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 Lansing, Mich., Feb. 24, 1863. 
 Ret. Edmund B. Fairfield, LL. D.: 
 
 Dear Sir: — The undersigned, members and officers of the Michigan Legislature, and 
 citizens of Lansing, believing that the publication of the sermon on " Christian Patriotism," 
 delivered by you in the Representatives' Hall last Sabbath, would advance the cause of our 
 common country, in this time of her greatest trial, would respectfully request of you a 
 copy for publication. 
 
 CHAS. S. MAY, 
 CHARLES MEARS, 
 E. 0. GROSVENOR, 
 E. 0. HUMPHREY, 
 E. BUELL, 
 N. GREEN'. 
 M. C. W ATKINS, 
 W. DIVINE, 
 S. H. BLACKMAN, 
 J. G. WAIT, 
 C. M. CROSWELL, 
 T. F. MOORE, 
 J. B. WELCH, 
 C. BUCKLEY, 
 W. T. HOWELL, 
 JAMES FOWLE, 
 AURA SMITH, 
 J. S. DLXOX, 
 G. E. READ, 
 JOHN GRINNELL, 
 GEO. THOMAS, 
 LEVI ALDRICH, 
 ISAAC C. ABBOTT, 
 P. C. SPRAGUE, 
 JAS. GARGETT, 
 EDWIN BURT, 
 
 C. F. MALLARY, 
 H. B. DEKMAN, 
 H. MILLER. 
 THADDEUSG. SMITH, 
 A. WILLIAMS. 
 
 D. G. SLAFTER, 
 
 S. M. CUTCHEON. 
 CHAS. MOSHER, 
 H. P. COMBES, 
 A. D. GRISWOLD, 
 N. K. GREEN, 
 J. J. WOODMAN, 
 WM. HEMINGWAY, 
 J. DOW, 
 C. D. DAVIS, 
 J. BOW EN, 
 C. FRFEMAN. 
 JAS. DOCKER AY, 
 A. W. BUELL, 
 R. J. CREGO, 
 GEO. COWAN, 
 JAS. A. SWEEZEY, 
 ELIJAH BENTLEY, 
 ASA SPENCER, 
 WM. WHEELER, 
 S. B. BLISS, 
 ED. W. BARBER, 
 WM. A. HALL, 
 J. A. CROSMAN. 
 GEO. W. POMEROY, 
 C. E. NASH, 
 JOSEPH MILLS, 
 H. D. PORTER, 
 H. W. WALKER, 
 S. R. GREENE, 
 E. LONGYEAR. 
 C. E. CLAPP, 
 T. F. GIDDINGS, 
 
 J. B. PORTER, 
 E. ANNEKE, 
 CYRUS HEWITT, 
 GEO. H. HOUSE, 
 J. E. TENNEY, 
 
 C. B. STEBBLNS. 
 W. A. WHITNEY, 
 
 J. C. ROCKAFELLOW, 
 A. F. MOREHOUSE, 
 S. R. WILCOX, 
 L. B. POTTER, 
 E. A. THOMPSON, 
 I. M. CRAVATH, 
 
 D. M. BAGLEY, 
 
 W. G. WOODWORTH, 
 GEO. P. SANFORD, 
 A. J. LEACH, 
 GEO. E. TREADWELL, 
 C. H. THOMPSON, 
 L. S. JENISON, 
 I. H. BARTHOLOMEW, 
 T. D. BILLINGS, 
 
 A. HARRISON, 
 H. INGERSOLL, 
 THEO. HUNTER, 
 R. C. DART, 
 
 B. F. SIMONS, 
 W. EMORY, 
 
 C. B. SEYMOUR, 
 M. D. 03BAND, 
 H. B. ARME3, 
 GEO. K. GROVE. 
 
 Hon. Charles S. May, President of the Senate; Hon. Sullivan M. Cutcheon, Speaker of the 
 
 House; Hon. James B. Porter, Secretary of State; and others: 
 
 Gentlemen: — Your nattering request for a copy of my sermon on last Sabbath, on Chris- 
 tian Patriotism, was duly received. It is a request difficult to be complied with. The 
 sermon was preached from a brief, the reading of which might have occupied Ave minutes, 
 while the sermon itself occupied but little less than two hours. This being the only manu- 
 script that had been previously prepared, I have written out the discourse in full, as well 
 as I could, from these brief notes and from recollection — taking the liberty to supply, here 
 and there, a paragraph or two, which, for brevity's sake, were omitted in the preaching. 
 
 The discourse has been criticised by a pious correspondent of a very religious paper , 
 (the Detroit Free Press,) as a desecration of the Sabbath. Of this, from the full report 
 which I here make of it, every reader may judge for himself. The correspondent referred 
 to, complains that frequent applause occurred during its delivery. B? this was Sabbath 
 desecration, those applauding must bear the responsibility of it — and not the preacher. It 
 is only justice to the congregation, however, to say that an audience of more weight of 
 character, of more intelligence, thoughtfulness or sobriety of manner, it was never my for- 
 tune to address. 
 The copy is herewith submitted according to your request. 
 
 Yours, very respectfully, 
 
 Lansing, Mich., Feb. 28,1863. EDM. B. FAIRFIELD. 
 
CHRISTIAN PATRIOTISM: 
 
 A. SERMON 
 
 DELIVERED m THB 
 
 W#&. r-6s. HSs *- ^ e * 
 
 ^Mtttetiv^ 9 §att, spnssmg, pklugjm, 
 
 FEBRUARY S3, 1863, 
 
 By Key. EDMUND 13. FAIRFIELD, LL. D. } 
 
 PRESIDENT OF HILLSDALE COLLEGE. 
 
 4 <(•> » » 
 
 LANSING: 
 
 John -A*. Kerr Sc Co., Book and Job Printers. 
 
 1863. 
 
.3 
 
 Fib 
 
SERMON. 
 
 In accepting the invitation to occupy this Sabbath after- 
 noon, with a discourse on National Affairs, I do so, not be- 
 cause I have any wisdom with which to enlighten, or any 
 eloquence with which to persuade; but because I do not 
 think that any man, however humble he may be, or to what- 
 ever profession he may belong, has any right to stand aloof 
 in the hour of his country's darkness and peril. He may be 
 a Christian minister, but in becoming such, he is to be none 
 the less a citizen or a man; nay, even the more, by virtue of 
 his ministerial office, should he utter manly words, and true, 
 in vindication of those changeless principles which lie at the 
 foundation of the Divine Government, of all rightful hu- 
 man authority, and of all true and enduring national pros- 
 perity. Whether those, whose good opinion he values, shall 
 approve or disapprove, he is nevertheless to be true to him- 
 self, to his God, and to his country; and wait in patience 
 and in hope, the final approval of Him whose Embassador 
 he is. The words which one of Shakespeare's heroes ad- 
 dresses to another, might most fittingly be spoken to every 
 minister, to every statesman, and to every man, at such a 
 time as this: 
 
 " I charge thee, Cromwell, 
 Fling away ambition; love thyself last; 
 Let all the ends thou aim'st at, be thy God's, 
 Thy country's, and truth's; and then, if thou fall'st, 
 Cromwell, thou fall'st a blessed martyr." 
 
 There is not one of us whose heart has been unmoved 
 amid these fierce and fearful conflicts, in which brothers, 
 speaking the same tongue, professing the same religion, and 
 living for so many years under the same flag and the same 
 
4 CHRISTIAN PATRIOTISM. 
 
 constitution, have met in direst antagonism, and shed their 
 blood like water, on many a hard-fought field of battle. 
 Least of all, can one, whose paternal ancestors, seven gener- 
 ations ago, sought a refuge from the oppressions and perse- 
 cutions of the old world, amid the unbroken forests of wild 
 and stern New England; and whose maternal ancestors, for 
 almost as many generations, have slept beneath the ground 
 which for twenty months has echoed to the tread of Johnson, 
 Lee, u Stonewall " Jackson, and their rebel hordes, — one in 
 whose blood, as it were, the parties to this contest and the 
 issues involved in it, meet — one who was born in the midst 
 of slavery, but who was brought to the altar of liberty at an 
 earlier age than eight years, to swear eternal enmity to the 
 " peculiar institution" so accursed of God and of man, ag 
 was never any other that has found a place among civilized 
 men— least of all can you ask of such a one that he should 
 be an indifferent spectator of a contest like this. 
 
 A year ago I sought the birth-place of my mother, and the 
 grave of her father, but found forty thousand rebel bayonets 
 standing between me and the spot. Had I gone a few 
 montfis sooner, I might have found the place of my own 
 birth beleaguered by men in arms against the constitution 
 of their fathers and mine. 
 
 Indifferent? Why, if this war were ten thousand miles 
 from our shore, no man, with a heart of flesh, could stand 
 unmoved. For there never was a war of such dimensions 
 before, since the world began ! I know that hyperbole is 
 natural, and that the use of the superlative degree in refer- 
 ence to all tilings present, and of which we have a personal 
 and bitter experience is very easy, but my words are weighed 
 when I say, that considering the numbers of armed men — 
 the intelligence and desperate determination of the parties — 
 and the terribly effective enginery of war, employed in this 
 contest, there never has been another of equal magnitude! 
 Already more battles have been fought since the firing upon 
 Fort Suinpter, than all that were fought during the seven 
 
CHRISTIAN PATRIOTISM. 
 
 years' war of the revolution, the war of 1812, and the Mexi- 
 can war combined. And any one of half a score of them 
 has been more terrific and destructive than battle ever was 
 before upon the American Continent. Considerably less 
 than three hundred thousand men, Continental and Militia, 
 were enrolled during the whole war of the first revolution; 
 already more than a million have been enrolled in this. 
 The Crimean war, the daily reports of which were read in 
 every village in twenty States of this Union, was a small 
 affair compared to that in which we are now engaged. The 
 storming of Sebastopol was pastime. The storming of the 
 old bastile of slavery is war ! 
 
 And does the preacher need to vindicate himself for dis- 
 coursing upon such a theme on the Sabbath, and from the 
 pulpit? That were an easy thing to do, if the example of 
 those glorious old preachers, the prophets, has any force in 
 it. The very first chapter of these inspired teachings is full 
 of breathing thoughts and burning words, as " the visions 
 which Isaiah, the son of Amoz, saw, concerning Judah and 
 Jerusalem, in the days of the kings of Judah," are enrolled 
 before us, and as the seer discourses of national sins, national 
 calamities, national repentance and national redemption. 
 Read it at your leisure; I will not detain you now to hear 
 it. And from that leaf to the last, there is scarcely one 
 that has not upon it some text appropriate for a national 
 sermon. Of all the " political preachers " that the world has 
 ever known, and that corrupt rulers and debauched politi- 
 cians have ever cursed or ever persecuted, the prophets take 
 the lead ! Witness Elijah, accused of " troubling Israel " by 
 Ahab, a king of whom it is said, that " lie did evil in the 
 sio-ht of the Lord, above all that were before him. 1 ' Witness 
 Daniel, whom scheming politicians, for his religious integ- 
 rity, quartered in the lion's den, more to their own ultimate 
 discomfiture than his. Witness Jeremiah, confined in the 
 Stocks by Pashur, the chief governor. Witness— but time 
 would fail me to tell of others, who were scourged and tor- 
 
6 CHRISTIAN FATRIOTISM. 
 
 tured, and stoned, and sawn asunder. But they would 
 "preach politics" nevertheless — they would persist in de- 
 nouncing national sins and social evils, as well as individual 
 and personal; and they would insist upon it that rulers 
 should " work righteousness," " seek judgment," " relieve the 
 oppressed," "execute justice between man and man," and 
 that " if men refused and rebelled " against such a govern- 
 ment, U THEY SHOULD BE DEVOURED WITH THE SWORD." And 
 
 professed prophets who withheld from denouncing the wrong, 
 and sustaining the right, fell under the scathing condemna- 
 tion ot these noble men and faithful preachers, in such words 
 as these: — " they are all dumb dogs that cannot bark /" 
 
 The bible, everywhere, comments manly utterances for 
 the true and the right, and condemns cowardly silence where 
 there ought to be bold speech. Your preacher is vindicated, 
 then, in discussing questions of national morality and free- 
 dom, from the pulpit, and upon the Sabbath; and vindicated, 
 too, not only by the example of prophets and apostles, but 
 by that of the noblest preachers in every age. Not a Sab- 
 bath, from the battle of Bunker Hill to the final declaration 
 of peace, but heard electric words from those " sons of 
 thunder," who filled the pulpits of America in that day of 
 our country's trial. 
 
 As the particular theme for this hour, I announce: 
 
 THE CLAIMS OF CHRISTIAN PATRIOTISM. 
 
 And it has occurred to me, since I accepted your invita- 
 tion, that of all the days in the year, this was most propi- 
 tious for such a discussion. 
 
 Had you stood upon the banks of the Potomac, a little 
 more than a hundred years ago, you might have seen, standi 
 ing a few rods from the river's brink, a humble cabin, occu- 
 pied by a pioneer family. It was in the month of April, IV 50. 
 The river, always rapid in that part, (for but half a mile be- 
 low is a fall of several feef,) was swollen into unwonted fury 
 by heavy rains that bad fallen a day or two before. The 
 
CHRISTIAN PATRIOTISM. 7 
 
 father of the little family was from home, and the chil- 
 dren were enjoying their play, not far from the river side. 
 It was about mid-day, and two or three young men engaged 
 in surveying the wild lands in that vicinity, might have been 
 seen, seated near by upon a fallen tree, and partaking of 
 their noon meal, when suddenly a shriek was heard, and then 
 another, and another, in quick succession. They hurried to 
 the spot from which the shrill cry of agony had come, to find 
 the mother of the little family frantic with terror, pointing 
 into the maddened stream, into which her little bov of two 
 years had fallen; and already the furious waves were bear- 
 ing him rapidly downward, and far outward. One of the 
 young men, a noble looking youth, began to thrust aside his 
 outer garments. A companion remonstrated at the perilous 
 venture; but he looked into the river, and quick as lightning 
 into the imploring face of the almost despairing mother, and 
 his purpose was formed. Letting himself down the precip- 
 itous bank, he dropped into the boiling current, and rapidly 
 ploughed his way toward the floating garments upoiTwhich 
 the mother's eyes were fixed, with a little gleam of hope. 
 On, the noble swimmer pushed, while the lookers on scarce 
 dared to breathe. He had reached it! he grasped it! but 
 no! — a mad wave had dashed it away! Again: another 
 dash with that strong arm, — but a vain one ! And now the 
 current was stronger — " the falls " were nearer, but the swim- 
 mer despaired not. Two lives were wrapped up in the ven- 
 ture — of the sweet little boy, and the heart-life of his trail 
 mother. Another bold and vigorous battle with the sweep- 
 ing tide — another nervous, muscular grasp, and a sharp cry, 
 "Oh God," leaped trom the lips of the mother, and tears 
 came unbidden to the eyes of the swimmers companions as 
 the little form was lifted above the waters. But the strug- 
 gle was to come. Only one arm was left with which to fight 
 the waves; but that was a strong one, and nerved with such a 
 purpose as an exalted humanity inspires, it had a strength 
 not its own. The battle was quick over, and away down the 
 
8 CHRISTIAN PATRIOTISM. 
 
 stream the two came safely to shore, and the drowning boy 
 was dropped into the lap of his fainting mother! 
 
 That young man was George Washington, at the age of 
 eighteen! — with that great heart of humanity beating strong 
 in li Is breast, which did not cease to beat, till lie was writ- 
 ten down M the Father of his Country," when he had, under 
 God, delivered it in its infancy, from the overwhelming 
 tide of oppression and ot power; which did not cease to 
 beat, until he was acknowledged " first in war, first in 
 
 PEACE, AND FIRST IN THE HEAKTS OF HIS COUNTRYMEN !" 
 
 It was the 22d of February that gave Washington to hia 
 country, and to the world ! And this is his birth-day ! 
 Hail to it! All hail to Washington, the Christian Pat- 
 riot! He has gone to his rest; but his country, though 
 mangled and torn, and bleeding, still lives! And thank 
 God for the confident hope that it will live yet, many — many 
 years. 
 
 But I had almost forgotten to take a text. You would 
 scarcely excuse me for failing to take one, when our text-book 
 furnishes so many, and so beautiful ones. My theme is 
 Christian Patriotism; and no text, for such a theme, strikes 
 my heart so pleasantly — none seem quite so tender and 
 touching, and every way appropriate, as the one which lies 
 before me. 
 
 Text. — By the rivers of Babylon there we sat down; yea, 
 we w>'pt when we remembered Zion. We hanged oar harps 
 in the midst of the willow* thereof. For there, they that car- 
 ried us atony captive required of vs a song ; and they thai 
 wasted us required of us mirth, saying, sing us one of the 
 Songs nf Zion. 
 
 Iloio skill we sing the Lo>d^s song in a s'range land? If 
 1 forget thee, Jerusalem,, let my right hand forget her cun- 
 ning. If I do not remember the-i, let my tongas cleave to the 
 roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my 
 chief joy. Fs. 137: 1-6. 
 
 I would use this passage "as not abusing it." And I 
 think it no abuse to quote it as an illustration of Christian 
 Patriotism. The writer and his countrymen were ill treated 
 
CHRISTIAN PATRIOTISM. 9 
 
 captives in a strange land. " Wasted" and yet taunted ! 
 You can see them in your fancy, as in oriental style they sat 
 down upon the ground — bent forward, each one holding his 
 face in his hands, and both resting forward upon his knees; 
 the very picture of dejection, and almost of despair! And 
 now you hear their enemies, at the same time their captors 
 and their tormentors — as jeeringly, and sneeringly, almost, 
 they say, Ci Heads up, my good fellows; now sing us one of 
 the songs you used to sing when you inarched up to old Je- 
 rusalem ! one of those real joyous dancing tunes to the time 
 of which you used to trip so gayly, when you went up 
 to the feasts !" Aye ! u they required of them mirth." But 
 their harps they had hanged upon the willows! 
 
 Mcthinks some of our soldiers that have almost famished 
 in the land of their captivity, at Richmond and elsewhere, 
 some of whom have been glad to pick up crusts and bones 
 thrown to the very dogs, and maintain life upon food fit only 
 for jackals — some of them might understand this passage. 
 Suppose their tormentors had come around to them in their 
 dejection, as the noble boys have remembered home, and 
 sighed for the humblest fare of a mother's kitchen, and 
 dropped now and then a silent tear, while their hearts were 
 6till brave; suppose their cruel torturers had said to them, 
 " Cheer up, my lively lads ! Come ! sing us Yankee Doodle ! 
 Give us the Star Spangled Banner!" What think you? 
 Would they have felt like it? It would not be strano-e, if, 
 with such adding of insult to injury, they should lose their 
 good temper as thoroughly as ever the writer of this Psalm 
 has been charged with losing his, nor would it be wondered 
 at if their indignation burned and flashed very much like 
 his, in the words that follow: " O daughter of Babylon, who 
 art to be destroyed; happy shall he be that rewardeth thee, 
 as thou hast served us!" The Psalmist has been pretty se- 
 verely dealt with for this breathing of retributive justice. 
 But I think if you or I were placed in a similar position, we 
 
10 CHRISTIAN PATRIOTISM. 
 
 i 
 should be able to understand him better. For my part, I 
 
 have not a word of fault to find. 
 
 But I come to my subject. And, 
 
 I. Christian Patriotism is founded upon the very na- 
 ture which God has given to us. — Love of home is one of 
 our divinely implanted instincts. We have all learned ia 
 spirit to sing the familiar words of one of our own poets: 
 
 " How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood, 
 
 When fond recollection presents them to view, 
 The orchard, the meadow, the deep-tangled wild-wood, 
 
 And every loved spot which my infancy knew ; 
 The wide-spreading pond and the mill that stood by it, 
 
 The bridge, and the rock where the cataract fell, 
 The cot of my father, the dairy-house nigh it, 
 
 And e'en the rude bucket that hung in the well; 
 The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket, 
 
 The moss-coverei bucket that hung in the well." 
 
 Musing thus, we are carried back to the home of our child- 
 hood — under the shadow of the Granite Hills, to the old Bay 
 State, within sight of the Green Mountains, along the Hud- 
 son or the Genessee, or the Ohio, may be across the waters 
 — no matter where, to some spot that we called home, in the 
 days of " Auld Lang Syne." 
 
 Another sweet singer has enlarged this idea of home, when 
 he says: 
 
 " All have their home. The chamois on the rock, 
 
 Leaps out his feeling of attachment; 
 
 The eagle hies her to the hollow tree, 
 
 Where she did rear her young the year before." 
 
 Love of country is but love^of home^expanded. And it is 
 not the spirit ot Christianity to root out these instincts of 
 God's own planting; but to refine, exalt and enoble them. 
 
 IT. The Claims of Christian Patriotism upon evert 
 American citizen are seen in view of the sacrifices which 
 our country has cost us. — It has been bought with a price; 
 the precious blood of many heroes has been shed for its re- 
 demption, 
 
 Eitz Green Halleck tells us of those 
 
 44 Who lo\e their country because it is their own 
 And scorn to gi\e aught other reason why." 
 
CHRISTIAN PATRIOTISM. H 
 
 But we have other and weightier reasons for lovino- ours 
 and for maintaining its integrity and its freedom. It has 
 cost us many lives to redeem it. First, from a wilderness 
 and secondly, from the tyranny of a haughty king; from 
 barbarism in the beginning, and from despotism afterwards. 
 The heroes of the May Flower fell in the first great battle 
 with an inclement season and with stern privations. JVJore 
 than seven times were they decimated within a few short 
 months from the landing on Plymouth Rock. Others that 
 came after them, only pressed forward, themselves to tall in 
 the same spot where others had fallen before them. 
 
 Our birth in the beginning was with many pangs; but our 
 redemption from despotism was a still costlier one. We be- 
 came by and by, after many a struggle and many a baptism 
 of blood, « as of right we ought to be, a free and independent 
 people." But " with a great sum obtained we this freedom." 
 England is sometimes called our "mother country;" i ut I 
 have little disposition to call her so. It has been said that 
 the three sweetest words in our tongue are mother, home and 
 heaven. I dislike to abuse the first of these by such an un- 
 hallowed association with the name of a country that has 
 acted toward us so unmotherly a part as England. Nor will 
 I cast undeserved imputation upon an already too much 
 abused class, — occupying often times a most unenviable posi- 
 tion, — by calling her, as some have done, " our stepmother." 
 No ! if she be any mother at all, she has often been a most 
 unnatural one. Mothers upon the Ganges throw their child- 
 ren to the crocodiles sometimes. England has acted towards 
 lis much like that. A few years since a woman was seen 
 begging through the streets of New York, upon the plea of a 
 deformed and helpless child, which she bore in her arms. 
 She gathered much money for weeks; and then it was dis- 
 covered that the inhuman mother had, by her own act, pro- 
 duced the deformity, making her child a cripple fur life, that 
 its helplessness might gratify heravaii :e ! England has bi^en 
 to us, much of the time lor a hundred years, a mother like 
 
12 CHRISTIAN PATRIOTISM. 
 
 that. I regret to say it; for as a child loves always to have 
 across the way, or within reaching distance, a fond old grand- 
 mother, so I should love to be able to say with true affection, 
 as an American, u England is our mother country." But, 
 how can I? — when I remember the rigor of her rule a century 
 a<»-o, and the iron heel of tyranny with which she attempted 
 to crush out our young life then; and, above all, when I see 
 that in these days of our trial, instead of doing works meet 
 for repentance, she repeats with aggravations the wrongs of 
 other years, seeming to glory in our tribulations, and to 
 rejoice in the opportunity of thrusting heavy weights upon 
 the deck of our sinking ship. 
 
 " Friendships," it is said, " are tried by adversity." Then 
 is that of England, for us, " weighed in the balances and 
 found wanting." In the hour of your prosperity men may 
 smile. It may be the smile of congratulation; it may be 
 the smile of fawning servility; it may be the smile of envy; 
 it may be the smile of genuine friendship. You can scarcely 
 tell. But when adversity comes, you will find out. May I 
 be forgiven if I do not love England well enough. But it is 
 certain 1 do not love her quite enough just now to speak of 
 her very affectionately as "the mother country." 
 
 In these remarks I speak of the ruling aristocracy of tho 
 country; many of the common people there feel otherwise. 
 Some of the ablest of her men have spoken and acted far 
 otherwise, and their names will be held in everlasting remem- 
 brance by a grateful people. It is said that the Queen her- 
 self 1 >ves America, and sympathises with the Union in this 
 life struo-o-le. If it be so, then will I join with the warmest 
 of her admirers in shouting, u God save the Queen !" But it 
 is of England as a power, that I thus speak. And history 
 has recorded it that we were born in the first revolution in 
 spite of her; and if we shall be born again to a still higher 
 life in this second revolution, (and I believe we shall,; history 
 will record it again, that our regeneration was not due to the 
 friendly agency of " the mother country I" 
 
CHRISTIAN PATRIOTISM. 13 
 
 Our country's independence, and freedom, and glory, lias 
 cost us something 1 We have been born to a vast and glori- 
 ous inheritance — an inheritance of mountains and valleys, 
 rivers and plains, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the 
 Lakes to the Gulf, — an inheritance of precious memories 
 from the landing of the Pilgrims to this hundred and thirty- 
 firrit anniversary of Washington's birth — and shall we, like 
 that profane Esau, sell such a birth-right for a mess of potage ? 
 
 III. Christian Patriotism DEMArsDS that the Unity of 
 the Country be maintained. — Our country is essentially 
 one. Lid 6ome one tell it me ? or did it come to me in the 
 visions of the night? No matter — "whether in the body or 
 out of the body, I cannot tell, but I was caught up into the 
 third heavens," and heard words which it is lawful for man 
 to utter. As I was borne on high, I saw in my vision a 
 grand convention, representing the vast domains of the Union 
 as it was, and is, and ever shall be. I saw hoary-headed Mt. 
 Washington, and Mt. Jefferson, and Mt. Franklin, and the 
 " old man of the mountain," and on their banner it was 
 written, " A band of brothers are we, from the Old Granite 
 State." Massachusetts Bay, and the majestic Hudson, and the 
 beautiful Connecticut, and the Savannah, and the Ohio, the 
 Missouri, the Tennessee and the Mississippi, the Columbia 
 and the Rio Grande, were there; the Green Hills, the Allegha- 
 nies, the Rocky Mountains and the Blue Ridge, were there; 
 Niagara and the Lakes from the North, and the Gulf of 
 Mexixco from the South. It was a grand assemblage ! 
 A thousand starry eyes looked down from the galleries upon 
 the majesty of the scene. 
 
 I listened to report to you, and the words that were borne to 
 my ears, like a rushing, mighty wind, were these: " Resolved, 
 That by the fiat of Almighty God, we are one; and what God 
 hath joined together, let not man put asunder !" And the 
 Atlantic, on the East, and the Pacific, on the West, lifted 
 up their waves on high, and clapped their hands in boister- 
 ous applause, and the sound of shoutings that rose from every 
 
14r CHRISTIAN PATRIOTISM. 
 
 plain, rolled through every valley and echoed from every 
 mountain side, were like the voice of thunder and the noise 
 of many waters. 
 
 Our Country is One. Early in our history, while there 
 sat in the Presidential Chair, one of the strictest of the strict 
 constructionists, of the u most straightest sect of that reli- 
 gion." was he — there came before the Executive and his Cab- 
 inet, the question ot the " Louisiana purchase." Tne Presi- 
 dent admitted that there was no constitutional authority for 
 making this purchase, and yet he made it, for fifteen mil- 
 lions of the lawful monev of the United States— more or 
 less. It was admitted by many to be extra-constitutional, 
 and yet it was acquiesced in; nay, it was opj)roved. l\o con- 
 stitutional authority for it, but "the life is more than meat, 
 and the body is more than raiment," thought they. The 
 constitution was but the raiment — the county's life and per- 
 manent prosperity were of more consequence than the strict 
 construction of a parchment. I am not now admitting that 
 in my opinion there was any deficiency of constitutional au- 
 thority; the discussion of that question is unsuitable to this 
 hour. But the strict constructionists claimed none, and had 
 always insisted that the General Government had only a 
 right to do the specific things allowed by that document 
 This was not one of them, and yet the Country needed the 
 Louisiana Territory fok its own Completeness. The 
 mouth of the Mississippi must not be held by a foreign 
 power, and with constitutional authority or without, it must 
 become ours. 
 
 Was it important then, and is itless important now? Shall 
 we to-day, at the end ot sixty years from the date of its pur- 
 chase, allow the control of this important outlet to pass into 
 the hands of a foreign power? Shall we surrender the oc- 
 cupancy of both banks of this river all the way from the 
 mouth ot the Ohio to the Gult? I do not ask this question 
 as one of policy, of finance, but as a question of Christian 
 morals. Shall we divide in two, upon some imaginary line, 
 
CHRISTIAN PATRIOTISM. 15 
 
 along which both nations must have their border police and 
 their standing army? Shall we of the North-west pay trib- 
 ute on the Mississippi River? No! NO! We shall insist 
 upon sweeping across your imaginary line, with the unre- 
 strained freedom of the grand old Mississippi itself! To 
 have your border police and your standing army upon our 
 side, and upon theirs, will be, as our poor fallen human na- 
 ture is, to provide for constant war that shall cost us a hun- 
 dred millions a year, and our peace for ever. No ! War is 
 a dreadful work, I know, and most of all, for brothers. And 
 for that very reason must it be cut short in righteousness. 
 When the alternative is, between finishing this war "for good 
 and all," by a genuine and abiding peace, on the one hand, 
 and arranging for ceaseless, annoying, petty hostilities on the 
 other — Christian patriotism cannot be long in deciding. 
 On this ground "justice and mercy have met together; 
 righteousness and peace have kissed each other." Christi- 
 anity and statesmanship strike hands in proclaiming, with 
 the old hero of the Hermitage, " the Union of these States 
 
 IT MUST AND SHALL BE PRESERVED ! " 
 
 It has been coolly proposed since this contest began, that 
 the Union should be re-constructed and New England left 
 out! This proposition evinces the little sincerity of the old 
 cry, — " The Union as it WAS ! " That cry seems now only 
 to mean—" The Southern States back again, even if New 
 England must be expelled in order to do it." Do these men 
 forget the history of the very war which made us a nation % 
 Do they know that of the whole number of soldiers enrolled 
 during the seven years of the Revolution, New England fur- 
 nished more than half? Do they know that Massachusetts 
 alone sent into the army — including both continental troops 
 and militia — more than eighty three thousand men ? while 
 all the States south of Pennsylvania furnished less than sev- 
 enty-two thousand? Do they know that little Rhode Island, 
 with an area of 1,250 square miles — less than the counties of 
 
16 CHRISTIAN PATRIOT SM. 
 
 Ingham and Jackson combined — that little Rhode Island fur- 
 nished more troops than the great State of Virginia? and 
 that Connecticut furnished three times as many as the boast- 
 ful Old Dominion? This is a tact which, as a native of Vir- 
 ginia, I blush to acknowledge. But it was no fault of mine 
 that 1 was born there. I have repented of it many a time, 
 of late, and determined never to be born there again. 
 
 " Leave New England out in the cold?" If the Prodigal 
 Son in the parable, had proposed to return to the home which 
 he had so insolently left, upon the condition that his elder 
 brother should be banished, wouldn't that have been impu- 
 dent enough? Impudence? It would have been decency 
 and propriety, and filial and fraternal piety compared with 
 the unutterable insolence of these shameless reconstruction- 
 ists! Had the Prodigal proposed the banishment of his 
 mother, and the entire surrender into his hands of the whole 
 paternal estate and all its appurtenances, as the condition of 
 his return, there would be something like a parallel ! But 
 no ! he came back with confession and deepest humility, tak- 
 ing to himself such words as these: u Father, I have sinned 
 against Heaven and in thy sight, and am no more worthy 
 to be called thy son; make me as one of thy hired servants." 
 When the seceding States shall come back thus to Father 
 Abraham, it will be time enough to talk about the new robe, 
 and the ring, and the fatted calf, and the welcoming music 
 and dance. 
 
 Leave New England out? That will be to leave us all 
 out! For no true son would consent to remain in a home 
 from which a loving and faithful mother had been banished. 
 And who are we ? Ttie Honorable gentleman who presides 
 from this chair is a native of New Hampshire. The Honor- 
 able President of the Senate was born in Massachusetts. 
 And nineteen-twentieths of all who hear me to-day are na- 
 tives of New England or descendants from New England 
 ancestry. 
 
CHRISTIAN PATRIOTISM. 17 
 
 IV. Christian Patriotism Demands of us an Efficient 
 Government upon the Divine Plan. Government is a 
 necessity of human society, and society itself is a necessity 
 of man's nature. Hence men never have lived, and never 
 can live without civil government. This necessity for gov- 
 ernment is itself the most solemn obligation to maintain it. 
 For a profound writer has said truly: " We do not say that 
 necessity makes law, but necessity is law." And legitimate 
 government exists for the maintenance of rights and the pun- 
 ishment of wrongs. But, all theory aside, "to the law and to 
 the testimony." Here it is in a few pregnant verses in the 13th 
 chapter of the Epistle to the Romans: "Let every soul be 
 subject unto the higher powers, for there is no power but of 
 God; the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever 
 therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God; 
 and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation." 
 
 This is authoritative. Human governments are God's or- 
 dination. We are bound by Christian obligation to sustain 
 them. But, is it not a broad assertion ? Is the government 
 of Nero ordained of God? Is every ordinance of Caligula 
 ratified in Heaven? Was George the Third, God's Vicege- 
 rent? And is the government at Richmond, established by 
 Jefferson Davis and his confederates, clothed with Divine 
 authority, so that those loyal men who resist its claims, and 
 stand by the old flag and the Constitution of 1787, become 
 obnoxious to the charge of resisting God's ordinance? Paul 
 was a close logician, and anticipated just such an objection. 
 The following verse shows how he meets it: " For rulers are 
 not a terror to good works, but to the evil." As much as to 
 say, "this is the kind of rulers that I speak of, as ordained 
 of God; if there are those who become a terror to good 
 works and not to the evil, then they are not ordained of God, 
 and they that resist shall not receive to themselves damna- 
 tion." But the Apostle proceeds: "Wilt thou, then, not be 
 afraid of the power? Do that which is good, and thou shalt 
 
 2 
 
18 CHRISTIAN PATRIOTISM. 
 
 have praise of the same; for he is the minster of God to thee 
 for good." By logical consequence, then, if the doers of 
 that which is good receive blame, instead of praise, and 
 curses instead of blessing, and evil instead of good, the gov- 
 ernment at whose hands they are thus treated proves itself 
 to be illegitimate and without authority. It is of true gov- 
 ernments, maintaining rights and redressing wrongs, and of 
 such only, that Paul speaks w T hen he says: u they are the or- 
 dinance of God." This is the divine test for discriminating 
 -between a government and a tyranny; between legitimate 
 authority and mere usurpation. 
 
 Now let us hear what Paul farther says respecting such 
 God-appointed rulers: — " If thou do that which is evil, be 
 afraid, for he beareth not the sword in vain, for he is the 
 minister of God; a revenger to execute wrath upon him that 
 doeth evil." Notice, (1.) That such rulers inspire fear in 
 evil-doers. A government that fails to do that, falls short of 
 the very end of its existence. When evil-doers incur not 
 the wrath of the Executive, that Executive has failed in his 
 duty. Notice, (2.) That the Apostle puts into the hand of 
 these rulers a u sword " — not a scabbard, but a sword, and 
 they " bear it not in vain /" It is not a sword with inscrip- 
 tions and adornments and trappings to be worn in the draw- 
 ing-room and on parade day; it is not a sword for show, but 
 for use; one whose blade is of steel, and means blood and 
 death to rebels; one for executing the laws, and for execu- 
 ting traitors who set these laws at defiance. Now don't 
 blame me for this stern word; I did not put a sword into 
 this verse. And among all the various readings, and inter- 
 pretations and glosses of commentators, expositors and scho- 
 liasts, not one lias ever hinted at a corruption of this text. 
 Paul himself has put the sword into the hands of government, 
 and if you are disposed to quarrel with it, you must settle 
 the matter with him. I recollect once, in 'New Hampshire, 
 of arguing a question with an ex-member of Congress, and 
 when he was hard pressed in the argument, by a pointed 
 
CHRISTIAN PATRIOTISM. 19 
 
 quotation from another of these epistles, he very coolly re- 
 plied, "That's where Paul and I differ!" If any of you 
 differ with Paul, settle the questiDn with him, but don't 
 quarrel with me. I speak to-day, only to those who admit 
 the authority of the Apostolic teachings, and to such it must 
 appear without a shadow of doubt, that human government 
 means physical force, whenever, wherever, and to what ex- 
 tent soever, it may be demanded in its own vindication. 
 " Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God;" but resistance 
 
 TO RIGHTFUL AUTHORITY IS REBELLION AGAINST HEAVEN. 
 
 It is to no avail to say that prophecy foretells a day when 
 swords shall be beaten into plough-shares, and spears into 
 pruning hooks. It does so, and a beautiful picture it is: 
 
 "And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the 
 mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top 
 of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills ; and 
 all nations shall flow unto it; and they shall beat their swords 
 into plough-shares, and their spears into pruning hooks. 
 Nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall 
 they learn war any more." Is. 2: 2-4. 
 
 This is in the " last days." When there shall be no tyrant 
 to oppress, no traitor to rebel, no foreign foe to assail, no 
 armed hordes to resist the execution of just laws; then swords 
 shall be beaten into plough-shares — not before. We have 
 not yet reached those days. But we have reached those 
 other times foretold by the prophet Joel: — "Proclaim ye 
 this among the tribes. Prepare war; wake up the mighty 
 men; let all the men of war draw near; beat your plough- 
 shares INTO SWORDS, AND YOUR PRUNING HOOKS INTO SPEARS ; 
 
 let the weak say, I am strong." This is the dispensation un- 
 der which we are living. This is the proclamation under 
 which these nineteen States have waked up a million of men 
 and sent them to the field. * 
 
 V. Christian Patriotism forbids that we should yield to 
 
 SUCH UNJUST DEMANDS AS WORK THE OVERTHROW OF LlBERTY AND 
 
 Law. War is terrible — slavery is intolerable. I speak now 
 of the slavery of white men. How is it ? You have sent your 
 
20 CHRISTIAN PATRIOTISM. 
 
 loved ones to the field; mothers their sons, wives their hus- 
 bands, and children their fathers. After a while that noble 
 boy of yours has come back again — not with gay step and 
 joyous glee, to greet you with the glad words, " mother," 
 u father," "sister," as they ring from fond lips that speak a 
 warm and generous heart but in "garments rolled in blood," 
 at the head of a slow and solemn procession, his mangled 
 corpse is brought to the door from which his feet departed 
 but the other day, with a cheerful good-bye, and a warm 
 kiss. You stand by his coffin, and your tears rain upon his 
 pale, icy face. Oh ! it is hard. You go bowed down to- 
 day, and the heaviness of your heart will never be quite re- 
 lieved this side of Heaven. 
 
 " Brave boys are they — 
 Gone at their country's call; 
 And yet, and yet, we cannot forget, 
 That many brave boys must fall !" 
 
 War is terrible ! But their country demanded the sacrifice, 
 and you laid them upon the altar. Your heart bleeds; but 
 there is a balm for every wound. Drafhng is a painful thing; 
 and many a wife and mother have spent anxious days and 
 sleepless nights at the dread prospect. But the blow comes, 
 and you resign yourself and your friends to the demand of 
 patriotism. 
 
 But try the other! Let some dealer in flesh and blood 
 come to your home and lay hands on wife, or child, or 
 mother, to reduce them to slavery. What then ? Yon stand 
 at your door, armed or unarmed, and the words hiss from 
 your teeth, as though they came sissing hot from the burning 
 furnace of your heart: " If you dare! Lay hand on wife, or 
 child, or mother, and you do it at your peril ! Over my dead 
 body you must walk first !" Your soul is an uncapped 
 volcano of melted lava to the very center, heated seven times 
 hotter than it is wont to be. Make your child a slave! — 
 mother? Your eyes would flash lightning at the miscreant 
 that should propose it! The electric fires would clash through 
 every nerve and fall in terrific lightning blows upon his ac. 
 
CHRISTIAN PATRIOTISM. 21 
 
 cursed head ! Let some man in dead earnest undertake to 
 drag my child from my door to slavery, and there will be a 
 coroner's inquest over some body pretty soon afterwards! 
 War is terrible! But "is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as 
 to be purchased at the price of chai?is and slavery f Forbid 
 it! Almighty God ! I know not what others may think, but 
 as fur me, give me liberty, or give me death !" 
 
 These thundering words that fell on the ear of the House 
 of Burgesses ninety years ago almost, might now be uttered 
 as fittingly in any of these Northern States, in view of the 
 encroachments of Southern despotism upon our national 
 liberties for a long time past. We have yielded enough ! 
 Even since this war began, our leniency has been deemed 
 cowardice; our magnanimity, timidity; our long-suffering, 
 pusillanimity and elavishness. " Our forbearance has ceased 
 to be a virtue." Let it end ! 
 
 This contest is not one of our own seeking; but we cannot 
 yield it ! When a robber meets me at my door and demands 
 of me full surrender and silent acquiescence in his usurpa- 
 tion, I yield to that demand only as I yield my self-respect 
 and the last remaining spark of rny manhood ! I cannot do 
 it. We have gone quite far enough on that road. We may 
 honorably consent to die freemen; we cannot consent to live 
 slaves. 
 
 Our Southern brethren have made demands and threats, 
 and for the sake of peace, we have made concessions and sub- 
 missions, until they thought us cravens and cowards. They 
 boasted of their high descent, and their princely blood, and 
 their chivalry; they were the patricians — we the plebeians; 
 noble knights they — miserable caitiffs we. Our masters, 
 high-born and well-bred, these Southern lords! their serfs, 
 ignoble and menial, we Northern " mud-sills !" Their super- 
 ciliousness and swagger has been quite too long responded 
 to by our obsequiousness and sycophancy. We'll s'op now! 
 
 "But they ask only half!" So a robber asks but half my 
 house! But what assurance that he will not demand the 
 
22 CHRISTIAN PATRIOTISM. 
 
 other half when it suits his convenience ? And who will pay 
 the guard that must stand day and night at the partition 
 door, to protect my life and what remains of my property ? 
 Grant to these Southern banditti what they demand now at 
 the point of the bayonet, and a standing army of two hun- 
 dred thousand men will not secure us against other, and, if 
 possible, more arrogant demands in the future. Emboldened 
 by past success, there will be no limit to their shameless 
 effrontery, no bound to their ambitious schemings, short of 
 the utter overthrow of freedom on this wide continent ! 
 
 YI. Christian Patriotism demands vigor in the Gov- 
 ernment. Bonaparte was a wise General. I have been pray- 
 ing for his resurrection these eighteen months ! He tells us 
 that when called to suppress an insurrection, he never began 
 "by firing UanJc cartridges. We did ! and we have done little 
 else since the war began. War? Yes, with the enemy it has 
 been war, — stern, deadly, uncompromising, relentless, with- 
 out an armistice. But with us it has been grand parades, 
 and reviews, and long delays, and patient waitings ! To this 
 there have been some glorious exceptions, and a pure christian 
 patriotism has rejoiced in them. For it is merciful in war to 
 strike hard blows and fast. The man who begins by firing 
 blank cartridges will only embolden and strengthen the 
 enemy, and in the end, ten times as many men must die as 
 would otherwise. 
 
 Thirty years ago, when rebellion was plotted, and the chief 
 conspirator — Cataline himself— was living to give it power, 
 we had a President in the chair, — not merely a "public 
 functionary." And he stood up to his full height — " every 
 inch a man," — and spoke words with a peculiar emphasis — 
 which, possibly, the third commandment might not justify 
 me in repeating — but which could not be misunderstood by 
 the milliners of that day. They knew that when " Old 
 Hickory" spoke, it was done. And the gibbet which Haman 
 had prepared for Mordecai, upon that the treacherous con- 
 spirator was himself to hang. The country knew that Jack- 
 
CHRISTIAN PATRIOTISM. 23 
 
 son meant it, and nobody had the courage or the ambition to 
 be a martyr after such a fashion. 
 
 There is such a thing as being " lenient to a fault !" Com- 
 ing ages will read with astonishment the history of this war 
 — a war marked on the one side with all that is barbarous 
 and vindictive in savage warfare, and on the other, with all 
 the gentleness, and amenity, and civility of diplomatics itself. 
 This rising in arms is rebellion, — high treason — the greatest 
 crime known to the statute book! Where is the gallows? 
 Not here, but down there! And who hang upon it ? Not 
 one traitor as yet ! — not one ! But only loyal men, who 
 have stood by the flag, and who have been hung by the emis- 
 saries of Jefferson Davis for refusing to join in his rebellion. 
 Hundreds of brave and loyal men have died at his hands, 
 and their blood will be found upon him. But with all our 
 talk about the sacreclness and dignity of law, not a traitor 
 has our government sent to the gallows, though the law affixes 
 no other penalty to this high crime ! Yes ! — I mistake. The 
 brave Butler did hang one at New Orleans. And now ob- 
 serve. What have we said ? — what has our government pro- 
 claimed in reference to the heroic loyalists who have been 
 thus executed in Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and 
 Texas? Not a word of anything. But when Butler hung a 
 man, who, with traitorous hands, had plucked down the Stars 
 which a Major General had ordered to float over a conquered 
 city, was the Richmond autocracy so fearful of " irritating 
 the enemy" as to remain dumb? No! No! A papal bull 
 bellowed upon the track of Butler, and condemned him to die 
 as a felon, if they ever catch him ! 
 
 Let a man in the revolted territory but whisper a word 
 against the usurpation of Jeflerscn Davis, and he goes to 
 prison and to death! But what sentence do we pass upon 
 such as publicly denounce our government, rejuice in our 
 defeats, and even threaten to assassinate the lawfully elected 
 President of these United States? Send them to our State 
 Legislatures, and to Congress ! Witness Dr. Olds, a gradu- 
 
24r CHRISTIAN PATRIOTISM. 
 
 ate of Fort Lafayette, escorted to his seat at Columbus, by a 
 two-mile procession ! Witness the loyal State of New Jer- 
 sey, electing a man to the United States' Senate the other 
 day, whose chief qualification for the office, seemed to be that 
 he, too, had graduated from that same distinguished institu- 
 tion! Witness— but I forbear; my heart sickens at the long 
 roll. They mean war down South ! And we have begun 
 to mean war here at the North. I use the past tense; the 
 future I fear, would better express it. We shall mean war 
 before the country is saved ! 
 
 Who are our enemies ? What is the style of their warfare ? 
 Their barbarism has lifted into the twilight of comparative 
 civilization even the Sepoys of India, and theSionx upon our 
 western frontier. As I heard Parson Brownlow discoursing 
 of his own experience, I felt my blood freeze and buil by 
 turns His narrative appears incredible, but his veracity has 
 never been questioned, and truthfulness is apparent in his 
 ver} T manner. And when he pictured to us a narrow prison, 
 cheerless, comfortless and reeking in filth, into which more 
 than a hundred men were thrust for the crime of loving their 
 country and its constitution, and its precious memories; the 
 "dead cart" driving up day after day with its rough coffins, 
 and driving away again with some of their number seated 
 upon these coffins, destined to the gallows; and when he told 
 us of one true man, who had wasted away by his long con- 
 finement, until, as he lay upon the stone floor, haggard and 
 ghastly as a living skeleton, his bones had protruded through 
 the broken skin, unable to turn himself over; his wife plead- 
 ing at the door for the poor privilege of caring for him, and 
 smoothing his way to the grave, but denied it — as he told of one 
 who, for this same high crime of loving his country, was hung 
 near the railroad, and for weeks his lifeless body remained 
 suspended, that wn day the riders on the railroad might, 
 with hands, and feet, and clubs, inflict blows upon it — the 
 conductor moving the train slowly by, to accommodate the 
 internals in their fiendish work !— Oh ! I asked, are we fighting 
 
CHRISTIAN PATRIOTISM. 25 
 
 with men, or with devils ? Of such as these, it were no ex- 
 travagance to say with Pollock: 
 
 " I strive in vain to set their evil forth; 
 Words that should sufficiently accurse 
 And execrate such reprobates, had need 
 Come glowing from the lips of eldest hell!" 
 
 I do not wonder that a Southern man like Brownlow, after 
 his experience with these incarnations of malice and murder, 
 should become a seething caldron of bitter vituperation and 
 Caliban execrations. 
 
 And there may have been other and darker deeds that no 
 Brownlow or Aughey have lived to rehearse. "Dead men 
 tell no tales ! " and we must await the future for the full rev- 
 elation of all the atrocities that have marked the history of 
 this rebellion. There may be too great leniency in dealing 
 with such wretches as these. God commanded an utter ex- 
 termination of the Ilittites and Hivites and Perizzites and 
 Amorites and Jebusites, that by their Heaven-daring deeds 
 of crime had made the whole land of Canaan ripe for ruin. 
 I know not but such is the bidding of Providence in respect 
 to the high-handed traitors and outlaws with whom we have 
 to deal in this contest. Certainly, if their utter destruction 
 is the only condition of reinstating the Government in its 
 lawful authority — let it come ! 
 
