Piety and Patriotism
My son, feartliou the Lord and the king: and meddle not with them that are given to change.” — xxiv. 21.
‘;HERE are two kings and two kingdoms in Scotland,” said James Melville to his royal master; and our forefathers sturdily maintained the maxim through a long series of troubles, until the tyrants fell and liberty triumphed. The supreme authority of God, and the subordinate authority of human government may both have fullest scope in the same country, and at the same time. Godliness and loyalty, like brethren dwelling together in unity, may possess the same heart, and the heart is all the nobler that these twin inhabitants have made it their home. Those who cherish both principles together fulfil best the specific duties which belong to each. The Covenanters and Puritans were not faultless men. By aid of the light which we now enjoy, some of their measures may be corrected and improved: but it is too late to make them better now, and it is a pity that our philosophers who see their faults so clearly when they are in their graves, had not been present in the conflict to give them counsel. In the main, those men were right, and God has blessed their labours. They were the honour of their country, and have proved the benefactors of their race. Those who laugh most loudly at their faults, have in secret no sympathy with their virtues. Looking outward at the present experience of other nations, and upward through the history of our own, patriots, rejoicing in achieved liberty, may well tremble yet as they try to picture what our condition might have been at this day, if God had not raised up rank after rank of religious and loyal men — a break-water to receive the waves of combined spiritual and temporal despotism, and ward them from our shores.
The fear of the Lord and the fear of the king are in themselves great and interesting subjects, but at present I ask the reader only to glance at their order and relations. I speak not of godliness and loyalty separately and in all their extent, but only of their mutual bearing upon each other. Submission of heart and life to the King Eternal overrides and controls, yet does not injure, a citizen’s allegiance to an earthly ruler. This principle lies deep, and spreads far. It reaches all lands, and runs down through all generations. The word is, “Fear the Lord and the king;” the fear of the Lord must go first, but the fear of the king may follow. The supreme does not crush, it protects the subordinate. Although the heart is full of piety, there is plenty of room for patriotism. Nay more, patriotism nowhere gets full scope except in a heart that is already pervaded by piety. These elements are like the two chief constituent gases of the atmosphere. The space which envelopes the globe is full of one gas, and it is also full of another. To discharge the nitrogen would not make the space capable of containing more of the oxygen. The absence of the one constituent destroys the quality but does not enlarge the quantity of the other. Take away godliness, and your loyalty, without being increased in amount, is seriously deteriorated in kind: take away loyalty, and you run great risk of spoiling the purity of the remanent godliness. God’s works are all good: his combinations are all beneficial. If we attempt to amend, we shall certainly mar them.
Obedience to rulers is a positive command. It is binding everywhere and always, until it is taken off by the same authority that imposed it. Men are not permitted to determine for themselves how far they shall go in obedience to magistrates. Such a principle would produce universal anarchy, and is not found in the Bible. Go forward in your allegiance to “the powers that be,” not until you think you have gone far enough, but until you come upon the law of God, claiming the space in front for Himself, and absolutely forbidding your advance. Go forward with the fear of the king, unless and until the fear of the Lord cross your path like a wall.
There is room for every effort by the citizens to get laws amended and grievances redressed, but no permission given in the Scriptures to rise in rebellion with the view of achieving any temporal good. Resistance is not prescribed as a remedy when the magistrate invades your rights; that terrrible resource is held in reserve for one terrible contingency — when the magistrate invades the rights of God. If any one, looking from the political view-point, should say this concedes only a limited measure of liberty; it is not my business to supply an answer. My duty is to point out what the Scriptures teach. To their authority I fondly cling; for the subject on independent grounds of philosophy is too deep for me. If I am cast abroad upon abstract speculation for the grounds and limits of a subject’s obedience, I am in a sea where I can feel no bottom and see no shore. No feasible rule can be laid down, except that which the Scriptures contain. Let any man try to write down a scale showing when and wherefore private persons may lawfully resist public authority, and he will soon be convinced that the task is hopeless. Every attempt to define the liberty of rebellion will be found to open a door to anarchy.
In point of fact very little of the liberty that now exists in the world has been achieved by violent resistance to governments because of oppression in temporal things. Wherever civil liberty is large and lasting, it has grown slowly by successive accretions, the effect of peaceful effort: or, if it has been obtained wholesale, it will probably be found that the tyrant government fell and broke itself upon a resisting people in the effort to usurp the authority which belongs to God. Violent revolutions, although provoked by injustice and oppression on the part of princes, have seldom secured and consolidated the liberty of the people.
