_Ballot-Box_. I am aware that this is not everywhere a consistent
symbol; but to a large degree it is so. I know what miserable
associations cluster around this instrument of popular power. I know
that the arena in which it stands is trodden into mire by the feet of
reckless ambition and selfish greed. The wire-pulling and the bribing,
the pitiful truckling and the grotesque compromises, the exaggeration
and the detraction, the melo-dramatic issues and the sham patriotism,
the party watch-words and the party nick-names, the schemes of the few
paraded as the will of the many, the elevation of men whose only worth
is in the votes they command--vile men, whose hands you would not grasp
in friendship, whose presence you would not tolerate by your
fireside--incompetent men, whose fitness is not in their capacity as
functionaries, or legislators, but as organ pipes; the snatching at the
slices and offal of office, the intemperance and the violence, the
finesse and the falsehood, the gin and the glory; these are indeed but
too closely identified with that political agitation which circles
around the Ballot-Box. But, after all, they are not essential to it.
They are only the masks of a genuine grandeur and importance. For it
_is_ a grand thing--something which involves profound doctrines of
Right--something which has cost ages of effort and sacrifice--it _is_ a
grand thing that here, at last, each voter has just the weight of one
man; no more, no less; and the weakest, by virtue of his recognized
manhood, is as strong as the mightiest. And consider, for a moment, what
it is to cast a vote. It is the token of inestimable privileges, and
involves the responsibilities of an hereditary trust. It has passed into
your hands as a right, reaped from fields of suffering and blood. The
grandeur of History is represented in your act. Men have wrought with
pen and tongue, and pined in dungeons, and died on scaffolds, that you
might obtain this symbol of freedom, and enjoy this consciousness of a
sacred individuality. To the ballot have been transmitted, as it were,
the dignity of the sceptre and the potency of the sword. And that which
is so potent as a right, is also pregnant as a duty; a duty for the
present and for the future. If you will, that folded leaf becomes a
tongue of justice, a voice of order, a force of imperial law; securing
rights, abolishing abuses, erecting new institutions of truth and love.
And, _however_ you will, it is the expression of a solemn
responsibility, the exercise of an immeasurable power for good or for
evil, now and hereafter. It is the medium through which you act upon
your country--the organic nerve which incorporates you with its life and
welfare. There is no agent with which the possibilities of the Republic
are more intimately involved, none upon which we can fall back with more
confidence, than the Ballot-Box.
But there is a symbol which represents the power and greatness of a
Republic more significantly than all the rest, and is comprehensive of
all the rest. It is the fruit of unfettered thought and political
equality, of intelligence and virtue, of private sovereignty and public
duty--it is a free, true, harmonious _Man_. As the crown or the sceptre
is the symbol of a Monarchy; as heraldic honors are the symbols of an
Oligarchy; so, I repeat, the most expressive symbol of a Republic is a
man--a man free in limb and soul, a man intelligent and self-governed, a
man whose spiritual vision is clear, and in whose breast the voice of
conscience is peremptory, with whom the conception of duties is deeper
even than the conception of rights; in short, a man who embodies all the
elements, and represents to the world the best results of Liberty. Laws
are nothing, institutions are nothing, national power and greatness are
nothing, save as they assist the Moral purpose of God in the development
of humanity. To this test we must bring the symbols of the Republic, and
judge whether they are fitting and consistent. No matter what else they
accomplish, no matter what else they signify, if they do not serve this
end they are either incomplete instruments, or vain forms. For, Man is
of more worth than Institutions; Religion is greater than politics; and
the designs of Providence are wider than the cycles of National destiny.
I turn, then, to the signs of our own national greatness; I turn to
these symbols of spiritual freedom and political equality; and I
ask--how completely do they develop this most significant symbol of
all--how completely do they serve the purposes of God in History--by
securing the welfare, the culture, the moral elevation of humanity? And
the reply is--that, by our institutions and our endeavors, these ends
have been served in various ways. There is here, to-day, a more
enlightened, free, self-governed humanity--and we say it without
arrogance--than anywhere else on the globe. Our benefits are of the kind
that are not realized, because they are so great and familiar--like the
light and the air; but take them away, or transfer us to some other
atmosphere, and how we should miss them, and pine and dwindle! Let no
man, in his zeal for bold rebuke or needed reform, overlook what has
been done, and what is enjoyed here, as to the noblest results of
national greatness and power.
