Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1886-11-26
THANKSGIVING.
INDIVIDUAL LIFE IN NATIONAL
DESTINY.
Sermon Delivered Yesterday by Rev.
w. G. Merrill, of the Congre-
gationaI Church.

the First Baptist Church, Rev. w. Z. Mer'
rill, pastor of the Congregational Church
delivered the following sermon. His text
was Luke xix, AZ:
IF thou hadst known, even thou, al
least in this thy day, the things that per-
tain unto thy peacer'
Hegel, the greatest, perhaps, OF the refiec'
tive or subjective philosophers, once de-
clared that there are three periods in the
life of every man: the yes, the no, and the
yes again. First childhood says yes to the
parental instruction then youth says no
in self-will and waywardness; and last OF
all old age comes on and compels the soul
to say yes again to the first yes of is early
years" Tradition relates of Og, King OF
Bashan, that in an unequal contest he lifted
an enormous stone to hurl it upon his ad-
versary, but the gods suddenly followed it
in the middle, and it dropped about his
neck, there to remain to the end of life.
Says the poet Lowell:
once to every man and nation comes the mo-
ment TO decide,
In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, twixt the
good and evil side.
Some great cause, Gods new Messiah, offering
each the bloom or blight,
Parts the goats upon the left hand ana the
sheep upon the right
And the choice goes by forever for that dark
ness or that light
These three thoughts from philosophy,
tradition and poetry point all the same
great moral: that there is in all life a
formative period, that is period under
strict and rigid laws; probationary pc
Rod, and judgment day; a time when
we lay broad and deep the foundations
upon which we are to build in after years,
for veal or woe; a period again when,
though compelled to build, we shall struggle
to confirm or modify the action of our
early years, and a period yet again
when we must stand in silent awe to see
that our past is already become history, and
all that remains to us is to throw ourselves
down again, as in early childhood, at our
mothers knee and seek protective power in
calm obedience THE world is full of
Judgment days" says Emerson, and we do
not gainsay the terse aphorism; but think
not that sentence is always executed with
the judgment. The findings are carried up
and up through court after court of stern
investigation, until one day the final hearing
comes, and in the presence of the Supreme
Power no witnesses are suborned, no juries
packed, no Judges bribed to partial verdicts.
We are too apt to think that laws deter
mine right and wrong, justice and injustice.
Sacramento, a few years ago. had
ONE OF THE ABLEsT WRITERS
Of journal leaders in this country, and for
years his words were passed over your
breakfast-tables as high authority and al
lowed to mold the thought and fashion
the characters of your youth. When l
asked him one day why he did not expose
an unjust transaction, in which, by skill
full manipulation, the numerous owners in
great public business were defrauded of
their Just share Of the earnings, he asked if
they could not be prosecuted by law.
When l answered that they had managed
the affair so skillfully that they had actually
violated no law, but that such an evasion
did not lessen the injustice of the act, he
denied vehemently all sympathy for such
sentiment, and declared that he knew no
right, no wrong, save such as issued from
the observance or Infringement of civil
law. This idea of the origin of right and
wrong in human life is too widespread by
much, and hangs upon an utter miscon-
ception of the Office of abstract law.
Forces are ill-adjusted law seeks to adjust
them. Opposing interests clash; law
quells the disturbance by giving precedent
to the right Law (civil law is liberal in
its activity, and determines according to
the spirit. Law, in the healthy exercise of
its functions, looks to the careful adjust
ment of the active factors-the formative
elements of society. 1t does not seek out
its petty weaknesses and spend its forces in
Analysing morbid peculiarities. The stern
duty of law is to gather up in one and send
safely on the great current of humanity
towards
THAT OCEAN on WHOSE wAvELEss SHORE
Its jurisdiction forever ends instead of al
lowing il to dribble in from thousand I'M
cared-for brooks and rills. Law, then, is
not creative, but declarative. Law does not
make a thing right or wong by virtue of
its proclamation. Law does not create
Justice it recognizes it, and bends the
mighty forces of humanity to the protec-
ton and projection of man in its attain
ment 1t says: This thing is just; l beg
you do it." Itsays: This is unjust do it
at your peril" The real service, then, of
law is not 10 conjure up and infuse into
some acts that which shall color them
black, and into other acts a certain essence
that shall bleach them white. 1t does not
make integrity and honor famous, neither
does it make crime and dishonor infa-
nous. 1t does not say You shall
labor while it is day" it announces, II
Won spend the day in idleness you must go,
home empty handed." 1t does not say,
You shall not work iniquity y it says
4" If you SOW dragons teeth, you shall
reap a harvest of spears and gather them
into your own BOSOM" 1t notes the fact
| that the logic of events is pitiless, within
certain lines, recognizes the stern fidelity
of sequence and throws, for the salvation
| of man, line of light from primal cause
| 20, Fna al This 10 tha nfffoa e 10
and while it does not with captious
| scrutiny peer over the borders for every
| ouirk OF occentricity, it does define the bouni
| diaries with generous exactness and binds
man to his course for good or i'll. The
physical laws of mankind are yet more
| unerring and more certain far of execu-
| ton; but their function in visible activity
| is the same. The laws of physical being
| do not create penalties, they define and
| declare them. Certain lines Of conduct in
| the physical organism lead to certain re-
suits. When those lines of conduct, many
| times repeated, become identical in oper-
| alton. the succession becomes law and the
result is inevitable. But the law does moi
create the result, it but declares it. As il
is itself but formulated by the succession
so it but witnesses to the necessary coEclu-
sion and plants the iron track, henceforth
from the action to its end. Now, thus fal
in the domain of law we recognize its
| function to be normal, and see the absolute
necessity that as universal guide it must
within certain limitations, approach to the
infallible; that
ITS STANDARDS MUST BE INTERCHANGEABLE,
! That it must throw its lines of direction
with answering accuracy from certain
cause to sure effect. But the field of civil
iuriedistion does not embrace all the do
main of law-that is only conventional
after ala matter of convenience among
| individuals, to be set up and overturned a
| will by majorities. Even the physical
laws are only the advance guard-tht
picket-line of ethical laws, and the issue
in these civil and physical territories il
petty in comparison with the tremendou:
| consequences with which law has to do II
the moral realm. If, now, we value Law
in the civil and physical spheres of human
living as induces of underlying principles
| which we see by results must have exist
ence there, shall we not be equally careful
when we follow on or step into the mora
realm, to discover the existence OF world
wide principles underlying these universe
manifestoes Shall law split hairs in thu
very vestibule of her temple, and then play
fast and loose with her holy offices at tn,
very foot of the sacred shrines within
Must man travel in the straight grooves o
law all the way up to the lofty plane o.
moral responsibility, and then shall he b.
allowed to glide off upon some turn-ta6l'
oF ,,,danision xvhOSa wheels RIM 10 and FRI