SERMON IV.

REV. STEPHEN H. TYNG, D. D.

"And the king of Israel said unto Elisha, when he saw them, My father, shall I smite them? shall I smite them? And he answered, Thou shalt not smite them. Wouldst thou smite those whom thou hast taken captive with thy sword and with thy bow? Set bread and water before them, that they may eat and drink, and go to their master."-II KINGS vi. 21.

THE point of this story is very manifest. The principle which it establishes is also very clear. The simple ques tion proposed to the prophet and answered by him was: What shall be our treatment of an enemy subdued? One class of sentiment demands, in the very language of man's nature: "Shall I smite them?" Another replies in the spirit of the divine teaching: "Set bread and water before them, and let them go." The combination of both would be in the analogy of the divine administration. "Behold the goodness and the severity of God." There are those involved in every such crisis, the sparing of whom is false to the true operation of mercy. There are those also, the punishing of whom would be an avenging undue to justice.

Both mercy and justice derive their very nature and power from a proportionate discernment. When man describes either of them as blind and unlimited, he paints them as arbitrary, tyrannical, and unreasoning. In a just and equitable administration of government, whether dis

tributing its rewards or its penalties, there must be the most accurate discerning of varied responsibility. The leaders in crime should never be excused from the just penalty of their offence. The subordinates-subjects of relative influence,-victims of determined power,-often more sinned against than sinning-are never to be dealt with, on the same plane of responsibility. For them, mercy delights to rejoice against judgment, and the highest sovereignty may well display itself in the most complete forgiveness.

In the story which lies before us now, four separate facts are very remarkable, and to our purpose extremely appropriate. I. The warfare was really against the God of Israel. II. The power which prevailed was the providence of God. III. The victory attained was the gift of God. IV. The resulting treatment of the captives was the example of God.

These are very important propositions in any earthly crisis. The field of their illustration was very limited in the history of Israel. The extent of the field, however, will not affect the propriety of their application. I deem them remarkably applicable to our own national condition. And as you require and expect me, on these occasions of a nation's worship, to speak on the subjects of the nation's interest, I shall freely speak of the elements and obligations of the present crisis. I assume these four propositions as absolutely and minutely illustrated by our national condition.

I. The warfare which this Southern rebellion has made on our Government and nation, has been really a warfare against God. Not Israel was more truly a nation divinely

collected, divinely governed, divinely commissioned, divinely prospered, than have been the United States of America. It is no boastful nationalism, to say that this nation, in its establishment and prosperity, was the last hope in a weary world that man could ever on earth enjoy a peaceful and protected liberty. This broad, unoccupied continent, which God had reserved for its possession, was the last open field of earth remaining on which to try the grand experiment of a moral, social, intellectual advancement of the peaceful poor of the human family.

Freedom, education, orderly government, secure possessions, equal social rights, triumphant, stable law, universal possibility and prospect of advancement, complete freedom in man's personal relations to God, had been in all generations, and among all people, flying before the violence of savage force and brutish selfishness. Here was the last possible opening for their peaceful conquest. Here only on earth could human welfare be attained, without the violence of destructive revolutions and the overthrow of nations in the confusion of war and blood. To make the other three quarters of the globe free and happy, demanded a process of previous destruction of reigning evil. To make America free, happy, and prosperous, required only that it should be settled in peace, prospered in liberty, and hallowed in prayer. If it could thus be settled with plants of renown, generations to come should gather from it the fruits of paradise and glory.

The actual circumstances combining to make up the history of the settlement of this nation, were so peculiarly and remarkably an ordering and arrangement in divine providence, that I will not waste your time, or trifle with

your intelligence, by demonstrating in detail the fact, that God had chosen this place and this people for a special exhibition of his own wisdom and goodness in the government of man, and for the accomplishment of great results in human happiness, which had been nowhere else attained. I should be ready to affirm that whoever warred with the integrity, prosperity, and onward growth of this nation, warred with the plans and purposes of God.

But the warfare through which we have now passed, was organized expressly to overthrow the government and integrity of the American nation, for the establishment of local sectional sovereignties. It was avowed to be for the arrest and destruction of the dominion of universal liberty, and for the maintenance and perpetuation of American slavery. It was to establish a perpetual degradation of honorable labor and of the hard-toiling laboring classes, by making the capital of wealth the owner of the labor of poverty. It was to create and maintain a repulsive rivalship of distinct and contending peoples, in the place of one, united, and mutually sustaining nation. It was to overturn the whole power which this nation was exercising as a nation, to bless and exalt the earth, by breaking it up into inferior and inefficient communities, an example of good to none, a probable curse to all.

I cannot conceive of a warfare, in its inauguration and purpose, more completely against the purposes and the commands of the Most High. If we could imagine its success in the accomplishment of these avowed purposes of this rebellion, it would be impossible to calculate, in human reasoning, the sorrows which it would have brought upon a laboring earth. It would have been the