Page:A Memorial of John Boyle O'Reilly from the City of Boston.djvu/46

40 for the world, that it might well make a man willing to die before he is fifty, if he could contribute but a little towards accomplishing it,—the reconciliation in this community between the Roman Catholic Irishman and the Protestant American.

That was the mission that Boyle O'Reilly seemed just as distinctly sent among us to do, as if he had been born with that mission stamped upon his forehead, and as if a hundred vicar-generals had anointed and ordained him for the work.

And in doing this work he showed not merely the lovableness of his temperament, but its farsightedness. He knew that unless that work could be done, our city and our State and our country are confessed failures. He knew that American civilization was a failure if it was only large enough to furnish a safe and convenient shelter for the descendants of Puritans and Anglo-Saxons, leaving Irishmen and Catholics outside.

In doing that work he became our teacher. Himself a self-liberated convict, he set us free. Himself a faithful advocate of a great and powerful religion, he taught a standard of religious toleration such as many a Protestant has yet to learn.

Why, even here in Tremont Temple, they have not always got up to the level of that. And when he came to speak at Plymouth, or to speak of Wendell Phillips, he showed himself an American of the Americans in sympathy. He saw points in our history and