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

     SERMON        

On the Moral Uses

Of the Pestilence

Denominated

Asiatic Cholera

Delivered on
Fast-Day August 9, 1832

By Rev. Orville Dewey

Pastor of the First Congregational Church in New-Bedford

published by Request of the Society

New – Bedford

Printed by Benjamin T Congdon

1832

SERMON

Isaiah XXVI

When Thy Judgments Are In The Earth, The Inhabitants of the

World Will Learn Righteousness

   The visitation of a calamity in some respects of an unprecedented character, has awakened the world to an unusual degree of consideration.  It is most desirable that this consideration should be rightly directed; that it should be guarded from all resorts to superstitious reliances and from an absorption in mere world fears; and that it should yield some results adequate to the greatness of the occasion.  If the world after this calamity shall have passed over it, is to be no wiser than it was before, such a failure must, to every sober mind, believing in providence, be a deep cause of regret.  The end is more important than the means.  It more concerns every being to improve God’s discipline, than to escape it.  To fail of that end, to fail of the improvement of the discipline would be a greater calamity than it is to endure the visitation of the pestilence itself.  For surely we are not , as Christians to forget that there are worse evils than the pestilence—worse evils than all outward calamities— evils so much worse , that all outward calamities  are designed to be their antidote and cure.
   

This consideration too, of the moral uses of the prevailing pestilence, would tend more than anything else, to allay the fears it inspires.  To caution the people against being alarmed, to reiterate  and multiply admonitions on this point, to warn the timid and terror-sticken, that this panic is among the surest harbingers of the dreaded disease, to tell them continually that the more alarmed , the more exposed they are, to exhort and urge them, as they value their lives, to be calm,  to recommend to them , in fine, by such constant implication,  to try not to be afraid—this seems to be very ill adapted to answer the purpose.  It is as if we would frighten people out of their fears, or hurry them into moderation and calmness.  Besides, it is not easy, unless we look at the moral aspects of this calamity, to prevent some natural tremors, some agitations, perhaps of unmanly fear.  If the elements are left to work their will upon us, if they are working to no end, but to show their awful and destructive power; if the scourge is borne upon the uncommissioned winds and its pavilion is darkness and its way is mystery and its end is death and there is no object and no explanation and nothing for the mind to deal with, but elements and powers, but inevitable fate and dire necessity.  How can mortal hearts sustain themselves in the dread encounter with agents so blind, inexorable and awful!  But if there is a Power, beneficent as it is mighty, that stays at its pleasure, the pestilence that walketh in darkness and the destruction that lays waste at noon-day; if it suffers the prevalence of disease to answer wise purposes.  If this calamity , however singular it is , nevertheless a part of the universal providence; if it is , like all other means for the reform and improvement of the world , to do more good than evil; then surely may we learn to look upon it with calmness and acquiescence.  Then indeed shall we look seriously upon it and we shall look upon it and we shall look upon it with fear too, but with a fear that is rational  and religious ; with a fear that will turn very much indeed upon the state of our own minds.  We shall think much of ourselves and so much more the less of the outward and physical forms of this evil.  We shall think much of the good it is to do millions of our fellow-men and so much the less of the mere bills of mortality , dreadful as they are.  In fine, we shall have our fears, but they will mingle much of devout and grave consideration with them —a trust and satisfaction in the wisdom of God’s providence; an apprehension lest we and others shall not reap the good designed to be communicated and these moral considerations will assuage and moderate those panic sensations which are now occupied with nothing but danger and rumors of danger.
     

There is another argument for attention and for universal attention.  The visitation of this calamity is a voice to the world.  Other calamities have been partial in their extent.  Other forms of pestilence have been confined to particular countries, or districts of country.  No famine ever devastated a whole continent.  No war ever raged from ocean to ocean.  But to the ravages of this fearful destroyer, neither oceans nor continents have set bounds.  It has compassed the habitable globe.  From the plains of India, from the mountains of central Asia, its march has been steady and irresistible.  It has traversed deserts and seas.  It has broken through all the defenses which the power and vigilance of governments could set up against it; till that which for years has been the rumor of far off evils, is suddenly become terrific reality and the spoiler of two continents knocks at the door of our American homes.

At such a visitation, it is meet that the world should pause.  It is meet that days of fasting and humiliation and prayer should suspend the ordinary pursuits and cares of life and give an opportunity to meditate upon the “ways of God to man”. 

I have thus far urged the propriety and advantage of a sober and attentive consideration of this extraordinary calamity, but is there anything to consider?  Is there any meaning in this visitation which can without presumption, be fixed upon by us, as the subject of attention.

I ask in reply:  Is there not a providence in it?   Permitted, or produced, does it not come within the range of the Almighty power and Agency?  Who will say that it is without the sphere of God’s government?   Who will tell us where those dread regions are, over which God has no control, in which He does not His pleasure?  Has not the whole course of events which take place in the world, a design?  Did they receive their original, do they receive their present impulses from the tendencies of matter, or the ordinations of fate?  But if there are ends to be accomplished by all things, will there not be a relation, an intentional relation between the means and the ends?  Why then —- so far as the agency of any event is specific —-why shall we not say that the object, the design, the meaning, is specific.

And now, let me ask, was there ever a calamity in the world, not miraculous, which apparently possessed such a high and solemn moral significance as this pestilence?  Was any design of earthly events ever more clear, specific or solemn?  We saw an evil, the most insidious and deadly, entering the world by a thousand avenues and gaining a strength, unknown to former ages, by the modern improvements, if improvements we must call them, in the process of distillation.  We saw the produce of ten thousand harvest-fields wrought, from all wholesome uses, into an intoxicating and destroying poison.  We heard the voice of wailing and lamentation and despair, from ten times ten thousand dwellings: and we asked, with many others, what can stay the progress of this horrible evil?  What is to save the world?  What is to leave in the world, any innocent father, mother, sister, friend, not utterly broken-hearted?  And now, at this very crisis, when good men had begun to be alarmed, indeed, but when the good were more alarmed than the bad were reformed—at this very crisis, there appears in the world, a disease  unknown to former times and it appears as the grand antagonist power to the monster, Intemperance.  It strikes as its foremost victims the votaries of strong drink and to them, its blow, though all others, or nearly all, with prudence may escape-–to them its blow is almost inevitable death!

If this be not providence, what is providence?  If this be not a voice from heaven, by what tokens shall we know such a voice?  If all the pains and penalties that follow vice, are held, in all creeds but that of the atheist, to be the remedial and disciplinary process of the Supreme wisdom; if those specific diseases, which set their mark and brand upon particular vices, are justly to be regarded as possessing, in a more striking degree, the same admonitory character, what less shall we think of a visitation like this unprecedented pestilence?  If a new species of brain-fever were to appear in the world and if it made gamesters its principle victims, what more specific and solemn moral would it hold out, than to be found in this plague of the cholera?

It is true, indeed, that the desire, natural to the reflecting mind, of finding reasons for things and of finding reasonableness, intelligence and wisdom, in the whole surrounding scene of life, may have carried us too far.  It is true, too, that this is one of the subjects that comes not within the range of demonstrative, but only of moral evidence. I do not say that I know that this is a special visitation, designed to check a particular vice; and on the other hand, no man can say that he knows it is not. I can only say, that my mind leans to this view of the subject.  I firmly believe that if there had been no intemperance in the world, this pestilence would not have been in the world.  But what do I say?  I had thought that I was arguing and I find that I am stating a simple fact.  Certainly there would have been no such pestilence in the world; there might have been such a disease and it might have prevailed like other diseases—but there would have been no such pestilence in the world, if it had not been for intemperance.  Intemperance is its very haunt, its resort, its prey—that without which it could not live.  Intemperance has occasioned it, created it, called it into being.  Has it not?  What means then, the language of every medical report and opinion on the subject?  What is to be made of the sense and experience of the whole world upon this point?  Why do the intemperate everywhere feel that it is they who are exposed, that it is they who are meant?  And why are so many moderate drinker, as the disease approaches nearer and nearer to them, setting down the untasted cup?  Is it too much to say , that it was designed for the check and destruction of the vice in question?

But it may be said, that the intemperate are not its only victims.  It is true, that they only its chief, its most conspicuous victim; others suffer.  But this only comports with the general order of God’s providence.  The innocent are everywhere suffering with, and for, and through, the guilty.  It may possibly be said, also, that this pestilence does not, after all and will not, altogether reform the world and so will fail of the alleged end and therefore could not have been designed for that end.  The general answer to both these objectives is the same.  God’s providence over the mind, is adapted to the mind; does not compel it or overwhelm it with flagrant and instantaneous results, but appeals to its reason, elicits it powers, respects its freedom, deals with it by influences that are gentle and persuasive and not coercive and irresistible.  Whether the world will be reformed or not—it is warned—and this is the material point for us to establish.  It  is all the less likely to be reformed, till it feels that it is warned.

It is for this reason that I am concerned to urge the doctrine of a providence, in relation to this stupendous and wide-spreading calamity: for indeed the facts without the doctrine, are sufficient for my main purpose.  And so eminently providential does it appear, that it might not be difficult for us to persuade ourselves, that it was designed to teach and explain this great doctrine of a providence, to the generation of the thoughtless, the negligent and skeptical.  Let us then, dwell a moment longer on this point, to illustrate this use, if not design, of the affliction that is sent upon us.

The difficulty sometimes found with the doctrine of a providence is, that it is held to be special, that it recognizes the efficacy of prayer, that it is believed to interpose at the call of human weakness and distress and penitence.  It is the interposition of providence, that is by some doubted.

But let it be supposed that the world were to be reformed from the vice of intemperance and then, the cholera—that peculiar disease which is now prevailing—would cease.  It would cease, because it would no longer find victims.  The very element which supports it, would be taken away.  On what condition then, would it cease?  The answer is, on the very condition of repentance.  It would cease at the voice of humiliation and prayer; at the voice of a sorrowing and reformed people.  Here then, in a general view, is the efficacy of prayer and here is the doctrine of a providence.

And why may we not go farther?  Why may we not go beyond the general view?  Why should it be thought “a thing incredible” with us, that who inflicts the blow, should with an interposing hand, suspend it, when its purpose is answered?  It is here perhaps, that the difficulty about a providence presses hardest.  Are not the operations of nature, it may be said—are not the laws that govern the elements, uniform?  I answer, we do not know that they are.  What saith the visitation of this calamity?  It reminds us how wide a theatre there is for the operations of the overruling hand—how vast a region, before which the vail is lifted up, that none can penetrate.  Where is the origin of this dread pestilence?  Where are its dark magazines, out of which swift destruction comes?  Where is the secret of its presence and the hiding of its power? Wisdom is baffled in the inquiry and experience is but a blind guide.  Whether it is in the heaven or in the earth or in the waters under the earth, it is questioned and it is questioned in vain.  Whether it is in the atmosphere or in the human system—whether it is contagious or infectious or epidemic or local, the understanding of the learned has not found out and the wisdom of the wise has not decided.  It has travelled through the world: the eyes of millions have been eagerly bent upon it; the voices of every language have invoked from it, its dark secret; the seers of every healing art, from the Ganges to the Atlantic shore, have sought for the interpretation of its fearful signs and still it is shrouded in impenetrable mystery.  The object is clear; it is proclaimed as with the voice of a trumpet; all else is darkness and silence.  Where the bolt strikes, we can see; we see who are its foremost victims; but the bosom of the black cloud, as it rolls onward, no eye has penetrated.

Let no man tell me, that in the bosom of that black cloud, there is no might or mystery beyond the reach and measure of His understanding—no space for the secret work of God—for the operations of an inscrutable and interposing providence.  Let no man tell me, that he who rides on the whirlwind and directs the storm, is bound by the chains of any fate or necessity.  He does his pleasure amidst the armies if heaven, amidst the thrones and powers of the firmament and among the inhabitants of the earth and none can say unto Him, what doest thou?  None can know what He does, or may dare to say what He doeth not.  What is interposition or what is not interposition; how far the overuling hand is stretched out or where it is stayed; what chord in the mighty system of things it touches or what hidden spring it unlocks; what it binds that shall not be loosed, or losses that shall not be bound.

But the skeptic will perhaps say, in fine, that man is a creature too insignificant to be the object of such attention and care, as we allege, that the Being who sits enthroned above the heavens and governs millions of world, will not stoop to regard a thing so inconsiderable and indifferent as this dweller in the dust.  But look at this being, when struggling as a victim in the grasp of the fell destroyer.  If it were the lot of man, to drop from the course of life like an animal, a mere inert lump of clay, we might think differently.  But what is the death of a man?  What is it when it comes in the form of this disease, held to be so terrible?  It is not any frightful paroxysm of pain, which makes that hour so awful; it is not the gathering mist that settles upon the closing eye-lids, that makes it so dark; it is not convulsion and grasping for breath and the mortal strife , that gives such intensity to every thought and feeling; but it is parting from the thousand ties that bind the heart to life; it is the solemn vision of eternity opening upon the soul; it is that intense spiritual consciousness that seems to concentrate all that is solemn and sublime in the universe, upon that dread moment; it is an element mightier than any earthly power, that imparts such grandeur to the death-bed scene; it is a portion of the Divinity, that is holding conflict with disease and pain and sorrow and death.  Will not God regard it, in its great and perilous hour?   Can He hold that which was made in His own image, as too mean for His interposition or disposal?  Can we believe that thousands and millions in the world are dying under the stroke of this one peculiar and extraordinary infliction and that there is no providence and no meaning in all this?

II. But if there is a meaning in this, what is it?  If there is a providence, what does it teach?  What do facts teach, let the doctrine be what it may?

The answer to this question has been necessarily implied in the previous discussion; but we should be totally wanting to the occasion that has assembled us together, if we did not give it our direct and separate attention.  I say then, that which providence teaches, that which facts teach the world in this great calamity, is a lesson of temperance.  The calamity itself, as I think, naturally leads us to recognize a providence and a special interposing providence.  But providence, if there be any in this matter, has an end.  That end, if there be an end, must be, I repeat, to teach the world a lesson of temperance.

Will it not teach this?  Will not increased temperance be the effect?  And if it will, why should we not say, that it was intended to be the effect?  But will it not, I repeat?  Suppose the cholera were to remain ten years in this country or in Europe : there is no reason to expect its speedy disappearance—it has already returned to some of the cities in Europe—it has been a long period in Asia: if I say, the cholera were to remain ten years among us; if for that length of time it should hover in the air, ready to stoop with its deadly talons upon any dissolute city or village or individual, can it be doubted that by such an agency, the work of reform would be carried on with a success  and effect, beyond all former example?  Can it be doubted, that ten years, with the sword hanging over every man’s head, would make us comparatively a temperate people?  How many is this single summer’s experience showing that they can live without spirituous drinks and that they are altogether better without them!  “When thy judgments are in the earth,” saith the prophet and surely when such judgments are in the earth, “the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.”

And if they are to learn righteousness, or if this going forth of the pestilence is fitted to teach them, then I am prepared to take another step, and to say, that it is a beneficent visitation.  If you doubt whether your ears hear me rightly, I repeat it, and say it is a beneficent visitation.  I confess that I do not partake of the unmixed and supreme horror, which many feel at this disease.  There is another calamity, another curse, which, as I believe, it is designed to remove, and which impresses me with greater horror.  The Cholera, I am firmly persuaded, will prevent more suffering than it will occasion.  The woes of unrestricted intemperance in this country for ten years, would be far greater than the woes of a ten years’ plague.  I cannot pray, therefore, without the most careful qualification, and the most guarded submission, that this pestilence should depart from our borders.  I dare not say, it is best for us that it should depart.  I dare not absolutely pray for the removal of this disease, any more than for the removal of many diseases.  I see clearly that the world would sink at once into the ruins of sensual indulgence, if no pain or sickness followed excess.  I see that to indulgence, disease, of some kind or other, is the antagonist power.  I now see indulgence of one particular species, rising to a most alarming height; and I see a disease breaking out at the same time to counteract it.  This, to my apprehension, is the method which Providence has adopted for teaching the lesson of temperance.  Say that his pestilence is developed by intemperance itself, or say that its causes, not of any new creation, have always lain hidden in the bosom of the elements; or say that it is the result of general laws; still it is none the less the teaching of Providence.  And I dare not absolutely ask that the teaching should be suspended till the lesson is learnt.  Though the discipline be costly and dear, I dare not ask it.  I know that it is taking from us the lives of some valuable and beloved citizens, but I do not esteem even their lives too precious a sacrifice for the salvation of the land.  I see the innocent, indeed, dying for the guilty; but I see in this, only the usual order of God’s providence; I see, indeed, the order of his grace; I see, as it were, Jesus again in his members, dying for the world.

The horrors of the Cholera, I must be allowed to repeat, are not the greatest horrors that are to be found in the abodes of the civilized world.  The convulsions of this disease are not, in my eyes, so horrible as the paroxysm of drunkenness—the riotings of its merriment, or the writhings of its fury.  The delirium of sickness is not so dreadful as the madness of the inebriate man. The dreaded “collapse” presents not a picture so dreadful as the poor wretch who lies by the wayside; no waiting friends or sympathizing kindred around him; senseless to the passing jest or buffet; no longer a human being, but the ghastly ruins of what was once human.  And a brief sickness and a speedy death carry no such agony to the bosom of a family as ten, or twenty, or thirty years of dissoluteness in it; no, nor as one year’s woe and shame of intemperance, in one of its before cherished and beloved members.  Nor doth the land mourn, nor ever can it mourn for a pestilence, nor is its substance wasted, nor are all its laws and safeguards sapped and undermined, though all the plagues of Egypt fall upon it—no, there is no such peril to any people in all this, as there is in the poisoned fountains of intoxication that are now deluging the world—there is no such sorrow, as the sorrow of millions by their desolate hearths, made desolate by this accursed indulgence; there is no such “cup of trembling” and of “wrath poured out without mixture,” as the horrible cup or excess!

It is impossible not to observe in this connection, that this judgment of Providence on the people at large, is especially a voice of admonition, a call for reform, to cities and populous places.  It has always been found that in proportion as men congregate together, and wealth increases in the hands of some, and poverty presses hard upon others, that the vices shoot up into monstrous and fearful luxuriance.  The most splendid advantages, the brightest gifts of heaven as they seem as least to most men, are here set in glaring and mournful contrast with most awful abuses of them.  It is here too perhaps, that the noblest virtues are developed and formed; but the powers of good in these circumstances have hitherto held but a feeble and doubtful conflict with the powers of evil; they have not, indeed, been put forth; and Christian men and women in our cities, are yet, perhaps, to learn the measure and the methods of their duty. 

It would be dullness, worse than ingratitude, and more inexcusable, not to refer in this view to the noble efforts for teaching the poor and rescuing the vicious, which are now making by a Christian ministry devoted to those objects, in the metropolis of our own State—efforts, which it is hoped will in process of time, present to the world, the model of a Christian City.  This Ministry for the poor in cities, like the Sunday School, and the improved Prison Discipline, and the Bethel Churches, I regard as one of the great moral discoveries of the age.  Physical causes, I trust, are also to lend their aid.  It seems to me, not an extravagant anticipation, that the astonishing improvements about to be introduced in the facilities for carriage and passage,—the rail-roads, I mean—will have the effect to prevent the enormous growth of cities, to send their inhabitants abroad to build beautiful and delightful abodes in the country, and will thus tend to break up those hot beds of vice, those congregated masses of filth and misery which are now found in them.  Meanwhile this pestilence is doing its work—its work of mercy as well as of judgment—its work of physical as well as moral purification.  It would be scarcely too much to say, that the cleansing of our cities and villages, especially if it may be a precedent for future years, will save more lives, than the cholera will destroy. 

Will there not be a moral cleansing, also?  Will not this judgment of the Most High, strike a salutary dread into the scenes of drunkenness, debauchery, and Sabbath-breaking—and of that horrible filthiness which is itself a heinous sin?  Is not that very point—the mass of evil in cities—that  wickedness in high places, to which, of all the earth, the philanthropist and Christian have looked with the greatest despondency,—is it not to have light poured in upon it—the light of inquiry and of hope?  Are not the miseries of those ten thousand thronged abodes, which it makes the heart ache to think of—are they not to be relieved?  Is not that pestilential atmosphere of contagious vice, forever hanging ever the cities and crowded villages of the world, and every year drawing millions from the healthful airs of a simple and rural life, to breathe it and die—is it not, at length, to be purified?  Is not this fearful stroke of the lightning from the heaven, to break the heavy and thick and settled cloud, beneath which such iniquities and abominations have been done for ages?  When, ye children of darkness and vice and vileness!  Will ye hear?  Hath not trembling and death come into your habitations?  Hath not horror taken hold of your hearts?  When, till the judgment-hour break upon you, will ye listen to the voice of God?

I feel, too, that the visitation ought to speak to men in power, to the rulers of the earth, and to those, who, by their influence, reign in society.  Why are those masses of vice, and filth, and famine, and bodily prostration, where the cholera finds its haunt, suffered to exist?  It is, in part, because great men, aye, and good men, have failed to do their duty.—Much of this prostration, physical and moral, is to be referred, ultimately, to political oppression, to arbitrary distinctions in society, to cruel and unjust laws, and to proud self-complacency and selfishness, “passing by, on the other side.”  In Asia, helpless millions have been swept away, the victims of grinding tyranny and of unparalleled social abuses.  Such victims are to be found in Europe, too; nor are they wanting America!  When, let me ask then—ye great ones of the earth, and ye good men!  When will ye hear?  When will the whole power of the world, political and moral, arise to do good, and to heal the wounds of society, and to build up the fallen fortunes of afflicted humanity!

No, I am not indifferent to the fate of the unhappy victims of this visitation, hurried as they are by thousands to an untimely grave, and to a sudden and unlooked-for judgment.  Who, with a Christian’s heart, will not mourn for them, as well as for the evil that they have inflicted upon the world? And yet, what can I say to them, or to the partakers of their guilt—what can I say, more or less than this?  “You have been reasoned with, pleaded with, besought, warned, by every voice of tenderness and by every voice of terror, that God has given to man, or to woman, to utter, and it has been all in vain.  You have resisted the outstretched hands of affection, and the pleading eye, and the breaking heart.  You have trampled upon the dearest interests of society, as if it were without remorse.  You have trampled upon all the admonitions of God’s word and providence, as if it were, without fear.  You have trodden under foot all the agonizing remonstrances of your own heart and consciences, as if they were but fit to pave you way to the resorts and haunts of indulgence.  Would to God, that all this had not been in vain; but it has been in vain.  It has been all in vain!  You would not hear.  You would not relent.  You would not give up the deadly draught that bereaved you of everything to respect, and of everything to love.  The child, the wise, the friend, have asked permission but to respect, but to love you; and you have hardened yourself against appeals, that might have broken—Oh!  They might have broken, a heart of stone.”  What then shall we say?  Must we say and think, that it is hard, very hard, that this additional, this last dread infliction, has come upon the victims of excess,—that this bolt has fallen, as it were, direct from heaven, to dash the guilty cup from their hands?  God Almighty give them grace to be wise in the day of his rebuke!  We dare not prescribe the term of this, to the vicious, tremendous day.  May it be shortened, we are ready to say; yet we dare not ask that it may be shortened, but through the intervention of repentance, at the instance of a humbled and reformed people!

This, my friends, is the only escape, of which we can feel any assurance, or ought to feel any very strong desire.  This pestilence has a moral mission to fulfill; its fulfillment is the only pledge for its termination.  No services, no offerings to God, coming short of this, can promise us any relief.  No wall of prayers is to be built up, to keep out this dreaded disease; no mere solemnities of fasting and humiliation, will disinfect the atmosphere; nothing, within our knowledge, but removing the cause, will remove the curse.       

One word more, and I will relieve you attention from the unusual task, which I have ventured, at this time, to lay upon it. 

What is it, then, I ask, which imparts to the pestilence, whose ravages have been the occasion of setting apart this day of solemn prayer and humiliation,—what imparts to this pestilence, I say, its peculiar horror?  And, I answer, it is the terrible speed with which it does its work.  It is not that its victims, according to present appearances, are likely to be more numerous than sometimes are the victims of a prevailing influenza, of a malignant fever; not more numerous, than are, every year, the victims of consumption.  It is, that the cholera, unlike every other disease that has appeared among us, makes but a step, between us and death.  It is, that death has been brought near to many minds, as it never was before.  The impression has been made upon them, in a character and with an emphasis altogether new, that they might, indeed, die suddenly; that their moral account with this life, might be made up, and settled, and sealed forever, in a few brief hours; that although to-day in the midst of life, to-day walking in the same negligent course as for years before, to-day unprepared to die,—yet that to-morrow’s rising sun might behold them dead, and its parting ray might shine around the grave, that had closed upon them forever. 

It is, my brethren, a most solemn and monitory conviction.  This pestilence has created an era, I believe, in many of our minds, from which a new spiritual life ought to be dated.  We have erred in this matter; we have erred in regard to the strict account, which we have to give, of life.  We have been misled, with the negligent world, into the irrational, the absurd idea, that we may live in sin, and yet die in safety; that we may live without religion, and yet die with it; that we may at last find some gracious dispensation from the law that is to “render to every man according to his living deeds.”  We have vaguely and vainly imagined, with multitudes in the same delusion, that our sickness may, at length, do, what our health will not;  that the last feeble pulses of life, may be strong enough to turn back the mighty current of tastes, and affections, and habits, that for years has been flowing on with accumulated power. 

This is one of the grand ruining delusions of the world.  “It is not this day,” men are perpetually saying, and still with every successive period of life they are saying, forever saying, “it is not this day, it is not this year, on which I can venture the decision of the great question for eternity; by and bye,” is the secret thought of thousands of hearts, “by and bye, amidst the days of sickness and sorrow, or of old age, I will prepare for heaven.”  Let this solemn visitation of God, let this voice of the pestilence, break up forever that tremendous delusion.  It speaks not only to the heinous transgressor, but scarcely less awfully to the careless neglector of his duty.  It is in his heart, a voice of weighty admonition.  What meaneth,—if it means not this—what meaneth that fear, curding the very heart’s blood,—the fear of smiting disease and sudden death?  Yes, its meaning is moral.  It is not a mere dread of pain, or of parting with life.  It is fear, breathed in the deeper recesses of the soul.  It is a voice, that speaks of duties neglected, of sins indulged, of the soul, unprepared for death.  That very fear, that very voice, believe me, shall yet give witness at the bar of judgment: for us, or against us,—to proclaim our fidelity, or our neglect,—to declare that we have listened to the voice of God’s judgments, or have hardened ourselves in the day of his rebuke.  But let me not close with the words of this last dreadful alternative upon my lips.  Let us hope better things, and things, that pertain to salvation.  Let us give all earnestness, to meditation, and watchfulness, and humble prayer, that we may be found faithful to all the teachings of God’s wisdom, and all the tokens of God’s will!   

The conduct of Men,

Considered in contrast with the Law of God.

A

DISCOURSE,

DELIVERED IN THE CALVINIST CHURCH, WORCESTER,

ON FAST DAY, APRIL 7, 1836.

BY D. PEABODY,

PASTOR OF SAID CHURCH.

PUBLISHED BY REQUEST.

 

WORCESTER:

PRINTED BY HENRYJ. HOWLAND.

1836. 

 

ADVERTISEMENT.

It may be due to those readers of the following Discourse who heard it from the Pulpit, to state, that, as it was originally prepared in a double form, and delivered with sundry extemporaneous additions, it was found necessary, in preparing it for the press, to make several alterations; which, it is believed however, do neither change its character, nor detract from what little value it may have possessed.

DISCOURSE. 

DANIEL 9:5.

“We have sinned, and have committed iniquity, and have done wickedly, and have rebelled, even by departing from thy precepts, and from thy judgments.”

                In pursuing the rain of reflection naturally suggested by the text, it will be my object, my hearers, to lead you to look at the world—at man—in contrast with the Law of God; to furnish you with some views of human character on a large scale, as it appears in the light which is reflected from the Decalogue; and hence to deduce moties to humiliation and prayer.  You are perfectly aware, indeed, that the world lieth in wickedness; and you need no arguments to convince you, that man, as a race, is opposed to the divine Law.  All this is familiar, because often affirmed and illustrated; all this, too, is to your minds unquestionable, because you see the evidence of it both on the pages of Revelation, and in living exhibition around you.  But we need something more than conviction, something more than knowledge.  We need a frequent repetition of well known lessons, a fresh representation of admitted truths, with such variations of light and position, as shall, in some degree, impart novelty to what is old, and impressiveness to what is familiar.

            Some men are disposed to complain of us, that we make the world far worse than it really is; that we spread over it shades of depravity much darker than do actually exist, except here and there in the lives of those who are to be regarded rather as anomalies than as fair examples of human character; and that we carefully shut out from view the bright sports of innocence and joy, which no unjaundiced eye can fail to discover.  These men, however, we apprehend, are either not over-zealous students of the Bible; or else they imagine, that when that antiquated book was written, human nature was vastly worse than it is at present.

            But what is the present moral condition of the world?  What is its actual state, compared not with any Utopian scheme of excellence and virtue, not with any standard of perfection which man has devised,—but with the universal, the unchanging, the only obligatory standard—the law of God?  Why, in sober truth, its state is such, that a holy and impartial observer—suppose an angel that has never sinned—who should critically survey it in all its operations and principles of action, would conclude at once that men had banded together in one general conspiracy to set the divine laws at defiance, except as far as the observance of them is found indispensable exception; but it makes nothing against our position; for when men act in accordance with law only because their own temporal interest requires it, they cannot be said, in any proper religious sense, to obey law, but only to obey the impulses of a selfish nature.  From such an impartial survey, we should be prepared to return to our closets with something of the penitential sorrow of the Prophet, and mourn over what we had discovered in the midst of ourselves and everywhere among men, saying, “we have sinned, and have committed iniquity, and have done wickedly, and have rebelled, even by departing from thy precepts and from thy judgments.”

            Let us see, then, in what this departure consists;—let us compare the conduct of men extensively with the requisitions of the Decalogue, fixing on those points—since we cannot on all—in which the contrast is most strikingly apparent, or which are peculiarly worthy of attention.

            Take the first and second Commandments; which together require that men have no other gods but Jehovah, and that they render to him, as a spirit, spiritual worship.  With these in your hand, travel abroad among men, and make your observations.  First, visit if you will,—though these are not within the province of our immediate concern,—the four hundred and eighty millions of Pagans, three fifths of the human family, who, to a man, have set their faces against God; and here and there a tribe only excepted, have changed his glory into the corruptible image of men, birds, four footed beasts, and creeping things.  All that portion of the race you must set aside at once as palpable transgressors of the fundamental and universal law—that law which constitutes the basis of the whole moral code.  If from them you turn to the Jews and Mohammedans,—in the one you discern a people, who, though professing to worship the God of Abraham, have long since virtually rejected him; for of them the Savior said, “He that despiseth me, despiseth him that sent me;”—and in the other, a people, who, amidst many corrupt notions of the Deity, have in truth elevated their Prophet above his throne.  How far all these are from obeying that comprehensive rule, which requires all men to render unto God a spiritual and undivided homage, is sufficiently apparent. 

            But not to linger on ground so remote, and so little a matter of our concern to-day, you will come back and cast your eye over what is passing in nominally Christian communities.  And you will say—“Surely men here have no other gods but Jehovah.”  But tell me can He be said to be their God whom they never affectionately acknowledge; whom they never devoutly worship; to whom they erect no altar in their dwellings; whose word and ordinances they regard with indifference; towards whom they feel in their hearts no reverence and no love!  If Jehovah be their God, why not serve him; why not confess him before the world; why not make at least some decided demonstration of their homage and attachment?  Is it enough that they do not put themselves to the trouble of openly and boldly denying him?  Enough that they do not announce to the world that they are idolators or atheists?  Judge ye,—for if the Lord be God, he is a great God and a jealous; and if he is chosen by you as your God, you will worship him, ay, in spirit and in truth,—judge ye, how many such worshippers the eye of Omniscience discerns among all the thousands of decent, honest, kind hearted, moral, church-going men in Christian lands!  Of how many can the Omniscient Searcher of hearts say—“They have no other gods before me?”  If by their fruits we are to know them, few, alas! We must judge, are the spiritual worshippers of God.

            Again: Repeat your tour of observation with another article of the Decalogue:  “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.”  Profane oaths and blasphemies, it is well known, abound among the heathen; and it is a remarkable and melancholy fact, that the first sentences of a Christian language which pagans learn to pronounce, are generally—at least to a great extent—sentences of profaneness and blasphemy.  So true is this, that travelers in heathen countries have often been surprised by a salutation accompanied by an oath, in their own tongue, when the speaker could scarcely pronounce any other word in the language.

            Of the frequency of this vice among ourselves, you are sufficiently aware.  You have daily examples of it, in various forms more or less gross among almost all ages and classes in society, from the brisk gentlemen of the bar-room and the theatre, down to the unruly and vulgar school-boy.  By some men, and some too who profess to be men of sense and respectability, one might suspect, a covenant had been entered into with their lips, that they should never utter the sacred name of God, except in connection with an oath!  They know not how to approach their Maker in prayer; but they can dare him to vengeance on themselves or their fellow men just to give expression to momentary anger, or,—what is if possible still more contemptuous of Heaven,—to impart grace to a period or pungency to wit!  Such is the treatment, from vast numbers, which this third most easy and reasonable requisition of the Divine Law receives.

            Again:  God demands, in his immutable Law, that one day in seven shall be consecrated peculiarly to him, as a day of holy rest.  The voice in which this demand was originally made known, seems, either with full emphasis or in fainter echoes, to have gone abroad everywhere among men, and been reiterated down through their successive generations.  But, my hearers, take another survey, and see how this law has been observed.  By a great majority, the day has been employed merely to mark into convenient divisions the lapse of time.  Some have regulated by it the seasons of licentious festivity and idolatrous worship—sad perversion surely of its original design!

            But,—to turn to a more important inquiry,—what is the manner of its observance among Christians?  How and to what extent, does it appear that they who bear the Christian name, are in this point obedient to the Law of God?  Why, my hearers, you shall find a numerous class of them who regard the Sabbath of our times as a mere human institution.  They observe it, not because it has been consecrated by divine authority, but because it is required by human convenience.  They honor it not as arising from an ordinance of Heaven, and, of course, they honor not the ordinance whence it arises; but because they consider it as, on the whole, a happy accident of custom, and even perhaps essential to the good order and well-being of society.  God and his Law they leave entirely out of view; and the Sabbath, in their estimation, has little more to do with either, than have the stated terms of legislative assemblies and judicial courts.

            Another numerous class acknowledge the divine origin and binding authority of the Christian Sabbath; but still suppose it to be designed as a day of rest from labor for the refreshment and reinvigoration of the exhausted body and mind; and not at all as a day holy unto the Lord for purposes of spiritual worship and improvement.  Consequently, with them it is a holy day—a season of relaxation and amusement.  Possibly they may be found in the sanctuary occasionally in the morning or evening;—but it is to gratify friends, or to fall in with established customs, or to break up the monotony of the week’s affairs.—Their motives in all this are essentially the same with those, which require on the Lord’s Day a particularly sumptuous entertainment or a ride for pleasure, as a necessary part of its sacred observances.  They cannot imagine what harm there can be in a little social visiting, with its edifying accompaniment of gossip and gaiety; and if the evening should pass away without a friendly call given or received, why then the holy season has been to them altogether incomplete and unsatisfactory.

