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 DETROIT: 
 
 FREE PRESS MAMMOTH BOOK AND JOB PRINTING HOUSE. 
 1861. 
 
A THANKSGIVING DISCOURSE. 
 
 THE 
 
 RULE OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE 
 
 APPLICABLE TO TEE 
 
 PRESENT CIRCUMSTANCES OF OUR COUNTRY. 
 
 DELIVERED IN THE 
 
 FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF DETROIT, 
 
 Thursday, November 28, 1860. 
 
 BY GEO. DUFFIELD. 
 
 DETROIT: 
 
 FREE PRESS MAMMOTH BOOK AND JOB PRINTING HOUSE 
 1861. 
 
E4 
 
 .5 
 
CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 Detroit, January 19, 1861. 
 To the Rev. Geo. Duffield, 
 
 Dear Sir: 
 
 Having listened with pleasure 
 to your discourse, prepared and delivered on the National Fast 
 Day, and being of the opinion that many of the facts and sug- 
 gestions therein contained, and much of the counsel affected by 
 it might prove of service, if more generally circulated through 
 the community, we beg leave to ask of you a copy of the same 
 for publication. 
 
 Those of the undersigned, who likewise enjoyed the privilege 
 of listening to your Thanksgiving Sermon in November last, 
 would be pleased to have a copy of that also, in order that the 
 two might be jointly published. 
 
 "We remain, with much respect, 
 
 Your obedient servants, 
 
 H. H. Wells, 
 
 D. Cooper, 
 
 Henry A. Morrow, 
 
 J. W. Tillman, 
 
 Geo. W. Hoffman, 
 
 J. A. Farrell, 
 
 N. Miner Pratt, 
 
 J. S. Farrand, 
 
 C. N. Ganson, 
 
 A. Knight, 
 
 C. H. Buhl, 
 
 W. S. Penfield, 
 
 J. W. Bagley, 
 
 Morse Stuart, 
 
 C. M. Davison, 
 
 C. Van Husan, 
 
 F. J. Dougall, 
 
 Geo. S. Frost. 
 
 Detroit, January 26, 1861. 
 
 To H. H. Wells, Henry A. Morrow, 
 
 Geo. W. Hoffman, J. W. Tillman, and others: 
 
 Gentlemen : 
 
 In the hope you inspire, that the discourses of 
 which you request copies, "might prove of service, if more gen- 
 erally circulated through the community," it gives me pleasure 
 to comply with your recpiest. 
 
 With much respect and Christian regard, 
 
 I remain, yours, truly, 
 
 Geo. Duffield. 
 
THANKSGIVING DISCOURSE. 
 
 JERE. 18: 7, 8. "At what instant I shall speak concerning a 
 nation and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and 
 to destroy it; if that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn 
 from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto 
 them." 
 
 Our annual day of Thanksgiving meets us under 
 circumstances so strongly marked, and of such strik- 
 ing contrast, as to bid us "rejoice with fear and 
 trembling." Seldom has there been a year so 
 crowned with the goodness of the Lord, in many re- 
 spects, as the past. "His paths have dropped fat- 
 ness," and "the little hills have rejoiced on every 
 side." Abundant, exuberant crops have poured plenty 
 into the lap of the husbandman; the fruits of the 
 earth have been reaped and gathered, and stored in 
 richest profusion ; commerce and trade had recovered 
 from the embarrassments and distrust, for a year or 
 two previous, so prevalent and perplexing; no pesti- 
 lence has invaded our cities, nor disease of mortal 
 malignity prostrated any wide extent' of our country ; 
 nor epidemic any limited district. The seasons have 
 been marked with health, and unusually exempt from 
 extreme degrees of heat or cold, or sudden and vio- 
 lent fluctuations. Tempests and tornadoes, floods and 
 
flames, have accomplished less than ordinary destruc- 
 tion. The ravages of death have been more than 
 ordinarily restrained. The mortality of our city has 
 been much less than usual, and no conflagration, or 
 calamity of a public nature, has filled our habitations 
 with sorrow. Although sad and painful calamities 
 have here and there occurred, and we have been 
 called, as a congregation, to mourn with parents 
 whose hearts were broken by the untimely loss of a 
 beloved and promising son; yet much fewer than in 
 previous years, have been the visits required from 
 us to the city of the dead. And although here and 
 there, in the southern portions of our land, the show- 
 ers of heaven have been withheld, the verdant field 
 turned into a dry and barren waste, and the hideous 
 spectre of famine reared her frightful form in some 
 of our distant borders, yet has there been more than 
 abundance to meet the deficiency of provender and 
 provisions thus caused, and a prompt exercise of gen- 
 erous liberality, to prevent and mitigate the threat- 
 ened suffering. k 'The pastures have been clothed 
 with flocks, the valleys, also, have been covered over 
 with corn/' and the shout of joy, and the song of 
 praise, have ascended from nearly every corner of our 
 land. 
 
 Amid these tokens of unmerited goodness, how- 
 ever, are to be seen indications of a fearful and por- 
 tentous nature. It has been a year of religious de- 
 clension. But few revivals of religion have blessed 
 the churches. The zeal and prayerfulness of many 
 have subsided into monotonous formality. "The sol- 
 emn leasts 1 ' and Sabbaths have by many been forgot- 
 
ten. The sanctuaries of the Lord have been dese- 
 crated ; few have come to the solemn assemblies. Vice 
 and immorality, in various forms, are on the increase ; 
 intemperance laughs at the restraints of the law; 
 public opinion sustains not its enforcement; profes- 
 sors of religion extensively frown upon and condemn 
 attempts for that purpose. The Sabbath has become 
 a day of traffic, of sensual indulgence, and of noisy 
 amusement, and drunken excesses and brawls; and 
 places of corruption, whirlpools of perdition, spring 
 up around, while magistrates, ministers of justice and 
 law, and multitudes that name the name of Christ, 
 rest at ease, and consent and "love to have it so." 
 Party political strifes have greatly neutralized chris- 
 tian influence. The wicked have walked on every 
 side, and vile and unprincipled men have been ex- 
 alted, by catering to the corrupt passions and de- 
 praved appetites of the lovers of strong drink. Noth- 
 ing, comparatively worth speaking of, is done to stay 
 the tide of intemperance and of Sabbath desecration, 
 which are sweeping so many of our youth and oth- 
 ers to the drunkard's grave. God's gifts have been 
 abused. ' His mercies have been despised or forgot- 
 ten. "Dumb dogs, that cannot bark," have stood as 
 sentinels of the press; and the work of corruption, 
 the ravages of intemperance, the increase of crime, 
 move forward without molestation, or hindrance of 
 any great efficiency from officers of justice, churches 
 of the living God, and christian professors generally. 
 These are alarming requitals for the goodness and 
 mercy and loving kindness of the Lord. Suddenly, 
 and most unexpectedly, in the midst of abundance, 
 
a cloud of gloom and darkness overspreads the sky. 
 Extraordinary dispensation- of Providence excite 
 alarming apprehensions. The bonds of Union, that 
 have for nearly three-fourths of a century held us 
 united as a confederate government of free and inde- 
 pendent States, become relaxed, and threat- of sever- 
 ance and separation are heard. A panic in the com- 
 mercial world produces dismay; State securities and 
 stocks of every sort are depreciated : an inflated cur- 
 rency excites distrust; business and trade have become 
 stagnant ; embarrassments are thrown in the way of for- 
 warding our abundant crops to market; exchange, for 
 a season, is rendered almost impracticable; the Lord 
 has blown upon men's anticipated gains, and "he 
 that earneth wages, earneth wages to put it into a bag 
 with holes." Consternation seizes the wise and the 
 wary; confusion takes the place of confidence; and 
 the providence of God is heard to "speak enact rning 
 the nation" and government, not as it was hoped it 
 would, to plant and prosper, but "to pluck up, and 
 to pull down, and to destroy." 
 
 It behooves us, on such an occasion as the pres- 
 ent — met as we are to render thanks to God for 
 mercies abounding — to ponder also, and seek to profit 
 from judgments impending. God, in a season of 
 prosperity, security and increasing sinful provocation, 
 has suddenly gi\*eu warning of approaching .judgments. 
 He thus calls to repentance and reformation. If 
 they are not so improved, men may please them- 
 selves with hopes of deliverance or safety, and think, 
 by their wisdom and skill, to prevent or counteract 
 threatened ills; but the wisdom of the wise will be 
 
9 
 
 found foolishness, and the resources of the mighty 
 utterly weak and unavailing. There is but one way 
 of averting the Divine displeasure, and escaping 
 from impending judgment; that is, repentance and 
 reformation. "If the nation," saith God, "against 
 whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will 
 repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them." 
 
 Such is THE RULE OF HlS RIGHTEOUS PROVIDENCE. 
 
 We invite your attention to it as applicable to 
 
 THE PRESENT CIRCUMSTANCES OF OUR COUNTRY. 
 
 I. The rule itself becomes a righteous God, 
 in His government of the world. There is, in 
 the minds of men, an inward sense of right — 
 a deep and abiding conviction — that they .should 
 suffer, who, having been previously warned, will 
 not repent of their sins. It is not necessary 
 that one man teach this to another. It is insepa- 
 rable from our intelligent nature. Every man intui- 
 tively feels, in his own conscious convictions, with 
 respect to himself and others, that impenitent sin- 
 ners, incurable by divine warning, are proper objects 
 of the divine displeasure. Impunity, under such cir- 
 cumstances, would prove a great temptation to athe- 
 ism. It is right and becoming, therefore, that God, 
 in His own time and way, should vindicate His 
 faithfulness, by executing His threatenings. For, if 
 men can at any time banish the fear and restraint 
 of impending judgments, and persuade themselves 
 there is no danger of coming wrath, no God that 
 judgeth righteously on the earth, there is nothing 
 too vile, dishonest, profane and flagitious, they will 
 not eventually consent to and commit, "Because 
 
10 
 
 sentence against an evil work is not speedily exe- 
 cuted, therefore the heart of the sons of men is 
 fully set in them to do evil." 
 
 It is with nations as with individuals; long 
 continued prosperity, and escape from threatened 
 and impending judgments, amid growing vice 
 and immorality, tend to hardness of heart, profli- 
 gacy of life, imperious oppression, increasing cor- 
 ruption, and provocations of crime. Those that 
 love and fear God, who prize His gospel, and 
 seek to do right, instinctively cry to Him for re- 
 dress, deliverance, and safety, when provoking sins 
 and abounding crimes prevail. The Spirit leads them 
 thus to pray, and God has promised to hear their 
 prayer. Should iniquity always triumph, and impu- 
 nity in this world always accompany provoking 
 crimes and a corrupt administration of government, 
 the temptation would be too strong for the faith of 
 weak believers. Hence the interpositions of severe 
 and sudden wrath, occasionally, by signal and right- 
 eous judgment, where warnings and impending evils 
 have not produced repentance and reformation. It 
 is right and becoming in a holy God, who has said 
 He will "avenge His elect that cry unto Him day 
 and night," thus to vindicate His faithfulness and 
 glory. 
 
 II. In applying this rule to the circumstances of 
 our own country, there are several inquiries of im- 
 portance for us successively to consider; and, 
 
 First. What indications are there of iniquities so 
 abounding, and of judgments so impending, as to call 
 for speedy repentance in order to escape greater 
 
11 
 
 evils'? As to the first part of this inquiry, we re- 
 mark, that there is no need for us to enter into a 
 specific enumeration of all sorts of crimes, in their 
 varieties, observable at this day in our country. We 
 may differ also from others and many, in our esti- 
 mate of particular vices in societj^. It will be suffi- 
 cient, briefly, to state a few things, which, the sacred 
 Scriptures teach us, indicate a corrupt state of soci- 
 ety, requiring repentance and reformation for deliv- 
 erance from impending judgments. 
 
