CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP AND HONEST LEGISLATION.
A
SERMON
DELIVERED BEFORE
HIS EXCELLENCY
HENRY J. GARDNER,
HIS HONOR 
HENRY W. BENCIILEY,
THE HIONORABLE COUNCIL,
AND THE
LEGISLATURE OF MASSACHUSETTS,
AT THE
ANNUAL ELECTION,
WEDNESDAY, JAN. 6, 1858.
BY F. D. HUNTINGTON, D. D.,
PREACHER TO THE UNIVERSITY AT CAMBRIDGE.
BOSTON:
WILLIAM WHITE, PRINTER TO THE STATE.
1858.
I
,;,4,'O 
i
I 
HOUSE OF REPXISSENTATIVES, Jan. 12, 1858.
ORDERED, That four thousand copies of the Election Sermnon, delivered by Rev. F. D. HUNTINXGTON, D. D., before the Executive and the
two Branches of the Legislature, be printed for the use of the Legislature.
WILLIAM STOWE, Clerk.
6Smman~attlof glSatslS 
That part of the Sermon, included under the second head, was not
spoken at the delivery. 
SERMON.
LUKE VII. 5.
For he loveth our nation, and hlie hath built us a synagogue.
THE two thoughts are joined, not accidentally, not
artificially, but by a natural law. In the habit of the
Hebrew mind, which was speaking,-in the character
of the public-spirited officer for whom that praise and
that plea were spoken,-those ideas lived harmoniously
together, a bond of organic unity between them, and
each more vital for the other. By the march you have
just made from the State Hlouse to this sanctuary, you
have given another deliberate confession, and offered
one more public symbol, that they were both true,
and that their mutual relation is a truth also.  The
love of country and reverence for God: their conjunction here was no rhetorical device, nor local Judaistic
sentiment, but a permanent, philosophical, unchangeable reality.  It was not a fact then for the first time,
or the last.  No matter though the centurion was a
citizen only by adoption. The association was just 
6
as vivid, for that, between the people's good and the
worship of the Most High. It is not the rule, but it
happens,-it happened then,-that the foreigner, by the
very freshness with which the genius of an advanced
economy salutes him, and by its contrast with oppressive institutions that he has outgrown, enters farther
into its real meaning than the sluggish and sordid native.
Probably the centurion was more profoundly imbued
with the central life of the Hebrew system than many
of the straitest of the Pharisees. It seems he was discontented with Paganism, and found his aspirations
encouraged and his affections attracted, by the sublime
monotheism of Moses;  it seems he loved a slave,
and was so catholic as to bestow his liberality on a
nation of which he was not born; it seems he was so
modest and reverent as to shrink from letting the
Lord of life come under his roof. These are not slight
nor provincial virtues, in any age or land, certainly not
too common in our own.  Nor ought it to surprise
us to find, in a nature so lofty and comprehensive, a
practical faith that patriotism and religion,-the State
House and the synagogue,-belong together.
We can go farther yet.  Down at their lowest roots
and life-springs, these principles not only interlock,
but become essentially one and the same. Patriotism,
that is, when it is a principle, and not a mere blind
instinct of the blood, is an outgrowth and a part of the
faith and honor of the Almighty.  Analyze  it, and
you will see it so. For patriotism is only disinterested 
devotion to the justice, the power, the protection, the
right, embodied, after a certain fashion and degree, in
the State and its subjects. It is not attachment to the
parchment of a constitution, to the letter of an instrument, to the visible insignia of authority, to a strip of
painted cloth at a mast-head, to a mass of legal precedents and traditions, nor always to the person of the
sovereign. It is not a personal interest in the people
of the nation, for the most of one's fellow-citizens are
unknown, and the few that are met may awaken no
special regard. Instituted ideas,-as justice, power,
protection,-organized into a national government, and
lifted up for the defence of the country, are what  inspire an intelligent loyalty, and the same ideas have
their perfect embodiment in the person of God. On
the other hand, religion, veneration for the Creator,
involves a consistent regard for the welfare of great
bodies of his family. By the laws of the human nature he has fashioned, this will mount to enthusiasm,
as our relations to any one body grow  intimate, or
look back to an antiquity, or own a history of common
sufferings. Less elevated elements may intermix. But
whichever you take  first,-the feeling for the State,
or for the God of States,-the other clings to it, and
comes logically with it.
So the State, through you, its temporary representatives and civil ministers, bends here to-day before the
Ruler of rulers. Legislation comes to the Church,
not primarily to hear a sermon from a man, but to
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adore the Supreme Lawgiver, and to supplicate light.
Our Fathers, best builders of empire, on the whole,
that the world has seen since the Great  Emancipator
of Israel compacted a Commonwealth of fugitives, of
which Jehovah was the head,-our Fathers, taking
that for their model, when they ordained this ceremony
of election worship, believed in it. W\ith them  the
ceremony was a faith.  If it ever sinks into a mere
routine,-the ghastly effigy of a departed sincerity,it will be because some generation has not honesty and
courage to drop the form with the life, but is willing
to keep credit with superstition by continuing, for considerations of policy, a sanctimonious pageant out of
which the soul has ebbed away.  For, saying nothing
either of religion or of patriotism, it is only when man
is emptied of his manliness, that he consents to go
through a solemn performance that is emptied of its
heart. And, let it be added just here, when there are
cant and make-believe at Churchl, it will not be strange
if presently there are fraud and falsehood at the State
House; for it can scarcely be expected with reason that
men who undertake a deception on the Omniscient, and
act a part before themselves, will be restrained from
overreaching one another, and cheating the people.
I have no occasion, therefore, to wander far for my
subject.  It lies before me in your coming here, and
we are shut up to it.  I have to.speak first of the
personal character of a Christian Citizen, and then of
the honest Legislator; and since it is the blessing of 
9
our system that citizen and legislator are united in
one,-our   rulers, as the Prophet pu     t  it, being of ourselves, and our governors proceeding from the midst of
us,-the one of these topics will pass, by a natural
transition and progress, into the other.
I.  Nor need I detain you with much amplification
on the propensity in all partially Christianized states
of society to separate what are here joined,-to divorce public affairs, that is, from the control of the
Gospel, and so to unchristianize government. Such a
tendency may be briefly disposed of, I think, in this
way.   If it will stand out in the light and  defend
itself,-and not merely creep under the poor shelter of
an unthinking timidity, or an irrational selfishness,
it must pursue one of three lines of argument; for
there is no fourth for it. It must maintain either, 1.
That religion is inferior to politics, as an interest of
hlumanity,-which would be virtual atheism,-a denial
of God, as God, supreme; or, 2. It must maintain that
religion and politics are naturally hostile to one another,
the admission of religious obligation damaging  political success, —which is practical infidelity, i. e. a
denial of the absolute character which religion takes
in the teaching of Christianity; or else, 3. It must
maintain that while both are legitimate ideas, and
capable of being represented by legitimate institutions,
their provinces are distinct, and their objects best
achieved by keeping them apart; which, so far as it is
2
.e ~e 
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not atheistic and infidel both, is simply absurd;
because it amounts to saying that a man, or a
community of men,  can have such  a thing as  a
Christian character separate from those vital social
relations, and those duties of life by which the character is made up.  So much of attempts to wrench
asunder what the Divine constitution of things has
married into one, and what, as I said, were one in the
centurion of the text, as in every Christian citizen.
But what is more deserving of your careful notice,
because a truth apt to be disguised by subtler kinds of
sophistry, is, that every such attempt, whether open or
occult, ends practically in the first of the three errors
just supposed,-i. e. in subordinating the claims of
religion to the claims of politics,-which then instantly
become by that act, false and vicious politics. When
a people begin to dissever their obligations as Christians fi'rom their obligations as citizens, it is never long
before the first class of obligations become secondary,
and they are ready to break the laws of God, in
managing the machinery that dispenses the offices and
patronage of the State. God and Mammon never
become co-ordinate powers, nor even enter into treaty;
and as soon as any department of life, like political
action, bereaves itself of religious guidance, it becomes
at once unmitigated mammon.   If they divide, religion
sinks into a mere client. Because, there are always
commercial advantages which Government is able to
multiply, and material interests which it can secure        * —.:!n*fe  
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trade, custom-houses, corporations, post-offices, public
works, legal protection to property,-and these will
be had at any rate, by men who are willing to turn
religion into a corner, or lock it up in a meeting-house.
In such a sense as this, the subjection of the Church
to the State is a mischief of much larger extent than
the theory technically known by that name.  In the
time of the civil wars in England, the doctrine took
a specific shape, and, reaching out from its Germanic
origin, formed a British sect that made it known to
history.  But  there is a virtual Erastianism, where
there is no church  establishment, and no crown to
wrangle for its patronage.  Let the Church represent
the Christianized life, power and principles of a people;
and let the State represent those regulations that provide for the external welfare of society,-which was
Mr. WVebster's definition,-and there has been no age
when the State has not aggressed upon the Church.
For there has been no age when men's outward comfort has  not seduced their conscience; no  country
where grasping passions have not made war upon
righteousness; no people in the whole period since
the office-seeking sons of Zebedee applied for places
at the right hand and left of the expected Prince,
down to the city of Washington as it has looked since
the first of December, in which multitudes have not
been more willing to attest their affection for their
nation by accepting its emoluments, than, like the centurionl, by building its synagogues. 
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And yet, my friends, what warrant is afforded, either
by experience, or by the word of Heaven, or by the
nature of things, for supposing that national safety is
compatible with any less strictness of moral life than
individual safety is? or that those retributive rules of
God, which require the loss of power as a penalty for
the abuse of privilege, which drag every secret abomination to judgment, linking sin to damnation, will be
somehow evaded by masses of men, while they hold for
men one by one? as if God's hand were too unskilful
to feel through the intricacies of a crowd, or his eye so
infirm as to be bewildered by the pompous iniquity of
office! Whenever America shall be thoroughly committed to a line of policy that rejects those officers
which are peace and those exactors which are righteousness; whenever it shall resign the election of its
law-makers and rulers into the hands of cunning
cabals, to the chicane of talkative persons whose only
principle of suffrage is a determination to put certain
labelled candidates in, right or wrong, and to keep
certain proscribed candidates out, wrong or right,-so
giving over its Capitol and Cabinet to brawling tongues
and embezzling fingers; whenever it shall consent to
seat on the high Bench of Justice political debaters
instead of Judges of the Lawv, and to take from that
Bench sophistries and special pleas of partisan selfinterest instead of impartial interpretations of the
Constitution,-whenever it lifts to power those who
care more for the world's applause and money, than 
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for God's worship, so violating the condition given in
the text, then, infallibly shall the warning also of the
context be fulfilled. They shall come from the East
and the West, and God shall take away the kingdom
from you, and give it to a nation bringing forth the
fruits thereof.
God knows who can be trusted. Bad governments
seem to succeed for a while; but their fame only lifts
them up into a more conspicuous post, that the mockcry of their coronation may be more widely instructive.
For the permanence of power, there needs a select
sacramental band, and enough to control the community, of brave-hearted, God-fearing, consecrated menneeds these more than the amplest revenue, the most
splendidly appointed navy, the mightiest fortifications,
or the loftiest roofed arsenals.  If "saints" meant, as
it ought to mean, men of manly righteousness, and
not men of cunning or cruel piety, we might all join
the Fifth Monarchists, and pray for "the reign of
God's people." The best system of national defence
is the organization of character. No State House
presents a venerable front, after it becomes a nest of
unclean birds,-demagogues who have bartered their
principles to get there, or carried them there for a market. If Congress is to be the country's council,-or
indeed if it is to leave any Country long to be counselled for,-you must stock it with hearts whose faith
is vital, and not traditional, in the justice of Almighty
God. No judiciary can decree law or equity from a 
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durable bench, if the men that sit there, however
learned or large of brain, have forgotten that they
are themselves forever on trial at the great assize of
eternity. It is little that the members of a cabinet
talk in twenty tongues, or issue diplomatic papers that
rouse domestic pride and foreign jealousy, if they
never speak the one simple language of child-like
hearts to the Father of Truth, with whom lies are
abominations. And what is spiritual law for the
president and his secretaries, for judges and legislators, is law for the humblest of the subjects. It will
be seen yet, truly as the maxims of passing dynasties
and parties must be adjourned for the ideas of the
New Testament, that every faithful disciple, standing
in his lot for the command to love God and man, is
a better patriot than the statesman who seeks every
kind of honor but that which comes from on high.
