heats, extended regions. Their religious life, as it glows in intensity, or with a faint and failing- luster, will be repeated in answering image' from the widening frontier. The beneficence which gives them grace and consecration, and which, as lately, they fol- 340 THE NEW YORK AND BROOKLYN BRIDGE low to the grave with universal benediction, or, on the other hand, the selfish ambitions which crowd and crush along their streets, intent only on accumulated wealth and its sumptuous display, or the glittering vices which they accept and set on high — these will make their impression on those who never cross the continent to our homes, to whom our journals are but names. Surely, we should not go from this hour, which marks a new era in the history of these cities, and which points to their future indefinite expansion, without the purpose in each of us, that, so far forth as in us lies, with their increase in numbers, wealth, equipment, shall also proceed, with equal step, their progress in whatever is noblest and best in private and in public life ; that all which sets humanity for- ward shall come in them to ampler endowment, more renowned exhibition : so that, linked together, as hereafter they must be, and seeing " the purple deep- ening in their robes of power," they may be always increasingly conscious of fulfilled obligation to the nation and to God ; may make the land, at whose magnificent gateway they stand, their constant debtor ; and may contribute their mighty part toward that ultimate perfect Human Society for which the seer could find no image so meet or so majestic as that of a city, coming down from above; its stones laid with fair colors, its foundations with sapphires, its windows of agates, its gates of carbuncles, and all its borders of pleasant stones, with the sovereign promise resplendent above it, — "And great shall be the peace of thy children ! " 341 YII MANLINESS IN THE SCHOLAR The Chancellor's Oration, delivered at the Eighty-sixth Commence- ment of Union College, 1883. VII MANLINESS IN THE SCHOLAR Eckekmann tells us, in his interesting report of talks with Goethe, that once, when looking with him at some engravings, the poet said : " These are really good things. You have before you the work of men of very fair talents, who have learned something, and have acquired no little taste and art. Still, something is wanting in all these pictures — the Manly. Take note of this word, and underscore it. The pictures lack a certain urgent power, which in former ages was generally expressed, but in which the present age is deficient ; and that with respect not only to painting, but to all the other arts." * This remark of the great German not unfrequently recurs to one as he stands before pictures, graceful in conception, harmonious in composition, radiant in color, but wanting in evident and predominant mo- tive ; and so wanting the dignity and charm which come only from an imperative spiritual impulse, im- parting significance to lines and tints. He thinks of it in reading many books, where the thoughts elabo- rated, or the knowledges assembled, seem quite suf- ficient to reward the attention, and where the style which commends them to such attention is nowise wanting in carefulness or elegance, but where there beats no pulse in the pages ; where no pervading and 345 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES animating spirit transforms what is written into a quickening personal message ; where the finest pas- sages have in them a certain moral inertness, and where the element, however indefinable, which changes words into powers, and makes sentences surprise us with fine inspirations, is palpably wanting. And we see the same thing, often and sadly, in the character and career of accomplished, capable, per- haps brilliant men, who eagerly aspire, but who never achieve; whose influence is perceptibly limited and languid, as compared with their powers ; from whom society, after a time, ceases to expect anything more than a transient entertainment; whose age is shadowed with the deepening sense of practical fail- ure, and who finally pass out of the communities which they seemed adapted to invigorate and to guide, with no results and no remembrances to be the abiding memorial of them. In how many such instances does this word of Goethe come back to the thoughts : " Something is wanting. It is the Manly. Take note of the word, and underscore it. There is a lack of urgent power." And that lack is as fatal to genuine and fruitful human success as the want of fire beneath the boiler is to the movement of the system of mechanism of which that should be the throbbing heart. But, on the other hand, sometimes we see this, in rich, bright, superb exhibition ; in writings, in art works, in the temper of men, and in their illustrative public careers. I do not think it extravagant to say that this special element, of native, habitual, govern- ing manliness, was as marked in him of whom fitting memorials remind us to-day, as in any whom I have 346 MANLINESS IN THE SCHOLAR personally known. 1 It was this which, first attracted me to him when he and I were young together. It was this for which, in large measure, I afterward ad- mired and honored him ; and the image of him which rises before me, even as I speak, without the help of library or of portrait, bears this characteristic with indelible clearness stamped upon it. Dr. Washburn was a master of many knowledges and generous accomplishments; who impressed one with the natural dignity of his thought, and his easy command of abundant acquisitions. He was a man in whose mental faculty, as well as in his face and his phys- ical frame, a rare gracefulness was intimately asso- ciated with disciplined strength. He united much of the spirit of the poet with the faith of the Christian, the learning of the student, and the discursive reason of the philosopher. He had studied many subjects, and his thinking upon them was uniformly just, fresh, wide in range, nobly stimulating, while he could hardly express himself in any form of action or of speech without a certain romantic elegance in what- ever he did — attractive to all, delightful to his friends. But, beyond all this, he was preeminently a manly man ; who was true to his convictions, and determined by his sense of practical duty, whatever might happen ; who never shrank into silence, nor retreated into inglo- rious indolence, before any opposition ; whose spirit, indeed, grew more elate, as he was hindered, antago- nized, threatened ; who was most buoyantly sure of his 1 On the day on which this Address was delivered, a portrait of Eev. Edward A. Washburn, D. D., was unveiled at Union College, in a library hall erected as a memorial of him, by members of Calvary Church, New York, and other friends. 347 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES end when to the timid the last chance of success seemed to have vanished. It was this more than any- thing else — or this as ennobling everything else — which fitted him for the positions, sometimes as haz- ardous as they were eminent, to which he was called. It gave him large influence over minds hardly less discerning than his own, and spirits as resolute. It made his life an occasion of gladness to those who did not meet him often, or hear his sermons, but who knew him to be, in every, fiber, a faithful, fearless and conse- crated scholar. It is this for which he will long be remembered by those who stood near him ; which gives, for some of us, peculiar sacredness to the serv- ices of this day ; which makes the thought of meeting him again, in realms more fair and high and perma- nent than those which lie on this side death, our familiar and happy hope. " Crown him with gold," wrote one who had known him long and well, writing with affectionate admiration after his death : Crown him with gold, the kingly crown of gold ! Where is there one of statelier grace or mien ? That lofty soul uplifting young and old On wings of glorious thought to realms unseen ! What though his head lie low beneath the sod, He lives a king and priest before our God. Pausing for a little, then, under the suggestions of so high an example, I do not know that any subject can be more suitable to this brief address, or more likely to convey to us healthful impulse, than that to which our thoughts are by the occasion naturally turned: the beauty and power of thorough Manliness in the instructed American scholar. The duty of cherishing 348 MANLINESS IN THE SCHOLAR this in ourselves will hardly fail to become apparent ; and the usefulness of great institutions of learning, in so far as they minister to this in those whom they educate, will need no other vindication. The subject is ethical, as well as literary ; but it is not, therefore, the less adapted to an hour overshadowed, as to some of us this is, by affectionate recollections, or thronged, as it is to many others, with eager hopes and large expectations. The question is, of course, concisely to be answered : What is implied in such essential manliness of spirit ? What principal elements must combine in the temper of the scholar "to constitute and complete it ? And the answer is not far to find. Certainly, Courage is essentially involved, and no true manliness can be realized where this is not pres- ent : — courage, as denoting not merely that keen in- stinct of battle which displays itself in stimulating excitements, in the heat of contest, in the crisis which pushes one to self-vindication, or. in passionate cham- pionship of favorite opinions, but as representing what is ampler than this, and also finer : strength of heart ; strength to endure as well as attack, to pursue and achieve as well as to attempt, to sacrifice self alto- gether, if need be, on behalf of any controlling con- viction. A thorough consent of judgment, conscience, imagination, affection, all vitalized and active, with a certain invincible firmness of will, as the effect of such a consent— this is implied in a really abounding and masterful courage. It is not impatient. It is not imperious. It is not the creature of fractious and vehement will-power in man. It is never allied with a passionate selfishness. It is associated with 349 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES great convictions, has its roots in profound moral ex- periences, is nourished by thoughts of God and the hereafter. It is as sensitive and gentle in spirit as it is persistent and highly resolved. It forms the base of sympathies, generosities, rather than of defiances. Its language is that of courtesy always, never of petulance, or of egotistic arrogance. A chivalric manner is natu- ral to it, especially toward those who are weak or alarmed — as natural as is his carol to the song-bird, or its interplay of colors to the flowering tulip. But though courteous, sympathetic, and ready for all genial affiliations, it is sufficient in itself, and quite independent of outward auxiliaries. Once established as an element of character, it is deepened and renewed with all experience. It is only compacted into more complete force before the shock of downright attack, and becomes supremely aspiring and confident when hostile forces rage against it. Such courage as this is everywhere at home, and is naturally master of all situations. Conspicuous on the battle-field, it may equally be shown in the journal or in the pulpit. It shines on the platform as clearly as in the senate; is as manifest in the frank and un- swerving announcement of principles which men hate, in the face of their hatred, as it is when the tempestu- ous winds, tearing the wave-tops into spoondrift, have caught the reeling ship in their clutch, and threaten to bury it in the deep. And wherever it is shown, it has in it something of the morally superlative. Men recog- nize a force which emergencies cannot startle, nor catastrophes overbear ; which possesses inexhaustible calmness and strength ; with which no intellectual faculties or acquired accomplishments can be com- 350 MANLINESS IN THE SCHOLAR pared, but from which all such take a value and splendor not their own. We know how history delights to turn from eloquent debates or picturesque pageants to present even partial portraits of this : as in the English soldier, biding the shock at Waterloo, wholly disdainful of the military science which declared him early and fatally beaten, unshaken in his spirit, and holding by that spirit his reeling standards to their perilous place, in spite of the tremendous assaults of artillery and cavalry which Napoleon hurled upon his rent and shattered squares ; or in prominent individual instances : as in William of Nassau, with treachery around him, a price on his head, a few divided provinces at his back, crowded almost literally into the sea, and clinging with hardly more than his finger-tips to the half -drowned land, yet front- ing, without one sense of fear or sign of hesitation, the utmost fury and force of Spain, though the armaments of that exasperated empire were pushed to their relent- less onset by the subtlety of Philip, the fierce energy of Alva, and the unwearied genius of Parma ; in the Wittenberg monk — the 400th anniversary of whose humble birth in the miner's cabin the world will recog- nize next November — going to the Diet with unfalter- ing step, though the veteran soldier told him as he passed that the pathway was more perilous than his own had been in the imminent deadly breach ; or in the venerable Malesherbes, volunteering his defense of the fore-doomed king before the frantic Convention at Paris, though perfectly knowing that that death by the guillotine which afterward overtook himself and his household must be the only reward of his devotion. Nothing else in biography or in history impresses 351 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES us more than this sovereign courage ; assured, unyield- ing, without impetuosity, but ready for any service or sacrifice. It has been not unfrequently the infrangi- ble diamond-pivot on which destinies have turned. "Whether or not connected with consequences so large, in its own majesty, it lifts prosaic and commonplace pages above the level of rhythmic ethics. It makes us aware of the vast possibilities implied in our nature. It knits the man in whom its utter self-poise appears with whatever is freest and lordliest in the universe. No power is too brilliant, and none too rare, to need the combination of this with itself in order most pro- foundly to move us. And no matter what the defects of one's manner, or the obvious imperfections of his faculty or his knowledge, a man who shows this is, by right, a leader of his fellows, having in him the stuff of heroical supremacy. I think that the American people, as distinctly at least as any other, will always demand this in those who aspire to instruct and to guide them. Our ancestors were sailors, soldiers, explorers — men who worked hard, lived roughly, dared greatly, suffered without flinching, died without moan; who purchased with the sword, not with the pen, the liberties which they wrung from reluctant power, and who set a bloody sign-manual to the charters which many of them certainly were not able to read. The stern and salutary training of the nation, on a continent so long remote from the Old World, its severe education in physical hardship, in great and novel political enter- prise, in moral struggle, in vast and repeated military contest, has only confirmed this victorious element in the national spirit. 352 MANLINESS IN THE SCHOLAR It has come to be a sort of inherited virtue, as if mingled with the iron and fibrin of the blood ; and any scholar, however familiar with manifold knowl- edges, however apt and copious in speech, who has not this, who is timid in his convictions, vague and hesitant in their expression, unwilling to take risks on their behalf, who fears opposition, is fettered before difficulty, or is daunted in heart by vociferous resist- ance — will certainly here have lost his chance of moral leadership. He must be free of the times before he can mould them. If his spirit is one that others can master or scare into silence, he may dismiss the thought of any high function, as belonging to him, when he stands in front of difficult work, or amid the sharp conflicts of human opinion. But a second force needs to be combined with this to give a supreme manliness to the scholar. It is that which Goethe appears to have had more or less in mind in his word to Eckermann — the transfiguring force of Moral Energy : what the Greeks denoted, in part at least, by that great word which is one of our inheritances from them : the effective, almost creative force, which sets things in movement, which seizes great ends, invents new methods, masters and applies all sorts of instruments, and which works with unfail- ing and impelling enthusiasm, kindling and quickening as well as controlling whatsoever it touches. Courage, without this, is apt to be sluggish and unimpressive, like the Black Knight in " Ivanhoe " till his spirit has been aroused. But with this it becomes an electrifying power, which stirs individuals, in- vigorates communities ; which multiplies weight by swiftness of purpose into mighty momentum, and w 353 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES which sets not unfrequently a great mark upon his- tory. This, too, is cognate to a governing element in our national character, and ought to be developed in largest measure in those who would reach and move and lead the public mind. It is the spirit of practical, unfatiguable, almost coercive energy, which achieves the great physical works of the country; which tunnels the hills, and throws the causeways over the chasms ; which turns the waste into gardens, tears out the metals from beneath the imprisoning strata of rock, or rolls across the outstretch of prairies the golden billows of the harvest ; which builds great cities, on what a few generations since were lonely strands or dreary swamps, which unites them by stately avenues in the air, or which rebuilds them in wider extent and nobler beauty when the flame has swept them with desola- ting stroke. It is steadily carving the obdurate con- tinent into millions of happy homesteads, and is set- ting the nation physically forward toward the future for which the fathers hoped ; and it no more can be stayed, in the march of this immense achievement, than the rising of the tide can be checked or diverted by an army setting batteries against it. Those who founded this nation brought such an invincible energy with them, having gathered it from those whose heroical life was the matrix of their own — in Holland or England, in Sweden or France, or Protestant Germany. Nothing else would have pushed them in venturous shallops over seas that had hardly felt a keel. Nothing less would have enabled them, after they got here, to conquer the wilderness, to turn marshes to meadows, to harness 354 MANLINESS IN THE SCHOLAR and curb the turbulent streams, and to make the grass grow upon the mountains. The whole subsequent work of the nation has renewed this. The real value of our institutions lies, more than in anything else, in the tendency which belongs to them to nourish and diffuse such practical energy ; and though an increas- ing general luxury may do much, no doubt, to impede or impair it, and though unparalleled material suc- cesses may divert it from the principal moral and social ends which it ought to subserve, it is not hazardous to predict that it is to continue a character- istic integrant part in the essential spirit of the people. To the Courage beneath, it will add its factor of intensity and celerity. The two combined will con- stitute a prevalent national temper so positive and effective that even a continent as rich as this in natural advantages is not too noble to be its theater; that from it that continent shall take on itself a fresh renown. The scholar must realize a like energy in himself, of character, feeling, and masculine purpose, if he would fulfil any adequate mission in the communities which he may affect, and in the years which offer him opportunity. Otherwise, his work will be simply ornamental, or wholly superfluous : and society might be pardoned if at last it should do with him, in effect, what the Dey of Algiers is said to have done with the captured French poet, whose chiming jingles he could not understand, who was clearly unfit for either laborer or soldier, and for whom he could find no use whatever till he set him to braiding the plumage of birds into feather-tunics. It is the want of this rich and resolute moral energy 355 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES which makes many astute and accomplished politicians entirely powerless among the plain people. They pretty much believe, but rather more doubt. They wait for the platform before defining their principles ; are afraid for their party, more afraid of their party ; and, lacking determining force in themselves, they get no sure and governing hold on the public intelligence. Their occasional successes are as absolutely a matter of mechanics as the making of buttons. With all their adroitness, all their assiduity, and in spite of the frequent brilliance of their speech, they slip toward oblivion, as the rocket-stick wavers noiselessly earth- ward from the air which it promised for a moment to enlighten. It is this want which, more frequently, I think, than anything else, deprives the cultivated preacher of re- ligion of any such commanding power as belonged to the men, less largely instructed, but more stalwart in spirit, who made pulpits famous half a century ago. "I myself also am a Man," said the apostle to the Roman centurion. He said it in humility, not in pride, but with a practical sense, no doubt, of all that it implied. And if one cannot say it after him, in the broadest significance, it is plain that he, at any rate, is not in succession from that primate of the Church. It is the want of such virile energy which often makes diligent students and dexterous writers as entirely in- effective when great interests are at stake, and sharp issues are being decided, as their walking-sticks would be in the rush and clash of a cavalry charge. We have had instances, on the other hand, of the power which comes with such incessant and masterful energy, abundant and signal in our own history. We 356 MANLINESS IN THE SCHOLAR have seen them abroad, in perhaps yet more impressive exhibition. Dr. Arnold, among educators, gave almost the superlative example of this force, in deli- cate yet robust development. His pupil and biogra- pher, whose name adds a charm even to Westminster Abbey, had caught it from him ; and it glows through the writings, as it glowed through the life, of the be- loved and honored Dean Stanley, like fire glowing in molten steel. The two great leaders of English po- litical thought and action, on the liberal side, in recent times — Mr. Bright and Mr. Gladstone— have had in such exuberant energy of purpose the real scepter of their strength. In a development perhaps narrower and more selfish, but not less intense, of this vehement force, stinging in sarcasm, flashing into epigram, keeping every faculty always at its height, making him daring in invention, insolent in attack, unsubdu- able in defeat, lay one chief secret of the enigmatical and fascinating power of him whose hold on the Eng- lish imagination gave him a place so high and unique in English history — the Oriental dandy, novelist and prime minister, Lord Beaconsfield. It is certain that no man in this country, with the turbulent elements swirling around him, and in the times which wait before him, will be of real and widening power, or of service to the welfares which he ought to subserve, in whom this force of a system- atic and conquering energy does not appear. And it comes only — or comes, at least, in fullest ex- hibition, and comes to stay — to him whose life is passed among books, and whose habit is of reflection and inquiry, from great convictions: in which the whole personal life of the soul finds exhilarating lib- 357 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES erty and unfailing motive and by which it is pushed to the utmost exertion of every power to make what to it is regal in thought, supreme and shining to other minds. Thus, only, one achieves a clear independence of the shifting opinions which play back and forth in the air of society, as clouds across the summer day, with an equal independence of malign opposition, or of vicissitudes of fortune. He has secure freedom, and vital inspiration, within himself. There is, of course, an evanescent excitement of feeling produced by picturesque novelties in doctrine, which for the moment engage the fancy, and are counted as true because they are novel. They are the iron-pyrites of opinion, essentially worthless, though glittering almost like golden flakes. There is some- times a vivid enthusiasm, not always lasting, but fervid and quickening while it continues, which is generated in men by their eager apprehension of what to them appears justified in thought, though it has no hold on the permanent and general conviction of man- kind. Their fondness for it becomes more passionate because it is an outcast from other men's minds, and their championship has a special earnestness because their conviction about it is singular. The advocates of new things, the deniers of the old, in religion or philosophy; in ethics, art, or social science, often show ■ this impulse ; and it is not to be reckoned a thing of no consequence. It not unfrequently contributes largely to the impact of their opinions, however fan- tastic, upon the minds which they address. But still the old are the living and magisterial truths — old as the race, and still as un wasted in their spiritual supremacy as is the sunshine by all the eyes 358 MANLINESS IN THE SCHOLAR which have felt its blessing, as is the atmosphere by all the transient noisy concussions which have startled its echoes. Among them are two, which are plainly preeminent as sources of personal independence in man, and of that unfaltering moral energy which is the essential secret of power. In order to gain these, one needs the assurance, fundamental in his mind, of the dignity of Man's nature, of the rights which be- long to it, of the properly subordinate relation to its development of all institutions, of the unbounded fu- tures waiting for it. He needs as well, as in fact the basis of the other, an equally clear and exalting con- viction of the being, the character, the authority of God, and of those affiliations of thought and spirit in which the imperfect human soul may stand toward him in immortal alliance. A man in whom these convictions are cardinal, always present, always ex- alting, is free of chance and change and combat. He has supremacy of expectation and enterprise in his own soul. In one sense, at least, he has entered the per- fect law of liberty; and no allurements, and no at- tacks, can limit his independence, emasculate his cour- age, or rob him of the fulness of an intrepid and sovereign energy. I call your attention the more gladly to this, be- cause there are influences now actively at work to dis- credit in men's minds these principal truths ; perhaps to wholly displace them from the primacy which they long have held in the best human thought. Agnos- ticism affirms the true knowledge of God a thing un- attainable. His personality is to it an unproved hypothesis. It feels force, recognizes order, and formulates law ; but the God of the Hebrew and the 359 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES Christian faith it knows nothing about, since no lenses discern Him, and no chemical reagents bring out to exhibition on the palimpsest of nature the distinct in- scriptions of His divine hand. Miracles, therefore, it sets wholly aside. Providence is a dream of the fanciful. Prayer has its efficacy in the impression which it leaves on the supplicating heart. The Bible is the accredited literature of half -civilized tribes, as- sociating the utterances of many devout, but often mistaken, human minds, to which our age owes no allegiance ; and the Church is simply a social institu- tion, for pleasant assemblages, for ethical culture, per- haps for the exercise and discipline of taste, or the furtherance of humane and educational enterprise. The supernatural, on this scheme, is eliminated from the sphere of human thought ; and even the natural loses meaning and majesty by ceasing to be connected with that. So Man, as well, is displaced from that spiritual rank in the creation which the sacred books of Christendom recognize. His nature is regarded as evolved from the brutal ; mind coming out of matter, and conscious- ness being developed by chemical action, without the intervening energy of God. Conscience is not of di- vine inspiration, but the summary product of human experience. Responsibility to a divine government is reckoned a shadowy legend of the past, or a dreary dream of morbid minds. Immortality itself becomes, at most, a doubtful hypothesis — " a grand perchance." I am not now concerned with either of these recent fashions of thinking, save as they stand in one relation. But it seems as plain as are the stars on an unclouded night that either or both of them — and they are essen- 360 MANLINESS IN THE SCHOLAR tially intimately connected — will dry the sources, and stay the strength, of that masterful freedom and moral energy which the scholars of our time eminently need. Certainly, if history has any lesson pertinent to the subject, it indicates this. The faith which faced the dungeon and flame, and the Libyan panther, without flinching or fear, had no agnostic element in it. The heroic endeavor, and more heroic endurance, which conquered the Roman empire to the cross, which after- ward curbed, and finally converted to rich enthusi- asms, the awful frenzy of the ages that followed ; which, by missionary sacrifice never equalled in the world, enlightened, tamed and transformed barba- rians, making Christian peoples out of the vagrant, painted savages, your ancestors and mine ; which built cathedrals, universities, hospitals, and gave to Europe its character and its culture — these were not founded upon doubts about God, or on mean and ignoble con- ceptions of Man. Their inspiration was in the peren- nial and paramount truths of both the Testaments. Men like us in nature, and often not surpassing our endowment of power, accomplished these stupendous achievements, because liberated in will from all fear of the world, and energized in spirit, as by a celestial in- flux of force, through their lofty conception of that which was above them, of that which was before them. Their relationship to the recognized Government of the Universe set them free from subjection to earthly restrictions. Their impression of the dignity of that nature in man which had been created by the In- finite Majesty to share the divine immortality, and for which the Son of God had appeared, inspired endeavors on behalf of that nature by which ages 361 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES became illustrious, of the fruit of which we hourly partake. We cannot be mistaken in attributing to these su- perlative ideas, which the mission of the Master had lifted before men into glorious ascendency, that might of the spirit which set Ambrose against Theodosius in unbending supremacy ; which made Bernard the coun- selor of Pontiffs, yet the champion of the poor, the de- fender of the Jew ; which nerved Huss and Savonarola to wear, without shrinking, the ruby crown. Such men might differ at many points. But they all were conscious of their sovereign relations to God and to eternity. They swung clear of the world by their hold on the supernal certainties. They flung their life into the service to which the times called them, with a pas- sionate yet a persistent abandon which we poorly emu- late, because they had clearly apprehended the God of psalmists and prophets and illustrious apostles, and also the Man whose ideal was, as well as his redemp- tion, in Jesus of Nazareth. If such impressions fade from the minds of those who should be leaders among us in moral enterprise and in educating thought, the loss will be a vast one. We shall still, no doubt, have swifter vehicles than those in which our fathers rode, vaster ships, presses more rapid, looms more productive, factories more fre- quent, and wires for the fleeter transmission of thought. But the height of the moral inspiration and freedom which broke on the world when the advent of Christ set God and man in celestial discovery, we shall not reach. The scholars now going forth from our colleges, no matter with what accomplishments of learning, or graces of manner, or admirable natural 362 MANLINESS IN THE SCHOLAR mental endowments, will miss the ennobling and lib- erating force from which, those whom they follow took sublimity. They will do little work, in their various communities, involving the higher energies of the soul, or which the world will care to remember. Society will master them, and not be uplifted or moulded by them ; and that sway of the spirit, to which all studies should contribute, and in which is the ultimate hope of the world, will pass from them to become the in- heritance of others nobler. I have no real fear that this is to be. Certainly, if it come, it will show us morally the meanest of the peoples on whom the great disciplines of history have been tried. On a continent where the bright marvels of Providence confront our vision, almost as if grouped in zodiacal constellations, in a nation whose life has involved from the outset the majestic conception of what is the native prerogative of man, we may antici- pate that these efficacious and emancipating ideas will continue in lucid eminence before men; that the scholar, especially, will find in them the full liberty of his spirit, the fervor of an unconquerable impulse, the fulness of an inexhaustible energy. What the love of art was to the Athenian, whose fathers had loved it, whose exquisite language was alive with its images, and on whose plastic and sensitive childhood had fallen its impressions ; what love of empire was to the Ro- man, whose annals had traced the expansion of do- minion from the hills on the Tiber to the Pillars of Hercules and the Euphrates, and who saw in his tri- umphs the Northern furs, with amber from the Baltic, intermixed with Greek marbles, and ivory ornaments from Asia and the South ; what love of letters has 363 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES been to large communities of men, love of glory to others, or love of localities to those whose affections cling tenaciously to the passes and pinnacles and shout- ing torrents among the Alps — that, the sense of Man's imperial place amid the immensities, and of the im- mutable majesty of Him who now as of old, " judgeth in the earth," should be to the leaders in American thought ; what the public mind holds in silent solu- tion, being crystallized in them into brilliant examples. If this shall be so, then in these great elements will be found the source for every scholar of a courage that will not faint or pale before any emergency ; of the moral energy which gives natural leadership. He who shall show them, being at the same time ripened in taste, cultivated in faculty, equipped with learning, by the ministry of these schools, with ampler knowledges open to his grasp than ever before have been accessi- ble, with a wider field on which to work, with more effective instruments for his use, and with grandest welfares soliciting his service — he will be surely the favorite child of civilization. Such manliness as his is the regal force in human society ; by which we meas- ure all that affects it, from which society takes grace and renown. We honor the Hellenic centuries, not so much for the fact that from them came poems, statues, temples, unsurpassed in the world, festive spectacles, stately squares, which we cannot rival, philosophies and his- tories which still stand before us as the Parthenon stood amid its surroundings of splendid grace; but more for the fact that, under the influences prevalent in them, Aristides was possible, whom Plato honored as singular among great men ; Socrates, the undaunted 364 MANLINESS IN THE SCHOLAR John the Baptist of the ethnic religions ; or Pericles, that man of a majestic intelligence, whom defeat could not master, rebellion frighten, nor sorrow shake, nor plague dismay. We accept it as the glory of the Eoman civilization, not that it won vast military victories on sea and land, and celebrated those victo- ries with magnificent ceremonial ; not that it produced the poems of Yirgil, the artful and musical odes of Horace, the ethics of Seneca, the eloquence of Cicero, or the sad majesty of the annals of Tacitus ; but that it gave the real though the imperfect examples of a sovereign manliness, in Brutus or Cato, in Epictetus or Antoninus. If, in our times, a similar but completer spiritual mastery is shown in those whom our colleges train, these times will also have a great place in history. Nothing else on the continent will be comparable to that supreme moral force, and to the work — devout and humane — in which it is expressed. It is well, no doubt, that we have mountains higher than the Alps, and lakes holding half the fresh water of the planet, and cataracts capable of driving the machinery for in- numerable millions ; that we have vast savannahs, and Yosemite valleys, ledges sparkling when they are split with wealths beyond all dreams of the East, and prairies, whose soils look to European eyes like fabri- cations of the laboratory, yet across whose bounteous breadth of verdure the eagle himself can hardly fly without strengthening plasters on both his wings. All these are well : our national endowment of mate- rial wealth, opening the rich and unmeasured oppor- tunities which we have not more than half discovered. But the moral is greater than the material ; the spirit 365 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES than the instrument with which it works ; the char- acter than the circumstances which furnish its setting. And the man of wide culture, in whom a free and sur- passing moral force matches his faculty, ennobles his knowledge, and crowns his accomplishments, will be grander than all this opulence of equipment. What- soever has been best in civilization will have come in him to consummation; and every University which has helped its students toward that attainment will have brought therein its richest reward to the faith which founded it, to the ceaseless generosities which have given it expansion, to the wisdom and forecast and faithful fervor with which its affairs have been ad- ministered. Young Gentlemen, now going forth from these halls, or tarrying in them to still further advance your studies : a voice from a verdant grave at St. Johhland has seemed to bid me speak as I have done. One in whom that which I have roughly and rapidly outlined was at least partially realized, has, in fact, addressed you. I would take to my own heart the lesson which thus is commended to yours, and would feel for my- self that this imperative Manliness — fine in fiber, but unyielding in force, which makes one sympathetic with others, yet independent of them, superior to vicissitudes, self-poised and temperate amid all oppositions, with every purpose undisturbed, and every power in easy play, though passion assail him, and the times repulse and reject his impression — that this is really the prime req- uisite for every scholar who would use his opportu- nity to the noblest advantage ; that a conscientious, yet a thoroughly impassioned moral energy must supple- ment this ; and that both will find the supplies of 366 MANLINESS IN THE SCHOLAR their strength in the undecaying and governing con- ceptions of God in his majesty, and of Man in his im- mortal relations. The amplest learning, the most bril- liant dexterity in logical play, the biggest brain, weigh light as punk if these essential moral powers are not present. A humbler force associated with them becomes transfigured, and rains reviving inspira- tion upon men. The admiration which men give to decorated speech, to graceful fancy, to gifts of song or tricks of wit, is as nothing to the honor which they pay instinctively to this royalty in the spirit, by which they are exalted, refreshed, reenf orced ; on which they rest with grateful satisfaction in the hour of public doubt and peril; from which they take, in every time, impressions most deep and most abiding. May it be the glory of our civilization that this is realized in largest measure in many among us ; that here examples, more numerous and more signal than have elsewhere been shown, are presented to the world, of those whom schools and colleges have trained, to whom sciences have been opened, and wealthy literatures in many languages, but who, above all, represent, in the temper which animates their life, the glorious courage and unresting energy, springing from the impulse of immortal convictions, by which power is consecrated, life made exultant, influence crowned. May this institution do its full share, in the future as in the past, for such a result ; and when we come to review our life, from the point where time for us is ending, may we feel, each one, that, however humble our place has been, and however limited our acquisi- tions, we have, in spirit, matched the work to which 367 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES we were called ; that we have been faithful, fearless, free ; we have done with our might what our hands found to do, especially when it was dangerous or hard ; and that we have, therefore, won our right in the successive victorious ranks of those whom the world may not remember, but from whom in their life it took the impressions, at once salutary and strong, which can come only from the resolute, inspir- ing and inestimable service of Manly Scholars. 368 VIII THE BROADER RANGE AND OUTLOOK OF MODERN COLLEGE TRAINING An Address delivered at Amherst College, June 28, 1887, at the Semi-centennial Celebration of the Amherst Chapter of the Alpha Delta Phi Fraternity. VIII THE BROADER, RANGE AND OUTLOOK OF MODERN COLLEGE TRAINING Me. President, Brothers of Alpha Delta Phi, Ladies and Gentlemen : An. institution like this, whose annual commence- ment attracts and greets us, has its peculiar indwell- ing life, which ever freshly reveals itself through the constant impulse to expansion and growth. Depart- ments of study are added one by one to those which had preceded, while each of those before established seeks to afford wider instruction, with more exact training ; new teachers are added, more fit and ade- quate apparatus of instruction is diligently sought and considerately supplied, and the whole scheme of study becomes more practical and more generous, aiming to meet continually wider and finer needs, and to furnish to prepared and inquisitive minds a completer supply of what they seek of training and of truth. This is the law of such institutions, only in fulfilling which do they show themselves worthy of honor or of main- tenance ; in the absence of cordial obedience to which they become inevitably, after a little, groups of sparsely occupied buildings covering acres which the plough might more usefully traverse. The vigor, abundance and fruitfulness of the life of any college 371 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES are manifested and measured by the changes which progressively take place in the courses and methods of its instruction, and in the physical structures and instruments through which it imparts this. There- fore it always needs liberal friends, and an ampler endowment ; and the time never comes when it can say that its desires are answered, its equipment is complete. It is not, therefore, an occasion of surprise when we return here to find that enlargements and alterations, manifold and conspicuous, have taken place in our ab- sence ; and if we look back, as some of us to-day do, over a term of fifty years since the infant chapter of our fraternity found here its incipient life and early cradle, we expect to discover, upon recalling that long- ago, that the changes accomplished and still going on have made almost another college of that with which we were familiar. The same skies are above us, effulgent in the dawn with sunrise lights which we used to see or shiveringly to watch for at six in the morning, resplendent at sunset with a glory which none of us has seen surpassed, amid whatever ethereal charm or purple glow of Italy itself. The same landscape is before us, rimmed with hills, but stretching far out- ward toward the west, now rich with verdure, blazing in autumn in the vast vestment of many colors, while always lovely in its modulated lines, with the reflected flash of waters touching it at points with sparkling shimmer. Some of the same buildings are here, tarry- ing, perhaps, beyond what those who have to use them conceive the fitness of things to require, but connect- ing the college as now presented, through somewhat rude and rusty links, with the college as it was, while 372 MODERN COLLEGE TRAINING making us all glad to know that the law of progress, elsewhere so effective, has undergone no final suspense before their ancient and homely walls ; and the same village, though far more beautiful, is around us now that was here when as boys we trod these streets, were lodged, perhaps, in some of these houses, strolled over these fields, or took, it may be, our private spin — very private ! — behind whatever horses could be hired, on the neighboring roads. These remain; but in almost everything which directly pertains to the college, the scene is one of transformation. One professor continues here — long may he continue ! — under whom some of us ploughed our way through parts of Livy, or grappled the con- densed martial sentences, with the tone of tragic battle in them, of the great master Tacitus, or caught some swift and inspiriting glimpse of Attic philosophy, eloquence, poetry, story. All the others have passed from the scenes in which they were to us at the time illustrious persons, and their places are filled by others. Different buildings, another chapel, a new library, a new observatory, a new and splendid gymnasium are before us ; and the physical apparatus of instruction is widely diverse from that with which those of us who have passed our threescore years, and are rapidly com- pleting the supplementary ten, were formerly familiar. The change has not been startlingly rapid in its par- ticulars, but it has been persistent, continuous, general, and we may hope that it has been prophetic ; that other changes are to follow, as needful as these, and yet more wide. It is a fact always impressive, and one which lifts our thoughts forward with spontaneous impulse on an occasion like this, that such an institu- 373 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES tion counts scores of years as in personal life we count the months ; that classes coming and classes going are but recurring incidents in its history, and that to its incorporeal life the century is not long. The most significant change of all which we observe has been in the broader scope and the fresh elasticity given to the courses of study pursued here, with the more various and large opportunity systematically offered for a more comprehensive and elaborate train- ing than in our time was proposed or was possible. The. college remains a college for training, not aspiring to become a university, which in its intent represents a universal cyclopaedia of knowledge, housed in libra- ries, but supposed to be also vitally incorporate, and the more accessible because peripatetic, in a multitude of teachers. Such an institution has, beyond question, important advantages; but this is not such an one. Its purpose is, as it was at the beginning, to discipline men in the use of their powers, while opening to them inviting opportunities for profitable study, in large part now along lines of inquiry which they select. But the variety of these lines of study is far more abundant and attractive than it was, and the develop- ing life of the college has been shown in this direction almost more distinctly than in any other. "When some of us were here as students, a half- century ago, the courses of training were all arranged with reference to the professional studies, in law or medicine, or especially in theology, which it was im- plicitly assumed were to follow. Even as so planned and maintained they were meager, restricted, sharply mandatory. We had, of course, Latin and Greek, grammatically taught, till some of us wished that re- 374 MODERN COLLEGE TRAINING publican Rome had never existed, and that the Persians had conquered Greece. We had mathematics, which to many were a weariness to spirit and mind, as well as to the flesh. "We had more or less of natural science, as then understood ; something of philosophy, with dear Dr. Brown's mellifluous lectures on the human mind for our principal text-book ; something, no doubt, of instruction in ethics, though I cannot remember what author was expected to serve as our enlightening guide and friend. We had moderate courses in rhetoric and logic, and a very slight smattering of French. Besides these, I do not remember anything of im- portance in the field of survey opened to us. We had no German, Italian or Spanish ; no history ; very little, if anything, of political economy ; no instruction in art ; no leadership into the life of the Old World and the secrets of its renown, and no elective studies what- ever. The grooves were definite and constrictive, and we were to move along them as we might, looking out at the end, as I have suggested, on one or other of the three professions toward which the college was to open the way. From that to this the change is apparent, of large reach, and of radical importance. Now I observe that German, French, Italian, Spanish are systematically taught ; that opportunity is offered for an initial study of Sanskrit — that prolific other- world matrix from which the whole family of the languages popularly known as Indo-European trace their descent; that English literature and the English language, back to the Anglo-Saxon times, have prominent places in the curriculum; that philosophy, both intellectual and moral, is far more extensively and profoundly ex- I 375 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES pounded ; that biology takes its place with geology and chemistry; that the recent art collections — pre- senting copies of statues and groups of sculpture from the best Greek and Roman periods, of the frieze of the Parthenon, of the Olympian Hermes and Yictory, of the bronze Gates of Ghiberti, " worthy to be the gates of Paradise " — become the occasion for illustra- tive lectures ; that the life and literature of the mag- nificent ancient peoples are set forth in picturesque portraiture for those who seek to master their lan- guages; that the great medieval Latin hymns are brought under appreciative review ; best of all, per- haps, that the library, which in our time was a place for preserving, in security, no doubt, but in utter secrecy, any book which had drifted into it from a clergyman's shelves, now contains nearly fifty thou- sand volumes, most of them freshly selected, in all departments of study, and is still steadily increasing. Meantime, the new and superb gymnasium gives op- portunity and constant incentive to a graceful and fin- ished physical culture ; and history appears, the true preserver and mistress of knowledges, established in a principal place among elective studies from the begin- ning of the junior year onward. No one, I am sure, will question the wisdom of changes like these, or will fail to be grateful for the successive gifts and endowments which have rendered them possible, as no one, either, can fail to see to what a vastly widened outlook for the effect of college- training such changes and expansions point. Where it was the rigorous aim to train men for one of the three professions then called "learned," the object now evidently is to give the more liberal, many-sided 376 « MODERN COLLEGE TRAINING instruction, which shall fit men for useful, happy and illuminated lives, in any department of future activity, professional, educational, editorial, artistic, or com- mercial, social and domestic. To accustom men to right methods of study, and to form in them the habit of pursuing such methods, thus starting them fairly on their courses of independent inquiry, while giving them just and liberal views of the changing thought and life of the world, that they may be more culti- vated persons wherever afterward they may live, and whatever work they may accept — this is now the pur- pose of the college. It is a wise and beautiful pur- pose, which must command the approval of all. In a constantly increasing multitude of persons, through- out widening circles, life will be silently but gener- ously enriched by the studies here pursued. In all walks of life, and not only in the professions, those will appear who feel themselves owing a debt of grati- tude to the text-books and the teachers from whom they received early guidance with an energetic and continuing impulse. Let me illustrate this somewhat more distinctly, by noticing the peculiar and permanent benefits of that study of history which, as I said, was here formerly wholly ignored, but which now has a place so promi- nent and constant sympathetically assigned to it. This special instance will, perhaps, present as clearly as any, both the extent and the benefit of the change which has here taken place. Of course the recorded annals of mankind cannot be exhibited, can hardly be sketched in more than vague outline, by the most accomplished and diligent teacher, in the term of two years. But the great 377 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES periods in history can be distinguished ; the places of some eminent persons in its inter-connected though complex development can be fairly indicated, and the general trend of the forces which it shows, in particu- lar ages or in the whole far-spreading progress, can be clearly set forth. What is better still, those who enter on the study can have their taste for it cherished, can learn the rewarding methods of inquiry, can be as- sisted to a fairly critical judgment of authors, and be distinctly set upon the path toward wider, finer and more exact knowledge to be subsequently gained ; and these are effects important in themselves, while alive with promise, which will make any two years of study of memorable value. The mind is always expanded and liberalized by what puts distant lands and times, with the exacting and disciplinary experiences of one's own ancestors or of other peoples, distinctly before it. To a certain extent foreign travel does this, as it sets the immeas- urably wider expanses, filled with energetic and labor- ious life, in contrast with the narrower scenes with which one before had been familiar ; and he who has stood with any thoughtfulness amid the crowded im- mensities of London, an empire in itself; who has looked through curious whirls of reminiscence upon the ancient streets of Paris or its stately boulevards, or who has followed the Unter den Linden from the Schloss to the Brandenburg Gate; before whom Munich, Vienna, Yenice, Florence, Naples, Milan, Madrid, have opened their treasures, to whom Kome has appeared, across the Campagna, a city ascending out of the past, but with the dome of later date roof- ing the throne of its existing empire of souls — such a 378 MODERN COLLEGE TRAINING man can never again be in mind, in range of thought, in intellectual sympathy, what he was before the broadening experience. It is thus that the easier modern modes of foreign travel become educational, and that those are multiplying in all our communities who have been essentially widened in view, by their acquaintance with other lands, for the contemplation of proximate questions. The parish period has almost disappeared from even our. popular mental develop- ment. But history, when carefully studied — studied as it should be, with maps, topographic plans, careful itin- eraries, photographs of monuments or of sites — does the same thing for the home-keeping student, and does it in some important respects in a yet freer and bolder fashion. Egypt, Greece, Assyria, Persia, the scanty and rugged strip of Palestine from which influences have come to regenerate the world, India, China, the vast outstretch of Eussia, from lands of the olive and the fig, the pomegranate and the palm, to the lands of the frozen mammoth and the midnight sun — we may not traverse these in our journeying, unless we give our life to the business, but they come before us in the intelligent study of history, in panoramic breadth, with photographic distinctness. The centuries of the past present themselves in perspective. "We see the vast cosmical movements from which states have been born, in which subsequent civilizations took rise, and in which the devout mind discovers silent procedures of Providence. We learn how far removed from us were initial influences that are now flowing into re- sults, and how our life is affected at this hour by political combinations and military collisions which 379 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES preceded by ages the invasion of England by the Normans or the splendid schemes of Charlemagne. It is quite impossible that one who reads with com- prehensive attention, till this immense and vital pic- ture is in a measure opened before him, should not be consciously broadened in thought, expanded even in mental power ; that he should not freshly and deeply feel how limited is his individual sphere ; how local, although multiplied by endowments from the past, are his personal opportunities ; what a vast scheme it is which is being evolved through stir of discussion, rush of emigration, competitions of industries, crash of con- flict, by the power which gives its unity to history, and which is perpetually educing great harmonies out of whatever seeming discords. An influence of the same kind descends upon one in the review of geologic periods, or in the contemplation of that stupendous celestial architecture which shows the infinitesimal minuteness of the spinning globe on which we live. But the influence of the study of historical life, crown- ing the planet with the mystery and majesty of per- sonal forces in long career, makes always a keener ap- peal to our consciousness, while it inevitably associates itself, by natural impulse, with those sublime scientific speculations which trace the fire-mist as it rounds into a world, and which show the universe, in the immeas- urable coordination of its physical forms under the rule of harmonious laws, a house of beauty for beauti- ful souls. Not merely a general expansion of thought, and, one may say, of the compass of the mind, comes with this larger study of history. It trains directly, with vigor- ous force, in fine proportion, each chief intellectual 380 MODERN COLLEGE TRAINING faculty. In this respect it is often misconceived by those who regard it as a pleasant exercise, to be pursued at one's leisure, but not to be reckoned on as imparting to the mind elastic vigor, any fresh robustness and alertness of power, or any refined capacity of percep- tive insight. Of course the memory will be trained, perhaps all will admit, by the effort to hold distant periods and persons distinctly in view ; to keep epochs, and the movements which marked them, from be- coming confused and entangled in thought ; and to recall, without reference to books, the points at which tendencies affecting subsequent centuries slowly or suddenly became apparent, or at which important tributary influences came in to reinforce them. But beyond the memory, it often is doubted if history offers any energetic or symmetrical discipline to the mind which pursues it. On the other hand, it seems too evident to be questioned that the vigilant, analytic and reconciling judgment, by which we separate things that differ, and harmonize and associate things that agree, however unlike in outward show ; by which we extricate the governing forces beneath phenomena, and set in their historic synthesis the individual designs and the public aspirations which cooperate in movements of general importance — that this noble power is essentially trained, as it is certainly constantly exercised, in any true study of history. I think that many present will agree that for them- selves no other form of mental practice has had closer relation to such an intimatp and enduring effect ; and I am quite satisfied that in either of the professions, in journalism, in educational work, or in the simply private life of an educated citizen, this 381 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES effect will appear ; that one accustomed to wide and searching historical inquiries will be more expert in judging of urgent practical questions presented to- day, and will have a more discerning apprehension of the forces working to modify legislation and to mould society — forces which are often more formidable, or more replete with victorious energy, because subtle and occult. It seems to me plain, too, that the intuitive moral reason to which the most conspicuous action must give its account, and by which its character is interpreted and adjudged, which puts a candid estimate upon motives, and sets whatever historic achievement pre- sents itself for review in fair connection with special environments of time or of place, must here find as fruitful activity, as systematic and quickening a nur- ture, as in any department of human research ; and that the historical imagination — which of course does not rank with the creative imagination of the poet, but which is surely akin to that, and perhaps not less capable of giving incitement and beautiful pleasure in common experience — that this has such impulse and sustenance in the study of the past as cannot be fur- nished anywhere else. So it is that many of the as- piring and superior minds which have wrought in letters have taken this study for their own, and have by their successes in it made the world of readers their grateful debtors. The " personal equation " has continually appeared among them, in their judgment of motives, of movements, and of men ; but in order to form any judgment at all, which the discerning would respect, they have had to cultivate moral insight, as well as a discursive and commanding intelligence. 382 MODERN COLLEGE TRAINING Records of the centuries, buried in the crypts of archives and libraries, have had to yield up to the sur- vey of their genius living forms ; vanished times have had to be reconstructed by their thought, in their out- ward phenomena, and their constitutive moral and so- cial forces ; the manifold sensibilities, desires, passions, which belong to our nature, have had to be recognized, and their operation in public affairs to be patiently exhibited, while the impressions of peoples on each other have filled to the edge the crowded canvas. No teachers, therefore, have done more than these to educate broadly the ethical and the mental faculty in those whom they addressed, and before whom they unrolled the immense panorama of action, passion, collision, catastrophe, in the story of nations, with the energies exerted at critical points by particular per- sons, the deeper and more controlling power belong- ing to tendencies. It is strictly true, what Macaulay said : " He [who reads history] learns to distinguish what is local from what is universal ; what is transi- tory from what is eternal; to discriminate between exceptions and rules ; to trace the operation of dis- turbing causes ; to separate the general principles, which are always true and everywhere applicable, from the accidental circumstances with which in every community they are blended, and with which, in an isolated community, they are confounded by the most philosophical mind. Hence it is that in generaliza- tion the writers of modern times have far surpassed those of antiquity. The historians of our own coun- try," he adds, " are unequaled in depth and precision of reason ; and even in the works of our mere com- pilers we often meet with speculations beyond the 383 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES reach of Thucydides or Tacitus." This is the testi- mony of one who delighted to tear the vigor and flower of his life from the Bar and the Senate, from official distinction and the rarest social opportunities, that he might survey with ampler scope, while inves- tigating with microscopic minuteness, the records of the past ; reading a week to fashion a sentence ; find- ing reward for laborious journeys in the more pre- cise outline of a character, or the more exact picture of a scene, in even the more lively turn of a phrase or the more lucid completeness of a paragraph. If one needs to see, in near example, the fitness of historical studies to quicken and maintain high mental enthusi- asm, and to discipline and enrich as well as to enlist rare and various mental powers, he may certainly find the immediate demonstration in the instance of Lord Macaulay. A college like this, too, and an audience like the present, can never fail gratefully to recognize the large and beautiful moral impulse delivered upon spirits prepared to receive it through their contact in history with great, serene and masterful personalities, as these present themselves in the crowded passages which study explores, daring or suffering in the con- flicts of their time. In common life we can, at best, but rarely meet such. The saintly and superior souls are not mustered in regiments. Multitudinous com- panies of elect spirits do not yet surround us on earth. It seems, sometimes, as if the enormous secular ad- vances of which our times are so full and so proud were lowering the height and dimming the luster of the moral ideal, as represented in the actual of life. Sending messages by lightning, traveling at forty 384 MODERN COLLEGE TRAINING miles to the hour, crossing in a week the ocean which the Mayflower perilously breasted, in our sumptuous vessels, framed of iron, luxurious in appointment, pro- pelled from within, and gay with color as so many swimming summer-gardens — these applauded achieve- ments do not tend of necessity to the upbuilding of nobler courage, to the development of a luminous moral wisdom, to the culture of even philosophical re- finement, or the nurture of the temper of devout as- piration. On the other hand, do we not sometimes feel that virtue among us is coming to be too much a matter of manners ; that the intense subjective proc- esses from which august character is derived are in a measure being superseded by the mechanical contriv- ances and the physical successes with which our noisy years resound ; and that the grand and lovely spirits, which are present still, and in which, whensoever we touch them, we find strange charm and inspiration, are fewer and lonelier than they were ? Surely we do mot meet them often, and cannot command their presence at our need. But in history they abound, and are always at our service. Marcus Aurelius, saddest of men, yet im- perturbable in a falling empire, and amid the mad whirl of an unexplained universe ; Bernard, with the flaming intensity of his spirit, commander of kings and counselor of pontiffs while the friend and pro- tector of the lowliest of the poor, crushing before him the insolent noble, and facing the fierce fury of the mob on behalf of the Jew; Melanchthon, with his beautiful enthusiasm for letters, writing Greek more easily than German, modest, peace-loving, yet firm in conviction, devoted to the Master in almost passionate Y 385 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES love, the very St. John of the stormy Reformation ; William of Orange, fronting with majestic endurance the apparently irresistible power which swept the Netherlands with flame and blade, and recovering for freedom the land which his ancestors might literally be said to have plucked from the sea — these will come to us when we want them ; and with them all, orators, statesmen, theologians, artists, leaders of crusades like Godfrey of Bouillon, who would not wear a crown where his Master had borne the cross, rulers of king- doms like St. Louis, poets, philanthropists, heroes, martyrs, the women with the men, of whom the world of their time was not worthy, by whom the world is made worthier to-day. We may wait years, or we may journey thousands of miles, to meet in the present the special spirit whose office it is, and whose charming prerogative, to kindle and ennoble ours. It is but to step to the library shelf to come face to face with such in the past, if we know where to find them ; nay, it is but to let the thought go backward, over what has become distinct to our minds, and the silent company is around us ; the communion of rejoicing and consecrated souls, the illustrious fellowship, in the presence of whom our meanness is rebuked, our cowardice is shamed, and we become the freer chil- dren of God and of the truth. Not only the romance of the world is in history, but influences so high in source and in force as to be even sacred descend through it. Benedictive, sacra- mental, is its touch upon responsive souls. We be- come comparatively careless of circumstances ; aware of kinship, in whatever heroic element may be in us, with the choice, transcendent spirits ; regardless of 386 MODERN COLLEGE TRAINING the criticism, or the snarling scoffs, which here may surround us, if only conscious of a deeper and more complete correspondence with those whose elate and unsubduable temper remains among the treasures of mankind. I think that to our times, especially, the careful and large study of history is among the most essential sources of moral inspiration. The cultiva- tion of it, in ever larger and richer measure, is one of the finest and noblest exercises proposed to young minds. Any college which introduces to the society of the spirits which have made centuries illustrious, takes splendor and majesty from the office. The importance of individual life and effort is also magnified by it, instead of being diminished or dis- guised, as men sometimes fancy ; since one is contin- ually reminded afresh of the power which belongs to those spiritual forces which all may assist in animating and moulding civilizations. Of course an imperfect study of history, however rapid and rudimental, shows' how often the individual decision and the re- straining or inspiring action of great personalities have furnished the pivots on which multitudinous con- sequences have turned ; how, even after long intervals of time, the effects of such have made themselves evi- dent, in changed conditions and tendencies of peo- ples ; and so it reminds us, with incessant iteration, of the vital interlocking of every energetic personal life with the series of lives which are unconsciously de- pendent upon it, of the reach of its influence upon the great complex of historical progress, and of the service which each capable or eminent spirit may render to the cause of universal culture and peace. But those to whom our thoughts are thus turned have been for 387 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES the most part signal men in their time, remarkable in power, distinguished in opportunity, intuitively dis- cerning the needs of the age, and with peculiar com- petence to meet them. With such we by no means may mate ourselves; and, so far, the lesson which history teaches may easily seem to be one of dis- couragement rather than of impulse, inclining us to rely upon occasional great men as the true pioneers and champions of progress, and to feel that for our- selves we have no place and no responsibility in the assistance of large and permanent public advance- ment. But a deeper inquiry shows us at once that such a place and such an obligation belong to each, since each may aid, in the measure of his influence, to es- tablish or renew those spiritual forces which erect and sustain the great and beautiful civilizations. It was, we know, the Hellenic spirit, which not only wreaked itself on immortal expression in the choicest marbles and temples of the world, in the eloquence, the tragedy, the comedy, and the song, the high specula- tion, and the simple or the stately story, which have for mankind a perennial charm, but which also faced and fought the Persian, and made the names of Mara- thon and Salamis shine resplendent in the crowded firmament of the world's recollections ; only in the decadence of which did Greece yield to the mastery of Macedon. It was the Anglo-Saxon temper which the Norman could not extinguish at Hastings or trample into the bloody ground, which outlived its invaders, conquered its conquerors, and in the end forced them to accept, while modify- ing in turn, its language, its laws, its popular 388 MODERN COLLEGE TRAINING liberties, and, in great measure, the free spirit of its religion. And it was not, fundamentally, by William or by Maurice — conspicuous as they are on the copious and picturesque pages of Motley — but it was by the spirit, indestructibly regnant among common people, that the otherwise defenseless Bata- vian plains were saved from the furious ravage of Spain. The men and women who were ready to suffer the loss of all for a King in the heavens — the minis- ters, by no means accomplished always in the learning of the schools, but who read and expounded the Holy "Word in upper rooms, by the light of the flames in which their brethren in faith and in service were being offered as a sacrifice in the resounding squares below — the common sailors who would blow up their ships and find graves in the deep, rather than see the vessels which they manned the prey of their enemies — the promiscuous populations, young and old, nobles and burghers, who would tear away dykes and drown the land, before they would accept for themselves and their children the domination of Philip — these were they who saved their country, giving to their leaders an indomitable power, snatching success from the cruel and haughty hands of what appeared an invin- cible invasion ; and to them, supremely, the world owes the immense augmentation made by that strug- gle of eighty years to the freedom, prosperity and culture of Europe. So, after Jena, Prussia was regenerated, under the lead of Yon Hardenberg and Von Stein, by the sys- tem of common school education; and they, more radically than Bismarck and Yon Moltke, have con- tributed to make that recent kingdom the center of 389 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES the German Empire, the arbitrating power in the in- ternational politics of Europe. It was true, as the mili- tary attache wrote to his master, the lesser Napoleon, that the schoolmaster, not the needle-gun, triumphed at Sadowa. So Scotland, also, with a comparatively- sparse population, on a sterile soil, and under unpropi- tious skies, has become the seemingly inexhaustible source of great teachings in all departments, indus- trial, philosophical, theological, poetic. Out of the instructed and invigorated life of the Scottish people have come not only the looms of Paisley, and the vast industries on the Clyde, but Scott and Jeffrey, Erskine and Hume, Chalmers, Guthrie and Hugh Miller, Burns and Carlyle. Even in the physical world invisible and impalpable forces are those which govern : the light, which strikes without indenting the infant's eye, which no balances can weigh, and whose secret remains undis- covered by man; the lightning, which subtly paces the wires, and sheds illumination on streets and squares, but which shows its effect, never itself, in the blazing edges of cloven clouds ; the cohesive attractions which build and bind all organized bodies, but which the microscope cannot discern; the life, which no man can analyze or can see except in operation; the in- clusive and vast energy of gravitation, which holds at once each pebble on the beach, each flying foam-fleck driven by winds, while it reaches the farthest nebulas in its grasp, the very muscle of omnipotence com- pacting the universe in its integrity. Tremendous, immeasurable, as this power is, before its operation no slightest rustle is stirred amid the quiet air. So everywhere, structures decay and forms disappear, the 390 MODERN COLLEGE TRAINING things unseen are the things eternal. It is the same law which manifests itself in national development. Moral forces are always behind the palpable phenom- ena. The historical progress that moves our admira- tion has been initiated, and been afterward assured and guided, by spiritual energies. We have never reached the secrets of history till we apprehend these. And every man and every woman has his or her work in the world plainly set forth under the light of this great lesson. It is for each, in the measure of the power and opportunity of each, to cherish and diffuse the temper out of which in their time the great and benign changes shall come. Neither the eloquent and stimulating speech which went before our civil war, nor the military judgment, fortitude, valor, which pre- sided on its historical fields, would have carried to success the vast revolution which we have seen, and for which the country to-day rejoices from the Lakes to the Gulf, except for the patient love of freedom and hatred of slavery which had been nurtured in quiet homes, by peaceful firesides, in the preceding years. In dispersed villages the real battle was fought, not at Gettysburg or at Shiloh. The splendid burst of our century-plant into a bloom as rich and as brilliant as the continent ever can show, went back to hidden and homely roots. And until that great experience is for- gotten, the lesson which all the study of history im- peratively teaches cannot lose its emphasis for us: that every one in a civilized and advancing community has the opportunity. to do something for the future as well as for the present, and that on each is set the crown of this noble right, and this imperious obliga- tion. 391 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES I have no function as preacher here, but I may be permitted to add that history is a department of study leaving, in my judgment, as distinct and salutary religious impressions as does any form of secular knowledge opened to man. Ours is a historical religion; coming to us through historical books, exhibiting its energy through two thousand years, in the recorded advancement of mankind ; which may be studied almost as distinctly in the moral and social progress of peoples under its inspiration as in the writings, of narrative and epistle, which represent the source and the government of that progress. Certainly a force incalculable by man was exerted by this religion in the conversion of the Roman Empire from the fierce passions and vices of Paganism to even the partial and qualified acceptance of the pure and austere Christian rule. Make all the allowance which the skeptic can ask for the political and military ambitions which consented to or conspired with the spiritual changes introduced by Christianity, and it still remains an astonishing fact, wholly inexplicable by human analysis, that a recent, unattractive and foreign religion, hated and fought with the utmost fury by those whose only moral alliance was through their common antagonism to it, should in less than three centuries have changed the gardens of Nero into resorts for Christian worship ; should have scattered its assemblies and their institutions over the whole civilized world, and have blazoned the cross on the standards of the Empire. It must have had a Divine energy with it and in it to accomplish an effect so strange and stupendous. On any other hypothesis the chances were millions on millions to one, as even 392 MODERN COLLEGE TRAINING thoughtful unbelievers admit, against its success — against, indeed, its continued existence. The astonish- ing changes wrought by it are to this day almost incredible to those who know what Rome had been under Tiberius, and what it had come to be in the time of Theodosius. A power invisible but also invincible, behind the movement, is as evident as are the subterranean fires in the shining outbreak of volcanoes, or as are the vast subterranean forces be- neath the shattering tremble of earthquakes. Almost equally afterward, in the conquest of barbarian tribes, in the fusion, the restraint and the moral education of the savage, nomadic and relentless populations from which have gradually come into being the Christian states of modern Europe — in the immense constructive energies which silently wrought, but wrought with amazing breadth and effect, amid the medieval chaos — in the astonishing reformation of religion, opening the Bible to the study of mankind, and using pulpit and printing press for its conquering instruments against majestic establishments of hier- archical power — in the work already in part accom- plished upon this continent, and which is swiftly going on in Europe and the East, in India, Africa, the islands of the Pacific — the same celestial, unsubduable energy everywhere confronts us, inhering organically in our religion, while also inseparably associated with it in cosmical operation. No miracle of the Master's time, however fully accredited, shows more distinctly the might of God under the human muscle which it clothed, than do these vast developments in history his intervening thought and will. One sees some- times in a studio or a gallery a veiled statue, every 393 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES characteristic line of form and face visible beneath what seems a thin film of lace-work, which itself, however, is wrought in the marble. So the very earth on which we stand is coming to show the face of the Christ, wrought into it from above, and revealed through the reticulated hardness of its slowly yielding civilization. And the mind of Him from whom sprang the genius of the sculptor is supremely declared in this effect. There is something more, therefore, in the history of Christendom than philosophy teaching by example. It infolds and expresses the Christian Keligion, work- ing itself into partial, difficult, but progressive ex- hibition, through intractable materials, against stub- born opposition, with a power unyielding and un- decaying because it is of God. To one who listens with reverent heart, the voice of the Master still sounds amid the uproar of passionate tempests, and still commands the final calm. The entire history is, in fact, a kind of secondary rubricated Scripture, immense in extent, covering the continents, written in colossal Roman and Gothic characters, the initial let- ters stamped sometimes in gold and sometimes in blood, but the vast, confused and tangled text holding in it still the song of angels, the benedictions on the Mount, the story of Bethlehem, Capernaum and the cross, the illustrious Ascension, and the terrible tri- umph of the Apocalypse. A divine purpose in all history becomes gradually apparent to him who with discerning thought surveys its annals. The Bible proceeds upon the assumption of such a plan, though perhaps no one of its separated writers had a full conception of that which he was in 394 MODERN COLLEGE TRAINING part portraying. Back beyond the beginnings of his- tory, onward to the secure consummation, lovely and immortal, which prophecies prefigure, extends this plan. Parts of it are yet inscrutable to us, as parts of the heavens are still unsounded by any instruments. But the conviction becomes constantly clearer, among those to whom the records of the past unfold in a measure not contents only but glowing portents, that a divine mind has presided over all ; that every remotest people or tribe has had its part to do or to bear in the general progress ; and that at last, when all is interpreted, the unity of the race, with the in- cessant interaction of its parts under the control and in the concord of a divine scheme, will come dis- tinctly into view. Mysterious movements, as of the peoples who from woods and untamed wastes inun- dated Europe, and before whose irresistible momentum bastions and ramparts, the armies and ensigns of the mistress of the world went hopelessly down, will be seen to have had their impulse and direction as well as their end. Great passive empires, as of China, will be found to have served some primordial purpose ; and the Mind which sees the end from the beginning will be evidenced in the ultimate human development as truly as it is in the swing of suns or in the constitution of unmeasured constellations. The British Empire a week ago was ringing and flaming with the august and brilliant ceremonies which marked the completion of fifty years in the reign of one whose name is with us, almost as generally as in her own realms, a household word. American hearts joined those of their kinsmen across the sea, around the world, in giving God thanks for the purity and 395 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES the piety with which the young maiden of fifty years since has borne herself amid gladness and grief, over- shadowing change and vast prosperity, and for the progress of industry and of liberty, of commerce, edu- cation and Christian faith by which her times have been distinguished. But something more than the wisdom of statesmen, or the valor of captains, or any silent or resonant work of man, has been involved in all this. An unseen power has been guiding events to the fulfilment of plans as wide as the world, and far more ancient than Dover cliffs, with the narrow seas which gleam around them. The ultimate kingdom of righteousness and of peace is nearer for these remark- able years. It was well to render grateful praise, in church and chapel, in cathedral and abbey, in quiet homes and great universities, to Him who has given such luster to the fame and such success to the reign of the wise and womanly and queenly Yictoria. But as with her reign, so with all that advancing history of mankind in connection with which this brilliant half-century, of feminine supremacy and im- perial expansion, has to be set to reveal its significance. It everywhere discloses the silent touch and the sweep- ing command of Divine forecasts. It reverberates with echoes to superlative designs. I know of no other department of study, outside of the Scriptures, more essentially or profoundly religious. A Christian col- lege may well hold it in honoring esteem, and give it in permanence an eminent place among the studies which it proposes. In our recent country, in our times of rapid and tumultuous change, it seems to me that we specially need this, as the thoughtful among us are specially in- 396 * MODERN COLLEGE TRAINING clined to it, since it is vital to the dignity and self -poise of our national life that we feel ourselves constantly interknit with the life of the world, from which the ocean does not divide us ; that we recognize our mag- nificent inheritance in the opulent results of the effort and the struggle of other generations. It is a distinct and encouraging indication of the best qualities of the American spirit, as well as of the vigor and vivacity of the American mind and the variety of its attainments, that such studies are eagerly prosecuted among us, and that those who have given to them, with splendid en- thusiasm, laborious lives — like Prescott, Motley, our honored Bancroft — have been among the most inspiring of our teachers, have gained and will keep their prin- cipal places in that Kepublic of letters from which the Republic of political fame must always take grace and renown. But I have taken this study of history, Ladies and Gentlemen, not so much to particularize the various and profuse benefits of it — for which, of course, volumes would be needed, instead of paragraphs — as to indicate by it with a sharper distinctness the broadened range and brightened outlook which belong to the college course of to-day, as compared with that to which we were accustomed a half-century ago. Then, as I said, nothing of history was here taught, except as perhaps obscurely suggested by Latin or Greek vocables and constructions. Now it has this prominent place among the elective studies of two years ; and the change is significant of much. The same tendency appears on other sides, especially, for instance, in the courses of study now proposed in the modern lan- guages. These, too, are both for training and for 397 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES culture. They come with the study on which I have dwelt, in an association at once natural and close. The languages of Goethe and Schiller, of Dante, of Cervantes — the intelligent mastery of these is not for ornament only or chiefly, nor even for directer access to the manifold knowledges distributed in them, but that one may come to more intimate contact with the life expressed in European literature in its original forms, and that the sense of being able to converse with the masters of thought in their own tongues may add vigor to faculty, a general wealth and luster to life. So with all the connected changes in what was of old the narrow range of the studies here offered. The aim has clearly been, as I have said, to give to those going forth from the college, to whatever depart- ments of experience and of labor, an ampler knowledge, a finer and a nobler power, new instruments for hap- piness and for useful activity. The training of faculty, in studious minds, is still the governing primary aim, with the impression of the Christian truth and law and temper. But the wider culture is now recognized as auxiliary to this, while in itself of a beautiful value ; and the college is unquestionably to widen its range to further bounds as years go on, and thus to make itself helpful and dear to more numerous minds, in more various departments of skilful work, as generations follow in their silent succession. So will it continue, and so will it become yet more and more, a beautiful power in the civilization to which it contributes. It is the expectation of this, and not merely the memory of the past, which animates our hearts as we gather here to-day. Not with every year, perhaps, shall this grow- ing oak add another concentric ring of equipment or 398 MODERN COLLEGE TRAINING of discipline to its previous substance, but when an- other half -century shall have passed how many shall have been these silent augmentations ! How broad the shadow, and how solid the strength, of that which here in our own time was anxiously planted, in poverty, but with prayer ! Gathered as we are by this special anniversary, it is a question which naturally meets us, and toward which this rapid and imperfect discussion has constantly tended, "What is the native and normal relation of a fraternity like ours to this great change in the cus- tomary courses of college instruction, and to the wider effects which it contemplates ? And this is a question the answer to which is not far to seek. By gathering to itself, as has been the effort of this fraternity, those of choice intellectual parts, and of earnest and catholic literary tastes, as well as of wholesome moral instincts and agreeable social man- ners, it systematically reinforces among its members the spirit of generous scholarly enterprise. Knitting students together in personal affiliation for intellectual purposes, it makes their minds interactive on each other, not in public competitions, but in the private communications of defined and limited circles, while any distinguished success of either becomes a part of the pride of the chapter. Students so related neces- sarily and constantly educate each other, maintaining among them the common aspiration for widened knowledge, for more various accomplishments, a more carefully trained intellectual force. The familiar criticism which they continually meet is cheering and quickening, not discouraging. In all kindness and confidence they search each other, till each is likely to 399 ORATIONS AND 'ADDRESSES learn the lesson of the legend inscribed over the statue of Tycho Brahe in the Thein church at Prague (Pro- fessor Tyler is responsible for the old-fashioned pro- nunciation) : " Esse potius quam haberV The com- mon desire to make the finest use of their powers, if not in one particular department then in another, is as natural to students so associated as friendship is to sympathetic households. One might almost say that it comes as certainly as any effect of physical law, in the perfumed breath which steals forth from gardens, or in the lush foliage of June. It is native, not im- ported ; and it has a power of its own, not only to sustain the nobly ambitious, but even to curb the un- ruly and to animate the sluggish. An influence of this kind is always important, not easy to secure, of great value when gained, in any col- lege ; and some plan of the sort with which we are familiar seems almost indispensable to it, since the mind of the student takes incentive and guidance from the minds of others ot his own standing, or but slightly advanced, quite as readily at least, and quite as richly, as from any minds of older teachers, which are to him relatively remote. It is an influence pecul- iarly important, it seems to me, in our time, when the taste for athletic competition and achievement has be- come so wide and so engrossing. The change in this respect from the college of our earlier day, with its swings and rough bars in the open air, its creaking spring-board and wheezing football, is as striking as any that has occurred. It came almost as suddenly as a cyclone, though it came to stay. A bright young man in one of our older Eastern colleges was rusti- cated in his junior year for visiting a bowling-alley 400 MODERN COLLEGE TRAINING too often. Being a man of good habits, of fair scholarship, and of excellent character, he came back to his class, was graduated with honor, and two years after was appointed tutor, one of the duties of his tutorship being to see that the men in his division went regularly to the work of the gymnasium, in which the bowling-alley was a principal feature. The change is wise, and greatly beneficial. It is plainly a return, even if in the somewhat boisterous American fashion, toward the Greek idea of simultaneous and harmonious training of body and of mind as neces- sary to a complete education. But there has been some danger, perhaps, that the element coming in with this later vehemence might disturb and obscure that to which it has been added, as the rushing Arve mud- dies the clear blue of the Rhone into which it is ab- sorbed. The temper of intellectual aspiration, quickened and sustained by frequent and intimate in- tellectual fellowships, must keep its preeminence, or the college would soon become a mere shouting and stormy athletic club. A fraternity like ours, working normally, works always in the needed direction. It animates the taste for variety in study, and is thus in constitutional sympathy with the entire intellectual movement within the colleges in recent years. It puts the stimulated minds of its members face to face, for mutual discipline, reciprocal incentive ; and it is always study which it helps, a manifold culture, rather than any development of muscle. Its running matches are in the fields of the Muses. Its applauded achievements are in the domain of letters and the arts. The leap and wrestle which it .encourages, are between minds moving from thought to thought, and from author to author. z 401 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES It has even a distinctly moral influence, as evident as the mental, and yet more beneficent. Instances arc- within my knowledge in which certain bright and eager young men, peculiarly susceptible to college temptations, while peculiarly fit for college successes, have been restrained from bad associations, have been excited to better ambitions, have been enveloped, to their permanent advantage, in a governing spirit within the chapter which wrought for a gentler and nobler manhood. I cannot but think that a wise faculty will always shelter, favor and cherish any as- sociation which works in this temper for ends so im- portant. A beneficial influence belongs also, inherently, to such an organized fraternity, arising from the fact that whatever has been done by its