Era or Event: 1780s-1850s: Early Republic

William Sprague (1795-1876) Biography:

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.

A
Sermon
Addressed to the Second Presbyterian Congregation in Albany,
March 4, 1838,
The Sabbath after Intelligence was Received that the
Hon. Jonathan Cilley, ¹

Member of Congress from Maine,
Had Been Murdered in a Duel
With the
Hon. William J. Graves, ²²

Member from Kentucky

By William Sprague, D.D. Minister of Said Congregation.

I. Timothy 2: 1,2
I exhort therefore that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; for kings and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.

The religion of the gospel is pre-eminently a religion of benevolence. As it has its origin in the benevolence of God, so its tendency is to form a benevolent spirit in man; to prompt us to do good to our fellow-creatures, as we have opportunity. And one of the most important means of doing them good which it places within our reach is intercession in their behalf at the throne of the heavenly grace. One great advantage of this, above other means of usefulness is, that it is less subject to the control of circumstances; for though there are circumstances in which I cannot be actively engaged to promote the welfare of my fellow men, there are none in which I may not lift my heart to Heaven in their behalf. And then the spirit of intercession takes for granted that we put forth our best efforts for the benefit of those in whose behalf it is exercised; for if we ask God to do them good, while yet we ourselves neglect to do that for them which is within our ability, what better is our asking than mockery ?

As it is obligatory upon all to offer intercession, so there are none who are not legitimately subjects of it. Hence the exhortation of the Apostle in the text that “intercession be made for all men;” for men of every nation, every character; every condition. We are to intercede for all, because all have a common origin; a common nature, a common relation to God and eternity. We are to intercede for all, because there are none so good as not to need our intercession, and none so bad that we have a right to withhold it from them. We are to intercede for all, because this is one of the means in the economy of God’s grace by which all are to be blessed.

But while the Apostle enjoins the general duty of intercession for all men; he designates a particular class as having a special claim to be remembered in our supplications. This class consists of Civil Rulers � “Kings and all that are in authority.” And while there are general reasons why we should intercede for all, there are particular reasons why we should intercede for these. To exhibit before you some of these reasons is the object of the present discourse. I observe then,

I. We owe it to our rulers that we make intercession for them.

We owe it to them, inasmuch, as they occupy places of peculiar responsibility. They are the constituted guardians of the public welfare. It is for them to decide upon measures in which the interests of the state or the nation may be involved; the influence of which will tell upon every part of the body politick, and will either render its pulsations more vigorous and healthful; or create the elements of disease and decay. Very often is the legislator placed in circumstances in which the giving of his vote; or even the expression of his opinion, is felt for good or evil to the extremities of the nation. Civil rulers then have a mighty responsibility resting upon them. They are responsible to the community with whose interests they are entrusted. They are responsible to God whose ministers they are. Have they not a claim then upon us that we should assist them by our prayers to sustain this burden?

But they occupy places of peculiar delicacy and difficulty also. They may have the most honest intentions and the most earnest desires to do right, and yet there may seem to be so much that is right or so much that is wrong on both sides of the question that is presented for their decision, that they may find themselves utterly at loss what course to adopt; and yet the question may be one which involves the most important public interests, and one upon which they are compelled to act without the opportunity of much previous reflection. It often happens that matters of legislation are so deeply involved, and the results of different courses depend so much on the remote relations of things, that any man may reasonably pause long before he comes to a conclusion, and may review his conclusion with some degree of doubt after he has formed it; and where the subject is one of deep interest, it cannot be but that a conscientious legislator must find in it a source of severe trial. On this ground then, are not our rulers entitled to the benefit of our intercessions?

Still farther: They occupy a place of peculiar temptation. They may be tempted to violate their own honest convictions, for the sake of being true to the party which they represent, or of avoiding a forfeiture of the place to which they have been elevated. They may be tempted to forget the public good in a regard to their own interest; asking rather what will advance their own temporary popularity, than what will subserve the benefit of the nation. And they are especially liable to the temptation to neglect their own immortal interests. In the whirl of public business and the collisions of party feeling, there is danger, even if they are true Christians, that they will grow negligent of the great duties of keeping the heart, of communing with God, of growing in grace; and if they are strangers to the power of religion; there is reason to fear that conscience in these circumstances will become more and more powerless, the heart more estranged from God, and the prospect of ever reaching Heaven more fearfully dubious, I say not that there is any thing in civil office that is at all incompatible with the most elevated tone of piety: � Wilberforce was in the British parliament, and was most deeply involved in the concerns of the nation during a great portion of his life; and yet I know not where to look in modern times for a higher tone of spiritual feeling than he exhibited. But while his experience and that of a few others shows that civil office is rot incompatible with a deep and glowing piety, the experience of the multitude proves that it is exceedingly unfavorable to it. Shall not then this class of our fellow-men have our prayers that they may be kept from yielding to the temptations which their station involves; � especially from making shipwreck of a good conscience, and neglecting their own salvation?

And finally under this head, our rulers occupy a place to which they have been elevated by ourselves. There are indeed nations whose rulers are imposed upon them by a hereditary succession; but we have no rulers which, we have not ourselves made. Whatever difficulties in the way of doing right or whatever temptations to do wrong their station may involve, to those difficulties and temptations we have subjected them; and hence surely they have a claim upon our intercessions that they may be enabled to hold fast their integrity and discharge with fidelity the duties to which we have called them.

II. We owe it to ourselves also that we faithfully discharge this duty � to ourselves both as a nation and as individuals.

It is a law of the divine administration that the prosperity of nation should depend in a great measure upon the character of their rulers; that in proportion as those who exercise authority over them are enlightened or ignorant, virtuous or vicious, the nations themselves should be degraded and miserable, or elevated and happy. If we recur to the history of the Jews, we shall find a perpetual illustration of this remark: when they were governed by wise and good men, we are told that things went well in Israel; the nation was prosperous and happy: but when the high places of public authority were occupied by the wicked, the effects of wild misrule were felt in every thing, and the nation groaned under the most signal manifestations of the divine displeasure. And so it has been in respect to every other nation. No community was ever prosperous for a long time; which was prevailingly under the control of bad rulers.

Nor are the reasons of this fact less obvious than the fact itself; for civil rulers have a hand upon the very springs of public prosperity. Their influence is both direct and indirect. It is direct, inasmuch as it is for them to frame and execute the laws on which the public weal essentially depends. Suppose then that the laws which they enact are adapted to the promotion of intelligence and virtue, this renders them benefactors to the whole community; whereas, on the other hand; if they adopt measures which are fitted to encourage licentiousness under the name of liberty, or if they leave any of the dearest interests of man unprotected; do they not infuse poison into the very fountains of public happiness? And the influence of rulers is felt, to say the least; not less in the execution of the laws than in the enactment of them; for be the law ever so salutary in its tendency, if it is suffered to remain a dead letter, its beneficent provisions can never be realized: no evil doer will ever be terrified by the sword of the magistrate, if the magistrate himself is always asleep. And then there is an indirect influence exerted by rulers scarcely less important than that to which I have already adverted � I refer to the influence of their example. What is said of the church may be applied to them � they are ” a city set upon an hill.” From the commanding elevation which they occupy, they are rendered conspicuous objects to the whole community; and as their example is good or evil, they become either like the pole-star to guide the mariner safely on his way, or like the ignis-fatuus, to bewilder the traveler away from his path. Let a man of exemplary virtue and lofty aspirations be elevated to a post of high authority, and his benign influence will diffuse itself far and wide; there will be an attractive energy in his example which will be felt by a multitude of hearts; not only those who witness, but many who hear of, his truly honorable and exemplary deportment, will find in it a most persuasive argument for their own well doing: whereas, on the other hand, if such a place be occupied by a man who disregards the obligations of morality, or scoffs at the gospel as a fable, or surrenders himself to the loathsomeness of sensuality, or, as the case may be, stands ready to plunge a dagger into the heart of his fellowman � I say if the chair of authority be occupied by such a man, every profligate and villain in the community will feel strengthened in his desperate purposes as often as he lifts his eye to the powers that be; and the bands of moral obligation, the strongest that bind society together, will soon come under a dissolving process from being subjected to such an influence.

Now what has happened to other nations, must inevitably happen to us: � wisdom and fidelity on the part of our rulers will bring upon us the smiles of Heaven; while their neglect of their appropriate duties, and especially their open wickedness and impiety, will as certainly bring upon us God’s avenging frown. Do we then value our national prosperity, and desire to see it increase more and more? Do we shrink from the thought that these precious privileges which our fathers have bequeathed to us to be transmitted to posterity, should be lost in our hands? Do our bosoms burn with the lofty desire that our nation may become a praise in the whole earth? Then surely it becomes us not to forget the duty of interceding for our rulers before God; for on them, under God, our weal or wo especially depends.

But while it is due to ourselves as a nation, it is not less due to ourselves as individuals, that we faithfully discharge this duty. As individuals we are component parts of the nation; and whatever affects the whole body of course affects all the parts of which it is composed. Inasmuch, then, as the influence of rulers pervades the nation at large, it reaches, either directly or indirectly, to every class, nay, to every individual, within its bounds. Yes, hearers, it depends in no small degree on our rulers whether those institutions which are the nurseries of some of your dearest interests � the fountains of some of your richest blessings, shall flourish under the influence of a liberal economy, or languish under the influence of a withering parsimony. It depends upon them to decide whether your property shall be made as secure to you as is consistent with the mutability of the world, or shall be borne away from you by the desolating current of public convulsions and conflicts. It is for them also to say whether you shall walk abroad in the confidence of perfect safety, or in the apprehension of appalling danger; whether you shall sit quiet and unmolested under your own vine and fig tree, or be liable to be awaked at midnight, by the footsteps of the robber or the assassin. In short, the rulers of the country are, to a great extent, the guardians of your individual and personal interests; and the influence which they exert reaches even to the innermost part of the sanctuary of domestic life. Unless then we are indifferent to our most important interests � interests which belong not only to the life that now is, but to that which is to come, can we forbear to ask of God that he will grant wisdom and grace to our rulers according to their needs?

III. We owe it to posterity, also, that we faithfully discharge this duty.

It is a most contracted view of things which those persons take who, in their estimate of the influence of actions upon earth, look not beyond the period of their own mortal existence. The truth is, each generation is acting, not for itself only, but for all succeeding generations. The opinions that we form, the habits that we cherish, whatever constitutes the character of our age, will be transmitted, in a great degree, to the beings who shall occupy the stage after we have left it. A few more years, and the grave will have taken every one of us into its keeping; but those who shall occupy our places will know what we have been even if every written record of the age should be blotted out; they will read it in their own character and condition � in the habits and opinions we shall have entailed upon them. If then the present generation is acting not for itself only, but for posterity, and if the legacy which it is to bequeath depends in a great measure on the influence of its rulers, then how important is it that that should be a well directed influence; that we may not be chargeable with having left in the path of those who are to come after us the elements of destruction.

Men of this generation, I hear a voice speaking from the depths of the future, in an imploring and monitory tone. It is the voice of an unborn posterity, reminding you that you have other interests than your own committed to your keeping � that you are living, in an important sense, for those who are to live after you are dead. They implore of you not to entail upon the ignorance, insubordination and crime. And that you may be faithful to your trust in respect to them, they admonish you to be faithful in your duty toward those in authority, and especially to commend them to the God of all counsel and wisdom. Men of this generation, listen to the monitory voice. Pray for the rulers of the nation, as you would shudder at the thought that those in whose grateful remembrance you would desire to live should pronounce curses over your sepulchres.

IV. We owe it, also, to God, that we forget not to intercede for our rulers.

We owe it as a debt of obedience to his authority, and of gratitude for his goodness. Civil government is God’s own ordinance; and hence the Apostle, speaking of the magistrate, calls him ” the minister of God to thee for good.’ I do not mean that any particular form of civil government is authoritatively prescribed to us in the scriptures; but that the ordinance itself is of divine origin admits not of question. And it is easy to see that the purposes to be accomplished by it are worthy of its divine original: it is the channel through which God communicates a large part of the blessings which he bestows upon men; nay, it is essential to the very existence of human society. � And to no nation on earth we may safely say, does this ordinance of Heaven secure a larger amount of blessing than to our own. Hence, then, we are under a double obligation to co-operate with God for the accomplishment of the great ends of this institution; and as intercession for our rulers is one important means of this, we are bound to employ it to the extent of our ability. Do you recognize the supremacy of God’s authority? Then pray for our rulers, because civil government is from God; and more than this � God has explicitly required this at your hands. Do you cherish a grateful sense of the divine goodness? Then surely you will manifest your gratitude by failing in with his own gracious designs; and especially in strengthening the hands and encouraging the hearts of our rulers for all well doing by your fervent intercessions. Contemplate not only the beneficent tendencies of civil government in general, but the rich and varied blessings which it secures to you; think of the domestic quietude, the general security, the equal rights, the means of intellectual and moral culture which you enjoy, and contrast with all this the miserable degradation, the besotting ignorance, the deep and cruel oppression, under which many other nations are groaning at this hour, on whom has been entailed some wretchedly perverted form of civil government; and then say whether every feeling of gratitude to the Being who hath made you to differ, does not demand that you should obey the exhortation of the Apostle to make intercession for those who are in authority.

