107. A Righteous Judge

A Righteous Judge

2Sa_3:38 : ’93Know ye not that there is a prince and a great man fallen this day in Israel?’94

Here is a plumed catafalque, followed by King David, who is about to deliver a funeral oration at the tomb. Concerning Abner, the great, David weeps out the text. More appropriately than when originally uttered, we may now utter this resounding lamentation: ’93Know ye not that there is a prince and a great man fallen this day in Israel?’94

It was thirty minutes after six, the exact hour of sunset of the Sabbath day, and while the evening lights were being kindled, that the soul of Stephen J. Field, the lawyer, the judge, the patriot, the statesman, the Christian, ascended. It was sundown in the home on yonder Capitol Hill, as it was sundown on all the surrounding hills; but in both cases the sunset to be followed by a glorious sunrise. Hear the Easter anthems still lingering in the air: ’93The trumpet shall sound and the dead shall rise.’94

Our departed friend came forth a boy from a minister’92s home in New England. He knelt with father and mother at morning and evening prayer, learned from maternal lips lessons of piety which remained with him and controlled him amid all the varied and exciting scenes of a lifetime, and helped him to die in peace an octogenarian. Blot out from American history the names of those ministers’92 sons who have done honor to judicial bench and commercial circle and national Legislature and Presidential chair, and you would obliterate many of the grandest chapters of that history. It is no small advantage to have started from a home where God is honored and the subject of a world’92s emancipation from sin and sorrow is under frequent discussion. The Ten Commandments, which are the foundation of all good law’97Roman law, German law, English law, American law’97are the best foundation upon which to build character, and those which the boy, Stephen J. Field, so often heard in the parsonage at Stockbridge were his guidance when a half-century after, as a robed justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, he unrolled his opinions. Bibles, hymn-books, catechisms, family prayers, atmosphere sanctified, are good surroundings for boys and girls to start from; and if our laxer ideas of religion and Sabbath days and home-training produce as splendid men and women as the much derided Puritanic Sabbath and Puritanic teachings have produced, it will be a matter of congratulation and thanksgiving.

Do not pass by the fact which I have not yet seen emphasized that Stephen J. Field was a minister’92s son. Notwithstanding that there are conspicuous exceptions to the rule’97and the exceptions have built up a stereotyped defamation on the subject’97statistics plain and undeniable prove that a larger proportion of ministers’92 sons turn out well than are to be found in any other genealogical table. Let all the parsonages of all denominations of Christians where children are growing up take the consolation. See the star of hope pointing down to that manger!

Notice also that our departed friend was a member of a royal family. There were no crowns or scepters or thrones in that ancestral line; but the family of the Fields, like the family of the New York Primes, like the family of the Princeton Alexanders, like a score of families that I might mention, if it were best to mention them, were ’93the children of the King,’94 and had put on them honors brighter than crowns and wielded influence longer and wider than scepters. That family of Fields traces an honorable lineage back eight hundred years to Hubertus de la Feld, coadjutor of William the Conqueror. Let us thank God for such families, generation after generation on the side of that which is right and good. Four sons of that country minister, known the world over for extraordinary usefulness in their spheres’97legal, commercial, literary, and theological’97and a daughter, the mother of one of the Associate Justices of the Supreme Court. Such families counterbalance for good those families all wrong from generation to generation’97families that stand for wealth, unrighteously gotten and stingily kept or wickedly squandered; families that stand for fraud or impurity or malevolence; family names that immediately come to every mind, though through sense of propriety they do not come to the lip. The name of Field will survive centuries and be a synonym for religion, for sound jurisprudence, for able Christian journalism, as the names of the Pharaohs and the C’e6sars stand for cruelty and oppression and vice.

While parents cannot aspire to have such conspicuous households as the one the name of whose son we now celebrate, all parents may by fidelity in prayer and holy example, have their sons and daughters become kings and queens unto God, to reign forever and ever. But the work has already been done, and I could go through this country and find a thousand households which have by the grace of God and blessing upon paternal and maternal excellence become the royal families of America.