 VII. Christian Patriotism demands of us a large 
 humanity. That was a noble speech of the old Roman — 
 "the noblest Roman of them all" — " puto nihil humani a 
 Be aLl'3num\ " I think that everything which concerns human- 
 ity concerns me. The subliinest patriotism is that which 
 rests upon the broad basis of justice and humanity, and over- 
 tops all the stunted growths of prejudice and caste. "The 
 golden rule" is the law for all times and all peoples. Every 
 human soul, bearing upon it the impress of God and of im- 
 mortality, is embraced within the scope of Christian philan- 
 thropy, without which there can be no such thing as Christian 
 patriotism. 
 
 Ages to come will look upon the Proclamation of January 
 
26 CHRISTIAN PATRIOTISM. 
 
 1, 1863, as the noblest war measure known to history. This 
 is most magnanimous revenge; to gain a victory over our 
 enemies by striking off the fetters of millions of oppressed 
 men, whom they have made the victims of an injustice so 
 dire and so far-reaching as to involve in its calamitous con- 
 sequences, not only themselves but the nation. And it is a 
 glorious triumph which brings good not only to the conquer- 
 ers, but even more to the conquered. For the fall of slavery 
 will be to the South itself, the dawn of a brighter day than 
 they have ever seen. Slavery has brooded like a starless 
 night over that whole land; it has rested like a night-mare 
 upon its political, and social, and religious life, during all 
 the years of its power. They will breathe easier when the 
 crushing incubus has been removed. 
 
 Such a result was no part of our plan. But " God's ways 
 are not as our ways, nor his thoughts as our thoughts. For 
 as the Heavens are higher than the earth, so are His 
 wats higher than our wa1s, and hls thoughts than our 
 thoughts." If slavery dies by the verdict and flat of war, 
 it will be only another illustration of the saying of Christ: 
 " They that take the sword shall perish by the sword." Op- 
 pression grasped the sword and assaulted the nation's life. 
 If they grasped it by the blade, and it shall prove that its 
 sharp edge has sundered some life artery of the fierce assail- 
 ant himself, we shall not be among the mourners at the fune- 
 ral ! Slavery is the great felon, charged with this murder- 
 ous and traitorous assault, and if it dies a felon's death, from 
 its ashes shall spring a beauty and glory that shall cover all 
 the land till time shall end. 
 
 A nation has a higher and deeper life than appears to 
 many. True national greatness is not alone or chiefly, in 
 wide domain, or brilliant achievements, or material prosper- 
 ity — but in integrity, inflexible and equal justice, high and 
 noble character and befitting deeds — in the largest liberty to 
 every man to be and become all that God has made him to 
 be. That man writes his name deepest upon the nation's 
 
CHRISTIAN PATRIOTISM. 2? 
 
 heart who writes it in lines of justice and humanity. He 
 has committed his fame to the ages, and they will not let 
 it die. 
 
 A long time ago in the reign of one of the Ptolomies, a 
 light-house was to be built. The first architect of the Em- 
 pire devised and executed the work; laid deep its founda- 
 tions and built strong its massive walls. The story is that 
 the vain king forbade the builder to attach his own name to 
 the work, but required him to put the king's instead. The 
 architect thought that if fame was worth any thing to either of 
 them, it ought to be his. So deep on a hard granite rock he 
 engraved his own name, plastered it over with a cement that 
 might last a while, and in that cement was written the name 
 of the king. The stone went into the huge pile; the work 
 was complete. A few years, and king and subject alike slept 
 in the grave. But the storms beat upon the huge pillar, and 
 little by little the cement had crumbled, and with it the 
 name of the vain and showy monarch ; while that of the builder 
 appeared in deep lines which the storms of centuries have 
 not washed away ! 
 
 Some men have filled the Presidential chair who will be 
 known as dates are known, and not otherwise; but when the 
 outside plaster on which their deeds have been written, has 
 fallen away, and with it the memory of the deeds themselves 
 — on the granite beneath, by the Proclamation of Freedom, 
 issued from the National Capitol on the 1st of January, 1803, 
 will be found engraved, in efTaceless lines, the name of 
 Abraham Lincoln ! Such deeds outlive, ofttimes, the very 
 nation itself, to whose glory they have been wrought. 
 
 Men may sneer at humanitarianism, or abolitionism, or 
 Christian philanthropy, but at that Judgment Seat, where 
 you and I shall shortly appear, the Judge upon the throne of 
 His glory, shall say to the approved: " Inasmuch as ye have 
 done it to the least of these my brethren, ye have done it 
 unto me." Our Elder Brother identifies himself with the 
 feeblest and humblest of the race. "We may despise them; 
 
2S CHRISTIAN PATRIOTISM. 
 
 but he does not. The slave may be our weaker brother; but 
 if there is a child in the family, of whose rights the father 1*8 
 most jealous, and whose wrongs he is quickest to redress, 
 that child is the invalid. Let one smite your grown up son, 
 and you leave him to tight his own battles; he can defend 
 himself. But let cruel stripes be laid on the innocent child 
 of two or three short summers, and your ire can scarce be 
 assuaged. And is not He that ruleth over all, " Our Father V 1 
 Aye ! " As a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth 
 them that fear Him." 
 
 Call it sentimentalism if you will; but let me stand acquit- 
 ted in the Great Uay, of the charge of abusing or neglecting 
 the humblest and lowliest of God's children. He has a great 
 family to care for, but not a sparrow falleth to the ground 
 without his knowledge, and "the very hairs of your head are 
 all numbered." Let me not f rget the word of high author- 
 ity that speaks to me ever: " Kemember them that are in 
 bonds as bound with them!" I spoke a little while ago of 
 making white men slaves. But the Eternal Word makes no 
 distinction on account of color; and as for that matter slavery 
 makes just as little. It is a question of condition, not of 
 complexion. " Them that are in bonds," lam to remember, 
 "as bound with them." That is a hard saying, perhaps, but 
 ,such is Heaven's law. Neither my mother, nor wife, nor 
 children, are in slavery; but many a man as noble, as loving, 
 and as loved of God as you or I, has no other than a slave 
 mother, a slave wife and enslaved little ones. To remember 
 them as in bonds with them! That is a high command! 
 Tears ago we followed a little daughter to the grave. The 
 wheels rolled over the pavements heavily and sadly as our 
 tears fell. She was a sweet little flower, just bursting from 
 the bud, and I said involuntarily: "Gone! gone!" The 
 words aroused me; for they belonged to the sad refrain of a 
 slave-mother's song that I had read but a month before: 
 
 " Gone ! gone, sold a id gone I 
 
 Gone to the rice swamp, dank and lono 1" 
 
CHRISTIAN PATRIOTISM. 29 
 
 No! No ! my heart bounded to say, as I brushed away 
 the complaining tears; no, not gone there, thank God, but 
 gone up there, " where the wicked cease from troubling and 
 the weary are at rest!" 
 
 God lias come into our Paradise, making inquisition: 
 " Where is Abel, thy brother? For the voice of thy broth- 
 er's blood cries to me from the ground!" "Therefore, thus 
 Baith the Lord, ye have not hearkened unto me in proclaim- 
 ing liberty every one to his brother, and every man to his 
 neighbor; behold, I proclaim a liberty for you, saith the 
 Lord, to the sword and to the pestilence." (Jer. 34: 17.) 
 Like Joseph's brethren, we may say in this day of our calam- 
 ity — u We are verily guilty concerning our brother, in that 
 we saw the anguish of his soul when he besought us, and we 
 would not hear; therefore is this distress come upon us." 
 
 I am not here to discuss the policy of the Proclamation; 
 only this I know, that " he that walketh uprightly, walketh 
 securely." It is always safe to do right. Justice is expe- 
 diency every where and always. One man with the truth 
 and right and God on his side, is mightier than a thousand 
 armies enlisted to maintain the wrong! It is Henry Ward 
 Beecher who has so beautifully said, " Whoever rides in 
 God's chariot, rides to victory." 
 
 Not long since I listened to a remark, somewhere — no mat- 
 ter where — congratulating the four million slaves of the South, 
 upon their happy condition prior to the commencement of 
 this " Abolition War." Is that condition so happy that any 
 man who thus speaks would be willing to occupy it? 
 
 The slaves contented? So much the worse were it true! 
 For Edmund Burke never uttered a truer word than in 
 saying: " When you have made a contented SLAYE, you 
 have made a degraded MAN ! A system that should 
 prove itself capable ot so imbruting a man, that he could 
 consent to be a thing — a marketable commodity, merely, 
 would show itself thereby to be most supremely Satanic! . 
 
 But it is not so. The love of liberty is quenchless until 
 
30 CHRISTIAN PATRIOTISM. 
 
 the soul's light has gone out in utter darkness. It was many 
 years ago, while slavery still lived in the West Indies, that 
 there went out one day, upon a merchant brig, a gay party, 
 to enjoy a pleasure excursion. But the fair sky and the 
 smooth sea proved treacherous, and in the midst of their un- 
 suspecting mirth, a storm was upon them. They wrestled 
 with the waves a while, but the brig was soon dashed upon 
 a rock, and fathers and mothers gathered upon the shore to 
 see the uplifted hands, and to hear ever and anon amid the 
 roar of the waters the imploring cry of the wrecked party. 
 Relief must come soon or not at all. The waves dashed 
 high upon the shore; the winds were furious. The little 
 boats were near at hand, but to man them, was a fearful risk. 
 And even paternal love dared not the venture of attempting 
 the rescue against the frightful odds. Their slaves were or- 
 dered to man the boats at the peril of the lash ; but a master's 
 authority and threats were powerless against the terrors of 
 the angry sea. Their affection for their young masters and 
 mistresses was appealed to, but in vain. Not a boat was 
 manned. Something must be done, and the masters were in 
 consultation as to what. It was suggested to try another 
 appeal; it was agreed to. And one of the planters shouted 
 above the noise of the sea: "Liberty to every slave who will 
 go to the rescue/" The effect was electric; palsied muscles 
 were quickened into life. What the master's threats, what 
 the boasted affection of slaves for the master's family could 
 not move them to — the love of liberty could ! They seized 
 the boats, dashed through the waves threatening to engulf 
 them at every stroke of the oar, reached the wreck, and 
 brought safely to the shore the last member of the terror- 
 stricken party; not one had perished ! Such is the undying 
 love of liberty to which the President's Proclamation makes 
 its appeal. And when the slave believes our words, because 
 we have given him substantial reason for faith in our prom- 
 ise of freedom, there will be no lack of brave hearts and 
 strong hands to fight our battles for us. 
 
