Chapter 2

So long as there are wrongs to be redressed, so long as the strong oppress the weak, so long as injustice sits in high places, the voice of the orator will be needed to plead for the rights of man. He may not, at this stage of the republic, be called upon to sound a battle cry to arms, but there are bloodless victories to be won as essential to the stability of a great nation and the uplifting of its millions of people as the victories of the battlefield.

When the greatest of modern political philosophers, the author of the Declaration of Independence, urged that, if men were left free to declare the truth the effect of its great positive forces would overcome the negative forces of error, he seems to have hit the central fact of civilization. Without freedom of thought and absolute freedom to speak out the truth as one sees it, there can be no advancement, no high civilization. To the orator who has heard the call of humanity, what nobler aspiration than to enlarge and extend the freedom we have inherited from our Anglo-Saxon forefathers, and to defend the hope of the world?

Edward A. Allen

PIERRE ABELARD (1079-1142)

Abelard's reputation for oratory and for scholarship was so great that he attracted hearers and disciples from all quarters. They encamped around him like an army and listened to him with such eagerness that the jealousy of some and the honest apprehension of others were excited by the boldness with which he handled religious subjects. He has been called the originator of modern rationalism, and though he was apparently worsted in his contest with his great rival, St. Bernard, he remains the most real and living personality among the great pulpit orators of the Middle Ages. This is due in large part, no doubt, to his connection with the unfortunate Heloise. That story, one of the most romantic, as it is one of the saddest of human history, must be passed over with a mere mention of the fact that it gave occasion for a number of the sermons of Abelard which have come down to us. Several of those were preached in the convent of the Paraclete of which Heloise became abbess,-- where, in his old age, her former lover, broken with the load of a life of most extraordinary sorrows, went to die. These sermons do not suggest the fire and force with which young Abelard appealed to France, compelling its admiration even in exciting its alarm, but they prevent him from being a mere name as an orator.

He was born near Nantes, A. D. 1079. At his death in 1142, he was buried in the convent of the Paraclete, where the body of Heloise was afterwards buried at his side.

The extracts from his sermons here given were translated by Rev. J. M. Neale, of Sackville College, from the first collected edition of the works of Abelard, published at Paris in 1616. There are thirty-two such sermons extant. They were preached in Latin, or, at least, they have come down to us in that language.

THE RESURRECTION OF LAZARUS

The Lord performed that miracle once for all in the body which much more blessedly he performs every day in the souls of penitents. He restored life to Lazarus, but it was a temporal life, one that would die again. He bestows life on the penitent; life, but it is life that will remain, world without end. The one is wonderful in the eyes of men; the other is far more wonderful in the judgment of the faithful; and in that it is so much the greater, by so much the more is it to be sought. This is written of Lazarus, not for Lazarus himself, but for us and to us. "Whatsoever things," saith the Apostle, "were written of old, were written for our learning." The Lord called Lazarus once, and he was raised from temporal death. He calls us often, that we may rise from the death of the soul. He said to him once, "Come forth!" and immediately he came forth at one command of the Lord. The Lord every day invites us by Scripture to confession, exhorts us to amendment, promises the life which is prepared for us by him who willeth not the death of a sinner. We neglect his call, we despise his invitation, we contemn his promise. Placed between God and the devil, as between a father and a foe, we prefer the enticement of the enemy to a father's warning. "We are not ignorant," says the Apostle, "of the devices of Satan,"--the devices, I say, by which he induces us to sin, and keeps us back from repentance. Suggesting sin, he deprives us of two things by which the best assistance might be offered to us, namely, shame and fear. For that which we avoid, we avoid either through fear of some loss, or through the reverence of shame.... When, therefore, Satan impels any one to sin, he easily accomplishes the object, if, as we have said, he first deprives him of fear and shame. And when he has effected that, he restores the same things, but in another sense, which he has taken away; that so he may keep back the sinner from confession, and make him die in his sin. Then he secretly whispers into his soul: "Priests are light-minded, and it is a difficult thing to check the tongue. If you tell this or that to them, it cannot remain a secret; and when it shall have been published abroad, you will incur the danger of losing your good character, or bearing some injury, and being confounded from your own vileness." Thus the devil deceives that wretched man; he first takes from him that by which he ought to avoid sin, and then restores the same thing, and by it retains him in sin. His captive fears temporal, and not spiritual, evil; he is ashamed before men and he despises God. He is ashamed that things should come to the knowledge of men which he was not ashamed to commit in the sight of God, and of the whole heavenly host. He trembles at the judgment of man, and he has no respect to that of God. Of which the Apostle says: "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God"; and the Truth saith himself, "Fear not them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do; but fear him rather who can cast body and soul into hell."

There are diseases of the soul, as there are of the body; and therefore the Divine mercy has provided beforehand physicians for both. Our Lord Jesus Christ saith, "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." His priests now hold his place in the Church, to whom, as unto physicians of the soul, we ought to confess our sins, that we may receive from them the plaister of satisfaction. He that fears the death of the body, in whatever part of the body he may suffer, however much he may be ashamed of the disease, makes no delay in revealing it to the physician, and setting it forth, so that it may be cured. However rough, however hard may be the remedy, he avoids it not, so that he may escape death. Whatever he has that is most precious, he makes no hesitation in giving it, if only for a little while he may put off the death of the body. What, then, ought we to do for the death of the soul? For this, however terrible, may be forever prevented, without such great labor, without such great expense. The Lord seeks us ourselves, and not what is ours. He stands in no need of our wealth who bestows all things. For it is he to whom it is said, "My goods are nothing unto thee." With him a man is by so much the greater, as, in his own judgment, he is less. With him a man is as much the more righteous, as in his own opinion he is the more guilty. In his eyes we hide our faults all the more, the more that here by confession we manifest them.

THE LAST ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM

"He came unto his own, and his own received him not." That is, he entered Jerusalem. Yet now he entered, not Jerusalem, which by interpretation is "The Vision of Peace," but the home of tyranny. For now the elders of the city have so manifestly conspired against him, that he can no longer find a place of refuge within it. This is not to be attributed to his helplessness but to his patience. He could be harbored there securely, seeing that no one can do him harm by violence, and that he has the power to incline the hearts of men whither he wills. For in that same city he freely did whatever he willed to do; and when he sent his disciples thither, and commanded them that they should loose the ass and the colt, and bring them to him, and said that no man would forbid them, he accomplished that which he said, although he was not ignorant of the conspiracy against himself. Of which he saith to his disciples whom he sends, "Go ye into the castle over against you"; that is, to the place which is equally opposed to God and to you; no longer to be called a city, an assembly of men living under the law, but a castle of tyrannical fortification. Go confidently, saith he, into the place, though such it is, and though it is therefore opposed to you, and do with all security that which I command you. Whence he adds, also: "And if any man say aught unto you, say that the Lord hath need of them, and he will straightway send them away." A wonderful confidence of power! As if the Lord, using his own right of command, lays his own injunction on those whom he knows already to have conspired for his death. Thus he commands, thus he enjoins, thus he compels obedience. Nor do they who are sent hesitate in accomplishing that which is laid upon them, confident as they are in the strength of the power of him who sends them. By that power they who were chiefly concerned in this conspiracy had been more than once ejected from the Temple, where many were not able to resist one. And they, too, after this ejection and conspiracy, as we have said, when he was daily teaching in the Temple, knew how intrepid he showed himself to be, into whose hands the Father had given all things. And last of all, when he desired to celebrate the Passover in the same night in which he had foreordained to be betrayed, he again sent his Disciples whither he willed, and prepared a home for himself in the city itself, wherein he might keep the feast. He, then, who so often showed his power in such things as these, now also, if he had desired it, could have prepared a home wherever he would, and had no need to return to Bethany. Therefore, he did these two things intentionally: he showed that they whom he avoided were unworthy of his dwelling among them; and he gave himself, in the last hours of his life, to his beloved hosts, that they might have their own reception of him as the reward of their hospitality.

THE DIVINE TRAGEDY

Whether, therefore, Christ is spoken of as about to be crowned or about to be crucified, it is said that he "went forth"; to signify that the Jews, who were guilty of so great wickedness against him, were given over to reprobation, and that his grace would now pass to the vast extent of the Gentiles, where the salvation of the Cross, and his own exaltation by the gain of many peoples, in the place of the one nation of the Jews, has extended itself. Whence, also, to-day we rightly go forth to adore the Cross in the open plain; showing mystically that both glory and salvation had departed from the Jews, and had spread themselves among the Gentiles. But in that we afterwards returned (in procession) to the place whence we had set forth, we signify that in the end of the world the grace of God will return to the Jews; namely, when, by the preaching of Enoch and Elijah, they shall be converted to him. Whence the Apostle: "I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, that blindness in part has fallen upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles shall be come, and so all Israel shall be saved." Whence the place itself of Calvary, where the Lord was crucified, is now, as we know, contained in the city; whereas formerly it was without the walls. "The crown wherewith his Mother crowned him in the day of his espousals, and in the day of the gladness of his heart." For thus kings are wont to exhibit their glory when they betroth queens to themselves, and celebrate the solemnities of their nuptials. Now the day of the Lord's crucifixion was, as it were, the day of his betrothal; because it was then that he associated the Church to himself as his bride, and on the same day descended into Hell, and, setting free the souls of the faithful, accomplished in them that which he had promised to the thief: "Verily I say unto thee, to-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise."

"To-day," he says, of the gladness of his heart; because in his body he suffered the torture of pain; but while the flesh inflicted on him torments through the outward violence of men, his soul was filled with joy on account of our salvation, which he thus brought to pass. Whence, also, when he went forth to his crucifixion, he stilled the women that were lamenting him, and said, "Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves and your children." As if he said, "Grieve not for me in these my sufferings, as if by their means I should fall into any real destruction; but rather lament for that heavy vengeance which hangs over you and your children, because of that which they have committed against me." So we, also, brethren, should rather weep for ourselves than for him; and for the faults which we have committed, not for the punishments which he bore. Let us so rejoice with him and for him, as to grieve for our own offenses, and for that the guilty servant committed the transgression, while the innocent Lord bore the punishment. He taught us to weep who is never said to have wept for himself, though he wept for Lazarus when about to raise him from the dead.

CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS (1807-1886)

The son of one President of the United States and the grand-son of another, Charles Francis Adams won for himself in his own right a position of prominence in the history of his times. He studied law in the office of Daniel Webster, and after beginning practice was drawn into public life by his election to the Massachusetts legislature in which he served from 1831 to 1838. A Whig in politics until the slavery issue became prominent, he was nominated for Vice-President on the Free Soil ticket with Van Buren in 1848. The Republican party which grew out of the Free Soil movement elected him to Congress as a representative of the third Massachusetts district in 1858 and re-elected him in 1860. In 1861 President Lincoln appointed him minister to England, and he filled with credit that place which had been filled by his father and grandfather before him. He died November 21st, 1886, leaving besides his own speeches and essays an edition of the works of John and John Quincy Adams in twenty-two volumes octavo.

THE STATES AND THE UNION (Delivered in the House of Representatives, January 31st, 1861)

I confess, Mr. Speaker, that I should be very jealous, as a citizen of Massachusetts, of any attempt on the part of Virginia, for example, to propose an amendment to the Constitution designed to rescind or abolish the bill of rights prefixed to our own form of government. Yet I cannot see why such a proposition would be more unjustifiable than any counter proposition to abolish slavery in Virginia, as coming from Massachusetts. If I have in any way succeeded in mastering the primary elements of our forms of government, the first and fundamental idea is, the reservation to the people of the respective States of every power of regulating their own affairs not specifically surrendered in the Constitution. The security of the State governments depends upon the fidelity with which this principle is observed.

Even the intimation of any such interference as I have mentioned by way of example could not be made in earnest without at once shaking the entire foundation of the whole confederated Union. No man shall exceed me in jealousy of affection for the State rights of Massachusetts. So far as I remember, nothing of this kind was ever thought of heretofore; and I see no reason to apprehend that what has not happened thus far will be more likely to happen hereafter. But if the time ever come when it does occur, I shall believe the dissolution of the system to be much more certain than I do at this moment.

For these reasons, I cannot imagine that there is the smallest foundation for uneasiness about the intentions of any considerable number of men in the free States to interfere in any manner whatever with slavery in the States, much less by the hopeless mode of amending the Constitution. To me it looks like panic, pure panic. How, then, is it to be treated? Is it to be neglected or ridiculed? Not at all. If a child in the nursery be frightened by the idea of a spectre, common humanity would prompt an effort by kindness to assuage the alarm. But in cases where the same feeling pervades the bosoms of multitudes of men, this imaginary evil grows up at once into a gigantic reality, and must be dealt with as such. It is at all times difficult to legislate against a possibility. The committee have reported a proposition intended to meet this case. It is a form of amendment of the Constitution which, in substance, takes away no rights whatever which the free States ever should attempt to use, whilst it vests exclusively in the slave States the right to use them or not, as they shall think proper, the whole treatment of the subject to which they relate being conceded to be a matter of common interest to them, exclusively within their jurisdiction, and subject to their control. A time may arrive, in the course of years, when they will themselves desire some act of interference in a friendly and beneficent spirit. If so, they have the power reserved to them of initiating the very form in which it would be most welcome. If not, they have a security, so long as this government shall endure, that no sister State shall dictate any change against their will.

I have now considered all the alleged grievances which have thus far been brought to our attention, 1. The personal liberty laws, which never freed a slave. 2. Exclusion from a Territory which slaveholders will never desire to occupy. 3. Apprehension of an event which will never take place. For the sake of these three causes of complaint, all of them utterly without practical result, the slaveholding States, unquestionably the weakest section of this great Confederacy, are voluntarily and precipitately surrendering the realities of solid power woven into the very texture of a government that now keeps nineteen million freemen, willing to tolerate, and, in one sense, to shelter, institutions which, but for that, would meet with no more sympathy among them than they now do in the remainder of the civilized world.

For my own part, I must declare that, even supposing these alleged grievances to be more real than I represent them, I think the measures of the committee dispose of them effectually and forever. They contribute directly all that can be legitimately done by Congress, and they recommend it to the legislatures of the States to accomplish the remainder. Why, then, is it that harmony is not restored? The answer is, that you are not satisfied with this settlement, however complete. You must have more guarantees in the Constitution. You must make the protection and extension of slavery in the Territories now existing, and hereafter to be acquired, a cardinal doctrine of our great charter. Without that, you are determined to dissolve the Union. How stands the case, then? We offer to settle the question finally in all of the present territory that you claim, by giving you every chance of establishing slavery that you have any right to require of us. You decline to take the offer, because you fear it will do you no good. Slavery will not go there. But, if that be true, what is the use of asking for the protection anyhow, much less in the Constitution? Why require protection where you will have nothing to protect? All you appear to desire it for is New Mexico. Nothing else is left. Yet, you will not accept New Mexico at once, because ten years of experience have proved to you that protection has been of no use thus far. But, if so, how can you expect that it will be of so much more use hereafter as to make it worth dissolving the Union?

But, if we pass to the other condition, is it any more reasonable? Are we going to fight because we cannot agree upon the mode of disposing of our neighbor's lands? Are we to break up the Union of these States, cemented by so many years of common sufferings, and resplendent with so many years of common glory, because it is insisted that we should incorporate into what we regard as the charter of our freedom a proclamation to the civilized world that we intend to grasp the territory of other nations whenever we can do it, for the purpose of putting into it certain institutions which some of us disapprove, and that, too, whether the people inhabiting that territory themselves approve of it or not?

I am almost inclined to believe that they who first contrived this demand must have done so for the sake of presenting a condition which they knew beforehand must be rejected, or which, if accepted, must humiliate us in the dust forever. In point of fact, this proposal covers no question of immediate moment which may not be settled by another and less obnoxious one. Why is it, then, persevered in, and the other rejected? The answer is obvious. You want the Union dissolved. You want to make it impossible for honorable men to become reconciled. If it be, indeed, so, then on you, and you alone, shall rest the responsibility of what may follow. If the Union be broken up, the reason why it happened shall remain on record forever. It was because you rejected one form of settling a question which might be offered and accepted with honor, in order to insist upon another which you knew we could not accept without disgrace. I answer for myself only when I say that, if the alternative to the salvation of the Union be only that the people of the United States shall, before the Christian nations of the earth, print in broad letters upon the front of their charter of republican government the dogma of slave propagandism over the remainder of the countries of the world, I will not consent to brand myself with what I deem such disgrace, let the consequences be what they may.

But it is said that this answer closes the door of reconciliation. The slaveholding States will secede, and what then?