681 43 py 1 THE STATE OF THE NATION A SERMON. JOHN W. CHADWICK, MINISTER OF THE SECOND UNITARIAN CHURCH IN BROOKLYN. 1878-79. DECEMBER. JAMES MILLER, PUBLISHER. 779 Broadway, New York, Opposite A. T. Stewart & Co. S. W. GREEN'S Tvpe-Setting Machinery, i6 and i8 Jacob Street, New York. A FOURTH series of Mr. Chadwick's Sermons is publishing in this form for the season 1878-79. Copies can be had for six cents each (including postage of copies sent by mail) of James Miller, 779 Broadway, New York, opposite A. T. Stewart's, and at Tredwell's bookstore, 417 Fulton street, Brooklyn. Copies at the church in Brooklyn, corner of Clinton and Congress streets, 2ixe free to all ; but voluntary subscriptions to the printing fund will be acceptable. I. THE FAITH OF THE DOUBTERS, n. RELIGION AND MORALITY. III. THE STATE OF THE NATION. The following Sermons, of the first and second and third series, can be supplied by Mr. Miller: THE HIGHER REVERENCE. THE BEST USE OF SUNDAY. ECONOMY AND WASTE. THE ANGEL SONG. THE MORALS OF BELIEF. , FUTURE PUNISHMENT. FATE AND FREEDOM. . THE RISING FAITH. THE CHILD JESUS. THE SIMPLICITY OF TRUE RELIGION. THE COMING MAN. Mr. Miller can also furnish "The Bible of To-Day, " by John W. Chadwick ; a rational account of the various books of the Bible ; the order of their appearance, authorship, object, etc. Sent by mail for $1.50. Also "A Book of Poems." Sent by mail for $1. THE STATE OF THE NATION. It was formerly the custom at least twice a year, on Fast-day and at Thankso-iyino--time, for teachers of religion to remind their hearers that they were not only individuals, not only mem- bers of a family circle, or of a church or town community, but also citizens of a great nation, and to inyite them to consider tJic state of the na- tion, if haply so C(^nsidering some path of public duty might be made more plain, some public sin be dragged to light, some public danger be proclaimed in time to be averted. This custom has never fallen into entire disuse, but since the war for liberty and honor, and the immediately succeeding agonies of reconstruction, the preacher has been more content than he was formerly upon these special occasions to dwell in a re- gion of sentiment, to be poetical about the gra})es and corn, and to leave questions of a more spe- cial nature for the newspapers and the politicians to debate and settle. The reason for this change is obvious to some extent. For many years be- fore the war the idea generally prevailed in min- isterial minds that there was really but one na- tional sin, and that the sin of slaver}'. And al- though it was sometimes a test of courage for the minister to say his plainest word about this 220 THE STATE OF THE NATION. sin, aware that A or B, perhaps his wealthiest parishioner, was inwardly making a running commentary on his performance which some- times became audibly profane, yet the courage demanded for such utterance was not so great as if the sinner had been there before him in the pews. Then, the long-smouldering volcano hav- ing broken out into the fierce wrath of civil war, the special occasions were improved by pul- pit orators to criticise the generalship of Burn- side or McClellan, or to insist that the govern- ment should use its war-power to make an end of slavery. Still further on, the preacher found his occupation in demanding that the reconstruc- tion of the S(nith should be upon the basis of equal rights for all. This also having been finally accomplished, it must be confessed that the preacher soon began to find it much more difificult than it had been to deal with public questions in his pulpit. The question of a proper currency became more and more the uppermost question in the political sphere, and this question is not one the right and wrong of which appear so plain to the average mind as of other questions which had preceded it. The preacher might well feel suspicious of his ability to adjudicate upon so critical a matter, when close at hand in the community were men of equal practical sagacity, equally able to succeed in practical affairs, who nevertheless differed as widely as possible concerning the engrossing question of the time. And so his function has been more and more confined to personal ethics, with an occasional raid upon the civil service or ( THE STATE OF THE NATION. 