CHAPTER III.

GOD, IS THE SOVEREIGN.

"We recognize God as the Supreme Disposer of our national affairs: our peace and true prosperity depend upon our allegiance to him and his eternal principles of justice and right."- CALIFORNIA CONF. OF M. E. CHURCH, 1867.

THE history, which, in its principal and controlling facts, has passed before us, has shown the hand of God so distinctly, that it must be a strange blindness which can conceal it. He appears everywhere, not only as the Creator of our great continent, but as the grand, directing Providence, the gracious Sovereign, of the nation. We have his laws, not only in the book of revelation, but in the spirit of liberty which he has imparted to our government; in the Christian character of our institutions; in the succession of facts rising above the power, and contrary to the inclinations, of men. These all reveal his stern condemnation of our personal and national sins, and his divine approval of individual and national virtue, of the true spirit of worship and piety - throughout the land. We know his will. His orders to us are as distinct and peremptory as though they had been written upon the fair face of the heavens, or proclaimed in an audible voice to every ear from his throne above. We know, that, as our Sovereign, he forbids us to worship idols; to be a nation of swearers, murderers, or adulterers; to steal, bear false witness, or covet houses or beasts, people or lands, which belong to our neighbors; that he requires us to keep sacred the holy sabbath, and to honor fathers and mothers; to love him with all our hearts, and our neighbors as ourselves. We know that all our attempts to enslave men are

denounced by his law and his administrative justice in our guilty land; and that he requires justice of us, - clear, distinct, elevated, universal justice. We know, that, as our great common Ruler, he disallows all our dishonesty, political corruption, intemperance, and bribery. If the plea of ignorance with regard to the will of a sovereign could ever avail for any nation, after the marvellous revelations of God in our history, it certainly cannot avail for us.

REBELLION IS RUIN.

We must obey. To be found in the wrong in the midst of such distinct and sublime revelations must be a grave of fence; but to be a nation of deliberate, practical atheists must be the highest crime. If our rulers dare to defy God; if they treat his holy laws with contempt, profane his sabbaths, blaspheme his name, become corrupt in character and in administration, they will call down wrath upon us. If the people -the great body of the people, who are the source of civil and political justice - become corrupt and oppressive, forgetting the lessons which have been taught them by unparalleled mercies and the most awful judgments, we may now certainly know that overwhelming disasters are before us. If the Church should become recreant to her holy trust, now that she has been shown so clearly her high position and responsibility; if her ministers should become proud and ambitious, her members earthly and sensual, and her pure, spiritual life be sacrificed for forms and a dead ritualism; if the vain pretensions of philosophy and science should supersede the pure, simple, and honest revelations of God's word, -we shall be cursed for such ecclesiastical and national crimes. We know that this is God's method of dealing with fallen churches and infidel peoples. Let the wrath which has fallen upon the Jew and the Pagan, the Mahometan and the Christian, for proud defiance of God, be our solemn warning. We are not above Almighty Power: we can by

no possible means go beyond the reach of Infinite Justice. True, the life of liberty is indestructible: but this vitalizing, pervading, immortal power may be transferred to other people; and we may go down amid the shouts of defiance and the wailings of despair, and the very name of the Great Republic become a hissing and a byword forever. Beyond all question, rebellion against God-intentional, persistent, prevailing rebellion would overwhelm this nation in de

struction.

LOYAL OBEDIENCE IS SAFETY AND SUCCESS.

Let God be honored; let righteousness, which exalteth a nation, prevail everywhere; let the Church become purer as she enlarges, more exalted in her sense of duty, clearer in her vision as she looks out upon her future responsibilities; let the ballot become the emblem of liberty and justice, and the life of divine love permeate the nation, inspiring and exalting rulers, lifting up the poor and distressed, vitalizing all legislation and administration of law, and we are safe. It is in the light of this grand revelation of power, in the presence of these great equities, that our future rises up sublimely before the eyes of men and angels to-day.

It is time for us to believe, without reservation, in the eternal safety of justice, in the infallible wisdom of God's revelations, and the absolute security of a nation ruled by a high and all-pervading sense of God, - God everywhere; God in every thing, infusing life into the public organism, health and vigor into the nation's patriotism; giving intelligence, breadth, and efficiency to the nation's philanthropy.

What power can prevail against a people rendering loyal obedience to a Sovereign so high, so pure, so omnipotent? "If God be for us, who can be against us?" In the presence of such a possibility even, the very conception of our nation's future is sublime. Let this loyal devotion to the right, to God, prevail over our personal and national vices; let the regeneration of our humanity, under the redeeming agency

of the great Messiah, go on until purified by divine power and invigorated by divine inspirations, according to the now distinctly manifested purposes of our great Sovereign, — and this nation shall stand forth "fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners."

THE UNITED STATES A GREAT CHRISTIAN POWER.

We have seen that God has intended the Great Republic for this, and this only. Whoever seeks to destroy the religious faith of its people, or their sound, trusting devotion to the purifying, elevating doctrines of Jesus Christ, is the enemy of our government; for, with this destroyed, it has absolutely no basis on which to rest. It has no other reason for existing, only that a grand Christian power was the choice and purpose of God for this Western continent and that its lead in the march of justice before the eyes of men was required for the great future. In point of fact, therefore, no treason in this land is so guilty as moral treason; no enmity to republican liberty is so perilous as enmity against God; no disloyalty so menacing as infidelity. We certainly cannot exist as a nation of atheists.

With what humble gratitude, therefore, have we traced in our remarkable history the Christian elements of our national character! How strong we have felt as we have seen clearly that God, and not man, provided the place, and formed the plan, of our national existence; that the Christian religion, embodying the purest principles known in the world, became the very first, and ultimately the controlling, organizing power of our government! How vigorously has this principle wrestled with oppression, and dashed it to the ground! How thoroughly has this, and this alone, wrought against our own personal and national vices! How evidently has this only eradicated any one of these vices! How quickly, in the absence of the laws and dominion of Jesus Christ, would they rise against and overpower us!

Let no man, therefore, no number of men, attempt to rob us of this our glory. We are not a Pagan or Mahometan, but a Christian power. As such, we are closing up the first century of our national existence; as such, we have put down our most infidel vice, American slavery, and entered upon the second great era of the development of liberty. We must now go on to perfect our system as a great system of Christian government. Our laws must all be rendered just and equal. From our State and National Constitutions the last vestige of oppression and infidelity must be eliminated, and God enthroned in all our forms of government and social life. Personal regeneration must extend until political corruption shall become improbable, unpopular, impossible; until the only way to preferment shall be that of Christian patriotism, and an honest, broad, and noble philanthropy. Then the laws which shield the public enemies in the sale of intoxicating liquors, or in any way poisoning the public morals, will disappear from our statute-books, and ample protection to innocent sufferers will take their place.

Do you say this can never be? Never? Then the regeneration which God extends to some men cannot extend to others; then the gospel of Christ is a failure, and "our preaching is vain ;" then, in the grand conflict of ages, vice is to prove itself more than a match for virtue; then the word of unchangeable truth, that "righteousness shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea," shall be demonstrated a failure. This cannot be. Long and terrible indeed will be the conflict; but the triumph is going on before our eyes. Its type is in every man created anew in Christ Jesus. Its progress is in the accumulating numbers of " the sacramental host of God's elect," and in the masterly style in which our national virtues triumph over vile forces and untoward events mighty enough to destroy any government not sustained by Omnipotent Power. Unwavering faith in the ultimate triumph of the right reposes to-day securely on the verities of history as well as upon the unalterable veracity of God.