er can be. No
flatteries of courtiers, no adulations of the multitude, no audacity of
self-reliance, no intoxications of success, no evolutions or
developments of science, can make more or other of them. This is "the
sea-mark of their utmost sail," the goal of their farthest run, the very
round and top of their highest soaring. Oh, if there could be to-day a
deeper and more pervading impression of this great truth throughout our
land, and a more prevailing conformity of our thoughts and words and
acts to the lessons which it involves; if we could lift ourselves to a
loftier sense of our relations to the invisible; if, in surveying our
past history, we could catch larger and more exalted views of our
destinies and our responsibilities; if we could realize that the want of
good men may be a heavier woe to a land than any want of what the world
calls great men, our centennial year would not only be signalized by
splendid ceremonials, and magnificent commemorations, and gorgeous
expositions, but it would go far toward fulfilling something of the
grandeur of that "acceptable year," which was announced by higher than
human lips, and would be the auspicious promise and pledge of a glorious
second century of independence and freedom for our country. For, if that
second century of self-government is to go on safely to its close, or is
to go on safely and prosperously at all, there must be some renewal of
that old spirit of subordination and obedience to divine, as well as
human, laws, which has been our security in the past. There must be
faith in something higher and better than ourselves. There must be a
reverent acknowledgment of an unseen, but all-seeing, all-controlling
Ruler of the Universe. His word, His house, His day, His worship, must
be sacred to our children, as they have been to their fathers; and His
blessing must never fail to be invoked upon our land and upon our
liberties. The patriot voice, which cried from the balcony of yonder old
State House, when the declaration had been originally proclaimed,
"stability and perpetuity to American independence," did not fail to
add, "God save our American States." I would prolong that ancestral
prayer. And the last phrase to pass my lips at this hour, and to take
its chance for remembrance or oblivion in years to come, as the
conclusion of this centennial oration, and as the sum and summing up of
all I can say to the present or the future, shall be: There is, there
can be, n