LECTURES ANL 
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 Lectures and orations. 
 
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Lectures and Orations hy 
 Henry Ward Beecher 
 
By Newell Dwight Hillis 
 
 Each i2mo, cloth, net, 3l-20 
 
 HENRY WARD BEECHER 
 A Study of His Life and Influence 
 
 LECTURES AND ORATIONS BY HENRY WARD 
 
 BEECHER 
 
 Collected by Newell Dwight Hillis 
 
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 ATION 
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Lectures and Orations 
 By Henry Ward Beecher 
 
 Edited by 
 NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS 
 
 New York Chicago Toronto 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
 London and Edinburgh 
 
 ll 
 
Copyright, 1913. by 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPAKY 
 
 A.^S4.S5*6 
 
 New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
 Chicago: 125 North Wabash Ave. 
 Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. 
 London : 2 1 Paternoster Square 
 Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street 
 

 Contents 
 
 
 
 
 Foreword by Newell Dwight 
 
 
 
 HiLLIS .... 
 
 . 
 
 S 
 
 I. 
 
 Puritanism 
 
 . 
 
 II 
 
 II. 
 
 The Wastes and Burdens 
 
 OF 
 
 
 
 Society 
 
 • 
 
 43 
 
 III. 
 
 The Reign of the Common 
 
 
 
 People 
 
 
 94 
 
 IV. 
 
 Eloquence and Oratory . 
 
 
 128 
 
 V. 
 
 William Ellery Channing 
 
 
 157 
 
 VI. 
 
 Charles Sumner 
 
 
 183 
 
 VII. 
 
 Wendell Phillips . 
 
 
 20l!^ 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Eulogy on Grant 
 
 
 234 
 
 IX. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln . 
 Appendix 
 
 
 263 
 
 {a) 
 
 Patriotism Above Party 
 
 
 284 
 
 (P) 
 
 The Herbert Spencer Dinner 
 
 
 312 
 
 
 Index 
 
 
 325 
 
Foreword 
 
 FOR more than forty years Henry Ward 
 Beecher was one of the two or three 
 most conspicuous figures in American hfe. 
 During all these years he divided honours 
 with the man who happened to be President ' 
 and the occasional banker, inventor, author or 
 statesman who for the hour stood in the lime- 
 light. More men heard Mr. Beecher preach 
 and lecture than any other American speaker. 
 More people read what Mr. Beecher wrote 
 than any other writer. More people knew 
 Mr. Beecher than any other man upon our 
 streets or cars. He left behind more than 
 forty volumes, including sermons, patriotic 
 addresses, essays, theology, philosophy, with 
 studies of travel, nature and art. He was 
 successful as preacher, lecturer, editor, essay- 
 ist, and statesman. Not once in a thousand 
 years does a man appear in the world of 
 whom we can say as was said of Theseus, 
 " Whether he ran, or whether he walked, or 
 whether he stood, he conquered." 
 
 Popularity is like the tides of the sea ; it 
 5 
 
Foreword 
 
 rises and falls. The influence of a truly good 
 and great man is like the mountains and the 
 stars ; it stands fast forever. From his youth 
 the pilgrim host looked to Henry Ward 
 Beecher as to the Moses who was to lead 
 them out of the wilderness into the promised 
 land. Multitudes of our people never made 
 up their minds on any great question of re- 
 hgion, pontics or social reform, until first of 
 all they had taken their bearings from Beech- 
 er's thinking. All this is the more wonderful 
 when we remember that Beecher never had 
 the assistance of high office. Grant's arm was 
 strengthened by the might of a half million 
 men standing behind him. The office of the 
 Presidency lent weight to Lincoln's words. 
 The history of the Repubhc holds the names 
 of at least ten Presidents who through some 
 compromise or happy accident were elevated 
 to the White House. But yesterday this 
 private citizen was not able to make his voice 
 heard far beyond the limits of his own town ; 
 to-day as President this same man's voice may 
 ring to the borders of the Rio Grande and the 
 Oregon. But by sheer weight of personal 
 manhood Beecher maintained an influence as 
 great as that exerted by other men as senators 
 or Presidents. 
 
 6 
 
Foreword 
 
 Among the secrets of the power of Henry 
 Ward Beecher we shall find one in his splendid 
 body and marvellous health. He was, per- 
 haps, the finest animal and the best illustra- 
 tion of a perfect body as the instrument of 
 fine thinking afforded by his generation. 
 From his fathers also he had the gift of 
 unique common sense that made him reason- 
 able, fair, and sane. He had the rare gift of 
 intellectual sympathy, so that instinctively he 
 put himself in the other man's place. He was 
 our Nineteenth Century illustration also of 
 John Bunyan's Great- Heart, using his genius 
 as a shield above the weak and oppressed. 
 He had the most extraordinary gift of lan- 
 guage, choosing words with a certain exquisite 
 sense of the inevitable. He had reverence for 
 the truth, justice towards men, love towards 
 God ; he had moral earnestness, wit, humour, 
 gentlerress, courage, — and by his combination 
 of gifts he captured the admiration of the 
 American people. It is not too much to say 
 that Beecher changed the thinking of our 
 people as to their idea of God, the Bible, andj 
 the genius of Christianity. He was the first 
 man to take the sting out of the early theories 
 of Evolution, and who found in science a real 
 aid to religion. Indeed, the very atmosphere 
 7 
 
Foreword 
 
 of the churches of our land has been differ- 
 ent because Henry Ward Beecher lived and 
 wrought. 
 
 At a critical hour during the Civil War, 
 Henry Ward Beecher pleaded the cause of the 
 Republic before the Enghsh people. Some 
 time during the autumn of 1863, England 
 practically entered into a compact with France 
 to recognize the Southern Confederacy on 
 January i, 1864. Two influences brought 
 this about. On the one hand, the English 
 patrician, loving the throne and the monarchy, 
 wished the Republic to go to pieces. On the 
 other hand, the English cotton spinners, after 
 two years of starvation because no raw cotton 
 could be obtained from the South, had become 
 desperate, driven to crusts, rags and idleness. 
 Although they manfully endured their dis- 
 tresses, believing in the cause of free labour, 
 their condition lent excuse to the British gov- 
 erning class for favouring the South. Beecher 
 was abroad in the interest of his health and at 
 the charges of Plymouth Church. He had no 
 commission from Abraham Lincoln or his 
 country. Believing that the recognition of 
 the South by England and Frcnce might be 
 fatal to the Union, Beecher gave a series of 
 five addresses, beginning in Manchester and 
 8 
 
Foreword 
 
 ending in Exeter Hall, London. William 
 Taylor went away after Beecher's address in 
 Liverpool to say, " No such eloquence has 
 been heard in the world since Demosthenes 
 pleaded the cause of Athens against King 
 Philip." After reading those speeches Abra- 
 ham Lincoln told his cabinet that if the war 
 was ever fought to a successful issue, there 
 would be but one man to lift the flag at Fort 
 Sumter, for without Beecher in England there 
 might have been no flag to raise. 
 
 The later years of Beecher's life brought 
 other crises to his country. In the name of 
 patriotism and education, family life and social 
 reform, he delivered many orations and lec- 
 tures. In the interest of multitudes who never 
 had an opportunity of seeing such transient 
 reports of them as may have been accessible 
 at the time, some of these addresses of the 
 great preacher have been brought together in 
 this more permanent form. 
 
 Newell Dwight Hillis. 
 
 The oration on Lincoln is given as re- 
 ported in Beecher's "Patriotic Addresses 
 In America and England, 1850-1876,'' by 
 permission of Mr. Wm. C. Beecher, as 
 representative of the owners of the copy- 
 right. That book offers, in the great 
 orator's own words, the most complete 
 view of his political career. 
 
I 
 
 PURITANISM' 
 
 IN one of the mightiest battles of the Span- 
 ish Peninsula, Napier, I think it is, who 
 records that a truce was sounded at noon, that 
 the war of artillery ceased, the smoke cleared 
 away, and the men, who but an hour before 
 had been whirling like storms upon each 
 other in headlong charges, came down to a 
 brook which divided the ground, to quench 
 their thirst, and reached forth friendly hands 
 and exchanged kind greetings across it. To- 
 night, ladies and gentlemen, there is a truce 
 around the Plymouth Rock. We seize this 
 charmed hour to hush every conflict, to let the 
 whirl of business run out to stillness, to quench 
 the fires of party. The most earnest men will 
 pause to-night, and from opposite sides look 
 kindly at each other. We reach hands across 
 the Plymouth Stone, and greet each other. 
 Peace be with you ! To be sure it is the eve 
 
 ' Delivered first in Philadelphia, December 21, i860, be- 
 fore the New England Society, and substantially repeated 
 often as a, lecture. 
 
 II 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 of the 22d, but let us gently abolish twelve 
 hours, and decree this to be the ever-memo- 
 rable date of New England ! 
 
 Even in Old England there are those who 
 mark the 22d of December, for the children 
 of the Pilgrims are not all upon this side of 
 the ocean. As the sun leaves those shores 
 and wheels hitherward, every hour awakes in 
 ranks the States that celebrate that memo- 
 rable date. Where there is a drop of New 
 England blood there will be holy thoughts and 
 grateful memories to-night — and where is there 
 not New England blood ? Is there a State of 
 the glorious thirty-three that is unenriched by 
 it? Her ingenious mechanics work in every 
 nook upon the Continent. Her gentle school- 
 mistresses brood in schools along every league 
 from Lake to Gulf — or, exalted to a higher 
 sphere, preside over their own school, where 
 husband is assistant usher, and children pupils. 
 When a railroad needs method, when a bank 
 needs keen sagacity, when iron or stone, wood 
 or clay, are to be moulded, or water called 
 from waste to usefulness, or steam subdued to 
 industry — there you shall find the universal 
 Yankee. Prolific stock ! Wonderful hive ! 
 New England swarms forever, but it never 
 runs empty. And no man born in New Eng- 
 
 12 
 
Puritanism 
 
 land ever forgets his mother, though her breast 
 was granite, and her kiss frost. 
 'T'o-night, then, in every State of this Union, 
 there will be a time for grateful retrospection. 
 Maine, amid her snows, will rehearse the story 
 that never wears out by telling. New Hamp- 
 shire, from amid her hills and mountains, will 
 send back a grateful remembrance to the past, 
 and an " All hail ! " to the future. Vermont, 
 her green hills now tucked up in white for 
 their winter's sleep, will recount to her children 
 the story of the wintry day and the welcome- 
 less landing. Connecticut, small but comely, 
 and Rhode Island, smaller but yet fair, shall 
 stop all their machineries, and bare the head 
 in the sacred memories of this hour. Let Mas- 
 sachusetts lead this throng, to whose shores 
 came the Pilgrims. She guards the Rock, and 
 a hundred tongues to-night eloquently speak 
 its meaning. 
 
 Metropolitan New York admits to her cal- 
 endar of saints as many as the world can find, 
 so that they do not come dry-lipped; and 
 while in due sequence she spreads a wondrous 
 cheer on hospitable tables for the Knicker- 
 bocker and for the Gaul, for Santa Claus, for 
 St. George and St. Patrick — thirsty saints all — 
 and for St. Burns, elected to the saintship by 
 13 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 a thirst equal to any, she hails the coming of 
 the Pilgrim, mumbles her parched corn, con- 
 scientiously sips the water fervid with ices, re- 
 warding afterwards her exemplary temperance 
 with fare that would have appalled a Puritan, 
 albeit he was a man not averse to generous 
 diet. 
 
 So long as the trailing arbutus — true May- 
 flower — grows upon the hills of New Jersey, 
 she shall yield a welcome to this day ; for many 
 of her noblest cradles to-night rock the blood 
 of the Puritan. And the great heart of Penn- 
 sylvania, to-night, true to its generous im- 
 pulses, and confessing how many that she loves 
 and honours come from the Puritan land — 
 opens to hail and bless the memory of the Pil- 
 grims. Delaware and Maryland, States that, 
 by the side of their neighbours, seem like punc- 
 tuation points, or particles, in the sentence that 
 spells Union and Liberty — not disjunctive par- 
 ticles, but inseparable conjunctions, binding 
 together the glorious eloquence of confederated 
 States ! And Virginia, what shall she say, to- 
 night? Uncover the head ! Draw near with 
 me, that I may ask — not those who forget, but 
 those who remember Washington. Hark ! 
 To-night Mount Vernon sends a greeting of 
 holy reverence to Plymouth Rock ! And 
 14 
 
Puritanism 
 
 sweeping westward, every State — Ohio and 
 Kentucky, Michigan and Indiana, Illinois and 
 Missouri, Tennessee and Wisconsin, Iowa and 
 Kansas — shall send patriotic thoughts to the 
 ancestral shrine, for every one of them has 
 New England blood ! Yea, across the plains, 
 along the mountain slope, in the cabins of the 
 wearied miner, all down the coasts of Cali- 
 fornia and Oregon, there shall be a grateful 
 recognition of the Pilgrim Fathers, and from 
 the gigantic evergreens of Calaveras goes a 
 greeting to the pine trees of all New England. 
 
 Nor shall the wide compact of remembrance 
 lose one State along the Gulf to-night — they 
 shall drop the hand and cool the tongue, and 
 from a thousand spots truce shall sound, and 
 men come down to this peaceful memory that 
 flows between us and exchange greetings. 
 
 By the God of the Pilgrims, I say to the 
 North, give up ; to the South, keep not back, 
 but bring my sons from afar and my daughters 
 from the ends of the earth, and reverence the 
 memory of the Pilgrims ! Let the Savannah 
 murmur it; let the Mississippi sound it; let 
 the Chesapeake and Delaware bear the chorus 
 to the sea; then let the Atlantic speak and 
 the Pacific answer — deep calling unto deep. 
 
 Two hundred and forty years ago! Who 
 15 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 will journey with me back to that period ? 
 Of how much must we divest ourselves before 
 we can draw near to that eventful day, when 
 the sea washed upon the shores of Plymouth 
 the seed of states? You may not carry with 
 you the vision of fruitful valleys — of popu- 
 lous cities, of fields of grain and grass. Re- 
 store if you can, in imagination, the solitude 
 of the Continent! Put a few Spaniards in 
 Florida, a few Englishmen at Jamestown, a 
 few stragglers in Canada. Give back the 
 whole continent to the Aboriginal Indian. 
 Light his fire along the streams, and mark 
 his hunting path again along the slopes of the 
 Alleghany ! Put out every lighthouse upon 
 the coast, stop every mill, burn every ship. 
 Nay, if you would be real pilgrims, in search 
 of the Primitive Pilgrims, you must abolish 
 the annals of history, cover up the battle-fields 
 of the Revolution, the Yorktown, the Bunker 
 Hill, the Camp at Valley Forge. You must 
 plant the forest where your noble Continental 
 State House now is, and silence that bell now 
 consecrated to Liberty, but which then lay 
 undug in the ores of the earth. You must 
 roll back the tide of civilization, efface every 
 railway, fill every canal, annihilate the steam 
 engine, give back the telegraph wire to its 
 i6 
 
Puritanism 
 
 mine, and its subtle fluid to the vagrant stormy- 
 clouds, restore to science all those secrets of 
 chemistry which now enrich the manufactories 
 of the world ; restore to nature the secrets of 
 fertility ; go back to the plough and imple- 
 ments of the olden time, and let steam ploughs 
 and reapers retreat to their old hiding-places ; 
 destroy natural pity, and let birds fly back to 
 unknown haunts, fish sink into the deep again, 
 and the astronomer forget his way, and his 
 path be rubbed out. Sink your yachts, ob- 
 Hterate your main and river steamers, scuttle 
 your merchantmen and bird-rivalling clippers, 
 and stand to see the ill-looking, clumsy May- 
 flower enter the harbour, a very tub which a 
 Delaware lighterman would scorn. 
 
 Thus, divesting the imagination of the facts 
 of the age in which we live, walk back to our 
 fathers without seeing a schoolhouse or a 
 church in all the way ; without hearing a mill, 
 or the lowing of the kine ; without one verdant 
 meadow for the scythe, or blossoming field for 
 the bees ; without an inn and without a host, 
 without a road and without steed or carriage ; 
 without a companion save the Indian, and 
 without a paper to print your observations, or 
 a book to record your travels ! In short, they 
 who would see Plymouth Rock to-night as 
 17 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 they saw it who landed two hundred and forty 
 years ago, must disrobe the continent and 
 strip bare the age in which he lives of its 
 discoveries, inventions and accumulations of 
 knowledge ! And thus unapparelled see these 
 
 men 
 
 But they, too, must not stand forth in those 
 pictures which the imagination loves to draw, 
 full of colours, full of symmetries, full of grand 
 heroic traits ! They were men of like pas- 
 sions with ourselves. Some were heroes and 
 some only heroic. Heroes never march in 
 battalions ! They were beset with ignorance 
 which later ages have cleared away. They 
 were narrow where we have grown broad. 
 They were intolerant where we have grown 
 liberal. They were rude and hard, while we 
 have clad ourselves with a few graces. A 
 grim and firm-faced band of men were they, 
 who for liberty of conscience forsook home, 
 and stood firm, on a December day upon the 
 winter-locked shore of Plymouth, without a 
 regret. How many of us, with all our boasted 
 advances, could have stood on that Rock, 
 blossoming only with frost-flowers, with old 
 England behind and a howling wilderness be- 
 fore, and cast no look backwards, but like 
 them, smile upon a welcome winter wilderness 
 i8 
 
Puritanism 
 
 in which there was liberty ! As sometimes, 
 in a doubtful battle, a bold commander casts 
 forward his flag among the enemy, that his 
 followers, with new redoubled ardour, may 
 strike forward to retake it there — so our fathers 
 cast forward their hearts upon the wilderness, 
 and it would be gloriously well if the sons 
 could find indeed the heart of the fathers ! 
 
 But it is time that we should look to these 
 men, not in their peaked hats and slashed 
 doublets, not in their clumsy cloaks and an- 
 tique costumes, but in the habiliments of their 
 souls ! Let us compare these men of two hun- 
 dred and forty years ago with their own age, 
 and that age with our own ! 
 
 There seem to be long winters in history as 
 well as nature, out of which spring suddenly 
 leaps; whose growth, slowly preparing 
 through many months, is almost like en- 
 chantment. To-day snows, and to-morrow 
 blossoms. Certain it was that despotism, 
 civil and ecclesiastical, had come to its full 
 development, just previous to the Reforma- 
 tion. The human soul broke forth from pro- 
 found darkness and captivity, with as sud- 
 den a glory as that which roused the shep- 
 herds on the plains of Bethlehem. And the 
 hundred years preceding the Pilgrim period 
 19 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 was one continuous outbreak and advance of 
 the human mind towards Liberty ! Scholar- 
 ship was revived. Printing was bringing the 
 democratic element to learning and inteUi- 
 gence. There was tumult in every depart- 
 ment of society. The world had completed 
 a full season, and was entering a new period. 
 No one could then have so said. A darkness 
 lay upon all men. In all the one hundred 
 years in which the Reformation stands central 
 not a prophet appeared ! 
 
 The noble was borne he knew not whither ; 
 the king felt himself swinging at the anchor 
 with an ever-lengthening cable ; scholars found 
 out truth as miners seek for ore, not knowing 
 whether it should make sword or shield, 
 buckler or knife, horse's shoe or nail for the 
 sanctuary — as sawyers rip the deal log, 
 thoughtless whether it is for the cradle or 
 for the floor it rocks upon ; for couch or for 
 coffin. Men at that time were very earnest, 
 intensely active, but every one with business 
 right on hand. Divines were searching for 
 truths, for immediate use against some cruel 
 error, some pestilent persecuting dogma. The 
 statesman was seizing a new truth, not from 
 any foreseen relation of its system or philos- 
 ophy, but because with something he must 
 20 
 
Puritanism 
 
 defend himself against intolerable pretensions 
 of power. Scholars were not men of theory, 
 weaving schools of modern days, who spin 
 over the fields of learning with more webs 
 than the sun shines upon in actual meadows. 
 They were living men — men who felt yokes 
 and burdens, and asked truth as knives to cut 
 the stringent burden off. Kings disputed the 
 very ground that men stood on, and sheer 
 necessity drove them to find out a reason for 
 their right to stand there. A common danger 
 drove them to explore principles of right 
 which should include all men in common. 
 And so, the forms of development — civil and 
 religious truth — naturally, and from circum- 
 stances of their origin, were towards the demo- 
 cratic or universal good. Everybody was 
 made practical and wise by some existing 
 necessity. All thinkers were held down to 
 earth by the earthly movements. Men, like 
 hounds, ran with their heads low to the ground 
 which they coursed over ! And as it was in 
 Europe, so it was in England. As it was of 
 the great army of Reformers, that secured to 
 England her liberties, so it was with those 
 who were broken off the parent tree to be 
 grafted upon the wild stock of a wilderness. 
 Our fathers did not come hither on a specu- 
 21 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 lation of philosophy, of religion, or of com- 
 merce. They came simply to be rid of op- 
 pression, and to live at peace with their own 
 consciences. They never dreamed of future 
 greatness. 
 
 The history of the Pilgrims is the proper 
 epic of humihty. They did not know their 
 own worth, or suspect their own grandeur. 
 They heard God's voice speaking in their age, 
 and they obeyed it. It was a nice ear that 
 could hear it. It was a pious soul that ac- 
 cepted it. It was a bold heart that could 
 obey it. No Moses was with them. No 
 miracle authenticated their moral convictions. 
 No fire or cloud guided them. The invisible 
 truth was their guide ! 
 
 These men were of small account at home. 
 If you will follow them back to their homes, 
 you will now and then find a mansion, never 
 a castle, but almost always a yeoman's house, 
 or a labourer's hovel. At home the Puritans 
 were weavers, cobblers, tinkers, merchants and 
 mechanics. Only their leaders were educated. 
 There is no evidence that they reared up in 
 imagination any Promised Land, or that they 
 fed their enthusiasm upon the visions of an 
 ideal Republic. There was no Sir Thomas 
 More among them, and they had no Utopia. 
 22 
 
Puritanism 
 
 There is no evidence of great foresight or 
 foregoing sagacity in statesmanship. They 
 were men of common sense in tlie affairs that 
 lay near to them, but there is no evidence that 
 they had tlie poetic glance or the in-looking 
 eye of philosophy. But what was the state 
 of an age in which the genteel men were able 
 to be only courtiers, while cobblers and tinkers 
 became statesmen, without knowing or pre- 
 tending it ? This is the lesson, then ; that 
 firm faith in God, and fidelity to moral truth 
 in its apphcation to the age in which men 
 live, and to the business that lies next their 
 hand, are the powers by which the greatest 
 events are brought to pass. 
 
 In taking away from the Puritan the com- 
 prehensive glance that read the whole scope 
 and future of the principles which he adopted, 
 do we lower him in the scale of greatness ? 
 If he had seen the end from the beginning, he 
 would have been more than a man. Not one 
 of all those eminent names that acted in the 
 Reformation were consistent with the since- 
 discovered nature of the principles which they 
 adopted. They accepted the doctrine of 
 liberty with a local application. They never 
 foresaw the logical future. Luther and his 
 compeers vehemently denounced the Protes- 
 23 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 tant war, although it was based upon the 
 identical principles which led the Reformed 
 Church to separate from Rome. That liberty 
 of speech which the Protestant asserted as be- 
 tween Protestantism and Catholicism was 
 denied by Luther, by Calvin, by Knox, as 
 between different sects of the Protestant 
 body. 
 
 The fatal notion of Unity which the Romish 
 Church has for an iron centre was carried by 
 the Protestant with the Reform. Despotism 
 consolidates ; Liberty opens, diffuses, relaxes. 
 Growth in tyrannies is only petrifaction. 
 Freedom develops as a tree does. First is the 
 seed of some pine, dropped by the hand of 
 frost, caught in the rift of some rock, and let 
 down towards the scanty soil by the melting 
 ice. It sprouts, and no voice announces its 
 birth. It struggles for room. Its roots seek 
 for nourishment from pervious rocks, and yet 
 it thrives. And as it grows, it divides and 
 divides again, united in the trunk but diverse 
 in the boughs, until in full stature it lifts up 
 ten thousand separate branches, each one with 
 liberty, but all of them fibral, back to a common 
 root. 
 
 But the knowledge of the safety which goes 
 with diversity — the practical knowledge of it 
 24 
 
Puritanism 
 
 — belonged to a later period. And since it 
 existed nowhere else, how should we demand 
 it among the Puritans ? Free speech with 
 them was a self-defensory claim, and not a 
 universal principle. Every man might revile 
 the Pope — but the Quakers were forbid to 
 revile the Protestant. That is as far as their 
 experiment went. They believed in free 
 speech, but beyond their own experience 
 they dreaded it. It was reserved for their 
 children to carry out to its full proportions 
 this fundamental right of liberty. 
 
 It is the joy and glory of our age that this 
 benign principle — liberty of the tongue — has 
 dropped its blossoms upon our land, and that 
 our hands are full of its fruits. For what are 
 free ports, in and out of which ships of all 
 nations may go, compared to the free mouth, 
 which is the soul's port ! And what is all the 
 merchandise of gold and silver, of silks and 
 spice, compared with the commerce of wis- 
 dom ! Within, invisible, the all-skillful soul 
 fashions her precious wares, weaves divine 
 truths into governments for the nations, forges 
 implements for sacred warfare, executes all 
 conceits of beauty and of grace, and to the 
 tongue she commits her treasures, as to a free 
 and universal merchantman, that runs through 
 25 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 every latitude, and with endless rounds of 
 benefaction enriches the globe ! 
 
 They planted the seed ; we gather the fruit. 
 Now, the civilized world is yielding to a Puri- 
 tan doctrine. Free speech is to the soul what 
 free air is to the body. To deny or suppress 
 it is to take sides with deceit and wickedness. 
 No righteous cause suffers by open search. 
 No cause dreads a Free Press unless it has 
 reason for dreading it. There is always a lie 
 or wrong when a probing tongue makes men 
 wince ; and he that shuts a free man's mouth 
 would, if he had an opportunity, temptation 
 and impunity, shut the prison door upon him. 
 To shut up the tongue in his mouth is a worse 
 imprisonment than to shut his body in a 
 dungeon. But the Puritan was not omniscient. 
 He could not borrow the Divine power of 
 seeing the end from the beginning. Nor 
 should we blame him for knowing only those 
 stars which rose in his hemisphere. 
 
 Let us see, now, what was the Puritan's 
 Creed. 
 
 I. The first grand battle of the Puritan 
 was continental, and in behalf of the right of 
 every man to his own God. God is father, 
 man is child. Religion is liberty. No man 
 but the father shall tell the child what he may 
 26 
 
Puritanism 
 
 do at home. The Church and the priests are 
 helps, not masters. Ordinances are staffs, not 
 sceptres. God gave to every man a telescope, 
 through which he might see the eternal world 
 and the invisible God. The cunning priest 
 slipped in place of it a kaleidoscope, filled 
 with bits of painted glass, beads and tinsel 
 metals, and every turn gave fantastic figures 
 and strange monkish devices, rarely fine to the 
 superstitious, but disgusting to intelligent faith. 
 
 The first contest was simply this : Is the 
 Bible a sufHcient guide to God ? Is the reason 
 a sufficient guide through the Bible ? Are an 
 honest soul and virtuous heart sufificient guides 
 for the reason ? 
 
 Next, the magistrate sought to usurp the 
 usurpation of the priest. King and Parlia- 
 ment undertook to direct the religious duties 
 and worship of the subject. Against this in- 
 trusion came the soul's Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence, and, in England, this separation 
 between Puritan and Churchman. 
 
 The last step taken into perfect liberty was 
 that taken by the Independent, whose cham- 
 pion was Harry Vane, that one's own sect 
 may not molest his free conscience. 
 
 That which the priest may not do the king 
 must not. What the king must not do one's 
 27 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 own neighbours and fellow citizens shall not. 
 And here at length the Puritan emerged 
 from the cave of darkness and into the hemi- 
 sphere of light and liberty. It was the spec- 
 tacle of the human soul claiming its birth- 
 right, asserting its sonship, inspired by full 
 faith of its immortality. 
 
 II. But whatever gives strength to the soul 
 for one purpose gives it universal growth. 
 The rights of the soul against ecclesiastical 
 domination could not fail to result in the 
 same conflict with the civil magistracy. The 
 logic that took the tiara from the pope's head 
 removed the crown from the king. The Puri- 
 tan shrank for a long time from consistency. 
 They dared not follow their own principles. 
 They strove to hold back. Like men who 
 begin to explore some unknown river in a 
 new land, that grew deeper and deeper at 
 every league, until, like the Amazon, it seemed 
 itself a sea, long before it reached the ocean, 
 so were the Puritans upon that stream — the 
 Liberty of the Individual ! It was not until 
 they had got out entirely from the shadow of 
 the Cathedral that they could make straight 
 lines in religion, and only when they left be- 
 yond the seas the whole fabric of monarchy 
 that they gave consistency and symmetry to 
 28 
 
Puritanism 
 
 their civil governments. Before, the prem- 
 ises had been Government, — from which they 
 strove to recover the rights of the people. 
 In the wilderness of New England, the syllo- 
 gism was reversed and the premise was the 
 People — and the inference a government. 
 
 Only give the whole of a man to himself, 
 and he is made to be prudent, virtuous, 
 orderly, self-governing. This is the molecule, 
 the atomic cell of Puritanism. Men need 
 governments of restraint, just in proportion 
 to the degree in which they are not developed 
 and free. As the individual becomes edu- 
 cated and strong in his whole nature, moral 
 and intellectual, he needs no government. For 
 God made the human soul sufficient for all its 
 own exigencies. It is a perfect state. It is 
 competent to entire sovereignty. 
 
 The Puritan was a man thoroughly alive to 
 liberty. Nor can he be understood or revered 
 by any who do not believe as he did, that true 
 manhood and Christian liberty were identical. 
 The first effect of Christianity upon the world 
 was monarchical and not democratic. It gave 
 power to the intellect, and purity to the moral 
 nature. But these were exerted in the direc- 
 tion of Government. In,the sixteenth century 
 there was in the world but one great interest 
 29 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 — Government. There was nothing else so 
 divine, so worshipped. God was supposed to 
 be revealed chiefly by Government. The world 
 of ideas was pervaded with the idea of Gov- 
 ernment — Government — Government ! Of the 
 one hundred million people of Europe, God 
 was supposed to think well only of about 
 twenty thousand. The rest were used for the 
 benefit of these. 
 
 Now in 1620, how stood the Puritan in com- 
 parison with the world ? Just as the Primi- 
 tive Christians had stood 1,600 years before. 
 [At this point Mr. Beecher proceeded to con- 
 sider at great length and with equal felicity, 
 first, the relative conditions of Christianity and 
 Idolatry, and second, the relative conditions of 
 the Puritan and his notions of individual rights 
 and monarchy with rights of Government. 
 He then proceeded.] 
 
 The Puritan is pronounced vulgar. But by 
 whom? Not by men who work. Not by 
 men whose worth comes by character rather 
 than station. He was the prophet of the com- 
 mon people, and was not ashamed to call them 
 brethren. Why should the servant be more 
 than the master ? The Messiah was scorned 
 as the son of a carpenter, who had never learned 
 letters. 
 
 30 
 
Puritanism 
 
 The Puritan is charged with a frivolous zeal 
 against trifles — robes and linen vestments. 
 But were they trifles ? Had they not mean- 
 ing? It is in the power of association to print 
 more indelibly than types or the graver's tool. 
 Not what the loom made ; it was not the linen, 
 but what the priest made it. It stood for 
 ideas. The homeliest peg that was ever driven 
 into the wall may hold up the warrior's armour, 
 or the king's robe. And days, trees, places, 
 garments, costumes may be nails on which the 
 heart hangs precious memories, or the imagina- 
 tion wondrous superstitions, or the faith earnest 
 beliefs. And the significance of any symbol 
 or ceremony is to be looked for, not in its in- 
 trinsic worth, but in the associations which it 
 carries to the popular mind. What is a wed- 
 ding-ring but a few pennyweights of gold? 
 Yet that little circle holds more to the wearer's 
 imagination than the horizon of the earth ! A 
 king's crown is but a rim of gold. Yet who 
 can estimate the meaning of that word in the 
 world's history? It signifies law, authority, 
 obedience, the State, the world's sovereignty. 
 The gold band on the king's head may be an 
 iron shackle on the Commonwealth. A throne 
 is but a clumsy chair, but that chair is symbol 
 of all that men hold most august in authority 
 31 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 and worshipful in earthly reverence. And in 
 the times of the Puritans a robe was more 
 than a robe, and a linen surplice more than a 
 garment. They carried with them the priest, 
 the altar and the church to which they be- 
 longed. The Puritans cared little for the 
 cloth, but much for the ideas which it sym- 
 bolized. 
 
 They are charged with ascetic prejudices, 
 and hatred of innocent amusements. But what 
 are innocent amusements in a tyrant's hands ? 
 Shall a king defraud his people of political 
 privileges and pay them in games and dances ? 
 If they would not question magistrate or priest 
 they might have holidays, and masks, and bear 
 baitings. What despot would not be glad to 
 furnish amusements, if, for such an equivalent, 
 the people would be content under all his 
 oppressions ? To-day, he of Gaeta would let 
 his people dance if they would consent not to 
 vote. He would pay for pipe and lute, if they 
 would leave him throne and sceptre. But the 
 sturdy sense of the Puritan despised the bribe, 
 and cast it under foot. Revels and dances 
 seemed to him but flowers upon the corpse of 
 Liberty. 
 
 They are charged with indifference to beauty, 
 and wanton desecration of art. But what was 
 32 
 
Puritanism 
 
 the art which they beheld ? Not harmonious 
 lines and wealth of colour. Art is language. 
 It came to them speaking all the abominable 
 doctrines of oppression. The more beautiful, 
 the more dangerous. It was a siren. Its 
 beauty was a lure. Did not the Puritans tread 
 in the very steps of the primitive Christian ? 
 Was not Art, in the early day, but heathenism 
 in its most potent and attractive form ? The 
 legend might be forgotten ; the perilous mythol- 
 ogy, let alone by one generation, would perish : 
 but art stood aloft; gleaming in the tempest, 
 radiant from thousands of pictures, silently fas- 
 cinating and poisoning the soul through its 
 most potent faculty — the imagination ! And 
 when the early Christian turned away from 
 art, it was not because it was beautiful, but 
 wicked. It embalmed corruption — it enshrined 
 lies ! And the Puritan lived in an age when 
 the priest, the aristocrat, the king, had long 
 and long been served by Art. 
 
 I doubt if in Cromwell's day there was a pic- 
 ture on the globe that had in it anything for 
 the common people ! The world's victories 
 had all been king's victories — warrior's vic- 
 tories. Art was busy crowning monarchs, 
 robing priests, or giving to the passions a gar- 
 ment of light in which to walk forth for mis- 
 33 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 chief! Will any man point me to the picture 
 of the wonderful number that Raphael painted 
 or designed that had in it a sympathy for the 
 common people? They are all hierarchic or 
 monarchic. Michael Angelo was at heart a 
 Republican. He loved the people's liberty 
 and hated oppression. Yet, what single work 
 records these sentiments ? The gentle Cor- 
 reggio filled church, convent, and cathedral 
 dome with wondrous riches of graceful forms ; 
 but common life found no signs of love, no 
 help, no champion in him. The Venetian 
 school, illustrious and marvellous, has left in 
 art few signs of liberty, and yet where might 
 we expect some recognition of the simple dig- 
 nity of human life, if not in that Republic ? 
 No : her rich men had artists, her priests had 
 artists, her common people had none. 
 
 In all the Italian schools probably not a 
 picture had ever been painted that carried a 
 welcome to the common people. To be sure, 
 there were angels endless, and Madonnas and 
 Holy Families without number ; there were 
 monkish legends turned into colour. Then 
 there were heathen divinities enough to bring 
 back the court of Olympia and put Jupiter 
 again in place of Jehovah. But in this im- 
 mense fertility — in this prodigious wealth of 
 34 
 
Puritanism 
 
 picture, statue, canvas and fresco — I know of 
 nothing tiiat served the common people. In 
 art, as in Hterature — Government, Govern- 
 ment, Government, was all, and People noth- 
 ing. I know not that the Romanic world of 
 art ever produced a democratic picture. 
 
 The Germanic World, from whence came all 
 our personal and popular liberties, had a strong 
 development of popular subjects in their schools 
 of art. Their pictures teem with natural ob- 
 jects, with birds and cattle, with husbandry, 
 with personals, and their life with domestic 
 scenes and interiors. 
 
 What had an Englishman, if a commoner, 
 to thank art for ? Not a painter in England, 
 from 1500 to 1700, until the days of Hogarth, 
 ever expressed an idea which was not inspired 
 by the aristocracy or the monarchy ! 
 
 While, then, the Puritan stood forth under 
 the inspiration of a new life in the state — the life 
 of the common people — he had no thanks to 
 render to art in the past. On the contrary, it 
 stood against him. It plead for the oppressor. 
 It deified the hierarchy. It clothed vice in 
 radiant glory. It left homely industry, sterling 
 integrity and democratic ethics without a line 
 or hue. Every cathedral was to him a door 
 to Rome. Every carved statue beckoned the 
 35 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 superstitious soul to some pernicious error. 
 Every altar-piece was a golden lie. Every 
 window suborned the sun, and sent his rays to 
 bear on a painted lie or a legendary superstition. 
 With few exceptions, at that time of little in- 
 fluence, the art of all the world was the minion 
 of monarchy, the servant of corrupted religion 
 or the mistress of lust. It had brought noth- 
 ing to the common people and much to their 
 oppressors. When the Puritan broke the 
 altar, it was not the carving that he hated, but 
 the idea carved. It was not the window that 
 he shattered, but the lie which it held in its 
 gorgeous blazonries ; for nothing had any 
 worth to the Puritan which was not morally 
 sound, and which did mot consent to Lib- 
 erty. 
 
 It is all very well for us, who are without 
 superstition, who cannot even understand the 
 meaning of old art, to admire it and mourn 
 over its destruction by iconoclastic Puritans. 
 It is easy, after two centuries of experience, to 
 send back good advice to those who struggled 
 in the twilight of their beginning without help 
 and desperately set upon by evils that threaten 
 hberty, truth and love itself. Let us be glad 
 that so little was destroyed, and wonder at the 
 forbearance of outraged men that did so little 
 36 
 
Puritanism 
 
 injury to arts which carried deadly contagion 
 to the popular imagination ! 
 
 But why do I defend ? Why do I interpret ? 
 Their work is the best eulogy. Do you ask 
 for their sincerity ? Go with these Pilgrims to 
 exile ! Toss with them upon the deep ! Land 
 with them on this December day upon the 
 bleak New England shore — on this, the 22d 
 of December, the shortest day of the calendar, 
 but the longest day of American history, and 
 most honoured. 
 
 They brought no gold; they found none. 
 They found no dweUings. No sunny clime 
 cheered the weary voyagers ; no sweet fields 
 sent forth a savour such as, even in winter, the 
 south of England knows. The hills were for- 
 ested, but leafless, except the pine. That 
 stood green and hopeful, even in midwinter. 
 That tree they marked. They chose it for 
 their banner. It yet stands upon the seal pf 
 Massachusetts. No symbol in heaven, or on 
 earth, was half so fit. What other tree so well 
 can stand for the principle of Liberty? It 
 grows without culture; it flourishes on soil 
 that would starve another tree. Sand or rocks 
 are quite alike to it. Every root is an engi- 
 neer. The mast rises straight up to God. It 
 spreads out its branches to the North, the 
 17 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 South, the East, the West, ahke, and spires up 
 in symmetry like a pinnacle of a cathedral. 
 It defies the storm ; is not afraid of heat or 
 cold. It is grateful to culture, but thrives 
 bravely even in neglect. It adorns the habita- 
 tion of men, but is just as much the glory of 
 the wilderness. And when all other trees 
 have yielded to the frost, the evergreen pine 
 lets go not a leaf, but holds up its plumed head 
 like a warrior, and whoops and chants to the 
 winds all winter long, just as it murmured and 
 sang all summer. Is not that the tree of 
 Liberty ? The Pilgrims chose it — placed it on 
 their banner. All hail to the Pilgrims' Pine — 
 the tree of Liberty ! 
 
 When they left, no one missed them. No 
 king sat easier. No prime minister, Richelieu, 
 or Mazarin, or Villiers, felt his care lighter. 
 They were too mean. Gone or present, they 
 were despised. Their doctrine was a pestilent 
 heresy. The whole world scorned it. A few 
 of the Puritans had become Pilgrims to a dis- 
 tant continent, — and that, wise men doubtless 
 thought, would end the impertinence ! 
 
 Two hundred and forty years ! And what 
 
 says the world now ? England confesses that 
 
 to the Puritan she owes her liberty. Their 
 
 name is honoured. Men grow famous by 
 
 38 
 
Puritanism 
 
 merely praising them. Their principles, si- 
 lently working, have ameliorated or changed 
 laws and customs, until now England is one 
 of the freest nations on the globe. Nowhere 
 else is conscience more sacred from tyranny. 
 The Press is free as the winds, and like them 
 brings health by blowing. The tongue is 
 loosed. Indeed, were the old Puritan sud- 
 denly to come to hfe again in Old England, so 
 far has practice outrun even his utmost notions, 
 that he would be in danger of conservatism. 
 
 And upon the Continent of Europe a com- 
 plete revolution is effected. Those nations 
 that have refused the Puritan principles are in 
 their dotage. Spain, Portugal, Italy — where 
 are they? Their life died down for want of 
 using. They are the feeblest states in Europe. 
 France, half Protestant, is becoming more free 
 every year. The Emperor is no more mon- 
 arch by the grace of God, but by the vote of 
 the people ! ' There are two centuries in that 
 simple thing. And what is the schoolmaster 
 of Europe teaching the indocile kings ? That 
 nations may drive out sovereigns who abuse 
 the subjects' rights ; that the people may 
 choose their own rulers. Italy votes for her 
 King ! When votes are cast into the ballot- 
 1 The reader will remember that this was i860. 
 
 39 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 box before St. Peter's, the spirits of the old 
 Puritans will surely walk the streets of Rome, 
 and chant their airy psalms of praise. The 
 Czar signs the decree of emancipation in his 
 continental domains, and on the ist of next 
 January, millions of serfs will enter the yecir, 
 freemen 1 Austria, sullen and reluctant, has 
 not the strength to defend her oppressed Prov- 
 inces. Asia and Africa are coming rapidly 
 under the dominion of nations which advance 
 the world in liberty. 
 
 And is our own land receding ? Are we 
 unclothing ourselves of the garments of lib- 
 erty, just as the nations are arising in its 
 robes ? Are we about to put on the cast-off 
 rags of despotism, and join the oppressors 
 of the earth just when God is herding and 
 driving them from among men ? No ! Lib- 
 erty was never loved more dearly than now. 
 There are more hearts that beat with intelli- 
 gent enthusiasm for human rights than ever 
 before ! And this night of Pilgrim celebration 
 had never before so wide and profound a sym- 
 pathy ! Our fathers lit a feeble natal fire upon 
 the rocks this night, two hundred and forty 
 years ago, and it has never gone out ! It 
 burns there ; it burns here ; it burns in every 
 State in this Union; and will burn on for 
 40 
 
Puritanism 
 
 ages yet. No vestal fire of ancient temples 
 ever endured so long. No renewed candles 
 ever glimmered so long before priestly shrines, 
 as has glowed, and will glow, before the Puri- 
 tan's flame — the freeman's fire ! 
 
 The Germans have a legend that, on the 
 anniversary of every great world-battle, the 
 spirits of the old combatants rise and join 
 again in silent glory above the scenes of their 
 former conflict. To-night, methinks, the old 
 Puritans of the 22d of December gather in 
 high and solemn council over the scene of 
 their landing. No war is in the soul — no 
 sword is in their hand ! A Divine glory is 
 upon them, and with solemn benediction they 
 stretch forth their shadowless hands towards 
 all this Continent ! And shall I seem ex- 
 travagant if I believe that thither, through the 
 high air, swoop the mighty dead of former 
 days, to do them reverence — the Rutledges, 
 the Pinckneys, the Jeffersons, the Madisons, 
 the Franklins, the Adamses, the Hancocks, 
 and all the revered names from every State 
 that, with them, carried forward the Puritan 
 work? Let us join them in sympathy. We 
 send forth our hearts to-night to every Amer- 
 ican who loves the liberty which the Puritan 
 planted on these shores ! We greet, over all 
 
 41 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 the earth, every man who stands boldly for 
 the rights of men ! We give our sympathy 
 and our prayers to every man, wherever he 
 may be, that is wronged and oppressed ; and 
 that prayer is and shall be, " God of our 
 Fathers, send confusion to the oppressors, and 
 liberty to the captive ! " 
 
 4? 
 
II 
 
 THE WASTES AND BURDENS OF 
 SOCIETY 
 
 SOCIETY is the most comprehensive of 
 all institutions, the most complex. It is 
 really the method under which men live to- 
 gether in all their interests, in their social 
 relations, in their business, in their very- 
 various conditions of poverty, and riches, and 
 industry. It is the largest subject that could 
 be handled, — so large that when the subtler 
 elements that enter into it are considered, no 
 man can comprehend the whole of it. He can 
 select departments, the moral elements, the 
 political elements, the industrial elements, the 
 intellectual elements ; but there is in society 
 something more than either or all of these 
 put together. 
 
 In the human body there are hands, there 
 are feet, there is a heart, and there is a head ; 
 but when the physiologist has enumerated 
 every organ and all its functions, he has not 
 yet described the man. Life is that subtle 
 43 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 thing that no man can express and no man 
 can understand ; and so it is in that great 
 organic body — Society. Under the providence 
 of God it is an existence having within itself, 
 though apparently much mixed and obscured, 
 a hfe of its own. Its formation depends very 
 much on climate, on the occupations of men, 
 on the government and laws under which they 
 live, upon the condition of religious beliefs 
 that prevail among them, whether old or late 
 in formation ; yet, after all, with all these 
 variations affected by incidental circum- 
 stances, there is something more than these 
 enumerations indicate. 
 
 If you had never seen an acorn or any seed 
 brought from a distant land, you might make 
 a difference in its growth by the soil which 
 you gave it, by the culture that followed it, by 
 the climate in which it was brought forward ; 
 but after all there would be in that seed some- 
 thing that would not change ; it would go 
 right on from the germ to unfold itself as it 
 pleased, according to the nature that was in 
 the seed. 
 
 This is entirely set aside, apparently, by 
 
 those men who are seeking to reconstruct 
 
 society in the air upon the principle of some 
 
 theory. They think that society as it has 
 
 44 
 
The Wastes and Burdens of Society 
 
 been is very imperfect ; so do I. They think' 
 it may be made much better ; so do I. They 
 think they have got the trick of doing it ; and 
 I don't. They formulate this, and they formu- 
 laite that, and after all society goes stumbling 
 om and has its own way. As if a naturalist 
 would think that an elephant was a great deal 
 too big, and that he was clumsy, and should 
 undertake to make elephants grow according 
 to his own idea of alertness and strength com- 
 bined, as they are not in the elephant. So- 
 ciety is an unmanageable thing. Whatever 
 exertion you lay out on it will produce some 
 effect; yet it will not be the result of your 
 will, but the result that Nature gives to this 
 complex organization as it pleases her. Let 
 me then proceed, not to undertake to pro- 
 pound a new theory of what society ought to 
 be, but simply to do what every doctor does. 
 He can diagnose what is the health or sickness 
 of every individual, but he cannot reconstruct 
 it ; he must act upon the lines of creation for 
 each individual. I can criticize, I can point 
 out wastes, I can show the burdens, and these 
 may successively be cut down by criticism, 
 and practically reduced in weight, in number, 
 in various ways ; but this is very different 
 from undertaking to reconstruct society from 
 45 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 that foundation upon some notion of philos- 
 ophy. 
 
 The first burden that I shall mention, the 
 first waste, is Sickness and Weakness. Here 
 and all the way through I beg you to under- 
 stand that I am not discussing these topics, 
 which in succession will come up, from the 
 standpoint of humanity or morality, and still 
 less from the standpoint of spiritual religion, 
 but from the standpoint of political economy. 
 That is the " science " which takes cognizance 
 of the production of wealth, its distribution, 
 and its uses in rendering society strong and 
 happy, and I am speaking now in regard to 
 each successive phase of waste and of burden 
 from that point. 
 