older members, after graduation, in the way of distinguished literary work, of eloquent speech, of effective assistance to generous movements, is kept more distinctly before the minds of those tarrying in the chapters from whose active exercises the others have withdrawn. A certain sense of special fellowship unites therein the younger with the older, which in its way, and in the measure of its reach, is an educating power. The students of a college are always glad, and properly proud, when one of its graduates attains high distinc- tion in the literary, the professional, or the political field. But the members of a chapter have a clearer and a closer sense of just gratification when one whose name is borne on their rolls achieves a useful and high distinction. Old stories are recalled of his earlier efforts ; his subsequent methods, in study and in the culture of style, are more carefully scanned ; a fresh 402 MODERN COLLEGE TRAINING ambition is started in those who have their own place to attain in the world ; and I cannot doubt that many responsive and onlooking minds, in this chapter and in others, have been inspired to greater ardor in ap- propriate studies, and greater persistency in intellec- tual exercise, to acquire for themselves a noble and an exquisite English style, to master the power of high and rich and discriminated thought, to prepare them- selves for large offices in the world — because belong- ing to chapters bearing in eminence on their rolls names like those of Frederic Huntington, Algernon Sullivan, Truman Backus, of the Choate who adds new honor to the name, of the Curtis whose touch of velvet smoothness, in daintiest sentences, hides behind it a sensitive conscience, with purposes strong as sinews of steel. Each member feels a fresh responsi- bility resting upon him to keep himself worthy of companionship like theirs; to prepare himself to stand, when the time has come, in the ranks upon which abides a luster from names so honored. Even names which death has crowned with stars — like that of the accomplished scholar, the eloquent teacher, the wide-minded theologian, whose presence we had gladly expected to-da}'-, and sadly miss — have a continuing power to bless. They do not fade from eye or thought, but beckon us up to higher levels, while we a little longer linger. A peculiar sense of union with others closely and happily associated with one in such a fraternity goes forward with him, too, into subsequent life, wherever and in whatsoever vocation his lot may be cast ; and this brings its own beauty and blessing. It is inevita- ble, as I have said, that the outcome of the college 403 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES system, as it now is presented, should be shown on more diversified fields of subsequent labor than were contemplated a half -century ago. Not all men trained in such institutions as this is rapidly coming to be are to be ministers, lawyers, or physicians. Some will be architects, painters, sculptors; some will be editors, authors, teachers ; some will be scientists, inventors, explorers, or civil engineers ; and some will be cul- tured merchants, perhaps, manufacturers, bankers, rail- way officers, or men of property and leisure. Their paths will diverge more and more, as life goes on, and their separated employments will tend to keep them apart from each other. Without some influence in the opposite direction, the effect may be to prevent the invigorating contact of their minds with each other, by absorbing each, with a narrowing rigor, in his special pursuit. It is well and salutary, under cir- cumstances like these, that there be strong and vital sympathies uniting them in after life, arising from common glad recollections of sympathetic association in the earlier days ; that they go back together to the pleasant reunions, intellectual and social, of the chap- ter-house and its meetings ; that the earlier collisions and happy affiliations of mind with mind come freshly to their remembering thought. So will be likely to be kept alive in them a certain healthful and beautiful correspondence of spirit and aim, in the broader life into which they have entered. The college itself will have for their memories a livelier charm. The earlier aspiration will more surely survive in their souls. Unconsciously, even, they will heed and fulfil the noble advice which the Marquis de Posa, according to Schiller, sent by the Queen to his pupil, Don Carlos : 404 MODERN COLLEGE TRAINING " To revere in manhood the dreams of his youth, and not to be led astray when by the wisdom of the dust he hears enthusiasm blasphemed." In our hurried American society, full as it is of secular ambitions, of rapidity, noise, and the clamor for success in whatever department, this seems to me peculiarly needful ; and certainly the impulse of a fraternity like this, and like others established with similarly discreet plans and aims, must supply here a force of essential value, and of permanent efficiency. It tends as well, I am equally sure, in the measure of its influence, to remove the prejudices which used to exist between the students of different colleges, and even to bring the institutions themselves into happier relations, as members of the several chapters of the fraternity, in the various colleges, meet in a coopera- tive sympathy, and honor and rejoice in each other's success. The old temper was one, we must admit, rather of distrust, or of positive dislike, between the colleges of the seaboard and these among the hills ; between the latter, among themselves. In my time here, the typical Harvard student was to us one who did not greatly exercise his brain, but who wore glasses, carried a cane, was curled and perfumed, and studiously parted his hair in the middle. His conception of us was, doubtless, a caricature equally grotesque, but in a widely different direction. From those of not a few other colleges we expected vigor, pluck, intellectual push, but with palpable deficiencies in refinement and grace. Many causes have modified this spirit of mutual disrespect, largely ameliorating if they have not abolished it. One of the causes operating in this way, with an excellent effect, has 405 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES been the frequent communications between the chap- ters of general fraternities extending into many col- leges. The more distinguished students in each have become known to the others. The governing sense of common aims, and a common work, has been con- stantly reinforced in each toward the rest. A certain solidarity, of harmonious aspiration and of reciprocal interest, comes by degrees to be established among them. The time is certainly hastened in its approach when all the colleges scattered over the land will rec- ognize themselves as only local constituent members of the real and great American University; which will have no single cathedral city, but the campus of the continent, for its seat, and which will be richer than in any renown derived from the past through the fame which it wins by training men for great utilities, noble offices. By training men, I have said ; but the training of women, through similar methods, with an equal effect, is a part of the modern widened movement among American colleges, as important as the other which I have sketched, in close harmony with it, and assuming rapidly equal proportions. ]STewnham and Girton have lately surprised the Eng- lish universities by the accurate and large learning imparted in them. Smith College and Amherst will have as well their friendly rivalries and eager com- petitions, and the vexed problem of coeducation may be held, I think, by the most exacting and fastidious critic, to have found in them its proper solution, un- less Amherst and Northampton are farther from each other than they used to be when I was young. The final University which is thus magnificently arising among us will embrace in itself all such equipped and 406 MODERN COLLEGE TRAINING advancing schools, of training and culture, in any state, for either sex. Its vastness and opulence will have had no parallel among the comparatively re- stricted institutions across the sea, to which kings and prelates have made contribution. Its spires will shine from the sounding Atlantic onward to the ocean of Peace. Multitudinous associations, clinging: more te- naciously than tentacles of ivy, will robe its far ex- tending walls, as the pavements of its corridors are worn by the feet of successive generations. Its chim- ing bells, with musical triumph, will ring in the era of assured liberty, of popular intelligence with a refined and ripened culture, of thriving enterprise, and of Christian faith. So, Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, and broth- ers of the fraternity, I join with you in gladness at the fact that the fifty years since this chapter was organ- ized have seen it growing in strength and fame, keep- ing at least in equal advance with the college in which it is embosomed ; and I join with you equally in the hope that when another half-century shall have passed it may have only an ampler power, a richer promise, a nobler fame. The traveler in Switzerland not unfre- quently sees in the eastern sky what he takes to be a patch of cloud, fair but fleeting, white beneath the morning light, silently transfigured, as if charged from within by golden, chrysolite, opaline lusters, when the sun has passed the meridian. Its permanence gives it interpretation. It is not a cloud, but a mountain peak, solid as the earth from which it arises, though delicate in outline, and burning in the air like a translucent gem. This chapter which we love seemed to some, no doubt, in the days when the morning light lay on our 407 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES path, a passing whirl of mist-laden air, hovering for a season in the sky of the college. It has kept its place, never expanding to large proportions, but growing more eminent and more variously lucent before our thought as the sun for us has descended in the west. I trust that it will be as permanent as the college, and will be constantly clothed upon with a more attractive and various charm, as the sun which is to mark the iollowing centuries in the life of the college seeks its, as yet, unseen horizon. 408 IX THE PURITAN SPIRIT An Oration delivered before the Congregational Club in Tremont Temple, Boston, December 18, 1889. IX THE PURITAN SPIRIT Me. Peesident, Ladies and Gentlemen: When I rashly yielded to the request of your Com- mittee, and promised to deliver an address before the Congregational Club on this occasion, I expected it to be that comparatively simple and informal thing which one styles familiarly an Address ; delivered before a company of a few hundred persons, many of them, doubtless, my personal friends. I did not anticipate that in the air of Boston, a sup of which the early im- migrants declared equal to a draught of English ale, and in the exuberant fancy of the Committee, what I had proposed might suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange, and be set forth to the public as an Oration, gather- ing this vast assembly by which I am partly animated but chiefly appalled. However, you will not forget, I am sure, my modest promise ; and if I cannot conduct you, as I cannot, through any House Beautiful, such as Boston Orations are known and are expected to be, you will let me introduce you to an unobtrusive and commonplace structure of thought, such as may rea- sonably bear upon its low and unadorned lintel the name " Address." 411 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES It is often said by those who desire the highest wel- fare of the nation, and who feel that to such welfare right moral and spiritual forces are first of all need- ful, that what this country chiefly needs, to maintain and exalt its place in the world, is a larger measure of the Puritan spirit, in energetic development and in wide distribution. Fundamentally, the vast effort, pursued now for. a hundred years, to plant churches at the West, with schools, colleges, seminaries of whatever class, to in- spire and mould instruction there, has had in this feel- ing its impulse and motive ; and its value has been es- timated, by those who have made it, by its success in this direction. The same thing is substantially true of the similar efforts now being made, with unsur- passed patience and energy, at the South and in the New West. The effort is to practically New-Eng- landize the continent ; and however it has changed in our time, in its special forms of manifestation, the Pu- ritan spirit is that which has given to New England its characteristic place and power in the vastly en- larged national organism. The many institutions, of rising rank and growing power, all over the vast area of the country, show the energy of this impulse, with its partial and perhaps its prophetic success. On the other hand, however, hardly any proposal meets fiercer opposition in many quarters than does this very one. " It is precisely this Puritan spirit," multitudes say, " which we do not want. It would be well if it could be practically extirpated in New Eng- land itself. To carry it through the country would be to fetter and pervert the whole development of the nation, and to embarrass or thwart its career. It may 412 THE PURITAN SPIRIT easily bring about a popular revolution. "We need to move, distinctly and purposely, in the opposite direc- tion ; to break away from restraints, to emerge finally from the earlier glooms, and to secure on all sides am- pler tolerance, larger freedom of opinion and custom. The contrary effort will be vain and may be destruc- tive, forcing a fierce, if not a fatal, explosion." Probably this feeling was never wider or more en- ergetic than it is at this hour. The incessant inrush of immigration from abroad adds constantly to its vol- ume. The expansion of population over wider spaces increases its extensiveness, if not its intensity. As secular interests become more prominent, and the towers of exchanges, newspaper offices, insurance and telegraph buildings, surpass and dwarf the spires of churches, it naturally increases ; and as men depart further from the inherited faith of their fathers, either in the direction of Yaticanism on the one hand, or of agnosticism on the other, this feeling becomes more keen and controlling. In regard to no one subject, therefore, affecting our national development and career, is the contest fiercer than in regard to this ; and few signs appear that it is to subside, for years to come, in any general harmony of judgment. It may be worth while, then, to consider particularly what it is which really constitutes and effectively dif- ferentiates the Puritan spirit ; and to look at this as it has widely appeared in the world, not merely or mainly in this province of New England. New Eng- land is an important district, though it may not ap- pear as vast as it once did, when one has lived for forty-odd years outside its bounds. But it is certainly by no means considerable, as territorially related to 413 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES the surface of the earth, or even of the continent. Two hundred and seventy years are a considerable period of time, but they dwindle to insignificance be- fore the recorded centuries of history. Perhaps enough has been said of the Puritan spirit as it has appeared in these immediate delightful sur- roundings. It has been sketched in poetry, and in picturesque prose, in philosophical discussion, and with elaborate eloquence, with witty jest and in fascina- ting fiction; sometimes, perhaps, with extravagant eulogy, and sometimes, we know, with extraordinary force of hatred and derision. There are those around me, on this platform, who have contributed memo- rably to this discussion, with ample learning, in admi- rable utterance, with a just enthusiasm for those whose blood they have inherited, and whose names they have nobly adorned. It is not necessary, and it is not at all my present purpose, to add to this special pro- fuse discussion. Let us look, rather, at the Puritan spirit as it has asserted itself at large, on an ampler area, in the broader ranges of general history. We may there see it more clearly, perhaps ; as one sees a mountain, in its majestic and harmonious outlines, most distinctly from a distance, not from its base, or from the sides or shoulders of it; — the Oberland group, from the terrace at Berne ; the Graian or the Pennine Alps, from the streets of Turin or from the cathedral roof at Milan. Our first question must naturally be : What are the elements vitally involved in the distinctive Puritan spirit, as that has hitherto and in general experience appeared in the world ? Let us disengage these, as far as we may, from individual traits, which are as 414 THE PURITAN SPIRIT various as the millionfold crinkles along a coast, and survey them impersonally, before we regard them in particular examples. The spirit, as such, is not to be identified, of course, with any specific form either of doctrine or of wor- ship, since it has appeared in connection with many, and has continued positive and permanent, while they have been widely and variously changed. The ele- ments involved in it are essentially moral, and ear- nestly practical, not theoretical ; and they are not difficult to ascertain and exhibit. The first is, I think we all shall agree, an intense conviction of that which is apprehended as truth, with a consequent desire to maintain and extend it, and to bring all others, if possible, to affirm it. It by no means follows, you observe, that what is thus apprehended is truth, or is truth in harmonious and complete exhibition. JSTo man, or body of men, according to our conception of things, is infallible on all subjects, or even on any, history being witness ; and very different forms of thought have at different times drawn to themselves the intense conviction of human minds. It is the vigor, the moral energy of the conviction, which belongs to and which character- izes the Puritan spirit. Usually, this concerns supremely moral or religious propositions, rather than those which are political or philosophical ; though the latter may no doubt take occasional supremacy, as being involved in the others, or closely associated with them. Usually, too, it is founded, you will notice, on personal inquiry, indi- vidual reflection, not on traditional impressions or ex- ternal instruction ; while, very largely, it takes its ag- 415 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES gressive and resolute force from personal experience, which seems, of course, to give an assurance that nothing else can. So the conviction is sharp-set and energetic, however narrow it may seem to those who do not share it. It may be wanting, as not unfre- quently it has been, in breadth of view, and in clear- ness of perspective ; but it is never wavering or weak. It is naturally uncompromising toward what contra- dicts it ; and it perhaps too easily makes one impa- tient of divergence in opinion, liable to suspect moral error in those not mentally agreeing with it. It is not particularly catholic in temper, and not usually conciliatory in forms of expression ; and to those who do not have definite, urgent and sovereign opinions, it may easily seem imperious and harsh, repellently arrogant. But it becomes, by reason of its strength, a very positive power in the world of thought. It leads one to risk much on his convictions, to be utterly bold on their behalf, and to be ready to stand or fall with them before God and the universe : and in this is al- ways dignity and power. • It is in exact antithesis — this distinctive Puritan spirit — to that indifferent, pyrrhonic temper, always popular in the world, and never more so than in our time, which thinks one opinion about as good as another — this more probable, perhaps, that more doubtful, but no one of all abso- lutely and certainly true. An accomplished friend of mine, somewhat critical perhaps of accepted opinions, once heard a sermon from an eminent divine of New England, on the char- acter of Judas, in which the sordid and treacherous meanness of the apostate apostle, ripening into stu- 416 THE PURITAN SPIRIT pendous crime, was traced with a touch as delicate and vivid as the severity was unsparing. As he passed from the church, a friend said to him, " What a terrific discourse that was ! so true to the record, so true to life, and so startlingly true to the secrets of sin ! " " Yes," was his reply, " it was certainly a tre- mendous summing up against Judas ; but some things, I think, might fairly be said upon the other side." That is always the temper which is restless in conclu- sions, which doubts whatever it does not see, and which can accept no result of thought as beyond the reach of further revision. You may like it, perhaps. For the evening, at least, I shall open no quarrel with it. I only point out the fact that it is as alien from the Puritan temper as is that of the careless observer of society from that of the heroic reformer ; as was that of Erasmus from that of John Huss ; as that of the " free lance," in the Middle Ages, bold and skil- ful, but ready to follow any banner which paid him best, from that of the perhaps mistaken but always chivalric soldier or knight, who would fight to the death for Church and crown. On its intellectual side, this fairly exhibits the Puri- tan spirit. But also, with this intellectual temper, is associated characteristically, in this spirit, an intense sense of the authority of righteousness, as constituting the impera- tive law for mankind, only in obedience to which is it possible to realize true human nobleness and beauty. Here again, you observe, it by no means follows that that which is conceived to be righteous is so in fact, or is so fully. Men's moral judgment of particu- lars, in action or in habit, may be widely and diversely AA 417 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES mistaken. It is apt to be variously shaped and shaded through the impressions of early instruction, of exter- nal influences, of transmitted prepossessions, not un- frequently through the force of an unsuspected self- interest turning the delicate indicating needle from the true north ; so that courses of action seeming right to some shall be to others ethically offensive, and even the crimes of one state of society shall appear virtues to another. Thus, in our time, slavery has been as- sailed and defended, with equal vehemence and with equal tenacity, by those in whom was the Puritan spirit ; as in other days the divine right of kings, and the duty of regicide, have alike found supporters among them. JSTo special code of formal regulations belongs, distinctively, to the Puritan spirit. But that which is peculiar to it is the conviction of a law of righteousness, the omnipresent, superlative and unyielding law in the universe of mind, before which self-interest must be silent, against which the power of human passion vainly breaks, in conformity with which human laws have justification and vindica- tion, and find their only secure support. Theoretic- ally, of course, Cicero had recognized this in what Lactantius called the "almost divine words" of the Republic ; as did Seneca afterward ; as Plato had done before ; and as Sophocles had put into the lips of the doomed Antigone the recognition of the " un- written and immovable laws of the gods," eternally vital, which no mortal may justly transgress. But the peculiarity of the Puritan spirit is that it affirms this with tremendous emphasis, undertakes to test everything by it, and is determined to force it into practice, whatever happens. The Puritan is constitu- 418 THE PURITAN SPIRIT tionally, always, the incarnate conscience of his time ; and, as one of our present illustrious guests said, in substance, fifty years ago this week, in an Address which was an Oration, in the city of IsTew York, " It was Conscience in the Pilgrims which brought them to these shores ; inspiring a courage, confirming a resolu- tion, and accomplishing an enterprise, for the parallel of which men vainly search the records of the world." 1 This temper brings one, as a matter of course, into elemental conflict with those who hold that the law of the state, or the custom of society, is. the ultimate rule ; which is simply equivalent to saying that there is nothing higher in the universe than " the low-hung sky of Time ; " with those who affirm, too, that what is for a man's profit and pleasure is always permissi- ble, certainly if involving no damage to others ; with those who hold that any ideal law is a matter of poetic fancy and ethereal illusion, and that practical maxims, like those of Poor Richard, derived from economic experience, are the true guide of human life. Neither of these ethical tendencies has anything whatever of the Puritan in it. i But when one affirms an invisible law, — "vera lex," as Cicero says, " recta ratio, . . . diffxisa in omnes, constans, sempiternal 2 — above all human rule and 1 An Address delivered before the New England Society in the city of New York, December 23, 1839, by Eobert C. Winthrop. Boston: Perkins & Marvin. 1840. 2 "Est qnidem vera lex, recta ratio, naturae congruens, diffusa in omnes, constans, sempiterna; quae vocet ad officium jubendo, vetando a fraude deterreat; quae tamen neque probos frustra jubet aut vetat, nee improbos jubendo aut vetando movet. Huic legi nee obrogari fas est, neque derogari ex hac aliquid licet, neque tota abrogari potest : nee vero aut per senatum, aut per populum solvi hac lege possumus: 419 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES custom, which he is eternally bound to obey, and whose sublime precepts he must accomplish, whatever the cost and whatever the result — there is the essential Puritan spirit. The man may be absurdly mistaken in particulars ; the circumstances and the drapery of his life may be sumptuous or mean ; he may be on the throne, or brooding alone in sterile fields; his name among men may be anything you please : but his moral temper is always the same, whether in heathendom or in Christendom, in the middle age or in this age, in Massachusetts or beyond the Pacific. That moral temper associates him with many from whom in other things he stands widely apart. You see it in Stuart Mill as clearly, perhaps, as in any old stoic ; in Emerson, and in Whittier, whose recent birthday the country honored, as in any early New England divine. The law of righteousness, dimly dis- cerned, perhaps, but affirmed without debate and ap- plied without flinching — that is the element. Goethe spoke to Eckermann, you may remember, of his dis- like for a too tender conscience, which tended, he thought, to fix men's moral view on themselves, and to make them hypochondriacal ; and elsewhere, in a pas- sage of his autobiography, he congratulates himself on neque est quserendus explanator, ant interpres ejus alius: nee erit alia lex Komae, alia Athenis; alia nunc, alia posthac; sed et omnes gentes et omni tempore una lex, et sempiterna, et immutabilis continebit: unusque erit communis quasi magister et imperator omnium Deus, ille legis hujus inventor, disceptator, lator; cui qui non parebit, ipse se fugiet, ac naturam hominis aspernatus, hoc ipso luet maximas poenas, etiam si cetera supplicia, quae putantur, effugerit." — De Eepub. iii. 17. Lactantius' words are: "Dei lex, quam Marcus Tullius in libro de Eep. tertio psene divina voce depinxit. " — Div. Inst. vi. 8. 420 THE PURITAN SPIRIT having left behind a certain anguish of conscience, with the altar and the Church, to all which he felt himself thenceforth superior. But Goethe, with all his many-sided genius and his surpassing accomplish- ments, was as little of a Puritan — with the possible exception of Alcibiades — as ever set foot upon the planet. It, is noticeable, too, that with this intense sense of the authority of righteousness, comes naturally, though not universally, a profound assurance of a Personal Power at the head of the universe, who is working for righteousness, and who means to make it triumphant in the world. Of course this is the Biblical idea, on which all promises and provisions of the Scripture are based and set. But it is by no means universally accepted, even among those who daily walk beneath the light of the Scripture. Many feel, practically, in our time as in other times, that substantially the present course of things is to go on to the end — industry, commerce, war, crime, pleasure, punishment, following each other in ceaseless succession; sometimes right uppermost, and sometimes wrong, even as now ; that education will be widened, inventions multiplied, wealth in- creased, but that the old tangle of experience will re- main, with the same confused elements contending in it, till the completion of the history of mankind. The Puritan is he who looks for the absolute final dominion of righteousness on the earth, without which society never can be perfect, through which alone true welfare can be reached, in which the earth shall.be illumined and morally crowned; who looks for this because he believes there is always One, at the head 421 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES of the Universe, intent on this end and sure to achieve it. The moral argument for God is essentially su- preme with such a man. The ethical quality is to him the highest in the Most High. To hear God described as " the sum of natural forces," or as a being of power and skill, with no sovereignty of an eternal righteousness in him, is to such an one the final offense against reason and conscience. God is sublime to him, not so much because braiding the light, or launching the lightnings, or bending the heavens in an arch of circles which no telescope can search, as because He accepts righteousness as the law ; and His government is august because He will make this uni- versal. Here is the key to the Puritan theology, wherever that has appeared in history. Here is the dominant note in the personal Puritan life. It is a determining fact in character. It associates souls in a mystic and wide communion. Men may call such a man Quaker or Catholic, Cavalier or Roundhead, heretic or believer: he is as truly of the spiritual Puritan stock as if he had fought with Cromwell at Naseby, had faced the flame with the cheerfulness of Ridley, or had worshiped in the earliest and rudest huts of the Plymouth colony. I have specified three elements in the Puritan spirit. A fourth one must be added : a profound sense of the invisible world as the immortal realm of righteousness, and of the dignity of the nature of man, who is con- stitutionally related to that, and to the righteousness which is sovereign in it. The dignity of man's nature, I say, you observe. This is by no means to be confounded with any high estimate put on his character. On the other hand, 422 THE PURITAN SPIRIT the higher one's estimate of his nature, in its inborn relationship to righteousness and to God, the sharper will be, usually, his criticism of himself, and perhaps his moral condemnation of others. It is the man of Epicurean life and thought who thinks too lightly or too highly of himself, having no noble ethical standard by which to try his moral life. The austere judg- ment of one who reveres God as righteous will strike with sharpest and hardest stroke on all conscious folly and sin ; and despair is apt to be nearer to such an one than any self-exaltation. But the estimate of the human personality is wonderfully different in the Epicurean, to whom life is only a holiday game, and in the Puritan, to whom it is an arena for sublime struggle and heroic achievement in the service of righteousness. " Bury me with my dogs " is a saying which has sometimes been attributed to Frederick the Great, as he drew toward death. It might have been said by him, though probably it was not. To the Puritan the very body is sacred, as having been the shrine of that personal soul which is allied w T ith the immensities. In himself, as in others, he recognizes profoundly supernal relations. Man is to him naturally a great person ; with great powers for discerning the truth, and serving the cause of a divine justice ; on a solemn and divine errand in the world; constitutionally affined to in- visible spheres, and to Him who is supreme amid them ; not far beneath the level of celestial intelli- gences ; to whom it is natural that there should come divine teachings, and even present divine impulses ; for whom no miraculous intervention is too amazing to be believed ; before whom arises the great White 423 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES Throne. Differences of human condition are little. The question of more or less culture, of more or less success in the world, is of no account to one who looks thus on the nature of man. The personal soul, in castle or cabin, in palaces or in chains — that is the supreme thing on the planet ; for which, indeed, the planet was builded and is maintained ; by the pres- ence of which the earth becomes a vital and a signifi- cant part of the universe which has God in it, with ranks and orders of intelligent spirits. For this the Cross was set, under shadowed heavens, on the amazed and quaking earth. Above this are opened the gates of light. This honor for the soul, as related to God and to the holy and bright Immensity, is as essentially as anything else a characteristic force and element in the Puritan spirit. Masson gives a perfect illustration of it when, in his Life of Milton, he describes the great poet, at his graduation from Cambridge in 1632, two years after some of our ancestors reached these shores, as characterized by a solemn and even an austere de- meanor of mind, connected with which, he says, was a haughty yet not immodest self-esteem, since he recognized himself as an endowed servant of the Most High, and was accordingly daringly resentful of any interference, from whatever quarter, with his com- plete intellectual freedom. That was precisely the Puritan spirit. Even the portraits of Puritans show it, whether by Van Dyck on the other side of the ocean, or by Copley on this. Men have thought of this temper as wholly subdued, if not overwhelmed, in its unquestioning reverence toward God. His authority it has not doubted, because his character 424 THE PURITAN SPIRIT has arisen before it, glorious in holiness. But it has been the most imperious temper of the world in its assertion of man's independence, as responsible to God ; as already by nature what he would make it morally, by operations of grace, his son and heir. This is the temper in which the Scriptures have been studied ; in which preaching has become the great function which it has been in the Puritan congrega- tions — whether performed in the Genevan gown, or in the surplice, or in neither. This is the temper in which learning has been cultivated with incessant as- siduity ; in which Harvard College was established, in the midst of extreme poverty and weakness, to be- come the vast and opulent university in which to-day the land rejoices, and from which it takes a beautiful renown. Such enthusiasm for learning never will cease while the Puritan conception of man's nature continues. We have noticed some principal elements in the Puritan spirit. Let us observe, and with equal care, some grave and palpable deficiencies in it. To it be- long, not unnaturally, the defects of its virtues, and the roughnesses of its strength. It is not easy for any man, or any body of men, to have the armor of right- eousness equally and fully on the right hand and on the left. And the evident deficiencies or faults which appear in connection with the Puritan temper are such as to excite, among multitudes of men, a very vigorous dissent and dislike. They are often assailed with the sharpest and most contemptuous ridicule, are sometimes encountered with the fiercest animosity. One of them, certainly, is a want of interest in things esthetic ; in the products of fancy, of artistic 425 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES genius, of dexterous skill, in what has it for its office to add the ornament of beauty to life. It is not by accident that the Puritan spirit has been often icon- oclastic, shattering statues or burning them into lime, melting in furnaces the rich and precious monumental brasses, shivering the loveliest stained glass as if it were frost-work on the window, cutting pictures in pieces, and once, at least, offering twenty thousand pounds, as it is said in my family tradition that a Puritan did to Oliver Cromwell, for permission to burn the pile of York Minster. Not for the Puritan, in his reserved and haughty consciousness of supernal relations, is the dainty sump- tuousness of color, the symmetric grace of moulded marbles, the rhythmic reach and stately height of noble architecture, the pathos and the mystery of music. His spirit has been too intense, his mind too heavily charged with urgent and imperial themes, his will too set and strenuous for achievement in the world-battle to which he feels himself engaged, to allow him to pause upon things like these. They have seemed to him glittering and deceptive gauds ; tin- seled shows, hiding the sun ; products of the pleasure- loving part of man's nature, not ministering to truth and righteousness, and to man's supreme welfare. He has therefore dashed them before him as frail things, of no moral worth, and liable even to be dangerously alluring. He has not remembered that to some minds a relish for what is lovely in fancy and in art is as native as color to the violet, fragrance to the rose, or song to the bird ; that God's own mind must eternally teem with beauty, since he lines with it the tiny sea-shell, 426 THE PURITAN SPIRIT and tints the fish, . and tones the hidden fibers of trees, and flashes it on breast and crest of flying birds, and breaks the tumbling avalanche into myriads of feathery crystals, and builds the skies in a splendor, to a rhythm, which no thought can match. It has been a narrowness, though a narrowness that has had depth in it, and that has not been merely superficial and noisy. And it has been a narrowness for which the Puritan has suffered, in the diminution of his influence in the world, and in the darkening of his fame, more than others for conspicuous crimes. I recognize the fact, and have no contention to make against it, though I cannot but regret it with all my heart. It is obvious, too, that with this disesteem of things esthetic has been often associated a foolish contempt for the minor elegancies of life, of letters, of personal manners, and of social equipment, with sometimes a positively dangerous disdain of the common, innocent pleasures of life. Unquestionably, and for the same reason, — its in- tensity of conviction, its supreme devotion to what it conceives as the absolute righteousness, — the typical historic Puritan spirit has had in it something harsh and rigid, repellent, indeed, and almost relentless, to- ward the minor refinements of thought and speech. It is too downright, and determinately insistent, to give sympathy to these. There have been, as there will be, signal exceptions ; elegant scholars, accom- plished artists, noble gentlemen, to whom a delicate courtesy was an instinct ; but, constitutionally, the spirit which I am broadly describing does not spe- cially care for what is charming, graceful, picturesque in society. The dainty humor, the choice epigram, 427 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES the sparkling persiflage of the salon are not a.t all within its sphere. It is so essentially predetermined to great ideas and majestical purposes, that these things appear to it slight, evanescent, of no real ac- count. Its very wit is sharp, if not saturnine, has a gleaming edge, and is meant to serve practical uses. And toward the pleasant enjoyments of life it is apt to take an attitude almost cynical, in which there is both folly and peril. Not everything is true, we know, which has been said of it in this regard. Household pleasures have been familiar and delightful in Puritan families. The Thanksgiving festival, — a kind of secular Christmas, — now happily naturalized throughout the land, has been one of the products of the Puritan spirit, rising like a majestic date-palm from amid the gleaming ice of New England. But certainly its conception of life on the earth has always been that of a battle and a march, under watchful heavens, toward superlative issues, with great destinies involved. And so disdain of the soft and pleasant things in life has never been unnatural to it. It fears in them a subtle seduction from nobler aims, perhaps sometimes suspects this where it does not exist ; and for itself, it would be always girded and armed, and shod with swift sandals, for righteous strife. Of course there is much in this which, to the gen- eral feeling of the world, is wholly unlovely ; and there is much, it may not be denied, which involves a positive moral danger. For pleasure, so it be innocent in itself, is not a mere sedative or emollient to the spirit. It is absolutely recreative, as the very word " recreation " implies. Within reasonable limits, it is 428 THE PURITAN SPIRIT that which keeps the moral temper sound and sweet, which refreshes the will when it is weary, and rein- forces it for invigorated action, making the face of the sternest man to beam and shine with a radiance from within. Any ascetic intolerance of true pleasure, or any habitual indifference to it, tends to moodiness, or even morbidness, of mind. It tends to self-isolation from a world whose playfulness and whose pleasant- ness are distrusted ; from a world which is regarded as one to be refused and conquered, not to be enjoyed. It has tended, indeed, sometimes at least, to worse effects still, to a wild and fierce license, coming in re- action from it, and as a final alternative to it. It is not monasticism alone which has shown these effects. There are passages in the history of Puritan families which almost luridly illustrate the same. The mod- ern gay insolence of youth was of course never toler- ated in the Puritan society, even when it took much milder forms than that which angered the ancient bears. But sometimes, also, the glad and comely pleasure of youth was too little regarded, was too sternly repressed. The effort to expel nature with pitchforks is not often successful. One may, perhaps, cap a geyser with stone, but look out then for more formidable jets ! And it is a fact which has philoso- phy in it, that the most reckless profligates whom our history has known have come, sometimes, from the saintliest and the most scrupulous households. Another defect is still more vital ; that toward the more delicate sensibilities of the soul, especially as they appear in minds disturbed, unsettled and ques- tioning, and in hearts reaching tenderly forth for stimulation or solace, there is often a lack of affection- 429 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES ate sympathy in the Puritan spirit. There is even sometimes a hard and oppressive intolerance toward such. Certain great ideas have authority for that spirit, and it feels and declares that they should have for all. The immutable laws of righteousness "must go on, though a million hearts are bruised before them. There is, not unfrequently, among minds which are not of the finer and superior order, a prodigious con- fidence in purely logical processes, as availing to solve the highest problems which can be presented to hu- man thought. Even the Cambridge Platonists, with their sympathizers at Oxford, were regarded in their time, and have been regarded since by the commoner minds, with a certain disfavor, though the honored name of Emmanuel College was above them. The spiritual intuition of truth, the sublime views of it which appeal immediately to a spirit in holy fellow- ship with God, are apt to command too little respect from the downright and practical Puritan mind. An inference, to that mind, is as certain as a vision. It sees no shading, and tolerates no internal hesitation. " Logic is logic. That 's what I say " — as in the won- derful "one-horse shay." There is at times, no doubt, something hard, im- perious, dictatorial, in this spirit. It is not as sensi- tively gentle and responsive, as discerning and patient, toward diffident souls as was that of the Master. It repeats his denunciatory words toward the strong and the haughty, more easily than his affectionate minis- try to the questioning and the sad. It catches the roll of the thunder from Sinai, and makes it reverber- ate over the centuries, more readily than it adapts 430 THE PURITAN SPIRIT itself to the loftier office of wiping all tears from every eye. One of the most striking modern instances of this spirit, among literary men, has been in Carlyle, who did not accept many Puritan doctrines, but whose Scotch blood seethed with its temper in every micro- scopic globule; and in whom sternness, rather than sweetness, was certainly the prevailing trait. Sar- castic jeers at human infirmity were oftener on his lips than words of compassionate sympathy with it. A nation, to him, was "of forty millions, mostly fools." And while multitudes of minds have been seized and stirred by his well-nigh prophetic words, as by almost no others spoken in our time, a sad soul, teased with questionings, troubled and tremulous in anxious solicitudes, crying like a child in the night for help, would hardly conceivably have gone to him. In a lonely grief any one of us would, I am sure, have appealed far sooner to men with not a tithe of his terrible genius. In more or less distinctness, we see the same thing widely in history. The Puritan temper is strong and stalwart. It grasps great themes, confronts great op- positions, and reckons with great issues ; but it is not essentially gentle, tolerant, sympathetic, tender, in- tent upon leading men with delicate hand out of tan- gles of doubt, out of weakness and fear into spiritual tranquillity, out of sadness into peace. It is too affirmative to be wholly sympathetic ; too surely re- lated, in its intense consciousness, to the supreme circles of the universe, to regard as it ought the weary and timid and half-despondent. So multitudes of men resent and hate it. They scoff at and scout 431 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES it, and would put it, if they could, in a perpetual pillory of history. Mrs. Stowe has touched this, again and again, with her unsurpassed delicacy and strength, in some of her sketches of New England life. Perhaps no one of us, in whose veins flows the blood of the early immigra- tion, could go back to the start in his family history without finding examples. The sensitive minds, the minds in which the moral dominated the logical, — the imaginative, and especially the feminine minds, — were often oppressed with terrific self -questionings, in the shade of the woods, in the comparative loneliness of life and its austere stillness under the solemn and silent stars, and in face-to-face view of the mystery of the future. An introverted thought started sur- misings which it could not silence and could not expel; and Satanic suggestions seemed sometimes inpalpably to lurk amid the shifting and darkling shadows of untracked woods. The cases were cer- tainly not uncommon, in which no ministry, save of logical deductions from what were esteemed theo- logical jprincvpia, was addressed to such minds ; in which, indeed, their suffering lasted, sometimes deepening into utter despondency, till cleared and dispersed in the supreme illumination of death. I do not hold the Puritan temper directly, or cer- tainly universally, responsible for this; but it has a defect in this direction which no fair mind will forget or conceal. But if such are its deficiencies, which we may not hide, let us not forget that it has also certain magnifi- cent qualities and superlative traits, which surely we ought, as well, to recognize. In times of great trial, 432 THE PURITAN SPIRIT amid the tremendous emergencies of affairs, these are certain to appear. It has, for one thing, a masterful sincerit}^. If any fineness of literary form is not a matter of importance to the Puritan, — as it usually is not, — if he fails to ap- preciate the subtle charm of modulated sentences, the finished luster of choice aphorisms, or the iridescent interplay of humor, this splendid and powerful grace of sincerity belongs to his temper, and gives it a dig- nity impossible otherwise. Men may charge him with sternness, and with being too little regardful of others ; but he is not apt to be temporizing in policy, ambigu- ous or diplomatic in forms of expression. Naturally his spirit hates the stucco which would represent stone ; and while it will not be anxious, perhaps, to gild iron columns, or to crown them with acanthus leaves, it will insist on their being iron, and not a frame of painted wood. I do not think men can anywhere be found whose words have squared more absolutely with their convic- tions than did those of the Puritans of England toward king and prelate ; than have those of many on this side of the ocean, in whom was the original Puritan temper, who have set forth conclusions sure at once to be violently assailed. Sincerity, at least, has been in the utterance — such sincerity as Ruskin long ago elo- quently expounded as a characteristic condition and element of all great art ; a sincerity which, as he says, " rules invention with a rod of iron ; which subdues all powers, impulses, imaginations, to the arbitrament of a merciless justice, and the obedience of an incor- ruptible verity." It is a characteristic not of great art alone, but of BB 433 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES all great life — this majestic sincerity, which means what it says; which does not evade and does not equivocate ; which gives weight to words, simplicity and impressiveness to all forms of action ; and which makes the longest uncouth sentences that ever were heard from a Puritan pulpit reverberate with the tone of personal earnestness, as with music of deepest bells. The Puritan statesmanship is apt to be candid. The Puritan laws are sure to have penalties ; and if Puri- tan thought has the impulse and the power to wreak itself on expression in the true poetic form, it makes the poetry glowing and incandescent, shot through with the singular heat and splendor of an upright and fervent soul. For myself, I would rather there were less of elegance and more of sincerity in letters and in life, wherever the English tongue is spoken. If that is a consummation not reached in our time, it will cer- tainly not be because the dauntless Puritan temper has not distinctly assisted toward it. Still further, too, if fancy is not active in the Puri- tan on lighter themes, he has before his mind a majestic ideal, of a universal kingdom of righteousness and truth, which is to include all human society, and to shape that society by its supreme laws. This is essentially the grandest ideal ever recognized in the world ; with which no other may be compared. The aim of the Roman Empire, of the Napoleonic, of the Russian, or of the British, has been simply limited and gross in comparison. It passes all other schemes of mankind, as opalescent mountain masses, seen from some fortunate coigne of vantage, surpass the cabins and villages about them. It has appealed, with a su- preme summons, to greatest spirits. A refrain from 434 THE PURITAN SPIRIT it was in Dante's song, and in Milton's. It is older far than the vision of John in the Apocalypse. A light from it gleamed upon the Hebrew economy. It was this, and nothing else, which the early colonists hoped and strove to realize here, in their narrow and stern surroundings. It is this which their descendants are striving to-day to further and assist, in their costly and cosmical missionary work. It is impressive to see how, in the early New Eng- land, when the distances were great, the surfaces deso- late, when churches were bleak and services austere, and when the Bay psalm-book marked the only trou- badour period in the unadorned annals, this vision of the future, in its superlative moral beauty, was the constant poem both of house and of church. Where- soever it appeared, and left its luster on the life in the wilderness, it appeared, as it still appears to us looking back, an illuminating ideal, impelling to the noblest endeavors, lifting the spirit toward highest levels, rounding the confused and noisy history of the time and of the world with " a sevenfold chorus of hallelu- jahs and harping symphonies." JS"o other fact is more characteristic of the Puritan spirit, and none, I think, is more significant or more impressive in any exhibi- tion of human temper. It is certainly to be said, too. that if the Puritan spirit is not naturally strong on the side of moral ten- derness, it has a superb and shining courage, as well as a capacity for tremendous enthusiasm, and for a self-devotion conspicuous and complete. It is not afraid of what man can do, so long as it feels that God and his righteousness are on its side. It has been frankly and gladly ready to face not only the fierce " 435 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES charge of cavaliers, but loneliness, exile, the sea and the wilderness, the unknown perils of a soil and an air which civilization had not tried, the cruel craft of sav- age enemies. It has gone out from happy homes for this, and from lovely surroundings, and has not flinched before the hazard and lifelong loss, any more than it had flinched before the frowning face of kings. It has in it a fortitude which is nobler than bra- very, as the current of the stream is mightier in mo- mentum than the sparkles which flash and foam on its surface. Such fortitude belongs to the convictions behind it. It is essentially involved in the assurance of God, of an imperative righteousness, of the uni- verse as one in which the moral order is supreme, and of the immortality in which that order shall be reg- nant and eternal. So it cannot give way, any more than the rock can before arrows or winds or the leap of wild beasts. Whoever has a true Puritan behind him, in any stress of contention and struggle, may know that there is one on whose succor and support he can steadfastly depend. A law of nature is scarcely less mutable. The poise of the planet is hardly more constant. " The Guard may die, but it never surrenders." And yet further : if this spirit has often too little regard for perplexed and suffering individual souls, it has also a triumphant disregard of institutions, however mighty, however ancient, if they are not characterized by what it apprehends as a divine right- eousness, and are not ready to submit to and to serve that. It is this which has brought this imperative temper constantly into conflict with such institutions, and has 436 THE PURITAN SPIRIT made it seem often only ruthlessly destructive. It has in fact been tearing down, to build up on what it could not but hold to be nobler lines. Church hier- archies, state aristocracies, institutions of royalty or of empire, have been nothing to it, except as related to the supreme ends of God's righteous kingdom. Miters and scepters have been paltry baubles before the intensity of its convictions. Pontifical thrones have seemed mere offensive obstructions in its path, to be swept away as the cannon fire sweeps away earth- works and abattis- before the shouting onset of an army. Even majority votes, which to the American mind seem to be specially hedged with divinity, are hay and stubble before its intensity. Individual re- sponsibility is its fundamental law. It expects to con- tinue in the minority, till the earth has been renewed to the righteousness of God ; and it is ready to wait for vindication and victory in the ages of larger light to come. It is essentially an innovating and a pioneer temper, aggressive and resolute for whatever may lift society forward, toward superior levels, more generous times. As it formerly met pain and persecution, without complaint and without reserve, so now it meets an adverse vote. As it denounced prelates aforetime, and set its foot on the neck of kings, so now it attacks any interest of society, or any organ- ized institution, which seems to it opposed to right- eousness ; and it is never to be satisfied till such an institution has been overthrown. " First pure, then peaceable," is its favorite maxim ; and the terrible strength of an intense purpose is always behind its moral attack. It needs the guidance of hignest wisdom, and may 437 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES well offer the considerate prayer of the Scotch divine, " Be pleased, O Lord, to guide us aright : for thou know est that, whether we be right or wrong, we be very determined." But no man can make or face an issue with this Puritan spirit without doing well to count beforehand the cost. I see the danger involved at this point ; but I see, as well, the temper which has rectified a thousand intrenched and haughty abuses, and has made the world far lovelier to live in ; and I will not forget the lowly graves from which it has sprung, when enjoying the harvest of our more free and fruitful society. Yet one thing more. If the Puritan spirit is com- paratively careless of pleasant things on earth, and is apt to fear them as too dangerous allurements, it has the clearest and surest vision of things celestial, and draws from them solace and strength, and high in- spiration. It is not a temper which works for wages. Men have heaped all manner of scorn upon it for maintain- ing, here and there, that a man should be willing to be damned in order to be saved. I admit the justice of much which has been said. No test of that un- scriptural sort, fabricated by metaphysical logic, ought ever to be presented ; and this one is offensive in many special ways. It is not even harmless, as the man thought the end of the thermometer might be, which he had bitten off and swallowed when it was testing his temperature, though he could not perceive that it was doing him any good. A test like this famous one dishonors God, by assuming that he can be willing to condemn one who seeks to turn in peni- tence to him ; and it confuses and bewilders the mind 438 THE PURITAN SPIRIT which is reaching after him in the person of his Son. It is justly repulsive to modern thought, and it never was favored by any large number of even the exact- ing Puritan divines. But it must be remembered, in absolute justice, that it represented precisely the state and attitude of mind in those who first proposed it as a question; and that never until one does not care what may happen, in this world or the next, so long as he does right, is he finally and utterly free of the Universe, with all his powers in perfect poise and grandest play. If righteousness required it, and the glory of God under the gospel, they who offered this test were willing to face infernal fires ; and they felt that others should be so too. Their primary error un- doubtedly was in transferring a transcendent, an al- most superhuman attitude of mind, to the beginnings of Christian experience ; in requiring from the babe in Christ what might possibly, at least in exceptional cases, have been accepted by the sublimely impas- sioned missionary or martyr. But while such absolute submission to God has been encouraged, and been even required, the Puritan thought has always been fixed on the supreme and celestial results of a divine life upon the earth, and has kept before it the radiant consummation of the eternal plan of the Most High. The Apocalypse has been to it the favorite book of all the Scriptures. The sunset-splendor has been no more evident to the phys- ical eye than the Heavenly City has been to the heart. The Cross of Christ has been interpreted by its rela- tion to those issues of life beyond all compass of human thought ; and the mission of the Comforter has been felt to be to bring an earnest of wisdom and 439 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES love, of spiritual peace and of holy power, only fully attainable in the illustrious sphere of the immortals : as if blossoming branches had been flung from over the walls of paradise ; as if fragrant odors had secretly stolen between the gates. The earth itself has be- come a sacred place to men, with this high expecta- tion arching its bow above the household, turning darkness to day in the dreariest life, and lighting the hills and bathing the sandy or rocky shores as in the up-spring of the immortal morning ! The waste and the wood have been to such only the wilderness which men were taking, as Lady Arbella Johnson was said to have taken New England, on the way to heaven. Over the rudest letters and life of the early colonies brooded this ethereal splendor. Their very funeral hymns throbbed with the impulse of the great expec- tation. The living Puritan, like the dying Stephen, not unfrequently saw the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God ; and his face, too, was to those around him "as the face of an angel." Ladies and Gentlemen, I have spoken frankly, with too great slightness and rapidity of treatment, but with such a treatment as the circumstances of prepara- tion have allowed me, of the elements involved in the Puritan spirit, as that has appeared not here alone, but at large in history ; of its deficiencies, or positive faults, which even its admirers have to recognize ; and of the sovereign qualities and traits which it also ex- hibits, and exhibits with most commanding force in critical times, and in the front of great emergency. It cannot be needful, then, to argue that this temper has not been local or provincial, but in the truest sense cosmical ; not limited to any one period in history, 440 THE PURITAN SPIRIT but common to all, and sometimes appearing most re- markably in those that were most unfriendly to it. It is as old as history ; and it always has shown itself with clearest manifestation in those of noblest nature and power, who have done the most memorable work for the world. Men have made kings out of rubbish, and statesmen, so called, out of pedants and rogues. They have tried, at any rate, to make scholars out of those too lazy to work, soldiers out of padded uni- forms, philanthropists out of cranks. But it takes a strong man, and a sound one, to be developed into a Puritan ; as men forge cannon out of grim metal, and do not fashion them oi papier-mache. Puritanism has its sources and its securities in the supreme elements of human nature ; in the discerning and imperative conscience, which affirms right as the ultimate law in the universe of mind ; in the intuitive reason, which declares the certitude of invisible truth ; in that divine side of the soul which is in direct cor- respondence with its Author, and which sees the eter- nal justice and might on the field of human combat, more clearly than in any roll of the earthquake, or any far-shining figures of the stars. It has its strength in that commanding will-power which is ready for effort, endurance, consecration, which finds opposition an incentive to achievement, and before which resist- ant forces or circumstances, whatever they may be, have got either to bend or to break. In these great powers the Puritan spirit finds always its roots and reinforcements. And, therefore, wherever these have been shown, it has appeared ; wherever these are to be shown hereafter, it will appear, till the earth and the heavens shall be no more. 441 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES Moses was a Puritan, — in fact, the sublime exem- plar and type of the Puritan spirit; who could not speak in the phrase of courts, and who knew that he could not ; but to whom Pharaoh, against God, with whatever chariots and horsemen and rock-built tem- ples, was no more than a temporary bulrush of the Nile against atmospheres and suns ; to whom the law of righteousness, the kingdom of the Holiest, the divine intervention for the guidance of his people, were as fleecy clouds, inlaid with fire, moving before him to lead the way and burnish the stern and rocky path ; who was just as strong against popular rebellion as he had been against imperial threat ; who bowed submissively to that divine will which sent him to die alone upon NTebo, and whom God buried in that austere and lonely funeral, the most majestic of time. It has been by reason of his indomitable Puritan temper, touched of God, that Moses has towered in colossal proportions, before all generations ; so that, as Theodore Parker said of him, " His name is plowed into the history of the world, and his influence never can die." Hezekiah was a Puritan, no one can doubt, what- ever temporary weaknesses he showed : who recon- secrated the defiled temple ; who swept away, with besom of fire, the lovely high places in which lust was taking on it the semblance and the sanctions of wor- ship ; who broke in pieces the brazen serpent, in the most daring and splendid iconoclasm which the world has seen, calling it in contempt " JSTehushtan " — a piece of brass. Daniel was a Puritan, as well as a statesman and a seer ; in the face of presidents, princes, and the king, 443 TfiE PURITAN SPIRIT when the decree had gone forth against prayer, before watchful eyes, and with the fierceness of lions near, going into his chamber, with its windows opened to- ward Jerusalem, and three times a day kneeling, pray- ing, and giving thanks, "as he did aforetime." Jeremiah was a Puritan: with rough raiment, ascetic habit, hated by people, priests and kings, flung into prison, eating bread of affliction, and with tears for his drink, yet standing against wickedness like a brazen wall ; with a faith unfailing buying the field on which the invading host was encamped, to demon- strate his certainty that again it should be possessed by Israel ; his life a long martyrdom, his death, per- haps, a furious murder ; yet bearing witness always, without impatience, but with no bated breath, to the truth of the Most High. One does not wonder that so many of the devout among our own Puritans sought a chrism of his majestic spirit, in naming after him their precious first-born. In fact, to state it in a word, the whole Old Testa- ment is vital and commanding with the examples of the Puritan spirit. It is not here and there, alone ; it breaks to light at multitudinous points, as the sun- shine through vapors, as the silver-gleams through all rifts of the rock in the wealthy mine. It was this which made the venerable Testament so dear to our fathers, and so familiar. We read it, perhaps, with daintier and reluctant eyes. But they, with their more virile temper, their experience of hardship, in their secluded homes in the wilderness, saw in the ancient Testament not history only, theology, or praise, but the glory of man reflecting and celebrating the glory of God. It was a Scripture in life which 443 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES . smote and stirred their strong emotion. Not merely as to Deborah under the palm-tree, or to Ezekiel by the river of Chebar, was the majesty of the Eternal mani- fest to them. The whole Hebrew economy bore its radiance, and declared its effect ; an economy stern, sublime, working for freedom because binding to God ; training men to be careless of the world and its lusts, that they might be champions for the kingdom un- seen. This was the lambent cloud of glory which filled all Puritan temples when the ancient Scriptures were opened within them. This made a presence- chamber of the Infinite in each Puritan home. We may not say that the Master was a Puritan, any more than we may apply to him any other of the special and divisional names known among men, his spirit being wholly sublimed and complete in perfect wisdom and perfect love. But this energetic and magnificent element was certainly in him, as shown by his attitude toward Pharisees and rulers, by his magisterial declarations of truth, and his terrific pre- dictions of the judgment to come. The Puritan has never found anything hostile in the temper of Christ, though he might sometimes have been attuned by that temper to a more benignant and winning grace. In John the same strong element appears, with all his temper of mystical love, and that lofty spiritual intuition of truth which has made his Gospel a source of perpetual wonder and delight to all sympathetic and lofty minds. His first Epistle is alive with its power; and it was an unswerving Puritan hand which traced the terrible crash of conflict in which righteousness conquers, and empires go down, till out of heaven descends in triumph the city of God. 444 THE PURITAN SPIRIT Paul was a Puritan, par eminence, in his view of truth and in his practical temper, in his hardihood of will and his vehement affirmations, and in his magnetic readiness for battle, on behalf of the con- victions at which the Greek laughed and the Jew was enraged. Wherever this spirit has appeared in the world, since his head fell on the Ostian road, it has turned instinctively to his Epistles for instruction and incitement. His spirit has spoken in all the words which have smitten like cannon-shot upon powerful abuses. Outside, altogether, of the Biblical history, such ex- amples appear. Men speak sometimes as if this spirit had been peculiar, or at least most familiar, to those of the Hebrew times and training, or, in modern years, to those, perhaps, of the English stock. Not at all. It belongs, as I have said, to the strong forces of human nature, and has appeared, therefore, wherever these have vitally emerged ; among those of Hellenic or Romanic lineage, of Gothic or of Celtic, as signally and impressively as anywhere else. It is, in fact, everywhere apparent in history, as one traces the glistening metallic threads in an ancient tapestry, which impart to it of their strength as well as of their sheen, and, while adding to its luster, preserve it from being torn apart. One cannot hnagine Eameses a Puritan: the haughty Egyptian, who knew not Joseph, who made the life of the Hebrews the cement of his walls, and whom the charming Miss Edwards pursues with her delightful persistency of scorn for his sins against the monuments. Yet to one who has any faith whatever in physiognomical indications, it is startling to see how his kingly face, reappearing from 445 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES the mummy-folds of three thousand years, seems to prophesy the face, set and stern, with a deep trace of sadness in it, of the hardest-thinking New England farmer, looking out from his windy hillside on the solemn problems of life and of the world. But Aristides was unmistakably a Puritan, whom Plato eulogized as having righteously fulfilled his trust : unsurpassed in justice, ostracized on account of it ; holding high office, commanding armies skilfully and bravely, not leaving enough of worldly wealth to pay for his funeral. The magnificent statue in the Museum at Naples, supposed to be of him, remains in my thought, and I doubt not in the thought of many others present, as one of the grandest embodiments ever made, in yielding and responsive stone, of high intellectual dignity and power, with a moral elevation unsurpassed among men. Pericles was distinctly not a Puritan, though a far-sighted statesman and an elo- quent orator ; fortifying Athens, giving magnificent impulse to art, and setting the shining diadem of the Parthenon on the brow of the queenliest city of time. Epictetus was a Puritan : the freed slave who felt himself in relationship with God and with the uni- verse ; to whom palaces and emperors were a trivial pageant; who was consciously here on a divine errand; who felt the touch of the Over-soul upon him; whose maxim was to "suffer and abstain." Cicero was not, in spite of his high and attractive speculation, his elaborate eloquence, his dazzling ac- complishments, perhaps never surpassed among men. In his theory of life, Marcus Aurelius had strong Puritanical tendencies, as had all the nobler and wiser 446 THE PURITAN SPIRIT stoics — Seneca himself, in his ethical writings. The Epicureans were always at the opposite extreme. How often the same temper has appeared in the Church, from the first age to the present, I need not remind you. Basil was an illustrious Puritan, though of sensitive genius and an admirable culture : who enjoined the three peremptory vows of poverty, chastity and obe- dience ; who feared not the imperial forfeiture of his property, because he had none, nor any banishment to inhospitable regions, since he was everywhere the guest of God; and who said, in practical effect, when the brutal deputy in Cappadocia threatened to cut out his liver if he did not obey an offensive order : " Thanks ! You will do me a favor. Where it is, it has bothered me ever since I can remember." 1 There is the essen- tial Puritan temper, which it is no more easy to break down by assault than to burn the iEgean, or to upset the Apennines. Athanasius was a Puritan : ruling councils in the interest of what to him was divine, not with The imperial stature, the colossal stride of mere titular kings, but with the subtler and might- ier force of a moral energy which almost none could withstand, and to whom the imperial tyranny which drove the Church from Alexandria was, as he said, "a little cloud, that will soon pass." Augustine was another, writing quietly that "City of God," which has been a favorite in all generations of Puritan fami- lies, amid what seemed the imminent crash of a fall- ing world. 1 Vita S. Basilii, chap. xxxi. v. ep. Greg. Naz. 447 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES Hildebrand was a Puritan (Gregory YII), strange as it seems : who strove with all the prodigious strength of genius, devotion and unconquerable will, to purify the Church according to his conception of purity ; and who could honestly say, when he died at Salerno, " I have loved righteousness and hated iniq- uity : therefore now I die in exile." Anselm was a Puritan : Archbishop of Canterbury, father of scholas- tic theology, who would rather be a brother in the cloister than a prelate in the Church and an officer of the realm ; whose friends were frightened by the ascetic severities of his life ; and who was accustomed to say, in the temper of the most unrelenting of New Eng- land divines, that if he saw sin on one side and hell on the other, he would jump into the latter to escape the former ! 1 Bernard was a Puritan : who lashed the /luxury of convents, and the glittering pomp and pride of churches, with an unsparing hand ; who admonished kings and pontiffs to think of themselves as stripped and unclean before the coming judgment of God ; who was an absolute iconoclast toward pictures and ornaments, with the jeweled candelabra which towered in churches ; and who valued the soul of the poorest peasant above all wealth of royal treasures. Wycliffe, Savonarola, Huss, Zwingli — Puritan traits are apparent in all ; in the Huguenots of La Rochelle and among the Cevennes ; in the Hollanders, pursuing 1 " Conscientia mea teste non mentior, quia saepe ilium sub verita- tis testimonio profitentem audivinius, quoniam si hinc peccati hor- rorem, hinc inferni dolorem corporaliter cerneret, et necessario uni eoruin immergi deberet ; prius internum, quam peccatum, appeteret. ' ' — Eadmer: De Vita S. Anselmi, lib. ii, 16, D. . 448 the puritan spirit with equal and incomparable faith and wrath their heroic battle of eighty years, for the land which they had redeemed from the sea, against Spain and Eome, and the fierce Inquisition. It was the same spirit, and no other, among our fathers in England, which led them to endure perse- cution there, and many of them to cross to this con- tinent of unsubdued forests and unexplored wastes, to plant the small colonies which should be the founda- tion of great Commonwealths, with what they deemed truth and righteousness for their rule. The true place of the founders of New England in the history of the world is given them by the fact that this spirit was in them. We value them for what they did. We should honor them more for what they were. There were hypocrites among them. The common temper was not, of course, equally or fully exhibited by all. They made many mistakes. They were often, no doubt, harsh and unlovely. It is easier, perhaps, to honor some of them now than it would have been to live with them then. But the essential and powerful temper which had been in Moses and in the prophets, in Paul and in Stephen, in illustrious Stoics and in great builders and reformers of the Church, was also in them. Because of it, they take their place among the morally illustrious of the world. They stand un- abashed, and in spirit undimmed, in the most illustri- ous succession of time. Because of it, till the con- tinent disappears, their fame cannot fail from the records of men. Because of it, their holy and happy renown will be immortal on high ! Woe be to us, Ladies and Gentlemen, if ever we fail to remember them with honor, or to contemplate their part in the CG 449 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES history of mankind with admiration and a triumphing praise. A monument has been raised to them at Plymouth, on a spot near which they landed. It is wholly fitting that another be raised, as is now, I learn, proposed, on the site of their departure from the old world to the new. The two should stand as answering towers — Martello towers, commemorating hearts that were as resonant, iron, and words that were hammers; be- tween which the unfailing wires of reverent remem- brance shall bind not Delft and Plymouth alone, but all the hearts fearless of man, and steadfast for right- eousness, in both the continents. This was the Puritan temper in New England in the earlier time. And, really, the secret of their strenuous struggle with Baptists and Quakers was in the fact that in these they encountered the same spirit which was in themselves, under special and differing forms of faith ; so that it was fire fighting fire, an almost irresistible force striking an almost immovable ob- stacle. It was the crossing of blades of Toledo, with different etchings and embossings on hilt and scabbard, but neither inferior to the other in the temper of the steel, or in the sharpness of edge and point. No wonder that sparks flew like flashes out of surcharged opposing clouds, and that the ringing clash of those unsurpassed weapons still echoes in history. The same indomitable Puritan spirit survived the early colonial times, always seeking not to decorate life or to ornament society, but to assert personal free- dom under God, and to innovate for righteousness, leading the march toward better ages. It sought always to lay foundations, to build vast walls, and 450 THE PURITAN SPIRIT then was ready to leave it to others to tone and color them, and set the pictured glass in the windows. Samuel Adams was a Puritan, if ever there was one : son of a deacon in the Old South Church ; carefully trained in his father's ways ; of whom Hutchinson said that, though he was poor, such was his inflexible disposition that no office could bribe him ; whom Gage excepted by name from his offer of pardon to penitent rebels ; who raised and ruled the eager democracy of the town and the state, and to whom Washington was no more than another, if he did not succeed. Colonel Abraham Davenport was a Puritan : who sat in the governor's council at Hartford on the ex- traordinary dark day, May 19, 1780, when chickens went to roost in the morning, and cattle came lowing from the fields, when a pall of darkness swept through the sky as if the sun had been suddenly extinguished, and when the Day of Judgment was tremblingly thought to be at hand. The House of Eepresentatives had already adjourned, and it was proposed to adjourn the council. " The Day of Judgment is at hand," said the Colonel, " or it is not. If not, there is no occasion for adjournment. If it is, I choose to be found doing my duty. Bring in the candles." Samuel Hopkins was a Puritan : who wrought with the utmost energy and patience of his acute and labo- rious mind to vindicate the ways of God to man ; who, on behalf of the enslaved African, fought that enraged aristocracy of Newport whose splendid wealth had on it, to his eye, the infernal scorch of cruel oppression ; and who, in the midst of utmost poverty, held his spirit aloft in communion with God, and in an almost seraphic meditation. 451 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES It is only true to the facts to say that the same spirit appeared afterward in those who differed widely from his faith, or from any accepted and articulated scheme of the New England fathers. The intensity of con- viction, of which I have spoken as characterizing Pu- ritanism, is an intensity of individual conviction. It may therefore make comparatively little, as often it has made, of general creeds, or of any systems to which others have agreed. It affirms the opinions held at the time by the personal mind, and is some- times almost ready to say, with the Quaker to his wife, " All the world seems queer, Sally, except thee and me; and thee is a little so." While devoted, therefore, to its own conclusions, it cannot escape the responsibility of leaving each following generation to do its own thinking, and to come to its possibly an- tagonizing convictions. As a system of thought, the Puritan element enters into alliance with diverse theo- ries. As a spirit, it survives strange vicissitudes of opinion. So it was that Unitarianism had under it its fair opportunity — was almost certain to appear at some time, and with the old temper to try to project the new and attractive scheme of speculation into the thought and life of society. Not a little of the spirit which had preceded him appeared in Channing, who had early learned to honor the Stoics, and who had taken from Hopkins enduring impressions ; who was as bold as he was gentle, cultured and suave ; and who faced slavery, in the Federal-Street meeting-house, and in Faneuil Hall, as if he believed in a personal devil, and that this was the incarnation of him. The same, too, was not unapparent in Buckminster, differing so widely in opinion from the father whose spirit was yet 452 THE PURITAN SPIRIT ever manifest in him. It is not hard to trace the same element in Emerson, or in Bushnell, or in Theodore Parker. I may not name some among the living, in whom equally it appears. Wendell Phillips was a Puritan : supple as an ath- lete, graceful as Apollo, gentle as a woman among his friends, to whom eloquence was an idiom, and the de- lightful grace of conversation both an ornament and a weapon, but from the silver bow of whose musical lips flew fiery shafts against whatever appeared to him wrong, and whose white plume shone always in the dangerous van of the heady fight. He had in his veins the blood, and in his spirit the Calvinism, of his first ancestor in this country, of whom it is recorded that having been ordained in the Church of England, and having served honorably in one of its parishes, he would not minister to the Congregational Church at Water town unless it would reordain him for itself, treating as null the Bishop's rite. John Brown was in some sense a Puritan, though certainly the sword of the Lord and of Gideon was not wisely wielded by him, and he might have learned more from the Sermon on the Mount than he did from the Decalogue, and from favorite prophets. Ladies and Gentlemen, this spirit is by no means dead in the land, though secular success may seem at times to have fettered or dissolved it ; though a daintier culture may have made men insensitive, if not positively averse, to its austere dignity and power; though it may almost seem whelmed and buried under the rush of incessant immigration, from lands whose manners and moral life it has not trained. It will surely reappear, if too daring assaults are made 453 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES on the ancient order and faith of the ~New England churches, or on that system of public schools which is to us a great inheritance ; or if socialistic, anarchic theories seek to minister to passion, to subvert public order, and to conquer, defile and despoil the con- tinent. In it is really, as I believe, our assurance of the future. "Without it our civilization will rot. All progress in what calls itself " culture " will only make us tender, luxurious and inert if this be absent. All simply material accumulations will but make in the end a bigger bonfire, to be touched by the torch of agrarian passion. The nation, without this spirit in it, however plethoric in wealth, however boastful of its strength, however famous in the world, will become at last but a bald-headed Samson. It may trust in some ineffectual wig to replace its vanished native strength, but the gates of Gaza will not even tremble before its touch. But with this spirit, affirmative of the truth as God gives us to see it, devoted to righteousness, and to Him who eternally advances it in the earth, seeing the glory of man revealed in his relation to the immensities, and in his essential correspondence with righteousness, and looking for the ages, even here on the earth, in which that is to triumph, for which we are ready ourselves to labor, to suffer and to endure, no difficulties will be too great to be encountered, and no assaults or perils fatal. The moral life of the nation will then equal its physical might and its great opportunity. Its virtue will not fail, and the iron in its blood will not be found wanting. Here, then, is our duty plainly before us: not to 454 THE PURITAN SPIRIT eulogize this spirit, but to incorporate it, and make it a part of our personal life ; not to put it away from us, as something which specially pertained to the past, but to set it forth afresh in our modern conditions. We may present it in gentler exhibition than it found in the old time. We may combine with it, as we ought, an ampler love of grace and beauty. We may rise, as we ought, to higher levels of spiritual sympathy with differing opinions than were familiar, perhaps possible, to our fathers. We may be more tender toward doubting minds, and more eager to minister to those who are walking, with overshadowed and saddened souls, amid the mighty and mystic problems of life and of the universe. But we must retain the same spirit in ourselves, and make it, as far as our influence goes, generally controlling, organific in the nation, if we would do our work aright. For it is true now, as true in the midst of all the beauty and all the wealth with which commerce, invention and art surround us, as true in this city of the Puritan's pride and of our admiration, as it was when Paul wrote to the despised disciples in Ephesus, under the shadow of that temple of Diana to which princes were tributaries and whose renown was in all the world — " We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand." We want the same temper, amid the changed world in which our personal lot has been cast, which has been in those who have stood, in all their times, 455 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES against corruption in Church or in State, with hearts that no more failed, and brows that no more blanched, than does the granite before the rush of the storm ; the same temper which was in our fathers two hun- dred and seventy years ago, when they left whatever was beautiful at home, in obedience to conscience, and faced, without flinching, the sea and the savage ; when they sought not high things, and were joyfully ready to be stepping-stones for others, if they might advance the kingdom of God ; but when they gave to this New England a life which has moulded its rugged strength from that day to this, has made it a monu- ment surpassing all others which man can build, and a perpetual living seminary of character and of power for all the land ; — a life, please God ! which shall never be extinct, among the stronger souls of men, till the earth itself shall have vanished like a dream. 456 THE SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF NATIONAL PROGRESS An Oration delivered at the Celebration of the Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the settlement of Southold, Long Island, August 27, 1890. THE SOUKCES AND GUARANTEES OF NA- TIONAL PROGRESS Me. Peesident, Ladies and Gentlemen: It is a happy and wholesome impulse which prompts us to look back from principal anniversaries to the character and the work of those from whose life our own has sprung, and of the fruit of whose labors we gratefully partake. No effects which are not morally beneficent can follow celebrations like that of to-day ; and I gladly respond to the courtesy which invites me — though a stranger to most of you, not a descendant of the settlers of Southold, only incidentally connected with its history through the fact that an ancestor of mine, a hundred and twenty -seven years ago, became pastor of its church, with the smaller fact that I have a pleasant summer-home within its old bounds — to take part with you in this commemoration. The special line of thought presenting itself to me in con- nection with the occasion will want, of course, the sparkling lights and shifting colors of local reminis- cence, but I hope that it may not seem unsuited to the day, or wholly unworthy of that kind attention on which I am sure that you will suffer me to rely. The two and a half centuries of years which have silently joined the past since the settlement by English- 459 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES men of this typical American town have witnessed, as we know, a wide, various, in the aggregate effect an astonishing, change in the conditions and relations of peoples, especially of those peoples whose place in modern history is most distinguished, and with which our public connection has been closest. "We get, per- haps, our clearest impression of the length of the period which presents itself for review as we recall some particulars of the change ; and it is a fact of en- couraging significance that almost uniformly the lines of change have been in the direction of better things : toward the limitation of despotic authority, the wider extension and firmer establishment of popular freedom, toward a more general education, with a freer and more animating Christian faith ; toward improved mechanisms, widened commerce, the multiplication within each nation of the institutes and ministries of a benign charity, the association of nations in happier relations. This prevailing trend in the general move- ment of civilized societies can hardly be mistaken. A rapid glance at some prominent facts of the earlier time, with our general remembrance of the courses on which Christendom has advanced, will make it appar- ent. It is a circumstance which at once attracts an interested attention that in the same year in w T hich Pastor Youngs and his associated disciples here organ- ized their church, and within a fortnight of the same date, the memorable Long Parliament was assembled at Westminster, the convening of which had been made inevitable by darkening years of royal imposition and popular discontent, the public spirit and political ability combined in which had probably been equaled 460 SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS in no previous parliament, and which was destined, in the more than twelve years of its stormy life, to see and to assist prodigious changes in the civil and re- ligious system of England. It was more than eight years after the settlement which we celebrate that the scaffold at Whitehall received the stately and tragic figure of Charles I, and sharply cut short his am- bitions and his life. It was more than eighteen years after the Indian title had here been purchased when the death of the great Lord Protector opened the way for the return of Charles II, with his dissolute reign of revel and jest. It was almost half a century before the reign of William and Mary introduced the new and noble era into the kingdom which had staggered so long under sorrows and shames. . We go back to the day of Strafford and Laud, of Hampden and Pym, of the Star Chamber and the High Commission, as we think of those who reared the first houses upon this plain. The contrast of what was at the same period with what now is, is not less striking, in some respects it is more impressive, if we cross the channel and recall what was going on in the principal states of the Con- tinent. It was more than two years from the date of this settlement before the death of the crafty and dar- ing Cardinal Richelieu delivered France, amid unusual popular rejoicings, from his imperious and unscrupu- lous rule. It was nearly three years before the com- mencement, under the regency of Anne of Austria, of the long, splendid, detestable reign of Louis XIV. It was twelve years before the close of the war of the Fronde, and forty-five years before that revocation of the Edict of Nantes which pushed hundreds of thou- 461 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES sands of her noblest children out of France, the cost of which to the kingdom, in character and power even more than in riches, could never be computed, the disastrous effects of which are evident to-day in its social, religious and political life. When the early colonists came to these distant plains, the Thirty Years' War was raging in Germany, with a fury exasperated by the unparalleled strife and ravage of the preceding twenty-two years. Gustavus Adolphus had fallen in death in the fog at Lutzen, and his capricious and eccentric daughter Christina, though formally enthroned, was a petulant girl of fourteen years, only held in check by the masterful intelligence and the dominating will of the great Chancellor Oxenstiern. The eighty years' war of the Nether- lands against Spain was not yet diplomatically ended, though even Spanish arrogance and prelatical fury could hardly hope longer for final success. Barneveldt had been twenty-one years in his grave ; but Grotius, though an exile from the country to which he had given loyal service and a beautiful renown, was at the height of his fame in Europe, and the future illustrious grand pensionary of Holland, John DeWitt, was an aspiring lad of fifteen years. Interior Germany had been wasted beyond precedent, almost, one might say, beyond belief, by the tremendous struggle through which it was still painfully passing on the way to the era of religious toleration ; the peace of Westphalia was only to be reached eight years later, October 24, 1648 ; and the interval was to be measured not so much by years, or even by decades, as by successions of generations, before the vast elements of strength, political, military, educational, religious, which have 462 SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS since belonged, and which now belong, to the most commanding empire in Europe, were to come to free historic exhibition. Forty-three years after Southold was settled the Turkish armies, with barbaric ferocity and fatalistic fanaticism, were beleaguering Vienna, and the famous capital was only saved from capture and sack by the consummate daring and military skill of John Sobieski, king of the Poland which in less than ninety years was to be brutally dismembered. Prussia, which now is supreme in Germany, did not become a kingdom, the elector of Brandenburg was not strong enough to assume a crown, till more than sixty years after these fields and forest spaces had felt the thrust of the plow and rung with the stroke of the English ax. In the same year in which the first houses were raised here, Portugal was successful in wrenching itself from that Spanish clutch which sixty years before had been fastened upon it by Philip II, and the power of Spain, already diminished more than it knew by the recent insensate expulsion of the Moors, was further reduced through this resumption by Portugal of its proper autonomy. Urban VIII, who led the way in condemning the Jansenists, was the head at the time of the Roman Catholic world, and the fierce zeal which seventy years earlier had instigated and celebrated the awful massacre of St. Bartholomew was still a vicious prevailing force in Southern Europe. In the north of the Continent Peter the Great, with whom the modern history of Russia begins, was not born till after the first pastor of this church had fulfilled his useful ministry here of thirty- two years, and had been laid in his