Honor, thrice honor to those who for three generations, during the period of this people’s great expansion, have seen that the force of the living truth expanded as the nation expanded! They bore the burden and heat of the day, they toiled obscurely and died unknown, that we might come into a glorious heritage. Let us prove the sincerity of our homage to their faith and their works by the way in which we manfully carry toward completion the work they so well began.
Friends, I made up my mind coming up here that I would speak to you of something that has taken place to-day and of something else that has taken place within the last ten days. First of the action of this nation which has culminated on this Tuesday, the twentieth of May, nineteen hundred and two, in starting a free Republic on its course. That represented four years’ work. There were blunders and shortcomings in the work, of course; and there were men of little faith who could only see the blunders and shortcomings. But it represents work triumphantly done. And I think that we as citizens of this Republic have a right to feel proud that we kept our pledge to the letter, and that we have established a new international precedent. I do not remember (and I have thought a good deal about it, ladies and gentlemen) another case in modern times where, as a result of such a war, the victorious nation has contented itself with setting a new nation free and fitting it as well as could be done to start well in the difficult path of self-government. Mere anarchy and ruin would have fallen upon the island if we had contented ourselves with simple victory in the war and then had turned the island loose to shift for itself. For over three years the harder work of peace has supplemented the hard work of war; for over three years our representatives in the island (representatives largely of the army, remember—I sometimes hear the army attacked; gentlemen, I have even heard missionaries attacked. But it is well for us that when there comes a great work in peace or in war we have the army as an instrument for it), our representatives in Cuba have steadily worked to build up a school system, to see to sanitation, to preserve order and secure the chance for the starting of industries; to do everything in our power so that the new government might begin with the chances in its favor. And now as a nation we bid it Godspeed. We intend to see that it has all the aid we can give it, and I trust and believe that our people will, through their national legislature, see to it very shortly that Cuba has the advantage of entering into peculiarly close relations with us in our economic system.
That is the deed that was consummated to-day; now for the other.
Ten days or a fortnight ago an appalling calamity befell another portion of the West Indies; befell islands not in any way under our flag—islands owning allegiance to two European powers. But their need was great and our people met that need as speedily as possible. Congress at once appropriated a large sum of money and through private gifts great additions were made to that appropriation; and I found, as usual, the army and navy the instruments through which the work could be done. I wanted to get men whom I could call on instantly to drop whatever their work was and go down, with the certainty that neither pestilence nor the danger from volcanoes or anything else would make them swerve a half inch—men upon whose absolute integrity and capacity I could count, as well as on their courage. When I wanted these men and wanted them at once I turned to the army and the navy. I am sure that we all feel proud that ships bearing the American flag should have been the first to carry relief to those who had been stricken down by so appalling a disaster.
It seems to me that while there is much evil against which we need to war with all the strength there is in us, and while there are many tendencies in the complex forces about us which are fraught with peril to the future welfare of the Republic and of mankind, yet it is a fine thing to see at the opening of this century such omens of international brotherhood, of a future when the sense of duty to one’s neighbor will extend beyond national lines. They are good omens for the future, these actions: that action which culminated to-day in establishing the free Republic of Cuba; that action which made our country the first to reach out a generous and helping hand to those upon whom calamity had fallen, without regard to what the flag was to which they paid allegiance.
AT THE OVERFLOW MEETING OF THE CENTENNIAL OF PRESBYTERIAN HOME MISSIONS, CENTRAL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, NEW YORK, N. Y., MAY 20, 1902
Mr. Chairman; Ladies and Gentlemen:
I am glad to have the chance of saying a word to you this evening, and I know you will pardon me if it is but a word, for I did not anticipate that there would be another meeting at which to speak.
Of course, the very first thing that any nation has to do is to keep in order the affairs of its own household; to do that which is best for its own life. And as has been so well and truthfully said, Dr. Van Dyke, by you this evening, the vital thing to a nation is the spiritual, not the material. Napoleon said that in war the moral was to the material as ten to one; and it is just exactly as true in civil and social life. I do not mean for one moment to undervalue the material. We must have thrift, business energy, business enterprise and all that spring from them, as the foundation upon which we are to build the great national superstructure. But it is a pretty poor building if you have nothing but the basement. It is an admirable thing to have material development, great material riches, if we do not misestimate the position that that material well-being should occupy in the nation. It is an admirable thing to have wealth if we use it aright and understand its relative value compared to the things of the spirit. Now that sounds like preaching. But it is only an expression of a political truism if you look at it in the right way. We have spread during the last century over this whole continent. One hundred years ago the home missionary work was begun. Do you realize that at that time any one who went west of the Mississippi went into a foreign land? He did; and as late as 1846 any one who went, in this latitude, to the Pacific Coast, went into a foreign land. But as we expanded nationally, so it was our good fortune that there should go hand in hand with such expansion the expansion of the church work, and of all that goes with church work. I do not think we can realize the all-importance of the way in which the vital need was met by the men who went out as missionaries, and pastors, and workers in the little raw, struggling communities whose people were laying deep the foundations of the great States that to-day fill the valley of the Mississippi and stud the Pacific Coast. The men who went out have by their efforts given to what would otherwise have been the merely material development of our people the spiritual lift that was vital to it—the spiritual lift that made in the end a great nation instead of merely a nation of well-to-do people. We want well-to-do people, but if they are only well-to-do people, they have come far short of what we have a right to demand. A giant work looms up before the churches in this country, and it is work which the churches must do. Our civilization has progressed in many ways for the right; in some ways it has gone wrong. The tremendous sweep of our industrial development has already brought us face to face on this continent with many a problem which has puzzled for generations the wisest people of the old world. With that growth in the complexity of our civilization, of our industrialism, has grown an increase in the effective power alike of the forces that tell for good and of the forces that tell for evil. The forces for evil, as our great cities grow, become more concentrated, more menacing to the community, and if the community is to go forward and not back they must be met and overcome by forces for good that have grown in corresponding degree. More and more in the future our churches must realize that we have a right to expect that they shall take the lead in shaping those forces for good.
I am not going to verge on the domain of theology, and still less of dogma. I do not think that at the present time there will be any dissent from the proposition that after all in this work-a-day world we must largely judge men by their fruits; that we can not accept a long succession of thistle crops as indicating fig trees; and that we have a right to look to the churches for setting the highest possible standard of conduct and of service, public and private, for the whole land; that the church must make itself felt by finding its expression through the life work of its members; not merely on Sunday, but on week days; not merely within these walls, but at home and in business. We have a right to expect that you will show your faith by your works; that the people who have the inestimable advantages of the church-life and the home-life should be made to remember that as much has been given them, much will be expected of them; that they must lead upright lives themselves and be living forces in the war for decency among their surroundings; that we have a right to expect of you and those like you that you shall not merely speak for righteousness, but do righteousness in your own homes and in the world at large.