V. Once more: We owe it especially to the present crisis that we are faithful in the discharge of this duty.

I will not dwell here upon the fact that the tide of our national prosperity has recently been setting back; that our public concerns have undergone a melancholy derangement; that our commercial interests have been depressed, and the fortune of many a rich man has been blown from him; just as a feather rides off upon the wind: no, I will not speak here of national calamities; but I may speak of national crimes � the polluted and deadly fountain, in which have originated all these dark streams that are rolling through our land. I may speak of the desecration of God’s holy day; of the multitude of boats of every description that are abroad upon all our waters; of the multitude of public and private vehicles that are moving wherever there is a road to admit them; of the multitude of hands that are kept busy in sustaining these unhallowed operations; of the multitude of professing Christians who calmly look on without saying a word, or else lend a direct influence in aid of the desecrating process. I may speak of infidelity, that monster of brazen front, and fiery tongue, and poisonous breath, who goes round with curses hanging upon her footsteps. I may speak of a spirit of insubordination and defiance of the powers that be; of the mob forcing its way up into the judgment seat, and setting at naught all legal authority, and trampling on the dearest rights of man. And I may speak, I must speak, of the shedding of human blood, � not by the executioner whom God has constituted the avenger of public crime, but by the legislator whom God has ordained the guardian of the public interests; not by the uncivilized Indian whose education renders him at home in scenes of barbarity, but by the man of cultivated intellect and polished manners; the man who has been nurtured under the influence of Christian institutions, and whose mother taught him as one of his earliest lessons, “Thou shalt not kill.” I need not tell you why I speak thus � the explanation has been anticipated in every newspaper which, within the last few days, has fallen into your hands. The simple truth divested of all technical phraseology is, that there has been a murder of the most atrocious kind at the capitol of the nation. An individual in the heat of public debate dropped a word that fell harshly upon the ear of some who heard it; and that provoked the resentment of some who read it. And the strange result is, that a man who has received no injury goes to a man who has inflicted none upon him; and makes the foolish and desperate proposal that they go out into a bye place, and stand up and face each other with the weapons of death, and each do his best to send the other, stained with the guilt of murder, into eternity. And the arrangement for the bloody transaction is quickly completed; and with a single night intervening, they are on their way to the spot where one of them is to die; and lest the privilege of blood-shedding should be denied them, they move in such profound silence that those who would have arrested the procedure are unable to track them to their deadly retreat. They reach the spot and adjust every thing according to the code of honorable murder. Each lifts his instrument of death, and points it at the other’s heart, and discharges it without effect. And then there is a grave discussion among the accomplices whether, inasmuch as there is no personal hostility between the parties, they may not now let each other live; but the law of honor still cries out for vengeance. And then the preparation for another trial is made, and the trial is over; and yet another succeeds, and there is no blood flowing yet; yet at length the weapon of one falls from his hand, and the hand that held it moves no more. Honor looks upon that bleeding corpse and cries out, “It is enough:” The body of the eloquent statesman rendered lifeless by a man whom he had never injured, and in a combat to which he had madly consented, is borne back to the place from whence he came; and then a sensation of horror beginning at the heart continues to circulate till it has gone through every pore of the nation. The story as it goes abroad is, that a man has fallen in a duel; but the truth as it is written in God’s book is, that a man has been deliberately and wantonly murdered. And the murderer � I know not where he is, but I pray that he may not be sitting among the legislators of my country. Let him flee into some dark place, with all who were concerned in the horrid transaction, and seek forgiveness through the blood of Jesus, which availed to purge away the guilt even of his own murderers.

I have recited the aggravating circumstances of this foul deed, not because I do not suppose you are familiar with them, but because I would impress most deeply upon your hearts the lesson which they so loudly inculcate. Is there not reason to fear that, because the practice of duelling has disappeared almost entirely from the part of the country in which our lot is cast; we have ceased in some measure to feel our responsibility in respect to it as a national sin? But surely, my friends, if this be so, the recent tragedy administers a rebuke to our apathy to which we shall be constrained to give heed. The man who has fallen had his birth and education not in the South but in the North; and all the individuals immediately concerned were men whom we had sent to the capitol to make laws for the protection of our rights. I say then, here is a voice that echoes through all the North as well as the South, charging every man to exert his personal influence for the suppression of duelling. Let the laws, wherever there are laws on this subject, be promptly executed; � yes, executed even to the hanging of the duellist up between the heavens and the earth; or if he escape the hand of justice; let public opinion, mighty to punish, imprint Cain’s mark upon him, that wherever he wanders in the earth, the evidence of his blood guiltiness shall meet every eye. Let all the conductors of our public journals, as many have done already, give us the history of duels under the head of murder, and accompany it with corresponding comments. Let all political considerations be lost sight of in the estimate which is formed of these events; and let no man stop to inquire whether a duellist belongs to one party or to another, before he expresses an opinion of his guilt. Let our great men and our wise men at the capitol who reverence the authority of God and regard the interests of society, dare to speak out their convictions; though every blood-stained disciple of honour whom they meet should lift his voice to remonstrate, or even draw his dagger to terrify. Let every citizen when he goes to the ballot-box, inquire whether it will be safe to put his dearest interests into the keeping of a murderer; and let him resolve, as he would keep a conscience void of offence, that no man who gives or accepts a challenge shall ever have his vote. Let every one labor according to his ability to purify the land from blood. Never was there a more auspicious moment than the present for a sustained and vigorous effort on this subject; and if all classes are faithful now � if the pulpit speaks, and the bar speaks, and the press speaks, so that the note of remonstrance shall be heard; loud and long, in every city and every village, in the palaces of the great and the hamlets of the poor, rely on it, a change in public opinion will ensue which will cause this bloody event to mark the era of a blessed national reformation.

I hear one voice that seems used only to sobs � a voice coming up from a bosom that anguish hath seized and monopolized as its dwelling. I enter the habitation whence it comes; and every thing around me tells that I am in the dominion of wo. There sits a widow half paralyzed by the power of grief. Her babes cluster around her; and she takes them one by one, and presses them to her throbbing bosom, and calls them fatherless. I say to myself, ‘I am accustomed to find mourning wherever the destroyer hath been; but in such deep lines of agony as this countenance exhibits, I think I see the murderer’s hand.’ Ah yes, it is that which surcharges this widow’s cup with wo. It is not that her husband is dead, nor yet that she has not been privileged to minister to his latest wants, but it is the manner of his death, that creates the untold pang. And now ye wretched men, who have been partners in this horrible transaction, come hither and see if you can survey with a steady eye the work of your own hands. If there was nothing to move you in the bleeding and breathless body of the husband, come and see if you are equally proof against the sobs and wailings of the wife. Come, every one whose principles allow you thus to sport with human happiness, and see if there is not something here that will put horror into your very dreams. Come, ye who profess to hate the practice, and yet do nothing to oppose it, and see if the time has not arrived for vigorous and determined resistance. And yet this is only one of an extended class of crimes that blacken the annals of my country! Oh could there be assembled in one mournful group at the capitol of our nation, all who have been rendered widows and orphans by this murderous practice; could the tears which it has drawn forth be gathered into one mighty reservoir of wo; could the sobs which it hath produced be condensed into one convulsive and doleful lamentation; I cannot doubt that in that same hour this monster vice would have his death warrant written, and that even the men of honor themselves, lion hearted though they be, would not dare refuse to sign it.

And now in the close, I come back to the Apostle’s exhortation, that you should pray sincerely, earnestly, perseveringly, for our rulers. The present crisis especially demands it. The prevalence of open transgression, the boldness of iniquity in high places, the air of defiance with which public sentiment is met; loudly demand it. Pray for them that they may be indeed the ministers of God to us for good. Pray for them that they may possess the spirit, and discharge the duties, of their station. Pray for them � and yet tell it not in Gath that there should be occasion for such a prayer � that they may be kept from shedding each other’s blood!

NOTES

¹ Jonathan Cilley (1802 – 1838), a Representative from Maine; born in Nottingham, Rockingham County, N.H., July 2, 1802; attended Atkinson Academy, New Hampshire; was graduated from New Hampton Academy and later, in 1825, from Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine; studied law; was admitted to the bar in 1828 and commenced practice in Thomaston, Knox County, Maine; editor of the Thomaston Register 1829-1831; member of the State house of representatives 1831-1836 and served as speaker in 1835 and 1836; elected as a Democrat to the Twenty-fifth Congress and served from March 4, 1837, until February 24, 1838, when he was killed in a duel on the Marlboro Pike, near Washington, D.C., by William J. Graves, a Representative from Kentucky; interment in Cilley Cemetery, Thomaston, Maine. (From: https://bioguide.congress.gov/biosearch/biosearch.asp).

²William Jordan Graves (1805 – 1848), a Representative from Kentucky; born in New Castle, Ky., in 1805; pursued an academic course; studied law; was admitted to the bar and practiced; member of the State house of representatives in 1834; elected as a Whig to the Twenty-fourth, Twenty-fifth, and Twenty-sixth Congresses (March 4, 1835-March 3, 1841); engaged in a duel on the Marlboro Road in Maryland with Congressman Jonathan Cilley in 1838, in which the latter was killed; this duel prompted passage of a congressional act of February 20, 1839, prohibiting the giving or accepting, within the District of Columbia, of challenges to a duel; was not a candidate for renomination in 1840; again a member of the State house of representatives in 1843; died in Louisville, Ky., September 27, 1848; interment in the private burial grounds at his former residence in Henry County, Ky. (From: https://bioguide.congress.gov/biosearch/biosearch.asp).

The Rev. Henry Handley Norris was a British clergyman who served as Rector of South Hackney in Middlesex County, England. Rev. Norris married Catherine Henrietta Powell in 1805. Their marriage lasted for forty-five years until his death in December of 1850. In this sermon, Norris marks the recent passage of a new law on marriage by providing a detailed look at the marriage institution from a Biblical perspective. He painstakingly progresses through the scriptures in establishing his point that marriage is most importantly a religious institution, and therefore it should never be relegated to a strictly civil character. Rev. Norris emphasizes that God created and established the marriage institution and therefore His intent and purposes should be followed by both religious and civil rulers. Rev. Norris’ sermon provides an example of how 18th and 19th Century clergymen regularly instructed their congregations in a Biblical worldview

Marriage Scripturally Considered

A Sermon,
Preached At South Hackney Church,
On Sunday, July 2, 1837,
On Occasion of the New Law of Marriage Coming into Operation

By The Rev. H. H. Norris, A.M.
Rector of South Hackney, and Prebendary of St. Paul’s, and Landaff.

Genesis 2:22
And He brought her unto the man.

There are none probably so entirely strangers to the measures in progress under the notion of reform, as to be unaware that a very material change has just taken place in the law of marriage, as the admission into this state of life has been uniformly regulated since the first establishment of Christianity amongst us, with the exception of a very few years during Cromwell’s usurpation.

Of that short period of the kingdom’s judicial subjection to the very dregs of its population, one distinguishing feature is, that, in their self-assumed legislative character, they took from the Clergy “the solemnizing of Matrimony, and put it into the hands of Justices of the Peace [See the Ordinance, Neal’s History of the Puritans, Vol. IV. Page 74.].” This is the only precedent to be found in our annals for the enactment that has now taken effect; and though, if reference be had to it, and to the circumstances belonging to its history, it will be seen, that no sooner did the nation recover its legitimate government, than this ordinance was declared a nullity, and repudiated in opprobrious terms, yet does it appear, from the observable similarity in some of the visions of both instruments, to be the model after which the new statue has been framed, the preamble of which lays the ground for the desecration of the holy rite, in and alleged “expediency” that the law of marriage should be so “amended.”

In the former instance of this desecration being ordained, the power to legislate had been seized by those who would be restrained in nothing that they imagined to do; and, in a day specified in their ordinance, “no other marriage whatsoever within the Commonwealth,” but such as should be contracted under the Parish Registrar’s Certificate of his publication of Banns, and before a Justice of the Peace, “should be held or accounted a marriage according to the law of England [See the Ordinance.].” But the national principle is not yet sufficiently prostrated to make us again ripe for so arbitrary and irreligious and imposition, and therefore, by the law just come in force, you are left to form your own judgments, whether marriage is a mere civil contract, or a Divine institution – whether it shall be celebrated with or without any offices of religion – whether the Church, the Conventicle, or the Register-office, shall be the place of celebration – and whether the Clergyman of the Parish, the Dissenting Teacher, or the superintendent Registrar, shall officiate on the occasion.

In the relation in which I stand, and have long stood, toward you, my beloved brethren, and in a matter wherein your interests, both in time and eternity, are not lightly concerned, it would betray a very culpable indifference to my own responsibilities, were I to allow this new order of things to be brought into operation with our subjecting the questions at issue to a scriptural inquiry, and putting before you the strong reasons which should guide your conduct, “as persons professing godliness,” and pledged, by your baptismal stipulations, to maintain in all things “a conversation becoming the Gospel of Christ.”

It is under these impressions that the subject is undertaken; and the text has been selected, because, being the Divine record of the institution of Marriage, it carries back our inquiries into it to the fountain head, and whether the desecration of marriage is an “amendment” of the law, and there is the alleged “expediency” in dealing with it as though it were a common covenanting between parties about to traffic together as long as they can mutually agree, are questions upon which it has by no means an unimportant bearing.

To make this appear with the clearness due to it, having first reminded you that the facts of Scripture, bearing reference to man, are our “examples,” and “are written for our leaning,” let it be observed how few and simple are the words of the text, and how full to the point is their testimony, that on the first solemnization of the nuptial union, God, in His own person, brought the woman to the man. But this is far from being the whole of the august proceeding: there are disposals belonging to it, preparatory to this final issue, which set it very strikingly apart from all the other alliances established at the Creation, and connect the Almighty with it with a peculiarity to which they can in no degree aspire. In the case of the inferior orders, it was by one fiat of His Sovereign Will that both the male and female of every species were produced – a corporeal and instinctive adaptation to herd together being the bounds of their perfection. But, in the case of the human species, a course very far removed from this compendious process was pursued: the man was formed first – a splendidly-gifted individual – and having been made to feel his social wants by a survey of all God’s creatures mated but himself, and to express, by that plaintive reference to his own comparative destitution with which the scene is closed, how desolate he was even in Paradise, being alone in that garden of delights, and how hopeless was the search for the “help meet” for him throughout the whole compass of hither-to-animated nature, God puts His last finish to the visible universe by the execution of His own wonderful counsel for supplying the deficiency. He takes from man’s own substance the material from which his second self is to be formed; as the term employed by Moses technically imports, He works upon it with the skill of a profound and exquisite artificer; and having framed and modeled out of it, after man’s own image, yet retaining its Divine similitude, but softened and refined, the grace of social life, He brings her to him, to be his bosom counselor and partner of his joys (for cares and sorrows he then had none), and knitting them together, pours out upon them precious benedictions; and ordains, with obvious respect to all future generations, that in every instance the strongest tie of nature, at the time existing, should be in great part dissolved, that the tie of matrimony might be adequately cemented; and that it should be of the very essence of the alliance thus contracted, that the parties should become “one flesh,” and, therefore, that our first mother’s marvelous formation should be in some sort influentially repeated, that this mutual tendency to cleave together might be produced.

