Posted on 08/28/2014 3:42:43 PM PDT by betty boop
Indeed. And yet it is noteworthy that "progressive education" of the John Dewey school (learned from the Germans, from Hegel on up) is devoted to transforming the rising generation of students into "mindless cattle," by depriving them of all historical memory.
Instead, Dewey's education theory is all about shaping "citizens" into "productive members" of society. Ultimately, the citizen's main contribution to society obtains from their status as workers, and thus taxpayers. Keep them pacified, and collect the receipts. That's the entire interest of the State.
If there is no historical memory, then there's nothing to "conserve," going forward. Conservative thought has no basis whatever, once historical memory is expunged from society.
This sort of thing seems to work very well for the teachers' unions.
We live in a corrupt age. People seem no longer to care about Truth for its own sake.
Much peril comes to us, I suppose, by the sort of mental habits that support such a view of actual reality.
Thank you so very much, dearest sister in Christ, for sharing your thoughts on this matter.
I agree with the comments.
One thing that disturbs me about the lack of historical review, is the danger to miss object lessons from the past.
Our Founding Fathers developed a great set of Founding Documents. Why? What is their comparison to other such documents? Are ours better or worse?
What can be learned from Adolf Hitler and WWII? Is there anything to be learned?
It’s shocking that history is boiled down to nothing, so that ‘good citizenship’ (by today’s standards) trump anything else, even the ‘good citizenship’ standards from days gone by.
Are we a better society today? In some ways yes. In most ways, I’d say no.
Our children are being raised to merely like popular people, and make not comparative judgements for themselves.
Toss in moral relativism to boot, and we are exposed to a new generation that is totally unfit to defend themselves.
Government is those formal institutions and procedures that constitute the framework of legal authority. Politics is the way men use these instruments of power.
Ninety-nine percent of what we read at FR, listen to on talk radio and watch on Fox News involves politics. Which party is up/down, on offense/defense, etc. is the focus of politics, which as presented have absolutely nothing to do with our freedoms.
What makes Mark Levin's show unique are his scholarly trips into government. No other show visits government with such clarity as Levin. Now, attendant to his lectures on government, are always what it takes to regain our liberty.
First and foremost, the absolute first requirement to reestablish the American republic, is the return of the states to the senate. Free government is impossible without repeal of the 17th Amendment. I'm amazed that Levin's ideas are not even bounced around, and largely ignored across conservative media.
“Government is those.” Sorry. I call out the grammar police on myself.
Oh so very true, muir_redwoods!
Which tells us that the Article V amendment process is the very thing the progressivists want to avoid. Because there is no widespread pubic support for their policy prescription projects, they must do an end-run around Article V, to secure their illegitimate ends that the Constitution does not and cannot accommodate. And as rapidly as possible.
Thank you for drawing attention to this fundamental problem.
Oh, DEFINITELY it is most helpful! A wonderful resource for this discussion. Thank you so very much!
I particularly resonated to this insight:
In this formal compact THE PEOPLE specified the terms and conditions under which "ourselves and posterity," would be governed: granting some powers and withholding others, and organizing the powers granted with a view to preventing their misuse by the legislative, the executive, and the judicial branches alike. WE THE PEOPLE were authorized by natural right to do this, and were authorized to act on behalf of posterity only insofar as the rights of posterity to change those terms and conditions were respected. This was accomplished in Article V of the Constitution, the amending article, which prescribed the forms to be followed when exercising that power in the future.The Framers were so wise: They did not enchain future generations — the national Posterity — to the decisions made by their ancestors. That is precisely what Article V is all about.
Yet because we can say that the Constitution itself provides for its own modification if/as urged by changes in social and economic reality, by referring the urgent problem of how to deal with these effects to decisions made by the contemporaneous people who actually suffer from such causes, does this define what a "living constitution" is?
The so-called "living constitution" [LC] is a mere term of art designed to mask the fact that the people who comprise the body politic, under the LC regime, are not even consulted with respect to matters that affect them most deeply, most critically, most personally.
Yet to me, the most despicable thing about LC theory, is that it has absolutely no use for the very idea of "posterity."
The reason being: Any reflection regarding the claims of "posterity" must take into account the concept of Life as an intergenerational phenomenon that, from time to time, needs defending by those now living — the progenitors of the posterity that follows.
Just an observation here: The defenders of living constitution theory tend not to be defenders of the principle of life for its own sake. Indeed, the entire purpose of the former is to obliterate the claim that life is valuable, inviolate, for its own sake.
The Framers of the Constitution built for the ages in precisely this sense: They left all needful adaptations of the requirements of the original Constitution, should they hamper the progress of "posterity" due to changing conditions social, political, and economic, to the judgment of the very people themselves, so affected.
But this is the very thing the theorists of the "living constitution" are trying to obviate. In principle.
The "living constitution" is what "we" — I'm here referencing the "opinion" of credentialed experts, not "average" people — say it is. And if you have a different view or opinion of the matter, then you are patently WRONG from the get-go. You may also be immoral or even criminal to hold a point of view that differs from "expert opinion."
Gotta close for now. Thank you so very much for writing, and posting this excellent article!
As for the term, "living constitution," note the section, quoted below, from Dr. Walter Berns' essay about the outright dishonest manipulation of Marshall's words:
"The living Constitution school also claims to have a source more venerable than legal realism or Ronald Dworkin - justice John Marshall. A former president of the American Political Science Association argues that the idea of a " 'living Constitution'...can trace its lineage back to John Marshall's celebrated advice in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819): 'We must never forget that it is a Constitution we are expounding...intended to endure for ages to come, and consequently to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs' " The words quoted are certainly Marshall's but the opinion attributed to him is at odds with his well-known statements that, for example, the "principles" of the Constitution "are deemed fundamental [and] permanent" and, except by means of formal amendment, "unchangeable" (Marbury v. Madison). It is important to note that the discrepancy is not Marshall's; it is largely the consequence of the manner in which he is quoted - ellipses are used to join two statements separated by some eight pages in the original text. Marshall did not say that the Constitution should be adapted to the various crises of human affairs; he said that the powers of Congress are adaptable to meet those crises. The first statement appears in that part of his opinion where he is arguing that the Constitution cannot specify "all the subdivisions of which its great powers will admit;" if it attempted to do so, it would "partake of the prolixity of a legal code" (McCulloch v. Maryland), In the second statement, Marshall's subject is the legislative power, and specifically the power "to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution" the explicitly granted powers. "Neither Marshall nor any other prominent members of the founding generation can be 'appropriated' by the living Constitution school to support their erroneous views.Sadly, since the 1870's, those forces in America, first self-identifying as "liberals," and now, as "progressives," have used such ruses, semantic maneuvers, and other artful devices in their attempt to destroy the foundations of liberty laid out in the Declaration of Independence and incorporated into the provisions of our written Constitution."Marshall's and the Founders' concern was not to keep the Constitution in tune with the times but, rather, to keep the times to the extent possible, in tune with the Constitution. And that is why the Framers assigned to the judiciary the task of protecting the Constitution as written."
Theirs are not "progressive" ideas. They are, instead, regressive and tyrannical ideas, however they are expressed, and they must be confronted and overcome if liberty for individuals is to be restored.
I disagree with your characterization. In his memoirs Wilson stated that each age was dominated by one great thinker, and that in his age that thinker was Darwin. We tend to forget that Wilson was a racist who believed in the bogus “science” of eugenics. He was a social darwinist who believed that whites would triumph through racial superiority so that the white “race” would outlast all others. This was true of many “progressives.” The American Economic Society that features such luminaries as John R. Commons had no non-white members. Wilson re-segregated the government employment in Washington, much of which had been desegregated by TR. During Wilson’s administration there were bloody race riots in Washington, egged on, believe it or not by the Washington Post. To Wilson, in short, “progress” would lead to the triumph of the superior white “race.” His “progressivism” was a good deal less benign than that of may others. He believed in “separate but not equal.”
I was thinking of the Bill or Rights rather than the Constitution as a whole. I should’ve been clearer.
That's not true.
Most don't know every word of the Constitution.
I mean to see that change.
Study your Constitution like you study your bible. Failure to know either will cost you a lot in the long run.
/johnny
Thank you for sharing your insights, dear hosepipe!
History - factual history - is not taught. Instead, the kids are getting a repackaged revised history to make whatever point serves the ones who have political power. I hardly recognize the present "history" textbooks.
No matter how true a statement may be, e.g. the reference to Creator in the Declaration of Independence - if it threatens or offends or excludes (in this case, atheists) the political power brokers will see that it is not mentioned or is explained to be more politically 'correct.'
We do indeed live in a corrupt age.
Maranatha, Jesus!!!
And though I'm usually skeptical about how seriously politicians really take the ideas they spout, a politician who was a Poli Sci professor probably is more likely to be serious about the ideas he tosses around.
I also wouldn't argue that Wilson was the most racist of the 20th century presidents. He was far from as much of an exception or outlier in his own day than he would be today, though.
IMHO, We currently suffer from a "plague of the idiotes" — the "fools" and "men without chests" (as Chesterton put it), who for some strange reason believe they are "elected" to rule over the rest of us — for our own good.
Speaking of "chests," I've got something I really want to get off mine: My feeling of total revulsion for a man like Richard Dawkins, the famous "biologist" who once famously said that Darwinist theory enabled him to be "an intellectually-fulfilled atheist" — and then wrote a book called The God Delusion. Whatta jerk. He must have a very reduced, incurious intellect.
Which I gather is what one gets, when one expunges God from one's view of Reality.
If one banishes divine Spirit and Logos from one's understanding of Reality, this requires that one first must reject the findings of countless millennia of human experience and history. Any student of human culture can tell you that the deepest experience of human beings universally has always turned on the ultimate question: What is the relation of the human being with God?
So if you take God out of the picture — as Dawkins and his friends definitely do want to do — then how is man to understand himself, in terms of the most profound questions that face human beings? Questions involving: a man's truthful understanding of himself; his understanding of his social relations, and the obligations imposed on him as a member of a wider community than himself; questions of human suffering and of his own post-mortem destiny. Et al.
When Dawkins decided to expunge God (and ridicule those who love Him), practically the only strategy he left himself was to become a philosophical Utilitarian. He is joined in this by such luminaries as Peter Singer, who chairs the Ethics branch of the Philosophy department at Princeton (go figure); Daniel Dennett, Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies and Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University; et al.
The philosophy of "utility" was first proposed by David Ricardo (1772–1823), a British political economist, and was further elaborated by the British philosophers, the Mills, father and son. In our own day, by, e.g., Richard Riorty and that annoying Richard Dworkins person....
Taken altogether, these men represent the underlying worldview of Progressive thought in our own time.
Here's what I'm driving at: If one can persuade a man that he has no connection to the divine whatsoever — which connection, of course, is impossible if "God is dead" or merely a fiction of primitive, superstitious minds — then he ineluctably becomes a "cipher" that statisticians can manipulate. He joins the amorphous body of Mass Man. He loses all possibility of recognition of human dignity as a person, as a unique individual who possesses divinely-ordained natural rights.
The upshot is the rights he has must come only as grants from the State. In the course of time, the Mass Man, lacking any moral principle, will devolve into competing interest groups — which can be endlessly (it seems) manipulated to contend with one another for the available public spoils. Under such conditions, the fulmination of inter-group conflict is in the prime interest of the Progressive State.
It is a "divide and conquer" strategy, right down to the ground, that can only sow social disorder ad infinitum. And it seems to me no sane person who understood these developments would tolerate the total debauchment of our sociopolitical order that the Progressives are seeking to achieve.
Before closing, I need to say what Utilitarianism — a "school philosophy" — portends. My take is this: Since absent God, the human person cannot be sacred, and thus has no force as an "individual"; he is simply a member of a species. The only human thing about him is his participation as a member of such. The Utilitarian tells you that his mission is, under such conditions, the inculcation and promulgation of the new, "progressive," value: The greatest good for the greatest number.
But these freaking idiots have no concept of the Good. They lost all hope of a rational ground for the Good when they decided to "dump" God. (In their own minds, of course.) The fact of reality is: The "existence" of God is not subject to their personal recognition and/or validation. And by no means have any of these creeps ever shown any "concrete" evidence for the non-existence of God.
When even supposedly morally-neutral "science" can be corrupted like this, to show or "prove" something it can't even reach to, then we do, indeed, live in a thoroughly corrupt age. What really kills me is how few people nowadays seem aware, let alone concerned, about these developments.
Thank you ever so much, dearest sister in Christ, for writing, and for your penetrating observations!
From the "Library of Congress - Historical Collections" -
"African-American Pamphlets from the Daniel A. P. Murray Collection," 1820-1920; American Memory, Library of Congress
Washington, DC,
CENTENNIAL Thanksgiving Sermon, DELIVERED BY REV. B. W. ARNETT, B. D., AT ST. PAUL A. M. E. CHURCH, URBANA, OHIO 1876
Office of ST. PAUL A. M. E. CHURCH
Urbana, Ohio
Rev. B. W. ARNETT, B. D.
Dear Pastor
Will you please prepare your “Centennial Thanksgiving Sermon” for publication: together with whatever matter pertaining to the colored people of this city, you deem worth preserving.
We make this request of you, believing that the publication of such matter, will be of benefit to the present and succeeding generations.
Yours Respectfully,
J GAITER
J. DEMPCY
C. L, GANT
Trustees W. A. STILGASS, W. O. BOWLES
Urbana, O.
December 7th, 1876
J GAITER
J. DEMPCY
C. L, GANT
Trustees W. A. STILGASS, W. O. BOWLES
Yours is at hand, requesting me to prepare my "Centennial Thanksgiving Sermon" for publication. If you think that my words will be of any advantage to you, and those whom you have the honor of representing, I am willing to leave it to your judgement and will prepare my feeble effort for the press: hoping that, if there is nothing new in it, at least I may awaken some one to follow "the Moccasin tracks of Righteousness, and the Foot Prints of sin on the sands of time," and be better prepared for the duties they owe to themselves, their families, their country, and their God.
I am, yours,
BENJAMIN W. ARNETT
Programme!Centennial Thanksgiving ServicesST. PAUL A.M.E. CHURCH,URBANA, O.,2 o'clock P.M.,November 30th, A.D. 1876
"Blest be Tie that Binds"
1. PRAISE SERVICE
"Sweet hour of Prayer"
"Blow Ye the trumpet, blow!"
2. INVOCATIONHenry Adams, Local Preacher.
3. ANTHEM: "Herein is Love: - Choir.
4. SERMON: Text, Prov. xiv:34 - Rev. B.W. Arnett, B.D.
5. "Sing unto the Lord with Thanksgiving" - Choir
"Every Day and Hour"-
"Once for All"
6. PRAISE SERVICE - "Hold the Fort" "What Shall the Harvest Be?
7. BENEDICTION - Rev. S.D. Clayton.
CENTENNIAL THANKSGIVING SERMON
Text: "Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people." -Prov. xiv: 34
"These are words of wisdom, and were the expression of the wisest King that ever sat on a throne or ruled over a nation.
"In choosing principle to found a government on, you can only select one of two principles: Right or Wrong. All governments are founded on the one or the other, and we may fully understand what Righteousness means.
"The words Right and Wrong are relative terms, like light and darkness, good and evil, just and unjust; righteousness and sin stand in the same relation to the actions of men. The one implies strict obedience to all moral, civil, ecclesiastical or divine law; the other means the violation of either divine or human law. So when we speak of Righteousness, we have reference to the actions of men, or the principles of government. The text makes the announcement that one will exalt, and the other will\ bring reproach on the nation or people who practices the one or the other principle. Now we will call your attention to the application of these, principles, and then took at them philosophically and logically, and then we will try and find whether the testimony of the past will bear out the declaration of the Royal King of Israel.
"Civil government is what? It is not the family, yet family is the unit of States. There can be no government without families; we can have a family without government or without political government in all its ramifications. But every family has some kind of government.
"We understand a government to be a community organized under one form or system of government, and dwelling together under that form of government, in one territory, or in territories distinct from each other. Those who thus associate themselves together form the State or nation of people.
"Now, as to the Rule of conduct that shall characterize this state of government. There are only three rules by which men govern each other. We will call them the Iron Rule, the Silver Rule, and the Golden Rule. They read as follows:
1st. Iron Rule—As I would not that men should do unto me, do I even so to them;
2d. Silver Rule—As men do unto me, do I even so to them;
3d. Golden Rule—“As I would that men should do unto me, do I so unto them.”
"Now this constitutes the Political ethics, when applied to government of states. Just in proportion as the individual member of the State feels that he has an interest in the conduct of the whole, he is morally and ethically bound to consult the interest and wishes of the whole.
"In our country the wishes of the majority is expressed by the parties and the election of men to represent our principles, and then they crystallize these into law, and send to us, to bless or curse us, just in proportion as we have been wise in the election of our principles, policies and men.
"There are various opinions as to what constitutes the true basis of human government. Some contend that it rests on the will of God, and is based on Divine Right. Hobbs says, that, “whereas it is manifest that the measure of good and evil action is the Civil Law.” Again he says: “The Law of Right is the public conscience by which he hath already undertaken to be founded.” Thus he makes might Right, and establishes the divine right of Kings and governments, whether they are good or bad. We are opposed to this doctrine from beginning to end. We are of the opinion that every man is the judge of good and evil, and this was the force that set the reformation of the 16th century in motion, and which has made the protestant religion so acceptable to the masses and so powerful for good.
"Dr. Haven states in his Moral Philosophy, page 238: “That by the constitution of things and of human nature, God has settled it, that civil government of some sort, there shall be; but of what sort it shall be, He has left it to men themselves to decide; and this they do decide, each community or people for itself, by some sort of civil compact or government.”
"Then we assert that the best rule for human conduct is found in the Bible, “The Home Book of Heaven, and the School Book of Earth.”
"This gives us examples of government, which administered its law by each of the three rules named. It gives us the result of the experiment, and informs us that only Righteousness will exalt a nation, politically, morally, socially, religiously and intellectually. This was said, not by a beggar, nor a man unacquainted with government, but by the Royal King, Solomon, than whom there never was so wise a one sat on the throne of state.
"The condition of man, and the place he occupies in the great chain of creation, makes him the subject of law, physical, intellectual, civil and spiritual. Every thing animate and inanimate is subject to the universal law of creation, and when they violate them, they are punished and die, the innocent babe or the octogenarian. Laws are human or divine; they are rules from man or God; they are always good when from God; but are sometimes good and sometimes bad when made by man. Sometimes men are right, and at other times, they are radically wrong.
"Man is not alone subject to law in this world, nor in the one to come. From the smallest animalcule that sports in the crystal drop of the deep sea, to the tallest archangel that moves and burns in the presence of God, is subject to physical or spiritual law. The far reaching world the occupies space, and the arch-fiend of the pit, all move in harmony to the Divine will, which is law.
"The Knowledge of Law Essential:—Now that we find man chained by law to the earth, and moves, eats, sleeps and works by the same, we should know what is law? what is human? what is Divine? that we may obey the one without questioning it, and that we may examine the other to see if right or wrong; for sometimes the individual dare not agree with human law, because they are not always right, and ought not to be obeyed, or if obeyed only until they can be repealed or abrogated.
"The conflict of right and wrong is not confined to the human heart, but found in the laws and customs of men. They find themselves incorporated into the fundamental law of nations. In the declaration of rights and wrongs, they are often sanctioned by the Legislators formulating them, and spreading them on the Statute book. They are seen in the judicial decision of the Supreme Court, in the dissension of the minority from the majority. But though wrong may be written in the constitution, and affirmed by the judicial decision of a thousand courts, it will not be right. It may be law, but law is not always right.
"Man being a dependent creature, he is subject to the laws of his creator. “The will of his maker is called the law of nature. “St Paul in speaking of the relation of man and God, says: “For in Him we live, and move, and have our being.”
"When God made man, and created matter, he endowed matter with seven certain principles or properties: I, impenetrability; 2, extension; 3, figure; 4, divisibility; 5, indestructibility 6, inertia; 7, attraction.
"Man was made, a mortal from an immortal mold, and when he came from the plastic hand of his maker, he was a compound being, having body and soul; the body was formed out of the dust of the earth, with the senses of feeling, tasting, smelling, hearing and seeing; the avenues of his knowledge of the objective world. The soul was formed rational of a pure spiritual nature, having understanding, affections and will.
"The whole was given a path in which to perambulate; the one was subject to the general laws, the other was subject to the necessary laws of thought, and the soul was subject to special commands from Heaven. The will was free to choose between the right and wrong; righteousness and sin was set before them; the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the tree of life, were side by side then, as now; they were planted by the same Divine hand, and watered by the same dews, and received the same sun light. But his maker made him to understand that though he was free to partake of the one, or reject the other, that he was responsible for his choice; and that the application of the will of the Creator to supplying the wants of man was to be the work of man, and not God. So that from then until now, man has chosen his own form of government, based on obedience to God, or in unbelief or doubt in the truth of the commands of the Almighty; his affections have been on earth or heaven: on God or self; for the good or evil of man; the fruit has sometimes been bitter and sour, at other times times mild and pleasant; but always sweet, when the tree was planted in righteousness. Governments were always good, when founded in inimitable principle of right and justice from man to man. If man could have lived alone, he would not have needed any government; but being a social being, he will, and must have society; then if society, to have harmony, there must be rules of action expressed or understood; the wants of our nature make it imperative, and compel us to pursue this course, in order that our wants may be supplied, for we can not live alone and be happy; no happiness in loneliness or solitude, says humanity with almost a unanimous voice. The inimitable principles of truth and justice are written on the heart of humanity by the divine pen, and it is so legible that it may, and is read in the dim light of intuition, and explained by stammering tongue—reason.
"The wise author of our being so constructed our constitution, or that of humanity, that we need no other prompter to inquire into and pursue the principle of justice, than our own self love and self interest.
"The principle of eternal justice is inseparably joined in the bend of holy wedlock to our individual happiness; “to have and to hold, from this day, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part, according to God's holy ordinance.” It is so that when we fail in the one the other fails on us.
"So we say, that those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder in church, nor in state, nor in the family, nor in society.
"This brings us to ethics, which is the science of human duty, the body of rules of duty derived from science; a particular system of principles and rules concerning duty, whether true or false; rules of practice in respect to a single class of human actions, as political or social ethics.
"Ethics in the art of government; it is the application of principles to human action. Then as man will not, or can not, live alone, he must have some laws, and when he has a law, there must be some one to see that the law is carried out, and that every body living under the law obeys the same. There must be some one to execute the will of the people, as embodied in the law and as understood by the jurisprudence of the country. The human family could not live as one great family, nor as one great society, and be happy, for the good of one is not always the good of another; the conditions physically considered are not the same; then the moral, social and intellectual wants are not always in harmony.
"So we find mankind divided into numerous and various governments, all intended to benefit man; some the few and others the many.
"The most common forms of government are the patriarchal; when the head of the family is the source of law and order, he is the legislature and fills the judicial chair, and then sees that his own will is executed by all. This was the first form of government among men. It was suited to them when the earth was young and the race was in its infancy.
"Monarchy Absolute":—The power is in the hands of one; His will is law. The monarch is at once executive and law-maker, and, if he pleases, judge also; that is, those who may be nominally entrusted with the functions of legislative and judicial power are so at his pleasure and by his appointment, and therefore under his complete control; to his power there is no constitutional check or restraint.
"Limited Monarchy:—This power of the emperor or king is modified and held in check by other departments of the government, and by constitutional restraints, which affix certain limits, beyond which he may not go.
"The legislative is kept distinct from the judiciary, in its prerogatives and powers, while the functions of the executive are well guarded and defined.
"The Aristocracy:—Where a select body, sharing among themselves the powers and prerogatives of the government, or exercise them in their collective capacity, filling their own vacancies or coming into place by inheritance, or by the acquisition of certain titles, rank or possessions.
"Pure Democracy:—The people at large make laws for themselves in assemblies of the whole or by division and tribes; the will of the people is law, with no intervening instrumentality to give expression or validity.
"Republican Democracy:—Where the whole people delegate their power to representatives, who represent them, the real power still lying in the hands of the people, or the many, nevertheless, who choose only such persons as they please, and by this they can change or revoke that power at certain and given times or periods.
We have an illustrious example of the Republic in our own beloved government. It stands as the monument to the progress of the human family, the representative of the advancement of knowledge in the science of human governments; it is the acme, the experience of the ages, the light of the past in a focalized state.
"Ours is the beginning of the political millennium. The divine hand is seen in the establishment of our Republic. In its organization the hand of Providence can be seen, and the foot prints of God are found throughout all of its history. It was the theatre, where the human family was to try its hand at self-government; where the rights of all were to be respected; “to be a government of the people, by the people and for the people.” Sin had made the governments of the Old World a reproach to any people, and men were ashamed of their governments, and the human family was looking for a land where divine right of king to rule was not the law, nor the belief of the many.
"The political, social, educational and religious rights of the people were at the mercy of the most absolute depots, and tyranny was the ruling method of government; the power of oppression and wrong were in an unhallowed alliance with each other, to support the tottering, crumbling thrones from destruction by the truth and justice of God.
"The Testimony of the Past.—We now invite you to come with us and assist in rolling back the wheels of thought for thirty centuries; or let us ascend the renowned car of universal history and ride back with imagination along the stream of Time and take antiquity by the hand, and walk with him amid the lofty pyramids of Egypt, and view its congregated halls sparkling with diamonds and glittering with gems and gold; parambulate the spacious temples of Greece, and gaze upon the harping hosts as they lift on high the Doric columns of the Roman Capitol, pore over her Sibylline oracles, and converse with her kings, her peasants, and her beggars; and the united voice will fill your chariot and all will say, that “Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.”
"Get out of your chariot and step with us among the ruins of the ancient city of Nineveh; walk along her banks and view the river and see the roads where the flying car of Jehu scared the wild beasts or affrighted man, or where the mighty Nimrod drove the wild beasts before him like chaff in the wind. But we will not find all there. Where is the proud city Who heard the cry of the prophet of the Lord, as he went from street to street crying, “Yet forty days and Nineveh will be destroyed?”
"Her kings are sleeping the sleep that knoweth no waking; the busy populace are buried in the ruins, or sleep in the sister city of the dead. Two dead cities, one died from sin, the other from wrong; the one died a natural, the other a political death. Both are beyond the hope of a general resurrection until Jubal's trump shall sound, and call all the nations that forgot God in their day and generation.
"The wickedness of the one and the crimes of the other has brought ruin on the race and that proud city could not stand, when violating the laws of God.
This city was in the center of Assyria Empire. [2 Kings xix. 36 Isaiah xxxvii. 37. Jonah iv. 11.]
Nahum the prophet says [iii. chap. 1 verse.]. “Woe to the bloody city! it is all full of lies and robbery; the prey departeth not.”
"Zephaniah predicts the destruction of Nineveh and the kingdom of which it was the capital. It was finally destroyed by Cyaxares, King of Media, and Nabopolassar, king of Babylon, in the seventh century B. C. The ruins of this once proud city tells us that sin is as sure death to a city as to an individual.
"Babylon, great city, where is she to-day! Let us go to the place and there amid the ruins see if we can find something to help us in an investigation of the truth of history, as to what is the true glory of a nation.
"The word is from the Greek, and means “The Gate of God-il,” “The Gate of God.” A good name and ought to be significant of the position of the people who dwelt in the city.
"The Greatness of the City.—It was the largest and the most magnificent city of the ancient world. It was built in the form of a square upon both sides of the Euphrates, surrounded by a populous suburb, interspersed among fields and gardens, the whole surrounded by a deep moat, and enclosed within a vast system of double walls, measuring, according to the least estimate, forty miles, or ten miles each way, eighty-five feet thick, and seventy-five to three hundred feet high. The wall was pierced with a hundred brazen gates, twenty-five on each side, from which great streets led crossing each other at right angles, thus cutting the whole area into six hundred and twenty-five square blocks.
"The banks of the river were lined with as many quays as streets. Boats were always ready to convey passengers across. There was a bridge 3,000 feet long across the river, besides there was also a tunnel 15 feet wide and 12 feet high, arched, through which the multitude could pass from one side to the other of the city.
"There were two remarkable buildings in the city, the Temple Belus and King's Palace. It is said that the largest palace of the king was magnificently enclosed by a circuit of seven miles of walls, with high towers. The second wall was said to be three hundred feet high, all of varied colored bricks. The Temple Belus arose from a base or foundation a quarter of a mile in length and breadth. It was pyramidal in form, and contained eight apartments; on the top stood a large shrine, a golden table on which the God was supposed to dwell. There was the hanging garden, in which not only flowers grew, but large trees. This was the city of Babylon in the days of its glory and power.
"The empire which was founded in the year 625 B. C., by Nebuchadnezzar, was about 1,400 miles, from east to west, in length. It varied from 100 to 280 miles in breadth, and had an area of 250,000 square miles, or was about the size of Austria.
"It only lasted about 88 years, and in the midst of its glory and power the voice of the prophet of the Lord was heard: “And it shall come to pass, when seventy years are accomplished, that I will punish the king of Babylon, and that nation, saith the Lord, for their iniquity, and the land of the Chaldeans, and will make it perpetual desolations.” [Jer. xxv. 12.] Then we remember the handwriting on the wall of this city:“MENE,MENE, TEKEL,UPHARSIN.”“God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished .”“Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.”“Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.” [Daniel v. 25, 26, 27.]
"Cyrus, king of Persia, marched down in the bed of the river, and took the city while the king and his subjects were drunk and indulging in an impious religious feast.
The Babylonish empire was no more; the sun of the king set to rise no more. The golden city was destined to be the home of wild beasts instead of men; and so complete was the prophesy, that the whole city was buried so deep that for centuries the exact spot of its grave was not known. This is one of the testimonies that sin is a reproach to any people, but Righteousness exalteth a nation.
The Medes were a great people, but they were not the best people in the world; they had a powerful organization, but it was not built on the immutable principles of “justice to all and equality for all.”
Their territorial possessions were as large as the united kingdoms of Great Britain, France, Portugal and Spain—500,000 square miles—reaching from the Rhages and Canaan desert on the east, to the River Hayls on the west, a distance of 1,300 miles; or the one side was washed by the waters of the Black and Caspian seas, the other by the Persian gulf. How broad the field for this great people to play their part in the drama of nations!
She flourished for a little season, but she was built on a sandy foundation; she was not built on the rock; she was more of the violator of law than the observer of the commands of High Heaven.
"She was weak for the want of a strong central power. It was the uniting of a number of petty kingdoms, each trying to retain as much power as possible, and giving as little as possible to the central force.
There was no principle that bound them in the bonds of union. In union there is strength, but we are only strong when in the right, when justice and equity are the bonds [Text not seen] us; then we are strong, for God is with us and for us. Her downfall was hastened by the corruption of her manner and laws. The religion of the Medes, that is, their original religion, for they had more than one in their history, was the one, simple as appears to us in the Zanda Vesta.
"Its peculiar characteristic was dualism, the belief in the existence of two opposite principles of good and evil, nearly if not on a par with each other. Ormuzd and Ahriman were both self-caused and self-existent, both indestructible, both potent to work their will.
"Besides Ormuzd, the Aryans worshiped the sun and moon under the names of Mithra and Homa.
"The emigration of the Medes brought them in contact with other nations, and they soon learned to bend the knee to a false God or other Gods. They bowed at the altars of their subjects, and then we find the conquerors were conquered. The victors became the victims, and they who shouted victory were soon bound with chains of worship, stronger than any other, for political purposes. So we find the Medes worshiping the Gods of the Aryans; the one conquered the government, body and power, the other the affection and religious sentiment of the head and heart.
"The Bible in speaking of this nation, tells us why they were to be destroyed. They were to reap the whirlwind they had sown to the wind.
"I refer you to 2d Kings, xvii, 6; Isaiah xiii, 17; xxi, 2; Jeremiah xxi, 28, xxv, 25; Jeremiah xxviii, 31; Ezra v, 2-5.
"Esther, the patriotic Jewish Queen, was held in great favor at the Court of the Medes, and by her devotion to her race, she saved them and brought joy to many a heart. But with all the great advantages of this nation or government, it was not founded on the lasting principles, therefore it could not stand. The laws were not all just ones; some of them were opposed to the laws of nature, and to the revealed will of God.
"Polygamy was enforced by law; thus the laws struck a blow at the foundations of the state and society. Thus not only social, but organic foundations of the state and society. Thus not only social, but organic law was violated, and the fountain of life was corrupted; the blood of the nation polluted, and the strength of the coming generation was bartered away for momentary pleasure. It in fact, banished virtue from the fire-side, and enthroned vice at the gateway of posterity.
"How could that people prosper, or how expect the blessings of a just God?
"They forsook the laws of sobriety, and quit the path of the just; so we find them in a few years with—what? Ruined temples; empty halls; desolate fields; broken and razed walls; scattered army; captive King, and subjugated people, and lost empire; and amid the ranks of this powerful empire, we can find written on the broken chains and scattered materials, that “sin is a reproach to any people;“ written with scalding tears; painted with the blood of the slain millions; “Sin is a reproach to any people.” See it! See it and read it, ye coming generations!As once in virtue, so in vice extreme,This, almost universal fabric yielded love,Before ambition still; and thundering down,At last, beneath its ruins crushed a world.— Thompson
"CARTHAGE.The Carthagenians were a nation renowned in antiquity for their government, manners, laws, customs, languages, religion, and their application to commerce and trade. Their language was that spoken by the Canaanites and the Israelites. “It was the language of Canaan,” or it was similar thereto, so much so that the names in the language of one nation found synonym in the language of the other, and the general significations were the same. The spirit of religion was so closely connected with them, that it was attached to most of great men's names. Hannibal, signifies “The Lord has been gracious to me, on Baal.” Astrabal, “The Lord will be our succor.” The nation was so pre-eminently religious that they taught that every enterprise must, or ought to begin and end with the worship of God.
"Hamilcar, the father of the great Hannibal, when about to enter Spain, offered sacrifices to the Gods. And when his son, Hannibal, in after years, marched against the imperial city of Rome, he went as far as Cadiz, to pay his vows to the god Hercules, and to renew them to him providing he would give him success in his design against the city of power and iniquity. When the armies of the Carthagenians had signally triumphed over the Roman forces, and when Hannibal sent word home of the triumph at Canea, he recommended that when the joyful intelligence was received by his friends and countrymen at home, that they should at once offer thanks to the immortal Gods. And when the messengers arrived in the city, and the news was announced, the temples were thrown open, and the whole city offered thanks to the Gods and sang the praise of the great general.
"Thus we see that in that remote day, men thought it not unmanly to thank God for His blessings to them and their state. The religious sentiment ran through the whole nation, from the King on his throne, to the beggar in the street; they let all the inhabitants know that they trusted in God, and were willing that all should know that they were dependent on the Gods for their success in peace and war; in agriculture and commerce; in education and religion. Every ship that put to sea, was under the protection of the God of the sea; the farmer sowed his seed in the times and signs of the moon; everywhere there was a religious trust among the people and in the state. There was enough religion in this government: such as it was; Gods enough but not the right one. The trouble was they had too many Gods; their sentiments were right, but practice was wrong; men chose their professions only after they had consulted the Gods. There were two Gods to whom they paid particular attention; the Goddess Celestes, or Uranium, the moon: whom they consulted in times of danger or calamity, or in times of drought, that they might have rain.
"Jeremiah the Prophet, says of this Goddess, [chap vii 18:] “This Goddess was called the Queen of Heaven; was held in great esteem by the Jewish women; that they address their vows; brunt incense; poured out drink offerings, and made cakes with their own hands: and from whom they boasted their having received all manner of blessings, whilst they regularly paid her their worship; whereas since they had failed in it, they had been oppressed with misfortunes of every kind.”
"The general sentiment of veneration for the religious institutions, was one of the characteristics of this nation, and we are called to admire them for their devotion, to what they thought right; and the persistency with which they held on to their Gods. This religion was not the one to call forth the blessings of the God of heaven; the thought was right, but action wrong; they aimed in the right direction, but too low; they looked to the heavens, but the terrestrial, instead of the celestial; they worshipped the Queen, instead of the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords.” They were wrong in the way they thought to call the benedictions of the Most High down; their sacrifices was truly costly, but not of the right kind; they offered their own loved ones, fathers, mothers, children and wives to their deities. Thus their righteousness was sin; their sacrifices were murder; and the libations were a stench in the nostrils of the Almighty.
"In this government we have the strange anomaly of the combination of strength with weakness; truth and error side by side; wrong and right at the same altar; the foundation of their government was right, but the superstruction they built on it was like the Apostle Paul said, [1st Corinthians, iii chapter, 9-15
“For we are labourers together with God; ye are God's husbandry, ye are God's building.
"'According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise masterbuilder, I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon.
“For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
“Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble;
“Every man's work shall be made manifest; for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire, and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is.
“If any man's work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward.
“If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.”
"Again we are called upon to witness a government with the proper foundation principles, but whose practices are far from what it ought to be.
