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H. C. HORNADY, \
EDITOR and PROPRIETOR. f
J
VOLUME 111.
The Banner and Baptist
IS PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY MORNING,
AT ATLANTA, GA.
Subscription price—Three Dollars per year, in advance.
11. C. Hornadv, Proprietor,
Death of Captain If. E. Decatur,
CO. C, FIRST TEXAS REG’T.j
[I wrote these lines in Richmond, at the re
request of a beautiful, weeping young lady, to
whom this gentleman was engaged.]
Down, down into the silent grave
Sinks now another noble brave;
Sinks here my darling, only love,
To gain the happy world above.
High in the battle’s raging storm
Was seen his proud and manly form;
He went dear Freedom’s cause to hunt,
And bleeding, dying, fell in front.
Bold in his country’s holy name,
He dared the cannon’s leaping flame,
And with the hero’s bursting shout,
Inspired his comrades all about.
Though full of patriotic fire,
He had the coolness of a sire;
And when low on life’s solemn verge,
He bade the war-god chant his dirge.
He lay among the mighty dead,
His lips grew pale, his bosom bled ;
And in his brassy armor drest,
He sweetly, calmly sank to rest.
These were the words of sinking life,
Heard ’mid the din of mortal strife—
His sword still pointing to the sky:
“ Than to run, rather let us die!”
My hope, my love and life are dead,
And sorrow bends my aching head;
My precious all of earth now sleeps,
While virtue’s wounded daughter weeps.
Adieu, my love. In quiet rest—
Be ever still thy noble breast;
The dread alarm and battle-roll
Will stir no more thy happy soul.
W. D. M.
OUR NATIONAL SIN.
A SERMON,
BY ELDER A. C. DAYTON,
Broachad In the First Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia,
May 4,
[PUBLISHED BY BEQUEST OF TUB CHURCH.]
* Tke Lord is with you while ye he with Him .’
[2d Chronicles xv: 2.
The New Testament was given by God
to teach us Ilia plan of dealing with indi
vidual men. Its religion is personal —it
tells how each one, for himself, is to secure
his individual salvation from sin and hell.
The Old Testament, on the contrary, was
in a great degree designed to show God’s
plan of dealing with nations —with men in
organized or associated masses. Its reli
gious teachings are to a great extent nation
al. Its precepts are addressed to kings and
rulers, or to whole tribes or families. Its
promises are mostly of national prosperity,
and its threatenings of national calamities.
A large portion of its history is but the
record of God’s dealing with the nation of
the Jews, and other nations with them.—
The manifest object of it all is to make
known to us the great principle, or rule, in
accordance with which God is pleased to
act in His government over the govern
ments of. the earth.
He is the King of all earth’s kings—the
Ruler over all the rulers of the rations.—
‘He setteth up one and casteth another down
according , to His own good pleasure.’—
But in these dealings with nations, He is
no more arbitrary than in Ilia dealings with
individuals. Ilejias good reason for what
lie does, or leaves undone, lie acts in ac
cordance with an established rule ; and our
text is but an epitome, a condensed ex
pression, of all that may be learned by
studying the precepts, the promises, the
threatenings, and the history recorded in
the Old. Testament concerning this rule.—
It tells it all in a single sentence: God is
with those who ore with Him. God is on
the side of those who are on llis side in
.His warfare against wrong and wickedness.
If any nation will have God to aid them
by 11 is almighty power, and to give them
such blessing and prosperity as God alone
can give, there is one way, and only one,
in which they can do it. God will not
leave His place of right and truth, and come
over to them; but they must leave their
place of wrong and sin, and go over to Him.
If they will have God to be with them, they
must be with God.
Our President has, very piously and
very properly, called again and again on us
to bow in humble prayer before the throne
of Heaven and beseech the God of nations
to give us deliverance from the power o
ATLANTA, GA., AUGUST 16, 1862.
them who hate us and are seeking to de
stroy us ; and some have seemed to suppose
that all we had to do was simply thus to
pray. Ido not say that God will never
hear the prayers of His own people, even
in behalf of a wicked and rebellious nation
of which they form a part; Ido not say
He will not hear our prayers in behalf of
our nation. But we can not reasonably
expect it, unless we do something pnore
than offer prayers. God has a controversy
with our people. He has brought upon us
affliction and sorrow.' A great stveam of
blood and death rushes resistlessly across
our land. Every hearthstone is wet with
tears. A great heart-cry of anguish goes
up to heaven, like that when Egypt wept
the first-born slain in every family. Even
when we hear of victory our hearts are sad,
for we know it has been bought only with
the life-blood of our noblest and best loved
citizens. But of late we have had only de
feat and disaster. God has given a large
portion of our heritage into the hands of
them who hate us. There are thousands
who, to-day, are like myself—driven from
their homes and those whom they love as
their own life; and thousands more who
| weep over homes made desolate and dark
by the untimely death of those who had
gone to defend those homes from ruin, and
the loved ones who dwelt there from hor
rors worse than death. ‘ lie who reads
history without seeing God in it, reads
history like a fool.’ God is in our history.
But *He does not willingly grieve or af
flict the children of men.’ He has some
object worthy of Himself lie means not
to destroy, but only to correct. There is
among us some great wrong—some great
sin, to be repented of and forsaken. We
have, in some particular, been * walking
contrary to Him,’ and He has been ‘walking
contrary to us in fury.’ (Levit. xxvi: 28.)
I come, to-day, to ask that you will turn
with me to these holy oracles of God, and
let us search and try our ways, and see if
we can not discover what that sin is.—
What heart does not, as mine, exclaim (in
the language of Job), ‘Show us wherefore
thou contendest 'with us ’?
1 take it for granted that the sin, whatev
er it may be, is a national sin—since it is
against the nation, as a whole, that God’s
judgments have been directed. So the first
step in our inquiry must be to ask,
What is a national sin ?
I answer, first: ft is not the great aggre
gate of all the individual sins of all the
people collected, as it were, into one great
mass. We need not feel blindly out for it
in the great deep of universal personal de
pravity. The nation has no soul. It can
not repent of personal transgressions.—
We must find something more definite and
tangible than every body’s every-day of
fences, or else there will never be a nation
al repentance. I can not repent of every
body’s sins—no more can you. The gov
ernment at Richmond can not repent of'or
forsake the private sins of all its citizens.—
And this is, therefore, not what God re
quires it to do. No more is a national sin
the personal transgression of any one private
citizen, or of any number of such citizens.
For his own sins, God holds each one re
sponsible for himself. You must account
to God for yours; I must account to Him
for mine. We must all stand before the
judgment seat of Christ, and every one
give answer for himself for all the deeds
done in the body.
In the second place, I answer: It is not
the individual or personal sin of the Presi
dent or of any other officer of the govern
ment, or the personal sins of them all col
lectively considered. For their private \
life, the officers of the government, like
other men, must answer at the judgment:
seat of Christ. God does not hold me re
sponsible, wholly or in part, for the per
sonal transgressions of members of the
Cabinet or members of Congress. Not so,
however, of their public and ojftcial acts. —
In them they represent the nation.
lienee I conclude, third: That a national
sin is some trangression of the law of God
by the government of the nation, in its or
ganized and official capacity. The govern
ment, as I said, has no soul. It can not
stand before the judgment seat of Christ
in the last day; it can not be ealled officially
before the great white throne to answer for
its sins when all are judged. Hence, God
holds the nation responsible for them now.
“m BAffifHß orar ns is "imr
This was His rule in the ancient days. He
punished the people for the official sins of
their rulers. And in regard to our nation,
we must admit, there is a peculiar propriety
in His doing this; because our government
is our servant, not our master, and is taken
to be but the fair exponent of the will of
the nation. If it is permitted unrebuked
to violate God’s laws, God must regard
such violation as having the sanction and
approval of the nation, and must punish the
nation for the sin. This makes our subject
very plain. We now know where to look
for our national sin; not in the multitude
of the individual offences of seven millions
of people, but, in th ejmblicand official acts
of the government itself, or in acts perform
ed with its sanction by those holding authori
ty under it.
And now we are prepared to ask,
What is our yiational sinl
In what particular has our government
been accustomed to violate the laws of God 1
Has it dared, in any thing, to raise its puny
arm against the power of the Almighty?—
Has it dared to forbid what God commands?
Has it dared to command what God forbids?
God will be known and honored in Ilis laws.
He is the great Law-Giver above all the
governments of the universe. Ifis laws are
supreme; and lie will no more allow gov
ernments than individuals to disregard them
with impunity. The day of punishment
may be long delayed, but it will come to
nations as it will to men. It is a fearful
thing for any government wilfully to bring
upon its people the terrible vengeance of
the Almighty King of nations. Surely our
government has not intended to do this ;
an( j if, in ignorance of what God commands,
it has fallen into sin, it will hasten, so soon
as the facts are known, to right the dreadful
wrong, whatever it may be. Will we con
tend with the Almighty 1 Are we stronger
than He ? Is it not enough that He has
covered us with the red cloud of war, and
deluged our country with blood ? Is it not
enough that He has given Kentucky and a
large portion of Tennessee and of Virginia
into the hands of them who hate us ? Is it
not enough that the great river of the West
is in their hands? Is it not enough that
the ‘blight’ has destroyed our wheat, and
is like to destroy our oats ? Is it not
enough that, one by one, our strong places
on the coast fall before their iron clad ves-
sels? Shall we go on to provoke Ilim
still, until He shall utterly destroy us? —
Surely we have learned by this time that
we can not fight this warfare without God.
Let the drought come now and cut short
our corn crop, and our soldiers must dis
band and their families starve at home.—
If God shall be against us, who can be for
us ? We must find what it is for which He
is contending with us. We must place our
selves * with Him so that He may be with
us,’ according to the language of our text. —
What is it, then ? I ask again. What is
the sin of which our government has been
guilty ? There are many who suspect, and
some who half believe, that it is one but'
rarely mentioned among us as a sin I
have not heard it confessed assn in any
prayer; I have not heard it denounced as
sin in any sermon. It has not been charged
against the government as sin even by the
newspapers or in political pamphlets pub
lished among us. And yet I have heard it
whispered in the confidence of the social
circle, and have reason to know that there
are hundreds, nay thousands, who fear , if
they do not feel, that slave-holding is this
sin.
A lady, one of the most intelligent in all
our land, a native of Georgia, and the wife
of an officer in our army, said to me a few
days since : * 1 can not get rid of the con
viction, that the great sin of the South is to
be found in our peculiar institution, and that
a just God intends either to destroy us, ori
drive us to abandon slavery.’ In this she
but expressed the thought which has risen
involuntarily in many a heart. We have
almost all been taught that slavery is a sin.
We read it in the school books from which
we learned to read our mother tongue. —
We were in early life accustomed to hear
it denounced as the * sum and substance of
villainies,’ and we heard it defended, not on
the ground that it was right, but that it was
necessary. We listened to discussions as to
whether it was * a sin per se' that is, in it
self and of necessity, or w hether it was only
a great moral evil, which became a sin only j
from some contingent circumstances. But
there were few, if any, who did not concede
that it was evil; few, if any, who were pre
pared to maintain that it is a righteous and
holy institution, ordained by God himself
for the most kind and righteous purposes.
We were left to look upon it as at best a
necessary evil—a great moral wrong, to be
endured only because there seemed to be
no way to cast it off which would not in
volve a greater wrong. And now that this
war has come upon us chiefly in conse
quence of the existence of slavery among
us, and is waged for its destruction, it is
perfectly natural that there should be many
among us whose tender consciences are
troubled with at least the fear that what
we have been told so often may be true. —
Hence, I think it proper for us to inquire on
this occasion, Is slave holding a national sin ?
If it is a sin at all, it is a national *3 well
as an individual sin, for the very constitu
tion of our government rests upon it, and
the whole power of our government is
pledged to sustain it. Is it, then, a sin?
If it is, far be it from me to seek to hide
its wickedness or apologize for its guilt.—
Asa true minister of Jesus Christ, I rnay
not shrink from denouncing any sin which
He denounces, even though my liberty or
life may pay the forfeit; as a minister of
Christ, I am bound to go to His holy Word,
and learn the truth, and teach it— ‘ the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth,’ as I must answer unto God in the
great day when He will judge the world.
Come, then, with me, and let us search God’s
word, with earnest minds and humble
hearts, to learn the truth, whatever it may
be, upon this subject—ls slavery a sin ?
What is sin ? Sin is a transgression of
God’s law. ‘ Where there is no law there
is no transgression.’ (Romans iv, 15; Ist
John iii, 4.) What, then, is God’s 1w in
regard to slavery ? I can know it only by
Ilis written word. ‘The Bible, and the
Bible only, is our all-sufficient rule of faith
and practice.’ If any man imagines that he
is wiser than the God who made him, or
has a higher standard of morality than the
one which God has given, it were folly to
reason with such an one. ‘ The foolishness
of Gol is wiser than men.’ I have no need
to call on moral philosophers, or on doctors
of divinity, to answer this question. God
has spoken, with His own awful voice; and
when God speaks, let all the world keep
silence. If the God of Heaven condescends
to be my teacher, I need not inquire of the
wise ones of earth. God is a better moral
philosopher than Dr. Way land or Dr.
Barnes, or any others who have undertaken
to instruct the world in regard to what God
ought to have commanded concerning slave
ry. Our only question is, What did He
command ? * ‘ What saith the Scripture 1 ’
‘How readest thou?’
Sin is the transgi ession of God’s law.—
And God’s law is in the Bible. If He has
forbidden slavery, He has forbidden it here.
Come, then, to the Bible. Let us begin at
the beginning ; turn to the book of Genesis.
In those early days, God taught morality
and religion more b) example than by pre
eept. He made those great and good old
men called the Patriarchs, and set them on
the earth as models of whst, in the eyes of
God, a righteous man should be; and then
He sketched with the pen of inspiration the
outlines of their noble characters, and left
them standing as living pictures to be
studied, admired, and imitated, in all com
ing ages. Such a one was Abraham, ‘ the
friend of God,’ so called by God himself.—
Such a one was Job, * the just man, and ore
that feared God and eschewed evil,’ so de
scribed by God himself. I go and ask of
them, What is God’s law concemingslavery?
And 1 am met by Abraham’s pious servant
as he goes to bring a wife for his young
master Isaac. (Genesis xxiv, 34—35.)
‘ And he said, I am Abraham’s servant;
and the Lord hath blessed my master great
ly, and he is become great, and He hath
given him docks and herds, and silver and
gold, and men servants and maid servants
And of Job, God says himself: ‘ His sub
stance was seven thousand sheep and three
thousand camels, and five hundred yoke of
oxen, and five hundred she-asses, and a very
great household.' Besides his seven sons
and three daughters, there was a very great
household of slaves which made part of this
good man’s ‘substance,’ or wealth. (Job
i, 2-3.) But this, it may be said, was a
J TERMS : Three Dollars per annum,
1 STRICTLY IN ADVANCE.
peculiarity of the Patriarchal age. Was
slavery not to be confined to those old
fathers ?
Turn to Genesis xvii: 12, and we can
see. Here God gives to Abraham—not
only for himself in his own life-time, but
to his descendants in all coming time—an
everlasting covenant; and circumcision, the
sign of that covenant, He ordained should
be given not only to their children, but to
their slaves in all generations—those ‘ born
in their house or bought with their money'
But we are not left to the teaching of ex
ample, though this itself, with nothing con
tradicting it, would be enough. Our ques
tion is whether slave-holding is a sin.—
Let us remember that sin is the transgres
sion of God's commandment, and then turn
to the twenty-fifth chapter of Leviticus, in
which God was pleased to give a very plain
commandment on the subject. It is a part
of the code of laws which God gave to His
people when He condescended to become
their secular Law-giver—the only secular
code o t laws God ever gave to man. He
gave it to a people who, at the time, were
not slave-holders—who had themselves but
just escaped from slavery in Egypt—and
when there was no necessity or occasion to
make any mention of slavery at all; or if
there were, it would have been just as easy
to have forbidden as to have provided for
its existence. Yet under such circum
stances as these, when there can be con
ceived no reason why God should have
instituted a slave code for His people, ex
cept that He saw thatt/ was best that slavery
should exist, He made His code a slave
code. He instructed the people who were
then not slaveholders, and who would be in
no condition to become such for some years,
that when it became possible and convenient
for them to do so, they should purchase
slaves. He told them of whom the pur
chases should be made, and how they should
treat their slaves when they came into thei r
possession. Here is a part of this slave
code (Leviticus xxv, 44): ‘ Both thy bond
men and thy bondmaids which thou shalt
have, shall be of the heathen which are
round i bout you; of them shall ye buy
bondmen and bondmaids. Moreover, of the
children of the strangers that do sojourn
among ybu/of them shall ye buy, and of
their families that are with you which they
begat in your land ; and they shall be your
possession, and ye shall take them for an
inheritance for your children alter you to
inherit them for a possession. They shall
be your bondmen forever.’
Now turn to £xodus xxi, 20-21, and you
will see some instructions concerning the
management of these slaves : ‘lf a man
smite his servant or his maid with a rod,
and he die under his hand, he shall surely
be punished. Notwithstanding, if he con
tinue a day or two he shall not be punished,
for he is his money.’
I might mention other details of this
slave code, but this is enough to show all I
desired for my argument, which is: that
such a code was actually ordained by the
God of Heaven himself, at the only time
when He ever condescended tobooome the
secular Law giver of any nation. He him
self made His model nation a nation of
slaveholders. God introduced slavery
among them by His own direct enactment.
Is slavery, then, a transgression of His law 1
But it may be said, and truly said, that
this was only a Jewish regulation and does
not extend to us ; God might haveordaiaed
it for the Jews and yet have forbidden it
it to all the world besides. If so, it would
be right for them, yet wrong for us. Let
us grant all this. But while Ife ordained
it for them, where and when did He forbi 1
it to us, or to the world ? Where is the law?
Let us turn now to the Ten Command
ments. These, by common consent, are
God’s law ol morality to all the world. —
God spake them, in a voice of thunder, from
Sinai to the Jews, and wrote them with His
own finger on two tablets of stone, that
they might be preserved in all generations,
and teach all nations on the earth what is
wrong and what is right in human conduct.
The first table contains a coinpend of our
duty to God. The second table teaches
our duty to our fellow-man. They are
both consistent with the Saviour’s great law
of love, since He himself declares they were
built upon it. JNow, what if I can show
you this institution of slavery in this great
moral law itself 1 What if I tell you that
NUMBER 39 *
