NATIONAL DESTINY
AND
OUR COUNTRY.
REV. P. F. ROBERTSON.








NATIONAL DESTINY
AND
OUR COT N T R Y.
A DISCOURSE,
BY
REV. D. F. ROBERTSON.
NEW YORK:
E. FRENCH, 135 NASSAU STREET.
1851.




ADVERTISEMENT.
THE following Discourse was first delivered in Rev. Dr. Spring's Church,
and, subsequently, in the Broadway Tabernacle, and in the R. D. Church on
Lafayette Place.
Several persons, then, desired its publication; but aside from hesitations as to
its general utility, other callings then more important, and more imperative, prevented its issue.
Some paragraphs here and there, have been added-some of which will be
readily distinguished as not appropriate to the pulpit. In publishing it now, with
many imperfections, the writer is yielding to the opinions of others-especially
to the requests of a gentleman who now desires to have it, at some trouble and
expense to himself.
He would be laying himself liable to be placed in a false position, if he failed
to state here, that a person who borrowed the manuscript has published some
portions of it over his own name; and has thereby manifested a great failing in
matters of taste (not to mention things ethical), in appropriating fiom another
that which —as in the present instance —is inferior to what he could have produced himself.
Note. —The intelligent reader will perceive that the certain dissolution of our
Government and Institutions, or their certain perpetuity, is not asserted in this
Discourse.
NEW YORE:
S. W. BENEDICT, PRINT.,
16 Spruce street.




D ISCOURS E.
ISAIAH LXIV. 6.
WE ALL DO FADE AS A LEAF; AND OUR INIQUITIES, LIKE THE WIND,
HAVE TAKEN US AWAY,
THE Prophet Isaiah, looking down the course of time, beholds,
afar off, in the visions of prophecy, the terrible ruin of the kingdom of Judah, the forlorn and desperate condition of the guilty
inhabitants.
The startling events described, were not to take place till
many years after he should be gathered to his fathers; yet they
are mentioned, here, in the present tense-in the simple, sententious, glowing style often assumed in prophetic composition.
The predicted scenery, in all its dismal detail, passes before
his eyes; and the deep, intense emotion, kindled at the sight,
bursts forth in this simplest form of the verb, portraying most
vividly the dread impending desolation.
It is pertinent, here, to observe that this mode of expressionemploying the present tense to indicate future events-is of
frequent occurrence in the prophetic Scriptures. Would the
holy prophet foretell that Messiah would suffer in innocence, patience and silence?  He speaks of the event as present to his
mind, and exclaims, " He is led as a lamb to the slaughter"not shall be led; though the event was, as yet, some seven hundred years in the future.
This species of style, which is an excellence rather than a de



4
feet, is not peculiar to the sacred poets. It often obtains in the
finest periods of secular poetry; and the most erudite historians
often throw a past or a future tense into the pr9esent to give life
and force to their narratives.
Unhappily, we have, just now, amongst us, a very injurious
order of Biblical critics-cold, captious and minute-who are
ever in trouble about these and similar passages in the Word of
God; who spend their days in frivolous and bewildering solicitude over the most inconsiderable distinctions pertaining to the
mnere " letter" or incidents of Revelation. They would clip the
wings of inspired Genius and bid her creep upon the dust at their
own dull, plodding pace. They would silence her voice, did she
decline to announce her oracles in their own little, precise
phraseology. To such the whole destiny of Christianity often
seems to turn upon the specific rendering of some small phrasesome philological point or accent (important in itself and as an incident), or perchance, on some appalling discrepancy between
the inches of lava at the base of a volcano, and the very minute
of time when the human race arose into being and dwelt in
shady borders in the garden of Paradise!
To such idle and absurd calculations and criticisms, such vain,
petty punctilio, the celestial muses deign not to condescend.
Though every passage in the sacred canon, when cautiously
and fully interpreted, will ever be found to coincide with every
sober and faithful generalization of new facts, whether these
facts pertain to the discoveries of natural science, to the proper
interpretation of language, or to any subject-mental or material-within the limits of things created-the remotest points
of space, or periods of time to which the human mind could
ever rise even in its conceptions.
The passage now before us cannot be perceived in its full intent, until the mind is set free from these puerilities of small
critics, and brought back to its natural position, where, alone,
the beauty and grandeur of this prophecy may meet the eye and
arouse the soul.




5
If you would, then, approach the startling import of the text,
attend simply to the simple figure here introduced: "We all do
fade"-we, the kingdom of Judah, do fade —" as a leaf, and our
(national) iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away." The
leaf of a tree or plant is presented as the emblem of his country. It is a fading leaf, trembling in the chilling winds. The
air of autumn has breathed decay upon its verdant beauty. No
more it drinks the evening dews; no more it greets the smiling
beams of early, joyous light. The frosts and the snows of winter-the storm and the tempest are bent upon its ruin. See that
leaf, as it struggles in vain on the verge of dissolution, grasping
faintly in its frail fibres the shrinking stem that gave it birth,
till the last fatal blast sweeps it " away."  Then, behold the
kingdom of Judah soaring high far above all the nations of the
earth, smiling with upward bent in the noontide of Jehovah's
love, till, at last, cankered and cursed, turning its face from God,
it is torn away in violence, and drifted into Babylon in a whirlwind of the Divine indignation.
Following, then, this the strict sense of these words, we shall,
I. BRIEFLY CONTEMPLATE THE PROSPERITY, THE POPULAR VICES,
AND THE FADING AWAY OF THE HEBREW NATION.
II. ILLUSTRATE, SOM12EWHAT, THE IDENTITY OF THE GREAT GENERAL LAwS WHICH CONTROLLED THE HEBREW DESTINY, WITH THOSE
THAT HAVE EVER OPERATED VITALLY IN THE REAL RISE AND DECAY OF OTHER NATIONS.
III. ENDEAVOR TO INDICATE SEVERAL ELEMENTS OF DECAY IN
THE EXISTING INSTITUTIONS OF OUTP OWN COUNTRY, WITH CERTAIN
LEADING REMEDIES.
I. BRIEFLY CONTEMPLATE THE PROSPERITY, THE POPULAR VICES,
AND THE FADING AWAY OF THE HIEBREW NATION.
In reaching the true idea of national prosperity, it must be assumed that a' people are really prosperous in proportion to their
knowledge and sense of the true God, and to their constant




cherishing the institutes he has vouchsafed for their attainment
of the highest excellence.
In the dispensations of the Almighty we discover no arbitrary
bestowal of prosperity upon any people. He dispenses his
highest blessings to the nations that know most of HIim, and
whose institutions have the highest aim. This is a pervading
principle in the Divine administration, losing itself beyond the
human vision only in that mysterious sovereignty which every
reasoning being must recognize, and by which the Omniscience
gives or withholds the full knowledge and sense of Himself to
one nation rather than to another.
Unless we are prepared to dispute the simplest truisms in
morality that have obtained among all enlightened communities
in every age-unless we are to stifle the deep, prevailing convictions that cry out in every human bosom for the eternacl distinction between virtue and vice,-we must acknowledge that
the Almighty, "' who giveth to all liberally," hath favorably distinguished this great people from millions of mankind.
Hath IHe not conferred upon me higher favors than upon the
poor, wretched troglodyte who feeds on reptiles, and seeks the
hollow rocks to find a shelter from the murderous weapons of his
kindred and friends? He who will not see that God has bestowed higher favors on New England than on New Holland,
has simply lost his moral sense, and with this, all claim, save for
our sympathy, upon our attention on a subject of this nature.
We say, then, that the same general law characterizing the divine action upon the different and opposite economies of modern
nations, is especially observable in the case of the Hebrew
people.
We see the divine choice falling upon a single man and his
descendants. This choice was not arbitrary. The personal excellences of Abraham, so far as we are informed, were higher
than those of any other man then living. And though it
cannot be denied that Abraham had, antecedently to his " call,"
been " made to differ" by an act of grace altogether sovereign in




7
its nature, yet God probably elected him to his sublime eminence
among good men, in view of the circumstance that he was, or
would be, the best of living men. The great progenitor of the
favored nation was no warring chief or military general famed
for bloody contest,-no Jupiter or god-like hero, but a plain,
peaceable man, eschewing every merely personal aim, and
humbly walking with God. Whatever, therefore, may have
been all the reasons for the choice of this man as the head of this
great people, we are deliberate in pointing out
1. The high religious character of Abriaham? a8s an wnczaie nt
element of the prosperity of the iebirew NaCtioLn.
If special religious tendencies are not transmitted in the blood,
they are certainly transmitted in the line. To deny this, is to
contend with the authority of historical facts, and with our common observation sufficiently extended.
Every devout Israelite prayed more fervently when he thought
of the persevering prayers of Abraham; and when he thought of
the persevering prayers of Abraham  it was in part, becacuse
Abraham's tendencies stirred within him.
No Israelite, enlightened from above, could ever acknowledge
Abraham, or any other mere nman, as the tltinmate mzode of character. But a great model of personal excellence he certainly
became with multitudes, so long as he was known and read in
the assemblies of the people.
As they dwelt upon his singular fcaith, his obedience under
severe trials, his simplicity and unsullied integrity, they became
more faithful, obedient, truthful, and perfect in their own character as individuals, and as a people. So far as they followed
Abraham and pleased God, they were prosperous, at peace, and
happy.
2. But the leading element of their prosperity wmas thefir possession of divite revelationzs and diviney cp2poitetd insitutes.
In writing to the Romans, St. Paul (who was quite competent
to estimate the real value or worthlessness of the various heathen institutions he met with,) refers directly to the transcendent




8
privileges of the Hebrews.  "What advantage (over other
nations) then hath the Jew?" He answers, " Much every way:"
but " chtiefy, because that unto them  were committed the
ORACLES OF GOD."
To the children of Abraham pertained " the adoption, and the
glory, and the covenants, and the GIVING OF THE LAW, and the
SERVICE of God."  Jehovah, himself, became their Lawgiver.
" He established a testimgony in Jacob, and appointed a law in
Israel which they were commanded to make known to their
children; that the generations to come might KNOW them," who
should arise and "' declare them (again) to their children, that
they might set their hope in God, and not forget his works."
No one of these laws was " higher " than any of the rest, as respects the authority enjoining them. They were all "high "
laws, emanating from the highest authority. Each was well defined in its individual and general applications. Each was
equally imperative in its execution. There was no Church AND
State, but Church IN State, and State IN Church. Let it here be
observed, that all the Levitical Institutes, in all their striking
peculiarities, are only specific applications of great general principles, of personal and social laws, long before acknowledged and
practiced under the Patriarchal dispensation, and which will
continue hereafter to be acknowledged and practiced wherever
mankind shall conform to the great essential moral and religious
conditions of their nature.
Behold, then, the nation favored and free! Where are the
freemen so free as the sons of Jacob, living under laws so
wise, so strict, so beneficent? The devout Israelite must bow
dowrn to no human being, as such, nor commute his sacred dignity, at the peril of his soul.
The Declaration of his Independence is proclaimed amid
" thunderings and lightnings" from the mountain top. The
declaration of rights-the constitution of Heaven —lifts him, at
once, far ab6ve the frown of any and every mortal man. So
long as he obeys, no enemy may touch him and prosper.