But every sincere man must say likewise that, with us, the
_possibilities_ are far greater than the _performance_; that these
symbols are the splendid tokens of what _may be_, rather than what _is_.
And, that I may bring this discourse to a practical conclusion, let me
say that two things, at least, are necessary to convert these
possibilities into the noblest achievement.
In the first place, it is essential that every citizen of the republic
should recognize his own manhood; the sacredness of his own personality;
and should recognize this especially in relation to his duties, which
are inextricably involved with his rights. For here it is true in a
special sense, that the mass is but an aggregate of personalities--that
public sin is but the projection of your sin and mine. A man will often
say that he is responsible to his country, and responsible to his
constituents; but upon no claim, by no sophistry, should he suffer
himself to forget that he is also responsible to his God. He does forget
this, when he acts for political interests, and as one of a party, as he
never would act in his private affairs. And does he suppose that there
is a corporate vice, or virtue, differing from his private vice or
virtue, as a gentleman's purse differs from the public fund? There is no
such distinction in moral qualities. It is your own coin that helps
swell the amount; it bears your stamp, and you are responsible for the
product. If the party lies, then _you_ are guilty of falsehood. If the
party--as is very likely--does a mean thing, then _you_ do it. It is
surely so, so far as you are one of the party, and go with it in its
action. God does not take account of parties; party names are not known
in that court of Divine Judgment; but your name and mine are on the
books there. There is no such thing--and this is true, perhaps, in more
senses than one--there is no such thing as a party conscience. It is
individual conscience that is implicated. Party! Party! Ah! my friends,
here is the influence which, it is to be feared, balks and falsifies
many of these glorious symbols. Men rally round musty epithets. They
take up issues which have no more relation to the deep, vital, throbbing
interest of the time, than they have to the fashions of our
grandfathers. They parade high-sounding principles to cover selfish
ends; interpret the Constitution by a doctrine of loaves and fishes;
while individual independence and private conviction are whirled away in
the political maelstrom, and the party-badge is reverenced and hugged as
the African reverences and hugs his fetish. And surely it is a case for
congratulation, when some great, exciting question breaks out and jars
these conventional idols, and so sweeps and shatters these party
organizations and turns them topsy-turvy, that a man is shaken out of
his harness, does not know exactly what party he _does_ belong to, and
begins to feel that he has a soul of his own. I am not denying the use
and the necessity of parties as instruments, but protest against them as
ends, especially when principle is smothered under their platforms, and
they absorb the moral personality of a man.
It may not seem so strange that the political field should so often be
the field of a lax and depressed morality, when we consider that here is
the great theatre where human ambition struggles for its aims; here are
enlisted the strongest passions of the soul; here throng some of its
fiercest temptations; here the stakes played for are the kingdoms of
this world, and the glory of them. And this, I suppose, is the reason
why the most authentic type of human depravity is a thoroughly
unprincipled politician. Such an instance, at least, may strike us more
forcibly, because we see the perversion of great faculties, and
capabilities are contrasted with performance; while, on the other hand
he may be confirmed in his moral bankruptcy by the fact that, in playing
upon the passions of men he sees the worst side of humanity. But,
surely, there have been those who passed this ordeal, and came out with
brighter lustre; who have kept the eye of conscience elevated above the
ecliptic of political routine; who have made politics identical with
lofty duties and great principles; whose patriotism was not a clamorous
catch-word, but a breathing inspiration, a silent heart-fire. In private
life they have felt the great privilege of their citizenship; the
magnitude of the obligation which bound them to virtue and to
consistency; while, in public life, they have kept their trust firm as
steel, bright as gold; have felt, with due balance on either side, the
beatings of the popular heart and the dictates of the everlasting Right;
and in themselves have represented the union of liberty and law, the
real greatness of a nation. Without such men, the nation has no
greatness; for its significance and its power are in the moral worth of
its citizens.
