A Discourse for the Time, delivered January 4, 1852 in the First Congregational Unitarian Church — Story, Setting & Ideas

Diction of Duty and Necessity

Furness's language repeatedly stresses compulsion. He declares that 'a necessity is upon us' and that citizens 'must take our lot as we find it.' The verb 'must' recurs, as when he writes that the visiting Hungarian leader Kossuth 'must see' the truth about American slavery. This diction of obligation is not abstract; it is tied to concrete social fabric: 'such is the nature of our social fabric; drawing all the power of the government from the people, from the individuals that compose the people, that it is made the direct and plain duty of every man and woman of us to know about those things, which are public.' The repetition of 'people' and 'individuals' reinforces a democratic theology where no one lives to themselves.

The Rhetoric of Contrast and Irony

Furness builds his argument through pointed contrasts. He juxtaposes the 'most brutal and ruthless military revolution' in France with the 'quiet' that some Americans wish for. He sets the 'great authority of our Declaration of Independence' against the reality that Americans are 'clinging with such desperation to Oppression, as if it were the very life and soul of their Union.' The irony is sharpest when he describes how the Hungarian leader Kossuth, who had 'expressed his determination not to meddle with our domestic institutions,' finds that 'our domestic institutions threaten to meddle with him.' This inversion—the non-interferer interfered with—underscores Furness's claim that silence is impossible.

The Figure of Kossuth as a Rhetorical Device

Furness devotes substantial attention to the visiting Hungarian revolutionary Lajos Kossuth, not as a biographical subject but as a rhetorical foil. He speculates on Kossuth's perceptions: 'He looks, I believe, upon American Slavery as a thing, which we, ourselves, are at this moment busily engaged in abolishing.' Furness then corrects this imagined view: 'He does not yet know that we have not the will to settle it.' The sermon uses Kossuth's anticipated disillusionment to indict American hypocrisy. Furness even quotes Kossuth's allusion to Hamlet—'there are more things in heaven and earth, than were dreamed of in my philosophy'—to dramatize the gap between European expectation and American reality.

Structure: From News to Exegesis to Prophecy

The discourse moves through three distinct phases. It begins with the French news as a 'text' for the sermon, then turns to the epigraph from Romans 14:7—'None of us liveth to himself'—as the scriptural anchor. But Furness does not linger in exegesis; he quickly applies the verse to contemporary American politics, especially slavery. The final section becomes a kind of prophecy, predicting that Kossuth 'will—he must see how the matter stands; and he will declare, most fervently do I trust, what he cannot help seeing.' This structure—current event, scripture, application, forecast—gives the sermon an urgent, forward-looking momentum, as if Furness is trying to force history to conform to his moral logic.

The Voice of the Preacher as Public Intellectual

Furness's authorial voice is that of a pastor who is also a political analyst. He uses the first-person plural ('we,' 'our') to include his congregation in a collective moral responsibility. Yet he also speaks with individual authority: 'For myself, I cannot help thinking...' He is unafraid to name specific actors—the French military, American slaveholders, Kossuth—and to assign motive. His tone is measured but passionate, logical but indignant. The sermon's power lies in its refusal to separate religious duty from civic engagement; Furness insists that the pulpit is a place for confronting 'those great questions that agitate nations.'

Readers approaching this discourse should attend to how Furness weaves together scriptural citation, contemporary journalism, and political analysis. The sermon is not a systematic theology but a timely intervention, shaped by the events of late 1851 and early 1852. Its value lies in its specific diction—words like 'necessity,' 'duty,' 'must'—and its rhetorical structure, which moves from European crisis to American complicity. Furness's use of Kossuth as a mirror for American conscience is particularly revealing of the sermon's method: it holds up an outsider's perspective to force self-examination.

I came back to Furness’s sermon, struck by how he kept insisting that private faith must touch public life—that the pew and the street were never truly separate. The weight of that obligation lingered with me yesterday, and it led me, almost without thinking, to Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) — Reading Notes. Those quieter, plainer pages felt like a different kind of pulse, gentler but still insistent on the same holy ache.