Ep. 301 - The Salt of Godliness

FCB Faith is your rhythm and preystation. I listen, my mom listens, pretty much the whole family. I cannot. I cannot listen to FCB Faith on iHeartRadio, Odyssey at FCB faith dot com, or tell your smart speaker to play FCB Faith on iHeartRadio. This is the FCB podcast network. That we then we won't to say, oh we got it does? No one can take that oway. Just gonna be okay as that we won't was pay then we won't to say oh we got it does. No one can take that away. Don't be okay, happy Thanksgiving? Everybody, Welcome to another episode of just listening to yourself. This is the Thanksgiving Day Special. And rather than break down a particular topic and get in all that thinking, God only knows what you're going through right now at your house. It's gonna be a weird Thanksgiving for everybody. I did the story episode earlier this week. I shared some uncomfortable Thanksgiving stories, just something quick to amuse us all. And so if you if you have any story fun Thanksgiving stories, go back and listen to that and then send me yours. But rather than add to the stress, I thought, oh, let's go back in history, let's learn something. And I was go I'd love to go through the old historical Thanksgiving proclamations from our presidents across time. And I don't think presidents do it anymore, but we've got there's some great speeches from presidents over the years on Thanksgiving, and so I like to go back and read them. Well, I found that this is not from a president, but I found this sermon tucked in among these historical documents I was looking through from doctor Charles Wadsworth, Doctor Charles now Charles Wadsworth. I don't now some of you out there. I'm sure my great friend Daryl Harrison probably already knows who Charles Wadsworth is. I don't listen to Wadsworth or or see Wadsworth stuff out there, but Charles Wadsworth is a He was known as one of the most eloquent divines of his day. And I I think when you listen to this sermon, I know you're listening to me read it, and it's not the same because these aren't my words, and some of it's flowery language. I can't really wrap my modern brain around. So some of it I'm just reading. I'm not really contextualizing it because I can't, But oh, my gosh, some of this is like is this guy, this is eighteen fifty three. Not only is some of it prescient, it's just it's almost eerie. How prescient what some of the things he said, he does make some predictions. It's almost eerie. But not only that, it's beautifully, beautifully written, and it is a beauty. It is a love letter to America, but it is also an admonishment to American Christians to stop pulling back now again eighteen fifty three, he wrote this to stop pulling back from politics and pretending that they're there is this thing of oh, we separate politics and faith, and we render unto God what is God's and render under Caesar what is Caesar's. He has an amazing take on this, and I found it absolutely inspiring. In fact, I feel renewed almost by reading this. I've renewed in my political determination to stay in the spy and keep pushing forward. And now more than ever, I truly believe is a time for Christians to stand up and get in the public square. And Wadsworth talks a lot about how it is a mistake. This is what they were dealing with in eighteen fifty three, that it is a mistake for Christians to pull out of the public square. It is a mistake because none of the ideas that built America can thrive without the idea that America was founded on, which is the idea of a creator and the blessings of liberty that he bestows on all of us. If we don't have him right, that's where ever ething comes from. How we understand our blessings, how we understand our rights. It's all from Christianity. It's all from fate religion, as doctor Wadsworth says. So to pull that out, that leg from the schools, and he says, he says it better than I am now. But to pull that leg out from under that stool and then suggest, well, we don't need Christianity anymore. We got it figured out. Even Christians say that. And I think that's part of the reason why we're here, and we should all be. We should feel very convicted by the words of doctor Wadsworth as laid out in this sermon. Pay attention to the things he says, particularly about Christianity in the public square, about the type of politicians in Washington, DC at that time, so he's talking probably Philadelphia at that time, I think. But he's he's saying a lot of things that are gonna sound familiar to you. He's talking about a lot of the problems we have. But pay attention to the way he describes what your duty is as Christians and why it matters to politics, religion, economy, trade, all of it. So so good. I hope you enjoyed this sermon as much as I enjoyed reading it. And golly gee, there's a part of me that kind of wants to memorize it and turn it into just one woman show because damn wish I could have sat in this guy's church. Well i'll bet anyways, I designed this to be something you can sort of listen to, press pause on and off, maybe put it in your ears while you're cooking your turkey dinner or whatever. So it's not information that you have to absorb, you know, right, Like we're not sifting through arguments here. It's just maybe this is something you might not have had a chance otherwise to have heard, or no exists, and I think it's valuable for everyone. So thank happy Thanksgiving to you, and please enjoy this sermon from doctor Charles Wadsworth. So I hope these words inspire you as you go about your thanksgiving activities. Religion in politics, Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's. These words, you will remember, are part of our Lord's answer to the Heradians when they sought to entangle him in the political controversies of the time. I have not, of course, selected them as a theme of usual scriptural and Sabbath Day exposition. You have come here expecting to have your meditations turned into channels beseeming the occasion. That occasion, owing to the agreement of so many of our United States to celebrate it simultaneously, is a great national thanksgiving, and to turn from its national or political aspects and confine ourselves to what are called technically religious considerations, or to do evident violence to the properties of time and Okay, and yet here at the very outset are we met with the outcry of the whole howling pack of infidelity and irreligion, as they hunt in couples for Christian inconsistencies, claiming meanwhile for themselves the whole body politics as a carcass from the shambles to be cast to their kennel. Do not bring politics into the pulpit, Say these men, do not desecrate God's sanctuary. A preacher's business is to minister the Gospel, God's pure and peaceable gospel. And beware how you desecrate and pollute it by interfering in state matters. Verily, these be most wonderful men, blaspheming and reviling, and trampling under their foul feet for the whole three hundred and sixty five days of each year, this very Gospel, and then overwhelmed with a holy awe lest some preacher