But we have faith that we shall not prove false to memories of the men of the mighty past. They did their work; they left us the splendid heritage we now enjoy. We in our turn have an assured confidence that we shall be able to leave this heritage unwasted and enlarged for our children’s children.
To do so we must show, not merely in great crisis, but in every-day affairs of life, the qualities of practical intelligence, of course, of hardihood, and endurance, and, above all, the power of devotion to a lofty ideal, which made great the men who founded this Republic in the days of Washington; which made great the men who preserved this Republic in the days of Abraham Lincoln.
EDWIN G. LAWRENCE
Our Country[21] (1912)
Mr. Toastmaster, Ladies and Gentlemen: In that long ago, that age just following the period when darkness covered the face of the earth, that age when God dispelled that darkness by issuing his fiat, “Let there be light,” we are told in the Good Book that God followed the birth of the light with the creation of man, that He breathed the breath of life into his nostrils and that man became thereby a living soul. With the entrance of divine breath into the senseless clay, with the awakening of the soul of man, there came the realization of three spiritual facts: the belief in God, the love of home, and the devotion to country.
Nowhere in this vast universe does a conscious being exist who does not, in his heart, believe in God. Traverse the wilds of darkest Africa, enter the densest jungles of that great continent, and you will find that all its human inhabitants have some conception of God. In the remotest isles of the Pacific, among the cannibals who devour the flesh of their victims, is found evidence of the belief in the existence of God, although the evidence may be nothing more than the setting up of a symbol of wood or stone that typifies to the poor savage the Being he worships. Even the blasphemer, who, with the words of his mouth, denies the Almighty who created him, will, in his secret soul, hear the still small voice, the reflex of that great Creator, whisper unto him, “I am the Lord thy God.”
The love of home is universal. Be that home a hovel or a palace, if the heart be there, happiness will be its companion. Love of home often exists where the home is only in the fancy, only in the heart that longs and hungers for its blessings. That sweet singer who sang of “Home, sweet home” was a wanderer on the face of the earth, and possessed that home only in his dreams. No matter how pomp and power may elevate us, no matter how our erring feet may carry us astray, still in our hearts will echo the refrain:
’Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.
As we are gathered within this palatial building, around these well-laden tables, under the splendor of these electric lamps, how many of you at the sound of the word “Home” think of the little cottage perched upon the hill, or nestling down in the valley, where, seated at the plain wooden table, the room faintly lighted by a tallow candle, you have eaten your humble meal, blessed by the spirit that ever sanctifies the home? How many of you at this moment are, in fancy, back in the dear old county of Greene? How many of you trace the winding brook climb the hills, till the fields, or sit within the holy confines of the House of God, humble in its man-made structure but magnificent with the glory of His presence?
Home is a thought, a dream, a wish, the longing of the soul for the attainment of the heaven upon earth; and because man keeps before him the vision of what he would have his home, and sees not the materiality of its reality, he conceives his home, no matter where it may be placed, to be the best on earth. That beautiful writer, weak man, and luckless wanderer, Oliver Goldsmith, thus expresses the idea I would convey to you: