Categories: Sermons

Francis Wayland (1976-1865) graduated from Union College in 1813. He served as President of Brown University (1827-1855), where he also taught psychology, political economy, and ethics. These sermons were delivered on April 7, 1825.

THE DUTIES OF AN AMERICAN CITIZEN.

TWO DISCOURSES,

DELIVERED IN THE

First Baptist Meeting House in Boston,

On Thursday, April 7, 1825.

THE

DAY OF PUBLIC FAST

By FRANCIS WAYLAND, JUN.

PASTOR OF THE FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 

Published by request of the Society.

BOSTON:

JAMES LORING, WASHINGTON ST.

1825.

SERMON I.

LUKE XXI. 25.

AND THERE SHALL BE UPON THE EARTH, DISTRESS OF NATIONS WITH PERPLEXITY.

            The season has arrived, my brethren, when in conformity with the usages of our forefathers, we are assembled to supplicate the blessing of God on the labours of the advancing year.  Custom has permitted that on such occasions, the minister of religion, digressing somewhat from the path of his ordinary duty, should exhibit to his hearers, some truths not expressly revealed in the gospel of Jesus Christ.  He is allowed to select a subject, which may be rather of national interest, and is commanded to abstain only from such discussion, as would enkindle those feelings of party animosity, to which a free people, in the present imperfect condition of human nature, must always be liable.

            If, then, I should on this day direct your attention to a subject somewhat unlike those which you are accustomed to hear from this sacred place, I trust the example of wiser and better men will plead for me an apology.

            But I find in the occasion that has called us together, an apology, with which I must confess myself far better satisfied.  We have come here as citizens of the United States, to implore the blessing of God upon our common country.  At such a time, it cannot be unsuitable to inquire, how may the interests of that country be promoted?  The destinies of this, are intimately connected with those of other nations, and it surely becomes us to ascertain the duties which that connection imposes upon us.  I remember that on every question decided in this community, each one of you has an influence.  I am addressing an assembly, whose voice is heard through the medium of its representatives, not only in our halls of legislation, and in our cabinet, but throughout the legislatures and the cabinets of the civilized world.  In the attempt, then, to enlighten you upon any of those great questions, on which the well-being of our country, as well as other countries, is virtually interested, I seem to myself to be discharging a duty not improperly devolving upon a profession, which is expected to watch with sedulous anxiety, every change that can have a bearing upon the moral or religious interests of a community.  Impressed with these considerations, I shall proceed to offer you some reflections, on what appears to be the present intellectual and political condition of the nations of Europe; the relations we sustain to them; and the duties which devolve upon us, in the consequence of those relations.

            I shall this morning direct your attention to some reflections upon THE PRESENT INTELLECTUAL AND POLITICAL CONDITION OF THE NATIONS OF EUROPE.

                You are doubtless aware, that society throughout Christendom, has been undergoing very striking alterations since the era of the Reformation, and the invention of the printing press.  The effects of this new impulse, which was then given to the human mind, have been every where visible.  The attempt to delineate it would require a volume, instead of a paragraph.  It will only be possible here to state, that it has been produced by the more universal diffusion of the means of information; it has been characterized by more unrestrained liberty of thinking; and has every where resulted in elevating the rank, and improving the condition, of what are generally denominated the lower classes of society.

            But it must be obvious to all of you, ht especially within the last fifty years, the intellectual character of the middling and lower classes of society throughout the civilized world has materially improved, and that the process of improvement is at present going forward with accelerated rapidity.  A taste for that sort of reading, which requires considerable reflection, and even some acquaintance with the abstract sciences, is every day becoming more widely disseminated.  And not only is the number of news papers multiplying beyond any former precedent, but it is found necessary to enlist in their service a far greater portion of literary talent than at any other period.[i]

            For this increase of the reading and thinking population of Europe at this particular time, many causes may be assigned.  It is owing, in part, to that slow but certain progress, which the human mind always makes after it has once commenced the career of improvement.  It may also have been considerably accelerated by the various wars, which have of late so frequently desolated the continent.  The momentous events to which every campaign gave birth, have quickened the desire of intelligence in every class of society, and taught men more or less to reflect upon the principles which led to so universal commotions.  And besides this, the range of information among those attached to the army must have been materially enlarged by visiting other countries, and becoming in a considerable degree acquainted with their inhabitants, and familiar with their institutions.

            And her truth obliges us to state, that this melioration owes much of its late advancement to the pious zeal of Protestant Christians.  Desirous to extend the means of salvation to the whole human race, these benevolent men have labored with perseverance and success, not only to circulate the Bible, but to enable men to read it.  Hence have arisen the British and Foreign Bible Society, the British and Foreign School Society, the Baptist Irish Society, the multiplied free schools, and the innumerable Sabbath schools, which are so peculiarly the glory of the present age of the church.  And surely it is delightful to witness the disciples of Him, who went about doing good, thus girding themselves to the work of redeeming their fellow men from ignorance and sin.  O it is a goodly thing to behold the rich man pouring forth from his abundance, and the poor man casting in his mite; the old man directing by counsel, and the young man seconding him by exertion; the matron visiting the prison, and the young woman instructing the Sabbath school; and all pledging themselves, each one to the other, that, God helping them, this world shall be the better for their having lived in it.  The effects of these exertions are every year becoming more distinctly visible.  In a short time, if the church is faithful to herself, and faithful to her God, what are now called the lower classes of society will cease to exist; men and women will be reading and thinking beings; and the word canaille, will no longer be applied to any portion of the human race within the limits of civilization.

            In connection with these facts, we would remark, that in consequence of this general diffusion of intelligence, nations are becoming vastly better acquainted with the physical, moral and political conditions of each other.  Whatever of any moment is transacted in the legislative assemblies of one country, is now very soon known, not merely to the rulers, but also to the people of every other country.  Nay, an interesting occurrence of any nature cannot transpire in an insignificant town of Europe or America, without finding its way, through the medium of the daily journals, to the eyes and ears of all Christendom.  Every man must now be, in a considerable degree, a spectator of the doings of the world, or he is soon very far in the rear of the intelligence of the day.  Indeed, he has only to read a respectable newspaper, and he may be informed of the discoveries in the arts, the discussions in the senates, and the bearings of public opinion all over the world.

            The reasons for all this, as we have intimated, may chiefly be found in that increased desire of information, which characterizes the mass of society in the present age.  Intelligence of every kind, and specially political information, has become an article of profit; and when once this is the case, there can be no doubt that it will be abundantly supplied.  Besides this, it is important to remark, that the art of navigation has been within a few years materially improved, and commercial relations have become vastly more extensive.  The establishment of packet ships between the two continents has brought London and Paris as near to us as Pittsburgh and New-Orleans.  There is every reason to believe, that within the next half century, steam navigation will render the communication between the ports of Europe and America as frequent, and almost as regular, as that by ordinary mails.  The commercial houses of every nation are establishing their agencies in the principle cities of every other nation, and thus binding together the people by every tie of interest; while at the same time they are furnishing innumerable channels, by which information may be circulated among every class of the community.

            Hence it is that the moral influence, which nations are exerting upon each other, is greater than it has been at any antecedent period in the history of the world.  The institutions of one country, are becoming known almost of necessity to every other country.  Knowledge provokes to comparison, and comparison leads to reflection.  The fact that others are happier than themselves, prompts men to inquire whence this difference proceeds, and how their own melioration may be accomplished.  By simply looking upon a free people, an oppressed people instinctively feel that they have inalienable rights; and they will never afterwards be at rest, until the enjoyment of these rights is guaranteed to them.  Thus one form of government, which in any pre-eminent degree promotes the happiness of man, is gradually but irresistibly disseminating the principles of its constitution, and from the very fact of its existence, calling into being those trans of thought, which must in the end revolutionize every government within the sphere of its influence, under which the people are oppressed.

            And thus is it that the field in which mind may labour, has now become wide as the limits of civilization.  A doctrine advanced by one man, if it have any claim to interest, is soon known to every other man.  The movement of one intellect, now sets in motion the intellects of millions.  We may now calculate upon effects not upon a state or a people, but upon the melting, amalgamating mass of human nature.  Man is now the instrument which genius wields at its will; it touches a chord of the human heart, and nations vibrate in unison.  And thus he who can rivet the attention of a community upon an elementary principle hitherto neglected in politics or morals, or who can bring an acknowledged principle to bear upon an existing abuse, may, by his own intellectual might, with only the assistance of the press, transform the institutions of an empire or a world.

            In many respects, the nations of Christendom collectively are becoming somewhat analogous to our own Federal Republic.  Antiquated distinctions are breaking away, and local animosities are subsiding.  The common people of different countries are knowing each other better, esteeming each other by various manifestations of reciprocal good will.  It is true, every nation has still its separate boundaries and its individual interests; but the freedom of commercial intercourse is allowing those interests to adjust themselves to each other, and thus rendering the causes of collision of vastly less frequent occurrence.  Local questions are becoming of less, and general questions of greater importance.  Thanks be to God, men have at last begun to understand the rights, and feel for the wrongs of each other.  Mountains interposed do not so much make enemies of nations.  Let the trumpet of alarm be sounded, and its notes are now heard by every nation whether of Europe or America.  Let a voice borne on the feeblest breeze tell that the rights of man are in danger, and it floats over valley and mountain, across continent and ocean, until it has vibrated on the ear of the remotest dweller in Christendom.  Let the arm of oppression be raised to crush the feeblest nation on earth, and there will be heard every where, if not the shout of defiance, at least the deep-toned murmur of implacable displeasure.  It is the cry of aggrieved, insulted, much-abused man.  It is human nature waking in her might from the slumber of ages, shaking herself from the dust of antiquated institutions, girding herself for the combat, and going forth conquering and to conquer; and woe unto the man, woe unto the dynasty, woe unto the party, and woe unto the policy, on whom shall fall the scath of her blighting indignation.

            Now it must be evident, that this progress in intellectual cultivation must be operating important changes in the political condition of the nations of Europe.  This moral power has been applied almost exclusively to one portion of the social mass.  The rulers remain very much as they were half a century ago; but the people have advanced with a rapidity, of which the former history of the world furnishes us with no similar example.  The relations which once subsisted between the parties having changed, the institutions of society must change with them.  A form of government to be stable, must be adapted to the intellectual and moral condition of the governed; and when from any cause it has ceased to be so adapted, the time has come when it must inevitably be modified or subverted.  These remarks seem to us to apply with special force to the present condition of many of the nations of Europe.  I will proceed then, and remark some of the changes which this progress in intellectual improvement is effecting in their political condition.

            II.  We shall commence this part of our subject by remarking, that the various forms of government under which society has existed may, with sufficient accuracy, be reduced to two; governments of will, and governments of law.

            A government of will supposes that there are created two classes of society, the rulers and the ruled, each possessed of different and very dissimilar rights.  It supposes all power to be vested by divine appointment in the hands of the rulers; that they alone may say under what form of governments the people shall live; that law is nothing other than an expression of their will; and that it is the ordinance of Heaven that such a constitution should continue unchanged to the remotest generations; and that to all this, the people are bound to yield passive and implicit obedience.  Thus say the Congress of Sovereigns, which has been styled the Holy Alliance:  “All useful and necessary changes ought only to emanate from the free will and intelligent conviction of those, whom God has made responsible for power.”  You are well aware, that on principles such as these rest most of the governments of continental Europe.

            The government of law rests upon principles precisely the reverse of all this.  It supposes that there is but one class of society, and that this class is the people; that all men are created equal, and therefore that civil institutions are voluntary associations, of which the sole object should be to promote the happiness of the whole.  It supposes the people to have a perfect right to select that form of government under which they shall live, and to modify it at any subsequent time, as they shall think desirable.  Supposing all power to emanate from the people, it considers the authority of rulers purely a delegated authority, to be exercised in all cases according to a written code, which code is nothing more than an authentic expression of the people’s will.  It teaches that the ruler is nothing more than the intelligent organ of enlightened public opinion, and declares that if he ceases to be so, he shall be a ruler no longer.  Under such a government may it with truth be said of law, that “her seat is the bosom” of the people, “her voice the harmony” of society; “all men in every station do her reverence; the very least as feeling her care, and the very greatest as not exempted from her power; and though each in different sort and manner, yet all with uniform consent, admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy.”  I need not add, that our own is an illustrious example of the government of law.

            Now which of these two is the right notion of government, I need to stay to inquire.  It is sufficient for my purpose to remark, that whenever men have become enlightened by the general diffusion of intelligence, they have universally preferred the government of law.  The doctrines of what is called legitimacy, have not been found to stand the scrutiny of unrestrained examination.  And besides this, the love of power is as inseparable from the human bosom as the love of life.  Hence men will never rest satisfied with any civil institutions, which confer exclusively upon a part of society, that power which they believe should justly be vested in the whole; and hence it is evident that no government can be secure from the effects of increasing intelligence, which is not conformed in its principles to the nature of the human heart, and which does not provide for the exercise of this principle, so inseparable from the nature of man.

            We see then that the people under arbitrary governments, whenever they have become enlightened, must begin to desire some change in the existing institutions.  On the contrary, it is not unreasonable to suppose, that to such change the rulers would everywhere be opposed.  Instances have been rare in the history of man, in which the possessor of power, has surrendered it to anything but physical force.  The rulers everywhere will, to the utmost of their ability, maintain the existing institutions.  This is not conjecture.  The Holy Alliance has declared its determination to bring its whole power to bear upon any point, from which there was reason to fear the love of change, or in other words the love of liberty, would be disseminated.  They have announced that “the powers have an undoubted right to assume an hostile attitude, in relation to those States in which the overthrow of governments may operate as an example.”

            You perceive then, that if the people in Europe have become dissatisfied with the government of will, and if the rulers have determined to support it, the present progress of intelligence must be rapidly dividing the whole community into two great classes.  The one is composed of the monarchy, the aristocracy and the army, and in general of all those whose wealth, whose rank, or whose influence depend on the continuance of the existing system.  The other is composed of the middling and lower classes of society, of the men who understand the nature of liberal institutions, and those who are groaning under the weight of civil and religious oppression.  The question at issue is, whether a nation shall be governed by men of its choice, or by men whose only title to rule is derived from hereditary descent; whether laws shall be made for the benefit of the whole or a part; and whether they shall be the expression of a monarch’s will, or the unbiased decisions of an enlightened community.  It is a question between precedent and right; between old notions and new ones; between rulers and ruled; between governments and people.  It has already agitated Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, Germany, Prussia, and South America.  Hence you see that the parties formed in those nations have all taken their names from their attachments to one or the other of these notions of government.  Hence we hear of constitutionalists and royalists, of liberals and anti-liberals, of legitimates and reformers.  It is in a word the same question, though modified by circumstances, which wrought out the revolution under Charles I., and in which the best blood of this country was shed at Lexington and at Bunker-Hill, at Saratoga, and at Yorktown.

            But we cannot pass from this subject without remarking another fact, which renders the present state of Europe doubly interesting to every friend of the religion of Jesus Christ.  You are well aware that what is called Christianity is at the present day exhibited to the world under two very different forms.  The one supposes man amenable to no created being for his religious opinions, and that provided he do not disturb the peace of society, he is perfectly at liberty to worship God after the dictates of his own conscience.  It supposes, moreover, the Bible to be a sufficient and the only rule of faith and practice; a book of ultimate facts in morals, which is to be put in the hands of everyone, which everyone is at liberty to interpret for himself, and that with his interpretation neither any man nor body of men has any right to interfere.  The other form, which also professes to be Christianity, supposes, on the contrary, that religious opinion must be subject to the will of man; and that for disbelieving the religion of the State, the citizen is justly liable to fine, disfranchisement, imprisonment, and death.  It denies to man to right of reading the scriptures, and substitutes in their place monkish legends of fabulous miracles.  It stamps the traditions and the decisions of men with the authority of a revelation from heaven, and thus places conscience, by far the strongest of those principles which agitate the human bosom and direct the human conduct, entirely within the control of ambitious statesmen and avaricious priests.  You perceive I have alluded to the Protestant and Catholic forms of Christianity, as they generally exist on the continent of Europe.

            These systems, as you must be convinced, depend upon principles very different the one from the other.  The one pleads for the universal circulation of the scriptures; the other, from its highest authority, forbids it.  The one labours for the improvement of the lower classes of society, and lives and moves and has its being in the atmosphere of religious liberty; the other has never been able to retain its influence over the mind any longer than whilst enforcing its doctrines by relentless persecution.  And hence are the scriptures supposed to have designated this church by that awful appellation, “drunk with the blood of the saints.” Here then we see that the adherents of these two systems must be at issue on that question, of all others dearest to man, the question of liberty of conscience.

            But it is here of importance to observe, how nearly the line which is drawn in this division coincides with the other on the question of civil liberty, of which we have just spoken.  The government of will has never been able to support itself without an alliance with the ecclesiastical power.  Having no hold upon the understanding or upon the affections of man, it must control his conscience or it could not be upheld.  And on the contrary, the Catholic religion cannot carry its principles into practice without the assistance of the civil arm.  The State needs the anathema of the Church to check the spirit of inquiry, and the Church needs the physical power of the State, to silence by force when it cannot convince by argument.  These systems are, as you see, the natural allies of each other; and hence in fact have they always been found very closely united.  Hence is it that we behold at present among the sovereigns of the Holy Alliance, so evident an attempt to re-establish the influence of the papal see; and hence, to use the language of the Christian Observer,[ii] do we perceive throughout Europe the mournful advances of that superstitious and persecuting church, whose much abused power we had hoped was crumbling to decay.”

            And on the contrary, it is equally evident, that popular institutions are inseparably connected with Prostestant Christianity.  Both rest upon the same fundamental principle, the absolute freedom of inquiry.  Neither accepts of any support not derived from the suffrages of a free, intelligent, and virtuous community.  Though each is perfectly independent, yet neither could long exist without giving birth to the other.  And here, were it necessary, it would not be difficult to show that the doctrines of Protestant Christianity are the sure, nay, the only bulwark of civil freedom.  A survey of the history of Europe since the era of the Reformation would teach us, that man has never correctly understood nor successfully asserted his rights, until he has learned them from the Bible; and still more, that those nations have always enjoyed the most perfect freedom, who have been most thoroughly imbued with the doctrines of Jesus Christ.  But a discussion of this sort would lead us too far from the range of this discourse.  Enough has, we trust, been said to convince you, that the very existence of Protestantism in Europe, is at stake on the issue of the question, which appears so soon about to agitate that continent.

            And hence if the human mind only continues to advance with its present ratio of improvement, a general division of the people in Christendom seems inevitable.  The questions at issue are the most momentous that can be presented, and the most active principles of the human heart must oblige every man to rank himself on the one side or the other.  It is the question, whether man shall surrender up into the hands of other men those rights, which he holds immediately from God; whether, in fact, he shall bow to nothing but law, or tremble at the frown of a despot.  It is whether the human mind shall advance steadily onward in the career of improvement,  or whether it shall lose all that it has gained, and sink back again into the gloom of monkish superstition.  On the issue of this controversy depends the question, whether the light of divine revelation shall shine far and wide over our benighted world, pointing out to our fellow men the path to everlasting life; or whether that light shall be extinguished, and the generations which follow, the prey to a designing priesthood, shall be led in ignorance to everlasting woe.

            Such seem to us to be some of the circumstances attending the present political condition of Europe.  That two parties are forming in every country, you have abundant evidence; it is equally evident that the question on which they are divided is of the utmost magnitude; and that it is in every nation substantially the same.

            In concluding, it may be worth our while to remark very briefly, the condition and the prospects of these two opposite parties.

            1.  As to their present state, we may observe, that the one has enlisted the greatest numbers, while the other wields the most effective force.  The one comprises the lower and middling classes of society, which are of course by far the most numerous, and the other the rulers, and their immediate dependents.  The physical power of any nation always resides with the governed, and it is the governed who are the friends of free institutions.  But it is to be remarked, that the millions who desire reform are scattered abroad over immense tracts of country, each one by his own fireside, without concert, and destitute of the means for organized operation; on the contrary, the force of the rulers is always collected, and can at any moment be brought to bear upon any portion of territory, in which there might appear the least movement towards revolution.

            But the friends of popular institutions are opposed, in every nation, by more than the force of their own rulers.  Whilst they are powerful only at home, the rulers are able to bring all their forces to bear upon a single point in any part of the civilized world.  To accomplish this purpose, seems the principal design of the Holy Alliance; and hence they have pledged the physical force of the whole to each other, whenever the question shall be agitated in any country, on which depends the rights of the people.

            2.  If we compare their prospects, we shall find that the power of the popular party is increasing with amazing rapidity.  Nations are already flocking to its standard.  Fifty years ago and it could be hardly said to exist, only as the voice of indignant freemen was heard in yonder hall, the far famed “cradle of liberty.”  From that moment, its progress has been right onward.  A continent has since declared itself free.  In the old world, the principles of liberty are becoming more universally received, more thoroughly understood, and more ably supported.  Education is becoming every day more widely disseminated; and every man, as he learns to think, ranks himself with the friends of intellectual improvement.  The trains of thought are already at work, which must operate important modifications in the social edifice, or that edifice, undermined from its foundations, must crumble into ruin.

            And thus from these very causes, the other party is rapidly declining.  Nations are leaving it.  The people are loathing it.  It cannot ultimately succeed, until it has changed the ordinances of heaven.  It cannot prosper, unless it can check that tendency to improvement, with which God endowed man at the first moment of his creation.  Every report of oppression weakens it.  Every Sabbath School, every Bible Society, nay, every mode of circulating knowledge weakens it.  And thus, unless by some combined and convulsive effort it should for a little while recover its power, it may almost be expected that within the present age it will fall before the resistless march of public opinion, and give place everywhere to governments of law.

SERMON II.

PSALM LXVII. 1, 2.

GOD BE MERCIFUL UNTO US, AND BLESS US, AND CAUSE HIS FACE TO SHINE UPON US; THAT THY WAY MAY BE KNOWN UPON EARTH, THY SAVING HEALTH AMONG ALL NATIONS.

          Pursuing the train of thought which was commenced this morning, I shall proceed to consider the relation which this country sustains to the nations of Europe, and some of the duties which devolve upon us in consequence of this relation.

            I.  Let us consider the relation which this country sustains to the nations of Europe.  Here we shall observe in the first place, that this country is evidently at the head of the popular party throughout the civilized world.  The statement of a few facts will render this remark sufficiently evident.

            1.  This nation owes its existence to a love of those very principles for which the friends of liberty are now contending.  Rather than bow to oppression, civil or ecclesiastical, our fathers fled to a land of savages, determined to clear away in an inhospitable wilderness, one spot on the face of the earth where man might be free.  Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem.

            2.  This nation first proclaimed these principles, as the only proper basis of a constitution of government.  Here was it first declared by a legislative assembly:  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”

            3.  This nation first contended for those principles with perfect success.  In other countries, attempts had been made to re-model the institutions of government.  But in some cases, the attempt was arrested in its outset by overwhelming force; in others, the first movement had been succeeded by anarchy; anarchy gave place to military despotism, and this at last yielded to a restoration of the former dynasty.  In our country first was the contest commenced in simplicity of heart, for the rights of man; and when these were secured, here alone did the contest cease.  Since our revolution, other nations have followed our example, and many more are preparing to follow it.  But when the most glorious success shall have attended their struggle for liberty, they are but our imitators; and the greatest praise of any subsequent revolution must be that it has resembled our own.  Our heroic struggle, its perfect success, its virtuous termination, have riveted the eyes of the people of Europe specially upon us, and they cannot now be averted.  To us do they look when they would see what man can do; and while sighing under their oppressions, yet hope to be free.

            4.  And lastly, our country has given to the world the first ocular demonstration, not only of the practicability, but also of the unrivalled superiority of a popular form of government.  It was not long since fashionable to ridicule the idea, that a people could govern themselves.  The science of rulers was supposed to consist in keeping the people in ignorance, in restraining them by force, and amusing them by shows.  The people were treated like a ferocious monster, whose keepers could only be secure while its dungeon was dark, and its chain massive.  But the example of our own country is rapidly consigning these notions to merited desuetude.  It is teaching the world that the easiest method of governing an intelligent people is, to allow them to govern themselves.  It is demonstrating that the people, so far from being the enemies, are the best, nay, the natural friends of wholesome institutions.  It is showing that kings, and nobles, and standing armies, and religious establishments, are at best only very useless appendages to a form of government.  It is showing to the world that every right an be perfectly protected, under rulers elected by the people; that  government can be stable with no other support than the affections of its citizens; that a people can be virtuous without an established religion; and more than this, that just such a government as it was predicted could no where exist but in the brain of a benevolent enthusiast, has actually existed for half a century, acquiring strength and compactness and solidity with every year’s duration.  And it is manifest that nowhere else have been so free, so happy, so enlightened, or so enterprising, and nowhere have the legitimate objects of civil institutions been so triumphantly attained.  Against facts such as these it is difficult to argue; and you see they furnish the friends of free institutions with more than an answer to all the theories of legitimacy.

            It is unnecessary to pursue this subject further.  You are doubtless convinced that this country stands linked by a thousand ties to the popular sentiment of Europe.  We have no sympathies with the rulers.  The principles, in support of which they are allied, are diametrically opposed to the very spirit of our constitution.  All our sympathies are with the people; for we are all of us the people.  And not only are we thus amalgamated with them in feeling, we are manifestly at the head of that feeling.  We first promulgated their sentiments, we taught them their rights, we first contended successfully for their principles; and for fifty years we have furnished incontrovertible evidence that their principles are true.  These principles have already girded us with Herculean strength, in the very infancy of our empire, and have given us political precedence of governments, which had been established on the old foundation, centuries before our continent was discovered.  And now what nation will be second in the new order of things, is yet to be decided; but the providence of God has already announced, that, if true to ourselves, we shall be inevitably first.

            Now to say that any country is at the head of popular sentiment, is only to say in other words that it is in her power to direct that sentiment.  You are then prepared to proceed with me, and remark, in the next place, that it devolves on this country to lead forward the present movement of public opinion, to freedom and independence.

              It devolves on us to sustain and to chasten the love of liberty among the friends of reform in other nations.  It is not enough that the people everywhere desire a change.  The subversion of a bad government is by no means synonymous with the establishment of a better.  A people must know what it is to be free; they must have learned to reverence themselves, and bow implicitly to the principles of right, or nothing can be gained by a change of institutions.  A constitution written on paper is utterly worthless, unless it be also written on the hearts of a people.  Unless men have learned to govern themselves, they may be plunged into all the horrors of civil war, and yet emerge from the most fearful revolution, a lawless nation of sanguinary slaves.  But if this country remain happy, and its institutions free, it will render the common people of other countries acquainted with the fundamental principles of the science of government; this knowledge will silently produce its practical result, and year after year will insensibly train them to freedom.

            But suppose that the spirit of freedom have been sustained to its issue, the blow to have been struck, and either by concession or force, the time to have arrived when the institutions of the old world are to be transformed; then will the happiness of the civilized world be again connected most intimately with the destinies of this country.  Ancient constitutions having been abolished, no new ones must be adopted by almost every nation in Europe.  The old foundations will have been removed; it will still remain to be decided on what foundations the social edifice shall rest.  From the relation we now sustain to the friends of free institutions, as well as from all the cases of revolution which have lately occurred,[iii] it is evident that to this nation they will all look for precedent and example.  Thus far our institutions have conferred on man all that any form of government was ever expected to bestow.  Should the grand experiment which we are now making on the human character succeed, there can be no doubt that other governments, following our example, will be formed on the principles of equality of right.  To illustrate the subject by an example;—who does not see, that if France had been illuminated in the era of her revolution by the light which our fifty years’ experience has shed upon the world, unstained with the blood of three millions of her citizens, she might now have been rejoicing in a government of law?

            We have thus far spoken only of the effects which this country might produce upon the politics of Europe, simply by her example.  It is not impossible, however, that she may be called to exert an influence still more direct on the destinies of man.  Should the rulers of Europe make war upon the principles of our constitution, because its existence “may operate as an example;” or should a universal appeal be made to arms, on the question of civil and religious liberty;—it is manifest that we must take no secondary part in the controversy.  The contest will involve the civilized world, and the blow will be struck which must decide the fate of man for centuries to come.

            Then will the hour have arrived, when uniting with herself the friends of freedom throughout the world, this country must breast herself to the shock of congregated nations.  Then will she need the wealth of her merchants, the prowess of her warriors, and the sagacity of her statesmen.  Then, on the altars of our God, let us each one devote himself to the cause of the human race; and in the name of the Lord of Hosts go forth unto the battle.  If need be, let our choicest blood flow freely; for life itself is valueless, when such interests are at stake.  Then when a world in arms is assembling to the conflict, may this country be found fighting in the vanguard for the liberties of man.  God himself hath summoned her to the contest, and she may not shrink back.  For this hour may he by his grace prepare her.

            How a contest of this kind would terminate, we should doubt, if our trust were in the arm of flesh.  But we doubt not.  We believe that the cause of man will triumph, because the Judge of the whole earth will do right.  The wrath of man shall praise him, and the remainder of wrath he will restrain.  And yet again we doubt not; for we believe that on the issue of this controversy, the dearest interests of the church of Christ are suspended.  That day will decide, whether the light of revelation shall shine far abroad among the nations, or whether it shall be extinguished, and its place be supplied by the legends of a monkish superstition.  We cannot believe that the blood of martyrs has flowed so much in vain.  We cannot believe that God will suffer his church to go back again for ages, after he has showed her in these latter days, so many tokens for good.  Therefore, though the kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder and cast away their cords from us; he that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh; the Lord shall have them in derision.  Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure.  For he hath set his King upon his holy hill of Zion.  God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.  The Lord of Hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.

            And if the cause of true religion and of man shall eventually triumph, as we trust in God it will, who can tell how splendid are the destinies which will then await this country!  One feeling, the love of liberty, will have cemented together all the nations of the earth.  Though speaking different languages and inhabiting different regions, all will be but one people, united in the pursuit of one object, the happiness of the whole.  And at the head of this truly holy alliance, if faithful to her trust, will then this nation be found.  The first that taught them to be free; the first that suffered in the contest; the nation that most freely and most firmly stood by them in the hour of their calamity;—at her feet will they lay the tribute of universal gratitude.  Each one bound to her by every sentiment of interest and affection, she will be the centre of the new system, which shall then emerge out of the chaos of ancient institutions.  Henceforth she will sway for ages the destinies of the world.

            Who of us does not kindle into enthusiasm as he contemplates the mighty interests connected with the prosperity of this country?  With the success of our institutions, the cause of man throughout the civilized world seems indissolubly interwoven.  What, then, let us inquire, are the DUTIES TO WHICH WE ARE SUMMONED BY THE RELATION THAT WE SUSTAIN TO OUR BRETHREN OF THE HUMAN RACE?  This is the last topic to which I shall direct your attention.

            And here it is scarcely necessary to remark, that it cannot be our duty to do anything which shall at all interfere with the internal concerns of any other government.  We should thus compromise the fundamental principle of our constitution, that civil institutions are to be established or modified only in obedience to the will of the majority.  But this will can only be ascertained by allowing each nation to select for itself that form of government, which it shall choose.  If the majority in any nation are willing to be slaves, no power on earth can make them free.  It is certainly their misfortune; but physical force can do them no good.  We may extend to them every facility for the dissemination of knowledge and of religion; this we owe them as brethren of the human race; and having done this, we must commit them to the decisions of an all-wise and holy Providence.

            It is evident, then, that unless called to defend the cause of liberty in the field, all we can do for it must be done at home.  Our power resides in the force of our example.  It is by exhibiting to other nations the practical excellence of a government of law, that they will learn its nature and advantages, and will in due time achieve their own emancipation.

            The question, then, What can we do to promote the cause of liberty throughout the world? Resolves itself into another, What can we do to ensure the success of that experiment which our institutions are making upon the character of man?

            In answering it, it is important to remark, that whatever we would do for our country, must be done for THE PEOPLE.  Great results can never be effected in any other way.  Specially is this the case under a republican constitution.  Here the people are not only the real but also the acknowledged fountain of all authority.  They make the laws, and they control the execution of them.  They direct in the senate, they overawe the cabinet, and hence it is the moral and intellectual character of the people which must give to the “very age and body of our institutions their form and pressure.”

            So long, then, as our people remain virtuous and intelligent, our government will remain stable.  While they clearly perceive, and honestly decree justice, our laws will be wholesome, and the principles of our constitution will recommend themselves everywhere to the common sense of man.  But should our people become ignorant and vicious; should their decisions become the dictates of passion and venality, rather than of reason and of right, that moment are our liberties at an end; and, glad to escape the despotism of millions, we shall flee for shelter to the despotism of one.  Then will the world’s last hope be extinguished, and darkness brood for ages over the whole human race.

            Not less important is moral and intellectual cultivation, if we would prepare our country to stand forth the bulwark of the liberties of the world.  Should the time to try men’s souls ever come again, our reliance under God must be, as it was before, on the character of our citizens.  Our soldiers must be men whose bosoms have swollen with the conscious dignity of freemen, and who, firmly rusting in a righteous God, could look unmoved on embattled nations leagued together for purposes of wrong.  When the means of education everywhere throughout our country shall be free as the air we breathe; when every family shall have its Bible, and every individual shall love to read it; then and not till then shall we exert our proper influence on the cause of man; then and not till then shall we be prepared to stand forth between the oppressor and the oppressed, and say to the proud wave of domination, Thus far shalt thou go and no farther.

            It seems then evident, that the paramount duty of an American citizen, is, to put in requisition every possible means for elevating universally the intellectual and moral character of our people.

            When we speak of intellectual elevation, we would not suggest that all our citizens are to become able linguists, or profound mathematicians.  This, at least for the present, is not practicable; it certainly is not necessary.  The object at which we aim will be attained, when every man is familiarly acquainted with what are now considered the ordinary branches of an English education.  The intellectual stores of one language are then open before him; a language in which he may find all the knowledge that he shall ever need to form his opinions upon any subjects on which it shall be his duty to decide.  A man who cannot read, let us always remember, is a being not contemplated by the genius of our constitution.  Where the right of suffrage is extended to all, he is certainly a dangerous member of community who has not qualified himself to exercise it.  But on this part of the subject I need not enlarge.  The proceedings of our general and State Legislatures already furnish ample proof that our people are tremblingly alive to its importance.  We do firmly believe the time to be not far distant, when there will not be found a single citizen of these United States, who is not entitled to the appellation of a well informed man.[iv]

            But supposing all this to be done, still only a part and by far the least important part of our work will have been accomplished.  We have increased the power of the people, but we have left it doubtful in what direction that power will be exerted.  We have made it certain that a public opinion will be formed; but whether that opinion shall be healthful or destructive, is yet to be decided.  We have cut out channels by which knowledge may be conveyed to every individual of our mighty population; it remains for us, by means of those very channels, to instill into every bosom an unshaken reverence for the principles of right.  Having gone thus far, then, we must go farther; for you must be aware that the tenure by which our liberties is held can never be secure, unless moral, keep pace with intellectual cultivation.  This leads us to remark in the second place, that our other and still more imperious duty is, to cultivate the moral character of our people.[v]

            On the means by which this may be effected, I need not detain you.  We have in our hands a book of tried efficacy; a work which contains the only successful appeal that was ever made to the moral sense of man; a book which unfolds the only remedy that has ever been applied with any effect to the direful maladies of the human heart.  You need not be informed that I refer to the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.

            As to the powerful, I had almost said miraculous effect of the sacred scriptures, there can no longer be any doubt in the mind of anyone one whom fact can make an impression.  That the truths of the Bible have the power of awakening an intense moral feeling in man under every variety of character, learned or ignorant, civilized or savage; that they make bad men good, and send a pulse of healthful feeling through all the domestic, civil and social relations; that they teach men to love right, to hate wrong, and to seek each other’s welfare, as the children of one common parent; that they control the baleful passions of the human heart, and thus make men proficients in the science of self government; and finally, that they teach him to aspire after conformity to a Being of infinite holiness, and fill him with hopes infinitely more purifying, more exalting, more suited to his nature than any other, which this world has ever known; are facts incontrovertible as the laws of philosophy, or the demonstrations of mathematics.  Evidence in support of all this can be brought from every age in the history of man, since there has been a revelation from God on earth.  We see the proof of it everywhere around us.  There is scarcely a neighbourhood in our country where the Bible is circulated, in which we cannot point you to a very considerable portion of its population, whom its truths have reclaimed from the practice of vice, and taught the practice of whatsoever things are pure and honest and just and of good report.

            That this distinctive and peculiar effect is produced upon every man to whom the gospel is announced, we pretend not to affirm.  But we do affirm, that besides producing this special renovation to which we have alluded, upon a part, it in a most remarkable degree elevates the tone of moral feeling throughout the whole of a community.  Wherever the Bible is freely circulated, and its doctrines carried home to the understandings of men, the aspect of society is altered; the frequency of crime is diminished; men begin to love justice, and to administer it by law; and a virtuous public opinion, that strongest safeguard of right, spreads over a nation the shield of its invisible protection.  Wherever it has faithfully been brought to bear upon the human heart, even under most unpromising circumstances, it has within a single generation revolutionized the whole structure of society; and thus within a few years done more for man, than all other means have for ages accomplished without it.  For proof of all this, I need only refer you to the effects of the gospel in Greenland, or in South Africa, in the Society Islands; or even among the aborigines of our own country.

            But before we leave this part of the subject, it may be well to pause for a moment, and inquire whether, in addition to its moral efficacy, the Bible may not exert a powerful influence on the intellectual character of man.

            And here it is scarcely necessary that I should remark, that of all the books with which, since the invention of writing, this world has been deluged, the number of those is very small which have produced any perceptible effect on the mass of human character.  By far the greater part have been, even by their cotemporaries, unnoticed and unknown.  Not many an one has made its little mark upon the generation that produced it, though it sunk with that generation to utter forgetfulness.  But after the ceaseless toil of six thousand years, how few have been the works, the adamantine basis of whose reputation has stood unhurt amid the fluctuations of time, and whose impression can be traced through successive centuries on the history of our species.

            When, however, such a work appears, its effects are absolutely incalculable; and such a work, you are aware, is the Iliad of Homer.  Who can estimate the results produced by this incomparable effort of a single mind!  Who can tell what Greece owes to this first-born of song.  Her breathing marbles, her solemn temples, her unrivalled eloquence, and her matchless verse, all point us to that transcendent genius, who by the very splendor of his own effulgence woke the human intellect from the slumber of ages.  It was Homer who gave laws to the artist; it was Homer who inspired the poet; it was Homer who thundered in the senate; and more than all, it was Homer who was sung by the people; and hence a nation was cast into the mould of one mighty mind, and the land of the Iliad, became the region of taste, the birth-place of the arts.  Nor was this influence confined within the limits of Greece.  Long after the scepter of empire had passed westward, genius still held her court on the banks of the Ilyssus, and from the country of Homer gave laws to the world.  The light which the blind old man of Scio had kindled in Greece, shed its radiance over Italy; and thus did he awaken a second nation to intellectual existence.  And we may form some idea of the power which this one work has to the present day exerted over the mind of man, by remarking, that “nation after nation, and century after century has been able to do little more than transpose his incidents, new-name his characters, and paraphrase his sentiments.”[vi]

            But considered simply as an intellectual production, who will compare the poems of Homer with the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament.  Where in the Iliad shall we find simplicity and pathos which shall vie with the narrative of Moses, or maxims of conduct to equal in wisdom the Proverbs of Solomon, or sublimity which does not fade away before the conceptions of Job, or David, of Isaiah, or St. John.  But I cannot pursue this comparison.  I feel that it is doing wrong to the mind which dictated the Iliad, and to those other mighty intellects on whom the light of the holy oracles never shined.  Who that has read his poem has not observed how he strove in vain to give dignity to the mythology of his time?  Who has not seen how the religion of his country, unable to support the flight of his imagination, sunk powerless beneath him?  It is the unseen world where the master spirits of our race breathe freely and are at home; and it is mournful to behold the intellect of Homer striving to free itself from the conceptions of materialism, and then sinking down in hopeless despair, to weave idle fables of Jupiter and Juno, Apollo or Diana.  But the difficulties under which he labored are abundantly illustrated by the fact, that the light which he poured upon the human intellect taught other ages how unworthy was the religion of his day of the man who was compelled to use it.  “It seems to me,” says Longinus, “that Homer, when he ascribes dissensions, jealousies, tears, imprisonments, and other afflictions to his deities, hath, as much as was in his power, made the men of the Iliad gods, and the gods men.  To man when afflicted, death is the termination of evils; but he hath made not only the nature but the miseries of the gods eternal.”

            If then so great results have flowed from this one effort of a single mind, what may we not expect from the combined effort of several, at least his equals in power over the human heart?  If that one genius, though groping in the thick darkness of absurd idolatry, wrought so glorious a transformation in the character of his countrymen, what may we not look for from the universal dissemination of those writings, on whose authors was poured the full splendor of eternal truth?  If unassisted human nature, spell-bound by a childish mythology, have done so much, what may we not hope for from the supernatural efforts of pre-eminent genius, which spake as it was moved by the Holy Ghost?

            To sum up in a few words what has been said.  If we would see the foundations laid broadly and deeply, on which the fabric of this country’s liberties shall rest to the remotest generations; if we would see her carry forward the work of political reformation, and rise the bright and morning star of freedom over a benighted world; let us elevate the intellectual and moral character of every class of our citizens, and specially let us imbue them thoroughly with the principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

            You are well aware that to carry into effect this design, is one of the objects in which good men of every denomination are now so actively engaged.  Having observed that the precepts of the Bible take more immediate effect when repeatedly inculcated upon man by teachers set apart for this purpose, missionary societies have been formed to furnish such teachers to the destitute.  Having found that the proportion of ministers of the gospel is lamentably insufficient to meet the wants of our increasing population; they have formed societies, and endowed institutions, with the design of qualifying a greater number for the pastoral office.  And again it has been observed, that youth is the season for instilling into man the elements of knowledge, and the principles of piety; and hence the Christian world is universally engaged in the benevolent work of Sabbath school instruction.  And here in passing I cannot but remark, that if indeed our country shall be saved from that ruin which has awaited other republics, and shall move steadily onward in that career of glory which Providence has opened before her; next to the circulation of the scriptures, to the Sabbath school more than to anything else, do I verily believe that salvation will be owing.

            You see then that these institutions all have one common object in view, to elevate the intellectual and moral character of our people.  Here is true philanthropy; here is Christian patriotism.  And this is one reason why we so often present these charities to your notice.  When therefore we ask you to aid us in circulating the Bible, in sending the gospel to the destitute, or in educating the ignorant, you must not look unkindly at us; for we plead the cause of our country, of liberty, and of man.  Let us all unite in spreading abroad the means of knowledge and of religion; let us do our utmost to render our nation a church of our Lord Jesus Christ;

Then, howe’er crowns and coronets be rent,

A virtuous populace shall rise the while,

And stand a wall of fire, to guard their native soil.

            And lastly, I would urge you, my brethren, to activity in these labours of charity, by presenting at single view, the momentous results with which they seem to me indissolubly connected; but I feel myself utterly incompetent to the task.

            When I reflect that some of you who now hear me will see fifty millions of souls enrolled on the census of these United States; when I think how small a proportion our present efforts bear to the pressing wants of this mighty population, and how soon the period in which those wants can be supplied will have forever elapsed; when moreover I reflect how the happiness of man is interwoven with the destinies of this country;—I want language to express my conceptions of the importance of the subject; and yet I am aware that those conceptions fall far short of the plain, unvarnished truth.  When I look forward over the long track of coming ages, the dim shadows of unborn nations pass in solemn review before me, and each, by every sympathy which binds together the whole brotherhood of man, implores this country to fulfill that destiny to which she has been summoned by an all-wise Providence, and save a sinking world from temporal misery and eternal death.

            In view of all these considerations, let me again urge you to be in earnest in this cause.  I would plead with you, instead of engaging in political strife, to put forth your hands to the work of making your fellow citizens wiser and better.  I pray you think less of parties and more of your country; and instead of talking about patriotism, to be indeed patriots.  And specially would I charge you to give to this cause not only your active exertions, but your unceasing prayers.  Ye who love the Lord, keep not silence, and give him no rest, until he establish this his Jerusalem, and make her a praise in the whole earth.  God be merciful to us and bless us, and cause his face to shine upon us; that his name may be known on earth, and his saving health unto all nations.  And to him shall be the glory, forever.  Amen

NOTES

Note A.           Page 6.

            In confirmation of these remarks, it may not be amiss to state the following facts.  The Gentleman’s Magazine was, until about thirty years since, almost the only extensively circulated periodical pamphlet in Great Britain.  In this department of literature are now numbered, The Edingburgh and Quarterly Reviews; Westminster Review; Blackwood’s, The Scotsman’s, Monthly, New Monthly, Gentleman’s, and Sporting Magazines; The Christian Observer; Eclectic Review; Universal Review; The Etonian; The Oxonian; Ackerman’s Repository; Retrospective Review; London Magazine; Baldwin’s Magazine; The  Churchman; Evangelical Magazine; Mechanic’s Magazine; The Literary Chronicle; Literary Gazette; The Kaleidoscope; Newcastle Magazine; British Critic; Pamphleteer; Classical Journal; Christian Guardian; Cottager’s Magazine; Farmer’s Magazine; Sunday School Magazine; European Magazine; Imperial Magazine; Literary Magnet; Knight’s Quarterly Magazine; four Botanical Journals, monthly; three of general science, quarterly; besides several other scientific and professional periodical works.  Some of these are splendidly edited, many ably, and most well supported.  The largest works print from five to fourteen thousand copies.

            Upon the eight morning and six evening papers in London, there are no less than 150 literary gentlemen employed, at an expense of L1000 per week; for workmen, L1500 per week; and L1500 more for the literary labours of the weekly and semi-weekly papers.  There are on an average 250 provincial papers.  300,000 papers are ordinarily printed in London weekly, and 200,000 in the country; total 500,000.  The whole amount of the expenses of the British newspaper press is estimated at L721,266 per annum.  The total number of newspaper stamps issued in Great Britain, for the year 1821, was 24,779,786.

            From these facts we may form some idea of the demand for information in Great Britain.  But one other fact may convince us that the number of readers very far exceeds the number of printed papers.  “It is there a custom for carriers to set out in all directions daily, and let papers out to customers, for a few moments to each, as they proceed, until night; so that a hundred persons may read or rather glance over the same paper for a penny each.”

            “There are but few papers published in the departments of France; but those in the metropolis, publish an enormous number.  The Constitutionel publishes 19,000; the Journal des Debats, 14,000, and the other papers from that to 5,000.”  It is probable that the ratio of improvement in many nations on the continent of Europe is not very far beneath that of Great Britain.

Note B            Page 31.

            “The following are a few of the subjects of the political essays of the Censor (a periodical paper published at Buenos Ayres) in 1817: an explanation of the Constitution of the United States, and highly praised—The Lancastrian System of Education—on the causes of the prosperity of the United States—Milton’s essay on the liberty of the press—A review of the work of the late President Adams, on the American Constitution, and a recommendation of checks and balances, continued through several numbers and abounding with much useful information for the people—brief notice of the life of James Monroe, president of the United States—examination of the federative system—on the trial by Jury—on popular elections—on the effect of enlightened productions on the condition of mankind—an analysis of the several State constitutions of the Union, &c.

            “There are in circulation, Spanish translations of many of our best revolutionary writings.  The most common are two miscellaneous volumes, one, containing Paine’s common sense and rights of man, and declaration of Independence, several of our constitutions, and General Washington’s farewell address.  The other is an abridged history of the United States down to the year 1810, with a good explanation of the nature of our political institutions, accompanied with a translation of Mr. Jefferson’s inaugural speech, and other state papers.  I believe these have been read by nearly all who can read, and have produced a most extravagant admiration of the United States, at the same time, accompanied with something like despair.”—Breckenridge’s South America, Vol. II. Pp. 213, 214.—From Prof. Everett’s Oration at Plymouth.

Note C.           Page 38.

            In illustration of these remarks, it may be interesting to state the following facts.  “Not one of the eleven new States has been admitted into the Union without provision in its constitution for Schools, Academies, Colleges and Universities.  In most of the original States large sums in money are appropriated to education.  And they claim a share in the great landed investments which are mortgaged to it in the new States.  Reckoning those contributions, federal and local, it may be asserted, that nearly as much as the whole national expenditure of the United States is set apart by the laws for enlightening the people.  Besides more than half a million at publick schools, there are considerably more than 3000 undergraduates matriculated at the various colleges and universities authorized to confer academical degrees.”—Ingersoll’s Oration before the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

            It is, however, evident, from the returns of the State of New York alone, that the above estimate of Mr. Ingersoll is vastly below the truth.  Governor Clinton in his late message states, that “the number of children taught in our common schools during the last year, exceeds 400,000; and is probably more than one fourth of our whole population.  The students in the incorporated academies amount to 2,683; and in the Colleges to 755.”  It is very rare to find a person born in New England, who cannot both read and write.  The late Judge Reeve, of the Supreme Court of Connecticut, declared, that in the whole of his professional practice, he had found but three persons in that State who could not sign their names, and that all of them were foreigners.

Note D.          Page 39.

            “A republican government is certainly most congenial with the nature, most propitious to the welfare, and most conducive to the dignity of our species.  Man becomes degraded in proportion as he loses the right of self government.  Every effort ought therefore to be made to fortify our free institutions, and the great bulwark of security is to be formed in education; the culture of the heart and the head; the diffusion of knowledge, piety and morality.  A virtuous and enlightened man can never submit to degradation, and a virtuous and enlightened people will never breathe in the atmosphere of slavery.  Upon education, then, we must rely for the purity, the preservation, and the perpetuation of Republican government.  In this sacred cause, we cannot exercise too much liberality.  It is identified with our best interests in this world, and with our best destinies in the world to come.”—Gov. Clinton’s last Message.   END.

The Nation’s Progress,

Or

Licentiousness and Ruin,

A Discourse,

Delivered on the Evening of the

Annual Fast in Massachusetts,

April 7, 1836.

By John Gunnison,

Pastor of the Union Evangelical Church

Of Amesbury and Salisbury.

“Their rules of life,

Defective and unsanctioned, prove too weak

To bind the roving appetite, and lead

Blind nature up to God.” Cowper.

Amesbury:

Printed by J. Caldwell,

Courier Press.

Discourse.

Psalm XXII: 23.

The Kingdom is the Lord’s; He is the governor among the nations.

Psalm II:9. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; Thou shalt dash them to pieces like a potter’s vessel.

These sentiments are but dimly recognized, either by the rulers or the ruled of this world. That the world belongs to God–that He made it–that He governs it–and that He will dispose of it, are facts seldom presenting themselves, in all the impressiveness of their vast reality, before the great mass of human minds. It is true men do not–they dare not–in so many words deny the rightful dominion of God; yet they do virtually exclude Him from his own kingdom. By enacting laws, and cherishing principles, and setting examples, in direct contrariety to the divine law, rulers ask, in language by no means equivocal; “Who is the Lord, that we should obey Him?” –and by following out his spirit in their allowed practices, the great mass of men say, “There is no God!”

 Now here we detect the specious machinery of atheism. The simple fact that men deny their obligations to God, or attempt unrighteously to cancel these obligations, shows beyond doubt that they deem themselves their own masters, created for their own gratification, with a perfect right to live exclusively to themselves. Yet, notwithstanding the universality of this practical atheism, “The kingdom is the Lord’s, and He is governor among the nations.” This is God’s world. He made it. He preserves it, and to his righteous disposal it must ultimately submit.

“Why then do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? Why do the kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel against the Lord and against his anointed, saying, let us break their bands asunder, and let us cast their cords away from us? He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh. The Lord shall have them in derision. He shall speak to them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure.”

 It would seem that the fact of God’s rightful authority should have exerted, ere this, a constraining influence upon the world which he has made. Such however is not the result. It has been true in all time that men are “lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God.” If we survey the first sinner, upon his expulsion from paradise, or mark the malice of Cain, or the ambition of Nimrod; or if we trace down in all its length the mighty stream of generations past, we perceive the same features, and the same proofs of practical atheism, in the great mass of men, of every period and of every clime.

 The idolatry of the Canaanites, the abominations of Israel, he tyranny of Ahab, the cruelties of Nero, the fires of the Inquisition, and the blasphemies of Voltaire and Paine, although standing out as monitory way-marks in the “course of time,” are by no means extraordinary exhibitions. They serve indeed as beacons for us to gaze at and as facts to converse upon and occasions from which wrongfully to infer our own virtue, and to congratulate our own age and country upon the refinement of intellect–the reign of liberty–and the influence of religion–when, in sober truth, the same great outlines of oppression, idolatrous love to the world, atheism, and unblushing sin, in all their essential elements, live and operate in our own bosoms–expand by our firesides–give complexion to our social interviews–pollute our sanctuaries– bask beneath the tree of liberty and assume the control of our national and state legislatures.

In confirmation of these remarks, it seems needful only to survey the existing state of the public mind and the public morals in our own land.

 From the morals of a community may always be inferred the virtue or licentiousness of public sentiment; and on the other hand, the public mind is always a true index of the public morals. That era of anarchy and misrule which changed the most populous cities of France into a modern Golgotha, by the sacrifice of not fewer than three millions of human beings upon the altar of cruelty and lust, did not at once burst forth, without having been preceded by the state of mind and morals, in perfect accordance with all the fatal transactions of that dark period.

Previous to the out-breaking of the French Revolution, it is a well-known historical fact, that the public mind had become notoriously licentious. It is true, that a “form of godliness” was sustained; nor is it less true, that atheism was openly avowed by many, and secretly cherished by more, whose place and whose privilege it was to give form, and force, and character to the public mind.

 Licentiousness of sentiment, therefore, may justly be regarded as the pioneer which preceded and effectually prepared the way for the abolition of God’s sabbath–the prostitution of His ordinances, and the entire reign of terror which ensued. And is not similar licentiousness of sentiment now a marked, and by no means a happy feature of our national mind?

The Press, in these States, is an engine of immense power indeed, with some qualification, may it not be denominated the presiding genius of our law, religion, and liberty? What then is the general character of the American press? Is it, or is it not anti-Christian? In reference to the great mass of periodicals devoted to politics, may it not justly be asserted, that their influence, in this point of view, is bad, decidedly bad? To profit, or party, or popularity, most of them are manifestly pledged; wholly irrespective of those eternal obligations which bind all men to act for God and virtue. And what shall be said of scores even, among those nominally devoted to the advancement of God’s kingdom? Is it not their direct tendency to undermine the deep and everlasting foundations of the gospel? It cannot be denied, that to a considerable extent, through the press, the public mind is infected with the spirit of a religion, which not only fails of recognizing God as the moral Governor of the world, and contemplating man as a lost and guilty being, whose only refuge from “the wrath to come” is in the cross of Christ–but a religion which commends itself to the worldly, the careless and the profane, by casting a false garb over the deep depravity of the heart–by trifling with sin, and sneering at accountability and a “judgment to come.” “Christ and the Church!” was the motto of our puritan fathers; but this perverted public sentiment leaves God, and Christ, and holiness, and the Church altogether in the back ground. And have not the magistrate and the preacher aided the press and contributed their full share in this deterioration of public sentiment?

 Whether the multitude range themselves under the undisguised banner of infidelity, or embrace a system claiming affinity with the scriptures, the operation of one and the same spirit seems widely prevalent. This spirit manifestly seeks to deny, evade or explain away the great distinguishing doctrines of revelation–to keep the awful attributes of God out of sight–to hurl conscience from her throne–to blot out accountability–to reduce heaven and hell and holiness to the mere imagery of a disordered brain, and with one sweeping stroke, to prostrate all those cardinal truths which alone can exert a redeeming influence upon fallen man.

 There was a period in our history, when the public sentiment (especially of New England) contemplated man, not as the mere creature of time and chance and reason; but as a being of eternal destination–a subject of God’s moral government–most strongly bound to recognize the law of his Creator and to live for eternity, his final abode. Then, appeals were made, both by the magistrate, the preacher, and the press, to the moral obligation and the living conscience of men.