All this is to be gathered from the text, and the passages which immediately precede and follow it; and, had the All-gracious Giver of this good to man confined the expression of His purposes and will to this primeval revelation, surely He had made known enough of both to enshrine the institution in inviolable sanctity, and to afford the means of conviction to every considerate inquirer that His presence and intervention constituted an indispensable part of the solemnity, and was to be invoked in His sacred dwelling place, with all the fervor of the most importunate supplication.

But we are not left to be our own interpreters of the perceptive force of the passage before us, or of the extent of its application to ourselves; for, the Pharisees, in their cavilings with our Savior on the intricate questions in debate amongst them, having called upon Him on one occasion, to decide a doubtful disputation growing out of their allowance of divorce, He meets their attempt to entangle Him in the difficulty, with a direct appeal to God’s original promulgation. On the sole ground that “in the beginning it was not so,” He dismisses the cases captiously put to Him, making this the criterion of lawful marriage under His perfect dispensation; and, still keeping steadily before Him the primeval pattern, He pronounces the vital principle of marriage to be “the making of twain one flesh,” and expressly declares, that it is by “God’s joining them together,” that this blending of their beings takes effect, and that the contract is inviolable; and farther, that it is an exempt jurisdiction reserved by God exclusively to Himself, and not to be modified, or, in any respect, invaded by human authority [Mat. 19:3,6]. Man’s law indeed may “couple” male and female together; but as our Church affirms, it is their being “joined together by God, and as God’s law does allow, that, in His sight, makes their matrimony lawful [Marriage Service.].”

What has been already advanced relates to marriage considered in itself, as it is God’s ordinance, “instituted by Him in the time of man’s innocency,” and as it received confirmation from our Lord, on His adoption of it into the Christian system. But that innocency was of very short duration, and, by the loss of it, as the prophet sets it forth, Man “destroyed himself so effectually, that “in God only was his help [Hosea 13:9],” and the “help meet for him” God again only could provide; and this provision God made by fulfilling the prediction of another prophet, whose words of promise are, “to us a Child is born – to us a Son is given [Is. 9:6] – the Second Adam – of Whom “the first” is declared by St. Paul to have been a “a figure” [Rom. 5:14]; and one striking feature of resemblance between our fallen sire and this Great Deliverer is, that, when first brought into the world, He abode “alone” [John 12:24], and so continued, till God, by His providential over-ruling the malice of the Jews, caused a deep sleep – the sleep of death – to fall upon Him; and, during His suspended sensibility, still conducting to the accomplishment of His purposes the very wantonness of the soldiers attendant upon His crucifixion, caused to come forth from His wounded side the sacramental symbols – “the water and the blood” [ibid. 19:34-John 5:8] – the means by which the Church, to united to Him by the closest bond of union, and therefore declared to be “His spouse,” was to be formed. Thus the eternal Son of God descended from the bosom of the Father, contracted His divinity with flesh and blood, and married our nature; and thus it is, that as the mystery of God with reference to man commences, during the period of his innocence and of his abode in Paradise, with the marriage of Adam and Eve, the grandest and the most august nuptial celebration that ever yet was solemnized, inasmuch as the Officiating Minister was God Himself, and the contracting parties, for merit and dignity far beyond all subsequent comparison amongst ourselves, were the stem of all mankind; so does this mystery close, when redemption is completed, and Paradise regained, with a marriage infinitely surpassing its prototype in all the circumstances by which grandeur can be enhanced; for thus does St. John speak, in the Apocalypse, of this blissful consummation – “the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife hath made herself ready [Apoc. 19:7] – and it is all in beautiful accordance with this glorious issue, and in process towards it, that our Lord compares His kingdom to “a king making a marriage for his son” [Mat. 22:2]; and that St. Paul describes the ministerial office to consist in our “espousing you to one Husband, that we may present you a chaste virgin to Christ” [2 Cor. 11:2]; and that the same Apostle, expatiating upon the demonstrations of our Lord’s love to the Church, sets it forth as manifested in “giving Himself for is, that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word,” and so, when the end comes, “present it to Himself a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, but holly and without blemish” [Eph. 5:26-27].

Nor is this mystical union between the Redeemer and His faithful people so depicted, as the above representations exhibit it, only in the Scriptures of the New Testament, but the same figurative illustrations occur continually in the Psalms of David, and the Prophets, when this Desire Of All Nations, and the relation in which He was to affiance Himself to our race, are the subjects of their prospective contemplation; and, to specify but in a single instance, the 45th Psalm (appointed a stated part of the public service on the festival of our Lord’s nativity, and fraught with expressions far transcending any merely human application), is, in the structure of it throughout, a song of congratulation on the marriage of a great king, to be sung to music at the Wedding Feast, and is made up of those topics the praises both of the Bridegroom and the Bride which belong naturally to all compositions of that description.

Now what has here been stated affects the question of the religious character of marriage in a very material degree; for, that by the “state of matrimony the spiritual marriage that is betwixt Christ and His Church is signified and represented,” is no mere unsupported doctrine of the compilers of our Liturgy, but is put forth by them on the authority of St. Paul, the great mystagogue of Christianity, who propounds it, not in a cursory manner, or in ambiguous terms, but in a lengthened argument drawn out into particulars, and in a statement so clear as to be incapable of misapprehension, and to show incontestably that he attaches great importance to it. His object is to put to silence certain seducers who were disfiguring Christianity, by imputing to it the forbidding its disciples to marry. To do which effectually, he takes the decided course of showing that marriage, so far from having any disparagement cast upon it by the Gospel, was greatly advanced in honor by its revelations, which had made the discovery of its consecration to be the earthly figure of the above-specified excellent mystery, and had thus placed its holiness in a more conspicuous point of view, and given a new, and a more sacred force to its mutual obligations.

These, then, are the strong reasons to which I had respect in the outset of this discourse, as proving, beyond all controversy, the sanctity of the marriage state, and the despite done by Christians to the spirit of Grace in becoming parties to its desecration; and if it be required, for their further commendation to our regard, to make it appear that they are not merely speculative, but have the sanction of being received and acted upon by those divinely accredited to us as examples in the conduct of life, and are, moreover, enforced by divine commands, specifically enjoining their observance, we have only to refer to the recorded particulars, both of the holy conversation of the patriarchs, and of the laws of God, and the demonstration will be, not that of greater license or indifference than these reasons impose, but of a godly jealousy diffusing itself over the whole affair, and subjecting it to much more restricted limitations.

Mark the conduct of the Father of the Faithful, when the marriage of Isaac comes under his contemplation, and of the ruler of his household also, to whom the negotiation was confided. Religion overrules the whole proceeding. The patriarch, on his part, protesting against any alliance with the unbelievers amongst whom he dwelt, commits the conducting it to a prosperous issue, to the Lord God of Heaven, who had taken him from his father’s house; and the servant, full of his master’s faith, refers himself to God also for guidance and direction; and, in the very terms of the supplication which he makes, describes the object of his pursuit to be her whom God has appointed to His servant Isaac [Gen. 24].

In the same spirit, when Jacob, the fruit of the marriage thus solemnized, was of age to be affianced to a help meet for him, Rebecca evinced the same solicitude in the most passionate expressions of deprecation against any union with the daughters of Heth, and took the same religious precautions to keep the way of the Lord which Abraham had taken in his day, in the case of her husband Isaac [Ibid. 27:46].

And, though the sons of Jacob dealt deceitfully with Schechem, in the case of their sister Dinah, the terms upon which they insisted as the condition of intermarriage, viz. that “all the male among the Schechemites should be circumcised” [Ibid. 34:14-16], explains fully that religion was the ground on which both Abraham’s and Rebecca’s exceptions were taken; for circumcision was the divinely-appointed rite of admission into covenant with God, and incorporation amongst His people. In the symbolical language of the prophets, they became married to Him by receiving this sign upon them; and as, by the contract then entered into they were solemnly pledged to keep themselves only unto Him in spiritual communion, so were they also with respect to nuptial alliances, the figures of this mystical union, to keep themselves only to them who were partakers in its espousals; and the reason of this restriction, distinctly stated by Moses, from God Himself to the descendants of the sons of Jacob, when he reinforced it upon them on their arrival at the confines of the forced it upon them on their arrival at the confines of the Canaanitish nations, whose land they were to possess, that the throwing of it off would open the way to their going back from God, and forsaking Him altogether [Deut. 7:3-4], connects marriage with religion in the closest possible degree.

The last words of Joshua lay even more stress upon this connection than those of his predecessor, the great lawgiver of the Jews, and set out in fearful array the penal consequences that would result from slighting his admonition [Josh. 23:12-13]; and when this “great trespass,” as Ezra describes it, persevered in through several generations, in contempt of the above warnings, had been visited with the threatened penalty – “the delivery of themselves, their kings and their priests, to the sword, to captivity, to a spoil, and to confusion of face” – and, upon God’s giving them, after a long term of bondage, “a reviving to repair their desolations,” was repeated by irreligious marriages to a great extent, the nullity of such marriages, in the construction of the Divine law, and the reserved jurisdiction over them to the spiritual court of Israel, received a most impressive exemplification; for it is declared to be “according to that law,” that a judicial sentence of separation is in every instance pronounced, and the judge who pronounces it is described specifically as “Ezra the priest,” to whom the princes of Israel present the transgression on the alleged ground distinctly stated, that “the matter belongs to him;” calling upon him to “take courage and do” as God’s commandment requires, and engaging to “be with him: to support his authority [Ezra 9:10].

Such are the practical illustrations of the principles previously laid down with reference to marriage, and proving it to be, not a mere civil contract, but “an holy estate,” which we derive from the scriptural records, both of the Patriarchal and Mosaic dispensations; and, as might be presumed from the preeminently spiritual nature of Christianity, that dispensation, so far from dismantling it of any of its sacred character, gives that sacredness new stability by the fullest confirmation. Our Lord, who, in His reply to the Herodians, carefully distinguishes between “the things of Caesar and of God,” and on several occasions disclaims all interference with those of the former department [Luke 12:14-John 18:36], yet, as we have seen in the case of marriage, legislates with absolute authority – suppresses the Jewish licenses of polygamy and divorce – and restores it to what it was at the beginning: and, when called upon to take cognizance of a breach of conjugal fidelity, He does not put the hearing aside by inquiring “who made Him a judge;” but He exercises His judicial prerogative without any reservation, and thus again sets His seal to the position, that God, and not Caesar, is the supreme authority to Whose tribunal it belongs [John 8:1-11].

But the spread of the gospel not having commenced, nor the foundations of the Church been laid till after our Lord’s return to The Father, it is to the Apostolic epistles that we must have recourse for the full development of its laws and constitutions; and though, where the matrimonial alliance had already been formed, and one party only became a convert, the decision is, that the bond was not to be necessarily broken [1 Cor. 7:13]; yet, with reference to the contracting this relationship subsequently to conversion, the religious restriction, already traced through both preceding dispensations, is both negatively and positively enjoined – “Be no unequally yoked with unbelievers [2 Cor. 6:14]” – “Marry only in the Lord” [Ibid. 39].

In the scriptural view which has been already taken, I have, in passing, just touch upon the consequences entailed by the sure warnings of God on the setting at naught these divine injunctions; and I might now proceed to show, by the induction of particulars upon record in the same sacred history of man throughout his generations, how fearfully that total corruption from which the earth was purified by Noah’s flood, to that equally desperate accumulation of moral depravity and unbelief which, as St. John sets it forth, introduced by the Nicholaitan heretics [See Woodhouse on Apoc. Ch 2:6], through the same desecration of marriage, overspread the fairest portion of the Church in the early part of the Christian era; and I might further enforce a devoted adherence to the Divine ordinances, setting as it were a sacred hedge about this most influential institution, either for evil or for good, by arresting your attention to our Lord’s predictive representation of the state of apostasy in which the world will be found at His second coming, the caused of which are declared to be the same by which mankind were demoralized and fitted for destruction when the flood swept them away [Mat. 26:37-38].

These are indeed weighty considerations to those whose eyes are open to the signs of the times, and who, instructed by the records of former ages what those self-inflicted miseries were which falling off from God has hitherto produced, have sufficiently quickened and spiritualized their understandings to apprehend in any degree the enhanced poignancy of woe, which is to characterized the yet impending desolation. But there is a consideration, in most intimate connection with the subject before us, which will bring it at once to your own homes, and identify it with your tenderest affections; and therefore, having glanced at consequences affecting us in our national capacity, I shall wave the further insisting upon them, that I may urge that point upon you, which is more obviously and impressively of individual interest, and which you cannot but feel to be vitally important to yourselves. I refer to those choicest of domestic treasures of which marriage is the source; and I would put it to you to bethink yourselves what effect any civil contract, with all the appliances that can be devised to render it efficient, can have in their production. Independent and self-sufficient as, in the dotage of carnal mindedness, some amongst us conceit themselves to be, here they must succumb to the God of the spirits of all flesh; and however grudgingly they may yield the tribute, must take up the Psalmist’s recognition, and confess that the treasures in question, “the babes they would have to call after their own name,” and to preserve their remembrance in the earth, “are an heritage and gift that cometh only from Him [Ps 127:4];” that it is He “who seeth their substance, yet being imperfect, and in Whose book all their members are written which day by day are fashioned, when as yet there were none of them [Ps. 139:16],” that it is by “sending forth His breath [Ps. 104:30]” that the vital spark is kindled, and by His giving “strength to bring forth,” that they are born into the world.

