But if the indifference to public affairs, which is now confined only to a class—only to a portion of the people—to too large a portion, indeed, but still only to a portion,—if it were to become general, if things were allowed to go on their way, without any interest taken in them by private persons, by those whose intelligence goes to create a commanding public opinion, then you would soon find your private interests, the comfort and lives of individuals, threatened and assailed. If your public affairs, as they are directed in your Public Councils, were uncontrolled by the sentiments of private men, they would soon be coming down into our streets and into our private dwellings with a most disastrous influence. They would make their appearance in the shape of armed men. They would be heard in the rattle of musketry and the roar of cannon; and the door-posts of the humblest and of the richest homes of the people might be spattered with the blood of inoffensive men, women, and children,—of the very persons who maintain that they have nothing to do with public matters.
Already, well off as we may be in comparison with other nations, have not our public concerns, through the criminal neglect and insensibility of the people, taken such a direction as, if it does not put us in peril of having our blood spilt in the streets, yet endangers the sacred rights of Free Thought and Free Speech, and makes it hazardous to property and to personal liberty to obey the plainest dictates of humanity? There are things, as I have already intimated, which ought to be dearer to us than life, which may be exposed to suffer loss; and which are exposed to harm at this very hour by the bad administration of our public concerns.
No doubt, these quiet people who have been so savagely butchered in the streets of Paris, little dreamed, when they left their homes that day, that they would be shot down as the enemies of the Government. They had nothing to do with the Government. They had no thought of crossing its path. They were pursuing the even tenor of their own quiet way. They desired only to mind their own business. And yet, had they been taking the most active interest in public affairs, they could not possibly have come to so miserable an end, as I will presently show.
The simple, religious truth is, and the sooner every man accepts it, and makes up his mind and his life to it, the better for him, for our country, and for the world—the plain truth is, that 'no man liveth or can live to himself'—that the interests, the highest interests, the personal character and salvation, the very life of the individual, in the most obvious and in the profoundest sense of the word, life, is wrapt up with the interests of the whole; in other words, with the public interest, with public affairs. We cannot—no man can separate himself and stand apart, and insist upon being ignorant and indifferent. It lies within our own will to say, whether we will meet and endeavor to answer the claims which the welfare of the whole has upon us, whether we will take a lively interest in the public interest; but it is not a matter of our own will whether we shall suffer or not. We may choose whether or not we will act; but the consequences, and they may be most deadly,—the consequences of our action or our no-action we cannot escape. They may fall upon us with a crushing power at our very firesides, and ruin our private and domestic peace for ever. So long as we live in society, and build our houses near our neighbors, we may or may not take an interest in the public provision which is made against fire, but we cannot avoid the danger and the consequences of a conflagration. Because a man keeps himself retired, never reading, never thinking about what is going on on the public theatre of the world, he has no security against being shot down like a dog in the streets, as the case of those unfortunate citizens of Paris shows.
Certainly then, since we are liable to suffer from public affairs taking a wrong direction, whether we take an interest in them or not, it is worth our while to suffer for a cause. There is small comfort in incurring danger and in losing one's life for nothing. If we must suffer, when public events go wrong, it is best by far to suffer for something. For in times of universal alarm and disorder, when property and life are put in peril, they suffer the least, though they lose everything, who are inspired by the conviction that they have tried to be faithful and to do their duty. They have a life in them which bullets and bayonets and cannon-balls cannot reach. When men perish for a cause to which they were utterly indifferent, for which they cared nothing, of which they knew nothing, then they perish as the brutes perish. Then death comes to them as a fatal accident; and the only moral that can be drawn from their fate, is that it is folly for men to think to live unto themselves. No glory shines from their graves; no renown immortalizes their memories. But when men suffer and die for a cause, into which they have thrown their whole souls, when they perish for a principle, then their death is noble, and they do not die like the brutes, but like men. Then they are heroes and martyrs, and though dead, they speak with mighty angel voices; and their blood hallows for ever the spot on which it is shed, 'down to earth's profound, and up to Heaven,' and they become immortal in the affection and reverence of mankind, and in the influence which they exert upon the course of human affairs. For this reason it is, that I said just now, that those quiet people who have been killed in the streets of Paris, could not have perished so miserably had they taken an active interest in the great public question of Liberty. Then they would have had a spring of life in their own hearts; then they would have suffered for a cause for which it is worth any man's while to suffer, and die any death that a relentless power might inflict.
I know that it is a very wise injunction, that every man should mind his own business; and that, if every man would only do that, the world would go on as well as heart could wish. I believe this, firmly. But then, since, in the very constitution of things, every man's 'own business' is inextricably interwoven with every other man's 'own business,' who shall draw the line? Who shall define the circle and the sphere of the private individual? Has not our Creator defined it already in our very being, inasmuch as, by the indestructible ties of human sympathy and a common nature, he has bound up the life, the interests, the business of the individual, with the life, the interests, the business of the whole? By his very nature, then, is it not every man's own business to know what the world is busy about, and to take an interest in the world's affairs, because they are his own? Is it not a truth written in the constitution of every individual man, the well-known declaration of the Roman slave: 'I am a man, and I hold nothing human foreign to me?' And does not our common Christianity teach over and over again in a thousand ways, that we are all members one of another, and that no man lives for himself? And is there any one fact, which the progress of events is now making, more manifest than the oneness of all mankind? Why, my hearers, it is because this simple and indestructible fact is not seen; because individuals are for ever trying to live, and work, and enjoy, not with and for, but at the expense of, their fellow-men, that things are so continually getting out of joint, and the world is so full of uproar and misery. My brothers, we are all One; and if we are resolved to mind each his own business, we must attend to the business which God and nature have given to us. We must interest ourselves in the cause of our common humanity. I do not say, that we must make this great cause our business. It is made our business already by our Maker.
Consider then how the case stands. If we fling our whole hearts with a generous ardor into the conflict for the welfare of our brother, seeing to it with all vigilance that public affairs go wisely and justly, then if the fortunes of this good cause prosper, it is well with us; we triumph with it. But if it should be defeated, and we should be involved in its defeat, and suffer danger, loss, and even death itself, still how powerfully should we be sustained by the consciousness of suffering in so grand a behalf, for such a glorious reason! Who would not rather suffer with the Right than prosper with the Wrong? But if we will not fling our hearts into anything of a general and generous interest, if we insist that we will keep at a distance from all such matters, that we will be ignorant and insensible, we gain no additional security. Still our private lot is inextricably bound up with the public interest; and when those interests suffer, we must suffer with them, but with no sustaining power in our own minds. We may be shot down with the heroes and martyrs of Humanity without the heroes' joy or the martyrs' radiant crown. 'No man liveth to himself.' Since such is the simple Bible truth, and since it is a truth, which it becomes us to look at fully, and adopt as a fundamental principle and law of our thinking and of our living, let no one turn a deaf ear, and say I am talking politically now, because I refer to considerations of a public, and if you please, of a political character, to urge home upon your reason and your consciences your sacred duty as men, and as Christians, to take a hearty, intelligent, self-sacrificing interest in what is going on on the public theatre of the nation to which you belong, and of the world to which you belong as well, and in whose fortunes, we are every one of us so deeply interested.
But this is no hour for apologies. This is no time for grown-up men to be dodging and hiding, and evading a great duty, under words and phrases. Political! what if I am political? what if every pulpit in the land should be ringing in these days with political events? God knows there is need. We should be lost to the ordinary feelings of men, if we could remain silent when political events are arresting and absorbing public attention, and threatening to rouse all the passions of the human heart, and to shake the earth out of its place. This present time, in which we are living, is no holiday, when a man can throw himself down in the shade, and dream his soul away. The fires, that are kindling on the earth, flash their portentous light into the inmost retirement of private life. The world is resounding with great events. And cold indeed must be our hearts, we are not worthy to live at so momentous, so unprecedented a period, if we refuse to be reminded of those indissoluble ties of a common nature and a common interest, which the course of things is laying bare to all men's view. As you are men, human beings, your hearts must beat with a new and stirring sympathy for the great Public of Christendom, of which you are each an inseparable portion, when you see the second great nation of Europe, after all the terrible experience of the last three-quarters of a century, again falling prostrate in the dust beneath the blow of a base usurper, with no great exploits at his back to extenuate the insolence of the brutal deed; again laid low beneath a despot's feet by that vulgar instrument of power, a standing army. I think there can hardly be found in modern history any parallel to this outrage upon truth, freedom, and humanity—to this implied contempt for human rights and human nature. A robber-hand has seized the great French nation, and flung it down into the dust to be trampled upon at pleasure. At such startling tidings, what man is there so humble or so weak, who can repress the solemn appeal to God, which must rise instinctively from every heart of flesh? Who can help having his attention arrested and engrossed? Who does not long to be saying something, doing something, or suffering something, for the outraged rights, the imperilled interests of our Common Humanity, our One Nature?
But above all, who that has seen, who that has heard the great Hungarian exile, who has come to us, bringing his unhappy country in his heart, that does not feel his kindred to his oppressed brethren everywhere? I have looked full into those large, sad eyes, in which one seems to look into the great deep of a nation's sorrows. I have heard that voice, coming from his inmost soul, with which he pleaded for his dear native land, and I cannot so much as try to tell you of the profound impression which he made on me. I can set no limits to the power of such a man as I have just seen and heard. It may be (God grant it!) that it is not a mere transitory emotion of enthusiasm that he is awakening among the people of this land. It may be that the influence he is exerting is yet to penetrate the rock of our selfishness and insensibility, and call forth, in full flood, like one of our own great rivers, the mighty stream of our sympathy that shall sweep away from our land and from the earth, every vestige of oppression. Such a thing seems almost possible, when we observe how the advocates of Slavery on our own soil tremble at his approach, and fear to welcome him. Most devoutly do I hope that he may exert such an influence. It is my fervent prayer. It is yours, too, brethren, I do not doubt. But I cannot resist the conviction that he must fail of achieving the object so near his heart, and for which he is spending the strength of a giant, wearing away his life, if indeed a life, so deep and so intense, capable of so much labour, can be worn away.
Yes, friends, he must fail. And happy will it be for him, great, wonderful as he is, if he comes out unscathed from the fiery and searching trial of his principles, upon which he entered the moment he stept upon our soil. Yes, he must fail. How can it be otherwise? He must fail; not because this people are averse to the possibility of war, for they have just come out from a war waged, not to extend Freedom you know. He must fail, not because we revere the counsels of the Father of our Country. But he must fail because there is a tremendous obstacle in his way to our free, unfettered sympathy, upon which that fond hope of his, that great heart of his, the treasury of a nation's woes, must be broken at last.