Article April 12, 1913 Issue

FROM OUR EXCHANGES

with contributions from Woodrow Wilson, R. J. Campbell

[Woodrow Wilson as reported in New York (N. Y.) Times.]

Every community ought to realize, it seems to me, that the search for God takes precedence over everything else. What is the foundation of our life? What is the source of our strength? Where is our salvation? Not in ourselves, but in something external to ourselves and greater than ourselves, from which we are to arise. So the first thought that I have in standing here tonight is, that these walls have witnessed the permanent impulses and instincts of human life, that they are greater than the walls of cities. And the second thing that I have in mind is this: that this search is fruitless if it issues in mere conclusion, if it issues in mere intellectual certitudes; it is fruitless unless it gets embodied in men.

I have seen this beautiful thing happen, and I know that the salvation of a church and the salvation of a community and the salvation of a state is to be found only in those men who are thus rendered greater than themselves and greater than their age, and greater than anything that can happen to them. Those old martyrs who went to the stake smiling and singing songs of praise were terrible fellows; terrible because their very gaiety in going to the stake was evidence of the fact that this was an incident, not an end; that this meant nothing, and that after them their ashes would seem to speak the condemnation of those who put them to the stake, and stand up and condemn the generation that dared interfere with the processes of divine Providence.

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