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Show I ROOSEVELT TALKS TO I 1 LUTHERAN CHURCH I tional chuiches In the United States; one of the two or three churches most distinctly dis-tinctly American. most distinctively among the forces that are to tell for making ma-king this country even greater in the future, fu-ture, f "Therefore, a peculiar load of responsibility responsi-bility rests upon the members or this church. It is an important thing for the people of this Nation to remember their rights, but it is an even more important thinK for them to remember their duties. In the last analysis the work of statesmen states-men and xoldlers. the work of the public man. shall go for nothing; If It is not based upon the spirit of Christianity working in the millions of homes throughout through-out this country, so that there may be that social, that spiritual, that moral foundation without which no country can ever rise to greatness. "For material well-being, material prosperity, pros-perity, success In arts, In letters, great industrial triumphs, all of them and all of the structure raised thereon will be as evanescent as a dream if it does not rest on the 'righteousness that exalteth a nation.' na-tion.' "Let me congratulate you, and congratulate con-gratulate all of us. that we live In a land and at a time that we expect as natural that there should be an Interdenominational Interdenomina-tional service, such a ceremony as Is to take place this afternoon. In which the pastors of other churches Join to congratulate con-gratulate themselves and you upon the rebuilding of this church. One of the constant problems of life Is to try to cultivate breadth without shallowness Just as we want to try to cultivate depth without narrowness." WASHINGTON, Jan. 30. President Roosevelt delivered an address Sunday at the dedication of the Luther place Memorial Me-morial church, which was nerlously damaged dam-aged by Are Just one year ago last night. -The church has been entirely restored. The President came' In while the services serv-ices preliminary to the sermon were in progress and was shown to a seat in the pulpit. At their conclusion he was introduced. intro-duced. President Rooeevelt said: "From the standpoint from which I am obliged so continually to look at matters, there Is a peculiar function to be played by the great Lutheran church In the United Suites of America. This is a church which had Its rise to power In and. until it emigrated to this side of the water, had always had Its fullest development develop-ment In the two great races of northern and northern middle Europe the German and the Scandinavian. "The Lutheran church came to tne territory which is now the United States very shortly after the first permanent settlements were mad within our limits, for when the earliest settlers came to dwell around the mouth of the Delaware they brought the Lutheran worship with them, and so with the earliest German settlers, who came to Pennsylvania and afterward to New York and the mountainous moun-tainous region In the western part of Virginia and the States south of It. "From that day to this the history of the growth in population in this Nation has consisted largely, in some respects mainly, of the arrival of successive waves of new comers to our shores, and tne prime duty of those already in the land is to see that their own progress and development de-velopment are shared by these new C"It 1 a serious snd dangerous thing for any man to tear loose frorp the soil from the' region in which he and his forebears hove taken root and to be transplanted into a new land. He should receive all possible aid In that new land; and the aid can be tendered him most effectively by these who can appeal to him on the ground of spiritual kinship. Therefore, the Lutheran church can do mrst In helping upward and onward so many of the new comers to our shores; and it seems to me that It should be. I am tempted to say well nigh the prime duty of this church to see that the immigrant, immi-grant, especially the emigrant of Lutheran Luther-an faith from the Old World, whether he come from 8candlnavla or Germany, or whether he belonged to on of the Lutheran Luther-an countries of Finland or Hungary or Austria, may not be suffered to drift oft with no friendly hand extended to him out of all the church communion, away from all the Influences that tend toward safeguarding and uplifting him, and that he find ready to hand thoae ready to bring htm Into fellowship with existing niodes. "The Lutheran church in this country Is ef great power numerically, through the Intelligent thrift of its members, but H will grow steadily to even greater bower.' It is destined to be one of two or r |