WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY, 1874
A DISCOURSE,
DELIVERED AT THE
CHURCH OF THE HOLY COMMUNION,
BY THE
REV, JAMES W. MILES,
ON SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22d, 1874,
BEFORE THE
WASHINGTON LIGHT INFANTRY
IT BEING THE 67th ANNIVERSARY OF THE CORPS.
[printed by request of the company.]
CHARLESTON, S. C.
WALKER, EVANS & COGSWELL, PRINTERS,
Noa. 3 Broad and 109 East Bay Streets.
1874.
ASPECTS OF THE PRESENT.
Mat. 24, 8 : " And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars ; see that ye
be not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not
yet."
Should it ever occur in History that a people were suddenly
called by Providence to assume a prominent part in the Drama
of Nations, it might be a misfortune that such a people had no
great past to inspire them. JBut still the very birth-throes by
which they would emerge as a great nationality, would bring
them forth animated by a fountain of life-blood that would
throb through and invigorate and inspire their future career.
It was so, perhaps, with Athens. It was not the olden mythi¬
cal or heroic traditions, when they were but one of many small
States, that formed the true spring to their national life ; but
it was the great struggle with Persia, whence they arose as a
mighty power in the world, that gave the inspiration to their
national career. But when a people has possessed a great past,
which they come to neglect, and from the inspiration of which
they degenerate, then their moral decline has been certainly
commenced; and however slowly, yet their eourse to political
dissolution is surely proceeding. Thus, perhaps, it was with
Rome. From these examples analogies might be drawn appli¬
cable to England and to our own country. We may, at least,
safely read this law of History, that whenever England and
America lose the inspiration of those great principles of Consti¬
tutional Liberty, which were involved in their birth-throes as
great Nationalities in the Drama of Nations, they will have en¬
tered upon a perilous course of change, which, without the evo¬
lution of some new providential element, must lead to disaster.
That such providential elements may be evolved by Historical
Laws, cannot be denied. But the object of the remarks which
have been made is, to lead to'the observation that, whether it
be thought that England and America have begun to depart or
not from their vital constitutional principles—a question we are
not called upon to discuss—nevertheless it is true, and it forces
itself upon our notice, that the whole world is going through
one of those great Transition Epochs, when no one can foresee
what is to be the issue, but when every thoughtful man must
perceive that great and solemn are the responsibilities of the
two countries which have been mentioned, as to the fate and
future of Constitutional Liberty in the civilized world. Upon
those two countries above all does that responsibility rest: be-
4
cause to them has been granted the highest conception of, and
advance in, Constitutional Liberty; they are, as it were, ex¬
amples and instructors therein to the world, and their failure
would be a serious blow to the progress of Humanity. Of
course, no temporary failures can affect the ultimate plan of
Providence in working out the destiny of man to the highest
result of which it is capable; but that does not lessen our pre¬
sent responsibility, but rather increases it, because, as free
agents, we may further or retard a gracious plan. All History
has been indicating and pointing to the fact that the attain¬
ment of rational liberty is one of the highest results aimed at in
human development. What has been the course of History?
Savageism disappears, vast Despotisms are broken up, Nation¬
alities spring into self-conscious existence, Civilization grows,
Arts and Science elevate man, Commerce binds nations
together, the influence of the higher civilization brings under
its dominion the ruder races, and in the bosom of the higher,
ever advancing civilization, there has been going on the cease¬
less struggle for the evolution of a higher and nobler idea of
Humanity, which involves a nobler idea of the individual, and
hence of rational civil and religious freedom, in which the full¬
est development of the individual shall be harmonized with the
highest liberty of Law. Such has been the general tendency of
historical evolution, through all struggles and revolutions and
seeming retx*ogressions. And now we are in one of the epochs
of struggle for the evolution of a new phase; and upon England
and America rests the responsibility of furthering or retarding
the progress of Constitutional Liberty. I say nothing with re¬
gard to Keligion, because that is not a national matter—it is
personal, individual, as much so as any system of Philosophy;
and that will be furthered, shaped, and moulded by the
moral and intellectual culture of the age; but Constitutional
Liberty is, necessarily, a matter of national life and responsibil¬
ity, and it is only of national, not individual, aspects of Human¬
ity that we have to speak upon this occasion.
We have, then, national responsibilities; and although we
cannot foretell the future, let us take a cursory glance at " The
Aspects of Humanity in this Present Epoch of Transitional
Struggle," in reference to our duties and position.
