My Beloved Brethren:—Looking on this annual assemblage of human consciousness, health, harmony, growth, grandeur, and achievement, garlanded with glad faces, willing hands, and warm hearts,—who would say to-day "What a fond fool is hope"? The fruition of friendship, the world's arms outstretched to us, heart meeting heart across continents and oceans, bloodless sieges and tearless triumphs, the "well done" already yours, and the undone waiting only your swift hands,—are enough to make this hour glad. What more abounds and abides in the hearts of these hearers and speakers pen may not tell.
Nature reflects man, and art pencils him, but it remains for Science to reveal man to man; and between these lines of thought is written in luminous letters, O man, what art thou? Where art thou? Whence and whither? And what shall the answer be? Expressive silence, or with finger pointing upward,—Thither! Then produce thy records, time-table, log, Traveler's companion, et cetera, and prove fairly the facts relating to the thitherward,—the rate of speed, the means of travel, and the number en route. Now what have you learned? The mystery of godliness —God made manifest in the flesh, seen of men, and spiritually understood? And the mystery of iniquity—and how to separate the tares from the wheat—that they consume in their own fires, and no longer kindle altars for human sacrifice. Have you learned to conquer sin, false affections, motives, and aims,—to be not only sayers but doers of the law?
Brethren, our annual meeting is a grave guardian, it requires you to report progress, to refresh memory, to rejuvenate the branches and vivify the buds, to bend upward the tendrils and incline the vine toward the parent trunk. You come from feeding your flocks, big with promise: and you come with the sling of Israel's chosen one to meet the Goliaths.
