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 ING THE TOMBS OF THE PROPHETS. 
 
 DISCOURSE 
 
 PREACHED IN THE 
 
 BOWDOIN-SQUARE CHURCH, 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 SABBATH EVENING, JULY 4. 1858. 
 
 BY JOHN N. MURDOCH, D.I). 
 
 BOSTON: 
 JOHN r . J E W E T T AND COMPANY, 
 
 CLEVELAND, OHIO : 
 
 HENRY p. B. .TEWKTT. 
 18 5 8. 
 
4- 
 
 BUILDING THE TOMBS OF THE PROPHETS. 
 
 A FOURTH OF JULY DISCOURSE. 
 
 BY JOHN N. MURDOCK, D.D. 
 
 This day commemorates the epoch of our 
 National History. It is the political birth-day of a 
 great people. If we keep days for kings, heroes, 
 v^ sages and statesmen, it is proper that we should 
 s^ observe, in some becoming way, the anniversary of 
 ^ a Nation's Exodus from vassalage and dependence. 
 \ Let this day be honored, by due observance, in all 
 ^ time to come. I have invited you to this place 
 •t to-night, in deference to its claims. It is not my 
 ^"^ purpose, however, to rehearse the history of which 
 it is the luminous centre : I propose rather to deal 
 with the truths which it signalizes, viewing them 
 somewhat from their point of contrast with those 
 errors and perversions of the time, which threaten 
 to rob the day of its only true significance. I have 
 selected, as serving my present occasion, by afford- 
 ing a proper starting point for the remarks I wish 
 to make, those words of our Lord found in Luke 
 xi. 47, 48. 
 
 " Woe unto you : for ye build the sepulchres of the Prophets, and 
 your fathers killed them. Truly ye bear witness that ye allow the 
 deeds of your fathers, for they indeed killed them and ye build 
 their sepulchres." 
 
 "Was it wrong, then, for the Jews of Christ's 
 day to show their reverence for the prophets whom 
 their fathers had unjustly killed? Did they not, 
 in the act which our Lord attributes to them, vin- 
 dicate the slain prophets, and condemn the men 
 who murdered them ? Was it not praiseworthy in 
 1 (1) 
 
2 BUILDING THE TOMBS OF THE PROPHETS. 
 
 that generation to erect the martyr's memorial to 
 those servants of God whom former generations 
 had wickedly slain ? Was it not like going back- 
 ward to cover the shame of the fathers wdth the 
 mantle of atonement? Was it not a just and 
 honorable sentiment which prom'pted them to 
 say — " If we had been in the days of om* fathers 
 we would not have been partakers with them in the 
 blood of the prophets ? " * How then could it be 
 unworthy for them to build the sepulchres of the 
 martyrs whom their fathers slew, and what is the 
 reason of the woe denounced against them by the 
 Son of Man? 
 
 The crime of the Jews did not consist in sym- 
 pathy and veneration for the dead, but rather in 
 hatred to the living prophets. They saw how 
 wrong it was in their fathers to persecute and slay 
 the prophets of old, yet they were ready to copy 
 the very crime v/hich they were so prompt to con- 
 demn. At that very moment they were thirsting 
 for the blood of a greater than the greatest of the 
 ancient prophets, and plotting to compass his 
 death. Such is the fatal aptitude of those who are 
 quick to detect the sin of others, in blinding them- 
 selves to their own. These men were, in reality, 
 only perfecting their fathers' crime, and fihing up 
 the measure of that national guilt which the former 
 but commenced. The fathers slew the servants of 
 God, and the children perpetuated their spirit, 
 though assuming to repudiate and condemn their 
 deeds. This was the crime of the Jews of our 
 Lord's time ; a crime amplified and refined by the 
 hypocrisy which informed it. 
 
 The text and the history to which it refers afford 
 a lesson for us as a people. We condemn the 
 Jews whom our Lord rebuked, as they condemned 
 their fathers. We wonder at their blindness, and 
 
 * Matt. 23 : 30 
 
BUILDING THE TOMBS OF THE PROPHETS. 3 
 
 execrate their insane malice towards the Son of 
 Man. We marvel that men who lavished such 
 costly mourning on the slain prophets of a former 
 day, should be found cementing the monuments of 
 the dead, with the innocent blood of the living. 
 Yet if I do not misread the spirit of our time, and 
 misinterpret the course of events in our country, 
 we are not unlike them, in that we imitate what 
 we condemn, doing the very things which we are 
 so prompt and earnest to denounce in others. We 
 censure the men who denied freedom of conscience 
 to our Puritan fathers ; yet all over the land we 
 make organized attempts to punish a particular 
 ecclesiastical connection with civil disabilities ; 
 thus restricting portions of our people in the free 
 enjoyment of a great and indefeasible right; as if 
 the rights of conscience were not as broad and 
 sacred in the Catholic as in the Protestant. Thus 
 while we glorify the Puritan's resistance of wrong, 
 we range ourselves on the side of the Puritan's 
 oppressor. Moreover, we execrate the acts of those 
 rulers who goaded our revolutionary fathers to 
 resistance ; yet, either as principals or accessories, 
 we are inflicting greater injustice on a province of 
 our own country, seeking by the bands of power to 
 fasten an oppressive yoke on the necks of thous- 
 ands of our own brethren. We venerate the men 
 who, in the day that tried men's souls, dared to do 
 or die, but we denounce their living representa- 
 tives. We build monuments to the dead prophets 
 of freedom, while, by our injustice or indifference, 
 we are adding to the immortal roll of our country's 
 martyrs. It becomes us then, on this occasion, to 
 inquire in what respects the text suggests parallels 
 in the history and spirit of our country, and to find 
 how we are to apply the lessons of warning which 
 it presents with such solemn emphasis. 
 
