The crisis of the times : a sermon preached in the First Presbyterian Church, Washington, D.C., on the evening of the national fast, Thursday, April 30, 1863

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THE CRISIS OF THE TIMES

A. SERMOISr

PREACHED IN THE

^ir$t ^f^$6j)UrUn |p5«^^5^fi

WASHINGTON. D. C

ON THE EVENING OF

TuiHi isTj^rrxoisTj^Xj :fjlst.

THURSDAY. APRIL 30, I8G3,

Rev. BYRON SUNDERLAND, D. D.

WASHINGTON :

" X A T 1 O >• A L banner" PRESS.

1863.

THE CRISIS OF THE TIMES:

A SERMON /W

PREACHED IW THB

Jfirst Irubgterian CJurt|,

WASHINGTON, D. C.

ON THE EVENING OF

THE NATIONAL FAST,

Tbursday, April 30, 1863,

Rbv. BYRON SUNDERLAND, D. D.
it

Tbxt. — liaiah Iviii., 1-7. — "Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy
voice like a trumpet, and show my people their transgression, and
the house of Jacob their finst!"*

WASHINGTON :

K A T I O K A I BAKNSR'' PBK8S,

1868.

^58

COERESPONDENC:Er.

Washington, D. C, 3Iay 2, 1863,

Sir : I have been requested bj an association of pat-
riotic citizens to ask of you for publication a copy of
your discourse delivered on the evening of the National
Fast day, that the thousands who were unable to hear
may be permitted to read an authentic copy of that
Tery able and patriotic address.
With great respect.

Your obedient servant,

J. M. EDMUNDS.
Rsv. Byron Suni>eelani>.

Washington, 3Iay 5, 1863.
Hon. J. M. Edmund3 :

Sir : Your favor of the 2d instant is just received.
The sermon which you request for publication wasf
prepared and delivered under a sense of deep personal
responsibility, on the most solemn occasion of our his-
tory. So far as it may be read, I devoutly ])ray its
effect to b€ only and lasting good. With daily suppli-
cation for the complete triumph of the Government of
the United States, and a glorious future for our beloved
though now greatly afflicted country, I remain.
Yours in the bonds of Christian patriotism,

B. SUNDERLAND.

SERMON.

Isaiah l-riii., 1-7. — Cry aload, spare not, lift up thy roice lite a
trumpet, and show my people their transgression, and the house of
Jacob their sins.

Yet they seek me daily and delight to know my ways, as a nation
that did righteousness and forsook not the ordinance of their God;
they ask of me the ordinances of justice : they take delight in ap-
proaching to God.

Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou seest not? where-
fore haye we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowledge?
Behold, in the day of your fast ye find pleasui-e, and exact all your
labors. Behold, ye fast for strife and debate, and to smite with th&
fist of wickedness ; ye shall not fast as ye do this day, to make your
"soice to be heard on high.

Is it BVich a fiist that I have chosen, a day for a man to afflict his
soul ? Is it to bow down his head as a bulriish,. and to spread sack-
sloth and ashes untler him ? Wilt thou call this a fast and an ac»
feptable day to the Lord?

Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wick-
edness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free,
and that ye break every yoke?

Is it not to deal thy bread to the hiin^gry, and that thou bring th*
poor that are cast out to thy hov^e? when thou seest the naked thai
thou cover him ; and that thou hide not thyself from thine owa
flesh?

This day is to me as solemn as a day of judgment.
When I think what we^ the people of America, our
rulers and chief men in all stations^ have been professing
to do this day, before God and in the sight of all the
aations of the earth, I tremble from head to foot, ia
every joint. What is it that we have been professing
to do this day ? X have read it to you in the procla-

matiou of the President. How many out of the thirty-
two millions of human souls composing this nation
have not even pretended to observe the day in forml
And of those who have pretended to comply with the
request of the proclamation, how many have made of
it only a fearful mockery in the sight of God ! How
few comparatively of all these multitudes has the Om-
niscient Eye beheld in a suitable and acceptable posture
before him ! Truly, the heart of man is deceitful above
ail things and desperately wicked j and who can know
it? We may well fear in regard to all of us that it is
now as it was before the flood, and that God sees that
the wickedness of man is great in the earth, and that
every imagination of the thought of his heart is only
evil continually. And we may devoutly pray, each one
of us all, in the language of the Psalmist, Search me,
0 God, and know my heart j try me, and know my
thoughts, and see if there be any Avicked way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.

If we could think that thig day had been kept as a
day of holy convocation unto the Lord, in the entire
land, or even throughout the borders of the adhering
States, and that among ail the people it had been ob-
served in the same spirit which was manifest among
the Ninevites under the preaching of Jonah, we might
at least feel supported by the hope that such a repent-
ance would be followed by immediate and signal dis-
plays of divine favor in our behalf. Look for a moment
at the record of that event.

" Forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown !''
That was the cry which rung through the city its ter-
rible alarm. That, in substance, is the awful cry which
goes out among all nations where human wickedness
and corruption have become so fearful as to strike at
the verv foundations of human societv, and to threaten

the deinoliliou of the most stable and the raost beueti-
cent structures of human government. This cry is
travelling now through the length and breadth of our
own land, like the travelling prophet in the midst of
Nineveh ; and it has been so travelling for the three days
as of old, and a year for a day. It began afar off in the
fears, the anxieties, the predictions of the wisest and
best men of the nation ; and it waxed nearer and louder,
the awful cry of Heaven's indignation against the land
for its wickedness, until, two years ago it broke in the
thunders of the cannonade at Charleston. Since then,
that cry has been reverberating in the North and in the
South, in the East and in the West — the voice that
thunders at noonday, the voice that startles at mid-
night, the warning of a nation's overthrow, the disso-
lution of American republican empire. Its echoes are
heard in the sobs and moanings of a hundred thousand
families, over whom a pall of mourning for the slain
has settled. Its accents tremble fearfully in the pas-
sions of men, who, animated as by a spirit of diabolical
fury, are ready to inaugurate a storm of anarchy and
violence, compared with which the convulsions of the
physical creation are tame and innocuous. This is our
position to-day ; and that prophet-cry rolls on una-
bated, Wo, wo, wo to the inhabitants of the land ! All
the air is full of its portents ; all the signals of provi-
dence foreherald its desolations. Nay, the one prophet
voice, that sounded the doom of ancient Nineveh, is now
multiplied into ten thousand times ten thousand voices,
that surge and thunder around and before, above and
behind us, on every side. And the simple meaning of
it now is, as tlien it was, repentance or-ruin. Besotted
and blind with insensibility or infatuation must he be
who cannot now at this late day perceive that this is
our precise condition as individuals and as a nation.

