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great story of God's creation. And lo! the world was not made in a week and man in a moment, but instead

"I doubt not through the ages an increasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns."

Evolution is a larger story of Divine Providence than any of the fathers dreamed.

Other scholars came. And these began to study the Bible and lo! instead of a book, a library; instead of a proof text, a literature; instead of a dictation, an experience; instead of a typewriter for an inspired man, a poet, a seer, a martyr. And the Bible became greater and grander than ever before. Revelation instead of being a tiny lake, crystal in depth, and lost amid the hills, was like the boundless ocean, thundering on all shores and refreshing all lands. The Bible took on a new splendor and a new dignity that day.

The Homeland

Nehemiah Boynton

This is an extract from a speech delivered before the New England Society, New York City, December, 1911. Note the skillful manner in which the theme is linked with the opening illustrative story. Be sure that your hearers get the point. If well delivered, the sentiment and language of this selection will make a strong appeal to any audience.

MANY of you know your Wordsworth, and you doubtless remember the pastor and the little company out in the open in Merry England that looked up the road and saw a man coming along driving a brave team of horses that were drawing a load

of logs. The man himself was in the evening of his life; the white hair was curling about the forehead, but there was the ruddy glow of health upon his cheek and the splendid magnificence of his stature, which never had been bent by increasing years, was still his. He was a man who looked, so the poet said, "as if he were in the possession of freedom, and of gaiety, and of health"; "he was a man," so the poet said, "who had escaped the fear of loss, and likewise the pride of having." Indeed, as he pointed to him, the pastor said, "There goes a man who seems to be a man of cheerful yesterdays and of confident to-morrows." That is the man who has lived over and over again in real life in the person of our forbears, who were four square and ambidextered men in their own lives and hearts, and especially in the hearts of the children who have come after them.

And so, fellow Americans, it is because of these cheerful yesterdays which rise above all egotism and all pessimism, because of these confident tomorrows, that you and I may well rejoice that it is ours to live beneath the Stars and Stripes and may turn away from the felicities of an hour like this with a nobler pulse beat in our hearts and a truer purpose in our souls to reproduce in our day and in our generation, according to the need of the times in which we live, the spirit-the ideal, the four square characters of those brave men of yesterday.

Ah! If one is far away from America sometimes the recollection of the beauty and the true

ness of the homeland comes in upon him with overpowering influence. Have you never felt it yourself when in some far away and foreign city, perhaps, separated from your friends, you have thought of the conditions, social, political, religious, which were about you, and then, as in the twinkling of an eye, have thought about those conditions social, political and domestic, which are yours in the "land of the free and home of the brave?" Do you not remember how your heart beat with a great pride on the one hand, and a great longing on the other? Why? Because you do believe in those cheerful yesterdays as the basis on which shall be erected the confident to-morrows.

One who, I judge, has often been in this company, and very likely has been at this table, had such an experience. He was sitting one day in a hotel in London when it seemed to him as if his heart would break if he could not take a steamship for the homeland before nightfall, but that was absolutely impossible; and so, because he was a man whose soul sentiment, compelled by its throb, took the muse of song, he took out his pad and pencil and this is what he wrote:

O! London is a fine town,
It is a man's town;

There is power in the air.
And Paris is a woman's town,
With flowers in her hair;
And it's good to live in Venice,

And it's fine to walk in Rome,
But when you talk of living,

There's no place like home.

And it's home again, home again,

America for me.

My heart is turning home again,

To my own country

To the blessed land of room enough,

Beyond the ocean bars,

Where the air is filled with sunshine,
And the flag is filled with stars.

The Mission of America

Woodrow Wilson

This is an extract of a speech delivered before the Manhattan Club, New York City, November 4, 1915. Problems arising out of the Great War in Europe are reflected in the first paragraph. The concluding paragraph contains a particularly strong appeal, requiring deep feeling and strong force.

THE mission of America in the world is essentially a mission of peace and good will among men. She has become the home and asylum of men of all creeds and races. Within her hospitable borders they have found homes and congenial associations and freedom and a wide and cordial welcome, and they have become part of the bone and sinew and spirit of America itself. America has been made up out of the nations of the world and is the friend of the nations of the world. America has not opened its doors in vain to the men and women out of other nations. The vast majority of those who have come to take advantage of her hospitality have united their spirits with hers as well as their fortunes. These men who speak alien sympathies, who raise the cry of race against race or of church against church, who attempt to create divisions and an

tagonisms where there are none,—such men are not the spokesmen of the great mass of Americans, but the spokesmen of small groups whom it is high time that the nation should call to a reckoning. The chief thing necessary in America in order that she should let all the world know that she is prepared to maintain her own great position is that the real voice of the nation should sound forth unmistakably and in majestic volume, in the deep unison of a common, unhesitating national feeling. I do not doubt that upon the first occasion, upon the first opportunity, upon the first challenge, that voice will speak forth in tones which no man can doubt and with commands which no man dare gainsay or resist.

Here is the nation God has builded by our hands. What shall we do with it? Who is there who does not stand ready at all times to act in her behalf in a spirit of devoted and disinterested patriotism? We are yet only in the youth and first consciousness of our power. The day of our country's life is still but in its fresh morning. Let us lift our eyes to the great tracts of life yet to be conquered in the interests of righteous peace. Come, let us renew our allegiance to America, conserve her strength in its purity, make her chief among those who serve mankind, self-reverenced, self-commanded, mistress of all forces of quiet counsel, strong above all others in good will and the might of invincible justice and right.

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