As one looks around the world, and as one looks around our own land
to-day, he sees that the one thing we need in high places--the thing
whose absence, among those who hold the reins of highest power, is
making us all anxious with regard to the progress of the country--is
personal character. The trouble is not what we hold to be mistaken ideas
with regard to policies of government, but it is the absence of lofty
and unselfish character. It is the absence of the complete consecration
of a man's self to the public good; it is the willingness of men to
bring their personal and private spites into spheres whose elevation
ought to shame such things into absolute death; the tendencies of men,
even of men whom the nation has put in very high places indeed, to count
those high places their privileges, and to try to draw from them, not
help for humanity and the community over which they rule, but their own
mean personal private advantage.
If there is any power that can elevate human character: if there is any
power which, without inspiring men with a supernatural knowledge with
regard to policies of government; without making men solve all at once,
intuitively, the intricacies of problems of legislation with which they
are called upon to deal; without making men see instantly to the very
heart of every matter; if there is any power which could permeate to the
very bottom of our community, which would make men unselfish and
true--why, the errors of men, the mistakes men might make in their
judgment, would not be an obstacle in the way of the progress of this
great nation in the work which God has given her to do. They would make
jolts, but nothing more. Or in the course which God has appointed her to
run she would go to her true results. There is no power that man has
ever seen that can abide; there is no power of which man has ever
dreamed that can regenerate human character except religion; and till
the Christian religion, which is the religion of this land--till the
Christian religion shall have so far regenerated human character in this
land that multitudes of men shall act under its high impulses and
principles, so that the men who are not inspired with them shall be
shamed at least into an outward conformity with them, there is no
security for the great final continuance of the nation.
Copyrighted by E.P. Dutton and Company, New York.