What came next? They believed God — king, nobles,
and people. There is a volume of meaning in that short
sentence. It opens the secret of all that followed.
That is the only remedy for us now ; in that ig our
health. But if this faith in God be confined to a few
only, as I fear it is ; if, like Abraham pleading for the
cities of the plain, and putting one condition after an-
other to narrow the chances of their destruction, they
who believe God in this nation at this hour are too few
in proportion to the whole to render it by their right-
eousness worth the saving, then the boldest of us may
turn pale, and the most sanguine may despair, for the
principles of the Divine government are fixed. God can
by no means clear the guilty. He is of one mind, and
who can turn Him ? When He rises up, who can stand
before Him ? Oh, that we are now in such a case before
Him, and that we have reason to believe that multitudes
everywhere in the land have no more personal or prac-
tical regard to the voice of His judgments, than to an
oldwife's fable, is a fact so appalling as to transcend
the power of human expression. Because it augurs
that, in spite of all our hopes, and all our faith, and all
our desire, we are nevertheless descending every hour
and at every step in the path of inevitable and swift
destruction. It means simply this, and nothing else.
We are at this moment in our national life in a condition
like that of a man in his skiff already drawn upon the
breakers above Niagara, and already partaking of the
speed and drift of that resistless current, which, unless
a miracle be interposed, will surelj* carry him over the
precipice. That is our d:vnger, I am persuaded, in
our moral and spiritual condition as a nation. But
was that the case with Nineveh ? Far otherwise; they
believed God.

And what next ? The king, with. hifl_ nobles, pro-

claimed a fast, and caused it to be published througii-
out the city, saying. Let every living thing be cast
down, let tliem not taste drink or food, let them be
clothed iu sackcloth and mourn for sin, let them turn
every one from his evil way and from the violence that
is in their hands, and let them cry mightily unto God.
Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn
away from His fierce anger, that we perish not? And
after this solemn proclamation of the king, in the sight
of all the people, where do we hear of him next ? Not in
scenes of dissolute amusement, not convoking hig
chamber of nobles, or reviewing his mighty armies to
make a gala-day of holy time j not recklessly exhibiting
an example in the presence of his subjects which might
least tend to prepare them or him for the solemn period
of mourning to which they bad been called. No, this
is not the conduct of the king of Nineveh. He believed
God, and his works corresponded to his faith. He left
nothing to be done by proxy. He saw clearly enough
that his own action would powerfully influence the
action of the population. He was in earnest in the
business of seeking God — in calling the city over which
he ruled, to avert the threatened calamity, by the one
way of appointment, which has ever been open to all
the generations of men. And so we are told that he
arose from his throne and laid his robe from him, and
covered him with sackcloth and sat in ashes That
was bis position before God and in the sight of the
nation in that day of humiliation.

And what next? All the people followed his ex-
ample. There is probably nothing on record equal to
this repentance of Nineveh for its thoroughness and
universality. It was genuine, radical, efficacious.
There was no concealment, no hypocrisy, no mockery
then. It was heart-felt, rational, and entire. It moved

10

all minds; struck at the }ilague of every man's heart:
reformed evei'y soul of all the multitudes of the city.
It was a moral miracle of the gi*ace and power of
God, imbuing a whole- population suddenly with a
sense of sin — with a sense of duty and obligation to
God — and the most profound conviction of dependence
upon Him and of hope only in His mercy. It was that
repentance which transformed them — made them a dif-
ferent community from what they were before — made
them new creatures — changed all their habits of feel-
ing, thought, and conduct — changed their principles,
their views, their motives, their life — brought them to
renounce their former profligacy and returnj to
the path of purity, soberness, and peace. They be-
lieved and embraced the truth of God just so far,
just so fast as it was made known to them. They en-
tered directly upon the obedience of this faith. They
espoused the cause of the right, and set their faces as
a flint against everything false and wrong. They be-
came a righteous people, by the putting away, evea*y
one of them, their iniquities.

Now, in this i-espect, it was not with them as, I fear,
it is with us. Their repentance was individual and
personal, as well as federative and national. But we;
how do we feel? Has every human being in this na-
tion to-day, capable of reflection and capable of know-
ing and understanding his relation and duties to God,
solemnly considered and reviewed the delinquencies
and transgressions of his past life, and devoutly pur-
posed, God helping him, to be a better man in the future;
to lead a life of Christian piety and prayer, and to let
all men know that henceforth he no longer halts be-
tween two opinions — henceforth he is on the Lord's
side, in life, in death, and to all eternity? The man
who has not come up to that mark and standard this

11

day, I pronounce, in so far, an enemy of God and his
country. The man who has failed to do that, has sig-
nally failed to answer the end for which this day was
appointed; and for the mode in which it has been met
by us God will hold each one to a solemn and fearful
accountability. We cannot appoint these days of na-
tional humiliation and prayer in the sight of mankind,
as we have done one after the other in time past, and
trifle Avith their very meaning and intention, with im-
punity. If we undertake to do this, we shall find out
to our sorrow that we are wrestling with One who can
easily overthrow us, One who will see, that in our ob-
duracy and blindness, we are utterly ground to powder.
The Ninevites seem to have thoroughly comprehended,
the significance of this, and they kept the fast, not
merely in the outward forms of humiliation, but in the
spirit and the soul, in verity and truth. They realized
and illustrated, in their experience and by their exam-
ple, the very nature of that fast which is here so
emphatically commended in our text, and which is
alone the fast that is acceptable to God.

