The love of country is the gift of God--it can not dwell in homes of
sin, it has no abiding place in saloons of vice or dens of infamy,
it belongs not to infidel clubs or fanatical conventions, they would
tear down the sacred edifice which they have never loved; they are
impatient for change, for in the seething caldron of rebellion they
are brought to the surface. With nothing to lose, they have no fear
of the days of terror; their only dread is in the majesty of the law.
The love of country belongs to a God-fearing people; it is seen in
the purity of private life, in the privacy of Christian homes, in the
devotions of the closet, in the manliness of Christian character. The
church is its nursing mother. Loyalty to God and to His institutions
is her first and last lesson; it is the earnest cry of her loyal
children "that peace and happiness, truth and justice, religion and
piety may be established among us for all generations." The love of
country belongs to loyal men. The power of self-government depends
upon a loyal people.
The protection of the nation depends not on the wisdom of its
senators, not on the vigilance of its police, not on the strong arm
of standing armies: but the loyalty of a united people. Other nations
have equaled us in all the arts of civilization, in discoveries, in
science, in skill, and in invention; they have kept even step with
us and often surpassed us in philosophy and literature; they have
been brave in war and wise in council; they have clustered around
their homes all that art can lavish of beauty--but ripe scholarship,
cunning in art, or skill in invention, never gave to the people a
constitution. This is the outgrowth of a manly spirit of loyalty. It
teaches men _duty_--a right manly word for right manly men. Loyalty
was God's gift to our fathers; it was learned in the hard school
of adversity, and by self-denial and suffering inwrought into the
nation's life; it grew up in the sheltered valleys and on the rocky
hillsides of New England, it was cradled in Virginia, in New York, in
the Carolinas, among the patricians of Virginia; it gave to the world
a Washington, and from the shop, the store, the farm, and professional
life there sprung up from the people many who shared his spirit to
become the founders of the Republic.