No argument is necessary to show that he who feels himself accountable to God, will be but slightly constrained by the bonds of party influence. So far as he regards the ends of a party as accordant with the true ends of government, which in some cases may be nothing more than the truth, and in others nothing _less_--his sense of religious obligation will of course not interfere with his diligent prosecution of those ends. But at that critical point, where ends zeal for party, for the sake of the common weal, and begins zeal for party, for the party's sake, and for ambition's sake, there a sense of paramount obligation, like the magnetic power, will still the whispers of selfishness, and counteract the tendencies of party commitment. The Christian politician knows no party but the party of patriots, or, if that party be divided, he seeks not the building up of either fragment for its own sake--but the building up on the best and most hopeful, or if need be, on the ruins of both, the great fabric of public welfare. Who does not desire to see a deep sense of allegiance to one who is our Master, pervading the leaders and the adherents of the great political parties, into which it is so common and perhaps necessary, for nations to be divided?--under such an influence, how might excesses be restrained, needless repellances be neutralized, and how soon, instead of fierce bands of brethren gathered in distinct and opposing array, like the dark clouds of summer, meeting over our heads, might we see the beauty and the strength of party organization, without its wide severance and its deadly hate, like the rainbow, which is not more beautiful in the variety of its colors, than in the grace with which the divine Painter has blended them.
It will be denied by none, of whatever religious or political faith, that public morals are, under a government like ours, the life-blood of national strength and safety. The day that shall behold us a nation of gamblers, or duelists, or profane swearers or drunkards, or Sabbath-breakers--will be the day of our political death. Armies, and navies, and enterprise, and numbers, with a sound hereditary government, may for a time give prosperity to a dissolute immoral people. But in a government like ours, where the laws and the administration of law, are as quickly and as certainly affected by the popular sentiment, owing to frequent elections, as the sunbeams are reflected from the summer clouds, prosperity cannot survive morality a single day. And who can tell how important, in this view, it is, that our public men should be public models of private virtue!