If there is any truth in the interesting narrative of Hannah, the wife of Elkanah, with which the First Book of Samuel is introduced, the blessing of the priest has something to do in the raising up of family to cheer our domestic retirement, for sought and obtained that blessing, and her pious effusion of praise and thanksgiving proclaims its abundant success. If, on the other hand, the narrative of Michel, the wife of David, is equally founded in fact, there is something also intimately affecting the subject before us, in scoffing at the offices of religion; for this was her trespass against the Lord, and therefore says the sacred historian, she had no children to the day of her death [2 Sam. 6:22-23].

But that “the fruitful vine” should have its counterpart within our walls is only half the requisite to connubial felicity. To render that complete, our children must be “olive branches round about our table [Ps. 128:4].” As the Psalmist expresses it in another place, “our sons must grow up as the young plants, our daughters must be as the polished corners of the Temple [Ps. 144:12];” and then indeed they may well be compared to “the arrows in the hands of the giant, and blessed will be the man who has his quiver full [Ps. 124:5-6]” of such an armory, for securing to himself internal peace and external protection. But this also is not procurable by a civil contract, it cometh only of the Lord.

There is a mystery in the whole process of the formation of man, as compounded of “body, soul, and spirit,” which in our present state completely dumb-founders the acutest understanding. Who can explain the problem of the two sons of Isaac, why one should have been “a hairy man, and the other a smooth man; why “the elder should serve the younger,” and, on what principle it was pronounced upon them by the Almighty, “Jacob have I loved, and Esau have I hated?” It is a short method of solving the difficulty to avail ourselves of Jeremiah’s illustration of the potter [Jerem. 18], and by an abused reference to this figure, to disengage ourselves in our own conceits from being in any way implicated in the moral character of our offspring, and thus cast off from our minds all concern about it; but though it is profoundly and awfully true, that “as the clay in the potter’s hand,” so are the element of which we are composed in the hands of God, to form them individually, in the inner equally with the outer man, as seemeth him good; yet the very similitude assumes that the artificer has a material to work upon; and if wisdom and not caprice is the principle that governs him, (and who shall presume to charge God foolishly in this respect,) the quality of that material is, as we well know, of no small account in determining him to the construction that ensues. If we presume to pry into the arcane of God’s creative dispensations, and to put to Him the audacious question, “Why hast Thou formed me thus?” we trespass in the same degree upon His prerogatives as our Maker, that the clay would upon the potter by a similar interrogatory, and in the way of rebuke He returns no other answer, than, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and will harden whom I will.” But dare we, therefore, suppose, when contemplating the almost infinitely-diversified endowments and dispositions of children, that it is to be ascribed solely to God that they are qualitied as we see them, and that, in so fashioning the, He is actuated by no other motive than the showing His authority over a piece of clay: Was it of God alone, that, when He had formed our first parent in the Divine image, it was in his own likeness divested of that image that all his children were begotten, and that his posterity waxed worse and worse, till all flesh had become irretrievably corrupted? God is indeed omnipotent, and does whatsoever pleases Him both in heaven and earth; but omnipotence is not His only attribute; wisdom, goodness, and equity, belong equally to the Divine Essence, in the same infinite degree, and in common with it have their full share of influence in all His acts and operations; and “as the Judge of all the earth He will do right,” and be clear, when He is judged, of any respect of persons. This irrefragable principle governs all His dealings with mankind; but with reference to children, He has further made this specific disclosure of the judicial course His providence will pursue, that, in vindication of His honor, and in demonstration of the jealousy with which He watches over it, and exacts from us the filial acknowledgment of our dependence upon Him, by that holy worship which is exclusively His due, He will visit upon them the iniquity of their fathers, and thus in their punishment emblazon their parents’ offense. And if this be so, and yet as it were to challenge the Almighty to do His worst against them in this respect, men will make the audacious breach upon Him in His creative character to imagine the device of families without reference to Him, what alternative is left to Him, than, as the Prophet fearfully expresses it, “to curse these blessings [Mal. 2:2],” and, “raising up evil against them out of their own houses [2 Sam. 12:11],” to let them experience what it is to nourish and bring up rebellious children, and to reduce them to those circumstances of poignant anguish and blasting of their fondest hopes, that in the agony of their minds they shall themselves curse the day which invested them with the parental relation.

Let these impressive representations be pondered upon with the solemnity to which the sacred source from whence they are derived gives them so peremptory and demand; and should, (what God forbid!) a single instance brave the light of day, and affront the decencies of social life, of such an abandonment to a reprobate mind as shall occasion holy matrimony to be supersede by a coupling together which, upon scriptural principles, can be regarded only as a legalized concubinage, and which our Liturgy, a part of the law of the land, brands as likening those who enterprise it “to brute beasts who have no understanding,” do you, my beloved brethren, cast discountenance and reproach upon it by every means in your power; do so, for your brethren and companions’ sake, that the demoralizing example may not spread amongst us; do so, for the sake of our common Christianity, against which, by this enactment, a blow has been struck of a nature so insidious and destructive, that we are bound to give its framers the advantage of our ignorance of the hearts of men, and in duty to them, to believe that its tendencies, natural and necessary as they are, never came under their deliberative contemplation. And for yourselves, my beloved brethren, when meditating admission into this Holy estate, lay it well to heart, that what is sweet on its first flavors, may be acrid in the extreme in its subsequent experiences; and therefore do not allow the fascinations of short-sighted and superficial views to captivate your minds, but carry them forward through all the domestic passages of life, and from time into eternity, where the beings you give birth to must pass an interminable existence, either in joy unspeakable in the beatific vision of God, or in wailing and gnashing of teeth with the Devil and his angels.

Reflections such as these will infuse a due degree of soberness into the very exuberances of the most glowing affection, and will so solemnize your internal temperament, that reverence and the fear of God will pervade it, through the whole of the momentous undertaking. In the choice you make you will look beyond external circumstances to “the hidden man of the heart,” that being “heirs together of the grace of life,” one faith and hope may animate your common supplications; and when the vows are to be exchanged which are to bind you to each other, your first thought will be, that God be invoked to sanctify your union, “that Christ, the President of Marriage, be propitiated to adorn and beautify it with His presence, as at that similar celebration in Cana of Galilee, where His first miracle was wrought; and that the Holy Ghost, the fountain of purities and chaste desires, be supplicated to pour out upon it His harmonizing and cementing benedictions. Nor will its mysterious relation to that contracted between Christ and His Church be lightly regarded, but, on the contrary, will be devoutly cherished and exemplified, as St. Paul enjoins, in your interchanges of affection. And although your union, thus hallowed, must still be dissolved when death comes to make the separation; and when you meet again, there shall be no renewal of your conjugal relation, “and no other marriage shall be celebrated but the marriage of the Lamb, yet then it shall be remembered how you passed through this state, which is the type of that, and from these symbolical and transitory espousals your translation shall be to the substantial reality which is spiritual and eternal, where love shall be your portion, and joys unutterable shall crown your heads, and you shall lie in the bosom of Jesus and in the heart of God to eternal ages [Bp. J. Taylor’s Sermons, folio, p. 136.].”

Leonard Bacon (1802-1881) graduated from Yale in 1820. He was minister of the First Church in New York from 1825 through his death. Bacon opposed slavery and supported the Union during the Civil War. This sermon was preached in 1837 in New Haven.

CONNECTED WITH

THE PRESENT COMMERCIAL DISTRESS.

A SERMON,

PREACHED IN

THE CENTER CHURCH, NEW HAVEN, MAY 21, 1837,

AND REPEATED, MAY 23.

BY LEONARD BACON.

A few months ago, the unparalleled prosperity of our country was the theme of universal gratulation [feeling of joy]. Such a development of resources, so rapid an augmentation of individual and public wealth, so great a manifestation of the spirit of enterprise, so strong and seemingly rational a confidence in the prospect of unlimited success, were never known before. But how suddenly has all this prosperity been arrested. That confidence, which in modern times, and especially in our own country, is the basis of commercial intercourse, is failing in every quarter; and all the financial interests of the country seem to be convulsed and disorganized. The merchant, whose business is spread out over a wide extent of territory, and who regarding all his transactions as conducted on safe principles, feared no embarrassment, finds his paper evidences of debt, the acceptances and promises which he has received in exchange for his goods, losing their value; and his ability to meet his engagements is at an end. The manufacturer finds the vent for his commodities obstructed,–he finds that his commodities sold in distant parts of the country have been sold for that which is not money; and loss succeeds to loss, till he shuts up his manufactory and dismisses his laborers. The speculator who dreamed himself rich, finds his fancied riches disappearing like an exhalation. Many a laborer who, a year ago, listening to the teachings of those who wanted to use him for their own purposes, felt as if his employers were his oppressors, and s if the rich were the natural enemies of the poor, now finds to his sorrow, that the rich and the poor have one interest, and must prosper or suffer together; and that the impoverishment of capitalists and the ruin of employers is starvation to operatives. The distress already wide-spread, is still spreading; and none, however wise in such things, ventures to predict where or when it will end. Already in many a huge fabric, that but a few days since resounded with the cheerful noise of labor and with the roar of enginery, all is silent as in a deserted city. Already many a great work of public improvement, upon which multitudes were toiling to bring it to the speediest completion, that commerce might rush upon its iron track with wings of fire, is broken off, and stands unfinished, like the work of some great conqueror struck down amidst his victories. Already want, like an armed man, stands at the threshold of many a dwelling, where a few days ago, daily industry brought the supply of daily comforts. Soon, unless God shall send relief, our great cities will echo with human suffering, and then with the rage of men, not only exasperated by finding that which they have received as money, turning to rags in their hands, but driven to desperation by hunger and by the cries of their famishing children. What more may be before us in the progress of God’s judgments—what tumults—what convulsions—what bloody revolutions—we need not now imagine. It is enough to know, that this distress is hourly becoming wider and more intense; and that no political or financial foresight can as yet discover the end.

Amid these present calamities, and these portentous omens of the future, it is not strange that many minds are seeking, and all voices are debating the cause and the remedy. But, in this place, we discuss neither questions of finance nor questions of government. We propose to speak only of the duties connected with the present crisis.

The most obvious of these duties is, devoutly to recognize the hand of God, that brings these calamities upon us. One speaks of the distress as caused by the policy of government; another ascribes it to the measures of financial institutions; another talks of over-production and over-trading. But shall we, in the discussion of second causes, forget that this is God’s judgment upon us—God’s chastisement of our sins? “Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?”

There is a peculiarity in this calamity, which perhaps prevents some minds from recognizing the providence of God. We see the springs of industry and enterprise all broken; we see great manufacturing establishments shut up, and the workmen wandering about in quest of employment; we see capitalists made insolvent, and hunger invading the home of the honest laborer; but in all this, we see not the operation of any of the ordinary agents of calamity. It is not war, nor pestilence, nor conflagration, nor tempest, nor the cutting off of the fruits of the earth, nor the drying up of the streams of water, that brings upon us this distress. Yet to a thoughtful mind is there not, even in this absence of God’s ordinary ministers of wrath, a more impressive indication of his presence? We are at peace with all nations; yet here are the commercial embarrassments of war. Health is in all our coasts; yet the laborer leaves his work, and the population of the cities begin to set back upon the country, as if the pestilence were abroad. Our cities stand in their pride of architecture, yet the greatest and richest of them has experienced in the depreciation of lands, buildings, and commodities, losses threefold greater than when her wealth, to the amount of seventeen millions, was destroyed by fire. Our commerce rides upon the ocean in safety, yet every returning vessel brings home, as it were, a freight of bankruptcy. There is a supply of food; yet how many families are there, that see the ghastly visage of famine looking in upon them! Our streams still rush from the hills, and pour through a thousand raceways; but a thousand water-wheels are silent, as if the waters had retired into their caverns. If we see the hand of God in war and pestilence, in fire and tempest and famine,–shall we not much more recognize his presence, when without the intervention of these ordinary instrumentalities, he spreads sudden distress and consternation over all the land?

Another duty connected with the present crisis, is the duty of regarding properly those moral causes which have brought the distress upon us. Attribute this distress to whatever political or financial causes you may, you cannot but believe that it may be traced, directly or indirectly, to certain causes in the moral sentiments and habits of the people. Whatever may be said about excessive importations, or the expansion and contraction of the currency, or arbitrary obstructions in the way of the natural circulation of money, as having occasioned these embarrassments, every thinking man—every man whose thoughts recognize the government of God—must feel that there are causes of entirely another order. He whose providence has permitted these evils to take place, does all things well. It is for the sins of this people, that calamity and fear have so suddenly come upon them.

What are the particular sins which a righteous Providence is now visiting upon this people? There is sometimes presumption in saying, that a particular calamity is sent in judgment for this or that particular sin. When an individual is stripped of his possessions by fire or tempest, or by the fraud or failure of others, we cannot of course point to any particular cause in him, and say, Here is the sin for which God is now visiting that man with these afflictions. When pestilence breathes over some mighty city, and thousands are swept to their graves, we cannot always say for what specific and characteristic sins of that city, God sends his destroying angel. But when we see a manifest connection between the sin and the calamity; when poverty overtakes the gamester or the sluggard; when disease torments the drunkard or the libertine; when the parent, who would not restrain his son from evil, is cursed with a son whose crimes bring down that parent’s gray hairs with sorrow to the grave; who can doubt what sin is the moral cause of the affliction? So when, in some great city of a Christian land, the Sabbath, and the institutions of public worship, and the means of religious instruction and restraint, are openly held in contempt, and the people, comparing themselves with other communities, glory in their bad pre-eminence,–if we see in that city a dreadful prevalence of assassination and robbery, and of all the evils involved in a universal corruption of morals, we need no prophet to show us the connection between the moral cause and the retributive effect. Or if a nation which has poured out its armies upon one peaceful country and another, finds the tide of war turned backward—its own fair harvests trampled under the march of invasion, its armies defeated on their native soil, its homes violated, and its proud capital once and again in the possession of its enemies—we cannot refuse to see that there is a God who judgeth the nations righteously, and who makes himself known in the earth by the judgments which he executeth.

In looking, then, for the moral causes of the present affliction, we are to be guided by the visible connection between the affliction and the moral sentiments and habits of the people. Who can be at a loss in tracing such a connection?

Who doubts, that we are now, as a people, experiencing God’s visitation upon that madness of making haste to be rich, by which we are so eminently characterized? In this country, we have succeeded to a great extent in annihilating those distinctions which in other countries check somewhat the pride of wealth, and the fever of acquisition. True, there is yet in New England, and where New England principles still linger, some deference to intelligence and personal worth; but to how great an extent is it a matter of fact in the United States, that the only distinction sought or envied, is the distinction conferred by wealth. The distinction naturally connected with illustrious parentage, we have not only guarded against abuse, but have diligently abolished. The distinctions which belong to great exploits or noble actions, to profound knowledge or brilliant discoveries, are all assiduously assailed and leveled. The honors of magistracy and government have faded in the eyes of the people, and are no longer objects of desire; office is sought for rather because of its emoluments, than because of its dignities. In the attempt to do away all distinctions, and to force men to one level, we have come near to making riches the only object of competition or desire. Thus it is, that in this country, the love of money, that root of all evil—the fever of avaricious and grasping desires—the recklessness of adventure—and the arrogance of successful accumulation, have attained a strength and predominancy unequaled, perhaps, in all the world besides. To acquire riches, seems to thousands upon thousands the chief end of man. To be rich is, in their estimation, the highest felicity. No endowment of the mind, no skill or knowledge, whether from nature or from education, seems great to them, save as it may be turned to account in getting rich. No attainment or possession is valuable in their eyes, save as it has an exchangeable value in the market.

Naturally, connected with this universal and engrossing love of money, is the desire and hope of acquiring wealth, without helping to create it, and the effort to get possession of wealth by other methods than those of productive industry and skill. By this, I mean what is commonly called speculation, as opposed to honest enterprise. The difference between the traffic of the honorable merchant and the art of the mere speculator, is wide as heaven. The merchant whose business is to transfer commodities from the producer to the consumer, gives an augmented value to the commodities thus transferred, and has an equitable title to the value created by his skill, his capital, and his labor. The mere speculator, on the other hand, renders no actual service to the community. His whole art is to get possession of commodities at one price, and to get rid of the same commodities at a higher price, without any corresponding augmentation of their value. The mere speculator, whose only capital is his acquaintance with the arts of panic and excitement, whose hopes of success depend on the skill with which he calculates the expansibility of a bubble and the chances of its bursting, is twin-brother to the gambler. Now, in what degree the entire traffic of this country, for the past three years, has been prosecuted on the plan of acquiring wealth without aiding in the production of wealth—let others tell. How few there are, who have not paid in the augmented price of almost every article, whether of subsistence or of luxury, a tax for the support of speculation, and for the encouragement of the art of controlling the market—let others tell. It is enough for our present purpose, to remember, that the country has been full of the most extravagant schemes, and agitated with the most extravagant hopes, of sudden and vast accumulation; and that this has necessarily been accompanied with a melancholy (we need not say universal) relaxation of the bonds of integrity. What usurious exactions—what fraudulent negotiations—what conspiracies to swindle—what forgeries before unheard of—has this country witnessed, within a few months past!

Of this reckless haste to be rich, this epidemic fever to be rich by sudden speculation, and the consequent departures from uprightness in commercial transactions, the whole land is now reaping the fruits, in the present visitation of a retributive providence. This is the most obvious of the moral causes of that universal embarrassment, which not only terrifies the capitalist, the merchant, and the artisan, with the stoppage of all business, but threatens the nation and the government with universal bankruptcy.

Another of the pecuniary causes of this common adversity, may be seen in those luxurious and profligate habits of expenditure, which have so rapidly become characteristic of our whole country. As a people, we have gone mad with our sudden prosperity; and, fancying it to be far greater than the reality, we have introduced from older and more profligate countries, habits of luxury ill suited to our republican state of society. To be rich—to seem rich—to live in the style of princely riches—has been the grand objet with myriads of our citizens. In the great cities, among those who are rich, or who would be thought rich, there has been a mode of living in respect to furniture, equipage, apparel, eating, and drinking, and the giving of entertainments, more suited to the character of the idle, oppressive, worn-out aristocracy of Europe, born to consume without earning, and to wear without winning, than to the more honorable character of American citizens, born to no hereditary distinctions, generally beginning life with few resources out of themselves, and compelled to be the artificers of their own fortunes. From that class of families in our great cities, who have learned to spend from $15,000 to $30,000 yearly, the fashion of extravagant living has spread through almost every class, and over the whole land, till we are no longer worthy to be recognized as the countrymen of Franklin. The wealth lavished upon articles of dress, which add nothing to health, to comfort, or even to dignity or beauty of personal appearance—the still greater wealth vested in articles of costly furniture, which answer no purpose of convenience or rational enjoyment—the untold riches which have been consumed in that yet lower form of luxury, the luxury of the table—would go far to relieve the country of its financial embarrassments. The wine-drinking of this country, without taking any thing else into the calculation—the wine-drinking which, with the drinkers, is so often more a matter of pride and fashion, than a matter of sensual indulgence—the wine-drinking upon which money is squandered as if for the mere sake of waste and ruin—is enough to bring poverty upon thousands. Many a man there is, whose creditors would rejoice to see the money which he has expended upon Champaign at two dollars a bottle.

In brief, the whole country has been living not only “up to the means,” but “beyond the means.” The man who was in the midst of his speculations and adventures, has presumed upon his success as if it were infallible—has begun to expend his expected riches in advance—has set up his equipage, and spread his sideboard and his tables with plate, while as yet he was rich only in projects and prospectuses. Old fashioned frugality has gone out of fashion; and the honesty that scrupled about spending money before earning it, is regarded as a narrow parsimony. And in connection with these luxurious and reckless habits of expenditure, there has of course been a rapid deterioration of morals. Not to speak of the tendency of such habits to frivolity, to the destruction of dignified and manly sentiments in the public mind, and to the practice of dishonorable artifices to maintain the style of wealth, these habits of expenditure pervading the country, can no more be separated from the wide prevalence of intemperance and licentiousness, and of a passion for the most corrupting amusements, than the habit of acquiring wealth by adroit or gambling speculations, can be separated from the prevalence of dishonest maxims and practices in business.

Is there any presumption in saying, that for this sin, a righteous Providence is now visiting the country with chastisement? Is not the connection between our present distress and this, as one of the moral causes of the distress, too obvious to be disputed? The Judge of all the earth is teaching us, by a severe discipline, that a far slenderer expenditure for the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, is adequate to all the reasonable wants of human nature.

One most alarming feature of the madness which has filled the country in respect to both the acquisition and the use of wealth, is the fact, that the conservative energy of religion has not been exerted as it ought to have been. Indeed, so far as the acquisition of riches is concerned, and the estimation to be put upon riches, religion itself seems to have caught the spirit of the times. You find men of high religious professions, among the foremost in the pursuit of wealth—not merely serving God and their generation in the ways of honest, productive industry, and receiving, to hold and to use as the stewards of God, whatever of gain his providence may distribute to them—but rushing headlong in the wild scramble of speculation, and justifying it all to their own conscience, and to the friends who behold them with fear, by the plea, that thus they are to acquire the means of great usefulness, and to do much for the kingdom of Christ. Nay, we have seen religious institutions of no small name and credit in the religious world—colleges and theological seminaries, of a peculiar adaptedness to the spirit and wants of the age—embarking with all the credit of their sanctity, and inviting thousands to embark with them in the name of God, upon the uncertain sea of traffic in the wild lands, and in the building lots of cities yet to be. So in respect to expenditure, has there not been, on the part of those who profess to shine as lights in the world, a most mischievous conformity to the extravagance and selfishness around them? They have given, out of their abundance, some portion indeed, for great and good purposes; but how much more have they given to luxury and splendor in living. Have they, in practice, borne any energetic testimony against the epidemic madness, of supposing that to enjoy the splendor and the self-indulgence of wealth, is the highest happiness. Alas for the cause of uprightness, purity, contentment, and godliness, when the salt of the earth has lost its saltness. Is it not time for God to appear against us in chastisement, to touch with his power the prosperity that has infatuated us, to dispel our delirious visions, and to scatter our riches, like chaff upon the wind?

Though these are the most obvious among the moral causes of our present calamities, we are by no means, to consider these as all. Is there not also a cause to be seen, in the want of a true and intelligent patriotism?

To multitudes, the mere propounding of this question may seem like an insult upon the public spirit of the nation. What! Are we not a nation of patriots? Bear witness the debates and hot contentions in the Capitol. Bear witness the daily declamations and discussions of the press. Bear witness the rush of eager thousands to the ballot boxes. Bear witness the agitations which, at every election, shake the community as with the throes of dissolution. What is all this but patriotism?

The answer is easy. Of false, affected patriotism, the thin disguise of selfishness and base ambition, there is more than enough. Of blind, misguided, patriotic passion, there is no lack. But what we need, is true and intelligent patriotism,–the patriotism which, rising above all selfish and factious views, seeks, with simplicity of aim, the public welfare—the patriotism which, guided by the same common sense that is ordinarily employed in respect to other interests, is willing to commit the public welfare to men honest enough and wise enough to be trusted; and then is willing to treat them with the respectful confidence due to men of superior wisdom and unstained integrity, in the administration of so great a trust.

Instead of this, the patriotism of the present day is—what? First, the whole country is divided into organized parties, to one or the other of which every citizen is summoned to attach himself, under the penalty of being denounced on all sides as indifferent to the public welfare. Every citizen is to choose only to which side he will attach himself; and thenceforward his political duty is summed up in acting with and for his party. His duty, as invested with the right of suffrage, is to vote for the candidates agreed upon in the party conventions,–candidates, selected not for their capacity or integrity, but with a leading or exclusive reference to their “availability.” Thus citizens in all other respects conscientious, will give their suffrages and their influence to place in high stations, men whom they would not trust with the guardianship of their children, or of their estates; nay, whom they would not admit to the privilege of friendship or society in their families.

Next, it is made an established principle, that whichever party is successful in an election, is to seize immediately upon every office and every lucrative contract in the gift of the government, as their lawful and exclusive possession, sweeping from all places of emolument in the public service, every incumbent who is not a co-partizan with them. No party is ever in the minority, which does not complain of this proscription. No party fails to practice the same proscription, whenever it becomes the majority. And the question in regard to a candidate for any office in the gift of the government, is not simply the question of his fitness or merit, but includes, as of primary if not paramount importance, the inquiry, what he has done, or will do, or can do, for the party? Thus it has become by common practice, if not by common avowal, a part of the patriotism of the day, to use all the patronage of the government, in the nation, in the state, and in every municipality, as belonging to the machinery of political influence,–in other words, for the purpose of political corruption.

Nor is this all. The government, not only in its distribution of patronage, but in all its measures, is expected to be administered, as far as practicable, with a chief regard to the continued ascendancy of the party in power, which is assumed to be the only means of saving the county. Those entrusted with the government, know that their power has been committed to them, not by the people for the public good, but by an organized faction of the people, for the benefit of that faction. They know full well, that every measure of theirs, however wise or patriotic, will of course be misrepresented and opposed by those of the opposing faction; and they have no choice but either to abdicate their power, or to wield it for the uses and at the dictation of the party that gave it to their keeping. Thus, whatever may be the changes of party ascendancy, we are doomed to behold, in the places once made illustrious by the Trumbulls, the Shermans, the Jays, and the Washington of elder and better times, men who, whatever may be their talents or their virtues, are there only as the heads, perhaps only as the tools, of a triumphant faction.

Now, that there is a connection between the present distress and what is called the politics of the country, is admitted, nay, stoutly asserted, on all sides. The question between the parties is, which is to bear the blame,–whether the party of the government, or the party which has labored to expose the measures of the government to odium? It is not for us here to adjust so great a controversy. But let every man who believes that there is a God presiding over the nations, judge for himself, whether that God is not now visiting us for the sin of having perverted the natural and healthy love of country, into the baseness and selfishness of party spirit.

Another of the moral causes of the present embarrassment—and one which ought not to be overlooked—may be sufficiently indicated by a few easy questions. In what part of our country did this distress begin? Where is it felt with the heaviest pressure? Where is it, that the depreciation of all kinds of property has been most rapid and fatal? It is just where the soil, cultivated by the reluctant toil of slaves, yields its abundant products into hands unhardened by labor. It is just where the laborer, contrary to the law of nature, has no interest in the productiveness of his own strength and skill; and where the revenues of successful enterprise, instead of being distributed naturally, and according to the equitable arrangements of God’s wisdom, between the adventurer and the laborer, are all given to the adventurer, while the laborer gets little else than his coarse food and scanty clothing. While the staple of that great region was sold in the markets of Europe and America at extravagant prices, wealth poured in upon the planters like a deluge; and the privilege of participating in that wealth by traffic, begat in other parts of the country a propensity to overlook that grand iniquity. In the hot blood of their prosperity, and provoked by undiscriminating denunciations and unwise proceedings, the people there have announced to their countrymen and to the world, the atrocious determination to uphold their system of slavery forever. They have demanded, that to the maintenance of that system, the liberty of the press, the liberty of speech and discussion, and the liberty of voluntary association for purposes not unlawful, shall be sacrificed. They have demanded, that mobs, trampling down order and law, shall suppress such discussions and associations as bear unfavorably upon that system. And—shame to human nature!—men have been found, who, breathing our free air, and walking among our fathers’ graves, have been ready to give to such demands an approving answer. “This slavery,” we are told, “is no concern of ours, and none among us has a right to speak of it:”—as if we were not “born of woman”—as if the blood in our veins were not kindred to human nature. No concern of ours! Providence is teaching us another lesson. Those who cannot feel the tie of brotherhood, that binds them alike to the lordliest oppressor and the meanest of his slaves, may be touched where they can feel. Ask the merchant and the manufacturer, whose drafts come back dishonored, and who are themselves made bankrupt, because slaves have fallen to one sixth of their last year’s price—ask them, and ask their creditors, if we have no concern with slavery.