 The proper duration of human life I suppose 
 to be anywhere from eighty to a hundred 
 years. Men are built so that they have a 
 right to expect that. A man ought to be 
 ashamed to die before he is seventy years old. 
 But the average duration of human life is 
 about thirty-three years. Consider what a 
 waste that is, when society has in itself the 
 power of prolonging life to a hundred years, 
 or ninety years, or eighty years, and the 
 average of the duration of life is but thirty, 
 according to the old account, and thirty-three 
 46 
 
The Wastes and Burdens of Society 
 
 now, according to the more modern estimate. 
 Well, here is two-thirds wasted; one-third 
 only does all the work that is done in human 
 society ; and if you consider the period of 
 non-productiveness necessary in the develop- 
 ment of childhood, and if you give to the aged 
 and outworn the liberty of some years on the 
 other side of life, and then count the pro- 
 ductive forces, I think it may be said, taking 
 the world over, it is a fair estimate that one- 
 fourth of the human family do all the work 
 that is done, and support the other three- 
 fourths. Now, sickness is, from the stand- 
 point of political economy, a squandering of 
 the forces of productive labour in human life. 
 No corporation, no commercial enterprise 
 could succeed, — they would go to smash, the 
 whole of them, — if they wasted three-fourths 
 of all their forces; but this great institu- 
 tion, Human Society, squanders three-fourths 
 of all its forces, yet steadily holds on 
 its way through time ; in spite of all its 
 diseases and all its burdens and all its squan- 
 derings, it continues to exist ; such are its vital 
 forces. 
 
 Now from the standpoint of political econ- 
 omy, weakness is worse than sickness, for if a 
 man has any self-respect when he is sick he 
 47 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 will either get well or he will die ; but a man 
 that is weak will not do either. He not only 
 does nothing, but he hangs on the hands of 
 men who do take care of him, and, so far as 
 political economy is concerned, though add- 
 ing nothing he subtracts a good deal. From 
 the standpoint of affection it is a very different 
 question, but from the standpoint of the pro- 
 ductiveness of mankind in political economy 
 it is a very fair question, so that v/eakness and 
 death are to be regarded as the wastes of the 
 industrial forces of human Hfe. 
 
 One would not suppose, after the world has 
 had philosophy so long and has so much of it 
 now, that there would be any need, such as I 
 feel burdened with to-night, to set forth how 
 utterly inadequate men's ideas are in regard to 
 the maintenance and propagation of health. 
 There are two things that God made the most 
 of in this world that men are more afraid of 
 than of anything else — fresh air and cold 
 water. As regards this matter of fresh air : so 
 that a man can breathe, he seldom troubles 
 himself what it is he is breathing ; but nature 
 considers what it is that he is breathing all the 
 time. I have been speaking for more than 
 fifty years in every conceivable place — in 
 halls, in churches — and I have yet to meet 
 48 
 
The Wastes and Burdens of Society 
 
 one single place where an audience ought to 
 be detained for an hour. 
 
 A healthy man in the open air breathes 
 about two thousand cubic feet of air an hour. 
 Our best hospitals make arrangements for 
 about twelve hundred feet per hour ; our best 
 jails and penitentiaries make provision for 
 about six hundred cubic feet per hour ; what 
 the churches provide I do not know. The 
 schools in the city of Philadelphia — and it is 
 supposed to be a model city — provide for 
 each child one hundred and fifty-six cubic 
 feet per hour. In our schools in Brooklyn, 
 where I live, fifty-nine, forty-five, thirty-nine, 
 and, in one disgraceful instance, twenty-four 
 cubic feet are provided for those little wretches 
 that we call our children. If they had been 
 thieves they would have got six hundred in 
 jail. An audience gathered together in 
 ordinary assembly-rooms not only have no 
 considerable proportion of that air which 
 they should have, but ordinarily in such an 
 assembly-room as this, in about fifteen minutes 
 the fresh air has been all used up once, and as 
 there is very httle resupply it will very soon 
 be breathed over twice, three times, four times, 
 five times, and in less than an hour every 
 man, woman, and child in this assembly will 
 49 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 have in him something of every other man, 
 vifoman, and child. It is but very rarely that 
 one sees a person who thinks so well of an- 
 other that he would like to eat him up. 
 
 This vaporous intimacy with each other's 
 interiors Is not wholesome, and yet it is al- 
 most universal. The filth of it never seems 
 to have struck anybody at all. If you were 
 to invite a friend to your house, and put him 
 into a bed where fifty men in succession had 
 slept without any change of sheets, he would 
 justly think you were a filthy householder, 
 and you would have a right to be ashamed ; 
 or if you sat a man down to your table, and 
 told him that ten men had eaten from that 
 knife and fork and plate before he came in, he 
 would not tolerate it for a moment : but yet in 
 an audience-room they will go on eating each 
 other over and over and over again without 
 the slightest reluctance. Every man or woman 
 in a congregation in half an hour has some- 
 thing in him of everybody else. But nobody 
 thinks about it, and of all creation the men 
 who think less about it than any others are 
 architects. They make clean the outside and 
 beautify the house, but within it is full of dead 
 men's breaths, or the dead breaths of men. 
 
 Well, there has been an estimate formed in 
 SO 
 
The Wastes and Burdens of Society 
 
 the United States, which I suppose will answer 
 substantially for Great Britain, as to the eco- 
 nomical value of a man. We estimate a man's 
 value in the United States as based upon the 
 fact that men earn upon an average six hundred 
 dollars a year, and a man's value is a capital 
 whose interest amounts to six hundred dollars 
 a year. Thus, every time an experienced 
 mechanic, every time a labouring farmer, 
 every time a productive citizen dies, the com- 
 munity loses the capital, whose annual interest 
 is six hundred dollars. Of course, when I am 
 called to a funeral I never look at it from that 
 standpoint. I never say, " Six hundred dollars 
 gone, brethren ! " Sentiment, taste, and re- 
 ligious feeling would prevent that ; but it is 
 gone, and gone very largely by the decease 
 of men whom society cannot afford to let go. 
 If an annual death of six hundred men in the 
 community had taken place, and they were 
 all shifty politicians, why, we could get along 
 all the better for their going. But one in- 
 genious, inventive, skillful, and industrious 
 mechanic is worth a whole shoal of those in- 
 sects that fly about the community called 
 politicians. 
 
 Now it is the duty of every civic ruler to 
 look at this matter; it is the duty of every 
 SI 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 governing body, of Nation, State, county, 
 town, city, to look after the health of the 
 citizens, in draining, in lighting, in cleansing 
 the streets, and in securing them from epi- 
 demics, or from the more gradual causes of 
 sickness, and weakness, and death. And in 
 doing this work it is indispensable, according 
 to the dictates of the largest philosophy — and 
 that is Christianity — that the care should be 
 at the bottom of society, first and mainly, and 
 not at the top. If you go into a community 
 and see beautiful mansions, you have a right 
 to rejoice in them. I like to see fine streets, 
 well shaded ; I like to see com.fortable dwell- 
 ings, surrounded by flowers, and all the ele- 
 ments of taste ; but, after all, I can form no 
 idea of the Christian civilization of any com- 
 munity till I go down and see where the 
 working men live, where the mechanics live. 
 The test of civilization is not at the top, it is 
 the average, but more especially the bottom of 
 society. They may be too weak to do it 
 themselves, they may be too ignorant to do it 
 themselves ; it is, therefore, one of the highest 
 duties of civic bodies to see to it that the 
 great under- mass of human society are put and 
 kept in conditions of health. 
 
 And there is also an appeal in this matter to 
 52 
 
The Wastes and Burdens of Society 
 
 those that are able by reason of knowledge 
 and of wealth to have ventilated dwellings 
 and all the sanitary appliances of modern 
 knowledge. It is right ; but it is not the only 
 thing that is right. No man can go home 
 and shut his door and walk upon his royal 
 carpets and say, " All things in my house con- 
 duce to health." Society is so knit together 
 that the condition of the upper classes is very 
 largely, though indirectly, determined by the 
 condition of the under classes, and in no one 
 respect more than in the matter of health ; for, 
 although they may seem to you brutal, there 
 is no family so poor, there is no family so 
 ignorant, there is no family so sottish that 
 they cannot develop smallpox and malarial 
 fevers. And when these ills are developed 
 they do not stay at home ; the wind carries 
 them, they sweep through the whole com- 
 munity, and the neglect and indolence of the 
 upper classes may return in the form of so- 
 called Divine Providence through the develop- 
 ment of epidemics by the under classes of 
 society. For their own sake and for the sake 
 of humanity every thinking man and citizen 
 well off should see to it that the great body of 
 society should be taken care of and that a 
 preventable disease should not be allowed to 
 53 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 ravage the community. It is pretty generally 
 the custom in New England, where the 
 winters are long, to have a great store of 
 potatoes, cabbages, onions, and all manner of 
 vegetables, and the old-fashioned way was, as 
 soon as the climate became too severe for 
 them to be left out in the open air, to put 
 them in the cellars, which are built with thick 
 walls, where they will not freeze. But when 
 the spring begins to come on and the remnant 
 of the vegetables begins to reek and germinate 
 malarial influences, those silent, vaporous in- 
 fluences steal up through crack and cranny and 
 partition. By and by one of the children is 
 sick ; the doctor is sent for. He says : " It is 
 singular that the child should have such a 
 trouble as this ; if you lived in a squalid 
 neighbourhood I could understand it, but this 
 looks very much as if it were malarial dis- 
 ease." The child dies. By and by a sec- 
 ond child is taken sick, and the wonder grows ; 
 and the mother goes down, and by this time 
 they send for the minister, and he looks grave. 
 " Mysterious providence ! " he says. Mysteri- 
 ous providence ! It is not providence at all : 
 it is rotten onions and potatoes down-stairs. 
 You cannot have a foul cellar and not have a 
 dangerous up-stairs ; and in society the upper 
 54 
 
The Wastes and Burdens of Society- 
 classes have a great deal more risk than they 
 are apt to suppose ; though they keep them- 
 selves in a sanative condition, yet there is this 
 reeking influence that is coming up directly or 
 indirectly from society everywhere. 
 
 The next burden and waste in society that I 
 should mention is that which springs upon us 
 from our Parasites. A parasite is an animal 
 organized to get its living out of somebody 
 else. It does not work ; it sucks for a living. 
 Of course, you know what a vegetable parasite 
 is, like the mistletoe and certain air plants that 
 live upon trees ; and the insect parasite, the red 
 spider, and the green aphis and aphides every- 
 where; we know what animal parasites are, 
 intestinal or exterior ; but the worst parasites 
 in the world are human parasites, and society 
 is full of them. All healthy men competent to 
 work, but unwilling, who live upon society 
 without giving an equivalent, I call parasites. 
 The young man has had some ambition ; he 
 has run through his active energies, and he 
 loiters about the streets morning and noon and 
 night, and picks up a living. Providence may 
 know how. All vicious men, and men that 
 come to the legitimate results of vice, all 
 criminal men that forsake industries and live 
 by warfare, open or secret, I call parasites. 
 55 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 These tliat become the offscouring of com- 
 munities, that ichorously drop from stage to 
 stage, and at the bottom form a malarious mud 
 — these parasites of society are wasters ; and I 
 have a right to denounce vice and crime and 
 all the courses that lead to them, not alone 
 upon high moral principle, not alone upon 
 mere schedules of morality, but because they 
 are my enemies and your enemies, and they 
 bleed us and suck us ; they are vermin that in- 
 fest our bodies and our families. And if these 
 classes are vicious, criminal, and parasitic, 
 how much more are they that make them, 
 those whose very trade and livelihood consist 
 in making vicious and criminal parasites in a 
 community ! The men that make drunkards 
 are worse than the drunkards. The men that 
 make gamblers are worse than the gamblers. 
 The men that furnish lust with its material are 
 worse than those that are overcome by the lust. 
 And yet, when we preach a doctrine of 
 restriction and ask for laws that should hold 
 in these parasites of society, what a clamour is 
 raised — we are interfering with the liberty of 
 men ; they have a right to support their fami- 
 lies. Especially they say, " What has a min- 
 ister got to do with this business ? Why does 
 not he attend to preaching the gospel of 
 56 
 
The Wastes and Burdens of Society 
 
 peace ? Why does he come out and interfere 
 so with the vocations of men in society ? " I 
 was a citizen before I was a minister, and I do 
 it as a mall and citizen, not as a professional 
 minister; yet I would do it that way rather 
 than let it go undone, for I am one of those 
 who do not believe in that kind of minister 
 that seems to be a cross between a man and 
 a woman. There was a time when a man 
 with a hectic cheek and sunken eye was sup- 
 posed to be near heaven, and fitted to teach 
 men and young men in the proportion in 
 which he was going to the grave himself. 
 Times are changed, and now robust and 
 strong, open-eyed men are ministers because 
 they are men, and have practical, humane 
 thoughts and sympathies, living among men 
 as men, and not Ufted above men on some 
 velvet shelf where by reason of their mere 
 externals they are considered above and better 
 than the average of human nature. Either 
 way, I think it is the duty of every moral 
 teacher to scourge the makers of crimes, and 
 the men that invalidate the health or morality 
 of the great body of the community. And 
 there is another reason why I have a right to 
 speak out. You declare that I have no right 
 to meddle with other people's business; no, 
 57 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 but I have a right to take care of my own 
 business. My sons and daughters are dear to 
 me, and when men do wrong about them by 
 lures and temptations and snares, for hu- 
 manity's sake as well as for parental affection 
 and love I have a right to interfere. 
 
 And I hold that that is a sphere in which 
 above all others a woman has a right to inter- 
 fere. What are called woman's rights are 
 simply the rights of human beings, and before 
 a woman can do right and well in the direc- 
 tion of humanity and virtue she has a right to 
 vote. In our land the vote is rapidly becom- 
 ing the magister as things go with us, and 
 more and more throughout all civilized coun- 
 tries the power of the vote is increasing. 
 I hold that a woman has the right to vote ; 
 but if you withhold from her on any consid- 
 erations of supposed propriety voting for the 
 remote questions of civility, there is one 
 sphere where a woman is not allowed to vote, 
 and where she ought to vote. She brings 
 forth children in pain, she spends her life on 
 them, bringing them up from infancy and 
 helplessness to manhood and strength ; and if 
 there is one creature on the earth that has a 
 right to vote what sort of school there should 
 be in a district, what teacher should be there, 
 58 
 
The Wastes and Burdens of Society 
 
 for how many months it should be kept open, 
 what should be taught in it, if there is one 
 person who has a right to speak of the gam- 
 bling dens and drinking hells that are round 
 about her family, it is the mother of the 
 children, and in all police relations and educa- 
 tional matters and everything that touches the 
 virtue and morality of society, our civilization 
 will not be perfected until it should be, as it is 
 in religion, that man and woman stand before 
 God equal and alike. 
 
 There is another aspect of this matter of the 
 criminal classes that is worthy a moment's 
 consideration. It is industry that pays for 
 laziness; it is virtue that pays for vice; it is 
 law-abiding and God-fearing men that pay for 
 unprincipled men's misdeeds. All the waste 
 of society is endured by the virtuous ele- 
 ments in it. I am taxed, you are taxed 
 heavily — taxed not for humanity in the care 
 of the disabled poor — that tax we pay cheer- 
 fully ; but you are taxed and I am taxed for 
 the ignorance, for the vice, for the crime, for 
 the laziness, of all the parasitic forces of 
 human society. I am content when I am 
 taxed by our law that applies equally to every 
 one, but the pickpocket has no right to put 
 his hand in my pocket; and the grog-seller 
 59 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 has no right to levy taxes on me. The vices 
 of society are the most arrogant of tax-gath- 
 erers ; they lay the imposts themselves ; they 
 themselves declare how much men shall pay ; 
 they collect it themselves ; you stand by and 
 pay for the devil's wages. 
 
 The third waste that I shall mention is 
 that which comes from Ignorance. It is a 
 great loss to a man to have had a head put on 
 him with nothing in it, and next to that it is a 
 great misfortune to a man to have had a good 
 deal put into his head and not know it is 
 there. It is a curse to an ignorant man to be 
 ignorant. If a man had no eyes, no ears, and 
 no use of his tongue, he would be shut out 
 from so much of knowledge, and every man 
 would bemoan his condition and ask, " Why 
 does he Uve ? " But more than the eyes and 
 the ears and the tongue are perpetually para- 
 lyzed in an ignorant man. Eyes he has, but 
 he cannot see the length of his hand ; ears he 
 has, and all the finest sounds in creation escape 
 him ; a tongue he has, but it is cursed with 
 blundering. An ignorant man is a man whom 
 God packed up and men have not yet unfolded. 
 If a man has as a mechanic a chest of tools 
 and knows how to use a gimlet and a saw, 
 and that is all, it is a great deprivation to 
 60 
 
The Wastes and Burdens of Society 
 
 him; he cannot keep up in the race of life; 
 and an ignorant man must of necessity be 
 dropping down, down to the bottom. 
 
 Society moves upon averages. To make 
 society progressive, it is not enough to develop 
 the top of it. In the dairy it may be all very 
 well to have the cream on the top, but it is 
 very poor in society to have the thing re- 
 peated; for society does not move by the 
 force of its top : that influences some, but it 
 is the average of the mass that either acceler- 
 ates or retards the movements of society in 
 advance. It is the hull and the freight, and 
 not the sails alone, that determine the quick- 
 ness of the voyage, and ignorance at the bot- 
 tom of society benumbs society ; it is obliged 
 to drag this vast bulk. It is like a gouty man 
 trying to walk ; he may be good at the top 
 and all the way down, but his feet are not 
 good, and he cannot walk. It behooves, there- 
 fore, as a matter of political economy simply, 
 that by schools and popular knowledge ig- 
 norance should be purged out from every 
 community. There can be no prosperity de- 
 serving of that name that leaves at the bot- 
 tom a section of ignorance nearly equal in 
 numbers to that in the middle or top of so- 
 ciety. 
 
 6i 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 But chiefly it is the relation of ignorance to 
 public affairs that I would emphasize, — the 
 relation of ignorance in the production of 
 property, and in that which concerns all prop- 
 erty, legitimate legislation, and administration. 
 In olden times, when there were but two classes 
 in the state, one of which said : " Thus saith 
 the king," and the other had nothing to do 
 but to say : " Yea " and " Amen," the matter 
 of political economy did not matter so very 
 much. But with the growth of the ages the 
 light that in early times shone only on the top 
 of the mountain is finding its way down the 
 mountainside lower and lower into the valley, 
 and the inevitable course of the development 
 of humanity is that the great under classes 
 shall have some voice. At last we have come 
 to a period in which it may be said of all the 
 civilized nations of Europe and of America 
 that the mass of the common people have 
 gained such a twihght intelligence that they 
 are partners in the administration of law and 
 of government. Now where men holding the 
 vote are really determinative of the best legis- 
 lation, it is to the last degree important that 
 they should have both knowledge and intelli- 
 gence. I make a distinction between knowl- 
 edge and intelligence. Intelligence is the 
 62 
 
The Wastes and Burdens of Society 
 
 capacity to see, to understand, to choose, to 
 determine ; it is an ever-active force ; but 
 knowledge is merely one of the fruits of intel- 
 ligence — what it has found out. They are 
 separable. I have known a great many men 
 stop with knowledge, who could do nothing ; 
 I have known men that had intelligence and 
 no education, and did a great deal. Best it is 
 that both, large knowledge springing from 
 active inteUigence, should be the possession of 
 every citizen. 
 
 Above all, we need that men should have 
 the kind of education that should enable them 
 to put themselves to their best uses. And 
 this is an experiment that has been carried on 
 in America. We hold here that it is a crime 
 to allow a man or his children to grow up in 
 ignorance — a crime against the Common- 
 wealth. From the Atlantic Ocean to the 
 Pacific, and from the Lakes on the North to 
 the Gulf of Mexico on the South, there is not 
 now a State nor a Territory, the population 
 being either white or black, foreign immigrants 
 or native-born citizens, in which there are not 
 established free public schools. For it is held 
 to be necessary for the existence of the Com- 
 monwealth that those who have the power of 
 the vote shall have that power in the hands of 
 63 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 intelligence, and for the conservation of the 
 State itself. The State, the Commonwealth 
 thereof, all of them determine that the people, 
 as the first condition of citizenship, shall come 
 up through the common schools of America, 
 and no man pays one farthing for the instruc- 
 tion of his children in those schools, because 
 the State cannot afford any other conditions 
 for its rising population. More than that, we 
 are making our common schools so good that 
 comparatively few private paid schools can 
 stand under them. And it is a good thing in 
 another way, too ; it is a good thing for every 
 class in society, however widely they may ul- 
 timately differ, to start together in a common 
 citizenship. The children of the rich and the 
 children of the poor sit together on the same 
 bench. The rich man's dunce has no prefer- 
 ence over the poor man's genius. Here is a 
 clergyman's son, and right alongside of him 
 the son of the clergyman's washerwoman, and 
 oftentimes the last shall be first and the first 
 last. Where there is to be a government of 
 the people it is a good thing that for once in 
 their Hfe there shall be a level, and that the 
 children shall stand on that democratic level 
 all together and alike ; then let them shoot up 
 just as far as their several talents will allow them. 
 64 
 
The Wastes and Burdens of Society 
 
 The next and fourth of the wastes that I 
 shall mention is that of Quarrelsomeness, the 
 bulldog nature of men. Darwin supposes that 
 men descended, or ascended, rather, from the 
 animal, and I think I have seen men that came 
 through the wolf, — another man seems to have 
 come through the bear, another through the 
 fox, and some men through the hog, and I see 
 some men that came through the bulldog. 
 The excitement of life with them is some form 
 of combating; they love to fight. Now the 
 honest and temperate conflict, the attrition of 
 mind with mind, the comparision of opinions 
 and the proof of them in a gentle school of 
 fencing, or the generous emulation of bodily- 
 athletics, is beneficial. The want of excite- 
 ment is death. Excitement carried on from 
 the basilar passions is bad; intellectual and 
 moral excitements are the highest conditions 
 of social life. But the kind of excitement that 
 becomes quarrelsome and cruel has stood in 
 the way of human progress for centuries, and 
 it is not out of the way yet. For example, 
 there are organized hindrances that stand upon 
 quarrelsomeness and selfishness. In com- 
 merce competition, to a certain extent, is hon- 
 est, but carried to excess it becomes quarrel- 
 someness. Men may, and often do, try to 
 6? 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 swallow up all those that are weaker than they. 
 Up to a certain point competition is normal 
 and wholesome, but beyond that point I think 
 it is criminal. All attempts to restrict the 
 liberty of men, and all violence in doing it, 
 are criminal. I do not speak alone of govern- 
 mental violence, but of legislative violence. I 
 regard Free Trade as being the virtue of our 
 age, and believe that oppressive taxations are 
 quarreUing with the best interests of the whole 
 of human society. 
 
 But all these things are not to be compared 
 for one moment — the conflicts of politics, the 
 fierce engendered strifes that grow out of it, 
 the over-reaching, the under-reachings of men 
 — all these secular things are not to be com- 
 pared for one single moment as hindrances, 
 with organized religious quarrelsomeness. 
 About eighteen hundred years ago some in- 
 expert angels came singing out of heaven, and 
 their song or chant was : " On earth peace, 
 good-will to men ! " But they looked down 
 and saw what men were doing, and they flew 
 ■back to heaven as quick as they could go, and 
 never sang that song again. There never was 
 so little of anything on earth as peace, and 
 among those things that have destroyed it 
 nothing has done more than organized relig- 
 66 
 
The Wastes and Burdens of Society 
 
 ion. Religion as a creed or system has been 
 one of the most ruthless or destructive of the 
 influences that have ravaged human society. 
 Turn back on the pages of history. Look at 
 the wars that have sprung from creed differ- 
 ences ; look at the battles, the despotism, the 
 racks, the inquisitions ; go through the bloody 
 path in which the feet of the Prince of Peace, 
 acting as Providential Governor of the world, 
 has passed. Christ has trodden again Geth- 
 semane, and that for tvi^o thousand years, and 
 the chief advocates of His opposition have 
 been those that were anointed and ordained to 
 preach the principle of love and of peace. All 
 the world, when the Greek Church and the 
 great Cathohc Church were at odds with each 
 other, was inflamed. In both Churches — but 
 more especially in the Catholic Church — what 
 noble names ! what saintly women ! what ad- 
 mirable men ! what sweet literature ! And to- 
 day, how it shows some of the noblest speci- 
 mens of Christian life ! And yet, when you 
 look upon its whole prolonged history, you 
 see it smiting here and there by the sword, by 
 fines, imprisonments, and in every other way. 
 Religion was spoiled in its very fountain, and 
 instead of its being love, the fulfilling of the 
 law of the universe, it was simply infernal. In 
 67 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 those ages in which the Church organized it- 
 self to compel everybody to worship in some 
 one way, to believe in some one schedule of 
 doctrine, to declare themselves in affiliation 
 with any special hne of organization, and some 
 of the protesting Reformers of the Church were 
 just as savage on those whom they called 
 heretics, I do not wonder that a man who was 
 a Christian after the New Testament idea was 
 noted as an infidel. Thousands of men have 
 turned away from religion organized, because 
 they were just and humane, because they loved 
 God and they loved their fellow men. 
 
 There are no more dungeons now in civi- 
 lized lands where men are imprisoned for the 
 want of orthodoxy. No more are men burned, 
 no more are men exiled, no more are men 
 fined and their property confiscated. The 
 punishment has changed ; but it has not been 
 destroyed. A more exquisite torture is where 
 you take a man's name away from him, and 
 his reputation, and make one sect stand over 
 against another with sneer and hissing, where 
 you make a man because he is of a different 
 Church from yourself a byword, and warn 
 men against him. The difference between 
 you and him may be on a point of abstract 
 philosophy, or it may turn on ornaments, or 
 68 
 
The Wastes and Burdens of Society 
 
 on some mediaeval doctrine ; it is no excuse to 
 say that a man that torments and punishes 
 with moral intolerance believes it is necessary ; 
 it makes no difference vi^hat he believes. The 
 man without the spirit of Christ may believe 
 what he pleases, but he is anti-Christ. 
 
 The condition of sects is very rapidly im- 
 proving. I have no objection to sects, 
 denominations — have just as many as you 
 mind to have, if you only teach them to 
 behave themselves. A sect is under the same 
 Christian law as an individual is. I have no 
 right to go and see what time my neighbour 
 has breakfast, though it differs from my time. 
 I have no right to inspect his table and see 
 what he eats and drinks ; whole streets may 
 live in amity and fellowship though they differ 
 in a housekeeping way ; they have perfect 
 fellowship in secular things, but jealousies ap- 
 pear in all the elements that lie higher than 
 that — in the realm of purity and love. The 
 better day is advancing rapidly, for so large is 
 becoming the sphere of mutual cooperative 
 work in the reforms that are going on, that 
 men who before would scarcely look at each 
 other or walk on the same side of the street 
 find themselves assembled on peace or temper- 
 ance platforms, and, to their amazement, when 
 69 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 they see a brother there, and look him over, 
 he has neither horns nor hoofs. It is a great 
 thing to bring men together. The effect of 
 organized orthodoxy in days gone by has 
 been to keep men apart. That was the theory 
 of the Old Testament. To save men from 
 idolatry and the infectious passions that be- 
 long to it, they were shut up in Palestine ; 
 but when Christ came, regarding the moral 
 forces of religion as sufficiently strong to take 
 care of themselves, He said to His disciples : 
 " Go ye into all the world, and preach the 
 Gospel to every creature." And the spirit of 
 Christianity is one that spreads itself, accepts 
 the universality of humanity, and tends to 
 draw men to each other in creed and in 
 church and in life. A procedure in this life 
 that disintegrates and scatters moral and 
 honest men is not Christian. By and by, 
 when all the good that is in all the churches 
 shall be confluent, and when men shall help 
 each other by all that they agree in ; when 
 the things in which men agree — which are a 
 hundred times more than those in which they 
 disagree — shall come to the front and to the 
 top, there is moral power enough in this 
 world to make an advance of ages, as meas- 
 ured by the past. 
 
 70 
 
The Wastes and Burdens of Society 
 
 The fifth topic of waste and burden is the 
 Misfit of Men. One thing is very certain, 
 that no man can do his best work except 
 along the hne of his strongest faculties. 
 Sometimes men do not know what is the Hne 
 of their strongest faculties, and very often no- 
 body else knows. And yet, when you look 
 at society and the adaptations of men, this 
 misfit of men to function is very pitiful. The 
 best strength of men is often wasted. There 
 are men most conscientious, most serenely 
 sweet and pure and pious, digging and delving 
 away in the pulpit where they are not fitted 
 to be. A man that is fitted for the pulpit is a 
 man who has the genius of moral ideas, and 
 there are a great many men that have not the 
 genius of moral ideas, or any other, and yet 
 they are in the pulpit. 
 
 But did it ever occur to you that of all the 
 mysteries in this world the greatest are not 
 religious mysteries, not the Trinity, not 
 Atonement, not Decrees, not Election, not 
 any of these things ? The mystery of this 
 world is how men were created and shoved 
 on to this globe, and let alone. Whatever 
 has been revealed in Old or New Testament 
 that tells of man, is that he has a brain, and 
 that is a seat of intelligence, but it has been 
 71 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 only within my memory that men have been 
 taught that brains were of any use. Hun- 
 dreds of men do not believe it yet. Ages 
 went away before a man knew what the heart 
 was for, or what it was doing. Men were not 
 told in the early day, neither by writing on 
 the heavens nor by words spoken by the 
 prophet, nor was it made known by any 
 philosophy, what was the structure of their 
 own bodies, and the relation of their bodily 
 condition to the outward world, which itself 
 also was a wilderness of ideas. They had no 
 idea of what was its organization ; they were 
 as perfectly helpless as a child in the nursery. 
 It was through hundreds and thousands of 
 years that men groped and groped and died, 
 when medicine for their ills was right under 
 their feet in the vegetable world; although 
 there was the remedy no voice told them of it. 
 What if I put a child on the foot-board of a 
 locomotive and say : " Run this Flying Dutch- 
 man five hundred miles, and it will be death 
 if you come to any accident." The human 
 body is a more complicated piece of machinery 
 than any engine ; yet for ages and ages until 
 our day men have had no considerable insight 
 either into their own structure, or into the 
 relations of the physical world, any more than 
 72 
 
The Wastes and Burdens of Society 
 
 into the highest problems that belong to 
 morality or religion. 
 
 And, even now, when a young man of 
 fifteen or sixteen wants to know what he is fit 
 for, who can tell him ? He goes to the doctor, 
 who sounds his heart and lungs, and says : 
 " You are healthy." " Well, what should a 
 healthy young man do ? " " Oh, you had 
 better go to the schoolmaster." The school- 
 master says : " Are you advanced in mathe- 
 matics ? Do you know something about history 
 and poHtical economy ? " " Yes ; what would 
 you recommend me to do for my livelihood ? " 
 " Well, anything that happens to come to 
 hand." He can give him no direction. He 
 goes to the minister, and his minister says to 
 him : " Have you been baptized ? Do you 
 say your prayers every morning and night ? 
 Do you believe in the creed ? " " Sir, what do 
 you recommend me to do as my life busi- 
 ness ? " " Well, I commend you to Provi- 
 dence." The minister is as ignorant as the 
 youth is — the blind leading the blind. In this 
 condition of things, is it strange that men 
 should take to their professions not from an 
 elective affinity, not because they feel an im- 
 pulse to run along the lines of their strongest 
 faculties, but from ambition, or from the 
 73 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 promise of gain, or from misguiding love? 
 Here is a man, a bricklayer, and he has or- 
 ganized industry and acquired great wealth, 
 and his family increases amain. His eldest 
 son they set up in business, and he has in- 
 herited from his father business tact. The 
 second son grows up, and the mother says : 
 " Well now, James is a very conscientious 
 boy, and I think we had better make a lawyer 
 of him." They do, and he utterly fails. 
 They say : " William ? — William seems to 
 have parts and has an interest in Nature : I 
 think we had better make him a doctor. That 
 is a very respectable calling — we will make a 
 doctor of William. As to Thomas, he is not 
 very strong in body, and he is not so bright in 
 mind as the other children, but he is a good 
 boy, he would make a good minister : " and so 
 the parental idea is not, " What are my chil- 
 dren fitted for ? " but, " What is respectable ? 
 What will give them standing in the opinion 
 of their fellow men ? " Men are perpetually 
 going to things that are above their capacity 
 and other men in various conditions of life are 
 toiling in spheres that are below their capacity. 
 What if a farmer should harness greyhounds 
 together and plough with them ? What if 
 racing on the track was to be made by oxen ? 
 
 ;4 
 
The Wastes and Burdens of Society 
 
 An ox is for strength, a greyhound for speed ; 
 but men are greyhounds where they ought to 
 be oxen, and oxen where they ought to be 
 greyhounds, all their lives. How should they 
 know ? By their blunders mostly. How 
 often most admirable men of ideas are mere 
 copyists ! They generate thought, they have 
 latent poetry in them, they have latent 
 inspirations ; if they had been put in the right 
 avenues, and under the right inspirations, these 
 men would have been great thinkers, and their 
 life like the outpouring of music. And there 
 are men on the judges' bench holding the court 
 who would have made good and excellent 
 farmers, and not a few men in the blacksmith 
 forge and in the stithy, or in the mines, who 
 would have been excellent citizens — influential 
 in all moral and civic affairs ; but they are all 
 mixed up hke a keg of nails. There is many 
 a labouring man that would have made a 
 good exhorter and a good preacher, and there 
 are many preachers that evidently were not 
 " called." When God calls a man to preach 
 He always calls an audience to go and hear 
 him. There is many a man thinks he has 
 heard a call, and doubtless he did, but it was 
 somebody else's call. I think I do not err 
 when I say that one-half of the energy of life 
 75 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 is badly applied, and that, too, which is adapted 
 for the superior functions of human life. There 
 has got to be a great light arise in that direc- 
 tion. 
 
 Then the next great mischief, which you 
 will hear gratefully, because we always like to 
 hear the faults discussed which we do not find 
 in ourselves, is Lying. Craft is the remainder 
 of the animal life that inheres in man, for 
 weakness in the presence of strength is obliged 
 to resort to craft, to dig under, to go side- 
 ways. Concealment belongs to weakness in 
 the presence of despotic strength. Slavery 
 always produces lying subjects, and in the 
 struggle for life among men the weak seek to 
 make up their deficiencies of strength by craft. 
 And it is not always the weak either that do it, 
 for men have an impression that truth, pure 
 and unadulterated, is like twenty-two carat 
 gold, too soft to wear ordinarily, and that it 
 must be adulterated to about eighteen carat, 
 and then it is tough enough to go. They say 
 a judicious mixture between a truth and a lie 
 is the true currency, and they do not believe 
 in truth. On no subject in this World is there 
 a greater lack of faith than in truth. You 
 may have faith in the Transfiguration, and 
 faith in immortality, but you have not faith in 
 76 
 
The Wastes and Burdens of Society 
 
 the safety of telling the truth everywhere and 
 always. 
 
 I am one of those that believe the truth 
 ought to be told whenever you tell anything. 
 It is not necessary that a man should always 
 tell everything, but whatever he tells, it is 
 necessary that that should always be truth. A 
 man has a right to concealment. The soul 
 has no more business to go stark naked down 
 the street than a man has to go stark naked as 
 regards his body. It is the preservation of 
 social life and of individual life, and the man that 
 has not a great silence in him, a great reserve 
 in him, is not half a man — he is a babbler, he 
 lealis at the mouth. All this talk about 
 benevolent lies, white lies, and the customary 
 lies of society — I abhor the whole raff of it. 
 
 But men say, " Would you advise a physi- 
 cian to tell a man that he is going straight 
 down to death ? " He will have to die, and 
 lying will not prevent it. " But suppose a man 
 were to come to your house for protection, 
 and you conceal him there, and the soldiers 
 are right after him in times of civil war, and 
 they asked, ' Has So-and-so been here ? ' 
 would you say, ' Yes, he was here ten hours 
 ago ; we gave him a glass of milk ; he is in the 
 forest, go after him and get him ; ' or would 
 77 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 you say, ' The man is hid in the house now ' ? " 
 Men say, " Would you betray him? Don't 
 you think it is right to he for benevolence ? " 
 No, I do not. " Would you tell the truth to 
 a robber, when the life of your children de- 
 pended upon it ? " Probably not ; but that has 
 nothing to do with the principle. I may be 
 weak enough to tell a he ; but that does not 
 justify a lie, nor me in telling it ; and when 
 you appeal to the weakness of a man to justify 
 a he, you do not advance in any way towards 
 the truth. I hold that the hardest thing in 
 this world is for a man habitually to tell the 
 truth. A man who tells the truth is like a 
 man who lives in a glass house, and everybody 
 that goes by sees what he is doing there. A 
 man that tells the truth has to be very sym- 
 metrical in his character; he has got to be 
 really a good man, and righteous, or he cannot 
 afford to tell the truth. 
 
 Now the political economy of the matter is 
 this, that lying disintegrates society. Men are 
 united together in the great interests of human 
 life by trust. On an average they believe 
 when a man says a thing ; when he says he 
 has done a thing they take it for granted. We 
 could not live if we could not believe in men. 
 " William, have you deposited those checks in 
 78 
 
The Wastes and Burdens of Society 
 
 the bank ? " " Yes, sir, I have." Maybe he 
 has, maybe he has not ; I will go round to 
 the bank and see. " Has my clerk deposited 
 checks for ^1,000 in the bank to-day ? " " Yes," 
 says the teller, " he has." But there may 
 be a collusion between him and some of the 
 bank officers ; I will go inside and see. " Is 
 your teller to be believed when he says my 
 clerk has deposited ;gi,ooo?" If a man had 
 to do all that circumlocution in his business he 
 would not have time to do anything else. We 
 cannot get organized, combined strength un- 
 less a man is trusted, and the moment a man 
 is known not to be trusted there begins the 
 process of separation. The progress of all hu- 
 man life begins in the belief that men substan- 
 tially tell the truth. 
 
 Men say society is full of lies. Yes, it is 
 full of lies. There is a great deal of lying in 
 all sorts of business ; but the philosophy of 
 that is at once exposed as false in this, that if 
 lying were more common than speaking the 
 truth, society would be like a heap of sand, it 
 would fall apart. The cohesion is the belief in 
 men's veracity. The fact is that a lie has to 
 have a cutting edge of truth or it would not 
 be worth anything. It is the truth that works 
 a lie into anything like victory. On the street, 
 79 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 in the shop, in the manufactory, on the ship, 
 at home and abroad, the implication is that a 
 man is to be relied upon for his word or bond, 
 and if you take that away society goes back 
 into original elements. Everything that tends 
 to separate the confidence of man in man im- 
 pedes business, and makes it more and more 
 laborious. Truthfulness is general in society ; 
 but lying is too often used. The higher the 
 proportion of truthfulness, the stronger the 
 community. The permanent prosperity of 
 society is to be derived not from the lower, 
 basilar faculties but from the coronal qualities. 
 All those influences, therefore, that tend to 
 make the violation of a man's word and pledge 
 easy ought to be swept out of society. 
 
 Then there is the false notion that men are 
 more likely to tell the truth under oath than 
 they are without an oath. A man that will 
 not tell the truth without an oath won't tell the 
 truth with an oath. You cannot make a 
 man honest by machinery. There has got to 
 be established in him an automatic honesty, 
 an honest individuality. Therefore, I do not 
 believe in the oaths of our courts. In the old 
 days of superstition, men believed that by a 
 reference to arms on the battle-field God would 
 always decide for the right. That has been 
 80 
 
The Wastes and Burdens of Society 
 
 exploded, and duels and conflicts for the sake 
 of truth are all gone into the lumber-room of 
 heathendom. And we may as well drop the 
 old superstition with regard to a man standing 
 before a mysterious Deity, and swearing on 
 the penalty of his soul, when he did not be- 
 lieve he had a soul, and did not believe there 
 was much penalty. And see how oaths have 
 passed into disrepute by the mode of prescrib- 
 ing them. Here is an honest, simple-hearted 
 man, who has never been in a court or through 
 a trial; he comes in rather tremulous, and 
 goes into the witness box. See how the clerk 
 administers the oath to him. He holds out 
 the Bible as if there was some emanation from 
 the Bible that would make the man tell truth. 
 But some witnesses would not swear and stick 
 to it on a Bible merely ; the Bible must have 
 a cross on it ; that gives it extra sanctity. Then 
 he is made to kiss it. Was there ever any 
 superstition more abject than that ? Then the 
 clerk gets up and says to the man who is wait- 
 ing to be honest : " In the case of John Doe 
 vs. Richard Roe you swear — mumble, mumble, 
 mumble, mumble." It gradually dawns on him 
 that he is sworn to tell the truth, the whole 
 truth, and nothing but the truth. Then the 
 lawyers on each side are determined he shall 
 8i 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 not tell the truth, and that he shall lie, and 
 when he goes off the stand he does not know 
 whether he is on his head or his feet. That 
 is called sifting the evidence. 
 
 I do not believe in Custom House oaths. I 
 do not believe in Custom Houses anyhow. I 
 think they are manufactories of lies. I have 
 got to swear when I go back — I have felt like 
 it many times, but I have got to do it — that I 
 have nothing in my trunks or about me con- 
 trary to the customs laws of my country. I 
 know nothing about the customs laws of my 
 country ; I do not know whether they admit a 
 jack-knife. I am wearing all new clothes, so I 
 can say I have nothing but what I wear. It 
 is inherent in the oath that it is morally weak. 
 Every man who has to do with the Custom 
 House has a clerk who swears for the firm, who 
 goes down to the Custom House, and does the 
 swearing there. These Custom House oaths 
 are simply ridiculous. 
 
 But there is another kind of oath though not 
 quite so frequent and perhaps not so demor- 
 alizing, yet hardly less disgraceful, when a 
 green young man fresh from the college or the 
 seminary, who has had his theology put into 
 him as sausages are filled, goes before the 
 council, or the conference, or the convention, 
 82 
 
The Wastes and Burdens of Society 
 
 or whatever may be the machine, and takes 
 oath that he will preach the doctrines of the 
 confession, or of the creed as they have been 
 interpreted by his Church. For a year or two 
 he does not know anything better than to go 
 on doing it ; but, by and by, what with books 
 and collateral light, and intercourse with men, 
 and the progress of science, the man begins 
 to have wider thoughts, and very soon he sees 
 that he cannot preach on that doctrine, so he 
 holds his tongue about it. And there begins 
 to rise from the horizon to him the bright and 
 morning star — yea, it may be the very Sun of 
 Righteousness ; but he has taken an oath that 
 he will not preach anything but what is in the 
 book, as if a book ever contained the Lord 
 God Almighty and all creation ! What does 
 he do ? He compromises and holds his 
 tongue, or else the conditions of fellowship are 
 such that he sacrifices everything that is dear 
 to a man. All his roots in the past and all 
 social aiifections bind him to this particular 
 communion ; but for the sake of truth he 
 suffers himself to be expatriated and cast out, 
 and the world says : " If a man belongs to 
 that denomination he ought to teach what the 
 denomination believes or leave it; " as if there 
 was nothing else than getting a salary, as if a 
 83 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 man did not feel that the truth in his hands 
 was the test of his allegiance to Almighty God. 
 Ordination oaths lay men's consciences under 
 bondage, for I hold, and the world will yet 
 agree to it, that a godly life is orthodox, and 
 no orthodoxy that does not carry love behind 
 it is orthodox. 
 
 I pass on to the next waste, and I shall 
 barely mention it and go forward, and that is 
 Drunkenness. I specify this because civiliza- 
 tion has developed the nerve-forces of man- 
 kind, and there is a physiological law now af- 
 firmed by scientific men, that a regulated 
 stimulus prevents the waste of the nerve-mat- 
 ter which performs the function of life; that 
 opium, hashish, brandy, alcohoHc stimulants 
 of every kind, and coffee and tea are, in mod- 
 eration, nerve-conservators, and that the danger 
 lies not so much in the article, as in the un- 
 conscious increase until the stimulants narco- 
 tize the nerve. That is the philosophy that, 
 as civihzation advances, men in the higher 
 walks of life put forward. If a man can learn 
 to love tobacco there is nothing on God's earth 
 he cannot learn to love. Men are constantly 
 seeking to reinforce nature in proportion as 
 they are vigorous ; but others say it is all 
 wrong, that cold water and plain bread are 
 84 
 
The Wastes and Burdens of Society- 
 better. Every time you think or do anything, 
 a certain portion of the nerve is wasted in do- 
 ing it ; and if there be something that makes 
 the nerve tougher in use, that will explain the 
 almost universal use of stimulants. What we 
 want to learn, if this be true, is to teach young 
 men and old men where the lines of safety be. 
 A man may be brought up in the rule of ab- 
 stinence, as I was ; until I was sixty years of 
 age I never knew the taste of beer or of stim- 
 ulants. Since I was sixty-five I have known 
 something more — it is never too late to learn ! 
 I am none the less a temperance man, for all 
 that. I look upon the use of intoxicants 
 and stimulants by young men, or men in 
 health, as a waste, as well as a danger and a 
 temptation. 
 
 I would seek, not, however, by legislative 
 prohibition, but by moral persuasion, to bring 
 every man into a sound principle in regard to 
 self-control in what he eats and drinks, for I 
 do not believe there is any governing force 
 that is equal to self-government, and it is self- 
 government we should seek in every form of 
 life. How is it that a young man goes out in 
 society? He has been a tee-totaller at home, 
 but he goes out into fashionable society ; they 
 set before him wines- ; little by little he begins 
 85 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 to drink. There is a great art in drinking, 
 and a bon vivant knows what it is, and he can 
 say, " Young man, if you are going to take 
 any of this kind, let me tell you how and 
 when ; " but we do not dare put a young man 
 to such instruction, so we let him go on and 
 guzzle according to his own fancy. What we 
 want to get is physiological knowledge and 
 hygienic knowledge as to the proper use of 
 stimulants. But men drink because they have 
 an inherited appetite for drink ; because they 
 want to do two days' work in one ; because 
 they are of too slow and sluggish a tempera- 
 ment, and they want to wake up their slow 
 forces and the inspiration of their mind ; or 
 they drink because they are in good fellow- 
 ship. There are a variety of reasons. The 
 result is, drunkenness spreads in all our com- 
 munities. The moment a man has gone be- 
 yond the line of temperance he has lost his 
 place as a producer in society and is a waste 
 and a burden. Every church and every legis- 
 lation and every form of public sentiment 
 should limit the use of intoxicants and teach 
 men to be temperate, for there is no evil that 
 is committing so much crime; there is no 
 evil that so populates the poorhouse, the jail, 
 the gallows ; there is no evil that takes away 
 86 
 
The Wastes and Burdens of Society 
 
 so much comfort from the home and makes 
 so much misery therein ; there is no one 
 evil under the sun that is so infernal as that 
 of drunkenness, for all other evils follow in 
 its wake. 
 
 The last of the burdens of society that I 
 would mention is War. This is simply ani- 
 malism. I do not undertake to say that 
 defensive wars, or other wars, are always mor- 
 ally wrong. As the world is constituted, 
 physical force is often quite necessary. You 
 cannot drive the team without some goad, or 
 some ^whip, or some rein, or some harness. 
 The animal must be controlled by animal 
 forces, for there is nothing else influences it, 
 and men are yet animals largely. When there 
 are insurrections, and riots, and plunderings 
 of property, and aggressions upon the peace and 
 life of other men, there must be an arm stronger 
 than their violence to hold them in. The 
 theory that we are never to be allowed to use 
 force would forbid police anywhere; and to 
 forbid the hand of strength for the protection 
 of the community is to give a premium to 
 violence and lawlessness. But look at the 
 history of the wars. The earth is red with 
 blood. Look at the symbol of Great Britain — 
 a lion; look at the symbol of America — an 
 87 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 eagle; look at other symbols of nations — 
 leopards. Men have rightly considered that 
 the symbol that typifies the national life 
 should be borrowed from animal violence. 
 
 I cannot say that the history of Great 
 Britain would justify me in praising her for 
 peace principles. I will admit that the tend- 
 ency of British literature, and British re- 
 ligion and civility and polity, when men have 
 been subdued, is benign, and develops a 
 higher nationality everywhere, and that on 
 her colonies and possessions around the earth, 
 Britain has bestowed an equitable government 
 and a procedure which is to the advantage 
 of weak and dependent nations. But how 
 came they weak and dependent ? 
 
 In our own land I thank God we have been 
 saved from foreign war, partly by our weak- 
 ness, partly by the nature of our institutions, 
 partly by our distance and exemption from 
 the intercourse of nations ; but in the pursuit 
 of great principles we have gone through the 
 baptism of blood, and we have come out with 
 a national debt of hundreds of millions of 
 dollars, and every dollar of it represents the 
 industry of men. This counts nothing of the 
 waste by the burning of dwellings, the burn- 
 ing of crops, the burning of fences, the up- 
 88 
 
The Wastes and Burdens of Society 
 
 setting of society everywhere. The whole 
 South was made absolutely bankrupt by the 
 war in which she asserted a false principle. 
 I hold that there was never a people on earth 
 more sincere and honest in their conflict than 
 our Southern brethren ; I hold that they gave 
 their last dollar, their last breath, and when 
 they gave up there was nothing more with 
 which to make resistance. I bear witness 
 to them that as soon as they gave up they 
 gave up thoroughly, and came back into the 
 Union, and are now inspired with Union 
 principles as sincere as any in the North. 
 But this terrible internecine struggle was a 
 waste of a million of men. At Gettysburg 
 40,000 men lay dead, wounded, or dying on 
 both sides. 
 
