is color-line. Pentecostal
blessings fell at Jerusalem, and have fallen ever since on the
cosmopolitan church.

The second feature of this church that adapts it to ours field is the
open Bible. Every convert is armed with the shining sword--the sword of
the spirit, which is the word of God, like the sword in the hand of the
angel at Eden's gate, turning every way at once.

You do not hear of immorality, gross and fearful, within the precincts
of our Congregational churches. You do not hear of our people walking up
the hills of the beatitudes over the broken tables of the law. The
written word, like the Incarnate, goes into our congregations and drives
out all the sellers of oxen and of doves. The Word, also, is the
protection of these people against their greatest foe of this day--the
encroaching power of the Church of Rome. Do you know that that ancient
foe of liberty is stalking all across the twelve States of the South? Do
you know what it means to have the Church of Rome take in hand these
people of lowly and of feeble intelligence? We do not have to crossover
to Austria or Italy in order to discern her aims, for the Nun of Kenmare
has alighted upon our shores, and her alarming words are running through
the land. Rome knows no color prejudice, and the foot of that great
despotic power can rest just as easily upon a skin that is black as upon
a neck that is of the purest alabaster. And the Congregational Church
down South is the only champion against this papal see, for she has an
aisle wide enough for five races of mankind to march up to her communion
table, while the sword of the Spirit guards her portals.

Again, I wish you to notice this fact: That this Church which we are
planting is not only hiding a multitude of sins by saving these lowly
people, but it is serving the interests of the State as well. When we
remember that the polity of our church is a polity of liberty, that it
teaches that rights and duties go hand in hand, that it takes just as
much wisdom to elect the pastor of a church as the President of the
United States, we can see that the moral influence of this polity of
ours is serving the interests of our commonwealth. The Congregational
Church is carrying the Pilgrim idea into the soil of the Cavalier.
Straight University, Tillotson Institute, and these other schools, are
but the outcropping of that old stone down in an Eastern harbor that we
call Plymouth Rock. Down South are being planted those