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HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 WENT THROUGH 
 
 A WAR 
 
 BEING A SELECTION OF SERMONS 
 FROM THE NOTE BOOK OF THE 
 OCTOGENARIAN TRAVELLER 
 
 W. SPOONER ^MITH 
 
 Author of "Travel Notes of an Octogenarian" 
 
 BOSTON: THE G O R H A M PRESS 
 
 TORONTO: T HE COPP CLAR K CO.. LIMITED 
 
Copyright, 1916, by Richard G. Badger 
 All Rights Reserved 
 
 S66 
 
 Made in the United States of America 
 The Gorham Press. Boston, U. S. A. 
 
 f/? 
 
 JUN 15 1916 
 ©CI.A431495 
 
PREFACE 
 
 These sermons were written over fifty years 
 ago, during the stress and conflict of a great civil 
 war. They are not published because the public 
 responds to this class of writing, but because they 
 are charged with the life throes of brothers in 
 conflict, they are alive with the instincts and 
 anxieties of differing views, and because it was 
 thought that words written at the time might pre- 
 serve some sense of that vital four years' crisis 
 to a generation that can learn of it only from the 
 fathers. 
 
 This year the author of these sermons has 
 joined the great majority of those who have left 
 a debt of gratitude to their descendants for a 
 preserved and united country. 
 
 May not the final message of peace and victory 
 bring a note of hope from the past to our warring 
 world? 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 A War Sermon — Preached at Guilford June 9, 1861 7 
 
 A Sermon — Preached August 18, i86i ... 27 
 
 A Sermon — ^Preached Thanksgiving, November 1862 44 
 
 On The Death of Charles Benton .... 63 
 
 A Sermon — Matt, xxiv: 35 78 
 
 A Sermon — Preached June 26, 1864 .... 97 
 
 A Sermon — March 15, 191 2 — Written April 30, 1863 115 
 
 National Thanksgiving Sermon — Preached in 
 
 Guilford August 6, 1863 129 
 
 Thanksgiving Sermon — Preached at Guilford, 
 
 November 26, 1863 141 
 
HOW ONE CHURCH WENT THROUGH 
 A WAR 
 
HOW ONE CHURCH WENT 
 THROUGH A WAR 
 
 A WAR SERMON 
 
 Preached at Guilford, June 9, 1861. 
 
 Curse ye, Meroz, said the Angel of the Lord, 
 curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof: because 
 they came not to the help of the Lord, to the help 
 of the Lord against the Mighty. — Judge v. 23. 
 
 Brethren and friends, in the time of our provi- 
 dential separation as people and pastor a great 
 change has passed on the face of our beloved 
 land. The little cloud like a man^s hand which 
 rested in our horizon without exciting serious ap- 
 prehension, has risen and grown and made all 
 the heavens black with clouds and wind. War 
 great and threatening is actually upon us. A 
 time of anxiety and trouble such as we had never 
 anticipated has come. We cannot if we would, 
 
 7 
 
8 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 keep our thoughts from the great and dreadful 
 fact. We should not, for we all have individual 
 relations to It which It gravely concerns us to 
 know. You have doubtless all meditated deeply 
 upon this matter, the ministers of the sanctuary 
 have doubtless from time to time given you the 
 counsels of God's word respecting the duty of 
 the hour, but you will permit me while the storm 
 is in no wise abating but rather assuming more 
 and more portentous dimensions, to briefly re- 
 consider In the light of God's word the duty of 
 the man of God in this eventful crisis. 
 
 This call to arms has surprised the Christian 
 sentiment of the loyal nation, fixed with deep 
 prejudices In favor of peace. The profession of 
 the soldier was fast becoming outlawed. Chris- 
 tian people were finding it more and more diffi- 
 cult to harmonize participation In any war with 
 the spirit of the gospel of the Prince of Peace. 
 An army of thirty thousand men was by many 
 regarded as an almost useless appendage to a na- 
 tion of thirty million souls. 
 
 This strong sentiment against all wars stands 
 foremost for examination in an Inquiry for the 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 9 
 
 way of the Christian citizen's duty. If God says 
 all war Is unjustifiable and wrong, then what else 
 may be urged from other deductions? the ques- 
 tion Is settled for all the people of God. If God 
 forbids they must not fight or help unto any fight- 
 ing. 
 
 But is that the law? 
 
 Thou shalt not kill, no more forbids all ex- 
 ercise of violence than It abolishes the scaffold. 
 There Is legitimate force of violence that must 
 be exercised by the blow of the executioner, by 
 the carnage of battle. 
 
 The word of God recognizes In this world of 
 lawlessness the necessity of the sword of law. 
 Society has been often helped by battles, even as 
 the atmosphere we breathe Is purified by storms. 
 
 Was not God's ancient people accustomed and 
 under divine command accustomed to the camp 
 and the battlefields? Was not chosen Israel in- 
 deed a church militant, did not God teach their 
 hands to war and their fingers to fight? Were 
 there not men of even great powers renowned 
 also as men of blood? Were not Abraham and 
 Moses and David and Joshua and a great mul- 
 
lo HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 titude of worthiest worthies leaders of armies? 
 It is even so. 
 
 Then if we look into the future as forecast by 
 the prophet of Patmos, is it not by the throes of 
 conflict that the blessed age comes to its birth? 
 See we not that it is, by the marshalling of host 
 again even to the last, by overturning of wars 
 that must needs be, that He whose right it is shall 
 at last come to His right and rule the whole earth? 
 Not that this conflict is in itself good, not because 
 the sword converts and sanctifies but because with 
 other agencies it must needs be,— a necessary evil. 
 The storm that strews the seas with wrecks is 
 better than the fatal poison of universal stag- 
 nation. 
 
 We settle down to those conclusions by study- 
 ing the spirit of the sacred record. 
 
 We see there no sweeping condemnation of all 
 war, but on the other hand we see the sword In 
 the hand of many a faithful servant of the Most 
 High. We see also an express necessity of war 
 recognized, a time given unto it, and a large place 
 given unto it in the economy of the world's re- 
 demption. 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR ii 
 
 But our text gives us a case where fighting was 
 not only according to the will of God, but where 
 they who declined it were cursed. The offense 
 of Meros was that it did not respond to a procla- 
 mation of war, because it did not arm and dare 
 and fight. Because it did not with weapons win 
 and come up to the help of the Lord, to the help 
 of the Lord against the mighty, it was cursed 
 bitterly, cursed by the Angel of the Lord. 
 
 From this then we learn that there are times 
 when it is not only right to gird on the sword, 
 but also that there are times when to withhold 
 one's self from cooperation with demonstrations 
 of warfare is utterly unjustifiable in the sight of 
 God. 
 
 Christians not only may fight, but out of the 
 signs of the times they may sometimes read the 
 clearest indications of the will of God, that they 
 go up to conquer or die upon the field of blood. 
 
 The question then becomes narrowed down to 
 this. Is this one of those emergencies when we 
 are called to the help of the Lord, to the help 
 of the Lord against the Mighty? 
 
 We choose in answering this question to con- 
 
12 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 suit the Word of God. From that we are sure 
 that government is ordained and sanctioned by 
 Him who is the soul of all authority. Order is 
 heaven's first law, and as heaven comes down to 
 the earth there is the infusion of this same spirit. 
 A bad government is better than anarchy, and as 
 a rule the institutions of the nations have been as 
 good as they could bear. With allowance of ex- 
 ceptions, the regulations, the laws of a community 
 are the expression of its highest practical wis- 
 dom. So inspiration might and did honor the 
 bloody scepter of Nero; Paul himself a victim 
 of executive injustice, under God enjoins a spirit 
 of submission and loyalty and honor to all that 
 are in authority, he under God indicated the sword 
 of government as a power that must be exercised 
 in the earth. We have had a government, it has 
 been just, equal, kind, beneficent, abounding in 
 prosperity, prolific of blessing, more than ever a 
 government was upon the face of the earth. 
 
 It had in itself the means and the disposition 
 to modify its provisions, change its regulations, 
 for the redress of every grievance that might be 
 made to appear. If God would have no rebel- 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 13 
 
 lion against the cruel tyranny of Nero, the harsh 
 ambitious despotism of Rome, if he endorsed 
 their commission to bear the sword of authority 
 with all their abuse thereof, then we may well 
 believe God stands by law here, and that he will 
 justify self-defense, and its rightful jurisdiction 
 to it, and that if he has a people who will not 
 come up to his help, and sustain such institutions 
 as these, he will curse them. 
 
 Whether it can be understood elsewhere or not, 
 it will be understood here that we are standing 
 for the very existence of that divinely sanctioned 
 institution of government. We know, if this goes, 
 God's best blessing to us is gone. If we cannot 
 retain this, we lose all. We know if institutions 
 ever deserved to be defended and perpetuated at 
 the cost of treasure or of our blood, those of ours 
 must come into that count. And be it observed 
 that here the responsibility for the exercise of 
 authority and the preservation of power are not 
 resting upon one or a few men, but that each man 
 Is a sovereign with a measure of duty of sov- 
 ereignty. 
 
 It is ours not only to honor and obey but also 
 
14 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 to enforce and defend. 
 
 Who are to exercise the violent powers, who 
 are to go to the post of danger, who are to make 
 sacrifices ? The people, all who receive the bless- 
 ings of these popular Institutions. If now God is 
 on the side of the laws, then we are imperatively 
 called upon to fight. For the time has come when 
 mad rebellion assails not only the just laws, but 
 the very vltahty of the government. To bear 
 more is wicked consent to destruction. Fierce 
 blows are being aimed at the bond of constitu- 
 tional authority, which being severed we fall Into 
 helpless anarchy or despotism. Then we know 
 that it Is of God that a government like this with 
 such a record of history, with the letter of Its 
 constitution and laws so commending itself to all 
 sense of justice, righteousness, beneficence, it Is of 
 God, that such a government should resist to 
 the last with all its concentrated force, rebellious 
 hostility. It is of God that the executives proceed 
 to condemn and punish all transgressors of these 
 just and wise and necessary regulations, to see 
 that violence and theft and dishonesty and murder 
 and all crimes be visited with their appropriate 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 15 
 
 penalties, and when evil does band into armies, 
 and undertake gigantic villainies, then the Repub- 
 lic must send her police by regiments, numbers 
 on numbers, with all necessary and fitting arms 
 and appliances, till, though It be over battlefield 
 after battlefield, traitors and rebels are utterly 
 overcome and duly punished. Such a work as 
 this, though It be done In blood and fire, we feel 
 has the approbation of him who concedes the 
 right of coercion to the sacred Institution of 
 government. 
 
 This great and dreadful strife we know was 
 necessitated of rebellion. Thank God that on the 
 dear, blessed stars and stripes there is yet no 
 stain, they have only waved to bless, and they 
 float to-day In the grandeur of the noblest for- 
 bearance, that power ever exercised toward 
 wicked. Insolent outrage. 
 
 This carries us beyond the consideration of the 
 fact of rebellion and the necessity of Its repres- 
 sion to the nature of that rebellion. 
 
 Now It Is a fact that eight or fifteen states of 
 this confederacy are persuaded that they cannot 
 live without slavery, if they see it as they de- 
 
i6 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 clare only inferior to the Christian religion In 
 Its beneficent effects upon society. If they could 
 not be content till they had established a system 
 of government resting upon this one boasted foun- 
 dation, If thus they had resolved to take practical 
 issue with all humanity, and build up from corner 
 to top stone one grand despotism, even then they 
 need not have gone Into rebellion. Had they 
 sought constitutional and peaceable means of sev- 
 erance from the states that believed in another 
 gospel, that end could have been attained. Union 
 under those circumstances never could or would 
 have been enforced. But, doubtless because of 
 the lack of that unanimity, the leaders who have 
 for years been infatuated with the vision of a 
 great slave empire, resolved to try rebellion as 
 a short road to disunion and Independence. 
 
 And such a rebellion marked with such un- 
 scrupulous disregard of all rights and Interests 
 but their own, such falsehood, such dishonesty, 
 such treachery, such violence and Insult! We 
 search the records of civilization In vain to find 
 its equal, not in anger, but In pity and amazement 
 we look upon a people crazed with passion, lashed 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 17 
 
 to fury by ten thousand lying representations. 
 For six long months our government looked for 
 the groundless excitement to pass away, most se- 
 ditious and treasonable language was tolerated 
 almost unrebuked In the halls of the Capitol, 
 words and acts were endured which In any other 
 civilized nation would have brought their authors 
 to sudden punishment. 
 
 Not till she felt the dagger of the assassin 
 seeking her very heart did the Republic spring 
 to the defense. God be praised that the nation 
 awoke to Its fearful peril ! God be praised that 
 she became not a victim to her love of peace and 
 faith In her foes ! God be praised that we still 
 have a government still mighty to command, pro- 
 tect and defend ! 
 
 The loyal nation, by all Its habits and predilec- 
 tions, Is for peace, the interests of the people 
 bind them to an industrial and commercial repose 
 with chains of gold, our President, Cabinet and 
 Governors are all men of peace, there Is no fear 
 of military ambition, no anger or revenge burns 
 in the popular mind, there are no gains in treas- 
 ure or territory to be gathered by the sword, yet 
 
i8 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 here are mighty states vying with each other in 
 a great and solemn devotion to their country — to 
 their God, in the readiness and unanimity with 
 which they give themselves to the dread work of 
 war I 
 
 The nation by unparalleled outrages has been 
 roused to a full sense of its governmental re- 
 sponsibility and functions. Constitutional order 
 must be reestablished on immovable fundations, 
 evildoers must be punished, the oppressed re- 
 lieved, and through the land and through the 
 world it must be proclaimed by acts of might, that 
 free institutions are not only benignant but also 
 self-sustaining and enduring. 
 
 We must do this. Is it not the voice of God 
 that commands it, that the nations need not in 
 despair turn from the hopes aroused by our splen- 
 did history, — to the fate of anarchy or despotism? 
 
 The Christian soldier is, under God, the serv- 
 ant and guardian of that more than royal or im- 
 perial order, even the seat of law and liberty 
 which sacrifice and blood established here. He 
 fights against injustice, violence ; he fights the ene- 
 mies of humanity. He fights for order and 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 19 
 
 equity. His blows and blood shall give emphasis 
 to the best code of enactments that have yet been 
 given into the world. Yes, laws must be lifted 
 up from their dishonor, or in time we shall be- 
 come the victim of the rapacity and violence that 
 as yet has been meted out to a few of us. 
 
 We believe God is calling the people to the 
 sword and not only because there is rebellion, but 
 because it is the wickedest and most unjustifiable 
 rebellion upon record. Wicked because its root 
 is in human oppression, wicked because its every 
 advance is marked with outrage, wicked because 
 meant to be destruction to the best government 
 the world has ever known, unjustifiable because 
 there has been no provocation, the very arch- 
 traitors themselves having been chief oflScers and 
 councilors, leading spirits in the government, up 
 to the time the great rebellion was instigated. 
 
 If the curse of God falls upon men because 
 they fail to apprehend the signs of the time of 
 war, because they come not up to the help of 
 the Lord against the mighty, then let men think 
 well before they speak or act against the present 
 
20 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 policy of our government. It is perilous to seek 
 peace when God summons the hosts to battle. 
 
 But, says the timid man, What is the use of 
 fighting? If nothing more, call out your police 
 and make one honest and determined effort to 
 restore order. The policeman may not get the 
 advantage of the desperate burglar or murderer, 
 yet nothing excuses him from the effort and the 
 peril of the encounter. Men with the mighty 
 inspirations of a noble cause may chase each his 
 thousand, but if they fall, their blood shall fight 
 the battle on. Is there not recreant meanness 
 when men fear to do and dare with God and all 
 that Is good on their side? 
 
 But states may not, cannot, be coerced. The 
 fact that States are in rebellion is a supposition, 
 not a fact. But if it were so, what? Can a state 
 make wrong right? May not a state be punished 
 just as much as the Individual man? Can it not 
 be brought to terms? That Is a matter of 
 strength to be better pronounced upon after trial. 
 The probability is that, other things being equal, 
 the stronger power will enforce its requirements. 
 
 But this touches not the facts in the case. So 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 21 
 
 far as can be ascertained not more than one state 
 Is yet by the legitimate vote of the people In re- 
 bellion with the federal government. 
 
 What power on earth but that government can 
 reach and free from oppression and coercion Its 
 own willing subjects? Terrorism and misrepre- 
 sentation are all the nerve and power of this in- 
 surrection. Does God absolve us from this serv- 
 ice of duty and mercy? The forcible dissolution 
 of this union will leave a wound by which the 
 passion part will bleed to death, the dissolution 
 that the south sought to be carried by foul and 
 violent means, will plunge a loyal majority, loyal 
 if they might speak In virtue of all the facts in 
 the case, into untold calamities. The world 
 knows and we conclude from the information 
 we receive that a majority of the people of the 
 seceded states know that with the union the south 
 loses all. So that out of pity to good men and 
 true, out of compassion for our brethren who 
 have been wickedly wrought up to hate us, God 
 calls us to go as we only can go now In armies 
 and tell the loyal men of the South that we love 
 them still, that we came to join hands and hearts 
 
22 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 with them against a common enemy. Fail in this 
 duty and henceforth we are two maimed, hating 
 and warring nations. Do we not already see 
 something of the outcome of this wise policy, 
 which the bayonet only can carry out? Maryland 
 is saved. Missouri is saved. Kentucky we trust 
 is doing well. Even Virgini^a is being reclaimed. 
 Our brethren in Tennessee, fearfully environed 
 and beset, are struggling manfully. With these 
 indications apparent, we scout the miserable twad- 
 dle about the coercion of States, and the mischief 
 of the war, and believe it is the voice of divine 
 wisdom which calls upon us to give to the gov- 
 ernment men and means to enable it to do its duty 
 of defense, protection and enforcement of the 
 laws. The gate through which the true and last- 
 ing peace must come is to be opened by force. 
 These daring mischief makers must die or go into 
 exile. An overwhelming military force only is 
 sufficient to enforce that decree. Become special 
 policemen for a while till the mob is dispersed, 
 employ your individual influence and resources 
 for the good cause or never use or claim the 
 services of law or officer. He that cannot help 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 23 
 
 his country in the time of her trouble deserves not 
 her protection and help in the day of his own 
 trouble. Such as he are given over of the Angel 
 of the Lord to the curse of God. 
 
 Have we not further intimation that this foul 
 rebellion should not succeed but be suppressed in 
 the fact that God has made us one people? This 
 was the original ordination. Common language 
 and faith, common sympathies and trials and in- 
 terest, by these God made of us the United States 
 of America. Since then we have learned how 
 strongly by ocean and wind and lakes and river 
 we are bound together in geographical unity; na- 
 ture not only affords no natural boundary for two 
 nations, but will not suffer her bonds of union 
 to be broken. And besides this, steam and tele- 
 graph have done away with the dissevering influ- 
 ences of distance and time. So joined are the States 
 in one nationality, nothing but the most unnatural 
 and violent influences can pronounce disruption. 
 And were this effected, there is every probability 
 that the continuance of that condition would be 
 uninterrupted warfare. Thus we read in all 
 these signs the decrees of nature and providence, 
 
24 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 that the union must be preserved and the laws 
 enforced, though it cost, as all high duty does, 
 a great price. Further, do we not recognize God 
 in all this wonderful and unlooked-for move- 
 ment about us? Who hath brought light out of 
 the darkness, strength out of weakness, harmony 
 out of discord? It is the Lord Almighty alone 
 that with the signs of the times is writing out 
 the promise of our salvation. 
 
 Month after month all things seemed to be 
 going wrong, so complicated were our affairs and 
 so hopelessly deranged, that men all confessed 
 themselves unable to see any way of escape. As 
 never before the party of the nation despaired of 
 human dependence and turned unto the Lord, and 
 He, out of the weakness and folly and the wick- 
 edness of man, at length caused a word to go 
 forth that in one way made timely millions of 
 apparently demoralized and divided people to 
 spring to their feet as one man, forgetting all 
 their animosities, thrilling with one and the same 
 new-born resolve and hope and love, seeing eye 
 to eye, working hand to hand, brethren as they 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 25 
 
 never were before. This Is Indeed the Lord's 
 work and It Is marvelous In our eyes. 
 
 The governors willingly offered themselves 
 among the people. Except where traitors had 
 poisoned the air and deceived the hearts of the 
 people, did the children of the Republic fall to 
 respond to her call, "Vox popull, vox del"? It 
 is of God this marvelous uprising, he Is caUIng 
 us to his help — to his help against the Mighty. 
 
 Finally we recognize this call for devotion to 
 the nation to be that of God, because most brief, 
 effectual, and least harmful war will come of the 
 most formidable demonstration of military force. 
 Let countless bayonets fill the hearts of traitors 
 with consternation. Help the government to 
 show by brave, enthusiastic armies how strong 
 she Is and how summarily she can punish; help 
 her to show to her now weak and oppressed 
 children that she is able still to protect them. For 
 the very dread of war and Its great calamities 
 make the authorities so formidable that none shall 
 venture war. 
 