 I. Consider, in the first place, how much it is 
 
4 BUILDING THE TOMBS OF THE PROPHETS. 
 
 the habit of our people to condemn and malign 
 the living, for what they admire and commend in 
 the dead. We honor the dead prophet, while the 
 living, who walks in the same path, and speaks 
 from the same inspiration, is stoned. We sing 
 the praises of the ascended Elijahs, and hoot the 
 lingering Elishas on whose shoulders the mantles 
 of the former have fallen. The noble men of old, 
 who rebuked the wrong, and resisted the injustice 
 of their time, are canonized ; while those who de- 
 nounce the wrong and trample on the injustice of 
 to-day, are pelted with abuse, and smeared with 
 obloquy. Let a man stand up in these times for 
 those human rights which our fathers proclaimed 
 as imprescriptible and universal, only reechoing 
 the words in which they asserted, and duplicating 
 the' deeds by which they vindicated them, and the 
 magnates who wield the reins of power, and the 
 rabble whom they hold in their leash, will cry out, 
 with one voice, " Away with him I " He who 
 dares, in this degenerate age, to earn the honor 
 accorded to the patriotism of Franklin, will be 
 very likely to be rewarded with the anathemas 
 which have been vented against the treachery of 
 Arnold. We embellish our public squares and 
 monumental grounds, with statuary in honor of 
 the sages and heroes of our earlier and better his- 
 tory, without any just appreciation of the spirit 
 which animated them, or the great ends for which 
 they struggled and bled ; though, in sober sooth, 
 the truth of nature is sometimes vindicated in 
 spite of ourselves, in those pitiful travesties of art 
 which fitly symbolize, not the glory of a former 
 age, but the simulated and maudlin patriotism of 
 the present. We rear an imperial monument in 
 the national capital to the memory of the purest 
 and best among the dead prophets of freedom; 
 yet, beneath its very shadow, his living representa- 
 tives may be stigmatized as incendiaries, or beaten 
 
BUILDING THE TOMBS OF THE PROPHETS. 5 
 
 to the earth with ruffian rage and murderous blud- 
 geon. If that incongruous pile should ever be 
 com])leted, there would be a measure of poetic 
 justice in the consummation ; for it would signal- 
 ize, not the glorious name it bears, but the distort- 
 ing prejudices and belittling animosities of the 
 age in which it was reared, and the degenerate 
 souls of the men who conceived and executed it. 
 It is fit that a generation w^hich represents the 
 principles of Washington by such deeds, should 
 be doomed to commemorate his fame by such a 
 monum.ent! 
 
 For what, let me ask, do we honor the early 
 fathers of our Republic ? Is it merely for the per- 
 gonal qualities which they displayed ; for physical 
 endurance, or mental fortitude ; for personal cour- 
 age, or political sagacity? Is it not rather for 
 those great principles of justice, equality, and free- 
 dom which they asserted with such emphasis, and 
 vindicated with such devotedness of purpose and 
 life ? They proclaimed the natural and inalienable 
 right of every man to life, liberty, and the pursuit 
 of happiness. They set up the privileges of the 
 people, as above and before the prerogatives of 
 government; declaring that the only authority of 
 the latter, is derived from the consent of the former. 
 When Power ignored these principles, and in- 
 fringed on these rights, they resisted its aggres- 
 sions. They refused to bear the burdens of a 
 government whose policy they were denied a voice 
 in shaping, asserting the right of immediate repre- 
 sentation in the National Legislature. They vin- 
 dicated the privileges of their citizenship, and the 
 claims of their manhood. They submitted to 
 obloquy and reproach, they incurred danger and 
 braved death, to secure these rights and privileges 
 for themselves and their posterity. These are the 
 things which entitle them to be remembered by 
 succeeding generations, insuring them an enduring 
 1^ 
 
6 BUILDING THE TOMBS OF THE PROPHETS. 
 
 fame. These are the principles and deeds which 
 our orators embalm in eloquence, and our poets 
 commemorate in song. But how do we regard 
 those who follow in the footsteps of these glorious 
 men of old ? There are still men in our national 
 councils, who have not forgotten the lessons of the 
 Fathers, who are not afraid to imitate their noble 
 example, and who, in season, and out of season, 
 maintain the principles which they proclaimed, 
 and sealed with their blood. What do we say of 
 these, our living prophets ? Do we not stigmatize 
 them as " fanatics," or brand them as " rebels ? " 
 Do we not cover them with foul epithets ? Have 
 we not attempted to awe them with menaces, or 
 to silence them with blows ? Have we not done 
 all that supreme power, unscrupulously exercised, 
 could effect, to stifle the voice of a part of our 
 people, or crush them out ? Have we not mnzzled 
 their presses by mob violence ? Have we not bat- 
 tered their houses with cannon, and burned them 
 with fire? Have v/e not allowed them to be 
 hunted, as if they were wolves or beasts of prey ? 
 Have we not denied them the blessings of peace, 
 and the fruits of industry ? Have we not insisted 
 that they shall renounce their rights as citizens, or 
 become martyrs to them ? Have we not allowed 
 them to be arrested without accusation, dragged 
 from their homes, and shot down in cold blood ? 
 Thus even wdiile we magnify the merits of our 
 dead patriots, we persecute and slay those of our 
 own time. Thus we perpetuate and repeat the 
 crime of the old oppressors, condemning acts in 
 them, which we allow in ourselves, and praising 
 those acts in the dead, for which we are willing to 
 see the living impaled. For we must not forget 
 that what has been done by our government, has 
 been done by us ; that we are responsible for the 
 evil which we knew, and did not our utmost to 
 avert. If these things have been, and our devotion 
 
BUILDING THE TOMBS OF THE PROPHETS. 7 
 
 to party has blinded us as to their reality, or made 
 us insensible of their enormity ; if such crimes 
 against freedom, and the rights of man, have been 
 suffered to pass without rebuke, through our tim- 
 idity or indifference, the stain of innocent blood is 
 upon us, and we are covered with the stigma of 
 an indelible disgrace. We have built the tombs 
 of the prophets, as the continuators of the injus- 
 tice which consigned them to death ; not in vindi- 
 cation of their memories, nor out of fealty to the 
 principles in which they lived, and for which they 
 died. 
 
 11. I ask you to consider, in the second place, 
 that, in spite of the avowed reverence which is so 
 generally professed for the patriots and heroes of 
 our earlier history, there is a very marked and 
 wide, if not general, repudiation of the principles 
 which they maintained, both by pen and sword, 
 and embodied in the institutions which they have 
 transmitted to us. Quite too many among us, 
 separate the men from their principles, pretending 
 to venerate the one, while they scout and discard 
 the other. There are thousands who are loud in 
 their eulogium of Washington, who yet ridicule 
 those religious convictions, and look with scorn on 
 that love of impartial freedom, and that regard for 
 human rights, which led him to make provision for 
 the manumission of his slaves. There are thou- 
 sands who acknowledge Jefferson as the apostle of 
 the political theories in which they have been 
 reared, who yet scout his immortal axiom, which 
 constitutes the only rational ground of those theo- 
 ries; namely, that " all men are created equal, and 
 are endowed by their creator with certain inalien- 
 able rights, among which are life, liberty, and the 
 pursuit of happiness." There are too many, alas I 
 who, while they exult in the great truth of the 
 Fatherhood of God, forget, or practically deny, 
 
8 BUILDING THE TOMBS OF THE PROPHETS. 
 
 that He hath " made of one blood all nations of 
 men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth." 
 Our people generally profess to glory in the doc- 
 trines, the spirit, and the deeds, of the Revolutionary 
 Fathers ; yet our government, in this very year of 
 grace, denies the great theory, which they so broadly 
 asserted, that it is the right of the people to elect 
 their own representatives, set up their own consti- 
 tutions, and enact their own laws. We have seen 
 the whole patronage of our national administration, 
 and all the appliances of a gigantic political power, 
 exerted, both in the way of corruption and of 
 terror, to defeat or to force the will of a free peo- 
 ple, in respect to the fundamental law under which 
 they are to live. The names of Washington and 
 Jefferson are invoked to sanctify a course, and to 
 justify a measure, from which their great souls 
 would have shrunk with loathing and ineffable 
 scorn. The fathers believed that human bondage 
 was a wrong and a curse, both to the master and 
 the slave, and they labored earnestly, and prayed 
 fervently, for its eradication from our soil. But, 
 while those who are more immediately involved in 
 this terrible evil, assume to honor their memories, 
 they do, in this most vital respect, repudiate their 
 faith. Instead of curtailing slavery, they seek to 
 give it wider scope. Instead of laboring for its 
 extinction, they aim to make it perpetual. They 
 have renounced the humane and just ideas of the 
 men whose names and deeds they make their 
 boast, giving themselves up to the claims of inter- 
 est, or suffering themselves to be swayed by the 
 impulse of a blind prejudice. They assume to rever- 
 ence the memory of the brave men of old, who 
 asserted the great rights of humanity, making them 
 good against all comers ; but they discard those 
 principles of universal and impartial freedom, 
 which those men maintained in spite of the parch- 
 ments of parliaments, and the bayonets of kings. 
 
BUILDING THE TOMBS OF THE PROPHETS. 9 
 
 It is a truth to which the history of this coun- 
 try bears abundant and mournful testimony, that 
 our political institutions are well nigh emptied of 
 the spirit which the fathers breathed into them ; 
 that the broad foundation of popular rights on 
 which they reared the superstructure of our gov- 
 ernment, is well nigh destroyed; and we have 
 stood by, tacitly consenting to the foul desecration 
 of what was meant to be forever sacred to free- 
 dom, if, indeed, we have not held the stained 
 garments of those who have been active in the 
 WTong. Human liberty was the object of the 
 fathers' devotion, but we have tamely seen her 
 degraded and her rights repudiated. They set her 
 in the highest niche of the temple of our republi- 
 can state, but we have seen her first bound, and 
 then cast forth into the streets. We have despised 
 freedom, which is the chief jewel in the crown of 
 our glory. We have discarded the seminal princi- 
 ple of our political and social state. We have 
 rejected the great life elements of our democratic 
 polity ; the perfect equality of all men before the 
 law, and the right of all men to the free use of 
 their proper faculties, in any sphere which Provi- 
 dence may open to them, until they forfeit that 
 right by crime. These doctrines of our fathers we 
 have already repudiated in practice, and we are 
 beginning to question them as theories. But a few 
 months since I heard a gentleman of most amiable 
 character, and of highly respectable attainments, 
 then and now holding a responsible office under 
 (he national government, deprecating the humane 
 impulses by which Mr. Jefferson's theories of gov- 
 ernment were colored, and by which his political 
 course was so strongly influenced, though he 
 allowed the wisdom of the great statesman in all 
 other respects. This man does not stand alone. 
 A greater and more eloquent man, also a native of 
 New England, whose name has become a house- 
 
10 BUILDING THE TOMBS OF THE PROPHETS. 
 
 hold word in the city of his adoption, may tell yon, 
 to-morrow, if he choose to repeat, oh such an 
 occasion, what he has deUberately said before, that 
 the declaration of human rights, which is made 
 the basis of the Declaration of American Inde]~>en- 
 dence, is only a tissue " of glittering generalities," 
 mere rhetorical flourishes, instead of substantial 
 and immortal truths. Thus the political disciples 
 of the Sage of Monticello, are coming openly to 
 repudiate his theories of freedom and haman rights. 
 They are beginning to set up the privileges of race 
 and class, against the rights of man ; thus sweep- 
 ing away the grand idea of the equality of men in 
 respect of natural rights, which constituted the 
 basis of his political philosophy. Such views are 
 utterly incompatible with impartial freedom, and 
 with the principles on which our government is 
 professedly grounded. 
 
 The fathers of the Republic were wise enough 
 to make the Constitution under which they organ- 
 ized it declare the intent for which it was framed 
 and put into operation. It expressly declares that 
 it was " ordained to establish justice, promote the 
 general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty 
 for themselves and their posterity." These words 
 at least are left, and there can be no reasonable 
 doubt as to their meaning. Yet, a few years since, 
 I heard the foremost man of ah New England 
 declare that this government had nothing to do 
 with the rights of men, or individual security, but 
 was meant chiefly to facilitate the intercourse of 
 the people, and subserve the ends of commerce. 
 I give the substance of his remark ; his words are 
 on record, and, I believe, are to be found in his 
 published works. Thus wealth is set up above 
 man, and commerce is regarded as a greater inter- 
 est than humanity. This is an utter reversal of 
 the ideas of the fathers ; by the very men, too, who 
 laud their names, and assume to venerate their 
 
BUILDING THE TOMBS OF THE PROPHETS. 11 
 
 memories. Nor is this new interpretation of the 
 objects of the constitution personal or accidental 
 merely. It has come to be an authorized construc- 
 tion, and an established policy; the government 
 having actually been made to take this new direc- 
 tion. Not only must the most sacred privileges of 
 one man give way to the interests of another ; but 
 conviction, conscience, sympathy and humanity 
 must be crushed down, to smooth the way for the 
 material interests of the country. Men talk much 
 of their love for the Union of these States ; but if 
 you sift and carefully weigh the expressions which 
 are so much on their lips, you shall find that this 
 popular attachment to the Union, springs, not 
 from love of liberty, and sentiments of human 
 brotherhood, but from the mere love of national 
 wealth, power, and greatness. Men love the Union 
 because it exalts the State, and aggrandizes 
 national importance ; not because it magnifies man, 
 and secures his rights. 
 
 The highest tribunal under our government has 
 recently assumed grounds which subvert the great 
 popular principles so clearly recognized in the 
 Constitution. I do not allude now to the mon- 
 strous claim that, instead of being the safeguard 
 of freedom, the Constitution was intended to open 
 the way, and cover the march, of chattel slavery 
 over our public domain ; I refer rather to the formal 
 denial of the truth, regarded by the fathers as self- 
 evident, that all men are created equal in respect 
 of fundamental rights. That august court, which 
 has stood so high in the respect and veneration of 
 cur people, has solemnly proclaimed that it is not 
 the design of our Federal Constitution to recog- 
 nize the rights of man, as man ; but that it was 
 meant simply to secure the rights of the dominant 
 race, more properly, perhaps, to fortify the privi- 
 leges of a small portion of that race. This re- 
 markable fulmination is most significant and mo- 
 
