the representatives of three generations of statesmen, Washington and
Hamilton, Clay and Webster, Lincoln and Sumner. Our attention will be
concentrated on the unique and commanding figure of the first President.
Through the renewed study and statement of his public career many
lessons, familiar indeed, but of fresh importance, will be read into the
hearts of our country.

We cannot doubt in the case of Washington the fact of a divine call.
Joshua was not more evidently called to command the armies of Israel
than Washington to lead the forces of the united colonies. David was
not more signally summoned from the sheep-folds to the throne of his
people than Washington from his quiet home on the Potomac to the seat of
supreme power over his countrymen. There was not a single believer in
the Divine Being in the Constitutional Congress who did not hear in the
voice of John Adams, when he moved the appointment of George Washington
as Commander-in-Chief of all the forces raised or to be raised, the
creation and appointment of God.

So, in his election and re-election to the office of President, Hamilton
set forth the clearness and urgency of the call in the remark that
circumstances left Washington no option. That wonderful triumphal
procession from Mount Vernon to New York, through Baltimore,
Philadelphia, and Trenton, is in response to the appeal and command not
only of earth, but of Heaven. As the nation's first President was called
of God, so is the nation itself called. The divine ideal is before it as
it was before him. God had work for Washington; he had work for his
nation; he had work for every one of his fellow-citizens. An ideal good
is before every man, and divine power behind him. Let him consent to the
control of the power.