039. Moral Character of Candidates

Moral Character of Candidates

Exo_20:1-17 : ’93The Ten Commandments.’94

The lightnings and earthquakes united their forces to wreck a mountain of Arabia Petr’e6a in olden time, and travelers today find heaps of porphyry and greenstone rocks, boulder against boulder, the remains of the first law library, written, not on parchment or papyrus, but on shattered slab of granite. The corner-stones of all morality, of all wise law, of all righteous jurisprudence, of all good government, are the two tablets of stone on which were written the Ten Commandments. All Roman law, all French law, all English law, all American law that is worth anything, all common law, civil law, criminal law, martial law, law of nations, were rocked in the cradle of the twentieth chapter of Exodus. And it would be well in these times of great political agitation if the newspapers would print the Decalogue some day in place of the able editorial. But let the Ten Commandments loose upon the great political parties of our day and there would be wild panic.

The fact is that some people suppose that the law has passed out of existence, and some are not aware of some of the passages of that law, and others say this or that is of the more importance, when no one has any right to make such an assertion. These laws are the pillars of society, and if you remove one pillar you damage the whole structure. I have noticed that men are particularly vehement against sins to which they are not particularly tempted, and find no especial wrath against sins in which they themselves indulge. They take out one gun from this battery of ten guns, and load that and unlimber that and fire that. They say: ’93This is an Armstrong gun, and this is a Krupp gun, and this is a Nordenfelt five-barreled gun, and this is a Gatling ten-barreled gun, and this is a Martini thirty-seven barreled gun.’94 But I have to tell them that they are all of the same calibre, and that they shoot from eternity to eternity.

Many questions are before the people in the coming elections all over the land, but I shall try to show you that the most important thing to be settled about all these candidates is their personal moral character. To-day, in this brief course of sermons I am preaching on national affairs, and within a few days of the Presidential election, I propose to test the character of persons nominated for office in city, State and nation, and to test them by the Decalogue. Many of the clergymen have gone on the political platform in these times’97and I have no criticism to offer in regard to them’97some going on one political platform and some on the opposite political platform. I hope they are all better than I am, yet I have not felt called of God to copy their example, but rather in a few Sabbath morning sermons, omitting all personalities, to lay down certain principles which will stand the test of the Judgment Day. The Decalogue forbids idolatry, image making, profanity, maltreatment of parents, Sabbath desecration, murder, theft, incontinence, lying, and covetousness. That is the Decalogue by which you and I will have to be tried, and by that same Decalogue you and I must try candidates for office.

Of course we shall not find anything like perfection. If we do not vote until we find an immaculate nominee we will never vote at all. We have so many faults of our own we ought not to be censorious or maledictory or hypercritical in regard to the faults of others. The Christly rule is as appropriate for November as any other month in the year, and for the fourth year as for the three preceding years: ’93Judge not that ye be not judged, for with what measure ye mete it shall be measured to you again.

Most certainly are we not to take the statement of red-hot partisanship as the real character of any man. From nearly all the great cities of this land I receive daily or weekly newspapers, sent to me regularly and in compliment, so I see both sides’97I see all sides’97and it is most entertaining, and my regular amusement, to read the opposite statements. The one statement says the man is an angel, and the other says he is a devil; and I split the difference, and I find him half-way between. There has never been an honest or respectable man running for the United States Presidency since the foundations of the American Government, if we may believe the old files of newspapers in the museums. What a mercy it is that they were not all hung before inauguration day! If a man believe one-half of what he sees in the newspapers in these times, his career will be very short outside of Bloomingdale Insane Asylum. I was absent during this last week, and I was dependent entirely upon what I read in regard to what had occurred in these cities, and I read there was a procession in New York of five thousand patriots, and a minute after I read in another sheet that there were seventeen thousand; and then I read in regard to another procession that there were ten thousand, and then I read in another paper that there were sixty thousand. A campaign orator in the Rink or the Academy of Music received a very cold reception’97a very chilling reception’97said one statement. The other statement said the audience rose at him; so great was the enthusiam that for a long while the orator could not be heard, and it was only after lifting his hand that the vociferation began to subside! One statement will twist a letter one way, and another statement will twist it another way. You must admit it is a very difficult thing in times like these to get a very accurate estimate of a man’92s character, and I charge you, as your religious teacher, I charge you to caution, and to mercifulness, and to prayer.

