NATIONAL RIGHTEOUSNESS AND NATIONAL SIN:
THIE SUBSTANCE OF
A DISCO URSE
DELIVERED IN
THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF SOUTH SALEM,
WESTCHESTER CO., N. Y., NOVEMBER 20, 1856,
BY AARON L. LINDSLEY,
PASTOR OF THE CHURCH.
NEW YORK:
PRINTED BY EDWARD 0. JENKINS,
NO. 26 FRANKFORT STREET.
1857.








NATIONAL RIGHTEOUSNESS AND NATIONAL SIN:
THE SUBSTANCE OF
A DISCO UiRSE
DELIVERED IN
THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF SOUTH SALEM.,
WESTCHESTER CO., N.Y., NOVEMBER 20, 1856,
BY AARON L. LINDSLEY,
PASTOR OF THE CHURCH.
NEW YORK:
PRINTED BY EDWARD 0. JENKINS,
NO. 26 FRANKFORT STREET.
1857.








CORRESPONDENCE.
To the
REV. A. L. LINDSLEY, A. M.:
Dear Sir:
The undersigned members of your congregation, being desirous that the
views set forth in your Discourse on Thanksgiving Day should be more widely
disseminated, do most respectfully solicit a copy of the same for publication.
With sentiments of sincere regard,
We are, truly yours,
EDWIN BOUTON,             CYRUS LAWRENCE,
JOSEPH BENEDICT,          LEONARD B. TODD,
HARVEY MEAD,              ELI KEELER,
THOMAS GILBERT,           STEPHEN G. HOWE,
S. R. LOCKWOOD,           JACOB WEBSTER,
AND MANY OTHERS.
LEWISBORO, DEC. 25, 1856.
SOUTH SALEM, JANUARY 2, 1857.
GENTLEMEN:
I should be indisposed to comply with the request in the foregoing
note, if I had not been informed that it was very generally concurred in by the congregation. My objection arises from the fact, that I very seldom feel justified in
discussing the topics presented in the discourse. But as it was originally prepared
for the congregation, I feel that they are not without a claim upon it still.
Allow me to state, that the time which has elapsed since the delivery of the
discourse, makes it difficult to recall the phraseology employed in the unwritten
portion of it. I do not claim to have recalled it precisely, but the sentiments you
will recognize as substantially the same. I had purposed to append some quotations, personal and historical, but finding that these would enlarge the pamphlet to
an unexpected size, I omit them altogether.
In the fervent hope that the discourse may aid in giving a salutary direction to
the thoughts of those who may peruse it, and thereby contribute, however humbly,
to a wise and peaceful solution of the perplexing questions which agitate our Country, I commit it, though with much diffidence, to the press. The object of your
request will then have been not altogether disappointed.
With acknowledgements for your favorable opinion, I subscribe myself,
Your Friend and Pastor,
AARON L. LINDSLEY.
To MESSRS. E. BOUTON, AND OTHERS.




MOST GRACIOUS LORD!
We humbly beseech Thee, to grant us hearts mindful of Thy past mercies toward this nation. Suffer us never to fall into unthankfulness and forgetfulness of
Thy benefits publicly received. Be pleased to continue Thy fatherly guidance and
direction of our ways; dissipate the counsels of such as labor to stir up the hearts
of this people against one another; let their malicious practices be for their confusion. And grant Thou of Thy mercy, that love, concord and tranquility may continue and increase among the inhabitants of this land, even unto the coming of
our Lord Jesus Christ, by whose gracious Gospel Thou dost call us to unity, peace
and Christian harmony, the full perfection whereof we shall possess in Thy Kingdom; where all offences shall be removed, all iniquity suppressed, and Thy chosen
ones endued with that perfect glory in which our Lord Jesus now reigneth; unto
whom, with Thee and the Holy Ghost, be all honor and glory, evermore. —Amel.
[COMPOSED BY JOHN KNOX, THE REFORMER.]




DISCOURSE.
CHRISTIAN BRETHREN AND FELLOW-CITIZENS:
THF mariner who is wafted by favoring gales upon a smiling sea,
may eagerly look forward to a successful completion of his voyage:
but when contrary winds compel him-t to traverse, or a gale drives
him far off his course, he must make frequent observations, consult
his charts, keep his eye on the compass, and bring into busy operation the principles of the nautical art. And when clouds obscure
the heavens by night and by day, frustrating every attempt to
ascertain the ship's course, what resort has lihe as he anxiously
gazes into the thickening gloom, but with tle utmost circumspection
to apply all his skill and experience at every accessible point, and
await the issue with a confiding' trust in Him who "rides on the
tempest and directs the storm?"
I confess to you that the condition of our Country is aptly pictured
in my own mind by a noble ship driven before a tempest; and the
obligations of our countrymen are like the obligations of a ship's
company tossed on treacherous waves the sport of adverse winds.
It behoves us then as patriots to resort to fundamental principles,
determine our bearings, and ascertain our points of departure from
the meridian upon which our national craft was sailing, before she
was driven from her chartered course into the seductive currents of
personal gain and national aggrandizement.  In this investigation,
we are supplied with an authentic and reliable directory. It is
the Chart of God.
I have chosen therefore, as the guide to our reflections at this
hour, the words recorded in the Book of Proverbs, the fourteenth
chapter and the thirty-foulrth verse:
" RIGHTEOUSNESS EXALTETH A NATION; BUT SIN IS A REPROACH TO
ANY PEOPLE."
This passage contains a forcible contrast, the first portion of
which requires but little explanation.  Personal Righteousness is




6                 NATIONAL RIGHTEOUSNESS
the practice of justice in every department of life. It is the rendering to others whatever is lawful and equitable. It is the honorable
fulfilment of engagements. It is the prosecution of lawful ends in a
lawful way. Justice is a moral principle; righteousness is a moral
act. The latter is the expression or the outworking of the former.
Righteousness is justice operating.
National Righteousness is the same cardinal virtue on a broader
scale. It is the operation of justice in the hands of the Country.
A just government marks its intercourse with other nations by
uprightness in its commercial relations, and by the faithful observance of treaties; and its domestic administration, legislative,
judicial and executive, is characterized by the same scrupulously
correct and honorable policy. A righteous administration of government is therefore always founded upon the principle of evenhanded and incorruptible justice.
But inasmuch as government is established among men for the
benefit of the governed, a righteous administration of its functions
will therefore promote the best interests of all classes of citizens,
and every section of the country. It will frame just and equal
laws, cherish industry, encourage virtue, suppress vice, throw its
powerful shield over the innocent, punish the criminal, relieve the
oppressed, protect and honor religion, and revere Almighty God,
the Supreme Ruler who has ordained governments as His agents
among men.
Government is the constituted guardian of the natural and civil
rights of its subjects. Natural rights cannot be created by the
State: they are the gift of God. The State acknowledges them, and
defines their just limitation. Civil rights may be enacted by the
State; but natural rights are the only just foundation of these: for
the God-given rights of man are inalienable. A righteous government protects them from encroachment at home and defends them
against aggression from abroad. The loyal citizen of such a country
dwells in peace. He prosecutes his lawful avocations, while the
government protects himn in the possession of his most cherished
rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Government necessarily reacts upon the people whom it serves.
Hence a righteous administration of Public Affairs affords a benign
encouragement to industry and virtue and an honorable fame, by
dispensing justice to all, maintaining order and stability, and preserving inviolate its own character for faithfulness and incorruptibility. Thus it promotes individual welfare, and moral and intellectual elevation. Such a government is enthroned upon the moral
judgment of its subjects, and enkindles patriotism in every breast;
and it secures the respect and confidence of the world. Its moral




AND NATIONAL SIN.                        7
influence is in proportion to its righteousness; and its citizens in
foreign lands are clothed with its moral power. It is endowed with
all the elements of life and progress and perpetuity.
So true is it that "RIGHTEOUSNESS EXALTETH A NATION."
The truth contrasted with this in the text, is expressed in language
not difficult to understand. " Sin is a reproach to anypeople." Differing but not contrary views are maintained respecting the meaning
of the word translated reproach; but without rehearsing these, it is
sufficient to observe, that the words of our version are regarded as
accurate enough for practical uses. I think the full meaning would
appear by making the points of the contrast more prominent:
Righteousness exalts a nation; but Sin degrades any people.
Personal immorality is corrupting from its very nature; and that
which corrupts the mind debases the man.  The more flagrant the
immorality, the deeper the degeneracy. Immorality and crime are
not always but very often joined together in a debauched alliance
of profligacy and shame. Impiety, injustice, oppression, and every
form of iniquity, tend only to infamy and ruin. Sin is contagious.
Unrestrained transgression in a few, weakens the bonds of virtue in
many, and makes the timid culprit bold. Law loses its majesty,
and license creeps through its meshes. The public, familiarized to
abuses in the administration of law, learns to look with indifference
upon the frequency of crime; a turbulent populace rapidly swelling
in numbers, clamors for freedom from restraint, and runs riot into
excesses; and then the end is nigh.
As it is with society, so is it with nations. A corrupt supervision
of Public Affairs, brings any country into contempt at home and
dishonor abroad. It is the helm of state in the hands of treachery.
A violation of treaty obligations, an unscrupulous thirst for national
aggrandizement, public defalcations, the unfaithful discharge of official trusts, the oppression of the weak and defenceless, the rancorous
spirit of party, the misconstruction of constitutions and statutes-all
these show the degradation of any government, and exhibit an unmistakable tendency to dissolution. For these are national crimes
which call to Heaven for vengeance; and Heaven will avenge.
Our text then teaches that National Righteousness is the guardian
of national honor, and the promoter of national prosperity and peace;
and that National Iniquity terminates in national disgrace, misery
and ruin.
The Bible contains much instruction on the subject of civil government. And to expound its lessons without regard to parties, is
not political preaching, in the ordinary usage of the phrase. Politics
relate to the policy, or course of procedure which should be adopted
in the management of Public Affairs.  As citizens hold different




8                  NATIONAL RIGHTEOUSNESS
views in relation to the policy to be pursued by the government,
they range themselves on opposite sides, and thus become partisans.
But on this as on every subject, there are general principles which
are held in common by good men of all parties,-some branches of
moral science and political science are closely interwoven, and cannot be effectively treated of apart, —and these may therefore be very
properly discussed in the pulpit on suitable occasions, but always
with reference to the welfare of men, and the glory of God. There
should be religion in the State, and religion in politics. To divorce
them  is to repudiate God, and make a league with hell. On the
other hand, a political religion is a curse. By partisan preaching
the pulpit is sunk as much lower than " the stump" as it legitimately
stands above it. And we ask no privilege to advocate in this place
the claims of any party but the party of tile RIGHCT,which maintains
the claims of humanity and the claims of God. All true patriots
belong to the party of the Right. No reasonable man will take exceptions to such a course as this. —Now that the great contest for
the Presidency is past, I propose to review in a candid and impartial manner, some of our Country's claims to that Righteousness
which exalteth a nation, and inquire how far we maiy have incurred
the reproach which follows national Sin; and then examine our
duty to our Country and to God, in the existing condition of national
affairs.
In the advancement of our Country's material welfare, we still
find powerful incentives to Thanksgiving and Praise to the Giver of
every good.  Our Country as a whole was probably never more
prosperous in all that pertains to the production of the great staples
of commerce, and the consequent diffusion of the necessaries, comforts and enjoyments of life. The extent of our Country, its mineral
resources, the productions of its forests and its waters, its fertility
of soil, its agricultural interests, its inventive talent, its mechanical
skill, the variety and utility of its manufactures and arts, its mercantile enterprise, its facilities for travel and transportation, its vast
commercial marine, —all distinguish our land as the most highly
favored in point of material advantages that the sun shines upon,
and offer in the aggregate the greatest incitements to industry, the
acquisition of a competency, and the accumulation of wealth. And
these three results are in a remarkable degree developed. Every
man can find an honest employment in our Country; every man can
acquire a homestead and a competency if he chooses; and every
man has access, so far as a just regard to equal rights can open the
way, to the avenues to wealth. These are great advantages, unequalled in any land. But they are not all indispensable to tile
highest interests of man. These provide for material welfare; but




AND NATIONAL SIN.                         9
beyond the simple supply of nature's wants, they are means to a
higher end.  Thzat end is the promotion of the intellectual, moral and
spiritual well-being.
And the provision which is made for moral and religious cultivation in our Country is also abundant and unsurpassed. This provision is another reason for Thanksgiving to Almighty God.
A proper regard for these facilities of salutary progress, and a
due improvement of them, would be our nation's most appropriate
Thank-offering, and most acceptable to God.  The surplus product of
oar material adcvantcages should be devoted to intellectual and moral elevation. The superfluities of life should be held in trust for the higher
objects of life. And the proportion of responsibility is in proportion
to the superfluity. The amount of means to do good, is the measure
of obligation to do good. This is a divine law. For "unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required."  This department of duty should not be confined to the limits of optional charity,
where a common delusion places it. To do good is as truly a work
of righteousness, as to be just and faithful. It is as much of the
nature of stringcrent moral obligation, as any other which our Maker
has enjoined upon us. The obligation is universal and unchangeable:
its application is regulated by opportunity and proportion of means.
Its indefiniteness in the latter particular, is the innocent occasion of
its frequent violation. The observance of this rule is therefore obedience to a leading rule of righteousness. It exalteth the person
who observes it; and when it is regarded by the people, it exalts
the nation whose citizens they are. It gives it a just and honorable
fame among the brotherhood of nations, and a lofty place in the
annals of the world.
Now have we as individuals, and therefore as a nation, consistently observed this rule of righteousness, and thus far commended
ourselves to the favor of Him who has bestowed upon us all these
resources of comfort and wealth, and the consequent means of
personal elevation in the scale of rational beings, and of exalted
usefulness to fellow-creatures? 7T ould to God a conscience void of
offence might sanction an affirmative response! There are individual examples of the consecration of means to the purposes of a
higher life. lBut in what relation to this unquestionable duty would
this inquiry find the mass of our countrymen?  WVould it not discover them in almost universal transgression? This sin is a burning
reproach to any people. And the more prevalent the sin, the deeper
the reproach. The prevalence of the sin must be determined by the
amount of means to work righteousness.  And was there ever a
land where the means wvere so universally diffused, and the calls for
their beneficent employment so numerous and so pressing as in our
own?




10                NATIONAL RIGHTEOUSNESS
Look abroad over our Country. What a diversified scene of exciting and restless activity fatigues the eye! Almost all classes
are driven by a common impulse. The busy hand and the busy foot
of toil are everywhere. The country is all astir under the rapid and
effective movements of labor; and the myriad sounds of the cities
respond to the farmer's voice and the herdman's call, multiplying
echoes over countless fields; the water-courses are vexed with innumerable keels, and the valleys are vocal with the mingled din of
manufactures endlessly diversified; the mountains tremble in the
miner's blasts, vomiting the minerals hoarded in their rock-ribbed
recesses; far away the woodman's axe resounds through the dim
archways of primeval forests; and boundless prairies are untilled
solitudes no longer. Then to demonstrate the mutual dependence
of human occupations, we behold the interminable system of water
communication on seacoast and river provided by the beneficent
Creator, together with the vast labyrinthine network of railways
constructed by man, employed to bear away and afar the surplus
products of industry and skill, enriching the great depositories of
trade, while leaving a generous tribute along every route of transportation, and furnishing employment to a great number of heads
and hands, from the laborer whose capital is vested in his strong
muscle, to the merchant whose ships frequent remotest bays. What
varied combinations thus arise out of extreme diversities of occupations!  The producing classes in turn become consumers; the
thinking brain leaves its cloistered study, and helps the working
hand; and every calling affords remuneration for the investment of
capital and skill, which makes the poor rich and the rich no poorer.
Surely indolence is not an American vice, nor pauperism an American
institution!
But whence this universal activity? It springs from a desire for
acquisition; a propensity just in its normal condition, evil in its
abuse. It thus becomes a consuming thirst for gain; a despotic and
insensate impulse, which urges to the violation of all the laws of the
human constitution by posting on for success, regardless of the
means employed, the obligations involved, or the consequences entailed.  Hence the reckless expenditure of the vital forces by
stretching both mind and body upon the rack of toil, resulting in
chronic maladies, premature imbecility, or early death. Hence the
eager resort to the credit system, to do business with other people's
goods and live on other people's money; and having run a brief
career of fashionablefolly, conveniently to fail, and grow rich by
the operation —resulting in the loss of reputation and ruin of character. Hence the invention of tricks of trade'to defraud a purchaser
or outstrip a competitor. Hence the employment of irresponsible




AND NATIONAL SIN.                      11
agents, whose chief recommendation consists in an aptness to drive
a good bargain, or a fast train. Hence the respect paid to prosperity which has mounted to its " bad eminence" through dishonor
-to placeholders without character or capacity-to wealth without
worth. Hence, in fine, the general adoption of the rule of expediency, which fluctuates by circumstances, or is graduated by selfishness or baseness, instead of the rule of righteousness which never
changes, and which appeals from selfishness to conscience and from
the opinion of men to the arbitrament of God.
And what is the end contemplated in these never-ceasing exertions
of body and brain? If all this activity were indispensable to secure
the means of subsistence, it would carry its justification along with
it. But the end in view is removed far beyond this. The thirst for
gain is not slaked at the fountains of necessity or competency. And
the superfluity it seeks is not for the promotion of intellectual and
moral self-elevation-not for the relief of virtuous want in others —
not for the endowment of public charities-not for the dissemination
of knowledge, art, religion among the families and nations of the
earth. Its aim is self-aggrandizement; its end is personal display.
The miser's cupidity is not a ruling lust in our Country. Hoarding
is the vice of old men; squandering is the vice of modern society.
Extravagance marks almost all classes, high and low. Driven by
the common impulse, the rich and poor alike are on a career of reckless prodigality. Disdaining the sobriety of former times, when a
less gaudy and conceited style prevailed, the society of our day
runs with precipitate haste after native and imported extravagances
in habitations, personal apparel, entertainments and amusements,
whose chief recommendation is their exorbitant price, whose principal charm is novelty, and whose fruit is first a paltry boast, and
after that dissatisfaction and disgust. The ostentation of " high
living" is thus found in close alliance with "mean  thinking."
WTealth is sought with intense covetousness, for the indulgence of
the lower propensities; and when it is acquired, often by resorting
to base expedients, it is profusely lavished to gratify a depraved
appetite for costly luxuries, and an uncultivated taste for fine things.
Hence the rage for foreign works of art, foreign fashions, and
foreign manners; and with these importations are inevitably blended
the introduction offoreign morals too —the execrable vices of the licentious capitals of Europe-to demoralize American society, under
the color of refinement and civilization. Nameless abominations are
these-which must needs be spoken of in a foreign dialect to make
them exquisitely polite and captivating.
Under such combined fascinations, the virtuous simplicity of former days is rapidly giving place to an artificial life which permits no




12                NATIONAL RIGHTEOUSNESS
restraints upon its demands. It lays all resources under contribution,
It tasks labor and taxes capital to the utmost. It drains the country
of its products, and then fails at the rate of millions to balance the
account with our foreign trade. The exportation of bullion to
Europe is carried on almost without intermission to pay for luxuries
and fancy goods, imported in profusion to satisfy the imperious
demands of vanity and lust. We are the laughing stock of Europeans. Anything will sell in America, if it has a novel style however gairish, and a foreign label however unutterable. Genuine
refinement is smothered amid chemical perfumes, good taste is put
to the blush upon a pyramid of furbelows and flowers, civilization
plays attendance upon French cooks and dancing-masters, and
chastity dwells among nude statuary.
Such prodigality will ruin any nation.  All the gold of California cannot save it. The late war and the partial failure of crops
in Europe have postponed only in part the consequences of our
extravagance and waste. These calamities in Europe created an
unprecedented activity in American trade and commerce, by soliciting supplies which our country was able to furnish. Such demands
are necessarily transient. These will cease; but the consequences
of an unwonted expansion of trade unprovided with adequate checks
and balances, will follow. The wanton waste and extravagance, the
appetite for expensive luxuries and pleasures, and the resort to
fraudulent expedients to gratify these, will not depart.  Public
credit abroad will be overthrown, and confidence at home, the cornerstone of business, will fluctuate and fall.
The sin of luxurious living has always been the curse of prosperous nations. Its source is a misuse of the abundant blessings of
Providence, and a practical denial of accountability to God. The
general diffusion of wealth without the counterpoise of moral responsibility to guide its employment is essentially enervating, and
subversive of all manliness and all virtue. When this comes to be
the ordinary condition of a people, corruption is already at the
pith, and the whole mass must swiftly decay and perish. This is
the teaching of all history. No power can arrest its dissolution; for
the Most High, in dealing with nations as well as with individuals,
hath declared "The kingdom and nlation that will not serve me, SHALT,
PERISH."  The retributions of Providence are ordinarily seen in
permitting the development of the legitimate results of transgression, which are like the tree and its fruit. IIence, whatsoever a
nation soweth, that shall it also reap; and if it sows to the flesh, it
must reap corruption. The persistent abuse of the means of selfimprovement and beneficence unavoidably grows downwards into
self-abasement, poverty, and want. The couch of pleasure is a bed




AND NATIONAL SIN.                     13
of down upon a bed of thorns. An abused conscience generates a
scorpion with torment in its sting.
We think there can be recognized, in the prevalent misuse of
pecuniary means, the infliction of retribution upon parental unfaithfulness. The fathers of the present generation of active nien —and
their fathers too-were men of toil. Our Country shows it to-day.
The progress of this land in material improvement since the adoption
of the Federal Constitution, is probably without a parallel in the
annals of the world. Our ancestors, the founders of this Republic,
knew the value of labor, and the value of its fruits. The necessities
of their condition taught them serviceable lessons, which their successors appear in a great measure to have forgotten. Economy in
those days was regarded as a cardinal virtue. But it was likewise
abused. It too often degenerated into parsimony. And yet property was frequently put to highest uses then. Their sanctuaries,
colleges, public charities, and other useful and benevolent endowments, surpass in value, we venture to assert, the boasted munificence of to-day, due allowance being made for the proportion of
means. And the pecuniary sacrifices which our fathers made to
maintain the struggle for Independence, needs no laudation. The
cause was great, and great men there were to sustain it. Notwithstanding, it cannot be denied that the economy of the past age often
stiffened into penuriousness. Money was too much regarded as an end
in itself, and not as means to an end. Old America was a hoarder:
he toiled hard to lay up. Young America is a spendthrift: he
works day and night to squander. The close-fisted parsimony
which cheapened the comforts of life and narrowed education to a
naked utility, which frowned upon charity, denied innocent recreation, and discountenanced the cultivation of taste lest it might
lead to expenditure, was disdainfully cast aside, when the wonderful facilities of our day opened an easy access to wealth. Proper
instructions in relation to the uses of money and the responsibilities of
stewardship, would have saved multitudes from the sin of squandering and the degradation of resorting to dishonorable expedients to
keep up appearances, when their real condition was worse than
bankruptcy. The intense pursuit of gain was the lesson taught,
and eagerly learned  but the object of its pursuit was discarded,
and no elevated and unselfish motive supplied its place. The early
inculcation of liberality would in due time have pointed out the
golden mean which intersects the extremes of avarice and prodigality.
But the absence of this generous principle is sadly evident in the
transitions which take place under the intoxications of money-getting in our day, from the parsimonious savings of honest gains aforetime, to the lavish expenditure of riches rapidly and often unscrupu



14                NATIONAL RIGHTEOUSNESS
lously acquired. Covetousness is at the bottom of both: the end
in view is widely different. And herein is that proverb true, The
fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on
edge.
The absorbing pursuit of any mercenary end brings about by a
moral necessity, the degradation of the moral sentiments. And thus
human concerns come to be important only as they bear a relation
to the market value of stocks and staples. The rules of trade are
the rules of life, and the rate per cent. is the rate of interest in
fellow man. This moral debasement makes success the higher law,
and treats a covenant obligation as a rope of sand, when the convenience ceases for which it was assumed. Hence the ease of a
pecuniary failure, when men grow rich by publishing themselves
too poor to pay their creditors; and hence the deplorable indifference with which the public have come to look upon breaches of
trust, and criminal abuse of mercantile confidence, which offers a
premium to dishonesty, and renders an. easy chastisement or none
at all to skilful fraud.
But the " reproach " which attaches to this " sin," is not confined
to individual and social life. It exerts directly and indirectly an
incalculable influence upon the Public Affairs of the Country. The
moral consequences of the universal thirst for gain is felt in all the
departments of government. As its selfish ends induce the disregard of personal and social duties, so they lead to the neglect and
violation of civil and political obligations. Its intense application
leaves no time to devote to the common interests of citizenship.
Gain asks to be let alone in the prosecution of its selfish ends, and
relinquishes the highest aims of government to other hands. Add
to this, the indifference of many good men to the honors of office,
their aversion to partizan wrangling, and their criminal neglect of
political duties, and the wide-spread corruption of politics, proceeding
from opposite sources, is explained. But that disregard of these
obligations which attend the vehement pursuit of gain is less excusable than any other, because the defence which it sets up is
entirely selfish. Men who have a taste for serving the people, and
a disrelish for labor, push themselves forward; and demagogues
are thus lifted into place and power. The injuries which such men
are capable of inflicting upon the Country are incalculable; for it is
never safe to confide important interests to corrupt hands. No
barrier is impregnable to their insidious assaults. They reduce the
science of politics to a contraband trade in offices and emoluments.
The safeguards of liberty which patriotism would vigilantly defend,
they covertly invade, or openly disregard.
Constitutions and laws may, for a while, withstand the aggres



AND NATIONAL SIN.                      15
sions of bad men in power; but history furnishes a warning commentary upon the facility with which the best institutions may be
totally perverted and overthrown by unfaithful functionaries. Nor
are these examples limited to political institutions. The trusts confided to churches and colleges and public charities-justly regarded
as more sacred than political trusts-have often been violated under
a specious appearance of fidelity to the letter of the obligation.
Our institutions possess no inherent properties to preserve them from
a similar fate; and the danger of their perversion is most imminent
when their management is entrusted to designing and irresponsible
executives. If the command of the citadel is in the hands of traitors,
the gates will be open to the enemy in an hour of slumbering security. Corrupt functionaries, occupying the seat of authority, can
successfully defy all constitutional efforts to dislodge them long
enough to destroy every chartered right, and violate every trust.
Neither can political parties save our Country.  They act a very
important part in the affairs of government. Directed by patriotic principles, they are guardians of public welfare. They catechise the
aspirants after office, watch the agents of government, and recompense delinquents at the ballot-box. They dissect the principles and
ventilate the pretensions of every seditious faction. The Country is
safe while a highminded patriotism is diffused among their ranks.
But when attachment to party supplants love of country, and every
species of abuse and fraud is practised to secure a partisan triumph
-when leaders are unprincipled and corrupt, and their followers
are blindly led-the object of political parties is subverted, and
they become instruments of stupendous mischief. The animosities
of partisan strife are diffused like a virulent poison through all the
agencies employed. Political conventions and speeches, newspapers
and pamphlets, legislative debates and personal controversies, all
share in the bitterness and hatred poured forth against political opponents, who are at least as honorable gentlemen and as pure patriots as their revilers.
In the present state of things, it seems impossible to raise a party
founded upon true liberty and righteousness, and keep it together long
enough to give it the ascendancy. The spirit of'76 and'87 has been
again and again revived, and great expectations indulged in view of
the numbers who have immediately enlisted under its banners. But
the men who should have stood in the van, and marshalled the ranks,
were too intent upon gain, or too averse to political exertion; and
the management fell upon professional politicians, whose merits had
not been appreciated by their old associates. The attempt to carry
it forward by the foul machinery employed in other parties, has resulted in defeat; and thus reforms imperatively demanded in muni



16                NATIONAL RIGHTEOUSNESS
cipal, state and federal administrations have been abandoned, or indefinitely postponed.
If " eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," the men of our day
are refusing to pay it. In their opinion the price is too high. Enough
for them to watch the stock-market and the price-current; while liberty is watched with an evil eye by political hucksters, who purchase
license in administrative halls, and barter indulgences and rights
under that sacred name.
We cannot forbear to notice another element of " reproach " which
originates in the FATAL PASSION OF THE DAY, as the Emperor of France
justly characterizes the profligate spirit of speculation which is
everywhere prevailing. The extravagance and knavery which attend
it, find their way into the administration of government. Public Affairs were conducted aforetime upon an economical basis. This has
been our boast. The cost of government in our land has been in favor of republican institutions; but this argument against monarchy
is shifting fast against us. No other result could be looked for. So
intimate are the relations which subsist between our people and our
rulers, that the style of expenditure maintained by the former will
be speedily adopted by the latter. The golden mean which holds
the balance between penuriousness and prodigality, must be observed in society, in order to retain it in the government; for the
customs of society in this particular, will always turn the key of the
public treasury. Salaries sufficient for honest men will be ascertained to be inadequate; then will follow costly gifts from without
(which the law calls bribery), embezzlement of public funds, and
general depletion of the treasury; a spirit of official recklessness,
which squanders the public revenues, is soon manifest, which cannot be expelled so long as the habits of the people give it countenance. When citizens yield to the despotic sway of the "fatal passion," no effective rebuke can be administered to public profligacy,
or malfeasance in office. A change of parties will be only a change
of " platforms," not of aims; a change of management, not of expenditure; a change of men, not of morals. A mercenary and voluptuous people not only cover themselves with infamy, they also tempt
their successors into profligacy and dishonor, and instigate to flagrant crimes in official stations.  When the mass is corrupt, the body
politic must perish. SIN IS A REPROACH TO ANY PEOPLE.
The opinion is sometimes expressed, that a remedy for these evils
exists in the nature of the enterprises of the present day, operating
like a safety-valve upon a high pressure of steam. These are indeed grand, varied, and attractive, beyond all precedent. The immense slopes laved by two oceans, the intermediate valleys and mountain ranges, the allied domain of thirty-one States, with territory




AND NATIONAL SIN.                      17
enough to swell the number to fifty, stretching away in the sublime
magnitude of a Continent, are the home-field of American industry,
talent, and skill; and in the eye of American enterprize, no land is
so remote and no sea so solitary as to prohibit access to American
exploration and commerce. A race naturally inventive and acute,
as persevering as energetic, as self-confident as capable, stimulated
alike by difficulties and by dangers, equally unsubdued by disasters
and unsatisfied by successes-finding the highways of the world on
either vast shore, boldly project and push forward undertakings on
a scale and in a variety unknown to States of an origin so recent
and of available means so limited, and in some sublime features unrivalled among the nations.* They take a vast wilderness in hand, and
in a few seasons transform it into fruitful fields, intersect it by roads
and railways, dot it with villages and embryo cities, establish government, introduce education, art and science, found colleges, dedicate churches, and snapping its leading-strings, create an independent nationality-the former work of a century accomplished in a day.
Moreover, the condition of things in our country and the world is
in a degree never known before, adapted to develope all the resources, and excite all the activities of such a race. All things are
in motion, or easily moved. Inertia is a physical property well nigh
exploded in practice. The world is a vast laboratory, in full operation. Human sagacity discovers little therein besides the disorganization of things that are-the disruption of old affinities, and the
recombination of all things upon new bases. But the hand of a neverslumbering Providence moves forward all these changes; and the
race best qualified by energy, intelligence, and capacity, seizes the
instruments, works upon the new material, and turns it all to account. The abundance and vastness of existing opportunities, acting upon a people free to embrace them, and predisposed to engage
in them, under a government which reflects the prevailing spirit,
and obeys the popular will, stimulate the enterprizes and create the
speculations which make our Country the theatre of over-strenuous
and restless activity.
But it is impossible that these should furnish a remedy for the disorders of which we have spoken —unless, indeed, a malady and its
cure are one and the same; for the facilities afforded to enterprise
and speculation are the proximate occasions of the insatiable pursuit of gain.  These excite the thirst to fever heat, by the promise
of success entirely disproportioned to the means invested, and the
time employed. In short, the elements of novelty and adventure
-t E. G. The Government Expedition to Japan, and the resulting Treaty; the
Grinnell-Kane Expedition, the joint enterprise of Government and one citizen.
2




18               NATIONAL RIGHTEOUSNESS
which enter largely into many of these opportunities on the one
hand, with the stable element of affluent returns for regular investments on the other, satisfy the conditions coveted by the extremes
of the business classes; and these elements mutually kindle an unparalleled excitement in every department.  The nature of the enterprises of the times is therefore not a safety-valve for reduction,
but fuel for the increase: it is a principal occasion in the production of the evils to which we have adverted.
But a comprehensive view of the field we are surveying, compels
us to take another step. In our Country, not only the prevailing dispositions, but also the prevailing pursuits of the people, inevitably
give character to legislation, and the administration of government.
Hence the tendencies of the times assume an importance of the
gravest significance. The pursuit of gain for personal ends is expanded into a passion for NATIONAL AGGRANDIZEMENT. Professional politicians are among the first to discern such tendencies, and make
the most of them. They skilfully touch the keys of popular passions,
and manufacture public opinion to serve the occasion. A false and
wicked mode of enlarging our territory is thereby justified under
the specious plea of " extending the area of freedom" —a plea which
carries immense weight with many honest minds who ardently desire the propagation of liberal institutions among all nations, but
whose zeal betrays them into the advocacy of the iniquitous measures concocted by political tacticians, at the instigation of interested parties. Much of the eloquence vented on this subject would be
struck dumb if the ulterior object fell short of annexation to our already overgrown territory.  "The extension of the area of freedom " would lose all its popularity, if our sovereignty were not to go
abreast with it, step by step. This will be sufficiently evident, upon
examining the real motives which control these zealous propagandists
of liberty. The real motives are not often apparent in the fervor of
partizan declamation; but they are more plainly avowed in the general discussions which take place among the people.  In short, the
" extension of the area of freedom," is a formula synonymous with
the extension of the area of trade. It is a French cover to an Anglo-Saxon purpose. It is a pretext ingeniously framed for popular effect.
It is a deception hitherto successfully imposed upon the multitude who
put their consciences in the keeping of political leaders, and their
faith in convention platforms.  The formula has a philanthropic
sound; but the ring of coin is the key-note. Its synonym displays
the true ground of every scheme of annexation recently accomplished or proposed. In the purchase of Louisiana (A. D. 1803), the leading idea was the security of boundaries, although the extension of
trade was not without weight. The sources of the Mississippi were