The condition of the European continent now, and its history during the last ten years, lead us back, in the interests of patriotism as well as religion, to the very letter of the scriptural rule, “Fear the Lord and the king, and meddle not with them that are given to change.” It is true that the people have been oppressed by their rulers; but it is also true that they have gained nothing by rebellion. We can observe these two facts; but we cannot do much more. The subject is too deep for us. God in his word condemns all tyranny on the part of princes, but he does not there prescribe an armed rising of the people as the method of redressing their wrongs. He retains the retribution in his own hand, and permits it to fall in his own time on the head of the guilty. Men who intelligently fear God, and make his word their
49 i PIETY AND PATRIOTISM.
law, while they unite with every patriot in efforts to improve the condition of the people and the laws of the state, are disposed to bear wrong when their temporal rights only are invaded, and to reserve the ultimate remedy of resistance for those laws of man that would compel them to violate the law of God.
Among enlightened Christians loyalty is more than a negative principle. It is not enough for them that they refrain from resisting constituted authority; they learn from the Scriptures to be “subject not only for wrath but for conscience’ sake.” Fear of the king is comparatively a feeble sentiment; alone it cannot long withstand assailing temptations. The fear of the Lord is a mightier principle; it is its nature, wherever it lives and thrives, to strike its roots down into the deepest places of a human heart. In the Scriptures the feebler force is made fast to the stronger, and so carried through in trying times. Loyalty is most secure where it has godliness to lean upon.
The Popedom has appropriated these doctrines to itself, and employed them for its own ends. The principle of Melville is adopted at Rome: the priests teach most earnestly that allegiance to a temporal sovereign is limited, and controlled by a prior and superior spiritual claim. This truth perverted has become the main-stay of popish power. They adopt the divine revealed law, “Fear the Lord and the king,” and foist an old Italian priest, the chief or the tool of a college of cardinals, into the place of the living God. The nations, with their eyes put out, grind like Samson in the mill of these lordly priests. The Romanists are accustomed to take up the arguments wherewith we defend the truth, and employ them to support their own lie. Hence, when the ancient war-cry of our forefathers, “We must obey God rather than man,” began to rise in a crisis of our own day, the politicians recognised a wonted sound, and exclaimed, Here is Popery over again. Yes; the doctrine of the Covenanters and of the Papists is the same. Both maintain and teach that a supreme allegiance is due to One Supreme, and that obedience to human governments comes in under it, and only in as far as may be consistent with it. Up to this point they agree; but in one thing they differ. Those accord the supreme allegiance to God, according to the rule of the Scriptures; these accord it to the Pope, as advised by the dark and selfish counsels of the junto that surround him. If oui legislators bad an eye to take in the breadth and depth of that distinction, it would be better for themselves and the nation.
The popish doctors have a pleasant coating wherewith they cover their bitter pill; they teach that it is spiritual authority only that is claimed by the Pope, not temporal. Thus the shipmaster, with a leer in his eye and the helm in his hand, tells the remonstrant horseman on deck that he may mount his own steed and ride in any direction he pleases. When persons or peoples embark on board the Pope’s ship, they may, like little children, play at temporal liberty, by chasing each other from side to side, or from stem to stern; but the wary pilot has them under his power, and will carry them and theirs into any port he chooses.
A British Christian owning God, according to his word, as supreme ruler of the conscience, and knowing no authority on earth superior to the Queen, is a safe subject and a useful citizen: a Papist, settled on our soil and enjoying the benefits of our constitution, sworn to yield primary allegiance to a foreign prince in all that relates to spiritual interests, and conceding absolutely to that prince the right to define what spiritual interests are, maybe in his own character personally a good man, but cannot in any crisis be counted a loyal subject. The difference between these two is as great as the difference between light and darkness. If it were generally perceived, and practically acknowledged, it would* go far to right the labouring ship of the State, and prepare her for meeting the baffling winds and deceitful currents of the times.
We do not, however, expect light to arise on the political horizon: we must look in another direction for the dawn. Although Popery is the greatest tyrant, and the chief support of other tyrannies, the love of civil liberty has not light enough to perceive the danger nor strength enough to strike the blow. Civil liberty is indeed in principle and practice against the Popedom, but it is like an infant in a giant’s hands. The Popedom is a “spiritual wickedness in high places:” terrestial patriotism stands on a lower platform, and cannot reach its mighty foe.
Political liberalism, though it desire a good thing, has’ not strength to win it. It lacks pith and bottom. Popery is too many for it. The great victories over the world and its god are won, not by policy, but by faith. It is “not by might, nor by p;.wer, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord.”
’s (Harirett.