 God be praised under his lead that we are 
 going to do our duty as loyal Christian citizens. 
 
26 ONE CHURCH 
 
 Thus we will write law and liberty in plainer char- 
 acters upon the field of our noble flag, and cause 
 it to wave evermore over our broad land, a 
 symbol of terror to the rebellious, a joy, a glory, 
 and a refuge true and sure for the loyal and 
 the free. 
 
A SERMON 
 
 Preached August i8, i86i. 
 
 And it came to pass when Pharaoh had let the 
 people go, that God led them not through the way 
 of the land of the Philistines, although that was 
 near; for God said. Lest peradventure the people 
 repent when they see war, and they return to 
 Egypt. But God led the people about, through 
 the way of the wilderness of the Red Sea. 
 
 In sacred history the two elements of affairs 
 are seen working along together. There appears 
 the thought of God and the thought of man. The 
 works of .God and the works of man. Profane or 
 uninspired records present only the human side. 
 Hence the vast superiority of the Bible as a means 
 of gathering practical wisdom from the past. In 
 the one case the Lord is present declaring his will 
 and expressing his approval or disapprobation by 
 the prosperous or adverse course of events; in the 
 other, man is magnified, human conduct passes 
 
 27 
 
28 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 unchallenged, and vicissitudes of fortune remain 
 greatly unexplained. While there is this great 
 difference between inspired and uninspired narra- 
 tive, yet there is thrown a general interpretation 
 upon all human events and action from the reve- 
 lations of sacred history. In connection with in- 
 dividuals and national history there are declara- 
 tion and illustration of the principles of the divine 
 will and government in the world. God has given 
 us a key by which the mysterious hieroglyphics of 
 this ever-changeful world life may be at least in 
 part interpreted. In the old Bible story there 
 rests forever the light of the mind of God. This 
 is the light by which all our ideas must be tested, 
 where the true and the false are made apparent. 
 It is a kind and gracious provision of God that 
 in great exigencies, in time of doubt and fear, 
 when the great world is convulsed and men feel 
 that they are making history and making way 
 for the time to come; that then they may read 
 out the waymarks of righteousness and salva- 
 tion from a God-given chart of this human 
 life. The Bible, thank God, is an all-sufficient 
 storehouse of wisdom for all possible vicissitudes 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 29 
 
 of time. In the Scriptures there are counsels 
 goodly and divine and confirming and encourag- 
 ing, as well as admonitory for these solemn and 
 distressing times. Happy are we If hereunto 
 we find day by day our dally bread, If In the try- 
 ing weeks we live upon the fitly adapted word of 
 God. 
 
 By the printing of our text we turn our 
 thoughts to the time when God made Israel a 
 nation. A family, the chosen seed, went into 
 Egypt, In the disintegrated, unorganized condi- 
 tion of servitude they continued there, till by the 
 hand of Moses they went forth, proud, marshaled 
 and self-directed, to enter upon their natural 
 career as the peculiar people of the Lord. By 
 mighty signs and wonders their deliverance was 
 wrought. God in clearest manner called them, 
 and set them on their way toward the land prom- 
 ised to their fathers. With power and favor, with 
 help and hindrance, with salvation and distinc- 
 tion, God drew a line of wide and everlasting 
 separation between the children of bondage and 
 their proud and hard oppressors. Around the 
 exodus there seems to gather a word and power 
 
30 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 of divine adoption sufficient to bind the graciously 
 befriended people unto everlasting faith and 
 obedience. 
 
 There in the first outset from Egypt it had 
 been easy to venture the prophecy that it were 
 in the will of man and the purpose of God, that 
 the shortest and most expeditious route should be 
 taken to the land of promise. And this, if we 
 may so speak, appears to have been the divine 
 preference. The direct way was avoided by the 
 command of God, lest they should see war and 
 through fear turn back again to Egypt. Safe be- 
 yond the Red Sea, Israel receives the law from 
 Sinai, and those special directions that were pur- 
 posed to distinguish them from every other na- 
 tion. A year passes and the people of God stand 
 upon the threshold of their promised inheritance 
 and rest. Men are sent to search the land, all 
 things are ready for the desired consummation. 
 Egypt is forgotten and the wilderness is passed. 
 Floods of milk and honey and wonders invite 
 them to the grand heritage of their long-cherished 
 hopes. But even according as the Lord had 
 spoken, the people see war, are smitten down with 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 31 
 
 apprehensions of the giant that is in the land 
 and their weak hearts turn back towards their 
 miserable bondage again. In the gloom of the 
 hour they murmured, "Would God that we had 
 died in the land of Egypt or would God we had 
 died in the wilderness." "And wherefore hath 
 the Lord brought us unto this land, to fall by 
 the sword, that our wives and our children should 
 be a prey? Were it not better for us to return 
 into Egypt?" In vain did Moses and Aaron fall 
 on their faces before all the assembly of the con- 
 gregation of the children of Israel. In vain did 
 Joshua and Caleb, who had searched the land, 
 rend their clothes, and plead, saying, "The land 
 which we passed through to search is an exceed- 
 ing good land. If the Lord delight in us, then 
 he will bring us into this land, and give it to us, 
 a land which floweth with milk and honey. Only 
 rebel ye not against the Lord, neither fear ye 
 the people of the land; for they are bread for 
 us; their defense is departed from them, and the 
 Lord is with us; fear them not." All the congre- 
 gation bade stone them with stones. Therefore, 
 the glory of the Lord appeared in the tabernacle 
 
32 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 of the Congregation before all the children of 
 Israel. And the anger of the Lord broke forth. 
 "How long will this people provoke me? How 
 long will it be before they believe me, for all the 
 signs which I have showed among them? I will 
 smite them with the pestilence, and disinherit 
 them, and I will make of thee a greater nation 
 and mightier than they." 
 
 Thus heavily fell the indignation of the Lord. 
 Then the people repented, saying, "So, we be 
 here, and will go up into the place which the Lord 
 hath promised, for we have sinned." But it was 
 too late, the mischief was accomplished. Moses 
 answered, "Wherefore now do ye transgress the 
 commandment of the Lord? But it shall not 
 prosper. Go not up, for the Lord is not among 
 you; that ye be not smitten before your enemies, 
 because ye are turned away from the Lord, there- 
 fore the Lord would not be with you." Yet they 
 persisted and went up to battle, but were smit- 
 ten before the enemy. Backward they turned in 
 defeat, back to the wilderness to wander and to 
 die. What a day of grief, anguish and shame 
 was that; humbled before God and their enemies, 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 33 
 
 they enter the forty years of their first great na- 
 tional calamity. This is a remarkable passage of 
 sacred history and it has its important lessons. 
 
 I. There is here set before us one of the 
 necessary conditions of national existence. The 
 divinely imposed obligation of asserting its author- 
 ity and of making its way by force when opposed, 
 or in other words the duty of facing war. 
 
 This was a new thing to the children of Israel. 
 Hitherto they had been only slaves, held only to 
 the responsibility of toil. They had taken no 
 part in national affairs. The management of the 
 state was in other hands. Brick-making had been 
 the great necessity of their subordinated and un- 
 organized condition. But now they had been 
 given a place among the nations of the earth. 
 Power had been conferred upon them, for self- 
 government and self-defense and self-assertion. 
 
 The responsibihty of braving and overcoming 
 opposition great, grave and dreadful was im- 
 posed upon them. Thus it clearly appears, for 
 with all the great interposition of the Lord in 
 their behalf, God in the plagues of Egypt, God 
 in the overthrow of the pursuing enemy, God in 
 
34 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 the miraculous provisioning of their wilderness 
 march, God in the guiding pillar of cloud and 
 fire, they were not relieved of the duty and the 
 perils of warfare. It was the purpose of Him 
 who had called his people out of Egypt that they 
 should occupy the already inhabited land of 
 Canaan. He that overwhelmed the hosts of 
 Pharaoh could have swept it clean, and made it 
 ready for the peaceful occupation of his people, 
 all the land that he ordained for their inheritance. 
 The sword of the Lord could have cleared the 
 way, he could have led them so that they should 
 not see war in its threatening and its horrors at 
 all. But this it did not please him to do. He made 
 them a nation and gave them the sword to bear. 
 If their rightful way was obstructed, they must 
 hew it clear by force. They had come where the 
 next onward step towards the fulfillment of their 
 desires and the divine purposes was war, severe 
 and bloody strife. It was an exceedingly good 
 land, and God bade them enter in and possess it. 
 But a strong people dwelt in the land, and the 
 cities were walled and very great and there were 
 the giant sons of Anak. Against this formidable 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 35 
 
 opposition they were to cast themselves and pay 
 a price of blood before entering into rest and 
 abundance. To us the pathway of their duty is 
 very clear. With firm faith in God, fully per- 
 suaded that he was with them, they with one 
 heart should have exclaimed with Caleb, "Let us 
 go up at once and possess it; for we are well able 
 to overcome it." 
 
 II. Illustration of national temptation in the 
 face of war. 
 
 The duty of the children of Israel at this time 
 was to obey the voice of God and to take council 
 of nothing else whatever. They were to do with- 
 out hesitation or doubt what obedience require'd. 
 But with war in the path it was hard to go on. 
 There was the great and strong argument that 
 ever appeals to human sympathies. War Is in- 
 conceivably dreadful. The woes and the pains of 
 the horrible battle work none can look upon un- 
 moved. No easier was it to the people of three 
 thousand years ago to wrestle with the apprehen- 
 sion or the reality of a state of warfare than for 
 ourselves. Experience teaches us the force of this 
 appeal. Besides, the odds were against them. 
 
36 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 They were a nation of Colonies, they had never 
 been skilled or disciplined to the use of arms. The 
 temptation was here to look on the human side, 
 and there were great grounds for the apprehen- 
 sion that they would be vanquished and suffer 
 all the calamities of total defeat. Their dark 
 forebodings are shadowed forth in their despond- 
 ent cry, "Wherefore hath the Lord brought us 
 into this land to fall by the sword, that our wives 
 and our children should be a prey; were it not 
 better for us to return into Egypt?" 
 
 Anything is preferable to war — bondage, 
 death in Egypt, death in the wilderness. No good 
 can come of it, only evil. So the multitude rea- 
 soned and they thought they reasoned well; they 
 were ready to stone any man, even the godhest 
 of them all, even Moses and Aaron and Caleb 
 and Joshua, who dared to urge courageous, en- 
 ergetic, immediate guiding to the battle. The 
 temptation of fear was so great, the reasoning of 
 apprehension was so strong, that God and the 
 pointing of duty was well-nigh lost to sight. 
 Those who believed that this was a matter of 
 right and wrong to be settled at a higher tri- 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 37 
 
 bunal than that of mere human sympathies 
 and human fears consisted of just four men. 
 They withstood the temptation, Moses and 
 Aaron and Joshua and Caleb, not because they 
 were less human and not because they de- 
 lighted in the scenes of blood, but because they 
 knew there could be something worse even than 
 war, yea, because they believed that when duty 
 and God demanded it there was nothing better 
 than to go out to do valiantly in the name of the 
 Lord, therefore they expostulated with the panic- 
 stricken, murmuring and falling multitude, say- 
 ing, "Rebel not yet against the Lord, neither fear 
 ye the people of the land, for they are bread for 
 us, their defense is departed from them, and the 
 Lord is with us, fear them not." But the temp- 
 tation prevailed, anything is better than war, 
 swept down all opposition. We see it to have been 
 a temptation. They thought they were wise for 
 the time. They thought they were pleading for 
 humanity. They thought not that they were dis- 
 regarding the waymarks of God. 
 
 in. We look on a nation's fall. Israel for- 
 got God, remembered not his wondrous words 
 
38 WENT THROUGH A WAR 
 
 and works. Through fear of the enemy, for lack 
 of nerve or heart for stern duty, she drew upon 
 herself the fierce wrath of God. The sin was 
 fear to fight, dread of war, low. Inadequate con- 
 ception of human affairs. How fierce the outburst 
 of divine indignation! How long shall this peo- 
 ple provoke me? How long will it be ere they 
 believe me, for all the signs which I have showed 
 among them? I will smite them with pestilence 
 and disinherit them. And all this on the human 
 side, because the people judged it prudent to 
 avoid a war and retreat into the wilderness. Be- 
 cause they did not see what good could come of 
 fighting, because forsooth they were good, quiet, 
 yielding, peaceful men, because they counted the 
 cost of war and pronounced it the greatest evil 
 of the world. 
 
 This on the one side, but on the other because 
 they took not high council of God, because they 
 ignored all the higher and nobler obligations, be- 
 cause they saw not something of more worth than 
 life, because they were not willing to sacrifice 
 themselves for the attainment of that blessing 
 which God had put before them, for their chil- 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 39 
 
 dren forever, because they were so unequal to 
 their duty and their opportunity, therefore was 
 it counted unto them as their grievous trans- 
 gressions. 
 
 IV. A nation grievously punished. What are 
 the burning words of indignation which Moses 
 the Mediator hears? What causes his anguished 
 expostulation? What fixes the final decree which 
 sends the wanderers back into the wilderness to 
 die? What forfeits Canaan to a generation, and 
 withholds it from the people forty years? What 
 checks prosperous advance? What disappoints 
 the nation's brightest hopes? What draws down 
 misfortune, calamities, heart-crushing reverses? 
 Wherefore this disastrous condition of affairs? 
 This is the grievous punishment, this is the reward 
 of transgression. Dread of war was the tempta- 
 tation, faithless faltering was the sin; even as the 
 Lord foresaw it, they saw war, repented and 
 turned back. 
 
 V. How speedily was the irreparable mischief 
 accomplished. Great opportunity, the time for 
 duty is exceeding short. At the stern and wrath- 
 ful words of the Lord, Israel repents, sways her- 
 
40 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 self up once more in the remembrance of God, is 
 ready to dare and to do. But it is too late, the 
 doors are shut. Unbelief has done its work of 
 cursing. Though they go up to the battle, now 
 God is not with them. They are vanquished, 
 crushed and broken in spirit, they set their faces 
 towards the great and terrible wilderness. 
 
 To sum up the moral of this Scripture is that 
 great war sometimes disputes the progress of a 
 nation, the good land is beyond it, temptation is 
 before it; the wilderness of the curse of God re- 
 ceives the people that falter before the great, stern 
 duty of the hour. 
 
 Are we a people in the temptation of beholding 
 war to-day? 
 
 Our fathers under favor of Heaven escaped 
 out of foreign bondage, and were constituted a 
 nation. They set their faces towards a better 
 order of government than had yet been realized 
 in the world. They escaped from Pharaoh and 
 fought the first battle, but the great, final strug- 
 gle beyond which is the political Canaan, the land 
 of largest liberty and strongest order, has 
 been reserved for us. The great triumph of lib- 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 41 
 
 eral institutions is yet to be consummated. A 
 mighty rebellion has risen in the land, a most 
 wicked and unjustifiable rebellion, and it has set 
 up before Itself the front of most formidable war. 
 Now no God-fearing, loyal man can honor au- 
 thority, or authorities, none of us can pray for our 
 rulers, as we are commanded to do, no man can 
 discharge the full duty of a good citizen, except he 
 prays towards successful warfare, except he does a 
 part of that work which is made complete, in 
 the destruction of the armies of the rebellion with 
 sword, bayonet, cannon, the most tremendous and 
 effectual managing of force. It is a temptation 
 of the devil to cry peace in the faces of the sup- 
 porters of this government as if they had the 
 pov/er of peace. They have it by only one way, 
 the way that Israel had to get Into the promised 
 land, to conquer it. What If the sight of this 
 fearful struggle almost breaks us down, what if 
 many reason in fearfulness, that they are many 
 and strong, what If we even stand to the enemy as 
 the timid brickmakers of Egypt, to the giant of 
 Anak. What if on the human side the chances of 
 success are all against us, still we may not hesi- 
 
42 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 tate. Then did Israel and others sin and were 
 dreadfully punished. 
 
 On this people must go, without fear, with high 
 faith, that this is the way and that God is with 
 them. The hour has come. But it is not yet fully 
 apparent whether the councils of Moses and 
 Caleb will prevail or whether the fearful cry of 
 a false, wicked and fatal peace will prevail, 
 whether the nation in its might will go forward 
 or turn backward, whether after victory we shall 
 have rest and security in the good land, or whether 
 we fall back into the wilderness of anarchy and 
 misrule. 
 
 Will the people have heart to put forth the 
 adequate earnestness and tremendous energy, nec- 
 essary to destroy the great power of lawlessness 
 that has put itself in the way? Tearfulness and 
 falling is the great sin, death, destruction of gov- 
 ernment, and a wilderness of woes the penalty. 
 Duty is forceful restoration of order, the destruc- 
 tion of the enemies of peace and the state, and 
 the reward, a government more like unto God 
 than any the world has known, both gracious and 
 strong. 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 43 
 
 Let It be remembered that exhortations for 
 peace are for traitors and not for loyal men, that 
 anything but faithful, forceful, just dealing with 
 rebels Is wrong, that all appeals to the sympathies 
 of nature or to our fears are to be resisted and 
 overthrown by firm, strict, stern adherence to duty 
 and faith in God. 
 
 Be courageous, firm, keep rank, go on, fear not 
 the multitude or the giants. Let not the Bible 
 be turned against you; are not men of God men 
 of war, when duty and God bid them fight? 
 
 The people that would not fight excited the 
 indignation of the Lord so that he was tempted 
 to destroy them all and make a greater nation of 
 the man Moses, who exerted his utmost Influence, 
 urging a forceful entrance Into Canaan. 
 
 If our government comes crippled out of this 
 war to a miserable compromise with traitors. If it 
 stand beyond the struggle otherwise than glori- 
 ous, stronger than ever, it will be because through 
 fearfulness and effeminacy or worse reason the 
 people have denied a fair sympathy and support. 
 
A SERMON 
 
 Preached Thanksgiving, November, 1862. 
 
 Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye 
 lands; serve the Lord with gladness; come before 
 his presence with singing. Know that the Lord 
 he is God; It is he that hath made us, and not 
 we ourselves; we are his people and the sheep 
 of his pasture. 
 
 Enter Into his gates with thanksgiving and unto 
 his courts with praise, be thankful unto him and 
 bless his name. 
 
 How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange 
 land? cried the captive bands of ZIon as they 
 wept by the waters of Babylon, remembering in 
 their grievous bondage Jerusalem desolate and 
 friends and children mingled with the dead. 
 
 So now, while the Lord has covered our ZIon 
 with a cloud and cast her down from heaven into 
 the earth, while all that pass by hiss and wag 
 their heads, saying, "Is this the land that men call 
 
 44 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 45 
 
 The Perfection of beauty, the joy of the whole 
 earth." This is the day we looked for, we have 
 found it, we have seen it, while decimated con- 
 gregations and vacant places in the home circles 
 are telling so touchingly and sadly of the many 
 dear ones absent or dead. This festal hour 
 hallowed and clustered about by so many precious 
 associations and memories, turns with mute but 
 moving tongue, to recount how much is wanting, 
 how much Is lost. Yea, the flower of our land 
 and the idols of our hearts are languishing in the 
 dreary hospital or toiling on the forced march, 
 or it may be worshiping where the incense is the 
 rolling war cloud; the music Is the rifle's sharp 
 rattle and the bursting shell and the cannon's sullen 
 boom; and the offering is blood and life; while 
 in the troublous and agonizing thought of the 
 hour, there cometh up the thought, "How can we 
 sing the Lord's song to-day?" 
 
 Yet this is the old Thanksgiving day of our 
 fathers, they kept It well through all their stormy 
 and troubled lives. We wipe away the tears, and 
 we quell our fears, and come before the Lord 
 with singing. We will enter into his gates with 
 
46 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise; we 
 will be thankful unto him and bless his name, for, 
 if we will consider, we can still sing of the mercy 
 and judgment of the Lord. 
 
 Before turning to a review of the year, it be- 
 comes us to call to mind the fact, thus nationwise 
 or individually, all our good is by the grace and 
 mercy of the Lord, and all the evil we know, far 
 less than our deserving, and this also, that what- 
 ever we may see favorable or desirable is God, 
 shaping, ordering. Thus first we remember our 
 place as offenders, and take human offers as the 
 expression of God's overruling will. 
 
 Of all the broad, fertile garden of our loyal 
 land, the record of the year may be thus noted 
 down. "Thou, Lord, hast visited the earth and 
 watered it. Thou didst greatly enrich it with the 
 river of God which is full of water; thou pre- 
 paredst corn when thou hadst so provided for it, 
 thou wateredst the earth thereof abundantly; 
 thou settledst the furrows thereof; thou madest it 
 soft with showers; thou blessedst the springing 
 thereof; thou crownedst the year with thy good- 
 ness and thy paths dropped fullness. The pas- 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 47 
 
 tures were clothed with flocks; the valleys also 
 were covered over with corn; they shout for joy, 
 they also sing." Our barns are filled, affording all 
 manner of store. Happy is that people that is in 
 such a case. Ah, we need to hear famishing 
 little ones pleading in vain for bread, in the 
 fearful winter of famine, to realize how precious 
 and good is the gift of God in a plentiful har- 
 vest. The granaries of the land are full, for this 
 praise the Lord, praise the Lord. 
 
 We will not forget to give thanks to God that 
 no pestilential breath has been sent upon our 
 cities and towns; the healthfulness of our vast 
 armies, many of them in very exposed locali- 
 ties, has been wonderful. The hope and the 
 prayer of the enemy has been that this angel of 
 God's wrath would come down and fight for them 
 with the resistless subtle sword of destruction, but 
 while the dreaded fever has made ravages on the 
 southern soil, there have been defenses that we will 
 ascribe to the Lord around about our camps. The 
 oft death laden air of southern coast and river 
 hath breathed with friendliness on the champions 
 of national order. The Norfolk of '53 was not 
 
48 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 the Norfolk of 1620, for this we give most 
 hearty thanks unto him who tempers all the winds 
 of heaven. 
 
 It becomes us also to be devoutly grateful that 
 the industries, the work of the nation, which is 
 the daily bread of the million, has been so lit- 
 tle disturbed by the gigantic civil war which is 
 going on. Though the waves of martial forces 
 are gathering and breaking with fearful shock 
 along a line of a thousand miles, the toll of 
 the supportive labor of the land is steady and 
 firm. We are menaced with no enforced idleness, 
 with its train of terrible destitution and suffering. 
 The country is full of bread, and all accommo- 
 dating business is passing it around to every 
 mouth. The strange phenomenon appears of a 
 nation lightly supporting a gigantic war in its 
 midst which is paralyzing the labor and commerce 
 of nations three thousand miles away. 
 
 Again we are devoutly thankful to God this 
 day for the wonderfully sustained spirit and the 
 loyal states. This hitherto hath saved us from 
 the incalculable calamity of political dissolution 
 and anarchy. A government of acknowledged 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 49 
 
 authority is arbiter supreme in the midst of 
 ten thousand conflicting interests, a defense of 
 the weak, a concentration of the popular will un- 
 der the guidance of truth and justice, is an insti- 
 tution of priceless value. For Its conservation 
 blood and treasure may be poured out almost 
 to any amount, for without an acknowledged 
 authority there Is no security for life or posses- 
 sions. Whatever the design of this great re- 
 bellion, its success is not merely the forcible 
 withdrawal of so many states from the union, 
 but a mortal wound to constitutional authority. If 
 it is a revelation of the fact that law Is no longer 
 supreme, then it may be state against state, sec- 
 tion against section, party against party, aye, man 
 against man, not by appeal to justice and reason, 
 by gentle and peaceful methods, but by appeal to 
 brutal, bloody violence. The action of the uncor- 
 rupted American people for the last year, accord- 
 ing to this standpoint, furnishes one of the sub- 
 llmest spectacles in history. What Is It? A pas- 
 sionless devotion of their all to the support of 
 a principle. We feel safe in the assertion that 
 a great people never fought a great war so free 
 
50 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 from the spirit of anger. Yet withal the national 
 heart has shown no faltering in the face of mul- 
 tiplying and enlarging difficulties, delays, disap- 
 pointments, defeats, and the threatening of most 
 formidable hostile collisions. After the 75,000 
 went the 500,000 men, and after the 500,000, 
 50,000 more, and after the 50,000 went the vol- 
 unteers, 300,000 more, and after them there have 
 just gone up 300,000 soldiers more, making in 
 all for the period of about a year and a half 
 almost a million and a half of men; besides these 
 untold thousands more have manned the fleets and 
 gone to defend and to conquer on the coasts and 
 the paths of the great rivers. So many in the 
 land had the heart to go and offer themselves as 
 a living sacrifice if need be on the altar of their 
 country; and the fathers and mothers, the wives 
 and the children, the brothers and sisters, had 
 the heart to send them forth or let them go. Yea, 
 the great mass of this people of an unwarlike and 
 peaceful race and aged by word and work, have 
 thus been holding steadily on from month to month 
 in the inflexible purpose of defending and vindi- 
 cating the government of their fathers. Allowed 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 51 
 
 that all Is not the purest gold of patriotism, take 
 into notice the luke-warm zeal, and the opposi- 
 tion, yet withal how good a thing is it that so 
 many great states have stood so well and so 
 strongly together, under such a pressure and at 
 such a costliness. Thank God for this bulwark 
 around liberty and law. This hath indeed been 
 a year of great hardship, of suffering, of sorrow, 
 stern, rugged, living it hath been, but it hath 
 been one of the most heroic and noble of the 
 years of the Republic. Corruption and wickedness 
 and weakness have indeed been thrown to the 
 light by the great seams which tremendous con- 
 vulsions of the times are opening, yet the demands 
 of the day have found the men and the women 
 that make nations great and strong and noble; 
 ever it is in this world that the best and noblest 
 works are done in grief and pain. For the great 
 offering that the men and the women of the land 
 have had the heart to lay upon the altar of their 
 country, we praise Him in whose hands are the 
 hearts of all the children of men. We call to 
 mind to-day, as we review the year, that while 
 putting forth such effort to quell this most un- 
 
52 WENT THROUGH A WAR 
 
 natural and desperate rebellion, a strange ma- 
 lignity has frowned upon us from foreign lands. 
 The complication of affairs and the temper of 
 times Is such that we cannot but most fervently 
 thank the Lord that we are yet preserved from 
 a war Into which would go such desperate and 
 tremendous energies and passions and out of 
 which peace would not come till there had been 
 tribulation such as has not been since the begin- 
 ning of the world. (War with England would be 
 a war of all passion, of pride, of hate, of re- 
 venge.) (The Lord give her still the grace of 
 tolerable decency, the Lord lead us not further 
 into temptation.) The combined navies of 'two 
 of the leading powers of the world have seemed 
 ready for months to be let loose upon our too 
 defenseless shores, and to unequal conflict with 
 our gallant and devoted navy, but the Lord hath 
 held them back thus far while rising fortifications, 
 heavy guns and formidable Ironclads are multi- 
 plying potent arguments for keeping the peace. 
 
 Again, success has attended our arms. One 
 year ago and the martial line of rebellion was 
 advanced very near the borders of the free states. 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 53 
 
 The pressure of our armies has crowded this line 
 backward to the borders of the gulf states at 
 the west, while the most Important points upon 
 the coast have been repossessed and held In a 
 resistless grasp. With the mixed fortunes and 
 unexpected protraction of the struggle for Rich- 
 mond, we almost forget the evacuation of Colum- 
 bia, and Bowling Green, the fall of Fort Henry 
 and Fort Donaldson, the capture of No. 10, the 
 repossession of proud Nashville and pestilent 
 Memphis, the victories of Pea Ridge and Shiloh, 
 the important and successful operations upon the 
 Atlantic coast, which have raised the glorious old 
 flag over Norfolk and Portsmouth, Newbern and 
 Macon, Pulaski and Port Royal, that daring and 
 gallant enterprise which gave us back the great 
 metropolis of the southwest. All in all, it has 
 been a year of success. Another twelve months 
 of such pressure would utterly crush and destroy 
 the power of the rebellion. The work is much 
 larger than was thought when It was undertaken, 
 but it Is being steadily accomplished. Here is 
 great reason to give thanks to the God of bat- 
 tles for the victories which through our people, 
 
54 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 and our army and our navy, He has organized for 
 us, and especially that He hath Inspired the nation 
 unto that vast preparation of military and naval 
 power, which Is but now making a fresh and 
 simultaneous movement upon every army and 
 every stronghold In the revolted territory. 
 
 Yea, for the fortunate, wholesome and the well- 
 timed reverses that have In the course of events 
 been made to arouse and forewarn the nation of 
 the threatening danger; thus the occasions of fu- 
 ture triumphs, and for the wooden gunboats that 
 relieved the disaster of Pittsburgh, for the ap- 
 pearance of the little but Inconquerable Monitor 
 In the Chesapeake, to turn the fortunes when our 
 men-of-war were being crushed In like shells, and 
 sent to the bottom or driven aground. For these 
 striking Interpositions, we give thanks unto the 
 disposer of all events. But there is another and 
 devout rejoicing for to-day. 
 
 Under whatever disguise he may appear, we 
 know that the devil which is so grievously excit- 
 ing all the broad land Is the cruel, abominable and 
 hateful system of human slavery. Thus poisoning 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 55 
 
 the minds of the people, slavery has rent this 
 great nation asunder. The champions of human 
 bondage smote at the government and stirred up 
 this most calamitous strife. Well, It is good at 
 this stage of affairs, however other things may go, 
 that there are most Incontestable evidences that 
 slavery is being destroyed. This has been a year 
 of jubilee to unnumbered thousands of the chil- 
 dren of bondage. And what Is more than the 
 emancipation of a few, slavery has lost friends 
 this year. The war has levied most effectually 
 upon the nature of the system and has made con- 
 verts like the drops of the morning dew. Fifty 
 years of assallment by reason, argument, moral 
 suasion could not have achieved what the stern, 
 resistless lag of war has effected In a few short 
 months. The great Missouri is virtually an anti- 
 slavery state to-day, and there is conclusive indi- 
 cation that Kentucky and Tennessee and western 
 Virginia and Maryland and Delaware will soon 
 reconstruct their politics on the great Issue of 
 freedom or slavery, with the first vote in the 
 glorious cause of emancipation. We have lived 
 fast of late or we had not come to see the en- 
 
S6 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 slaved of Kansas represented in the Congress of 
 the United States by anti-slavery men. This is 
 not all, in about thirty days more the law of this 
 land will be liberal as never before. Near a mil- 
 lion of men in heavy battalions and in the panoply 
 of war will move on, on the great crusade of 
 freedom, bearing and enforcing the grand procla- 
 mation of the first president of free America to 
 the millions who with unwilling hands are uphold- 
 ing this great rebellion. 
 
 Was it so that heaven could not tolerate the 
 slow removal by peaceful means of this worst 
 of all villainies, but suffered it to provoke beyond 
 endurance a nation in arms that it might, as it 
 were, be destroyed in a day? Oh, it is good to 
 see this hideous monster recoil from the encounter 
 which he has provoked, it is good to watch his 
 flowing blood, it is good to see him making ready 
 to die. How different this than if a free state 
 had fallen under the domination of slavery. The 
 battle is going for the right. Yea, we rejoice 
 to welcome the time when the Republic shall be 
 liberty and not a lie. The day is advancing when 
 many a waiting Simon shall cry, "Lord, now let- 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 57 
 
 test thou thy servant depart In peace for mine 
 eyes have seen thy salvation." 
 
 But I will detain you only by one or two sug- 
 gestions further. 
 
 Let us not forget this day that there have been 
 great dangers and wars unsuspected and unseen, 
 from which our God hath kindly and mercifully 
 preserved us, during this solemn and eventful 
 year. Could we retrace the pathway through 
 which the nation has passed, with all Its sur- 
 roundings and possibilities, we should doubtless 
 be filled with wondering, trembling and most pro- 
 found gratitude to God, for his protecting and 
 guiding care. We should see doubtless what a 
 little thing, how many times would have brought 
 disaster, and how many times little things and 
 great things in the providence of God saved us. 
 We may be sure great grace unseen has been 
 mingled Into our national affairs. By the salva- 
 tion of the Lord we stand to-day far more than 
 we think. O forget not that our ship of state 
 has a piloting that regards breakers and shoals, 
 and a thousand dangers that no human eye ever 
 detects. The holy faith of our fathers was that 
 
58 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 the keeper of the nation is the Lord. 
 
 Finally, our religion, all that we learn from 
 it of the economy of God In the affairs of the 
 world gives us the assurance, that every troublous 
 time, every great and grievous crisis Is big with 
 unexplained blessing to the future. The light of 
 the world and of eternity to mankind was born 
 of the darkest day in the history of time, the 
 crucifixion of Jesus, the bright day comes of the 
 stormiest night. Life begins in the suffering hour. 
 
 Therefore be ye not troubled when ye hear of 
 wars, for these things must needs be. These com- 
 motions are transition times. In them old things 
 pass away and all things become new. Yet men 
 are apt to be terrified and despondent at the griev- 
 ous present, and forgetful that God is even there 
 and thus at work bringing in some better day. 
 Just what It may be we cannot say, but It Is a 
 part of our faith in our God to believe that this 
 great war will bring good to the nation that In 
 no other way could come, and good commensu- 
 rate with its costliness. For this precious faith 
 that makes all evil prophetic of coming good, that 
 transmutes the cost and suffering of this sad 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 59 
 
 day to a far more exceeding weight of gain and 
 blessedness, we praise the Lord, for faith's hope- 
 ful and glorious solution of our present great 
 troubles, we sing aloud our thanksgiving song. 
 
 Shall I touch upon a sudden and more tender 
 theme, shall we speak of the noble beloved and 
 fallen? The blood of our kindred hath reddened 
 the war sod. Many an honored and useful and 
 beloved one joined the rank of marshaling pa- 
 triots to return no more except as the dead re- 
 turn. In view of the sufferings of the camps and 
 In view of the dreadful battle bolt, how many 
 home heart strings are torn? The untimely fate, 
 the hardships, the anxiety, the grief, of these 
 things — what shall we say? 
 
 Is this what I see? A rising thankfulness, sol- 
 emn and strong, loftily towering above the wreck 
 and grief of the present hour, with streaming, 
 but courageous eyes fixed upon duty, counting 
 humanity God, rendering subllmest, purest human 
 praise. It says in suffering strength, "Let It not be 
 changed." Recall not the early fallen, It Is well. 
 The loss of precious life Is a living lamentation. 
 But the generation shall not find to its utmost 
 
6o HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 limit a better, a nobler dying place or time or 
 cause. For this are these dead blessed, honor 
 and affection cherish the names which such a 
 death hath sanctified. Call not the soldier back 
 from his hard and perilous mission; he would not 
 come. In his hours of faith, these sacrifices here, 
 there, are a noble offering; blessed are they that 
 can, that do render them. To this every right 
 moral sense cries amen. 
 
 Grief rejoices to-day that its blood was of such 
 a temper to be stirred, of a temper to pour Itself 
 out for something better than life. 
 
 Honor to the cherished dead; courage and 
 cheer to the unforgotten absent ones, sympathy 
 for all the martyrs of the day. And for all this 
 spirit, and life, and dying, give thanks unto God, 
 for in such as this is the true excellence, the sal- 
 vation and glory of our land. 
 
 Yes, praise the Lord that though the foeman 
 complains of scanty harvest, plenty has been 
 poured over all the loyal states. Though mil- 
 lions In foreign lands to whom work is daily 
 bread, are thrown out of employment to depend- 
 ence or starvation, all-sufficient business makes 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 6i 
 
 hopeful provisions for passing the wintry season 
 through. For this praise our God, because the 
 angel of death hath breathed no angry all-wither- 
 ing desolation in our borders or upon our great 
 armies; praise the Lord, because the people have 
 been vastly devoted, and courageous, hopeful and 
 have given with such unanimity to the conversation 
 of their government, for this, bless His name 
 who commands the inspirations of the popular 
 heart. 
 
 Because of foreign foes kept in unavailing non- 
 intervention, for keeping for us the peace of the 
 great world in this great day of misfortune and 
 exposure, because of this make mention of the 
 great goodness of Him who rules the affairs of 
 the nations. 
 
 Because of the victories and this present vast 
 organization for victory, praise the God of 
 battles. 
 
 Because the great curse and erring of our be- 
 loved land Is getting his mortal thrust and is 
 about to die, praise the Lord, praise the Lord, 
 who suffered the fiend In his great passion to 
 tempt his own seeming destruction. 
 
62 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 Think of the unseen danger through which we 
 have come and praise Him whose eye watcheth 
 and whose hand guideth over the dark and dreary 
 and stormy waters of national revolution. 
 
 Go up on the watch tower of your holy faith 
 and welcome the new nation, whose great cry is 
 prophetic. Think of the day, so bright and in- 
 spiring and good that God is about to flash upon 
 this night and praise Him who moves in mysteri- 
 ous ways His wonders to perform. 
 
 Measure life from its true standpoint, and 
 thank the Lord that for the lost, for the absent, 
 for the sadness and grievousness of the present 
 day all is well. 
 
 The Lord reigneth, let the earth rejoice, yea, 
 rejoice alway. 
 
ON THE DEATH OF CHARLES BENTON 
 
 For none of us liveth to himself and no man 
 dieth to himself. 
 
 For whether we live we live unto the Lord; 
 and whether we die we die unto the Lord; 
 whether we live, therefore, or die, we are the 
 Lord's. — Rom. xlv. 7-8. 
 
 It is really true that all men are consciously 
 living unto the Lord. In character of moral 
 action, In a spirit of entire subserviency to God, 
 Is all the world moving on. Are there none hold- 
 ing themselves as their own and seeking their 
 own? And are there none forgetting God and 
 living for themselves? Surely It cannot be said 
 In full, absolute, unconditional sense that no man 
 llveth to himself, that all mankind In spirit and 
 purpose are the Lord's, for It Is common to 
 claim all of one's life, and all of attainable things 
 as one's own, without condition. It Is common 
 to put God out of all proprietorship or claim 
 
 63 
 
64 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 here. And it Is common to set action against 
 the clearly proclaimed commandments of God. 
 Much, much, oh, how much of the thinking, the 
 willing and working of the human heart is selfish 
 and wicked! What a warfare has been waged 
 and is still kept up against those commandments 
 which are only holy, just and good. What a 
 controversy the generations of our race have 
 maintained against the law and gospel given 
 from God! Shall we then conclude from the 
 lives of unbelieving, self-seeking and wicked men 
 that the declaration of our text has substantial 
 limitations? 
 
 Shall we say that some men do take themselves 
 out of the Lord's hands and withhold themselves, 
 Hving and dying and furthermore from any sub- 
 serviency to his will and purpose? No, this 
 rather, that while here now in a measure a man 
 may in his own consciousness and in the character 
 of his actions live and die unsubordinated to God, 
 yet the man is yet in the controUing and disposing 
 hand of the Almighty, his living, his dying, are 
 at the arbitration and purpose of another will 
 than his own. Though a man may resist moral 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 65 
 
 laws he is as nothing before the divine decree, the 
 executive will. Pharaoh withstood the command 
 of God, repeatedly hardening his heart, but with- 
 al we see the life and the death of this great, 
 proud and willful king were woven into the web 
 of God. 
 
 So the crucifixion of our Saviour was the most 
 wicked and heaven-daring work of man's guilty 
 hand, yet the life that killed the Holy One and 
 just, this very crucifying will and force was made 
 of God to bear onward, more than His creative, 
 even His greater redemption glory. These cases 
 are sufficient to show us that God has wisdom 
 and power that can make wicked, unconsecrated 
 life help on His grand designs and work His 
 sovereign will. 
 
 Perhaps here is to be found, as nearly as we 
 can receive, the solution of the great problem of 
 the permitted existence of evil in the universe. 
 
 Why does God allow wicked life? Is it not 
 worse than useless, an unmitigated curse? To 
 those who will do it, yes, but, nevertheless, all the 
 life and the death and the after-death of even 
 wicked men, shall be made, like the sin of the 
 
66 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 betrayal and crucifixion of Jesus, to glorify God 
 and the work and kingdom of His grace. We 
 think we see useless things in the material and 
 moral world, yet must it not be a prerogative of 
 infinite wisdom to turn everything to account? 
 Here is some light for dark places. Are there 
 wicked men, single handed or bound together, 
 causing mighty mischief and plunging nations into 
 dreadful sorrows? God has them yet in hand 
 and He shall follow after them, make their wrath 
 to praise Him, turn their curseful doings into 
 some great future good, and, in the day which 
 best befits God's beneficent purpose, they shall fall 
 and die. Give the wicked into His hand. No 
 man liveth to himself and no man dieth to him- 
 self, but all, whether living or dying, are the 
 Lord's. 
 
 Yet while it is true that no man liveth unto 
 himself or dieth unto himself, however much he 
 may think or strive so to do, but is made, by the 
 infinitely wise and great disposer of all events, 
 who worketh all things according to the counsels 
 of his own will, to subserve by his continuance 
 in this world, by his departure out of it and his 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 67 
 
 existence beyond It, the purposes and the glory of 
 One, of whom he thinketh not, and for whom 
 he careth not. While God Is wide around and 
 high above, able to make all things praise Him, 
 the declaration of this fact was made by the 
 apostle in the text, to believe, and Is, therefore, 
 not to be considered In the light of a general faith 
 In God and of natural religion, but as related to 
 the Christian faith and the Christian life. 
 
 To those who are ready to receive it and happy 
 to assent unto It, Paul said, None of us llveth 
 unto himself and no man dieth unto himself. For 
 whether we live we live unto the Lord; and 
 whether we die we die unto the Lord; whether 
 we live, therefore, or die, we are the Lord's. 
 