honored grave. Even a fragmentary outline like this, indicating a 463 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES few prominent points in the half chaotic condition of Europe two and a half centuries ago, will serve to re- mind us what astonishing changes have there occurred since this modest but beautiful town was started on its prosperous course, The swift review brings prophecy with it. A general progress unmistakably appears, amid whatever clash of ambitions or whirls of change. Events seem hurrying, as if the history of mankind were drawing nearer a destined consummation. One cannot well resist the impression of a forecasting and governing purpose, which cannot be wearied, and which on the large scale never is baffled ; which has ages for its days, which makes nations its ministers, and the perfect fulfilment of whose august plans is to transform the earth into a paradise of wider extent than the primeval, in a lovelier beauty, through uni- versal righteousness and peace. But these changes in other lands, remarkable as they are, are hardly as full of animating promise as are those occurring in the same period in the nation which has sprung to sudden greatness out of distributed towns like this. The change has come here chiefly in the way of development, with rapid simultaneous accretions from abroad, rather than in the way of convulsive and fracturing organic change; but how amazing in the aggregate it has been ! It is hard to recognize the fact that at the time of the settlement of this village Hartford and New Haven were insig- nificant hamlets, including each a church and a grave- yard, with a few poor houses ; that only the obscure and winding Bay Path anticipated in New England that comprehensive railway system which now over- lays it with meshes of iron ; that only an unimportant 464 SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS huddle of houses around a small fort marked the site of the present magnificent commercial metropolis, one of the financial centers of the world ; that the Swedes and Finns were just beginning their short-lived colony on the Delaware ; and that more than forty years were still to elapse before the peace-loving Quakers were to take advantage of that royal grant to William Penn which was not made till 1681. Over all the now resounding continental expanses the Indians were lords paramount, where in general to-day they are scarcely recalled save by legend or history, as starting trains of ethnological inquiry or inspiring efforts of Chris- tian charity — sometimes, perhaps, with an evil twist of what was fierce or childish in them, as hideously caricatured in the Ku-Klux disguise, or supplying a title for the chief members of the Tammany society. The few thousands of English, Dutch and Swedish immigrants, then clustering lonesomely along the nar- row Atlantic edge, are now multiplied, as we know, into a vast cosmopolitan people, numbering nearly sixty-five millions, and increasing in an accelerating ratio. The imperfect and frail early alliance between the colonies of Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Haven, whose brief life did not begin till three years after this town was settled, has been suc- ceeded by the immense organized union of forty-four powerful States, exuberant with vigor, proudly inde- pendent in local affairs, but for national concerns compacted in a unity which nothing but the splitting of the continent can disturb ; and the pinching poverty of the time to which we reverently look back has been followed by that extraordinary wealth which makes the nation one of the richest in the world, and to DD 465 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES which mine, meadow and sea, the factory and the prairie, the cotton field, the sugar field, oil wells and fisheries, even quarry and forest, under the skilled enterprise of man, are adding prodigiously all the time. Whatever special lines of comparison we follow, the same amazing contrast appears. The only institution for any education higher than that of the common school was then the recent and small one at Cam- bridge, to which only two years before this village began had come Harvard's bequest of money and books. What multitudes of colleges, seminaries, pro- fessional schools, institutes of learning and of training, of every grade, for both the sexes, now fill the land, I need not remind you. The country is almost too crowded with them, while every department of human knowledge is fairly or richly represented among them. A newspaper was, of course, not imagined on these shores when the Indian wigwams began to retreat be- fore the habitations of civilized man. None was known in England till this town had been settled twenty-three years. The first in America was still more than sixty years in the distance. Yet a small printing press had been brought from England to Cambridge, and an almanac was soon issued from it. In the year of the commencement of this village the " Bay Psalm Book " appeared, from the same press, to quicken with rude versification of Hebrew lyrics the praises of those who were laboring and enduring for God on these unsubdued coasts. It is never to be for- gotten that the early office of the press in this country was to give an expression, however unskilled, to the reverent and grateful adoration of those who felt themselves nearer to God because exiles from home, 466 SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS and to whom, in the midst of penury, cold, hardship, of wasting sickness and savage assault, He had given songs in the night. "The New England Primer" was in spirit a natural companion of this, though later in appearance, the date of the first edition being un- certain, the second following in 1691. Bunyan's " Pil- grim's Progress " had been reprinted earlier, in 1681. The poems of Anne Bradstreet had preceded this, in 1678. Morton's "New England's Memoriall " had come from the same press in 1669. Books like these were designed of course for English readers, while a fervent missionary temper prompted others for the Indians. Eliot was not able in 1640 to address those near him in their own tongue, but no long time passed before he had mastered the Massachusetts dialect of the Algonquin language, and had begun to convey into it the entire Bible. A catechism for the Indians was published by him in 1654. His translation of the Scriptures appeared in 1661 and 1663, from the press to which it gave renewed consecration. An Indian primer followed in 1669. His translation of Baxter's " Call to the Unconverted," in 1664, was followed by others till 1689 ; and the work of the Cambridge press for the Indians was continued into the following century. These incunabula, or " cradle books " of New Eng- land, with the others, principally sermons and theo- logical essays, for which collectors now make inde- fatigable search, were not imposing in size or style, were commonly rude in typographical execution. Their relative antiquity alone commends them to modern attention. But there was certainly a large prophecy in them. 467 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES To what practically immeasurable proportions the literature of the country has since expanded we all are aware, how many distinguished native authors have conspired for its enrichment, how familiarly at home in it are choice translations from other tongues, how copiously the eloquence and song of other centu- ries address through it attentive minds, what abun- dance and brilliance it adds all the time to American life ! Either one of several of our current magazines is a better exponent of the modern civilization than the Parthenon was of the Hellenic, or the Forum Eomanum of that which ruled from the Tiber ; and the yearly issues of these alone are counted in the millions. Of necessity, these changes, and the others which they suggest, have not come without vast endurance and endeavor, the record of which occupies volumes, the report of which gives distinction to the continent. The steady advance of a civilized population from the seaboard to the fertile interior ; the training of the ever-multiplying people to public administration, in local congregations, in town meetings, in provincial assemblies ; the repeated French and Indian wars, ex- hausting but educating, scarring with fire the length- ening frontier, but making homes always more dear ; the multiform movements, political, commercial, mili- tary, religious, ultimating in what we call the Revo- lution — which was, in fact, a predestined Evolution, in special circumstances and on a vast scale, of the inherent life of the people; the closing severance from Great Britain, and the speedy establishment of our Government, with its coordinate departments of authority, its careful limitations and its sovereign 468 SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS functions ; the following periods of political discus- sion, and of free and confident legislative action ; the ever-inflowing immigration from abroad, of those at- tracted by virgin fields, by the absence of oppressive restrictions, and by the stir of an eager and fruitful popular enterprise ; the introduction of more powerful forces and more elaborate mechanisms into diversified fields of labor ; the sudden transportation of a coura- geous and well-equipped empire over alkali plains and rocky crests, to the sunny and golden slopes of the Pacific ; the final climactic civil war, in whose bloody crash it seemed at times that the nation must sink, but from which it came with a nobler and an enduring power ; the crowning glory of that emancipating Edict which had been purchased by inestimable sacri- fice of treasure and of life, which exiled Slavery from our shores and lifted to freedom the millions of a race — all these events, with others which have followed, have marked the stages of the astonishing progress in which we rejoice, at which the world wonders, by the narrative of which human history is enriched. It is through these that the feeble communities of two and a half centuries ago have been steadily, at length victoriously, changed into the magnificent national organism which now faces mankind upon these shores. The process has at times seemed slow, has sometimes been stormy, sometimes bloody; but the final result is evident and secure. The little one has become a thousand, and the small one a strong nation ; the Lord hath hastened it in His time ; and imagination fails to prefigure what hereafter is to follow. "We need no sign in the sky to assure us that a power greater and a plan more far-reaching than 469 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES any of man have been implied in the progress ; and it does not seem presumptuous to expect that consum- mations are still to be reached yet more delightful and more stupendous. Standing then for a little at this point, after the general survey which the hour has seemed irresistibly to prompt, the question almost imperiously meets us : "What are the essential sources and guarantees, under God, of that national progress, the desire for which is common to peoples ? How comes it to pass that, oc- casionally at least, out of weakness and obscurity emerges immense political strength? that scattered hamlets multiply and consolidate into an empire? that settlements as feeble to human eyes, at the be- ginning as wanting in promise, as ever were planted, come to take a place as prominent as any, so far as we can foresee as permanent as any, in the history of the world ? The question is one of vast interest and importance. It is apt to the occasion. It is empha- sized by the fact that not a few peoples, in recent as in earlier times, if not sinking in definite decay, have failed to achieve the progress which they sought. It meets us at a time when, in regions separated by con- tinents and oceans, the nascent beginnings are appear- ing of what it is hoped may some time or other be- come civilized states. It has at the same time vital relation to the strong hope which we entertain for the future security and advancing development of the nation to which our hearts are bound. Let us think of it then, in this morning hour, and rise if we may from the local to the general, from facts which we gladly recall to the vital principles which they imply. 470 SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS It is idle to imagine that there is any impersonal vitality, belonging to assemblages of persons or of households, out of which social progress comes as by unconscious evolution, the rude tribe becoming the in- structed and aspiring community almost as the plant is unfolded from the seed, the stately tree from the growing shoot, or the perfect form of manly strength or feminine grace from the infant or the embryo. A fancy of this sort may entertain speculative minds, whose theories in the air are to them more significant than suggestions of facts, and who are ready at a half -hour's • notice to reconstruct society and to fore- cast its progress, according to some imaginative scheme. But the obstinacy of facts does not yield to dexterity of theory ; and communities do not stand upon paper plans. The social instinct is of course at the base of civilization. But this instinct may be only disturbed or displaced by the effect of local proximity, feuds becoming intensified thereby, suspicious ani- mosity overruling the tendency to moral affiliation ; while, always, the primitive instinct for society re- quires many things external to itself for the promo- tion of general progress. If this were otherwise, none of the early peoples of the world, long asso- ciated, would be now in a state of inert barbarism, as they obviously are in Africa, Australia, in the islands of the Pacific, or in Patagonia. If this were other- wise, it is difficult to see why a progress commenced, and carried to points of considerable success, should be afterward fatally interrupted, as it certainly has been in many countries, as it was, for example, among the mound-builders on this continent. It is a notion unsupported by history, that the inherent life of a 471 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES people, associated in vicinity of residence, or even allied by ties of blood, will of itself assure the final magnificent effect of a prosperous, strong and ad- vancing society. Nor can this be assured by any pleasantness of en- vironment, with rich and various physical opportu- nities thus set before peoples. Doubtless the natural circumstances of climate, soil, vicinity to the sea, the frequency and the breadth of rivers, the reach of forests or of arable lands, the proximity of mountains and hill-ranges, the accessible metallic and mineral re- sources — these have large effect on communities when the force which works for civilization is established among them. But the influence is secondary, not primary, of auxiliary rather than of cardinal impor- tance ; and regions beautiful, healthful, fertile, have continued for centuries the home of barbarians, while comparatively rugged and sterile lands have only braced to new vigor the will of peoples, and pushed their inventive and conquering force to supreme ac- tivity. In comparison with many others Scotland is a poor and unpromising country ; but the strenuous and disciplined energy of its sons has made it the seat of as noble a civilization as the pages of history have to show, while districts under temperate skies, with navigable rivers, inexhaustible riches beneath the soil, with fields only waiting the baptism of industry to make them bloom in abounding harvests, remain the homes of the nomad or the savage. We may not forget that our own country, with all the immeasurable natural advantages which the European mind has discovered and used in it, was possessed and used in their rude way, for ages which 472 SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS no one is able to reckon, by the cliff-dwellers, the mound-builders, and by the tribes which our fathers here met, which not only had not attained civilization, which have shown themselves unready to accept under subsequent pressure its limitations and its privilege. These smiling heavens beamed as brightly over them as over us. The waters were as near, the open fields were as inviting, to them as to us ; and no intervening commerce has brought to any part of our country one element of wealth, in mine or quarry, in rippling stream or opulent hillside, which was not as present to them as to us. It is something behind all natural environment which gives to a people the promise of progress. We have not found the secret of this when we have measured the mountains in scales, and have counted the hills, when the acreage of tillable land has been reckoned, and the push of streams against mill wheels has been stated in figures. The depth saith, It is not in me ! and the sea saith, I cannot de- clare it ! Neither sunshine nor dew, the fattening rains, nor the breath of long summer, can build feeble communities into great commonwealths, or crown the regions which they make attractive with the triumphs and trophies of a noble and happy human society. Nor can this be done by the occasional extraordinary force of master minds, rising above the general level, and giving teaching and impulse to the ruder peoples among whom they appear. Such minds have their conspicuous office, but we are prone to overestimate their effect, even when the suddenness of their advent makes them impressive. Creative spirits are excess- ively rare in human history. The most commanding sons of men, like Gautama or Confucius, are apt to be 473 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES followed by a moral childishness among the peoples whom they singularly surpass, and who afterward look to them as ultimate models. Aside from such preeminent instances, the most distinguished in any time hardly do more than set forth existing tenden- cies, with a fresh, perhaps a multiplying, energy. They are gilded figures on a dial, marking a move- ment which they did not initiate. Their influence is usually limited, sporadic ; and the public temper which it affects is likely to be confirmed by it rather than changed. King Philip was not only an experienced warrior, but a passionate patriot, and in some sense a statesman. There have been others in the Indian tribes fervent of spirit, eloquent in speech, shrewd in plan, and discerning of needs which they could not supply. But the influence of such men never has brought, in thousands of years it would not bring, a true civilization. That must spring from other sources ; must be erected and maintained by influences broader, more pervasive and permanent, and more controlling. Seeing the evident insufficiency of either of the forces which I have named to account for the progress of different peoples toward the harmony, power, cul- ture and character which belong to an advanced so- ciety, men are sometimes inclined to find an element of fatalism in it ; or, if religious in tone, to discover a determining divine purpose in the development of states — a purpose which does not necessarily doom certain peoples to live in degradation, but which elects others to a finer and larger general progress, and as- signs to them historic positions for which they had not been self-prepared. An example of this is be- 474 SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS lieved to be presented by the Hebrew nation. More or less distinctly it is felt by many that the providential plan appearing in the Koman Empire, and framing it to a majestic arena for the victories of Christianity — the plan afterward indicated in the tremendous col- lisions and comminglings of barbarous tribes in Cen- tral and Southern Europe, out of which grew the great states of the Continent — the plan suggested in later times by the mighty advance of English and German speaking peoples to commercial, political, educational preeminence, one may fairly say to the leadership of the world — that all these show distant selection, on the part of Him who rules mankind, of communities to serve Him ; on which He bestows endowments and a training suited to His purpose, which others do not share. I certainly do not question, I reverently rec- ognize, the beneficent cosmical plans of Him who is on high. The indication of them is as, general in the Scriptures as is the sapphire tint on the waters of yonder bay. Their reality approves itself to highest thought, and moral intuition. They give the only su- pernal dignity to what goes on on this whirling orb, which arithmetic measures in miles and tons. To trace them is the philosophy of history. But I do not find that God anywhere builds a nation to greatness by sheer exertion of arbitrary power, any more than He covers rocks with wheat-sheaves, or makes rivers flow in unprepared courses without rills behind. He works by means ; and, in the development of modern states, by means which involve no element of miracle. In our time, certainly, no people is made strong by Him in spite of itself. He opens the opportunity, supplies physical conditions, gives needful faculty and the im- 475 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES pulse to use it, and leaves communities to work out for themselves the vast and complex practical problem. Not even the Hebrew nation was made by Him the monotheistic herald of the Gospel, except by means of the patriarchal training ; of the bondage in Egypt, which taught civilization, but associated the alluring heathenism with tyrannic oppression; of the signal deliverance ; of long wandering in the wilderness, suc- ceeded by strange fruitf ulness in Canaan ; of the storm and stress of the time of the Judges ; of pious and li- centious kings, almost equally testifying to the su- preme value of a virtuous rule ; of internal division following always decay of worship ; of the exile to Babylon ; of the final loss of national autonomy, and the raising of hated defiling standards above the hal- lowed courts of the Temple. The divine plan, even here, clearly contemplated conditions and processes. It does so always, in the education of nations ; and while all that Ave have, or that any people has, is the gift of God, He has given it through means, which for the most part our unassisted human thought can ex- tricate and trace. So, again, we come back to our principal question : What are the conditions of that slow but unfailing public progress which requires generations, perhaps centuries, for accomplishment, but examples of which, with equally signal examples of the want of it, we fa- miliarly see ? To give a full answer, volumes would be needed. Some rapid suggestions of a partial reply will not, I hope, unreasonably detain us. Undoubtedly, we must start with the assumption of a fairly strong stock, not deficient in native vigor, at least not hopelessly drained of life-force by previous 476 SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS centuries of hereditary vice. God hath made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth, the apostle instructs us. We may not dis- pute the inspired declaration. But there may be orig- inal differences among peoples, in respect of capacity and social aptitude, as there are among children of the same household : and certainly lust, laziness, cruelty, dominating an ancestry through long periods, en- throned and transmitted in hereditary custom, associ- ated with religious observance, and impressing the mind and spirit of generations, may work a deprava- tion of moral and even of physical life which shall make civilization in effect impossible. There is a fateful Nemesis in histoiw, and here it ap- pears. One cannot by any process build weeds into trees, or give to weak parasites the tough and solid fiber of oaks. We are to work, for peoples as for per- sons, with hopeful confidence in the instruments which have been elsewhere effective. But for some, of either order, the day of redemption seems to have passed. There are peoples which vanish, as by an evil neces- sity, before the incoming of new arts and nobler thoughts, of the fresh aspiration and larger obligation which belong to an advanced society ; while there are others which stolidly and stubbornly resist these to the end, being apparently no more susceptible to a pure and refining moral instruction than is iron slag to the kiss of the sunshine. Like that, they must be reduced, if at all, in the fierce assault of furnace heats. The inhabitants of some of the Pacific islands furnish sufficient examples of the one class. Illustrations of the other appear not infrequently, with sad distinct- ness, among the coarser savage tribes. 477 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES The most promising stock for a rich and progress- ive civilization is probably always a mingled stock, in which different elements conspire, and the life of various peoples finds a common exhibition. The Egyptian, Assyrian, Roman annals illustrate this, as do those in later times of the nations which now lead the march of mankind. The amalgam of Corinthian brass, though the humbler metals of silver and copper were mixed in it with gold, was a composite material of more renowned and various use than either of the contributing metals. It might well have been used, according to the old tradition, to fashion sacred vessels for the temple. So a composite national stock, in which concurrent elements combine, from different yet related and assimilated tribes, is usually capable of largest patience and most persistent endeavor, while susceptible also of finest polish. But even such a stock does not necessarily insure the attainment of a noble civilization. In order to this supreme effect particular traits must appear, in- herent, constitutional, though constantly reinforced as they ripen into habit. One of these is, — a primary one, — readiness for Labor, in any needed and useful form, and for faithful continuance in such labor. Inhabit- ants of regions where nature unassisted supplies food and raiment, shelter from heats, with inviting oppor- tunities for indolent pleasure, are enfeebled and de- moralized by their environment. The strongest will grows languid and limp when not challenged to an educating exertion. The general mind intermits effort for which outward occasions do not call. The spirit sinks easily into contentment with a self-indulgent, care-free existence, vacant of impulse, and equally 478 SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS vacant of well-earned success. If the instinct which craves excitement continues, as doubtless it must, it will find its only wretched satisfaction in feasting and in fights. Even a nomadic pastoral people is almost sure to be satisfied with semi-civilized conditions, and to be intent chiefly on protecting and multiplying the milk and flesh and fleece of its flocks. The tribal government will be enough for it ; and moving tents, seeking ever " the pastures of the wilderness," will take the place of established homes and rising cities. Civilization organically begins with strenuous, pa- tient, purposeful labor ; and the more various and per- sistent this labor, the surer and larger is the progress. Any people which shirks it is predestined to decline. In leveling forests, subduing uncultured lands to tillage, as barbarians do not ; in building houses, and combining them in villages ; in bridging streams, con- structing public roads, finding out and clearing prac- ticable passes ; in making nutritive grains replace the wild grasses, and rearing the rude water-mill or wind- mill to turn maize and wheat into bread material ; in damming or diverting streams, and rescuing meadows from morasses ; after a time, in piercing the earth with drills of mine-shafts, and bringing fuel and wealth from beneath ; in forging metals, fabricating utensils, supplying more abundantly the general equipment and furniture of life ; in all these ways, and in others re- lated, the labor which is a vital condition of public progress challenges peoples, while other larger works will follow: to facilitate interchange of products, intercommunication of thought and purpose between separated communities ; to build villages into towns, and towns into statelier cities ; to conquer the wider 479 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES water spaces, after a time the sea itself, through ves- sels of greater capacity and strength ; to furnish, in a word, the advancing society with whatever it needs for comfort, security, augmented wealth, expanded knowledge, a more satisfactory and diversified pleas- ure. Intelligence comes thus, with an ever-increasing sense of vigor. Hopefulness and courage are born of work which tasks yet rewards. It teaches economy, patience, forecast. The idea of property, if not thus suggested, is confirmed and reinforced ; and the idea of property, against which foolish or frantic sciolists passionately declaim, is a root-idea in social progress. Invention is stimulated, and machineries to make labor more easy and fruitful are devised and elaborated. Government tends, with sure advance, to become at once popular and strong, for the conservation of inter- ests and properties. It will not be long before the in- structed and stimulated mind of a people so trained will insist on associating beauty of form with fineness of contrivance, and making esthetic art an ally of in- dustrial. Intellectual effort, of whatever sort, is pro- foundly related to labor, finding inspiration in that to which it offers beauty and breadth. Science begins in the tussle with nature. Philosophy has its vital genesis, not in indolent day-dreams, but in the serious thought which accompanies work. Literature rises in grace and bloom from cloven rocks and the upturned sod. Libraries and colleges have their roots in the field. There is a sense, and a true one, in which the richest poetry of a people, alive with fine thought and spiritual impulse, was in its inception a Song of Labor. The spiritual thus follows the physical, in preordained 480 SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS sequence ; and each generation, under such conditions, will tend to advance on the preceding, the rugged roots to rise to the height and expand to the fulness of a noble human society. Political ideologists are not of much account in a young community. Effective popular industry is the indispensable foundation of real civilization. Whatever limits it — whether slavery which degrades it, or tyranny which despoils it of re- ward, or agrarian theories, which offer luxury to the lazy through plunder of the laborious, or the fatuous indolence which does not care for the goods that labor procures — everything of this sort makes social prog- ress improbable or impossible. The giant was re- freshed when he touched the earth. Any people that will grapple the stubborn soil, and make it yield sustenance and riches, is sure to advance. Any people that will not, will only add another skeleton to the multitudes of those strewing the caravan-tracks of time. " To labor is to pray " was an ancient maxim, within limits a true one. " Cruce etAratro" by Cross and Plough, was a motto of the monks who civilized Europe. Eeligion itself becomes a more educating power in communities which take hold, with resolute energy, on the Divine forces which make the earth fruitful; and the Gospel has a constant part of its civilizing power in the large honor which it puts upon labor : showing hands which held the prerogative of miracles using common instruments, presenting chief- est apostles as in more than one sense " master work- men." The roughest regions become kindly cradles for peoples who will work. The amplest continent, the most smiling skies, convey no promises to the lazy. EK 481 \ ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES But even such readiness for labor in placid and con- genial ways is not enough to build a people into virile and disciplined national strength. There must be, also, a readiness for Struggle, to defend and preserve what labor acquires. It has been suspected, not with- out reason, that the early cliff-dwellers on this conti- nent gave example of this need, who hollowed for themselves cunning houses in the rocks, and fashioned implements of pleasant industry from horn and bone, sometimes from stone, but who were apparently timor- ous in spirit, and whose silent disappearance is a puzzle of history. Certainly, no tribe with weak heart and drooping hands has the promise of perma- nent national life. While nature and man continue what they are, every people must at times do battle for existence. Wrestle, as well as work, is a condition of progress : wrestle against hostile physical forces ; the fierce severities of climate, whose effects may be mitigated where the causes cannot be changed ; against powers of pestilence in the air, the damp and deadly breath of swamps, or the destroying overflow of streams ; against whirl of storms, which only stanchest vessels can withstand, and solidest houses ; sometimes, as in Holland, against the inrush of oceans, which rage along the yielding coasts, and are only kept from drowning the land by a dauntless spirit putting forth the last efforts of strength and skill. It is in such struggle that manhood is nurtured, and the heroic element in a people finds keen incitement. The south wind soothes, and clothes with sweet blooms the shores which it caresses. But it is true now as when Kingsley wrote, that 482 SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS — the black Northeaster, Through the snowstorm hurled, Drives our English hearts of oak, Seaward, round the world : and any community which refuses the struggle against opposing elements in nature, desiring only gentle sat- isfactions on salubrious plains, fenced about with ram- parts of hills and responding at once to touch of in- dustry, may seem rapidly to secure an unusual measure of happiness and of culture, but it will in- evitably become morally weak, and will be likely to sink, fat-witted and supine, into a silent but sure decay. Struggle is as necessary to men as to man, in order to radical strength of character: and so it is that sterile, harsh and wind-swept regions have been often the homes of conspicuous valor, energy, achievement. But not against threatening physical forces, alone or chiefly, is such struggle to be made ; or, as in our early time, against craft and fierceness of man or beast. It must be made against all inimical social forces, which limit or endanger social welfare. No community not ready for this can reach dignity and power. So laws against wrong-doing, with sharp penalties speedily and unsparingly inflicted, are a necessary element in public development. They may be sometimes ill considered, as doubtless they were, in prominent instances, in the primitive New England. A mature system of wise legislation is no more to be reached at a single step than a stately temple is to be reared on ground from which stumps are not ex- tracted, or a modern steamship to be constructed and launched on shores which have known nothing larger 483 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES than a yawl. But a system of law, designed to be just, certain to be executed, and maintained and en- forced with unflinching purpose by an imperative public will — this is a sign and a fruit of the struggle which every people must resolutely make against whatever would vitiate its life. If, with a plethoric ungirt lassitude before difficult moral endeavors, it leaves conduct to be guided by inclination and passion and capricious self-will, the end will be ruin, and it will not be remote. Endicott was utterly right in his conviction that great commonwealths could never be built on Morton's plan at Merry Mount. By peoples, as by persons, life has to be taken seriously, or it will not unfold in richest vigor ; and the seriousness of the public temper is expressed and reinforced not so much by industry or commerce as by salutary laws. So against oppressive governmental exactions, every people must be ready to struggle if it would grow to character and power. Rebellion is often a condition of life, and readiness to rebel when tyranny brutally limits and exacts is an element necessary to any noble popular development. Defiance of an established order, when it becomes fettering and insolent, is not destructive in final effect. It is often essential to highest progress ; and popular revolutions, even des- perate and bloody ones, from which history fain would turn its eyes, have contributed, more than theories of philosophers or plans of statesmen, to the foundation of beneficent kingdoms. So equally, of course, against a power from without which assails a people content to grow up upon its own ground, and to seek its welfare in unwarlike ways. A war of aggression is always demoralizing. A war of defense 484 SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS is as legitimate, on occasion as indispensable, as is the local execution of law, or the force which breaks a ruffian clutch on child or wife. Such were the wars which our fathers faced, against Indian ferocity pushed to the onset by civilized craft. Such was, in fact, the war of the Revolution ; and such was the terrible Civil War, which was needful to establish for coming centuries the indivisible unity of the nation. The national flag which floated then, and which floats to-day, over army and navy and halls of legislation, over the capital of the country, and over its furthest mining camp, was the symbol of continental welfare, which might conceivably be shattered and buried in the terrific shock of arms, but which would not with consent give way before the forces represented in council and in battle by the alien flag of the Stars and Bars. This was only the culminating conflict in a history rough with opposing policies and moral collisions. It may be hoped that it will be the last in which navies must be mustered and armies set within our realm. But it is as evident from our annals as from those of other peoples, during the recent two centuries and a half, that readiness for struggle when occasion de- mands, as well as for quiet and prosperous labor, is a needful condition of national progress. Until the millennium is here the necessity for contest against what threatens society hardly will cease ; and if rapa- cious and brutal forces, within a State or around it, are not to be left to be lords of its destiny, if industry is not to be fatally discouraged, progress arrested, character impoverished, society wrecked, an advancing com- munity must be ready in spirit for any sore struggle whenever the fateful hour has come. 485 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES Something beyond even readiness for struggle must go to the building of permanent States out of small communities ; a readiness for Sacrifice, in free subor- dination of local or individual aims to public welfare. This is not that effacement of the individual on behalf of the State which was the demand of ancient phil- osophy. It does not involve that extinction of local aspiration and right, in favor of more general ag- grandizement, on which modern theory sometimes in- sists. The surrender which it contemplates is intelli- gent and free, and the temper which prompts this is no exceptional religious temper, nor one that demands special fineness of nature. It often appears among ruder peoples quite as distinctly as among the more cultured, and is perhaps most effective in the simpler societies. But everywhere it is needed, as an element of strength. It implies simply a prevalent sense of the principal value of general welfare, as that in which local or personal interests are essentially in- folded, which therefore it is duty and privilege to pro- mote, at the cost of whatever may be required. Where this spirit appears, the readiness for labor and the readiness for struggle are ethically ennobled, and the latter especially is kept from unfolding into that destructive passion for war which has blinded and blasted so many efforts for civilization, which is to-day the fiery curse of barbarous people in all parts of the earth. Becoming established among any peo- ple, this spirit, which seeks with chief enthusiasm the public advancement, and is ready to serve and sacrifice to secure that, will become, as knowledge increases and thought is widened, a constant power of pacifica- tion ; while within the State it is the force beyond 486 SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS any other which works for moral organization. A vital unity is its product ; completely differenced from the superficial combinations which are all that com- mercial ties can compass, or that can be secured by military clamps. " Public spirit " is what we properly call this temper, which looks first at the common- wealth, and then at the local or personal interest. Of course, the exact opposite of this often is shown, even in States where a large prosperity seems to have been reached. It is shown, for example, by ruling classes, whether limited to a few or embracing many, who are chiefly intent on confirming or enlarging class-privilege, and to whom the proposal seems offensive to suspend or discard this for the general welfare. It is shown, on the other hand, as distinctly, by the anarchist, who insists on unhindered personal freedom for the gratification of every impulse; to whom Law is not a majestic ordinance for the con- servation and furtherance of society, but a malicious contrivance of craft, against which it is noble to fight ; who would wreck the State to have his way. All lawlessness, in fact, involves the same element ; while the law-abiding temper is not selfish or abject, but large-minded and chivalric. It is the true and noble Loyalty, which does not imply attachment to a per- son, or to an officer, but fealty to Law, and which de- serves the place that it holds in the honor of the wise. It says, in effect, — this loyal temper, — that reserving the rights of conviction and conscience, it will yield to the formulated public will ; will cheerfully subordinate personal interest, and forego advantage, for the larger well-being; will serve or suffer, or, if need be, will die, that the' State may live, and its noblest welfare 487 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES be secure. This is a spirit which tends always to con- firm yet to regulate the institutes of government ; to make laws' benign, that they may be worthy of ac- ceptance and homage. It lifts patriotism from the level of an impetuous sentiment to the height of a generous moral passion, fine in impulse, emulous of good works wherever they are seen. Institutes of learning and of charity will be sure to spring up under its inspiration, to be continually invigorated in life and enriched in resources ; while the ideas and policies which are felt to be essential to public progress will take fresh sovereignty in thoughtful minds, and will easily evoke the martyr temper: such as was shown by those who fell on English fields in defense of the ancient liberties of the realm, or who lingered uncomplaining amid the darkness and filth of dun- geons ; such as was shown by those who went from small hamlets and scattered farms to meet the British and Hessian troops in our revolution — only regretting, like Nathan Hale, that they had each but a single life to give for the country ; such as was shown by those who went lately from Sunday-school and church, and from beloved Christian homes, to wounds and death, and the long pining in rebel prisons, on behalf of national unity and honor — and by the women who sent them thither. In its early exhibition this temper will of course be crude and imperfect. Among some peoples it may seem wholly wanting. But it is as necessary to public progress as air is to life ; and wherever it exists, in vital germ, it holds the promise of prosperous advance. A people of a strong stock, ready for labor, ready for struggle, and capable of sacrifice, on behalf not of 488 ft SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS personal interests but of general advancement, will rise toward greatness in spite of whatever obstacles of nature or resistance of man. Its progress will be almost as certain as the motion of stars. A people morally incapable of this, and eager to subordinate public welfare to divergent personal aims, cannot be made great by any surroundings, or any fortunate ad- mixture of bloods in its primitive stock. It was power which made the world. It was sacrifice which redeemed it. And this is the diviner element by which its peoples must achieve their grandest progress. The temper which is ready to make the work of a lifetime a stepping-stone for others, to toil and to die that the nation may prosper, and that other genera- tions may reach a larger and lovelier well-being — this is the temper which honors human nature, which gives an almost perennial fame to the regions where it rules, and which shows to the world illustrious presage. The icy cliffs and chasms of Switzerland hardly offer inviting homes to those whose lives have been passed upon plains ; yet labor and struggle have built there rich cities, have made narrow valleys laugh with har- vests, have terraced hills for fruitful vineyards, have cut channels in astonishing curves through the rocky heart of mountains, while the temper, common to many, which blazed into historic exhibition in him who swept into welcoming bosom the many deadly spears at Sempach, to break a breach in the serried phalanx ranked behind, has made that beetling crest of Europe an eyrie of Liberty for five hundred years. Ladies and Gentlemen: I have spoken in this cursory and inadequate fashion of the forces required to give coherence, security, growth, to small com- 489 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES munities, building colonies into states, groups of ham- lets into republics or empires. It is important to notice that all these forces — readiness for labor, for just and self -protective struggle, with the temper which prompts to personal sacrifice for commanding common ends — will appear most surely, in fruitful and abiding vigor, wherever a people, however recent or remote, feels itself related responsibly and usefully to other peoples, to the world-history, and the governing scheme of God's kingdom on earth; where, in other words, it has an apprehension of those supreme facts which the Bible declares, especially concerning nations, as divinely ordained to be cooperating forces in a sub- lime cosmical progress, and concerning millennial times to come. Where this large conception of things widens, exalts and reinforces the mind and spirit of a people, there is surer stability, with the promise of a progress vital and organic, not artificial. The popular character is ennobled. Expansion of outlook becomes habitual. In leading minds consecration ap- pears, to world effects ; and to peoples as to persons consecration is a prime condition of power. "Where such subtle and immense moral impressions are permanently wanting, no advantage of surroundings, no variety and brilliance of force in the people itself, suffice to fill the large place of the element which is missed. More than anything else it was the want of this superlative force which made the ancient kingdoms weak, in spite of superb endowments of nature. The wealth of the Egyptian valley, or of the ampler Assyrian plains, the stimulating suggestions of sea and sky and purpled hills in the fortunate states of Greece 490 SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS — these were not enough, even as connected with singular intellectual powers, to assure the lasting prosperity of States. The diviner elements needful for this were conspicuously wanting; and whatever shows only a mundane vigor wastes and crumbles in the shock of collisions, or under the grinding attrition of time. Probably the most colossal examples given in history of extreme popular weakness beneath glow- ing skies and in the midst of shining riches — a weak- ness surely moral in origin rather than physical — were offered on this hemisphere a century and more before this infant settlement began. Men marvel still at the terrifying suddenness with which the Aztec empire went down, or a little later that of the Incas, before the shock of