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The Spirit Proper to the Times.


A SERMON

PREACHED IN KING'S CHAPEL, BOSTON,

SUNDAY, MAY 12, 1861.

BY

JAMES WALKER, D.D.


PRINTED AT THE REQUEST OF THE WARDENS OF THE SOCIETY.

BOSTON:
PRESS OF GEO. C. RAND & AVERY,
NO. 3 CORNHILL.
1861.




SERMON.

    "With such sacrifices God is well pleased."--_Hebrews_ xiii. 16.


I am to speak of public spirit, as manifested in a willingness to make
sacrifices for the public good.

The necessity for making sacrifices would seem to be founded in this:
as we cannot have every thing, we must be willing to sacrifice some
things in order to obtain or secure others. Wicked men recognize and
act upon this principle. Can you not recall more than one person in
your own circle of acquaintances who is sacrificing his health, his
good name, his domestic comfort, to vicious indulgences? Worldly
people recognize and act upon this principle. Look at that miser: he
is hoarding up his thousands and his tens of thousands, but in order
to do so, is he not sacrificing every thing which makes life worth
having? It is a mistake to suppose that religion, or morality, or the
public necessities, ever call upon us to make greater sacrifices than
those which men are continually making to sin and the world, to
fashion and fame, to "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and
the pride of life."

In times of ease, and abundance, and tranquillity, the public takes
care of itself. There are few sacrifices on the part of individuals
for the public good, because there are few occasions for such
sacrifices. They are not made because not called for, because not
needed. Moreover, private benevolence is apt at such times to become
less active, and, for the same reason, that is to say, because less
of it is required.

This state of things is seized upon by those who are eager to put the
worst possible construction on human nature and human conduct, as
evidence of extreme degeneracy. How often are we to be told that our
present troubles are sent upon us in order to lift the whole community
out of the mire of money-getting propensities, where every thing like
public spirit was in danger of being swallowed up and lost? I protest
against this wholesale abuse of what has been,--at best, a gross
exaggeration. The whole truth in this matter is told in a few words.
By constitution, by habit, by circumstances, our people are intensely
active; and this activity, for want of other objects, has been turned
into the channels of material prosperity. If, therefore, you merely
affirm their excessive eagerness in acquisition, I grant it; but if,
not content with this, you go on to charge them with being niggards in
expending what they have acquired, I deny it, emphatically, utterly.
Read the history of what has been done in this commonwealth, in this
city, during the last twenty-five years for humanity, for education,
for science and the arts, for every form of public use or human need,
and then say, if you can, that public spirit has been dying out. Our
people have never been otherwise than public spirited, and hence the
promptness and unanimity of their response to this new call to public
duty. Hence also our confidence in it,--not as an excitement merely,
which a day has made, and a day may unmake, but as an expression of
character.

Let us, however, be just to the excitement itself, considered as the
sudden and spontaneous uprising of a whole community to sustain the
government. We need demonstrations of this kind, from time to time,
to reassure us that all men have souls. It is worth a great deal
merely as an experiment, on a large scale, to prove that the moral and
social instincts are as much a part of human nature as the selfish
instincts. But he must be a superficial observer who can see nothing
in this vast movement but the play of instincts. It is a great moral
force.

Not a little of what passes for loyalty or patriotism in other
countries is blind impulse, growing out of mere attachment to the
soil, or the power of custom, or a helpless feeling of dependence on
things as they are. "If my father in his grave could hear of this
war," said a Spanish peasant, "his bones would not rest." Yet what
earthly interest, what intelligible concern had Spanish peasants in
the rivalships and struggles of princes who thought of nothing but
their own or their family aggrandizement. Of such loyalty, of such
patriotism, there never has been much in this country, and there never
will be. The loyal and patriotic States have risen up as one man to
maintain the government, because the government represents the great
ideas of order and liberty. It is not an excitement of irritation
merely, or of wounded vanity, or of a selfish and discomfited
ambition. It is, as I have said, a great moral force, a reverence for
order and liberty; an excitement, if you will have it so, but an
excitement resting on solid and intelligible principle, and one,
therefore, which trial and sacrifice will be likely to convert into
earnest and solemn purpose.

I suppose some are full of concern as to the effect which trial and
sacrifice will really have on this new outbreak of public spirit. They
fear that suffering for our principles will abate our confidence in
them, or at least our interest in them, and so the ardor will die
away. So doubtless, it will in some cases, for every community has
its representatives of "the seed that was sown on stony ground"; but
it will be the exception and not the rule. Human nature, if it has
fair play, will never lead a single individual to think less of a
privilege or blessing, merely because it has cost more. When has
religion interested men the most, and the most generally? Precisely at
those times when men were religious at the greatest sacrifices.
Indeed, it is on this principle that we explain the decay of a proper
love of country among us for the last twenty or thirty years; it is
because we have had so little to do for our country. A foreign war,
even a famine or a pestilence, if it had been sufficiently severe,
would have saved us from our present trouble and humiliation. So long
as the people think and feel together, they hold each other up, and
the sacrifices in which they express their public spirit, instead of
wearing it out, will purify it and keep it alive.

And this is not all. From the language sometimes used in speaking of
sacrifices for the public good, it might almost be supposed that the
making of them is simply painful, simply distressing. But is it so? Of
course both instinct and duty impel us to look out for ourselves; but
is it not equally true that both instinct and duty impel us to help
one another, and provide for the common weal? A generous and noble
deed,--simply painful, simply distressing! I will not deny that a long
life of selfishness, meanness, and servility may bring here and there
one to look on things in this light, but not until he is, in the
language of Scripture, "without natural affection." "Public spirit,"
so an eminent jurist has defined it, "is the whole body of those
affections which unite men's hearts to the commonwealth." What I
insist upon is, that these are real and natural affections, and that,
in acting them out, we find a real and natural satisfaction. Who will
say that the happiest moments of his existence have not been those in
which he was conscious of living for others, and not for himself?
There are many things in the present aspect of our public affairs to
fill us with regret and anxiety, but a gleam of light shines through
the cloud. Every man and woman and child will be moved to act more
unselfishly, more nobly; life will cost more, but it will also be
worth more.

It is extremely difficult to do justice to this human nature of
ours,--capable at once of such mean and little things, of such noble
and great things. There is, however, one distinction which all, I
suppose, will accord to it: I mean its tendency to rise up and meet
great emergencies. In every soul that lives there is an untold amount
of latent energy and public spirit which only waits for the occasion
to call it forth. Read the history of the Netherlands,--a people made
up, for the most part, of merchants and manufacturers, of traders and
artisans, growing rich and apparently thinking of little else. A blow
is struck at the free institutions which they had inherited from their
ancestors; immediately a new spirit reveals itself, and all Europe
rings with the story of their heroic daring and suffering.

The sacrifices which the country asks for in time of war are those of
_property, labor, and life_; and she does not ask in vain.

We are continually reminded that this rebellion has taken place at a
moment of great national prosperity, to blast it all. The sacrifices
of _property_, in a thousand ways, must be immense; every man,
however, from his diminished fortune, is "ready to distribute," and
"not grudgingly or of necessity." His public spirit makes him love to
give. I doubt whether it is common for rich men to think any better of
themselves merely because they are rich; but if they can make their
riches, and their financial skill, available to save the State, they
will think better of themselves, and they will have a right to do so.
There is a natural jealousy of wealth, especially when it takes the
form of a passion for accumulation, which demagogues and fanatics know
how to use for bad ends. One of the incidental benefits resulting from
a great national struggle is, that all these social misunderstandings
and heart-burnings are suspended, are healed. The people see and feel
and acknowledge that a real title to nobility is found, not in wealth
itself, but in wealth generously and nobly bestowed.

Others are manifesting their public spirit by sacrifices of _time_ and
_labor_. And here I wish I could find fit terms in which to
acknowledge the services and sufferings of women. You have heard of
the Spartan mother equipping her son for battle, and giving him, last
of all, the shield, with the brief and stern farewell, "With it or on
it." We expect no such stoicism now, but we expect what is better. We
expect that Christian mothers, with hearts bleeding for their country,
and bleeding for their children, will say, "It is the will of God that
they should go," and, furthermore, that they will go, having always
been taught at home that there are many things worse than death. And
then how many fingers are busily at work in all classes, rich and poor
alike, to provide for the comfort of those who go? They even ask for
the privilege of tending the sick and wounded. How many, brought up in
ease and affluence, would follow in the steps of her whose tender
voice, the very rustle of whose dress by the bedside of the dying
soldier was as a glimpse of heaven. I have heard men call this
"romance." But is it well, or right, or tolerable, in times like
these, to look round for side motives, when the motive avowed is
reasonable and probable? I believe, as I believe I live, that many who
never knew what it is to work before, are ready to thank God for the
chance they now have to live to some purpose.

But will our men _fight_? There is no denying that this word sounds
disagreeably in a Christian discourse; still, I have no misgivings in
respect to it,--no extravagances to take back; not the beginning of a
doubt but that there are wars which, on one side at least, are
necessary, and just, and holy. The Bible contains no express and
unqualified prohibition of war; neither can such prohibition be said
to be intimated or implied in any text or in the general tenor of
Scripture, without making it subversive, at the same time, of civil
government. Besides, I remember that the first person not a Jew, in
whose favor our Lord wrought a miracle, was a Roman centurion; and
that the first person not a Jew admitted into the Christian church,
was also a Roman centurion; and not a syllable is said against their
calling, neither is there a shadow of evidence that they ever changed
it. Undoubtedly it is the legitimate and certain tendency of the
spirit of the gospel, as it is more and more diffused in the world, to
introduce universal peace; but the spirit of the gospel acts from
within outwardly, and not from without inwardly. Thus the stop to be
put to war is to be expected, not so much by chaining down those
irrepressible instincts which lead men to resist wrong, as by
eradicating the disposition to do wrong. Wars will cease when all men
are Christians, and perfect Christians; but this will not be to-day
nor to-morrow.

Accordingly, I am not surprised that the call to arms has been
responded to with such enthusiasm,--or that it is sustained by the
whole moral and religious sentiment of the community. Men are ready to
offer up not only their money and their labor, but also their lives.
Are you afraid that your sons and brothers will be cowards merely
because they are not duelists? because they have never been engaged in
a street-fight? because prayers were made at their departure? or
because they have carried their bibles with them? Did Cromwell's
soldiers flee before the cavaliers because they were sober and
God-fearing men? Our people have no love for fighting, as a pastime;
let it, however, become a serious business, and they will show that
their veins are full of the blood that flowed so freely in other days.

These are some of the ways in which a people may manifest their public
spirit, and in which our people are manifesting it now. "With such
sacrifices God is well pleased." I have given a definition of public
spirit from the jurists, but I like still better the Bible definition.
In the words of the prophet, "They helped every one his neighbor, and
every one said to his brother, Be of good courage."

In looking back on what has been said, I find I have not spoken
against anybody, not even against our enemies. Perhaps we have had
enough of invective; at any rate the pulpit may spare it. God is my
witness, I feel no vindictive resentment, no bitter hostility against
those who have been swept away by this terrible delusion. Moreover, I
confess to being greatly moved by the circumstance that in some
respects what is true of us is true also of them. They seem to be of
one mind; their religious men appeal with confidence to the righteous
Judge; their women are working day and night to help forward the
cause. If it were a mere question of interest, or passion, or
prejudice between us and them, it might be said that one side is as
likely to be self-deceived as the other. But it is not. By striking at
the principles of all constitutional and free government, and this too
avowedly for the purpose of founding society on the servitude of an
inferior race, on whose toil the more favored races are to live, they
have put themselves in opposition to the settled convictions and the
moral sense of good men all over the world.

To the student of history it is no new thing that a whole community
should be given over "to believe a lie,"--not the less mad, because
all mad together. The process by which this state of things is brought
about is always substantially the same. Egotism, vanity, disappointed
ambition, sectional jealousies, a real or supposed interest or
expediency induce them to _wish_ that a wrong course were the right
one. They try to convince themselves that it is so, and all such
efforts to sophisticate the conscience, if persisted in, are _punished
by entire success_. The spectacle does not inspire me with hate; it
fills me with wonder and profound melancholy. Do these men think that
by altering their opinion of right they can alter the nature of
things, or make wrong come out right in the great and solemn issues
which are before us? We stand where their own great men stood in the
best days of the republic. As regards the leading rights and interests
at stake, our consciences are but the echo of the conscience of the
Christian world. The fathers of the Revolution, one and all, are
looking down with sorrow and indignation on this attempt to break up
and destroy their work.

Nevertheless, it can do no good to begin by overvaluing ourselves, or
undervaluing our enemies. We know that the behests of a righteous
Providence will be accomplished, but we do not know in what way. It is
more than probable that in the troubles and distractions which have
come upon the country we ourselves have something to answer for. For
this reason reverses and humiliations may be in store for us, before
we are accounted worthy to carry out the Divine judgments. But there
can be no doubt as to the end. A struggle has been forced upon us by a
doomed people, if the laws of nature do not fail, if there is any
meaning in the moral sentiments of mankind, or any justice in
heaven.

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End of Project Gutenberg's The Spirit Proper to the Times., by James Walker