Our National Troubles

HEBRON, Va., May 22nd, 1861. 

   BROTHER A. CAMPBELL—Dear Sir; —It seems that our entire country is to be raptured from pole to pole, from East to West. Are there any predictions in, or prophecies of, Scripture that are being fulfilled in the events that are daily transpiring around us nationally? We seem to be in the midst of the bloodiest revolution that the world has ever seen. We as a congregation, are very much divided. In fact, we are divided socially, morally, politically, religiously. Is there indeed no remedy for such evils? Give me your views scripturally on the whole affair at length.

   Please be so kind as to answer this letter, and you will oblige your humble servants and friends in this community.

   Your brother in the hope of eternal life,                                                       S. B.MAYWELL.

 BETHANY, Va., June 13th, 1861.

    BROTHER S. B. MAXWELL, My Dear Sir; —I have just read your letter of the 22nd ult., and am not at all surprised at its contents. Our Nation has been superlatively blest for many years with health, peace, and prosperity. No people can long enjoy these without becoming proud, puffed up, ungrateful, unthankful and enslaved to mammon. Such has been, such is, and such will be the destiny of nations. —It is fully written out in the greatest nations and people that have lived or do now live on the face of this sin polluted earth. Man cannot long endure luxuriant prosperity. Abraham’s blood and Abraham’s faith were as good and great as ever were the faith and blood of any people. But God was, in His benevolence, obliged to lay His hand very heavily upon them. He rooted them out of their patrimonial inheritance and banished them from His guardianship for nearly two thousand years.

   We are no better than they. Indeed they have been long blest for their Father’s sake. We are as proud of our nationalities and birth rights as are the Jews of their fathers, and their fathers’ country. Indeed such is the fallen race of Adam. Man cannot in any nation, climate or country long enjoy good health, a good constitution, a good farm, a good trade, a good and profitable business of any kind without become heady, high minded, a lover of pleasure—and to hold him in abeyance, if I may so speak, our Heavenly Father is constrained to lay His hand upon his person, his family, or his estate; and by a series of difficulties, embarrassments, afflictions, —personal or social—awaken and arouse him, compel him, indeed, to think, to ponder his paths, and thus to reform, change his course of life, and become sober-minded. It is a great blessing, indeed a distinguishing favor, to be rebuked and thus reproved of God, provided only that we have so much good sense and reflection as to perceive it and amend our ways. Every man, every family, every tribe, every nation must, in the course of time, pass through trials, temptations, afflictions, because such are the effects of man’s alienation and apostacy from God. Very few men, indeed, can endure much prolonged prosperity. Lean, weak, sickly constitutions require tonics; full, fleshy bodies, high fed, and not hard wrought, soon run to riot, or ruin. Agur’s prayer was one of the most judicious and sober-minded. It is in these words: “Remove far from me vanity and lies, give me neither poverty nor riches, feed me with food sufficient for me: lest I be full and deny thee and say who is Jehovah? Or lest I be poor and steal, and use the name of God in vain!”

   I am much grieved to hear of your schisms, strifes, alienations, —You are all to blame, and you must come together, confess your sins without mincing them, keep nothing back, confess candidly, honorably, magnanimously, and humble yourselves before the Lord and He will mercifully forgive; otherwise you must languish, become barren, unfruitful, and unholy. The Lord has said once that He would spew out of His mouth certain persons or parties, merely, too, because there were neither hot nor, cold but luke-warm (Revelation 3:16). It is, my dear sir, it is a fearful thing to rust out. It is good, says not Solomon only, but says Paul, “It is good to be zealously affected in a good cause And what cause can compare with that cause which cost the sacrifice of the most august person—the most exalted and glorious personality in reason’s, in faith’s, in imagination’s most expansive area.”

   But I am constrained to write with a rapid hand. I can say no more, however, than to purchase peace and good feeling and holy fraternal cooperation is worth more now in heavenly peace, and joy in the present world than you or I can arithmetically speak or compute.

   Confess your faults manfully, candidly, and pray together that you may be healed and that the Lord may forgive you.

   In all Christian feeling and affection,                                                          A. CAMPBELL

 Millennial Harbinger
(July 1861)