ter is as clear
and glorious to us as it was to his compeers. It thrills us as
delightfully and moves upon us as powerfully as it did upon them. It is
a glory hung around the name of America to which the world looks with a
reverent and admiring joy. To tell me that I can not love Washington
would be to rob me of the highest pride I feel in my country. I love
him for what he was in the day of his earthly glory, the man of all
majesty, the pride of all nations. I love him for what he did, for the
life of spotless virtue and magnificent wisdom and goodness. He lived
for the good of his country and the world. I love him for the tall angel
of light that he now is, and the celestial richness of the glory that
streams from his brow. I know I love him, and no philosophy or
skepticism can cheat me out of that love.

I could name a hundred characters that have lived in the past and now
live in heaven that I know I love in the same way. I love them as really
as I do my personal friends, and love them in proportion to the
greatness and goodness I see in them. I may say the same of many living
men and women. Speaking from my own experience, I should say that I can
love goodness, worth, all that is lovable in character as well as in a
being that I have not seen as one that I have. I have known of people
who have an earthly father living that they have never seen, and whom
they love with a deep and rich fervency of affection. I have known of
children whom poverty or accident has separated in infancy from their
mother, and who cherished for that unknown, far-off maternal friend a
sacred and deathless love. They have meditated hours, days, and weeks on
the sad separation and the sweet, holy bosom from which they drew the
breath of life. In well-formed minds this love grows up with their
growth and strengthens with their strength. The idea of parentage
awakens love in the heart. The relation is so near and dear it can not
be otherwise in good and cultured minds. Then we can love a father whom
we have not seen. We all know that the idea of God is a spontaneity in
the human mind. Though God may be incomprehensible and his ways past
finding out, he is still so much within and around us that we can not
keep the thoughts of him out of our minds. We know, too, that thousands
do love Him with a deathless love who can comprehend him no better than
we. We may infer from this that we can love Him also.

But when we think of His character, its inf