not differ more radically from the splendor of this
banquet than did the sentiments with which the Puritans
came to these shores differ from the sentiments of
the men who gather in this room to-night. If it
had happened to them as it happened to a distinguished
company in New England, where an eminent New England
divine was called upon to lead in prayer, their feelings
would have been as little wounded as those against
whom he offered up his petition; or rather, if I were
here to-night to denounce their sentiments as to religious
toleration, in which they did not believe; their sentiments
as to the separation of the Church from the State,
in which they did not believe any more than they believed
in religious toleration; their sentiments as to Democracy,
in which they did not believe any more than they believed
in religious toleration—those of us who
are here and who do believe in these things would be
as little wounded as the company to which I have referred.
The distinguished divine to whom I have alluded was
called upon to offer prayer, some fifty years ago,
in a mixed company, when, in accordance with the custom
of the times, he included in his petition to the Almighty
a large measure of anathema, as “We beseech
Thee, O Lord! to overwhelm the tyrant! We beseech
Thee to overwhelm and to pull down the oppressor!
We beseech Thee to overwhelm and pull down the Papist!”
And then opening his eyes, and seeing that a Roman
Catholic archbishop and his secretary were present,
he saw he must change the current of his petitions
if he would be courteous to his audience, and said
vehemently, “We beseech Thee, O Lord! we beseech
Thee—we beseech Thee—we beseech
Thee to pull down and overwhelm the Hottentot!”
Said some one to him when the prayer was over, “My
dear brother, why were you so hard upon the Hottentot?”
“Well,” said he, “the fact is, when
I opened my eyes and looked around, between the paragraphs
in the prayer, at the assembled guests, I found that
the Hottentots were the only people who had not some
friends among the company.” [Laughter.]
Gentlemen of the New England Society, if I were to
denounce the views of the Puritans to-night, they
would be like the Hottentots. [Laughter.] Nay more,
if one of their number were to come into this banqueting
hall and sit down at this splendid feast, so unlike
what he had been wont to see, and were to expound
his views as to constitutional liberty and as to religious
toleration, or as to the relations of the Church to
the State, I am very much afraid that you and I would
be tempted to answer him as an American answered an
English traveller in a railway-carriage in Belgium.
Said this Englishman, whom I happened to meet in Brussels,
and who recognized me as an American citizen:
“Your countrymen have a very strange conception
of the English tongue: I never heard any people
who speak the English language in such an odd way as
the Americans do.” “What do you mean?”
I said; “I supposed that in the American States