Spanish invasion. One secret of it lies far in the past. It was not merely firearms and horses which enabled the few to conquer millions. It was not merely a pleasure-loving passivity of temper in the vast and luxurious empires assailed, which exposed them to the terrific crash. The native spirit in either empire was not despicable. It was apt for con- trivance, skilful in workmanship, with a patience and fortitude which rose at times to heroic exhibition. But the empires were childish ; puerile in fear before imagined malign divinities; cruel accordingly in re- ligious custom ; without general knowledge, strength of character, public aspiration, or disciplined purpose. So the treasures which they amassed became their ruin. Incantations were idle, sacrifices vain. Their pompous ceremonial was as tinder before flame, as tinseled paper before the stroke of steel-head lances, when smitten by a destroying civilized onset ; and that onset took part of its terrible force, indirectly and 491 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES remotely, from the religion on which it put a lasting shame. Personally graceless and godless as they were, unsparingly condemned in the world's tribunal, the invaders showed an energy derived in part from the long dominance over their ancestors of supernal ideas. Their vigor had not come alone from the mixed Iberian blood. It had come in part from that stim- ulating faith of whose law and spirit they showed no trace, but which in centuries preceding had subdued and invigorated Yandal and Visigoth, and built Spain to a power which then its representatives, at home and abroad, displayed and disgraced. It was the same impalpable force of sovereign ideas, however imperfectly apprehended, which pushed into growing moral unity the jealous and fighting German tribes, and prepared them to be the great power which they have been in the world's civilization. Charle- magne had builded better than he knew, and had done the Saxons an inestimable service, if only for this world, when he hammered them relentlessly, in tre- mendous campaigns, into formal acceptance of these paramount ideas. Once accepted, and working more and more into the inner life of the people, subordina- ting yet exalting and multiplying its native strength, they have brought the development which now the world sees, and in which is one great promise of its future. Other tribes, of a natural vigor not inferior, continue in a sullen, and so far as their own resource is concerned a hopeless barbarism, because, in spite of generous gifts, and of dormant heroic elements, they want the uplift of supernal instruction. They are isolated and enfeebled by local idolatries, degrading fetichism. Only a breath from above can transform 492 SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS them, and turn stagnant decay into prosperous progress. So it is that the Bible becomes the grand civilizing force on the earth x that every fervent and faithful missionary helps forward the simple or savage peoples, or the partially civilized, among whom he labors, not toward the heavens only, but toward a nobler human society. So it is that the Lord's Day, carefully main- tained for public religious instruction and worship, remains a vital guarantee of the State ; and that what- ever discredits the Revelation, concerning God, man the future, the rule which nations are bound to obey, the providence which is over them, the ultimate ends which they are to serve, strikes not only at personal character, but at the essential well-being of Society. Any nation losing its reverence for that which has come from higher spheres through prophets and apostles, and by the lips and life of the Son, becomes suicidal in tendency and effect if not in intent. Of the most advanced, it is true now as it was of Israel, that the Law is its life. And any tribe, however ob- scure—hidden behind coral reefs, buried in the shades of African jungles— if it vitally accept the supreme ideas with which the Bible is eternally instinct, will grow in greatness of spirit and of strength. If its vigor has not been hopelessly wasted by previous centuries of lust, animalism, ferocious ignorance, it will come to be a nation, or an important component part of one, and will continue such while it retains the life-giving faith. Obedience to the truth which is opened before us in the Word of the Highest holds the promise of this life, as of that which is to come ; and moral forces, which infidels assail, and at which men of the world disdainfully sniff, are immortally 493 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES supreme in the development of civilization. The first popular election known in Japan was held there last month. Feudalism has disappeared ; a constitution has been established ; the old theory of paternal gov- ernment gives place to the theory of one directly representative of the people; and in November the first parliament ever assembled in those Islands of the Morning is to open its sessions. The best hopes may be entertained for the future of the empire so long secluded from the civilized world, which now seeks eagerly to range itself abreast with advanced States. But these hopes, in thoughtful minds,' will not rest wholly or chiefly on the aptitude of the people for in- dustry, economy, the pursuit of information, or for trade, debate, and their peculiar forms of art. They will not rest chiefly on the lines of railway and tele- graph there being constructed, or on the annual im- ports and exports of fifty-odd millions. They will find a surer support in the fact that the Bible is now, and is always to be, a Japanese book ; that many thousands of its people have grouped themselves in Christian churches ; and that multitudes more are accessible to the truth which comes to men through both the Testaments. The Bible is a lifting force which does not break. A Christianized state is full of vitality, not subject to decay. The future of Japan is in the hands of those who honor God's Word, and whose joy it is to make it known. At the end, then, of this imperfect discussion, two things, I am sure, come distinctly to view : one, an interpretation of that which is past in our national career ; the other, a prophecy of that which is to come. "We cannot miss the essential secret of the extraor- 494 SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS dinary growth, which has been realized by the Ameri- can people since its prophetic germs appeared. The progress has been wonderful, but not magical. It has outrun precedent, and implied the guidance of a Providence in the heavens, but has involved no ele- ment of miracle. The settlement here, to which our thoughts to-day go back, fairly represented the others made at about the same time along our coast, with others afterward in the interior. Indeed, recent ones at the West, made in the lifetime of many among us, show gen- erally similar characteristics. Of a strong stock, in which were commingled different strains of kindred blood, trained to labor and self-control, with hereditary instincts claiming freedom as a right, and not shrink- ing before arbitrary force, the early inhabitants of this hamlet were planted on a soil offering scant promise to indolence, but an ample reward for faithful work. They were ready for labor, ready for struggle, accustomed to subordinate personal convenience to public welfare, and thoroughly possessed, through their fathers and by personal conviction, of the vital and magisterial truths which had come by the Bible. It was almost impossible, therefore, that their public life should not continue and be developed with con- stant energy. Their primitive property was not large, though for the time it was respectable. There is a touch of unconscious pathos in the brief inven- tories of their household belongings. They had few of our familiar instruments, fewer of our conveniences, none of our luxuries. They could not manufacture, and they could not import. Tea and coffee they knew nothing of ; spices and condiments, of whatever 495 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES sort, they could not buy ; of fruits they at first had none at all, save the wild fruits plucked from bushes or vines. Corn-meal and milk provided chief nourish- ment ; " rye and Indian " made their bread stuff ; and our finer wheat flour would have seemed to them almost as wonderful as did the manna, the angels' food, to the children of Israel. Clocks, carpets, lamps, stoves, they did not possess. Little glass was in their windows ; almost less money was in their purses. Few books were in their homes ; no pictures ; and probably the only musical instrument was the pitch- pipe. Men to-day cast away on a desert island, if saving anything from the fittings and cargo of the wrecked ship, would probably start with a larger apparatus of the furniture of life than the founders of this village possessed. But civilization can be built without a carpeted base. The piano is not necessary, may not always contribute, to social harmony. Glass is a con- venience, but rain and snow can be excluded by wooden shutters, and light will pass, not wholly obscured, through oiled paper. Books are good, if of a good sort ; but large collections of them are not in- dispensable to the founders of States, and more of moral manhood can be learned from hardship and toil than from all the volumes on crowded shelves. Some way, no doubt, must be devised for measuring and recording time, in order to the useful regulation of life, in order to any intelligible sequence in general affairs. But this may be done, well enough for the purpose, by the dial or hour-glass ; and no English or Swiss watches were needed here when trains did not start on the minute, and horse races were as wholly 496 SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS in the future as were telephone wires or naphtha launches. No doubt the life had sharp privations, was in many respects a bleak and hard one, which the physically feeble could hardly sustain, from which the morally weak might shrink. But the men had that in them, the women, too, which was more important than any aids to a cheerful convenience. They had the robust strength of soul to which all else is merely auxiliary, which can dispense with all else and still perform distinguished service. Though their lands, unused to civilized handling, required in- cessant expenditures of labor, they were ready for these. Though surrounded by tribes easily becoming suspicious and hostile, and accustomed to obey every impulse of greed or anger, they were ready to fight for the lands which they had bought, and for the small homes which they had reared. If their life gave no chance for ease or luxury, was not gay and was not picturesque, it had its opportunities and its general relations. The lands and waters by which they were encompassed supplied a livelihood, and something to lay up. With the Bible open in every household, and schools established to teach children to read it, they felt themselves related to other regions, to other times, to great plans of Providence, and to future effects contemplated by these. The nearly fifty University men who were in Massachusetts before 1640, the nearly one hundred who were in N~ew Eng- land within ten years after — most of them ministers, and many from Emmanuel College — may not have added notable reinforcement to the physical sinews which with ax and mattock, spade and ploughshare, FF 497 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES were striving to subdue the waste, but they brought large thoughts of God and his ways, and they made the religion for which they were exiles an element of unequaled power in the early colonial life. So the church was the central fact in this place; and the minister of religion was a principal citizen. He did not ask such place of leadership ; it came to him as naturally as buds break from their sheaths in spring. Men came to worship, summoned probably by conch- shell or horn, with matchlocks ready, which rested during the long service on gun-racks still affectionately preserved. They were guarded at their worship by armed sentinels, but the worship was not intermitted. The eternities touched time, God spoke to their souls, through the austere and solemn discourse. Their prayers were of faith, if in form not liturgic. If their singing was rude, their tunes few, the temper of praise was vocal in the dissonance ; and to ears on high the seraph's song may not have borne a higher tribute. The Lord's Day was the day of general com- munion with the Invisible. \ The very stilling of all sounds of labor or of laughter was a sermon con- cerning the things supreme. The meeting-house was at once church, fortress and town hall, in which secular affairs were discussed and decided, not merely as a matter of present convenience, but because secular things, as done for God's service, became also sacred, and the Southold hamlet had its part to do for the divine glory. The Mosaic law was at first its suffi- cient code ; and a man must be in personal covenant with God, and with His people, to have voice and vote in public affairs. These and other related facts are happily set forth 498 SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS in that excellent history of the town during its first century which has been prepared by him, for forty years the pastor of the church here, in whose presence with us we rejoice, and to whom we look for subse- quent volumes, continuing the narrative to our day. The history which he has carefully investigated and affectionately recited is not romantic in its incidents and drapery, but it infolds the strong forces which I have indicated, and it presents in clearest view the sources and guarantees which here existed, from the beginning, of the virile and fruitful American life. As science finds the oak microscopically exhibited in the living acorn, so here we find the vital germs and sure predictions of vast subsequent progress and power. It is this robust and resolute life, which sea and wilderness could not daunt, and which early pri- vation only trained to new vigor, which has shown it- self in the following career of the people whose beginnings we love to remember. It has subdued regions stretching further and further toward the sun- set, till they abut on the shores of the Pacific. It has largely assimilated the adverse elements drawn to our coasts with incessant attraction from foreign lands. It has set itself against formidable political problems, and has found or forced fair answers to them. It has uncovered mines, launched a vast ship- ping on lakes and rivers, supplied to the country, in a measure to the world, an industrial apparatus of unrivaled effectiveness, built cities by hundreds, towns by thousands, and laid down ways of travel and com- merce to the furthest borders which pioneers reach. It has made education more universal than in almost any other country, and lias sent the institutions and 499 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES the influence of religion wherever the log hut has been raised, wherever the camp-lire shows its smoke. In a measure, certainly, it has kept alive the early ideal of a nation made by the Gospel, as Cotton Mather said that our towns were, and applying its principles to public conduct. "Without jealousy, or excessive am- bition, it has sought substantially such prosperity as could be wrought by the hard hand of labor, and de- fended in emergency by the mailed hand of war : and, therefore, in defiance of whatever obstacle, it has brought the nation out of poverty and through blood to its present place of distinction in the world, and has linked it in relations of amity, correspondence and mutual respect, with the great states of Christen- dom. As long as this life continues unwasted it will be ready for greater tasks, whatever they may be, which the future shall present. The shifting of power from one party to another will no more seriously check its operation than the shifting of tides in yonder bay de- files or dries the changing waters. The removal of leaders will no more stay the immense impersonal pop- ular progress than the extinction of lighthouse lamps arrests the t morning. Immigration from abroad, though coming in blocks, from lands whose training has been different from ours, will not retard the pub- lic progress, or start persistent antagonizing currents. It will steadily disappear in the expanding American advance, as ice cakes vanish in flowing streams. Even an increasing corruption in cities has its only real threat in its tendency to impregnate with a malign force the national life. Our future history is as secure as that of the past, if only that moral life remains 500 SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS 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, peren- nially renewing the nation which started from their seminal work, no bound appears to its possible prog- ress. 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, in- deed, 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 de- cay. 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, demo- cratic nation, which defies precedent, traverses dis- dainfully speculative programmes, and lurches onward with irresistible energy in spite of whatever philo- sophical forecasts. But I believe, after all, in the dis- tributed American people. It means to be honest ; it is not afraid of what man can do ; and it is capable of 501 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES surpassing enthusiasms. Pessimism may spring from a scholarly temper, which shrinks from rude contacts, and is offended by vulgar boasts, which insists on im- mediate accomplishment of ideals, and would have the Golden Age sent by express, which is therefore impa- tient and easily discouraged if a nation cannot be in- stantly 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 condescend- ing critics, not commonly born among us, whose resi- dence 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, de- spising 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 every- thing, 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 ac- cents utter prophecies of alarm have as little effect on its courageous confidence and hope as so many spar- rows on the housetops. I think, for one, that the na- tion 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 coun- try 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 502 SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS more than are their censors, but they are fairly capa- ble 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 cen- tury. 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 de- sire 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 accord- ingly 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 mat- ters 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- 503 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES gence and moral inertness take the place in the coun- try of the earnest, faithful, strenuous spirit which built this hamlet, and all the others out of which the na- tion 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 na- tional 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- 504 SOURCES AND GUARANTEES OF PROGRESS 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. Let 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 strug- gle, " with water and with blood." Let us always re- member 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 main- tain 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 ! 505 XI JOHN OF ANTIOCH (CHRYSOSTOM) THE GREAT PREACHER OF THE FOURTH CENTURY A Lecture delivered at Music Hall, Boston, March 26, 1894. XI JOHN OF ANTIOCH (CHEYSOSTOM) THE GKEAT PREACHER OF THE FOURTH CENTURY Ladies and Gentlemen : The eloquence of the pulpit has been a theme of large discussion, in other times and in our own ; and you have had such examples of this eloquence, in this city of Boston, for many years, and especially of late, that it may appear wholly superfluous to have another descriptively presented, from a distant century, or to be asked to pause at all in the rush of affairs for any thoughts suggested by it. Yet surely a rare and splendid soul must always attract us, wherever shown ; and the mystery of eloquence does not the less fasci- nate or dominate, because we ourselves have felt its power. It is therefore without fear, rather with as- surance of cordial welcome, that I come to speak to you of John of Antioch, whose extraordinary gifts and unsurpassed spirit had the pulpit for their throne, and whpse majestic and winning personality sheds luster on his age. With all the differences of manners and language, in spite of the intervals of space and of time, I cannot but feel that you will find yourselves at home with this commanding and illustrious preacher, who was also a hero and a saint. Let us first get distinctly before us the city and the 509 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES circumstances in which the part of his work which gave him the chief part of his early fame was nobly done. The traveler beyond the Bosphorus, in those Oriental lands which were wont to come to our thought in childhood, on familiar and memorable pages, gilded and purpled, rustling with silks, redolent of perfumes, dazzling with splendor of armies and palaces, may not unfrequently feel that history must have become romantic in such descriptions ; that poetic illusion dis- placed, or at least disguised, reality ; and that such a city as the Antioch of old is declared to have been could not have existed where remains only the deso- late town, of a few thousand inhabitants, housed in rough, transient habitations, without arts or commerce, enterprise or hope. Yet a recent brilliant and famous story, perhaps more widely read in our country than any other of this generation, has given a not exagger- ated picture of Antioch as it was in the day of the Master, and as it largely continued to be in the centu- ries following ; as it was, indeed, in recent memory, and in still existing indications, when the Emperor Justinian sought to restore the marvelous beauty which had then been shattered by earthquakes and by war. Its historic glory was still recognized ; and it was a natural impulse of imperial ambition to repro- duce and prolong that. From a remote antiquity its site had been noticed as suitable for a large and opulent seat of commerce. Lying at the northeastern corner of the Mediterra- nean, in the angle which the coast of Syria, running northward, there makes with the coast of Asia Minor running westward ; only separated from the sea by a fruitful valley, between whose lines of stately piers 510 JOHN OF ANTIOCH flowed the rapid Orontes, and having behind it the winding passes between the ranges of Taurus and Lebanon, through which alone, for many leagues, the trade of Asia found access to the coast — it was almost as fortunate in situation as was Corinth, Alexandria, or Byzantium itself. So the foundations of a town were laid there by Antigonus, not far from where the subsequent city rose to its greatness, three centuries before Christ. The later Greek kings of Syria changed the name of the town, and in a measure transferred its site, but they established it as their capital, and rapidly developed it into a gay and brilliant city, numerous in population, rich in resources, echoing with industry, thronged with trade, and conspicuous in the world for its luxury and splendor. The camp and the court naturally followed the suc- cessful ventures of commerce ; by the Romans, there- fore, it was yet further enlarged and enriched ; till in the time of Augustus it was described by Strabo, as you may remember, as including four separate cities within its encompassing external wall. Cicero had in his time described it, in his Defense of the Rights of Archias, as a city celebrated and rich, abounding in men of learning and in liberal studies ; while in thundering against Verres, his majestic invective softened into music as he spoke of the reach and the opulence of the kingdom of which it was the capital, and of the surpassing grace and splendor of the royal gifts brought from it to the Tiber. Caesar built in it an aqueduct and a basilica. A glorious street extended across it,, four miles in length, paved with red granite, and shielded from the sun by continuous colonnades. Temples, palaces, arches, columns, made its aspect superb. A famous 511 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES suburb was added to it by Agrippa, that greatest of builders, in the time of Augustus. Tiberius embel- lished it ; and even Caligula, craziest of imperial prof- ligates, left his monument there in an aqueduct and baths. Its great Circus was only second to that at Rome ; its palaces were even more charming and ela- borate. It was appropriately styled by Pliny "the Queen of the East." It was almost, as was often said, " an Oriental Rome." The proverbial softness, evenness and healthfulness of its climate drew many to it from the west, while from the Euphrates or the Indus came merchants with ivory, pearls, spices, silks, precious stones, bringing also their occult superstitions, and their spirit and habit of mingled lassitude and passion. The Jews were in it in great numbers ; though the Greeks chiefly moulded its society, and made its life brilliant and picturesque, while pleasure-loving and licentious almost beyond the example of Corinth. The races and the athletic games were celebrated in it at the public expense with a magnificence not surpassed on the plains of Elis, or on the great Isthmus. All orna- ments and appliances of the most sumptuous and ex- travagant epicurean life were there copiously col- lected ; and in the great suburb, amid the thickets of laurel and of cypress, was that grove of Daphne, " full of harmonious sounds and aromatic odors," which Gibbon has pictured with pleased and lingering luxuriance of phrase, where the most continuous and unlimited licentiousness was prompted and encouraged as an ordinance of the gods ; where genius, wealth and the popular religion had sadly combined to make the loveliest sceneries of nature, embellished with the 512 JOHN OF ANTIOCH finest and costliest trophies of the later Greek art, a shrine and temple of perpetual vice. Such was the city to which Paul had gone to preach of the Lord whom he served and adored, and in which those who received his message were first* called Christians. Such was the city of which Ignatius was the celebrated Bishop not long after the time of the apostles, and from which he went to his martyrdom at Kome ; and such, in large measure, it continued to be, after earthquake, fire, Persian pillage, and the ravages of famine, at the time to which I would call your at- tention. It was, even then, a smaller, more brilliant Paris of the old world, with more boundless incentives and facilities for voluptuous living, with Paganism fronting Christianity in it in at least an equal numer- ical strength, and with no one of all the names, phil- anthropies, benign institutions, the sciences, and the historic annals, which have given distinction to the city on the Seine. Its popular life was fickle, restless, devoid of dignity, and excessively wanton. " To live after the manner of Daphne," was a proverb in the world, representing the extreme of dissolute habit. It is at a terrible crisis in its history that this re- nowned and luxurious city comes before us this even- ing ; and that also must be plainly in view, that the unique and noble figure which I would set in its place may command our just attention. In the early spring of the year of our Lord, 387, in the weeks preceding Easter, there was in it a general panic fear, such as hardly can be known in any city in our time of comparative liberty and peace. Excited by sudden and heavy increase in the burden of im- perial taxation, the people had remonstrated without Gd 513 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES effect, and entreated relief without success, till their discontent had turned to anger, and their anger had burst, with Oriental vehemence, into a sudden and passionate fury. Throwing down from their pedestals the statues of the Emperor and the Empress, of the Emperor's father, and of the princes Arcadius and Honorius, they had broken and defiled them, and dragged .them wrathfully through the streets. The insurrection thus bursting forth on the 26th of Febru- ary had been speedily suppressed by the onset of bands of Roman archers ; but the fierce insults offered to the imperial family had yet, according to universal expectation, to be bloodily avenged. It was not merely the generally severe and haughty policy of the military empire which made the people expectant of this. It was, still more, the character of the Emperor, the great Theodosius, who was known to be a ruler not only capable, on occasions, of enormous rapidity and energy of action, but also subject to almost frantic outbursts of passion ; like that in which, only three years later, he ordered thousands, according to some accounts fifteen thousand, of the inhabitants of Thessalonica to be savagely massacred, without distinction of age or sex, of innocence or guilt, without regard even to their being residents of the city or only strangers passing through it, because some of his officers had there been killed in a popular riot. That city the Emperor familiarly knew. He had vis- ited it often, and had himself resided in it. Its streets and its inhabitants were as familiar to him as were those of Byzantium ; and the temper which in so short a time afterwards could doom such a city to ruthless and indiscriminate carnage, without the least attempt 514 JOHN OP AiYTIOCH to separate from others those concerned in the pri- mary offense — this might well be dreaded now by the inhabitants of Antiocb, as one would dread the explo- sion of a dynamite factory when all circumstances in- stantly threatened it. The Empress Flaccilla, a woman of sweet and noble character, whose words and spirit had been a restraint on the temper of her husband, had been dead for two years. Her statue, as well as his, had been overthrown and dishonored. The insult to her memory had pierced him to the quick ; and nothing promised to interpose between his wrath and the terrified population. After a period of frightful suspense, the city was suddenly filled with the rumor, born probably of its fears, that it had been decided to level it with the ground, and to give its inhabitants to general massacre. The Governor and the magistrates, as if to make up for their stupid inefficiency at the time of the riot, were seizing those whom they suspected of privity to it, and punishing them with a savage severity. Men were brought chained before the tribunal, were ex- amined with torture, and even children were devoted to execution. Some were burned, others beheaded, and others still thrown to wild beasts, the weeping parents following at a distance, powerless to help, and almost afraid to express their grief. Multitudes fled to the mountains or the wilderness ; others shut them- selves in their houses, as if the city had been possessed by barbarians, or were smitten by the plague. A dis- mal silence reigned in the squares which lately had been thronged with animated crowds. The splendid colonnades, stretching transversely across the town, which were wont to be lighted at night with many 515 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES lanterns, making them almost as brilliant as by day, were often at midday empty of passengers. JSlo one could conjecture where or when the destroying blow was next to fall. About the middle of Lent, two imperial commis- sioners arrived, with a military force ; and the sen- tence which they had come to execute, though less sweeping than had been feared, was fearfully severe. All who had been guilty of complicity in the outrage, even by not interposing to prevent it, were to be rigor- ously punished. Antioch was degraded from the rank of a capital, and reduced to a village, under the juris- diction of Laodicea ; all theaters, baths, and places of amusement, were ordered to be closed ; and those who had been distinguished and wealthy were to. feel the first sharp edge of retribution, their properties to be confiscated, their families reduced to sudden poverty, their lives to be the forfeit for what to the Emperor was their criminal action or their criminal neglect in the matter of the statues. The commissioners them- selves were moved by the general anguish and fright, and by bold intercessions on behalf of the citizens, offered by the hermits who descended from their soli- tudes into the city, and consented to suspend execu- tion of the sentence until fresh orders could be re- ceived from the Emperor. But the cloud hung, heavy and thunderous, over the town ; and it seemed as if the sun himself, obscured for the time by unusual mists, had veiled his rays. At this terrifying crisis it was given to one man, a Presbyter in the Church at Antioch, recently or- dained, to admonish and direct, yet equally to sustain, instruct and uplift, the spirit of the city ; and to do it 516 JOHN OF ANTIOCH by sermons. The Bishop, Flavianus, had gone to Constantinople soon after the outbreak, to allay, if possible, at least to mitigate, the wrath of the dreaded Theodosius. A man already advanced in years, at a season of the year usually inclement, he had left his church, and torn himself from what appeared the death-bed of his only beloved sister, to traverse the eight hundred difficult miles between Antioch and the Bosphorus, on this mission of mercy; and the Pres- byter John, since known in the world by that descrip- tive name of Chrysostom, or The Golden-mouthed, first applied to him three centuries later, was left to take his place in the church in public discourse. He was a man now of forty or forty-two years of age, having been born at Antioch probably in the year 345, or possibly two years later. He had been the only son of a Christian mother, Anthusa, who had been early widowed, and who had afterward devoted herself with unremitting assiduity to his culture, and training. She was a woman, by the testimony of all, of singular sweetness, strength and elevation of char- acter, — the woman by whom the eloquent and accom- plished heathen Libanius was impelled to exclaim, " Heavens ! what women these Christians have ! " She united soundness of judgment with devout feeling, and the utmost affectionateness with a discerning spir- itual insight. It would doubtless have been better for her celebrated son if the urgency with which she for a time effectually detained him from the monastic life had always controlled him. Having at length entered upon this life, probably after his mother's death, he carried some evil effects of it, physical if not moral, into his whole subsequent career. 517 . OKATIONS AND ADDRESSES As I said, lie had been carefully trained not only in the Christian truth, but in all the knowledge and dis- cipline of the time. In common with his intimate friend Basil, and with many others, he had been edu- cated by Libanius, the friend of Julian, in philosophy and in eloquence. He had entered, at an early age, the profession of the law, and had found attractive opportunities in it ; and he had been fond of attending the theaters, not only as preeminent among the exci- ting amusements of the city, but as giving him oppor- tunity to study the method and the manner of the actors. Becoming converted, as we should say, at the age of twenty-three or twenty-five, and thereafter de- termined, with all the energy of his character, to the Christian life, and to whatever forms of Christian service it might open, he was baptized, and ordained as a reader, about the year 370. Three years later, having followed at home in the meantime a strictly ascetic life, he entered a monastery, situated among the heights south of Antioch, and there continued for four years. Some of his most famous and eloquent treatises were composed, probably, during this period. At the end of it, having become dissatisfied with even the sharp strictness of monastic rule, he left the com- munity, and went out by himself into one of the re- mote and solitary caves common in the region, and there for two years lived as an anchorite, wholly alone, with himself and with God. After these years, with health almost fatally smitten, and in the prospect of immediate death if he should longer continue in his cave, he went back to a home in the city. In the year 381 he was ordained deacon by Bishop Meletius ; and five years after, in 386, he was ordained priest by 518 JOHN OF ANTIOCH Bishop Flavianus, and appointed to be a frequent preacher at what was known as the Great Church at Antioch. In form of structure this church was as different as it is easy to conceive, from our modern churches of either the Gothic or the Romanesque order, or of any other familiar to us. It had been commenced by Constantine, and finished by Constantius ; and prob- ably as clear an impression of it as now can be gained is received by one standing in the famous church of St. Vitale, at Ravenna, a church erected in substan- tially the same style, in the time of Justinian, and consecrated a century and a half after the time of the Antioch riot. This was the church which Charle- magne largely copied in his famous chapel at Aix la Chapelle. The church at Antioch stood, as does that of St. Yitale, in a large court, and was octagonal in form, with subordinate chambers clustered around it, some of them sunken beneath the ground level. The floor was paved with polished marbles, the walls and columns were embellished with bronzes, mosaics, gold ornaments, and all the accessories of Oriental splen- dor ; and a lofty dome, gilded within as well as with- out, rose harmoniously above the whole. A special fact is noted in the structure of this church, for which no reason appears to be given, that the altar in it looked toward the west, not toward the east, as was customary. One might almost be tempted to find in the fact an unconscious prophecy of the vast influence which thence was to circulate, through its great preacher, over countries and continents stretching be- fore it along the path of the westering sun. Behind the altar was the Bishop's throne, with seats 519 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES for the Presbyters extending from it in semicircular arrangement on either side ; the whole chancel, as we call it, or sanctuary, as it was known by the Latins, — thusiasterion by the Greeks, — being raised above the pavement and separated from it by rails of wood, or cancelli, from which our word chancel is derived. These were often richly wrought and woven together as into a solid oaken network. At some distance in front of the sanctuary, at one side of the church, on the broad pavement, but raised above it, stood the ambo, or reading-desk, sometimes called also the pul- pitum, or the tribunal, where the readers or singers were accustomed to stand, and before and around which the congregation was easily assembled. On parts of the pavement all might gather — Jew or Goth, heathen or heretic, as well as Christian catechumen or disciple, to hear the Scriptures, or to listen to ser- mons, up to the climax of the Eucharistic celebration. The men and the women were separated from each other by rails, or, as Chrysostom said, by wooden walls, " which were meant to supply the lack," he added, " of that inward wall of separation in the heart which should be between them ; " and galleries on the sides were particularly appropriated to women, while the men remained below. The preaching was usually from the steps going up to the sanctuary, the place of the altar ; but some- times, certainly in the case of Chrysostom, to be heard more easily, and to come into more immediate connec- tion with those whom he addressed, the preacher took his place in the ambo, and had his congregation grouped around him on every side. In this church, then, and chiefly at least from this 520 JOHN OF ANTIOCH place in it, it was his office to preach da}' by day, for successive weeks, to the half-heathen and half-Chris- tian crowds, terrified, disconsolate, despairing, exci- table, suddenly cut off from all dissolute pleasure, and often equally querulous and rebellious against God and man. As a man, a citizen, a neighbor and friend, a Christian teacher, he had the immense re- sponsibility upon him of animating, calming, instruct- ing, restoring their perturbed and passionate spirits ; and certainly no man ever met an emergency so sud- den and overwhelming with nobler or finer intellec- tual forces, with a more sure grasp on the divine message entrusted to him, or with a more royal and radiant temper in his own heart. He was at that time, as I have said, forty or forty- two years of age ; of a slight and rather diminutive figure, with long, thin limbs, which he himself likened to spiders' legs ; with deep-set eyes, surmounted by a forehead of remarkable height, and with pale cheeks, prematurely shrunken and withered. He had come back from his six years in the monastery and the cave", with debilitated body, suffering frightfully from what we know as chronic dyspepsia. He might have spoken of his general health almost as emphatically as the great Basil did of his liver, when the brutal Gov- ernor of Cappadocia threatened to cut it out if Basil should not obey an order. "Thanks," said Basil, " you will do me a favor. Where it is, it has bothered me ever since I can remember." But the spirit of Chrysostom, in spite of his exhausting ailments, was as sunny and strong, as frank, courageous, intense and decisive as in his youth, a deep and tender sympathy with men combining in it with an assurance as deep 521 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES and full as ever possessed a human soul, of the real- ness and majesty of things divine; and all that he had, of energy and of grace, of every knowledge and every power, he put at the service of the Master and the Church, and of his beloved native city, in this ap- palling emergency. His sermons were premeditated, no doubt, but were not written, and have been preserved for us by the shorthand reporters, of whom that time had hardly fewer than our own. They were probably revised afterward by the preacher, and published with his consent and authority. In his later career, when, as Patriarch of Constantinople he had less leisure, amid the multitudinous cares of his office, to review his dis- courses, the notes of many of them were evidently written out without revision ; and the contrast is a striking one between the fractured parts and bits, which were all that reporters then could gather, and the finished whole which the preacher, availing him- self of stenographic assistance, could personally sup- ply. His voice is described as penetrating and melo- dious, sympathetic with his thought, never monoto- nous, but rising and falling with the swell or subsidence of feeling, while powerful enough to reach distant hearers. And so day by day he stood, or probably oftener sat, in the ambo, amid those who had known him from his boyhood, to bring his message from a Master unseen, to the frightened and almost paralyzed throngs who came for comfort and for succor. Not merely at this time, but afterward, to the end of his eleven years' ministry in Antioch, the crowds attend- ing on his preaching were simply without precedent. After the theaters had been reopened, they were often $23 JOHN OF ANTIOCH practically deserted that he might be heard. People came to church after dinner, as he himself noticed — then, as now, an extraordinary thing. The crowds were so dense that pickpockets took advantage of them to pursue their vocation, and he had to warn people to come without ornament or purse. The dis- courses were frequently interrupted by applause, in spite of his never failing rebuke ; and no man has ever had the hearts of his hearers more completely in his hand than did this great preacher of fifteen hundred years ago. Some account of his sermons at the time of the sedition, however imperfect, may help us, perhaps, to realize his power. To quicken inquiry, facilitate comparison, and avoid suspicion of exaggeration or paraphrase, the extracts are taken almost verbally from the Oxford translation, easy of access, and well ac- credited. The first sermon was preached on March 6th, or a week after the riot had occurred, when the popular terror had come to be extreme. It opens thus : " "What shall I say, or how shall I speak ? The present season is one for tears, not for words; for lamentation, not for discourse; for praying, not preaching ; — such is the magnitude of the deeds dar- ingly done, so incurable is the wound, so piercing the stroke, even beyond the power of treatment, and craving assistance from above. . . . Suffer me to lament our present state. We have been silent seven days, even as were the friends of Job. Suffer me to- day to open my mouth, and to bewail with you this common calamity. . . . Aforetime there was noth- ing happier than our city; now nothing is more melancholy than it has become. As bees buzzing 523 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES around their hive, so, before, the inhabitants flitted daily about the forum, and all pronounced us happy in be- ing so numerous. But behold, that hive hath now be- come solitary ; for even as smoke drives away the bees, so hath fear dispersed our swarms. . . . Nothing is naturally sweeter than one's country ; but now it has come to pass that to us nothing is more bitter. All flee from the place which brought them forth, as if it were a place of snares. They desert it as if it were a dungeon ; they leap out of it as out of a fire. . . . Our calamity has become an enigma — a flight without enemies ; an expulsion of inhabitants without a battle ; a captivity without cap- tors. We have not seen the watch-fires of barbarians, nor beheld the face of enemies ; yet we suffer what those do who have so been smitten. . . . Hereto- fore our city has been shaken by earthquakes, but now the very souls of its inhabitants stagger. Before, the foundations of houses trembled, but now the founda- tions of every heart quiver, and we daily see death face to face. . . . There is a silence big with hor- ror. Loneliness is everywhere. That dear hum of the multitude is stifled ; and even as though we had gone under the earth, speechlessness hath taken pos- session of the town, while all men seem as stones. . . . For he who has been insulted hath not his equal in dignity upon earth. He is a monarch ; the summit and head of all below. On this account, then, let us take refuge in the King who is above. Him let us call to our aid. If we may not obtain the favor of Heaven, there is no remaining consolation for what hath befallen us. ... I could have wished, as for myself, to put an end here to my discourse. But 524 JOHN OF ANTIOCH remembering that it is not simply the nature of a cloud to intercept the forward progress of the sun's rays, but that, on the other hand, the cloud itself often suf- fers as the sun's warmth, falling constantly upon it, wears it away, and frequently breaks through the midst of it, and shining forth, at once meets in splendor the gaze of the beholder — so this also do I myself hope to-day to accomplish ; and by the Word continually anew turning upon your minds and longer lingering upon them, I hope that the cloud of sadness will be dispersed, and that your spirits will shine again through the customary instruction. But afford me your attention. Once more, for a little, lend me your ears. Shake off this sadness. Let us return to our former custom ; and as we have been wont to meet here with gladness, so let us now do, casting all our fears upon God." The spirit of the man went forth on his words, and the effect was immediate, as is indicated a few minutes after by his sharp rebuke: "The Church is not a theater," he says, "in which we are to listen for amusement. With profit ought we to depart hence ; and some fresh and great gain should we acquire, even before we leave this place. . . . What need have I of these plaudits, these cheers, these tumultuous signals of approbation ? The praise I seek is that ye shall show forth in your works what