Its counsels are ripe with a many-centuried knowledge of
human nature. Its joys and consolations are the most precious
inheritance of the heart of man. Its saints open our pathways, and go
before, following in the ways of the spirit. Its doors concentrate
within their shelter the general faith, and give it there a home. Its
table is spread for all men. I do not speak of the Church Invisible,
but mean to embrace with this catholicity of statement all
organizations, howsoever divided, which own Christ as their Head.
Temple, cathedral, and chapel have each their daily use to those who
gather there with Christian hearts; each is a living fountain to its own
fold. The village spire, wherever it rises on American or English
ground, bespeaks an association of families who find in this bond an
inward companionship and outward expression of it in a public habit
continuing from the fathers down, sanctified by the memories of
generations gone, and tender with the hope of the generation to come;
and this is of measureless good within such families for young and old
alike. It bespeaks also an instrument of charity, unobtrusive, friendly,
and searching, and growing more and more unconfined; it bespeaks a rock
of public morality deep-set in the foundations of the state.
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