292. The Bride of Nations

The Bride of Nations

Isa_62:4 : ’93Thy land shall be married.’94

As the greater includes the less, so does the circle of future joy around our entire world include the epicycle of our own republic. Bold, exhilarant, unique, divine imagery of the text. At the close of a week in which for three days our National Capitol was a pageant, and all that grand review, and bannered procession, and National Anthems could do, celebrated peace, it may not be inapt to anticipate the time when the Prince of Peace and the Heir of Universal Dominion shall take possession of this nation, and ’93thy land shall be married.’94

In discussing the final destiny of this nation, it makes all the difference in the world whether we are on the way to a funeral or a wedding. The Bible leaves no doubt on this subject. In pulpits, and on platforms, and in places of public concourse, I hear so many of the muffled drums of evil prophecy sounded, as though we were on the way to national interment, and beside Thebes and Babylon and Tyre in the cemetery of dead nations our republic was to be entombed, that I wish you to understand it is not to be obsequies, but nuptials; not mausoleum, but carpeted altar; not cypress, but orange-blossoms; not requiem, but wedding march; for ’93thy land shall be married.’94 I propose to name some of the suitors who are claiming the hand of this republic. This land is so fair, so beautiful, so affluent, that it has many suitors, and it will depend much upon your advice whether this or that shall be accepted or rejected. Even if your advice in regard to national betrothal is not regarded, you will have discharged your responsibility.

In the first place, I remark: there is a greedy, all-grasping monster who comes in as suitor seeking the hand of this republic, and that monster is known by the name of Monopoly. His sceptre is made out of the iron of the rail track and the wire of telegraphy. He does everything for his own advantage and for the robbery of the people. Things went on from bad to worse until in the three legislatures of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, for a long time Monopoly decided everything. If Monopoly favor a law, it passes; if Monopoly oppose a law, it is rejected. Monopoly stands in the railroad depot, putting into his pockets in one year two hundred million of dollars in excess of all reasonable charges for services; Monopoly holds in his one hand the steam power of locomotion, and in the other the electricity of swift communication; Monopoly has the Republican party in one pocket and the Democratic party in the other pocket; Monopoly decides nominations and elections’97city elections, State elections, national elections. With bribes he secures the votes of legislators, giving them free passes, giving appointments to needy relatives to lucrative positions, employing them as attorneys if they are lawyers, carrying their goods fifteen per cent. less if they are merchants; and if he find a case very stubborn, as well as very important, puts down before him the hard cash of bribery.

But Monopoly is not so easily caught now as when, during the term of Mr. Buchanan, the legislative committee in one of our States explored and exposed the manner in which a certain railway company had obtained a donation of public land. It was found out that thirteen of the senators of that State received one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars among them, sixty members of the lower house of that State received between five thousand dollars and ten thousand dollars each, the Governor of that State received fifty thousand dollars, his clerk received five thousand dollars, the Lieutenant-Governor received ten thousand dollars, all the clerks of the Legislature received five thousand dollars each, while fifty thousand dollars were divided among the lobby agents. That thing on a larger or smaller scale is all the time going on in some of the States of the Union; but it is not so blundering as it used to be, and therefore not so easily exposed or arrested. I tell you that the overshadowing curse of the United States today is Monopoly. He puts his hand upon every bushel of wheat, upon every sack of salt, upon every ton of coal, and every man, woman and child in the United States feels the touch of that moneyed despotism. I rejoice that in twenty-four States of the Union already anti-monopoly leagues have been established. God speed them in the work of liberation.

I have nothing to say against capitalists; a man has a right to all the money he can make honestly; I have nothing to say against corporations as such; without them no great enterprise would be possible; but what I do say is that the same principles are to be applied to capitalists and to corporations that are applied to the poorest man and the plainest laborer. What is wrong for me is wrong for great corporations. If I take from you your property without any adequate compensation, I am a thief; and if a railway damages the property of the people without making any adequate compensation, that is a gigantic theft. What is wrong on a small scale is wrong on a large scale. Monopoly in England has ground hundreds of thousands of her best people into semi-starvation, and in Ireland has driven multitudinous tenants almost to madness, and in the United States proposes to take the wealth of sixty or seventy millions of people and put it in a few silken wallets.

Monopoly, brazen-faced, iron-fingered, vulture-hearted Monopoly, offers his hand to this republic. He stretches it out over the lakes, and up the great railroads, and over the telegraph poles of the continent, and says: ’93Here is my heart and hand; be mine forever.’94 Let the millions of the people North, South, East and West forbid the banns of that marriage, forbid them at the ballot-box, forbid them on the platform, forbid them by great organizations, forbid them by the overwhelming sentiment of an outraged nation, forbid them by the protest of the Church of God, forbid them by prayer to high heaven. That Herod shall not have this Abigail. It shall not be to all-devouring Monopoly that this land is to be married.

Another suitor claiming the hand of this republic is Nihilism.

He owns nothing but a knife for universal cut-throatery, and a nitroglycerine bomb for universal explosion. He believes in no God, no government, no heaven, and no hell, except what he can make on earth! He slew the Czar of Russia, keeps many a king practically imprisoned, killed Abraham Lincoln, would put to death every king and president on earth; and if he had the power, would climb up until he could drive the God of heaven from his throne and take it himself, the universal butcher. In France it is called Communism; in the United States it is called Anarchism; in Russia it is called Nihilism, but that last is the most graphic and descriptive term. It means complete and eternal smash-up. It would make the holding of property a crime, and it would drive a dagger through your heart, and put a torch to your dwelling and turn over this whole land into the possession of theft, and lust, and rapine, and murder.

Where does this monster live? In all the towns and cities of this land. It offers its hand to this fair republic; it proposes to tear to pieces the ballot-box, the legislative hall, the Congressional assembly; it would take this land and divide it up, or, rather, divide it down; it would give as much to the idler as to the worker, to the bad as to the good. Nihilism! This panther having prowled across other lands, has set its paw on our soil, and it is only waiting for the time in which to spring upon its prey. It was Nihilism that burned the railroad property at Pittsburg during the great riots; it was Nihilism that slew black people in our Northern cities during the war; it was Nihilism that mauled to death the Chinese immigrants years ago; it is Nihilism that glares out of the windows of the drunkeries upon sober people as they go by. Ah! its power has never yet been tested. I pray God its power may never be fully tested. It would, if it had the power, leave every church, chapel, cathedral, schoolhouse and college in ashes.

Let me say it is the worse enemy of the laboring classes in any country. The honest cry for reform lifted by oppressed laboring men is drowned out by the vociferation for anarchy. The criminals and vagabonds who range though our cities talking about their rights, when their first right is the penitentiary; if they could be hushed up, and the downtrodden laboring men of this country could be heard, there would be more bread for hungry children. In this land, riot and bloodshed never gained any wages for the people or gathered up any prosperity. In this land the best weapon is not the club, not the shillalah, not firearms, but the ballot. Let not our oppressed laboring men be beguiled to coming under the bloody banner of Nihilism. It will make your taxes heavier, your wages smaller, your table scantier, your children hungrier, your suffering greater. Yet this Nihilism, with feet red of slaughter, comes forth and offers its hand for this republic. Shall the banns be proclaimed? If so, where shall the marriage altar be? and who will be the officiating priest? and what will be the music? That altar will have to be white with bleached skulls, the officiating priest must be a dripping assassin, the music must be the smothered groan of multitudinous victims, the garlands must be twisted of nightshade, the fruits must be apples of Sodom, the wine must be the blood of St. Bartholomew’92s massacre. No! It is not to Nihilism, the sanguinary monster, that this land is to be married.

Another suitor for the hand of this nation is Infidelity. When the midnight ruffians despoiled the grave of A. T. Stewart in St. Mark’92s churchyard, everybody was shocked; but Infidelity proposes something worse than that, the robbing of all the graves of Christendom of the hope of a resurrection. It proposes to chisel out from the tombstones of your Christian dead the words, ’93Asleep in Jesus,’94 and substitute the words, ’93Obliteration’97annihilation.’94 Infidelity proposes to take the letter from the world’92s Father, inviting the nations to virtue and happiness, and tear it up into fragments so small that you cannot read a word of it. It proposes to take the consolation from the broken-hearted, and the soothing pillow from the dying. Infidelity proposes to swear in the President of the United States, and the Supreme Court, and the Governors of States, and the witnesses in the court room with their right hand on Paine’92s ’93Age of Reason,’94 or Voltaire’92s ’93Philosophy of History.’94 It proposes to take away from this country the Book that makes the difference between the United States and the Kingdom of Dahomey, between American civilization and Bornesian cannibalism. If infidelity could destroy the Scriptures, it would in two hundred years turn the civilized nations back to semi-barbarism, and then from semi-barbarism into midnight savagery, until the morals of a menagerie of tigers, rattlesnakes and chimpanzees would be better than the morals of the shipwrecked human race.

The only impulse in the right direction that this world has ever had has come from the Bible. It was the mother of Roman law and of healthful jurisprudence. That book has been the mother of all reforms and all charities’97mother of English Magna Charta and American Declaration of Independence. Benjamin Franklin, holding that holy Book in his hand, stood before an infidel club in Paris and read to them out of the prophecies of Habakkuk, and the infidels, not knowing what book it was, declared it was the best poetry they had ever heard. That book brought George Washington down on his knees in the snow at Valley Forge, and led the dying Prince Albert to ask some one to sing ’93Rock of Ages.’94

I tell you that the worst attempted crime of the century is the attempt to destroy this book; yet Infidelity, loathsome, stenchful, leprous, pestiferous, rotten monster, stretches out its hand, ichorous with the second death, to take the hand of this republic. It stretches it out through seductive magazines, and through lyceum lectures, and through caricatures of religion. It asks for all that part of the continent already fully settled, and the two-thirds not yet occupied. It says: ’93Give me all east of the Mississippi, with the keys of the church and with the Christian printing presses; then give me Wyoming, give me Alaska, give me Montana, give me Colorado, give me all the States west of the Mississippi, and I will take those places and keep them by right of possession long before the Gospel can be fully entrenched.

And this suitor presses his case persistently. Shall the banns of that marriage be proclaimed? ’93No!’94 say the home missionaries of the West, a martyr band of whom the world is not worthy, toiling amid fatigues and malaria and starvation. ’93No! not if we can help it. By what we and our children have suffered, we forbid the banns of that marriage!’94 ’93No!’94 say all patriotic voices, ’93our institutions were bought at too dear a price and were defended at too great a sacrifice to be so cheaply surrendered.’94 ’93No!’94 says the God of Bunker Hill and Independence Hall and Gettysburg, ’93I did not start this nation for such a farce.’94 ’93No!’94 cry ten thousand voices, ’93to Infidelity this land shall not be married.’94

But there is another suitor that presents his claim for the hand of this republic. He is mentioned in the verse following my text where it says: ’93As the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee.’94 It is not my figure; it is the figure of the Bible. Christ is so desirous to have this world love him that he stops at no humiliation of simile. He compares his grace to spittle on the eyes of the blind man. He compares himself to a hen gathering the chickens, and in my text he compares himself to a suitor begging a hand in marriage. Does this Christ, the King, deserve this land? Behold Pilate’92s hall and the insulting expectoration on the face of Christ. Behold the Calvarean massacre and the awful hemorrhage of five wounds. Jacob served fourteen years for Rachel, but Christ, my Lord, the King, suffered in torture thirty-three years to win the love of this world. As often princesses at their very birth are pledged in treaty of marriage to princes of kings of earth, so this nation at its birth was pledged to Christ for divine marriage.

Before Columbus and his one hundred and twenty men embarked on the Santa Maria, the Pinta, and the Nina, for their wonderful voyage, what was the last thing they did? They sat down and took the holy sacrament of the Lord Jesus Christ. After they caught the first glimpse of this country and the gun of one ship had announced it to the other vessels that land had been discovered, what was the song that went up from all the three decks? Gloria in excelsis. After Columbus and his one hundred and twenty men had stepped from the ship’92s deck to the solid ground, what did they do? They all knelt and consecrated the new world to God. What did the Huguenots do after they landed in the Carolinas? What did the Holland refugees do after they had landed in New York? What did the Pilgrim fathers do after they landed in New England? With bended knee, and uplifted face, and heaven besieging prayer, they took possession of this continent for God. How was the first American Congress opened? By prayer, in the name of Jesus Christ. From its birth this nation was pledged for holy marriage with Christ.

And then see how good God has been to us! Just open the map of the continent, and see how it is shaped for immeasurable prosperities. Navigable rivers, more in number and greater than of any other land, rolling down on all sides into the sea, prophesying large manufactures and easy commerce. Look at the great ranges of mountains timbered with wealth on the top and sides, metaled with wealth underneath. One hundred and eighty thousand square miles of coal; one hundred and eighty thousand square miles of iron. The land so contoured that extreme weather hardly ever lasts more than three days’97extreme heat or extreme cold. Climate for the most part bracing and favorable for brawn and brain. All fruits, all minerals, all harvests. Scenery displaying an autumnal pageantry that no land on earth pretends to rival. No South American earthquakes; no Scotch mists; no London fogs; no Egyptian plagues; no Germanic divisions. The people of the United States are happier than any people on earth. It is the testimony of every man that has traveled abroad. For the poor, more sympathy; for the industrious, more opportunity. Oh, how good God was to our fathers, and how good he has been to us and our children. To him! Blessed be his mighty name! To him of Cross and triumph, to him who still remembers the prayers of the Huguenots, and Holland refugees, and the Pilgrim Fathers’97to him shall this land be married. Oh! you Christian patriots, by your contributions and your prayers, hasten on the fulfilment of the text.

We have been turning an important leaf in the mighty tome of our national history. One year at the gates of this continent over five hundred thousand immigrants arrived; I was told by the Commissioner of Immigration that the probability was that in that one year six hundred thousand immigrants would arrive at the different gates of commerce. Who were they, the paupers of Europe? No. At Kansas City I was told by a gentleman, who had opportunity for large investigation, that a great multitude had gone through there, averaging in worldly estate eight hundred dollars. I was told by an officer of the Government, who had opportunity for authentic investigation, that thousands and thousands had gone, averaging one thousand dollars in possession each. I was told by the Commissioner of Immigration that twenty families that had recently arrived brought eighty-five thousand dollars with them. Mark you, families, not tramps. Additions to the national wealth, not subtractions therefrom. I saw some of them reading their Bibles and their hymn books, thanking God for his kindness in helping them cross the sea. Some of them had Christ in the steerage all across the waves, and they will have Christ in the rail trains which at five o’92clock every afternoon start for the great West. They are being taken by the Commissioner of Immigration in New York, taken from the vessels, protected from the Shylocks and the sharpers, and in the name of God and humanity passed on to their destination; and there they will turn your wildernesses into gardens, if you will build for them churches and establish for them schools, and send to them Christian missionaries.

Are you afraid this continent is going to be overcrowded with this population? Ah, that shows you have not been to California; that shows you have not been to Oregon; that shows you have not been to Texas. A fishing smack today on Lake Ontario might as well be afraid of being crowded by other shipping before night as for any one of the next ten generations of Americans to be afraid of being overcrowded by foreign populations in this country. The one State of Texas is far larger than all the Austrian Empire, yet the Austrian Empire supports thirty-five million people. The one State of Texas is larger than all France, and France supports thirty-six million people. The one State of Texas far surpasses in size the Germanic Empire, yet the Germanic Empire supports forty-one million people. I tell you the great want of the Western States is more population.

While some people may stand at the gates of the city saying, ’93Stay back!’94 to foreign populations, I press out as far beyond those gates as I can press out beyond them and beckon to foreign nations, saying: ’93Come, come! all ye people who are honest and industrious and God-loving!’94 But say you: ’93I am so afraid that they will bring their prejudices for foreign governments and plant them here.’94 Absurd. They are sick of the governments that have oppressed them, and they want free America! Give them the great gospel of welcome. Throw around them all Christian hospitalities. They will add their industry and hard-earned wages to this country, and then we will dedicate all to Christ, and ’93thy land shall be married.’94 But where shall the marriage altar be? Let it be the Rocky Mountains, when, through artificial and mighty irrigation, all their tops shall be covered, as they will be, with vineyards, and orchards, and grain fields. Then let the Bostons, and the New Yorks, and the Charlestons of the Pacific coast come to the marriage altar on the one side, and then let the Bostons and the New Yorks and the Charlestons of the Atlantic coast come to the marriage altar on the other side, and there between them let this bride of nations kneel; and then if the organ of the loudest thunders that ever shook the Sierra Nevadas on the one side, or moved the foundations of the Alleghanies on the other side, should open full diapason march, that organ of thunders could not drown the voice of him who would take the hand of this bride of nations, saying, ’93as a bridegroom rejoiceth over a bride, so thy God rejoiceth over thee.’94 At that marriage banquet the platters shall be of Nevada silver, and the chalices of California gold, and the fruits of Northern orchards, and the spices of Southern groves, and the tapestry of American manufacture, and the congratulations from all the free nations of earth and from all the triumphant armies of heaven. ’93And so thy land shall be married.’94

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage