(Receive our blog posts in your email by clicking here. If the author links in this post are broken, please visit our Free PDF Library and click on the author’s page directly.)
Erasmus Darwin McMaster (sometimes spelled MacMaster) [1806-1866], son of Gilbert McMaster, was a notable leader in the Presbyterian Church In the United States of America (PCUSA). Raised in a Covenanter (Reformed Presbyterian) home, he had occasion once to speak of his thankfulness to God for such a heritage as a child of the covenant, along with his ecumenical (in the best sense of the word) desire to see all branches of the Church united as one:
God gave me my birth as a Presbyterian; and I am not ashamed of my ecclesiastical lineage. Without any invidious disparagement of other families of the great Christian commonwealth, I reckon the Presbyterian to be some of the best blood in Christendom. At any rate, the fact that I am born such, is in the predicable of inseperable accidents. I can’t help it. As I was born, so I expect to live and to die, a Presbyterian; - unless God should in mercy, before that event come to me, hasten the day, earnestly hoped for by all the good, when the watchmen upon the walls of Zion shall see eye to eye, and together lift up the voice; and when, as there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all, so there shall be visibly, as there is spiritually, but one body; and all these party names shall be sunk in the one catholic and glorious name, The church of the living God, the ground and pillar of the truth [Inaugural Address as President of Miami University, Ohio, 1845].
Born in Mercer, Pennsylvania, McMaster served the church in many ways - as pastor of the Ballston Centre Presbyterian Church in Ballston, New York (1831-1838); President of Hanover College, Indiana (1838-1845); President of Miami University, Ohio (1845-1849); Professor of Systematic Theology at the Presbyterian Seminary in New Albany, Indiana (later McCormick Theological Seminary) (1849-1858); and later, again, as Professor of Systematic Theology at the same seminary when located in Chicago (1866). More about his remarkable life can be found in L.J. Halsey’s A History of the McCormick Theological Seminary of the Presbyterian Church (1893); and in W.M. Glasgow’s History of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in America (1888), who wrote that “He was confessedly one of the great men of the Presbyterian Church in America….As a scholar, theologian and preacher, he was of the first rank.”
In 1849, a cholera epidemic was raging throughout the United States. Not long after former President James K. Polk died of the disease in June, President Zachary Taylor declared a national day of fasting and prayer to be observed on August 3, 1849. E.D. McMaster, in his final days as President of Miami University in Ohio, preached a sermon that day titled Impending Judgments Averted by Repentance. In that sermon — based on Jeremiah 18:1-10, 17 — he speaks not only of personal and family repentance needed, but also corporate and national repentance called for, before the Lord. And, further, McMaster argues that the Lord has promised in His Word mercy, rather than judgment, for those who do personally and corporately repent.
At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; If that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them (Jer. 18:7-8).
Because to the Lord Jesus Christ, as a reward for his faithfulness, is given, in his mediatorial office of King, authority over all things (Matt. 28:18), all families, all nations, all societal associations, which are created and established by God, are encompassed under that authority, and have a duty to “Kiss the Son” (Ps. 2:12), that is, to confess subjection and loyalty to Him. This is the argument made by McMaster.
Pre-eminently is it true, that when God establishes a people, either as a Church, or as a nation, or as an aggregation of individuals bound together in the various relations of the society of comity, and associations of business and of pleasure, under peculiar advantages, especially in respect to the knowledge and means of the true religion, he claims a peculiar property in and dominion over them, that they shall subserve the interests of his kingdom….
And is not this equally true of us as a people? Has not God established us under peculiar advantages? I cannot wait to recount all his gracious dealings toward us, in our origin, in all the circumstances connected with our planting as a people, the achievement of our independence as a nation, the establishment of our institutions, political, ecclesiastical, and social, and the manifold blessings which, with so bountiful a hand, he has poured upon us through our whole unexampled career of prosperity. It is not true that God has signally marked us out by the bestowment of peculiar advantages, physical, intellectual, moral, social, political, and religious; especially in the possession of Christianity in its truest and purest forms, untrammeled by the commandments and ordinances of men? Surely must we say, he hath not dealt so with any other people. And is not all this that he may claim a special and peculiar property in and dominion over us as a people, and as a Church in the nation, that in all the different characters, capacities, and relations which we sustain, we shall exist, shall live, shall spend our being and be spent, in carrying through our own land and over the earth the triumphs of that heavenly reign by which the world shall be reclaimed to God, and to true happiness, honour and glory? Confused and mistaken ideas about the peculiar nature of the Israelitish Theocracy, so common even among writers of reputation, may perplex the minds of the ill-instructed and undiscriminating, and strengthen the hands of the wicked in seeking to deny and cast off the dominion of God and his Anointed. Other men will do as they choose, will believe as they choose, about this. For one, I believe and assert, that God’s Christ is as truly this day king of Ohio as he was ever the king of Judea; as truly the king of this whole Confederacy of States as he was ever the king of the twelve tribes of Israel. Say who will, “Who is Jehovah, that we should serve him? who is lord over us?” — who will, “We will not have this man to reign over us:” Jehovah, he is God; and this is the will of the Father, that all men honour the Son even as they honour the Father.
