Bishop Clark's Sermon on our Impending National Dangers.
THE discourse preached by Bishop Clark in Grace church last Sunday evening, Nov. 1, 1862, was one of intense interest, and made a profound impression upon the immense congregation. The text was from Lamentations v, 16. "The crown is fallen from our head. Woe unto us, for we have sinned!" We make the following report : After a reference to the sad picture of reverses which the prophet describes in the book of Lamentations, the Bishop proceeded to show the application of his language to the condition of our country. "We have fallen upon evil days, and the heart of the nation beats with agony. I do not wish to say a word that shall deepen the gloom. We must look the facts in the face, we must be willing to see where we stand, and what dangers threaten us. The crown of prosperity is fallen from our heads. There is no suspension in the operations of business. There are many who are making202money as they never did before. By a single turn of the wheel, some find themselves rich who were poor yesterday. There never could be a better time for shrewd and daring speculation. Money is a drug; and when a man has made his half a million, he does not know what to do with it; for he feels that there is no paper which may not be rags in a year, no stock which may not have lost its value, no form of business that may not be at a stand still. Nothing is safe but gold and land; and the former can be had only at ruinous rates, and the latter may yield no income. We have a sort of hectic prosperity, but the vital organs are diseased. We have an abundant currency—an over-abundant currency—because it is fictitious—a "promise to pay," which everybody knows is a lie. The show of prosperity that we have cannot last long. We are blowing the bubble larger and larger every day, and it grows thinner as it expands. It glistens gloriously in the sunshine for a moment, but it will burst suddenly and vanish into space. We have ceased to accumulate the true material of prosperity, producing and manufacturing abundantly. Every one knows that soon the supply will be much larger than the demand, and we are speculating upon the impending calamity. "This is not the worst. The temptations to fraud are irresistible, and many men, of whom we had expected better things, are yielding to the temptation. The most discouraging thing in the present alarming crisis is the fact that so many loyal citizens are improving the opportunity to amass enormous profits by fraudulent speculation upon the miseries of the country. I have seen the results of this at Washington, in forms that make one's blood curdle with indignation. I have seen sick and dying men in our hospitals furnished with supplies, for which the contractors were paid a generous price, and the poor creatures turned away with loathing from the nauseous substances laid upon their hot and fevered lips. "The crown of pride is fallen from our head. No foreign power has attacked us; but the foundations are shaken, not by assault from without, but—the pillars of this magnificent fabric have fallen in by their own weight, weakened and shattered by the hands that were sworn to hold them up. And now we are distressed and ashamed at our inefficiency in dealing with the traitors who have desolated the land; and here and there men begin to whisper of compromise and concession. Meanwhile the nations from abroad withhold their sympathy, exult over our defeats, minister abundantly to the wants of the rebels, and exultantly predict our final ruin. Before many months have passed, if things continue in their present condition, we have reason to believe that they will proffer mediation with one hand, holding in the other the threat of armed interference. "The crown of confidence is broken. No people ever struggled harder to retain their faith in the wisdom of their statesmen, and the efficiency of their military leaders; but to-day they point to the practical results—to what has not been accomplished, and say, 'We are disappointed.' Men are losing faith in each other. Party strife is rampant—the crew are quarreling while the ship sinks. "It would be well in these days, when we are threatened with other dangers besides the Southern rebellion,203if our people and our rulers would study somewhat carefully the records of the past, and then remember that human nature, being essentially the same in all generations, history is very apt to repeat itself. What precipitated upon France all the horrors of her bloody revolution? I shall enter upon no recital of the strange cruelties and atrocities of that dark period—God grant that it may never be repeated! But I simply ask you to note these few points in the order of events. First, a cry for bread—the people are hungry and must be fed. Starving men are tigers, and will have blood if they cannot have bread. Secondly, weakness and temporizing on the part of the monarch. He means well, but lacks nerve. Thirdly, the union of extreme parties most diametrically opposed—the old aristocracy and the new radicals, to make things as bad as possible, and each hoping to secure what it wanted in the general overturn. Fourthly and lastly, national delirium, universal madness, a menagerie of wild beasts all let loose together, and human life regarded as a bagatelle. "Is there anything in the fact that we live in the nineteenth century to shield us from the awful convulsions of the past? A while ago we thought there was, and he who should have predicted such a civil war as is now raging, would have been called a fool. Do you think that the great problems that the nation is now trying to solve will be settled easily or speedily? Do you feel sure that the final issue will come during your day and generation? Are there no tokens here in the loyal portion of the land which alarm you? Would one grand victory bring us unity and peace? Do you suppose that out of the ruins we shall ever rebuild the temple of our liberties in the same proportions and after the same architecture as before? No nation ever passed through such a struggle as we are engaged in without having experienced some organic changes; some for the better, some for the worse. We shall come out of this contest with the mark of the scars indelibly impressed upon us. God grant that we may also come forth stronger in limb, clearer in brain, and purer in heart. "For, woe unto us, we have sinned, and therefore is the crown fallen from our head. We have sinned as individuals, and we have sinned as a nation. I have not time to give a full catalogue of our transgressions. I can only notice those which are most obvious and flagrant. "First and foremost stands our treatment of those races which the providence of God has thrown upon our protection; inferior to us in blood, in culture, in rank, and in power. I say it deliberately, that the annals of the world nowhere furnish a record of more atrocious injustice, cruel fraud, than is seen down to the present hour in our treatment of the aboriginal nations of the soil, whom we have dispossessed, and, as far as possible, exterminated. "And there is another people, first stolen from their barbarous homes, and transported over the sea to become our slaves. How have we dealt with them? Here at the North we abolished slavery when it ceased to be profitable; but down to the present hour the very name of the African is a term of indignity and reproach. We cast contempt upon him because he is weak. We exclude him as far as we can from every station of responsibility, no matter what his qualifications may be, and we would be glad to be rid of him altogether if we could. Well might Jefferson tremble, as he tells us that he did, when he remembered that God is just. His vision was prophetic, and to-day we are reaping the bitter fruits of our iniquity. "And in those parts of the land where slavery was not abolished because it was thought to be profitable, why has there been no legislation to save the husband from being torn from the wife, parents from their children; no legislation to rescue the slave from the position of a chattel? No legislation for the prospective, gradual abolition of an institution which the whole civilized world has united in branding as a relic of barbarism. I hold no Utopian views upon this subject. I never believed that the relation of master and servant is of necessity a sin. I always thought that the evil needed to be carefully and judiciously handled. But I marvel at the wicked folly which pronounced this curse to be a blessing ordained of God to be perpetrated forever, and at the stupendous blindness which supposed that a nation could continue to prosper in peace with this caldren forever infecting the atmosphere. "Again, we have sinned as a nation, in the persons of our representatives and rulers. Is it the wise forethought and sober judgment and deliberate wisdom of the community which determine who shall be our rulers? How are they nominated? How are they elected? How do they conduct themselves after they are elected? Do they never take bribes? Do they represent the country, or the party which elects them? Do they decide every question by its merits? Are they always sober, temperate, chaste, free from all objectivity and profaneness? Do they always utter their honest convictions? Whenever a measure is proposed for action, do they ask 'Is this wise and is it right?' and so determine how they will vote? Alas! the crown of glory is fallen from our head, and there is no hope for the country until the people arise in their might and say, 'We will no longer have profligates and fools to rule over us.' The descent has been so low that it is considered an impropriety to speak of the subject in a Christian pulpit. Politics mean party, and this is out of place in the house of God. "We must have a thorough reform in this matter, or the nation is ruined; ruined whether we succeed in our present struggle or fail. We want men at the helm who fear God and keep his commandments. Men who break laws are not the men to make laws. Alas! for the ship of State, when the morals of the officers are lower than the average of the crew. I do not say that it is so now; but as things have been going, it is likely to become so soon. It is a terrible symptom when one is allowed to do that as a legislator which he would be turned out of society for doing as a citizen. The language of the Capitol of the nation ought to be the purest in the land. I do not learn that it is so regarded at present. The language of the Capitol is not altogether what we would like to have our children learn. Whenever our rulers represent the highest intelligence and the loftiest morality and the purest religion in the land, then the fallen crown will be restored to our brow. Brethren, pray for this; labor for it; and vote for it. "Finally, we have sinned in that we have to a great extent banished God from our councils, and divorced Christianity from statesmanship. We have built a stupendous engine, and left out the regulator. It is not strange that we have an occasional explosion. "I think the world have found out clearly enough where we are weak. We are not weak in numbers or resources, but we are weak in that efficient action which comes of faith, earnestness, self-denial, and unity of purpose. We have made many awful sacrifices to no purpose. We follow up nothing so that it tells substantially upon the final issue. The fault is laid here and there and everywhere, and there are none so positive in their censure as those who know nothing of the facts. "O that the unity of the nation might now be restored in the bond of perpetual peace! We will sacrifice everything but principles for this. . . . Blow from the South, O winds of God, and bring us the tidings of reconciliation and love! Blow from the North, O winds of God, and carry back the message of fraternity and peace! Scatter the darkness, roll away the clouds, and give unto us all once more the sunshine of tranquil rest! Under the shadow of thy wings we make our refuge, O God; give us peace."—Providence, R. I., Evening Press.