221 a (generally) too indiscriminate attack upon the honesty of our public officers. All this has been very natural, and perhaps unavoidable, but in the mean time the nation has been " sounding on, a dim and perilous way, " now swerving this way and now that, and hnally, to all appearance, it has quite irrevocably declared itself for that financial policy which seems to me the policy of simple honesty. It is neither here nor there whether the national financiering was wisely managed amid the overwhelming excite- ment of the war, and under the enormous pres- sure of those immediate necessities which it im- posed upon us. There is the simple fact that under that pressure, amid that excitement, we made certain promises ; and having made them, and upon the strength of them • furnished our- selves with the sinews of war, there is nothing left for us to do but keep those promises, let come what will, and every man in the United States ought to prefer to live as simply as his father and grandfather did before him, and simpler, if need be, rather than that the prom- ises which the nation made should not be kept to the last syllable : and so they would, the poorest first of all, if the appeal had been made not to their selfishness and envy, but to their honor and their truth. " So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When duty whispers low Thou must. The heart replies I can." But if the preachers have of late been more reluctant than formerly to enter on considera- 222 THE STATE OF THE NATION. tions of national duty and danger, the voice of criticism and of prophecy and warning has not failed us utterly. Rather has it made itself fre- quently and loudly heard, and it has been no " lovely song of one who has a pleasant voice and can play well on an instrument." Beyond the angry surge of war we thought we saw the smiling gleam of a millennial time ; but like the cru- sading children whose "Jerusalem the golden" turned out to be a squalid hamlet, swarming with thieves and harlots, so has what we took to be the goal of our desire proved to be but a single stage of an illimitable journey which still length- ens out before us, hundreds of weary miles. Never, it is safe to say, since we became a nation has there been so deep a tone of national distrust as there is now. Lying upon my desk as I wrote this sermon was a Thanksgiving sermon written more than a hundred years ago. It was preached December 15th, 1774, by Ezra wStiles, the great- o-randfather of my friend William Gannett, the President of Yale College, and the most distm- o-uished minister of his time. It is a manuscript sermon, but the writing is still legible enough, althouo-h the hand that wrote it has so long been dust. "It is the darkest da}^," he says, "that ever America saw." The first Continental Con- o-ress had met in Philadelphia only a few weeks before. And it was dark enough. But the dark- ness was from the overshadowing cloud of Brit- ish t3'ranny. The light within the people was not darkness yet, and now we know that dark- ness held within its bosom the promise of our THE STATE OF THE NATION. 223 national independence. Man}^ a time since then have men been ready to take up those words of the old revolutionary preacher and say, " It is the darkest day that ever America saw." And more than once, no doubt, it has been true. But every time the darkness has been a forerunner of the light. And every time, till now, the danger seemed to come either from some power outside the state or from some party in the state which threatened it with ruin. Never before has there been prevalent, as there is now, a very wide distrust not only of the fundamental character of our republican institutions, but, which is the saddest thing of all, of the moral fibre of the American people. Men are saying, The institu- tions are good enough, only they are too good for the people. They require virtue for their suc- cessful operation, and virtue is not to be had. The rich care only for their riches ; the poor care only to do as little work as possible for the most pay they can browbeat their employers into giv- ing them. This sort of talk and feeling is not so much here and there as it is everywhere. It is, you might say, in the' air. But now and then it is condensed into some newspaper or magazine article of unusual force, which attracts much at- tention and does much to increase the amount of pessimistic thought and feeling in the community. The extent to which this thought and feeling enter into individual minds is dependent very largely upon subjective conditions. " To him who wears a shoe," the saying is, " it is as if the earth were carpeted with leather." So long as a 224 THE STATE OF THE NATION. man's own business and dii^estion are first rate, the chances are that he will take a very cheerful view of the political and social situation. But let his business or digestion get into a bad way, and straightwav he is haunted by visions of gen- eral bankruptcy, and c(3mmunism, and so on. For the most part, too, theories of radical social re- form are generally the offspring of the involun- tarv idleness of cultured men whose self-esteem obliges them to suspect a fimdamental weakness in the structure of society in order to account for their individual misfortunes. The}- cannot con- ceive it possible that in a well-ordered society, even if in a well-ordered universe, persons of their ability should not have evervthing thev want. And as the involuntarv idleness of culti- vated men is the seed-garden of radical social ideas, so the wide field in which these ideas are broiidcast is the involuntary idleness of unculti- vated men, who if thev had ^vork enough to do, and consequently bread enough to eat and clothes enough to wear, would have neither the time nor disposition to inflame themselves with vague anticipations of a general breaking-up of the existing order. Nevertheless, we must beware lest our own well-fed optimism obscure for us the facts. Making all due allowance for subjective bias in men's estimate of the political and social situa- tion, the fact remains that in the state of the na- tion there are at present a good many things which are not as they should be, and which mav well excite the interest of the most thoughtful THE STATE OF THE NATION. 225 men. And by the state of the nation I do not mean the state of the government. One of the hopeful signs of the times is that so many are coming to see that the nation and the government of the nation are not equivalent terms. The nation is the total life of forty millions of people and more here in America. The government, or rather the administration of the government, does not in- clude, national and state together, the official life of more than half a million people, if so many. And this distinction between the government and the administration of the government is another distinction that we ought to learn to make. The best governments are capable of reckless admin- istration. The government of England now is the same that it was a dozen years ago. But the administration is very different ; in Gladstone's day it was ministerial and parliamentary, now it is almost wholly personal. Men talk about our government as if the system of official patronage were an essential part of it. But it is nothing of the sort. The election of John Quincy Adams in 1826 was to all intents and purposes a party change, and yet John Quincy Adams only re- moved two civil officers out of the thousands under his control, while Andrew Jackson, his im- mediate successor, removed hundreds and thou- sands. I do not mean that administration is everything, the form of government indifferent. Some forms of government are premiums upon official tyranny and corruption. But the best form of government that can be devised is capa- ble of maladministration, as the best locomotive 226 THE STATE OF THE NATION. that was ever built is capable of running- a whole train-load of passengers into perdition if a drunken engineer and fireman have it in charge. I do not doubt there are details of the American government which can be improved. But take it as it is, and let the administration of it be of corresponding wisdom and justice, and there shall not be a government on the face of the earth that shall insure so much security of life and property, and so much general happiness, as ours. Ay, even as it is, with all the maladminis- tration, it is the best government to live under that the sun shines upon. The administration of the government is one factor in the state of the nation, but it is not ex- haustive of the whole. As one factor, however, it is an important one. And I shall not deny that in the administration of our government there is abundant ground, not for despairing of the re- public, but for the deepest sorrow and huinilia- tion. There is, however, little need for me to say anything upon this head, the whole subject has so recently been canvassed here by one who is the most earnest and eloquent antagonist of our present system in the whole countr)-. And I need not remind you how conclusively Mr. Curtis proved that this svstem is neither essential to our republican form of government, seeing that until the time of Andrew Jackson, that incarnate mob, we never had any such system, nor to our method of party politics, seeing that England has this method just as much as we, without our mon- strous system of official patronage. But there are THE STATE OF THE NATION. 227 other evils in the administration of the govern- ment besides the maladministration of the civil service. Theoretically our government is a gov- ernment of the people, by the people, for the peo- ple. Practicallv it is not exactly this. It is a gov- ernment of the people, by the caucus, for — the Lord knows whom. We must vote for the candi- dates nominated bv the caucuses, or our vote is thrown awa}'. The moral is, that if a man would have political inlfuence, if he would have his unit count, he must attend the primaries. But here again the individual is a mere puppet. A set of candidates has been agreed upon beforehand. Everything has been cut and dried by a few igno- rant but ver}^ knowing persons in the back parlor of some retailer of wine and lager-bier. ' ' What are you going to do about it ?" The individual alone can do next to nothing. But honest men c^f force and pluck can so combine that they can counter- act to some extent the back-parlor oligarchies. If they do not, then we may well despair for the Re- public. The Natioi, which would be infallible if its conceit could make it so, says that men of force and pluck w^ill not combine to secure honest ad- ministration ; that they would rather be plundered by political rings than take the trouble to break them. If it is so, then the most pessimistic view of our political situation is likeliest to be true. That form of government cannot be devised which like a perfect crystal shall exclude from itself all impurity. " Eternal vigilance is the price of lib- erty." This ancient saying has not 3^et lost its point. But I have faith that there are men of 228 THE STATE OF THE NATION. force and pluck in all our cities, towns, and villages who, once they realize the situation, will go to work to mend it with a will. Here is a splendid opportunit}- for jou 3^oung men to break up the monotony of your too joyous lives or the dull apath}^ of your habitual amusements. You re- joice in athletic physical sports. Here is a chance for an athletic mind ; sometimes, perhaps, for an athletic body too. Here is occasion for you to brace and measure yourselves against the igno- rance and criminahty of the community. The future of America is in your hands if you are equal to the task imposed upon you by the present emergency, if you can rise to the high level of your glorious opportunity. One of the saddest things in our political situa- tion is the draining off of the best talent of the country from the sphere of politics into the sphere of mercantile activity. Time was when the best men in the community, the most able, the most cul- tured, looked to the political arena as the one place which they would choose wherein to exercise their gifts. For a long time this has not been the case. ¥he acquisition of wealth has had superior attrac- tions to the acquisition of political power. But now that wealth has proved a dead-sea apple in so many hands, I can but hope that once again our best young men, upon the very threshold of their career, will set their hearts upon the acquisition of poHtical power, and, to the end that they may be worthy custodians of it, I would have them give the best part of their mental energy to studying the science and the art of government, and especi- THE STATE OF THE NATION. 229 ally to making- themselves acquainted with the or- igin and development of our own political system. One day, while I was at my bookseller's, a man came in and said, " Have you got any book about money ?" He had been elected to Congress only the day before, and he was going to read up I Here was a specimen of the men who do our financial legislation. And yet we speak of profes- sional politicians with a sneer. Why, the desider- atum of the time is a class of professional politi- cians, men with political ambition, but not less with political culture and political enthusiasm, and stern resolve that the political administration of Amer- ica shall not always be the sweetest consolation of monarchs and aristocrats across the sea ; nay, but a herald of their doom. We want here in America not only a class of professional politicians, men educated to the sci- ence and the art of government as carefully as physicians are educated to the science and the art of medicine and lawyers to the science and the art of law, but also a class of educated journalists who shall make journalism as much a profession, and as honorable a one, as divinity or medicine or law. Journalism is to-day the one great force in our American life. In power and opportunity it is what the pulpit was one hundred years ago. The newspapers make and unmake the politicians. But they are seldom leaders of thought. They lag be- hind the average intelligence and moral sentiment of the community. They consult expediency in- stead of justice. They are organs of party, not of the spirit. They do not keep both eyes for 230 THE STATE OF THE NATION. truth, but always one for the subscription-list. They do not lead, but follow, popular sentiment. Let this decree that Gen. Grant or Gen. Butler shall be the next President, and one by one ever)- Republican or Democratic paper, as the case may be, will fall into line and discover that the candi- date has all the cardinal virtues ; or, under the plea of " principles, not men," conveniently forget a hundred doughty editorials of which the inspiring theme, and justly so, was, " Men are incarnate principles. ' ' To say a thing in such a way that just the opposite thing can be said three months hence without apparent contradiction is journalism con- sidered as a fine art. The press is nothing if it is not oracular. Men quote to me as if they were infallible the judgments of the press on this book or that picture, when the chances are the criticism is written by a callow youth who confounds Ed- mund with Herbert Spencer, and but for the name in the corner could not distinguish between a painting by Alma Tadema and one by Gustave Dore. No matter how little the journalist knows about anything ; if he can talk about it as if he knew everything, he is all right. The newsboy becomes a reporter and the reporter an editor, his grammar and his rhetoric debauched by having read newspapers and nothing else. And so it hap- pens that although the press is a great power, it is a power for evil quite as often as for good. What we need is a profession of journalism, the training for which shall combine all the details of printing and of office-work together with many years of special stud}- upon history and social science. I know of THE STATE OF THE NATION. 