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Read Ebook: The Spirit Proper to the Times A Sermon preached in King's Chapel Boston Sunday May 12 1861 by Walker James
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The Spirit Proper to the Times.
A SERMON
PREACHED IN KING'S CHAPEL, BOSTON,
SUNDAY, MAY 12, 1861.
JAMES WALKER, D.D.
PRINTED AT THE REQUEST OF THE WARDENS OF THE SOCIETY.
BOSTON: PRESS OF GEO. C. RAND & AVERY, NO. 3 CORNHILL. 1861.
SERMON.
I am to speak of public spirit, as manifested in a willingness to make sacrifices for the public good.
The necessity for making sacrifices would seem to be founded in this: as we cannot have every thing, we must be willing to sacrifice some things in order to obtain or secure others. Wicked men recognize and act upon this principle. Can you not recall more than one person in your own circle of acquaintances who is sacrificing his health, his good name, his domestic comfort, to vicious indulgences? Worldly people recognize and act upon this principle. Look at that miser: he is hoarding up his thousands and his tens of thousands, but in order to do so, is he not sacrificing every thing which makes life worth having? It is a mistake to suppose that religion, or morality, or the public necessities, ever call upon us to make greater sacrifices than those which men are continually making to sin and the world, to fashion and fame, to "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life."
In times of ease, and abundance, and tranquillity, the public takes care of itself. There are few sacrifices on the part of individuals for the public good, because there are few occasions for such sacrifices. They are not made because not called for, because not needed. Moreover, private benevolence is apt at such times to become less active, and, for the same reason, that is to say, because less of it is required.
Let us, however, be just to the excitement itself, considered as the sudden and spontaneous uprising of a whole community to sustain the government. We need demonstrations of this kind, from time to time, to reassure us that all men have souls. It is worth a great deal merely as an experiment, on a large scale, to prove that the moral and social instincts are as much a part of human nature as the selfish instincts. But he must be a superficial observer who can see nothing in this vast movement but the play of instincts. It is a great moral force.
Not a little of what passes for loyalty or patriotism in other countries is blind impulse, growing out of mere attachment to the soil, or the power of custom, or a helpless feeling of dependence on things as they are. "If my father in his grave could hear of this war," said a Spanish peasant, "his bones would not rest." Yet what earthly interest, what intelligible concern had Spanish peasants in the rivalships and struggles of princes who thought of nothing but their own or their family aggrandizement. Of such loyalty, of such patriotism, there never has been much in this country, and there never will be. The loyal and patriotic States have risen up as one man to maintain the government, because the government represents the great ideas of order and liberty. It is not an excitement of irritation merely, or of wounded vanity, or of a selfish and discomfited ambition. It is, as I have said, a great moral force, a reverence for order and liberty; an excitement, if you will have it so, but an excitement resting on solid and intelligible principle, and one, therefore, which trial and sacrifice will be likely to convert into earnest and solemn purpose.
I suppose some are full of concern as to the effect which trial and sacrifice will really have on this new outbreak of public spirit. They fear that suffering for our principles will abate our confidence in them, or at least our interest in them, and so the ardor will die away. So doubtless, it will in some cases, for every community has its representatives of "the seed that was sown on stony ground"; but it will be the exception and not the rule. Human nature, if it has fair play, will never lead a single individual to think less of a privilege or blessing, merely because it has cost more. When has religion interested men the most, and the most generally? Precisely at those times when men were religious at the greatest sacrifices. Indeed, it is on this principle that we explain the decay of a proper love of country among us for the last twenty or thirty years; it is because we have had so little to do for our country. A foreign war, even a famine or a pestilence, if it had been sufficiently severe, would have saved us from our present trouble and humiliation. So long as the people think and feel together, they hold each other up, and the sacrifices in which they express their public spirit, instead of wearing it out, will purify it and keep it alive.
And this is not all. From the language sometimes used in speaking of sacrifices for the public good, it might almost be supposed that the making of them is simply painful, simply distressing. But is it so? Of course both instinct and duty impel us to look out for ourselves; but is it not equally true that both instinct and duty impel us to help one another, and provide for the common weal? A generous and noble deed,--simply painful, simply distressing! I will not deny that a long life of selfishness, meanness, and servility may bring here and there one to look on things in this light, but not until he is, in the language of Scripture, "without natural affection." "Public spirit," so an eminent jurist has defined it, "is the whole body of those affections which unite men's hearts to the commonwealth." What I insist upon is, that these are real and natural affections, and that, in acting them out, we find a real and natural satisfaction. Who will say that the happiest moments of his existence have not been those in which he was conscious of living for others, and not for himself? There are many things in the present aspect of our public affairs to fill us with regret and anxiety, but a gleam of light shines through the cloud. Every man and woman and child will be moved to act more unselfishly, more nobly; life will cost more, but it will also be worth more.
It is extremely difficult to do justice to this human nature of ours,--capable at once of such mean and little things, of such noble and great things. There is, however, one distinction which all, I suppose, will accord to it: I mean its tendency to rise up and meet great emergencies. In every soul that lives there is an untold amount of latent energy and public spirit which only waits for the occasion to call it forth. Read the history of the Netherlands,--a people made up, for the most part, of merchants and manufacturers, of traders and artisans, growing rich and apparently thinking of little else. A blow is struck at the free institutions which they had inherited from their ancestors; immediately a new spirit reveals itself, and all Europe rings with the story of their heroic daring and suffering.
Accordingly, I am not surprised that the call to arms has been responded to with such enthusiasm,--or that it is sustained by the whole moral and religious sentiment of the community. Men are ready to offer up not only their money and their labor, but also their lives. Are you afraid that your sons and brothers will be cowards merely because they are not duelists? because they have never been engaged in a street-fight? because prayers were made at their departure? or because they have carried their bibles with them? Did Cromwell's soldiers flee before the cavaliers because they were sober and God-fearing men? Our people have no love for fighting, as a pastime; let it, however, become a serious business, and they will show that their veins are full of the blood that flowed so freely in other days.
These are some of the ways in which a people may manifest their public spirit, and in which our people are manifesting it now. "With such sacrifices God is well pleased." I have given a definition of public spirit from the jurists, but I like still better the Bible definition. In the words of the prophet, "They helped every one his neighbor, and every one said to his brother, Be of good courage."
Nevertheless, it can do no good to begin by overvaluing ourselves, or undervaluing our enemies. We know that the behests of a righteous Providence will be accomplished, but we do not know in what way. It is more than probable that in the troubles and distractions which have come upon the country we ourselves have something to answer for. For this reason reverses and humiliations may be in store for us, before we are accounted worthy to carry out the Divine judgments. But there can be no doubt as to the end. A struggle has been forced upon us by a doomed people, if the laws of nature do not fail, if there is any meaning in the moral sentiments of mankind, or any justice in heaven.
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