            And even of that other class, who feel in some measure, or profess to feel, the claims of the Christian Sabbath upon them, as the day of God, the feast day of the soul, the seed time for the harvests of eternity,—how few devote its precious hours to the sublime purposes for which they were appointed!  How, even by the best class that can be selected among men, is the intent of the Divine Law, as interpreted by the principles and examples of Christianity, frustrated and lost!  Some deem the season well spent, if they have placed themselves within hearing of the ordinary number of sermons and prayers in the house of God, or kept their eye running over the pages of some religious book,—no matter whether or not the mind apprehends or retains a single truth, or whether or not a single devotional feeling is stirred in the soul.  Some plead hard the necessity of laboring, at particular times, on this day; and would rather run the risk of diminishing, by their example, the respect that is felt for it in a hundred hearts, than hazard the loss of injury, from the contingency of bad weather, of a little precarious property.  On this principle, the farmer drives his team afield, to save a half eared crop from a gathering storm; and the man of business indulges himself and his family in a ride to a neighboring town; or commences or prosecutes a journey to a distant mart of trade; and our wise legislators enact laws requiring the transportation of the mail, and the employing of thousands of hands, and the famishing of thousands of souls; and continue their deliberations on important questions almost till the very dawn of the holy morning—all on the day which they hold to be sacred to religion and to God; and all, I say, on the same principle, That man’s secular profit or convenience may set aside the laws of Heaven.  It is nothing more nor less than this.  Not one of them can offer any apology for such a desecration of the Sabbath, that does not involve the principle—that mere human profit or convenience may in these cases,—and if in these cases, why not in any other?—countervail the ordinances of Infinite wisdom.

            Our country is deeply stained with the guilt of violating the Fourth Commandment.  The stain is upon our Statute Books; upon our legislative halls; upon our rulers;—and upon the common body of the people.  Touching this matter, we are a guilty nation:—are we not guilty, too, as individuals?  Certainly it becomes us to be silent concerning the nation’s guilt, so long as we allow ourselves to act—though perhaps on a smaller scale—on the same unhallowed principle.  In view of all this, we surely have occasion to humble ourselves before the Lord to-day, and to say with the Prophet, “We have sinned, and have committed iniquity, and have done wickedly, and have rebelled, even by departing from thy statutes and from thy judgments.”

            Turn now a rapid but honest glance on what is passing in domestic circles.  Suspend the precept, “Honor thy father and thy mother,” in the interior of every dwelling; and under it write the multiplied and diversified delinquencies which occur in every household—the unkind words, the disobedient acts, the disrespectful demeanor, the ill wishes, the unuttered heartburnings, and longings for freedom from parental restraint, together with all other varieties of this sin;—do this, not merely in heathen communities, which are proverbial for a want of natural affection,—but among ourselves, where Christianity has labored to exert its purifying power; and then collect the scattered items into one aggregate amount, and weigh them in the balance of the Sanctuary; and say whether there be not matter here, if the Divine Law is to be strictly interpreted, of deep humiliation before God.  Is there not a growing prevalence of this sin amongst us, which calls not only for grief and self abasement, but also for active efforts to stay the evil and avert the consequences?

            But there is one point on which, you may flatter yourselves, that the most patient and critical scrutiny, will be able to detect no guilt, except among the most inhuman and ferocious of the race.  “Thou shalt not kill.”  Rarely, you may imagine, is this law broken.  Well, then, before you pronounce with confidence, take some post of extensive observation, and note down your discoveries.  Confine your view, if you will, to our own Christian community.  Let us see with what scrupulosity this Sixth great command of God is obeyed.  How often, in the intercourse of life, do you perceive this and that man angry with his brother without cause!  They, according to the moral code of Jesus Christ, are murderers.  If they cherish anger in their hearts, so that it becomes a settled passion, they are, in temper and spirit, chargeable with the murder’s guilt.  It is not necessary, however, to dwell on cases so little tangible.

            Look up, now, to the higher walks of life.  Who is he whom you see blustering and storming at his fellow in a hurricane of passion?  It is a man of honor, who has been entrusted perhaps with the responsibility of enacting laws for you and your country.  The delicate scarf-skin of his honor has been wounded by some unkind remark of his friend;—and now, when the violence of anger ought to be subsiding in feelings of forgiveness, he coolly intimates the necessity of reciprocal compliments of pistol-shot to atone for the insult and restore friendship.  The challenge in due time and form is given and accepted.  Look once more, and see these dignified personages, at the hour appointed, stealing away with their attendants to some solitary glen, on this honorable errand.  The ground is measured—the arms are prepared—the preliminaries are completed—the signal is given, followed by the flash and the peal;—and whether both fall, or one, or neither, they leave the ground, dead or alive—murderers, murderers in the sight of God and man.

            And these tragedies, as we well know, are acted over by our lawmakers—not to speak of others encouraged by their example—so frequently that the appellation of duelist applied to them excites no surprise; and sometimes almost within sight of the Capitol.  Not a few of our most admired statesmen, are men who have thus aimed the weapon of death at a fellow’s breast, and perhaps left the field stained with his blood.  And, tell me, as they go back to their sacred work of preserving and enriching the ark of our liberties, does not that blood follow them; and as they put forth their hands to write or seal our laws, does not that blood mark and remain upon the parchment—unseen indeed by men, but read by Omniscience, and heard, too, in its cry to Heaven for vengeance on a guilty land?

            There are those,—and their number is not small, as recent occurrences testify,—who seem to care nothing for the shedding of blood, whether of one man or of thousands; who would be willing to involve the country in war, and commit it to all the direful consequences of war, for the sake of a few millions of dollars, or for some other reason, if possible more insignificant, for which this was held up as a mere pretext and disguise.  Happily, indeed, through a merciful Providence, the dreaded event has been forestalled.  But how must God regard a people on whom he has lavished the riches of his goodness, who to so great an extent and for so unworthy a reason, were almost on the point of sending forth their ships to belch death on the ocean, and drawing up their troops to cut down every one of their once honored allies who should land on the shore!

            These suggestions are made in the spirit—not of a political partisan, but simply of a plain advocate of the principles of the Divine Law.

            Would, my hearers, that the work of death in our land ended here.  But—to pass over that common waste and destruction of the vital energy by means of animal indulgences, which might be set down to the score of suicide—there are ways not yet alluded to, in which men are ready to engage in the wholesale sacrifice of life.  Distillers and venders of intoxicating liquor are yet found among us.  In a single town in this Commonwealth, five thousand hogsheads, it is said, are manufactured annually.  Nor is this the only manufactory general of this essence of misery and death.  Many a fountain, it is true, and we would be grateful for the fact, has been dried up; but you may still see them scattered here and there over almost the whole surface of the country, pouring out their deadly streams, to be distributed wherever man’s beastly appetite or love of gold may convey them.  And observe, as these streams flow on, how every place through which they pass, is accursed.  Disorder, poverty, famine, crime, disease, and death, hold their revels along their borders, and laugh and batten amid the desolations which the poisonous waves spread around them in their course. 

            And to facilitate the work of destruction, there are, very fortunately, men holding some a more and some a less honorable rank, according to the kind of service to be performed in the general business, who regularly divide and subdivide these streams into smaller currents, and distribute the precious poison for the public good at so much per gallon and so much per glass, that all those families and individuals may be accommodated, who are disposed to ruin their health, squander their estate, and make shipwreck of their souls,—and are able to pay the rumseller for the privilege.

            So extensively is this business still carried on in the midst of us, and so prolific is it in all the varieties of human woe, that it would seem as if our Great Enemy might cheerfully consent never more—except as the legitimate fruit of this—to breath famine or pestilence from his shriveled lips, or sound the alarm of war among the nations.  One might suppose, that, insatiate as he is, this alone, since it is so easy to obtain auxiliaries often of very respectable character in the work, might suffice to glut his ravenous appetite with victims, and stay the greedy yearnings of his malice.

            Ah! My hearers, here is matter of grief and humiliation.  From this cause, there is blood on our country;—is there not blood on some of our own hands?

            In relation also to the Seventh Commandment—for in this review we must omit none of the Commandments of God—a careful examination would disclose guilt around us, of the extent and deep dyed aggravation of which we are little aware.  I shall not dwell here on those offences against the law of purity, which, being confined to the imagination and the heart, are known only to conscience and to God; but which, as Jesus Christ assures us, are regarded as positive transgressions.  Nor shall I do more than allude to those dens of wickedness which the persevering efforts of good men have not yet been able to remove from our cities and large towns; to the purlieus of our theatres, and other chambers of abomination which, though perhaps on a small scale, would, if opened, “shame the eye of day.”  I should hardly be believed, should I fully describe to you the systematic exertions of wicked men, acting by a common understanding and concert in many of our large towns, with the manifest design of corrupting the young and unsuspecting; and preparing them to become hereafter a prey to the grossest seductions of vice.  Such an association of profligates has actually been discovered, within a comparatively short period, together with their obscene pictures and other machinery of like character, with which they carry on their infernal plans.  And this is only a sight glance, a mere surface view of the evil, as it exists in the community.  Such is its prevalence in our most populous cities, that it is often found unsafe for unsuspecting innocence to trust itself, even in respectable families, without the most vigilant protection.  The young and the aged, the married and unmarried, the respected and the despised, are frequently alike guilty.  My hearers, it is my sober belief, that if we were fully apprised of the extent to which this sin, in its various forms, prevails; how many licentious practices, natural and unnatural, exist among us; and what wide spread mischief, moral and physical, is their legitimate result,—we should start back with horror to find in the midst of ourselves, so many foul features of resemblance to the people of Sodom whom God destroyed.  There is in the community a generation of vipers gliding often under a specious disguise,—possibly there may be some of them in our own neighborhood;—and it becomes families to be on their guard, lest they discover “the trail of the serpent” when too late to escape the poison.  Let mothers, let fathers, let confiding youth, beware!

            Verily we have reason to enter into our closets to-day, and mourn over the guilt which rests upon us as a people and as individuals; and to say, “O God, we are ashamed and blush to lift up our faces unto thee; for our iniquities are increased over our heads, and our trespass is grown up unto the heavens.”

            Look abroad then with a microscopic eye;—and what do you discover?  Is there no unfairness here—not in singular and solitary instances, but in the common business transactions of men?  Is there no study to take advantage, in as honest and polite a way as possible,—but nevertheless to take advantage,—of the ignorance, or the necessities, or the vices of other men?

            In the first place, of their ignorance.  Is there never a concerted scheme among merchants, or an attempt made by individuals of them, to raise or keep up the market, for the express purpose of augmenting their own gains at the purchaser’s expense, who is ignorant that the balance of trade requires a reduction?  I do not speak here of professed merchants exclusively; but of all who are engaged in buying and selling;—and I ask, if they do not often contrive to turn to their advantage the ignorance of those with whom they have dealings, by concealing the true state of the market, or by managing to keep it up where it cannot justly be held?

            Again:  In respect to the quality of what is manufactured, or bought or sold, is there not frequently a dishonest use made of the ignorance of others?  Is it not common with the manufacturer and vender, to make the commodity pass for more than its real value; and with the purchaser, to labor to obtain it for less, crying, It is naught, It is naught, while the bargain is pending, and then, when he has accomplished his purpose, boasting of his adroitness and success?  And does the mechanic in his work, study durability and good service, as much as strict honesty would require?  Or, is his eye rather on the number of articles he turns off and the amount of profit he gains; and does he not often laugh in his sleeve over the ignorance and gullibility of those who may be so unfortunate as to purchase his fabrics for their use?  These may serve as examples of what I mean by taking advantage of another’s ignorance.  And, unless I mistake, this is not a rare thing among men who would be held respectable.

            In the second place, advantage is often taken of another’s necessities.  Suppose that a time of great scarcity is seen to be approaching.  Immediately the price of the “staff of life” is raised, and raised sometimes quite above the reach of the poor.  What is the consequence?  Numbers of them are reduced to great suffering, if not to absolute starvation.  But a few are enriched, enriched by the misery and destruction of their neighbors.  This may serve as an example of a numerous class of cases of similar kind.  I know they are vindicated on the ground of the universal laws of trade.  But are they, can they be vindicated by the holy Law of God?  Is there a whit more regard paid here to the rights and well-being of these men, than is paid by the high-way robber to those of the man whose property he seizes?  In the one case, the alternative presented, is the payment of the price demanded, or death by starvation: in the other, the tribute of your purse, or death by the bullet or the bludgeon.  In the one, a demand is made, backed by necessity; in the other, by violence.  And in the sight of God, what, judge ye, is the difference between the two, in point of honesty and justice?

            And, in the third place, would not a careful observer discover a large class of men, who gladly turn to their advantage the vices of others?  Who would sell to another the material of his ruin, but for the profit of it.  It is said, indeed, that it is an equitable bargain; that on each side there is so much given and so much received, forming a true and satisfactory balance.  One party receives his lucre, and the other his poison, and both are content.  But suppose a man calls on you for a half gill of aqua-fortis to drink, under the insane but honest impression that it will do him good; and offers you the fair market price for it; and you sell it to him.  Is it, think ye, in the eye of God, an equitable bargain?  Our standard, be it remembered, is not human law, but divine.  And according to this standard, in other words, in the sight of God, is it an equitable bargain?  Is the article, so used, of any value to the purchaser.  Does he not pay you for that which is infinitely worse than worthless, when applied to such purposes?  And if you should engage in the business of such traffic, would you not, in addition to all other guilt, the guilt especially of being accessory to another man’s self-destruction, which comes under the prohibition of the commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” would you not be guilty of taking from him that for which you return no proper equivalent—nothing but misery and death;–and so come, to say the least, fearfully near the confines both of murder and robbery?  True the purchaser imagines he receives and equivalent; but you know he does not.  He consents freely to be imposed on and deluded; but you know it is a delusion.  Is it, then, as viewed by a God of justice, a sufficient vindication?  Can the imagination of a man whose vices have made him, on this one point, insane, and who under this insanity, offers you a purse of gold for a few gallons of deadly poison, can his imagination constitute the traffic honest, in which you are engaged?  What is it but turning to your advantage the hallucinations of vice, and taking from a fellow man, with his consent, under a delusion, it is true, that money which enriches you, but is paid back to him in no equivalent—nothing but disease and death, both of the body and the soul!  And this is palpably condemned by the obvious principles of the Divine Law.

            The law, which in terms forbids Slander,—“Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor,” may be considered, like all others in the Decalogue, as embracing in its prohibition a large class of sins, but aimed specifically at the highest of the class.  In a direct, liberal application, it seems to forbid slander only.  But interpreted more generally, yet in perfect accordance with acknowledged principles of interpretation, it will be found to prohibit falsehood of perhaps every conceivable kind.  A very large proportion, certainly,—indeed I believe it correct to say, the whole, of the falsehood which is uttered, tends in some way or other to the injury of our fellow men.  It may not be aimed directly against their character: yet it may be equally against their happiness.  If a man deceives in trade, or by falsifying a promise, or in any other of a thousand ways which might be mentioned, he violates the spirit of this law, quite as much, it may be, as if he sought to injure his neighbor’s reputation.

            Write, then, this law on every door-post; inscribe it on the inner walls of every dwelling; and let it stand emblazoned in every place where men congregate for business or pleasure;—and as each breath of slander or injurious falsehood passes over it, let it send back a power that shall silence the tongue of the offender;—and my hearers, how much worse than wasted breath would be saved; how much more quiet would be the public haunts of men, and how much less loquacious, allow me to speak it, would often be the private coteries of women!

            Should we extend this prohibition so as to embrace all the varieties of falsehood, what a vast amount of guilt should we find in every community and neighborhood!  Even if it was in his haste only, that David exclaimed—“All men are liars”—we are compelled by a deliberate survey, to admit that few are entirely innocent of the transgression.  It cannot be concealed that there is much of practical, if not of literal, verbal lying in almost every branch of the intercourse which man carries on with man.  It abounds in the commercial, and, if possible, still more in the political world.  It has well nigh come to this in our country, that a politician who, on all occasions, boldly speaks the truth and acts the truth, must be set down as scarcely better than a driveller.  The cunning, necessary for political promotion and glory, is little else than consummate skill in violating the ninth Commandment.  And when that skill is possessed by any individual, who has talents enough to enlist in his favor more than one half the tongues and presses of the people in the same unholy art—his success is sure.

            Let me not be misunderstood.  I speak not in accusation of a party, but rather in rebuke of a sin, which is too extensively characteristic of the people.  To whatever political party we look, and to whatever sphere of action, we find sufficient evidence of the prevalence of this sin, to cover us with shame and confusion.

            But once more:  The Law of God finally forbids all Covetousness.  This is a disposition of the heart, an internal principle of action, a root from which springs no inconsiderable proportion of the vices and crimes most common in the world.¹  To give a brief and summary definition of it, it is an inordinate desire of natural, worldly good—of that good or that measure of good, real or imaginary, which it is not proper that we should possess, either because it belongs to another, or would be injurious to us.  It seems to have been originally, and to be still, the first principle of evil, the elementary germ of sin in the heart.  Most wisely, then, does the holy Decalogue close with this prohibition.  The axe, in its final blow, is here laid at the root of the tree; and were this law obeyed, the whole aspect of the sinful world would be changed.  Avarice would no longer grind the face of the poor, and hoard its ungodly grains.  Ambition would no longer aspire at power, and trample on the rights of men.  Sensuality would no longer spread snares for the unwary and riot in polluted pleasures.  Pride would give place to humility, and vanity to meekness.  Envy would be exchanged for sympathetic joy; and anger, malice, and revenge, for pity, grief, and love.  We should be greeted with the smile of contentment and the song of gratitude, instead of the lowering brow of care and the bitter plaint of repining.  And in all habitations and along all the walks of men, we should breathe the balmy atmosphere of cheerfulness and peace.

            But, alas, what a contrast to this, does the actual condition of the world around us present!  What is it, I might almost inquire, that puts every wheel in society in motion,–that keeps all its active elements astir,—but some form or other of Covetousness, an inordinate desire of worldly good?  How much of this is embodied in the enterprising schemes of speculators and merchants!  How much of it enters into the patriotism of the statesman and the fervid eloquence of the orator!  How much of it is couched under that zeal for the public good, so loudly professed by partisan sycophants and aspiring demagogues!  Subtract this principle with its kindred adjuncts from the motives which stir and govern the world,—substituting nothing else in its place,—and almost the whole machinery of life would stand still.  Here and there would remain a spring still operating, of a temper and elasticity drawn from above; but with this exception, it would be like destroying the principle of gravitation in nature, causing every orb in the firmament to stop in its course.  It is covetousness, too often, that, with the help of winds and waves, wafts our Commerce over every stormy sea, and to every sickly shore.  It is Covetousness, too often, that smiles at the counter and presides over the day-book of the tradesman.  It is Covetousness, too often, that urges on the march of improvement in husbandry and the arts, clothing the earth with richer harvests, and making the most ungovernable elements subserve the convenience and comfort of men.  It is Covetousness, too often, that drowns the noise of our water courses with the din of machinery, and causes our villages to resound with the hum of business.  It is Covetousness, too often, that distils in the honey of flattery or the gall of invective from the Editor’s pen, and throws off the sheets of political cant from a hireling press.  It is Covetousness, always, that oils the lying lips of the cheat; and gives dexterity to the hand of the gamester; and emboldens the thief on his nightly errand; and nerves the assassin’s arm for its deed of death; and feeds the fires of the distillery, and pours off, and transports, and distributes its sublimated poison.  It is Covetousness, always, that sits snug in its abundance, closing its ear against the cry from Zion’s wastes at home, and the habitations of cruelty abroad; that prompts the perjurer’s oath, and by the aid of law filches the bread of the widow and the fatherless; and sends forth the adulterer at midnight, and fills peaceful homes with shame, infamy, and wretchedness; and rivets the chains of Slavery; and presses the foot of despotism on the neck of nations; and deluges empires with blood.

            Such is Covetousness,—so powerful as a principle, so subtle, so diffusive, so universal in its operation.  It finds its way into almost every channel of human feeling and action, sometimes mingling itself with better principles, frequently producing valuable results, but always corrupting and degrading the soul.

            And what a dark picture must this be to the eye of a holy God!  The law has gone forth from his mouth,—Thou shalt not covet; and as he looks down to see if there be any that do understand and obey, and with the exception of here and there a bright spot partially redeemed from the common waste, beholds the whole world alive and busy with the workings of Covetousness, must not his displeasure be enkindled, as it was against Israel, when he said, “For the iniquity of his Covetousness was I wroth, and smote him!”

            Perhaps in no country, certainly in no Christian country, is this sin more prevalent and more pernicious in its influence, than our own.  The facilities thrown here in every man’s way, for the attainment of wealth, honor, and power, tend directly to cultivate this passion, and give it a disastrous supremacy over the mind.  They have undeniably had this effect; and Covetousness is one of our crying, national sins.

            Thus have we taken a rapid survey of the condition of the world, as it appears in contrast with the Law of God.  And surely every step of our progress, every discovery we have made, has furnished fresh matter of sorrow—fresh occasion for humiliation and fervent prayer for forgiveness before the Lord.  We might have paused, at different points in our progress, to notice what lights there are, in connection with the shades of the picture; but the shades, deep, heavy, and almost unrelieved, form the appropriate object of our attention to-day.  The first Table of the Law, prescribing summarily the duties which we owe to God; and the second Table also, prescribing in the same summary manner the duties which we owe to man,—both the more forcibly enjoined for the use of the negative and prohibitory form,—we have seen to be transgressed, to a deplorable extent, among all classes of mankind.  Except by a remnant, God is not worshipped in spirit and in truth; his reverend name is blasphemed; and his Sabbath violated by multitudes.  Parents are dishonored, it is feared, to an increasing extent; life is often wantonly sacrificed; adultery, in its protean form and fair disguise, steals abroad through the community; virtual fraud often marks the commercial transactions, of men; slander and falsehood are so common as to have become almost a necessary art; and Covetousness is the mighty spring of action and enterprise throughout our busy world.

            This picture is not too darkly drawn.  The pencil has been dipped in no deeper colors than those employed by the pencil of inspiration; nor than those which an eye that has gazed on Sinai’s brightness, discovers in the present state and character of mankind.  There is no view which can be taken of men and their doings, so mournful and mortifying, as that which presents them in full-drawn contrast with the Divine Law.  While we honestly endeavor to form a true estimate of the character of men, holding in one hand the Tables of the Decalogue, radiating light from every line, and unrolling with the other the dark moral map of the world, we are constrained to say, “We have sinned, and have committed iniquity, and have done wickedly, and have rebelled, even by departing from the precepts and from the judgments of our God.  O Lord, to us belongeth confusion of face, because we have sinned against thee.”  Such a view, as far as time allowed, I have labored to set fully and faithfully before you.  Let your minds dwell upon it, my hearers, while in your closets, you bow down at the Mercy Seat, humbly confessing your guilt and earnestly imploring pardon.  Let a sense of guilt,—of guilt personal—for are we not personally involved in the prevailing iniquities?—of guilt national—for we as a people have grievously transgressed,—rest on every heart, till with sincere penitence and earnest longings for mercy, you can pray, “O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive; O Lord hearken and do; defer not, for thine own sake, O my God.”  “Turn us, O God of our salvation, and cause thine anger towards us to cease.”

            But, my hearers, if the view which we have taken, should be productive of nothing more than mortification and sorrow, our labor will have been in vain.  Let it be a godly sorrow, working repentance, that ye may receive damage by us in nothing.  Send up not only your importunate supplications for forgiveness, but like Israel, when they returned from their backsliding, enter into a covenant to seek the Lord God with all the heart and, like Jehoshaphat, when he not only sought the God of his fathers, but walked in his commandments.

            Ye who love Zion, the design of this day calls you to double your diligence, watchfulness, and fidelity.  Let the multitude of your thoughts within you, prompt the individual inquiry—“Lord what wilt thou have me to do?”  “What can I do to stay this mighty tide of iniquity!”  Let all on whose hearts the Divine Law has been inscribed anew, array themselves close and strong against those sins which abound in the land, and with untiring perseverance and with all the power of example, influence, and prayer, labor to suppress them.

            Let the young also set their faces as a flint against them.  To you, under God, is soon to be committed, all that remains of the hope of our country.  Fall in carelessly with the prevailing tide of sin, and the last rays of that hope are extinguished.  Take for your guide the eternal laws of Heaven, and better omens will yet cheer us; the clouds will pass away from the sky; and our sun, now threatening to fall from his mid-day height, will still rejoice, as a strong man, to run his race of glory.

            Finally; God calls upon you all, to day, my hearers, to array yourselves under the banner and in support of his righteous Law; relying on his strength, to plant yourselves in eternal opposition to sin, wherever and in whatever form it exists; and to toil on, year after year, in the conflict, till, at least in your own heart, the victory shall be complete.  This is the day to commence the work.  For to keep a Fast acceptable unto God, is not merely for a man “to afflict his soul, and bow down his head as a bulrush, and spread sackcloth and ashes under him.—But, to loose the bands of wickedness”—(whether they bind your own souls, my hearers, or the souls of other men;) to undo the heavy burdens; to set the oppressed free; and to break every yoke; to deal thy bread to the hungry; to bring the poor that are cast out to thy house;”—in short, to act under the constant impulse of a spirit of heavenly benevolence, irrevocably pledged to a war against sin, to the defense of right, to the relief of woe.  “Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily; and thy righteousness shall go before thee; and the glory of the Lord shall be thy reward.”

 

END.

 

A STRICKEN PEOPLE’S CONFESSION.

 

A

 

DISCOURSE,

 

PREACHED IN

 

ST. ANDREW’S CHURCH, PHILADELPHIA,

 

BY

 

REV. JOHN A. CLARK, D. D.

 

May 14, 1841,

 

On the occasion of the National Fast recommended by his Excellency John Tyler, President of the United States.

 

 

 

PHILADELPHIA:

HOOKER & AGNEW.

1841.

PREFACE.

 

            The following Correspondence is inserted merely by way of preface to explain the occasion of the publication of this Discourse.

Philadelphia, May 14, 1841.

 

REV. AND DEAR SIR:

            At a meeting of the Vestry of St. Andrew’s convened immediately after divine service in the morning, the following Resolution was unanimously adopted.

            “Resolved, That the Rector be requested to furnish the Vestry with a copy of the Sermon preached by him this morning, for publication; and that the Wardens be requested to make the application.”

            In compliance with the Resolution of the Vestry, we respectfully solicit from you a copy of the Discourse for publication.

With great regard we are

Sincerely and truly your’s

C. STEVENSON,

LAMBERT DUY,      Church Wardens.

 

Rev. John A. Clark, D. D.

Rector of St. Andrew’s Church.

 

 

 

Philadelphia, May 15, 1841.

 

 

C. STEVENSON, ESQ.

LAMBERT DUY,                  Church Wardens.

 

 

 

GENTLEMEN:

            I have just received your communication, enclosing a Resolution of the Vestry, requesting a copy of my Sermon preached yesterday morning, on the occasion of our national fast, for publication.  The request quite surprised me, as the Discourse which you would thus honour is of the most unpretending character, and was prepared in a very feeble state of health, and without the remotest expectation that it would be desired for publication.  I hope the feelings of personal kindness on the part of the Vestry towards me—multiplied and unceasing expressions of which I am happy to record I have continued to receive during my whole connexion with St. Andrew’s Church, a period of six years—I hope their feelings of personal kindness have not prompted them, in this instance, to prefer a request which, if granted, their after and more mature judgment will not approve.

            The views I endeavoured to present in my Sermon yesterday, are such as the events transpiring around us have forced upon my attention.  I am not aware, however, that there is anything connected with these views, new or original, and I am sure that there is nothing in the mode in which they were presented, deserving the publicity you would give them.

            Still, as I am desirous ever to gratify those who have in so many ways sought to promote my comfort, and have uniformly evinced towards me so much personal regard and kindness—if in the honest judgment of the individuals composing the Vestry, it is believed that the publication of the Discourse will be useful, in the smallest degree, in arresting the progress of those national sins, which now unhappily darken and overshadow our land—and in leading the minds of our fellow countrymen to the love and practice of that “righteousness” which alone can “exalt a nation”—it shall be at their disposal.

With great regard, dear sirs,

I am sincerely and truly

Your friend and pastor,

JOHN A. CLARK.

 

Philadelphia, May 24, 1841.

REV. AND DEAR SIR:

            We have received your note of the 15h inst., and laid the same before the Vestry, and we beg leave to assure you that the opinion of the Vestry remains unchanged in relation to the expediency of publishing your Fast-day Sermon.  They believe that the views it contains are such as the great majority of the people would do well to hold and act upon; and they are convinced that its publication would tend to the good of those into whose hands it might fall.  With these feelings they were induced to request your consent to its publication, and further reflection has served but to increase their desire that this step might be taken.

We are, very respectfully,

            Your most obedient servants,

            G. STEVENSON,

            LAMBERT DUY,      Church Wardens.

 

 

Rev. John A. Clark, D. D.

 

                                                                                                            Philadelphia, June 1, 1841.

 

C. STEVENSON, ESQ.

LAMBERT DUY, ESQ.        Church Wardens.

 

GENTLEMEN:

           

            In consequence of my absence from the city, I have not till now had an opportunity of replying to your second letter, bearing date of the 24h ult., in which the request is still reiterated on the part of the Vestry for my Sermon, preached on the occasion of our recent national fast, for publication.  Having already left the matter wholly to the verdict of the Vestry—I herewith send you a copy of the Discourse.

            With great regard,

            I am, gentlemen, truly

            Your affectionate friend,

            JOHN A. CLARK.

 

 

 

DISCOURSE.

 

            “Thou art just in all that is brought upon us; for thou hast done right, but we have done wickedly.”—NEHEMIAH, ix 33.

We are presented, in the chapter from which our test is taken, with the affecting scene of a whole nation congregated in one vast assembly, to observe a solemn national fast.  They appear clothed in sackcloth, with earth upon their heads: and among their confessions to Almighty God, whose hand now lay heavy upon them, are the words of our test—Thou art just in all that is brought upon us; for thou hast done right, but we have done wickedly.

            These words seem well suited to the occasion upon which we have assembled, and will naturally lead to a train of reflections in keeping with this day—a day in which a great and mighty nation, in conformity with the suggestion of their chief magistrate, are bowing themselves down in deep humiliation before that august Being whose breath called them into existence, and who in just displeasure has smitten them with the rod of chastisement.

            We are assembled here this morning in the sanctuary of God, in compliance with the Proclamation of our present Chief Magistrate, who has recommended to the people of the United States, of every religious denomination, to observe this as a day of FASTING and PRAYER—“and to join with one accord in humble and reverential approach to Him in whose hands we are, invoking Him to inspire us with a proper spirit and temper of heart and mind, under the frowns of His providence, and still to bestow his gracious benedictions upon our government and our country.”¹

            We may truly say, that “the frowns of God’s providence” are upon the nation:—and glad we are to know, that this truth is recognized and admitted by one who now, by the fiat of that same Providence, sits at the helm of our government.  Truly can we take up the sad response, and say—the frowns of God’s providence are upon us.  Most emphatically do the words of ancient Judah’s holy seer depict the state of things around us at this moment, when he said, “the land mourneth!”  Yes:  the land mourneth!  It mourneth, because God hath smitten us with the rod of his displeasure.  He hath smitten us, not simply once, or twice, but many times; and this in a great variety of ways.  Just now again he hath repeated the blow, and stricken us at a point and in a way which justifies the appropriation to ourselves of the strong language of Israel’s pathetic lament—the Lord hath covered us with a cloud in his anger, and cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of Israel.

            And if the inquiry be made—what is our duty at this moment, and under these circumstances?  We reply, unquestionably it is to imitate smitten and stricken Israel—to look up and say, to Him whose chastening hand is upon us—“Thou art just in all that is brought upon us; for thou hast done right, but we have done wickedly.”

            The leading idea—the main position—in our text, is the assertion of the entire justice of God in the infliction of judgments upon Israel in the case referred to, and consequently in all cases, and in reference to all nations upon whom he in his wisdom sees fit to lay his chastening hand.

            This idea, and the truth it asserts, we shall endeavour to elucidate, and distinctly set forth, in the remarks offered on the present occasion.

            Before we proceed to this main position, however, we desire to call your attention to three preliminary considerations, which will greatly tend to illustrate and confirm this position.

            1.  And first I would remark, that all the nations of the earth are under the control of Jehovah.  This idea is necessarily involved in the fact of a divine government, and of an overruling Providence.  This idea, with its various ramifications, runs through every part of the divine record.  In the test itself there is a distinct recognition of this truth.  Why should it be said, that God was “just in all that was brought upon” the Jewish nation, unless all that befell them came from His hand—unless their destiny was under His control?  And it is not merely of the Hebrew people, in reference to whom the scriptures affirm that Jehovah exerts a controlling power—but in reference to every people and tribe.  It is in this sense that he is emphatically described “THE KING OF NATIONS;” and it is distinctly affirmed that “by Him Kings reign and Princes decree justice.”  His ability to control the destiny and to regulate the movement of nations, is described in the most sublime strains by the Prophet—“Behold the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance.”  “Have ye not known?  Have ye not heard?  Hath it not been told you from the beginning?  Have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth?  It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth; and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers, that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell           in: that bringeth the Princes to nothing:  He maketh the judges of the earth as vanity.  Yea, they shall not be planted; yea, they shall not be sown; yea, their stock shall not take root in the earth:  And He shall also blow upon them, and they shall wither, and the whirlwind shall take them away as stubble.”

            So indisputable is Jehovah’s control over all nations, that in designating Jeremiah to the Prophetic office, who was to predict, as God’s messenger, the fall and rise of many people, he says to him—“See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out and to pull down, and to destroy and to throw down—to build and to plant.”

            The idea of this absolute divine control over nations, is still more graphically depicted in a subsequent chapter of the same Prophet—“The word came to Jeremiah, saying—Arise and go down to the potter’s house, and there will I cause thee to hear my words.  Then I went down to the potter’s house, and behold he wrought a work on the wheels.  And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter:  So he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it.  Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying—O house of Israel, Cannot I do with you, as this potter? Saith the Lord.  Behold, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel.  At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and pull down, and to destroy it:  If that nation against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them.  And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it:   If it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent of the good wherewith I said I would benefit them.”

            No language could more explicitly assert the absolute control of Jehovah over the nations of the earth than this.  They are all in his hand, as the clay is in the hand of the potter.  He can mould them as he pleases.  He can destroy them when he chooses—and out of their ruins raise up other nations and empires.  When the Lord would punish Israel, he employs “the Assyrian” “as the rod of his anger.”  But when the king of Assyria would come against Israel contrary to the will of Jehovah, he “puts a hook into his nose,” and “a bridle into his lips,” and “turns him back by the way by which he came.”  When God hath any purpose to accomplish, “he lifteth up an ensign on the mountains,” and “all the inhabitants of the world and dwellers on the earth, see it,” and are moved.  When “the nations rush like the rushing of many waters,” “God rebukes them, and they flee far off, and are chased as the chaff of the mountains before the wind, and like a rolling thing before the whirlwind.”

            The eternal Jehovah causes “Palestina” to be “dissolved”—“Moab” to “howl”—Damascus to be taken away from being a city, and converted into a ruinous heap”—“the Egyptians” to be “given into the hand of a cruel lord”—“Tyre to be laid waste, so that there is no house—no entering in.”—Yea, adds the prophet, “behold the Lord maketh the earth empty, and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down, and scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof.”  Do not these statements show the entire sovereignty of God over the nations of the earth?  Does not Jehovah most distinctly assert his indisputable control over nations, and kingdoms, and empires, when he says in reference to a wicked prince, “remove the diadem, and take off the crown; I will overturn, overturn, overturn it, until he come whose right it is; and I will give it to him?”  Is not God the Lord of the whole earth, and of all the creatures that move upon it?  Is he not the universal, uncontrolled, and uncontrollable sovereign?  Are not all creatures in his hand?  Unquestionably they are!  And as God controls the destiny of individuals, orders their lot, and numbers the very hairs of their heads, in like manner does he control the destiny of nations.  The hearts of kings, the deliberations of senates, the issues of war, the wealth and prosperity of nations, are all in the hand of God.  Look at the great empires that have risen, and filled the earth with their fame.  Where are they now?  Swept into oblivion!  In the hour of their highest prosperity, God foresaw and foretold their ruin.  His decree sealed their fate.  The history of Tyre, of Babylon, of Egypt, of Greece, of Rome, and especially of the Jews, demonstrates the truth that all the nations of the earth are under the control of Jehovah.  The traveller in the oriental world, whose feet treads upon the dust of Babylon, once “the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of Chaldee’s excellency”—or upon the marble ruins of Gaza—or within the rocky places of Petra—or amid the broken pillars of ancient Thyatira, is constrained to see and feel that cities, and kingdoms, and empires, rise, and flourish, and decay, at the bidding of God.  All nations are wholly under his control.

            2.  Again we remark, that all nations are not only under Jehovah’s control, but under his moral government.  Nations have a moral responsibility as well as individuals.  God holds them accountable for their conduct just as strictly as he does individuals, and will just as certainly punish them for their sins.  Hence, it is said of Israel, “The Lord hath afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions”²  And again, “Jerusalem hath grievously sinned: therefore she is removed.”³  Nations are punished for national sins.  Those are regarded as national sins which pervade the great mass of the people.  Those also are accounted as national sins which are connived at, or sanctioned, either by legislative acts, or by the example and influence of individuals who are appointed to govern the nation, or who are the official representatives of the people, chosen or appointed by the nation to enact her laws and to conduct her government.

            This, then, is to be distinctly noted: the sins of the great mass of the people—the sanction of wrong on the part of government—and the open depravity of the rulers of any people, all come under the class of national sins.  As the moral governor of the universe, and a God of justice, Jehovah must punish these sins.  What was the destruction of Sodom and the cities of the Plain—what was the fall of Tyre, and Babylon, and Jerusalem, but an illustration of this very principle—that God holds nations morally accountable to him for their national acts?  It was not until the drunken Chaldean king in that night of his fatal revel, as he sat amid his thousand lords, commanded the sacred vessels which had been taken out of the temple of the house of God which was at Jerusalem, to be brought—it was not until those sacred vessels were used as common wine cups by “the king and his princes, his rulers and his concubines,” lifting up their voices in profane songs, “praising the gods of gold and of silver, or brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone”—it was not until this last heaven-daring act of desecration, that the fingers of that mysterious hand came forth and wrote upon the plaster of the wall the doom of the king and the nation.  “That very night Belshazzar was slain, and Darius the Median took the kingdom.”

            Does not God hold nations morally accountable to him for their conduct as nations?  Look at Nineveh!  Consider Jonah’s commission!  “The word of the Lord came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me.”  And what was the proclamation tht Jonah was to make?  Simply this!  “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be destroyed.”  Nineveh was an immense city—the seat of a great empire—containing a population among which there were more than sixty thousand of so tender an age that they “knew not their right hand from their left.”  These were to be involved in the general destruction.  Though individually innocent, yet as a part of the nation, they shared the national guilt, and were to be involved in the national destruction.  Within forty days, Nineveh, then flourishing in the zenith of its glory, was to be laid in utter ruins; its doom was sealed; and it was to perish on account of its wickedness.  A messenger is sent by the Almighty to proclaim this through its streets—“Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be destroyed!”  Had this message been unheeded, just as sure as God is on his throne that city, like Sodom, would have been whelmed in destruction.  But “the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them.  For word came unto the king of Nineveh; and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.  And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh, (by the decree of the king and his nobles,) saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing; let them not feed, nor drink water.  But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God; yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands.  Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?  And God saw their works that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not.”  Here we see fully carried out, that principle in the divine government, which Jehovah himself had laid down, and upon which he acts in the administration of that government as it respects nations.  “At what instant I shall speak concerning a kingdom, to pluck up and pull down and to destroy it; if that nation against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them.”  You see, therefore, that the divine government under which nations as well as individuals are placed, is a moral government.  Sin in nations as well as in individuals, displeases God, and he will certainly empty upon them the vials of his displeasure.

            3.  Again:  I remark that God punishes nations for national sins, by the infliction of TEMPORAL JUDGMENTS.  It is only here that they have a corporate and national existence.  Individuals, each one for himself, will for their personal sins have at last to meet the retributions of Christ’s judgment-seat.  But God judgeth the nations, and awards to them their allotments, while they still have a name and local habitation upon the theatre of this world’s existence. 

            The instruments which God employs for the execution of his displeasure upon  any people whose sins cry to heaven for vengeance, are multiplied and various.  He has infinite resources at his command.  War, and pestilence and famine, and flame and flood, are all ministers that wait upon his beck.  He can, at his pleasure, open the windows of heaven, and break up the fountains of the great deep, to drown a sinful world.  He can cause the heavens to empty a deluge of fire upon the cities of the plain.  He can turn the waters of Egypt into blood, and send death into every habitation.  He can bring up locusts upon the land to eat up every green thing.  He can “make the heavens as brass, and the earth as iron.”  He can “smite with a consumption, and with a fever, and with an inflammation, and with an extreme burning, and with the sword, and with blasting, and with mildew.”  He can make the embattled thousands of Assyria, the rod of his anger to punish Israel; and he can send the angel of destruction into the camp of the Assyrians to “punish the stout heart of the king of Assyria, and the glory of his high looks,” by smiting with the silent withering touch of death, a hundred and eighty-five thousand of his armed warriors in a single night.⁴  That same God who did such wonders in ancient times, still lives; and still holds the same sway over the nations of the earth.  He still abhors sin; and still possesses infinite expedients by which to execute his displeasure upon the nations that cast away his fear, and trample upon his law.  God punishes nations now, as he did formerly, for their sins.  He punished Israel.  Though they were his peculiar people—though they were highly exalted above all other nations, he would not allow sin in them to go unrebuked.  When they cast his law behind them, he held them responsible not only as individuals, but as a nation.  He therefore brought upon them national judgments.  He therefore brought upon them national judgments.  He caused them to be carried away captive.  He allowed the crimson tide of war to roll over their land.  He sent multiplied judgments upon them.  He wrested from them their property, and subjected them to a foreign yoke.

            Now the position laid down in our text is, that in the infliction of these various judgments, God acts strictly in accordance with the principles of rectitude and justice.  The history of the Jews, as far as their case is concerned, most strikingly demonstrates this position.  This, at the time they observed the great national fast referred to in our text, they distinctly acknowledged.  Their language in their humble confession to Almighty God, was “Thou art just in all that is brought upon us; for thou hast done right, but we have done wickedly.”  God had in all respects acted as a righteous governor.  In all the inflictions of judgment upon the nation, he had proceeded no farther than was necessary to uphold his moral government, and to indicate his deep and changeless displeasure against sin.

            And what was affirmed of Jehovah in that case, may be affirmed of the divine administration in every case.  “Thou art just in all that is brought upon us; for thou hast done right, but we have done wickedly.”

            The great truth asserted in our text, would lose much of its force on this occasion, and the object for which we are assembled in a great measure be defeated, did I not in this connexion call your attention particularly to the undoubted fact, that God has been displeased with us as a nation.  During the last ten years he has rebuked us in a variety of ways, and spoken out his displeasure in tones that have been reverberated through the whole land.  How solemnly did he speak to this whole nation, when he permitted the Asiatic cholera to be wafted on the wings of the wind across the great deep, and bade it hang like a dark cloud of death over every city in our land!  Was not the voice of God in that pestilence!  With what awful tread it marched from place to place, filling all hearts with dismay, and sweeping thousands into eternity!  And when the moral impression of this awful visitation faded away like “the morning cloud and early dew,” Jehovah again spoke to us in flame and fire.  A mighty conflagration was kindled in the very centre of the great mart and metropolis of our land, which no human power could stay, till edifice after edifice, and block after block had fallen, and millions of property had been swept away in one fatal night.⁵ 

            Since that period, how often, how emphatically, how distinctly, has the Most High spoken to us by tempest,⁶ and by flood, on the sea and on the land!  Since that period, what unwonted scenes have been acted upon our great rivers, and bays, and along our coast!  Were not the three combined elements of flame, and frost, and flood, manifestly the ministers of the Lord, and acting in obedience to his word, when in a single night—in a single hour—they became the dread executioners to sweep hundreds from time to eternity; and in the sudden, awful, and bitter bereavement they occasioned, carried grief and mourning through the whole land!⁷

            But, more particularly, and no less distinctly, has God spoken in the silent, noiseless, but deadly blight that has fallen upon our national prosperity.  We were prosperous; we were heaping up wealth; thousands were enjoying perfect ease of circumstances a few years since.  A wonderful change, however, has come over the land.  The wheels of business have suddenly stopped.  The sinews of trade have been cut in sunder.  The affluent have become poor; men who considered themselves rich, have seen their property melt away like the dew of morning.  Individuals who supposed that they had a competence for life, have unexpectedly found poverty staring them in the face.  And all this has occurred in a time of peace—when no enemy had been among us to lay waste and destroy—when no civil commotion had occurred to shake the pillars of our government—when everything upon which national prosperity is supposed to depend, seemed auspicious—and at a period when the earth has not withheld her bounties, but has poured forth her productions with unwonted profusion.  Now, men may speculate, and theorize, and ascribe this to a variety of secondary causes; but if we are not atheists, if we do not shut out God altogether from the government of the world, we shall see His hand in this.  “Shall there be evil in a city,” or a land, “and the Lord hath not done it?”  Whatever may have been the proximate, political or natural causes that have brought these disastrous influences upon us, the hand of God has most assuredly been in it.  We can read our sin in our punishment.  “The Lord hath done that which he had devised.”⁸

            Men, however, did not choose to look at the matter under this aspect.  God’s hand was not seen.  They looked to secondary causes.  Still, however much, and however honestly they differed, in relation to the causes which they supposed had involved the nation in this wide-spread disaster, and borne it down to the very dust in depression; all were ready to concede the fact of the disastrous state in which our country was involved.  Various were the expedients devised to roll away this dark cloud of adversity.  But among all the propositions which the wise counselors suggested, how few thought or said—“Bring hither the ephod, and let us inquire of the Lord.”⁹  Men undertook to settle this matter themselves; some in one way, and some in another.  A large majority of the nation looked for relief in the elevation of a new and favourite candidate to the Presidential chair.  The nation was agitated to its very centre to compass his election.  He was proclaimed the successful candidate.  He was inducted into office with the accustomed ceremonies, amid assembled thousands of his countrymen.  Combining in his character every public and private virtue, all hearts began to be drawn towards him, and all eyes were fixed upon his movements.  Every step that he took, seemed to be directed with so much caution, and to proceed from such singleness of heart, that public expectation fastened still more intensely upon him every day, as the agent that was to extricate the nation from all its difficulties.  In all this, it is to be feared, men looked not to God, but to human instrumentality.  They forgot that it was for their sins that the nation’s prosperity had been cloven down.  And, therefore, in the midst of the people’s acclamations of triumph, while the laurels which were hung around their representative head at his inauguration, were still fresh and blooming, God stretched forth his hand, and suddenly touched him with death.  No one had anticipated such an event.  Of the hundreds that saw and heard him on the day of his inauguration, who thought of his dying before the expiration of his Presidential term?  “His eye was bright; his voice was clear; his step was firm; no part of his iron constitution gave signs of failing.”  But, one short month was scarcely completed, amid the cares and toils of government, and the news flew through the land—The President is dead!

            Now, the point to which we wish to call your attention, is, that in this—that in all that has been brought upon us—God has been rebuking us.  He has done right.  The pestilence, the flame, the flood, the commercial depression, the fall of our beloved President; all these are to be regarded as so many successive tokens of God’s displeasure against our national sins.