"The cry of old men and frail women, as they are brought to the sacrificial altar of this great and otherwise strong nation, comes to us over the waste of years; and with dismal and heart-breaking groans, say to us, that “Sin is a reproach to any people.” This nation was strong enough to be good; it was good enough to be wise; it was old enough to be wise; but not wise enough to serve the true and living God, or to learn by the light of reason, “that righteousness exalteth a nation,” and “that sin is a reproach to any people.”
"RISE AND FALL OF ROME.Full in the center of these wondrous works,The pride of earth, Rome in her glory see.— Thompson
"The Roman Empire was one of the most distinguished of all the governments of the past; her glory and power were the themes for bards, and poets wove garlands of praise, and hymns of triumph were sung. The Roman eagle seized“The double prey, and proudly perched on high;And here a thousand years he plumed his wing,Till from his lofty eyry, tempest tossed.And impotent through age, head-long he plunged,While nations shuddered as they saw him fall.”We want to interrogate this great nation in its rise and fall, about the truthfulness of the text; what we may learn from its life, works and death; whether a nation of sin can succeed, or whether it is best to do “Right though the heavens fall.” We are aware that it was said of her by Byron:Italia! Italia! thou who hastThe fatal gift of beauty, which becameA funeral dower of present woes and past,On thy sweet brow is sorrow placed by shame,And annals traced in characters of flame.
"The founding of the city is one that will baffle the most astute student of history; it is shrouded in mystery. But it is supposed that the eternal city was formed by the uniting of the seven hills, where the Queen of the Earth had her throne, the one on the Palantine hill gave name to all the rest. Now, whether it received its name from Romulus, or whether he got his from the city, is a question that I care not solve, or try to. It is enough for you and I to know, that this city was the germ of the greatest Empire the world ever saw.“See Romulus, the great, born to restoreThe crown that once his injured grandsire wore;This prince a prestige of our blood shall bear,And like his sire, in arms, he shall appear.”— Dryden.
"The Roman nation was not only very distinguished for its military power and intellectual force, and for legal jurisprudence, but has been the academy of the civilized world. We are indebted to the Grecians for the finest specimens of various arts, and the most elegant models of literature, and also for a large amount of instruction in politics, derived from their institutions and experience. But from the Romans, we are indebted for Civil Law, which is the basis of all laws throughout Christendom. The rudiments of this wonderful code were in existence before the Roman Empire was born, or the Queen of the Seven Hills was brought forth from the womb of the ages.
"“This distinguished people were unjust to everybody,” says one, in his time, “but they were scrupulously just to themselves.” The laws which relate to families, relationship, marriages, testimonies, succession, to intestate ownership, grew into a complete system under the fostering care of this people, and from that day until now, they have lighted up the path of pilgrim man, and thrown harmony into the transactions of men, and locked the doors of contention. This government was just within, but unjust without—they worked by the Golden Rule to Romans, and Iron Rule to others.
The oath that this nation took was their sacrament, one which they kept with a religious sacredcy. They were religious in all of their transactions:“First to the Gods, 'tis fitting to prepareThe due libation, and solemn prayer;For all mankind alike require their grace,All born to want; a miserable race.”
"The duties of Rome were derived from the religious institutions of surrounding tribes, but the religion and ceremonies of the Tuscans was the pattern from which the system of Roman religion was constructed. It had all the glories and mystery of the mythology of the east. Their Gods were objects of fear, rather than of love, and were supposed to turn away threatening danger rather than to give the blessings of life.
"Their religion formed a part of all civil government; every public act, whether of election or legislation, had certain forms, and was sanctioned by the higher authority. Every public assembly was opened by the magistrates after taking the auguries of the Gods. Thus this nation had the principle of righteousness in them, in their civil laws to themselves, in war to their Gods, in peace to their superstition.
"Though giving civil law to all coming time, yet her own throne was sold to the highest bidder, and the halls of her courts were the scenes of blood and carnage; her Emperors sat on the throne as on beds of thorns, and their crowns were like targets, for which ambition threw its fiery darts, or crime was want to enter into leagues of assassination. But the throne crumbled beneath her king, the armies were vanquished by the Goths and Hunns; the wings of the golden eagle, which had spread his imperial wings from the seas to the uttermost parts of the earth, were clipped by the combined powers of her foes, and the intestine turmoils of her patricians and plebeians; the one pulling down, the other trying to hold the weak, and the weak were trying to break loose from their oppressors. The same old fight of justice with injustice, right and wrong, oppression and freedom, all here were in conflict. Thus we are here to say: after looking at the means used to carry out the very good principle subscribed to by this nation, we can only see the works of this nation in the light of the burning cities, and as we read the triumphs of her armies, our ears are saluted with the wail of weeping widows, and our joy is drowned in the orphan's tears, and the sea of blood that run at our feet, will inform us that sin is a reproach to any people, and the verdict of universal history is, that sin is a reproach to any people. Rome, with all her power, was a nation of corruption, and in the height of her power, she was the most sinful.
"Mr. Mesheim in his "Three Centuries of Christianity," says of the of the Roman Government: 'were we to form our judgment of the Roman government from the principles of its constitution, or the nature of its law, we must consider it as mild and moderate.' But the promise of an equitable government was lost by the avarice and rapacity, and dishonesty of the collectors of the revenues of the government. The cupidity of the people and their general desire to excitements enabled them to be led about by designing men, and made them an easy prey to the whims of the designing, so that to-day they would make an oath that they would break to-morrow; for the forces that makes men morally strong, were not in them; they thought more of success than the triumph of right.” The Roman forum is now silent; the colosseum is in ruins; the amphitheater is no longer the scene of merriment; the arena of wild beasts, and gladiators are all in the silent past, and slumber beneath the green sod of the land of poetry, song and the cradle of learning, the home of the sculptor, and the theater where some of the great battles of human freedom were fought; and amid the ruins of this once favoured land, we learn “That righteousness exalted a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people,” and in broken columns read it; in vacant halls hear the dismal sound; in empty streets hear the echo; in wasted fields, amid the burning sands; hear it in the rustling leaves, and see it painted on the evening sky, “That sin is a reproach to any people, but righteousness exalteth a nation.” The nation that followeth the grand principle of right will stand, and the one that disregards it must fall.
"The ruin of the Roman Empire is a strong testimony to the asseveration of the sacred writer, that there is only one way for a nation or an individual to find favor with God, and perpetuate its existence and increase its usefulness—that is by doing right; only one road to success—that the road to truth and virtue, the same in the one as the other. Then the nation that would succeed must do right in the sight of God and men. The line of triumph over the things of this world, was the same way tried by the son of Man in his triumph from the manger to the cross—a final triumph, a glorious success. Then from Golgotha to the city of the dead where on the pavements of the grave he triumphed over the powers of death, hell and the grave, and gave light to the cerements of the tomb, and lighted up the highway to the skies, and opened the new way for those who by faith are living to live again on that throne, “where the chariot of death has never rolled its ponderous wheels on the sun-lighted hill of the glory-land.”
"THE TRIUMPH OF THEOCRACY OVER MONARCHY —RIGHTEOUSNESS AND SIX IN BATTLE—THE TRIUMPH OF THE GOOD OVER THE BAD. We now come to the testimony inside of the temple of the most high. We now want to follow the church of hope, and the fiery pillar of protection, and see what righteousness will do for a nation of people. We have seen what sin was to the nation of the past; we want to see what the testimony on the other side is, what to be learned from this nation of truth and righteousness.
"We now call your attention to a nation whose king was God, and the hall of legislation was Mount of Sinai. Her council chamber was in the sky; her army was composed of the warring elements -wind, fire and water; her generals were the flaming angels of the celestial host; her shield the collected vapor, or the shining and burning clouds; her commissary was in the granary of the great “I AM,” and who could call the manna from the sky, or quail from the wilderness, or bring water from the rocks, and sweeten Maribah's bitter stream. Being thus blessed, we will follow this people, and see somewhat of their ways. We will follow their footprints, though at times they were sore-footed. Trusting in God, their garments waxed not old, nor did they want without being supplied. When they were in the path of duty, and observed the commands of God, they were so strong that no obstacle was sufficient to stop their onward march; no combination of kings was sufficient to prevent their going whithersoever the Lord directed them. But when disobedient, they fled like chaff before the wind; their sons were captured, their daughters were slain by the sword of the heathen; their city was destroyed, and the whole nation led captives to a strange land.“Afflicted Israel shall sit weeping down,Fast by the streams where Babel's waters run;Their harps upon the neighboring willows hung,Nor joyous hymn encouraging their tongue;Nor cheerful dance their feet, with toil oppressed.Their wearied limbs aspiring but to rest.—Prior.
"The conflict of Israel with the Egyptians, was long and severe, but the triumph of Israel was complete. It will give us a parallel case of righteousness and sin, or the warfare of right and wrong with faith and reason, Pharaoh and Moses, God and the devil. The one righteous and slaves; the sinful and free was Egypt. The masters were sinful; the slaves were righteous. One the subjects, and yet free; the other masters, but slaves, arrogance, pride, hate and power on their side; humility, faith, love and obedience on the other side. The sons of God and children of the devil; the one self-educated; the other by God. The one permanent: the other for only a season. As was said of Moses. [Hebrews xi, 23.]
"The armies of the two nations were brought into close contact. On the banners of one was written Wrong, and on the other Right; one in letters of gold and living light; the other in salt tears that were forced from the bleeding hearts of the sorrowing children of Jacob. But the truth had gone forth “That righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.” Israel believed and held on to the promise of God, and toiled on in hope of the coming rest. They wept, and in sorrow went to their increased tasks. Though afflicted, they trusted and waited—not forsaking their God. They held on to the faith of Jacob their father, and contended with their oppositions, and declaring that they would not let God go for the enemy. They worked and prayed, and prayed and worked, and their petitions went up to the throne of God by reason of their bondage. A deliverer was wanted. He came in the person of Moses, who was trained by the Great God in the school of Providence, for the work. The clouds hung low and dark over the little settlement of Goshen, and like moving battalions of war, their hardships moved and counter-moved before them. The waters were sour and bitter; hope, pain and despair was alternating in their hearts. But their hope grew, and finally ripened into confidence and trust, and trust blossomed into reliance, and they combined bore the fruit of a strong and stable faith in God. The representative government of sin for a season seemed to triumph. God sent his representative to the court of sin and Pharaoh. The message was, “Go in and speak unto Pharaoh, King of Egypt, that he let the children of Israel go out of his land.” But “who is the Lord that I should obey his voice? Wants to know who the great “I am” was! Was this ignorance, arrogance, or impudence in the king. Surely his answer fully justified the vengeance which followed upon the heels of this impious language. Was it ignorance or arrogance in this man? Did he know God? If he knew the Gods of Egypt, certainly he ought to have known something of this “Great I Am.” I am unable to account for it on the score of ignorance, for he had eyes, and all he had to do was to open them, and each star, each rolling sphere, that nightly gleamed in the Egyptian sky, spoke eloquently of the great Author of their being. The fragrant flowers, the emerald carpet on the floor of nature, the falling dews, the blaze and brilliancy of the golden sun, as he marched up the mountain of the sky; the hush of the grey twilight, and the calm and stillness of the night; the murmur of the silver waters of the Nile as it moved on in majesty to the bosom of the restless sea the rising of the mountains in their pride, and leaning their frosted heads on the blue ether, making stairways to the clouds; these scenes alone should have been sufficient to awaken in his soul the thought of the great Supreme; the first cause; or God with us. Yes, thus the ruler of millions of men and women, presumes not to know God; not to know the God of the heavens and earth. He makes this house of bondage the scenes of his cruelty, and the children of God were sorely oppressed by his heel. In no government of this world do we find so much oppression. New schemes of torture were invented, and the claims of justice were not heard, and the voice of pity was drowned in the wild shout for more labor! More brick!
"It is often thought that the Bible contradicts itself, and that it shows that the wicked have flourished and the righteous have pined away and died. That wicked men have had great influence with the children of men, we will not deny, but we do affirm that while the wicked have flourished for a season, they have in the end been the losers, and proved the truthfulness of the text. Now in the case before us, if we will only follow the two nations in their career and final destiny, we will come to the wise conclusion that God always will and does keep his promises, when made, whether to a man or a nation. We may see the banner of the Egyptians waving in triumph. But be like David. “Rejoice not, O thou my enemy, I will yet praise my God.”
"In speaking of the condition of Israel, Dr. Latta says, in his book, ["The Chain of Sacred Wonders.”] “But clouds of darkness are round about him, but righteousness and judgment are the habitations of his throne; with him the future is now, and in harmony with his plans, nations may be left in darkness, or groan in bondage from century to century, from age to age, that ends may be accomplished promotive of his glory, and his plans. But the time will come, when the equity of his course, and wisdom of his plans will be as fully attested as in the deliverance of his people from the grasp of the Egyptians.”
"We will see that Israel was certainly very much exalted in the world by the righteousness of her people, and the Egyptians were correspondingly brought low by their sins against his people and against God. Israel was persuaded that the throne of their God was surrounded with mystery, but certain of success. They had a faith that pulls aside the curtain of the future; walks in triumph on the fields of battle; that hears the songs of victory borne on the air, and can see the final success of the sons of Jacob. Egypt trusted the wisdom of her king, and the strength of her armies of men, the other on the armies of God. The King of Egypt was not a man of very quick perceptions, for he could not read “the “Book of Providence,” or if he could, and did read it, he did not profit by reading, for he stood unmoved by scenes of unparalleled desolation and distress; scenes not unlike those witnessed at the close of the deluge, it broke upon his stony heart, and he stood like the rock, unmoved, and as cold as the mountains of Greenland; while thousands of his subjects lay lifeless and cold in death, his own first-born was frozen by the wrath of God. Beasts were strewn over every plain, and dotted every hill; the earth was wrapped in sadness; meadows, orchards, vineyards, and harvests were destroyed; forests were prostrate on the earth; the lowlands were deluged by the overflow of the stream of blood and flowing torrents which still were thundering down the heights above him; but no, he heeded not the warning given by thunder, lightning, rain and hail, but in his own strength he went on leading his nation to certain and inevitable destruction. What scenes followed this impious act of the king, we cannot say, but God spake to Moses, and he stretched forth his hand toward the heavens, and there was thick darkness in all the land of Egypt.” “In vain did the husbandman seek the handle of his plow, shovel, or, spade; in vain did the herdsmen and shepherd desire to attend upon their flocks, or conduct them to the plains for water or food.” Night, long and dreary, which, for aught they knew, was to be eternal, hung over them for three successive periods of the revolutions of the earth. Darkness to Egyptians, but light to Israel. Glorious was the sombre judgement of God: rejoicing and sorrow, weeping and crying, were to be heard alternately; mother separated from her children; husband lost from wife, in the camp of the wicked; sad and sorrowful, was this mantle of distress.
"The Triumphal March of the Children of God.The hour of deliverance came; the preliminary services were over; the slaves of Egypt were moving; the fatted calf was slain; the whole army was now ready to go to Canaan, and the banners were then thrown to the breeze of heaven. Six hundred thousand men on foot, formed the advance guard; millions of men, women and children were following on in the train, and tribe by tribe they marched; and behind these moving millions could be seen domestic animals by the thousand. Their faces were toward the Land of Canaan, the night before: what was the condition of the host in the morning? The first night of freedom was sweet to them, fearing no master. The morning brought them the first day-dawn of freedom. The matin songs of the host were borne one the zephyrs, and from tent to tent the shout of freedom was heard; and thanks were rendered to the great “I Am, that I Am,” and the acclamation “We are free! we are free! we are free from the master and the oppressor! The Guardian Angel answered to the refrain, “You are, and shall be free forever, if you are obedient to God.” “We will! we will obey the Lord our God.”
"The Pursuing Master.The joy was only momentary, for on the first day, their freedom was turned into one of fear and sorrow; avarice and the love of power had prompted the wicked King to follow after them.
The first sight of the coming host was beheld with astonishment by the trembling fugitives, who see them coming, with chariots of war, and steeds of power; implements of death were seen gleaming in the sun. What shall we do? Whither shall we, or can we, fly for protection from the infuriated King? The mountains reared their heads to the sky on either side; the treacherous and rolling sea was in their front, while the enemy, with a host of well-trained warriors, was moving in their flank and rear. We had better stayed in the Land of Goshen; “It had been better for us to have served the Egyptians, than that we should die in the wilderness.” They were downcast, but it is written, that “Righteousness exalteth a nation.” God's ways are not our ways; man's extremity is God's opportunity; God lays hold when we have stretched ours to its full length so in this case; the final conflict was to take place on the border of the sea, and Right was to triumph over Wrong, Moses over Pharaoh; God over the Devil; Righteousness over Sin.
"The only sight to the human eye was death and destruction, or a return to a more cruel bondage than before. The one had an army, well disciplined; the other, none. The one had spears; the other, faith in God. Here we are to have a grand trial of the two representative governments of Sin and Righteousness. The hour is weighty; the destiny of the nation hangs in scales, and the balances were quivering. Great God help us to watch and pray!
"What was the sad condition of this people at the hour? In the camp, families were in the wild commotion, crying, sighing, moaning, running to and fro; but Moses stood in the camp and said to the trembling multitude, “Stand still, and see the salvation God.” They stood! they stood, and a noble stand it was! The cloud of hope was soon stretched out by the invisible hand of God and turned to the rearward of Israel, and forward of Pharaoh. It was light to Israel, and darkness to Pharaoh. The soft, mellow light of confidence was soon over the whole camp, and the faces of the whole were lighted up with joy and hope. The roll of the chariots of war was gone; the trumpet was unblown; the banners unlifted, and the enemies were hid from the view of Israel.
"Israel was jubilant and happy!Stand still! stand still, was the universal cry;It filled the air, and rent the sky;While faith, hope and love combined,Gave joy, peace and comfort to Israel's mind.
"The Wonderful Battle.All was quiet on the sea, when Moses, at the command of God, stretched out his hand and rod, the waters give back, and the elements threw up a pathway through the bed of the sea. The host marched to the command of the Most High, and down to the sea, and the new highway, where the corals had built their homes and the struggling waves had moved for centuries undisturbed. They marched in triumph in the caves of the sea, to the shores of the wilderness, and at high noon they stood on the hither banks of their trouble. The wilderness was filled with the songs of the redeemed; the groves were white with the tents of Jacob, and Israel was safe on the shore. Righteousness had triumphed, and the people were safe, and joyful, and thankful.
