12 December 1850 A.D. Rev. James
Thornwell’s Sermon Before the Legislature of South Carolina: “Judgments: A Call to Repentance”
December 12:
Thornwell on Our Nation’s Sin
In 1854,
the city of Charleston, South Carolina was ravaged with an epidemic of
yellow fever. Later, at the behest of the State Legislature, the
Rev. James H. Thornwell, then president of South Carolina College, brought a
sermon at the State capitol on December 9, 1850. The title of his discourse,
“Judgments: A Call to Repentance.” On this momentous occasion, the assembled
audience saw themselves as “a sovereign people prostrating themselves before a
sovereign God.”—”South Carolina, by her trusted agents and chosen
representatives, in her organic capacity, as a distinct political community; in
the power of her honored Chief Magistrate, in the two Houses of the
Legislature, and the venerable Judges of the land, presenting herself, in
humility and mourning, before the footstool of Him who standeth in the
congregation of the mighty, and judgeth among the gods.”
As one
reviewer noted, “The leading thoughts of the Sermon are as follows: The
visitations of Providence expressive of the Divine displeasure are called
“judgments,” because they are universally regarded as the penal inflictions of
a Judge or Ruler. This implies the conviction of our nature that there is a
personal God; and if God be a Person, then all his dispensations have some
purpose or design, and this design is to be ascertained by an observation of
the tendency of the dispensations. The tendency of public, wide-spread
afflictions is to create a sense of guilt in the bosoms of men,—to make them
tremble at the anger, and dread the justice of their Judge; and so, to restrain
transgression, and preserve the innocent in their integrity. There is an
inseparable connexion between suffering and sin; and so strong is the
conviction of the human mind upon this point, that there is always danger of
misinterpreting Providence, by making the degree of suffering the exponent of
the measure of guilt. All, however, that we have a right to conclude from even
extraordinary suffering, is the existence of sin, and the consequent necessity
of repentance. And this repentance is the duty of the spectators, as well as of
the sufferers. “Except ye”—the spectators of the woes—”repent, ye shall all
likewise perish.”
Then,
following Thornwell’s delivery of this discourse, representatives from the two
houses of the legislature wrote to Thornwell on December 12, 1850,
requesting a copy of his discourse for publication. Click here to read the full
discourse.
The words that follow form the heart of Thornwell’s discourse. They are
insightful, almost prophetic words, and here I think Thornwell puts his finger
on the crux of our nation’s sin, then and now. What he seems not to see,
however, is that this same sin is at the root of the system of slavery and
racism that so troubled the nation then and which besets us to this day.
Finally, the logical conclusion of this sin is the deification of the
individual, and we see that hydra-headed monster coming into all its “glory” in
our time. Racism is but one expression of the sin of self-deification. Me first.
My ‘rights’ over all else. What I want, rather than bowing the knee to the will
of the sovereign Lord of the universe.
Judgments
: A Call to Repentance
(1854)
“The
sins which have been mentioned, and which confessedly prevail to a melancholy
extent through the length and breadth of the land, though they call for
humiliation and repentance here, are, perhaps, not so appropriate to this
occasion, as those which spring from the tendencies and workings of our forms
and principles of government. Bear with me in briefly stating what seems to me
to be a species of idolatry which cannot fail to bring down upon us, sooner or
later, the righteous judgments of God. I allude to what
may be called the deification of the people. They are frequently represented as the source of all
political power and rights; the very fountain head of sovereignty. It is their
will which makes law; it is their will which unmakes it. A supremacy is
ascribed to that will which he who reads the Bible and recognizes a God that
has dominion over the children of men, must feel to be shocking. They
are really treated as a species of Deity upon the earth. Now this whole
representation is not only inconsistent with religion, it is equally
inconsistent with the philosophy upon which our popular institutions are
founded. The government of this country does not proceed upon the maxim that
the will of the people is the will of God, and its arrangements have not been
made with a reference to the end, that their will may be simply ascertained.
