Page images
PDF
EPUB

political, religious, or intellectual slavery, will always be a state of degradation and stagnation. The mind must have freedom to think, the tongue to speak, the pen to write, and the nation to act. To advance the greatness of any country, men must be free to do or say anything that will not directly interfere with the happiness of society. Truth will not, in the end, lose by discussion. Let every principle, every law, every truth, be thrown open for full, free, thorough discussion, and you then have the greatest security for the progress and advancement of the people. Where mind is stagnant, and the government despotic, there is no progress: we see this in the history of China and India. Just as the sea is purified by the agitation of its waters, so nations are kept morally healthy by the liberty to think and act. No doubt there will be some evils result from entire freedom of thought and expression; and it becomes the duty of the Christian and enlightened portion of the community, to endeavour to counteract this, by spreading the influence of that religion which teaches "that we are not to use our liberty as a cloak of maliciousness, but as the servants of CHRIST." I am of opinion, that we have more real liberty here than any other nation in the world; others have the name, we have the thing itself; others have the shell, we have the kernel. This liberty to speak and write on almost everything, acts as the volcano does to nature-it is the safety-valve of society. Our people have never been, as a rule, a lawless or a disorderly people, because we have felt that all that needs alteration and reform, can be obtained without violence or confusion. My opinion is, that despotism is better than the absence of law, and that any government is better than none. It has always been a principle wih us, as a people, to obey law and respect government. May this ever continue to be the principle on which we shall act, and then we shall continue to progress and advance. In all our attempts at reform, and the alterations of our laws and institutions, we use moral instead of physical force; and thus the reform when obtained is permanent and lasting.

Our respect for the Sabbath, too, has greatly contributed to our national greatness. I should not be faithful to my convictions or my conscience, if I did not refer to this as one of the principal causes of our greatness. I do not refer to the subject controversially, but historically. I am not

now saying whether we are bound to devote the Sabbath exclusively to religious duties, and religious exercises; I feel it a privilege and a duty to do so; but, leaving that view of the question for the present, I now contend for three points. 1st. That the Sabbath has been a great national blessing physically. Man must have time to rest. We nearly all work too hard; more work can be done with than without a Sabbath. The Sabbath is the charter of liberty and comfort to the working-classes. It is a blessing to all; but to you, my working friends (said the lecturer), it comes as one of Heaven's best blessings. Intellectually, too, man needs a Sabbath; the mind, as well as the body, requires rest and change, and the Sabbath affords time and opportunity for mental culture and thought; without this our thoughts, intellects, and hearts, would be bound down more than they are at present, to a continual round of business and excitement. Religiously, too, we need a Sabbath. The religious life would die out without the Sabbath. It is on this hallowed and sacred day that the heart is trained, and the soul lifted above earth and earthly things, and taught to look up to Him who is the source of all goodness, and to recognise Him as a father and a friend. It is on this hallowed day that we are able to listen to the blessed words of Him who "died that we might live," and repose our hopes on His atoning sacrifice. It is on the Sabbath that we are chiefly brought into contact with those higher spiritual truths that fit us for life, and prepare us for death. 2nd. I contend that we owe the blessing of the Sabbath to the Bible and Christianity. It is most unfair in those who advocate making the Sabbath a day of amusement and pleasure, to find fault with that Christianity without which we should have no Sabbath to contend about. If we remove the religious sanctities which now surround the Sabbath, it will soon become a day of toil and labour to the masses. This is clearly proved by the state of the Continent; and, in fact, by the history of all countries where Christianity does not exist. In France the working-men have been robbed of half the Sabbath, as a day of rest; and they are to be seen toiling on the morning of the Lord's Day as upon other days of the week. 3rd. I contend that it is our national interest to protect

pel the observance of the Sabbath; but I think at any rate it ought not to be violated with the sanction and through the operation of law.

4th. I should like to have spoken at length of our efforts for the education of the masses, as also of our encouragement of science and literature, which have done so much to promote our national greatness; but I can only now refer to one or two facts in connection with this subject. The progress of education is evinced by the fact, that while in 1803 only 1 in 17 of the population were found at school; in 1860 at least 1 in 7 of the population were there: this is indicative of vast progress. It is also pleasing to know, that our educational efforts are not the result of State machinery and law, so much as they are of individual conviction. Voluntary benevolence, Christian principle, and parental sense of obligations, have been the foundation of our educational progress. Our Sabbath schools, mechanics' institutes, systems of lectures, working men's clubs, and the thousand other ways in which our people are educated, are chiefly the outgrowth of voluntary effort, and therefore have been productive of vast blessings.

I have now referred to some (not all) of the causes of our national greatness. I have taken those that strike my own mind as most important, time will not allow me to refer to more. I should not like you to leave, however, with the impression that I believe that all the aspects of society, or all the developments of our national character, are hopeful and satisfactory: on the contrary, I believe much yet remains to be done; and much must be done, or we shall not continue to progress. Progress is not eternal; all history proves that. Whether the sun of our national greatness will, like many of the nations of antiquity, set in darkness, I do not know; that will depend greatly upon ourselves. But that we have some great and terrible national evils among us, we must admit; and we ought to try and remove them. In the first place, there is still a vast mass of ignorance and irreligion to be removed: this is eating like a canker into our national character. Woe, woe to the nation that allows its great masses to grow up in ignorance and vice! sooner or later such a course must end in national ruin. Ignorance and vice are sources of weakness and degradation to any country; and those who wish to make their country great, should try and remove both.

pat

Secondly. We have a large mass of polluted and vicious streams constantly issuing from the press. I rejoice as much as any one in a cheap and free press; but at the same time, I cannot but observe that even this blessing is often prostituted to the meanest and basest purposes; there are thousands who use the press simply for the purpose of corrupting truth, debasing society, and dishonouring GOD.. Thirdly. We have the path of youth beset on every hand with temptations and vice: our streets often make us hang down our heads and blush. I confess I think it would be wise and right for law to step in and prevent, any rate, some of the flagrant, open, vulgar, and distressing exhibitions of profligacy and sin. I have not much faith in law, as a means of suppressing evil; but there are temptations and traps laid openly and constantly in our large towns that ought to be removed; they are a disgrace to our civilisation, our national character, and our religion. Fourthly. Our drinking customs make foreign nations point at us with scorn. One eminent foreigner said "It is a blessed thing that you Anglo-Saxons are a drunken people, or you would conquer the world." This drink-evil deserves our most serious attention. It is doing more to lessen our national greatness, and to degrade our national character, than any other evil we have amongst us. On this drink poison we expend some £75,000,000 a-year. To make these drinks, we waste the food of 6,000,000 of people; to keep up this curse, we cause 1 in 30 of our population to be paupers and 1 in every 300 to be criminals; through these rinks there are thousands of wives worse than widows, and thousands of children worse than orphans. Ohhaste to the rescue!" do not let our country be wrecked on the rocks of intemperance; this evil can be prevented and the people can be saved; for science, experience and common sense have taught us, that these drinks are unnecessary.

Another great evil amongst us is the want of sympathy between the different classes of society. I am not a leveller. I do not want to destroy distinctions of property or rank. I think it is a great national blessing to have those who can consume without producing in any country. I believe, too, that the aristocracy of this country are in many respects (of course, with some exceptions) the noblest in the world. Still, there is too great a gulf between the

different classes of society; a little more mingling and commingling would largely tend to remove those unkind feelings that too often exist. More intercourse will beget more sympathy, and tend to the happiest results. Let us try to "bridge over this gulf," and promote not so much patronage as sympathy on the part of the rich towards the poor. Employers of labour would do well to make themselves personally acquainted with the condition of those they employ. Do not let us treat men like oranges, squeeze them, and then cast them away. Acquaintance will beget sympathy, and sympathy will beget confidence. Allow me also to refer to the war spirit." I should be a traitor to some of the deepest convictions of my mind, if I did not say that the war spirit that unhappily prevails among us, is a ground of fear and a source of danger. I am not now going to argue the abstract question of the lawfulness or unlawfulness of defensive war. All will admit that war is a great curse, and that it has proved the ruin of most of the nations of antiquity. The love of war sink any

nation, however great. To my mind, it is of the

greatest sources of danger we have. There has been in this country ever since the Russian war a fearful increase of the war spirit. The nation seems "given over to a delusion" on this question; and for some time has been entering upon a course of the most profligate expenditure and wicked waste that it is possible to conceive; and the worst of it is, that our fear of invasion and dread of imaginary enemies, seem to increase about in proportion to our expenditure. Let us be careful we do not cherish the love of military conquest and military glory. To do so will be to lay the foundation of our ruin. The cultivation and propagation of the arts of peace, and the religion of peace, have made us great. Let us cultivate these arts and this religion to a still greater extent.

I have now endeavoured, to the best of my ability, to prove the fact of our country's greatness; I have also pointed out a few of the causes of that greatness, and shown that there are still evils amongst us that ought to be remedied, because they interfere with the increasing greatness of our country. The inquiry, as I have said, naturally arises,-Will this greatness last? Shall we continue to progress, develope, advance? I am no prophet; but I venture to say, if we are faithful to our mission, to

« PreviousContinue »