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Address of Bishop
Potter at the Centen-
nial of Washington's
Inaugurations.

201
ARTES
LIBRARY
1837
VERITAS
JAJAJAJAJAJ
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
1. E-PLURIBUS UNUM
TUEADA
SCIENTIA
OF THE
SI-QUAERIS-PENINSULAM AMOENAMA
CIRCUMSPICE
WAAAAAAUMAJAU,
MIG
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31266
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933
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BISHOP POTTER'S ADDRESS,
CENTENNIAL OF
WASHINGTON'S INAUGURATION,
ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, NEW YORK.
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​ADDRESS OF THE
odman
RT. REV. HENRY C. POTTER, D.D.,
AT THE CENTENNIAL COMMEMORATION SERVICE
OF WASHINGTON'S INAUGURATION, ST.
PAUL'S CHURCH, NEW YORK,
APRIL 30, 1889.
[Reprinted from the New York EVENING POST.]
1
One hundred years ago there knelt within
these walls a man to whom, above all others in
its history, this nation is indebted. An Eng-
lishman by race and lineage, he incarnated in
his own person and character every best trait
and attribute that have made the Anglo-Saxon
name a glory to its children and a terror to
its enemies throughout the world. But he was
not so much an Englishman that, when the
time came for him to be so, he was not even
more an American; and in all that he was and
did, a patriot so exalted, and a leader great and
wise, that what men called him when he came
here to be inaugurated as the first President of
the United States the civilized world has not
4
since then ceased to call him-the Father of his
Country.
We are here this morning to thank God for
so great a gift to this people, to commemorate
the incidents of which this day is the one
hundredth anniversary, and to recognize the
responsibilities which a century so eventful has
laid upon us.
And we are here of all other places, first of
all, with preëminent appropriateness. I know
not how it may be with those to whom all sa-
cred things and places are matters of equal
indifference, but surely to those of us with whom
it is otherwise it cannot be without profound
and pathetic import that when the first
President of the Republic had taken upon him,
by virtue of his solemn oath, pronounced in the
sight of the people, the heavy burden of its
Chief Magistracy, he turned straightway to
these walls, and kneeling in yonder pew, asked
God for strength to keep his promise to the
nation and his oath to Him. This was no un-
wonted home to him, nor to a large propor-
tion of those eminent
men who, with
him, were associated in framing the
Constitution of these United States. Chil-
dren of the same spiritual Mother and
nurtured in the same Scriptural faith
and order, they were wont to carry
with them into their public deliberation some-
thing of the same reverent and conservative
spirit which they had learned within these
walls, and of which the youthful and ill-regu-
lated fervors of the new-born republic often be-
5
trayed its need. And he, their leader and
chief, while singularly without cant, or for-
malism, or pretence in his religious habits, was
penetrated, as we know well, by a profound
sense of the dependence of the republic upon a
Guidance other than that of man, and of his
own need of a strength and courage and wis-
dom greater than he had in himself.
And so, with inexpressible tenderness and
reverence, we find ourselves thinking of him
here, kneeling to ask such gifts, and then ris-
ing to go forth to his great tasks with mien so
august and majestic that Fisher Ames, who sat
beside him in this chapel, wrote, "I was pre-
sent in the pew with the President, and must
assure you that, after making all deductions
for the delusions of our fancy in regard to cha-
racters, I still think of him with more venera-
tion than for any other person." So we think
of him, I say; and indeed it is impossible to
think otherwise. The modern student of
history has endeavored to tell us how it was
that the service in this chapel which we are
striving to reproduce came about. The record
is not without obscurity, but of one thing we
may be sure-that to him who, of that goodly
company who a hundred years ago gathered
within these wails, was chief, it was no empty
form, no decorous affectation. Events had been
too momentous, the hand of a Heavenly Provi-
dence had been too plain, for him, and the men
who were grouped about him then, to misread
the one or mistake the other. The easy levity with
which their children's children debate the facts
6
of God, and Duty, and Eternal Destiny were as
impossible to them as Faith and Reverence seem
to be, or to be in danger of becoming, to many of
us. And so we may be very sure that, when
they gathered here, the air was hushed, and
hearts as well as heads were bent in honest sup-
plication.
For, after all, their great experiment was
then, in truth, but just beginning. The memo-
rable days and deeds which had preceded it—
the struggle for independence, the delicate and,
in many respects, more difficult struggle for
Union, the harmonizing of the various and
often apparently conflicting interests of
rival and remote States and sec-
tions, the formulating and adopting of
the National Constitution-all these were after
all but introductory and preparatory to the
great experiment itself. It has been suggested
that we may wisely see in the event which we
celebrate to-day an illustration of those great
principles upon which all governments rest, of
the continuity of the Chief Magistracy, of the
corporate life of the nation as embodied in its
Executive, of the transmission, by due succes-
sion, of authority, and the like; of all of which,
doubtless, in the history of the last 100 years
we have an interesting and on the whole in-
spiring example.
