WARREN The Ideas and Feelings Necessary to National Greatness, THE IDEAS AND FEELINGS NECESSARY TO NATIONAL GREATNESS, DEL1VEKKD BEFORE THK <$*ttutttoe inttr epartments GOVERNMENT OF MASSACHUSETTS, ANNUAL ELECTION, WEDNESDAY, JAN. 2, 1867. BY HENRY WHITE WARREN, 1'A.STOR OF THK HARVARD STRRRT METHODIST BPISCOPAL CHURCH, CAMBRIDGE. BOSTON: WRIGHT & PO.TTER, STATE PRINTERS, No. 4 SPRING LANE. 1867. THE IDEAS AND FEELINGS NECESSARY TO NATIONAL GREATNESS, SERMON DELIVERED BEFORE THE (feotiifxe anb GOVERNMENT OF MASSACHUSETTS, AT THE ANNUAL ELECTION, Wednesday, January 2d, 1867. BY HENRY WHITE WARREN, *v PASTOR OF THE HARVARD STREET METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHUBCH. CAMBRIDGE. BOSTON: WRIGHT & POTTER, STATE PRINTERS, No. 4 SPRING LANE. 1867. of iiitssadntsctts. SENATE CHAMBER, BOSTON, January 8, 1867. Rev. HENRY W. WARREN: DEAR SIR, Agreeably to an Order unanimously adopted, the undersigned were appointed a Committee to present you the thanks of the Senate for the very able Discourse delivered before the Executive and Legislative branches of the Government of the Commonwealth, on the 2d inst, and to request a copy of the same for the press. Hoping you will be pleased to comply with the above request at an early day, We remain, Very respectfully yours, LUCIUS W. POND, GEORGE S. BALL, MOSES A. DOW, Committee. 71 PROSPECT ST., CAMBRIDGEPOET, January 10, 18.67. GENTLEMEN: Your note of the 8th inst., informing me of the action of the Senate in regard to the Election Sermon,, is received. I am glad that the principles enunciated in the Discourse meet the approval of so high and important a branch of the Government of Massachusetts. I inclose a copy as requested. With sentiments of sincere respect for the body you represent, and for yourselves personally, I am, yours truly, HENRY W. WARREN. Lucius W. POND, GEORGE S. BALL, MOSES A. Dow, Committee of the Senate. IN SENATE, January 11, 1867. ORDERED, That four thousand copies of the Election Sermon, preached before the Executive and Legislative branches of the Government of the Commonwealth on the 2d instant, be printed for the use of the Legislature. S. $. GIFFORD, Clerk. SERMON EXODUS iii. 14. I AM HATH SENT ME UNTO YOU. You have been elected executive and legislative officers, gentlemen, for the purpose of preserving and advancing the interests of the. State. Massa- chusetts brings forward all the interests of her one million two hundred thousand people, and says, JC Take care that for a whole year, over all my territory, from the capes to the western hills, these interests receive no detriment." One billion of dollars ask of you conditions of safety and channels for development. An army of two hun- dred and fifty thousand children look to you for systems of education that shall fit them for advancement, and save from the poor-house or prison. Helpless paupers stretch their empty hands for aid, and those bereft of reason plead with wild or vacant eyes for Christian charity. More than this. A nation of thirty millions is in 8 REQUISITES TO NATIONAL GREATNESS. confusion. Anarchy reigns over an area large enough for an empire. Civilization and barba- rism are at war. Our troubled ocean, swept by blasts of passion and hate, casts up mire and dirt. There is need that some omnipotent voice should cry, w Peace be still." But if this is top much to expect, we insist that Massachusetts speak amid these elements of discord, with a voice so loud as to be heard, so clear as to be unmistakable,, on a key-note so high and sweet that all brayings of dissonance shall be hushed, and all voices drawn to join in an anthem of peace and love. These, gentlemen, are your responsibilities. They are neither few nor small. They pertain to interests most numerous and momentous; and by reason of their diversity and importance are most difficult to meet. The greatest men of all ages, gifted with genius, taught by experience, and inspired by revelation, have brought all their pow- ers to bear upon the question of human . govern- ment. What is the result? The earth shows bar- ren deserts, miasmatic marshes, and putrid seas as memorials of their lamentable failures. They have uniformly raised a few to a pernicious and calamitous elevation; they have crushed the hap- piness of the many, and so failed in both direc- REQUISITES TO NATIONAL GREATNESS. 9 tions. The past is the blackness of darkness, relieved but not illumined by rising and falling stars, but no steady sun of national prosperity anywhere shines. The government under which we have lived, seemed to be a more successful effort. But, even here, the wily and power-debauched few were able to peril and well nigh ruin the interests and hopes of the many. And when those interests and hopes seemed secured at inconceivable cost, a single trusted traitor was able to turn back the tide of national prosperity for years, give the truest patriots over to the tender mercies of the wicked, pour upon the conquerers the woe that belongs to the conquered, and well nigh cause that thousands of martyrs had died in vain. The problem of government is not clearly solved as yet, even here. Honest men fall into perplexities, and blunderers and knaves find ways of wicked- ness into which they either fall or leap. To assist in solving this problem of government, you are called. It is for you to look over the work of your predecessors, to discover what principles are true and elevating, what are false and destructive; to see where mistakes have ruined and where wis- dom blessed ; to embody your wisdom into legisla- 2 10 REQUISITES TO NATIONAL GREATNESS. tive enactment, and cause our revered Common- wealth to pass a year of prosperous growth, set- ting herself yet stronger on right principles, and rising yet higher in the sight of less prosperous States, their light and guide for coming time. You will agree with me that the causes of national permanence and growth are not native or imported wealth. For Africa has had golden sands; India, pebbles worth a kingdom; galleon loads of wealth were poured into Spain; Rome was never more gaudily decked nor sumptuously fed than when dying; yet national greatness came not to all, nor permanence to any. Indeed, no material advantage within the scope of human con- ception can make a nation permanently great; for every material advantage conceivable by man or conferable by God, has blessed and cursed the nations whose blackened wrecks strew the past. "We must turn to something higher, even to ideas and feelings, for the cause of greatness. In these a people live and die. Are these exalted, the starry heavens are not high enough or wide enough for that nation's rise and growth. Do these become grovelling, a whole wide empire can only afford room for a grave. REQUISITES TO NATIONAL GREATNESS. 11 But what ideas and feelings are necessary to permanence and growth? Not merely that public opinion have force, for DeTocqueville declares it was omnipotent in France for fifty years before the Revolution. Tot merely that public schools exist, for China and India have had them for fifteen hundred years without adding one cubit to their stature. -Not merely that representative govern- ments exist, for the republics of Italy perished under those systems of government. Indeed, not any of these minor outcroppings of great underlying ideas alone can permanently bless a people. Every good thing in the range of thought has at some time been operative. Success suffi- cient to intoxicate men has followed, and the paeans of perfected government have been shouted just as that government was tumbling into ruin. It is not by setting up any single pillar, however splendid, nor springing any arch, however" grand, that a building is complete and beautiful. It is by laying the foundation strong and wide, and then devel- oping every part aright. So is a nation to be perfected by first accepting the fundamental ideas and feelings necessary to a State, and then devel- oping every phase and relation of them to a perfect whole. 12 REQUISITES TO NATIONAL GREATNESS. What are those ideas and feelings? Our text brings before us a rude mass of ignorant slaves, being developed into a nation under divine teaching. "What are the ideas and feelings God attempts to engraft? I. Simply the idea and conscious feeling of a Divine Being. I AM sends the prophet, over- whelms every Egyptian divinity, storms in their cloudless sky, overturns mightiest armies, opens the sea, shakes the mountains, feeds the people, makes one chase a thousand and two put ten thou- sand to flight, just to imprint indelibly upon their minds that there is a divine power. And that single truth is worth forty years' teaching in dreary deserts, and the death of a whole generation. Many nations will not learn. that truth with ten times the teaching. Just in proportion as men truly apprehend and conform to this idea, is their national life and growth. Just hi proportion as they have encumbered the idea with misconcep- tions of their own, have they halted in their progress or been blasted with decay and death. In regard to this matter men have erred in two directions. They have changed this Divine Being, seen by the Jews to be as flexible as man's circum- stances and tender as infinite love, into an omnipo- REQUISITES TO NATIONAL GREATNESS. 