where the disciples knelt to receive the outpouring of the Holy Ghost, and where they had seen the risen Christ, and heard His "Peace be with you." As we remember this, we feel that we are doing no isolated work, when we seek to restore to something of its ancient beauty and former dignity this old fane, but that we are building the house which our fathers builded these many years ago, and which is not finished.
As we go forth to this new task, we do not break with the old traditions, but we make them all the more sure. It is your church, but not yours alone. It is the church of those who have gone before, many of whom sleep in the quiet graves around us. Of the men who, while here as representatives in the Virginia House of Burgesses, helped to lay the foundations of our Anglo-Saxon civilization in this republic, who were the pioneers of the great nation. They had their faults, but they had also their strong virtues. They were real men of God, and they showed their devotion to the Christ when they built a church strong to stand the wear and tear of time, and beautiful as an expression of their thought that the House of God should be the fairest and stateliest in the community. It is your Church, but it is also the Church of the men who took the foremost part in asserting the principle of independence, in securing for America the great boon of civil and religious liberty. Into the making of these great Virginians of the Revolutionary period, without whom there would have been no victory and no ordered state, this Church had a large part. They were what they were because they had been trained by her services, because they had been taught from Bible, and Prayer Book and Catechism their duty to God and to man. It is your Church, but it is also the Church of the men and women who have gone before you. You are entering upon their labors, "building the house which they builded, which has been building many years, and which is not finished."
It is your Church, but it is also the Church of those who are to come after you; the Church of many generations,
