"when despair grips us. There are times when we must fight the fight alone. Then it is that we need our faith. We shall be overcome without the armor and sword of Christian. But with courage born of deep faith, faith like Christ had, we may face the darkest, most dismal hour and put to flight the hosts of aliens."

We hear much about the distinctive American novel, biography, musical composition. What of the distinctive American sermon? It is doubtful if a sermon was ever preached from an American pulpit the superior of Roosevelt's "The Strenuous Life," which, by the way, he said he wished he had called "The Vigor of Life," as better describing what he With what grand rhythm and high

aim it begins!

"I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach the highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires more

easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph."

"A life of slothful ease, a life of that peace which springs merely from the lack either of desire or of power to strive after great things, is as little worthy of a nation as of an individual... In the last analysis a healthy state can exist only when the men and women who make it up lead clean, vigorous, healthy lives; when the children are so trained that they shall endeavor, not to shirk difficulties, but to overcome them; not to seek ease, but to know how to wrest triumph from toil and risk. The man must be glad to do a man's work, to dare and endure and to labor; to keep himself, and to keep those dependent upon him. The woman must be the housewife, the helpmeet of the home-maker, the wise and fearless mother of many healthy children.

"I preach to you, then, my countrymen, that our country calls not for the life of ease, but

for the life of strenuous endeavor. The twentieth century looms before us big with the fate of many nations.... Let us boldly face the life of strife, resolute to do our duty well and manfully; resolute to uphold righteousness by deed and by word; resolute to be both honest and brave, to serve high ideals, yet to use practical methods. Above all, let us shrink from no strife, moral or physical, within or without the nation, provided we are certain that the strife is justified, for it is only through strife, through hard and dangerous endeavor, that we shall ultimately win the goal of true national greatness."

"I am accused of preaching," he once said with a laugh to a group of friends, "but I have such a bully pulpit!"

His pulpit was the legislative hall at Albany, the pioneer county of the Dakota Bad Lands, the police commissioner's office at Mulberry Street, the battlefield, the executive mansion of New York, the White House, the game trails of Africa, the untrodden Brazilian wild

erness, his home at Sagamore Hill; and his parish was the entire American nation, yes, the world. Surely he is entitled to pass on into history the greatest preacher of moral and spiritual virtue of this generation.