13 tent Fate, rigid as law and pitiless as death. The effect has been to degrade men into helpless atoms, to be driven by the resistless whirlwinds of infinite power, or builded into decreed conditions by an irreversible fiat. Thus man reaches the highest greatness possible to a creature of circumstances, but cannot make circumstances the steps by which he rises above them. He may be part of a noble building, but not a builder a stone in the great cathedral, but not a creative soul that regards that cathedral as one of the works of its opening stage of being. This was the mistake of Egypt. Her soil was rich, her people numerous, her wisdom famous, and her works, builded through centuries, still stand after three thousand years' decay, to taunt and humble the boasted art and civilization of to-day. But the Egyptians came to believe that over them stood a fate as unmoved as the pyramids, resistless as the Nile, and they, like grains of sand, must do its will. As soon as that belief settled in the national mind, the nation could but die. For, to be irresistibly moved by a power from without, is to be so far a slave. To be in any degree a slave, is to be so far dead; and to be moved by the absolute decrees of an uncompromis- ing fate, is to be wholly dead. It was the fatal 14 REQUISITES TO NATIONAL GREATNESS. mistake of Mohammedanism. It was the cause of sublime effort while fate decreed success, of stupid acquiescence when fate decreed disaster. Into this deadly error some philosophers would lead the world to-day. Generalization is the mania of thinkers. To leap from falling apples to sublim- est laws is the ambition of every would-be Newton. Two observations may determine every element of a planet's orbit, but not the future vagaries of the mind of man. And when these philosophers rise from an investigation of material nature, "fast bound in fate," and 'attempt to apply their iron formulae to the working of free intelligences, they make the greatest mistake. They attempt to weigh light with hay-scales, or carry it on its way with an ox-team. And so far as their teachings are believed, they reduce those free intelligences to inert atoms. They may give a sublime signifi- cance to law, but they annihilate the Author of law. They reduce creation to a mechanical system, driven by an infinite Necessity, like an engine per- petually fired and fed, with no mind to control its movements. They reduce history to one of the exact sciences, so that you can take a single bony fact, carpal, dorsal, or caudal, from human history, and reconstruct the whole great mastodon of REQUISITES TO NATIONAL GREATNESS. 15 human life. But they can do this only when they have reduced man to a helpless puppet of irresisti- ble forces, and his every act to a necessary sequence of uncontrollable exterior circumstances. The doctrine of volitional necessity has been routed out of the department of metaphysics till most men are ashamed- to own that they ever held it. But men now seek to intrench it, under the euphemistic appellation of " invariable succession," in the department of social science and history. Just as surely as such exponents of philosophy as Comte, Buckle, Mill, Lewes, Herbert. Spencer, of Europe, and Draper in America, succeed in doing this, they destroy the conditions of progress, quench the light of inspiration, and bind man to the chariot of inexorable fate. Pygmalion, having wrought dead marble into a statue of exquisite beauty, loved it with such quenchless ardor, that it changed into a living woman, crowned with every grace of soul. These men take the sublimest manifestations of life, and mould them into rigid systems without soul, inspiring every observer with chilly horror instead of love. Necessity is a Gorgon thought that changes souls to stone. Is Fatalism the idea of a Divine Being that shall make men great and nations permanent ? 16 REQUISITES TO NATIONAL GREATNESS. No ! Possibilities must be offered to men. Ne- cessity is death. Freedom is a quickening spirit. That word was spoken in the forest wild by our Pilgrim Fathers. It made them twice the men they were before. It traversed the world like the quick- ening word that created light. Its meaning pene- trated every part of the civilized world. It spoke to souls deadened by the exactions of law. That word had- a resurrection power. The mightiest armies of time sprang to their feet. The greatest crusade of history was inaugurated. Their holy land was the. Free Jerusalem of the "West. Their watchword, Freedom for themselves and their chil- dren. They saw a guiding pillar of light come down from a God who opened boundless possibili- ties before men willing to strive. They crossed the waters, arid under the stimulus of free institu- tions, the wilderness and desert blossomed like the rose; wild wastes changed to Eden beauty; schools sprang up; taste was refined; generosity expanded; devotion took wings; and the whole compass of human powers rose from ignorance and death, as a continent is heaved from ocean depths and darkness to the beautiful sunlight of the upper air. Here, of all places on earth, let men believe in a God that leaves them free. REQUISITES TO NATIONAL GREATNESS. 17 The highest result of our national existence will not be material development, the establishment of right principles of government, the utilization of science, the development of mind, the demolition of caste, not any of these grand results which mostly benefit those dwelling here, but the grandest effect may be to emancipate the entire race from the crushing burden that a belief in Fate lays on men. This it will do by bursting the narrow bounds of assumed laws, by getting out of the grooves of ages, by casting off the shackles of traditional con- straint, and at every turning of national affairs dic- tating destiny by the spontaneous action of the nation's will. This it has done already, and will do again. Our fathers had received every civil, mili- tary, and religious training calculated to lead them to obey the legal sovereign. w Invariable succes- sionism " declared them a most subservient people. But Free "Will tore down the emblems of kingly authority, and hurled their defenders from the con- tinent. The North had been taught subserviency to the South, by the supposed interests of trade, and by armies of time-serving politicians. Occasional obsequiousness became habitual sycophancy, until men had conquered their prejudices, and "invari- able successionism " declared that the South would 18 REQUISITES TO NATIONAL GREATNESS. always have unresisted sway. But Free "Will rebelled. The power of politicians was broken. Interests of trade were disregarded. The might of habit proved but flax to flame. Property gained for personal ends was dedicated to public uses. The nation's heart beat high, put three hundred thousand men into the field at every throb, and dictated destiny in defiance of Fate. The vagaries of Ptolemy availed nothing to dwarf the majestic movements of the heavens into the puny epicycles of his imagining. And in the presence of such demonstrations the fine spun theories of necessity shall eflect no more. The other mistake has been to frame the concep- tion of the Divine Being after human models; to bring God down to men, instead of lifting men toward God; to attach human attributes, per- fected according to our conception, to the Infinite God. It has been the mistake and ruin of the whole heathen world. The early Greeks held this doctrine in its least objectionable form, but it was their ruin. They committed the error of worship- ping gods they understood, which are no gods at all; the blasphemy of thinking God is what we think him to be. Their highest idea of God was the perfect strength of man and beauty of woman. REQUISITES TO NATIONAL GREATNESS. 19 The inspiration of that idea raised them up, till they conquered peoples, and filled the rocky cliffs and shores of Greece with forms of rarest beauty. They went up the height of culture and power as far as that idea could carry them. But when it had developed in them power to appreciate and * produce the greatest human strength and greatest beauty of form, when they could give the most delicate shade of thought in breathing marbles, their idea of God could do no more for them. They had reached its - height. They stood on the mountain tops of earth indeed, but lacked power to rise into the boundless heaven. They were jubilant .over their success. But their limited breath of inspiration failed to fill their enlarged natures, and the swelling anthem died into the awful silence of death. That finite idea could not carry them through the ever-rising cycles of national progress. Their Iliad of others' woes* became their own history. Had they not mocked, j but reverently listened to one declaring to them the unknown God unknown forever, though we rise in knowledge of him day by day they might have brought to themselves a higher power, set up a new ideal, filled their temples with spiritual life, 20 REQUISITES TO NATIONAL GREATNESS. and lifted every grovelling son of Hellas into a son of the Lord God Almighty. Thus we see that neither the worship of the Infinite where the finite has no will, nor the worship of the perfected finite where the Infinite is forgotten, can ever lead to the highest or most enduring individual or national life. The one makes man a slave with no will, a Jielpless atom driven by the tornadoes of Almighty fate; the other makes him an embryo God, with no means of attaining a perfected Godhood. "We now come to discuss the effect of a true idea of the Divine Being in developing human nature, and in nerving that developed nature to the highest achievements. A proper idea of the Divine Being represents him as able to give his own mental, moral and spiritual characteristics to men made in the like- ness and image of himself. "What will be the effect of such a bestowal upon man? Capabilities for development depend largely on capacity for being inspired by a higher nature. Lampblack is inspirable by electricity, and becomes a diamond. Iron ore, loose, friable, useless, is inspirable by heat, and becomes firm iron, that you may wrap around you, and sit secure, while the heaviest bolts REQUISITES TO NATIONAL GREATNESS. . 21 of modern artillery are thundered at your head. It is ins^irable by magnetism, and rises to the power of bearing human love uncooled across a continent, or a spark of genius unquenched through depths of ocean. Once it was the judgment of philos- ophers, that mankind in general could not be suffi- ciently developed in mind to understand the simpler demonstrations of geometry. But we now see the mass of mind around us, able, with very little culture, to measure the thousandth part of an inch or second; to understand how worlds are weighed millions of miles away, and get a clear conception of the laws of the material universe, whose flaming wheels roll through thirteen million of years to accomplish a single circuit. What has occasioned this development? Mostly the material universe inciting men to higher thoughts. One of the highest purposes subserved by the myriad. insects, flowers, trees, animals, and worlds, is the develop- ment of mind. For this purpose the highest laws work in our frames, parade before the mental vision, display themselves on fields wide as earth and heaven, asking to be seen> beckoning to be followed, striving to evoke a thought. During the last century man has heeded these incentives, and 22 REQUISITES TO NATIONAL GREATNESS. behold what marvellous development of mind has resulted. % / But there is a higher inspiration for man than that flowing from these embodiments of God's thought, even God himself. " If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth liberally to all men, and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him." He offers to give himself directly to him that asks, and lift his soul into the range of God's motives, feelings, and thoughts. Here is the highest conception of man's ability for develop- ment. This is the influence that makes a people great. The rough rock, touched by the power of man, changes into forms of beauty. And man, barbarous and beastly, still has a spirit within that may be touched to finest issues. t? There is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding." It is impossible to see how human nature could have higher opportunities. Indeed no nature could be created with higher appliances for development. Here culminates our highest conception of the possible development of man by assummg in his growing measure the wisdom of God. A proper idea of the Divine Being as infinite represents him as able, willing, and pledged to REQUISITES TO NATIONAL GREATNESS. 23 care for any single being with the same minute- ness and care as if there were no other being in existence. Hence this developed nature is con- stantly nerved to the highest achievements by its faith in the constant and kindly providence of the Divine Being. Any faith is potent. Mohammed found the Arabs without an element of national 'greatness feeble, roving, hostile tribes, with no more coherence than the drifting sands of their deserts. He succeeded in infusing into them a common faith in Allah and his prophet, that cemented them together like rock, and hurled them over three continents, crushing out all oppo- sition. Within the memory of some of you, a man arose in Europe, who put faith in his destiny, and gathered a sheaf of sceptres in his hand. 'But no false faith can permanently inspirit. There are obstacles it cannot surmount, or it goes down before a faith more true and mighty. Hence the crescent wanes before it is full," and the star of destiny darkens in mid heaven. But a living faith in the providence of God makes man superior to any possible circumstance. " He laughs at impossibilities," banishes all fear of capricious chance or doubtful help. Homer's gods divided and fought in fields of air, while men 24 REQUISITES TO NATIONAL GREATNESS. contended below. But God is wholly and omnipo- tently on the side of right. And one man joined with God against the world, is in a majority. This faith has been the inspiration of every great act in our history. Filled with this idea our fathers plunged into the sea to find a place where the benefit of that faith could be enjoyed. Appeal- ing to the God of battles, they asserted their deter- mination to become a nation. Washington was inspired by it, as he daily kneeled before the Lord Almighty. Defeated for years, driven into the interior, cut off from every military supply and resource at Valley For-ge, surrounded by every incentive to despair, he ever walked sublime, his head among the stars. In the darkest hour of our civil war, faith in God sustained us more than prophecies of men. Faith in God made Lincoln vow emancipation as a pledge for victory. And having faith that God would sanction the deed, and save the nation in consideration of its justice, he poured the light of freedom on those Memno- nian figures of Egyptian mould, and their lips burst into song. That very song of praise showed what faith in God had done for them. Born of a barbarous race, chattelized for two centuries, crushed by every legal or illegal wile that human REQUISITES TO NATIONAL GREATNESS. 25 greed or lust could invent, could they still be men? Those who had used these dread appliances of degradation said " no." ' But the uplifting power of that single saving faith in God so wrought hi them, that when the test of real manhood came, there appeared such forgiveness of injuries, such patience under distrust, such loyalty to country and to truth, and such heroic bravery in the deadly field, that the black man stood transfigured between the earth and heaven. Here is transcen- dent power to make a people great. "We have thus far considered what might possi- bly follow from a mental conception of the exist- ence of a Divine Being, and his pledged fidelity to men in' given relations. But while the actions cited above were greatly influenced by feeling, as well as mental conviction, it is due to the subject, and necessary to a full understanding of the laws of national stability and growth, to consider at greater length this conscious feeling of the Divine Being in the heart of man. We here rise into man's highest department. States of the mind are potent for influencing action; those of the heart more so. A developed intellect controls neither passions nor will, but a perfectly developed love to God easily takes kingly authority over 26 REQUISITES TO NATIONAL GREATNESS. every passion and power of body and soul. The purest mental truth as found in mathematics finds no martyrs. We smile at the idea of a man's dying for the truth of the proposition that the interior angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles. Even the grandest fact in the material world, and the greatest discovery of the human mind could not strengthen Galileo to die. But the discoveries and conclusions of the heart find mar- tyrs in every age. The conscious love of God, worth more than life, can nerve any timid mortal to die with shouts of joy amid the rising flames. Under the inspiration of our emotions we do our greatest deeds. "We regard the greatest feat of engineering less highly than the deeds wrought by the inspiration of love. Roman arches crumble, and pyramids lose the names they were built to perpetuate. But the sacrifices made by Howard's loving heart, go down the ages with increasing admiration. We do not reconstruct' rod by rod the miles of intrenchments around Boston in com- memoration of its evacuation. Those were works of our mental and physical natures. But we seize on the height where love of liberty made a sacrifice of the physical nature, and there set up our imperishable memorial of the superiority of the REQUISITES TO NATIONAL GREATNESS. 27 works of the affections. We build no monument to the highest triumph of ttie mind by Leverrier, but all around us rise enduring monuments of immortal deeds that love of country wrought. And in that greatest deed of earth and time, the wonder of angels and salvation of men, there appeared no wonderful physical or mental displays, but pitying love for men and tender sorrow for their sins. Yes, it was love that wrought earth's greatest work. Courses of action and modes of life adopted under the proper influence of feeling, are more stable and fruitful than those resulting from the conclusions of mere reason. Reason contemplates policy; must change with every change' of circum- stance, must veer to every point of the compass as expediency demands. Policy men stagger from side to side, or swing in circles. Arnold took a reasonable course in going over to the British. Had he been capable of one feeling of sacred duty, one inspiration that God would prosper the right, or one consuming sense of. the ignominy of betrayal, he had stood firm. In accordance with these positions, that man's affectional nature is the highest department, leads to the greatest deeds and utmost inflexibly of 28 REQUISITES TO NATIONAL GREATNESS. purpose, we find God's manner of manifestation. Once in a millennium or so he comes to a man's physical nature and makes a Samson. Once in a century or two he comes to a man's mental nature and makes a Solomon. But every day and hour he comes to spiritual natures, that will receive him, causing thousands of hearts to leap for joy, thrill with love, and throb with conscious life eternal. They " swell unutterably full of glory and of God." This being of exhaustless love pours it out like a river of life. It strikes every world, surges into every open heart, and crowns man with perfection in the kingliest part of his being. Such inflexi- bility of purpose is born, that man exclaims, " Neither life, nor death, nor angels, nor principali- ties, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God hi Christ Jesus our Lord." The power of this -conscious feeling of God in the soul for elevating and sustaining a nation is beyond estimate. " Mightier far Than strength of nerve or sinew, or the sway Of magic potent over sun or star, Is love a feeling from the Godhead caught, REQUISITES TO NATIONAL GREATNESS. 