Let young men beware, lest they by their behavior blot such family records with some misdeed. We can all think of households, the names of which meant everything honorable and consecrated for a long while, but by the deed of one son humiliated, disgraced, and blasted. Look out how you rob your consecrated ancestry of the name they handed to you unsullied! Better as trustee to that name add something worthy. Do something to honor the old homestead, whether a mountain cabin or a city mansion or a country parsonage! Rev. David Dudley Field, though thirty-two years passed upward, is honored today by the Christian life, the service, the death of his son Stephen.

Among the most absorbing books of the Bible is the book of Kings, which again and again illustrates that though piety is not hereditary, the character of parentage has much to do with the career of descendant. It declares of King Abijam, ’93He walked in all the sins of his father which he had done before him,’94 and of King Azariah, ’93He did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, according to all that his father Amaziah had done.’94 We owe a debt to those who have gone before in our line as certainly as we have obligations to those who subsequently appear in the household. Not so sacred is your old father’92s walking-staff, which you keep in his memory, or the eyeglasses through which your mother studied the Bible in her old age as the name they bore, the name which you inherited. Keep it bright, I charge you. Keep it suggestive of something elevated in character. Trample not under foot that which to your father and mother was dearer than life itself. Defend their graves as they defended your cradle. Family coat-of-arms, escutcheons, ensigns armorial, lion couchant or lion dormant or lion rampant or lion combatant may attract attention, but better than all heraldic inscription is a family name which means from generation to generation, faith in God, self-sacrifice, duty performed, a life well lived and a death happily died and a heaven gloriously won! That was the kind of name that Justice Field augmented and adorned and perpetuated’97a name honorable at the close of the eighteenth century, more honored now at the close of the nineteenth.

Notice also that our illustrious friend was great in reasonable and genial dissent. Of the one thousand and forty-two opinions he rendered, none were more potent or memorable than those rendered while he was in small minority, and sometimes in a minority of one. A learned and distinguished lawyer of this country said he would rather be the author of Judge Field’92s dissenting opinions than to be the author of the Constitution of the United States. The tendency is to go with the multitude, to think what others think, to say and do what others do. Sometimes the majority are wrong, and it requires heroism to take the negative; but to do that logically and in good humor, requires some elements of make-up not often found in judicial dissenters or, indeed, in any class of men. There are so many people in the world opposed to everything, and who display their opposition in rancorous and obnoxious ways that a Judge Field was needed to make the negative respected and genial and right. Minorities under God save the world and save the church. An unthinking and precipitate ’93yes’94 may be stopped by a righteous and heroic ’93no.’94 The majorities are not always right. The old Gospel hymn declares it:

Numbers are no mark that men will right be found;

A few were saved in Noah’92s ark to many millions drowned.

The Declaration of American Independence was a dissenting opinion. The Free Church of Scotland, under Chalmers and his compeers, was a dissenting movement. The Bible itself, Old Testament and New Testament, is a protest against the theories that would have destroyed the world, and is a dissenting as well as a divinely-inspired book. The Decalogue on Sinai repeated ten times ’93Thou shalt not.’94 For ages to come will be quoted from law books in courtrooms Justice Field’92s magnificent dissenting opinions.

Notice that our ascended friend had such a character as assault and peril alone can develop. He had not come to the soft cushions of the Supreme Court bench stepping on cloth of gold and saluted all along the line by hand-clapping of applause. Country parsonages do not rock their babes in satin-lined cradle, or afterward send them out into the world with enough in their hand to purchase place and power. Pastors’92 salaries in the early part of this century hardly ever reached seven hundred dollars a year. Economies that sometimes cut into the bone characterized many of the homes of the New England clergymen. The young lawyer of whom we speak today arrived in San Francisco in 1849 with only ten dollars in his pocket. Williamstown College was only introductory to a post-graduate course which our illustrious friend took while administering justice and halting ruffianism amid the mining-camps of California. Oh, those ’93forty-niners,’94 as they were called, through what privations, through what narrow escapes, amid what exposures they moved! Administering and executing law among outlaws never has been an easy undertaking. Among mountaineers, many of whom had no regard for human life, and where the snap of pistol and bang of gun were not unusual responses, the task required courage of the highest metal.

