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 ' ]0hristi8tt |*|all|. 
 
 STEPHEN H. TYNG, D.D. 
 
 Rector of St. George's Church, " 
 
 NEW-YORK. 
 
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11 
 
 ' LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. | 
 
 Chap 
 
 She/f 
 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
^^^S)-^QSi^'^-&^?'e~j,^,&\$^i(9^^^&^^liS)\Qie,\;$^ei'^iQ^ 
 
 BMMMMM'^*^^-^ 
 
 etiristiau aosalts. 
 
 A DISCOUESE, 
 
 DELIVERED IN 
 
 ST. GEORGE'S CHURCH, NEW-YORK, 
 
 APRIL 30th, 1S63, THE DAY OF NATIONAL FAST. 
 
 STEPHEX H 
 
 UECTOR OF ST. GEO 
 
 JOHN A. GRAY & GREEN, PRINTERS AND STEREOTYPERS 
 
 FIBE-PROOF BnlLDINGf, 
 
 COBNER OF FRANKFORT AND JACOB STREETS. 
 
 1863. 
 
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 (Kijin'stiau iLoga(t|)* 
 
 Psalm ISY : 1, 2, 56. 
 
 "By the rivers of Babylon, there wc sat down. 
 Yea, we wept when we remembered Zion. "We 
 hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst 
 thereof. If I forget thee, Jerusalem, let my right 
 hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember 
 thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth ; 
 if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy." — 
 Psalm 137 : 1, 2, 5, 6. 
 
 This is the patriot's devotion to his 
 country. It is a living spirit in his 
 heart. It clings to his own land and 
 people in their lowest depression as 
 truly as in their highest prosperity. It 
 is living and active within him, to what- 
 ever contumely and reproach it may ex- 
 pose him. It is determined and unyield- 
 
4 CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 
 
 ing, however multiplied and persecuting 
 may be tlie foes he meets, or the disap- 
 ]:»ointments he endures. Nay, like every 
 class of that true and faithful love, of 
 which it is an illustration, its tenacity 
 and power continually grow with the 
 misfortunes of the land of his home, and 
 even with his own despair of its re- 
 covery. 
 
 Never had the allotted home of the 
 Israelite been so wasted, so trodden 
 down as when this divine psalm was 
 inspired, to utter for man forever its 
 high illustration of domestic and eth- 
 nical love. Jerusalem was burned with 
 fire. Judea was lying waste and cap- 
 tive. The city was solitary that was full 
 of people. She had become as a widow. 
 She that was great among the nations, 
 and princess among the provinces, had 
 
CHRISTIA y L YALTY. 5 
 
 become tributary. Her adversaries were 
 the chief, her enemies prospered. Utter 
 despair rested on all her prospects, so 
 far as man, or human power were con- 
 cerned. The great hammer of the earth, 
 as Nebuchadnezzar was called, had brok- 
 en her in pieces. And only the cove- 
 nant and j)romise of her God remained, 
 as the hold for faith and hope, upon any 
 prosperity or restoration in the future. 
 
 What then ? Shall the faithful Israel- 
 ite give up to the triumphs of despair ? 
 Shall he turn upon his suffering mother, 
 and spurn her with his foot, because 
 others wickedly hate and despise her? 
 By no means. He sits down by the 
 rivers of Babylon, he hangs his harp 
 upon the willows there ; he weeps when 
 he remembers his beloved Zion. But 
 he declares that his right hand shall be 
 
6 CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 
 
 palsied, and liis tongue shall be silent in 
 death, before he will consent to forget 
 Jerusalem, or to prize her welfare and 
 her honor above his highest joy. In the 
 full confidence of his soul, in the cer- 
 tainty of the divine promise he still ad- 
 dresses his faith to the God of Israel. 
 " Thou shalt arise and have mercy upon 
 Zion, for the time to favor her, yea, the 
 set time is come, for thy servants take 
 pleasure in her stones, and favor the 
 dust thereof"' He still confidently looks 
 for a destruction of destroying Babylon, 
 and for the rewarding her, as she had 
 served them. 
 
 This is an illustration, and it is a 
 most affecting and commanding iUustra- 
 tion of that loyalty in man of which we 
 must speak as of one of his highest du- 
 ties. It is man s faithful, undying love, 
 
CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 7 
 
 directed to Lis country, liis nation, tlie 
 land which it occupies, the institutions 
 which distinguish it, the interests, pros- 
 pects, and welfare which are appointed 
 for it. This one outspreading sea of 
 human affection gains a specific name, 
 as it laves the shore of every separate 
 portion of the dwelling-places of man. 
 And whether filial, marital, parental, 
 social, or national, it is but the same 
 generic spirit, designated by a new name 
 as it becomes specially marked by new 
 relations in this divine geography. 
 
 When this heaven-born love touches 
 the shore of national relations, it is loy- 
 alty. But one higher, grander relation 
 can it have ; that one which exalts it 
 beyond all earthly bounds, and bids it 
 roll upon the dominion and the person 
 of the great Lord of lords, and King 
 
8 CHRISTIAN LOYAL TY. 
 
 of kings. The Church, the person, the 
 heavenly home of the Great Head of the 
 Church, the Prince of the kings of the 
 earth, is the one only nobler, loftier, 
 more abiding exercise and display of 
 human love. 
 
 For a man basely to say he has no 
 loyalty, is to say he has no love, no 
 lionor, no integrity, no honesty, no 
 gratitude. It is to acknowledge the im- 
 alloyed dominion of base materialism 
 and brutal selfishness, and to boast in 
 the degTadation which must forever at- 
 tend it. It is to display with ghastly 
 satisfaction an acknowledged spirit, 
 which, no human being can trust or 
 love, made only, and qualified only, for 
 "treason, stratagem, and spoils." 
 
 The child's love of his home, the fa- 
 ther's love of his fiimil}^, the Christian's 
 
CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 9 
 
 love of his Saviour, are the patriot's love 
 of his country, and the citizen's loyalty 
 to his nation and his government. And 
 if the flowing fountain of the whole 
 dwell within the man, the course of its 
 streams is easily to be predicted. If the 
 channels of these streams are dry, the 
 fountain-head has dried and ceased to 
 flow. Indiflerence to the claims of na- 
 tional loyalty, and still more, a coldness 
 which comes with apparent depression, 
 and a desertion which springs from the 
 disappointment of individual selfish am- 
 bition, is a spirit and character which 
 every good man must abhor. I should 
 feel neither my proj^erty nor my per- 
 son, — my home nor my family, — my life 
 nor my reputation to be safe within the 
 grasp of a man who could boldly re- 
 nounce the obli orations of unchano-in.2^, 
 
1 CHRISTIAX LOYALTY. 
 
 consistent lojalty, and join himself to 
 the revolutionary influence and 23lans 
 contrived and combined to overthrow 
 the dominion of a just authorit}', which 
 had furnished him all his shelter and 
 success, — and to break up the nation 
 which had |)eacefullj lived and grown 
 under its healthful shadow 
 
 I confess the language of the text 
 before us is the utterance of my con- 
 sciousness and of my choice. I may 
 weep beside the rivers of Babylon; I 
 may see much and recall much in Jeru- 
 salem to trouble me ; I may be dissatis- 
 fied with much of man's control ; but I 
 trust my right hand will be powerless, 
 and my tongue be silent in death, be- 
 fore I forget my home, my native land; 
 or cease to prefer the welfare of my 
 country, the honor of its government, 
 
CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 1 1 
 
 and the glory of its flag above my chief 
 joy. My heart goes out with the bard 
 of Scotland : 
 
 " Breathes there a man with soul so dead, 
 "Who never to himself hath said, 
 
 This is my own, my native land ! 
 Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned, 
 As home his footsteps he hath turned, 
 
 From wandering on a foreign strand ! 
 If such there breathe, go, mark him well : 
 For him no minstrel raptures swell ; 
 High though his titles, proud his name. 
 Boundless his wealth as wish can claim ; 
 Despite those titles, power, and pelf. 
 The wretch, concentred all in self. 
 Living, shall forfeit fair renown. 
 And, doubly dying, shall go down 
 To the vile dust, from whence he sprung, 
 Unwept, unhonored, and unsung. 
 
 Land of my sires ! what mortal hand 
 Can e'er untie the filial band 
 That knits me to thy ru2:a;ed strand ? 
 
12 CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 
 
 Still as I view each well-known scene, 
 
 Think what is now, and what hath been, 
 
 Seems as, to me, of all bereft. 
 
 Sole friends thy woods and streams were left ; 
 
 And thus I love them better still, 
 
 Even in extremity of ill." 
 
^iMAMmiMEl 
 
 ILojialts to Jrruisaltm is Hobc 
 Cor i)tt ISfatiou* 
 
 1. My loyalty to Jerusalem is my 
 love of her people. I love my nation. 
 I love tlieni because they are my nation, 
 and I cannot separate my feelings in 
 this relation between those who found 
 their natural being in a birth upon this 
 soil, and those who have chosen it as 
 their own in a voluntary political birth 
 in maturer life. I certainly love as in- 
 dividuals the fellow-inhabitants of my 
 own native town, the citizens of my 
 own honored State, the descendants of 
 my own pilgrim line, with a peculiar re- 
 gard. I have most sincerely loved and 
 
14 CHRISTIAN LOYALTY, 
 
 do still most sincerely love many of my 
 own well-proved friends, in my South- 
 ern ministry, — warmer hearts, dearer 
 or more faithful friendship I shall never 
 find. But my loyalty is not to Massa- 
 chusetts or Kew-York, to my birthplace 
 or my residence. Not to Maryland or 
 Pennsylvania, so long my own happy 
 homes, and the birthplaces of my child- 
 ren. 
 
 My love, my peculiar love, is still 
 for its various reasons to all these. But 
 my loyalty is to the United States of 
 America, that great federal nation, 
 which, wherever scattered, or however 
 collected, have dwelt together under 
 one glorious government, as one per- 
 petual, indivisible people. This was 
 the nation my honored father taught 
 me in my youth to consider mine, and 
 to love as mine. 
 
CHRISTIAN L TAL TY. 1 5 
 
 Do tliej say it is a congeries of most 
 promiscuous elements, gathered as tlie 
 discontented from all lands? I confess 
 the collection. But in this very discon- 
 tent with all other lands, I discern also 
 the most remarkable testimonies of an 
 homogeneous character and purpose. 
 They are the offshoots of all lands. 
 They are the fruit of all lands. They 
 are the scum, if men choose to call them 
 so, of all lands, conceding in that very 
 illustration, that they are the rising, vola. 
 tile, progressive elements of all people, 
 which the grinding of oppression has 
 expressed, and the boiling of revolu- 
 tions has disengaged. They are not the 
 crude, dead, neutralized, conservative 
 sediment and mass which remains be- 
 hind when the work of preparation has 
 been completed. They are the people 
 
1 6 CHRISTIAN L YA LTY. 
 
 of all lands, who have cherished aspira- 
 tions of freedom, and who could not en- 
 dure the bondage of oppression, — who 
 have so loved the form of liberty and so 
 conceived the attractions of its priceless 
 worth, that they have been willing to 
 sunder all hereditary ties, and brave the 
 storms of ocean, and all the wearings of 
 gaining a new abode, that though their 
 lives might be consumed in the perilous 
 undertaking, their children, at least, 
 might be free and independent. The 
 very poorest of them had a perception 
 of human rights, and an aspiration for 
 human elevation, demonstrated in the 
 very choice and hazard which they thus 
 adopted, that the highest despot or 
 richest nabob whom they left behind 
 had no power to conceive. 
 
 I honor the lowest and the poorest of 
 
CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 17 
 
 them, because lie has shown himself a 
 man, and with that homage with which 
 mj Lord commands me to honor all 
 men. Gathered here, whether they or 
 their fathers thns came, they are a na- 
 tion ; they are one nation ; they are 
 my nation ; they are Americans ; and 
 I love and honor them as snch. I 
 have met them far from my native con- 
 tinent — in Europe, in Africa, in Asia. 
 They have looked up with me, and with 
 equal delight to our common flag. And 
 I have never met them without the wel- 
 come of my heart, as Americans. I 
 have saluted them whether coming from 
 the ISTorth or the South, from the East 
 or the West, on foreign shores, as my 
 own countrymen. I never met them 
 but with a brother's heart, and never 
 received from them any other than a 
 
1 8 CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 
 
 brother's response ; and I have rejoiced 
 to meet them as such. 
 
 I am still loyal to my nation. I will 
 never give my consent to its dismember- 
 ment or its separation. I cling to the 
 one federal American j)eople ; not to a 
 confederacy of States, but to a consoli- 
 dated nation. I desh'e not to live to see 
 a disunion of them for any reasons or 
 upon any terms. I would far rather 
 adopt any concessions of policy which 
 did not involve absolute crime, and trust 
 to the advancing influence of civiliza- 
 tion, religion, and experience to remove 
 the errors, and heal the sores which 
 have been discovered, felt, or imagined, 
 than I would yield to any consumma- 
 tion of a purpose of separation ; still less 
 to the atrocious and abominable com- 
 binations of a treasonable overthrow. 
 
CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 1 9 
 
 Even from tlie rivers of Babylon, in 
 tlie lowest circumstances of depression, 
 I slioiild still cry ont to my country- 
 men, Be one people ; be one nation ; 
 ablior, destroy tlie traitors who would 
 ..^divide you, and tlieir abettors wlio 
 .|WOuld try to break you up ; banish 
 them, drive them from your homes 
 and your society, as instruments, the 
 vilest instruments of your bitterest foes. 
 Let Jerusalem be still a city at unity 
 in itself, encircled with the walls of a 
 3ommon defence from foes abroad, and 
 bound together for an united subjuga- 
 ;ion of traitors at home. 
 
 4 
 
S-o^altg to Jrrusalcm in ILoije to 
 
 2. My loyal tj to Jerusalem is my love 
 for lier territory. I have wandered 
 through it from North to South, from 
 East to West. I have gloried in the re- 
 lative and competing prosperity of every 
 part. Its hills and valleys, its mountains 
 and streams, its plains and lakes, its farms 
 and cities, its manufactories and work- 
 shops, its churches and schools, its col- 
 leges and hospitals, its asylums and 
 beneficent homes, its halls of legisla- 
 tion and of science, its rural towns 
 embedded in beauty, and its commer- 
 cial cities glowing with wealth, have 
 
CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 21 
 
 been the apj^le of my eye, and the 
 pride of my heart. 
 
 I have roved in other Lands, beneath 
 the shining of foreign suns, and the 
 shade of foreign institutions ; amidst all 
 the wonderful glories of ancient art, and 
 long inherited civilization. I have not 
 undervalued their attainments, or af- 
 fected to despise their wonderful ad- 
 vantages. I have gloried in the great- 
 ness of man, and of man's accomjolish- 
 ments, as I have contemplated the things 
 which he has done. I have been ready 
 to adore his Creator with new grati- 
 tude, as I have surveyed the surprising 
 achievements of the creature. But I 
 have ever returned to my dear, my na- 
 tive land, with new gratification, pride 
 and delight. It has shone before me 
 beneath its western sun, as the brightest, 
 
22 CHRISTIAX LOYALTY. 
 
 topmost branch of the ancient tree, 
 around whose majestic trunk I had 
 been wandering, and at w^hose wide- 
 spread roots I had been seated. It has 
 appeared before me, the very fruit of 
 earth ; the noblest, richest fruit that 
 earth has borne for man, or that man 
 has gained from earth ; the very pur- 
 pose for which all other lands have 
 grown and thrived ; the rich autumn Qf 
 humanity pouring out from its bosom 
 the boundless stores, for the production 
 of which the rest of man had been but 
 the spring and summer. 
 
 I love my country ; I love it with an 
 intense affection. Every part of it is 
 equally mine, and equally dear to me. 
 I am a citizen of the United States. I 
 will acknowledge no Korthern rights nor 
 Southern rights. Virginia and South- 
 
CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 23 
 
 Carolina are mine as rightly- and as 
 lawfully as Massachusetts or Khode 
 Island; Virginia, where the Massachu- 
 setts Lincoln received the sword of Corn- 
 wallis and finished the war of freedom ; 
 South-Carolina, where the Ehode Island 
 Greene delivered from English bondage, 
 a people as dear to him as if dwelling on 
 the shores of the Narraganset. My 
 New-England blood has been sprinkled 
 in a costly sacrifice over them both. 
 Louisiana and Texas are mine as justly 
 as New- York or Pennsylvania. My toil 
 and my father's toil have helped to pur- 
 chase them, and my hard-earned money 
 has in its measure and degree been given 
 for them both. 
 
 I have a fee simple, indisputable 
 right in every portion of this soil, from 
 sea to sea, as a citizen of this nation, 
 
24 CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 
 
 I will never consent to give it up. I 
 am a citizen of the whole. I have a 
 right to a domicil, a protected home, 
 throughout the whole, which I will 
 never yield. To separate this glorious, 
 hard-earned land, to divide it, to disin- 
 tegrate it, cut it up, parcel it out to a 
 set of wild conflicting provinces, farm 
 it out to the ambition of petty contend- 
 ing satraps, gaining in blood a short- 
 lived triumph, is a degradation and a 
 social atrocity to which I will never 
 consent. 
 
 Because a set of marauding robbers 
 have broken into my inherited domain, 
 and maintaining a temporary intrench- 
 ment there, demand of me to divide 
 with them this noble inheritance, as if 
 it were a pirate's spoils, shall I in base 
 cowardice give up to them and concede 
 
CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 25 
 
 tlieir claim ? I will never do it. I will 
 never consent to the division of the land 
 I love. I will never agree to regard 
 other than as traitors the men that de- 
 mand it, or the men who encourage 
 such demands, or the men in official 
 responsibilities who basely pander to 
 them by indolence, or cowardice, or 
 pique. I will never yield the right of 
 my home to the power of burglars. I 
 may be conquered, I may be carried a 
 captive in chains, I may sit in solitude 
 and weep beside the rivers of Babylon. 
 But Jerusalem shall never say to me that 
 I agreed to her destruction. I should 
 deem protracted warfare nothing in 
 comparison to a voluntary treason like 
 this. 
 
 If it demanded twenty years or seven- 
 ty years of contest to preserve for mj 
 
2 6 CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 
 
 cliildien the broad inlieritance my fa- 
 thers gave to me, I should say to the 
 generation that came after me. Fight it 
 out to the end ; resist even unto blood, 
 striving against sin ; but never yield the 
 gifts of God to Satan, or the intrusted 
 inheritance which you have received, to 
 violence or riot. K power subdue you, 
 rise against that power on every possible 
 occasion of recovery, with an undying 
 determination. Live as freemen on your 
 fathers' land, or die as freemen striving 
 to maintain it. Financial questions are 
 nothing. Political questions are nothing. 
 National debts are nothing. Life is noth- 
 ing. If your country goes, little will be 
 the worth of the wealth, or policy, or 
 life, which you may hope to preserve. 
 To my country my loyalty shall be 
 unchallenged and unchanged, and I shall 
 
CHRISTIAN- LOYAL TY. 2 7 
 
 consent to look only as traitors to lier 
 welfare, "upon tlie men who plan, who 
 counsel, or who encourage a plunder of 
 her soil, from the whole people to whom 
 it belongs. To those who come after me 
 I say, Kever, never consent to give up 
 this covenanted inheritance, intrusted by 
 God to you, for the final, peaceful, secure 
 asylum of suffering, persecuted men. 
 Let the land of your fathers, the sa- 
 cred, assured abode of a nation of free- 
 men, be transmitted unbroken, solid, 
 entire, untarnished, to the children who 
 succeed you. Die, if it must be so, for 
 it, but never give it up. 
 
Eosaltg to Jcint3(»altm iu Holier for 
 Jcr Jlmncfplt of jFtcttrom. 
 
 8. My loyalty to Jerusalem is my 
 love for the freedom which she has 
 established. Men may call the testi- 
 monies of her Declaration of Independ- 
 ence, a tissue of " glittering generalities," 
 when they have no af&nity with the 
 liberty which it proclaims, and no sym- 
 pathy with the grandly humanizing in- 
 fluence which it is desis^ned and destined 
 to exercise. To my mind it stands on 
 the highest platform of uninspired testi- 
 monies. In it the noblest emotions, 
 aspirations, sentiments, and principles of 
 the heart of man speak out in golden, 
 
CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 2 9 
 
 crystal sounds. "We hold tliese truths 
 to be self-evident, that all men are cre- 
 ated equal ; that they are endowed by 
 their Creator with certain inalienable 
 rights ; that among these are life, liberty, 
 and the pursuit of happiness ; that to 
 secure these rights, governments are in- 
 stituted among men, deriving their just 
 powers from the consent of the govern- 
 ed." What nobler testimony for human 
 freedom, or human exaltation, was ever 
 given ? When did the representative 
 mind of progressive, rising humanity, 
 ever announce its convictions and its 
 purposes in a loftier strain, or in a 
 grander formula? 
 
 Under the shadow of such a heaven- 
 born testimony, slavery is but a dismal 
 looking fungus springing from the cor- 
 ruptions of the earth. It was grow- 
 
30 CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 
 
 iiig tliere wlien this divine canopy was. 
 spread, thougli every thing in the very 
 air and atmosphere of the nation testi- 
 fied against it. And in a weak and 
 deluded forbearance, singularly incon- 
 sistent with their own principles and 
 convictions, the men who mourned over 
 its existence, hesitated to cut it up from 
 its roots at once. It was suffered to con- 
 tinue as a most abnormal, outrageous 
 exception to all the institutions of the 
 nation which thus permitted it. Like 
 Milton's toad in Paradise, it stole a garb 
 and covering of tolerated innocence to 
 become the messenger of Satan, to whis- 
 23er treason in the sleeping nation's ear, 
 till men awoke and believed the dreams 
 which they had seen, to be divine reve- 
 lations ; and imagined that this horrid 
 shape of cruelty and crime was really an 
 
CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 3 1 
 
 institution of the Most High. The liv- 
 ery of heaven was stolen for the service 
 of the devil. The spotless holiness of 
 Sinai was insulted, blasphemed, by drag- 
 ging it to consecrate the most oppressive 
 and shocking cruelties, which innocent 
 and helpless victims ever endured. 
 
 Yet the men who prepared and uttered 
 this great testimony for freedom, solemn-, 
 ly protested, at the very time, against the 
 crime of slavery, even while they with- 
 held the arm of violent excision. The 
 great writer of the document, himself a 
 slaveholder, in referring to its influences 
 and results, said : "I tremble for my 
 country when I reflect that God is just." 
 He would seem to have been inspired as 
 a prophet, to warn a listless people, of 
 the very sorrows which we have encoun- 
 tered, and the judgments which we now 
 
32 CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 
 
 endure on its account. ''But judgment 
 lingereth. not, and condemnation slum- 
 bereth not." The hour of appointed retri- 
 bution and responsibihty comes, and the 
 men who would not hear shall be made 
 to feel.' "All men are created equal," 
 the African man as well as the European 
 man, and wo unto that man who stealeth 
 his brother and selleth him. The flxthers 
 of the present generation, even on the 
 very soil of slavery, testified unceasingly 
 to this exceptional character of human 
 bondage. They longed, they planned, 
 they prepared, in every way, to limit, to 
 restrain, to annul it. Any other idea 
 than that it was a cursed thing, a dread- 
 ful, even if, as some supposed, it had 
 been an inevitable evil, was never broach- 
 ed in Southern circles, till the present 
 generation came into mature action. 
 
CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 33 
 
 "There is not a man living, wlio 
 wishes more sincerely than I do, to see 
 a plan adopted for the abolition of 
 slavery," said George Washington^ April 
 12//2, 1786. 
 
 "The scheme which you propose as a 
 precedent, to encourage the emancipation 
 of the black people in this country from 
 the state of bondage in which they are 
 held, is a striking evidence of the benev- 
 olence of your heart," said Washington 
 to Lafaijette, 1783. 
 
 " it is the most earnest wish of Amer- 
 ica, to see an entire sto^D forever put to 
 the wicked, cruel and unnatural trade in 
 slaves," said a Meeting at Fairfax^ F«., 
 presided over by Washington^ July 18th, 
 1774. 
 
 " I tremble for my country when I 
 reflect that God is just. His justice can 
 
34 CHRISTIAN L YAL TY. 
 
 not sleep forever," said Jefferson^ in liis 
 Notes on Slavery in Virginia^ 1782. 
 
 " He has waged a cruel war against 
 human nature itself," said Jefferson of 
 the British King, in his draft of the 
 Declaration of Independence, " violating 
 its most sacred rights of life and lib- 
 erty, in the persons of a distant people 
 who never offended him, captivating and 
 carrying them into slavery in another 
 hemisphere, or to incur miserable death 
 in their transportation thither. This 
 piratical warfare, the opprobrium of in- 
 fidel powers, is the warfare of the Christ- 
 ian king of Great Britian. Determined 
 to keep open a market where men should 
 be bought and sold, he has prostituted 
 his negative for suppressing every legis- 
 lative attempt to prohibit or restrain this 
 execrable commerce." 
 
CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 35 
 
 " After the year 1800 of tlie Christian 
 Era, tliere shall be neither slavery, nor 
 involuntary servitude in any of the said 
 States," (all of the territories then belong- 
 ing to the United States,) said Jefferson's 
 Ordinance of 1787, unanimously approved 
 hy Congress and signed hy Washington. 
 
 " We have seen the mere distinction 
 of color made in the most enlightened 
 period of time, a ground of the most 
 oppressive dominion ever exercised by 
 man over man," said James Madison. 
 
 "We have found that this evil has 
 preyed upon the very vitals of the Union 
 and has been prejudicial to all the States 
 in which it has existed," said James 
 Monroe. 
 
 " The tariff was only the pretext, and 
 disunion and a Southern Confederacy the 
 real ohjcct. The next pretext will be the 
 
3 6 CHRISTIAN L YAL TY, 
 
 negro or slavery question/' said Andrew 
 Jackson^ May^ 1833. 
 
 " Sir, I envy neither tlie heart nor the 
 head of that man from the Korth, who 
 rises here to defend slavery on principle," 
 said John Randolph^ of Roanoke. 
 
 " The people of Carolina form two 
 classes, the rich and the poor. The poor 
 are very poor; the rich who have slaves 
 to do all their work, give them no em- 
 ployment. The little they get is laid out 
 in brandy, not in books and newspapers ; 
 hence they know nothing of the com- 
 parative blessings of our country, or of 
 the dangers which threaten it, therefore 
 they care nothing about it," said General 
 Francis Marion to Baron De KaTb. 
 
 " So long as God allows the vital cur- 
 rent to flow through my veins, I will 
 never, never, never, by word or thought, 
 
CHRISTIAN LOYALTY, 37 
 
 by mind or will, aid in admitting one 
 rood of free territory to the everlasting 
 curse of human bondage," said Henry 
 Clay, 
 
 Alluding to the time the above senti- 
 ment was uttered, Thos. H. Benton says : 
 
 "That was a proud day. I could 
 have wished that I had spoken the same 
 words; I speak them now, telling you 
 they were his, and adopting them as my 
 own." 
 
 The finest minds and hearts of the 
 nation had been consulting together for 
 this half century past, how to accom- 
 plish a gradual and peaceful removal of 
 the burden, before it should break forth 
 into a violent assertion of its power and 
 its consequents. To immediate and vio- 
 lent emancipation I had always been 
 most earnestly opposed. The friends of 
 
3 8 CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 
 
 liberty struggled successfully to inau- 
 gurate measures and sentiments tending 
 to the nation's peaceful relief, until the 
 abettors and supporters of the crime, 
 awake to the fact, that freedom was 
 spreading its living and life-giving pow- 
 er through, all the land, plunged us 
 into the catastrophe, in the crisis of 
 which we are now contending; deter 
 mined that the country and the nation 
 should be sacrificed to slavery rather 
 than the dominion of slavery over the 
 nation should be cast off and renounced. 
 And now these traitors to their coun- 
 try say, that they who have always con- 
 tended for freedom are the ones who 
 have produced the overhanging judg- 
 ment, and are responsible for its results. 
 It is a glorious testimony to their fidelity 
 and their influence. Doubtless, had we 
 
CHRISTIAN L YAL TV. 3 9 
 
 quietly lain in our beds reposing, con- 
 templating with our open eyes tlie gath- 
 ering hordes of robbers around our dwell- 
 ings, and agreed to lie still and silent 
 while they plundered, our abode and 
 murdered our household, there would 
 have been no agitation — their work 
 would have been a quiet work, and a 
 successful work. And our refusal to be 
 peacefully destroyed may well be said to 
 be one cause of the violence of the as- 
 sault which has ensued, to accomplish 
 that by force, which they failed to effect 
 by craft. 
 
 "\Ye may well be thankful that our 
 nation's freedom did find some bold 
 and watchful guardians and defenders. 
 We may be equally grateful that they 
 were allowed to wield a power in the 
 nation, which should so effectually resist 
 
4 CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 
 
 and excite tliese sons of violence while 
 treading the Declaration of our Independ- 
 ence beneath their feet, and destroying 
 both the honor of our country as the 
 abode of liberty, and the priceless inher- 
 itance of universal freedom which it had 
 received. Certainly we are in the midst 
 of a war for freedom — the great, the 
 grandest contest for human liberty which 
 the human race has ever seen. I mourn 
 over its sorrows. I grieve for the person- 
 al afflictions to which it gives inevitable 
 occasion. Its money cost is nothing — a 
 poor, degrading consideration. Cost what 
 it will, if it beggars us into a nation of 
 daily operatives, its glorious result will 
 be cheaply purchased. It will leave us a 
 free nation — a nation true to our solemn 
 pledges to the world, true to the instincts 
 of our nature and our descent — true to 
 
CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 41 
 
 our covenant with God. And we sliall 
 lift up a grander, nobler head beneath 
 the sun and sky of our Father's dwelling 
 from the humble abodes of honest, tri- 
 umphant poverty, than we could ever 
 have claimed in the palaces of ill-gotten 
 luxury or disgraceful wealth. 
 
 Slavery at last has received its inevit- 
 able death-blow. Our nation's aspect and 
 our national profession are at unity with 
 each other. Its death has come far enough 
 from all my plans, from all my struggling 
 endeavors for these forty years of per- 
 sonal interest in the subject ; indeed, 
 directly in violation of every scheme 
 which I had cherished and ever}^ hope 
 I had entertained. But it has come in 
 the wonderful providence of God, in the 
 very judgments of his righteousness upon 
 the people who clung to it and main 
 
42 CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 
 
 tained it, by their own choice, violence, 
 and crime. I am content with his ap- 
 pointment: "Even so, Father, for so it 
 seemed good in thy sight." At any rate, 
 slavery in this country is abolished. It 
 can never be reconstructed. Its recon- 
 struction can never be attempted without 
 greater contests and more terrific scenes 
 of violence than we have yet seen. 
 
