Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 66:263 (Jul 1909)
Article: The Partnership Of Organized Society
Author: Burnett T. Stafford

BSac 66:263 (July 1909) p. 498

The Partnership Of Organized Society

Reverend Burnett T. Stafford

Social and political principles confined to paper are powerless; when incorporated in personality, they become the moving and constructive energies of history. Character makes common men heroes when geniuses fail. Character creates nations more than political resolutions or legislative assemblies do. Nations rally round their strong characters in the midst of distress and its threatened confusion. Unselfish character, with honesty to the truth, in the long run rules the world and fixes the lines of progress. And so it has always been that every monument for the perpetuation of social gains has been inspired and sustained by a man who has been the living embodiment of the cause. Such an one was Julius Caesar. He saw clearly and felt keenly the need of ending the chaos of the Republic. For the end of preserving Roman society he laid the foundations for the authoritative order of the Empire. Beyond question, Washington, above all other patriots, embodied those principles of protest and constructive freedom which were involved in the war for American Independence. It is just as clear that in Abraham Lincoln lived the ambition of the hoping and aspiring millions to keep their self-respect free from the assault of the ancient crime of might making right.

These and all the other benefactors of mankind have not

BSac 66:263 (July 1909) p. 499

been the mere products of their environment. They have grown to greatness and power in spite of it. They have conquered the many hereditary enemies and have riveted fetters on the fiends of envy and selfishness. The histories usually begin with the statement that Lincoln was of humble origin. Humble is a word of comparison, both in grammar and life. Its meaning changes with the generations. One or two centuries ago, the people of humble condition in the South were the small planters with a few slaves, above them were the rich planters, beneath them were the slaveless whites. Their condition was pitiable in the extreme. There was no social commerce between them and their white neighbors.

In the early days of this country the soil was the only assured source of wealth. The minerals of the mountains waited for the miner, and the abundant sea food of its shores was in small demand by the sparse population. There was much rich land in Virginia between tide-water and mountain. The insatiate demands of slave agriculture required all of this. If a poor man had established a clear title to a tract of this, direct and indirect methods were used to effect his removal by storebill and mortgage. He was forced back onto the “thinner soils,” and his prospect of betterment was darkened proportionately. His children grew up in ignorance...