46 Presidential Addresses 



pressure of example, broad charity, and neighborly 

 kindness. 



But to-night we celebrate one hundred years of 

 missionary work done not incidentally, but with 

 set purpose; a hundred years of effort to spread 

 abroad the Gospel and lay the moral foundation upon 

 which all true national greatness must rest. The 

 century that has closed has seen the conquest of this 

 continent by our people. To conquer a continent 

 is rough work. All really great work is rough 

 in the doing, though it seems smooth enough to 

 those who look back upon it, or to the contempor 

 aries who overlook it from afar. We need display 

 but scant patience with those who, sitting at ease in 

 their own homes, delight to exercise a querulous and 

 censorious spirit of judgment upon their brethren 

 who, whatever their shortcomings, are doing strong 

 men's work as they bring the light of civilization 

 into the world's dark places. The criticism of those 

 who live softly, remote from the strife, is of little 

 value; but it would be difficult to overestimate the 

 value of the missionary work of those who go out 

 to share the hardship, and, while sharing it, not to 

 talk, but to wage war against the myriad forms of 

 brutality. It is such missionary work that prevents 

 the pioneers from sinking perilously near the level 

 of the savage race against which they war. With 

 out it the conquest of this continent would have had 

 little but an animal side. Without it the pioneers' 

 fierce and rude virtues and sombre faults would 

 have remained unlit by the flame of pure and loving 



