We pride ourselves these days on our “sweetness and light,” on our culture and manners.  The soul of the age is hospitable and entertains, like an inn, “God or the devil on equal terms,” as George Eliot says.  Alas! the Puritan chart has failed us in the sea through which we are passing; the old stars have ceased to shine; too many of us know neither our course nor destination; “authority is mute;” the “Thus saith the Lord” of the Puritan is not enough now for our guidance.  For the age is in all things not one of reason or of faith, but of speculation not only in the business of the world, but in all moral and spiritual questions as well.  Well, we shall see what we shall see.  But for one, I admire with all my soul a man who knows just what he was put into this world for, what his chief end in it is, what he believes, must do and must be, and in the ways thereof is willing to inflict or to suffer death. [Applause.] The Puritan divine was such a man.  He sowed your rocky coasts and sterile hills with conscience and God.  You are living on the virtue that came out of the hem of his garment; he is our bulwark still in this land against superstition on the one hand and infidelity on the other. [Applause.] Grand man he was, the old Puritan; once arrived he was always arrived; while other men hesitated he acted; while others debated he declared; fearing God, he was lifted above every other fear; and though he has passed away for a time—­only for a time, remember:  the wheel is still turning, we can’t stand on air—­he will come back again, but in the meantime he is still a “preacher of righteousness” to our souls as effective in death as in life. [Applause.]

In your presence I greet with my warmest admiration, I salute with my profound reverence, the old Puritan divines of New England who had a scorn for all base uses of life, who were true to duty as they saw it, who had convictions for which they would kill or die, who formed their characters and guided their lives by the law of righteousness in human conduct.  To these men under God we largely owe our liberties and our laws in this land.  I take off my hat to his ghost, and salute him as greater than he who has taken a city, for the Puritan divine conquered himself.  He was an Isaac, not an Ishmael; he was a Jacob, not an Esau; a God-born man who knew what his soul did wear.  Great man he was, hard, stern, and intolerant.  Yes, but what would you have, gentlemen?  The Puritan was not a pretty head carved on a cherry-stone, but a Colossus cut from the rock, huge, grim, but awe-inspiring, fortifying to the soul if not warming to the heart. [Applause.]