III. When a people peculiarly favored of God, especially in respect to the knowledge and means of the true religion, by a departure from God into sin are failing to accomplish, in the promotion of his kingdom, the end for which he has raised them up, then the destroying judgments of God are impending over that people.
McMaster goes on to discuss distinctions between the chastening of the Lord intended to correct and destroying judgments.
It is of these calamities, which are the execution of Heaven’s vindicatory justice, God’s destroying judgments because of sin, that we here speak. These, we say, are impending over a people, who, peculiarly favoured of the Lord, turn away from him, transgress his law, refuse his dominion, and so are failing to accomplish, in the promotion of his kingdom, the end for which he has raised them up. Much more is this so, if such a people are, not failing merely to accomplish the end for which God has planted and built them up, — but acting in opposition to that end; setting themselves to counterwork, to thwart, as much as in them lies, to defeat that end….
The plan and obvious principle upon which God proceeds in this is, that Jehovah is God the Lord; he has made all things for his own glory; and he will have service of his creatures, or he will reject and cast them away; he will have fruit of the work of his hands, or he will destroy it. So we are taught in the parable of the fig-tree; If it bear fruit, well: if not, cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground? Such is the method in which God deals with a sinful people.
After laying out the principles by which God deals with nations in particular, McMaster brings home the point that the people of Ohio, and the the people of the United States, who — having been established by God under peculiar advantages, especially in respect to the knowledge and means of the true religion,” and been the recipients of the gracious blessings of God in so many ways — were at that time experiencing the effects of the dreaded cholera, were called upon “as a people, in all relations, individual, domestic, social, political, ecclesiastical, explicitly, truly, and practically to recognize both God and his Christ, and to enter into and prosecute that which is the appointed end of our being as a people.”
McMaster highlights in this sermon the fact that the Constitution of the United States, by a great and grievous omission, neglects to honor God and, specifically, Jesus Christ, as King over this nation. He also highlights the prevailing (at that time) sin of slavery that both existed and was allowed by that same Constitution. He further raised the question of the morality of the Mexican-American War. But especially McMaster addressed the prevalence of idolatry and superstition across the land and in the churches of 19th century America. Taking no delight in pointing out the sins of his own people, McMaster nevertheless implored his hearers to consider how blessed they were, and how greatly they had, as a people, departed from the commandments of the Lord, and how great their need of repentance was that a great and weighty judgment, which was hanging over their heads at present, might yet be averted.
…the Rule according to which God deals with a people in such a case is; that Repentance shall avert his threatened judgments; perseverance in disobedience to his voice shall upon them his judgments in sure and terrible destruction….
This turning of a people to God must be by them in all the different characters, capacities, and relations which they sustain, and in which they have sinned in departing from him. Individuals in concerns private and personal, families in concerns domestic, churches in concerns ecclesiastical, states and nations in concerns political and national, — all, — all, in their several places, capacities and relations, must return unto Him whose they are, and who claims an absolute and unlimited property in and dominion over them, and yield themselves in their whole being to receive the law of God in Christ, and to promote the ends of his kingdom. In this course there is safety. It is no where else to be found. God is, indeed, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness. But he is God, and his honour he will not suffer to be taken from him.
The rod of his anger is a voice calling to America today, and it did in 1849. It calls us to repentance, corporate and personal, and such repentance is the only means by which we may find refuge from distress - in the ark of God, which is Jesus Christ. McMaster’s 1849 sermon is not a short read, but it is a valuable exposition of Biblical principles and analysis of a situation not unlike that which America faces in 2020. Take time to study this call to repentance on every level with prayerful consideration. God is indeed glorified in the repentance of his people, for true repentance on the part of his people, as a rule, leads to mercy on the part of our gracious God.
