PREFACE.
FOR the privilege of having been permitted to deliver these discourses without interruption, and with a cordial answering sympathy on the part of the public, I thank God and take courage. Seldom have I found a heart more thirsty for divine truth, more attentive under it, and more manifestly responding to it, and grateful for it, than in the great congregations whom God in bis good providence brought out to listen to these sermons.
I commenced them, much questioning as to the result, but determined to leave consequences to God, and to proclaim, out and out, the whole truth in his word in regard to the great reigning and destroying sin of our country. I endeavored to do this to the best of my ability.
The event was, that instead of driving men away in anger, the assertion of the freedom of the Pulpit, and the proof of it from the prophets and apostles, and the use of it in demonstrating the sinfulness of slavery, brought thousands on thousands to hear. They came, desiring to learn what God had really said in His word in regard to slavery. The church could not contain the multitudes that thronged, mght after night, to listen to a simple, plain exhibition of God's own truth, in regard to the guilt of this Iniquity in His sight, and the inevitable consequences of it, if persisted in.
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Undoubtedly, Old Testament truth is a strange thing to many; they are not aware how it burns, how it cuts, how it probes and pierces, as a discerner and reprover of sin, and how the mighty Hebrew prophets, ever living, ever new, seem to hold a grand inquest over our organic [systemic, routine, institutionalized] iniquities, and to walk among us with the writers ink-horn, and the measuring plumb-lines of the Mosaic laws.
The people, generally, are glad to witness these operations. The people love to hear God's word demonstrating and rebuking the Iniquity of slavery; and it is only crooked politicians, and political Christians, and preachers standing in awe of them, who cry out against it [Bible-preaching], and call it political preaching. This vulgar watchword is losing all its terrors, and begins to be, as it deserves to be, thoroughly despised.
| Ed. Note: Denouncing speaking up for Bible principles is via accusations of "politicking," of being e.g., "offensive," "divisive," "heretical." |
The people prefer freedom, and are glad to find that God's word not only does not sanction slavery, but is against it, wholly and utterly, from beginning to end.
But those men who prefer slavery along with freedom, slavery for others and freedom for themselves, and whose plan is to combine both, and give them the same sanction and the same rights everywhere, would be glad to find some support of slavery, some shield for it in God's word; and, if any one could demonstrate from God's word that slavery is right, he might do that from the Pulpit ad infinitum and they would not regard it at all as political preaching, but as simply the genuine meekness of wisdom preaching peace by Jesus Christ, and the very perfection of gospel conservatism.
There are many who, without the least wincing, will hear you preach about the slavery
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of sin, but not one word will they endure about the sin of slavery.
| Ed. Note: Likewise is true on war. It's OK to preach for war, to pray for, honor, idolize "our troops." But to cite rebuttal Bible data is "offensive," "divisive," "heretical," "politicking." |
I have been delighted to find a great enthusiasm among young men, for the freedom of God's word in dealing with the Iniquity of oppression. They feel that it is no necessary part of religion to put down, or conceal, or crucify, our native impulses in behalf of freedom, or our native sense of justice against cruelty and wrong. They have but little sympathy with those who make political or commercial expediency, in regard to great Questions of right or wrong, the Urim and Thummim of their divinest consultations.
The series of discourses began with an examination of the dreadful influence and consequences of UNRIGHTEOUS LAW, as illustrated in the history of the Hebrews, under the light of the prophets.
Now, in consenting to throw several of them into a volume, I have taken the liberty of breaking them up into twenty chapters, both for the sake of introducing some details into the argument, which could not be condensed in speaking within compass of the time given to a sermon, and also to relieve and sustain the attention of the reader, and give greater prominence to the principles developed in the discussion.
I am more than ever convinced of the right and duty of every preacher of God's word to preach on this Subject, as contained in His word, and to show the people how He regards it; and the providence that directs and overrules all things is manifesting more clearly than ever the wickedness of the attempt to shield slavery from the reprobation of God's word, by denouncing every mention of it as
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political preaching. That outcry is more likely to cover up a jealousy against religion in politics, than any real hatred of politics in religion. To the law and to the testimony: should not the people seek unto their God? And if their leaders speak not according to His word, it is because there is no light in them [Isaiah 8:20].
THE VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY AND RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED TO THE YOUNG MEN OF MY OWN CONGREGATION, AND TO ALL LOVERS OF FREEDOM AND TRUTH IN ALL PLACES.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
| PAGE |
| Preface | iii
| Chap. I.—Shall the Throne of Iniquity Have Fellowship With Thee, Which Frameth Mischief With A Law? | 9
| Chap. II.—The Prevalence and Power of Unrighteous Law, And The Ruin of the Nation In Consequence of Obeying It | 16
| Chap. III.—Compulsion by the Government, Enacting Wicked Laws To Drive The People Into Sin; And The Damnation of Such Guilt—The Iniquity of Preachers Defending or Excusing It | 23
| Chap. IV.—Dan and Bethel in New York, and the Worship of the Golden Calves in America—Repression and Concelament of Truth in the Pulpit and Conservatism of National Sins | 35
| Chap. V.—Obligations of the Pulpit in the Sight of God—Hypocrisy of the Outcry of Political Preaching—The Sinfulness of Concealment and of Shielding Men's Sins From the Light of the Gospel—Application of the Doctrine of Christ and Him Crucified | 48
| Chap. VI.—Glory and Freedom of the Word of God in its Universal and Perpetual Application—Demonstrations from its Historical and Prophetic Portions, as to National Sins—This Light Yet to be Applied | 62
| Chap. VII.—God's Wrath Against Slavery in Jeremiah XXXIV.17—The Illumination from this Passage Upon Our Own Sin—The Solemnity of the Crisis and the Responsibility—National Decisions by Individual Opinions and Choices—The Question to be Settled is of Right or Wrong, Not Policy or Impolicy | 72
| Chap. VIII.—Objections Urged Against the Mention of this Sin—The Opinion of Coleridge—The Example of Lord Erskine in Resisting and Rebuking Oppression—The Word of God Our Only Safe Guide | 82
| Chap. IX.—Demonstration of the Sinfulness of Slavery—Argument from the Law of Love—Argument from the Laws against Oppression—No Such Thing As Slavery Among The Hebrews—Ludicrousness of the Claim of Africans As Our Property by Reason of Noah's Curse on Canaan | 93
| Chap. X.—The Wrath of God Against the Jews for the Attempted Establishment of Slavery—The Penalty of Death Against the Crime of Man-Stealing—Compass of This Law, and Its Application to the Claim of Children As Property | 107
| Chap. XI.—Doing Evil That Good May Come—The Gospel of Slavery—Its Germinating and Propagating Power of Evil—The Stealing of Children—Paul on Man-Stealing | 116
| | | | | | | | | | | |
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| Chap. XII.—Sacredness of the Parental Relations—Violation of It by Slavery—Slaveholding, With the Claim of Property, Man-Stealing | 123
| Chap. XIII.—The Compound Interest of Crime—The Slave's Note-of-Hand Against the Slave-Holder Who Claims to be His Owner—Accumulated Crime, Accumulated Retribution | 131
| Chap. XIV.—Ownership in Man Not Possible—Forbidden in the Scriptures—The Act of Selling Men, A Crime Abhorred of God—The Nature of this Crime, and of the Sin of Slavery, Well Known Under the New Testament | 135
| Chap. XV.—No Restoring of Runaway Servants—The Hebrews Forbidden to Restore Them—The Hebrew Fugitive Law, A Law in Behalf of the Servant, and Not the Master—Demonstration from This Law That Human Beings Can Not Be Property—Paul's Epistle to Philemon in the Light of This Law—The Assertion That the Word of God Sanctions Slavery An Impious Libel | 140
| Chap. XVI.—Jubilee Statute of Universal Freedom—Its Application to Heathen Servants—Perversion and Misinterpretation of the Mosaic Laws—No Involuntary Servitude Allowed—Various Forms of Contract—Limitation by the Jubilee—Meaning of Lev. XXV.46—No Refuge or Standing-Place for Slavery | 148
| Chap. XVII.—The Jubilee Contract of Service for the Heathen—Every Contract Perfectly Voluntary—Usage of the Word Buy—Servants Bought by a Voluntary Contract With Themselves, But Not of A Third Party—The Family Inheritance of Service Till the Jubilee—Both Hebrew and Heathen Servants Free—No Property in Man Ever Sanctioned | 158
| Chap. XVIII.—God's Judgments against Slavery Prove It to be Sin—The Contemporaneous Testimony of Jeremiah and Ezekiel—Effect of Slavery in the Ruin of Empires—Its Effect on the Morals and Sentiments of a People—Degradation of Free Labor | 162
| Chap. XIX.—The Combination of Demonstration—Solemnity of our Responsibilities—The Individual Responsibility—Province of the Pulpit To Proclaim the Religious Responsibility of a Vote | 170
| Chap. XX.—The One Question Before Us—Pretensions and Demands of Slavery—The Consequences If We Yield To Them—Guilt of Extending Slavery, and Setting It at the Vitals of A New State or Territory—The Perpetual Agitation and Power of Conscience | 176
| | | | | | | | |
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CHAPTER I.
SHALL THE THRONE OF INIQUITY HAVE FELLOWSHIP WITH
THEE, WHICH FRAMETH MISCHIEF BY A LAW?
—Psalm xciv. 20.
THERE are plenty of answers to this question in the Word of God; but the most startling and overwhelming is the answer by divine judgment, in the destruction of the thrones and kingdoms of Israel and Judab. We have but to trace a few steps in the Jewish history, and we find lessons that, for the closeness of their application to our own period, and people, and country, and the terror of their warning against our own legalized and cherished sins, are absolutely appalling. Would to God we might lay them to our heart!
The time from the beginning of the Hebrew kingdom under Saul to its division under Rchoboam, the son and successor of Solomon, was not much longer than that which has elapsed from our revolutionary war to the present day. And the progress of the nation had been about as rapid and mighty as our own. What a prodigious difference between the state of the people and the extent of the kingdom at the beginning of Saul's reign, and the close of Solomon's!
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In this brief time, cities rose as by enchantment, and territories were added, and brought under the one great confederation, till the fame of its prosperity, and the fear of its greatness, filled the world.
But in the midst of all this, the causes of ruin grew on with frightful rapidity: luxury, aristocracy, grandeur, riches, pride, family-wealth and rivalry, insolence, commerce with Egypt and with foreign countries, bringing in alliances, intermarriages, the imitation of foreign vices and customs, and at length the open, undisguised, and heaven-defying establishment of idolatry for Solomon's pagan concubines and wives.
The wisest of kings had grown the maddest in his rebellion against God, and his iniquitous example before his people. By his own vices he had conducted the country from the climax of power and greatness to the verge of ruin. In the greatest apparent grandeur of its prosperity, none but God knew the precipice on which the kingdom tottered, nor how soon its proud union was to be dissolved forever. There it was, strong and mighty in appearance, yet instantly to be riven, as when the frost splits a rock, or one last blow upon the wedge rives the oak asunder.
The blow descends from God, the kingdoms separate, and thenceforward, what a career of warning to all the nations of the earth is theirs?
The lead in wickedness was assumed by Israel under [King] Jeroboam, as one of the separate and rival kingdoms; the first great national step in open sin
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was his.
By what he considered a master-stroke of policy, but which proved his ruin, he set up the two golden calves, to serve for the uses of his kingdom, in place of the worship of the Temple at Jerusalem. The one he inaugurated at Bethel, and the other at Dan, and proclaimed to all the people, with the semblance of the kindest consideration for their wants and fatherly compassion for their burdens, it is too much for you, too irksome and too great a task, to go up to Jerusalem at the times appointed in the service of the temple; these will answer for your gods, O ye people! [I Kgs 12:28] These shall be to you the representatives of the gods that brought you up out of the land of Egypt, and here shall you rejoice in your worship!
The appointed ministers of God's worship, who would not subscribe to these decrees of the king and his government, were ejected from their offices, and in their places Jeroboam appointed an idolatrous priesthood from the riff-raff of the people [I Kgs 12:31]; whoever was willing so accept a devil's chaplaincy under his government, him he set to work in the ministration of oblations and of incense before those golden calves; and so the people, the king, and Baal, were all served and glorified, flattered and cajoled, at one and the same time.
And so the thing became a stately sin, a systematized organic iniquity; and the people went to worship before one or the other of these calves, even unto Dan.
The topography of these places is the best
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illustration of the passage, and for want of the consideration of that matter, the force of the history is nearly lost. One of them, Dan, was at the extreme north; the other, Bethel, at the extreme south, on the borders of Jeroboam's kingdom.
The whole of Jeroboam's kingdom lay north of Judah. If he had set up both calves at Dan, it would have been too far north to attract his subjects of the south; if he had set them up in Bethel only, the people of the north coming down so far as that for worship, would have been tempted to continue their journey a few miles further to Jerusalem itself.
But up at Dan he caught in the snare all the population of the north, and down at Bethel all the inhabitants of the south. And by setting at the heart of Bethel the whole circle of his priesthood, and making the ceremonies of the worship there both gorgeous and attractive, he caught as in a great Vanity Fair nearly all unstable persons, whose consciences might have startled them on a pilgrimage for the Holy City, to engage in the worship of the Temple itself.
Passing through Bethel, they would stop to gaze at the golden calves, they would enter into conversation with the worshipers there, they would be met by temptations and seductive bribes, and in the state of moral debauchery to which the conduct of Solomon had reduced the nation, it was not difficult to make any, except the most truly conscientious of the people, believe that they could serve both God and Mammon.
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Jeroboam must have sounded the heart of the nation, and must have known that he could calculate on the idolatrous disposition of the people, otherwise he never would have dared to propose such a measure. But he had watched the passions of men, and he knew well how deeply the examples, and the idolatrous shrines, made so familiar by Solomon, had corrupted the people, and how far he could himself rely upon them.
Besides, he is supposed to have set guards on the borders of the kingdom between Judah and Israel, at the feast times especially, to prevent his subjects from crossing the line, and going up to the Temple in obedience to the law of God.
And so, between allurements and force, between his lies and compulsion, between the power of law, unrighteous [law], and the examples of the great multitude obeying it as righteous, he succeeded in quieting the most troubled and audacious consciences, and induced his people to believe that inasmuch as this worship at the altars of the calves was commanded by law, and they were bound to obey magistrates, and not to set themselves against the government, it might and must be considered a permitted substitute for the Temple worship.
Moreover, the payment of tithes seems to have been done away, when Jeroboam turned the Levites out of office, and put in a set of his own priests to do his bidding; and that was an exemption which would please the covetous multitude greatly. The king well knew how to make up for the loss; he could extort
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from them in other ways double what the willing support of the true worship of God would have cost them.
Now this whole mighty revolution, first, in the establishment of Jeroboam's authority and kingdom as foreign and separate from that of Rehoboam, and second, in the impious establishment of a new and separate religious worship, the commixture of idolatry and the divine law under one and the same form, would necessitate new laws, and would bring about, in many points, inevitably, a conflict between the statutes of the kingdom and the statutes of God.
But the people chose to obey man rather than God. They agreed, as men do now, when they blasphemously set the laws of a human government higher than God's law, that the law of the land, right or wrong; must be obeyed at all hazards, and that to teach otherwise is to teach rebellion.
They said that the statutes of the king and his government must be obeyed, and “they willingly walked after the commandment [politician law],” as the accusation is brought against them for doing this by the prophet Hosea [5:11]; so that the characteristic description of this monarch, up to the time of Omri and Ahab, who each set new iniquities a going, and framed laws still more infamous, was that of “Jeroboam the son of Nebat, WHO MADE ISRAEL TO SIN.”
The obedience of the people to such a monarch and government in such commanded sins, was rebellion against God; and rebellion against the monarch and
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government would have been obedience to God.
And God by his prophets plainly denounced vengeance against the nation, for thus preferring to obey man's laws rather than God's. Your very blessings shall be blasted, said he, and you shall be swept with desolation, delivered up to captivity and the sword, because you have kept the statutes of Omri, and all the works of the house of Ahab, and ye walk in their counsels [Micah 6:16]. Ye have turned judgment into gall, and the fruit of righteousness into hemlock [Amos 6:12].
Through the impious policy of Jeroboam, and the consent and submission of the people, it thus came about that the separation of the ten tribes was as the building of a vast reservoir of iniquity in Israel; a fountain of atheism and licentiousness, of which the people continued drinking to the latest generations, forsaking God, and the cold-flowing waters of his sanctuary, and hewing them out cisterns of Satan, and springs of the vilest abominations.
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CHAPTER II.
THE PREVALENCE AND POWER OF UNRIGHTEOUS LAW, AND THE
RUIN OF THE NATION IN CONSEQUENCE OF OBEYING IT.
HERE we have come upon a marked and mighty era. The separation of this great Hebrew kingdom into two, and the establishment of these regal and governmental dynasties and machineries, not only constituted the most important revolution since the deluge, and the greatest event of all the history of empire up to that time, but it had consequences, and it set in motion tides of principle and courses of action, that made a stratum in men's morals and character; it was a dispensation, a period of social and governmental theory of life, as distinct as any period in all the formations of geology.
The periods of granite primordial foundation, and of fossiliferous rocky strata, and of alluvial deposits, are not more strongly marked and demonstrated, or more important as demonstrations in themselves of the mighty changes in the globe. The thing not justifies only, but commands our careful study; it ought not to be passed over with a superficial view.
For here began the wide, germinating, sweeping
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habit of rebellion against God under cover of obedience to man; that plague in the body politic and social, worse than the yellow fever, worse than any pestilence ever begotten or active among men, of a supreme submissive regard to the laws of a human government rather than the laws of God.
It is in this respect a most prominent and awful era; a period marked, as you will see, all along the record of the history, down to the time when the kingdom was swept from existence, as the period of the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, WHO MADE ISRAEL TO SIN. The first book of Kings ends [I Kings 22:52-53], as its course has often been signalized, with that stigma, that scar, that trench of God's wrath, and of moral infamy in the cause and subject of it.
Ahab and Jezebel were the next grand incarnation of such wickedness. And as upon the surface of the globe, when a roaring cataract or deluge has passed over it, there are left huge mountain cliffs, frowning over the country in front, and behind them a sloping trail of land where the soil has gathered and held on, indicating which way the convulsion and the torrent rolled forward, so stand these monarch forms, rent, blasted, blackened, the leaders of the people's apostacy from God, and the landmarks of His vengeance.
And from one to the other, it seems as if you could still hear the thunders roar and reverberate. Look back to the 21st chapter of the first book of Kings, and mark the interview between Elijah the prophet
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and Ahab in Naboth's vineyard, and you find in the person and character of that monarch the defiant pinnacle on which God's wrathful lightning descended.
| "Thou hast sold thyself to work evil in the sight of the Lord; and I will make thine house like the house of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, for the provocation wherewith thou hast provoked me to anger, AND MADE ISRAEL TO SIN." |
And look back still further to the 16th chapter, 25th and 26th verses, to the person and character of Omri, who
| "wrought the same evil in the sight of the Lord, and did worse than all before him, for he walked in all the ways of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and in his sin, WHEREWITH HE MADE ISRAEL TO SIN." |
And then, before him, look back to Baasha, and before him, to Nadab, the immediate successor and son of Jeroboam. The voice of every peal of thunder, and the sentence trenched by every flash of lightning, is the same dreadful accusation, Thou hast walked in the way of Jeroboam, and HAST MADE MY PEOPLE ISRAEL TO SIN.
And how was it? What does this repeated phrase in the indictment cover up? How could the man carry all Israel with him in his wickedness? Mere example could not have done it; permission could not have done it; bribes could not have done it, nor persuasion, nor the inherent temptations of devil-worship.
No! But in league with all these influences, law could do it; the State power could forcibly persuade, and if the people would yield up their conscience, the
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government would find no opposition to their most impious enactments. We learn the secret from Micah and Hoses, two of the prophets contemporary in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. "For the statutes of Omri are kept, and all the works of the house of Ahab, and ye walk in their counsels, that I should make thee a desolation, and the inhabitants thereof a hissing." [Micah 6:16] "The princes of Judah were like them that remove the bound; therefore will I pour out my wrath upon them like water. Ephraim is oppressed and broken in judgment, because he WILLINGLY WALKED AFTER THE COMMANDMENT." [Hosea 5:10-11]
It was thus that the king, the princes, the government, by their unconstitutional and infamous legislation, by new enactments, framed on purpose, MADE ISRAEL TO SIN. You gather this demonstration from the history and the prophets together; and this is one of the points in which you see the usefulness and importance of a close comparative study of tbe prophets by the history, and the history by the prophets.
It was a usurpation, under color of law, thus forced upon the people, and the experiment being once successful, then, in giving up their conscience, and renouncing their allegiance to God, they surrendered all their liberties. They should have resisted at the outlet; but there are never wanting those, who affirm that law is to be obeyed at all hazards, the moment it is law, no matter of what character. So,
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by the power and majesty of UNRIGHTEOUS LAW, which is as when the starry angel, first in heaven's ranks, brightest of the sons of the morning, drew after him the third part of heaven in his rebellion, the king and the government compelled the people.