I have said. Then am I enviable and happy, not when ye applaud, but when ye perform with readiness whatsoever ye have heard from me." He then proceeds to discourse upon the folly of largely striving and planning to become rich in this world's goods. " A covetous man is one thing," he 525 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES says ; " a rich man is quite another. A covetous man is never rich. He is in want of many things, and while he needs so many things he cannot be rich. A covetous man is a keeper, not a master, of wealth ; its slave, not its lord. He would sooner give one a portion of his flesh than of his hidden gold. As though he were ordered and constrained by some One to touch nothing of these concealed treasures, with all dili- gence he watches and keeps them, abstaining from his own as if it were another's. Yet indeed they are not his own ; for what he can neither determine to bestow upon others, nor yet to distribute to the needy, though in consequence he encounter infinite punishment, how can he possibly count that his own ? . . . Abraham was rich, but he was not covetous. He covered not his roof with gold, but fixing his tent near the oak, he was content with the shelter of its boughs. Yet so illustrious was his lodging that angels were not ashamed to tarry with him, for they sought not splendor of abode, but virtue of soul. This man let us imitate, my beloved. His lodging was rudely prepared, but it was more distinguished than kingly saloons. No king has entertained angels ; but he, dwelling under an oak, and having only briefly pitched his tent there, was thought worthy of that honor; not receiving the honor on account of the meanness of his abode, but enjoying the benefit on account of the magnificence of his soul, and the riches which were therein laid up. Let us, too, adorn not our houses, but our souls before our houses. What doth thy house profit thee, O man ? Wilt thou take it with thee when thou departest ? But thy soul, when thou departest, thou shalt surely carry with thee. 526 JOHN OF ANTIOCH Behold this great danger which has now overtaken us. Let your houses now stand by you ! Let them deliver you from this threatening peril ! But they cannot ; and you yourselves are the witnesses, who are leav- ing them solitary and going forth into the wilder- ness, fearing your houses, even as ye would fear snares and nets. Let riches now lend you assistance. But it is no time for them to do this. If, then, the power of riches be found wanting even before the wrath of man, how much the rather shall this be be- fore the divine and inexorable tribunal. . . . Do you wish to build large and splendid houses ? I for- bid it not. But let it not be upon the earth. Build yourselves tabernacles in the heavens, and such that' ye may be able to receive others into them ; , even tabernacles which shall never be dissolved." These extracts from the first sermon after the sedi- tion — preached, as I said, on Saturday, March 6th — sufficiently indicate the practical character and the general scope of the preaching which followed. It is not necessary to present equal extracts from other sermons of the succeeding three weeks, one to almost each following day. But from the thirteenth sermon, preached a little more than a fortnight after, some passages may be taken to show the august and im- pressive solemnity of the teaching of him to whom the great function was committed in this dread crisis of threat and fear. This was preached a week after the terrifying trials before the two imperial commission- ers. The trials, after the second day, had themselves been suspended, through the intreaties of the people and the bold remonstrance of the hermits, until the Emperor should be heard from further. The preacher 527 Orations and addresses presents the most vivid account which language could convey, of the horrors of the scene of that first inqui- sition : terror besetting men on every side ; inhabit- ants fleeing to the stony deserts and solitary ravines ; only two or three to be seen in the forum, and these walking like animated corpses ; a multitude around the doors of the tribunal, all looking on each other in profoundest silence ; the preacher himself, with those beside him, mutely stretching out their hands unto God, beseeching Him to soften the hearts of the judges ; — within the court, scenes yet more awful ; armed soldiers keeping the guard ; at the vestibule, a mother and a sister of one of the accused, veiling their faces, prostrate and writhing upon the pavement, meanly clad, without attendant, in the midst of sol- diers, dragging themselves along upon the ground, hearing the strokes of the scourges within, and endur- ing at every stroke sharper pains than those on whom the lash was falling. "Within," he says, "one saw tortures; without, tortures. Those the executioners were tormenting ; these women, the irresistible domi- nation of nature. . . . While I beheld this, how matrons and virgins, accustomed only to retired apart- ments, were now made a common spectacle to all ; how those accustomed to softest couches had now the pavement for their bed ; how those who had enjoyed the constant attendance of servants and eunuchs, with all the outward array of distinction, now threw them- selves prostrate at every one's feet, beseeching any help that he could give, hoping that thus there might be produced a kind of general contribution of mercy — I exclaimed, in the words of Solomon, ' Vanity of vanities, all is vanity ! ' I saw, too, another oracular 528 JOHN OP ANTIOCH word here fulfilled : ' All the glory of man is as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away.' And these things, thus behold- ing, I cast in my mind that dread Tribunal which is yet to come ; and I said, in myself, ' If now, when men are the judges, neither mother nor sister nor fa- ther, nor any other, though guiltless of the perpetrated deed, can avail to rescue the criminal — who will stand by us when we are judged at the tremendous tribunal of Christ ; who will dare there to raise his voice ? Who will be able to deliver those who shall then be led away to unspeakable punishment ? . . . There- fore, I supplicate and beseech you to put your own hands to the work of Christian piety, and when ye depart hence, to show the same earnest regard for your safety which I have shown for your amendment. Oh, that it were possible that I could perform good works as your substitute, and that you could reap the reward of such works ! Then I would not so agitate and disturb you. But how can I do this ? The thing is impossible ; for to every man will he render accord- ing to his works. . . . Since then, by the rule of our own works we shall be punished or we shall be saved, let us endeavor, I beseech you, in conjunction with all other precepts, to fulfil this one ; that finally departing this life with a good hope, we may obtain those blessings which are promised by the grace and loving-kindness of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom and with whom, to the Father, with the Holy Ghost,, be glory both now and ever, world without end. Amen." Several other sermons followed this one, not, per- haps, in such rapid succession as those which had pre- HH 529 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES ceded, but with occasional intervals of two or three days, until, in April, came Easter Sunday, when Fla- vian had returned with the announcement of pardon from the Emperor, and when the preacher opened all the stops of triumphant gratitude and of jubilant praise, in the more than organ-like melody and mag- nificence of his consummating discourse. He de- scribes God's care of Flavian. " He chose," he says, " for the safety of the city, to spend this festival in a foreign place, afar from his people ; but God brought him back to us before the Paschal feast arrived. He feared not the inclement season ; and lo, there was a very summer during the whole period of his journey- ing ! He took not his age into account ; and the journey was accomplished with as much ease as if he had still been young and sprightly. He thought not of his sister's decease, neither was restrained by his tender affections ; and when he returned he found her still among the living." He describes with graphic eloquence the interview of Flavian with Theodosius — the first attitude of the Bishop, in speechless and tear- ful deprecation ; the address of the Emperor to him, with his affectionate but admonitory reply ; the final yielding of Theodosius, in consequence of this reply, to his own better nature, and to the words and ex- ample of Christ ; and then he adds : " "What therefore ye then did (that is, when the news was first received) in crowning the forum with garlands, in lighting the lamps, in spreading the couches with green boughs before the shops, and in keeping festival as if the city had just been born, this do ye, in another manner, through all coming time ; being crowned, not with flowers, but with virtues ; lighting up throughout your 530 JOHN OF ANTIOCH entire souls that true luster which comes from good works ; rejoicing with inward spiritual gladness. And let us not fail to give God thanks, continually, for all these things; not only that he hath freed us from calamities, but even that he permitted such calamities to come ; and let us acknowledge his infinite good- ness, so that all those who shall be hereafter, even to the final consummation of things, learning this act of God's loving-kindness toward our city, may call us blessed in having enjoyed such a favor ; may marvel at our sovereign, who hath thus raised up the fallen city; and may themselves be profited, being stimu- lated to piety by these events. Let us learn this from the divine Scriptures, as well as from the recent events, that God overrules all things for that which is needful for us, with His own loving-kindness ; which God grant that we, continually enjoying, may obtain, moreover, the kingdom of heaven in Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom be glory and dominion, forever and ever. Amen." Some general impression of the tenor and spirit, as well as of the apt and brilliant intellectual power, of these memorable discourses may possibly be gathered from even an account of them so rapid and fragmen- tary as this has been. But only a careful study of them can show the admirable grace and vigor of many passages, the elegant and felicitous strength, with which the things presented in them are commonly put. A few examples may illustrate what I mean. In the second homily, for example, he is cautioning his hearers not to feel disgraced because they are insulted. " Some man hath insulted thee," he says, " with vio- lent language, perhaps unfit to be repeated. If thou 531 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES laugh at the insult, if thou art above the stroke, thou art not insulted ; just as, if we possessed an adaman- tine body, we should not be hurt even were we at- tacked from every side by innumerable darts ; since darts beget wounds, not from the hand of him who hurls them, but from the bodies of those who receive them. So, in this case, insults are made real and dis- honoring, not by the folly of those who offer them, but by the weakness of those whom they strike. If we know how to be truly wise, we are incapable of being insulted, or of suffering any serious evil. Some one hath offered thee injury and contumely. Hast thou not felt it ? Hast thou not been pained ? Then thou art not injured. Thou hast rather given than re- ceived a blow." Here is a passage from the fourth homily, preached two days after, in which he is illustrating God's care of his people by the case of the three children in the fire : " He is more desirous to quench the fire, than thou who art tried by it ; but He is waiting to gain thy soul. It is not always winter, nor always sum- mer ; neither are there always tempestuous waves, nor always a calm ; neither always night, nor always day. In the same way, tribulation is not perpetual, but there will be also repose ; only in our tribulation, let us still always give thanks to God. For the three youths were cast into the furnace, and did not even for this forget their piety, neither did the flames affright them ; but, more earnestly than men sitting in their chambers and suffering nothing to alarm them, did they, while encircled by the fire, send up to heaven these sacred prayers. Therefore the fire became to them a wall, and the flame a robe, and the furnace was 532 JOHN OF ANTIOCH as a fountain; and whereas it had received them bound, it restored them freed. It received bodies that were mortal, but abstained from them as if they had been immortal. The tyrant bound their feet, and their feet bound the operation of the flames. O mar- velous thing! The flame loosed those who were bound, and was itself afterward bound by those who had been set in it in bonds. For the piety of the youths changed the nature of things ; or rather, it did not change their nature, but what was more wonder- ful, it stayed their operation, even while their nature remained the same. . . . The tyrant bound and the flame let loose ! that thou mightest learn at once the fierceness of the barbarian and the submissiveness of the element." In another homily, a few days later, on the w r ords in Ecclesiastes, "Remember that thou goest in the midst of snares," he says : " Why, it is asked, are there so many snares ? That we may not fly low, but may seek the things which are above. For just as birds, so long as they cleave the upper air, are not easily caught, so thou also, as long as thou lookest at things above, wilt not easily be captured, whether by a snare or by any other device of evil. The devil is a fowler. Soar thou, then, too high for his arrows. The man who has mounted aloft will no longer admire anything in the matters of this world ; but as, when we have ascended the tops of the mountains, the town, with its walls, seems to us small, and the men appear going about on the earth like so many insects, so, when thou hast ascended to the lofty contemplations of wisdom, nothing upon the earth will have power to fascinate thee 3 but everything here, riches and honor 533 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES and human glory, and whatsoever else may be of their kind, will appear insignificant as thou regardest heav- enly things. . . . Hence also Paul's admonition, 'Set your affection on things above.' "What things callest thou things above ? I ask. Where the sun is ? "Where the moon is ? Nay, saith the apostle. Where angels are ? Where archangels ? Where the cheru- bim are ? Where the seraphim ? Nay, still saith he. But where, then ? ' Where Christ sitteth, at the right hand of God.'" In the same homily, admonishing, as he continually did, against the vice of profane swearing, for which Antioch was sadly famous, he quotes from Zechariah his vision of a flying sickle, as it is translated in the Septuagint (drepanon petomenon), and then says: "For what reason is it a sickle, and even a flying sickle, this vengeance which is shown to pursue the swearer ? That thou mayest see that the judgment is inevitable, and that the punishment is not to be eluded. For from a flying sword one might perchance be able to escape ; but from a sickle falling upon the neck, and encircling it like a cord, no one can escape ; and when wings are added, what hope of safety can there be ? . . . The sword is not so piercing as is the nature of an oath ; the saber is not so destructive as is the stroke of an oath. The swearer, though he seems to live, is already dead, and hath received the fatal blow. Even as the man who hath received the halter, before he hath gone out of the city, and come to the pit, and seen the executioner standing over him, is dead from the time he passed the doors of the hall of justice : so also is the swearer." In another homily, preached especially to those 534 JOHN OF ANTIOCH flocking in from the country to hear him, it is inter- esting to see how he takes the peculiar sights of the city, and makes these his images and vivid parables. " Let us think," he says, " what services the devil imposes ; how laborious, how burdensome ; and yet the difficulty becomes no obstacle to those who perform them. For what can be more difficult, I ask, than when a youth, delivering himself to those who under- take to make his limbs supple and pliant, uses his utmost exertion to bend his whole body into the shape of a wheel, and so to revolve upon the pavement ; his powers being tasked, to the last measure, at the same instant, through the eyes, through the 'movement of the hands, as through the other kindred convolutions, in order to pass into the class of female dancers. Yet neither the difficulty of such feats, nor the resulting degradation, is even thought of. Or, again, with respect to those pulled over the stage, and using their limbs as if they were wings. Who that behold such but must be struck with amazement ? So those, too, who toss knives aloft into the air, one after the other, and again catch them by their handles as they fall. Whom of us might they not put to shame, who are willing to undergo no labor for the sake of virtue ? And what can one say of those men who balance a pole on the forehead, keeping it as steady as if it were a tree rooted to the ground ? Even this is not the only marvel in the matter, but they set little children to wrestle with one another on the top of this pole ; and yet, neither the hands assisting, nor any other part of the body, the forehead sustains the pole un- shaken, with more steadiness than could any fasten- ing. Another walks on a slender cord, with the same 535 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES fearlessness with which men run on level plains. These things, which even to thought seem impracticable, be- come possible by art. What similar difficulty can we pretend to encounter in the matter of swearing? What is the difficulty there, what the toil, what the art, where the danger ? A little effort on our part alone is needed, and the whole task will be quickly accomplished." The address which he attributes to Flavian, before Theodosius, but which is unquestionably in form his own, if not in its substance, being full of his idioms of expression, illustrates in another way his marvelous accomplishment in the art of putting things. " We ourselves," he says, speaking by Flavian for the people of Antioch, " have by anticipation inflicted upon our- selves what is worse than a thousand deaths. If barbarians had come down upon our city, and over- thrown its walls, and burned its houses, and had car- ried us away captive, the evil would have been less. Wherefore is this, do you say ? Because while you live [that is, the Emperor] and continue your generous kindness toward us, there might be a hope that these evils would be overcome, and that we should be restored to our former condition, and enjoy a more illustrious freedom. But now, having been stripped of your favor, having quenched your love, which has been a greater security to us than all our walls, whom have we left to whom to fly ? While therefore the people seem to have committed the most intolerable offenses, they have suffered, on the other hand, the most terrible evils ; not daring to look any man in the face ; not being able to behold the sun with free eyes ; shame everywhere weighing on their eyelids, and 536 JOHN OF ANTIOCH compelling them to hide their heads. ... If you will, most gracious, most wise, most devout Sovereign, this very contempt which you have suffered will pro- cure you a crown more honorable and splendid than the diadem which you wear. The diadem is a trophy of your princely virtue, but also a token of the mag- nificence of him who gave it. But the crown woven from your humanity will be wholly your own blessed work ; and all men will less admire you for the sake of those precious stones than they will applaud you for your superiority to your wrath. Were your statues thrown down ? You have it in your power to set up others, more splendid. If you remit the offenses of those who have done you this injury, and take not revenge on them, they will erect a statue to you, not one in the forum, of brass or of gold, or inlaid with gems, but one arrayed in that robe which is more precious than anything material, of clemency and tender mercy. Every man will thus exalt you, within his own soul ; and you will have as many statues as there are men who inhabit, or who shall hereafter inhabit, the entire world." No doubt the excellent Flavian made an excellent address before the Emperor ; but that he did it in terms like these is nowise probable. The reader of the sermons of John the Presbyter will not doubt whence the rhetoric came in which he clothes the Bishop's appeal. Another extract may be permitted, from another homily, as showing the practical outlook of the preacher, as well as a tendency in the minds of those who heard him, which is not Avholly unknown in our day — outside, at least, of Boston. After many earnest 537 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES admonitions, he adds : " Say these things to others, and observe them also yourselves. I know that in this place [that is, the church] we become more reverent, and lay aside our evil habits. But what is to be desired is this — that we depart taking this reverence away with us to where we specially need it. For those who carry water do not seek merely to have their vessels full when they are near the fountain, and then empty them when they reach home ; but they set them down there with particular care, lest they be overturned, and their labor become useless. Let us imitate this process, and when we reach home let us strictly retain what has here been spoken ; since, if ye have here gotten full, but return empty to your houses, having the vessels of your understanding there destitute of what here ye have heard, there will be for you no advantage from your present replenish- ment. Show me not the wrestler in the place of his exercise, but show him in the lists ; and show me re- ligion not at the season of hearing, but in the time of personal practice." Not in the same connection, but of the same tenor, from another homily, after the fears of the city had been relieved, come these words : " When the sad con- flagration of these calamities first was kindled, I said it was not a time for preaching, but for prayer. The very same thing I now repeat, when the fire has been quenched— that it is now especially, and more than ever, a time for prayer ; now the season for tears and compunction, for anxiety of soul, for great diligence and great caution. For at that time the very nature of our trouble restrained us, and compelled us to a measure of sobriety. But noWj when the scourge is 538 JOHN OF ANTIOCH removed, when the cloud is past, there is danger that we fall back into sloth, and be relaxed by the respite. . . . Learn what the dignity of a city is ; and then thou wilt see clearly that if the inhabitants thereof do not betray it, no one else can take away its honor. Dost thou wish to learn the dignity of this city ? I will tell it exactly ; not that thou may est know it merely, but that thou may est emulate it also. This it is : 'It came to pass that the disciples were first called Christians at Antioch.' Dost thou wish to hear further of another dignity belonging to this city ? A grievous famine was once approaching, and the inhabitants of Antioch determined, as each had the means, to send relief to the saints at Jerusalem. . . . They also sent Paul and Barnabas to Jerusalem, and cautioned the apostles to provide that pure doctrine should be distributed over the world. This is the dignity of this city ; this its precedence. This makes it a metropolis, not in the earth only, but as related to the heavens. To me, the city that hath not pious citizens is meaner than any village, and more ignoble than any cave. . . . Let us not then be senseless ; but then let us grieve when any one deprives us of our dignity of soul ; when we commit sin ; when we have offended the common Master of us all. I have heard many saying in the Forum, ' Alas for thee, O Antioch ! What hath befallen thee ! ' "When I heard, I smiled at the puerile spirit which gave vent to such words. "When thou seest men dancing, drunken, singing, blaspheming, perjuring themselves, lying, then apply such words as these, 'Alas for thee, O city! What hath befallen thee ! ' But if thou seest the Forum containing meek, modest and temperate persons, even though they be 539 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES few, then pronounce the city blessed When you wish to bestow an encomium on it, tell me not of the suburb of Daphne ; nor of the height and multi- tude of its cypresses ; nor of its flowing fountains of waters ; nor of the vast population which inhabits the town, nor of the safety of its markets and the abun- dance of its wares. But if you are able to speak of virtue, meekness, almsgiving, nightly visions, prayers, sobriety, true wisdom of soul — then for these things commend the city." His power of setting things tersely forth, in pointed sentences, is always remarkable. Take this contrast between the people of Nineveh and the people of An- tioch, in the fifth homily, for an example : " Thus was that city agitated when it heard the prophet's voice ; but instead of being injured, it was benefited, by fear, for that fear became the cause of its safety. The threatening effected the deliverance from peril. The sentence of overthrow put a stop to the overthrow. . . . They indeed did not flee from the city, as we are doing, but remaining in it, they caused it to stand. It was a snare, and they made it a fortress. It was a gulf and a precipice ; and they turned it into a tower of safety. They had heard that the buildings would fall, yet they fled not from the buildings, but from their sins. . . . They trusted for safety not to a change of habitations, but to a change of habits." Or take this example : " The weapons of the lion are a hairy mane, pointed claws and sharp teeth. The weapons of the righteous man are divine wisdom, tem- perance, patience, contempt of all present things. Who- soever hath these weapons shall be able to affright not only wicked men, but the adverse powers themselves." 540 JOHN OF ANTIOCH Or, again : " It is customary with those who love, to glory more in the things which they suffer for those who are beloved than in the benefits which they re- ceive from them. A king is not so pleased with his diadem as Paul was, glorying in his chains. A dia- dem offers only an ornament to the crowned head, but the chain is a greater ornament, while at the same time a security. A king's crown often betrays the head which it encircles, and allures innumerable traitors, inviting them to the lust of empire ; but the chain will bring nothing of the sort upon those who bear it, but altogether the contrary. . . . But what were the chains, some one says, that brought glory to him thus fettered ? Were they not formed of iron ? Of iron, indeed, they were fashioned ; but they showed the graces of the spirit^ flowering upon them richly, since he wore them for Christ's sake . . . ; and thus that iron became to him more pre- cious than any gold, not by its intrinsic nature, but for this cause and ground." A maxim for usefulness has not unfrequently been derived from the bee, but hardly ever more charm- ingly than by this preacher : " Whilst from the ant thou learnest industry, take from the bee a lesson at once of neatness, industry and mutual concord. For it is not more for herself than for us that the bee labors and is every day weary ; which is a thing espe- cially proper for a Christian, — not to seek his own things only, but the things of others. As, then, she traverses the meadows, that she may provide a ban- quet for another, so also do thou, O man. If thou hast accumulated wealth, expend it upon others. If thou hast the faculty of teaching, bury not the talent, 541 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES but bring it forth publicly for those who need it. If thou hast any other special endowment, become useful by it to those who need the fruit of thy labor. Seest thou not that for this very reason the bee is more hon- ored than other insects — not because she labors' merely, but because she labors for others ? For the spider also labors, and spreads his fine textures upon the walls, surpassing the utmost skill of women ; but he is still without estimation, since his work is in no way profitable to us. Such are they who labor and are weary, but only for themselves." Another power must be recognized in him — that of taking up a whole assembly on the rush of a great thought, and carrying it, as on eagle's wings, to the highest contemplations. And of this I can give but a single example, one of many. He is speaking of the visible universe. " Seest thou its greatness ? Marvel at the power of Him who made it. Seest thou its beauty? Be astonished at the wisdom which hath adorned it. This it was which the prophet signified when he said, ' The heavens declare the glory of God.' How then, tell me, do they declare it ? Yoice they have none; mouth they possess not; no tongue is theirs. How then do they declare this glory? By the spectacle itself. For when thou seest the beauty, the breadth, the height, the steadfast poise, the form, the stability thereof, during a period so long — hear- ing, as it were, a voice, and being instructed by the spectacle, thou adorest Him who created so fair and so admirable a body. The heavens may be silent, but the appearance of them emits a voice which is louder than a trumpet-sound, instructing us not by the ear, but through the medium of the eye, since the latter is 542 JOHN OF ANTIOCH a sense more sure and more distinct. If God had given instruction by books and by letters, be who knew letters would have learned what was written, but the illiterate would have gone away without bene- fit, unless some one had assisted his way ; the wealthy would have purchased the Bible, but the poor man had been unable to obtain it. Again, he who knew the language expressed by the letters might have known what was therein contained, but the Scythian and the barbarian, the Indian and the Egyptian, and all others excluded from that language, would have gone away without instruction. This cannot be said with re- spect to the heavens, for every man that walks upon the earth shall hear their voice, since not by the ear, but through the sight, it reaches the understanding. . . . Upon this volume the unlearned as well as the wise shall be able to look ; the poor man and the rich man alike ; and wherever any may chance to come, looking up toward the heavens, he will receive a suffi- cient instruction. . . . And this is true not merely of the heavens, but of the successions of the day and the night. For when thou understandest how these distribute between them the whole year, and mutually divide the length of the entire space, as it were by a beam and scales, thou wilt be astonished at Him who hath ordained them. ... So who can describe the order of the seasons ; and how these, like virgins dancing in a circle, succeed each other with the happi- est harmony; how those in the middle cease not to pass over to those who are opposite, with a gradual and noiseless transition. So that neither does the summer receive us directly after winter, nor the winter immediately succeed the summer ; but midway the 543 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES softer season is interposed, that insensibly, little by little, our bodies may be prepared to encounter what is to come, without uneasiness. . . . Who is he so wretched and so unfortunate that, beholding the heavens, and. beholding this exact temperament of the seasons, and the unfailing order of day and night, he can think that these things happen of their own ac- cord, instead of adoring Him who hath arranged them with such consummate wisdom ? " I have said enough, I am sure, and have quoted enough from these remarkable discourses, all of them contained in a single volume, to indicate, at least par- tially, the sources and the measure of the power as a preacher of this John of Antioch. My own impres- sion of it I cannot easily overstate. Dean Milman says of him, with his accustomed moderation of phrase, that he was " the model of a preacher for a great city." Certainly, not only his popularity, but the vast effects produced by his preaching at Antioch first, and afterward at Constantinople, sustain and en- force this temperate judgment. But I should say for myself much more than this : that he was one of the few, not more perhaps than half-a-dozen at most, of the really great preachers of the world ; and that among these he held nearly, if not quite, the foremost place. I have read many sermons of Augustine and Gregory, not a few of the great medieval preachers, from Bernard of Clairvaux to John Tauler ; a goodly number from Bossuet, Massillon and other famous preachers of France, with many of the English pulpit, from Taylor and South to Robert Hall, Newman, Lid- don and the others, with our own Phillips Brooks ; and I do not know, for myself, where to find certainly 544 JOHN OF AftTIOCH the superior, in this special function, of this Presbyter in Antioch, fifteen hundred years ago. Others may have been more finely exact in analysis of themes; I know of no one who has had his thought more distinctly before him, or has made it more dis- tinct and commanding to his hearers. Others have equaled, but none have surpassed him in the reach and ardor of that sympathy with souls which drew to him not only the devout, but those who were conscious of any need — indeed all those who were not fiercely predetermined against him by self-commitment to the courses and causes against which his speech flamed like a sword. His alertness of mind still amazes the reader, while his convictions remain as fixed and im- movable as the ribs of the hills. His buoyant and unconquerable hopefulness was an immense power, in himself, and for his hearers ; and it offers a lesson to all who follow him, however humbly, in his great function. In the days of debased or discordant churches, of scandalous prelates fighting each other, often to the death, for riches and honors, and all lasts of the flesh — when society was chaotic, seething with strifes, of opinions and of arms, when paganism had only half yielded to the Gospel, and when the turbu- lent peoples were only held to any semblance of order by the terrible secular tyranny above them — he was as tranquil and brave in spirit, as surely expectant of the better things coming, as if he had lived near the millennium, in lands full of culture and peace. The first note of weakening timidity is not found in his writings. Almost every personal tone is there, except a whine. In doctrine he was thoroughly evangelical, almost II 545 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES according to our modern conventional meaning of the word. He had no doubts to fight in his own mind, no fears concerning the truth, and no inward hesita- tions to fetter his speech. I cannot say, certainly, that I have read all or the larger part of that which is contained in the thirteen immense folios of my Yenice edition of his works ; and I sympathize some- what with Suidas, the lexicographer, if he said, as he is reported to have said, that only God can know all that there is in those almost immeasurable books. But so far as I have studied them, my impression co- incides with those who have examined them more largely, and much more minutely, that while he ven- erates martyrs, and desires and expects personal aid from the prayers of saints, nothing appears in his writings of purgatory, of Mariolatry, of confession to Priests, or of the papal supremacy ; that he recognizes but the two Sacraments of the Church ; and that he teaches, with utmost emphasis, dependence upon Christ alone for salvation. His acquaintance with the Scrip- tures, through the Septuagint version of the Old Testa- ment and the Greek Scriptures of the ~New, was familiar and profound. Their words are constantly on his lips. His style is often saturated with what we may call the Biblical idiom ; and in interpretation he shows almost always clear sense and discriminating judgment. Comparing his expositions of the Scrip- ture with those of Bernard, for example, the contrast is as great as between a stately and symmetrical tree, firmly rooted, proportional and fruitful, and a wild vine running at large over rocks, roots, fences, shrubs, attaching itself to all sorts of objects with which it has no native affinity, and simply at last, by mechan- 546 JOHN OF ANTIOCH ical process, hanging its pendent shoots in the air. Yet the rich spiritual unction in John is not less abundant, spontaneous, inspiring, than it is in Ber- nard. His devout feeling is not that which belongs to the mystic, a feeling of ecstasy and an intimate rap- ture, alternating, perhaps, with occasional ghastly fears. His is the robust and deliberate feeling, which yet is emotional and intensely impassioned, of one dwelling in the vision of highest truths, and knowing the touch of God's Spirit upon him, yet conversant with men, living in the midst of them, and daily call- ing on God in prayer to help him bless them. No more practical preacher has ever stood, I am sure, upon the earth. Even Gibbon speaks, as you may re- member, of his "happy art of engaging the passions in the service of virtue, and of exposing the folly as well as the turpitude of vice, almost with the truth and spirit of a dramatic representation." One cannot read any of his discourses without feeling that he means to strike sin with all his force, wherever he finds it ; whether in empress or handmaid, in soldier or slave, in bishop or priest, prefect or philosopher, the prelate of the Church or the wandering Scythian. The differences of rank or of culture among men are to him absolutely of no importance. He means to in- spire holiness, if he may, by God's grace assisting, in every soul which he reaches — of statesman, harlot, heretic, Jew, as well as of Christian, wherever his winged words may come. His eloquence is every- where modulated and determined by this overmaster- ing practical aim, this passion for usefulness. All that he had learned in the early study and practice of the law, all that he had gained in the assiduous contem- 547 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES plation of the Greek learning and the Hellenic philos- ophy, as well as what he had learned from the Scripture, came swinging in, under the grasp of his ready memory and of his absolutely inexorable pur- pose, to assist this endeavor. He had, as we have seen, the quickest eye for every incident in the circum- stances around him which might add vividness and point to his appeal; and he breasted occasions, of whatever nature, with a spirit never confused and never shackled by any emergency. In fact, the occa- sion, however sudden, whether tragical or triumphant, became the real standing-ground for his spirit ; and if the earthquakes which more than once had shattered Antioch had buried the whole of it except the Church and the people there gathered, he would, I am sure, have had great lessons for the few who survived ; and even the roll of the earthquake itself would hardly have drowned the stirring and masterful melody of his voice. His unbounded facility of expression and illustration has seemed, sometimes, to hide from men's thoughts his other powers ; but his logic was as forcible as his convictions were deep, and through the chains of consecutive thought his lightnings flashed. The ardor of his soul infused his words ; and his rhetoric was never artificially elaborate. It was the very vernacu- lar of his mind. He used it because he could not help it, without violence to his nature. Sometimes it was enriched too profusely, no doubt, for modern or for western taste — sentences glittering like clustered jewels, where various yet harmonious gems dazzle the eye with radiant facets, and sometimes, on the other hand, it approached an extravagance wholly un-Hel- 548 JOHN OF ANTIOCH lenic in its character ; so that some of the most re- markable examples of utterly rough and ready plain- speaking to be found in any literature occur in his sermons. The stately rhythm, the shining and sinu- ous grace of his sentences, marching in general like centuries of soldiers, in glittering mail, with banners displayed and swell of trumpets, are only more impress- ive because broken now and then, in this abrupt and startling fashion, by passages which rush in like bar- barian cohorts, with clubs and clamor, shaking rude spears and dressed in skins. But still, above all, — over- ornament, over-ruggedness or plainness of discourse — was his courageous and consecrated temper, which never feared the face of man; which had in it the consciousness of eternal relations, and was inwardly familiar with the divine secrets. This poured through his speech an incalculable power. Men felt that he Jcnew, when he reasoned of righteousness, judgment and temperance. It was absolutely known that no bribe could corrupt him, and no menaces daunt him. Fitly did Dante place him in Paradise between Nathan, the seer, and Anselm of England, as one who, like them, had never flinched before wrath of kings. He stood in his pulpit as one who had communed with God, and had felt upon his soul the mystery of the Cross ; before whom loomed the near Eternity, with its tremendous admonitions ; on whom was already the majesty and the tenderness of the temper celes- tial. And so his words were living things. They are so still. There is a marvelous modernness in his ser- mons. So far as form is concerned, they might have been preached last year, or this, in Boston or in Brooklyn, if anybody had been able to preach them, 549 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES and if any congregation had understood Greek ; and no man can read them, after so many ages, in our far lands, without feeling that he who shot these shafts, who bore up souls on these mighty instructions, or who comforted and exalted with these divine consola- tions, lived the life which he lived in the flesh by the faith of the Son of God ; that he had dwelt in the secret places of God's pavilion ; that not even in Paul had conviction been deeper, or vision clearer of that which is above, consecration more complete, affection more loyal, zeal more intense. One does not marvel at the effects produced by his sermons at Antioch or Byzantium ; that the heathen were converted in num- bers uncounted ; that disciples were lifted to wholly new levels of enthusiastic conviction; that heretics were won. One does not wonder that his name ever since has risen as a refulgent banner above the early march of the Church.. His enforced coronation as patriarch in the imperial capital ; the desperate fight which, in the pure severity of his conscience, he there waged to the last against lust and license in Church and in court ; his exile and death, which gave him, in fact, the martyr's crown, but which gave a blow to Christian morality and to Church discipline, from which the Church in Constantinople never recovered ; these have added both pathos and luster to his fame in the world. They commend him. now to our rever- ent love. But wholly apart from either of these, it seems to me that no one can study his sermons, even in his earliest period, without recognizing in him per- haps the greatest preacher of the world since the day of Paul's death on the Ostian road ; without feeling that to apply the name by which after centuries have 550 JOHN OF ANTIOCH loved to describe him, to others among the millions of preachers who have followed him in his work, is hardly less than to him a reproach or to them a sarcasm. Of course it was not given to men in that time, any- more than in ours, to be equally great in all the pow- ers which belong to humanity, or in all the offices which these may fulfil. It is as a resplendent preacher that John of Antioch has held so long his superb pre- eminence.- In other relations he was doubtless sur- passed by two, at least, of his Western contemporaries. Ambrose of Milan, born and dying a few years before him — who had also, like him, been trained to the law and exercised in it, and who, almost against his con- sent, was suddenly placed by the unanimous and im- perative voice of rulers and people in his high Arch- bishopric — was not of more zeal and self-forgetfulness in his work for the Master, or of more unflinching and vehement purpose to further and exalt the authority of righteousness ; but he had a greater capacity, no doubt, for organization, and the maintenance of dis- cipline ; and he fronted the threats of imperial dis- pleasure, when imperial power had reached its climax, with a more commanding magisterial will. Augus- tine, born and dying a little later than Chrysostom, was a profounder theologian, and left unquestionably a deeper impression on the subsequent conviction and thought of Christendom. He is to-day more widely known among the thinkers and the peoples who rule the world, and his power upon them is more vividly recognized. But the genius of Chrysostom had its peculiar and fascinating splendor. There was not only a corusca- 551 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES ting sparkle upon it. It had a variety and exuberance in it, surpassing that of either of the others. It was more subtle, stimulating, various, eager, outflowing more naturally into graceful, fervent and picturesque speech. He touches hearts more tenderly still, where his life is recalled, or his sermons are read. Men feel to-day, as far as they know him, an enthusiasm for him, hardly equaled, certainly not surpassed, by the reverent respect which they pay to the others. The threads of gold interwoven by him with the Christian history of the first four centuries, add more of luster, I am not sure that they add less of strength, to that entangled and complex fabric, than do the tougher iron fibers inserted by the others. And it may be doubted whether to the ultimate culture of Christen- dom his contribution will not prove as large. At any rate, both they and he illustrate in common, though with differences belonging to their respective personalities, the intensity of faith in that earlier time, and the immortal supremacy of spiritual forces over everything physical. Antioch now, as I said at the outset, is a town of ruins; its superb architecture despoiled and destroyed ; with frequent mosques rising in it, but no evident Christian temple ; its com- merce dead, its scanty population cowering in mean houses, rudely built from ancient remains of palace and fortress. Emperor, Empress, and the empire which they governed, have equally gone from the shores of the Bosphorus, and the Moslem power, fierce and sullen, rules where Constantine founded New Home. The great eastern metropolis of Chrysostom's day has almost disappeared, and a new city has, dur- ing the centuries, risen in its place. But the eager, 552 JOHN OF ANTIOCH faithful, inspiring spirit of him who spoke so long ago, at Antioch and Byzantium, still addresses the world. His fame is as firm as the mountains around Antioch, and as fresh as the spring-grass climbing their slopes. His influence is to-day as unwasting as the mingled waters on which looks the city, which he hallowed at last by eloquence and by suffering. His name is among the great lights of History ; one of the stars which shall not set, or lose their radiance, in that serene, illuminated arch which bends forever over the kingdom of God on earth ! 