An Election Sermon by Samuel Payson (Feb. 28, 1778)

The Rev. Samuel Phillips Payson (1736-1801) was a classical scholar and Pastor. His family migrated from England, and his father was a pastor before him; his wife was also a daughter of the manse. He graduated from Harvard in 1754 and pastored in Chelsea, Massachusetts. He delivered this sermon on February 28, 1778 to a State Convention in Boston just before the state constitution was considered.

Payson took this sermon from Gal. 4:26 and 31. He began praising liberty: “We doubt not but the Jerusalem above, the heavenly society, possesses the noblest liberty to a degree of perfection of which the human mind can have no adequate conception in the present state.” He also denounced bondage, corruption, tyranny, and lust. Payson preached, “Hence a people formed upon the morals and principles of the gospel are capacitated to enjoy the highest degree of civil liberty, and will really enjoy it, unless prevented by force or fraud.”

In this sermon, he was clearly an advocate of ‘republican’ governance: “Much depends upon the mode and administration of civil government to complete the blessings of liberty; for although the best possible plan of government never can give an ignorant and vicious people the true enjoyment of liberty, yet a state may be enslaved though its inhabitants in general may be knowing, virtuous, and heroic.”

Payson also sounded Calvin’s warnings against either pure democracy or monarchicalism:

. . . a government altogether popular, so as to have the decision of cases by assemblies of the body of the people, cannot be thought so eligible; nor yet that a people should delegate their power and authority to one single man, or to one body of men, or, indeed, to any hands whatever, excepting for a short term of time. A form of government may be so constructed as to have useful checks in the legislature, and yet capable of acting with union, vigor, and dispatch, with a representation equally proportioned, preserving the legislative and executive branches distinct, and the great essentials of liberty be preserved and secured.

Rather than espousing an abstract theory or presuming a dictatorial posture, his sermon targets to, “ask the candid attention of this assembly to some things respecting a state, its rulers and inhabitants, of high importance, and necessary to the being and continuance of such a free and righteous government as we wish for ourselves and posterity, and hope, by the blessing of God, to have ere long established.”

Aware of the excesses of both Greek and Roman governments, Payson’s knowledge of history led him to aver: “There are diseases in government, like some in the human body, that lie undiscovered till they become wholly incurable. The baneful effects of exorbitant wealth, the lust of power, and other evil passions, are so inimical to a free, righteous government, and find such as easy access to the human mind, that it is difficult, if possible, to keep up the spirit of good government, unless the spirit of liberty prevails in the state.”

Americans were “children, not of the bond woman, but of the free”; thus, their government should rightly reflect that. Slavery, he declared, was born of ignorance. Education was critical, but nothing was more important for good government than “public virtue.”

Payson was not naïve:

The exorbitant wealth of individuals has a most baneful influence on public virtue, and therefore should be carefully guarded against. It is, however, acknowledged to be a difficult matter to secure a state from evils and mischiefs from this quarter; because, as the world goes, and is like to go, wealth and riches will have their commanding influence. The public interest being a remoter object than that of self, hence persons in power are so generally disposed to turn it to their own advantage. A wicked rich man, we see, soon corrupts a whole neighborhood, and a few of them will poison the morals of a whole community.

On the role of faith and an authentic view of establishment, he proclaimed that “religion, both in rulers and people,” was of the highest importance to public matters, preaching:

This is the most sacred principle that can dwell in the human breast. It is of the highest importance to men—the most perfective of the human soul. The truths of the gospel are the most pure, its motives the most noble and animating, and its comforts the most supporting to the mind. The importance of religion to civil society and government is great indeed, as it keeps alive the best sense of moral obligation, a matter of such extensive utility, especially in respect to an oath, which is one of the principal instruments of government. The fear and reverence of God, and the terrors of eternity, are the most powerful restraints upon the minds of men; and hence it is of special importance in a free government, the spirit of which being always friendly to the sacred rights of conscience, it will hold up the gospel as the great rule of faith and practice.

He also thought a ruler’s faith was important:

The qualities of a good ruler may be estimated from the nature of a free government. Power being a delegation, and all delegated power being in its nature subordinate and limited, hence rulers are but trustees, and government a trust; therefore fidelity is a prime qualification in a ruler; this, joined with good natural and acquired abilities, goes far to complete the character. Natural disposition that is benevolent and kind, embellished with the graceful modes of address, agreeably strike the mind, and hence, in preference to greater real abilities, will commonly carry the votes of a people. . . . A good acquaintance with mankind, a knowledge of the leading passions and principles of the human mind, is of high importance in the character before us; for common and well-known truths and real facts ought to determine us in human matters. We should take mankind as they are, and not as they ought to be or would be if they were perfect in wisdom and virtue. So, in our searches for truth and knowledge, and in our labors for improvement, we should keep within the ken or compass of the human mind.

He seemed to think that the Galatians passage led to this: “A state and its inhabitants thus circumstanced in respect to government, principle, morals, capacity, union, and rulers, make up the most striking portrait, the liveliest emblem of the Jerusalem that is above, that this world can afford. That this may be the condition of these free, independent, and sovereign states of America, we have the wishes and prayers of all good men. Indulgent Heaven seems to invite and urge us to accept the blessing. A kind and wonderful Providence has conducted us, by astonishing steps, as it were, within sight of the promised land.”

Payson even praised a specific foreign power in this sermon: “We must be infidels, the worst of infidels, to disown or disregard the hand that has raised us up such benevolent and powerful assistants in times of great distress. How wonderful that God, who in ancient times ‘girded Cyrus with his might,’ should dispose his most Christian Majesty the king of France to enter into the most open and generous alliance with these independent states!—an event in providence which, like the beams of the morning, cheers and enlivens this great continent. We must cherish the feelings of gratitude to such friends in our distress; we must hold our treaties sacred and binding.”

He concluded his address to the legislature with these words:

With diligence let us cultivate the spirit of liberty, of public virtue, of union and religion, and thus strengthen the hands of government and the great pillars of the state. Our own consciences will reproach us, and the world condemn us, if we do not properly respect, and obey, and reverence the government of our own choosing. The eyes of the whole world are upon us in these critical times, and, what is yet more, the eyes of Almighty God. Let us act worthy of our professed principles, of our glorious cause, that in some good measure we may answer the expectations of God and of men. Let us cultivate the heavenly temper, and sacredly regard the great motive of the world to come. And God of his mercy grant the blessings of peace may soon succeed to the horrors of war, and that from the enjoyment of the sweets of liberty here we may in our turn and order go to the full enjoyment of the nobler liberties above, in that New Jerusalem, that city of the living God, that is enlightened by the glory of God and of the Lamb. Amen.

A version is available at the Liberty Fund’s OnLine Library at: http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=2066&chapter=188684&layout=html&Itemid=27. A printed copy is in the 2012 Kindle edition of Election Sermons (pp. 181-198; http://www.amazon.com/Election-Sermons-David-W-Hall-ebook/dp/B0077B2RLK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1454974474&sr=8-1&keywords=Election+sermons+david+w.+hall#reader_B0077B2RLK)

by Dr. David W. Hall, Pastor
Midway Presbyterian Church

“Divine Providence Towards America” by James Madison (Feb 19, 1795)

Originally a lawyer (and cousin of an early President), the clergyman James Madison (1749-1812) had high academic potential (even teaching philosophy and math at the College of William and Mary) and was ordained to the Anglican ministry in 1775. Shortly thereafter he was appointed to the presidency of William and Mary, where he served until 1812. He was consecrated at Canterbury in 1790 to become the first American born bishop of Virginia.

Madison, though an Anglican, was a firm supporter of the Revolution, even venturing on occasion to speak of the kingdom of heaven as a “republic,” a political sentiment that raised eyebrows among loyalists and applause to be sure among colonists. He fought with the revolutionaries against Britain in the war. A polymath (a surveyor, cartographer, science teacher, and economics professor, using Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations as a text!), Madison was a faithful preacher as well.

His 1795 sermon was delivered on a designated Fast Day, declared by President George Washington to be observed on February 19th. His chosen text (from 1 Sam. 12) was “Only fear the Lord and serve him; for consider how great things he hath done for you.”

He noted from the outset that these American events were signal events, with unusual consequences; he also thought the tokens of divine providence were clear and self-evident. He would leave it to “the sons of irreligion, wrapped in their dark and gloomy system of fatality [to] refuse to open their eyes to the great luminous proofs of providential government, which America displays; let them turn from a light, which their weak vision cannot bear.”

In the tradition of Cotton Mather (see his Great Works of Christ in America), Madison sought to rivet the thoughts of his listeners to “those great things, which the Lord hath done for us, to those manifold displays of divine providence, which the history of America exhibits; and let the subject afford an opportunity to revive within us sentiments of lively gratitude, and excite sincere resolutions to fear the Lord, and to serve him; in a word, to increase daily in piety, and in all those noble affections of the soul which dignify the christian and the patriot.”

His sermon asserted the following points:

1. The discovery of the new world was all according to God’s providence, including the timing of it. He thought the Glorious Revolution would “not be arrested in its progress, until the complete restoration of the human race to their inherent rights be accomplished throughout the globe.” “Let the tyrants of the earth,” he said “set themselves in array against this principle; ‘they shall be chased as the chaff of the mountain before the wind, and like the down of the thistle before the whirlwind.’”
2. Closer to the present, the recent history also showed God’s providence and tender care for these colonies.
3. As a banner, and as a moral obligation, he asserted that this providential tract was: “unequal, bold and hazardous as it appeared in its commencement, [not] soon terminated in the establishment of liberty and independence, [but] soon held aloft to the nations of the earth, the sublime example, which called, and still calls aloud, awake, awake, put on strength, O nations of the earth; awake as in the ancient days, in the generations of old.” That was America’s place. Rather than spawning a “presumptive arrogance,” America was called to lead the world in liberty.

Under this third head, hear a sample of his piety and rhetoric:

Yes, brethren, if the effects, which we have, in your hearing, thus slightly traced; if the period of time when America was discovered, the necessity and the consequent production of other means for the restoration of human rights, than those, which had hitherto operated; if her origin, and the consequent possession of a principle, which, nurtured and matured, is now pervading, and will animate and excite the whole family of mankind to vindicate their lost rights; if her astonishing progress from infancy to the station, which she now possesses, a progress, which the opposition of a ten-fold force served only to accelerate: if, become free and independent, having accomplished the most unparalleled revolution, a revolution unstained by fratricide, or the blood of the innocent, she hath given to nations the first lesson by which their rights may be preserved . . . ; if she hath established upon a rock, the empire of laws, and not of men; if America, as a tender and affectionate daughter, is ready, from her exuberant breasts, to afford the milk of regeneration to her aged and oppressed relatives; if, in short, from a beginning the most inauspicious, she hath thus outstript all political calculation, thus risen to this day of glory, thus ascended on high, thus triumphed over every obstacle, and if all these be effects worthy of the divine interposition, then we will still cherish the fond idea, we will cling to the full persuasion, that our God hath been, ‘our strength, our refuge, and our fortress,’ a God, who, at the birth of creation, destined man for liberty, for virtue and for happiness, not for oppression, vice and misery.

4. “Gratitude, warm and fervent, united to a sincere resolution ‘to fear and to serve him,’ is the return” that fits this divine beneficence.

He called for praise and renewed service to the Lord, warning against forsaking God, who he described equally as “the remunerator of virtue” and “the avenger of iniquity.” He preached that as soon as “that divine system of equality, fraternity, and universal benevolence” is abandoned, “the moment that religion, the pure and undefiled religion, which Heaven, in compassion to the infirmity of human reason, vouchsafed to mortals, loses its influence over their hearts, from that fatal moment, farewell to public and private happiness, farewell, a long farewell to virtue, to patriotism, to liberty!” Madison believed that “Virtue, such as republics and Heaven require, must have its foundation in the heart.” Moreover it had to be internalized, and had to derive its constancy “not from the changeable ideas of the political moralist, or the caprice of the wisest of human legislators, but from the unchangeable father of the universe, the God of love, whose laws, and whose will we are incited to obey by motives, the most powerful that can actuate the human soul.”

Hardly a secularist, Madison averred: “Thus taught by religion, man becomes acquainted with his real character; instead of being amenable only to human laws, whose utmost vigilance he may and often does elude, he sees himself accountable to a being, as just as merciful, as omnipotent as omniscient. He finds himself destined, not to the narrow range of the beasts that perish, but to immortal life. The bright prospect invigorates his soul.”

His conclusion should be considered:

Certainly, my brethren, it is a fundamental maxim, that virtue is the soul of a republic. But, zealous for the prosperity of my country, I will repeat . . . that without religion . . . the religion which our Saviour himself delivered, not that of fanatics or inquisitors, chimaeras and shadows are substantial things compared with that virtue, which those who reject the authority of religion would recommend to our practice.—Ye then who love your country, if you expect or wish, that real virtue and social happiness should be preserved among us, or, that genuine patriotism and a dignified obedience to law, instead of that spirit of disorganizing anarchy, and those false and hollow pretences to patriotism, which are so pregnant with contentions, insurrections and misery, should be the distinguishing characteristics of Americans; or, that, the same Almighty arm which hath hitherto protected your [country] and conducted her to this day of glory, should still continue to shield and defend her,—remember, that your first and last duty is ‘to fear the Lord and to serve him;’ remember, that in the same proportion as irreligion advances, virtue retires;—remember, that in her stead, will succeed factions, ever ready to prostitute public good to the most nefarious private ends, whilst unbounded licentiousness, and a total disregard to the sacred names of liberty and of patriotism will here once more, realize that fatal catastrophe, which so many free states have already experienced. Remember, the law of the Almighty is, they shall expire, with their expiring virtue.

Centuries later, columnist William Safire suggested that Ronald Reagan’s “It’s Morning in America” speech could have been taken from this Madisonian homily.

Online versions are posted at: http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/816 and http://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/evans/N22012.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext. A printed version is contained in Ellis Sandoz, Political Sermons of the American Founding Era (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1998).

by Dr. David W. Hall, Pastor
Midway Presbyterian Church

Today being Saturday, we return to our Election Day Sermon Series written by the Rev. David W. Hall, pastor of the Midway Presbyterian Church in Powder Springs, Georgia. Today Dr. Hall looks at the sermon brought by the Episcopal minister Jasper Adams on this day, February 13, in 1833.

Election Day Sermon Series : “The Relation of Christianity to Civil Government in the United States”
delivered on February 13, 1833, by the Rev. Jasper Adams.

The Rev. Jasper Adams was an Episcopal Minister and President of the College of Charleston when he preached this 1833 message to the Diocese of South Carolina at St. Michael’s church in Charleston, South Carolina. This sermon occurred a little over a half century after the American Revolution. In it, Adams argued at length that Christianity (Protestantism in the main) rested at the foundation of American political order. This sermon may be found on pp. 39-50 of Religion and Politics in the Early Republic, Daniel L. Dreisbach, ed. (Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 1996).

Adams based his sermon on 1 Peter 3:15, Prov. 14:34, and Rev. 11:15. His first trumpet note was: “As Christianity was designed by its Divine Author to subsist until the end of time, it was indispensable, that it should be capable of adapting itself to all states of society, and to every condition of mankind.” He summarized the intersection of religion and politics toward the beginning of his sermon in this fashion:

According to the structure of the Hebrew Polity, the religious and political systems were most intimately, if not indissolubly combined: and in the Mosaic Law, we find religious observances, political ordinances, rules of medicine, prescriptions of agriculture, and even precepts of domestic economy, brought into the most intimate association. The Hebrew Hierarchy was a literary and political, as well as a religious order of men. In the Grecian States and in the Roman Empire, the same individual united in his own person, the emblems of priest of their divinities and the ensigns of civil and political authority. Christianity, while it was undermining, and until it had overthrown the ancient Polity of the Jews on the one hand; and the Polytheism of the Roman Empire on the other; was extended by the zeal and enterprise of its early preachers, sustained by the presence of its Divine Author and accompanied by the evidence of the miracles which they were commissioned to perform. It is not strange, therefore, that when, under the Emperor Constantine, Christianity came into the place of the ancient superstition, it should have been taken under the protection, and made a part of the constitution of the Imperial government.

While warning against the flagrant abuses of Constantinianism, he also noted that most early American colonies united faith with franchise. Here is how he raises the establishment question: “In thus discontinuing the connection between Church and Commonwealth—did the people of these States intend to renounce all connection with the Christian religion? Or did they only intend to disclaim all preference of one sect of Christians over another, as far as civil government was concerned; while they still retained the Christian religion as the foundation of all their social, civil and political institutions?” And on the federal level, he asks: “Did the people of the United States, when in adopting the Federal Constitution they declared, that ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ expect to be understood as abolishing the national religion, which had been professed, respected and cherished from the first settlement of the country, and which it was the great object of our fathers in settling this then wilderness to enjoy according to the dictates of their own consciences?”

Rather than the view “that Christianity has no connection with the law of the land, or with our civil and political institutions,” Adams reviews the actual record and finds the following:

1. The originators and early promoters of the discovery; and settlement of this continent, had the propagation of Christianity before their eyes, as one of the principal objects of their undertaking.
2. We shall be further instructed in the religious character of our origin as a nation, if we advert for a moment to the rise and progress of our colonial growth.
3. To examine with a good prospect of success, the nature and extent of the changes in regard to Religion, which have been introduced by the people of the United States in forming their State Constitutions, and also in the adoption of the Constitution of the United States. In perusing the twenty-four Constitutions of the United States with this object in view, we find all of them recognizing Christianity as the well-known and well-established religion of the communities.

He reports these epiphenomena as well: “In our Conventions and Legislative Assemblies, daily Christian worship has been customarily observed. All business proceedings in our Legislative halls and Courts of justice have been suspended by universal consent on Sunday. Christian Ministers have customarily been employed to perform stated religious services in the Army and Navy of the United States.” He continued to note: “In administering oaths, the Bible, the standard of Christian truth is used, to give additional weight and solemnity to the transaction. A respectful observance of Sunday, which is peculiarly a Christian institution, is required by the laws of nearly all, perhaps of all the respective States. My conclusion, then, is sustained by the documents which gave rise to our colonial settlements, by the records of our colonial history, by our Constitutions of government made during and since the Revolution, by the laws of the respective States, and finally by the uniform practice which has existed under them.”

[Ed. : An epiphenomenon (plural: epiphenomena) is a secondary phenomenon that occurs alongside or in parallel to a primary phenomenon.]

Adams not only thought this to be the accurate history but also a salutary relationship. Neither he nor his audience seems to tremble before this history as if it were a theocratic incursion. On the contrary, a half century after the Revolution, Adams (and others) advocated a healthy, clothed public square.

This Episcopal bishop warned against the encroaching system of unbelief that ushered in “the ruin of hundreds of thousands of estimable families, unexampled distress of nations, general anarchy and convulsions, and in the devastation of much of the fairest portion of the earth? Encouragement of the infidel system among us will dissolve all the moral ties, which unite men in the bonds of society.” “Circumvention and fraud,” he warned, “will come to be esteemed wisdom, the sacred mystery of ‘plighted troth’ will be laughed to scorn, wise forbearance will be accounted pusillanimity, an enlightened practical benevolence will be supplanted by a supreme regard to self-gratification and an insensibility to the welfare of other men, the disregard of Almighty God will be equaled only by a corresponding contempt of mankind, personal aggrandizement will be substituted for love of country, social order and public security will be subverted by treason and violence—these, and all these have been, and may again be the fruits of the infidel system.”

Believers today might still wish to consider his exhortation:

No nation on earth, is more dependent than our own, for its welfare, on the preservation and general belief and influence of Christianity among us. Perhaps there has never been a nation composed of men whose spirit is more high, whose aspirations after distinction are more keen, and whose passions are more strong than those which reign in the breasts of the American people. These are encouraged and strengthened by our systems of education, by the unlimited field of enterprise which is open to all; and more especially by the great inheritance of civil and religious freedom, which has descended to us from our ancestors. It is too manifest, therefore, to require illustration, that in a great nation thus high spirited, enterprising and free, public order must be maintained by some principle of very peculiar energy and strength—by some principle which will touch the springs of human sentiment and action. Now there are two ways, and two ways only by which men can be governed in society; the one by physical force; the other by religious and moral principles pervading the community, guiding the conscience, enlightening the reason, softening the prejudices, and calming the passions of the multitude.

Such stirring rhetoric and such passionate patriotism from an early 19th century Episcopalian pulpit may surprise many descendants of the diocese of Charleston. But Adams’ sermon is well worth hearing again.

This sermon appears in the 2012 Kindle edition of Election Sermons (pp. 45-64) or click here or here to read it on the Web.

by Dr. David W. Hall, Pastor
Midway Presbyterian Church