            Have we not national sins?  Can there be any question in relation to our having “done wickedly” as a nation?  No people under heaven ever enjoyed more civil liberty than we.  In soil, and climate, and laws, and advantages of education, and religious privileges, God has distinguished us above all the nations of the earth.  And yet, what wretched returns have we made to him for all this!  What sins and enormities disgrace our land!  Go through the whole Decalogue, and see what command has not been openly trampled in the dust by this nation.  Some of the Legislatures of our States have scoffingly rejected, and driven out with scorn from their legislative halls, all recognition of God and of his control.¹⁰  In how many instances have the legislators of our land, in the very temples of justice, trampled on all laws, human and divine, cherishing and uttering sentiments full of murder and blood!  How often have they set at defiance all decency; being notorious for drunkenness, and debauchery, and every evil work!  How often have they desecrated the Sabbath, and profaned the name of Jehovah, and scoffed at religion!  These things our rulers have but too frequently done.  And God has seen it all.  This, however, is only a small part of our national guilt.

            As in the days of one of Israel’s prophets, so now with great force and truth it may be said, “because of swearing, the land mourneth!”  Profanity is one of the crying sins of our land.  Go from one end of our country to the other, and all along our rail-roads, and canals, and navigable rivers, and national roads, you will hear one continued volley of profane oaths bursting upon your ears; and that, in utter contempt and defiance of that divine precept proclaimed from the burning top of Sinai, “Thou shall not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.”  We are not strangers to these things.  We can scarcely walk along through a single street of our city, without having our ears assailed with oaths, and curses, and awful profanity.  God sees all this, and keep a record of it in the book of his remembrance.

            Drunkenness is another sin of our land.  Notwithstanding all the laudable efforts that have been made to suppress intemperance, this sin, like a wide spreading pestilence, stalks abroad everywhere through the land; the foul minister of disease, and ruin, and death.  In a statistical calculation made recently by an intelligent clergyman of this city, from accurate data which he had collected, it was stated, that the amount paid annually in our country, for intoxicating drinks, exceeded the amount paid out to sustain the government, to sustain all our schools, to sustain the preaching of the gospel at home, to sustain our charitable institutions, and all our missionary operations: that a larger number of persons had been destroyed since the declaration of American Independence, by intemperate drinking, than had ever been called into the field to defend our country in all the several wars in which this nation has been engaged: and that at the present moment, so wide spreading is this evil, if you were to allow twelve hours for each day, there is on an average a drunkard committed to the grave, somewhere in the United States, every six minutes each day, from one end of the year to the other.  What an idea does this give us of the extent and frequency of this terrible sin of drunkenness!  And does not the Holy One of Israel see and abhor all this?  And will he not visit for these things?  What does he mean when he says to Israel, “Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of Ephraim, whose glorious beauty is a fading flower, which are the head of the fat valleys of them that are overcome with wine!  Behold, the Lord hath a mighty and strong one, which, as a tempest of hail, and a destroying storm, as a flood of mighty waters overflowing, shall cast down to the earth with the hand.  The crown of pride, the drunkards of Ephraim, shall be trodden under feet.”¹¹

            Licentiousness is another of our national sins.  Of all the sins that defile the earth, none can be more hateful to God than this!  And yet its extent, especially in our large towns and cities, is truly awful and appalling.  Were it proper or possible to give statistics here, what startling facts would be brought to light!  How many thousands and tens of thousands is this sin yearly hurrying forward to a ruined eternity!  And how many who wish to claim high respectability in society, and to be ranked even among the virtuous, give countenance and support to this vice!  O, what scenes of pollution does the all-seeing eye of God behold around us on every side!  The only wonder is, that having drunk so deep into Sodom’s sin, we have not, ere this, shared its fate.

            But I pass on to another point.  Among the causes which have operated to involve the nation in great and crying sins, and which have contributed to the utter shipwreck of private character, is the undue love of money, which has pervaded the whole mass of society, and spread its infection through all classes like a fearful pestilence.  Men everywhere, in all ranks and stations in society, were “in haste to be rich.”  The old paths of patient toil and honest industry were deserted, and new ways devised, by which the object of men’s pursuit could be more speedily attained.  Hence, those extensive schemes of speculation, and of wholesale gambling, which in their operation have fallen with suh disastrous influence upon the most safely vested interest in the country.  This mania for speculation, not only scattered the fortune of thousands to the winds, but exerted a most deleterious moral influence upon the public mind.  It seemed to crush and obliterate the few vestiges of moral sense that had remained in the human mind.  This was manifested in a variety of ways.  The whole country began speedily to put on a new aspect.  Singly, and in masses, men hesitated not to adopt new courses of action.  They no longer waited around the gates of justice, but, in many instances, trampled down into the dust all respect for law and authority.  The mob undertook to be umpire, and to settle all questions in a summary way, by an appeal to the excited passions of the worst portion of the community.  There is nothing that has stained the fair honour of our country with so foul a blot—nothing which has made us so much the sport and by-word of European nations—and nothing, we may believe, which has been more offensive in the eye of God, than the existence and toleration of mobs in this land.  Our own city has participated in the guilt, and been the theatre upon which one of these disgraceful scenes has been acted.¹²

            Alas, what elements of depravity are around us!  The workings of iniquity are seen under ten thousand varied manifestations.  It seems as though the crime and corruption of the old world had been transplanted here, and was springing up with increased vigour on our soil.

            Among the sins which are rife around us, we must not forget to mention that of systematic gambling.  How many rooms—how many dwellings in this city—are yearly rented for the express purpose of carrying on this nefarious business, and exclusively devoted to this object!  And how many individuals are there that calculate to get their livelihood by this system of deliberate robbery!¹³

            Another of the crying sins of our land, is the desecration of the Sabbath.  In the early history of this country, there was nothing that ore strikingly characterized those venerable men who cleared away the mighty forest, and planted the first germ of our nation, than their strict and conscientious observance of the Sabbath.  They proceeded upon the plain and obvious principle, that they were not to look for success in their various enterprises, unless they feared God and kept his commandments.  And to them the Most High acted on that rule of his government, declared by the man of God to Eli, “them that honour me, I will honour.”  While our fathers honoured God, the banner of prosperity waved over our country, and we were overshadowed with the blessings of the Most High.  But a new order of things for many years past has sprung up among us.  The ancient reverence for the Lord’s day has greatly declined.  Men have allowed their love of pleasure, and of gain, to urge them on to an utter disregard of the command so sacredly enjoined by the Almighty, remember the Sabbath-day and keep it holy.  Where can you now go, and not see crowds around you on every side, trampling this sacred injunction of Jehovah in the dust?  And alas, this sin is participated in by almost all classes in society!  This disregard of divine authority does not escape the omniscient eye!

            Again:  So common has dueling become in this country—that it may with great propriety be mentioned as one of our national sins.  How long, and by what distinguished names has this barbarous and heaven-daring sin been upheld and practiced in our country!  And even to this present moment, how many there are that would contend that it was their privilege to avenge any imaginary or real wrongs they have suffered—by the pistol, or the bowie-knife!

            What law of Jehovah has not been set at defiance by the nation?  Look around!  What acts of peculation, of embezzlement, of high-handed fraud, have been committed, not only by private individuals but by officers of public institutions—by those holding high official stations under government!  What dishonesties—what derelictions from the path of rectitude have been practiced—what forgeries have been committed—what developments of depravity—what tales of murder and bloodshed have come to our ears, or have been acted in our very streets!  And does not God see and abhor all these?

            I might here specify several other national sins that lift up a mighty voice to heaven, calling down upon us the wrath of God.—But I pass over these, and close by remarking, that the greatest of all our national sins is the neglect and contempt with which the gospel of Christ is treated; and the utter disregard which has been manifested to the various and multiplied rebukes which Jehovah hath put forth to recall and reclaim this nation.

            Though to all the people of this land, there has been proffered and proclaimed a free and full and everlasting salvation—a salvation purchased by the tears and toil and agony and death of the incarnate Son of God—these riches of infinite grace have been utterly neglected or despised!  Of the seventeen millions that form the entire mass of our nation, by far the great majority act and live just as they would if Christ had never come here on the errand of their redemption—had never poured out his precious blood for their salvation!  How few in all this land have truly received and truly submitted to the glorious gospel of the Son of God!  God’s greatest gift to man—that gift which filled all heaven with amazement—has been scorned and rejected by millions in this land.  This, I repeat it, is our greatest sin—the neglect or rejection of Him who came down from heaven for our redemption.

            And we have not only closed our ears to the sound of the gospel—but to the voice of God as he has been speaking in his various providences.  Who hath heard and regarded his voice?  Who, under these various divine rebukes which we have noticed, hath turned from his evil ways and humbled himself under the mighty hand of God!  And though God’s long-suffering and forbearance with us have been so distinguished—where shall we find any proper sense of gratitude at all commensurate with the extent of this goodness!  Indeed, how few, how very few in all this land have any adequate conception of the goodness of Jehovah to us as a nation!  What multitudes and multitudes have set him utterly at defiance!

            Now, when you consider the forgetfulness and neglect of God of which this nation has been guilty—when you consider what an immense amount of crime is spread over all this land, and how the depravity of the people has broken forth in every form;—and then, when you consider in connexion with this, that God claims to be the moral governor of this nation, and that he has determined to punish our national sins with national judgments, can you be surprised at what has befallen us?  Do you not rather wonder that he hath dealt so gently with us?  Who that reflects will not unite with Israel and say—“Thou art just in all that is brought upon us; for thou hast done right, but we have done wickedly?” 

            But we must hasten to a close.  Allow me to call your attention in conclusion, to three practical deductions.

            1.  It becomes us first of all to acknowledge the justice of God in his dealings with us.  He has chastened us.  We see his hand in the various calamities that have befallen us.  It was the Lord that took away our chief magistrate.  He took him away on account of the sins of the people.  This was JUST on the part of God.  We deserved it.  Our sins deserved it.  “Thou art just in all that is brought upon us; for thou hast done right, but we have done wickedly.”

            2.  At this time, we are especially called upon to confess and bewail our sins.  Even if we have not personally participated in those national sins to which we have alluded, yet as members of this great national compact, we all share in the guilt, and so we must in the punishment of our national sins.  We are bound therefore to confess them before God, and to mourn over them, and seek for pardon, that the divine displeasure shall no longer rest upon us as a nation.  How sad it is to remember, that the good old General who had fought for his country so many battles, and had now reached the evening of life, and was garnering up his hopes for heaven, and diffusing happiness by his presence in the domestic circle—had he been left in his happy home might have passed many more years on the earth—but when he was torn from that retirement, and invested with the robes of office, and placed at the head of the nation, then the nation’s sins came upon him, and he was cut down for their sake.  We trust he has gone to a world where sin is unknown.  But it becomes as none the less to humble ourselves before Almighty God, for those sins which called down this last heavy stroke upon our country.

            3.  And, finally, it becomes us on this occasion not only to acknowledge the justice of God in all that he has done—not only to confess our sins before the Lord, but to pray and labour for a universal reformation through the land.  What will all our confessions, and rebukes, and fasting, amount to, if we go on in sin just as we have hitherto done?  Listen to the divine word, “Is not this the fast I have chosen?  To loose the bands of wickedness; to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?  Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house?  When thou seest the naked, that thou over him, and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?”  In other words, we are to seek to bring about a great and extended reformation—to roll away that load of sin which presses down this nation, “as a cart is pressed down that is full of sheaves.”  For this we are to labour and pray without ceasing.  Let us begin with ourselves.  Let us embrace if we have hitherto neglected to do so, at once, the Lord Jesus as our Saviour.  Let us break off every sin, and seek to have the light of our example such as becometh the gospel of Christ.  Let us do wickedly no more, but live as enlightened, free, Christian men, ever remembering that it is “righteousness” alone that will save, preserve, and “exalt” our “nation.”

            Let this day be spent by all in prayer.  Let us seek the face of the Lord, not only in public but in private.  Humble prayer to God is mighty, and it is the duty to which we are now especially called.  Let us not fail to call upon God, with one accord, for his mercy and for his blessings.  If we—if all thus humble themselves before the Lord—thus call upon his name, we may hope that for the sake of our great Intercessor he will turn, and show mercy upon us, and continue to bless us in all our interests as a nation.

END.