"Pharaoh started in hot pursuit of the host, and went down into the sea and boldly marched after the Hebrews. But see, they are halted by an unseen hand, by an unknown power; the chariot wheels all were strangely loosed from the axles and were running against the icy walls, which shielded them from the coming billows, which were now lashing and thundering high above; the steeds of war stood still; the chariots dragged heavily upon the ground; they were chained to the bed of the deep; fixed fast and could not move; the wrath of God was pent up, and was ready to come down in wonderful, awful, sublime and terrible vengeance. “The skies sent out a sound; the clouds poured out water; the earth trembled and shook, and the lightning lightened the earth;“ unearthly voices issued from the sky; thunder, never before heard on earth, walked along the silent deep; wind warred with wind; and tempest fought with tempest; and the hissing billows of the sea rolled like mountains on the bosom of the raging sea, while the whole army of Pharaoh was transfixed in the caves of the deep, waiting the judgment of the Almighty. Onward! Onward! was the cry of Pharaoh, but they obeyed not his command; they had been obedient, but now they are chained and bound to the car of destiny. The cry was heard: “Let us flee from before the face of Israel, for the Lord fighteth for them against the Egyptians.” They now acknowledge that the Lord fought for Israel; but could not move on their own journey; they were firmly fixed in their position as the rocks in the bed of the sea; they would not hear the voice of God when they had an opportunity, now their die is cast, and their doom is sealed, and the Avenging Angel is on his march of destruction, and only awaiteth the pouring out of the liquid judgment of the Almighty.
"The battalions of the sky were called to retreat, and amidst the final charge, on the banks stood the army of Israel, when Moses again at the command of God, stretched forth his hand, and an east wind blew; the walls of ice gave way, and came tumbling down on the heads of the doomed, and the sea went on its course as before. Thus we find that the army of God triumphed over the army of the Devil. The grand song of triumph was sung, and all joined with the servant of the Most High in singing: [Exodus xv: 1-21.]
"“Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the Lord, and spake, saying, I will sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea.
“The Lord is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation: he is my God, and I will prepare him a habitation; my father's God, and I will exalt him.
“The Lord is a man of war; the Lord is his name.
“Pharaoh's chariots and his host hath he cast into the sea: his chosen captains also are drowned in the Red sea.
"“The depths have covered them: they sank into the bottom as a stone.
“Thy right hand, O Lord, is become glorious in power: thy right hand, O, Lord, hath dashed in pieces the enemy.
"“And in the greatness of thine excellency thou hast overthrown them that rose up against thee: thou sentest forth they wrath, which consumed them as stubble.
"“And with the blast of thy nostrils the waters were gathered together, the floods stood upright as a heap, and the depths were congealed in the heart of the sea.
"“The enemy said, I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil; my lust shall be satisfied upon them; I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them.
"“Thou didst blow with thy wind, the sea covered them: they sank as lead in the mighty waters.
"“Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders ?
"“Thou stretchedst out thy right hand, the earth swallowed them.
"“Thou in thy mercy hast led forth the people which thou has redeemed: thou hast guided them in thy strength unto thy holy habitation.
"“The people shall hear, and be afraid: sorrow shall take hold on the inhabitants of Palestina.
"“Then the dukes of Edom shall be amazed; the mighty men of Moab, trembling shall take hold upon them; all the inhabitants of Canaan shall melt away.
"“Fear and dread shall fall upon them; by the greatness of thine arm they shall be as still as a stone; till thy people pass over, O Lord, till the people pass over, which thou hast purchased.
"“Thou shalt bring them in, and plant them in the mountain of thine inheritance, in the place, O Lord, which thou has made for thee to dwell in; in the sanctuary, O Lord, which thy hands have established.
"“The Lord shall reign for ever and ever.
"“For the horse of Pharaoh went in with his chariots and with his horsemen into the sea, and the Lord brought again the waters of the sea upon them; but the children of Israel went on dry land in the midst of the sea.
"“And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and dances.
"“And Miriam answered them, Sing ye to the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath be thrown into the sea.
"The history of this nation is a lesson to all coming generations not to oppress the people of God, for “Sin is a reproach to any people.”
"The Enthronement and Dethronement of Reason.The French nation had the trial of an atheistical government; it has had the sweets of a government founded on the grand principles of Right; and the sorrows of one, whose foundation was Wrong; and if we consult the history of this nation, and read well the lesson written in the blood of the best and wisest of its citizens, we can see the great difference in a government whose officers fear God, and worketh righteousness.
The Jacobins founded their institutions on the ridicule of every species of devotion, and erected altars to Reason, on what they thought was the ruins of the christian faith. Everywhere during the Reign of Terror, the churches were closed; professors of religion dispossessed of their fortunes, and their rights were overturned, and they were crushed beneath the iron heel of Anarchy. A proclamation was issued, “That the French people could acknowledge no other worship, but that of universal Morality; no other faith, but of its own sovereignty; that all religious emblems placed on the roads, on the houses, or on public places, should be destroyed;“ that the mortcloth used at funerals should bear, instead of religious emblems, a figure of sleep, and that over the gates of the cemetery should be written “Death is an eternal sleep.” Thus was the religion of our Lord Jesus Christ banished from France, and everything like religion was eliminated from the government.
"In keeping with this atheistic programme, a fete in honor of Charlien, the Governor of Lyons, was proclaimed, the churches were all closed, the priests abolished, the Sunday was banished, and every vestige of religion was extinguished. The bust of Charlien was carried through the streets, followed by an immense crowd of assassins and prostitutes. After them came an ass bearing the gospel, the cross, the communion vases, and the most sacred emblems of the christian worship. When the procession had arrived at the Places des Terreaux, an altar was there erected, and Fouche exclaimed to the swaying multitude “That the blood of the wicked can alone appease thy names; we swear before thy sacred image to avenge thy death; the blood of the aristocrats shall serve for its incense.” At the same time a fire was lighted on the altar, and the crucifix and the gospel were committed to the flames; the consecrated bread was trampled under the feet of the mob, and the ass was compelled to drink out of the communion cup the consecrated wine. This is what was done in a government that was founded in iniquity. Are you ready to try a government of this kind? Do you think that it is best to have a government founded and run without God? If so, then join with the free thinkers of this kind. But I think that we are satisfied that “Righteousness will exalt a nation, and sin is a reproach to any people.” For never was the latter clause of the text, more clearly demonstrated than in the history of this short, but wicked reign of sin. It was the quintessence of all the sins in the catalogue of crimes. The diabolical work of demolition went on slowly at first, but increased with the increase of power and influence.
"The citizens were seated in the chariots, and were moved in procession to the place of death; many women watched for the hour when their husbands were to pass to execution; they threw themselves upon the chariots, and locked their arms around their husband's necks and were suffered to die at the side of those they loved. Daughters surrendered their honor to save the lives of their parents, but the monsters who violated them, led them out to behold the execution of the objects for whom they had sacrificed more than life to save.
“Open the annals of the French nation,” said Lamartine, “and listen to the last words of the political actors of the drama of our liberties, one would think that his name was unknown in language. The republic of these men without a God, has been quickly stranded. The liberty won by so much heroism and so much genius, has not found in France a conscience to shelter it, a God to avenge it, a people to defend it against the atheism which is called glory. All ended in a soldier. An atheistic republic can not be heroic.”
"This will give us an idea of the fallacy of founding a government on the atheistical idea. We are, and ought to be thankful, that our fathers in the formation of our government, were warned by the ruins of the Republic of Sin, and with a heroism that does their heads and hearts credit, they shunned the rocks on which France had stranded, and gave innumerable blessings to their children, and their children's children.
"The Queen of Civilization.—The Queen of the civilized nations is the government of England. We may with consistency inquire from whence cometh her power, political, and maritime, the Queen of the Ocean. Where lieth her strength? why her sails of commerce kissing every wind, her ships parting the waves of every sea, and disturbing the tranquil waters of all oceans? Her armies are stationed on the outpost of the commonwealth of our christian civilization; the drum beats; the defenders of her honor march with the King of Day, and the bugle notes of her army sings the song of gladness at the retirement of Sol to his hesperian throne, throughout all the earth.
"How is it, that in fostering the arts and sciences, she has few equals and no superiors? Her statesmen were and are the champions of civil, religious and political freedom; her sons the grand army of freedom in all lands. Why her air is so pure that no man can live on it a slave, and her soil is so blessed that the slave becomes free as soon as his foot presses her sacred soil. In the council of the nations, she is a power. When she is for peace, the rest of the nations are for peace; when the lion roars, the small beasts tremble and large ones hold council; so with this powerful nation. Now whence all this strength, power, and potency; her foundation is layed deep on the Rock of Righteousness; and it runs through every avenue of trade and commerce, in peace and war. It is the force and energizing power of her language; it carries the power of the Holy Ghost; it is the channel of living, burning and moving thought of God. It is freighted with the message of God to man: 'Peace on earth, good will to man.' It is the reservoir of salvation; the Bible language; it is the way to the pure gold, which is to be tried in the fire. While the Queen is honored, God is greater than the Queen; “God save the Queen!” is the language of these subjects; Heaven is more desirable than London; the regenerated heart is more sacred than Westminister Abbey; the banner of the cross is held in greater reverence than the English jack.
"Spiritual power, intellectual force and benevolence are the pillars of State, and the sublime words: God is a spirit; God is light; God is love; are written on the banner and on the hearts of the subjects in this empire from the Queen to the humblest subject in the bogs of Ireland, or on the highlands of Scotland. It is the religious sentiment that is to be found in all the dominion of her gracious Majesty that make this nation occupy so powerful a place in the civilized world. Thus we can account for the power, potency of this government, though some of the principles of government are not in accord with my conception of the best form of human government; yet the experience of my race with this government will ever cause it to live in our hearts and our children shall know that when we had no day of freedom, we borrowed the first day of August from our black English brethren, and the songs of freedom they sung, we sung with them, in hope of one of our own. It came, and now let us pay a fitting tribute to the friends of ours in the night of bondage. “Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.”
"We will fail to tell you of the powers of Germany who went down to Austria; and in the wake of the needle gun the spelling book and Bible followed. It is a great power, intelligent and respects God. Free and redeemed Italy is another example of the triumph of right over wrong. Switzerland on her lofty mountain throne looks down and says amen to the triumph of righteousness. Struggling Hungary lifted her voice and cried for aid in her conflict with the powers of sin and oppression. But that will suffice as to the illustrious example of governments of right and wrong.
"Moral, Intellectual and Political Night.Coming down along the stream of history we find the light of knowledge surrounded with clouds of darkness, and the human mind was fettered with the chain of superstition, and the human heart was trusting in the ceremonies of the temple, or paying prices for their sins; a cloud of darkness greater than that which was over Egypt, when the vengeance of the Lord was seen and felt in the mysterious cloud, which hung for three revolutions of the earth, over the people of wicked Egypt. But this stayed not over the temple of God, but in every home its blighting and deadening influence was felt; in church and state. The moral, social, educational, political and religious interests of the people were held captive by the Prince of the Air, and men on the throne were in league with him, and for a while the strong arm of law was palsied when right was assailed. Justice was blind when the children of men were calling for redress; wrong sat on the thrones of power; injustice administered the wicked and nefarious law, and the church bound the the head and heart, and the state chained the body to the car of oppression, and ground out the life of its subject, and wrung from the brow of toil the crystal drops of industry without reward.
"The temples of God were polluted; the Priests at the altar were not what they ought to be, to say the least. Everywhere there was a moral, social, political and intellectual bondage. The fields were all occupied; the armies were standing face to face -righteousness and sin on the one side, liberty and oppression, soul-freedom or soul-bondage, mind-freedom or intellectual darkness. Thus these armies were face to face; the world, the flesh, the devil and the customs and powers of men, were all arrayed against the little band of men who were on the side of right and justice, in this condition. The spirit of toleration and freedom to worship God, was what the Waldenses in their mountain churches taught, and says Dr. Duncan:
"“We have become so familiar with a condition of society based upon the recognition of the absolute freedom of the human conscience, upon the denial of the right of the State to interfere in matters of religion, that we have almost come to fancy that this has always been the inheritance of men, and that we are not distinct and favored as a people in this respect. In the freedom and security of the present we have well nigh forgotten the sorrows and sufferings of the past. So vigorous and comely in all its ample proportions is this offspring of many dark and stormy centuries, that we have long since ceased to remember the anguish and travail of its birth. It is well at times to stop and look around us and consider, to complete the sum of our indebtedness to the past, that we may the better discharge our duty to the future. Follow me, then, while we question the silent centuries in tracing this idea of religious liberty through the several stages of its progress to its realization here.
"Developing this idea, the speaker traced the growth of the spirit from the little germ planted in the mountains of Piedmont by the persecuted Waldenses, who, driven from their beautiful valleys, preached the doctrines of toleration and and civil liberty in every kingdom of Europe. Through their labors, Luther and his contemporary reformers found the world prepared to hear and follow their preaching. Europe was ripe for an uprising in favor of soul liberty against oppression in every form, but especially against that despotism which the church, founded on the throne of the Caesars, had maintained for centuries over the reason and conscience of its subjects. The great Protestant Reformation was nothing less, in fact, than a noble effort made by this reason and conscience for their own emancipation. But the reformation is notable rather for its shortcomings in emancipation than for that which it actually accomplished. In a new world, just then discovered, under more favorable influences, this glorious work was yet to be attempted.
"When the leaders of the Reformation had thrown off the spiritual dominion of the Pope, ardent was the expectation of many of their adherents that the individual mind would be no longer held in spiritual bondage. But this expectation was doomed to disappointment. The Protestant government, indeed, had emancipated themselves from the dominion of the Papacy, but they substituted in the place of it a dominion of their own. They did not maintain the right of private judgment, or the absolute freedom of human conscience. Each party of the Reformers asserted its own right to freedom of thought and worship, but it was because each believed it had attained to the truth, and was in the right, and not because this freedom was the inalienable birthright of every human being. Those who could not conform to the established church were disfranchised and punished as heretics. The reign of Elizabeth, for example, was one protracted conflict between the State-protected church and the numerous bands of earnest spirits who were struggling for larger freedom. To the latter there was sin in the alliance between Church and State and an intolerable bondage in cramping all their spiritual aspirations to the narrow range of prayers and sermons prescribed for every Sabbath of the year. Persecutions only increased this rising spirit of liberty. Its advocates were driven from England only to found a nation in the New World. Even here, however, the seeds of intolerance were sown, and again the struggle was renewed between the leaders and those who sought untrammeled freedom.”
"Rev. T. Vickers, in his discussion with Archbishop Purcell, makes the following pertinent remarks in relation to the moral, religious, and intellectual condition of the world, at the period we are now speaking:
"But let us lay aside the metaphor entirely, and see what the plain facts of the case are. After the fall of the Roman empire in the west, there was an almost universal loss of that learning which the Greeks and Romans had accumulated.
"For centuries, taste and knowledge had been declining, but the irruption of the barbarian nations put an end to them entirely. Up to this time there had been some show of learning and culture among the so-called Fathers of the church, but even that died out.
"Outside the ecclesiastical order, ignorance reigned supreme; but the knowledge found within it was scarcely worthy of the name. I repeat, there was a time when the church was the home of all culture and all knowledge, but, after all, this lamp of learning in the church shed such a feeble and ineffectual light that it was scarcely distinguishable from the surrounding darkness.
"It was in the period known as the Dark Ages. The literary treasures of ancient Greece were stowed away in the monasteries, but the language in which they were written was almost entirely forgotten. Not one in a hundred of so-called scholars could read them.
Even the Latin, the official language of the church, became so corrupt and barbarous that it could scarcely be called Latin any longer.
"Now and then there was one who read and copied an old author, or made extracts from “the” fathers, on points of church doctrine, but thought, as such, was utterly out of the question.
"There was no inducement to think; the truth had been attained, and he who presumed to question it was worse than a heathen.”
"The powers appear to be distributed by God and not man; four of the greatest monarchs that wielded a scepter were on the throne at the same time. Henry VIII, was on the throne of England; Francis I, on that of France; Charles V, Emperor of the Kingdom of Germany and Spain, and Pope Leo X, the most powerful, politic and sagacious Pope that ever filled the chair of St. Peter. His power was felt all over Europe, but his power was mortal, therefore limited. He was mighty, but there was an Almighty hand guiding the church and protecting the rights of the State. The strongest evidence that the fears of truth and justice were to triumph, was seen in the general interest taken in the conflict of the church and state, by the wise and learned, as well as the unwise and illiterate. Kings and subjects seemed to awake from the sleep of the night of oppression and wrong, and all were crying for the government of the day; they wanted to put off the night clothes of the past and prepare to meet the duties of the hour; they wanted to burst the bonds of ignorance, and break the bands of sin, and put on the habiliments of righteousness and thereby exalt their nation and bless humanity. The spirit of bold inquiry had arrived; the emancipation of the world from the bondage of the sin and oppression was at hand. Ignorance could no longer hold the millions of human minds by the bonds of superstition, and the light thrown into the mind by the progress of knowledge had quickened every pulsation of the heart of the nations, and the warm blood of intellectual freedom was throwing off the chill, from the heart of the million, by the winter of ignorance and moral and spiritual bondage. The Barons wrung from the unwilling hands of John, the tyrant, the great Magna Charta, the keystone in the arch of English Liberty. This grand temple for constitutional law was in 1215.
"Arragon is stirred by the germs of liberty, and the light of liberty is seen gleaming the sable empire of Spain. Peter III responds to the demands of his people and gives them an instrument called “General Privilege.” This was to check arbitrary power, and to insure liberty to the people; this was one of the powers that influenced Columbus, and no one can tell how much this act of Peter had to do with the discovery of the New World. In Germany, the Emperors were made elective; Switzerland, high on her mountain home, had achieved her freedom and was breathing her free air, and singing songs of joy. It is said by Mr. Reed: “That Free City was the cradle of civil and political freedom and was the world was not indebted to monarchs, it was not the courts of the Great Princes, it was the cities of Northern Italy, which opened the way for the progress of improvements, and lighted the torch of modern civilization.”
"The Crusades to the Holy Land had the effect to move the stagnant waters of ignorance and sin. The expedition was like a burning meteor, and on went the million to rescue the sepulcher, and the land, where the Prince of Life lived, suffered and died, from the profane tread of the infidel of the east. Thus we find the hearts of men were moved with ambition, and all the motives which dwelt in the human breasts were brought into requisition. Exemption from debts, taxes, and punishment for crime, religious zeal and bigotry, the confident hope of heaven, stirred up all the people to the good cause of crusaders.
"The religious freedom which the world wanted, and the freedom of thought and action which was wanted, and looked for by the downtrodden, was wanted, and was not seen; but the brooding darkness of the moonless and starless night of a thousand years, hung like the pall of death over the earth, and the expectant piety of the children of God was doomed to the narrow house of deferred hope, “which maketh sick, and many faint-hearted thought that the King of Darkness had begun his final reign, and that moral and intellectual light were extinguished; and man was doomed to grope his way in misery, to the tomb, without hope or God. But time will not allow me to follow the dawn of moral and intellectual freedom in the continent of Europe. The rays which came from the east, awoke a desire in the hearts of all Europe and the revival of learning was everywhere the watchword of the nation.
"A Triumph for the Crescent. It was the Saracens who stirred all Europe with the love of learning, and the courts of the Caliphs was the citadel of intelligence and the fountain of learning; and at the foot of the throne, the treasures brought from afar were opened to the wise and all were invited to drink from the crystal fountain, without money and without price; and Bagdad was for awhile the university of the world. Her gates were crowded with camels loaded with the volumes of Greek, Hebrew, Latin and Persian literature; almost every city was the seat of a Seminary of learning, and the human mind was lead to the hidden treasures by the translators who were supported by the Courts, and encouraged by the government.
"The Crescent was sending forth a more brilliant light than the Son of Righteousness. Which reflects the greatest glory, the son of Sarah, or of Hagar; the cross or the crescent; sin or righteousness; which shall triumph? Who shall reign, God or the devil? Which shall rule, force or love? Which shall be the capital of intelligence and the home of virtue, Jerusalem or Bagdad? Which shall go forth to the conquest of the world, Mohamedanism or Christianity? Shall faith be conquered by works, or which shall we serve, God or mammon? The answer is given, in the providence of God, by the emancipation of the world from the iron grasp of the King of Bagdad, and the triumph of the forces of God, and the change of scenes in the political drama. We cannot follow all the moral, social and religious conflicts, which enable Christianity to triumph; but we will in the language of Dr. T.A. Skinner, notice them:
"“As to those facts, forces and energies, which are left out of the calculations of those, who, from their narrower fields of observation, forecast the future of the race. We, unhesitatingly and with unfaltering confidence, ascribe to the Divine and Supernatural as set forth in the Bible; especially do we ascribe to Christianity, whose Lord is the life and light of man, the commanding energies, the first and formative causes by which human progress and destiny are determined; we estimated them above and beyond all the forces of nature, all the workings of law and order, all the agency of sin and selfishness on the one hand, of science, art, and education on the other; above all the effects of climate and scenery, and hereditary influences of whatever kind, for in the language of the Apostle, 'where sin abounds grace doth much more abound;' and of Christ, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.' I know the attempt is made in the intellectual centers of Christendom to eradicate the Christian religion and remove God and the supernatural from the problem of humanity, and their example is followed by thousands of weaker men, mere weaklings many of them, to whom it is impossible to rise to the dignity and grandeur of the Christian argument, who with great boldness and dogmatic positiveness, affirm the religion of the Bible to be a superstition, a damage, and a hindrance to all progress, and who base their fond dreams of the future on the extinction of Christianity from the earth. I cannot in my limited time analyze this matter, nor reply to the argument of those who champion the assaults on our religion and lay before us the philosophy of Epicurius and Lucretius, or the morals of Confucius and Marcus Aurelius, or the merits of the earlier Roman law and the later Justinian Code; but I will suggest a broad generalization which I think will sufficiently illustrate and commend the position I have taken. Withdraw from Christendom the Bible, the Church with its sacraments and ministry, and Christian morality and hopes, and aspirations for time and eternity; repeal all the laws that are founded in the Christian Scriptures; remove the Christian humanities in the form of hospitals and asylums, and reformatories and institutions of mercy utterly unknown to unchristian countries; destroy the literature, the culture, the institutions of learning, the art, the refinement, the place of woman in her home and in society, which owe their origin and power to Christianity; blot out all faith in Divine Providence, love, and righteousness; turn back every believer in Christ to his former state; remove all thought or hope of the forgiveness of sins by a just but gracious God; erase the name of Christ from every register it sanctifies—in a word annihilate all the legitimate and logical effects of Christianity in Christendom—just accomplish in fact what multitudes of gifted and learned minds are wishing and trying to accomplish by their science, philosophy, and criticism, and what multitudes of the common people desire and seek, and not only would all progress toward and unto perfection cease, but not one of the shining lights of infidelity would shine much longer. Yes, the bitterest enemies of this holy and blessed religion, owe their ability to be enemies to its sacred revelations - to the inspiration and sublimity of that faith which reflects its glories on their hostile natures. They live in the strength of that which they would destroy. They are raised to their seats of opportunity and power by the grace of Him they would crucify afresh; and is it to be thought that they are stronger than that which gives them strength? Can it be supposed that a religion which civilizes and subdues, and elevates and blesses will succumb to the enmities it may arouse and quicken in its onward march? Are we to tremble for the ark of God when God is its upholder, and protector, and preserver?”
"The position occupied by the forces and powers of Christianity now, was the position of the good men in the time of the development of the grand ideas of mind and soul freedom, and in the discovery of the American continent we see the forces of the living God at work; we can trace his foot marks in the actions of men, or see his strong arms in the overthrow of nations; in the downfall of empires; in the ruins of the same he has reared others, for his own glory and for the general good man. A good foundation, the material out of which the new nation was to be formed, was an evidence of a wise design. The position has been stated by Dr. E.D. Ledyard:
"“If therefore, the character of a nation depends upon the character of its men, and if that in turn is largely determined by the physical influences of the land, here, again, America has been specially favored.
"And yet this is not all. We have seen that unto us has been given a vast country, a rich country, a country wherein the physical surroundings were specially favorable to the development of man; but even thus a great deal would depend upon the character of the first settlers, from whom the nation should spring. In nations, as in families, there is such a thing as blood—such a thing as the transmission of National traits, be they good or bad; and if the founders of this nation had been mental or moral imbeciles, if they had come from Asia or from Africa, bringing the errors and superstitions that had already delighted other lands; if such had been the character of the seed planted in this virgin soil, not even the favorable surroundings of this fair heritage would have sufficed for its development into the tree of a noble race. But not thus was our beginning. The rich plains of India were possessed centuries ago by the polytheistic Aryans, and are cursed to-day by the sinful, speculative, indolent Hindoos. In many of the fairest spots of this very continent, shortly after its discovery, the adherents of a corrupt and superstitious Christianity obtained a footing, and we all know how degraded, and ignorant, and powerless today are the nations which have sprung from their loins.
"But our beloved land was greatly and conspicuously favored by the fact that to it came as the germ of the future nation, men better fitted for this purpose—I hesitate not to say—than any others then existing upon the face of the globe. Not from heathen Asia, but from Christian Europe; even thence not from the regions where Christianity was corrupt, but from those where it was purest and most primitive; even thus not from among men of only ordinary worth, but from among men proved by the sifting of adversity and persecution to be the best and noblest of their kind, came the progenitors of our race; the settlers of our land!
"It is remarkable that, notwithstanding the prominent part taken by others in the discovery and colonizing of the New World, the element by which our country was molded was pre-eminently the enlightened, sterling, Protestant element from England, Holland, and Huguenot France, though driven forth, many of them with cursings, from their homes, the gold, the pure gold, nevertheless, of the Old World at that day. It is no slight thing that these infant colonies drank the milk of such a pure, strong life; it was no inconsiderable favor that the foundations of our society were laid by men who built in the fear of the Lord, and with whom the Word of God was plummet, and level and square.
"It is a matter of profound thankfulness to-day, inasmuch as it is one of our chiefest blessings, that 250 years ago the brave, weather-beaten company of the Mayflower stood forth on Plymouth Rock.
"Fellow-countrymen, it was no slight favor to have such men, such women, for the founders of your nation!”
"Thus the elements of Right and Righteousness, were selected by Providence, to establish our government and to sow the seed of Liberty; to worship God; though we came to this country to establish toleration, we find the Fathers failing in that object. The complete emancipation of the church from state, was not the final object of the Pilgrims, but they wanted to make men religious by law, human not Divine; so we find that it has been said by another, that:
"“The Church and State governments were essentially the same, under different names. The spiritual power was brought down to earth, and into all the relations of public and private life. Nothing of importance was done without the advice of the minister and ruling elders, and under such a form of government politics and religion were identical. It was designed to make men religious according to law. The brethren were free as long as they continued brethren, but Reason was at that time moving on to its emancipation, and it could discuss nothing which did not bring it directly or indirectly into conflict with the church.
"Among the number of those who sought New England with the expectation that they might here enjoy the religious liberty that was denied them in the mother country, was Roger Williams, a minister of the Gospel, who became pastor of the church at Salem, Mass. He freely expressed his opinion on various subjects. He asserted that the princes of Europe had no power to give a just title to the lands of the Indians. He denied the right of the civil magistrate to interfere in matters of the conscience, and spurned the idea of toleration, when perfect freedom in religion was man's inalienable birthright. It was then, for the first time, as has been most truly said, that the startling thought of a complete separation of Church and State was uttered on these Western shores; and it was then, also, for the first time, that the individual man there in the sovereign attributes of reason, stood forth before the Massachusetts authorities, and boldly claimed its emancipation, in the realization of its own true idea of government.
"They were not prepared for declarations so bold and startling as these. They could not suffer a spirit so fearless and independent to remain among them, and so Roger Williams was banished.”
"The founders of this nation are inexcusable for their action in the case of toleration of free speech and freedom of thought. That for they left their homes and braved the dangers of an unknown and treacherous sea, to secure to themselves and children, they denied to one of their own number. They were not in the dark, for they were, in the language of an eminent Divine, when speaking of the advantages of our ancestors, “Favored thus in every material respect, favored in the character of our national ancestry, we are highly distinguished still further, in view of the time in which we have our existence as a people. Much has been given us in this regard. It is not a period of the world`s history when the problem of nation life is to be first wrought out—its dangers and its paths of safety learned by hard experiment. The experience of sixty centuries is before us. The rocks on which other Commonwealths have split stand revealed; shoals on which other national have stranded are known—yea, the very currents of popular tendencies, the eddies and malestorms of public peril, the best courses, the safest harbors, the surest anchorages—everything which experience can teach concerning this great ocean over which governments must sail, is marked out and the chart is before our eye. Nor is this all of the advantages secured to us by the time in which we exist. In every respect we live in the great harvest period of the world, the golden autumn of its growth. Other nations have toyed with knowledge in its swaddling bands, but we have fellowship with it in its mighty manhood. Men, not very long ago, knew science as a sickly plant, springing with difficulty from the hard ground of ignorance and superstition. Now, it is a magnificent tree, and we sit beneath its shades and eats its maturest fruit.”
"The Fundamental Idea.But I am proud to say of them that they built wiser than they knew; their foundation was on solid ground, but the superstructure was a little contracted, but time has enabled their children to make some changes in it, adding to the beauty, symmetry and durability of the Temple of American Liberty. The government was founded on the principle that “Righteousness exalteth a Nation, and that sin is a reproach to any people.” This position I take with the understanding that I am to question the records of the past, to see whether it is only an assertion, or a fact in the living history of this nation; was it so recognized by those who formed it, or was it an after thought of the children? But I think the language of Dr. Mayo, in his address on the banishment of the Bible from our Common Schools, was the sentiment of the Fathers of our Country, and whether it was theirs or not, it is certainly the average sentiment of the present generation:
"'If there is one thing that is universal, one sentiment that makes men human, one-influence that is cosmopolitan, one golden chain which clasps by Adam's hand and felt after by the trembling fingers of the last new born child, binds all created men in one family, unites nations, and races and ages in a sublime brotherhood, and pressing upward is but in the mysterious universe peopled by myriads of created intelligence and pervaded by the spirit of infinite love, that golden chain is Religion. No nation ever existed that was not founded upon it; no human institutions that have repudiated the worship of God and the religious and moral duties of man, have been able to stand upright in this world. All the occupations of human life are organized around the universal religious faith of man. The family, the school, the whole machinery of human government, no less than the church, are built upon this universal faith. Whether expressed or understood, religion is present, visible like the light, or invisible like the air, the element which binds all together and makes life itself a blessing.'
There has always been in the world a class of people, who have denied in their philosophy, the possibility of religion, though compelled to recognize it in their actions. “A gracious Providence for a brief hour committed the destinies of one nation to their charge, and they ruled it long enough to make that one chapter in the history of France the bloodiest record on the book of time. That sect exists to-day in the United States, organized and sustained by men, who have thought themselves out of the world of divine realities into a universe of philosophical negations.”
"The Continent Religious by the Right of Discovery.
"W.M. Ramsey, Esq., says in an address before the citizens of Cincinnati, Sept. 28th, 1869, that 'Columbus when he beheld the shores of the New World, called all hands about him, and offered solemn thanks and supplications, to Almighty God; and when he went on the land, he kneeling before High Heaven, dedicated it a second time to the Ruler of the Universe.'
"The world was hunting for a passage to the East Indies, but God was sending them out to hunt a field in which the great problem of human government and universal soul and mind freedom could fright and conquer the enemies of man and foes to God. In this, as in many other cases, in the multifarious works of man, we find that there is a divinity that shapes our ends, let us rough hew them as we may. This was only a prelude to a grand succession of events, which have made this continent illustrious in the annals of history, and furnished a number of brilliant names for the galaxy of the temple of fame. But what was the moving force in the breast of the distinguished pioneers. By the way, Justin D. Fulton in his "Outlook of Freedom' page 30, says: 'It was on the third of August, 1492, a little before sunrise, that Christopher Columbus, undertaking the most memorable enterprise that human genius ever planned, set sail from Spain for the discovery of the Western World. On the 13th of October, about two hours before midnight, a light on the Island of San Salvador was discovered by Columbus, from the deck of his vessel, and America was, for the first time, beheld by European eyes. The admiral, on the following morning attended by his followers stepped upon the shore, and with tears of joy streaming down his cheeks, threw himself upon his knees, kissing the earth, and returned thanks to God. Arising, he drew his sword, planted the cross, displayed the royal standard, and as the banners of the enterprise were flung to the breeze, he took possession of the soil, and a connection that was to subsist forever, was established between Europe and America.' And he might have added, a connection between the purpose for which God intended was recognized here; first the banner of the cross, then that of Spain; God first and man next; God and Christ, then Ferdinand and Isabella.
"What kind of a Religion was meant by the Father, if any? I quote from another: 'Do you doubt that these men intended to found a Christian nation? Every syllable of colonial history attests it. They sought for themselves and their posterity civil and religious liberty; they knew that they were the necessary attendants of each other—that one could not exist without the other—but it was religious liberty that was uppermost in their minds; it was religious liberty of which they had been deprived in the land of their nativity; it was religious liberty of which they experienced the greater need.'
"What did they mean by religious liberty? The conflicts of the sixteenth century were not between infidelity and Christianity, or between Christianity and paganism, but between different forms of Christian worship. That which our ancestors were intent upon making secure, therefore, was the right to worship God according to the dictates of the conscience of each individual worshiper, and not the right to those who had no conscience to blaspheme the name of God. Hence it was provided by legislative enactment in some of the colonies, that no man should be questioned or disturbed on account of his religion, provided always that his religion was the religion of the Lord Jesus Christ.
"That was their idea upon the subject of religious freedom. And this was not a protestant idea. This provision, in all its directness, was incorporated into the laws of Maryland in 1649, at the instance of the Roman Catholics in the colony, the protestants graciously assenting, and neither Catholic nor protestant dreaming that there was any third party that had any voice in the matter. By religion, our ancestors did not mean Mohammedanism, Buddhism, or Free Thinkingism. They meant Christianity. 'Our ancestors,' said Mr. Webster, 'established their system of Government on morality and religious sentiment. They were brought hither by their high veneration of the Christian religion. They journeyed by its light, and labored in its hope. They sought to incorporate it with the elements of their society, and to diffuse its influences through all their institutions, civil, political, social and educational.'
"We will now look for organic and judicial testimony. Thus we have to a certain extent, followed the history of the government of the United States, and find the best thinkers agree that this nation was founded on the principle that 'righteousness exalteth a nation' thus forming their belief. We can find it in acts of the men who formed it; that they founded this nation on the principle of the 'Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of man.' We will now examine some of the records to establish the fact that this is a nation ';Christian in its chain and filling'- fundamentally, organically, legally and judicially, religiously, morally and educationally, a Christian nation, the denial to the contrary, notwithstanding. And, by the grace of God, we intend to use our humble influence to continue it in the highway to glory, honor and usefulness to man, by keeping it essentially christian in all of its departments. We want laws that are the transcript of the laws of God; we want rulers that rule in the fear of the Lord; we want a judiciary that gives righteous judgments; we want a people that fear God, and work righteousness, then we will be what God intended we should be—an asylum for the oppressed of all lands - 'The land of the free and the home of the brave.'
"The Pilgrim Fathers.
The vessels which preceded the 'Mayflower,' came in the name of some Prince or Lord, carrying grants and patents for the land; and they were to take possession, in the name, and by the authority of their sovereign, who was to reap the political benefits, and the expeditionists were to enjoy the great treasury, which they thought were lying bound in the wilds of the Western World, or the New World as it was then familiarly called.
"The Mayflower and Speedwell, two grand old vessels, on a glorious mission, started, not by and with the favor of the crowned heads of the old world they had no smiles from opulent princes, or favor from the aristocracy; but they came, bringing no parchment with them. What did they want with authority from the titular dignitaries of Europe, when they had authority from the Court of Heaven, coming at the command of the Kings of Kings and Lords of Lords. Their principles were written on the tablets of their hearts by the finger of God; their motto was Holiness to the Lord of Hosts, and their aim was to form a government where men could worship God in accordance to the dictates of their conscience; they brought no monuments of the tyranny of Europe with them, and they allowed none to be their posterity; a glorious heritage; a grand legacy from the Pilgrim Fathers. All honor to the noble men, who brought into living reality the grand principles, which for sixteen centuries, had been struggling into life—that governments were made for man, and not man for government. This is the soul of the nation, of our glorious United States. The Bible was the constitution of the Pilgrims; on that vessel was the 'Grand Republic' in miniature. The religious sentiment of this noble band is still going down through avenues of American society.
"Religion in the Declaration of Independence. I find these grand religious ideas running through the immortal Declaration; it is the widening of the stream of right and mountain in range of governments. Is the principles of Righteousness in this document? or is it outside of the Declaration of God. It is only the re-enactment of text, and its formulation to found a government. But what does the document say?
"'When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God, entitles them.
"'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.'
"The Declaration is thus finished, and when this noble band of patriots sent out the document to the world, how did they close it? Let us see:
"'We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America in General Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare: That these United Colonies are and of right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; and that, as Free and Independent States, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, and in a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.' - JOHN HANCOCK.