 Can anything be considered more horrible 
 than the history of European wars ? The 
 wranglings of lions and tigers in the wilder- 
 ness, the fights of the bear, or the cruelties of 
 the shark that kill not to consume, but for 
 savage destructiveness — human nature has been 
 more cruel than all the animal creation. The 
 days are coming, I think, when the best men 
 will not be called out for standing armies. 
 To-day Europe is armed to the teeth ; indeed, 
 the whole continent is a camp. All Germany 
 89 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 — it is not an army that they raise ; it is an 
 army that they are : and substantially that is 
 the condition of France ; and Italy, newly 
 brought into the communion of saints of the 
 nations, is still weighing down her population 
 by the expenses for the army and nav)^. There 
 is not a nation except Switzerland that dare 
 lay down its arms. Yet they are all Chris- 
 tian nations. They would all be mortally of- 
 fended if you said they were not members of 
 the community of the Faith. Yet here comes 
 in Christ's revelation of God's love, that rather 
 than men should die He gave His only begot- 
 ten Son to save them. Here comes that grand 
 revelation of the eternities, that the test of 
 love is how much men will suffer for others. 
 Yet men are fighting for the love, slaughter- 
 ing men for the peace of society, for the sake 
 of obtaining the reign of the empire of love 1 
 Was there ever such a spectacle presented to 
 mankind ? 
 
 The general drift of many of you will be to 
 say that I have given such a bad picture of the 
 actual goings on of society that it discourages 
 you. No. On the contrary, I think the world 
 never was so much advanced as it is to-day. 
 I think that it is the sensibility and consequence 
 of this advance that makes the picture so vivid 
 90 
 
The Wastes and Burdens of Society 
 
 and so repulsive to you. Indeed, there is more 
 of thought for the common people, for their 
 external hfe, for their instruction, a larger con- 
 ception of their rights, and more and more in- 
 stitutions that tend to fortify and extend the 
 rights of the mass of mankind than ever before. 
 I think there is coming on gradually a time 
 when war itself will begin to be throttled. In 
 that day may America be found leading, for 
 the inducements and temptations to us are a 
 thousandfold less than to any nation in Europe ; 
 and with us, and behind us — for there is no 
 backing that we could covet like that of our 
 mother country, speaking our language, from 
 whose literature we learned, from whose re- 
 hgion we received inspiration, from whose 
 legislation and sense of justice has sprung all 
 that there is on the Western hemisphere — may 
 Great Britain stand, and back America up in 
 every step that she should take to make justice 
 and equity comport with peace, and destroy 
 war everywhere ! 
 
 Professor Guyot says that there are three 
 periods in the growth of a plant : the first is the 
 longest and the most obscure — growth by the 
 root ; the second period is much accelerated — 
 growth by the stem ; and the third and fastest 
 of all is the growth by the flower and the 
 91 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 fruit. I take it, the civilized part of the 
 world has been growing by the root through 
 the centuries ; and that we have come unto a 
 time when the world is growing by the stem 
 faster and faster ; but that just before us in our 
 children's day, and maybe in our own, society 
 will burst out into blossom and begin to bear 
 the fruits of righteousness as we have never 
 seen it do in days that are gone. 
 
 Take no counsel, then, of crouching fear, 
 still less of misanthropic cowardice. Take 
 courage of this : there is a God, and He has 
 time enough, and is not obliged, as man is, to 
 run quickly through the offices of the building 
 of His providence. He can wait through the 
 ages, and He can wait through the junctures ; 
 but He is building, He is building, and that 
 which His hand undertakes no man may long 
 hinder. There shall be no man that shall have 
 need to say to his brother, " Know the 
 Lord ! " for all men shall know Him, from the 
 least unto the greatest. I shall behold Him, 
 not here but there, in the midst of the rejoic- 
 ing host; I shall understand that which to-day 
 is an enigma, and I shall see the accomplish- 
 ment of that in the midst of which I have 
 striven, for which tears have been shed in ocean 
 streams, for which blood has flowed through 
 92 
 
The Wastes and Burdens of Society 
 
 the race and through all time. The emancipa- 
 tion of man from his animal conditions shall be 
 achieved before the race dies from off the face 
 of the earth, and the glory of the Lord shall 
 fill the earth as the waters fill the sea. 
 
 93 
 
Ill 
 
 THE REIGN OF THE COMMON 
 PEOPLE 
 
 IT has been the effect of modern investiga- 
 tion to throw light without illumination upon 
 the most interesting period of human history. 
 When the old chronology prevailed, and it was 
 thought that this world was built about six 
 thousand years ago, men had of necessity one 
 way of looking at things ; but now it is agreed 
 upon all hands that we cannot count the 
 chronology of this world by thousands, more 
 likely by millions of years. Nor was the system 
 of immediation in creation, which prevailed at 
 the time, favourable to the discovery of truth. 
 God who dwells in eternity has time enough to 
 build worlds which require millions of years, 
 and whatever may be the cause of the origin of 
 the human race, and I have my opinion on 
 that subject (confidential, however !), I think it 
 maybe said that the earliest appearance of man 
 upon earth was in the savage condition. He 
 began as low down as he could and be a man 
 rather than an animal. This question of pro- 
 94 
 
The Reign of the Common People 
 
 found interest is one that can probably never 
 be answered except by guess, — and guess is 
 not philosophy altogether. 
 
 How did man emerge from that savage 
 condition ? There were then no schools, no 
 churches, no prophets, no priests, no books, 
 presses — nothing; wild tribes in the wild 
 wilderness, how did they come towards 
 civilization ? You say that the first industries 
 were those that supplied appetite — food, 
 shelter, clothing. That is, doubtless, true, 
 although we only infer it ; but how did the 
 brain which is the organ of the man begin to 
 unfold, not the simple knowledge that lay 
 close in the neighbourhood of every man, but 
 how did it come to build institutions, found 
 communities, and develop them, till now the 
 human race in civilized countries are as far re- 
 moved from their ancestors as their ancestors 
 were from the animals below them ? It is on 
 this broad field that light falls, but not illumi- 
 nation. But later down, supposing that indus- 
 tries were educators, supposing that men were 
 educated by war itself, by combinations re- 
 quiring skill and leadership, by ten thousand 
 forms of growing social life, by the love of 
 property, the instinct that is fundamental to 
 human nature — suppose that all this indirectly 
 95 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 evolved the intelligence of the human family, 
 how do we come at length to the period in 
 which the unfolding of the hidden powers of 
 the human soul became an object of direct 
 instruction ? 
 
 The earliest attempt to develop men, on 
 purpose, was in Egypt, so far as we know. 
 The Egyptian school has in it all the marks of 
 antiquity and of primitive development, for it 
 was limited in the numbers admitted and in 
 the topics taught. Only the royal family 
 could go to the schools of Egypt. That in- 
 cluded, of course, the priesthood ; and, putting 
 aside some slight mathematical teaching, it is 
 probable that mysteries and superstitions were 
 the whole subjects taught — and that mainly 
 to teach the higher class how to be hierarchs 
 or rulers. When we cross over the sea to 
 Greece, at a period much later, though how 
 much we know not, we find that schools had 
 developed, and that the idea of making more 
 of men than natural law or the casual in- 
 fluences of human society make of them — the 
 attempt directly to train intelligence and to 
 produce knowledge was farther advanced, for 
 anybody could go to a Greek school that had 
 the means to pay — anybody but slaves and 
 women; they trained very near together in 
 96 
 
The Reign of the Common People 
 
 antiquity, and they are not quite far enough 
 apart yet. But I am compelled to correct 
 myself when I say that women were not 
 privileged ; they were. It is probable that in 
 no period of human history has more pains 
 been taken with the education of women than 
 was taken in Greece ; in all their accomplish- 
 ments, in learning, in music, in the dance, in 
 poetry, in literature, in history, in philosophy, 
 even in statesmanship, women were very 
 highly educated — provided they were to live 
 the lives of courtesans. The fact is simply 
 astounding that in the age of Pericles intel- 
 Ugence and accomplishments were associated 
 with impudicity, and were the signs of it, and 
 that ignorance and modesty were associated 
 ideas. If a woman would have the credit of 
 purity and uprightness in social relations she 
 must be the drudge of the household, and if 
 any woman appeared, radiant in personal 
 beauty and accomplished, fitted for conversa- 
 tion with statesmen and philosophers, it was 
 taken for granted that she was accessible. 
 
 We have a side-light thrown on this subject 
 in the New Testament, not well understood 
 hitherto. That noble old Jewish book, the 
 Bible, reveals a higher station to womanhood 
 in the ancient Israelitish days than in any 
 97 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 other Oriental land, and from the beginning 
 of the Old Testament to the end of it there is 
 no Umitation of a woman's rights, her func- 
 tions and her position. She actually was 
 public in the sense of honour and function ; 
 she went with unveiled face if she pleased ; 
 she partook of religious services and led 
 them ; she was a judge, she was even a leader 
 of armies ; and you shall not find, either in 
 the Old Testament or in the New, one word 
 that limits the position of a woman till you 
 come to the Apostle's writings about Grecian 
 women, for only in Corinthians and in the 
 writings of Paul to Timothy, who was the 
 Bishop of the Greek Churches in Asia Minor, 
 do you find any limitation made. Knowing 
 full well what this public sentiment was at that 
 time, Paul said : " Suffer not a woman to teach 
 in your assemblies ; let your women keep 
 silence." Why? because all, in that corrupt 
 public sentiment, looking upon intelligent 
 teachers in the Christian Church, would have 
 gone away and said : " This is done of licen- 
 tiousness, women are teaching;" and in a 
 public sentiment that associated intelligence 
 and immorality it is not strange that pruden- 
 tially and temporarily, women were restrained. 
 But that has all gone; woman has risen; 
 98 
 
The Reign of the Common People 
 
 not only in intelligence, she is the universal 
 teacher, not alone in the household but in the 
 school ; not alone in common schools but in 
 every grade; till she has attained professor- 
 ships in universities and even presidency in 
 women's colleges — at least in our land. She 
 is the right hand of the charities of the 
 Church ; she walks unblushing with an un- 
 veiled face where men do walk; and she is 
 not only permitted in the great orthodox 
 churches of New England to speak in meet- 
 ing, but when they send her abroad, ordained 
 to teach the Gospel to the heathen, there she 
 is permitted to preach. When they come 
 home women may still teach in a hall, but not 
 often in a church, for dear old men there are 
 yet so conservative that they are reading 
 through golden spectacles their Bibles, and 
 saying : " I suffer not a woman to preach." 
 
 We hardly can trace the unfolding of hu- 
 man intelligence after it plunged into that twi- 
 light or darkness of the Middle Ages. Then 
 we begin to find inteUigence developed through 
 mechanical guilds, and in various ways of 
 commerce ; schools, such as we now under- 
 stand schools to be, are very imperfectly 
 traced out in the Middle Ages. But when 
 that new impulse came to the moral nature, 
 99 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 and the civil nature, and the intellectual and 
 philosophical nature, to art, literature, to learn- 
 ing — when the Reformation came, whose scope 
 was not ecclesiastical alone by any means — it 
 was a resurrection of the human intelligence 
 throughout its whole vast domain — schools be- 
 gan to appear to be, as John Milton says. 
 
 Raked embers out of the ashes of the past, 
 
 and they began to glow again. And from 
 that time on, when men made efforts to de- 
 velop by actual teaching, human intelhgence 
 grows broader, brighter and more effectual 
 down to our present time ; and to-day in the 
 principal nations of Europe education is com- 
 pulsory, the education not of favoured classes, 
 not of the children of the wealthy, not of those 
 that have inherited genius, but the children of 
 the common people. It is held that it is un- 
 safe for a state to raise ignorant men. Ig- 
 norant men are like bombs, which are a great 
 deal better to be shot into an enemy's camp 
 than to be kept at home, for where an ignorant 
 man goes off he scatters desolation. More- 
 over, an ignorant man is an animal, and the 
 stronger his passions and the feebler his con- 
 science and intellect, the more dangerous he is. 
 Therefore, for the sake of the commonwealth, 
 lOO 
 
The Reign of the Common People 
 
 modern legislators wisely, whether they guide 
 republican institutions or monarchical institu- 
 tions or aristocratical institutions, have at last 
 joined hands on one thing — that it is best to 
 educate the people's children, from the highest 
 to the lowest everywhere. 
 
 And what, in connection with various other 
 general causes, has been the result of this un- 
 folding of intelligence among the common 
 people ? It has not yet gone down to the bot- 
 tom ; there is a stratum of undeveloped intel- 
 ligence among the nations, certainly; I am not 
 speaking now of the residuum that falls down 
 from the top like the slime of the ocean, but 
 of those who are reasonable and honest and 
 virtuous and useful. It may be said that, as 
 the sun touches the tops of the mountains first 
 and works its way downward through the val- 
 ley later and later in the day, so there is very 
 much to be done yet to bear knowledge and 
 intelligence, which is better than knowledge, 
 to the lowest classes of the common people. 
 But even in this condition, what has been the 
 result in Europe of the education of the com- 
 mon people ? All those heavings, all those 
 . threatened revolutions, all those civil and com- 
 mercial developments that are like the waves 
 of the sea, are springing from the fact that God 
 lOI 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 in His providence has thrown hght and intel- 
 Hgence upon the great undermass of society j 
 and the underparts of society, less fortunate in 
 every respect than those that are advanced, 
 are seeking room to develop themselves ; they 
 are seeking to go up, and no road has been 
 found along which they can travel far as yet. 
 I do not believe in Nihilism in Russia, but if I 
 had been born and brought up there and had 
 felt the heel on my neck, I would have been a 
 Nihilist. I am poor stuff to make an obedient 
 slave out of. Nevertheless, they are like blind 
 men trying to find their way into the open air, 
 and if they stumble or go into wrong depart- 
 ments, are they to be derided and cursed ? 
 Because they are seeking to construct a gov- 
 ernment after they shall have destroyed gov- 
 ernment and made a wilderness, are they, 
 while they are doing the best they know how 
 — are they, therefore, to be cursed, or rather 
 to be pitied, better directed, emancipated? 
 When they come to America to teach us how 
 to make commonwealths we think they are out 
 of place, decidedly. We thank Europe for a 
 great deal — for literature, ancient and modern; 
 we thank Europe for teachers in art, in colour, 
 in form, in sound, we are grateful for all these 
 things ; but when the Socialists of Germany, 
 
 I02 
 
The Reign of the Common People 
 
 and the Communists of France, and the Nihil- 
 ists of Russia come to teach us how to reor- 
 ganize human society, they have come to the 
 wrong place. Their ignorance is not our en- 
 lightenment. 
 
 The main cause of all the disturbance during 
 the last half-century — the cause of causes — lies 
 in the swelling of the intelligence of the great, 
 hitherto neglected, and ignorant masses of 
 Europe ; they are seeking elevation, they are 
 seeking a larger life, and as men grow in in- 
 telligence life must grow too. When a man 
 is mere animal he does not want much except 
 straw and fodder ; but when a man begins to 
 be a rational and intelligent creature, he wants 
 a good deal more than the belly asks ; for 
 reason wants something, taste needs some- 
 thing, conscience craves something, every 
 faculty brought into ascendancy and power is 
 a new hunger, and must be supplied. No man 
 is so cheap as the brutal, ignorant man ; no 
 man can rise up from the lower stations of life 
 and not need more for his support from the 
 fact that he is civilized and Christianized, and 
 although he may not have it individually, the 
 community must supply it for him. He must 
 have resources of knowledge, he must have 
 means of refinement, he must have limitations 
 J03 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 of taste or he feels himself slipping back. As I 
 look upon the phenomena of society in Europe 
 I see them as the phenomena of God. He is 
 caUing to the great masses of a growingly en- 
 lightened people, " Come up," and they are 
 saying, " Which way ? By what road ? 
 How ? " They must needs pass through the 
 experiment of ignorance, tentative ignorance, 
 and failure in a thousand things — they must 
 pass through these preliminary stages, for as it 
 was necessary when they came out of the 
 bondage of Egypt that the children of Israel 
 should go through the wilderness for forty 
 years, so all people have to go forty years 
 and more through the wilderness of mistake, 
 the wilderness of blind trails and attempts that 
 fail. It may be said, indeed, that the pyramid 
 of permanent society is built up on blocks of 
 blunders ; mistakes have pointed out the true 
 way to mankind. 
 
 Now what has taken place among the com- 
 mon people ? Once they thought only about 
 their own cottage, and their own httle stead- 
 ing ; they have gradually learned to think 
 about the whole neighbourhood. Once they 
 were able to look only after their own limited 
 affairs ; they begin to recognize the community 
 of men, and to think about the affairs of others, 
 104 
 
The Reign of the Common People 
 
 — as the Apostle said: " Look ye every man 
 on his own tilings, but also every man on the 
 things of others." They are having a society 
 interest among themselves. Once they had 
 limited thoughts and bits of knowledge ; now 
 they have the mother of knowledge — intelli- 
 gence : they are competent to think, to choose 
 discriminately ; they are competent to organize 
 themselves ; they are learning that self-denial 
 by which men can work in masses ; they are 
 beginning to have a light in life transcendently 
 higher than the old contentment of the bestial 
 state of miserable labour. 
 
 Such are the results, briefly stated, to which 
 God in His providence has brought the masses 
 of the European common people, and the 
 promise of the future is brighter even than the 
 fulfillment of the past. What the issues will 
 be, and what the final fruits, God knows and 
 man does not know ! 
 
 Now if we examine these matters as they are 
 in America, we shall find that there are in- 
 fluences tending to give more power to the 
 brain, alertness, quickness, to give to it also a 
 wider scope and range, than it has in the 
 average of the labouring classes in Europe. 
 Our climate is stimulating. Shipmasters tell 
 me that they cannot drink in New York as 
 105 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 they do in Liverpool. (Heaven help Liver- 
 pool !) There is more oxygen in our air. It 
 has some importance in this, that anything 
 that gives acuteness, vivacity, spring, to the 
 substance of the brain prepares it for education 
 and larger intelligence. A dull, watery, slug- 
 gish brain may do for a Conservative; but 
 God never made them to be the fathers of 
 progress. They are very useful as brakes on 
 the wheel down-hill ; but they never would 
 draw anything up-hill in the world. And yet, 
 in the climatic influence that tends to give 
 vitality and quickness, force, and continuity to 
 the human brain, hes the hope for a higher 
 style of manhood ; although it is not to be 
 considered as a primary and chief cause of 
 " smartness," if you will allow that word, yet it 
 is one among others. And then, when the 
 child is born in America, he is born into an 
 atmosphere of expectation. He is not out of 
 the cradle before he learns that he has got to 
 earn his own living; he is hereditarily inspired 
 with the idea of getting on in the world. 
 Sometimes, when I see babies in the cradle 
 apparently pawing the air, I think that they 
 are making change in their own minds of 
 future bargains. But this has great force as 
 an educating element in early childhood : 
 1 06 
 
The Reign of the Common People 
 
 " You will be poor if you do not exert your- 
 self : " and at every future stage circumstances 
 make it clear that it lies with each man what 
 his condition in society is to be. This becomes 
 a very powerful developer of the cerebral 
 mass, and from it come intelligence and the 
 power of intellect. And then, beyond that, 
 when the man goes into life the whole style of 
 society tends towards intense cerebral excita- 
 bility. For instance, as to business, I found in 
 London that you may go down at nine o'clock 
 to see a man and there is nobody in his office ; 
 at ten o'clock the clerks are there ; at eleven 
 o'clock some persons do begin to appear. By 
 that time the Yankees have got half through 
 the day. 
 
 This is in excess with us : it is carried to a 
 fault ; for our men are ridden by two demons. 
 First, they desire excessive property — I do not 
 know that they are much distinguished from 
 their ancestors — they desire more than enough 
 for the uses of the family ; and when a man 
 wants more money than he can use, he wants 
 too much. But they have the ambition of 
 property^ which is accursed, or should be. 
 Property may be used in large masses to de- 
 velop property, and coordinated estates may 
 do work that single estates cannot do ; I am 
 107 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 not, therefore, speaking of vast enterprises 
 like railroads and factories. But the individ- 
 ual man thinks in the beginning, " If I could 
 only make myself worth a hundred thousand 
 dollars, I should be willing to retire from busi- 
 ness." Not a bit of it ! A hundred thousand 
 dollars is only an index of five hundred thou- 
 sand ; and when he has come to five hundred 
 thousand he is like Moses — and very unlike 
 him — standing on the top of the mountain and 
 looking over the promised land, and he says 
 to himself, " A million ! a million ! " And a 
 miUion draws another million, until at last he 
 has more than he can use, more than is useful 
 for him, and many a one won't give it away — 
 not till after his death. That is cheap benev- 
 olence. Well, this is the first element of mis- 
 take among large classes of commercial life in 
 America. 
 
 The second is, they want it suddenly. They 
 are not willing to say, " For forty years I will 
 lay gradually the foundations, and build the 
 golden stores one above another." No ; they 
 want to win quickly, by gambling, for that is 
 gambling when a man wants money without 
 having given a fair equivalent for it. And so 
 they press nature to her utmost limits till the 
 very diseases of our land are changing ; men 
 1 08 
 
The Reign of the Cdmmon People 
 
 are dropping dead — it is heart disease ; men 
 are dropping dead — it is paralysis; men are 
 dropping dead — it is Bright's disease. Ah ! 
 it is the violence done to the brain by excessive 
 industry, through excessive hours, and through 
 excessive ambition, which is but another name 
 for excessive avarice. 
 
 But outside of that there is still another ex- 
 citement, and that is politics. Now, the Eng- 
 lish in their insular and cool climate are rarely 
 excited in politics, but we are in our sunshiny 
 land ; especially are we so once in four years, 
 when the great quadrennial Presidential elec- 
 tion comes off, and when the most useless 
 thing on God's earth is built on God's earth — 
 namely, a political platform, which men never 
 use and never stand on after it is once built. 
 Then the candidates are put forth, and every 
 newspaper editor, and every pubHc-spirited 
 citizen and elector, goes before the people and 
 declares to them that the further existence of 
 the Government depends on the election of 
 both parties. Now nations have a wondrous 
 way of continuing to live after they are doomed 
 to death, and we contrive to get along from 
 four years to four years ; nevertheless the ex- 
 citement is prodigious. Men say these wild 
 excitements are not wholesome, I say they are 
 I eg 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 the best things that can happen to the com- 
 munity. I say the best speeches of the com- 
 munity scattered through the land, discussing 
 finance, taxes, education, are the education of 
 the common people, and they learn more in a 
 year of universal debate than they would in 
 twenty years of reading and thinking without 
 such help. 
 
 Well, outside of that there is still another 
 excitement, and that is in the Church, which 
 is the hottest place of all. I do not mean a 
 torrid heat ; I do not mean a fuliginous kind 
 of heat ; I mean simply this that, even under 
 its poorest administration, religion brings to 
 bear upon the human brain the most perma- 
 nent and the most profound excitements that 
 are known to humanity. If you take denomi- 
 nations as they are now, you could not illus- 
 trate much by them, for they are mere inci- 
 dents in the history of time, and they are no 
 permanent, cohesive, systematic developments. 
 I divide all Christian denominations into three 
 sections : those that work by doctrines ; those 
 that work by emotion ; and those that work 
 by devotion. The men that work by doctrines 
 think they have found out the universe ; they 
 have not only got it, but they have formulated 
 it : they know all about the Infinite, they have 
 no 
 
The Reign of the Common People 
 
 sailed round Eternity, they know all about the 
 Eternal and the Everlasting God, and you will 
 hear them discuss questions of theology: 
 " Now God could not, consistent with consist- 
 ency, do so-and-so." They know all His 
 difficulties ; they know how He got round 
 them. One might easily come to think that 
 God was their next-door neighbour. Well, 
 after all, whether it is true or false, their sys- 
 tematic views, their dogmas, are really impor- 
 tant to teach young and middle-aged and old 
 to attempt, by philosophic reasoning, to reach 
 into these unfathomable depths. It produces 
 a power upon the brain of most transcendent 
 importance. The dogmatists in their way may 
 not increase the sum of human knowledge, 
 but they increase the capacity of the human 
 brain for profound thought and investigation, 
 and that is wholesome and helpful. 
 
 Then there are the joyous churches, that love 
 hallelujahs, songs, hymns — revival churches. 
 Moody and Sankey movements, Methodist 
 movements of all kinds, the Salvation Army, 
 which has done noble work among the people. 
 I need not undertake to show you that this 
 emotion also tends to produce cerebral activ- 
 ity, and has an educating force in regard to 
 the facility with which the brain acts. 
 Ill 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 Then there come those churches that Uve in 
 an atmosphere of devotion, formulated prayers 
 printed services. One would not think that 
 stereotyped prayers read in the dim light 
 of a painted window would produce great 
 conflagration ! Nor, indeed, do they. But 
 when you come to look at the interior life 
 of these churches, you shall find that their 
 charities, their sense of responsibility to the 
 weak and the poor and the ignorant, are per- 
 petually acting as an inward fire, and develop- 
 ing intelHgence in ways not common to the 
 other forms of religious worship. 
 
 Well, what has been the result of all these 
 influences which have been superadded to those 
 universal stimuli to which all the civilized 
 world outside of our land has been subject? 
 We have 60,000,000 men, women, and chil- 
 dren in America ; we have common schools 
 for every living soul that is born on this con- 
 tinent — except the Chinese. Now, in the 
 States where twenty-five years ago it was a 
 penitentiary offense to teach a slave how to 
 read, we are sending out educated coloured 
 men and women to teach, to preach, to practice 
 law and medicine through the coloured popu- 
 lation of the South ; the Government is en- 
 listed in their behalf, and the States are proud 
 112 
 
The Reign of the Common People 
 
 of their coloured schools, that a Httle time ago 
 would have burnt a man who dared to advo- 
 cate the education of the slave. We are the 
 harbour to which all the sails of the world 
 crowd with emigrants, and we bless God for it. 
 Their letters go back thicker than leaves in 
 autumn, to those that are left behind ; and we 
 have a vast population from Spain, from Por- 
 tugal, from Italy, from Hungary, from Austria, 
 from Germany, from Russia ; we have a vast 
 population from all the Scandinavian lands, 
 from Scotland, from England, and occasionally 
 from Ireland. Let them come ! It takes a 
 little time to get them used to things; but 
 whenever the children of foreign emigrants, of 
 whom we have 8,000,000 born and bred in 
 our land — whenever those children have gone 
 through our common schools, they are just as 
 good Americans as if they had not had foreign 
 parents. The common schools are the stom- 
 achs of the Republic, and when a man goes in 
 there he comes out, after all, American. 
 
 Well, now, we are trying this experiment 
 before the world on a tremendous scale, and 
 the world does not quite believe in it. I do. 
 They say : " With regard to your success in 
 government of the people by the people for 
 the people, you are dependent upon extraneous 
 "3 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 conditions ; it is iftrt philosophically to be 
 infd'retj. from the principles of your govern- 
 ment ; you have got so much land that it's 
 easy now ; wait till the struggle for existence 
 takes place, as in the denser populations of 
 Europe, and then you will find that self-gov- 
 ernment will be but flimsy to hold men's 
 passions in check. By and by, you will go 
 from anarchy to a strong centralized Govern- 
 ment." I do not blame them for thinking so. 
 If I had been brought up as they have been, 
 perhaps I should think so; but they do not 
 understand the facts which actually are in 
 existence, and are fundamental.' For we are 
 not attempting to build Society /we are by 
 Society attempting to build the individual. 
 We hold that the State is sti;ong in the pro- 
 portion in which every individual in that State 
 is free, large, independent. Europe has a 
 finer educated upper class than we have; 
 noble and deep schojars in greater numbers 
 than we; institutions compared with which 
 ours are puny. Eu/ope is educating the top ; 
 we are educating/society from the bottom to 
 the top. We a/e not attempting to lift fa- 
 voured classes higher ; we are not attempting 
 to give to those that already have ; we are 
 attempting ib put our hands under the foun- 
 114 
 
The Reign of the Common People 
 
 dations of human life, and lift everybody up. 
 That is a slower work ; but when it is done, 
 the world will never doubt again which is the 
 wisest and best policy. 
 
 ""I do not suppose that one looking from the 
 outside upon the experiment of self-govern- 
 ment in America would have a very high 
 opinion of it. I have not either, if I just 
 look on the sjarface of things. Why, men 
 will say : " It stands to reason that 60,000,000 
 ignorant of law, ignorant of constitutional 
 history, ignorant of jurisprudence, of finance, 
 and taxes and tariffs and forms of currency ; 
 60,000,000 people that never studied these 
 things — are not fit to ruleTT Your diplomacy 
 is as complicated as ours, ai;^ it is the most 
 complicated on earth, for all things grow in 
 complexity as they develop towards a higher 
 condition. What fitness is there in these 
 people ? " J Well, it is not democracy merely ; 
 it is a representative democracy. Our people 
 do not vote in mass for anything ; they pick 
 out captains of thought, they pick out the 
 men that do know, and they send them to the 
 Legislature to think for them, and then the 
 people afterwards ratify or disallow them. 
 
 But when you come to the Legislatures I 
 am bound to confess that the thing does not 
 "5 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 look very much more cheering on the out- 
 side. Do the people really select the best men ? 
 Yes : in times of danger they do very gener- 
 ally, but in ordinary time " kissing goes by 
 favour." What is that dandy in the Legis- 
 lature for f Oh, his father was an eminent 
 judge, and they thought it would be a com- 
 phment to the old gentleman to send his son 
 up to the Legislature, — not because he knows 
 anything, but because his father does. It 
 won't do to make too close an inquisition as to 
 why people are in Legislatures. What is that 
 weazel-faced lawyer doing there ? Well, there 
 may be ten or twenty gentlemen who wanted 
 legislation that would favour their particular 
 property interest instead of the Common- 
 wealth, and they wanted somebody to wriggle 
 a bill through the Legislature, and so he sits 
 for the Commonwealth. That great blustrous 
 man squeezing on the front seat ; what is 
 he there for f He? He could shake hands 
 with more mothers, kiss more pretty girls and 
 more babies, and tell more funny stories in an 
 hour than any other man in a month, and so 
 they send him up to make lawsjl^ Whrfn they 
 get there it would do your heart gooa just to 
 go and look at them. You know what the 
 first duty of a regular Repubhcan-D^mocratic 
 ii6 
 
The Reign of the Common People 
 
 legislator is. It ik to get back again next 
 winter. His second duty is what? His 
 second duty is? to put himself under that 
 extraordinary /providence that takes c&re of 
 legislators' sparies. [The old mirade of the 
 prophet and the meal and the oU/ls outdone 
 immeasurably in our days, for^ey go there 
 poor one year, and go ho|rfe rich; in four 
 years they become moneylenders, all by a 
 trust in that gracious^rovidence that takes 
 care of legislators' ajflaries. Their next duty 
 after that is to ser/e the party that sent them 
 up ; and then, if there is anything lefE.pf them, 
 it belongs to the Commonwealth, j^ome one 
 has said, very wisely, that if a man travelling 
 wishes to relish his dinner he had better not 
 go into the kitchen to see where it is being 
 cooked ; if any man wishes to respect and 
 obey the law, he had better not go to the 
 Legislature to see where it is preparedj (This, 
 I presume, is entirely an American poi^t of 
 view — without parallel in^ther Jarids !) 
 
 There are a great many more faults in self- 
 government, but time will not permit me to 
 enumerate them all ; and yet I say that self- 
 government is the best government that ever 
 existed on the face of the earth. How should 
 that be, with all these damaging facts ? " By 
 "7 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 their fruits ye shall know them." What a 
 government is is to be determined by the 
 kind of people it raises, and I will defy the 
 whole world in time past, and in time present, 
 to show so vast a proportion of citizens so 
 well off, so contented, so remunerated by their 
 toil. The average of happiness under our 
 self-government is greater than it ever has 
 been, or can be, found under any sky, or in 
 any period of human history. And the philo- 
 sophical reason is not far to find ; it belongs 
 to that category in which a worse thing is 
 sometimes a great deal better than a better 
 
 WiUiam has been to school for more than a 
 year, and his teacher says/to him*bne day: 
 " Now, William, I am afraid your father will 
 think that I am not doit/g well by you ; you 
 must write a composifion — you must send 
 your father a good composition to show what 
 you are doing." \A/ell, William never did 
 write a composition/ and he does not know 
 how. " O, write aboit something that you do 
 know about — write jabout your father's farm," 
 and so being goaaed to his task, William 
 says : " A cow is a/useful animal. A cow has 
 four legs and two/'horns. A cow gives good 
 milk. I love goo;3 milk. William Bradshaw." 
 Ii8 
 
The Reign of the Common People 
 
 The master looks over his shoulder, and says : 
 " Pooh ! your father will think you are a cow. 
 Here, give me that composition, I'll fix it.'' 
 So he takes it home and fixes it. Here it 
 reads : " When the sim/^sts off the dusky 
 garments of the nighi<and appearing o'er the 
 orient hills, sips tjre dewdrops pendant from 
 every leaf, the nrfilkmaid goes afield chanting 
 her matin son^''frtid so on, and so on. Now 
 while, rheJmpSClly, the master's composition 
 was uns|fe^bly better than William's, as a 
 part elf/William's education, his own poor 
 scrawly lines are unspeakably better than the 
 on^ that has been " fixed " for him. No man 
 ever yet learned by having somebody else lear^ 
 for him, [A man learns arithmetic by blunder 
 in and blunder out, but at last he gets it. A 
 man learns to write through scrawling ; a man 
 learns to swim by going into the water ; and 
 a man learns to vote by voting. Now we are 
 not attempting to make a Government; we 
 are attempting to teach sixty millions of men 
 how to conduct a Government by self-control, 
 by knowledge, by intelligence, by fair oppor- 
 tunity to practice. It is better that we should 
 have sixty millions of men learning through 
 their own mistakes how to govern themselves, 
 than it is to have an arbitrary Government 
 119 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 with the whole of the rest of the people igno- 
 rant. • 
 
 -Thus far I have spoken of the development 
 of the common people in their relations to 
 political economy and to government and 
 politics, but I have left out the more impor- 
 tant, the less traversed part. I affirm that the 
 intelligence of the great mass of the common 
 people has a direct bearing upon science, upon 
 art, upon morality, upon religion itself. It 
 would not seem as though the men that were 
 superior in education and knowledge could re- 
 ceive anything from those below. Perhaps 
 No ; perhaps Yes ; for that which education 
 gives IS more nearly artificial than that which 
 is inspired by the dominant sense and condi- 
 tion of the human mind that unites people in 
 greater mass. Why, two hundred years ago, 
 there was but one doctor in the village ; no- 
 body but him knew anything of medicine. 
 To-day hygiene, physiology, are taught in our 
 schools, are spread abroad by newspapers or 
 in lectures, or from the pulpit, and the common 
 people in our land have their dividends of 
 human knowledge. A woman that has brought 
 up six children knows more about medicine 
 than the village doctor did two hundred years 
 ago. Two centuries ago, nobody knew any- 
 
 I20 
 
The Reign of the Common People 
 
 thing about law but the judge and the coun- 
 cillors. To-day everybody knows something 
 about law. We have broken open the arcana, 
 ■we have distributed its treasures of knowledge, 
 and the labourer knows something about law, 
 the farmer, the mechanic, the merchant — 
 everybody has an elementary knowledge of 
 law. Has it destroyed the profession of the 
 law ? There never were so many highly edu- 
 cated men as now in the profession of the law, 
 never were they more trustworthy and hon- 
 ourable, never had larger interests put into 
 their hands, never had larger fees, and never 
 were more willing to have them than they are 
 now. They do not suffer by the intelligence 
 of the common people which comes from dis- 
 tribution of the elementary forms of profes- 
 sional knowledge. 
 
 How, then, is it with regard to the Church ? 
 Just the same ; just the same. Three hundred 
 years ago there was but one Bible in a parish 
 in England, and that was chained to a column 
 in the church ; and there was but one man to 
 read it — the priest. And the people did not 
 understand it then, and it was a part of official 
 duty to go from house to house on the 
 theory that the average parent did not know 
 enough to teach the children the first prin- 
 
 121 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 ciples of morality and religion. Go to-day 
 over the same community or a like community 
 in America, and on the Sabbath morning 
 you shall see the girls and the young men 
 with Bibles under their arms, themselves 
 teachers, going to mission schools, going 
 down to instruct their mental inferiors. The 
 clergy has distributed its functions among the 
 common people. Has that destroyed the pro- 
 fession ? It never was stronger, never was as 
 strong as it is to-day. Thank God, as to mere 
 professional power, save by ordination, save by 
 some endowment from without, there never 
 was a time since the Advent when the clergy 
 had so little influence as they have to-day : and 
 it is growing less and less, and with the ages 
 they will grow so pale that they cannot cast 
 a shadow. Yet there never was a time when 
 the man of God — because he was moved by 
 the Holy Spirit of God to unfold his own 
 moral consciousness, living among men, tied 
 to them by no other ties than the sympathies 
 of love — there never was a time when he had 
 so much influence as to-day. And let me 
 say that with regard to the ministers of the 
 Gospel everywhere, who have great and proper 
 influence, it is not the paraphernalia of their 
 profession, but it is the man inside of all these 
 
 122 
 
The Reign of the Common People 
 
 things that is the power. And ennobled man- 
 hood is coming into a position of influence in 
 this world that it never had in any other pe- 
 riod, nor in any other nation outside of our 
 great English stock, which is the root, as the 
 Germanic from which it sprang, of the grandest 
 manhood that ever has been. But the stature 
 has yet to be greater, and the power and the 
 character are yet to be greater. Now has this 
 alteration changed the economy of the 
 Church, or destroyed it? The Church was 
 never so strong as it is to-day. It is not the 
 pastor's business any longer to go from house 
 to house as if they were ignorant. Fathers 
 and mothers of children have now more knowl- 
 edge than, three hundred years ago, the minis- 
 ter himself had, and the families are the bul- 
 warks of the Church. It may be said that the 
 Church has protected the family, but the 
 Church itself has had its life from the family 
 emancipated, and made larger and nobler. 
 Well, has it promoted morality ? Yes ! Of all 
 the schools on earth where intelligence and piety 
 dwell together, the father tongue and the mother 
 love have been the instructors of the children. 
 There is in these centres more of real purity, 
 and staunch honesty, and thorough integrity, 
 than in any other institutions upon the earth. 
 123 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 Has this development made any difference 
 with theology ? Yes, thank God, a great deal 
 of difference. Theology in every age is the 
 best account that men can give of the rela- 
 tions of the human family to God, and the 
 types must be the types that society in those 
 periods is best acquainted with. When men 
 thought that the King was Divinely King, and 
 that the channel of instruction to mankind 
 came through the King, it was almost inevi- 
 table that the God should be nothing but a 
 superhuman King, having no consideration 
 for the individual, but only thinking about 
 His law and about the universe and about the 
 national hfe ; that theology stood in the way 
 of the people, and men were running round it 
 or creeping over it, or running against it and 
 knocking their brains out. Well, what has 
 the education of the common people done in 
 that regard ? It has taught men the meaning 
 of the first words of the Lord's prayer : — 
 " Our Father." The old theology is from the 
 forge, from law, from government among 
 men ; the New Testament theology takes its 
 centre in the Fatherhood of God and in the 
 Divine love. 
 
 And how has that old governmental theology 
 been changed ? If there be one thing which 
 124 
 
The Reign of the Common People 
 
 the family can teach men it is the doctrine of 
 love, and if there be one priestess that can 
 teach it above all others it is the mother. 
 Hers are the sufferings that precede the 
 child's existence; through the doors and 
 pangs of the mother it comes to life. She is 
 the food of the child, she watches it. If it is 
 sick she is the nurse; if it suffers she suffers 
 yet more. She gives up all her natural liberty, 
 she accounts no assembly so full of pleasure, 
 and nowhere else is her life so sweet to her as 
 by the side of the cradle or with the babe in 
 her lap. For this she suffered, for this she 
 gives all her knowledge, and as it grows up 
 step by step she feeds it, and she becomes its 
 knowledge and its righteousness, and its 
 justice and its sanctification ; she stands for 
 it, and out of her it lives. And when the 
 father, even, has lost out of his ear the funeral 
 bell when the child has gone, the mother 
 hears it toll to the end of her life. Or, when 
 misled and overtempted, a child in ascending 
 years breaks away from family influence and 
 goes down step by step to disgrace and misery, 
 and at last is afar off, the poor child sends 
 back word : " Oh, mother, may I come home 
 to die ? " there is no reproach, the one word 
 that rings out like an angel's trumpet is : 
 
 125 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 " Oh, my child, come home," and the mother's 
 knee to the returning prodigal is the most 
 sacred place in the universe this side of the 
 feet of Jesus Christ. If there be one single 
 creature out of heaven or on the earth that is 
 able to teach the theologian what is the love 
 of God, it is the mother. And that work has 
 but begun, and both the teacher, the preacher, 
 and the Church are to see balmier and better 
 days in the time to come, when at last we 
 shall have a theology that teaches the Father- 
 hood of God and the brotherhood of man. 
 
 Many good men are alarmed at the inevi- 
 table changes in theology and government and 
 the conditions of the people. They want 
 peace. Well, you can find it in the grave- 
 yard, and that is the only place. Among 
 living men you can find no peace. Growth 
 means disturbance; peace in any such sense 
 as that of no investigation, no change, means 
 death. When men say : " If you give up 
 the old beacons you do not know where you 
 will land," — I know where you will land if 
 you do not ! Do you believe in God ? I do. 
 Do you believe that He has a providence over 
 human afTairs ? I do. And I beUeve that the 
 Hand that has steered this vagrant world 
 through all the dark seas and storms of the 
 126 
 
The Reign of the Common People 
 
 past has hold of the helm yet, and through all 
 seeming confusions He will guide the nations 
 and the people safe to the golden harbour of 
 the millennium. Trust Him ; love Him ; and 
 rejoice ! 
 
 127 
 
IV 
 ELOQUENCE AND ORATORY ' 
 
 I CONGRATULATE myself, always, for 
 the privilege of appearing before a Phila- 
 delphia audience — intelligent, sympathetic, 
 appreciative; but never more than now, 
 when the audience is assembled both to be- 
 hold, and to bear witness to, one of the 
 noblest institutions that could be established 
 in your midst ; one of the most needed ; and 
 one which I have reason to believe has been 
 established under the inspiration of the highest 
 motives, not only of patriotism in education, 
 but of religion itself. This city — eminent in 
 many respects for its institutions, and for its 
 various collections which make civilization so 
 honourable— I congratulate, that now, at last, 
 it has established a school of oratory in this 
 central position, equidistant from the South, 
 from the West, and from the North, as a fitting 
 centre from which should go out influences 
 that shall exalt, if not regenerate, public senti- 
 
 • Originally delivered in Philadelphia, in the year 1876, 
 at the opening of the School of Oratory. 
 128 
 
Eloquence and Oratory 
 
 ment on the subject of oratory ; for, while 
 progress has been made, and is making, in 
 the training of men for public speaking, I 
 think I may say that, relative to the exertions 
 that are put forth in other departments of 
 education, this subject is behind almost all 
 others. Training in this department is the 
 great want of our day ; for we are living in a 
 land whose genius, whose history, whose in- 
 stitutions, whose people, eminently demand 
 oratory. There is nothing that draws men 
 more quickly to any centre than the hope of 
 hearing important subjects wisely discussed 
 with full fervour of manhood; and that is 
 oratory — truth bearing upon conduct, and 
 character set home by the living force of the 
 full man. And nowhere, in the field, in the 
 forum, in the pulpit, or in schools, is there 
 found to be a hving voice that informs of 
 beauty, traces rugged truth, and gives force 
 and energy to its utterance, that people do 
 not crowd and throng there. 
 
 We have demonstrations enough, fortunately, 
 to show that truth alone is not sufficient ; for 
 truth is the arrow, but man is the bow that 
 sends it home. There be many men who are 
 the light of the pulpit, whose thought is pro- 
 found, whose learning is universal, but whose 
 129 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 offices are unspeakably dull. They do make 
 known the truth ; but without fervour, without 
 grace, without beauty, without inspiration ; and 
 discourse upon discourse would fitly be called 
 the funeral of important subjects ! 
 
 Nowhere else is there to be so large a dis- 
 closure of what is possible from man acting 
 upon men, as in oratory. In ancient times, 
 and in other lands, circumstances more or less 
 propitious developed the force of eloquence in 
 special instances, or among particular classes. 
 But consider the nature of our own institutions. 
 Consider that nothing can live in our midst un- 
 til it has accepted its mission of service to the 
 whole people. 
 
 Now and then, men, mistaking good sense, 
 speak contemptuously of popularizing learn- 
 ing, and of popularizing science ; but popular 
 intelligence is that atmosphere in which all 
 high scientific truth and research, and all 
 learning, in its amplest extent, are, by advance 
 in civilization, to find their nourishment and 
 stimulation; and throughout our land the peo- 
 ple demand to know what are the principles 
 of government, what is the procedure of 
 courts, what is the best thought in regard to 
 national policy, what are the ripening thoughts 
 respecting the reformations of the times, what 
 130 
 
Eloquence and Oratory 
 
 is social truth, what is civil truth, and what is 
 divine truth. These things are discussed in 
 the cabin, in the field, in the court-house, in the 
 legislative hall, everywhere, throughout forty 
 or fifty millions of people. This is in accordance 
 with the nature of our institutions and our 
 customs ; and to the living voice more largely 
 than to any other source are we indebted for 
 the popularization of learning and knowledge, 
 and for motive force, which the printed page 
 can scarcely give in any adequate measure. 
 
 Yet, though this is in accordance with the 
 necessity of our times, our institutions and our 
 customs, I think that oratory, with the excep- 
 tion of here and there an instance which is sup- 
 posed to be natural, is looked upon, if not with 
 contempt, at least with discredit, as a thing 
 artificial ; as a mere science of ornamentation ; 
 as a method fit for actors who are not sup- 
 posed to express their own sentiments, but un- 
 fit for a living man who has earnestness and 
 sincerity and purpose. 
 
 Still, on the other hand, I hold that oratory 
 has this test and mark of divine providence, in 
 that God, when He makes things perfect, 
 signifies that He is done by throwing over 
 them the robe of beauty ; for beauty is the 
 divine thought of excellence. All things, 
 131 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 growing in their earlier stages, are rude. All 
 of them are in vigorous strength, it may be ; 
 but not until the blossom comes, and the fruit 
 hangs pendant, has the vine evinced for what 
 it was made. God is a God of beauty ; and 
 beauty is everywhere the final process. When 
 things have come to that, they have touched 
 their limit. 
 
 Now a living force that brings to itself all 
 the resources of imagination, all the inspira- 
 tions of feeling, all that is influential in body, 
 in voice, in eye, in gesture, in posture, in the 
 whole animated man, is in strict analogy with 
 the divine thought and the divine arrange- 
 ment ; and there is no misconstruction more 
 utterly untrue and fatal than this : that oratory 
 is an artificial thing, which deals with baubles 
 and trifles, for the sake of making bubbles of 
 pleasure for transient effect on mercurial au- 
 diences. So far from that, it is the consecra- 
 tion of the whole man to the noblest purposes 
 to which one can address himself — the educa- 
 tion and inspiration of his fellow men by all 
 that there is in learning, by all that there 
 is in thought, by all that there is in feeling, 
 by all that there is in all of them, sent 
 home through the channels of taste and of 
 beauty. And so regarded, oratory should take 
 132 
 
Eloquence and Oratory 
 
 it s place arn ong__.the highest departments of 
 educa tion. - 
 
 I have said that it is disregarded largely ; so 
 it is ; and one of the fruits of this disregard is 
 that men fill all the places of power — how ? 
 With force misdirected ; with energy not half 
 so fruitful as it might be ; with sincerity that 
 knows not how to spread its wings and fly. I 
 think that if you were to trace and to analyze 
 the methods which prevail in all the depart- 
 ments of society, you would find in no other 
 such contempt of culture, and in no other such 
 punishment of this contempt. 
 
 May I speak of my own profession, from a 
 lifelong acquaintance — from now forty years of 
 public life and knowledge and observation ? 
 May I say, without being supposed to arrogate, 
 anything to my own profession, that I know of 
 no nobler body of men, of more various ac- 
 complishments, of more honesty, of more self- 
 sacrifice, and of more sincerity, than the clergy- 
 men of America ? And yet, with exceptional 
 cases, here and there, I cannot say that the pro- 
 fession represents eminence : I mean eminence, 
 not in eloquence, but in oratory. I bear them 
 witness that they mean well ; I bear them wit- 
 ness that in multitudes of cases they are gro- 
 tesque ; that in multitudes of other cases they 
 133 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 are awkward; and that in multitudes still greater 
 they are dull. They are living witnesses to 
 show how much can be done by men that are 
 in earnest without offices, and without the ad- 
 juvants of imagination and of taste, by training ; 
 and they are Uving witnesses also, I think, of 
 how much is left undone to make truth palatable, 
 and to make men eager to hear it and earnest 
 to receive it, by the lack of that very training 
 which they have despised — or at any rate neg- 
 lected. 
 
