Vermont watchman and State journal. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1836-1883, 1880-11-24

grand fellowship. Ana, brethren, we welcome
you here to-day; we welcome you TO our hearts
and our homes, and to all our best endeavors to
make 1t pleasant to you and profitable to us
while you stay. But we welcome you, especially
| inviting you to look into the space that has been
cleared up by this great war, TO get nearer view
into this new world that Is arising like thing OF
| God a mighty exbalation out Of our western ex-
panson to listen nearer TO the tramp Of nations
that are entering upon 1t, to the din and stir that
are here, where the Titans OF our civilization and
our empire are bursting open the gates OF the
Atlantic, and are
BUILDING THEIR HIGHWAYS
across the desert, and extending arch after arch,
| tiers Of imperial states across the wilds TO the
Pacific, dome gttering upon dome in setting
| suns; chasing the star OF empire to where the
! Occident and the Orient grasp hands at last over
| the Pacific seas, and where California, looking
out over the waves, looks TO the shores of Ormus
and Of Ind and realms of barbaric pearl and gold.
| We invite you to look out into the great domain
/ of our empire, westward, opened by the war,
wrought up and still further developed by the
rush of thousands for gold, and now trampled by
commerce, and turned into highway of the ma
tions, thoroughfare of ideas and Of civilization
| We invite you to look into the world awhile, look
into the brth-hour and birthplace Of nations soon
to be; look that you may rightly estimate and
consult for the solution Of problem the most
solemn, the most awful, in the present history of
the world-the problem that waits upon the de-
cisons of a few days, few years, over the fields
that have spoken Of, and to inquire what is our
duty, with our polity, with our ideas, with our
faith, toward this field. We welcome you in the
belief that you are to bring your distinctive ideas
of polity of social and ecclesiastic architecture,
creative of light, OF law, OF love, and known in
the history Of the past as the mightest architect
ure of social and political forms Of beneficent and
wise arrangement and loving energy, and now
standing with their record behind them Of Gre
atoms of civil prosperity and energetic and living,
free civilization, such as the sun hardly shines
elsewhere in all its course, antagonizing on the
one hand anarchy and infidelity; the very best
forces for engaging in this conflict, to antagonize
anarchy and intideity on the one hand, and su.
persttion and spiritual despotism the other,
and placing these principles that we hear, placing
the population they penetrate in harmony with
| that spirit of the age, that democratic tendency
| | don't use words in party relations, brethren
[applausel - that democratic tendency which
DE Tocqueville says In the certainty OF Its triumph
over the world stands equivalent to decree of
God placing us in harmony with the inevitable
| outcome of the future and at the same time with
means for Christening that democratic spirit OF its
wild force that would tear the world to pieces
otherwise, SOLDERING 1t, imparting TO it Christian
reason, penetrating 1t with reverence for human
rights, and with reverence for God and love Of
man, with sense of duty and with that Christian
sentiment and principle which will alone make it
possible that there shall be government OF the
people, by the people and for the people, existing
permanently among men.
WE WELCOME YOU
brethren, as coming with your aid we recognize
forces grand forces of Christian feeling and prin-
cipe, at work here with those Of other names
whom we love; but we welcome you as coadjutors
with your principles of liberty and ORDER of light
and life, that have been the mightiest demiurgic
forces in building up the kingdom Of our Lord and
Savior In the past. We welcome you, brethren,
moreover, not as bringing your organic principles
alone; we welcome you as bringing faith once
delivered to the saints; descending from Christ
and the Apostles, attested and witnessed by hosts
Of confessors and martyrs and saints in other
DAYS baptized and consecrated in holy tears and
heroic blood, vindicated in the dungeon, at the
stake ON the scaffold, in the high places OF the
field in the ages past, and transmitted that faith
Immortality down through the ages, hiding, it may
be, now for time from history, gliding, like the
tabled Arethusa, under the waters Of this world,
but flowing on unmxed, by-and-by to spring up
in some distant elime some far-oh DESERT or in
some solitary isle so living on and propagating
forever this faith, this symbol which we term
evangelical, and which has proved the mghtiest
in the power Of God presented to this world in
our Lord, unto the salvation Of the world inner
tors and possessors and bearers of this faith but
with it a theory OF the conservation of faith that
quckens and liberates people, not letters or pet
rifles; that for its propagation and conservation
uses the forces Of life, emuatng the strength and
firmness OF the oak rather than adamant; by
growth rather than stereotyping of organic life
rather than machine. A theory of this conserva-
ton and preservation Of faith that unites identity
with progress Just to the astronomers eve the
heavens eternally the same, stand out yonder un-
changeable, and rolling on forever and ever in
their solitary, their vast their immutable courses
and order, and yet that by the telescope, by in
creased power piercing deeper and deeper into the
mighty depths, they are forever old and the same
and forever new; that like the river, which is the
same and yet bears forever through new scenery
and with wider and grander sweep to the seas; a
theory that anchors faith-not anchors faith by
the past, but sets it upon the current Of living
thought and principle issuing from that past, that
bears 1t
ON TO THE SEA,
that lives in fal piety, not in dolatry with the
| treasures utilizpa
and builds upon their results, preserving things
most sacred and most beautiful, but never like
the idolatrous and foolish children Of Israel gath
ering the collected things to work them into a
golden calf that however it may wall itself
round, as it may do, with forms, with formulas,
with book, with dogma, and however 1t may gar
rison itself with great and holy memories never
converts its walls Of defense to a prison, and
never permits its champions TO become jailers;
that does not make an idol OF the iconoclast, nor
will it permit reform revolution to harden into
despotism; that treats the fathers with love and
reveres them as brethren and helpers, but not as
it reveres our Lord and Saviour as Master; that
believes and relies upon living things and present
forces for maintaining the life OF Christianity In
this world. Much It may rest upon what has
been wrought in the past, and we thank God for
it, but it relies for continued life, it relies upon
living present Christ, living Holy Ghost that is
promised to us this day much as it ever has
been since the day Of Pentecost that relies upon
the immortal reason and conscience that are
bound up with the eternal soul God has given us,
ana with the living testimony OF saints tnat now
walk the earth, and the testimony Of the blessed
and holy ones that are all the while going up to
glory; that looks away from the cloud of wit
nesses, however glorious. to the "author and fin
Usher Of our faith that regards guarantor and
conservator Of our faith and our purity and creator
of our unity, the last great commission left by
our Lord to the disciples as he went up to the
throne of his Fathers glory Go We into all the
world, and preach the gospel to every creature. "
Co. dsciplining all nations.
: In this great commission Is her hope, and hei
only hope for purity, and life and power. By this
each doctrine, each form Of theology she tests
tests by its uses, whether 1t is instrument
for which God gave Christ to the world, the
means, the instrument for saving the world
She keeps this near, the great end the
r Ureat ohiact NJ on rth and kaan