Then, instead of eulogizing the all-sufficiency of reason, and man’s native purity, and God’s indulgent tenderness toward sin; instead of speaking with complacency of the imperfection of the scriptures, and the innocent frailties of human nature; and the trifling importance of vital godliness–public sentiment recognized distinctly through all its mediums, the “desperate wickedness” of unrenewed hearts; the personality and office word of the Holy Ghost; the vicarious sufferings of “God manifest in the flesh;” the supremacy of the scriptures; and the indispensableness of that new-birth, without which none can see God in peace.

 Then, God the Creator, God the Lawgiver, God the Governor and God the Judge, both in the world of matter and the world of mind, was acknowledged; and the elements of man’s spiritual and accountable being were aroused and put in motion by appeals to his actual state, in relation to those everlasting truths revealed in the scriptures.

 And what was the result upon the Puritans themselves, and their immediate descendants? Why (to borrow the language of a certain writer, not far from a century subsequent to the landing of the pilgrims) –“The name and interest of God has been written upon us, in capital letters, from the beginning. How did our fathers entertain the gospel from the first, with all the institution thereof! How much of “holiness to the Lord; was inscribed upon all their ways and works@ and how do we reap the fruits, in the good influence of our pious rulers, and the practice of morality, and the enjoyment of peaceable times!” Near the same period, a member of the British Parliament, in a speech before that body, said– “I have lived in New England seven years, and all that time I never heard one profane oath; and all that time I never saw a man drunk in that land.”

 Now when we wander back through by-gone periods, and contrast the purity of that “olden time” with the corruption of the present, how can we avoid the conviction, that, in the language of Moses to Israel, “Of the Rock that begat us we are unmindful; and have forgotten God, that formed us?” That “we have provoked him to jealousy with new gods, and sacrificed to gods which came newly up, which our fathers feared not?” How can the fact be well concealed that a spirit of practical atheism is not only pervading the domestic circle, but diffusing its baneful influence through the press, and the pulpit, the court of justice, and the hall of legislation?

Is it not obvious that the face of society now exhibits many of those dark presages which ushered in the death-struggle of liberty, religion and law in revolutionary France? Who can fail of perceiving, in “the signs of the times,” a marked contempt of those statutes of eternal righteousness, laid down in the great law-book of heaven? Is it not easy to detect in many features of our political economy and the administration of our civil government, a tacit denial of God’s right and God’s agency, and the great principles of God’s government amongst men?

Instead of making, as did the Puritans, God’s word the polestar and chart of legislative rule and legal enactment, is it not undeniable, that selfishness, reckless of consequences, often binds in fetters of adamant the decisions of the Judge–the doings of State legislatures, and the acts of Congress?

 Time was, when for arresting with a bold and fearless hand, the current of death in its fatal sweep over the community, a worthy citizen could not have been personally abused, legally prohibited the liberty of speech, fined, and condemned to solitary imprisonment; and the reckless ruffian exculpated from the due rewards of his deeds, and virtually commended for personal insult and brutal force! In the better days of New England, such an act of palpable disregard to righteousness in high places would have eclipsed her glory, and darkened the promise of her brightening hopes.

 But now, such a transaction may command public applause; and in perfect keeping with the spirit by which this is prompted, the system of retailing strong drink at the corner of every street, and in almost every dark receptacle of sin, is legalized, and guarded and watched over, and invested with energy and power, and progress, by those august bodies, which are entrusted with the guardianship of the commonwealth, and solemnly pledged to act for the public good. It would seem that the iniquitous system of “rum-shops and ruin,” which has so long obliterated the fear and counteracted the truth of God; and preyed upon the very vitals of our communities; I say, it would seem that this ruinous system should have failed ere this to command the influence of legislative enactments, and the fostering guardianship of the law.

 Indeed, it is matter both of astonishment and mortification, that in such a land, and at such a day, the cause of distillers, drunkards and criminals can be vindicated by the majesty of the statute book! Yet such is the fact; and the position (of some at least) of our constituted authorities, in relation to the distillery and the dram-shop, is such, in the judgment of sober charity, as to exclude the moral government of God and the accountability of man altogether from the public mind! And how shall it be accounted for? Why truly, “the powers that be” seem, at least in this respect, moved and influenced by that greater power, denominated in scripture phrase, “the God of this world.” Fear of public odium–love of sensual indulgence, or self-interest, in some one or other of its numerous forms, appears to have perverted the judgments–blinded the perception, and eradicated from the ethics of our rulers, those eternal principles of righteousness, which only can “exalt a nation.” And thus it comes to pass that in instances, too numerous, both the maker and the executor of the law sacrifice the interests of two worlds upon the polluted and polluting altar of selfishness.

In fact, the publicly legalized and cherished manufacture and sale of intoxicating drinks, with its associated sisterhood of vices, affords fearful indication that the death-struggle of virtue is about being witnessed; and that Jehovah is suffering us as a nation, to strengthen ourselves “against the Almighty;” and to rush madly “upon the thick bosses of his burning buckler.”

Associated with this sin and invigorated by the atmosphere of a lax religious sentiment, is the open and allowed and legalized desecration of God’s sabbath.

It is ours, not only to witness in the common walks of life, the transaction of secular business–the idleness– the labor, and the sport, which, from the gray-headed to the little child, alarmingly mark the Lord’s day; but also, to see our national legislature lay reckless hands upon that sacred institution, by employing scores of thousands in conveying the mails, discharging the duties of the Post Office, drilling at military stations, and attending to secular business, in various other departments of the  general government; and thus giving the whole country a precedent for travelling, boating, gambling, horse-racing, or whatever else may suit their own convenience or profit, or pleasure on that day, with the sanctification of which is entwined the very life of our country’s welfare. And it might with propriety be added, that the personal example of our rulers, from the highest to the lowest, with few exceptions, indicates in this respect, the prevalence of an infidelity, the sad story of which will probably be read by coming generations, in the gone-by glory and departed worth of this once favored land. Here again we can but perceive marked forgetfulness of God, rebellion against His laws, and a tacit denial that “the kingdom is the Lord’s; that he is Governor amongst the nation’s.”

An additional feature of the same degeneracy may be seen in the gross, growing, and disgraceful violation of the seventh commandment; under which, to say the least, every city, and village, and considerable town groans and becomes infected with the elements both of literal and spiritual death. This “body of sin” has filled our moral atmosphere with pestilential vapors; and in conjunction with infidelity, intemperance and sabbath breaking, consigned to the grave and a hopeless eternity.

“Tis a vortex insatiate, on whose giddy bosom,

The victim is whirl’d, till his senses are gone;

When lost to all shame, and the dictates of reason,

He lends not an effort to ever return.”

How many have found its ‘end as bitter as wormwood;” and mourned “at last, when their flesh and body are consumed!” and yet it is tolerated by the laxity of public religious sentiment. The prevailing skepticism, in regard to God’s government and God’s truth, gives it countenance; and the pulpit, and the press, and the ruler have forborne to portray its hideous features, and to hang out for the benefit of the young and unsuspecting, such beacons as should effectually deter them from that pathway which leads “down to hell.” And hence, it has continued to extend its ravages and multiply its victims, and increase its pollutions, in our nominally Christian communities–in which even, there has seemed to be too little virtue to check its onward march! Nevertheless, “Because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience!”

“Whoremongers and adulterers, He will judge!”

To the foregoing it were well to add, in all their deteriorating attitudes, and disgraceful mobs, the deliberate assassinations, the gambling, the perjury and bribes, which in most parts of the country, stalk forth at noon day. But time forbids. Justice, however, demands the introduction of one other, and peradventure, the chief of this sisterhood of harpies, who have already commenced their prey upon our body politic; and are rapidly bearing off in their foul talons, the guards of liberty, the restraints of law, and the sanctions of religion. I allude to American Slavery. “That we have in the midst of us more than town millions of human being in servile bondage, is a fact suited to awaken the deepest solicitude and the most fearful apprehension.” This simple fact of itself is a caricature upon all the institutions of our boasted democracy; it gives the lie to our constitution; and holds us up to the world as a nation of hypocrites and oppressors! Such is the attitude in which it inevitably places these United States.

Nor is it amongst the least of the alarming features of this great national sin, that it finds a congenial atmosphere in the capital of this falsely-called “asylum of the oppressed;” and beneath the very eye of the constituted guardians of liberty!

Think of the spectacle. On the one hand, imagine the American eagle proudly towering above the nation’s dome, the ensign of equal rights; and on the other, –perchance within the very shadow which this proud ensign casts upon the distance–scores or hundreds of human beings, lacerated by the lash, groaning beneath the chain, or being bought and sold like beasts of burden! And those too, MEN, to whom equally with ourselves, not only the Constitution, but the God of nature, has guaranteed the “inalienable rights” of “life, LIBERTY, and the pursuit of happiness!” A spectacle sufficiently ludicrous one might suppose, to ensure its suppression, even were it not attended with superlative guilt. But alas! When we enter the halls of Congress; when we listen to the sentiments advanced by many of those legislators who lay high claim to patriotism, devotion to the cause of liberty, and even deference for the bible, we can be tremble for our political ark. There, in the legitimate spirit of despotism, we hear the right, and even the virtue of slavery asserted. Here, in too many lamentable instances, we see a disposition to sacrifice upon the altar of lust and licentiousness, whatever is valuable in our bill of rights, and whatever is obligatory in the law of love. It is a dark omen–that Columbia, the seat of government, the alledged strong-hold of liberty, the focus of equal rights, should after all be the greatest slave market perhaps in the Christian world, is a fact pregnant with the most fearful evils. The “mischief” however, thus “framed by law, and proceeding from the throne of iniquity,’ terminates not with the sacrifice of the flesh, and blood, and souls of nearly three millions of immortal beings; but like the poisonous effluvia from the fabled bohon upas, it impregnates the whole atmosphere of our republic.

Witness its influence in the interception and robbery of the United mail; the cold-blooded murder of guiltless citizens, without the privilege of trial by jury; the various attempts to interdict the freedom of the press; and by lawless mobs and brute force, to aim a fatal blow at free discussion, and liberty of speech! It is not, then merely the wrongful oppression of degraded millions, which is involved in the natural results of this great moral outrage; but all the rights and immunities for which the Pilgrims suffered, the Puritans prayed, and the Patriots bled; all that is dear in our social compact; all that is valuable in our privileges of citizenship; all that is to be prized in our religious, literary and political institutions; stands or falls inevitably with the great question of American slavery, in its present aspects and bearings. Yes–let the unobstructed influence of this crying sin, with its legitimate legion of moral maladies and physical tortures, continues to go forth and finally preponderate–and the knell of this republic will soon have tolled–our halls of legislation will be transformed into theatres of violence and blood–our Constitution scattered to the winds–our sanctuaries demolished–and evils “without a precedent, without a number, and without a name,” overwhelm us, as did the deluge the antediluvians, or the fire the guilty cities of the plain.

Without, therefore, attempting to describe the numberless evils, the cruelties, the unbridled licentiousness, the extreme degradation of morals, the ruin of souls, and the numerous and nameless lesser sufferings and sins of which slavery is directly or indirectly the prolific source; I would merely ask, do not the facts alluded to in this connexion, show undeniably that our nation has forgotten that God who has threatened to judge the oppressor? –That we practically claim the kingdom as our own–and impiously ask, “Who is Lord over us?”

Howbeit, such is the spectacle which our country at present exhibits. These are the great features of its moral character and its political aspect. Such is the cloud, surcharged with blackness and pregnant with the lightnings of heaven, which is now intercepting the rays of our sun, and stretching athwart our national horizon! It is not however, there mere demanded surrender of civil rights–it is not the prospective entombing of liberty and law alone, which admonish us of the coming catastrophe, in a voice of thunder; but those interests which are vastly more valuable–which will outlive time and chance and change–the interests of the imperishable spirit, the untold and imagineless joys or woes of an approaching ETERNITY, call upon us to AWAKE! And is there no redeeming principle? May not the threatening calamity be strayed? Not surely by casting a false and fallacious garb over the existing state of things. The elements of anarchy and sin can never be palsied and rendered powerless by the siren song of safety. You might as well hope to arrest the tornado by dint of argument, or to lull the ocean to repose with the sound of the violin. No–the seeds of iniquity lie deeply imbedded in the human soul. “The carnal mind is enmity against God.” In the power and the purity of vital godliness, therefore, exists our last hope. A return to the primitive views of God’s character and the sublime, and spiritual and purifying truths of God’s word, holds forth the only bright promise either for “the life that now is or that which is to come.” Here must be the starting place, the source, and the sanction of all genuine reform. The gross, and willful, and bewildering errors, in regard to God’s righteous government and man’s moral being, which have so widely gone forth, must be counter acted by those scriptural truths, which urge the broad and spiritual and unyielding demands of the divine law–which waken up convictions of sin, solicitude for salvation, and thirst for holiness, in the heart forgetful of God and careless of its immortal destiny. Not until then, will the deceitful gains and the gaudy gayeties of this passing world fade away before the Saviors’ Cross. Not until then, will the sense of a present and presiding God constrain and hollow-hearted statesman, and the unrighteous judge, and the aspiring demagogue, to act in reference to that day, “when every work shall be brought into judgment, with every secret thing!” indeed, not until then, will “peace on earth and good will” abound, and man’s emancipated spirit, “like the waters of a peaceful pool, reflect the image of heaven.” But whilst he continues to imbibe the elements of any system which deprives God of his holiness–the transgressor of his guilt, and sin of its malignity; so long will man think upon and live for himself alone. So long will he forget his moral ruin, and the imperishable spirit, and God his Judge, and eternity, his final abode. So long will he seek only the world that he dwells in, the vanities that encompass him around, and those “fleshly lust that war against the soul.” Until the bible, as understood by Paul and the Pilgrims shall become the “citizen’s directory and the statesman’s manual,” bribery, and intrigue, and management will preside at our elections; and instead of having our “officers peace and our exactors righteousness,” the wicked will rule–sin will stand forth with brazen front in the hall of legislation, the seat of justice, and the sanctuary of God–and the land will mourn.

So long, it must be expected, that “the house” which “is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death” will continue to send forth its putrefactive influence; diffusing rottenness and corruption through the land–while drunkenness, perjury and murder flourish within and around it.

So long, that Sabbath will be used as an engine of Satan, in the unrestrained pursuit of sin. It will be appropriated to human convenience of interest, a legalized, and established and frequented entrance-way to perdition.

So long will rulers legislate, and advocates plead, and judges decide for distilleries and dram shops, and ensure an incalculable amount of wrong and ruin to the community.

So long will human flesh and blood and souls be held in unrighteous bondage– the institution of marriage derided–separation of parents and children enforced–a vast system of incest and pollution cherished–and liberty, and right, and religion despised and trampled in the dust, until “the land spew us out, as it spewed out the nations that were before us.”

And now, my brethren, it remains for the watchmen upon Zion’s walls; and for “the church of God which He has purchased with his own blood,” to decide in no small measure whether our country shall still be borne down, and palsied, and petrified by this mighty pressure of sin, until He who “is Governor among the nations, shall “break us with a rod of iron, and dash in pieces like a potter’s vessel.” Did the prayer of Abraham avail for polluted Sodom? Might “ten righteous” have saved the guilty cities of the plain? What then may not the thousands of Israel, by deep humiliation, repentance, and intercession before God, accomplish for our sinning, sinking land? “Behold, thus saith the Lord, return ye everyone from his evil way, and make your ways and your doings good. But if ye will not return, I will pluck you up, and leave you desolate.” Let, therefore, the neglect of God and profanation of His sabbath, the lewdness and intemperance, oppression and pride, and practical atheism which now abound, be tolerated, and cheered and cherished, by the rulers and the ruled, but for a while, and the sad crisis of our destiny will have fully come.

“Behold, saith the Lord, it is written before me, I will not keep silence, but will recompense, even recompense, your iniquities into your own bosom!” and what can shield us against the righteous retribution of Jehovah? Where are the cities, and states, and kingdoms of antiquity? Babylon? Ninevah? Tyre? Egypt? Carthage? Could their walls, or treasures, or armies withstand the visitation of the Almighty? “Like a potter’s vessel,” they are “dashed in pieces” –like a passing meteor, they have faded from the horizon of human sight! And thus must it be inevitably in relation to ourselves, “whenever God takes off his restraining hand,” and suffers lewdness, and lust, and infidelity unchecked to fill the sail, and guide the helm, and drive furiously upon the hidden rocks below! Then–in the characteristic language of an eminent writer–“the reign of chaos will return. The waves of our unquiet sea, high as our mountains, will roll, and roar, and dash, from West to East, and from South to North, wrecking the hopes, and upturning the deep foundations of all that we hold dear! Who then would thrust out our ship from her moorings, in a starless night, upon an ocean of storms, without rudder, or anchor, or compass, or chart? The elements around us may remain; and our giant rivers and mountains; our miserable descendants also may multiply and vegetate, and rot, in moral darkness and putrefaction, –But, the American character, and our glorious institutions, will go down to the tomb, and our epitaph will stand forth a warning to the world–Thus endeth the nation that despised the Lord!”

Here, then, o ye people! “Be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in Him.”

“Fret not thyself because of evil doers.”

A

Sermon

Preached on Fast Day,

April 18, 1839.

By Samuel Hopkins

Pastor of the First Congregational Church

In Saco, ME.

[Published by Request]

Saco:

S. L. Goodale

1839

Psalm 37. 1.

Fret Not Thyself Because of Evil Doers.

The world abounds with evil doers. You may find them – without search – among the polite and the vulgar; in high ways and by-ways; abroad and at home. They beset you, they face you, they thwart you – everywhere. If you will, you may spy some deformity of conduct, or policy, or principle – some flaw or defect – some excrescence or putrefying sore – upon every one you look at; upon chief magistrate, law maker, judge, and petty justice; upon pedagogue and school-boy; buyer and seller; husband, wife, and child; maid and mistress; deacon and minister of the Gospel.

How this strange and universal degeneracy comes to pass – how it dare sustain itself against the tremendous warnings of all past history – I do not stop to enquire. The fact is all I want. Everybody – at least everybody else – does wrong, more or less. They do not do what they should. They do what they should not.

Another thing. The eyes and ears of the present generation are peculiarly occupied with each others’ faults. Not that we are quicker to scent, or more ravenous to devour, the offal [refuse] of human wickedness than our fathers were. But times have changed. The ends of the earth are brought together. An evil done at a distant point–in a twinkling–is bruited in our ears. The press tells it. Steam power carries it. Strolling lecturers trumpet it and denounce it.  And the result is, that whereas past generations could see but little of the deeds of evildoers, beyond their own firesides or hamlets – we have an interminable succession of abominations, floating before us from every quarter of the globe, thrust upon us by every wind that blows, chattered to us by every tongue that talks, till we are sickened – verily sickened – with the uncleannesses of a world lying in wickedness. All this is well. God has his design in it. And God will make it tell – with power, too – in the accomplishment of his purposes of grace.

These two facts, then, are now before us; the one – that the world is full of evil doers; and the other – that the deeds of evil doers, to a degree unknown in former times, are forced upon our minds.

These things being so – if ever there was a generation for whom the words of our text were specially designed; if ever there was a generation who needed specially to weigh and remember these words – that generation is our own. And perhaps the careful consideration of their import can never be more timely than upon a day like this; a day set apart “in view of our manifold transgressions as individuals and as a community”; a day which we are as prone to occupy in brooding over the sins of others, as in confessing and forsaking our own.

The duty enjoined in the text can hardly be stated in plainer terms – “Fret not thyself because of evil doers.” In presenting it to your consideration I shall endeavor.

I.       To illustrate the behavior here prohibited.

II.    To present some reasons why we should avoid it.

I.       Let us examine the behavior here prohibited.

A man of a right spirit will feel the spirit stirred within him against Sin; whether the Sin be in himself or in others; whether it rise before him in the misdeeds of the oppressor, in the vices of the inebriate, in the arts of the libertine, or in the waywardness of a little child. He will not wonder, yet never feel – he will not behold, yet never care a feather – when evil doers are scattering firebrands, arrows and death. Neither will he be roused because men do evil here or there, in this way or that – yet blink and nod and go to sleep over wickedness in some other shape or some other place. It is impossible for us, if we obey the Bible, to look upon any sort of evil doing with indifference.

There is, then, a feeling, an excitement of heart against evil doers which is duty. To describe it; it is – dislike – strong aversion – abhorrence. All this exists in the spotless citizen of heaven. It exists in God.

But – there is a kind of excitement which, forsooth, because it is against evil doers, calls itself good, and passes for good, though it is kith and kin with the evil it opposes. It is not an excitement which leads us to yearn over the worker of iniquity. It is not an excitement which sends us to our closets to weep and plead in their behalf. It is an excitement which hurries us to harshness and bitterness; of look, of word, of deed. It is – passion. It is – ill humor. It is – wrath. It is what, in common talk, we call “getting cross.” It is what the Bible calls “fretting ourselves.” When we indulge it, we get out of all patience and into all agitation – perhaps, beside ourselves – because somebody does not do, or believe, or feel, or preach, what we think is right. When a child teases us; when a jockey cheats us; when a friend neglects us, or a neighbor defames us; when a man-seller or a rum-seller will not mind us; when an impudent fellow insults us; when any one refuses our party, our doctrine, or our measures; when Congress thrusts out our petitions; when  a Christian brother or a Christian minister seems to us to say “God speed” to the wicked; – whatever be the evil, and how great soever the provocation – the moment we lose our temper, the moment we get angry and vexed, we fall into the very behavior forbidden in our text. We “fret ourselves because of evil doers.”

II.    Let us consider some reasons why we should avoid fretting ourselves because of evil doers.

1. One reason is – it does no good. True – it sometimes passes for an evidence of piety; and sometimes is all the evidence we can get. We may point to our feelings and our bold words and our schemes and our labors against evil doers and say – “Lo our zeal – ; our zeal for the Lord of Hosts.” [Isaiah 37:32] – We may point conscience there and say – “Peace – Peace.” We may feel Pharisaical, and self-righteous, and self-pleased, and safe, because we are hot against the wicked. Thus our opposition to evil doers may give a temporary comfort; it may bolster up, for a day, our souls – lull to sleep, for a night, our fears – and keep at bay, for a while, our convictions.

But does this do us good? Does it make us better? Does it mold us into the likeness of God? Does it help us in our preparatory work for heaven? What! – fretfulness – ill temper – self-righteousness – the light of our own fire – the sparks of our own kindling – guide us to glory and to God! Fretting ourselves against the wicked – is this attuning our hearts to the music of heaven! But, if not – what doth it profit us?

“But it does the wicked good. It takes off their chariot wheels. It troubles their consciences. It sometimes makes them leave off their wickedness.”

Does it? What! You’re getting peevish do all this! Your ill humor physic away iniquity like this! The mere lightning and grumbling of a towering passion – of yours, of mine, or of a hundred others leagued together – will they do so much? Will a scowl – all alone – quell a willful child? Will a volley of angry words – and nothing else – reclaim a thief? Will the flashing indignation of priests and elders – all alone – convert a heretic? Will the trumpeted wrath of the north – all alone – bring to repentance the slaveholder of the south?

Try it – then. To the work – then; good men and true. And – by all your pity for the oppressed, your fears for the unbeliever, your regard for order, and you love for domestic peace – use no truth, no persuasion, no authority; but raise one united and untiring peal of wrath – till the wilderness bud and blossom – till the world put on righteousness for her robe and beauty for her diadem.

“But, nay – ; this is absurd. No one affirms it. Truth is wanted, for the conscience. Power is wanted, for the perverse.”

Well – then; has Truth grown halt and lazy, in her old age, that she must needs be whipped and spurred by Passion? Has Power lost its nerve and right that it must be bolstered up by anger? – If truth for the conscience, and power for the intractable – be the legitimate and effective means of dealing with the wicked, why not trust to them? Why foist in something else? Can we not publish truth – can we not use our power (when we get it) without being in a passion? To be sure we can. And if we can, and if a sour temper neither convicts the conscience nor subjects the forward pray how does it mend the matters of a wicked world? Not at all. Then it does no good. And God has well said – “Fret not thyself because of evil doers.”

The truth is – when a man’s desire is purely to do good; to convince, to reclaim, to gain, the evil doer; he coincides, instinctively, with the precept we are considering. He is moved; but not to wrath. He is excited; but not with fretting. He goes about, the gentle and hopeful bearer of “the Truth as it is in Jesus.” A precious testimony, this, to the righteousness and wisdom of the text.

2.  But – another reason. Fretting ourselves because of evil doers does hurt.

How is our own comfort affected by it? Well – or ill? Watch the man who is out of humor at somebody’s wickedness; the man whose words are quick and sharp and hot; the man who looks and tones and gestures show you that he is out of patience – vexed – that someone does not think as he thinks and do as he does. Is he happy? – No. that fretful gust must pass away; that swell of passion must subside, before he can enjoy himself or anything that God has made. But we need not look to others, to understand this. We have all felt it. Anger and enjoyment cannot live together. They are contrary the one to the other. We must either train ourselves to consider, and to endure evil doers without being irritated; or – in this world where they whirl around us like the leaves of autumn – we must lead wretched life to our graves.

Beside; a man in a passion is no comfortable companion. In matters not what his passion concerns. Whether fretting himself because someone has done right, or because someone has done wrong – he sends discomfort all around him.

And again; when we are irritated because of evil doers, we shall act accordingly. “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.” [Matthew 12:34] “Out of the heart are the issues of life.” [Proverbs 4:23] Like does not more surely beget like, than a fretted temper, some evil fruit. It makes us speak wrong. It makes us do wrong.

And yet more. A vexed spirit vexes a spirit. Passion excites passion. If you do wrong, and I fret about it, you are not excited by my wrath to do better, but to do as you please; and that is – to do wrong the more. Let a man see that you cannot bear him because he is so bad – you excite his anger. He cannot bear you. This is human nature. Miserable stuff, I grant; nevertheless, the very stuff you have to deal with. And a fine beginning you have made in the scheme of mending a sinner, when, by your fretting, you have brought him to fretting too. Why! You have made him bristle like a porcupine. He says “touch me if you dare.” You have made him set his feet like a mule; and there, in the midst of evil deeds, dogged the perverse – while he pleases, he will stand. And he will please to stand while – you fret. You have made him blind. You made him deaf. And now you may show him truth, pure as the blush of morning; he will not hail it. You may show it to him, vivid as the lightening’s glare; he will not see it. You may peel it to him like the rolling of a thousand thunders; he will not hear it.

Now we may philosophize about this as we please. We may speculate, till we are gray – and lecture, till the season of our stewardship is spent – about the omnipotence of truth; but we cannot make one hair of this matter white or black. It still remains true an angered man is immovable. The omnipotence of Truth notwithstanding – no sinner, since the world has stood, has been converted from the error of his way, or his doctrine, in a passion. – And while the world standeth, no sinner will be. The passion must be subdued – even in the operations of Divine grace – or the truth fails. Wake it up – sustain it; and you have reared a wall of defense and defiance; a wall which must come down ere the citadel can be won.

Now, if fretting ourselves because of evil doers works mischief like this – mars our comfort – and others’ comfort – provokes us to bad deeds – and rouses in those against whom we fret a spirit which prevents their reform – we had better give it up; we had better forswear it forever. We had better hold the truth in righteousness, and “speak the truth in love.” [Ephesians 4:15] We had better – first of all – and last of all – “take heed to our spirits.” [Malachi 2:15]

3. But another reason; – fretting ourselves because of evil doers is unseemly.

It is becoming to feel towards those who do wrong, as Paul did towards his unbelieving “kinsmen according to the flesh;” [Romans 9:3] as Stephen did, when he prayed “Lay not this sin to their charge;” [Acts 7:60] as Jesus Christ did, when he wept over Jerusalem – when he cried “Father forgive them.” [Luke 23:34] But, that it is becoming to feel fretful, in the case, is what none can show.