 Jerusalem is free. And my loj^alty to 
 Jerusalem is in my love for her freedom. 
 No land of earth had equal professions, 
 annunciations, claims before. And now 
 no land of earth will have equal realities 
 to respond to them. No caste influence 
 can here oppress the poor, or forbid his 
 elevation. Ko oppression can here arrest 
 the upward motion of talent, merit, or 
 fidelity. No capital can purchase the 
 bondage of labor. No assumptions of 
 
CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 43 
 
 individuals can limit or fetter the liberty 
 of man. Tlie poorest immigrant may 
 stand on our shore witli the feeling that 
 he has reached at last a land where man 
 enjoys " the free air, and the free use of 
 his own limbs." He finds every incentive 
 to enterprise, every inducement to integ- 
 rity, every recompense to thrift, every re- 
 ward to honest and honorable economy. 
 It is the home of freedom, the home of rest 
 — the protected, lawful, peaceful abode of 
 man. I rejoice in the thought. And I 
 say to my children after me : Kever 
 yield this priceless inheritance of human 
 liberty ; never sacrifice by any compro- 
 mise the unrestricted, universal freedom 
 of your nation; never consent to any 
 arrangement in which you may not look 
 back upon your fathers' line and home, 
 and still triumphant say : '' Jerusalem, 
 the mother of us all, is free." 
 

 (^ 
 
 Ho^altg to Jerusalem in ILobc for 
 Ijer (S:onstittttion. 
 
 4. My loyalty to Jerusalem is my love 
 for her Constitution. This very word in 
 its technical use is almost an American 
 word exclusively. Europe has been fa- 
 miliar with charters, concessions by the 
 assumed power of individual royalty to 
 the desires and demands of the dissatis- 
 fied people. England is familiar with 
 the idea of constitutional liberty, and 
 speaks habitually, and with just pride, 
 of the British Constitution. But consti- 
 tutional liberty there is but the hard- 
 wrung concessions to the people from the 
 crown, in a succession of revolutions and 
 
CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 45 
 
 demands. And the British Constitution is 
 but the accumulation of all these conces- 
 sions, and of the principles which have 
 been established bj them ; known only to 
 the learned and professional ; shut out 
 from the view of the millions who are to 
 be governed by them. To this day, consti- 
 tutions are still the cry of the awakened 
 people of Europe, and constitutions are 
 the dread of those who rule them. 
 
 Jerusalem had het glorious constitution 
 from the divine gift — a book in the hands 
 of every one, to be read at home, to be 
 studied by children, to be talked of by 
 the way. America has received her Con- 
 stitution from the gracious providence of 
 God ; the grand result of ages of human 
 experience and observation ; the admired 
 shape and cast of man's wisdom among 
 the nations of the earth. 
 
46 CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 
 
 A charter is the form and evidence of 
 a conceded authority granted by superior 
 power. A constitution is a mutual ar- 
 rangement, a reciprocal concession and 
 authority of equal corporators, each pos- 
 sessing the authority in himself, and each 
 bringing with himself the sovereign con- 
 stituting power. Thus our national Con- 
 stitution opens with its avowal of au- 
 thority and sovereign designs : " We, the 
 people of the United States, in order to 
 form a more perfect union, establish just- 
 ice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide 
 for the common defence, promote the 
 general welfare, and secure the blessings 
 of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, 
 do ordain and establish this Constitution 
 for the United States of America." 
 
 ISTever was there a more majestic ex- 
 hibition of sovereign power ; never was 
 
CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 4? 
 
 tliere a more lionorable display of mu- 
 tual concession and self-restraint. The 
 very idea of a Constitution involves the 
 necessity of personal concession in re- 
 turn for mutual support. It is in this 
 precise thought that constitutional liber- 
 ty differs from savage freedom. No ra- 
 tional man would ask the uncontrolled 
 freedom of bis own will and action in 
 the necessity of conceding equal liberty 
 to every other man. He thus puts him- 
 self, simply and only upon his own per- 
 sonal defence, against every conceivable 
 assault of human violence and crime. 
 "Where there is no law, there is no 
 freedom," says the eminent John Locke. 
 "The political liberty of the citizen," 
 says Montesquieu, "is a tranquillity of 
 mind arising from the opinion which each 
 person has of his own safety. In order 
 
4 8 CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 
 
 to have this libertj^, it is requisite that 
 the government be so constituted, as that 
 one man need not to be afraid of another. 
 In a free state, everj man who is sup- 
 posed a free agent ought to be con- 
 cerned in his own government; there- 
 fore the legislative power should reside 
 in the whole body of the people or their 
 representatives." 
 
 Such is the American Constitution — a 
 beautiful machinery of intellectual con- 
 ception and of moral influence, working 
 with its powers and restraints, its checks 
 and balances, its provisions and prohibi- 
 tions in a thoroughly adjusted harmony 
 and in remarkable order and grandeur of 
 operation. It is written in the plainest 
 terms. Mr. Dallas said : " The Constitu- 
 tion in its words is plain and intelligible, 
 and it is meant for the home-bred, imso- 
 
CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 49 
 
 pliisticated uiiderstandiDgs of our fellow- 
 citizens." Tliis is the precious, priceless 
 treasure, transmitted by our fathers to 
 us. The first, the only instance on earth 
 of a nation creating itself as one peo- 
 ple, and forming and arranging the very 
 terms and conditions on which they could 
 or would agree to live as such. 
 
 It is not a charter — or, if so, it is a 
 charter from God to man. It is a mu- 
 tual constitution, a reciprocal setting up 
 and supporting of each other and of all, 
 by a people, in the exercise of their own 
 sovereign and indisputable right. The 
 people made it, the appointed agents of 
 the people manage and work it, and the 
 people alone can sustain and perpetuate 
 it. I unite from my heart in the formula, 
 "The Constitution as it is," as we re- 
 ceived it, or to be amended only in the 
 way which itself prescribes. 
 
50 CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 
 
 Well does Judge Story say of it: 
 " Who can preserve the rights and 
 liberties of the peojDle, when they sliall 
 be abandoned by themselves ? Who shall 
 keep watcli in the temple, when the 
 watcbmen sleep at their posts? Who 
 shall call npon the people to redeem 
 their possessions and revive the repub- 
 lic, when their own hands have deliber- 
 ately and corruptly surrendered them to 
 the oppressor, and have built the prisons 
 or dug the graves of their own friends ? 
 America, free, happy, and enlightened as 
 she is, must rest the preservation of her 
 rights and liberties upon the virtue, inde- 
 jiendence, justice, and sagacity of the 
 people. If either fall, the republic is 
 gone. Its shadow may remain with all 
 the pomp and circumstance and trickery 
 of government, but its vital power will 
 
CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 5 1 
 
 have departed. If ever the day shall ar- 
 rive in which the best talents and the best 
 viriues shall be driven from office by in- 
 trigue or corruption, by the ostracism of 
 the press, or the still more unrelentiDg 
 persecution of party, legislation will cease 
 to be national ; it will be wise by acci- 
 dent and bad by system." 
 
 The protection of this constitutional 
 liberty of the United States of America 
 is a duty which the citizens owe to them- 
 selves who enjoy it — to their ancestors, 
 who transmitted it — and to their pos- 
 terity, who will claim to receive from 
 them this sacred birth-right, the noblest 
 inheritance of mankind. Again Judge 
 Story says: ''If, upon a closer survey 
 of all the powers given by the Constitu- 
 tion, and all the guards upon their ex- 
 ercise, we shall perceive still stronger 
 
5 2 CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 
 
 inducements to fortify tliis conclusion 
 and to increase our confidence in the 
 Constitution, may we not justly hope 
 that every honest American will concur 
 in the djdng expression of Father Paul, 
 ' Esto perpetua' — may it be perpetual. 
 This glorious Constitution of my coun- 
 try I love. I have always loved it. I 
 read it, I read of it, with delight yet 
 more and more, as years go by. I look 
 at its embryo formation in the inherited 
 principles of representative government 
 and taxation, which my fathers brought 
 with them from their English home. 1 
 look at its infant birth in the Articles of 
 Confederation in 1777, when the thirteen 
 separate States formed themselves into a 
 confederacy of States, and assumed the 
 hallowed name of the United States of 
 America, in a firm league of friend- 
 
CHRISTIAN L YA LTY. 53 
 
 ship witli each other for their defence, 
 the security of their liberties, and their 
 mutual and general welfare ; in mutual 
 obligations of assistance against all force 
 offered to, or attacks made upon them, 
 or any of them, on account of religion, 
 sovereignty, trade, or any other pre- 
 tence whatever; and when in the same 
 j'-ear they adopted their sacred flag, the 
 banner and token of freedom and self- 
 government, with its thirteen equal 
 stripes, and its thirteen united stars. 
 I look at the more complete and final 
 formation of this wonderful instrument 
 of national security and power, when 
 in 1785, Virginia proposed a Convention 
 for its formation ; and in 1786 and 
 1787, the other States agreed to meet 
 her representatives in council for tlie 
 purpose. 
 
