AND THEIR TRADITIONS.
We have chosen the above caption to designate a class of people which is now pretty numerous in the old and new worlds. It is a class of politicians whose political faith is their religion. They are known in divers countries by different appellations. In France they are called Socialists, or Democratic and Social Republicans; Moderate Republicans, &c.; in England, Chartists, and Radicals; and in the United States, Whigs, Democrats, Locofocos, &c. Their apostles are numerous—“Legion” in fact—and of a world-wide celebrity. Who hath not heard of Lamartine, of Mazzini, of Kossuth, of Ledru Rollin, of Prudhomme, of Victor Hugo, of Daniel Webster, and Henry Clay? These, and a multitude of others, who are looked up to by the misguided populace as the very oracles of truth and wisdom, though differing in details, agree in mind and judgment, to wit, that republicanism is the divinely appointed panacea for the evils of the world! The Anglo-Saxon republicans of England and America regard the United States—“the Model Republic,” as it is styled—as the power by which the republican regeneration of the nations is to be effected; while Mazzini would point to Italy, and the Franks to the French nation, as the destroyers of the devilry of kings and priests, and the planters of the Tree of Liberty in the midst of the earth, under whose world wide shadow all men shall be equal, and the members of a brotherhood that shall be universal. The Websters and the Clays amuse the people with flattering predictions of the high and towering destiny of their confederacy, which will irradiate the nations with a darkness-dispelling splendor, and either prepare them for self-government and independence; or, by the cooperation of the disaffected in all lands, for their annexation to the United States. The kingdom and nation that will not become republican shall perish; yea, it shall be utterly wasted: for monarchy is a sin against society—a government for the benefit of the few—and not to be tolerated in the era when all nations are blessed in Washington and his fraternity! The Victor Hugos, however, while they rejoice in the good news of universal republicanism, and accord all honor and glory to “the Father of his Country,” and his sons, take a view of the application of their common gospel to human necessities, not altogether in harmony with the Websters and the Clays. The French Constitution perfected, and not the Constitution of the United States, is to become, according to him, the Bible* (see over page) of the nations, the book of progress of the United States of republicanised Europe, when kings and priests, and privileged orders will all be merged in “the swinish multitude,” no longer swine, but enlightened and independent freemen, every one a nobleman, a prince, a king! But, we need not trouble ourselves about the differences of detail which seem to perplex these leaders of the people.
* In a speech to the Legislative Assembly, on the proposed revision of the Constitution, Victor Hugo observed, “If it had been said the Constitution of the French Republic should be the charter of human progress in the Nineteenth Century, the immortal testament of civilisation, the political Bible of the nations, it should approach as nearly as possible to absolute social truth, therefore let us revise the Constitution, that he could have understood: but that in the middle of the Nineteenth Century they should be told, there is a great light in France, let us put it out; that they should be told the French people have hewn out of indestructible granite the first stone of that vast edifice that will hereafter be called the United States of Europe * * and then that it should be added, we were going to destroy this revolution; we will extinguish this Republic: we will snatch this book of progress from the people’s hands, we will raze out the dates of 1792, 1830, and 1848; we will bar the way against that rash grant whose name is Providence; that this should be said, that this should be dreamed of, overwhelmed him with astonishment.”—N. Y. Tribune.
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What we have to consider at present is that upon which they all mainly agree, namely, that a time is fast approaching in the history of the world when its kingdoms will become republics, and all men free, equal, sovereign, and blessed; and ruling themselves by governors of their own appointment, who shall be amenable to the majorities that have created them, and breathed into them the breath of political life. This is the political optimism of the day. Politicians can devise nothing better suited to the necessities of mankind. It is a political condition from which they consider all social blessings may flow; and by which the happiness of the greater number may be guaranteed. It is their Gospel—the Gospel of universal Republicanism—the Great Salvation of political prophets and apostles! They preach it from the presidential chair, the bureau, the steps of the Capitol, the mountain, the pulpit, the Fourth of July rostrum, the editor’s den, and the stump—until the people and their beguilers actually persuade themselves that it is the very truth of God itself! It is, however, but a small affair—a very little gospel—a sort of gospellilla, the very diminutive of “gospel;” and, therefore, we have denominated its confessors and proclaimers, REPUBLICAN GOSPELLERS.”
We say to these Lilliputian Gospelillos, your gospel of universal republicanism is a very microscopic affair. It is small and insignificant because it is a mere substitution of one evil for another. The world requires more than a change of political and social constitution. It requires this, indeed; but it requires also, a just and equitable, a righteous administration of the law in all its relations to human affairs. The wants of the nations are twofold. They need first, an independent Aristocracy of intelligent, wise, and just men, such as God would pronounce just, wise, and intelligent. They need these for the administration of their affairs, and without them their happiness could not be guaranteed for a single month. They must be independent of the people, because the people, because the people are evil, and their influence corrupting. It is not the best men that have the ascendancy in human affairs at present. The most intelligent and virtuous of society could not obtain power, because it is only obtainable in this, and in all other countries, by obsequiousness to the evil, which reigns in majorities of the people, or in despotic minorities sustained by military force. God’s people, who are the elite of society—“the salt of the earth” wherever found—could not condescend to the meanness and trickery necessary to become popular, without which the votes of majorities, or the patronage of “the great,” could not be gained. The world’s people, even the best of them, are radically incompetent to rule the world in righteousness; and without righteousness in the rulers, mankind cannot be happy. Their first want is therefore, a sufficient number of just persons to carry into effect a legislation which proscribes evil in all its ramifications, and fosters only that which is good.
The second want to be supplied is a Constitution and Laws which will establish such a civil, ecclesiastical, and social condition, as will be glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, and good will among men. Now this desideratum no politician, nor sect of politicians, has knowledge enough, or wisdom and virtue sufficient to supply. They do not know what would contribute to the highest glory of God, and to peace, and good will. Republican constitutions have determined that an equality of religious sects is most conducive to the glory of God, and to peace, and to goodwill. This is the best political theorists could devise. They are so ignorant of the truth that they do not know which of the sects has the true faith, or whether there be any true faith at all; what better then could they do than to treat them as they have done? From the experience of the past, and viewing the present in this the Model Republic, as the ripe fruit of the seed sown by “the sages of the revolution” as the people regard them, we conclude that the world is lost, if it have in store no other redemption than the salvation preached by the republican gospellers, the blind leaders of the blind, in Europe and America.
But granting that their gospel shall become a fact—that not a kingdom shall exist upon the earth, but that all nations shall be aggregated into the most approved republican confederacy—when their political optimism shall exist without a single sceptic of its completeness and adaptation to the real necessities of the world—is such a system to be eternal? Are generations to come and go upon the earth eternally? Are they to be subject to pestilence, famine, earthquake, disease, poverty, and all the ills which political panaceas cannot reach, forever? Are mankind to be always governed by men whose existence is the breath of their constituents? Is society though united in political, to be forever divided, in religious faith? Will human nature be then changed, and its passions hushed by republicanism into the repose of peace, of love, of righteousness, and of good will! Do its gospellers suppose that such a republican world is the mystery of God’s will which he hath purposed in himself from the beginning? Alas, alas! what a utopian speculation, what a visionary absurdity is this gospel of the republic for the redemption of the world!
The gospellers of the Victor Hugo school regard France as the first dominion of the future United States of Europe; while those of the cisatlantic brotherhood consider New York as destined to be “the Empire State” of the United States of the American Continent. When these two republican confederacies divide the world between them will there be no jealousy, no contention as to which shall take the lead—no Carthaginian and Roman tragedy re-enacted on the broad wave for political and commercial ascendancy among the nations? Yes, it is not to be denied, that the prestige of future sovereignty over the world is with the Anglo-Saxons. Theirs is the race that is to fill the globe, and to absorb all others into itself, so that all nationalities will be merged into one universal Yankee nation! We were greatly amused at the enthusiasm of a fellow-traveller in one of the Philadelphia steamers a few months since. Conversing on the progress of things around us, he exclaimed with great zest, that “the Yankees were destined to regenerate the world; and they were the boys to do it!” It is manifest he did not dream of the French constitution being “the political Bible of the nations.” It was Yankee, and not French, regeneration that was the prime article of his political faith. But what mortal man of intelligence could be satisfied with a French or Yankee regeneration of the world! What have France, or Frenchmen in their whole history, exhibited of a recuperative character to cause the nations to hope in them as the architects of human happiness! They do well as executioners of divine wrath upon the destroyers of the people—to strike kings and priests with terror, to strip “nobility” of its plumes, and to punish them with confiscation, imprisonment, and death. Frenchmen are destructives. They can build up and regenerate nothing. Their mission is to pull down, to disorganise, and overthrow. They are the Arabs of “Christendom”—the sword of God upon Austria and the Papacy.
