209. Before They Adjourn

Before They Adjourn

Psa_105:22 : ’93And teach his senators wisdom.’94

Senators in this text stand for law-makers. Joseph was the Lord Treasurer of the Egyptian government, and among other great things which he did, according to my text, was to teach his senators wisdom; and if any men on earth ought to be endowed with wisdom, it is senators, whether they stand in congresses or parliaments or reichstags or assemblies or legislatures. By their decisions nations go up or down. Lawmakers are sometimes so tempted by prejudices, by sectional preferences, by opportunity of personal advancement, and sometimes what is best to do is so doubtful that they ought to be prayed for and encouraged in every possible way, instead of severely criticised and blamed and excoriated, as is much of the time the case. Our public men are so often the target to be shot at, merely because they obtain eminence which other men wanted but could not reach, that more injustices are hurled at our national Legislature than the people of the United States can possibly imagine. The wholesale belying of our public men is simply damnable. By residence in Washington I have come to find out that many of our public men are persistently misrepresented, and some of the best of them, the purest in their lives and most faithful in the discharge of their duties, are the worst defamed. Some day I want to preach a sermon from the text in II. Peter: ’93They are not afraid to speak evil of dignities. Whereas angels, which are greater in power and might, bring not railing accusation against them before the Lord. But these, as natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed, speak evil of the things that they understand not.’94 So constant and malignant is this work of depreciation and scandalization in regard to our public men that all over the land there are those who suppose that the city of Washington is the centre of all corruption; while, what with its parks, and its equestrian statuary, and its wide streets, and its architectural symmetries, and its lovely homes, it is not only the most beautiful city under the sun, but has the highest style of citizenship. I saw but one intoxicated man in the first six months of my residence, and I do not think any man can give similar testimony of any other city on the American continent. The depressing things written and spoken concerning this Capitol are inspired by reasons not at all complimentary to those who utter them.

The gavels of our two houses of national legislature will soon fall, and adjournment of two bodies of men as talented, as upright, and as patriotic as ever graced the Capitol, will take place. The two or three unfortunate outbreaks which you have noticed only make more conspicuous the dignity, the fraternity, the eloquence, the fidelity which have characterized those two bodies during all the long months of important and anxious deliberation. We put a halo around great men of the past because they were so rare in their time. Our Senate and House of Representatives have five such men where they once had one. But it will not be until after they are dead that they will get appreciated. The world finds it safer to praise the dead than the living, because the departed, having a heavy pile of marble above them, may not rise to become rivals. But, before the gavels of adjournment drop and the doors of Capitol Hill shut, there are one or two things that ought to be done, and let us pray God that they may be accomplished. More forcibly than ever before, Congress has been implored to acknowledge God in our Constitution. The Methodist Church’97a church that is always doing glorious things’97has in its recent Wilmington conference requested our Congress to amend the immortal document which has been the foundation and wall and dome of our United States government, by inserting the words, ’93Trusting in Almighty God.’94 If that amendment is made, it will not only please all the good people of the country, but will please the heavens. It was only an oversight or a mental accident that the fathers who made the Constitution did not insert a divinely worshipful sentence. They all, so far as they amounted to anything, believed in ’93God, the Father Almighty, the Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son.’94 The Constitution would have been a failure had it not been for the Divine interference. The members of the convention could agree on nothing until, in response to Benjamin Franklin’92s request that the meetings be opened by prayer, the Lord God was called on to interfere and help, and then the way was cleared, and all the States signed the document’97an historical fact that all the rat-terriers of modern infidelity cannot bark out of existence.

I know that there was an exception to the fact that the prominent men of those times were good men. Tom Paine, a libertine and a sot, did not believe in anything good until he was dying, and he shrieked out for God’92s mercy. And Ethan Allen, from one of whose descendants I have received within a few days a confirmation of the incident I mentioned in a recent sermon, as saying to his dying daughter that she had better take her mother’92s Christian religion than his own infidelity. The article sent me says: ’93The story has been denied by some of the Allen family, but the Bronson family, some of whom were with the dying girl, affirm that it is substantially true. In such a matter one confirmation is worth more than many denials.’94 So says the article sent me. But all the decent men of the Revolution believed in God, and our American Congress, now assembled, will only echo the sentiments of the fathers when they enthrone the name of God in the Constitution. We have now more reason for inserting that acknowledgment of Divinity than our fathers had. Since then the continent has been peopled and great cities from the Atlantic to the Pacific built, and all in peace, showing that there must have been supernal supervisal. Since then the War of 1812, and ours the victory! Since then great financial prostrations, out of which we came to greater prosperity than anything that preceded. Since then sanguinary 1861, 1862, 1863, 1864 and 1865, and, notwithstanding the fact that all the foreign despotisms were planning for our demolition, we are a united people, and tomorrow you will find in both houses of Congress the men who fought for the North and the South, now sitting side by side, armed with no weapon except the pen, with which they write home to their constituents who want to be appointed postmasters. The man who cannot see God in our American history is as blind of soul as he would be blind of body if he could not at twelve o’92clock of unclouded noon see the sun in the heavens. As a matter of gratitude to Almighty God, gentlemen of the American Congress, be pleased to insert the four words suggested by the Methodist Conference!

Not only because of the kindness of God to this nation in the past should such a reverential insertion be made, but because of the fact that we are going to want Divine interposition still further in our national history. This gold and silver question will never be settled until God settles it. This question of tariff and free trade will never be settled until God settles it. This question between the East and the West which is getting hotter and hotter, and looks towards a republic of the Pacific will not be settled until God settles it. We needed God in the one hundred and twenty years of our past life, and we will need him still more in the next one hundred and twenty years. Lift up your heads, ye everlasting gates of our glorious Constitution, and let the King of Glory come in! Make one line of that immortal document radiant with Omnipotence! Spell at least one word with Thrones! At the beginning, or at the close, or in the centre, recognize him from whom as a nation we have received all the blessings of the past and upon whom we are dependent for the future. Print that word ’93God,’94 or ’93Lord,’94 or ’93Eternal Father,’94 or ’93Ruler of Nations,’94 somewhere between the first word and the last. The Great Expounder of the Constitution sleeps at Marshfield, Massachusetts, the Atlantic Ocean still humming near his pillow of dust its prolonged lullaby; but is there not some one now living, who, in the white marble palace of the nation on yonder hill, not ten minutes away, will become the Irradiator of the Constitution by causing to be added the most tremendous word of our English vocabulary, the name of that Being before whom all nations must bow or go into defeat and annihilation’97’94God’94?

Again, before the approaching adjournment of our American Congress, it ought to be decidedly and forever settled that no appropriations be made to sectarian schools, and that the courtship between Church and State in this country be forever broken up That question already seems temporarily settled. I wish it might be completely and forever settled. All schools and all institutions, as well as all denominations, should stand on the same level before American law. Emperor Alexander of Russia, at his Peterhof Palace, asked me how many denominations of religion there were in America, and I recited their names as well as I could. Then he asked me the difference between them, and there I broke down. But when I told him that no religious denomination in America had any privileges above the others, he could hardly understand it. The Greek Church first in Russia. The Lutheran Church first in Germany. The Episcopal Church first in England. The Catholic Church first in Rome. Mohammedanism first in Constantinople. The Emperor wondered how it was possible that all the denominations in America could stand on the same platform. But so it is, and so let it ever be. Let there be no preference, no partiality, no attempt to help one sect an inch higher than another. Washington and Jefferson and all the early Presidents, and all the great statesmen of the past, have lifted their voice against any such tendency. If a school or an institution cannot stand without the prop of national appropriation, then let that school or that institution go down. On the other side of the sea the world has had plenty of illustration of Church and State united. Let us have none of the hypocrisy and demoralization born of that relation on this side of the Atlantic. Let that denomination come out ahead which does the most for the cause of God and humanity; men, institutions, and religions getting what they achieve by their own right arm of usefulness, and not by the favoritism of government. As you desire the welfare and perpetuity of our institutions, keep politics out of religion.

But now that I am speaking of national affairs from a religious standpoint, I bethink myself of the fact that two other gavels will soon lift and fall, the one at St. Louis and the other at Chicago, and before those national conventions adjourn, I ask that they acknowledge God in the platforms. The men who construct those platforms are here this morning or will read these words. Let no political party think it can do its duty unless it acknowledges that God, who built this continent, and revealed it at the right time to the discoverer, and who has reared here a prosperity which has been given to no other people. ’93Oh,’94 says some one, ’93there are people in this country who do not believe in a God, and it would be an insult to them.’94 Well, there are people in this country who do not believe in common decency or common honesty or any kind of government, preferring anarchy. Your very platform is an insult to them. You ought not to regard a man who does not believe in God, any more than you should regard a man who refuses to believe in common decency. Your pocketbook is not safe a moment in the presence of an atheist. God is the only source of good government. Why not, then, say so, and let the chairman of the Committee on Resolutions in your national conventions take a pen full of ink and with bold hand head the document with one significant ’93Whereas’94 acknowledging the goodness of God in the past, and invoking his kindness and protection for the future?