54 CHRISTIAN L YALTT. 
 
 It was doubtless a compromise and 
 concession of conflicting interests. But 
 then it was truly this. Tliese conces- 
 sions were nobly made. And its result 
 was, tlie creating of a nation — a nation 
 of people — a consolidated, absolute gov- 
 ernment of united people, and no longer 
 an incoherent confederacy of repelling 
 and discordant States. Its full success 
 in operation was gravely doubted. Able 
 and commanding minds opposed it earn- 
 estly; wiser minds counselled and suc- 
 ceeded in its acceptance and establish- 
 ment. Franklin said : "I consent to 
 this Constitution because I expect no 
 better, and because I am not sure it is 
 not the best. The opinions I have had 
 of its errors I sacrifice to the public 
 good." " There are some things in this 
 new form," said Washington, "I will 
 
CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 55 
 
 readily acknowledge, which never did, 
 and I am persuaded never will, obtain 
 my cordial approbation. But I did 
 then conceive, and do now most firmly 
 believe, that in the aggregate it is the 
 best Constitution that can be obtained 
 at this epoch, and that this or a disso- 
 lution awaits our choice, and is the only 
 alternative." And again he says: "It 
 appears to me little short of a miracle 
 that the delegates from so many States, 
 different from each other in their man- 
 ners, circumstances, and prejudices, 
 should unite in forming a system of 
 national government so little liable to 
 well-founded objections." 
 
 On the seventeenth of September, 
 1787, this venerated man affixed his sig- 
 nature to the document, as the President 
 of the Convention which had formed it , 
 
5 6 CHRISTIAN L YALTY, 
 
 and his companions in the great work 
 followed him with theirs. It was the 
 great constructing day of this nation; 
 of which it may be said, the nation was 
 born on it. I have wondered that it 
 has not been kept among the holidays 
 of the American people. 
 
 Now my loj^alty to Jerusalem is my 
 love for her Constitution. I would trans- 
 mit it as I have received it. To main- 
 tain it, unbroken and supreme, I should 
 contend to the last. And when a vio- 
 lent assault has been made upon it, to 
 break it down and destroy it — fearful 
 as is civil discord and bloodshed — any 
 amount of suffering to maintain the just 
 order of a nation is nothing, compared 
 to the higher, more complicated, and 
 fearful sufferings which must come from 
 its violent overthrow, and the dissolution 
 of society into a mob. 
 
CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 5 7 
 
 What it may cost, what it may require, 
 what it may impose, are to me considera- 
 tions of no consequence in comparison. 
 Its preservation is cheap at any cost. 
 And I should stand at the pumps while I 
 could stand, and bail as long as strength 
 would suffer me to do it, rather than 
 permit the ship to sink, and to carry 
 every one within to the bottom of the 
 sea. I therefore say : Never give up 
 this contest for the Constitution. Com- 
 pel this rebellion to submit to its au- 
 thority. And if you must perish, per- 
 ish nobly maintaining the peerless cause 
 of liberty, government, and order. Let 
 my right hand forget her cunning, and 
 my tongue cleave to the roof of my 
 mouth, if in this I prefer not Jerusalem 
 above my chief joy. 
 
^m 
 
 \^M,.ikM h ^. hhh hi^, ^ii^M 
 
 Hogalts to Jrnissalcm in Hobe Cor 
 iitr (^oijtrnmcnt* 
 
 5. My loyalty to Jerusalem is my 
 love for ]ier government. Her Consti- 
 tution is the charter of her government 
 — the fixed and final scheme arranged 
 for its construction and its perpetual 
 operation and control. This govern- 
 ment is subordinate to the Constitution, 
 must submit to it, be ruled by it, defend 
 it, guard it, fight for its protection, in- 
 sist upon the absolute obedience of the 
 people of the nation to it, or punish 
 with a severity, merciful to the nation, 
 those who choose to trample on its au- 
 thorit}'. 
 
CHRISTIAN L YAL TY. 5 9 
 
 The government is in tlie two houses 
 of Congress, as the makers of the laws 
 — in the President, as the executor of 
 the laws — in a supreme court, as the 
 interpreter of the laws. Here is a gov- 
 ernment of law, in its establishment, its 
 interpretation, and its execution, bj the 
 representatives of the sovereignty of the 
 people. And in every act of each, "We, 
 the people of the United States/' act for 
 ourselves ; and if these representatives 
 of our will are unworthy or unfaithful, 
 our Constitution provides a just and 
 immediate way for their responsibility 
 and punishment. 
 
 But we have a government. I am 
 every day grateful in saying we are 
 proud to have a strong and vigorous 
 government. Our laws are intelligible 
 and clear, and our President, for his 
 
GO CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 
 
 appointed term of service, is absolute. 
 He is tlie individual utterance, expres-' 
 sion, and manifestation of the will of 
 tlie people. They have chosen him 
 for four years, to rule for them, and 
 in their name ; to rule them by the 
 power which their own absolute sov- 
 ereignty has committed to him. All 
 the power of executing their laws they 
 have intrusted absolutely to him, as a 
 personal agent, an individual agent, with 
 constitutional advisers, but with no con- 
 stitutional superior. 
 
 Kow I love this government. I love 
 it in its origin. I. love it in its sim- 
 plicity. I love it in its supremacy. I 
 love it in its individuality. I love it 
 in its constitutional strength. I love it 
 in its personal power, determination, and 
 will. It combines for me all the possible 
 
CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 61 
 
 freedom of liberty for the man}^, consist- 
 ent with order and tranquillity for the 
 whole, and the vast security of absolute 
 authority in an ultimate ruler from 
 whom there is no appeal. It seems to 
 me to have gathered the gems from all 
 regions to make this new, last crown 
 of a monarchical people — a ruling na- 
 tion. 
 
 There is an affected distinction made 
 between the government and its ad- 
 ministration. I agree that there is the 
 possibility of such a distinction in the- 
 ory. But it is the simple distinction 
 between form and life, between con- 
 ceded power and its activity. It is a 
 distinction possible only in the theory. 
 The administration is the government 
 in actual life. " The executive power 
 shall be vested in a President of the 
 
62 CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 
 
 United States of America," is tlie ordi- 
 nance wliicli creates this simple, perfect 
 type. " He sliall hold his office during 
 the term of four years," is the decree 
 of duration to his future official life. 
 
 Thus in the first section, article second 
 of the Constitution, the form is arrayed. 
 But the ideal of this immense poten- 
 tiality is still dead. And when this 
 sovereign people have said, in the ma- 
 jesty of their right, "Abraham Lincoln, 
 be thou this president for these four 
 years," it is a breathing into the nostrils 
 of this form the breath of life, and the 
 man imagined becomes a living soul. 
 The government arises into being in ad- 
 ministration, and till the term of official 
 being expires, you cannot separate the 
 administration from the government. 
 And my loyalty to the government, in 
 
CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 63 
 
 wliicli I find the honor of m.j nation, 
 is my loyalty to the administration of 
 that government, in its personal repre- 
 sentatives of the executive sovereignty 
 of the j^eople. 
 
 I agree that this does not involve my 
 complete satisfaction in opinion with all 
 the actings of the administration. It 
 certainly did not for me when James 
 Buchanan was the representative of the 
 people's executive sovereignty. It cer- 
 tainly has not for me, in all things, in 
 the administration of his successor. But 
 I should find no fault with alleged arbi- 
 trary acts. I would that he were the 
 reimpersonation of the iron will and de- 
 termination of Andrew Jackson, and that 
 every sympathizer with this shocking 
 treason had been made to feel the 
 power of the people's stern displeasure. 
 
