As a nation we are fast losing that reverence for the powers that be
which is enjoined by Holy Writ, and without which no form of government
can be lasting, no political system can take a firm hold upon the
affections of the people. The opposition press teems with vituperation
and personal abuse of those whom the people themselves have chosen to
control the public policy and administer the public affairs. The
incumbent of the Presidential chair, so far from receiving that respect
and deference to which his position entitles him, becomes the victim of
slander and vilification, from one portion of the country to another, on
the part of those who chance to differ with him in political sentiments.
Even beardless boys, taking their cue from those who, being older,
should know better, are unsparing in the use of such terms as
'scoundrel,' 'fool,' 'tyrant,' as applied to those whom the people have
delighted to honor, either unconscious or utterly heedless of the
disgust with which their language inspires the older and more
thoughtful. And thus it has become a recognized fact that no man's
reputation can withstand the trial of a four years' term of service in
the Presidential office. While this is in a great measure the reaction
from the king worship of the Old World, it is nevertheless a blot upon
our civilization, a departure from those lofty and noble sentiments
which characterize every advanced stage of human intellect, in which the
supremacy and inviolability of the law is acknowledged, and in which the
ruler is reverenced as the representative and impersonation of the law.
And as, in such a stage, respect for the magistrate and the law mutually
react upon each other, so in the present state of affairs the tendency
is, in the course of time, to reach from the ruler to the edict which he
administers, and thus to beget a disrespect and disregard of law itself,
paving the way to that violence and mob rule which, in the present state
of humanity, must inevitably attend the establishment of the democratic
principle.
The remedy is to be found in reform in the education of our youth,
whereby the utmost respect for the law and for those by whom it is
administered shall be inculcated as the groundwork of all patriotism and
national progress, while at the same time cultivating a loftier
appreciation of the blessings of social order and harmony, and of
well-regulated liberty of thought, speech, and action, and a purer
standard of right. Yet even this will be of little avail except in
connection with the abatement, through the strong good sense of a
thinking and upright people, of that national nuisance of bitter and
unmerciful political partisanship of which we have spoken, all of whose
tendencies are to evil, and so removing from the eyes of our youth a
low, unworthy, and degrading example, which they are too prone to
follow. The child will tread, to a great degree, in the steps of the
father, and the whole course of his intellectual life be governed, more
or less, by the principles and prejudices which he is accustomed every
day to hear from the lips of a parent, who is necessarily the teacher
and, in a great measure, the moulder of his infant mind. How careful,
then, ought every parent to be of the principles which he inculcates and
the examples which he sets in his conversation, especially when that
conversation is directed to a condemnation of the motives or the acts of
the ruling powers!--lest the child be some time inclined to enlarge upon
his views, and carry his deductions farther than he himself ever
dreamed, till he shall finally be led into a contempt of the
institutions as well as of the rulers of his native land, through a
father's teaching, and so grow up an embryo traitor, ready at the first
signal to embark in any revolutionary scheme or wild enterprise of
visionary reform, such as have been and are still the disturbers of our
national prosperity. For an example of such a result in our day we have
but to look at the youth of the Southern States, whose fiery treason,
far exceeding that of their elders, is nothing more than the outgrowth,
the legitimate extension and development of that bitter denunciation of
rulers who chanced to be unpopular with their fathers, of that
unrestrained license of speech which left nothing untouched, however
sacred, however holy it might be, which chanced to stand in the way of
gross and sordid interest. The ideas of the hot-blooded, fire-eating
Southern youth of to-day, the recklessness and the treason, the
denationalizing spirit of revolution and blood which so readily
manifests itself in contempt of the old flag, and the direst hatred of
all that their fathers held sacred and laid down their lives to
sustain--all this is but the idea, intensified and developed, of the
Southerner of a bygone generation; it is but the natural deduction from
his conversation and life, pondered over by the child, fixed deeply in
his heart as the teaching of a revered tutor, and carried out, by a
natural course of reasoning, to its extreme in the parricidal rebellion
of to-day. And yet that idea was, in its inception, apparently harmless
enough, being nothing more than that denunciation and vituperation of
the political leaders and the ruling powers which chanced to be in the
opposition, whereby the child was in due course of time weaned from his
country, and taught to look lightly upon and speak lightly of that which
of old time was only mentioned with love and reverent awe.
Nor is this the only reform which is needed in the education of our
youth. The phrase 'completing one's education' is used to-day with utter
looseness, and applied to that period when the youth leaves the school
or college for the busy walks of life. How much of error is contained in
such an application of the term he well knows who, after some years of
world life, can look back upon his college days and see what a mere
smattering of knowledge he gained within the 'classic shades,' and how
poorly _educated_ he was, in any and every sense of the word, how ill
fitted for the realities of work-day life, when first he emerged in
self-sufficient pride from the sacred walls, and launched boldly out
upon the world. At the time when, according to the popular acceptation
of the term, the education is completed, it is in truth but just begun;
and he who, upon the slender capital of college lore, should set himself
up for a finished man, one competent to take upon himself the duties,
responsibilities, and labors of active life, would soon find to his
sorrow that he was yet but a babe in wisdom, and yet needed a long and
severe discipline ere he could be considered one of the world's workers.
