cclesiasticism, which in effect claims a monopoly in religion and would
practically hand over the salvation of the race to the hands of a close
corporation. Now, whence did it come; where did he learn this
steadfastness to his own principles, yet this generosity towards the
convictions of other men, which has been so eloquently dwelt on to-night
as a cardinal feature of the American character through the leavening
power of Dutch influence? It came, gentlemen, as part of his birthright.
We have been told that to study and appreciate Dutch character and Dutch
history we must keep in view what has been called the geographical
factor, that constant war with the elements, which trained the Dutchman
to patience, to endurance, and to self-mastery. So, in studying the
Dutch Domine, you must keep in view the historic factor out of which he
and his church have come. I make no extravagant claim for the old Dutch
Church of New Amsterdam and New York, when I say she stands to-day for a
great and a splendid tradition in American life. She enshrines within
her history facts and forces which have been woven into the texture of
her most enduring institutions. Out of the darkness of persecution she
came, bearing to these shores the precious casket of civil and religious
liberty. When with prophetic vision she gazed across the Western sea,
and saw the red dawn of a new day glow upon the waters, that dawn but
reflected the red blood that dripped like sacramental wine from her
robes--the blood of martyrdom poured forth for that sacred trophy of
liberty of conscience which it is your privilege and mine to hand on to
the generations yet to come. For full forty years, the Dutch Church was
the only religious institution on this island, and who in these early
times, when the great ideas for which America stands to-day were in
their formative stage, guided in the light of truth the young country to
a larger conception of her destiny? Not only from the standpoint of
religion, but from the standpoint of education, the Dutch Church and her
clergy were a mighty factor in the evolution of the great twin truths of
civil and religious liberty. To the Dutch Church we owe it, that
liberty, in the reaction from old-world despotism, was not allowed to
degenerate into license. To them we owe it that freedom of conscience
was impressed not merely as a right to be claimed, but as a duty to be
safe-guarded, and, need I say?--this sense of personal duty and
respon