6 4 CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 
 
 And yet I rebuke my own impetuosity 
 of spirit, and I lionor as perhaps far wiser 
 tlie forbearance, the gentleness, the in- 
 tegrity, the fixed pursuit of conscientious 
 principle, which have so remarkably dis- 
 tinguished the present righteous, but too 
 forbearing sovereign of this people, — for 
 in him I honor the unlimited sovereignty 
 of the people of this nation in themselves. 
 I make, therefore, no distinction, for 
 there can be no practical one estab- 
 lished between the government and 
 the administration. And I view all 
 hostility to the administration, — quite 
 differing from mere disapprobation or 
 disagreement of opinion, — to be but an 
 assumed and convenient aspect of real 
 hostility to the government itself; and 
 while the administration is engaged in 
 maintaining the supremacy of the Con- 
 
CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 65 
 
 stitution and the verj existence of the 
 nation, to be just that which the Con- 
 stitution defines as "treason against the 
 United States," consisting in "adhering 
 to their enemies, and giving them aid 
 and comfort." 
 
 In the present crisis of the nation my 
 loyalty is called to consider the whole, 
 and the absorbing question, of rebellion 
 and war ; and in a single indivisible al- 
 ternative, to cleave to the government 
 of my country, or to oppose and di.^- 
 tract it while engaged in war. From 
 this aspect of duty and of necessity I 
 may well start back. 
 
 " Those passion roots of desolating war, 
 Which germinate in havoc fierce and far, 
 What are they but a brood of sin, 
 Sprung from a bosom-hell within ? 
 Pride and envy, lust and power. 
 Form the fiends which thus devour 
 
66 CHRISriA N LO YALTY. 
 
 All principles of peace, a God incarnate came, 
 To purchase by his pangs, and hallow by his 
 name. 
 
 •' What is false ' glory ' save a guilt disguised, 
 A murderous cheat, magnificently prized ; 
 When rifled home and ruined shrine 
 With all the curse of war combine, 
 And the shrieks of womanhood 
 Heard in harrowing solitude, 
 Throng round the gory track where armies fought 
 
 or fled. 
 And crushing war-steeds stamped their hoofs upon 
 the dead. 
 
 " Go, when the rush and roar of fight are past, 
 And pallid moonbeams on the slain are cast ; 
 Go muse around the mangled heap. 
 Who there in weltering havoc sleep ; 
 Youth and manhood as they fell. 
 Far from home, and loved so well; 
 And while 3'ou heave a sigh o'er many a sunken 
 
 brow. 
 Think what the spirits feel whose flesh lies 
 mouldering now," 
 
CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 6 7 
 
 I see and feel all this most sadly. 
 But there is a liiglier consideration of 
 responsibility still. A nation's over- 
 throw is planned and sought by the 
 wickedness of selfish and ambitions men. 
 The sacrifices and the loss to them are 
 nothing, for they had nothing, and every 
 thing was to be gained. That nation 
 must protect and defend its own in- 
 habitants and people at whatever cost. 
 And there we stand. This rebellion 
 must be subdued ; this government 
 must be sustained ; this administration 
 must be upheld; whatever expenditure 
 of men, of money, or of time may be 
 required, or greater evils far become 
 the alternative. And the duty of the 
 administration is to subdue, or to de- 
 stroy. And if there be no willing sub- 
 mission yielded to a rightful authority, 
 
6 8 CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 
 
 then is its duty absolute destruction of 
 the guilty. And the same responsibility 
 which compels a father to kill a beast, a 
 madman, or a violent robber and mur- 
 derer, in the defence of his own house, 
 and to rescue and provide for those, a 
 neglect of whom makes him worse than 
 an infidel, according to the command of 
 God, — requires the supreme magistrate to 
 bear and use the sword, till the invading 
 enemies of the nation committed to him 
 shall have been subdued, and in the vic- 
 torious protection of his people he shall 
 become justly called the father and the 
 saviour of his country. 
 
 Doubtless the crisis is terrific. But 
 the progress has been wonderful. And 
 far from feeling a disappointment or 
 discouragement from the past, I am only 
 in wonder that the authorities of the na- 
 
CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 69 
 
 tion have achieved so much. I look 
 back upon these two years of warfare, 
 surprised at the progress we have made, 
 in what I have always believed would 
 be a five years' war. 
 
 How remarkable is the present as- 
 pect of this Government ! What gov- 
 ernment ever found itself upheld with 
 such a system of finance in war, such 
 armies of voluntary defenders, such unit- 
 ed loyalty in a people, such rapid dis- 
 grace of those who have opposed it ? 
 What nation in war was ever distin- 
 guished by such humanity to foes, such 
 unwillingness to exercise even a mo- 
 derate and just severit}^, such readiness 
 to bear with injustice, and to utter an 
 amnesty for crime? What other gov- 
 ernment on earth would have tolerated 
 in office, such manifest unfaithfulness 
 
70 CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 
 
 to itself in liigli official and military 
 stations, such, absolute disobedience to 
 superior authority, sucb undisguised 
 consideration of the welfare of enemies, 
 or of future contingent personal attain- 
 ments ? 
 
 Surely the last charge that can with 
 justice be made against such, an admin- 
 istration is arbitrary violence or un- 
 seemly severity. And the wisest ob- 
 servers can only comfort themselves in 
 their observation of such, remarkable 
 patience and long-suffering, with the 
 assured feeling that it must cut off 
 from history the whole spirit of cen- 
 sure, and render but the more exe- 
 crable and odious the conspiracy with 
 which it has dealt so mercifully. I 
 have no complaint to make of these 
 two years of the living government in 
 
CHRISTIAX LOYALTY. 1\ 
 
 administration, but of its slackness, in 
 not punishing treason, in not banishing 
 its abettors, and in suffering its own sub- 
 ordinates in offices even when indisput- 
 ably imjDlicated in it. 
 
 My loyalty to Jerusalem is still love 
 for its government, in a perfect confi- 
 dence in its form, and in a continued 
 trust in and a determined support of 
 its administration. But one alternative 
 is either righteous or merciful to the 
 nation which has suffered such an out- 
 rage, and so without cause, — to a com- 
 munity whose peaceful employments and 
 dwellings have been so assaulted and 
 marauded upon by a mob of such vio- 
 lence, l^either justice to the nation, 
 mercy to the injured, protection to the 
 country, care for posterity, nor fidelity to 
 a great and imperative trust, will suffer 
 
72 CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 
 
 any toleration, or light dealing with the 
 leaders and instigators of such a re- 
 bellious outbreak, so unnecessary, so 
 cruel, so bitter,' so unsparing, and so 
 reckless of all that is honorable in a 
 community, and humane and beneficent 
 in private life. Worse men, if character 
 is to be illustrated by persistent conduct, 
 the world has never seen, and they are 
 to be righteously dealt with, only as 
 the demonstrated enemies of the human 
 race. 
 
 But my regard for the present admin- 
 istration advances with its own career. 
 Its growth is in all the attributes which 
 must attract the confidence and love of 
 generous men. The day which has 
 called us here together is a vivid illus- 
 tration of this. How remarkably hon- 
 orable to the Senate of the United 
 
CHRISTIAN LOYA LTY. 73 
 
 States ,was the resolution unanimously 
 adopted by them, suggesting such a 
 reference to the Divine authority and 
 will. 
 
