INTELLECTUAL AND SPIRITUAL PIONEERS

WILLIAM H. P. FAUNCE

(1908)

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WILLIAM HERBERT PERRY FAUNCE (1859- ), educator, was born at Worcester, Massachusetts. He graduated from Brown University; was ordained to Baptist ministry and became pastor of a church in Springfield, Massachusetts. In 1899 he was elected president of Brown University.

Rhode Island has given to the country at large the finest example of the spirit and work of the normal and religious pioneer. The true explorers are not always the men who discover lakes and rivers or ride for the first time through burning deserts or across snowy mountain passes. The real pioneers are those who push out the boundaries of the human spirit, open up routes of intellectual commerce, and establish outposts of human freedom. If we honor Coronado 2 and De Soto and Fremont and Major Powell,5 much more we honor the men who have gone "voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone," the men who blazed a path

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1 From an address of President W. H. P. Faunce, delivered on Rhode Island Day at the Jamestown Centennial Exposition.

2 Coronado, a Spanish governor of Mexico, who conquered the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and explored as far north as the Platt River in his search for gold (1540-1542).

3 Ferdinand de Soto, the explorer of Florida and discoverer of the Mississippi (1539–1542). He, like Coronado, made his discoveries while searching for gold.

4 John C. Fremont of California, pioneer and explorer. In 1856 he was a candidate for the presidency.

5 Major John Wesley Powell, born in 1834, the explorer of the Colorado Cañon and other regions in the West, and director of the United States Geological Survey.

through the forests and thickets of ancient prejudice; the men who have slain the beasts of tyranny and cruelty and built homes for liberty and truth.

Roger Williams1 and his associates were not merely laying the frontier of the modern world. They were incarnating in an actually existing commonwealth the visions which had come many times to poets and statesmen, but which seemed too good to be true. Others had affirmed the majesty of the human conscience. Others had declared that neither political nor ecclesiastical functionary might come between the soul and its God. Others had affirmed the separation of the civil and religious realm. Roger Williams was the first man to found a State on that principle of separation, a State whose fundamental compact was a promise of allegiance and obedience "in civil things only." Cut in the gleaming marble of the façade of the Rhode Island Capitol is the sentence in which he sets forth his great ideal: "To hold forth a lively experiment that a most flourishing civil state may stand and best be maintained with full liberty in religious concernments." This ideal was the basis of the original compact, and was incorporated into the charter granted by King Charles in 1663: "No person within said colony at any time hereafter shall be in any wise molested, punished, disquieted, or called in question, for any difference of opinion in matters of religion, who does not actively disturb the civil peace of our said colony." Roger Williams's principle was not the fruit of logic, it was with him a primary conviction. It was the fun

1 Roger Williams (1599–1683), the founder of Rhode Island. He left England in 1630 and became a minister at Salem. From

damental principle of Puritanism fully understood and heartily followed. It has now become the corner stone of modern political doctrine, accepted more or less consistently by all civilized States. But to discern its truth early in the seventeenth century, to embody it in a heroic and stainless life, and to build it into the foundation of an enduring State is the unique and unfading distinction of the founder of Rhode Island.

In the world to-day there is not much more room for the physical pioneer. The great American desert is vanishing, the dark continent is shot through with light, and even the north pole is besieged by expeditions that cannot long fail of success. But the moral pioneer is to-day more clearly called for than ever before in history. Our country is demanding the fearless application of its moral standard in the realms of industry, commerce, finance, and international law. Our country is turning wearily away from captains of industry who are merely "law honest," and from political leaders who are turning public office into private plunder. The public are eagerly asking for men who can courageously lead the way into the complete moralization of industry and the public service. The men who render greatest service to their country are not those who pile marble to the twentieth story, or whiten the seas with ships, or organize gigantic enterprises. They are those that give us a deeper sense of the things that abide, a clearer vision of public duty, a loftier standard by which to live and die.

this colony he was expelled for heresy. He, with some adherents, founded a new colony, where there should be complete religious toleration (1636).

PATRIOTISM1

ARCHBISHOP O'CONNELL

(1910)

HIS GRACE, MOST REVEREND WILLIAM H. O'CONNELL (1859-), was born at Lowell, Massachusetts. He was educated in Boston College, and after graduating in 1881 continued his ecclesiastical studies in Rome. Following a period of service in the priesthood in America, Father O'Connell became rector of the American College in Rome. In 1901 he was appointed bishop of Portland, Maine, and in 1905 was sent by the Pope to Japan as special envoy in the interests of the church. While there he won the friendship of the Mikado, who conferred special honors upon him. During his absence from this country he was appointed Coadjutor to the Archbishop of Boston, and two years later, upon the death of the venerable Archbishop Williams, Archbishop O'Connell succeeded to the full duties of the Archdiocese.

Patriotism, the love of one's native land, has ever been considered by all humanity among the most hallowed of all the highest and noblest human sentiments. What the love of life and personal honor is to the individual, patriotism is to the nation. Its roots may be traced to the most sacred principles of our nature.

Every human being born into this world has a place and a duty allotted to him, definite and limited; he is to work out his human destiny in certain surroundings, in certain relationships with his fellow men. The place where his eyes first opened to the light of day is ever to him a sacred spot. The roof under which he was

1 From a lecture delivered before the conference of Saint Vincent de Paul, Boston, February, 1910.

By special permission of his Grace, Archbishop William H. O'Connell.

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born, the playgrounds of his early childhood, the little school where first he learned to read, the village church where as child and youth and man he held sacred intercourse with God, these to each of us are among the most sacred things of life.

The home, the family fireside, the tender maternal care, the watchful father's guidance, the playmates, the friends, — all these are the golden treasures of life. The great ones of the earth amid all their glory, pomp, and state, have always cherished them as a most sacred memory. Be they all ever so lowly, they are still the sweetest things in all life, and all this, elevated, enlarged, and consecrated, is what men call Patriotism.

Patriotism has given birth to the most sublime heroism, and the most noble devotion of which the human heart is capable. It is a passion which grows with age. The exile sighs for the green hills of his own land, and pines for the soft, flowing river where he dreamed his youth away.

Strong men, little moved by other things, have grown heartsick at the thought of their distant home, and, in the midst of all that strange lands could offer them, have often wept, as, at the recurrence of some timehonored festival, memory carried them back over years and continents and seas to the cot of their youth and "the little window where the sun came peeping in at morn."

It is all so intimately a part of human life, this great passion for home and native land, that men, again and again, with joy, lay down their lives for it.

A free people can never endure the tyranny of a stranger enforced by the domination of might and