For because of the original majesty, the awfulness, the reverential glory, the transcendant importance of law, even its perversion wears the semblance of its authority; even bad law, wicked law, accursed law, appears not less than archangel ruined, and men bow down to it, and worship it, and range themselves under its banners, especially when popular and profitable sins are protected by it. Sometimes, under its pressure, men must have the firmness of Abdiel to stand up against it, and nothing but God's word and His righteousness in their hearts will enable them to do it.
This usurpation began in Israel. But you are not to suppose this kind of wickedness was the exclusive property of that kingdom. You might have imagined that after such a divulsion of the tribes, the separation between Israel and Judah would have been so wide, and the enmity so mortal, that certainly the torrent of these devilish iniquities could not have crossed the gulf, and rolled over the house and kingdom of David. But where the heart is not right with God, occasion can easily be found for any wickedness. There was a mine of Satan's combustibles in the bosom of Judah ready to be fired; and there was
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an elective affinity, a power of attraction by evil examples, instead of repulsion by disgust; there was an electric intelligence and fire of depravity shooting from one side to the other. You have but to run your eye down to the 8th chapter of the 2d Book of Kings, and the 15th, 16th, and 17th verses, and you discover the secret."In the fifth year of Joram, the son of Ahab, king of Israel, Jeboram, the son of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, began to reign in Jerusalem. And he walked in the way of the kings of Israel, as did the house of Ahab; for the daughter of Ahab was his wife, and he did evil in the sight of the Lord." Here you have the bridge, the telegraphic wires, the sympathies. And running on to the 26th verse you have another step, the son of Jeboram reigning in Jerusalem, and his mother's name was Athaliah, the granddaughter of Omri, king of Israel. And he walked in the way of the house of Ahab, and did evil in the sight of the Lord, as did the house of Ahab; for he was the son-in-law of the house of Ahab. And in 2 Chron. xxii. 3, 4, it is added, that his mother was his counselor to do wickedly; wherefore he did evil in the sight of the Lord like the house of Ahab; for they were his counselors after the death of his father to his destruction.
The singular intensity of wickedness, the eminent and inveterate profligacy and malignity accumulated in this family, as the force of galvanism collected in a complicated battery, will be better understood, if
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you consider that Ahab, as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, took to wife Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal, king of the Zidonians, and went and served Baal, and worshiped him. Him, king Ahab, and the murderess his wife, Elijah the Tishbite confronted.
These related and confederate families of Israel and Judah threw over their kingdoms a net-work of the same diabolical statutes; and to these enactments, and the terrors used in their enforcement, the sacred historian refers, when it is recorded, as in 2 Chron. xxi. 11, that the king of Judah caused the inhabitants of Jerusalem to commit fornication, and compelled them into all this wickedness.
So this mighty sin passed into vogue in Judab, and from Ahab and Jezebel's families, in connection with Jeroboam's, it ran on, till in the kingdom and house of David itself, Manasseh went far beyond even Ahab in the form, the magnitude, and the monstrousness of bis sins. And of him it is said in 2 Chron. xxxiii. 9, 10, that Manasseh made Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to err, and to do worse than the heathen, whom the Lord had destroyed before the children of Israel. And the Lord spake to Manasseh and to his people, but they would not hearken.
And in 2 Kings xxi. 9, 11, God declares that Manasseh seduced the people to do more abominable and horrible wickedness than even the Amorites, and made Judah to sin with his idols, besides filling Jerusalem from one end to the other with innocent blood.
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CHAPTER III.
COMPULSION BY THE GOVERNMENT, ENACTING WICKED LAWS
TO DRIVE THE PEOPLE INTO SIN; AND THE DAMNATION OF SUCH
GUILT. THE INIQUITY OF PREACHERS DEFENDING OR EXCUSING IT.
Now in this account we have the fact of a compulsion laid by the government upon the people, to drive them into sin, to constrain them, and force obedience to the statutes of an idol worship. But this compulsion was no other than the choice of obeying other statutes than God's.
Being compelled to disobey either God's law or the king's, they chose to disobey God's, alleging, perhaps, that whatever laws the government enacted, they were bound to obey, God's law to the contrary notwithstanding.
Sometimes the princes took the lead, and proposed the enactment of mischief by a law, according to the references in Hos. v. 10, and xiii. 2, the princes removing the bound, and enacting that those who sacrificed shall kiss the calves.
So in 2 Chron. xxiv. 17, 18, after the death of Jehoiada the priest, we have the princes coming, and making obeisance to the king, and the king hearkening to them, and all together leaving the house of the Lord God of their fathers,
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and serving groves and idols. All this information is concentrated finally in the 17th chapter of the 2d book of Kings, where the whole transcript of the people's wickedness, and of God's final wrath upon them for it, is so solemnly summed up. For they walked in the statutes of the heathen, whom the Lord cast out from before the children of Israel, and in the statutes of the kings of Israel, which they had made. Also Judah kept not the commandments of the Lord their God, but walked in the statutes of Israel which they made; walked in all the sins of Jeroboam which he did, and departed not from them.
Now it is impossible to find any thing in all history more terribly instructive than all this.
It shows the mutual responsibility of government and people, both to one another and to God, and the consequences of disregarding it.
It shows the manner in which the responsibility and guilt of government and people may get inextricably involved and entangled, and unless there be in the people a conscience of resistance in behalf of God, they go to ruin together.
It shows that wicked laws are no authentication or excuse of personal wickedness, nor any authorization of disobedience to God. They are not to be obeyed, but on the contrary denounced and rejected; and only by being thus faithful to God, can a people keep their freedom.
And while it shows that a people are on the high road to ruin, who will suffer and obey wicked statutes, it also shows the terrific responsibility and
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wickedness of those who concoct and endeavor to enforce such statutes, and
who set the example of such iniquity.
If there be a lower deep in hell than any other deep, such men will, beyond all question, occupy it, along with those who have put out or concealed the light of God's word, and have put up false lights to lure men upon the breakers.
It is such as those, whom God gives judicially over to a reprobate mind, to be filled with all unrighteousness; who, knowing the judgment of God, that they who commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them [Romans 1:28-32].
Nothing can go beyond this wickedness; it is a fountain sin, a germinating sin, an accumulating and multiplying sin, a sin that causes and compels others to sin, a sin that enlarges from generation to generation all the way into the eternal world.
If it brings a million under its power this year, it may bring two millions the next; this generation ten, the next generation twenty. Cursed be he that maketh the blind to wander out of the way; and all the people shall say, Amen! [Deuteronomy 27:18]
But he that strikes out the eyesight of a whole nation, that obliterates the law of justice and humanity, and sets in its place statutes of injustice and inhumanity, and thus compels a nation so blinded, to wander in iniquity, what shall be said of such a monster? What curse is heavy enough for such an incarnation of malignity, or what curse can measure in retribution the dreadful consequences of such crime?
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Of all evil things, law, that embodies in itself the example of wrong, the instruction, the authority, sanction, justification, and command of injustice and oppression, in principle and in act, is the highest and the worst. It is worse than arsenic in the fountain; it is poison for the souls of men, poison for the great heart of society, running through all the veins, and corrupting the whole system.
Well did Edmund Burke [1729-1797] say, that of all bad things, bad laws are the very worst, and that they derive a particular malignity from the good laws in their company, under which they take shelter.
If a system of wicked laws be deliberately contrived, and fastened on a people for the purpose of consolidating and rendering immovable the governmental despotism, and if, under those laws, a system of immorality and cruelty is inaugurated as the central fountain of the country's policy, to enter into both the domestic and civil life of the people, to regulate all their institutions, to impose conditions on the gospel itself [banning providing Bibles to slaves], to compel men in every sphere of society, every branch of commerce, every agency of active business, to swear faithfulness to that immoral interest; and if the word of God itself, for the sake of shielding all this iniquity, is either suppressed or perverted, what really is the attitude of such a people toward God, and what their character in his sight?
Can any thing cover up this wickedness?
But suppose that, along with such a system, there
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is inserted in it a provision, not of improvement or correction, but rendering correction or repeal impossible. Suppose that a guard is imposed on purpose to perpetuate such a system, without change or amelioration, by which indeed any attempt at change is to be punished as treason.
All these ingenious elements of evil were in the diabolical statutes, with which Jeroboam and the like kingly instruments of Satan, subjected the people to his sway.
And all these ingenious elements of evil are in those execrable laws now being enforced at the point of United States bayonets in Kansas; laws acknowledged to be an utter usurpation, publicly demonstrated as such by the House of Representatives in Congress assembled, and therefore unconstitutional, null, and void. And yet the people commanded to obey them [under evil President James Buchanan (1857-1861)]!
Can any professions of religion induce God to wink at such wickedness, or to connive at the prostitution of religion itself for its support? God's own voice shall answer; you shall have his own judgment from the prophets:
"Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and that write grievousness which they have prescribed, to turn aside the needy from judgment, and to take away the right from the poor of my people. Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with thee, which frameth mischief by a law? He shall bring upon them their own iniquity, and shall cut them off in their own wickedness; yea, the Lord our God shall cut them off." [Psalm 94:20-22]
If a man could take the
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bolt of God's thunder in his hand, and could flash the lightning right in the face of a tyrannical, usurping legislator, there could not be any thing more direct than this. And is not this to be preached? And if the government of any nation be guilty of this sin, is it not to be charged upon them?
Is not the country where this wickedness is perpetrated the very place, and the generation in which and against which it is perpetrated, the very time to rebuke it, and in the name of God declare his testimony against it?
And on whom rests the responsibility of doing this, and who have the right and authority from God to do it, but his own appointed preachers of the word? And will any man dare to call this political preaching?
It is indeed the bringing of religion into politics, according to God's command, and the application of the instructions and principles of God's word to the conduct of the nation and the people, and such application the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah were commanded to make, and our Lord Jesus conjoined upon the preachers of the Gospel the same faithfulness.
"Cry aloud; spare not; lift up thy voice like a trumpet; show my people their transgressions, and the house of Jacob their sins. Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, is a nation that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinance of their God. They take delight in approaching to God." [Isaiah 58:1-2] And yet, besides the delineation continued in that chapter, here is their character by the same
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prophet:"A rebellious people, lying children, children that will not hear the law of tlic Lord. Which say to the seers, See not, and to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things; speak unto us smooth things; prophesy deceits. Get ye out of the way; turn aside out of the path; cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us. Wherefore, thus saith the Holy One of Israel, because ye despise this word, and TRUST IN OPPRESSION and perverseness, and stay thereon, therefore THIS INIQUITY shall be to you as a breach ready to fall, swelling out in a high wall, whose breaking cometh suddenly in an instant." [Isaiah 30:9-13]
"For the leaders of this people cause them to err, and they that are led of them are destroyed. Therefore the Lord shall have no joy in their young men, neither shall have mercy on their fatherless and widows; for every one is a hypocrite and an evil-doer, and every mouth speaketh villainy. [Isaiah 5:23-24] They call evil good, and good evil; they put darkness for light, and light for darkness. They justify the wicked for reward, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him. Therefore, as the fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff, so their root shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as dust; because they have cast away the law of the Lord, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel." [Isaiah 5:23-24]
And every one of the prophets corresponds in his testimony with this description; and you will find in
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the 5th chapter of Jeremiah, and in that which follows, the most singularly precise and pungent invectives for the coveteousness, cruelty, oppression, falsehood, and disregard of God, prevailing to such a degree that they added to their iniquities a plump denial of them, and would not listen to the word of God against them; so that God charges Jeremiah,
Run ye to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, and see now and know, and seek in the broad places thereof if ye can find a man, if there be any that executeth judgment, that seeketh the truth, and I will pardon it.
