The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1908-05-17

| SlVe influence that Rises from the
most fruitful and popular leadership
any generation of Americans has ever
| known"
Tribute Paid.
| President responded by saying:
! 1t is a pleasure to be with you to-
day and to bid you welcome on behalf
of the nation. here in the capital of
the nation. Important though the
Methodist church is IN many lands,
there is none in which it has played
so great and peculiar a part as here
in the United States. Its history is
indissOlubly interviewer with the his
tory of our country for the six score
years since the constitutional cOnven-
tiOn made us really a nation. The
whole country is under a debt of graft
tude to the Methodist circuit riders,
| the Methodist pioneer preachers,
whose movement westward kept pace
with the movement of the frontier.
who shared all the hardshiDs in the
life of the frOntierman, while at the
same time miniStering to that from
tierSmans 5 spiritual needs. and seeing
that his pressing material cars and
the hard and grinding poverty of his
life did not wholly eXtinguish the
divine fire within his soul. Such was
your work in the past; and your work
in the present is as great; for the
need and opportunity for service wild
ems as the field of national interest
Widens.
True religion, through church or
ganizatOns, through philanthrOpic Or
ganizatiOns, in all the field of kindred
endeavor. can manifest itself as effec-
/ lively in the crowded and complex life
OF today as in the pioneer yesterdays;
and the souls of men need. the light
now and strive blindly toward it, as
they needed it, and strove toward it in
the vanished past
No nation in the world has more
right than ours TO look with proud
confidence toward the future. No.
where else has the experiment Of
democratic government, of govern
ment by the people and for the peo-
pie, of government based on the prin-
ciple of treating each man on his in
nate worth as a man, been tried on
(
whole the experiment has been more
successful than anywhere else More
over, on the whole. ! think it can be
said that we have grown better and
not worse; for if there is much evil.
good also greatly abounds. and if
wrong grows, so in even greater
measure grows the stern sense of right
before which wrong must eventually
WELD. 1t would be both unmanly and
unwarranted to become faint-hearted
or despairing about the Nations fu-
ture. Clear-eyed and far-sighted men
who are both brave of heart and cool
| OF head, while not for a moment refus-
ing to see and acknowledge the many
evils around us, must vet also feel a
confident assurance that in the strug-
gle we shall win and not lose. that
/ the century that has just opened will
see great triumph for our people.
But the Surest way 10 achieve this
triumph is. while never losing hope
and belief in our progress. vet at the
same time to refuse to blind ourselves
to what is evil in the complex play
of the many forces, working through,
anu HItAI anu dSdIIlSI one duolleT. IN
the upbuilding of our social structure
Prosperity such as ours. necessary
I though ii be as the material basis of
national greatness. inevitably tends to
undue eXaltatiOn of the merely mater
lal side of the national character: and
we must largely rely on the efforts Of
such men and women as those / am
addressing 10 build up the spiritual life
without which the material life
amounts to nothing. As generation
succeeds generation the problems
change in their external shape: old
needs vanish, and new needs arise:
! but II remains as true as ever that in
the last analysis national greatness,
lCQufinl1ad Ra