 They belong unto God, they were not their 
 own. The highest purpose of their existence 
 could not be found related only or chiefly to them- 
 selves. They were pointed to something higher 
 than life, to something nobler than self. The 
 glory of God was the meaning of things. The 
 reason of changes that should be ordained unto 
 them. And thus the Lord was magnified not 
 alone by creating right of supreme worth but 
 
68 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 by virtue of the divine redemption in that Christ 
 died and rose again that he might be Lord, both 
 of the dead and the living. Creatureship and a 
 most marvelous ransom purchase gave our every 
 believing soul to be made unto the praise of the 
 glory of the grace of God. Enough was seen 
 and felt of the love of God, and the wisdom and 
 the excellence of his plan and way, to make it the 
 most favorable and desirable condition to be 
 completely at his disposal. 
 
 What order this faith of their Redeemer God, 
 above all and in all, wrought with a seemingly 
 chaotic wonder and chaotic life. 
 
 Nothing seemed to keep time with every known 
 throng or plan, the wisest arrangements of action 
 were often frustrated, the living and the dying 
 seemed at war with their order of well-doing, thus 
 left alone to the management of themselves and 
 the world, almost everything seemed in a dis- 
 couraging confusion, but assured of the particu- 
 lar providence and the all-embracing oversight of 
 Him, their Saviour God, assured that all things, 
 even all the living and the dying, did and would 
 work perfectly into his beneficent and glorious 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 69 
 
 plan. 
 
 Thus they found great peace, hope and con- 
 fidence towards God. But this was not all. 
 
 The truth was used of the apostle In the form 
 of an exhortation. The doctrine Is In all things 
 bound to glorify God. Thus must the believer 
 hold his life. He must strive to make It holy, 
 and thus best to befit Its use of God. This Is 
 the Ideal. All that belongs to existence has Its 
 highest meaning and service In what God shall 
 do with It. 
 
 Be the spirit and action of life confirmed to 
 the will of God by all endeavor. No man llveth 
 to himself. Realize that consecration. Make 
 the consciousness conform to the great fact. 
 
 Then again make the glory of God the end of 
 all things In personal Intent. 
 
 Living and dying in its manner and time have 
 reference In thought not to what may seem on 
 the human side, but rest the control of these 
 changes with Him who best knows the times and 
 the seasons. 
 
 Hereby is marked the course to Christian per- 
 fection. All done and held as unto the Lord. 
 
70 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 When from an acceptance of the doctrine to the 
 writing of the doctrine In the heart and life a 
 man has gone, the same Is become a perfect man 
 In Christ Jesus. In the way there must be found 
 dehverance from Impure and selfish motives. A 
 getting at the answer of the prayer, "Not my 
 will but thine be done." A readiness to give up 
 all things even unto life, when that shall be re- 
 quired. 
 
 Though this realization of living and dying 
 unto the Lord is the effort and the ever-to-be 
 perfected work of the believer, It is the privi- 
 lege of the soul from the first moment of its 
 reconciliation to God by faith In the atonement 
 of Jesus, to be apprehended as God's own child, 
 thenceforward, everlastingly. Though in the in- 
 firmity of the flesh. In the pressure of temptation, 
 the man may be unequal and unjustifiable to his 
 privilege and obligation, yet the Lord is ever 
 faithful to his covenant. The adoption holds 
 from the day of the first surrender to Jesus. 
 
 It is from this standpoint let us consider the 
 doctrine of our text, as setting forth the relation- 
 ship of God to the believer. The authorized as- 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 71 
 
 surance of faith Is, "We are the Lord's," Hving 
 or dying, we are the Lord's. 
 
 L This then Is an assurance of divine guid- 
 ance. The Lord will lead His own. The world 
 to them as to all often seems a perplexing maze 
 and the right way Is not clear; often the children 
 of God may seem to themselves to be groping 
 their way In the dark. 
 
 But whatever It appears to themselves, an un- 
 seen eye Is evermore guiding them, and wherever 
 He most needs them and It Is best they should 
 be, there they shall be found. They will be made 
 to hear most pleasingly the voice that should call 
 them. They will be made to feel most patiently 
 the motives which should Influence them. They 
 are the Lord's, for use, and this use all baptized 
 In love. They shall live where their good Lord 
 will, and they shall die where their Lord wills. 
 All this matter hath particular direction of what 
 a blessed assurance this is In respect to Christian 
 friends, in respect to our unknown course in this 
 bewildering world. Pass over days In the walks 
 of peace, or find where our place is in the toilsome 
 march, In the storm of battle, or in the trying 
 
72 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 langulshment of the hospital, or In any place or 
 condition in which God calls his own. It is the 
 privilege of the people of God to know that with 
 such experiences they should go. 
 
 II. There is assurance here of God's unfailing 
 care. If all this living and dying is with the Lord 
 he will provide. 
 
 Whatever of grace or strength the place or the 
 condition shall demand, God will give unto His 
 own. The life may appear exceedingly hard and 
 bare; it may be amidst extreme hardships, and it 
 may be far sundered from dearest fellowship. 
 The comfort and strength that come of the heart 
 and hand of earthly friendliness and love may 
 be wanting. This, while life's hard battle is being 
 fought on through dust and heat and weariness 
 and dreariness, or this race loneliness while heart 
 and flesh are failing, while the mortal faithful- 
 ness comes on and the death dew gathers on the 
 unsoothed brow, yet He, the best, the only effecual 
 helper and provider is there. He it is that serveth 
 as they struggle. So shall the struggle be and 
 He is able and faithful to make it good. Friendly, 
 overflowing human sympathy for the children of 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 73 
 
 God in hardness of life or in apparent forsaken- 
 ness and death is in danger of forgetting that He 
 is there. Could we, with spirit eyes, look into 
 the furnace of their affliction, we should see one 
 like the Son of Man, with them living or dying; 
 they are the Lord's. How much sweet peace with 
 God, what precious powers of holy communion 
 could the ways of this great war speak if they had 
 a voice I Out of the dark places how the light of 
 God is shining to angels' eyes ! Then what glori- 
 ous visions of spiritual things have spanned ten 
 thousand hard and dreary hospital couches, where 
 the ever faithful one hath remembered his dying 
 ones. Do we need to be reminded that He can 
 be the all-sufficient minister of strength? Do we 
 need to be reminded not to magnify our human 
 instrumentality and not to dishonor the resources 
 of divine love and power? Methlnks there 
 comes up out of the great tribulation, as it were, 
 many a triumphant voice, crying for the fulfill- 
 ment of the promise, "Living or dying, we are 
 the Lord's." 
 
 Hereby let comfort be taken for those whom 
 the providence of God, in this day of trial, have 
 
74 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 for duty or suffering been sent far away from 
 the blessedness of home and the services of affec- 
 tion. Their God forgets not their need. For this 
 their living and their dying may be enriched in 
 mercy and grace and deeper, more substantial 
 good, than the duty of less hardness, or the dying 
 less apparently grievous. 
 
 It is Jesus makes life truly blessed. Where He 
 is it is well. It is Jesus, not father, mother, sister, 
 brother, friends, that makes the dying bed soft 
 as downy pillows are. 
 
 If we would have faith of this ourselves, and 
 those we love, how much of the fear, the anxiety, 
 and the mourning, would be turned into confi- 
 dence, peace and joy. The Lord will and evermore 
 careth for His own. In the light of this word the 
 weeks of languishing through which our brother 
 went to his early grave lose their dreariness, and 
 where the watchers sat not we see Him watching 
 most tenderly, and soothing the weary soul with 
 the words most precious and sustaining, "I will 
 never leave thee nor forsake thee." It was our 
 youthful brother's religion that took him into the 
 army. It was duty, and duty only, that led him 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 75 
 
 towards the field of blood. It was his God that 
 ordained his last living and dying thus, and it 
 was his God, we are assured of it, that proved 
 faithful to him through it all, a very present help 
 in his every time of need. 
 
 And as with him so we believe it to have been 
 with others who have fallen in the faith of Jesus. 
 They were far from us, but God was not far from 
 His own. 
 
 III. It is here that we get grand and inspiring 
 views of God and the great kingdom of God. 
 One in which our poor life is kindly and glori- 
 ously exalted by consenting and participating 
 with the out-working beneficence and glory of 
 God. What is life but a transient dream, eat- 
 ing and drinking to-day and dying to-morrow! 
 It is a little matter that begins in the cradle and 
 ends in the grave. And is this all it is, and all 
 the greatness and the good that concerneth us? 
 No, no, God, the eternal God, and our Saviour, 
 appears, working out with us and by us the most 
 beneficent designs. What they are in the definite 
 and particular we know not, but it is on from 
 glory to glory. God, with all celestial powers. 
 
76 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 is. moving for a grand, all-satisfying and endur- 
 ing future. He is the great Master worker. 
 Now of that which pertaineth unto the believing 
 man there are three things: The living on the 
 earth, the dying and the after-life. All is the 
 Lord's, all shall be made in His hands to work 
 together for good. He marshals all this being. 
 So apparently by accident, he times the living and 
 arranges the hour of departure and assigns to 
 immortality, not as an indifferent matter, but so 
 that the living may have perfectness in itself and 
 also that it may harmonize with the develop- 
 ments of the great spiritual kingdom which is 
 being established. 
 
 We sometimes think we see good men die too 
 soon or live too long. We think we see last hours 
 unfortunately conditioned. But herein we are pass- 
 ing an unauthorized criticism upon the prefects 
 for ordination of God. God could, if he would, 
 give us a most satisfactory reason why so many 
 of His people were in the most repulsive life of 
 military service to-day, why He made it duty for 
 them to go and endure hardness. God could 
 give a conclusive reason why so many thousands 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 77 
 
 of His dear children are to-day In hospitals, 
 why so many have passed far from dear home and 
 Its sweet joys. These things are needful. They 
 that suffer and die shall be satisfied when here- 
 after they shall see them clearly. 
 
A SERMON 
 
 Heaven and earth shall pass away but my words 
 shall 710 1 pass away. — Matt. xxiv. 35. 
 
 Ancient writers, commenting on Dore's cele- 
 brated representation of our Lord's descending 
 the steps of the Praetorium, on his way to the 
 crucifixion, says it indicates a perfect calmness 
 upon his face, an utter ignoring of his terrible 
 surroundings and a far-away look in his solemn 
 eyes, as if his heart-strings were yet vibrating to 
 the lamentation over Jerusalem. This striking 
 feature of the rendering of the great artist may 
 seem original and unauthorized at first thought, 
 but it is in special accordance with evangelical rec- 
 ords of the passion week. First upon His mem- 
 orable triumphant entry into the Holy City. 
 When, with palm branch and loud hosannahs, 
 that vast multitude came to that turn in the way 
 where the unparalleled splendors of that peerless 
 city burst, at once, upon the view, there was wit- 
 
 78 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 79 
 
 nessed a most surprising scene and one in the 
 strongest possible contrast with that exultant and 
 joyful occasion. For, then, when Jerusalem 
 seemed at last to recognize her king. He himself, 
 in that open and admiring public gaze, burst into 
 tears, and cried out in despairing grief, ''If thou 
 hadst known, even thou, at least, in this, thy day, 
 the things which belong unto thy peace, but now 
 they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall 
 come upon thee that thine enemies shall cast a 
 trench around thee and compass thee around and 
 keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even 
 with the ground and thy children within thee, and 
 they shall not leave in thee one stone upon an- 
 other, because thou knowest not the time of thy 
 visitation." This was on Monday. On Wednes- 
 day the solemn and terrible arraignment of the 
 scribes and Pharisees for their obdurate unbelief 
 closed with these prophetic words, "Wherefore, 
 behold I send unto you prophets and wise men 
 and scribes, and some of them ye shall kill and 
 crucify, and some of them ye shall scourge in your 
 synagogues and persecute from city to city, that 
 upon you may come all the righteous blood shed 
 
8o HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 upon the earth from the blood of Zacharias, the 
 son of Barachlas, whom ye slew between the 
 temple and the altar. Verily, verily, I say unto 
 you, all these things shall come upon this gen- 
 eration. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that kill- 
 est the prophets and stonest them which are sent 
 unto you, how often would I have gathered your 
 children together even as a hen gathereth her 
 chickens under her wings and ye would not. Be- 
 hold your house is left unto you desolate." Later, 
 also, on the same day as they were departing from 
 the temple some said, "Master, see what manner 
 of stones and what buildings are here?" And 
 he answered, "Seest thou these great buildings? 
 There shall not be left one stone upon another 
 which shall not be thrown down." And there- 
 upon, in a private conference, he told his won- 
 dering disciples many more things about those 
 days and the signs of their coming. Again, finally 
 as Jesus was being led away to be crucified, fol- 
 lowed by a great multitude of people, and women 
 which also bewailed him. He, turning unto them, 
 said, "Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for Me 
 but weep for yourselves. For, behold the days 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 8i 
 
 are coming In which they shall say, 'Blessed are 
 the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and 
 the paps that never gave suck, when they shall 
 begin to say to the mountains. Fall upon us, and to 
 the hills, cover us.' " 
 
 Thus the rejected Messiah set forth In grief 
 and tears a definite prediction of a great judg- 
 ment to come. And It Is Important to notice that 
 the Immediate and special application of the fa- 
 miliar words of our text was to emphasize the 
 certainty of the fulfillment of those predictions. 
 He gathers, as it were, the visible universe unto 
 the sweep and energy of His expression and as- 
 sures His astonished and incredulous disciples that 
 Heaven and earth shall pass away, but his words 
 about this particular prophecy shall not pass away. 
 Things so real, fast and eternal as the very uni- 
 verse itself shall pass away, but His words shall 
 not pass away. Thus we come to the subject in 
 hand. The historical verification of these words 
 of Jesus. 
 
 In instituting this Inquiry it is in point to ob- 
 serve that never did solemn warning fall more 
 utterly dead upon the empty air. The exultant 
 
82 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 Sanhedrin slew the prophet and rejoiced. Re- 
 ligious Jerusalem had relief in the thought that a 
 formidable deceiver and blasphemer had been 
 put out of the way. All together, lightly and se- 
 curely, the multitude lifted up its mighty voice 
 and cried, "His blood be upon us and our chil- 
 dren.'^ 
 
 It must be allowed also that to human appear- 
 ances the fulfillment of such a prophecy was ex- 
 ceedingly improbable. The Jewish nation, at 
 large, despite of all previous losses and disasters, 
 never had been so strong in the world, and it was 
 still manifestly increasing in numbers and advanc- 
 ing in influence. This people, intensely clannish 
 and exclusive as they were, were nevertheless also, 
 even before their last great dispersions, more gen- 
 erally and largely represented throughout the 
 known world than any other single race. And 
 those communities were noted for their thrift, 
 force of character and influence and their loftier 
 and purer religious faith was ever strongly at- 
 tractive to honorable men and women throughout 
 the heathen world. But always and everywhere 
 the heart was true to the land of the fathers, anH 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 83 
 
 Its ceaseless and passionate refrain was, ''If I 
 forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand for- 
 get her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let 
 my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I 
 prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy" ; and, by 
 the spirit of that loyalty, the entire Gentile world 
 was, in a certain real sense, put under tribute as 
 the frequent pilgrims brought costly offerings upon 
 the Holy Altar, At home, no hostile hand had 
 been laid upon the state so heavily as to cause 
 any permanent arrest of essential prosperity. 
 Under the Herodlan dynasty, even, that evil and 
 bloody house, a new city had been Inclosed out- 
 side of ancient Jerusalem, and the temple Itself 
 had been rebuilt and readorned with surpassing 
 magnificence. The spirit of nationality had never 
 been more vital, old traditions never more cher- 
 ished, and the splendors of the ceremonial ritual 
 never more Imposing. Be it, Indeed, that all was 
 sadly carnal, misled and perverted to such a mon- 
 strous extent, even as to effect the deification of a 
 Herod and the rejection of her own Messiah, yet, 
 notwithstanding, all was taken as moving on to 
 that confidently expected day when the chosen race 
 
84 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 should irresistibly and gloriously dominate the 
 world. True, after straining the resources of the 
 empire as no other people in her long career of 
 conquest, the Roman yoke was upon her neck, 
 as it was upon all the world. Yet her proud 
 spirit was still unbroken. That subjugation was 
 no menace of destruction, but contrariwise. For 
 the policy of Rome was neither to hesitate nor 
 avenge, but was, to a remarkable degree, consider- 
 ate and tolerant to all peoples, religions and gods. 
 It was one secret of the extent and duration of the 
 empire that it so far harmonized its supremacy 
 with the prosperity of tributary nations. In any 
 probable event the destruction of a gem so pe- 
 culiar and unique and brilliant as was Jerusalem 
 in the imperial crown, was nothing less than the 
 grossest wantonness and folly. It had been called 
 the perfection of beauty, the joy of the earth. 
 It was a great mountain fortress. There the 
 Jebusites had held their ground for four hundred 
 years after the conquest of Canaan by Joshua and 
 then finally the victorious arm of David made it 
 the lion of sacred literature. It was styled the 
 habitation of Jehovah, from whence he looked 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 85 
 
 upon all the Inhabitants of the world. Its kings 
 were higher than the kings of the earth. Thus 
 its physical elevation fitly typified the security, 
 pride and confidence of its inhabitants. Accord- 
 ing to a curious and expressive Rabbinical figure, 
 the world is like an eye. The white of the eye 
 is ocean surrounding the world, the black is the 
 world itself, the pupil Is Jerusalem, and the image 
 in the pupil is the Temple. This proud metropo- 
 lis was then a thousand years old and had risen 
 Phoenix-like from the ashes of every destructive 
 conflagration. All that marble, brass, silver and 
 gold, and elaborate and exquisite workmanship 
 could achieve had been lavished upon this chosen 
 city of God. The Temple, the only place in all 
 the world where sacrifices might be offered unto 
 the only living and true God, was in its structure 
 and habiliments, as a high organ correspondent 
 to its singular and lofty claims, appearing In the 
 distance like a mount of snow fretted with golden 
 pinnacles. In the extent and grandeur of Its pro- 
 portions, as well as in Its decorations. It far ex- 
 ceeded any edifice of its kind at Rome. The de- 
 liberate and final judgment of history Is that the 
 
86 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 whole city at that time as far surpassed Rome in 
 grandeur as it fell short of it in size and popu- 
 lation. 
 
 Add now to these natural grounds of assurance 
 the glorious things spoken of Zion by the prophets 
 of old and the exultant sentiments of the inspired 
 psalms, whereby it became a part of holy wor- 
 ship to sing in strains like these, viz: "Walk 
 about Zion and go round about her, tell ye the 
 towers thereof. Mark ye well her bulwarks, con- 
 sider her palaces, that ye may tell it to the gen- 
 eration following. They that trust in the Lord 
 shall be as Mount Zion which cannot be moved 
 but abideth forever. As the mountains are round 
 about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about his 
 people forever." Such was the array of argu- 
 ment and presumption confronting the word of 
 Christ that day when, as the worst of malefactors, 
 he hung nailed upon the cross. 
 
 Look we now to the evangelical records for 
 a historical counterpart as full, clear and indis- 
 putable as the prophecy itself. It is nowhere here 
 to be found. Though the chronology of the New 
 Testament embraces this memorable event there 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 87 
 
 is a profound silence about the whole matter, like 
 that constrained silence of inspiration so notice- 
 able in other cases, where human heart, hand and 
 tongue would be most demonstrative. Nor can 
 it b-e discovered that the early Christians ever 
 made any provision whatever to report to suc- 
 ceeding generations when or how ancient Jeru- 
 salem disappeared from the face of the earth. 
 
 Yet, nevertheless, in the course of events, signal 
 witnesses were provided, and records were made, 
 and they will both stand unimpeached and unim- 
 peachable so long as men credit human history. 
 Extinguish Christianity and all her records and 
 there will yet remain the unquestioned fact that 
 Jerusalem was miserably destroyed. For the 
 story is neither by intent, author or bias. Christian. 
 It is simply profane history, such as requires no 
 faith in God or religion to accept. But it is a 
 narration more fully circumstantial and realistic 
 than exists of any other like event in the history 
 of the world. Not Babylon, nor Tyre, nor Sidon, 
 nor Athens, nor Carthage, nor Rome itself has 
 had her supreme catastrophe thrown out in sharp 
 and horrible relief and made such a common inci- 
 
88 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 dent. How abundantly and how clearly both 
 from the eyes of Josephus, who was an eye wit- 
 ness upon the ground, and from the matured de- 
 ductions of historians, as well as from the fact of 
 the timely flight of the Christians of Jerusalem 
 from the doomed city, — we have not time to tell 
 how abundantly and clearly its distinctive fea- 
 tures and incidents are identified with the course 
 of events. But that identification is without ques- 
 tion we have not time to demonstrate, but pass at 
 once to the culminating movements of the mon- 
 strous tragedy. 
 
