. Unless these appear, I cast
aside the word as a sham and counterfeit, having no ring
of the true metal. Love cannot be a mere abstraction, or [20]
goodness without activity and power. As a human quality,
the glorious significance of affection is more than words:
it is the tender, unselfish deed done in secret; the silent,
ceaseless prayer; the self-forgetful heart that overflows;
the veiled form stealing on an errand of mercy, out of a [25]
side door; the little feet tripping along the sidewalk; the
gentle hand opening the door that turns toward want and
woe, sickness and sorrow, and thus lighting the dark
places of earth.

[Page 251.]

Address On The Fourth Of July At Pleasant View, Concord, N. H., Before
2,500 Members Of The Mother Church, 1897

My beloved brethren, who have come all the way from
the Pacific to the Atlantic shore, from the Palmetto to the [5]
Pine Tree State, I greet you; my hand may not touch
yours to-day, but my heart will with tenderness untalkable.

His Honor, Mayor Woodworth, has welcomed you to
Concord most graciously, voicing the friendship of this
city and of my native State--loyal to the heart's core to [10]
religion, home, friends, and country.

To-day we commemorate not only our nation's civil
and religious freedom, but a greater even, the liberty of
the sons of God, the inalienable rights and radiant reality
of Christianity, whereof our Master said: "The works [15]
that I do shall he do;" and, "The kingdom of God cometh
not with observation" (with knowledge obtained from
the senses), but "the kingdom of God is within you,"--
within the present possibilities of mankind.

Think of this inheritance! Heaven right here, where [20]
angels are as men, clothed more lightly, and men as angels
who, burdened for an hour, spring into liberty, and the
good they would do, that they do, and the evil they would
not do, that they do not.

From the falling leaves of old-time faiths men learn a [25]
parable of the period, that all error, physical, moral, or
religious, will fall before Truth demonstrated, even as
dry leaves fall to enrich the soil for fruitage.

Sin, sickness, and disease flee before the evangel of
Truth as the mountain mists before the sun. Truth is [30]

[Page 252.]

the tonic for the sick, and this medicine of Mind is not [1]
necessarily infinitesimal but infinite. Herein the mental
medicine of divine metaphysics and the medical systems
of allopathy and homoeop