 1. The first is, when all sorts of crimes are on 
 the increase. Such a state of things indicates a gen- 
 eral corrupt state of society, like that of the prophet 
 referred to in Israel, when he lamented, " Ah, sinful 
 nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evil- 
 doers, children that are corrupters, they have forsa- 
 ken the Lord; they have provoked the Holy One of 
 Israel to anger; they have gone away backward."* 
 That vice and immorality are on the increase 
 in our land, none can deny. The statistics of 
 crime, the columns of the daily gazettes, prove it. 
 It is not designed to intimate, that, as a people, we 
 are as corrupt as are other nations which might be 
 named, or as we may }^et become without repent- 
 ance and reformation. But there are few provoking 
 sins condemned in the word of God, and known to 
 be worthy of punishment by man' as well as God, 
 that are not to be found in the catalogue of our 
 guilt as a people. From the most impudent and 
 law-defying atheism — that has attempted to impose 
 upon the common sense of the communities in our 
 
 * Isaiah 1 : 5. 
 
12 
 
 large cities, especially New York, by claiming the 
 protection of our federal constitution for theatrical 
 exhibitions, and musical concerts, and lager beer fes- 
 tivals on the Sabbath, in open defiance of municipal 
 law and public sentiment, under the blasphemous 
 pretext of these things being their worship and 
 their rights of conscience — down through the vilest 
 intemperance, sensuality and uncleanness, to every 
 phase of dishonesty, deception, oppression, and moral 
 degradation, may we trace the black and odious list. 
 Who will dare to make it a plea with God on our be- 
 half, that we are free from prevalent profanity, horrid 
 oaths and blasphemies, open and wanton desecration 
 of the Sabbath, filial disobedience, contempt of pa- 
 rental authority, bloodshed, murder, drunkenness, licen- 
 tiousness, lewdness, repudiation of marriage contracts, 
 adultery, theft, burglary, swindling, wholesale fraud and 
 gambling of every hateful sort, oppression, slavery, 
 with all its catalogue of abominations, falsehood and 
 defamation of every type, and avarice with its end- 
 less cruelties and exactions'? Not one. Not only 
 have these sins a growing prevalence, indicating a 
 corrupt state of society, but a second indication of 
 this observable is, that: 
 
 2. All sorts of persons, and ever}* grade of soci- 
 ety, are involved in them; many by their own personal 
 guilt ) still more by not doing what they can to prevent 
 them in others. All sorts of persons, in every pro- 
 fession and vocation, are found consenting to the re- 
 laxation of law, and to the venality of officers of gov- 
 ernment. The proof of this is to be seen; in eleva- 
 ting corrupt men to places of trust and power; in 
 
13 
 
 not testifying openly and publicly against the vices 
 prevalent; in indifference and refusal to adopt and 
 co-operate in measures for the execution of law ; and 
 in not mourning for what they cannot remedy. 
 And not only is the world around full of such sins 
 as are its own, appropriate to men of unbelieving 
 minds, and unrenewed by the spirit of holiness. But, 
 3. A third characteristic is, that churches, 
 and professors of religion extensively, are not free 
 from a participation in them, but practice such as are 
 peculiar to them — pride, vanity, boasting, ostenta- 
 tion, self-righteousness, luxury, covetousness, ambition, 
 sensuality, conformity to corrupt fashions, and drink- 
 ing usages, formality, deadness and coldness in reli- 
 gion, indifference to the cause of God, the claims of 
 the Sabbath, and public morals, rivalry, proselytism, 
 want of cordial co-operation, self-applause, loss of zeal 
 for God and Christ, seeking their own ease, hypoc- 
 risy, and making religion often a cloak for unright- 
 eousness, or a stepping-stone to commercial, politi- 
 cal, or social ambitious preferment. These things 
 are so obvious, that all the fair glosses of a mere 
 profession of religion cannot conceal them. Thus is 
 Christ wounded in the house of His friends; and 
 many of the wicked stumble, and find occasion to 
 reproach and blaspheme, and proclaim themselves 
 skeptical and devoid of confidence altogether in re- 
 lation to real vital godliness. Certainly such things 
 call for repentance, and cannot be sufficiently be- 
 wailed. Sad evidence is there, not only that the 
 foolish, but that all the virgins, wise and foolish, slum- 
 ber and sleep while the Lord delayeth His coming. 
 
14 
 
 4. Beside these, we may discern indications, that, 
 in some respects, our sins, more strictly nation- 
 al, are becoming more than ordinarily aggrava- 
 ted, and that in despite of solemn warning. Intem- 
 perance has been, and yet is, one of our national 
 sins. It has been fearfully rebuked by the annual 
 immolation of 100,000 of our fellow citizens, by the 
 steady increase of onerous taxes, by crowded jails 
 and poor houses, by the multiplication of the insane, 
 by demands for lunatic and drunkards' and other 
 asylums, and by the lawlessness, and murders, and 
 other crimes it produces. Yet public opinion treats 
 it as a matter of indifference ; will not sanction and 
 call for the enforcement of the prohibitory liquor 
 law; elevates to office men that treat it with con- 
 tempt; sustains and justifies public functionaries sworn 
 to enforce the laws, who perjure themselves by not 
 doing it; looks, with allowance and approbation, upon 
 the conspiracy of liquor dealers to defy the law and 
 tread down the Sabbath ; and countenances the vend- 
 ing and use of adulterated and poisonous mixtures, 
 known, and publicly proved, to be abominable and 
 murderous frauds practiced on the community. 
 With all the clear light upon this subject, and the 
 numerous rebukes, which God in his providence ad- 
 ministers for this sin, it is no small aggravation of 
 our guilt, that such a state of things, on the part of 
 rulers and ruled, should continue. 
 
 Another of our great national sins, becoming 
 more and more aggravated, is the growing prac- 
 tical contempt for the moral obligation of con- 
 contracts. The federal government violated the 
 
15 
 
 faith of its treaties with the Cherokee Indians. Of- 
 ficial oaths are extensively disregarded. A man's 
 word in business, especially his promise, was once 
 extensively regarded as good as his bond. Honor 
 and honesty were safeguards of social compacts. 
 But now, no man regards himself safe from imposi- 
 tion and unfaithfulness to promises and contracts, 
 except in so far as he can vindicate his claims and 
 rights by process of law. Even securities, given ac- 
 cording to law, for the faithful performance of offi- 
 cial duties, or in private contracts, are regarded as 
 worthless, and laughed at both in the church and in 
 the world. Subscriptions, on the part both of reli- 
 gious professors and irreligious men, even when ex- 
 pressed in promissory notes, are repudiated without 
 shame and compunction. Men accept of places of 
 trust, and ridicule the idea of their being required 
 or expected faithfully to discharge their duties. 
 Stations of influence, places of power and patronage 
 are sought, not for the public good, but for personal 
 advantage. Covenant engagements, and the duties 
 thence arising, even among church members, are es- 
 teemed but light affairs, relinquishable at will. Re- 
 ligious professors, in managing voluntary societies, 
 and religious associations and congregations, under 
 various pretexts, pervert funds, alienate property, and 
 set examples of robbery and fraud, allied to the 
 swindling operations of unprincipled men in banks, 
 and other corporate companies. The provisions of 
 Federal and State constitutions are disregarded ; and 
 Legislative enactments and judiciary decisions are 
 framed to render them worthless. Honest, confiding, 
 
16 
 
 conscientious, order-loving and law-abiding citizens, 
 are betrayed and robbed by the promises and schemes 
 of speculators. One generation begins to sneer at the 
 idea of compacts being binding on them, which have 
 descended from a former. The son repudiates the 
 obligations of the father. Many repudiate their own, 
 and fail, or make assignments, after having covered 
 up whatever property they can conceal, and eventually 
 are found to have purchased their own notes at 
 heavy discounts, and defrauded their creditors. 
 "Judgment is fallen in the streets, and equity can- 
 not enter." The very ligaments of the social state 
 are sundered. Even the marriage compact begins to 
 be regarded by many as binding only as long as 
 convenient. 
 
 Another of our great national sins beginning 
 to develop itself is the avaricious pursuit of gain. 
 Commercial greatness is the idol and ambition 
 of all our chief cities. Desire for wealth, in 
 rapid and large accumulation, renders many ready to 
 prey, each upon his neighbor, and laugh at the idea 
 of honor or honesty in commercial transactions, be- 
 yond the flagrant offenses which can be detected 
 and punished at law. It is becoming characteristic 
 of us, as a people, to sacrifice time, social and do- 
 mestic comfort, and to neglect the means of moral and 
 religious improvement, in the mad and hot pursuit 
 of wealth. Nothing but amusement attracts the 
 masses -, science and religion have but few votaries 
 that can give an evening or two a week for im- 
 provement. God has rebuked this spirit, again and 
 again, by the embarrassments of trade, the revul- 
 
17 
 
 sions in the market, the panics started, the depreci- 
 ation of stocks and property, and the destruction of 
 confidence and credit in business. Yet no change, 
 no repentance, no reformation takes place, but the 
 absorption of mind and heart, and the rush, are as 
 great as ever, and greater, after extravagant profits 
 and illicit gain, whenever the pressure of impending 
 judgment is lightened. After repeated warnings, such 
 things greatly aggravate the guilt of that "covet- 
 ousness which is idolatry." 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to add, that slavery, 
 with its accompaniments and consequents, is another 
 of our great national evils and God-provoking sins. 
 But the violence of party strife, the alienations and 
 rivalries, the jealousies, and fears, and reproaches, 
 and collisions of interest between those involved in 
 it and those relatively affected by it, and the con- 
 tests for political victory, in the absence of moral 
 influence and fraternal sympathy and good will, 
 have thrown far back, apparently, the day of re- 
 pentance and reformation. Passion has taken the 
 place of reason. Prejudice has overpowered con- 
 science. Christianity has been invoked to subsidize 
 oppression. Churches have been rent. Alienations 
 have been rendered apparently incurable, and loud 
 threats are heard of secession, separation, and disso- 
 lution of the Union. These things are omens of 
 dread import, and they suggest a second leading in- 
 quiry : 
 
 Second. What are the ordinary impending judg- 
 ments, foretokening approaching crises of distress, 
 calamity or ruin, and which can only be prevented 
 2 
 
18 
 
 by repentance] Judgments, as we learn from the 
 sacred Scriptures, are either of a temporal or spir- 
 itual nature. Of the former, are seasons of afflic- 
 tion, wide-spread disease, especially visitations of 
 pestilence, seasons of want and privation, when the 
 Lord turns His hand upon men's gains, withers their 
 crops, blasts their fields, destroys their business, and 
 renders their labor and industry unproductive and 
 valueless. A third method is when He sends the 
 ravages of mildew and various insects, drought-, 
 floods, tempests, tornadoes and such like, that cause 
 suffering and famine to a greater or less extent. A 
 fourth is, when He lets loose the restraints of His 
 providence, and allows assaults and injuries and tell 
 passions prevailing, to lead to war. Another method 
 is to make rulers a curse, and cause the people to 
 suffer from mercenary cruelty and oppression by ru- 
 inous policy adopted, or utter recklessness and prof- 
 ligacy, and infidelity in the execution of their trust 
 and responsibilities. And still another and disas- 
 trous method is, to inflict spiritual judgments, by 
 withholding His Holy Spirit, so that the churches, 
 becoming cold and dead, corrupt, and copying the 
 fashions of the world, make a profession of religion 
 such a formal, hypocritical thing, that it loses all its 
 moral power and redeeming influence. 
 
 All these things are tokens of the divine displeas- 
 ure. Whenever and wherever they occur, loud are the 
 calls of God to immediate repentance. We need 
 not say, that in retracing the history of the past 
 sixty years, we can discern all these things to have 
 occurred among ourselves. Seasons of agricultural, 
 
19 
 
 manufacturing and commercial prosperity, through 
 years of general health, have been followed with 
 seasons of disease, commercial disaster, visitations in 
 different forms of pestilence, partial famines, war, and 
 general anxiety and distress. Seasons of great and 
 extensive revival and religious awakening, have been 
 succeeded by those of stupor, worldliness, sensuality 
 and selfishness, awakening the uneasy fears of 
 watchmen stationed on the walls of the church, and 
 others seeking the honor of God and the salvation 
 of men. 
 
 Divine Providence has afflicted us as a people in 
 the most marked manner, again and again; and the 
 present money panic, in the midst of abundance and 
 animating prospects of commercial prosperity — occur- 
 ring in a day of religious declension, and immedi- 
 ately consequent on political contests and jubilations — 
 seems to be the very voice of God, proclaiming His 
 displeasure, and calling to repentance. We may 
 think, and say, that it has been unnecessary, and re- 
 fer it to this cause and the other-, to political in- 
 trigues, or the rage of disappointed partisans, or cu- 
 pidity of scheming speculators; and we may say, as 
 we read the movements of Providence, that they 
 who have sown the. wind, are reaping the whirl- 
 wind. But the fact is not to be questioned, that 
 suddenly, as by the violent jerk of a powerful bit 
 in the jaws, the prancing fiery steed has been reined 
 in, and made almost to fall, so has the commercial 
 world been arrested, and made for a moment to 
 stand amazed and tremble. It is the call of God: 
 "Repent, and turn yourselves from all your trans- 
 
20 
 
 gressions, so that your iniquity does not prove your 
 ruin/' Warning after warning has been given — re- 
 buke after rebuke, and now, unexpectedly, in rapid 
 succession, in the midst of rejoicings, and when least 
 expected, it is repeated, as though some fearful crisis 
 in Providence is at hand. 
 
 What that crisis is, is obvious to every intelli- 
 gent observer of passing events. It is the dissolu- 
 tion of the Union, that binds together in harmony 
 and prosperity this great confederacy of free and 
 independent States. Such an event could not fail 
 to produce results in every respect to be deprecated, 
 if not fatally disastrous to the future well-being of 
 these United States, severally as well as collectively. 
 The history of the revolution, and of the trials and 
 frequent agony of the great father of his country, 
 raised up and sustained so wonderfully by a gra- 
 cious Providence, during the }^ears of contest with 
 Great Britain, proved the perils and perplexities of 
 a mere States' compact and legislative council, 
 which formed the bond of union among associated 
 colonies, or brought men together by pressing exi- 
 gencies. The federal constitution, framed with so 
 much care and wisdom by the great patriots and 
 statesmen assembled in convention in 1787 — the 
 names of many of whom emblazon the annals of 
 our country's fame, — and adopted successively, with 
 amendments, suggested by different individual States, 
 became a bond of union of such enhanced force and 
 aptitude, that when consummated by the organiza- 
 tion of a federal government, was thought and pro- 
 claimed by multitudes to be perpetual and indisso- 
 
21 
 
 luble. It has been the element of our greatness 
 and glory as a free and independent nation — the 
 very centre of endless processes of our country's in- 
 dustry and prosperity. Like the heart in the hu- 
 man body, which sends its throbbing pulsations 
 through all the arteries and veins, bearing life, nour- 
 ishment and vigor, so has it, through all our civil, 
 political, commercial, financial and productive sys- 
 tems, united and assimilated increasing millions in 
 one vast giant confederacy, which has stretched its 
 vigorous growth across the continent, nearly from 
 the frozen region of the north, to the torrid equa- 
 torial climes. Its power and glory have astonished 
 the world, as by the blessings of Divine Providence 
 it has turned the desert into an Eden, and made 
 the wilderness to blossom as the rose. Like the 
 Orient sun, it has poured forth its radiant beams, 
 waxing in its strength, as its splendor advanced, 
 from hemisphere to hemisphere, and illumined the 
 globe. While wretchedness, tyranny and crime set- 
 tled in deep midnight gloom on other lands, and 
 wars and desolation filled their inhabitants with 
 consternation and horror, here all was prosperity 
 and happiness, grandeur and glory, under its vital- 
 izing power. Like the gravitating force which 
 gives stability to the earth, it has been the primum 
 mobile of our Union, which nothing but violence, 
 like earthquake throes, could rend. The volcanic 
 fires of mad, impetuous passion alone, confined and 
 struggling beneath our foundations, and not external 
 violence, are the only source of danger to the sta- 
 bility and perpetuity of that constitution, which, for 
 
22 
 
 nearly three-quarters of a century, lias harmonized 
 and united this great confederac} 7 . 
 
 But now alarm exists extensively, lest dangers 
 from this source are close upon us. Quivering 
 shocks, spasmodic tremblings, and heaving undula- 
 tions, have sent the thrill of terror into myriads of 
 palpitating hearts. The governing authorities, the 
 veteran statesmen, the wise and sober counselors, 
 and devoted patriots, are not without solicitude and 
 fears. Should passion reign, and the great God of 
 nations, who has hitherto protected and preserved 
 us, withdraw His guardianship, our securities are 
 gone. If once "He arises to shake terribly the 
 earth," our lofty, proud and stable edifice must top- 
 ple to the ground. Who can estimate the ruin that 
 a few moments of such earthquake shocks, the revo- 
 lutionary violence of wild, careering fires of passion, 
 may produce? Time may indeed repair them; but 
 at what an immense expenditure of life, and prop- 
 erty, and labor! The rending of the bonds that 
 hold these States in union, the secession and separation 
 of one or more, by open, violent rejection and defiance 
 of constitutional compacts, must prove the first 
 throes of disastrous revolutions, in long succession, 
 beyond all power of human sagacity to foresee, or 
 human wisdom and might to arrest and counteract. 
 Thus did they in the history of the separation of 
 the tribes of Israel. Our prosperity, our safety, our 
 hope as a nation, depend upon a wisdom and a power 
 that can hush the hurtling tempest, and quench the 
 smouldering, struggling fires, or open some volcanic 
 vent, like the safety valve, and bid them exhaust 
 
23 
 
 themselves at their leisure. God alone can give the 
 wisdom to do this. He, only, is competent to apply 
 the hand that shall save. The rule of His provi- 
 dence, illustrated and established in the history of 
 other nations, and as mighty as our own, is applica- 
 ble to us in present circumstances. "At what in- 
 stant I speak concerning a nation, and concerning a 
 kingdom; to pluck up and to pull down, and to de- 
 stroy it; if that nation against whom I have pro- 
 nounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the 
 evil that I thought to do unto it." Repentance 
 and reformation, sustaining an appeal to Him, will 
 as truly save our country now, as it ever did Nine- 
 veh, or Israel, or Judah, or our sires of revolutionary 
 piety and patriotism. 
 
 Third. But here a third question is pertinent: 
 How are such repentance and reformation to be se- 
 cured? It will be, as it often has been, asked, how 
 are we, as a people, to turn from the evil which has 
 caused God in His providence to pronounce against 
 us? One party says, abolish slavery; another says, 
 violate no longer constitutional compacts. Crimina- 
 tions and recriminations have thence arisen. Taunts, 
 jeers, reproaches, daring and provoking challenges, on 
 the one hand, exasperate and madden. Unfounded alle- 
 gations and passionate phrenzy, excited by misappre- 
 hension, misrepresentation, suspicions, and fallacious 
 reasonings, on the other hand, are thrown back with 
 intense violence. Interests are found in conflict. 
 Reason is blinded by passion. The complications 
 and surroundings of the policies of antagonistic par- 
 ties admit not of prompt, easy, categorical adjust- 
 
24 
 
 merit. Morally and religiously, judgment, conscience, 
 and feeling, among great masses of our population, 
 are found at variance. 
 
 The question of slavery has already divided 
 North and South, as really in a moral, and eccle- 
 siastical, and social point of view, as were the tribes 
 of Israel separated in the days of Rehoboam, and 
 Jeroboam. And Jerusalem and Samaria were 
 not more effectually made the seat and centres 
 of discordant and uncongenial, moral and commercial 
 systems, than the agitation of this subject seems to 
 have prepared the way for Charleston and New 
 York, or Boston to become the focus, of rival oppos- 
 ing and antagonistic systems of religions, as well as 
 of political and commercial influence. The breach 
 in the confederacy of the twelve tribes of the Jew- 
 ish nation — which confederacy, to some extent, formed 
 the model, and suggested mairy of the principles in- 
 corporated in our own — became irremediable, from 
 the moment that the religious and social feelings 
 were alienated, and gathered around Mount Gerizim 
 and Mount Moriah, as the seats and centres of rival 
 and opposing systems of spiritual influence. In such 
 a state of things, amid the ruins of divided churches, 
 the fjuestion becomes agitating and alarming; is it 
 posible, can any thing be done to prevent repellent 
 and abhorrent feelings, sustained by rival and op- 
 posing fanaticisms, from producing lasting and incu- 
 rable alienations and disunions] Here, here precisely, 
 is where we feel that the greatest danger lies. The 
 South have their religious views and feelings, accor- 
 dant with the teachings of their pulpits, and the 
 
25 
 
 trainings of education, on the subject of slavery. The 
 North have theirs. Neither seem prepared, soberly 
 and considerately to apply the spirit of Christ and the 
 teachings of the Scriptures, in the exercise of forbear- 
 ance and brotherly regards, for the solution of the 
 various entangling and intricate questions of sin and 
 duty connected with it. 
 
 The spirit of repentance and reformation in both 
 is indispensable, for the exercise of sound judgment 
 and a good conscience in the premises, and for se- 
 curing the help and favor of Divine Providence. 
 But our case is by no means desperate. There are 
 some things which can be clone, and the religious 
 and christian portion of the country must initiate 
 them. 
 
 Let it be made known and fully understood, 
 that the compromises of the constitution shall be 
 faithfully kept and honestly carried out, so that an 
 example be given, of practical respect for the sacred- 
 ness of social compacts, and of an abiding sense of 
 moral obligation. Let party spirit and sectional 
 strifes give place to patriotic love of country. Let 
 angry denunciations, and a bitter spirit of mutual 
 crimination and animosity, be supplanted by the 
 friendly feeling of one common citizenship, and the 
 regards of fraternal good will and affection. Let a 
 reckless partisan and venal press be rebuked, and a 
 public sentiment be formed, founded on truth, and 
 right, and loyal attachment to the Union of these 
 States. Let the patriotic devotion, which inspired 
 our sires with invincible attachment to one common 
 cause and country, inspire their sons, and make us 
 
26 
 
 true to the constitution and government they founded. 
 Let there be a return to the principles and policy 
 which characterized the administration of Washing- 
 ton. Let the government be administered, not for 
 private emolument, or party victors, or sectional in- 
 terests and ambitions, or theoretical purposes, or 
 schemes of political aggrandizement, or territorial ac- 
 quisitions and conquests; but for the public good. 
 Let moneyed aristocracies, and chartered monopolies, 
 and secret conspiracies of trade, and transported na- 
 tionalities, and privileged and corrupt corporations, 
 bow before the majesty of a virtuous people, bent 
 on the maintenance of equal rights, and the diffu- 
 sion, as far as practicable, of the greatest amount of 
 equality in social condition, in wealth, and in edu- 
 cation. Let men of integrity, and worthy of trust, 
 be elevated to office, and none be called to discharge 
 the functions of authority, who are ignorant, incapa- 
 ble, and reckless of social and moral obligation. 
 Let the judge, or legislator, or public functionary, 
 known to receive a bribe, or make his official duty 
 truckle to his selfish and pecuniary interest, be pun- 
 ishable for criminal offense, and forever ineligible to 
 any office. Let the laws be faithfully executed by 
 the officers appointed for that purpose. And let pen- 
 alties, specifically provided for by law, be imposed 
 on every officer, sworn to perforin the duties of his 
 office, who neglects, fails, or refuses to discharge the 
 same, or to render the service required by the law 
 for its enforcement. 
 
 The want of concurrent fidelity on the part of 
 magistrates and officers, in the enforcement of law, 
 
27 
 
 will be sure to frustrate any and every attempt at 
 general repentance and reformation. The spirit of 
 lawlessness abroad in the land — which tramples com- 
 pacts under feet, and defies the execution of laws 
 for good order and the general good — is the legiti- 
 mate result of examples, set by governmental au- 
 thorities, from the highest to the lowest, who have 
 betrayed and abused the trust reposed in them as 
 public functionaries and guardians of the general 
 weal. When magistrates and public officers are 
 profane swearers, Sabbath breakers, drunkards, liars, 
 scoffers at religion, covetous, oppressors, and violators 
 of law themselves, the greatest obstacles are thrown 
 in the way of public repentance and reformation. 
 The guilt of perjury is thus superadded to all other 
 miscarriages and personal sins. Wrath from God 
 accumulates rapidly against a people that will con- 
 sent to such a state of things. 
 
 Ministers of religion, and people at large, must 
 aim at, and carry on a work of repentance and 
 reformation, where such things exist, if they would 
 turn away the judgments of God, impending over a 
 guilty land. No work of repentance or reformation 
 ever was carried on among a people, where the laws 
 against flagitious immoralities were not enforced, and 
 men entrusted with power did not evince that it 
 was their determination to have offenders punished. 
 Joshua, David, Hezekiah, and others, accomplished 
 wonders, by their zealous fidelity in the discharge of 
 their official trusts and obligations. And true, relia- 
 ble, and faithful rulers yet can accomplish marvel- 
 ous results. Let but the Sunday laws, and the pro- 
 
28 
 
 hibitory liquor laws, and others against vice and 
 immorality, be faithfully executed, and we shall 
 quickly see a work of repentance and reformation 
 prevail to turn away impending judgments from the 
 kind. 
 
 A very large amount of our national guilt is to be 
 traced to the Sabbath desecration and intemperance, 
 that have disgraced our halls of legislation, from the 
 Common Councils of our cities, up to the State Leg- 
 islatures, and the Congress of the United States. 
 No wonder if God, in His providence, should turn 
 His hand against us, to smite us with the rod of 
 His displeasure, and let the demons of discord and 
 confusion loose among us, if we neglect the obliga- 
 tions of morality and good faith. He does not ordi- 
 narily bring wasting and desolating judgments on a 
 people or nation, without having given previous 
 warning of their approach ; and never without good 
 reason for it. For 120 years, He admonished the 
 world for its wickedness, before He overthrew it 
 with a flood. Sodom and Gomorrha perished not, 
 till after they had rejected the counsel and admo- 
 nition of Lot, and utterly corrupted themselves. Je- 
 rusalem and Judah, Samaria and Israel, Egypt and 
 Nineveh, and Tyre, and Babylon, and Greece, and all 
 the great nations of antiquity, which have perished, 
 had their warnings and seasons of repentance and 
 reformation, that postponed for a season the crisis 
 of their ruin. That came not, till they became re- 
 gardless of warning, and hardened themselves in 
 their wickedness. 
 
29 
 
 The nations of modern Europe have had their 
 days of warning; and judgment has delayed, as 
 they have repented and turned from their wicked- 
 ness. We are yet a young nation. Our crimes 
 have not yet filled up the cup of our iniquity. 
 God has lavished favors on us. No nation under 
 heaven has shared so largely of His bounties as we 
 have done. He has been loath to give us up, 
 The corner stone of our great edifice was laid in faith, 
 and prayer ascending from the hearts of many de- 
 vout patriots and saints of God. He has yet much 
 people in this land. The gospel here is yet cher- 
 ished, and spreads its hallowing influence among us. 
 Schools, colleges, institutions of learning, charity, 
 and piety, rear their attractive towers. Churches 
 of the living God flourish, and multiply still among 
 us. Again and again has He poured out His 
 Spirit upon us; and the people having extensively 
 repented and turned from their wickedness, He 
 has turned His wrath from us. God seems loath 
 to abandon us. He loves us for the fathers' sake \ 
 and He is saying: "How shall I give thee up, 
 Ephraim? How shall I deliver thee, Israel? How 
 shall I make thee as Adrnah? How shall I set 
 thee as Zeboim? My heart is turned within me: 
 my repentings are kindled together." 
 
 Much as there is ground to fear, there is still 
 more for hope. We have His pledge, that if we 
 repent of the evils we have done, He will repent 
 of the evil He thought to do unto us. If He has 
 sent a panic, originating in political causes, to alarm 
 and excite dismay, He has done it, under circum- 
 
stances when its results may be most easily obvi- 
 ated. In the midst of plenty, in the midst of 
 rejoicings, the alarm is sounded that we be not 
 surfeited with excess. And can we not discern ob- 
 stacles, marked and peculiar, thrown by His provi- 
 dence in the way of impetuous passion, and of the 
 wild and frantic strife for which the bugle blasts have 
 here and there been already blown? The contrast 
 of condition, in fiscal matters, between the North 
 and South, has thrown power into the hands 
 of those called to forbearance and prudence, and 
 taken it from those whose voice is lifted up for 
 severance and disunion. Foreign and domestic ex- 
 changes are greatly in favor of the former. The 
 materiel of prosperity is profusely laid to their hands. 
 A wholesome check is given to reckless banking. 
 Never could there have been circumstances less 
 propitious to division, and less open and public pre- 
 text for violence. Political parties broken into frag- 
 ments ! The dominant majority in the choice of 
 their chief magistrate at a fearful dead lock, as to 
 power to do harm should they be so disposed ! 
 Division of counsel and confusion of purpose among 
 the separatists! Our great national Congress on 
 the eve of as.se mbling! The Federal Executive au- 
 thorities, calm, firm, and determined to exert their 
 power wisely, energetically, and without un- 
 necessary irritation and exasperation! The chief 
 magistrate elect, uncommitted to violent measures; 
 untrainmeled by party discipline; untarnished by re- 
 prcach even from his foes; unshaken in the confi- 
 dence of his friends; undisturbed by the noise of 
 
31 
 
 surrounding excitement; unmoved in the majesty of 
 dignified composure and silence; and quietly wait- 
 ing the summons of Providence, to assume and dis- 
 charge the solemn and heavy responsibilities to be 
 devolved upon him ! Can we not see in all this, 
 the ordering of a propitious providence ? God, as it 
 were, is waiting for this great nation to turn from 
 its evil, and thus give Him occasion for prolonging 
 His care, and turning away the evil He had seen 
 that we were bringing on ourselves ! 
 
 Should we not, then, in our grateful offerings 
 this clay, for the lavish bounties He has scattered 
 round us, deeply ponder the rule of His providence, 
 applicable to our present circumstances as a l nation? 
 And, while repenting of the evils we have done 
 and consented to, should we not hopefully lift our 
 imploring and believing cry, — "Spare, Lord, our 
 guilty land ; give not thy heritage to reproach ; suf- 
 fer not the tie that binds us as one to be rent 
 asunder ! But, as thou hast been our fathers' God ; 
 and led them through the wilderness; and established 
 them in this good land ; be thou also the God of 
 their children; and to generations yet unborn, trans- 
 mit, unbroken, unharmed, and enhanced, the privi- 
 leges, liberty and union of these confederate States." 
 
 Oh, God! look down upon the land which Thou hast loved so well, 
 
 And grant that in unbroken truth her children still may dwell ; 
 
 Nor, while the grass grows on the hill, and streams flow through the rale, 
 
 May they forget their father's, or in their covenant fail ! 
 
 God keep the fairest, noblest land that lies beneath the sun : 
 
 " Our country, our whole country, and our country ever one." 
 
OUR NATIONAL SINS TO BE REPENTED OF, 
 
 gfrntmls 0! §wpe Ux the § mmstiam 
 
 FEDERAL CONSTITUTION AND UNION. 
 
 A DISCOUESE 
 
 DELIVERED 
 
 IF'IFIIID.A-"^, CT^ZLXTTT-^IFl^r 4, 1861, 
 
 DAY OF FASTING, HUMILIATION AND PRATER 
 
 APPOINTED BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 BY GEORGE DUFFIELD 
 
 Pastor or the First Presbyterian Congregation of" Detriot- 
 
 DETROIT: 
 
 FREE PRESS MAMMOTH BOOK AND JOB PRINTING HOUSE. 
 1861. 
 
A DISCOUESE. 
 
 1. PSALM 78 : 37, 39. Their heart was not right with Him, neither 
 were they steadfast in His covenant. But He being full of com- 
 passion, forgave their iniquity and destroyed them not; yea, many 
 a time turned He His anger away, and did not stir up all His 
 wrath; for He remembered that they were but flesh; a wind that 
 passeth away and cometh not again. 
 
 2. PSALM 79: 8,9. O remember not against us former iniquities: 
 let Thy tender mercies speedily prevent us; for we are brought 
 very low. Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of Thy 
 name ; and deliver us and purge away our sins, for Thy names' 
 sake. 
 
 But five weeks have passed, since we assembled 
 in this place, to render our thanks to Almighty 
 God, for His great goodness to us as a nation. A 
 dark cloud then had risen above our horizon, por- 
 tentous, to some, of a coming storm. But the mass 
 of politicians and people had either not noticed, or 
 did not regard it, then, as at all ominous of evil. 
 We took occasion to press the admonition, as inti- 
 mated by the divine providence, to rejoice with fear 
 and trembling, and to mingle repentings and hum- 
 Mings of heart before God for our sins, with our 
 thanksgivings. 
 
 To-day we assemble, in accordance with the 
 proclamation of the President of the United States, 
 
to implore the mercy and forgiveness of God, in 
 the midst of discord, perplexity and perils. "Hope," 
 says he, "seems to have deserted the minds of 
 men. All classes are in a state of confusion and 
 dismay, and the wisest counsels of our best and 
 purest men are wholly disregarded. In this, the 
 hour of our calamity and peril, to whom shall we 
 resort for relief, but to the God of our fathers? 
 His omnipotent arm only, can save us from the 
 awful effects of our own crimes and follies, our 
 ingratitude and guilt towards our Heavenly Father." 
 The trumpet of alarm has been blown from the 
 very citadel. In bewilderment and trepidation, the 
 head of the army, cabinet, civil government, and 
 this once flourishing confederacy, invokes the nation 
 to repentance and confession of individual and 
 national sins; "to acknowledge God's justice in their 
 punishment ; to implore Him to remove from our hearts 
 the false pride that might prompt to persevere in 
 wrong; to restore the good will and friendship of 
 former days between the people of our several 
 States; to save us from the horrors of civil war 
 and "blood-guiltiness;" to "desert us not in this 
 hour of extreme peril, but to remember us as He 
 did our lathers, in the darkest days of the revolu- 
 tion, and preserve our Constitution and our Union, 
 the works of their hands, for ages yet to come." 
 
 These are all matters legitimate and appropriate 
 to the present exigencies. Whatever different per- 
 sons may think of the spirit, and motives, and 
 policy of the President, it ill becomes any one, 
 especially members, elders, and ministers of the 
 
church of Christ to set an example of party spirit, 
 pride of opinion, disrespect for the highest govern- 
 mental authority, and thus sanction the lawlessness, 
 contempt of rule, and atheistic idea of liberty prev- 
 alent, by refusing to unite in an humble appeal 
 to God for our common country, at the request of 
 the chief magistracy. This is virtually to aid and 
 abet the scoffs and sneers of the infidel partisan, 
 " the wicked," who, as the psalmist says, " through the 
 pride of his countenance will not seek after God," 
 "whose judgments are far above out of his sight; 
 who puffeth at his enemies, and saith in his heart, 
 there is no danger, we shall not be moved, we shall 
 never see adversity." * Even should there be bewil- 
 derment, misapprehension, neglect of duty, or worse — 
 so that there might be reason to fear the betrayal 
 of trust, or the manifestation of imbecility on the 
 part of those to whose courage, and wisdom, and 
 counsels, the management of the great affairs of 
 State is confided — the greater is the reason, the 
 louder is the call of providence, to make an appeal 
 to the God of our fathers, and enroll our names 
 under His banner, when He demands "Who is on 
 the Lord's side?" "Who will rise up for Me against 
 the evil doer? or who will stand up for me against 
 the workers of iniquity?"! 
 
 "Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the 
 people not be afraid? Shall there be evil in a city 
 and the Lord hath not done it?" J Whatever we 
 may think about the political and partisan causes, 
 that have led to the present trouble and tumults 
 
 * Psalm 10 : 4, 6. t Psalm 94 : 16. t Amos 3 : 6. 
 
G 
 
 among the people of this land; however foolishly or 
 wisely and reproachfully, men may talk and reason 
 about the nature and sources of the peril and per- 
 plexity of the country, the Lord's hand is in it. 
 "The Lord God of hosts," the prophet says, "is He 
 that toucheth the land, and it shall melt, and all 
 that dwell therein shall mourn."* If He had not 
 seen sin in us, and we had not, in some wa}^, as a 
 people sorely displeased Him, He had not smitten 
 us, and brought upon us the things we fear. It is 
 His righteous providence that has commanded and 
 raised the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves 
 that toss the great ship of State like a foundering 
 bark upon the billows, and cause our rulers to reel 
 to and fro, to stagger like a drunken man, and be 
 at their wits' end. 
 