CHRISTIAN PATRIOTISM. 31 
 
 There has been great progress humanity-ward and freedom- 
 ward since this war began. We know the facts better than 
 we did. Slavery has developed its intrinsic barbarism to 
 the eyes of men who did not see it before. The proposition 
 to return to the place of beginning is as absurd as to talk of 
 putting an oak tree back into the acorn from which it sprang 
 twenty years ago. You may take the two year old Eagle 
 that spreads his pinions to grapple with the wildest storms, 
 and return him to the shell from which he came, sooner 
 than you can restore the American Nation to the position 
 which it occupied at the commencement of this war. 
 
 A few years ago a young man became ambitious of guber- 
 natorial honors in the little State of Khode Island— a laud- 
 able ambition enough— for although the State is small, it is 
 one of glorious memories, and its chief Executive is " Gov- 
 ernor" just the same. With a large expenditure.— of many 
 thousands, it is said— he succeeded. A friend rallied him 
 upon the cost ot his election, wishing to know how long 
 a time it would take a salary of $500 a year to repay such an 
 expenditure. To this the Governor replied: "I am largely 
 engaged in the manufacture and sale of prints— I shall be 
 better known— more favorably in the South than ever. You 
 will live to see the result !" Time passed on. The Governor 
 met his friend—" Just as I told vou, sir, I have sold a million 
 and a half more of goods than ever before— chiefly at the 
 South. And what's more, on short notes of four, six and nine 
 months; and more still, I have discounted every dollar of it 
 and have the money in my pocket. My electioneering ex- 
 penses are paid !" His friend admitted that the Governor 
 had made a good investment; his Southern trade was a grand 
 success. Time passed on; and the paper matured in the fall 
 and winter of 1860. Not a dollar of it was paid by the 
 Southern debtors, and the banks fell back upon the Gover- 
 nor as endorsor, and two millions had gone to the bottom- 
 swallowed up as hundreds of millions had been before, in the 
 great sea of Southern bankruptcy ! The Governor's shrewd 
 
32 CHRISTIAN PATRIOTISM. 
 
 financiering had failed after al) ! And then he resolved that 
 he would get it out of them in another fashion. He became 
 a Brigadier-General in the army, and has now gone to the 
 Senate, a pretty thorough-going u anti-slavery fanatic," to deal 
 heavy blows at a system that has lived by plunder for a 
 hundred years. The experience ot his Excellency was a clear 
 school, but it educated him well. From words which I have 
 seen from his pen, I should be inclined, in graduating him 
 from this stern school of Anti-Slavery, through which so 
 many have passed in these latter days, to give him the first 
 honor of his class; unless, indeed, that other man from 
 Lowell, Massachusetts, deserves it better. He seems to have 
 made equal proficiency in Anti Slavery learning, and to have 
 proved himself "born to rule," above any other man that has 
 been developed in this war. I have hoped that, as, like the 
 chief butler ol Pharoah, he seems to have been deposed from 
 his office for no good reason, so, like him, he might be speed- 
 ily restored to it. 
 
 But to our well directed efforts at overthrowing the rebel- 
 lion, by striking at the malignant cause of it, I hear it objected, 
 by pious politicians, that this is a matter to be left to God' 3 
 Government and the Divine Decrees ! Now, in this theolog- 
 ical aspect of the subject — were there any occasion for it — I 
 should feel very much at home in crossing swords with my 
 honorable assailants. But in truth, I have no occasion to 
 take any exception to their own proposition, that we abide 
 by God's decrees ! Most joyfully do I acquiesce in it. And 
 this is more, I fear, than these theological objectors them- 
 selves are prepared to say, when they have read the explicit 
 decree which I find written for just such a rebellion as this. 
 I read it from the second Psalm: 
 
 " Why do the nations rage," [nations or tribes; it may well 
 apply to these seceding States,] "and the people imagine a 
 vain thins? The governors of the land set themselves, and 
 the rulers take counsel together against the Lord, and against 
 His Anointed, saying: ' Let us break their bands asunder, 
 and cast away their cords from us.' 
 
CHRISTIAN PATRIOTISM. 33 
 
 "He that sitteth in the Heavens shall laugh; the Lord 
 shall have them in derision. Then shall lie speak unto them 
 in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure. Yet have 
 I set my King upon my holy hill of Zkm. I will dkclare 
 the Decree. The Lord hath said unto me: Thou art my 
 son: ask of me, and I will give thee the heathen [that means 
 those fellows clown there!] for an inheritance, and the utter- 
 most parts of the land for a possession. Thou shalt break 
 them [that means the rulers and governors that have devised 
 the conspiracy] with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in 
 pieces like a potter's vessel !" 
 
 That is the decree pertaining to this case? We are ready 
 to abide by it. And not one word of it shall fail/ It is only 
 for us to act in harmony with God's decrees, and not airainst 
 them. That was sound Theology which was so quaintly 
 taught by one of the earlier Divines of Kew England, who 
 in starting to a distant appointment through an unfrequented 
 and perilous road, was arraying himself for defense against, 
 possible attack. [That was the Puritanism of those days— 
 no sickly sentimentalism and unpractical theories of non resis- 
 tance characterized the stern men of those heroic times. 
 They carried their rifles to church, you know — set them in 
 the pew beside them; determined to worship God accor- 
 ding to their own consciences, and that there should be 
 "none to molest or make them afraid." They were of the 
 Cromwellian stripe, and remembered the speech of the Pro- 
 tector when he said to his men, not in jest, but in stern ear- 
 nest, "Now, my boys, trust in God, and keep your powder 
 dry !"] Our old Divine was of this same faith, and knowing 
 his exposure upon his projected journey, had his side arms 
 in readiness. A waggish neighbor said to him, " Doctor, have 
 you not preached to us that in God's decrees a man's time 
 to live and his time to die were fixed ?— and why take your 
 fire arms, for you cannot die before your time, without 
 subverting the unalterable decrees of Heaven!" "Aye, 
 
 3 
 
34 CHRISTIAN PATRIOTISM. 
 
 true," replied the ready Doctor, " but suppose I should meet 
 a highwayman, whose time had come to die, and I had no 
 fire-arms, what then would become oi God's decrees?" 
 
 "We bdieve that when even the Czar of Russia — despite his 
 nobles — has spoken forty millions of serfs into manhood; that 
 when slavery in this land has instigated the plot to subvert 
 our constitution, and a benign government under it; when it 
 plunges the nation into a sea of blood, to consummate its ne- 
 farious schemes; then, surely, however we may have differed 
 before, every loyal man must agree that God's time has 
 come for Slavery to die! And I f-hall not be found fight- 
 ing against God's decrees, nor standing between the execu- 
 tioner and the convicted felon ! 
 
 VIII. Christian Patriotism demands that we should 
 be willing to make sacrifices. — The world is full of vica- 
 rious suffering — suffering which one endures for another's 
 sake. Parents suffering for their children, martyrs for the 
 church, patriots for their country. On the 20th of October, 
 1761, 4,000 Englishmen assailed a New England town with 
 fire and sword. Taken by surprise, some fled, some fell. A 
 train of powder was laid from the magazine in the fort, to the 
 sea, to be fired when the dastardly assailants were free from 
 danger. Two or three wounded men, left to die, lay near the 
 train. One, "Wiluam IIotman, by name, proposed to the others 
 that he and they should crawl to where the powder lay, that 
 their flowing blood might wet it, and their bodies intercept 
 the fire; thus the magazine and the fort and the lives of their 
 surviving comrades might be saved. The proposition was 
 accepted, but only Hotman had strength to carry it out. 
 The plan succeeded. The fort was saved, but Hotman was 
 dead. On a tomb stone in the cemetery at New London, Ct., 
 the facts are briefly rehearsed, and followed by the short sen- 
 tence, "Here lies the body of William Hotman!" Proud 
 epitaph ! But such are the terms which are often submitted, 
 npon which alone safety comes to a community or a nation. 
 
 "It is expedient for us, that one man should die for the 
 
CHRISTIAN PATRIOTISM. 35 
 
 people and that the whole nation perish not." Our country 
 is worth the sacrifice which we are called to make. Shame 
 on the man who can mutter a word at the expenditure of 
 any money which may be necessary to this end ! And while 
 we pray to be delivered from shameless contractors, and 
 spendthrift officers, who are willing, in such a day as this, to 
 pounce like vultures upon a fallen nation, in the hour of its 
 weakness and its need, we will still be liberal to the Govern- 
 ment while it expends its treasure for saving the nation's life. 
 And away with the contemptible croakers who are feeling in 
 their pockets, and counting over their money, and brooding 
 over increased taxes, and higher prices, to see if they are a 
 penny poorer because of this war; and if they are, begin to 
 talk of surrender, and of the "good old days" in which the 
 oligarchy of the South ruled us to their heart's content! 
 Imagine a thousand men in some stronghold, besieged by five 
 thousand foes without. Day after day the siege continues. 
 At length ten thousand friends appear in the distance, has- 
 tening to raise the siege. They come with drum and fife, 
 with banners and with shouting; and how do the besieged 
 greet them? Oh! they send forth some penny-wise, snivel- 
 ing, croaking niggard to meet them with the shout: "Take 
 care! spare the fences! save the corn! don't walk on that 
 potato patch! there's a penny, don't tread it into the dust!" 
 Will they? Even the very stones in the wall would cry out 
 a welcome! Growing crops would be forgotten ! and a shout 
 with waving of banners and beating of drums, would give a 
 large and generous greeting to the advent of the deliverers! 
 Taxes high? Prices up? Then count it all joy that you, 
 too, can do and surfer something for such a country as this? 
 K-.-joice that you may in some little measure fill up that 
 which is behind of the sufferings of those who have perished 
 in battle, and in camp, and in captivity, for our country's re- 
 demption. I blush to speak of the cost of this war to me, 
 when 1 see a father who has sent four sons to the army, and 
 now and then one who has buried all that he had at Cor- 
 inth, or Murfreesborough, or on the Potomac. 
 