For the statesman ought also, and first, to be Christ's
mnan; patriotism without Christianity is not a strong
sentiment; he who has resolved to stand on the side
of God, is the best friend of his country that any
country can have; and there is no earthly country
good enough to be loved safely, except the love of it
be hallowed by faith in a better country, even  an
heavenly.
In this spiritual sense, not by an ecclesiastical or
prelatical control, the State is really but a dependent
on the society of Christ. Instead of the church being
a subaltern to the government, government is ancillary 
15
to the church. The church is the religion of Jesus
organized, of whatever sect, and of all sects where faith
in Jesus is, going forth to redeem and bless humanity
with the heavenly doctrines of freedom, equality,
holiness and love. Has the civil State ally higher
function than that? Has any empire so exalted a
sovereign?  So  far the theocratic idea is just, that
every nation should have God for its acknowledged
ruler, and make every custom and institution in it
loyal to that heavenly supremacy. I can imagine no
loftier conception of human society than that.  Every
avenue of the national life should be a channel for the
free course of the divine spirit, every legislature a
school of practical theology, every court house a solemn vindicator of the oppressed, and every city, village,
and home, a nursery of strong and beautiful souls.
II. Christian citizenship, then, is the true foundation of national greatness. But who are Christian
citizens? Something more definite and determined
than mere men of compliance with the conventional
decencies of civilization-not mere  "barbarians in
broadcloth."
Something more is necessary to being the citizen
of a Christian State than barely living in it. Because
I tread under my feet, as I go about my private business, a certain soil which has been marked off by surveyors, and called by the geographic name of Massachusetts, and because I avail myself of its various local 
16
provisions for the more advantageous pursuit of certain selfish ends, do I therefore deserve to be recog
nized as one of the State's proper citizens? In matter,
mere physical presence constitutes a claim to be called
by a local name.  Holyoke, whatever the character of
the prospect from it, is a Massachusetts mountain;
and Cochituate, vlwhether its waters be pure or foul, is
a Massachusetts lake,-as a quantity of building
materials fashioned into a dwelling within the limits
of this city makes a Boston house.  So, for the mere
purposes of a census, or for the assessment of a capitation-tax, or for convenience of description, it may be
said of a person that he is a Massachusetts man, irrespective of his convictions, or his character, his loyalty,
or his treachery. But you will see that the moment
you take up such a designation for thoughtful reflection, or a sober analysis, you must make it cover something besides the bare fact of inhabiting. You can
apply the term citizenship, then, only to such as possess a certain Massachusetts spirit, and are morally
assimilated to the genius of the State's institutions.
We shall begin at a safe point if we say that the
first qualification consists in an intelligent understanding of the principles which the government oryanizes,
and of the ideas which it represents. Every political
institution is the visible exponent of an invisible
thought. Every charter, compact, bill of rights, written
law-book, or established custom of civil administration, is an attempt to realize in practice some idea in 
the governing mind. If that governing mind is an
autocrat, or even monarch, you will have embodied
the idea of irresponsible dominion, or pure despotism,
like the old eastern tyrannies, or like modern Russia,
where only the smallest check is imposed by the prerogative of the nobles. If it is a landed aristocracy,
of caste, conquest, or hereditary rank, you will have
Feudalism, as in the middle ages. If it is a combination of royal prerogative and popular will, you have
a limited monarchy, with parliament and crown, as in
Great Britain. If it is a majority of the people, you
have a limited democracy, as with ourselves.   Sometimes this central and radical idea of the Government
is formnally set forth in a Declaration, as with a Constitutional Power like the United States.  Sometimes
it is expressed only in the aggregate of usages, precedents and maxims, of an empire, or of some petty
court or chieftain's castle.  But whether its utterance
be direct or indirect, in words or practices, it does
somehow get uttered, and by its consequences it is felt.
The blusiness of an historical student is not merely to
learn the outward succession of events, the sayings and
doings of the several kingdoms, but it is to comprehend those hidden principles lying below the surface
like seeds under the ground, out of which empires
and their epochs have germinated, and sprung up,
opening their beneficent  or baleful foliage, bearing
their nutritious or poisonous fruit.
So also of the present. It is one thing to go through
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17 
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the mechanical functions of voting for law-makers
year by year, or obeying lawvs after they are made, and
quite another to enter into an intelligent apprehension
of the great thoughts which lived in the minds of the
men by whom the whole structure of the Government
was founded, and which still live in the heart of the
Government itself.  It is this last which  every man
ought to have attained before he is worthy to be regarded as, in any lofty acceptation, a citizen.
Libanius, quoted by Montesquieu, says, that at
Athens a stranger who intermeddled with the assemblies of the People was punished with death.  If this
was summary and cruel, it proved the sanctity attached
to political action,-the faith that a distinctive civil
education was indispensable to it,-that the popular
sources of power should be kept pure, and thus
attested the reality of the democratic profession. An
illegal vote was usurpation, and ignorance was a
milder form of rebellion.
I am not referring here to the advantages of a general education. I accord, of course, heartily with all
that can be argued in behalf of that.  There can be
no right citizenship at this day without intellectual
activity. But over and beyond this I insist on the
importance of a special branch of science,-of a better
understanding of the fundamental principles which
underlie and animate our political system. Proudly
as we boast of our promiscuous cultivation, I believe
that we are in great danger of national damage from 
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indifference just at that point. We take too much
for granted. We are driven to the ballot-box once a
year in gangs, by little knots of self-constituted leaders
in caucuses, who  mean, by indirect process, to dictate
the votes and take the offices.  Or else we follow some
party champion, who, let him know never so much, is
certainly not endowed with a vicarious knowledge that
shall atone for our ignorance, and who  may possibly,
on the very theatre where he has gained his experience
and his eloquence, have encountered temptations, too
strong to be resisted, to imbibe the duplicity and the
trickery of a demagogue.
I would have every child, therefore, carefully and
conscientiously taught those distinctive ideas which
constitute the substance of our Constitution, and
which determine the policy of our politics.  He should
know wherein his own government differs from othler
governments.  He should be able, on his own ilformation, and not depending on any interested meddler, to
tell when there is a departure from the true course,
where an abuse begins, and where a peril threatens.