This country belongs to God, and we ought in every possible way to acknowledge it. From the moment that, on an October morning in 1492, Columbus looked over the side of the ship and saw the carved staff which made him think he was near an inhabited country, and saw also a thorn and a cluster of berries (type of our history ever since, the piercing sorrows and cluster of national joys), until this hour our country has been bounded on the north, south, east and west by the goodness of God. The Huguenots took possession of the Carolinas, in the name of God. William Penn settled Philadelphia, in the name of God. The Hollanders took possession of New York, in the name of God. The Pilgrim Fathers settled New England, in the name of God. Preceding the first gun of Bunker Hill, at the voice of prayer all heads uncovered. In the War of 1812, an officer came to Gen. Andrew Jackson and said: ’93There is an unusual noise in the camp; it ought to be stopped.’94 General Jackson said, ’93What is the noise?’94 The officer said, ’93It is the voice of prayer and praise.’94 Then the General said, ’93God forbid that prayer and praise should be an unusual noise in the encampment, You had better go and join them.’94 Prayer at Valley Forge. Prayer at Monmouth. Prayer at Atlanta. Prayer at South Mountain. Prayer at Gettysburg. ’93Oh!’94 says some infidel, ’93the Northern people prayed on one side and the Southern people prayed on the other side, and so it did not amount to anything.’94 And I have heard good Christian people confounded with the infidel statement, when it is as plain to me as my right hand. Yes; the Northern people prayed in one way, and the Southern people prayed in another way, and God answered in his own way, giving to the North the re-establishment of the government, and giving to the South larger opportunities, larger than she had ever anticipated, the harnessing of her rivers in great manufacturing interests, until the Mobile and the Tallapoosa and the Chattahoochee are Southern Merrimacs, and the unrolling of great Southern mines of coal and iron, of which the world knew nothing, and opening before her opportunities of wealth which will give ninety-nine per cent. more of affluence than she ever possessed; and instead of the black hands of American slaves, there are the more industrious black hands of the coal and iron mines of the South, which are achieving for her fabulous and unimagined wealth.

And there are domes of white blossoms where spread the white tent, And there are ploughs in the track where the war wagons went, And there are songs where they lifted up Rachel’92s Lament.

Oh, you are a stupid man if you do not understand how God answered Abraham Lincoln’92s prayer in the White House, and Stonewall Jackson’92s prayer in the saddle, and answered all the prayers of all the cathedrals on both sides of Mason and Dixon’92s Line. God’92s country all the way past; God’92s country now. Put his name in your pronunciamentos. Put his name on your ensigns. Put his name on your city and State and national enterprises. Put his name in your hearts. We cannot sleep well the last sleep, until we are assured that the God of our American institutions in the past will be the God of our American institutions in the days that are to come. Oh, when all the rivers that empty into Atlantic and Pacific seas shall pull on factory bands; when all the great mines of gold and silver and iron and coal shall be laid bare for the nation; when the last swamp shall be reclaimed, and the last jungle cleared, and the last American desert Edenized, and from sea to sea the continent shall be occupied by more than twelve hundred million souls, may it be found that moral and religious influences were multiplied in more rapid ratio than the population. And then there shall be four doxologies coming from North and South and East and West, four doxologies rolling toward each other, and meeting mid-continent, with such dash of holy joy that they shall mount to the Throne’97

And Heaven’92s high arch resound again

With peace on earth, good will to men.

I take a step further, and say that before the gavels of our Senate and House of Representatives and our political conventions pound adjournment, there ought to be passed a law or adopted a plank of intelligent helpfulness for the great foreign populations which are coming among us. It is too late now to discuss whether we had better let them come. They are here. They are coming this moment through the Narrows. They are this moment taking the first full inhalation of the free air of America. And they will continue to come as long as this country is the best place to live in. You might as well pass a law prohibiting summer bees from alighting on a field of blossoming buckwheat; you might as well prohibit the stags of the mountain from coming down to the deer-lick, as to prohibit the hunger-bitten nations of Europe from coming to this land of bread’97as to prohibit the people of England, Ireland, Scotland, Italy, Norway, Sweden and Germany, working themselves to death on small wages on the other side the sea, from coming to this land where there are the largest compensations under the sun. Why did God spread out the prairies of the Dakotas and roll the precious ore into Colorado? It was that all the earth might come and plough, and come and dig. Just as long as the centrifugal force of foreign despotisms throw them off, just so long will the centripetal force of American institutions draw them here. And that is what is going to make this the mightiest nation on the earth. Intermarriage of nationalities! Not circle intermarrying circle, and nation intermarrying nation. But it is going to be Italian and Norwegian, Russian and Celt, Scotch and French, English and American. The American of a hundred years from now is to be different from the American of today. German brain, Irish wit, French civility, Scotch firmness, English loyalty, Italian aesthetics packed into one man, and he an American! It is this intermarriage of nationalities that is going to make the American nation the greatest nation of the ages. But what are we doing for the moral and intellectual culture of the five hundred thousand foreigners who came in one year, and the six hundred thousand who came in another year, and the eight hundred thousand who came in another year, and the one million who are coming into our various American ports? What are we doing for them? Many of them have no acquaintance with our laws. Now, I say, let the Government of the United States, so commanded by one political party or both political parties, give to every immigrant who lands here a volume, in good type and well bound for long usage’97a volume containing the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, and a chapter on the spirit of our Government. Let there be such a book on the shelf of every free library in America. While the American Bible Society puts into the right hand of every immigrant a copy of the Holy Scriptures, let the Government of the United States, commanded by some political party, put into the left hand of every immigrant a volume instructing him in the duties of good citizenship. There are thousands of foreigners in this land who need to learn that the ballot-box is not a footstool, but a throne’97not something to put your foot on, but something to bow before.

There are three great reasons why you and I should do our best for this country’97three great reasons: Our fathers’92 graves, our cradle, our children’92s birthright. When I say your father’92s graves, your pulses run quickly. Whether they sleep in city cemetery or country graveyard, their dust is very precious to you. I think they lived well and that they died right. Never submit to have any government over their tombs other than that government under which they lived and died. And then this country is our cradle. It may have rocked us very roughly, but it was a good cradle to be rocked in. Oh, how much we owe to it! Our boyhood and girlhood, it was spent in this blessed country. I never have any patience with a man who talks against this country. Glorious place to be born in, and a glorious place to live in. It has been our cradle. Ay! it is to be our children’92s birthright. You and I will soon be through. We will perhaps see a few more spring blossoms, and we will perhaps see a few more summer harvests, and we will perhaps gather a few more autumnal fruits; but we are to hand this government to our children as it was handed to us’97a free land, a happy land, a Christian land. They are not to be trampled by despotism. They are not to be frightened by anarchies. We must hand this government to them over the ballot-box, over the school-desk, over the church altar, as we have received it, and charge them solemnly to put their life between it and any keen stroke that would destroy it.

And thou, Lord God Almighty! We put, with a thousand-armed prayer, into thy protection this nation. Remember our fathers’92 bleeding feet at Valley Forge. Remember Marion and Kosciusko. Remember the cold, and the hunger, and the long march, and the fever hospital. Remember the fearful charge at Bunker Hill. Remember Lexington, and Yorktown, and King’92s Mountain, and Gettysburg. Remember Perry’92s battle on the lake, and Hampton Roads, where the Cumberland went down. Remember Washington’92s prayer by the camp-fire. Remember Plymouth Rock, and the landing amid the savages. Remember Independence Hall, and how much it cost our fathers to sign their names. Remember all the blood and tears of three wars’971776, 1812, 1862. And more than all, remember the groan that was mightier than all other groans, and the thirst that stung worse than all other thirsts, and the death that was ghastlier than all other deaths, the Mount on which Jesus died to make all men happy and free. For the sake of all this human and divine sacrifice, O God, protect this nation! And whosoever would blot it out, and whosoever would strike it down, and whosoever would turn his back, let him be accursed!

Go home today in high hopes of the future. The Eternal God is on the side of this nation. Our brightest days are yet to come.

He hath sounded forth the trumpet that will never call retreat, He is sifting out the hearts of men before the Judgment-seat.

Be swift my soul to answer him, be jubilant my feet.

Our God is marching on.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage