Do you not see that if a man have a new truth, it must be reformatory and so create an outcry? It will seem destructive as the farmer's plough; like that, it is so to tares and thistles, but the herald of the harvest none the less. In this way a Christian church should be a society for promoting true sentiments and ideas. If it would lead, it must go before men; if it would be looked up to, it must stand high.
That is not all: it should be a society for the promotion of good works. We are all beneath our idea, and therefore transgressors before God. Yet He gives us the rain, the snow and the sun. It falls on me as well as on the field of my neighbor, who is a far juster man. How can we repent, cast our own sins behind us, outgrow and forget them better, than by helping others to work out their salvation? We are all brothers before God. Mutually needful we must be; mutually helpful we should be. Here are the ignorant that ask our instruction, not with words only, but with the prayer of their darkness, far more suppliant than speech. I never see an ignorant man younger than myself, without a feeling of self-reproach, for I ask: "What have I been doing to suffer him to grow up in nakedness of mind?" Every man, born in New England, who does not share the culture of this age, is a reproach to more than himself, and will at last actively curse those who began by deserting him. The Christian church should lead the movement for the public education of the people.
Here are the needy who ask not so much your gold, your bread, or your cloth, as they ask also your sympathy, respect and counsel; that you assist them to help themselves, that they may have gold won by their industry, not begged out of your benevolence. It is justice more than charity they ask. Every beggar, every pauper, born and bred amongst us, is a reproach to us, and condemns our civilization. For how has it come to pass that in a land of abundance here are men, for no fault of their own, born into want, living in want, and dying of want? and that, while we pretend to a religion which says all men are brothers! There is a horrid wrong somewhere.
Here too are the drunkard, the criminal, the abandoned person, sometimes the foe of society, but far oftener the victim of society. Whence come the tenants of our almshouses, jails, the victims of vice in all our towns? Why, from the lowest rank of the people; from the poorest and most ignorant! Say rather from the most neglected, and the public sin is confessed, and the remedy hinted at. What have the strong been doing all this while, that the weak have come to such a state? Let them answer for themselves.
Now for all these ought a Christian church to toil. It should be a church of good works; if it is a church of good faith it will be so. Does not Christianity say the strong should help the weak? Does not that mean something? It once did. Has the Christian fire faded out from those words, once so marvellously bright? Look round you, in the streets of your own Boston! See the ignorant, men and women with scarce more than the stature of men and women; boys and girls growing up in ignorance and the low civilization which comes thereof, the barbarians of Boston. Their character will one day be a blot and a curse to the nation, and who is to blame? Why, the ablest and best men, who might have had it otherwise if they would. Look at the poor, men of small ability, weak by nature, born into a weak position, therefore doubly weak; men whom the strong use for their purpose, and then cast them off as we throw away the rind of an orange after we have drunk its generous juice. Behold the wicked, so we call the weak men that are publicly caught in the cobweb of the law; ask why they became wicked; how we have aimed to reform them; what we have done to make them respect themselves, to believe in goodness, in man and God? and then say if there is not something for Christian men to do, something for a Christian church to do! Every almshouse in Massachusetts shows that the churches have not done their duty, that the Christians lie lies when they call Jesus "master" and men "brothers!" Every jail is a monument, on which it is writ in letters of iron that we are still heathens, and the gallows, black and hideous, the embodiment of death, the last argument a "Christian" State offers to the poor wretches it trained up to be criminals, stands there, a sign of our infamy, and while it lifts its horrid arm to crush the life out of some miserable man, whose blood cries to God against Cain in the nineteenth century, it lifts that same arm as an index of our shame.
Is that all? Oh, no! Did not Jesus say, resist not evil—with evil? Is not war the worst form of that evil; and is there on earth a nation so greedy of war; a nation more reckless of provoking it; one where the war-horse so soon conducts his foolish rider into fame and power? The "Heathen" Chinese might send their missionaries to America, and teach us to love men! Is that all? Far from it. Did not Christ say, whatsoever you would that men should do unto you, do you even so unto them; and are there not three million brothers of yours and mine in bondage here, the hopeless sufferers of a savage doom; debarred from the civilization of our age, the barbarians of the nineteenth century; shut out from the pretended religion of Christendom, the heathens of a Christian land; chained down from the liberty unalienable in man, the slaves of a Christian republic? Does not a cry of indignation ring out from every legislature in the North; does not the press war with its million throats, and a voice of indignation go up from East and West, out from the hearts of freemen? Oh, no. There is none of that cry against the mightiest sin of this age. The rock of Plymouth, sanctified by the feet which led a nation's way to freedom's large estate, provokes no more voice than the rottenest stone in all the mountains of the West. The few that speak a manly word for truth and everlasting right, are called fanatics; bid be still, lest they spoil the market! Great God! and has it come to this, that men are silent over such a sin? 'Tis even so. Then it must be that every church which dares assume the name of Christ, that dearest name to men, thunders and lightens on this hideous wrong! That is not so. The church is dumb, while the state is only silent; while the servants of the people are only asleep, "God's ministers" are dead!
In the midst of all these wrongs and sins, the crimes of men, society and the state, amid popular ignorance, pauperism, crime, and war, and slavery too—is the church to say nothing, do nothing; nothing for the good of such as feel the wrong, nothing to save them who do the wrong? Men tell us so, in word and deed; that way alone is "safe!" If I thought so, I would never enter the church but once again, and then to bow my shoulders to their manliest work, to heave down its strong pillars, arch and dome, and roof, and wall, steeple and tower, though like Samson I buried myself under the ruins of that temple which profaned the worship of God most high, of God most loved. I would do this in the name of man; in the name of Christ I would do it; yes, in the dear and blessed name of God.
It seems to me that a church which dares name itself Christian, the Church of the Redeemer, which aspires to be a true church, must set itself about all this business, and be not merely a church of theology, but of religion; not of faith only, but of works; a just church by its faith bringing works into life. It should not be a church termagant, which only peevishly scolds at sin, in its anile way; but a church militant against every form of evil, which not only censures, but writes out on the walls of the world the brave example of a Christian life, that all may take pattern therefrom. Thus only can it become the church triumphant. If a church were to waste less time in building its palaces of theological speculation, palaces mainly of straw, and based upon the chaff, erecting air-castles and fighting battles to defend those palaces of straw, it would surely have more time to use in the practical good works of the day. If it thus made a city free from want and ignorance and crime, I know I vent a heresy, I think it would be quite as Christian an enterprise, as though it restored all the theology of the dark ages; quite as pleasing to God. A good sermon is a good thing, no doubt, but its end is not answered by its being preached; even by its being listened to and applauded; only by its awakening a deeper life in the hearers. But in the multitude of sermons there is danger lest the bare hearing thereof be thought a religious duty, not a means, but an end, and so our Christianity vanish in words. What if every Sunday afternoon the most pious and manly of our number, who saw fit, resolved themselves into a committee of the whole for practical religion, and held not a formal meeting, but one more free, sometimes for the purpose of devotion, the practical work of making ourselves better Christians, nearer to one another, and sometimes that we might find means to help such as needed help, the poor, the ignorant, the intemperate and the wicked? Would it not be a work profitable to ourselves, and useful to others weaker than we? For my own part I think there are no ordinances of religion like good works; no day too sacred to help my brother in; no Christianity like a practical love of God shown by a practical love of men. Christ told us that if we had brought our gift to the very altar, and there remembered our brother had cause of complaint against us, we must leave the divine service, and pay the human service first! If my brother be in slavery, in want, in ignorance, in sin, and I can aid him and do not, he has much against me, and God can better wait for my prayer than my brother for my help!
The saints of olden time perished at the stake; they hung on gibbets; they agonized upon the rack; they died under the steel of the tormentor. It was the heroism of our fathers' day that swam the unknown seas; froze in the woods; starved with want and cold; fought battles with the red right hand. It is the sainthood and heroism of our day that toils for the ignorant, the poor, the weak, the oppressed, the wicked. Yes, it is our saints and heroes who fight fighting; who contend for the slave, and his master too, for the drunkard, the criminal; yes, for the wicked or the weak in all their forms. It is they that with weapons of heavenly proof fight the great battle for the souls of men. Though I detest war in each particular fibre of my heart, yet I honor the heroes among our fathers who fought with bloody hand; peace-makers in a savage way, they were faithful to the light; the most inspired can be no more, and we, with greater light, do, it may be, far less. I love and venerate the saints of old; men who dared step in front of their age; accepted Christianity when it cost something to be a Christian, because it meant something; they applied Christianity, so far as they knew it, to the lies and sins of their times, and won a sudden and a fiery death. But the saints and the heroes of this day, who draw no sword, whose right hand is never bloody, who burn in no fires of wood or sulphur, nor languish briefly on the hasty cross; the saints and heroes who, in a worldly world, dare to be men; in an age of conformity and selfishness, speak for Truth and Man, living for noble aims; men who will swear to no lies howsoever popular; who will honor no sins, though never so profitable, respected and ancient; men who count Christ not their master, but teacher, friend, brother, and strive like him to practise all they pray; to incarnate and make real the Word of God, these men I honor far more than the saints of old. I know their trials, I see their dangers, I appreciate their sufferings, and since the day when the man on Calvary bowed his head, bidding persecution farewell with his "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," I find no such saints and heroes as live now! They win hard fare, and hard toil. They lay up shame and obloquy. Theirs is the most painful of martyrdoms. Racks and fagots soon waft the soul of God, stern messengers but swift. A boy could bear that passage, the martyrdom of death. But the temptation of a long life of neglect, and scorn, and obloquy, and shame, and want, and desertion by false friends; to live blameless though blamed, cut off from human sympathy, that is the martyrdom of to-day. I shed no tears for such martyrs. I shout when I see one; I take courage and thank God for the real saints, prophets and heroes of to-day. In another age, men shall be proud of these puritans and pilgrims of this day. Churches shall glory in their names and celebrate their praise in sermon and in song. Yea, though now men would steal the rusty sword from underneath the bones of a saint or hero long deceased, to smite off therewith the head of a new prophet, that ancient hero's son; though they would gladly crush the heart out of him with the tomb-stones they piled up for great men, dead and honored now, yet in some future day, that mob, penitent, baptized with a new spirit, like drunken men returned to sanity once more, shall search through all this land for marble white enough to build a monument to that prophet whom their fathers slew; they shall seek through all the world for gold of fineness fit to chronicle such names! I cannot wait; but I will honor such men now, not adjourn the warning of their voice, and the glory of their example, till another age! The church may cast out such men; burn them with the torments of an age too refined in its cruelty to use coarse fagots and the vulgar axe! It is no less to these men; but the ruin of the church. I say the Christian church of the nineteenth century must honor such men, if it would do a church's work; must take pains to make such men as these, or it is a dead church, with no claim on us, except that we bury it. A true church will always be the church of martyrs. The ancients commenced every great work with a victim! We do not call it so; but the sacrifice is demanded, got ready, and offered by unconscious priests long ere the enterprise succeeds. Did not Christianity begin with a martyrdom?
In this way, by gaining all the truth of the age in thought or action, by trying public opinions with its own brave ideas, by promoting good works, applying a new truth to an old error, and with unpopular righteousness overcoming each popular sin, the Christian church should lead the civilization of the age. The leader looks before, goes before, and knows where he is going; knows the way thither. It is only on this condition that he leads at all. If the church by looking after truth, and receiving it when it comes, be in unison with God, it will be in unison with all science, which is only the thought of God translated from the facts of nature into the words of men. In such a case, the church will not fear philosophy, nor in the face of modern science aim to reëstablish the dreams and fables of a ruder day. It will not lack new truth, daring only to quote, nor be obliged to sneak behind the inspired words of old saints as its only fortress, for it will have words just as truly inspired, dropping from the golden mouths of saints and prophets now. For leaders it will look not back, but forth; will fan the first faint sparkles of that noble fire just newly kindled from the skies; not smother them in the ashes of fires long spent; not quench them with holy water from Jordan or the Nile. A church truly Christian, professing Christ as its model-man, and aiming to stand in the relation he stood, must lead the way in moral enterprises, in every work which aims directly at the welfare of man. There was a time when the Christian churches, as a whole, held that rank. Do they now? Not even the Quakers—perhaps the last sect that abandoned it. A prophet, filled with love of man and love of God, is not therein at home. I speak a sad truth, and I say it in sorrow. But look at the churches of this city: do they lead the Christian movements of this city—the temperance movement, the peace movement, the movement for the freedom of men, for education, the movement to make society more just, more wise and good, the great religious movement of these times—for, hold down our eyelids as we will, there is a religious movement at this day on foot, such as even New England never saw before;—do they lead in these things? Oh, no, not at all. That great Christian orator, one of the noblest men New England has seen in this century, whose word has even now gone forth to the nations beyond the sea, while his spirit has gone home to his Father, when he turned his attention to the practical evils of our time and our land, and our civilization, vigorously applying Christianity to life, why he lost favor in his own little sect! They feared him, soon as his spirit looked over their narrow walls, aspiring to lead men to a better work. I know men can now make sectarian capital out of the great name of Channing, so he is praised; perhaps praised loudest by the very men who then cursed him by their gods. Ay, by their gods he was accursed! The churches lead the Christian movements of these times?—why, has there not just been driven out of this city, and out of this State, a man conspicuous in all these movements, after five and twenty years of noble toil; driven out because he was conspicuous in them! You know it is so, and you know how and by whom he is thus driven out![1]
Christianity is humanity; Christ is the Son of man; the manliest of men; humane as a woman; pious and hopeful as a prayer; but brave as man's most daring thought. He has led the world in morals and religion for eighteen hundred years, only because he was the manliest man in it; the humanest and bravest man in it, and hence the divinest. He may lead it eighteen hundred years more, for we are bid believe that God can never make again a greater man; no, none so great. But the churches do not lead men therein, for they have not his spirit; neither that womanliness which wept over Jerusalem, nor that manliness which drew down fire enough from heaven to light the world's altars for well-nigh two thousand years.