 As the rejection of the Messiah had been gen- 
 eral, both at home and abroad, so in like manner, 
 a common calamity seemed to overtake the race. 
 Says Milman, ''It might seem as if the skirts of 
 that tremendous tempest which was slowly gather- 
 ing over the nation, country and the metropolis 
 of the Jewish nation broke and discharged their 
 heavy clouds of ruin and desolation successively 
 over each of the more considerable though remote 
 settlements of the devoted people." Roman senti- 
 ment, both official and popular, heretofore essen- 
 tially indulgent and liberal, became hostile, and 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 89 
 
 finally under the infamous administration of 
 Florus the tributary yoke was made to gall and 
 torture to a degree to madden into insurrection 
 a far more long-suffering people. Popular ani- 
 mosity thus encouraged seemed everywhere let 
 loose upon an outlawed race, until at length the 
 wantonly outraged and infuriated Jew hurled 
 back defiance in the face of a world in arms. And 
 thus without an ally or friend, or hope of favor, 
 he himself gratuitously aggravated and embit- 
 tered the conflict. But the fearful odds and the 
 ultimate hopelessness of this unequal struggle were 
 but the least part of the untowardness, the dis- 
 couragement and misery of that fateful time. 
 For never did a nation rush headlong into a great 
 foreign war In such a deplorable condition of 
 civil strife. Not only was there no acknowledged 
 or organic unity, no comprehensive system of ac- 
 tion or defense; on the other hand the energies 
 and resources of the country were being wantonly 
 consumed in a desperate and relentless civil war- 
 fare. Assassination was rife and Its stealthy mys- 
 terious hand struck down even the High Priest 
 himself within the sacred precincts of the Temple 
 
90 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 itself. Brigandage under the lead of many false 
 Messiahs added to the miserable confusion, while 
 a grievous famine of five successive years' dura- 
 tion came with its woeful aggravation of the na- 
 tional calamity. Indeed every possible adverse 
 element seemed mingled in that bitter cup which 
 was to be drained to the dregs by that doomed 
 generation. But the amazing vitality and energy 
 of Jewish patriotism, though so Immensely handi- 
 capped and embarrassed, withstood the pressure 
 of the imperial arms for three bloody years, but, 
 though slowly, yet with irresistible advance, the 
 veteran legions of Rome gathered in upon the des- 
 perate insurrection, step by step, and stamped it 
 out with exterminating vengeance on the 13th of 
 April in the year of Our Lord 70. Titus en- 
 camped before the walls of the Holy City itself. 
 This advance fell upon the time of the great 
 feast of unleavened bread. A vast multitude of 
 pilgrims encamped outside the walls crowded 
 within the town, where now packed together, ac- 
 cording to the estimate of Josephus, were 3,000,- 
 000 of human souls, a number large enough at 
 least to strain to the utmost all the accommo- 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 91 
 
 dations and resources of the beleaguered city. 
 Consider, furthermore, that within that crowded 
 space three hostile camps shared control of af- 
 fairs, only suspending assault upon each other 
 under pressure from the outside foe, and it needs 
 no vivid imagination to forecast the inevitable 
 and unspeakable horrors of the situation. 
 
 It goes without telling that the details of that 
 five months' siege are wearisome and sickening in 
 countless cases of extremest misery, anguish and 
 horror. This was one of those awfully calami- 
 tous times when not only all the holy dictates of 
 religion but also all the kindly instincts of the 
 heart seem in suspense and human beings live, 
 ravage, fight and die, like savage beasts. Suffice 
 to say that no skeptic can ever claim that the ful- 
 fillment was inadequate to the prophecy. We 
 hasten past that holocaust of famine, blood and 
 fire to the end. Nearly a million and a half of hu- 
 man beings perished during the siege. Some of 
 the tallest and most handsome of the captives 
 were reserved for the triumph of Titus. The 
 aged and infirm were put to death in cold blood. 
 Of the rest all above seventeen years of age were 
 
92 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 sent to the mines of Egypt or reserved for gladia- 
 tors, who singly or in companies were compelled 
 to slay each other or were slain by wild beasts 
 in the theaters of Rome for the amusement of 
 their conquerors. The whole city, says Josephus, 
 was so thoroughly leveled and dug up that no one 
 visiting would believe it had ever been inhabited. 
 That was the most blood-stained soil on the face 
 of the globe. Seventeen times had this devoted 
 city been besieged, six times had it been captured. 
 This was its second and final destruction as a 
 Jewish city. On the merely human side the record 
 which the Israelites had made as a nation was 
 as heroic and glorious as has ever been achieved 
 by the sword. But mortal might and courage are 
 vain against the supernal decree. The end had 
 come. The entire country of the subjugated race 
 was confiscated, and remains unredeemed to the 
 present day, and the Jew was thenceforth through 
 long centuries to be an afflicted and helpless alien 
 in the land of his fathers, or wander in an un- 
 friendly world. When next rebuilt Jerusalem was 
 a heathen city and the oppressed and helpless rem- 
 nant of Israel was obliged to divert its annual tem- 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 93 
 
 pie tax to the support of the Idolatrous rites of 
 Olympian Jove upon the very site of Its own Holy 
 Place. The Temple fell, never more there or else- 
 where to raise again, and the Altar and the priest- 
 hood were forever burled under its ruins. Thus 
 temple. Altar and priesthood forever lost, there 
 could be no more sacrifice for sin. It was needed 
 no more, for the Lamb of God had been offered 
 up for the sins of the whole world. 
 
 The requiem of ZIon is most fitly sung In the 
 sublime strains of her own Holy Oracles. How 
 hath the Lord covered the Daughter of ZIon with 
 a cloud In his anger and cast down from heaven 
 unto the earth the beauty of Israel and remem- 
 bered not his footstool in the day of his anger. 
 The Lord hath swallowed up all the habitation of 
 Jacob and hath not pitied. He hath thrown down 
 in his wrath the strongholds of the daughter of 
 Judah. The Lord hath done that which He de- 
 vised, He hath fulfilled his word that He com- 
 manded In the days of old. 
 
 Therefore that which hath been done, that 
 which hath been suffered, that had been witnessed 
 to by unbelieving eyes, reported by unbelieving 
 
94 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 tongues and fully accredited by an unbelieving 
 world has in strange ways and astonishing minute- 
 ness, as well as exhaustive completeness, fulfilled 
 these words of Christ which when spoken were 
 scarcely credited by his most devoted followers. 
 Through the cries and tears and torn heart strings 
 of divine compassion the secret of the doomed 
 escaped to the world. He who came from God 
 first of all to save the Holy City, who yearned 
 over her with an inexpressible and unquenchable 
 love and despairingly recognized the obduracy of 
 her guilt, bathed her streets in unavailing tears for 
 the great day of her visitation when it was forty 
 years away. In any supposable case could 
 there be a stronger course of reason, a more 
 formidable array of improbabilities, a more sin- 
 cere insistence of the mind than that which here 
 combined to dispute and deny the words of Christ? 
 All assurances in earth and heaven were that that 
 consecrated place could not be destroyed, as soon 
 should eternal truth and the only Living God 
 Himself pass away. But the great reversal has 
 come. The record has gone unquestioned into the 
 world's history. Everything here that withstood 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 95 
 
 his word has passed away, and their ruin is monu- 
 mental of the eternal verity of the words of Jesus 
 Christ as they concern the interests and destiny of 
 human kind. 
 
 Is there not here solemn admonition of most 
 practical kind, and is not the number to which it 
 appeals larger by far than all the professing 
 Christians of the world? If all the words of 
 Jesus Christ are to be completely vindicated, how 
 tremendous are to be the revivals of soon coming 
 times! What havoc is to be made in human ex- 
 pectations and the destinies of millions of human 
 souls ! 
 
 The opposition to the words of Jesus Christ 
 to-day, with all its doubts, its questionings, its un- 
 belief, its philosophy, its reasonings, its criticisms, 
 its scoffs. Its ridicule, great, deplorable as it is in 
 its influence upon the young and the old, making 
 so easy, so natural, so reasonable and comfort- 
 able to practically disregard all warnings and in- 
 vitations, this great popular discrediting of Christ 
 and His word is yet in reality and substance but 
 the repeating in history the presumption and con- 
 fidence of the millions which it then misled! Then 
 
96 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 Is It not time for the wise and the prudent to put 
 themselves out of the way of opposition to such 
 words as these? Who should choose to enter Into 
 conflict with him whom the justification of human 
 history has made so formidable? Woe, woe to 
 him whom Christ declared to be In the way of 
 destruction, though all the world may gainsay and 
 deny! 
 
 Blessed, forever blessed, Is he to whom the 
 eternal words of Jesus Christ are a refuge, de- 
 fense and an eternal hope. 
 
A SERMON 
 
 Preached June 26, 1864. 
 
 And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars; 
 see that ye he not troubled, for all these things 
 must come to pass, hut the end is not yet. 
 
 Without entering into a particular discussion 
 upon the interpretation of the chapter in which 
 the text is found, observation of one or two plain 
 facts will prepare the way to the object In view. 
 
 1. These words are addressed to Christians. 
 
 2. To Christians in respect to troublous times, 
 to wars and rumors of wars. Where these con- 
 ditions occur there can be nothing to forbid the 
 application of the exhortation or declarations 
 here given. 
 
 I. First, then, be it observed that the assertion 
 is made to believers that they shall hear of wars 
 and rumors of wars, and an imperative, positive 
 predication. It is doubtful whether there ever 
 lived a generation of Christians who were not 
 
 97 
 
98 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 more or less tried by rumors or scenes of bloody 
 strife. Though by precept of the gospel and the 
 spirit of the new heart made to abhor blood and 
 violence, rendered by their religion to be most 
 painfully sensitive to all discord and conflict, yet 
 the very Prince of Peace himself assures them 
 that they are bound unto the necessity of experi- 
 mental contact with that which their souls hate. 
 Before that generation passed awaty to which 
 Jesus then spake there came upon Jerusalem and 
 Judea one of the most grievous and bloody wars 
 that ever afflicted the Jewish nation. In the de- 
 struction of the holy city was mingled every ele- 
 ment of bitterness and suffering, perhaps, that was 
 ever poured out for people. If we remember that 
 the Jewish Christian was indissolubly bound by 
 blood and affection to his native race and land, 
 that his faith in the Son of David had not extin- 
 guished but intensified and ennobled his patriot- 
 ism, so that doubtless in view of the sins of his 
 country he could but say, "With all thy faults, I 
 love thee still." We may well believe that every 
 success of the heathen Roman, every defeat and 
 disaster and calamity of his countrymen in that 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 99 
 
 long and dreadful siege, which at last came to a 
 close in the utter humiliation and overthrow of 
 the nation, was naturally a most afflictive and 
 troublous course of events to the yet unalienated 
 Israelite, who in the person of Paul, the perse- 
 cuted, could wish himself ever accursed from 
 Christ for his kindness according to the flesh. Of 
 those things which should make both their ears 
 tingle they should hear. The church which suc- 
 ceeded that time of tribulation was passed under 
 the affliction of the wars of the Roman Empire, 
 which knew no permanent repose until the sun of 
 her glory and existence went down in blood and 
 fire. Directly or indirectly the church has experi- 
 enced terror and hurting by the sword on all its 
 way down the warring ages. Bloody strifes have 
 Invaded her peaceful habitation, taken up her be- 
 nevolent purposes, destroyed her hopes, wasted 
 the blood of her sons, and in untold ways tended 
 to Increase her anxiety, distress and suffering. No 
 strange thing has befallen us In that way that 
 touches home to the quick, we are made to hear 
 from day to day, week to week, month to month, 
 and year to year, of war and war and rumor of 
 
loo HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 war. They are a part of that sad experience 
 which the Lord said long ago should be. The de- 
 sires and prayers and efforts have not been able, 
 are not able, and shall not be able, to prevent that 
 bloody strife. Ye shall hear of it and know of 
 it, my people, that it may be a part of your expec- 
 tations on the earth. We tremble, we mourn, 
 we are tempted to distress and despair because 
 of what we hear of this great and grievous and 
 threatening and wasting war. But this war Is 
 the command of the Lord and the foretold of the 
 Lord, that which by providence and grace this 
 generation of Christian men and women were 
 ordained to hear and know. It Is a part of those 
 decrees to which the instructions of our faith pre- 
 pare us to bow, that which God is pleased to say 
 shall continue in the world. 
 
 IL Next we have direction as to the state of 
 mind with which we meet this disturbed condi- 
 tion of human affairs. See that ye be not troubled. 
 
 This cannot mean a dead and unbroken Insensi- 
 bility to the issues of war, for there have prob- 
 ably been but few struggles In respect to which 
 Intelligent sympathies have not been enlisted upon 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR loi 
 
 one side or the other so as to cause a solicitude for 
 one of the parties and sorrow for Its disasters. It 
 cannot mean a callous Indifference to the human 
 suffering Involved. There may be a quietude and 
 carelessness In view of most momentous and 
 bloody convulsions which are simply monstrous, 
 reflecting anything but credit upon heart or head. 
 Sympathies and Intelligence naturally causing 
 anxieties, fears, and sorrows are all unrebuked 
 and commanded of him who himself wept, a man 
 of sorrows and acquainted with grief. 
 
 Upon the human side as respects sufferings and 
 jeopardy of that which Is good. Christians are 
 most delicately and acutely sensitive to all the dis- 
 turbances of war. Supernatural benevolence Is 
 not Indifference to that which Increases the bur- 
 den of human war, or drives its bloody plowshare 
 apparently so destructively among the roots of 
 most of the Interests of the world. The sensibility 
 which In times of war disposes towards a painful 
 solicitude for the result, that disposes the heart 
 to enter with strong sympathy Into the sorrows 
 and woes of the time. Is creditable and well. It 
 bespeaks the larger soul, the more refined and 
 
I02 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 elevated sentiments. This Indicates that noble 
 virtue humanity, the love of man. This mind 
 was In Jesus, by It he sorrowed, suffered and wept 
 for the world. Therefore, the sin Is not In the 
 stirring of troublous emotions, but In not caus- 
 ing the diviner sentiment of faith In God to work 
 upon and direct them. The words Indicate the 
 mastery and control of tumultuous and disquieted 
 feelings. See that ye be not troubled. The dan- 
 ger Is that sight and sense will get above faith, 
 that In the stormy and distressful scene that voice 
 win not be heard which speaks In every fearful 
 hour, "It Is I, be not afraid." Be In sympathy 
 with the best, let your heart be measurably re- 
 joiced or depressed by the course of events, un- 
 rebuked, be not hard of heart in view of the wars 
 of the times. Wrestle if you would with strong 
 crying and tears in respect to what you suffer 
 and fear If you would, be sorrowful and very 
 heavy, weep with those that weep, thereby do you 
 show the sensibilities of a Christian soul, yet never 
 have that dark unconsolable trouble of a faith In 
 God lost. Feel, but evermore resist all the sug- 
 gestions and conclusions of hopeless and gloomy 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 103 
 
 unbelief. 
 
 See that ye be not troubled. There would be 
 no fitness of the injunction but for the exceeding 
 great exposure to that wretched condition. It Is 
 because these wars and rumors of wars are so 
 exceedingly troublous and discouraging, because 
 of the cost and the blood and the suffering, be- 
 cause so many delays, reverses and disappoint- 
 ments, because of the very discouraging cost and 
 the conjunction of wants, because we are ready 
 to despair of all good and to give up all hope, 
 because a mighty and almost overpowering trou- 
 ble Is magnifying Itself to the possession of our 
 entire consciousness, that God comes to help, giv- 
 ing us permission and command still to bear up. 
 That Is a steady, firm, strong, substantial peace 
 that comes by occasion of trouble. Nothing is 
 so stable as that which Is established and held by 
 two strongly counteracting forces. They know 
 what faith Is who have doubted. They under- 
 stand security who have had fears, they enter 
 Into the blessedness of joy who have tasted the 
 sorrow. So they reajlze what It Is to be un- 
 troubled in God, who have felt what trouble is. 
 
104 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 The cloud and the storm and the whirlwind are 
 In the air, but through this very medium In which 
 they act there Is a rising to the bright and peace- 
 ful scenes above the clouds. 
 
 *'See that ye be not troubled." 
 
 What a blessed commandment In days like 
 these. Trouble Is dreadful, this our great tribu- 
 lation who can estimate Its unspeakable grlevous- 
 ness; almost every sight and sound seems to say, 
 "Ye do well to be troubled and only so," but God 
 speaks down In sublimely reassuring tones, say- 
 ing, "See that ye be not troubled, keep courage, 
 hope, endure, let not your hearts be troubled." 
 
 III. The next point Is the affirmation of the 
 necessity of wars and rumors of wars, as a rea- 
 son why believers should not be discouraglngly 
 troubled by them. All these things must come 
 to pass. This is not a blind, reasonless, purpose- 
 less and cruel fate, but the wise and good sov- 
 ereignty of Almighty God. Aside from the 
 Gospel of Christ, there is no ground for the con- 
 fidence that the divine judgments towards this 
 world would be ordained In vices of the well- 
 being of a rebellious race, but in Christ there is 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 105 
 
 a practical pledge and assurance that the neces- 
 sities of God's action as related to mankind shall 
 be in the interest of mercy and salvation. This 
 must be In the dispensation of grace and by the 
 law of peace and good-will to man. 
 
 Predestination towards the believer Is set in 
 this way. If God be for us, who can be against 
 us? He that spared not his own son, but deliv- 
 ered him also freely, gives us all things, all things 
 for good, and that extends to that which Is 
 grievous as well as to that which Is joyous for 
 the present. And all Is now from God for all the 
 world, all the decrees of God, by this stormy 
 declaration God so loved the world that he gave 
 his only begotten son that whosoever belleveth In 
 him should not perish but have everlasting life. 
 For God sent not his son unto the world to con- 
 demn the world; but that the world, through him, 
 might be saved. So knowing the great mercy 
 of God In the Gift of his son to the world, we 
 are compelled to believe that whatever he fixes 
 to come to pass is also in the Interest of mercy 
 and love, for God's work is consistent and har- 
 monious. Therefore, do we know that whatever 
 
io6 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 he declareth by word or providence must be, is the 
 best thing for all the world to come to pass. It 
 is an Infinitely wise and unspeakably kind neces- 
 sity. What a comforting interpretation to give 
 to troublous things. Divine sovereignty alone 
 clothes grim and cruel war with a mantle of 
 prophetic beauty and light. The Father on high 
 saith to his distressed and trembling children, be 
 calm, let not your heart be troubled, these things 
 must be, they are best, should not the wisdom 
 of an all-merciful God be endured, though It 
 roll past in the horrid storm of war? Shall we 
 unbeHevIngly inquire how these things can be? 
 Shall we say God Is not able to prove that all 
 these things are not against us? Rather let us 
 believe the judgment of God a great deep, past 
 finding out, till he himself Is pleased to make 
 them plain. We will wait in peace for the great 
 day when with wondering admiration we shall 
 praise the Gracious disposer of all events, for 
 even all the tribulations of the world. Great shall 
 be the glory of God in that he shall show so much 
 good to flee from the apparently useless and de- 
 structive things. 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 107 
 
 Even more appears something of the mission 
 of the wars and rumors of wars that are com- 
 missioned of God in the earth. 
 
 In these bloody and violent scenes are the vast- 
 est and most vivid expressions of human de- 
 pravity. Hereby are made to appear the de- 
 plorable consequences of wrong acts and prin- 
 ciples. War punishes sin, humbles the pride 
 of man, teaches human dependence and insignifi- 
 cance, and reveals the will and power of the 
 Almighty. War sweeps away the pestilent vapors 
 of moral evil, a stormy breath of blood and fire. 
 War overthrows political and social despotisms. 
 War reveals the need of an almighty refuge, 
 purifies the souls of the sinners and takes them 
 from this world and becomes to the wise an 
 Illustration of the principles and facts and the pro- 
 visions of the divine government. It makes a 
 part of the great tribulation through which those 
 that are made white enter into the rest of God. 
 But how little Is all this, or all that can be read 
 out by human wisdom In inspired precept com- 
 pared with that which omniscience beholds 
 when he says these strifes and bloody scenes must 
 
io8 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 come to pass? What constrains Almighty God 
 to the permlttal of this great day of suffering, 
 desolation and fear? Is It not the vision of bet- 
 ter things, is it not the joy to come which says 
 of all this grievous train, these things must come 
 to pass? Thus we interpret this mind of God. 
 
