statesmen and the electorate alike, it is doomed to failure and its failure
is likely to pull the state down with it.

Finally, I would leave this thought with you—a statement by Rabbi
Stephen Wise in his autobiography. Rabbi Wise said:

"Religion is a vision or ideal of life. Politics is a method, or modus
vivendi. To say that the minister should not go into politics is to imply
that ideal and reality are twain and alien. Politics is what it is because
religion keeps out of it. "

I believe that ideal and reality should be as one, and I agree with
Rabbi Wise that politics suffers because there is not enough religion
in it.

PENINSULA ANNUAL CONFERENCE
OF THE METHODIST CHURCH

SALISBURY

May 15, 1959

It is a pleasure and high honor to me, an Eastern Shoreman and a
Methodist, to have this opportunity to join with you again in this
annual session of the Peninsula Conference.

In speaking of our church, I like to recall the story that is told of the
saintly Joshua Thomas, the island preacher who more than a century
ago was spreading the Christian Gospels and the doctrines of John
Wesley through the lower counties and islands of our peninsula. Joshua
Thomas, who had launched his canoe nearby, was preaching—or rather
exhorting, as he liked to call it—at a little place called Rockawalking.
His topic was religious denominations in their relation with the general
Church of Christ, and he had this to say:

"Not one branch of the true vine but brings forth some good fruit.
I love all the people who love my God in sincerity. But I love the
Methodists a little more than any other. "

He went on to say that he had always sought the best light and that
he had found it with the Methodists. There are many of us here who
have shared Brother Thomas' experience and have found what to us is the
"best light" in the bosom of our church.

The capacity to detect evil and to propose the methods for abolish-
ing it were the mark of the preachers and exhorters who planted

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