"And the names of the whole Congress followed. You see that there is Divinity in this immortal document. Can we find in the Articles of Confederation anything to support the position that the founders of this government intended that it should be a nation for God, and that his religion should have a place in this land. It says: 'Whereas it hath pleased the Great Governor of the World to incline the hearts of the legislatures we respectively represent in Congress, to approve of and to authorize us to ratify the said Articles of Confederation and perpetual union.' Thus we find this assembly thanking the Governor of the world for inclining the hearts of men. Who can move the hearts of men but God? But we find them in reverence bowing to the Governor of men.
"We now call your attention to the Constitution of the Nation and let us examine that instrument in the light of the men who formed it, and we will see that this was intended to be a Nation founded in Righteousness and Justice. What does the instrument say on this subject:
"'We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.'
Article VI says: 'The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall be required as a Qualification to any office or public trust under the United States'"Thus we find there was some probability of a religious test being applied in the government. But it is proved by the words in the above Article that Religion was recognized in the proceedings of the convention. When the convention was very much perplexed on some important subject, and there appeared to be no way out of the dilemma, Dr. Benjamin Franklin stated: 'That he recognized that there was a God, who ruled in the affairs of men, and that He heard the prayer of those who petitioned to him.' He moved that a Chaplain be appointed for the Continental Congress. The motion was opposed by Mr. Jay and others on the ground that many sects were represented in the Congress. But Samuel Adams arose in his place and said 'he was no bigot, and could hear a prayer from a gentleman of piety and virtue, who was at the time a friend to his country.' He moved that Mr. Ducine, of Philadelphia, an Episcopal clergyman, might be desired to read prayers to the Congress, and the motion was adoped. Mr. Duche was appointed Chaplain to the first Congress, and on the following morning read the xxxi Psalm, beginning thus:
"'In thee, O Lord, do I put my trust; let me never be ashamed: deliver me in thy righteousness.
"'Bow down thine ear to me; deliver me speedily: be thou my strong rock, for a house of defense to save me.
"'O love the Lord, all ye his saints: for the Lord preserveth the faithful, and plentifully rewardeth the proud doer. Be good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the Lord.”
"In 1852, the House of Representatives at Washington, paused in the strife of its election of Speaker, and solemnly resolved, in view of the dangers besetting them, that every morning session should be opened with prayer. The Senate of the United States, and House of Representatives, are opened with prayer every morning. Each regiment of your army is provided with a chaplain. The Legislatures of almost every State in the Union are opened with prayer. Every Court House has a Bible in it. The eleemosynary institutions, supported by the State, have the Bible in them, and religious services are conducted in them by the evangelical ministers living adjacent thereto. The penitentiaries and jails have religious services in them, and the word of God is given freely to the unfortunate.
"Judicially Considered by Judge Story, "The promulgation of the great doctrines of religion; the being, and attributes, and providence of one Almighty God; the responsibility to him for all our actions, founded upon moral freedom and accountability: a future state of rewards and punishments; the cultivation of all the personal, social and benevolent virtues,—these never can be a matter of indifference in any well ordered community. It is, indeed, difficult to conceive how any civilized society can well exist without them.
"And, at all events, it is impossible for those who believe in the truth of Christianity, as a divine revelation, to doubt that it is the special duty of Government to foster and encourage it among all the citizens and subjects. This is a point wholly distinct from that of the right of private judgement in matters of religion, and of the freedom of public worship according to the dictates of one's own conscience."
"He says of the religious amendment to the Constitution, that: 'The real object of the amendment was, not to countenance, much less to advance Mohammedanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects, and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment, which should give to a hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the National Government.' Chief Justice Story, in his Commentaries on the Constitution, declares, that: 'That attempt at the time of the formation of the Constitution to make it a matter of State policy to hold all religions in utter indifference, would have created universal disapprobation, if not universal indignation.'
"The following are words of the people of Ohio in relation to the Religion of the State, as embodied in the Constitution: 'We, the people of the State of Ohio, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, to secure its blessings and promote our common welfare, do establish this Constitution.' It affirms, in reiteration of the old language of the ordinance of 1787: 'Religion, morality, and knowledge, however, being essential to good government, it shall be the duty of the General Assembly to pass suitable laws to protect every religious denomination in the peaceable enjoyment of its own mode of public worship, and to encourage schools and the means of instruction.' The Bill of Rights says: 'All men have a natural and indefeasible right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own conscience. No person shall be compelled to attend, erect or support any place of worship, or attend any form of worship against his consent; and no preference shall be given by law to any religious society, nor shall any interference with the rights of conscience be permitted.'
"'No religious tests shall be required as a qualification for office, nor shall any person be incompetent as a witness on account of his religious belief.
"'Religion, mortality and knowledge, however, being essential to good government, it shall be the duty of the General Assembly to pass suitable laws to protect every religious denomination in the peaceable enjoyment of its own mode of public worship, and to encourage schools and the means of instruction.'
"The Convention which formed the present Constitution, at its first meeting, almost unanimously resolved to open their meetings with prayer, and the Rev. James Presly, a Christian minister, invoked the blessing of the Almighty on their deliberations.
"The Convention which held its sessions in Cincinnati in 1874, of which M.R. Waite was President, opened their sessions with prayer. The Rev. Thomas Lee, a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, had charge of the services during the sittings of the Convention. The State Legislature open their sessions with prayer. The Rev. Robt. A. Johnson, of the African M.E. Church, was invited by the Hon. George L. Converse, to open the Assembly of Ohio with prayer.
"Oaths and affirmations are appeals to God, by him who makes them, that what he has said, or what he shall say, is the truth. It is the most solemn form under which one can assert or pronounce anything, and its violation is a crime of the darkest hue; one which God has declared he will punish; one that is made infamous and punishable by fine and imprisonment, by the laws of the land. Thus Christian obligation is required of every officer of the general Government, who fills any position of trust, honor or emolument. Many reports are required in the form and shape of affidavits.
"The First and Last Presidents' Testimony.
"We find that the Father of our Country, General George Washington, in his first Inaugural Address to the American nation, made the following statement: ;No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible Hand, which conducts the affairs of men, more than the people of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an Independent Nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency; and in the important revolution just accomplished, in the system of their united government, the tranquil deliberations, and voluntary consent of so many distinct communities from which the event has resulted, cannot be compared with the means by which most governments have been established, without the return of previous gratitude along with an humble anticipation of the future blessings which the past seems to presage.' In his farewell address, when returning his important trust to his countrymen, he said 'abide by religion and morality as the firmest props of the duties of men and citizens.' The first in peace, the first in war, and the first in the hearts of his countrymen, in the ripenings of his manhood advises the Nation to abide by religion and morality, which is the same as Righteousness. It is in the language of the Holy Bible, 'Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.'
"The testimony of the Father of his Country, is before you. Now I have the great satisfaction of giving the last proclamation of the Great Captain of the Age, the worthy savior of his country, and the friend of our race. He is of the opinion that the strength of this Nation is the Almighty. Thus the first and last of the Chief Magistrates are of the opinion that this nation has a God and was founded on Righteousness. But here is the testimony, read it and take it home with you, and transmit it to your children and their children:
By the President of the United States - A Thanksgiving Proclamation.
"From year to year we have been accustomed to pause in our daily pursuits and set apart a time and offer our thanks to Almighty God for the special blessings He has vouch-safed to us, with our prayers for a continuance thereof. We have at this time equal reason to be thankful for His continued protection and for the material blessings He has bestowed. In addition to these favors accorded us as individuals we have especial occasion to express our hearty thanks to Almighty God, that by His providence and guidance our government established a century ago has been enabled to fulfill the purpose of its founders in offering an asylum to the people of every race, securing civil and religious liberty to all within its borders, and meting out to every individual alike justice and equality before the law. It is moreover especially our duty to offer our humble prayers to the Father of all mercies for continuance of His Divine favor to us a nation and as individuals.
"'By reason of these considerations, I, Ulysses S. Grant, President of the United States, do recommend to the people of the United States to devote the 30th DAY OF NOVEMBER next to the expression of their thanks and prayers to Almighty God and laying aside their daily avocations and all secular occupations to assemble in their respective places of worship and observe said day as a day of thanksgiving and rest.
'In witness whereof I have herewith set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. Done at the city of Washington, this 26th day of Oct., in the year of our Lord, 1876, and of the Independence of the United Stated of America, the one hundred and first.
(Signed)U.S. GRANT.
Hamilton Fish, Secretary of State.'
"The great seal of this nation is of vast importance, for all the executive documents must have the impression of the 'great seal' to establish their authenticity. We can find that on this religious sentiment of the founders of the government are seen. This history of this seal is of much importance to every lover of his country; and who is not a lover of his country? The front of the seal contains the American Eagle with a shield on his breast, the olive branch is one talon and a bundle of thirteen arrows in the other, and in his beak a scroll inscribed with the motto, E Pluribus Unum. Reverse, a pyramid unfinished in the zenith, an eye in the triangle surrounded with a glory, over the eye the words Annat Coptis, God has favored the undertaking; on the base of the pyramid Novus Ordo, Secularum or a new series of ages.
"The Moccasin tracks of Righteousness are seen on the money of this country, on the silver and gold. You will find on one side the Goddess of Liberty, and on the other the American Eagle, and over his head we find &'In God we Trust.' It is a truth that the financial prosperity of the nation depends on the aid given by Providence in the production of the soil; if we have a bountiful harvest then we will have much money in circulation; every piece of money; the five cents, twenty-five cents, fifty cents, one dollar, on it you will find the significant inscription.
"The Footprints of Christianity as seen in the Names and Mottes of the States.
We will now call your attention to the fact that in every State of the Union you can trace in their mottoes or names, either the Moccasin track of Righteousness of the footprints of Christianity. We now call your attention to the motto of our great and glorious Nation - E Pluribus Unum, 'Out of Many One'; Arkansas - Regnant Populi, 'The people Rule'; Colorado - 'Nil sine Numine, 'Nothing can be Done without Divine Aid'; Connecticut - Qui transtulit Sustinet, 'He who brought us over Sustains us'; Florida - 'In God is Our Trust'; Georgia - 'Wisdom, Justice and Moderation'; Illinois - 'State Sovereignty, National Union'; Iowa - 'Our Liberties we Prize, Our Rights we will Maintain'; Kansas gives us the following significant motto - Ad Astra per Aspera, 'To the Stars through Difficulties'; Kentucky - 'United we Stand, Divided we Fall'; Louisiana - 'Union and Confidence'; Missouri - 'Let the Welfare of the People be the Supreme Law'; Nebraska - 'Equality before the Law'; New Jersey - Liberty and Independence'; New York - Excelsior, 'Higher'; Nevada - "Willing and Able'; Ohio - Imperium in Imperio,'An Empire in an Empire'; Pennsylvania - Virtue, Liberty and Independence; Rhode Island - 'Hope'; South Carolina - Ready in Will and Deed; Vermont - 'Freedom and Unity'; Virginia - 'So Always with Tyrants'; West Virginia - 'Mountaineers are Always Free'; Wisconsin - 'The Civilized man succeeds the Barbarious.'
"Thus in most every State of the Union, do we find the impress of the Religious sentiment or the track of Righteousness in the Government. In all of them we find their aim is the amelioration of the condition of man, by the rule of right and in the light of our Christian civilization. We now hope we have satisfied the most skeptical that this is a Religious Nation, so far as principle and sentiment is concerned.
"Irrepressible Flict of Ages.
This government was formed with the principle of Right as the cornerstone. It has been well said by one that, 'a broad and trackless ocean separates the Old World from the New; equally separated are the principles which underlie and give form and vitality to the institutions that prevail in the two Hemispheres.' The institutions of the Old World are founded in precedent, and derive their strength from the mouldering elements of the dead past. The American institutions, on the contrary, are implanted in the living present, and depend for their strength and vitality upon the progressive development of the human mind.
"Asiatic and European nations and people are enthralled and impeded in their efforts for improvement, by the chains and manacles, the intricate web and woof of inherited tyranny. The fathers left the form behind them, but the spirit of caste found its way to this land, intended to be the asylum from oppression. The Continental Congress had met and the Declaration had gone forth to the world, of the Independence of the United States. But no sooner had the old Bell of Liberty, in the Hall of Independence, sent forth its molten notes of freedom, proclaiming liberty throughout the land, and unto all the inhabitants thereof, the power of sin in the person of slavery, entered the Halls of Legislation and then Freedom and Slavery began a conflict, which only ended with the passage of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the Government. It was the old battle of Right and Wrong; Free labor and Slave labor. The forces met and no decisive battle was fought; but a compromise was entered into so that while slavery triumphed in preventing the acknowledgment of the universality of Freedom, Liberty was triumphant in drawing a line and in culling out its forces.
"The present century of the nation has been one of justice and injustice, during which time loud professions of Liberty have been made; orators have stood on the platform and spoke in the most glowing terms of the Liberty of this nation, while the voice of millions of men, women and children were ascending to the sky, asking the King of Heaven to hear them and to come to their deliverance, from the most cruel and wicked servitude that ever disgraced a civilized nation. The committee who formed the immortal Declaration of Independence, had to contend with the monster Slavery. They say, 'that all men are created equal,' but we generally hear it quoted, 'that all men are born free and equal.' The last is the sentiment of humanity and the teaching of the word of God; but that could not be said in a land part free and part slave, so we find the compromise. It was not long until we find that the country was divided in sentiment, and many gave full expression to their opinions on the subject of human slavery. You may follow the conflict throughout the history of this nation, and men everywhere, were convinced that “righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin was a reproach to any people.” The friends of slavery united their forces and followed the standard of sin. The sons of freedom and daughters of Liberty were true to their principles. Righteousness was then written on the banners of a large host of men and women who wanted the nation free from all the crimes of human slavery, for it was wrong to master and slave; it was the foul spot on the escutcheon of our proud nation. We can find that this was not only the thoughts of the poor, but the wise, true and consistent. We will examine this and see what they have to say about this sin of the American Nation.
"William Wilberforce said: 'Slavery is the full measure of pure, unsophisticated wickedness, and scorning all corruption or comparison, it stands alone without a rival, in the secure, undisputed possession of its detestable pre-eminence.' Jonathan Edwards, the great and eloquent divine, said: 'While you hold your negroes in slavery you do wrong exceedingly wrong. You do not, as you would men should do to you; you commit sin in the sight of God; you daily violate the plain rights of mankind, and that in a higher degree than if you committed theft or robbery.' Again he says, 'every man, who cannot show that his negro hath, by his voluntary conduct forfeited his liberty, is obligated immediately to manumit him.' Porteus says: 'The Christian religion is opposed to slavery, in spirit and in its principle; it classes menstealers among murderers of fathers and mothers and the most profane criminal upon the earth.' Fox bears testimony, that 'Personal Freedom is the right of every human being. It is a right of which he who deprives a fellow creature, was absolutely criminal in so depriving him, and which he who withheld, was no less criminal in withholding.' Horsely said, 'Slavery is injustice, which no consideration of policy can extenuate.' Johnson says: 'No man is by nature the property of another. The rights of nature must be some way forfeited, before they can be justly taken away'Burke says 'Slavery is a state so improper, so degrading, and so ruinous to the feelings and capacities of human nature, that it ought not to be suffered to exist.' Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of independence, said: 'The Almighty has no attribute which can take sides with us in such a conflict - A contest with insurgent slaves.' General Bolivar: 'Slavery is the infringement of all law having a tendency to preserve slavery, would be the greatest sacrilege.' In 1774 John Wesley declared that 'It cannot be either war or contract can give any man such a property in another as he has in his sheep or oxen. Much less is it possible that any child of man should be born a slave. If therefore you have any regard to justice, to say nothing of mercy, nor the recorded will of God, render unto all their due. Give liberty to whom liberty is due, that is to every child of man, to every partaker of human nature.' Daniel O'Connell, the Irish patriot, on presenting the petition of one million five hundred thousand persons, for the immediate abolition of slavery, said with all the earnestness of his patriot heart: 'I am for speedy, immediate abolition, I care not what creed or color slavery may assume, I am for its total, its instant abolition.'
This was the sentiment of a large number of men and women in this country. But then we find that though the fathers thought that the institution of slavery would only last for a short time, they were mistaken in their hopes, for it was not long after the formation of the Government that it made strong demands on the government for aid and protection in its work of bondage.
"Dr. Henry Highland Garnet, D.D., my first teacher in Divinity, used the following language on one occasion: 'The propagators of the system, or their immediate ancestors, very soon discovered its growing evil and its tremendous wickedness, and secret promises were made to destroy it. The gross inconsistency of a people holding slaves, who had themselves 'ferried o'er the wave,' for freedom;s sake, was too apparent to be entirely overlooked. The voice of Freedom cried, emancipate your slaves! humanity supplicated with tears, for the deliverance of the children of Africa; wisdom urged her solemn plea; the bleeding captive plead his innocence, and pointed to Christianity who stood weeping at the cross; Jehovah frowned upon the nefarious institution, and thunderbolts, red with vengeance, struggled to leap forth to blast the guilty wretches who maintained it. But all in vain; slavery had stretched its dark wings of death o'er the land; the church stood silently by; the Priest prophesied falsely and the people loved to have it so.
"Again this noble son of the race says, 'the diabolical injustice by which your liberties are cloven down, neither God, nor Angels, or just men command you to suffer for a single moment. Therefore it is your solemn and imperative duty to use every means, both moral, intellectual and physical, that promises success. You had far better all die, die immediately, than live slaves, and entail your wretchedness upon your posterity. However much you and all of us may desire it, there is not much hope of redemption without the shedding of blood. If we must bleed, let it all come at once, rather die freemen, than live to be slaves.'
"Thus spoke this most distinguished citizen to his brethren on the subject of their wrongs. The convention did not adopt the address, but his words were prophetic and have been literally fulfilled.
"The Seed Time of Liberty.