I warn you also against the mistake which many are making, and always do make, of applying a different standard of character for those in high place and of large means from the standard they apply for ordinary persons. However much a man may have, and however high the position he gets, he has no especial liberty given him in the interpretation of the Ten Commandments. A great sinner is no more to be excused than a small sinner. Do not charge illustrious defection to eccentricity, or chop off the Ten Commandments to suit especial cases. The right is everlastingly right and the wrong is everlastingly wrong. If any man nominated for any office in this city, State, or nation differs from the Decalogue, do not fix up the Decalogue, but fix him up. This law must stand whatever else may fall.

I call your attention also to the fact that you are all aware of, that the breaking of one commandment makes it the more easy to break all of them, and the philosophy is plain. Any kind of sin weakens the conscience, and if the conscience is weakened, that opens the door for all kinds of transgression. If, for instance, a man go into this political campaign wielding scurrility as his chief weapon, and he believes everything bad about a man, and believes nothing good, how long before that man himself will get over the moral depression? Neither in time nor eternity. If I utter a falsehood in regard to a man I may damage him, but I get for myself tenfold more damage. That is a gun that kicks. If, for instance, a man be profane, under provocation he will commit any crime. I say under provocation. For if a man will maltreat the Lord Almighty, would he not maltreat his fellow-man? If a man be guilty of malfeasance in office he will, under provocation, commit any sin. He who will steal will lie, and he who will lie will steal. If, for instance, a man be unchaste, it opens the door for all other iniquity, for in that one iniquity he commits theft of the worst kind, and covetousness of the worst kind, and falsehood’97pretending to be decent when he is not’97and maltreats his parents by disgracing their name, if they were good. Be careful, therefore, how you charge that sin against any man either in high place or low place, either in office or out of office, because when you make that charge against a man you charge him with all villainies, with all disgusting propensities, with all rottenness. A libertine is a beast lower than the vermin that crawl over a summer carcass’97lower than the swine, for the swine has no intelligence to sin against. Be careful, then, how you charge that against any man. You must be so certain that a mathematical demonstration is doubtful as compared with it.

And, then, when you investigate a man on such subjects, you must go the whole length of investigation, and find out whether or not he has repented. He may have been down on his knees before God and implored the divine forgiveness, and he may have implored the forgiveness of society and the forgiveness of the world; although if a man commit that sin at thirty or thirty-five years of age there is not one case out of a thousand where he ever repents. You must in your investigation see if it is possible that the one case investigated may not have been the glorious exception. But do not chop off the seventh commandment to suit the case. Do not change Fairbanks’92s scale to suit what you are weighing with it. Do not cut off a yardstick to suit the dry goods you are measuring. Let the law stand, and never tamper with it.

Above all, I charge you do not join in the cry that I have heard’97for fifteen, twenty years I have heard it’97that there is no such thing as purity. If you make that charge you are a foul-mouthed scandaler of the human race. You are a leper. Make room for that leper! When a man, by pen or type or tongue, utters such a slander on the human race that there is no such thing as purity, I know right away that that man himself is a walking lazaretto, a reeking ulcer, and is fit for no society better than that of devils damned. We may enlarge our charities in such a case, but in no such case let us shave off the Ten Commandments. Let them stand as the everlasting defense of society and of the Church of God.

The committing of one sin opens the door for the commission of other sins. You see it every day. Those Wall Street embezzlers, those bank cashiers absconding as soon as they are brought to justice, develop the fact that they were in all kinds of sin. No exception to the rule. They all kept bad company, they nearly all gambled, they all went to places where they ought not. Why? The commisson of the one sin opened the gate for all the other sins. Sins go in flocks, in droves, and in herds. You open the door for one sin, that invites in all the miserable segregation. The campaign orators this autumn, some of them, bombarding the suffering candidates all the week, will think no wrong in Sabbath-breaking. All the week hurling the eighth commandment at one candidate, the seventh commandment at another candidate, and the ninth commandment at still another. They think no wrong in riding all Sunday, and they are at this moment, many of them, in the political headquarters calculating the chances. All the week hurling one commandment at Mr. Elaine, another commandment at Mr. Cleveland, and another commandment at Mr. St. John’97what are they doing with the fourth commandment, ’93Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy’94? Breaking it. Is not the fourth commandment as important as the eighth, as the seventh, as the ninth? Some of these political campaign orators, as I have seen them reported, and as I have heard in regard to them, bombarding the suffering candidates all the week, yet tossing the name of God from their lips recklessly, guilty of profanity. What are they doing with the third commandment? Is not the third commandment, which says, ’93Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain’94’97is not the third commandment as important as the other nine? Oh, yes, we find in all departments men are hurling their indigation against sins perhaps to which they are not especially tempted’97hurling it against iniquity toward which they are not particularly drawn.