And then what next? God saw their works that
they turned from their evil way, and God repented of
the evil that he had said that he would do unto them,
and he did it not. Oh ! the unutterable tenderness and
fidelity of the Divine placability. Go see the old
father hanging with tears of compassion and joy upon
the neck of his long-lost son. That is God in all the
constraining mercies of his unutterable love. That is
the great and terrible One in the heavens, in whose
anger is infinite might, in whose wrath is desolating
and withering power. But what He is to the contuma-
cious, that He is not to the believing, the penitent, and
sincere. To tliose who by patient continuance in well-
doing, are chosen to stand before Him. everything in

u

the being, the character, the attributes, the law, the
government, the purposes and providence of God, is
friendly. For them and for their final triumph, He has
stored the universe. They shall never be confounded.
All things shall work for their good. But to the evil,
all shall work for evil. The very slumber of God's
wrath. His yearning His weeping, all shall turn at last
into the fierceness of indignation against themT What
then is the alternative? Where do we stand? The
point to be remembered is, not whether the Lord is
on our side, but whether we are on the Lord's side.
The simple question before us this day is not
whether God will withdraw his judgments, but whether
we are an incorrigible people. That is the whole
sum and substance of it, and that is the issue now
to be tried; it is the very thing which constitutes
the gist and stress of our present condition and ex-
perience. If, as time rolls on and the alarm of ruin is
sounded in our ears, we will neither heed nor hear it; if
we will shut our eyes persistently and madly to all the
proofs and tokens of the Divine displeasure; if we will
not learn nor comprehend the lessons of our duty and
obligation; if we will refuse to inquire of God what he
would have us to do; and if when truth is shown us
we will not embrace it, will not espouse it, will not
stand by it, will not defend it at all hazards and costs,
albeit even to the giving up of life; if we are and
continue to be so indifferent to God's cause in the
earth, so inconsiderate, so hard of heart, so blind and
perverse, so brutish and benighted as not to see nor
perceive nor know the things which belong to our true
peace, why then, of course, we must be destroyed;
there is no other alternative; we may as well make up
our minds to it at once. He that spared not his own
Son will not spare the guilty nations of the earth. He.

IH

that in tears of bitter anguish stood by and saw Jeru-
salem utterly wasted, will also stand by and see this
country mined, if we as a people shall continue incor-
rigible.

\Yhile stating in this broad form my conviction of
this fearful doctrine, I am aware there is another prin-
ciple on which God sometimes proceeds in His admin-
istration over the affairs of men, and in His disposition
of the communities and nations of the earth, and that
is — He does sometimes interpose to save a multitude
from impending destruction, or to postpone a public
calamity for the sake of a few, or even sometimes of
one of His faithful servants. Thus when Moses plead
for the life of his nation, God turned from the purposed
destruction for the time; and so when Solomon in his
old age had defiled the land with idolatry, God threat-
ened the rending of the kingdom, but postponed it to
the succeeding reign for the sake of David his father.
But this is the fearful law of all human iniquity, that
sooner or later its retribution must come. Vengeance
upon sin, though long delayed and slumbering long,
must come at last, in spite of all the memories of the
pious dead or of all the tears and prayers of the pious
living. There must come a day in the history of every
incorrigible people when God says my spirit shall no
longer strive with man. Ephraim is joined to his idols;
let him alone. Though Moses and Samuel stood before
me, yet my mind could not be toward this people.
And when that day comes, it is the old story of Egypt
and Babylon, of Assyria and Greece and Rome, under
the philosophy and religion of Paganism ; and it is the
more modern story of the European and American na-
tions under the dispensation of Christianity. It is a
day of pride and luxury and fulness of bread, a day of
the laxity of all moral discipline and the perversion of

14

all moral principle, a dti}^ of individucal and social
debauchery andcorruption, aday when the very -thoughts
of men are twisted and turned out of the way, and
human nature, salacious, infidel and irreligious, even
amid all the circumstances of outward refinement and
intellectual development, presents a spectacle of apos-
tacy at once the most disgusting and the most alarm-
ing. When society reaches this point, as I verily be-
lieve it has this day in our country, there is but one of
two things that must speedily follow: either a re-
pentance and reformation approaching that of Nineveh,
or ruin and destruction, remediless and condign.

All this is clearly set fortli in this message of
Isaiah. God deals with us as with rational beings.
He is full of succor and salvation towards us if we
are only resolved on simply doing right. In this
posture of mind everything is favorable. God has
so constituted his universe that we have no cause for
fear or alarm, no cause to bow down our head as a
bulrush or cover ourselves with sackcloth, or to spend
a day in the abasing and servile affliction of the soul,
or in making our faces long and sad, when we have
once closed the struggle with ourselves, and have come
to the firm determination to do exactly' right. It is
only before this self-struggle is concluded, and while
we are yet in the bondage and pollution of sin and
guilt and condemnation, that we may justly fear. While
we seek to conceal our sin, to cover up our iniquity,
to cancel it by atonements and penances and prayers,
instead of freely and fully confessing and forsaking it,
then it is that we may observe all the outward for-
malities of religion, and still wonder why God does
not regard us, nor hear our prayer. Nothing but
honesty before God, nothing but truth and sincerity
will do in a cnse like ours. We may perform the cere-

15

vnoHies of oonfessiou and supplication, we may go
without food for a day, we may cover ourselves with
sackcloth, and vainly endeavor to appease our own
conscience or attract upon ourselves the favorable
notice of the Searcher of all hearts, but He knows all
the time that our appi'oaches to Him are only in ap-
pearance and in word, while our hearts are far from
Him. He knows that what we do in the performance
of th€ services of religion, we do for a cover of our
wickedness, and for a salvo to a wounded conscience,
but not as tlie expression of a broken heart and a con-
trite spirit. We fast, indeed, we afflict ourselves for
a day, but we repent of nothing in all this; we fast
for debate and strife, and to smite with the fist of wick-
edness, and yet we wonder that God takes no knowl-
edge of all our pains. How can He recognize such a
state of mind, and such a spirit, as the fast which He
has chosen ? There is no truth in it, no reformation
in it, no forsaking of sin, no real confession of wrong
whatever. Therefore, God cannot recognize such a
fast. He must loathe and abhor it, and turn it into
a more bitter curse.

But the prophet vividly draws tlic contrast between
a true fast and this mockery. ' ' Is not this the fast that
I havechosen — to loose thebandsof wickedness, to undo
the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free,
and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy
bread to the hungry, and to bring the poor that are
cast out to thy house, to take away the yoke, the put-
ting forth of the finger, and speaking vanity? Is it
not to turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing
thy pleasure on my holy day; and to call the Sabbath
a delight, the holy of the Lord, honoi'able; and shall
honor him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine
own pleasure?" What a contract there is in a fast like

16

this! Here is the devout and filial recognition a,nd
reverence of God and of His lav/ and ordinances. Here
is the separation of the soul and of society from the
Tices and iniquities that have defiled and corrupted
them. Here is the positive abandonment of selfish-
ness and covetousness, of violence, cruelty, and op--
pression in all their forms. Here is the ceasing from
vices and evils which contaminate and degrade, and
from all sentiments, opinions, prejudices, habits, prac-
tices, and customs of a pernicious tendency, and of a
doubtful propriety in all relations and among all
elasses of human beings. And here are the opposite
dispositions, virtues, and charities which constitute
the cap-sheaf and the crown of all our usefulness, and
all our happiiiess both here aad hereafter. God pre-
sents this contrast of moral and spiritual attributes of
S.uman character as the very soul and substance of all
acceptable sacrifice, prayer, and worship; and upon
the presence or absence of these elements in a day like
this, depends the issue of its observance.

There ^is at this point another momentuos truth
which adds solemnity to our present national posture
in the sight of heaven and before the eyes of all men.
It is that no nation that ever existed has sinned
against such light as this nation. The degree of light
against which a people go on to sin is a most impor-
tant element in determining the grade or extent of
guilt or heinousness which must be estimated a&
belonging to its offences. Tried by this rule, no
people were ever so guilty as we have been. When
Nineveh repented, she had only before her eyes the
example of the cities of the plain and some of the
earlier catastrophes of human sin. When Jerusalem
was destroyed, it was even then before the day of the
Christian Era had fairly begun to shine. But we, we
■who live in the light of the nineteenth century, and

17

upon whom History lias poured all its examples, wid
Providence all its illustrations, and Inspiration all its
instructions ; we who have lived in the shining faces
of all God's angels of truth and ministers of grace;
we who have basked in the summer sun-light of
an unclouded Gospel ; we who have looked morning,
noon, and night upon the glorious walking of the
Sun of Righteousness ; we who have been taught
from infancy the simple but sublime principles of the
Christian faith — of God and eternity, human life, duty,
and destiny — we have sinned against the light of the
Sermon on the Mount, against the light of all the
evangelists and epistles of the New Testament, against
the light of the Reformation and our own Revolution,
against the grandest and most glorious age of Chris-
tian charities and missions the world has ever seen,
against the light of eighty years of unparalleled pros-
perity, against the light of all its science, its learning,
its discovery, its discussion, its mighty franchise.
We have sinned, while holding in trust the noblest
heritage ever held by any people, while having charge
in effect of the last and most precious hopes of human
nature. And now through our follies and sins we have
brought ourselves to the verge of ruin, and unless God
in his infinite mercy shall swiftly interpose through
mysteries of His providence and grace higher and
deeper than any we have ever known, to prevent the
calamity, we shall plunge over and sink, one and all,
into an abyss of shame and infamj' such as no people
ever contracted, not even the doomed and wandering
house of Israel.

This, as I humbly conceive it, is our condition to-
day. We are to be tried upon the principle of the
degree of light we have enjoyed ; and so tried we can-
not but see that wherein the nation h.^s sinned, it is

18

in these regards the foremost sinner among all thtt
nations of history.

And noTV it is said in the word of God that when
His judgments are abroad in the earth, the inhabi-
tants of the world will learn righteousness. Let us
consider whether those judgments are abroad among
us, for our sins — and if so, what they are, and how
many, and how heavy; for God suits His judgments
to our sins — makes our sins, indeed, the punishment
of themselves. This is that which gives to retribu-
tion its fearful power. We are, as a people, under a
heavy hand. The principal feature of these judgments
is that we have been left to ourselves; we have been
left to be filled with the fruit of our own doings. They
are not the judgments of famine or pestilence or earth-
quakes, the invisible and wasting scourges which go
over the earth decimating and destroying, by a law
too subtle for our tracing and too secret for our pene-
tration. But they proceed from the shock and collision
of human agencies, directed and impelled by the con-
flicting sentiments and passions which lie behind them.
They stand before us in all the woes and horrors of
a bitter, protracted, desolating civil war. From the
forum of peaceful discussion and republican suffrage,
the controversy has been carried to the last resort of
physical force, violence, and blood. And this has
been done under circumstances and with concomitants
of evil such as to affect the whole mind and heart of
the nation with every form of affliction and mental
distress. Upon the more open and tangible effects of
such a civil war as this, in its bearing upon the dis-
ruption of business, the destruction of property and
even the loss of human life, it is not my pui'pose to
dwell. The shock thus given to the country, the dis-
order it produces, the derangement and uncertainty

]'9

it occasions, the burdens it imposes, and tlie fortianes
it destroys, are all matters with which the people of
this country are but too sadly familiar. And yet even
in these things, through all the regions of the adher-
ing, with the exception of the border States, these
judgments of God have thus far been tempered with
singular mercy, and have on the general scale been
marvellously mitigated. Indeed, so far in the contro-
versy, it is to be feared that the people inhabiting
these sections of the Republic, thro' their comparative
exemption from the storm, do not even yet take to
heart the awful nature of the judgments now smiting
the land, nor comprehend the extent and derjth of
their complicity in the sins which have culminated in
this fury. I make all allowance, indeed, for what
they have dene and borne and sacrificed ; but when it
is all subtracted, the present thrift, and drift, and
appearance, and a-ction, and condition of the people
in all those regions, constitute a ground of wonder
and amazement at the loug suffering and tender mercy
of our God. It as, indeed, upon the people of the
border States, and throughout the region where tlie
sway of the rebellion is still rigid ami unbroken, that
the woes and miseries of this tempest have hitherto
been falling heaviest; And when we do but try to
conceive the depths of the sorrow of the true and faith-
ful people in these regions, ixnd to contemplate even
one tithe of what they have yulfL-red in their most keen
and sacred sensibilities, no power of words can express
fully the nature and extent of their wretchedness.
The disruption of business associations, the separation
of families, the social ostracism, the fearful aliena-
tions of human hearts, the cruelties perpetrated, the
scenes of persecution, the grinding heel of despotism,
*iie awful profanity and jocularity of death in his

2t>

jaurderous round, surely nothing in the horrors of
the French Revolution can be said to have transcendeo:
the miseries and anguish of men, women, and chil-
dren Trhose only provocation to the tormentors is their
"anchanging love and devotion for the Union and Gov-
ernment of their fathers. The sanie spirit, though in
a form as yet modified and restiiiin^id, we have wit-
nessed and felt here in the very Capital of the country..
The lines of division have run right through old and
long established friendships, have sundered pastors
and people, have made a man's foes even them of his
own household, and have engendered the bitterness
and fostered the prejudices that ever Avalk forth as
the premonitory spectres of social and ecclesiatical
dissolution. So that the question is no longer a mere
question of party politics, or preference for a candi-
date, or a question of some measure of sectional or
local policy, but it is a question of fundament ssl char-
acter, a question of human right and duty, a question
of human conscience, a question of the life and death
of a mighty nation ; and along with this there are
questions of the most amazing and appalling compli-
cation and difficulty, all arising from the confusion
and variety of public sentiment, and from the moral
obliquity and perversion of thenational mind and heart.
The very things v/hich now strain and try this nation
are traceable to the sins of the nation. It is not ig-
norance that is trying us now, but wilful, wanton
blindness, unreasoning selfishness, and the practical
atheism of the people, from which as from an ex-
haustless fountain rolls the current of our follies, our
errors, and our crimes — passion and prejudice, sus-
picion, jealousy, lust for power, avarice, intrigue, ha-
tred, rancor, all inflamed and aggravated by the open
Trenality and flagrant wickedness of the public press .

2V

Political confusion and judicial blindn^esa are the real
judgments which now lie upon the land, which now
•confuse and bewilder those who would be honest,
who desire to be true, who want nothing in this
'Controversy but what is right, but what is in accord-
ance with the will and law of God, and who would
gladly do what they may to establish the institutions
of the Government upon a &ure foundation of public
righteousness ; who feel that it is no time for sophis-
tries and technicalities, for quibbles and formalities,
but who go for the substance of doctrine, the eternal
righteousness of God in all the relations of man to his
fellow-man, as well as ef men to God. And because
we are confounded in these things, and do not even
yet know whether a lie is in our right hand, we are
still groping and stumbling on the dark mountains of
sin and shame, our eyes blinded, our ears heavy, our
hearts hardened, and our hands paralyzed ; we are
as a nation in a swound, feeling the sharp sting of
God's goads spurring us out of our stupor, but yet
drowsy and but a little awake, only seeing men as
trees walking, and filled with the pains and agonies,
not, we hope, of a second death, but of a second birth.
This it seems to me is our condition under the present
judgments of Heaven.

And now we have no right to shut our eyes to the
«in8 which form the ground of indictment against ua.
We are guilty if we attempt to do this, guilty in the
attempted concealment; and we are really the more
culpable if, on an occasion like this, we undertake to
blink or flinch from the full acknowledgment and
recognition of any one of the sins of which we as in-
dividuals, or as communities, or as a nation have been
guilty in the sight of heaven. But where shall we
S>egiB the catalogue of these iniquities ? It is even

difficult to classify and docameat them. Willi »
language copious in terms significant of human in-
iquities, we should exhaust the vocabulary of our
mother-tongue long before we could express the full
tale of our private and public delinquencies — sins of
the heart, sins of the spirit, sins of the flesh, sins of
ignorance and sins of wantonness, sins of omission
and sins of commission, secret sias and open sins,
personal sins and social sins, sins in the family and
sins in the church, sins in business life, sins in fash-
ionable life, sins in private life and sins in official life,
sins political and sins ecclesiastical. In all these
forms of human depravity, the terrific principle of
spiritual wickedness seeks its m.anifestation.

All sin is fiery, and eats as doth a canker. It rid-
dles out the very basis of moral character in man; it
frets and wears away the warp and woof of the confir-
dences and securities of human life ; it is the moral
azote. ^Nothing of spiritual purity can live in its pres-
ence ; under its impulse and dominion men have their
lusts excited, their passions inflamed, their under-
standings darkened, their consciences seared, and
their hearts hardened. So prepared they enter upon
life, and in the choice of avocations, of associates, of
aims, and of means to those aims, they are constantly
exposed to powerful temptations which break down
all moral restraint, and send them on in a career of
immorality, impiety, and dishonesty, which not only
proves their own ruin, but seriously tends to injure
and corrupt all with whom they come in contact. Out
of all this mass of human iniquity certain cardinal
forms of human sin and profligacy appear.

In defining national oS'ences, each man must pursue
his own method, and make his own distinctions. I
am not disposed to be over nice, or careful, in adher-

2S

ing istrictly to technical or theological terms, or the pop-
ular phraseology of the day. I shall consider those sins
national which are known as open, public, or gene-
ral, whether in a form organized or unorganized. I
shall consider those as national sins which involve the
great majority of the people in their practice, their
motive, or their sympathy. On the subject of private
and personal sins, which are to be confessed and re-
paired in a manner corresponding to their nature, I
need not now undertake, as it would be manifestly
impossible, to dwell, any further than to say that the
whole aggregate of them, no doubt, furnishes one
serious and solemn reason for the private and public
afflictions that are resting on all the land. But there
are some general and positive forms of sin which it
would, in my judgment, be the sheerest hypocrisy to
overlook on a day like this.

I. And the first I mention is the practical rejection
of the Gospel of Jesus Christ by vast numbers of the
people. This is so general that it amounts, in my
estimation, to a national sin of the deepest dye.
It is tantamount to a charge of irreligion, impiety
and atheism, and is the sin for which every man who
stands in it is now arraigned before God. This is
their condemnation, that light has come into the world
and men have chosen darkness rather than light, be-
cause their deeds are evil. He that believeth not on
Christ is condemned already. For the testimony of
Christ is the spirit of prophecy; and that is no less
than the infinite spirit of truth, the spirit of God, the
Holy Ghost. We have quenched that spirit and ex-
tinguished its light. We have mocked at it until we
are become vain and empty. We are no longer able
to conquer, because God and His Christ have become a
myth to us, and we have cast away the only might that

24

mftkes men and nations strong. I believe in my soul
that God is angry with this nation, and is now bring-
ing us into judgment because we have so many of us
failed to confess Jesus Christ before men, and to re-
ceive His spiritual kingdom into our heiarts with all
its laws, agencies, influences, and effects. And I put
this first and foremost, because it is a practical denial
of God in the kingdom of His grace, and in the last
means and methods He ever designs to employ for the
recovery and salvation of mankind. It is, in effect,
utterly ignoring his prerogative, despising his au-
thority, and setting at nought his very mercy and
compassion. It is the deepest insult, and the foulest
dishonor, we can ever pay to him, because under the
present dispensation it prepares the way for every
other iniquity in the catalogue of human guilt.

II. Again, I mention idolatry as a cardinal sin of
which we have, in many forms, been guilty. It fol-
lows that if men, who must have some object of
sovereign desire to which they pay supreme devotion,
will not have God for that object, they will, virtually,
dethrone Him in their hearts, and establish there
some idol-god of the current age. "We have all
had gods of one kind or other before the Lord God
Jehovah, and we have worshipped our idol, whatever
it be, without regard to the claims, the command-
ment, or the statutes of the one only true and ever-
living God. I believe that He is angry with us for
this, and that His indignation is now smoking against
us, and against all our idol deities that we have cher-
ished in the land.

III. Again, I mention the general neglect and vio-
lation of God's ordinances, the sabbath, and the sanc-
tuary, and the profanation of His name. The whole
»ir is loaded with a foul-mouthed profanity : and in

25

ffict all this is accompanied by a degree of levity, vul-
garity, and vanity, that are as appalling as they are
well nigh universal. Men who profess to be loyal to
their country, openly and shamelessly trample on the
sabbath, and provoke Him to anger who has said, I
will not hold him guiltless that taketh my name in
vain. I believe God is angry with us for this, and
that His anger smokes, and will smoke, upon the pro-
fane and impious race of men Avho treat the whole
subject of Christianity, with its requirements and
restraints, as a mere story, an idle song, who conduct
in regard to it as if it were only a figment or fiction
of the past.

IV. Again, I mention the general corruption of
manners and morals which is manifest in vice and
dissipation, in excess, extravagance, and intempe-
rance, everywhere — in the highest circles of fashion,
in the lowest dens of infamy — and all this fostered and
catered to by the bold and reckless corruptors of
society, while the well nigh total failure to correct,
restrain, or extinguish the public profligacy of the
times, either by family and primary instruction, by a
Christian public sentiment, by the laws of the land,
or through the officers of the Government itself, is a
delinquenc}' so great as to enhance our criminality,
and increase the evils of our condition a thousand
fold. There is no doubt but we. are suflFering from
these evils in all the ramifications of human society;
and in this respect, if God's wrath be not turned away
by timely repentance, we must share the fate of every
other people whose very luxuries and licenses have
first enervated, and finally destroyed them.

V. I mention again the spirit of cruelty and oppres-
sion Avhich has marked the white race of America

26

toward the Indian and the African. When the chapter
of our usurpations and perfidies toward the aborigines
of this country shall be fully disclosed, we shall find,
I greatly fear, that notwithstanding the treacherous
and savage dispositions, and occasional outbreaks of
the barbarians, the refinements of infamy which the
dominant race have practiced upon them are not less
repugnant to truth and justice, or heinous in the sight
of God. And then as to the evils and wrongs of human
bondage — when I come to speak upon this subject I am
well aware that I touch the sensitive nerve, the sore
spot, of this whole nation. And yet though I should
encounter the settled convictions or prejudices of every
man in the nation, I feel that I should not have per-
formed my whole duty this day without plainly setting
before you my estimate of the subject as it appears to
me in the present light; and when I have done this as
briefly as possible, I shall feel that I have finished my
testimony in respect to this question by exhausting, so
far as I am able, the obligation that rests upon me.

First, then, I believe that the system of slavery as
it has existed in our country when considered only in
the light of the consequences that have followed it,
has been an evil and a curse of the most appalling
magnitude and enormity. To say nothing of its inci-
dental or inherent and essential wrongs upon the
African race, and after abating its alleged, fancied,
or real advantages as an institution of human society,
it is, as I firmly believe, nothing short of the solemn
truth of God to declare that it has been ''the apple
of discord," among the ruling race, tliat has wrought
more dissension, more animosity, and more lasting
bitterness and woe, than any one, or all other causes
combined since the foundation of the Government.
The traces of this evil are in the Federal Consti-

I

tution, legislation, and history of the country; but
the spirit of the evil lies back of all written or
documentary instruments ; lies in the unsanctitied
mind, and heart, and passions of man ; lies in com-
mercial cupidity, and ambition for political aristoc-
racy and power. And, therefore, I do not believe that
any one portion of the people in any one section of
tlie land are alone to be blamed, or held accountable,
for whatever of sin or suffering this system may have
entailed upon us. " Since the war broke out, and th«-
great events of its progress thus far have transpired,
I am disposed to stand equally amazed at the proofs
of human insincerity on the one hand, and the claims
of divine authority on the other. I am constrained to
censure the injustice of the laws of exclusion against
this outcast portion of God's human creatures, and to
denounce the cruel, preposterous, and inexorabl-e
prejudice in which these laws are founded. I believe,
in short, that the all-seeing eye of God beholds a de-
gree of selfishness, hypocrisy, inconsistency, and false
philanthropy upon this subject which positively
amounts to the infatuation and frenzy of judicial
blindness among all the people East and West, North
and South, and which of itself would be sufficient to
sink the whole nation into the nethermost pit of perdi-
tion. And after long years of angry and embittered
controversy, in which men have not known the man-
ner of spirit they were of, this great, fearful, eompii-
cated nva^s of guilt and misery, this awful nightmare
and incubus which was lying across the very vitals
of the nation vrhich no skill or foresight of human
wisdom could remedy or relieve, has been thrown into
the mighty scales of civil war, and the sword of God
is unsheathed to cut the knot of this more than Gor-
dian mystery ; and to rip from the heart of the nation^

28

tlie disguises that have hiddea our own real condi-
tion from our eyes ; and to solve in unanticipated ways,
and by means we never could have foreseen, the ques-
tions connected with this subject whicli have hitherto
been both our torment and our shame. I believe that
the time had come when nothing but war was left to
open our eyes to our true moral state in the sight of
God, and to educate the mind and heart of the nation
to a new platform of doctrine, sentiment, and opin-
ion, on this as well as on every other great interest of
mankind in the advancing day of a Christian civiliza-
tion. I believe it is the design of God that the sys-
tem of African slavery shall pass away, and that the
true era of its decline was struck when the first gun
of the rebellion made its booming salutation to the
brave Anderson and his little band under the case-
mates of Sumter. And because I have been impressed
with this belief from the beginning, and as occasion
offered expressed it, there are those in this commu-
nity who branded me with Avhat I imagine they sup-
pose to be the vilest and most odious of epithets, and
who regarded me as having wholly departed from the
walks of clerical propriety. Here, then, I define my
position. I am in favor of abolishing all human sin
and wrong-doing, whether it be in connection with
the black laws of the free States, or the slave laws of
the South — whether it be in connection with Sabbath
breaking, profanity, or whatever else may tend to mar
and degrade human nature, and to provoke against us
the just judgments of Heaven. I am in favor of suclx
abolition, in short, as is announced in this passage
from the prophet, and sanctioned by the favor of the
Lord God Almighty, and let the man who dissents
from this position stand up on this great day and pro-
duce hhi reasons. If it is tliis to be an abolitionist.

20

then I am an abolitionist. And I can afford here to
wait and suffer all the present consequences of such
a declaration, in the firm conviction that the day is
not far distant when it M'ill be no longer regarded as
a crime, or even as an indiscretion, for a man to stand
up here, or in any other portion of the counti-y, and
plead truly and faithfully for God and his fellow
men,

YI. And now once more I mention another crying
and crushing sin that we have to deplore and lament
to-day — the sin of secession and rebellion against the
Government of the United States, and the connivance
of secret sympathizers and abettors. I regard this as
a high crime against God and man ; not a mere mis-
take or misfortune, save where men and women are
compelled or constrained to act in the character of
traitors and rebels by the despotic mandate of the
arch-conspirators against the integrity, the peace,
and safety of the Federal Union. That there was a
foul and shameful conspiracy, attended by the inso-
lence and ferocity of fiends in human shape, first to
assassinate the President-elect on his way to the Cap-
ital, and afterwards to seize the city and murder
Union men, women, and children, there is not the
slightest doubt; and if the secret history of the plots
of these men could come to light, it would no doubt,
startle the whole nation with the horrors of these con-
templated atrocities. And if we look at the persecu-
tion and distress inflicted on the innocent wherever
the ruthless perjurers have been able to hold their
sway, we shall find that not in all the annals of mar-
tyrdom have our heroic and faithful countrymen been
transcended by examples either in the lofty spirit of
their devotion or in the brutal and bloody savagery
ox-

30

of their oppressors. And yet this Government has
been unable or unwilling to aflFord them any relief,
while it shields, and protects, and feeds with almost
criminal indulgence the secret enemies of its existence
who live beneath the shadows of its very Capitol,
detesting it in its magnanimity, and applauding the
open Treason which with an armed front is clutching
at its very throat. Amazed at such a state of things,
I sometimes wonder what posterity will think in the
clear light of a coming day which I pray may succeed
the darkness of the present night, in contemplation of
the subtlety and the depth of the treachery that per-
vades every nook and corner, and whether they will
be more astonished at the madness of disloyalty in its
perversion of the plainest principle of common honesty
and duty, or at the toleration and clemency of a gov-
ernment which through years of suffering, disaster,
and humiliation, still fails not to cherish in its bosom
this nest of vipers. Nor am I constrained to speak
thus of a portion of our community from any spirit or
desire of personal violence or capital retribution but
such as the necessities of the general safety and of
self-preservation imperatively demand. I only feel
that the community ought to be cleared of the spirit
of disloyalty, by a division of those whose hearts are
with the South in this rebellion from those whose
hearts are with the Government up to the full stand-
ard of scriptural obedience. This is the only way
that I recognize in which Ave can repent of and forsake
the sin of sedition and revolt.

Those who feel at heart no allegiance to the Govern-
ment should be put beyond the lines at least. Tliat is
the gentlest visitation that the authorities can lawfully
bestow; for this is no question of party politics, and I

31

deny the imijeachnicnt of it in the most emphatic term?.
It is purely a question of religious duty which we owe
to God and our country. And if wc mean to forsake
our sins, if we mean to put away from among us the
abominable thing, if we mean to return unto God with
all our hearts, we must recur to the law of the Bible:
if thine eye offend thee pluck it out ; if thine hand
offend thee cut it off. Nay, nay, we have before us, in
this passage from the prophet, the true solution of the
issues that are pending.

And this is called preaching politics. Now. when
the ship of state, freighted as it is with all our memo-
ries and all our hopes, lies tossing in the tempest ; when
it is no longer a question of policy or preference as be-
tween rival parties and candidates in time of peace,
but a deeper, broader, more vital question of the tri-
umph of the Government and the conscience of the
American people over a system of usurpation and des-
potism, sustained by an organized and armed rebellion
against them — now, when a fierce and bloody attempt
is made to undermine the very foundations of social
order and to pull down the noblest structure of empire
the sun has ever shone upon, and to sunder a land that
was once most happy in all the arts and industries of
advancing civilization, and to blot out from the face
of the globe the unit3' of a mighty nation and to im-
pair forever the greatness and the usefulness of a peo-
ple among whom the divine jyrinciples and precepts of
Christianity itself have had their freest and their no-
blest scope — would it not bethought a thing incredible
that the Christian people and the Christian ministry of
this land should stand aloof, should manifest a deep
and profound indifference, should undertake to live and
act and i>reach and .=peak and tliink and feel as though

there were no war, and no judgment of God among u-t
whatever? And all this, too, while the whole history
of the nation hitherto has been marked by one contin-
ued succession of providential interpositions for deliv-
erance, one constant series of examples of the presence
and influence of the Christian element in working out
our national destiny. Without Christianity, the story
of America never could have been told; these manifold
and mighty monuments which cover the land could
never have been reared. None but God can tell the
effect of Christian prayer and fidelity, in the testimony
of Christian truth, upon the fortunes of this nation.
And now, in such a land, with such a record and such
a prospect, and in such a condition, when we feel and
know that blows are being struck which, if not repelled,
must not only destroy our civil heritage, but also roll
back the chariot of human salvation for a thousand
years, can the disciples and ministers of 4his Religion,
which has more than all other things made the land a
blessing, be excused from the duties and trials which
now rest upon the nation? Nay, do j'ou not look to
the Christian sentiment and opinion of this country for
countenance and support? Do you not rely on the
loyalty and the prayers of the Christian people of this
country as constituting under God the firmest and most
unwavering prop and pillar of the nation's strength?
If this be so, then I am here to declare, in the name of
the Christian church, and of all that follow the great
Head of the church in this land, that as they have
never, heretofore, been found wanting in the hour of
the country's need, so they will not now be found
wanting. For, when it comes to this, the old Religion,
'.vhicli has, for eighteen hundred years, produced the
heroes and martvrs of the world, will rise again and

