THE NATIONAL SIN by Uriah Smith

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 20, 1861

THE NATIONAL SIN.

By Uriah Smith

FROM the following article it appears that we are not alone in our views of the hypocritical and wicked character of this nation. The extract is from the American Missionary; and although that paper, in penning it, had probably no reference to the prophecy concerning this nation [Rev. xiii, 11–17], its testimony is nevertheless unequivocal that though in profession this government is just and peaceable and pure, in its actions it gives the lie to its profession, and shows itself unjust, corrupt and wicked. Though in appearance it is innocent and ‘lamb-like,’ it ‘speaks like a dragon.’ Well does the writer remark that the “Almighty has a controversy with this nation;” and not only with this nation, we may add, but he has a controversy with all nations [Jer. xxv, 31], upon which he is evidently now about entering [Luke xxi, 25, 26]; and of the cup of God’s fury from which all nations will be required to drink [Jer. xxv, 15] we believe the dregs will be administered to our own [Jer. xxv, 26; Ps. lxxv, 8]; for the guilt of any people is in proportion to the strength and brightness of the light which they reject; and how much light has been rejected by this government may be learned from the fact that a black and revolting iniquity which all other nations pretending to any degree of civilization have repudiated, and from which they are hastening to cleanse their hands, is still hugged by our own with a sottish tenacity, the people in one portion of the country blasphemously endeavoring to defend it by the Bible, and too many of the rest conniving at both its existence and its arrogant claims. But there is another practice almost equally deserving of rebuke, dwelt upon in the article from which we will not longer detain the reader.

U. SMITH.

It is marvelous in the eyes of the friends of the colored man, who acknowledge him as their countryman and brother, and in the eyes of the civilized world—this country excepted—that so large a portion of the people of the United States, religious and irreligious, and especially those who deify the founders of our Republican government, and more especially those who profess to be disciples of Christ, are so indifferent to the welfare, improvement and advancement of the colored Americans. We may well suppose also that the angelic hosts look with astonishment upon the aversion manifested by the citizens of this country, native and naturalized, toward those who are guilty of a skin not colored like their own. Talk of the “Question at the Door”—proposed by the Vermont Chronicle and the Colonization Journal, and all who sympathize with the sentiments we have quoted from these publications! Let them observe the signs of the times, the handwriting upon the wall, the indications of divine Providence, more visible to the spiritual eye than is the comet that has just visited us, to the natural eye; let them listen to the “Question” that the Almighty is propounding to the people of this land:

“Shall I not visit for these things? saith the Lord: Shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?” “Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge? who eat up my people as they eat bread?”

The free and enslaved people of color have suffered, and are suffering grievous wrongs at the hands of the white inhabitants—at the hands of the Church and those who minister at God’s altar. Although the revolutionary patriots and statesmen asserted that all men were equal before the law, and founded the government upon that noble principle, although some of them protested against the dogma that man can hold property in man; although the Declaration of Independence asserts, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, 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”—and although the Constitution declares that it was, among other things, ordained to “establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves (the people of the United States, white and colored) and our posterity,” yet, from the foundation of the government to the present time the free people of color have been maltreated and scorned, at the North as well as at the South, and their enslaved brethren inhumanly peeled and goaded at the South, aided in the inhumanity by the North.

The North has joined hands with the South in oppressing the colored man throughout the whole country. Exulting in their own freedom the white inhabitants of this country have trampled upon the rights of the poor and needy, and practically given the lie to the principle of equality engraven upon the cornerstone of our political edifice. The world has been witness of this, and the enemies of a Republican government have taunted us with our hypocrisy or indifference “to the opinion of mankind.” Professing to be a Christian nation, the people—we allude to the masses—have set at naught the precepts of Christianity, in their treatment of their colored brethren, forgotten the exhortations of God, and unheeded his warnings, until the patience of the Father of all appears to have been exhausted, and he has come out against us in judgment. His voice to the American people is this: “These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself; but I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes. Now consider this, ye that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver.”

Who is so blind as not to see that the Almighty has a controversy with this nation: that notwithstanding the war waged by the South is a most unnatural, unprovoked and diabolical war upon the government of the United States, the whole country is guilty before God for national sins, of which the chief is slave-holding—a hellish practice connived at by all the States; and that slavery is the cause of the present war. And how astonishing is it that the people, especially those in the free States, do not see and acknowledge that there can be no satisfactory or permanent peace between the Southern and Northern people until the cause of the war—slavery—is removed, and that we can have no peace with the great Ruler of nations until we repent of the sin of slaveholding, and the sin of treating our “neighbors,” the free people of color, with contumely, disdain and cruelty. How amazing that the church is so apathetic on the subject, that ministers are so dumb, that the people are so insensible to the rebukes of the civilized world, so neglectful of the lessons of history and the warnings of Scripture, and so regardless of the retributive justice of the Almighty.