In the few years devoted, in our country, to the education of youth,
little more can be done than to teach them the value of knowledge and
the proper method and system of its acquisition, leaving to the
exertions of the after years that education of the mind and development
of the intellectual powers which constitute the finished man. And this
should be the object of all our schools, for females as well as for
males, to inculcate the truth that the true education begins where the
schools leave off, and depends entirely upon the scholar himself, aided
only by that groundwork of preparation, that systematizing of effort,
imparted by the tutor in the tender years. This end should be ever
before the teacher's eyes, and the whole course of study adjusted with a
view thereto. And the instruction imparted should be of such a character
as most thoroughly to fit the student for future study, giving him a
firm foothold upon the most essential branches of knowledge, from which
he may advance steadily and securely when left to himself; frequently
warning him that this is but the beginning of great things, and that the
abstrusities of wisdom, wherein is all its æsthetic beauty and its
holiness--all its moral good--lies far beyond, where it can only be
reached by the most patient, persevering, and unremitting toil; not
forgetting, at the same time, to point out the glorious reward which
awaits the seeker of truth. The effect of such a system would soon be
felt, not only in our national life, but in our very civilization. For
thus would be thrown out upon our society, year after year, a class of
thinkers, of earnest, working, strong-minded men and women, searchers
after truth and disciples of the highest good, instead of the crowd of
half-fledged intellectual idlers who yearly emerge from our schools with
the conceited idea that the course of study is finished, the paths of
investigation fully explored, and that life is henceforth a holiday from
study. Under such a giant impulse our society could not but advance with
enormous strides in all that pertains to true civilization, since
thinkers would then be the rule instead of the exception, and talent
almost universal, which is now, like angels' visits, comparatively 'few
and far between.' This is no Utopian vision: it is a reality within the
scope of human exertion and the capacity of our people of to-day, if men
would but exert themselves to such an end, and properly apply the energy
and labor which is now too often excited upon unworthy and trifling
objects. The realm of knowledge is so boundless that a lifetime is
little enough and short enough to give to mortals even a smattering of
that sea of wisdom which swells around the universe, and he alone can
claim to be a seer who devotes the whole of a long existence to the
investigation of truth; and only when this fact is impressed upon the
minds of youth can they be made to appreciate their true position in
existence, and made efficient workers in the great cause of humanity.
Yet all education is vain, all intellectual development is of little
benefit, all civilization hollow in its nature and ephemeral in its
duration which lacks the moral element. And by the word _moral_ in this
connection is intended to be understood not only what is usually
conveyed in the term morality, but also all religion. It is a
well-established fact, more particularly exemplified in our own history,
that all political parties founded upon an ephemeral issue, inevitably
disappear with the final adjustment of the questions upon which they are
based, having nothing left to rest upon, so it is in the affairs of
nations. In the weakness of human nature and the fallibility of all
human prescience, no system or theory can be devised which shall endure
through all time, which shall not become effete, useless, and even
erroneous in the progress of human development, and in the ever-shifting
condition of human society. Hence any government and society founded
upon a system of merely human devising, must, in the progress of events,
fall to pieces, and give place to the results of a new and younger
development. The law of God, as contained in Divine revelation, is alone
unchangeable, unmodifiable. It is adapted to meet the requirements of
all lands and all ages, to answer all the necessities of which human
nature is capable, even to its extremest verge of development. Hence all
political systems are durable only in proportion as they, in their
organization, conform to the precepts of Divine law.
We have used the term 'moral element' as necessarily comprehending all
religion, for the reason that upon religion is necessarily based all
true morality. There is nothing in the physical, and more especially in
the intellectual world, without a final cause; and that so-called
morality which exists entirely separate and distinct from religion, can
be based upon nothing other than self-interest, which, under different
conditions and circumstances, would as unhesitatingly lead to evil. The
'moral man' without religion could as easily be evil minded and
dissolute in a community purely evil as he is upright and honorable in a
civilized and enlightened community of to-day, for the reason that his
morality is nothing more than deference to a certain standard of
honor--in other words, to the _tone_ of the society by which he is
surrounded, bringing with it all the benefits of high public estimation
and a lofty position in society, which tone it must follow, be it good
or bad: it is founded and built up in self-interest. Yet this very tone
of society, and all these standards of honor and uprightness, when
traced to their origin, are found to arise from the precepts of
revelation. We are all, physically and intellectually, the creatures of
circumstance. Experience moulds and develops the intellect. Our moral
natures are not innate, but solely and entirely the result of the
influences by which we are surrounded. There is in the soul no absolute
standard of right; if there were, uprightness would be the same the
world over. But the right of the heathen is a different thing from that
of the Christian; the right of the Chinese or the Japanese is a
different thing from that of more enlightened nations; the right of one
Christian community is different from that of another; and this because
right, considered distinct from religion, is relative, and subject to
all the modifications of different conditions of society. The 'Evil, be
thou my good' of Milton's Satan is a delicate recognition of this fact.
But absolute right is a thing unknown to human _nature_; it can never be
innate, but comes from without. It can only be apprehended by the
intellect as a thing of God, a part of His nature, given to us as a law,
a rule of action, which we can accept or not, taking upon ourselves the
consequences of its rejection. There can be no standard of absolute
right other than the law of God; there can be no other invariable and
eternal rule of human action.
And if this position be true of individuals, most assuredly is it true
of nations, which are but individuals in the concrete, subject to the
same vicissitudes, governed by the same laws, physical and moral, and
following the same path of development. Only that form of government
which recognizes the Supreme Being as the chief of rulers, and His law
as the source and model of all human law, can be sure of truth and
justice on its side, both in its dealings with other nations and in its
regulation of its own internal affairs. Only such a form can work
steadily for the advancement of its people, both by leading them forward
and by smoothing the rugged path to perfection, and removing every
obstacle which impedes the national progress. However near the
principles of our Government may approach to those of the Divine law,
there is still room and urgent necessity for reform. Yet, in the
universal disfavor into which theocracies have fallen, and in the
intense desire which pervades our people to avoid the complicated evils
of a union between church and state, every attempt to unite religious
principles with those of government is looked upon with positive alarm;
and justly so, since the experience of past centuries proves that both
thrive best in separate spheres, however near they may approach each
other in the abstract, and that when united, the one is apt to prove a
hamper on the other, through the introduction of error and corruption;
while, separated, they act as a mutual restraint, each tending to
control the abnormal development of the other. For these reasons reform
in this particular must move from the people to the government, not from
the government to the people.
And here we come to the root of the whole matter, to the field where
reform is most needed, that is, in the moral condition of our society.
While there are few nations in which there is such a diversity of
religious views and multiplicity of religious sects, there are few
peoples which are so proverbially irreligious as our own. Yet our
condition in this respect is rather a neutral one than otherwise, for
while we are without any positive immorality which should make us
preëminent above other nations for vice, there is, nevertheless, in our
midst, little of that simple, trusting, unquestioning faith, which is
the 'substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not
seen'--little of that all-pervading and all-powerful reverence for
sacred things, that deep religious feeling which forms a portion of the
very life of most of the nations of the Old World. This is nothing more
than the reaction of the stern Puritan tenets of the colonial times. It
is the logical result of those dark and gloomy theories which aimed to
make religion not only unpalatable but absolutely repelling to the young
and the ardent, causing them to fly to the opposite extreme of throwing
aside religion to 'a more convenient season,' when the pleasures of life
should have lost their charm, and they themselves should be drawing near
the close of their pilgrimage. That theory which made a deadly sin of
that which was at worst but a pardonable misdemeanor and perhaps wholly
innocent in its nature, could not fail in time to react violently, first
through the process of disgust, then through that of inquiry, and
finally to the carrying of speculation to extremes, and practically
pronouncing harmless and innocent that which was really vice. The
popular mind, rebounding from the Puritan ideas, did not pause to
discriminate between the truth and error which were so intimately
mingled in their system, but, sweepingly denouncing all the theories
whose most prominent characteristics were revolting, involved in the
denunciation and rejection much of pure and simple truth, and ran
rapidly along the path of revolution, heedless of every warning,
unchecked by the obstacles which Truth threw in its way, down to the
present time of almost universal looseness.
Another effect of this rebellion of the national mind against the
Puritan theories is seen in the almost yearly inauguration of some new
sect in religion, in a land which is already so crowded with diverse and
antagonistic religious organizations that it might be termed the land of
sects. However right or wrong in a religious point of view, the Puritans
committed the great _social_ mistake of establishing a new church,
instead of working earnestly to reform the old in those respects in
which it seemed to them to have fallen into error, thereby destroying
the unity of the Christian world. Had the movement stopped here, less
harm would have been done; but it was not of the nature of things that
it should be so. The establishment of the principle that purity of
worship and of belief was to be sought, and diversity of religious
opinion to be gratified in separation and the erection of new
organizations, rather than in the endeavor to purify the old and
established form, at once threw wide open the door of schism, and with
it, in the end, that of scepticism. The movement once begun could
neither be checked nor controlled by any human effort. Others claimed
the right which they themselves had exercised, and the result was soon
seen in the separation of one after another denomination from the
Puritan Church, each, in its turn, to be divided into a score of sects,
according as circumstances should alter religious views. Were the
principles of true religion in themselves progressive, were the
teachings, of the gospel inadequate to or unfitting for all possible
stages of human progress, or were they capable of development, the world
might then have been the gainer. Or, again, were reason infallible, the
separation of the churches would be an incalculable blessing, by
securing to all minds a free investigation upon religious subjects. But
infidelity desires no more powerful coadjutor than human reason in its
freest exercise, because it is so liable to be led away by sophistry,
and its invariable tendency is to reject as myths and fables all things
which it cannot comprehend or for which it cannot see a material cause.
Perfect reason is the twin brother and strongest supporter of faith; but
reason as it exists in the present development of humanity is its most
deadly antagonist. The age of reason has fallen upon us, and its result
is seen in a practical scepticism pervading the whole of our society,
which in its extent and its injurious effects put to the blush the
wildest speculations of the most radical German metaphysicians. Every
day we see around us men of no religious profession, and little if any
religious feeling, calmly facing death without a tremor, without a
thought of the awful beyond. And though the application of the term
infidel to such a man would not fail to arouse his fiercest indignation,
his indifference to the events and the fate of the great hereafter can
arise from nothing else than an utter disbelief in the teachings of Holy
Writ, in the truths of Christianity. Such men are but types of a class,
and that class a very large portion of our population.
The evils of religious divisions are plain to be seen, even if they
consisted in nothing more than the division and consequent weakening of
Christian effort. The church of God, torn by internal dissensions,
becomes almost powerless for the spread of the gospel, the greater
portion of its strength and energy being exhausted in bolstering up its
different branches as against each other, and in proselytizing within
itself. Where, if united, a small portion of its wealth and energy would
suffice to support in a nourishing condition the worship of a great
people, leaving an immense surplus to be directed to the evangelization
of the heathen world, now, in its divided state, its power and immense
material resources are squandered in the support of innumerable
fragments, each one of which costs as much in labor and in means as
would suffice to sustain the religion of the whole country if united.
Worse than even this, the incessant bickerings of the Christian world
tend to invalidate, in the minds of the unbelievers, not only among the
heathen, but among ourselves, the teachings of that Word which is its
professed guide. The 'See how these Christians hate each other!' is to
reflecting minds outside the church's pale, an almost unconquerable
argument against that religion which professes to be founded upon love.
Hence arises a great portion of that practical infidelity of which we
have spoken, and which is the bane of our civilization. No nation can be
truly great or noble or progressive without religion, and by as much as
we are departing, in our every-day life, from the pure teachings of the
gospel, by so much are we tending to our inevitable downfall. The people
must have some high standard of moral excellence, something to elevate
and purify the tone of society, to lead their aspirations upward away
from the petty toils and cares and vexations, from the sordid desires
and the animal propensities of life, in order to prevent them from
falling into that decay which is inevitably the result of corruption,
following hard upon a devotion to mere self-interest. We are, in a great
measure, a nation of materialists, too much devoted to the pursuit of
selfish and so-called practical aims, too little to the spiritual and
the ethereal. Reform must come, else the soul will become gross and
grovelling, and the nobler part of our natures, the more delicate and
refined sympathies of the heart, the finer faculties of the intellect,
will rust away with disuse, and the whole race become sensual, and
finally effete, however brilliant may be its individual exceptions. From
what direction the needed reform is to come it is not for us to say.
That Almighty Providence which overrules an erring world will doubtless
provide a way for the regeneration of His people. The first great step
is to awaken the people to a sense of the necessity of such a change,
and some more powerful means must be employed to the accomplishment of
that end than have ever yet been applied to our civilization. And the
apostle who, in the hands of God, shall be the means of arousing the
slumbering faith of our people, of awakening them to a full sense of the
danger, and of imparting new energy to the recuperative powers of the
race, will win for himself a loftier position in the world's
appreciation than has yet been conceded to any mere mortal.
Another great and manifest evil in our society, and one closely
connected with that of which we have just spoken, is the inordinate love
of wealth, and the elevation of the money god to the highest seat in our
temple of worship. Human nature craves distinction. The divisions and
castes in the society of the Old World, from the present day back to the
remotest ages, is not only an evidence, but a practical exemplification
of this fact. The abolition of all these distinctions consequent upon
the establishment of our republican government upon the ground of
political equality, swept away from our ancestors almost the only means
of gratifying this innate propensity. A hard-working, practical,
agricultural people, with no literature, and little if any cultivation
of the fine arts, there was but one road to distinction open to the mass
of the population, and that lay through the avenues of wealth. Hence it
was but natural that affluence should take the place of the hereditary
honors of the olden times, and that the people should bow to the only
distinction, however spurious it might be, which elevated any portion of
themselves above their fellows. With all the evils connected with a
hereditary aristocracy, the distinction which attends upon a nobility is
in a great measure an ideal one. It is not either its wealth or power
which constitutes its charm, but a certain nameless something pertaining
to the ideal, which affects not only the tenants and retainers, but even
our republican selves. It may well be questioned whether we have been
the gainers by substituting for such distinctions a gross and material
one, affecting the bodily senses alone--the animal part of our
nature--and which contains little either to expand the mind or exalt the
aspirations. With us but comparatively few can become distinguished in
the ranks of literature or of art, or, indeed, in any of the higher or
intellectual branches of human attainment; hence for the great mass
there is but one road to distinction, one object to claim every
exertion--the pursuit of wealth. And as a natural consequence, we see
every art, every profession hinging upon this motive. Most of the evils
connected with the administration of our public affairs, the fraud and
corruption which are so prominent, the quadrennial scramble for place,
with its consequent degrading of those positions which should be those
of the highest honor, may be traced to this one source. More than this,
we find the so-called aristocracy of our great cities--a moneyed one
purely--excluding from its ranks those who earn their livelihood in the
pursuit of literature and art, and who, if true to their professions,
are entitled to the very highest rank in society. There are of course
exceptions, but not more than sufficient to prove the rule. A striking
exemplification of the power of wealth among us is seen in these days of
shoddy, when those who have hitherto moved in the humblest circles
suddenly take their positions among the 'upper ten thousand,' and are
treated with a deference to which they have all their lives been
strangers, by virtue of a successful contract or a towering speculation.
The effect of such a state of things upon our civilization is easy to be
seen. A low motive is sure to bring down its followers to its own level.
A people without a lofty and ennobling object is sure to fall into
decay. The grasping spirit which everywhere pervades our society is fast
lowering our people to the level of a race of mercenary jobbers. Truth,
justice, honor, purity, and even religion, are in a great measure lost
sight of in the general scramble for gold, until the strictest
integrity, the most self-sacrificing honesty, are beginning to be looked
upon as marvels, and we have won for ourselves among the nations of the
world the unenviable title of worshippers of the 'almighty dollar.'
Religion itself is twisted and distorted into every imaginable shape to
bring it into harmony with our all-absorbing pursuit: all our ideas of
public policy and of social progress are made to depend upon and
modified by this unworthy motive. We mean not to include those
individuals who, with loftier motives and a true appreciation of man's
spiritual capabilities, are prominent among us, battling earnestly in
the cause of true progress; we are speaking of the mass of our
population. Those few are the goodly leaven who are yet to prove the
regeneration of our race. Bad as is the state of affairs in this
respect, it will, if left to itself, become infinitely worse as each
succeeding year rolls around, for the spirit of greed is progressive in
its nature, growing fatter and fatter upon its success.
Yet, in another point of view, this same strife for wealth is one great
secret of American prosperity and progress. It is the motive power to
that energy which has peopled the wilderness, erected as if by magic a
mighty republic among the savage wilds, and, above all, spread American
ideas, and with them the germ of human liberty, over the whole broad
earth. To this spirit of greed upon our shores the Old World owes much
of its advancement and most of those useful inventions which are fast
revolutionizing humanity itself. But we are not considering it in this
light; we are viewing it in its moral aspect, that respect in which it
most strongly affects true civilization, which must soon fall away and
lapse into the condition of the ages long past, if it be not sustained
by an enduring moral and religious element. The moral advancement must
keep pace with the intellectual, else the latter will some day reach
that point where extremes meet, and have its weary journey to commence
again.
It is to be hoped that this evil is already on the wane. It is to be
hoped that the present stirring up of our society from its uttermost
depths, with its consequent exploding of worn-out theories, which have
hitherto held their places only through our national lethargy--with its
sweeping away of old-time prejudices, and mingling together of elements
which have hitherto existed distinct and aloof from each other, will
result in bringing true merit to the surface, in awakening our people to
a loftier appreciation of the good and the true, thereby establishing a
higher moral standard among us; that purer motives will henceforth
actuate our society. The fears which are entertained by some that the
present war will prove a severe shock to our civilization, are not
sustained by the facts which are everywhere appearing around us. The
frequent demands upon the generosity and forbearance of a great people,
the constant calls for the exercise of the noblest qualities, the most
self-sacrificing devotion, and that too in support of a great principle
rather than of any present material interest, the very necessity for an
exalted civilization and intellectual development on the part of the
masses, which shall enable them to see in that principle the groundwork
of all their future well-being, both as regards material prosperity and
political position, are constantly bringing before the people, in a
clearer light than ever before, the blessings of honor and uprightness,
the necessity of national purity, and developing a moral element in our
midst, whose good effects will far outbalance the ephemeral and
spasmodic immorality and vice which a state of war usually engenders.
Our people are _becoming acquainted_ with those blessings of individual
well-doing and those principles of philanthropy to which they have for
so long been comparative strangers. And it is this, together with the
unveiling, through the present convulsion, of those errors, both in our
political system and in our society, which have so nearly proved our
ruin, which will make this war in very truth the greatest blessing that
has ever befallen us. And if this moral progress shall be such and so
great as to throw down the golden calf from his throne and make the
place of honor the reward of true merit alone, then shall we have cause,
for the remotest generations, to thank God for this seeming calamity
which has fallen upon us.
And these same facts, standing out as shining lights in the darkness,
tend to show that we are, after all, not quite so sordid as we seem;
that, with all our worship of the money god, there is yet, away down in
the great American heart, a wealth of strong, true, generous feeling,
ready at the first call of sorrow and of suffering to spring forth and
scatter its golden blessings even beyond the seas. It is not alone that,
years ago, when we were at peace and at the height of prosperity, many
ships left our shores laden down with food, the voluntary contributions
of the American citizen to his starving brethren of the Emerald Isle;
though this of itself was enough to place our civilization on a level
with that of the most polished nation of the Old World. But even now,
when we are struggling for our very existence, when every energy and
every material resource is being exerted to stem the tide of internal
dissensions and crush out the hydra of internal treason; at a time when
the mother country has gone to every length short of open war to aid and
assist those who are striving for our downfall, and her press is
exhausting every epithet of vituperation and scurrilous abuse of us, who
are battling so earnestly in our own defence, and who are entitled by
every truth of human nature to her warmest sympathy--a press which,
adopting the phraseology of its Secession friends and allies, scruples
not to place the civilization of the slaveholding States far in advance
of that of the 'Northern mudsills'--even now, when the cry of the
starving operatives of the English mills comes to us across the water,
forgetting for the time all the abuse and maltreatment we have received,
all the enmity and bitter hostility which the traitorous perfidy of
England has engendered, more than one full-freighted vessel has left our
ports bearing grain to those whom their own proud aristocracy is either
powerless or too niggardly to sustain. Is this not evidence of a
civilization considerably advanced beyond any which history has yet
recorded?--a civilization based upon the golden rule of Christianity,
and upon that still more precious command: 'Love those that hate you,
and do good to those that persecute you.' For it is in its moral aspect
that every civilization must in the end be judged; and that society
which develops such noble principles and feelings as these, which
manifests itself in this higher region of spiritual excellence, in the
exercise of these finer feelings of the heart, is certainly nearest to
perfection, in that it follows most closely the law of God, the truths
of divine revelation. When instances such as these occur on the part of
any of the older nations of the world, it will do for them to boast of a
civilization superior to ours; but until their faith is shown by their
works, suffering humanity the world over will accord to us the palm. Nor
will it answer to ascribe to us an unworthy motive in this matter--a
desire to win credit in the eyes of the world. An individual might, with
some degree of plausibility, fall under such an imputation, but a great
people does not move spontaneously and unitedly in one direction from
such a motive, since none but a pure and just principle can produce
unity in the masses. Such an unworthy and degrading motive is the
property of individuals, not of nations, even if it were possible for
such an idea to be conceived at one and the same time by a multitude of
minds. No! it was the spontaneous expression of a deep and pervading
principle of American society--of American humanity--a free outpouring
of the American heart; and as such it will stand upon the page of
history as the evidence of a civilization behind none of its age.
Nor is this the only mark of the moral awakening of our people.
Instances are every day appearing in our midst of this truest of
charity, not the least of which are the 'wood processions' of the
Western cities and towns; those long lines of wagons laden with fuel and
provisions for the families of the absent soldiers, whose sole object
and motive is the comfort of those whose protectors and supporters are
sustaining the country's honor in the field; evidences more striking
than the founding of charitable institutions or benevolent societies,
since the latter may, and too often does, arise from the most selfish
and vainglorious motive, while in the former the individual is lost in
the many who press eagerly to bear their part in a noble work, in this
spontaneous outpouring of true and heartfelt benevolence. From this same
spirit arises the wonderful success which attends the efforts of
sanitary commissions and soldiers' aid associations in alleviating the
sufferings and softening the privations of our soldiers in the field.
With such evidences constantly appearing before our eyes of the deep and
noble feelings of the American heart, who can doubt that our
civilization is a progressive one, our enlightenment equal? Who can
doubt the capacity of the American people for good, or look with
foreboding upon our future?
Another important sign of the times, as evincing our advancing
civilization, is the revival of art in our midst. In the midst of all
our bustle and toil and eager strife for gain, there has ever been a
something wanting to the completeness of our life, a something to fill
and satisfy that yearning of the soul for æsthetic beauty, which is at
once an evidence of its progress and its capacity for diviner things.
Too long have we been absorbed by the desires of our animal nature, in
whose pursuit there is little gratification to that finer portion of our
inner selves which will not be silenced by anything short of the deepest
degradation. The people--the great people--need something--something
higher, more ennobling, more tender--to fill the vacant spot in their
hearts and homes, to preserve the balance between the animal and the
spiritual part of their lives, and to clothe their surroundings with a
higher and holier significance than can arise from the events and
associations of the work-day life. In art the missing link is found, and
whether it be the simple ballad in the evening circle or the modest
print that graces the humble cottage walls--and the humbler the
habitation the deeper the manifestation, because the more touching--it
is but the expression of the people's appreciation of the needs, the
capacities, and the holier aspirations of the better part of humanity.
Hence the revival of art has a deep significance; it is something more
than a forced, an exotic, and hence ephemeral growth; it is the
manifestation of the awakening of the people to the æsthetic sentiment;
it is the actual result of the intellectual and moral needs of society;
it is in itself the striving of a great people for the beautiful and
true. And as such it has a broad and deep foundation in the godlike in
human nature, which shall insure not only its permanence but its
progress as long as the good and the true have any influence whatever
upon our society. That we have had, until a comparatively late period,
no art among us, is the result not of a lack of capacity to comprehend
the beautiful, but of the intense and all-absorbing passion for gain
which has so nearly proved the bane of our society by shutting out the
consideration of better things: that art has so suddenly revived in our
midst is a proof that, so far from having our humanity, our political
position, our very civilization itself swallowed up in the love of the
almighty dollar, as has been predicted of us by foreign wiseacres, we
have been aroused to our danger and to a true appreciation of the better
part of existence; which is itself an evidence of the elasticity and the
recuperative energy of our social system.
In literature our progress is not so flattering. In its effects upon
civilization a literature can only be judged by that portion of it which
touches the popular heart, which descends to the humblest fireside, and
is most eagerly sought after by the ploughboy and the operative. All
other, however brilliant it may be--and the more brilliant or profound
the farther it is generally removed from the minds of the masses--is to
them but as the stars of a winter night, cold and distant, radiating
little warmth to the longing soul, too far away to awaken more than a
faintly reflected admiration. He who said, 'Give me to write the songs
of a people, and I care not who makes their laws,' touched the tender
spot in the great heart of humanity; he was a sage in that truest of
philosophy, the study of human nature. Though we have our princes in
every branch of literature, who are the result of and an honor to our
civilization, yet for their own results in moulding the tastes, the
habits, and the intellects of the common people, in contributing to
their advancement, they fall far below the efforts of the veriest
penny-a-liner. It is a lamentable fact of our society that while the
more solid literature scarcely pays, the flashiest of so-called 'flash
literature' brings down the golden shower. The writer of the lowest
possible order of literary productions is enriched, and his name is
familiar in the remotest corners of the land, while our monarchs of
literature are oftentimes poverty stricken and comparatively obscure;
and that because the latter is confined to a comparatively small
audience and patronage, while the former speaks to and for the masses;
and, as a natural consequence, the former controls the tastes of the
greater portion of the reading community, and that too for anything but
good, since he reaps his golden harvest by pandering to the basest of
appetites, the lowest of sensibilities and sympathies; thus retarding
rather than accelerating the intellectual advancement of the people,
this being his material interest.
And how great is the responsibility of those who thus speak to the ear
of the simple and the unlearned! how terrible the retribution they are
heaping up for themselves in the great hereafter, for thus prostituting
talent which might be made eminently useful in leading the minds of the
common people to the highest and noblest of truths; in making purer and
better in every sense of the word! The idea that the province of
literature, even of fiction, is simply to amuse, is exploded in the
light of advancing civilization. Every writer has a higher mission, and
accordingly as he discharges the duty which his faculty lays upon him,
is he true or false to the true end of his existence, a success or a
failure in the world of intellect and morality. The mission of all
literature is to make mankind both wiser and _better_, and the writer
who fails to appreciate and act upon this truth is worse than a useless
cumberer of society; he is a curse to his age, and, however great his
present fame, will most assuredly be forgotten with the passing away of
his generation. For does not _all_ human effort resolve itself into this
one thing? Is there any work which we call good or great, or even
important, which is not intended in some way to benefit mankind? Else we
were but butterflies, and our works but mists. In the past ages the
world has not seen and appreciated this fact; but the world of to-day
does appreciate it, and will certainly set every worker upon his proper
pedestal, high or low, according as his efforts have conduced or not to
the welfare of humanity.
Present reform in this particular is not to be looked for; it must be
external rather than internal. Could the whole mass of light literature
be at once and forever swept out of existence, the people would soon
acquire a love of solid reading as ardent as that which now pervades the
lower stratum of our society for 'yellow-covered' trash. For the love of
knowledge is innate, and the people would necessarily seek for and find
amusement in such reading as could not fail to instruct and educate, to
revive this love of knowledge, and fan it into an ardent flame. But this
cannot be done. The people will ever seek that reading which is most
congenial to their present tastes and habits, and there will ever be
found a legion of those who are eager to supply this sort of mental
pabulum--if it can be so called--for the sake of the golden equivalent.
For these reasons, the literature of the common people must ever follow,
not lead, their civilization; it must continue to be the outward and
visible sign of their progress, instead of the inward and spiritual
grace by which it is pervaded and sustained; and reform must be
inaugurated and consummated in those other influences which tend to
mould the moral man, and which must be so guided as to destroy all these
low and grovelling tastes, by lifting the man into a higher plane of
being, in which the animal shall be wholly subservient to the spiritual.
Hence the province of the true philanthropist lies in those other paths
which we have pointed out, rather than in this, since in them lies the
prospect of success whose _fruits_ will in this most clearly appear.
It is a significant fact that the foreign view points to but two blots
upon our society, and that foreign detractors harp continually upon
these, and these alone, as evidences of the backwardness of our
civilization--the institution of slavery and the riots which
occasionally disgrace our large cities. For in the light of the facts
and experience of to-day, such a position is simply a yielding of the
whole question. When it is considered that the few riots with which we
are afflicted--few in comparison with those which so often convulse
European society--are almost invariably incited and sustained by our
foreign population, and that portion of it, too, latest arrived upon our
shores, it will be seen with what injustice the evil is laid at the door
of American society. It is, in fact, nothing else than the outbreak of
the long-accumulated and long-suppressed discontent and misery of
European lands, which, for the first time for centuries, finds vent upon
the shores of a land of political and social liberty--a reaction of the
springs long held down by the iron hand of tyranny--a violent
restoration of that natural elasticity which had so nearly been
destroyed by ages of social degradation. The mob law, the frequent
resort to the pistol and the bowie knife, and the universal social
recklessness of our own citizens of the Southern States, is the effect
of the institution of slavery, and falls within the discussion of that
question, with the disappearance of which they must inevitably depart.
Were African slavery a permanent feature in our midst, the argument
against our civilization would be unanswerable. But it has maintained
its ground in spite of, rather than as the result of or in connection
with the spirit of our institutions. It has hitherto been suffered to
exist as an acknowledged evil, solely because the disastrous results
attending its sudden abolition have been justly feared as greater than
any which could at present arise from its continuance. Yet at no period
has the American people ceased to look forward to some future time when
it might safely be rooted out. Our faith has ever been strong, and our
confidence in the ultimate triumph of the right unshaken. That time has
come. The present war, from whose inauguration the question of slavery
abolition was--on our part, at least--entirely absent, has given the
opportunity which our people have not failed to seize. To crush out the
rebellion without meddling with the institutions of the South was at
first the main spring of the war; _fiat justitia, ruat coelum_, is now
the voice of the whole people; and the very fact that the nation has so
earnestly taken hold of the work, so sternly determined to sacrifice
everything but its existence to the demolition of this bloody god, is of
itself an evidence of the purity of our civilization. We have not been
dead to the principles of truth and justice involved in this question;
we have been but biding our time, plainly seeing and carefully noting
the direful effects of slavery upon our social organization, and
'heaping up wrath against the day of wrath.' And now, with the blessing
of God upon our efforts, the present war will not cease until the death
blow is given to the accursed institution with all its attendant evils.
We, as a people, are fully aroused and sternly determined henceforth to
let nothing stand in the way of our social advancement, however
time-honored and cherished may have been the obstacle. And when these
evils have all been swept away, as they assuredly will be, we shall
stand forth among the nations in all the glory of a pure and enlightened
civilization, and challenge the world to produce a nobler record, to
point out a happier, more prosperous, more truly progressive people.
With the close of the present war will arise another important question,
bearing not less strongly than that of slavery upon our ultimate
civilization. The slaveholding States are to be, in a measure,
repeopled. The tide of immigration which has so long and so steadily
streamed toward the West will be for some time diverted to the fertile
plantations of the South. Not only the soldiers of the North, to whom
the war has opened what has hitherto been to them almost a _terra
incognita_, will seek new homes within the sunny climes; but the flood
of foreign immigration, which, upon the vindication of our national
integrity and power, will quickly double itself in comparison with that
of former years, and sweep toward this new and inviting field; and the
distinctive feature of Southern society--of so-called 'Southern
chivalry'--will soon be swallowed up in the torrent. And what then shall
we have to fill its place? The crude ideas of foreign tyros in the
school of freedom, the conflicting religious, social, and political
theories of European revolutionists, the antagonistic policies of a
hundred different nationalities. All this, in connection with the
difficulties arising from the freeing of so large an African population,
will prove a severe trial to our national civilization, and call for the
exercise of the profoundest wisdom, the most careful discrimination, and
the most patient forbearance on the part of our rulers and statesmen.
And most assuredly the times will themselves produce the men most fitted
for the care of such interests and the decision of such questions.
Though there is need of the firm hand, the utmost watchfulness, and the
strongest exertion on the part of every citizen as well as statesman, it
is not to be feared that the result will in the end be disastrous to our
progress. For the genius of the American people was never yet at fault.
We have handled similar questions before; we are handling a more
important one now, and our capabilities and our power of development are
such that we need not fear but that we shall be enabled to cope with the
exigencies of the future. That genius which has built up a powerful
nation here in the wilderness, which has developed to such a degree the
resources of the laud and the capacities of the people, which has
conceived and executed in so short a time such a social and moral
revolution, has in it too much of the godlike to suffer the work to fall
through from any incapacity to deal with the legitimate consequences of
its action. The power to inaugurate and carry through the work
necessarily implies the capacity to establish and render permanent its
results, to guide the ship when the storm is past. It will find the ways
and means; the times themselves will develop new truths, which will make
the task less difficult than it seems to us of to-day. Such is the
feeling of the people; and this same noble faith and confidence in our
own capacities, this turning a deaf ear to all the possibilities of
failure, and looking with a never-failing trust, a soul-felt faith, to
the triumph of our cause and of our civilization, is our greatest
strength, while it is, at the same time, a conclusive evidence that we
are on the high road of true progress, that our civilization is not a
thing of yesterday, to-day, or to-morrow, but of the eternal ages.