And into what would Yankeedom convert the world that the nations should desire the Yankee era as “the acceptable year of the Lord?” Into one vast Connecticut—an universal factory of wooden clocks, hams, and nutmegs, together with “other notions,” in which a diamond-cut-diamond “smartness” would skin the teeth of conscience, and squeeze oil from the flinty rock. Men would then become all keen traders; expediency and profit, “the higher law;” women in the plenitude of reconquered rights, endued with masculinity; and all devout in devotion to the world, and punctilious in observance of Sabbath and thanksgiving days! New England sectarianism, as frigid, rigid, and heartless as the Blue Laws themselves, would be the highest glory to God upon earth; and none would be permitted to walk in the light of its divinity who did not do homage at its shrine, and burn incense at the altars of its priests. Their common schools would be universal, all lands be “the land of steady habits,” and society merged into one great “anti” for the abolition of all sins, misdemeanours, and offences hypocrisy had no mind to! This would be about the loftiest attainment Yankeeism could reach. A humdrum world at best, affording no scope for the highest and noblest faculties of the mind. A Yankee regeneration may satisfy the fleshly lusts which war against the soul; but like the French, it is a miserable abortion as a panacea for the social evils that afflict the world.
The Gospel of the Model Republic, then, is the gospel preached in Mammon’s temples—is the salvation vouchsafed of God for the deliverance of mankind from all evils of their political and social condition. The gospellers who feel themselves called to preach it are of two orders—lay and clerical. The lay preachers are the Jeffersons, Clays, Victor Hugos, &c., who figure in Capitols, Halls, platforms, stumps, &c.; —the clerical, the pulpiteers of theological conventicles, who “grind divinity of other days” for the “cure of souls.” The latter sanctify the speeches and legislation of their lay brethren by congressional prayers and ministrations, and promise them immortal fame below and apotheosis beyond the skies for their patriotic labors in the service of God, the people, and the State; as if these were a trinity to be worshipped combinedly by all believers who would look down from heaven and behold with joy the blessedness of the nations freed from monarchy, and burdensome taxation, and rendering a devout and willing homage to the clergy as the favourites of heaven—the saints who shall possess the honor, glory, and riches of the republic for ever, even forever and ever! Amen.
But all these speculations of the gospellers are mere vanities and lies. Indeed, lay and clerical politicians cannot speak the truth in relation to the future. There is not a single political speech on record, uttered by the orators of the people in regard to the destiny of these United States and other governments of the world, but is perfect foolishness—the merest absurdity that ever escaped the lips of ignorance and imbecility. The blinded people call it wisdom, and idolise the blind that utter it as highly gifted of the gods! But their light is darkness, their wisdom folly, and their knowledge the absence of all truth. They are possessed of a lying spirit like the four hundred prophets of Ahab, for they speak not according to the Law and Testimony of God. How can they speak truly on this subject! If they venture to prophesy, as all the peoples’ orators do when they speak of the destiny of nations, a necessity rests upon them to lie; because, being ignorant of the reality, of what God has determined shall be, they can no more speak the truth than a man could who should undertake to narrate, or to predict what should happen hereafter in Lunar or Solar society. Being ignorant, he must be of necessity, though not intentionally. “I said in my haste,” says the prophet, “all men are liars.” This pre-eminently applies to the Republican Gospellers. Their gospel is “a lie in their right hand,” and has been invented by “the Father of lies” to discredit the glorious Gospel of the Kingdom of God. If all nations are to be aggregated into one universal republic, or if their governments are to become independent republics, or if this Model Republic is to endure another century, then the Bible is not a true exposition of the reality; and men will be justified in adopting the French Constitution, or the Constitution of these United States, or the Book of Mormon, or the Koran, perhaps, as the political Bible of the nations! ! But the Book of God is true, wholly and unimpeachably true; and all sermons, speeches, and vaticinations, which do not reproduce its testimony, whether lay or clerical, are baseless fabrics, mere fables of old wives, the vapourings of an hour, which amuse and deceive the children of darkness in whom works the spirit of disobedience and untruth.
The gospel of Republicanism is the popular gospel of the age, and in direct contradiction to its crushing antagonist the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. We have seen with what “lying wonders” the former beguiles the people to their destruction. (It was faith in this republican fiction that urged on the invasion of Cuba. Some republican gospellers think they have nothing to do but to show their precious persons in a monarchical territory, and annexation to the Model Republic is an inevitable necessity! Such have yet to learn that “God hath determined the bounds of the habitations of all nations;” and that the frontiers of a people cannot be extended at their will and pleasure be they royalist, imperial, or republican. Had the Fillibusteros possessed as much knowledge and intelligence as zeal in propagating their faith, they would not now be going down to the sides of the pit, or pining in the mines of Spain. But this comes of ignorance of the true gospel, and of running before you are sent!)
The time is at hand, it proclaims, when the kingdoms of the world shall all become republics, and monarchy shall curse the nations no more. It is false, exclaims the Gospel of the Kingdom; for “the kingdoms of the world shall become the kingdoms of the Lord, and of his Anointed One,” or Christ, “and He shall reign for ever.” When monarchy is suppressed the people shall govern themselves by their own chosen representatives. It is false, saith the true gospel; monarchy shall never be suppressed on earth; for Christ, the Lord shall be king over the whole earth for ever—Revelation 11: 15; Zechariah 14: 9. The people shall not govern themselves; for “the kingdom is the Lord’s, and he is governor among the nations”—Psalm 22: 28; therefore “let them be glad, and sing for joy; for thou, O God, shalt judge the people righteously, and govern the nations upon earth”—Psalm 67: 4. Instead of choosing their own representatives to make laws for them, “a law shall proceed from me”—Isaiah 51: 4, saith the Lord; “it shall go forth from Zion”—Isaiah 2: 3; “my Servant, whom I uphold; mine elect one in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my spirit upon him: HE shall bring forth judgment to the nations. He shall not fail, nor be discouraged, till he have set judgment in the earth: and the isles shall wait for his law”—Isaiah 42: 1-4. The nations shall not elect their governors any more than they shall enact their own laws; but they shall be ruled by those whom they have robbed, and tormented, and murdered, and despised, and hated in times bygone: for, saith the future Lord of the world, “To him that overcomes the world by his faith will I give power over the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron”—Revelation 2: 26; 1 John 5: 4. Men talk of self-government as though their right to do so were indisputable! But they are as devoid of the right as they are unfit to govern with equity and judgment. Human government in its least objectionable form is an usurpation of divine right; for God only has the right to govern the nations upon earth. The present state of things in the several divisions of the globe is only permitted, not approved. It is merely provisional, not permanent, and destined soon to pass away. The eternity of republicanism and the divinity of its principles are as great a fiction as the eternity and infallibility of the Roman Jezebel of the peninsular. Mankind are provisionally permitted to amuse and fret themselves with political experiments and impossible schemes until they have wrought themselves up to such a pitch of wicked ambition as to necessitate the interference of Omnipotence to place things upon the foundation which has been laid in his purpose before the world began. Men err egregiously in their notions of government, which they have derived from their original progenitors. These conceived the idea of self-government in transgressing the divine law, and becoming a law to themselves. True to their ancestry their descendants audaciously exclaim, “Who is lord over us!” They are willing that God should “save their souls from hell,” upon their own principles; but as to receiving laws and governors from him they have no idea of this; and prefer that he should mind his own affairs above, and leave the world to them.
But, hear this, O ye who preach rebellion and give the lie to God, in your vapourings about patriotism and republican universality! He has proclaimed your gospel to be utter foolishness in announcing his purpose in creating nations to dwell upon the face of the earth. “I have created all thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers,” says Jehovah, “for Him who is my image, and the First-Born of every creature”—Colossians 1: 15-17; “whom I have appointed Heir of all things”—Hebrews 1: 2, “and whose lordship every tongue shall confess, and every mortal bow the knee to his name which is above every name, or title, among angels or men upon the earth”—Philippians 2: 9-11; Hebrews 1: 4. “My purpose is to aggregate all kingdoms, republics, tribes, peoples, and nations into one dominion under him for ever”—Ephesians 1: 10; Daniel 2: 44; 7: 9, 13-14, 27; “and he shall have the heathen for his inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession. He shall rule them with a rod of iron, and dash them in pieces as a potter’s vessel”—Psalm 2. “This is my decree, and the kingdom and nation that will not serve Him shall perish; yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted”—Isaiah 60: 12. Now when king Jesus is triumphant here; —when every knee bows to his name, from the Autocrat to the pettiest prince in Germany, and from the President to the humblest official of the States; —when all kings fall down subdued before him, and all nations serve him—Psalm 72: 11—what then becomes of your republicanism! The British Empire will have fallen to pieces, and your Model Republic will be no more! The Houses of Parliament and the State-Capitols will be barred against the representatives of the people, the echoes of whose uttered foolishness will be silenced in their political death. THE MODEL KINGDOM will become the admiration of all nations, and the Model Republic as little remembered, or cared for, as the kingdom of Bashan, or the diminutive republic of San Merino.
“The Lord shall be king over all the earth, and his name one.”
This is universal monarchy instead of universal republicanism! A glorious monarchy such as the world has never witnessed before—a government which is theocratic, not popular; and one to which none are appointed by votes of majorities, but by the absolute will and pleasure of the Lord God alone.
