Judgment and Sins by Dr. Sunderland

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 14, 1863

Judgment and Sins.

By Dr. Sunderland

THE very things which now strain and try this nation are traceable to the sins of the nation. It is not ignorance that is trying us now, but willful, wanton blindness, unreasoning selfishness, and the practical atheism of the people from which all the outgrowth springs of all our follies and errors, our crimes and sins and miseries; passion and prejudice, mutual jealousy, suspicion, lust for power, attended by all the arts of the demagogue, by the reeking venality and unblushing wickedness of the public press. These are the real judgments which now lie upon the land—which now confuse and bewilder those who would be honest, who desire to be true, who want nothing in this controversy but what is right, but what is in accordance with the will and law of God, and who would gladly do what they may to establish the institutions of the Government upon a sure foundation of public righteousness; who feel it is no time for sophistries and technicalities, for quibbles and formalities, but who go for the substance of doctrines, the eternal righteousness of God in all the relations of man to his fellow man as well as of men to God. And because we are confounded in these things and do not even yet know whether a lie is in our right hand, we are still groping and stumbling in the dark mountains of sin and shame, our eyes blinded, our ears heavy, our hearts hardened and our

hands paralyzed. We are as a nation in a swoon, feeling the sharp sting of God's goads, spurring us out of our stupor, but yet drowsy and but little awake.

And now we have no right to shut our eyes to the sins which form the ground of indictment against us. We are guilty if we attempt to do this, guilty in the attempted concealment, and we are really the more culpable if we undertake to blink or flinch from the full acknowledgment and recognition of any one of the sins of which we as individuals, or as a nation, have been guilty in the sight of Heaven. But where shall we begin the catalogue of these iniquities? It is even difficult to classify and document them, so manifold and variant; private sins and public sins, secret sins and open sins, personal sins and social sins, sins of the heart and sins of the life, sins in the family and sins in the church, sins in business life, sins in fashionable life sins of the flesh and sins of the spirit, sins of omission and sins of commission, sins of ignorance and sins of wantonness, sins of civil and sins of official life, sins political and ecclesiastical.—Dr. Sunderland.