King Herod ordered all the young children in Bethlehem to be slain. Was it right for. the magistrates to execute the order? for the justices of the peace to kill the babies? for the fathers and mothers to do nothing against the massacre of those innocents? The person who wrote the account of it seems to have been of rather a different opinion.
King Henry the Eighth of England ordered that no man should read the English Bible. Reading the Bible in the kingdom was made a felony,—punishable with death, without benefit of clergy. Was it the duty of Dr Franklin's humble fathers to refuse to read their Bibles? They did read them, and your fathers and mine also, I trust. King Pharaoh, Darius, Herod, Henry the Eighth, could not make a wrong thing right. If a mechanic puts his wheel on the upper side of the dam, do you suppose the Merrimack is going to run up into New Hampshire to turn his mill ? Just as soon as the great God will undo his own moral work to accommodate a foolish and wicked legislator.
Suppose it was not the king, a one-headed legislator, but the majority of the nation, a legislator with many heads, who made the statutes, would that alter the case ? Once, when France was democratic, the democracy ordered the butchery of thousands of men and women. Was it a moral duty to massacre the people ?
I know very well it is commonly taught that it is the moral duty of the officers of government to execute every statute, and of the people to submit thereto, no matter how wicked the statute may be. This is the doctrine of the Supreme Court of the United States of America, of the executive of the United States; I know very well it is the doctrine of the majority of the legislature in both houses of Congress; it is the doctrine of the churches of commerce;—God be praised, it is not the doctrine of the churches of Christianity, and there are such in every denomination, in many a town; even in the great centres of commerce there are ministers of many denominations, earnest, faithful men, who declare openly that they will keep God's law, come what will of man's statute. This is practical piety; the opposite is practical atheism. I have known some speculative atheists. I abhor their doctrines; but the speculative atheists that I have known all recognize a law higher
