Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 25.djvu/106

88 naturally the foe of autocracy in state and industry, the undoubted enemy of vice and intemperance, the certain opponent of greed in places high and low. He must be the friend of all. By the very nature of his position he knows every class, and in his own person and by the Church of which he is the exponent, unifies society as nothing else can. The minister, whether as Circuit Rider in pioneer conditions, or the son of the Circuit Rider in the more complex life of today, has often inspired ideals of life and service, set in motion beneficent reformation and even revolutions, and profoundly influenced the world-movements which have made human history what it is. He has often become the veritable conscience of the communities where he has labored and the people for whose souls he watched over. He has again and again in his day of power reduced all other figures in the community to comparative insignificance, and ruled from the pulpit as from the throne,—as Savonarola ruled Florence, John Calvin ruled Geneva, and John Knox ruled Scotland.

Although it is not given to many men either in the pulpit or out of it to make great conributions to the life of a whole nation, yet from the earliest days we have record of ministers who gave impulse to the spirit and character of America. It would be but a matter of transcription to give such names as Eliot, the Apostle to the Indians! Hooker, who was the leading spirit in colonizing the Connecticut Valley; Increase Mather, President of Harvard College, and celebrated diplomat; Stiles, the brilliant President of Yale; Witherspoon, President of Princeton, and member of the Continental Congress and signer of the Declaration of Independence; Edward Everett, Conductor of the North American Review, member of Congress for ten years, Governor of Massachusetts,, minister to England, President of Harvard, and Secretary of State; Beecher, whose influence in the dark days of our Civil War is so well known; Marquette, a discoverer and pathfinder in all the middle west; and a