I have this book for my authority when I say that the man who swears or the man who breaks the Sabbath is as culpable before God as either of those candidates is culpable if the things charged on him are true. What right have you and I to select which commandment we will keep and which we will break? Better not try to measure the thunderbolts of the Almighty, saying this has less blaze, this has less momentum. Better not play with the guns, better not experiment much with the divine ammunition. Cicero said he saw the Iliad written on a nut-shell, and you and I have seen the Lord’92s prayer written on a five-cent piece; but the whole tendency of these times is to write the Ten Commandments so small nobody can see them. I protest this day against the attempt to revise the Decalogue which was given on Mount Sinai amid the blast of trumpets and the cracking of the rocks and the paroxysm of the mountain of Arabia Petr’e6a.

I bring up the candidates for city, State and national power, I bring them up, and I try them by this Decalogue. Of course, they are imperfect. We are all imperfect. We say things we ought not to say, we do things we ought not to do. We have all been wrong, we have all done wrong. But I shall find out one of the candidates who comes, in my estimation, nearest to obedience of the Ten Commandments, and I will vote for him, and you will vote for him unless you love God less than your party; then you will not.

Herodotus said that Nitocris, the daughter of Nebuchadnezzar, was so fascinated with her beautiful village of Ardericca, that she had the river above Babylon changed so it wound this way and wound that, and curved this way and curved that, and though you sailed on it for three days every day you would be in sight of that exquisite village. Now, I do not care which way you sail in morals, or which way you sail in life, if you only sail within sight of this beautiful group of divine commandments. Although they may sometimes seem to be a little angular, I do not care which way you sail, if you sail in sight of them you will never run aground and you will never be shipwrecked.

I never felt more impressed from God than I do this moment of the importance of what I am saying to this audience. Society needs toning up on all these subjects. I tell you there is nothing worse to fight than the ten regiments, with bayonets and sabres of fire, marching down the side of Mount Sinai. They always gain the victory, and those who fight against them go under. There are thousands and tens of thousands of men being slain by the Decalogue. What is the matter with that young man of whom I read, dying in his dissipations? In his dying delirium he said: ’93Now, fetch on the dice. It is mine! No, no! It is gone, all is gone! Bring on more wine! Bring on more wine! Oh, how they rattle their chains! Fiends, fiends, fiends! I say you cheat! The cards are marked! Oh, death! oh, death! oh, death! Fiends, fiends, fiends!’94 And he gasped and was gone. The Ten Commandments slew him.

Let not ladies and gentlemen in this nineteenth century revise the Ten Commandments, but let them in society and at the polls put to the front those who come the nearest to this God-lifted standard. On Tuesday morning next read the twentieth chapter of Exodus at family prayers. The moral or the immoral character of the next President of the United States will add seventy-five per cent. unto or subtract seventy-five per cent. from the national morals. You and I cannot afford to have a bad President; the young men of this country cannot afford to have a bad President; the commercial, the moral, the artistic, the agricultural, the manufacturing, the religious interests of this country, cannot afford to have a bad President; and if you, on looking over the whole field, cannot find a man who, in your estimation, comes within reasonable distance of obedience of the Decalogue, stay at home, do not vote at all.

I suppose when in the city of Sodom there were four candidates put up for office, and Lot did not believe in any of them, he did not register. I suppose if there came a crisis in the politics of Babylon, where Daniel did not believe in any of the candidates, he stayed at home on election day, praying with his face toward Jerusalem. But we have no such crisis, we have no such exigency, thank God. Yet I have to say to you today that the moral character of a ruler always affects the ruled; and I appeal to history. Wicked King Manasseh depressed the moral tone of all the nation of Judah, and threw them into idolatry. Good King Josiah lifted up the whole nation by his excellent example. Why is it that today England is higher up in morals than at any point in her national history? It is because she has the best ruler in all Europe, all the attempts to scandalize her name a failure. The political power of Talleyrand brooded all the political tricksters of the last ninety years. The dishonest Vice-Presidency of Aaron Burr blasted this nation until important letters were written in cipher, because the people could not trust the United States mail. And let the court circles of Louis XV and Henry VIII march out, followed by the debauched nations.

