adulation of the people can mislead, and no spirit of ambition can pervert. Such men as these, as our history proves, and as the scenes of the past few weeks illustrate,-as a weeping nation has united in honoring the name and reverencing the virtues of a man having, it may be, little gracefulness of speech or bearing, but with a great talent for serving his generation and doing hard work for the public good; a man honestly ambitious; whose industry was such as to raise him to the second office in the land without one dishonest act; one at heart sound and true; the lover of his kind, "who feared God and eschewed evil,"— such men the people will honor and enshrine in their most grateful remembrance and affection. In referring to the evils of our times, we have not spoken despondently; for there is no evil which a true Christian fidelity, and a wise and sagacious patriotism, and a pure political action, cannot lessen or remove. If, in the present season of difficulty and depression, any mind has yielded to despondency as to our future, it needs only to be remembered, as a check to this hasty despair, how much of misrule and mischief every great nation has had to survive. There never has been an auspicious day for humanity that was not one of doubt and conflict. Great evils have always confronted the world's earnest workers. Indeed, the intense light that they have flashed on them, has tended to reveal them with greater clearness. The world does not move backward, neither is it stationary. Men may leave their work incomplete, but the work of God goes on to perfection. What trials of our faith in principles, what delays, nay, even what momentary reverses may be before us, none may foresee; but our trust is in God, whose purposes never fail. Generations may come and go individuals may die, the great and the mighty, men wise in council and reverend in goodness, may pass away, but God's work in the regeneration of the race will go on. There will be vicissitude and change, the conflict between good and evil will deepen, the questions engrossing the thought of to-day will find their solution, and give place to the more absorbing questions of the future; but the country will live, its institutions perfected and perpetuated by the enlightened devotion and patriotism of the people, till our letters and our arts, our schools and our churches, our laws and our liberties, shall be carried from the arctic circle to the tropics, from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof. May it please Your Excellency, Governor of Massachusetts, Your Honor, Lieutenant-Governor, the Honorable Council, the Honorable Senate and House of Representatives, to receive our respectful salutations. You have the right to regard it as a distinction and a privilege that you have been called to serve the State in this historic period. The interests of a citizen, as well as the sentiments of a preacher, have led me to speak of the providence of God in our history,-a history as wonderful as it is unique. With the Psalmist, we can say, "He hath not dealt so with any people." It will be in accordance, I doubt not, with your own religious convictions, to recognize that to him belongs all the glory of our present greatness and prosperity; and that from him must come all the wisdom to guide and the power to advance our well-being and growth in the future. Whatever is noble in the character of our people, or heroic in the annals of our history, is deeply grounded in their constant recognition of a Divine Providence in human affairs, and the immutability of moral law, the one the object of their daily trust, the other the inspiration and rule of their daily life. May it be yours, ever realizing the presence and blessing of our fathers' God, to emulate their spirit, and to reproduce, with added lustre, their character, as you shall aim to preserve, and, as far as in you lies, to give perfection to their work. Bringing to the duties before you, bearing not only on the material, but the moral weal of the State, your ripest wisdom, your purest, most unselfish motive, and your most enlightened patriotism, and in all that may claim your attention, consulting only the mandates of righteousness, and legislating accordingly, you will secure the blessings of a grateful people, as you now have their prayers. "The Lord our God be with us, as he was with our fathers; let him not leave us nor forsake us." |