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Download PDF for ACM-2007.19.7_09 (project ID 12257)
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December, 1860. DOUGLASS' MONTHLY. 377 [[3 columns]] [[column 1]] points. We find that Jefferson, himself a slaveholder, uttered an awful truth when he said that the Almighty has not one attribute that can take part in behalf of the oppressor in this conflict. We find that the love of God and the oppressor binds us to report to the slaveholder, from the Word of God, the name and the nature of his guilt, as God describes it, and the precise reprobation with which God has branded it, forbidding it on pain of death. It is a cardinal principle of the morality of love in such a case, that thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbor; thou shalt not suffer sin upon him. We find that the heaviest maledictions in the Word of God are against this iniquity — that all its features are made the subject of special and awful maledictions in turn; and not only so, but the fountain crime, the act and sin of slaveholding, whence flow all the consequent particular violations of every commandment in the Decalogue, is set apart by itself — apart from its consequences, as a sin in itself, in the same category with the crime of murder. We ask, for what possible purposes are these maledictions crowded and concentrated in God's Word, but to be applied against that very sin, to be used in God's name in the great work of its abolition. They are to be used in reliance on God, under the influence of his Spirit, in the exercise of love, and not of wrath. But they must be used, and who can use them but the church of God and the ministry of Jesus Christ, to whom his Word is command, with command and authority to apply it against all sin, whether men will hear or forbear. There is nothing else that will reach men's consciences, nothing that will subdue them, but this will, for God has declared it. His own omnipotence is committed to His church, if they will throw themselves on Him, and just as His early disciples did, speak His Word in the face of opposing nations. This is the only salvation, God's wrath revealed from Heaven against all unrighteousness, and Jesus as the Savior of sinners, not in their sins, but from them. Now, if the Church of God, if the ministers of Jesus had taken His Word and applied it against this sin many years ago, it would have been abolished. If the church, in the spirit of love and power, and of a sound mind, had applied the pungent and terrible fire of the Word against those who practice this sin, there would have been no need of any other warfare against it. (Cheers.) There would have been no need of John Brown, and no such awful tragedy as the judicial murder of that majestic Christian hero —(applause)— if the ministry had armed themselves with God's Word, and made that moral incessant resistance against the sin and its supports which they were bound to do. But the longer this faithfulness is deferred, the more necessary it becomes, and the greater is the burden of those who come after, and whose souls God may set on fire, and the greater are the perils and disadvantages under which they work, and the greater is the agitation and enmity and wrath which the Word produces, and the greater the demand for the extremest intensity and incessantness in the play of its thunderings and lightnings. And this is just the spectacle, the fierce moral conflict, God's Word and Satan grappling, that we desire to see ; this is just the trial and the development of Christianity which we are longing, yearning to behold. This is the vindication of the Cross from the charge of being the minister of sin and such sin, which the church and the ministry are bound in faithfulness to their Master, though its cost be even unto death, to fling forth to a gazing world ; this conquest of the most gigantic sin that ever bound the world and infected and corrupted the church in its pestilential involutions. (Cheers.) Let but a few churches unite, filled with the spirit of the old Hebrew prophets, and of Him whose Spirit spake by the Prophets as well as the Apostles — apply the fire of the Divine Word with prayer for the Divine Spirit, in fearless reliance on God, right to the heart and the seat of this iniquity, there where it reigns, and it would be speedily seen that [[/column 1]] [[column 2]] what all political power, management, compromise, all carnal wisdom, all selfish bargains, all motives and compulsions even of interest could not do, God's Word can do. This would be the greatest triumph of Christianity in modern times, and would be felt in the farthest corners of heathenism. It would do more for the conversion of the world than all the missionary efforts from the Reformation to this day. (Cheers.) It is such an application that in all our weakness, and with every power against us, the despised and hated Church of the Puritans and its pastor are humbly and earnestly endeavoring to make. This is our experiment, and we beseech you to aid us in it, and we assure you of the vast power exerted by your sympathy and uncompromising utterances on the right side. The moral electricity of a meeting here travels across the Atlantic, and the rage and violence resulting from your rebuke are a proof of its effectiveness. If your churches will array themselves against this iniquity, even the boundless cotton interest cannot any longer shield it. The slave power, when its sees you doing this, will come to you with sackcloth on its loins, and ropes on its head, with affecting appeals for pity. 'Thy servant, Benhadad ; I pray thee, let me live.' It watches now diligently whatever word may come from you, and hastily catches it ; and if you should at any time say to the monster, my brother, and send him away with the covenant of cotton, you would be worse than Ahab of old, when he let go out of his hand an enemy of Israel, whom God had appointed to utter destruction. (Loud cheering.) At a meeting held last week in the Church of the Puritans, resolutions were introduced and passed sustaining the course taken by their pastor, and again sanctioning the appeal. [[line]] [[bold]] THE JERRY RESCUE CELEBRATION [[/bold]] [[line]] ANNUAL ADDRESS BY REV. SAMUEL J. MAY. [[line]] [[italics]] Syracuse, [[/italics]] October 1, 1860. FELLOW CITIZENS:—In the lamented absence of that illustrious philantrhopist who has usually presided on this occasion, the Committee of arrangements devolved it upon me to prepare and deliver the opening address.—Its distinctive object shall be, as it ever has been, to republish and recommend the sacred principles, on which those men acted, who did the humane, the glorious deed, which we this day celebrate. The Rescue of Jerry was not done in opposition to government, but in obedience to the highest authority, in resistance to tyranny, which is every where and always antagonistic to government. It was not done in defiance of law, but in reprobation of an attempted outrage upon law. In justifying and applauding the Rescue of Jerry, we do not assume independence of the State or of the Confederacy to which our State belongs, but only declare that neither the State nor the confederacy is independent of God—independent of the obligation that is upon all men, 'to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly ;' and that neither the State nor the Confederacy can release us individually from our allegiance to the Law of the Most High. In celebrating now, as we have done from year to year, the Rescue of Jerry, we do not mean, we have never meant, to countenance our fellow citizens in disturbing the peace, violating the good order of society, but to manifest the respect that is due to those who, on the 1st of October, 1851, generously, at great hazard to themselves, snatched a poor fellow being from the grasp of a mean and cruel despotism. We have never by this celebration intended, we do not now intend, to insult the Chief Magistrate or the Legislature of these United States, but to admonish them that even they cannot, with impunity, set God at defiance, and may not, shall not, compel us to insult Him. God is Ruler of Rulers, Governor of Governors, King of Kings. The mightiest nation, not less than the lowliest individual, is bound [[/column 2]] [[column 3]] to obey Him. The lowliest individual is to be justified in setting at naught the enactment of the mightiest nation, if it violates the eternal principles of righteousness and mercy. The first, the greatest of all commandments is, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.' And the second is like unto it, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.' On these two commandments hang, from them depend — that is, with them must be consistent all laws that impose any obligation upon men; all laws that can be innocently obeyed. — Only such laws as may be deduced from both or one of these commandments, have any divine authority. It used to be claimed and allowed throughout Christendom, as well as heathendom, that Kings reigned by a diving right, and that subjects were bound, in all things, to obey them as the vicegerents of the Almighty. But that assumption has subsided in every part of the Christian world; and in our country it is utterly repudiated. It was laid down by the founders of our Republic as a fundamental principle, that all the powers of a just civil government are derived from, must have been delegated by the governed. Now, the governed cannot commit to their officials any right, any authority, which they do not themselves possess. They possess no right, they have no permission, to disobey any of the commandments of God. Therefore the government cannot derive from them any authority to require any unrighteous act of them. This proposition, Fellow Citizens, will commend itself to you all the more as incontrovertibly true, when you consider the significant fact, that these two great commandments, of which we are speaking, were laid upon man as an individual, not as a constituent of the body politic, or as a party to any civil compact, but as an individual — a being sustaining such relations, on the one hand, to God who made him, and on the other hand, to his fellow beings, as do obviously give rise to the moral and religious obligations that depend from these two seminal, all comprehensive commandments. In each case, we repeat, Jesus Christ spoke to men as individuals, and he inculcated these principles of moral conduct because they were right. The obligation to conform to them arose then, as it arises now, from the constitution of man which the all wise God devised, and of which Jesus Christ was the best expounder, a constitution not written upon parchment, but upon the living tables of the human heart — a constitution, of course, much more ancient, venerable, sacred, than any which men have framed for national purposes. We are not, therefore, to wait until the civil government under which we live, shall see fit to conform itself to these requirements of the Just and Holy, before we give our individual obedience to them. Individuals generally must precede nations in their conformity to God's will. This they must often do through persecution and suffering. Such is the high calling of those who are to be accounted as benefactors, the lights of the world, the leaders of reform. Every one, when he comes to know himself amid his relations to other beings, will see that the two greatest commandments of Christ are founded in eternal righteousness, and justly claim his prompt, entire obedience. If there be any man who does not discern the reasonableness of these commandments, and the obligation that rests upon himself to obey them — if these have not become self evident to him, matters of consciousness to his moral sense —it must be because his intellectual and moral nature is undeveloped. He needs education, culture; and the greatest concern of society is to see to it, that its constituents shall become so cultivated and enlightened, that at least they shall not be ignorant of the first principles of right and wrong. Those rulers are not such as God approves, not such as we should respect, who aim merely to exact from their subjects a blind obedience to their authority, instead of encouraging [[/column 3]]
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