And to this end, there ought forthwith to be introduced into our common  schools a simple, comprehensive muanual, adapted to juvenile mninds and to the
whole country, whereby the needed tuition should be
planted at that early period. It is absurd that our
pupils should go on, through the whlole term of their
preparation for life, committing the rules of a granmmnar, the facts of geography, and the calculations of 
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arithmetic, to the total neglect of the principles of the
legislation under which they are to live, of the facts
of the country to which they belong, and of the constitution of their liberties. It may be the low instinct
of a money-making age to desire only a knowledge how
to reckon profit and loss. But will it not be at least
as sensible, and far more patriotic, to covet an acquaintance with those grand laws of social order and protection under which all our traffic is prosecuted, by which
all our prosperity is shielded, and which alone can
make any successful or honorable enterprise possible?
Among us, a neglect of this sort of culture is without excuse. It is made so equally by the freedom of
opportunity, guarantied by all the arrangements of our
educational apparatus, and by the simplicity of the
government itself, which is to be studied. An Austrian peasant, a Russian serf, Italian lazzaroni, have
a plausible apology for being in the dark respecting
the laws they live under, for the laws themselves are
kept in the dark; and then the subject is held so far
under them, that he cannot lift himself up to look at
them. In some of these cases, no school-house door
stands open to him; a stifled press defrauds him, or a
mercenary one hoodwinks him; an " Index Expuryatorius" screens from him what he most wants to know,
and tyranny silences the instruction which he has the
best right to hear. To say that it is otherwise with
us, is only to repeat the common-place of two hundred
and twenty-seven election sermons. Yet professional 
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and trading politicians, for purposes of their own, have
the effrontery to tell us that nobody is fit to legislate,
nor to form parties, nor to discourse on public matters,
but those who, like themselves, hold a professional key
to the secret. Doubtless, if legislation consists in
making the many the tools of promoting a few, if
drilling parties is tantamount to framing a conspiracy
of plunder, and if discoursing on public matters is
the art of compounding falsehood, detraction and insolence, then doubtless they may be left to enjoy a
monopoly of political science. Such characters flourish among us,-just as the rankest weeds grow in the
fattest soil,-for the very reason that our admirable
system of government is so well able to go alone, that
the consequences of individual apathy are slow to
appear. But those consequences will not be postponed forever; the everlasting laws of national retribution are not to be defeated; ignorance and carelessness are seeds that will yield their harvest of calamity
and shame.
The next qualification for good citizenship I mention is a sympathy with the spirit of the government.
There needs a feeling in the heart for one's country, as
well as a comprehension of its presiding principles and
its informing ideas by the intellect; because a nation,
which is only a kind of collective and conscious person, has, in some sort, a heart of its own, as well as a
brain,-and so a characteristic temper, or quality, to
be loved or hated, to be sympathized with, or repelled 
22
by. It is on this moral sympathy between citizen and
government, that loyalty and patriotism depend, hardly
less than on intelligence. You know how loyalty is
roused to enthusiasm, how patriotism flames up into
an ardent passion, at the sight of a national edifice,
fortification, ship, or the sound of national airs or
watch-words. There is no intellectual process-in these
cases,-no deliberate recurrence to ideas,-but a sudden gush of feeling, a throb out of the heart. Hence
the mere sentiment of loyalty, half-blind but enlthusiastic, has often been found most impetuous and most
heroic in those periods of the world, and those states of
society when there was little thinking, but an abundance of feeling. Still, any government is weak, which
has not this vital sympathy between the spirit of its
institutions and the spirit of the citizens.
Now it often happens in a State as it does in a
family, that individuals are found in it, who are out of
a]l harmony with its prevailing sentiments. There is
mere physical presence,-but a moral discord,-an
absence, or alienage, of the heart. The body is native
but the soul foreign,-and needing some other naturalization than a formal oath of allegiance or subscription before a magistrate.  Wherever there is one  or
more of such sullen and uncongenial inmates, there is
a chill on the intercourse of the household, an iceberg
in its sunny climate. And wherever there is such an
element of estrangement and distrust in a State, there
must be so much hindrance to its prosperity, so much 
23
material for disorganization in trying times. It reminds us of what De Maistre, by one of his lively
paradoxes, calls France, at one period of her history"A republic without republicans."
In this country we are exposed to two classes where
this want of sympathy has a tendency to appear.
One  is a class of essential anti-republicans, partly
monarchists and partly aristocrats, sometimes cast in
upon us by accident, and sometimes growing up among
us by anomaly. People are found in our democratic
society who belong, by natural affinity, under a transatlantic emperor, among ultramontane ecclesiastics,
or back in the feudal centuries.  They are full of the
pride of caste, full of hereditary ambition, coveting
exclusive privileges, fond of badges of rank, absolutists in their real notions, and ridiculously contemptuous of their fellows who suffer external disadvantages. Such persons, however democratic their
professions, have no more place here than a cardinal's
hat has in a Methodist meeting, simply because they
are out of all affinity with the inmost life of the land.
If they have their way, unrestrained by custom or
policy, they yoke the weak and the poor under a
vassalage, they pamper their estates and add splendor
to their equipage out of the earnings of the laborer,
they would toss up their caps for a bold and conceited
adventurer with a crown of gems on a brainless head,
or they would institute a selfish oligarchy, taking
good care to be themselves inside its counsels. A great 
24
many restraints may kIeep this class from ever openly
acknowledging  themselves;  but they are none the
less out of all hearty fellowship with the true spirit
of the country, and are bad citizens.
There is another class, who, instead of being anti-republicans, are ultra-republicans; or rather they are
disorganizers and distractionists, and so are as truly
anlti-republicans as their opposites; for their wild and
irresponsible notions are incompatible with any order
or law, and so are among the worst enemies a legitimate democracy has to dread. The main desire of
this class is a total solving of all restraints on the passion0s and the individual will.  Their first postulate is
that every body is as good as any body. The liberty
they lust after is liberty to swallow their fill at the first
stall,-the liberty of untamed animals.
There grows up among us an excessive and morbid
individualism, begetting an arrogant irreverence. It
obstructs domestic discipline, going down into the
brains of young children, and inflaming in them a
prurient eagerness to spurn at parental authority. It
runs into destructionist speculations on theories of
social order. It caricatures the generous conceptions
our national existence grew from.  It writes an egotistical, fevered, passionate, foolish literature. It rallies
mobs. It perverts democracy into demonism. It longs
for no Christian republic, but a wild riot of the lusts in
its heated blood. Sometimes it sits in its study and
philosophizes unbelief; sometimes it haunts a German 
25
beer-shop,-sometimes a reckless pulpit; sometimes
it simmers in social bogs and fogs; sometimes it
sparkles brilliantly on the top of the rocks. Everywhere it is a traitor and a rebel to the country, and
because it spoils the Christian citizen, robs the nation
of its rights. Construe independence to mean an unlimited license to do as you please, and instead of the
just arbitraments of law, with precedents and experience, calm adjustment and sober equity, you retreat,
at best, upon the summary instincts of the injured
party, and the matches of brutal violence. Paul, of
Russia, when a French ambassador incidentally spoke
to him of some man of consequence in St. Petersburg,
instantly and impatiently replied, "There is no man of
consequence in this empire, save the man with whom I
happen at any moment to be speaking, and so long
only as I am speaking to him is he of consequence."
Where every man in the nation feels himself of the
size of an emperor, that language will be in the bearing if not the mouth of the crowd. And what is impertinence in manners soon becomes insubordination
in temper.  It is the misfortune of all liberal movements to attract about them malcontents and radicals.
Such false alliances try the strength of a government.
If it takes up this crude ingredient, wisely regulates it,
converts it and assimilates it, it is strong. But if the
disordered matter proves too much for the digestive
energy of the constitution, and remains discordant,
then it poisons the whole health of the body.
4 
26
A third qualificatioin fr a right citizenship, besides
an understanding of the principles of the government
and a sympathy with its spirit, is a practical reslectfor
thie operacition of its form,s.  One might suppose, indeed,
that when the two first exist the third must necessarily
follow.  I think, we do find instances, however, where
the government is both understood and loved, while
its regular and necessary fituctions are treated with
a neglect amounting very nearly to contempt. Because
the forms are firee, and the acts are voluntary, it does
not follow that they are trivial, but  the  contrary.
Among us respect for the government is shown  in
performing all the primary duties that attend the right
of suffrage.  Our early fathers certainly enjoy a repu
tation for dignity quite as high as we  can emulate;
yet they did not deem it beneath them, whatever their
station, to taklie the most active participation in all the
initiatory steps of an election.  Those of our citizens
N1-o staid aloof firom the little local meetings  and
movements which are the fountains of all democratic
powier, are actuated by a very false view of their responsibilities, or else by a very foolish pride; and tihey
are handing over the reins of rule or misrule, as fast
as they can, into the fingers of jobbers and chiarlatans.
Neither business, nor pleasure, nor unconcern, nor disgust at vulgar proceedings, nor any other cause, ought
to deter you from this duty.  If it does, the country
holds you chargeable for its disgrace, and you are not
good citizens. 
III. So we pass up from the citizen to the legislator, which two, by the felicity of our system, meet in
the same person —the citizen-legislator.
Nothing belongs more precisely to this occasion,
than a fresh conviction of the necessity of a high personal character, in the public makers of law, to the
honor and safety of the Commonwealth.  Let us not
be deceived. There are laws of moral iniifluence and
moral life, above those that are voted and recorded, so
inwrought into man and his institutions by thle Eternal
God, that nothing can tear them out without dislocating the joints of the structure, and nobody can break
them without being an " archlitect of ruin."  One of
these is, that wrong principle, in every workman whose
work is moral, creeps over, and subtly spreads itself,
to contaminate and  damage the tiing he works in.
Now, the legislator's work is largely moral.  It has
constantly to do with the evAerlasting, distinction  between right and wrong.   It professes to guard  and
foster equity and truth.  It is the avowed organ of justice.  It is the terror of evil doers, and the praise of
them that do well.  It touches the most sacred interests
of society.  Its special and legitimate sphere is rectitude, peace, order, between man and man. It deals
with the very first demonstrations  of overt integrity
and systematic morality, so far as external measures
can.  Nor are the laws  merely  an  enactment and
execution of the moral convections of a people, as is
so often implied: they are an indirect but effectual
27 
28
e ucator of these convictions also,-constantly forming
the public conscience, and raising or lowering the tone
of moral life.  They are not only an expression, but
an infiucnce,-not only a sign of them but a power
upon them.
Now, a business so august and so sacred as that
cannot be intrusted to any but good men,-righteous
men,-sound at heart, right with God, true to humanity,-men that can neither be bought off, nor
reasoned off, nor frightened off, nor flattered off, from
the simple and immutable right.
The State and the law, persons and property,
education and industry, marriage and life, are not
safe in the hands of any other order of men. You say,
good laws may be made  by unprincipled  men.  So
may pious sermons be preached by a Godless clergy
But that does not affect the truth, that down at the
secret channels of things, and finally, in the long run,
up on the open fields of history, what man is works itself into what man does-spirit determines life-principles shape institutions. Public virtue does not graft
nor grow on personal iniquity.  Men do not gather
figs of thistles, nor of a bramble-bush grapes, nor of
tricky and profane legislators a noble and Christian
State.
True, the form of the government is by no means a
matter of indifference. Here it is not likely to be
underrated. Yet personal character will sometimes
override even the sharpest distinctions in that, and it 
29
is certainly a grander element.  A Mexican republic
can hardly be pronounced better than an  English
monarchy.  Unless we live in some consistency with
the pure ideas out of which the Revolution sprang, we
shall have gained no more by a change of rulers than
Rome gained by the expulsion of the Tarquins.  Despotism may be "democratized," but it is still despotism.
A people may destroy their tyrants without destroying
tyranny; so the Romans did; but they cannot corrupt
their law-makers without debilitating their laws.
