The Forefathers were a power on earth from the start—­and that by the masterful quality of their mind and spirit.  They had endless pluck, intellectual and moral.  They believed that the kingdom in this world was with ideas.  It was, you might say, one of their original Yankee notions that it was the property of a man to have opinions and to stand by them to the death.  Judged from the standpoint of their times, as any one who will take the pains to look will discover, they were tolerant men; but they were fell debaters, and they were no compromisers.  They split hairs, if you will, but they wouldn’t split the difference. [Laughter.]

A German professor of theology is reported to have said in lecturing to his students on the Existence of God, that while the doctrine, no doubt, was an important one, it was so difficult and perplexed that it was not advisable to take too certain a position upon it, as many were disposed to do.  There were those, he remarked, who were wont in the most unqualified way to affirm that there was a God.  There were others who, with equal immoderation, committed themselves to the opposite proposition—­that there was no God.  The philosophical mind, he added, will look for the truth somewhere between these extremes.  The Forefathers had none of that in theirs. [Laughter and applause.]

They were men who employed the great and responsible gift of speech honestly and straightforwardly.  There was a sublime sincerity in their tongues.  They spoke their minds.

Their sons, I fear, have declined somewhat from their veracity at that precise point.  At times we certainly have, and have had to be brought back to it by severest pains—­as, for example, twenty-six years ago by the voice of Beauregard’s and Sumter’s cannon, which was a terrible voice indeed, but had this vast merit that it told the truth, and set a whole people free to say what they thought once more. [Great applause.]

Our fathers of the early day were not literary; but they were apt, when they spoke, to make themselves understood.

There was in my regiment during the war—­I was a chaplain—­a certain corporal, a gay-hearted fellow and a good soldier, of whom I was very fond—­with whom on occasion of his recovery from a dangerous sickness I felt it my duty to have a serious pastoral talk; and while he convalesced I watched for an opportunity for it.  As I sat one day on the side of his bed in the hospital tent chatting with him, he asked me what the campaign, when by and by spring opened, was going to be.  I told him that I didn’t know.  “Well,” said he, “I suppose that General McClellan knows all about it.” (This was away back in 1861, not long after we went to the field.) I answered:  “General McClellan has his plans, of course, but he doesn’t know.  Things may not turn out as he expects.”  “But,” said the corporal, “President Lincoln knows, doesn’t he?” “No,” I said, “he doesn’t know, either.  He has his ideas, but he can’t see ahead any