These Transition-Epochs appear to be necessarily involved in
the Law of Development. They appear as marked in History
as they do in the growth of individual beings. The one through
which we are now passing is remarkably distinguished from
former ones, by the fact, that every element of Humanity is
simultaneously in the same transitional state. In other analo¬
gous periods there has been, it is true, the seeming chaos or dis¬
integration, which is the common characteristic of all transi¬
tional epochs, when we cannot trace the secret processes by
which new combinations and evolutions are preparing for the
5
emergence of a new phase in the development of Humanity.
But still, there might have been a literary, or religious, or sci¬
entific culture apparently pursuing a regular course, while the
political and social elements were all in change and seeming
confusion. Or the political elements may have seemed compar¬
atively stable, while other phases of change were obviously
taking place; although, in fact, there must be really a change
going on in all—although the confusion seems at the time
more conspicuous in one or more of the elements of society.
But at present it is obvious to every observer that nothing is at
rest;'—that in Religion, in Science, in Sociology, in Politics,
there is an unsettled condition, a strife of opinions, a war of
Ideas, such as no previous period of the world's History has ex¬
hibited. And an equally remarkable and unprecedented feature
of the present epoch is, that this universal disturbance of the
elements is not confined to the higher, the more intellectual, the
more thoughtful, or to the intelligent middle classes; but it has
reached the very lowest strata of society, and they have felt the
reverberation of the storm, and questions of profoundest import
are even dimly discussed or agitated by the wayside, in the ale¬
house, in the workshop, in the mine, by those who have neither
the intelligence nor the education to understand either the
topics of which they have heard, or their own doubts and de-
batings about them.
The times are,
" as when 'neath blasts
From Thrace, that fiercely over Ocean sweep,
A swift wave runs along above the deep
Submarine darkness, till the storm stirr'd sand
It tosses from below, while cliffs and strand
Wave-lashed, make echoing moan,
And with the wild sea-roar reverberating groan."
[Soph. Antig.~\
Let us take, then, as was proposed, a cursory glance at the
various aspects of Humanity in the present period of storm and
struggle.
With regard to Education, there never was more controversy
and unsettledness. In the midst of vague disputes—often with
no conception of the real points at issue—between Classical and
Scientific, Secular and Religious, National and Private Systems
of Education, what Education itself really means is often lost
sight of. Observe, it is not affirmed that there is no good and
real education to be found in the world—far from it; but what
is, nevertheless, seen ? In one place a mechanical system, cal¬
culated only to make machines; in another place a one-sided,
defective system, calculated to mutilate one-half of the moral
and intellectual nature; here, competitive examination systems,
conducted in such an absurd manner as to destroy the chief
value which they ought to possess; there, systems on such false
f)
and hollow principles, as are calculated to deceive and—let the
true word be spoken out—humbug pupil and parent and com¬
munity alike ; and then has come in, too, the complication of
the educational question by the exciting debate respecting the
co-education of the sexes. There are also, of course, collateral
disputes as to Method and Discipline—to say nothing of the
worthless, catch-penny text-books, with which the machinery
at publishers' commands enables them to flood the country.
With regard to Social questions, it is only necessary to allude
to the fact that the most serious and embarrassing problems in
that sphere are agitated as confessedly unsettled and unsolved
as yet, with no prevision as to how some of them are to be
solved at all.
With regard to Science, the storm and warfare rage even more
fiercely, because its questions have become more deeply in¬
volved than ever with Religious issues. The fundamental pro¬
blems of the Universe are implicated in the strife; and it is no
longer a mere question as to whether there is a Revealed Re¬
ligion—whether Christianity cannot be explained upon a myth¬
ical theory—but Atheism, which was once thought to have been
annihilated rears under new aspect its spectral form ; and so
far from its being possible now to say, what once theologians
were fond of affirming, namely, that there never was a rational
creature who did not, whatever might be his language, believe
in a God in some way or other : so far from this being the case,
we find that, not on metaphysical grounds alone, but with the
whole armory of Physical Science, in its present advanced state,
tne battle is waging around the central Citadel, the Holiest Al¬
tar, the very Palladium of our Hopes, of our Reason, of the
Universe itself—the existence of a Personal God. One set of
Scientists put forth some astounding work of imagination and
assumption and hypothesis, and tell us with the most audacious
dogmatism that ".Natural Science" has now settled such and
such facts forever.N When, supposing thereupon that such an
assertion can only mean that those facts are now as universally
accepted by the whole Scientific World, as are the facts of the
Solar System, we are 'overwhelmed with surprise, there comes
another set of Scientists, who show us that it is not "Natural
Science," but only a particular School which makes this claim,
and either that "Natural Science" has not yet furnished the
data for validating those assumptions, or that there are links
wanting to the chain of assumptions which never will or can be
supplied, or that Science, on the contrary, pronounces a totally
different decision. But neither are the Scientists of either of
these two great opposing Classes at one among themselves.