9
No nation, as a whole, before or since-monarchical, republican, or what else-could boast of stuch freedom,-rational
liberty, as was, once and again, the birth-right of the humblest
man, the poorest of the people among the descendants of Jacob.
It was liberty zunder law,-not self-will under self. It was
liberty from God, not license from macn.
The ten general principles embraced in the injunctions of the
Decalogue were matured in the divine mind from a full view of
all the exigencies of human nature, throughout all ages. aNo
human jurisprudence could ever have drawn up such a summary, to which every moral act and every secret emotion can be
clearly, readily, and safely referred.
This general Law, first essentially proclaimed in Paradise,
variously reiterated to the generations of the Patriarchal era,
and, at last, written with the finger of God on the tables of stone,
was the central element of the national prosperity, the highest
glory of the people Israel. So long as they kept this law they
were the glory of all lands, "the perfection of (national)
beauty," and a terror to the dissolute communities around them.
When surrounding nations were sunk in the pollutions of paganism; when Gentile sages were groping in great darkness, blindly
tracing one manifestation of creative power to this god and
another to that; when devoted, benighted multitudes saw the
sun in the heavens moved by one divinity, and the moon by
another;-the son of Abraham, enlightened and devout, raised
his suppliant eyes to HIimn, whose finger moves the " universal
frame," and the little child was early taught, what this blind
philosophy had failed to teach, that this Almighty Personal
Power pervaded the heavens and the earth; that this one energy,
propelling countless revolving spheres, and wielding the fiery
comet through its long, lonely traject, is mysteriously centred
in the Eternal Essence of all excellence, in unity of one intelligent Cause-the one only living and true Jehovah. Yes, they
were prosperous above all other nations, because they were wise:




10
and they were wise because they followed the light that fell immediately from Heaven.
When the far-famed pagan rationalist, (rationalist in the
better sense,) the profoundest moralist of heathen antiquity,
the loftiest genius that Athens ever produced, —awbke to a
manly sense of the All-Searching Presence of One, Supreme,
Intelligent Mind,-it was the radiance of Heaven, descending
first on Palestine and glimmering athwart the AEgean Deep,
that fell upon the eyelids of the " wise man " when he drank the
fatal hemlock, and died a martyr to the truth. For it must be
conceded that Socrates and other Greek philosophers derived
their light either from  Palestine, or through tradition from
one of the sons of Noah. They were dependent on tra-cltiors, not intuitions, for their best notions of Deity. They were
yet more dependent, either directly or indirectly, on the Israelites living contemporaneously with themselves.
These two facts in authentic history are of great importance;
not only as indicating the origin of the highest heathen conceptions of Deity, and the source of their best ethical systems, but
as also indicating the origin of the Hellenic and Roman Institutes; and by consequence, as indicating the real origin of the
modern Gallican and other European laws, which are assumed
by some able economists to be derived, ultimactely, from the
Roman code. The English or American law also is essentially
the body of the Church Canons, traceable to the Hebrew Institutes. A bust of the Hebrew law-giver decorated the library of
a Roman statesman.
The transcendent prosperity of the Hebrew people was felt and
acknowledged by the heathen nations far and near. Monarchs
from  remote regions visited the "City of the Great King."
" For lo, the kings were assembled, they passed by together;
they saw it, and so they marvelled; they were troubled, and
hasted away."  While gazing upon the strength and beauty, the
splendour and opulence of the Grand Symbol of the Divine
Presence, the loyalty, virtue, and equality of the population, they




11
marvelled, were troubled, they hasted away. Well might these
exclaim, " Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding
people." Yes, human nature-beyond the boundaries of the
Christian Zion-never assumed a lovelier, pu)urer, mnore glorious
aspect, than it did on the banks of the Jordan, among the tribes
of the Lord, when they heard His voice and walked in His
Statutes. As rigid virtue and piety contributed to individual
strength and efficiency, so the whole nation grew strong and,?nighty, as they were humble, faithful and obedient. In Jerusalem, the Lord had said, my name shall dwell there. Hither the
tribes came up to hear the law and celebrate HIis praise. IHere
stood the temple, " the noblest pile that ever pressed the earth,"
the Sanctuary and the Holy of IIolies, where the Ark of the
Lord, with the two tables of stone, was placed.  HI-ere the
heavenly glory descended, uttering forth the oracles of life.
Here sat the wisest and most erudite of eastern kings, " Solomon
in all his glory," swaying a sceptre from the hand of God-a
sceptre of righteousness and peace-over all the kings from
Egypt to Chaldea.
Jerusalem! the Scene of the most sublime events in the
annals of mankind! the favored spot whereon angels have
deigned to tread their heavenly feet!  Mount Zion! beautiful
for situation, the joy of the whole earth-God was known in her
palaces for a Refuge!
Behold, the faithful tribes thronging the temple gates to
celebrate the praises of Jehovah.  See, their king, learned,
illustrious, devout, kneeling near the altar before all the congregation, supplicating the mercies of God on his people
and their children, and thus you may infer their transcendent
prosperity. Well might they fondly exclaim, " What nation
is there so great who hath God so nigh unto them as the Lord
our God is in all things that we call upon Him for."  " What
nation is there so great that hath STATUTES and JUDGMIENTS SO
righteous as all this LAW."  It is not, then, the nature or extent of
their commzzerce, not the power or fame of armies or navies, not




12
even the renown of their warriors and kings, but statutes and judymnents vouchsafed from IHeaven. So long as these were administered by men fearing God and hating covetousness, they continued to maintain a moral ascendency over every other people.
The Hebrew regimen touched the individual springs of individual action. Every man felt every law to be a law for himself,
and that, under a divine sanction.  He regarded no law Ias
emanating from man; hence he had no beggarly fear of man, as
such. Human authority was a mockery when divine laws were
clearly taught and impartially executed-when, not only the organic law itself, but its exposition and its execution were divinely
appointed, so that no individual or majority could originate a
single enactment for his neighbor, or for the minority of the
people. Hence, you perceive here the higher claw in its true and
safe application. No majority, as such, —no agency whatever,
short of one directly commissioned from Heaven's ultimate
throne, could apply this law beyond the personal acts of the individual who conceived this law to be the " higher law." HIere
was individual independence, individual equal rights, exercised
in absolute indifference to, or defiance of, any interference or
espionage of other men, or bodies of men.
Here is an approach to a social perfectibility, that modern
philanthropy has as yet hardly dreamed of. Here are the lineaments of a perfect humanity, to which the Church, from past
unbelief, must as yet look forward.
The Lord was " very near" unto them. The daughter of Zion
was as the apple of his eye. " Behold, I clothed thee also with
broidered work, and shod thee with badger's skin (saith the
Lord). I girded thee about with fine linen, and I covered thee
with silk. I decked thee also with ornaments, and put bracelets
upon thine hands, and a chain upon thy neck. I put a jewel on
thy forehead, and ear-rings in thine ears, and a beautiful crown
upon thy head. Thou wast exceeding beautiful, and thou didst
prosper into a kingdom; and thy renown went forth among the




13
heathen for thy beauty-for it was perfect through my conmeliness, which I had put upon thee, saith the Lord God."
3. But a dread Decadence was to follow:- Shall such a
people, so far advanced-so near in the divine affection, ever
fall back and pine away under the scorn and derision of the
base and the abominable? Shall beauty-so transcendent —the
handiwork of Heaven, ever be unveiled to the gross starethe wanton touch —of the profane and polluted heathen?
Alas! the daughter of Sion forsook the Lord her God, and
committed the abominations of the heathen. " Thou didst trust
in thine own beauty, and playedst the harlot, because of thy
renown."
The majority of the people, and their king, flushed in
their prosperity-flattered by their neighbors, and deceived
by their own deceitful hearts —" drew back from the good
ways of the Lord," and were turned unto their idols: and soon,
but a few were found in the borders of Jacob, who humbly
and sternly withstood the popular mania for idols, and the
odious abominations of heathen worship. Through a succession of dire vicissitudes, the princes and the people went on from
bad to worse. Torrents of social vices swept over the land.
Idleness, sensuality, oppression, lying, slandering, Sabbathbreaking, profanity and contempt of God, every where prevailed: and no power under the heavens (or above them) could
now avert the blackening cloud of vengeance soon to burst upon
their guilty heads, and to scatter them among their enemies.
The cup of their iniquity was, at last, filled to the brim-the
patience of God was, at length, exhausted, and this stupid and
stubborn people must now begin to realize, in all their bitterness, the consequences of their iniquity. A day of wrath-a
day of trouble and distress-a day of wasteness and desolationis at hand. The mighty man of valor trembles in his loins, and
howls bitterly on the ground. A voice of wailing is heard out
of Zion-" How are we spoiled! A nation, fierce and strong,
have come up against us! The army of the Chaldees encompass