 ^^ Resolved^ That devoutly recognizing 
 the supreme authority a,nd just gov- 
 ernment of Almighty God in all the 
 affairs of men and of nations, and sin- 
 cerely believing that no people, how- 
 ever great in numbers and resources, 
 or however strong in the justice of 
 their cause, can prosper without his 
 favor, and at the same time deploring 
 the national offences which have pro- 
 voked his righteous judgment, yet en- 
 couraged in this day of trouble by the 
 assurances of his Word to seek him 
 for succor according to his appointed 
 way, through Jesus Christ, the Senate 
 of the United States do hereby request 
 
74 CHRISTIA N LO YALTY. 
 
 the President of the United States, by 
 his proclamation, to designate and set 
 apart a day for national prayer and 
 liurniliation, requesting all the people 
 of the land to suspend their secular 
 pursuits, and unite in keeping the day 
 in solemn communion with the Lord 
 of Hosts, supplicating him to enlighten 
 the counsels and direct the policy of 
 the rulers of the nation, and to support 
 all our soldiers, sailors, and marines, 
 and the whole people, in the firm dis- 
 charge of duty, until the existing re- 
 bellion shall be overthrown and the 
 blessings of peace restored to our bleed- 
 ing country." 
 
 How equally creditable to himself 
 is the Proclamation of the President : 
 
 ^'Whereas, The Senate of the United 
 
CHRISTIAN LOYA LTY. 75 
 
 States, devoutly recognizing the supreme 
 authority and just government of Al- 
 mighty God in all the affairs of men 
 and of nations, has, by a resolution, 
 requested the President to designate 
 and set apart a day for national prayer 
 and humiliation ; and 
 
 " Whereas^ It is the duty of nations, as 
 well as of men, to own their dependence 
 upon the overruling power of God, to 
 confess their sins and transgressions, in 
 humble sorrow, yet with assured hope 
 that genuine repentance will lead to 
 mercy and pardon, and to recognize the 
 sublime truth announced in the Holy 
 Scriptures, and proven by all history, 
 that those nations only are blessed whose 
 God is the Lord ; 
 
 "And inasmuch as we know that, by 
 his divine law, nations, like individuals, 
 
76 CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 
 
 are subjected to punishments and chas- 
 tisements in this world, may we not justly 
 fear that the awful calamity of civil war 
 which now desolates the land may be but 
 a punishment inflicted upon us for our 
 presumptuous sins, to the needful end of 
 our national reformation as a whole peo- 
 ple? 
 
 " We have been the recipients of 
 the choicest bounties of heaven. We 
 have been preserved these many years 
 in peace and prosperity. We have grown 
 in numbers, wealth, and power, as no 
 other nation has ever grown. But we 
 have forgotten Grod. We have forgotten 
 the gracious hand which preserved us in 
 peace, and multiplied and enriched and 
 strengthened us; and we have vainly 
 imagined, in the deceitfulness of our 
 hearts, that all these blessings were pro- 
 
CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 11 
 
 duced by some superior wisdom and vir- 
 tue of our own. Intoxicated with un- 
 broken success, we have become too 
 self-sufficient to feel the necessity of re- 
 deeming and preserving grace, too proud 
 to pray to the Grod that made us ! 
 
 " It behoves us, then, to humble our- 
 selves before the offended Power, to con- 
 fess our national sins, and to pray for 
 clemency and forgiveness. 
 
 " Now, therefore, in compliance with 
 the request, and fully concurring in the 
 views of the Senate, I do, by this my 
 proclamation, designate and set apart 
 Thursday, the thirtieth day of April, 
 1863, as a day of national humiliation, 
 fasting, and prayer. And I do hereby 
 request all the people to abstain on that 
 day from their ordinary secular pursuits, 
 and to unite, at their several places 
 
18 CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 
 
 of public worship and in their respective 
 homes, in keeping the day holy to the 
 Lord, and devoted to the humble dis- 
 charge of the religious duties proper to 
 that solemn occasion. 
 
 " All this being done in sincerity and 
 truth, let us then rest humbly in the 
 hope, authorized by the divine teachings, 
 that the united cry of the nation will be 
 heard on high, and answered with bless- 
 ings, no less than the pardon of our na- 
 tional sins, and the restoration of our 
 now divided and suffering country to its 
 former happy condition of unity and 
 peace ! 
 
 " In witness whereof, I have hereunto 
 set my hand, and caused the seal of the 
 United States to be aflSxed. 
 
 " Done at the city of Washington, this 
 thirtieth day of March, in the year 
 
CIIRISTIAX LOYALTY. 79 
 
 of our Lord one thousand eight 
 [l.s.] hundred and sixty-three, and of 
 the Independence of the United 
 States the eighty-seventh. 
 
 "Abraham Lincoln. 
 " By the President. 
 
 "William H. Seward, 
 
 " Secretary of State." 
 
 The Christian people of this land can- 
 not fail to honor and to sustain, with the 
 most loyal devotion, an administration, 
 so distinguished by all the integrity of 
 principle which can honor an executive, 
 and all the fidelity of personal feeling 
 which can exalt an individual. And in 
 looking at the whole field spread out be- 
 fore me, I behold a glorious government 
 contending, like a tempest-tossed but 
 majestic ship, with a storm of intense 
 
80 CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 
 
 violence and fury, riding on the angry 
 wave uninjured, unshrinking, facing still 
 the vehemence of the tempest. I behold 
 an administration distinguished by pro- 
 bity, moderation, calmness, honesty, and 
 truth, — standing still on deck, a wearied 
 but unresting pilot, determined to weather 
 the gale, and bring safe to port the pre- 
 cious trust committed to his care. I see 
 his lofty head above the gathered anxious 
 multitude around him, still tranquil, deter- 
 mined, generous, and unexcited ; not fast 
 enough, not ambitious enough, not stern, 
 not avenging enough, I am ready to say, 
 as I hear multitudes say around me. But 
 what man has said, or dares in the face 
 of the American people, to say, not hon- 
 est enough, not conscientious enough, not 
 enough really trying and determined to 
 do that which is right? I see him with 
 
CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 8 1 
 
 his surroundiDg council, baring his head 
 amidst the storm, and while taxing all 
 his energies of mind and heart and feel- 
 ing for the most disinterested and thor- 
 ough fulfilment of his fearful duties, with 
 uplifted ej^e calling aloud through all the 
 wave-washed deck, in a voice that all 
 shall hear, and none shall misunder- 
 stand : " Look aloft, look aloft." Let 
 us pray to God, and trust ourselves to 
 him. Let us strive to do his will, and 
 ask and supplicate his gracious blessing 
 with us. He it is who maketh the winds 
 his messengers, and the flaming fire his 
 ministers. 
 
 I stand and survey this majestic scene, 
 this sublime spectacle, and I return to 
 my own heart and say : Before I am 
 disloyal to such a government, to such 
 an administration, to such a representa- 
 
82 CHRISTIAN L YALTY. 
 
 tive of the sovereign majesty of my 
 people, let my right hand forget her 
 cunning, and my tongue cleave to the 
 roof of my mouth. To my nation, to 
 my country, to the principle of freedom, 
 to the Constitution, to the Government, 
 while I live, will I be faithful ; and how- 
 ever depressed or downcast or desjDond- 
 ing may be the incidents and elements 
 of the day, even though in captivity I 
 sit by the rivers of Babylon, I will never 
 forget, dishonor, or deny the Jerusalem 
 I have loved, beneath whose shade I 
 have grown and been refreshed, and 
 with whose sons and daughters I have 
 gone to the house of God and taken 
 sweet delight. Still in prayer for my 
 beloved country will I look up to the 
 King of kings and Lord of lords. 
 
CHRISTIAN LOYALTY. 83 
 
 " Yes, Lord of hosts ! if blood and battle come, 
 And weaponed patriots fight for hearth and home, 
 "While tented field and bivouac, 
 The trumpet, steed, and victor track, 
 Soldiers of the world delight. 
 Who for crowns of conquest fight, 
 The prowess of thy Church will prove by ceaseless 
 
 prayer. 
 As Joshua did of old, true victory is there. 
 
 " Blest Teacher ! who unteachest pride to man, 
 In perfect harmony with God's own plan. 
 Leader of Saints ! thy meekness bring. 
 When war and faction round us ring 
 Yells of fierceness, which betray 
 Passions in their fiendish play. 
 Come with thy gentleness, celestial as refined, 
 And let our struggle be, who most shall love 
 mankind," 
 
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