But, take another view. When we get vexed at evil doers it is not because they abuse God, but because they abuse ourselves, or our fellow creatures. We do not fret at a man because he is unconverted, spiritually; but because he is somehow irregular, outwardly. I have never seen a man cross because his neighbor was not born again. But I have seen hundreds cross because their neighbors–born again, or not – transgressed the second table of the law. Now we ourselves are guilty of deeds more evil than our neighbor’s deeds which anger us. Perhaps we have not, like him, cheated in a bargain; or extorted usury; or sworn profanely; or enticed men to drunkenness; or held our fellow men in bondage; – but, we have done things worse – all of us; we do things worse, all of us, every day. We have done, and do things compared with which the deed of his we fret at, is as a mole hill to a mountain–as a bubble to a world–as a feather to a universe of lead. He wrongs his fellow creature–(for that is the only thing which frets us)–we wrong our God. He treads upon the claims of blood to blood–we, in every error of our lives and secret thoughts, upon those of matchless Grace, of pure redeeming Love.

True – our sin against God is no counterpoise to his against man. His sin is just as heavy and just as ill deserving as though we were sinless. It merits our abhorrence just as much. Our greater wickedness is no reason why we should like or justify his. But it is a reason why we should view his, and bear it too, – without wrath.

It does not become an evil doer to sit in haughty, angry, judgment upon an evil doer. It does not become one who has a beam in his own eye to scowl and chafe at the mote in his brother’s eye.

But–

4. To fret ourselves because of evil doers is wicked.

It is against the Bible. It is as truly disobedience of God as any other thing. It is as openly, as pointedly, disobedience of God. Has he forbidden idolatry? So he has, this. Has he forbidden oppression? So he has, this. Has he forbidden domestic broils–and fraud–and lying–and stealing–and adultery. So he has, this; just as decidedly, just as plainly.

If it be sin to disobey God in one thing–is it not, to disobey him in another? If it be sin to hold flesh and blood of man as chattels, so it is to fret ourselves because of him who does it. if it be sin to be a drunkard, so it is to be vexed against a drunkard. And which is the less and which the greater sin–to be an evil doer in this or that; or–to be an evil doer in fretting ourselves against an evil doer? Which is the least a disobedience of God; and which the most?

True– this fretfulness is natural. It is hard to avoid it. We slip into it unawares. We see the best of men indulge it. And sometimes it seems as though one could scarce do God service–briskly–without it. But all this weighs nothing, nothing, against–“Thus saith the Lord.” “Therefore–thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever though art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself–for thou that judgest, doest the same things.” Thou who frettest against  an evil doer, and he–alike and equally–disobey God.

Another thing will illustrate this sin. What would be your thoughts, and what, your emotions, should I tell you that our Savior used, at times, to foam with passion against evil doers in his day, as you have seen his professed disciples do in yours? You would start at it as blasphemy. Why? If it be not a sin thus to feel toward the wicked–why?

But take another test; for the matter in hand is worth it. –The influence of petulance towards the wicked upon devotion shows it to be a sin. Any feeling which is wrong prevents our access to God. We must first smooth down our ruffled spirits before we can commune at the mercy seat. –Now how is it with an angry, peevish spirit toward the wicked? Does it help, or hinder, prayer? While we are in the heat–are we ready for the communion of our closets–or not? A certain writer answer the question. He says–“prayer is the daughter of charity and the sister of meekness; and he that prays to God in an angry spirit, “is like him who retires into a battle to meditate, and sets up his closet in the out quarters of an enemy, “and chooses a frontier garrison to be wise in. anger is a perfect alienation of the mind from prayer; “and–is contrary to the attention which presents our prayers in a right line to Heaven. For so have I seen “a lark rising from his bed of grass, and soaring upwards, singing as he rises, and hops to get to heaven, “and climb above the clouds. But the poor bird was beaten back by the loud sighings of an eastern wind, “and his motion made irregular and inconstant; descending more, at every breath of the tempest, than “he could recover by the libration and frequent weighings of his wings; till  the little creature was forced “to sit down and pant, and stay till the storm was over; and then–it made a prosperous flight and it did “rise and sing as if it had learned music and motion from an angel, as he passed sometimes through the “air, about his ministries here below.

“So is the prayer of a good man, when anger raises a tempest and overcomes him. Then his prayer was “broken, and his thoughts were troubled, and his words went up towards a cloud; and his thoughts “pulled them back against, and made them without intention. And the good man sighs for his infirmity; “but he must be content to lose his prayer; and he must recover it when his anger is removed, and his “spirit is becalmed, and made even as the brow of Jesus, and smooth like the heart of God: and then is “ascends to heaven upon the wings of the holy dove, and dwells with God, till it returns like the useful “bee, laden with a blessing and the dew of heaven.”

Surely, then, if fretfulness be disobedience of God; if it be contrary to the spirit of our great Example; if it spoil the hours of our closet devotion; there is something wrong about it. It is wicked to be vexed at the ill-behavior of others; as verily wicked as the evil we fret at.

Brethren beloved–there is reason why we should guard ourselves against this sin. Fretting is in vogue. We see it. We hear it–every day. We are tempted to it every day. And, truly, we ought to watch against and resist the temptation–because, God has forbidden the thing–; because, it is unseemly; –because it does much hurt and no good.

In times past we have been guilty. Not one of us but has lost his temper; more or less. Somebody has been lax, and somebody else has been ultra, on some subject of practical moment; and it has made us fretful. Some school boy has been a rogue; some vixen in our families has molested us; some sharper has over-reached us in trade; some canting tyro in politics, or religion, or morals, has aspersed our integrity; silly dupes have gulped the libel; and we–have been nettled about it. –Verily, verily, we have been guilty.

Brethren–suppose we should do better. Suppose we should cleave to the Bible in this matter. Suppose we should mind God. Come–let the past suffice, and more than suffice wherein we have fretted ourselves because of evil doers. In our families, in our streets, in our church meetings, in our enterprises of moral reform, never let us fret ourselves. If heretics and sinners, publicans and Pharisees, thwart us and throw dirt at us–by scores–by thousands–let us never fret. Should the world grow ten times as wicked; should Satan come down with tenfold wrath; nay–should the church of the living God–the family of our espousal and vows, of our hope and love–apostatize; should priest and people go and do abominations, together, on the altar of Belial–whatever else we do, let us never prostitute our own integrity; never let us allow ourselves in a fretful, snarlish temper.

Let us abjure it. Root and branch, let us expel it. We shall be the better. We shall be the happier. We shall die the easier. We shall love each other the more. We shall do the more–a deal more–toward the conviction and reform of evil doers. It would be so strange a thing, if only you and I should look upon the wickedness, and bear the buffetings of evil doers, without ill humor–why! The wicked would suspect us, Christians; and–by the contrast–themselves, sinners. But, however this might be, life would be another thing to us. Our food would be sweeter; our sleep, better; our sunshine, brighter. Our fellowship would be heartier; our pilgrimage, smoother; and the evening twilight of our days, softer.

Brethren–brethren–remember these words–“fret not thyself because of evil doers.” And, remember, THEY ARE GOD’S WORDS. He gave them–to be obeyed. If you care for his approval; if you value the peace which he giveth; if you covet the refreshing dews of his grace–obey his word. “Be not overcome of evil; but overcome evil with good.” “He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit, than he that taketh a city.”

An

Oration

On the Occasion

Of the National Fast;

Delivered Before The

Academy of Sacred Music,

In the Broadway Tabernacle, New York,

On Friday Evening, May 14, 1841.

New York:

Office of the Iris, 647 Broadway,

John S. Taylor & Co., 145 Nassau Street.

1841.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1841,

By George H. Houghton,

In the Clerks Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York.

Piercy & Reed, Printers, 9 Spruce St.

Advertisement

The introductory remarks of this Address have reference to two things which may be here more distinctly presented. The one is, those widely-circulated notices of the meeting, on the evening of the Fast Day, which were intended to indicate the subject of the Address. This is their form: “Rev. E. N. Kirk will deliver an Eulogy on the Death of the late President Harrison.” These notices are alluded to here, both because of the blunder they contain, and for the wrong impression they were calculated to make. The author of the Oration is not responsible for their awkward use of language, in speaking of an Eulogy on Death, where they meant to promise an Eulogy on the President. And moreover, although the personal qualities of that great and good man are incidentally introduced, yet the discourse was in no way designed to be, nor, we think, can it properly be designated, an Eulogy. The other allusion is to the fears of many excellent persons, that the Academy of Sacred Music would give a secular character to the latter part of a day designed to be as sacred as the Sabbath. Nothing was farther from their desires, nor from those of the speaker. Whether the fears were well or ill-founded, must be determined by those who heard, and by those who now may read.

E.N.K.

Address

The specialty of the case may justify a preliminary remark. Many who desire to see this day and its rites so observed as to meet the Divine approbation, and secure the greatest degree of the Divine blessing, have feared that the present exercise might strike and discordant not, and disturb the plaintive harmony of the nation’s dirge. It is of course manifest that we do not participate in this fear. Nor should it be alluded to here, did it not furnish us a good occasion for introducing the fact, that the general estimate of Sacred Music is too low. If the fear is founded upon the notice that there was to be a Concert and an Eulogy on the Death of General Harrison, we are not surprised at it. A Concert given in reality for the public amusement, but calling itself “sacred,” were as ill-timed and sacrilegious, as it were unfair toward those places of professedly secular amusement, which, in deference to public sentiment, have this night closed their doors.

And again; it were as much a violation of good taste, as of religious propriety, to devote the hours of such a day to an “Eulogy on Death,” as your advertisements have it, or an Eulogy on our departed chieftain, as your advertisements partly state and partly imply.

And yet again; if he, who knows not this Academy, nor its principles, aims, and practice, presumes that its members are not acquainted with the true nature of Sacred Music, and its relations to such occasions as the present, and therefore fears that the holy art will be perverted, and the holy season desecrated, we need no other vindication than the exercises of this evening.

But if the fear alluded to, implies that Sacred Music should not occupy the hours of such a day, then we must be indulged in our brief plea. And it is altogether based upon this fact, that the elements of Sacred Music; sacred poetry expressed by appropriate melody and harmony, have not on earth a more appropriate sphere than that which we here assign them.

A nation is mourning its bereavement in mutual condolence! A nation is mourning its sins in lowly prostration before the offended Deity! The active stir of business is suspended, the voice of mirth is hushed, the face of beauty is veiled, the steps of millions hasten tremblingly to the house of prayer – the honorable and the base are gathered in the temples of mercy – ten thousand supplicating voices are raising their imploring cry, “Spare, O Lord, thy people; give not thy heritage to reproach” – the strength of the nation is feebleness before God, lofty looks are bowed, and proud spirits are contrite – intellect, the heart, the will of a free and mighty people lies low before the mighty Governor of the Universe. He has taken away our staff and our strength; He has removed the stay in which we trusted; and thus cast the nation upon his own naked arm; and we are made to feel an awful nearness to the Omnipotent. He has taken away the veil which hid Him and His authority from our unbelieving eyes; and a sinful people seem to be ushered unanointed into the presence where angels tremble, and archangels veil their faces! Well may we weep. We do weep. The voice of lamentation is wafted like the sigh of the summer wind from the Northern Lakes to the Southern Gulf, from the Atlantic Sea to the Rocky Mountains. It is in the presence of Death we are weeping. We had but just rejoiced as a nation. Part of us had honestly opposed the choice; but the choice once made, patriotism carried it over party, and the man of the North West became the man of the country. Never since the first days of the republic, had there been such enthusiasm on the accession of a Chief Magistrate. The heart of the people has honestly, profoundly glad; but scarcely had the excessive, nay, the idolatrous congratulations ceased, ere the whisper of fear began to spread; the sun had barely lifted his cheering disk upon our horizon, ere a dark cloud was drawn toward it by a mighty and invisible hand. The people trembled, they supplicated; but the decree had gone forth; the mercy that would save us from total ruin, arrested us kindly, though sternly; it gathered us around a vacated throne, a pallid corpse, a silent grace, and changed the voice of joy into lamentation; that amid blasted hopes and broken hearts, we might pause to “hear the voice of the rod and him who appointed it.”

Death is always formidable to man as an inhabiter of time and an inheritor of this lovely planet, so full of God’s bounty. We are loth to part from familiar scenes; we are by instinct tenacious of life. And when we see any fellow-creature die, we start as from a spectral hand that writes our own doom. But when death strikes a high mark; when it treads unrelenting upon hopes and hearts, breaks through the life guard of the throne, and despises the supplicating millions; our terror is enhanced. It has entered our palace; it has conquered our unvanquished defender; it has dimmed the eye that watched only for his country’s welfare; it has closed the ear that was quick to a nation’s complaint, and open to the cry of the needy; it has chilled the heart that throbbed with paternal love over the people that called him father; it has palsied that hand, so honestly, so honorably pledged to defend the Constitution, and to execute the laws. As was said of the death of the great Maccabeus, so may we say here: “At the first tidings of this dreadful accident, all the cities of Judah were moved, streams of tears flowed from the eyes of all their inhabitants. They were struck for a time, dumb, immoveable. An effort of grief at length breaking this long and sad silence, with a voice interrupted by sobbings, that sadness, pity and fear are wringing from their hearts, they exclaimed, ‘How is this mighty fallen, he who saved the people of Israel!’ At these cries Jerusalem redoubled her wailings; the vaults of the temple trembled, the Jordan was troubled, and all its banks echoed the sound of these mournful words: ‘How is the mighty fallen, that saved the people of Israel.’”

Yes, the nation feels; and to express her feeling, behold this day of fasting and prayer! Yes, America, “Atheistical America,” who has no national church, no national creed, no national clergy; America is now in the dust before her God. To our friends and to our foes in Europe, who ask, Where is your religion? We reply, Behold it! With you it may be form the state policy to appoint and observe a fast. But with us, none can doubt that it is a genuine expression of public sentiment. Here is no pageant, no pomp, no royal patronage to encourage our piety. It is a free people invited by a man who has and who wishes no other authority than such as the people have given him, to meet the chastisement of our common Father. And we have done it. We have done it, because we recognized that God has afflicted us, and that for our sins. Such is the object of this day and of its exercises. But what can more appropriately enter into the design of this day, than penitential song? It is answer enough to this, to refer to the dirges and elegies of Jeremiah and David. Whether then we contemplate this fast as an expression of true grief or as an act of homage and worship toward a God holy, and yet inclined to forgive the penitent; Sacred Music is a most desirable auxiliary in our solemn public exercises.

But we leave the vindication, and enter more directly upon the designs of this day. In the expressive language of the prophet, we have paused to “hear the rod and him who hath appointed it.” This day has reference to the past and the future. The rod is upon us, and it speaks to us of the sins which is rebukes; and it hath another voice, lessons are rich, varied, most important, nay, indispensable. America, O America! My dear, my native land, hear the voice of the Lord! Americans, my countrymen, shall we not hear this voice; shall we fail to profit by these lessons? Shall we not become better observers of Providence, and commune more closely with Him “in whom we live and move, and have our being?”

The Voice of the Rod

 1. We are learning our dependence on God. Nation after nation, for nearly six thousand years, has been trying to obtain prosperity independently of the favor of Jehovah. The experiment has been fairly made; made under every variety of circumstances. But no one nation has ever yet truly prospered, and answered the true and obvious ends of the social state; because no nation, not even the Jewish, has yet governed itself permanently and faithfully by the will, and under the supreme authority of Jehovah. And hence the most of them have run a career of ambition, crime, and luxury, to dreadful and utter ruin; while others have remained in a state of stagnant, though sometimes splendid barbarism. America sees the open page of history spread before her. Infidelity and Christianity are both expounding it to here, each in its own way. The one says– no, it was simply and solely because they cast off the fear of God.

The political and diplomatic errors which led immediately to their destruction, had their origin in national impiety. The universe waits to see to which Instructor the young republic will accord its faith. Untold and unborn millions await this decision. The exercises of this day ministers of Christ feel as they do feel, their souls pressed with unusual responsibilities. May the Spirit of the Lord be our aid.

The holy oracles proclaim that Jehovah ruleth among the armies of heaven, and doeth his pleasure among the inhabitants of the earth; that it is he who lifts up, and he who casts down. This was believed by our fathers. But the Atheism of the European illuminati rolled its pernicious waves over us soon after the revolution; and we have had many manifestations of that Skepticism which denies to the Son of God the supreme control of human affairs. What, through our dullness, the sacred oracles failed to teach, He has been teaching by the rod of His chastisement. And the lessons have not been in vain.

I select a single specimen of the tone of the secular press in our country, in reference to this fast; a tone to us full of promise for our country:

 “National Fast.– We hope to see evidence that the occasion of the National Fast will not have passed by as a mere formality. We hope to see proofs that the National Heart can be touched by the spirit of devotion.

“It is nearly time that this and other Nations, professing to be Christian, should break some of the links in the base chain that binds them to the foot-stool of Belial, Moloch and Mammon. The spirit of avarice especially should be crushed. It is in this country a whirlpool that is engulphing all, with hardly an exception. The base pursuit of gain, with little regard to the honesty of the means, has become the disgrace of some of those most eminent for intellect, and heretofore highest in public estimation.

“We hope that by divine co-operation the hearts of our countrymen will be ‘touched to finer issues.’ For we are sure that a mere money-loving and money-seeking nation, must sink under the enervating indulgences, which the sordid spirit brings in its train.”

“Then look at the frequency with which the most enormous crimes are perpetrated; the frauds, embezzlements, defalcations, and forgeries, which greet our ears on every side; the prevalence of Sabbath-breaking, intemperance and profaneness, (though in these particulars we hope there has been some amelioration of late.) Look too at the delicate sate of foreign relations. How easily, by an unfortunate turn of affairs, –by the occurrence of some ‘untoward’ event, –may we become involved in a bloody and protracted war! Now these accidents, as we call them, are entirely within the control of the Being before whom if, as individuals, we look at our personal demerit in the sight of the Holy One, surely, taking all these things into account, and a thousand more which will suggest themselves to the reflecting mind, we shall find reason enough for setting apart, as a nation, one day for fasting, humiliation, and prayer.”

 From the Spring of 1837 to the present day, there has been a powerful tendency of the public mind back toward the recognition of a minutely superintending Providence Events which human prudence would not foresee nor provide against, indicated the movings of an invisible hand, and suggested the counsellings of a Superior Will; blow followed blow, cloud came after cloud, until the close of the last political campaign. Then hope revived; and confidence was returning. The country had chosen a tried man, a man whom his enemies opposed, not from personal, but political considerations; who had, in fact, no enemies but such as envy made. There he sat, calm at the helm, inspiring new confidence in our institutions, new hopes for our country. The Lord saw it, and saw that we had not yet learned where to put our trust. And again; the pressure of his hand must be felt. The rod is therefore upon us. It teaches us, that while political sagacity has its sphere, and that a very important one; yet, after all, there remains so many occult which modify and baffle all his plans and enterprises, that man in his very philosophy ought to seek for a sure director of those unseen influences, those hidden but mighty powers, determine the fate of empires. My countrymen – God is teaching us that He reigns over us, that his favor is life. We must learn that lesson, or perish. We must learn to recognize, to fear, to obey, to trust, to supplicate God, who has revealed himself in his Word. We had in the late President all that we can ask in a Chief Magistrate of a Constitutional Government. He met the wants of our hearts as well as those of our judgments; and therefore we loved as well as trusted him. Probably there is scarcely the man living who combines, both in his history and character, so many of the qualifications that office requires. He was evidently fitted of God for the station and its responsible duties. He had the practical talents for governing, which are more needed there than in any other office of the republic. All this has been proved by incontestable evidence. Through a space of at least twenty years, he was called upon to act in the varied character of Commissioner to the Indians, Secretary of the Territory, Legislator, Commander in Chief, and Governor. Here he displayed all those practical talents, that purity of purpose, that knowledge of men, of public affairs, of the principles of government, which his last station demands. He had, in fact been remarkably trained amid the horrors of the border- warfare, the difficulties of treating with the treacherous savage, and the rude settler. But as he rose from station to station, he became more and more the very shield and pillar of that whole North- Western Territory. By treaty he procured the right of the soil, by the prowess of his arm he defended it, by the wisdom of his counsels he governed it. There were times when the Indians renewed their bloody system of border-warfare. Once, shortly after the battle of Tippecanoe, they commenced their depredations on the borders of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, at points so far distant from each other, as to distract public attention and create a universal panic. As the murders became more frequent, and more aggravated by the cruelties which attended their perpetration, the alarm scene of dismay and suffering; the labors of husbandry were suspended, families deserted their homes and sought safety in flight, and Governor Harrison found himself surrounded by fugitives claiming protection, and by sufferers demanding vengeance. There his patriotism and capacity and energy were called into full exercise. The country was put into the best posture for defense, the enemy was met at every point where his approach could be anticipated, and the defenseless inhabitants owed their safety, under God, to his well directed energies. Of his integrity, it is enough to state, that after having had more power than many an eastern prince, over men’s persons and property, more opportunity to enrich himself in appropriating the best lands of the world; by one treaty alone, securing fifty-one million acres of the richest country in the West, and the most valuable mineral region in the Union, he lived and died poor, and that not from prodigality, but integrity. He never used his immense power and influence to procure stations for his own relatives, if we except his private Secretary. And soon after his resignation in the army, while the wants of a large family were pressing upon him, he made up his mind to ask an appointment for one of his sons in West Point. But before he had done it, a poor boy, a neighbor’s child, made a personal application to the General, to secure him a place in the Institution. He immediately waived the application for his son, and procured a place for this poor lad, who is now a distinguished citizen of Indiana. Who can doubt the integrity of that man! Equally strong was his sense of honor, which was to the country a pledge that merit, and not favoritism nor party-interests, would secure the places of trust. A political opponent, who had known him for forty years, said: “General Harrison never had a particle of dishonesty about him; he was honest in politics, honest in religion, honest in everything.” His benevolence which is the antagonist of ambition. There has been much reproach cast upon our government in regard to the Indians; but he who becomes familiar with General Harrison’s history, will not make the charge of cruelty without many and strong qualifications. Harrison was a warrior; and there may have been a mingling of that selfish love of military renown which leads many to enlist cheerfully in the work of blood. But every step of his military career indicates the contrary in his case. Let the historian speak here for a moment: “On the morning of the 27t, the final embarkation of the army on Lake Erie, commenced. The sun shone in all his autumnal beauty, and a gently breeze hastened onward the ships to that shore, on which , it was anticipated, the banner of our country would have to be planted amid the thunder of British arms and the yells of ferocious Indians. While moving over the bosom of the lake–every eye enchanted with the magnificence of the scene, and every heart panting for the coming opportunity of avenging their country’s wrongs, –the beloved commander-in-chief caused the following address to be delivered to his army:

‘The General entreats his brave troops to remember that they are the sons of sires whose fame is immortal; that they are to fight for the rights of their insulted country, while their opponents combat for the unjust pretensions of a master. Kentuckians! Remember the river Raisen; but remember it only, whilst victory is suspended. The revenge of a soldier cannot be gratified upon a fallen enemy.’” The latter sentiment characterized all his military operations, even with the savage tribes. He never drew his sword but for his country and for liberty. It was fiery rampart to our exposed frontier; but it blazed only for defense. And in alluding to his qualifications, we speak once more of his simplicity of character and manner. One who knew him wells, says: “in personal address and manners, he was the very man to be popular in a republican government. He was no aristocrat in democratic disguise; but, a people’s man, he went among the people in the people’s dress, and with the people’s manners.  Though President of the United States, any one could see him even from sunrise in the morning. He had a native courteousness united with the ease and dignity of a Virginia republican. His countenance was goodness, honesty, frankness, and disinterestedness. His eye was emphatically “the light of his body,” a soft, sparkling eye–dark, but gently; and though gentle, full of fire. Mildness and energy were hardly ever more beautifully blended.” Another says, “he was condescending. The poor and illiterate found as ready access to him as the great and learned. Even the children were at home with him, and none but the guilty were embarrassed in his presence.” His views of agriculture, as presented in an address delivered ten years ago, are so entirely accordant with the spirit of our institutions, so utterly opposed to this office-seeking, money-grasping spirit, that now infects the youth of our nation; and at the same time these views are so strongly descriptive of the simplicity and purity of his character, that you will bear their introduction here. “The encouragement of agriculture, gentlemen, would be praiseworthy in any country; in our own it is peculiarly so. Not only to multiply the means and enjoyments of life but as giving greater stability and security to our political institutions. In all ages and in all countries, it has been observed, that the cultivators of the soil, are those who were least willing to part with their rights, and submit themselves to the will of a master. I have no doubt, also that a taste of agricultural pursuits, is the best means of disciplining the ambition of those daring spirits, who occasionally spring up in the world, for good or for evil, to defend or to destroy the liberties of their fellow-men, as the principles received from education or circumstances may tend. As long as the leaders of the Roman armies were taken from the plough, to the plough they were willing to return. Never in the character of General, forgetting the duties of the citizen, and ever ready to exchange the sword and the triumphal purple, for the homely vestments of the husbandman.

The history of that far-famed republic is full of instances of this kind; but none more remarkable than our own age and country have produced. The fascinations of power and the trappings of command were as much despised, and the enjoyment of rural scenes and rural employments as highly prized, by our Washington, as by Cincinnatus or Regulus. At the close of his glorious military career, he says, ‘I am preparing to return to that domestic retirement, which, it is well known, I left with the deepest regret, and for which I have not ceased to sigh through a long and painful absence. Your efforts, gentlemen, to diffuse a taste for agriculture amongst men of all descriptions and professions, may produce results more important than increasing the means of subsistence, and the enjoyments of life. It may cause some future conqueror for his country, to end his career,

“Guiltless of his country’s blood.”

Such views in our day are of incalculable importance and you will excuse their introduction while I am showing what we have lost, in losing such a man. And you will allow one other feature of his character to be mentioned; his patriotism. He was born of a race that have distinguished themselves as lovers of liberty. As far back as Charles I, we find a Harrison, boldly condemning to the scaffold a monarch who as much violated the law of his country, as any murderer does. The father of our hero was signer of the Declaration of Independence, who nobly ceded the Speaker’s chair to Hancock, seizing the modest candidate in his athletic arms, placing him in the chair, and then exclaiming to the members, –“we will show Mother Britain how little we care for her, by making a Massachusetts man our President, whom she has excluded from pardon by a public proclamation.” Such was the descent of General Harrison. He was born and bred in the very school of Washington, and Adams, and Madison. And through the long course of almost half a century, that he was in his country’s service, not an act, not a word, can be adduced that indicates that he preferred anything to the welfare of his country, and the permanence of her institutions. His time, his property, his domestic comfort, the temporal welfare of his family, his life, his fortune, his sacred honor, were laid on his country’s altar; and his dying breath uttered the sentiment, that next to the fear of God, had lain deepest and most cherished in his heart, as it had been the main-spring of his wonderfully active, and efficient, and protracted career– “I wish you to understand the true principles of the government– I wish them carried out– I ask nothing more.” Yes, departed sage, horseman of Israel and the chariot thereof; they shall be carried out, and the last earthly wish of thy noble heart shall be gratified! And in his statement of the principles on which he would govern the country, we have an exhibition of the apparent importance of his presence at the helm of State.

“Among the principles proper to be adopted by any Executive sincerely desirous to restore the administration to its original simplicity and purity, I deem the following to be of prominent importance:

I.        To confine his service to a single term.

II.      To disclaim all right of control over the public treasure, with the exception of such part of it as may be appropriated by law to carry on the public services, and that to be applied precisely as the law may direct, and drawn from the treasury agreeably to the long established principles of that department.

III.    That he should never attempt to influence the elections, either by the people or the state legislatures, nor suffer the federal officers under his control to take any other part in them than by giving their own votes, when they possess the right of voting.

IV.    That in the exercise of the veto power, he should limit his rejection of bills to–1. Such as are, in his opinion, unconstitutional. 2. Such as tend to encroach on the rights of the states or individuals. 3. Such as involving deep interests, may, in his opinion, require more deliberation or reference to the will of the people, to be ascertained at succeeding elections.

V.      That he should never suffer the influence of his office to be used for purposes of a purely party character.

VI.    That in removals from office of those who hold their appointments during the pleasure of the Executive, the cause of such removal should be stated, if requested, to the Senate, at the time the nomination of the successor is made.

VII.  That he should not suffer the Executive department of the Government to become the source of legislation; but leave the whole business of making laws for the Union to the department to which the Constitution has exclusively assigned it, until they have assumed that perfected shape when and where alone the opinions of the Executive may be heard.”

