[Applause.] I know it's the fashion now to poke fun at the
Puritans, to use the "Blue Laws" as a weapon against them, to sneer at
them as hard, narrow, and intolerant. Yes, alas! we do not breathe
through their lungs any more. The wheel has gone round, and we have come
back to the very things the Puritans fled from in hatred and in horror.
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.
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