ourselves in the place of Columbus, on the third day of August, 1492. We
are about to leave the Known, in search of the Unknown--about to
penetrate for the first time that vast expanse of water which for
uncounted ages has stretched away before the wondering vision and
baffled research of Europe. We are not leaving the world--we are not
alone. Yet is it not a solace that a few friends gather on the shore to
say good-by? The sympathy of the kind, the well-wishes of the brave--are
they not always a comfort? This poor fellow Peters, whose lowly home we
are now approaching, is alone--he is about to start on his last journey,
alone. The land to which he perhaps this day begins that journey is not
only unknown, but unknowable to us in our present state. And therefore
is it, sir, that the learned professions live. Even the worldly man,
when he comes to start upon this last journey, does not disdain the
sympathy and kindness of the loving, and the expressions of hopefulness
that come from the good and pure. True, you may say that the learned
professions are for the man who is about to die but frail supports on
which to lean. The wise man as well as the ignorant man, when he fears
that death is near, reaches out for help or at least some knowledge of
his future. He sends for his physician, who cannot promise him
anything--cannot number the days or hours of his remaining life; for his
lawyer, who cannot assure him beyond all doubt that his will can be made
to endure for a single day beyond his death. At last, he sends for a
minister of God--and what says the spiritual expert? Perhaps he
represents that old, old organization, whose history stretches back for
centuries through the dark ages to the borders of the brilliancy beyond;
that old hierarchy that claims to hold all spiritual power to which man
may appeal with reasonable hope. What says to the dying man this
representative and heir of the accumulated spiritual research and
culture of the past? He may with honesty say, 'Hope;' but if he says
more than Hope, he does it as the blind might sit and guide by signs