 ^ Or, shall I ask you to scrutinize the manner 
 and the methods that prevail in our courts — 
 the everlasting monotone and seesaw ? Shall I 
 ask you to look at the intensity that raises it- 
 self to the highest pitch in the beginning, and 
 that then, running in a screaming monotone, 
 wearies, if it does not afifright, all that hear it ? 
 
 Or, shall I ask you to consider the wild way 
 in which speaking takes place in our political 
 conflicts throughout the country — the bellow- 
 ing of one, the shouting of another, the gro- 
 tesqueness of a third, and the want of any 
 given method, or any controlled emotion, in 
 almost all of them. 
 
 How much squandering there is of the voice 1 
 How little is there of the advantage that may 
 come from conversational tones ! How sel- 
 134 
 
Eloquence and Oratory 
 
 dom does a man dare to acquit himself with 
 pathos and fervour ! And the men are them- 
 selves mechanical, and methodical in the bad 
 way, who are most afraid of the artificial train- 
 ing that is given in the schools, and who so 
 often show by the fruit of their labour that the 
 want of oratory is the want of education. 
 
 How remarkable is sweetness of voice in the 
 mother, in the father, in the household 1 The 
 music of no chorded instruments brought to- 
 gether is, for sweetness, like the music of fa- 
 miliar affection when spoken by brother and 
 sister, or by father and mother. 
 
 Conversation itself belongs to oratory. 
 Where is there a wider, a more ample field for 
 the impartation of pleasure or knowledge than 
 at a festive dinner ? But how often do we 
 find that when men, having well eaten and 
 drunken, arise to speak, they are well qualified 
 to keep silence and utterly disqualified to 
 speak ! How rare it is to find felicity of dic- 
 tion on such occasions ! How seldom do we 
 see men who are educated to a fine sense of 
 what is fit and proper at gatherings of this 
 kind ! How many men there are who are 
 weighty in argument, who have abundant re- 
 sources, and who are almost boundless in their 
 power at other times and in other places, but 
 1 35 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 who when in company among their kind are 
 exceedingly unapt in their methods ! Having 
 none of the secret instruments by which the 
 elements of nature may be touched, having no 
 skill and no power in this direction, they 
 stand as machines before living, sensitive men. 
 A man may be as a master before an instru- 
 ment ; only the instrument is dead, while he 
 has the living hand ; and out of that dead in- 
 strument what wondrous harmony springs 
 forth at his touch ! And if you can electrify 
 an audience by the power of a living man on 
 dead things, how much more should that au- 
 dience be electrified when the chords are liv- 
 ing and the man is alive, and he knows how 
 to touch them with divine inspiration ! 
 
 I advocate, therefore, in its full extent, and 
 for every reason of h^umanity, of patriotism, 
 and of religion, a more thorough culture of 
 oratory ; and I define oratory to be the art 
 oj[_ influencing conduct with the truth set home 
 by all the resources of the living man. Its aim 
 is not to please men, but to build them up ; 
 and the pleasure which it imparts is one of the 
 methods by which it seeks to do this. It aims 
 to get access to men by allaying their preju- 
 dices. A person who, with unwelcome truths, 
 undertakes to carry them to men who do not 
 136 
 
Eloquence and Oratory 
 
 wish them, but who need them, undertakes a 
 task which is like drawing near to a fortress. 
 The times have gone by, but you remember 
 them, when, if I had spoken here on certain 
 themes belonging to patriotism which now are 
 our glory, I should have stood before you as 
 before so many castles locked and barred. 
 How unwelcome was the truth ! But if one 
 had the art of making the truth beautiful ; if 
 one had the art of coaxing the keeper of the 
 gate to turn the key and let the interloping 
 thought come in ; if one could by persuasion 
 control the Cerberus of hatred, of anger, of 
 envy, of jealousy, that sits at the gate of men's 
 souls, and watches against unwelcome truths ; 
 if one could by eloquence give sops to this 
 monster, and overcome him, would it not be 
 worth while to do it ? Are we to go on still 
 cudgelling, and cudgelling, and cudgelling 
 men's ears with coarse processes ? Are we to 
 consider it a special providence when any good 
 comes from our preaching or our teaching ? 
 Are we never to study how skillfully to pick the 
 lock of curiosity, to unfasten the door of fancy, 
 to throw wide open the halls of emotion, and 
 to kindle the light of inspiration in the souls 
 of men ? Is there any reality in oratory ? It 
 is all real I 
 
 137 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 First, in the orator is the man. Let-ao 
 man -who is a sneak try to be an orator. The 
 method" is not the substance of oratory. A 
 man who is to be an orator must have some- 
 thing to say. He must have something that 
 in his very soul he feels to be worth saying. 
 He must have in his nature that kindly sym- 
 pathy which connects him with his fellow men, 
 and which so makes him apart of the audience 
 which he moves that his smile is their smile, 
 that his tear is their tear, and that the throb of 
 his heart becomes the throb of the hearts of 
 the whole assembly. A man that is humane, a 
 lover of his kind, full of all earnest and sweet 
 sympathy for their welfare, has in him the 
 original element, the substance of oratory, 
 which is truth. But in this world truth needs 
 nursing and helping ; it needs every advantage ; 
 for the underflow of life is animal, and the 
 channels of human society have been taken 
 possession of by lower influences beforehand. 
 Tbe-devil squatted on human territory before 
 tbe-angei came to dispossess him. Pride and 
 intolerance, arrogance and its cruelty, selfish- 
 ness and its greed, all the lower appetites and 
 passions, do swarm, and do hold in thrall the 
 under-man that each one of us yet carries — 
 the man of flesh, on which the spirit-man seeks 
 138 
 
Eloquence and Oratory 
 
 to ride, and by which too often he is thrown 
 and trampled under foot. The truth in its 
 attempt to wean the better from the worse 
 needs every auxiliary and every adjuvant. 
 
 Therefore, the man who goes forth to speak 
 the truth,whether men will hear or whether they 
 will forbear, and goes with the determination 
 that they shall hear; the man who carries 
 victory in his hope; the man who has ir- 
 refragable courage — it is not enough that 
 he has in his soul this element, which, though 
 it be despised, is the foundation element, and 
 which comes first by birth, thanks to your 
 father and mother, thanks to the providence 
 that gave you such a father and such a mother, 
 and thanks to the God who inspires it and 
 sanctifies it. With this predisposition and this 
 substance of truth which men need, and which 
 is to refashion human life in all its parts, the 
 question arises whether there is need of any- 
 thing more than gracious culture. Well, so 
 long as men are in the body they need the 
 body. There" are ~ some Avho think they have 
 well-nigh crucified the body. If they have, 
 why-are.they lingering here betow, where they 
 are not useful, and where they are not needed ? 
 So long as men touch the ground, and feel 
 their own weight. So long they need the 
 139 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 aptitadesu and the instrumentalities of the 
 hiKnanbody; and one of the very first steps 
 in^oralofy is that which trains the body to be 
 the welcome and glad servant of the soul — 
 which it is not always ; for many and many a 
 one who has acres of thought has little bodily 
 culture, and as httle grace of manner ; and 
 many and many a one who has sweetening 
 inside has cacophony when he speaks. Harsh, 
 rude, hard, bruising, are his words. 
 
 The first work, therefore, is to teach a man's 
 body to serve his soul ; and in this work the 
 education of the bodily presence is the very 
 first step. LWp had almost extinguished the 
 power of the h,uman body by our pulpits, 
 which, in early days, were the sources and 
 centres of popular eloquence such as there 
 was ; for men followed the Apocalyptic figure 
 of the candlestick, the pulpit in the church 
 representing the candlestick, and the minister 
 being supposed to be the light in it. In those 
 days of symbolization everything had to be 
 symbolized ; and when a church was built they 
 made a pulpit that was like the socket of a 
 candlestick, and put a man into it ; and thus 
 entubbed he looked down afar upon his con- 
 gregation to speak unto them ! Now, what 
 man could win a coy and proud companion if 
 140 
 
Eloquence and Oratory 
 
 hV were obliged to court at fifty feet distance 
 fro^ her ? or, what man, pleading for his life, 
 would plead afar off, as through a speaking 
 trumpet, from the second story, to one down 
 below ? 
 
 Nay, men have been covered up. The in- 
 troduction of platforms has bee;n thought, on 
 the whole, to be a somewhat discourteous 
 thing. I will tell you, if you will indulge me, 
 a httle reminiscence of, my own experience. 
 In the church where,! minister there was no 
 pulpit ; there was only a platform ; and some 
 of the elect ladies, honourable and precious, 
 waited upon me to know if I would not permit 
 a silk screen to be drawn across the front of 
 my table, so that my legs and feet need not be 
 seen. My reply to them was, " I will, on one 
 condition — that whenever I make a pastoral 
 call at your houses you will have a green silk 
 bag into which I may put my legs." 
 
 If the legs and fe^ are tolerable in a parlour, 
 or in a sscial rqofn, why are they not tolerable 
 on a platfo)a^? It takes the whole man to 
 make a man ; and at times there are no gestures 
 that are comparable to the simple stature of 
 the man himself. So it behooves us to train 
 men to use the whole of themselves. Fre- 
 quently the foot is emphasis, and the posture is 
 141 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 oftentimes power, after a word, or accompany- 
 ing a word ; and men learn to perceive the 
 thought coming afar off from the man himself 
 who foreshadows it by his action. 
 
 You shall no longer, when men are obliged 
 to~~-ii{and disclosed before the whole aujiience, 
 see rmljis^rs bent over a desk, lilce a weary 
 horse crooked over a hitching block, and 
 preaching first on^Tsn^ leg, and then on the 
 other. To be a gentleirian in the presence 
 of an audience is one of the firs^ lessons which 
 oratory will teach the young aspiring speaker. 
 
 But, beside that, what power there is in 
 posture, or in gesture ! By it, how many 
 discriminations are made ; how many smooth 
 things are rolled off; how many complex 
 things men are made to comprehend ! How 
 many things the body can tongue when the 
 tongue itself cannot well utter the thing de- 
 sired ! The tongue and the person are to 
 coiiperate ; and having been trained to work 
 together, their result is spontaneous, unthought 
 of, unarranged for. > 
 
 Now, to the real natural man — and the 
 natural man is the educated man ; not the 
 thing from which he sprang — -how much is to 
 be added ! Many a man will hear the truth 
 for the pleasure of hearing it, who would not 
 142 
 
Eloquence and Oratory 
 
 hear it for the profit of hearing it; and so ' 
 there must be something more than its plain 
 statement. Among other things, the voice — 
 perhaps the most important of all, and the 
 least cultured — should not be forgotten. How 
 many men are there that can speak from day 
 to day one hour, two hours, three hours, with- 
 out exhaustion, and without hoarseness ? But 
 it is in the power of the vocal organs, and of 
 the ordinary vocal organs, to do this. What 
 multitudes of men weary themselves out be- 
 cause they put their voice on a hard run at 
 the top of its compass ! — and there is no re- 
 lief to them, and none, unfortunately, to the 
 audience. But the voice is like an orchestra. 
 It ranges high up, and can shriek betimes like 
 the scream of an eagle ; or it is low as a lion's 
 tone ; and at every intermediate point is some 
 peculiar quality. It has in it the mother's 
 whisper and the father's command. It has in 
 it warning and alarm. It has in it sweetness. 
 It is full of mirth and full of gayety. It 
 glitters, though it is not seen with all its 
 sparkling fancies. It ranges high, inter- 
 mediate, or low, in obedience to the will, un- 
 consciously to him who uses it; and men 
 listen through the long hour, wondering that 
 it is so short, and quite unaware that they 
 143 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 have been bewitched out of their weariness by 
 the charm of a voice, not artificial, not pre- 
 arranged at the time in the man's thought, 
 but by assiduous training made to be his 
 second nature. Such a voice answers to the 
 soul, and is its beating. 
 
 Nt)w"agai«st this training manifold objec- 
 tions are made. It is said that it is unworthy 
 of manhood that men should be so trained. 
 The conception of a man is that of blunt 
 earnestness. It is said that if a man knows 
 what he wants to say, he can say it ; that if 
 he knows what he wants to have men do, the 
 way is for him to pitch at them. That seems 
 to be about the idea which ordinarily prevails 
 on this subject. Shoot a man, as you would a 
 rocket in war ; throw him as yo<i would a 
 hand-grenade; and afterwards, if you please, 
 look to see where he hits ; and woe be to 
 those who touch the fragments ! Such ap- 
 pears to be the notion which many have on 
 this subject. But where else, in what other 
 relation, does a man so reason ?J Here is the 
 highest function to which any man can address 
 himself — the attempt to vitalize men ; to give 
 warmth to frigid natures ; to give aspirations 
 to the dull and low-flying ; to give purpose to 
 conduct, and to evolve character from con- 
 144 
 
Eloquence and Oratory 
 
 duct ; to bring to bear every part of one's self 
 — the thinking power ; the perceptive power ; 
 the intuitions ; the imagination ; all the sweet 
 and overflowing emotions. The grace of the 
 body ; its emphasis ; its discriminations ; the 
 power of the eye and of the voice — all these 
 belong to the blessedness of this work. 
 
 " No," says the man of the school of the 
 beetle, " buzz, and fight, and hit where you 
 can." Thus men disdain this culture as 
 though it were something effeminate; as 
 though it were a science of ornamentation ; 
 as though it were a means of stealing men's 
 convictions, not enforcing them; and as 
 though it lacked calibre and dignity. 
 
 But why should not this reasoning be ap- 
 plied to everything else ? The very man who 
 will not train his own voice to preach, to 
 lecture, to discourse, whether in the field or 
 in the legislative hall or in the church, will 
 pay large dues through weary quarters to drill 
 his daughter's voice to sing hymns, and canzo- 
 nets, and other music. This is not counted 
 to be unworthy of the dignity of womanhood. 
 
 " But," it is said, " does not the voice come 
 
 by nature ? " Yes ; but is there anything that 
 
 comes by nature which stays as it comes if it 
 
 is worthily handled ? We receive one talent 
 
 145 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 that we may make it five ; and we receive five 
 talents that we may make them ten. There is 
 no one thing in man that he has in perfection 
 till he has it by culture. We know that in 
 respect to everything but the voice in speech. 
 Is not the ear trained to acute hearing ? Is 
 not the eye trained in science ? Do men not 
 school the eye, and make it quick-seeing by 
 patient use ? Is a man, because he has 
 learned a trade, and was not born with it, 
 thought to be less a man? Because we have 
 made discoveries of science and adapted them 
 to manufacture ; because we have developed 
 knowledge by training, are we thought to be 
 unmanly? Shall we, because we have un- 
 folded our powers by the use of ourselves for 
 that noblest of purposes, the inspiration and 
 elevation of mankind, be less esteemed? Is 
 the school of human training to be disdained 
 when by it we are rendered more useful to our 
 fellow men ? 
 
 But it is said that this culture is artificial ; 
 that it is mere posturing ; that it is simple 
 ornamentation. Ah ! that is not because there 
 has been so much of it, but because there has 
 been so little of it. If a man were to begin, 
 as he should, early; or if, beginning late, he 
 were to addict himself assiduously to it, then 
 146 
 
Eloquence and Oratory 
 
 the graces of speech, the graces of oratory, 
 would be to him what all learning must be 
 before it is perfect, namely, spontaneous. If 
 he were to be trained earlier, then his training 
 would not be called the science of ostentation 
 or of acting. 
 
 Never is a man thoroughly taught until he 
 has forgotten how he learned. Do you re- 
 member when you tottered from chair to 
 chair ? Now you walk without thinking that 
 you learned to walk. Do you remember 
 when your inept hands wandered through the 
 air towards the candle, or towards the mother's 
 bosom ? Now how regulated, how true to your 
 wish, how quick, how sharp to the touch, are 
 those hands ! But it was by learning that they 
 became so far perfected. Their perfection is 
 the fruit of training. 
 
 Let one think of what he is doing, and he 
 does it ill. If you go into your parlour, where 
 your wife and children are, you always know 
 what to do with yourself — or almost always ! 
 You are not awkward in your postures, nor 
 are you awkward with your hands ; but let it 
 be understood that there are a dozen strangers 
 to be present, and you begin to think how to 
 appear well before them; and the result of 
 your thinking about it is that you appear very 
 
 147 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 ill. Where to put your hands, and where to 
 put yourself, you do not know ; how to stand 
 or how to sit troubles you ; whether to hold up 
 one hand or the other hand, or to hold both 
 down, or both up, is a matter of thought with 
 you. 
 
 Let me walk on the narrowest of these 
 boards upon which I stand, and I walk with 
 simplicity and perfect safety, because I scarcely 
 think of walking; but lift that board fifty feet 
 above the ground, and let me walk on it as far 
 as across this building, and let me think of the 
 consequences that would result if I were to 
 fall, and how I would tremble and reel 1 The 
 moment a man's attention is directed to that 
 which he does, he does it ill. When the thing 
 which a man does is so completely mastered 
 that there is an absence of volition, and he 
 does it without knowing it, he does it easily ; 
 but when the volition is not subdued, and 
 when, therefore, he does not act spontaneously, 
 he is conscious of what he does, and the con- 
 sciousness prevents his doing it easily. Uncon- 
 sciousness is indispensable to the doing a thing 
 easily and well. 
 
 Now, in regard to the training of the orator, 
 it should begin in boyhood, and should be part 
 and parcel of the lessons of the school. Grace ; 
 148 
 
Eloquence and Oratory- 
 posture ; force of manner ; the training of the 
 eye, that it may look at men, and pierce them, 
 and smile upon them, and bring summer to 
 them, and call down storms and winter upon 
 them ; the development of the hand, that it 
 may wield the sceptre, or beckon with sweet 
 persuasion — these things do not come artifi- 
 cially ; they belong to man. Why, men think 
 that nature means that which lies back of 
 culture. Then you ought never to have de- 
 parted from babyhood ; for that is the only 
 nature you had to begin with. But is nature 
 the acorn forever ? Is not the oak nature ? 
 Is not that which comes from the seed the best 
 representation of the divine conception of the 
 seed ? And as men we are seeds. Culture is 
 but planting them and training them accord- 
 ing to their several natures ; and nowhere is 
 training nobler than in preparing the orator 
 for the great work to which he educates him- 
 self — the elevation of his kind, through truth, 
 through earnestness, through beauty, through 
 every divine influence. 
 
 But it is said that the times are changing, 
 and that we ought not to attempt to meddle 
 with that which God has provided for. Say 
 men, " The truth is before you ; there is your 
 Bible ; go preach the Word of God." Well, if 
 149 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 you are not to meddle with what God has 
 provided for, why was not the Bible sent in- 
 stead of you ? You were sent because tlie 
 very object of a preacher was to give the truth 
 a living form, and not have it lie in the dead 
 letter. As to its simplicity and as to its beauty, 
 I confute you with your own doctrine ; for, as 
 I read the sacred text, it is, " Adorn the 
 doctrine of God our Saviour." We are to 
 make it beautiful. There are times when we 
 cannot do it. There are times for the scalpel, 
 there are times for the sword, and there are times 
 for the battle-axe ; but these are exceptional. 
 " Let every one of us please his neighbour for 
 his good to edification " is a standing com- 
 mand ; and we are to take the truth, of every 
 kind, and if possible bring it in its summer 
 guise to men. 
 
 But it is said, " Our greatest orators have 
 not been trained." How do you know ? It 
 may be that Patrick Henry went crying in the 
 wilderness of poor speakers, without any great 
 training ; I will admit that now and then there 
 are gifts so eminent and so impetuous that they 
 break through ordinary necessities ; but even 
 Patrick .Henry was eloquent only under great 
 pressure ; and there remain the results of only 
 one or two of his efforts. Daniel Webster is 
 150 
 
Eloquence and Oratory 
 
 supposed in many respects to have been the 
 greatest American orator of his time ; but 
 there never hved a man who was so studious of 
 everything he did, even to the buttons on his 
 coat, as Daniel Webster. Henry Clay was 
 prominent as an orator, but though he was not 
 a man of the schools, he was a man who 
 schooled himself; and by his own thought and 
 taste and sense of that which was fitting and 
 beautiful, he became, through culture, an ac- 
 complished orator. 
 
 If you go from our land to other lands ; if 
 you go to the land which has been irradiated 
 by parliamentary eloquence ; if you go to the 
 people of Great Britain ; if you go to the great 
 men in ancient times who lived in the intellect ; 
 if you go to the illustrious names that every 
 one recalls — Demosthenes and Cicero — they 
 represent a hfe of work. 
 
 Not until Michael Angelo had been the 
 servant and the slave of matter did he learn to 
 control matter ; and not until he had drilled 
 and drilled and drilled himself were his touches 
 free and easy as the breath of summer, and full 
 of colour as the summer itself. Not until 
 Raphael had subdued himself by colour was he 
 the crowning artist of beauty. You shall not 
 find one great sculptor, nor one great architect, 
 151 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 nor one great painter, nor one eminent man in 
 any department of art, nor one great scholar, 
 nor one great statesman, nor one divine of 
 universal gifts, whose greatness, if you inquire, 
 you will not find to be the fruit of study, and 
 of the evolution that comes from study. 
 
 It is said, furthermore, that oratory is one of 
 the lost arts. I have heard it said that our 
 struggles brought forth not one prominent 
 orator. This fact reveals a law which has been 
 overlooked — namely, that aristocracy dimin- 
 ishes the number of great men, and makes the 
 few so much greater than the average that they 
 stand up like the pyramids in the deserts of 
 Egypt; whereas, democracy distributes the 
 resources of society, and brings up the whole 
 mass of the people ; so that under a demo- 
 cratic government great men never stand so 
 high above the average as they do when so- 
 ciety has a level far below them. Let build- 
 ing go up on building around about the tallest 
 spire in this city, and you dwarf the spire, 
 though it stand as high as heaven, because 
 everything by which it is surrounded has risen 
 higher. 
 
 Now throughout our whole land there was 
 more eloquence during our struggles than 
 there was previously ; but it was in far more 
 152 
 
Eloquence and Oratory 
 
 mouths. It was distributed. There was in 
 the mass of men a higher method of speaking, 
 a greater power in addressing their fellow men ; 
 and though single men were not so prominent 
 as they would have been under other circum- 
 stances, the reason is one for which we should 
 be grateful. There were more men at a higher 
 average, though there were fewer men at an 
 extreme altitude. 
 
 Then it is said that books, and especially 
 newspapers, are to take the place of the living 
 voice. Never ! never ! The miracle of mod- 
 ern times, in one respect, is the Press ; to it is 
 given a wide field and a wonderful work ; and 
 when it shall be clothed with all the moral in- 
 spirations, with all the ineffable graces, that 
 come from simplicity and honesty and convic- 
 tion, it will have a work second almost to 
 none other in the land. Like the light, it car- 
 ries knowledge every day around the globe. 
 What is done at St. Paul's in the morning is 
 known, or ever half the day has run around, 
 in Wall Street, New York. What is done in 
 New York at the rising of the sun is, before 
 the noontide hour, known in California. By the 
 power of the wire, and of the swift-following 
 engine, the papers spread at large vast quan- 
 tities of information before myriad readers 
 153 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 throughout the country ; but the office of the 
 papers is simply to convey information. They 
 cannot plant it. They cannot open the soil 
 and put it into the furrow. They cannot en- 
 force it. It is given only to the living man, 
 standing before men with the seed of knowl- 
 edge in his hand, to open the furrows in the 
 living souls of men, and sow the seed, and 
 cover the furrows again. Not until human na- 
 ture is other than it is, will the function of the 
 living voice — the greatest force on earth 
 among men — cease. Not until then will the 
 orator be useless, who brings to his aid all that 
 is fervid in feeling; who incarnates in himself 
 the truth ; who is for the hour the living reason, 
 as well as the reasoner ; who is for the mo- 
 ment the moral sense; who carries in himself 
 the importunity and the urgency of zeal ; who 
 brings his influence to bear upon men in 
 various ways ; who adapts himself continually 
 to the changing conditions of the men that are 
 before him ; who plies them by softness and 
 by hardness, by light and by darkness, by hope 
 and by fear; who stimulates them or represses 
 them at his will. Nor is there, let me say, 
 on God's footstool, anything so crowned and 
 so regal as the sensation of one who faces an 
 audience in a worthy cause, and with ampli- 
 154 
 
Eloquence and Oratory 
 
 tude of means, and defies them, fights them, 
 controls them, conquers them. 
 
 Great is the advance of civilization ; mighty 
 are the engines of force, but man is greater 
 than that which he produces. Vast is that 
 machine which stands in the dark uncon- 
 sciously lifting, Hfting — the only humane 
 slave — the iron slave — the Corliss engine; but 
 he that made the engine is greater than the 
 engine itself. Wonderful is the skill by which 
 that most exquisite mechanism of modern life, 
 the watch, is constructed ; but greater is the 
 man that made the watch than the watch that 
 is made. Great is the Press, great are the 
 hundred instrumentalities and institutions and 
 customs of society; but above them all is 
 Man. The living force is greater than any of 
 its creations — greater than society, greater 
 than its laws. " The Sabbath was made for 
 man, and not man for the Sabbath," saith the 
 Lord. Man is greater than his own institu- 
 tions. And this living force is worthy of all 
 culture — of all culture in the power of beauty ; 
 of all culture in the direction of persuasion ; of 
 all culture in the art of reasoning. 
 
 To make men patriots, to make men Chris- 
 tians, to make men the sons of God, let all the 
 doors of heaven be opened, and let God drop 
 155 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 down charmed gifts — winged imagination, all- 
 perceiving vision, and all-judging reason. 
 Whatever there is that can make men wiser 
 and better — let it descend upon the head of 
 him who has consecrated himself to the work 
 of mankind, and who has made himself an 
 orator for man's sake and for God's sake. 
 
 156 
 
V 
 
 WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING* 
 
 I DO not propose to speak to-night at any 
 length. It is now a time at which Dr. 
 Channing would have been abed and asleep 
 for an hour. You have had a banquet, if ever 
 an audience had ; and you have also had the 
 benediction of a good sound orthodox clergy- 
 man at the end of it. And it seems to me 
 that the consent of men, whether they are in 
 the Mother Church or in any of the scattered 
 sectarian churches, — orthodox, half-orthodox, 
 or heterodox, — is all gained to-night, and 
 gained on one point : that a man who loves 
 God fervently and his fellow men heartily, and 
 devotes his life to that love, is a member of 
 every communion and of every church, and is 
 orthodox in spite of orthodoxy or anything 
 else ! 
 
 There is one point, however, that has been 
 pressed upon my mind, as I have been over- 
 whelmed with the richness of the thoughts and 
 
 * At a celebration of the centenary anniversary of Chan- 
 ning's birth, held in Boston, April 7, 1880. 
 
 IS7 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 illustrations of the speakers gone by. So warm 
 and enthusiastic have been the eulogies to- 
 night, that one might almost imagine that Dr. 
 Channing was himself the light of the world ! 
 But no ; so rich is God, so all-pervading, so 
 incarnated in every soul that thinks and in 
 every heart that throbs, that Dr. Channing 
 was but one single taper shining in the dark- 
 ness of this world, and drawing his light from 
 the great solar Fountain, God. He was the 
 mouthpiece of his time ; but his time had pre- 
 pared the material which he expressed. No 
 man, in any age, though he stand head and 
 shoulders above his fellows, is competent to do 
 much more than has been wrought out for 
 him, — to be the teacher of those things which 
 have been made needed, and manifestly needed, 
 by the experience of millions of men, and to 
 give intellectual expression to those truths 
 which in their emotive form have welled up 
 in thousands and tens of thousands of bosoms. 
 Dr. Channing felt all the accumulated force, 
 moral and social, of the times gone by and the 
 times at hand in which he lived. And so, 
 though he was great, mankind behind him 
 was greater, the time was greater, and the all- 
 informing spirit of God was greater yet. 
 
 In my boyhood, I went to Boston in 1826, 
 158 
 
William Ellery Channing 
 
 and was thrown into the very centre and heat 
 of that great controversy which was raging, in 
 which my father was an eloquent thunderer 
 on one side, and in which Dr. Channing was 
 an eloquent silent man on the other side. 
 Mostly his work had been done, at that time. 
 Do I not remember the image of that day ? 
 In my own nature enthusiastic, sincere, and 
 truthful, did not what my father thought be- 
 come what I thought? And did I not know 
 that Unitarians were the children of the 
 devil? And did I not know that those 
 heresiarchs, if they had not fallen from 
 heaven, ought to fall from the earth? And 
 did I not regard Channing, I will not say 
 as a man misled, but as a man demented, in 
 whom was the spirit of error, leading men 
 down to perdition, and who ought to be 
 silenced, and all of whose followers ought to 
 be scourged ? Did I not read in those days 
 the haughty statement, the reply, the rejoinder, 
 and then the diffusive controversy generally ? 
 And yet time has wrought with me, as it has 
 wrought with you, and with all men, wonder- 
 ful changes ; and now those two men, my 
 father and Dr. Channing, that stood over 
 against each other, — to my young seeming, — 
 as wide apart as the East from the West, I see 
 159 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 standing together, and travelling in precisely 
 the same hnes, and towards precisely the same 
 results. For did not Lyman Beecher feel that, 
 as the doctrine of God and of moral govern- 
 ment was presented in the day in virhich he 
 lived, the glory of God was obscured, that men 
 were bound hand and foot, and that the sweet- 
 ness and the beauty of the love of Christ in the 
 Gospel were misunderstood, or even veiled and 
 utterly hidden ? And what was he striving 
 for but such a renovation of the old orthodoxy 
 as should let the light of the glory of God, as 
 it shone in the face of Jesus Christ, have a fair 
 chance at folks ? And what was Channing 
 striving for? He felt that the old formulas 
 and statements of men did not let out the 
 whole circumference, nor did it give the whole 
 force and beauty of the character of God. He, 
 too, was driving, as best he could, the clouds 
 out of heaven, and seeking to make the char- 
 acter of God more resplendent, and morally 
 more effective to mankind. And there they 
 stood bombarding each other, both of them 
 with the same grand object and motive ; like 
 two valiant men-of-war, that are giving each 
 other broadside after broadside, and yet are on 
 a stream of Providence that is carrying them 
 unconsciously in the same direction ! They 
 i6o 
 
William Ellery Channing 
 
 sailed side by side, and as they met in heaven 
 I think they hfted up hands of wonder and ex- 
 claimed, " Is it possible that I am here — and 
 you ? " 
 
 My estimate of Channing is not less because 
 my estimate of the whole force of society is 
 greater. He was one of the men, and but one, 
 — a great and noble and leading man. Ten 
 thousand other things were working. When 
 Sisera was at his battle, the stars in their courses, 
 it is said, fought against him ; and, when God 
 hath great work on hand, the stars, and every- 
 thing that is beneath them, are working in one 
 direction. The changes in governments, the 
 advance in laws, the development of a better 
 political economy, the evolution of common- 
 wealths, the progress of science and of the 
 mechanic arts, but especially the science of 
 mind, are working out a final theology by 
 working to the same great end, — the emanci- 
 pation of man, the clarity of his understanding, 
 the sovereignty of his conscience, the sym- 
 pathies of his soul, and the full disclosure of 
 God, over all, blessed forever. And it is enough 
 glory to say of Channing that he understood 
 the day in which he lived, and understood 
 that he was appointed to be a pilot to the times 
 that were to come after ; and that whatever he 
 i6i 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 did administratively he did intelligently, that 
 the young and the vital wood that carried the 
 sap and the life of the tree might have a 
 chance. 
 
 Those who are horticulturists will under- 
 stand that the bark that carried the sap last 
 year will have to get out of the way, and let 
 the bark that comes on this year have a chance ; 
 and the kind pomologist, with his knife, often 
 slits the bark of the cherry tree that is con- 
 servative, to give a chance to that which has a 
 hereditary right to be the bark, and let the bark- 
 bound diameter of the tree expand a little. 
 Dr. Channing, among other men, used the 
 knife for the sake of letting the new truth, 
 which was struggling for a larger diameter in 
 the world, have a chance. 
 
 Well, what has been the result ? That was 
 one hundred years ago to-day. And what 
 would Channing think if he were allowed to 
 stand here to-night? He would have been 
 half deaf by this time, if he had heard every- 
 thing that has been said on this platform ; but, 
 if he turned his eye upwards, and saw the 
 change that has come over the American 
 world, to say nothing of Christendom, during 
 the last hundred years, and contrasted the 
 spirit of antipathy which existed between sect 
 162 
 
William EUery Channing 
 
 and sect, between theologian and theologian, 
 and the spirit which exists between them now, 
 what would be his thought ? Even so sympa- 
 thetic a man as my father never saw an 
 Arminian come into his church in that early 
 day, that he did not feel bound to give him 
 such a dose of Calvinism as would physic him 
 for a year ! I know very well how stringent 
 were the habits, the methods, the peculiarities 
 of each sect, and how each sect defended itself. 
 They were like so many nests of wasps in 
 neighbouring trees, each one stinging for his 
 own nest, and each one fighting against the 
 nest of every other. 
 
 So the fiery sects, if they were not dead and 
 buried in worldHness, or when they revived 
 and came to life, were animated by a spirit of 
 antipathy and suspicion and jealousy. Of 
 course the spirit of envy and jealousy is uni- 
 versal and continuous ; but in that early day 
 there was the spirit of criticism and of suspicion, 
 and it all sprang from a very obvious source. 
 For had they not embraced that world-wide 
 heresy, that God had committed His kingdoms 
 in this world to the consciences of His official 
 disciples, and had ordained their consciences 
 to govern the consciences of all mankind? 
 Has it not been the bane of every sect, from 
 163 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 the beginning to this day, that men have felt 
 that they were the special depositaries of divine 
 knowledge, and that the deposition gave them 
 the power to dictate to other men what they 
 should think and what they should believe, 
 and to hold the rod of everlasting damnation 
 over their head, if they did not think and 
 believe as they were told ? All men held 
 substantially this view then, and some men 
 hold it even now. So it came to pass that 
 each sect followed its own notion of God, 
 marking out exactly the line of the wall, 
 throwing up exactly the right bulwarks, and 
 defending what each man knew to be the one 
 exclusive truth of creation, and feeling bound 
 to look sharp at all the others, to contest them, 
 and to condemn them, that the deposit of 
 truth which each one had in purity might have 
 a fair chance in this world ! 
 
 That is all changed. I remember when you 
 could not get a minister of the Episcopal 
 Church, and of the Unitarian, and of the 
 Universalist, and the Swedenborgian, and of 
 the Baptist, and of the Congregationalist, on to 
 a common platform. You could scarcely do 
 it on the Fourth of July, and it was a wonder 
 then that they did not fight. But, to-day, on 
 how many different subjects are they glad to 
 164 
 
William EUery Channing 
 
 come together and consult! And how 
 marvellous an event is it of the time in vi^hich 
 we live, to see all these staunch churches, by 
 their staunchest ministers and advocates, stand 
 together through one long day with nothing 
 on their tongue but praises of that heretic 
 Unitarian, Dr. William EUery Channing ! 
 Time and the world do move. Changes have 
 been wrought ! 
 
 And more than that : there has come in, 
 from influences which it has pleased God to 
 give forth, and distribute in the heart and 
 understanding of many a man, but by none 
 more than by Channing, a change by which 
 it is understood in this world that, if God is to 
 have all the glory, then He must be repre- 
 sented to be a God that is altogether glorious ; 
 that, if He is to have sovereign and absolute 
 control of men, then He is to have it because 
 all the faculties of the human soul which He 
 infixed in mankind for the very purpose of 
 judging what is right and what is wrong, what 
 is just and what is unjust, what is holy and 
 pure and what is unholy and impure, are 
 satisfied with the representations that are made 
 of Him ; and the whole Christian world to-day 
 is feeling after such a representation of God as 
 mankind will not let die out. No view of 
 165 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 God will be allowed to reign which does not 
 conform to the enlightened moral sense of 
 good men. While there are men who are 
 atheists largely because the God on which 
 they have been fed is not God, is a misrepre- 
 sentation of the true God, in churches all over 
 our land, — and, with perhaps more reluctant 
 step, in the churches of other lands, — the cry 
 of Christendom is : " Give to us a God that 
 shall not be apologized for 1 Give to us a God 
 that we do not need to defend ! Give to us a 
 God that, when the child, and the mother of 
 the child, and the just man, and the loving 
 soul, look up, they shall say, ' Whom have I in 
 heaven but Thee ? and there is none that I 
 desire upon earth beside Thee.' " 
 
 The Calvinistic theology of New England 
 before Channing's day had become intolerable 
 to the best Orthodox men, and Channing was 
 but one of many who sought its modification. 
 Judged by the Scotch, the Genevese standard 
 — many noble men, Edwards, Hopkins, Bel- 
 lamy, West, Spring, Backus, Strong, Dwight, 
 and a host of others, were smoothing its 
 features, and softening its immedicable harsh- 
 ness. The revolt against this system of 
 organized Fatahsm and Infinite Despotism is 
 not yet ended. In the lecture-rooms of the 
 166 
 
William EUery Channing 
 
 schools, where intellect has supreme sway and 
 heart is excluded, the system lives, but in the 
 pulpit it has perished. The educated moral 
 sense of the laymen has slain it. The free air 
 of human hfe, the play of Christian sympathies 
 upon it, have made the employment of it as 
 impossible as to uphold astrology, or alchemy, 
 or the inquisition. 
 
 But, while we thus speak of Calvinism, John 
 Calvin was illustrious as a radical. He broke 
 away from the reigning spirit of his own times," 
 and led the spirit of free inquiry. Were he 
 alive in our day, no man would scourge 
 Calvinism with such resounding blows as John 
 Calvin ! Nor was his theological system with- 
 out great benefit, in an age when the king and 
 the priest had more power than God upon the 
 senses and the imagination. Men believed in 
 nothing that they could not see and handle. 
 The Church was busy in bringing all high and 
 ineffable truth into a sensuous condition. 
 
 Over against this magnificent Rome, with 
 its cathedrals, altars, robed priests, processions, 
 gorgeous ceremonies, filling the eye, and 
 bringing down the spiritual man to the 
 bondage of the senses, Calvin wrought out a 
 theology of thought, logical, elaborate, com- 
 plete. When men pointed to the visible 
 167 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 Church, its flowing rituals and its impressive 
 trappings, and asked tauntingly, " Where is 
 your religion ? There is ours, visible to 
 all men, sublime and beautiful," Calvin pointed 
 to his system, invisible yet powrerful, ad- 
 dressed to reason, not sense; a system that 
 aroused fear, that developed imagination, 
 that moved in men's thoughts as laws of 
 nature move upon the earth. His God 
 was full-orbed in power, and His light and 
 glory extinguished the false lights of the 
 throne and the altar. It was a time when 
 nations were being dashed in pieces as a 
 potter's vessel; and Calvin's God was the 
 very divine iconoclast, going forth to over- 
 throw idols and polluted temples, and drive 
 headlong all usurpers of His prerogatives. 
 His attributes as expounded by Calvin did 
 not shock the rude ideas of that day. They 
 only concentred in God the barbaric authority 
 to which men had wearily and long submitted 
 in magistrates and masters. Better one despot 
 than a thousand. That system, which now 
 oppresses the conscience and shocks the 
 moral sense, in its day emancipated reason, 
 developed the moral sense, and inspired men 
 with ideas that led to liberty in the State and 
 in the Church. 
 
 1 68 
 
William EUery Channing 
 
 But, like the steel armour of our fathers, 
 admirable in its day, it can be no longer 
 worn. The spirit of God has advanced men 
 beyond the need of such an instrument. It 
 must be placed in the hall, or gathered in 
 military museums, with broadswords, spears, 
 culverins, and the whole panoply of antiquated 
 weapons. 
 
 Our age has witnessed and is still rejoicing 
 in a better idea oi justice. There has been a 
 great advance in our day in the conception of 
 justice, as an emanation of sympathy and love, 
 and not a deification of combativeness and 
 destructiveness. Justice has formerly been 
 made vindictive rather than vindicatory. The 
 principle of hate has ruled in civil law, in 
 government, in theology, and in the churches. 
 We have had a fighting, not a loving Chris- 
 tianity. Repulsion has been stronger than 
 attraction, dislike than sympathy. Upon this 
 dreary winter, spring is advancing. It has not 
 yet conquered. Here and there come bluster- 
 ing days, to renew the rigour and to destroy 
 this new life. But the Sun of Righteousness 
 is now high in the heavens. The days are 
 longer ; the light advances, and the warmth. 
 All things are tending to draw men to each 
 other. The things in which men agree are 
 169 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 increasingly more important than those in 
 which they differ. Love is growing, hate is 
 weakening. 
 
 More than that, I think in the past one 
 hundred years — and this, the birthday of 
 Channing, marks the beginning of it — there 
 has not only been a change in the spirit of 
 sects, in the notions of government and in 
 theology, but there has also been a wonderful 
 progress in true religion. If you measure 
 religion by the exact forms of any of the 
 highly organized churches, — our mother, 
 Rome, and her eldest daughter, the Episcopal 
 Church ; if you measure it by dogma and 
 formality and ordinance, in the different 
 aspects in which the denominations present 
 it; if you measure its condition by the 
 Westminster Catechism, or by the Confession 
 of Faith, or by any of the mediaeval Confes- 
 sions, or by the hitherto standing claims of 
 any of the organized religious bodies, — I 
 think it must be admitted that there is a 
 decadence of religion. But how? When 
 the morning star begins to shine, the nimble 
 lamplighters of our cities go around extinguish- 
 ing one gaslight after another. They were 
 substitutes for daylight ; but, when the sun is 
 coming up, there is no longer use for gaslight. 
 170 
 
William Elleiy Channing 
 
 And shall any man say, " They are putting 
 out the light of the world " ? They are putting 
 out the artificial lights that help us through 
 the night, but are they destroying daylight ? 
 
 If religion means veneration, there is not so 
 much as there was. Our own institutions do 
 not tend to breed veneration. Our children 
 at fifteen years of age know as much as we do, 
 and govern us at twenty ! Our magistrates 
 have but little dignity. We put them up 
 merely that we may pelt them. To nominate 
 a man for office in our land is to stigmatize 
 him ; and to elect him is to damn him ! There 
 is nothing old in America but trees ; and peo- 
 ple do not care for them. For it is with us as 
 of old, when a man was accounted great as he 
 lifted up an axe against the trees ; and almost 
 nothing in the body politic is sacred in our 
 scrambling, active land, where men are build- 
 ing every one for himself. There is little 
 veneration here ; and, if that is religion, heaven 
 help us ! We have tried to breed it. We 
 build big churches with small windows. We 
 put out with paint what little light can get 
 through. We have imitations of grotesque 
 things that have come down five hundred or 
 one thousand years, and we try to dress as they 
 used to dress before they knew how to dress ! 
 171 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 In every way possible, we are trying to coax the 
 old mediaeval spirit of veneration. We cannot 
 doit; it is not bred in our day. It will not live 
 in our land. The common school is against it; 
 the elective franchise is against it ; the whole 
 of our society is against it. So dangerous are 
 the lapses of men now in theology that we are 
 all of us trying to stop that ; and we are re- 
 furbishing the old armour, and the word is 
 going out : " We must reprint the old doc- 
 trines, and we must introduce a shrewder 
 economy in our seminaries, and we must 
 screw up the system. It is getting loose and 
 shackly." The engineers are screwing it up 
 here and there, and by every means striving 
 to make it work as it used to work. There is 
 such a wide-spread doctrinal defection — with 
 one or two exceptions — that, if you are to 
 measure the progress of religion by the exact 
 agreement of men to confession and catechism, 
 woe be to religion ! 
 
 But religion is of the heart. It is a living 
 force. Books do not contain it, but only de- 
 scribe it. Creeds and catechisms may be hon- 
 oured while religion is perishing ; and religion 
 may be increasing in scope and sweetness 
 while creeds are waning. It is born in every 
 generation, and in every heart that is a child 
 172 
 
William Ellery Channing 
 
 of God ; and one cannot find whether men 
 have religion or not by bringing them to the 
 catechism, or by asking them how they got it. 
 We have learned one thing, and that is that 
 mankind are greater than all the governments 
 of mankind. We have learned that the man 
 is more than the church, and that the church 
 was made for man, and not man for the church. 
 We have learned that, if there is such a thing 
 as religion, it is not to be found in any ma- 
 chinery. We have learned that religion is 
 loving God and loving our fellow men. 
 
 Now, then, tested by that, is there more 
 or less religion in the age in which we live 
 than there was in the days that are gone by ? 
 I say, more. I call the whole civilized world 
 to witness that, although there is much of the 
 lion, of the bear, of the eagle, and of the vul- 
 ture yet in mankind, and though these foul 
 beasts or birds float on our national banners 
 and represent much of the under economy of 
 animalism among men, yet to an extent that 
 was never known before in the world, there is 
 the spirit of sympathy of man with man dis- 
 closed. Never before has God been wor- 
 shipped by the serving of His children as He 
 is to-day. Never before was there such an 
 adhesion as there is to-day to the words of 
 173 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 Christ, " Inasmuch as ye do it unto one of the 
 least of these, ye do it unto Me." We worship 
 a Christ that stands by the poor, by the slave, 
 by the prisoner, and by the emigrant who 
 lands, weary and discouraged, on our shores. 
 We worship a Christ that identifies Himself 
 with the low and the needy and the suffering. 
 We worship a Christ that is in the hospital 
 among the sick. If worshipping Christ is wor- 
 shipping God, I am orthodox. I wish others 
 were. I aver that Christ was never worshipped 
 so much as He is to-day by the love, by the 
 sympathy, and by the self-sacrificing helpful- 
 ness which we bestow upon all classes and 
 conditions of men. Never before did the 
 human race see a whole age and an organized 
 nation putting their hands under the very 
 bottom of society, and attempting to lift, not 
 the crowned heads, not the middle classes, 
 not the burghers and rich men, but mankind 
 from the very lowest, taking the whole house 
 up from its foundation. And while I see all 
 reformatory societies attempting to reclaim 
 men from intemperance, to cleanse our pris- 
 ons, to purge out vice, to restrain all wrong ; 
 while I see the tendency everywhere to send, 
 by showers of gold, the Gospel to benighted 
 nations, and to promote the mission cause 
 174 
 
William Ellery Channing 
 
 at home, and to educate the slave and every 
 living creature, — shall a man stand by and 
 tell me that religion is going down? A 
 religion that lets these alone is no religion ; 
 and a reUgion by which any man or com- 
 munity takes care of these, and in the love of 
 God sympathizes with man, and cares for 
 him, — that is the true religion. 
 
 When the potato was first sent to Ireland, 
 they planted it, and did not know where to 
 look for the fruit. And when it blossomed 
 and bore its little seed pods, they boiled these 
 pods, and ate them, and did not like potatoes ! 
 If they had gone to the root of the matter, 
 they would have liked them. They learned 
 that later. So there are very many men who 
 taste rehgion as it is shown in the pod, if I 
 may so say; and they do not like this church, 
 that doctrine, this ordinance, and that economy. 
 What if you do not ? These are not crops : 
 they are merely the tools by which we try to 
 raise crops. They are the machinery by which 
 we work, and not the thing for which we are 
 working„ I never ate millstones ; but I have 
 eaten that which millstones have produced. 
 And the things that grind out human love and 
 kindness, — all may be defective; but the flour 
 is the thing. And I say that never before 
 175 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 was there so much holy flour as there is to- 
 day. 
 
 There is one more thing that I think is true, 
 and of which this celebration is significant ; 
 namely, that there is no statement of religion 
 hke religion itself. You cannot put into words 
 the essential verities of religion. When you 
 have used all the language that the vocabulary 
 can give you, and tacked word to word, you 
 cannot have made a belt that will go around 
 the infinity and eternity of God. When by 
 every figure that is known to fallible men, by 
 all the sweetness of a mother's love, by all 
 the purity of a child's love, by all the fervour 
 of noble souls just mated, you have tried to 
 represent God ; when you have gathered up 
 all things that are resplendent, and made them 
 patterns of divine love,^you have done, as it 
 were, nothing. The love of God that fills 
 eternity, and that is marching down through 
 eternities, bearing benison and benediction to 
 countless spheres of existence, doubtless, be- 
 sides our own, — when you attempt to put it 
 into language and represent it by figures 
 gathered by the limited experiences of men, 
 it is as if you undertook to find timber for 
 your navy in moss, and as if you undertook to 
 decorate your cathedrals with the inconspicu- 
 176 
 
William Ellery Channing 
 
 ous flowers and plants that grow too small but 
 for the microscope. God is too big for lan- 
 guage, too big for representation by human 
 experience. 
 
