Chapter 35

The Sunday is a chosen day, in which the angels rejoice. We must ask who was the first to request that souls might (on Sunday) have rest in hell; and the answer is that Paul the Apostle and Michael the Archangel besought the Lord when they came back from hell; for it was the Lord's will that Paul should see the punishments of that place. He beheld trees all on fire, and sinners tormented on those trees; and some were hung by the feet, some by the hands, some by the hair, some by the neck, some by the tongue, and some by the arm. And again, he saw a furnace of fire burning with seven flames, and many were punished in it; and there were seven plagues round about this furnace; the first, snow; the second, ice; the third, fire, the fourth, blood; the fifth, serpents; the sixth, lightning; the seventh, stench; and in that furnace itself were the souls of the sinners who repented not in this life. There they are tormented, and every one receiveth according to his works; some weep, some howl, some groan; some burn and desire to have rest, but find it not, because souls can never die. Truly we ought to fear that place in which is everlasting dolor, in which is groaning, in which is sadness without joy, in which are abundance of tears on account of the tortures of souls; in which a fiery wheel is turned a thousand times a day by an evil angel, and at each turn a thousand souls are burnt upon it. After this he beheld a horrible river, in which were many diabolic beasts, like fishes in the midst of the sea, which devour the souls of sinners; and over that river there is a bridge, across which righteous souls pass without dread, while the souls of sinners suffer each one according to its merits.

There Paul beheld many souls of sinners plunged, some to the knees, some to the loins, some to the mouth, some to the eyebrows; and every day and eternally they are tormented. And Paul wept, and asked who they were that were therein plunged to the knees. And the angel said, These are detractors and evil speakers; and those up to the loins are fornicators and adulterers, who returned not to repentance; and those to the mouth are they who went to Church, but they heard not the word of God; and those to the eyebrows are they who rejoiced in the wickedness of their neighbor. And after this, he saw between heaven and earth the soul of a sinner, howling betwixt seven devils, that had on that day departed from the body. And the angels cried out against it and said, Woe to thee, wretched soul! What hast thou done upon earth? Thou hast despised the commandments of God, and hast done no good works; and therefore thou shalt be cast into outer darkness, where shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. And after this, in one moment, angels carried a soul from its body to heaven; and Paul heard the voice of a thousand angels rejoicing over it, and saying, O most happy and blessed soul! rejoice to-day, because thou hast done the will of God. And they set it in the presence of God. ... And the angel said, Whoso keepeth the Sunday shall have his part with the angels of God. And Paul demanded of the angel, how many kinds of punishment there were in hell. And the angel said, there are a hundred and forty-four thousand, and if there were a hundred eloquent men, each having four iron tongues, that spoke from the beginning of the world, they could not reckon up the torments of hell. But let us, beloved brethren, hearing of these so great torments, be converted to our Lord that we may be able to reign with the angels.

HENRY WARD BEECHER (1813-1887)

A very great orator must be a thoroughly representative man, sensitive enough to be moved to the depths of his nature by the master-passions of his time. Henry Ward Beecher was a very great orator,--one of the greatest the country has produced,--and in his speeches and orations inspired by the feelings which evolved the Civil War and were themselves exaggerated by it to tenfold strength, we feel all the volcanic forces which buried the primitive political conditions of the United States deep under the ashes and lava of their eruption. Words are feeble in the presence of the facts of such a war. But what more could words do to suggest its meaning than they do in Mr. Beecher's oration on the raising of the flag at Fort Sumter, April 14th, 1865:--

"The soil has drunk blood and is glutted. Millions mourn for myriads slain, or, envying the dead, pray for oblivion. Towns and villages have been razed. Fruitful fields have been turned back to wilderness. It came to pass as the prophet had said: 'The sun was turned to darkness and the moon to blood.' The course of the law was ended. The sword sat chief magistrate in half the nation; industry was paralyzed; morals corrupted; the public weal invaded by rapine and anarchy; whole States were ravaged by avenging armies. The world was amazed. The earth reeled."

In such passages, Mr. Beecher has something of the force which immortalized the "Voluspa." The "bardic inspiration," which moved the early Norse poets to sing the bloody results of the "Berserker fury," peculiar to the Teutonic and Norse peoples, seems to control him as he recounts the dreadful features of the war and reminds the vanquished of the meaning of defeat.