12 BUILDING THE TOMBS OF THE PROPHETS. 
 
 mentous, not only sti'iking at the hopes of the 
 black man, but threatening the dearest rights of 
 the white man, as well. For be it remembered, 
 that, when humanity ceases to be sacred, and 
 manhood cannot insure protection of person and 
 personal rights, the real safeguard of liberty is 
 gone, and we are exposed to whatever encroach- 
 ment the interests of the dominant class, or the 
 exigencies of party, may demand. Taking the 
 theories put forth by our public functionaries, and 
 the action of successive administrations, as expo- 
 nents of our national policy, it would seem that 
 nothing is regarded as sacred, except the single 
 interest of property in human flesh. This gi'eat 
 government puts forth all its power, increasing its 
 police to millions, to remand one rational chattel 
 to his chains, and the use and behoof of his mas- 
 ter ; but what has it done to repress the outrages, 
 or punish the wholesale robberies and murders 
 which have been practised against men whose 
 only crime is, that they deny both the expediency 
 and the rightfulness of human bondage ? There is 
 a fearful commentary on the spirit of a large por- 
 tion of our people, (that portion of them which 
 seems to share the chief sympathies of the national 
 government,) in a paragraph which I read a day 
 or two since in one of our public journals, em- 
 bracing a statement of the venerable Mr. Hair- 
 grove, formerly of Georgia, and one of the victims 
 of the late murderous outrage of Hamilton and 
 his party, in Kansas. Speaking of a four years' 
 residence in Monroe county, Mississippi, Mr. Hair- 
 grove says that, during that short period, "thirty- 
 six murders were committed ; and yet no man was 
 ever punished for murder or manslaughter. In 
 fact," he adds, " you may commit any crime under 
 heaven there, without fear of punishment, except 
 one. You may assault, stab, shoot, kill, as much 
 as you please, without much danger; but you 
 
BUILDING THE TOMBS OF THE PROPHETS. 13 
 
 must not tamper with slaves. They seldom pun- 
 ish anybody for crimes against a white man, but 
 they will lynch half a dozen white men, for steal- 
 ing one negro." This picture may seem over-col- 
 ored, but I believe it is substantially just. It is 
 only reasonable to expect that human life will be 
 held cheap, where human liberty is disregarded. 
 Where the rights of man are ignored, and property 
 in man is the only vital thing, these things must 
 follow, as the shadow follows its body. And the 
 national government, both in its laws and admin- 
 istration, seems to have adopted substantially the 
 same economic policy. All other interests, indus- 
 try, property, liberty, even life itself, appear to be 
 regarded as trivial, in comparison with the as- 
 sumed right of man to hold property in man. I 
 would prosecute no unreasoning crusade against 
 those who are unfortunately involved in the evils 
 of slavery ; but when this institution is assumed 
 as the key-stone of our government, and every 
 other interest is construed in subordination to it, I 
 insist that the principles of (he Fathers of the Re- 
 public are abandoned, that the Constitution is per- 
 verted to uses which it never contemplated. 
 
 Thus the noble instrument which our Fathers 
 ordained to establish justice, promote the general 
 welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to all 
 generations, has become practically obsolete. Ac- 
 cording to the new theory of the functions of gov- 
 ernment, promulged by courts, and adopted by 
 successive administrations, the great ends which it 
 ostensibly proposes, are Utopian and fanatical. The 
 theory on which the present practice proceeds, is, not 
 that governments are instituted among men to se- 
 cure the blessings of impartial freedom, but that they 
 are designed to set up privileges, as of one class 
 against another ; to foster ohgarchies, and promote 
 the interests of the few, at the expense of the 
 many. If these be the true ends of government, 
 
14 BUILDING THE TOMBS OF THE PROPHETS. 
 
 then were our fathers mistaken in all their political 
 and social theories. Then has it been reserved for 
 the men of this generation to correct the errors, 
 both of theory and administration, into which the 
 Fathers were betrayed, in projecting and setting 
 in motion the machinery of Government. On the 
 other hand, if these be not the true ends of gov- 
 ernment ; if the larger and more humane concep- 
 tions of the Fathers were just, we are recreant to 
 then' principles, while professing to venerate their 
 names, and to love them for their works' sake. 
 
 The truth is, we have corrupted the noble and 
 humane institutes of government which the fathers 
 of the republic set up. We have perverted what 
 they intended should enure to the benefit of the. 
 weak, to the strengthening of the strong against 
 the weak. We have used what they fondly hoped 
 would work out the deliverance of the oppressed, 
 for the benefit of the oppressor. We have reversed 
 the engine Avhich they gave a progressive motion, 
 with a view to the redress of wrong, and the ele- 
 vation of the lowly ; turning it back, with crushing 
 power, on the very persons whom it was meant to 
 establish in freedom, and the paths of a self-direct- 
 ing industry and competence. So thoroughly have 
 we come to repudiate the principles of the men 
 whom we pretend to venerate. We build costly 
 sepulchres over their dead remains, but shamelessly 
 scout their living principles. It may be said of us, 
 as it was said of certain men of old : " Hath a 
 nation changed their gods, which are no gods ? but 
 this people have change.d their glory for that which 
 doth not profit." * 
 
 HI. Consider, in the third place, how fully we 
 have come under the law of subterfuge, and the 
 extent to which our people have been in the habit 
 
 * Jer. 2 : 11. 
 
BUILDING THE TOMBS OF THE PROPHETS. 15 
 
 of promoting wrong, in the name of right ; mak- 
 ing abstract theories of freedom pretexts for the 
 exercise of a real oppression. To outrage justice 
 in the name of justice, is no novelty in the history 
 of mankind. The Jews of our Lord's day pre- 
 tended to be guided by the lights of prophecy, in 
 their rejection and abuse of him who was the end 
 of all prophecy. They invoked the prophets in 
 confirmation of their falsehood, and perverted the 
 law to sanctify their injustice ; seizing the author 
 of the law, in the name of the law. And like 
 these Jews we are clamorous in our appeal to the 
 Fathers, without any respect for their true mean- 
 ing. We have the audacity to bring the dead to 
 witness against the living, though both speak 
 under the same inspiration, and proclaim the same 
 evangel. The Jew talked of the prophets, but 
 knew not the prophecy ; so we appeal to the glori- 
 ous defenders of freedom, but know not the spirit 
 that was in them. We are consciously false and 
 mercenary in the pleas by which we justify our 
 public acts. We enlarge our territorial posses- 
 sions, professedly to " extend the area of freedom ; " 
 but really to enlarge the field, and augment the 
 influence of slavery. We pick a quarrel with a 
 weak and distracted neighboring nation, who never 
 offended us in aught that was not justified by the 
 encroachments of our own people on her rights, 
 under the specious plea of securing a guaranty of 
 future peace. We bombard defenceless hamlets, 
 jeoparding the property and lives of unoffending 
 people, in the interest of humanity. We encourage 
 piratical expeditions against the territories and lib- 
 erties of friendly States, under the pretense of 
 giving them timely aid, and extending a needed 
 protection. We open free territory to the inroads 
 of chattel slavery, under the sanction of social and 
 political equality. In the name of the people's 
 
16 BUILDING THE TOMBS OF THE PROPHETS. 
 
 right to shape their own domestic institutions, we 
 connive at, if we do not abet, armed incm'sions on 
 the part of one people, for the avowed pm*pose of 
 shaping the domestic policy of another. We tol- 
 erate mobs under the color of law, and let anarchy 
 loose in the behoof of social order. It is appahing to 
 contemplate the wrongs perpetrated by our people 
 during the last fifteen years ; to recount the deeds 
 of injustice, cruelty and bloodshed which they 
 have deliberately wrought or sanctioned ; but one 
 of the darkest features connected with these dis- 
 mal transactions consists in the hollow, heartless, 
 unmitigated hypocrisy, illustrated in the pretexts by 
 which they have been either urged or defended. 
 How appropriate to a case like this are the words 
 of the prophet : " Our transgressions are multi- 
 plied, and our sins testify against us ; for our 
 transgressions are with us, and as for our sins we 
 know them ; in transgressing and lying against the 
 Lord, and departing away from our God, speaking 
 oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering 
 from the heart words of falsehood. And judg- 
 ment is turned away backward, and justice standeth 
 afar off: for truth has fallen in the street, and 
 equity cannot enter. Yea truth faileth; and he 
 that departed from evil, maketh himself a prey." * 
 Speciousness and insincerity have come to be 
 marked political vices of the time. Too many 
 build the tombs of the prophets, not so much to 
 honor the glorious men of old, as to secure a fac- 
 titious influence for themselves. They ascend the 
 altars of freedom for the sake of the elevation 
 which they afford, and the light of distinction 
 which their holy fire sheds around them ; not that 
 they may minister to those high ends for which 
 these altars are consecrated. The highest profes- 
 sions of devotion to public interests, are too often 
 
 *Isa. 59: 12-15. 
 
BUILDING THE TOMBS OF THE PROPHETS. 17 
 
 hollow and false. Many of our public men are 
 more anxious to gain station, than to fill it well, 
 They ofier inducements for the popular suffrage, 
 which they take little pains to justify by their sub- 
 sequent acts. They are not unfrequently guilty of 
 perversions and malfeasance which belie their 
 pledges, and which they attempt, sometimes, to 
 justify on grounds insulting alike to the intelli- 
 gence and conscience of those whom they have 
 deceived and betrayed. Personal interest, or party 
 expediency, is allowed to turn them from the path 
 of duty, leading them to the sacrifice of their 
 professed principles. The remarkable warlike ful- 
 minations recently uttered in our national Congress, 
 by men who should have been deterred from such 
 contemptible clamor, not less by the reason and 
 equity of the case, than by the convictions and 
 interests of their constituents, may be cited as an 
 instance in point. No one seriously believes that 
 there was the least public necessity for vsuch demon- 
 strations. The inspiration of these things must be 
 sought in party, not in patriotism. The peace of 
 the world involves concerns too high and sacred to 
 be recklessly jeoparded for the sake of any per- 
 sonal or party interests whatever ; and all such 
 movements involve the perversion of holy things, 
 to uses base and unworthy. It is so much the 
 custom of our public men to look one way and 
 row another ; to start false issues before the peo- 
 ple, for the purpose of covering their real designs, 
 that we are often compelled to look with suspicion 
 on those whom we are really anxious to honor with 
 our confidence. But we must be careful not to be 
 too indiscriminate and severe in our censures on 
 such courses. We, the people, are far from guilt- 
 less in this matter. If we encourage men to resort 
 to tortuous courses, for the promotion of interests 
 wliich we cherish, why should we be surprised to 
 2^ 
 