 These are the principles which we had fondly hoped he was going to carry out and execute. To us, they seem inseparable from the dignity of that high office, essential to the healthful action of our political system.  With such an exposition made by such a man, we rejoiced to see him going up to the highest place of power and trust.

Such was General Harrison, considered in reference to the qualifications for the Presidential chair. And such is our loss. But it is the Lord who qualified him, who gave him and who has taken him. Hear then, mourning nation, the voice of the rod. It proclaims our complete, our incessant dependence on a sovereign God. Today let it be engraven on the heart of this people, and let them tell it to their children’s children; that “His dominion is an everlasting dominion, and all the people of the earth are reputed as nothing; and he doeth according to His will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth.”

2. The dealings of Providence bring to our view our national and personal sins. This blow is but one of a series. The history of the last six years recounts the resources of the Almighty hand, when he means to visit a nation for its sins–fires, storms, disease, wrecks, perplexity, fear, murderers, rumors of war, heart-burnings, volcanic and subterranean thunderings of party strife–public distrust created by an unparalleled series of public frauds, and the breach of the public faith; these have been the inflictions superadded to ordinary inflictions, and to which the vain heart of man pays too little heed. And all these chastisements seemed to have, through our obstinacy, one defect as chastisements; they did not strike suddenly enough, nor with a sufficiently general effect, to make the nation comprehend their meaning. So this last was sent, and may it be the last? This has a two-fold efficacy–it strikes the nation like an electric shock. Probably there was not a hamlet within the broad domain of our empire, in which the cry was not heard in less than one week from its occurrence–the President is dead. And it came too just in the height and heat of the nation’s enthusiasm. Just when they would feel it most, and when the spirit of man-worship was in its most lusty stage. God lifted him up to a nation’s admiration; but at the same time held up the decree– “this day have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion; be wise, now therefore, O ye kings, and be instructed, O ye judges of the earth; serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry.” The space of one short month was given, that like Nineveh we might repent and avert the impending blow. But we repented not, and the rod fell. All our sins are comprehended in this one of rejecting Christ. And all our national sins are personal sins. And the appropriate spirit and employment of this day, is the review of our personal transgressions, and the putting away of our individual atheism and unbelief, our disregard of the supremacy of Christ, and of his precious gospel. He is the true patriot, who this day carries a broken heart to his closet, and mourns over his own and our people’s sins; our worldliness and love of money, our party-spirit, our profanation of the Sabbath, our lewdness and profaneness, our neglect of the Bible and of prayer. “Kiss the Son,” as our Sovereign and your Savior, and let your entire influence be henceforth devoted to securing to him the faith, the homage and the praises of the nation. Let us repent and bring forth fruits meet for repentance. Let the ministry lay aside its sins, the country, the President, the Cabinet, the Law-makers, the Judges, the Princes, and the People all bow down this day before an offended God, and seeking the aids of his grace, promise new obedience to Him who was exalted, in order that to Him every knee might bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord, to the glory of the Father.

3. Let us learn that we must die, and how to die. The dispensation that now afflicts us, impresses on our minds two great realities; – that we must die; and, that personal piety is the only and the essential preparation for that great change. I doubt, if any event in our history has ever called forth so cordial, so extensive and impressive an expression of the genuine conviction of our country. It is remarkable, how earnestly the secular journals have echoed the question–was our noble friend prepared for the great change? And it is as remarkable how full, and how satisfactory an answer Providence is giving to that inquiry. The nation is treasuring up his doings and sayings; but none give such relief to the burdened heart, as those which show him a penitent suppliant for mercy at the foot of the cross. And he did bow there, we fully believe. For several years the claims of his Savior, and the interests of his own soul had been objects of supreme importance in his view. And his were no superficial views of piety as consisting in belonging to a particular sect, or rendering a respectful homage to Christianity in general. He regarded the gospel as designed to penetrate and renovate the heart. He said to a clergyman, “I like your views of repentance; genuine sorrow, humble confession, and a forsaking of sin, are the only things that can bring peace to the sinner, or make him a better man–“How beautifully,” said he, “is the gospel adapted to the wants of the world. God must love the penitent more than the sinless, and the forgiven penitent must love God more than those who never sinned.” And in a full accordance with our views of the nature and intent of the rite, he intended to celebrate the love of his Savior at the sacramental supper. But the facts are before the nation; he loved the Bible, the Sabbath, the ministry, the cause of evangelical religion. His message, penned in the chamber where maternal piety taught his infant lips to lisp the Lord’s prayer, presents to the nation his sense of our dependence upon the power and favor of God.

Let the nation now gather around his silent tomb. By the fresh grave let our young men learn to die. We ask the infidel there; what do you find despicable in piety? Did it make Harrison less intelligent, less energetic, less upright, less patriotic? Let the soul consumed by the feverish thirst of wealth stand there and think of one whose character was never tainted by the foul passion, one who had chosen the good part that can never be taken from him. Let the ambitious pause in his career, and see whether honors are worth so much, when they may be enjoyed so briefly, snatched away so suddenly, so early; whether it is best to sell the soul and gain the world.

Let the friend of his country there see that just what we need in our rulers, is, that conscientiousness and disinterestedness which piety creates. He had the godliness which is profitable for the life that is, and for that which to come.

“It is appointed unto men once to die; and after that, the judgment.” Fellow citizens, are you prepared for judgment? Could his voice be heard amidst us again, think you it would teach you to disregard the mercy of God and to despise his anger? Oh no; my countrymen, no. Pause, pause, he would say; pause ere you rush into the holy presence where my soul is now standing in holy fear and rapture. Young men, cease to struggle for party and for power. Political men, cease your schemes of vain ambition. Where are my laurels now? Behold them already withered in the tomb. Where is the power and glory of my envied elevation? Evaporated by one breath of disease. Where is my soul? Here, where no political party no military renown, no classic lore, no national gratitude, no personal worth, has raised me; but that grace of Christ to which I fled, as a perishing sinner. Living, I would have labored for your temporal good, and I would have labored for your temporal good, and I would have shewn you an imperfect though honest example of obedience to Christ. But that was not permitted me. To my emancipated spirit, it is only permitted to utter one word more of counsel. It is this–“Be ye also ready.”

The Divine right of Government:

A

Discourse

Delivered in

Quincy, Massachusetts,

On the Day of

The Annual State Fast,

April 10, 1851,

By WM. P Lunt,

Minister of the First Congregational Church in Quincy.

Boston:

WM. Crosby and H. P. Nichols,

111, Washington Street,

1851.

To William P. Lunt, D. D. Quincy,

Quincy, April 12, 1851.

Dear Sir, –In the belief, that, in times like the present, the pulpit may find a useful auxiliary in the press, the undersigned, with many others who had the good fortune to hear your Fast-day Sermon on the 10^th inst. are desirous of obtaining a copy for publication. Your kind compliance with their and our wishes in this regard will much oblige, dear Sir,

Yours very truly,

S. G. Williams

Josiah Brigham

Daniel Greenleaf

Thomas Greenleaf

Lemuel

Brackett

Ebenezer Woodward

George W. Beale

I.W. Munroe

Gideon F. Thayer

Lysander Richards

To Messrs. S. G. Williams, Josiah Brigham, and others.

Quincy, April 17, 1851.

Gentlemen, – I place at your disposal a copy of the Discourse which you have done me the honor to ask for publication, and am, with great regard,

Your friend and servant,

Wm P. Lunt.

Discourse

Titus III. 1, 2.

“Put them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates, to speak evil of no man, to be no brawlers.”

It appears, then, from the text, that there is such a virtue, in the judgment of a Christian apostle, as allegiance to human authority, and that obedience to magistrates is to be found on the catalogue of Christian duties. It may be well for us to keep this fact in mind; because, in the estimation of many at present day, the only test of virtue seems to lie in resistance to the execution of laws, and in disrespect to rulers.

It also appears from the text, that one of the vices against which Christian morality laid an injunction in apostolic times was the vice of an evil-speaker or a brawler. This, too, it may be well for us to bear in mind; because this part of morality seems to be obsolete in the consideration of many in our generation. A man is in no esteem now, if he be not a brawler and an evil-speaker. The Apostle Peter, in one of his epistles, speaks of a class of “presumptuous, self-willed” persons, who “are not afraid to speak evil of dignities.” If the Apostle Peter were alive now he would find a class who are not only “not afraid,” but who esteem it quite commendable, to “speak evil of dignities.” They vilify their magistrates from principle. They appear to regard it as their peculiar mission, and the service which they are sent into the world to perform, to malign the motives and characters of those opposed to them. They set about the service quite deliberately. They have furnished a good deal, by their ingenuity and invention, to enlarge the vocabulary of abuse. Probably the people’s English was never so rich in terms and phrases suited to the purpose of defamation, as, through the contributions of such persons, it has grown to be. What will become of the next generation, if they use faithfully all these weapons of tongue-welfare, which are laid up in the armories of the fashionable philanthropy, and add to them others of their own forging, perhaps of keener edge than any they inherit, it is impossible for our foresight to determine. Certainly there is not a prospect of the earth being possessed by a very amiable society.

By they are doing a good work, they say; they are working for God and for humanity; and this will excuse, they imagine, any methods and instruments that may be employed. Doubtless they are so sincere, and so intent upon the object at which they are aiming, that they are not observant of the consequences of the course they pursue. And they will not, therefore, take it ill, if one who is standing by a cool spectator should undertake to suggest, by way of caution, that their mode of reforming the world may possibly resemble a case which is recorded in the Bible. The unclean spirit against which they are striving may be cast out; but the mischief is, that seven other spirits, more wicked than the one ejected, enter in, and the last state is worse than the first. If we must purchase exemption from one undeniable social evil by the introduction into the system of seven more virulent diseases, surely the world will not be very much of a gainer by the use of such remedies.

Another suggestion may not be regarded inapplicable to those persons who are so fond of “speaking evil of dignities.” The Apostle Jude, in his brief epistle, relates an interesting and instructive incident. He tells us that “Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil” (it was a kind of habeas corpus process served upon the evil one for the body of Moses), “durst not bring against even him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee.” If this was treating the devil altogether too well, there is very little danger of the Archangel Michael’s example being followed in our day.

It may therefore be deemed not inappropriate to the present occasion, called together as we are by the recommendation of the public authorities, “to consider, in the spirit of Christianity, the private and public sins of this community;” to give our attention specially to the two which are named in the text, –Resistance to the Laws, and Evil-Speaking.

With regard to the first of these sins, – resistance to the laws, – I am aware that there are two classes of persons who will be likely to object to the remarks now to be offered. First, there is the class containing those who will be ready to say that there is no disposition in our community to resist the laws; that, however much opposed our people may be to a particular enactment, they have no wish and entertain no purpose to act in any other than a regular way, through discussion and the ballot-box. It is to be hoped that this course will be pursued. Our people generally have been marked by a love of order, as much as by an inbred, if not an inborn, hatred of oppressions. But we are all composed of inflammable materials; and it is not unlikely that those who kindle into a flame most slowly may burn with the greater fierceness, and keep their unsafe heat for the longer time. When, too, we hear it said, as it has been said among us not once, but repeatedly, and as deliberately as the persons uttering it were capable of, that, Constitution or no Constitution, a certain law shall not be executed; when we hear the most violent language used by those who are looked to as guides, and witness the natural influence of such language upon the temper of persons who are ignorant and impressible; when the pulpit is denounced, if it says a word to support of the Government and Union under which we live; when the coarsest abuse is poured out upon the Judiciary, because they dare to refuse to be made use of for party purposes; – when these things are said and done, surely the coolest may see reason to be alarmed, and the conviction must be forced upon them, that there are some unmistakable symptoms in the midst of our community, of resistance to the laws. The danger is not imaginary, as some are disposed to allege. Nor is it wholly a pretext thrown before the public by designing politicians, who wish to divert attention by sounding a false alarm. There is a factious element in our community; and it will be found far more material to put down, at all hazards, this turbulent spirit, than to oppose any law, however objectionable.

But, besides those who maintain that there is no ground for fearing resistance to the laws, there is among us another class composed of persons who make resistance, passive if not active, to the laws a matter of principle. They assume the right to bring any act of statue of the government to the bar of their individual judgment or conscience; and, if the statute in question does not square with their private notions of justice, they claim the liberty to set it aside. This doctrine has been broached among us; and it finds able, eloquent, earnest advocates. The doctrine in question, it will be observed, goes far beyond any nullification that has been heretofore proposed. The dogma set up in this new school is, – that, without waiting for State action, without the necessity of calling any convention, every individual is competent to consider and pronounce the final judgment upon the laws of the land; that the rule hitherto adopted in our communities – that the majority shall govern – is a false rule; that King Majority is as great a tyrant as King George; that every individual, when he enters into society, promises to obey the Constitution of such society, as he understand that Constitution, not as others interpret it for him; that he is bound to submit only to such laws as he approves, and finds a warrant for in his own judgment. The practical operation of such a dogma is, – that, if any statute conflicts with the conscience of an individual, he will not entertain the question whether his conscience is right, but assume that it is infallible; nor will he entertain the question whether it would be practicable to submit every public act to twenty million consciences, with all the variety that may be found ranging from the inmates of the State’s prison up to the most enlightened and righteous in the land; but that, if the statute in question is pronounced wrong in the court of his private mind, he will set it aside; he will trample upon it; he will annul it. When Louis Fourteenth of France abruptly interrupted some one of his courtiers, who presumed to mention in his hearing the State, – “The State! I am the State,” – it has been thought to indicate the highest point of arrogance that a human being could reach. The pretensions of absolute power, it has been supposed, would be carried no farther. The doctrine of the tyrant is, “My will is law. My conscience is the public judgment. There shall be no appeal from my edicts.”

But is it any less arrogant and assuming for a private individual to say, – “Constitution! I am the Constitution. There shall be no appeal from my conscience to any tribunal or instrument on earth.” Who would have looked, a few years since, to find the most extravagant and high-toned doctrine of absolutism adopted by individuals nominally republicans?

Now, against every doctrine of this kind, against every species of nullification, – that which would bring State laws into conflict with the laws of the nation, as well as that more extreme but equally ungrounded species which would set the decisions of the mind of an individual, call them decrees of conscience or assertions of will, in opposition to the deliberate expression of the public mind, – against every form of nullification, both reason and religion alike protest. Man, in his private relations, may and should be governed by his own sense of right. And if all the separate members that compose society were as scrupulous to apply this inward light, each one to his private walk and personal character, as some are officious in thrusting their peculiar judgments upon the community, it would be well for the world.

But when men come to act together, a multitude of consciences and wills, there must of necessity be some umpire to settle unavoidable differences. There must of necessity be some limits beyond which the freedom of the individual shall be restrained. There must be some standard, some central authority, which shall be sovereign, and beyond which, for the purposes of society, there shall be no appeal. For the purposes of society, I say, this limitation of the individual’s prerogative is indispensable. Thought may still be free; but, when thought expresses itself in overt acts, those acts must be restrained within some fixed and definite bounds. This seems to be unavoidable, if we would maintain any form of human association.

The simple questions, then, for men to ask are, Who shall be the umpire? What power shall fix the limits beyond which the individual shall not go? And what shall be the standard from which no appeal is allowable? These questions, it is well known, have been variously answered in different countries; and, according to the answer given to them, the forms of society, and the political institutions under which men have lived, have varied. In one country the settled polity is, that a single individual, as the autocrat of Russia for example, or the Pope of Rome, called infallible, shall be umpire. He shall arbitrarily, and according to his good pleasure, fix the limits beyond which the wills of his subjects shall not transgress. His mind shall be the standard from which there shall be no appeal. In another country, the aristocracy – those who are accounted the wisest and best in the land – are the ultimate judges of what is right and binding.

Now, we reject both of these standards. We deny the divine right of kings; we deny the infallibility of the Pope. But yet we allow, as all reflecting men must allow, the necessity of some ultimate standard, if we would avoid anarchy, and uphold the order and stability of a social system. How is this problem met and solved in the theory and practice of our free forms of government? We say, – and this is the fundamental principle of our systems, – that the will of the majority, deliberately expressed, and embodied according to wholesome, prescribed forms agreed upon beforehand, and described in written Constitutions, – that this will of the majority shall rule, and that nothing shall set it aside but itself revising and reversing its own acts. This fundamental principle of our institutions has always heretofore been esteemed the best, the safest, the most reasonable rule for determining public questions; and, if we look at the working of this principle, the influence it has actually exerted, the results which have flowed from it, the prosperity and happiness, public and private, to which it has contributed, we must be convinced that it has proved itself by its fruits and beneficent principle. The amazing spectacle which our favored land presents, stretching as it does from ocean to ocean, is a proof that may be seen of all men to the same effect.

It is not maintained by any, that the principle is a perfect one, either theoretically or practically. Doubtless, the majority in any community are liable to error. They may, and sometimes do, commit mischievous mistakes. They may be driven by passion or by interest; or, by the dissemination of false doctrine, may be led deliberately into unjust and pernicious measures. But with all this liability to error, inseparable from the will of the majority, should we be ready to exchange the popular rule, judging of its character by its influence on the whole, for the principle upon which absolute governments are founded? If the action of the majority is wrong in any instance, being grounded in false doctrines whether moral in any instance, being grounded in false doctrines whether moral or political, the only remedy open to us, short of revolution, is to set about rectifying public opinion, so that at some future period the wrong measures may be repealed. If the expressions of the popular will were to be regarded as irreversible decrees which it were unlawful to consider and discuss, in that case there would be some valid reason for complaint. It is true, that, when public opinion gets bent and fixed in any wrong direction, it is no easy matter, and it is not the work of a day or of a year, perhaps not in some cases the work of a single generation or century, to rectify the errors that have been committed, and to put society upon the right track. But is this any reason why a being so short-lived as the individual man is upon the earth should fret and work himself into a passion, and distrust Providence, and oppose his will to the public will, and, if he cannot have his own way, impede, as much as in him lies, the working of social institutions?

Government, therefore, as we may easily convince ourselves, grows out of the necessity of human affairs, although its form may and does vary in different countries and periods of time. But whatever form it may assume, and however much it may be improved, it will always be an imperfect instrument, involving evils of greater or less magnitude, and for ever failing to correct social inequalities, and to bring the condition of mankind upon the earth to that point of absolute justice and right of which the human mind can form an ideal conception. Nor is this any good reason why men should give over all effort to better their condition, and to bring the actual state of society more nearly up to the level of their ideal standard. Let such efforts be unceasingly made by the wise and benevolent of successive generations. But, in laboring for a good which they have not attained, let them not put to hazard the manifold blessings they already possess. With all its imperfections, and failing, as it does, to accomplish much that the heart of man earnestly desires to attain, there is yet a sacredness attached to government which is a wholesome sentiment; and although there are cases when rulers may be rightfully resisted, and when revolution is a duty, yet these are extreme cases, and require for their justification the most imperative necessity.

The sentiment of the sacredness of government is expressed and enforced in the Scriptures very emphatically. The words of the Apostle Paul, for example, are often quoted to enforce this sentiment, “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.” Although these words have too often been misinterpreted, as if they were designed to uphold and justify absolute governments, and to inculcate passive, unresisting submission to laws, however unjust and oppressive; one sentiment they do at least convey, namely, the divine right of government, the majesty and sacredness of public law, and the consequent venerableness of those who are invested and authority. He who allows himself to speak evil of magistrates dishonors himself as one of the people from whom those magistrates derive their delegated power. And therefore it is a just and well-grounded maxim for every good citizen, that a magistrate, when he has been fairly chosen to office, whether we ourselves helped to elect him or not, is entitled to respect until he may forfeit it by some unworthy act.

The Divine Right of Government! This is eminently a Christian sentiment. The divine right of kings is a fiction formerly entertained very widely by the human mind, but which has vanished before the clear light of intelligence and Christian truth. The divine right of any particular form of government, in preference to any other form, will not bear the test of examination. But the divine right of government as opposed to anarchy; the necessity, established by God himself in our constitution and condition, for some restraint upon the wills of individuals; the essential sanctity of law, – this is a sentiment which no changes to which the human mind is subject can impair. Reason and Scripture, with united voice, say to men: “Choose you, as wisdom may dictate, under what form of civil society you will live. Determine, as you like best, where the sovereign authority shall be lodged from which there shall be no appeal. If you are oppressed by intolerable burthens and unjust exactions, rise up against the tyranny, and shake it off; do this calmly, in the fear of God, and not without a prudent calculation of the hazards. However, do the work, hazardous as it is, if you are convinced that it must be done, and strive to place yourselves in a position more favorable for your happiness.” But Reason and Scripture add this caution to the liberty which is granted to men: “Remember, you cannot choose whether you will live under some government or none at all. This is not – this never has been– this never will be the alternative offered to mankind.” Nor, because a government fails to come up to the ideal standard we form in our minds, and to accomplish all the unmixed good we could desire, are we at liberty to disallow its claims, and to fall back upon our own individual judgments.  It is with government as with all earthly blessings, even the best: we take it, and we take them all, “for better or for worse,” “until death do us part.” Authority supreme, from which there shall be allowed not appeal, must reside somewhere. God, who desires the highest good of communities, has instituted government for the promotion of that good. Government, therefore, is not only to be submitted to as a necessity, nor merely to be look upon as an institution quite useful to society, but the Christian citizen will look upon it as a shield which Heaven has interposed between what he most loves and what he most dreads; he will regard it with veneration, as type, however imperfect, of that divine sovereignty which rules the universe; as a branch of that law whose “seat is the bosom of God.” This is the doctrine in regard to governments, magistrates, and laws which Christianity plainly inculcates.

And assuredly there never was a time when our community stood more in need than now of the influence of this great conservative sentiment of the divine right of government, and of such precepts as those contained in the text, to moderate the excitement which exists against an obnoxious law. To examine with the utmost freedom, consistent with decorum, all public measures, is a clear and indisputable right, which none of us would willingly surrender. To discuss the laws of the land, to point out their defects, to argue their inconsistency with the Constitution, to criticize their details, or to object to the principle they involve; to point out, by fair reasoning, their opposition to natural justice and to the duties of religion; to urge their repeal on the ground either of their transcending the powers lodged with the lawmaking branch, or if clearly within the scope of their authority, yet as unadvisable exercises of that authority, under a complex system which depends very much for its harmonious working on compromise, concession, and forbearance, – all this is allowable surely. But while this process for rectifying public sentiment, necessarily slow, requiring long periods of time it may be, and calling for much patience before the object is gained, – while this process is going on, the obnoxious law must be executed, or there must be a revolution. And amidst the complicated affairs of this world, where nothing corresponds to the principles which we are apt to regard best, we are forced to decide between submitting to a wrong for which we are not responsible, or hazarding the existence of those social safeguards upon which all our most valued blessings rest.

It should be borne in mind, too, that there are consciences on both sides of such a question as now divides our community; that there are convictions equally strong, equally enlightened, equally pure and honest, on both sides. It is neither justifiable nor sufferable for a person to assume, that the motives of himself and of those who agree with him are right, and that all opposed to him are acting under the influence of interested, immoral, and unchristian motives. The only fair view of the case is, that there is a conflict of consciences equally honest. And, in such an exigency, what can be done, what do the necessary imperfections of the social state allow to be done, except to submit to the umpire which we have voluntarily and deliberately adopted, – the will of the majority; to defer to the best judgment touching the matter in dispute, which the body of the community is capable of arriving at for the present, and to trust to the enlightening influence of causes now at work, to produce a better state of public opinion hereafter?

This conflict of consciences among men that think at all, and that are able to exercise the faculty of judgment on moral subjects, demonstrates the imperative necessity of some government, that is, of some established umpire, whose decisions, if not always wise and right, if even they may at times be unjust, are far better fore society than infinite wranglings among those who will consent neither to give over their disputes, nor to refer their differences to any earthly tribunal. What society needs, in order that the great interests of man which are aimed at in social institutions should be promoted, is some chance for repose. It were but poor amends for the evil of never-ending, bitter strife, to say that the combatants are conscientious. If they are conscientious in quarrelling, there ought to be some power somewhere in the world that shall be conscientious in putting a stop to their quarrels. We are bound to consider what must be the consequence, if, in every collision that occurs between private conscience and public law, we apply the doctrine that we may set aside a portion of that public law. Where can this doctrine end but in the sovereignty of every individual? – a state of things very much resembling that which is described in the Book of Judges, – “In those days there was no king in Israel; but every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” And as the wise man tells us, “Every way of a man is right in his own eyes.” There is not an article in any Constitution that now exists upon earth, or in any Constitution that could be devised by the wit or wisdom of man, to which the honest or the contentious conscience of some individual might not be found to object. If a person should feel impelled by his conscience to aim a murderous weapon at my life, or to appropriate to himself a portion of my substance, or to vilify and slander my good name (and all these things have been done very conscientiously), I should pray to be protected from that man’s conscience.

What other conclusion, then, can wise, practical men come to, but to allow the laws of the land, which have been enacted in due form, to have their course and be executed, until we can so far change the current of public opinion that what is objectionable in those laws may be corrected?

Among the great, wise, and good men who met in convention more than sixty years since to frame the Constitution of the United States, under which we have lived and prospered thus far, was Benjamin Franklin, known all over the world for his genius, his virtue, and his usefulness. At that time, he was eighty-one years old. He had learned all that he was likely to learn upon earth. He had all but finished his mortal career, and therefore was not open to the charge, from the most captious, of being influenced by interested motives. In a speech that he made at the close of the convention, he said, among other good remarks; “I consent to this Constitution, because I expect not better, and because I am not sure that it is not the best. The opinions I have had of its errors I sacrifice to the public good. On the whole, sir, I cannot help expressing a wish, that every member of the convention who may still have objections to it would with me on this occasion doubt a little of his own infallibility, and, to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to this instrument.” Such was the language of Franklin on a memorable occasion. I would seek to strengthen the good sense and practical wisdom of his words, not by any language of my own, but by the inspired world of Holy Writ: “Put them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates, to speak evil of no man, to be no brawlers.” This is the charge given to a Christian teacher and minister in early times; and the same charge is given, as I understand the matter, to the servants of the altar now. If the time shall ever come when it shall be deemed the legitimate office of the Christian pulpit to preach revolutionary doctrines, and to instigate the minds of men to resistance to the laws of the land, it will be time, too, for the people to consider whether the pulpit is worth upholding. God grant that that time may never come!

A Sermon

Delivered at the New North Church in Boston,

In the Morning

And

In the Afternoon at Charlestown,

May 9th, 1798,

Being the Day recommended by

John Adams,

President of the United States of America,

For

Solemn Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer.

By Jedidiah Morse, D.D.

Minister of the Congregation in Charlestown.

Published at the request of a number of the Hearers, in both Congregations.

Printed by Samuel Hall, No. 53, Cornhill, Boston.

1798.

2 Kings, XIX. Part of Verse 3 & 4.

This day is a day of trouble, and of rebuke, (or reviling) and blasphemy – wherefore lift up thy prayer for the remnant that are left.

Thus king Hezekiah, by his messengers, addressed the prophet Isaiah, in circumstances of singular perplexity and distress for the safety of his threatened country. It must be interesting to us in the present posture of our public affairs, to know that were the peculiar circumstances and dangers, which prompted good king Hezekiah to make a declaration and a request, so remarkably applicable to our case as a nation, and so exactly coincident with the spirit of the proclamation. “This day,” said Hezekiah to the prophet, “is a day of trouble, of reviling, and of blasphemy – Wherefore lift up thy prayer so the remnant that is left.” –  “The United States of America,” says the President, to the minister of religion and the people, “are at present placed in a hazardous and afflictive situation” – Wherefore make earnest supplication to God “that our country may be protected from all the dangers which threaten it.” – In what respects the causes which, in each case, produced the perilous and distressful situation, bear resemblance to each other, may be perceived from a concise historical view of the state of public affairs in the kingdom of Judah, at the period of which we are speaking, and with which, as applicable to the present occasion, I shall introduce this discourse.