 It is well that there is a God to whom we may 
 pray. As many a bewildered crew upon the stormy 
 deep, when their creaking, shattered vessel has 
 mounted up to the heavens, and gone down again 
 to the depths, and their soul melted because of 
 trouble, have cried unto the Lord, and He brought 
 them out of their distress, and made the storm a 
 calm, so that the waves thereof were still; so has 
 He done for us as a people — and so can He again 
 do, and will — what all human wisdom and valor 
 cannot accomplish, if we call upon Him with peni- 
 tent and believing hearts, in this day of our 
 calamity. 
 
 The passages of Scripture we have selected and 
 
 * Amos 9 : 5. 
 
read, as a guide and foundation for our reflections, 
 are full of encouragement, and unfold to us abun- 
 dant sources of hope. The one shows what God, 
 replete with mercy and compassion, was willing to 
 do, and often had done, for a people whose sins and 
 iniquities had forfeited all just claim upon Him. 
 The other is the prayer we may be emboldened to 
 offer, if with penitent and believing hearts we seek 
 forgiveness, purification, and the interposition of 
 divine aid. The motives and argument of such 
 prayer are to be derived from His own merciful 
 nature, the abounding of His compassions in Jesus 
 Christ, who is the glorious name of God — the em- 
 bodiment and manifestation of His own infinite and 
 adorable excellence — the brightness of .the Father's 
 Glory, the express image of His person, the only 
 hope and standing plea for mercy, at all available 
 and efficacious, for a guilty sinner or a guilty people. 
 That we may, intelligently and in faith, present 
 our supplications to God this day, on our country's 
 behalf, we propose to inquire: 
 
 I. What are the sins for which God is contend- 
 ing with us as a nation? 
 
 II. On what grounds we may venture to pray 
 for the preservation of the Constitution and the 
 Union of our national confederacy? 
 
 Every form and variety of sin and crime among a 
 people does not deserve to be called national, however 
 it may swell the amount of popular guilt. National 
 sins are those, and those only, which, by reason of 
 their commonness, frequency, popularity, and the 
 state, grade, and condition of those who commit 
 
them, are allowed to pass, either without the pro- 
 hibition of law, or without punishment by the en- 
 forcement of law. Government is ordained of God 
 for the protection of society against evil, and for 
 the promotion of the public good. The moral law, 
 or law of the ten commandments, is God's legisla- 
 tion against crime, for the individual and general 
 good. It lies at the foundation, and should ever be 
 magnified as the basis, of all civil, political, and 
 criminal statutes. Whatever tends to subvert the 
 authority of the moral law, in any of its great 
 organic provisions, and conflicts, or is inconsistent 
 with its spirit and precepts, is, and ever must be, 
 injurious to the peace, purity, and safety of indi- 
 vidual citizens, and to the public good. 
 
 What are the gross sins, against which God has 
 denounced national judgments, and which, when un- 
 restrained and unpunished by the civil magistracy. 
 He, in His providence, will visit with the rod of 
 His chastisement, the sacred Scriptures have clearly 
 declared, and abundantly illustrated in various his- 
 torical precedents therein recorded. Ordinarily, He 
 does nut interfere by any temporal visitations of 
 His punitive providence, to correct the crimes 
 of men, where the magistrates or governmental 
 authorities are attentive and faithful to their obli- 
 gations in this respect. For such interposition is 
 thereby rendered unnecessary. But, where they neg- 
 lect their duties, and the people love, or consent, to 
 have it so, and will elevate to, and sustain in office, 
 corrupt men, so that the laws against the vices of 
 society become a dead letter, and crimes prevail on 
 
every hand, there is nothing left for the general 
 welfare and safety, but for God to interfere with 
 His retributive judgments. Accordingly. He has 
 said, "when the land sinneth against Me by tres- 
 passing grievously, then will I stretch out my 
 hand." * 
 
 The most superficial observer cannot fail to dis- 
 cover, in this country, the prevalence of various 
 forms of vice, which have been tolerated and prac- 
 ticed so extensively in society, that judgments from 
 the hand of God have fallen upon us, frequently 
 and extensively. Often have they been so marked, 
 that they could not well be mistaken. Such are 
 the intemperance in all classes, — the utter disrespect 
 of truth — the prevalent falsehood and frauds in 
 business, social intercourse, and the press, — the want 
 of good faith and fidelity in the trusts and relations 
 of life — the desecration of the Sabbath — the con- 
 tempt of compacts and oaths and obligations of of- 
 fice — profanity — licentiousness — lawlessness — oppres- 
 sion — polygamy among the Mormons — adultery, sanc- 
 tioned by divorce laws — avaricious extortion — and 
 swindling operations of speculators, bankers and corpo- 
 rations almost without end, which almost every where 
 in our land corrupt society. Of these, and such 
 like, the legislation and government of our several 
 States have immediate and principal cognizance. 
 However widely diffused are such, and kindred 
 forms of vice and immorality, which, by reason of 
 general extent may be, or become, national, all our 
 
 * Ezekiel 14 : 13. 
 
10 
 
 different States are not equally involved in the 
 growing corruption and consequent condemnation. 
 
 In estimating our national crimes, reference 
 must be had to the peculiar features and functions 
 of our Federal government, 
 
 The want of any recognition of God, in the con- 
 stitution of the United States, and even in the form 
 of the Presidential oath of office which it prescribes, 
 taken in connection with its declaration of absolute, 
 unqualified sovereignty of the people, as the source of 
 its authority, and the supreme law of the land, 
 affords apparent and formal ground for this charge. 
 The christian forms of oath, as sometimes, and 
 commonly in the States, administered under it to 
 different United States' officers, and the opinions 
 and ruling of some of our State Judges, may, in 
 practice have somewhat mitigated this charge: but, 
 unquestionably, there is — in that non-recognition of 
 Almighty God, and of Jesus Christ, the Lord of 
 Lords and King of Kings, by whom princes decree jus- 
 tice, and of the divine authority of the sacred Scrip- 
 tures — sufficient reason to awake the fears, as it has 
 ever done, of many virtuous, sober-minded, religious 
 citizens, that its unqualified and virtually atheistic 
 claim of popular sovereignty, irrespective of the 
 law, the word, and the providence of God our 
 Saviour, may have subjected us, as a nation, so far 
 to His displeasure, as, to have forfeited for us 
 the perpetuity of the Federal government, it 
 established as the bond of union, and to secure, 
 eventually, a demonstration from Him, of the dan- 
 ger and licentious excesses of a liberty — and the 
 
11 
 
 weakness, folly, and falsehood of any asserted right 
 or ability for self-government — independent of Jeho- 
 vah, and unrestricted by His supreme, universal, 
 immutable law, and the counsels of His holy Scrip- 
 tures. 
 
 It has been thought also, and much more fre- 
 quently, extensively, and confidently affirmed, that 
 the slavery practiced in this land forms the great 
 national sin. On this account, more than any other, 
 it has been, and is, as confidently believed and pro- 
 claimed, that mainly, if not exclusively, the Lord is 
 dealing with us in His providence, and threatening 
 to pull down upon our heads the fair and noble 
 structure of this confederacy. The evils and the 
 crimes, however, either incident to or involved in 
 the system of southern slavery — which makes human 
 persons property equally with chattels and cattle, 
 and thus degrades human beings originally created 
 in the image of God, — do not, as we think, impli- 
 cate directly, either the Constitution of the United 
 States, or the compact under it, or all of the States, 
 much less the citizens, generally, of our confederacy. 
 Were this the fact, we could have no faith or hope 
 in the efficacy of prayer to God to preserve and 
 perpetuate our Union. For we can cherish no hope 
 of permanent security and prosperity for any peo- 
 ple or nation whatever, if its constitution, or legis- 
 lation under it, should be in direct and flagrant vio- 
 lation of any of the great fundamental provisions 
 of the law of God, the moral law, or law of the 
 ten commandments, especially as expounded in the 
 Scriptures by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. 
 
12 
 
 Whether slavery, as it exists in our country, is 
 in violation of that law of God, which is the law 
 of love, holy, and just, and good, and true, requir- 
 ing us to do to others as we would have them do 
 to us, is a question of deep and vital moment. The 
 moral bearing and aspect of this question, we have 
 ever thought, should have been examined and dis- 
 cussed, testified and proclaimed, in the spirit of love 
 and forbearance. The church in this matter should 
 have been the witness of Christ. From the moment 
 it became entangled with party political strifes, and 
 the slavery question and discussions began to assume 
 a sectional consequence, through the collisions of 
 interest, commerce, politics, and struggles for office 
 and authority, we feared, and averred, that the 
 results would prove disastrous. 
 
 The attributes of slavery in the South, are to 
 be mainly traced, in the statutary codes, the social 
 regulations, practices, and habits, with their legiti- 
 mate fruits, in the different States, where, by local 
 laws it is defined, characterized, protected and main- 
 tained, both as a species of chattel property and a 
 domestic institution, forming an element, or entering 
 into the very structure, of the civil State, but not 
 of general national society. The Federal constitu- 
 tion, while it recognizes a right to service from one 
 human person to another, degrades not our common 
 humanity by making men property like beasts of 
 burden. 
 
 The original patriarchal idea of servitude, re- 
 cognized in the Bible history of Abraham, although 
 sophistically referred to by the advocates of Aineri- 
 
13 
 
 can slavery as its "sanction," went no further. 
 Such, also, was the slavery originally, to a great 
 extent, if not generally, in our own country, ante- 
 rior to the adoption of the Federal constitution. 
 All of the colonies had more or less of it in them 
 before the American Revolution. In all but Massa- 
 chusetts it still existed at the adoption of the Fed- 
 eral constitution. Whatever, and however, great 
 were the evils and sins to which slavery led, the 
 slaveholder was not regarded as a sinner above all 
 others; nor slavery as criminal under all circumstan- 
 ces, and the very worst of crimes. The Northern 
 and some of the Middle States repented of it — 
 modified as it then was in them, in accordance 
 with the letter of the constitution, and its spirit, — and 
 put it away, by a wise and salutary system of gradual 
 emancipation, believing, that what God denounced 
 by Noah as a curse upon Canaan, neither was, nor 
 ever could be, meant by Him to be understood and 
 practiced as a blessing, and desirable in the social 
 state. 
 
 Nevertheless, commercial interests and relations, 
 various social ties of marriage, kindred, trade, be- 
 quest, and enterprises of business, involve, no doubt, 
 a considerable portion of the citizens of our free 
 States, indirectly and incidentally, as well as directly 
 in the guilt and evils of this thing, and thence, 
 create a sympathy and sensitiveness touching it, 
 which often, and naturally, expresses itself in the 
 conflicts and platforms of party politics. But, by no 
 public act of organic law or of their governments, can 
 it be said, that the free States have made themselves 
 
14 
 
 partakers of the sins of slavery, appropriate and pe- 
 culiar to the degrading of human beings or persons, 
 by making and regarding them as chattel property. 
 Some, indeed, have contended that they did so, by 
 the adoption, first, of the Federal constitution, and, 
 subsequently, of the Missouri compromise, in 1820, 
 and especially by the legislation of Congress, pursuant 
 to the constitutional compact, requiring fidelity in car- 
 rying out its provisions, relative to the rendition of 
 fugitives. A party, in a few of the free States, 
 especially Massachusetts and Pennsylvania — whose 
 leaders have been characterized by what we regard 
 the most arrant infidelity, and repudiation of the 
 plenary and miraculous inspiration and divine au- 
 thority of the sacred scriptures, zealous, mistaken fa- 
 natics — under erroneous pleas of philanthropy, have, 
 while blaspheming the word of God, denounced the 
 Federal Constitution and Union as fraught with 
 guilt, sufficient to provoke the judgments of heaven. 
 Their language and abuse of "Washington and the 
 constitution, it is not fitting here to quote; but they 
 have thought they were doing service to both God 
 and man, especially the slave, to rend and destroy 
 our Union. We have never been able to see that 
 their construction of the constitution is just, or 
 capable of being sustained; either by the legitimate 
 meaning of the language, or by the debates and 
 history of the convention that formed it, and of the 
 legislatures that adopted it. The Missouri compro- 
 mis< — which indeed changed the policy of the Fed- 
 eral administration and the dominant party, and which 
 we deplored at the time as mischievous, however it 
 
15 
 
 may have been a great mistake — was nevertheless 
 conceived and formed in 1820, for the maintenance 
 of treaty-faith, pledged as it was thought, in the 
 purchase of Louisiana. 
 
