George Washington Flowers 
 Memorial Collection 
 
 DUKE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
 ESTABLISHED BY THE 
 FAMILY OF 
 
 COLONEL FLOWERS 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2015 
 
 https://archive.org/details/dutyinterestiden1861bell 
 
election 
 
 Dtttif nnit 3ntrrrst Sknlirnl in iijr Rrsrnt (Crisis. 
 
 A SERMON 
 
 PREACHED IX 
 
 ALL SOULS’ CHURCH, 
 
 SUNDAY MORNING, APRIL 14th, 1861, 
 
 HENRY W. BELLOWS. 
 
 NEW YORK : 
 
 WYNKOOP, HALLENBECK & THOMAS, PRINTERS, 
 No. 113 Fuiton Street. 
 
 1861 . 
 

- 
 
 THE FLOWERS COLLECTION 
 
 SERMON. 
 
 “ Men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking aftei • those things which 
 are coming on the earth ." — Luke xxi : 26. 
 
 The introduction of our sacred religion was attended 
 and followed by most distressing events. Our Lord pre- 
 pared the minds and hearts of his immediate disciples for 
 the perils of ease, property, and life, which were to dis- 
 tinguish the generation that founded the Church, openly 
 predicting universal perplexity and distress, hut exhorting 
 them that when all other “ men’s hearts were failing them 
 for fear, and for looking after those things which were 
 coming on the earth,” they should “ look up and lift up 
 their heads,” for “ their redemption was drawing nigh.” 
 
 We are so little used, in these modern times, to suf- 
 fering for our principles — so little accustomed to he 
 called to long and exhausting sacrifices for our religion — 
 that we are all somewhat out of sympathy with those 
 who, from the first, have done the work of pioneering the 
 cause of truth, justice, and humanity in the world. The 
 long period of peace and prosperity we have enjoyed has 
 taught us to flatter ourselves that the time was gone by 
 when men were likely again to he called on to suffer 
 the spoiling of their goods, the interruption of their domes- 
 tic comfort, the imperilling of their fortunes, for the sake 
 
4 
 
 of any of the permanent interests of society. That was 
 very well in Revolutionary times, or Puritan times, or 
 Reformation times, or Apostolic times ; and we have no 
 praises too strong, no gratitude too deep, to convey our 
 sense of the glorious merits of those who counted their 
 lives not dear, and their possessions dross and dung, when 
 the great principles of humanity, order, justice, piety, 
 summoned them to risk all in their defense. But these are 
 modern times ; times when agriculture and commerce and 
 manufactures are the great interests ; times when schools 
 and churches are the main bulwarks of truth and morali- 
 ty, and when we are expecting to have our duty and our 
 principles somehow made consistent, if not coincident, 
 with our interest and prosperity ; and so, in the deepest 
 view, but only in that, they are. 
 
 I desire to speak with true respect of the material inter- 
 -ests of society. The real progress oi the world depends 
 very much on peace and prosperous industry, and wide- 
 spread, because safe and rewarding, commerce. Christiani- 
 ty has immensely advanced the wealth and comfort of 
 society, and the riches and peace of the world have repaid 
 religion by munificent support of her cause. It is not 
 necessarily a mean and selfish instinct which makes us so 
 f sensitive to the prospects of our material interests. The 
 bread, safety, and happiness of our wives and children ; 
 the prosperity of our social, civil, and humane institutions ; 
 the support of religion itself; the supply of labor and food 
 
5 
 
 to the masses of the people — all are finally dependent upon 
 the undisturbed condition of trade, the sound basis of 
 monetary affairs, and the pacific prospects of the world. 
 There can he no difference among sensible men as to the 
 vast importance of stability in the industry and commer- 
 cial and fiscal affairs of the nation. 
 
 Radically and truly considered, however, there is no con- 
 flict between the moral interests of society and its material 
 interests. What is most for the interest of piety and virtue 
 is most for the interest of trade and commerce. What 
 best serves God and humanity, best serves basket and store. 
 Any seeming antagonism here is not real, hut due only to 
 our shortsightedness. It is proved indisputably that public 
 morality and piety are in the highest degree favorable to 
 public wealth, and that the most moral and religious nations 
 are the richest. It is with moral and spiritual truths, as it 
 is with scientific and economical truths — they always seem 
 to threaten disaster when they first break upon the notice 
 of the world, but soon show themselves to he the guardians 
 and most efficient promoters of the real interests which it 
 is predicted they are swiftly to ruin. Thus, the introduc- 
 tion of machine labor was going to ruin the industry of 
 England ; and the abolition ot the Corn Laws was going to 
 ruin the British landholders ; the invention of steam power 
 was going to make horses of no value ; the education of 
 the lower classes was going to sow dangerous political dis- 
 contents among the people ; the abolition of a religious 
 
G 
 
 establishment was going to prostrate Christianity. But 
 nothing of this happened ; for, when things are right in 
 principle, they always work right in practice, after a little 
 time ; and when things are wrong in principle, they always 
 work wrong in practice, sooner or later. It is right in 
 principle to economize labor, to do things in the cheapest 
 and most efficient way, to let in light, to discuss all matters 
 with freedom and thoroughness, to do justice, to tell the 
 truth, to insist on ecpiity, to maintain law and order, and 
 uphold public rights ; and, therefore, carrying out these 
 principles in trade, commerce, labor, in politics, morals, and 
 religion, is always safe and beneficent, and favorable to 
 stability ; and nothing else is. To favor imperfection, know- 
 ing it to be such; to encourage hand-labor against machine- 
 labor ; to suppress intellectual and moral light, as if it were 
 a foe ; to cover up known wrong ; to sophisticate ourselves 
 for the sake of immediate interest — is as fatal to permanent 
 well-being as it is contrary to sound principle and good 
 sense. 
 
 No doubt every great step forward in science, art, 
 social economy, in politics, morals, and religion, injures the 
 material interest of some class whose prosperity is built 
 upon the superseded policy. The discovery and introduc- 
 tion of luminous gas has seriously damaged the whaling 
 interest. Elementary education has become so general 
 with us, that a class of persons who formerly made their 
 living by reading to the illiterate and writing their letters, 
 
7 
 
 a class still known in some European countries, is extin- 
 guished. The turnpike property throughout the North has 
 lost all its value through the introduction of railroads. 
 And every day, science, morals, religion, as they advance, 
 threaten some interest based upon past ignorance of their 
 highest laws. All the gaming houses of England and 
 France complained of the fanaticism which banished their 
 once open tables to the petty principalities of Germany ; 
 while the lottery business, lately so prosperous and flourish- 
 ing in this country, shrieked as it fell dead under the moral 
 sentiment of our Northern States. Does any one doubt the 
 vast material gain accruing to society from these steps, 
 fatal as they were to special interests, which themselves 
 were poisonous to the State ? 
 
 So English emancipation in the West Indies, which, un- 
 doubtedly, seriously injured the interest of the great pro- 
 prietors, and diminished the exported sugar crop, it is now 
 demonstrated has actually increased vastly the well-being 
 of the general population of the islands, the amount of their 
 products, and the moral character of the people. Being- 
 right in principle, it must inevitably prove right in prac- 
 tice, and this was sure to appear after a fair chance was 
 given to the experiment. At this moment, the total ex- 
 ports of the British West Indies, excepting Jamaica, ruined 
 before emancipation begun, exceed by seventy-seven mil- 
 lions of pounds of sugar those of its most prosperous 
 slave-labor year, while its imports from England and Amer- 
 
8 
 
 ica have advanced from 8,840,000 to ] 4,000,000, proving, 
 in the most satisfactory manner, the pecuniary advantage 
 of pursuing the humane and Christian policy of emanci- 
 pation. 
 
 It is, therefore, a grand mistake to imagine that our 
 duty and our interest are ever permanently at war ; or that 
 we can he too just, or too humane, or too right, or too 
 God-fearing for our welfare. Temporarily our advance in 
 scientific, economic, political, or moral wisdom, may cost 
 us some serious sacrifices ; but only to save us from far 
 more permanent calamities. It is sticking to falsehoods as 
 if they were truths ; adhering to policies that are behind the 
 age and the times ; attempting to back up blunders and mis- 
 takes ; to whitewash what is black, and brazen out what 
 is wrong — that causes the downfall of industries, disturbs 
 trade, ruins commerce, and upsets society and government. 
 Scientific, economical, moral, political, religious truths, all 
 hang together. There is no war among them. They sup- 
 port, uphold, and illustrate each other; and it is only error, 
 mistake, wrong, darkness, sin, folly, which occasion the 
 disturbances that in our haste we attribute to the fanatical 
 progress of truth. 
 
 It is idle and mischievous to think of the material and the 
 moral interests of our own beloved country as at war with 
 each other. Nothing immoral can be for our interest. 
 Our people generally wish to do what is just and right, 
 and as a rule they believe honesty the best policy, and lm- 
 
9 
 
 inanity the best business. They have grown up, certainly 
 in our own section of the land, under the conviction that 
 the blessing of God was upon their industry, trade, and 
 commerce ; and that their material prosperity need not 
 hinder their fidelity to conscience and their allegiance to 
 the Almighty. And they are right in this faith. God is 
 on the side of justice. Duty is rewarding. Conscience is 
 a lamp to the feet of the wise and prudent. Now and then 
 it leads to martyrdom and the loss of all that is commonly 
 held dear, but its usual light falls upon the path of safety 
 and success. And when it does its exceptional work, when 
 it kindles the faggots of the confessor and the saint, or 
 consumes the hero in the heat of his own patriotic zeal, the 
 flame of that sacrifice sheds a benignant illumination over 
 centuries of tolerance and of security purchased at this no- 
 ble rate. There can be no greater error than that which 
 supposes that the great names or the marked eras of suffer- 
 ing for conscience and principle have originated in a sub- 
 lime disregard of the peace and prosperity of society. He- 
 roes die at their lonely post — and one may be sacrificed 
 this very day* — for a punctilio of soldierly duty ; but that 
 punctilio measures the hair-breadth that saves the national 
 ship from going to pieces on the rock it grazes. Saints go 
 to the stake for a scruple of conscience ; but that scruple 
 weighs mountains in the scales of human destiny, and the 
 sufferings it exacts vindicate a policy that involves the in- 
 
 * Fort Sumter and Major Anderson were supposed to be still under fire at the moment 
 when these words were uttered 
 
10 
 
 dependence, the self-government, the energy and spirit of 
 untold generations. A nation goes to war on a preamble, 
 or on some nice question of the right of visitation, or on 
 some fine point of honor. Is it for purely imaginary inter- 
 ests, is it for a salve to wounded sensibility, the gratification 
 of passion and pride, that the dreadful arbitrament of war 
 is invoked on such occasions? No! it is because it is 
 
 / 
 
 rightly felt that the self-respect, the honor, the dignity of 
 a nation, is at the very bottom of its prosperity — that to lose 
 confidence in the country, to abate loyal feeling, to weaken 
 national pride, is to put at peril every interest of trade, 
 commerce, and industry — is to strike at the root of stability, 
 to invite foreign contempt, to drive away capital and labor, 
 to dishearten and demoralize youth, to rend the foundations 
 of morals and piety, and to lessen by billions the produc- 
 tive power and real wealth of the country. The prosperity 
 of a people is based on its honest pride in their institutions, 
 on its confidence in their statesmen and rulers, on the in- 
 violability of its flag, and the strength and stability of the 
 public credit. Let repudiation either of oaths of office or 
 promises to pay, find favor in a State, and its whole people 
 are suddenly struck with palsy. What a blow is given to 
 business, when it becomes doubtful whether the very Army 
 and Navy of a nation can be trusted with the honor of their 
 own standards ! What an element of demoralization is let 
 loose, when casuistry is the only defence which gentlemen 
 have left for their staggering veracity ! Who will trust a 
 
11 
 
 region, where its first men have a code of honor peculiar 
 to their own latitude, and a course of behavior that can be 
 vindicated only from their point of view '? Right- and wrong, 
 truth and falsehood, honor and dishonor, are not matters of 
 latitude and longitude. There is said to be honor among 
 thieves, but it never stood them in much stead at the bar 
 of justice, or in the money market ; and it never will. Be 
 sure that public prosperity, business success, stability of 
 fortune, repose on fidelity to world-wide principles of truth 
 and right, and not on fidelity to local or sectional passions and 
 prejudices, North or South, East or West. 
 