The higher up you put a bad man the worse is his power for evil. The great fabulist says that the pigeons were in fright at a kite flying in the air, and so these pigeons hovered near the dovecote; but one day the kite said, ’93Why are you so afraid? why do you pass your life in terror? make me king, and I’92ll destroy all your enemies.’94 So the pigeons made the kite king, and as soon as he got the throne his regular diet was a pigeon a day. And while one of the victims was waiting for its turn to come, it said: ’93Served us right!’94 The malaria of swamps rises from the plain to the height, but moral malaria descends from the mountain to the plain. Be careful, therefore, how you elevate into authority men who are in any wise antagonistic to the Ten Commandments.

As near as I can tell, the most important thing now to be done is to have about forty million copies of the Sinaitic Decalogue printed and scattered throughout the land. It was a terrible waste when the Alexandrian library was destroyed, and the books were taken to heat four thousand baths for the citizens of Alexandria. It was very expensive heat. But without any harm to the Decalogue, you could with it heat a hundred thousand baths of moral purification for the American people. I say we want a tonic’97a mighty tonic’97a corrective’97an all-powerful corrective’97and Moses in the text, with steady hand, notwithstanding the jarring mountains and the full orchestra of the tempest and the blazing of the air, pours out the ten drops’97no more, no less’97which this nation needs to take for its moral convalescence.

But I shall not leave you under the discouragement of the Ten Commandments, because we have all offended. There is another mountain in sight, and while one mountain thunders the other answers in thunder; and while Mount Sinai, with lightning, writes doom, the other mountain, with lightning, writes mercy. The only way you will ever spike the guns of the Decalogue is by the spikes of the cross. The only rock that will ever stop the Sinaitic upheaval is the Rock of Ages. Mount Calvary is higher than Mount Sinai. The English Survey Expedition, I know, say that one Sinaitic peak is seven thousand feet high and another eight thousand and another nine thousand feet high, and travelers tell us that Mount Calvary is only a slightly raised knoll outside of the wall of Jerusalem; but Calvary in moral significance overtops and over-shadows all the mountains of the hemispheres, and Mount Washington and Mount Blanc and the Himalayas are hillocks compared with it. You know that sometimes one fortress will silence another fortress. Moultrie silenced Sumter; and against the mountain of the law I put the mountain of the cross. ’93The soul that sinneth, it shall die,’94 booms one, until the earth jars under the cannonade. ’93Save them from going down to the pit, I have found a ransom,’94 pleads the other, until earth and heaven and hell quake under the reverberation. And Moses, who commands the one, surrenders to Christ, who commands the other.

Once by the law our hopes were slain,

But now in Christ we live again.

Aristotle says that Mount Etna erupted one day and poured torrents of scoria upon the villages at the base, but that the mountain divided its flame and made a lane of safety for all those who came to rescue their aged parents. And this volcanic Sinai divides its fury for all those whom Christ has come to rescue from the red ruin on both sides. Standing as I do today, half-way between the two mountains’97the mountain of the 20th of Exodus and the mountain of the 19th of John’97all my terror comes into supernatural calm, for the uproar of the one mountain subsides into quiet, and comes down into so deep a silence that I can hear the other mountain speak’97ay, I can hear it whisper: ’93The blood, the blood, the blood that cleanseth from all sin.’94

The Survey Expedition says that the Sinaitic mountains have wadys, or water courses’97Alleyat and Ajelah’97emptying into Feiran. But those streams are not navigable. No boat put into those rocky streams could sail. But I have to tell you this day that the boat of Gospel rescue comes right up amid the water courses of Sinaitic gloom and threat, ready to take us off from under the shadows into the calm sunlight of God’92s pardon and into the land of peace. Oh, if you could see that boat of Gospel rescue coming this day, you would feel as John Gilmore, in his book, ’93The Storm Warriors,’94 says that a ship’92s crew felt on the Kentish Knock Sands, off the coast of England, when they were being beaten to pieces and they all felt they must die! They had given up all hope, and every moment washed another plank from the wreck, and they said, ’93We must die, we must die!’94 But after a while they saw a Ramsgate lifeboat coming through the breakers for them, and the man standing highest up on the wreck said: ’93Can it be? Can it be? It is, it is, it is, it is! Thank God! It is the Ramsgate lifeboat! It is, it is, it is, it is!’94 And the old Jack tar, describing that lifeboat to his comrades after he got ashore, said: ’93Oh, my lads, what a beauty it did seem, what a beauty it did seem coming through the breakers that awful day!’94 May God, through the mercy in Jesus Christ, take us all off the miserable wreck of our sin into the beautiful lifeboat of the Gospel!

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage