God in Government

True loyalty implies service. Man, be he peasant, prince, or king, must have a master. However great his powers, there are others greater; however high his authority, it is never the highest. Like the stars, he rules best by obeying; like the moon, he must yield his glory to another, though a sea of applauding humanity follow in his wake. To whom, then, belongs this meed of highest honor? Whence comes the primal right of any to rule? Where rests the ultimate will for all to heed? These are queries as old as history, as intricate as society, as vital as government itself; to the solving of which reason has loaned its bright intuitions, experience has set its lamp of reflection, war has waged its sharp arbitrament. And yet the answers given have been as varied as God in Government. the ends sought or the means employed to reach them. According to one theorist, imver gives the seal to all authority; another affirms that wealth, wisdom, or executive tact hrings the right to rule ; another believes in the " divine right " of kings, and knows no stable throne outside the royal line ; while another still centres absolute sovereignty in the social compact, and prays that a "government of the people, by the people, and for the people," may not perish from the earth. This last theory, born of reason, and bred in the school of patriotism, — the bane of dynasties and the pest of tyrants, but the glory of republics and the pet of freemen, — so dear to every American heart, and so fraught with blessings for this goodly land, is, nevertheless, liable to perversion, and needs the check of wise conditions. In our strong revulsion from hereditary rule and arbitrary power, with an intense hate of everything that binds conscience or limits constitutional rights, with an inborn love of civil liberty and social equality, there is danger of overestimating the power of the popular will, and of robbing God that man may rule. As a check to this tendency, and in explanation God in Government, of the true relations between divine and human authority, the passage of Scripture of which our text is a part has great significance. In this inspired "Magna Charta " the rights of the citizen, the State, and the great Sovereign are fully guaranteed through a harmonious adjustment of the less to the greater, and of all to the greatest. Civil law is here honored by divine sanctions; obedience is made a matter of conscience; tribute is put down as a test of loyalty; penalties are applied on the principle of benevolence; right government is ranked as a religious duty; those that legislate, and those that execute, are ordained alike as with the laying on of apostolic hands, the ministers of Him who rules supreme.

Being permitted to address those thus highly commissioned, I can think of no more fitting theme for discussion in this grave presence than Qod in Government^ or the Tlieocratic Element in the Social Compact. I. As a premise to the conclusions that may follow, we shall need to consider : first, the absolute supremacy of the Most High, and his inherent right to regulate all government. Jehovah has never yet abdicated his throne in 2 ■ ■ / 10 God in Government. favor of any royal line, or bound his will by the vote of a majority. Deity cannot give his prerogatives to humanity. The finite must be limited by the Infinite ; the created, by the Creator. model outranks its maker; no shadow is independent of the light; no system has an organic unity distinct from ultimate principles; no forms of life determine their own functions, or set bounds to their own existence. This has been done for them by Him who is the life, on a plan devised before the foundations of the world were laid. If, then, man has liberty, it must be in law; if he has authority, it is delegated, not developed; if he rules, it is as by sufferance, and that not of his subjects beneath simply, but also of his Sovereign above. From this germinal truth all good governments spring. Man rules liimself best when he heeds the restraints of the higher law. His free agency, although involving a choice between right and wrong, is yet conditioned by moral motives, which make it imperative that he do the right. Conscience will give him no peace until he obeys her mandates. That inner sense of duty which the elder Adams called " the minister plenipotentiary of God Almighty in the breast," may not be God in Government. slighted, save at the cost of anarchy in the heart. "When our first parents turned a deaf ear to that authoritative voice, it was only to hear the din of discordant emotions, and feel the friction of opposing motives. No more placid repose in conscious worthiness for them; no more complacent meditations unmarred by sharp compunctions; no more free activity, save in the tether of chafing restraints. Primeval blessedness was bartered when righteous law was broken. Paradise became a pandemonium at the loss of moral rectitude.

Yet the point to be emphasized here, is the fact that the first transgression was a social sin against a system divinely arranged. There was collusion in guilt between the unhappy pair. Society, as well as the individual, suffered by the revolt in Eden. God's government, as well as man's moral nature, was involved in that lapse from loyalty. He framed the constitution of the garden Commonwealth. He adjusted the legal relations between the two citizens and himself. He put the permissions, the prohibitions, and the penalties in the first unwritten statutes. He devised the marital laws, the secular industries, and the civil service of the primeval state. …