In the conflict, through years of toil and sorrow, we witness the persistent hostility of its members to the extension of slavery. The Missouri struggle for the restriction of this wicked institution, comes next in order. There we find the State right doctrine assuming a formidable position under the famous resolutions of '98; the union of the friends of freedom. The seed sowers make their advent into the political arena, they invade the social circle, and bow at the altars of the church and attack the muzzled pulpit. They make considerable progress and meet with the pro-slavery re-action. The aggressive friends of slavery want other fields and are for the annexation of Texas, lawfully or unlawfully. Then we have the Mexican war, in the interest of the power of sin, which is a reproach to the nation and to the inhabitants of this land, for right could not afford to compromise with wrong: sin and righteousness are foes and cannot dwell in the same state in peace. We now see our grand and glorious country turned into a hunting ground, by the Fugitive Slave Law, the most nefarious that ever disgraced the nation. It was a sin against heaven and man. We next find the contest the Nebraska and Kansas struggle of 1854, where the contest was whether the States should be free. The judicial decision of Judge Taney, 'that the Negro had no rights that the white man was bound to respect,' was promulgated to the world; those who were trying to administer the government in the interest of slavery were jubilant, while the friends of freedom were correspondingly despondent, or they were bought to realize the true situation, and many who had been the supporters of the policy of wrong, now, for the first time, saw the logic of their political sentiment, and we find a healthy re-action in the interest of freedom and from that time until the great struggle, in which the two armies were brought out on the field of strife, the halls of Congress, the platform, the stump and the pulpit, were crying with a loud voice the 'Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.'
"Foreseeing that the nation could not maintain her power and influence, with the sin of human bondage eating at her vitals and dividing her people into hostile factions, the political parties in the country began to modify their platforms and fall in line with the growing sentiment of freedom. We find the men and women organizing Anti-Slavery Societies throughout the Northern States, and there was a corresponding awakening in the Western States, to the aggressive spirit of the institution of slavery. Then we find the growing sentiment crystallizing itself into the Free Soil Party, who went forth showing the sins of the nation, and declaring that sin was a reproach to the nation, a weakness, a foul blot on the character of the sons of freedom, and a reflection on the sacred cause of Christianity.
"At this juncture the convention of 1856 met and nominated John C. Fremont, for President of the United States, and a mighty army of living men were marshaled on the side of God and universal liberty. 1,341,264 votes for Fremont; Buchanan, 1,838,169; Fillmore, 874,534.
"The Sword of the Lord and Gideon.
The lines were well drawn on the principles of Liberty and Slavery. The next contest was the memorable raid of John Brown, who with nineteen men frightened the whole State of Virginia. He with a noble band of men went down to the State to 'set the captive free,' and to lighten the burden on those who were oppressed, but he failed and all of his men were captured save one, Osborn P. Anderson, who died a few years ago in Washington, D.C. We are caused to admire the spirit of this old hero, and when we see and learn of his noble conduct while suffering in prison, what a grand sight, one hand on the pulse of his dying son, and a gun in the other. See him in the court room, surrounded by foes, but calm and dignified, or when he is convicted and sentenced to the scaffold to die for his efforts to help the poor, the grand old hero said: 'Christ told me to remember those in bonds as bound with them; to do toward them as I should wish them to do toward me in similar circumstances. My conscience bade me to do that. Therefore I have no regret for the transaction for which I am condemned. I think I feel as happy as Paul did when he lay in prison. He knew if they killed him it would greatly advance the cause of Christ. That was the reason he rejoiced. On that same ground 'I do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice.'
"The Hon. Charles Summer, speaking of John Brown, said on one occasion that 'on his way to the scaffold, he stooped to take up a slave child.' That closing example was the legacy of the dying man to his country. That benediction we must continue and fulfill. In this new order, equality, long-postponed, shall became the master principle of our system, and the very frontispiece of our Constitution. 'For whether on the scaffold high,Or in the battle;s van
The fittest place where man can die,
Is where he dies for man.'
"E. D. Proctor says:
'Bear on high the scaffold alter all the world will turn to see,
How a man has dared to suffer that his brother may be free,
Rear it on some hillside looking North and South, and East, and West,
Where the wind from every quarter fresh may blow upon his breast,
And the sun look down unshaded from the chill December sky,
Glad to shine upon the hero, who for Freedom dared to die.'
On his triumphant march from the prison to the scaffold which was to immortalize him, he met on his way a woman with a little child, colored, the only friends in the whole throng. He stooped and kissed the child with the tenderness of a father. When coming out of his prison he seemed to walk out of the Gate of Fame, his countenance was radiant with the smiles of a clear conscience, there was a joyous expression on his face, and here was the material out of which was made the grand old song,
John Brown's body lies mouldering in the ground,
But his soul goes marching on. - Glory, glory hallelujah.
"The March to Fame and Immortality.
'A winter sunshine, still and bright,
The Blue Hills bathed with golden light.
And earth was smiling to the sky,
When calmly he went forth to die.
The old man met no friendly eye,
When last he looked on earth and sky:
But one small child, with timid air,
Was gazing on his hoary hair.
As that dark brow to his upturned,
The tender heart within him yearned:
And, fondly stooping o'er face.
He kissed her for her injured race.
But Jesus smiled that sight to see,
And said, 'He did it unto me';
The golden harps then sweetly rung.
And this the song the Angels sung:
'Who loves the poor doth love the lord:
Earth cannot dim thy bright reward;
We hover o'er yon gallows high,
And wait to bear thee to the sky.' - L.M. Childs.
"The Attempt to Build a Government on the Negro.
The next step in the conflict of the Anti-Slavery principle in this government, was when the conflict was not with arguments, but with bullets on the bloody field of battle. The friends of slavery and wrong were determined to have a government founded on what they thought was the proper relation of the white man and the negro. The object of this government is best stated by Alexander H. Stephens, in his speech on his election to the Vice Presidency: 'The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution - African slavery as it exists among us - the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and the present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this as the 'rock upon which the old union would split.' He was right, but whether he comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. These ideas were fundamentally wrong; they rested upon the assumption of the equality of the races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation; and the idea of a government built upon it - when the storms came and the winds blew, it fell But says this distinguished statesman, 'our government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests upon, the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. [Applause.] This, our new government, is the first in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical and moral truth.'
Thus we find that the Southern Confederacy was built on the principle of wrong to one part of the human family, as it is here announced that it was the first in history, and if we are to take its life as an example of the governments which are builded on the sand, then I think that the government which he declares as having fallen, is still standing, the designs of the Confederacy to the contrary notwithstanding.
"Mr. Stephens says further on: 'That many governments have been founded upon the principle of enslaving certain classes, but the classes thus enslaved were of the same race, and their enslavement in violation of the laws of nature. Our system commits no such violation of nature's laws. The negro by nature, or by the course against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system.'
"Listen to the impious cant: 'The substraction of our society is made of the material fitted by nature for it; it is in conformity with the Creator. It is not for us to inquire into the wisdom of His ordinances, or to question them. Our Confederacy is founded upon principles in strict conformity with these laws. This stone which was rejected by the first builders, is become the chief stone of the corner in our new edifice.' [Applause.] With this idea we had a war for the preservation of the Union, and it was convinced. It is apprehended that the civilized world will be against us. I care not who or how many they may be; when we stand upon the eternal principles of truth. We are obliged to and must triumph.'
"The friends of the Confederacy threw down the gauntlet of defiance, their mighty host of the Moloch of slavery united their armies and went forth to battle. The gallant Boys in Blue, at the bugle call of Abraham Lincoln, come forth from the hill-side, and gathered from the plans, with the boldness of the Spartian band of Leonidas, and with a valor that would have honored the Golden Legions of Rome in her palmiest days; they drew their loyal swords and shouldered their patriotic muskets in defense of the constitution and the union. The contending armies confronted each other, on the field and in the halls of legislation. The fate of the nation was to be decided by the sword. Then my poor, bleeding, bruised and oppressed race was between the upper and nether millstones. They were between the two contending forces. Sad was the sight, sorrowful was the morning watch of the day of freedom. Who of the millions can comprehend the suffering of five million souls? Who can weigh the sighs that escaped from them then? Who can measure the suspense in the struggle, and what book would contain the record of their many woes? Why 'Were all the gags, bolts, lars and locks,
The thumbscrews, handcuffs, and the chain,
The branding iron and the stocks,
That have increased the African's pain,
Piled up by skillful smith or mason.
With care, in one great concave heap,
Those gory gyves would form a basin,
Unnumbered fathoms wide and deep.
Could all their blood and tears alone
Flow in this basin deep and wide,
The proudest ship the world hath known
Would on that basin's bosom ride;
And then could all their groans and sighs,
Their anguished wailings of despair,
But freight that ships just where she lies,
Twould sink that mammoth vessel there.'
"The Triumph of Liberty in Washington.
The result of the conflict was the most glorious triumph of the principle of liberty and equality to all men, over the armies of those who were determined to make the victory come on the side of wrong. The result of the conflict was that the government abolished the wicked institution in the District of Columbia, and the chains of the bondsman were no longer heard in the capital of the nation, and when they joined in singing:
"All hail the day of gladness
We banish fear and sadness,
Our voices clear, in loudest strain we raise:
And freedom's praises singing,
Our hymns of joy out-ringing,
To him who crowns the labors of our days.
O, tell wide the story,
How like a crown of glory,
She rests on bright Potomac's gentle stream;
Her name now ascending,
Her influences blending
In beauteous rays, o'er Southern plains shall beam.
There freedom' sun is shining,
The slave no more repining,
For wife and children separated wide:
Nor scourges without number,
Or shrieks awake his slumber
In slave-marts, by the river's flowing tide.
Chorus - Sing! sing! ye grateful hearted
Bring songs of triumphant melody;
In sweetest numbers sounding,
While hill and vale resounding,
Fair Washington our capital is free.
- J. Madison Bell, the Bard of Toledo, gives the following:Unfurl your banners to the breeze!Let Freedom's tocsin sound amain,Until the islands of the seasRe-echo with the glad refrain!Columbia's free, Columbia's free!Her teeming streets, her vine-clad groves,Are sacred now to Liberty,And God, who every right approves.Thank God, the Capital is free!The slaver's pen, the auction-block,The glory lash of cruelty,No more this nation's pride shall mock;No more, within those ten miles square,Shall men be bought and women sold;Nor infants sable-hued and fair,Exchanged again for paltry gold.
"A Grand Party of Political Righteousness.Was organized, and in the memorable conflict of 1860 Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States, and the things which made this party great were the position it occupied on the question of slavery, and the grand old principle of right. Its success over injustice to the negro and disloyalty to the government stands as a monument to its memory; and the chains and handcuffs of the bondsmen of the South, are the base of the grand pyramid of the triumphs of liberty. The tracks of Righteousness are seen everywhere in this land of ours. Let us see what this grand party has done for us and the nation.
"1st. It saved the nation's life and snatched it from the jaws of dissolution.
"2nd. It gave the country a free soil, free men, free speech, free press, free schools and free pulpits.
"3rd. Proclamation of President Lincoln, the bow of promise was hung out for ninety days, and the fate of the race was in the balance, but in due time the Proclamation of Emancipation was issued and went forth to the world. The prayers of the oppressed went up to heaven that the brazen doors of oppression should be opened, and that the captive night go free. It was so; a grand and glorious day was it when the works of freedom was done. The Proclamation has the following as its close: 'Trusting to the deliberate judgment of posterity and the gracious favor of Almighty God.' Then since his faith was well founded, he arose and followed his leader and feared no danger. Mrs. F. E. W. Harper says of the Proclamation: It shall flash through coming ages,
It shall light the distant years;
And eyes now dim with sorrow,
Shall be brighter through their tears.' The Amendments to the Constitution, first, the 13th, forever prohibiting slavery; second, the 14th, defining citizenship and giving the oath to all men in the courts of the United States—the key-stone in the arch of the temple of American liberty was finally secured and raised to its appropriate place, amid the acclamations of the struggling millions and the shouts of triumph from the lovers of right and justice. Then once more the nation took up its line of march to honor and success. The war cloud went down behind the horizon, we hope to rise no more, and the sun of peace, plenty and prosperity has arisen in the east, and is now sending its powerful influence through all the avenues of commerce, trade and agriculture. The highways to the mountains of knowledge were thrown open, and the ignorant are invited to come to the fountains and partake of the sweet waters, drink and live, study and be wise. Thus while the country was awakening to the duties of the hour, the grand Centennial year came upon us and found a nation grand in all that makes a nation great. Let all the people sing praises to the Lord.
"Let us see what it is that makes us so great; wherein lies our strength. What has made us one of the greatest powers of the earth, politically and intellectually? Have we come to the conclusion that it is Righteousness that exalteth a nation? We have met to-day at the request of the President of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant, and also the Governor of our beloved State, Rutherford B. Hayes. For what? Why call us from our homes? Why come to the house of God? Why not go to the hall of mirth and to the places of amusement to-day? No that is not what they want us to do. We are commanded to go to our 'several places of worship, and there offer up thanks to Kind Providence which has brought our nation through the scenes of another year, and blessed the land with peace, plenty and prosperity.' Then as Americans we have reason to rejoice and congratulate ourselves on the greatness of our beloved country; at this the close of the first hundred years of experimental government of the people, by the people, and for the people. To be a citizen of this vast country is something, and to share in its privileges and duties is more than something.
"Have you any idea of the vastness of this country? Dr. Ledyard says in showing that to whomsoever much is given, much is required:
"1. The first fact, then, which demands attention is that ours is a nation to which 'much has been given.' Look at this truth in a material sense. In the mere matter of extent the statement just made is seen to be true. We have a territory that measures at the points of greatest length, from east to west, 2,600 miles, and from north to south 1,600 miles and that includes an area of 3,230,572 square miles. These stupendous figures will be plainer to us if we remember that France, before the loss of the German provinces, contained only 203,000 square miles, or one-fifteenth of ours; and England, including Wales, companies only 51,000 square miles, or less than one-sixtieth of the area of the United States. Important as was the ancient land of Palestine in the history of the race, its entire length might be multiplied nearly twenty times along the straight line between Cape Cod and the Pacific coast, and 500 countries of the size of that old home of Israel might be accommodated within our borders, with room to spare! And in these estimates we have not taken into account our Russian American possessions, which add to that which has been indicated a region about twice the size of France. In this sense, therefore, of the extent of our domain, much has been given us. Mere vastness of territory, however, is not necessarily a distinguished blessing. The great desert of Northern Africa is about the size of the United States, yet no nation would consider it a specially desirable possession. But our noble expanse is by no means a Sahara. We have more than 3,000,000 square miles not of desolation, but of richness, or fertility, of all that secures the material wealth and greatness of a people. Our mountains are full of mineral treasures; our plains and valleys already teem with valued products of the soil, or wait to reward with abundance the labors of the workmen. Gold and silver, lead, copper, and iron, lumber and coal, cotton and wool, and breadstuffs, all are produced easily and abundantly in this favored land, and the catalogue of our productions is almost a transcript of a list of the needs of men.
"Then we should rejoice at our educational facilities, which are greater in some respects than any nation on the face of the earth. Our common schools, or the colleges of the poor, stand up like a beacon light to the nations of the earth, and the down-trodden millions of all races and all climes hear our call saying, arise and shine, thy light has come; and the glory of the grandest Republic that the sun shines on, says arise and come and enjoy the banquet that I have spread for the children of men.
"Reasons why the American Negro should Rejoice in this Hour of Thanksgiving.We are in a peculiar situation as a race. Our way has been one of toil, sorrow and pain; we have been hewers of wood and drawers of water, the laborers in the field of toil; we have been the bone and sinew in the Southern States; we have moistened the soil with our salt tears, forced by the wrong and oppression from our sorrowful and bleeding hearts; we have consecrated the field with the crystal drops of labor, and baptized the whole with the blood drawn from our backs by the gory lash. The temples of learning have been closed against us; the word of life and light sealed by wicked law, and we have been compelled to find the way to heaven by the flickering light of inspiration or intuition, rather than by the brilliant and luminous rays of revelation; we were chained and whipped because we could not walk nor run. The hymenial altars were burned in our presence; the sacred ashes were scattered to the winds of heaven; our wives were not our own; our children were not our own; the virtue of our daughters were sold to the highest bidder; but amid all of this we have had a strong faith in God, and lively hope of the final triumph of right over wrong.
"To-day we can say: “The Lord has done great things for us, whereof we are glad.” Every heart can rejoice in the position we occupy, that of citizens, with all the obligations and all the privileges that are ours. If we cannot exercise them everywhere, they belong to us and by the blessing of God,
"1st. We should be thankful that the new century finds us not as the old one found our fathers, then they were slaves, now there is no slave within our borders, no master in our land, every man is free, owning no master but his God above him and his own free will.
"2nd. The great change in public sentiment in favor of the equality of man, and the general feeling that “God hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth.” While the iron hand of war wrung from many unwilling lips the expression of Peter, “I perceive of a truth that God is no respecter of persons.” The sentiments is now embedded in the constitution of our country and crystallized in the Civil Rights Bill.
"3rd. The political status of the Negro is something to make us thankful. The recognition of his manhood in the election and appointment to offices of trust, honor and emolument. We have in the short time we have been out of the house of bondage, furnished, what no race of men ever did, in so short a period from their emancipation, men who have filled with credit to the race, satisfaction to the government, and honor to themselves, the positions of Representatives, Congressmen, States Senators, United States Senators, Secretaries of State, Commissioners of Education, Lieutenant Governors, Judges of Circuit and Supreme Courts, in fact we have almost every office from a Constable to United State Senator. This in the short space of thirteen years. Thus we close up the old century and meet the new as men, taking a part in the administration of the laws of this grand State of ours.
"4th. Educationally we have reason to rejoice with the rest of the progressive men and women of our land. The facilities for the acquisition of a common school education are of a very superior kind, and the teachers in the school are an improvement on those of my day. The methods of instruction are far superior to those of ten years ago. We have comfortable houses and good teachers for our children and if we can only give them a little corn bread and meat and keep their backs covered, they can go to school and qualify themselves for usefulness and honor in this life, and for glory in the one to come. We must educate! We must educate! I say with all the earnestness of the soul, or short will our position of honor in this country be. We must be able to meet thought with thought, reason with reason, fact with fact, argument with argument, on the platform and in the pulpit. Let our banners be thrown out, and on their ample folds written in letters of living light, educate the head to think, the heart to feel and the hands to work.
'Another hopeful sign in the race is the general desire of our young men and young women to improve their talents and time by becoming useful to their neighbors. The establishment of schools of learning of a high and low degree, the founding, controlling and supporting of a school of learning of the highest order, is a sign unmistakable that we are worthy of the position we providentially occupy in this country. We will be judged by what we do for the education of the race; we must not be satisfied with the position of followers, but we must qualify ourselves for leaders in the war against ignorance and sin. Fall in line young men! Fall in line young women! Old men clear the way and let the children come in! Mothers send on the re-enforcements to the hall of knowledge and let us storm the outer works and take the forts, ignorance, sin and intemperance, and hold it. Hold the fort! Hold the fort! says the coming generation, for we are coming.