AND NATIONAL SIN.                      19
in our own domain, while its outlet was in the possession of another
power. Prudential reasons of high moment justified the acquisition
of the territory watered by that immense artery, and contiguous to
its discharge into the gulf. Its acquisition was, therefore, deemed
indispensable to the security and prosperity of our Western possessions. By the same means, immense facilities were provided for
every department of business. The purchase of Florida (A. D. 1819)
was justified upon grounds relating to the protection and'security of
boundaries; and the motive was frankly avowed. No solid reasons
affecting the security of domain could be alledged for subsequent
acquisitions; and the advantages to trade openly avowed were a
consideration too obviously selfish to carry the vote of a great people, or to justify extreme measures in the eyes of the world. Hence
the invention of a figure of speech, professing devotion to liberty,a devotion like that which Roman legions carried on their eagles,
when they remorselessly imposed their liberty upon subjugated
nations.
This famous formula is the great staple in political theatres; its
synonym triumphs in commercial circles. The club-room and the
counting-house meet in a cordial cooperation. Demagoguism and
Trade unite in developing " manifest destiny!"  And we are thus
working out our destiny, which will be apparent in due time.  It will
be a luminous manifestation of the unchangeable truths, that
RIGEITEOUSNESS EXALTETH A NATION, and that SIN IS A REPROACH TO ANY
PEOPLE.
The formula finds favor and advocacy in every section of the country; but it is interpreted to suit different latitudes.  At the North
the advantages to commerce and manufactures are displayed as the
result of any proposed accession of territory; at the South, it is the
same plea, quoting a different class of staples-a commerce in cotton and slaves. GAIN is the ruling consideration, and the advocates
of territorial enlargement, intent upon their purpose, move agencies
seductively appealing to sectional interests; and thus the strong
incentives of personal selfishness serve to enlist all portions of the
Country, and make the measure popular and national. A vicious:
political machinery, ready for propulsion in any direction in which
its masters may engineer it, is brought to bear against any respectable minority in whatever quarter it may exist. But perhaps no
single fact more plainly denotes the general demoralization of politics, than the fact that this iniquitous machinery is permitted to
prevail against the convictions of a majority. By these processes,
Texas was incorporated with our Union. Our limits forbid an extended discussion of this event. The annexation was accomplished
against the solemn remonstrances of the best and wisest men in all




20               NATIONAL RIGHTEOUSNESS
parts of the country, who predicted calamities which were speedily
realized. The measures adopted to secure it were unconstitutional
and fraudulent; anld thl Country was thereby plunged into an iniquitous war, not in obedience to the will of a great majority, but
contrary to it, and afterwards agitated from centre to circumference
upon the subject of admitting independent slave States into the
Union. All that our Country could honorably desire, could have been
gained without shedding a drop of blood, and without violence to
the public peace. It was only a question of time.  But Gain and
Politics struck hands with Slavery, and Righteousness and Honor
fled.
The success which attended these proceedings imparted a fresh
impulse to other projects for " extending the area of freedom." In
the flush of victory, its advocates believed that their fondest
dreams might be realized; and they turned their eyes eagerly upon
Cuba, lent a helping hand to land-pirates in Central America, and
concocted the scheme of "popular sovereignty" to beguile free
territory into the embrace of slavery, as elucidated in the brief and
bloody history of Kansas.
Large numbers at the North are induced to advocate these plots:
many from vicious political alliances; a smaller number from
benevolent but mistaken views; and not a few from the consideration of commercial interests. These classes have one thing in common: the denial of the atrocious wrong involved, and the disregard
of the consequences of unrighteousness. An insensate impulse
drives them forward in the employment of expedients which violate
international law, public honor and common honesty.
At the South these schemes have their origin and are generally
advocated. If it be assumed that the leading interests of that part
of the Union are correctly represented by Southern statesmen, no
one can be at a loss to decide what they are. They revolve around
a common centre, which is the perpet~uation of domestic servitude. And
in order to perpetuate it, it is maintained that its extension must
keep pace with the extension of the free States. By this means,
also, the superior political privileges guaranteed to it in the federal
Constitution will be prolonged and extended,- and this is ponwer. —
Two paramount considerations are thus brought to bear upon the
South: the creation of a larger market for slaves, and the consequent enhancement of that species of property; together with the
preservation of a preponderating political influence: for the capital
invested in that staple production of the South is very great, and
the sources of a larger income from it are objects of corresponding
interest; while the predominant influence of the South in the
management of Public Affairs is a fact of history. Though the




AND NATIONAL SIN.                      21
numerical strength and enterprise of our Country preponderate in
the North, unity of purpose and harmony in its prosecution do not
prevail here; while at the South these primary elements of success
do prevail; and union is strength.  A  compact well-disciplined
energetic minority will always outmanoeuvre a lukewarm and halfneutral majority. The latter is vulnerable; and under the drill of
political tactics, the Southern minority has ill the'end always carried
the day.
It cannot be denied that the statesmanship of our Southern
brethren for all practical purposes, is also superior. Their uniform
success displays a high degree of executive talent. They are
skilled in the science of diplomacy. And if their later statesmen
had devoted their abilities to honor the claims of justice and humanity towards the victims of oppression within their own borders,
and cooperated with intelligent patriots in every part of the Country
in developing our unlimited resources, in securing access to selfimprovement to all classes, in cultivating the arts of peace, in repressing the spirit of public misrule and private lawlessness, in discouraging sectional alienation and thereby uniting all sections in
an inseparable confraternity, maintaining righteousness and tranquility at home and honor and amity abroad,-this land of ours
would have ascended to an unparallelled elevation of material prosperity and moral grandeur-a spectacle of glory and excellency to
be admired by the wise and virtuous among all nations, and approved of Heaven.
How painful, alas, is the contrast afforded by our existing condition! Our material prosperity is indeed very great; and very
great also will be the curse it will entail, if we continue to depart
from  that Rig hteousness which exalteth a nation. But the spirit of
sectional discord and alienation prevails to a degree of bitterness
which will dash the fabric of our Union into mutilated fragments,
and bequeath incalculable evils to posterity, unless the spirit of
generous and enlightened patriotism is universally revived and
disseminated.
This spirit would lead our countrymen to the acknowledgment of
existing evils, and to the adoption of safe and pacific remedies.
Attempts to suppress by violence the freedom of debate and of the
press would no longer take the place of argument and temperate
discussion; schemes for increasing the number of slave States would
be reprobated, and Southern statesmanship would win imperishable
laurels by developing the philanthropic views of the patriots of'16
and'8 —the eras of our Independence and Constitution-which contemplated not the perpetuation and enlargement, but the early
extirpation of slavery.