29 A power to lift from sordid thought, A ray from Him who formed the whole, A glory circling round the soul." Philosophers tell us that three dark desponden- cies have come over the race.* Foiled in their attempts to realize the greatness they desired, or to maintain what they had achieved, the whole race settled down into blank stupor, and canopied itself with black despair. They should also tell us that those clouds have been pierced, that stupor quick- ened, and hope raised from its grave by the bestowed spirit of the Almighty. He breathed on dry bones, and they stood erect. He came into man's affections, and shone there with the light of the divine Shekinah, inspiring the desponding nations to struggle up the greatest hejghts of power. The idea of God we have been unfolding involves man in responsibiltity. Without this, no progress can be made or maintained. Mr. Web- ster was once asked, what was the most moving thought that ever crossed his mind? He bowed his head and reviewed the past. There came before him, that first triumph at. the bar; those immortal scenes on Bunker Hill; those battles of the giants, where he stood victor in the Senate; * Lectures on the Study of History, by Goldwin Smith, p. 166. 30 REQUISITES TO NATIONAL GREATNESS. that prophetic vision of States dissevered, discord- ant, belligerent, a land rent with civil feuds and drenched with fraternal blood; that later and better vision of the gorgeous ensign of the republic, with not a single stripe erased or 'single star obscured, bearing for its motto, in characters of living light spread all over its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land and in every wind under the whole heavens, that sentiment dear to every American heart, "Liberty and Union, JS^ow and Forever, one and Inseparable." All this passed before him, but a higher, vaster thought came up and raising his head he declared that the most pro- foundly moving thought that ever crossed his mind, was a sense of his responsibility to God. When men forget that there is a God who holds them individually responsible for acts performed, they go forth from solemn oaths to support the Constitution of their country, to perjure themselves with treason. Then anarchy comes down like night, civil war rocks a continent like an earth- quake, myriads of prisoners are starved, sleeping cities fired, most malignant diseases deliberately spread, and men greedy of the fame of infamy rise to martyr the Mngliest men. Reduce man's idea REQUISITES TO NATIONAL GREATNESS. 31 of responsibility to God, and you decree a nation's death. One of the most vigorous shoots of thought in the last half century has taught the harmlessness of what men once called sin. It is a branch of the destroying doctrine of ^Necessity. Men have sung songs, written novels, and preached sermons on constitutional bias, ante-natal propensities, phreno- logical bumps, influence of circumstances, the good of evil, and every other- conceivable variation of Satan's first utterance to man, "thou shalt not surely die." They died nevertheless. Previous to our late civil war, this current literature had won- derfully weakened the nation's sense of responsi- bility, had rendered peculation respectable, fraud honorable if sufficiently gigantic, recreancy to prin- ciple allowable to politicians, itching palms as wel- come as those clean of bribes, while stealing, lying, and ah 1 such downright terms were euphemized out of existence. All crimes became the result of uncontrollable circumstances, and on the whole the very best thing for 'the criminal. Repentance was unnecessary, and conversion dwarfed into a voli- tion. It was, w thou shalt not surely die," demon- strated by pretended science, worked into a philo- 32 REQUISITES TO NATIONAL GREATNESS. sophic system, and turned into syren songs. But death came nevertheless. For one national sin the scourge was applied till most of the teachers of this false doctrine were soundly converted, called loudest for vengeance, died in the field to punish wrong, or wrote appeals that achieved and paBans that celebrated victory. The advocates of this doctrine of irresponsibility for crimes cannot be charged with inoculating the South with this idea. They did not need inoculat- ing; they had it in the natural way. But they are greatly responsible for an indifference to right, a loose fidelity to principle in the ^orth, that allowed Northern men to be the willing tools of Southern crimes, and yet exist among us. Instil the idea that God's eye sees through the plausible wiles of men, his hand feels through the intricacies of a plot, that though hand join with hand, by the hundred thousand, the wicked shall not go unpunished, let men know that the world's history is written in two words, w GOD BEIGES," then oaths become sacred, property secure, virtue illus- trious, and every interest of a nation advanced. The idea and feeling of God's existence and providence, then, bring development of mind, the might of true faith, the spur of responsibility REQUISITES TO NATIONAL GREATNESS. 33 and the impartation of infinite love. Foundations broad enough and forces strong enough to raise a nation to the greatest heights. II. A right idea of God as our Father makes us infer the endlessness of man's conscious being. All our civil interests are grounded on the preva- lence of this idea. As Webster declared in one of his most celebrated arguments, "In no case is a man allowed to be a witness, that has no belief in future rewards and punishments for virtues and vices, nor ought he to be. We hold life, liberty and property, in this country, upon a system of oaths, oaths founded upon a religious belief, and that system that would strike away the great sub- stratum," would "destroy the safe possession of life, liberty, and property, destroy all the civil inter- ests of civil society." This sentiment is abso- lutely necessary to national well-being. Dimin- ish in ever so small a degree man's vivid con- sciousness of an eternal future of rewards or pun- ishments, and to that degree you diminish the restraints of virtue and law. The sentiment of the old Epicureans becomes the highest practical phi- losophy, Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. The infamous Catullus could comfort him- self and his profligate mistress because, 5 34 REQUISITES TO NATIONAL GREATNESS. " Nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux Nox una perpetua dormienda est" France, decreeing death an eternal sleep, finds every bond of social order sundered, every tie of domestic fidelity broken, even the appearance of decency cast aside, and more ruin wrought in a month than a century could retrieve. This idea of immortality is not only necessary, to give national stability by rendering oaths sacred, but also to enable men to do deeds most con- ducive to the highest national life. Such a concep- tion of man is necessary to appreciate the value of the inspiration of which we have spoken. Pud- ding-stone has not the capacity to receive and dis- play the genius of Phidias ; Michael Angelo could not reveal his genius in building mud huts. Machinery designed to receive and work by the mighty inspiration of steam is not made of rushes. And when God, inconceivably great, proposes to dwell in man and fill him, beyond what he can ask or even think, with all the fulness of God, it reveals to man such capabilities of his nature, that he is ready to conceive and execute plans of the highest national good. It was just this conscious- ness of the after life, that enabled hundreds of thousands of prisoners to endure their privations, REQUISITES TO NATIONAL GREATNESS. 35 kept them from joining the enemy, helped them to endure every insult and grandly confront death month after month. For thoughts of "Immortality o'erswept All pains, all tears, all scorn, all fears, and pealed, Like the eternal thunders of the deep, Into their ears this truth : ' Thou livest forever, For there is that within thee that shall tire Torture and time, and live when both expire.' " Lines drawn to infinity are all of the same length. It matters not whether the first rod begin here or there, is crooked or straight, high or low, black or white, runs through a gold mine or over a desert, mathematical exactness declares " Ye are equals all." And He whose providence has given us an interminable being, sees the beginning of that being marked by great diversities of tem- porary interests; but, glancing along those lines of infinite existence and seeing future requisitions and adjustments according to talents received and s improved, declares, "Before all the opportunities for development, before all the possibilities, that open to the race, before all the favors of infinite love, Ye are equals all." And dear old Massachusetts God bless her for her noble spirit ! echoes the sentiment, and says to every son of man upon her 86 REQUISITES TO NATIONAL GREATNESS. soil, high or low, rich or poor, learned or ignorant, black or white,