Syracuse University Library
Special Collections Research Center
Gerrit Smith Broadside and Pamphlet Collection

Be natural! : a discourse / by Gerrit Smith, in Peterboro, November 20, 1864.

Smith, Gerrit, 1797-1874.

Digital Edition.

This digitization project was supported by Regional Bibliographic Databases and Interlibrary Resources Sharing Program funds, awarded by the New York State Library.

Call number: Smith 529

BE NATURAL!

A DISCOURSE

BY GERRIT SMITH

IN

PETERBORO, NOVEMBER 20, 1864.

"I AM THE WAY, AND THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE." - John 14:6

BE NATURAL!

A DISCOURSE

BY GERRIT SMITH

IN

PETERBORO, NOVEMBER 20, 1864.

"I AM THE WAY, AND THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE." - John 14:6

BE NATURAL!

"I AM THE WAY, AND THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE." - JOHN 14:8.

Let me not be understood as meaning that the modes and particulars of Jesus' outward life were always just such as the laws of nature called for, and that his eating, drinking, dressing, were always in the most perfect harmony with those laws. In such respects he but conformed to the providential progress of his time, doing as did the most enlightened and conscientious. I but mean that Jesus loved and communed with nature, and that his spirit, dispositions, tastes, principles, aims, were all in the fullest accord with her. His brief mission was not to work reforms in dietetics or dress, in the modes of travel or toil. It was to call men to a change of heart, and to the re-submission of their moral affections to the authority and discipline of nature.

Jesus was preeminently a child of nature. The beautiful illustrations of moral truths which he drew from her prove his familiarity with her. Renan does not exaggerate Jesus' love of nature and the natural simplicity of his character. How inconsistent is he in coupling ambition, and even juggling, with that love and simplicity ! Jesus was not "fond of honors." Jesus played no tricks. He neither performed nor at-

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tempted to perform miracles. His divine wisdom, and his deep seriousness and sincerity, totally forbid the supposition that he was ever guilty of folly, self-seeking, dishonesty. Am I an unbeliever in the historical Jesus because I hold him innocent of the absurdities which superstition and credulity tax him with? No more than I should be in the historical Shakespeare from denying a story that he had walked upon his Avon, or a story that he had turned its waters into wine. By force of those words which none others than themselves were able to speak, I identify and believe in both Jesus and Shakespeare. No marvelous stories about them can serve to identify them or justify our faith that there were such persons. As marvelous stories might be told, and, indeed, have been told of other men. Let me say in this connection, that our view of Jesus should not, in the slightest degree, be affected by the ascription to him of miracles or magic. That the narratives of him should be interlarded with such nonsense is not more strange than that the narratives of other remarkable men of his superstitious and credulous age should be.

By the way, Renan has done about as well as he could by Jesus, seeing how extensively he credited the stories of his magical or wonder-working powers. He should have made no account of those stories. He should have dropped them entirely, as did Rammohun Roy in his Hindoo translation of the New Testament. Let the credulous feed on these creations of superstition, but let men of sense turn entirely away from them.

Jesus did not teach a new religion. He taught no other than the old and only true one - the religion of nature. He taught that the naturalness of childhood is religion; and that a man, in order to be religious, must become, as is a little child, ingenuous, simple, sincere, trustful.

The great duty of life is to be natural. From its violations come our losses and sufferings. From its observance, our success and happiness. God has made us right. He has given us right powers to develop; right wants to supply; right desires to gratify. And he has impressed right laws on - not only our own being but on all being connected with it - on the sun and the stars, on the earth "and the fulness thereof." Hence, to

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learn these laws and to keep them should be our first and our life-long study. To know and do what nature requires of us in her material, mental, and moral departments should ever be our supreme concern. In this wise shall we learn most of God and do most to honor Him; and in this wise phall we be most useful and happy.

The human family is very uncomfortable and very unhappy, simply because it is very unnatural - simply because it fights against nature instead of falling in with her. Instance woman's imprisoning and unhealthy dress - but too generally terminating in no other protection from the damp earth than soles little thicker than paper. Instance the confining of woman to indoor life and labor, when to be much in the open air is as indispensable to woman's as to man's health. Instance the misery from overcoming the inborn repugnance to opium, tobacco, and strong drink. Instance the numberless and almost ever-successful wars of fashion against nature, and usage against reason. Because we and our ancestors have so extensively violated the known laws of nature, and because from their and our ill-training and indolence, so many of these laws remain more or less undiscovered, we live out but half our days, and even this half is far more wanting in health, and happiness, and holiness, and usefulness than it should be. Shamefully little do we know, how to take care of these bodies; how to build our dwellings; how to select and prepare our food, or how to cure and prevent disease. God will not indulge our indolence and impart to us without cost the knowledge of such things. Nor will He save us from the penalty of our ignorance of them. He has made us capable of learning them by toilsome study; and so long as we will not learn them we must suffer. Moreover, this suffering and study are the appointed means of our expansion and of our approximation to God. Atheists often rest their argument on the low and unhappy condition of man. They hold that were there a God, and especially a benevolent one, man would have been created with large intelligence and large happiness. I admit that he was created small in both these respects, and that the story of his Fall - his Fall from wisdom, goodness, and bliss-is not only utterly destitute of proof but at war with nature and reason. I admit that God did not make

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man all that He would have him become, and that He did not make him a mere machine, the credit of whose operations would reflect honor on its maker only. On the contrary, the Creator made man to be himself also a creator, endowing him with powers and advantages, in the right use of which be would create for himself that truest greatness and truest happiness which can come to man only from his own creations. In other words, the Divine policy was not to make man great and happy, but to leave it to man himself to accomplish this result. God saw that it was in this wise He would be doing most for the benefit of man and most for the glory of God through man. Not the Bible only, but nature also, teaches that man is made in the image of his Maker. A faint image, indeed, but with powers in man for making it bright and illimitably brighter. Why this image remains but faint, results from his very lazy and very limited use of those powers. He still persists in preferring ignorance to knowledge, and superstition to science. That he continued to do so as far down as within a few generations of our own time, is often illustrated by such facts as the opposition to the teachings of Galileo, to the discovered circulation of the blood, and the discovered preventive of the small-pox. But, alas I there is only too abundant evidence that he still clings to ignorance and superstition-and this, too, at points the most essential - at points where he can least afford the folly. For instance, we are made capable of discriminating between truth and error: and the farther we carry this discrimination, and the greater the conformity of our character to its results, the more obedient do we become to the requirements of our nature, and the higher and nobler rises our manhood. It may truly be said, that the great work to which our human nature calls us is to distinguish truth and error from each other; for it is in this work more than in all others that we develop and honor that nature, and build ourselves up in wisdom and strength. But how little the call to this great work is heeded, may be seen in the fact that people still gulp down their theologies; and that they do this, notwithstanding they identify their religion with them. Thus do they accept without evidence what they deem to be their religion, and what, with illtemper toward all dissenters, they claim to be the only true re-

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ligion. I say, without evidence; for it is idle to claim that the laws of evidence are recognized in the flimsy arguments which are relied on to prove the authenticity and truth of the theologies. Such looseness and uncertainty as attach to the evidence in this case would, with one consent, be regarded as fatal if attaching to the evidence in any other case. Some say that we should not exact certainty in this case. I would go with them, were it not that the theologies are confounded with religion, and that the proofs of the truth of religion, unless amounting to certainty, are worthless. Religion being more important than every thing else, it is more important that we be certain of its truth than of the truth of every thing else. Miserably off, then, are they who, making one of the theologies their religion, have, therefore, in point of fact, (though they may think they have it,) no proof of the truth of their religion.

I must not omit to mention another reason why the evidence of the truth of the theologies should be very abundant and very clear. They are largely made up of violations both of human experience and nature. Hence, there is an inherent improbability of their truth, which, to say the least, it must require very abundant and very clear testimony to overcome.

Every one of the theologies is obviously but a weaving of fiction and fancy, in which the silver threads of truth are emphatically "few and far between." Surely there is no evidence that Methuselah lived nine hundred and sixty-nine years; that lot's wife became a pillar of salt; that the sun and moon stood still; that God loved Jacob and hated Esau before they were born; nor, indeed, that He ever bated any one, nor ever failed to love all. That such things were declared does not make them true; that they were declared by no one knows whom, nor when, nor where, leaves them without title to our acceptance; and that they are at utter war with reason and nature, calls for their instant rejection. I add, that not only instant should be the rejection of these things, but also of the systems with which they stand connected-those systems being founded on the grossest contradictions and contempt of reason and nature. Unhappily, however, this, which calls for their rejection, but serves to commend them. Nay, but for it they would be too tame to interest their wonder-loving disciples. Very unna-

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tural must we become by embracing and feeding upon the theologies. Nothing has more power to draw us from our proper orbit-from that orbit where man is appointed to move har moniously with his own nature and with all nature. And to believe without adequate evidence, or to disbelieve where there is adequate evidence, also helps to make us unnatural. Whoever does either, fights against his own nature and against all nature. They who refused Galileo's teachings were guilty of the twofold unnatural crime of rejecting what science taught to be certainly true, and of confronting this certain truth with words which are made none the less superstitious and truthless by being found in that Book which is the best of all books.