But it is a somewhat significant fact that it
is not along lines such as these that that en-
thusiasm which has flamed out during these
recent days and weeks, as this anniversary has
approached, has seemed to move. The one
7
thing that has, I imagine, amazed a good many
cynical and pessimistic people among us is the
way in which the ardor of a great people's love
and homage and gratitude has kindled, not
before the image of a mechanism, but
It
been
has
felt
of
a
man.
has,
with an unerring intuition which
once and again and again in human history,
been the attribute of the people as distinguish-
ed from the doctrinaires, the theorists, the sys-
tem-makers, that that which makes it worth
while to commemorate the inauguration of
George Washington is not merely that it is
the consummation of the nation's struggle to-
wards organic life, not merely that by the ini-
tiation of its Chief Executive it set in opera-
tion that Constitution which Mr. Gladstone has
declared is "the most perfect instrument which
the wit of man has devised "; but that it cele-
brates the beginning of an Administration
which, by its lofty and stainless integrity, by
its absolute superiority to selfish or secondary
motives, by the rectitude of its daily conduct
in the face of whatsoever threats, blandish-
ments, or combinations, rather than by the os-
tentatious phariseeism of its professions, has
taught this nation and the world for ever what
the Christian ruler of a Christian people ought
to be.
I yield to no man in my veneration for the
men who framed the compact under which
these States are bound together. No one can
easily exaggerate their services or the value of
that which they wrought out. But, after all,
8
we may not forget to-day, that the thing
which they made was a dead and not a living
thing. It had no power to interpret itself, to
apply itself, to execute itself. Splendid as it
was in its complex and forecasting mechanism,
instinct as it was, in one sense, with a noble
wisdom, with a large-visioned statesman-
ship, with a matchless adaptability to un-
tried emergencies, it was, nevertheless, no dif-
ferent in another aspect from one of those
splendid specimens of naval architecture which
throng our wharves to-day, and which, with
every best contrivance of human art and skill,
with capacities of progress which newly
amaze us every day, are but as impotent, dead
matter, save as the brain and hand of man
shall summon and command them. "The ship
of state," we say. Yes; but it is the cool and
competent mastery at the helm of that, as of
every other ship, which shall, under God, de-
termine the glory or the ignominy of the voy-
age.
Never was there a truth which more surely
needed to be spoken! A generation which
vaunts its descent from the founders of the Re-
public seems largely to be in danger of forget-
ting their preeminent distinction. They were
few in numbers, they were poor in worldly pos-
sessions-the sum of the fortune of the richest
among them would afford a fine theme for the
scorn of the plutocrat of to-day; but they had
an invincible confidence in the truth of those
principles in which the foundations of the
Republic had been laid, and they had
G
an unselfish
(6
the con-
as
purpose to maintain them.
The conception of the National Government as
a huge machine, existing mainly for the pur-
pose of rewarding partisan service-this was a
conception so alien to the character and con-
duct of Washington and his associates that it
seems grotesque even to speak of it. It would
be interesting to imagine the first President of
the United States confronted with some one
who had ventured to approach him upon the
basis of what are now commonly known
But
'practical politics."
ception is impossible. The loathing,
the outraged majesty with which he would
have bidden such a creature to begone is fore-
shadowed by the gentle dignity with which,
just before his inauguration, replying to one
who had the strongest claims upon his friend-
ship, and who had applied to him during the
progress of the "Presidential campaign," as
we should say, for the promise of an appoint-
ment to office, he wrote: " In touching upon the
more delicate part of your letter, the communi-
cation of which fills me with real concern, I
will deal with you with all that frankness
which is due to friendship, and which I wish
should be a characteristic feature of my con-
duct through life.
Should it be my
fate to administer, the Government I will go to
the Chair under no preëngagement of any
kind or nature whatever. And when in it, I
will, to the best of my judgment, discharge the
duties of the office with that impartiality and
zeal for the public good which ought never to
•
Uor N
10
suffer connections of blood or friendship to
have the least sway on decisions of a public
nature."
On this high level moved the first President
of the Republic. To it must we who are the
heirs of her sacred interests be not unwilling to
ascend, if we are to guard our glorious heri-
tage!
And this all the more because the perils which
confront us are so much graver and more por-
tentous than those which then impended. There
is (if we are not afraid of the wholesome
medicine that there is in consenting to
see it) an element of infinite sadness in the
effort which we are making to-day. Ransacking
the annals of our fathers as we have been do-
ing for the last few months, a busy and well-
meaning assiduity would fain reproduce the
scene, the scenery, the situation, of an hundred
years ago! Vain and impotent endeavor! It
is as though out of the lineaments of living
men we would fain produce another Washing-
ton. We may disinter the vanished draperies,
we may revive the stately minuet,
we may
rehabilitate the old scenes,
but the march of a century cannot
be halted or reversed, and the enormous
change in the situation can neither be dis-
guised nor ignored. Then we were, though not
all of us sprung from one nationality, practically
one people. Now that steadily deteriorating
process against whose dangers a great thinker
of our own generation warned his countrymen
just fifty years ago, goes on, on every hand,
Mou
11
apace. "The constant importation," wrote the
author of "The Weal of Nations" "as now,
in this country, of the lowest orders
of people from abroad to dilute
the quality of our natural manhood, is a sad
and beggarly prostitution of the noblest gift
ever conferred on a people. Who shall respect
a people who do not respect their own blood ?
