Our Destiny
“I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.
Jefferson.
“Whatever makes men good Christians juakes them good citizens.’^
Webster.
^’■Watchman, what of the night?
The watchman said, The mor?ting
Cometh and also the flight.” Isaiah
21: II, 12.
Our country is great in its area, its fertility, its mineral resources, its diversity of climate, and its political institutions. There are no autumn leaves like ours. Other countries may excel in ruins, but none can excel this country in the beauty of its scenery. An Englishman standing at the foot of Mount Vesuvius said to an American, “You have in your country no volcanoes like that.” “True,” replied the American, “but we have a little water-fall that can put out your volcano in three minutes.” No water-falls, rivers, and lakes like ours. Our people ought to be better than any others in the world, for we ought to make some return of righteousness to God who has so abundantly blessed us.
The practical question, however, is. What
is to come of all this? What is to be our des-
185 tiny? When the prophet Isaiah asked the watchman “What of the night?” the watchman said, “The morning cometh and also the night.” In this chapter we propose to study the relation of the subjects so far discussed to the destiny of our nation, and, as we proceed, we shall try to see whether the morning cometh or the night.
I. As to our homes. The home is the fountain of health or disease, of medicine or poison, of purity or impurity. Make the home pure, and the church will be pure. As is the home, so will be the nation. If marriage is holy, husband and wife and children happy, while the divorce-court is hated and avoided as a pestilence, it may be truly said, “The morning cometh.” There is a bright future. If, on the other hand, the home is degraded, the marriage tie easily dissolved, if it is made a place of gambling, drinking, and carousing, children neglected, with no respect for parental authority, we may see written in letters of black cloud upon the future of our nation, “The night cometh.”
II. As to our bread-winners. The working people of this nation are prosperous. There are thousands out of work, to be sure, but even the men without work fare about as well as the workers in India, and other pagan countries. The laborers there are little better off than the paupers here. The destiny of the nation is, to a large extent, in the hands of the wage-earners. Mr. Gladstone is reported to have said some time ago that he regarded the trades unions and the accompanying strikes as the greatest menace to our civilization. He may be right, but organizations of working men are not in themselves evils. They educate, they make men read and think, they cultivate a spirit of fraternity. The danger is that the organization may become a machine, a sort of juggernaut that shall crush out the rights of the individual. If labor organizations obey the golden rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” and live up to the law of Christ, “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” truly “the morning cometh.” If, on the other hand, the leaders of these masses of men shall try to force a new social order upon people who are not prepared for it, make laws for lambs which must govern tigers and lions, the night of anarchy and ruin will certainly come. III. As to our money-makers. The rich are certainly growing richer, though it is not true that the poor are growing poorer. Rich men who observe the golden rule, and are permeated by the sentiment of the Scripture, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” are the real friends of the poor. Combinations of capital give us real public improvements. Without it no bridges could be erected, no railroads built, no steamship lines established. The outcry against such combinations of capital is as foolish as it is demagogic. Capitalists, like labor organizations, may be a blessing or a curse to the country. If, like the devil-fish, they have only hands for getting and holding, with no hands for giving, they are a curse. If they make money just for the sake of acquiring, and with no unselfish philanthropic purpose, if they oppress the laborer in his wages, and esteem money above man, building up themselves upon the wreck of others, they will do much toward bringing about a national night of adversity. If laborer and capitalist respect the rights of each other, prizing men above machines or money, uniting against their common foe the anarchist, and joining hands in every attempt to improve the condition of the people, then “the morning cometh,” prophetic of the noonday.
IV. As to our boys and girls. The enemy of the school-house is the enemy of this republic. We hear much about manhood suffrage, and I believe in it, but every human being has not manhood. Ignorance, either black or white, has no right to the ballot-box. No man should vote who cannot read the Constitution, and inform himself as to the principles of our government. He should be made to wait until he learns to read before he ventures to assist in governing intelligent people. But education of the head is not sufficient. Universities can breed rascals. Their knowledge enables them to make dynamite and form conspiracies against good order. Reading, writing, and arithmetic will not transform their character. There must be an education of the heart. A ragged boy from the slums, who attended the public school in a certain place, was asked, if he knew it was wrong to steal. He replied, “No.” “Is it wrong to lie?” “No.” “Well, then,” continued the questioner, “what do they teach you at school?” “Sums, sir,” was the reply. It is well to teach sums, but with that teaching should go the moral instruction which is the foundation of our government. Thieves, liars, and rakes with the ballot box at their command will bring a night of national gloom. To save the children is not only Christian but patriotic. To transform one bad boy into a good man is splendid service to one’s country. While “Chinese” Gordon was interested in many important movements, political and social, he kept hanging on the wall of his room a map covered with pins. Every day standing before this map he would move the pins. A friend asked him what that meant? He replied that each pin designated the place where one of his rescued boys was, some of them on land, others at sea, but he tried to follow each one with his prayers. More important than building up a great organization may be the salvation of some one ragged boy or girl. You may be saving a future Luther or Lincoln. The salvation of our boys and girls means the dawn of the morning. Their degradation means the coming of the night.
V. As to our amusements. It will be a dark day when we become a pleasure-seeking nation. Rome went down in that gulf. The taste of the people, given up to amusing themselves, became so morbid that they demanded in the arena not acting but reality. No make-believe murder would satisfy them; it must be real blood and a real victim. The emperors pandered to this depraved taste by filling the circle of the Coliseum with wild beasts. But the blood of animals did not appease the demand. There must be the real human gladiator, and the crowd gloated upon the scene when Christians were torn to pieces by lions and tigers. This tendency needs always to be guarded against. Those who amuse the people for pay will go just as far as decent public sentiment will permit. The theater in its spectacular obscenity, its pandering to the worst passions, is a corruptor of public morals. The need of the day is a revival of genuine Puritanism without its Puritanicalism. The Puritans believed in pleasure that exhilarates and makes healthy and beautiful. They objected to the pleasures that debase and defile. In this they were right, and we need to emulate their virtues. As this nation shall become, if it ever does, a pleasure-seeking people, revelling in scenes of indecency and cruelty, the night of moral decrepitude will gather upon us. But if our amusements are rational and moral, unbending the strain of work without breaking the stamina of character, they will add to the strength of our people, and hasten the dawn of the morning.
VI. As to our Sabbath. Israel as a nation was destroyed because she desecrated the Sabbath. Sabbath desecration is becoming a national sin, and we need to remember that in the 25th chapter of Matthew, all nations are called before God for judgment. “The wicked shall be turned into hell and all the nations that forget God.” Sabbath desecration brings to the individual its train of physical, mental and moral evils, and so to the nation. If God’s day is remembered and honored, we will keep our faces toward the sunrise. If it is forgotten and destroyed, we shall march toward the sunset of departing glory.
VII. As to our politics. If the nation is dominated by politicians who care only for success and spoils, buying votes and corrupting legislators, our destiny will be as dark as midnight.
If, on the other hand, we are led by statesmen who incarnate principles of righteousness, placing the good of the whole country above partisan victory, we shall continue to be what Bartholdi’s statue proclaims, “Liberty enlightening the world.” Through us to the oppressed of all nations “the morning cometh.”
Vin. As to our cities. The city is to be the salvation or the damnation of our civilization. It is the heart that carries out the blood, bad or good, to all the surrounding country. The city saved means the nation saved. If our cities shall be ruled by men of character, the masses evangelized, the atmosphere filled with Christian thought, and its activities dominated by Christian principles, “the morning cometh.” But if our cities are to be ruled by spoilsmen and political thugs, the masses demonized by drink, the atmosphere malodorous with infidelity, truly “the night cometh.”
IX. As to our Bible. The Bible is the foundation of this republic, and the man who writes or talks against it is the enemy of his country. As the Bible is read, believed, and lived, republican institutions which are founded upon the virtue of the people will flourish. As it is neglected and rejected, tyranny will prevail. The Bible is the promoter of civil and religipus liberty. When Alexander the Great laid siege to a city, he hung up a great lantern which was to burn day and night. As long as that lantern burned, the city might surrender, and the lives of the people would be spared, but as soon as the lantern went out, there should be war to the knife, not one should escape alive. The Bible is the lantern which God has hung out from the heavens. While it gives light there is life and safety; when it goes out there is darkness and death. The attempt to put it out is high treason. The Bible is being read in this country as never before. It is the book of the common people, and for that reason “the morning cometh.” The old Book can never be destroyed. In 1793 a red Republican in France said to a Christian, “We are going to tear down your churches and wipe out everything that reminds the people of your God.” “Pull down the stars, then,” was the reply. The stars of truth that shine in the firmament of God’s revelation can never be pulled down by the hands of infidelity.
X. As to our churches. The real church of Christ was never better than it is to-day. There is a nominal outward church, made up of mere professors and hypocrites, some of whom attend church, while they support infidel papers and give help to the enemies of 13
Christianity. Now and then one of them dies, leaving in his will the record of his hypocrisy. But in spite of this the church of Jesus is marching on to victory. God is gathering out of the world his own. If the church shall take Christ to the people, and hold before them a high standard of righteousness and spirituality, “the morning cometh.” But if, on the other hand, the church goes down to the level of sin and selfishness that prevails, she will lose her power and bring on the night. A holy, separated, consecrated Christly church is to be the salvation of the nation,
XL As to our dangers. I am not pessimistic by nature or grace. I delight in keeping my face toward the East. To every one of us Christ is the morning star. And yet we must not turn away our eyes from facts. There are dangers which threaten, and they may be averted. In the window of a Salvation Army barrack is the picture of a poor convict with two angels standing above him. One angel is “Love,” the other “Hope.” They are both seeking to gain his attention, and they are there to uplift and protect him. The man who believes in the love of God may always hope, and if God, by the manifestation of his love in Christ Jesus, can only gain our attention, and draw us to himself by the magnetism of his sacrifice on Calvary, our hearts will be
renewed, and the future made aglow with the dawn of day.
XII. As to our women. If wifehood and motherhood are held sacred, woman in the home as the helpmeet of man; if Christian women shall “prophesy” in the church, proclaiming to the world what Jesus Christ has done for her, while she leaves to man the burdens of ofcial position; if wifehood, motherhood, and sisterhood shall be allowed to speak through the ballot for the election of righteous men and the enactment of righteous laws, while women enter every sphere of industrial activity open to men, and receive the same remuneration for the same quality and quantity of work, “the morning cometh.”
But if loose views of marriage, and easy divorces shall degrade wifehood and destroy the home; if woman shall neglect to prophesy in her rush for official position in church and state, there will be the confusion and curse which always follows disobedience to God’s revealed will, and “the night cometh.”
If what has been said in the foregoing chapters fails to reach the individual, and attract his attention to Jesus Christ I have failed in my purpose. The discussion of general principles is valuable only in so far as they reach the individual.
My closing appeal is not to the crowd, to the city, to the state, or the nation, it is to YOU, the individual man, woman, or child. God saves not by wholesale. Each one must for himself come unto personal relation with God through Jesus Christ. By honoring the Son of God in our creed and lives, we do the best possible service to the church, the state, and the world. And, though I would not appeal to a selfish motive, the word of God abides, “Them that honor me, I will honor.”
When Professor Muller was in Berlin he received through Humboldt, the scientist, an invitation to dine with the Emperor Frederick William IV. The day before the dinner a young lieutenant approached Professor Muller, and laying his hand upon his shoulder said, “We advise you to leave the city within twenty-four hours.” “By whose authority?” asked the professor. “By the authority of the chief of police,” replied the lieutenant. “Tell the chief,” answered Professor Muller, “that I cannot leave within twenty-four hours, for I must dine with the Emperor to-morrow.” That afternoon the Chief of Police called in person to apologize to Professor Muller, and asked him not to mention the conduct of the lieutenant to the Emperor, for it would ruin him. He explained that the police officials had noticed Professor Muller in company with some young students who were known to be enemies of the government and for that reason they had decided to ask him to leave the city, but when they learned that he was the friend of the Emperor all of them stood ready to serve him. Link yourself by faith with Jesus Christ, and every angel in heaven is your servant. Our association with Jesus is not only salvation, but honor, power, and glory here and hereafter.