our course nor destination; "authority is mute;" the "Thus saith the
Lord" of the Puritan is not enough now for our guidance. For the age is
in all things not one of reason or of faith, but of speculation not only
in the business of the world, but in all moral and spiritual questions
as well. Well, we shall see what we shall see. But for one, I admire
with all my soul a man who knows just what he was put into this world
for, what his chief end in it is, what he believes, must do and must be,
and in the ways thereof is willing to inflict or to suffer death.
[Applause.] The Puritan divine was such a man. He sowed your rocky
coasts and sterile hills with conscience and God. You are living on the
virtue that came out of the hem of his garment; he is our bulwark still
in this land against superstition on the one hand and infidelity on the
other. [Applause.] Grand man he was, the old Puritan; once arrived he
was always arrived; while other men hesitated he acted; while others
debated he declared; fearing God, he was lifted above every other fear;
and though he has passed away for a time--only for a time, remember: the
wheel is still turning, we can't stand on air--he will come back again,
but in the meantime he is still a "preacher of righteousness" to our
souls as effective in death as in life. [Applause.]

In your presence I greet with my warmest admiration, I salute with my
profound reverence, the old Puritan divines of New England who had a
scorn for all base uses of life, who were true to duty as they saw it,
who had convictions for which they would kill or die, who formed their
characters and guided their lives by the law of righteousness in human
conduct. To these men under God we largely owe our liberties and our
laws in this land. I take off my hat to his ghost, and salute him as
greater than he who has taken a city, for the Puritan divine conquered
himself. He was an Isaac, not an Ishmael; he was a Jacob, not an Esau; a
God-born man who knew what his soul did wear. Great man he was, hard,