3:5

lead her mighty processions into the thickest of the con-
test. And not till the church of Christ has been utterly
overthrown, and not until her last prayer goes out.
and her last soul is offered upon the altar of expiring
liberty, will it be time for men to s-;iy '-theie is no
longer any hope." And not until tlion. can the cause
of America, which Ave believe to be the cause of hu-
man nature everywhere, be ruined. And for this rea-
son it is, that in the name of the church we lift up our
voice — cry aloud and spare not — showing the people
their sins and transgressions. The Christian mind of
this nation bejiolds the spectacle wo now present with
a feeling of the deepest solemnity and the most pain-
ful suspense. The Christian mind of this nation in-
terprets the afflictions we are suffering now, as the
judgments of God for our moral obliquity. It holds,
that there is righteousness w^hich exalteth a nation,
while sin is a reproach to awy people. It holds that,
in a crisis like this, there is but one inspiration that
can carry us through in triumph, and that is the in-
spiration of the Almighty. It holds that, among the
first signs of the presence of such an inspiration is the
general return of the people to sobriety and virtue ;
and therefore it views with pain and grief, with appre-
hension and alarm, the almost universal reign of vice,
vulgarity, and impurity. And because the nation has
been so long blind and indifferent to the principles of
truth, and so long disobedientto the authority of God,
He has not only kindled the fire of this furnace, but he
is adding fuel to the flames, and holding us in them,
that we may be either purified or consumed. That is the
issue now before us — purification or destruction. It is
comparatively of litt'e account wliat may be the tidings
from the great sieges or the battle-fields of our m'litary
or naval operations: what may be the condition of the

34

currency; or the result of local elections; or, indeed,
what may be the daily contingencies or details that fall
out to us in the history of this great time ; but the true
question is, whether, amid all these millions of human
beings, a sufficient number may be found upon whom
the inspiration of the Almighty has descended, to render
it consistent with his most gracious purpose and with
the character of his supreme government over men, to
interpose and give us the victory, If this point,hi the
moral and religious condition of the American people
can be attained, then vre have no fear for the remain-
der. The same power that delivered the Hebrew na-
tion with a high hand and a stretched out arm; the
same power that shielded the people of the Nether-
lands against the combined attack of the greatest Po-
tentates of the time in Europe ; the same power that
brought our fatliers through the bloody baptism of the
Revolution, and gave to them, to bequeath to us, their
children, this glorious inheritance, will thunder for us
along all our lines of battle, and put our enemies to
rout and confusion forever.

I have this faith, then, in the overruling providence of
God, and, so believing, let me implore my fellow-coun-
trymen to pause this day and consider how we may best
serve our country and our Christ in this time of their
need ; for a bitter curse fell upon Meroz because they
came not up — not up to the help of the Lord against the
mighty; and I honestly believe that a deep and bitter
curse will fall upon that man, that family, that commu-
nity, that church, or that city that will now draw back
from following the Lord in the pathway of his present
providence over this nation. How, then, can you save
America in this hour of wrath — men, women and chil-
dren, young men, old men, all men? Hl' i.s the truest
patriot and best lover of his country, the wisest and

most efficient friend and helper, who is the most con-
sistent, earnest, and prayerful Christian. If 3^011 would
serve the cause of your country, cease to do evil and
learn to do well; let the wicked forsake his way and
the unrighteous man his thoughts; if you have received
a bribe, restore it; if you have profaned the name of
God, abandon it; if you have trampled on the Sabbath
daj', trample on it no more; if one have been an infidel, a
debauchee, or an inebriate, if one have acted dishonestly,
suppressed the truth, corrupted others, defrauded men
of their rights, do it no more. Oh! become once again
a true man, abandon every vice and every iniquity; be
a man, sobered and chastened by the great realities and
severities of the time — a man no longer for the levity
and vain dalliance of the past, but full of the mighty
thoughts and stern resolves and steady purposes of
present duty. We cannot anj^ longer trifle before God.
These are days of sacrifice — the days of heroic suffer-
ing— the days of many and most noble martjTdoras.
Oh ! look at the spectacle of the altars and the holocausts
which are now smoking to heaven in all the land, in
the very centre of which are lifted up in our American
Switzerland the mountains of Tennessee where crackle
the hottest fires of the great persecution. The day of
peace is gone from us ; God only knows Avhen, or if
ever, it may return to this generation. Lot us compose
and prepare ourselves for the sacrifice; let us look
defeat, disaster, and even death, if need be, steadily
and calmly in th<> face ; but grasping the pillars of
God's eternal truth and jus'ico^ and holding up our
country and all its interests before His throne, let us
t'jitreat Ilim to turn us from our transgressions, that
iniquity may not be our ruin. The host of God, bear-
ing the ark of our sacred institutions, and waving the
etandard of a mighty peopk in thia last exodus of civil

36

luul religious liberty, is now already on its niixrch.
The trumpets of Providence have summoned the mil-
lions of our country to its peril and its toil. The pillar
of fire by night and of cloud by day is moving before
us. We are standing face to face with God. While
His majesty fills us with awe, may His mercy arm us
with strength to live and labor, to watch and pray, to
suffer and die for our native country and for the king-
dom of Jesus. Oh ! walk softly, all je people, walk
softly; for God is among us, and the Searcher of Hearts
is trying us as the gold is tried.

J ®ljj Itatiaiial §aiiiin, ^^'

f, A Joui-nal of 16 pages, devoted to j^Z

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