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412 Douglass' Monthly. February, 1861. [[line]] [[3 columns]] [[column 1]] GERRIT SMITH ON BIBLE CIVIL GOVERNMENT [[short line]] The following extracts are taken from a Discourse delivered in Peterboro, Nov. 18, by Gerrit Smith. They were prepared for our January number, but was unavoidably crowded out. Another Election has come and gone.- Much of good, in both its near and remote results, do we look for. Nevertheless, we are not to overlook its many baleful influences, and its wide havoc of virtue and happiness.- We have again passed through the great quadrennial Demoralization, which sinks into a lower deep tens of thousands of drunkards; which turns into drunkards tens of thousands of the sober; which makes tens of thousands of new liars, and makes worse tens of thousands of old ones; which cheapens sincerity and simplicity, by putting high prices upon intrigue and dishonesty; which puts falsehood for truth and darkness for light, and makes ten appeals to passion and prejudice where it makes one to reason. While, however, we affirm that this is the general character of a Presidential Election, we are free to admit that some of the actors in it are candid, and some of the influences in it enlightening and elevating. But with all this, and every other conceivable alleviation, still who does not see that a Presidential Election frightfully lowers the standard of morality, pours tides of wickedness through all ranks and classes, and preys fatally with its rampant vices on numberless bodies and numberless souls. Many and mighty are the influences needed to redeem great popular Elections from the coarseness and corruption which characterize them. Pre-eminent among these influences is the presence and the part of woman. The conduct and character of men as voters will become far better after the advancing stages of civilization shall have bro't up women to vote by their side. And where were our church people in the late Election? They were voting for slave-catching and dram-shop candidates. Nay, some of them were themselves such candidates. Our church people were mixed up with the abominations of the Election and not a few of them were drenched in it corruptions. I turn for a moment from the church people to notice the fact that even the rescuers of slaves did, with very few exceptions, vote for these candidates. In their measureless inconsistency and infatuation, they voted power into hands ready to use it both for resizing the slave and punishing his rescuers. Doubtless these inconsistent and infatuated men will wonder that we should refuse to join them in celebrations of slave-rescues. To return to the church people. It must be confessed that thousands of them honestly believed that their candidate would be found faithful to all the claims of freedom and righteousness, and it must also be confessed that, but for this belief, they would not have voted for him. Admit, too, will we that thousands of them voted as they did because they believed the Constitution to be for slavery, and thousands because they believe that Bible sustains it. I believe both to be against it. But what if both are for it? Why, only that both are so far void of obligation. The Bible and the Constitution are the work of men; but Freedom is the great gift of the Great God. Hence, believing, as I do, with 'Peter and the other Apostles that we ought to obey God rather than man,' I must insist that all shall go for Freedom, however the Constitution and the Bible may go. 'The law of his God,' or, in other words, the law of Justice, was Daniel's law, and it should be every mans law, the Constitution and even the Bible to the contrary not withstanding. Will the church people never believe in the religion of the Bible? They believe in its theologies and its philosophies, or in what are interpreted to be such. Why will they not believe in its religion also? One answer is that they are sectaries; that their sects are organized to uphold, some this part and some [[/column 1]] [[column 2]] that of these theologies and philosophies;- and that in this wise, religion is in general greatly undervalued, and often quite ignored or lost sight of. Indeed, the mistake becomes almost universal among them, that these theologies or philosophies are themselves religion, or at least part of it, and that their zeal and contention for them have all the merit of zeal and contention for religion it self. Another explanation is, that whilst the good man alone is willing to be religious, these theologies or philosophies are a substitute for religion so cheap and easy that the wickedest man finds no cross in adopting them. And still another explanation of the refusal of these church people to receive the religion of the Bible, is that whilst this true religion enters a man's heart through his heaven-enlightened and heaven-sanctified reason, they are educated to distrust reason in the province of religion, and to receive upon authority what passes with them for religion.- Much, too, might be said to show that religions imposed by authority are not only like to differ very widely form the religion which a sound understanding and a sound heart make their own, but are also peculiarly effective in shutting it out. I have spoken of the religion of the Bible as one with the true religion. It manifestly is; and nowhere else is that true religion presented so simply, so sublimely, or so perfectly. Foolish skepticism rejects the Bible; credulous and unquestioning superstition gulps it down. But reason- the reason blest with divine illumination - the reason coupled with a renewed heart - though sitting, as it is bound to do, in stern and unspairing, whilst yet in meek and humble judgement, on the Bible, and deciding for itself on the popular interpretations of it, and on the theological and philosophical structures built upon it, comes at last to acknowledge the pre-eminence of its inspirations and the truth of its religion. What is the religion of the Bible? The churches hold that it is largely contained in their speculations and theories respecting Trinity, Atonement, Heaven, Hell &c. But the Bible resolves it into love, especially love to the destitute and afflicted. It says that 'God is love,' and that man should be also.- It says that 'love is the fulfilling of the law,' and that 'all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.' It says that to do justice to the poor and needy is to know God. (Jeremiah, xxii, 16) It says that 'Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father, is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.' It says, 'Remember them that are in bonds as bound with them, and them which suffer adversity as being yourselves also in the body.' It says, 'Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is offended, and I burn not?' It says, in short, that the whole of religion consists in doing as you would be done by. The churches make religion to consist mainly in creeds, but the Bible wholly in deeds, and in the spirit of which they are the necessary outflow. Church religion dreams, but Bible religion bids us do. Nothing in all the Bible, save the life of Jesus, which was given to reflect before men the life of the Father, and in which the character of God shines out in the character of the God-filled Man, is so rich in tenderness and beauty, and so powerful in appeals to love and admiration as its portrayal of righteous civil government. Nothing, with that exception, so clearly and attractively reveals the genius of the religion of the Bible. How little the church people appreciate this religion is manifest from their indifference to the Bible view of civil government. Altogether welcome to them would be this view, and altogether corresponding with it their political action, did they but love this religion. Civil government is, in the eye of reason, the collective people caring for each of the people - the combination of all for the protection of each one. Such is it also in spirit and scope on the pages of the Bible. We there see it to be, next to God himself, the [[/column 2]] [[column 3]] great Protector; and, as is reasonable, the special Protector of the innocent and helpless poor. The Bible requires for civil rulers able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness;' men who 'shall judge the people with just judgment, shall not respect persons, neither take a gift;' 'shall judge [do justice to] the poor of the people, save the children of the needy, and break in pieces the oppressor.' Of this true and Bible type of civil rulers was Job, who says: 'I delivered the poor that cried; and the fatherless and him that had none to help him.- The blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon me, and I caused the widow's heart to sing for joy. I put on righteousness, and it clothed me; my judgment was as a robe and a diadem. I was eyes to the blind, and feet was I to the lame. I was a father to the poor, and the cause which I knew not I searched out. And I break the jaws of the wicked, and plucked the spoil out of his teeth.' I am always pained when I hear Christians praise certain persons as great statesmen.- Great statesmen they are - not because they care for the poor, for they uphold statutes and execute decrees for enslaving and crushing the poor - but because they have talents and learning, and talk ingeniously and eloquently about banks and tariffs and internal improvements, and prate cunningly and winningly of human rights. Were these Christians more Christian, they would see more statesmanship in that noble ruler who 'was a father to the poor,' than in the sum total of those sham statesmen who are so unwisely and guiltily lauded. For the reason that it looks upon the civil ruler as the protector of the needy, the Bible says to him: 'Open thy mouth for the dumb in the cause of all such as are appointed to destruction. Open thy mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and needy.' 'Seek judgment, relive the oppressed.' 'Let the oppressed go free: break every yoke.' It is for this reason that it pronounces 'Wo unto them that decree unrighteous decrees and that write grievousness which they have prescribed; to turn aside the needy from judgment and to take away the right from the poor of my people;' and says: 'Execute judgment in the morning and deliver him that is spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor.' We cannot mistake the Bible apprehension of civil government, when it tells us that 'rulers are not a terror to good works but to the evil;' nor when it says that the rule is 'the minister of God,' or in other words, acts on and acts out the principles of God. And who can mistake it, or fail to be touched and melted by it, when he reads the injunction upon civil government: 'Take counsel, execute judgment, make thy shadow as the night in the midst of the noon day; hide the outcasts, bewray [betray] not him that wandereth. Let mine outcasts dwell with thee; be thou a covert to them from the face of the spoiler.' Or who can misapprehend it, or not be moved by it, when he reads: 'Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee. He shall dwell with thee even among you, in that place which he shall choose, in one of thy gates where it liketh him best: thou shalt not oppress him.' I need quote no further from the Bible to prove that the civil government it commends is the protector of the innocent and helpless poor; nor to prove how widely it contrasts with the civil governments of the whole earth, and especially with the oppressive and murderous rule which, in our own nation, usurps the name of civil government - a rule so sanctioned by the priesthood and upheld by the people, as forcibly to recall the prophet's description of a similar conspiracy. 'There is a conspiracy of her prophets in the midst thereof, like a roaring lion ravening the prey; they have devoured souls; they have taken the treasure and precious things; they have made her many widows in the midst thereof. Her priests have violated my law, and have [[/column 3]]