 Immediate and unqualified emancipation began 
 in 1833-4, to be proclaimed and demanded by cer- 
 tain moral and political extremists, as the only 
 proof of repentance, and the only salvation of the 
 country. And because the Constitution of the United 
 States neither possesses, nor could be made by 
 amendment to possess, power to accomplish this, 
 whatever might increase the friction and hasten 
 the dissolution of the Union, found ready and cor- 
 dial entertainment and sympathy. 
 
 Many of the ministry, and members of different 
 evangelical churches, were zealously affected with 
 the thought of immediate emancipation as alike the 
 duty and safety of our country. The relation of 
 master and slave, slavery per se, without any reserve 
 or qualification whatever, was pronounced a God- 
 provoking sin, the greatest men can commit, and 
 all involved in that relationship denounced as guilty 
 of man-stealing, robbery, murder, and whatever 
 other crimes are incident to the system as spread 
 out in the statutes, sustained by law, and, in fla- 
 grant cases, carried into practice, in all, or any of the 
 southern States! This rampant zeal — sustained, as 
 we have ever thought, by fallacious logic — agitated 
 and rent churches, united ecclesiastically, and pre- 
 viously walking in harmonious christian fellowship. 
 It engendered alienations, strifes and divisions be- 
 tween Congregationalists and Presbyterians; repudi- 
 
16 
 
 ated the plan of union upon which they had, for more 
 than the third of a century, happily co-operated; 
 separated them completely as distinct and rival 
 denominations; drove the ploughshare of division 
 between the northern and southern churches; and 
 carried the war of angry debate and irreconcilable 
 antagonisms, into the different great national associ- 
 ations for missionary and tract operations. 
 
 The judgment of a large portion of the min- 
 istry and churches, in the southern States, and also 
 in the northern, could not see and admit, either the 
 obligation, the benevolence, the practicability, or the 
 safety of immediate emancipation, as then and thus 
 urged. The consciences of multitudes who sustained 
 the relation of master to slave, did not, or could 
 not be made to feel, that the simple relationship of 
 master to slave, or slavery under all circumstances, 
 was sinful; and especially, when they knew, that 
 there were obligations of guardianship, dictates of 
 humanity, and claims of enlightened charity, which 
 not only forbade immediate and unqualified emanci- 
 pation, but required the continuance of that rela- 
 tion and sometimes its formation. From the denun- 
 ciations of those — who neither saw nor would admit 
 such obligations, but who held them up to scorn 
 and infamy, and sought to excommunicate them by 
 declarative resolutions from the church of God. as 
 unworthy a place in it — they turned away, and said, 
 " how can two walk together unless they be agreed!" 
 preferring secession and separation to strife and 
 obloquy. 
 
17 
 
 In their attempts to interpret the report of their 
 own consciences, which acquitted them from the 
 false, unqualified charges of guilt, made against them 
 by their northern brethren, they found themselves 
 in circumstances where the temptation became na- 
 tural and powerful, to justify slavery as a system, 
 as well as to excuse all its developments, and ex- 
 onerate themselves from the criminality personally and 
 promiscuously charged upon them. Inasmuch as 
 the Bible, — which gives an account of God's civil 
 legislation concerning slavery, and the counsels and 
 precepts of divine wisdom in relation to the moral 
 duties and obligations growing out of the relation 
 of christians to it, and to the governments that toler- 
 ated or enacted it, — has thus distinctly recognized 
 the existence of that relation, and enjoined recip- 
 rocal duties on masters and servants, the judgment 
 and conscience of southern ministers and churches 
 began to claim, what none of a former generation 
 had ever thought of doing, that God, by such legis- 
 lation, had sanctioned it, and made it as truly a 
 divine ordinance as He had government itself; and 
 that, indeed, it was but a species of government, 
 provided and ordained by His wisdom and benevolence 
 for the benefit of the domestic and social state. 
 Rev. Mr. H. J. Van Dyke, of Brooklyn, and Dr. 
 Palmer, of New Orleans, have volunteered their 
 casuistry in thfs matter, as a writer in Mississippi, 
 years ago, had done, in opposition to the ultra views 
 of immediate emancipation that had been inculcated 
 and propagated in the North. It is proof to us of 
 
 the blinding influence, which sjnnpathy with party 
 2a 
 
18 
 
 politics, and polemic casuistry, can exert upon the 
 mind and conscience. These excellent brethren 
 seem not for one moment to have adverted to what is 
 undeniably true, that God, when legislating as the 
 civil head of Israel, — -just as human governments 
 ever find it necessary for them to do, — enacted laws 
 in view of evils nascent or innate in corrupt society, 
 for the purpose of restricting, restraining, and ulti- 
 mately curing them; and that such legislation is 
 far, very far, from implying His allowance or appro- 
 val, much less His sanction of them. To claim 
 that slavery is a divine ordinance, because God has 
 legislated concerning it, indicates, either an inability 
 or unwillingness, through prejudice or passion, to 
 distinguish between enduring a present evil, in a 
 given state of society for the prevention of greater, 
 and sanctioning such evil in every condition of so- 
 ciety. Never was there a greater nonsequitur, more 
 palpable and offensive sophistry, than that into 
 which these writers have been betrayed. 
 
 Such casuistry has been one of the melancholy 
 results of the alienations and separations produced in 
 the churches by the political agitation of this subject. 
 Shut out and cut off from the sympathy of the 
 churches and the christian community, generally, of the 
 North, the southern churches and christians, very 
 naturally, received and relished the sympathy of 
 unbelieving men and political partisans, who, from 
 mistaken considerations of State and national policy, 
 were seeking to protect and propagate and perpetu- 
 ate the slavery, in connection with which they had 
 been born and nursed, educated and trained. Nor 
 
19 
 
 have the ministry and churches at the North been 
 wholly exempt from a similar and hurtful influence 
 upon their judgment and consciences, by sympathy 
 with political partisanships, inducing a rancorous 
 spirit of denunciation often mistaken for, and claimed 
 to be, a superior piety. 
 
 The essential and irreconcileable antagonism be- 
 tween free labor and slave labor can never be cured, 
 permanently and completely, by any system of hu- 
 man legislation that attempts to harmonize them. 
 Light and darkness are not more at variance, radi- 
 cally and immutably, than are liberty and bondage. 
 The conflict between them has well been pronounced, 
 by one of our eminent statesmen, "irrepressible." 
 Compacts and legislation may ease its violence; 
 and, if wise and just, lead to the gradual salutary 
 disappearance of the one before the other. But 
 the experiments of past ages and nations from the 
 first, have proved, in the recorded history of man- 
 kind, that freedom and slavery cannot dwell per- 
 manently, harmoniously, safely, and prosperously, 
 together. 
 
 God's legislation on the subject, found in the 
 book of Leviticus, so far from being a sanction of 
 slavery, was actually a wise and wonderful system 
 of gradual, but certain and inevitable emancipation. 
 The history of the Jewish nation proved and illus- 
 trated it. 
 
 The patriarchal slavery, claimed to have been 
 sanctioned by the example of Abraham, was not 
 hereditary. There is no proof that it descended to 
 Isaac or Ishmael. Certainly none that it was 
 
20 
 
 transmitted to Jacob and Esau, in the third genera- 
 tion. 
 
 God's ethical precepts on the subject in the New 
 Testament, on which Mr. Van Dyke and others 
 have founded their erring deductions, were explicitly 
 designed, as the context shows, not to sanction the 
 political code and usages of the Roman Empire j but 
 to bring out and exhibit, in the clearest and strongest 
 possible light, the moral power of that christian be- 
 nevolence, which makes the master and the slave 
 alike feel that they are brethren of one family, and 
 which is a much more potent force, to remedy and 
 overcome the evils and existence of slavery, than 
 any mere political expedients, or system of civil 
 legislation, that human wisdom without it can ever 
 devise. 
 
 The extremists' views, on both sides of this ques- 
 tion, and in both sections of our country, which have, 
 for the last twenty-six years, been pressed in various 
 political and ecclesiastical contests, have resulted in 
 deep, permanent, and, we fear, fatal estrangements. 
 The doctrines of immediate emancipation, and of the 
 sin of slavery j>cr se, as taught by ultra abolitionists, 
 have irritated the South far more than personal liberty 
 bills, or the election of a republican candidate for 
 the President. The pro-slavery teachings and vio- 
 lence of southern preachers and politicians, have, in 
 their turn, exasperated the North. The thrift and 
 prosperity of the North, their progress in wealth, 
 population, and improvement, whatever may have 
 been the policy of the Federal government, — 
 forcing, at one time into commerce, another manu- 
 
21 
 
 factures, and at another free trade — have proved so 
 illustrative and demonstrative of the value and effi- 
 ciency of free labor, as to have increasingly excited the 
 envy, jealousy, and rivalry of the South, whose 
 exhausted farms, dilapidated domiciles, disordered 
 finances, mortgaged property, depreciated lands, and 
 other evidences of decay, made them look, with an 
 angry and suspicious eye, upon the commerce, manu- 
 factures, enterprise, capital, resources, and enhanced 
 prosperity of the free States. Socially, politically, 
 religiously, there have been developed, and are, an- 
 tagonisms, which have already rent the most solemn 
 compacts, and destroyed the most sacred sympathies. 
 How they are to be reconciled, if possible, is the 
 great problem of the day, which leaves all our sages 
 and statesmen utterly at fault. Well has the 
 President, in his proclamation for a fast, invited 
 one and all, both North and South, to implore God 
 to remove " the false pride of heart which impels, 
 for consistency's sake, to persevere in wrong." It 
 is God only who can do it. 
 
 Concession, without the sacrifice of moral prin- 
 ciple, and in the spirit of forbearance and for- 
 giveness, may, and we would fain hope, by God's 
 blessing, will do it. Crimination and recrimi- 
 nation, charges of provocation and blame pri- 
 marily and mainly, by either party, will never 
 accomplish it. Civil war and bloodshed will 
 render it forever impossible. Here, in this very 
 pride of opinion, we think, lies much of the guilt, 
 the peril and perplexity connected with the question 
 of slavery in our Federal relations. If the North 
 
22 
 
 will consent that the South adjust for themselves 
 the evils of their own social state, and, ceasing to 
 traduce, denounce, and vituperate, will extend to 
 them the good will and. charities of christian broth- 
 erhood; and if the South will not insist upon ex- 
 tending the acknowledged evils of their own social 
 state, by demanding their admission and approba- 
 tion in new States and Territories, there to spread 
 and prolong this cancer in the body politic, there 
 may be hope. But if the North can only be 
 reconciled, on the ground of anti-slavery propagan- 
 dism within the southern States, or the South, upon 
 the ground of the extension of slavery by right of 
 their construction of the constitution; and if the 
 constitution must be changed to meet the views of 
 either, then is our unity forever at an end. The 
 antagonisms of party should never regulate the ad- 
 ministration of our government. It should be con- 
 ducted on higher principles. If the pride of opinion 
 and the oppositions of party, cannot be overcome, by 
 the spirit of patriotism and devotion to the public 
 good, there can be no safe and peaceful deliverance 
 for us from our present perplexities. The gaping 
 fissures must increase. The separation must become 
 fragmentary; and dissolution follow, without hope 
 or possibility of ever again crystallizing or aggre- 
 gating, in the same or any other happy consolidated 
 Union, similar to that, which, for more than half a 
 century, has made us, as a nation, the wonder and 
 glory of the world. 
 
 Our social, political, moral and religious strength 
 as a nation hitherto, has been in our union. The 
 
23 
 
 one tie, that binds all together, once severed and 
 acknowledged to be so, divides not, by a wide and 
 yawning chasm, As in the human body, the disin- 
 tegrating process of dissolution supervenes, the mo- 
 ment that the vital forces, through their constitu- 
 tional channels, cease to operate; so will and must 
 it be in the national. Discordant interests, rival 
 factions, predatory incursions, servile insurrections, 
 despotic oppressions, rapacious robberies, contending 
 ambitions, selfish demagogism, phrenzied excitements, 
 hostile religions, civil wars degenerating into contests 
 of aspiring military chieftains, and intriguing schemes 
 of corrupt monopolies and men of wealth, will not 
 fail to repeat, in more aggravated and distressing 
 story, the revolutions and disasters of disordered, 
 wretched, ruined Mexico. May the God of heaven 
 mercifully interpose to prevent it! 
 