14
thee, O Jerusalem, and break down thy walls! Thy holy temple have they defiled, and our streets run down with blood!
Woe unto us, that we have sinned!-that we have sinned!!
Our young men perish in the streets! Our daughters are a
prey to devouring legions!  Teach your daughters, O  ye
women-teach your daughters, wailing! —that our eyes may
run down with tears, and our eyelids gush out with waters!
Our transgressions are bound upon our neck, and they that
hate us do carry us away! We all do fade as a leaf, and oure
in&iqrtties, like the wind, hcave taken 9s away."
Alas! she that was the glory of all lands, and princess among
the provinces, is gone into captivity.  She sitteth alonealone-upon the ground, and hangeth down her head! She
weepeth sore in the night, and tears are on her cheeks. The
ways of Zion do mourn —her gates are desolate-her priests
sigh —her beauty hath departed and " faded like a leaf-her iniquities, like the wind, have taken her away!"
II. I SHALL ILLUSTRATE) SOMEWHAT, THE IDENTITY OF THE GREAT
GENERAL LAWS WHICH CONTROLLED THE HIEBREW DESTINY, WITH
THOSE THAT HAVE EVER OPERATED, VITALLY) IN THE REAL RISE AND
DECAY OF OTHER NATIONS, AS SUCH.
I remark here that though several of the old historians and philosophers had derived, through tradition from Palestine, and
otherwise, many fragments of the Hebrew Institutes, yet they
always fail in presenting us with the true idea of national prosperity. And it is remarkable and significant, that the poor infidels, Gibbon and Hume, never knowingly point us to the true
epoch when the people had actually made the nearest approach
to real national prosperity. They never climbed the heights of
Zion to survey the panorama of the Past. They sat under the
fig-tree of our civilization, but knew not that the invisible winds
wafted to it the invisible pollen from the Tree of Life.
We must, therefore, leave these shadows which benighted and
solitary spirits have sought, and rise to the holy mount of vision




15
and accustom our eye to the broad blaze of the sun whose burning radiance dissipates the cold bewildering mists that hover
heavily over the low levels of prejudice and passion.
We must yet rise above the region of storm and tempest which
shake the various eminences in Church or State; and seek the
point in space where the spirit, humbly poised on its own true
identity, may first calmly look to God, and then upon the vast
realm of the Past, —and here diligently descry the long, long
lines of everlasting laws extending themselves from the first
chaos of mundane affairs down to the last dread crisis when
"Time shall be no longer."
Nay, let us contemplate some of these general laws shooting
back beyond the mystic heights where time began; and see how
daring spirits who thought to trample them, and prosper still,
soon felt beneath their impious feet the terrible rebound which
threw them in dismay beyond the battlements of Heaven. The
greater the stature and the dignity of the transgressor the greater
the rebound-the more profound the plunge. The more exalted
the nation that may set at naught the Almighty the more terrible
the curse when the catastrophe comes.
Where do we read of such suffering as came on Jerusalemz at last,
when their national cup of iniquity was filled? Their knowledge
of what they had been and might ghave been, gave the keenest
edge to the invading sword. The delicate mother devouring the
babe at her breast, knew and felt the being she was murdering
to be immortal. What shame and contempt could equal theirs,
with all their high sense of national character, when they at last
beheld the foul bird of the heathen god soaring disdainfully over
the proudest glories of the favored nation?
1. We say then, that the same general laws pervading the economy of all nations in all time are followed in their inevitable
operations by rewards and penalties the same in natucre, but clfferinrg in their extent or intensity, according to the religious
capacity and elevation of the people; the descent being more




16
steep and more terrific in the case of highly privileged nations,
and vice versa.
Now, observe, that the only modification that can affect the
undeviating action of these general social laws, is strictly moral
and religious-not material.  This modification may be an
agency from God or one from the human will, or both: but it is
always moral.
Need we inquire for example what were the efficient agencies
that overthrew the great city, ZBabylon? The Babylonians, (like all
other ancient heathen nations) had had some knowledge of the true
God by tradition and otherwise. During the later periods, those of
their greatest apparent prosperity, vast numbers of captive Jews,
and many of the princes of Judah, had been borne thither, who had
disseminated ampler knowledge of the true Jehovah. Daniel
and others had exemplified, in that dissolute cotrt, the life of godliness. But the people and their rulers contemned the great
organic moral laws without which society in any of its stages of
progress cannot hold together. DMonstrous monopoly of the material results of labor, oppression on the largest scale, general
concubinage and contempt for the holy marriage vow, luxury,
lying, profanity, Sabbath-breaking, and the worst forms of idolatry, everywhere prevailed. National dissolution must ensue. It
did ensue; but, at a period in their history utterly unexpected
by the wisest and most talented statesmen in the cabinet of Belshazzar.-A notable instance of national self-complacence.
The same (and no other) general laws, binding with an iron
grasp the penalties to the perpetration of national evil, are equally
conspicuous in the sad and sanguinary phenomena of the other
great empires of antiquity. All the great ends of true government were constantly overlooked in the fires kindled amlong the
lower passions. When the last city or province had been subdued-when the triumphal car bore the mighty conqueror in the
imperial pageant-when the strongest arm held the reins of
government, and the empire seemed to rest in prosperity, at the
very acme of glory, —the whole body-politic was a mass of cor



17
ruption, and the great laws of the great God were again hastening to dissolution, that which the profoundest statesmen had just
proclaimed perpetual.
2. These general moral laws are not, in the slightest degree,
afected in their eficiency by any, or all, of the discoveries or.mjprovements of modern times.
Shall I point you to the modern despotisms of the Eastnations tottering with decay —to the miserable republics on the
South of this continent-nations of untimely birth? No. But
rather to the track of bloodshed and revolution among the European states of our own day, to Paris itself-Paris-the foul
seat, it would seem, of the foul Beast of the Apocalypse, if
anywhere on earth.
Trace the course of the recent tornadoes of revolutions over
Europe, and tell me if the causes, remote or proximate, lay in the
want of mere material or scientific advancement. Put your finger
on the map of Europe, and show me a single state, thoroughly
Protestant, and generally moral, that did not escape the violence
and blood of these inevitable revolutions. Is there no science in
the French metropolis —no mental activity-no intellectuality —
no arts-no refinement? Yes-but there is no Sabbath-and
where there is no Fowrth Commandment, there is no _Familyand where there is no cFamily —you have neither the Fifth, the
Sixth, nor the Seventh Commandment. And can you have Society without these?  Vain thought! Society! Are all the ends
of Society compassed in securing enough to eat, to drink, to.
wear? Let five hundred or five thousand men and women, cot.temning the experience of the race, form a Fraternity, or a
State. Let them fence themselves in from mankind; let them
bridle and bit their being into the pursuit of these ends; let them
grub and grovel, and grovel and grub, till the " common stock"
has become sufficient to feed and clothe the community for fifty
years. What then?  Why, if in ten years Dissolution did not
mercifully interpose, the earth itself, if it had a mouth, would
spew them beyond the Milky Way, and drop them at last into the
2




18
dread Gehenna, where Communism may find no general laws to
disturb and overthrow its absurdities and its abominations.
One great general law of Revelation-or, if you please, of
the actual condition and destiny of man —is, that he can never
rise from the depths of ignorance and self-condemnation in
which he finds himself, without a divine impulse, received by
and through the Savior Christ and his Church. If you say,
little has been done through this influence down to the presentI state, as a historical fact, that all that has been done for mankind, as individuals or nations, has been by and through this
divine influence, and no other.
Without the Fctmily, without the Chiceh, all the actings of
Society become introverted. There is no free and joyous development. The whole social phenomenon becomes a floundering monster, devouring itself, and ever hastening to dissolution.
When the Hebrews lost the Revelation —the Living Oraclesthe Law and the Testimony, beneath the immense rubbish of
Talmud and Tradition, they lost the living Churc7h, and they lost
the loving Famzily. W~ith these they lost everything. So when
the Eastern and the Romish Churches, trembling before the living page of Inspiration, began to ask, like the Israelites at Sinai,
that the voice of God should speak no more to them directly —
when they began indolently to fear to read cdirectly for themselves, lest "private judgment" might deceive and destroywhen they suspended the function of reasoning, and blindly
raised the Golden Calf of a Blind Authority-when the miserable rubbish of Tradition began, again, to rise to mountain
height between the people and the Ark of Testimony, overshadowing the nations in darkness and mildew —when at last,
the teachers and the taught are found in mean prostration,
wailing to the manes of the " Fathers" to come back and explain
to them what the Word of God mnight ~really be, or mean —then
we have Society, again, the same monstrous thing stalking about,
trampling down the very frame-work —the primary laws-of
humanity. What! Society without a Bible! —a Church withoul




19
a Bible!-a Family without a Bible! As well imagine perfect
day without the sun. In such a case, there is no permanent security —no progress, no liberty-no free, independent thought —
no public honor —no domestic confidence-no restraint to passion-no deference for age or office —no happiness.
Now, these general lcws controlling, at allperiods of time in
the same way, the course of human events and the destiny of
nations, and consequently affecting the condition, rights: sex, capacity, labor and its results, of different classes of a community,
must have had thAeir origin far before and above anything that
the human mind could originate.
Take the aggregate experience of the greatest individual
mind of any age-what is it?  Take that of a whole generation-what is it? Take the aggregate of what the human family
have acquired in 5,000 years-then deduct what is lost in transmitting any s&ch sequence of facts or events, on a question of
this nature, from age to age,-and what does it all amount to?
I protest, then, that the author or editor, or who else, who presumes to propound to mankind any theory of society or of government, which he refers to his own individual experience and
observation, or to that of his own, or any age or ages, he is immeasurably reckless, and utterly uncandid.  And yet how
many of these upstart infidel philosophers, in their own complacency, have had the impertinence to propound to mankind
not only a theory of society and of government, but of the
economics of heaven and earth! They have written Bibles for
the race. How many, at this moment-wildly renouncing all
Divine institutes-are groping their way throughout the wild
chaos of speculation, that they may bring back to the mother earth
yet some other theory of Life and Destiny? How many poor
political empirics, at this moment, in France, are babbling before the world about their miserable schemes of social organization! These all obstinately decline to receive a perfect series of
general primary laws, vouchsafed from Heaven-too general for
the human mind to originate-and which, in proportion to their