And the prophet Ezekiel, writing and speaking of precisely the same period and people, declares,"The people of the land have used oppression and exercised robbery, and have vexed the poor and needy; yea, they have oppressed the stranger wrongfully. And I sought for a man among them that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it, but I found none." [Ezekiel 22:29-30]
The offer that God made by Jeremiah was unavailing. The prophet could not find a man in Jerusalem to stand in the gap before God; that he might pardon the city and the people; and God bears witness to this fact by Ezekiel, even at the very time of the punishment of the people for their sins, especially the sin of oppression.
The iniquities practiced by the people were sanctioned by statute, defended by false prophets, and
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enforced by the priests and princes through their influence, when, if they had stood up publicly and firmly against such sins, we have God's plain declaration both by Jeremiah and Ezekiel, that they would have turned the people from their sins, and procured for them life and pardon."A wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land. The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so; and what will ye do in the end thereof?" [Jeremiah 5:30-31]
What will ye do indeed? They soon found out that the end thereof was death. "I have not sent these prophets," said the Lord God, "yet they ran; I have not spoken to them, yet they prophesied. But if they had stood in my counsel, and had caused my people to hear my words, then they should have turned them from their evil way, and from the evil of their doings." How amazingly solemn and impressive is this testimony as to the responsibility and power of the ministry in reference to the sins of the people and the nation! They are able, at their pleasure, to mold the character of the people for good or evil, and to direct their course for heaven or hell. They may lead them either to obey or disobey God, both in their public policy and their domestic life; they may, if they choose, proclaim the law and policy of the government to be higher than the law of God, and sacred from rebuke for its wickedness, and they may make the true word of the Lord to be de-
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spised and forbidden of the people; but on their heads is the consequence. They did thus deceive and corrupt the people of old, so that Jeremiah could not persuade them to listen to the voice of God.
Behold, their ear is uncircumcised, and they can not hearken; behold, the word of the Lord is unto them a reproach; they have no delight in it. For from the least of them even unto the greatest of them every one is given to coveteousncss; and from the prophet even unto the priest, every one dealeth falsely, saying, Peace, peace, when there is no peace. And when God said, Walk in the old paths and in the good way, and ye shall find rest unto your souls, they said, We will not walk therein. And when God set watchmen, saying, Hearken to the sound of the trumpet, they said, We will not hearken." [Jeremiah 6:10-17]
Such was their obstinate refusal to hear God's word in regard to their own iniquities.
And then comes the great appeal of God to the whole world to take note, and bear witness for him, against this people of his wrath, and to mark the wickedness that is going on among them, and especially this exasperating and aggravating impiety of refusing to have the light of God's word turned upon their national, governmental, and social policy.
"Hear ye, O nations, and know, O congregation, what is among them. Hear, 0 earth!' Behold, I will bring evil upon this people, even the fruit of their thoughts, because they have not hearkened unto my
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words, nor to my law, but rejected it." [Jeremiah 6:18-19]
God then proceeds just as in Isaiah, to denounce with utter scorn their formal pretenses of his worship, along with all their wickedness. He had said by Isaiah, I hate, I despise your solemn feast-days, and your rites of pretended religious service are an abomination to me. And he asks of Jeremiah,"To what purpose cometh there to me incense from Sheba, and the sweet cane from a far country? Your burnt-offerings are not acceptable, nor your sacrifices sweet unto me; therefore, fathers and sons, the neighbor and his friend shall perish together." [Jeremiah 6:20-21]
And the conclusion of this tremendous sermon is impressive beyond measure for its inculcation of the necessity of discerning between the righteous and the wicked, and separating the latter with their abominable maxims, from the former, in the policy and government of a people, in order that the agencies appointed of God for the good of the people may work, and may be able to accomplish his purposes. God describes the character of the people, in their acceptance of, and submission to, the oligarchy of evil counselors and wicked governors and laws, by whom they consented to be led to destruction, following them as sheep for the slaughter.
"They are all grievous revolters, walking with slanders; they are brass and iron; they are all corrupters. The bellows are burned, the lead is consumed
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of the fire; the founder melteth in vain; for the wicked are not plucked away. Reprobate silver shall men call them, because the Lord hath rejected them." [Jeremiah 6:28-30]
God distinctly informs us, that if his ministers had spoken as they ought in regard to all this wickedness, it might have been prevented, and the ruin which it brought would have been averted. The nation's destruction was in consequence of their concealment and perversion of God's word; and hence the solemnity and appropriateness of these historic records, as applied for our own guidance at the present time.
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CHAPTER IV.
DAN AND BETHEL IN NEW YORK, AND THE WORSIIIP Of THE
GOLDEN CALVES IN AMERICA—REPRESSION AND CONCEALMENT OF
TRUTH IN THE PULPIT AND CONSERVATISM OF NATIONAL SINS.
THERE are some practical instructions from this history of great importance. As we go forward in it, we cannot help being astonished at the very little use made of it, and the very little light poured from it, when it is certainly one of God's great suns of radiance for Christian nations, one of the orbs in the planetary system of His word; and distinctly in the New Testament, as well as the old, He declares that much of this light was given as a warning, a forewarning, and that it should be poured upon our own consciences, our own habits of thinking, and our own courses of action. It is light that cost more than any thing in the world ever did cost, till the light from the cross and sufferings of Christ, the light bought by his death, came down upon the world. The light from the carcasses of dead empires, the light from Israel and Judah in their crimes and final sufferings, and dreadful death, the light from their captivities before the crucifixion, and the destruction and desolation like a whirlwind after the filling up
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of that measure of their iniquities, and the light from half-buried ... communities, and from ... infidel minds still going about and wailing in their grave-clothes, peeled, scattered, and exterminated thus, is a beacon-light to states and statesmen, and to every one of us in a world of probation; the world where character, both national and individual, must be formed in accordance with God's word, or it has in it the elements, the self-igniting fires, of inevitable ruin. The history shows the wickedness of obeying men rather than God, and the dangerous nature of a system of human expediency and concealment of the truth, in preference to a reliance on God, and his truth and righteousness.
But here you may possibly say that the great sin for which the nations and generations now under our examination were destroyed, was the sin of idolatry, and we are not guilty of that, and in no danger from it. Examine the record, and you will find, besides the idolatry, the great sin of oppression, occupying as large a space in the indictment; and we shall discover, as far onward as the 34th chapter of Jeremiah, the deliberate establishment of slavery in the nation to have been the one climacteric cause and occasion of the wrath of God coming down upon the whole land and people without remedy.
And we ourselves may be guilty of things as bad as the idolatry of the old Israelites, and may be quite as unwilling as they to have the light of God's truth
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turned upon them. God speaks of covetousness, which is idolatry. [Colossians 3:5] God looketh on the heart, and if God sees a single merchant in our cities, with whom the reason, for example, why he is unwilling that any mention of the sin of slavery should resound from the pulpit, or that any agitation in regard to its wickedness should be kept up, is a regard to his business and its profits, or a fear of revulsion and disturbance distressing to the prosperous course and current of commercial affairs, that concealment and opposition of the light, and the motive for it, are as bad, in his case, with his increased knowledge, in the blaze of the whole word of God, as the idolatry of the Israelites. It is the golden calves still, and still there is the worship of them, and Dan and Bethel are in this city with their Dagons and their altars, and their priests, not among the lowest merely, but the highest of the people.
And the forced concealment of truth on this very subject, the voice to the seers, See not, and to the prophets, Prophesy not, the ban upon the light, the ostracism of opinion, the repression of freedom in the pulpit, the accusation and the outcry of political preaching, if the light of God be turned upon it, the extreme fastidiousness and fear in our fashionable congregations, sit like a night-mare on the genius of the gospel. It is a mountain of despotism, and of the fear of man thrown upon the truth. The preacher is like the fabled giant under the volcano. If the giant
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will be quiet, the mountain will be quiet, and some green things may grow upon it in peace and freshness. But the moment he turns in his anguish, or strives to free himself of his load, the mountain belches forth its fire and fury, and rolls down streams of lava, and the poor be-mountained giant is the cause of it! The giant can not stir, hand or foot, with the least suspicion of regaining his freedom, but Etna rages.
Tell me not that this is an exaggerated description. Almost every time the light of God's word has been turned directly upon this subject it has been followed with tumult Again and again have faithful and beloved pastors been driven from their pulpits, just barely for giving a single utterance of God's word against the sin of slavery. At the South a man has been driven from his church, simply for refusing to add his name to a commendation of the dastardly and murderous outrage in the Senate of the United States. In Washington, a pastor has been recently dismissed for one single sermon against slavery. In Philadelphia the people have demanded and accomplished the resignation of a paator for the same offense. Everywhere, almost, there is this attempt to muzzle the pulpit, this impious refusal to listen to God's word on this one sin.
Now I should insult the moral sense of the congregation, if I should ask them (as though there were a doubt in their minds as to such iniquity) whether this is right in the sight of God; and God perhaps has
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suffered us to come to our present crisis in the affairs of this nation, on purpose, in part, to deliver the pulpit from such bondage. There is a point where the life is reached, and men feel it, and now they begin to speak out, whether mon will hoar or forbear. And if we would be faithful, we must speak out; for we know that this is God's truth and that whatever plausible motives of expediency may induce either us to refrain from uttering it, or you to shrink from hearing it, it can not be right in God's sight to hearken unto men more than unto God.
The conservatism that would prevent the utterance of God on this subject is a conservatism that stands in the way of righteousness, and yet it makes great pretensions to sobriety and uprightness. It reminds one of Jeremiah's satirical description. They are upright as the palm-tree, but speak not. It preserves a sober and dignified silence, when God commands a fearless outspoken rebuke of cherished sins. It imputes the violence of men's passions in defense of such sins to the rashness and impertinence of those who have dared to rebuke them. It is always saying to those who open the batteries of truth, when noise and fury follow the cannonading, Had you kept silence, there would have been nothing of all this agitation; you are stirring up nothing but contention and wrath. This was the very accusation brought against Jeremiah himself, when he proclaimed the Word of God in Jerusalem and Judea against sins
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which the government commanded, and which the people declared they would defend and practice, and which not a few among prophets and priests themselves affirmed were no sins at all, but just a profitable policy.
"Woe is me," exclaimed Jeremiah, "for I am become a man of contention and strife. I love peace, and I love my people, and I love my country, and out of love I speak to them this word of the Lord. I have neither lent on usury, nor men have lent to me on usury, yet every one of them doth curse me." [Jeremiah 15:10] Ah, Jeremiah, there are other ways to touch men's pockets, and irritate their avarice, besides charging twenty per cent. for your money. Lay the tax of the word of God upon their profitable, legalized, and cherished sins, and instantly they cry out violence and spoil, and the word of God itself will be made a reproach unto you and a derision, daily."Then said they, Come, and let us devise devices against Jeremiah; for the law shall not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet. Come, and let us smite him with the tongue, and let us not give heed to any of his words. [Jeremiah 18:18] So I heard the defaming of many, fear on every side. Report say they, and we will report it. All my familiars watched for my halting, saying peradventure he will be enticed, we shall prevail against him, and we shall take our revenge on him." [Jeremiah 20:10]
And all for what? Had he injured them, betrayed them, slandered them, defrauded them? Simply and
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solely because he had delivered unto them the words of the Lord against their sins of oppression and idolatry. Well! if all the Lord's prophets had been faithful and true like Jeremiah, they would have conquered, and God's word in them. But Jeremiah stood almost alone, and the prophets themselves were against him, the conservatists of peace and sin.
When he said that the city and the people were wholly given to oppression, and that God would desolate the land, and deliver up the city to its enemies, because of this wickedness, they said no, he will not deliver it, but Jeremiah is teaching rebellion against the king, the government, and the nation.
So between the word of the Lord on the one side, and the word of these false prophets on the other, between the word of the Lord burning as a fire in his own soul and in his very bones, and making him weary with forbearing, and compelling him to cry out, like a lion in his anguish, and the lies, threatenings, and outcries of rebellion and treason, by prophets, priests, and people, the faithful preacher of God was almost distracted.
"Mine heart within me is broken because of the prophets; all my bones shake; I am like a drunken man, and like a man whom wine hath overcome, because of the word of the Lord, and because of the words of his holiness. [Jeremiah 23:9] For both prophet and priest are profane, and their ways shall bo unto them as slippery ways in the darkness. [Jeremiah 23:11-12] I have seen also in the prophets of Jerusalem an horrible thing."
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"They walk in lies, they strengthen also the hands of evil-doers, that none doth return from his wickedness; they are all unto me as Sodom, and the inhabitants as Gomorrah." [Jeremiah 23:14]
Nothing could be more expressive of the burning anger of the Lord against those who stood against his word. They were looked up to for examples and guides as the conservatists among the people; but they conserved the people in their sins, crying out all the while against this agitation and strife that Jeremiah was producing with the word of the Lord.
There could hardly be a more offensive and deliberate wickedness against God, than the example of such resistance against his word, and such denial of its application.
Therefore saith the Lord of hosts concerning the prophets, Behold, I will feed them with wormwood, and make them drink the water of gall; for from the prophets of Jerusalem is profaneness gone forth into all the land.
Therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts, Hearken not unto the words of the prophets that prophesy unto you; they make you vain; they speak a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the Lord.
They say still unto them that despise me, The Lord hath said ye shall have peace, and they say unto every one that walketh after the imagination of his own heart, No evil shall come upon you.
For who hath stood in the counsel of the Lord; and hath perceived and heard his word? who hath marked his word, and heard it? [Jeremiah 23:15-18]
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These sneering questions of blasphemy and unbelief, this daring denial of God's word in the face of his divinely-commissioned prophets, addressed by the false prophets, and believed by the people, filled up the cup of their sins, and insured the divine vengeance.
And instantly its assertion follows:
| "Behold, a whirlwind of the Lord is gone forth in fury, even a grievous whirlwind; it shall fall grievously upon the heads of the wicked.
The anger of the Lord shall not return, until he have executed and till he have performed the thoughts of his heart; in the latter days ye shall consider it perfectly.
I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran; I have not spoken to them, yet they prophesied.
But if they had stood in my counsel, and had caused my people to hear my words, then they should have turned them from their evil way, and from the evil of their doings.
I have heard what the prophets have said that prophesy lies in my name, saying, I have dreamed, I have dreamed.
How long shall this be in the hearts of the prophets that prophesy lies?
Yea, they are prophets of the deceit of their own hearts which think to cause my people to forget my name, by their dreams which they tell every man to his neighbor, as their fathers have forgotten my name for Baal.
The prophet that hath a dream, let him tell a dream, and he that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully.
What is the chaff to the wheat? saith the Lord.
Is not my word like as a fire, saith the Lord, and like a hammer |
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| that breaketh the rock in pieces?
Therefore, behold I am against the prophets, saith the Lord, that steal my words every man from his neighbor. [Jeremiah 23:19-30]
Prophet, priest, and people that do this, I will even punish that man and his house; for ye have perverted the words of the living God, of the Lord of Hosts, our God.
Therefore, behold, I, even I, will utterly forget you, and I will forsake you, and the city that I gave you and your fathers, and cast you out of my presence.
And I will bring an everlasting reproach upon you, and a perpetual shame which shall not be forgotten." [Jeremiah 23:39-40] |
That everlasting reproach, that perpetual shame, that living destruction! We see it with our eyes, for where is the nation on whose soil some of these cinders out of the furnace of God's wrath have not fallen? And still the Jews, like half-burned shingles from the great conflagration, darken the air of prophesy. And how is it possible that men anywhere can read these burning denunciations of the wickedness by which they fell, and repeat the same wickedness, the same oppression, and the same daring defiance, and resistance, and perversion of God's word in regard to it?
God sent Jeremiah with such messages, even toTophet, sent him on purpose, and gathered a congregation to hear him, even on the borders of that smoldering; smoking image of the world of woe; sent him to preach there in order to give a more
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terrible force and stinging application to his words, sent him to that valley of the son of Hinnom, that rotting gehenna of dead men's bones and all uncleanness, and made him stand with an earthen vessel in his hands, which, amid the tide of burning eloquence poured from God's Spirit through his lips, against the sins of the nation, he was commanded to break in pieces, and cast it into the valley as an emblem of the manner in which God would break up the whole nation, and cast the people into Tophet, till there should be none to bury them, nor room for them to be buried. [Jeremiah 19:1-11]
And after he had finished that sermon, he came into the city again, and repeated its application to all the people in the court of the Lord's house [Jeremiah 19:14-15], and instantly upon that, the sermon being reported to the authorities, they lashed the prophet with stripes, and put him in the stocks, as their descendants afterward did with Paul and Silas, the New Testament preachers of the same Gospel.
Never did the malignity of man, and the instant retributive power and majesty of the word of God come into more graphic and instructive conflict. Will you listen to the recital, for it is brief and pungent:
| "Then came Jeremiah from Tophet, whither the Lord had sent him to prophesy; and be stood in the court of the Lord's house, and said to all the people, Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will bring upon the city, and upon all her towers, all the evil that I have pronounced against it, because they |
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| have hardened their necks that they might not hear my words.
"Now Pashur, the son of Immer the priest, who was also chief governor in the house of the Lord, beard that Jeremiah prophesied these things. Then Pashur smote Jeremiah the prophet, and put him in the stocks that were in the high gate of Benjamin, which was by the house of the Lord. And it came to pass on the morrow, that Pashur brought forth Jeremiah out of the stocks."
"Then said Jeremiah unto him, The Lord hath not called thy name Pashur, but Magor-Missabib. For thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will make thee a terror to thyself, and to all thy friends; and they shall fall by the sword of their enemies, and thine eyes shall behold it; and I will give all Judah into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall carry them captive into Babylon, and shall slay them with the sword.
"And thou, Pashur, and all that dwell in thine house, shall go into captivity: and thou shalt come to Babylon, and there thou shalt die, and shalt be buried there, thou and all thy friends, to whom thou hast prophesied lies." Jeremiah 20:1-4, 6] |
It was thus that God preserved Jeremiah, and, according to his promise, made the terror of his words to sink in the hearts of his opponents, made his words fire and the people wood, to be kindled by them. And all around in the region of bis native place, where wicked and scornful men beset and plagued him, Jeremiah was charged with similar messages.
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Now if ever there was what is now falsely called political preaching, it was this preaching of Jeremiah. It was the preaching of religion in politics, God's word as the only authoritative and right guide of politics, God's word forbidding a nation's sins. And God sustained the prophet in this preaching through a ministry of forty-three years' duration.
Now mark my words, It was the preaching of religion in politics which is God's own command, both in the Old and New Testament, but the preaching of politics in religion is quite another thing, the work of intriguing politicians and of Satan, seeking to blind the minds of men, and keep God's light and God's authority away from their hearts and consciences. If religion be not preached and practiced in the politics of a nation, that nation is on the high road to perdition; for the nation and kingdom that will not serve God shall perish; and if politics be preached and practiced in the religion of a nation, which is the case when religion is not applied to politics, then both church and people perish in their sins.
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CHAPTER V.
OBLIGATIONS OF THE PULPIT IN THE SIGHT OF GOD—
HYPOCRISY OF THE OUTCRY OF POLITICAL PREACHING—
THE SINFULNESS OF CONCEALMENT AND OF SHIELDING
MEN'S SINS FROM THE LIGHT OF THE GOSPEL—
APPLICATION OF THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST AND HIM CRUCIFIED.
THE Jesuitical habit of apologizing for sin, and of covering it up, runs into every thing; he that is unfaithful in much will also be unfaithful in a little, and he that is unfaithful in a little is unfaithful in much. He whose corporate conscience is debauched in a society, will lose all tenderness and acuteness of conscience in private life, and in his own piety. He will lie, steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, and burn incense unto Baal, and walk after other gods, and then come and stand in God's house, which is called by his name, and say, We are delivered to do all these abominations. [Jeremiah 7:9-10] Politics in religion will not only lead to the practice of such abominations, but will justify and sanctify them; but religion in politics pours the light of God's word upon men's corporate as well as individual crimes. It is impossible for the individuals of a nation to support the nation's sins, or apologize for them, or ward off the light of
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God's word from rebuking them, and not put in peril their own piety and salvation.
Already, over more than half the pulpits in our land there hangs the ban of excommunication, if a single page of God's word be applied against slavery; the thing must not be mentioned, and a politic silence prevails. The drums of God'a word are muffled, and they beat a funeral march instead of a Gospel onset. Our conservative Christians have turned sextons—they are for burying the truth instead of publishing it. Their whole terror is against the living truth; dead men's bones and all uncleanness have less that is repulsive for them, than rousing, cutting, and exciting truth, the truth of God, that brings religion into their cotton speculations and their politics.
"My people ask counsel at their stocks, and their stuff declareth unto them. [Hosea 4:12] Ephraim is a merchant; the balances of deceit are in his hands; he loveth to oppress, yet he saith, I am become rich, I have found me out substance; in all my labors they shall find none iniquity in me that were sin." [Hosea 12:7-8] There may be iniquity in the abstract, but nothing is sin per se if there be great profit in it; and when the pecuniary interest of any wicked system becomes vast, there are prophets enough to justify Ephraim in its preservation.
Now, then, let such dead as these bury their dead, but the Gospel is not to walk as a mourner, at the grave-digger's bidding. Preach thou the kingdom of
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God. Undertakers for the dead; preachers for the living. Let not the first presume to give instructions to the last. It is a different process, that of nailing up truth in coffins, and putting it five feet underground, lest it be a stench in the nostrils of cotton merchants, and that of revealing its grand and noble forms, as glorious living messengers from the Lord Almighty. We walk with angels, not with dead men; we take counsel of living, beating hearts, not dead bones and purses.
To those who conceal or sell the truth for a present expediency, and handle God's word by profit and loss, God gives in receipt a whirlwind; ye shall be ashamed of your revenues, says he, because of the fierce anger of the Lord. And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep and that mutter, Should not a people seek unto their God? Will they dare to seek for the living to the dead? To the law and to the testimony! If your leaders speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them. [Isaiah 8:19-20]
And if you follow such teachers, hear ye what is in reserve for you, even in your very passage through the word of God, and what it means when the Lord says, that if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch. [Matthew 15:14] For, says the living God, If they speak not according to my word, they shall pass through it hardly bestead and hungry; even through this land of glory, this place of living streams, green pastures, and cold flowing waters, and
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trees of life, whose fruit is for the healing of the nations; even through this region of heaven shall they pass more famished with thirst and hunger than if lost in the heart of the great desert under the simoom cloud. They shall pass through it hardly bestoad and hungry, and it shall come to pass that when they shall be hungry, they shall fret themselves, and curse their king and their God, and look upward. And they shall look unto the earth, and behold trouble and darkness, dimness of anguish, and they shall be driven into darkness. [Isaiah 8:21-22]
That is the fate of any political party that will not obey God's word, but chain themselves to platforms that abjure it, and trust in lies.
Nothing can possibly be more hypocritical, than the outcry about political preaching. The truth is, that the moment any sin passes from the individual to the nation, and is sanctioned by law, and becomes what is called organic, then instantly the speech against it is branded as political preaching; so that, if you wish to take all manner of sin from the touch and control of the pulpit, if you wish to shield it from that rebuke which God has appointed to be thundered against it, you have only to make it legal and national, and you have given it a tabernacle, a pavilion, you have enshrined it as a Dagon, before which you must put off the shoes from your feet, and approach it only to bow down and worship. If a man has two wives, you may preach against polyga-
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my, and nobody thinks of charging you with preaching politics; but if a State set up polygamy by law, and its support be made a plank in the political platform of a party, then, if you touch upon it in the pulpit, you are preaching politics. Whenever, and in whatever way, you bring religion to bear upon politics, there are men who will accuse you of political preaching; but you are not to stop for that.
And it is most instructive to see the blundering power of political prejudices, and the distortions of men's vision. The Rev. Dr. Richards, settled in Morristown during the administration of President Jefferson, preached on one occasion a sermon on the prevalence of infidelity, applying the principles of the gospel to the duties of the nation; and the sermon happening to fall in with the opinions of the hearers, it was greatly admired. No one thought of calling it a political sermon. Several years passed away, bringing, in many respects, a great change in the political views of the congregation. But divine truth is always the same. Dr. Richards, thinking he perceived a train or habit of opinion and feeling in the congregation or community, which called for it, took up the same sermon, and preached it again as before. Not an individual remembered it, but a great portion of the congregation were very much offended by it, as being what they called political preaching. They went to the length of appointing a committee to wait upon the preacher and remonstrate with him against
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such kind of preaching. One of the gentlemen on the committee, and their chairman, was Dr. Whelpley, then an elder in Dr. Richards's church. The committee presented their grievances and remonstrance, and Dr. Richards listened with great gravity and serenity. When they got through, he remarked that time brings about great changes. Men change, opinions change; nature herself works wondrous transformations; but his old sermons remained, for aught he could discover, just as they were. This discourse, said he, taking up the obnoxious sermon, is indeed discolored, and somewhat yellow with age; but its contents remain precisely the same as they were so many years ago, when you first heard its expositions of divine truth, and regarded them with admiration as the pure gospel of God, nor ever dreamed of there being any thing political in them.
The committee of remonstrance listened with astonishment; they took the manuscript into their hands, and sat gazing at one another, and at Dr. Richards, in silence. At length Dr. Whelpley, the chairman, turned to them and said, Gentlemen, I think we had better go! And after that, there was no more criticism in the congregation concerning the preaching of politics.
But at the present time, the simplest announcement of divine truth, in regard to national guilt, is asserted to be an invasion, forsooth, of the political rights of the congregation, and an unwarranted intrusion of
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themes adapted to excite angry feeling, where there ought to be nothing mentioned but Christ and him crucified. [I Corinthians 2:2]
But what is it to truly preach Christ and him crucified, except to pour the light of a Saviour's sufferings and death upon men's sins, that in that light they may see and feel "the exceeding sinfulness of sin [Romans 7:13]," their own sins, and the sins of the community, and be led, out of love to Christ, and for bis sake, to renounce them? Many person may be willing to preach nothing but Christ and him crucified, who are not willing, like Paul, to know nothing among men save Christ and him crucified; a very different thing it is, merely to preach that doctrine speculatively, from applying it practically.
Many are very willing to hear about Christ being crucified for them, who will not listen for a moment to the proposed crucifixion of their sins for him, especially those sins which they call organic, those that have the sanction and protection of human law, those that are regarded and maintained as domestic institutions, and those that are defended by a strong party, so that it becomes an unpopular and a hazardous thing to assail them. But for what purpose was the gospel given, but to turn men from their iniquities, disclosing and condemning them in the light of the cross?
And what is the gospel, with its infinite majesty of thought, and its burning motives, and its countless applications, and its sublime combinations of thunder-
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ings and halleluias, and its compass of all sounds reverberating from heaven to hell? Is it a fiddle with only one string, or a harp of infinite harmonies? Is it an organ with only one note—a monotonous anodyne of repeated truisms, so admitted, that they are cradled in the dormitory of the soul, as lifeless as exploded errors? Is it a treadmill of orthodoxy and conservatism, where men, that would be Samsons anywhere else, must grind blind-folded, crushed beneath the fear of man, terrified at the thought of a blast from the political newspapers, afraid of every thing exciting, their only object to keep things quiet, and the watchword of their millennium, First peaceable, then pure? Such an idea of the gospel is preposterous, it reminds us of our school-day declamations:
"My name is Norvall on the Grampian hills
My father feeds his flock; a frugal swain,
Whose only aim was to increase his store,
And keep his only son, myself, at home."
I tell you, no wonder that the modern pulpit has lost its power, when men are afraid of the application of that power, and tremble at the consequences. The gospel is not to be perverted as a political lullaby, and shall not be muzzled at the mandate of intriguing politicians and oppressors. There is nothing, from the beginning to the end of the alphabet, connected with moral issues, and bearing on men's duty, which may not, at the proper time, be made the subject of
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investigation in the pulpit and the proper time for the consideration of any sin, is the very time, and the proper place the very place, where the sin is practiced, where its lawfulness, expediency, and righteousness are maintained, and where its disastrous, demoralizing, destructive influence, is felt, and not at the Antipodes, where sins are reigning of an entirely opposite character. The proper time and place for the consideration of idolatry is in the presence of the idol-worship, and in the community where such an abomination prevails, or where it is defended; and no matter what laws, or antique usages and authorities of state and custom sustain the iniquity, that makes no difference in the duty of the preacher. The application of the gospel must be made; nor is there any time to be lost; since the argument of possession, custom, and law, is every day growing stronger.
Just so with every dear, cherished, fashionable evil. If the probing of it occasions agitation, anger, strife, that very thing is proof of the necessity of so dealing with it; and if it is warmly contested not to be an evil nor a sin, that itself just clearly shows the danger and ruin of letting it alone, and the pressing necessity of pouring the light of God's word upon it. If it be interwoven with the politics of the state and of society, so much the worse; so much the more hazardous to meddle with it, but so much the more necessary. Idolatry was thoroughly interwoven with the fixtures and statutes of the Roman empire, but
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the gospel was laid at its roots; and though the apostles might have preached Christ and him crucified, technically, orthodoxically, without saying one word against the worship of idols, yet they attacked it, and poured the light of the cross upon it, in the very heart of Athens [Acts 17:15], Corinth [Acts 18:1], Ephesus [Acts 19:1], and Rome [Acts 28:16-31], before the temples and the altars of Astarte, of Jupiter [Acts 14:13], of Diana [Acts 19:24-35], and the thirty thousand gods admitted by the indifference of Areopagus [Acts 17:19-23].
Think of any man undertaking to tell Paul that he must not
bring his religion into politics! It was only vagabond Jews a [Acts 19:13], and that only of the lower sort a [Acts 17:5], and Demetrius the silversmith, the maker of silver shrines for Diana [Acts 19:24-28], that cried out politics, and the turning of the world upside down with agitation [Acts 17:6], and sounded the alarm that the apostles were persuading men to worship God contrary to the law [Acts 16:21
and 18:13]. That was the accusation; and where the law was all on the side of sin, death, and Satan, how could there but be incessant conflict and strife, till God's law got the uppermost?
I sometimes think I see, with the clearness of a death-bed vision, that the spirit of gain, and of a commercial expediency, and of an indolent love of ease and prosperity, even in spiritual things, has taken fast hold of the people. And I do know that there may be a self-deception, even in the hearts of men who think they are going on wisely and smoothly in the way to heaven, and a secret leaven of supreme
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regard to self, that corrupts the whole fountain, so that, by-and-by, with the horror of an eternal surprise, they may find God saying to them, I never knew you, ye never knew me! [Luke 13:27]
There are those who have asked themselves, again and again, May we not keep silence? Is it not best? Why is it necessary to speak on this subject, though it be in God's word; or, if necessary, why necessary for us, and why now? But we are answered by conscience, by God's word, by the examples of the prophets and apostles: and so answered, how can we forbear speaking out?
By the help of God, I, for one, mean to speak freely, fully, on this subject, at this most solemn juncture in our history. It is not from curiosity, merely, but by constraint, that we have to seek the light of God upon our present path of duty, personal and individual, in regard to this thing. It is no mere abstraction, and never was, but it has come to every man's door, every man's own soul, asking what shall be done? what course are we to pursue, what opinion shall we maintain, and what would God have us to do, in such a crisis? Here, then, we must consent to come humbly to the word of God, and learn what is His judgment in regard to the right way; for now, at this very time, we are making, as a nation, our final decision upon it, and every man takes part in that decision.
I proclaim the right and the obligation of a minister of God's word to preach on the sinfulness of
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extending the system of slavery, and to show the consequent religious responsibility of a vote in regard to it. If any persons in the nation have a right to speak on this subject, those who have thoroughly investigated it in the Scriptures, in their original languages, certainly possess that right. I have long studied the Old Testament in reference to it, out of anguish of spirit at the daring accusation brought against God's law among the Hebrews, of sustaining and sanctioning this stupendous wrong.
And if, after some seventeen years' ministry in the city of New York, I could not dare to speak, or might not be permitted or sustained in proclaiming the whole utterance of God's word on this subject, where or when could I? Could I do it at the South ? where, not only no man is allowed to speak, but if he be even suspected of thinking unfavorably to the system of slavery, he must be expelled from society, the safety of which is declared to be imperiled by his presence.
Or, should a minister go to India or Siberia, and there proclaim the word of God against the sin of slavery, in a country five thousand miles distant? That was Amaziah's advice to the prophet Amos, when, at God's bidding, he proclaimed the iniquities of Israel in Israel. O thou seer, go, flee thee away into the land of Judah, and there eat bread, and prophesy there, but prophesy not again any more at Bethel, for it is the king's chapel, and it is the king's court. [Amos 7:12-13]
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But why speak here, and why now? Because the time has come, and the occasion, and the demand, and the personal moral necessity. It is worth a seventeen years' ministry to come to such a crisis, and be permitted of God to speak out. Never before has the extension of slavery been made a personal responsibility, at least not directly, but now it is. It is put to you and to me, as individuals, to say, Shall slavery and oppression, or freedom and justice, be the rule of this nation? This, then, is a crisis in which, with the word of God in trust to proclaim for God, we can not be silent; and as to our hearers, whatever part of God's word you reject, the same shall judge you in the last day.
Now, it is no easy matter to proclaim the word of God on this subject; it is not a pleasing or a popular theme. And as to position, as to prosperity, as to popularity, are not all inducements over on the side of ease, quiet, and silence? Why endanger your position, influence, the welfare of your church, by an obstinate conscience, that makes you think, forsooth, that you must proclaim the messages in the word of God on this subject? Truly, my friends, you must see that it is nothing of ease, or self-indulgence, or the seductions of popular applause, that can constrain a man, in such a case, to give utterance to his convictions. I can but ask your prayers, as Paul did, that I may open my mouth boldly, that I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak. [Ephesians 6:18-19] But speak I must. If
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I did not speak, I should perhaps receive the curse of a judicial darkness into my own soul. I should fool degraded, debased, enslaved. I could never lift my head as a man, a free man, an ambassador for God, who seeks not to please men, but God. I have been made to feel that if a man can not stand against the whole world, if need be, with a Thus saith the Lord, he is unfit to speak for Jehovah; it may be that he is unfit for heaven, destitute of the very first elements of faith in the Lord Jesus.
And of the two lines of mistake in regard to eternity, that of self-indulgence in the way of timidity and love of ease, taking that for a conservative piety, and that of boldness, and a constitutional love of liberty and truth, taking that for conscientiousness;—a man may be mistaken in regard to his motives in either way. But if one must go to perdition by one of these errors, he had better go by mistake of boldness in the truth, than shame and fear of it. And sure I am, that more will be lost in this age by not confessing God and his truth before men, than by imprudent or fiery zeal in the proclamation of any part of God's messages.
O that God may work in us all, by his own grace, a most entire and hearty love of his truth. Remembering that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God shall man live [Matthew 4:4], may we be enabled to say with Jeremiah, Thy words were found, and I did eat them, and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of my heart. [Jeremiah 15:16]
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CHAPTER VI.
GLORY AND FREEDOM OF THE WORD OF GOD IS ITS UNIVERSAL
AND PERPETUAL APPLICATION— DEMONSTRATIONS FROM ITS
HISTORICAL AND PROPHETIC PORTIONS, AS TO NATIONAL SINS—
THIS LIGHT YET TO BE APPLIED.
IT is the glory and the freedom of the Word of God, that it is for all ages, times, circumstances, men, and sins, without respect to persons. What would it be worth, if it were not? It would grow old, it would pass out of date, it would vanish away, it would be like the first Egyptian covenant which decayeth and waxeth old, and is suspended. But now, forever, every word of God is settled in heaven, every orb hung up in that divine firmament, the same faithful light unto all generations. Its very historical records are like the milky way, a galaxy of stars, disclosing new worlds with the application of every new comprehensive prayerful investigation by instruments of greater power. And its very nebulosities, that like the cloudy fleeces of the starry universe, have sometimes furnished hopeful clinging-places for the bats of infidelity, are resolved into clusters of perfect worlds, arranged from the outset by him who made them at
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his own great will, for the manifestation of his own glory.
The words of the Lord are pure words, as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. There is no dross in it; there is nothing to be thrown away; and the historical portions are especiully precious for this, among many essential uses, that they teach us, beyond all possibility of doubt, the freedom and fearlessness with which God will have every portion of his Word applied. They set in a divine illumination the precedents, in which the statutory parts of the divine law are illustrated, with such demonstration, as to give their meaning new clearness and power.
And the same is the case with the illustration of the promises, so often made to shine in the chapters of personal experience, and in the beautiful and various recountings of God's providence.
Now it can not be denied that in whatever age of the world any sinful practices or principles prevail, to the condemnation of which any part of the word of God is applicable, or for demonstration of the wickedness of which any part of the word of God can be used, that part of the word of God is meant for that age and that iniquity, was given in reference to it, was prearranged for such application, and is as directly revealed from God to that age, for the purpose of being proclaimed as his immediate message, as it was for the very first age, and the very first occasion. For this is the ever-living power and freshness of the word of God. When God revealed it first, he gave it
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for all times and places, through all generations up to the last day, and with a particular foresight of all phases of human society, all forms of human government, all customs and fashions among men, and all varieties of human wickedness, whether of philosophy or impiety, intellect or heart, in the church or out of it, rulers or ruled. It is the incorruptible, eternal Word of God, which liveth and abideth forever, while generation after generation, all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof fadeth away, but the Word of the Lord endureth forever. [Isaiah 40:6-8]
And God will have it applied; he gave it, he prepared it, he made it profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. [2 Timothy 3:16] God will have it applied by living preachers, according as men's conditions, dangers, miseries and sins, sins and miseries, require; will have it divided rightly [2 Timothy 2:12], that every man, and every generation, and every community, may receive their portion in due season. Like the sun in the heavens, there is nothing hid from the heat thereof. [Psalm 19:6]
And there is nothing, in individual or national life, at the door of which, as at a forbidden or sacred citadel, any man, or government, or society, may stand and fend off, or expel, the word of God from entering and applying its judgment. It has the scrutiny and freedom of omniscience and omnipresence, breaking
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every seal and every spell of concealment, and flashing as God's eye into every secret recess and on every hidden thing. Whatever is morally wrong in all the ramifications, employments, and organizations of society, whatever in human business or luxury, whatever in art, commerce, manufactures, labor, learning, science, jurisprudence, civil, social, or domestic economy, on that the word of God falls, to search it out and rebuke it.
Whatever there be in the laws or policy of nations, tainted with moral infection, under the condemnation of God's righteousness, or adapted, or designed, to lead men into, or protect them in pursuing courses of sin, on that the word of God comes down, to that it is to be applied, and that is the province over which it has indisputable dominion, and on which it is to be marched without fear or apology, without hindering or halting. If unrighteousness in law is carrying men in iniquity headlong, God's word is to be planted in the face of such law, in defiance of it, as a park of artillery to thunder against it, and shield the people from its dreadful sway.
Of all partisan claims or theological hallucinations, the idea that the science of government, the conduct of rulers, the political creeds and practices of men, the administration of parties and of nations, the whole domain, in fine, of what is called politics, is sacred from the application of God's word, and stands aloof on ground which the very nature of the preacher's vocation forbids him to invade, is the maddest. A greater
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absurdity could scarcely be broached or a more impious one in its logic and its consequences, than that which, nevertheless, has been broached, and widely insisted on, that politics are out of the supervision of piety, and that religion is out of its sphere in applying to the political doctrines and practices of a people the rules of God's righteousness, the light of God's word. The politics of a people comprise the whole scope of their laws and civil obligations, under which, if they be left to the dominion of the god of this world, given over to his undisputed sway, the whole nation will at length inevitably go down to perdition.
The idea that men commissioned with the word of God are desecrating their office, or transcending its limits, when they undertake to bring the nation's laws and transgressions under the judgment of God's law; or that they are in any manner or degree going out of their own proper sphere as the teachers of God's word, is a creation only of pride and impiety; and for the ministers of that word themselves to echo such an opinion, is itself a desecration of their office and a treason against God.
And here let me say, in regard to the historical teachings, and all other teachings in the Old Testament; that they are not only not superseded by the New, but confirmed and strengthened, and of just as great importance to be applied as ever. The New Testament is an addition to, and perfection of, the revelations of God's will in the Old, but it takes not
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away one jot or tittle of its authority, nor diminishes in the least degree its importance, nor supplies its place. The New Testament is part and parcel of the Old, but what the Old could not do, the New has done, and what the Old has still to do, the New does not do, and can not do, in its place. The Old came very much to governments and nations; the New still leaves that field to be occupied by the Old, and itself comes more especially and directly to individuals; but the Old has still its mission, and must occupy its sphere, as fellow-preacher with the New, both being God's eternal witnesses, neither to cease on account of the other, but both to preach together and forever, to men and communities, to individuals and nations, to governments and peoples, to rulers and the ruled alike.
And in this history, the career of nations, and of the Jews especially, is full of blazing light and practical instruction, both in regard to our duty, and in illustration of the divine Providence and word. The Hebrew people, in their own country, and in their national life, were a perpetual beacon-light amid the darkness; and in their living death among the nations they still serve a mighty purpose for the demonstration of anatomy and disease, as God's subject of dissection, for the scrutiny of deadly moral poison, and the instruction and the warning of all empires. And in these historical pages the providential government of God is revealed and illustrated as we never
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could have known it, but for them. Hence, continually the vivid references by the Lord Jesus Christ back to the records of what God has been doing, for instruction as to his will and providence and our duty. Have ye not read? [Mark 12:26] Is it not plain before you? Remember Lot's wife [Genesis 19:26; Luke 17:32]. Remember the carcasses of those who fell in the wilderness [Hebrews 3:17]. Remember Sodom and Gomorrah. [Genesis 19:24-25]. As it was in the days of Noah so shall it again be [Luke 17:26].
As it was with Jonah and Nineveh, and the warned and instructed, and yet ruined cities and kingdoms of old, so again in the ever-recurring tides and destinies of rising, flourishing, sinning, and falling nations. There they lie, the ruins of those cities, and in solemn silent eloquence proclaim God's wrath; and Nineveh and Thebes, in their wonderful disentombment and material anastasis bear witness to the truth.
The dispersion of the Jews among all nations, and at the same time God's most wonderful providential preservation of them from becoming lost and indistinguishable, or merged and denationalized, constitute a perpetual flaming miracle, in fulfillment of the prediction in Amos,
| "I will destroy the sinful kingdom from off the face of the earth, and I will sift the house of Israel among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth" [Amos 9:9]. |
These demonstrations cover the course of all time, and they are [warnings, precedents] for all ages, and they reach to all possible circumstances and questions in their application, with their
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light [message]. They show, as one vast example and precedent, for the instruction of all generations and nations, how God is a present God, with a particular providence, interposing, acting, arranging all causes, and ordering affairs, and guiding and governing the whole world on the same principles developed in the history of that small portion of the world where the Saviour of the world was crucified.
But this light has never been applied to the affairs of nations, the administration of governments, the political life of the people; and almost half of God's word has remained a dead letter, and an unknown power. When John Robinson told the pilgrims that he was confident God had much more truth to unseal and let it break forth out of his living oracles, than they had any of them then gazed at, he might, or he might not, have had in his mind this application of divine truth to human politics; but certain it is, that by such application and guidance alone can our country be saved from going down into a deeper gulf of ruin than any nation was over buried in.
This country is the battle-ground of religious principle against a wicked political expediency, and of God's authority in national affairs against the spirit of conquest, covetousness, oppression, and diplomatic fraud and selfishness. Never, anywhere else, has principle had the field; it has been shut out and abandoned, as an interloper, an intruder, out of place in politics, and so the world has gone on without it. But here we have
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it. The battle is God's authority, and the religious principle, and the power of conscience, against political dishonesty and villainy. It is by the word of God that conscience and freedom fight on against immorality and slavery; and the whole word must be free, and must be used, and no part of it vailed or rejected.
Heretofore the conscience-battle has been merely as a skirmish in a narrow mountain gorge, where not a thousandth part of the troops could be engaged, or it has only been an ecclesiastical engagement, as of the Free Church of Scotland, moving from the government and patronage of the State. Now, at length, we are down in the plain, room enough for all the forces and for every evolution, and the whole world are gazing at us, as if they occupied the mountain sides, and suspended all their interests for the issue of this conflict.
It is principle, battling by the word of God, that here must contend against policy, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places [Ephesians 6:12]; must enter into policy, conquer it, guide it, shape it, inspire it, transform it. It is principle in the hearts of the people that must reclaim and govern the government, that must wrest it mightily from the possession of men who are subverting its fundamental laws and elements, and put it in the hands, and keep it in the hands, of men who will not do what God abhors.
There is but one way to accomplish this: God's
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truth, working by God's Spirit in the masses, in the common people, in the whole constituency. We must take possession of the constituency for God, and so we get possession of the government for God. The opinions of the constituency in regard to polities must be formed under the light of God's word, a thing which in most nations has never yet been done, but religion has been kept as far away from politics; and politics as thoroughly on the watch against religion, as if politics were a peaceful, unpolluted Eden, and religious truth the prowling fiend, seeking to distract, divide, and fill it with mischief and desolation.
The government of religion by politics has been very common; this has been the rule where church and state have been united; and between both the truth of God's word has been crushed and silenced, where it could not be perverted. But now comes a time when every thing must be brought into the light, and determined not by state or ecclesiastical power, as formerly, but by conscience, which God's truth first sets at work, and then arms with a might that is irresistible. Now, over all this domain, God's word has a park of mighty batteries to move, hitherto masked and silent, but now to be unmasked and thundering. There is a hidden fire never yet revealed, but which is to break forth in triumphant majesty and power.
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CHAPTER VII.
God's Wrath Against [Judah's] Slavery in Jeremiah XXXIV. l7—
The Illumination from this Passage Upon Our Own [U.S.] Sin—
The Solemnity of the Crisis and the Responsibility—
National Decisions by Individual Opinions and Choices—
The Question to be Settled is of Right or Wrong, Not Policy or Impolicy.
THUS saith the Lord, Ye [of Judah] have not hearkened unto me, in proclaiming liberty, every one to his brother, and every man to his neighbor; behold, I proclaim a liberty for you, saith the Lord, to the sword, to the pestilence, and to the famine; and I will make you to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth. Jer. xxxiv. 17.
[Ed. Note: Meaning: 'I, God, will abolish you sinful nation]. |
These words constitute one of the most tremendous thunderbolts of God's wrath against a nation's sins ever issued from the quiver of the Almighty. It came down with the suddenness of a peal of thunder in a clear day.
The cause and occasion of it [the abolition of Ancient Judah] were the attempted establishment of slavery in the land [of Ancient Judah], in place of free voluntary paid labor.
Ed. Note: This parallels the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah, Ezekiel 16:4, oppressing the poor and needy, hence, warranting destruction, Genesis 19:24-25.
In case of both, the penalty was permanent. Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed, whereas while not all Israelites were killed, they were not to have their own nation, not until the Messiah returned, Ezekiel 37:21-28 (which event has of course not yet happened). |
Involuntary servitude was forbidden by the divine law [Exodus 21:16, Deuteronomy 24:7], and the service appointed by the constitution of the Jewish state was a free service.
| Ed. Note: The Israelites were also clearly told to not oppress the Palestinians. See reference and details by Rev. John G. Fee, Sinfulness of Slavery (1851), p 11. |
There had been, from time to time, great and gross transgressions of this benevolent constitution; and God had incessantly
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denounced his vengeance, by the prophets, against such oppressions; but never before had there been a deliberate determination and attempt, on the part of the nation, to
- violate the free constitution [God's anti-slavery commandments and laws],
- defeat its [God's Laws'] provisions of protection and justice for the laboring classes,
- establish the sinful and forbidden claim of property in man, and
- bind their free servants as bond-slaves and chattels forever at the will of the master.
This dreadful revolution and usurpation [sin] they [the people of Judah] now [in the King Zedekiah era] resolved upon—king, princes, priests, and the whole oligarchy of masters [in defiance of God and warnings by Jeremiah].
They [the people of Judah] had hesitated, had relaxed their grasp from the subjects of their oppression, when Jerusalem was threatened by the invading Chaldean army; but the moment the troops drew off, and the immediate pressure of fear and danger was removed, they returned to their impious project; the gain in their wealth, by making their servants property instead of hired servants was too vast, and the temptation of wielding an irresponsible despotism too dazzling for their cupidity and love of power to resist [Jeremiah 34:8-11].
They [the people of Judah] had been going on in an immoral, sensual, proud, vicious training for this final, daring, culminating iniquity, for centuries; but they did not expect to be reined up and blasted by so sudden a destruction.
It [Judah's permanent national destruction] came like a whirlwind; it was all over with them; there was no more reprieve, no more forbearance [by God]; the choice of slavery instead of freedom, and oppression instead of justice and humanity, as the
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policy of the nation, filled up the measure of their iniquities, and exhausted the last drop in the allotted patience and long-suffering of God.
Ed. Note: This sin, restoring slavery, had been cited by
Rev. Samuel Hopkins, Discourse 1785 [see excerpt]
Rev. John Rankin, Letters on American Slavery, pp 101-102 (Ohio, 1823)
Dr. [Samuel] Horsley, Bishop of Asaph, Anti-slavery Speech (BHL, 24 June 1806).
The offense against divine law was particularly offensive in view of the background of Israel having been created as a nation via rescue out of the Egyptian bondage system and given pertinent anti-slavery laws and principles, see, e.g.,
Rev. Theodore D. Weld, The Bible Against Slavery (New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1837), pp 86-92
Alvan Stewart, Legal Argument (1845), pp 31-34
Rev. John G. Fee, Sinfulness of Slavery (1851), pp 10-11.
See also Ruth Sinai, "Once we were slaves, now we're slavers" (Haaretz, 14 April 2006), on slavery in modern Israel. |
Now, the transaction of this marked and mighty sin, and God's tremendous, almost instantaneous, wrathful judgment against it, were, for the sudden illumination of wickedness and justice in our fallen world, like a sun shot into chaos.
If I had time to examine, and you the patience to contemplate, the previous steps of transgression, that led to this colossal guilt, and prepared the way for it,
the gradual sapping and mining of the foundations of morality,
the corruption of principles, manners, and morals,
the successive wicked statutes, and
the habit of infidelity and disobedience toward God fastened on the people, in willingly walking after them,
the sacrifice and shipwreck of conscience, in obeying man rather than God, and
the consequent loss of all dignity, power, and freedom,
the recital would be full of instruction and of thrilling interest.
We have already dwelt upon several important points; and I can now only, as it were, take the quadrant, and, getting this orb of light in the firmament of God's word in the right line and reflection, bring it down exactly to our position, to calculate our course of duty and of safety. It is only by such celestial observations, as that great writer, Mr. Coleridge, once remarked, that terrestrial charts can be constructed: such charts, at least, as can be relied upon
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to carry a nation safely through its perils. We ourselves are at sea, and surrounded by breakers, and God only can rescue us; and He will do it, only by our reliance on Him, and obedience to Him.
Let us, then, in the first place, secure an observation as to God's method in a nation's probationary trial, and as to the solemnity of the criais to which we have been brought, and the similarity between our position and that of the Jews, from the lifted lid of whose sepulchre there comes such an awful voice of wailing and of warning. We shall then be prepared to go into the argument as to the iniquity of slavery, and as to our own guilt and ruin, if we consent to its extension.
And here I beseech you to remark, that this mighty precedent of national injustice, and of God's vengeance against it, being once set, and blazing out with lurid fire, like a burning planet, in God's word, it settles into certainty the judgment of God with any other nation that shall dare to take to its embrace a similar injustice as to its policy.
It settles another matter also, that God will never again have patience with any other nation as he had with the first; but the wrath that with the first was restrained for ages, while the injustice was rolling on, will come down upon the last, because of the despised light of the first example, with overwhelming rapidity and power.
Ed. Note: This wrath came about a mere four years after this 1857 writing, i.e., in 1861.
See also Grenville Sharpe, The Law of Retribution, or, A Serious Warning to Great Britain and her Colonies Founded on Unquestionable Examples of God's Temporal Vengeance Against Tyrants, Slave-holders, and Oppressors: The Examples are Selected from Predictions in the Old Testament, of N |
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Welcome to the book, God Against Slavery (1857), by Rev. George B. Cheever, D.D. To go to the "Table of Contents" immediately, click here.