once in a whole annual revolution should happen in their apprehension to find its high sacredness. Ah, the most astonishing men, most wonderful zeal for the Gospel. Nevertheless, we agree with these men in the assertion that a preacher's business is with the Gospel of Christ and its religion only. But then, what is religion? Religion as revealed in the Gospel. Is it an influence so ethereal and unearthly as to require to be shut carefully from common life into sabbath days and sanctuaries, lest its white garments should become soiled by contact with worldliness. So indeed these men tell us, and here we are an issue with them. Religion is not merely a sentiment, but a life, not merely affections God word, but activity man word. It renders a man not merely a singer of psalms and a partaker of sacraments, but indeed renders him mainly a kind of friend, an affectionate father, an estimable citizen, and an honest man. And therefore, a religion that does not pass beyond the region of technical sacredness and pervade the whole economy of social and secular entering as a living power into the commerce and the literature, and the magistry and the politics of a man, is a mutilated and monstrous religion. In the text our Lord sets forth one great part of Christian duty. It is not only rendering unto God the things that are God's, but as well rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's. A principle taking as vital an interest in a human as in the divine government. And if you will remember that in Christ's times the form of civil governments and their practical administration were as imperfect as they have ever been and that the Caesars were, with few exceptions, the barriest of tyrants. You will perceive how emphatically we are taught in the text that a man's religious duties are not only unto his God, but as well unto his country, or more simply stated, that a man should carry his Christianity heartily and wholly into the politics of his country. And this then is the theme of our present meditation, the duty of every Christian man to go forth in the face of all this infidel outcry, and carry his religion into his politics. But then, what do we mean by politics? Do we mean the paltrych canery of placement for power, a working out of the low artifices of party, in pursuit of offices and spoils. Would we have a Christian minister, or a Christian man go down to the shameless and undisguised corruption which pervades what is called the peculiar moral code of politics. Would we have such a man sit face to face with the brutal ignorance and ruffian vice which, hidden from the face of honest men, distribute the parts of the great play, and shuffle and cut and deal the dirty cards, where within partisan gamblers are to play a game whose great stake is our civil and national welfare. Oh no, No, by politics as we would have them mingled in by Christian men, we mean the science of government, the part of ethics which consists in the regulation and government of a state or nation, or the preservation of its peace and prosperity, comprehending the defense of its existence and rights against foreign control or conquest, the augmentation of its strength and resources, the protection of the citizens in all their right lify, and the preservation and improvement of their manner and morals, And involving therefore every religious, patriotic and domestic interest that is near and dear to us. And in such as the only grand and just idea of politics, we would have every Christian and good man mingle religiously and holy. And this for several reasons we will now go on to consider. And this first of all, because political privileges and blessings, as we enjoy, deserve in our hands as God's great gifts, such a public religious consecration. This is indeed the very sacrifice of thanksgiving we are met in God's house to offer this morning. In all times we have religious offering been discriminative and appropriate. The husbandman has brought forth of the fruits of the ground, the shepherd has brought the first thing of his flocks. And one appropriate sacrifice of thanksgiving for national and political blessings is not a mere expression of gratitude in Hallelujah's but a consecration to God of our powers, in a service which will perpetuate unto our children's children, our great social and political and national privileges, and surely such privileges as ours deserve. Such an offering, truly a goodly and glorious gift is our American birthright. I know, men tell us it is grandiloquent, and in bad taste and savors of arrogance and vanity, and is wanting, in national courtesy and good breeding, to be everlastingly glorifying in our eagles and our star spangled banners, and exulting in our national consciousness of political superiority, and our national hope of a sure and limitless and magnificent future before our lives. We cannot help it. How can the children of the bride chamber mourn while the bridegroom is with them? We look at the nations of the old world, gigantic, if you please, but manifestly in wrinkle and decay of a hoary age. And we look at our own land, just springing in glorious and gigantic youth, with flashing eyes and iron sinews, to run such a race of honor and power as the world never saw. And we cannot shame on us if we could repress the thrill of pride from the heart and the exalting words from the tongue, as we think of our own matchless land as it is now and shall be. Oh, I see it, I see it, a nation that shall be unto all other nations, as blessed old Israel was to Amorite and the Philistine. A nation stretching from an ocean to ocean, across this whole continent. A nation of freemen, self governed, governed by simple law, without police or soldiery, a nation of five hundred millions of people, covering the sea with their fleets, and the land with great cities, first and learning, and science and arts, and every great produce of industry and genius, aye and better and higher and holier of virtuous and godly people, bound together in one tender and beautiful brotherhood and luxuriant with fruit and flower in the bloom and aroma of Christian graces. The refuge of the oppressed, the protector of the downtrodden, the home of the exile, the terror of the daspotism, the victorious champion of Earth's wronged tribes against tyranny and outrage, the almoner of God's great grace, to the wounded spirit and bleeding heart of a redeemed humanity. I see this and more than and our safe and dazzling and limitless future. And my tongue would cleave to the roof of my mouth if I thought to check the joyous words that swell up in hallelujahs. We have. We have a magnificent birthright. And what is it all but God's gift, God's gift through the Gospel. All it is, and all it shall be a result of Christianity. And so all it is and all it shall be but an accession gift to my Lord unto his disciples as Christians. And are we then, as Christians as a very man, for whom it was projected and for whom it is conserved, Are we, as religious and Christian men to stand back from this glorious nationality and that fools