Year: 1859

ing down with a sharp blow Of the whip upon bis
flank, the spirited creature darts forward. forget
ful Of the object Of his former alarm. These leads
ers must be made to feel that their fear Of dsas-
trous results to their particular ecclesiastical or
ganizations, should they prove true to themselves,
to the oppressed victims of an outrages tyranny,
and to Cod is wholly eroundless or at all events,
far from the greatest misfortune that might befall
the of truth and righteousness. Ministers
must make up their minds that political preaching
will be peculiarly distasteful to such hearers ss
Pierce Butler, whose moral and epiriiua sensibil.
iGes were outraged, crashed through, and in
fact crushed, by the political preaching OF Dudly
Tying. while owning, working, whipping, selling
hundreds Of human beings. created in the image
of God on the cotton and sugar plantations Of
Carolina and Georgia.


| When the celebrated Robert hall was teproach
ell with meddliug in politics, he replied The plat
state of the case is, the writer 10 offended MT al
my meddling with politics, but that l have med
died on the wrong side =


Political preaching in this land, technically
means rebuking great national ard political SINS
This kind Of preaching is not only legitimate bu
the very kind which, in this age--wheh rational
llIquINy ie CbWluR 'u Ike IOOu-is tSVcCiHuy ut'
mandcd against uni ust ard aggressive wars, in
temperance. Sabbath violation, slavery, and kin
dred evils let the artillery of Gods Word be di-
rected from the forty thousand pulp of this land
and they will fall once like lightning from hcav
en-, sink like lead beneath the tide of public scorn
and their place be found no more at all. Against
these enormous evils the pulpit is bound to protest
and every one into whose hand is put the hammer
Of Gods Word must deal such blows upon them
as the measure Of his strength will admit 80 cor
rups. however all the political parties Of the
day that no minister can advocate the claims of
any one Of them without being gully Of mon
arena of their strfes is merely to soil sacred
garments, without rational hope of efecting any
beneficial result whatever.


True courage, it is necessary to say, does not
consist in denouncing sn in the abstract, or evils
which exist in other com munites and other eccle-
siastical organizations, but in meeting it face to
face, and 10 carrying on the conflict with it as it
exists in all forms of individual and organic wick
edness around us.


We have enough who are the champions of bat
ties long ago fought and won, who are bold and





thing without u local habitaton or q name,' but
who have no relish for a hand to hand encounter
with those great organized systems of oppression
and iniquity that opposed to the kingdom of
the Redeemer in the present-in these cases pre-
ter The mid and the persuasive. and consider it al
together better that Christianity should not come
10 contact with existing institutions.


Had the Church Of past ages been Of this mind.
no martyrs blood would ever have been shed, the
sacrifice OF 50 many noble lives of apostles and
their SUCCESSORS would have been avoided, and un-
told sufferings escaped-pity that the Church has
learned this wisdom SO lately If we to accept
such views now, we must reverse our former opin-
ions i; the past and present admiration which the
world entertains or the martyr spirit Is perni
cious sympathy for bigoted and misguided zeal
and those heroic deaths, from which even unbeef
does not Withhold the tribute of its praise but lit
tie better than suicide!


Men may plume themselves upon their superior
wisdom in stunning all the great moral conflicts
of the age but whether they will have equal
cause 10 congratulate themselves when they appear
to receive the crown of faithful and valiant SOL
dier of the truth and cause of Christ, is a point
upon which e may be permitted to entertain a;
least doubt.