THE TWO METHODS.
REV. LYMAN ABBOTT, D.D., NEW YORK.
* * * Let us recognize, then, that there is a possibility of danger to us, religious danger from the influx of a godless and atheistic people, political danger from the influx of a vast amount of cheap labor, danger from a deluge coming from an ocean almost unfathomable and immeasurable. How shall we meet that danger? Looking down the vista of the years, how shall we prepare ourselves for it and protect ourselves from it?
There are two methods; and I wish simply to set these two methods before you as clearly and as distinctly as I can.
The one method is that of self-protection by force; the method of building a Chinese wall and saying, “You shall not come upon our shores;” the method of the brick-bat; the method of the mob; the method which has been succinctly put in Dennis Kearney’s platform, “The Chinese must go,” and more genteelly and courteously put in the Democratic and Republican platforms, which mean the same thing; the method which declares, “We will not allow this people upon our shores to live among us, to work with us, to share our benefits;” the method of a prohibitory legislation.
In respect to that method, first, we have no right to adopt it. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.” Go through the first five books of the Bible and find how it is iterated and reiterated again and again, that the soil of this earth belongs to God. No people have a right to set themselves down upon a territory and say to their brother people, “You shall not come.” We have a right to say that if they come they shall come subordinate to the laws and the institutions that have been established here; that they shall behave themselves; that they shall obey the system of laws which we have found good for ourselves and for our children; but we have no right to build a wall of adamant around the land and say, “Keep out.” By what right do the children of the immigrants of 1620 say to the immigrants of 1880, “You shall not set foot upon this soil”? By what right do the sons of the Pilgrim Fathers say to the pilgrims of this generation, “You shall keep off”? When did that right come to us? Could we have said it in 1700, in 1750, in 1800? At what epoch in our national history accrued to us the right of drawing the line, building the wall, closing the gates, and saying, “Thou shalt come no more?”
I shall not enter in detail into the argument on this subject. I know what is the reply: “If I have a farm of a hundred acres, may I not keep tramps off?” No nation has found itself without difficulty and threatened danger, that has attempted to keep the laborer off of land which was not being worked. To-day Ireland is wrestling with the labor problem, and England is wrestling with the labor problem, because there are vast tracts of unoccupied, untilled, uncultivated land from which the laborer is excluded. So long as our mines lie undug; so long as our prairies lie uncultivated; so long as our streams run their course and no music of the mills sings along their lines, so long industry has a right to its home under our flag and within our borders.
And we have not the power if we had the right. Congress does not make laws; Congress only declares and interprets them. There is but one law-giver—God Almighty; and all that judges and governors and law-makers and Congresses and Parliaments can do, is to ascertain what are God’s laws and interpret them. And God’s law is the law of liberty, and all His laws are to conserve liberty. Never in the history of the world has a nation succeeded in stopping one of these great migratory movements. Out of four hundred million people, in one year almost as many corpses lie upon the ground in China as were strewed on all our battle-fields, and over every one a grave-stone might be erected with the inscription, “Died of hunger!” Why, you might better expect to stop the charge of a herd of buffaloes rushing madly along with the prairie on fire behind them, by means of a Virginia rail fence, than to stop the immigration of a great nation, driven from its home by pursuing famine, with an act of Congress. You could easier dam up the waters of the Gulf Stream with bulrushes.
In the year 250 the Goths and Vandals won their first victory over Roman arms on the Roman boundary. The Roman empire adopted Dennis Kearney’s platform; it said, “We will not have the Goths and Vandals on our territory.” The Roman empire was clad in mail from its head to its foot; it was an army of soldiers; it put forth the greatest military power the world has seen to stop the great migration. For a hundred and fifty years the conflict went on, but year by year the valiant warrior was beaten back, and it was ended at last with the sack of Rome. But 250 years before these immigrants made their first appearance on the border line, a little decrepit Jew made his appearance in Rome as a prisoner. He lived there two years, bound, chained to the soldier that guarded him, and he brought there the story that God had shown himself in Jesus Christ, His Son, who had lived, suffered, died, risen, and ever lived for them. In those 250 years, Christianity under various persecutions, had grown little by little, until, when the Goths and Vandals made their appearance, it comprised one-twentieth of the population of Rome—fifty thousand out of a million. It sent Bishop Ulfilas with his Gothic Bible, to the north; it sent Augustine into England; it sent St. Patrick—Protestant before the time of Protestantism—to preach a pure gospel in Ireland. One and another and another went forth, bearing the cross; and when at last the Goths and Vandals had conquered the armed Romans, so thoroughly had that Christian church done its work, that, says Lecky, the Christian church conquered the barbarian world almost in the same hour in which the barbarian world conquered Rome.