There are many ways in which Christ may be denied:—one is that of the bold blasphemer, who, out of a base and haughty heart mocks, scoffing at that manly man, and spits upon the nobleness of Christ! There are few such deniers: my heart mourns for them. But they do little harm. Religion is so dear to men, no scoffing word can silence that, and the brave soul of this young Nazarene has made itself so deeply felt that scorn and mockery of him are but an icicle held up against the summer's sun. There is another way to deny him, and that is:—to call him Lord, and never do his bidding; to stifle free minds with his words; and with the authority of his name to cloak, to mantle, screen and consecrate the follies, errors, sins of men! From this we have much to fear.
The church that is to lead this century will not be a church creeping on all fours; mewling and whining, its face turned down, its eyes turned back. It must be full of the brave, manly spirit of the day, keeping also the good of times past. There is a terrific energy in this age, for man was never so much developed, so much the master of himself before. Great truths, moral and political, have come to light. They fly quickly. The iron prophet of types publishes his visions, of weal or woe, to the near and far. This marvellous age has invented steam, and the magnetic telegraph, apt symbols of itself, before which the miracles of fable are but an idle tale. It demands, as never before, freedom for itself, usefulness in its institutions; truth in its teachings, and beauty in its deeds. Let a church have that freedom, that usefulness, truth, and beauty, and the energy of this age will be on its side. But the church which did for the fifth century, or the fifteenth, will not do for this. What is well enough at Rome, Oxford or Berlin, is not well enough for Boston. It must have our ideas, the smell of our ground, and have grown out of the religion in our soul. The freedom of America must be there before this energy will come; the wisdom of the nineteenth century before its science will be on the churches' side, else that science will go over to the "infidels."
Our churches are not in harmony with what is best in the present age. Men call their temples after their old heroes and saints—John, Paul, Peter, and the like. But we call nothing else after the old names; a school of philosophy would be condemned if called Aristotelian, Platonic, or even Baconian. We out-travel the past in all but this. In the church it seems taught there is no progress unless we have all the past on our back; so we despair of having men fit to call churches by. We look back and not forward. We think the next saint must talk Hebrew like the old ones, and repeat the same mythology. So when a new prophet comes we only stone him.
A church that believes only in past inspiration will appeal to old books as the standard of truth and source of light; will be antiquarian in its habits; will call its children by the old names; and war on the new age, not understanding the man-child born to rule the world. A church that believes in inspiration now will appeal to God; try things by reason and conscience; aim to surpass the old heroes; baptize its children with a new spirit, and using the present age will lead public opinion, and not follow it. Had Christ looked back for counsel, he might have founded a church fit for Abraham or Isaac to worship in, not for the ages to come, or the age then. He that feels he is near to God, does not fear to be far from men; if before, he helps lead them on; if above, to lift them up. Let us get all we can from the Hebrews and others of old time, and that is much; but still let us be God's free men, not the Gibeonites of the past.
Let us have a church that dares imitate the heroism of Jesus; seek inspiration as he sought it; judge the past as he; act on the present like him; pray as he prayed; work as he wrought; live as he lived. Let our doctrines and our forms fit the soul, as the limbs fit the body, growing out of it, growing with it. Let us have a church for the whole man: truth for the mind; good works for the hands; love for the heart; and for the soul, that aspiring after perfection, that unfaltering faith in God which, like lightning in the clouds, shines brightest, when elsewhere it is most dark. Let our church fit man, as the heavens fit the earth!
In our day men have made great advances in science, commerce, manufactures, in all the arts of life. We need, therefore, a development of religion corresponding thereto. The leading minds of the age ask freedom to inquire; not merely to believe, but to know; to rest on facts. A great spiritual movement goes swiftly forward. The best men see that religion is religion; theology is theology, and not religion; that true religion is a very simple affair, and the popular theology a very foolish one; that the Christianity of Christ is not the Christianity of the street, or the state, or the churches; that Christ is not their model-man, only "imputed" as such. These men wish to apply good sense to matters connected with religion; to apply Christianity to life, and make the world a better place, men and women fitter to live in it. In this way they wish to get a theology that is true; a mode of religion that works, and works well. If a church can answer these demands, it will be a live church; leading the civilization of the times, living with all the mighty life of this age, and nation. Its prayers will be a lifting up of the hearts in noble men towards God, in search of truth, goodness, piety. Its sacraments will be great works of reform, institutions for the comfort and the culture of men. Let us have a church in which religion, goodness towards men, and piety towards God, shall be the main thing; let us have a degree of that suited to the growth and demands of this age. In the middle ages, men had erroneous conceptions of religion, no doubt; yet the church led the world. When she wrestled with the state, the state came undermost to the ground. See the results of that supremacy—all over Europe there arose the cloister, halls of learning for the chosen few, minster, dome, cathedral, miracles of art, each costing the wealth of a province. Such was the embodiment of their ideas of religion, the prayers of a pious age done in stone, a psalm petrified as it rose from the world's mouth; a poor sacrifice, no doubt, but the best they knew how to offer. Now if men were to engage in religion as in politics, commerce, arts; if the absolute religion, the Christianity of Christ, were applied to life with all the might of this age, as the Christianity of the church was then applied, what a result should we not behold! We should build up a great state with unity in the nation, and freedom in the people; a state where there was honorable work for every hand, bread for all mouths, clothing for all backs, culture for every mind, and love and faith in every heart. Truth would be our sermon, drawn from the oldest of Scriptures, God's writing there in nature, here in man; works of daily duty would be our sacrament; prophets inspired of God would minister the word, and piety send up her psalm of prayer, sweet in its notes, and joyfully prolonged. The noblest monument to Christ, the fairest trophy of religion, is a noble people, where all are well fed and clad, industrious, free, educated, manly, pious, wise and good.
Some of you may now remember, how ten months and more ago, I first came to this house to speak. I shall remember it forever. In those rainy Sundays the very skies looked dark. Some came doubtingly, uncertain, looking around, and hoping to find courage in another's hope. Others came with clear glad face; openly, joyfully, certain they were right; not fearing to meet the issue; not afraid to be seen meeting it. Some came, perhaps, not used to worship in a church, but not the less welcome here; some mistaking me for a destroyer, a doubter, a denier of all truth, a scoffer, an enemy to man and God! I wonder not at that. Misguided men had told you so, in sermon and in song; in words publicly printed and published without shame; in the covert calumny, slyly whispered in the dark! Need I tell you my feelings; how I felt at coming to the town made famous by great men, Mayhew, Chauncy, Buckminster, Kirkland, Holley, Pierpont, Channing, Ware—names dear and honored in my boyish heart! Need I tell you how I felt at sight of the work which stretched out before me? Do you wonder that I asked: Who is sufficient for these things? and said: Alas, not I, Thou knowest, Lord! But some of you told me you asked not the wisdom of a wiser man, the ability of one stronger, but only that I should do what I could. I came, not doubting that I had some truths to say; not distrusting God, nor man, nor you; distrustful only of myself. I feared I had not the power, amid the dust and noises of the day, to help you see and hear the great realities of religion as they appeared to me; to help you feel the life of real religion, as in my better moments I have felt its truth! But let that pass. As I came here from Sunday to Sunday, when I began to feel your spirits prayed with mine a prayer for truth and life; as I looked down into your faces, thoughtful and almost breathless, I forgot my self-distrust; I saw the time was come; that, feebly as I know I speak, my best thoughts were ever the most welcome! I saw that the harvest was plenteous indeed: but the preacher, I feel it still, was all unworthy of his work!
Brothers and Sisters: let us be true to our sentiments and ideas. Let us not imitate another's form unless it symbolize a truth to us. We must not affect to be singular, but not fear to be alone. Let us not foolishly separate from our brothers elsewhere. Truth is yet before us, not only springing up out of the manly words of this Bible, but out of the ground; out of the heavens; out of man and God. Whole firmaments of truth hang ever o'er our heads, waiting the telescopic eye of the true-hearted see-er. Let us follow truth, in form, thought or sentiment, wherever she may call. God's daughter cannot lead us from the path. The further on we go, the more we find. Had Columbus turned back only the day before he saw the land, the adventure had been worse than lost.
We must practise a manly self-denial. Religion always demands that, but never more than when our brothers separate from us, and we stand alone. By our mutual love and mutual forbearance, we shall stand strong. With zeal for our common work, let us have charity for such as dislike us, such as oppose and would oppress us. Let us love our enemies, bless them that curse us, do good to them that hate us, and pray for such as despitefully use us. Let us overcome their evil speech with our own goodness. If others have treated us ill, called us unholy names, and mocked at us, let us forgive it all, here and now, and help them also to forget and outgrow that temper which bade them treat us so. A kind answer is fittest rebuke to an unkind word.
If we have any truth it will not be kept hid. It will run over the brim of our urn and water our brother's field. Were any truth to come down to us in advance from God, it were not that we might forestall the light, but shed it forth for all His children to walk by and rejoice in. "One candle will light a thousand" if it be itself lighted. Let our light shine before men so that they may see our good deeds, and themselves praise God by a manly life. This we owe to them as to ourselves. A noble thought and a mean man make a sorry union. Let our idea show itself in our life—that is preaching, right eloquent. Do this, we begin to do good to men, and though they should oppose us, and our work should fail, we shall have yet the approval of our own heart, the approval of God, be whole within ourselves, and one with Him.
Some of you are venerable men. I have wondered that a youthful ardor should have brought you here. Your silvery heads have seemed a benediction to my work. But most of you are young. I know it is no aping of a fashion that has brought you here. I have no eloquence to charm or please you with; I only speak right on. I have no reputation but a bad name in the churches. I know you came not idly, but seeking after truth. Give a great idea to an old man, and he carries it to his grave; give it to a young man, and he carries it to his life. It will bear both young and old through the grave and into eternal Heaven beyond.
Young men and women, the duties of the world fall eminently on you. God confides to your hands the ark which holds the treasures of the age. On young shoulders He lays the burden of life. Yours is the period of passion; the period of enterprise and of work. It is by successive generations that mankind goes forward. The old, stepping into honorable graves, leave their places and the results they won to you. But departing they seem to say, as they linger and look back: Do ye greater than we have done! The young just coming into your homes seem to say: Instruct us to be nobler than yourselves! Your life is the answer to your children and your sires. The next generation will be as you make it. It is not the schools but the people's character that educates the child. Amid the trials, duties, dangers of your life, religion alone can guide you. It is not the world's eye that is on you, but God's; it is not the world's religion that will suffice you, but the religion of a Man, which unites you with truth, justice, piety, goodness; yes, which makes you one with God!
Young men and women—you can make this church a fountain of life to thousands of fainting souls. Yes, you can make this city nobler than city ever was before. A manly life is the best gift you can leave mankind; that can be copied forever. Architects of your own weal or woe, your destiny is mainly in your own hands. It is no great thing to reject the popular falsehoods; little and perhaps not hard. But to receive the great sentiments and lofty truths of real religion, the Christianity of Christ; to love them, to live them in your business and your home, that is the greatest work of man. Thereby you partake of the spirit and nature of God; you achieve the true destiny for yourself; you help your brothers do the same.
When my own life is measured by the ideal of that young Nazarene, I know how little I deserve the name of Christian; none knows that fact so well as I. But you have been denied the name of Christian because you came here, asking me to come. Let men see that you have the reality, though they withhold the name. Your words are the least part of what you say to men. The foolish only will judge you by your talk; wise men by the general tenor of your life. Let your religion appear in your work and your play. Pray in your strongest hours. Practise your prayers. By fair-dealing, justice, kindness, self-control, and the great work of helping others while you help yourself, let your life prove a worship. These are the real sacraments and Christian communion with God, to which water and wine are only helps. Criticize the world not by censure only, but by the example of a great life. Shame men out of their littleness, not by making mouths, but by walking great and beautiful amongst them. You love God best when you love men most. Let your prayers be an uplifting of the soul in thought, resolution, love, and the light thereof shall shine through the darkest hour of trouble. Have not the Christianity of the street; but carry Christ's Christianity there. Be noble men, then your works must needs be great and manly.
This is the first Sunday of a new year. What an hour for resolutions; what a moment for prayer! If you have sins in your bosom, cast them behind you now. In the last year, God has blessed us; blessed us all. On some his angels waited, robed in white, and brought new joys; here a wife, to bind men closer yet to Providence; and there a child, a new Messiah, sent to tell of innocence and heaven. To some his angels came clad in dark livery, veiling a joyful countenance with unpropitious wings, and bore away child, father, sister, wife, or friend. Still were they angels of good Providence, all God's own; and he who looks aright finds that they also brought a blessing, but concealed, and left it, though they spoke no word of joy. One day our weeping brother shall find that gift and wear it as a diamond on his breast.
The hours are passing over us, and with them the day. What shall the future Sundays be, and what the year? What we make them both. God gives us time. We weave it into life, such figures as we may, and wear it as we will. Age slowly rots away the gold we are set in, but the adamantine soul lives on, radiant every way in the light streaming down from God. The genius of eternity, star-crowned, beautiful, and with prophetic eyes, leads us again to the gates of time, and gives us one more year, bidding us fill that golden cup with water as we can or will. There stand the dirty, fetid pools of worldliness and sin; curdled, and mantled, film-covered, streaked and striped with many a hue, they shine there, in the slanting light of new-born day. Around them stand the sons of earth and cry: Come hither; drink thou and be saved! Here fill thy golden cup! There you may seek to fill your urn; to stay your thirst. The deceitful element, roping in your hands, shall mock your lip. It is water only to the eye. Nay, show-water only unto men half-blind. But there, hard by, runs down the stream of life, its waters never frozen, never dry; fed by perennial dews falling unseen from God. Fill there thine urn, oh, brother-man, and thou shalt thirst no more for selfishness and crime, and faint no more amid the toil and heat of day; wash there, and the leprosy of sin, its scales of blindness, shall fall off, and thou be clean for ever. Kneel there and pray; God shall inspire thy heart with truth and love, and fill thy cup with never-ending joy![2]
I ask your attention to a Sermon of War. I have waited some time before treating this subject at length, till the present hostilities should assume a definite form, and the designs of the Government become more apparent. I wished to be able to speak coolly and with knowledge of the facts, that we might understand the comparative merits of the present war. Besides, I have waited for others, in the churches, of more experience to speak, before I ventured to offer my counsel; but I have thus far waited almost in vain! I did not wish to treat the matter last Sunday, for that was the end of our week of Pentecost, when cloven tongues of flame descend on the city, and some are thought to be full of new wine, and others of the Holy Spirit. The heat of the meetings, good and bad, of that week, could not wholly have passed away from you or me, and we ought to come coolly and consider a subject like this. So the last Sunday I only sketched the back-ground of the picture, to-day intending to paint the horrors of war in front of that "Presence of Beauty in Nature," to which with its "Meanings" and its "Lessons," I then asked you to attend.
