Alexander Knox to Bishop Jebb-Moral Uses of a Poor Class. The luxuries of the great, as to personal comfort, might be dispensed with; but, in a civil and political light, they too have their use; yea, and in a moral light also. But even those conveniences which we must all value, the accommodations of our houses and our persons, of our sedentary and our active hours, the food we eat, the clothes we wear, every thing, in short, which forms our extrinsic comfort, flows to us from that providential adjustment of continued poverty. But this is not all; from the same source arose our fathers' leisure as our own; and, hence, how infinite our intellectual blessings! Who, of an enlarged mind, would willingly relinquish the happiness of an improved and exercised understanding? What lover of science, what admirer of classic elegance and simplicity, what inquirer into the moral relations between man and man, and between man and his God, would be willing to have all at once swept from his mind by a dark, vacant, and everlasting oblivion? Yet, if these are blessings, they also are chiefly owing to the same cause, which, by the permanent stimulation of want, has roused mankind from indolence into that series of exertions which has given rise to all the rest. Pater ipse colendi Haud facilem esse viam voluit, primúsque per artem Movit agros, curis acuens mortalia corda. With what just and gracious fitness, then, is the subsequent command given? How becoming the source of goodness and happiness? Every humane mind hears with pleasure that other injunction, "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn;" but this, resting on the same ground of justice, rises far above it in importance. The very terms are exquisitely suitable. "Therefore, I command thee:" in no instance is the language Alexander Knox to Bishop Jebb-Moral Uses of a Poor Class. * ** * more authoritative. As if he had said, The existence of poverty is my direct and special appointment, as being indispensable to your civil welfare. Therefore, on the fairest principle, I enjoin a just acknowledgment of that benefit. You are to be the daily objects of my bounty; and the chief of that bounty shall be conveyed to you through the instrumentality of the poor. You owe me a return for this bounty, and they who are my instruments in giving, are my appointed agents for receiving: "Therefore, I command thee." But there is, in addition to this, a natural tie. It is not for one of another nature or other feelings I am solicitous; it is thy brother to whom I enjoin thee to open thy hand, * * to whom thou oughtest to be kind, if for this reason only, because you are creatures of like passions. "of one blood,” * * * * * Thy own weaknesses and wants, therefore, are so many advocates within thee for his. But he is "thy poor, and thy needy, in thy land." This returns to the main argument, the civil connection between the rich and poor. He is an appendage to thy civil existence, * a necessary part of the great body. "The body is not one member, but many. If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? if the whole body were hearing, where were the smelling? and if they were all one member, where were the body? The eye, therefore, cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee; nor, again, the head to the feet, I have no need of you. Nay, much more, those members of the body which seem to be more feeble, are more necessary." The poor, then, being as it were the hands and feet of the body politic, it is most fitly said, "thy poor and thy needy." They are one with their superiors as to unity of action. They should be one, therefore, in just sustenance; in sympathetic ten Alexander Knox to Bishop Jebb-Moral Uses of a Poor Class. derness; and in every instance, of requisite care. voice of reason, of interest, of nature, and of God. open thine hand wide unto thy brother." This is the "Thou shalt Various are the duties which this command embraces. But none more peculiarly or distinctly than in meeting their opening wants and weaknesses, and fitting them betimes for sustaining their lot with credit and comfort. It is the great end of all the divine dispensations to diffuse and heighten happiness. But, in this lower world, God has been pleased, as it were, to abridge His own power as to direct exercise, and to commit in a great degree to man's agency the executing of His beneficial purposes; as if every blessing here were to be conveyed in the way of mediation. What, therefore, must be the divine complacency when He beholds His adorable design in progress, in consequence of an harmonious coöperation of all the different agencies. To supply physical wants is, as has been stated, the function of the poor. To manufacture and distribute mental, intellectual, and moral comfort, is the high allotment of superior classes. God has so ordered matters that the former function is steadily performed. But what a reckoning will the rich and great have if they do not perform theirs! What are God's final designs as to human society He has not fully revealed. But universality of moral happiness is intimated. The progress, however, is awfully committed, in a great degree as already hinted, to society itself. We have made some progress, doubtless. Two thousand years ago, what were these islands? who, then, can say how far civilization might be carried? But we do not yet know and feel, in this less happy island particularly, what the evils of barbarism are; and how can we so remove them as by the very duty of this day? To multiply moral and religious mechanists, Rev. J. M. Mason to Capt. U.S. A.-Course to be pursued on receiving a Challenge. servants, and laborers, is the only way we can at present leaven the lump. And, so sure as we faithfully endeavor, God will bless. Such, my good friend, are the crude hints of a less common kind which have occurred to me. Use or not just as suits. Whatever I send you, is always yours to throw by, just as much as to take up. What you say of my little work is gratifying to me. I did not forget you, but there has been an omission either at the post-office or the castle. Most truly yours, ALEXANDER Knox. XVI. COURSE TO BE PURSUED ON RECEIVING A CHALLENGE. Rev. Dr. J. M. Mason to Capt. U. S. Army. NEW YORK, Jan. 10th, 1814. MY DEAR SIR: I deeply sympathize with you in the trial to which your public duty and Christian virtue have been put by a challenge from one of your brother officers; and am rejoiced and consoled by the triumph, thus far, of all that is good and holy, of all that is rational and true, of all that is magnanimous and brave, in refusing from principle to fight a duel; in which fools and atheists, madmen and cut throats, and cowards, have courage enough to engage on the slightest provocation, but which it requires that rare virtue, moral heroism, to decline on the greatest. At the same time, I doubt the propriety of the course which in this stage of the business you seem inclined to take. Direct appeals to the public ought to be the last resort. It is hardly military to adopt, without final necessity, an unmilitary mode of defence. You have a regular military form of Rev. J. M. Mason to Capt. U.S. A.-Course to be pursued on receiving a Challenge. redress, which by all means ought to be tried, before you present yourself at the bar of the public. I take it for granted that you have given no plausible reason of dissatisfaction to the challenger. Be very sure on this head; and be not fastidious. If you have in any way been so unfortunate as to injure him, honor and generosity combine with justice and religion to enforce the utmost extent of reparation consistent with their united claims. If you have done no wrong, then the process is short; have the challenger and his second immediately arrested and tried by a court-martial, under the "Rules and Articles of War." You may prefer solid charges, and touch no others. You will, of course, be certain of your proofs; and will not fail to keep for inspection the written challenge, if such an one was sent. I trust you will keep yourself perfectly cool; but insist on a court-martial. Provided you can fairly make out your case, and should the court not do you justice, appeal to a general court-martial. Should you fail there, appeal to God and your country, and resign a sword which you cannot wear without crime. I pray you to put it fully to the test, whether the "Articles of War" are an unmeaning letter or not. Reap the honor of arraying public principle against private depravity. But as you love your country, as you would not be a perjured soldier, as you fear God, as you look for reward to that eternity, as you would not break the hearts of your best friends, as you would not scandalize the wise and good, and be cast away from the Church of Jesus Christ in the present life-persist, inflexibly persist in refusing the challenge. My prayers are for you in this time of need. Affectionately yours, J. M. MASON. |