531. Lawyers

Lawyers

Tit_3:13 : ’93Bring Zenas the lawyer.’94

We all admire the heroic and vigorous side of Paul’92s nature, as when he stands coolly deliberate on the deck of the corn-ship, while the Jacktars of the Mediterranean are cowering in the cyclone; as when he stands undaunted amid the marvels of the palace, before thick-necked Nero, surrounded with his twelve cruel lictors; as when we find him earning his livelihood with his own needle, sewing haircloth, and preaching the Gospel in the interstices; as when we find him able to take the thirty-nine lashes, every stroke of which fetched the blood, yet continuing in his missionary work; as when we find him, regardless of the consequence to himself, delivering a temperance lecture to Felix, the government inebriate. But sometimes we catch a glimpse of the mild and genial side of Paul’92s nature. It seems that he had a friend who was a barrister by profession. His name was Zenas, and he wanted to see him. Perhaps he had formed the acquaintance of his lawyer in the court-room. Perhaps sometimes when he wanted to ask some question in regard to Roman law, he went to this Zenas, the lawyer. At any rate, he had a warm attachment for the man, and he provides for his comfortable escort and entertainment, as he writes to Titus, ’93Bring Zenas, the lawyer.’94

This man of my text belonged to a profession which has often had ardent supporters of Christ and the Gospel. Among them Blackstone, the great commentator on English law; and Wilberforce, the emancipator; and Chancellor Frelinghuysen; and the late Benjamin F. Butler, Attorney-General of New York; and the late Charles Chauncey, the leader of the Philadelphia bar; and Chief Justice Marshall, and Tenterden and Campbell and Sir Thomas More, who died for the truth on the scaffold, saying to his aghast executioner, ’93Pluck up courage man, and do your duty; my neck is very short; be careful, therefore, and do not strike awry.’94

Among the mightiest pleas that ever have been made by tongue of barrister have been pleas in behalf of the Bible and Christianity’97as when Daniel Webster stood in the Supreme Court at Washington, pleading in the famous Girard will case, denouncing any attempt to educate the people without giving them at the same time moral sentiment, as ’93low, ribald, and vulgar deism and infidelity;’94 as when Samuel L. Southard of New Jersey, the leader of the forum in his day, stood on the platform at Princeton College commencement, advocating the literary excellency of the Scriptures; as when Edmund Burke, in the famous trial of Warren Hastings, not only in behalf of the English Government, but in behalf of elevated morals, delivered his immortal speech in the midst of the most august assemblage ever gathered in Westminster Hall.

Yet, notwithstanding all the pleas which that profession has made in behalf of God and the Church and the Gospels, and the rights of man, there has come down through the generations a kind of prejudice against it. So long ago as in the time of Oliver Cromwell it was decided that lawyers might not enter the Parliament House as members, and they were called ’93sons of Zeruiah.’94 The learned Dr. Johnson wrote an epitaph of one of them in these words:

God works wonders now and then:

Here lies a lawyer, an honest man.

Two hundred years ago a treatise was issued with the title, ’93Doomsday Approaching, with Thunder and Lightning for Lawyers.’94 A prominent clergyman of the last century wrote in regard to that profession these words: ’93There is a society of men among us bred up from their youth in the art of proving, according as they are paid, by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black and black is white. For example, if my neighbor has a mind to my cow, he hires a lawyer to prove that he ought to have my cow for me. I must have another lawyer to defend my right, it being against all rules of law that a man should speak for himself. In pleading they do not dwell upon the merits of the cause, but upon circumstances foreign thereto. For instance, they do not take the shortest method to know what title my adversary has to my cow but whether the cow be red or black, or her horns long or short, or the like. After that they adjourn the cause from time to time, and in twenty years they come to an issue. This society, likewise, has a peculiar cant or jargon of their own, in which all their laws are written, and these they take especial care to multiply, whereby they have so confounded truth and falsehood that it will take twelve years to decide whether the field left to me by my ancestors for six generations belongs to me, or to one three hundred miles off.’94

I say that these things show that there has been a prejudice going on down against that profession, from generation to generation. I account for it on the single fact that they compel men to pay debts that they do not want to pay, and that they arraign criminals who want to escape the consequences of their crime; and as long as that is so, and it always will be so, just so long will there be classes of men who will affect, at any rate, to despise the legal profession. I know not how it was in other countries; but I have had long and wide acquaintance with men of that profession. I have found them in all my parishes’97I tarried in one of their offices three years, where there came real estate lawyers, insurance lawyers, criminal lawyers, marine lawyers, and I have yet to find a class of men more genial or more straighforward. There are in that occupation, as in all other occupations, men utterly obnoxious to God and man; but if I were on trial for my integrity or my life, and I wanted even-handed justice administered to me, I would rather have my case submitted to a jury of twelve lawyers than to a jury of twelve clergymen. The legal profession, I believe, has less violence of prejudice than is to be found in the sacred calling.

There is, however, no man who has more temptations, more trials, or graver responsibilities than the barrister; and he who attempts to discharge the duties of his position with only earthly resources is making a very great mistake. Witness the scores of men who have been your contemporaries making eternal shipwreck. Witness the men who, with the law of the land under their arm, have violated every statute of the eternal God. Witness the men who have argued placidly before earthly tribunals, who shall shiver in dismay before the Judge of the quick and the dead. Witness Lord Thurlow announcing his loyalty to earthly government in the sentence ’93If I forget my earthly sovereign, may God forget me,’94 and yet stooping to unaccountable meannesses. Witness Lord Coke, the learned and the reckless. Witness Sir George McKenzie, the execrated of all Scotch Covenanters, so that until this day, in Gray Friars’92 Churchyard, Edinburgh, the children whistle through the bars of the tomb, crying:

Bloody McKenzie, come out if you dare:

Lift the sneck, and draw the bar.

No other profession more needs the grace of God to deliver them in their temptations, to comfort them in their trials, to sustain them in the discharge of their duties. While I would have you bring the merchant to Christ and while I would have you bring the farmer to Christ and while I would have you bring the mechanic to Christ, I address you in the words of Paul to Titus, ’93Bring Zenas, the lawyer.’94 By so much as his duties are delicate and great, by so much does he need Christian stimulus and safeguard.

We all become clients. I do not suppose there is a man fifty years of age, who has been in active life, who has not been afflicted with a lawsuit. Your name is assaulted, and you must have legal protection. Your boundary line is invaded, and the courts must re-establish it. Your patent is infringed upon, and you must make the offending manufacturer pay the penalty. Your treasures are taken, and the thief must be apprehended. You want to make your will, and you do not want to follow the example of those who, for the sake of saving twenty dollars from an attorney, imperil fifty thousand, and keep the generation following for twenty years quarreling about the estate, until it is all exhausted. You are struck by an assassin, and you must invoke for him the penitentiary. All classes of persons in course of time become clients, and, therefore, they are all interested in the morality and Christian integrity of the legal profession. ’93Bring Zenas, the lawyer.’94 But how is an attorney to decide as to what are the principles by which he should conduct himself in regard to his clients? On one extreme Lord Brougham will appear, saying ’93The innocence or guilt of your client is nothing to you. You are to save your clients regardless of the torment, the suffering, the destruction of all others; you are to know but one man in the world’97your client. You are to save him though you should bring your country into confusion. At all hazards you are to save your client.’94 So says Lord Brougham.

But no right-minded lawyer could adopt that sentiment. On the other extreme, Cicero will come to you and say: ’93You must never plead the cause of a bad man.’94 Forgetful of the fact that the greatest villain on earth should have a fair trial, and that an attorney cannot be judge and advocate at the same time. It was grand when Lord Erskine sacrificed his attorney-generalship for the sake of defending Thomas Paine in his publication of his book called The Rights of Man, while, at the same time, he, the advocate, abhored Thomas Paine’92s religious sentiments.

Between these two opposite theories of what is right, what should the attorney do? God alone can direct him. To that chancery he must be appellant, and he will get an answer in an hour. Blessed is that attorney between whose office and the throne of God there is perpetual, reverential, and prayerful communication. That attorney will never make an irreparable mistake. True to the habits of your profession you say: ’93Cite us some authority on the subject.’94 Well, I quote to you the decision of the Supreme Court of Heaven; ’93If any lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him.’94 What a scene is the office of the busy attorney! In addition to the men who come to you from right motives, bad men will come to you. They will offer you a large fee for counsel in the wrong direction. They want to know from you how they can escape from solemn marital obligation. They come to you wanting to know how they can fail in business advantageously for themselves. They come to you wanting to know how they can make the insurance company pay for a destroyed house which they burned down with their own hands. Or they come to you on the simple errand of wanting to escape their honest debts.

Now, it is no easy thing to advise settlement when, by urging litigation, you could strike out a mine of remuneration. It is not a very easy thing to dampen the ardor of an inflamed contestant, when you know, through a prolonged lawsuit, you could get whatever you asked. It is no easy thing to attempt to discourage the suit for the breaking off of a will in the surrogate’92s court, because you know the testator was of sound mind and body when he signed the document. It requires no small heroism to do as I heard an attorney do in an office in a Western city. He said, ’93John, I will see you through as well as I can, but I want to tell you before you start that a lawsuit is equal to a fire.’94

Under the awful temptations that come upon the legal profession scores of men will go down. There are scores of men who have gone down, and some of them, from being the pride of the highest tribunal of the State, have become a disgrace to the Tombs court-room. Every attorney, in addition to the innate sense of right, wants the sustaining power of the old-fashioned religion of Jesus Christ. ’93Bring Zenas, the lawyer.’94

There are two or three forms of temptation to which the legal profession is especially subjected. The first of all is skepticism. Controversy is the lifetime business of that particular profession. Controversy may be incidental or accidental with us; but with men of your profession it is perpetual. You get so used to pushing the sharp question ’93Why?’94 and making unaided reason superior to the emotions, that the religion of Jesus Christ, which is a simple matter of faith, and above human reason, has but little chance with some. A brilliant lawyer wrote a book, on the first page of which he announced this sentiment: ’93An honest god is the noblest work of man!’94

Skepticism is the mightiest temptation of the legal profession, and the man who can stand in that profession, resisting all solicitations to infidelity, and can be as brave as George Briggs, of Massachusetts, who stepped from the gubernatorial chair to the missionary convention, to plead the cause of a dying race; then, on his way home from the convention on a cold day, took off his warm cloak and threw it over the shoulders of a thinly-clad missionary, saying, ’93Take that and wear it, it will do you more good than it will me;’94 or like John McLean, who can step from the Supreme Court-room of the United States to the anniversary platform of the American Sunday-school Union, its most brilliant orator’97deserves congratulation and encomium.

O men of the legal profession, let me beg of you to quit asking questions in regard to religion, and begin believing. The mighty men of your profession, Story and Kent and Mansfield, became Christians not through their heads but through their hearts. ’93Except ye become as a little child, ye shall nowise enter into the kingdom of God.’94 If you do not become a Christian, O man of the legal profession, until you can reason this whole thing out in regard to God and Christ and the immortality of the soul, you will never become a Christian at all. Only believe. ’93Bring Zenas, the lawyer.’94

Another mighty temptation for the legal profession is to Sabbath-breaking. A trial has been going on for ten or fifteen days. The evidence is all in. It is Saturday night. The judge’92s gavel falls on the desk, and he says: ’93Crier, adjourn the court till ten o’92clock Monday morning.’94 On Monday morning the counselor is to sum up the case. Thousands of dollars, yea, the reputation and life of his client, may depend upon the success of his plea. How will he spend the intervening Sunday? There is not one lawyer out of a hundred that can withstand the temptation to break the Lord’92s Day under such circumstances. And yet if he does not withstand he hurts his own soul. What, my brother, you cannot do before twelve o’92clock Saturday night or after twelve o’92clock Sunday night, God does not want you to do at all. Besides that you want the twenty-four hours of Sabbath of rest to give you that electrical and magnetic force which will be worth more to you before the jury than all the elaboration of your case on the sacred day.

Our own Judge Neilson, in his interesting reminiscences of Rufus Choate, says that during the last case that gentlemen tried in New York the court adjourned from Friday until Monday on account of the illness of Mr. Choate; but the chronicler says that on the intervening Sabbath he saw Mr. Choate in the old ’93Brick Church,’94 listening to Rev. Dr. Gardiner Spring. I do not know whether on the following day Rufus Choate won his cause or lost it; but I do know that this Sabbatic rest did not do him any harm. Every lawyer is entitled to one day’92s rest out of the seven. If he surrender that, he robs three’97God, his own soul, and his client. Lord Castlereagh and Sir Thomas Romilly were the leaders of the bar in their day. They both died suicides. Wilberforce accounts for their aberration on the ground that they were never intermittent in their work, and they never rested on Sunday. ’93Poor fellow!’94 said Wilberforce, in regard to Castlereagh. ’93Poor fellow! it was non-observance of the Sabbath. Chief Justice Hale says, ’93When I do not properly keep the Lord’92s Day all the rest of the week is unhappy and unsuccessful in my worldly employment.’94 I quote from the highest statute book in the universe: ’93Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy.’94 The legal gentleman who breaks that statute may seem for a while to be advantaged; but, in the long run, the man who observes this law of God will have larger retainers, vaster influence, greater professional success than those men who break that statute. Observance of the law of God pays not only spiritually and eternally, but it pays in hard dollars.

Another powerful temptation of the legal profession is to artificial stimulus. No one except those who have addressed audiences know about the nervous exhaustion that comes afterward. The temptation to strong drink approaches the legal profession at that very point. When a trial is coming on. Through the ill-ventilated court-room the barrister’92s health has been depressed for days and weeks. He wants to rally his energy. He is tempted to resort to artificial stimulus. It is either to get himself up or let himself down that this temptation comes upon him. The flower of the American bar, ruined in reputation and ruined in estate, said in his last moments: ’93This is the end. I am dying on a borrowed bed, covered with a borrowed sheet, in a house built by public charity. Bury me under that tree in the middle of the field, that I may not be crowded. I always have been crowded.’94

Another powerful temptation of the legal profession is to allow the absorbing duties of the profession to shut out thoughts of a great future. You know very well that you who have so often tried others will after a while be put on trial yourself. Death will serve on you a writ of ejectment, and you will be put off these earthly premises. On that day all the affairs of your life will be presented in a ’93bill of particulars.’94 No certiorari from a higher court, for this is the highest court. The day when Lord Exeter was tried for high treason; the day when the House of Commons moved for the impeachment of Lord Lovatt; the day when Charles I and Queen Catharine were put on trial; the day when Robert Emmet was arraigned as an insurgent; the day when Blennerhasset was brought into the court-room because he had tried to overthrow the United States Government, and all the other great trials of the world are nothing compared with the great trial in which you and I shall appear, summoned by the Judge of the quick and dead.

There will be no pleading there the ’93statute of limitations,’94 no ’93turning State’92s evidence,’94 trying to get off ourselves while others suffer; no ’93moving for a nonsuit.’94 The case will come on inexorably, and we shall be tried. You, my brother, who have so often been advocate for others, will then need an advocate for yourself. Have you selected him? The Lord Chancellor of the Universe. If any man sin, we have an advocate’97Jesus Christ, the righteous. It is uncertain when your case will be called. ’93Be ye also ready.’94

Lord Ashburton and Mr. Wallace were leading barristers in their day. They died about the same time. A few months before their decease they happened to be at the same hotel in a village, the one counsel going to Devonshire, the other to London. They had both been seized upon by a disease which they knew would be fatal, and they requested to be carried into the same room and laid down on sofas, side by side, that they might talk over old times and talk over the future. So they were carried in, and, lying there on opposite sofas, they talked over their old contests at the bar, and then they talked over the future world upon which they must soon enter. It was said to be a very affecting and solemn interview between Mr. Wallace and Lord Ashburton.

My subject puts you side by side with those men in your profession who have departed this life, some of them skeptical and rebellious, some of them penitent, childlike, and Christian. These were wandering stars, for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever; while the others went up from the court-room of earth to the throne of eternal dominion. Through Christ, the advocate, these got glorious acquittal. In the other case it was a hopeless lawsuit. An unpardoned sinner versus the Lord God Almighty. Oh! what a disastrous litigation. Behold he comes! The judge! the judge! The clouds of heaven, the judicial ermine. The great white throne, the judicial bench. The archangel’92s voice that shall wake the dead, the crier. The pound of the last thunderbolt, the falling gavel. ’93Come, ye blessed’97depart ye cursed,’94 the acquittal or the condemnation. ’93And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God, and the books were opened.’94

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage