following in the ways of the spirit.  Its doors concentrate within their shelter the general faith, and give it there a home.  Its table is spread for all men.  I do not speak of the Church Invisible, but mean to embrace with this catholicity of statement all organizations, howsoever divided, which own Christ as their Head.  Temple, cathedral, and chapel have each their daily use to those who gather there with Christian hearts; each is a living fountain to its own fold.  The village spire, wherever it rises on American or English ground, bespeaks an association of families who find in this bond an inward companionship and outward expression of it in a public habit continuing from the fathers down, sanctified by the memories of generations gone, and tender with the hope of the generation to come; and this is of measureless good within such families for young and old alike.  It bespeaks also an instrument of charity, unobtrusive, friendly, and searching, and growing more and more unconfined; it bespeaks a rock of public morality deep-set in the foundations of the state.

“It is true that in uniting with such a Church, under the specific conditions natural to both temperament and residence, a man yields something of private right, and sacrifices in a greater or less degree his personality; but this is the common condition of all social cooperation, whether in party action or any union to a common end.  The compromise, involved in any platform of principles, tolerates essential differences in important matters, but matters not then important in view of what is to be gained in the main.  The advantages of an organized religious life are too plain to be ignored; it is reasonable to go to the very verge in order to avail of them, both for a man’s self and for his efficiency in society, just as it is to unite with a general party in the state, and serve it in local primaries, for the ends of citizenship; such means of help and opportunities of accomplishment are not to be lightly neglected.  Happy is he who, christened at the font, naturally accepts the duties devolved upon him, and stands in his parents’ place; and fortunate I count the youth who, without stress and trouble, undertakes in his turn his father’s part.  But some there are, born of that resolute manliness of the fathers, which is finer than tempered steel, and of the conscience of the mothers which is more sensitive than the bare nerve,—­the very flower of the Puritan tradition, and my heart goes out to them.  And if there be a youth in our days who feels hesitancy in such an early surrender into the bosom of a Church, however broadly inclusive of firm consciences, strong heads, and free hearts; if primitive Puritanism is bred in his bone and blood and is there the large reserve of liberty natural to the American heart; if the spirit is so living in him that he dispenses with the form, which to those of less strenuous strain is rather a support; if truth is so precious to him that he will not subscribe to