The Assyrians, in the time of Hezekiah, were the most powerful nation on earth. Their empire embraced and controlled the strength of the kingdoms of Babylon, Nineveh and Medea. – They had, in rapid succession, subdued and annexed to their empire, Syria, Palestine, and the whole territory inhabited by the ten tribes, constituting the kingdom of Israel; and had even carried their conquests into Egypt, and ravaged that country. With their immense spoils, they had enriched and aggrandized their empire; and with their captives, they had peopled their waste territories. Thus strengthened by the accession of the conquered countries, by their inhabitants and wealth, they became formidable, and the dread and terror of their neighbors.

They were a treacherous and faithless, as well as powerful nation. Ahaz, king of Judah, the wicked father of Hezekiah, discarding the aid of the God of his fathers, had very unwisely, and at the very great price, purchased an alliance with the king of Assyria; but he basely betrayed the interests of Ahaz, and converted the fruit of all his conquests to his own advantage. “In reality,” to use the words of the learned and faithful historian, Predeaux, “he was in reality distressed rather than any way helped by this alliance; the land being almost as much exhausted by the presents and subsidies, which were extorted from him by his pretended friend and ally, as it was by the ravages and pillages of his open enemies.” Two other evils of magnitude to the kingdom of Judah, grew out of this alliance: it brought into its neighborhood, in place of a number of small and feeble states, the formidable Assyrian empire, which afterwards proved a severe scourge; it cut off the inhabitants from their lucrative trade to the Southern sea, which had been the source of all their riches. And what was worst of all, and proved afterwards a source of great and almost ruinous calamity to the kingdom of Judah, was, that Ahaz, with a view to induce the king of Assyria to form an alliance with him, had meanly engaged, in case of his compliance, to become his vassal and tributary. This base agreement was the foundation of the difficulties and distress in which the good king Hezekiah was involved, when he sent the message in our text to the prophet.

Early in the reign of Hezekiah, the king of Assyria sent to demand the tribute, which, by the agreement of Ahaz, was his due. Hezekiah could not brook this base submission, and refused to comply with the demand. A war with Tyre, which commenced at this time, diverted the Assyrian king, Salmanezer, from urging his demand by force.

This demand, however, was repeated by his successor, Sennacherib, who, upon the refusal of Hezekiah to comply with it, declared war against him, and entered Judah with a numerous army. In this alarming state of affairs, Hezekiah consulted with the chief men of his kingdom, and it was agreed to put the city of Jerusalem into the best possible state of defense. Accordingly the old walls were repaired; new ones erected, and towers and other works, necessary for their defense were provided: All the people, capable of bearing arms, were enrolled an disciplined for war; and every possible preparation was made to repel the attacks of the enemy.

In the meantime, the king of Assyria was ravaging the cities of Judah, and advancing towards Jerusalem. Grieved at this havoc, and fearing its increase, notwithstanding the defensive measures which he had taken, he sent ambassadors to Sennacherib with this humiliating message, “I have offended, return from me; that which though puttest on me I will bear. And the king of Assyria appointed to king Hezekiah 300 talents of silver and 30 talents of gold.” [II Kings 18:14] To pay this heavy contribution he exhausted the treasures of the temple, and his own coffers, and even cut off the gold from the doors and pillars of the temple. Mark the subsequent conduct of the haughty Assyrian conqueror: Having procured from his humiliated enemies, their means of defense, and knowing them to be now more completely in his power than ever, regardless of the sanction of treaties and oaths, he renewed the war with Hezekiah, and pushed on his conquests more vigorously than ever!

In the meantime, hearing that and Egyptian army was advancing, agreeably to treaty, to the aid of Hezekiah, Sennacherib raised the siege of Jerusalem, and proceeded to meet them, gave them battle and defeated them, and carried desolation into the heart of Egypt, and came back with great spoil. Elated and proud with his successes, he returned to the siege of Jerusalem, and, by three of his principal officers, sent to Hezekiah that insulting, boastful and blasphemous message which is recorded at length in the chapter preceding the text. It is remarkable, that Sennacherib directed that this message should be delivered under the walls of Jerusalem, in the Hebrew language, and within the hearing of the people, with an evident design to destroy their confidence in their king, and to excite them to revolt. The style of the message was calculated to effect this base purpose. When the messengers of Hezekiah, who were appointed to negotiate with those of Sennacherib, requested the orator, Rabshakeh, to speak to them in the Syrian language, telling them that they understood it, and not to talk with them in the Jews language in the hearing of the people who were on the wall; the orator replied–“Hath my master sent me to thy master, and to thee, to speak these words? Hath he not sent me to the men which fit on the wall?” [II Kings 18:27] – or, in plainer and more modern language, My business is not with your government, it is with the people. “Then Rabashakeh stood, and cried with a loud voice in the Jews language, and spake, saying, Hear the words of the great king, the king of Assyria. Thus saith the king, Let not Hezekiah deceive you, for he shall not be able to deliver you out of his hand. Neither let Hezekiah make you trust in the Lord, saying, The Lord will surely deliver us. Hearken not unto Hezekiah; for thus saith the king of Assyria, Make an agreement with me by a present, and come out to me; and then eat ye every man of his own vine and fig-tree, and drink ye every one the waters of his cistern. Hearken not unto Hezekiah, when he persuadeth you, saying, The Lord will deliver us. Hath any of the gods of the nations delivered at all his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria? Where are the gods of Hamath, and of Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivah? Have they delivered Samaria out of mind hand? Who are they, among all the gods of the countries, that have delivered their country out of mine hand, that the Lord should deliver Jerusalem out of mind hand? But the people held their peace, and answered him not a word.” [II Kings 18:28-36]

We can easily conceive what effect this message must have had upon the people, upon the messengers of Hezekiah, and upon this good king himself, when it was told to him. They rent their clothes; the king covered himself with sackcloth, and, like a good man, went into the house of the Lord. He then sent the message, of which our text makes a part, to the prophet Isaiah. “This day is a day of trouble and of reviling and of blasphemy; wherefore lift up thy prayer for the remnant that are left.”

 How far the facts and circumstances, in the foregoing narrative, apply to our case as a nation; what degrees of resemblance there are in the causes which involved Hezekiah and his people in their great perplexity and distress, and those which have brought us into our present unhappy and perilous situation, I leave everyone to judge for himself. I make no particular applications. However we may vary in our opinion on these points, we shall all agree, I apprehend, in this – “the situation of the United states, at present, is hazardous and afflictive.” And I would hope that we all feel disposed, in compliance with his request, to unite in earnest supplications to God for those important and timely favors enumerated in the proclamation. It would be difficult to reconcile with a sincere belief of the Christian religion, the conduct of any person, who should seriously object to the observation of this day, as a day of humiliation, fasting and prayer, at a time when all must agree, we have peculiar need of divine support, guidance and protection. Whether our troubles and dangers arise from our own errors, or from the unjustifiable conduct of foreign nations, it becomes us, in either case, and peculiarly in the former, to humble ourselves before God, and to implore his forgiveness, direction and benediction. But that we should have men among us, so lost to every principle of religion, morality, and even common decency, as to reprobate the measure; as to condemn the authority who recommended it, and to denounce it as hypocritical, and designed to effect sinister purposes, is indeed alarming. Such persons address the sentiments, if not the language, of Rashakeh to the people – “Suffer not your President to make you trust in the Lord.” That such vile sentiments should find their way into a newspaper, and be read and tolerated by a people who profess Christianity, indicates a degree of corruption and depravity in the public mind, more truly threatening to our dearests rights and interests, than the hostile attitude and movements of foreign nations.

 I proceed to show, in what respects, the present may be considered as a day of trouble, of reviling and blasphemy.

It is a day of trouble with us in respect to our foreign relations. Our situation is rendered “hazardous and afflictive,” (says the proclamation), “by the unfriendly disposition, conduct and demands of a foreign power, evinced by repeated refusals to receive our messengers of reconciliation and peace; by depredations on our commerce, and the infliction of injuries on very many of our fellow citizens, while engaged in their lawful business on the seas.” These circumstances prompted our Chief Magistrate to recommend the solemn Fast which we now celebrate; and they constitute the leading and most operative causes of our existing troubles.

To the unfriendly disposition and conduct of foreign power, we may ascribe the unhappy divisions that have existed among us, which have so greatly disturbed our peace, and threatened the overthrow of our government. Their maxim, to which they have strictly and steadily adhered, has been, “Divide and govern.” Their too great influence among us has been exerted vigorously, and in conformity to a deep-laid plan, in cherishing party spirit, in vilifying the men we have, by our free suffrages, elected to administer our Constitution; and have thus endeavored to destroy the confidence of the people in the constitution authorities, and divide them from the government. They have abused our honest friendship for their nation, our gratitude for their assistance in our revolution, and our confidence in the uprightness and sincerity of their professions of regard for us; and, by their artifices and intrigues, have made these amiable dispositions in the unsuspecting American people, the vehicles of their poison. Hence has arisen no small portion of the troubles which we now experience. They are the bitter fruit of a subtle and secretly operating foreign influence among us – an influence which has proved the bane of our peace, and which ought, as we value our liberties and dearest privileges, to be vigilantly watched, and firmly resisted.

Calculating upon the effects produced, in this country, by their “diplomatic skill” in intrigue, and believing that they had secured a party sufficiently strong to enable them to accomplish their designs, this foreign nation have, by degrees, adopted a bolder and bolder tone towards us, and at length have openly avowed their object. By their ministers they have quarreled with our government: They have vehemently opposed our exercising the rights of an independent nation: They have fomented insurrections among us: They have artfully endeavored to plunge us into a ruinous war: They have, unjustly and unprovoked, captivated, imprisoned, and otherwise mal-treated many of our fellow-citizens. And when, notwithstanding all these aggressions and provocations, our government, sincerely anxious for peace, and willing to sacrifice everything but our national honor and independence to this purpose, sent ambassadors of reconciliation, with ample and unexceptionable powers – (could it have been expected from allies? – allies who have yet their admirers among us!!!) – they have refused, and that repeatedly and perseveringly, and in a manner most mortifying to an independent mind, even to receive them! They will not hear what we have to say in vindication of those measures, at which they affect to be offended. They spurn at our advances for reconciliation, and insult us with their neglect. More than all this, to use the language of our commissioners, “In the haughty style of a master, they tell us, that unless we will pay them a sum of money, to which our resources scarcely extend, we may expect their vengeance, and, like Venice, be erased from the list of nations; that they will annihilate the only free republic on earth, the only nation in the universe, which has manifested for her a cordial and real friendship!” – Still more, they say to our commissioners of peace, “You believe, perhaps, that in returning and exposing to your countrymen, the unreasonableness of the demands of this government, you will unite them in their resistance to those demands. You are mistaken – you ought to know that the diplomatic skill of France, and the means she possesses in your country, are sufficient to enable her, with the French party in America, to throw the blame, which will attend the rupture of the negotiations, on the Federalists, as you term yourselves, but on the British party, as France terms you; and you may assure yourselves this will be done.”

Such are the causes which have progressively operated, till they have ultimately placed us in our present hazardous and afflictive situation. If proofs are demanded in support of the foregoing statement, they are contained in the State Papers which have been published by our own government and by the government of France –in the late dispatches from our commissioners, and in the newspapers; and these proofs are abundant, luminous and convictive to everyone who reads them with a candid and unprejudiced mind.

It will, perhaps, be expected by some, that while so much is said concerning the unjustifiable conduct of one foreign nation, another, whose conduct towards us, during the present war, has been unfriendly and unjustifiable, should not pass unnoticed and uncensored. On this subject I would observe, that this thing was done at the time. The unjust spoliations of the British nation were reprobated in the strongest terms, throughout America; and similar measures for an amicable adjustment of differences, and compensation for losses, were then adopted, and pursued successfully with Great-Britain, which have since been repeatedly proffered to France, and as repeatedly rejected with most insulting aggravations. I am by no means an advocate for the aggressions of any nation on our rights. I would with equal indignation resist them all. But when differences with a nation have been once settled, and provision made for the peaceable adjustment of any new ones which may arise, why should we be continually opening afresh old wounds? What purposes can it answer, but to inflame the public mind, to prevent a union in the measures of our own government, and aid the views of a nation who seek our division and ruin? It was insinuated to our commissioners in France, and it is a current and credited language among a particular class of people in this country, (and the design of it is too visible to escape a discerning mind), that it is the wish of our government and its supporters, to form an alliance with Great-Britain. To this insinuation I believe I may safely and truly answer in the words of our commissioners – that “with respect to any political connection with Great-Britain, America never contemplated it.” Our maxim, as citizens, in regard to all nations, ought to be that contained in the declaration of our independence, “Enemies in war, but friends in peace.”

Our situation is rendered “hazardous and afflictive,” not only from the unfriendly disposition, conduct and demands of a foreign power, which excite painful apprehensions that war may be the consequence, and which render necessary expensive measures of defense; but also and peculiarly from the astonishing increase of irreligion. I use this word in a comprehensive sense, and would be understood to mean by it, contempt of all religion and moral obligation, impiety, and everything that apposeth itself to pure Christianity. This day is a day of reviling and blasphemy.

Never, at any period, could this be said, in reference to the world at large, with more truth than at the present. Kings, princes, and rulers in all governments; government itself in all, even its mildest, forms; priests and ministers of religion of all denominations; and the institutions of Christianity of all kinds, from the most corrupt to the most pure, are reviled and abused, in a singular manner, in similar language, in all Christian countries, and seemingly by common consent. The existence of a God is boldly denied. Atheism and materialism are systematically professed. Reason and Nature are deified and adored. The Christian religion, and its divine and blessed Author, are not only disbelieved, rejected and condemned, but even abhorred, and efforts made to erase their very name from the earth. As the natural fruits of these sentiments, and what we ought to look for where they prevail – fraud, violence, cruelty, debauchery, and the uncontrolled gratification of every corrupt and debasing lust and inclination of the human heart, exist, and are increasing with unaccountable progress. Evidence of the truth of this representation is brought by almost every arrival from Europe, and we have it, in various and convincing forms, before our eyes in our own country.

Our newspapers teem with slander and personal invective and abuse. Our rulers, grown grey, many of them, in the service of their country; who, in the various dignified and responsible offices they have filled, have discharged their duties with great ability and incorruptible integrity, are yet stigmatized continually, as unfriendly to the rights and liberties of the people, and to the true interests of their country. Our Government itself, the most perfect, and best administered, the least burdensome, and most happysying to the people of any on earth, is yet steadily opposed in all its important measures, and regular and continual efforts are made to “stop its wheels.”

The Clergy also, who have according to their influence and abilities, supported the Government and vindicated its administration, have received, from the same quarter, a liberal portion of reviling and abuse. And what have the Clergy done to provoke this treatment? Can it be said, with truth, that they are unfriendly to the rights and interests of the people? On what side were they in the year 1775, and during the revolution? What interests can they have separate from those of their people and their country suffer, must they not necessarily suffer with them? Their little all of property stands on the same basis with that of their people, and the same events affect them equally. Could they not subsist in as much ease and affluence as they now do, by other professions? Are their stipends or their prospects of promotions enviable or alluring? Can they then be your friends who are continually declaiming against the Clergy, and endeavoring by all means – by falsehood and misrepresentation, to asperse their characters, and to bring them and their profession in to disrepute? If the Clergy fall, what will become of your religious institutions? Undoubtedly they must share the same fate. And are they of no value?

What can be the design and tendency of all these things? Have we not reason to suspect that there is some secret plan in operation, hostile to true liberty and religion, which requires to be aided by these vile slanders? Are they not intended to bring into contempt those civil and religious institutions founded by our venerable forefathers, and to prostrate those principles and habits formed under them, which are the barriers of our freedom and happiness, and which have contributed essentially to promote both; and thus to prepare the way among us, for the spread of those disorganizing opinions, and that atheistical philosophy, which are deluging the Old World in misery and blood?

We have reason, my brethren, to fear that this preparatory work is already begun, and made progress among us; and that it is a part of a deep laid and extensive plane, which has for many years been in operation in Europe. To this plan, as to its source, we may trace that torrent of irreligion, and abuse of everything good and praise-worthy, which, at the present time, threatens to overwhelm the world. This plan is now unveiled.

In a work written by a gentleman of literary eminence in Scotland, within the last year, and just reprinted in this country, entitled, “Proofs of a Conspiracy against all the Religions and Governments of Europe,” we are informed, that a society who called themselves the illuminated has existed for more than twenty years past in Germany. The express aim of this society is declared to be, “To root out and abolish Christianity, and overturn all civil government.” Their principles are avowedly atheistical. They abjure Christianity–justify suicide–declare death an eternal sleep–advocate sensual pleasures agreeably to the Epicurean philosophy–call patriotism and loyalty narrow minded prejudices, incompatible with universal benevolence–declaim against the baneful influence of accumulated property, and in favor of liberty and equality, as the unalienable rights of man–decry marriage, and advocate a promiscuous intercourse among the sexes–and hold it proper to employ for a good purpose, the means which the wicked employ for bad purposes.

This society, under various names and forms, in the course of a few years, secretly extended its branches through a great part of Europe, and even into America. Their aim is to enlist in every country, “such as have frequently declared themselves discontented with the usual institutions”–to “acquire the direction of education–of church management–of the professorial chair and of the pulpit–to bring their opinions into fashion by every art, and to spread them among young people by the help of young writers.” They are unwearied in their efforts, by various artifices, to get under their influence the reading and debating societies, the reviewers, journalists or editors of newspapers and other periodical publications, and booksellers and post-makers; and to insinuate their members into all offices of instruction, honor, profit and influence, in literary, civil and religious institutions. The leading members of this Order are men of great talents, zeal and industry; and governed by their maxim, borrowed from the Jesuits, “that the end sanctifies the means,” they are prevented by none of those religious and moral principles, which are wont to restrain men when prompted to acts of wickedness, from pushing their plans by the vilest means.

This society, aided by concurrent causes which it has been instrumental in combining and bringing into operation, has already shaken to their foundation, almost all the civil and ecclesiastical establishments in Europe. There is great reason to believe that the French revolution was kindled by the Illuminati; and that it has been cherished and inflamed by their principles. The successes of the French armies, many of them, can be traced to the influence and the treacheries of different branches of this society.  –– There are too many evidences that this Order has had its branches established, in some form or other, and its emissaries secretly at work in this country, for several years past. From their private papers which have been discovered, and are now published, it appears, that as early as 1786, they had several societies in America. And it is well known that some men, high in office, have expressed sentiments accordant to the principles and views of this society.

In a work published by Hoffman, at Vienna, in 1795, and quoted by professor Robison, in the following remarkable passage respecting France: – “The intelligent saw (in 1790) in the open system of the Jacobins, the complete hidden system of the Illuminati. We knew that this system included the whole world in its aims, and France was only the place of its first explosion. The Propaganda works in every corner to this hour; and its emissaries run about in all the four quarters of the world, and are to be found in numbers in every city that is a seat of government.” There can be little doubt that the “Age of Reason” and the other works of that unprincipled author, as they proceeded from the fountain head of Illumination, and have been so industriously and extensively circulated in this country, were written and sent to America expressly in aid of this demoralizing plan. The titles of some of these works, and the tendency of them all, are in exact conformity to the professed principles and designs of the society. It is not improbable that the affiliated Jacobin Societies in this country were instituted to propagate here the principles of the illuminated mother club in France. And is it not apparent that the seeds which were then sown, are springing up and bearing fruit.

Let any who doubt the truth and fairness of the foregoing representation, read for themselves. The book which is my authority ought to be read by every American. It throws more light upon the causes, which have brought the world into its present disorganized state, (I speak for myself), than any, I had almost said than all other books beside.

I hold it a duty, my brethren, which I owe to God, to the cause of religion, to my country, and to you, at this time, to declare to you, thus honestly and faithfully, these truths. My only aim is to awaken in you and myself a due attention, at this alarming period, to our dearest interests. As a faithful watchman I would give you warning of your present danger.

By these awful events – this tremendous shaking among the nations of the earth, God is doubtless accomplishing his promises, and fulfilling the prophecies. This wrath and violence of men against all government and religion, shall be made ultimately, in some way or other, to praise God. All corruptions, in religion and government, as dross must, sooner or later, be burnt up. The dreadful fire of Illuminatism may be permitted to rage and spread for this purpose. When a work of vengeance and destruction is to be performed, the instruments are fitted for their work. But while we contemplate these awful events in this point of view, let us beware, in our expressions of approbation, of blending and end with the means. Because atheism and licentiousness are employed as instruments, by divine providence, to subvert and overthrow popery and despotism, it does not follow that atheism and licentiousness are in themselves good things, and worthy of our approbation. While the storm rages, with dreadful havoc, in Europe, let us be-comforted in the thought, that God directeth it, and that he will, by his power and wisdom, so manage it, as to make it accomplish his own gracious designs. While we behold these scenes acting abroad, and at a distance from us, let us be concerned for our own welfare. In various respects, as we have shown, it is with us, at present, “a day of trouble, of reviling, and blasphemy.” Our situation is “hazardous and afflictive” –We have reason to tremble for the safety of our political, as well as our religious ark. Attempts are making, and are openly, as well as secretly, conducted, to undermine the foundations of both. In this situation of things, our duty is plain, and lies within a short compass.

The pious king Hezekiah hath set us an example, when place in a similar situation, well worthy our present imitation: he took the message he had received from the king of Assyria, and spread it before the Lord, and prayed – (let us unite in this pertinent prayer) – “O Lord God of Israel, which dwellest between the cherubims – thou art the God, even thou alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth – thou hast made heaven and earth – Lord, bow down thine ear and hear – open, Lord, thine eyes and see; and hear the words of Senacherib, which hath sent him to reproach the living God. Of a truth, Lord, the kings of Assyria have destroyed the nations and their lands, and have cast their gods into the fire; for they were no gods, but the work of men’s hands, wood and stone, therefore they have destroyed them – Now, therefore, O Lord our God, I beseech thee, save thou us out of his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art the Lord God, even thou only.” [II Kings 19:14-19] The effectual fervant prayer of this good man availed much. [James 5:16]

As citizens, we ought with one heart to cleave to, and support, our own government. It is a government of our own forming, and administered by men of our own choice; and therefore claims our confidence and support. We ought to repel, with indignation, every suggestion and slanderous insinuation, calculated to weaken and just confidence in the rectitude of the intentions of our constituted authorities. All such insinuations, at this critical period, proceed from an influence hostile to our peace; and, if permitted to have their intended effect, may accomplish the purposes of our enemies, in our division and the overthrow of our government. While, on the one hand, we would avoid passive obedience and non-resistance, let us not vibrate into the other extreme, and believe it a duty to be jealous and suspicious of everything which is done by our rulers. We thought them honest men, and friends to their country, when we elected them into office; and what have they since done to forfeit our good opinion? Let their measures be examined with candor, and we shall assuredly say, they deserve well of their country. In this moment of our political danger, let us be impressed with this truth – that – “United we stand – divided we fall.” The increasing union among us, and the revival and expression of the true American spirit, are tokens for good, and augur well in regard to our political interests.

As Christians, we ought to be alarmed for the safety of the church; to be vigilant in resisting the open and secret attempts to bring into disrepute and to prostrate our religious institutions. If these foundations be destroyed, and infidelity and atheism prevail, what will the righteous do? Let us then search for the Achans, the accursed things, among us, and let them be taken away and destroyed. Let us, each with care, inspect his own heart and conduct, and repent of, and correct, what he finds amiss. Let us examine into the state of our families, “those little communities which constitute the great public body,” and reform, as far as in us lies, whatever is sinful or wrong in them. Let us exert all our influence and efforts to effect a general reformation, in principles and manners, trusting in the Lord to succeed our endeavors. These are the sure, and only means of our preservation. If, in defiance of all warnings, we will be a sinful people, and abuse our civil and religious blessings, we must expect to be punished with the loss of them. Talents that are unimproved will in due time, be taken away. As we would hope for their continuance then, let us properly appreciate our national privileges, and our religious institutions, and repent that we have been so insensible of their value, and so negligent to improving them. And, agreeably to the excellent and reasonable advice of our Chief Magistrate, let us this day, “with the deepest humility, acknowledge before God the manifold sins and transgressions with which we are justly chargeable as individuals and as a nation, and beseech him, of hi infinite mercy, through the Redeemer of the world, freely to remit all our offences, and to incline us, by his Holy Spirit, to that sincere repentance and reformation, which may afford us reason to hope for his inestimable favor, and heavenly benediction.” And will God vouchsafe to hear our prayers, and the prayers of his people, throughout our country, this day, and grant us an answer of peace, through Jesus Christ, our divine Lord; to whom, with the Father and Holy Spirit, be ascribed praises everlasting.

AMEN

THE TRIUMPHS OF WAR. 

A

SERMON

PREACHED

ON THE DAY OF THE ANNUAL FAST,

APRIL 15, 1847.

BY ANDREW P. PEABODY,

PASTOR OF THE SOUTH CHURCH, PORTSMOUTH, N. H.

SECOND EDITION.

PORTSMOUTH:  JOHN W. FOSTER.

C. W. BREWSTER, PRINTER.

1847.

SERMON.

ACTS X. 36.

Preaching peace by Jesus Christ.

            The day before yesterday, a peal of rejoicing for the taking of Vera Cruz was rung forth from most of the church steeples in town.  In employing for the expression of their gladness the furniture and property of our churches, the friends of the war now in progress have themselves violated the neutrality, which they have endeavored to impose on the voices of the sanctuary.  They have forced into their service tones hallowed by the most sacred associations with the worship of the living, and the last rites of loving piety over the departed.  They have thus taken their injunction of silence from the house of worship, and in making its inanimate, though most eloquent music echo their peculiar sentiments, they have, I trust, (if in any instance that work remained to be done,) unsealed, for Christian utterances on the great questions at issue, the living voices of all that minister at the altar.  I am sincerely thankful that our bell bore no part in that concert.  But, as the conduct of our Wardens in refusing to have it used for such a purpose may be called in question, I propose now to vindicate it, and to offer some of the reasons which justify the expressive silence of our belfry while the surrounding steeples rang with joy.

            In the first place, in our professed regard, our most precious article of church furniture is a volume here at my side, which bears the same relation to our rites of worship, which the image or oracle did to the temple service of the ancient heathen, and the ark with the overshadowing cherubim to that of the Jews.  This book is literally our oracle.  We come hither on the day which it pronounces sacred; we offer our prayers and praises to the Father whom it reveals, through the Mediator whom it presents to our faith; and all else that we profess to do here is to study its lessons of truth and duty.  This book has various contents, that have come down to us through a long series of ages, and it purports to give us a compend of God’s special revelations of his will and law for the guidance of successive generations of men.  Its history carries us through centuries of violence, wrong and blood; but we find them all spanned by the promise of a heaven-born King, under whose scepter wars should cease, the sword be broken into the ploughshare, and the spear into the pruning hook.  We have the record of the coming of that King, and of the song of angels on his birthnight, proclaiming, “on earth peace, and good will among men.”  We find abundant reason to believe that it was his prime aim and end in living and dying, to interweave all kindreds of men by the most sacred bonds of brotherhood, and to quench forever those lusts and passions, which alone lift the arm of violence, and light the flame of war.  That his aim has not been reached,—that his end is far from its fulfillment,—the recent victory gives us only too signal a token.  And that this is the case many rejoice, and have a perfect right to seek out all lawful modes of expressing their joy.  But it is certainly in utter violation of decorum and consistency that voices from our church-towers should bear part in this joy, and ring in gladness that the Gospel is not yet supreme,—that Christ does not yet reign,—that the earth is still reddened by he passions which he came to subdue,—that our oracle falls so far short of the fulfillment of its predictions.  In self-consistency we must put our Bible out of our church doors, and establish some other rule and form of worship than the Christian, before we lend any of the agencies of our sacred edifice to express joy on occasions on which the Bible would bid us mourn.

