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ADDRESS TO THE NEW GENERATION. 
 
 Masbinoton anb Xincoliv 
 
 February 12 and 22, 1888. 
 
 DAVID SWING, 
 
 I'ASTOK OK CENTRAL CHURCH, CHICAGO. 
 
 Pi'hi.ished hy W. A. Tam oi r. 
 
 OF ROCKFOKD, ILL. 
 
ADDRESS TO THE NEW GENERATION. 
 
 Masbington an6 Xincoln. 
 
 February 12 and 22, 1888, 
 
 DAVID SWING, 
 
 PASTOR OF CENTRAL CHURCH, CHICAGO, 
 
 )C C. 
 
 Pqblished bv W. a. Talcott, 
 
 OF ROCKFOKD, ILL. 
 
 (..APr. 16 1888 '' 
 

[PUBLISHER'S NOTE.] 
 
 RocKFORD, III., February 22, 1888. 
 
 De.'^r Friend, — Upon reading this address, I felt, as a business man 
 and citizen, a very strong desire to have it read by as many as possible of 
 the young vi^omen and young men of our country, — those who are still in 
 schools and colleges., but who must soon take up and discharge the duties 
 and responsibilities of home life and citizenship, — believing that it would be 
 to them a help and an inspiration, valuable and lasting. Acting upon this 
 desire, I asked for, and obtained, permission to publish it. 
 
 To all who may receive a copy, I make this request, that you will aid in 
 its mission of usefulness by having it read as widely as possible. This can 
 be secured by public reading at gatherings of Students, Literary Clubs 
 and Societies, and at Church prayer-meetings, sociables, Christian Endeavor 
 Society gatherings, and other social meetings. 
 
 I shall be glad to furnish copies, upon request. 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 William A. Talcott. 
 
Ma^Ijington ant) ^.antolii. 
 
 As our Nation grows older, and adds to its moral worth as 
 rapidly as it adds to its years, its memorial days will become 
 more significant, and no statesman or editor or clergyman will 
 pass unconsciously such graves as those of Washington or 
 Lincoln. The Greeks and Latins celebrated the death-days 
 of their great men because greatness did not reach its climax 
 at the cradle, but nearer the tomb. Our country, in regard- 
 ing the birthdays of its distinguished sons, has in heart the 
 same feelings which the classics cherished, and uses the joy 
 and beauty of the cradle only as an emblem of the subsequent 
 splendor of life. Any day taken from that career which 
 ended in 1799, the day in October when Cornwallis surren- 
 dered to Washington, would answer as well as the day in 
 February for a trumpet call to awaken an unequalled memory. 
 Be the hour that of cradle or inauguration or farewell 
 address or grave, it recalls the one great historic fact. The 
 American habit of taking up the birthday as an emblem of 
 the whole page or volume in history is well, for there the 
 first smile of life is seen, and the cradle is less sad than the 
 sepulchre. 
 
 This smallest month in the year is ornamented by the 
 two greatest birthdays recorded upon our continent — those of 
 Washington and Lincoln. February 12 will by degrees become 
 the associate in love and memory of February 22, and both 
 will advance in honor with the advance of public patriotism 
 
t) 
 
 and culture. Only ten years lay between the death of Wash- 
 ington and the birth of Abraham Lincoln. In that little 
 interregnum the people ruled just as they do now when both 
 kings have long been absent from the land they loved. But 
 we should all see to it that the absence is only that of the 
 material form, not that of the soul. The bookmaker, the 
 journalist, the politician, the preacher, the poet, and the 
 painter should carry onward the spirit of these men, and make 
 them to be the same moral forces in the morrow they were in 
 the yesterday. What the old saints are to Christianity these 
 two patriots are to our country. Take from beneath our 
 churches the Christ and the Saints Paul and John, and 
 although each truth of a natural religion would remain, what 
 a coldness would be felt in its walls ! How hearts would 
 freeze at the altars ! So our Nation does not repose upon 
 early abstract ideas, but also upon the warm hearts which 
 once beat along the Potomac and in the prairies of Illinois. 
 
 Society is moved not simply by its truths, but also by its 
 attachments, and doubly fortunate and successful is it when 
 its attachments bind it to the best truths. Men love their 
 country, right or wrong ; but fortunate is our Nation in that 
 its great heroic characters were in perfect harmony with the 
 most refined light, and thus truth and sentiment are in full 
 partnership. There have been States which have had to 
 apologize for the defects of their heroes — their Csesars or 
 Napoleons or Georges — their emperors or queens or czars : 
 but fortunate was this February in those two cradles over 
 which attachment and philosophy join in unusual accord. 
 Love sees nothing that need be forgiven. Patriotism and 
 reason meet over these birthdays, and, willing to love country, 
 right or wrong, men may love it all the more in this unsullied 
 memory of right. 
 
Next to the saints of religion must be ranked in all our 
 minds these saints of our country ; because our Nation asks 
 not for political theory only, but for a worship, a friendship 
 that can conquer and hope like the faith of the Christian. 
 When an enemy rises up against this Republic it must always 
 find not a mere soulless corporation, but a passion, a senti- 
 ment which will pluck up trees by the root and toss mountains 
 into the sea. A mother defends her child not only because of 
 right and principle, but also because of her affection. Thus 
 great, pure leaders, like those of historic memory, enlarge 
 political philosophy into devotion. It helped our nation in 
 its dark days of 1770 and 1861, that its two leaders were so 
 worthy of admiration. The soldiers of Valley Forge saw in 
 their general a lofty character for whom they could endure 
 privations, in whom they could trust. When they were cold 
 and hungry and homesick they were still inspired by the merit 
 of their commander. He had separated himself from his 
 wealth and its peace to be a soldier against the greatest power 
 upon earth ; the troops saw that moral worth, and were 
 cheered by the vision when all other scenes were darkened. 
 When Baron Steuben, an ardent volunteer from the German 
 army, saw the troops at Valley Forge, their want of all the 
 comforts of life, he wondered what held the soldiers so firmly 
 to their post of duty. It was a moral power that held them — 
 the hope of a free nation and faith in their chieftain. In 
 Philadelphia the British army, from the highest to the hum- 
 blest, was spending in carousal the winter months which the 
 colonial troops were spending in all forms of discomfort. One 
 British officer kept a gambling house in which the common 
 soldiers were robbed of their gold. Thus was the British 
 army a military machine, while the American army was a 
 band of men with a soul in it — an army of 6,000 friends of 
 
freedom and of Washington. Washington's dining-room of 
 logs, in which banqueting hall that could be duplicated for $50, 
 there was simple food and no carousal, became an emblem of 
 the kind of leader the file was trusting and following. 
 
 This scene was repeated in the war of the secession. 
 Whatever the hardships of the soldiers in that long and awful 
 war, the troops could always think of Abraham Lincoln as 
 being in full sympathy with them, as knowing what labor and 
 privation were, and as being willing to die, if need be, for the 
 welfare of the country. The fame of other men arose and 
 fell, but Mr. Lincoln's shone with a steady beam, however 
 dark the night. All the simplicity and honesty of his charac- 
 ter, the hardships of his early life, added to the impressiveness 
 of his name. His history made him the basis of songs and of 
 a deep admiration. 
 
 It is wonderful that two such men, so similar, so grand in 
 intellect and morals, came to our Nation in its hour of great- 
 est need. The need did not create them ; it simply found 
 them. George Washington was just as honest and noble when 
 he was twenty, and twenty years before the independence, as he 
 was in the revolution. When discontent about rank and pay 
 sprang up in the Indian war, Major Washington, then tw^enty- 
 two, said he should as soon serve as a private as serve as an 
 officer, and for small pay as for large pay ; that he would re- 
 main with his regiment on the Ohio under any possible arrange- 
 ment. Thus the subsequent revolution did not make Wash- 
 ington ; it only found him. 
 
 Thus came Abraham Lincoln into our country, not created 
 by the war of the rebellion, but created previously in the mys- 
 terious laboratory of nature. He was simple in life, clear in 
 his views of right and duty, firm in his will long before the 
 flag of war w^as unfurled. Circumstances ought to have made 
 
a hero and patriot out of James Buchanan, but they were 
 unequal to the large task ; they ought to have fashioned a 
 leader out of Stephen A. Douglas, but they could not teach 
 him the whole of the right as to territories where no slave 
 had ever been. Circumstances did not fit Wendell Phillips 
 nor Mr. Garrison for the highest office, for neither of them 
 could have carried that heart of justice towards the South 
 which the times required. Many men came near being 
 worthy, but some valuable element seemed wanting until this 
 singular character was led up out of the high grass of Illinois. 
 He was a marvellous combination of intellectual power and of 
 the sentiment of right. An English reporter who had come to 
 this country expressly to ridicule Mr. Lincoln for an English 
 paper (the London Fiinc/i) gave up at last his task, and con- 
 fessed in a long, rich poem his poor estimate of the Western 
 woodsman : 
 
 My shallow judgment I have learned to rue, 
 
 Noting how to occasion's height he rose ; 
 How his quaint wit made home-truth seem more true, 
 
 How iron-like his temper grew by blows. 
 
 How humble, yet how hopeful, he could be ; 
 
 How, in good fortune and in ill, the same ; 
 Not bitter in success nor boastful he, 
 
 Thirsty for gold nor feverish for fame. 
 
 He went about his work — such work as few 
 
 Ever had laid on head or heart and hand — 
 As one who knows when there's a task to do 
 
 Man's honest will will heaven's good grace command. 
 ****** 
 The words of mercy were upon his lips. 
 
 Forgiveness in his heart and on his pen, 
 When the red murderer brought a swift eclipse 
 
 To thoughts of " peace on earth, good will to men." 
 
 The old world and the new from sea to sea 
 
 Utter one voice of sympathy and shame ; 
 Sore heart, so stopped when it at last beat high ; 
 
 Sad life, cut short just as its triumph came. 
 
10 
 
 Great memory of our country, that in ten years after the 
 death of Washington this child was oper.ing its eyes upon a 
 continent that was to make it a part of its second great drama ! 
 
 So far is our day from the time of Washington that many 
 details have fallen out of the picture, and there remains the 
 form without the life. To the new generation that man, once 
 called the " Saviour of His Country " and the " Father of His 
 Country," has become as dead and cold as a marble statue of 
 some ancient Greek or Roman. The calm forehead and 
 noble face remain, but the human nature which still comes to 
 us when the name of Lincoln is pronounced has fallen away. 
 But this is not time's fault, it is the fault of the new genera- 
 tion ; for God has made the mind such that it can recall past 
 years and fill itself with living pictures. Nature offers no 
 reward to mental indolence. It hates an idler in any field. 
 If the passion for property has injured all love of literature, 
 and if so far as literary taste remains it prefers a foolish novel 
 to the greatest pages of history, certainly in such an age a few 
 years will blot out scenes the most wonderful and events the 
 most thrilling. The law of nature is that to the industrious 
 mind pursuing the best paths, the past shall be made almost 
 as vivid as the present. Not eighteen hundred years can 
 destroy the picture of the living Jesus, a hundred years can 
 not turn into dead rock the fathers of the Nation. 
 
 Man is the only animal to which nature has granted the 
 power of seeing the past. The brute lives by the day ; but 
 each educated soul carries hundreds of years in the heart. 
 Thus life is endeared, and the youth of twenty may seem to be 
 living in a day thirty centuries in length. But all this land- 
 scape depends for its breadth and beauty upon the mind's 
 activity. When one comes to the Mississippi one can see 
 only a muddy stream, or he can behold that stream with 
 
11 
 
 De Soto at its mouth and red men on its banks three hundred 
 years ago ; and when the same heart comes to the Potomac 
 it may see only the fishing-boys and the negroes lying idly in 
 the sun, or it may see Washington there in those days whose 
 suns went down a hundred years before the sun of this sacred 
 morning came. Man's present is only an hour or two, but 
 when his mind is awakened the past and future are melted 
 into the present, and make each passing hour great in its 
 associations and hopes. 
 
 Not all minds may indeed possess the same power of 
 recalling the past, but the common mental attributes are quite 
 uniformly distributed, and few are the young persons of to-day 
 who could not, if so they wished, recall the bygone times until 
 they could hear the leaves rustle, in the autumn, under the 
 foot of George AVashington, could hear the axe of young 
 Lincoln sounding afar in the lonely woods, could even see 
 Jesus of Nazareth in his cottage in the Galilean hills or in the 
 streets of Jerusalem. God made the soul too great to lie 
 poised upon the present moment. It should rest upon the 
 past and the future. But if the mind possesses no activity, or 
 if its activity is exhausted upon transient and worthless litera- 
 ture the past falls out of life, and all the grand ones from the 
 Divine Christ to the human Washington and Lincoln are only 
 names without any meaning. Often are they made the sub- 
 jects of ridicule or wit by hearts that have never measured 
 the greatness of the lives for which the names stand. The 
 philosophy of that revival of interest in the birthdays of our 
 two greatest men is the hope that the new generation may 
 grasp the past of the Nation and may pass from ignorance to 
 knowledge and from silly ridicule to deep admiration. 
 
 One of the best lessons to be read from these two names 
 is the warmth of their hearts. There was no indifference in 
 
12 
 
 these characters. Great as their minds were, they were also 
 powerful in their affections. Washington suffers now from the 
 peculiar dignity of the old literary style. That style, perfected 
 by Addison and Johnson, made a letter from friend to friend 
 as pompous as a President's message or a King's address to a 
 Parliament. Hamilton, George Washington, and Martha, 
 each man and woman, used the style of Edmund Burke ; and 
 a love letter read like an oration. But translating Washington's 
 letters into the simple English of to-day, he is seen at once to 
 have been a man of deep love, with his country one of the 
 chief objects of his passion. The kindness and pathos of Mr. 
 Lincoln are better seen because they are expressed in the 
 dialect of our time, while the same qualities in Washington 
 are toned down by the stateliness of the Miltonian English. 
 When Washington had bidden good-by to LaFayette he fol- 
 lowed the noble French patriot with a letter which shows the 
 tenderness of the American's heart : 
 
 " In the moment of our separation, upon the road as we 
 traveled and every hour since, I have felt all that love, respect 
 and attachment for you with which length of years, close con- 
 nection, and your merits have inspired me. I often asked 
 myself, as our carriages separated, whether that was the last 
 sight I should ever have of you. My fears answered yes. I 
 called to mind the days of my youth that they had long fled 
 to return no more ; that I was now descending the hill I had 
 been fifty-two years in climbing, and that though I was blessed 
 with a good constitution I was of a short-lived family, and 
 might soon expect to be entombed in the mansion of my 
 fathers. These thoughts darkened the shades and gave a 
 gloom to the picture, and consequently to my prospects of 
 seeing you again." 
 
 Strip the letter of its stateliness and it recalls a tearful 
 
13 
 
 carriage ride from Mt. Vernon to Annapolis. Washington and 
 LaFayette journeying toward the harbor whence the great 
 friend of freedom was to sail for France, ritling along mile 
 after mile in the Indian-summer of Maryland, make a picture 
 which is easily filled with all the friendship and nobleness and 
 pathos of the once real life. It does not ask for much imagi- 
 nation to make that good-by ride so near and real as to make 
 the rattle of the carriages audible and the slow procession 
 visible on a long hillside, and thus visible are the travelers. 
 
 It is of fresh memory that Mr. Lincoln was a man of unu- 
 sual warmth of heart— a twofold reminder in these two names 
 that our age asks for men not of vast wealth and of endless 
 political acuteness, but men who can love the country and be 
 once more as a father full of affection for all the household. 
 Men without affection for their nation make citizens like 
 Benedict Arnold, Aaron Burr, or the advocates of anarchy or 
 political frauds. The country needs only those children who 
 are capable of studying the great pages of history, and of 
 forming tender attachments to all that is good in our National 
 career. It is the evil of our day that the human heart has 
 passed out of power, and that machine natures have attempted 
 to fill up the tremendous vacancy. The treasury at Washing- 
 ton is full, but the Nation's heart is empty. The rights of the 
 negro are not secured to him ; the tremendous frauds of cor- 
 porations are permitted to go on with a growing robbery of 
 the people, and all because the love of the whole country is 
 inactive, and men of great brain have displaced the men of 
 large soul. This disease of the political heart is so infectious 
 that we all are touched with its blight, and look upon our 
 country as only a soulless corporation. 
 
 But our government is not a corporation. It is a vast 
 family of dependent ones where hearts and hands should be 
 
joined for mutual welfare. Washington and Lincoln being 
 absent, the Congress and the President stand in loco parentis, 
 and should carry onward all that old sympathy with the people 
 which made all the old glory of our fathers. A colonial 
 officer once wrote to Washington, suggesting that, in case 
 independence were secured, they establish an American king ; 
 that the people could never rule. Washington quickly wrote 
 to the young aristocrat never to speak or even think of such a 
 result again — that the coming government must be that of the 
 people. Thus was he the people's friend, and now that these 
 States are occupied by fifty millions of people, the need of a 
 friend has not undergone any decline. These millions are not 
 rich, not powerful, they need a government which can secure 
 to them "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." 
 
 That our country is not a cold corporation may be read 
 from the peculiar concomitants in its progress. Our national 
 hymns betray a national soul. Had the old East India Com- 
 pany any hymns ? Has any corporation in our land any great 
 dead ? Any heroic graves, where students and benefactors 
 stand to ponder and admire ? Have these corporations any 
 eloquence like that of Patrick Henry, Henry Clay, Daniel 
 Webster, and of Lincoln at Gettysburg? Have they any self- 
 denial like that of the soldiers who fell at " Yorktown " or in 
 the Wilderness ? Have they any poetry like " The Star 
 Spangled Banner?" Have they any torn and riddled battle- 
 flags ? These words, a part of a vast hymn : 
 
 Oft o'er the seaman's or the soldier's bier 
 
 Droops the dear banner for his glittering pall, 
 
 Where every star might seem an angel's tear, 
 And every stripe Christ's mercy covering all. 
 
 See from the rampart how the freshening breeze. 
 Flings out that flag of splendor, where the Night 
 
 Mingles with flaming Day its blazonries, 
 And spreads its wavy azure, star-bedight. 
 
15 
 
 Did ever the noblest corporation — the London Bank — did 
 the meanest in the world ever fly such a holy banner, and 
 compose such words of eulogy? Ah, no ! our country is not 
 a corporation ; it is a sentiment also, like that which binds 
 the inmates of a home all into one love through life and death. 
 
 Washington and Lincoln should stand as proofs forever 
 that our Nation is a great beating heart, capable of many sor- 
 rows and a many-colored happiness, a great heart like that of 
 a Jesus, which must embrace millions in its measureless affec- 
 tion, and love all equally. All the struggles and disappoint- 
 ments and labors of Washington, all the similar pains and 
 tears of Lincoln tell us that when we come to the words ''our 
 country," we have come to a living soul, that ought to be as 
 omnipotent as the hand of God, as loving and pure as the 
 heart of Jesus, the Son of God and of all humanity. 
 
 Washington came up from Virginia, Lincoln down from 
 Illinois; both came in one spotless honor, in one self-denial, 
 in one patience and labor, in one love of man ; both came in 
 the name of one simple Christianity ; both breathing daily 
 prayers to God ; thus came, ns though to picture a time when 
 Virginia and Illinois, all the South and all the North would 
 be alike one in works, in love, in religion, and in the details 
 of National fame. If any of you young hearts have begun to 
 forget your Nation and its heroes, you would better sit down 
 by her rivers and remember your lost Zion, and weep as the 
 old vision unveils itself, and then pray God to let your right 
 hand forget its cunning rather then permit your soul to empty 
 itself of your country. 
 
BROWN, PETTIBONE A: CO. 
 
 PRINTERS, 
 
 CHICAGO, ILL. 
 
 W 73 
 

 
 
 
 
 
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