Twelve little Dirty questions.
we should very much like to know what in the opinion of the Rev. Dr. Hawks constitutes a large and clean question. In the Protestant Episcopal Convention last Monday, Dr. Hawks, arguing that the Church must treat its rebellious children with “lenity, courtesy and affection,” used the following language: “We must not lug in all the little dirty questions of the day which will be buried with their agitation.” One might retort upon Dr. Hawks that the questions which have disturbed the diocese for some years past, have been many of them small, and one of them, at least, exceedingly dirty — to say nothing of piquant scandals in the neighboring diocese of Pennsylvania. [305] To the Protestant Episcopal Church is unquestionably due the reverence of some of us and the respect of others; but Heaven knows there is nothing in its history, nothing in its present position which justifies this sublime scorn of political affairs which Dr. Hawks professes. In England, from the days of Henry VIII. to the days of Victoria, the Church has been quite as much a political as a religious body — its Bishops have been courtiers, and sometimes generals — it has been a political institution in Scotland and in Ireland — the reigning monarch has been its legal head — among its clergy have figured the keenest and most unscrupulous politicians, while for the last twenty-five years, though Land has been in his coffin for more than two centuries, this Church which never meddles with little questions, has been well-nigh sundered upon points of architecture, of upholstery, of tailoring, of genuflexions and of decorations; while in America we have had petty reproductions of the same differences, with the disgusting spectacle of a Right Reverend Father in God, riding, all booted and spurred, at the head of his rebel regiments. After this, to find Dr. Hawks so delicately squeamish and so doubtful about the authority of the Church in public affairs, must excite commiseration both for his stomach and his understanding. Shall the United State of America be deprived of an immense territory acquired at a cost of blood and treasure absolutely incomputable? This is Dr. Hawks's Little Dirty Question, No. One. Shall the Constitution of the United States be [306] overthrown by the perjuries of its sworn defenders? This is Dr. Hawks's Little Dirty Question, No. Two. Shall the Loyal States see the rolls of their citizens decimated, the flower of their youth slain in battle, the homes only a little while ago the happiest in the world made desolate, the honest accumulations of industry scattered, the enterprises of benevolence arrested-and all without hope of indemnity or of security? This is Dr. Hawks's Little Dirty Question, No. Three. Shall the wildest and wickedest perjury, the most Satanic defiance of the Majesty of Heaven, the clearest and least defensible of crimes flourish and bloom in the establishment of a great empire, and out of the dissolution of society secure the prosperous fortunes of the turbulent and the ambitious? This is Dr. Hawks's Little Dirty Question, No. Four. Shall the great experiment of political self-government utterly fail, while we, crouching and crawling through the vicissitudes of anarchy, find refuge at last in blind obedience to the edicts of an autocrat? This is Dr. Hawks's Little Dirty Question, No. Five. Shall a system of labor be perpetuated which, without regard to its abstract equity, without consideration of its injustice to the employed, has so demoralized the employer, that treason, robbery and murder seem to him to be Christian virtues? This is Dr. Hawks's Little Dirty Question, No. Six. Shall a system of labor be perpetuated which so utterly degrades the spiritual nature of the enslaved, as to expose it in its very yearning for sacred culture [307] to a fanaticism analogous to idolatry? This is Dr. Hawks's Little Dirty Question, No. Seven. Shall a system of labor be perpetuated the very essence of which is a denial of the fundamental principle of Christian ethics — that the laborer is worthy of his hire? This is Dr. Hawks's Little Dirty Question, No. Eight. Shall these acts be considered by the Church mere peccadilloes, when perpetrated by its Southern slaveholding members, which in its Northern communicants it would at once visit with its censure and even its excommunication? This is Dr. Hawks's Little Dirty Question, No. Nine. Shall a Church which every Sunday prays the Good Lord to deliver us “from all sedition, privy conspiracy and rebellion,” and “to give to all nations unity, peace and concord,” still hold communion with a Church which is full of sedition, privy conspiracy and rebellion against the unity, peace and concord of the land? This is Dr. Hawks's Little Dirty Question, No. Ten. Shall a Church which every Sunday prays for “the President of the United States, and all others in authority” --not merely as fellow-men, but because they are “in authority” --shall the Church withhold its censure of those of its members, who in contempt of authority are waging a felonious war against law and order? This is Dr. Hawks's Little Dirty Question, No. Eleven. Whether, finally, these communicants of the Church in the rebel States who have been so disregardful of [308] its discipline, and so false to its teachings as to avowedly violate all laws Divine and human, are entitled to anything more than Christian pity, are at all entitled in their double tort to Christian Fellowship, is a Little Dirty Question well worth the consideration of every Christian Patriot; and is Dr. Hawks's No. Twelve.October 11, 1862.