How sad it is, that even lawyers, who are familiar with the laws of evidence, should accept a theology which can not, for an instant, abide the application of those laws! Shame on their superstition! or on, as it more frequently is, their calculations and cowardice! That the prophecies are authentic; that they were prophecies; that they preceded the events; that they meant what it is claimed they meant-all this is without proof; and yet, even lawyers have the credulity, or find it to be their interest, to fall in with the popular idea that the prophecies are fulfilled. We have never seen prophets: and from what we have observed of the human mind, it does not belong to it to know the future. Why then should we, and that, too, without evidence, believe that there ever were prophets? The spiritualists tell us that departed spirits can inform us of the future. Perhaps they can; for we know not what enlarged or even new faculties they may have in their new sphere of existence. We wait for facts to convince us of what the spiritualists tell us.

All that I have here said of lawyers is quite as applicable to the class of men whose pursuit is the natural sciences; and I add that, even more than the lawyers, are they to be condemned for countenancing the theologies. N o other traitors to truth are so guilty as this class; for it is to certain truth that they are traitors. The most recent signal instance of such treason is the paper subscribed by hundreds of English scientific men. What a sbame that such eminent names as Bell and Brewster should be amongst them I Heartily glad am I that

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Herschel and, Bowring refused to sign it. Think of this paper's putting - the fancies, and fictions, and superstitions of the ignorant and childish past on a par with the certainties of natural science, and holding them to be entitled, and equally enti tled to credence! Think of its making the words of a book as worthy of belief as the words of nature! - the words of men as the words of God! I will not call the subscribers hypocrites; but meaner or more truckling cowardice is not to be found. I could wish all the theologies sent down-stream, were it only that we might then have untrammeled and courageous students of natural science. The smiting of these theologies - of these stupendous structures of superstition - is the very highest service which this age demands from those students. Alas! how guiltily and loosely do they pervert their calling when they make it minister to the upholding of these big and baleful falsehoods! Dear Hugh Miller! how much freer, bolder, better student of nature he would have been, had he not all the while concerned himself to have nature harmonize with the Bible!

What a war upon nature, and how strongly it must tend to make us unnatural, is that great central, vital doctrine of some of the theologies, that another can relieve us of the natural penalty of our own sins - that by another's stripes we can be healed! We admit that another can suffer for our sins; and we also admit that, through the influence of his example and character, we may be saved from committing this, that, and the other sin. In these respects Jesus has made us all debtorsimmeasurably greater debtors than any other of our benefactors has made us. But that another can save us from the natural consequences of the sins we have committed, nature, and, therefore, truth for nature is truth - must ever deny. To say that Jesus can save us from them is not to honor him, but it is to dishonor and wrong him, by setting up an unnatural and, therefore, false claim in his behalf. By the way, he is, in the light of this reasoning, insulted by every imputation to him of miracle-working. As the Bible so admirably defines it "Sin is the transgression of the law." It is sin, be the trans gressed law a physical, mental, or moral one. And whether the wound has been inflicted upon our finger, or upon our men-

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tal or moral nature, the damage must be borne by ourselves, and can not be transferred to another.

We are often told that the truth of this doctrine of the transference of the penalty of sin from one to another is spiritually, and can not be naturally discerned, and that, were we born again of the Holy Spirit, we should believe in and welcome this and other doctrines, which are above the ken of nature. I do myself believe in the necessity of a radical change in the sinner; and that Jesus did not characterize it too strongly when he called it a new birth. But the Holy Spirit and nature can not be in conflict with each other; and, therefore, what nature condemns as an untruth the Holy Spirit can not see to be truth.

I said that the theologies make us unnatural. I add, that they make us miserable. They are a fountain of misery, compared with whose vast and ceaseless outflow all other human miseries are but insignificant rills. Instance the Hindoo and other Eastern faiths. What a hell upon earth they make for their disciples I Scarcely less the theological torments in which Europeans and Americans live. Millions of them are hurried to insanity or the grave by the fear that they have committed " the unpardonable sin," or are not amongst the "elect." Scores of millions of them believe that they are in the hands of an angry God, and exposed to "the wrath to come." As further illustrations that the Jewish and Christian theologies have had their full share in afflicting mankind, let me refer to the fact, that scores of thousands have been slain for refusing to accept the doctrine of the Trinity, and to the measureless woe which has come to Africa and her children from that babbling of drunken Noah, ecclesiastically interpreted into a curse of God upon Canaan, and afterwards, in accommodation to slaveholders, ecclesiastically interpreted into a curse of God upon the negroes. Even Mr. Stephens, the Vice-President of the Southern Confederacy, cites this curse as authority for slavery. I hold slavery to be so matchless and measureless a crime against nature that, but for this curse, the conscience of Christendom could not have been reconciled to it. It takes a theology - a theological religion - to drown the loudest voices and triumph over the clearest claims of nature. It takes all that to turn aside nature's denial of polygamy and slavery, ay, and strong

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drink also; for I verily believe that the temperance cause would have triumphed but for the putting of the Jewish and Christian theology in its way. That fatally changed the issue from between temperance and what nature condemns into the issue between temperance and what the accepted theology is claimed to approve. Temperance, though backed by nature, could not prevail with those who had a theology with which to combat and override both temperance and nature. So did the churches generally interpret this theology, as not to let alcoholic liquors be withdrawn even from the Lord's Supper. Can we reasonably hope that, until banished here, they will be banished elsewhere?

I say not that they rightly interpret the theology of Christendom who bring it to the side of polygamy, or slavery, or strong drink. But I do say, that all these are condemned by nature, and that the world can not afford, nor God consent, to have appeals taken from nature to theology - in other words, from God to man. There is not a theology but should be judged by the light of nature. On the other hand, it is only by her own light that nature should be judged. How absurd, then, to allow theologies to review the decisions of nature!

Just here let me say, that the wicked always choose to refer moral questions to a theology instead of nature. For nature, which can be read in only one way, always condemns the side of the wicked; whilst the theology can be read in whatever way suits the wickedness of the reader.

And I will turn aside here, to notice very briefly why believers in the theologies are wont to be uncharitable in religion. Believing, as they do, that their religion is a revelation, and that all can, if they do not already, see it to be such, they have little patience with those who do not admit it to be such. In other words, believing, as they do, that their religion, because in their esteem a revelation, is a certainty, they have little charity for those who doubt the certainty. They will not condescend to reason the case with the dissenters, any more than they would to reason that a stick is a stick or a stone a stone. For there is no room left for reasoning where reason is confronted by revelation. If they do sometimes appear to reason the case, it is only that they appear io do so. For, in point of fact, they

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cover the whole ground with their assumptions, and meet every pressure of reason with a"Thus saith the Lord."

And in this connection we see why it is that they who believe in the religion of reason do so generally hold their religious views in a charitable spirit. They know that human reason is apt to be mingled with ignorance, prejudice, and passion; and hence they distrust its conclusions, and keep themselves open to change. Their conscious liability to err makes them modest; whilst the lack of it makes the theologian arrogant. Their doubts whether their religious views are in all respects what they should be, keep them still at school. But the theologian has graduated. Revelation educated him quickly; and from his eminence, too often a proud one, he looks down with pity, too often mingled with a sneer, upon those who are still pursuing their religious education in the slow and uncertain paths of human reason.

A few words in regard to those prayers that quarrel with nature. We quarrel with nature when we ask God to quarrel with it. We do not pray for or against eclipses. Possibly we would if we had Bible authority for it. We have such authority to pray for a change of weather, and that may be 'the chief reason why we pray for it. The foolish story that Elias could, by force of his prayers, bring the rain and stay it - and stay it, too, for several years - has, doubtless, encouraged millions to try the efficacy of their own prayers in these directions. But I may here be asked, if I approve of any prayers. I answer, that I would that every man, Cornelius-like, "prayed always." Nothing is more natural than prayer. We habitually pray to men, either in behalf of ourselves or others. Just as natural is it to pray to "the Father of lights," from whom cometh down "every good gift and every perfect gift." When one excuses himself for deferring prayer by saying that he is not in the mood of prayer, he simply confesses that he is in an unnatural mood. In this connection let me notice the objection to public praying - to an assembly's supplicating God through one of their number. But every day, men go in groups to the king or the president, or some one else, to ask him, through their chosen mouth-piece, for the favors they want. Why may they not in this wise approach God also? Do you answer, let

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them pray to Him separately? But by the laws of our social nature the prayer in which numbers engage, and through which numbers pour out their souls, has some advantages which solitary prayer has not. This is so, be the prayer to God or man.

The question is often asked: "About what should men pray?" Do you answer that they should pray about whatever concerns men, and about nothing else? - for instance, about the weather, and not about the eclipses? I would rather answer that they should pray about nothing which is entirely beyond the reach of human agency, and about every thing which is, in whatever degree, within its reach, or dependent upon it. Under this rule, therefore, they would pray about neither weather nor eclipses; but they would pray for the safety of the ship, the restoration of the sick, and the growing of the grain. But would I not have men pray for the Holy Spirit? Certainly. For human agency has to do with their receiving it. Whether they shall receive it, depends upon themselves.

A long time, doubtless, it will be ere men will confine their prayers to legitimate topics. An excellent religious newspaper, and the leading one of the land, said, a few days before the recent election: "How much a bright sunshine or a furious storm on election-day will have to do with the result! Prayer may determine that point." How prayer, so far from deter mining that point, had nothing whatever to do with it. eteorology, like eclipses, is entirely out of the reach of prayer. In the one case, as well as in the other, nature will have her undisturbed way. Hence, to pray for a change of weather is to quarrel with nature and with her Author. Not so, however, is an intelligent prayer for the safety of the ship. It asks not for a change in the wind, for it recognizes the fact that "the wind bloweth where it listeth." But it does ask for whatever needed practicable change in the men or means to save the ship. specially does it ask for freedom from fear, for self-possession and trust in God - for in proportion as these are gained, will there be increased nautical skill, and increased chance to save the ship. t does ask for the opening of the mind and heart to the all-pervading and ever-present Spirit; and virtually also for. the changes to be wrought by its influences. It may, indeed, be said, that changes may take place in him also who prays for

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different weather. Nevertheless, there will remain, at least, this difference in the two cases: those changes can do nothing to change the weather; whilst the changes which prayer brings to him who prays for the ship may result in saving it.

A thought in this place regarding inspiration. The popular belief is, that God vouchsafes inspiration to only a very few, and even these very few are of a favored race or a favored age. But his impartiality puts the blessing within the reach of all, at all times and in all places. he nearer men the to God, and the greater their intellectual capacity, the more of his spirit do they imbibe. hether they are of this or that period, or of this or that people, is quite immaterial. ntellectual capacity to receive, and a loving heart to attract - these are the only conditions of inspiration.

I said something to illustrate the wrongs to our bodies and minds from our violations of nature.The wrongs to our moral affections from such violations are not less manifest. They are, moreover, far more pernicious, since it is in these affections, far more than in any other part of ourselves, that our nature is most Godlike and precious. Jesus, our teacher, example, and Saviour, gives us the rule, as simple as single, for keeping these affections in their natural state. his rule, which none need the help of book, or school, or church, or priest, to understand, is, to do as we would be done by. But this rule those only will conform to, who are so natural as to love God supremely and their fellow-men as themselves. How entirely natural and reasonable thus to love Him who gave us our rich and sublime nature! - and thus to love all who are common partakers of it with ourselves, and - have common capacities with ourselves for suffering and enjoyment! Nay, how entirely unnatural and unreasonable to do otherwise! Men are wont to make religion consist in adherence to creeds and dogmas. But it is only in proportion to the extent that they do as they would be done by, and do it, too, to white, red, and black men, to poor and weak as well as rich and strong men, that they are religious. Moreover, they that are religious, do, like the Good Samaritan, let their sympathies travel across foreign boundaries, and to all nations and peoples. They not only recognize in every man a brother, but they believe it to be their duty to be so religious - so natural - as to recognize in every man another self.

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Paul, notwithstanding his addiction to theological speculations, was a natural man; notwithstanding it, he was a deeply and sublimely, religious man. He was natural and religious, because he held that "all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself;" because he believed that "God hath made of one blood all nations;" because he believed it right "to remember them that are in bonds as bound with them;" because his sincere and eloquent heart cried out: "Who is weak, and I am not weak?" And here let me cheerfully acknowledge that the great mass of truly religious men believe, some in one and some in another of the theologies. They think that such belief, if not absolutely essential to their religiousness, is, at least, largely contributive to it. For my own part, I do not see how religion is to be helped by faith in unnatural fancies and fictions, or, indeed, by any thing but the truth.

Greatly mistaken are they who hold that the natural man is irreligious. He alone is religious. Our grand human nature is stocked with religious affections, and calls for their incessant exercise and their highest culture. If we are not just, and loving, and true, our nature has been perverted. If we are ambitious and self-seeking, it is because we have failed of the natural duty to live for others as well as for ourselves; failed, in other words, to identify ourselves with humanity, and to seek our own advancement only in its advancement.

Fathers! mothers ! you, in common with myself, were drawn away from the simplicity and sincerity of childhood. We became conventional when we should have remained natural, artful when we should have remained simple, ambitious when we should have remained humble, selfish when we should have re mained benevolent. By this perversion we lost much - even the kingdom of Heaven. But we must not despair. We must resolve to regain the lost treasure. With the help of God's renewing Spirit we can be restored to the characteristics and the heaven of childhood. Only so far as we recover these characteristics shall we be in heaven. This taught the blessed Jesus. Children! be warned by us - by what we have lost and suffered through our unfaithfulness to our, nature, and by what society has lost and suffered through our bad example and bad

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influence in this respect; be warned by all this to remain true to your nature, and not to let the natural, heavenly traits of human character give place to those evil dispositions and habits which are but too generally created by contact with a corrupt world. That Theodore Parker became one of the wisest and most truly religious men the world ever saw, was chiefly owing to the remarkable care over his childhood, and to the success in keeping his early years in such beautiful harmony with the laws of his being. In all his subsequent life he was true to nature, save that he allowed the natural desire to live for others to run into excess and into an undue expense of himself. Parker accepted Jesus as "the way, and the truth, and the life." See his hymn on it. He accepted Jesus as this, because Jesus accepted nature as this.

But does not what I have said of the characteristics and bearing of childhood conflict with the doctrines of "total depravity" and "original sin"? I care not if it does conflict with those stupid, nonsensical, absurd doctrines with which the churches have ever been puzzling their poor, pitiable brains. I admit that, owing to ancestral transgressions, we come into the world with defective physical, mental, and moral constitutions. This is the only fact in the materials whence the doctrine of "total depravity" is made. The rest is all fancy. I admit, too, that we are all placed in circumstances in which we are continually tempted to transgress the laws of our nature. Every forbidden but inviting dish or drink thus tempts us. Every permitted dish or drink, if an inviting one, tempts us to partake too freely. But thankful to God we should all be, that He has so ordered our circumstances, and that He has made us capable of sinning - that is, of yielding to, as well as resisting, the temptations with which we are surrounded. For it is only through victorious struggles with never-ceasing temptations that human nature grows in goodness and grandeur. To be untempted is to be unexpanded. Our duty is not to regret our temptations, but, like Jesus, who also was tempted, to be unharmed by them. In these few words I have hinted at all there is of truth out of which to construct the doctrine of " original sin." Superstition and folly and false theologies furnished all else.

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I need say no more to show how necessary to true religion and to the best type of manhood is unwavering fidelity to the claims of nature. Were I called on for the most striking and melancholy instance of trampling on these claims, I would cite the late Democratic Party. I say late, for it is dead: and Slavery and the Rebellion, instead of being able to raise their ally to life again, will soon be in the same grave with it. I do not say that there will never again be a Democratic Party amongst us. There will be. It will not, however, be like the old one. For slavery, the soul of the old one, will not be alive to animate the new one. Nor will it be the party which was proposed in the War Democratic Meeting held in New-York a few days before the recent election. For that would be a party, if not too icowardly, nevertheless too prudent, to speak of slavery. Most emphatically would that party furnish an instance of the playing of Hamlet with the part of Hamlet left out. The saying that never more can a man who spells "negro " with two "g's" become President, is a very true one. As true, however, is it that no party, which, whilst slavery lasts, favors or ignores it, will ever again be in the ascendant. No, the Democratic Party which shall succeed the deceased one, will be impartial toward all the varieties of the human family, and be based on equal justice Howard all men. The original Democratic Party, that of Jefferson's day, and, in no small degree, of his making, was worthy of honor. The late Democratic Party had no title whatever to its prestige or traditions. It was a thief. But, unlike most thieves, (for they take what is most valuable and leave what is least so,) it took the name and left the principles of the original Democratic Party; the flag, and left all it symbolized. That with this name and flag it was able to juggle so successfully and to accomplish so much evil, is, to say the least, very discreditable to the popular, intelligence. I have praised the original Democratic Party but the Democratic Party which is to come will be a far better one.

We return. from this digression, and. proceed in showing how frightfully at war with nature was the late Democratic Party; in other words, how frightfully unnatural it was. Slavery not only robs its victim of every right, but with unapproachable

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blasphemy it attempts a change - an entire change - in his essential, God-given being. It drags him down from the glorious heights of humanity to class him with brutes and things. It reduces immortality to merchandise. Such is the hideous the stupendous crime against nature of which the slaveholder is guilty. There is only one other on earth that is more hideous, more stupendous. This one other is, when a great political party indorses and espouses slavery, and makes its perpetuation and indefinite ,extension its chief and vital policy. Of this greater crime against nature the late Democratic Party was guilty. More than thirty years ago it began its alliance with slavery; and ere long that alliance had ripened into indissolubleness. When the Rebellion broke out - when, in other words, slavery took up arms - the Party, bad as it was, was somewhat shocked. Many, including of course its best men, quit it. The Party did not - certainly not to a great extent immediately and openly favor the Rebellion. But, soon after, it came to see that the downfall, of the Rebellion would of necessity involve the downfall of slavery, and therefore its own downfall, its own life being bound up in the life of slavery. And then it delayed not to take open steps toward the side of the Rebellion. At Chicago it formally and shamelessly identified itself with it. It adopted a Rebellion platform - a platform at peace with the South and at way with the North. It left no material difference between itself and the Southern Rebels, save the geographical one. Those were the Southern and it was the Northern wing of the Rebellion.

As proof how clearly the late Democratic Party saw itself to be living in the life of slavery, and as proof, too, that its members are trained to make its interest their supreme interest, there was probably, when that Party entered upon the recent election, not one man in it who was in favor of abolishing slavery, that greatest crime against God and man.

Not a few of the Southern presses of the Democratic Party held that slavery is the appropriate condition of all manual laborers. But so deep and revolting a crime against nature is slavery, that it was not easy to spread the conviction at the North that slavery is right. Nevertheless the negroes must be continued in slavery. This was vital in the policy of the

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Democratic Party. Hence with ceaseless industry did that Party inculcate hatred of the race on whom slavery had fastened. For it knew that the more men hated this innocent and hapless race the more they would be reconciled to its enslavement, and the less they would speak of and pity its wrongs. The first and last and never-ceasing lesson which that Party taught Irish immigrants was hatred, murderous hatred, of the negro. Nothing went so far to inflame it as that Party's incessant lie that the negro, released from slavery, would come North and take away the Irishman's labor. This hatred became the ruling passion of those immigrants. Under its sway they denied the right of the negro to eat or sit, or even fight for his country, by the side of a white man. Moreover, under its sway seven eighths of them voted with the Democratic Party. The reason commonly assigned why these immigrants increase so slowly in knowledge and rise so slowly in character, is that they are Irish. I deny that this is the true reason. My respect for the memory of a grandparent born in Cork denies it. The obvious truth in the case denies it. Why these immigrants are so backward in knowledge and character is chiefly because they were made into Democrats and drank in the Democratic hatred of the negro. Need any one be told that hatred is shriveling to the soul which harbors it? Need any one be told that, had these immigrants been taught love instead of hatred, they would have expanded into a wisdom and morality widely contrasting with their present intellectual and moral darkness ?

It is not because these immigrants are Irish that, so soon after landing upon our shores, they show themselves to be the deadly oppressors of our harmless and helpless colored people. It is because they are scarcely landed ere they are, as I said before, made into Democrats. Would that it were into real Democrats! But, alas, it is into the Satanic style of Democrats! The people of Ireland are taught to hate oppression by their own suffering of it. They hate it when they come to us. But very soon, under Democratic appliances, they are made ready to practice it.

Chief-Justice Taney was much censured for favoring the sentiment that black men have no rights which white men are

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bound to respect. But he was pushed up to it by the Democratic Party. This sentiment had long been the sentiment of that party. A practice corresponding with it had long been the practice of that Party. Within a few weeks the Chief-Justice has left our world. There is a world (and may be he has gone to it) where to condemn a man for his skin is held to be a mistake; and where those few words of dear Robert Burns, "A man's a man for a that," infinitely outweigh all the nonsense and blasphemy which pro-slavery courts and pro-slavery parties and pro slavery churches have uttered to the contrary.

It is held that the Catholic priests help the Democratic Party to the Irish vote. I am not prepared to believe it. Like the ministers of the Episcopal Church, they stand aloof from politics. I would myself that all preachers preached politics - the politics of wisdom, justice, and humanity. For to me it is as plain that pure politics are a part of religion as that the theologies are not. Deeply do I rejoice that most of the ministers of most of the sects have of late years come to preach politics. God bless them for their good service in this wise in the last election! Great and blessed is this change! Only twenty years ago, and they were strenuously opposed to bringing politics into the pulpit; and if a layman ventured to attempt to supply their delinquency, he lost all favor with them. Our ministers are making religion more practical; and the more they do so, the more will their interest in the theologies decline. Compared with his interest in practical righteousness - in other phrase, with his interest in religion - how little does Henry Ward Beecher care for the theologies! What a contrast between the dry, dogmatic, useless sermons of the last century and the juicy and fit-for-use sermons of the present day!

That a Party, which has its life in slavery, should furnish tens of thousands of men to those secret, oath-bound, bloody Associations that are cooperating with Southern Rebels; and that, under its educating influences, there should come forth men base and villainous enough to attempt the ruin of their country by forgeries upon soldiers and frauds upon the ballotbox, is but what might have been expected. So, too, it was but a matter of course that such a Party should be exceedingly attractive to the vicious and ignorant. Of the drunkards and

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of the men who can not read and write, who voted at the late election, probably seven eighths voted Democratic tickets. Those localities in our great cities which are sinks of vice have generally given their almost entire vote to the Democratic Party. Cunning and corruption combined with ignorance, and ceaselessly playing upon it - these were so largely the elements in the Democratic Party, that one might almost say they made up the Party. And these were the elements that made it both numerous and strong. But happily the strength, which comes of such sources, is short-lived, whilst that, which is founded in virtue and intelligence, is permanent.

Am I asked whether there were no good men in the Democratic Party? I answer that there were tens of thousands. Many of them were blind to its bad character. Many of them continued in it simply from the force of habit. They had always been in the Democratic Party; and though the change which had taken place in it was as great as from day to night, they must nevertheless continue in it. That the ship was rotten and sinking did not arrest their attention. That it carried the same name and flag, as that which bad gone triumphantly through so many tempests, was enough to assure them of safety and keep them from deserting it.

And how do I explain the fact that thousands of intelligent, high-minded, cultivated gentlemen, who, though well knowing what the Democratic Party was, nevertheless consented to belong to it? I answer that it was because they knew what it was, that they belonged to it. They bad so far smothered their nature with their conventionalisms as to become unnatural enough to feel at home in so unnatural a Party. They had drawn a broad line of demarkation between themselves and the masses - especially between themselves and the poor, most of till, the negroes, who are the poorest of the poor. In a word, they were aristocrats, and therefore could not fail of a strong affinity for the most aristocratic Party in the world. They had that contempt of the poor which is the leading element in aristocracy; and so strong was it in that Party, as to make increasingly popular in it the doctrine that the rich should own the poor and capital own labor. Not strange was it then that the aristocrats of America should attach themselves to that Party, nor strange was it that the aristocrats of Europe should sympa

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thize with it. Nor was it strange that both, should wish success to the Rebellion, since they saw it so clear that the Rebellion and negro slavery and the Democratic Party must all succeed together or fail together; and since, too, they saw it so clear that aristocracy would gain much by the success or lose much by the failure.

I need say no more to justify my citing the deceased Democratic Party as a preëminent instance of outrages on the principles and rights of human nature, and therefore as a striking specimen of the exceedingly and monstrously unnatural. Let this Party, whose malignant and untiring industry on the side of the Rebellion threatened ruin to our country; let this Party, so furiously at war with the claims of nature, and therefore with the claims of religion; let its career and its close effectually admonish us to be true to humanity, and to stand by its rights in the persons of men of whatever clime, complexion, or condition. So shall we stand by God also; and so will He in turn stand by us. Nature or religion (which in this connection is a word of the same import) succeeded at the late election. The suppression of the Rebellion and the freedom of all the slaves, highly probable before, are made certain by this success. But whether our nation shall be saved will turn upon the question, whether we shall be so true to the claims of nature - to the claims of religion - as to enthrone justice in our governments, our churches, our hearts - a justice so impartial as to accord equal rights to all, born wherever they may have been or with whatever complexion. A nation can be saved only by righteousness. It is only in a low sense that as yet any of the nations have been saved. When all of them shall recognize and protect all the natural rights of all men, then all of them will be saved. Then there will no longer be war, nor slavery, nor land-monopoly, nor licensed dramshop, nor denial to woman of civil and political equality with man. Then, indeed, will have come the "Millennium;" not because it was foretold, but because it was earned. It will come not as the beginning, but as the fruit of righteousness; not to last for only a thousand years, but so long as justice shall reign amongst men, and so long as the religion of nature and reason and Jesus - the religion of doing as we would be done by - shall be their religion.