            Again, the Mexicans are called our enemies.  They probably are so.  We have done enough to make them so; and for them to be otherwise, they must have a double share of the spirit of Christ.  Now the religion, to which our church is consecrated, prescribes certain modes of dealing with enemies.  Its precepts are:  “If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink”—“Love your enemies; do good to them that hate you,”—“Overcome evil with good.”  Had the Mexicans done us wrong, and had a Christian army crossed their frontiers to minister to their necessities, to proffer them on our behalf fraternal relations and offices, and to diffuse among them the benefits of that higher civilization and purer moral culture to which we lay claim, the progress of that army would have been conquering and to conquer, and we, with bell and organ, shout and anthem, would have made these walls shake and ring for the victory.  Heaven grant that they may stand long enough to echo with such bloodless triumphs, which are yet in reserve for coming years.  But which of these Christian laws for the treatment of enemies has not been atrociously violated in the recent siege?  Far other voices than those of love rent the walls and ran through the streets of the beleaguered city.  The most appalling necessities, the most deadly sufferings on the part of the besieged, were made the point of support and ground of confidence for the assailants.  Not one note of mercy, not one breathing of compassion, tempers the official narrative of that bloody transaction, or relieves the unmingled sadness, and the unqualified reprobation, with which it must be regarded by every Christian heart.  We have made that nation our bitter enemies; and the most rancorous hatred of men or fiends can invent no more fearful agony than that in which, within the last few months, we have consigned thousands upon thousands to a speedier or more lingering death, and steeped thousands of bereaved and desolate families.  If then there be anywhere a temple dedicated to the creed “of them of old time,” by whom it was said, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy,” there is a bell which may fittingly swing in response to the boom of the rejoicing cannon.  But when the express laws of Christ have been in letter and in spirit utterly set at nought, a mournful silence becomes the Christian sanctuary.

            Again, the Bible establishes a law of impartial justice,–of sacred respect for the rights and property of all men.  Even in its early and imperfect revelations, it was said, “Thou shalt not steal,” and “Cursed be he that removeth his neighbor’s landmark”; and none can doubt that the Gospel prescribes the most rigid and conscientious equity in every relation and transaction.  Now what shadow of right have we even to the peaceful occupancy of the coil which we have deluged with the blood of its owners?  Does any pretended landmark of ours reach to the lines of our army, or approach within gunshot of the walls of Vera Cruz?  Have our citizens any more rights of property there, than Santa Ana and his army within our fields or walls?  It is said, indeed, that war suspends all common maxims of right and justice.  I know that it does.  But I look in vain to the New Testament for the charter of such a suspension.  The code of war is independent of that of Christ.  The broadest construction of his teachings leaves no provision open for a state of voluntary hostility, and those who aid in bringing about such a state are morally responsible for every violation of private rights, and every outrage on private property, to which it may lead.  So far as the written word of God goes, the midnight burglar or assassin within my doors, and the invading army battering down the walls of the Mexican city, occupy the same moral position, and incur the same fearful accountability.  The victory which we refused to help celebrate, was won in a conflict which no one has yet been daring enough to defend on moral grounds.  It was a victory of force over right,—of human passion over the law of Christ; and it would have been high treason against our holy faith, to have lent any portion of the apparatus of our Christian worship to proclaim the triumph of anti Christian principles.

            Yet once more, our church is consecrated to a humane and merciful religion.  Its Founder lifted off men’s burdens, and helped their infirmities.  Beneath his touch, bread grew in the desert for the famished multitude, and living pulses beat in the palsied frame.  Wherever he went, health and gladness flowed from his lips, and sprang upon his footsteps.  He bade his followers show mercy as they would receive mercy; taught them in the parable of the Samaritan that humanity was independent of national distinctions; and, in his sketch of the final judgment, made works of love for the relief of the needy, the stranger and the prisoner, the test of discipleship requisite for a place at his right hand.  In the same spirit, one of his three most intimate associates assigns to the visiting of the fatherless and the widows in their affliction, the first place among the marks of pure and undefiled religion.  Now it was for works of a character diametrically opposed to the tender and loving spirit of Christ and his Gospel, that we heard those notes of rejoicing.  I pity, from the bottom of my heart, the man who can have so much as a momentary feeling of exultation at such horrors.  What! Rejoice at the explosion of those infernal missiles in those late peaceful homes,—at the scattering of the dissevered limbs and mangled corpses of those hundreds of women and children?  Imagine the scene enacted among us.  Suppose our whole population surrounded by the enginery of war,—our wives and children forbidden all egress,—witnessing day after day spectacles of the intensest agony, at the very thought of which the blood runs cold,—burrowing in our cellars, while the shell bursts through roof, ceiling and floor, explodes on the ground, and wraps the torn and bleeding form of matron and maiden, boy and babe, in the winding-sheet of smoke and flame.  The groan of the wounded, the wild shriek of the  dying, rises from house to house above the roar of the artillery.  Dwelling after dwelling buries in its shattered ruins the dismembered and the dead, while survivors suffer a thousand times the pangs of death in the lacerating of every fibre of their being.  Were this measure meted to us, could we conceive of its giving joy anywhere this side of pandemonium?  Those Mexicans have human hearts.  There are there as here fond parents and loving children.  They have the same susceptibilities of suffering and anguish with ourselves.  Sudden calamity is no less appalling, the cup of bereavement no less bitter, the sense of desolation in the widow’s or the orphan’s heart no less keen, to them, than to us.  The frightful realities, through which the dead have passed into eternity, and surviving friends have seen them go, exceed the power of language, and leave imagination far behind experience.  And for works and scenes like these, shall there be rejoicing and that, too, echoed from the temples of the meek, compassionate, loving Redeemer?  These are the very works which Jesus came to destroy; and, had any sound of sympathy with them gone forth from our house of prayer, we should have reason to feel that it had utterly lost its consecration, and was no longer a fit place for the gathering of a Christian assembly.

            But it is said, perhaps, that the rejoicing was not for the horrible havoc of the siege, but for the display of the noblest traits of character on the part of our troops and their leaders.  Be it so.  In order to render it meet that our churches should participate in the outward demonstrations of joy, the characters manifested in the siege and illustrated in the victory must belong to the Christian school,—the virtues brought into exercise in the conflict must be such as have received our Divine Master’s approval.  Now, though I believe war under all circumstances inconsistent with the precepts, and opposed to the spirit of the Gospel, I by no means deny that there may be many noble Christian traits beneath the “garments rolled in blood.”  Where one repels assault from his own home, or helps roll back the tide of invasion from his own shores, even though his conscience be not fully enlightened as to the extent to which a Christian is bound to suffer wrong without doing wrong, he may still manifest some of the loftiest attributes of character,—he may have a keen sense of justice, may love mercy, and may be filled with that spirit of generous, disinterested self-sacrifice, which, with greater light, would have made him an unresisting martyr for truth and righteousness.  There was much of this martyr spirit among the leaders in the American Revolution; and I honor them for it, and believe that they were true to their highest convictions of duty.  But virtues of this class have no foothold in an assailing army, in an openly aggressive war.  We are told that the leaders in this war believe it unjust and wrong.  If this be the case, they must regard the successive outrages to which they have lent their services, as unmitigated robbery and murder; and to do this work they have sold themselves, body and soul.

            I know that the prevalent theory is,—“The soldier has no right to look behind his country’s orders,—it is no concern of his whether his country’s wars be right or wrong,” that is, he is not a moral agent,—he has ceased to be personally accountable.  This might be a safe theory, were human authority competent to establish it.  But unfortunately the very idea of accountability implies a higher party.  When the individual soul stands before the divine tribunal, stained with the wanton butchery of those women and babes, think you that the plea, “I knew that it was wrong and vile, but my country bade me do it,” will be accepted in Heaven’s chancery in mitigation of the crime?  We praise the man in high executive or legislative trust, who resigns his office, rather than violate his own conviction of duty at the bidding of the Chief Magistrate or of his constituents.  Why should not the conscientious soldier do the same, so that a government, intent on some scheme of lawless aggression, might know beforehand, that it could employ for such work only the refuse of its forces?  It is said that such a doctrine would undermine the military profession?  I answer, that, if the tenure of the military profession requires a man to perform acts of the most decisive and momentous moral significance, yet forbids him to consult his own conscience as to their moral bearing, and at the same time provides him with no release under the divine signature from the responsibility for individual acts which rests upon other men, it is a profession which cannot bear the light of Christianity.  I say not that the profession can rest on no other tenure, but would commend this as a subject of serious inquiry for the friends and advocates of war.  And I would still urge the question,—Is there, in the precepts or the spirit of Christ, any warrant or pretence for obeying man rather than God,—for trampling on every divine law and every human charity, and wading through seas of guilt at the bidding of corrupt rulers?  This at any rate is not Christian virtue,—not a style of moral excellence to be praised in or from the sanctuary.  This sacrifice of individual conscience is no offering for the altar of Christian faith.  Those who first bore the Saviour’s name, while they offered up everything else for Christ’s sake, proclaimed, “We must obey God rather than man,” in the very ears of those who occupied high places of power, and at the peril of their lives.

            We cannot then regard the blind, unquestioning obedience to Government at the sacrifice of individual conscience, without which our fleet and army would never have laid siege to Vera Cruz, as entitled to a place among the Christian virtues.  And for which among the shining sisterhood did that transaction afford scope?  Under which of the beatitudes shall we canonize the heroes of that massacre?  Surely meekness, humility, forbearance, long-suffering, can have had no home in the hearts of the assailants; and these are the cardinal virtues of the gospel.  The moral system of Christ beautifully verified the prediction:  “Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low.”  He deranged the entire moral scale, and transposed its very extremes.  He found the military virtues, aggressive courage, quick resentment, bigoted patriotism, unyielding obstinacy, at the summit of the scale.  He cast them down, and cast them out; and for courage he put fortitude,—for resentment, forgiveness,—for exclusive patriotism, an all embracing philanthropy,—for harsh, unfeeling rigidness of purpose, a love incapable of weariness or exhaustion.  For any signal victory, in which these virtues of the gospel and the cross bear the most prominent part, let every voice that the sanctuary can lend join in the triumph; but not for a victory over those virtues,—not for the disowning and overturning of the Christian scale,—not for transactions, which carry us back to the days of heathenism, and make us feel as if the sun of righteousness were setting in blood.

            Such were some of the reasons why no merry peal rang from our church-tower on the news of the victory.  That bell has deep notes of grief, which it might most fittingly have sent forth.  On that same afternoon, for the death of a single child, we heard the slow, sad knell from a neighboring steeple.  Had our bells all been tolled for the dead at Vera Cruz, they would have chimed with many hearts that were filled with sadness at the tidings, and would have been a not unapt expression of the contrite sorrow with which, under so heavy a load of guilt, the great heart of the nation should humble itself before its forsaken God.  Were we to embody right Christian feeling in our outward forms of worship, our churches would be clothed in mourning, the funeral toll would summon us to the sanctuary, our anthems would all be dirges, our praise would lose itself in penitential sorrow, until this atrocious war shall cease, and its memory shall be bathed throughout the land in floods of devout contrition.

            I have thus far spoken of the proprieties of the temple made with hands.  The order of the sanctuary, the outward beauty of holiness, is, however, but the type of that temple, whose builder and maker is God.  “The temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.”  If it be sacrilege to testify unholy joy for deeds of blood and rapine by soulless sounds from the house of prayer, how much more so is it to harbor thoughts of such joy in our hearts!  Of the warning this there is more need than a few weeks ago I was willing to believe.  While the fortune of the war hung in doubt, there were indeed many ready to denounce it; and one of the great political parties, though lacking courage, (with a few illustrious exceptions,) to maintain a firm and decided stand against it, still proffered many strong expressions of disapproval and abhorrence.  But now that success has crowned our arms, we find many members and some distinguished leaders of that party joining in the congratulations and festivities that hail the recent victories; thus showing how flexible the conscience of a political partisan is made by the current maxims of expediency and availability.  There are strong indications that this war in its triumphant progress is going to become generally popular, and that, through its shout and din, one of its laurelled heroes is to be elevated to the chief chair of state.  I can hardly imagine an event more fatal than this would be to the peace, and ultimately to the liberties, of a nation.  Should it once be established by so signal a precedent that military rnown, achieved in warfare however atrocious, affords the surest and quickest passage to the first places at the nation’s disposal, we have nothing in prospect but wars and rumors of wars for generations to come; and every new swarm of aspirants for public favor will work their way to power and office by fomenting discord and stirring up the waters of strife.  All this you and I may be unable to prevent, though none can tell how fast or far any earnest expression of dissent from the multitude on moral and religious grounds might spread.  There certainly exists, in our country, with all the prevalent apathy and time-serving, enough of Christian principle and sentiment to make itself strongly felt, would it only in some one quarter take to itself resolute, determined utterance.  The pulpit, the press where uncorrupted, the individual voice and influence of men who love the right better than their party, might yet achieve the salvation of our country from a destiny, which, after tossing her on seas of blood, will inevitably merge the last vestige of republican freedom in anarchy or military despotism.  But, whether we can effect much or little, we can at least be true to our own consciences.  We can keep ourselves innocent from the great transgression, and deliver our own souls from blood-guiltiness.  We can help our children, our neighbors, our friends, in the formation of right principles and sentiments.  We can prepare ourselves to pass, with clean hands and pure hearts, from a land filled with violence to the welcome tribunal of Jesus, and the peaceful seats of the redeemed.

            I know that such sentiments as I have now uttered are deemed unpatriotic.  I see it currently said in our most respectable public journals, that, whatever may be thought of the justice of this war, every citizen of the United States must needs rejoice in the brilliant success and honor that have attended our arms.  I for one feel no such joy, but only deep sorrow, shame and humiliation, the deeper for every victory.  Yet I believe that I love my country none the less for this.  In my view, success in crime, adroitness in wrong-doing, whether in an individual or a nation, confers no honor, and affords no just cause for joy.  I love my children; and, because I love them, if they entered on any wrong course of conduct, I should hope that they would fail of their evil ends, and be humbled and made better by the failure.  And I have all along hoped, till it is now too late for the hope, that our country might fail of every end sought by this conflict, and might, though the mortification of those lusts and passions whence it sprang, be made wiser and better.  I cannot but believe that Providence, in permitting this guilty success for a season, is preparing for us sorer judgments and a heavier doom.  The justice of an outraged Heaven makes me tremble for my country.  I can take no hopeful view of the nearer future; nor do I believe that we shall any of us live long enough to see the time, when we can again congratulate ourselves, as we have been wont to do, that we were born citizens of these United States.  By the threatened triumph of the war spirit, and the political profligacy which must follow in its train, our goodly heritage is to my eye hopelessly laid waste, and the sanctuary of our true peace and well-eing made utterly desolate.

            Think not, because I have thus freely expressed by abhorrence of this war, that I have no sympathy with those, who have been made its agents.  As to the members of our naval and military establishments, while, (as I have said,) I believe that they will find it hard to make good their plea before a higher tribunal, “let him that is without sin cast the first stone.”  I leave all harsh and reproachful censure for those, (if any there be,) who have never failed in the moral courage requisite for the surrender of all personal considerations at the call of duty.  Were these officers to make the sacrifice, which high Christian principle undoubtedly demands of them, it would be an illustrious sacrifice, worthy of the best days of the primitive church.  Their profession should not be made a mark for peculiar attack or condemnation.  It is but the exponent and representative of a still imperfectly Christianized condition of the body politic.  It will exist and be honored, so long as nations calling themselves Christian elevate other moral standards above that of the gospel,—it will decline and vanish with the revival and establishment of primitive Christianity.  In the present war, while I would not for worlds place myself in the moral position of those actively employed in its prosecution, I regard the greatest load of guilt as resting on the government, which has taken advantage of their maxims of unconditional obedience, to send them on a mission of rapine and blood, which most of them loathe and hate.  I sincerely lament the havoc that has been made in their ranks, and for their sake, as well as for the country’s, I long to see the plague staid.

            As for those, who, unforced by what they deemed prior obligations, have thrown themselves into this conflict, I feel unutterable pity for their recklessness and inhumanity.

            But, most of all, I confess, my sympathies are with the bereaved, suffering, homeless Mexicans,—with the multitudes, that, without fault of their own, have been made to feel the direst of earthly calamities, and have been given over to the wasting of the war-fiend, whose tender mercies are cruelty.  They are our brethren, commended to our charity and our intercessions by the blessed gospel, borne equally with ourselves on the heart of Jesus, loved no less than we are by the eternal Father.  Heaven grant them speedy release from fear, surprise and agony,—space to rear again their shattered dwellings, and to gather in quietness the remnants of their divided households.  Haven  grant that they may learn better lessons than we are teaching them, and that their experience of the bitterness of strife may commend to them the arts of peace and the spirit of gentleness and mercy.

            But all is not dark.  We have faith in the sure word of prophecy.  We doubt not that we may hasten, and our posterity behold the day, which the old Hebrew seers descried from afar through ages of guilt and woe, when men shall learn war no more.  Nor are we without signs of its approach.  The gospel is now, more than ever before, preached in its primitive spirit.  Christians are fast learning what they had forgotten for fifteen centuries, that meekness and mercy are the disciple’s only armor.  Let us labor in faith and hope, by example and influence, by word and deed, to diffuse the spirit of irrespective love and universal brotherhood, and, though God call us home before the work be done, we may join the second host of herald angels, who will wake the echoes of the regenerated earth with the song, “The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.”

END.

PRAYER FOR THE SICK.

A 

S E R M O N

PREACHED AT KING’S CHAPEL, BOSTON,

ON THURSDAY, AUGUST 9, 1832, 

BEING

THE FAST DAY

APPOINTED BY

THE GOVERNOR OF MASSACHUSETTS,

ON ACCOUNT OF THE

APPEARANCE OF CHOLERA IN THE UNITED STATES.

BY F. W. P. GREENWOOD,

JUNIOR MINISTER OF KING’S CHAPEL.

PUBLISHED BY REQUEST.

B O S T O N:

LEONARD C. BOWLES

362 Washington Street.

1832.

S E R M O N.

JAMES V. 16.

CONFESS YOUR FAULTS ONE TO ANOTHER, AND PRAY ONE FOR ANOTHER, THAT YE MAY BE HEALED.  THE EFFECTUAL FERVENT PRAYER OF A RIGHTEOUS MAN AVAILETH MUCH.

            The apostle is urging the duty of intercession with God for the sick, and of mutual confession and forgiveness in the time of sickness.  He thus joins moral duty with prayer, and signifies that an humble, repentant, charitable state of mind, is one condition on which the restoration of bodily health, and the answer of prayer depend.  And who will object to the condition?  Who will harden his heart against his neighbor, and refuse him his full forgiveness, when he sees the hand of the Lord lying heavily upon him, and hears the groans of his anguish, and thinks, whatever he may have been, or whatever he may have done, what a poor, feeble, suffering creature he is now?  And who, on his own sick-bed, feeling the same hand on himself, and made sensible, by the near approach of another world, how vain and how wrong are the competitions and discords of this, and by he pressing thoughts of judgment and God’s holiness, of his own manifold imperfections, and repeated transgressions, can hesitate to acknowledge his errors, and forgive all who have sinned against him, as he himself hopes to be forgiven.

            After thus recommending the holy dispositions which should accompany prayer for the wick, the apostle James asserts the efficacy of prayer in obtaining the implored blessing.  ‘The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man,’ he continues, ‘availeth much.’  He then mentions as an instance in proof, the case of Elias or Elijah, at whose earnest entreaty the Lord withheld rain from heaven, and afterwards caused it to be given again.

            The translation, in our common Bible, of the latter clause of the test, is not a happy one.  It is clearly tautology to say, at least according to the present meaning of words, that an effectual prayer will avail much.  The single Greek word which is here rendered by the two English words ‘effectual fervent,’ is rendered by some commentators inwrought, or inspired; and these commentators consequently suppose that the whole passage applies only to the prayers of such persons as are inspired, or strongly and supernaturally moved to pray for particular blessings, which are granted at their request.  And they say that the very instance given of Elijah, an inspired prophet, who prayed, as he was moved by divine impulse, for extraordinary and almost miraculous events, is a proof of the correctness of their interpretation.  This rendering, though not to be overlooked, is not required, and in all probability is not the correct one.  The original word (eveqyouuevn) is one from which our own word energetic is immediately derived.  It means internally and strongly working.  Wakefield translates the sentence thus; ‘The effect of the prayer of a righteous man is very powerful.’  And if the translators of the received version had omitted the word effectual, and rendered ‘The fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much,’ they would have given us a more intelligible translation, and one, too, not far from the true meaning of the writer.

            I have offered this brief criticism on the passage, because it is one which is constantly quoted, whenever the efficacy of prayer is the subject of discussion, and is not often clearly apprehended, on account of the dim and neutral character of the translation.

            As to the doctrine of the text, the prevalence of the sincerely fervent prayer of a righteous man, I have no doubt of its soundness.  Even if it could be conclusively shown that in this particular place, reference is had solely to the prayers of inspired saints in the first age of Christianity, and previously under the Jewish dispensation, yet there are so many general exhortations to prayer in the Scriptures, on the ground of its efficacy with One who hears and answers it, that I could not permit myself to deny that sincere, fervent, and righteous prayer is of much avail, not only with the petitioner, but with God.  And this doctrine, which I believe to be a Scriptural, appears to me to be also a comforting and a rational doctrine.  It is comforting to all who love God, to perceive him brought so near to them; to be confident, from the assurances of his own word, that he hears all they say to him; that he not only hears, but attentively and graciously listens, with the purpose of granting those requests which can be granted, consistently with his own wisdom, the real good of the petitioner, and the happiness of the great whole.  Why should prayer be made, if God does not hear?  Why should God hear if not to listen: and why should he listen, if not with a purpose connected with the prayer?  We are not justified in expecting any miraculous answer to prayer, but a direct answer to prayer, through ordinary means, we are justified in expecting, if the gift is expedient for us; and if it is not granted we should rest satisfied that it is not expedient.

“If what I ask my God denies,

It is because he’s good and wise.’

            Beyond a very few steps, and a very short distance in the path of God’s operations, our eyes are too weak to see.  It is highly unbecoming in us o say, or to presume, that there is nothing, because we see nothing beyond, or that we know exactly how those events which we do see re brought about by a ruing Deity.  There is a regularity and order in that which we discern, which we call natural, and which none but a fanatic would look to see interrupted.  But without this regularity and order being interrupted, blessings may come to us, or evils may be averted from us, through the steps of this very order, this natural regularity and order, at the voice of our prayer, and a bidding from on high.  There is nothing irrational in this, for there is nothing irrational in believing that we are ignorant, and that God, who orders all things, may grant us special blessings by common means; and that he will grant them, because, in a revelation which we agree is from him, he has promised so to do.

            To occupy no longer time in introduction—though I easily might on so wide, so fruitful and so interesting a subject—and to come at once to the occasion of our present assembling together, let me ask who knows anything of the origin and mode of progress of the disease which we have prayed God to avert from us?  Who knows what place or what person it will next attack?  Who knows how it journeys from place to place, and from person to person?  Who knows how near it may be to ourselves, or whether it will enter our gates at all?  Who knows how many it will visit if it should come, or how many of those whom it visits it will spare, and how many it will not spare from the consummation of death?  Who knows how soon it will leave a town or city, after it has once entered?  Who knows at what time it will leave the world, or whether it will ever leave the world?  Who knows whether sin may not be the cause of this disorder, and whether prayer, righteous prayer, may not be among the most effectual means of averting it?  At any rate, the servant of God who has prayed in sincerity that the calamity may not fall on himself, his household and his neighbors, has performed his duty in seeking the throne of Grace.  He knows that he has been heard kindly by Him who sitteth on the throne, and that whether he is to be spared or not, whether his household and neighbors are to be spared or not, the event will be wisely and mercifully ordered.  He feels, moreover, that his own affections have been raised and his own charities been warmed and extended by his devotion; and that he is consequently better prepared for sickness and for health, to be taken or to be left.

            This last is a highly important consideration, and is ground on which all sober and pious persons can stand together, whatever may be their differences of opinion with regard to the direct efficacy of prayer on the mind of the Deity, or rather the literal correspondence of its efficacy with the promises of scripture.  All such will agree that the effect of prayer on the devout heart is great and beneficial; that it softens and sanctifies; that it places the petitioner, by the influence thus exerted on his dispositions and life, in the best position for receiving and enjoying the blessings, and bearing and improving the chastisements of Heaven.  All will agree, too, that if prayer has not this effect on the hearts and lives of those who pray, it can have no effect on Him who hears; and that whatever may be the precise way in which the fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth, one thing is undeniable, if a prayer be not one of sincerity and righteousness it will avail nothing.

            What, then, should be some of the moral influences and effects of prayer on the present occasion?  What must be some of the moral influences and effects of fervent and righteous prayer?

            In order to answer these questions let us consider, first, what it is which we pray God to avert from us.  Some call it the blighting curse of God.  I will not call it so.  Some call it a fierce demon let loose upon poor mortals, and some a horrid monster glutting itself with prey.  I give my assent to no such epithets.  It is a wasting disorder, melancholy in its character, but commissioned with the intentions of God’s omniscience.  It is a judgment on the earth.  It is a warning to the people against sin and uncleanness.  It is a trying but also a just providence.  These are the names by which I prefer to describe it; and in painting it to the imagination, I would draw it not with eyes angry and bloodshot, and a mouth breathing out fumes from the bottomless pit, but as an angel, a mourning as well as a retributive angel, bearing the sword of the Almighty not in vain, but hiding its sad countenance with one hand, while with the other it deals the speedy blow.

            1.  I have called it a judgment on the earth, and a warning against sin and uncleanness.  And is it not reasonable and justifiable to call it so, when we are told that it seizes first and principally on the intemperate and the unclean?  How can the voice of God speak more plainly against these forms of unrighteousness, than in this mandate to his destroying angel?  In praying that the disorder may not be sent among us, we should call to mind this purpose of its mission, and remember the vices against which it appears so evidently to be sent, and thus strengthen our conviction of their fatal nature and exceeding sinfulness, and redouble our efforts to root them out.  How can we expect that the disease will keep away, when that which invites the disease is permitted to remain?  It is a solemn truth that every intemperate and corrupt person, that every keeper and every supporter of the haunts of profligacy and riot is laboring to bring the so much dreaded pestilence to the place in which he dwells.  Should the punishment come, it will be called a demon and curse—when behold the demon and the curse are even now among us and upon us.  Do we expect to sin on and sin on forever, without any notice taken, and without a retribution?  While we pray, we would meditate on these things, with the purpose of acting accordingly, and then we may hope that our prayer will be availing.

            2.  But the disease does not entirely confine itself to the above described victims.  Though it principally selects these, yet it falls occasionally on the sober and pious and on innocent children.  And ought we not to be taught by this, not to boast of our virtue, nor to be sure of exemption, not to elevate ourselves in fancied security above the poor creatures whose vices are their exposure?  Humility will always accompany sincere prayer.  We are all exposed in some degree; and therefore it should be a primary consideration with us how we shall be prepared; and surely no better preparation will present itself to the Christian than that of mercy and charity.  While we are roused to act against sin, it will be in a temper of great pity for the sinner, and with especial care that we do not fall into sin, particularly the sin of the Pharisee, ourselves.  ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.’  Let us be careful that we interfere not with the Supreme prerogative.  It is the Lord’s to send abroad his terrible and righteous judgments; it is ours to be kind and charitable, humble and watchful.

            3.  We are to be prepared, but not afraid.  ‘The Lord is the strength of my life,’ exclaims the Psalmist, ‘of whom shall I be afraid?’  It is the tendency of true prayer to lift up the heart above fear, because it lifts it up into the presence of God.  Can we run to an Almighty Guardian, and acknowledge his power to save, and then feel and talk and act as if we had no guardian?  Shall we come into the temple of the Most High, and address him as our ever present God and watchful Father, and after we have gone from the door, tremble at the first rumor of disease, as if we had no God and no Father?  I say that he who prays sincerely, not only prays to be delivered from pestilence, but prays to a being who sends, limits and rules the pestilence, who is the Lord of life and death, who is the Judge of all the earth, who will do what is right, and who is the refuge and defense of all those who trust in him.  Such a suppliant cannot be overcome by unworthy dread.  He has gone and placed his life in the hands of its Author, and his blessings and comforts in the hands of their Giver.  They are locked up—he is sure of them—and therefore he is not afraid.  My friends, if we come here and pray, and if other congregations of our brethren assemble to pray, merely because we are afraid; and if the effect of our praying will be only to make us more afraid, we have not prayed aright—we could not have been doing a more ineffectual thing—our prayers have been vainer than vanity.  He who has been fervently and righteously praying that this pestilence may be averted from him and his, will rise up from his knees, a fearless man.  He will feel himself piously and rationally superior to the exaggerated alarms which have operated on some.  Rather than permit a sufferer from the disease to be shamefully deserted and neglected, he will go and minister to him himself.  Rather than permit the lifeless frame of a fellow creature to lie on the bare earth, he will dig a grave with his own hands, and then fall again on his knees, and commit that body to the earth, and the spirit to God who gave it.  And when he has done this, he will feel that his prayer has availed much.