The second condition necessary to the fulfilment of the great results
indicated by these symbols, is consistent action upon the ideas that
constitute the basis of our own institutions. If many of the privileges
and peculiarities which I have specified in this discourse are possessed
by other nations, in one respect we differ from them all. These
privileges and peculiarities are _legitimately_ ours. They have not been
grafted on hereditary antagonisms. They have not grown up in _spite_ of
our institutions, but as the _fruit_ of our institutions. These ideas,
entwined with the very roots of our Republic, shooting through every
fibre, running into every limb, bind us to a recognition of human
brotherhood; to sympathy with Liberty wherever it struggles; and to
stedfast opposition to whatever crushes the rights, hinders the
development, or denies the humanity of man. If these symbols of the
Republic mean anything, they mean just this; and whatever is
inconsistent with this, is inconsistent with the terms of our national
birthright. Depend upon it, not the assertion of Liberty, but whatever
is opposed to Liberty, is the innovating and agitating element in this
country. It interrupts the legitimate current of our destiny. It shocks
the popular heart with inconsistency. It becomes mixed with the ashes of
the old heroes, and the land keeps heaving with the fermentation. One
assumption is too impudent, too nakedly in contradiction with the
fundamental ideas of our Republic ever to be admitted--the assumption
that the man who speaks for freedom, who sympathizes with the broadest
doctrine of human rights, and sets around these the eternal barriers of
justice, is an innovator and an agitator. I ask--what made our
Revolution legitimate? What were the central ideas that throbbed in the
breasts of its heroes and martyrs? Take down the old muskets bent in the
hot encounter, and printed with many a death-gripe; take down the old
uniforms, clipped by Hessian sabres and torn by British bullets; take
down the dusty muster-rolls, scrawled with those venerable names--names
that now "are graven on the stone," names that are buried in the sod,
names that have gone up to immortality--and ask, for what was this great
struggle? Was it not for freedom, based upon the conception of the right
and supremacy of freedom? And is _this_ the legitimate conclusion of
that sublime postulate--this other Fact which, never retreating, always
advancing, follows the steps of Freedom over the continent like a
shadow, looms up like a phantom against the Rocky Mountains, and darkens
the fairest waters? On the contrary, is not Freedom that old truth, that
conceded premise that does _not_ agitate? Liberty, Human Rights,
Universal Brotherhood, was it not for these ideas ye fought--was it not
these ye planted in the soil, and laid with the corner-stone of our
institutions? My friends, I know, and you know, could those men give
palpable sign and representation, the answer that would come, as in one
quick flash from bayonet to bayonet, in one long roll of drums, from
Lexington to Yorktown.
These peculiar privileges, then, to which I have referred, differ from
those of other nations inasmuch as they are not grafted expedients, but
legitimate fruits. Unless we change the premises of our Republic, and
shift the foils in our historical argument, these are necessary
conclusions. They are necessary conclusions, if our symbols represent
realities. Russia is consistent with its national idea. It pours forth
its legions and moves to its work with a terrible consistency. And if
we--also a great people, having great power--are equally consistent, we
shall fall back upon no selfish conservatism, but aid whatever tends to
fulfil the Providential purpose of our existence, and whatever helps and
advances man.
One thing is certain. So long as any nation truly lives, it unfolds its
specific idea and lives according to its original type. When it fails to
do this, the sentence of decay is already written upon it. If it fails
to illustrate God's purpose in its obedience, it illustrates His control
in retribution. For there is nothing supreme, nothing finally
triumphant, nothing of the last importance, but His Law. It penetrates,
and oversweeps, and survives all charters and institutions and
nationalities, like the infinite space that encompasses Alps and Andes,
and planets and systems. It is this that successive generations
illustrate. It is this that all history vindicates. If a nation runs
parallel to this Divine Law, it is well; if false to its purpose and its
control, down it goes. The prophet Isaiah, in one of the most terrific
and sublime passages of the Bible, represents the king of Babylon, while
passing into the under-world, saluted by departed rulers, by dead kings,
rising from their shadowy thrones, and exclaiming, "Art thou become weak
as we? Art thou become like unto us?" Thus has many a nation gone down
to its doom. Shall it be so with this Republic, because false to its
ideal? Shall it descend to the shades of perished pomp and greatness,
and see Nineveh with dusty, hieroglyphic robes rising up to meet it; and
Persia, with the empty wine-cup of its luxury; and Rome, with the shadow
of universal empire on its discrowned head; and hear them say--"Art thou
become weak as we? Art thou become like unto us?"
