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Only by a general obedience to these shall ever be brought on that happy state of the world, so glowingly depicted by the Hebrew Prophets, and the hopeful of other nations, when there shall be no more oppression, nor violence, nor wrong.
To arouse, guide and strengthen men to keep these commandments more perfectly at all times, at any hazard of property, of reputation, and even of life, was the great end and aim of the ministry, of the life, and of the death of Jesus Christ.
Now if, as we believe, the authority of Jesus Christ was divine; if he was sanctified and sent into the world by God, to declare unto individuals and nations the principles of true righteousness; and by the power of his truth to make them free from sin and death, then it is obvious that there can be no power on earth that is authorized to contravene and set at naught his commandments. It used to be claimed and allowed throughout Christendom, as elsewhere, that kings reigned by a divine right, and that subjects were bound to obey them in all things, as the vicegerents of the Almighty. But that assumption has subsided in every part of the christian world; and in our country it is repudiated utterly. Here it was laid down by the founders of our Republic, as a fundamental principle, that all the powers of a just government are derived from, must have been delegated by, the governed. Now then, the governed cannot commit to their officials, any right, any authority, which they do not themselves possess. The governed possess no right, they have no authority to disobey the commandments of God, therefore the government can receive no authority to require any unrighteousness.
This proposition will commend itself to you as incontrovertibly true, when you consider the significant fact, that the two greatest commandments of Christ were laid upon man, not as a party to any civil compact, or as a constituent of any social arrangement, but upon man as an individual—a being sustaining such relations, on the one hand, to God who made him, and, on the other hand to those fellow beings whom the Creator has made like him, as do obviously, naturally give rise to the two classes of obligations, imposed in these two seminal, all comprehensive precepts. In each case Jesus speaks to the individual; and he appeals to the very nature of every human being, on which rests the obligations to feel and do what he here enjoins.