It seems to me that an idea of God as the Infinite is given to us in our nature itself. But men create a more definite conception of God in their own image. Thus a rude savage man, who has learned only the presence of power in Nature, conceives of God mainly as a force, and speaks of Him as a God of power. Such, though not without beautiful exceptions, is the character ascribed to Jehovah in the Old Testament. "The Lord is a man of war." He is "the Lord of Hosts." He kills men, and their cattle. If there is trouble in the enemies' city, it is the Lord who hath caused it. He will "whet his glittering sword and render vengeance to his enemies. He will make his arrows drunk with blood, and his sword shall devour flesh!" It is with the sword that God pleads with all men. He encourages men to fight, and says, "Cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood." He sends blood into the streets; he waters the land with blood, and in blood he dissolves the mountains. He brandishes his sword before kings, and they tremble at every moment. He treads nations as grapes in a wine-press, and his garments are stained with their life's blood.[3]
A man who has grown up to read the Older Testament of God revealed in the beauty of the universe, and to feel the goodness of God therein set forth, sees him not as force only, or in chief, but as love. He worships in love the God of goodness and of peace. Such is the prevalent character ascribed to God in the New Testament, except in the book of "Revelation." He is the "God of love and peace;" "our Father," "kind to the unthankful and the unmerciful." In one word, God is love. He loves us all, Jew and Gentile, bond and free. All are his children, each of priceless value in His sight. He is no God of battles; no Lord of hosts; no man of war. He has no sword, nor arrows; He does not water the earth nor melt the mountains in blood, but "He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust." He has no garments dyed in blood; curses no man for refusing to fight. He is spirit, to be worshipped in spirit and in truth! The commandment is: Love one another; resist not evil with evil; forgive seventy times seven; overcome evil with good; love your enemies; bless them that curse you; do good to them that hate you; pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you.[4] There is no nation to shut its ports against another, all are men; no caste to curl its lip at inferiors, all are brothers, members of one body, united in the Christ, the ideal man and head of all. The most useful is the greatest. No man is to be master, for the Christ is our teacher. We are to fear no man, for God is our Father.
These precepts are undeniably the precepts of Christianity. Equally plain is it that they are the dictates of man's nature, only developed and active; a part of God's universal revelation; His law writ on the soul of man, established in the nature of things; true after all experience, and true before all experience. The man of real insight into spiritual things sees and knows them to be true.
Do not believe it the part of a coward to think so. I have known many cowards; yes, a great many; some very cowardly, pusillanimous and faint-hearted cowards; but never one who thought so, or pretended to think so. It requires very little courage to fight with sword and musket, and that of a cheap kind. Men of that stamp are plenty as grass in June. Beat your drum, and they will follow; offer them but eight dollars a month, and they will come—fifty thousand of them, to smite and kill.[5] Every male animal, or reptile, will fight. It requires little courage to kill; but it takes much to resist evil with good, holding obstinately out, active or passive, till you overcome it. Call that non-resistance, if you will; it is the stoutest kind of combat, demanding all the manhood of a man.
I will not deny that war is inseparable from a low stage of civilization; so is polygamy, slavery, cannibalism. Taking men as they were, savage and violent, there have been times when war was unavoidable. I will not deny that it has helped forward the civilization of the race, for God often makes the folly and the sin of men contribute to the progress of mankind. It is none the less a folly or a sin. In a civilized nation like ourselves, it is far more heinous than in the Ojibeways or the Camanches.
War is in utter violation of Christianity. If war be right, then Christianity is wrong, false, a lie. But if Christianity be true, if reason, conscience, the religious sense, the highest faculties of man, are to be trusted, then war is the wrong, the falsehood, the lie. I maintain that aggressive war is a sin; that it is national infidelity, a denial of Christianity and of God. Every man who understands Christianity by heart, in its relations to man, to society, the nation, the world, knows that war is a wrong. At this day, with all the enlightenment of our age, after the long peace of the nations, war is easily avoided. Whenever it occurs, the very fact of its occurrence convicts the rulers of a nation either of entire incapacity as statesmen, or else of the worst form of treason; treason to the people, to mankind, to God! There is no other alternative. The very fact of an aggressive war shows that the men who cause it must be either fools or traitors. I think lightly of what is called treason against a government. That may be your duty to-day, or mine. Certainly it was our fathers' duty not long ago; now it is our boast and their title to honor. But treason against the people, against mankind, against God, is a great sin, not lightly to be spoken of. The political authors of the war on this continent, and at this day, are either utterly incapable of a statesman's work, or else guilty of that sin. Fools they are, or traitors they must be.
Let me speak, and in detail, of the Evils of War. I wish this were not necessary. But we have found ourselves in a war; the Congress has voted our money and our men to carry it on; the Governors call for volunteers; the volunteers come when they are called for. No voice of indignation goes forth from the heart of the eight hundred thousand souls of Massachusetts; of the seventeen million freemen of the land how few complain; only a man here and there! The Press is well-nigh silent. And the Church, so far from protesting against this infidelity in the name of Christ, is little better than dead. The man of blood shelters himself behind its wall, silent, dark, dead and emblematic. These facts show that it is necessary to speak of the evils of war. I am speaking in a city, whose fairest, firmest, most costly buildings are warehouses and banks; a city whose most popular Idol is Mammon, the God of Gold; whose Trinity is a Trinity of Coin! I shall speak intelligibly, therefore, if I begin by considering war as a waste of property. It paralyzes industry. The very fear of it is a mildew upon commerce. Though the present war is but a skirmish, only a few random shots between a squad of regulars and some strolling battalions, a quarrel which in Europe would scarcely frighten even the Pope; yet see the effect of it upon trade. Though the fighting be thousands of miles from Boston, your stocks fall in the market; the rate of insurance is altered; your dealer in wood piles his boards and his timber on his wharf, not finding a market. There are few ships in the great Southern mart to take the freight of many; exchange is disturbed. The clergyman is afraid to buy a book, lest his children want bread. It is so with all departments of industry and trade. In war the capitalist is uncertain and slow to venture, so the laborer's hand will be still, and his child ill-clad and hungry.
In the late war with England, many of you remember the condition of your fisheries, of your commerce; how the ships lay rotting at the wharf. The dearness of cloth, of provisions, flour, sugar, tea, coffee, salt, the comparative lowness of wages, the stagnation of business, the scarcity of money, the universal sullenness and gloom—all this is well remembered now. So is the ruin it brought on many a man.
Yet but few weeks ago some men talked boastingly of a war with England. There are some men who seem to have no eyes nor ears, only a mouth; whose chief function is talk. Of their talk I will say nothing; we look for dust in dry places. But some men thus talked of war, and seemed desirous to provoke it, who can scarce plead ignorance, and I fear not folly, for their excuse. I leave such to the just resentment sure to fall on them from sober, serious men, who dare to be so unpopular as to think before they speak, and then say what comes of thinking. Perhaps such a war was never likely to take place, and now, thanks to a few wise men, all danger thereof seems at an end. But suppose it had happened—what would become of your commerce, of your fishing smacks on the Banks or along the shore? what of your coasting vessels, doubling the headlands all the way from the St. John's to the Nueces? what of your whale ships in the Pacific? what of your Indiamen, deep freighted with oriental wealth? what of that fleet which crowds across the Atlantic sea, trading with east and west and north and south? I know some men care little for the rich, but when the owners keep their craft in port, where can the "hands" find work or their mouths find bread? The shipping of the United States amounts nearly to 2,500,000 tons. At $40 a ton, its value is nearly $100,000,000. This is the value only of those sea-carriages; their cargoes I cannot compute. Allowing one sailor for every twenty tons burden, here will be 125,000 seamen. They and their families amount to 500,000 souls. In war, what will become of them? A capital of more than $13,000,000 is invested in the fisheries of Massachusetts alone. More than 19,000 men find profitable employment therein. If each man have but four others in his family, a small number for that class, here are more than 95,000 persons in this State alone, whose daily bread depends on this business. They cannot fish in troubled waters, for they are fishermen, not politicians. Where could they find bread or cloth in time of war? In Dartmoor prison? Ask that of your demagogues who courted war!
Then, too, the positive destruction of property in war is monstrous. A ship of the line costs from $500,000 to $1,000,000. The loss of a fleet by capture, by fire, or by decay, is a great loss. You know at what cost a fort is built, if you have counted the sums successively voted for Fort Adams in Rhode Island, or those in our own harbor. The destruction of forts is another item in the cost of war. The capture or destruction of merchant ships with their freight, creates a most formidable loss. In 1812 the whole tonnage of the United States was scarce half what it is now. Yet the loss of ships and their freight, in "the late war," brief as it was, is estimated at $100,000,000. Then the loss by plunder and military occupation is monstrous. The soldier, like the savage, cuts down the tree to gather its fruit. I cannot calculate the loss by burning towns and cities. But suppose Boston were bombarded and laid in ashes. Calculate the loss if you can. You may say "This could not be," for it is as easy to say No, as Yes. But remember what befell us in the last war; remember how recently the best defended capitals of Europe, Vienna, Paris, Antwerp, have fallen into hostile hands. Consider how often a strong place, like Coblentz, Mentz, Malta, Gibraltar, St. Juan d'Ulloa, has been declared impregnable, and then been taken; calculate the force which might be brought against this town, and you will see that in eight and forty hours, or half that time, it might be left nothing but a heap of ruins smoking in the sun! I doubt not the valor of American soldiers, the skill of their engineers, nor the ability of their commanders. I am ready to believe all this is greater than we are told. Still, such are the contingencies of war. If some not very ignorant men had their way, this would be a probability and perhaps a fact. If we should burn every town from the Tweed to the Thames, it would not rebuild our own city.
But on the supposition that nothing is destroyed, see the loss which comes from the misdirection of productive industry. Your fleets, forts, dock-yards, arsenals, cannons, muskets, swords and the like, are provided at great cost, and yet are unprofitable. They do not pay. They weave no cloth; they bake no bread; they produce nothing. Yet from 1791 to 1832, in forty-two years we expended in these things, $303,242,576, namely, for the navy, etc., $112,703,933; for the army, etc., 190,538,643. For the same time, all other expenses of the nation came to but $37,158,047. More than eight ninths of the whole revenue of the nation was spent for purposes of war. In four years, from 1812 to 1815, we paid in this way, $92,350,519.37. In six years, from 1835 to 1840, we paid annually on the average $21,328,903; in all $127,973,418. Our Congress has just voted $17,000,000, as a special grant for the army alone. The 175,118 muskets at Springfield, are valued at $3,000,000; we pay annually $200,000 to support that arsenal. The navy-yard at Charlestown, with its stores, etc., has cost $4,741,000. And, for all profitable returns, this money might as well be sunk in the bottom of the sea. In some countries it is yet worse. There are towns and cities in which the fortifications have cost more than all the houses, churches, shops, and other property therein. This happens not among the Sacs and Foxes, but in "Christian" Europe.
Then your soldier is the most unprofitable animal you can keep. He makes no railroads; clears no land; raises no corn. No, he can make neither cloth nor clocks! He does not raise his own bread, mend his own shoes, make his shoulder-knot of glory, nor hammer out his own sword. Yet he is a costly animal, though useless. If the President gets his fifty thousand volunteers, a thing likely to happen—for though Irish lumpers and hod-men want a dollar or a dollar and a half a day, your free American of Boston will enlist for twenty-seven cents, only having his livery, his feathers, and his "glory" thrown in—then at $8 a month, their wages amount to $400,000 a month. Suppose the present Government shall actually make advantageous contracts, and the subsistence of the soldier cost no more than in England, or $17 a month, this amounts to $850,000. Here are $1,250,000 a month to begin with. Then, if each man would be worth a dollar a day at any productive work, and there are 26 work days in the month, here are $1,300,000 more to be added, making $2,550,000 a month for the new army of occupation. This is only for the rank and file of the army. The officers, the surgeons, and the chaplains, who teach the soldiers to wad their muskets with the leaves of the Bible, will perhaps cost as much more; or, in all, something more than $5,000,000 a month. This of course does not include the cost of their arms, tents, ammunition, baggage, horses, and hospital stores, nor the 65,000 gallons of whiskey which the government has just advertised for! What do they give in return? They will give us three things, valor, glory, and—talk; which, as they are not in the price current, I must estimate as I can, and set them all down in one figure = 0; not worth the whiskey they cost.
New England is quite a new country. Seven generations ago it was a wilderness; now it contains about 2,500,000 souls. If you were to pay all the public debts of these States, and then, in fancy, divide all the property therein by the population, young as we are, I think you would find a larger amount of value for each man than in any other country in the world, not excepting England. The civilization of Europe is old; the nations old, England, France, Spain, Austria, Italy, Greece; but they have wasted their time, their labor and their wealth in war, and so are poorer than we upstarts of a wilderness. We have fewer fleets, forts, cannon and soldiers for the population, than any other "Christian" country in the world. This is one main reason why we have no national debt; why the women need not toil in the hardest labor of the fields, the quarries and the mines; this is the reason that we are well fed, well clad, well housed; this is the reason that Massachusetts can afford to spend $1,000,000 a year for her public schools! War, wasting a nation's wealth, depresses the great mass of the people, but serves to elevate a few to opulence and power. Every despotism is established and sustained by war. This is the foundation of all the aristocracies of the old world, aristocracies of blood. Our famous men are often ashamed that their wealth was honestly got by working, or peddling, and foolishly copy the savage and bloody emblems of ancient heraldry in their assumed coats of arms, industrious men seeking to have a griffin on their seal! Nothing is so hostile to a true democracy as war. It elevates a few, often bold, bad men, at the expense of the many, who pay the money and furnish the blood for war.
War is a most expensive folly. The revolutionary war cost the General Government directly and in specie $135,000,000. It is safe to estimate the direct cost to the individual States also at the same sum, $135,000,000; making a total of $270,000,000. Considering the interruption of business, the waste of time, property and life, it is plain that this could not have been a fourth part of the whole. But suppose it was a third, then the whole pecuniary cost of the war would be $810,000,000. At the beginning of the Revolution the population was about 3,000,000; so that war, lasting about eight years, cost $270 for each person. To meet the expenses of the war each year there would have been required a tax of $33.75 on each man, woman and child!
In the Florida war we spent between $30,000,000 and $40,000,000, as an eminent statesman once said, in fighting five hundred invisible Indians! It is estimated that the fortifications of the city of Paris, when completely furnished, will cost more than the whole taxable property of Massachusetts, with her 800,000 souls. Why, this year our own grant for the army is $17,000,000. The estimate for the navy is $6,000,000 more; in all $23,000,000. Suppose, which is most unlikely, that we should pay no more, why, that sum alone would support public schools, as good and as costly as those of Massachusetts, all over the United States, offering each boy and girl, bond or free, as good a culture as they get here in Boston, and then leave a balance of $3,000,000 in our hands! We pay more for ignorance than we need for education! But $23,000,000 is not all we must pay this year. A great statesman has said, in the Senate, that our war expenses at present are nearly $500,000 a day, and the President informs your Congress that $22,952,904 more will be wanted for the army and navy before next June!
For several years we spent directly more than $21,000,000 for war purposes, though in time of peace. If a railroad cost $30,000 a mile, then we might build 700 miles a year for that sum, and in five years could build a railroad therewith from Boston to the further side of Oregon. For the war money we paid in forty-two years, we could have had more than 10,000 miles of railroad, and, with dividends at seven per cent., a yearly income of $21,210,000. For military and naval affairs, in eight years, from 1835 to 1843, we paid $163,336,717. This alone would have made 5,444 miles of railroad, and would produce at seven per cent., an annual income of $11,433,569.19.
In Boston there are nineteen public grammar schools, a Latin and English High school. The buildings for these schools twenty in number, have cost $653,208. There are also 135 primary schools, in as many houses or rooms. I know not their value, as I think they are not all owned by the city. But suppose them to be worth $150,000. Then all the school-houses of this city have cost $803,208. The cost of these 156 schools for this year is estimated at $172,000. The number of scholars in them is 16,479. Harvard University, the most expensive college in America, costs about $46,000 a year. Now the ship Ohio, lying here in our harbor, has cost $834,845, and we pay for it each year $220,000 more. That is, it has cost $31,637 more than these 155 school-houses of this city, and costs every year $2,000 more than Harvard University, and all the public schools of Boston!
The military academy at West Point contains two hundred and thirty-six cadets; the appropriation for it last year, was $138,000, a sum greater I think, than the cost of all the colleges in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts, with their 1,445 students.
The navy-yard at Charlestown, with its ordnance, stores, etc., cost $4,741,000. The cost of the 78 churches in Boston is $3,246,500; the whole property of Harvard University is $703,175; the 155 school-houses of Boston are worth $803,208; in all $4,752,883. Thus the navy-yard at Charlestown has cost almost as much as the 78 churches and the 155 school-houses of Boston, with Harvard College, its halls, libraries, all its wealth thrown in. Yet what does it teach?
Our country is singularly destitute of public libraries. You must go across the ocean to read the history of the Church or State; all the public libraries in America cannot furnish the books referred to in Gibbon's Rome, or Gieseler's History of the Church. I think there is no public library in Europe which has cost three dollars a volume. There are six: the Vatican, at Rome; the Royal, at Paris; the British Museum, at London; the Bodleian, at Oxford; the University Libraries at Gottingen and Berlin—which contain, it is said, about 4,500,000 volumes. The recent grant of $17,000,000 for the army is $3,500,000 more than the cost of those magnificent collections!
There have been printed about 3,000,000 different volumes, great and little, within the last 400 years. If the Florida war cost but $30,000,000, it is ten times more than enough to have purchased one copy of each book ever printed, at one dollar a volume, which is more than the average cost.
Now all these sums are to be paid by the people, "the dear people," whom our republican demagogues love so well, and for whom they spend their lives, rising early, toiling late, those self-denying heroes, those sainted martyrs of the republic, eating the bread of carefulness for them alone! But how are they to be paid? By a direct tax levied on all the property of the nation, so that the poor man pays according to his little, and the rich man in proportion to his much, each knowing when he pays and what he pays for? No such thing; nothing like it. The people must pay and not know it; must be deceived a little, or they would not pay after this fashion! You pay for it in every pound of sugar, copper, coal, in every yard of cloth; and if the counsel of some lovers of the people be followed, you will soon pay for it in each pound of coffee and tea. In this way the rich man always pays relatively less than the poor; often a positively smaller sum. Even here I think that three-fourths of all the property is owned by one-fourth of the people, yet that three-fourths by no means pays a third of the national revenue. The tax is laid on things men cannot do without,—sugar, cloth, and the like. The consumption of these articles is not in proportion to wealth but persons. Now the poor man, as a general rule, has more children than the rich, and the tax being more in proportion to persons than property, the poor man pays more than the rich. So a tax is really laid on the poor man's children to pay for the war which makes him poor and keeps him poor. I think your captains and colonels, those sons of thunder and heirs of glory, will not tell you so. They tell you so! They know it! Poor brothers, how could they? I think your party newspapers, penny or pound, will not tell you so; nor the demagogues, all covered with glory and all forlorn, who tell the people when to hurrah and for what! But if you cipher the matter out for yourself you will find it so, and not otherwise. Tell the demagogues, whig or democrat, that. It was an old Roman maxim, "The people wished to be deceived; let them." Now it is only practised on; not repeated—in public.
Let us deal justly even with war, giving that its due. There is one class of men who find their pecuniary advantage in it. I mean army contractors, when they chance to be favorites of the party in power; men who let steamboats to lie idle at $500 a day. This class of men rejoice in a war. The country may become poor, they are sure to be rich. Yet another class turn war to account, get the "glory," and become important in song and sermon. I see it stated in a newspaper that the Duke of Wellington has received, as gratuities for his military services, $5,400,000, and $40,000 a year in pensions!
But the waste of property is the smallest part of the evil. The waste of life in war is yet more terrible. Human life is a sacred thing. Go out into the lowest street of Boston; take the vilest and most squalid man in that miserable lane, and he is dear to some one. He is called brother; perhaps husband; it may be father; at least, son. A human heart, sadly joyful, beat over him before he was born. He has been pressed fondly to his mother's arms. Her tears and her smiles have been for him; perhaps also her prayers. His blood may be counted mean and vile by the great men of the earth who love nothing so well as the dear people, for he has no "coat of arms," no liveried servant to attend him, but it has run down from the same first man. His family is ancient as that of the most long descended king. God made him; made this splendid universe to wait on him and teach him; sent his Christ to save him. He is an immortal soul. Needlessly to spill that man's blood is an awful sin. It will cry against you out of the ground—Cain! where is thy brother? Now in war you bring together 50,000 men like him on one side, and 50,000 of a different nation on the other. They have no natural quarrel with one another. The earth is wide enough for both; neither hinders the sun from the other. Many come unwillingly; many not knowing what they fight for. It is but accident that determines on which side the man shall fight. The cannons pour their shot—round, grape, canister; the howitzers scatter their bursting shells; the muskets rain their leaden death; the sword, the bayonet, the horses' iron hoof, the wheels of the artillery, grind the men down into trodden dust. There they lie, the two masses of burning valor, extinguished, quenched, and grimly dead, each covering with his body the spot he defended with his arms. They had no quarrel; yet they lie there, slain by a brother's hand. It is not old and decrepid men, but men of the productive age, full of lusty life.
But it is only the smallest part that perish in battle. Exposure to cold, wet, heat; unhealthy climates, unwholesome food, rum, and forced marches, bring on diseases which mow down the poor soldiers worse than musketry and grape. Others languish of wounds, and slowly procrastinate a dreadful and a tenfold death. Far away, there are widows, orphans, childless old fathers, who pore over the daily news to learn at random the fate of a son, a father, or a husband! They crowd disconsolate into the churches, seeking of God the comfort men took from them, praying in the bitterness of a broken heart, while the priest gives thanks for "a famous victory," and hangs up the bloody standard over his pulpit!
When ordinary disease cuts off a man, when he dies at his duty, there is some comfort in that loss. "It was the ordinance of God," you say. You minister to his wants; you smoothe down the pillow for the aching head; your love beguiles the torment of disease, and your own bosom gathers half the darts of death. He goes in his time and God takes him. But when he dies in such a war, in battle, it is man who has robbed him of life. It is a murderer that is butchered. Nothing alleviates that bitter, burning smart!
Others not slain are maimed for life. This has no eyes; that no hands; another no feet nor legs. This has been pierced by lances, and torn with the shot, till scarce any thing human is left. The wreck of a body is crazed with pains God never meant for man. The mother that bore him would not know her child. Count the orphan asylums in Germany and Holland; go into the hospital at Greenwich, that of the invalids in Paris, you see the "trophies" of Napoleon and Wellington. Go to the arsenal at Toulon, see the wooden legs piled up there for men now active and whole, and you will think a little of the physical horrors of war.
In Boston there are perhaps about 25,000 able-bodied men between 18 and 45. Suppose them all slain in battle, or mortally hurt, or mown down by the camp-fever, vomito, or other diseases of war, and then fancy the distress, the heart-sickness amid wives, mothers, daughters, sons and fathers, here! Yet 25,000 is a small number to be murdered in "a famous victory;" a trifle for a whole "glorious campaign" in a great war. The men of Boston are no better loved than the men of Tamaulipas. There is scarce an old family, of the middle class, in all New England, which did not thus smart in the Revolution; many, which have not, to this day, recovered from the bloody blow then falling on them. Think, wives, of the butchery of your husbands; think, mothers, of the murder of your sons!
Here, too, the burden of battle falls mainly on the humble class. They pay the great tribute of money; they pay also the horrid tax of blood. It was not your rich men who fought even the Revolution; not they. Your men of property and standing were leaguing with the British, or fitting out privateers when that offered a good investment, or buying up the estates of more consistent tories; making money out of the nation's dire distress! True, there were most honorable exceptions; but such, I think, was the general rule. Let this be distinctly remembered, that the burden of battle is borne by the humble classes of men; they pay the vast tribute of money; the awful tax of blood! The "glory" is got by a few; poverty, wounds, death, are for the people!
Military glory is the poorest kind of distinction, but the most dangerous passion. It is an honor to man to be able to mould iron; to be skilful at working in cloth, wood, clay, leather. It is man's vocation to raise corn, to subdue the rebellious fibre of cotton and convert it into beautiful robes, full of comfort for the body. They are the heroes of the race who abridge the time of human toil and multiply its results; they who win great truths from God, and send them to a people's heart; they who balance the many and the one into harmonious action, so that all are united and yet each left free. But the glory which comes of epaulets and feathers; that strutting glory which is dyed in blood—what shall we say of it? In this day it is not heroism; it is an imitation of barbarism long ago passed by. Yet it is marvellous how many men are taken with a red coat! You expect it in Europe, a land of soldiers and blood. You are disappointed to find that here the champions of force should be held in honor, and that even the lowest should voluntarily enroll themselves as butchers of men!
Yet more: aggressive war is a sin; a corruption of the public morals. It is a practical denial of Christianity; a violation of God's eternal law of love. This is so plain that I shall say little upon it to-day. Your savagest and most vulgar captain would confess he does not fight as a Christian—but as a soldier; your magistrate calls for volunteers—not as a man loving Christianity, and loyal to God; only as Governor, under oath to keep the Constitution, the tradition of the elders; not under oath to keep the commandment of God! In war the laws are suspended, violence and cunning rule everywhere. The battle of Yorktown was gained by a lie, though a Washington told it. As a soldier it was his duty. Men "emulate the tiger;" the hand is bloody, and the heart hard. Robbery and murder are the rule, the glory of men. "Good men look sad, but ruffians dance and leap." Men are systematically trained to burn towns, to murder fathers and sons; taught to consider it "glory" to do so. The Government collects ruffians and cut-throats. It compels better men to serve with these and become cut-throats. It appoints chaplains to blaspheme Christianity; teaching the ruffians how to pray for the destruction of the enemy, the burning of his towns; to do this in the name of Christ and God. I do not censure all the men who serve: some of them know no better; they have heard that a man would "perish everlastingly" if he did not believe the Athanasian creed; that if he questioned the story of Jonah, or the miraculous birth of Jesus, he was in danger of hell-fire, and if he doubted damnation was sure to be damned. They never heard that such a war was a sin; that to create a war was treason, and to fight in it wrong. They never thought of thinking for themselves; their thinking was to read a newspaper, or sleep through a sermon. They counted it their duty to obey the Government without thinking if that Government be right or wrong. I deny not the noble, manly character of many a soldier, his heroism, self-denial and personal sacrifice.