oppression.  Thank God, the axe, the gibbet, and the stake have had their day.  They have gone, let us hope, to keep company with the lost arts.  It has been demonstrated that great wrongs may be redressed and great reforms be achieved without the shedding of one drop of human blood; that vengeance does not purify, but brutalizes; and that tolerance, which in private transactions is reckoned a virtue, becomes in public affairs a dogma of the most far-seeing statesmanship.  Else how could this noble city have been redeemed from bondage?  It was held like a castle of the Middle Ages by robber barons, who levied tribute right and left.  Yet have the mounds and dykes of corruption been carried—­from buttress to bell-tower the walls of crime have fallen—­without a shot out of a gun, and still no fires of Smithfield to light the pathway of the victor, no bloody assizes to vindicate the justice of the cause; nor need of any.

So I appeal from the men in silken hose who danced to music made by slaves—­and called it freedom—­from the men in bell-crowned hats, who led Hester Prynne to her shame—­and called it religion—­to that Americanism which reaches forth its arms to smite wrong with reason and truth, secure in the power of both.  I appeal from the patriarchs of New England to the poets of New England; from Endicott to Lowell; from Winthrop to Longfellow; from Norton to Holmes; and I appeal in the name and by the rights of that common citizenship—­of that common origin—­back both of the Puritan and the Cavalier—­to which all of us owe our being.  Let the dead past, consecrated by the blood of its martyrs, not by its savage hatreds—­darkened alike by kingcraft and priestcraft—­let the dead past bury its dead.  Let the present and the future ring with the song of the singers.  Blessed be the lessons they teach, the laws they make.  Blessed be the eye to see, the light to reveal.  Blessed be Tolerance, sitting ever on the right hand of God to guide the way with loving word, as blessed be all that brings us nearer the goal of true religion, true Republicanism and true patriotism, distrust of watchwords and labels, shams and heroes, belief in our country and ourselves.  It was not Cotton Mather, but John Greenleaf Whittier, who cried: 

  “Dear God and Father of us all,
  Forgive our faith in cruel lies,
  Forgive the blindness that denies.

  “Cast down our idols—­overturn
  Our bloody altars—­make us see
  Thyself in Thy humanity!”

[Applause and cheers.]

HEMAN LINCOLN WAYLAND

THE FORCE OF IDEAS

[Speech of Rev. Dr. Heman L. Wayland at the fourth annual dinner of the New England Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, December 22, 1884.  Dr. Wayland, as President of the Society, occupied the chair, and delivered the following address in welcoming the guests.]

FELLOW NEW ENGLANDERS—­Or, in view of our