This legislature is not a congregation of deputies, or ministerial agents, and
you have, and know that you have, higher functions to perform than merely to
inquire what do the people think. I do not underrate their opinions; they must
always enter as an element in sober and wise deliberation; but what I maintain
is, that the true and legitimate end of government is not to accomplish their
will, but to do and enforce what reason, conscience, and truth pronounce to be
right. To the eternal law of right reason, which is the law of God, all are
equally subject, and forms of government are only devices and expedients to
reach the dictates of that law and apply it to the countless exigencies of
social and individual life. The State is a Divine ordinance, a social institute,
founded on the principle of justice, and it has great moral purposes to
subserve, in relation to which the constitution of its government may be
pronounced good or bad. The will of the people should be done only when the
people will what is right, and then primarily not because they will it, but
because it is right. Great deference should be paid to their opinions, because
general consent is a presumption of reason and truth.
The
peculiarity of a representative system is that it governs through deliberative
assemblies. Their excellence is in the circumstance that they are deliberative,
which affords a reasonable security that truth and justice may prevail. So far
from being mere exponents of public sentiment, their highest merit is that they
are a check upon popular power— a barrier reared against the tide of passion,
to beat back its waves, until reason can be fairly heard. There is no
misapprehension more dangerous than that which confounds representative
government with the essential principle of a pure democracy. It is not a
contrivance to adapt the exercise of supreme power on the part of the people to
extensive territory or abundant population, to meet the physical impediments
which in large States, must obviously exist to the collection of their citizens
in one vast assembly. It is not because the people cannot meet, but because
they ought not to meet, that the representative council in modern times is
preferred to the ancient convocations in the forum or market place. It is to be
prized, because it affords facilities and removes hinderances in the discovery
of truth; but the supreme power is truth, and not man; God, not the creature.
Now
whatever representations diminish the authority of the Divine law as the
supreme rule, and make the State the creature and organ of popular will, as if
an absolute sovereignty were vested in that, are equally repugnant to religion
and the true conception of our government. An absolute democracy is the worst
of all governments, because it is judicially cursed as treason against God, and
is given over to the blindness of impulse and passion. I am afraid that in this
matter we have trodden upon the verge of error—we have forgotten that the State
is ordained of God, and that our relations to each other are those of mutual
consultation and advice, while all are absolutely subject to Him.
In
proportion as we lose the true conception of the State, we fall short of
realizing in ourselves that perfection of development and happiness which it
was instituted to achieve. Hence, it is not
unusual that as extremes meet, those who in theory clothe the people with the
prerogatives of God, practically degrade them below the level of intellectual
existence. When we cease to regard the State as a great
instrument of moral education, it is not surprising that the education itself
should be disregarded, and these Gods be left to demonstrate that after all,
they are but men.
Let it
be once conceded that government is but an organ of the popular will, the
business of the statesman is very simple—it is only to find out what the people
wish; and as all courts are attractive by the patronage they bestow, we may
expect to see a system in operation, whose only tendency is to secure personal
popularity. The ambition of Legislators and Senators will be directed to the
gaining of popular favour, and whatever arts promise to be most successful,
will be held to be legitimate, as they are the customs and usages of the Court,
whose seal of approbation is desired. The consequences must be disastrous to all
the parties concerned. There will and must be corruption and bribery. There
will and must be unbecoming condescensions. The aspirants for distinction,
however they may abhor these practices, and reproach themselves in stooping to
them, feel compelled to resort to them as the conditions of success, and it
will always happen that where the people are deified in theory, they will be
degraded and corrupted in practice. Men will be promoted, not according to
their wisdom and worth; not according to their ability to answer the ends of
the State in eliciting the voice of reason and of truth, and securing the reign
of universal justice—they will be promoted according to their pliancy in
pandering to popular tastes. The demagogue will supplant the statesman—the representative
be replaced with a tool.”
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