My friends, I look at the eager enterprise, the young, hopeful vigor,
the tides of possibility that flow through this great city; I look at
the symbols of this Republic; and I cannot believe that such is to be
the result. I look back upon our history, and cannot argue such a future
from such a past. A great light lay upon the wake of those frail ships
that bore our fathers hither; the wake of past ages, the following of
good men's prayers and brave men's deeds, the mingling currents of
martyr-blood and prophet-fire. And methinks, as they struck the shore,
and met the savage wilderness, a Voice saluted them; a voice not of
profane ambition and of selfish hope, but of Divine promise, intending
Divine results--proclaiming, "Thou art a great people, and hast great
power." And He will fulfil this prophecy, Who leads the course of
history over the broad deep and through mysterious ways, and Who unfolds
His own glory in the destinies of men.
THE SPRINGS OF SOCIAL LIFE.
DISCOURSE V.
THE SPRINGS OF SOCIAL LIFE.
Let them learn first to show piety at home.--I. TIMOTHY, v. 4.
The text--which I purpose to employ not as a specific precept, but as
the illustration of a general principle--indicates those Springs of
Social Life which constitute the subject of the present discourse.
The crowd in a city affords comparatively little interest, when we
contemplate it merely as a crowd. But, when we resolve it into its
individual particles, and consider each of these as endued with the
attributes and involved with the conditions of humanity, our deepest
sympathies are touched. Every drop of that great stream is a conscious
personality. In some shape, the universe is reflected in it. In some
way, it takes hold of the reality of life: and the living organism of
which it is composed both acts and suffers, receives from the world
around it and contributes to it. That entire mass of people involves
nothing more than the interest of humanity, and the same interest
pertains to the least unit of that mass.
And, doubtless, you have sometimes busied yourself with the
speculation--"Where do all these people come from? And whither do they
retire at night?" Now, this is really a very suggestive question, and to
follow it out to a practical answer would yield results of the
profoundest importance. For out of hidden channels, here and there, _do_
spring all these struggling activities, these human diversities, these
various influences good and evil, that make up the crowd and spectacle
of city life. And night after night, with the rarest exceptions, into
some retreat they all disappear. Some spot--whether it seem the veriest
mockery to style it so, or whether it be a synonym for the sweetest
sanctities--some spot each of this living multitude calls by the name of
"Home."
For some that name is associated with a more than oriental
magnificence. Man and nature wait upon them there in every conceivable
form of service. There is no method of convenience or luxury which
ingenuity can devise; no bounty that earth can yield from her many-zoned
bosom; no shape which art can summon from the regions of the beautiful,
that is not possible there. Lifting its palatial walls, and kindling
with brilliant lights, it stands there as the completest symbol of
material refinement and civilization. It is arctic winter without. The
snow chokes up the dreary street, and the whistling wind cuts the
beggar's rags. But it is Italy, it is Ceylon, it is tropic gorgeousness
within. And these are the abodes of the children of fortune, whose
wishes require no talisman but expression, who, all their lives long,
have been used to such indulgence, or who accept it now as the fruit of
their own effort. This is the hospitality which some men find in life,
and out of which they constitute a home.
But none the less enviable, and perhaps much more so, are those retreats
where comfort waits on moderate means, while contentment imparts to
these an unpurchasable efficacy; where, blended with those infirmities
and liabilities which are common to palace and cottage, the domestic
affections flourish, and the dearest treasures of life are kept.