Behind a dry-goods box, surmounted by tallow candles, Judge Field began his judicial career. What exciting scenes he passed through! An infernal machine was handed to him, and inside the lid of the box was pasted his decision in the Pueblo case, the decision that had balked unprincipled speculators. Ten years ago his life would have passed out had not an officer of the law shot down his assailant. It took a long training of hardships and abuse and misinterpretation and threat of violence and flash of assassin’92s knife to fit him for the high place where he could defy Legislatures and Congresses and Presidents and the world, when he knew he was right. Hardship is the grindstone that sharpens intellectual faculties, and the sword with which to strike effectively for God and one’92s country.

The reason that life to so many is a failure is because they do not have opposition enough and trials enough, or because they ignominiously lie down to be run over by them instead of using them for stairs on which to put their foot and mount. Those ’93born with gold spoon in their mouths’94 are apt to take their last medicine out of a pewter mug. Have brave heart in all departments, ye men of many obstacles! There is no brawn of character without them. The roughs glaring and growling around about the shed of a court-room in Marysville, California, had as much to do with Judge Field’92s development as Mark Hopkins, the great Williamstown College president. Opposition develops courage. I like the ring of Martin Luther’92s defiance, when he said to the Duke of Saxony: ’93Things are otherwise ordered in heaven than they are at Augsburg.’94

Notice also how much our friend did for the honor of the judiciary. What momentous scenes have been witnessed in our United States Supreme Court, on the bench and before the bench, whether far back it held its sessions in the upper room of the Exchange at New York, or afterward for ten years in the City Hall at Philadelphia, or later in the cellar of yonder Capitol, the place where for many years the Congressional Library was kept, a sepulcher where books on questions of national import! Edmund Randolph ’93The Cave of Trophonius!’94 What mighty men stood before that bar pleading in immortal eloquence on questions of national import! Edmund Randolph, and Alexander Hamilton and Pinkney and Jeremiah Mason and Caleb Cushing and the weird and irresistible Rufus Choate and George Wood and Charles O’92Connor and James T. Brady and Francis B. Cutting and men now living just as powerful.

How suggestive the invitation which William Wirt, the great Virginian, wrote his friend inviting him to yonder Supreme Court room: ’93To-morrow a week will come on the great steamboat question from New York. Emmett and Oakley on one side, Webster and myself on the other. Come down and hear it. Emmett’92s whole soul is in the case, and he will stretch all his powers. Oakley is said to be one of the finest logicians of the age, as much a Phocion as Emmett is a Themistocles, and Webster is as ambitious as C’e6sar; he will not be outdone by any man if it is within the compass of his power to avoid it. Come to Washington. It will be a combat worth witnessing.’94 The Supreme Court has stood so high in England and the United States that the vices of a few who have had seats in that important place have not been able to disgrace it, neither the corruption of Francis Bacon nor the cruelty of Sir George Mackenzie nor the Sabbath desecration of Lord Castlereagh.

To that highest of all tribunals Abraham Lincoln called our friend, but he lived long enough to honor the Supreme Court more than it had ever honored him. For more than thirty-four years he sat in the presence of this nation and of all nations, a model judge. Fearlessness, integrity, devotion to principle, characterized him. No bribe ever touched his hand. No profane word ever scalded his tongue. No blemish of wrong ever marred his character. Fully qualified was he to have his name associated in the history of this country with the greatest of the judiciary.

