"Whenever the general could be spared from the camp on the Sabbath, he never failed to ride to some neighboring church to join in the worship of God." He claimed no praise for his matchless victories, but reverently gave all the glory to the blessing and protection of God. He knew, in the words of my friend Robert C. Winthrop, that "There can be no independence of God." The poet will sing and the orator describe eloquently the pageant of that day, but no incident will so touch the Christian's heart as the first act of the president of the United States, kneeling reverently with his fellow-citizens in the public worship of God. The service which had been set forth and was this day used in St. Paul's Church by Bishop Provost, also a patriot of the Revolution, and one who had suffered for his country's sake, was substantially the same used by us to-day. Washington assumed office in the midst of dangers. Edmund Randolph, one of the foremost members of the constitutional convention, wrote to Washington, "The Constitution would never have been adopted but for the knowledge that you sanctioned it, and the expectation that you would execute it. It is in state of probation. You alone can give it stability." There was a stormy sea before the new ship of state. The bitter hatreds between Federalist and anti-Federalist were not healed. Two states had not ratified the Constitution--there were tokens in more than one direction of rebellion. Without on dollar in the treasury, we were eighty millions in debt. The pirates of Morocco had destroyed our commerce in the Mediterranean, Spain threatened the valley of the Mississippi. Our relations with England were full of bitter memories; a country larger than Europe was to be protected, and we had a standing army of only 600 men. Washington called around him as advisers Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of Foreign Affairs; Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury; Henry Knox, Secretary of War; Edmund Randolph, Attorney-General, and John Jay, Chief Justice, and by these men, under God, the crumbling confederacy was cemented into one nation. Time forbids my reading you the words of wisdom, "apples of gold in pictures of silver," of Washington's inaugural and farewell addresses. I wish I had time to tell how, with a prophet's eye, he saw the future of the West, and again and again urged the opening of lines of commerce to bind East and West together. After eight years of wise rule, such as befitted "the Father of our Country," he retired to the shades of Mt. Vernon, to be, as he had been through life, the helper of the helpless, the friend of the needy and the almoner of God. On the 12th of December, 1799, he was exposed to a storm of sleet and rain, the severest form of quinsy set in; two days later, the 14th of December, he died. As friends stood weeping around his death-bed, he said with a smile, "O don't, don't; I am dying, but thank God I am not afraid to die." As the hour of his death drew near