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My beloved brethren, who have come all the way from the Pacific to the Atlantic shore, from the Palmetto to the Pine Tree State, I greet you; my hand may not touch yours to-day, but my heart will with tenderness untalkable.

His Honor, Mayor Woodworth, has welcomed you to Concord most graciously, voicing the friendship of this city and of my native State — loyal to the heart's core to religion, home, friends, and country.

To-day we commemorate not only our nation's civil and religious freedom, but a greater even, the liberty of the sons of God, the inalienable rights and radiant reality of Christianity, whereof our Master said: “The works that I do shall he do;” and, “The kingdom of God cometh not with observation” (with knowledge obtained from the senses), but “the kingdom of God is within you,” — within the present possibilities of mankind.

Think of this inheritance! Heaven right here, where angels are as men, clothed more lightly, and men as angels who, burdened for an hour, spring into liberty, and the good they would do, that they do, and the evil they would not do, that they do not. From the falling leaves of old-time faiths men learn a parable of the period, that all error, physical, moral, or religious, will fall before Truth demonstrated, even as dry leaves fall to enrich the soil for fruitage.

Sin, sickness, and disease flee before the evangel of Truth as the mountain mists before the sun. Truth is