little of external control. But with the growth of our country, and the increase of our large cities, in which moral force no longer avails to maintain order and secure public safety, there are occasionally outbreaks of lawless violence, striking at the very existence of society itself. How can such proceedings be stopped, and the rights of society secured? This is a very serious question, involving the very existence, or rather the possibility of republican institutions.

We have, we ought to thank God, no standing army. Our government consists of the people themselves. A military force is enrolled, which, for the time being, becomes a part of the government. It is indeed the executive power, to which society delegates the office of seeing that the laws are observed. But a mob assembles, and commences to violate the rights of person or property, the executive force is called out, and they and the mob are brought face to face. Here is the great crisis. It is vital to the very existence of society, that the military force should prevail, and the mob be put down. The mob can not be put down without taking life. There is naturally an awful pause. There is a reluctance to shed blood, and to take human life. Some of the rioters are the brothers or sons of the military, or at least their neighbors and acquaintance.

And there is behind these feelings a doubt of the religious propriety of the act. There is written in the New Testament, which all Christians recognise as the standard of duty, such a precept as this, "Resist not evil," but "overcome evil with good." "Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also." Is this precept to be literally obeyed without any limitation? Then those weapons are not to be used, and the military are to look quietly on and see their fellow citizens massacred and their city given to the flames. There is a conflict, then, between the duties of the Christian and the citizen, and Christianity must be considered as forbidding that self-defence which is necessary to the very existence of society. The common sense of mankind has decided, the necessity of the case has decided, that this precept must be, like many other universal propositions in the Scriptures, interpreted with certain limitations. This is evidently the case with many other commandments, such for instance as this, "Take no thought for to-morrow;" or this, "If any man come to me, and hate not his father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters, yea and his own life also, he can not be my disciple." That such universal precepts require limitation, we have not only the reason of the case to assure us, but other and opposite pre

cepts. To the first, then, we oppose the following declaration: "If any provide not for his own, specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel." Such provision can not be made without taking thought for the morrow. To the latter we oppose the declaration of the apostle, that one of the worst obliquities of the heathen was to be "without natural affection," that is, without love to father, mother, sisters and brothers.

These conflicting precepts must be allowed to modify each other, and we must consider Christ to forbid in the latter case, not natural affection, but that degree and exercise of it, which would lead a man, out of attachment to his natural kindred, to prove false to his obligations as a Christian. In the former case it is an over anxiety, not a proper care for the future, that is forbidden. So I believe we are justified in interpreting the precept, "Resist not evil," as forbidding not self-defence, but revenge. The very animals are provided with the weapons and the instincts of self-defence. Man has been provided with them too, and reason and the moral sense are given him to control him in their exercise, but not to paralyze and destroy them. God would not have given that

which is never to be exercised.

To throw light upon this whole subject, and

to aid you in obtaining clearer convictions of your duties, I would propose the passage of

Scripture which I read to you at the commencement of this discourse, as a modification of that general precept, "Resist not evil." It is, as you perceive, a general summary of the fundamental principles of civil government, and the reciprocal duties of both rulers and subjects. I shall go over it, clause by clause, and deduce from it those practical principles which in my judgment it embodies.

Go

"Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers, for there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God." vernment is a divine institution;—not a human contrivance, instituted without necessity by human caprice. It is not an usurpation of a few over the many, which may be dispensed with, whenever the many are disposed to throw it off. It always must exist in some form or other. God wills the existence of man upon the earth, and he wills him to exist, not in the state of solitude, but of society. To live at all in society, man must have certain rights of person and property. Without them he will not labor, nor can he enjoy what he earns. Without them he must be robbed and starve. He has a right to life, and of course a right to defend himself. Men can not live together without guarantying to each other these mutual

rights, and government is nothing more than the agency which they employ in fulfilling this guarantee.

But these rights are sacred, not only human. but divine, and to respect them is not only a social, but a religious duty. Nothing comes more immediately from God, than the instinct of property and the instinct of self-preservation, and, reciprocally, nothing is felt by the perpetrator to be more wrong than any invasion of the rights of person or property. Hence it is that the apostle calls government a divine institution. It is created to protect that which God has made most sacred upon earth. Those who watch over that which is most sacred, have a sacred office. Hence it is that, further on in the text, the ruler is called "a minister of God." He does not rule by divine right, in the sense which despots have claimed, of lineal descent, but he is clothed by society with the majesty of justice, and is thus the instrument by which God administers that immortal principle.

These things being established, there follow certain duties of the subject, such as obedience to the government. "Whosoever, therefore, resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God; and they that resist, shall receive unto themselves damnation," that is to say, by the very fact of resistance they put themselves in