The Religion of Politics

Ezra S. Gannett

The Religion of Politics / A Sermon Delivered Before His Excellency John Davis, Governor, His Honor George Hull, Lieutenant Governor, The Honorable Council, And The Legislature Of Massachusetts, At The Annual Election, January 5, 1842

SERMON

1 Corinthians, x. 31WHETHER YE EAT OR DRINK, OR WHATSOEVER YE DO, DO ALL TO THE GLORY OF GOD

The solemnities of this occasion belong to a Christian people. By them religion is solicited to throw her protection and authority around the institutions of the State. The citizen and the magistrate recognise their common relation to a higher Power than the functionary or the State, and in such recognition exchange the pledge of a mutual fidelity. The custom which this day renews comes to us from the founders of the Commonwealth – men of strong faith and religious hearts, who erected their political fabric as a temple in which to worship God, and inscribed over its front the name of the one Master whom they honored, even Christ. The place to which our legislators and rulers have come upon entering on their official duties is the house of prayer and Christian instruction. Every thing that distinguishes the occasion seems to point out the course of remark in which he who addresses this audience should invite his hearers to follow him. The relation of religion to politics – the religion of political life – is the subject to which he is unequivocally directed; and of which it is my purpose to treat, at such length only as the limits of the occasion will allow, but with such plainness of speech as should alone be used before freemen by one as free as they when speaking on their common duties.

There is however what may be called a political side to this subject, on which it would be improper for me to introduce any remarks at this time. The bare mention of religion and politics in connexion alarms some minds, who fear lest the liberties of the people be invaded by zealous religionists, or the public affairs of the time be handled by honest or ambitious preachers – in either case wandering beyond their appropriate limits. Let me at the outset disclaim all intention of touching questions to which a temporary interest only can belong, or of assailing the order of our civil state. It is higher ground which I hope to occupy as I examine the religious aspects of citizenship. When I speak of the religion of political life, I mean that religion should control men in the exercise of their political rights as it should control them in all their other relations and concerns. The religion of politics is nothing else than the application of religious principles to political action, whether it be the action of a statesman or a private citizen, of an individual or of the community. The politician should respect these principles as much as any other man. Political opinion, political discussion, political life should be brought under the influence of religious convictions. This is the ground which I take, and which I shall endeavor to prove is the only ground on which a Christian can consistently stand.

Religion should govern all political sentiment and action. Why not? Why should such a claim on behalf of religion be accounted extravagant, or meet with any other than a unanimous assent? Is not religion the supreme law; so acknowledged by the people of this land, at least by the thoughtful and sober part of the people? We but repeat one of the common-places of the pulpit, which however disregarded no one thinks of denying, when we say that the influence of religion should be paramount in every department of life. We but adopt an illustration with which every one is familiar, when we speak of it as a spiritual atmosphere, that must enclose the institutions and movements of society, and insinuate itself into every form of personal existence. The authority of religion, its right to exercise sway over human wills and human hearts, is admitted on all sides. It is not monks and nuns, nor religious teachers and their families, upon whom in these days it is believed that the command to fear God and work righteousness expends its force; it is not men on sick beds and in dying moments alone, of whom it is said, that they ought to think of the duty which devolves on them in view of their relations to God and eternity; but men and women full of life, in the midst of life’s cares, temptations and labours – the young, the vigorous, the busy – merchants in their traffic, farmers in the fields, scholars in their studies, mechanics in their workshops, the wife and mother in her domestic occupations, the daughter of toil at her needle – the rich, the poor – the wise, the simple – all should be religious, heartily, truly, constantly religious. This is the doctrine of the present time; or if it is not, it should be. This is the democratic doctrine about religion, and this is the Christian doctrine about religion. It includes all men under one law, and all sinners under one condemnation. Now why shall the politician be released from the demand made upon every one else? Why shall political life form an episode in the history traced by successive generations on the tablet of the ages, which shall have not only its own rules of composition, but its own principles of moral interpretation? Shall mercantile life be required to cover itself with the sanctity of moral obligation, shall the demand of the age be for a Christian literature, shall there be a general lamentation over the want of faith and virtue; and yet an exception be made in favor – no, not in favor, but to the disadvantage and disgrace – of one class of engagements, in which all the people of this country participate? Such injustice will not bear a moment’s examination. Away with it forever!

It seems impossible to misunderstand the language of Christianity on this subject. Undeniably it affirms its right to exercise universal dominion. It takes cognisance of all human action, extends its scrutiny to motives and feelings, and allows no condition, employment or exigency to raise a barrier against its entrance as the messenger of God to deliver and enforce his commands. It has one and the same instruction for all men, whether they live in palaces or wander houseless, whether they are versed in tongues or are rude of speech, men of science or men of handicraft, subjects of a monarchy or citizens of a republic; to them all it says, Hearken and obey – walk by faith – lead holy lives – fulfil all righteousness. Even if this be called by the unbeliever the pretension or the arrogance of Christianity, he must admit that the claim which it sets up is as broad as human existence. Wherever the religion of the New Testament can reach a man, over him it asserts its authority. No place so public, no spot so private, no situation so humble, no office so high, that Christianity will not rise to its eminence, descend to its depth, penetrate its seclusion, occupy its position, and still reiterate the same language, – speaking as one having authority, because it speaks in the name and in behalf of the Almighty. From the first has it advanced this claim of unlimited empire; its prerogatives change not with the mutations of society. It still shows a charter of “divine right” for the sovereignty at which it aims. It still claims, as it always has demanded, and ever will demand till it shall acquire, dominion over all classes, – from the slave of toil to the heir of a throne, from the pauper whom the charity of the State supports to the Ruler by whom the majesty of the State is represented.

It is important however that we have right conceptions of the nature of this dominion. Christianity, as we have noticed, aims at exerting a control over the motives, feelings and unseen life. It asks not for outward deference, but for inward submission. The conscience, the heart, the will must bow to its authority. A respect which lies on the surface only of the character, or which glides from the tongue like the schoolboy’s recitation of a few well-conned sentences, is not what the Christian owes to his religion, nor what it will accept in place of that homage of the soul which is the only proof of an insight into its nature. Strange that men should ever think to deceive God by playing the parrot or the hypocrite! There are many who make the fatal mistake of substituting profession for reality; and in a community who hold religion in high regard there may be politicians who will take this course in the hope of winning their fellow-men. If they succeed, they only effect a selfish purpose; they do not illustrate the influence of religion.

Neither is it an attention to forms, however sincere, nor a use of institutions, however constant, that will satisfy the demands of Christianity. It requires something more than reverence for the means by which it binds its power upon the disciple. The age in which faith terminates in the means of religion is the precursor of an age of unbelief. Ceremonies are but the ghosts of dead professions, unless a living faith convert them into ministers of goodness. Forms are needed, institutions are all but essential; but they are only the garments in which the Divine spirit of religion must be clad for its exposure to a cold and ungenial world. Many are there who look with profound respect upon the dress, but think not whether it covers a divinity or a fiction. How have men – great statesmen and small politicians as well as others – praised the Established Church of England, and actually stood in awe of its majesty, when the thought of its spiritual relation to themselves or any one else had perhaps never crossed their minds.

It is not reverence at certain times – a periodical service – by which men are required to prove themselves disciples of Christ. Righteousness, holiness, is not confined to any hour or place. The sanctuary whose walls the hands of labour have raised, is not the only house of God. There is a temple which the Divine Architect has reared, whose walls are immortal, in which his worship must be maintained by faculties ever conscious of his presence. There is an altar, the altar of the heart, on which a perpetual sacrifice must be presented.

That sacrifice too must be a whole burnt-offering. The man must give himself to God, “a living sacrifice,” in body and in soul, which is but his “reasonable service.” I pause not from my original purpose, to show how reasonable; but I insist upon the truth that a partial obedience, in whatever sense it be partial, will not meet the requisitions of Christianity. It is neither a part of human nature, nor a part of human life, which must be devoted to religion; but the whole – the whole of life, the whole of man. The man must be thoroughly, habitually, entirely religious. His loftiest purposes and grandest conceptions, his most familiar exercises and meanest employments, his whole impulse, energy and activity must be sanctified by faith – faith in God and his will, in Christ and his revelations. “Whether he eat or drink, or whatever he do, he must do all to the glory of God.” Whatever he do. Mark the words. They leave room for no exception. Whatever be the nature of one’s engagements, public or private; wherever he be, in the house or the street; whenever his course be examined, on Sunday or week-day, morning, noon, or night; he must be found living to God’s glory, – through faith, I repeat, and through the obedience which is the consequence of faith. Character is the service which he must render.

A character of which the principle is indicated by the words of the Apostle, will obtain a twofold development, as it shall seek the direction on the one hand of piety, and on the other of morality. Each of these forms of growth will proceed from an idea as its germ; the one from the idea of God, the other from the idea of man. The idea of God, – the Supreme, Eternal, Infinite Being, whose will nothing can overrule, but whose unimpeachable perfection is a guarantee for the rectitude of his government.

God, the mighty sourceOf all things, the stupendous forceOn which all things depend;From whose right arm, beneath whose eyes,All period, power, and enterpriseCommence and reign and end.

“He is Governor among the nations; but justice and judgment are the habitation of his throne.” “Thine, O Lord, are the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty; for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is thine; thine is the kingdom, and thou art exalted as Head above all. Both riches and honour come of thee, and thou reignest over all: and in thine hand is power and might, and in thine hand it is to make great and to give strength unto all.” Worthily, so far as language could go, did the greatest of Israel’s monarchs, and one of the first of human bards, in these words celebrate the majesty of Him who is Higher than the highest, the Maker, Guardian, and Sovereign of the universe. Religion adopts this description as the groundwork of its sentiments and exercises. With God it begins, to Him it returns, in Him it rests. To Him it traces all blessing, from Him receives direction concerning the aim and course of life, and as its first and last and central principle aspires to “do all things to his glory.” Led to Him as the Creator by his works, which it contemplates, reminded of Him as the Almighty Ruler by his providence, the aspects of which it reverently studies, and taught to call Him the Father by Christ, to whose instructions it yields a joyful obedience, it revolves around the Supreme Being as its light and security, through its relation to whom it is safe amidst the world’s commotions and blessed in life’s decay.

The idea of man – this is the other point of departure from which religion will seek its appropriate issues; of man in those attributes which are the universal endowment of our race, and not in the artificial prerogatives which distinguish a part of mankind – one nation, or one class in society; of man the partaker of a common humanity, before whose indestructible capacities, rights and destinies the distinctions of colour, wealth and office fade away, as the glare of night-lamps which shed illumination over a few feet of space before the beams of the sun which enwrap the whole land in their brightness. This idea of man, as everywhere the creature of God, and therefore dependent, everywhere the child of God, and therefore in his nature proclaiming himself of a nobler lineage than if he could show an ancestral register bearing the names of half the monarchs of the earth, as everywhere the same in virtue of his indefeasible possession of reason, conscience and immortality, and therefore entitled to fraternal treatment from his fellow-men, – this idea whence came it? Where did our fathers learn that men were “born free and equal”? From the religion of the New Testament, for centuries a sealed book, and from whose truths when opened the darkness of ages did but slowly disappear. “Equal;” not “free” only, – this latter word might seem to be used with some license of speech, – but equal, in the essential gifts and purposes of existence. Christianity by addressing the common nature and unfolding the immortal destiny of mankind has shown a broad ground, on which all may meet and lift up the chorus of a united and acknowledged brotherhood. The framers of our Declaration of Independence thought they were proclaiming a political axiom, when they republished one of the great revelations of the Gospel, the full meaning of which can be learned only through sympathy with him who came to save the lost and reconcile the estranged. “The common people,” it is said, “heard him gladly.” And the people it is who should welcome his religion, which condemns the selfishness alike of the tyrant and of the demagogue, and rebukes at once the arrogance of an aristocratic and the meanness of a servile spirit by its pregnant charge to “honor all men.” All men? What, of every class and condition? Yes, men of every name, rank, and complexion. Hear it, ye slaves, and ye masters of America. Hear it, ye nobility, and you the starving millions of Britain. Hear it, ye rulers, and ye defrauded and oppressed subjects of Continental Europe. Aye, hear it, ye nations of the East, where first the blessed words were spoken, though since long buried in oblivion. Words of righteous and joyful import to those to whom false opinion and unjust institutions have denied the place which by the will of their Creator they are entitled to hold, – standing erect by the side of their fellow-men, and not crouching submissively at the feet which trample or spurn them. Alas! how few yet comprehend the law, on which the morality of every Christian people, and every Christian believer, should be built – “Thou shalt love thy neighbour,” be he who he may, thou shalt love him “as thyself.”

It must now appear in what sense I use the expression, the religion of politics. We sometimes hear of the morality of political life, but the term is not comprehensive enough for my purpose. I do not indeed acknowledge a morality that is not based on faith in God, whose will is the only standard, as from his government must be derived the sanctions, of virtue. But a compliance with the requisitions of morality is not all that should be demanded of him who enters political life, or of any one in the discharge of his functions as a citizen. He should remember what is due to God, as well as what is due to man. Let us see how the principles which we have laid down will affect political action.

First, a man must carry into political life a sense of God as the Source of power and privilege. The air and the light are not more truly his gifts than are the civil institutions which we enjoy. We are fond of describing the virtues and deeds of our ancestors; our grandsires are regarded with mingled admiration and gratitude. It is well that we turn back to those days of fortitude and energy, and seek there the springs of our present prosperity. But our gratitude must not rest in the men of that period. They were but the instruments of a higher will, the agents of a mightier strength than their own. Those patriots of the revolution, and their progenitors who planted the seed of liberty wherever they took up their habitation on this soil, were the last men to have claimed for themselves the praise, as if in their own self-derived wisdom or force they had achieved the works which history will connect with their names. “Not unto us, not unto us,” would have been their cry, if they could have foreseen the sentiments of their posterity, “but to thy name, O Lord, be the glory.” Nay, such was their language. The Pilgrims, with all their faults – for faultless they were not – were men of an ardent piety, whose faith rose up to heaven with an almost profane confidence and laid hold on the arm of God as their sustaining and guiding power. The heroes of the revolutionary struggle – that struggle which began long before blood was shed on yonder height – looked up to Heaven to approve their cause, and when He whom they invoked had crowned it with success poured out their thanksgiving at his altars. And shall we, their sons, forget the God whom our fathers acknowledged? It is a good thing to celebrate their deeds and keep their memories hung round with fresh tributes of love; but let them not receive our final homage. Oh no! Let that pass beyond them to the Eternal Fountain of good, from whom our liberties and our institutions have been received through these channels which his Providence selected. Look abroad, my hearers, upon this great land, with its spreading population. See what a country is yours, – washed by two oceans, and stretching from the arctic to the torrid zone. Note its immense resources; its mountains reaching to the skies, its vallies nestling in the bosom of sunshine, its rivers on which a nation’s traffic may be borne, and its lakes on which the navies of the earth might ride. Mark its capacities in their as yet incipient state of development; its various fertility, its mineral wealth, its gigantic promise of support for future generations. Survey the people of this Union, pursuing their several branches of enterprise and industry, with none to hinder or molest. Ponder the statistics of your country’s growth. See the iron rods of communication along which the electricity of life will be transmitted from the Atlantic shores to the distant West. Examine the architecture of that social order under whose security you live, simple, yet firm, a model for other communities in its principles, and a blessing to ourselves in the protection it extends over us, – all the protection (but no more) that a freeman needs. And when you have filled your contemplation with the spectacles presented by your own beloved Republic, then bless the Lord for his goodness and his wonderful loving-kindness; for it is He who has given us this ample heritage. If ever men were bound to own that God is good, it is the people of these United States. If ever a community on earth should be distinguished by religious sensibility, it is this of which we are a part.

With this recognition of the Divine power and goodness must be united a sense of the responsibleness under which every one lies before God. These privileges – many and great – of which we have spoken are entrusted to us by One, the righteous principle of whose government it is, that to whom much is committed, of them will much be required. Our political advantages lay on us a peculiar weight of obligation. We are accountable, we shall be held accountable, for the use we make of freedom and of power. What is freedom? It is liberty to do right – nothing more than this; what more could an honest man desire? But mark, the liberty imposes the duty. The freeman must do right, or his immunities will enhance his guilt and deepen his condemnation. The power which is committed to the hands of every citizen of this Commonwealth – the power of controlling public sentiment through his speech and of directing the public affairs through his vote – the power of national sovereignty in which he participates as one of the sovereign people – is a solemn trust. He by whom it is abused sins; he by whom it is neglected sins. His guilt may never come under the notice of his fellow-men, but it will be established before a higher tribunal than any which they can erect. Every political act is a moral act, in view of the principle which we have expounded, that whatever we do, all must be done to the glory of God. Through the force of this principle it acquires a religious or an irreligious character; is clothed with a fearful significance, as it indicates the condition of the inward life; and is linked to everlasting consequences, as it forms part of the history of an immortal being. Whatever is done, whether in public places or in secret chambers, is done in the sight of God. And over the least as well as the greatest of human actions has He extended the law of duty. Duty! that word which expresses man’s glory and his peril. God save us from disregarding its import!

The necessary consequence of entertaining this sense of obligation will be the preservation of one’s integrity, which is the next point that claims our notice in considering the influence of religion upon politics. A man who acts religiously will act conscientiously, unless he grossly mistake the meaning of the former word. He will endeavour to maintain a clean heart and a clean tongue. Whatever would debase his character he will avoid as he would shun a pestilence; he will dread moral disease more than natural death. Let such a man enter on the performance of any service which devolves on him through his relation to the State, and he will proceed as to a work demanding high and holy principle. He will esteem it treason to his country to let go his own rectitude of soul. Temptation to sacrifice his uprightness to interest will only make him more resolute. The persuasion of example will be as vain as an open bribe. The question he will ask in each case is, – not what will custom or public opinion allow, but – what ought I to do. He will pursue this course of fidelity, alike to himself and to the trusts which he is called to execute, because he accounts the obligations of righteousness to be immutable. And here his judgment is according to the truth. There is no sphere or scene of life which gives a man the privilege of doing wrong; no land of license, nor castle of power, where he is exempt from the authority of religion. Neither the throne nor the senate-house, the secret conclave nor the popular assembly, can shield one from the force of that primary law of human action – thou shalt not sin against thine own soul. Purity of purpose and sincerity of conduct must preserve the citizen from the taint of evil, or he will become corrupt, and if he do not disgust, will corrupt others.