 The thing that most nearly represents God 
 is a man that is living hke God. And no 
 man can draw that portrait or put it into 
 language. We can see it, and we can rejoice 
 in it ; but, after all, the man that is like God is 
 the best catechism and the best confession of 
 faith. And we have learned one thing, — 
 that, when we see such a man, he is God's, 
 and he is ours. " All things are yours," says 
 Paul. On that ground, I am as good a 
 Catholic as there is in this world, except the 
 pope and the cardinals and the bishops, and 
 their doctrines. And from my ownership of 
 every saintly woman and every saintly man 
 no one can hinder me. They are mine, be- 
 cause they are God's ; and I revere them and 
 love them. There is a vast amount of true 
 theology in the good living of the Catholic 
 Church. There are men that rebuke our 
 lukewarmness and our lives by the nobility of 
 theirs, — multitudes of them ; and they are all 
 right. Whatever the church may be that 
 makes them, theirs is the true theology. I 
 go from that into the Episcopal Church. It is 
 177 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 enough for me that she gave me my mother. 
 Than that there can be no farther argument. 
 The church that yields such blessings is not 
 a church that I can contest, whatever her 
 machinery may be. I ask : " What are the 
 products ? Where are the saints, men and 
 women ? " If they are Christlike, they are 
 all right. I go into the Unitarian Church. 
 I want no better Christians than I find there. 
 They are orthodox, sound, by every Christian 
 man and every Christian woman among them 
 that makes piety beautiful in the eyes of man- 
 kind. I go into the Swedenborgian Church. 
 Brother Ager is a good enough Christian for 
 me. He is soundly orthodox, whatever he 
 believes. No matter about that. I don't 
 care what a man believes. What is he? 
 That is my question. I say that what a man 
 is is his confession of faith. A man's life is 
 more important than any statement of the 
 philosophy of that life, or of the machinery 
 by which that life was brought into existence. 
 It is true that some schools are better than 
 other schools, that some methods of teaching 
 are very likely to be better than some others, 
 that some statements of doctrine are better 
 than some other statements of doctrine in 
 their aptitude to carry men on and up- 
 178 
 
William EUery Channing 
 
 ward. I will not discriminate as to which I 
 think is the better, though I can well under, 
 stand that men find a difference between one 
 and another; but this I say, that when any 
 man has been made a Christian, luminous of 
 heaven, he does not belong to the church that 
 bred him : he belongs to that Church Universal 
 which has no exposition but in the sympa- 
 thies of the universe ; and he belongs to you 
 and to me. And, Mr. Chairman, don't take 
 on airs, as if Channing was your man. He 
 is my man as much as he is yours. I have 
 seen considerable of that spirit here to- 
 night, — and I feel bound as a Christian to 
 fight it, — as if you had a man that you would 
 let us come and look at, as if we might be 
 permitted to come on this platform and wor- 
 ship your hero. I thank God that you have 
 some such men to worship and to present to 
 us. It is a sign that there is a sort of grace 
 with you. Your doctrines may be very im- 
 perfect ; but, after all, there is a grace of God 
 that goes with imperfection. All sorts of 
 instruments have been employed in this world. 
 Oftentimes, too, the instrument has been more 
 than the prophet, as when Balaam went forth 
 on his famous ride of old. And, since all 
 sorts of instruments are employed by the 
 179 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 good God, no matter what the instrument is, 
 it is the man that is created. 
 
 Here was a man, in a dark day, in a day of 
 controversy, in a day in which men stood 
 very differently from the way in which they 
 stand now ; and I look upon that godly man 
 and see a lambent flame of holiness. I see 
 that he was a light kindled in a dark place ; 
 and the sweetness of his humility strikes me. 
 He blushes in heaven to hear what is said of 
 him on earth, if he attends to it, — though I 
 think hkely he does not. He was a good 
 man. If he had been in the Roman Church, 
 he would have been a saint; and he is not 
 less a saint, because he was in the Unitarian 
 Church. We have learned that man is a 
 better exposition of Christianity than doc- 
 trines, or any of the various instruments of 
 the Church. We are learning to receive whom 
 God receives ; and whenever a man shows 
 that he is acceptable to the Master, is wearing 
 His spirit, and is blessed by His continual 
 attendance, that man is sacred to us, no mat- 
 ter to what denomination he may belong. A 
 man is more than doctrine, — and mankind are 
 more than church and more than government. 
 Next to God, the only valuable things in this 
 universe are living men; and all nature is 
 180 
 
William Ellery Channing 
 
 prepared to take care of them. God is the 
 Fountain and Cause of all things ; and all 
 nature and all time and all providence and all 
 grace are so many ministering servants to 
 develop manhood in men. And the only dif- 
 ference there can possibly be in our view of 
 God is this : those views of God that tend to 
 beat men down, and to beat down their moral 
 sense, you may be sure are false views ; while 
 the views of God that tend to lift men up, 
 to inspire them with a holy horror of sin, to 
 lead them to aspire to holiness, and to give 
 them a willingness to do kindness at their 
 own expense, to live for mankind, and if need 
 be to shed their blood, — such views are ortho- 
 dox, however defective may be the system 
 from which they spring. 
 
 When we look back, then, one hundred 
 years, what do we see ? The greatest change, 
 I think, that has been produced in any hun- 
 dred since the Advent; and, when I look 
 forvyard from this standpoint, it seems to me 
 that we stand just about in the month of 
 ' April in the history of the world, as we do in 
 this year. We have had our dead winter, we 
 have had our blustering, controversial month 
 of March, and now we have our month of 
 April, which does not know exactly whether 
 i8i 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 it has left March or whether it is entering 
 into May ; but it is on the way towards sum- 
 mer, and soon there will come the blossoms of 
 May already anticipated; and after that will 
 come June, the opal of the year; and then 
 the summer ; and then the harvest. We are 
 on the full march ; and, therefore, instead of 
 looking back to the leeks and onions of or- 
 thodoxy in Egypt, the spirit of God, the 
 spirit of philosophy, the spirit of wisdom, the 
 spirit of true religion, is to forget the things 
 that are behind, and to press forward, towards 
 the mark, for the prize of our high calHng in 
 Christ Jesus. 
 
 182 
 
VI 
 
 CHARLES SUMNER' 
 
 THE best gift of God to nations is the gift 
 of upright men — especially upright men 
 for magistrates, statesmen, and rulers. How 
 bountiful soever the heavens may be ; how 
 rich the earth may be in harvest; though 
 every wind of heaven waft prosperity to its 
 ports, till the land is crowded with warehouses 
 stuffed to repletion with treasure, that country 
 is poor whose citizens are not noble, and that 
 republic is poor which is not governed by 
 noble men selected by its citizens. 
 
 The signs of decay in the life of a nation 
 show themselves as soon as anywhere else in 
 the character of the men who are called to 
 govern it. When they seek their own ends, 
 and not the public weal ; when they abandon 
 principles, and administer according to the 
 personal interest of cliques and parties ; when 
 they forsake righteousness, and call upon 
 greedy, insatiable selfishness for counsel ; and 
 
 ■ Died March 1 1, 1874. Sunday evening discourse in 
 Plymouth Church. 
 
 183 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 when the laws and the whole framework of 
 the government are but so many instruments 
 of oppression and of wrong, then the nation 
 cannot be far from decadence. When God 
 means to do well by a nation that has back- 
 slidden, among the earliest tokens of His benef- 
 icent intent is the restoration of men of integ- 
 rity and of honour — men who hve for their 
 fellows, and not for themselves. 
 
 I propose to look back a little to-night 
 over that great period of decadence with which 
 so many of us are too familiar, but which must 
 not be forgotten, lest the lesson which it 
 teaches should also perish. 
 
 The beginnings of our land, as you remem- 
 ber, were eminently religious. Our fathers 
 came hither to establish a new and notable 
 dispensation, seeking to lay it upon founda- 
 tions of righteousness. For generations they 
 succeeded ; and here was developed that con- 
 summate form of liberty which carried out, as 
 it could not be carried out in antiquity, the 
 idea of the freedom of the whole people. 
 
 It was here that France lit her torch ; but 
 she knew not how to follow our example. To 
 a large extent it was from this land that liberty 
 derived in Europe its modern impetus. We 
 ourselves derived the seed of Uberty from 
 184 
 
Charles Sumner 
 
 Holland and from England ; but we planted it 
 here under a free sky and upon a noble soil ; 
 and from this seed which we brought hither 
 we reared a harvest ; and we sent back and 
 resowed in France, in Germany, and through- 
 out Europe, it would seem now, the same 
 blessed truths which have emancipated us. 
 
 But " when the sons of God came to present 
 themselves before the Lord, Satan came also 
 among them ; " and when our institutions were 
 framed for liberty and for righteousness, there 
 was permitted to be twined among them an 
 element false in morals, corrupt in political 
 economy, and utterly subversive of all rights 
 and doctrines of human liberty. And there 
 came to be developed also a procedure which, 
 while it gave partial benefit to a favoured class, 
 corrupted the whole system of industry, not 
 alone in the immediate field where this pro. 
 cedure was established — namely, in the slave- 
 holding States of the Union — but indirectly, 
 and by the circulation, as it were, in the whole 
 body politic. For slavery is essential treason 
 to free labour, and to the rights of the work- 
 ing man, the world over. It is esteemed bad 
 enough for labour to be indebted to capital ; 
 but it was worse a thousand times when cap- 
 ital owned not only labour but the labourer 
 185 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 too ; and that was the condition over the 
 fairest portion of this continent. 
 
 Organized into our affairs, the principle of 
 slavery influenced national history in such a 
 way as to inevitably produce interior antago- 
 nism, clash, and grating of interests. When the 
 Mississippi and the Missouri come together, 
 and their waters push each other every whither, 
 and their face is covered with eddies and 
 wrinkles, it is in vain for the Mississippi to re- 
 proach the Missouri ; and it is in vain for the 
 eastward-coming river to reproach the south- 
 ward-coming river. It is not the fault of 
 either of them that they scowl upon each 
 other. There is a law that makes it unavoid- 
 able. So, that democracy which developed 
 freedom in labour, and that aristocracy which 
 developed bondage in labour, in the same 
 government, could not keep their hands off 
 from each other. They were born antagonists, 
 and conflict between them was a necessity. 
 
 There was, then, this latent principle of 
 antagonism which threatened our existence. 
 In the conflict which ensued, and which in- 
 creased as the elements of liberty and slavery 
 ripened into full expression in national life, 
 there was more and more a corrupting of the 
 morals and the conscience of the whole nation. 
 1 86 
 
Charles Sumner 
 
 The entire South was corrupted by perver- 
 sion ; for what the fathers believed to be a 
 permissible evil, to be done away in the course 
 of time, their descendants, when it became 
 profitable in the fields of both money and 
 politics, turned and justified. Although in the 
 early days the opponents of slavery were 
 eminently the ablest men of the South, in the 
 more recent days all the leading men of the 
 South — her scholars, her poets, her publicists, 
 and her ministers — all joined in one great out- 
 cry to justify slavery, and to make it the very 
 foundation of national life, as well as the very 
 philosophy of national thrift. So the whole 
 South went wrong, under the influence of 
 slavery ; and it was taught in her schools and 
 her colleges, until a whole generation had been 
 brought up from the cradle in the doctrine of 
 its essential beneficence, and of its wisdom in 
 political economy. It is in vain to say that 
 the people of the South did not believe this 
 doctrine. The younger men of the South did 
 believe it. It came to them almost with their 
 growth. But none the less were they per- 
 verted and corrupted by it. 
 
 The North was yet more corrupted, because 
 her interests led her largely to placate and 
 defer to the South. Nothing can be more 
 187 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 melancholy, particularly for the Eastern part of 
 our land, than to remember the public senti- 
 ment which existed in churches, when it was 
 made an offense that almost ostracized a man 
 to plead in a prayer-meeting for slaves ; when 
 men bated their breath in speaking of human 
 rights ; when pulpits not only were dumb, but 
 were employed very largely in the defense or 
 palliation of slavery, or only admitted in an 
 underbreath that it was an evil — an evil which 
 must be borne with patiently. If there was 
 not apology for slavery, there was at least a 
 guilty silence concerning it during a long 
 period in the pulpits of the North. 
 
 The benevolent associations of the North — 
 especially those men who were relied upon to 
 carry out the essential parts of their work — 
 were wrapt up in complicity with this great 
 mischief, and refused to bear their testimony. 
 I will not go into detail ; but you will remem- 
 ber how pitiful was the position of the great 
 missionary and publishing societies of the 
 Christian community in the North. Follow- 
 ing their lead, the commercial pubhshers took 
 out of their publications of every kind those 
 great truths which had been the meat of gen- 
 erations before ; and in their reading-books 
 nothing was said of liberty that could be con- 
 iS8 
 
Charles Sumner 
 
 strued as condemning American slavery. In 
 none of their books for the use of schools was 
 there anything that could offend the South. 
 So fashion, commerce, religion, and politics 
 throughout the North were lowered in tone ; 
 and they did obeisance to slavery. In politics, 
 if possible, it was worse than anywhere else, by 
 reason of ambition and political aspiration. 
 From the peculiar position of affairs, no man 
 in the North who hoped for preferment dared 
 to speak on the subject of liberty. Every 
 young lawyer was warned not to give way to 
 intemperate enthusiasm in favour of freedom, 
 because it would certainly block up all hope of 
 his advancement. No man could hope to go 
 to ^the Legislature of the State, and certainly 
 not to the national Legislature, if he dared to 
 utter an honest sentiment of liberty. Men 
 were marked ; and if they desired ready ad- 
 vancement, not simply must they be silent in 
 regard to the sacredness of freedom, but they 
 must say some kind and conciliatory things 
 for slavery. When they did this, they were 
 " sound!' 
 
 Therefore, it came to pass that there was 
 
 bred a generation of men of whom the fathers 
 
 in the upper sphere were ashamed. There 
 
 were men in the North who were corrupted 
 
 189 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 by the bribes which were presented to them 
 by slavery. There were political eunuchs, 
 emasculated men, fearing, calculating, tergiver- 
 sating. We never had a period of more pro- 
 found national humiliation than that between 
 1830 and i860. 
 
 I myself came into public life about the year 
 1837, and I was a witness of this condition of 
 things ; so that I speak from my own knowl- 
 edge. The great struggle at that time, I re- 
 member full well, was for liberty of thought 
 and of expression. I was tutored. I had 
 friends in high places who took me aside, and 
 whispered in my ear, saying, " Prudence ; cau- 
 tion ; you have opportunity ; good society is 
 open to you : do not blight your prospects. 
 There is a chance for you in public life : do not 
 by rash speaking spoil your opportunity of 
 ascending. Wait ; consider ; let your thoughts 
 ripen." Muzzling and suffocation were the 
 order of the day. I remember distinctly when 
 Birney's press was mobbed, in Cincinnati, and 
 dragged through the streets, and thrown into 
 the Ohio River. I remember perfectly the 
 night when I was one of those who patrolled 
 the streets, armed, to defend the houses of the 
 poor coloured people in that city. I remem- 
 ber when no prayer-meeting or church-gather- 
 190 
 
Charles Sumner 
 
 ing allowed men to speak on the subject of 
 liberty. I remember when in Presbytery and 
 Synod it was considered a heresy to advocate 
 freedom. I remember when it was regarded 
 as next to treason in politics for a man to be 
 an avoweti advocate of national liberty. 
 
 The battle began in the North on the ques- 
 tion of whether liberty of thought, liberty of 
 speech, and liberty of printing, should be main- 
 tained ; and we went through days when the 
 birds of fate laid addled eggs — and we had all 
 we wanted of them ; days of darkness and 
 humiliation and disgrace. 
 
 The condition of Washington from 1830 to 
 i860 was worse than the court of Pharaoh 
 while he held the Israelites in bondage. I 
 speak not of its want of thrift ; I speak not of 
 its slatternly condition ; I speak not of its lack 
 of enterprise , I speak not of the smothering 
 there of every element of prosperity : I speak 
 of the moral degradation that prevailed there, 
 and of the rod of iron which was held over the 
 heads of all the men who went thither. Ag- 
 gressive politics was there the drder of the 
 day. Among the movements in this direction 
 was the passage of that blessed infamy, the 
 Fugitive Slave Law. 1 say blessed, because 
 that, perhaps, marked the time when reaction 
 191 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 really set in. It was the most cruel insult to 
 the conscience of Northern men, and the most 
 needless, that was ever offered by men given 
 over by fate to fatuity. There was no neces- 
 sity for it. It was a defiance thrown in the 
 face of the North. 
 
 Then came the Kansas struggle. Then 
 came the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. 
 Then came preparations for the nationaHzation 
 of slavery. Then came the scheme for allow- 
 ing slaves to go in transitu through the North- 
 ern States. Changes in the Constitution were 
 contemplated by which slavery should be as 
 national as liberty. 
 
 Those were the elements to which we had 
 come when the war surprised us. Dark times 
 were upon us then. I remember them full 
 well. I had drunk in the love of liberty with 
 the breath of my life. I do not remember an 
 hour, in my very boyhood, in which my 
 soul was not on fire for the rights of men. 
 I never wavered. I never bent. Although 
 I had the same desire for kindness and con- 
 sideration and sympathy which every gener- 
 ous and unperverted heart has, I never saw 
 the moment when I would buy popularity or 
 position in society by yieldmg one hair's- 
 breadth of my feeling of enthusiastic conscience 
 192 
 
Charles Sumner 
 
 for human rights, and for rights that were 
 sacred in proportion as they were denied to 
 men, and in proportion as men were poor, and 
 crude, and unhelpful of themselves. 
 
 I well remember groaning and travailing in 
 spirit through all those dark days. I did not 
 altogether give up hope ; but, from the year 
 1856 to the year i860, events trod so fast on 
 each other that I confess to so much relin- 
 quishment of hope that I feared that per- 
 haps God meant to break this Nation in pieces 
 to teach the nations of the earth the guilt 
 and delusion of human bondage. I could not 
 bear it; and many a prayer in this Plymouth 
 house, many a prayer in my own closet, many 
 a prayer in the highway, and many a prayer 
 in the forest, have I sent up, that our Na- 
 tion might be spared and purged, rather than 
 destroyed for the benefit of posterity. 
 
 The mercy of God was seen early, in raising 
 up an army of men to resist the mischiefs that 
 were threatened to the country. Private men 
 there were not a few who enlisted in the cause 
 of freedom. There was Garrison, the uncom- 
 promising and harsh truth-teller. There was 
 the fiery Weld, like a second Peter the Hermit. 
 There was the patrician Phillips, who never 
 spoke without piercing — whose tongue was a 
 193 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 rapier. There was May, of sweeter heart, and 
 equally noble courage. There was Jackson, 
 who, though not known, was one of those 
 secret sources of supply and influence which 
 determined events. There were the two 
 Tappans, one of whom was long with us in 
 this church. There was Joshua Leavitt, a 
 citizen of Brooklyn until a year or two ago, 
 when he departed. There was Rogers, who 
 died of a broken heart early in the struggle. 
 There were Whittier, and Longfellow, and 
 Lowell, and Emerson, and others, of whom I 
 shall speak again. 
 
 It is often said that the church of the North 
 was corrupted. At one period, it certainly 
 was guilty. Nor did we have the help of the 
 great majority of the churches of the North 
 in the Eastern States until a comparatively 
 late period of the conflict. But I can say, to 
 the credit of the New-school Presbyterian 
 church of the West, with which my lot was 
 cast, that, before the year 1837, it was effectu- 
 ally leavened by liberty. The first vote that I 
 ever cast in the Presbyterian Church was a vote 
 that the Presbytery of Indianapolis should 
 never receive a licentiate, or should never 
 license any man, who held slaves, unless he 
 would show to us that he held them unwillingly, 
 194 
 
Charles Sumner 
 
 and that he would as soon as possible give 
 them up. My impression is that there was 
 not in the New-school Presbyterian Church in 
 Indiana a minister who was not in favour of 
 liberty. Long before the church in the East 
 was aroused on the subject of slavery, the 
 Western church stood established in opposition 
 to it. The ministers of the New-school 
 Presbyterian Church in the West were early 
 and faithful labourers for emancipation. 
 
 Of public men we shall not soon forget the 
 mission of John Quincy Adams. Many of 
 you have forgotten the noble tasks imposed 
 upon himself by Governor Slade. There was 
 Gerrit Smith and there was Alvan Stewart. 
 There was Joshua Giddings, who early espoused 
 the Anti-slavery cause. There was John P. 
 Hale, who served it in the Senate. There was 
 Seward, both in New York and in the Senate. 
 There was Greeley, foremost among journalists. 
 Still later was Sumner ; and Thaddeus Stevens ; 
 and later yet, Lincoln, and his great war- 
 minister, Stanton. These, and many others 
 whom time would fail me to mention, were the 
 men who appeared, to turn back the captivity, 
 and establish the glory and radiance of uni- 
 versal liberty. 
 
 Then came the blinding of the wise and the 
 195 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 weakening of the strong. Then came the 
 fatuity of Southern leadership. Had the 
 leaders of the South been wise, we might still 
 have been enthralled. Time and again it 
 seemed to me that, not being wise, if they had 
 been at least cunning, they still would have 
 held empire. But " whom the gods would 
 destroy they first make mad." 
 
 There has recently been an extraordinary 
 conjunction. Two men have departed from 
 us in the same week. The funeral services of 
 the one overlap those of the other. They were 
 both representative men — he of Boston and he 
 of Buffalo. Mr. Millard Fillmore, in private 
 life, was an irreproachable man, amiable, kind, 
 and universally to be respected ; but as a public 
 man, he was a type of that weakness and 
 cowardice which was bred in the North by 
 the accursed influence of slavery in the South. 
 Charles Sumner was the representative man of 
 that reactionary spirit which was developed by 
 liberty contending for its old rights and for its 
 old ground. These two men have died almost 
 at the same time ; and although I would not 
 invade the sanctity of the grave, it befits his- 
 torical reminiscence that these two antithet- 
 ical men, one representing the old, and the other 
 representing the new, within the period of a 
 196 
 
Charles Sumner 
 
 week going out from the generation of the 
 living, should be mentioned in this contrast. 
 
 Personally, privately, I honour Mr. Fillmore ; 
 but as a public man he had no pohtical con- 
 science. He was without any apparent sym- 
 pathy for any of those principles on which this 
 great Nation was founded. He gave to a party 
 — a miserable party — that which belonged to 
 the higher interests of humanity and of man- 
 kind. He gave up Liberty to be crucified 
 between Southern Slavery and Northern 
 Mammon ; and then washed his hands, and 
 said, " I am innocent of the blood of this just 
 person." 
 
 Of another sort was Charles Sumner. By 
 his birth, by his education, by his social sur- 
 roundings, he was fitted to be an aristocrat ; 
 nor was his disposition averse to such a place 
 and title, for by nature he was self-considering. 
 He was so intense in his own convictions as to 
 become arrogant, and impose his views upon 
 others with a species of oratorical despotism. 
 But from the beginning of his life a romantic 
 moral sense allied him to justice, to rectitude ; 
 and since in our day justice was most flagrantly 
 violated by slavery, his love of justice and of 
 truth took him, to his honour and to the glory 
 of mankind, out from his class, and away from 
 197 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 aristocracy, and made, essentially, an intellec- 
 tual democrat of him. Personally he never was 
 democratic. Intellectually he became so, by 
 the force of the struggle of the day in which 
 he Hved. 
 
 I cannot but call to mind how strangely, 
 and how very nobly, the old elect families of 
 the commonwealth of the glorious old State 
 of Massachusetts behaved. They were a 
 genuine aristocracy, both of wealth and of 
 historic association ; and yet, what more noble 
 man of the people was there in Massachusetts 
 than Adams ? Where have we found a man 
 more nobly allied to liberty in the day of its 
 peril than he was ? What higher credit rested 
 upon any household than that which came 
 from the name of Quincy ? Fathers and sons 
 — how true they were ! Aristocrats do you 
 call them ? They were the truest democrats ! 
 
 Longfellow, naturally tender and refined, 
 shrinking from struggle and from the rude 
 rush of unwashed multitudes, did not disdain 
 to set his harp, in the earliest hours, and sing 
 £ongs of liberty, when it was to bring upon 
 him discords and bowlings, and not the music 
 of praise. Emerson, the calm, the observa- 
 tional, the coolly reflecting, had not warmth 
 enough to make him an enthusiast in religion ; 
 198 
 
Charles Sumner 
 
 • I 
 
 but he had patriotism and humanity to make 
 him bear steadfast witness in the teeth of 
 slavery. Whittier, the beautiful singer who 
 wraps indignation and wrath about with such 
 gentleness of spirit, Quaker-like — he could 
 write " Ichabod " on the great name of 
 Webster and doom him as though he had 
 struck him with lightning, and yet all the 
 time could seem as sweet as the Gospel. And 
 there was the elegant patrician, the son of 
 aristocratic sires, born sovereign, full of 
 culture and of exquisite refinement, a noble 
 man — Phillips, who put aside all ambitions, 
 who devoted himself to the thankless task of 
 speaking to mobs, and who, through good re- 
 port and through evil report, carried his lance, 
 and never once had it shivered or cast vilely 
 away, and lived to see triumphant the cause 
 which he loved. 
 
 In this band, of which I have not enumer- 
 ated the half, belonged Charles Sumner ; and 
 by force of circumstances he became its leader, 
 being advanced to eminent trusts. He came 
 forth at the time when such men- as Story, 
 Webster, Choate, and Everett were the heroes 
 of Massachusetts. I remember that it was as 
 much as a man's life was worth then to speak 
 in derogation of Daniel Webster ; but how do 
 199 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 men feel respecting him to-day? I remember 
 wlien Choate was as brilliant as a star. Now 
 he is as a meteor, the memory of which has 
 gone with its radiance. And Everett — his 
 last days were his best days ; and all that he 
 did in elegant literature was not so much as 
 he did when he wrote in Mr. Bonner's Ledger 
 for the people,— because, then, for the first 
 time, I think, Edward Everett stood among 
 common folks, in sympathy with them, and 
 employed his culture, and reason, and taste, 
 and genius, for the masses. In all the great 
 and masterful struggles for hberty, and for 
 the redemption of our land, neither Choate 
 nor Webster nor Everett was found in the 
 van. 
 
 Charles Sumner was endowed by nature 
 with a noble presence. He was physically of 
 a most manly type. He had an admirably 
 constituted mind ; and yet he was not a child 
 of genius. His learning, joined to his high 
 moral sense, constituted him what he was. 
 He was a made man. He was well versed in 
 law, in general literature, in history, in art, and 
 in belles lettrcs. He was fitted in all these 
 respects to carry to his sphere in the United 
 States Senate great influence and great power. 
 He carried there an industry which was almost 
 200 
 
Charles Sumner 
 
 unmatched, and a straightforwardness and un- 
 changing intent which was well-nigh without 
 a parallel. The meaning of his life, the force 
 of all his enthusiasm, v^ds. Bondage must be 
 destroyed, and Liberty must be established. 
 For that he became a martyr. He has died, 
 lately, and from the blow in 1856 that felled 
 him in the Senate chamber, that darkened 
 many years of his life, and that gave to him a 
 shock which his nervous system never re- 
 covered from. Not John Brown himself, nor 
 Lincoln, was more a martyr for liberty than 
 Charles Sumner has been. How glorious 
 such a death as his ! How well it beseems his 
 reputation! Better so. Now, no pitying. As, 
 when a man is knighted, the sovereign takes 
 the sword and smites him on the shoulder, 
 and says, " Rise up. Sir Charles ! " so the club 
 that smote Sumner on the head did more than 
 knight him — it brought him to honour and to 
 immortality. 
 
 His devotion, his suffering, his perseverance, 
 have been without faltering. He filled nobly 
 the place where God put him. God worked 
 largely by him in the restoration of conscience 
 in the politics and statesmanship of this Nation, 
 and to-day the whole country stands still to 
 honour the name of Charles Sumner. 
 201 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 No son bears his name. No family will 
 transmit it to the future. No descendant will 
 gaze fondly upon his pictured face, and sa}', 
 " It was my ancestor." He and his kindred 
 are cut off. But the old State that gave him 
 birth, and that he served so nobly, shall cut 
 his name in letters so deep that time itself shall 
 never rub them out ; and no man shall ever 
 read the history of these United States of 
 America, and fail to see, shining brightly, with 
 growing lustre through the ages, the name of 
 Charles Sumner. No son, no daughter, weeps 
 for him ; but down a million dusky cheeks 
 there are tears trickling. They whom he 
 served weep for him. He was the Moses that 
 helped to bring out of bondage myriads of the 
 oppressed, who to-day feel that a father and a 
 protector is gone up from among them ; and I 
 would rather have the sympathy, the sorrow, 
 and the prayers of the smitten than all the 
 eulogies and all the honours of strong and 
 prosperous men. He has lived well. He has 
 died well. His faults will go down with him. 
 His virtues will live after him. He joined 
 himself to whatever was best in his time. 
 Now he is with God. 
 
 Young men, let me speak a few words to 
 you in respect to some parts of the example 
 202 
 
Charles Sumner 
 
 of this man who has departed from our 
 midst. 
 
 First, you will take notice that he identified 
 his own interests with the noblest interests 
 of his country. He was not a vermin states- 
 man, a parasitic statesman, who looked upon 
 his country but as a carcass from which he 
 might draw blood. In a venal, corrupt time, 
 he held trust and power unsullied and unsus- 
 pected. Nothing can speak better for the 
 judgment of corrupt men than the fact that 
 they never dared to approach him — for Mr. 
 Sumner said, with inimitable naivete, " Peo- 
 ple speak of Washington as being corrupt. I 
 do not believe a word of it ; I have been in 
 Washington fifteen years and more, and I have 
 never seen a particle of corruption ! " No, he 
 never had. He was the last man that any cor- 
 rupt schemer dared to approach. 
 
 It is not necessary that men should be 
 greedy, and selfish, and corrupt, in order to be 
 prosperous. The foremost man of his time 
 has died with white hands and a clean 
 heart. 
 
 His patriotism sought no aggrandizement of 
 
 his nation by defrauding others. His was not 
 
 a belligerent nor a selfish statesmanship. He 
 
 attempted to associate this land of his love 
 
 203 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 with the best interests of mankind universally. 
 He was an advocate of peace. He preached 
 and inspired the sense of justice among na- 
 tions. Known well in America and in Europe, 
 and esteemed among statesmen and courts and 
 lawyers everywhere, his voice was against 
 violence, and for amity based upon justice. 
 His ambition was not for the " manifest des- 
 tiny" of greediness; it was for the better 
 destiny of temperance, forbearance, patience, 
 and plenitude of power for the defense of 
 ourselves, but yet more for the defense of the 
 poor and of the needy. Everywhere aggres- 
 sion met his determined resistance. He was 
 a statesman because he based all procedure on 
 great principles. He was a republican states- 
 man because he sought the welfare of all ; and 
 not of a privileged class. In his case this is 
 the more noticeable because his personal habits 
 did not lead him to love association with com- 
 mon people. It was principle, and not per- 
 sonal attraction, that moved him. In some 
 sense, it may be said that he denied himself, 
 and loved those who were beneath him. Nay, 
 I think he thought more of mankind than he 
 did of men. I think he loved the principles 
 of justice and of liberty, rather than liberty 
 and justice themselves. It was because liberty 
 204 
 
Charles Sumner 
 
 in practical life glorified the principle of lib- 
 erty that he loved it. 
 
 He is an example of personal integrity — an 
 example not a little needed. Much assaulted, 
 much misunderstood, partly from his own 
 fault, and partly from circumstances, neverthe- 
 less he was prosperous, and had an illustrious 
 career, never drooping, and never blackened 
 by any taint. He has died in honour ; and 
 his name remains a glorious name in the 
 galaxy of American patriots. 
 
 Sumner was a man of courage, of fidelity 
 to convictions. He never meanly calculated. 
 He never asked the question whether it was 
 dangerous to speak. He was one of those 
 heroic spirits that carried the fight further than 
 it needed to be carried. He erred by an ex- 
 cess of bravery. He was a self-sacrificing man, 
 giving up every prospect of life for the sake of 
 doing his duty and estabHshing rectitude. He 
 lost his life, and found it. He has verified the 
 truth that disinterestedness is not inconsistent 
 with the highest ambition. We have not a 
 great many such men. There is not a disposi- 
 tion, in this vast, trading, thriving, commer- 
 cial nation, and in this time of greed, to be- 
 lieve in romantic heroism of character ; and it 
 is good for us to be called to the consideration 
 205 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 of a man who did not live for himself, and 
 whose nature, revolving about itself, was 
 trained by the principle of justice to develop it- 
 self for the welfare of others, I cannot con- 
 ceive of a man who by nature befitted the 
 courtly circle better than he. If I had looked 
 through all the old State of Massachusetts, I 
 could not have found, it seems to me, one man 
 who would have been more likely to ally him- 
 self to government, to party and to illustrious 
 power than Charles Sumner ; and it was a 
 marvel of the providence of God to see this 
 man, who was built apparently to play the part 
 of a sovereign and an aristocrat, filling the 
 ofifice of nurse to the slave child ; giving his 
 brilliant knowledge, his unwearied industry, 
 and the fruit which he had gathered from 
 every field, to those who needed succour ; and 
 bringing the stores of his literary attainments, 
 the richness of his historical researches, and 
 the accumulated treasures of the ages, which 
 were his, and employing them to build better 
 huts for the emancipated bondmen. 
 
 If he does not rank with the earlier men of 
 our history ; if he does not rank with the in- 
 ventive geniuses of the age to which he be- 
 longed ; yet no man in America has ever 
 surpassed Charles Sumner in the entire dedica- 
 206 
 
Charles Sumner 
 
 tion of the gifts which God granted him to the 
 service of the poor and needy. Thousands 
 and thousands are blessed by him who have 
 only heard his name to rail at it ; for while he 
 secured rights to the poor, and while he re- 
 moved disabilities from those who were en- 
 thralled, not only the particular class for whom 
 he specially laboured were benefited, but 
 every honest man in the country, whatever 
 might be his nationality, participated in the 
 bounty which he wrought out. 
 
 He has gone to his reward. He has lived a 
 noble and spotless life on earth. He has not 
 been a hero without a blemish ; and yet his 
 blemishes were not spots of taint. His faults 
 were weaknesses, not crimes of the soul. 
 They were intensities, partaking somewhat of 
 fierceness, engendered by the high conflicts 
 through which he passed. And let us forget 
 them. Let us bury them, as we bury the noble 
 form, dust to dust, under the sod. Let us re- 
 member his virtue, his integrity, his self-devo- 
 tion, his enormous industry, his patient hu- 
 manity, and his endurance unto the end as a 
 martyr for liberty. 
 
 207 
 
VII 
 
 WENDELL PHILLIPS' 
 
 IT was on last Wednesday that, standing 
 apon the steps of the Parker House, Bos- 
 ton, in School Street, my attention was ar- 
 rested by a procession. As they came up, I 
 saw a soldierly body of coloured men with 
 muskets reversed, the silent band following, 
 with officers' corps behind it, their swords re- 
 versed, and then the carriages, following the 
 hearse that bore — dust to dust — all that re- 
 mained on earth of Wendell Phillips. The 
 streets could not hold the crowd, and he 
 whom the mob had sought once and again to 
 tear to pieces now drew tears on every side 
 from the mob, and the obsequious city sought 
 to make up its vulgar scorn of other days by 
 its worshipful attention. 
 
 It is respecting this man and his times that 
 I shall, very briefly and imperfectly, speak 
 this morning. 
 
 ' Discourse in Plymouth Church, Sunday morning, Feb- 
 ruary lo, 1884. 
 
 208 
 
Wendell Phillips 
 
 Fifty years ago, during my college life in 
 Amherst, I was chosen by the Athenian So- 
 ciety to debate the question of African Coloni- 
 zation, which then was new, fresh and enthu- 
 siastic. Garrison was then just kindling into 
 that firebrand that never went out until 
 slavery was consumed. Wendell Phillips, a 
 young lawyer, had just begun his career. 
 Fortunately, I was assigned to the negative 
 side of the question, and in preparing to speak 
 I prepared my whole life. I contended against 
 colonization as a condition of emancipation, — 
 enforced colonization was but little better than 
 enforced slavery, — and advocated immediate 
 emancipation on the broad ground of human 
 rights. I knew but very little then, but I 
 knew this, that all men are designed of God to 
 be free, a fact which ought to be the text of 
 every man's life — this sacredness of humanity 
 as given of God, redeemed from animalism by 
 Jesus Christ, crowned and clothed with rights 
 that no law nor oppression should dare touch. 
 
 Nearly two generations have passed since 
 then ; the young men who are marching now 
 from youth to manhood are little acquainted 
 with the men or movements of those days, but 
 a few gray heads are left that can recall all 
 these scenes. It has been said that men are 
 209 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 more ignorant of that part of history which 
 immediately precedes their own lives, than of 
 any other. Let us, therefore, throw some 
 little light upon the history of those days that 
 immediately precede our own. 
 
 At the beginning, in the history of this 
 people, Slavery was the accident : it was intro- 
 duced at a time before the world's eyes had 
 been opened ; it came in, indeed, under the 
 cover of benevolence ; it had not attained a 
 very great estate for many years ; and yet, in 
 the days of its infancy, it so conflicted with 
 the fundamental ideas on which our institu- 
 tions and laws were based, that the Northern 
 States got rid of it. Because the climate and 
 husbandry were not favourable to it in the 
 Northern States, they were helped to do it ; 
 but the spirit of liberty had taken on the moral 
 element in New England, in New York, and 
 in Pennsylvania ; and slavery was soon extin- 
 guished. In the South it became a very im- 
 portant industrial element. Rice, sugar, cot- 
 ton were the trinity that dominated the indus- 
 try of the South, and slave labour was favourable 
 to this simple industry. It became, therefore, 
 a pecuniary interest to the South, as it never 
 was in the North. After a time the industry 
 became so important that, although through- 
 2IO 
 
Wendell Phillips 
 
 out all the South in the earlier days, men 
 recognized slavery as a sin, and its existence 
 as a great misfortune, and always hoped that 
 the day would speedily come for emancipa- 
 tion ; yet all those hopes and expectations 
 were met and resisted and overthrown by the 
 fact that slavery became a political interest. 
 It became the centre which united every 
 Southern State with every other, and gave 
 unity to the party of the South ; so that po- 
 litical reasons, rooted in pecuniary reasons, 
 gave great strength to slavery and its propa- 
 gandism in the South. The North emanci- 
 pated ; the South fortified. 
 
 It has been said a thousand times, and every 
 time falsely (it was said by one of the most 
 eloquent sons of the South a few months ago 
 in Cooper Union, where I presided, but it was 
 not the time nor a fitting place to expose the 
 misstatement), it has been said that the North 
 sold out, and having realized on their slaves 
 invested in liberty as a better paying stock. 
 
 This statement is absolutely untrue. It has 
 no historical verity in Massachusetts. There, 
 to some slight extent, slavery existed as it did 
 not in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, 
 but died by a very simple legal decision, one 
 case having been brought into the courts, and 
 211 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 the courts determining that it was inconsistent 
 with the Declaration of Independence, and 
 the Constitution sequent ; and the man stood 
 free. After that there was no enactment ; 
 nothing. Slavery perished of itself by that 
 one single decision. 
 
 In New York a bill was passed early for the 
 gradual emancipation of slaves, and it was 
 guarded in every way. On attaining a certain 
 age slaves were to become free ; up to that 
 age they were the property of their masters, 
 upon whom the responsibility of their support 
 still rested with full weight. After a trial of 
 some years it was considered a great deal bet- 
 ter to be rid of the evil at once, and subse- 
 quent legislation determined immediate eman- 
 cipation. Now, as against those that falsely 
 accused the integrity and love of liberty of 
 this great State, let me say that if you will go 
 back to the laws, and to the practice under 
 them, you shall find that with the declaration 
 of emancipation, both the primitive form of it 
 and the subsequent form of it, the right of the 
 slave or of the coming freedman was guaran- 
 teed, and his safety. 
 
 No man was permitted to take a slave out 
 of the State of New York without giving bond 
 for his return, and if he came back without 
 
 212 
 
Wendell Phillips 
 
 his slave, unless he could prove that the slave 
 had died, he was himself made a criminal, and 
 subjected to criminal punishment ; and there 
 is reason to believe, in regard to the most of 
 the comparatively few slaves that were in the 
 State of New York, that their emancipation 
 was a bona fide emancipation, and they never 
 were sold South. 
 
 Now and then a man can steal a horse ; but 
 we should not lay to the State from which it 
 was taken the charge of abetting theft. There 
 may have been single men or women spirited 
 away ; there may have been thieving ; I know 
 of none, I have heard of none, though there 
 may have been ; but whatever the statute 
 could do to maintain the slave in his integrity 
 and liberty was done, and substantially and 
 generally it was efTectual ; and all this cheap 
 wash of wild declamation that we hear going 
 through the land, to the effect that the North 
 sold out its slaves and then went into the 
 business of emancipation, is simply false. 
 
 The condition of the public mind through- 
 out the North at the time that I came to the 
 consciousness of public affairs, and was study- 
 ing my profession, may be described as the 
 condition of imprisoned moral sense. All men, 
 almost, agreed together in saying that " Sla- 
 213 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 very is wrong ; but what can we do ? " The 
 compromise of our fathers included us ; and 
 fidelity to the agreements that had been made 
 in the formation of our Constitution, of our 
 Confederation first, and of our Constitution 
 afterwards, was regarded everywhere as a 
 moral obHgation by men that hated slavery. 
 " The compromises of the Constitution must 
 be respected," said the priest in the pulpit, 
 said the politician in the field, said the states- 
 man in public hall ; and men abroad, in Eng- 
 land especially, could not understand what 
 was the reason of the later hesitancy of Presi- 
 dent Lincoln, and of the people, when they 
 had risen to arms, in declaring at once the 
 emancipation of the slaves. There never has 
 been in history an instance more notable in 
 which, I think, the feelings and the moral sense 
 of so large a number of people have been held 
 in check for reasons of fidelity to obligations 
 assumed in their behalf ; and I am bound to 
 say that with all its faults and weaknesses there 
 has never been an instance more noble. That 
 being the underlying moral element, the com- 
 mercial question in the North very soon be- 
 came, on the subject of slavery, what the in- 
 dustrial and political questions of the South 
 had made it. It corrupted the manufacturer 
 214 
 
Wendell Phillips 
 
 and the merchant. Throughout the whole 
 North every man that could make anything 
 by it regarded the South as his legal, lawful 
 market ; for the South did not manufacture. 
 They had the cheap and vulgar husbandry of 
 slavery. They could make more money with 
 cotton than with corn or beef, or pork, or 
 leather, or hats, or woodenware. Our North- 
 ern ships went South to get their forest tim- 
 bers, and brought them to Connecticut to be 
 made into woodenware, and axe helves, and 
 rake handles, and carried them right back to 
 sell to the men whose axes had cut down the 
 trees. 
 
 The South manufactured nothing except 
 slaves ; it was a great manufacture, that ; and 
 the whole market of the North was bribed. 
 The harness-makers, the wagon-makers, the 
 clock-makers, makers of all manner of imple- 
 ments and goods, were subject to this bribery. 
 Every manufactory, every loom as it clanked 
 in the North, said : " Maintain not slavery, 
 but the compromises of the Constitution," for 
 that was the veil under which all these cries 
 were continually uttered. 
 
 The distinction between the Anti-slavery 
 men and Abolitionists was simply this : the 
 Abolitionist disclaimed the obligation to main- 
 
 2IS 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 tain this Government and the promise of the 
 Constitution ; the Anti-slavery man recog- 
 nized tlie binding obligation of the Constitu- 
 tion, and sought the emancipation of slaves by 
 a more circuitous and gradual influence : but 
 Abolitionism covered both terms. It was re- 
 garded, however, throughout the North 'as a 
 greater sin than Slavery itself; and none of 
 you that are under thirty years of age can 
 form an adequate conception of the public 
 sentiment and feeling during the days of my 
 young manhood. A man that was known to 
 be an Abolitionist had better be known to 
 have the plague. Every door was shut to 
 him. If he was born under circumstances 
 that admitted him to the best society, he was 
 the black sheep of the family. If he aspired, 
 by fidelity, industry and genius, to good so- 
 ciety, he was debarred. "An Abolitionist" 
 was enough to put the mark of Cain upon any 
 young man that arose in my early day, and 
 until I was forty years of age, it was punish- 
 able to preach on the subject of liberty. It 
 was enough to expel a man from church com- 
 munion if he insisted on praying m the prayer- 
 meeting for the liberation of the slaves. I am 
 speaking the words of truth and soberness. 
 The Church was dumb in the North, but not 
 2i6 
 
Wendell Phillips 
 
 in the West. A marked distinction exists bej 
 tween the history of the new school of Pres-i 
 byterian churches in the West and the Con-t, 
 gregational churches, tlie Episcopal churches, 
 the Methodist and Baptist churches in the 
 North and East. The great publishing so- 
 cieties that were sustained by the contributions 
 of the churches were absolutely dumb. Great 
 controversies raged round about the doors of 
 the Bible Society, of the Tract Society and of 
 the American Board of Commissioners for 
 Foreign Missions. The managers of these 
 societies resorted to every shift except that of 
 sending the Gospel to the slaves. They would 
 not send the Bible to the South ; for, they 
 said, " It is a punishable offense in most of 
 the Southern States to teach a slave to read ; 
 and are we to go in the face of this State 
 legislation and send the Bible South ? " The 
 Tract Society said : " We are set up to preach 
 the Gospel, not to meddle with political and 
 industrial institutions." And so they went on 
 printing tracts against tobacco and its uses, 
 tracts against dancing and its abuses, and re- 
 fusing to print a tract that had a shadow of 
 criticism on slavery ! 
 
 One of the most disgraceful things took 
 place in New Jersey. I have the book. It 
 217 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 was an edition of the Episcopal prayer-book. 
 They had put into the front of it a steel en- 
 graving of Ary Scheffer's " Christus Consola- 
 tor," — Christ the Consoler. There was a semi- 
 circle around about the beneficent and aerial 
 figure of our Saviour, — the poor, the old, the 
 sick, the mother with her dead babe, bowed 
 in grief; every known form of human sorrow 
 belonged to the original design and picture ; 
 and among others a fettered slave, with his 
 hands lifted to heaven praying for liberty : 
 but this was too much; and so they cut out 
 the slave, and left the rest of the picture, and 
 bound it into the Episcopal prayer-book of 
 New Jersey. I have a copy of it, which I 
 mean to leave to the Historical Society of 
 Brooklyn when I am done using it. 
 
 These things are important as showing the 
 incredible condition of public sentiment at 
 that time. If a man came known to be an 
 Anti-slavery man it almost preluded bank- 
 ruptcy in business. 
 
 You remember, some of you, the black list 
 that was framed and sent all over the South, 
 of men that were suspected of being Aboli- 
 tionists in New York City. The South under- 
 took to boycott the whole North. Then it 
 was that I drew up the sentence for a then 
 2l8 
 
Wendell Phillips 
 
 member of this church, " I have goods for sale, 
 but not principles." Resistance was a blight 
 to all political hope. No man could have the 
 slightest expectation of rising in politics that 
 did not bow the knee to Baal. A derisive laugh 
 was the only answer with which exhortations to 
 nobility and manhood were received. This 
 pubUc sentiment was worse in the North than 
 it was anywhere else, and in the Northeast 
 worse than in the West, on account of the 
 extent of manufacturing and commerce here. 
 
 When I came to Brooklyn I was exhorted 
 not to meddle with so unpopular a subject. 
 " What is the use ? " was said to me by a 
 venerable master in Israel ; " why should you 
 lose your influence ? Why don't you go on 
 and preach the Gospel ? " to which I replied, 
 " I don't know any gospel of that kind. My 
 gospel has in it the breaking of prison bars 
 and shackles, the bringing forth of prisoners, 
 and if I can't preach that I won't preach at 
 all." The very first sermon that I ever 
 preached before this congregation — or rather, 
 the congregation that met me — was the dec- 
 laration of my principles on temperance, on 
 peace and war, and above all, on the subject 
 of slavery. For years and years just prior to 
 the renting of the pews, I came out like thun- 
 
 219 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 dcr on the subject of slavery ; for I told my 
 people that they need not think that they 
 could dine me out of my principles, nor 
 smooth me out of them, nor in any way make 
 the pews an argument to me of prudence in 
 the matter of principle. 
 