20
prevalence in any national code, give value to real and personal
estate, and provide for all the higher developments of humanity, —arraigning every individual, with Bible in hand, before
the Court of Hbeaven and his own Conscience, and pointing him
to his real interest, present and ultimate, as the chief motive of
his daily acts. These universal laws contemned, the penalties
are the same in nature in the case of call nations.
Now, in this career of reckless ranging, without helm or compass, no real progress in political science is possible.  Plunging
at random over the everlasting landmarks of life, the vain inquirer loses his equipoise. The great laws trampled, shake the surface beneath his feet, forbidding calm and copious investigation.
To such an one all is motion, and therefore all is progress!and all progress to him seems change!  Whereas, the diligent
Christian student discovers, from his solid stand-point, a grand
dezvelopment-not essential change-in the phenomena around
him. All is to him  a sublime evolution of great, complex and
generic laws, revealed from Heaven, and now being elaborated
by those communities of mankind who are nearest, or above, the
sacred eminence from which he himself views the whole.
This development, alas, has been sadly checked and thwarted,
from age to age, as the lower passions, rising rampant, weighed
down the nations; at one epoch under the dire pursuits of wars
and the horrible abominations of heathen worship; at another,
under the wand of priestly domination, when every evolution
of humanity was a caricature of itself. But wherever, in antiquity, or in modern time, the light of Divine revelation has
shone, either through direct traditions, or the teaching church,
it has brought forth from the frozen earth a plentiful harvest of
intellectual and scientific enlargement. The rays of heavenly
light, falling first on Palestine, glided into Egypt and Greece.
The same heavenly rays, in glorious reflection, dimmed by
the deadly emanations from the swamps of medie'val time, are
again bursting forth, and promise soon to dry up the foul
effluvia of the Tiber itself, and to bring to naught the whole sys



21
tenl of the inane stupidities of Roman Canon and Ritual that
is still a disgrace to us all as children of the great European
family —as the offspring of the intelligent Creator.
But the pseudo-economist to whom we referred, has yet to discover that the great morTal relations, though infinitely various, have
never varied an iota in six thousand years from the one Centre.
Murder, fraud, slander, lying and idolatry have alwaceys been,
and always will be, murder, fraud, slander, lying and idolatryheinous in the sight of God. The elenzents of human naturethe organic laws of society-are the same now  as they were
in the days of Noah, Solomon, or St. Paul. Respecting these
" there is nothing *new under the sun."  The passing windsthe wild tempest-may agitate the restless surface of the
seas, when all is tranquil in the silent bosomn of the deep.
The surface of humanity is, now and again, greatly diversified;
manners and customs at different times and places give various
hues and shades to the exterior of things; revolutions, inventions, new discoveries, all produce their several effects; but
the great natural and moral laws, centering in the eternal
Jehovah, continue undisturbed in their undeviating operation
throughout all time. One generation may be attired in sackcloth, and the next in purple and fine linen; but it is the same
helpless, guilty nature still.
At one period men may traverse the earth at the dull, tardy
pace of a caravan of Ishmaelites —at another more advanced
age, they may float from place to place on the wings of the
wind, but each is no nearer to God than the other.
Any possible degree of advancement in any of the arts, in
the science of government, or any of all the sciences, can never
essentially modify, alter or affect, either the great doctrines of
Revelation itself, or the elementary condition of mankind to
which these doctrines are eternally adapted.  There is the
highest moral certainty to believe that there is not one passage
of Sacred Scripture, duly interpreted, that will ever contradict
any thorough classification of new facts.; that all faithful gene



22
ralizations, fully elaborated, will continue (as they have heretofore) to harmonize with every faithful interpretation of the
Bible; that what the Church has continued to hold as, in the
main, truly Catholic teaching, will still continue to claim
alliance with every unborn reality which is yet to burst upon the
human mind in the progress of future time. It is this universality in the divine, revealed laws, binding every link in the
sequence of events through long ages, that brings us to any
confident conclusions as to the rise or fall of any given nation
or people. And when we discover no one exception in the
operation of these laws since time began, how can we hesitate as
to their origin being before and above the highest flight of human reason?
III. SHALL I THEN PROCEED TO INDICATE CERTAIN ELEMENTS OF
DECAY IN THE INSTITUTIONS OF OUR OWN COUNTRY?
Shall we entertain the unwelcome inquiry? Is it possible
that our "iniquities like the wind are, actually, taking us away?"
This is no gratuitous question in any point of view. The
history of nations, both sacred and profane, admonishes us to entertazm  such a hypothesis. There is not in the numerous examples
of national declension, a single instance where the multitudes of
the people, or their most distinguished statesmen, had any serious
apprehensions that " all was not, and would not be well," even
when the hour of their doom was at hand. They folded their
arms in that easy, stupid skepticism, that clings to the spirit
after a long course of obstinate pride and sensuality.
Cheerfully would I cherish the fond hope that a destiny of unfading renown and blessing awaits this great republic. Nor
would I yield to that peevish, melancholy forebodin~g that is ever
beholding shades and spectres even in the brightness of the noonday sun. But, with the eventful past in view, and the Bible in
our hands, how shall we designate certain obviously prevailing
tendencies among the masses of the people and their rulers?
Now, on this ocean of vast uncertainty, heaving with life and im



23
mortality, have we no point in the moving canopy above from which
to estimate, with certainty, our actual bearings? If not,-then
there is no end to disquisition. If the human family are thrown
adrift amid these blustering strands-these wild hurricanes that
guard this crazy earth, with no kindly luminary, ever fixed and
sure, by which to take their course,-then one opinion is as good
as another on any topic of the Social Economy.
I. It is necessary here to premise that, wherever, in the
past, the external institution of Revealed Religion has existed
in its simple integrity, there all the ends of civil organization
have been attained in the highest degree; and there they
have been perpetuacted, just so long as this institution of religion
has been preserved in its simplicity. Look at Israel under the
Judges, under the reigns of the pious kings.  Look at any of
those ancient nations that came in close proximity with the
Hebrews, how much they differed from those more remote. Look
at the Nestorians and other ancient communities (isolated from
the Romish ta Greek  churches) in the East, whose existence is perpetuated with many blessings. They have always
had an open Bible and they have generally aimed to admeasure
the dimensions of their Church by that open Bible. Look, now,
at Scotland, England, Holland, and New England, where the
external institution of religion is kept, in the main, within the
simple bounds of the simple gospel. Where are all the ends of
civil government so fully realized (though even here only very
partially) as in those countries?
This being a fact in history-a very prominent and significant fact-no honest man can hesitate to proclaim  the
same under any fear of encountering any popular sentiment
founded in ignorance or in the dishonesty and selfishness
of that large and mischievous class of men whom we might
denominate the " Peoples' Demagogues."  These poor panderers to the popular ignorance and the popular vice, mleanly
cast a blot on the actual history of the actual past, and hypocritically pretend that the State can exist without any kind of Cumrch,'




24
as if the priestly ignorance and assumptions of certain ages and
countries were inherent elements of the Gospel Church. If you
refer to the Romish or the Anglican church, we will join in the
cry, " no Church and State!" That is, let us have no suce relations as exist between these Churches and these States! But
we say, no community can long exist without Religion and
State. And the freedom and happiness of any people has been,
is, and will be, in proportion to the essential purity of their religion-the open Bible being the standard of that purity. The
Constitution of the United States, (notwithstanding all the recent
miserable bluster about Church and State) defers in many particulars to the essential Christian Church. For you cannot have
Religion without Church, nor can you have an actual Church
without actual Religion.
For, however sensible and intelligent men may differ as to the
visible Church, they must all acknowledge that it is something
tangible-having life, energy, action; —that it is not a mere collection of abstractions or transcendental sublimities-not some
tiny web of mere moral entities, depending from some aerial
power; but a visible, incorporated agency through which the
will of God is unfolded and perpetuated-subject to the conditions of time, place, personality; and inspired, (or moved upon,)
by a spiritual life which accrues to it by divine promise directly
firom above.
The Church is not, and cannot be, imrperiur, in imperio, but it
is MORE, —it is at this moment, in this country, an empire OVER an
empire. It is by Christ (through his Church) that kings reign,
and princes (rulers) decree justice. All that is good and permanent in the Constitution and laws of the United States rests
on the same sublime pedestal with the Church.
The Church visible "is not of this world," but is it not in this
world? Is it not to and for this world? I as she not given laws to
Europe and the United States? What was at first the common
law of England?Aad been the canon law of the Chulrch. What
then becomes of this ignorant cry about Church and State?




25
It has no pertinency here in the United States, wherever the
Bible is open and read.
This fear of some monstrous union of " Church and State" is
the fear of the most cnlpable ignorance, in these times at leastif it was not in the exciting period of the Revolution, when some
of the distinguished fathers, spurning all Englis/h ideas of society,
craved everything that was then'Frenc/k, at a time when France
knew no Church but the Romish caricature-no Christian philosophy above the political reveries of the Sorbonne. We smile,
now, at the poor French fears that enervated such a mind as that
of John Jay, when, after his return from France, we see himn
persuading effectually the Legislature of this State (New York)
to disfranchise the Protestant ministry! This school of economists whom Providence has been scourging for the past hundred
years-turning away from the constant lessons of history-would
open a gulf impassable between the Church and the State. Vain
attempt! As well attempt to open a vacuum between the coarse
earth beneath our feet and the all-pervading atmosphere above,
that ministers to all light, life and blessings without end.
2. I would offer here an important distinction: —There are
certain social tendencies which one nation has in common with
all nations; others, which it has in common with a few; and
others again that are peculiar to itself; if we group together
some seven or eight distinct and independent nations, comprising
mainly the races of the Anglo-Saxon and the Teuton-but which
are more philosophically distinguished as the Bible-reacding grou2p
of nations;-we shall observe the order of Providential blessing,
and the order of cursing, to be much the same in each case, and
differing widely in these respects from the other communities
of mankind, fromn whom the celestial light is shut out.
These blessings, then, are greater, freer, purer, than simply
national blessings. They are a gushing tide of beatitude, rising
high above the levels of nations, and flowing onwards, carrying
away the walls of war-like cities, the fencings of separate States,
and filling all hearts with joy and gladness.




