THE CRISIS | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 6, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 27.

THE CRISIS.

[The fundamental doctrine of American Government is “that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men;” deriving their just powers from “the consent of the governed.” Our country now holds as subjects about eight millions of people, who have for years waged war for freedom from oppression. These have been purchased for a price and are to be governed for gold, if greed is to have its way. They are deprived of the rights of American citizens; Spanish tyranny is condoned, and the basic principles of American justice and freedom are repudiated in practice, or left to an indeterminate future. The following lines of Whittier are to the point.]

Is THIS, O countrymen of mine, a day for us to sow The soil of new-gained empire with slavery’s seeds of woe? To feed with our fresh life-blood the Old World’s cast-off crime, Dropped like some monstrous early birth, from the tired lap of Time? To run anew the evil race the old lost nations ran, And die like them of unbelief of God, and wrong of man? Great Heaven! Is this our mission? End in this our prayers and tears, The toil, the strife, the watchings, of our younger, better years? Still as the Old World rolls in light, shall ours in shadow turn, A beamless chaos, cursed of God, through outer darkness borne? When the far nations looked for light, a blackness in the air? When for words of hope they listened, the long wail of despair? The crisis presses on us; face to face with us it stands With solemn lips of question, like the Sphinx in Egypt’s sands. This day we fashion destiny, our web of fate we spin; This day for all hereafter, choose we holiness or sin; Even now from starry Gerizim, or Ebal’s cloudy crown, We call the dews of blessing or the bolts of cursing down. By all for which the martyrs bore their agony and shame; By all the warning words of truth with which the prophets came; By the future which awaits us; by all the hopes that cast Their faint and trembling beams across the blackness of the past; And by the blessed thought of Him who for earth’s freedom died, O my people! O my brothers! let us choose the righteous side.