As at twelve o’92clock day by day on Capitol Hill the gavel falls in the Supreme Court room, and it is announced that the Chief Justice of the United States and the Associate Justices are about to enter, and all counselors at the bar and all spectators rise to greet them, and the officer with words, ’93Oyez! Oyez! Oyez!’94 announces that all is now ready for a hearing, and exclaims, ’93God save the United States of America,’94 so I wish we could in imagination gather together those who have occupied high judicial place in this and other lands, and they might enter, and after the falling of some mighty gavel had demanded attention, we could look upon them’97Marshall, the giant of American jurisprudence; and John Jay, of whom Daniel Webster said in commemoration, ’93When the spotless ermine of the judicial robe fell on John Jay it touched nothing more spotless than itself’94; and Rutledge; and Cushing; and Ellsworth; and Joseph Storey, called the Walter Scott of common law; and Sir Matthew Hale; and Lord Eldon and Lord Tenterden and Sir James McIntosh and Mansfield and the long line of Lord Chancellors and the great judges from both sides the sea’97and after they had taken their places in our quickened imagination the distinguished cases of centuries which they decided might again be called on, after the assembled nations had ejaculated, ’93God save the United States of America,’94 ’93God save Great Britain,’94 ’93God save the nations.’94

How the law honors and sanctifies everything it touches. Natural law. Civil law. Social law. Commercial law. Common law. Moral law. Ecclesiastical law. International law. Oh, the dignity, the impressiveness, the power of law! It is the only thing before which Jehovah bows, but he bows before that, although the law is of his own making. Law! By it worlds swing. By it the fate of centuries is decided. By it all the affairs of time and all the cycles of eternity will be governed. We cannot soar so high or sink so deep or reach out so far or live so long as to escape it. It is the throne on which the Almighty sits. To interpret law, what a profession! What a responsibility! What an execration when the judge be a Lord Jeffreys! What a benediction if he be a Chancellor Kent!

In passing, let me say that for this chief tribunal of our country, Congress should soon provide a better place. Let some of the moneys voted for the improvement of rivers which are nothing but dry creeks, and for harbors which will never have any shipping, and for monuments to some people’97whom it is not at all important for us to remember’97be voted for the erection of a building worthy of our United States Supreme Court. John Ruskin, in Stones of Venice, calls attention to the pleasing fact that in the year 813 the Doge of Venice devoted himself to putting up two great buildings’97St. Mark’92s, for the worship of God, and a palace for the administration of justice to man. In its appreciation of what is best let not 1899 be behind 813. With such granite in our quarries and such architects capable of drafting sublime structure and such magnificent sites on which to build, let not many years pass before we hear the trowel ring on the corner-stone of a temple to be occupied by the highest court of the land.

Have you ever realized how much God has honored law in the fact that all up and down the Bible he makes the judge a type of himself, and employs the scene of a court-room to set forth the grandeurs of the great Judgment Day? Book of Genesis: ’93Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?’94 Book of Deuteronomy: ’93The Lord shall judge his people.’94 Book of Psalms: ’93God is Judge himself.’94 Book of Acts: ’93Judge of quick and dead.’94 Book of Timothy: ’93The Lord the righteous Judge.’94 Never will it be understood how God honors judges and courtrooms until the thunderbolt of the last day shall pound the opening of the great assize’97the day of trial, the day of clearance, the day of doom, the day of judgment. The law of the case on that occasion will be read, and the indictment of ten counts, which are the Ten Commandments. Justice will plead the case against us, but out glorious Advocate will plead in our behalf, for ’93we have an Advocate with the Father’97Jesus Christ, the righteous.’94 Then the case will be decided in our clearance, as the Judge announces ’93There is now, therefore, no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus.’94 Under the crowded galleries of cloud on that last day, and under the swaying upholstery of a burning heavens, and while the Alps and Himalayas and Mount Washington are falling flat on their faces, we will be able to understand the significance of those Scripture passages which speak of God as Judge and employ the court-room of earth as typical of the scene when all nations shall be brought to Tribunal.

