oney to education, public
and endowed. Whence came this social wisdom? From Protestantism, from
Congregationalism, from the religious teachings of Channing and his
disciples. Listen to this sentence: "Benevolence is short-sighted
indeed, and must blame itself for failure, if it do not see in education
the chief interest of the human race."

It is impossible to join in this centennial celebration of the advent to
Boston of this religious pioneer and philanthropic leader without
perceiving that in certain respects the country has recently fallen away
from the moral standards he set up. Channing taught that no real good
can come through violence, injustice, greed, and the inculcation of
hatred and enmities, or of suspicions and contempts. He believed that
public well-being can be promoted only through public justice, freedom,
peace, and good will among men.

He never could have imagined that there would be an outburst in his
dear country, grown rich and strong, of such doctrines as that the might
of arms, possessions, or majorities makes right; that a superior
civilization may rightly force itself on an inferior by wholesale
killing, hurting, and impoverishing; that an extension of commerce, or
of missionary activities, justifies war; that the example of imperial
Rome is an instructive one for republican America; and that the right to
liberty and the brotherhood of man are obsolete sentimentalities.

Nevertheless, in spite of these temporary aberrations of the public mind
and heart, it is plain that many of Channing's anticipations and hopes
have already been realized, that his influence on three generations of
men has been profound and wholly beneficent, and that the world is
going his way, though with slow and halting steps.

His life brightened to its close. In its last summer but one he wrote:
"This morning I plucked a globe of the dandelion--the seed-vessel--and
was struck as never before with the silent, gentle manner in which
nature sows her seed.... I saw, too, how nature sows her seed
broadcast.... So we must send truth abroad, not forcing it on here and
there a mind, and watching its progress anxiously, but trusting that it
will light on a kindly soil, and yield its fruit. So nature teaches."

May those who stand here one hundred years hence say,--the twentieth
century supplied more of kindly soil for Channing seed than the
nineteenth.

EMERSON

Emerson was not a logician or reasoner, and not a rh