The Daily state journal. [volume] (Alexandria, Va.) 1868-1874, 1871-06-05

II,
The best fruits grow.
The worn out rite, the old abuse,
The pious fraud transparent grown,
The good held captive in the use
Of wrong alone;
These wait their doom from that great law
Which makes the past-time serve to-day:
And fresher life the world shall draw
From their decay.
o, backward looking son of time!
The new is old, the old is new,
The cycle of a change sublime,
Still sweeping through.
So wisely taught the Indian Seer:
Destroying Seva forming Brahm
Who wake by turns Earth's love and fear,
Are one, the same.
As idly as in that old day
Thou mournest, did thy sires repine
So, in his time, thy child, grown gray,
Shallsigh for thine.
Yet not the less for them, nor thou
The eternal step of progress beats
To that great anthem, calm and slow,
Which God repeats.
Take heart The waster builds again
A charmed life old Goodness hath
The tares may perish, but the gain
Is not for death.
God works in all things-all obey
His first propulsion from the night:
Hol Wake and watch The world is gray
With morning light
There may be instances in the moral and
intellectual world, as the physical, when "dis,
lance lends enchantment to the view" l do
not believe we can at this day form a concep-
ton approximating to exactness OF the great
work pei formed for our country and human
ity by our departed comrades, great as We
know it to be. l have no doubt succeeding
ages will demonstrate the fact, that it was more
great, more noble, and more lasting than we
at the present day can imagine. Let me not
be understood as advancing the idea that we
know nothing yet of the great results of that
mighty struggle. They are apparent on which
ever side we gaze: the shackles of slavery
taken from the limbs of four million bonds
men or slaves, and they to-day enjoying the
citizenship and claiming the protection of that
government which their bravery and blood
aided to preserve and that kings, emperors
and princes of titled and hereditary aristoc-
racy as well as the toiling millions of
despotic and monarchical governments,
have been taught the lesson that men are
capable of self government, and that the most
desirable element of strength for any people is
not in standing armies and frowning battles
ments, but the cultivated, intelligent patriotism
of its masses that rational lberty-not the
liberty of the unprincipled and crazy mob, but
liberty regulated by laws founded on justice
and governed by moderaton-is no>far fetched
figure of the imagination no splendid theory
of the visionary and the enthusiast, but real
living, vital, regeneratiug infuence-an infu,
cree destined to go onward, broadening in
sphere and Frightening in splendor, until other
nations than ours shall have felt its benign
power and superior excellence. While these
facts must strike the mind of any careful OBJ
server with a force nearly or quite automatic,
nevertheless it will remain for the scholar and
historian of a more subsequent age to combine
the results and norate the benefits which have
occurred to humanity by the blood shed in
Freedoms cause in our own land.
1t seems mysterious and dark to that Ii
should have required SO much of the best blood
of the nation to cement or weld together the
bonds of peace; but we have reason to hope
that that has been SO well and firmly done that
their strength may never become impaired
while human governments shall exist on earth.
Prominent among the many duties we owe to
both the dead and living is to provide for the
wants of the widow, educate the orphan and
console the bereaved. l doubt not these are
considered by you privilege as we'll as a
duty. The broad cornerstone of charity is
that on which our organization rests, and
while resting there the strength and durability
of the superstructure is assured.
Life, my comrades, human existence, is only
one grand warfare; it is a warfare which
commences with the years of our understand.
ing, and to the good soldier it ceases not till
the Gross is merged into a Grown. The march
in the pathway of duty is not always pleasant;
and it sometimes terminates, as IN the case of
those of our comrades whose graves we have
this day decorated, in an early grave. But to
him who dies in the cause of right and the
path of duty, the crystal gates of the grand
camping ground above will not be closed, and
the march will then be from glory to glory,
under the Great Captain of our Salvation.
My comrades, our duty to the dead ceases
not with the close of these ceremonies. If
with what we have here performed, we have
not caught somewhat of the inspiration of the
solemn exercises and the sacred rites, then our
labors have not been an entire success; but if
we depart from here strengthened in our pa.
triotic purposes, resolved to tread the path of
duty with the same unfaltering determination
of oar departed comrades, even unto death !;
if we earnestly and honestly endeavor to
gather and garner up the fruits of their strug-
gle and their sacrifice, and 60 forth from here
with our entire Lille consecrated to our duty to
our God, our country, and ourselves, then can
we look back to each annual recurrence of
these exercises as important eras in our earth~
life, and then our departed dead will not seem
to be so far removed from us as to be inhabi-
tants of another sphere; but this life will be
but the beginning of the next, and over all the
blessings which are the inevitable consequences
of duty well.performed, will fall and uncon-
sciously, too, it may be, we will be ascending
the "great worlds altarsstairs--tbat slope
through darkness up to God"
" Gods ways seem darkness unto men,
Yet they track the shining hills of day."
Then, comrades, indulge not in the reflection
that war is with you over it is never over as
long as wrong, injustice, oppression and evil
continue; be on the alert, ready to meet the
enemy. The visible implements of war have
been laid aside by us. trust the necessity for
their use may never again occur but clothe
yourselves in the armor described by the
Great Apostle of christianity-tha model mis-
sion-go forth to battle for the widow, the
orphan, for right, justice, truth and humanity,
and God will give to you the victory.
Comrades, our exercises for the day are now
overi but before we finally separate let me
urge you, by every glory OF the past, by the
solemnity OF the present, and the Importance of
the future, nourish and cherish with tender So
lcitude the memory of our heroic dead, and
when another year shall have come, let those
who shall not have been called away by death
meet here and again renew these solemn ceres
monies, and after each of us have gone to join
the grand army of the dead, may the princi-
pies which actuated them still live, and our
children and childrens' children to remote gen.
erations point with reverential pride to this
place, and may grateful people unite with
them in consecrating one day in each year to
the memory of the NATIONS DEAD.
1928
IN THE DISTRICT COURT OF THE UNITED
L States Tor the Eastern District OF Virginia.