553 XII COMMERCE AN EDUCATOR OF NATIONS A Speech made at the One Hundred and Twelfth Anniversary Banquet of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, in New York City, May 11, 1880, in response to the Toast : Commerce, an educator of nations and a constant minister of civilization ; what- ever contributes to extend its activity furthers the permanent interests of mankind. XII COMMEKCE AN EDUCATOK OF NATIONS Mr. President and Gentlemen : It seems to me a capital illustration of the sagacity of the merchants of New York, that they have called upon one to respond to this toast, in honor of Com- merce, who has nothing to do with it ! It is like asking a reviewer to criticize a book which he has not read ; his judgment is sure to be perfectly impartial. For, I suppose that of all classes in the community, perhaps that which has least to do in personal contact with the affairs of commerce is the clerical class, to which I have the pleasure and the honor to belong. We have to buy food and raiment, as other people do ; now and then to buy books, if we have any surplus funds, or if Mr. Appleton or Mr. Scribner will give us credit for the amount ; and there our re- lations to the system cease. I have known some min- isters who, after their parishes had no further use for their services, went into business, buying stocks, goods, real estate, or, sometimes horses. But I hardly ever knew one of them who, so far as the ultimate profit was concerned, was not obliged to say for himself pretty much what Artemus "Ward, I think, said of Mr. Jefferson Davis, that it would have been more 557 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES than ten dollars in his pocket if he had never been born. So we have to leave questions of commerce, in its details and particulars, to you, gentlemen, who are accustomed to reckon upon the laws of supply and demand, and to calculate the balance of trade, as the sea-captain calculates the force and direction of the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic ; or to statesmen, like your distinguished guest upon my left [Secretary Sherman], who has had the fortune and the honor, in a critical time of the national history, to set in mo- tion the languid currents of national industry, to re- store and exalt our national credit in the markets of the world, and to make the paper promises of our Government equivalent to gold. I count that the true alchemy : which has a continent for its alembic, which has the vast, diversified industries of the land for its instruments, and whose only magical words have been courage, foresight, and an untarnished public faith. I am no more of a politician, sir, than I am of a merchant. I suppose we all left our politics, with our overcoats, in the cloak-room. Mine are there, I know, done up in a nice little paper package, which I mean to read by and by. I have heard with surprise some heretical sentiments of Free Trade to-night. So far as I remember, I am an old-fashioned protective-tariff Whig. But, politics or no politics, gentlemen, I am sure we shall all be glad to feel assured that there will be before us a career of wide commercial prosperity, whenever the people of this country, by a majority of voices, shall apply to your distinguished guest the motto of the Empire State, and say to him, "Go up higher ! " 558 COMMERCE AN EDUCATOR OP NATIONS But though one may not know anything about the details of Commerce, he may know something of the history of it, and of the work it has done in the world. I think it is Richter who says that on some faces you read a date, and nothing more ; on other faces you read a proud and splendid history. So it is with some words ; they mean nothing more than they instantly convey, in their superficial significance, to the ear. Others are associated with great honors and powers, with illustrious movements of civilization ; and Com- merce is one of these. Yery simple in its elements ; the exchange of what I have, and do not need, for what another man has, which I desire ; that is the ele- ment of it. But think what a history such exchanges have had ! The history of commerce is the history of mankind in its civilized development. It goes back to the time when Abraham made his early investment in real estate in the land of Canaan, and paid "four hundred shekels of silver, current money with the merchant." That is in the book of Genesis, the old- est book in the world. It goes back beyond that ; to the time when Egypt and India, when Phoenicia and Assyria, exchanging with one another, became full of enterprise and of traffic. Charlotte Bronte says, in one of her letters, that Edinburgh, as compared with London, is like a vivid chapter in history compared with a dull treatise on political economy. A large and vivid history of Commerce, written in the true spirit, with a reviving historic imagination as well as with sufficient knowledge, would be the most inspiring book in secular annals. There is nothing now except dull chronicles of detail to take the place of such a history, which some time or other must be written. 559 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES The very word, if you consider its history, is exalted out of the commonplace. " Commerce " — it is aro- matic with perfume of the spices that have been borne between the decks of its argosies ; it rustles with the gold brocades that were brought from India to im- perial Rome ; it is white and polished with the ivory and the pearl of Araby and of Africa ; it gleams with the ornaments of gold and gems which the West has purchased from Oriental skill and wealth. It is one of the most illustrious words in the world ; and its history is that of a benign influence constantly exerted upon human civilization. Of course it has immensely augmented the wealth of persons and of peoples. That is not the best thing in the world, but it is a good thing, because wealth, accumulated and fairly distributed, brings independ- ence and public advancement. I suppose that no merchants in the world to-day are richer, relatively to their time, than were the Fuggers of Augsburg, that old Bavarian city, sprung from weavers, whose chil- dren and grandchildren wedded with princes; who had their ships in both hemispheres, floating on all seas ; who made enormous loans to Emperors ; one of whom is said to have burned a large bond of the Emperor Charles Y in a fire of cinnamon wood, when the Emperor did him the honor to pay him a visit. Perhaps you, gentlemen of New York, will burn your bonds, now that you have Secretary Sherman among you. Mere wealth is commonplace. But remember that Augsburg was almost the first city in the world to buy its freedom from the Dukes of Suabia. It will be three hundred and fifty years next month (June, 560 COMMERCE AN EDUCATOR OF NATIONS 1530), since there was published the Protestant Con- fession of Augsburg; and. twenty-five years after was issued there the first imperial edict which gave liberty of worship on the continent. This was the effect of Commerce, and of the wealth of Commerce, working towards freedom. Think of the powers which it has trained; the powers of those who have afterward become dis- tinguished in the service of the State. Eemember the Medici family, illustrious in government for cen- turies, and in the patronage of art ; Colbert, the poor boy of Rheims, Finance Minister of Louis XIV; N/ecker, the father of Mme. De Stael ; Lafitte ; Rich- ard Cobden, the manufacturer of Manchester, the Apostle of free trade, whom Sir Robert Peel, himself the son of a Lancashire cotton-spinner, eulogized in Parliament as having compelled the repeal of the corn laws in England. Think of John Hancock, in our' own country, whose signature comes first be- neath the Declaration of Independence, companion of Otis and Sam Adams, whom Governor Gage com- mended, more than by knighthood, to the honor of every American heart, when he excepted him, person- ally and paticularly, from the offer of pardon, be- cause his offenses against monarchy had been too out- rageous to be overlooked. I rejoice to remember that he was the son of a Braintree minister. I rejoice, in this company, to remember that he was, as well, your brother-merchant. Think, too, of the expansion of the knowledge of mankind concerning the globe, which is due to Com- merce, exploring the seas centuries before this conti- nent was dreamed of, gathering to itself the treasures JJ 561 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES of Central and of Eastern Asia, and, in seeking a quicker route to the Indies, picking up this continent out of the waste of waters. You and I owe it to Com- merce that we have our home on these fertile and delightful shores. Now it is exploring Africa, to bring all the secrets of that dark continent into the light ; now, by its hardy pioneers, it is pushing its way through the icy barriers that gird the pole. Commerce it is, that has done this. Think of the marvelous inventions which are due to it. The mariner's compass, the steam-engine, the telegraph — they are children of Commerce, as well as its servants and allies. It is Commerce that flings the chains of its .railways over the continents, and drives the channel through the rocky roots of the mountains, along which its trains of traffic are to slide. It is Commerce which has opened a liquid highway across the Isthmus of Suez, and which is now looking upon the snow-capped Cordilleras, on the Isthmus of Panama, and saying to them, "You have had a good time up there, ever since the earth was made round ; but there is not room for you and me both upon this planet, so please prepare to subside." You remember the little boy traveling who asked his mother, " What is a junction ? " "A junction ! why, do n't you know what a junction is ? A junction is a place w.here two roads separate." Hereafter, when the future geographer is asked the question, "What is an isthmus, the answer will have to be, " It is a place where two oceans are joined." It is Com- merce that has made the globe so much smaller than it was, to one who wishes to put a girdle round it. Think, too, how its influence has served political 562 COMMERCE AN EDUCATOR OF NATIONS freedom, from, the beginning. It really broke down the feudal system. It gave the means, and it gave in part the inspiration, to the Hollanders, in that tre- mendous struggle of eighty years against the ap- parently omnipotent power of Spain, which is the real romance of the modern history of the world. It is Commerce that has advanced steadily and tri- umphantly the liberties of England, while it has been making its flag eminent, if not supreme, on every sea of the world. It is Commerce, to-day, gen- tlemen, that is unifying all the time the magnificent peninsula of Italy — the internal commerce of the renowned capitals of that great land, binding it together as no laws or diplomacy could. Think of it in its international relations. The Hanseatic League marked the beginning of its influence on modern inter- national law. The eighty-three cities combined to put down piracy on the rivers and seas, making the German Ocean safe, making the Baltic safe. It is Commerce which is now mitigating the horrors of war, limiting its frequency ; which has put down piracy ; which has abolished the slave trade ; which will have abolished privateering, when other countries shall have adopted the principle of our country, that all private goods upon the seas, except they be contraband of war, shall be as safe from seizure in time of war as if they were in the homestead, or in the sheltered and guarded streets of cities ; and it is looking now for Courts of Ar- bitration to take the place among nations of the bloody and desperate arbitrament of battle. Then, too, think of it in its relation to the spread of Christianity, as bringing Christian nations nearer to the barbarous or the semi-civilized, and giving them 563 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES always more prominence and power. He who never trod the deck of a ship larger than the fishing-boat of the Sea of Galilee, is sending His messages to the world at this moment on thousands of keels, whose sails are spread by the impulse and propelled by the breath of Commerce. Whenever the future of the race for which we look shall be realized, and mankind shall be white in His holiness, glorious through His grace, Commerce will have been the great secular instru- ment for securing and hastening that radiant and immortal result. Gentlemen, these are the real trophies of that great profession of which you are members. I remember to have seen in the jewel office in Vienna the crown which Napoleon I wore as King of Lombardy — not the one with which he crowned himself, but the one which he wore on State occasions ; brilliant and splendid, and every stone in it reputed to be false ! I thought as I looked upon it, that it was an illustration of the character and the career of the charlatan Em- peror. Every stone in the majestic and brilliant crown of Commerce, which I have thus outlined before you, is as genuine as it is large and lustrous. Then remember that this vital, expansive interest has in it the prophecy of a great future. Commercial nations always grow more prominent in the world. Commercial cities always become more prominent in nations ; London, Liverpool, Manchester, in England ; Paris, Lyons, Marseilles, in France ; New York, Chicago, San Francisco, in the United States. Com- mercial men become more prominent in the national councils. Here, around me, on either side, are men who have taken high and honorable part in the dis- 564 COMMERCE AN EDUCATOR OF NATIONS cussion and the decision of great State questions in our National Legislature, for whom this City, on either side of the river, may well maintain, as it does maintain, respect, admiration, confidence and honor. I rejoiced to see the statement the other day, in some English paper, that of the newly elected mem- bers of Parliament — 257 in all — 150 were merchants, or professionally connected with Commerce. And there is no member of that Parliament who can surpass, few who can equal, that eloquent, intrepid, far-sighted statesman, the friend of his own coun- try, the friend of America, the friend of the world, the manufacturer and merchant, John Bright ; while at the head of all is that man of unmatched elo- quence and energy, at the age of seventy years, who treats finance in the spirit of a philosopher, who treats all national affairs in the temper of a philanthropist and a Christian, to whom America will give, if he ever comes to these shores, such a welcome as she would offer to no other living man, whose eminence in England now causes a thrill of joy to every true and humane heart throughout the world, the son of a Liverpool merchant, whose family name he has made illustrious in history as long as the history of England continues to be written or to be read — Mr. Gladstone. Gentlemen, these are great examples. "We may not, any of us, rival them. But I remember those words of Lord Bacon, in his preface to the Maxims of the Law : " I hold every man a debtor to his profession ; that as from it he derives profit and consequence, so he should ever endeavor to make amends, by being to it a helper and an ornament." I have thought those 565 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES words an appropriate motto for the study of any min- ister; and I know no human words more worthy to be inscribed, in letters of gold, as a legend on every counting room in New York. 566 XIII FOREFATHERS' DAY A Speech made at the Dinner of the New England Society in the City of New York, in Commemoration of the Two Hundred and Six- tieth Anniversary of the Landing of the Pilgrims, December 22, 1880, in response to the Toast, "The Day We Celebrate." XIII FOKEFATHEKS' DAY Me. President, Gentlemen of the New Eng- land Society — and, we may all rejoice to add, see- ing this cloud of witnesses by which we are sur- rounded, Ladies and Gentlemen, making this day of our celebration memorable in the annals of the Society : — I confess to a certain embarrassment in making any remarks upon the theme which has been suggested by the sentiment read by the President, because of a cer- tain indefinite expansiveness which belongs to it. I believe it was Sir Joshua Reynolds who said of Eubens that his genius expanded with his canvas, so that his largest pictures were always his best. I re- member certain canvases of the great master in the Louvre, in the Lichtenstein gallery of Vienna, and in the gallery of the Pinakothek at Munich which lead me to doubt whether that was altogether true, even of him. Certainly it is not true of humbler artists ; and I think that the more limited the subject is, the easier it is for one to talk about it. Being launched into a theme as vast as this, one feels that he may be in danger as the wandering Indian was on the prairie, who, when asked if he was lost, said : " No, Indian all right ; wigwam lost." At the same time I remember what eloquent voices 569 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES nave spoken in response to this sentiment, in other years : the voice of our distinguished fellow-citizen, so long identified with this Society, and who has been recognized not only as amongst the foremost of Amer- ican lawyers, but for the last four years as our wise, patriotic, and indefatigable Secretary of State; the voice of him who, spoke last year, not here, but in the meeting of the Society, whose inimitable grace and felicity of manner and of expression might almost hide from us, not his large and generous culture, but the sound and tonic strength of the thought which he im- presses — that accomplished and knightly scholar in politics, Mr. Curtis. One dreads to follow such men, even after the interval of a year. Tet, fortunately, the theme is its own advocate and its own orator ; and I have only to see to it that I do not stand, for more than a few minutes, between it and yourselves. Some days are memorable by reason of that which has gone into them, of the great histories which are behind them. The cathedral recently completed on the banks of the Rhine represents in consummate flower the work of six and a quarter centuries, the genius that so long ago shaped it in plan, the labor that during all that time, more or less, has been at work robbing the stone of its weight, and building it into that visible music in the air. When Yictor Em- manuel entered the city of the Caesars ten years ago — ten years ago next week — six months before his more public entry, but when already he was hailed as King of United Italy, the tendencies of six hundred years were represented in the fact that he was in the palace of the Quirinal. Back behind Cavour, and Ricasoli, 570 FOREFATHERS' DAY and Garibaldi, and La Marmora, went those tenden- cies, to the age of Dante and beyond, which there bloomed into exhibition. When our International Exhibition was opened in Philadelphia, in 1876, it rep- resented a hundred years of peaceful industry and profitable invention, of growing taste and augmented opulence, the result of the freedom which the Kepub- lic had enjoyed during all that century of time. When the Exposition opens, as we hope it will, in New York two or three years hence, it will be significant of the same thing. New York seems to hesitate be- fore it more than Philadelphia did — stammers more, to speak the word, because it is a larger city perhaps. By and by it will come. When it comes it will repre- sent all this growth and splendid attainment of the completed century. Some days are memorable by reason of that which flows from them, of the great and fruitful histories which they initiate. We celebrate thus the birthday of Washington in this country, making the twenty- second of February a red-letter day in American let- ters and American life, because then that majestic spirit touched the planet, on whose wisdom and forti- tude, on whose majestic strength, rested afterward the hope and destiny of the Eepublic ; who gave to the world perhaps the most vital and enduring gift which America thus far has produced, in that illustrious and unsurpassed character of the great statesman and patriot. We celebrate other days for that which has come out of them. I hope a few years hence we shall celebrate in this city, with appropriate cere- monial, the hundredth anniversary of the meeting of the first Congress under the Constitution, in Fed- 571 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES eral Hall, in the month of March; and certainly the inauguration of the first President — Washington — on the 30th of April, 1789, by whom was com- menced that series of American Presidents of whom we have one of the most recent and illustrious present to-night. • A thing need not be great, even in appearance, to be worthily celebrated. If any one can find the day on which the needle first trembled on its poise, seek- ing the north, and liberating the commerce of the world from the headlands and coasts to which it had been tied ; if any one can find the day on which the movable type first came into the grasp of human fin- gers, to be the lever to lift the world nearer the throne of G-od ; if anybody can find the day when the wire first thrilled with that impulse of articulate thought which now is making neighbors of the most distant nations — it were well to celebrate such days. It was the birth of a Babe in a Jewish manger which opened the new era of Christendom. It is by such tiny and seemingly inconsiderable instruments that that Babe, now Sovereign Lord of the earth, is carrying forward his shining banners to the ends of the world. We should celebrate such, not for their splendor, but for the immense consequences which have ever since flowed from them. It is the special honor of the day which we celebrate to-night that it is memorable for both these reasons — for that which went before it, and for that which came out of it. It is not a day to be remembered merely on account of the few voyagers who landed on Plym- outh Kock. There was behind them the whole mag- nificent age of Elizabeth: the age illustrious in the 572 FOREFATHERS' DAY world of philosophy and science by the name of Bacon ; the age fascinating to everybody who admires chivalry in character and in action by the name of Sidney ; fascinating to all who love high qualities of leadership, in adventure, in letters, in politics, in war, by the name of Raleigh ; the age which bears upon its shield, as it marches among the centuries of historic fame, the unmatched blazon of the name of Shakespeare. Out of that age came Hampden, came Milton, came John Selden, came the great Petition of Right. Out of that age came the Plymouth Colony, just as dis- tinctly and directly as if Drake had commanded the Mayflower, and Raleigh had steered the ship. "We remember all that, when we celebrate this day. Men may say that it was an inconsiderable event. Yes ! but it was not the eccentric adventure of a few forlorn persons and families seeking another home beyond the sea. The swing of the English spirit which had fought and crushed the Armada was be- hind it. You open the story of that day, and it is like open- ing the side door of a palace, through which one looks into corridors that are brilliant with lights, resounding with music, and grand with the presence of gallant men and lovely women. That is the day which we cele- brate, for w T hat went before it. Then for the result that has come after ; for it was not an inert piece of a formed continent which came over here in the Mayflower, like that obelisk that creeps up to its place — if anybody knows where its place is to be — in Central Park, at about the same rate at which a glacier slips from its mountain-slopes into the meadows. This colony, whose coming we 573 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES celebrate, was a sheet of fire-mist flung out from the Old World, that the lew World might be rounded out of it. Of course not out of it altogether ; because when we are met here we do not forget those who came earlier than our fathers. You remember that Dr. Bethune said, to some one who was praising too highly, as he thought, his own communion in his presence, that justice to his own de- nomination required him to say that he presumed all Christians would be Eeformed Dutchmen in heaven. We may not be entirely sure of that, perhaps, but we never can think of the Dutch colonists who landed on the island on which we are gathered without a feeling of admiration and pride, for the history which was behind them, and out of which they came. When Hendrick Hudson dropped his anchor in yonder bay in September, 1609, when the New Netherland charter was granted by the States General in 1614, a great nationality touched our shores. I never think of that country, I never could look upon it when I was within it, without admiration and honor for that which had been there achieved. A swampy morass, half as large again in extent as the State of New Jer- sey, built out of the mud which the rivers had brought down from the higher lands, absolutely owned by the German Ocean, which was only kept back from taking possession of it by the dikes that are said to have cost fifteen hundred millions of dollars : — on that swampy land they had built great and wealthy cities ; civic pal- aces unsurpassed in the world ; great churches, solid as mountains, and with their spires fine as Mechlin lace. They had built universities ; they had trained great scholars ; they had sent Erasmus to Oxford, to teach 574 FOREFATHERS' DAY Greek, a hundred years before ; they then had Gro- tius, theologian, statesman, ambassador, historian, poet, jurist, all in one. They had had public schools, the first in Europe. They had given the model of a re- public two hundred years before our Republic was formed. They gave the model of our Declaration of Independence at the Hague in 1581, and the model of the American Union before that at Utrecht in 1579. Never should we forget how much this country owes to the representatives of Holland. It was from the combined qualities of the English father and the Dutch mother that New York derived her illustrious states- man, De Witt Clinton ; and it is from a similar com- bination of the qualities of the Dutch and the English that New York City and New York State have taken their splendid power and fame. Other nations are represented among us also. Last evening I had the privilege of presiding at a meeting in this city to say farewell to a distinguished French- man returning to his own country, and it was freshly recalled to my mind how much we owed to that Huguenot blood represented by Boudinot and Laurens, by Jay and Bowdoin and Marion, and many others. Then there are the Scotch and the Scotch-Irish, the Germans, the Swedes, the Danes, and the Irish, who have poured in later in multitudes upon us, with their vivacity, their strong muscle and vivid fancy, their enthusiasm, foremost at the feast and foremost in bat- tle, and foremost in filling nearly every office or place of trust in the land. The fact is, Mr. President and Gentlemen, that when we come to say what our nationality is, we are very much in the condition of the man on whom the census 575 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES enumerator called, asking what his nationality was. " That," said the man, " is just what I have been try- ing all my life to find out. My father was English, my mother was French. I was born on a Dutch ship, sailing under a Spanish flag, and trading in Turkish waters. NTow what am I ? " But this great and ex- uberant American life is grander because it is com- posed, • as the sunshine is, of many strands, woven together — not of one. We do not forget the others combined with us when we meet to celebrate the day when our fathers landed; and the results are all around us of that complete, composite life. They are in the industry which fills the land, to which our fathers contributed something, certainly, with their practical energy, determined to get the hid- den riches of God's earth out of it, and to make the planet conform itself to the fashion which He would have it wear in the final day ; in the restless enter- prise which carried them everywhere ; in the old- fashioned love of Saxon freedom, which should com- bine order with liberty, making permanent institutions the guarantee of individual right ; in the spirit, founded on great convictions, which they propagated to those who came after. They contributed to the industry which raises crops at the West so heavy that they say sometimes the prairie sinks ten inches under the bur- den ; filling the air, too, with the whirl of machinery ; sending commerce wherever commerce goes ; founding the institutions of the government so solidly that they cannot be shaken. I used to sit last summer at my window on the northwest side of the White Mountains, and watch the storm coming up the eastern valley, breaking upon 576 FOREFATHERS' DAY the mountain, with its great buttresses of rock, in flame and thunder, with gusts of wind and rain, as if it would sweep the mountain from its base. The storm dispersed, and the old peak was there, un- troubled, vast, and glorious as ever. Civil war broke on our national government, and it seemed for a time as if it would destroy it. The American spirit was too strong for it. The government remained in its security, thanks to these distinguished sol- diers who are with us to-night, and thanks to the eminent statesmen who cooperated with them. I used to watch there the undulations of the clouds gathering around the mountain peak, portending storm ; and, as they rocked back and forth beneath the impulse of the wind, by a trick upon the eye they made it seem as if the very peak itself, peering above, were rocking and swaying in the wind. We go through our four years' debate, and it seems as if the country were in peril, and as if the government itself were insecure. The debate is ended, the clouds disperse, and the government is there, only refreshed, purified and exalted by all the stress and strain of the debate through which the people, whose it is, have been passing. That is the result of this com- posite American life to which our fathers gave one element, and one important element : and it is joyful — it should be — to all of us to know that now this day is celebrated over all the continent. Your President has a telegram, which he will read to you, no doubt, showing its celebration in New Mexico to-night. It should be joyful — it is — to all of us to know that it will continue to be celebrated as long as the Nation itself continues ; as long as the hills of New England KK 577 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES stand; as long as the waters continue to beat, in volleying thunder or in musical laughter, on the strand and the rock which, two hundred years ago, took upon them immortal renown. 578 XIY CONSOLIDATION OF BROOKLYN WITH NEW YORK A Speech delivered on taking the chair at a Mass Meeting of the citizens of Brooklyn favoring Ee-submission of the Question to popular vote, held at the Academy of Music, January 19, 1896. XIV CONSOLIDATION OF BKOOKLYN WITH NEW YOKK Ladies and Gentlemen, Fellow Brooklyn- ites: I am sure that it will be understood, by all who know me, that it is not by any desire or purpose of mine that I have this temporary prominence in the meeting this evening, gathered to consider so large a theme. My very strong preference would have been to sit in silence, and to hear what others should say, only afterward expressing my judgment in a vote, if the opportunity to vote shall ever be given to us. But the question which is before us is of such momentous importance, concerning not merely the present of Brooklyn, but all its future, that I have not felt at liberty to avoid or decline the responsibility which others have assigned to me. Therefore I am here. It is not even a question, to-night, of consolidation with New York; but it is the preliminary and the more fundamental question — whether Brooklyn is to have any deciding voice and vote upon that question. It is a question whether a city sixty years old, of a million inhabitants and more, is to be moved hither and thither, by an external power, without its own intelligent and decisive consent. And that is a ques- 581 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES tion, as it seems to me, to which there can possibly be but one answer given by fair-minded men, here or anywhere else. The State of Utah has just been admitted into the Union. A few days ago it was vivid with fireworks, and reverberating with the thunder of cannon, be- cause, as was there said, "At last two hundred and fifty thousand people have a right of self-govern- ment ! " Well, I make no objection to that, and have no quarrel with it. If they behave themselves, as I hope they will, Utah may come by and by to be a great state. But here is a population four times as large, and certainly quite as intelligent — although the married men in it have not hitherto enjoyed the edu- cational discipline of more than one wife apiece. Is this population to be deprived of self-govern- ment, and moved about by politicians in Albany, hither and yon, as a blind man is led along by a dog ? I think, myself, that some apology is necessary for that comparison, but under the existing circum- stances, the apology, I am sure, is due to the dog. Of course there can be but one answer to that question. It is as plain as that the earth is a globe, and not a gas ; it is as plain as that this building is a permanent structure, and not a transient canvas tent, that we must have the right to decide our own destiny as a city. And the only possible way to avoid that answer is by asserting, as is not infrequently done, that a vote has already been taken on the subject, in 1894, and that that was a final and decisive vote. Of course the facts in regard to that matter are very familiar ; yet they will bear to be re-stated, again and again. In the first place, it was not a " vote " at all, but 582 BROOKLYN WITH NEW YORK was expressly declared, in the legislative act, to be merely an expression of personal wish, having no legal efficacy whatever. That was reaffirmed in the circu- lar of the consolidation commission. It was an ex- pression preceded by no general discussion; which was regarded by a good many as simply a huge public joke ; which was regarded by a good many more as an entirely unimportant matter, concerning a hypo- thetical suggestion, upon which their feeling was of no value and would have no effect. Under these cir- cumstances men went to the polls. There was a mul- tiplicity of ballots — nineteen or twenty — and that was very confusing. There was a very limited time for selecting the ballots, and depositing them ; and that was confusing. There was not the slightest organiza- tion on the part of those who did not desire consolida- tion with New York. Whether there was any or not on the other side, I have no knowledge ; but they who objected or doubted were as utterly without intended association with each other as are the casual passen- gers on a railway train. Well ! Under these circumstances, out of a regis- tered vote of more than one hundred and ninety-one thousand (191,341), and an actual vote for Governor of one hundred and seventy-three thousand two hun- dred and fifty, (173,250), in the City of Brooklyn as it had existed when the act was passed, there was a majority of one thousand and more (1,040), against consolidation. Taking in the recently annexed vil- lages, and particularly the village of Gravesend (a name which then steamed to heaven !), there were de- clared to be two hundred and seventy-seven (277) pref- erences in favor of consolidation. That, in a total 583 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES registration of more than one hundred and ninety-one thousand ; or less than one-sixth of one per cent, of the total vote ! And that is declared to be a fair and final decision of the matter, on the part of Brooklyn ! "Why, gentlemen, one might as well say that this glass of water, which stands before me, is an adequate representation of the Kidgewood reservoir! You might as well say that a two-dollar greenback bill is a sufficient representative of a bank-deposit of twenty thousand dollars in gold ! I said the other evening, in another place, and I say it again, with all the emphasis that I can put into the words, that to base the extinction of the corporate life of Brooklyn on a majority like that, of two hundred and seventy-seven in this wholly inadequate expression of popular judg- ment, is either an example of the most extraordinary trickery in politics, or else it reaches very nearly, if it does not wholly attain, the absolute climax of insolent audacity. No ! Let us have a fair " vote," after a full discus- sion ; and let that " vote " be decisive. Let us all un- derstand that by it we are to abide, but let us have the vote ; and this, more especially, because there are con- siderations, on either side, which are certainly of great importance, and to which our minds should be thoughtfully turned. Let us remember, for example, that this is an abso- lutely unprecedented thing, this proposed consolida- tion of a city of a million and more inhabitants with a city of two millions, which is not far from it. It has never been done before, in the history of the country. Even Chicago, which is as eager for new territory as our trolley-car systems are for new 584 BROOKLYN WITH NEW YORK streets, lias never ventured to propose anything of this kind; It is entirely without precedent in our his- tory. We should pause before it, and ask if it be wise. Perhaps it is, but there is surely a grave ques- tion here. A vast city of three millions of people, where now there are two cities, widely differing from each other in their characteristics, this must have a lasting and a mighty bearing on the future of the state, on the future of the country. There are binary suns in the heavens — my friend on the right [Mr. S. V. White] will tell you so, for he has watched them — differing in size,, differing in color, differing in weight, which as combined hold in equipoise immense celestial systems; the absorption of one of which into the other would bring a sure celestial catastrophe. We should look at this great question fairly, discuss it in- telligently, and vote deliberately in regard to it. Then it is a question, and a question for every one of us, I am sure, whether good permanent government is possible in such an immense, shifting, heterogeneous population of three millions of people, scattered over a wide territory, growing more numerous all the time, with a large proportion of recent immigrants, and into which the political sewage of Europe is being dumped every week. As a general thing, cities become more corrupt, and more unmanageable, as they grow larger. London, Berlin, Paris, they are governed by the armed empires or the armed republic around them, or behind them. We have no such resource. Our republic has no armed forces with which to contend against organized riots in such a city. The government had to mass all its available troops at Chicago, in order to subdue a sudden furious riot in that locality, eighteen months ago. 585 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES ' Here, then, is the question : "What guarantee have we of good, wise, salutary, permanent government of this enormous mass of population in this threatened big city ? or what guarantee have we, even, that that interesting institution— Tammany Hall — is not to be the dominating power again in New York? The prospects certainly, as I think, point to that ; and we may find ourselves under its brutal and criminal dom- ination, with remonstrance, no doubt, but certainly without any power of -effective resistance. Of course, I quite understand that it has been said on the other side that there are advantages which will counterbalance the possible perils of this consolida- tion. It is said, for example, that we are going to have reduced taxation. That is simply a " perhaps " ! I have not had the pleasure very often of agreeing on political lines with our distinguished fellow-citizen, Mr. McLaughlin, though I have voted for his candi- date for Mayor more than once, I am sorry to say not always with entirely satisfactory results; but I take him to be a shrewd, sagacious, clear-headed man, in matters of finance ; and I observe that if he is correctly represented he does not expect taxes to be reduced by consolidation, but increased. I think he is right. The tax-rate in New York is rising steadily, and rapidly ; and the people there are just about in- curring, as an entirely incidental thing, a debt of from seventy-five to one hundred millions of dollars for an underground railroad, to cost, in the end, nobody knows how much ! All that will have to be paid for ; and the interest on it will have to be paid ; an amount which of itself doubles the entire sum of our munici- pal funded debt which has been accumulating for 586 BROOKLYN WITH NEW YORK a long series of years. And all the time this road will be of no more use to the City of Brooklyn than would be street-cars in Labrador. The entire effect of it will be, whether that be intended or not, to pull people away from Kings County, and land them somewhere up in the wilds of Westchester. In becoming incorporated with JSTew York we shall have to face that; and if there is anybody here who wants to place his house and property under the shadow of that avalanche, and then whistle to it to come down, all that I can say is, that he may have my chance ! It is said further that the price of real estate is go- ing to rise here, in connection with consolidation. I want to look into that question, also, before deciding to cast my vote in favor of the measure. So far as I have observed, the prices of real estate, for residence purposes, depend largely if not chiefly upon the set of the fashion ; and you cannot change the courses of fashion by changing the name of a district by legal enactment, any more than you can change the course of the wind by opening an umbrella. Whether a population will flow in one direction or an other is independent of any possible act of a legislature. The only practicable way to make Brooklyn a fash- ionable place of residence, for people of the sort that we want, is to make it attractive because replete with fine institutions, with everything that intelligent men and women desire in the city of their homes ; to make it so attractive that it shall be fashionable for every one to live in it except the billionaires ; and, if the worst comes to the worst, we must try hard to get along without them. 587 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES But it is said that we cannot have money enough for our municipal purposes without consolidation; that that is necessary to furnish us with the funds which we need as a city. We always have had enough here- tofore ; and will anybody tell me what guarantee we have that New York will be actively interested in the improvement and embellishment of Brooklyn, when it has absorbed us into itself ? Here is one great object-lesson plainly before us : — our dear and honored friend, Mr. Stranahan, whose name will be familiar and eminent in the annals of Brooklyn so long as they continue to be written — who gave to the consolidation commission about all the dignity that it ever has had on this side of the river — was the president of the Park commission thirty- six years' ago, in the early part of 1860, in the por- tentous year which preceded the war. The popula- tion of the City of Brooklyn, at that time, was three hundred thousand ; and the estimated and the realized cost of the real estate taken for the park area was three and one-half millions of dollars. The next year came the crash of the civil war, with the annihilation of many forms of productive industry ; with the wide paralysis of trade and commerce; with the bloody riots in New York against the government ; with the tremendous destruction of property and of life all over the country. The war went on ; and the work went on, on yonder heights, under this admirable, far- sighted and tranquil leader ; until, before he had left the work, it had cost nearly ten millions of dollars, every single dollar of which had been honestly, economically and fruitfully expended ! Now, I should like to know if there are any men, outside of an insane 588 BROOKLYN WITH NEW YORK asylum or of an asylum, for idiots, who imagine that Cherry Street and Mulberry Street, the Tenderloin dis- trict, or even Fifth Avenue and Madison Square, would have looked with enthusiasm on that prospective ex- penditure of ten millions of dollars for a remote sec- tion of their city, containing three hundred thousand people ! We might just as well have asked them to take part with us in building an elevated railroad to the Straits of Gibraltar; and I do not know why they are to be expected hereafter to be actively inter- ested in the improvement and the embellishment of this City of Brooklyn, as it is now, and as it is un- doubtedly to be in the future. I do not know whether they would have agreed, even, to the re- cent expenditure of the four millions of dollars, last year and this year, for that extension of our park system which is to make it one of the very finest in all the country. My friends, there is a very clear Biblical precedent, and a very energetic precept founded upon it, against "selling one's birthright for a mess of pottage." Let us be careful in this case that we don't sell our birthright, and wholly fail to get our pottage ! Let us ourselves make Brooklyn, as we have done in the past, with all its beauty, its manifold attractiveness, with its noble civic life, and with all the resources which people who come here desire, and let us glory in the work which it is thus permitted us to do ! I know it is said sometimes that no " sentiment " is appropriate to the discussion of this case. But, my dear friends, " sentiment " is merely judgment on fire ; and if our judgment is that we should not be incor- porated with New York then put the heart-fire into it 589 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES and that is " sentiment." There is sentiment con- cerning home — your home, and my home ; there is sentiment concerning one's country, and patriotism stirred is a tremendous passion. Everybody is not built like the man who went into the Independence Hall in Philadelphia and to whom the guide said, "Here is the place where Washington received his commission." " Did he, really ? Well, now, can you tell me what percentage he got on that commission ? " Let the financial case stand by itself, and then let sentiment come in, on its own motion, and in its own right ; and above all, cast out of your own breast, and out of the minds of others if you can reach them, that dastardly sentiment which says, " Kismet ! " " Fate ! " " It is bound to come ! " Bound to come ? Yes, if we want it ! Bound to come ? Perhaps, if we are supine in regard to it ; but if we reject and resist it, then it is no more " bound to come " than Albany and Troy on opposite sides of the river are bound to be consolidated, or St. Paul and Minneapolis on opposite sides of the great river in the West. Let the future of Brooklyn remain in the hands of the people of Brooklyn ! That is the keynote of the whole business ! If Brooklyn people desire to have its identity destroyed, and its name effaced, that it be known hereafter in the world as the " Sou'- Sou'-East-by-Sou'-District of New York," then let it be ; but let us decide that question for ourselves ! And let us say frankly to any political party : If you will not allow the people of Brooklyn to decide this matter for themselves, and for their children, by in- telligent discussion and by decisive vote, then, no matter what your name has been in the past, no mat- 590 BROOKLYN WITH NEW YORK ter what the history of your previous exploits has been, you are doomed to hopeless disaster on this ground, for all time to come ! And let us say to every politician : You may be the shrewdest wire- puller who ever managed a caucus, or set a candidate in the field ; you may be even a candidate yourself, and seem to be not very far from reaching a very high office in the gift of the nation ; but if you are deter- mined to force consolidation, with the extinction of Brooklyn as a separate city, through a distant body, by political manipulation, without referring it to the people of Brooklyn themselves — then, even if some of us have to say, "I love thee, Cassio," as surely as nightfall follows noon, we shall have to add, " But NEVER MORE BE OFFICER OF MINE ! " 591 Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide Treatment Date: Oct. 2009 PreservationTechnologies A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 111 Thomson Park Drive Cranberry Township, PA 16066 f7?41 779-2111