demigods.

To the broad vision of a true philosophy, nothing in this world stands
alone. Everything is a necessary part of everything else. The margin
of chance is narrowed by every extension of reason and knowledge, and
nothing comes unbidden to the feast of human experience. The universe,
of which we are a part, is continually proving itself a stupendous
whole, a system of law and order, eternal and perfect: Every seed
bears fruit after its kind, and nothing is reaped which was not sowed.
The distance between seed time and harvest, in the moral world, may
not be quite so well defined or as clearly intelligible as in the
physical, but there is a seed time, and there is a harvest time, and
though ages may intervene, and neither he who ploughed nor he who
sowed may reap in person, yet the harvest nevertheless will surely
come; and as in the physical world there are century plants, so it may
be in the moral world, and their fruitage is as certain in the one as
in the other. The bloody harvest of Harper's Ferry was ripened by the
heat and moisture of merciless bondage of more than two hundred years.
That startling cry of alarm on the banks of the Potomac was but the
answering back of the avenging angel to the midnight invasions of
Christian slave-traders on the sleeping hamlets of Africa. The history
of the African slave-trade furnishes many illustrations far more cruel
and bloody.

Viewed thus broadly our subject is worthy of thoughtful and
dispassionate consideration. It invites the study of the poet,
scholar, philosopher and statesman. What the masters in natural
science have done for man in the physical world, the masters of social
science may yet do for him in the moral world. Science now tells us
when storms are in the sky, and when and where their violence will be
most felt. Why may we not yet know with equal certainty when storms
are in the moral sky, and how to avoid their desolating force? But I
can invite you to no such profound discussions. I am not the man, nor
is this the occasion for such philosophical enquiry. Mine is the word
of grateful memory to an old friend; to tell you what I knew of
him--what I knew of his inner life--of what he did and what he
attempted, and thus if possible to make the mainspring of his actions
manifest and thereby give you a clearer view of his character and
services.

It is said that next in value to the performance of great deeds
ourselves, is the capacity to appreciate suc