The home must be safeguarded, and its sanctity preserved, that our children be protected and grow—as nature destined them to grow—in wisdom and grace before God and man.
The school—the private and the public school—free as speech and the press are free—must be encouraged that our citizens may understand the Constitution and our laws, and in the full development of their intellectual faculties realize the burdens as well as the privileges of representative government.
The church, the House of God, must have its place of respect, that our children may continue moral and grow in reverence for authority and for the divine and human law.
As Hamilton wrote to Washington, on the occasion of his farewell address: “In all those dispositions which promote political happiness, religion and morality are essential props.”
This, I take it, is the message our beloved country would send to us today. That we be men of American mind, the mind that expressed itself in the Declaration of Independence, the mind that was born of understanding, tolerance, and brotherly love, the mind that didn’t hesitate to say, in the closing words of the great document that gave to us our nation, “For the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.”
A LIST
OF
BOSTON MUNICIPAL ORATORS.
By C. W. ERNST.