26
Great Britain and North America are now fulfilling essentially
the same destiny. The religious, civil, and literary institutions
are nearly identical. In certain lines of mzaterial progress, all
with them seems elastic-promising; nothing tottering or effete.
But let us look again. Is the youth in his prime never cut
down?  M:ay not fatal disease invade the young and rising
nation?
This brings me to the
1. Indication of dissolution in the national existence of the
United States, viz.: Contagion from the dissolute communz ites
of Roman catholic Europe.
Formerly this contagion was of trivial extent-not affecting
the vitals of the system. The essential vigor resisted and overpowered every disease merely topical. The French virus of the
West and the South-though the most malignant of all-has
been thrown off before the internal moral energy of the North
and the East. Of all the causes of decay now operating, we
place the one here indicated as the most unmanageable, and the
most intense. Look at the effects of this agency of Continental
European immigrations in the Southern regions of this hemisphere, and around the Caribbean Sea. At the periods of their
immigration, most of the countries whence they came were less
intelligent than now, but more free from a class of vices that
render them now more destructive elements of society, especially
of such an order of society as ours, to the equal and harmonious
action of which, the indispensable quantum of moral or religious
force, is far greater than in most other economies as yet existing
on the earth.
Let this moral or religious force be neutralized by the overpowering swarms of vices now being imported, that have been
fermenting for centuries in the stagnant pool of the Middle
Ages,-and farewell to the fair form of OUR Liberty, which was
revived, nourished, and restored to men, (as the infidel Hume
explicitly admits,) under the auspices of Puritan pulpits, Puritan
Sabbaths, and Puritan school-houses.




27
Shall Liberty continue to smile when she beholds around her
feet these leprous multitudes pouring in upon us from every
estuary of Papal Europe, and putting to our lips the foul cup
that the iniquitous Power at Rome has held to theirs for ages?
Every improvement in the steam engine-every new facility
for locomotion by sea or land-every transatlantic crisis in commerce, in  manufactures, or in the frequent upheavings of
the social economy-all these are now nmultijp)lying exceedingly
the magnitude of this new and threatening power. I ask you
calmly to contemplate these, and their direct results.
It would not be altogether insane if the nation should even now
tax itself to purchase the Bermudas, or other Western isles where
Romish nuncios and Romish bishops could neither come nor
scheme. It would even be wise there to quarantine, for ten
years, these contagious masses of social corruption.  Is that
people a wise and ~understacnding people, then, who, not only
open their gates (and in the case of the genteel foreign debauchee,
their parlors) to these gross and groveling crowds, but who lift
them over their own heads by investing them, at once, with the
power to pull down the very pillars of their institutions?
Until within the last twenty years the policy of conferring the
elective franchise indiscriminately on all foreigners, was of trivial
consequence one way or the other. But now everything has
changed respecting this policy; and the ratio of immigration is
still increasing.
Better open our ports to a fleet of slavers fresh from the Niger
than to one importation from the lazar-city on the banks of the
Seine, where so many poor fools of fashion from the United
States, both male and female, " finish their education" and return
corrupt and corrupters, for life. Romish immorality, especially
Parisian immorality, is a deep distillation of all the dregs of every
specific abomination, one particle of which wafted over the salt
seas. still retains its inherent virulence, and is sufficient to infect
with sad and bewildering maladies, a whole community.




28; French refinement!"  French teachers! French masters
for your sons and daughters!
If we must have foreign accomplishments, let them be any
other than French!  Alas! the arts and sciences cultivated
under that dismal moral canopy, lend their hand not only to
deface and denude the fair and beautiful conceptions of the virtuous mind; but to decorate with show of decency, taste and
grace, that which the wild Hiottentot, besmeared with filth, would
nauseate, and turn away from-to catch his breath.
Let the American citizen, then, preserve his moral sense and
self-respect.  Let him disdain to compromise his dignity by
meanly imitating the meanest people of the meanest city on
God's footstool. Let him coolly calculate the consequences of
these influences here indicated; and turn his eyes to the real and
only means of deliverance from national ruin.
2. A second indication of national decay is the gradutal sup}ression of Biblical or religious nzstruction in our public schools.
The influence of a general public instruction, though latent, is
mighty and all-pervading over the family, and over the community. Political economists have generally left this question
untouched. The instances of a general provision for the intellectual and moral culture of the masses of a whole nation, being so
few, it was deemed a difficult department from which any controlling general principle could be evolved.
But it is not so now. It was not really so heretofore, to any
who might have thoroughly understood the nature of the Hebrew
Institutes under which every child in the land was imperatively
instructed in a system of general instruction, affording a high
national and moral bent to the juvenile mind. The perpetuation
of this system of general instruction was provided for from generation to generation.
The same notion that every child must be daily instructed in
religion pervades the Apostolical Epistles, and was extensively
developed among the early Eastern Christians. It has been
more conspicuously unfolded in the systems of public instruction




29
instituted some two hundred years ago in Scotland and New
England; in both of which systems the Bible was intended as
the paramount text-book.*
It is matter of interest to thoughtful and intelligent men that
two thirds of the colleges at present in the whole United States
have been founded and sustained in connection with these Puritan or Scotch systems of public instruction. In all of these
colleges the Bible is open and read. Not one Faculty of all
these higher institutions conceives it possible to hold young men
in subordination, or to teach them to govern themselves, without
the Bible and the spirit of the Bible. Thomas Jefferson's plan of
a university without a Bible was a miserable, miserable failure.
They had to call in a Christian Faculty to bury out of sight the
monstrous abortion. These higher institutions have lost far less
of their religious element than the common school, from the encroachments of aspiring infidel politicians, or the intermeddling
of aspiring Romish politicians.
Now this religious instruction which has been gradually suppressed in our public schools was not the peculiarities of any one
given denomination having any decent claim whatever to be
called Christcian.  It is the essental -Bible that has been so extensively suppressed. No man may therefore cavil with me as
to what I intend by the phrase "religious instruction."   All
honest men of ordinary intelligence and common sense know
what I mean.
Formerly there was no serious dispute touching the necessity
of general religious teaching in our public schools, excepting now
and then when some denominational peculiarity might happen
to be raised above its supposed importance through the inadvertence or imprudence of the teacher. All acknowledged the Bible
* The late Louis Philippe, it is said, corresponded with the late Rev. Dr. Chalmers,
desiring for France some similar order of public instruction as the Scotch. But that
wise and liberal king did not foresee that wherever in France he might lay the foundation stone of such an institution as Chalmers indicated, the Jesuits would dig it up in
the darkness of the night.




30
to be the best of books, and its use in the school as most needful
and appropriate; or if any did not, they were of that class of
small men whose influence in a thoroughly Protestant community could produce little or no inconvenience on any question
of this nature.
It is of the greatest practical importance to us now, to understand correctly where this issue lay some forty years ago, in the
events that tended to the suppression of the old quantum of religious instruction in the common schools of New England and
elsewhere. I can only stop to say that this issue was NOT between one religious denomination and another as such/; but between these religious denominations and a noisy, truant minority
of society who operated politically and socially and factiously,
until the schools were formally dragged beyond the outer walls
of the Christian Zion. So that should the Christian denominations now unite, as they undoubtedly should, in establishing a
system of Evangelicagl Publc Schools, it is next to a moral certainty that there would arise no practical, insuenmo~untable difficulties which could materially affect the great and indispensable end,
the daily unfettered perusal (as the great text book,) of the simple
Bible.  Formerly where the majority, in these communities,
read the Bible, one denominational subtilty usually neutralized
another under the general charity and intelligence pervading
such a community.
To some this suggestion may seem inadequate, if it were practicable: Perhaps it would be. And many impediments would be
met with in the begirtnnngs of any remedial order of institution.
But it is better to suggest something than merely to declaim
against what may be better than nothing. I have seen nothing
definite put forth from any quarter. But I am certain that nothing short of what is here offered, can consist with the most direct obligations of the Christian churches to their children; and,
moreover, I ask those who are capable of estimating the question-What is to become of the Protestant churches, as such, if
your children must be educated in alien hands, and trained up




to the new delusion, that the Bible is such an inexplicable, dangerous affair, that the young may tremble on opening it, lest it
may unfit them for study, or set them a quarrelling and fighting
with their neighbors? The exclusion of the Bible and essential
religion from public instruction is more general and complete
than many are aware of.  Point me out the public school
where the substance and the soul of Christianity are not carefully
excluded.
Religion, alas!-simple rational piety enters not the halls of
public instruction, or, if admitted, she comes an unwelcome
guest, —muffled and veiled,-her heavenly beauty and attractiveness are dexterously excluded from the wakeful, youthful eye.
Nor is she asked to sit, but bows in low obeisance, till the timid
teacher mumbles forth, perhaps, a cold, guarded, straitened
prayer; and then takes her departure to leave room for Mammon,
Mercurius, and other heathen deities, to rule the day.
There never was a greater sophism palmed off from the pit of
hell upon the human family, than that any degree of mierely literary or scientific knowledge can make man better in the sight
of Heaven, or change his moral character or his moral relations.
Shall calculating accounts teach the young the measure of his
daily duty to God and man? Shall he who pronely bends over
his mother earth, and picks from her bosom ten thousand genera
and species of flowers and flinty rocks; shall he who grows learned, poring over the lexicon of a dead or a living language; shall
he who measures the heavens and weighs the moving worlds as in
a balance; thlus overcome the moral malady within himself, and
please God better than he who may imagine the hills begirting
the small region of his rustic homestead, to be the utmost limits of
earthly things? There is no intellectual panacea to heal the
maladies of the human soul. The tree of knowledge, alas,secular knowledge-has not one healing leaf. The most magnificent display of physical power, could it lift the earth itself,
and drift it beyond the boundaries of space, can never raise man



32
kind one inch above the dead level of moral desolation to which
they are actually reduced.
The essential spirit of the Christian Church is the same as
that of the Hebrew Church. She throws around her children a
kindly inclosure from the uncircumcised in heart, warning them
of " evil communications," and blesses him who " standeth not
in the way of sinners."
She insists that every child, in every corner of the land, shall
be taught, when " rising up" and " sitting down," the written
Laws of God. Shall there, then, be one place where this law,
for six hours a clay, shall be excluded,'as an offence 
WVhat has the State —-which from the days of Constantine, has
obtruded its profane hand, and defiled the ark of God,-what
has the State, I demand, to do in teaching Christians how to
teach their children? What is this public sentiment before which
the Church trembles and turns pale, and idolatrously yields up her
children to be drilled and perverted five-sevenths of their time?
The one circumstance, by itself, that the youth finds himself, for
six hours a day, where he knows the inspired laws of the Creator
must not be whispered, is, of itself, subversive of his virtue, and
directly tending to dwarf his intellectual powers. Talk of " home
influence!" Wrhat kind of " home influence" will twenty years
more give us, under such a system?
But we are not left to reason from the cause to the effect.
What could be anticipated is already fearfully realized. Where
will you be compelled to hear more profane and impure language
than on the play-grounds of these public schools? By what ties
are these youth to be attached to the Church, who are daily taught
the daily neylect of the Word of Life? What know they of the
Bible or of the Church-the very mention of either being improper, if not a cause of ridicule or punishment? We talk of the
insubordination of the rising generation-of their contempt for
religious institutions-for age and office.  But what other can
we expect. Do you say the Sabbath-school tends to counterbalance the evil? Yes. But how much is to be expected from




33
the one or two hours, once a week, of Sunday-school instruction?
Besides, how few of the youth over fourteen or fifteen years of
age are not beyond and above the influence of Sabbath-schools?
The Sabbath-school is a bright ray from heaven-but not enough
to moisten the frozen earth into fertility.
What hold, by affection or otherwise, have our churches on
these youth and those who have already passed through the barren course of this misnamed public instruction?
The child thus alienated from the Church, soon becomes the
alien youth, and the alien youth soon becomes the alien Oddfellow, if nothing worse. Do you know how this new and ominous institution of vast and growing numbers and power regard
the Churches? Do you know that the Odd-fellow in this community is the legitimate offspring of the Public School, and of other
institutions in which the feeling of fraternity for earthly ends is
nourished, and takes a form?
I confess I cannot see how the Protestant churches are to be
perpetuated, unless they biing back their children under a decidedly Evangelical system of instruction-in which Christ is in
all and over all, in which the first lesson is the love and fear of
the Lord, and the love of his Church and people. " We have a
lesson here to learn at Rome."
And if the Protestant Churches are not perpetuated, what
shall become of these Protestant civil institutions of the country?
Has it come to this, that our Churches, with Bible in hand, and all
their intelligence, cannot teach their own children, but must send
them down to this Egypt for wisdom? Has it come to this, that
her own poor children must be fed in their poverty, and taught
in their ignorance, by agencies of sympathy and affection, too,
enlarged to be cherished in her own bosom? Can we have a
Church without children?  [And, to digress one moment-Can
you have a Church without the poor — and complain, if the Oddfellows constitute themselves into a diaconate, whose functions
are to take care of the poor?]
The evils, then, arising from this deficient and corrupting
3




34
system of Public Instruction are wide-spread. They hinder
every attempt in the private or select Schools to reach the ends
of instruction; they hinder the efficiency of the Sabbath-school
system; they create an enormous demand for corrupt and corrupting literature, and thus tend to support the living corrupters
of the Press, which is not the least element of National Decay;
but which we cannot now stop to enlarge upon.
These evils of this system are felt in the insubordination of
families-in the general lowering of the standard of purity
among the young of both sexes —in the profanity of the streetsin the genzeral tendencies of a system under which the vice of
lying is checked by no appeal to the divine Omniscience, and
under which, all the higher motives and aspirations of humanity
are deadened.
What mean, then, these thronging' hordes of impious men
and women crowding our thoroughfares, on the Sabbath day?
What mean the multiplication of these Sunday papers, and their
readers? If, then, such be the deterioration in Public Instruction, and such the startling, immoral effects, where is the individual who, so far as respects this city at least, is so responsible before God and man for this state of things, still growing
worse, as John Hughes, the schismatical minister, who did
his best to shut out the sunlight of Revelation from the rising
generations in this and other communities?
Say not these evils abound in other countries. They do. But our
Ship of State is of too sublimate a construction to carry such a
ballast of abominations as these gross and grovelling communities. If Providence had performed the mighty works in those
foreign communities, that it has here, they might long ago
have banished these infidel systems, these Sunday papers and
other vices that menace the integrity of Society here.
3. A  third indication of National Decay, is, The False
Position and consequent inefficiency of the Christian lKznistry.
Here is a large field.  I shall refrain from  pursuing the
subject, offering only a very few thoughts. All will admit,
as matter of history, that the Mlinistry of different ages and




35
countries have occupied positions widely different in their
effects, both in relation to the Church itself, and to the manners of the people, and the character of the Government. No
less unquestionable is the proposition, that some one of these
various relative positions is, other things being equal, more than
any of the rest in accordance with the Word of God, and therefore, the most desirable in order to reach the sublime ends for
which this Ministry is the appointed means. This being the
case, it is faithless and base to fold one's arms in indifference
under the old opiate illusion that " It has always been so, and
will be so, that the Ministry is ever being driven, or driving
itself from its HIeaven-appointed Position in the Church."  No
good man of intelligence can be easy and indifferent here.
When the Anglo-Saxon and Teuton Ministry escaped from the
thraldom of Rome, great results were justly anticipated; as it had
in its hand the open Word of life, and 1had at command the ear of
the Church, and of the nations. A new era of glorious enlargement followed; which might be distinguished as the lVestzminsteir
era. The essential canon laws of fifteen hundred years standing,
contirnuted to avail as to the distribution of labor —the support, the
initiation, and the general character of the reformed Ministrywith here and there an insignificant exception. No such thing,
e. g., was then known in Christendom as three or four of the
Ministry sustaining (by sundry sad, and not very creditable
means) three or four separate churches among three or four hundred people, led off by three or four factious laymen or laywomen, irresponsible to any power, either in the Church or the
State.
No such voluntary humilities were as yet known to Christendom as- twenty ministers of the gospel officiating, acd seriatim,
during twenty Sabbaths, in one "vacant" church, each in his
turn undergoing, before a court of "honorable women not a
few," aided by four or five " moneyed brethren,"-a certain
examination on certain qualifications concerning which it might
be superfluous here to enlarge. Suffice it to say that when one
of these twenty " candidates" is " called and settled," the pro



36
gramme of procedure as to "preaching," "praying," "tea
parties," " fairs,"'sewing circles," walking the streets, smiling,
dressing, pleasing, popularizing-managing him, her, or it;
I say the programme thus emanating from the "Authority'"
existing for the moment —an authority based on whims, whines,
and hysterics-offers a Rubric or Canon law that an honest man,
" hating every false way," cannot understand without contamination;-more degrading than any rubric or law thlat Rome ever
imposed on the most stupid of her clergy. Better be governed
by stupid bishops than learned women: better than either by?
an enlightened, comprehensive Canon Law, which would supersede a great redundance of " managements" and womanly tacts
at which the simple mind revolts, and which might puzzle the
most refined Jesuit to comprehend and to carry out.
I observe, then, that the Christiacn mnin8stry are,, to a great
extent, in a false position, in that they have slidden froom the
Platform of' the Cano lZaws, which were essentially Apostolical.
They have plunged from the pinnacle of the Temple-broken
loose from the ordinary and constant conditions of cooperative
human agency. But the angels from Heaven have not taken
care lest they might " dash their feet against the stones."
So long as there were Protestant canon laws, the ministry, if
not the people, studied them; and in studying them, they learned
to obey them; and in learning to obey them, they were, generally, in the way and in the spirit of teaching and saving men
and children.
Having repudiated these scriptural and time-sanctioned landmarks, they are now abroad in a wilderness of bewildering speculation-here and there attempting a few "by-laws" for some
specific cooperation or "society," which are presently carried
away beneath the rushing popular tread.
In assailing the corrupt and irresponsible Power of Rome,
they have at length written and spoken themselves under a
power more irresponsible, if not more corrupt —the power of
ignorance and presumption-the power of the multitude —an
epicene multitude, worse than the multitude in civil affairs.




