sed
to do. There were those, he remarked, who were wont in the most
unqualified way to affirm that there was a God. There were others who,
with equal immoderation, committed themselves to the opposite
proposition--that there was no God. The philosophical mind, he added,
will look for the truth somewhere between these extremes. The
Forefathers had none of that in theirs. [Laughter and applause.]

They were men who employed the great and responsible gift of speech
honestly and straightforwardly. There was a sublime sincerity in their
tongues. They spoke their minds.

Their sons, I fear, have declined somewhat from their veracity at that
precise point. At times we certainly have, and have had to be brought
back to it by severest pains--as, for example, twenty-six years ago by
the voice of Beauregard's and Sumter's cannon, which was a terrible
voice indeed, but had this vast merit that it told the truth, and set a
whole people free to say what they thought once more. [Great applause.]

Our fathers of the early day were not literary; but they were apt, when
they spoke, to make themselves understood.

There was in my regiment during the war--I was a chaplain--a certain
corporal, a gay-hearted fellow and a good soldier, of whom I was very
fond--with whom on occasion of his recovery from a dangerous sickness I
felt it my duty to have a serious pastoral talk; and while he
convalesced I watched for an opportunity for it. As I sat one day on the
side of his bed in the hospital tent chatting with him, he asked me what
the campaign, when by and by spring opened, was going to be. I told him
that I didn't know. "Well," said he, "I suppose that General McClellan
knows all about it." (This was away back in 1861, not long after we went
to the field.) I answered: "General McClellan has his plans, of course,
but he doesn't know. Things may not turn out as he expects." "But," said
the corporal, "President Lincoln knows, doesn't he?" "No," I said, "he
doesn't know, either. He has his ideas, but he can't see ahead any more
than General McClellan can." "Dear me," said the corporal, "it would be
a great comfort if there was somebody that did know about things"--and I
saw my chance. "True, corporal," I observed, "that's a very natural
feeling; and the blessed fact is there is One who does know everything,
both past and future, about you and me, and about this army; who knows
when we are going to move, and where to, and what's going to happen;