The Christian at the Ballot-Box
“Some therefore cried one thing, and some another: for the assembly was confused; and the more part knew not wherefore they were come together. And they drew Alexander out of the multitude, the Jews putting him forward. And Alexander beckoned with the hand, and would have made his defense unto the people. But when they knew that he was a Jew, all with one voice about the space of two hours cried out. Great is Diana of the Ephesians.” — Acts xix., 32, 33, 3i.
IT^PHESUS was upside down. A manufacturer of silver boxes for holding heathen images had called his laborers together to discuss the behavior of one Paul, who had been in public places assaulting image -worship, and consequently very much damaging that particular business. There was great excitement in the city. People stood in knots along the streets, violently gesticulating, and calling each other hard names. Some of the people favored the policy of the silversmith; other people favored the policy of Paul. There were great moral questions involved; but these did not bother them at all. The only question about which they seemed to be interested was concerning the wages and the salaried positions. The silversmith and his compeers had put up factories at great expense for the making of these silver boxes; and now, if this new policy is to be inaugurated, the business will go down, the laborers will be thrown out of employment, and the whole city will suffer. Well, what is to be done? “Call a convention,” says some one; for in all ages a convention has been
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a panacea for public evils. The convention is called, and, as they want the largest room in the city, they take the theatre. Having there assembled, they all want to get the floor, and they all want to talk at once. You know what excitement that always makes in a convention, where a great many people want to talk at once. Some cried one thing, some cried another. Some wanted to denounce, some wanted to resolve. After a while a prominent man gets the floor, and he begins to speak; but they very soon hiss him down, and then the confusion rises into worse uproar, and they begin to shout, all of them together, and they keep on until they are red in the face and hoarse in the throat, for two long hours crying out, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians! Great is Diana of the Ephesians!”
The whole scene reminds me of the excitement we have almost every autumn at the elections. While that goddess Diana has lost her worshipers, and her temples have gone into the dust, our American people want to set up a god in place of it, and they want us all to bow down before it; and that god is Political Party. Considering our superior civilization, I have to declare to you that the Ephesian idolatry was less offensive in the sight of God than is this all-absorbing American partisanship.
While there are honest men, true men, Christian men, who stand in both political parties, and who come into the autumnal elections resolving to serve their city or their State or the nation in the best possible way, I have noticed also that with many it is a mere contest between the ins and the outs — those who are in trying to stay in and keep the outs out, and those who are out trying to get in and thrust the ins out. And one party cries, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians!” and the other party cries,” Great is
Diana of the Ephesians!” neither of them honest enough to say, “Great is my pocket-book!”
Once or twice a year it is my custom to talk to the people about public affairs from what I call a Christian standpoint, and this morning I have chosen for that duty. I hope to say a practical word. History tells us of a sermon once preached amidst the Highlands of Scotland — a sermon two hours long — on the sin of luxury, where there were not more than three pairs of shoes in the audience; and daring our last war a good man went into a hospital distributing tracts, and gave a tract on “The Sin of Dancing” to a man both of whose legs had been amputated! But I hope this morning to present an appropriate and adapted word, as next Tuesday, at the ballot-box, great affairs are to be settled. The Rev. Dr. Emmons, in the early history of our country, in Massachusetts, preached about the election of Thomas Jefferson to the Presidency. The Rev. Dr. Mayhew, of Boston, in the early days of our republic, preached about the repeal of the Stamp Act. There are times when ministers of Christ must look off upon public affairs and discuss them. We need go back to no example. Every man is, before God, responsible for his own duty. If the Norwegian boasts of his home of rocks, and the Siberian is pleased with his land of perpetual snow; if the Roman thought that the muddy Tiber was the favored river in the sight of heaven, and if the Laplander shivers out his eulogy of his native clime, and if the Chinese have pity for any body born outside the “flowery kingdom,” shall not we, born under these fair skies, and standing day by day amidst these glorious civil and religious liberties, be public-spirited? I propose to toll the people very plainly what I consider to be their Christian duty at the ballot-box.
First, set yourselves against all ‘political falsehood. The most monstrous lies ever told in this country are during the elections. I stop at the door of a Democratic meeting and listen, and hear that the Republicans are thieves. I stop at the door of a Republican meeting and listen, and hear that the Democrats are scoundrels. Our public men microscopized, and the truth distorted. Who believes a tenth part of what he reads or hears in the autumnal elections? Men who at other seasons of the year are very careful in their speech become peddlers of scandal.
In the Far East there is a place where, once a year, they let the people do as they please and say what they please, and the place is full of uproar, misrule, and wickedness, and they call it the “Devil’s day.” The nearest approximation to that in this country has been the first Tuesday in November. The community at such times seem to say, “Go to, now; let us have a good time at lying.” Prominent candidates for office are denounced as renegade and inebriate. A small lie will start in the corner of a country newspaper, and keep on running until it has captured the printing-presses of the whole continent. What garbling of speeches! What misinterpretation of motives! What npisrepresentation of individual antecedents! To capture the unwary you shall have a ticket with Democratic heading and Republican names following, and then a Republican heading with Democratic names following; and the poor man will stand at the polls bewildered, at last, perhaps, voting for those whom he has been three weeks vociferously denouncing. O Christian men! frown upon this political fiilsehood! Remember that a political lie is as black as any other kind of a lie. God has recorded all the falsehoods that have been told at the city. State, or national
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elections since the foundation of this Government; and, though the perpetrators and their victims may have gone into the dust, in the last day judgment will be awarded. The falsehoods that Aaron Burr breathed into the ear of Blennerhasset, the slanders that Lieutenant-general Gage proclaimed about George Washington, the misrepresentations in regard to James Monroe, are as fresh on God’s book to-day as the lie that was printed last week about Samuel J. Tilden or Governor Dix. “And all liars shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.”
Again, / counsel you as Christian men to set yourselves against the 77risuse of money in yolitical campaigns. Of the tens of thousands of dollars already spent this autumn, how much of the amount do you suppose has been properly used? You have a right to spend money for the publishing of political tracts, for the establishment of organizations for the carrying-out of what you consider to be the best; you have a right to appeal to the reason of men by argument and statistics and by facts; but lie who puts a bribe into the hand of a voter, or plies weak men with mercenary and corrupt motives, commits a sin against God and the nation. Bribery is one of the most appalling sins of this country. God says, “Fires shall consume the tabernacles of bribery.” Have nothing to do with such a sin, O Christian man! Fling it from the ballot-box. Hand over to the police the man who attempts to tamper with your vote, and remember that elections that can not be carried without bribes ought never to be carried at all.
Again, / 05/1; yon as CJiristian men to set yourselves against the dissipations that hover over the hallot-hox. Let me say that no man can afford to go into political life who is not a teetotaler. Hot political discussion somehow creates an unnatural thirst, and hundreds of thousands of men have gone down into drunkenness through political life. After an exciting canvass through the evening you must “take something;” and rising in the morning with less animation than usual, you must “take something;” and going off among your comrades through the forenoon, you meet political friends, and you must “take something;” and in the afternoon you meet other political friends, and you must “take something;” and before night has come something has taken you. There are but few cases where men have been able to stand up against the dissipations of political life. Joseph was a politician, but he maintained his integrity. Daniel was a politician, but he was a teetotaler to the last. Abraham was a politician, but he was always characterized as the father of the faithful. Moses was a politician, the grandest of them; but he honored God more than he did the Pharaohs. And there are hundreds of Christian men now in the political parties, maintaining their integrity, even when they are obliged to stand amidst the blasted, lecherous, and loathsome crew that sometimes surround the ballot-box; these Christian men doing their political duty, and then coming back to the praj’er-meetings and Christian circles as pure as when they went out. But that is not the ordinary circumstance; that is the exception. How often you see men coming back from the political conflict, and their eye is glazed, and their check has an unnatural flush, and they talk louder than they usually do, and at the least provocation they will bet, and you say they are convivial, or they are exceedingly vivacious, or you apply some other sweet name to them; but God knows they are drunk! Some of you, a month or six weeks ago,
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had no more religion than you ought to have, and after the elections are over, to calculate how much religion you have left will be a sum in vulgar fractions. Oh, the pressure is tremendous!
How many mighty intellects have gone down under the dissipation of politics! I think of one who came from the West. He was able to stand out against the whole American Senate. God had given him faculties enough to govern a kingdom, or to frame a constitution. His voice was terrible to his country’s enemies, and a mighty inspiration in the day of national peril. He was in a flur way to become our President; but twenty glasses of strong drink a day were his usual allowance, and he went down into the habits of a confirmed inebriate. Alas for him! Though a costly monument has been reared over his resting-place, and though in the presence of the laying of the corner-stone there stood military and ecclesiastical dignitaries, the young men of this country shall not be denied the awful lesson that the agency by which the world was robbed of one of its mightiest intellects, and our country of one of its ablest constitutional defenders, was the dissipation of political life. You want to know who I mean? Young man, ask your fither when you get home. The adverse tide is fearful, and I warn you against it!
You need not go far off to find the worn-out politician. Here he is, stumbling along the highway, his limbs hardly able to hold him up. Bent over and pale with exhausting sickness. Surly to any body who accosts him. His last decent article of apparel pawned for strong drink. Glad if, when going by a grocery, some low acquaintance invites him in to take a sip of ale, and then wiping his lip with his greasy sleeve. Kicked off the steps by men who once were proud to be bis constituents. Manhood obliterated. Lip blistered with a curse. Scars of brutal assault on cheek and brow. Foul-mouthed. A crouching, staor2;ering, wheezing wretch. No friends. No God. No hope. No heaven. That is your worn-out politician. That is what some of you will become unless by this morning’s warning, and the mercy of God, 3’our steps are arrested. Oh, there are no words enough potent, enough portentous, enough consuming, enough damning, to describe the horrible drunkenness that has rolled over this land, and that has bent down the necks of some of the mightiest intellects, until they have been compelled to drink out of the trough of bestiality and abomination! I warn 3’oung men against political life, unless they are teetotalers and consecrated Christian men.
Again, I counsel you that, when you go to the ballot-box at the city or the State or the national elections, you recognize God.^ and apjyeal to him for his blessing. There is a power higher than the ballot-box, than the Gubernatorial chair, than the Presidential White House. It is high time that we put less confidence in political platforms and more confidence in God. See what a weak thing is human foresight. How little our wise men seem to know! See how, every autumn, thousands of men who are clambering up for higher positions are turned under. God upsets them. Every man, every party, every nation, has a mission to perform. Failing to perform it, down he goes.
God said to the House of Bourbon, “Remodel France, and establish equity.” House of Bourbon would not do it, Down it went. God said to the House of Stuart, “Make the English people free. God-fearing, and happy.” House of Stuart would not do it. Down it went. God
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said to the House of Hapsburg, “Rule Austria in righteousness, and open the prison -houses until the captives fihall go free.” House of Hapsburg refuses to do it. Down it goes. God says to the political parties in this day, “By the principles of Christianity remodel, govern, educate, save the people.” Failing to do that, down they go, burying in their ruins their disciples and advocates. God can spare all the political intriguers of this day, and can raise up another generation who shall do justice and love mercy. If God could spare Luther before the Reformation was done; and if he could spare Washington before free government had been fully tested; and if he could spare Howard before more than one out of a thousand dungeons had been alleviated; and if he could spare Robert M’Cheyne just as Scotland was gathering to his burning utterances; and if he could spare Thomas Clarkson while yet millions of his fellow -men had chains rusting to the bone — then he can spare any man, and he can spare any party. That man who, through cowardice or blind idolatry of party, forsakes the cause of righteousness, goes down, and the armed battalions of God march over him.
O Christian men! take out your Bible this afternoon, and in the light of that word make up your mind as to what is your duty as citizens. Remember that the highest kind of a patriot is a Christian patriot. Consecrate yourselves first to God, then you will know how to consecrate yourselves to your country All these political excitements will be gone. Ballot-boxes and Gubernatorial chairs and continents will smoke in the final conflagration; but those who love God and do their best shall come to lustrous dominion after the stars have ceased their shininof, and the ocean has heaved its last billow, and the
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closing thunder of the judgment- day shall toll at the funeral of a world! Oh, prepare for that day! Next Tuesday questions of the State will be settled; but there comes a day when the questions of eternity will be decided. You may vote right, and may get the victory at the ballot-box, and yet suffer eternal defeat. After you have cast your last vote, where will you go to? In this country there are two parties. You belong to the one or the other of them. Likewise in eternity there will be two parties, and only two. “These shall go away into everlasting punishment; but the righteous into life eternal.” To which party will you belong? God grant that, while you look after the welfare of the land in which God has graciously cast your lot, you may not forget to h)ok after your soul — blood - bought, judgment -bound, immortal! God save the people!