and ruffians, the filth and pollution, and off scout of moral life, creatures bought and sold for a price as cattle for the shambles, the wrecks, and the rotten wood that float with every shifting tide of infidel and irresponsible political opinion. Are we to stand together aloof and let creatures like these men mar and mutilate this great national machinery. Shall the insane fantasism of the North and the southern sham chivalry bluster about the dissolution of the Union, and Hugh with a fool's axe at the root of the tree of our liberty, and must die as a Christian man and minister, not smite them with all the strength God has given me. Lest I should pollute my Christianity by a contract with worldliness. Away with such shallow and hypocritical reverence for Christianity, I owe it to my Gospel and to my God as all the return I can make for a birthright so glorious to fling myself as a Christian man, into the defense of that birthright, and bear my bosom as a religious being to the infidel and a cursed tide that would sweep all those good and glorious things away, as Rex upon a deluge. And we have come upon this day as a rejoicing people, not merely to praise God, but to consecrate ourselves to this very work in sacrifice of thanksgiving, and go forth in the performance of our Christian work, rendering not only to God the things that are God's, but as well rendering onto Caesar the things that are Caesar's. And now let me remark secondly that as Christian men, we are bound to this duty because our nation needs this day for her own preservation and mingling in her politics of this religious element. She needs it. Indeed, at all times, on all principles of national and governmental policy. There never has existed, and never can exist, a nation without this pervading element of religious influence. Even the heathen and the unenlightened rulers of the elder world all perceived and acted on this common sense maxim History has no record of a single legislator who attempted to enforce obedience to law on the sole ground of its civil sanctions and its temporal penalties. The universal perceived the insufficiency of all such motives, if unstrengthened by the higher motives drawn from religious principles, and if they were strangers to divine revelation, they found a substitute in their mythology and applied it as skillfully as might be to the prejudices of the people. Like Courgis, Solon, Numa, Pompolis, Mohammad, and indeed every other legislator at all famed for the wisdom of his institutions, were compelled to have re course to religion, and in fact derived therefrom their mightiest motives to enforce obedience. And in all this they acted on an accurate and extensive knowledge of human nature, and with a wisdom that will remain true so long as simple passions and affections have such an influence on mankind. For whenever, as in France, the attempt has been made to loose all religious restraints from the minds of people, then have the whirlwind and the storm, and the great waves dashing into shipwreck made eloquent proclamation that, for the preservation of every great national and political interest, there is no need of a god to ride upon the whirlwind and direct the storm. Now, if this be evidently true, even of nations held in check by armed power of despotism. How emphatically must it be true of a free and self governing people. Our free institutions were created and conserved by the Christian religion, the two grand pillars, whereon the whole edifice rests are the equality of human rights and brotherly love equal to self love. And these great truths we have learned from the Gospel. Take them away, and our peculiar nationality is destroyed in a moment. We may still exist, indeed, as a power on the earth. We may exist still united under armed aristocracy or a great military despotism. Or we may exist a fragmentary and deserved power, as one hundred petty and belligerent principalities, And this continent may be parceled out like the old unto rival conquerors, and our miserable descendants increase and multiply, and vegetate, and brought in ignorance and bondage, and go forth in fierce feuds, marshaled under rival banners of the bear and the Lion and the lilies, over the very fields where their fathers marched, united and triumphant and free under their one glorious evil. But sure I am, if the religious element to be taken from our politics, our republicanism is gone at a stroke, and forever. I have not the limits here to enter into the argument of the manifold advantages to a free people of gospel piety. Time would fail me to tell you how it would increase national wealth by diminishing the popular tendency to luxury and extravagance, and by incalculating temperance and industry and frugality. How it operates as a mighty check on all those corruptions which weaken a free people. How it educates into truth and tenderness, the and popular conscience, without which just laws must remain dead letters in the statute books, unenforced and without influence. How it destroys all those selfish and sectional animosities where unto demagogue's oha is appeal. How in short, by restraining in the human heart devices that weaken, and regenerating into nobler life the virtues that strengthen it, it makes ever manifest the great truth that free and prosperous, and united and blessed is the people whose God is the Lord. This and all this we take in our argument for granted and based upon it. Our plea is that we are called on as religious men, to rise up and cast more of this salt of Godliness into our national character. We are this very day, in God's sight, going backward from our old moral landmarks. We are even now as a nation swarming with drunkards and sabbath breakers and profane swearers. The emissaries of the old foreign ecclesiastical despotism, the tool and the mainspring of all European despotism, are among us, foul and frequent as locus of the Nile on the green things of God's husbandry. Fanatics at both ends of the Union are toiling Might and Maine at their fiendish work of dismemberment. Our national compact, itself founded on the compromise of local interests, exposes us more and more to sectional jealousies and competition, and to the heartless assaults of ambitious agitators of popular passions. We are entering, confessedly on stormy times. New forms of infidelity, in political atheism and false philanthropy are rising in strength in the midst of us. While Christian men stand aloof fools, our heaving at the pillars of our great national temple, and the whole tribe of the Philistines are twisting at the cords, while God's samson sleeps in the lap of the enchantess. It is time, high time, then, for Christian championship to awake by the men of the present generation. Is a great question to be settled, whether there can be maintained in the midst of us enough of an enlightened and tender moral sense to keep us a virtuous and free and united people in the face of all these assaults of infamy and irreligion by the Christian men that now worshiping God's temples is the uncertain problem to be