And how shall a national spirit, or any de-
terminate and proportionate character, arise
out of so many low-bred associations and
coarse-grained temperaments, imported from
every clime? It was (indeed) in keeping that
Pan, who was the son of everybody, was the
ugliest of the gǝds."
And again: Another enormous difference be-
tween this day and that of which it is the an-
niversary, is seen in the enormous difference in
the nature and influence of the forces that de-
termine our national and political destiny.
Then, ideas ruled the hour. To-day, there are
indeed ideas that rule our hour, but they must
be merchantable ideas. The growth of wealth,
the prevalence of luxury, the massing of large
material forces, which by their very ex-
istence are a standing menace to the free-
dom and integrity of the individual, the in-
finite swagger of our American speech and
manners, mistaking bigness for greatness, and
sadly confounding gain and godliness-all this
is a contrast to the austere simplicity, the un-
purchasable integrity of the first days and first
men of our republic, which makes it impossible
to reproduce to-day either the temper or the
12
conduct of our fathers. As we turn the pages
backward, and come upon the story of that
30th of April in the year of our Lord 1789,
there is a certain stateliness in the
air, a certain ceremoniousness in the manners,
which we have banished long ago. We have
exchanged the Washingtonian dignity for the
Jeffersonian simplicity which was, in truth,
only another name for the Jacksonian vul-
garity. And what have we gotten in exchange
for it? In the elder States and dynasties they
had the trappings of royalty and the pomp and
splendor of the king's person to fill men's
hearts with loyalty. Well, we have dis-
pensed with the old titular dignities. Let
us take care that we do not part with
that tremendous force for which they stood!
If there be not titular royalty, all the more
need is there for personal royalty. If there is
to be no nobility of descent, all the more indis-
pensable is it that there should be nobility of
ascent-a character in them that bear rule, so
fine and high and pure, that as men come
within the circle of its influence, they involun-
tarily pay homage to that which is the one pre-
eminent distinction, the Royalty of Virtue!
And that it was, men and brethren, which,
as we turn to-day and look at him who,
as on this morning just an hundred years ago,
became the servant of the Republic in becom-
ing the Chief Ruler of its people, we must
needs own, conferred upon him his divine right
to rule. All the more, therefore, because the
circumstances of his era were so little like
13
our own, we need to recall his image and,
if we may, not only to commemorate,
but to reproduce his virtues. The
traits which in bim shone preeminent
as our own Irving has described them, "Firm-
ness, sagacity, an immovable justice, courage
that never faltered, and most of all truth that
disdained all artifices"-these are characteris-
tics in her leaders of which the nation was
never in more dire need than now.
And so we come and kneel at this ancient
and hallowed shrine where once he knelt, and
ask that God would graciously vouchsafe them.
Here in this holy house we find the witness of
that one invisible force which, because it alone
can rule the conscience, is destined, one
day, to rule the world. Out from airs
dense and foul with the coarse passions and
coarser rivalries of self-seeking men, we turn
aside as from the crowd and glare of some vul-
gar highway, swarming with pushing and ill-
bred throngs, and tawdry and clamorous with
bedizened booths and noisy speech, in some
cool and shaded wood where, straight to hea-
ven, some majestic oak lifts its tall
form, its roots embedded deep among
the unchanging rocks, its upper branch-
es sweeping the upper airs, and
holding high commune with the stars; and,
as we think of him for whom we here thank
God, we say, "Such an one, in native majesty
he was a ruler, wise and strong and fearless, in
the sight of God and men, because by the en-
nobling grace of God he had learned, first of
14
all, to conquer every mean and selfish and
self-seeking aim, and so to rule himself!" For
-What are numbers knit
By force or custom? Man who man would be
Must rule the empire of himself-in it
Must be supreme, establishing his throne
Of vanquished will, quelling the anarchy
Of hopes and fears, being himself alone.
Such was the hero, leader, ruler, patriot,
whom we gratefully remember on this day.
We may not reproduce his age, his young en-
vironment, nor him. But none the less may we
rejoice that once he lived and led this people,
"led them and ruled them prudently," like
him, that Kingly Ruler and Shepherd of whom
the Psalmist sang, "with all his power." God
give us the grace to prize his grand example,
and, as we may in our more modest measure,
to reproduce his virtues.
Copies of this pamphlet may be obtained of THE
EVENING POST, New York, at one cent each, in small or
large quantities; postage extra.
HE
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