To have done well, all that such a profession could ask of him, and to have made that profession still more honorable by his brilliant and Sublime life, is enough for national and international, terrestrial and celestial congratulation. And then to expire grandly, while the prayers of his church were being offered at his bedside, the door of heaven opening for his entrance as the door of earth opened for his departure, the sob of the earthly farewell caught up into raptures that never die. Yes, he lived and died in the faith of the old-fashioned Christian religion. Young man, I want to tell you that Justice Field believed in the Bible from lid to lid, a book all true either as doctrine or history, much of it the history of events that neither God nor man approves. Our friend drank the wine of the Holy Sacrament, and ate the bread of which ’93if a man eat he shall never hunger.’94 He was the up-and-down, out-and-out friend of the Church of Christ. If there had been anything illogical in our religion he would have scouted it, for he was a logician. If there had been in it anything unreasonable he would have rejected it, because he was a great reasoner. If there had been in it anything that would not stand research, he would have exploded the fallacy, for his life was a life of research. Young men of Washington! young men of America! young men of the round world! a religion that would stand the test of Justice Field’92s penetrating and all-ransacking intellect must have in it something worthy of your confidence. I tell you now that Christianity has not only the heart of the world on its side, but the brain of the world also. Ye who have tried to represent the religion of the Bible as something pusillanimous, how do you account for the Christian faith of Stephen J. Field, whole shelves of the law library occupied with his magnificent decisions?

And now may the God of all comfort speak to the bereft; especially to her who was the queen of his life, from the day when as a stranger he was shown to her pew in the Episcopal church, to this time of the broken heart. He changed churches but did not change religions, for the church in which he was born, and the church in which he died, alike believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only-begotten Son, and in the communion of saints, and in the life everlasting. Amen.

The body of our friend sleeps in temporary resting-place. Hearts overwhelmed with grief cannot just now decide where that sacred and silent form shall hear the trumpet that wakes the dead. Three places are proposed, and all appropriate. Some say let it be in some God’92s acre near this capital, where the pillows of dust are already embroidered with spring flowers. How appropriate some cemetery near this city, which was so long his residence, and so near the place where he sat in judgment, holding evenly the balances that God put in his hand! It would be well for us sometimes to go out and read his epitaph and recall his virtues. Some say let him rest on the Pacific slope, where he achieved so much for the new State and fitted himself for so great eminence; and it would be beautiful to let the whole nation bow at his passing catafalque, a funeral reaching from ocean to ocean and three thousand miles long, the Alleghanies and the Rockies and the Sierra Nevadas echoing the thunders of the rail-train taking him to his last earthly home. But equally appropriate is another proposal that he be put to rest amid the graves of father and mother and renowned brothers and the New England friends of the family in the cemetery at Stockbridge, Massachusetts. After a life of toil and struggle he needs some quiet place. Old men who were his school-fellows would lean heavily upon the staff and watch as he was brought through the gates of the place in which they also will soon lie down to rest. Far away from the jostle and contention and rush and activities of the great cities he would sleep the calm sleep of the just. The hyacinths and calla lilies of the spring planted there would typify the resurrection, and the snows of winter banked there would suggest the robes made white in the blood of the Lamb.

Good-by, my dear old friend of more than thirty years. Your words of personal encouragement and good cheer give me the right to offer words of commemoration. But I must leave to others his place of burial. This city might choose Rock Creek and Oak Hill, and San Francisco might choose Lone Mountain; yet if I had my choice I would say let it be the cemetery at Stockbridge. He would be at home there, and it would be a family reunited; but whatever be the place, let me sprinkle over the newly-made grave this handful of heather from the Scotch highlands, in the hymn which the people of that land of Andrew Melville and John Knox are accustomed to sing on their way to the grave of some one greatly beloved:

Neighbor, accept our parting song,

The road is short, the rest is long;

The Lord brought here, the Lord takes hence,

This is no house of permanence.

On bread of mirth and bread of tears

The pilgrim fed these checkered years;

Now landlord world, shut to the door,

Thy guest is gone forever more.

Gone to the land of sweet repose,

His comrades bless him as he goes;

Of toil and moil the day was full,

A good sleep now, the night is cool.

Ye village bells, ring softly, ring,

And in the blessed Sabbath bring;

Which from this weary work-day tryst

Awaits God’92s folk through Jesus Christ.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage