d each
his own business, we must attend to the business which God and nature
have given to us. We must interest ourselves in the cause of our common
humanity. I do not say, that we must make this great cause our business.
It is made our business already by our Maker.

Consider then how the case stands. If we fling our whole hearts with a
generous ardor into the conflict for the welfare of our brother, seeing
to it with all vigilance that public affairs go wisely and justly, then
if the fortunes of this good cause prosper, it is well with us; we
triumph with it. But if it should be defeated, and we should be involved
in its defeat, and suffer danger, loss, and even death itself, still how
powerfully should we be sustained by the consciousness of suffering in
so grand a behalf, for such a glorious reason! Who would not rather
suffer with the Right than prosper with the Wrong? But if we will not
fling our hearts into anything of a general and generous interest, if we
insist that we will keep at a distance from all such matters, that we
will be ignorant and insensible, we gain no additional security. Still
our private lot is inextricably bound up with the public interest; and
when those interests suffer, we must suffer with them, but with no
sustaining power in our own minds. We may be shot down with the heroes
and martyrs of Humanity without the heroes' joy or the martyrs' radiant
crown. 'No man liveth to himself.' Since such is the simple Bible truth,
and since it is a truth, which it becomes us to look at fully, and adopt
as a fundamental principle and law of our thinking and of our living,
let no one turn a deaf ear, and say I am talking politically now,
because I refer to considerations of a public, and if you please, of a
political character, to urge home upon your reason and your consciences
your sacred duty as men, and as Christians, to take a hearty,
intelligent, self-sacrificing interest in what is going on on the public
theatre of the nation to which you belong, and of the world to which you
belong as well, and in whose fortunes, we are every one of us so deeply
interested.

But this is no hour for apologies. This is no time for grown-up men to
be dodging and hiding, and evading a great duty, under words and
phrases. Political! what if I am political? what if every pulpit in the
land should be ringing in these days with political events? God knows
there is need. We should be lost to the ordinary feelings of men,