37
The world has as yet had no good laws from the indiscriminating multitude. This is a simple fact. He who denies it, is
superficial or worse, and we dismiss him to the demnagogues.'Good laws," says De Tocqueville, " must emanate from good
men. The multitude are (actually) not good men; therefore
good laws cannot emanate from the multitude."
Must we then, look to this ebb and flow of ignorance, and evil,
and female caprice, for stable canons of cooperative action in
the Church of God?
May each man, then, proceed without any regard to any other
man's course?
May he squander the treasury of the Lord in schismatically
erecting his church in the very center of a brother minister's
field of labor, and thus set two religious communities quarreling
for half a century, and hold them up as a laughing-stock in the
streets of Eshkalon?
We smile at the miserable crudity that all written creeds are
to be set aside. But still more crude and absurd is the proposition that written ecclesiastical canons of cooperation are not
indispensable. Why not blot out all the common law of the
land and depend on the "good sense and conscientiousness of
the people "? Are all in the Church of God true Christians?
And if they were, would they all be pejfect? The theory of a
perfect church and a perfect people is a chimera practically
entertained by far larger numbers than might at first appear
But like another " perfectionist error " less operative for genera
mischief than this-it soon works out its own dissolution —by
dispersions, alienations, ministerial estrangements, slanders,
where the slanderer goes free-with all the extravagance of a
self willed individuality that contemns all law not originating in
its own conceit.
It is said that the old church-masters and burgomasters of this
city, anxious to follow the " leadings of Providence," dared not
to lay out their new streets by any comprehensive line or canon
of utility, preferring to leave the matter to the mysterious natural
workings of " the people."  " The people," who are always " the




38
safest to follow," not daring  to adventure on what may have
seemed to them an act of presumption, and tempting Providence,
practically decided to leave the matter to the lowing qnzadyrpeds,
on whose meandering path they built their tenements and shaped
their avenues.
The old Romans decided  important matters by the entrails of
animals; the old Dutch by their mysterious footsteps; and we,
now, the momentous concerns of the Church, by an animal
agency of wilder instincts than these.
Where the opinions of the laity  (on a question, e. g., of the
forced removal of the pastor, whose character and official capacities are undisputed, and the pastor and his family are ruthlessly
driven from  their house and home) are always understood to be.finctL-where a half-informed individual, with two or three religious
ideas in his brain, and with a handful of gold, can (without
being amenable anywhere) bring his majorities to bear on every
vital local question —tell me that in thousands of instances the
minister and his office are not utterly in contempt; and in
many more instances every day liable to contempt?*
* I know it is God's way to humble both his ministers and his people-that he will
rather cross such than cast them away. But God never degrades them whose lineage he
hath made celestial.
He who thinks the ministry hath no high and peculiar attributes-willnot sufficiently
prepare himself for it, or properly fulfil its solemn functions after he has assumed it.
Nor will such rightly appreciate it when solemnly assumed by others. It is true a
good man will be a good man wherever he may stand in this probationary scene. But
his relative official utility in the church and the world may be greatly hindered and neutralized through corrupt institutions, or the perversity of men of corrupt aims, or both.
E. g. In the everlasting fitness of things, the sphere of the eagle is aloft among the
clouds. If you cage him, or clip his wings, the intended utility and glory of his being
are utterly frustrated. Again: the natural sphere of man implies his essential liberty.
If you manacle him, put him on an auction stand and price his muscles, his teeth, and
the flash of his eye, you hinder, nay utterly overthrow, the primary end of his being.
He is certainly in a false position. So, in the divine fitness of things, the ministry
(moved inwardly to its work by the Holy Ghost, and this inward motion outwardly
acknowledged,) is actually invested with that which the people are certainly not. To
assert that the people can confer and recall his ministerial faculty, is therefore, a constructive blasphemy. If the people might impiously assume this function of the Holy
Ghost, how could they even then " send " a minister to themselves?




39
Take care, then, how you tamper with the character and acts
of the poorest, weakest, humblest minister, lest you provoke the
Lord to curse the land; and the country itself sink in contempt
with a mill-stone about its neck.  For it shall be more tolerable
for Sodom  than for such a people.-Luke x. 12 and context.
Surely the order of the divine institution of the ministry is
under the heel of a monster power. Surely it is in a false
position. In the sad surrender of its heaven-appointed position
it is now operating as a most ominous cause of national dissolution.  Moreover, here must be, with Christian people, the initiative to restore those fundamentals of ecclesiastical order and
decency under which the country commenced its career. For it
should never be overlooked that the early American Churches
were generally guided either by old canon laws or by old canonical usage.
The meaning of the Bible, says one, is the Bible.  We therefore follow the meaning or spirit of the Bible —not its letter.
But what would become of this meaning of the Bible if we
destroy the letter?
Are we, then, to have no written rule of cooperation for permanent reference, in the Church, but depend on the " good sense and
propriety of the people "-the  "people" under storm  or sunshine-the "people" groveling at the feet of rich men, or soarIf you, then, " call 1" this minister-place him at your feet-place your fingers on his
eyes-your hands upon his lips-demanding that he must see nothing over the heads of
your majorities, and speak nothing but what may sell or fill the pews, respectably, or
pay off your church debts-do you not place him in a false position? What! Must he
thus become a bad man to be a good minister! Is Simony not a curse to the Church
and the State? Is this mean jugglery in order to the simple and sublime ends of the
Church on Earth? Now, so long as this local crudity, this small cunning, spite and
prejudice, must be heard, and heard, and heard without end on the gravest questions
touching the ministry; so long as the minister lives and moves according to every
shrug of the shoulder-every wink or grimace of every wiseacre in the congregation,
there can be no permanent respect or love for his office or himself; there can hardly be
any blessing, any " decency and order," self-respect, or true Godliness. Perhaps somemay pity him! Besides, this disorder grieves away the Spirit of Peace, and tends in
the shortest way to dispersions in the Church, and ultimately to dissolution in the State.




40
ing transcendentally  in the regions of Utopia-the "people,"
ignorant, prejudiced, deceived  or misled?  Then, surely, we
have an Idol-Calf as the OCenter of Power and Authority, trampling beneath its frantic hoof creeds and canons, and tossing and
goring at random  the helpless, exposed fugitive from  ecclesiastical canon and decorum. Here is a many-headed monster lording
it over God's heritage-more dementing and emasculating to the
ministry than all the cardinals and popes with which the Church
and the world have yet been cursed.
Now, if something like this, or half like this, actually prevails
among us, need I ask whether we have not here an element of
dissolution in the social economy? As the phrenologists tell us
that they think God has placed the moral powers over all the intellectual and social qualities; so in the order of nature, religion,
be it Christian or heathen religion, is over the social and political
systems. It is not, and cannot be, under, or on a level with, the
state and social forces. It is, has been, and will be, over it. And
if its ministers come down and attempt to reverse this order,
they and the people are inevitably plunged beneath a rising
refluent wave of retribution that cannot stay its course. The essential laws of the Church and her ministry are as eternal in
their penalties on the Church, and all beneath the Church in society, as any general law in the realm  of nature.*
We do not consider these evils as all-pervading, but as prevailing to an extent that is ominous and threatening.  The large
and devoted body of the Methodist Church among us has re-' In four of the lower wards of this city there are 62,000 inhabitants, and now only
nine churches! The removals "up-town" have not been under the Roman Catholic
or Methodist regimen, under which the working men have not thus been robbed of
their churches. In these removals, a few rich men and their wives controlled the funds
of the churches, and invested them in new churches near the steps of their own doors;up-town."  Had the ministry been in their appointed position, under any sort of
canon law, they would have done better by the poor; and this disgraceful mal-appropriation of religious investments could not have occurred. Let.the ministry, as a
bodly, determine such cases, and control such funds. Do you say, " they cannot be
trusted'" What! What class of men, then, can be trusted?
The poor fare best, after all, in the hands of the ministry.




41
tained in great efficiency much of the canonical spirit; and
God seems to bless them above other denominations. From
them, under God, we hope for much. Other denominations
might, if they would, learn an important lesson, were they to
attend a little to the nature and present tendencies of Methodism  both here and in England. If individuals amiong them
"fall away," their churches never "fall away."  In apostolic
language, their " good remains."  I can only stop to mention
here that *the ministry are in a false position to the Secular
Press; and that from this arises another active agency of evil
among us.
But I must proceed to mention a
4. Indication of national decay. What shall we say then of
that Sad and Sable Curse which sore defaced the infant ere yet
it had entered the family of nations-a pagan importation which
has already cost many a violent struggle to the country?
The influences of the institution of slavery are not confined
to one portion only of the country. They spread themselves
on the commerce, politics, and the general sentiments of the
whole nation. Every sensible man north and south knows
that there is danger here.  The Constitution of the United
States may hold together the various States in federal unity.
I hope it may.  But the curse will fall and strike what is
more precious to every man and every family, than even
the National Constitution.  Alas, the curse is already out
and doing its work.  The general obtuseness of the public
conscience, north and south, and at the seat of government,
respecting the present operations and tendencies of slavery, is a
demonstration of this curse, to any man whose moral sense remains to control his thinking and his opinions. Besides, we are
ashamed of it before the civilized nations. And shame, without amendment, is always enervating and producing self-contempt. Self-respect, if not itself a virtue, is at, or under, the
foundation of all virtue, personal and national. But the arm
that waves, from our loftiest eminence, our glorious stars and
stripes, trembles under the abash of enlightened compunction.




42
He who sits down to discuss the essential injustice of this institution of American slavery is not one for whom we now write.
The evil is all-pervading and terrible. It has forced itself on
every mind and heart among us. I therefore simply introduce
it here as one of the most obvious and direct causes of national
decay that could possibly have been suffered to take root and
grow up, blighting, in its dismal darkness, all that is fresh,
and fair, and lovely in the garden of freedom. God help us!
Passing by other causes of national dissolution, I shall mention
5. The equivocal or irreligious character of the civil authorities. I shall not stop to inquire here whether these authorities are a true representation, morally and religiously, of their
constituents, which might lead to discouraging trains of thought.
In the nature of things it must needs be that they who are invested, either by the sword or by the suffrage of the people,
with the functions of civil authority of any nation, are transcendently influential for transcendent good or evil. But do you
say it is a small honor, and often none whatever, to hold any
eminent station under this government? Sad omen!-if it be so.
But honored or not, his position is yet solemn and eventful. He
cannot send back to the people his powers, if he would. They
are his own, and personal, in the necessity of the case. Now, if
there is any truth in history, it is most true that the Almighty,
through unvarying general laws (not always cognizable to mere
man) often brings sad and bewildering judgments on nations
which are caused, or at least occasioned, by the sin of their public rulers. This, I say, is of the nature of a historical fact.
This being the case, his religious responsibility is most conspicuous; and that, too, whether the people who confer on him
this power think so or not. Under the most extended distribution of power known to any government, a single individual, by
a single act, assumed the consequences of the late disgraceful
and sanguinary war with Mexico, when his one vote unsheathed
the sword of state.  Whether, therefore, his office may be
honored or despised by many, it is intrinsically efficient in pro



