Our conscience fettered by tradition stultifies its own
life. We must go forward or die.
"Theology is a science, religion a life. The one is a fact, the
other an analysis after the fact. The stage-coach yielded to the
limited, the sailing craft to the ocean greyhound, but we are told
that the only age that ever knew the truth, or had the right to
express it, was the age which burned witches, executed dumb animals
as criminals, whipped church bells for heresy, held chemistry a black
art and electricity a manifestation of the devil or the Shekina of
God.
"The men to whom I speak have seen New York grow from a town of
three hundred thousand on the lower end of Manhattan Island to be
the imperial metropolis of the New World with four millions within
her golden gates.
"Within a generation, the Brooklyn Bridge, a dream in the brain
of a man, has spun its spider web of steel across the river, our
buildings grown from four stories to towering castles of steel with
their flag-staffs in the clouds.
"Our nation has been baptised in blood and a new Constitution
established.
"The German Empire has been created, and a new map of the world
made.
"Steam and electricity have been applied to travel and speech,
and the earth transformed into a whispering gallery.
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