The Monitor-register., 1897-04-16

could out of the crowded plgeonholes
of public men develop symmetrical re-
suits. For this reason pray Almighty
God for all those in authority.
The Demand of the People.
Then there are the vaster perplexltles
of our relations with foreign govern
ments. For directions in such affairs
the God of nations should be implored.
The demand of the people is sometimes
so heated. so unwise, that it must not
be needed. Hark to the boom of that
gun which sends from the American
steamer San Jacinto a shot across the
bow of the British merchant steamer
Trent Nov. s, 1861. Two distinguished
sou~therners, with their secretaries and
families, are III the way to England
and France to officially enlist them for
the southern Confederacy. After much
protest the commissioners, who had en-
barked for England and France, surren-
dered and were taken to Fort Warren,
near Boston. The capture was a plain
invasion of the laws of nations and an
~tagonistic to Il principle for the estab-
lishment of which the United States
government had fought i'll other days.
However, so great was the excitement
that the secretary of the United States
navy wrote an applauditory letter to
! Captain Wilkes, commander of the San
Jacinto, for his prompt and decisive
action and the house of representa-
tives passed a resolution of thanks for
"braye, adroit and patriotic conduct"
and the millions of the north went wild
with enthusiasm, and all the newspa-
pers and churches joined in the huzza,
England and France protested, the for
mer demanding that unless the distin-
guished prisoners should be surrendered
and apology made for insult to the
British flag within ten days Lord Ly-
ons must return to London, taking all
the archives of the British legation.
War with England and France seemed
inevitable, and war with England and
France at that time would have made
a restored American nation impossible
for a long while, if not forever. Then
| God came to the rescue and helped the
president and his secretary of state.
Against the almost unanimous senti-
ment of the people of the north the dis
tinguished Confederates were surren-
dered, the law of nations was kept in
violate, the lions paw was not lifted
to strike the eagles beak, and perhaps
the worst disaster of centuries was
avoided.
Gods Guidance Needed.
There came another crisis within the
last two years when millions of people
demanded that American war vessels
sail into Turkish waters and stop the
atrocities against the Armenians. The
people at large have no idea of the pres
sure brought upon our government to do
this rash thing. Missionaries and other
prominent Americans i'll and around
Constantinople assembled at the office
of the American legation and demanded
that our minister plenipotentiary cable
to Washington for United States ships
of war, and they suggested the words OF
the c%ablegram. Had our ships gone into
those waters the guns of foreign ma
lions, everlastingly jealous of us, would
have been turned against our shipping,
and our navy, within a few years be-
come respectable in power, would have
crawled backward i'll disgrace. The
proposition to do what could not be done
was mercifully withdrawn.
There will not be a year between now
and the next 20 years when those who
are i'll authority will not need the guild
ance of the God of nations. God only
can tell the right time to nations to do
the right thing. To do the right thing
at the wrong time is as bad as to do the
wrong thing at any time. Cuba will one
day be free, but it will be after she has
shown herself capable of free govern
ment. To acknowledge Cuban independ-
ence now would be to acknowledge what
does not exist The time may come
when the Hawaiian Islands may be a
part of cur government, but it will be
when they have decidedly expressed the
desire for annexation. In all national
affairs there is a clock. The hands of
that clock are not always seen by hu-
man eyes. But God sees them, not only
the hour hand, but the minute hand,
and when the hands nnoun that the
night hour has come the clock will
strike, and we ought to be in listening
attitude. 1.-The Lord reigneth. Let the
earth rejoice; let the m%ultitudes of the
isles be glad thereof"
speechmaking Versus Fighting.
You see, there are always in places of
authority unbalanced men who want
war, because they do not realize what
war is, or they are designing men, who
want war for the same reason that
wreckers like hurricanes, and founder
ing ships, because of what NAV float
ashore from the ruins. You see that
men who start wars never themselves
get hurt. They make the speeches, and
others make the self sacrifices. Notice
that all those who instigated our civil
war never as a consequence got so
much as a splinter under the thumb
nail, and they all died peacefully in
their beds. I had two friends-as thor
ough friends as old men can be to a
young man-Wendell Phillips and Rob-
ert Toombs. They were not among
those who expected anything advan-
tageous from the strife, but took their
positions conscientiously. They both
had as much to do with the starting of
SAO hoA w liz III SOulIl
as any other two men. A million brave
northern and southern dead were put
in the grave trenches, but the two IL
lustrious and honest men I have men,
toned were in good health long after
the ending of things at Appomattox,
, and If those who advocated measures
recently that would have brought ON
war between our country and Spain Or
England Or Turkey had been successful
in bringing on the wholesale murders
they themselves would not have been
above ground, as l hope they will be,
to celebrate the birth of the twentieth
century. If God had not interfered, we
would have had three wars within the
last two years-war with England, wal
with Spain and wal with Turkey, this
last joined by other nations transatlan-
tic. To preserve the peaceful e~qripoise
which such men are disturbing we
need a divine balancing, for which all
good men on both sides the sea ought to
be every day praying.
Advice an Impertinence.
Again, prayer to God for those i'll au-
thority is u only way Of being Of any
practical service to them. Our personal
advice would be to them, for the most
part, an impertinence. They have all
the facts as we cannot have them, and
they see the subject in all its bearings,
and we can be of no help to them ex-
cept through the supplication that our
text advises. In hat way we may be
infinite reinforcement. The mightiest
thing you can do for a man is to pray
for him. If the old Bible be true-and