‘"The
Secretary stood alone.
Modern degeneracy had not reached him."’ The tribute paid to a British statesman has been as fairly earned by an American prelate.
Of all that august and once conservative body, the
Episcopal Bishops of the
United States, a minority alone is left adhering to its principles of keeping aloof from the whirlpool of State affairs; and of that minority,
Hopkins, the Hon-looking and Hon-hearted
Bishop of
Vermont, stands alone in an open and lofty protest and remonstrance against the late departure of his brethren from their traditional and Christian policy.
The Kingdom of
Christ was pronounced by its Divine Founder to be not of this world.
Yet, from the very first, even its sincerest disciples longed to behold in their Master a temporal
Prince.
It required his constant admonitions and exhortations to banish this delusion.
Nor did even this accomplish the object.
It was not till He had scaled his mission with his blood, and till the fires of persecution purged from their hearts the dress of all earthly passion, that their souls were weaned from the hopes and ambitions of worldly dominions.
It was only amid the flames of martyrdom that the form of the Son of God walked in all its glory among the children of the
Church, and that she realized how much nobler to a Christian is the Cross by winch he ascends to Heaven than the glided trappings which make him a captive at the car of earthly power.
But when persecution passed away, how soon was this sublime lesson forgotten!
All the troubles and disasters which followed the departure of the
Church from the emphatic counsels of her founder, in hankering after temporal authority, are written upon every page of secular and ecclesiastical authority for many dismal centuries.
This is not the fault of Christianity, but of that defective and fallen nature of man, which, even under the best influences, it is so hard to raise from the dust and plume for a heavenward flight.
There was but one righteous man in
Sodom, and there seems to be but one left among the clergy of the
North who comprehends the true genius of Christianity.
We are not surprised to see him denounced and abused by the
Northern press, as any man must be who dares to speak the truth and withstand the evil passions of the multitude.
But the whole civilized world will do him honor, and his name will one day be reverenced by those who are now heaping reproaches upon his head.
We had long known that
Bishop Hopkins was the ablest of the
Northern Bishops, and that, if there was one among them more capable than any other of giving wise counsel in political affairs, he was the man. But he comprehends the true character of his mission, and has exhibited a moral courage which is more admirable than his lofty intellectual endowments.
Upon what times have we fallen, when, in the most conservative organization in the
United States, only one man can be found who takes the stand of
Bishop Hopkins and refuses to bow the knee to Baal?
