“The side of it that appeals to me is its history of freedom and its chronicle of subdivision, which mean life, at least I hold that they do in this case. And so we find the local Mother Church growing at first strong, and then new teachers rising in the body of the Church’s life to make more vital the friendly and hostile pulpits of the town, and stimulate everywhere debate.
“The teachings of Rabbi Ezekiel of the Oak Religion and Mother Grey of the Flower Religion may be largely classified as coming from Christian Science. The wave of its tide is still strong among us, and we know not what Christian Science may bring forth for Springfield tomorrow.
“Our sects quarrel, of course, but whatever quarrels they have divide families only, never the city.
“I wish this could always be true of the races in the World Government.
“We have seen adorers of the truth, like close followers of Mother Grey, the Florist, going from Synagogue to Church and from Church to the Open Forum, and it is generally deemed a mark of a good citizen, certainly among the descendants of the Iron Gentleman, to understand all of these movements, and to love many, though they appear to contradict one another. Within the dominion of the Springfield mind, there is a principle:—one sect, one vote: one race, one vote. As florist Mother Grey is willing to say to her most devoted following ‘Our religions and races may be looked upon by the wise as many flowers of opposite design, yet all making glad the Springfield garden.’ Yet there is no place in the world where people are more loyal to their clans. Boones are Boones forever.
“You, as a Japanese, will be glad and comprehend when I say that even the religious life from the far east, except the teaching of Singapore, moves up into this common denominator in Springfield that we call citizenship. There are a few Mohammedan Philippinos, and I happen to know, they are good citizens and good Americans, though they are allowed but one apparent wife in these states. There is a group of Thibetans, of whom the Thibetan Boy is one socially, if not religiously, who do not find a contradiction between their Springfield patriotism that has gone on these three generations, and their reformed Buddhism. Of course, they marry for the most part among themselves, or bring Thibetans from New York or San Francisco to build up their colony. Whatever church a group of our people finds in tune with their race and sex and love-tradition, no matter how separate they keep their race strains, or how guarded their family altars and holy family flags, they surely belong to the Springfield race and the Springfield Civic Religion. They are loyal to the city as a scholar is to his University. This is the mood I would like to get into World-Government-Flag-Patriotism, which is now too crude. With obvious Singaporian exceptions, this Springfield civic religion is preached by every philosopher and every local atheist. Even Sparrow Short, though he seems to hate me and the World Government, would count it as great a hardship to be banished from Springfield, as Dante counted it, to be banished from Florence. I wish his kind could see the World Flag as they see the Springfield Flag.
“You have wanted to understand my politics, to make it clearer to your brother in Japan. In most things the city is a symbol and pattern to me of World Unity and World Government and if there has been any consistency in my battles in the World Senate, it is because I had faith in this pattern.
“Within the range from Jew to Greek we openly trust one another’s priesthood, realizing we are all kings and priests before God. Above all races and their sects are the stars, and beneath them is the rich earth, and between these our city climbs heavenward. I am sure that before a thousand years go by, yes, before a hundred years go by, some image of Prince Siddartha will stand beside the image of Johnny Appleseed, whose soul was so much like his own. Our image of Johnny Appleseed would have been equally impossible in the church of St. Peter and St. Paul that stood on the site of our cathedral one hundred years ago. With such practical unity of the main forces that have quarrelled immemorially in the old lands, I have the hope that similar forces of race and sect, with the buffer state of the ocean between them, to keep them cool, may come to practical reconciliation under the World Flag:—that those that can unite under the Flag of Springfield with joy, can some day unite, the world over, under the flag of all mankind.” And so, till midnight Joseph Bartholdi Michael, the Second, talks on and on, possibly recruiting a member of his possible cabinet, if his dream comes true, of being for one term the President of the World. And the Japanese Samurai nods his gray head keeping time to the eloquence, till the one remaining waiter gets us out of the restaurant by turning down the lights, and handing us our hats.
CHAPTER XVII
HOW IN THE LATTER PART OF JULY BLACK HAWK BOONE IS OPENLY LYNCHED AND JAMES KOPENSKY MYSTERIOUSLY STABBED ON THE SAME EVENING. HOW THREE MONTHS LATER THERE IS NO SIGN THAT EITHER MURDER WILL BE PUNISHED. HOW THE GOLDEN BOOK APPEARS ON THE MYSTIC DAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2018 AND HOW, WHEN IT COMES DOWN TO THE MOURNING AVANEL, SHE TAKES COURAGE AND LEADS HER PEOPLE AGAINST SINGAPORE, THAT WICKED NATION, THAT HAS DECLARED WAR ON THE WORLD FLAG.
July 22, 2018:—This morning owing to new utterances on the part of Sparrow Short and two others, more venomous than himself, brothers of “Beau Nash,” he and they are put into the International Prison for world treason, with all further bail and bond refused. Therefore tonight there is a great torch-parade and ritual by St. Friend and his followers in the cathedral. Debs, John Brown, Lovejoy, Liebknecht, are invoked. Springfield’s fury, glory, and devotion are in every face and eye. St. Friend, with unaccustomed fire for these his days of feebler health, reviles the opinions of Short and his companions. But he demands their liberation in the name of the Constitution of the United States and Free Speech. St. Friend cries from the pulpit: “We preach not the low revolution, but the high revolution, not the massacre in the street, but the high unquenched torch of freedom and free speech in the unconsumed cathedral.”