Presidential addresses and state papers, Volume 2 (of 7)Roosevelt, Theodore
History
Presidential addresses and state papers, Volume 2 (of 7)
Roosevelt, Theodore
Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919; United States -- Politics and government -- 1901-1909
I shall ask your attention to three lines of the Dedication Canticle:
“Serve the Lord with gladness: enter into His gates with thanksgiving,
and into His courts with praise. Who shall ascend into the hill of the
Lord? or who shall stand in His holy place? He that hath clean hands,
and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul with vanity, nor
sworn deceitfully.”
Better lines could surely not be brought into any dedication service
of a church; and it is a happy thing that we should have repeated them
this morning. This church is consecrated to the service of the Lord;
and we can serve Him by the way we serve our fellow-men. This church
is consecrated to service and duty. It was written of old that “by
their fruits ye shall know them”; and we can show the faith that is in
us, we can show the sincerity of our devotion, by the fruits we bring
forth. The man who is not a tender and considerate husband, a loving
and wise father, is not serving the Lord when he goes to church; so
with the woman; so with all who come here. Our being in this church,
our communion here with one another, our sitting under the pastor and
hearing from him the word of God, must, if we are sincere, show their
effects in our lives outside.
We of the Dutch and German Reformed Churches, like our brethren of
the Lutheran Church, have a peculiar duty to perform in this great
country of ours, a country still in the making, for we have the duty
peculiarly incumbent upon us to take care of our brethren who come
each year from over seas to our shores. The man going to a new country
is torn by the roots from all his old associations, and there is
great danger to him in the time before he gets his roots down into
the new country, before he brings himself into touch with his fellows
in the new land. For that reason I always take a peculiar interest in
the attitude of our churches toward the immigrants who come to these
shores. I feel that we should be peculiarly watchful over them,
because of our own history, because we or our fathers came here under
like conditions. Now that we have established ourselves let us see
to it that we stretch out the hand of help, the hand of brotherhood,
toward the new-comers, and help them as speedily as possible to get
into such relations that it will be easy for them to walk well in the
new life. We are not to be excused if we selfishly sit down and enjoy
gifts that have been given to us and do not try to share them with our
poorer fellows coming from every part of the world, who many of them
stand in such need of the helping hand; who often not only meet too
many people anxious to associate with them for their detriment, but
often too few anxious to associate with them for their good.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account