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| Rev. Thomas DeWitt Talmage |
The Cortland
News, Friday, March 13, 1885.
Extracts From a Sermon by Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage.
National Ruin.
“Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city, for in one hour
is thy judgment come.” –Rev. xviii., 10, 13.
On
cisatlantic shores a company of American Scientists are now landing, on their
way to find the tomb of a dead empire holding in its arms a dead city, mother
and child of the same name—Babylon. The ancient mounds will invite the spades
and shovels and crowbars while the unwashed native looked on in surprise. Our
scientific friends will find yellow bricks still impressed with the name of
Nebuchadnnezzer, and they will go down into the sarcophagus of a monarchy
buried more than two thousand years ago. May the explorations of Rawlinson and
Layard and Chevalier and Opperto and Loftus and Chesney be eclipsed by the
present archaeological uncovering.
But is it possible this is all
that remains of Babylon, a city once five times larger than London and twelve
times larger than New York? Walls 373 feet high and 93 feet thick. Twenty-five burnished
gates on each side, with streets running clear through to corresponding gates
on the other side. Six hundred and twenty-squares. More pomp and wealth and
splendor and sin than could be found in any five modern cities combined.
A city of palaces and temples. A
city having within it a garden on an artificial hill four hundred feet high,
the sides of the mountain terraced. One night, while the honest citizens were asleep,
but all the saloons of saturnalia were in full blast, and at the king's castle they
had filled the tankards for the tenth time, and reeling and guffawing and
hiccoughing around the state table were the rulers of the land. General Cyrus ordered
his besieging army to take shovels and spades, and they diverted the river from
its usual channel into another direction, so that the forsaken bed of the river
became the path on which the besieging army entered.
When the morning dawned the
conquerors were inside the outside trenches. But do nations die? Oh, yes, there
is great mortality among monarchies and republics. They are like individuals in
the fact that they are born. They have a middle life, they have a decease, they
have a cradle and a grave. Some of them are assassinated, some destroyed by
their own hand.
My friend, it is no unusual
thing for a government to perish, and in the same necrology of dead nations, and
in the same graveyard of expired governments will go the United States of
America unless there be some potent voice to call a halt, and unless God in His mercy interfere, and through a purified ballot-box and a widespread
public Christian sentiment the catastrophy be averted.
The first evil that threatens
the annihilation of our American institutions is the fact that political
bribery, which once was considered a crime, has by many come to be considered a
tolerable virtue.
There is a legitimate use of
money in elections, in the printing of political tracts, and in the hiring of
public halls, and in the obtaining of campaign oratory; but is there any
homunculus who suppose that this vast amount of money is going in a legitimate
direction? The vast majority of it will go to buy votes.
There used to be bribery, but
it held its head in shame. It was under the utmost secrecy that many years ago
a railroad company bought up the Wisconsin Legislature and many other public officials
in the State. The Governor of the State at the time received $50,000 for his
signature. His private secretary received $5,000. Thirteen members of the
Senate received $175,000 among them in bonds. Sixty members of the other House
received from $5,000 to $10,000 each. The Lieutenant-Governor received $10,000.
The clerks of the House received from $5,000 to $10,000 each. The Bank
Comptroller received $10,000. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars were
divided among the lobbyists. Now, political bribery defies you, dares you, is
arrogant.
Unless this diabolism ceases in
this country, Bartholdi's statute to be lifted on Bedloe's Island, with uplifted
torch to light other nations into the harbor, had better be changed, and the
torch dropped as a symbol of universal incendiarism.
Unless this purchase and sale
of suffrage shall cease, the American Government will expire, and you might as
well be getting ready the monument for another dead nation, and let my text
inscribe upon it these words: “Alas! alas! for Babylon that great city, that
mighty city, for in one hour is thy judgment come."
My friends, if you have not noticed
that political bribery is one of the ghastly crimes of this day, you have not
kept your eyes open.
Another evil threatening the
destruction of American institution[s] is the solidifying of the sections
against each other. A solid North, A solid South. If this goes on we shall,
after awhile, have a solid East against a solid West, we shall have solid
Middle States against solid Northern States, we shall have a solid New York
against a solid Pennsylvania, and a solid Ohio, against a solid Kentucky. It is
nineteen years since the war closed, and yet at every Presidential election the
old antagonism is aroused.
When Garfield died, and all the
States gathered around his casket in sympathy and in tears, and as hearty telegrams
of condolence came from New Orleans and from Charleston as from Boston and
Chicago, I said to myself, “I think
sectionalism is dead.”
But alas! No. The difficulty will never be ended
until each state of the nation is split up into two or three great political parties.
This country cannot exist unless it exists as one body, the national capitol
the heart, sending out through all the arteries of communication warmth and life
to the very extremities.
What is the interest of Georgia
is the interest of Massachusetts, what is the interest of New York is the interest
of South Carolina. Does the Ohio river change its politics when it gets below Louisville? It is not
possible for these sections and antagonisms to continue for a great many years
without permanent compound fracture.
Another evil threatening the
destruction of our American institutions is the low state of public morals. What
killed Babylon of my text? What killed Phoenicia? What killed Rome? Their own
depravity, and the fraud and the drunkenness and the lechery which have
destroyed other nations will destroy ours unless a merciful God prevent. To
show you the low state of public morals, I have to call your attention to the
fact that many men nominated for offices in the State and nation, at different
times, are entirely unfit for the positions for which they have been nominated.
I have to tell you what you know already, that American politics have sunken to
such a low depth that there is nothing beneath.
My friends, we have in this country
people who say the marriage institution amounts to nothing. They scoff at it. We
have people walking in polite parlors in our day who are not good enough to be
scavengers in Sodom! I went over to San Francisco four or five years ago—that
beautiful city, that Queen of the Pacific. May the blessing of God come down upon her great churches and her noble men and women!
When I got into the city of San
Francisco, the mayor of the city and the president of the Board of Health
called on me and insisted that I go and see the Chinese quarters, no doubt so
that on my return to the Atlantic coast I might tell what dreadful people the Chinese are. But on the last night of my stay in San Francisco, before
thousands of people in their great opera house, I said: "Would you like me
to tell you just what I think plainly and honestly?" They said: "Yes,
yes, yes!" I said: "Do you think you can stand it all?" They
said: "Yes, yes, yes!" "Then," I said, "my opinion is
that the curse of San Francisco is not your Chinese quarters, but your millionaire
libertiness!"
And two of them set right before
me—Felix and Drusilla. And so it is in all the cities. I never swear, but when I
see a man go unwhipped of justice, laughing over his shame and calling his
damnable deeds gallantry and peccadillo, I am tempted to hurl red-hot anathema
and to conclude that if, according to some people's theology, there is no hell,
there ought to be.
Superstition tells of a marine
reptile, the cephaloptera, which infolded and crushed a ship of war, but it is
no superstition when I tell you that the history of many of the dead nations proclaim
to us the fact that our ship of state is in danger of being crushed by the
cephaloptera of national depravity. Where is the Hercules to slay this hydra? Is
it not time to speak by pen, by tongue, by ballot-box, by the rolling of the
prison doors, by the hangman's halter, by earnest prayer, by Sinaitic-detonation
[sic]?
Ah! It will not be long before
it will not make any difference to you or to me what becomes of this continent,
so far as earthly comfort is concerned. All we will want of it will be seven
feet by three, and that will take in the largest and there will be room to
spare. That is all of the country we will need very soon, the youngest of us.
But we have an anxiety about the welfare and happiness of the generations that
are coming on and it will be a grand thing if, when the archangel's trumpet
sounds, we find that our sepulcher, like the one Joseph of Arimathea provided
for Christ, is in the midst of a garden. By that time this country will be all
Eden or all Dry Tortugas.
Eternal God, to Thee was committed
the destiny of this people!
CORTLAND AND VICINITY.
If you want to read Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes' life of Emerson get it at the
village library.
The
Hitchcock Mfg Co., have purchased the Cortland Foundry and Machine shops, the
papers being executed on Wednesday. Possession given Mar. 16.
On Wednesday, E. M.
Santee, photographer, made an assignment to Wm. Crombie, for the benefit of
creditors. It is thought that the assets will be sufficient to cover all
liabilities.
Officers
raided the house just off from Groton Avenue near the stone quarry on Saturday
night, and arrested a man by the name of Sterling, his wife and two other females.
They were brought up before Esq. Bierce on Monday charged with keeping and
being inmates of a disorderly house. Sterling waived an examination and was
remanded to the county jail to await the action of the grand jury. The others will
probably serve the commonwealth at the Onondaga penitentiary.
The Wisconsin
Railroad Scandal, 1856: http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Wisconsin_railroad_scandal_1856.html?id=zIhGAAAAMAAJ
