Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society Part 1

Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society.

by Henry Ward Beecher.

The Eighth Lecture of the Course before the Anti-Slavery Society, was delivered, January 14, 1855, at the Tabernacle, New York, by the Rev.

HENRY WARD BEECHER. The subject, at the present time, is one of peculiar interest, as touching the questions of Slavery and Know-Nothingism, and, together with the popularity of the lecturer, drew together a house-full of auditors.

There were a number of gentlemen of distinction, occupying seats on the rostrum--among whom were the Hon. Joshua R. Giddings, James Mott, of Philadelphia, and Mr. Dudley, of Buffalo.

Mr. Beecher was introduced to the audience by Mr. OLIVER JOHNSON, who said:

_Ladies and Gentlemen_: The speaker who occupied this platform on Tuesday evening last, in the course of his remarks upon the wide degeneracy of the American Clergy on the Slavery Question, reminded us that there was in a Brooklyn pulpit, A MAN. We thought you would be glad to see and hear such a _rara avis_, and therefore have besought him to come hither to-night to instruct us by his wisdom and move us by his eloquence. I trust that, whatever you may think of some other parts of the lecture of WENDELL PHILLIPS, you will, when this evening's performance is over, be ready at least to confess that in what he said of the Brooklyn preacher he was not more eulogistic than truthful.

MR. BEECHER, on presenting himself, was received with loud and hearty applause. He spoke as follows:

The questions which have provoked discussion among us for fifty years past have not been questions of fundamental principles, but of the _application_ of principles already ascertained. Our debates have been between one way of doing a thing and another way of doing it--between living well and living better; and so through, it has been a question between good and better. We have discussed policies, not principles.

In Europe, on the other hand, life-questions have agitated men. The questions of human rights, of the nature and true foundations of Government, are to-day, in Europe, where they were with our fathers in 1630.

In this respect, there is a moral dignity, and even grandeur, in the struggles, secretly or openly going on in Italy, Austria, Germany, and France, which never can belong to the mere questions of mode and manner which occupy us--boundary questions, banks, tariffs, internal improvements, currency; all very necessary but secondary topics. They touch nothing deeper than the pocket. In this respect, there would be a marked contrast between the subjects which occupy us, and the grander life-themes that dignify European thought, were it not for one subject--_Slavery_. THAT is the ONLY _question, in our day and in our community, full of vital struggles turning upon fundamental principles_.

If Slavery were a plantation-question, concerning only the master and the slave, disconnected from us, and isolated--then, though we should regret it, and apply moral forces for its ultimate remedy, yet, it would be, (as are questions of the same kind in India or South America,) remote, const.i.tuting a single element in that globe of darkness of which this world is the core, and which Christianity is yet to shine through and change to light. But it is _not_ a plantation-question. It is a national question. The disputes implied by the violent relations between the owner and the chattel may only _morally_ touch us.--But the disputes between the masters and the Government, and between the Government, impregnated with Slavery, and the Northern citizen, these touch us sharply, and if not wisely met, will yet scourge us with thorns! Indeed, I cannot say that I believe that New England and the near North will be affected _locally_, and immediately by an adverse issue of the great national struggle now going on. But the North will be an utterly dead force in the American nation. She will be rolled up in a corner, like a coc.o.o.n waiting for its transmigration. The whole North will become provincial; it will be but a fringe to a nation whose heart will beat in the South.

But New-England was not raised up by Divine Providence to play a mean part in the world's affairs.

Remember, that New-England brought to America those principles which every State in the Union has more or less thoroughly adopted.

New-England first formed those inst.i.tutions which liberty requires for beneficient activity; and from her, both before and since the Revolution, they have been copied throughout the Land. Having given to America its ideas and its inst.i.tutions, I think the North is bound to stand by them.

Until 1800, the North had distinctive national influence, and gave shape, in due measure, to national _policy_, as she had before to national inst.i.tutions.

Then she began to recede before the rising of another power. For the last fifty years, upon the national platform have stood arrayed two champions in mortal antagonism--New-England and the near North--representing personal freedom, civil liberty, universal education, and a religious spirit which always sympathises with men more than with Governments.

The New-England theory of Government has always been in its element--first, independent men; then democratic townships; next republican States, and, in the end, a Federated Union of Republican States. All her economies, her schools, her policy, her industry, her wealth, her intelligence, have been at agreement with her theory and policy of Government. Yet, New-England, strong at home, compact, educated, right-minded; has gradually lost influence, and the whole North with her.

The Southern League of States, have been held together by the cohesive power of Common Wrong. Their industry, their policy, their whole interior, vital economy, have been at variance with the apparent principles of their own State Governments, and with the National Inst.i.tutions under which they exist. They have stood upon a narrow basis, always shaking under them, without general education, without general wealth, without diversified industry. And yet since the year 1800, they have steadily prevailed against Representative New-England and the North. The South, the truest representation of Absolutism under republican forms, is mightier in our National Councils and Policy to-day than New-England, the mother and representative of true republicanism and the whole free North.

And now it has come to pa.s.s that, in the good providence of G.o.d, another opportunity has been presented to the whole North to rea.s.sert her place and her influence, and to fill the inst.i.tutions of our country with their original and proper blood. I do not desire that she should arise and put on her beautiful garments, because she is my mother, and your mother; not because her hills were the first which my childhood saw, that has never since beheld any half so dear; nor from any sordid ambition, that she should be great in this world's greatness; nor from any profane wish to abstract from the rightful place and influence of any State, or any section of our whole country.

But I think that G.o.d sent New-England to these sh.o.r.es as his own messenger of mercy to days and ages, that have yet far to come ere they are born! She has not yet told this Continent all that is in her heart. She has sat down like Bunyan's Pilgrim, and slept in the bower by the way, and where she slept she has left her roll--G.o.d grant that she hath not lost it there while she slumbered!

By all the love that I bear to the cause of G.o.d, and the glory of his Church, by the yearnings which I have for the welfare of the human kind, by all the prophetic expectations which I have of the destiny of this land, G.o.d's Almoner of Liberty to the World, I desire to see Old Representative New-England, and the affiliated North, rouse up and do their first works.

Is it my excited ear that hears an airy phantasm whispering? or do I hear a solemn voice crying out, "_Arise? Shine? thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is arisen upon thee!_"

I am quite aware that the subject of Slavery has been regarded, by many, as sectional; and the agitation of it in the North needless, and injurious to our peace and the country's welfare. Whatever may have been the evils, the agitation has only come _through_ men, not _from_ them. It is of G.o.d. It is the underheaving of Providence. Mariners might as well blame _you_ for the swing and toss of their craft when tides troop in or march out of your harbor, as us, for heaving to that tide which G.o.d swells under us. Tides in the ocean and in human affairs are from celestial bodies and celestial beings. The conflict which is going on springs from causes as deep as the foundations of our inst.i.tutions. It will go on to a crisis; its settlement will be an era in the world's history, either of advance or of decline.

I wish to call your patient attention to the real nature of this contest. It is,

_The conflict between Northern theories and Southern theories of man and of Society._

There have been, from the earliest period of the world, two different, and oppugnant, doctrines of man--_his place, rights, duties and relations_. And the theory of man is always the starting point of all other theories, systems, and Governments which divide the world.

Outside of a Divine and Authoritative Revelation, men have had but one way of estimating the value of man. He was to them simply a creature of time, and to be judged in the scientific method, by his _phenomena_. The Greeks and the Romans had no better way. They did not know enough of his origin, his nature, or his destiny, to bring these into account, in estimating man. Accordingly they could do no better than to study him in his developments and rank him by the POWER which he manifested. Now if a botanist should describe a biennial plant, whose root and stem belong to one season, whose blossom and fruit belong to another, as if that were the whole of it which the first year produced, he would commit the same mistake which the heathen idea of man commits in measuring and estimating a being whose true life comes hereafter, by the developments which he makes in only this world.

From this earthly side of man springs the most important practical results. For the doctrine of man, simply as he _is in this life, logically deduces Absolutism and Aristocracy_.

If the _power of producing effects_ is the criterion of value, the few will always be the _most_ valuable, and the ma.s.s relatively, subordinate, and the weak and lowest will be left helplessly worthless.

And the ma.s.s of all the myriads that do live, are of no more account than working animals; and there is, no such a theory, no reason, _a priori_; why they should not be controlled by superior men, and made to do that for which they seem the best fitted--Work and Drudgery!

Only long experiment could teach a doctrine contrary to the logical presumption arising from weakness. There could be no doctrine of human _rights_. It would be simply a doctrine of human _forces_. _Right_ would be a word as much out of place as among birds and beasts.

Authority would go with productive greatness, as gravity goes with ma.s.s in matter. The whole chance of Right, and the whole theory of Liberty, springs from that part of man that lies beyond this life.

As a material creature, man ranks among physical forces. Rights come from his spiritual nature. The body is of the earth, and returns to earth, and is judged by earthly measures. The soul is of G.o.d, and returns to G.o.d, and is judged by Divine estimates. And this is the reason why a free, un.o.bstructed Bible always works toward human rights. It is the only basis on which the poor, the ignorant, the weak, the laboring ma.s.ses can entrench against oppression.

What, then, is that theory of man which Christianity gives forth?

It regards man not as a perfect thing, put into life to blossom and die, as a perfect flower doth. Man is a _seed_, and birth is _planting_. He is in life for cultivation, not exhibition; he is here chiefly to be _acted on_, not to be characteristically an agent. For, though man is also an actor, he is yet more a recipient. Though he produces effects, he receives a thousand fold more than he produces.

And he is to be estimated by his capacity of receiving, not of doing.

_He has his least value in what he can DO; it all lies in what he is capable of having done TO him._ The eye, the ear, the tongue, the nerve of touch, are all simple receivers. The understanding, the affections, the moral sentiments, all, are primarily and characteristically, recipients of influence; and only secondarily agents. Now, how different is the value of ore, dead in its silent waiting-places, from the wrought blade, the all but living engine, and the carved and curious utensil!

Of how little value is a ship standing helpless on the stocks--but half-built, and yet building--to one who has no knowledge of the ocean, or of what that helpless hulk will become the moment she slides into her element, and rises and falls upon the flood with joyous greeting!

The value of an acorn is not what it is, but what it shall be when nature has brooded it, and brought it up, and a hundred years have sung through its branches and left their strength there!

He, then, that judges man by what he can do, judges him in the seed.

We must see him through some lenses--we must prefigure his _immortality_. While, then, his _industrial_ value in life must depend on what he can do, we have here the beginning of a _moral_ value which bears no relation to his _power_, but to his future destiny.

This view a.s.sumes distinctness and intensity, when we add to it the relationship which subsists between man and his Maker.

This relationship begins in the fact that we are created in the divine image; that we are connected with G.o.d, therefore, not by Government alone, but by nature.

This initial truth is made radiant with meaning, by the teaching of Christianity that every human being is dear to G.o.d: a teaching which stands upon that platform, built high above all human deeds and histories, the advent, incarnation, pa.s.sion, and death of Christ, as a Savior of men.

The race is a brotherhood; G.o.d is the Father, Love is the law of this great human commonwealth, and Love knows no servitude. It is that which gilds with liberty whatever it touches.

One more element to human liberty is contributed by Christianity, in the solemn development of man's accountability to G.o.d, by which condition hereafter springs from pure character here.

However heavy that saying is, every one of us shall _give an account of himself_ before G.o.d--in it is the life of the race.

You cannot present man as a subject of Divine government, held responsible for results, compared with which the most momentous earthly deeds are insignificant, plied with influences acc.u.mulating from eternity, and by powers which though they begin on earth in the cradle, gentle as a mother's voice singing lullaby, go on upward, taking every thing as they go, till they reach the whole power of G.o.d; and working out results that outlast time and the sun, and revolve forever in flaming circuits of disaster, or in sacred circles of celestial bliss; you cannot present man as the center and subject of such an august and eternal drama, without giving him something of the grandeur which resides in G.o.d himself, and in the spheres of immortality!

Who shall trifle with such a creature, full bound upon such an errand through life, and swelling forth to such a destiny? Clear the place where he stands?--give him room and help, but no hinderance, as he equips for eternity!--loosen the bonds of man, for G.o.d girds him!--take off all impediments, for it is his life and death and struggle for immortality!

That this effect of accountability to G.o.d was felt by the inspired writers, cannot be doubtful to any who weigh such language as this:

"So then every one of us shall give account of himself to G.o.d. Let us not, therefore judge one another any more, but _judge this rather, that no man put a stumbling block, or an occasion to fall in his brother's way_."

By making man important in the sight of G.o.d, he becomes sacred to his fellow. The more grand and far-reaching are the divine claims, the greater is our conception of the scope and worth of being. Human rights become respected in the ratio in which human responsibility is felt. Whatever objections men may hold to Puritanism--their theory since the days of St. Augustine has constantly produced tendencies to liberty and a prevalent belief in the natural _rights of man_--and on account of that very feature which to many, has been so offensive--its rigorous doctrine of human accountability. Here, then, is the idea of man which Christianity gives in contrast with the inferior and degrading heathen notions of man. He is a being but _begun_ on earth--a seed only planted here for its first growth. He is connected with G.o.d, not as all matter is by proceeding from creative power, but by partaking the divine nature, by the declared personal affection of G.o.d, witnessed and sealed by the presence and sufferings of the world's Redeemer. He is a being upon whom is rolled the responsibility of character and eternal destiny! Of such a creature it were as foolish to take an estimate, by what he _is_ and what he can _do_ in this life, as it would be to estimate by an eagle's egg, what the old eagle is worth, with wings outspread far above the very thunder, or coming down upon its quarry as the thunder comes! It is the Future that gives value to the Present. It is Immortality only that reaches down a measure wherewith to gauge a man. If a heathen measures, the strong are strong, and the weak are weak: the rich, the favored, must rule, and their shadow must dwarf all others. If a Christian measures, he hears a voice saying: "_There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither bond nor free; there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus._ Whosoever shall do the will of my Father, which is in heaven, the same is my mother, and sister, and brother."