 And the concluding part of our text sets up the 
 future In the form of a watchword for grievous 
 times. "The end is not yet." Not amidst the 
 confusion, distress and destruction of war is the 
 final result. To chaotic violence all things are 
 not tending. This is the mediate and transitory, 
 the means not the end. It is a part of our faith 
 in our holy religion to be assured that by the 
 grace of our Lord Jesus Christ the world's affairs 
 shall end well, that all things now apparently 
 good or bad are under divine mercy and power 
 converging and combining towards a far more 
 heavenly state, that these disturbing overturn- 
 ings are for the bringing In of a better kingdom. 
 We have no right to hold the salvation of the 
 world which God has undertaken in such earnest, 
 and so costful, to be anything less than a final suc- 
 cess. The divine Redeemer "shall see of the 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 109 
 
 travail of his soul and be satisfied," and the pro- 
 vision and the call was for the world. That many 
 souls shall perish we have reason to believe, but 
 we are not authorized to believe, that at the last 
 count of all the generations of time, lost will be 
 a more appropriate term to the great multitude 
 for whom Christ died, than saved, and in the full- 
 ness of time the Gentiles shall come and be gath- 
 ered in. Christ was crucified, but he lived again, 
 the world tastes of miseries and death and destruc- 
 tions in wars and rumors of wars, but this is not 
 the end, it is on the way of tribulation and glory, 
 of truth and life, of distresses and comfortings, 
 of war and peace, say it over in the dark and 
 stormy and fearful night, when impenetrable 
 gloom serves to envelop all earthly affairs. When 
 the gates of hell seem to prevail. The end is 
 not yet, the end Is not yet. A morning cometh, 
 often this morning glorified by the night and the 
 storm. The economy of grace substantially ap- 
 plies to the world, the light afflictions which are 
 but for a moment work out the weight of glory, 
 far more exceeding. After the great war and 
 wars, peace profound, wide as the world, just 
 
no HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 heavenly and blessed. May we not say it the 
 warfare of the world is God conquering a peace, 
 forces of God energizing on to the effectual and 
 perfect pacification of human society, though it 
 may be torn and cast down for dead, yet thus 
 the evil spirit goeth out. This hopeful view we 
 have of the race in the mass. But in more em- 
 phatic and unqualified sense it may be said to the 
 people of God distressed and afflicted by wars 
 and rumors of wars. The end is not yet. We 
 shall not look upon conflict, sorrow, suffering and 
 devastation forever. Disturbed government, riot- 
 ing, rebellion, lawless and cruel violence, shall not 
 make your surrounding forever. These things 
 must come for a little time, but be not troubled 
 as in the midst of a disastrous and irretrievable 
 calamity. Through this experience it pleased the 
 all wise and most merciful Father to take you to 
 the everlasting kingdom of Peace. These wars 
 of man magnify and will for all eternity mag- 
 nify and enhance the peace of God. Thus it 
 standeth to the people of God. Indeed after the 
 war, and the wars, peace shall come, everlasting 
 rest. That is the end. Jerusalem is the destina- 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR iii 
 
 tion, Jerusalem the habitation of peace. 
 
 And, furthermore, as God says that wars must 
 be at the last, when looking on the great whole 
 we shall not regret for the warfare of the world, 
 however grievous It may have been with its be- 
 ginning, its issues, its security, its protraction. In 
 the times of settlement, for first and last under 
 God they each and all were instrumental in ad- 
 vancing the kingdom of God in the earth. 
 Though not one of these struggles was wholly 
 justifiable respecting man, though every one was 
 directly or indirectly caused by sin, and carried 
 on in sin in a great measure, though at the time 
 many appeared too costful to us, without good 
 results, failures as respects best purposes, and 
 ended in an unrighteous peace or wholly disas- 
 trous. I say, however these bloody struggles may 
 have been related to human responsibility and 
 however they may have ended at the time, yet at 
 the last, when viewed as a part of God's provi- 
 dential dealing with the world, they that see as 
 God sees and feel as God feels will be satisfied 
 with the agencies of the bloody struggles of hu- 
 man society. They will feel that if they had not 
 
112 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 occurred, or been otherwise, that the God of war, 
 the Lord of Hosts, had discarded them. It had 
 not been so well. Other things being as they were, 
 these very same bloody struggles had a necessary 
 relationship to the highest good of mankind and 
 the glory of God. 
 
 Therefore, withstand the depression of the 
 present hour, bear up amidst all the apparent 
 disasters and delays with the watching. The end 
 Is not yet, the end Is not yet. These are the 
 strong doctrines with which our souls should be 
 guided in these troublous times. 
 
 It Is a tendency to cultivate as much as may 
 be a callous indifference to that which occasions 
 distress. To withdraw from sympathy with the 
 afflicted; and to secure repose by narrowing the 
 ways of solicitude to that which is merely per- 
 sonal and selfish. But Christ contradicts one In 
 the spirit of a religion of universal love, and sym- 
 pathy rebukes the other. There shall be perilous 
 times, there shall be trouble, that Is the kind of 
 life that Christians are to look for, and the law 
 of Christian love Is to be sensitive to all that 
 Interests humanity, to weep with those that weep. 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 113 
 
 He is a fool or monstrously heartless who can 
 live in times like these when tremendous changes 
 are passing on, when great interests are at stake, 
 and slaughter and sorrow delaying the land, and 
 not feel the dangers and wars of the day. Hu- 
 man benevolence looking upon these sad and 
 threatening scenes, interpreting them according 
 to their seeing, will be disquieted and anxious. 
 Wars embarrass less or more apparently every 
 good cause, in themselves they are demoralizing 
 and destructive. They fill the land with suffer- 
 ing and agony. Therefore, the Christian looks 
 with the keenest and most painful solicitude to all 
 developments that tell upon the extension of 
 strife. The good man Is troubled, he feels the 
 mad tossing of the dreadful sea. God speaks 
 to calm his soul, yet sees to it that "ye be not 
 troubled, those things must come to pass. You 
 cannot keep back the wars with their vast trains 
 of present war, you cannot manage them, but 
 do not be afraid of them. I ride upon the whirl- 
 wind and direct the storm. Stand up strong 
 against the evil tidings, endure the tribulation In 
 patience, the end is not yet.'* To hear that voice 
 
114 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 addressed to faith and by the confidence of it 
 to keep down the excited, turbulent fears and 
 anxieties and to endure without despondency the 
 reverses and delays and the losses and the be- 
 reavements and the present desolations, that is 
 Christian force — and a bit by which excitement 
 and fears of the maddest tones may be kept sub- 
 dued and composed. 
 
 These almost measureless troubles of ours may 
 enlarge themselves yet more and more every hour, 
 till there shall be a tribulation such as never has 
 been since the beginning of the world to this 
 time and such as shall remain. Such a day is 
 doubtless somewhere in the future for us or those 
 that are to come afterwards. Yet what then? 
 The voice of our God unto all that believe in his 
 name is, behold I have foretold all things, but be 
 not troubled, be not overwhelmed with fear and 
 despair. This the watchword through every dark, 
 stormy and portentous time. The end is not yet. 
 
A SERMON 
 
 March 15, 1912. Written April 30, 1863. 
 
 ^'Are not these evils come upon us because our 
 God is not among us?*^ 
 
 These are the words of the Lord unto Moses, 
 reveahng something of the future of Israel. They 
 serve as a key to the varied fortune and misfor- 
 tune of the chosen people. Over Israelitish and 
 Jevt^ish history might be written this generaliza- 
 tion — God and good — ungodliness and evil. Here 
 we have illustration of the law and accountability 
 of nations that know the Lord. Observe this, that 
 God made the divine commandments or principles 
 revealed superior to any and every other obli- 
 gation, and held them firmly there. That which 
 he insisted upon, enforced by repeated injunc- 
 tions and repeated judgments, as well as favors, 
 was unqualified obedience and service supreme 
 unto himself. God as God on unquestioned au- 
 thority was to be acknowledged always and in 
 
 "5 
 
ii6 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 every thing. The obedience of Abraham that 
 could honor the authority of God against so much 
 apparent and felt opposition, was the service in 
 which the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob 
 delighted. The discipline of the chosen people 
 was to teach them, and others, through them, that 
 God Is to be obeyed as God. He commanded the 
 hosts to go forward when so to do apparently 
 was to enter the engulfing sea. He bade the peo- 
 ple be of good courage and fight when their fears 
 counseled them to turn back, and he bade them 
 turn back in his displeasure when they presumed 
 to go up against the enemy without divine permis- 
 sion, and forty years in the wilderness and dis- 
 astrous defeat in battle taught them how costly 
 it was to swerve from the word of the Lord. 
 
 Time does not allow the enumeration of the 
 times and ways in which results showed that the 
 course of the people should be directed, not by 
 dictates of worldly prudence, not by expediency, 
 not by any or every thing that might make itself 
 felt in the case, but only by the sure word of God. 
 Why it is a reasonable, a simple requirement — 
 nothing less is fitting to the conditions of the case. 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 117 
 
 God so far as known must be God. Yet continu- 
 ally were this people lifting up to equality with 
 divine authority or to superiority over it, or mix- 
 ing up with it other considerations. When trouble 
 would be sent upon them, in the discipline of which 
 they would consider their great sin of banishing 
 God from their hearts, and put the humble and 
 confessing inquiry, "Are not these evils come upon 
 us because our God is not among us?" ''The chil- 
 dren of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord" 
 and "The children of Israel cried unto the Lord." 
 Ten times these two alternating sentences occur 
 in the history of the time of the Judges, showing 
 the stubborn waywardness of the people and at 
 the same time the reasserted authority of God. 
 
 Great calamities have come upon this nation. 
 No man can see the end of them. What is this? 
 Have these evils come upon us because our God is 
 not among us? 
 
 There Is with us all the knowledge of God that 
 Israel ever had and a great addition besides, the 
 light that came of the old dispensation completed 
 and of the revelations of God In Jesus Christ. 
 
 According to this light Is there fidelity to God? 
 
ii8 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 Does the nation know, and love, and dare to prac- 
 tice the divine commandments in all circumstances 
 and temptations? Is It enough to prove that a 
 thing Is right in the sight of the Lord to command 
 for it general recognition? Is this people valiant 
 for truth and righteousness, equity and justice? 
 Are there no higher motives than divine sanctions? 
 It is not to be allowed that there are strained and 
 overdrawn tests. They can seem so only to those 
 who acknowledge not the revelation of God in 
 the Scriptures. 
 
 These questions sweep a very wide field. It Is 
 only possible on this occasion to examine a part 
 of It. 
 
 This being a national day, It Is proper to view 
 things In a national light. 
 
 I shall not make violent and unnatural effort 
 to avoid that matter which Is so widely acknowl- 
 edged as the Immediate cause and occasion of our 
 present troubles and which is so directly thrown 
 upon our notice by the words of the Lord indi- 
 cating what such days as these should be. ''Is not 
 this the fast that I have chosen? To loose the 
 bonds of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 119 
 
 and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break 
 every yoke." 
 
 Is there a man in this presence who is ignorant 
 of the peculiar regard that the Lord has declared 
 for the poor and the oppressed? Is there one 
 who does not recognize our God as the com- 
 mander of justice and mercy? Can there be for 
 a moment doubt that the spirit of the new dis- 
 pensation, so forcibly set in the golden rule, "As 
 ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even 
 so unto them," is one of benevolence and love? 
 Yes, we do know it, that God and Christ were 
 never on the side of oppression, injustice and 
 wrong, but that there is a declared and enforced 
 law against these things. 
 
 Herein, then, before God, before his plainly 
 intimated will, this Nation is under condemnation. 
 The nation is an oppressor in the earth, and that 
 under peculiar circumstances of aggravation. 
 
 In this nineteenth century, in the brightest light 
 of revelation and civilization that has ever shone 
 upon the world, when people after people in 
 Christendom have been and are being shamed out 
 of such inhumanity and ungodliness, yea, after our 
 
120 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 nation In most solemn and deliberate way had 
 made declaration as of a newly discovered truth, 
 to be a harbinger of blessing to all the earth In 
 this wise, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, 
 that all men are created equal, that they are en- 
 dowed by their Creator with certain Invaluable 
 rights. That among these are life, liberty and 
 the pursuit of happiness." In and after all this 
 the United States of America has stood before 
 the world as having within Itself one of the most 
 oppressed systems of human slavery In the world. 
 Equal men, having right of life, liberty and pur- 
 suit of happiness, have been allowed no control 
 over their own life, have been despoiled of their 
 liberty, bought and sold and made as subservient 
 to the Interest of masters as the very beasts of 
 the stall. These whom God created as men and 
 women; whom Christ redeemed with his precious 
 blood; among whom have ever been a large num- 
 ber of those who exhibit brightest evidence of 
 being born anew Into the spiritual kingdom as sons 
 and daughters unto the Lord forevermore; these 
 people grown at last to be more than four millions 
 in multitude, It has pleased this nation. In Its 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 121 
 
 collective capacity, to grind into the most 
 grievous oppression — acting thus in the sight of 
 God and man a monstrous hypocrisy and a He. 
 Of God we may be sure that we are holden for 
 this, for more than eighty years of self-controlling 
 power and boundless prosperity was given to the 
 country, whereby she might have repented and 
 purged herself of the abomination. Had the peo- 
 ple the heart to do this, it could have been done, 
 years ago, and slavery, which is upon us In ter- 
 rible retribution, might have been extinguished. 
 
 Suppose the Constitution had been against the 
 abolition of such an Institution as some affirm — are 
 the people not able to change the Constitution? — 
 but that has not been the difficulty — It has been 
 the choice and sufferance of this nation to hold 
 on In this offense against God and man. The 
 people have not considered the oppression of the 
 poor, they have been willing that millions should 
 toil unpaid — they have steeled their hearts to the 
 cry of the children of bondage, they have chosen 
 not to regard that which stirreth pity In the heart 
 of the Lord. Therefore, slavery by the nation 
 has been suffered to continue till it has become 
 
122 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 a great curse to all the nation. 
 
 But is there no pleading of irresponsibility 
 here? Not much, for North as well as South 
 has been most unfriendly to this colored race. 
 But one state in the Union recognizes its political 
 equality in the negro. While the popular preju- 
 dices — the common treatment of this people and 
 the most inhuman and outrageous enactment 
 against them on the statute books of many of 
 the States, prove that it is deeply set in the hearts 
 of this whole people to trample upon this unfor- 
 tunate race. We must go farther than this 
 acknowledgment. The religion of the so-called 
 free states has been of late years constrained in 
 respect to the wrongs and rights of this people. 
 North as well as South. Under the plea of ex- 
 pediency, political and religious convictions have 
 been suppressed and overruled, and the ten thou- 
 sand entanglements of lower considerations have 
 gradually led the people in their great majorities 
 to feel that this was a little matter, or that wrong 
 was right. 
 
 But the developments of the great struggle that 
 has been passing in which the very existence of 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 123 
 
 the government is at stake has demonstrated how 
 reluctant the government and people are to being 
 brought upon the ground of simple justice to this 
 injured people — how forbearing we are to slav- 
 ery. Yea, to this hour, though at such cost of 
 blood and treasure, who knows but if the war 
 might stop the outrages of the slave power. Would 
 all be forgotten — and the unoffending children 
 of bondage be sternly thrust down to a more 
 hopeless and intolerable oppression than ever? 
 Oh, it is astounding, this stubborn clinging to the 
 side of oppression against the oppressed! To 
 what a point has this grievous war brought the 
 nation — the loyal nation? Why to this, forsooth 
 — that it is willing that slavery should be de- 
 stroyed if thereby the country may be saved! 
 Willing to do an act of simple justice — wiUing 
 to conform to the principles of the divine will if 
 the country can be saved thereby — but also will- 
 ing and ready if that seems the shortest way for 
 us white people out of war — and cost and trou- 
 ble, to quit money-making time, ready for this to 
 consign the whole colored population of the land 
 to sacrifice. Yes, do you not see it; it is only 
 
124 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 self-preservation that has driven this people to- 
 wards even the forms of acts of justice toward 
 the enslaved of our land. Still it is the old prin- 
 ciple of expediency. 
 
 The public sentiment of the North would not 
 sustain the government a moment in any course 
 of simple equity toward the oppressed of the land. 
 It is not zeal to work righteousness that is now 
 loosing the bands of wickedness, undoing the 
 heavy burdens — letting the oppressed go free and 
 breaking the yoke so far as it is being done, but 
 it is to be the terrible alternative of events which 
 are saying, too clearly to be mistaken, this do or 
 perish. 
 
 Do we not see in this revolt that it is because 
 our God has not been with us that this evil has 
 come upon us? If the whole nation had heeded 
 only the law of God and the spirit of Christianity 
 in this thing, this root of bitterness, this deathful 
 poison of our national life, would long ago have 
 been removed, or if where there was the convic- 
 tion of truth and righteousness, there had been 
 courage to stand up for God and make protesta- 
 tion in every lawful way, oppression had never 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 125 
 
 become so bold and violent. It was because there 
 was more of God in the heart than was made to 
 appear that rebellion was ventured. It was this 
 sufferance of wrong that Invited the outrage of 
 the enemy. We see the long disastrous mistake, 
 the sin that has drawn down judgment upon us. 
 The people did not stand fearlessly up for God. 
 The Cotton Gin made slavery profitable, with 
 profit It grew strong, with strength it became de- 
 fiant and threatening, with that it intimidated good 
 men, and altogether by selfishness and lust and 
 expediency even the best of the nation has been 
 drawn far away from God In this thing. It Is 
 time to go back to the only sure and safe ground 
 — to do right Is to obey God as God — to ask no 
 permission of man or time or circumstances, to 
 serve the Lord. In this thing to take this ground, 
 the part of the wronged and the oppressed, 
 against Injustice, all Its spirit and works, because 
 against all these things the Lord hath plainly 
 declared himself. 
 
 What Is required of God Is that a man's heart 
 shall be with him and that he shall work for him 
 not In the stealthy ways of expediency, but con- 
 
126 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 fessedly and openly, doing unto the Lord what is 
 right, leaving results to him. Who will deny this 
 here to-day, that so far as this wronged and op- 
 pressed people are concerned — South or North, in 
 bondage or in friendless freedom — it is the part 
 of every God-fearing man to stand by them by all 
 means in his power, by wind and dew, willing to 
 be known anywhere and everywhere as their 
 friend, as a friend of all God's part in the world? 
 It is time for Christian men to free themselves 
 from all entanglements and to act as under God 
 in all their political responsibilities, — they may 
 get reproach, they may make minorities (that has 
 ever been the condition of those who feared God 
 alone in this world) , but they will keep themselves 
 from the condemnation and mischief of other than 
 service of the Lord. 
 
 But perhaps some weak brother is troubled 
 with that sophistry that, but for the opposition to 
 slavery, there would have been no trouble. It 
 is the Abolitionists that have made the war and 
 we might have peace at any moment if we would 
 only yield. That perhaps is in some sense true. 
 Let wicked men have their way and they will not 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 127 
 
 be enraged by opposition. For instance, it is 
 very pleasant for the oppressor that he be allowed 
 to perfect, without interference, all arrangements 
 to the working of his system. Very pleasant if 
 you will help him keep his slaves in subjection, if 
 you will never mention the fact that they are of 
 God designed for aught but toil and subserviency, 
 if you will, on the other hand, preach to them 
 that God and Christ mean that their masters 
 should find their earthly mission, making them as 
 the brute. Yes, in good temper the Devil him- 
 self will keep for the time being if men will agree 
 with him to cast God out of the world, if they 
 shall consent to the banishment of every memento 
 of God and abjure all the principles of his gov- 
 ernment, but what then, when God is driven out 
 — when all is given up? Will the world have a 
 good time of it? Allow the assumptions of slav- 
 ery, surrender all this fine land to the chain and 
 whip, people it all over with the enslaved and 
 to every enaction of this despotism say amen, — 
 then have you done a favor to the land? You 
 have averted a war, but given millions to the 
 
128 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 curse. No I No ! This is not the peace that God 
 bids us seek. Hold fast to him and the princi- 
 ples which he has made known, stand up for him, 
 be valiant for the truth. 
 
NATIONAL THANKSGIVING SERMON 
 
 Preached in Guilford, Ct., Aug. 6, 1863. 
 
 Hitherto the Lord hath helped us, — 
 
 I Sam. vii. 12. 
 
 The way of our thanksgiving to-day is through 
 the deep cypress shade of our noble dead, along 
 the extended ranks of our scarred, maimed, and 
 disabled young men. Yea, from the midst of the 
 separations, woes, and anxieties of a yet appalling 
 and incalculable civil strife. Strange, unwonted 
 thanksgiving! It is not for the rich harvest, the 
 glad festival of the prospered year, kept in the 
 delightful reunions of our scattered families, after 
 the hallowed order of our honored ancestry. 
 
 But it is of its kind, the solemn thanksgiving 
 of war. It is the grateful recognition of the God 
 of battles, who presides over the destinies of na- 
 tions, for the signs of His mercy In the midst of 
 shaken things in the course of irresistible events. 
 The Chief Magistrate of our nation has appointed 
 
I30 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 this day for thanksgiving to God because hitherto 
 He hath helped us. It Is for us, therefore, In 
 this place and at this time to trace the course of 
 military events as Illustrative of the Divine favor. 
 In so doing we need not shut our eyes to the great 
 sacrifices of life, limb, and liberty. We may face 
 the Incalculable woes and miseries of these years 
 of civil war, and give most heartfelt thanksgiving 
 to God, who has enabled this people to do, and 
 to suffer, so much to save their precious national 
 heritage. Thus they have shown themselves 
 worth saving. When this generation is all gath- 
 ered unto the fathers, they, whose heroism, sac- 
 rifices and sufferings, voluntarily taken, have saved 
 and more than restored all, will be the glory of 
 their day. We may live and escape sorrows and 
 sacrifices, but to them, and those that follow in 
 that way, will redound the Immortal honor of 
 saving their country In the time of Its mortal peril. 
 Therefore we may devoutly thank the disposer of 
 all events that enough of the heroic, true, and 
 faithful have been found to save the day until 
 now. 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 131 
 
 Anarchy 
 
 Popular government is, even yet, regarded as 
 an unsolved problem by many thoughtful men. 
 Our government is committed to this experiment 
 of self-rule. More than a decade less than a cen- 
 tury is too short a time to settle so grave a ques- 
 tion as this. But the trust is committed to the 
 people — there is no power above them to direct, 
 coerce or control. Will order or anarchy be the 
 outcome? We are numerically and geographic- 
 ally a great nation. People of all races of man- 
 kind are here — the good and the bad — the wise 
 and the ignorant — all with equal political rights. 
 The bad man, and the good man, and the foolish 
 man have an equal vote. None can deny that 
 there is a perilous venture here. Will the many 
 win where the selected few have so often failed? 
 During this more than two years of civil strife, 
 in the fierce conflict of opinions and forces, a test 
 of our democracy is upon us. A question deeper 
 than politics or administration is faced — the deep- 
 est of all vital questions — this government or no 
 
132 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 restraining government at all. Democracy is 
 breaking away into chaotic anarchy. Is there, 
 can there be, such a crime as treason in a popular 
 government? Is not every man a law unto him- 
 self? Is the American Republic a government, 
 a state, a coherent power? Or is it "but the un- 
 substantial fabric of a dream"? 
 
 The southern rebellion is ultimate anarchy. 
 The New York mob was anarchy broken loose, 
 and, for a little, supreme — the hell of a world 
 without law. It was an object lesson, well timed, 
 even with its fiendish outrages. Sound Ameri- 
 canism had a wholesome and stimulating vision 
 of what it was fighting for. Let us thank God 
 that this horror was but for a moment, and for the 
 mighty resolve it quickened that free America 
 should endure. 
 
 The great rebellion was organized, armed, and 
 made ready for action, while the loyal nation 
 slumbered and slept in a well-nigh fatal security. 
 In view of the condition of the country a little 
 more than two years ago, the necessity of a star- 
 tling arousement of the union sentiment is most 
 apparent. 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 133 
 
 The ground of that confidence was the Inabil- 
 ity to believe that a formidable resort to arms 
 was possible. That deplorable security gave the 
 great rebellion its chance. There was danger, 
 and the North must be aroused or all were lost. 
 And the warning came. And it was just enough 
 to reveal peril, and fix the purpose, and arm the 
 Union for the impending struggle. Sumter fell 
 and the loyalty of the nation sprang to its feet 
 when the old flag was trailed in the dust. Rumor 
 was that a great army was about marching on 
 Washington. An unprecedented host of 75,000 
 men was summoned for the defense of the capital, 
 and the vindication of the government, — in three 
 months' holiday! The foe was but a few thou- 
 sand misguided men who would never venture 
 battle against so great an army. That first wave 
 of patriotism broke in Ignominious flight from the 
 battle of Bull Run. But this surprisal of defeat 
 and shame stung the loyalty of the nation to 
 agony. But defeat though It was, It sufliced to 
 save our capital. Three months from Sumter 
 and a triumphant rebel force stampedes the na- 
 tional army to the forts of Washington ! 
 
134 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 Yet, with all, the first Bull Run was one of the 
 greatest mercies of the war. It woke up the na- 
 tion. Now it grasped the gravity of the situation. 
 And it was ready, and equal to Its opportunity. 
 Men and money began to come In by millions I 
 Traitors and croakers were shamed from sight. 
 Life was lifted up Into the grander ranges of 
 aspiration and devotion. Men and women were 
 ready to do, to sacrifice, to suffer, to die I All 
 because they saw and felt and wanted something 
 better. 
 
 Now what has prolonged the war and pre- 
 vented a premature and a disastrous compromise? 
 What has kept In suppression that peace that 
 would have bartered every principle and every 
 price for simple peace? 
 
 Slavery 
 
 There Is another line of retrospection too Im- 
 portant to be overlooked at this time. It con- 
 cerns a race that has unwittingly been the deep- 
 est root and occasion of all this calamitous strug- 
 gle. Without the slave there had been no North, 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 135 
 
 no South, as we have no hostile East or West. 
 He was delivered to the colonies, needing labor- 
 ers, an evil fate, by the slave trader, not of his 
 own will as a slave. He Increased In numbers 
 and service wonderfully. But to what Is called 
 the North, human slavery early became a curse 
 and a crime. But to the South It was the pillar 
 of the state, and a peculiar glory of Its Institu- 
 tions. Hence, In the course of events, the great 
 war. But neither North nor South, as antagonis- 
 tic powers, made any mention of the great bone 
 of contention. But the status of the slave. In 
 spite of all efforts to Ignore his presence, was yet 
 a stubborn fact In the situation. Most especially 
 did the Federal administration keep as far aloof 
 from It as possible. The Federal soldier also 
 had not come to fight for "niggers." But it was 
 not in human power to put the slave out of the 
 course of events. Here also rebel successes were 
 a mighty factor In respect to the status of the 
 slave population. In due time It became clear 
 to the loyal nation that its own salvation called 
 for the helping hand of the black brother. The 
 abolition of slavery was of God. Man had part 
 
136 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 in it as to the way of his own national salvation. 
 Adopted by the Union, uniformed and armed, the 
 slave proved himself a man and a man for his 
 time. He conquered the prejudice of the world. 
 At Port Hudson, Millikens Bend, and Morris 
 Island he put his heroic record into the annals of 
 his country as a free man. The grand Proclama- 
 tion went forth through the whole land that where 
 waved henceforth the stars and stripes all men 
 should be free. 
 
 The peril of the nation from the beginning of 
 this great struggle has been putting two very 
 grave questions — Is there the will and is there 
 power to save the state? Up to this time — more 
 than two years of great war — there has been made 
 apparent a great purpose and a great power of 
 national salvation — but not enough to make that 
 salvation evident. 
 
 To sum it up why are we so courageous and 
 hopeful to-day? 
 
 I. We now know our enemy — how desperate 
 and destructive its purpose — learned by dear ex- 
 perience. 
 
 We know that a mighty power is bent upon 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 137 
 
 the destruction of our free government at any 
 and every cost. It will use every possible means, 
 fair or foul, to destroy the Republic. 
 
 II. We have come to some wholesome and 
 adequate estimate of the enemy's power. 
 
 We have seen our boasted army under an over- 
 vaunted leader shattered and ignominiously driven 
 from the strong fortress of the foe — our own 
 capital but just escaped from triumphal host once 
 and again, an invasion of the loyal states barely 
 turned back by bloody Antietam, the carnage and 
 repulse of Fredericksburg, the blasting of eager 
 anticipations at failure of Chancellorsville, our 
 commerce burned upon the high seas. Berrys- 
 ville and Murfreesboro, sanguinary and doubtful, 
 gave little comfort, while the battlements of 
 Vicksburg and Port Hudson blockaded the lower 
 Mississippi and the great southwest. It was a 
 long year of grievous disappointments and costly 
 struggle. And, worse than all, a second great 
 army of Invasion carried itself unchecked into 
 one of the greatest of the Union states. In calam- 
 ities and menaces like these we approached the 
 
138 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 eighty-eighth anniversary of our national exist- 
 ence. The obliteration of that anniversary, with 
 all that It signified, seemed to Impend. Gettysburg 
 was essentially a Fourth of July battle. It was 
 a masterly, heroic battle of veteran forces. At 
 Its bloody close the stars and stripes waved over 
 all the stricken field more triumphantly and 
 gloriously than ever and the beaten foe retired 
 not Inglorlously from a daring adventure. Un- 
 wittingly, Lee's great army of secession and dis- 
 union had lent themselves to the reconsecratlon 
 of the grand anniversary of the Republic. This 
 was enough to satisfy but more was to come. 
 That same day Vicksburg surrendered to General 
 Grant, and her garrison of 30,000 men, and, to 
 crown all, Port Hudson, the last fortress on the 
 Mississippi, also was taken, and the great water- 
 way was cleared to the Gulf ! 
 
 It Is In point also to note how barren and In- 
 effectual have been the successes of the enemy. 
 He has not even held his own. The great ex- 
 ploit of the invulnerable Merrimac opened no port 
 and secured not the conditions of her own safety. 
 And what of the successes, great and small, in 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 139 
 
 Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Ar- 
 kansas, Louisiana? Not in all those states, all 
 of them once in rebellion, is to be seen a perma- 
 nent trophy of success. They have secured no 
 territory, but have lost state after state. Colum- 
 bus, Bowling Green, Nashville, Memphis, fortified 
 bluffs and islands on the western waters without 
 number, Portsmouth, Norfolk, Roanoke, New- 
 bern, Pulaski, Port Royal and the metropolitan 
 southwest. How almost less than nothing stands 
 to-day as monuments of rebel successes ! While 
 the reaction of the temporary advantages react 
 and smite upon them in the swelling armies of the 
 North ! But the trend of the Union has been on- 
 ward and firm in the face of all opposition. Our 
 defeats have been written in the sand, to be oblit- 
 erated by the rising waves of reaction. It surely is 
 of the grace of Divine Providence that the enemy 
 has been unable to gain by its successes and our 
 cause has not lost by its reversals. Do we not 
 see a hand working on, slowly it may be, but so, 
 most completely to root out altogether the great 
 bitter root of all our trouble — human slavery? 
 Is not a consummation like that worth working 
 
I40 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 for, suffering for, waiting for? 
 
 All and all did we ever have such occasion for 
 a great national thanksgiving as to-day? 
 
THANKSGIVING SERMON 
 
 Preached at Guilford, Nov. 26, 1863. 
 
 ''Blessed be the Lord who daily loadeth us with 
 benefits, even the God of our Salvation.^' — Psalm 
 Ixvill, 19. 
 
 All that is necessary to put us In a frame of 
 holy thanksgiving, if our hearts are right towards 
 God, is a recognition of the multitude and the 
 magnitude of the benefits of the Lord towards 
 us. The best Thanksgiving sermon (for this 
 hour) is that which brings to mind most of the 
 goodness of God (in the passing year). 
 
 But It is no more possible to number up and 
 recount the benefactions of providence, than to 
 count the raindrops that fall, or measure the 
 light that is poured down from the heavens, or 
 take note of the almost infinite fruitfulness and 
 adornments of the world. Our life enters upon 
 the inheritance of all the past made great and 
 rich by creation, skill and power — a past, even 
 
 141 
 
142 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 as related to this earth, full of a kind and boun- 
 tiful providence where in their vast storehouses 
 were laid the gold and silver, the iron and 
 the coal and all that multiform wealth, by which 
 the prosperous world makes its way from age 
 to age. The present is ours, horizon round and 
 to the zenith, filled with overflowing redundancy, 
 of growth and beauty and glory, and the future, 
 typed in the present but a far brighter world 
 in the vision of hopeful expectancy. These three 
 mighty tributaries, that of the past, the present, 
 and the future, — each gathering the waters of its 
 boundless continent — meet and mingle their floods 
 in the ocean of our passing life. These depths 
 on depths, these far rolling billows, these heav- 
 ing floods ! Can we trace the tides back to their 
 every fountain? Can we resolve the mighty com- 
 mingled main, even into its Amazons? This year 
 of time has rolled and heaved and tossed, the 
 voice of many waters. We look out upon the 
 deep stormy sea, — we feel its swell, — the beat- 
 ing of its mighty heart, yea, its floods are mov- 
 ing in all the channels of our being, — ^but can 
 we tell what God has sent by the raindrop, what 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 143 
 
 by the rivers, and what from the fountains of 
 the great deep? Can we map out and make this 
 ocean, and say, thus came this and thus came 
 that? No, the assimilation is too perfect, the 
 volume is too vast, the sources are too many, too 
 far removed, and from too far sundered climes, 
 to tell in what proportion the one kind or the 
 other, the little or the great are made into one 
 great living, moving, whole. But this restless, 
 changeful, vast and sublime sea of human experi- 
 ence, God throws mighty currents together. He 
 only knows what has filled the rounded year, — 
 what is the particular reward of thanks, part 
 for part. This we know that as individuals, com- 
 munities, states, in God, in his care, by his power, 
 inspirited by his breath, upheld by his world, 
 moved upon by sunshine and rain, night and day, 
 summer and winter, — touched by individual, social 
 and national Interest, tremulous with profound 
 sensation as the resistless will of the divine pur- 
 poses thundered along the track of time, glad- 
 dened or saddened, as the air that breathes as 
 from many lands — thus in way and spirit and kind 
 too strange and many for tongues to tell, — In 
 
144 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 God we have lived and moved and had our being. 
 Thereupon recognizing the fact that much of the 
 goodness of God is only experience, not by us 
 traced, and perhaps not traceable to its particular 
 instrumental cause. 
 
 We may pass to speak of some of the rivers 
 that have poured themselves into this sea. As 
 looking upon a landscape, we feel the effect of its 
 combined power, while if called upon for de- 
 scription, our attention would be called to the 
 more striking features of outline and coloring, 
 yet perhaps overlooking the little and the subtle 
 things, that perhaps have most of all to do with 
 the feelings. So it will be in recounting the sub- 
 jects of our yearly thanksgiving. Blessings large 
 and good we shall find, but many a cause of great 
 gladness experienced will be overlooked. Those 
 intangible things, the flow of spirits, the inspira- 
 tion that breaks on us and makes the heaviness 
 leap with a bound, — that relish of life that comes 
 upon us we know not by what or how, only that 
 we feel an ecstasy of living blessedness, those 
 gifts of gladness that seem not attached neces- 
 sarily to any particular outward fact or condi- 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 145 
 
 tion, will not come in our way, — so that to all that 
 can be told we may add gratitude for the good 
 unspeakable. 
 
 We begin our song of thanksgiving in the glad 
 harvest hymn. — Every season our bountiful God 
 comes forth and spreads the boards and fills the 
 garners of the world — Every year a fresh wave 
 of creative power in indescribable loveliness, in 
 substantial and delicious fruitfulness, passes over 
 the earth. What a ministry to human support 
 and gladness! Is this a little thing? Nay, verily, 
 for it is our life. Herein the Lord lays the 
 foundations of all human prosperity and enjoy- 
 ment. Ours is emphatically a land of plenty, a 
 very good garden of the Lord, and faithfully 
 does he serve unto it. Always enough, so that 
 no people live so lavishly and freely as ours, and 
 besides the overflow of our garners goes forth 
 in burdened channels to gladden the nations of 
 the earth. There has been but two years dur- 
 ing the last forty, in which the exports of bread 
 stuffs and provisions from our shores have fallen 
 short of ten million dollars' worth in value per 
 annum. While on the other hand some seasons 
 
146 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 have contributed to foreign support sixty or 
 seventy millions' worth. The exports of this kind 
 for 1 86 1 amount to over 94 million dollars. 
 
 This vegetable abundance Is not merely a com- 
 fortable supply for constantly recurring wants, 
 but it is the life and stamina of all business and of 
 every enterprise, even an indispensable condition 
 of moral, benevolent and religious actions. Take 
 away this, our yearly stock In all trade, which is 
 the constant creative gift of God, and we be- 
 come helpless and bankrupt In everything, — all 
 secular activities and prosperities fail, world-wide 
 and multitudinous charities are dried up at their 
 fountain heads. The human will Is powerless for 
 the lack of the wherewithal to feed It, and the In- 
 strumentalities of Its work. 
 
 Though fruitful seasons have to do to such 
 an Incalculable extent with all human prosperity, 
 there Is feeble gratitude rendered therefor, be- 
 cause abundant harvests are taken as a matter 
 of course,— as a necessity of result, — but they are 
 not so. Consider over what a perilous sea, ex- 
 posed to how many and great dangers, this rich 
 convoy of God is brought safe into port. If it 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 147 
 
 start too early or too late, if for long days and 
 weeks and months, the varying fickle elements are 
 not held in the exact and true balance, if for one 
 day the cold shall break forth from the frozen 
 North, — if the arid winds breathe too long, or 
 a subtle blast creeps into the skies, or the rot or 
 mildew infect the cargo of the year, or any one 
 of the many near and easily conceivable calami- 
 ties befall, — the fig tree shall not blossom, neither 
 shall fruit be in the vines, the labor of the olive 
 shall fail, and the fields yield no meat, the flock 
 shall be cut off from the fold and there shall be 
 no herd in the stalls. The hand of the Lord, it 
 is constant and firm that pilots the rich freight- 
 age, — the hand of the Lord it is, that turns away 
 the destroyer, and the garners are filled with the 
 labors of the Lord. 
 
 Therefore let us not forget his benefits in the 
 bountiful gift of the year to the husbandry of 
 the land — let us not be so foolish as to regard 
 this as a little favor, or to imagine that these 
 are the provisions of our own hands, — Give 
 thanks for the well tempered and the time favored 
 season — Herewith behold the goodness and the 
 
148 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 mercy of the Lord. 
 
 II. Again the healthful skies. By occasion 
 of human folHes, vices, and sins, disease and 
 death are sometimes permitted to make wide and 
 universal havoc, filling, the lands with gloom, sor- 
 row and alarm. 
 
 In this wise a terrible arrest is sometime put 
 upon all business, and all enjoyment and all life 
 is swallowed up in the fear of death. — But 
 though in much moral corruption, horribly vicious 
 and contaminated in many a locality, — greatly 
 condemned in the sight of God, and to natural 
 pestilent Influences exposed, yet the gloom of suf- 
 fering and death has not been suffered to darken 
 heavily upon the people — Even our armies under 
 the so often fatal Southern skies, have gone sur- 
 prisingly clear of sweeping mortalities, and the 
 deadly spirit of rebellion has not been suffered 
 to poison the loyal heavens. 
 
 But this year, excepting the battle work, quietly 
 and in ordinary proportions, the dead have sunk 
 to their rest and passed away. This bitterness 
 in the cup of mortals has been In dilution and not 
 poured out In the dregs and to overflowing. 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 149 
 
 Not angrily and horribly has death had carnival 
 through our cities and villages. What a woe, 
 what a calamity, what an embarrassment and con- 
 fusion of the great purposes^ and wars of the 
 time, If the people had been compelled to turn all 
 their thought and energy to guard and battle 
 against some fearful infection, attacking man or 
 beast or both. 
 
 O bless and praise the all-merciful and long- 
 suffering God that he hath been pleased to spare 
 us the deserved chastisements and works of in- 
 fectious and pestilential disease. 
 
 Not further can we go without touching upon 
 the great Interest of the war, — Though we know 
 not famine or plague, war is upon us still and 
 yet we thankfully remember at once, not its heavi- 
 est burdens. It has not devastated our fields, de- 
 stroyed our towns, cut off surplus, or work, con- 
 fined or blocked business — nor yet suppressed the 
 expression of general cheerfulness or even of 
 gaiety. Much has indeed been sacrificed and sharp 
 sorrows have been endured, but the tone of the 
 public heart Is but little depressed. Many weights 
 have been put upon business but it has been 
 
ISO HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 strengthened to bear them. With all the varied 
 and heavy taxations of the day, our old benevolent 
 institutions have not only been sustained, but new 
 and great channels of religious and charitable ac- 
 tions have been opened. 
 
 The exigencies of the strife in which we are 
 engaged have necessitated great exertion, but 
 there has been supplied abundant strength and 
 will to put it forth. 
 
 We are glad that this stupendous struggle is for 
 a right cause. That humanity and religion bid 
 us stand by it with even all our millions of men 
 and millions of treasures, until against liberty 
 and country no more the enemy shall dare to 
 come. The giant is not hungry or thirsty, nor 
 weary, nor discouraged, nor hurt to hinder him 
 in the least in extending head, hand, foot, or 
 any limb, strengthened and willed, by kind provi- 
 dence, to smite yet more heavily, not yet doubt- 
 ing but strength and endurance will be granted, 
 by the grace of God, to hold out to the end. 
 
 The nation has plainly now entered upon a 
 new stage of the great struggle. The first star- 
 tling shock of the nation was the atrocious and 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 151 
 
 unnatural fact of war begun upon this best and 
 most benign of governments. Then the very dead 
 almost leaped from their graves in astonishment 
 and indignation. Patriotism burst up in the 
 deserts and flowed forth like rivers. It seemed 
 then that the voices of the indignant milHons 
 would at once thunder their unnatural rebellion 
 into everlasting silence. As if the flash of myriad 
 eyes would scorch out the sedition like the sudden 
 lightning. That hour of resurrection past and 
 armed men put themselves in array — but the re- 
 bellion stood and lifted up its head, a cold- 
 blooded, long meditated wickedness. War it 
 should indeed be if the Nation dared to arm and 
 defend itself. 
 
 Then came the day of decision, the great day 
 of decision. Its revelations were most startling 
 and appalling. Loyalty was confused and 
 alarmed. Great men broke faith and went over 
 to the enemy. Public confidence seemed de- 
 stroyed — the government knew not whom to trust, 
 treason was everywhere. Gradually and through 
 gloomy days of disappointment, delay and disas- 
 ter, the lines were drawn with measurable distinct- 
 
152 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 ness. 
 
 The people looked abroad In their first great 
 national distress, for sympathy with their holy 
 cause, but It was only to be surprised and pained 
 by the scornful and threatening attitude of the 
 great powers of the world. They beheld the for- 
 midable proportions of the revolt, Its strength, not 
 only In the seceded states, but also in northern and 
 foreign sympathy, the probability of a long Civil 
 War and of grave foreign complications. This 
 revelation of dangers and difficulties brought mat- 
 ters to another stage. The people set themselves 
 to the consideration of cost and possible conse- 
 quences, and Inquired what they should do. Con- 
 fidently was it prophesied by many that the na- 
 tion would reconsider Its action, lay down the 
 sword and make the best terms it could with the 
 encouraged, confident and arrogant rebellion. The 
 real question was, whether the purpose could be 
 fixed, here to maintain the glorious old nation- 
 ahty against the armed protest of the confed- 
 erate states and the hostile sentiment and war- 
 like menace of allied European states. 
 
 That was the question which went Into the 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 153 
 
 round of the last annual elections. At first there 
 were indications of faltering. Majorities began 
 to have an ambiguous interpretation, but when 
 the naked issue was made, and the people were 
 required to say whether they would give up their 
 righteous cause and accept the dictation of any 
 terms, or put their faces like flint against the 
 enemy in all his destructive and wicked doctrines 
 and the utmost of his powers, aided by whomso- 
 ever might wish or dare to join hands with him. 
 When the loyal states were asked if they would 
 make a business of sustaining their righteous laws 
 and beneficent institutions against all enemies, 
 till victorious or exhausted, — from Maine to 
 California by thundering majority, with most 
 trifling local exceptions, they said, deliberately, 
 firmly, solemnly, "We will, we will, in the name 
 of humanity, of justice, of freedom, of God, 
 above hope, or fear of man and principles, cease 
 to stand in the way of a righteous peace." 
 
 This not in bravado or loud assertion, but in 
 the silent voice of their deliberate actions. Thus 
 it is said from the South. They see and interpret 
 the signs of a fixed purpose to finish up the re- 
 
154 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 belllon by the sword. 
 
 This is the unmistakable political position of 
 the hour. The first calm, firm time has come. 
 The people see a formidable array, they expect 
 delays and disaster and disappointment, but there 
 is but one way. Trust in God and on, thereby are 
 we delivered from the distressing doublemlnded- 
 ness and perplexity of the past. Rough and toil- 
 some Is the road, it bristles yet with perhaps thrice 
 a hundred thousand hostile bayonets, and Is swept 
 by hundreds of guns, but that is our road, and 
 on it we must march, and with bullet and bayo- 
 net and cannon, clear the way. 
 
 But this purpose has not become so fixed with- 
 out the favor of providence. Success from the 
 Lord has encouraged the heart and strengthened 
 the arm. This year our assisted sword has cleft 
 the rebellion in twain, — it lies in two bleeding 
 members, with little present prospect of making 
 sound the ugly cut. Unto the quick other mili- 
 tary lines are cutting, — into the very vitals of the 
 confederacy the sword Is now piercing, turning 
 and tearing in its way, and opening an ugly wound. 
 We believe as we survive the year, that we 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 155 
 
 are getting on. The Rio Grande welcomes once 
 more the old unchanged flag, very few are the 
 backward steps while our brave armies are march- 
 ing on. Yet the battle victories are but a part 
 of our rejoicing. 
 
 There Is a change of front and the motioning 
 of better signs over the seas. Truth is vindi- 
 cating our good cause upon foreign shores. The 
 threatening cloud of intervention, which has 
 frowned so darkly upon our horizon during all 
 the struggle. Is little by little lighting up. 
 
 Surprises are now by favor, rather than by in- 
 terposed difficulties. Piracy is getting something 
 of its deserved name and treatment. The far- 
 famed names of the muses have a pleasanter look 
 with the broad arrow of Old England upon them. 
 It is a grateful change of affairs to be warned 
 of danger, by better-natured neighbors across the 
 line. 
 
 By favor of Him in whose hand are the hearts 
 of kings and peoples, who turneth them as the 
 rivers of water are turned, there Is more free- 
 dom from fear of foreign intervention than at 
 any previous time during the war. In spite of 
 
156 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 the strong feeling against the success and welfare 
 of our government, and desire to obstruct and 
 oppose and dismember the great republic, that 
 Is too plain to be mistaken on the part of the great 
 Interested and jealous powers, the Lord has 
 caused those without to continue at peace with 
 us, holding back foreign enemies by the restraint 
 of his providence. 
 
 It Is also a part of our strength and confidence 
 to-day, and therefore a subject of gratitude, that 
 we are so favored In respect to the different 
 branches of government and command. That the 
 nation's purpose and energies have not been con- 
 fused and weakened by a change of administra- 
 tion — that a man with the physical firmness of 
 a rock and the toughness of a whip-end, occupies 
 that post of highest responsibility which has re- 
 peatedly crushed the war-worn veteran, — that 
 through all the rough, perilous and stormy months 
 a strong man has stood undaunted and hopeful at 
 the helm of the state — in his very bearing a tower 
 of strength to the disquieted people — that God 
 chose out a man of all commanding honesty in 
 this day of distrust and put him over us — a man 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 157 
 
 who Is willing to let all the world Into a scrutiny 
 of his every act when that scrutiny shall not en- 
 danger the public good — a man whom all the 
 wickedness, perversity and opposition and war- 
 fare of his enemies and the enemies of the coun- 
 try, have not discomposed or tempted to a single 
 Inconsiderate word or act — a wonderfully bal- 
 anced and passionless and benevolent soul — a man 
 so wise to use the wisdom and strength of all 
 other men — so quick to forecast what the peo- 
 ple ought to do, so discreet as to the manner 
 and time of successful action — so Independent 
 of all personal or party embarrassment — so true 
 In heart as to the highest Interest of the coun- 
 try and the times — and withal so persistent and 
 firm — that friend and foe may ever know just 
 where to find him — such a leader and commander 
 God hath In his mercy appointed for the nation In 
 Its most Imperiled and stormy hour — for the life 
 and health of such a president In such a time, the 
 people are grateful. 
 
 For the noble company of loyal governors we 
 also give thanks — and not least because that good 
 man and true, honored for his ability and Intelll- 
 
158 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 gence, Integrity and fidelity, William A. Bucking- 
 ham was and has continued to be the Governor 
 of the Commonwealth of Connecticut. For the 
 excellent company of councilors in the high places 
 — for the many able and devoted commanders in 
 our army and navy — who stand out illustrious as 
 the strength and adornment of the national cause 
 — for the noble armies which have been aggre- 
 gated by the providence of God — inspirited to 
 victories — and planted strong in the high places 
 of the field, for the reenforcements, which are in 
 preparation — yea, for all the personnel and the 
 material, the men and the financial resources — 
 all the political and moral soundness and stability 
 of the national cause, we give thanks unto Him 
 who has ordained all. 
 
 Nor do we attribute the preservation of our 
 civil and social Interest — the safety of life and 
 property from the fierce and uncontrollable vio- 
 lence of popular passion — the preservation of 
 law and order In our towns and cities and states 
 — in the midst of so many and great disturbances, 
 In the midst of so much that Is false and Inflam- 
 matory — that measureless blessing — the continued 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 159 
 
 security of our families, not primarily to man or 
 men, but to the kind guardianship of Almighty 
 God. That the mob has not risen under the 
 abundant instigation, to burn and pillage and mur- 
 der everywhere — is because the Lord has made 
 us to dwell in safety — Popular Government, has 
 not thus come to wreck — but we have seen the ele- 
 ments of the political tempest — the terrible agen- 
 cies of destruction and heard the roar of the break- 
 ers — enough to give us a deeper appreciation of 
 the shield that is over us and the defenses around 
 about us and our families. 
 
 But we should be strangely blind to the wonders 
 of divine providence in the nation, did we over- 
 look the marvelous revolution of sentiment and 
 action that Is going on In respect to human slavery 
 — Here we are led to exclaim, "Behold, God hath 
 wrought!'* 
 
 We stand now perhaps midway between the old 
 and the new, both wondering at what was and at 
 what Is. And are we not amazed now, to see 
 how an institution that Is founded In oppression, 
 which makes merchandise in most brutal way of 
 human beings, which buys and sells Immortal souls 
 
i6o HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 — an institution abhorred of the philanthropy and 
 the religion of the world as the sum of all vil- 
 lainies, In view of the nature of which even the so 
 accounted Infidel, Jefferson, confessed he trembled 
 when he remembered that God was just. I say, 
 "Are we not amazed at the fact?" that this quin- 
 tessence of despotism has so infused all the na- 
 tion's blood and conscience — had so intrenched it- 
 self in the very citadel of freedom, had become so 
 sacred in the habits and traditions of the laws and 
 the politics of the land, that when this rebellion 
 broke out and for months afterward, there was 
 nothing held so inviolable and treated with so 
 much delicacy and respect, as this wicked insti- 
 tution, though then notoriously the Mother of 
 treason, secession and war, every other right or 
 possession was clearly seen to be forfeited by re- 
 bellion. 
 
 But in the Union or In revolt out of it. Slavery 
 was evermore to have its constitutional right, to 
 oppress men or destroy governments, or what- 
 ever It willed. This right of wrong was so sacred 
 that it took well nigh two years of disastrous war, 
 in the providence of God to create a sentiment 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR i6i 
 
 that even dared to treat slavery like every other 
 forfeited right. 
 
 Then three long months were given for this 
 outlaw, public enemy, maker of all sedition, to 
 save itself. The nation as a nation, was it not 
 solicitous that the peculiar institution should avail 
 itself of salvation? Was there not grief and 
 wrath throughout the land because slavery was 
 likely to be treated as an enemy according to its 
 deserts? Have not the people been ready, if God 
 had let them, to make peace to the reinstatement 
 of the sum of all villainies, to its former high 
 place of insolence and power? 
 
 What a strange idolatry! Yet peace on such 
 terms the people have not been able to make, be- 
 cause, and only because slavery asked not for 
 it, wanted it not. In the meantime events 
 against which all the people prayed, at which they 
 all suffered and mourned, have been at work upon 
 the public mind. A few of the most eloquent and 
 schooled men in America had been laboring for 
 thirty years to abolitlonize the country, but their 
 converts were not like in number to the drops of 
 morning dew, but a war sprung by, and in, the 
 
i62 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 interest of the evil — a war contrary to the desire 
 of the people, an unmanageable war which no 
 man could frame or direct — a war subordinate 
 only to his direction who rules in the armies of 
 heaven and earth, has abolitionized the land. 
 Even semi-secession, intensely pro-slavery, border 
 states are getting to be the most radical and thor- 
 oughgoing emancipationists and immediate eman- 
 cipationists, to be found. Blood-stained Balti- 
 more has repented and stands on the side of the 
 government and against slavery by ten thousand 
 votes. Missouri and Delaware have wheeled into 
 the line of freedom. Less than ten years ago all 
 the legitimate authority and power of the govern- 
 ment, and more under a northern president, were 
 strained to make a slave state of unwilling Kan- 
 sas. To-day, not according to human plans, not 
 after any leadership, but by this God-fortuned 
 war, all the authorities and powers of the gov- 
 ernment, the courts, the executives, the army and 
 the navy, in all their hitherto unparalleled for- 
 midable and tremendous proportions, are legiti- 
 mately and necessarily whether they would or no, 
 by the very instincts of self-preservation, on the 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 163 
 
 side of freedom. God has made the proud, un- 
 willing people favor the oppressed, — yea, to take 
 the slave and gladly welcome him as a needed and 
 worthy fellow soldier and man. 
 
 In the meantime the great armies, each obedi- 
 ent to the decrees of heaven, have with their ter- 
 rible attrition ground forward and backward over 
 great states grinding the peculiar institution to 
 powder. Slavedom has been shaken as with great 
 earthquakes and unknown thousands have gone 
 out of bondage. 
 
 Is freedom a good thing? Are equal rights the 
 American glory? Read the handwriting of the 
 Lord on the times — "The year of jubilee hastens 
 on." 
 
 But one view more. Yet withal is the land 
 desolate and afflicted. Do we feel. In spite of all 
 we see, and all our reasoning, that these are evil 
 and terrible days? These are not easeful and 
 gainful and boastful times. Treasons are work- 
 ing, blood and tears are flowing. Yes, yes, it is 
 so. But what then? It Is in some sort the treat- 
 ment that God visits upon his own chosen church 
 and people. How did the Lord bless his Infant 
 
i64 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 and early church? With trouble! He gathered 
 from her a noble army of martyrs. He made 
 their excellencies to appear in a great fight of af- 
 flictions. He made blood the seed of the church. 
 In his mysterious ways he touched the deep 
 springs of endurance, devotion and actions. So in 
 troublous ways God is touching the hearts of 
 this generation, and a nobler and better life is 
 being lived by the people in this great day of 
 visitations. A noble army of martyrs has been 
 gathered out of the land. Not that all have gone 
 nobly to the war — for if one of the tribe that 
 followed Jesus was base and low, so shall not 
 every company have the bad element also? But 
 it were only what we do know to be just and true 
 to say that a grander and more beautiful life has 
 not been lived in this nation for many a year 
 than that which has crowned and is crowning 
 the earthly destiny of thousands of our young 
 men. We wonder at the devotion, the courage, 
 the lofty manhood that makes the bulk of our 
 great armies. Our eyes have been permitted to 
 behold the truly heroic, the loftiest traits of char- 
 acter, in the living and the dead. In the open- 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 165 
 
 Ings that are made the ambitious forget their 
 self-seeking, and our daughters ever go far away 
 to serve the poor and the lowly. 
 
 The nation has never before worked such a 
 power of benevolence. The proud, dry, cold rock 
 of our prosperity has been smitten by the rod of 
 the Almighty, and the waters of life burst forth. 
 Never before was there so much of the holy 
 work, so much clothing of the naked, feeding of 
 the hungry, and ministry of the sick. Verily the 
 days that produce fruit like these are not alto- 
 gether to be deplored. In the book of remem- 
 brance they are written on the earth and on high. 
 Grand and precious will be the history of these 
 very times. 
 
 And upon all and with all the converting Spirit 
 of God is dispensed. There is a mystic host con- 
 tinually in our vast marshaled hosts, who marches 
 and camps forevermore in the sight of Israel's 
 sign, the pillar or cloud by day and fire by night. 
 Christian truths and powers never had so benefi- 
 cently to do with men in arms. 
 
 Surely these are not the signs of wrath. It 
 may be the fire of the Lord, but it is the fire which 
 
i66 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 purifieth. 
 
 We have loved this land. We have counted 
 her the perfection of beauty, the joy of the whole 
 earth, foolishly and wickedly boasted much, per- 
 haps, but love deep and devoted we had for this, 
 our beloved country. 
 
 But time fails for the enumeration of particu- 
 lars. Greatly has our good cause been favored 
 In many and very different ways, and strength- 
 ened In heart as by the inspiration of the Al- 
 mighty. A cheerful and Inexpressible faith sets 
 itself towards the future, warlike and formidable 
 as it may appear. This Is not a matter of self- 
 assertion and boasting, it is both felt and ob- 
 served. Listen to a correspondent writing from 
 the rebel capital to the London Times — a party 
 not partial to us: "No one, who has been con- 
 versant with the northern states during the last 
 two and a half years, can have failed to notice 
 with astonishment the faith stronger than death 
 which the Northerners have exhibited In their 
 'Star,' 'their manifest destiny,' 'their religion,' 
 their alpha and omega, their dreams of dominion 
 from sea to sea, and (to quote Mr. Everett's 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 167 
 
 words) from the icy pole to the flaming belt of 
 the equator. No parallel faith has ever been 
 exhibited by the Confederate states in their fu- 
 ture. Six great Southern victories in the field 
 and three drawn battles, exhausting the nine prin- 
 cipal collisions of the war, the entire absence of 
 any such panic as Bull Run, or Chickamauga, the 
 tried inefficiency of the Federal blockade, the un- 
 molested predatory flight of Alahamas and Flor- 
 idas at sea, have altogether failed to inspire the 
 masses of the South with any of that confidence 
 in themselves which neither defeat nor disaster, 
 nor hope deferred, nor illusions dispelled, have 
 ever shaken out of the Northerners. Deny it 
 who may, there is something sublime in this shad- 
 owy earnestness, and misty magnificence of North- 
 ern faith and self-reliance. Would that I could 
 see promises of future and final Southern triumph 
 in any corresponding quality of the Southern 
 mind." 
 
 Such the tribute that an enemy is constrained to 
 render to a cause and people that have borne the 
 distraction, abuse, strange and bitter animosity, 
 of almost the whole world during the protracted 
 
1 68 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 agony of a life and death struggle. Yea, all the 
 nations around have waited in diabolical expecta- 
 tion and hope to witness the dying struggle of the 
 dismembered Republic, but they behold with as- 
 tonishment that life and faith are waxing stronger 
 and stronger. Far be it from us to glory in 
 this but as we glory in our God. And there is 
 glorying in Him here. Regard for underlying 
 principles explains faith on the one side and the 
 lack of it on the other. One side of this great 
 war had a sustaining cause, the other has none. 
 Can most unjustifying rebellion and barbarous 
 slavery give birth to an inspiring faith? Hatred 
 and ambition lit the Southern fire, and the raging 
 hordes came on to kill and destroy. It was not 
 so with the Northern blood. It thrilled not for 
 war. There was no murder in the loyal heart. 
 There was shuddering at thought of battles and 
 slaughter, and brotherly incredulous smile at the 
 bluster of military array. There was no thought 
 of the sword, until a voice, as from God and the 
 alarmed genius of country, liberty and humanity, 
 whispered solemnly in all the air and bade all the 
 children of duty stand by the imperiled interests 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 169 
 
 of the hour, even unto blood. How went our 
 heroes to the war? Gentle-hearted sons of peace, 
 they went with dauntless courage and devotion, 
 not to kill but to die if need be. It was not pas- 
 sion that spurred them on, it was not frenzy that 
 nerved their arm, but a cause more holy, more 
 dear than the best things of the earth. We shall 
 forget it never, who have seen it; how passion- 
 less, how calm, how free from ambition, how true 
 to duty and fuller of God than ever before, our 
 armies formed. To-day it is the strong, loving, 
 elder brother, quieting and restraining the danger- 
 ous delirium of a younger and erring brother. 
 
 Even so has a repentant Southern heart figured 
 the strife. No, it is not for love of strife, it is 
 not for ambition and empire, that our young men 
 have accepted hard and horrible war. Not for 
 this have so many of our noblest and best and 
 dearest laid themselves down in the premature 
 graves. What is it then that neither defeat nor 
 disaster, nor hope deferred, nor illusions dispelled 
 have ever shaken out. This deep, unshaken per- 
 suasion, that earth in its present interests and its 
 future will bring, and heaven with all its spirit and 
 
170 HOW ONE CHURCH 
 
 laws indicate the work to be done, and pledge 
 success for it. It is the feeling that such a cause 
 must not be neglected, let whatever else may — 
 that it can never fail. This sublimity of shadowy 
 earnestness, this misty magnificence of faith comes 
 of the irradicable conviction that here are precious 
 things, in the conservation of which it is better 
 to give all, and to die, rather than to bear life 
 when they are taken away. Not unto the peo- 
 ple be the praise for this faith, its achievements, 
 its cheer, but unto Him who has wrought through 
 them, breathed in them, causing them to have 
 some such encouragement as is felt to-day. 
 
 To sum up our rejoicing, now is God in the 
 abundant garners, God in the healthful skies, 
 God in the immunities of the great war, God in 
 the settled single-mindedness of the loyal states, 
 God in providential delays as well as military suc- 
 cesses, God in guiding and restraining the bellig- 
 erent spirits of foreign nations, God in rulers and 
 commanders for the times, God in the elimina- 
 tion and destruction of wicked principles and 
 systems, God in the wonderfully growing unity 
 and strength of the people on the ground of 
 
WENT THROUGH A WAR 171 
 
 universal liberty, God In kindly chastisements in 
 stirring the popular hearts to the highest desires 
 and the noblest works, God In the dispensation of 
 saving grace, God In making these and others un- 
 told unite In the faith and hope of good things 
 to come. 
 
 For the many signs that our God is with us, let 
 there be courage and rejoicing at home and in 
 the field. By these motionings, on, on to peace 
 and the free land. 
 
 Our banner is not going down! The hands 
 that bear it are strong. The God of Israel Is He 
 that giveth strength and power unto His people. 
 
 Blessed be God. Blessed be the Lord, who 
 daily loadeth us with benefits, even the God of our 
 salvation. 
 
H 91 80 n 
 
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