Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 25.djvu/108

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
90
William O. Shepard

and Coleman and Hawley, local preacher and President for ten years, and as long an unchallenged Congressman, and Homan, and last but not least, Carl Gregg Doney.

While it is only suggestive of a much larger list, it is sufficient for our purpose. Time does not permit even a mention of the long array of ministers and ministerssons who have inspired the people to patriotic action in the periods of storm and stress in American history, or who have given America its literary masterpieces. It is enough to mention in this connection Henry Ward Beecher, Lyman Abbott, Jared Sparks, Jacob and John Abbott, Thomas Starr King, Samuel Smith, the author of "My Country 'Tis of Thee," Theodore Parker, William Ellery Channing, Phillips Brooks, Henry Van Dyke, Edward Everett Hale, Edward Eggleston, and Newell Dwight Hillis, just closing his quarter of a century of a pastorate in Brooklyn.

The minister preaches two fundamental truths, one has to do with man's relation to his Creator, and the other has to do with man's relation to man. He would break down the barriers between God and man, and between man and man. He is forever the ambassador of peace, and in the Gospel which he preaches is the best hope of humanity that the demons of suspicion and hatred and aggression shall finally be exorcised, and nations learn war no more. His eye is ever upon that vast tomorrow when battle flags shall be furled "In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world."

I am here, however, not to eulogize the ministry, but to say that this statue standing on the state-house grounds of a far western state, is a most appropriate testimony to the contribution that the Circuit Rider and the settled pastor have made to American life. It commemorates in a worthy way those knights of Christ who suffered great hardships that the following generations might know something better than hardship and struggle, that every common citizen might have an opportunity for a decent competence, and that every child might have an oppor-