LECT. III.]

AMERICAN SLAVERY.

47

The masses of the people never heartily supported the compromises which made up nearly the whole of our statesmanship on the subject for half a century. Compromise -that miserable burlesque of wisdom where moral principles are at stake-was the sum total of the vision of our wise men through all that period; but the instincts of the people were never genial to it. When President Lincoln said, "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong," the conscience and common sense of the people responded, "So say we all." President Lincoln himself was a child of the lowgrounds. His ideas of political economy and of social rights he got out of the woods. His nearest approach to metaphysical culture was splitting rails. His knowledge of books was almost limited to the Bible and Shakspeare. All that he knew of history he learned from Abbott's histories for children.

If the cultivated mind of our country had been more childlike in its wisdom, and had followed the intimations of Providence more swiftly, it would have had no difficulty with the common mind in executing peaceably the plans which God at last thrust upon the nation in carnage. Carnage is not the normal and necessary instrument of great revolutions. In this also the masses of our people were right in their convictions. "Slavery is wrong," said they, "and it must die; but it can die by peaceful means.' In this conviction they were nearer to the ultimate principles of God's government of nations than were the few fanatical leaders who ignored the reformatory potency of time. They were nearer to the old Mosaic wisdom on the subject, that marvelous system of jurisprudence, to which we owe so many germs of the world's latest and wisest states

manship. History in future ages will tell this story more truthfully than living chroniclers are now doing it.

Even up to this hour, is it not the rude instincts of the people which are taking the lead of political opinion in the solution of those problems, consequent upon the civil war, which have a moral and religious basis? The cultivated classes as a whole are not leading this people they are following. The real leaders are men of the people, as distinct from, and to some extent opposed to, the men of culture. Such, at least, is the horoscope as I read it. How, otherwise, could the phenomenon ever have been possible, which we have witnessed within the last decade, that the government of a great nation hung in suspense upon the votes of a few negroes in the backwoods of Louisiana and the everglades of Florida, who could not write their own names, nor distinguish their ballots from circus-tickets?

One is reminded often, in observing such phenomena, of the declaration of the apostle, "Not many mighty, not many noble, are called." It appears as if men of culture did not generally read Divine Providence aright till they are needed as leaders of great movements which have, in the main, been originated without them. After a certain growth of reforms we must have the leadership, either of high intelligence, or, in the absence of that, of miraculous inspiration. God does not permanently abrogate the law by which the superior governs the inferior mind; but temporarily, and when inspiration and miracle can not be interpolated into the system of affairs, he does suspend that law by making the low-grounds of society the birthplace of great ideas.

LECTURE IV.

RELATIONS OF THE CLERGY TO REVOLUTIONS OF POPULAR OPINION, CONTINUED.

(3) THE views already presented suggest, further that sometimes popular revolutions of opinion become distorted and corrupt for the want of an educated Christian leadership. Then come mutterings of anar chy. These, if not heeded, swell into bellowings o revolution. It is my conviction that ponderous ques tions of right and wrong are now seething among th masses of the nations, which have been started by truthful ideas. They are, at the bottom, legitimate problems of Christian inquiry. They are such ques tions as socialism strives frantically to answer. Among them are the social problems which are chafing some of the Southern States of our republic. In all the great nations of Christendom questions of this nature are threatening to turn the world upside down. A blind sense of wrong is buried under the enormous inequalities of our civilization, which the first influence of Christianity tends to lash into frenzy over the first principles of government and social order, with a recklessness which breeds civil wars. Looking at the facts as they are known and read of all men, and as they are suffered by the great majority, human nature cries out against them. It declares, that, if Christianity

means any thing, it means something very different from this. Then follow, the world over, the questions, "What and why and how and wherefore,” down to the roots of things.

Yet this entire volume of popular questionings of the drift of our civilization might be answered so as to promote the peace of nations and the brotherhood of races, if the educated mind of the world would accept them as questionings which ought to be answered, instead of beating them down by a repressive conservatism, by pride of race, by the tyranny of wealth, and by bayonets. Because those questions are ignored, or falsely answered, by the educated classes, they continue to inflame the unsatisfied mind below. That lowground of humanity, ignorant and debased as it is, can not rid itself of them. It surges around them angrily and blindly. The more obstinately the mind above crowds them down, or holds still in contempt of them, the more tempestuously, often deliriously, and in the final result demoniacally, the mind below clamors for a settlement of them. At length, in the fullness of its times, the mind below breaks loose from established institutions. The laws and usages of centuries give way. Rabid diseases of opinion take the place of healthy and quiescent faith, all for the want of a dispassionate, scholarly, Christian leadership.

(4) At the root of almost all the intoxicated developments of popular opinion, there is a truth. It is a truth distorted, but still a truth; a truth tainted by error, but a truth nevertheless; a truth bloated by intemperate defenses, but a truth for all that. A mysterious power has set it fermenting in secret in the inexpressible intuitions of ignorant minds, as if in the

LECT. IV.]

THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS.

51

bowels of the earth, where the sun never shines. It must work its way up to light and air. If there is no other way for its ascent, if the repressive forces above are so ponderous and so compact that it can not lift them off gently, then it must spout up volcanically. It will not be smothered passively. A man buried alive will beat the coffin-lid. So these undying truths, pent up in the souls of ignorance and debasement, will struggle for egress. They will find their way out wherever they can discover the weakest spot in the shell with which conservative society becomes crusted The Providence of God certainly works sometimes in this seemingly anomalous neglect of the educated powers of the world.

over.

I say "anomalous," because it is not the normal way of Providence to ignore culture, or to work without it. But sometimes, when culture, as represented in the upper classes of great nations and ruling races, is false to its mission, and treacherous to its origin, God starts great truths into life in the hearts of the masses, not in the heads of the few. He lets them work a long time. there, in a half blinded way, before the few discover and embrace them.

An episode illustrative of this in literary history was witnessed in the origin and early fate of the "Pilgrim's Progress." Who wrote the "Pilgrim's Progress," and where? A tinker in Bedford jail. By whom, and why, was the tinker shut up in Bedford jail? The upper classes of a great empire put him there to prevent his preaching other such things as the immortal allegory. And how was it received by contemporary opinion? Thousands of colliers and peasants and humble tradesmen read it, and admired it, and loved it, long before