43
ducing often the most beneficial or the most calamitous results,
and that on a mighty scale. What a momentous alternative,
then, is forced upon a nation in the religious or irreligious character of its civil rulers!
What disaster, if they shall refuse to prostrate themselves at
the feet of Him-the Christ —by whom kings reign!-if they
shall refuse to acknowledge the everlasting Son, and explicitly
profess his name before men, and obey Him in His holy Gospel! What fearful lessons in the past, of those rulers who,
under the power of Ambition, or the spell of Mammon, have
" set themselves," and taken counsel together, against the Lord,
and against His Anointed!  "Be wise now, therefore, O ye
kings [rulers]; be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Serve the
Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest
he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is
kindled but a little."
From the nature-not the necessity-of the case, each nation
generally rates its own public men on illusory grounds; just as
each under-graduate of a college often rates such or such a professor of his Alma Mater to be the " first in the country," in his
department. To free us from this sure tendency to error, we
must earnestly and candidly look at the statesmen of other countries and other times, and familiarize our minds with the various
exemplifications of the true standard of public official character
abounding in the Word of God.
The Constitution and Laws of the United States, though pervaded, as I said before, with ideas and institutes peculiar to
Christianity, are still, at best, only "almost Christian."  The
nation, therefore, as a nation, refuses in its own capacity, to confess Christ. Do not be startled, my friends. Let us be candid,
and think and speak as if we took our stand-point on some
sister planet, and contemplated these dirty little spots on this
mother earth, called " countries." How many errors, political
and religious, are abroad on the earth! hIow many nations,
greatly enlightened, have suffered and pined away under two or
three great generic delusions! I submit, therefore, to the com



44
mon sense of all sensible and intelligent Christians, reading the
Scriptures, that the obligations of nations, as such, to call themselves by His (Christ's) name, and to submit to His authority, is
of the same nature, and equally imperative, with the obligations
of families or individuals to do the same; and that the consequences of neglect or contempt of these obligations, are as direct
and ruinous in their nature on all these corporate or national functions and functionaries. It follows, therefore, by necessary consequence, that if the religious character of the rulers of this
country is either equivocal or wanting, an effect goes forth, not
only in, through or by, their official acts, but under and over,
before and after, and aside from, those official acts.
Now, on points so delicate, where character, private or public,
is the theme, words should be few. It is only in their public
acts, secular and religious, that rulers are properly responsible to
their fellow-men. Even here, the right mind abstains from pursuing the case. But where all are immediately affected by a
course of public official conduct which is indisputably and overtly
wrong and ruinous to Society, any one-and especially the
preacher-may "cry aloud and spare not."
In the rudest forms of society-and much more so in the advanced-the state unavoidably assumes, and is charged with, interests most momentous to the individual. These vital interests
unavoidably depend on thewisdom, discretion, and religious integrity of the living functionary. Is not the religious character,
then, of the civil ruler, a vital affair in the destiny of any nation?
I submit, therefore, whether the irreligious character of very many
of our public rulers-their refusal openly to profess Christ, the
King of kings, in their offlcial capacity-is not a complicate indignity offered to Ilim before whom angels bow, and archangels
veil their faces? And shall an indignity so flagrant, escape the
notice of Him who declares Himself " Governor amongst the nations"?  Is this " cant"?-" Cant"!  I challenge the intelligence of mankind to the question. I appeal to the experience of nations-their histories-the brief cycles of their
infancy, pupilage, glory, and dark decadence. What! a Chris



45
tian people, and a Governnment denying Christ! A Government lifting its head among the nations, boasting independence,
and yet mute and gagged for FEAR of a handful of Jews and professed infidels living under the vine and fig-tree of the Christian
heritage! But I must pass, and point you, for a moment, to
several manifestations of the equivocal or irreligious character of
many of our rulers: viz.,
(1.) The sad moral forfeiture often made in rising into oftcial power. Let me only ask, why is it that thousands of candidates for office, shouting independence, do, nevertheless, meanly
barter away their conscience, to catch the popular vote? How
would the high-minded patriots of the Revolution turn away in
disdain from the contemptible cabals of our politicians bowing
down to dissipated rabbles, and doling out their wealth to purchase their election? It requires no prophet's eye-no special
acumen-to foresee the general results of such shameful vices,
but it requires some degree of mnoral senesib:ility-more than
statesmen. generally possess.
(2.) What are we to think of another tendency among
our rulers, and its influence on this whole question? What
are we to think of an intelligent American citizen-reading
history-who descends far-very far-down a dismal descent,
till we see him  basely prostrated, asking for'" votes"-for
" votes!"-at the feet of that idolatr9us 3MNonster of political and
church power, stalking the earth for twelve hundred years, and
breathing corruption fronm  her horrid breath, in the ear of
States?  Here, at this low level, do we find the skulking hypocrite who but yesterday declaimed in bar-rooms, on " Church
and State!" " Church and State!"  Nay-votes! votes! votes!
(3.) Let me point you to another very significant manifestation of irreligion among our public rulers: viz. —The open violation of the Fourth Commandment. This (I can only here say
briefly) extends over the various departments, legislative, judicial,
executive, military, naval, and diplomatic. With all the startling
vices and social disorders of Sabbath-breaking countries, lying
open on the surface of the political world, how many of our
reading, intelligent statesmen are found on the Sabbath, crowding




46
and cursing the thousand thoroughfares radiating from twenty
State capitals, and from the federal capital? Have not the exalted seats of legislation been polluted on the Sabbath-day, by
profane deliberative bodies, sitting in the sacred light of sacred
time, trampling under foot the organic laws of humanity, secured
by the Constitution of Heaven, and written at first by the finger
of God?
What influence is this on our aspiring young men —" the
country's hope," who may regard the Fomrtlh as no less binding
on mankind, than the Fhifth or the Seventh Commandment?
Now, in view of these and many such, it is morally certain
that unless they are speedily reversed,-unless our Christianity
shall educe from the masses of the people a class of public officers immeasurably different, we shall go on firom  bad to worse,
until the statesman's eye grows dim, his knees tremble, and the
government, bereft of every element of perpetuity, wasted and
impotent, shall be drifted back from this wilderness of Atheism,
and imploringly thrown for relief into the arms of a pseudo-ecclesiastical power, bloated and bloody, which is now hatching a
thousand sorceries for the fatal alliance.
Tell me of one aim that moves so anxiously the bosom of
Rome, as that of being supreme in the State, and that for ends
which the Protestant world has execrated. This is no flourish of
speech; it is history and experience. We would offend no honest
Romanist; but we must say, that all her vaunting about " Liberty" is only one of the thousand lies which she speaks by
rule, to deceive the nations. What! a Hierarchy and a Republie! Yes! The nuptials are now being discussed, at home and
abroad.
How are we to avert these, and such like agencies of national decay? Shall it be by the experience of othere nationsby vast tomes of history or science? Empty thought! If bold,
reckless impiety-if Sabbath-breaking, lying, profane swearing,
if family misrule and contempt for the marriage covenant, shall
continue to prevail; if public instruction in the School and in
the Church must be moulded under the blight of an irresponsi



47
ble and corrupting public press, or the caprice of women and
children, —then all the science, history and philosophy in the universe can never turn away the sword of national retribution.
The State, as such, unlike the Church, has no inherent self-preserving power against such terrific agencies. The most improved, the most profound system of political organization is a
mere scaffolding on the mouth of a volcano, and soon to crash
in the recoil of injured laws. These merely begin and end in
physical interests, and scarcely touch the far stretching destinies
of mankind. Hence we must look beyond men and measures,
parties and policies, for the causes and remedies of general national evils. It is melancholy that some of our leading statesmen
are often heard, gravely referring this and that social danger to
certain abhorred measures and parties. As well trace the motions of the rolling earth to the blustering winds that sweep its
surface.
Alas! it may be, that human nature, in these United States,
must pass again into some scorching, national solution; and the
burning crucible of conflicting passions and complicated vice,
must be scummed of its abominations before the poisons of dissolution can ever be removed-before anything permanent can
ever be produced.
But whatever may happen, our duties are plain, —as individuals-as families-as a nation.
Let every one put away his idols. Let him ask himself if he
may not be provoking the Divine curse on himself and those
around him, by his personal sins.
I have spoken of contagion, social and political. Are your
families exposed to these? Are you associated for any end whatever, in any capacity whatever, with perverse men? Then free
yourself at once from the entanglement, at every risk and every
present loss. God will help you.
I have spoken of deterioration in Pubtic I istruction. Are
your children in schools in which there is an open Bible, and
faithful, praying teachers? Is family government at home, and




48
family worship, maintained; and the young taught in the nurture
and admonition of the Lord?
I have spoken of Slavery. Do you really pity the oppressed.
Then send forth humble and judicious ministers of the Gospel to
teach and baptize among our Southern States-such will be received gladly. You can pray for the slave, and bless him without
cursing his master. As you are nationally and socially affected
by Slavery, you should readily cooperate with the South, for its
gradual extinction by LEGISLATION. The Gospel, in time, raises
a safe fulcrum for the lever of liberation. Let it speedily find
its way into the heart of every slave and every unfortunate
slaveholder!
I have alluded to the Fa'lse Position of the llinistry. Many of
you, I know, would do all you could to better this position. I
shall leave this very embarrassing question to be improved by
you, without any further suggestion at present.
I have alluded to the Irreligious CUharacter of many of our
Rulers. Do you give your suffrage, then, for Sabbath-breakers,
for profane, selfish, truckling, Godless rulers?  Do you convict
yourself of the same sins? Do you travel on the Lord's Day?
Are you found with French and German profligates on excursions on Sunday? Are you a Sunday visitor among your neighbors? Do you purchase and read Sunday papers and other corrupting literature?
Do you love your Country?  Are you then a profane swearer,
an idler, a. corrupter of others-of the young, the weak, the dependent?
Let us, one and all, then, cast off every personal weight, and
the sins easily besetting us, and address ourselves to the blessed
work of " strengthening the (good) things that remain," deprecating, from day to day, that wue, as a nation, should ever be
forced to cry and lament, that " our iniquities, like the wind,
have taken us away."  So let it be!