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GOD'S WRITTEN WORD.

SUNG AT TREMONT TEMPLE

AT THE 227TH BOSTON MONDAY LECTURE, FEB. 29, 1892.

I.

2.

3.

4.

TUNE- Autumn.

For Thy word, O Lord, we bless Thee,
For the volume of Thy grace;
Here in rapturous praise address Thee,
With the saints before Thy face;
For Thy word through saints and sages,
And at last through Thy dear Son,
In the fullness of the ages,

To redeem our race undone.

One by one on earth appearing,
Men of God by Thee were sent ;
Truth revealing, truth revering,
Kindling up faith's firmament.
Though from them a space divided,
We are pressing on our way;
By their counsels led and guided
To the same eternal day.

Oft we gaze above with wonder;

Wheeling worlds God's power display;
They shall all be rent asunder,

Like a dream shall pass away;

But God's word shall live increasing,
Might receiving from His breath,
Ransomed souls from sin releasing,
Victory giving over death.

There we see the Father's glory,
In creation's grandeur wrought;
Here Redemption's matchless story,
Phrased to suit an infant's thought;
God's true wisdom by men written :
How could man God's wisdom know?
See the Rock Eternal smitten,
By our daily path to flow.

Howard University, Washington, D. C.

J. E. RANKIN.

BOSTON MONDAY LECTURES.

SEVENTEENTH YEAR. SEASON OF 1892.

PRELUDE V.

FRAUD AT THE BALLOT-BOX NORTH AND SOUTH.

THE Rev. Dr. A. J. Gordon presided at Mr. Cook's 227th Boston Monday Lecture and the Rev. S. L. B. Speare offered prayer. President Rankin's original hymn, God's Written Word, the Prelude on Fraud at the Ballot-Box and the Lecture on Essentials and Circumstantials in Scripture were all cordially received by a large and eager audience.

I.

Each of the great American political parties has recently accused the other of seating a president by fraud. The Republicans affirm, in a historic platform, that Mr. Cleveland was elected by criminal nullification of the national election laws. The Democrats, on the other hand, assert that Mr. Tilden was elected when Mr. Hayes took his seat in the presidential chair. Professor Bryce says that this is the common opinion of publicists and educated circles in Europe.

When lawlessness at the ballot-box reaches such a height of audacity as to invalidate elections of presidents, a day of peril for Republican institutions has certainly reached its dawn. It is not surprising, therefore, that so cool and shrewd a judge as President Harrison should affirm that fraudulent elections are now the greatest danger of the republic. In view of the high place which he occupies, his words are exceedingly memorable, and are likely to grow more so as our history advances into a crowded and hazardous future.

"Nothing just now is more important," says the chief magistrate of the nation, "than to provide every guaranty for an absolutely fair and

free choice by an equal suffrage within the respective states for all the officers of the national government, whether that suffrage is applied directly as in the choice of members of the House of Representatives, or indirectly, as in the choice of senators and electors of president.

“Respect for public officers and obedience to law will not cease to be the characteristics of our people until our elections cease to declare the will of majorities fairly ascertained, without fraud, suppression, or gerrymander. If I were called upon to declare wherein our chief national danger lies, I should say, without hesitation, in the overthrow of majority control by the suppression or perversion of the popular suffrage."

With this opinion, our best publicists have expressed most earnest concurrence in recent months. And it is notorious

that, meanwhile, signs of peril are increasing.

In proportion to the number of legal voters the South has three times the power in Congress that the North has. This inequality of representation is secured by nullification of national election laws based on the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the constitution. It is certain that the North will not submit permanently to this outrageous injustice. The national government drafts colored men into the army and the navy, and takes their lives, if necessary, in defense of the country, and then does not defend their civic rights, or even their lives, when assailed by Bourbon white minorities in certain disorderly sections of the recently seceding Southern States. The party in power takes life but does not protect life.

Methods of political procedure which it was supposed were confined to the South have recently appeared in the North. In the Empire State a political trickster, who has been governor and is now senator, has employed such methods to capture a nomination for the presidency that he may justly be called, as he has been, the most forbidding political figure of our time. He is a specimen of the class of men brought to the front by lawlessness at the polls, by corruption of the press and of primary political meetings, and in general by the use of unscrupulous henchmen who degrade every sphere of influence that they dominate. This man is a portent in a young republic, an upstretching, lurid ray from the dawn of the day of doom for Republican institutions, unless he and

his tribe are decisively remanded to to the obscurity they deserve.

The liquor traffic grows more audacious with every decade. It now demands in New York state not only the abrogation of all laws restricting its activity, but also the legalization of the gambling-hell and the brothel. Illiteracy is on the increase among voters in many American commonwealths. Absenteeism at the polls increases. It is a terrific sign of the times that the number of murders annually committed in the United States has doubled within four years. When elections become corrupt and judges are elective, the courts become untrustworthy, and so life grows cheap.

It has been found in the Southern States that trickery in secular elections is swiftly imitated even in church elections, and that dishonesty at the polls has its dismal echo in the holy of holies of clerical politics. When fraud dominates in the field of political rivalry, it very soon obtains a controlling influence in the courts of law, and the poison drips from these heights of secular authority upon the bases of trade, and the result is that at last civilization itself is diseased, so that the church obtains only unsound material with which to build a sanctuary for human hope.

II.

What, now, are some of the remedies, both secular and religious, for lawlessness at the ballot-box, North and South?

1. National power should be used to secure purity of national elections and equality of representation in Congress.

Southern journals say that the political methods of the Bourbon Democracy in the South are justified by the fact that the shadow of the Force bill yet hangs over the Southern States. The Force bill should be called the Anti-Fraud bill. As President Harrison has remarked, the test of the sincerity of the desire of any section or politician to promote purity of elections is to be found in willingness to co-operate in any constitutional measure for the prevention of fraud.

The North needs the Anti-Fraud bill. The South needs it. The East and West both need it. The next century will need

it. If honest men of both parties cannot be brought to cooperate in measures intended to prevent fraud in national elections, and if the great parties continue to accuse each other of stealing the presidency, such facts will go far to prove that the domination of political tricksters has begun and that the rights of the people are vanishing. The balance of our Federal government depends on purity of national elections. The right adjustment of the authority of state and nation cannot possibly be maintained without the decisive suppression of terrorism, fraud and gerrymander. Any political party that does not declare itself in favor of such suppression thereby stamps itself as an enemy of the people and their liberties.

2. A reorganization of politics in the South by the best educated class of Anglo-Americans and their safest friends is vastly to be desired and seems already to have made a hopeful beginning.

At a recent convention in South Carolina it was declared by representatives of the colored population that they had been greatly misunderstood, both at home and in the North, being judged by the depraved character of those who have presumed to represent that population in state and national Republican conventions.

"Our race," says the convention, "has come to be regarded as political merchandise, always offering to be sold to the highest bidder." "This conference, composed as it is of representative men of our race, declare that the intelligent and respectable element of the colored people is in no wise in sympathy with the few mountebanks who have been claiming to be the political leaders of our people. This little band of self-seekers do not represent our race, nor, indeed, do they represent anything but themselves and the odious record of the old organization. We denounce them for persistently pursuing a course that has caused Republicanism in this state to be regarded by all respectable people as being a thing too offensive for any decent man to come in contact with.

"We emphatically repudiate all claim of political custodianship which they may make in our name. We deem it to be a moral and political wrong for the national administration to appoint any of this old, unsavory committee to any office whatever, for the reason that the influence of such appointments, to say the least, is used to corrupt and debauch those of our race who affiliate with them. We are willing that

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