            4.  But while fervent and righteous prayer will make us fearless, it will have no tendency to make us neglect other proper means of prevention or of cure.  It will, on the contrary, lead us to view those means with increased respect and gratitude, as the merciful provision of God, and use them diligently and advisedly, as by his ordination and appointment.  Whence are all these means?  What are all exciting, soothing and healing medicines; what are all purifying and disinfecting agents; what are all sanative applications, but treasures drawn from his storehouse?  So far from despising them, therefore, the religious man will regard them as things divine; he will regard medical skill, as an art and gift divine; and he will make use of them when necessary, as by divine commandment.  The health which God bestows, he will endeavor to preserve or restore by means which the finger of God points out, not relying on his own strength or merits and leaving the event to Him.  He loves to pray to his gracious Father, but he will not tempt him.  He is no fatalist.  He believes it to be disobedience to God, not to employ the aids which God furnishes for his use; he therefore employs, but does not finally trust in them.  He trusts in nothing but the divine wisdom, mercy and promises, and in these he trusts to the end.

            Let us then confess our faults one to another, and let us pray one for another.  Let us confess our faults to God, and pray for ourselves.  If our prayers are fervent and righteous; if they awaken us to the evil and danger of sin; if they make us humble and unassuming; if they inspire us with a cheerful courage, united with a rational prudence, we may be confident that they will avail much.  They have availed much.  They have prepared us in the best possible manner against the hovering pestilence; they have saved us from sin, which is more dreadful than pestilence.  God has heard them; and he will answer them, if not by temporal immunity, yet y the answer of eternal salvation.

END.

Born to farming parents, Sprague attended Colchester Academy and then attended Yale, where he graduated in 1815. He was invited to be the tutor for the children of Virginian Major Lawrence Lewis, nephew of George Washington. (Lewis’ wife was the granddaughter of Martha Washington.) He accepted, and traveled from Connecticut to Virginia. The Lewis’ home, Woodlawn, was part of the original Mount Vernon (George Washington’s home), and over the year Sprague stayed with the family, he received permission from Bushrod Washington (George Washington’s nephew who served on the US Supreme Court) to go through many of George Washington’s letters and papers. Sprague was allowed to take as many of those letters as he wanted, so long as he left copies of all letters he took, which was about 1,500. From these letters, Sprague was able to compile the very first complete set of autographs of all of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. In 1816, Sprague returned to school at the Theological Seminary at Princeton, where he studied for three years. In 1819, he became an associate pastor at First Congregational Church in West Springfield, Massachusetts, and remained there a decade before becoming pastor of Second Presbyterian in Albany, New York, where he remained until 1869. Sprague was a prolific writer, and penned sixteen major works, including biographies of important American Christian leaders as well as religious works such as Lectures on Revivals of Religion (1832), Contrast Between True and False Religion (1837), and Words to a Young Man’s Conscience (1848). He also wrote over 100 religious pamphlets and smaller works. Elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society, much of his writing and preaching was of a historical and biographical nature. In fact, one of his greatest accomplishments was his nine-volume Annals of the American Pulpit, which was particularly rich with biographies of those pastors who played important roles in the American War for Independence. By the time of Sprague’s death in 1876, he had collected over 100,000 historical autographs, including three complete sets of signatures of all the signers of the Declaration; one set of all the members of the Convention that framed the US Constitution; a complete set of the autographs of the first six Presidents of the United States and the officers of their administrations (including signatures of the Presidents, Vice Presidents, Cabinet members, US Supreme Court Justices, and all foreign ministers in those administrations); and the signatures of all military officers involved in the American War for Independence, regardless of the nation from which they came or the side of the war on which they fought. He also collected signatures of leaders of the Reformation as well as those of great skeptics and opponents of religious faith. His collection was considered the largest private collection in the world at the time of his death.

VOICE OF THE ROD:

A

SERMON,

DELIVERED AT ALBANY, MAY 14, 1841,

THE DAY OF THE NATIONAL FAST.

OCCASIONED BY THE DEATH OF THE LATE

WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON,

PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. 

By WILLIAM B. SPRAGUE, D. D.

PASTOR OF THE SECOND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH.

ALBANY:

PRINTED BY C. VAN BENTHUYSEN.

1841.

To the Rev. W. B. Sprague, D. D.

            Dear Sir—

            The trustees, as well in conformity with their own wishes, as the wishes of others of your congregation, respectfully request for publication a copy of the Sermon delivered by you on the morning of the 14^th inst., the day recommended by the President of the United States for a National Fast.

We are very respectfully,

Your obed’t serv’ts,

JOSEPH ALEXANDER,

A. M’INTYRE,

ERASTUS CORNING,

THOMAS W. OLCOTT,

E. P. PRENTICE,

Jno. I. BOYD,

JOHN TOWNSEND,

A. MARVIN.

Albany, May 15, 1841.

            To the Board of Trustees of the Second Presbyterian Congregation in Albany:

            GENTLEMEN—

            It has not been my custom to apologize for my own productions: on the contrary I have suffered even the most hasty of them to go to the publick for what they were worth; considering it a good general rule, that if a sermon is too poor to print without an apology, it is too poor to print at all.  In consenting, however, to the publication of this discourse, as I am aware that it very imperfectly meets the expectation which the occasion might reasonably justify, it is due to myself to state that it was necessarily prepared in a few hours, when I had but partially recovered from the fatigue of a journey; to say nothing of the fact of which you are already apprized, that I had previously delivered two other discourses on the same subject, in the same place, and to some extent to the same congregation; so that for this there remained little else than the gathering up of the fragments.  But for the mysterious disappearance from my study of the MSS. Of the two former, one of them, would have been given to the publick instead of this, which is now somewhat hesitatingly yielded to your wishes.

            I beg you will accept, Gentlemen, the assurance of my highest regard.

            W. B. SPRAGUE.

May 25, 1841.

SERMON.

MICAH VI. 9.

Hear ye the rod, and who hath appointed it.

                The occasion which has brought us into the house of God this morning, marks an era in the history of this nation.  Not that this is the first time that the nation has been called to keep a day of humiliation and prayer; but the first time that it has been called to keep such a day for such a cause.  Not that this is the first instance in which death has removed an individual whom we had elevated to the chair of supreme authority; but the first in which such an event has occurred at the commencement, or even in the course, of the Presidential career.  I am sure you will agree with me that every sentiment of religion, every dictate of propriety, justifies this appointment.  I count it an omen for good that our present Chief Magistrate, as one of the first of his official acts, has called upon his people to humble themselves beneath the rod of God.  Whatever his future communications to the nation may be, he has already given us one that will stand the test of time; for it breathes the spirit of reverence for the Divine authority, of confidence in the Divine government.  Whatever measures may characterize his course hereafter, he has adopted one in the beginning which may always be appealed to as worthy of imitation, so long as this nation exists.  God grant that this disposition to acknowledge Him, and to call upon the country to acknowledge Him, may prove the harbinger of a happy administration—an administration through which blessings incalculable in their number and extent shall be conveyed not only to this nation but to the world.

            If I were to meet one of you with your heart bleeding at the death-bed of a beloved friend, I know not what more appropriate counsel I could address to you, than “Hear ye the rod, and who hath appointed it.”  Or if death had made a fearful inroad upon our congregation, removing someone who had shared in an unusual degree our affection and confidence, and in respect to whom, after he was gone, we should say that an armour-bearer had failed us—here again, I know not what better I could say to you, than “Hear ye the rod, and who hath appointed it.”  And now that my country hath been smitten of God, and is bleeding under His righteous hand, what better can I say to her—what better can I say to you, my friends, who are assembled here this morning as part of this nation, than “Hear ye the rod, and who hath appointed it.”  The rod speaks: listen to the warning voice.  Consider the hand that wields it:  it is the hand of the Ruler of nations.

            We shall fall in, I trust, with the design of the occasion, if we consider this national bereavement as having a bearing both upon the past and the future; as administering rebuke on the one hand, and conveying instruction and expostulation on the other.  In the prosecution of this object,

            I.  I remark, in the first place, that this dispensation rebukes our national ingratitude, and calls upon us to form a higher estimate of our obligations to the Divine goodness.

            I do not say that, as a nation, we have been insensible of our superior privileges; or that we have been backward on certain occasions and in certain ways, to speak of them; but I appeal to you, whether it has not been chiefly in a manner that has discovered more of a boasting than of a grateful spirit.  When we have congratulated ourselves on the freedom and the supposed stability of our institutions, has not the secret feeling of our heart been, rather a feeling of complacency in consideration of our possessing these privileges, than a feeling of gratitude towards the bestower of them?  And even when we have professed to recognize them as the fruit of the Divine goodness; when we have said with our lips that it is God who hath made us to differ from other nations, and that He hath not dealt so with any nation as with us; nay, when we have been assembled professedly to recount the tokens of His favour, and offer to Him the sacrifice of thanksgiving; has not our recognition of His goodness been, to a great extent, a mere matter of form;—have we not been too much like those of old who sang His praise, and then forgat His works?  Yes, Brethren, as a nation, we are deeply chargeable with the sin of ingratitude; and I repeat—this dispensation administers a rebuke for it.

            For suppose you had lost an earthly friend—say a parent—whose watchful kindness had been the channel through which, from the first hour of your existence, there had been conveyed to you an uninterrupted stream of blessings; and you had been accustomed always to receive these blessings merely as a matter of course, without lifting your eye to that Almighty Father who gave you your earthly parent and constituted the endearing relation that he sustained to you; I ask whether his removal from the world would not come as a rebuke to your ingratitude;—whether it would not set you to thinking of blessings innumerable which had been forgotten in unthankfulness; and not merely of those which had come to you through the medium of parental kindness, but of others which may have come more directly from the hand of your Heavenly Father?  And why should not the same principle operate in respect to the nation bereaved of its Head?  The President of this nation sustains to it, in an important sense, the relation of a father.  The President who has lately died, though not the choide3 of the whole nation, was the choice of the majority; and I may safely say in view of the mourning which his death has brought over the land, had the respect and good will of the country at large.  I suppose that none of us doubt that he was a man of integrity and wisdom; and there is much reason to believe that, if he had lived, he would have ruled the nation in the fear of God.  Of course, the loss of such a man from such a place, irrespective of all party considerations, is to be regarded as a publick calamity.  We must suppose that a great blessing—certainly that which the majority of the nation accounted so—has been withdrawn from us in his death; and why should not this remind us of other blessings which we have enjoyed and still enjoy, and rouse us from a habit of thankless indifference in respect to them?  We have had other men distinguished for their patriotism and talents and usefulness to rule over us; and instead of being cut off at the commencement of their career, they have lived to complete the term of service which their country had allotted to them.  We have seen our nation going forward in the course of unexampled prosperity; enlarging the bounds of her habitation on the right hand and on the left; and when clouds have lowered in our horizon, they have soon disappeared; or if a tempest has passed over the land, it has lasted but for an hour, and has left a purer atmosphere and a brighter sky.  You who have travelled in other countries, especially on the continent of Europe, know better than others how to value the liberal spirit that characterizes our institutions.  You may have seen much abroad to gratify your curiosity and excite your astonishment; but you come back after all, rejoicing that your home is on this side of the ocean.  You welcome the sight of your own vine and fig tree, beneath which you can sit without any to molest or make you afraid.  Now I say, the effect of this national bereavement should be to remind us of these forgotten and neglected mercies; to lead us to recount them, not with a view to minister to our self-complacency, but to quicken our impulses of gratitude for the Divine bounty.  It will be a beautiful offering to the memory of your departed President, to make his death the occasion of a grateful recollection of your distinguished blessings.

            II.  This dispensation rebukes our national self-confidence, and charges us to cease from man and put our trust in the Lord.

            I honour and venerate my country; but I am sure I do not charge her unjustly, when I say that she has been most criminally given to leaning upon an arm of flesh.  She has gloried in the wisdom of man, as if man had no occasion to take counsel of any wisdom above his own.  She has seen ruin waiting on one set of measures, and safety and glory on another, without remembering that no measures can render her interests secure, unless they are attended with God’s blessing; that her destinies are in the hands of him who putteth down one and setteth up another.  In all this she has dishonoured the Ruler of nations.  She has acted as if she would take the scepter of supreme authority into her own hands.  She has practically bid the Most High stand aside, and without dreaming of the vanity or the madness of her pretensions, has attempted, in the spirit of the ancient builders of Babel, to make to herself a name whose glory should fill the earth.

            But it is not easy to conceive how a more effectual rebuke could have been given to this spirit, than has been in the death of our Chief Magistrate.  In his administration were bound up the hopes of a majority of the nation.  His election had been the result of a struggle, which had well nigh convulsed the country; and those who had placed him in that lofty station, thought they saw in the measures to which he was pledged, all they could ask to ensure the country’s prosperity.  But come, yet self-confident politicians, to your President’s grave, and tell us what ye think now of the wisdom of trusting to an arm of flesh.  Nerveless as a clod is the hand which but the other day received the staff of office.  The eye that looked out upon that brilliant and imposing pageant, sees not: the ear upon which fell the deafening plaudits of the multitude, hears not: the voice that uttered itself with freedom and energy from the highest place in the nation, speaks not: the senses are all locked up in the slumber of the sepulcher.  And death hath removed to another sphere, though by no means blotted out of being, that well-balanced and well directed mind, in which were already treasured up thoughts and plans for the development and execution of which you were anxiously waiting.  That beautiful fabric which your imagination had framed, and to which your heart was so strongly attracted, God has only touched; and lo, it has passed away, like the morning vapour before the sun!  Transfer your confidence, then, from the creature to the Creator.  Remember that if our national interests are safe, they are so only because God’s protecting hand is upon them.  Remember that if we in our folly refuse to put our trust in Him, we have no right to expect, either from His word or His providence, but that He in judgment will withhold His blessing from us.  If we confide in Him unreservedly and implicitly, we may be sure of His favour; and with that we need not fear, though enemies should encircle us, and convulsions should agitate us, and our very mountains should be carried into the midst of the sea.

            III.  This dispensation of providence rebukes our national idolatry of our rulers, and teaches us to remember that they are but men.

            Far be it from me to intimate that we have had too much of that sober and rational regard for those in authority, to which their station justly entitles them:  what I would here reprobate is that idolatrous homage, that fanatical praise, which they are perpetually receiving from that part of the nation that approves and sustains their measures.  I refer not to any particular administration as distinguished in this respect above others; but if I mistake not, you will find in looking through our whole national history, that just in proportion to the prevalence of party spirit, this evil of which I am now speaking has prevailed: the majority of the people have spoken, and written, and acted, concerning our rulers, as if everything they did was right, merely because they did it.  Now it is to be borne in mind that rulers are constituted with the same flesh and blood, the same susceptibilities and infirmities, with other men; and if other men cannot safely be subjected to such an influence, neither can they.  Admitting that they are good men, and disposed to rule with an equal hand; admitting too that they are discerning men, and more capable than most of discriminating between truth and falsehood; yet, after all, if their ears are continually trained to the sound of their own praise, it is hardly possible but that their hearts will beat too vigorously to the idea of their own merit; and as a consequence, that they will commit mistakes and errors which they would otherwise have avoided.  Many a ruler, I doubt not, has adopted measures adverse to the publick good, which he never would have adopted, had he not been kept in countenance by the unceasing flatteries of a party.  The nation that deals thus with its rulers, need not wonder if it should first ruin them, and then render them instrumental of bringing ruin upon itself.

            You see how this dangerous and deceiving spirit is rebuked by this providence.  Rulers are not only, like others, accountable for their conduct at the bar of Heaven, but their responsibility is increased in proportion to the amount of authority which is committed to them.  When they die, they enter upon their retribution, receiving good or evil in another world, according to the amount of good or evil which they have done in this.  Say, then, whether the grave of our departed President does not charge us to beware how we throw stumbling blocks in their way?  It lifts up the voice of intercession in their behalf, and pleads with us to remember that they have temptations enough to encounter, without being subjected to the ordeal of national flattery.  It admonishes us that such a course, more than almost any other, puts in jeopardy the best interests of our country.  And finally, it proposes to us the solemn interrogation, how we can meet our rulers in the judgment, if by our inordinate and unceasing flatteries, we have contributed to nourish their pride, to benumb their moral sensibility, and thus to accumulate for them the materials of an aggravated condemnation.  But on the other hand,

            IV.  This providence rebukes no less effectually our growing contempt of authority, and calls upon us to render honour to whom honour is due.  I am not sure but that I may have introduced this thought in the discourse which you heard on the Sabbath morning after the President’s death; but if I did, it is too important, and too opposite to the present occasion, not to be introduced here, even though it be at the expense of repetition.

            It is the fashion in this country for the party not in power to be exceedingly restless, and to oppose the administration under which they live, with at least an equal degree of zeal with that with which its advocates sustain it.  It is the fashion to level against rulers the arrows of detraction; to watch for every occasion for calling in question either their integrity or their ability, and to find occasion often where there is none; to impute selfish and abominable motives, where nothing can be said against the external act; and sometimes even to talk loudly of revolt and rebellion.  And I must add, it has become the fashion in many parts of our land, to trample upon the laws with mob-like violence; the consequence of which is, that sometimes an innocent man is maimed, or mangled, or torn to pieces, where the laws ought to have protected him; and in other cases the criminal is prematurely and unjustly punished, because the operation of the laws is too tardy for the taste of the people.  If I mistake not, this desperate spirit constitutes one of the worst features of our times.  In every instance in which it is manifested, there is not only an outrage committed against the laws of God, but an act of rebellion against the laws of the country.

            Here again, listen, and you shall hear your President’s grave still speaking forth the language of rebuke and exhortation.  He had indeed but just entered upon his office; but he had held it long enough to know that it was anything else than a bed of roses; and some have imagined that he actually fell a victim  to the fatigue and anxiety by which his introduction to it was attended.  His language to the nation now is, “Your rulers have care and responsibility enough to overwhelm them, apart from all those burdens which ye have been accustomed needlessly and voluntarily to impose.  Let the clamours of party then be hushed.  Let the voice of crimination and insult be heard no more.  Remember that your President is a man, that your rulers are all men, and that you have as little reason to expect perfection in them as have in you.  Be lenient, then, towards their infirmities, and be not too strict to mark even their errours against them.  Remember that they are God’s ministers for good, and as such claim your homage and obedience.  And if you will see their administration most fruitful in blessings, study to alleviate rather than increase their burdens; submit cheerfully to the laws which it is their duty to enforce, and co-operate with them to suppress the spirit of insubordination, and thus promote the best interests of our common country.  Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.  It is due to humanity; it is due to justice; it is due to honour; it is due to patriotism.”

            V.  This affecting providence rebukes our national inconsideration of death, and calls upon us to awake to a sense of our mortality.

            Look through any circle you please, no matter how limited, no matter how extensive, and you find a general inattention to the concerns of eternity.  You may travel through the length of the land, and then through the breadth of it, and it is only here and there one that you will meet, who is not living as if this world were his final home.  The merchant is busy in accumulating wealth, and in proportion to his success, is ever grasping for more; but he forgets that he must die and leave it.  The politician is eager to make his voice heard through the nation; but he forgets that his voice must soon be hushed in death.  The aspiring statesman has his eye upon some lofty place of honour, and labours day and night to lift himself into it; but he forgets that there is a pathway ever kept open even from the throne to the sepulcher.  The creature of habitual thoughtlessness is buzzing about in pursuit of pleasure, like a butterfly in the sun; but it never occurs to him that death may put an end to all his pleasures to-morrow.  Yes, the great mass of the nation are utterly absorbed in this world; and neither their vision nor their aspirations extend to a coming one.

            True there are rebukes to this spirit of inconsideration, every day, and on every side:—every death-bed scene, every funeral procession, every open grave, rebukes it.  But in ordinary cases the providence of God speaks to a comparatively small circle: here it speaks to every individual in the nation; for if the death of the father of a family be an admonition to that family to prepare to die, not less is the death of the Head of a nation an admonition to that entire nation to consider their latter end.  But a little while since, my countrymen, your President spoke to you as a living man, and he told you concerning the projected measures of his administration: today he speaks to you from the silence and corruption of the tomb, and I trust I may add, in view of all the cheering evidence of his Christian character which has come to us,—from that world where the dignity of earthly distinction is forgotten amidst the splendours of a blood-bought crown; but he speaks on another and more momentous subject—your relations to God and eternity.  If you were disposed to heed the voice of the living, turn not a deaf ear to the voice of the dead.  Men of every class and every character throughout this nation, not God’s ministers, but the grave, is preaching to you to-day; and the doctrine is everywhere the same—that you must all die; and the exhortation is everywhere the same—that you should prepare to die.

            Hitherto I have dwelt upon those national sins which are more directly and especially rebuked by this affecting dispensation; but I must now add in the

            VI.  Last place, that God has here sent us a rebuke for all our national transgressions, and is calling us to repentance and reformation in view of them.

            Nothing is so well adapted to set an individual to reflecting upon his sins, as the chastisements of the Divine hand.  Thus, you remember, when Jacob’s sons were brought into circumstances of difficulty and peril in Egypt, they began immediately to commune with themselves and with one another, in respect to their cruel and murderous treatment of their brother; and the reason was that conscience did its office, and recognized the doctrine of a retribution.  And the same principle applies to communities as to individuals.  When the rod of God is laid upon a nation as it has been now upon us, it is adapted to excite the inquiry, wherefore is it that He has thus come out in judgment?  What are the sins of which we have been guilty, that we are thus subjected to the chastisements of Heaven?  I can only hint at those which have not been already mentioned.

            Let me say, then, that we are chargeable with having shut our ears against the voice of God, when he has spoken to us in former judgments.  It is but a few years since the pestilence passed through this land, like fire through a forest.  We had heard of it indeed as the scourge of other lands; but we had looked at the ocean as an effectual barrier against its approach to us.  Presently, however, that barrier was passed; and we read in our own newspapers, under the head of domestick intelligence, as fearful tales of desolation as any which had come to us from across the ocean.  It was not here and there only, but every where; and the graves were multiplying every day by thousands and thousands; and even the most thoughtless were compelled to feel that they lived on the threshold of eternity.  But at length the pestilence passed off, and our anxiety passed off with it; and there is reason to believe that instead of melting the nation into penitence, it rendered it more obdurate in transgression.  At a more recent period, the country has been subjected to unprecedented commercial distress.  Rich men have seen their fortunes vanishing like chaff before the whirlwind; and poverty and bankruptcy and ruin have become as household words, where for years nothing but affluence and independence had been dreamed of.  But the nation has remained unhumbled still.  We have been loud enough and busy enough in referring the evil to second causes; but where have been the evidences of our recognition of the Divine hand;—of our repentance and reformation in view of the Divine rebuke?  And finally, the elements have been commissioned as ministers of God’s displeasure toward us.  The conflagration has swept over no inconsiderable portion of the metropolis of the land, blotting out the productions of art, frustrating the labours of industry, and arresting temporarily the current of expectation and enterprise.  Our vessels have been abroad upon our waters, freighted with youth and beauty, with intelligence and virtue; but the midnight tempest has opened for these multitudes a common grave in the deep; or the terrific explosion has announced their entrance into eternity; or else the flames around and the waters beneath have contended in the work of death, till there have been only enough left to record the horrours of the scene.  These events occurring in fearfully rapid succession, have for the time, spread consternation and agony through the land; and it has seemed as if God’s warning voice were raised to a note so loud and terrible, that the most thoughtless must be forced to consideration; but here again, scarcely have the tidings died away upon our ears, before we have regained our accustomed insensibility, and virtually said to God that if he would melt or humble us, it must be done by some yet more appalling visitation.

            Infidelity is another crying sin with which we are chargeable—yes, infidelity in every form and degree; from the dark insinuation against Christianity that is only whispered in a corner, down to the open rejection of all religion, and the blasphemies of the blackest atheism.  The state of the country in reference to this subject at this moment would, I doubt not, if it could be laid open to us, furnish matter of most appalling interest to everyone who regards his country’s welfare.  We should see that there is no place so high, but that infidelity has been able to reach it; no place so low but that she has been willing to creep into it; and I fear, no place so sacred, but that she is suffered to profane and pollute it.  From every part of this land, and especially from our great cities, there is a voice going up to Heaven, calling for still heavier judgments to descend upon us, because we are so rapidly becoming an infidel people.

            And there is the sin of slavery—yes, silent as we may be in respect to it, because fanaticism on the one hand, and prejudice and selfishness on the other, are lifting up together their discordant voices to seal our lips and palsy our efforts—the sin of slavery is, at this moment, bearing testimony against us before the Ruler of nations, as loudly as any other.  True, indeed, the fact that this mighty burden of guilt rests upon us is no reason why we should act precipitately, and thus defeat our own efforts in endeavoring to throw it off; but it is a reason why we should not remain inactive; and if we are contented to remain so, what else will other nations say of us, what else will our own consciences say of us, what else will God the righteous Judge write in His book concerning us, but that with all our eulogies of freedom, and all our pretended abhorrence of slavery, we are, after all, willing that this sin should lie at our door?

            The spirit of violence and bloodshed too is abroad in the land, and in some parts of it to a degree, to which you will scarcely find a parallel even in the most barbarous country.  The good and useful citizen is decoyed away from his habitation to be murdered at noon-day; and the murderer with a view to escape detection, turns his own dwelling into a sepulcher.  The magistrate, while engaged in the discharge of his appropriate functions, falls dead from his seat, a victim to ruthless violence.  The neighbourhood echoes at midnight to the alarm of fire; but it turns out that amidst those flames there is blood; and the fire has been kindled only to hide the assassin’s hand.  And in some instances the perpetrators of these deeds are suffered to go at large, while justice stands like a statue at her post, as if her eyes were put out, or her hands were palsied, or her life blood were frozen.  My country, thou hast a fearful account to settle for these bloody outrages; especially for such as are voluntarily, deliberately, left unpunished!

            I Had intended to add to this list of our national sins, the extensive desecration of the Sabbath; the neglect of the ordinances of religion; the profanation of God’s holy name, as well as the sin of intemperance, which is still in no small degree prevalent, notwithstanding all that Christian benevolence and Christian enterprise have done to arrest it; but instead of pursuing this train of thought, I will only in conclusion urge you in a single word, to fulfill the great purpose for which the solemnities of this day have been ordained—that of repentance and reformation.  The repentance of the nation must be that of the individuals of which the nation is composed; and as you are among its component parts, I call upon you this day, every one, to break off your iniquities by turning to the Lord, as a debt which you owe to your country.  Repent of your own personal transgressions—of the sins of your heart and of your life, and supplicate grace to enable you to live a righteous, sober and godly life, to the glory of God’s holy name.  Humble yourselves in view of our national sins, and resolve that the full amount of your influence shall be consecrated to the cause of national reformation.  And then go forth and act in the spirit of this day’s solemnities, in the spirit of the resolutions you have here formed, and it will be good for you, it will be good for our common country, that you have engaged in this exercise.

            It is at once a sublime and affecting thought that this great nation is professedly humbling itself to-day around the tomb of its departed Head.  If I had a voice that could be heard from one end of the land to the other, I would say, My countrymen, take heed that ye do not hereafter prove this day’s solemnities to have been a farce.  Ye are professing now to be humble for our sins, and to ask that God’s judgments may not be lost upon you: show your sincerity then by forsaking the sins for which you mourn; by laying duly to heart the chastisement which you profess to recognize.  But if you rise from your knees only to commit the sins which you have confessed; if you go forth from your chambers of fasting to open your bosoms to the influence of party strife, and criminal worldliness, and forgetfulness of God, then remember that you have played the hypocrite amidst the solemnities of an occasion which has had it not more of a fast than of a funeral; and to say nothing of other testimony, the grave of your lamented President will be a witness against you until it shall give up its dead at the great resurrection day.

END.