Western Reserve chronicle. [volume] (Warren, Ohio) 1855-1921, 1870-06-29
WHOLE NO. 2SO4.
From the Cincinnati Gazette.l
GERMAN IDEAS.

In Judge StalIO's address, delivered
at the Ssengerfest picnic and reported
in the Gazette, occurs the following
passage:
America, according to my judg-
ment, is the land of freedom in a much
higher sense than merely that of eX-
emptiOn from foreign yoke, and that
no citizen is the slave of lord or the
lord over the slave. There is bond
age which fetters us not by tangible
gives, but by the bonds of our own
past-one in which we feel ourselves
oppressed on all sides; hindered by
| belittling forms, and by venerated
| prejudices kept out OF our mental and
| physical advancement There is a
captivity of the mind, a Slavery OF the
soul which impose upon man a service
meaner than that paid by serf to his
lord. To abolish this slavery, to free
| from this captivity is the highest OF
duties assigned to US in this new
world. These duties belong mainly
to German ideas"
While our whole city, native and
foreign born, have welcomed with
open arms this great gathering of
German singers, and while there now
exists, and we hope always will exist,
the kindliest feelings between native
Americans and Germans, we can not
permit this proud assumption, as to
what it is the mission" of Germans
to accomplish, to pass unnotieed-
Deep down in the American heart
there exist some other ideas" that
were imported on the May Flower and
took root on Plymouth Rock. These
'ideas" are professedly Christion, but
are, at the same time, in the highest
degree humanitarian.
The gist of the German idea"
which Judge StallO so highly eulO-
giZes, is the selfish, or sensual, enjoy
ment:
I alive while we live" the epicure would say,
| And seize the pleasures of the present day."
Or, to express it in the language of
one of the notices borne on banner
in the late procession:
"Let others fast, and let them pray,
But give us joy by night and day"
The gist of the "bIayhower idea,"
which has given a moral grandeur to
our national life, and which infiuen-
ces our aims and our hopes for the fu-
ture, is this: That true life consists
not in meat and drink, and an abun-
dance of the good things of this life,
but in a willingness to deny ourselves
Oftentimes of these animal enjoy
ments, that the spiritual, the divine
of our natures, may be developed in
to an energized life. The MAY Flow
er" conception of mans duty is to
love God supremely, and our rneighbOr
as ourself; to be willing, to this end,
as to the animal, but to live as to the
spiritual of our natures.
We recognize, in like manner as
Judge Stallo does, that there is an
''irrepressible conflict" going on be-
tween the MAY Flower or the reli-
gious idea, and the German or sensual
idea. But we do not share it with
him in the hope that the latter is
bound to triumph. On the contrary,
our faith is strong that the former
idea is bound to predominant, not
only thrOughoutour land but through
out the world.
For more than eighteen hundred
years, the prediction has been made
time, and time again, that the Chris
tian religion was about to die out, and
something better and nobler was
bound to take its place. But the bar
ner of the Cross 'still waves" the ar
mics of the living Lord are still going
on, conquering and cOnquering. And
he who will look dispassionately at
this conflict of the ages in the light
of history, can not but acknowledge
that the followers of the Cross have
solid reasons for believing in the final
triumph of their religion in the hearts
Of all the children of men.