 I am addressing a commercial congregation — men who 
 are the first to feel the effects of national agitation ; and 
 who naturally and properly dread the suspense, the want 
 of confidence, and the interruption of trade, produced by 
 any terrible crisis in public affairs. I know very well, that 
 it is not a little more or less of domestic splendor, or per- 
 sonal comfort, a few more hundreds or thousands in the 
 strong-box ; a rise or fall of ten or even fifty per cent, in 
 stocks and mortgages, that appals their hearts. It is the 
 sickening uncertainty how they are to meet their engage- 
 ments ; how in a totally changed state of things they are 
 to fulfill promises made in the best faith, and to carry out 
 large plans, from which there is no retreat, formed under 
 other circumstances. With enormous rents, heavy stocks 
 of goods, large foreign obligations, and a sudden and wide 
 stagnation of business, what but solicitude can fill their 
 
12 
 
 souls ? Who can wonder at “ men’s hearts failing them 
 for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming 
 on the earth”? It is an honorable, not a selfish anxiety ; 
 and I wish to God I could say it were unnecessary, or like- 
 ly soon to pass away. But, I beg you to remember that 
 just the creditable anxiety you feel as merchants, to pre- 
 serve your honor untarnished, to uphold your credit and 
 meet your engagements — a feeling to which you would glad- 
 ly sacrifice any present convenience, or even private fortune — 
 is the very same anxiety which the country or the Gov- 
 ernment feels towards its own honor and credit — as the 
 basis of our complete future prosperity as a people. If 
 you know that your honor and credit are the conditions of 
 all your success or hope as merchants, how much more 
 must the Government or the nation know that its honor 
 and credit are the conditions of our general well-being, 
 and of our stability and growth as a people ? You may be 
 called on as a class to suffer more than any other for the 
 present year or the next five years, in order that the nation, 
 as a nation, may not forfeit its ability to protect your com- 
 merce and favor your trade for generations to come. The 
 commerce and trade — not of this spring or next fall, not of 
 this year or next year — but of the next hundred years, is im- 
 perilled. If doubts of the possibility of republican and dem- 
 ocratic institutions are encouraged and fortified — if radical 
 suspicion of the theory of our Constitution is fostered — if 
 faith in the honor of our high public officers, if confidence 
 
in our army and navy, are destroyed abroad and at home — 
 then “farewell — along farewell to all our greatness,” com- 
 mercial and political. We had better freely sacrifice our 
 fortunes and our lives, than allow the pestilent principles 
 to prevail which have already struck disgrace upon our 
 character, and which, if not stopped in their career, will 
 make another Mexico of our country. Your warehouses 
 will indeed be converted into deserted palaces, and your 
 docks into empty and sailless ditches — if the arm of the 
 Government is not nerved with your confidence, and strung 
 with the fibres of your loyalty and sympathy. 
 
 It is our first duty to look our affairs directly in the face. 
 They are too serious and solemn for partisan feelings or per- 
 sonal interests to sway our judgment, or color our speech. 
 War has been made upon the General Government by a 
 conspiracy of rebellious States. I will not say that these 
 States may not think themselves right in their course. I 
 even dare to say that they do so — for I believe that a peo- 
 ple who can persuade themselves that it is honorable, pru- 
 dent, politic, necessary, democratic, or Christian, to live by 
 slave labor, and that Slavery is a blessing and a divine insti- 
 tution, may persuade themselves of any thing most false 
 and injurious; may persuade themselves that secession is a 
 doctrine not absolutely incompatible with the very idea of 
 government; that resignation on the eve of battle in a 
 soldier is not equivalent to desertion ; that the use of a high 
 confidential public station for disarming the Government 
 
14 
 
 whose pay it receives, is a feat to be boasted of and feted ; 
 and that the moral judgment of the civilized world may be 
 victoriously withstood ! Allowing, therefore, perfect sin- 
 cerity and the clearest conscience on the part of the rebel- 
 lious States, now at war upon our flag — the question for us 
 is, what self-preservation, what humanity, what wisdom 
 and justice and mercy demand of us to do? I believe 
 that the very foundations of order, prosperity, self-govern- 
 ment, liberty, morality, and religion, are rocking to their 
 ruin under the false theories and pernicious policy of the 
 assailants of our Government and their abettors, and that 
 it is no longer a party question, or a question of expe- 
 diency, but a matter of direct and most pressing necessity, 
 to spring with united hearts and determined hands to the 
 defence of law and the maintenance of National authority. 
 We have reached the point when National demoralization 
 must either end, or must end us. The key-stone of all sta- 
 bility, sense of security, confidence in each other, honor 
 and truth, is already loosened ; and if it falls, the complete 
 arch of our civil, social, economic, and domestic peace and 
 prosperity will be in ruins. To uphold the Government — 
 be it in whose hands it may — is to fix this key-stone. It 
 is worth a thousand millions to keep it from yielding 
 another hair. It is worth a hundred thousand lives to ce- 
 ment it in its place. Each man of us had better give ten 
 years of his remnant of days, and half his fortune, than per- 
 mit one jot or tittle more of the national authority to pass 
 away. For if it is successfully withstood and broken, our 
 
15 
 
 property is a fiction, and our lives a spoil. Bad men are 
 now on the watch to spring at our mints and vaults, our 
 forts and arsenals. We know not how much we owe it to 
 the vigilance of our police that violence has not already 
 polluted our own Northern streets. Our real danger will 
 disappear only when the sickly doubt of our true policy, 
 and the paralyzing fear of immediate losses, have passed 
 from our still loyal States. When we are thoroughly and 
 overwhelmingly united in our patriotism, in our allegiance 
 to law and order ; when we have drowned partisan 
 clamors and jealousies in a common tide of devotion to 
 public duty, and risen to the greatness of the emergency, 
 as one involving every material, social, and moral interest — 
 then our day of greatest peril will be over, and the con- 
 test will be immediately narrowed to its smallest dimensions. 
 The worst thing now to be dreaded is irresolution, timidity, 
 and division. We must no longer wait for each other. If the 
 Border States are in doubt, they must choose between those 
 who are themselves already fully decided on both sides ot 
 them, and be either the open friends or the open enemies ol 
 the Constitution and the Government. We have no business 
 any longer to wait on their suspense. Our enemies are 
 in earnest ; they are united, and energetic, and resolved. 
 They must find us equally so, or our Capital will soon be a 
 foreign capital, and our Nation a slaveocracy. 
 
 It is a sad day, my brethren, when Christian duty 
 makes us militant, and denies us the blessed privilege ot 
 breathing peace. It is a melancholy hour when even the 
 
16 
 
 house of God and the temple ol Christ becomes a sort of 
 fortress and battle-field. But I wish to know nothing of 
 that kind of religion which will not defend the sacred 
 interests of society, with all the power, physical and moral, 
 which God and nature have supplied. My own enemies I 
 will forgive, and continually turn to them the other cheek ; 
 but the enemies of humanity — the enemies of all order, 
 truth, and virtue — the enemies of my country, I will not, 
 upon any theory of peace or meekness, unresistingly suffer 
 to achieve their guilty purposes, so long as there is a drop of 
 blood in my heart, a fibre of muscle in my arm, or a note 
 of warning in my voice ! 
 
 Our strife, alas! is with our brethren; but when a 
 brother strikes at a mother’s heart, filial duty takes prece- 
 dence of fraternal obligation. We have been forbearing, 
 patient, slow to anger — most anxious for peace. But we are 
 not men, much less Christians, if w T e suffer the great fabric 
 of our American civilization, the great inheritance of our 
 Constitution and Union, to lapse into ruin, from intes- 
 tine treachery or local passion — without a tremendous effort 
 to save it. God grant us something of that mingled “ good- 
 ness and severity ” which illustrates His own merciful 
 but vigorous government. Save us from cowardice, irre- 
 solution, and division ! Direct us the shortest road to 
 peace, and spare us the awful necessity of rebaptizing our 
 liberties in rivers of blood — and the more terrible calamity 
 of losing them from supineness, selfishness, and infidelity 
 to truth, humanity, conscience, and God. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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