22                NATIONAL RIGHTEOUSNESS
That such views, and no other, were entertained by the founders of
our Republic, and the framers of our Constitution, is susceptible of
proof so clear as to supersede the necessity of argument. The sources
of proof are twofold; first, they are patent upon and woven into the
texture of those unequalled documents which immortalized their authors, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, which by
every fair construction are sublime vindications of the rights of man;
and secondly, they appear in the speeches and writings of that day,
relating to those documents. Southern statesmen of that era taxed
the powers of language to express their abhorrence of slavery, and
to describe its enormities; and indulged in glowing anticipations
of the near approach of the day which should witness its extermination. In short the evidence goes to show that the architects of our
Union, and the States which entered into it, viewed domestic servitude as a local institution to be confined to the States in which it
existed, and in which it was universally supposed it was destined
to be speedily abolished.
But " what a fall was there, my countrymen," when in the conflict
between philanthropy and oppression, the latter triumphed I Slavery
had acquired an ingeniously-constructed lodgement in our great
National Covenant, providing for its temporary accommodation, like
a tent within a fortress; and thus indulged, a solid breastwork
silently arose within its curtains, the batteries of which have been
unmasked upon friends or foes as often as the interests of the system
have required. It became a power intrenched within a power,
mustering its forces to override all opposition to its schemes of exclusive aggrandizement, relentlessly crushing every assailant, and
seeking to abridge every right conflicting with its claims, in order
to retain the usurped control of the national citadel. Thus the
liberty of discussion, the inviolability of the post-office, the right of
petition, the trial by jury, the integrity of contracts and compromises, the public peace, the national treasure, the solemn faith of
treaties, have one after another been either invaded or set at
naught. It has made national administrations turbulent or tranquil
in proportion to their subserviency. Claiming for itself exclusive
jurisdiction within its own latitudes, and therefore violently repelling all interference, and simultaneously forcing the broad panoply of
the Union over all-its interests and schemes, it has become a power
totally foreign to the intent and purpose of the National Compact,
and should be suppressed. No encroachments, however, should be
made upon its constitutional privileges. It is the duty of true
patriotism to maintain all the guarantees of the Constitution, and
equally to resist every invasion of power and privilege upon natural
and prescriptive rights. A just construction of that instrument




AND NATIONAL SIN.                     23
would undoubtedly confine the institution to its privileges of a fractional representation of enslaved " persons," and a lawful return of
fugitives fromn service; and at the same time it would annihilate
all its usurpations at a blow.
The.great error, however, in an instrument otherwise perfect in
its intent and execution, was the recognition of the institution in
any form whatever. It should have been left exclusively to the
management of the States in which it existed, like other local
interests. Its recognition was naturally construed into tolerationtoleration was next magnified into sanction —and finally sanction
into imperious command. The next error was the permission to
carry the peculiar institution into free territory, out of which slave
States were subsequently erected. This point being gained, the
toleration of the system in the Federal Compact was also gained,
from which its national sanction was assumed, and thenceforward
it was emboldened to aggrandize itself at the national expense,
upon the ground of claims which were never dreamed of before, and
which the Free States have never sought for themselves.
It were unjust to a very large class of patriotic men at the South
to charge the usurpations of slavery upon them, or to include them
among the advocates of propagating the system. They know its
evils much better than we, and lament them more bitterly. Why
they are doing so little to mitigate them, or to arrest aggressions
upon freedom, is a very solemn question for them to answer. Their
inaction may be accounted for in part from the common aversion of
good men to mingle in political strife; but much more are they
deterred by the rule of the slavery propagandists, whose exactions
impose total silence upon all opponents, and whose penalty is flight
or death. A current in the Slave States has always set against the
system: but it is less apparent now than in former times. The
violent and unmeasured abuse heaped indiscriminately upon all
slaveholders by northern abolitionists has produced little less than
unmitigated evil both north and south; while in the slave States
its effect has been to rivet the chains of the slave, to prohibit discussion, to excite suspicion against all northern men, to sow dissension among brethren, and to magnify immensely the importance
of the pro-slavery party. This party is composed of different shades
of the same color: some who justify the system upon economic
grounds, as indispensable to the prosperity of the South; some upon
political grounds, as indispensable to the balance of power in the
Union; and others upon personal grounds, as indispensable to their
own promotion. A wing of this party enlists all disunionists, whose
intense aim is a Southern Confederacy. Unfortunately for the whole
Country, the latter hold the reins of the party, pack its conventions,




24                NATIONAL RIGHTEOUSNESS
and assume to embody and express the sentiments and purposes of the
entire South. Having stifled the utterance of all adverse opinion
within their own latitudes by a code more merciless than Draco's,
they misrepresent the South before the world.
To say that our southern brethren will resist all interference from
without-that they do not believe that the system of slavery involves sin in itself-that they are generally opposed to immediate
emancipation, and are unprepared to take a step towards it-or to
surrender their slave property without remuneration-is not to misrepresent them. And much solid argument can be advanced to
sustain nearly all of these positions. But to declare that they universally favor the schemes of the ultra pro-slavery party in their
midst-that the perpetuation and enlargement of the institution is
the ordained and deliberate policy of the South —that to secure these
aims they justify the invasion of Free State rights and the violation
of the territory of foreign nations-and that they are prepared to
secede from the Union if these plots cannot be promoted in its
bosom —is to impeach the patriotism and defame the humanity of a
numerous class of our Southern brethren: it is to cast an ineffaceable blot upon the civilization of the nineteenth century, and a most
foul reproach upon Christianity.
When the party of the RIGHT is inaugurated at the South, the
power of the propagandists will vanish into thin air. The aim of all
true patriots at the North should be to aid our brethren as much as
possible, by allaying all needless irritation upon the subject which
has occasioned more disturbance than all other subjects combined.
Let counsels of peace prevail. Let abuse and retaliation be discountenanced. Let brotherly love continue and abound, bearing
one anotlher's burden. LET A GENEROUS OFFER OF THE NATIONAL TREASURE
BE MADE to assist any State in bearing the burden of emancipation, whenever it is prepared for it. All this can be done without the sacrifice
of principle, but in obedience to the highest dictates of reason, conscience and love: for the same motives will lead to an unyielding
posture of resistance to the further encroachments of the propagandists of slavery. This course would ultimately tranquilize the
Country, heal the fraternal ties which are now strained and lacerated,
and cement all sections in an indissoluble union. LOVE IS THE GREAT
PACIFICATOR OF THE WORLD.
Is it too much to hope for the adoption of some such expedients
for internal peace? It is visionary to hope for it, under prevailing
influences. But little can be expected from Congress besides the increase of our dangers. The incoming Administration will be beset
on every hand by the propagandist party, and most likely be prevailed upon to favor some of their sinister designs. The newspaper




AND NATIONAL SIN.                     25
press might do much to promote this beneficent end. A free Press
is an agent of incalculable power: but the press is in one sense too
free-free from moral restraint-free enough to be licentious when
its conductors are venal and mercenary. Many of them are far
above this reproach: but it is nevertheless too true that the press
cannot be relied on, until public opinion bid it speak for righteousness and peace. The teachers of Religion can exert a very powerful influence upon the tranquil adjustment of these towering difficulties: but not by embarking upon the turbid streams of partizan
politics: they would thus totally defeat the end in view. The
nature of their calling conducts them to the fountain of infinite
Wisdom, and to the highest seat of Authority. Their teacher is God
in Christ, the Lawgiver and Ruler of all nations; and their comnmission is to teach whatever He has commanded. The Will of God is
the only ground of human obligation, and the supreme guide cf human duty; and from this grand fact in the divine government
arises MAN'S RESPONSIBILITY TO GOD, extending to all motives and to
all moral action. Hence the discharge of civil and political obligations in the fear of God, to whom people and rulers must give
account, forms a legitimate theme in the exposition of the Will and
the Word of God.
This thought conveys us to the last topic proposed for our discussion.
One of the leading controversies of the age may be termed a
question of Government: the government of the individual man, the
government of the nation, the government of the great family of
empires. This question involves LAW in its broadest sense-the
great code which should regulate individuals and nations. And as
the idea of Law implies liability of infringement, this again leads
to the doctrine of RIGHTS, which law specifies and invests with
sanctions, the enjoyment of which it is the object of good government to secure to every man. But as law can only define and ratify
those rights, as government can only administer the law, and as
man can no more invent his own rights than he can create himself,
the character of those rights must be sought in man's moral nature,
because the enjoyment of rights constitutes happiness, and happiness can be found only in the proper regulation of the moral faculties.
This again leads to the consideration of Moral Laws, the sum and
practice of which is Religion, the author of which is GOD.
The inquiry has not been so much respecting theform of Government, as the spirit of it: for it is clearly true that there can be an
absolute democracy,* as well as an absolute monarchy; they are
* I use the term Democracy in its abstract sense, and in no respect to designate
any political party.




