A Discourse for the Time, delivered January 4, 1852 in the First Congregational Unitarian ChurchFurness, William Henry
Religion
A Discourse for the Time, delivered January 4, 1852 in the First Congregational Unitarian Church
Furness, William Henry
Bible. Romans XIV, 7 -- Sermons; Church and state -- Sermons
The nations of the old world, degraded, trampled upon, and bleeding
under the relentless feet of arbitrary power, long and pray for
emancipation. The glorious vision of Liberty flits before their aching
sight. They stretch out their hearts and hands to us. But the
supporters of the old and oppressive forms of government sneer at our
boasted universal freedom, as well they may, and point to our millions
of bondmen. They can say, with truth, that Liberty does not exist here
or anywhere as a realized fact; that it is a chimera and an abstraction,
utterly impracticable; that the people are longing for a dream that has
never been and can never be fulfilled. Neither the foreign oppressor,
nor the foreign oppressed have any foundation in fact for the faith and
the hope of liberty; and much I fear we should do little for the
deliverance of other nations, even if, as we now stand, clinging to
Slavery, we were actually to intervene in their behalf. If we saw any
chance of strengthening and extending our 'domestic institution,' we
might in that case be ready enough to give them our help.
O how plain is it that the one thing which the world claims of us, the
one thing that the great Hungarian has to ask of us, for his own people
and for all Europe, is that we should prove that _Liberty without
Slavery_ is a practicable thing. Let this fact be realized, and the
world's redemption is sure. Show mankind twenty-five millions of human
beings, living together under such free and simple institutions as ours,
with not a single slave among them, and then all that we need do is
done, and our simple existence as a nation becomes an irresistible
intervention against the violation of human rights. To induce us to do
this, the Hungarian patriot may well go down on those knees which he
would not bend to Emperor or Czar, and adjure us for the love of God and
man, by all the dearest hopes and interests of the human race, by the
great name of the holy Jesus, to make our liberty complete, to redeem
our long-violated pledge, to wipe away the blot that eclipses the sun of
our Freedom, and prove, as we may, that all men are children of one
Father, brethren of one household, born to the glorious liberty of the
sons of the living God. If, in any way, he should be the means in the
hands of a gracious Providence of inducing us to do this, he will do
more for us than we could do for him, though we were to place all the
gold of the East, and of the West, at his disposal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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