Miscellany to Eardley, Culling E., Sir, 1857 · Isaac Leeser Digital Repository · Legacy Projects from Judaica DH at Penn Libraries

Title

Miscellany to Eardley, Culling E., Sir, 1857

Author

Samuel Hanson Cox

Contributor

Sir Culling E. Eardley

Date Created

10 August 1857

Location(s)

New York City

Philadelphia

Format

Miscellany. 2 page(s) on 2 sheet(s).

Type

Miscellaneous

Physical Characteristics

Unlined Paper

Typescript

Is Part Of

Arnold and Deanne Kaplan Isaac Leeser Collection

content

The annexed letter from Rev. Dr. Cox, of the United States, to Sir Culling Eardley, of England, expresses the unanimous sentiment of the people of this country on the topic under consideration. Here we have tried the experiment of granting political equality to Jews in common with other denominations of religionists, and have found it to work kindly and well. No evils have resulted from it, but the contrary.
Communicated for the Journal of Commerce.
TO SIR CULLING E. EARDLEY, BART., LONDON.
From your late kind letter, the receipt of which I gratefully acknowledge, my dear Sir Culling, you will probably be leaving London, as I judge, for Berlin, by the time this reaches you; to attend that meeting of our Evangelical Alliance, which His Majesty, the King of Prussia, has invited to his own capital, and which, according to your kind urgency and that of several others, I should be happy to attend, were this compatible with relative duties here. As it is, you will have some worthy representatives from America, beside Rev. Dr. Baird, Rev. Dr. Kirk, Rev. Dr. Alexander, and a number of others, extensively and favor-ably known in both hemispheres. As the grand crowner of all, may the Great Head of the Church, the King of Sion, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, be with you: illumining your way; prospering your de-liberations and measures, to such results, as HIMSELF may consistently perpetuate and bless, to the good of nations, and ultimately to the conversion of the world to the knowledge of the only living and true God.
On another occasion, Sir Culling, I hope to enjoy the luxury of your correspondence in a more extended and private form; and also never to have it totally in-termitted or relinquished, while we are both, by the sovereign pleasure of God, continued in the present world. But I seem to have a special reason for this public letter; in reference to a topic of common and ecumenical interest to Christian States and Christian men; especially to the English world, both Anglican and Anglo-American; as well as related to the legiti-mate objects of the Evangelical Alliance, and the pro-gress of Christianity, with its ascendant ju-risdiction in the whole world. That topic may vindicate the propriety, as well as il-lustrate the design of this public commu-munication. I allude distinctly to the recent action of the House of Lords, in their rejection of the bill for the removal of Jewish disabilities, in respect to the oath required to be taken by the members of Parlia-ment.
It is not my plan to review the proceedings or the speeches of their Lordships, though that of the Earl of Derby especially, Lord Chancellor as he is, Sir Cul-ling, or your own venerated Alma Mater, the Univer-sity of Oxford, I view as rather invitingly vulnerable; especially in contrast with the nobler, and I must say, the wiser views of the new Lord Bishop of London. I only design to take general regards of the matter, es-pecially its results and its tendencies, as connected with the duty of Christian men and the enlightened policy of Christian nations; and these as seen by my own countrymen, the most evangelical and intelligent of them, and indeed by our whole country of the United States; lamenting the position of their Lordships, and censuring them for conduct, at once, in their view, improper, unreasonable, inutile, unprotestant, and derogatory to the just progress and prospect of our age and their own great nation, as well as savoring of the spirit of persecution toward so large, and so opulent, and so respectable a portion of their fellow-subjects. There is an animus in the action, whose influence is easily detected, and must be dis-approved by all the more elevated Christianity of Christendom. Is ours the doctrine of the masters of the Inquisitorial Commission? Is it our duty to per- secute any who may differ from us in religious views? Is it the best way to benefit them, the way of wisdom to convince them, or the proper way to conciliate to our success the necessary benediction of our God? Has he authorized it? What damage could accrue to the State by honoring, in favor of the Israelite, at once, his consistency and his scruples in the matter? We are surprised, are grieved, at the conduct of their Lordships. Its echoes are not excellent or musical on this side of the Atlantic. We all think that they will not bear to be reviewed in the strong light, either of honorable and wise statesmanship, or of evangelical truth; and the peers of England, if they wish not to degrade their no-bility in the eyes of all the world, as well as through-out the immense majority of the Christian sentiment of the British nation, ought to go and sin no more, against the people who gave us the Holy Scriptures, the nation from whom and of whom was our blessed Saviour! and whom to persecute has been the shame, the history, and the sin, of almost universal Christen-dom.
It is my definite object, my dear Sir Culling, to commend THIS TOPIC to the solemn consideration of the Evangelical Alliance, and also to their lucid and deliberate action. It were well for them to act on it. The learning and the piety and the dignity that are there to convene, will make the metropolis of His Majesty, Frederick William, for the time, the lumi-nous focal centre of Christendom. It seems to court or claim the attention of mankind. I am persuaded that in an assemblage so august and so eminent, so truly philanthropic, so sincerely Christian, and so signally patronised by one of the noblest and most excellent sovereigns in the world, their collective wisdom can be neither a discord nor an ambiguity. Nor can it be unheeded. May we not, then, hope for a worthy, out-spoken, and loud-sounding deliverance, from their assembled and deli-berative multitude? Shall such an occasion be lost to the cause of universal liberty of conscience? We need not remind them that the only legitimate monarch of the conscience is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.
It has struck me, too, my honored friend, that my own dear country—with all its faults, I love it still— may, with singular propriety, be the censor morum of Great Britain, on such a topic as this. If you are the parent nation, the older and the wiser, ought you not to set us, and the rest of mankind, a wise and good example—and none other? Whatever may be our delinquencies and sins, I must urge that here the comparison is to us eminently hon-orable! We have set you and the world in this, if not in some other particulars, a noble and a good exam-ple. We are the only great Christian nation known to me, that has, either in popular sentiment or in our civil enactments, NEVER AUTHORISED THE PRESECU-TION OF THE JEWS. On the contrary, we have cher-ished, respected and protected them. For this, pleased and almost proud of it, I rejoice and bless the God of Abraham. In our country, no law is framed for the disfranchisement of one of them. The controversy between the synagogue and the church is properly and well maintained, on the basis of moral, historical, pro-phetical and scriptural argumentation, and that alone. Socially, commercially and vicinally, as well as in all the general relations of life, our intercourse is polite and kind, and our Christian piety makes us respect them with sincere considera-tion and benignity. Our first President, WASHINGTON, when first inaugurated in 1789, was approached and addressed by their Rabbis and their Chiefs, from dif-ferent cities, in terms of lauded propriety, and of law-abiding fidelity to the established Government; and that incomparable PATER PATRIAE, patiens vocari, re-plied to them in a style worthy of his official station, worthy of his exalted character, worthy of the senti-ments of a great though then comparatively youthful nation. We have fully tried the unique experiment ever since, and now report in their favor. They are in the main characteristically good citizens; and we should have no comparable hope that God would ever use and honor us to make them good Christians, if, misrepresenting the goodness of the Author of Chris-tianity, we were to scorn, insult, abuse, or injure them—as WASHINGTON, to say nothing of any higher sanc-tion, could never patronize, or willingly for one mo-ment endure!
The reasons of their Lordships for retiring the bill are immensely unsatisfactory. With all proper rever-ence for their exalted position, as hereditary senators of Great Britain, let it be something to them, that our superior Christian civilization, as constructively viewed in the contrast, redounds, in America and in all the world, only to our praise and to their own manifold and manifest disparagement. The sins of the Jews, their unbelief and alleged indocility, the prophecies of retribution that regard them, however clearly identified in their just interpretation and scope as affecting them, afford no apology, or mitigation of blame, to Christian nations, if any are found volun-teering to punish them for it. It is that which God has forbidden, not required at our hand. Be-side, what harm can possibly accrue to church or State, by conceding to them, as well as to Romanists and Quakers, all their civil and political rights? Is not a man fully qualified, so far as an oath goes or ought to go, in civil relations, either Christian or Mo-hommedan, or Jew or Heretic, when, on his responsi-bility to God and man, he promises, in any court of record or before competent witnesses, to do his duty according to law? The proper jurisdiction of magis-trates ought there to pause and be satisfied;—to God the things that are God's! It is not theirs to interpose between a man's conscience or creed, and that most holy Judge eternal, to whom his and our account is so soon to be rendered, with infallible equity and truth. This is the doctrine of my country; and not on that ac-count, but for higher reasons, it ought to be, in all con-sistency and policy, the doctrine of every Christian country on the globe. UBI LIBERTAS, IBI PATRIA.

Among the signs of the times, Sir Culling, it has not escaped your own meditative sagacity as a christian, that god is bringing that wonderful people to a wonderful crisis in their destiny. They are not relatively the people they were, to Christen-dom, in the periods of mediaeval history. They have risen, improved in social position, more intelligent, eminently more potential, and now much more con-siderable, even in the politics of Europe.
They hold the purse-strings of nations. They com-mand the sinews of war, in the hostile moves of princes. How much on bond and mortgage, with England and France to guarantee the payment, own they, of the territories of the Sultan in Jerusalem, of the Pope in Italy, and of many mighty monarchs in other places! How prodigiously has their wealth accumulated! In the United States, within my own memory, their num-bers, their synagogues, their intelligence, their opu-lence, their respectability and influence, have steadily altered, in one direction only. They love this country, with reason. It is their occidental Palestine. They have never done us harm—nor we them. I love to think that God, who is said to govern nations in this world, in which alone as nations they exist, according to their secular and collective conduct in it, has mani-festly blest us, for so hospitably, and so equally, and so singularly entertaining them; and I feel no desire that America should have the blessing in monopoly; and not in communion with other Christian na-tions, especially—I say it with liberal and gen-uine filial piety—especially with GREAT BRIT-AIN! yes! there is an allied reason which I may not omit to urge—the injuries they have suffered at the hands of our fathers; in contrast with the benefits we have derived, so vast and so incomparable, from that long dismembered nation. Let us rather try to compensate them for what they have had to feel and to bear—pri-vations, ignominies, ostracisms, malignities, cruelties, amercements, civil deaths, imprisonments, exiles, pro-scriptions, and all manner of abuse! Are not justice and generosity here to be co-operative in their favor; practically one in all wise measures of reconciliation and benevolence? How will the repeated and now too systematic action of their Lordships look, when the pen of truth shall portray it in full, on the page of his-tory—especially if soon hereafter some Christian Israel-ite, learned as Neander, shall move that pen? I blush for the renowned posterity of the Earl of Derby, if they shall ever read, in the twentieth century of the Chris-tian era, the speeches in parliament of their august ancestor; who seems now rather unconscious of such an amphitheatre of interested yet impartial specta-tors.
Those who have been studiously and pro-fessedly conversant with the prophecies, are mainly agreed, that, in the order of coming events, the recovery of all the tribes of the long-repudiated nation, to the knowledge of the only true Messiah, to the hope of the Saviour of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, CANNOT BE, IN THE FUTURE, DIS-TANT FAR! And, so all Israel shall be saved; as it is written, there shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob; FOR THIS is my cove-nant to them when I shall take away their sins.
If the wheels of his chariot are to be delayed, I hope the Lords Spiritual and the Lords Temporal of England are not to be in concert distinguished, as the fore-doomed clogs of retardation, in the righteous judgment of God; preventing for a season his destined and triumphant progression through the world! But there is a principle in the legislative intolerance of their Lordships; there is a typical implication in it; there is a sign of ominous and opaque aspect, which makes me tremble for your fast-anchored isle; rather than congratulate its government on its adamantine fixity, or the certitude of its amicable alliance with the reigning Lord God Omnipotent. The Jews are yet beloved for the Fathers' sake. God is un-changeable—the gifts and calling of God are without re-pentance; and I believe HE will punish those nations that dare to injure them! I pray God to inspire the illustrious brethren and fathers of your noble CONFER-ENCE at Berlin, now to meet in a few weeks, with manly wisdom and godly truth, TO SPEAK FOR THE RIGHT; so that their words may be like the echoes of the artillery of heaven: to reach the spirits of men, the intimacies of their moral consciousness, in the Old World and the New World; warning them to prepare the way of the LORD, and welcome his spiritual ad-vances, as with the song of seraphs on the plains of Bethlehem of Judah; saying, GLORY TO GOD IN THE HIGHEST, PEACE ON EARTH, AND GOOD WILL TO MEN! Our Saviour has told us—SALVATION IS OF THE JEWS! OUR BLESSED SAVIOUR, our Redeemer and Lord Jesus Christ, was himself—A JEW.
We are all plainly bound to show them kindness, and accord to them all the franchises and privileges of religious freedom. I cannot help recording it, Sir Cul-ling, to the honor of the Commons of England, that so strong a vote carried the plainly necessary reform in the House! Let their Lordships not be too lofty to consider it—in time. I am glad too that the consti-tuency are so calmly and justly willing to repeat the election of their candidate and representative. No effort for the right, said your and our Milton, was ever wholly lost. The HUZZAS of America cheer them across the Atlantic—while the ALLELUIAS of Christians ascend to God on both sides of it, when they pray—for the salvation of all men!
On this particular topic, my dear Sir Culling, I ac-quit you before the world of all responsibility. I know not indeed, as to details, what are your own politi-cal estimates of the matter; how it may or may not compromise or facilitate your influence; and I have written this from my heart's fulness, in humble hope of doing some good to the "magnificent and awful cause" of RELIGIOUS LIBERTY; in which I glory to say that my own is—posthabita Samo, Eng-land—the model country of the globe! Esto perpetua!
Thanking you, my good and honored brother in Christ, for all your public-spirited enterprizes of bene-ficence, for all your noble bearing toward America and Americans, and for all your devoted and busy attach-ment to the cause of the propagated truth of Christi-anity, in all the world and to every creature, and thank-ing you for your uniform kindness to myself, I remain, with high respect, fraternally, yours in the ties un-earthly of our common and glorious Christianity.
SAMUEL HANSON COX.
NEW YORK, August 10, 1857.

Identifier

LSKAP_New_9

Date

1857-08-10