There is probably no hazard in saying, that God has now commenced his own measures for the abolition of slavery; and that while he has permitted the violence of the oppressor so to rage as to prove itself stark madness, and while the weakness and hopelessness of mere human endeavors have been strikingly manifested, he, in the slow and silent arrangements of his own providence, has been preparing for the overthrow of the system. The great staple of the slaveholding region, which by its high price has been the sole support of slaveholding prosperity, has suddenly fallen to a price better corresponding with the necessary cost of its production. The first consequence is such a depression in the price of slaves, as cannot fail, if it continues, “to purge out the beam” in the eye of the slaveholder, which has so long made it hard for him “to see clearly” the moral wrong of slavery. Let the present prices continue for a twelvemonth, and the chains of the enslaved will already have begun to fall off. The Judge of all the earth, who might have vindicated the oppressed, and avenged their wrongs, by invasion from abroad, or by disunion and civil war, or by domestic insurrection, seems to be proceeding to the same end, by a gentler, yet perhaps not less effectual method of chastisement. The first strokes of that chastisement fall, as is meet, upon all the land. The merchant princes of Pearl street, and the mechanic princes of New England, share in the adversity, as they have shared in the prosperity and the sin.

This duty, then, of properly regarding the moral causes of our common distress, is among the most imperious of the duties specially connected with this crisis. I have dwelt upon it at greater length, because of its elementary importance. “Shall a trumpet be blown in a city, and the people not be afraid.” In view of the general calamity, whether you feel it heavily in your own affairs or not, inquire before God, what has been your individual participation in the sins that are now visited upon this whole people.

The time will allow us only to throw out, more hastily, some additional suggestions of duty. Patience under the chastising hand of God is not to be forgotten; and the perception of the agency of God in this distress, and the remembrance of the sins for which the distress is sent, are thoughts well suited to arm the mind for patience. One of the greatest dangers of the time is the danger of tumult and violence, the danger that distress may produce exasperation against those with whose agency the distress happens to be associated, and that exasperation may proceed to outrage; and then, that the first act of outrage, the first movement of force against existing laws and constituted authorities, may be the opening of the flood-gates of insurrection and roaring anarchy. Patience under these calamities, as laid upon us for our sins by a righteous God, ought to be the temper of every citizen. Every word of recklessness, every thought that looks towards desperate remedies, must e carefully suppressed. Every proposal to proceed against the laws, either violently or with measures which lead to violence, ought to be met with indignation, as the proposal of an incendiary. We have much to suffer; let everyone beware, lest by his impatience under the hand of God, he do something to augment the guilt for which we suffer, or the calamities which that guilt has brought upon us.

Equally important is the duty of kindness towards those who suffer. There has already been much of forbearance on the part of creditors towards their debtors. This is well, and, so far as it goes, it augurs well for the result. Let this forbearance cease to be exercised, let creditors begin to enforce their claims without favor or compromise, and society might be speedily disorganized. But the exercise of such kindness alone, will not save us. It is easy for bank directors to exercise forbearance towards the merchant, whose notes they have discounted. It is easy for the merchant, in his turn, to exercise forbearance towards those who are indebted to him. But all this does not meet the wants of unemployed laborers and unprovided families. So far as is possible, employment and wages must be given to the unemployed. But employment or no employment, the hungry must have bread. Let all who have any means of relieving the needy, remember, that when business stagnates, and capital vanishes, and enterprise is broken down, the poor are multiplied, and their sufferings must be relieved, or suffering will beget despair.

Another duty connected with these times, is the duty of seriously regarding those undertakings of associated benevolence, which aim at the extension of Christ’s kingdom and the salvation of the world. The enterprising spirit of Christians in this country has engaged, with great zeal and great resources, in works of far reaching benevolence. These works, and the contributions for their support, have expanded from year to year, not indeed in just proportion to the increase of our wealth as a nation, and the expansion of our resources, but with at least so much of a steady progression as seemed to give some good assurance of the future. But now has come a time of trial. Many a man of wealth, who gave his thousands, has no longer his thousands to give. Many a man of comfortable independence finds his income cut off. All feel the pressure which summons them to diminish their expenditures. Retrenchment is to be the order of the day. But where shall this retrenchment begin in your case? With your vanities and your self-indulgencies, or with your charities? With your dress, your furniture, your costly entertainments, or with your contributions to enlighten the ignorant, and to make known the glory of your Redeemer?

I will not say, that this is a time for the commencement of new enterprises, or for the rapid extension of those already in progress. I will not say, that this is a time to make large endowments for the use of future generations, and to build up colleges and institutes at the west or at the east. But I ask, shall the men who, fearless of the perils that awaited them, have gone to heathen nations in the name of Christ, relying on the churches at home to sustain them,–be now compelled to sit down helpless, and see the ruin of their fair beginnings? Shall the men who are reclaiming the waste and wilderness places of our own land, be compelled to retreat for the lack of food and raiment? Shall the young men who, at the call of Christian zeal, have devoted themselves to the work of the gospel, trusting in the churches to bring them forward, give up their cherished hopes and turn back to engage in secular employments? Other enterprises, perhaps, may stand still for a season, if need be, without catastrophe. But one year of the abandonment of these labors, one year of the recalling and disbanding of men once enlisted for life, would be the loss of ground which might not be recovered in a century.

Finally, the great lesson to be thoroughly learned at this crisis, is, that there are better things than riches, and that those are things which riches cannot buy. Health—who would intelligently exchange so common a blessing as health for riches? Health, a mind contented in its own humility, affection, enlargement of soul by knowledge and manly thought, a good conscience, peace with God by the sprinkling of the blood of Christ, the love of God shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Spirit, the bright and tranquil hope of heaven, joy in sorrow, glorying in tribulation, life in death—these are things which no wealth can buy. He who has these things, can easily dispense with riches. In comparison with these things, what are all the gold and gems that glitter in the treasuries of kings?

Yet such is the madness of men, that for a little wealth they part with health, with contentment, with the sweetness of pure affection, with multiplied means and opportunities of mental cultivation, with a good conscience, with the love of God, with the friendship of the Savior, with happiness on earth, and happiness in heaven. They lay up their dear-bought riches; and lo! Their wealth dissolves in smoke, and they are poor indeed.

Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. Trust not in uncertain riches. Godliness with contentment is great gain. No good thing will God withhold from them that walk uprightly.

George Blagden preached this sermon in 1835 in Boston. Blagden used Psalm 111:10 as the basis for his sermon.

The Influence of the Gospel upon the intellectual Powers.

A

SERMON,

PREACHED

IN THE CENTRAL CHURCH, PHILADELPHIA,

MAY 25, 1835.

BY REV. GEORGE W. BLAGDEN,
OF BOSTON, MASS.

THE SIXTH OF A SERIES OF ANNUAL SERMONS PREACHED AND PUBLISHED AT THE REQUEST OF THE BOARD OF MANAGERS OF THE AMERICAN SUNDAY-SCHOOL UNION.

The subject to which I ask your attention, and which will be found in the sequel to flow legitimately from the words just read, is the importance of cultivating the heart or moral feelings of a people, more than their intellect; and the argument, thence arising, for the encouragement and support of Sabbath-schools.

There can be no doubt that the mere intellect of man can do much for his temporal happiness and usefulness, although his moral feelings may be left, in a great degree, to run to waste, like the weeds of a sluggard’s garden. It is questionable, however, whether this could do much for his permanent good, without some indirect influence of a moral kind, to preserve and invigorate it. Certain it is, that it has accomplished very little in his behalf, except in circumstances where you can clearly trace the operation of moral causes, scattering some rays of the light of truth on his otherwise bewildering path. In Egypt, Greece, and Rome, those great and polished nations of antiquity, the influence of moral principles derived indirectly from the Bible, has been clearly traced; and it was only while such principles exerted a degree of power that their learning existed; while, in modern times, it is only where the religion of Christ has produced some of its legitimate effects that the mind of man is enlightened and enlarged. Wherever this is not the case, it is darkened and contracted.

Nevertheless, men have been so prone to overlook this truth, that they have attributed the most of their achievements to the power of intellect alone; and even in Christian lands, hitherto, there has been a marked and wonderful tendency to give to its cultivation an undue and dangerous prominency over the education of the heart.

Anticipating this dangerous tendency, the Scriptures, in a very remarkable manner, warn us against its influence; declaring, at one time, that he who increases merely intellectual knowledge, increases sorrow; at another, they warn the wise man not to glory in his wisdom, but rather to glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth the Lord. Solomon, after surveying all the things that are done under the sun, arrives at the conclusion, that all is vanity and vexation of spirit where there is not piety; and that to fear God and keep his commandments, is the whole duty of man. And, in the text, David affirms that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: A good understanding have all they that do his commandments.”

By the fear of the Lord, here mentioned, I understand not a slavish dread, but a holy reverence for Jehovah; producing in all who exercise it, proportionable sorrow for sin, and a heartfelt desire and endeavour to return to his favour by repentance, and works meet for repentance, in any way of restoration it may please him, in mercy, to provide. Of course, therefore, this fear is experienced in its true nature, however weak in degree, in the first act of heartfelt sorrow for sin, and repentance and faith exercised by the true Christian. So that the comparatively ignorant, as well as the learned man, can enjoy its blessings, because it is principally a matter of moral feeling; only requiring in the subject of it, conscience and reason to be convicted of sin against law, and realize the necessity of pardon.

The wisdom, of which this fear is declared to be the commencement, may be defined to be the application of the best means for the accomplishment of the best ends, whether in intellectual or moral concerns. But, as such an appropriate use of means can be manifested only where there is knowledge adequate to their selection and employment, I consider the fact, hat the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, to involve the truth that it is also essential to useful knowledge. That this was the meaning of the writer of the text, would seem to be evident from what he immediately adds, as explanatory of its sense:–“A good understanding have all they that do his commandments.”

The subject, then, presented to your consideration this evening, as that on which the importance of cultivating the heart, more than the intellect of a people, will be grounded, is,–the intrinsic adaptation of the fear of the Lord, or the religion of Christ in the heart, to enlighten, invigorate, and preserve the human intellect.

Its adaptation to do this, in respect to moral truth, would be a profitable and interesting theme, founded, as it would be, on the words of Christ,–“If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine.” But, in what is now to be said, reference will be had, principally, to its influence on the mind in relation to intellectual truth; this being more directly appropriate to the occasion on which I speak.

The fear of the Lord in the heart of man makes the improvement of the intellect a matter of moral principle. It causes him to love the acquisition of knowledge in loving God: since the more he knows, the better is he able to appreciate and enjoy and serve this perfect object of his affections. Accordingly, it is one of its most marked effects in the minds of the comparatively ignorant and degraded of our race, to awaken the desire of knowing more; at least, of knowing enough to read that word which is able to make them wise unto salvation. You may notice this to be true, alike in the history of the Greenlander and the Hottentot, the South-sea islander and the Hindoo, the Indian of our own borders and the slave of our Southern states. There is, indeed, something in the essential nature and government of the God of the Bible directly calculated to elevate and expand the human mind. It is the infinitely perfect and spiritual Jehovah, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders that now arrests the attention. The soul of man, naturally prone to receive impressions from the objects it contemplates, is peculiarly affected by such a Being and such a government as these. Considered even as mere theological theories, irrespective of their eternal truth, there is that in them highly calculated to exalt. The ingenuity of man never invented such a religious system. It is spiritual; it is eternal in duration; it is infinite in comprehensive extent; it is pure. While some of the wisest of Grecian and Roman philosophers, and the most celebrated Roman poets, distrusted, and, in some instances, ridiculed the mythology of their country; this places its believer above all other religious systems, so that he looks down on them as unsatisfactory and insignificant. It leaves the mind unfettered to examine all other systems, that it may learn their folly, without being in danger of yielding to their influence. Especially does it thus elevate, when the God and Saviour it reveals is sincerely loved and served. The meanest objects of attention, associated with such a Being, and studied as matters of duty to him, derive an interest and importance they would not otherwise possess; and not only the profound investigations of the moral or natural philosopher, but the humblest employment of the most common tradesman or labourer become immediately invested with something of the brightness of heaven, because attended to for the glory of God.

Moreover:–the religion of Christ cultivates all those habits of mind and life that enable the intellect to act with the greatest power. It cherishes a humility that is willing to feel and confess its ignorance,–the first step in the acquisition of knowledge. We have already seen that it inspires a love of truth, which is one of the most powerful stimulants in laboring for its attainment; while the habit of devotion, an invariable concomitant of piety, by calming the passions, and preserving the whole mind cool and composed in the most trying and exciting circumstances, is eminently calculated to promote the clearness and force of the human intellect. Martyn, relates of himself, that during an examination for one of the most honourable and important rewards bestowed by the University of Cambridge, in England, it was the influence of deep devotional feeling that so preserved the clearness and calmness of his mind, as to render him triumphant over his well-trained competitors. The benevolence of the gospel is also highly calculated to produce a similar effect. Cherishing as it does a firm determination to glorify God in doing good to men, it imbues its possessor with a fearlessness in embracing and expressing his conclusions on all useful subjects, that rises superior alike to the sneers or the threats of man; and mainly anxious to advance the truth, manifests a noble freedom and energy in discovering and making it known. Historical facts, probably familiar to the minds of all of you, might be adduced as evidences of the correctness of this sentiment. It has been principally under the influence of such benevolence that martyrs, as well in science as in religion, have, through all ages, declared and vindicated truth.