 The church rose steadily, despite the anti- 
 slaveryism of the pastor. Yet, if a coloured 
 man at that time had come into the church he 
 would have been an object of observation, and 
 the cause of some grumbling, though not of 
 revolt in this church, thank God. There never 
 has been a day since I became the pastor of 
 Plymouth Church that a cleanly-dressed re- 
 spectable coloured man or woman could not 
 have come in and taken a seat here. It would 
 have excited among a great many a good deal 
 of trouble ; but this congregation has been of 
 that mind, and never the result of my under- 
 taking to enforce it. I never preached on that 
 subject. I never said to the people in this 
 congregation, from the beginning to this day, 
 " You ought to let coloured folks sit in your 
 pew." I preached the dignity of man as a 
 child of God ; and lifted up the sanctity of 
 human life and nature before the people. 
 They made the application, and they made it 
 wisely and well. 
 
 2 20 
 
Wendell Phillips 
 
 When I came here there was no place for 
 coloured men and women in the theatre ex- 
 cept the negro pen ; no place in the opera ; 
 no place in the church except the negro pew ; 
 no place in any lecture hall ; no place in the 
 first-class car on the railways. The white 
 omnibus of Fulton Ferry would not allow 
 coloured persons to ride in it. They were 
 never allowed to sit even in the men's cabin 
 on the boats. 
 
 I invited Fred. Douglass, one day, in those 
 times, to come to church here. " I should be 
 glad to, sir," said he ; " but it would be so of- 
 fensive to your congregation." " Mr. Doug- 
 lass, will you come ? and if any man objects 
 to it, come up and sit on my platform by me. 
 You will always be welcome there." 
 
 I mention these things simply to show what 
 was the state of feeling that existed every- 
 where twenty-five or thirty years ago. Ex- 
 isted ! Swept through the land as a sultry 
 sirocco sweeps through the desert, scorching 
 and blasting pubhc sentiment ! 
 
 It was at the beginning of this Egyptian 
 era in America that the young aristocrat of 
 Boston appeared. His blood came through 
 the best colonial families. He was an aristo- 
 crat by descent and by nature — a noble one, 
 221 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 but a thorough aristocrat. All his life and 
 power assumed that guise. He was noble, he 
 was full of kindness to inferiors, he was willing 
 to be and do and suffer for them ; but he was 
 never of them, nor did he ever equal himself 
 to them. He was always above them ; and 
 his gifts of love were always the gifts of a 
 prince to his subjects. All his life long he 
 resented every attack on his person and on 
 his honour as a noble aristocrat would. When 
 they poured the filth of their imaginations 
 upon him, he cared no more for it than the 
 eagle cares what the fly is thinking about him 
 away down under the cloud. All the miser- 
 able traffickers, all the scribblers and all the 
 aristocratic boobies of Boston were no more 
 to him than mosquitoes are to the behemoth 
 or to the lion. He was aristocratic in his 
 pride, and lived higher than most men lived. 
 He was called of God as truly as ever Moses 
 and the Prophets were : not exactly for the 
 same great ends, but in consonance with those 
 great ends. 
 
 The elder ones remember when Lovejoy 
 was infamously slaughtered by a mob in 
 Alton, and blood was shed that has been the 
 seed of liberty all over this land. I remember 
 it. At this time, it was, that Channing lifted 
 
 222 
 
Wendell Phillips 
 
 up his voice, and declared that the moral sen- 
 timent of Boston ought to be uttered in rebuke 
 of that infamy and cruelty, and asked for 
 Faneuil Hall in which to call a public meet^ 
 ing. This was indignantly refused by the 
 Common Council of Boston. Being a man 
 of wide influence, he gathered around abouti 
 himself enough venerable and influential old 
 citizens of that city to make a denial of their 
 united request a perilous thing ; and Faneuil 
 Hall was granted to call a public meeting to 
 express itself on this subject of the murder of 
 Lovejoy. The meeting was made up largely 
 of rowdies. They meant to overawe and put 
 down all other expressions of opinion except 
 those that then rioted with the riotous. United 
 States District Attorney Austin (when Wen- 
 dell Phillips' name is written in letters of light 
 on one side of the monument, down low on 
 the other side, and spattered with dirt, let the 
 name of Austin also be written) made a trucu- 
 lent speech, and justified the mob, and ran the 
 whole career of the sewer of those days, and 
 justified non-interference with slavery. Wen- 
 dell Phillips, just come to town as a young 
 lawyer without at present any practice, al- 
 most unknown except to his own family, fired 
 with the infamy, and feeling called of God in 
 223 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 his soul, went upon the platform. His first 
 utterances brought down the hisses of the 
 mob. He was not a man very easily subdued 
 by any mob. They listened as he kindled and 
 poured on that man Austin the fire and lava 
 of a volcano ; and he finally turned the course 
 of the feeling of the meeting. Practically un- 
 known when the sun went down one day, 
 when it rose the next morning all Boston was 
 saying, " Who is this fellow ? who is this 
 Phillips ? " — a question that has never been 
 asked since ! 
 
 Thenceforth he was a flaming advocate of 
 hberty, with singular advantages over all other 
 pleaders. Mr. Garrison was not noted as a 
 speaker ; his tongue was his pen. Mr. Phillips 
 was not much given to the pen, his pen was 
 his tongue, and no other like speaker has ever 
 graced our history. I do not undertake to say 
 that he surpassed all others. He had an in- 
 tense individuality, and that intense individual- 
 ity ranked him among the noblest orators that 
 have ever been born to this continent, or I 
 may say to our mother land. He adopted in 
 full the tenets of Garrison, which were ex- 
 cessively disagreeable to the whole public 
 mind. The ground which he took was that 
 which Garrison took. Seeing that the con- 
 224 
 
Wendell Phillips 
 
 science of the North was smothered and mute 
 by reason of supposed obHgations to the com- 
 promises of the Constitution, Garrison declared 
 that the compromises of the Constitution were 
 covenants with hell, and that no man was 
 bound to observe them. This extreme ground 
 Mr. Phillips also took — immediate, uncondi- 
 tional, universal emancipation at any cost 
 whatsoever. That was Garrisonism ; that was 
 Wendell Phillipsism ; and it would seem as 
 though the Lord rather leaned that way too. 
 
 I shall not discuss the merits of Mr. Garri- 
 son nor of Mr. Phillips in every direction. I 
 shall say that while the duty of immediate 
 emancipation without conditions was unques- 
 tionably the right ground, yet in the provi- 
 dence of God even that could not be brought 
 to pass except through the mediation of very 
 many events. It is a remarkable thing that 
 Mr. Phillips and Mr. Garrison both renounced 
 the Union and denounced the Union in the 
 hope of destroying slavery ; whereas the prov- 
 idence of God protected the love of the Union 
 when it was assailed by the South, and made 
 the love of the Union the enthusiasm that car- 
 ried through the great war of Emancipation. 
 It was the very antithesis of the ground which 
 they took. Like John Brown, Mr. Garrison ; 
 225 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 like John Brown, Mr. Phillips ; of a heroic 
 spirit, seeking the great end nobly, but by- 
 measures not well adapted to directly secure 
 the end. 
 
 Little by little the controversy spread. I 
 shall not trace it. I am giving you simply the 
 atmosphere in which Mr. Phillips sprang into 
 being and into power. His career was a career 
 of thirty or forty years of undiminished eager- 
 ness. He never quailed nor flinched, nor did 
 he ever at any time go back one step, or turn 
 in the slightest degree to the right or left. He 
 gloried in his cause, and in that particular as- 
 pect of it which had selected him. 
 
 He stood on this platform. It is a part of 
 the sweet and pleasant memories of my com- 
 parative youth here, that when the mob re- 
 fused to let him speak in the Broadway Taber- 
 nacle before it was moved up-town — the old 
 Tabernacle — William A. Hall, now dead, a 
 fervent friend and Abolitionist, had secured the 
 Graham Institute, on Washington Street, in 
 Brooklyn, wherein to hold a meeting where 
 Mr. Phillips should be heard. I had agreed 
 to pray at the opening of the meeting. On 
 the morning of the day on which it was to 
 have taken place, I was visited by the com- 
 mittee of that Institute (excellent gentlemen, 
 226 
 
Wendell Phillips 
 
 whose feelings will not be hurt, because they 
 are all now ashamed of it ; they are in heaven), 
 who said that in consequence of the great peril 
 that attended a meeting at the Institute, they 
 had withdrawn the liberty to use it, and paid 
 back the money, and that they called simply 
 to say that it was out of no disrespect to me, 
 but from fidelity to their supposed trust. 
 Well, it was a bitter thing. If there is any- 
 thing on earth that I am sensitive to, it is the 
 withdrawing of the liberty of speech and 
 thought. Henry C. Bowen, who certainly has 
 done some good things in his lifetime, said to 
 me, " You can have Plymouth Church if you 
 want it." " How ? " " It is the rule of the 
 church trustees that the church may be let by 
 a majority vote when we are convened ; but if 
 we are not convened, then every trustee must 
 give his assent in writing. If you choose to 
 make it a personal matter, and go to every trus- 
 tee, you can have it." He meanwhile under- 
 took, with Mr. Hall, to put new placards over 
 the old ones, notifying men, quietly, that the 
 meeting was to be held here, and distributed 
 thousands and tens of thousands of handbills 
 at the ferries. No task was ever more wel- 
 come. I went to the trustees man by man. 
 The majority of them very cheerfully accorded 
 227 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 the permission. One or two of them were 
 disposed to decHne and withhold it. I made 
 it a matter of personal friendship. " You and 
 I will break if you don't give me this permis- 
 sion ; " and they signed. So the meeting 
 glided from the Graham Institute to this house. 
 A great audience assembled. We had detect- 
 ives in disguise, and every arrangement made 
 to handle the subject in a practical form if the 
 crowd should undertake to molest us. The 
 Rev. Dr. R. S. Storrs consented to come and 
 pray ; for Mr. Wendell Phillips was by mar- 
 riage a near and intimate friend and relation 
 of his. The reporters were here — when were 
 they ever not? A gentleman was called to 
 preside over the meeting who had been known 
 to be an Abolitionist almost from his cradle ; 
 but he was personally a timid man, though 
 morally courageous. When I put the sense of 
 the meeting that he should preside, he got up 
 and was so scared that he could not be heard. 
 He muttered that he thought some other man 
 might have been chosen. I called him by 
 name and said, " You are selected to preside, 
 sir." He got up again — " Will you be kind 
 enough to come up here and preside, sir? " 
 And for fear that he would be worse bom- 
 barded by not doing it than he would by doing 
 228 
 
Wendell Phillips 
 
 it, he came up. Prayer was uttered. An ex- 
 planatory statement was made. Mr. Phillips 
 began his lecture ; and you may depend upon 
 it by this time the lion was in him, and lie 
 went careering on. His views were extreme, 
 he made them extravagant. I remember at 
 one point, — for he was a man without bluster; 
 serene, self-poised, never disturbed in the least, 
 — he made an affirmation that was very bitter, 
 and a cry arose over the whole congregation. 
 He stood still, with a cold, bitter smile on his 
 face and look in his eye, and waited till they 
 subsided, when he repeated it with more em- 
 phasis. Again the roar went through. He 
 waited, and repeated it if possible more in- 
 tensely ; and he beat them down with that 
 one sentence, until they were still and let him 
 go on. 
 
 The power to discern right amid all the 
 wrappings of interest and all the seductions of 
 ambition was singularly his. To choose the 
 lowly for their sake ; to abandon all favour, 
 all power, all comfort, all ambition, all great- 
 ness — that was his genius and glory. He con- 
 fronted the spirit of the Nation and of the age. 
 I had almost said, he set himself against na- 
 ture, as if he had been a decree of God over- 
 riding all these other insuperable obstacles. 
 229 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 That was his function. Mr. Phillips was not 
 called to be a universal orator any more than 
 he was a universal thinker. In literature and 
 in history he was widely read ; in person most 
 elegant ; in manners most accomplished ; 
 gentle as a babe ; sweet as a new-blown rose ; 
 in voice, clear and silvery. He was not a man 
 of tempests ; he was not an orchestra of a 
 hundred instruments ; he was not an organ, 
 mighty and complex. The Nation slept, and 
 God wanted a trumpet, sharp, far-sounding, 
 narrow and intense ; and that was Mr. Phillips. 
 The long roll is not particularly agreeable in 
 music or in times of peace, but it is better 
 than flutes or harps when men are in a great 
 battle, or are on the point of it. His elo- 
 quence was penetrating and alarming. He 
 did not flow as a mighty Gulf Stream ; he did 
 not dash upon the continent as the ocean does ; 
 he was not a mighty rushing river. His elo- 
 quence was a flight of arrows ; sentence after 
 sentence, polished, and most of them burning. 
 He shot them one after the other, and where 
 they struck they slew ; always elegant, always 
 awful. I think scorn in him was as fine as I 
 ever knew it in any human being. He had 
 that sublime sanctuary in his pride that made 
 him almost insensitive to what would by other 
 230 
 
Wendell Phillips 
 
 men be considered obloquy. It was as if he 
 said every day, in himself, " I am not what 
 they are firing at. I am not there, and I am 
 not that. It is not against me. I am in- 
 finitely superior to what they think me to be. 
 They do not know me." It was quiet and 
 unpretentious, but it was there. Conscience 
 and pride were the two concurrent elements 
 of his nature. 
 
 He lived to see the slave emancipated, but 
 not by moral means. He lived to see the 
 sword cut the fetter. After this had taken 
 place he was too young to retire, though too 
 old to gather laurels of literature or to seek 
 professional honours. The impulse of hu- 
 manity was not at all abated. His soul still 
 flowed on for the great under-masses of man- 
 kind, though like the Nile it split up into 
 diverse mouths, and not all of them were navi- 
 gable. 
 
 After a long and stormy life his sun went 
 down in glory. All the English-speaking 
 people on the globe have written among the 
 names that shall never die, the name of that 
 scoffed, detested, mob-beaten Wendell Phillips. 
 Boston, that persecuted and would have slain 
 him, is now exceedingly busy in building his 
 tomb and rearing his statue. The men that 
 231 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 would not defile their lips with his name arc 
 to-day thanking God that he Uved. 
 
 He has taught a lesson that the young will 
 do well to take heed to — the lesson that the 
 most splendid gifts and opportunities and am- 
 bitions may be best used for the dumb and 
 the lowly. His whole life is a rebuke to the 
 idea that we are to climb to greatness by 
 climbing up on the backs of great men ; that 
 we are to gain strength by running with the 
 currents of life ; that we can from without add 
 anything to the great within that constitutes 
 man. He poured out the precious ointment 
 of his soul upon the feet of that diffusive Jesus 
 who suffers here in His poor and despised 
 ones. He has taught the young ambitions 
 too — that the way to glory is the way, often- 
 times, of adhesion simply to principle ; and 
 that popularity and unpopularity are not 
 things to be known or considered. Do right 
 and rejoice. If to do right will bring you into 
 trouble, rejoice that you are counted worthy 
 to suffer with God and the providences of God 
 in this world. 
 
 He belongs to the race of giants, not simply 
 
 because he was in and of himself a great soul, 
 
 but because he bathed in the providence of 
 
 God, and came forth scarcely less than a god ; 
 
 232 
 
Wendell Phillips 
 
 because he gave himself to the work of God 
 upon earth, and inherited thereby, or had re- 
 flected upon him, some of the majesty of his 
 master. When pigmies are all dead, the noble 
 countenance of Wendell Phillips will still look 
 forth, radiant as a rising sun — a sun that will 
 never set. He has become to us a lesson, his 
 death an example, his whole history an en- 
 couragement to manhood — to heroic man- 
 hood. 
 
 233 
 
VIII 
 EULOGY ON GRANT' 
 
 ANOTHER name is added to the roll of 
 those whom the world will not willingly 
 let die. A few years since storm-clouds filled 
 his heaven, and obloquy, slander and bitter 
 lies rained down upon him. 
 
 The clouds are all blown away, under a 
 serene sky he laid down his life, and the Na- 
 tion wept. The path to his tomb is worn 
 by the feet of innumerable pilgrims. The 
 mildewed lips of Slander are silent, and even 
 Criticism hesitates lest some incautious word 
 should mar the history of the modest, gentle, 
 magnanimous Warrior. 
 
 The whole Nation watched his passage 
 through humiliating misfortunes with un- 
 feigned sympathy ; the whole world sighed 
 when his life ended ! At his burial the un- 
 sworded hands of those whom he had fought 
 lifted his bier and bore him to his tomb with 
 love and reverence. 
 
 • Delivered at Tremont Temple, Boston, October 22, 1885. 
 Grant's death occurred on July 18, 1885. 
 
Eulogy on Grant 
 
 Grant made no claim to saintship. He was 
 a man of like passions, and with as marked 
 limitations as other men. Nothing could be 
 more distasteful to his honest, modest soul while 
 living, and nothing more unbecoming to his 
 memory, than lying exaggerations and ful- 
 some flatteries. 
 
 Men without faults are apt to be men with- 
 out force. A round diamond has no brilliancy. 
 Lights and shadows, hills and valleys, give 
 beauty to the landscape. The faults of great 
 and generous natures are often overripe good- 
 ness, or the shadows which their virtues cast. 
 
 Three elements enter into the career of a 
 great citizen : 
 
 That which his ancestry gives ; 
 
 That which opportunity gives ; 
 
 That which his will develops. 
 
 Grant came from a sturdy New England 
 stock ; New England derived it from Scotland ; 
 Scotland bred it, at a time when Covenanters 
 and Puritans were made — men of iron con- 
 sciences hammered out upon the anvil of ad- 
 versity. From New England the stream 
 flowed to the Ohio, where it enriched the 
 soil till it brought forth abundant harvests of 
 great men. When it was Grant's time to be 
 born, he came forth without celestial portents, 
 235 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 and his youth had in it no prophecy of his 
 manhood. His boyhood was wholesome, ro- 
 bust, with a vigorous frame. With a heart 
 susceptible of tender love, he yet was not 
 social. He was patient and persistent. He 
 loved horses, and could master them. That is 
 a good sign. 
 
 Grant had no art of creating circumstances ; 
 opportunity must seek him, or else he would 
 plod through hfe without disclosing the gifts 
 which God hid in him. The gold in the hills 
 cannot disclose itself. It must be sought and 
 dug. 
 
 A sharp and wiry politician, for some reason 
 of Providence, performed a generous deed, in 
 sending young Grant to West Point. He fin- 
 ished his course there, distinguished as a skill- 
 ful and bold rider, with an inclination to 
 mathematics, with little taste for the theory 
 and literature of war, but with sympathy for 
 its external and material developments. In 
 boyhood and youth he was marked by sim- 
 phcity, candour, veracity and silence. 
 
 After leaving the Academy he saw service 
 in Mexico, and afterwards in California, but 
 without conspicuous results. 
 
 Then came a clouded period, a sad life of 
 irresolute vibration between self-indulgence 
 236 
 
Eulogy on Grant 
 
 and aspiration, through intemperance. He 
 resigned from the army, and at that time one 
 would have feared that his life would end in 
 eclipse. Hercules crushed two serpents sent 
 to destroy him in his cradle. It was later in 
 his life that Grant destroyed the enemy that 
 " biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an 
 adder." 
 
 At length he struck at the root of the mat- 
 ter. Others agree not to drink, which is good ; 
 Grant overcame the wish to drink — which is 
 better. But the cloud hung over his reputa- 
 tion for many years, and threatened his ascend- 
 ency when better days came. Of all his vic- 
 tories, many and great, this was the greatest, 
 that he conquered himself. His will was 
 stronger than his passions. 
 
 Poor, much shattered, he essayed farming. 
 Carrying wood for sale to St. Louis did not 
 seem to be that for which he was created ; 
 neither did planting crops, nor raising cattle. 
 
 Tanning is an honourable calling, and, to 
 many, a road to wealth. Grant found no gold 
 in the tan vat. 
 
 Then he became a listless merchant — a 
 silent, unsocial and rather moody waiter upon 
 petty traffic. 
 
 He was a good subaltern, a poor farmer, a 
 237 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 worse tanner, a worthless trafficker. Without 
 civil experience, without literary gifts, too 
 diffident to be ambitious, too modest to put 
 himself forward, too honest to be a politician, 
 he was of all men the least likel)' to attain 
 eminence, and absolutely unlitted, apparently, 
 for preeminence ; yet God's providence se- 
 lected him. 
 
 When the prophet Samuel went forth to 
 anoint a successor to the impetuous and im- 
 perious King Saul, he caused all the children 
 of Jesse to pass before him. He rejected one 
 by one the whole band. At length the 
 youngest called from among the flock came in, 
 and the Lord said to Samuel, " Arise, this is 
 he',' and Samuel took the horn of oil and 
 anointed him in the midst of his brethren, and 
 the spirit of the Lord came upon him from 
 that day forward. 
 
 Ordained was Grant with the ointment of 
 war — black and sulphurous. 
 
 Had Grant died at the tan-yard, or from 
 behind the counter, the world would never 
 have suspected that it had lost a hero. He 
 would have fallen as an undistinguishable leaf 
 among the millions cast down every year. 
 His time had not come. It was plain that he 
 had no capacity to create his opportunity. It 
 238 
 
Eulogy on Grant 
 
 must find him out, or he would die ignoble and 
 unknown ! 
 
 It was coming ! Already the clouds afar off 
 were gathering. He saw them not. No figures 
 were seen upon the dim horizon of the already 
 near future. 
 
 The insulted flag ; the garments rolled in 
 blood ; a million men in arms ; the sulphurous 
 smoke of battle ; gory heaps upon desperate 
 battle-fields ; an army of slowly moving crip- 
 pled heroes ; graveyards populous as cities ; 
 they were all in the clouded horizon, though 
 he saw them not ! 
 
 Let us look upon the scene on which he 
 was soon to exert a mighty energy. 
 
 This continent lay waiting through ages for 
 the seed of civilization. At length a sower 
 came forth to sow. While he sowed the good 
 seed of liberty and Christian civilization, an 
 enemy, darkling, sowed tares. They sprang 
 up and grew together. The Constitution 
 cradled both Slavery and Liberty. While yet 
 ungrown they dwelt together in peace. They 
 snarled in youth, quarrelled when half grown, 
 and fought when of full age. The final catas- 
 trophe was inevitable. No finesse, no device 
 or compromise could withstand the inevitable. 
 The conflict began in Congress ; it drifted into 
 239 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 commerce ; it rose into the very air, and public 
 sentiment grew hot, and raged in the pulpit, 
 the forum, and in politics. 
 
 The South, like a queenly beauty, grew 
 imperious and exacting ; the North, like an 
 obsequious suitor, knelt at her feet, only to 
 receive contempt and mockery. 
 
 Both parties. Whig and Democrat, drank of 
 the cup of her sorcery. It killed the Whig 
 party. The Democrat was tougher, and was 
 only besotted. A few, like John the Baptist, 
 were preaching repentance, but, like him, they 
 were in the wilderness, and seemed rude and 
 shaggy fanatics. 
 
 If a wise moderation had possessed the 
 South, if they had concihated the North, if 
 they had met the just scruples of honest men, 
 who, hating slavery, dreaded the dishonour of 
 breaking the compacts of the Constitution, the 
 South might have held control for another 
 hundred years. It was not to be. God sent 
 a strong delusion upon them. 
 
 Nothing can be plainer than that all parties 
 in the State were drifting in the dark, without 
 any comprehension of the elemental causes at 
 work. Without prescience or sagacity, like 
 ignorant physicians, they prescribed at random ; 
 they sewed on patches, new compromise upon 
 240 
 
Eulogy on Grant 
 
 old garments ; they sought to conceal the real 
 depth and danger of the gathering torrent by- 
 crying " Peace, peace ! " to each other. In 
 short, they were seeking to medicate volcanoes 
 and stop earthquakes by administering political 
 quinine. The wise statesmen were bewildered 
 and politicians were juggling fools. 
 
 The South had laid the foundation of her 
 industry, her com merce, and her commonwealth 
 upon slavery. It was slavery that inspired 
 her councils, that engorged her philanthropy, 
 that corrupted her political economy and the- 
 ology, that disturbed all the ways of active 
 politics; broke up sympathy between North 
 and South. As Ahab met Elijah with, " Art 
 thou he that troubleth Israel ? " so Slavery 
 charged the sentiments of Freedom with vexa- 
 tious meddling and unwarrantable interference. 
 
 The South had builded herself upon the 
 rock of Slavery. It lay in the very channels 
 of civilization, like some Flood Rock lying 
 sullen off Hell Gate. The tides of controversy 
 rushed upon it and split into eddies and swirling 
 pools, bringing incessant disaster. The rock 
 would not move. It must be removed. It 
 was the South itself that furnished the engineers. 
 Arrogance in council sank the shaft, Violence 
 chambered the subterranean passages, and In- 
 241 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 fatuation loaded them with infernal dynamite. 
 All was secure. Their rock was their fortress. 
 The hand that fired upon Sumter exploded the 
 mine, and tore the fortress to atoms. For one 
 moment it rose into the air like spectral hills 
 — for one moment the waters rocked with 
 wild confusion, then settled back to quiet, and 
 the way of civilization was opened ! 
 
 The spark that was kindled at Fort Sumter 
 fell upon the North, like fire upon autumnal 
 prairies. Men came together in the presence 
 of this universal calamity with sudden fusion. 
 They forgot all separations of politics, parties, 
 or even of religion itself. It was a conflagra- 
 tion of patriotism. The bugle and the drum 
 rang out in every neighbourhood, the plough 
 stood still in the furrow, the hammer dropped 
 from the anvil, book and pen were forgotten, 
 pulpit and forum, court and shop, felt the 
 electric shock. Parties dissolved and re- 
 formed. The Democratic party sent forth a 
 host of noble men, and swelled the Republican 
 ranks, and gave many noble leaders and irre- 
 sistible energy to the Hosts of War. The 
 whole land became a military school. 
 
 When once the North had organized its 
 armies, there was soon disclosed an amiable 
 folly of conciliation. It hoped for some peace- 
 242 
 
Eulogy on Grant 
 
 able way out of th6 war ; generals seemed to 
 fight so that no one should be hurt ; they saw 
 the mirage of future parties above the battle- 
 field, and anxiously considered the political ef- 
 fect of their military conduct. They were 
 fighting not to break down rebellion, but to 
 secure a future presidency — or governorship. 
 The South had smelted into a glowing mass. 
 It believed in its course with an infatuation 
 that would have been glorious if the cause had 
 been better ! It put its whole soul into war — 
 and struck hard ! 
 
 The South fought throughout for slavery 
 and independence. The North fought for 
 Union, but at first its leaders seemed aiming 
 chiefly at securing political success after the 
 War. Thus for two years, not unmarked by 
 great deeds, the war lingered. Lincoln, sad 
 and sorrowful, felt the moderation of his gen- 
 erals, and longed for a man of iron mould, 
 who had but two words in his military 
 vocabulary, Victory or Annihilation. 
 
 He was coming ! He was heard from at 
 Forts Henry and Donelson. 
 
 Four great names were rising to sight — 
 
 Sherman, Thomas, Sheridan ; and larger than 
 
 either, Grant ! With his advent the armies, 
 
 with some repulses, went steadily forward, 
 
 243 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 from conquering to conquer. Aside from all 
 military qualities, he had one absorbing spirit 
 — the Union must be saved, the rebellion must 
 be beaten, the Confederate armies must be 
 threshed to chaff as on a summer threshing 
 floor. He had no political ambition, no 
 imaginary reputation to preserve or gain. A 
 great genius for grand strategy, a comprehen- 
 sion of complex and vast armies, caution, 
 prudence and silence while preparing, an end- 
 less patience, an indomitable will, and a real, 
 downright fighting quality. 
 
 Thus at length Grant was really born I He 
 had lain in the nest for long as an infertile egg. 
 The brooding of War hatched the egg, and an 
 eagle came forth ! 
 
 It is impossible to reach the full measure of 
 Grant's mihtary genius until we survey the 
 greatness of this most extraordinary war of 
 modern days, or it may be said of any age. 
 
 For more than four years there were more 
 than a million men on each side, stretched out 
 upon a hne of between one and two thousand 
 miles, and a blockade rigorously enforced 
 along a coast of an equal extent. During thr,t 
 time, counting no battle in which there were 
 not five hundred Union men engaged, there 
 244 
 
Eulogy on Grant 
 
 were fought more than two thousand engage- 
 ments — two thousand two hundred and sixty- 
 one of record. 
 
 Amid this sea of blood, there shot up great 
 battles, that for numbers, fighting and losses, 
 will rank with the great battles of the world. 
 
 In 1862 the losses by death, wounds and 
 missing on both sides, as extracted from Gov- 
 ernment Records, were nearly half a million. 
 
 Over 26,000 Northern soldiers died in 
 captivity. If we reckon all who perished 
 in field and hospital on both sides, nearly a 
 million died in that War. 
 
 The number must be largely swelled if we 
 add all who died at home, of sickness and 
 Ayounds received in the campaigns. 
 
 The Secretary of War, in his report, dated 
 November 22, 1865, makes the following re- 
 marks, which show more than anything else 
 the spirit animating the people of the loyal 
 States : " On several occasions, when troops 
 were promptly needed to avert impending dis- 
 aster, vigorous exertion brought them into the 
 field from remote States with incredible speed. 
 Official reports show that after the disasters on 
 the Peninsula, in 1862, over 80,000 troops 
 were enlisted, organized, armed, equipped, and 
 sent into the field in less than a month. Sixty 
 245 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 thousand troops have repeatedly gone to the 
 field within four weeks. Ninety thousand in- 
 fantry were sent to the armies from the five 
 States of Ohio, Indiana, Ilhnois, Iowa, and 
 Wisconsin, within twenty days. When Lee 
 surrendered, thousands of recruits were pour- 
 ing in, and men were discharged from recruit- 
 ing stations and rendezvous in every State." 
 
 Into this sulphurous storm of war Grant 
 entered almost unknown. It was with diffi- 
 culty that he could obtain a cornmand. Once 
 set forward, Donaldson, Shiloh, Vicksburg, 
 Chickamauga, The Wilderness, Spottsylvania, 
 Petersburg , Appomattox, these were his foot- 
 steps. In four years he had risen, without 
 political favour, from the bottom to the very 
 highest command — not second to any living 
 commander in all the world ! 
 
 His plans were large, his undiscouraged will 
 was patient to obduracy. He was not fighting 
 for reputation, nor for the display of general- 
 ship, nor for a future Presidency. He had but 
 one motive, and that as intense as life itself — the 
 subjugation of the rebellion and the restoration 
 of the broken Union. He embodied the feel- 
 ings of the common people. He was their 
 perfect representative. The war was waged 
 for the maintenance of the Union, the sup- 
 246 
 
Eulogy on Grant 
 
 pression of armed resistance, and, at length, 
 for the eradication of Slavery. Every step, 
 from Doiielson to Appomattox, evinced with 
 increasing intensity this his one terrible pur- 
 pose. He never wavered, turned aside, or 
 dallied. 
 
 In all this career he never lost courage or 
 equanimity. With a million men, for whose 
 movements he was responsible, he yet carried 
 a tranquil mind, neither depressed by disas- 
 ters, nor elated by success. Gentle of heart, 
 familiar with all, never boasting, always mod- 
 est — Grant came of the old self-contained 
 stock, men of a simple force of being, which 
 allied his genius to the great elemental forces 
 of Nature, silent, invisible, irresistible. When 
 his work was done, and the defeat of Con- 
 federate armies was final, this dreadful man of 
 blood was as tender towards his late adversaries 
 as a woman towards her son. He imposed no 
 humiliating conditions, spared the feelings of 
 his antagonists, sent home the disbanded 
 Southern men with food and with horses for 
 working their crops, and when a revengeful 
 spirit in the Executive Chair showed itself, and 
 threatened the chief Southern generals. Grant 
 indignantly interposed himself, and compelled 
 his superior to relinquish his rash purpose. 
 247 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 There have been men — there are yet — for 
 stupidity is long-hved — who regard Grant as 
 only " a man of luck." Surely he was ! Is it 
 not luck through such an ancestry to have 
 had conferred upon him such a body, such a 
 disposition, such greatness of soul, such pa- 
 triotism unalloyed by ambition, such military 
 genius, such an indomitable will, and such a 
 capacity for handling the largest armies ? 
 
 For four years and more this man of con- 
 tinuous Luck, across a rugged continent, in 
 the face of armies of men as brave as his 
 own, commanded by generals of extraordi- 
 nary ability, performed every function of 
 strategy in grand War, which Jomini at- 
 tributes to Napoleon and his greatest mar- 
 shals, and Napier to Wellington. Whether 
 Grant could have conducted a successful retreat 
 cannot be known. He was never defeated. 
 
 Grant has been severely criticized for the 
 waste of life. War is not created for the pur- 
 pose of saving life, but by a noble spending 
 of blood to save the Commonwealth. The 
 great end which he achieved would have been 
 cheaply gained, at double the expense. 
 
 But we are not to forget the circumstances 
 under which the conduct of the last great cam- 
 paign was committed to him. For four years 
 248 
 
Eulogy on Grant 
 
 the heroic and patient Army of the Potomac 
 had squandered blood and treasure v/ithout 
 measure, and had gained not a step. With 
 generals many, excellently skilled in logis- 
 tics, skillful in everything but success, they 
 fought and retreated ; they dug, they waded, 
 they advanced and retreated. They went 
 down to Richmond and looked upon it, and 
 came back to defend Washington. 
 
 Their victories were fruitless. Antietam 
 was ably fought, but weakly followed up, 
 Gettysburg, with hideous slaughter, checked 
 Lee's Northward advance and sent him back — 
 but unpursued, undestroyed, though he waited 
 three or four days, helpless, cooped up. 
 
 The Army of the Potomac needed a general 
 who knew how to employ their splendid 
 bravery, their all-enduring pluck. They had 
 danced long enough ; they had led off — 
 changed partners — chassed — they had gone 
 into campaigns with slow and solemn music, but 
 returned with quick-steps. They seemed de- 
 sirous of making war so as not to exasperate 
 the South. 
 
 Do not men know that nothing spends hfe 
 
 faster than unfighting war ? Disease is more 
 
 deadly than the bullet. In all the war, but 
 
 one out of every forty-two that died were 
 
 249 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 slain by the bullet, and one out of eveiy 
 thirteen by disease. Six million men passed 
 through the hospitals during the war; over 
 three million with malarial diseases. 
 
 It seemed doubtful whether the Government 
 was putting down rebellion, or whether Lee 
 was putting down the Government. An emi- 
 nent critic says : " The fire and passion, down- 
 right earnestness and self-abandon that the 
 South threw into the struggle at the outset 
 and maintained for two full years, had, it 
 must be admitted, so far impaired the morale 
 of the Union forces, that while courage was 
 nowhere wanting, self-confidence had been 
 seriously diminished. This was especially true 
 of the devoted and decimated Army of the 
 Potomac, whose commanders, after the first 
 battle of Bull Run, always appeared to be 
 afraid of exasperating the enemy. Driving 
 Lee to extremities was the one thing that they 
 were all loth to do. They would fight to the 
 last drop of blood to defend Washington, to 
 hold their own, to preserve the Union, but to 
 corner the enemy, to drive him to desperation, 
 to make him shed the last drop of his own 
 blood, was the one thing they would not do, 
 and no amount of urging could make them do 
 it. It was this arriere pens'ee that held the 
 250 
 
Eulogy on Grant 
 
 hand of McClellan and of Meade after Antie- 
 tam and Gettysburg. Both of these engage- 
 ments were victories for the Army of the 
 Potomac, and both were robbed of their fruits 
 by a lurking fear of the Hon at bay. ' They 
 are shooing the enemy out of Maryland,' said 
 Lincoln, with his peculiar aptness and home- 
 liness." 
 
 When Grant came to the Army of the Po- 
 tomac, he reversed the methods of all who 
 preceded him. Braver soldiers never were, 
 nor more valiant commanders ; but the gen- 
 erals had not learned the art of fighting with 
 deadly intent. Peace is very good for peace, 
 but war is organized rage. It means destruc- 
 tion or it means nothing. 
 
 At the Battle of the Wilderness, Grant 
 stripped his commissary train of its guards to 
 fill a gap in the line of battle. When expos- 
 tulated with for exposing his army to the loss 
 of all its provisions, his reply was : 
 
 " When this army is whipped, it will not 
 want any provisions." 
 
 All summer, all the autumn, all the winter, 
 all the spring, and early summer again, he 
 hammered Lee, with blow on blow, until, at 
 Appomattox, the great, but not greatest. 
 Southern general went to the ground. 
 251 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 Grant was a great fighter, but not a fighter 
 only. 
 
 His mind took in the whole field of war — 
 as wide and complex as any that ever Napoleon 
 knew. He combined in his plans the opera- 
 tions of three armies, and for the first time in 
 the war, the whole of the Union forces were 
 acting in concert. 
 
 He had the patience of Fate, and the force of 
 Thor. If he neglected the rules of war, as at 
 Vicksburg, it was to make better rules, for those 
 who were strong enough to employ them. 
 
 Counsellors gave him materials. He formed 
 his own plans. Abhorring show, simple in 
 manner, gentle in his intercourse, modest and 
 even diffident in regard to his own personality, 
 he seems to have been the only man in camp 
 who was ignorant of his own greatness. 
 Never was a commander etter served, 
 never were subordinates more magnanimously 
 treated. The fame of his generals was as 
 dear to him as his own. Those who might 
 have been expected to be his rivals were his 
 bosom friends. While there were envies and 
 jealousies among minor officers, the great 
 names. Grant, Thomas, Sherman, Sheridan, 
 give to history a new instance of a great 
 friendship between great warriors. 
 252 
 
Eulogy on Grant 
 
 Some future day a Napier will picture the 
 final drama : the breaking up of Lee's right 
 wing at Five Forks ; Lee's retreat ; Grant's 
 grim, relentless pursuit ; Sheridan, like a rag- 
 ing lion, heading off the fleeing armies, that 
 were wearied, worn, decimated, conquered ; 
 and, at the end, the modesty of the victorious 
 general ; the delicacy with which he ti'eated 
 his beaten foe; the humanity of the terms 
 given to the men — sent away with food, and 
 horses for their farms ; all this will form a 
 picture of War and of Peace. 
 
 Grant never forgot that the South was part 
 of his country. The moment that the South 
 lay panting and helpless upon the ground, he 
 carried himself with magnanimous and sym- 
 pathetic consideration. After the fall of Rich- 
 mond he quietly returned to Washington, 
 without entering the conquered capital. 
 
 When Johnston surrendered to Sherman 
 upon terms not agreeable to Lincoln, Stanton, 
 like a roaring lion fearing to lose its prey, sent 
 Grant to overrule the victor. Grant loved 
 Sherman, and was unwilling to enter his camp 
 lest he should seem to snatch from him the glory 
 of his illustrious campaign. From a near town 
 he enabled Sherman to reconstruct his terms, 
 and accept General Johnston's surrender. 
 253 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 When Lincoln was dead, Vice-President 
 Johnson became President; a man well fitted 
 for carrying on a fight, but not skilled in 
 peace. With a morbid sense of justice, he de- 
 termined that the leaders of rebellion should 
 be made to suffer as examples ; as if the death 
 of all the first-born, the desolation of every 
 Southern home, the impoverished condition 
 and bankruptcy of every citizen w^ere not ex- 
 ample enough ! He ordered Lee to be arrested. 
 Grant refused. When Johnson would have 
 employed the army to effect his purposes, 
 Grant, with quick but noble rebellion, refused 
 obedience to his superior, and, arranging to 
 take from his hands all military control, re- 
 pressed the President's wild temper and savage 
 purpose of a dishonouring justice. 
 
 Having brought the long and disastrous war 
 to a close, in his own heart Grant would have 
 chosen to have rested upon his laurels, and 
 lived a retired military life. It was not to be 
 permitted. He was called to the Presidency 
 by universal acclaim, and it fell to him to con- 
 duct a campaign of Reconstruction even more 
 burdensome than the war. 
 
 It would seem impossible to combine in one, 
 eminent civil and military genius. To a cer- 
 tain extent they have elements in common. 
 254 
 
Eulogy on Grant 
 
 But the predominant element in war is organ- 
 ized Force; of civil government, Influence. 
 Statesmanship is less brilliant than generalship, 
 but requires a different and a higher moral and 
 intellectual genius. God is frugal in creating 
 great men — men great enough to hold in em- 
 inence the elements of a great general and of 
 a great ruler. Washington was eminent in 
 statesmanship and a daring warrior — but then 
 he was not a great general : or, if he was, he 
 had no opportunity to develop the fact. 
 
 Alexander was a mere brutal fighter. 
 
 CsEsar as Emperor differed from Caesar as 
 General only as a sword sheathed differs from 
 a sword unsheathed. 
 
 Frederick the Great was simply a military 
 ruler. 
 
 Napoleon came near to combine the two 
 elements in the earlier period of his career, 
 but the genius of force gradually weakened 
 that sense of right and justice on which states- 
 manship must rest. 
 
 Grant had in him the elements of great 
 statesmanship ; but neither his education, nor 
 his training, nor the desperate necessities of 
 war, gave it a fair chance of development in a 
 condition of things which bewildered the 
 wisest statesmen. 
 
 255 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 The tangled skein of affairs would have 
 tasked a Cavour or a Bismarck. The Period 
 of Reconstruction is yet too near our war-in- 
 flamed eyes to be philosophically judged. 
 
 First came the disbanding of the army. 
 That was so easily done that the world has 
 never done justice to the marvel. The soldiers 
 of three great armies dropped their arms at the 
 word of command, dissolved their organiza- 
 tions, and disappeared. To-day the mightiest 
 force on earth — to-morrow they were not ! 
 As a summer storm darkens the whole heavens, 
 shakes the ground with its thunder, and 
 empties its quiver of lightning, and is gone in 
 an hour, as if it had never been, so was it with 
 both armies. Neither in the South nor in the 
 North was there a cabal of officers, nor any 
 affray of soldiers — for every soldier was yet 
 more a citizen. 
 
 In this resumption of citizen life, Grant, ac- 
 companied by his most brilliant generals, led the 
 way. He hated war, its very insignia, and in for- 
 eign lands refused to witness military pageants. 
 He had had enough of war. He loved peace. 
 
 When advanced to the Presidency, three 
 vital questions were to be solved. 
 
 I. The status of the four million emanci- 
 pated slaves. 
 
 256 
 
Eulogy on Grant 
 
 2. The adjustment of the political relations 
 of the dislocated States. 
 
 3, The restraint and control of that Gulf 
 Stream of finance which threatened to wash out 
 the foundations of honest industry, and which 
 brought to the Nation more moral mischief 
 than had the whole war itself. We are in 
 peril from golden quicksands yet. 
 
 Grant was eminently wise upon this ques- 
 tion. His Greenback veto saved the country 
 from a vitiated and corrupting circulation. 
 
 The exaltation of the domestic Africans to 
 immediate citizenship was the most audacious 
 act of faith that ever was witnessed. 
 
 Their fidelity to the duties of bondage was 
 most Christian. In all the war, knowing that 
 their emancipation was to be gained or lost, 
 there was never an insurrection, nor a recorded 
 instance of cruelty or insubordination. This 
 came not from cowardice ; for when, in the later 
 periods of the war, they were enlisted and drilled, 
 they made soldiers so brave as to extort ad- 
 miration and praise from prejudice itself. They 
 deserved their liberty for their good conduct. 
 
 But were they prepared for citizenship? 
 The safety of our civil economy rests upon the 
 intelligence of the citizen. But the slaves in 
 mass were greatly ignorant. 
 257 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 It was a political necessity to arm them with 
 the ballot as a means of self-defense. 
 
 In many of the Southern States a probation- 
 ary state would have been wiser, but in others 
 it would have remanded the freedmen to sub- 
 stantial bondage at the hands of the whites. 
 
 In this grand department of statesmanship 
 President Grant accepted the views of the 
 most eminent Republicans : Stanton, Chase, 
 Sumner, Thad. Stevens, Fessenden, Sherman, 
 Garfield, Conkling, Evarts, and of all the great 
 leaders. 
 
 In the readjustment of the pohtical relations 
 of the South he was wise, generous, and mag- 
 nanimous. Not a hne in letter, speech or 
 message can be found that would wound the 
 self-respect of Southern citizens. 
 
 When the dangerous heresy of a Greenback 
 currency had gained political power, and Con- 
 gress was disposed to open the flood-gates of 
 a rotten currency, his veto, an act of courage, 
 turned back the deluge and saved the land from 
 a whole generation of mischief. Had he done 
 but this one thing, he would have deserved 
 well of History. 
 
 The respects in which he fell below the line 
 of sound statesmanship — and these are not a 
 few — are to be attributed to the influence of ad- 
 258 
 
Eulogy on Grant 
 
 visers whom he had taken into his confidence. 
 Such was his loyalty to friendship that it must 
 be set down as a fault — a fault rarely found 
 among public men. 
 
 Many springs of mischief were opened which 
 still flow. When it was proposed to nominate 
 Grant for a third term, the real objections to 
 the movement among wise and dispassionate 
 men was not so much against Grant as against 
 the staff which would come in with him. 
 
 On the whole, if one considers the intrinsic 
 difficulty of the questions belonging to his ad- 
 ministration, the stormy days of pohtics and 
 parties during his eight years, it must be ad- 
 mitted that the country owes to his unselfish 
 disposition, to his general wisdom, to his un- 
 sullied integrity, if not the meed of wisest yet 
 the reputation of one who, preeminent in war, 
 was eminent in administration, more perhaps 
 by the wisdom of a noble nature than by that 
 intelligence which is bred only by experience. 
 Imperious counsellors and corrupt parasites 
 dimmed the light of his pohtical administra- 
 tion. 
 
 We turn from Grant's public life to his un- 
 
 restful private life. After a return from a tour 
 
 of the world, during which he met on all hands 
 
 a distinguished reception, he ventured upon 
 
 259 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 the dangerous road of speculation. The desire 
 of large wealth was deep-seated in Grant's 
 soul. His early experience of poverty had 
 probably taken away from it all romance. 
 Had wealth been sought by a legitimate pro- 
 duction of real property, he would have added 
 one more laurel to his career. But, with 
 childlike simplicity of ignorance, he committed 
 all he had to the wild chances of legalized 
 gambling. But a few days before the laumil- 
 iating crash came, he believed himself to be 
 worth three millions of dollars ! What service 
 had been rendered for it ? What equivalent 
 of industry, skill, productiveness, distribution 
 or convenience ? None. Did he never think 
 that this golden robe, with which he designed 
 to clothe his declining years, was woven of air, 
 was in its nature unsubstantial, and not rep- 
 utable? His success was a gorgeous bubble, 
 reflecting on its brilliant surface all the hues of 
 heaven, but which grew thinner as it swelled 
 larger. A touch dispelled the illusion, and left 
 him poor. 
 
 It is a significant proof of the impression 
 produced upon the public mind of the essential 
 honour of his mind, and of the simplicity of 
 his Ignorance of practical business, that the 
 whole Nation condoned his folly, and believed 
 260 
 
Eulogy on Grant 
 
 in his intentional honesty. But the iron had 
 entered his soul. That which all the hardships 
 of war, and the wearing anxieties of public 
 administration could not do, the shame and 
 bitterness of this great Bankruptcy achieved. 
 
 The resisting forces of his body gave way. 
 A disease in ambush sprang forth and carried 
 him captive. Patiently he sat in the region 
 and shadow of death. A mild heroism of 
 gentleness and patience hovered about him. 
 The iron will that had upheld him in all the 
 vicissitudes of war, still in a gracious guise 
 sustained his lingering hours. 
 
 His household love, never tarnished, never 
 abated, now roused him to one last heroic 
 achievement — to provide for the future of his 
 family. No longer were there golden hopes 
 for himself. The vision of wealth had 
 vanished. But love took its place, and under 
 weakness, pain and anguish, he wrought out a 
 history of his remarkable career. A kindly 
 hand administered the trust. It has amply 
 secured his loved household from want. 
 
 When the last lines were written, he lay 
 back upon his couch and breathed out his 
 great soul to God, whom he had worshipped 
 unostentatiously after the manner of his fathers. 
 
 A man he was without vices, with an 
 261 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 absolute hatred of lies, and an ineradicable 
 love of truth, of a perfect loyalty to friendship, 
 neither envious of others nor selfish for him- 
 self. With a zeal for the public good, un- 
 feigned, he has left to memory only such 
 weaknesses as connect him with humanity, and 
 such virtues as will rank him among heroes. 
 
 The tidings of his death, long expected, 
 gave a shock to the whole world. Govern- 
 ments, rulers, eminent statesmen and scholars 
 from all civilized nations gave sincere tokens 
 of sympathy. For the hour, sympathy rolled 
 as a wave over all our own land. It closed 
 the last furrow of war, it extinguished the last 
 prejudice, it effaced the last vestige of hatred 
 — and cursed be the hand that shall bring 
 them back ! 
 
 Confederate Johnston and Buckner on one 
 side, Federal Sherman and Sheridan upon the 
 other of his bier, he has come to his tomb 
 a silent symbol that Liberty had conquered 
 Slavery ; Patriotism, Rebellion ; and Peace, 
 War. 
 
 He rests in peace. No drum or cannon 
 shall disturb him more. 
 
 Sleep, Hero, until another trumpet shall 
 shake the heavens and the earth. Then come 
 forth to glory in immortality ! 
 262 
 
IX 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN' 
 
 THERE is no historic figure more noble 
 than that of the Jewish lawgiver. After 
 so many thousand years the figure of Moses 
 is not diminished, but stands up against the 
 background of early days distinct and indi- 
 vidual as if he had lived but yesterday. There 
 is scarcely another event in history more 
 touching than his death. He had borne the 
 great burdens of state for forty years, shaped 
 the Jews to a nation, filled out their civil 
 and reHgious polity, administered their laws, 
 guided their steps, or dealt with them in all 
 their journeyings in the wilderness ; had 
 mourned in their punishment, kept step with 
 
 ' At Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, Sunday morning, April 
 23, 1865. Mr. Beecher, returning with the steamer's guests 
 from the Fort Sumter flag raising of April 14th, met in New 
 York the fatal news of the President's assassination. He 
 went direct to Peekskill, and the following Sunday gave 
 this discourse. His text wtLS Deuisronomy xxxiv. 1-5, — the 
 brief account of how Moses was led by the Lord to the top 
 of Mount Pisgah, whence he viewed the promised land of 
 Canaan, before his death there in the mountain. 
 263 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 their march, and led them in wars until the 
 end of their labours drew nigh. The last 
 stage was reached. Jordan, only, lay between 
 them and the " promised land." 
 
 The Promised Land ! O what yearnings 
 had heaved his breast for that divinely fore- 
 shadowed place ! He had dreamed of it by 
 night, and mused by day ; it was holy and 
 endeared as God's favoured spot. It was to 
 be the cradle of an illustrious history. All his 
 long, laborious, and now weary life, he had 
 aimed at this as the consummation of every 
 desire, the reward of every toil and pain. 
 Then came the word of the Lord to him : 
 " Thou mayest not go over. Get thee up into 
 the mountain ; look upon it ; and die ! " 
 
 From that silent summit the hoary leader 
 gazed to the north, to the south, to the west 
 with hungry eyes. The dim outlines rose up. 
 The hazy recesses spoke of quiet valleys be- 
 tween hills. With eager longing, with sad 
 resignation, he looked upon the promised 
 land. It was now to him a forbidden land. 
 This was but a moment's anguish ; he forgot 
 all his personal wants, and drank in the vision 
 of his people's home. His work was done. 
 There lay God's promise, fulfilled. There was 
 the seat of coming Jerusalem ; there the city 
 264 
 
Abraham Lincoln 
 
 of Judah's King; the sphere of judges and 
 prophets; the Mount of sorrow and salvation; 
 the nest whence were to fly blessings innu- 
 merable to all mankind. Joy chased sadness 
 from every feature, and the prophet laid him 
 down, and died. 
 
 Again a great leader of the people has 
 passed through toil, sorrow, battle, and war, 
 and come near to the promised land of peace, 
 into which he might not pass over. Who 
 shall recount our martyr's sufferings for this 
 people ! Since the November of 1 860, his hori- 
 zon has been black with storms. By day and 
 by night he trod a way of danger and darkness. 
 On his shoulders rested a government dearer 
 to him than his own hfe. At its integrity mil- 
 lions of men at home were striking ; upon it 
 foreign eyes lowered. It stood like a lone 
 island in a sea full of storms; and every tide 
 and wave seemed eager to devour it. Upon 
 thousands of hearts great sorrows and anxieties 
 have rested, but not on one, such, and in such 
 measure, as upon that simple, truthful, noble 
 soul, our faithful and sainted Lincoln. Never 
 rising to the enthusiasm of more impassioned 
 natures in hours of hope, and never sinking 
 with the mercurial in hours of defeat to the 
 depths of despondency, he held on with un- 
 265 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 movable patience and fortitude, putting cau- 
 tion against hope that it might not be prema- 
 ture, and hope against caution that it might 
 not yield to dread and danger. He wrestled 
 ceaselessly, through four black and dreadful 
 purgatorial years, wherein God was cleansing 
 the sins of His people as by fire. 
 
 At last the watcher beheld the gray dawn 
 for the country. The mountains began to 
 give forth their forms from out of the dark- 
 ness ; and the East came rushing towards us 
 with arms full of joy for all our sorrows. Then 
 it was for him to be glad exceedingly, that had 
 sorrowed immeasurably. Peace could bring 
 to no other heart such joy, such rest, such 
 honour, such trust, such gratitude. But he 
 looked upon it as Moses looked upon the 
 promised land. 
 
 Then the wail of a nation proclaimed that 
 he had gone from among us. 
 
 Not thine the sorrow, but ours, sainted 
 soul ! Thou hast indeed entered into the 
 promised land, while we are yet on the march. 
 To us remain the rocking of the deep, the 
 storm upon the land, days of duty and nights 
 of watching ; but thou art sphered high above 
 all darkness and fear, beyond all sorrow and 
 weariness. Rest, O weary heart! Rejoice 
 266 
 
Abraham Lincoln 
 
 exceedingly, thou that hast enough suffered ! 
 Thou hast beheld Him who invisibly led thee 
 in this great wilderness. Thou standest among 
 the elect. Around thee are the royal men 
 that have ennobled human life in every age. 
 Kingly art thou, with glory on thy brow as a 
 diadem. And joy is upon thee forevermore. 
 Over all this land, over all the little cloud of 
 years that now from thine infinite horizon 
 moves back as a speck, thou art lifted up as 
 high as a star is above the clouds, that hide us 
 but never reach it. In the goodly company 
 of Mount Zion thou shalt find that rest which 
 thou hast sorrowing sought here in vain ; and 
 thy name, an everlasting name in heaven, 
 shall flourish in fragrance and beauty as long 
 as men shall last upon the earth, or hearts re- 
 main, to revere truth, fidelity, and goodness. 
 Never did two such orbs of experience meet 
 in one hemisphere, as the joy and the sorrow 
 of the same week in this land. The joy of 
 final victory was as sudden as if no man had 
 expected it, and as entrancing as if it had fallen 
 a sphere from heaven. It rose up over so- 
 briety, and swept business from its moorings, 
 and ran down through the land in irresistible 
 course. Men embraced each other in brother- 
 hood that were strangers in the flesh. They 
 267 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 sang, or prayed, or, deeper yet, many could 
 only think thanksgiving and weep gladness. 
 That peace was sure ; that our government was 
 firmer than ever ; that the land was cleansed of 
 plague ; that the ages were opening to our 
 footsteps, and we were to begin a march of 
 blessings ; that blood was staunched, and scowl- 
 ing enmities were sinking like storms beneath 
 the horizon ; that the dear fatherland, nothing 
 lost, much gained, was to rise up in unex- 
 ampled honour among the nations of the 
 earth, — these thoughts, and that undistinguish- 
 able throng of fancies, and hopes, and desires, 
 and yearnings, that filled the soul with trem- 
 blings like the heated air of midsummer days, — 
 all these kindled up such a surge of joy as no 
 words may describe. 
 
 In one hour, under the blow of a single be- 
 reavement, joy lay without a pulse, without a 
 gleam, or breath. A sorrow came that swept 
 through the land as huge storms sweep through 
 the forest and field, rolling thunder along the 
 sky, dishevelling the flowers, daunting every 
 singer in thicket or forest, and pouring black- 
 ness and darkness across the land and upon 
 the mountains. Did ever so many hearts, in 
 so brief a time, touch two such boundless feel- 
 ings ? It was the uttermost of joy ; it was 
 268 
 
Abraham Lincoln 
 
 the uttermost of sorrow ; — noon and midnight 
 without a space between ! 
 
 The blow brought not a sharp pang. It 
 was so terrible that at first it stunned sensibility. 
 Citizens were Uke men awakened at midnight 
 by an earthquake, and bewildered to find every- 
 thing that they were accustomed to trust 
 wavering and falling. The very earth was no 
 longer solid. The first feeling was the least. 
 Men waited to get straight to feel. They 
 wandered in the streets as if groping after 
 some impending dread, or undeveloped sorrow, 
 or some one to tell them what ailed them. 
 They met each other as if each would ask the 
 other, " Am I awake, or do I dream ? " There 
 was a piteous helplessness. Strong men bowed 
 down and wept. Other and common griefs 
 belonged to some one in chief; this belonged 
 to all. It was each and every man's. Every 
 virtuous household in the land felt as if its 
 first-born were gone. Men were bereaved, and 
 walked for days as if a corpse lay unburied in 
 their dweUings. There was nothing else to 
 think of. They could speak of nothing but 
 that ; and yet, of that they could speak only 
 falteringly. All business was laid aside. 
 Pleasure forgot to smile. The great city for 
 nearly a week ceased to roar. The huge 
 269 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 Leviathan lay down and was still. Even 
 avarice stood still, and greed was strangely 
 moved to generous sympathy and universal 
 sorrow. Rear to his name monuments, found 
 charitable institutions, and write his name 
 above their lintels; but no monument will ever 
 equal the universal, spontaneous, and sublime 
 sorrow that in a moment swept down lines 
 and parties, and covered up animosities, and 
 in an hour brought a divided people into unity 
 of grief and indivisible fellowship of anguish. 
 
 For myself, I cannot yet command that 
 quietness of spirit needed for a just and tem- 
 perate delineation of a man whom goodness 
 has made great. Leaving that, if it please God, 
 to some other occasion, I pass to some con- 
 siderations aside from the martyr-President's 
 character which may be fit for this hour's 
 instruction. 
 
 And first, let us not mourn that his depar- 
 ture was so sudden, nor fill our imagination 
 with horror at its method. Men, long eluding 
 and evading sorrow, when at last they are 
 overtaken by it seem enchanted and seek to 
 make their sorrow sorrowful to the very utter- 
 most, and to bring out every drop of suffering 
 which they possibly can. This is not Christian, 
 though it may be natural. When good men 
 270 
 
Abraham Lincoln 
 
 pray for deliverance from sudden death, it is 
 only that they may not be plunged without 
 preparation, all disrobed, into the presence of 
 their Judge. When one is ready to depart 
 suddenness of death is a blessing. It is a 
 painful sight to see a tree overthrown by a 
 tornado, wrenched from its foundations, and 
 broken down like a weed ; but it is yet more 
 painful to see a vast and venerable tree linger- 
 ing with vain strife against decay, which age 
 and infirmity have marked for destruction. 
 The process by which strength wastes, and the 
 mind is obscured, and the tabernacle is taken 
 down, is humiliating and painful; and it is 
 good and grand when a man departs to his 
 rest from out of the midst of duty, full-armed 
 and strong, with pulse beating time. For 
 such a one to go suddenly, if he be prepared 
 to go, is but to terminate a most noble life in 
 its most noble manner. Mark the words of 
 the Master : 
 
 " Let your loins be girded about, and your 
 lights burning ; and ye yourselves hke unto 
 men that wait for their lord, when he will 
 return from the wedding ; that when he cometh 
 and knocketh, they may open unto him im- 
 mediately. Blessed are those servants whom 
 the Lord when He cometh shall find watching." 
 271 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 Not they that go in a stupor, but they that 
 go with all their powers about them, and wide- 
 awake, to meet their Master, as to a wedding, 
 are blessed. He died watching. He died 
 with his armour on. In the midst of hours of 
 labour, in the very heart of patriotic consulta- 
 tions, just returned from camps and counsels, 
 he was stricken down. No fever dried his 
 blood. No slow waste consumed him. All 
 at once, in full strength and manhood, with 
 his girdle tight about him, he departed ; and 
 walks with God. 
 
 Nor was the manner of his death more 
 shocking, if we divest it of the malignity of 
 the motives which caused it. The mere in- 
 strument itself is not one that we should shrink 
 from contemplating. Have not thousands of 
 soldiers fallen on the field of battle by the 
 bullets of the enemy ? Is being killed in 
 battle counted to be a dreadful mode of dying ? 
 It was as if he had died in battle. Do not all 
 soldiers that must fall ask to depart in the 
 hour of battle and of victory ? He went in 
 the hour of victory. 
 
 There has not been a poor drummer-boy in 
 
 all this war that has fallen for whom the great 
 
 heart of Lincoln would not have bled ; there 
 
 has not been one private soldier, without note 
 
 272 
 
Abraham Lincoln 
 
 or name, slain among thousands and hid in 
 the pit among hundreds, without even the 
 memorial of a separate burial, for whom the 
 President would not have wept. He was a 
 man from the common people who never for- 
 got his kind. And now that he who might 
 not bear the march, and the toil, and the battle 
 with these humble citizens has been called to 
 die by the bullet, as they were, do you not feel 
 that there was a peculiar fitness to his nature 
 and hfe that he should in death be joined with 
 them in a final common experience to whom 
 he had been joined in all his sympathies ? 
 
 For myself, when any event is susceptible 
 of a higher and nobler garnishing, I know not 
 what that disposition is that should seek to 
 drag it down to the depths of gloom, and 
 write it all over with the scrawls of horror or 
 fear. I let the light of nobler thoughts fall 
 upon his departure, and bless God that there 
 is some argument of consolation in the matter 
 and manner of his going, as there was in the 
 matter and manner of his staying. 
 
 Then, again, this blow was but the expiring 
 rebellion. As a miniature gives all the form 
 and features of its subject, so, epitomized in 
 this foul act, we find the whole nature and 
 disposition of slavery. It begins in a wanton 
 273 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 destruction of all human rights, and in a dese- 
 cration of all the sanctities of heart and home ; 
 and it is the universal enemy of mankind, and 
 of God, who made man. It can be maintained 
 only at the sacrifice of every right moral feel- 
 ing in its abettors and upholders. I deride 
 him who points me to any one bred amid 
 slavery, believing in it, and willingly practic- 
 ing it, and tells me that he is a man. I shall 
 find saints in perdition sooner than I shall find 
 true manhood under the influences of so ac- 
 cursed a system as this. It is a two-edged 
 sword, cutting both ways, violently destroying 
 manhood in the oppressed, and insidiously 
 destroying manhood in the oppressor. The 
 problem is solved, the demonstration is com- 
 pleted in our land. Slavery wastes its victims, 
 and it destroys the masters. It kills public 
 morality, and the possibility of it. It corrupts 
 manhood in its very centre and elements. 
 Communities in which it exists are not to be 
 trusted. They are rotten. Nor can you find 
 timber grown in this accursed soil of iniquity 
 that is fit to build our Ship of State, or lay the 
 foundation of our households. The patriotism 
 that grows up under this blight, when put to 
 proof, is selfish and brittle ; and he that leans 
 upon it shall be pierced. The honour that 
 274 
 
Abraham Lincoln 
 
 grows up in the midst of slavery is not honour, 
 but a bastard quahty that usurps the place of 
 its better, only to disgrace the name. And, as 
 long as there is conscience, or reason, or 
 Christianity, the honour that slavery begets 
 will be a byword and a hissing. The whole 
 moral nature of men reared to familiarity and 
 connivance with slavery is death-smitten. The 
 needless rebellion ; the treachery of its leaders 
 to oaths and solemn trusts ; their violation of 
 the commonest principles of fidelity, sitting in 
 senates, in councils, in places of public confi- 
 dence only to betray and to destroy ; the long, 
 general, and unparallelled cruelty to prisoners, 
 without provocation, and utterly without ex- 
 cuse; the unreasoning malignity and fierce- 
 ness, — these all mark the symptoms of that 
 disease of slavery, which is a deadly poison to 
 soul and body. 
 
 I do not say that there are not single na- 
 tures, here and there, scattered through the 
 vast wilderness which is covered with this 
 poisonous vine, who escaped the poison. 
 There are; but they are not to be found 
 among the men that believe in it, and that 
 have been moulded by it. They are the ex- 
 ceptions. Slavery is itself barbarity. That 
 nation which cherishes it is barbarous ; and 
 275 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 no outside tinsel or glitter can redeem it from 
 the charge of barbarism. And it was fit that 
 its expiring blow should be such as to take 
 away from men the last forbearance, the last 
 pity, and fire the soul with an invincible de- 
 termination that the breeding-ground of such 
 mischiefs and monsters shall be utterly and 
 forever destroyed. 
 
 We needed not that he should put on paper 
 that he believed in slavery, who, with treason, 
 with murder, with cruelty infernal, hovered 
 around that majestic man to destroy his Hfe. 
 He was himself but the long sting with which 
 slavery struck at liberty ; and he carried the 
 poison that belonged to slavery. As long as 
 this Nation lasts, it will never be forgotten that 
 we have had one martyred President — never ! 
 Never, while time lasts, while heaven lasts, 
 while hell rocks and groans, will it be for- 
 gotten that slavery, by its minions, slew him, 
 and in slaying him made manifest its whole 
 nature and tendency. 
 
 But another thing for us to remember is 
 that this blow was aimed at the life of the 
 Government and of the Nation. Lincoln was 
 slain ; America was meant. The man was 
 cast down ; the Government was smitten at. 
 It was the President who was killed. It was 
 376 
 
Abraham Lincoln 
 
 national life, breathing freedom and meaning 
 beneficence, that was sought. He, the man 
 of Illinois, the private man, divested of robes 
 and the insignia of authority, representing 
 nothing but his personal self, might have been 
 hated ; but that would not have called forlli 
 the murderer's blow. It was because he stood 
 in the place of Government, representing gov- 
 ernment and a government that represented 
 right and liberty, that he was singled out. 
 
 This, then, is a crime against universal gov- 
 ernment. It is not a blow at the foundations 
 of our Government, more than at tlie founda- 
 tions of the English government, of the French 
 government, of every compacted and well- 
 organized government. It was a crime against 
 mankind. The whole world will repudiate and 
 stigmatize it as a deed without a shade of re- 
 deeming light. For this was not the op- 
 pressed, goaded to extremity, turning on his 
 oppressor. Not even the shadow of a cloud 
 of wrong has rested on the South, and they 
 know it right well. 
 
 In a council held in the city of Charleston, 
 just preceding the attack on Fort Sumter, two 
 commissioners were appointed to go to Wash- 
 ington; one on the part of the army from 
 Fort Sumter, and one on the part of the 
 277 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 Confederates. The lieutenant that was desig- 
 nated to go for us said it seemed to him 
 that it would be of little use for him to go, as 
 his opinion was immovably fixed in favour of 
 maintaining the government in whose service 
 he was employed. Then Governor Pickens 
 took him aside, detaining for an hour and a 
 half the railroad train that was to convey them 
 on their errand. He opened to him the whole 
 plan and secrets of the Southern conspiracy, 
 and said to him, distinctly and repeatedly (for 
 it was needful, he said, to lay aside disguises), 
 that the South had never been wronged, and 
 that all their pretenses of grievance in the 
 matter of tariffs, or anything else, were invalid. 
 " But," said he, " we must carry the people 
 with us ; and we allege these things, as all 
 statesmen do many things they do not believe, 
 because they are the only instruments by which 
 the people can be managed." He then and 
 there declared that it had simply come to this : 
 that the two sections of country were so 
 antagonistic in ideas and policies that they 
 could not live together ; that it was fore- 
 ordained that, on account of differences in 
 ideas and policies, Northern and Southern 
 men must keep apart. This is testimony 
 which was given by one of the leaders in the 
 278 
 
Abraham Lincoln 
 
 Rebellion,- and which will probably, ere long, 
 be given under hand and seal to the public. 
 So the South has never had wrongs visited 
 upon it except by that which was inherent in 
 it. 
 
 This was not, then, the avenging hand of 
 one goaded by tyranny. It was not a despot 
 turned on by his victim. It was the venomous 
 hatred of liberty wielded by an avowed advo- 
 cate of slavery. And, though there may have 
 been cases of murder in which there were 
 shades of palliation, yet this murder was with- 
 out provocation, without temptation, without 
 reason, sprung from the fury of a heart 
 cankered to all that was just and good, and 
 corrupted by all that was wicked and foul. 
 
 The blow, however, has signally failed. 
 The cause is not stricken ; it is strengthened. 
 This Nation has dissolved — but in tears only. 
 It stands, four-square, more solid, to-day, than 
 any pyramid in Egypt. This people are 
 neither wasted, nor daunted, nor disordered. 
 Men hate slavery and love liberty with 
 stronger hate and love to-day than ever before. 
 The Government is not weakened, it is made 
 stronger. How naturally and easily were the 
 ranks closed ! Another stepped forward, in 
 the hour that the one fell, to take his place 
 279 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 and his mantle ; and I utter my trust that he 
 will be found a man true to every instinct of 
 liberty ; true to the whole trust that is reposed 
 in him ; vigilant of the Constitution ; careful of 
 the laws ; wise for liberty in that he himself, 
 through his life, has known what it was to 
 suffer from the stings of slavery, and to prize 
 liberty from bitter personal experiences. 
 
 Where could the head of government in any 
 monarchy be smitten down by the hand of an 
 assassin, and the funds not quiver nor fall one- 
 half of one per cent. ? After a long period of 
 national disturbance, after four years of 
 drastic war, after tremendous drafts on the 
 resources of the country, in the height and top 
 of our burdens, the heart of this people is 
 such that now, when the head of government 
 is stricken down, the public funds do not 
 waver, but stand as the granite ribs in our 
 mountains. Republican institutions have been 
 vindicated in this experience as they never 
 were before ; and the whole history of the last 
 four years, rounded up by this cruel stroke, 
 seems now in the providence of God to have 
 been clothed with an illustration, with a 
 sympathy, with an aptness, and with a signif- 
 icance, such as we never could have expected 
 or imagined. God, I think, has said, by the 
 280 
 
Abraham Lincoln 
 
 voice of this event, to all nations of the earth, 
 " Republican liberty, based upon true Chris- 
 tianity, is firm as the foundation of the globe." 
 Even he who now sleeps has, by this event, 
 been clothed with new influence. Dead, he 
 speaks to men who now willingly hear what 
 before they refused to listen to. Now, his 
 simple and weighty words will be gathered 
 like those of Washington, and your children 
 and your children's children shall be taught to 
 ponder the simplicity and deep wisdom of 
 utterances which, in their time, passed, in the 
 party heat, as idle words. Men will receive a 
 new impulse of patriotism for his sake, and 
 will guard with zeal the whole country which 
 he loved so well ; I swear you, on the altar of 
 his memory, to be more faithful to the coun- 
 try for which he has perished. Men will, as 
 they follow his hearse, swear a new hatred to 
 that slavery against which he warred, and 
 which in vanquishing him has made him a 
 martyr and a conqueror ; I swear you, by the 
 memory of this martyr, to hate slavery with 
 an unappeasable hatred. Men will admire and 
 imitate his unmoved firmness, his inflexible 
 conscience for the right, and yet his gentle- 
 ness, as tender as a woman's, his moderation of 
 spirit, which not all the heat of party could in- 
 281 
 
Lectures and Orations 
 
 flame, nor all the jars and disturbances of this 
 country shake out of its place ; I swear you to 
 an emulation of his justice, his moderation and 
 his mercy. 
 
 You I can comfort ; but how can I speak to 
 that twilight million to whom his name was as 
 the name of an angel of God ? There will be 
 wailing in places which no ministers shall be 
 able to reach. When, in hovel and in cot, in 
 wood and in wilderness, in the field through- 
 out the South, the dusky children, who looked 
 upon him as that Moses whom God sent before 
 them to lead them out of the land of bondage, 
 learn that he has fallen, who shall comfort 
 them? Oh, Thou Shepherd of Israel, that 
 didst comfort Thy people of old, to Thy care 
 we commit the helpless, the long-wronged, and 
 grieved ! 
 
 And now the martyr is moving in triumphal 
 march, mightier than when alive.' The Nation 
 rises up at every stage of his coming. Cities 
 and States are his pallbearers, and the cannon 
 beats the hours with solemn progression. 
 Dead — dead — dead — he yet speaketh ! Is 
 Washington dead? Is Hampden dead? Is 
 
 ' The funeral journey, conveying Lincoln's body from 
 Washington to Illinois, was fourteen days in progress. 
 Assassinated on April 14th, he was buried on May 4, l865_ 
 282 
 
Abraham Lincoln 
 
 David dead ? Is any man dead that ever was 
 fit to live? Disenthralled of flesh, and risen 
 to the unobstructed sphere where passion 
 never comes, he begins his illimitable work. 
 His life now is grafted upon the Infinite, and 
 will be fruitful as no earthly life can be. Pass 
 on, thou that hast overcome ! Your sorrows, 
 O people, are his peace ! Your bells, and 
 bands, and muffled drums sound triumph in 
 his ear. Wail and weep here ; God makes it 
 echo joy and triumph there. Pass on, thou 
 victor ! 
 
 Four years ago, O Illinois, we took from 
 your midst an untried man, and from among 
 the people; we return him to you a mighty 
 conqueror. Not thine any more, but the 
 Nation's ; not ours, but the world's. Give him 
 place, ye prairies ! In the midst of this great 
 Continent his dust shall rest, a sacred treasure 
 to myriads who shall make pilgrimage to that 
 shrine to kindle anew their zeal and patriotism. 
 Ye winds, that move over the mighty places 
 of the West, chant his requiem ! Ye people, 
 behold a martyr, whose blood, as so many 
 articulate words, pleads for fidelity, for law, 
 for hberty ! 
 
 283 
 
Appendix 
 
 PATRIOTISM ABOVE PARTY 
 
 [In 1884, the public were intent upon two es- 
 pecial reforms, — one, of the inequalities and inef- 
 ficiencies of the Tariff, by which the Republican 
 party in its long lease of power was thought to 
 have been corrupted ; the other, of the methods of 
 appointment to positions in the Civil Service, 
 wherein naturally the party in power were held to 
 be the offenders in the wide-spread official demor- 
 alization of that time. Many Republicans were 
 urgent for these reforms, and of course their 
 political opponents, the Democrats, were vociferous 
 for them. 
 
 Thus, both parties became in their platforms 
 committed to the same lines of promised better- 
 ment, and the probability or improbability of 
 reform was to be looked for in their Presidential 
 candidates. The Republican candidate was James 
 G. Blaine; the Democratic candidate, Grover 
 Cleveland. Mr. Blaine's public career did not 
 satisfy the reforming element of his own party, 
 while Mr. Cleveland's course commended him to 
 284 
 
Patriotism Above Party 
 
 the Democrats (except of the New York Tam- 
 many type) and to many of the Republicans, who 
 supported — and elected him. 
 
 Among the Independent Republicans was Mr. 
 Beecher, who wrote and spoke for Cleveland, and, 
 when charged with treason to the Republican 
 party, made the following campaign speech in 
 Brooklyn, in October, 1884. The newspaper 
 report, with its interpolations of what the audience 
 thought about it, is allowed to stand. It is an 
 example of Mr. Beecher's aptitude in popular 
 appeal.] 
 
 I confess, at the risk of the imputation of some 
 immodesty, that my appearance here to-night to 
 antagonize the organized action of the Republican 
 party, is itself a fact of the most significant char- 
 acter. Before many of you were born I was 
 rocking the cradle of the Republican party. {Ap- 
 plause.'l I fought its early battles when it was in 
 an apparently hopeless minority. I advocated its 
 cause, speaking day and night, at the risk of my 
 health and of my life itself \applause\ when 
 Fremont was our first notable candidate. When 
 Mr. Lincoln \cheers\ became our candidate I gave 
 all I had of time, strength, influence, and persua- 
 sion, and when his election was ascertained and 
 efforts were made to intimidate the North and 
 to prevent his being chaired, I went up and down 
 through this country stifi'ening the backs of willow- 
 28s 
 
Appendix 
 
 backed patriots. \Applause and laughter. ^ I 
 faced mobs, I preached day and night in my own 
 church, to hold the North up to its own rights and 
 interests. When the war broke out I sent to it the 
 only boy I had big enough to hold a musket 
 {applause^ and it greatly grieved my oldest child, 
 a daughter, that she was not a boy. [Laughter and 
 applause. 'I As the war went on my contribution 
 could not be much, but such as it v/as I gave it — I 
 gave it as a mother gives her breast to her child. 
 [Renewed applause. "^ 
 
 And when, seeking some rest from exhausting 
 cares and labours, I went abroad, I did not suffer 
 the grass to grow under my feet, but in the face of 
 royalty and aristocracy and of great wealth in 
 England I upheld the justice and the rectitude of 
 the cause for which we were all striving. [Great 
 applause."] And at every canvass from that day 
 to this I have not held back health, strength or 
 influence. Why, then, is it that I am now opposed 
 to the organized movement of the Republican 
 party ? That is a significant question. For, gen- 
 tlemen, I have never fed on official pap. [Laughter 
 and applause.] I have never asked a favour for 
 myself, nor could one be given me. I would not 
 take a seat in the Senate of the United States, even 
 if I could get it, and I fear that I am too good a 
 man' to get it. [Great laughter.] Pardon me 
 some little vanity when I say that I regard the 
 platform of Plymouth Church as unspeakably 
 286 
 
Patriotism Above Party- 
 higher than the Presidency of these United States — 
 for me, not for others. [^Renewed laughter and 
 applause. ^ 
 
 I am now opposing the party whose cradle I 
 rocked, because I do not mean to be a pall-bearer 
 to carry the coffin of that party to the grave. 
 \_Applause.'\ Gentlemen, the Republican party is 
 on its way to destruction, unless you turn the 
 switch and run it on a side track. \Laughter.'\ 
 And by all my love of my country — and it is next 
 to my love of my God — by all my pride in the 
 past — I feel bound to do whatever God will inspire 
 me to do to stop the ruinous progress of the Re- 
 publican party and to save.it. \_Applause.'\ 
 
 It behooves you, therefore, not to make mere 
 amusement of the work of this evening. I speak to 
 you as to a jury. The case before you is not that 
 of some trembling culprit, or some wronged citizen 
 seeking redress. It is your whole country that is 
 before you to-night, whose cause I am to plead — to 
 plead as if life or death hung on the issues. \Ap- 
 plause.'\ I am in dead earnest. It is very natural 
 that men working through a political party should 
 by and by come to look upon all events in the com- 
 munity in their relation to party welfare and party 
 success. But I, who have had nothing to do with 
 parties, except as moral instruments, naturally look 
 upon their movements and purposes from the moral 
 standpoint. What are they attempting to do for 
 this great people ? What does their success mean ? 
 287 
 
Appendix 
 
 How does it stand alongside the intelligence, the 
 morality, the true religion of this people, alongside 
 that patriotism which rests its feet on morality, but 
 whose head stands in the spirituality which con- 
 nects man with God? {^Great applause."] I 
 study public affairs from the moral and religious 
 standpoint, and that which is offensive to God may 
 I never live to see the day when it may be accept- 
 able to me and to my countrymen. [Renewed 
 applause.] 
 
 Looking forward, as the pilot looks, what are our 
 perils? The war is over. The great questions 
 that agitated the community are past. You can't 
 bring them back. There are, however, two great 
 dangers that betide our Government! One is the 
 danger that comes from the corrupt use of wealth ; 
 the other, that which comes from the corruption of 
 too-long-held power. \_Great applause.] It is a 
 common proverb, " An honest man can bear 
 watching — a dishonest man needs it." [Laughter.] 
 This is just as true of politics as of common pro- 
 cedure. This is the age of enterprise, of produc- 
 tion, of commerce — of money. All the world is a 
 great buzzing factory, and the making of money 
 stands, of all things, the most conspicuous to the 
 visual sense. Russia, Austria and France failed in 
 their greatest recent wars and enterprises because 
 those countries were honeycombed with official 
 corruption. We are in danger from the same cause. 
 The heavens rain gold on us ; every drop of our 
 288 
 
Patriotism Above Party 
 
 summer showers is worth more than a dollar to us. 
 The annual increase of wages among the labouring 
 people is over ;?7oo,ooo,ooo, and they are taxed 
 ^1,200,000 a year ! Yet we have an organization 
 calling itself a " protection to the working man ! " 
 It is a great scheme of taxation that rolls ^4,000,000,- 
 000 a year into the reservoirs at Washington, and 
 $100,000,000 stagnates there uselessly, besides ex- 
 haling an atmosphere of corruption. [App/ause.] 
 
 It would be strange indeed if some of this golden 
 water in the mill-dam of Washington were not em- 
 ployed to grind out votes to-day for the " old Re- 
 publican party." It is! One of the greatest 
 dangers of our day is bribery. Voters are bribed. 
 Thousands of men carry their hands open for their 
 dollar or their two dollars, and put their vote in for 
 that price and then wipe their smudged faces and 
 go home and say their regular prayers. [^Laughfer.'] 
 Men who wish to go to the Legislature know how 
 it is. "Money makes the mare go" — and the 
 legislator! [_Zaughfer.^ It is scarcely possible 
 for a man to go to the United States Senate unless 
 he or his friends have the quid pro quo. Now and 
 then there is a Sumner, but they don't grow on 
 every bush. [Laughter.'] The Senators from 
 Kansas, from Nevada, from California, are not 
 suffered to go to Washington at their own expenses; 
 or, if at their own expenses, they take care of those 
 that send them there. [^Laughter.] Our very 
 courts often receive upon their benches judges 
 289 
 
Appendix 
 
 placed there by the influence of gain — not for 
 themselves, for I believe them as a body to be just 
 men, but their friends use inducements by which 
 they are sent to the bench. 
 
 To-day it is sought to buy a candidate into the 
 Presidential chair with money. I have been cred- 
 ibly informed that between one and two million 
 dollars have been rolled west to gild the State of 
 Ohio, and a like stream is pouring into Indiana. 
 My early life was spent in Indiana, my elder chil- 
 dren were born there, and, in my heart, a Hoosier 
 is, as it were, a brother to me, and anything that 
 is good for Indiana pleases me. When, therefore, 
 in the last conflict of 1880 word came that Dorsey 
 had succeeded in carrying that State for the Re- 
 publican party, I felt so grateful that I told Mr. 
 Murphy that I would be glad to go to a public din- 
 ner in honour of Mr. Dorsey, and I went — innocent 
 as I was! \_Greaf laughter."^ I think that confi- 
 dence in my fellow men and generosity have been 
 the occasion of more of my trips and downfalls 
 than any vices or any other off'enses. [Renewed 
 laughter and applause^ 
 
 When I see Mr. Dudley abandoning his duties 
 ill Washington and distributing money with an un- 
 shamed hand — willing to acknowledge that he is 
 doing it — I say that the thing is coming very 
 nearly home to me, and that one great danger in 
 the near future is that we shall have a Government 
 that will be honeycombed with pecuniary corrup- 
 290 
 
Patriotism Above Party 
 
 tion. What a rush there is for gold ! How im- 
 patient are men become of homely industry — how 
 eager for unearned properties — how eager for spec- 
 ulation, which is, in the main, an attempt to cheat 
 the devil. [Laughter. "l Who can count the repu- 
 table thieves that have stolen trust funds and run 
 off with bonds committed to their custody — presi- 
 dents, cashiers, directors, clerks, agents ; this one 
 a leading deacon, that one a Sunday-school super- 
 intendent; all of them Christians ! \_Great laugh- 
 ter. ^ Oh, if Christ were here, would He not again 
 begin to drive out from the temple of our liberty 
 the money-changers and those who sold doves and 
 oxen and asses — and men ! 
 
 Now, under such circumstances, I ask you, 
 which man will be the most likely to meet and re- 
 sist this cankerous tendency — Mr. Blaine or Mr. 
 Cleveland? [Tremendous enthusiasm and cheers 
 for Cleveland^ What would Mr. Blaine do for 
 the reform ? He would not allow Mr. Dudley to 
 forsake the Pension Bureau in order to teach the 
 people to worship the golden calf. — Would he? 
 [Laughter. '\ He would not allow Congress to do- 
 nate lands to railroads. — Would he? [Renewed 
 laughter. "[ He would seize the Pacific Railroads 
 by the throat and help Thurman and Edmunds to 
 drag them to settlement. — Wouldn't he ? [Great 
 laughter. '\ 
 
 What is the tone of moral sense of people who, 
 when a body of men are anxious to redeem the 
 291 
 
Appendix 
 
 Government from corruption, or to prevent it, call 
 them dudes and Pharisees ? — as if to seek to stem 
 the tide of corruption was to say, " I am holier 
 than thou; I am a Pharisee." Who was the 
 Pharisee ? In the earlier day he was the Puritan 
 of the Jews. The Pharisees were the men that in 
 the Babylonish captivity undertook to keep their 
 ovvn people from idolatry, and to hold them to the 
 worship of Jehovah. They were the Puritans of 
 the Orient, as the Enghsh were the Puritans of the 
 Occident. It was the Puritan that gave liberty to 
 old England, and it was the Puritan that brought 
 liberty to New England and laid the foundations of 
 the institutions on which we stand. So the Pharisees 
 were the Puritans, and in that sense I am a Pharisee, 
 thank God ! \Tremendous applause.'\ Whether 
 I am a dude, I don't know. \Uproarious laughter 
 and applause^ But if the sluices are to be kept 
 open, and jobbery permitted to run riot, no more 
 fitting selection could be made for the Presidency 
 than James G. Blaine. \Applause.'\ 
 
 I am a personal friend of Mr. Blaine. {Laugh- 
 ter. '\ For twelve years I have watched him, anx- 
 ious that he should be the right man — that he is 
 not. For more than ten years I have been afraid 
 of him. I have been challenged by a Brooklyn 
 paper to give an account of an interview I had with 
 Mr. Blaine at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. I have only 
 this to say about it. I don't think Mr. Joy exists 
 any longer \laughter\ as a respondent. If he does, 
 292 
 
Patriotism Above Party 
 
 there is something more to be said. But after I 
 spoke at the Cooper Union in advocacy of Mr. 
 Garfield's election, nearly four years ago \cheers1, 
 I received a request from Mr. Blaine to meet him 
 at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. Taking my eldest son 
 with me, I went over. Mr. Blaine asked me if I 
 had seen the newspaper called Truth. I said, 
 "No." "Let me read it to you," said he. He 
 read me, I should think, two columns. I replied, 
 "That paper has one-third truth and two-thirds 
 lies." {Laughter. \ " Now," said I, " I will tell 
 you just what the truth was." I then narrated to 
 him my interview with Mr. Joy. I was struck, 
 after narrating it, that he didn't fly into anger — 
 that he didn't peremptorily and with the indignation 
 of an honest man deny it. Without quoting his 
 words, this was their substance : " Why, this can't 
 be. I don't remember that I ever had any trans- 
 actions in that direction. I don't think that I had 
 any bonds or anything of that kind at that time. 
 Why, it is not probable; Mr. Joy — he couldn't have 
 said any such thing as that." 
 
 By that time I was touched a little. I said to 
 him : " Mr. Blaine, where then did I get the story ? 
 Did I make it up, or did Mr. Joy tell it to me ? " 
 "Oh," he said, "no, of course, but then Mr. Joy 
 is my best friend. He introduced my name into 
 the convention at Chicago, and advocated my 
 nomination." " Yes, sir," said I, " and that is 
 the most damning circumstance about it. [Great 
 293 
 
Appendix 
 
 applause. ^ For, sir, when they found that you 
 were the man that these monopolists and consoli- 
 dated railroads wanted, they attempted to put you 
 where you could do the most good." \Latighter 
 and applause. '\ After some further discussion — 
 for both of us were polite on the outside and ex- 
 tremely indignant on the inside — we parted. This 
 is the interview that the Brooklyn Times challenged 
 me, once and again, to relate. May that paper 
 make the most of it. \_Great applause. \ 
 
 I met Mr. Blaine once after that, and had some 
 conversation with him. Going out from the Adams 
 Express ofiice and walking down the street, he said : 
 " What do you think of the Cabinet that Garfield 
 is to form?" My reply was, "Well, I don't 
 meddle with such things much. The only thing I 
 know is who ought to be Secretary of State." 
 "Who?" said he. Said I, "James G. Blaine." 
 " Do you think so ? I wish you would write that 
 to Mr. Garfield." I replied that I did not like to 
 meddle with such matters, but I would think it 
 over. I did not write. 
 
 You may ask me how I should have made such 
 a suggestion to Mr. Blaine, with the opinion that I 
 held of him. I reasoned in this way : I knew Mr. 
 Garfield was under great obligations to Mr. Blaine, 
 and that beyond all question he would have the 
 proffer of some chair in the Cabinet. I thought : 
 It won't do for him to go to the Interior Department ; 
 there are too many temptations. It will certainly 
 294 
 
Patriotism Above Party 
 
 never do for him to be put in the Treasury. 
 \_Langhier.'\ Although he is a good letter-writer 
 he would not accept the Post-Office. In my sim- 
 plicity I thought that the next thing to extradition 
 and emigration would be to put him in the chair of 
 the Secretary of State. So simple was I ! [^Laugh- 
 ter. 1 And therefore I thought, as he must go into 
 the Cabinet, that was the place where he could do 
 the least harm. 
 
 Now, the other great danger to which our Govern- 
 ment is exposed is to be found in organizing all the 
 officers of the Government and drilling them into a 
 compact body, not for the people, but for the parly 
 that happens to be in the ascendency. There are 
 between 80,000 and 100,000 officers under the Fed- 
 eral Government. Jn the year 1900 there will be 
 multitudes more. To meet this danger. Civil Service 
 Reform has been instituted. You will remember it 
 began with a few, and was hardly thought worthy 
 of notice. When it was urged, politicians began 
 to resist it. Little by little, the sober sense of the 
 common people saw its necessity and it received a 
 tentative organization. Finally it became a system, 
 with its laws. 
 
 Rotation in office is bad for the Government, be- 
 cause the change of minor officers with every change 
 of administration leaves the Government continually 
 in the condition of being served by raw men. No 
 mercantile establishment, no foundry or ship- 
 building concern would turn off its expert labourers 
 295 
 
Appendix 
 
 and take on green hands, but that is what our 
 Government has been doing every time the party 
 has changed, Uius bringing into the service inex- 
 perienced and unfit men. It is bad also because it 
 holds up not patriotism as the motive of activity, 
 but this bribe of an office. These are dangerous to 
 the Government, corrupting to the people, and they 
 forebode by and by an oligarchy that can determine 
 almost every election by the people. \_Applause.'\ 
 
 Has Mr. Blaine ever done anything for Civil 
 Service Reform ? From under his roof, where 
 dwells one of the most brilliant and acute writers in 
 the great school of women writers,' there issued the 
 most caustic and ridiculing series of letters on the 
 whole matter of reform and reformers in this respect. 
 If I mistake not, it was composed under his roof, on 
 his tables, and under his eye, and — unrebuked. 
 Was there ever any testimony from him except this 
 — a mild praise of Garfield as believing in Civil 
 Service Reform and an acceptance of the platform 
 of the Republican party that indorsed it ? Is that 
 the man to enforce Civil Service Reform ? 
 
 Now, on the other hand, is there one of these 
 elements of danger which we have to fear at the 
 hands of Mr. Cleveland ? \_Cheers and applai(se.'\ 
 He is a lawyer of repute, known for the sound judg- 
 ment and the great industry which he brings to his 
 cases. He began public life as a sheriff. He has 
 
 ■ " Gail Hamilton " was the nom de plume of Mary 
 Abigail Dodge. 
 
 296 
 
Patriotism Above Party 
 
 been the subject of ridicule in that matter, and 
 from quarters where I did not expect it, I believe 
 last night — perhaps the night before — in this place. 
 It has been laughed at that he charged for 860 days 
 in a year of service, as if there were 860 days, 
 and yet the fools that are laughing do not know 
 that more than half the work of the sheriif is done 
 by deputies, and every deputy's service is counted 
 by the day. This is understood by legislatures and 
 by courts. The very man in that county who is 
 now up for Congress returned 1,100 days' service 
 in the 365, and doubtless very properly, too. He 
 is a Republican candidate. They laugh because 
 Sheriff Cleveland charged twenty-five cents for 
 newspapers. Mr. Blaine would have charged $200. 
 But this man Cleveland has no idea of dishonesty. 
 He does not know what his privileges were ! You 
 will bear in mind that when Marcy was Governor 
 of New York and had to travel the State, he 
 charged, I think, three shillings or fifty cents for 
 mending his pantaloons. He that is faithful in 
 little will also be faithful in great things. [^Laugh- 
 
 Now, I want a man that won't take one single, 
 solitary penny but simply what belongs to him. In 
 these buncombe days, when men don't count a dol- 
 lar worth anything, it is good to find the original 
 simplicity of the old-fashioned men who served the 
 public. But Judge Davis sneered at Cleveland as a 
 sheriff because he himself personally superintended 
 297 
 
Appendix 
 
 the execution of one whom the law had doomed 
 to death. He — a judge — an able judge — a judge 
 whose memory will go down to posterity as having 
 convicted that arch criminal Tweed \applause\, so 
 far forgot himself as to say that Mr. Tanner was a 
 good candidate for sheriff, and I say " Amen " to 
 that. I shall vote for him. [Applause.^ But he 
 also said — this is the offensive part — that he would 
 not vote for him if he thought that in executing the 
 law he would personally superintend the execution 
 of a culprit. A judge from the bench saying to 
 the young men who gathered here that a law and 
 statute of the commonwealth was honoured in hav- 
 ing a sworn officer refuse to execute it 1 [ Cries of 
 "Shame! shame .'^^ and hisses. '\ 
 
 Now, Judge Davis would never have said that 
 deliberately. It is one of those little excursions 
 that public speakers sometimes make. \Laughter.'\ 
 From the Shrievalty Mr. Cleveland was exalted to 
 the Mayoralty — if it be an exaltation, and in some 
 cities it is, but we will wait until after the election 
 in New York and see. \Laughter.'\ As such he 
 won a good repute and was honoured by the whole 
 bulk of the citizens of Buffalo. Then, as a rebuke 
 to the managers of the Republican party, he was 
 exalted to the position of Governor of the State of 
 New York. [Applause.'] Nor has there been any 
 sort of chance to make any effectual criticism on his 
 administration since he has been Governor of this 
 imperial State. [Applause.] In this position, 
 298 
 
Patriotism Above Party 
 
 simple as a child, sincere as a saint \applause\, with 
 broad common sense and very uncommon honesty 
 [applause], a true and enthusiastic member of the 
 Democratic party [applause'], but putting the 
 whole State and the whole country higher than the 
 party, he has been steadily and patiently perform- 
 ing the duties of his office, wliile Mr. Blaine has 
 been imitating the pot-house politicians in the ward 
 elections. As they go from house to house and 
 grog-shop to grog-shop, so Blaine goes from town 
 to town, hat in hand, a national mendicant 
 soliciting votes, as medicants solicit doles of 
 charity ; dishonouring the example of all Presiden- 
 tial candidates we have ever had up to this hour, 
 except the solitary instance of Mr. WhitelawReid's 
 great predecessor, Horace Greeley ! Blaine has ex- 
 hibited his person throughout New York State and 
 throughout Ohio, throughout Indiana and Michigan, 
 and is coming back soon to upset everything in 
 Brooklyn and New York. [Laughter.] During 
 this extraordinary and not honourable exodus of 
 Blaine, Grover Cleveland remained at home stead- 
 fast to duty. He attended to the duties of his office 
 and let the country employ its own best judgment 
 as to whether he should go higher. [Applause.] 
 
 One reason why Mr. Cleveland is not acceptable 
 to some of his own party is that while he is an 
 honest Democrat he is not a partisan, but a patriot. 
 [Applause.] Let me attend to some of the objec- 
 tions. If our country needs a man of sterling 
 299 
 
Appendix 
 
 honesty and integrity on account of the temptations 
 of money, Cleveland is the man 1 ^Applauser^ If 
 our Government is to be free from the dangers of a 
 complex financial combination that can determine 
 for any party in power very nearly the whole future, 
 Cleveland is the man. \_Great applause.'] Do 
 you know that when he came into the Governor's 
 chair he never turned out a man that his predecessor 
 Cornell had put in power but one ? Cornell had 
 turned out a one-anned soldier as a messenger and 
 put in a stalwart working-man. Cleveland put out 
 the stalwart working-man and put back the one- 
 armed soldier. [Ajipiause.] One-half of his staff 
 to-day are Republicans. That's the man for 
 Washington ! [Applause.] 
 
 But this is almost the one argument I hear on 
 every hand — " I don't like Blaine. He was not 
 my choice, but then, he is the regular nominee of 
 our party." Well, I should like to know what 
 sort of a party man you are that can stand by and 
 see your party degraded and damaged, but stick to 
 it and not put forward one single, solitary effort to 
 save it. [Applause.] And yet the party is not 
 like the man that fell among the thieves — though 
 the thieves are after it. [Laughter.] Here are 
 the men wlio see the danger. And the priest saw 
 that the poor fellow wasn't a priest and he went 
 past ; and the Levite (as it has been said) saw that 
 he had been robbed already and he went past. 
 [Great laughter.] But if you are a faithful Re- 
 300 
 
Patriotism Above Party 
 
 publican, the command is as if it came from the 
 lips of God, "See that the party suffers no detri- 
 ment," and no greater detriment could come than 
 an unworthy head given to it. 
 
