Thus saith the Lord God; Remove the diadem, and take off the crown.
The Christian philosophy of revolution
The true philosophical history of man is that which reveals to us the causes and progress, first, of his depravity and deterioration; and secondly, of his return towards that state of holiness and happiness which he is destined, in the purpose of God, and through the agency of the Gospel, again to attain. The progression which the history of the race exhibits has been in cycles, and not in straight lines. In accordance with the principle announced by the prophet of Jehovah to the profane and wicked Prince of Israel, it has been a process of revolution and not of development. It involves the law of declension and decay, as much as that of quickening and growth. In the first place, the origin of the human race was not from a state of barbarism, but one of absolute perfection; and the first change which passed upon human nature was that by which it fell into degeneracy, by reason of temptation from without. Social happiness was blighted, and perished in the bud. The very first offspring of the social state, instead of love, sympathy, and mutual support, were, first, envy, then hatred, and lastly murder. Alienation and division thus became at once the universal law of society. In the first place, the earliest ages of the world after the fall, when the light of revealed truth was dimmest, and the reign of grace most feeble, were marked by a rapid degeneration, physical, intellectual, and moral, in the nature, the character, and the condition of man. In the second place, when the power of sin was checked by larger gifts of gracious influence, the power of Divine truth became diffusive, and entered upon its aggressive work in the achievement of man’s regeneration; and has continued to the present hour, progressive; and, judging from the history of the past, and the characteristics of the present, as well as the prophetic delineation of the future, it will continue steadily progressive, till its final and perfect consummation. In the third place, the great agent by which this progress has been carried forward is that of revolution, or that of overturning, overturning, overturning, till He shall come whose right it is to wear the crown of universal dominion, amidst the redeemed race of man. In any comprehensive survey of the subject, the central epoch of human history is the advent of the Son of God. Everything anterior to that event pointed to the incarnation as embracing the fulness of its significancy, and everything subsequent derives its vitality and power from the same source. To the eye of the Christian, and in the light of the Bible, those vast and sublime overturnings which reared and overthrew successively the gigantic empires of Egypt, Assyria, Persia, and Macedon, to say nothing of countless smaller states, which concentrated the intellect, the genius, and the cultivation of the world in the States of Greece, and finally enthroned Rome as sole mistress of the earth, these all appear as mighty and indispensable agencies, commissioned of God to produce that mental culture, that feeling of strong, unsatisfied religious want, and that state of universal peace, which were essential to prepare the world for the advent of the Son of God. And now in like manner we believe the peculiar dispensation of the age, and specifically of the race to which we belong, is to leaven the philosophy, the literature, the morality, and the civil and political institutions of the world with the religion of the Bible, and then carry their elevating, purifying influence throughout the earth. This is the last of the great dispensations of the world’s progressive history. The true and final civilisation of the race, as statesmen and philosophers delight to call it, is just that which owes to Christianity both the life of its being and the law of its forms. It was designed for the whole family of man; and it will therefore embrace the whole. Changes are passing upon the internal policy and the outward face of nations, with a rapidity as much greater than those of the early ages of history as the modes of locomotion and the intercourse of the world have been improved by the agencies of steam and magnetic electricity. The progress of human events toward their ultimate goal, like some mighty mass acted upon by a constant mechanical force, is ever accelerating as it advances. This is preeminently true of the very point of time now passing. The plot thickens. Events crowd with ever-accumulating momentum toward the appointed end. The watchwords of the downtrodden classes of the Old World--Liberty, Equality, Fraternity--are not so far from the embodiment of the true and fundamental principles of that very civilisation which yet awaits the human race. But as to the sources whence these blessings are to come, they are, by the necessities of their previous condition, wholly in the dark. The “liberty” which they are blindly struggling after, in the turbulent and bloody track of radicalism, is to be realised in the enfranchisement of the Gospel, and grounded on that personal liberty wherewith Christ makes His people free. The “equality” to which their inward convictions assure them they are entitled is not an agrarian equality of social and material position, but an equality in human rights, founded on an equality of moral condition and desert in the sight of God; and the “fraternity” emblazoned on their motto is the genuine, but it may be the perverted, heart utterance of the conscious right to membership in that common brotherhood of humanity which springs out of the common Fatherhood of God. The whole and every item of this ideal longing of humanity in its most degraded and dangerous forms, and which has been moulded into the war cry of modern revolution, is destined to fulfilment; but in a form and from a source widely different from that to which the ignorant and vicious and dangerous paupers and outcasts of the world are looking for succour. They shall yet enjoy all, and more than all, their brightest hopes, but only as a fruit of the Gospel of Christ. (M. B. Hope, D. D.)
National revolutions
Our day is one of unusual excitement; mind is everywhere agitated; the foundations are out of place; the earth reels like a drunken man; sceptres are broken; dynasties tremble; the diadem is removed and the crown taken off; thrones are burnt in the open streets; kings flee for their lives to foreign shores; men’s hearts are failing them for fear, and for looking after those things that are coming on the earth, for the powers of heaven are shaken.
I. National revolutions are symptomatic of moral disorder. They are the result of one or more causes of an evil, or a series of evils, which have been long accumulating and gathering force and strength, until the terrible crisis comes, when, like the central fires of the earth rushing to the volcano, an eruption takes place, and men are filled with astonishment and oppressed with awe. All the manifestations of injustice are evidences of the moral disorder to which I allude.
1. Religious persecution.
2. The withholding of political rights.
3. Positive oppression.
II. National revolutions are in harmony with individual experience and material phenomena. The individual is the type of the nation. The nation is but the individual on a broader scale. The body politic is congregated men. The mass is the man multiplied. We are firmly persuaded that the security of a nation is not in the form, but in the moral integrity of its government. “Righteousness exalteth a nation.” We deprecate injustice, whether it emanate from a throne or a presidential chair; and tyranny, whether it come from a man or a mob; and slavery, whether it exist under a despotism or a republic. Again, as in the individual, so in the nation; if there be the conservative power of health, it will struggle for the mastery. The accumulated moral disease must destroy vitality, or be thrown to the surface by revolution. We find another analogy in material laws. The inequality of the earth’s surface is conducive to the health of vegetables and animals. The roaring cataract stuns the beholder, but he inhales not there the poison of the stagnant pool. The sweeping wind makes the forest to groan, but it causes its roots to strike deeper in the earth, and the juices of vegetable life are increased. The thunders of heaven, with their herald-lightnings, appall and terrify us, but they are the physicians of the atmosphere, and drive pestilence from the land.
III. National revolutions are the voice of God speaking to the world.
1. They proclaim the vanity of all artificial greatness. “The Lord is known by the judgment which He executeth.” “He leadeth princes away spoiled, and overthroweth the mighty.” “He poureth contempt upon princes, and causeth them to wander in the wilderness where there is no way.”
2. By these revolutions God utters His protest against tyranny. God is the God of justice, the Friend of the needy, the Avenger of the oppressed; and those that walk in pride He is able to abase. His voice, if despised in His word, is lifted up in the storm, the tempest, the plague, and the revolution; and it is the protest against injustice and oppression.
3. Another lesson read to the their victories worthless; their wars, sin; their pride, rebellion; their honours, transient; their wealth, evanescent; their glory, a fading flower; and their destiny, extinction from under these heavens.
IV. These revolutions are forerunners of the Redeemer’s righteous reign. The Redeemer will come again--not to be betrayed, mocked, and crucified; but to be glorified in His saints, and admired in all them that believe; to be hailed as the Prince of peace--the liberator of every bondman--the joy of every loyal heart--the desire of all nations; to be crowned, amid the hosannahs of an exulting world, while the smiling heavens are vocal with the intermingling hallelujahs of angels and men. (W. Leask.)