Thousands of homes like this there are, all around us. It describes the
largest class of homes, we may believe. And who can estimate their
influence over these busy tides of action, all day long? That world of
traffic, that world of toil, that looks so hard and gross and
sordid,--is it not transformed somewhat, does it not grow beautiful
even, when you think how many of its energies have their spring by the
infant's cradle and the mother's chair? And what lights, what shadows,
unseen by you, fall upon the speculative eyes, fall upon the hearts, of
thousands in that homeward-streaming crowd! Light of welcoming
hearth-fires, shadows of children's play upon the walls; light of
affections in which there are no decay and no deceit; shadows of sacred
retirement where God alone is; light of joys which this world's storms
cannot utterly quench; shadows of sorrow around sick-beds, and in vacant
places, that still make home the dearer as the arena of earth's purest
discipline and of its most triumphant faith!
And why delineate the features of that other class of homes, whose most
significant word is "_Privation_?" Where cheerlessness, and hunger, and
desponding toil, or hopeless apathy, brood continually. Let your own
sympathies, let your own imaginations that cannot exaggerate the
reality, call up the vision of such. Think how many such abodes there
are this very night, which winter besieges with all his terrors, and
into which he sends his invading frost! Think what Home is to hundreds,
and, therefore, how life looks to them, seen through this atmosphere of
disease and want, with starvation by the hearth, and death at the door,
and misery everywhere! Think, when the cold pierces even through all
your wrappages of comfort, and scarcity almost pinches, what forms of
humanity, with lungs, and nerves, and hearts, and every capacity for
suffering, are scraping the moss of subsistence from the barest rocks of
life, and struggling every day through an avalanche! Think what this
Sabbath has been in the dwellings of the poor, you who have had time to
listen to the Gospel, and have heard it comfortably--so comfortably,
perhaps, that you have fallen asleep under it--think what this Sabbath
has been in the dwellings of the poor! And yet, when I consider what,
doubtless, the Sabbath has been in some of those places, I am thankful
that the highest ideal, the richest sanctities of Home, are not
dependent upon outward conditions; for even there, unfaltering duty and
true love have made the bare walls beautiful, and prayer has set the
desolate chamber on the steps of the Divine throne; and before the eye
of faith the cold arch of the winter night, that looks in through hole
and cranny, has burst into a revelation of heaven, and a path for those
ministering angels that come to help the sufferer and to comfort God's
poor.
With more unqualified sadness, therefore, our thoughts must rest upon
still another group of dwellings, where deprivation and ignorance are
mingled with vice and crime--where want and guilt strip away the masks
of civilization, and bring out the essential savage in man's nature.
These also we must call "_homes_!" These breathing-holes of abomination,
these moral tombs, where huddle the demons of violence, and cunning, and
debauchery, and from which they issue. That vast Hades of social evil
opening downward from our streets, where the best ideals have no type,
and the purest sentiments scarce a name; where God is but a dark cloud
of muttering thunder in the soul; where all that is fair in womanhood is
dishevelled and transformed; and where childhood is baptized in infamy,
trained to sin, canopied with curses, and rocked to sleep by the
convulsive hell of passions all around it.
The Homes of the Metropolis! Thus diversified are they in their general
types, and more numerous in their individual conditions than can be
specified. And, surely, it is no vain speculation that inquires--"What
are they? Into what retreats do the elements of this busy crowd
dissolve, night after night?" Whatever they may be, a common interest
envelopes them and links them all together--the interest of humanity.
They have vanished from the streets. One great shadow covers them, and
hides their distinctions. For a time they are all equal. They have
fallen asleep--poor, tired humanity at the best!--they have fallen
asleep on the bosom of a common Providence, that bears them all up, as
it bears the planet on which they now repose, through the orbit of its
great purpose and the immensities of its love. But in the morning all
these diversities will break forth again, each pouring its influence
into the general stream. And who does not perceive how much the
character of that influence must depend upon the condition of those
homes? Who does not see that not only the interest of the common
humanity in its most intimate experiences attaches to them, but the
interest of community? Not only are they the reservoirs of individual
power and peculiarity, but they are the Springs of Social Life. And this
the apostle indicated, when he directed that certain, who bore intimate
relations to the early church, should "first learn to show piety at
home."
Keeping this conclusion in mind, let me ask you to consider, for a
little while, what Home _must_ be.