Monday, October 28, 2013

Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage--A Sermon on National Ruin


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

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