When the corn and wine and oil, the silver and the gold, have become
the main object of worship—that which men or nations do above all
things desire—sham work of all kinds, and short cuts, by what we call
financing and the like will be the means by which they will attempt to
gain them.
When that state comes, men who love their country will welcome Danish
invasions, civil wars, potato diseases, cotton famines, Fenian
agitations, whatever calamity may be needed to awake the higher life
again, and bid the nation arise and live.
That such visitations do come at such times as a matter of fact
is as clear as that in certain states of the atmosphere we have
thunder-storms. The thunder-storm comes with perfect certainty, and as
a part of a natural and fixed order. We are all agreed upon that now.
We all believe, I suppose, that there is an order—that there are laws
which govern the physical world, asserting themselves as much in storm
and earthquake as in the succession of night and day, of seed-time and
harvest. We who are Christians believe that order and those laws to
proceed from God, to be expressions of His will. Do we not also believe
that men are under a divine order as much as natural things? that there
is a law of righteousness founded on the will of God, as sure and
abiding as the law of gravitation? that this law of righteousness, this
divine order, under which human beings are living on this earth, must
and does assert and vindicate itself through and by the acts and lives
of men, as surely as the divine order in nature asserts itself through
the agency of the invisible power in earth and sea and air?
Surely Christianity, whatever else it teaches, at any rate assures us
of this. And when we have made this faith our own, when we believe it,
and not merely believe that we believe it, we have in our hand the
clue to all human history. Mysteries in abundance will always remain.
We may not be able to trace the workings of the law of righteousness
in the confusions and bewilderments of our own day, or through the
darkness and mist which shrouds so much of the life of other times and
other races. But we know that it is there, and that it has its ground
in a righteous will, which was the same a thousand years ago as it
is to-day, which every man and nation can get to know; and just in
so far as they know and obey which, will they be founding families,
institutions, states, which will abide.
If we want to test this truth in the most practical manner, we have
only to take any question which has troubled, or is troubling,
statesmen and rulers, and nations, in our own day. The slavery question
is among the greatest of these. In the divine order, that institution
was not recognized, there was no place at all set apart for it; on the
contrary, He on whose will that order rests had said that he came to
break every yoke. And so slavery would give our kindred in America no
rest, just as it would give England no rest in the first thirty years
of the century. The nation, desiring to go on living its life, making
money, subduing a continent,
“Pitching new states as old-world men pitch tents,”
tried every plan for getting rid of the “irrepressible negro”
question, except the only one recognized in the divine order—that of
making him free. The ablest and most moderate men, the Websters and
Clays, thought and spoke and worked to keep it on its legs. Missouri
compromises were agreed to, “Mason and Dixon’s lines” laid down, joint
committees of both houses—at last even a “crisis committee,” as it
was called—invented plan after plan to get it finally out of the way
by any means except the only one which the eternal law, the law of
righteousness, prescribed. But he whose will must be done on earth was
no party to Missouri compromises, and Mason and Dixon’s line was not
laid down on his map of North America. And there never were wanting
men who could recognize His will, and denounce every compromise, every
endeavor to set it aside, or escape from it, as a “covenant with death
and hell.” Despised and persecuted men—Garrisons and John Browns—were
raised up to fight this battle, with tongue and pen and life’s blood,
the weak things of this world to confound the mighty; men who could
look bravely in the face the whole power and strength of their nation
in the faith of the old prophet: “Associate yourselves and ye shall
be broken in pieces; gather yourselves together and ye shall come to
nought, for God is with us.” And at last the thunder-storm broke, and
when it cleared away the law of righteousness had asserted itself once
again, and the nation was delivered.
And so it has been, and is, and will be to the end of time with all
nations. We have all our “irrepressible” questions of one kind or
another, more or less urgent, rising up again and again to torment and
baffle us, refusing to give us any peace until they have been settled
in accordance with the law of righteousness, which is the will of God.
No clever handling of them will put them to rest. Such work will not
last. If we have wisdom and faith enough amongst us to ascertain and do
that will, we may settle them for ourselves in clear skies. If not,
the clouds will gather, the atmosphere grow heavy, and the storm break
in due course, and they will be settled for us in ways which we least
expect or desire, for it is “the Lord’s controversy.”
In due course, perhaps! but what if this due course means lifetimes,
centuries? Alas! this is indeed the cry which has been going up from
the poor earth these thousands of years:
“The priests and the rulers are swift to wrong,
And the mills of God are slow to grind.”
How long, O Lord, how long? The precise times and seasons man shall
never know on this earth. These the Lord has kept in his own power.
But courage, my brother! Can we not see, the blindest of us, that the
mills are working swiftly, at least in our day? This is no age in which
shams or untruths, whether old or new, are likely to have a quiet time
or a long life of it. In all departments of human affairs—religious,
political, social—we are travelling fast, in England and elsewhere, and
under the hand and guidance, be sure, of Him who made the world, and is
able and willing to take care of it. Only let us quit ourselves like
men, trusting to Him to put down whatsoever loveth or maketh a lie,
and in his own time to establish the new earth in which shall dwell
righteousness.