There is, on one hand, a vast difference, with intermediate
shades of opinion, between the negative position which refrains
from asserting the Personality of God, and the gross material¬
ism which affirms nothing but a blind, unconscious Chance.
7
And so, on the other hand, there is a wide space between the
aflirmer of an Intelligent Creator, and the claimant of Science
as covering miracles and all orthodox theology.
With regard to Religion, or rather the Religious World—for
Religion itself is one, like the God who is its being—there has
never been so remarkable a phase as it presents to-clay. In
some quarters is seen a strenuous effort to insist upon old sys¬
tems of dogmas in all their rigidity, arising from an obscure
sense of danger in the atmosphere, and a feeling that the only
safety for Religion is a clinging to the old formulae. In other
quarters there is a partial consciousness of the strife around, and
an effort to ward it off by some kind of compromise. In other
quarters there is a full sense of the issues at stake and of the
swelling storm, and a recognition of the necessity for the lan¬
guage of doctrine and interpretation being flexible, in order to
meet the advance or change in the knowledge and conceptions
of the age. There, are seen efforts to find some common ground
upon which different, and once hostile, sects may unite in mak¬
ing a stand against their common enemies; here, is seen within
even the same bodies a diversity of views, which, perhaps, only
external pressure causes the majority to tolerate. Hot the least
remarkable features of the religious world are the facts, that
(except in some quarters) there is allowed a liberty of opinion,
without being denounced as forfeiting the name of Christian,
upon points which it would once have been held heretical to in¬
terpret except in one way; and, also, the fact, that no theologian
of the age, possessing any degree of enlightenment, or any tinc¬
ture of learning, pretends to hold to the old mechanical notion
of the absolute verbal inspiration of the Scriptures. In Europe,
the existence in Germany, on one hand, of Free Congregations,
permitted by the State, which have virtually abandoned even
the semblance of Christian belief, and, on the other hand, the
struggle between the State and the Church of Rome, the issue
of which may involve the most formidable results;—the widen¬
ing Old Catholic movement;—the apparent growth of Unbelief
in all revealed religion;—the significant reflection or indication
of the conflicting religious opinions and questions, in almost all
the literature of the day;—all such facts further exhibit the
stormy transitional-epoch in the Religious World.
With regard to the Political State of the world, there, too,
issues have changed and other principles have come into play.
In Europe, on the Continent, powerful Ideas, which are Forces,
have been working in the whole life and civilization of the
people, from the time that they were set into action by the old
French Revolution. There is a deeper sense of the worth and
rights of the individual—a larger recognition of the people as
the true body of the State, and not as mere mechanical subjects
of a Dynasty. The idea of Nationalities as involved in Race,
having a right to independent political existence, and, also, ideaa
8
of democratic development, are exercising a powerful influence,
however they may be yet working chiefly beneath the surface,
repressed and distorted by causes which it might not be difficult
to explain. Unripe as the continental nations may be for a
clear conception of true Constitutional Liberty, the power of
the people is steadily growing. A mere dynastic war could
hardly now be possible; but such is the uneasy condition of po¬
litical relations that further collisions at some time are unavoid¬
able. There is besides the question yet problematical, as to the
part which the great Sclavonic Race is yet to play, or, at least,
what claims to be its representative, the Russian Empire. And
there lowers also in the future the inevitable disintegration of
the Turkish Empire, with all its momentous consequences.
If we cast our glance further over Asia, there, too, we find, in
the most civilized parts, as Rirmah, China, and Japan, the influ¬
ence of the ideas of western civilization tending to unrest, and
to the most' extraordinary modifications of long stereotyped
forms of thought and custom; and not the least remarkable
evidences of change or transition, however slowly progressing,
yet unmistakable, are manifested in India—itself a complex,
ethnological world. Among, too, the vast masses of the innu¬
merable barbarous peoples and tribes and families of the races
which swarm throughout Central and Northern Asia, there are
felt vibrations prophetic of the mighty changes which must ul¬
timately result from the contact and pressure of western power
upon those feebler and non-cohesive elements.
If we turn our eyes to England, there we see powerful forces
in operation throughout the whole mass of the nation—forces
which were set into active movement by the Revolution of
1688, which was not a revolution merely in order to get rid
of the oppression of an obnoxious dynasty, but a struggle
for the triumph of fundamental principles, which have ever
since been steadily working on to a wider and stronger devel¬
opment of democratic elements. That Revolution effected a
renovation of the Constitution, and a widening and deepening
of both the conception and foundations of Constitutional Lib¬
erty. Inestimable is the advantage which G-reat Britain pos¬
sesses in having a Constitution, not the formally concocted
document of a body of statesmen, but a Constitution rooted and
consisting in organic Institutions, the outgrowth of national
life and development. It is the very expression of the national
life, and possesses, therefore, an elasticity and capacity of ac¬
commodation to the exigencies of that life in its growth and
modifications which will enable Great Britain to pass safely
through such internal crises as would probably shatter the
Constitution of any other country. But the forces set in action
by the Revolution of 1688 are carrying Great Britain on to the
severest test of the power of Constitutional Liberty to resist the
destructive centrifugal force of radical democracy.
9
In this country we all know what is the state of things, so
that it is only necessary to observe, in passing, that here, too,
inheriting as we did from England the idea of Constitutional
Liberty and the history of its growth in that land, we are going
through a crisis in which the commingling of people from dif¬
ferent nationalities, the effect of new political combinations, the
development of different interests and forms of social life insep¬
arable from the extension of such varied elements of nationality
over an immense area, embracing almost every variety of cli¬
matic and geographical feature—all these, and yet other, causes
are going to subject to the stormiest and intensest strain the
principles of Constitutional Liberty.
It is not for us to prophecy or speculate about the future.
Our object has only been to bring out the fact of the unrest and
tumultuous character of this period, in reference to our political
responsibilities. For as it is the office of the pulpit to touch in
turn upon all of our duties, religious, social, educational, and
others, in proper order and degree, so the calling to mind the
responsibilities alluded to seems to be peculiarly appropriate
upon this occasion. But in order to elucidate those responsibil¬
ities, it was necessary to direct observation particularly to the
fact that the epoch in which we live is one of those seeming
chaotic transitional periods which have always preceded and
ushered in a new phase in the History of the World.
In such periods men sometimes despair, or lose heart and be¬
come confused in their perceptions. Clouds and darkness rest
upon the future—a mist seems to enwrap us in the present and
to obscure the duty of the moment. But all such periods in the
past have been the precursors of advance, and the knowledge of
this itself must make us hopeful of the future.
History shows that to the great families of the Aryan Race,
which have spread furthest westward, has been committed the
mission of developing Civilization to its highest form. But it
cannot be pretended that such a goal has been reached, while
we see that the capacities of those families are both capable of
still higher development, and are also still in most energetic life
and activity. There is no symptom of decay—at least in the
German and English-speaking families ; and, at the same time
it cannot be denied that they have not yet reached the highest
and completest development of Constitutional Liberty which is
conceivable by us and which is possible for man. The complete
development of a great Idea or Principle can only be attained by
man through successive stages of evolution, in which every
phase of the great Principle manifests itself in struggle with
contrary and opposing forces. Thus, through conflicts with
imperial despotism and centralization, on the one hand, and
with democracy and disintegrating radical despotism on the
other, must Real Liberty be attained—that rational liberty of
Law, the very Constitution of whose Being is—the complete,
10
free action and development of every interest, every class,
every individual within their own proper spheres, in the har¬
mony of an organism, every member of which contributes to
the healthy action and welfare of each other, and of the whole.
When we consider that in such a condition of .Rational Liberty
there would be an equitable adjustment of Rights and Duties, of
the Social Relations of all classes of society, and a free, harmo¬
nious development of Arts, Sciences, Learning, reasonable Re¬
ligion, and all of the elements of Civilization, we cannot but
perceive that such a goal is the highest and noblest for Hu¬
manity upon this earth. This idea was floating, with more or
less distinctness, before the minds of Philosophers, of English
Statesmen, of the wisest founders of the old United States.
And as from the analogy of past History we deduce the Law of
Historical Evolution and Progress, namely, that it resembles a
cycloidal curve of successive ascents and descents, forming con¬
tinual parallelisms, but each point of descent and ascent being
in advance of the previous ones, each descending sweep seeming
to portend retrogression and disintegration, but every ascending
sweep rolling on to a point of advance; so we believe that the
present transitional period will emerge in higher and profounder
and more comprehensive views of Education, Science, Religion,
and Politics. We may retard the evolution, and prolong the
confusion and storm of this period of transition ; but if we re¬
alize and fulfil our responsibilities we will further and quicken
the operation of the Law, even though our ephemeral generation
should not live to witness the results.
We see how blindly and ignorantly nations have struggled,
and still are struggling, for freedom, as though they conceived
that freedom consisted in, and could be secured by, certain ex¬
ternal forms and written Constitutions. But if the true concep¬
tion and spirit of rational freedom be not in the mind and heart
of the people, and actuate itself as an organic outgrowth of the
people's life, then the most skilfully devised Constitution is not
worth the paper upon which it is written.
The temporary or seeming retrogressing of England and
America, by succumbing to imperial or to radical and dema¬
gogical despotism, would incalculably retard and injure the
cause of rational Constitutional Liberty throughout the world.
For what would be the natural, nay, inevitable result of the
world beholding a free people, gradually undermining their an¬
cient institutions to plant upou their ruins the indiscriminate
power of uneducated masses, of leveling socialism, and, its nec¬
essary consequence, the tyranny of demagogism ? Or what
must be the effect upon the world, were it to behold a free peo¬
ple periodically agitated by party struggles for the spoils of
power, and that involving such a system of thoroughgoing cor¬
ruption as renders elections a mockery, and taints with venality
and contempt of all principle the voter, the party wire-puller,
11
the legislator, the rulers, yea, even defiles the sacred ermine of
the Bench, which ought to be the bulwark of Justice to Consti¬
tutional Liberty, and not the degraded pander to party unscru-
pulousness? Or what would be the effect upon the world, were
it to see a free people voluntarily enslaving themselves to un¬
scrupulous and corrupt party for the sake of political power, and
enslaving their opponents—not merely to the rule of the domi¬
nant party, but to the rudest, most barbarous tools of that
party—to an inferior race, without education, without political
experience, suddenly elevated by the bayonet above their cul¬
tured former lords ? Has the civilized world ever beheld such
a spectacle ? The Lacedemonians cruelly enslaved a race cog¬
nate with themselves; they imposed their Harmosts upon once
free cities; they ruthlessly butchered the hapless handful of the
heroic Platseans; but they never dreamed of suddenly imposing
as a political power an alien, barbarous race, just from slavery,
upon a civilized race, their own brethren in blood, in history, and
in the political rights and independence which were the common
achievement of their forefathers. Is the spectacle of such things
calculated to conciliate the world to the experiment of Republi¬
canism ? Could the Fathers of the American Union, although
some of the wisest of them regarded their work but as an ex¬
periment, have ever, in most desponding dream, conceived such
issues? But what is the significancy of this Anniversary, if it
be not to remind the Nation of its responsibility for preserving
the work of its Fathers—for saving that work from proving an
abortive experiment—for reviving and protecting and carrying
out in their true spirit those principles of Rational Liberty and
Constitutional Freedom which were committed to us as a sacred
legacy, and the abandonment and betrayal of which is equiva¬
lent to branding our Fathers as short-sighted traitors.
Let us trust that so long as this day is recognized by the Na¬
tion the lessons which it suggests will not be wholly in vain;—
that so long as the memory and principles and counsels of that
Supremest Character in all Political History, whose birthday it
is, hold any reverence and homage in the hearts of the Nation,
there will come a sense of pride and honor in maintaining that
true and rational liberty to the furtherance of which his life
was devoted. And the very recurrence of this Anniversary, in
a period of such unrest and transition, upon a day especially de¬
voted to the offices of Religion, reminds us of that unwavering
trust in Providence which supported Washington in the darkest
hour, and invites us to deepen the sustaining conviction that,
beneath all unrest, and through every complicated evolution of
History, there is a Divine Wisdom and Power working out, by
the steady operation of Supreme Law, a consistent Plan, in
which Right and Truth and Justice will be ultimately vindi¬
cated.
12
Party, in the insolence of power, may become so corrupt that
it alarms even its adherents, and breaks up by the excess of its
own unprincipled folly. Helpless Eight and Justice may be so
ground down that the sense of humanity revolts at and pities
the spectacle. But Providence preserves in Nations, which are
not destined to annihilation, a seed of renovation and reform and
progress. The American People have evidently not yet worked
out their destiny, and citizens who can appreciate and cherish
with affection and reverence the character and principles of
Washington, are a noble leaven—a saving salt—amidst the
restless changes and seeming confusion through which Provi¬
dence is guiding Humanity to larger knowledge, more rational
liberty, more harmonious relations, and purer, and more com¬
prehensive views of Christianity itself.
11701