See, by a little careful notice, how the mischief
results, and why a Massachusetts legislator should be
practically, as well as nominally, an honest, Christian
man.  First of all, you, whom the people have chosen
to represent them in the government are set, in some
measure, to be exponents of public virtue.  An authiority is committed to you.  Each of you in his  own
town, village, or city, is marked by his election as a
man that may be trusted.  Responsibility widens with
respect. The young look to you for example. The
unsteady quote your practice. If you are self-indulgent, mean, coarse, double-tongued, you  will harm
your neighborhood on a larger scale, you will diffuse
corruption with a more fatal facility, and to a heavier
judgment, for your office.
Again, a legislator's personal sins disgrace the institutions hle tampers with in the eyes of the community, and so they are unpatriotic as well as impious.
Reverence for the appointments of law is certainly not 
30
too common.  It declines alarmingly.  The genera tions are not growing up with an excess of loyalty.
For this waning veneration toward the dignity of gov ernueit, the "powers that be," the place, the assem blies, the processes of governmental control, it is for
you to consider how far the bearing of official persons
is accountable.   You  say, institutions  may  be re vered whether their managers are noble or vulgar.
But it happens that men are influenced by the living
representatives and spokesmen of things, quite as
much as by the things thelmselves.  Mlental association
is a fact; and a government is judged by the governors.
Thirdly, moral weakness blunts the intellectual perceptions.  Every time a man is false to the highest
leading of his soul, he dwarfs his mind. Law-makers
want every faculty their Creator gave  themn, and in
something better than the natural condition,-sharpened, stimulated, made  solid and strong.  MIeasures
come before you that require the mind's nicest touch
and boldest stroke,-the keenest discrimination and
the firmest grasp,-the quick insight and the patient
reason. These are intellectual abilities that go only
with habits of truth, temperance, chastity, honesty.
The man that drags himself up to his seat after a night
of convivial carousing, his brain still foggy and his
eyes vacant with the profligacy that has drenched his
soul, is no fit servant to stand for the interests of man
or the powers ordained of God,-among wise states 
31
men or pure patriots,-in the encounters of dignificed
debate, or the difficulties of entangled times.  Clearsightedness of the head waits in the end on clearsighltedness of the heart.  The sentencie of retribution
against that evil worl may not be executed speedily,
but it comes at last.  The voluptuary will not abrogate the immutable penalty.  God is the God of our
whole life.  Pure waters of pure fountains.  TNever
wisdom out of folly; never right by compromise or
collusion wiith wrong.  The cunning and selfish bargainer of the shop and the market, thle fiarmer that
cheats in weighlt or measure, the fradulent mechanic,
the lawyer that makes exceptions in heaven,'s command
of truth, for professional lies, the exhorbitant moneylender, the gambling brokler,-all these will c(arry their
disordered natures and their mutilated honor with
them to the legislature, and there they will barter
away rectitude and themselves for fees or votes.  Then
a carnival of the appetites will supplant the dignities
and sterner joys of our beginnings; then we shlall be
ashamed  to recur to our ancestral annals, just as
the Piomana authorities, of a corrupted age, were afraid
to show  the populace the old code of Numna, after
it had been dragged firom its obscurity, lest the palpable inconsistency should  rouse  indignation  into
rebellion; then pleasure will become the scandalous
substitute for patriotism,-just as enervated Athens,
when truth and honor were  lost, " dreaded Philip not
as the enemy of her liberty but of her luxury,"-or as 
32
the emasculated subjects of Augustus, angry at his
severities, quelled their factions, and were tamely pacified, when he let Pylades, the comedian, come back to
make sport for them in the theatre. It will avail
nothing that we have built up a splendid prosperity,
and that our numbers have increased eight-fold since
we were a people and a power.  Numbers and property and territory are as effectual to break an overgrown and corrupt policy to pieces as to confirm a
sound one; and we shall sink under a law of God
framed before Numa meditated, or Philip fought,
or Columbus  sailed.  My  friends, you will see the
ancient glories of our Commonwealth restored, just as
far as you restore the scrupulous conscience and
the righteous character-and with them the high-bred
manners and commanding thought-of those men who
approached the magistrate's trust with awe, as a temple
holy to the Lord.
Would to heaven we could only realize this simple
and everlasting law of moral life; that the stream cannot rise above the fountain! There is an unsightly
spectacle, not unknown in our own legislative annals.
In some fitful mood of conscience, of philanthropy, a
people, or its representatives, legislate some measure
altogether beyond the average and common level of
their moral life. What then? How long can such a
statute stand?  What will be its efficacy while it
remains? Statute-book and people both are only
disgraced presently by a retreat into their inferior 
morality. Any body that professes, in creed, or in
civil decree, above its faith, is guilty of cant, if not of
hypocrisy, and its life silently eats out the heart of its
written law. We do nothing effectually but what we
do from the full head-waters of honest conviction.
Bring up the personal sources of goodness, and your
acts will put on a consistent grandeur.
The complaint appears to gain emphasis  and currency, that both in the National and the State bodies,
the course of independent and impartial legislation is
seriously obstructed by the use of ambiguous machinery, and by appeals to sordid motives. I do not
profess to know the absolute or the relative reason for
this complaint. This, however, is certain, and challenges consideration; within a few years past, in our
State legislature, the subject-matter of legislation has
undergone a remarkable change.  There is a vastly
increased proportion of private bills-measures that
look to the immediate interests of individuals or corporations.  At the last regular session, considerably
more than half the Acts and Resolves were of this
nature.  Partly this is inevitable: with the passage of
time, the growth of commonwealths, general laws get
settled. The same advance calls into being an increased number  of special enterprises, seeking the
protection, or patronage, of the State.  Obviously
there comes in, with this tendency, an accumulating
temptation to external interference with the opinions,
judgments, consciences of senators and representatives.
6
33 
34
This needs no proof. The lobby speaks for itself, and
whatever may be said of its tactics, its geography needs
no  description.  Now, let it be granted that gross
bribery, that open and direct bids of money, or custom
in business, are rare. Granted that in this honorable
body of men before me, there is not one that would
not spurn such an approach away from him as an
atrocious insult to his manhood, and with shame and
pity for the depravity capable of proposing it. Much,
I say, yet remains behind all that. It remains, I suspect, proverbially and notoriously true, that a bill is by
no means secure which is left simply and solely to its
merits. It remains proverbially and notoriously true,
that not a few measures are no sooner proposed, than
a systematic arrangement and plan of attack are made
to carry it, without or within, by other appeals than
those to the clear judgment, the unbiassed will, the impartial and honest sense of the members. Committees
may be packed, weeks before hand; prejudice may be
enlisted; base passion —.envy, jealousy, avarice —kindled.   Make  what allowance or qualification you
please. If such things happen only once iln a session,
it is cause for anxiety and alarm. Or, make the case
one of pure hypothesis; your notice of the matter will
still be profitable.
Remember, then, first, that every possible question,
proposition, grant, charter, or measure whatsoever,
that can come before you, has in it the elements of
right or wrong, justice or injustice, and is to be judged 
35
by you accordingly, and not by any inferior judgment.
Itemember that it is as true to-dly as in the days of the
Hebrew legislator, that  " a gift," that is a bribe,
blindeth the wise," and that the capability of being
bribed has ever gone withli treachery, signalized a
decaying state, and been held the sure precursor of
anarchy and overthrow.  Remember that bribery is
none the less bribery for coming, not in the shape of
gold or bank notes, but in that of an electioueeriing
lift, or a professional assistance, or a supper party.
Surely it must be a strange and intolerable  morality
that distinguishes whether  the price of dishonor is
paid into an itching palm, or on to a proud pair of
shoulders,-paid to a man's pocket, or his politics, or
his palate.  Financial, political, professional, convivial,
they are all of one debauched and accursed brood.
I know it may be said, many measures are brought
forward that seem to have no specific quality of good
or evil; it is immaterial whether  you  vote for or
against them; you do not see far enough into them,
or trace them out to such consequences, as to make it
an ilmperative duty to favor, or to oppose them, and so
you may follow your own interest in doing the one or
the other. This seems to be taking refuge from moral
responsibility in intellectual stupidity.  But it will not
serve, in fact, in logic, or in ethics. The truth is, no
measure proposed is thus indifferent.  Every one, you
ought to countenance, or you ought to oppose. Understood, the bill, however small, will reveal that positive 
36
character.  And to begin to tamper with your power
of discrimnination, your legisla(tive fidelity, your private
manliness, by  balancing off your own interest or your
pet project withl some fellow-mnember's,-helping your
railroad in the western county by supporting  his,
justified or not, in an eastern one; carrying a bank
charter at home by helping out an infirm bridgecorporation for your neighbor; or making an insurance
company in the city, or next autumn's canvass, pay the
way of a company where you are a stockholder, or
your nephew is a director, or your political friend
wants to be president,-all this is to pronounce yourself
below the level of the moral dignity of your place.
These are only the Tempter's plausibilities,-Satan
transformed into the angel of mutual accommodation
More than that, it is just as profligate, and just as
dishonest, to be hired to run firom your seat, when a
vote is to be taken, as to be hired to stay there and vote
on the wrong side, only in that case you add the meanness of a coward, with the ignominy of a truant and
a trimmer, to the guilt of a knave. Gentlemen, whatever else we lose, let us cling to our brave, unspotted
ancestral honor.  No one measure can possibly be put
before you, by governor's message or people's petition,
in all this session, so vital, so momentous, so supreme,
as that principle. Imagine James Otis and Samuel
Adams foisting projects through the forms of law by
mutual  compensation!  Imagine  John  Adams  and
Benjamin Lincoln dodging a vote!  You must pardon 
the half profane hypothesis.  And that you may spare
the State a reproachful contrast, take care that the
time never come to us, when it can be said, in our
capitol, as by an old statesman of another stamp and
grade, that he could never obtain the grant of sixpence for a poor and deserving claimant, but that
he could always carry a felony without benefit of
clergy.
Doubtless it is a deplorable condition of a people
if they do not recognize their divinely appointed
leaders,-do not know their best men when they see
them, and, having the republican privilege, fail to put
them at the head of affairs. But it is a sadder sight
yet, when those who have been raised to power under
the impression that they were the best, noblest, purest,
falsify that confidence, betray that trust, and turn the
glory and the hope into shame.  That happens when
men imagine they can neglect the law of a heavenly
estate, because they are chosen to enact laws for an
earthly.  That happens, if they dream that they can
lay off their principles when they take up an office, or
because they begin to be legislators cease to be men.
That happens, when they forget that from the moment
they enter the halls they become the unpurchasable
servants of the least and lowest of the people of the
State, and can take no other furtherance to their private fortunes but their lawful salary. That happens,
when they come to the capital of the State to practice
in secret, out of sight of their families, the vices that
37 
38
always corrupt commonwealths, and then go back to
their constituents unclean and guilty. That happens
when they postpone the integrity of the soul to political Shiboleths, making it a test where a man was born
rather than what he is, or else subordinating the
mighty virtues of humanity to the cabals and caucuses
of a party. Above all, do not be enticed into any
measure, direct or indirect, which can possibly be construed into connivance at the overshadowing American
crime-the enslaving or re-enslaving of man.
I go back just a century in the history of Miassachusetts. It is striking to see how the sins of one
age are the sins of another, because the same old
human heart remains. There is no extinct species in
the Flora of iniquity. A hundred years ago the 25th
of last Mlay, before the election day was changed, and
when the first duty of the Colonial Legislature was to
elect the councilmen, the minister of the New Brick
Church, in Boston,* preached the anniversary sermon.
Calling on the magistrates before him to "arise and
teach the people," to "fear God and keep his commandmenits," that it might be well with them and their children forever, he continued his faithful exhortation thus:
"Animated by this divine principle, we trust you will
proceed this day to the choice of Hils Majesty's Council,
and give your votes for men who have an awful regard
for the laws of God.  You will choose men of wisdom
* Ebenezer Pemberton. 
39
to discern the times,-more zealous to advance the
public welfare than their private advantage, —men who
will hazard their credit and estates rather than unite
in any schemes of oppression and iinjustice,-men who
will venture to displease the highest authority upon
earth, rather than give a vote for a person unqualified
for the office to which he is nominated,-mcn that will
not sell their country for a bribe, but will generously
neglect their private affairs when the public requires
their attention,-men that will recommend religion
not only by wholesome laws but by their instructive
example."