"One word to the young men who are aspiring to the ministry, in the Christian Church . You may not hope to be a Paul, a Peter or John, in the church of God, yet it is in your power to attain to an eminent position in the moral and religious world. I insist on every young man and woman to aim high and labor hard, and follow the example of the great men, who have gone on before us and left their moccasin tracks in the sands of time. Strive to be as eloquent and learned as Payne; as brilliant in speech and as versatile in the knowledge of men and things as Campbell; as profound, pathetic and effective a worker as Wayman; as persevering and firm in character as Shorter; as sweet in expression, beautiful in diction and captivating in native and cultured eloquence as Ward. May you be as Catholic in spirit and comprehensive in thought, as the unconquerable and faithful Brown. Then if you want a worthy example of energy and success look on that king of negro editors, Dr. B. T. Turner, a man of rare ability and extensive knowledge. He wields the most trenchant and powerful pen of any negro in America, when he speaks of the wrongs of the race, or the effects of sin on man and the nation. His sentences burn like caustic. He shades his picture in darkness of the night or the moonlight of evening. But when he portrays the glory of truth, justice, righteousness and God, he dips his pencil in the sunlight of universal truth and says that “righteousness exalteth a nation,” and 'happy are the people whose God is the Lord.'p>
"Religiously we can congratulate ourselves and the race on the marked improvement in the ministry and membership. There was a time when the people were satisfied with a minister if he had a large mouth and a good pair of lungs; but not so now, they will not take sound for sense. They want an educated man; they want one fully qualified for the work and they are willing to pay for his services. But they are not willing to pay for smoking, talking and cant, but want thought, living and burning thought, and then they will be satisfied.
"I am of the opinion that the ministry of to-day are coming up to the requirement of the age. They are everywhere studying and investigating, and many are workmen that need not be ashamed. Then with an intelligent ministry and a holy and loving congregation, we can join with the other churches of the Lord in singing praise to the Great Giver of all good and perfect gifts. The church of which we are members and of which I am one of the ministers, is doing a grand work. When the nation was born, the church was unborn, but it now has the following army at work for God and humanity
The A.M.E. Church, May 1876.Bishops6 Annual Conference28 Traveling Preachers1,429)Local Preachers3,168)Local Exhorter2,638)—7,235 Full Members213,675)Probationers33,829)—247,504_______Total254,739 Sunday Schools2,430 Superintendents2,513 Teachers8,072 Scholars120,331 Volumes in Library151,321 Number of Church Buildings1,95 Number of Church Buildings1,950 Probable Value$3,332,222 Parsonages110 Probable Value55,000 Contingent Money$ 2,976 85 Pastors Support201,984 90 Presiding Elders' Support23,896 60Dollar General Expenses28,009 97 Sunday School Money17,415 32 Missionary Money3,872 72 Building and Repairs169,558 60__________Total$447,714 96The Following are the Chief Officers of our Church:Bishop D.A. Payne, D.D., Wilberforce University, Nenia, Ohio.Bishop A.W. Wayman, 127 East Baltimore Street, Baltimore, Maryland. Bishop J.P. Campbell, D.D., LL. D., 1923 North 11th Street, Philadelphia,Penn.Bishop J.A. Shorter, Wilberforce University.Bishop T.M.D. Ward, New Orleans, Louisiana.Bishop J.M. Brown, D.D., Howard University, Washington, D.C. Rev. J.H.W. Burley, Financial Secretary, 1214 16th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C.R. II. Cain, D.D., Missionary Agent, Charleston, South Carolina. J.C. Embry, Commissioner of Education, No. 1104 Cherokee Street,Leavenworth City, Kansas.H.M. Turner, D.D., LL.D., General Business Manager Publishing Department, 631 Pine Street, Philadelphia.B.T. Tanner, D.D. Editor of the CHRISTIAN RECORDER.Rev. C.L.Bradwell, Traveling Agent.Benjamin W. Arnett, B.D., Secretary of General Conference, Urbana,Ohio J.P. Underwood, Secretary of Ohio Annual Conference.Benjamin F. Lee, B.D., President of Wilberforce University, Xenia,Ohio.
"I think with the facts enumerated it is a sufficient justification of our meeting to-day in the church to thank God.
"I am aware that while we are reasonably secure in person, that our brethren in the South have been hunted like wild beasts and shot down for no offense only that God made them black. Their homes have been made desolate and murder has gone far in the sunlight of our christian civilization, and committed crimes which would bring a blush on the cheek of the Arab. Men and women have had to flee for their lives and live in the swamp or woods. School houses have been burned, and churches destroyed; ministers of the Gospel have run away by the light of their own burning temple of worship; terror, intimidation, wrong and crimes of every description have been committed in the name of Liberty. Our hearts have melted when we heard of the suffering of our people, and our ears have been filled with bitter crying and wailing from the South land. The lightning has flashed the tidings of death; the mails have been filled with messages of blood; the atmosphere moistened with the tears of my poor bleeding race. My God, hear prayer and have mercy on us! and deliver us from the cauldron of affliction, sorrow and death.
"Oh, that Justice would open her ear to our plaintive petition and hold with even hand her scales. We know that it is said that Justice is blind but can always hear the testimony of her subjects. We have thought some times that Justice was either asleep or deaf to the interest of the negro race of this country, for all the avenues to her temple have been closed to the weeping millions, but we hope that she will hear our cry and cause the cloud that hangs over us like the pall of death or the chariot of destruction to be removed. Though our eyes are filled with tears and our hearts with sadness, we rise up from our seats and lift up our hearts to the God of the nation, and send our voice on the startled air, that 'Righteousness exalteth a nation but sin is a reproach to any people.'
"Then may the voice of the four millions of men, women and children of the African race utter the world that 'sin is a reproach to any people.' May it be heard from where the Androscoggin meanders in the pine forest of Maine to where the Rio Grande kisses the warm waters of the Gulf. And may the sad refrain begin on the Atlantic's hesperian strand and increase in tone and volume until it reaches the Pacific's golden gates, that sin is a reproach! sin is a reproach! sin is a reproach to any people!
"The following lines were prepared by Mrs. F.E.W. Harper, to be read at the unveiling of "Allen Centennial Monument," and they are golden words, expressing the sentiment of my heart and are at the same time the voice of the coming generation; the nation song of the second century for the moving millions of the negro race.
"Hear it! sing it! Shout it, ye sons and daughters of America:
"We are Rising"
We are rising, as a people,
We are rising, to the light;
For our God has changed the shadows
Of our dark and dreary night.
In the prison house of bondage,
When we bent beneath the rod,
And our hearts were faint and weary,
We first learned to trust in God.
We are marching along, we are marching along,
The hand that broke our fetters was powerful strong.
We are marching along, we are marching along,
We are rising as a people, and we're marching along.
For the sighing of the needy,
God, himself did bare his hand,
And the footsteps of his judgments,
Echoed through the guilty land;
When the rust of many ages,
On our galling fetters lay,
He turned our grief to gladness,
And our darkness into day.
We are marching along, etc.
Unto God, be all the glory,
That our eyes behold the sight.
Of a people, peeled and scattered
Rising into freedom's light.
Though the morning seemed to linger,
o'er the hill tops far away
And the night was long and gloomy.Yet he was our shield and stay.
We are marching along, etc.
Help us, Oh! great Deliverer.
To be faithful to thy Word.
Till the nation's former bondmen,
Be the freemen of the Lord.
Teach, Oh, Lord, our hands to battle
Against the host of vice, and sin.
And with Jesus, for our Captain,
The victory we shall win.
We are marching along, etc.'
"The Danger to our Country.
"Now that our national glory and grandeur is principally derived from the position the fathers took on the great questions of right and wrong, and the career of this nation has been unparalleled in the history of the past, now there are those who are demanding the tearing down the strength of our national fabric. They may not intend to tear it down, but just as sure as they have their way, just that sure will they undermine our superstructure and cause the greatest calamity of the age. What are the demands of this party of men? Just look at it and examine it for yourselves, and see if you are willing that they shall have their way; or will you still assist in keeping the ship of state in the hands of the same crew and run her by the old gospel chart! But ye men who think there is no danger listen to the demands of the Liberals as they choose to call themselves:
"'Organize! Liberals of America! The hour for action has arrived. The cause of freedom calls upon us to combine our strength, our zeal, our efforts. These are The Demands of Liberalism:"Now we must not think that we have nothing to do in this great work, for the men who are at the head of this movement are men of culture and intelligence, and many of them are men of influence. They are led by that thinker and scholar, F. E. Abbott, than whom I know but few men who has a smoother pen, or who is his equal on the battle-field of thought. He says in an address on the duty of his leagues:"'1. We demand that churches and other ecclesiastical property shall no longer be exempt from just taxation.
"'2. We demand that the employment of chaplains in Congress, in State Legislatures, in the navy and militia, and in prisons, asylums, and all other institutions supported by public money, shall be discontinued.
"'3. We demand that all public appropriations for sectarian educational and charitable institutions shall cease.
"'4. We demand that all religious services now sustained by the government shall be abolished; and especially that the use of the Bible in the public schools, whether ostensibly as a text-book or avowedly as a book of religious worship, shall be prohibited.
"'5. We demand that the appointment, by the President of the United States or by the Governors of the various States, of all religious festivals and fasts shall wholly cease.
"'6. We demand that the judicial oath in the courts and in all other departments of the government shall be abolished, and that simple affirmation under the pains and penalties of perjury shall be established in its stead.
"'7. We demand that all laws directly or indirectly enforcing the observance of Sunday as the Sabbath shall be repealed.
"'8. We demand that all laws looking to the enforcement of “Christian” morality shall be abrogated, and that all laws shall be conformed to the requirements of natural morality, equal rights, and impartial liberty.
"'9. We demand that not only in the Constitution of the United States and of the several States, but also in the practical administration of the same, no privilege or advantage shall be conceded to Christianity or any other special religion; that our entire political system shall be founded and administered on a purely secular basis; and that whatever changes shall prove necessary to this end shall be consistently, unflinchingly, and promptly made.'
"'Let us boldly and with high purpose meet the duty of the hour.'
"'My answer may be a negative one to all who see nothing positive in the idea of liberty. The conviction I refer to is this: that, regarded as a theological system, Christianity is Superstition, and, regarded as an organized institution, Christianity is Slavery. The purpose I refer to is this: that, whether regarded as theological system, Christianity shall wholly cease to exercise influence in political matters. Although the national Constitution is strictly secular and non-Christian, there are many things in the practical administration of the government which violate its spirit, and constitute a virtual recognition of Christianity as the national religion. These violations are very dangerous; they are on the increase; they more and more give Christianity a practical hold upon the government; they directly tend to strengthen the influence of Christianity over the people, and to fortify it both as a theology and a church; and they are therefore justly viewed with growing indignation by liberals. Not unreasonably are they looked upon as paving the way to a formidable effort to carry the Christian Amendment to the Constitution; and the liberals are beginning to see that they must extinguish the conflagration in its commencement. I believe all this myself, with more intense conviction every day; and therefore I appeal frankly to the people to begin now to lay the foundations of a great National Party of Freedom. It is not a moment too soon. If the liberals are wise, they will see the facts as they are, and act accordingly. Not with hostility, bitterness, defiance, or anger but rather with love to all men and high faith in the beneficence of consistently republican institutions, do I urge them most earnestly to begin the work at once.'
"He acknowledges that this is a religious nation and wants all men to assist him in eliminating the grand old granite principles from the framework of our national union. Will you do it freeman; will we sell the temple reared at the cost of so much precious blood and treasure? These men would have us turn back the hands on the clock of our national progress, and stay the shadow on the dial plate of our christian civilization; they would have us call a retreat to the soldiers in the army of Christ; the banner of the cross they would have us haul down, and reverse the engines of war against sin and crime; the songs of Zion they would turn into discord, and for the harmony and the melody of the sons of God, they would give us general confusion; they would have us chain the forces of virtue and unloose the elements of vice; they would have the nation loose its moorings from the Lord of truth and experience and commit interest, morally, socially; religiously and politically to the unsafe and unreliable human reason; they would discharge God and his crew and run the ship of State by the light of reason, which has always been but a dim taper in the world, and all the foot-prints it has left are marked with the blood of men, women and children. No nation is safe when left alone with reason.
"But we have no notion of giving up the contest without a struggle or a battle. We are aware that there is a great commotion in the world of thought. Religion and science are at arms length contending with all their forces for the mastery. Faith and unbelief are fighting their old battles over again, everything that can be shaken is shaking. The foundations of belief are assaulted by the army of science and men are changing their opinions. New and starting theories are promulgated to the world; old truths are putting on new garbs. Error is dressing in the latest style, wrong is secured by the unholy alliances, changes in men and things, revolution in church and state, Empires are crumbling, Kingdoms tottering; everywhere the change is seen. In the social circle, in the school house, in the pulpit and in the pews. But amid all the changes are revolutions their are some things that are unchangeable, unmovable and enduring. The forces that underline the vital power of Christianity are the same yesterday, to-day, to-morrow and forever more. They are like their God, who is omnipotent, immovable and eternal, and everywhere truth has marched it has left its moccasin tracks.
"The Conclusion of the Whole Matter.We have patiently tried to examine the record of the nations of antiquity and learn the cause of their decay and decline, their fall, why their early death; and why so many implements of destruction around and about their tombs, and everywhere, in the silent streets, mouldering ruins, tottering columns, mouldy and moist rooms, and the united voice from the sepulcher of the dead past is, "sin is a reproach to any people." We see it written on the tombs of the Kings, and engraven on the pages of time, "sin is a reproach to any people." These are the principles of governments, Right and wrong; and the people who are the advocates of Right have bound themselves together and by their united effort they have brought light out of darkness and forced strength out of weakness.
"We as a nation have a grand and glorious future before us. The sun of our nation is just arising above the horizon and is now sending his golden rays of peace from one end of the land to the other. The utmost extremities of the members of the body politic are warm and in motion by the commercial and financial activities of the land. Her face is destined to blush with beauty when peace and justice shall be enthroned. The grand march of progress shall mark her in her onward advancement in moral strength, intellectual brilliancy, and political power. Then we can say that we give to every man, woman and child the benefit of our free institutions, giving all the benefits of our common school and the freedom to worship God under their own vine and fig tree. Then will we see written, on the banner of our free, redeemed and disenthralled country, the sublime words written, not in the blood of men, but in the sun-light of truth, that "Righteousness exalteth a nation." It will fall like the morning dew on the lowly; it will descend like the showers of May on the poor; and like the sun it will shine on the good and bad, dispensing from the hand of plenty the blessings of a government founded on the principle of justice and equality.
"Standing on the threshold of the second century of the nation's life, with the experience of the past lying at our feet, we are saluted by the shout of triumph from the millions who left their homes and business and attended the Great Exposition of the skill and genius of the world, collected at Philadelphia. We were permitted to receive the greetings from the oldest to the youngest nation of the earth. Egypt and the United States clasped hands over the waste of 5,000 years, and lay their treasures at the feet of our civilization. The material, intellectual and mechanical deterioration of the one, and the unprecedented progress of the other, stand in great contrast; in all that makes the nation great,—morally, religiously and socially, the young nation is ahead.
"Following the tracks of righteousness throughout the centuries and along the way of nations, we are prepared to recommend it to all and assert without a shadow of doubt, that "Righteousness exalted a nation"; but on the other hand following the foot-prints of sin amid the ruins of Empires and remains of cities, we will say that "sin is a reproach to any people." But we call on all American citizens to love their country, and look not on the sins of the past, but arming ourselves for the conflict of the future, girding ourselves in the habiliments of Righteousness, march forth with the courage of a Numidian lion and with the confidence of a Roman Gladiator, and meet the demands of the age, and satisfy the duties of the hour. Let us be encouraged in our work, for we have found the moccasin track of Righteousness all along the shore of the stream of life, constantly advancing, holding humanity with a firm hand. We have seen it “through” all the confusion of rising and falling States, of battle, siege and slaughter, of victory and defeat; through the varying fortunes and ultimate extinctions of Monarchies, Republics and Empires; through barbaric irruption and desolation, feudal isolation, spiritual supremacy, the heroic rush and conflict of the Cross and Crescent; amid the busy hum of industry, through the marts of trade and behind the gliding keels of commerce.”
"And in America, the battle-field of modern thought, we can trace the foot-prints of the one and the tracks of the other. So let us use all of our available forces, and especially our young men, and throw them into the conflict of the Right against the Wrong.
"Then let the grand Centennial Thanksgiving song be heard and sung in every house of God; and in every home may thanksgiving sounds be heard, for our race has been emancipated, enfranchised and are now educating, and have the gospel preached to them!
"Sons of freedom, sing the glad hymns of praise on the Western plains! Daughters of sorrow shout the joyful tidings amid the savannahs of the South-land! Proclaim it on the Atlantic's western stand and declare it on the slopes of the Pacific! Humble followers of the Son of Mary, chant the eternal truth in the temple of the Most High, that “Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.”
"We invite every nation, kindred, tongue and people, to come to our land. Come from the bogs of Ireland; come from the dykes of Holland; come from the mountains of Switzerland; and from the sunny plains of Italy; and enjoy a government made for man! Come from the jungles of Africa or Egypt, the university of the infant world; come from Asia the cradle of humanity; come and bring your gifts from the Islands of the South Sea and spice land! Come ye men of every clime and race and see a nation founded in Righteousness, guarded by Justice, and supported by truth and equity, and defended by God!
"When thus united in one grand commonwealth of nationalities the universal prayer will be:
"Show us our Aaron, with his rod of flower!
Our Miriam, with her timbrel soul in tune!
And call some Joshua, in spirits power,
To praise our sun of strength at point of noon.
God of our fathers! over sand and sea,
Still keep our struggling footsteps close to thee."
Well you’ve hijacked the thread...
Get a room with one of your other personalities.. jeese..
Save me from knowing what you two do in there.. please..
Anyone that would read all ..that.. needs to get a life..
So, if Wilson was the first progressive president, who was the first? I assume TR?
The upshot is the rights he has must come only as grants from the State. In the course of time, the Mass Man, lacking any moral principle, will devolve into competing interest groups — which can be endlessly (it seems) manipulated to contend with one another for the available public spoils. Under such conditions, the fulmination of inter-group conflict is in the prime interest of the Progressive State.
It is a "divide and conquer" strategy, right down to the ground, that can only sow social disorder ad infinitum. And it seems to me no sane person who understood these developments would tolerate the total debauchment of our sociopolitical order that the Progressives are seeking to achieve.
The Supreme Court's decision to remove all reference to God from publicly funded schools made it possible for the progressives to withhold such information for generations. And the breaking down of the family unit no doubt helped their cause.
Yep, TR was the first Progressive president.
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