2^1 one young man who is training himself for jour- nalism in this way. First a practical printer, he next acquired a first-rate college education, and now he is studying hard, especially in American history, drenching himself with its facts and its philosophy, and fitting himself thus to be a real teacher of his fellow-citizens. There must be many others, of whom I do not know, but there ousfht to be hundreds of young men in America to-day at work in this direction, and sooner or later there must be if American journalism is going to be a savor unto life and not unto death. What I have now said is broadly true, but of course there are particular exceptions. There are journals which are representative of both culture and con- science, and this because men of culture and con- science sit in their editorial chairs. The decay of patriotism in America is a notable sign of the times. But though Dr. Johnson said, " Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel," the saying is not any truer than a hundred other of his sayings — the offspring of ill-temper and defec- tive culture and a narrow mind — if it was intend- ed to impeach the value of patriotism and not merely the value of the scoundrel. " O Liberty," said Madame Roland, " how many crimes have been committed in th}- name!" and yet she did not doubt the good of liberty. Rehgion has from first to last been the cloak of innumerable hypoc- risies, and yet religion is no worse on this ac- count. We need an avatar of patriotism, a new birth of it, here in America. It need not be nar- row and provincial. It need not be conceited. 2^2 THE STATE OF THE NATIOJ^. It need not blind us to our faults ; nay, rather it may make us lynx-eyed to search them out. Mr. Emerson has \yritten recently, " Let the pas- sion for America cast out the passion for Eu- rope." But there are some thino^s in Europe \xe (jught to haye a passion for. T cannot sympa- thize with Emerson's desire that ^ve should haye a distinctiye American dress and architecture and literature, and so on. Let us seek the best every- where. At the same time I do detest the syco- phantic wa}' in which we wait f(jr foreign yer- dicts on our American products. English en- thusiasm did not prove Joaquin Miller a true poet, and English depreciation cannot prove our noble Whittier anything but one. And / \yould have a ' ' passion for America, ' ' and not only a pas- sion for her honor and her righteousness, but also a passion for her beauty and prosperity, and for her history, and for her literature, and for her henjes and statesmen. We can afford to laugh at the suggestion that the Yosemite was })urchased for a national park " in (jrder to show what sort of natural scenery can be produced under a republi- can form of gON'ernment," and still be very proud of the Yosemite and the White Mountains and the Adirondacks and Niagara. vSpread-eagleism has had its day, but I should like to have a lit- tle more of that good, health}- sense of national glory and achievement of which the most culti- vated English writers do not seem to be ashamed. We have become much too shamefaced and apolo- ofetic. Let us acknowleds^e every fault and fail- ure and still, upon the whole, dare to confront the THE STATE OF THE NATION. -OJ civilization of the world with an iinbhishing front. The worst of our mistakes and crimes can easily be |)arallcled, if not surpassed, by contemporary mis- takes and crimes of England and the Continent. The wonder is we are no worse, so many of their exasperated citizens have taken refuge on our shore. Yes, let us have a passion for America ; and to this end let us begin to impress upon our children's minds in earliest youth the history of (jur national career, teaching full soon their lips to lov- ingly recite the ballads of our homespun heroism and heroic men. It is the disgrace of our higher education, for the most part, that it gives ten times as much attention to foreign and ancient as to American historv, when it ought to give ten times as much to American as to foreign and ancient. Surely never was history more full of romance or adventure, noble excitement, generous inspira- tion. It onlv waits the genius of a Green or a Macaulay to make such a tale of it as shall keep " children from their play and old men from the chimney-corner. The distrust and fear which have of late suc- ceeded to our former confidence have fastened with special violence upon universal suffrage as the bane of our political life, the promise of our irretrievable dismav. But wherever this is al- ready established it is safe to say that it will not be disestablished. With popular sentiment more rampant than it has ever been, no franchise that has been already given to the people is going to be withdrawn. Try it, and see what thunder 3T)u will have about your ears. And however ill- 234 THE STATE OF THE NATION. qualified thousands of voters may be, especially in our great cities, nothing- is surer than that they are far less dangerous where they are than they would be on the outside of the body politic. The ballot is a convenient crater for volcanic passions that would else set the whole social continent to rumbling, undulating, and disgorging under our feet. But the inevitable corollary of universal suffrage is universal education. First, last, and always this must be insisted on. And the univer- sal education must include some elementar}- in- struction in the principles of the American Gov- ernment and the facts of its development. And lest the schools, especially the sectarian schools, should fail to do their duty, the state or national government ought to be so far paternal in its office as to see that every home is w^ell provided with some simple instrument for such elementary instruction." These faihng of their duty, it re- mains for individual effort to direct itself to such an end. Would that to this some elementary in- struction might be added in the principles of po- litical economy ! If this had always been a part of our common-school education, 1 think we should not now have hundreds of thousands of people imagining that the government can create labor or manufacture wealth, any more than we should have a tariff which fattens eight millions of people upon the flesh and blood of thirty-four millions, and defies the principles which have been estab- lished science in the region of political economy for a whole century. Another count in the indictment of the social THE STATE OF THE NATION. 235 pessimist is that the average morality of America has for some years past been deteriorating very rapidly. This count must be allowed, and the worst thing about it is that the deterioration is of that virtue which is the binding cement of all true society, — the virtue of integrity. It is not contended that the vices of intemperance and licentiousness have grown upon us. The facts, if we could get at them all, would prob- ably show that in these respects we have been getting on. But whereas crimes of sensuality and intemperance were venial at the begin- ning of the century, now crimes of dishon- esty are so. The abuse of public and of private trusts has been a startling feature of our recent social and political life. And what has been done on a large scale bv national and state and coun- ty financiers, and by bank presidents and insur- ance managers, has been done on a small scale by people everywhere. In the hard times of 1857 people who could not earn but 50 cents a day lived upon 50 cents a day and gave up all their little luxuries ; ate bread without butter, and drank coffee without milk. Now the same class of people earning $1 a day live at the rate of $2 a day, and let the grocer and the butcher pay the balance. Now they must have the best of every- thing, money or no money. This is the rule, but here again, of course, there are exceptions : men and women starving everywhere rather than eat the bread of charity or that for which they cannot pay. It is eas}- enough to account in some degree 236 THE STATE OF THE NATION. for these diseased and moribund conditions of our social life. They are to some extent, to a consid- erable extent, the offspring of those " good times" of the war when, with a currency monstrously inflated, wages were high, money was plenty, and extravagant expenditure was the order of the day. Those were the times when bounty-money, which should have been as sacred as the lives it symbolized, vanished " like the dew of heaven on the cliffs of Foulah." Women who had never had a ten-dollar-bill of their own in all their lives before spent hundreds in a few days of glori- ous shopping. Contractors for the government earned thousands and millions of dollars in a few months or years. And then came the reaction. The bounty-money had been spent. The real estate shrank to a fraction of its original nominal value. The need of plain living became every day more evident. But the habits of extrava- gance engendered bv the abominable " good times" were not easilv altered. The luxuries and dainties must be had, paid for or not paid tor. Hence defalcations on the right hand and the left ; hence general defect of honesty, and with this the loss of self-respect and ever deeper shame. Alas ! the blood of our voung heroes was not the dearest price we paid for national union and eman- cipation I If we had had here in America a type ol re- ligion pre-eminently moral, insisting above all things upon righteousness, it is quite possible that the destructive energy of an inflated currency might have been counteracted. But in fact the prevailing tvpe of our religion has been and is THE STATE OF THE NATION. 237 pre-eminently unmoral ; it insists upon righteous- ness not first of all, but last of all. Salvation is the principal thing, and righteousness has noth- incr whatever to do with the matter of salvation. This depends not upon character, but upon faith in the atoning merits of the blood of Jesus. If this religion had been a development of recent times, it would have had but little influence in the working out of our social p]-oblem. But it was on the ground when the demoralizing influences of the war, or rather of its attendant circum- stances, first made themselves felt. It was in the grain of the community, dif in by centuries of preaching and teaching and ecclesiastical routine. And being what it was, it was a religion which, instead of counteracting the evil influences of the abominable " goods times," conspired with these for the destruction of our moral life. The natural corollary of not paying one's own moral debts w^as not paying one's own business debts. If mercantile morality had nothing to do with sal- v^ation, why be so ver}^ anxious about mercantile morality ? No wonder then that, almost without exception, the abuse of sacred trusts, the squan- dering of other people's money, has been the fault of men of highest evangelical repute, of marked religiosity, active beyond all others in their re- spective churches, " shining like stars in the firma- ment." No wonder that when the demoralization of the abominable "good times" was joined in marriage with the doctrine of salvation zi'it/ioiit character, the children born of such a marriage have been Dishonesty and Faithlessness. There is another sign of the religious aspect 238 THE STATE OF THE NATION. of the times which demands some brief consider- ation. The old theology has lost its hold upon the more intelligent and cultivated people in America. But in the majority of cases, instead of boldly declaring their convictions, these keep up a show of orthodox belief and worship. If now and then they have a twinge of conscience and consult the rector or the minister, he confesses privately that he is very much of their opinion. Asked to read a certain service in a certain church, I declined. " Wh}'," said the gentle- manly warden, " two thirds of the congregation put their own construction on these words. Why can't you do the same ?" And so we go. The ignorance of the community is still implicit!}' de- voted to the popular theology. The intelligence of the community keeps up an appearance which has no basis of reality. It is this state of things which might well make Ezra Stiles exclaim, if he were living now, " It is the darkest day that ever America saw." To these phenomena of mercantile dishonesty and unspiritual religion add the phenomena of wide-spread discontent prevailing in the indus- trial classes, the communistic schemes that form the staple of a world of senseless talk and lawless aspiration, which would make the general gov- ernment a gigantic soup-house and compel its legislation to reflect the shifty sentiments of the untutored population, together with the spectacle of ignorant or malicious demagogues appealing to all that is most selfish, mean, and sordid in the human heart — and you have a horoscope which is THE STATE OF THE NATION. 239 not SO cheerful as might be ; which is indeed, and to no small degree, discouraging and ominous of ill. To cry peace, peace, when there is no peace is not the part of wisdom certainly. But no more is it the part of wisdom to exaggerate the popular discontent. The greater part of it is superficial, caused by the stress of present suffering and the enforced economies of our return to honest ways from our excursions into the illimitable void. Let there be honesty and frugality, with the read- justment of labor so that the overstocked depart- ments of trade and manufacture shall make over their surplus to the short-handed agriculturists, and, with the return of general activity, even with- out the false and lying appearance of prosperity which we have left behind us, Kearney and his fellow-demagogues would, if I am not mistaken, find their occupation gone. For the rest, our hope of rescue from the vague unrest or practical result of communistic speculations lies in the edu- cation of the whole community, not merely of the poor and uneducated, but of the rich who have the form without the substance of enlightenment. When men of much apparent culture and intelli- gence advocate the conversion of our city govern- ment into a great labor bureau, as if the city had a private mine and mint at its disposal, or as if the burden of taxation were not already greater than the majority can bear, it is a sign that ignorance of the first principles of political economy is not confined to manual laborers, but is an omnipres- ent evil. But there is intelligence in the com- munity which only needs a challenge sharp 240 THE STATE OF THE NATION. enough to prove with overwhehning force that this great reformatory idea of a paternal bureau- cratic government is one which we have been painfully disengaging ourselves from for hundreds of years ; one which has always been the step- ping-stone of tyrants to their thrones ; and one which has ever been " the first and therefore the falsest that meets the mind when it begins to reflect on the reform of human society." If, with all the hoarded learning it has got from cen- turies of experience, the aggregate intelligence of modern society is not able to meet the great re- formatory idea of a paternal, bureaucratic, com- munistic government in a fair field and " give it all it wants," then it deserves to be humiliated to the last degree. Well said John Milton, " Let Truth and Falsehood grapple ; who ever knew Truth to be put to the worse in a free and open encounter?" But the quarter from which I expect the great- est help in the solution of this labor problem, as we call it, is practical, not intellectual or argu- mentative. For it is from the justice and the faithfulness of individual men who in their various positions of responsibility shall carry themselves so wisely, so forbearingly, so tenderly, that they shall not onl}- convince those in employment under them that the interests of capital and labor are identical, but shall make them each and all apostles of this doctrine up and down the land. And yet it well may be that in all these form- less discontents and foolish aspirations there is the promise and the potency of some more equitable A aUI Ann BB AC* THE STATE OF THE NATION. 241 distribution of that wealth, which is the joint product of capital and labor, than we have yet attained unto. T am by no means sure that the exact relative value of the brains and hands con- cerned in all manufacturing is fairly expressed by the relative profits of the employer and em- ployed. The world is still young, and it would be ver}^ strange if we had got already to the highest point attainable in these concerns and need not keep our minds open and receptive to some further revelation. Moreover, in these discontents and aspirations may there not be a hint that our political economy, though excellent in its own sphere, does not ex- haust the social problem in its entirety ? Within the sphere of political econom}' it is a lawful say- ing, " He that \vill not work shall not eat." But there are those who cannot work, and, even of those who 7^-/// not, the unwilling will is sometimes a disease as positive as cholera or typhus. These are phenomena of which our political economy takes no account. So then our social science, inspired by our Christianity or such other religion as we have, must take account of them. Here is the sphere for our paternal government. It is not for men and women " full-summed in all their powei-s," but for the weakhngs and the drones ; those to be cared for with a divine compassion, these to be dealt with firmly and compelled to earn their right to live. It is not, then, to be denied that in the state of the nation, considered not merely as a working government but also as a society of upwards of 242 THE STATE OF THE NATION. forty millions of men, women, and children, there is much that is not as those who love America would have it, much that is ill and portentous of yet greater ill to come. And in all the horoscope the most baleful star is that which ought to shine with the most cheerful light, the pole-star of re- ligion. And yet I cannot doubt that out of all these sorrows and distresses the Spirit Avill yet lead us up and on. " He will bring upon us fear and dread and trial. He will torture us with the tribulation of his discipline, till he try us by his laws and test our soul. Then he will strengthen us and make our way straight for us and give us joy-" But one word more and I will end your weari- ness. It may be that you are asking. If these things are so, what ought a man to do who would acquit himself right manfull)^ ? Some hints I trust I have given on the way, but the one thing that he should do, and can, is to see to it that one single individual, namely himself, in the midst of what- ever falsehood is true, in the midst of whatever dishonesty is honest, in the midst of whatever in- sincerity is sincere, and that, in the midst of what- ever religion of glorified irresponsibleness, his re- ligion is to him first and foremost a principle and law of righteousness. So doing, haply it shall be made plain to him how he can help in other ways to make America a righteous nation whose God is the Eternal. GAYLORD IROS. MAKERS SYRACUSE, - H.Y. PAT. JAN. 21, laOB ^^^^ggg^^^l^gglggjg^ LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 013 789 610 2 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 013 789 610 2