The influence of the fear of the Lord on the body also is greatly favourable to the development and increase of intellectual power. By cultivating habits of the strictest temperance, and delivering from slavish subjection to all those appetites included in the scriptural designation of “lusts of the flesh,” it produces that sound mind in a sound body, commended by the Roman poet, and to the necessity of which, modern and Christian physiologists bear such ample testimony.

The contentment produced by the influence of religion is, likewise, highly favourable to intellectual acquisitions. A slight degree of attention will assure us that many are withheld from the willing, efficient, and successful employment of their powers, by the discontented contemplation of the real or imaginary difficulties by which they are surrounded. Like the undecided man mentioned by Foster, they are continually wondering why all the obstacles in the world happen to fall directly in their own way. Regretting that they are not in some higher station of life, or that they have not been blessed with the leisure or advantages for improvement enjoyed by others, they waste the time, and the blessings, and the talents they might improve, in fruitless complaining over what is not, and perhaps cannot be theirs; and which, even if possessed, might not add, in reality, either to heir happiness or success. In this way, too many lose the advantages they possess for obtaining wisdom, in fruitless regret for those they may not enjoy; instead of seeking and obtaining success. In this way, too many lose the advantages they possess for obtaining wisdom, in fruitless regret for those they may not enjoy; instead of seeking and obtaining success, by catching with a vigilant eye and seizing with a vigorous arm, all the possibilities of their actual situation. The religion of Christ in the heart of man delivers from this danger. Rendering him content with such things as he has; teaching him, if favoured with one talent, cheerfully to place it at interest, that he may gain more; telling him that he who is faithful in little will be faithful also in much; it forms in him the habit of faithfully performing his own duty in his appropriate sphere, and thus lays the best and surest foundation for his present improvement, and future ultimate success.

The effect of the fear of the Lord on hope and imagination is also clearly advantageous to intellectual improvement. It is difficult to separate these two powers of mind, in their relations to this subject, without entering into a tedious and unnecessary analysis. I shall therefore speak of their combined operation. As many are deterred from the right and efficient use of their mental faculties by murmurs over past and present circumstances, so the talents of others are enervated and misemployed by false imaginings and anticipations relative to the future. Many, while indulging ideas of what they may or shall be, pay no proper regard to what they now are, and ought to be. They suppose the time will come when they shall effect something; although now they are performing comparatively nothing. Thus present advantages are permitted to pass away unimproved, and they perhaps die the victims of a procrastination that deterred them from doing any thing, by the continually deceptive imagination and hope of some future more convenient season. In opposition to such a state of mind, the religion of Christ in the heart humbles man to the rigid common-sense performance of present duty. While it affords the utmost and most sublime scope for the imagination, in the anticipation of what shall be; it only allows the picture of the future to be bright, by the reflected light that present obedience flashes on its surface; teaching him that any other prospect of happiness or success, however flattering, must prove eventually delusive, and “like the mirage in the desert, only tantalize him by a delusion that distance creates, and that contiguity destroys.” True piety, therefore, does not permit man to enervate his intellectual powers by reveling in the false though gay hopes and imaginations of what is to come. It tells him to do with his might what his hand findeth to do, how. It warns him not to waste the immortal faculties and emotions God has bestowed, by employing them in relation to fictitious scenes, but to use them in respect to sober realities. The effect of piety on the student of any art or science, whether professional, mercantile, mechanical, or agricultural, is, to render him soberly industrious at the present time and under existing circumstances; prompting him in things temporal, as truly as in things spiritual, to work while the day lasts, recollecting that “the night cometh, when no man can work.” It may be confidently asked, if this is not the ordinary effect of religion on every mind. It may be confidently asked, if those whom any of you may know and have reason to believe are truly pious, do not manifest a constant and increasing desire to lay aside what is fictitious, and attend to what is real; whether in literature, or in the sciences and arts? I think that you must answer in the affirmative. Some minds, indeed, may have more, far more to struggle against, in this respect, than others, being naturally more imaginative and more sanguine; still it will prove to be true, that the gradual influence of the fear of the Lord tends to control and regulate even their hopes and imaginations, vagrant as they are, and to bind them to duty by the ligaments of truth.

There is also a powerful influence exerted by the religion of Christ in restraining the imagination, and keeping it in its appropriate sphere, amid the other faculties of the mind. While piety adds to its native power, by rearing it in the midst of the most beautiful and sublime objects; a love for truth is at the same time excited, superior to all other mental enjoyments; and the imagination is made the handmaid, and not the mistress, of the more noble mental powers. Thought, in such minds, leads; imagination follows, beautifying the conceptions, principles, and results of its leader, by its own resplendency. The former is the substance,–the clear, solid, unadulterated crystal; the latter is like the prismatic colors which the light of truth sheds forth from the substance it illumines. Every reflecting man knows the difference between an imagination that outruns, impedes, and weakens the intellect, and even affects morbidly the moral powers themselves; and one, which subjected to the restraints of reason, sheds its bright light on the weighty matter, that has been brought up out of the mines of knowledge. The one is but an ignis fatuus of the brain, alluring only to deceive,–it may be to destroy; the other is the less glaring, but pure light, that like the cynosure of the north, cheers and guides the wanderer on his way.

Scarcely anything is more dangerous in excited states of the public mind, on great moral or political questions, than one of those highly charged, powerful imaginations, not bound down to truth by clear knowledge, nor directed in the use of that knowledge by reason regulated by the fear of God,–the only right reason. Such a power can, and sometimes has, set a whole nation in a blaze, by the irrepressible heat of its own mad workings! In our own land, where there is such freedom of speech and writing on all subjects, such an imagination on questions of difficulty is highly dangerous. It can rouse the whole mass of popular mind into commotion, and produce revolution itself, before a Christian wisdom has had time to restrain its impetuosity, or discover, analyze, and throw out the weighty and far-reaching principles that alone can guide and save. I confess that I feel this single point to be of the utmost importance to the welfare of our country at the present time. When so many topics in politics and morals are before the public mind, agitating and exciting it in a most wonderful degree, every imagination in the land needs to be invigorated, yet chastened, guarded, and controlled by reason under the influence of piety in the heart; by that fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom. Otherwise fanaticism may ruin us!

Hitherto, the adaptation of religion to the intellect has been considered, as it arises from its influence in cultivating certain habits of mind, principally, in individuals. It will be still more appropriate to notice its influence on communities. I remark therefore, further,–that while piety makes it a matter of moral principle in man to acquire knowledge, it also prompts him to the duty of imparting it, so far as possible, to others. Knowledge, like every other possession and attribute of man, is under the control of selfishness, until sanctified by the religion of Jesus. Accordingly, to however great a degree it may have existed in ancient Egypt, or Greece, or Rome, it never went out from the initiated to bless and exalt the people, but was confined to a favoured few, who laughed at the absurdities and degradation of what the Romans were sometimes wont to term “profanum vulgus,” the profane vulgar. Even when you notice any system of professed Christianity, which is nevertheless not imbued with the full spirit of the gospel, you will soon be called to remark in it a tendency to keep the blessings of knowledge from the great mass of the people. The Roman church proverbially does this. And, if I mistake not, it will be found on examination to be true, that other systems of religious error, just in proportion to the degree of their departure from the true principles of Christ, will be seen to retard the spread of knowledge among the people. They will do this, either by representing the Bible itself as requiring such great learning to comprehend even its plainest doctrines as to discourage its study, and shake the public faith in its announcements; or, by gradually neglecting to take appropriate pains to instruct the ignorant throughout the land, and by gradually forming a self-indulgent and haughty aristocracy in literature, who, in praising each other, and contributing to one another’s selfish delight, shall neglect, or, it may be, despise the multitudes perishing for the want even of intellectual knowledge. If, therefore, you would produce the spirit that will communicate, you must also cherish the fear of the Lord in the heart, and baptize learning itself in the benevolence of the gospel. The fact that many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased, is represented by the prophet as a characteristic of the triumphs of the gospel; indicating, beyond reasonable doubt, that the design of spreading truth abroad will be one great motive for the constant changing of place that is there designated.

While the benevolence of the Gospel thus scatters knowledge among the people, it also inspires them with correct habits of thought and feeling in secular things, particularly in those of a political nature. The great principles of the moral government of God are, in one sense, so interwoven with human nature, that men, even when enemies to that government, tacitly acknowledge its great truths in their conduct towards each other. Jehovah has thus caused the very wrath of man to praise him, while the remainder thereof he has wonderfully restrained. All men, for example, recognize in their conduct the necessity of some law to govern them, and that this law ought to be productive of public good; they acknowledge the necessity of enforcing its observance by rewards and punishments, and of doing something to maintain its influence over the minds of the governed, if ever penitent transgressors of it are forgiven, that the lawgiver may be seen to be just, while he justifies the guilty. Even anarchy itself will soon fight its way back to some kind of law, through clouds of dust and seas of blood; so strongly are the principles of moral government adapted to the nature of man as a free agent, and so indelibly is the work of the law written on his heart.

This being the case, is it not most reasonable to suppose, that they, whose hearts have embraced, and whose wills have yielded to the perfect, spiritual government of God, would be most likely to feel, think, and act correctly in relation to the government of men? Is it not reasonable to conclude that such persons would be the most firmly resolved in opposing all institutions that might not promote the public good, by maintaining the great principles of law; and for the same reason would be the most obedient and zealous supporters of just legislation? The principles of the government of God being in their hearts, and influencing their lives in relation to eternity, is it not probable that these also would govern their passions and regulate their conduct in respect to the governments under which they lived in time?—particularly as these great and fundamental principles are necessarily, to a greater or less extent, recognized in all political institutions? This clear conclusion of reason, we find to be corroborated by fact. It is admitted by historians virulently opposed to the religion of Christ, that the men most deeply imbued with its principles have been the zealous, enlightened, and firm advocates of free government and public liberty. This is recorded by Hume himself of the Puritans; and is verified by existing people, at the present day. It is in Protestant England,–“with all her faults,”—and to Scotland, and America, that you must go for the people, who, as a mass, manifest the most enlarged and enlightened views of political government;–for the people who think, feel and act harmoniously with just law, while they are the strenuous friends and asserters of liberty. In these nations, a moral as well as intellectual education has taught the citizens to obey the law of the Lord; and they, therefore, understand best and value most highly and obey most implicitly, the just laws administered by man over man; while they are, correspondingly, the haters of all oppression.

It ought also to be observed here, that the fear of the Lord causes the deductions of intellect, on legal, political, and moral subjects, to harmonize with facts. As in natural science there are certain fixed principles derived from long established facts, which, if not acknowledged in theory and practice, will lead to the grossest mistakes, because the proceedings of him who thus neglects them will be at variance with the most common phenomena; so there are certain fixed principles in morals, which, if not admitted and acted on, will cause similar errors. The religion of Christ is, of course, founded on these principles; and the man who acknowledges them in theory only, much more he who feels their experimental influence in his own heart, will reason far more conclusively and powerfully, on all subjects connected with law, politics, and morals, than he who overlooks or rejects them.

The politician who admits the first great principle of the gospel,–the morally lost state of man, arising from his carnal opposition to the true character and righteous government of God,–will reason and write far more powerfully and correctly on any subject connected with the wise government of a country, than he who leaves this great fact out of sight. Indeed, one of the strongest corroborative evidences of the truth of the Bible arises from the tacit admission, knowingly or ignorantly, of the great leading principles it reveals, made by political or moral writers whose works have lived, or seem destined to live, long. It is principally this that gives to such writings as those of Cicero and Juvenal so strong a hold upon thoughtful minds in all ages. The very enemies of the great leading truths of the gospel will frequently be found, in the strongest parts of what they write or speak, tacitly admitting those great facts which the voice of nature speaks, trumpet-tongued, from her inmost recesses, throughout all time. There is a key to all subjects relative to the government of free agents found in the leading doctrines of the cross of Christ, of which if any one avails himself, only as a matter of human policy, he will find great advantage in analyzing any subject connected with the characters and duties of men. On these principles, I believe that the kind of doctrinal preaching heard by the people of a country has a great though silent effect on their intellectual characters, and their treatment of all subjects. Like the air they breathe, it diffuses an unseen yet most powerful good or pernicious influence throughout their whole mental system.

As the fear of the Lord promotes, both in individuals and communities, those positive habits of mind favourable to intellectual advancement, so it delivers from the influence of such as are detrimental. It prevents the intellectual faculties of man have not been regulated and modified by correct moral feelings, they have invariably yielded, sooner or later, to the animal appetites and passions. Whenever these faculties of man have not been regulated and modified by correct moral feelings, they have invariably yielded, sooner or later, to the animal appetites of his nature, and knowledge has deteriorated. How often are we called to notice melancholy illustrations of this in the case of distinguished individuals. For a period in their careers they have run well. Before obtaining that fame after which they panted as a supreme good, they have been faithful to their idol, and have taxed their powers to the uttermost for its acquisition; when, having obtained their end, they have become the slaves of fleshly lusts, until their sun has gone down in darkness, and the lustre of their literary reputation has been obscured by the blackness of gross moral delinquency. Even if the original acquirer of the fame may have barely escaped gross moral stains on his reputation, the animal indulgencies with which he regaled himself have, through him, often affected his posterity; and they have been left inefficient, comparatively unlearned, if not vicious and the very pests of society.

