and think that sin sits fast and rides secure.[1] But no
statute of men is ever fixed on man till it be first the
absolute, the right, the law of God. All else lasts but its day, for ever this, for ever still the same. By "previous questions," men may stop debate, vote down minorities with hideous grin, but the still small voice of justice will whisper in the human heart, will be trumpet-tongued in history to teach you that you cannot vote down God.
In your private character, if you would build securely, you must build on the natural law of God, inherent in your nature and in his; if the nation would build securely, it must build so. Out of their caprice, their selfishness, and their sin, may men make statutes, to last for a day, built up with joyous huzzas, and the chiming of a hundred guns, to come down with the curses of the multitude, and smitten by the thunder of God; but to build secure, you must build on the justice of the Almighty. The beatitudes of Jesus will outlast the codes of all the tyrants of the old world and the new. So I have seen gamblers hurry and huddle up their booths at a country muster, on the unsmoothed surface of a stubble-field, foundation good enough for such a structure, not a post plumb, to endure a single day of riot, drunkenness, and sin; but to build a pyramid which shall outlast empires, men lay bare the bosom of the primeval rock, and out of primeval rock they build thereon their well-joined work, outlasting Syria, Greece, Carthage, Rome, venerable to time, and underneath its steadfast foot the earthquakes pass all harmlessly away.
All things conspire to overturn a wrong. Every advance of man is hostile to it. Reason is hostile; religion is its deadly foe; the new-born generation will assail it, and it must fall. Of old it was written, "Though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not prosper," and the world’s wide walls, from the remotest bounds of peopled space, laugh out their loud and long "Amen!" Let Iniquity be never so old and respectable, get all the most eminent votes, have the newspapers on her side, guns fired at her success, it all avails nothing; for this is God’s world, not a devil's, and His eternal word has gone forth that right alone shall last for ever and for ever.
- ↑ This refers to a speech of Mr Webster, occasioned by the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law.
