As some railways water their stock, and for each dollar issue bonds for five, in the hope that only one of the five will ever know enough to ask for their dollar, so the intelligence of the nation has been watered and diluted. Sometimes a whole ballot-box full of voters' tickets does not contain the common sense of a single vote of the days of Hamilton. Our nation often seems like a householder who has given his night-key to an enemy who has threatened his home with firebrands. Our nation has loved--not wisely, but too well. The time has come when it must choose between loving itself and becoming bankrupt in intelligence and morality. For purposes of educating the nations of the world as to the true value of free institutions, one little New England community, where all the citizens were patriots and heroes, scholars and Christians, where vulgarity and crime were unknown, where the jail was empty and the church was full, where all young lives moved toward the school-house--one such community has a value beyond our present millions.
What the world needs is not multitudes, but examples and ideals. If one Plato can be produced, he will lift the world. Our citizens ask artists to paint their pictures--not bootblacks. We ask architects to erect our public buildings--not chimney sweeps. Loving their city, our citizens have lined the avenues with beautiful homes and streets with stores and factories. But here their self-love stops. When great men have created the city, they ask saloon-keepers to govern it. Well did the sage say, it was as if we had passed by Daniel Webster and asked an African ape to speak in his stead. Strange--passing strange--that our nation and city should forget that all love for others begins with a wise love for self.
We return from our survey with the conviction that Jesus Christ did well to make individual worth the genius of Christianity. Having moved backward along the pathway of history, we have found the streams of civilization taking rise in some one enriched mind and heart, even as mighty rivers issue from isolated springs. Looking backward we see Moses building the Hebrew temple; we see Pericles and Plato fashioning many shapes of truth and beauty for Athens; we see Dante laying the foundations of Florence; we see Carlo Zeno causing Venice to rise out of the sands of the sea; we see Bacon and Luther rearing the cathedrals of thought and worship, under which the millions find their shelter. Oppressed by a sense of human ignorance and human sin, a thousand questions arise. Can one poorly born journey toward greatness of stature? The Cremona violin of the sixteenth century is a mass of condensed melody. Each atom was soaked in a thousand songs, until the instrument reeks with sweetness. But can a human instrument, long out of tune and sadly injured, e'er be brought back to harmony of being? In the studio of the sculptor lie blocks of deserted marble. Out of one emerges a hand, another exhibits the outlines of a face. But for some reason the artist has forsaken them. It seems that as the chisel worked inward, it uncovered some crack or revealed a dark stain. Therefore the sculptor passed it by, preferring the flawless block of snowy marble. Is the soul soiled by sin, to be cast off by the divine Sculptor?