“So lived, and so, in a green old age, still in high public station and still useful in it, passed away the man to whose commemoration this hour has been devoted.
“The Church no longer thinks a peaceful end of a well-spent life is to be taken as a token of the divine displeasure. It no longer discusses the theological opinions that were of such absorbing interest in Sherman’s age. He belonged to the eighteenth and we are drinking in the inspiration of the twentieth century.
“But Sherman’s religion is still our religion. He stood for justice, and truth: he stood for duty, quietly, daily, untiringly done, in whatever station, high or low, God may see fit to place us. He was a good shoemaker, and he was a good Senator.
“His example will never die out of American memory, because it appeals to every man in every walk of life, and shows how character, perseverance, industry, joined to common sense, under our system of government, put within the reach of their possessor whatever the times may have to give of opportunity for doing public service and winning public esteem.
“There are five names in the history of the United States that seem to me to stand alone. In the view of most Americans, I think, Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, John Adams, and Hamilton were above all others the founders of the Republic.
“In his ‘Studies in History and Jurisprudence,’[44] James Bryce marshals in order the leaders in American affairs at the time of the adoption of our Constitution. Five, he says, belong to the history of the world: Washington, Franklin, Hamilton, Jefferson, and Marshall; ‘and in the second rank are to be named John Adams, Madison, Jay, Patrick Henry,
