Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Union, the Constitution and the Laws: Secession, a National Crime and Curse; A Discourse, Delivered in the Tabernacle Church, Philadelphia, Before the First and Tabernacle Baptist Congregations, on the National Fast Day, April 30th, 1863
I have tried to speak in this discourse, not as a partizan, but as a Christian patriot, holding the Bible in one hand and the Constitution in the other. Anunpatriotic ministry is a libel on the Christian church. The blood of this war stains and clots a dumb, silent pulpit all over, and cries to heaven against the Watchman who saw the sword coming on the land, and gave no warning.
No great reform was ever inaugurated, no grand revolution ever achieve liberty for a state or a nation without the pulpit. John Adams, says American Independence was owing more to the Republican views of the clergy, and the weight which their opinion had with the people than any other cause; and Gen. Lincoln wrote to Washington in i77s, - It is for tanate for us that the clergy are generally with us.
Some have said that the clergy do not understand the Constitution, and cannot rightly expound it, therefore, they should be silent on national themes! Is the Constitution written in hieroglyphics? Is it a sort of Chinese puzzle that needs a magician to find it out? Is this Magna Charta of our liberties so obscure and unintelligible that a man must study law an (1 be an expert in party politics to comprehend it 2 No, the Constitution is so transparent and clear that a child may understand it. The framers of that document made it so plain that the farmer on the prairie, the boatman on the lake, the operative in the mill, the immigrant landing on our shores, and the laborer in the street might comprehend it and the tune has come when the people would prefer as interpreters of that sacred document, loyal clergy men to disloyal politicians.
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