26                NATIONAL RIGHTEOUSNESS
essentially the same in spirit-governments of capricious will in
distinction from permanent Law, and differ only in this, that the
former is a far more reckless and atrocious despotism. It is less
hazardous to live under one Ahab or Nero, than to tremble under a
community of tyrants, an irresponsible and lawless mob. The spirit
of good government is therefore found in the administration of just
and benign laws, instead of the dictation of mere human impulses,
whether it be the dictation of one man, or many. And one result of
this inquiry seems to be the adoption of the principle among all wise
statesmen, "that the prosperity or adversity of a nation is made up
of the happiness or misery of the individuals composing that nation;
and the rejection of the old idea of a public interest distinct from
individual interest." Another gratifying result of this great inquiry
is found in the shape given to International Law, being moulded
entirely by the preceding rule of individual welfare: "The same
rules of morality which hold together men in families, and which
form families into commonwealths, also link together these commonwealths as members of the great society of mankind."*
Here then is disclosed a department of personal obligation too
much overlooked. It discovers a National Righteousness founded
alone upon PERSONAL RIGHTEOUSNESS.  This was the culminating
point proposed to us by our fathers in the birth-day of our Republic.
Our Country is singled out by Providence and by the consent of
Christendom, to supply a practical solution of the question whether
man is capable of seyfgovernment. Every fragment of our institutions,
from the foundation to the topstone, is laid in this grand cementing
principle. Hence every citizen is constituted a guardian of the
edifice. Our fathers went forth to erect that edifice, trusting in
God. They laid its broad foundations in the eternal principles of
Righteousness, which are the basis of His throne. If we now depart
from Him, and regard not the works of the Lord, nor the operation of His
hands, He will destroy us and not build us up.
The sad fact cannot be disguised that in a national capacity, we
are banishing Religion from the State, and with it all sense of
responsibility to God. In our eagerness to divorce the State from
the Church, (which ought never to be united,) we have confounded
the warping dogmas of sectaries with the pure principles of Faith
and Worship, which are at once universal in their scope and at the
same time obligatory upon every man. We are coming to regard
the State purely as a political organization, independent of all permanent moral obligation, and dependent alone upon the sovereign
will of the people, however changeable the expression of that will
a- Sir James Macintosh: Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and
Nations.




AND NATIONAL SIN.                       27
may be; and the consequence is, that from our halls of legislation,
our judicial tribunals, our business and our recreations, we are
divorcing the transcendant gift of God, and confining it to the
cloisters of private life. Voters and representatives, magistrates
and jurors throught the country, are alike becoming regardless of
Him " who doeth according to His will in the army of Heaven and
among the inhabitants of the earth."  The details are deplorably
obvious to every intelligent observer. While we have extended our
territory, multiplied our numbers, augmented our wealth, enlarged
our knowledge, and magnified our political importance, we have by
no means increased in the fear of the Lord which is the beginning of
wisdom, nor in that righteousness which exalteth a nation. Can national
justice or honor long survive? Can the integrity of our institutions
be maintained?
It is easy to distinguish the principles of a system from the tendencies
imparted to that system by its administrators: though beneficent in
design, it may be made pernicious in effect. Theoretically, we
appeal to the Supreme Ruler as the arbiter of the rectitude of our
intentions: practically, we have no national conscience. Theoretically, the fundamental principle of our republic is Righteousness:
practically, the leading rule of public action is Expediency.
To these deplorable errors can be traced all the perversions of our
political system. They cannot be charged against the principles of
our institutions: if these were consistently applied, results directly
the reverse of these evils would be realized. But they arise out of
our mode of working the system of representation, which merges the
authority of the many into the hands of the few.
One of the evils incidental to the system of representation, is the
assignment of the individual conscience along with the delegation of
individual authority. Hence, men who are conscientious in personal
concerns, do not consider that they in common with their fellowcitizens, are responsible for the acts of their representatives. We
are not indeed responsible for the wisdom or the folly of the representative; but we are responsible for the official exercise of these,
because we have chcsen him to act in our place. This principle invariably obtains in courts of justice, and in all business transactions.*
A commercial house is held responsible for the official acts of their
agent: they reap the profits, or bear the loss. They do not easily
escape even by showing that he acted beyond his instructions; for
in making this clear, a certain degree of blame attaches to their
employing an unfaithful agent. In short, this principle is recognized
in every form of government among men, because its foundation is
discovered in the moral government of God.  It holds peculiar
* Facit per alium facit per se.




28                NATIONAL RIGHTEOUSNESS
prominence in the republican system, under which the people claim
to be the source of political power. We are therefore liable for the
official proceedings of our representative. We are not morally accountable for his overt act-that is a matter of personal responsibility with himself: but we are justly liable in all cases for the
effects which flow from the exercise of his official functions. National
honor exacts the faithful discharge of the obligations growing out of
this system, or the provision of a remedy consistent with justice.
Nevertheless the opinion is widely prevalent that the people are not
responsible for the mal-administration of Public Affairs; so that if a
pernicious measure be adopted, although the public faith is pledged,
the people may repudiate it, and declare its solemn obligations
void.
We have, in a general sense, no national conscience, and as
electors, no political conscience.  The false maxim  is virtually
adopted, "all is fair in politics." And the man who displays the
most devotion to party, is the party's idol. This diminishes the responsibility of the representative to the entire body of his constituency, and transfers it to the mere bidding of a faction. It gives a
license to partisan intrigue, which stoops to any baseness in order
to secure an ascendency. He becomes a pliant instrument to carry
out a partial and selfish policy. Hence we have a partisan responsibility distinct from and paramount to all moral responsibility:
least of all is any deference shown to the will of God, who ordains
the powers that be, and who holds all people and rulers accountable
for their participation in the execution of those powers. It does not
require much sagacity to foresee that unless this base servility to
party is overthrown by a conscientious regard to political obligations on the part both of electors and representatives, our offices,
like the sceptre in the days of degenerate Rome, will pass to the
most unworthy persons; and the body politic, thus disordered in
every part, will hasten through a quick consumption to an early
grave. It may be stimulated to a factitious activity by political
quackery; but according to an inevitable law, it will soon vibrate
to the opposite extreme, leaving it more exhausted than ever. It
may assume unwonted strength, and make great efforts on great
occasions; but they will be like the spasms of a strong man in the
hour of dissolution.
Our system of government is in no other sense democratic beyond
the first step at the ballot-box, than as public opinion gives shape
to our legislation and the administration of our laws. Our officers
when chosen, are for the time being, in theory at least, the organs
of public sentiment, being the choice of a majority; and in no other
way can we direct the policy of our government. Here democracy




AND NATIONAL SIN.                      29
ends; and here commences a complicated representative system,
regulated by our constitutions and laws. And this is well. It is
our chief barrier against the licentiousness of a domineering mob.
The voice of the majority is the expression of the prevailing sentiment: but a corrupt majority may overleap that barrier; for a
depraved public opinion is a remorseless tyrant, ruling its constituency with a rod of iron, and compelling candidates for office to kneel
at its confessional and do its penances at the sacrifice of manly
independence, conscience and honor. Public opinion can be enlightened and regulated by right reason; but it is idle to attempt to
coerce it. You can purify the atmosphere, but you cannot control
the wind. Moral power is the only effectual purifier of public sentiment; but it must be applied at the sources of opinion. It must
operate beneath the "platforms" of parties, which consolidate individuals into masses, like a conglomerate rock. A sense of moral
obligation will nourish self-respect and personal independence; and
these are all elements of moral courage.  We are encircled by influences which require the exercise of moral intrepidity in every
lover of his country. Our foes are not without, but within. We
are threatened by those internal tendencies to decay which from the
imperfection of human government assail the organization of every
nation, and which if not frustrated, sooner or later accomplish its
destruction. Our institutions, from their very nature, demand our
watchful exertions in order to sustain them. And they must be
sustained by moral power. They have no impregnable citadels,
surrounded by bayonets and artillery and mercenary battalions.
Their fortress is the nation's heart, their strength the nation's moral
power. We have not now to establish them: our age of martial
heroism accomplished that; but shall they be maintained and perpetuated?  Many of our wisest and most venerated countrymen,
who once harbored no doubt of the permanency of our institutions,
have been forced, in view of actual evils and prevailing tendencies,
to entertain the most anxious forebodings.
To meet and master these difficulties requires a special direction
of thought and action among all good men. Every citizen should be
led to feel that he is responsible to God and to his countrymen for the
delegated as well as the personal exercise of his rights and privileges.
Upon this single pivot turns the permanency of any popular government. This alone can preserve the individuality of every man, and
imbue him with the principles and the spirit of Self-Government.
This alone can establish a public national political Conscience.
Acting under this conviction, electors would no sooner employ
forgers to manage their pecuniary affairs, than they would vote for
incompetent and corrupt men to legislate for them; they would no




30                NATIONAL RIGHTEOUSNESS
sooner trust a quack to heal their maladies, than they would sanction
the selection of judicial empyrics to preside over our tribunals of
law and wield the right arm of power which strikes down the
offender. This principle carried into practice would also regulate
the vacillations of public opinion, which when enlightened by a discriminating conscience, is the great balance-wheel of our political
organization.
This is the only path of wisdom, because it conducts to that
Righteousness which exalteth a nation. Every other course has been
tried by the nations now entombed, and proved signally disastrous.
The sages of antiquity, it is true, had some conceptions of the only
right idea of government and law; but they could not practically
realize it, because the people were not moulded by its transforming
power. Some of those nations once occupied an eminence of transcendant grandeur. Their resources were exhaustless. They were
skilled in some arts and learned in some sciences unknown to modern
times; and in others they have been the instructors of succeeding
ages. They were at times on the threshold of the most magnificent
revelations in physics and morals; but through ignorance or depravity they scorned the prize, and the glorious hour departed
unimproved, until revolving in the cycle of ages, those revealings
were made to nations better qualified to profit by them. And when
the final crisis came-a crisis superinduced by individual character
-those nations were inadequate to the trial, and they plunged into
the abyss which their own hands had excavated. The American
Continent is strewed with the majestic memorials of a race otherwise unchronicled, whose exit, from the analogy of all history, must
have been due to the same melancholy cause. The very' heart of
the Hebrew Commonwealth throbbed with this principle of personal
responsibility. It flowed from that heart like the currents of the
blood, ramifying the minutest parts of the body politic, and conveying life and vigor and activity to the whole. When that principle
was abandoned, the circulation contracted. It fluctuated for awhile
around the vitals: then it ceased: and the corpse was cast out to
be the prey of the sharks of every ocean, and the vultures of every
clime.
It is evident that we are approaching a crisis in our national
affairs, if indeed we are not already upon that pivot-point; while the
body of our countrymen are so intent upon their various pursuits
that they seem to observe it not, or disregard the omens. And yet
every man has an interest at stake in it, and will exert an influence
upon it. God is now calling upon us to decide whom we will serve.
If we choose the Lord God of our fathers, then He will be our God,
and we shall be His people.  "This shall be our wisdom and our




AND NATIONAL SIN.                      31
understanding in the sight of the nations, who shall say, Surely this
great nation is a wise and understanding people. For what nation is
there so great who hath God so nigh unto them as the Lord our God
is nigh unto us in all things that we call upon him for?"
In recommending the sense of responsibility to God, as the grand
element in moulding individual and national conscience, I offer no
new scheme, no untried experiment, no product of human wisdom.
It antedates the origin of man, is coeval with the birth of Gabriel,
and will remain unchangeably the same for ever. It operates without defect in the angelic realm; and when inflexibly obeyed on our
planet, Earth will be an Eden. To meet this paramount responsibility, the claims of God must be understood; and these are revealed in the Word of God. It is thus invested with the highest sanctions in the universe. Hence it will lead the mind regulated by it,
to dismiss a time-serving expediency, and cherish the principles of
a pure morality, resulting in a life of righteousness; the combined
effect of which will be Glory to God in the Highest, and on Earth peace,
good-will to men.
This alone furnishes that principle of self-government in the absence of which the extinguished nations went down to the tomb.
But can it be made to influence men who are indifferent to the revealed Will of God? Our limits deny the space to prove that it is
fixed in the foundations of human nature, and therefore that it is independent of Revelation.  But we cite a few historic illustrations:
The lights of antiquity which shone outside of Syria, were not
without a conviction of the need of some such guiding element in
the moral nature of man.
SOCRATES says, "that in order to act justly and wisely, we must
act according to the will of God."  The Scriptures teach that the
Will of God is the supreme law of the universe, and reveals the
only means of acting according to it.
ARISTOTLE says, "the prerogative of man consists in this, that he
is able to'discern that there is something higher and better than
himself."  The Scriptures make known what that higher and better
thing is, and clearly delineate the road to its attainment.
PYTHAGORAS declares, that " the highest aim of human culture is,
toknow things in their nature and pure relations, and live and act
accordingly." Holy Writ alone reveals the relation of all things to
time and eternity, and teaches us what use to make of them.
Speaking of moral law, CICERO* says, " True law is indeed right
reason, consistent with nature, shedding its influence upon all, constant and unchangeable. It incites men to the exercise of every
4 Cic. Fragm. III. Unfortunately the author has not the means now at hand to
cite the places in which the foregoing quotations stand.




32                NATIONAL RIGHTEOUSNESS
moral duty; it deters them by its prohibitions from the commission
of crime....  Neither the Senate nor the people can discharge us
from  its obligations....  It will not be one thing at Rome and
another at Athens; one law now and a different one hereafter: but
it is the same eternal and inviolable law which comprehends every
nation throughout all time; and is as it were, a common master and
ruler, the divinity of all. GOD is the inventor, the giver, and the
judge of  this law; and whoever will not obey its precepts, let
him  flee, and avoid the companionship of his race."  Here is
an accurate conception of pure law, and the ground of responsibility under it, pronounced by a sage upon whose mind the light of
a direct Revelation never shone. The Word of God publishes the
precepts and explains the applications of this great law, and enjoins
its observance by the most imposing sanctions, the weightiest obligations, and the most awful penalties.
With such testimony from unassisted reason, we do not hesitate
to say, that the influence of the Gospel in defining the principles of
human rights, and of all just legislation in reference to them, is
founded in the nature of the human mind, and the relations of man
to God, as well as in the revealed Will of the Creator. It addresses
itself directly to every one: THou art the man! In this alone it is
eminently democratic; yet not a leveler-no agrarian-no disturber
of the order of society-no subverter of the distinctions with which
talents or accidents of birth or superior industry endow their possessors; but it makes every one alike accountable for the exercise
of his influence, according to that which he hath, and not according
to that which he hath not. And it declares the whole duty of every
man to be, tofear God and keep His commandments, enforcing this duty
by the solemn declaration that God will bring every work into judgement, whether it be good, or whether it be evil. Thus revealed Truth appeals to every man in every condition, and every exigence and detail of his situation. It is like the air which presses with immense
weight as well on the mountain top as in the vale, yet with a pressure so even and a buoyancy so elastic that it does not crush the
smallest atom. on the surface.
Thus disclosing the true principles of self-government, its influence naturally extends, as the stream fiom the fountain, into the
family, the community, the nation, and the world. In regulating the
social element, which is the basis of civil government, the Gospel is
no longer exclusively democratic, but recognizes the relative conditions which are established in the structure of society. It sanctions
social distinctions on the basis of moral excellence and superior
wisdom, and the relative position of husband and wife, parent and
child, employer and employed, youth and age.  It sanctions politi



AND NATIONAL SIN.                     33
cal distinctions, on the ground of the relative position of the governor and the governed, the law-keeper and the law-breaker; and for
each and all it enjoins a due regard. It commands "every soul to
be obedient to the higher powers: for there is no power but of God;
the powers that be are ordained of God....  Render, therefore,
to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor. For this, Thou shalt
not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou
shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any
other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, Thou
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law." God " hath showed
thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee,
but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy
God?"
This system  with its code challenges comparison with every
other system of jurisprudence, and every other code of laws. It is
concise, and yet luminous; comprehensive, and yet so simple that it
seems strange that its fitness and its claims are not at once acknowledged by the unaided reason.  Its logic is profound; its rhetoric
irresistible; its wisdom all-wise; its scope embraces all; its specifications single out every one.  Every man can learn it; every man
can understand it; every man can practise it.  It needs no expounder, for its design is obvious; it demands no proof, for its truth is
self-evident; and it covers the basis of all good government, which
springs from moral responsibility, both personal and official, deriving
its sanctions from that dread tribunal whose decisions are final,
before which every man must stand to render an account for the
deeds done in the body.
How animating is the contemplation of eternal Truth I What
triumphs it has achieved! What victories are before it! My brethten, let your confidence in God be unshaken. Be strong; quit ye
like men. Dare to maintain the right, and leave consequences with
God. The glories of our Country are at the dawning only, if that
IRighteousness which exalteth a nation, be her lofty aim. Let
the Truth then, be every where proclaimed. Let the Word of God
be placed under every eye, and that it may be pressed to every
heart, be it your earnest prayer. Obedience to its moral precepts
will secure temporal happiness and prosperity to our fellow-citizens:
but the Divine Spirit who indited it must reveal its higher blessings
to the soul that would dwell in a heavenly country, and become a
citizen of the Commonwealth of God. May prayer be made contintually for our rulers and our Country, that the dangers which threaten
us may be averted —that our prosperity may not be our curse-that
8




34      NATIONAL RIGHTEOUSNESS AND NATIONAL SIN.
times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, in
which multitudes shall participate, and all alienation be lost in that
blest tie which is indestructible, the tie of Christian fellowship and
love.  Then shall our peace be as a river, and our righteousness as the
uaves of the sea!
The Law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul; the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple.
The statutes of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart; the conmmandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes.
The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring forever; the judgments
of the LORD are true and righteous altogether.
More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold;
sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.
Moreover, by them is thy servant warned; and in keeping of
them there is great reward.-Psalm xix: 7-11.