The DePew Story Book (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1902. Excerpt: ... MR. BEPEW'S COLUMBIAN ORATION. DELIVERED AT THE WORLD'S FAIR, CHICAGO, IN 1892. This day belongs not to America, but to the world. The results of the events it commemorates are the heritage of the peoples of every race and clime. We celebrate the emancipation of man. The preparation was the work of almost countless centuries; the realization was the revelation of one. The Cross on Cavalry was hope; the cross raised on San Salvador was opportunity. But for the first, Columbus would never have sailed; but for the second, there would have been no place for the planting, the nurture, and the expansion of civil and religious liberty. Ancient history is a dreary record of unstable civilizations. Each reached its zenith of material splendor, and perished. The Assyrian, Persian, Egyptian, Grecian, and Roman Empires were proofs of the possibilities and limitations of man for conquest and intellectual development. Their destruction involved a sum of misery and relapse which made their creation rather a curse than a blessing. Force was the factor in the government of the world when Christ was born, and force was the source and exercise of authority both by Church and State when Columbus sailed from Palos. The Wise Men traveled from the East toward the West under the guidance of the Star of Bethlehem. The 6pirit of the equality of all men before God and the law moved westward from Calvary, with its revolutionary influence upon old institutions-, to the Atlantic Ocean. Columbus carried it westward across the seas. The emigrants from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, from Germany and Holland, from Sweden and Denmark, from France and Italy, from Spain and Portugal, under its guidance and inspiration, moved West, and again West, building states and founding cities un...