This immaculate, invincible uprightness in public
station is no dream of visionaries.  We cannot dismiss
it as a glory of the Past, impracticable and fabulous at
present.  That is infidelity to Providence, to history,
to the ever-living heart of Christ. Besides, the instances stand forth, illustrious and imperial, in every
Christian nation,-the honor of statesmanship, the
defence of governments, the strength of their age
against all partisan or selfish conspiracies. Look, for
a single example of that power, into the last generation
and the legislative halls of England.  Trained in the
best refinement and learning of his time, coming forth
from the mnidst of London fashions and palaces, where
the frowns of the world are most formidable and its
flatteries most seductive, familiar from his childhood
with the luxuries of fortune and the policies of a false
expediency, yet with his vision quickened by Christian 
40
faith, and his whole nature lightened and invigorated
by the lessons of Olivet and Calvary, Wilberforce
enters Parliament. Many a hard test tries his steadfastness.  Erect, and yet courteous, he never swerves.
He sees straight through every moral sophistry, and
no chicanery can cheat him into one doubtful compliance.  Hardest of all, Melville is impeached.  Friendship, favor, interest, social alliance, popularity, all
importune this Christian statesman to take up the
cause of the accused. There was the eloquent countenance, and the trumpet tongue, of Pitt, pleading the
same way.  But there was one voice on the other side,
stiller, grander, the voice of a righteous sincerity, and
from that he was accustomed to take no appeal.   He
knew Melville was wrong, the accusation just.  Not
an instant's hesitation. He stood up to speak for
Right, stripped bare of all enchantments, and he knew
that, speaking for that, he spoke for man, for his
country, for God; because he who obeys a law higher
than that of states, obeys a law in which alone any
state is safe.  Proud and powerful men looked on with
disappointment, not to say with wrath. Every sentence
was like hacking away old and precious bonds of fellowship. Melville was condemned, and howr? Let the
words of another's history answer: "It was felt that
in a question of simple integrity, where casuistry had
to be eluded and plausibility swept aside, this religious
tongue was the last authority in England. In the
British Senate, in the nineteenth century, when a point 
41
of morality was to be settled, it was not to the man
of duelling honor, it was not to the philosophic
moralist, that men looked for a decision; it was to the
Christian senator whose code was the Bible," kneeling
every morning before the All-seeing Eye, going up to
his seat from his closet, through all the perplexities
of his place saying ever secretly to his God, "Lead me
only by thy Light."
I am sure, gentlemen, you respond this day to any
earnest call for public fidelity, and welcome any exalted
standard of public duty. You are at the outset of
great perils as well as great labors. Whether you
make a conscientious study of all measures and schemes
and subjects put before you or not, be certain there are
those who are already making a politic and interested
study of you,-your prejudices, tastes, habits, associations, your weaker and stronger side. You are in
danger of losing your single-mindedness, your independence, your manhood. You are charged to-day with
the responsibility, first of keeping a Christian conscience,
and then of Christian legislation for Massachusetts
Immense trusts both,-the last vain without the first.
So you need this hour of prayer, and are thankful for
it. If any of you, on the other hand, are carrying up
to the Capitol now such poverty of principle, or such
salable convictions, that you will be seduced into
making merchandise of your soul to the first or richest
buyer in the passage-way, then, in the name of the
State,-in the name of all public credit and faith,-in
6 
42
the name of common decency,-in the name of the
truth of God, I adjure you to resign and go home
to-night. It will be the best service you ever rendered
to the Commonwealth, and more to the advantage of
the statute book than all the votes and speeches of a
session.
Gentlemen, these are solemn hours for our country,
for this Commonwealth, for the whole Republic.
They are solemn hours for you, who hold for a little
while the awful trust of the character of one member
in the great confederation. It is no vision of alarmists that sees tendencies busily at work which will
sweep us first to political prodigality, and then to
oblivion of freedom and justice both, and then to
revolution, unless some new-born conviction of the
eternal rectitude comes to check the madness of the
hour, and restore religion to her control. Be the
immortal honor, of building the order which the early
patriots founded, yours. Yours also are the fathers,
and yours the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the
giving of the law, the service of God, and the
promises; and to you Christ has come. The just
nation, the just state, like the just soul, shall live by
its faith. No height of privilege, no swelling census,
no width of territory, no perfection of political construction, no wealth or splendor of cities or of citizens
can save the faithless people from perishing.
Lovers of the nation, then, still build its synagogues! Ye that would be patriots, be believers. 
43
Have men of veracity for your officers, men of intrepid
uprightness for your law-makers, men that fear only
God and keep his commandments for your citizens.
For he that reverences our holy religion in the sanctuary, and replenishes it in the closet, and acts it in
his life, is a more effectual priest in the temple of our
liberties, than the cunning statesman that diplomatizes
in a cabinet, or the orator that talks administrations
and parties into power or out of it with a crafty
tongue. For it is as true now, in our ancient, beloved,
Christian Commonwealth, as in the days of the eloquent prophet-king, that "over the faithful of the land
the eyes of Mercy keep watch."
Let us conclude then, with the most comprehensive
affirmation of our subject. Above and beneath all
civil constitutions,-the foundation of their stability,
the dome of their protection, their corner-stone, their
wall of defence, their genial and sheltering sky, is the
religion and Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Virtue
is loyalty. Goodness is patriotism. The best citizenship is the best Christianship. The best legislator is the
truest and wisest man. Character is the strength of
the State. They are the friends, the ornaments, the
defenders of the country and its constitution, who
will not swerve from its three original, immortal ideas,
-Faith, Freedom, Fraternity. These, rightly interpreted, comprehend the wealth of our heritage, the
boundless promise of our Future.  WVe  spoil that
'...*:....' 
44
heritage, we forfeit that Future, only as we disobey
God, injure man, and worship ourselves.
To the retiring chief magistrate I offer the respectful salutations of the place and the hour, congratulating him on the honors of his office, on the successes
of its administration, on the release from its cares, on
every independent and unselfish act in its discharge,
on every inward or outward testimony of fidelity.
For the honorable Senate, Council, and House of
Representatives, I invoke here the spirit and blessing
of the God of our fathers, the God of our beloved
Commonwealth, the God of Honor, Justice, Truth
and Peace. May they be honest legislators, Christian
citizens, lovers of the nation, servants of Christ and
his Church!
....          *. -,
I