50 ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS

Governor Lane combined a warm and friendly personality with the
skill of a great administrator. The courage and leadership he dis-
played in shoring up the State's financial structure, in the face of
public bitterness and even hostility, will be long remembered. So
will his vision in building the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, modernizing
worn State facilities and, in general, moving Maryland out of a post-
war era onto a road of progress.

His loss will be felt by all Marylanders who favor progress and
respect public service.

MESSAGE FOR FIRST UNITARIAN CHURCH, BALTIMORE
(Read by David Shay)

February 10, 1967

Mrs. Agnew and I are disappointed in not being able to be with
you on the 150th anniversary of the founding of one of Baltimore's
and Maryland's great institutions.

The contributions of members of your church to Baltimore — and
therefore to the heritage of us all — are too numerous to list.

The courage of that handful of men who founded the First Uni-
tarian Church of Baltimore in 1817 is difficult for most of us to ap-
preciate a century and a half later. Political conditions were, of course,
much different. More certainly the place of traditional belief was much
more a part of conformity.

For twenty-seven men to have been able to stand against the entire
community on behalf of an idea and found a church on what must
have seemed to their contemporaries, heretical concepts of religion, is
truly one of the great and significant reaffirmations of the validity of
our thinking about a free society.

None of us today would doubt:

that faith gives meaning and purpose to human life;

that the brotherhood of Man transcends the sovereignty of nations;

that economic and social justice can best be won by free men;

that government should be of laws rather than of men, or

that service to humanity is the best work of life.

But, it has taken the kind of courage exhibited by those brave men
who have given you your beginning to sustain and vitalize these ideals.