solved. The light of liberty that shines on us this day is of a sun bounding gloriously from the Orient. We're already sinking sadly and slowly to the sepulchral clouds of the West. And therefore the call comes to us loud as the voice of prophets in the glorious days of the Israel of Judah, to stand forth against the enemies of hearthstone and altar, for our God and our country, casting religious salt into the polluted fountains of our national conscience, Pouring religious light among the troubled seas of our national politics, rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, as surely unto God the things that are God's. And by all this are we brought to remark thirdly, that we are urged to this duty by our regard for all the great interests of the race and the world. Disaster says, would be the destruction of our peculiar nationality in regards of ourselves more disastrous and appalling still would it prove in regard of the human race everywhere, speaking only civilly and politically. And there is no sign of hope for a world's popular liberties if our republicanism fails, unto America are turned this day the regards of all nations, as the last practical experiment of popular self government from America goes forth this day the only light of hope to fall on the heart of an oppressed race, as a joy and a consolation for this great work we were raised up, and this great work we are doing. Talk as men will about the sanctity of international law as preventing on our part with the old world interference and intervention. Yet spite of it all, with the whole power that has given us. We are interfering and intervening, as surely and constantly as the blazing sun interferes with the prowling night beasts, are we interfering with the oppressions and despotisms of the world's farthest nations. There is not a cabinet in your Europe that does not look upon this great Republic as the real author of all the revolutionary movements on that whole broad continent, that does not plot and pray for our ruin, as the mighty disturber of the peace of their haggard and hoary oppressions, and the only formidable and gigantic obstacle to the perpetuity of their foul despotisms here on after and forever. The grand and simple principle that unites us as a free people is a principle actively and essentially at war with the whole spirit of European nationality. And we are this very morning, by the never ceasing and omnipresent influences of our free institutions, more powerfully and offensively interfering with the despotic policy of those European empires than if one hundred thousand armed men stood marshaled under the American Eagle on the banks of the Danube, and our whole naval power three times old were cruising on those European seas, sweeping a despot's fleets from the world water, or thundering with a thousand guns against the bulwarks of a despots capital. We are interfering, and what is more, we are bound to be interfered with. We may let European despotisms alone, and doubtless we shall let them alone, as to all armed aggression. But then the plain and simple fact is they will not let us alone. It is a mistake altogether to imagine that the whole popular sympathies of the old world are with popular freedom, or that the masses of those oppressed nations are prepared for or ambitious of our free institutions. The political movement of the whole East is backward manifestly to feudalism. Those favorite empires that, with a constitution limiting the monarch we have rejoiced over as already half free and gloried in as marching in the van of advancing civilization, are already in the wane and wrinkle of dotage and decrepitude. Great Britain is tottering already under the hideous burden of a bloated aristocracy. And the lion that once roused itself to shake the world its banner, now crouch, is tamed and spaniel like at the tread of the great Eastern despotism. France, that looked into the world so like a winged creature of liberty by a monstrous recoil, has gone back to a chrysalis, and is bound, as God lives, to come forth as a worm again. Spain is already a dead thing in the grave, and Austria that fouler thing than a despotism, the despotic tool of a despot. Yonder continent has indeed this day but one united one advancing and absorbing power, and that the great Northern and naked and unmitigated military despotism. A despotism too, be it ever remembered, not resting in and trusting to popular ignorance. But where industry is stimulated, and the arts are encouraged and fostered by all possible appliances, and commerce utterly and strenuously advanced in every possible direction, and where the subjects are not held in an unwilling bondage. But are the rejoicing and enthusiastic abiturs of despotism, And thus firm on her foundations and terrible in her might, is Russia aspiring and advancing to conquest the world impression of the far future she sees in the whole wide world today, but one mighty obstacle in her path, this young republic, the everlasting light of our popular freedom in the dark places of tyrant. And so the momentous signs of the times are now proclaiming a coming conflict, which, amid such terrorism antagonism as the earth never saw, there shall go on, under the rival banners of the bear and the eagle, the last great battle for freedom and the world. But if in all this we read not to write the program of the struggle, sure we are at least that the great conflict of this and the coming generation will be of the freedom against tyranny. And sure we are therefore as well that in the preservation and the perpetuity of our free institutions that arrests the only hopes of oppressed humanity, and that in the terrible hour that is coming on all of our people, our own civil and religious liberty must furnish the only championship for man's heart and soul against the testatisms of this world. Now, if to this thought of our civil and political influence upon the nations you add the other thoughts of the religious and evangelical influence we are manifestly designed to exert upon a lost race, the thought under consideration will appear most impressive even if for the civil franchises of mankind there were to rise up other than American championship. Yet, whence saved from the American Church can go forth the light of a redeeming Gospel to the dark places of the earth. If there be any philosophy reading of a historic providence than from God's past and present dealings with us as a peculiar people, and from the evidence signs of the times as displaying the powerlessness of all other nations for evangelizing a world. From these, I say, is the truth as apparent as an oracle of revelation, that unto us, as stewards of the grace of God, is awarded the magnificent service of sending forth a full and free Gospel over all the benighted continents of our globe, That from our beloved land glorious in its scenery and its broad boundaries, and its new growth of civilization, and its loftier type of civil and religious manhood. The Angel that hath the Everlasting Gospel to preach is already pluming the wing for flight over the nations. And that the hopes of the race therefore not merely for the time before eternity, not merely for your earthly freedom, but for immortal glory. Do under God's sea spend themselves under the perpetuity of our union and the permanent progress of the development of our free institutions, So that to give up our national character to the spoiler, we're not only to quench every light on the altars of liberty, but to quench for the world the fires on God's ultus, to shiver the great wheel on the mechanism of a triumphing evangel, and so to cast the race back not merely to the iron thralldom of despotism, but to the most monstrous bondage of superstition and infidelity. And I say you have only to remember this and consider it, and you will get an impression of the unspeakable importance the whole world of mankind, of the perpetuity and progress of our free institutions, which will make you jealous, with an immortal jealousy of any stain upon our national character as a wisely governed and intellectual and moral and religious people. And send and every man of us to stand proudly up in his place as an American Christian and patriot, carrying our piety as an inspiration to the duties of our citizenship, and lifting up in the great faith Christ's redeeming cross as a bulwark more powerful than all else, to roll back the tides of iniquity and corruption, and infidel legislation, and the whole wide deluge of ruffian and irresponsible politics, which would sweep all these glad and glorious things away as rex upon waters. For we shall perceive how God himself has linked all the great interests of our race with these American politics, so that in this whole matter, by rendering to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, we are most surely as well rendering to God the things that are God's. Now this leads me to remarks, fourthly, unless we should weary you finally, that we are urged by this duty by a due regard for our religion itself. We have already said that this is a false notion of religion, which supposes it to be polluted and thus injured by every contact and concern with merely worldly interests. And now we go further and declare that we should do very much to honor and magnify Christianity were we to carry it forth as an energizing principle. Yay, is a vital and controlling power into our whole practical life as American citizens. You are all of you familiar with the infidel clamor of the times that the Christianity of the Gospel has proved a great failure. That while it did good service as a pioneer of civilization and as a rudimental teacher of the alphabet and the great school of humanity, nevertheless, that now, when that race has progressed from its nomadic life, and that the great Man Child has flung off its swaddling and mastered the rudiments of knowledge and entered the higher forms of intellectual culture, that now Christianity must surrender its great charge to the higher teachings of philosophy and be flung aside as an epity engine whose work has been accomplished, and whose day has gone by. And we are too fain to confess that this outcry is not without plausible arguments, arguments drawn with irresistible force from the narrowness of the field and the feebleness of the power, wherein professing Christians have themselves developed their Christianity. For we must frankly admit that a religion that remains shut away from the common business of life, into the pure regions of spiritualism, as a thing of ecstasies and sentiment and psalm singing, appearing statedly on sabbath days and in sanctuaries, and seen no more abroad during the six days of the secular and social we confess, I say that such a religion, be a crist or pagan, is altogether out of place and imbecile amid the restlessness and earnest tides of an age and a life like our own. But then, quite as confident as I am, that if Christianity have not hitherto acquitted herself to the full of all her secular and social duties, the secret lies not in her inadequacy of the work, but in the smallness of the sphere which Christians themselves have assigned her, and the class and kind of labor they have committed to her hands. Sure I am at least that is an intellectual and moral system. Christianity was designed for all nations and all generations, and is divinely adapted to the exigencies of all nations and generations. Her credentials to our race are not merely as a fitting and tender nurse for its unsteady infancy, but more fittingly still is the earnest tutor of its hot youth, the glorious guide and guardian of its magnificent manhood, embodying as Christianity does within itself the mightiest and most practical moral influences to be found in God's universe, and revealed as the master contrivance of infinite wisdom. To restore man from his ruins and bring back a wandering world to the light and the liberty of God's own children, it has only to be inaugurated in its place of rightful authority, only to be brought forth from the cloisters of contemplation and the chairs of academic speculation, only to take hold in its strength and on the great practical questions of the race and the age and the scoffing world will acknowledge as they see, that an influence so long despised as a thing only busy with creeds and ceremonies and sacraments, can yet work gloriously and with a strong arm, as man's practical benefactor. That its fostering is of every influence which makes up li, That its calling is unto the patronage of the arts and sciences, and literature, and commerce and trade. That its place is as truly in the cabinet as if the conventicler in the Senate chamber, as at a sacrament, that acquit itself vigorously of all social and civil, in a word, of every secular duty, and its gloriously equal to all the exigencies of the time, and every possible emergency of the day and the generation. And we say such an inauguration to a high sway over things merely temporal. Christianity deserves today at the hands of his disciples. It deserves to be justified openly from the suspicions of the world that it is, after all but a low, impaltry and driveling fanaticism. It deserves to be brought abroad from the closet and cloister, to enter as a living power into the life, pilosophy and speculation, and the earnest of life, and all the high enterprise of an uprising humanity, rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and steadfastedly as unto God the things that are God's. Religion has indeed its most glorious place in the recesses of the redeemed Spirit, and an honored throne in the sanctuary, with its praises and sacraments. It is the joy in the glory of its great prerogative that it abides in the sanctities of the heart and the household, and brings heavenly comfort and peace to the secluded heart of the poor child of want, and sits in the seraphic love of the hushed bedside of the dying. Nevertheless, it is its other prerogative, and should be its joy and glory as well, to take care of man's temporal interests as wisely as his spiritual and walking abroad, as the conserving spirit of the day and age, to pour its divine light upon the speculations of the flow faith, and to bathe with its heavenly dues man's learning and genius, and to lay its strong hand on the energies of trade and of commerce, and to lift up its heavenly yet resistless voice in the halls of legislation, and to stand in meek yet mighty glory in the haughtiest presence of monarch and noble, and to fling from its radiant loveliness the resistless moral power that shall pervade the world's arts and sciences, and literature, and jurisprudence and jurisprudence, and economy of politics, and machinery of government, rendering as wisely and as well unto Caesar, the attributing tribute that is Caesar's, as unto God, the adoring worship that is God. Christianity, I say, deserves this honor at our hands. What we are as a nation to this day we all under God, to its blessed influences. Our very national existence is a miracle of the Gospel. The Genoese navigator and the German reformer, the one opening a new world, the other evolving a new humanity to enter in and occupy, were rocked in the same cradle twin children of evangelism. The strong, sifting of all nations, for God's chosen seed to scatter inglorious husbandry on his virgin soil was a gospel winnowing, that almost heavenly refinement of taste and love that found Earth's noblest kingdoms, but an intolerable wilderness without a pure altar and an open Bible, but could make a blessed home with the storm and the sea eagle and a God to worship. Was an inspiration of the Gospel. That patriotism and courage and self sacrificing toil which battled fearlessly unto death. For hearthstone and altars were all upshots from the Gospel. The matchless wisdom of a constitution whose great central truth of human equality was in direct antagonism to all principles of known governments, and started with the old despotisms of the world. Does the light of a coming judgment was a direct revelation of the Gospel. Yes, and then all the subsequent beatitudes, which, as if flung from the angel wings, have been scattered along all our path to national immorality, our accumulating wealth, our enlarging commerce, our vast increase of population, our progress in arts and manufactures, and the magnificence of our practical charities, the increasing harmony and strength of our political machinery, the enticing beauty which our land bears today the far away nations amid the sobbing agonies of their downtrodden children. And the glory and honor and power which the world accords today to the wing of the American eagle in its flight through the skies. This all this, and more than this, all in short, which makes the American eye flash with pride and the American heart beat with rapt and gathers us this very hour in God's temples with loud hallelujahs of praise and exalting and thanksgiving people we owe under God to our glorious Christianity, And amid such results of magnificent accomplishments, Christianity deserves at our hands a justification from the slander of the infidel. That it is at best in imbecile and worn out and dreamy sentimentalism, it deserves to be lifted up as the conservator of the glories it has created, and since by the breath of its inspiration, life's great ocean has been roused from the dead calm of ages into billowy and exulting play. It deserves to be sent forth in a divine glory, visibly, to ride upon the whirlwind and direct the story. Christianity claims as a divine right, the acknowledgment in the face of the universe that while it renders carefully unto God the things that are God, it renders as carefully unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's. Such, then, most imperfectly put, are some of the reasons why American Christians should carry their religion with their duties of citizenship. That they have not done so hitherto is a fact which needs no argument. So manifestly devoid of all Christian principles is the whole moral code of American politics, that to prove a man positively religious, or even severely and puritanically a moral man, were to destroy all his chances of political popularity and preferment. And this too at a time when the great balance of power in this matter is confessedly in the hands of the virtuous and the religious. But when strange to tell those virtuous and godly men, either from unfounded fear of dishonoring their religion by so earthly a contact or from an unutterable contempt of the whole business of such desecrated politics, have stood in their dignity aloof from it altogether, leaving the matter of popular nominations for office, in the arrangements of platforms, and the projection of great national and state policies, and in short, the whole real working of our great political machinery. And in mark me here I am not speaking well, nor will I be misunderstood as speaking evil of our rulers and magistrates and representatives. Leaving it all, I say to the oral outcasts of our social system, to men bankrupt, to all virtuous reputation, to wily demagogues who would flatter the foul fiend for the sake of his influence, To fawning menials who would crouch at a despot's feet for the smile of its patronage. To blustering ruffians whose only element of moral power are blows and blasphemies. To vaporing patriots and brawling philanthropists who would freely barter their country and their race and their own souls for the profits of an office or the outfit of an embassy. To the blind fools of fanaticism who would trample the Union and the Constitution under their feet, and deluge this blessed heritage with flames and blood, and bring down upon their own wives and little ones a worse than Ethiopian bondage, for the sake of the phantom of an abstract and selfish principle, whose practical outworking were a cruelty and a curse. Leaving it in short, I say to such things as these, to the low mercenary, the machiavellain herd, that gather in the dens of darkness and sin, to project the program and to distribute the parts of that great play, whose sublime issues are the glories of our country and the welfare of a world. Will this, and worse than this is the sad truth about that matter. Pardon me, my brethren, that I feel constrained to stir up with so foul a picture for your pure minds. By way of remembrance, I confess that to a refined taste, it is coarse and revolting. But the pitch was on the canvas. I but touched it and am defiled. Nevertheless, the picture is neither caricature nor exaggeration, but the sorrowful truth, colored too faintly, and all this too at a time when as sincerely as ever before, private virtue and morality are revered and honored throughout the land, and when the great mass and majority of our population, north and south, east and west, of every party in every state are proverbially honest and intelligent, and law abinding, and patriotic and earnestly desiring the application of a pure and religious morality to the whole complex machinery of government, And when it needs only a religious courage and consecration to take hold on those great interests, and this whole vampire brewed that fattened on the nation's heart, would hide their heads in shame as the serpents from the sun burst. It is time, when we say, high time, that religious men rouse themselves to a sense of their political responsibilities. Moralists indeed tell us from the pulpit sometimes that Christianity claims no power over a state and no official connection with it. What I pray these men is a state in abstraction, an idea, no, indeed, simply an aggregate of an individual and immortal men. And with every one of these men, Christianity should have an immortal connection, and over them it has a claim pre eminent and eternal. It is time, then, that the precise bearing of Christian principles upon legislation and the administration and general policy of our government were understood and acted on. Not that Christianity may be established by law, but that our laws may be established by Christianity. Not that the Gospel asks alliance with the state, but that the state sorely needs the conserving influences of the Gospel. It is time that Christianity came abroad from its cloistered sanctity to acquit itself of its great civil and national responsibilities in spite of the whole howling herd of infidelity and irreligion. It is time for Christian men and Christian ministers, now so busy with the minute of private and minor immoralities, uttering fierce and denunciations against the slight heresies and a man's creed and trifling inconsistencies in a man's conduct, seeing well to it that a little child does not laugh out loud on the Sabbath, and that a man's face does not graciously smile at any questionably questionable amusement loud in the outcry of heresy and hypocrisy, against men honestly trying to strive in the ways of Godliness. I say it's time for such Christian ministers and men to walk forth to a broader field and to a loftier standpoint, to cast an indignant glance over the civil at national shortcomings, to launch the fiery denunciations of our blessed Redeemer as serpents and vipers against irresponsible placement and their unprincipled tools. And to pour the glorious light of the Gospel of God into the whole hideous den of political abominations. And this then is our religious business. To this day, in this Temple of Jehovah, we have come up with one common thank offering unto God for our great national beatitudes. Be attitudes so eyd and so wonderful that the eye moistens and the heart bounds as we contemplate our great birthright, God's great gift to us, not merely as men, but mainly as Christians. For whatever we are and may be, we owe to the Gospel all our social and national influences, all the canvas of our commerce, all the enterprise of our markets, all the bread and wealth of our husbandry, all the machinery of our trade, and the pomp of our great cities. All all have grown up to us under the shadow of this cross, and owe all their goodness and glory and power to the sprinkled blood from Mount Cavalry. And coming with some sense of the greatness of our blessings, God claims that our hands as the only fit sacrifice of thanksgiving, such a consecration of ourselves to His service as shall send us abroad in our strongest endeavors, to keep the blessed fires of liberty bright on these altars, and transmit undimmed of one glory our free institutions to one hundred generations that shall come after us. Such a religious consecration can and can alone save us from the tides of infidelity and corruption and moral death that are rolling in upon us. Let us Christian men go bravely forth, carrying their religion as a light and a power and a conserving influence into our political machinery. And nothing out of Heaven impede or weaken us who speaks in fear of foreign aggression. Why Sirs, Gibraltar is not more steadfast and secure against the dash of its sea surges than we against the wildest assaults of this banded war power of the world. Every despot who talks about this union and the severance of this great national confederacy, Why sirs the fanatic and the fool who thinks to accomplish it, might better think to serve the mighty bond that unites the solar system, and blow with his foul breath those glorious stars away that march in God's great law of gravitation round the blaze of the Sun. I I if born radiantly abroad, as the light and the savor of our earnest lives along the vales and by the streams and the aftworth and the great hills of our blessed land, this heavenly gospel have free course and be glorified. Then, in spite of every storm upon the seas, and every cloud upon the firmament, and our foundations as the everlasting mountains, and our blessedness as the immutable love of our heavenly Father, and so upon the sincerity of our religious consecration. On such festival days as this depend under God, these momentous is shoes. Oh, we are here today not merely to unite in great national hallelujah, but to work out a great prophetic problem in the face of the universe, to bring forth the data for the solving and the solemn question. Whether this national Hallelujah of thanksgiving have to God the character of a birthday gratulation over our luxuriant youth, or a funeral whale over our already smitten and departing glories. Whether these shadows that brewed today along our national landscapes are passing away from a rising or lengthening and deepening with a descending sun. Whether the giant Babe, which God's hand amid tempests and storms has rocked into majestic strength in this great cradle of the West, imbued with the gentle spirit of the Gospel, and build as to its great heart with divine love, shall come forth to its earnest manhood sandals, to walk the round world as a deliverer and safe therefore under God's own shield, to mount to the loftiest summit of national glory, or a las alas, Whether with the madness of a fool's atheism within it shall leap from that cradle like a roused giant, to rush in mad strength on the bosses of God's buckler, or perish as a read in the crashing fire of God's this Thanksgiving as our country has survived, I think what will go down in history as one of the most tumultuous political times ever in our nation, and we deal with the spiritual ramifications of this. I really want us to consider Doctor Wadsworths were Doctor Wadsworth's words, and they admonition that now is not the time for Christians to slip back to complacency or to pretend that there are somehow two separate worlds, two separate places where we render sacrifice, Caesar, God, and they do not mix. That's not been working for us, and it's not even the right thing to do. I love how doctor Wadsworth tells us we render unto God what is God? And yes, we render unto Caesar what is Caesar's. But he reminds us that both are commands. Both are commands. It's not it is not He's. It's not a hall passed right. Oh well, this doesn't have anything to do with God, so I don't have to worry about it. No, you render unto God what is his, and you fully commit yourself to that, and you also render unto Caesar. What it belongs to Caesar, and you must fully commit yourself to that. You gotta pay your taxes, you gotta pay your tech. It's not air. Taxes are unjust, they're wrong. Taxation is theft. You have to pay them. That's Caesar's you have to render into Caesar. And so that means, yes, absolutely, we must be involved in the political life of our nation. Not only that, we must insist that the Gospel is involved in every aspect of this nation. So the conservatives that are turning up their noses as at putting the Bible back in classrooms or reigniting Christian focused or biblical historical, biblical education, you're turning up your nose at that. We we can't play that game anymore. We are these words by doctor Wadsworth. I think it's an eighteen fifty three everyone. Eighteen fifty three. He gave that sermon. He could be standing right now at any church in twenty twenty four saying this. If you do not speak into politics, who will you leave it to the destints? He loves this word infidel. You leave it to the despots and the infidels to shape. And that's what happened to us this last four years. We were left to the despots and the infidels. So no, Christians, not only do you not turn up your nose, but our we don't need to make apologies for our faith or our belief system. That is the system that has saved the world. So we absolutely should insist on it being reinserted into the public square. The very notion of the freedom of this country rests on the notion of the freedom of the Gospel. They are intimately connected and when you start trying to separate those, that's when you fall into chaos and despotism. And that's what we have seen, and that's what he was seeing, and he predicted it. Gosh, he's had so many predictions. He predicts Russia, what Russia is gonna come to us? And now Russia will always look at us as their enemy. Why because we're doing well? No, because we have God always he predicts, how good friends, what a wonderful society of intellectuals and art, and he predicts it in eighteen fifty three. Well, they're just gonna slide back. They're just gonna slide right back into their idiocy because they've rejected God and God is it is these Christian principles, these judi He wouldn't say it this way, of course, but Judeo Christian principles that give society all of its glory, everything that you like, that's creative. It cannot be invented without the Gospel. It can't even exist without the Gospel. So yes, of course, not only do we render unto God, we must render unto Caesar as well, which means taking the whole part of our body politic, our body, religion, and combining them all and using them all to inform each other. What an incredible word from doctor Charles Wadsworth. I have never read one of his sermons before. I am. I just ordered a book his book of sermons. What a great writer as well. But a message for all of us. How now is the time we are very divided family against family, and now is the time to a recognize where our blessings come from. Recognize that it's important that we look to God that as being grateful, as the one who we look to God with our gratefulness. And it's important that we get involved in politics and we stay involved in it. We have to. We have to because all of this is because of us. We don't know. This country is because of not us, not you, but write our faith, our God. It's because of the God we serve. It's because of the faith we hold. Our faith holds the key to better art, better music, better commerce, better relations, peace, you know, global peace. Our faith is the key to those things. So any conservative part in particular, I would expect to hear this from progressives, any conservative, any Christian who calls themselves a conservative and says, well, we should keep the Bible out of the classroom, or we don't want to. No, no, no, we have to the mistake we did. We made the mistake of compromising. We said, well, we can render justice Caesar what's just his, and then render just to God what's just his, and then that'll be fine. And then what happened is we didn't render it at all. We didn't render it all to Caesar, and we didn't render it all to God. We didn't give all of our public schooling to God, and we didn't give all of God to our public schooling. And so now we have this, Now we have public schools who will encourage your five year old senate to you know, caught up with Venus and call himself Kelly, and no one will have to tell you. So I'm not hearing it. I don't want to hear it. I actually don't want to hear it from the Christians. The conservative Christians were like, oh, why would we want God teaching the Bible or why would we want our political our ideological opponents teaching the Bible in the classroom. They're teaching everything else. Give them a curriculum. They're teaching everything else. I know, and I mean you know, it doesn't need to be a curriculum though, it can just be a culture. All right, Well, I've you got anything out of this or you have anything to add, of course, jlty at proton mail dot com. But let me know what you thought about this. This was incredible to me. I'm I'm I was blown away by this sermon. Again, it is something that could have been delivered this very Thanksgiving day. But I think he's right and I have taken his words to heart. I am so grateful for this country and all of the good things I have in my life. I have because of this country, and ultimately, as doctor Wadsworth reminded us in this sermon, because of God, because God gave this country the blessings of liberty. I have loved this country since the moment I set foot here. I love to quote our esteem Vice President, so so much. What do I love about America? Oh there's so much. Oh, there's so so much. Oh it's just so so so much. It's just you know, it's just, and you're right, and you're right. I was raised in a middle class family. There is so much to love about this country. And I think this the last election cycle proved to us it's not time to give up. But I do believe it's time to double down. Actually, and I think now is the time Christians, especially people have faith, the time to double down on our faith in the public square. Our country is starving. For we hope all of you have a wonderful and blessed Thanksgiving, and I hope you will join me in thanking our God, our Creator, for bestowing the blessings of liberty upon this great nation, for guiding our founding fathers, and for all of those for guiding all of those who have worked and struggled and sacrificed to make our country a better place and a safer place for all of us. And we we thank you God, for the blessings of this nation. May you continue to bless our nations. May a revival of your spirit and your values and your kingdom sweep this nation and made this nation serve you forever and unto the day of your return. Happy thanksgiving everybody, God blessing, wonder. That we won't to say, then we won't to say, oh we got it? Does one get dictat. This? Don't be okay. My brains anisoda that we won't with math, then we won't to pay oh we gott it? Does I want to take that away? Don't be okay. This has been a presentation of the FCB podcast network, where Real Talk lives. Visit us online at fcbpodcasts dot com.