18 BUILDING THE TOMBS OF THE PROPHETS. 
 
 find this tortuousness sometimes leading them 
 athwart those interests ? If we assume to bribe 
 men to the performance of what is right, we ought 
 to remember that there is a closer and stronger 
 afhnity between bribery and wrong. If New Eng- 
 land will buy tariffs with manufacturing capital, 
 why should not Presidents buy repeals of slavery 
 restrictions, and endorsements of Lecompton Con- 
 stitutions, with government patronage ? The 
 present evils of our political condition have not 
 sprung altogether from the pursuit and compass- 
 ing of wrong ends ; the attempt to attain good 
 ends by wrong means, has been quite as active in 
 producing them. A wrong act may be reversed, 
 and its pernicious tendencies thus be checked ; but 
 that deviousness of heart which leads to the seeking 
 of a good end by dishonest ways, betrays a deeper 
 and more pregnant evil. The real disease of the 
 body politic is in that hollowness which resorts to 
 subterfuge on the one hand, and accepts it on the 
 other ; not in the temporary misdirection of our 
 material interests. Your public servants may com- 
 mit great wrongs, like the revocation of the Mis- 
 souri restriction ; but such acts would be harmless 
 if the people had the intelligence to sift, or the 
 virtue to scout, the impudent sophistries by which 
 they may be excused or justified. The trouble is, 
 when the wrong is done, you have not the moral 
 integrity to resist it. You assume to be satisfied 
 by reasons which never, for a moment, have 
 imposed on your judgment; while conscience has 
 been stifled by the. swelling floods of party passion, 
 or the din of party strife. We offer a premium for 
 craft, chicanery, and wrong in the management of 
 our political atfairs. If constituencies were less 
 susceptible to cajolery and deception, there would 
 be fewer betrayals of truth and justice in high sta- 
 tions. The people do, in reality, give shape to our 
 
BUILDING THE TOMBS OP THE TROPHETS. 19 
 
 public policy ; if that policy be tortuous, it is 
 because the public heart is full of all subtlety and 
 deceivableness. 
 
 IV. I pass now to note one more view sug- 
 gested by the text ; namely, that the condition in- 
 volved in the charge brought by our Lord against the 
 Jews, is one of national weakness and social decay. 
 "When communities move only by indirection, and 
 speak only to utter guile, their dissolution must be 
 regarded as inevitable and speedy. When the 
 Jews had reached the pitch of hypocrisy reproved 
 in the text, they .were ripe for destruction. Having 
 rejected and crucified the Son of God, though pre- 
 tending to deprecate the guilt of their fathers in 
 killing the prophets, they were given over to the 
 sword and torch of the spoiler. The integrity of 
 the national conscience was sfone. Their social 
 vitality, consisting of soundness of heart, had 
 died cut. False in principle, corrupt in manners, 
 hollow in profession, and malignant in feeling, 
 there was scarcely any thing left for them to lose. 
 They were hopelessly corrupt ; and corruption is 
 always weakness. The life-element of their social 
 fabric was absorbed and eaten away. They fell, 
 not because they were weak in material power, 
 but because they were morally perverse, and hypo- 
 critical. 
 
 In like manner, must any nation perish if it 
 reject the seminal principles of its public polity, 
 becoming hollow in profession, and treacherous 
 in action. This is the lesson of history. The 
 old republics fell, not because they w^ere physically 
 weak, not for lack of sages and statesmen, not 
 because they were defective in Art, Literature, or 
 Law ; but because the people were corrupt, false, 
 and selfish. Rome never was so great in all the 
 elements of material grandeur and power, as at 
 
20 BUILDING THE TOMBS OF THE PROPHETS. 
 
 the time when her nationality received its death 
 blow. She was overcome, not by those northern 
 hordes which swept, like avalanches, over her 
 plains, but by her own intestine fraud, oppression, 
 and luxury. Her material resources were never 
 more abundant. Her territories teemed with men ; 
 her wealth was imperial ; her skill was, at least, 
 equal to any former period, and she was perfecting 
 a code of laws which has ever since been regarded 
 as the most perfect system of civil jurisprudence 
 instituted by men. But the people had lost the 
 ancient love of liberty. Power was used to ag- 
 grandize the state, not to protect the citizen. The 
 spirit of the laws lived not in the hearts and con- 
 sciences of the people. All orders of the state 
 had become effeminate in spirit, pleasure-seeking 
 and venial. The foundations of the common- 
 wealth were undermined by domestic vice and 
 social corruptions. Rome fell because virtue had 
 ceased to be a quality of Romans. 
 
 The examples of History should not only in- 
 struct, they should also warn us. The processes 
 of national growth, and the causes of national 
 decline, are essentially the same the world over, 
 and in all time. What has happened to a given 
 nation, may happen to us, under like conditions. 
 Though we have sought to assure ourselves of a 
 happier destiny, in view of the higher intelligence 
 of our people, the more perfect forms of our con- 
 stitutions and laws, and our purer and more vital 
 religious faith ; yet if, in spite of these things, our 
 social life is characterized by the same vices which 
 marked these ancient states, our fate will be simi- 
 lar to theirs. The ground of our prosperity must 
 be in ourselves, and not in any external advan- 
 tages. We must be humane, liberty -loving, just, 
 industrious, reasonable, fearing God and regard- 
 ing man. Constitutions give no vitality to na- 
 
BUILDING THE TOMBS OF THE PROPHETS. 21 
 
 tions ; laws give no validity to rights. These, at 
 the most, only crystallize the spirit and ideas of a 
 people. Aside from their hold on the judgment 
 and conscience of the people, they arc only empty 
 forms. The only force of law is in its embodi- 
 ment of truth and right. Freedom and justice 
 are the informing elements of all popular institu- 
 tions. When these have died out of the popular 
 heart, your constitution is worth no more than a 
 piece of blank parchment; it becomes a husk 
 without a kernel, a body without an animating 
 spirit. 
 