 We fear, however, that the complications and 
 exacerbation of this great moral, social and political 
 evil of slavery, around which the eyes and hearts, 
 the hopes and fears, the anxieties and lamentations 
 of the nation this day cluster, may be traced to a 
 guilt, even more strictly national than it, and which, 
 we have judged and felt for nearly the third of a 
 century, is the great public national crime God 
 is now punishing, by the present agitation, excite- 
 ment and alarm, as He has been in years past, by 
 various processes of demoralization. The slavery 
 trouble has been the entering wedge and battle axe, 
 that quickly followed, with its strokes of wrath, 
 after the offense of which we shall now speak. 
 
 By treaty both with Georgia, and with the 
 
24 
 
 Indians in the territory, which she ceded to the 
 United States, the Cherokee Indians were put under 
 the fostering care of the Federal government. Their 
 lands, eight million acres of which they refused to sell, 
 were recognized as their own, and reserved to them, 
 by solemn treaty. Their absolute title to them was 
 admitted to be beyond the power of the States or of 
 Congress, and to be alienated only, by treaties honor- 
 ably and fairly made, and with full assent of their 
 own. Missionaries were established among them, 
 under the direction and support of the American 
 Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions, and of 
 other missionary associations of different religious de- 
 nominations. By express stipulations, on the part 
 of the United States Government, a limited territory, 
 protection, and inviolate territorial limits, were guar- 
 anteed to the Cherokee nation of Indians. They 
 had attained to civilization, and established among 
 themselves the trades, arts, and religion, upon the 
 lands of their ancestors. Having, by the advice of 
 the President of the United States, organized a gov- 
 ernment of their own, consisting of legislative, judi- 
 ciary, and executive departments, administered on 
 republican principles, they had risen in character, 
 condition, and prospects; and were bound to us as 
 brothers, by the ties of that Christianity, which, in 
 common with us, they had professed. But it was 
 discovered that their lands contained gold. 
 
 Georgia claimed, that according to her construction 
 of the treaty with the United States government, by 
 which she ceded her territory, the Federal government 
 had failed to fulfill its provisions of that treaty; although 
 
25 
 
 Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, and Calhoun, had 
 been the foster-fathers of the citizens of the Cherokee 
 nation, as they were called in the Holsten treaty, 
 and the Senate of the United States had sanctioned 
 the acts, by which they had risen into a highly 
 civilized state. While refusing to sell their lands, 
 and planting themselves on the treaty guaranty of 
 the Federal government, with covetous and impa- 
 tient eye, the State of Georgia claimed the right of 
 possession ; and extended her laws over her fellow- 
 christians of Moravian, Presbyterian, Baptist and 
 Methodist churches j by which they were brought 
 into a state of degradation and defenselessness like 
 that of slavery, and declared to be incapable of 
 being witnesses or parties in a court of justice. 
 They were made outlaws upon their own lands, and 
 allowed but the privilege of choosing between exile 
 and chains. 
 
 It may be proper here to enter into details. 
 In 1829 the Cherokees possessed a regularly organ- 
 ized civil government, and a written language. 
 The latter was an invention of a native uninstructed 
 Cherokee. Unlike to any that ever existed, it 
 was yet so complete, that adults, by the use of it, 
 could learn to read their native tongue in ten, five, 
 and even three days. The mass of the people, 
 in their dress, houses, furniture, agriculture, imple- 
 ments, manner of cultivating the soil, raising stock, 
 providing for their families, and in their estimate 
 of the value of an education, did not suffer by a 
 comparison with the whites in the surrounding set- 
 tlements. The great body of the people had ex- 
 
26 
 
 ternally embraced the christian religion. Intemper- 
 ance, the bane of the Indian as well as of the white 
 man, had been checked. The laws of the nation 
 rigorously excluded intoxicating liquors from all 
 public assemblies. In this respect they set a noble 
 and lofty example, worthy of being imitated by our 
 Congress and State Legislatures. Numerous and 
 efficient societies for the promotion of temperance, 
 had been organized, and prosperity smiled upon 
 them. But, in two years afterward, in spite of all 
 their improvements, by the action of Georgia, the 
 nation had been thrown into a distracted state ; 
 their government prostrated; their council forbidden 
 to assemble; their laws declared null and void; 
 their magistrates prohibited, under severe penalties, 
 from enforcing them; intoxicating liquors introduced 
 without restraint ; the country traversed with armed 
 troops; their property plundered; their persons ar- 
 rested and imprisoned; their land, — known to be 
 theirs by ancestral and immemorial possession, and 
 guaranteed to them by numerous and perfectly ex- 
 plicit treaties, — claimed by others ; and they them- 
 selves threatened with immediate ejectment ! 
 
 The missionaries, at four stations lying within 
 the territory claimed by Georgia, were served with 
 copies of a law, requiring an oath of allegiance to 
 that State within a limited period, or imprisonment 
 for four years in the penitentiary for refusal. Im- 
 portant civil, moral, and religious rights, and per- 
 sonal liberties, were thus invaded and violated. 
 The missionaries could not, in good conscience, take 
 the oath ; for it would be an abandonment of the 
 
27 
 
 Indians' rights secured by treaty with the Federal 
 government, and an admission that Georgia was 
 right. 
 
 A detachment of the Georgia guard, consisting of 
 twenty-six men, armed and mounted, proceeded to each 
 of the four missionary stations, and arrested three 
 of the missionaries found there. They were, how- 
 ever, set free, by the Judge of the Superior Court 
 of Gwinnet county, on the ground that they were under 
 the patronage of the United States government, and 
 were in such sense its agents, that the laws of 
 Georgia did not apply to them. The Governor of 
 Georgia corresponded with the President of the 
 United States on the subject. The result was, that 
 the latter did not consider the missionaries as in 
 any sense agents of the government. Thereupon 
 the missionaries were ordered, within ten days, to 
 remove out of the State, or take the required oath. 
 
 Several of the missionaries, Messrs. Buttrick, 
 Proctor, and Thompson, thought it expedient to 
 remove, with their families. Mr. Thompson was 
 subsequently arrested, and treated in the most bru- 
 tal manner, for visiting his station. Mr. Worcester 
 and Dr. Butler were arrested, and subjected to cruelties 
 and indignities, such as savages themselves would 
 scarcely inflict upon their captives. They were 
 tried; and along with eight other white men, one a 
 missionary of the Methodist Episcopal church, were 
 sentenced to four years' hard labor in the peniten- 
 tiary. On their arrival at the door of the prison, 
 they were all offered a pardon and release, on con- 
 dition, of their removing from the Indian territory 
 
28 
 
 claimed by the State of Georgia, or of taking the oath 
 of allegiance to its laws. All but two of them ac- 
 cepted these humiliating terms. Mr. Worcester and 
 Dr. Butler, feeling that obedience to such laws 
 would be treason against God, conceded nothing, 
 and were committed to the penitentiary. 
 
 The matter was brought before the Supreme 
 Court of the United States, on a writ of error. 
 Having been ably argued by Messrs. Wirt and Ser- 
 geant, Chief Justice Marshall pronounced his decis- 
 ion. He reviewed the whole subject of the Indian 
 titles, the treaties made with the Indians, and the 
 laws of Georgia, which extended the jurisdiction of 
 the State over the Cherokee country. The laws 
 of Georgia were pronounced repugnant to the con- 
 stitution, the treaties, and the laws of the United 
 States. The mandate of the Supreme Court was 
 instantly issued, reversing and annulling the judg- 
 ment of the Superior Court of Georgia, and ordering 
 all proceedings in the indictment against the pris- 
 oners forever to cease, declaring the prisoners to be 
 thereby dismissed. The Superior Court of Georgia 
 refused to obey the mandate, or discharge the pris- 
 oners. The authority of the Supreme Court of 
 the United States thus set at defiance, the country 
 became excited, especially the religious and order- 
 loving, law-abiding citizens. 
 
 There existed a difference of opinion, if not a 
 contest for the ultimate authority, between the 
 President and the Chief Justice of the Supreme 
 Court of the United States. The latter, it was 
 known, would require a military enforcement. The 
 
29 
 
 counsel of the imprisoned missionaries prepared a 
 memorial to the former, praying for the interposi- 
 tion of his authority to enforce the decision of the 
 court. The missionaries gave notice of their inten- 
 tion to move the Supreme Court for a further pro- 
 cess. They had been sustained by the public 
 sentiment of the christian community, especially at 
 the North, as well as by their official advisers and 
 directors in the work of missions, the prudential 
 Committee of the Amerian Board of Conference for 
 Foreign Missions. It was thought by many to be 
 a proper juncture and opportunity to settle the 
 question, whether the Supreme Court or the Presi- 
 dent of the United States, the Judiciary or Execu- 
 tive, possessed the ultimate authority; and especially, 
 amid the rising excitement of South Carolina nulli- 
 fication, to put to the test the authority of the 
 treaties, laws, and Constitution of the United States, 
 and the strength and integrity of the Federal gov- 
 ernment and Union. Georgia had bid defiance to 
 the authority of the Supreme Court 3 and, by a cor- 
 rupting policy, — appealing to human cupidity, for 
 the distribution among her citizens, by lottery, 
 140 acres each, of the whole Cherokee country lying 
 withhi her chartered limits, previously surveyed and 
 divided into lots for that purpose, — had rendered her 
 legislation and defiant claims popular. 
 
 We shall not further ti^spass on your time here, 
 to enter into other details of this disgraceful history. 
 It may suffice to say, that upon various consulta- 
 tions it was thought inexpedient — we say not by 
 whom, but not by the imprisoned missionaries them- 
 
30 
 
 selves or their counsel, — to present their memorial 
 to the President for the enforcement of the decision 
 of the court. My personal reminiscences here of 
 matters learned from Dr. Butler himself — who spent 
 several days in my house as my honored guest, 
 soon after his removal from the penitentiary — are as 
 painful at this distant day, as they were in their 
 commencement, having been subversive of the 
 respectful consideration previously entertained for 
 the patriotic and religious men, whose timidity, 
 called and mistaken for prudence, led them to 
 change the counsel and policy, in accordance with 
 which the missionaries had all along acted in the 
 assertion of right and liberty. 
 
 It was well understood that the Supreme Court 
 of the United States would sustain its own decision, 
 and demand the support of the executive authority 
 of the government, by military force if necessary. 
 And it was also as well understood, that the Presi- 
 dent was not inclined to enforce it. To prosecute 
 the case would lead to a collision of the au- 
 thorities, and the result was thought doubtful. 
 The missionaries were, therefore, often and earnestly 
 counseled to desist from their attempt to obtain 
 release by a military enforcement of the decision of 
 the Supreme Court. They were assured of an un- 
 conditional release in case they would do so. But 
 they refused. They smirned a pardon. They 
 would not escape from the prison, even when the 
 doors were thrown open for them. Persons in the 
 confidence of the Governor of Georgia visited them, 
 and earnestly solicited them to desist from the 
 
31 
 
 prosecution. They made "no solicitation, no over- 
 ture, no compromise " whatever. 
 
 Two members elect of Congress visited them, 
 and told them officially from the Governor, that 
 they would be discharged without concession, with- 
 out condition, or even without application to the 
 Governor. To desist from the prosecution of the 
 suit, they were assured, would end the whole matter, 
 It would relieve the Court, the President, the esti- 
 mable Governor, the State of Georgia, and the 
 country. Their friends and counselors in Boston, 
 no longer advised to firmness in the prosecution. 
 The prisoners' counsel dropped all proceedings. 
 Messrs. Worcester and Butler were set at liberty by 
 proclamation from the Governor of Georgia, directed 
 to the keeper of the penitentiary; and the Governor's 
 carriage, it was currently reported, was in waiting 
 for them when they left the prison. They imme- 
 diately returned to the stations which they had 
 respectively occupied in the Cherokee country, and 
 resumed their missionary labors. 
 
 The country and its authorities, had passed a 
 crisis. But the fate of the Cherokee was sealed. 
 The robbery and violence of Georgia had proved 
 victorious; and the Supreme Court of the United 
 States then received the first blow which struck 
 it from its lofty position as the ultimate authority, — ■ 
 the grand balance wheel and regulating power in 
 our government — and rendered it, as many fear, 
 rather the dim reflector of the policy of the execu- 
 tive, than the independent interpeter of the consti- 
 tution. Be that as it may, it has suffered great 
 
32 
 
 loss in public confidence and estimation at the 
 North. The executive policy triumphed over right. 
 By means of a treaty obtained from unauthorized 
 and unfaithful representatives of the Cherokee peo- 
 ple, through the aid of intoxicating drinks — a plan 
 for removing the Indians, pronounced benevolent, 
 was carried out. The Cherokees were denational- 
 ized; and scenes of pillage, plunder, and mortality, 
 shocking to relate, consummated and aggravated 
 the guilt of a violated treaty. The inspired law- 
 giver of the Jewish nation proclaimed: 
 
 "Cursed be he that removeth his neighbor's 
 landmark, and all the people shall say amen. 
 
 "Cursed be he that maketh the blind to wander 
 out of the way, and all the people shall say amen. 
 
 "Cursed be he that perverteth the judgment of 
 the stranger, fatherless, and widow, and all the 
 people shall say amen." 
 
 The landmarks were removed; the blind and 
 helpless were led out of the way and banished from 
 their habitations and homes, by violence; judgment 
 was perverted; Washington dishonored; the Senate 
 of the United States stultified j and treaty docu- 
 ments, preserved in the treasuries of State, were 
 torn from our statute books, and scattered to the 
 winds. 
 
 It was then declared by many, and we felt at 
 the time, no hesitation in saying, that the nation 
 had incurred the guilt of violated treaties; and that 
 a bitter roll of "mourning, and lamentation, and 
 woe," would be unfolded to the people of the United 
 States. It bus been written in characters indelible. 
 
33 
 
 Every where may be met the black traces of that 
 fatal seal, which then was stamped upon the hitherto 
 stainless escutcheon of our country. The natural 
 and legitimate influence of that example has demor- 
 alized the land. "We have hatched cockatrice's 
 eggs, and woven the spider's web. He that 
 hath eaten of the eggs has died, and that 
 which was crushed hath broken out into a viper." 
 We have sowed the wind and are reaping the 
 whirlwind. God has withdrawn from us the pro- 
 tection of moral restraint, once mighty to protect 
 and preserve. It is not at all strange, that treaties 
 and compacts have lost their sacredness in the eyes 
 of multitudes; that the constitution has ceased to 
 be a bond of union; that States have repudiated 
 their obligations ; that oaths of office are disregarded ; 
 that plighted faith is violated 5 that honor and hon- 
 esty need the strong power of the law to support 
 them; that the law itself has lost its commanding 
 majesty; that fraud, and peculation, and corruption 
 can be traced from the councils of aldermen to the 
 cabinet of the chief magistrate; and that sober- 
 minded, virtuous citizens stand amazed, and are 
 ready to ask in the language of holy writ, " when 
 the Son , of man cometh shall he find faith on the 
 earth V 
 
 The success of Georgia emboldened Alabama ; South 
 Carolina soon after proclaimed nullification. The 
 Supreme Court of the United States has lost much 
 of its power and respect. The chief executive 
 having claimed to interpret the constitution for 
 himself, th*e spirit of lawlessness has grown apace; 
 
 3a 
 
34 
 
 and contempt for institutions, usages, and compacts, 
 time-honored and fraught with benefits, now gives 
 indication that the very joints and sinews of society 
 have been dislocated and strained. The strifes and 
 agitation of slavery have not only turned the halls 
 of Congress, often, into a bear-garden, and given 
 exhibitions of brutal violence ; but churches have 
 repudiated compacts, and set aside at will all corpo- 
 rate rights. The General Assembly of the Presby- 
 terian church, by one party act, through a packed 
 majority, ignored the covenant of the fathers j rode 
 violently over the constitution -, set at naught all the 
 obligations of discipline; and by one summary ex- 
 scinding act, cut off four synods, with their pres- 
 byteries and congregations, and GO, 000 members; 
 seized and held the property and possessions, wrested 
 from those who had largely contributed it; and hold 
 it still, though every decision of courts, where trials 
 have been conducted, have recognized or affirmed 
 the legal and constitutional body, to be that with 
 which they ecclesiastically broke faith, and refuse 
 to resume it. 
 
 Other ecclesiastical bodies have been rent also. 
 And our own New School Presbyterian Assem- 
 bly, in reaching over a synod to express a judg- 
 ment of censure bearing on a Presbytery, without 
 trial or constitutional right, gave occasion and pre- 
 text, on the ground of violated faith, for the separa- 
 tion of southern brethren from us, and the organi- 
 zation of a new body. 
 
 The traces of this thing are interminable. Its 
 roots strike deep into every part of society. Its de- 
 
35 
 
 velopments and growths, we regard as even worse, 
 and far more fatal to the welfare and safety of this 
 Union, than slavery itself, however pestiferous that 
 may be, and blighting to the prosperity of the 
 States that cherish it. It is this readiness to vio- 
 late compacts, to set aside constitutional law, to re- 
 pudiate the obligations of good faith, that we re- 
 gard the most alarming feature of the times. If 
 not cured or corrected, it must prove the inevitable 
 precursor of our ruin. How it is to be remedied, 
 God only knows. Our only hope is in the effusion 
 of the Holy Spirit, which the Lord Jesus Christ has 
 power to grant, by which to turn the heart of this 
 people back again unto Him. This can give wis- 
 dom, and firmness, and prudence, and zeal, and 
 fidelity in our rulers; and, reforming the masses, 
 counteract the influence of corrupt examples and de- 
 moralizing ambitions. God grant a baptism of this 
 Spirit to the whole nation, to bring us to repentance, 
 and teach us to keep His statutes, and command- 
 ments, and ordinances, as the means of our happi- 
 ness and security. 
 
 II. A word or two, in conclusion, as to the 
 grounds on which we may venture to pray in hope 
 for this, as the means of preserving us a united 
 people. 
 
 First, there is the boundless and amazing 
 grace and compassion of God, toward those that 
 have no just claim upon Him. How often did He 
 exhibit and exercise that grace and compassion, 
 in the history of ungrateful and perfidious Israel! 
 "Their heart was not right with Him, neither were 
 
36 
 
 they steadfast in His covenant; but He being full 
 of compassion, forgave their iniquity and destroyed 
 them not: yea, many a time turned He His anger 
 away, and did not stir up all His wrath j for He 
 remembered they were but flesh; a wind that pas- 
 seth away and cometh not again." It is as true 
 in the past history of our own beloved country. 
 Signal have been His interpositions, and abounding 
 His compassions toward us as a nation. Oh, what 
 a flood of grateful recollections does the history of 
 this people bear along with it, from before the days 
 of our revolutionary sires to the present. "He 
 hath done great things for us whereof we have 
 reason to be glad." 
 
 When we look at the manifestation of His own 
 amazing grace and compassion, His own lofty and 
 glorious excellence, as the God "who delighteth in 
 mercy," why should we despair? The fountain 
 of His overflowing love is not exhausted. He is 
 loath to execute His judgments in wrath. His 
 own loving heart, His abounding compassions, well 
 up, in exhaustless exuberant overflowings. What 
 may we not hope and pray for from Him, whose 
 name and nature is Love? Could the eyes and 
 heart of this people but be fixed on God Himself, as 
 He comes to us in Christ, filled with the Spirit, 
 without measure, all would yet be well. With such 
 a God, and such a Saviour, and such a Spirit, to 
 appeal to, let us drive away our unbelieving, guilty 
 fears, and draw near with the full assurance of 
 faith as we pray : " Oh remember not against us 
 former iniquities. Let Thy tender mercies speedily 
 
37 
 
 prevent us — at this very moment rise before us, and 
 keep us from sinking utterly — for we are brought 
 very low. Help us, God of our salvation, for 
 the glory of Thy name, and deliver us, and purge 
 away our sins for Thy name's sake." 
 
 This forms the second ground of hope, the con- 
 scious exercise of penitence in an appeal to God for 
 His help, that we may be delivered, and our sins 
 be purged from us. Without this, all prayer to 
 Him will prove unavailing. If we fast and pray 
 for party strife and debate, and to smite with the fist 
 of wickedness, or practice oppression and deceit, the 
 Lord will not hear us. God knows our hearts; and 
 He has said, "if we regard iniquity in our hearts 
 He will not hear us." But He says, "Let the 
 wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man 
 his thoughts; and let him return unto the Lord, 
 and He will have mercy upon him ; and to our 
 God, for He will abundantly pardon." If this people, 
 this day, though not universally, yet in sufficient 
 numbers to give to God a public reason for the 
 exercise of His clemency and compassion through 
 Christ, shall truly and heartily renounce their sins, 
 and confess and turn away from those things which 
 have displeased Him, He will forgive, and not de- 
 stroy us. Let each and every one of us, then, as 
 we love our souls, our country, and our God, re- 
 nounce and confess to Him, our own personal sins 
 and those of the nation, in so far as we have 
 knowledge and participation of them. 
 
 We shall thus find that we can draw near to God 
 with renewed confidence and enlarged expectations, 
 
38 
 
 and be in a better frame and spirit to influence 
 and lead from error and sin, our neighbors and 
 friends who practice what we judge to be wrong. 
 
 It is the glory of God to forgive : all the lustre of 
 His name, all the excellencies of His character display 
 themselves here. He has said, "I, even I, am He 
 that blotteth out thy transgressions, and will not re- 
 member thy sins any more for My name's sake; put 
 Me in remembrance; declare thou that thou mayest 
 be justified." If the hearts of the people to any 
 extent, will only believe this, so that with conscious 
 exercise of repentance for all past sins, they come 
 to God, and throw themselves and this nation upon 
 His grace and compassion, His very name and na- 
 ture — the infinite, adorable excellencies of His char- 
 acter, as they reveal themselves in the blessed Re- 
 deemer, who is the name of God — will form the 
 strong plea, the prevailing argument, so that with 
 Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, we may confidently 
 plead for our country as he did for his. "We ac- 
 knowledge, Lord, our wickedness, and the in- 
 iquity of our fathers, for we have sinned against 
 Thee. Do not abhor us, for Thy name's sake; do 
 not disgrace the throne of Thy glory." 
 
 Finally, we may take occasion, from the terrible 
 character of the evils deprecated, to become impor- 
 tunate with God. Moses prayed with fervor, and 
 fell down forty days and nights before the Lord, in 
 prayer, that He would not destroy the nation. 
 Dissolution and destruction are the evils that threaten 
 us. If God gives not repentance to put away vol- 
 untarily, the evils of slavery, and those it has 
 
39 
 
 developed, He will, as He ever has done, interfere 
 by His judgments to do it. Who can contemplate 
 such a procedure of His providence, without shud- 
 dering? It is no subject for flippant and angry 
 debates or discussions and bitter revilings. It would 
 seem that He hath smitten already with blindness, 
 and that those more immediately periled, see not 
 the disaster and ruin they are courting by the atti- 
 tude they have assumed. If gradual emancipation 
 is refused — as past history in every country has 
 shown — insurrection, murder, conflagration, rapine, 
 violence, will do it. Secession and separation will 
 invite to these things, and, ere the crisis comes, who 
 can tell how many hearts shall bleed, and homes 
 be rendered desolate, by the horrors of civil war? 
 It may be, that God shall leave us to folly and 
 madness, to break the pillar of our constitution, 
 shake down upon our heads the great and glorious 
 temple of our confederacy, raised by the wisdom, 
 and consecrated by the prayers of our sires of olden 
 days, and involve ourselves in its ruins. But ere 
 that day comes, while yet there is hope of averting 
 the avenging stroke of heaven's wrath, it behooves 
 every christian and patriot to try what conciliation, 
 repentance, fervent prayer, intercession with God, 
 can accomplish. We tremble in view of His judg- 
 ments and wrath, for we are guilty. But knowing 
 His great compassion, still let us pray, "0 Lord, 
 though our enemies testify against us, do Thou, for 
 Thy name's sake spare, and give not Thy heritage 
 to reproach. Oh, the hope of Israel, and the Saviour 
 thereof in time of trouble, why shouldst thou be as a 
 
40 
 
 stranger in the land, and as a wayfaring man that 
 turneth aside to tarry for a night? Why shouldst 
 thou be as a man astonished; as a mighty man 
 that cannot save? Yet Thou, Lord, art in the 
 midst of us, and we are called by Thy name, leave 
 us not!" 
 
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