The Worcester spy. [volume] (Worcester, Mass.) 1898-1904, 1898-11-14
A PosT-ELEcTIoN SERMON.
Rev. q. W. Kent Says We Too often De-
spise Day Of Small Things.

Rev. George w. Kent, pastor of the
South Unitarian Church, delivered an
eloquent post-eieotion address. at the
church Sunday morning, on the theme,
'Ante-American, but not Anti-Ameri-
can, taking for his text Deuteronomy
Ky: am not come to DESTROY" said
in part:
Too often we despise the day of small
things. The fact is there is nothing
true or good we are attempting, how
ever lmperfectly, but what the perfect
nails us from affair." with the blessed
assurance Il am not coming to de-
stroy, but to fulfill" 1t puzzles me that
man like Robert Ingersoll can urge
SO forcibly and tenderly the rigbtfIl
place of childhood and child ideas and
practices in the life of the individual,
ana be so blind and brutal in his de-
nunciation of childhood.
But what fear is there in our law
that the divine right of kings will be
made an article in any ones political
creed! What danger is there of denial
that the best government, the safest
government, the government more and
more to be established among men. is
that whose grandly simple Statement
Apraham Lincoln borrowed from our
theodore Parker-"a government for
the people, of the people and by the
people,"
Our danger is that we shall cut our
selves too far and too disdainfully
apart from that thousand years of toll
ana thought and suffering and strife,
OIL which our freedom is the great and
wonderful fulfllment. AS childhood is
the key to manhood so our past is the
key to our self-governing, national be-
ing OF today. And to know that past.
ana to sympathize with it's strivings
ana failings and succeedings, is the
surest guide to the yet finer liberty and
unity we may aspire to.
Ihese experiences of a thousand
years of tribal and monarchical deyeI-
opment are ante American-in the sense
OF having come before our American
republic They are not anti-American,
IN the sense of being against the best
that is American in us.
Nay, the order, the unity that at first
a kingdom only could establish amid
Jealous and warning tribes, are still the
Things that We must cherish and cline.
! TO- in spite Of the individuaIity-so
much desired-that our self-g govern
ment restores.
We shall not only show a base in
gratitude but a monStrous folly if we
think ourselves able to despise those
! institutions of the past by which man
CliAlpS 10 SET US where we stand and
breathe the air of freedom. How many
things might enumerate which indeed
are ante-American but are not anti
American.
The rule of the responsible, the edu-
Gated, those who have something to
lose by anarchy, that is ans-old estab-
lishment, and it is a good one. The
American way to fulfil it is 10 make
every citizen of this republic a man re-
sponsible, educated, with something to
lose by anarchy.
Let us hold ourselves destroyers of
the past, of past institutions, customs
laws, wheresoever they yet enslave and
tyrannize us, but let us make ourselves
fulfillers of the past in the noblest
fashion of true men and nations by
pushing on, with no hatred OF con-
tempt for the leagues that lie behind.
in the great march of human kind. Let
us go forward from the places where
our fathers halted as the night time
fell. Let us go ON before our brothers.
who under conditions not as favorable
as our own still pursue old paths and in
them find ways to do good and of work
ing out their freedom. Let US be the
worlds pioneers, friends of human
kind, who seek TO fulfil the good in man,
not enemies, who seek to destroy men
for the evil TO be found in them