 And here is our danger. We appeal to consti- 
 tutions, instead of resting on the great and impre- 
 scriptible rights of the people. As the Jews quoted 
 the prophets against Christ, we quote the Constitu- 
 tion against man. We are coming to love power 
 more than liberty. We begin to revere our sub- 
 lime fathers, more for their heroic deeds, than for 
 their just and humane principles. We exalt the 
 qualities of courage and fortitude, overlooking the 
 love of freedom for themselves and their posterity, 
 which inspired them. Our love for the fathers is 
 traditional, not vital. We seem to have forgotten 
 that impartial freedom was the soul, alike of the 
 deeds they wrought, the words they spoke, and the 
 institutions they formed. Else we should not 
 contemn the living champions of liberty. Else 
 we should respond to every word which denounces 
 oppression, opposes social WTong, and calls the 
 downtrodden to freedom. If we really venerated 
 our revolutionary heroes, for the spirit which guided 
 them in council, and nerved them in battle ; if we 
 loved the dead prophets for the noble truths which 
 they proclaimed, we should not only treasure their 
 words, but listen with attention to the eloquent 
 voices which reecho them to our own age. But 
 the truth is, our national life has become superii- 
 
22 BUILDING THE TOMBS OP THE PROPHETS. 
 
 cial. Our political integrity has sadly declined. 
 We have ceased to love liberty for its own sake. 
 The rights of humanity are no longer sacred in 
 our eyes. We magnify constitutions, but degrade 
 man. We insist on the sacredness of law, but 
 fail to maintain the inviolableness of personal 
 freedom. We give heed to the form, overlooking 
 the reality, forgetting that Humanity is the only 
 substantive thing. Constitutions may crumble to 
 dust, laws may become obsolete, and governments 
 may sink into decay ; but Humanity remains, in 
 the integrity of its substance, and the dreadness 
 of its responsibility. And shall the permanent 
 give place to the transient and accidental ? It is 
 possible that existing institutions of government 
 may not be ultimate and final. These may all be 
 swept away, in some new and more glorious upris- 
 ing of Humanity: but, from the social forces inher- 
 ing in itself, shall spring other institutions, fresher 
 in their life, and more glorious in their fruits. 
 
 This very day Virginia receives to its last rest, 
 the body of James Monroe, fifth President of the 
 United States, and fourth of her noble sons who 
 filled that high station, having just reclaimed it 
 from the foreign sepulchre, where it has reposed 
 nearly thirty years. This is well. Let her gather 
 the remains of her children to the generous soil 
 which gave them birth. But alas for her, and for 
 us all, if their mute ashes be all that she consent to 
 receive ! Mother of Presidents ! take bacli to thy 
 bosom not alone the lifeless forms of thy noble sons, 
 but also the inspiration of their living principles, and 
 the impulse of their heroic example. Stand up again 
 for the truths which they asserted, and for the rights 
 which they maintained. Garnish the tombs of 
 your dead worthies ; but be more intent to imbibe 
 their spirit, and follow their sublime aims, which 
 were generous as freedom, and wide as the world. 
 
BUILDING THE TOMBS OF THE PROPHETS. 23 
 
 Then shall a new fruitfuhiess restore thy wastes, 
 and the glories of a better age reinvest thy queenly 
 brow. Then shalt thou be lirst again, in this aug- 
 menting band of states, to sound the battle charge 
 of freedom, and first to strike that note of victory 
 which humanity, disenthralled and crowned with 
 the blessings of rational liberty and Christian 
 hope, shall lift responsive to the angel song of 
 Bethlehem — " Glory to God in the highest, and 
 on earth peace, good will toward men I " 
 
 Let all the States composing this great and 
 united America, remember that the statues of 
 heroes and sages, and the monuments crowning 
 our battle-fields, will become a national reproach, 
 when the spirit which animated the Fathers of the 
 Republic, and the principles which they staked in 
 the revolutionary conflict, shall have been lost or 
 denied ; that the memorials of their glory will then 
 stand only as the witnesses of our shame. Let 
 us all remember that the fittest commemoration 
 of their great deeds and living principles, is to 
 make their work perpetual, through the intelli- 
 gence, freedom, prosperity and virtue of the whole 
 people. Then shall their names shine as stars in 
 the ever-brightening firmament of a common- 
 wealth, which shall invest the interests and desti- 
 nies of a happy and hopeful race, till the clear ris- 
 ing of the Sun of Kighteousness shall scatter all 
 the dimness and distortions of our night, and bring 
 in the serener glories of the Millennial Day. 
 
LIBRPRY OF CONGRESS 
 
Mm 
 
CONGRESS