The fact, thus frequently exhibited in the history of individuals, is equally corroborated by that of nations. The great kingdoms of antiquity have gone through precisely this process. Moral feelings being neglected, the intellectual in man has been overcome by the animal. Wars and fightings, the children of evil lusts, have succeeded; their constant companions,–crime, intemperance, and cruelty, have triumphed over reason; and the glories of those nations have departed, to live only in name. So constant has been the recurrence of this process in the history of mankind, that distinguished writers, and among them the author of a late ingenious article in the North American Review, have maintained the theory,–a theory for which, alas! they have had hitherto the sanction of too many facts,–that all nations, however distinguished and elevated, must eventually conform to the general analogy of things in the natural world, and like the plants of the garden, and the trees of the forest, have their regular periods of rise, growth, maturity, and decay. It is difficult to find any valid objection to this theory, except on the principles of the gospel, which, lifting mind above the slavery of matter, and teaching it that it is immortal, destroys all reasonings of analogy between its noble powers and the phenomena of nature; and, by causing it to live for eternity, tends effectually to eradicate those downward propensities that have hitherto enervated and destroyed its energies. Gazing, therefore, on these downward tendencies in our own beloved country, already in many places too alarmingly developed, the only hope of the Christian philanthropist must be in the members of the church of Christ. Turning to these, he must exclaim,–“Ye are the salt of the earth; but if the salt have lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted?” If you spread not abroad the moral instructions of the Bible, we must sink into the corruption of other lands!

Finally:–The religion of Christ in the heart can alone prevent the acquisition of knowledge from being an occasion of sorrow, both to individuals and nations. It is written in the word of eternal truth,–“He that increaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow.” I understand this passage to speak of merely intellectual, in opposition to moral knowledge; and to allude rather to the ultimate, future effects of such acquisitions, than to their present influence on the happiness of men. For, although by a refined analysis it might be shown that intellectual attainments, unregulated by moral principles, or even in some degree under its influence, do in many ways produce sorrow in their possessors, by rendering them sensible to evils they cannot avoid, or fanning in their breasts the flames of selfish passions,–still, there is certainly a high degree of pleasure ordinarily connected with the attainment and possession of learning, utterly precluding the propriety of generally connecting with it associations of sorrow. On the contrary, we far more commonly connect with it thoughts of delight. And, certainly, its acquirer and possessor will tell you, that in gaining and using it, he is the subject of a very high degree of pleasure, richly counterbalancing all accompanying or succeeding pain. It is in relation to its ultimate moral effects on the soul that the inspired writer makes his declaration concerning this sorrow of knowledge; and considered in this light, the declaration will be found to be strictly true. The individual who adds to his intellectual stores, without yielding his heart to the requirements of Jehovah, increases the amount of his responsibility to God without presenting any corresponding return. He uses those acquisitions which the faculties imparted to him by Jehovah enable him to make, only to promote his own selfish and worldly ends, without any practical reference to his great duty of advancing the glory of God in doing good to man. The result is, he not only sins against Jehovah by neglecting to love him with a supreme affection, but by becoming as a God unto himself, he at the same time indulges a state of mind unfitting him, by the selfish passions it involves, for the benevolent and blessed delights and enjoyments of heaven hereafter; so that in the end he shall find, to his aggravated sorrow, that in all the splendor of his acquisitions, he has but been walking in a vain show, perverting the price put in his hands to gain wisdom, and has taken the talents bestowed for his spiritual and eternal well-being, and ungratefully and wickedly covered them as in a napkin, and hidden them in the bowels of the earth. His attainments have been all earthly; leading him in all their variety and greatness to neglect duty to God, and in his devotion to things temporal, utterly to neglect things eternal; and let heaven and glory go, as subjects unworthy of his serious attention. Surely, this must add bitter ingredients to his cup of wo hereafter, and increase his sorrow. There are few more melancholy sights to a true Christian, than a mortal man, blessed with superior talents, and adorned with various literary and scientific acquisitions, living and dying, without ever acknowledging his responsibility to God, or performing his duties in relation to eternity. What a contrast is presented between the powers of his mind and the comparative littleness of the objects to which they have been devoted, and the contractedness of the sphere in respect to which they have been exerted!

The illustration of this truth in reference to communities is still more striking than that presented in individuals. The sorrow connected with individual acquisitions is seen, principally, in the future effects it is to produce in another world; that associated with nations may be traced at the present time, in the present state of existence. Individuals die: there is a sense in which nations never die, until the world is dissolved. Before a whole people is taken away, another generation treads closely on the footsteps of the departing fathers, and the national character is preserved as a kind of permanent thing, untouched and unchanged by time and by death. Thus the sorrow following the attainment of merely intellectual knowledge by nations, may be seen in the history of their own existence in the present world, and is at this moment written in letters of blood and mourning. In the records of nations, knowledge unsanctified by moral influence is eminently exhibited as an instrument of destruction in the hands of a madman. Ambition, using it as a means to accomplish its ends, has perverted it amid scenes of intrigue and slaughter; or vice, using it to gratify its unhallowed propensities, has ruined its power in indulging raging lusts; and merged the intellectual in the animal, until men have become as beasts, and spilled each other’s blood, and left ruin and devastation behind, wherever they have turned their footsteps. Thus Babylon, and Sparta, and Athens, and Rome have successively passed away. Intellect could not save them: it was perverted by wicked hearts, until it became the very instrument of its own destruction. As the scorpion, surrounded by flames, is said to thrust its sting into its own vitals; so mind, in the fire of unregulated passions, has ever destroyed itself. In France,–a moral lesson almost losing its power to affect us, because so often contemplated,–in France, where the goddess of reason was personified and exalted in the temple of God, and men trusted to knowledge alone to guide and bless, what sorrow ensued! It has been well said of her revolution, that it was like the destroying angel passing through the dwellings of the Egyptians, leaving not a house in which there was not one dead! Let it then be repeated,–intellect alone can neither bless or save nations; but, unless regulated by moral principle, overcome by wicked passions, will eventually destroy them. This sentiment ought to be written on the heart of every American, never to be obscured or erased. Unless the mighty waves of human and party passion, at this moment rising, and every year increasing throughout the land, shall be duly restrained, repressed, and guided by the power of religious principle, binding them as the power of gravitation holds the surges of the mighty deep,–they will rise higher, and wax mightier, until, bending intellect itself to their purpose, they shall drive it onward in their own course, and eventually break over, and dash into pieces as a potter’s vessel, the noblest of our political institutions!

I have thus spoken of the adaptation of the religion of Christ in the heart of man to invigorate and preserve his intellect. I have illustrated this adaptation by the tendency of the love of God—that great duty of religion—to make mental improvement a matter of moral principle, and give a real importance to the comparatively meanest object of contemplation. I have attempted to show that it promotes all those habits of mind and life that enable the intellect to act with the greatest power,–cherishing humility, love of study, prayerfulness, benevolence, temperance, contentment, rightly regulating hope and imagination; prompting the desire of communicating knowledge to others, and teaching the people to feel and think correctly in relation to secular things. Finally, it has been my endeavour to show, that the fear of the Lord preserves from those practices, which tend to destroy the intellect; delivering from the tendency to merge the intellectual in the animal part of our nature, and preventing knowledge itself from becoming the occasion of ultimate sorrow to individuals and nations.

In what way does this adaptation of religion to the intellect form an argument for the support and encouragement of Sabbath-schools?

I answer,–by producing the inevitable and clear conclusion, that it is of far greater comparative importance to cultivate the heart than the intellect of the people, it exhibits the Sabbath-school system as one of the most efficient means for promoting this great end. The grand fundamental principle of this system is, that religion should be the foundation of education,–that the heart should be cultivated first, the intellect afterwards, and as a sure consequence. The very day on which these schools are held,–the Sabbath of the Lord; the instructors who conduct them,–generally the professed disciples of Christ; the institutions that most patronize them,–the churches of the Redeemer; the great text-book used in them,–the Bible,–“that choicest of earth’s blessings, that best of heaven’s gifts,”—all these stamp on Sabbath-schools the marked characteristic of piety as the guide to true learning,–the important truth that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

Moreover, the incidental influence of these institutions on other systems of education has been, extensively and efficiently to produce and fasten this conclusion in the public mind. I think it could be shown, by a fair detail of facts, that since these efforts for imparting instruction on the Sabbath have been made, the religion of Christ, as the foundation of all correct education, has been far more definitely and practically acknowledged in our common schools, academies, and colleges; so much so, that in several instances, the Bible has been introduced as a book to be studied, in some of our highest literary institutions.

Permit me, in corroboration of this remark, and as a passing tribute to departed worth, to cite the words of one, whose memory we have all much reason to love and venerate; of one, who was among the most enlightened, and firm, and influential friends of Sabbath-schools; of one, who has been taken from you since your last anniversary, in the midst of his life, and usefulness, and honour; but who has left, in an extensive and well-earned reputation, the impression of one of the most noble, yet humble, and benevolent of mankind. I allude to Thomas S. Grimke, of South Carolina. In an eloquent address in behalf of this system, he once said,–“Sunday-schools are, in my judgment, the primary schools, not only of religious and moral, but of intellectual education. The early development of the thinking and reasoning faculties of children, in connexion with the duties and affections, I regard as the great desideratum of all our schemes of youthful instruction. The Sunday-school has already done much in this department, not only within its own narrow limits, but by leading the way for improvements in the lower branches of ordinary education, by enabling its own pupils to derive more profit from common schools, and by suggesting the composition of a great number of valuable books for the instruction of children. Sabbath-schools are among the most interesting and remarkable signs of the times. In them we behold a beautiful example of the parable of the fig-tree,–‘When its branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves.’ They have demonstrated the union that exists in the nature of man (never to be wisely or advantageously severed) between the cultivation of the understanding and the cultivation of our duties and affections. They are preparing the way for a better order of things, throughout the whole system of education; for their influence will be more and more sensibly felt, the more they are multiplied and improved.” Such was the language already corroborated by what has occurred, and to be yet more clearly fulfilled as time rolls on.

It would seem also that this system is the only one calculated to meet, in any good degree, the present urgent wants of the nation for instruction, particularly in our newly settled states. I am credibly informed that thousands in almost every county in those states are utterly without adequate education. Even when teachers of daily schools are to be found, they are, in many, if not most instances entirely unfitted to sustain the responsibilities and perform the duties of good preceptors of youth. In many cases, they are mere mercenaries, taking up the profession of teaching,–which should ever be esteemed one of the most honourable,–as a speculation, assisting them for a short time in the accumulation of gain, to be devoted ultimately to other purposes more desired than the interests of education. Look now at the widely spread wants of our country, and how shall you meet them without some such system as is presented by Sabbath-schools? By means of these, if strenuously and extensively encouraged and increased, the whole effective religious population of the land can be brought to labour in the instruction of the ignorant once in seven days. This will also have the indirect and blessed effect of causing the Sabbath to be honoured, in our destitute places, both by Christians and the people of the world; and thus ensure the perpetuity of one of the most efficient means of promoting the fear of the Lord in the hearts of the people. It can be shown, that there is the most alarming desecration of this holy day in places where the “church-going bell” is not heard, and no regular worship of God is maintained, owing principally to the want of the stated ministrations of the gospel. Now there is nothing so suited to produce respect to the Sabbath, even in the most favoured circumstances, as employment in doing good. This is indeed the only philosophical, as well as only scriptural mode of ensuring its correct observance. To abstain from doing evil on that sacred season, it is necessary that the people of God should be engaged in doing good; and it is entirely contrary to the nature of the human mind to expect that abstinence from engagements of every kind is a possible thing. The mind must be engaged in something positive. No doubt meditation, prayer, and the consultation of the Scriptures should form a great part of the duties of this holy time; but mingled with these, it would seem to be very desirable, if not absolutely necessary to its entire consecration, that the people of God, feeling that “it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath-day,” should be engaged in some active exertions. The Sabbath-school affords such employment, and educates the public mind, when otherwise it would receive no instruction whatever. There are probably a few Christians or Christian families in almost every desolate region of our land. Let such be roused, by every lawful motive, to embark in the duty of instructing the ignorant in the most needful of all kinds of knowledge, every Sabbath. Unless some vigorous measures of this kind be adopted, I confess I see not what can be done to meet the pressing necessities of the times, and save the liberties of our country from being highly endangered, if not entirely lost, by an ignorant and wicked population. Behold, then, our beloved land! Mark the mighty mass of mind that is, on the one hand, perverted; and on the other, is becoming lost in vice and animalism. In Sabbath-schools is to be found one of the most effectual remedies. Wherefore, urge them onward!—as patriots, as Christians, I beseech you, urge them onward!

A strong motive for this is derived from the truth with which I commenced these observations, and with which they shall now be closed. It is the fact that this fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom, is, in its intrinsic nature, principally an exercise of the conscience and heart. Enough of reason to comprehend law, with conscience to acquit or condemn as it is obeyed or broken, and a will to choose or to refuse in contemplation of its sanctions, form all the pre-requisites for its exercise. These are the prerogatives of every free agent under the government of God; and may be exerted alike by the learned and the ignorant, the rich and the poor, the old and the young. It would seem indeed that God, in mercy to man, has ordered that the heart and conscience in childhood should be comparatively far beyond the intellect, in order that this spring-time of existence should be sedulously improved for holy instruction,–so that knowledge might not be perverted by an unholy heart in mature years, and be the occasion of future sorrow to the immortal soul. There is great benevolence and wisdom in this adaptation of the gospel primarily to the heart and conscience. It renders the way of salvation plain to the poor, and makes the law of the Lord, which it magnifies and makes honourable, what an eminent living statesman desired to make the statutes of England,–“not a sealed book, but an open letter; not barely the patrimony of the rich, but likewise the security of the poor; not a two-edged sword in the hands of the powerful, but a staff for the protection of the people.” Spread then the knowledge of this gospel abroad, throughout the length and the breadth of the land!—Spread it, by the ministrations of the sanctuary; spread it, by the circulation of the Scriptures;–more than all,–excepting by the voice of the living preacher,–spread it, by the instrumentality of Sabbath-schools!—until, from Maine to Louisiana, from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean, the combined lispings of infancy, ascending from earth to heaven, like the voice of many waters, shall proclaim, that out of the mouths of babes and of sucklings, God is perfecting praise. Amen.