In considering the oratory inspired by the passions which found their climax in the destructiveness of civil war,--and especially in considering such magnificent outbursts as Mr. Beecher's oration at Fort Sumter, intelligence will seek to free itself alike from sympathy and from prejudice that it may the better judge the effect of the general mind of the people on the orator, and the extent to which that general mind as he voiced it, was influenced by the strength of his individuality. If when we ourselves are moved by no passion we judge with critical calmness the impassioned utterances of the orators of any great epoch of disturbance, we can hardly fail to be repelled by much that the critical faculties will reject as exaggeration. But taking into account the environment, the traditions, the public opinion, the various general or individual impulses which influenced the oratory of one side or the other, we can the better determine its true relation to the history of the human intellect and that forward movement of the world which is but a manifestation of the education of intellect.

Mr. Beecher had the temperament, the habits, the physique of the orator. His ancestry, his intellectual training, his surroundings, fitted him to be a prophet of the crusade against slavery. Of those names which for a time were bruited everywhere as a result of the struggles of the three decades from 1850 to 1880, a majority are already becoming obscure, and in another generation most of the rest will be "names only" to all who are not students of history as a specialty. But the mind in Henry Ward Beecher was so representative; he was so fully mastered by the forces which sent Sherman on his march to the sea and Grant to his triumph at Appomattox, that he will always be remembered as one of the greatest orators of the Civil War period. Perhaps when the events of the war are so far removed in point of time as to make a critical judgment really possible, he may even rank as the greatest.

RAISING THE FLAG OVER FORT SUMTER (Delivered April 14th, 1865, by request of President Lincoln)

On this solemn and joyful day we again lift to the breeze our fathers' flag, now again the banner of the United States, with the fervent prayer that God will crown it with honor, protect it from treason, and send it down to our children, with all the blessings of civilization, liberty, and religion. Terrible in battle, may it be beneficent in peace. Happily, no bird or beast of prey has been inscribed upon it. The stars that redeem the night from darkness, and the beams of red light that beautify the morning, have been united upon its folds. As long as the sun endures, or the stars, may it wave over a nation neither enslaved nor enslaving! Once, and but once, has treason dishonored it. In that insane hour when the guiltiest and bloodiest rebellion of all time hurled their fires upon this fort, you, sir [turning to General Anderson], and a small, heroic band, stood within these now crumbled walls, and did gallant and just battle for the honor and defense of the nation's banner. In that cope of fire, that glorious flag still peacefully waved to the breeze above your head unconscious of harm as the stars and skies above it. Once it was shot down. A gallant hand, in whose care this day it has been, plucked it from the ground, and reared it again--"cast down, but not destroyed." After a vain resistance, with trembling hand and sad heart, you withdrew it from its height, closed its wings, and bore it far away, sternly to sleep amid the tumults of rebellion, and the thunder of battle. The first act of war had begun. The long night of four years had set in. While the giddy traitors whirled in a maze of exhilaration, dim horrors were already advancing, that were ere long to fill the land with blood. To-day you are returned again. We devoutly join with you in thanksgiving to Almighty God that he has spared your honored life, and vouchsafed to you the glory of this day. The heavens over you are the same, the same shores are here, morning comes, and evening, as they did. All else, how changed! What grim batteries crowd the burdened shores! What scenes have filled this air, and disturbed these waters! These shattered heaps of shapeless stone are all that is left of Fort Sumter. Desolation broods in yonder city--solemn retribution hath avenged our dishonored banner! You have come back with honor, who departed hence four years ago, leaving the air sultry with fanaticism. The surging crowds that rolled up their frenzied shouts as the flag came down, are dead, or scattered, or silent, and their habitations are desolate. Ruin sits in the cradle of treason. Rebellion has perished. But there flies the same flag that was insulted. With starry eyes it looks over this bay for the banner that supplanted it, and sees it not. You that then, for the day, were humbled, are here again, to triumph once and forever. In the storm of that assault this glorious ensign was often struck; but, memorable fact, not one of its stars was torn out by shot or shell. It was a prophecy. It said: "Not a State shall be struck from this nation by treason!" The fulfillment is at hand. Lifted to the air to-day, it proclaims that after four years of war, "Not a State is blotted out." Hail to the flag of our fathers, and our flag! Glory to the banner that has gone through four years black with tempests of war, to pilot the nation back to peace without dismemberment! And glory be to God, who, above all hosts and banners, hath ordained victory, and shall ordain peace. Wherefore have we come hither, pilgrims from distant places? Are we come to exult that Northern hands are stronger than Southern? No; but to rejoice that the hands of those who defend a just and beneficent government are mightier than the hands that assaulted it. Do we exult over fallen cities? We exult that a nation has not fallen. We sorrow with the sorrowful. We sympathize with the desolate. We look upon this shattered fort and yonder dilapidated city with sad eyes, grieved that men should have committed such treason, and glad that God hath set such a mark upon treason that all ages shall dread and abhor it. We exult, not for a passion gratified, but for a sentiment victorious; not for temper, but for conscience; not, as we devoutly believe, that our will is done, but that God's will hath been done. We should be unworthy of that liberty intrusted to our care, if, on such a day as this, we sullied our hearts by feelings of aimless vengeance; and equally unworthy if we did not devoutly thank him who hath said: "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord," that he hath set a mark upon arrogant rebellion, ineffaceable while time lasts.

Since this flag went down on that dark day, who shall tell the mighty woes that have made this land a spectacle to angels and men? The soil has drunk blood and is glutted. Millions mourn for myriads slain, or, envying the dead, pray for oblivion. Towns and villages have been razed. Fruitful fields have been turned back to wilderness. It came to pass, as the prophet said: "The sun was turned to darkness and the moon to blood," The course of law was ended. The sword sat chief magistrate in half the nation; industry was paralyzed; morals corrupted; the public weal invaded by rapine and anarchy; whole States ravaged by avenging armies. The world was amazed. The earth reeled. When the flag sunk here, it was as if political night had come, and all beasts of prey had come forth to devour. That long night is ended. And for this returning day we have come from afar to rejoice and give thanks. No more war. No more accursed secession. No more slavery, that spawned them both. Let no man misread the meaning of this unfolding flag! It says: "Government has returned hither." It proclaims, in the name of vindicated government, peace and protection to loyalty, humiliation and pains to traitors. This is the flag of sovereignty. The nation, not the States, is sovereign. Restored to authority, this flag commands, not supplicates. There may be pardon, but no concession. There may be amnesty and oblivion, but no honeyed compromises. The nation to-day has peace for the peaceful, and war for the turbulent. The only condition to submission is to submit! There is the Constitution, there are the laws, there is the government. They rise up like mountains of strength that shall not be moved. They are the conditions of peace. One nation, under one government, without slavery, has been ordained and shall stand. There can be peace on no other basis. On this basis reconstruction is easy, and needs neither architect nor engineer. Without this basis no engineer nor architect shall ever reconstruct these rebellious States. We do not want your cities or your fields. We do not envy you your prolific soil, nor heavens full of perpetual summer. Let agriculture revel here, let manufactures make every stream twice musical, build fleets in every port, inspire the arts of peace with genius second only to that of Athens, and we shall be glad in your gladness, and rich in your wealth. All that we ask is unswerving loyalty and universal liberty. And that, in the name of this high sovereignty of the United States of America, we demand and that, with the blessing of Almighty God, we will have! We raise our fathers banner that it may bring back better blessings than those of old; that it may cast out the devil of discord; that it may restore lawful government, and a prosperity purer and more enduring than that which it protected before; that it may win parted friends from their alienation; that it may inspire hope, and inaugurate universal liberty; that it may say to the sword, "Return to thy sheath"; and to the plow and sickle, "Go forth"; that it may heal all jealousies, unite all policies, inspire a new national life, compact our strength, purify our principles, ennoble our national ambitions, and make this people great and strong, not for agression and quarrelsomeness, but for the peace of the world, giving to us the glorious prerogative of leading all nations to juster laws, to more humane policies, to sincerer friendship, to rational, instituted civil liberty, and to universal Christian brotherhood. Reverently, piously, in hopeful patriotism, we spread this banner on the sky, as of old the bow was painted on the cloud and, with solemn fervor, beseech God to look upon it, and make it a memorial of an everlasting covenant and decree that never again on this fair land shall a deluge of blood prevail. Why need any eye turn from this spectacle? Are there not associations which, overleaping the recent past, carry us back to times when, over North and South, this flag was honored alike by all? In all our colonial days we were one, in the long revolutionary struggle, and in the scores of prosperous years succeeding, we were united. When the passage of the Stamp Act in 1765 aroused the colonies, it was Gadsden, of South Carolina, that cried, with prescient enthusiasm, "We stand on the broad common ground of those natural rights that we all feel and know as men. There ought to be no New England man, no New Yorker, known on this continent, but all of us," said he, "Americans." That was the voice of South Carolina. That shall be the voice of South Carolina. Faint is the echo; but it is coming. We now hear it sighing sadly through the pines; but it shall yet break in thunder upon the shore. No North, no West, no South, but the United States of America. There is scarcely a man born in the South who has lifted his hand against this banner but had a father who would have died for it. Is memory dead? Is there no historic pride? Has a fatal fury struck blindness or hate into eyes that used to look kindly towards each other, that read the same Bible, that hung over the historic pages of our national glory, that studied the same Constitution? Let this uplifting bring back all of the past that was good, but leave in darkness all that was bad. It was never before so wholly unspotted; so clear of all wrong, so purely and simply the sign of justice and liberty. Did I say that we brought back the same banner that you bore away, noble and heroic sir? It is not the same. It is more and better than it was. The land is free from slavery since that banner fell.

When God would prepare Moses for emancipation, he overthrew his first steps and drove him for forty years to brood in the wilderness. When our flag came down, four years it lay brooding in darkness. It cried to the Lord, "Wherefore am I deposed?" Then arose before it a vision of its sin. It had strengthened the strong, and forgotten the weak. It proclaimed liberty, but trod upon slaves. In that seclusion it dedicated itself to liberty. Behold, to-day, it fulfills its vows! When it went down four million people had no flag. To-day it rises, and four million people cry out, "Behold our flag!" Hark! they murmur. It is the Gospel that they recite in sacred words: "It is a Gospel to the poor, it heals our broken hearts, it preaches deliverance to captives, it gives sight to the blind, it sets at liberty them that are bruised." Rise up then, glorious Gospel banner, and roll out these messages of God. Tell the air that not a spot now sullies thy whiteness. Thy red is not the blush of shame, but the flush of joy. Tell the dews that wash thee that thou art as pure as they. Say to the night that thy stars lead toward the morning; and to the morning, that a brighter day arises with healing in its wings. And then, O glowing flag, bid the sun pour light on all thy folds with double brightness while thou art bearing round and round the world the solemn joy--a race set free! a nation redeemed! The mighty hand of government, made strong in war by the favor of the God of Battles, spreads wide to-day the banner of liberty that went down in darkness, that arose in light; and there it streams, like the sun above it, neither parceled out nor monopolized, but flooding the air with light for all mankind. Ye scattered and broken, ye wounded and dying, bitten by the fiery serpents of oppression, everywhere, in all the world, look upon this sign, lifted up, and live! And ye homeless and houseless slaves, look, and ye are free! At length you, too, have part and lot in this glorious ensign that broods with impartial love over small and great, the poor and the strong, the bond and the free. In this solemn hour, let us pray for the quick coming of reconciliation and happiness under this common flag. But we must build again, from the foundations, in all these now free Southern States. No cheap exhortations "to forgetfulness of the past, to restore all things as they were," will do. God does not stretch out his hand, as he has for four dreadful years, that men may easily forget the might of his terrible acts. Restore things as they were! What, the alienations and jealousies, the discords and contentions, and the causes of them? No. In that solemn sacrifice on which a nation has offered for its sins so many precious victims, loved and lamented, let our sins and mistakes be consumed utterly and forever. No, never again shall things be restored as before the war. It is written in God's decree of events fulfilled, "Old things are passed away." That new earth, in which dwelleth righteousness, draws near. Things as they were! Who has an omnipotent hand to restore a million dead, slain in battle or wasted by sickness, or dying of grief, broken-hearted? Who has omniscience to search for the scattered ones? Who shall restore the lost to broken families? Who shall bring back the squandered treasure, the years of industry wasted, and convince you that four years of guilty rebellion and cruel war are no more than dirt upon the hand, which a moment's washing removes and leaves the hand clean as before? Such a war reaches down to the very vitals of society. Emerging from such a prolonged rebellion, he is blind who tells you that the State, by a mere amnesty and benevolence of government, can be put again, by a mere decree, in its old place. It would not be honest, it would not be kind or fraternal, for me to pretend that Southern revolution against the Union has not reacted, and wrought revolution in the Southern States themselves, and inaugurated a new dispensation. Society here is like a broken loom, and the piece which Rebellion put in, and was weaving, has been cut, and every thread broken. You must put in new warp and new woof, and weaving anew, as the fabric slowly unwinds we shall see in it no Gorgon figures, no hideous grotesques of the old barbarism, but the figures of liberty, vines, and golden grains, framing in the heads of justice, love, and liberty. The august convention of 1787 formed the Constitution with this memorable preamble: "We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain this Constitution for the United States of America." Again, in the awful convention of war, the people of the United States, for the very ends just recited, have debated, settled, and ordained certain fundamental truths, which must henceforth be accepted and obeyed. Nor is any State nor any individual wise who shall disregard them. They are to civil affairs what the natural laws are to health--indispensable conditions of peace and happiness. What are the ordinances given by the people, speaking out of fire and darkness of war, with authority inspired by that same God who gave the law from Sinai amid thunders and trumpet voices? 1. That these United States shall be one and indivisible. 2. That States have not absolute sovereignty, and have no right to dismember the Republic. 3. That universal liberty is indispensable to republican government, and that slavery shall be utterly and forever abolished.