 Why, according to your logic, you must vote for 
 whomsoever the convention gives you. If the con- 
 vention had given you Tweed, every mother's son 
 of you would have had to drop your tail between 
 your legs and vote for Tweed. The logic of this 
 is infamous, and the man who urges such an excuse 
 as that, if he has a decent wife, ought not to go 
 home for forty-eight hours, until he had bathed and 
 cleansed himself. Suppose you were the trustee of 
 an academy or school and you knew that the man 
 whom the trustees had elected was utterly untrust- 
 worthy, you would say, " I belong to the Board of 
 Trustees, and I must go as they go, and I will send 
 my boy to the school whatever this man may be." 
 You would not do it anywhere else, I tell you, ex- 
 cept where the murrain of a blighted politics had 
 fallen upon you. 
 
 Well, they say, " We don't wish to leave the 
 liarty." We don't wish to have you. We want 
 you to stay in it and become Independent Repub- 
 licans. [A/>pla!tse.'\ Who are Independent Re- 
 publicans ? They are the men who seek to raise the 
 party to the higher ground. They are the men 
 who hailed the rising sun and don't want to see the 
 setting sun go down in clouds and darkness. They 
 are the men who watch the temptations of the day, 
 301 
 
Appendix 
 
 its dangers, and set themselves to maintain the 
 honour of party and country. These men " don't 
 want to leave the party." Suppose you were 
 travelling in a stage-coach and plunged headlong 
 down an embankment into mud and morass, and 
 the driver cries, " Come, out with you, out with 
 you all, and help me put it back again," and every 
 mother's son of you should say, " No ; we are not 
 going to leave this coach." 
 
 I should say, if I were driver, " Get the coach 
 out of the mud, and then get in again or go afoot ! " 
 
 To elect Mr. Blaine under all the conditions, un- 
 der all the charges and imputations, and in the 
 light of all his history, is to say to every unprin- 
 cipled man on this continent, " No matter what 
 your life has been, if you get a regular nomination, 
 you are going to be in the Presidential chair." I 
 shall attend to what men say about teaching our 
 young people to vote for the morality of Mr. Cleve- 
 land before I close ; but I return the question to 
 you : " Will you teach your children that lying is 
 a safe thing, a mere blemish, a foible ? " I tell you 
 that truth is the one cohesive element that holds 
 society together. \_Applause.'\ I tell you that 
 truth is that bond which creates trust between man 
 and man, and to put a man smouched with lies in 
 the Presidential chair is to teach all our young men 
 that lying is a foible and not a sin. 
 
 But they say again, " We are not going to join 
 the Democratic party. AVe have fought all our 
 302 
 
Patriotism Above Party 
 
 life long against it. We are not going to change 
 now." Well, we have not joined the Democrats 
 except for one end, and that is to keep out a bad 
 man and put in a good one. {Applause.l Suppose 
 they do take the Government. Do you undertake 
 to say that there are no good Democrats ? and that, 
 too, when you see that it was the best men of the 
 Democratic party that put forward Cleveland 
 against other and very strong candidates, because 
 he was an honest and good man? \_Applause.'\ 
 I tell you that either party alone will not produce 
 as good results as the best men of the two parties 
 working together for a common purpose. [Ap- 
 plause.'] If the^Democrats, long out of power, do 
 well, I want them to retain administrative power. 
 [App/ause.] If, with four years' power, they prove 
 themselves incompetent we will whirl them out as 
 the dust is whirled from the threshing-floor. [Ap- 
 plause.'\ I defy them to do much worse than I 
 think Blaine will. \_Applause.'\ 
 
 But there is another thing for you to carry in 
 mind and to interpret, and that is, what Independ- 
 ent Republicanism means. It is, as yet, an unde- 
 veloped third party. It will hold the balance be- 
 tween the two parties. It will be a voice in every 
 election, saying : " If you present worthy men 
 we'll help you. If you present unworthy men, 
 we'll defeat you." \Applause.'\ So degraded has 
 been the political conscience, however, that the Re- 
 publican leaders pour contempt on the very idea 
 303 
 
Appendix 
 
 that there can be uncorrupted politics, and they 
 ridicule the conception that the Independent Re- 
 publicans have got any cleaner hands and any 
 higher motives than anybody else. Nevertheless 
 they will find out, if not in this election then in the 
 next, for we have not come together to be easily 
 dissolved. The men who are forming the back- 
 bone, the ribs, the hands, and the feet of the Inde- 
 pendent Republicans are the men who propose to 
 stand by this work right through the years. We 
 are the men who have such a pride in our Govern- 
 ment and in our country that we decree our lives 
 to the maintenance of its purity, its dignity, and its 
 grandeur. 
 
 The great ends for which the Republican party 
 was formed have been grandly accomplished. But 
 this very accomplishment lays upon us new duties 
 growing out of the past. It is not for Repub- 
 licans to sit down like raisers and count over our 
 gains. 
 
 Our first endeavour was to secure free speech : we 
 gained it. 
 
 The right to attack slavery and put bounds to its 
 spread ; the right to put the government into the 
 hands of men who love liberty rather than slavery. 
 We elected Lincoln ; we put him into the Presi- 
 dential chair. 
 
 We exploded the doctrine of the sovereignty of 
 States, though we affirm the limited doctrine of 
 State Rights. The vicious heresy of the right of 
 304 
 
Patriotism Above Party 
 
 secession — we put our foot on that serpent, and it 
 will never squirm again. For the maintenance of 
 the war we freely gave our substance and that 
 which is above all treasure, our sons. 
 
 It is not to be forgotten that, in this renowned 
 war, we were gallantly helped by the noblest ele- 
 ment in the Democratic party. Our most notable 
 generals sprung from that party. 
 
 We have liberated the slave and have wiped the 
 shame and disgrace of slavery from off our es- 
 cutcheon. 
 
 We have passed through the clouded and difficult 
 work of Reconstruction, and the States are knit to- 
 gether and are working in good neighbourhood and 
 harmony. We have well-nigh paid the six thou- 
 sand million debt entailed by the war, we have 
 brought back the currency to a specie basis, and 
 driven the greenback heresy to the wilderness. 
 
 All these questions have been settled so thor- 
 oughly that they have drifted beyond the horizon 
 and out of party discussions. The old Republican 
 and the old Democratic parties are now so nearly 
 agreed that their two platforms are almost identical. 
 Platforms no longer mean principles — policies that 
 run down to the foundations of government. Plat- 
 forms to-day are mere policies for to-day, and the 
 Republican and the Democratic platforms might 
 almost be swapped without either party perceiving 
 the difference. 
 
 God calls us now to turn our face to the future. 
 
 305 
 
Appendix 
 
 What is the business of to-day? What arc the 
 great questions of the near future ? 
 
 First and most immediate, is Civil Service Re- 
 form, which in his sleeve Blaine laughs at ; next, 
 the limitations of great monopolies ; the dangerous 
 power of aggregated capital ; a lawful control of 
 the combined railroads ; a vigorous sympathy and 
 rigorous watchfulness of the rights of the common 
 people, who gain their livelihood by labour ; free- 
 dom of commerce, as the last link in the slowly- 
 forged chain of freedom; liberty of thought, of 
 conscience, of speech, of motion and action, and 
 liberty of commerce — the liberty of men to come 
 and go, for traffic, over the wide earth. 
 
 The education of all the people, at public ex- 
 jiense, by the Federal government where it cannot 
 be adequately done by the States. 
 
 The rights of labour as against combined capital, 
 and the defense of the individual as against the 
 despotism of corporate bodies. The safety of an 
 American citizen at home and abroad ; peace with 
 all the world, but war if we must. No Socialism, 
 no Communism, no Nihilism. 
 
 These are the questions of the hour. The Inde- 
 pendent Republicans will seek to bring the Old 
 Republican party to generous action upon them. 
 
 We are working for the future — not counting 
 
 the deeds of the past. But it is said Cleveland 
 
 cannot control the Democratic party ; he will be 
 
 controlled by them. He will oust all the office- 
 
 306 
 
Patriotism Above Party 
 
 holders, and put in Bayard, Thurman, Hurd, Car- 
 lisle, Morrison, Lamar, and such like. Well, would 
 that not be a better cabinet than Dorsey, Elkins, 
 Filley, and a whole brood more ; would you not 
 like to see Jay Gould sitting in the Treasury? 
 [Laughter.'] One man shakes his head and says, 
 "Things are so mixed, I shall not vote again." 
 That is like the soldier in the fierce battle who 
 stands with his gun and won't fire because he does 
 not know whom he will hit. We don't want any 
 cowards. It is a man's sworn duty to this Gov- 
 ernment to vote. 
 
 If you vote for Blaine, you vote for corruption. 
 If you vote for St. John,' you vote into the air. If 
 you vote for Butler, you vote into the mud. If you 
 vote for Cleveland [cheers], you vote for an honest 
 man. [Loud cheers.] I don't wish to be one-sided. 
 I don't deny to Mr. Blaine many excellencies as a 
 private citizen. He is kindly and impulsive. He 
 will do his best to serve a friend, if it does not in- 
 terfere with his personal aim. He loves to render 
 personal services to those who approach him. Such 
 qualities attach men to him. They excite enthusi- 
 asm in unreflective people who do not stop to con- 
 sider whether he is a good leader. Mr. Blaine's 
 personal and social attractions are such and so 
 many that one cannot but think that Providence 
 designed him to stay at home. 
 
 But another point: — in all the history of poli- 
 ' The Prohibitionist candidate, 
 307 
 
Appendix 
 
 tics no lies so cruel, so base, so atrocious, have 
 ever been set in motion. The air is murky with 
 shameless stories of Mr. Cleveland's private life. 
 To our sorrow and shame we find these cocatrice's 
 eggs, brooded and hatched by rash and credulous 
 clergymen. They could not go to Mr. Cleveland 
 with honest inquiry, so they opened their ears to 
 the harlot and the drunlcard. They have sought 
 by hint, innuendo, irresponsible slander, to poison 
 the faith of holy men, of innocent women, and 
 they have sought to make backbiting a virtue, and 
 to change the sanctuary into a salacious whispering 
 gallery. Is it for our sins, or for a trial of our faith, 
 that God has permitted the plagues of Egypt to re- 
 visit us? The land swarms with vermin, frogs 
 slime our bread troughs, and lice crawl about our 
 chambers. 
 
 Do timid ministers ever reflect that the guilt of a 
 vice or a crime measures the guilt of him who charges 
 them falsely ? Slander takes on the guilt of crime 
 alleged. True religion does not creep through 
 twilight passages, but is open, frank, rejoicing not 
 in iniquity, but rejoicing in the truth, hoping all 
 things. These vespertilian saints', whose soft bat's 
 wings bear them from house to house, and from 
 town to town, in the service of Baal, the god of flies 
 and lies, will one day creep into the holes and clefts 
 of rocks and hide themselves. 
 
 My honoured and beloved wife, quite unbeknown 
 to me, cut many cuttings from the newspapers, some 
 308 
 
Patriotism Above Party 
 
 of which — all of which — were in respect to the life 
 of Governor Cleveland in Albany. She sent them to 
 him, with a letter that will not be published, but 
 that would be a gem in English literature if it were 
 published. [Applause.'\ As swiftly as the mail 
 could return she received a letter from Governor 
 Cleveland, which I have had about two or three 
 weeks, which he means to be private, and marked 
 private. But such a complexion has the canvass 
 taken that I telegraphed to him two nights ago to 
 ask him if he would allow me to use my discretion 
 in regard to that letter. His reply was : " Cer- 
 tainly; if it is your judgment." [Mr. Beecher 
 then produced the letter, which he read as follows :] 
 
 " My dear Mrs. Beecher : 
 
 " Your letter, as you may well suppose, has 
 affected me deeply. What shall I say to one who 
 writes so like my mother ? I say so like my mother, 
 but I do not altogether mean that, for she died in 
 the belief that her son was true and noble, as she 
 knew he was dutiful and kind. I am shocked and 
 dumfounded by the clippings from the newspapers 
 that you sent me, because it purports to give what 
 a man actually knows, and not a mere report, as the 
 other four or five lies do, which I have read or 
 heard, about my life in Albany. I have never seen 
 in Albany a woman whom I have had any reason to 
 suspect was in any way bad. I don't know where aiiy 
 such woman lives in Albany. I have never been in 
 any house in Albany except the Executive Mansion, 
 the Executive Chamber, the First Orange Club 
 
 Jiouse twice at receptions given to me and on, I 
 
 309 
 
Appendix 
 
 think, two other occasions — and the residences of 
 perhaps fifteen or twenty of the best citizens, to 
 dine. 
 
 "Of course I have been to church. There 
 never was a man who has worked harder or more 
 hours in a day. Almost all my time has been 
 spent in the Executive Chamber, and I hardly 
 tliink there have been twenty nights in the year 
 and nine months 1 have lived in Albany — unless I 
 was out of town — that I have left my work earlier 
 than midnight to find my bed at the Mansion. I 
 am at a loss to know how it is that such terrible, 
 wicked, and utterly baseless lies can be invented. 
 \_Applause and cheers, during which Mr. Beecher 
 placidly remarked, "Do not spend your breath; 
 there is a good deal more coming."] The con- 
 temptible creatures who coin and pass these things 
 appear to think that the affair which I have not de- 
 nied makes me defenseless against any and all 
 slanderers. 
 
 "As to my outward fife in Buffalo, the manifes- 
 tation of confidence and attachment which was 
 tendered me there by all citizens must be proof that 
 I have not Hved a disgraceful life in that city. 
 And as to my life in Albany, all statements that 
 tend to show that it has been otlier than laborious 
 and perfectly correct are utterly and in every shape 
 untrue. \_Applaiise.'\ I do not wonder that your 
 good husband is perplexed. I honestly think I de- 
 sire his good opinion more than any aid he is dis- 
 posed to render me. I do not want him to think 
 any better of me than I deserve, nor to be deceived. 
 Cannot I manage to see him and to tell him what 
 I cannot write ? I shall be in New York Wednes- 
 day and Thursday morning, I suppose, of next 
 week. Thursday afternoon and evening I shall 
 310 
 
Patriotism Above Party 
 
 spend in Brooklyn. Having written this much it 
 occurs to me that such a long letter to you is un- 
 necessary and unexpected. It is the most 1 have 
 ever written on the subject referred to, and I beg 
 you to forgive me if your kind and touching letter 
 has led me into impropriety. 
 
 " Yours, very sincerely, 
 
 " Grover Cleveland." 
 
 When in the gloomy night of my own suffering, 
 I sounded every depth of sorrow, I vowed that if 
 God would bring the day star of hope, I would 
 never suffer brother, friend, or neighbour to go un- 
 friended, should a like serpent seek to crush him. 
 That oath I will regard now. Because I know the 
 bitterness of venomous lies, I will stand against in- 
 famous lies that seek to sting to death an upright 
 man and magistrate. Men counsel me to prudence 
 le.st I stir again my own griefs. No I. . I will not 
 be prudent. If I refuse to interpose a shield of 
 well-placed confidence between Governor Cleveland 
 and the swarm of liars that nuzzle in the mud, or 
 sling arrows from ambush, may my tongue cleave 
 to the roof of my mouth, and my right hand forget 
 its cunning. I will imitate the noble example set 
 me by Plymouth Church in the day of my own 
 calamity. They were not ashamed of my bonds. 
 They stood by me with God-sent loyalty. It was 
 a heroic deed. They have set my duty before me, 
 jind I will imitate their example, 
 
 3U 
 
THE HERBERT SPENCER DINNER 
 
 [In 1855 Herbert Spencer began his Evolutionary 
 publications with " Principles of Psychology," and 
 in i860 he issued the prospectus of his vast " Sys- 
 tem of Synthetic Philosophy," extending the prin- 
 ciple of Evolution to most developments of nature 
 and humanity. In 1882 he made a brief visit to 
 America, where his books had received warm wel- 
 come, and just before he returned to England a 
 complimentary dinner was given him, the gathering 
 comprising men of eminence, mostly in science. 
 Among them, however, was Mr. Beecher, who had 
 been foremost among clergymen in utilizing 
 Spencer's expositions of the development theory, 
 which had been, at first vaguely and later more 
 clearly, his own inspiration. He was to speak, 
 but at the end of the evening — nearly midnight — 
 when all were tired and ready to depart. Evolu- 
 tion was not then accepted as it is now, but was 
 under suspicion as an enemy of religion and the 
 Bible, and most pious folk regarded Mr. Beecher 
 as very "loose" and "dangerous." But he was 
 never afraid to speak his mind, and on that even- 
 ing he spoke it clearly. 
 
 "I shall never," wrote Dr. William A. Ham- 
 ntiond, " forget the effect which his ringing words 
 312 
 
The Herbert Spencer Dinner 
 
 produced upon that audience, composed as it was 
 mainly of hard-headed men who were not accus- 
 tomed to be swayed by their emotions. They rose 
 to their feet, waved their table-napkins, and shouted 
 themselves hoarse, not because they all approved 
 of the views which he then revealed to them, but 
 because of the astounding courage, the wonderful 
 regard for the truth as he understood it, and the 
 almost superhuman honesty by which he must 
 have been actuated." 
 
 As in the Blaine-Cleveland speech, the report is 
 given as it was taken down at the time.] 
 
 The old New England churches used to have 
 two ministers ; one was considered as a doctor of 
 theology, and the other a revivalist and pastor. 
 The doctor has had his day, and you now have 
 the revivalist. [Laughter. "] Paul complained that 
 Alexander the coppersmith did him much harm. 
 Mr. Spencer has done immense harm. I don't be- 
 lieve that there is an active, thoughtful minister in 
 the United States that has not been put in a peck 
 of troubles, and a great deal more than that, by 
 the intrusion of Mr. Spencer's views, and the com- 
 parison of them with the old views. I cannot for 
 the life of me reconcile his notions with those of 
 St. Augustine. I can't get along with Calvin and 
 Spencer both. [LaughUr."] Sometimes one of 
 them is uppermost, and sometimes the other, and I 
 have often been disposed to let them fight it out 
 313 
 
Appendix 
 
 themselves, and not take any hand in the scrape. 
 \_Laughler.'\ It is to be borne in mind that when 
 a man is driving a team of fractious horses that are 
 just all that he can manage anyhow, he is not in a 
 state of mind to discuss questions with his wife by 
 his side, who is undertaking to bring up delicate 
 domestic matters. \_Laughier.^ A man who has 
 a bald-headed deacon watching everything that he 
 does, or a gold-spectacled lawyer — not a fat one 
 \looking at Mr. Bristozv\ but a long, lean, lank 
 one [looking at Mr. Evarts, amid great laughter\ 
 — can't afford to talk Spencerisra from the pulpit ; 
 he has got to take care of himself first, and he must 
 therefore not be expected to come in like an equi- 
 noctial storm ; he will rather come in like a drizzle ; 
 he will descend as the dew. \Laughter.'\ 
 
 But one thing is very certain — Mr. Spencer is 
 coming. Nay, he has come; he has come to 
 stay. Mr. Spencer may have dyspepsia, but his 
 books have no dyspepsia. [Applause. '\ They 
 like the climate, and they are working their way 
 very steadily, without any regard to those dietetic 
 or nervous or nervine considerations which he has 
 been kind enough to propose to us here to-night. 
 Those books can work day and night everywhere, 
 all over the continent, and never grow any 
 thinner. 
 
 By the by, when he speaks about our being so 
 industrious, he speaks like an insular gentleman. 
 You have very little to do in England. You have 
 
The Herbert Spencer Dinner 
 
 but about three hundred miles diameter one way 
 and eight hundred the other. We have got this 
 whole continent to take care of. \_Laughter.'] 
 We have to get up early and work late in order to 
 take care of it. We are an ambitious people, and 
 we have learned from astronomers that they are 
 five hours ahead of us every day in England, and 
 we have to work with all our might to make up 
 those five hours. \_Laug/iUr.] We don't intend 
 to be surpassed by the old people on the other 
 side. We young people on this side intend to do 
 as well as they have done and a little better. 
 
 Now let me say, with a little more approach to 
 sobriety [^laughUr"], what I think about the doc- 
 trines of Mr. Spencer's philosophy. Not all his ad- 
 mirers or debtors or disciples need adopt his con- 
 clusions fully. We may deem his base line to be 
 correct, and yet not be surprised if here and there 
 parts of his vast field should need to be resurveyed. 
 But, speaking in general terras, I think that the 
 doctrine of Evolution and its relations to the work 
 of Mr. Spencer — which takes in that, but a great 
 deal more besides — to speak in plain language, is 
 going to revolutionize theology from one end to the 
 other \applause\, and it is going to make good 
 walking where we have had very muddy walking 
 hitherto ; it is going to bridge over rivers which we 
 have had to wade. There are many points in 
 which the theology of the past did well enough for 
 the past, but does not any more answer the reason- 
 315 
 
Appendix 
 
 able questions and the moral considerations that are 
 brought to bear upon it in our day. \_A/p/ause.] 
 We are to bear in mind in regard to the Scriptures, 
 the great source of instruction on the part of the 
 organized religions of the Christian world, that we 
 have there what we all agree in. Some points 
 have already been made in regard to it. Paul 
 speaks of his idea of what the whole drift of Chris- 
 tianity was. It was a system to make men. That 
 is what it was. He said. To some He gave apostles 
 and prophets, and evangelists and teachers, for the 
 perfecting of the saints, that they may become per- 
 fect men in Christ, or upon the model of Christ 
 Jesus. The New Testament idea is that religion is 
 the art of putting men on to an anvil and hammer- 
 mg them out into perfect manhood. Now there 
 is no difference between that tendency in the 
 Scriptures on that subject and in Mr. Spencer's 
 work or Mr. Darwin's, or any other of that galaxy 
 of eminent writers that shine in the East. 
 
 Then, on the other hand, taking that for the 
 ideal, that the whole business of religion is not 
 merely to insure a man against fire in the other 
 world, but to create an insurable interest in him 
 \J.aughter\ the business before men is the making 
 of themselves while they are making also the world 
 in which they dwell, building up society, bringing 
 tliat day when the very wilderness shall bud and 
 blossom as the rose ; making manhood ethics, in 
 short, of the building kind. And in that regard 
 316 
 
The Herbert Spencer Dinner 
 
 the morality which is taught in Mr. Spencer's work 
 is entirely in agreement with the great morality that 
 is taught in the sacred Scriptures. 
 
 Men forget that the Scripture itself — and it ought 
 to have dawned on the minds of the men who are 
 so afraid it will be destroyed — is itself a proof of 
 Evolution. There is no fact more absolutely 
 patent than that every moral idea from the opening 
 of Genesis, right straight through the period in 
 Judges and down to the New Testament day — 
 every one of the great moral ideas rose like a star, 
 and did not shine like a sun until ages had given it 
 ascension. [Applatise.'\ The very conception of 
 the divine nature begins at daylight and goes on to 
 sunrise and to meridian brightness; and all the 
 doctrines of duties and relations in the Old Testa- 
 ment are progressive from the beginning down clear 
 through to the end. The doctrine of immortality 
 was not known in the Old Testament day. Here 
 we have Professor Park, of Andover, and a great 
 many good and godly men in New England, dis- 
 cussing to-day whether a man who don't believe 
 that everybody who dies impenitent will be damned 
 forever and ever — whether he is fit to preach the 
 Gospel ; and yet for more than five thousand years 
 there was not a man living on the face of the earth 
 that knew there even was a future. [Applause. 1 
 We have the implicit declaration in the New Testa- 
 ment that life and immortality were brought to light 
 by Jesus Christ. For more than five thousand 
 317 
 
Appendix 
 
 years men did not know anything fit to preach, ac- 
 cording to the modern notion. 
 
 But look at the great question of the origin of 
 men. It is a hypothesis that we are but the pro- 
 longation of an inferior animal tribe, and there are 
 many evidences amoi/g men that it is so. [Laugh- 
 ter.'\ I can almost trace the very lines on which 
 some men have come dpwn. [Laughter.^ It is 
 said that we descend from the immortal monkey ; 
 but that is not the truth that is taught, as I under- 
 stand it, in the books. You have got to go a 
 great way further back than that to find your 
 grandfather. Apes came down from the same 
 starting-point with us, working towards bone and 
 muscle, and men came down on the other side, 
 working towards nerve and brain. A great many 
 people are loath to think that such an origin should 
 be hinted at by science, that it should stand even 
 as a hypothesis. I would just as lief have de- 
 scended from a monkey as from anything else if I 
 had descended far enough. [^LaughterJ^ But let 
 men have come from where they will, or how they 
 may have come, one thing is very certain, that the 
 human race began at the bottom and not at the 
 top, or else there is no truth in history or religion ; 
 and that the unfolding of the human race has 
 been going on, if not from the absolute animal 
 conditions, )'et from the lowest possible savage 
 conditions ; and the Jewish legend that men were 
 at the top, and then fell from the top to the bottom, 
 318 
 
The Herbert Spencer Dinner 
 
 and carried down all their posterity with them, 
 and that God's business has been for eight, ten, 
 twenty thousand years, and how many more I 
 know not, the punishing of men for sins they 
 never committed — well, that has got to go. [_Ap- 
 />/ause.] It will not be twenty years before a man 
 will be ashamed to stand up in any intelligent 
 pulpit and mention it. J[Ap/>lause.'] 
 
 On the other hand, see what light is thrown 
 upon Divine Providence. According to the old 
 theology, one single person was sorted out, an 
 emigrant, and the whole of the divine thought 
 was centred on him and on his posterity, and all 
 the collateral races of every kind were left without 
 a temple, without a book, without a priest, without 
 a Sabbath, without a sacrifice, without an altar, 
 without anything, while he brought up one single 
 family; and what a family! IZaughter."] And 
 what bringing up ! [^LaugAUr."] What a means 
 of grace it was to have had those twelve patri- 
 archs ! In modern society those men could not 
 have lived, with the exception, perhaps, of one or 
 two of them; they could not have lived outside of 
 Sing Sing — unless they went into politics. \_Laugh- 
 ter."] They went down to Egypt and there they 
 were abandoned to slavery for four hundred years. 
 What was done for them ? Nothing. They came 
 out of Egypt, and, passing forty years through the 
 wilderness, came into the eastern line of Palestine 
 and took possession, by the sword, of the land, 
 319 
 
Appendix 
 
 slaughtering the inhabitants, and for four hundred 
 years there was an interregnum again, until we 
 come down to the time of Samuel, and even after 
 that there is no continuity of organized govern- 
 ment. The hiatus between one period and another, 
 the interregnum periods, when you come to put 
 them together, negative the current and conven- 
 tional conception of the nature of the special 
 tutelary administration of God over a chosen 
 people, relieving them from the operation of the 
 laws of social progress. On the other hand, when 
 you come to look at the actual facts and take the 
 whole human family, they have been steadily and 
 gradually unfolding, some with greater rapidity 
 and some less. Some were more capable of 
 thought than others ; some were stronger in hand 
 and tarried by the way to fight ; but on the whole 
 the world has been, with unequal speed, advancing 
 from the earliest period down to the present time. 
 This is a great deal more consonant with any 
 rational idea of an overruling Providence and a 
 divine justice than the ideas of the old theologies. 
 
 Then comes the question of sin. I am taught 
 by Augustine and Calvin, and all of the mediseval 
 preachers, that there are two sorts of sin : one is 
 " original sin " — I have always been original 
 enough to have my own sin [laughter] — but that 
 we are all under conditions of guilt, wrath, and 
 penalty, on account of the transgression of Adam 
 and Eve, nobody knows how many thousand years 
 320 
 
The Herbert Spencer Dinner 
 
 ago; that the guilt of theic inexperience-r^iheir 
 transaction in the garden of Eden — ran clear down 
 through the thousands of years, and included 
 every child that was born from that time to this. 
 Now what is the theory that comes on the other 
 hand, on the side of science? It is the theory 
 that man is first an animal pure and simple ; that 
 by the breathing of the breath of God into him 
 there is the unfolding gradually of a rational soul, 
 an intellectual capacity, a moral and a spiritual 
 nature ; that while he was an animal the exercise 
 of selfishness, of plunder, of combativeness and 
 destructiveness, was the law of his being, — it was 
 not only a necessity, but the act was a virtue ; yet 
 by gradual development he has come to the posses- 
 sion of those higher qualities which should rule 
 him. Sin lies in the conflict between animal 
 nature and the dawning of spiritual, moral and 
 intellectual nature. It is the conflict in a man 
 between his upper and lower nature. 
 
 If you want to see that taught thoroughly, go to 
 the seventh of Romans and see how Paul argues 
 the matter. He says: "The things I would do, 
 I do not ; the things I would not do, I do. So 
 then, it is not I," he says, "but sin that dwelleth 
 in me. I find a law in my members." (He was 
 almost fit to be a minister to Darwin !) " I find 
 a law in my members that compels me to sin, but 
 that I in which my personal identity is, the 1 that 
 thinks, the I that perceives, that aspires, the flash 
 321 
 
Appendix 
 
 of imagination (which he calls faith), the whole 
 fruition of a great soul that approves the spiritual 
 law, the manly law — whatever is right, pure, just, 
 beautiful — I see that, but I am all the time doing 
 the other. My under man, my physical man, is 
 fighting against the upper man." 
 
 There isn't a man here but knows that that is so. 
 Every evening rebukes every morning among the 
 whole of you. You go out in the morning with in- 
 spiration and noble feeling, and say, " This day I 
 will cheat nobody," and you come back at night 
 and you have cheated a dozen men. [_LaughUr.] 
 And so on through the whole scale of conduct. 
 Great light is thrown, by this truly scientific and 
 truly spiritual view, on the subject of the nature of 
 sin. I might go on and show that in many other 
 ways religious teaching is largely benefited by the 
 light coming from the great thinkers of the day. 
 
 Now men say, Will you abandon revelation ? 
 No. We all believe, who believe in Moses, that 
 God wrote on stone. I believe that that was not 
 the first time he wrote on stone. He made a rec- 
 ord when he made the granite, and when he made 
 all the successive strata in the periods of time. 
 There is a record in geology that is as much a 
 record of God as the record on paper in human 
 language. [A//>/ause.] They are both true — 
 where they are true. \_Zaughter.] The record of 
 matter very often is misinterpreted, and the record 
 of the letter is often misinterpreted ; and you are to 
 322 
 
The Herbert Spencer Dinner 
 
 enlighten yourselves by knowing both of them and 
 interpreting them one by the other. It is no more 
 a quarrel between science and religion, than a dis- 
 cussion over family matters is a quarrel between the 
 husband and wife ; it is simply a thorough adjust- 
 ment of aifairs. \Laughter. ] 
 
 Gentlemen, we have had a good time here to- 
 night, too much of it, especially for a man like me 
 that can't eat because he has a speech to make. 
 We shall very soon break up. It is not our privi- 
 lege to meet Mr. Spencer face to face as we all 
 would be glad to do ; I certainly would. I don't 
 know of a man living, with whom, if I might sit 
 down in the shade of the evening, in quiet, and 
 bring up ray crude thought, my vagrant imagination, 
 and avail myself of his superior experience and 
 thought — I know of no man now living with whom 
 I should feel more honoured and more pleased in 
 communing than with him. It is not in my nature 
 to derive benefit from any mortal soul and forget 
 the obligation. I feel in my pulse a longing that 
 goes back to the early days, to Homer, and comes 
 down through the whole catalogue of noble writers 
 who have written that which the world thought 
 worth preserving \ and every man that comes up 
 in our day, and whose writings fortify me and 
 strengthen me — I would fain carry some tribute of 
 affection to him. I began to read Mr. Spencer's 
 works more than twenty years ago. They have 
 been meat and bread to me. They have helped 
 323 
 
Appendix 
 
 me through a great many difficulties. I desire to 
 own my obligation personally to him, and to say 
 that if I had the fortune of a millionaire, and I 
 should pour all my gold at his feet, it would be no 
 sort of compensation compared to that which I be- 
 lieve I owe him ; for whoever gives me a thought 
 that dispels the darkness that hangs over the most 
 precious secrets of life, whoever gives me confi- 
 dence in the destiny of my fellow men, whoever 
 gives me a clearer standpoint from which I can 
 look to the great silent One, and hear Him even in 
 half, and believe in Him, not by the tests of phys- 
 ical science, but by moral intuition — whoever gives 
 that power is more to me than even my father and 
 my mother ; they gave me an outward and a phys- 
 ical life, but these others emancipate that life from 
 superstition, from fears, and from thralls, and make 
 me a citizen of the universe. \_Applause.'\ 
 
 May He who holds the storm in His hand be 
 gracious to you, sir ; may your voyage across the 
 sea be prosperous and speedy ; may you find on the 
 other side all those conditions of health and of com- 
 fort which, shall enable you to complete the great 
 work, greater than any other man in this age has 
 ever attempted : may you live to hear from this 
 continent and from that other, an unbroken testi- 
 mony to the service which you have done to hu- 
 manity ; and thus, if you are not outwardly crowned, 
 you wear an invisible crown on your head that will 
 carry comfort to death — and I will greet you beyond 1 
 324 
 
Index 
 
 Abolition and Anti-sla- 
 very, a distinction, 214; 
 botli ostracized in North, 
 215-216 
 
 Adam and Eve, 320 
 
 Adams, John Quincy, 195, 
 197 
 
 After-dinner speaking usu- 
 ally dull, 135 
 
 Alexander, the coppersmith, 
 
 313 
 
 Alexander the Great, 255 
 
 America, in 1620, 16 ; no 
 place for European dema- 
 gogues, 102 ; stimulating 
 influences in, — climate, 
 hope, business ambition, 
 politics, religious excite- 
 ment, common schools, 
 105-115 
 
 Armies, disbandment of the, 
 251 
 
 Army of the Potomac, 249, 
 251 
 
 Art, hated by Puritans, 
 serving oppression in 
 Church and State, 33 ; 
 Italian, churchly and 
 classic, never democratic, 
 34 ; Germanic, popular 
 and domestic ; English, 
 aristocratic, 35 
 
 Augustine, St., 320 
 
 Austin, U. S. District At- 
 torney, 223 
 
 Bayard, Thomas F., 307 
 Beecher, H. W., Foreword 
 by N. D. Hillis, 5-9; 
 
 entered public life, 189 ; 
 college speech on Coloni. 
 zation, 209 ; advised to 
 silence on slavery, 219; 
 speaks in Blaine-Cleve- 
 land presidential cam- 
 paign. Appendix, note, 
 284 ; speaks at Spencer 
 dinner, Appendix, note, 
 312 
 
 Beecher, Mrs. H. W., letter 
 to, from Grover Cleve- 
 land, 309 
 
 Beecher, Lyman, and Wm. 
 E. Channing, 159 
 
 Bismarck, 255 
 
 Black list, the, 218 
 
 Blaine, James G., Appendix 
 I, passim, 284-3 ' ' 
 
 Bonner's N. K Ledger, 200 
 
 Book and newspaper cannot 
 replace orator, 153 
 
 Bowen, Henry C, 227 
 
 Bristow, N. Y. lawyer, 314 
 
 Brown, John, 225 
 
 Butler, Benjamin F., 307 
 
 C^sAR, Julius, 255 
 
 Calvin, John, denies liberty ' 
 
 of speech, 24 ; a radical 
 
 for freedom in his time, 
 
 167 ; on sin, 320 
 Calvinism would be scourged 
 
 by Calvin to-day, 167 ; 
 
 original value of, 168 
 Carlisle, John G., 307 
 Cavour, 256 
 Channing, William Ellery, 
 
 Chapter V, 157-182; a 
 
 325 
 
Index 
 
 mouthpiece of his time, 
 158; and Lyman Beecher, 
 159 ; sectarianism modi- 
 fied, 163-164 ; aids in 
 changing view of God, 
 165-169; since, religion 
 advanced, 170-175 ; a 
 godly man, light in dark- 
 ness, 179-180; testified 
 against slavery, 222-223 
 
 Choate, Rufus, 199 
 
 Chronology, 94 
 
 Cicero, 151 
 
 Civil liberty of individual, 
 27-29 
 
 Civil Service Reform, 296, 
 306 
 
 Civil War, the. North and 
 South, 242-243 ; survey 
 of forces in, 244-246 ; 
 death and disease in, 249- 
 250 
 
 Cleveland, Grover, Appen- 
 dix 1, passim, 284-3 1 1 
 
 Common people. Reign of 
 the. Chapter 111,94-127 ; 
 education of, 62-64, 9^— 
 105 ; intelligence of, af- 
 fecting science, religion, 
 government, 120-125 
 
 Connecticut, 13 
 
 Constitution, compromises 
 of, 213 
 
 Conversation a realm of 
 oratory, 135 
 
 Darwin, Charles, 65, 320 
 Davis, Judge, 297-298 
 Death, sudden, 270 
 Delaware, 14 
 Democratic party in the 
 
 War, 242 
 Demosthenes, 151 
 
 Despotism concentres, lib- 
 erty diffuses, 24 
 
 Dorsey, Republican worker, 
 290, 307 
 
 Douglass, Frederick, 221 
 
 Drunkenness, social bur- 
 den, 84-86 
 
 Dudley, Pension Commis- 
 sioner, 290 
 
 Education of common peo- 
 ple, 62-64, 96-105 
 
 Egypt, education in, 96 
 
 Elkins, Senator, 307 
 
 Eloquence and Oratory, 
 Chapter IV, 128-156; 
 valuable for spread of 
 learning, knowledge, and 
 right motive, 130, 131 ; 
 largely ignored by pulpit, 
 platform and bar, 133, 
 134; requisites — training 
 of whole body for ex- 
 pression of great thoughts, 
 138-150; examples, 151 ; 
 compared with books and 
 press, 153; is the living 
 power of man on man, 
 
 "55 
 Emancipation in North, 
 
 211-213 
 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 
 
 194, 198 
 England, 183, 288 
 Episcopal Church, the, 177- 
 
 178 
 Europe an armed camp, 89 
 Evarts, Wm. M., 314 
 Everett, Edward, 199 
 Evolution and the Bible, 
 
 326 
 
 317 
 Excitements classified, 65 
 
Index 
 
 Fankuil Hall, 223 
 Fillmore, Millard, 197 
 Five Forks, 253 
 France, 183, 288 
 Frederick the Great, 255 
 Freedom, method of growth, 
 
 24 
 Free speech, in sixteenth 
 
 and nineteenth centuries, 
 
 23-26 
 Free trade, 66 
 Fugitive Slave Law, 191 
 
 Garfield, James R., 293- 
 294 
 
 Garrison, Wm. Lloyd, 193 ; 
 and Phillips, 224-226 
 
 German battle- legend, 41 
 
 Gettysburg, 89, 249 
 
 Giddings, Joshua, 195 
 
 Gould, Jay, 307 
 
 Government or the People ? 
 28-30 
 
 Graham Institute, 226 
 
 Grant, Ulysses S., Chapter 
 VIII, 234-266 ; elements 
 of greatness, 235 ; early 
 life of, 236 ; unsuccessful 
 middle life, 237-238 
 success in the war — Don- 
 elson and Henry, 243 
 qualities in war and peace, 
 246-248 ; friends with sub 
 ordinates, 252; magnani 
 mous in victory, 253-254 
 presidency of, 256-258 
 private life — travel, bank 
 ruptcy, biography — death, 
 259-262 
 
 Greece, education in, 97 
 
 Greek Church, 67 
 
 Greeley, Horace, 195, 299 
 
 Guyot, Professor, on plant 
 growth, 91 
 
 Hale, John P., 195 
 Hall, Wm. A., 226 
 Hammond, Dr. Wm. A., 312 
 Henry, Patrick, 150 
 Henry and Donelson, 243 
 Hillis, N. D., Foreword, 5-9 
 Holland, 183 - 
 Homer, 323 
 
 ICONOCLASM OF PUEITANS, 
 revolt against superstition 
 and oppression, 31-36 
 
 Ignorance, social waste, 60— 
 64 
 
 Independent Republicans, 
 
 285. 3°i. 303 
 Independents assert free 
 conscience in one's own 
 sect, 27 
 
 Jackson, slave-helper, 194 
 Johnson, Andrew, 254 
 Johnston, Joseph, 253 
 Jomini, 248 
 
 Joy, friend of Blaine, 292 
 Justice, theological idea of, 
 improved, 169 
 
 Kansas, 192 
 
 Knox, John, claims free 
 speech in Romanism; de- 
 nies it in Protestantism, 24 
 
 Lamar, Senator, 307 
 Leavitt, Joshua, 194 
 Lee, Robert E., 246 
 Legislators, 115-117 
 Liberty, seeds of, from Eng- 
 land and Holland, 183; 
 
 327 
 
Index 
 
 joined with slavery in 
 United States, 185 
 Lincoln, Abraham, 195, 214; 
 Chapter IX, 263-283; 
 iMoses and, 263-265 ; ret- 
 rospect, 266-267 ; death 
 of, and effect, 268-269; 
 sudden death, 270; killed 
 by slavery, 273 ; blow 
 aimed at nation, 276-278 
 Republic strengthened, 
 279-280 ; Lincoln's in 
 fluence in death, 282 
 apostrophe, 283 
 Longfellow, H. W., 194, 198 
 Lovejoy, Elijah P., 222 
 Lowell, James Russell, 194 
 Luther, Martin, 23, 24 
 Lying, social waste, 76-83 
 
 Maine, 13, 211 
 
 Maryland, 14, 251 
 
 Massachusetts, 13 ; demo- 
 cratic aristocrats of, 198; 
 emancipation in, 2H 
 
 May, Samuel J., 194 
 
 Mazarin, 38 
 
 Methodist churches, m 
 
 Michael Angelo, 151 
 
 Middle ages, education in, 99 
 
 Misfits of men, social waste, 
 
 71-75 
 Missouri Compromise, 192 
 Moody and Sankey, 1 1 1 
 More, Sir Thomas, 22 
 Morrison of Texas, 307 
 Moses, 263 
 Mount Vernon, 14 
 
 Napier, historian, 11, 253 
 Napoleon, 248, 255 
 New England, blood of, in 
 America, 13 
 
 New Hampshire, 13 
 
 New Jersey, 14; prayer-book 
 in, 217-218 
 
 New York, 13; emancipa- 
 tion in, 211 
 
 Nihilism in Russia, in Amer- 
 ica, 102 
 
 North, the, corrupted by sla- 
 very, 187-189, 213-218 
 
 Oaths worthless — official, 
 80 ; ecclesiastical, 82 
 
 Oratorical training to pro- 
 duce automatic action, 147 
 
 Oratory, definition of, 136; 
 qualities requisite for, 138 
 [&if Eloquence] 
 
 Parasites, social burden, 
 
 55-59 
 
 Patriotism above Party 
 (Appendix I), campaign 
 speech, October, 1884, on 
 James G. Blaine and 
 Grover Cleveland as can- 
 didates for Presidency, 
 284-311 
 
 Paul, the Apostle, 98, 313, 
 
 Peace advancing, 90 
 
 Pennsylvania, 14 
 
 Phillips, Wendell, 193; 
 Chapter VII, 208-233; 
 first public appearance, 
 221-224; Garrison and, 
 224-226 ; in Plymouth 
 Church, 226-229 ; prin- 
 ciples and oratory of, 229- 
 230; lesson of his fame, 
 231-232 
 
 Pickens, Governor, of South 
 Carolina, 278 
 
 328 
 
Index 
 
 Pilgrims, the, descendants 
 of, in England, 12; land- 
 ing of celebrated, 11-15; 
 characteristics of, 18; rea- 
 sons of, for migrating, 22 ; 
 common sense and fidelity 
 to conviction their great- 
 ness, 23 ; England now 
 honours their work, 38 
 
 Pine tree, symbol of Liberty, 
 
 37,38 
 Plymouth Church, 219-221, 
 
 3" 
 Plymouth Rock, 11, 14 
 Potato, the, misjudged, 175 
 Presbyterian Church, New- 
 school, 194 
 Providence, belief in, 126 
 Puritans, the, mostly yeo- 
 men, 22 ; prophet of com- 
 mon people, 30; accused 
 of zeal against trifles, 3 1 ; 
 ascetic prejudices, 32 ; des- 
 ecration of art, 33-36 
 Puritanism, Chapter I, 1 1 ; 
 creed of, I, religious free- 
 dom, II, civil liberty, 26- 
 29 ; England freed by, 35 ; 
 European nations refus- 
 ing, in dotage, 38 
 
 Quarrelsomeness, 
 
 waste, 65-70 
 Quincy family, 1 98 
 
 social 
 
 Raphael, 151 
 
 Reformation, the, 19-21 ; 
 leaders of, inconsistent, 
 23 ; stimulating intelli- 
 gence, 100 
 
 Religion, of forms, de- 
 creased — of heart, in- 
 
 creased, 170-175; is itself 
 its best statement, 176 
 
 Religious freedom of indi- 
 vidual, 27, 28; systems 
 foes of peace, 67 
 
 Representative democracy, 
 
 "5 
 
 Republican party. Appen- 
 dix I, passim, 284-3 1 1 
 
 Rhode Island, 13 
 
 Richelieu, 38 
 
 Richmond, 253 
 
 Robes and vestments sym- 
 bolic, 31 
 
 Rogers, abolitionist, 194 
 
 Roman Catholic Church, 67, 
 177 
 
 Rotation in office, 295 
 
 Russia, 288 
 
 St. John, Prohibitionist can- 
 didate for Presidency, 307 
 
 Salvation Army, III 
 
 Scheffer, Ary, 218 
 
 Sects improving, 70; im- 
 proved, 163 
 
 Self government, 115-I19 
 
 Seward, Wm. H., 195 
 
 Sheridan, Philip, 243, 252, 
 
 253 
 Sherman, William T., 243, 
 
 252, 253 
 Sickness and weakness, 
 
 social waste, 46-54 
 Slade, Governor, of Ohio, 195 
 Slavery, in United States 
 Constitution, 185 ; made 
 clash of interests and cor- 
 ruption, 186-190 ; acci- 
 dental in North, impor- 
 tant in South, 210; end 
 of, in North, 21 1-213 ; at- 
 titude of churches towards, 
 
 329 
 
Index 
 
 216-218; and politics, 
 240-241 
 
 Social unrest due to grow- 
 ing intelligence of masses, 
 
 103 
 
 Socialists, nihilists, commu- 
 nists out of place in Amer- 
 ica, I02 
 
 Society complex, 43-45 ; es- 
 timated by average, 60 
 
 South, the, in Civil War, 89 ; 
 corrupted by slavery, l86 ; 
 not wronged, 277 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, Appen- 
 dix II, passim, Beecher 
 at Spencer Dinner, 312- 
 324 
 
 Stanton, Edwin M., 195, 253 
 
 States celebrating Decem- 
 ber 22, 1620, 13-15 
 
 Statesmanship, 255 
 
 Stewart, Alvan, 195 
 
 Storrs, Richard S., Jr., 228 
 
 Sumner, Charles, Chapter 
 VI, 183-207, 195 ; char- 
 acter of, 197 ; accomplish- 
 ments of, 200; fame of, 
 202; an unsullied states- 
 man, martyr to freedom, 
 203-207 
 
 Sumter, Fort, 242 
 
 Swedenborgian Church, the, 
 178 
 
 Tappan, Arthur and 
 Lewis, 194 
 
 Theology, the old from gov- 
 ernmental force, the new 
 from divine fatherhood, 
 1 24 ; the true, makes 
 noble lives, 177 
 
 Thomas, George H., 243, 252 
 
 Thurman, Allan G., 307 
 Truth-telling, social cohe- 
 sion, 76-80 
 Tweed, Wm. M., 301 
 
 Unitarian Church, The, 
 178-179 
 
 Unity, fatal notion of Ro- 
 manism set up in Protes- 
 tantism, 24 
 
 Usurpations of Church and 
 Governments, 27—30 
 
 Utopia, 22 
 
 Vane, Sir Harry, 27 
 Ventilation and health, 49- 
 
 54 
 Vermont, 13 
 Vice taxes virtue, 60 
 Villiers, 38 
 Virginia, 14 
 
 War, waste and burden, 
 
 87-93 
 Washington City,from 1830- 
 
 1860, 191 
 Washington, George, 14,255 
 Wastes and Burdens of So- 
 ciety, Chapter II, 43 
 I, sickness and weakness, 
 46; 2, parasites, 55; 3, 
 ignorance, 60 ; 4, quarrel 
 someness, 65 ; 5, misfits, 
 71 ; 6, lying, 76; 7, drunk 
 enness, 84; 8, war, 87 
 Webster, Daniel, 151, 199 
 Weld, Theodore, 193 
 Whittier, John G., 194, 199 
 Woman, rights of, 58; edu- 
 cation of, Greek, 97 ; He- 
 braic position of, 97, 98; 
 in America, 99 
 
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