36 CHRISTIAN PATRIOTISM. 
 
 We talk of a heavy national debt ; but what is riches worth 
 without a country? What value has land when national in- 
 tegrity and liberty are lost? National debt? England's is 
 four thousand millions ; and not one of her statesmen ever 
 dreams of paying a farthing of it. Yet we call England happy: 
 and the other clay she could expend twenty millions more, 
 rather than brook a slight insult, as she claimed, in the affair 
 of the Trent— an insult which consisted simply in returning 
 to her own lips the cup she had so often pressed to ours. 
 
 Talk of what this war costs — in Michigan*? Where are 
 your fields laid waste? — your personal property seized by 
 the invaders ? — your buildings burned ? Never did this State 
 know richer crops — more remunerative prices — more ma- 
 terial prosperity ! The zeal of the confederates might well 
 put us to shame! They know what war costs! And we 
 should blush to own that we are unwilling, in the cause of 
 constitutional government, and justice and freedom, to sac- 
 rifice half as much as they are willing to sacrifice, in the 
 interests of unprovoked rebellion, injustice and slavery — the 
 maddest < nterprise that ever infatuated men undertook to 
 accomplish ! 
 
 The only sacrifice we have made is of our noble soldiers. 
 That* is sad: but we must learn in this respect a lesson from 
 the heroic Spartan mother, of whom you recollect. She had 
 sent her sons to the battle which was to decide her country's 
 destinv. The engagement over, a messenger hastened to 
 tell her the issue. " What news?" she asked. " Your sons 
 have fallen !" he replied. " Miserable man !" said the mother, 
 "I asked not for my sons — what of my country? Is that 
 safe? — are we free?" " Our com try is safe, and we are 
 free!" "Then I am happy — my boys have fallen ! but my 
 country is redeemed !" That's heroism ! — heroism, I believe, 
 such as lives today; and American mothers will resign their 
 brave ones to death — rejoicing, in the midst of their tears 
 and their heart agonies, that their country survives, and that 
 freedom triumphs ! 
 
CHRISTIAN PATRIOTISM. 37 
 
 IX. Christian Patriotism demands that we shguld 
 "never despair of the Republic." — And especially of a 
 Republic with such a history in the past, and such a mission 
 in the future, as ours. Our nation's work is not done ! It is 
 not yet God's time that we should die ! All the years that 
 are past have only been years of preparation for the mag- 
 nificent career w r hich is still before us ! 
 
 We have had talk of surrender and of compromise. But, 
 in the providence of God, we are now beyond the danger of 
 that. If WE were shameless enough to consent to it, the 
 South is not. Hence the change which, within a few days, 
 has taken place on the part of the secession sympathizers in 
 all the North. Their emissaries have reported from Rich- 
 mond that separation is the only thing to which our enemies 
 will consent. And even John Van Buren is not quite ready 
 for that! As we listen to the words of that gentleman the 
 other day in the metropolis, speaking on . behalf of the gov- 
 ernment, we ask spontaneously — "Is Saul also among the 
 prophets ?" Not that I have much reliance upon the leader- 
 ship of such as he; but there are men whose statesmanship 
 consists chiefly in a sagacity that is quick to discern " which 
 way the wind blows." We use no very heavy material for 
 a weather vane. And it is only as an index to the public 
 sentiment of his class that I allude to this speech. There 
 is a growing conviction among even the bitterest opponents 
 of the Administration, that the government must be sus- 
 tained, and the rebellion crushed, at whatever cost. 
 
 But there is a far brighter aspect of public affairs than 
 even this. The ship of State that started out upon its voy- 
 age, eighty-seven years ago, with the star of freedom shining 
 full into the eyes of the pilot, almost straight over the flag- 
 staff that stood upon the prow of the vessel, has been for a 
 long time veering from its course. Now it begins to return ! 
 Years ago a merchantman, belonging to Philadelphia, was 
 on her voyage to Liverpool, and the pilot, weary with his 
 work one night, called the colored steward to the wheel for 
 
3S CHRISTIAN PATRIOTISM. 
 
 an hour or two, while he might enjoy his rest. The directions 
 were plain, and plainly given : — " Keep that star which you 
 see yonder straight over the bow of the ship." u All right, 
 sir!" The pilot slept, until he was aroused by the good- 
 natured cook with — " Come, captain, I want } T ou to give me 
 another star — got clean past dat star long ago !" And true 
 enough, the ship was careering on straight to the south 
 with the given star far in the rear ! Need I declare my 
 parable unto you ? Ever since slavery has become the pilot 
 of our old Ship of State, she has dashed madly southward, 
 past the star of freedom that appeared in the Heavens, shin- 
 ing so brightly over our flag-staff on the Fourth of July, 
 1776. On the first day of January, 1863, the ship tacked 
 about, and now we are freedom-bound again ! It only re- 
 mains, as we find ourselves now in the midst of u a mighty 
 tempest in the sea" — so mighty " that the ship is like to be 
 broken" — that we throw overboard the rebellious Jonah, " for 
 whose sake the great tempest is upon us:" — and if he shall 
 be swallowed up, and never be " vomited out again upon the 
 dry land," while the world stands, we shall not be sorry ! 
 
 Reverses must be expected: nations, like individuals, be- 
 come strong by trials ! God rears the mountain oak amid 
 mountain storms. The roughest winds sing its lullaby 
 through the hundred years of its infancy, and it defies the 
 tornado for a thousand years afterwards. 
 
 We have had reverses — but reverses are not defeats! 
 — Seeming disasters are oftentimes the truest and grandest 
 successes. The hottest fires only consume the dross, and 
 leave the gold the purer. Storms may terrify the timid, but 
 the wise and brave hail the lightnings as God's messengers 
 — coming on en-ands of mercy and good-will to men — puri- 
 fying the air — and dropping from their swift wings, as they 
 pass, health to the invalid, and life to the dying. If it be 
 true that "righteousness exalteth a nation," then does ours 
 stand higher to-day than ever before. To be right is to 
 be conqueror : to be wrong is itself the direst defeat. 
 
CHEISTIAN PATRIOTISM. 39 
 
 Had we succeeded sooner and easier, present success might 
 have been only ultimate failure. We were never so near to 
 victory as we are to-day. The enemy has driven us back 
 sometimes ; but it has only been to renew our strength, to 
 raise higher our banner, and now — that LIBERTY is written 
 upon it — to march again to a triumph that shall be for all 
 time, when it is once achieved ! I was not of those who ex- 
 pected an easy conquest when this struggle began ; and 
 when the President called for seventy-five thousand three- 
 months' men, though " neither a prophet, nor the son of a, 
 prophet," I ventured to say, that — if this war was not to be 
 a failure — it would need ten times as many men and ten 
 times as long to fight it out! Perhaps it was my bad 
 Southern blood that taught me by instinct the desperation 
 of the enemy. But in due time, we shall succeed ! and 
 our very reverses in the past, shall be reversed in our favor 
 in the good time coming, by and by ! 
 
 Months ago a mock procession of six hundred men down at 
 Memphis, marched with beat of muffled drum to the funeral 
 of the old flag, and they buried it in a grave six feet deep ! 
 So men eighteen hundred years ago, buried the Christ, 
 rolled a great stone against the door of the sepulchre, and set 
 four quaternions of soldiers to guard it. But despite their 
 watch, angels rolled away the stone, and the Crucified came 
 forth with a glorious resurrection, leading captivity captive! 
 The time is not far distant when the land shall be shaken 
 with a mighty earthquake, and the insulted and buried flag 
 shall come forth with a resurrection power, and shall float 
 in prouder triumph than ever, over the^very scorncis that 
 have heaped indignity upon it! 
 
 I love the old flag! I love it for its^precious memories, 
 during these eighty-six years in which it has been the ensign 
 of the nation! I love it for its motto— "E PLtratraca unum" 
 — one out of many. And we shall never consent that tri itoi 
 tongues shall teach our children to read it backward, and 
 make many out of one! I love the bird that perches abovo 
 
40 CHRISTIAN PATRIOTISM. 
 
 it — for the reason for which our fathers loved it, and chose 
 it for their ensign — because the American Eagle dwells 
 proudly in freedom, and cannot endure subjugation! 
 
 " Go ! let the cage with grates of gold, 
 And pearly roof, the eagle hold I 
 Let dainty viands be his fare, 
 And give the captive tenderest care: 
 But say ! in luxury's limits pent, 
 Find you the king of birds content ? 
 No ! oft he'll sound the startling shriek, 
 And dash the grat3S with angry beak ! 
 Precarious freedom's far more dear, 
 Than all the prison's pampering cheer. 
 He longs to see his eyry's seat, — 
 
 Some cliff on ocean's lonely shore, 
 "Whose bare old top the tempests beat, 
 
 Around whose base the billows roar. 
 When tossed by gales, they yawn liUe graves, 
 He longs for joy to skim those waves, 
 Or rise through tempest-shrouded air, 
 
 All thick and dark, with wild winds swelling; 
 To brave the lightning's lurid glare, 
 
 Or talk with thunders in their dwelling !" 
 
 Such is the bold and liberty loving eagle which we have 
 chosen to be the symbol of bold and liberty loving America. 
 May the symbol ever be a true one ! The banner that waves 
 over us means more to-day than ever before ! It portends in 
 a fuller and sublimer sense, life to the nation and death to 
 oppression ! Never before did those magical words of 
 Webster have so grand a significance — " Liberty and Union! 
 now and forever, one and inseparable!'' 
 
 Despair not! The day of our redemption draweth nigh! 
 Our brothers have gone to the field — but they have gone to 
 conquer ! In this great contest Justice and Eight and 
 Heaven are for us ! 
 
 " O thus be it ever when freemen shall stand 
 
 Between their loved home and the war's desolation; 
 Blessed with victory and peace, may the Heaven-rescued land 
 Praise the power that hath made and preserved us a nation. 
 " Then conquer we must, when our caise it is just; 
 And this be our motto — "In God is cur trust I" 
 
 And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave 
 O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave 1" 
 
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