LEGAL ANARCHY.

LET EVERY SOUL BE SUBJECT UNTO THE HIGHER POWERS.- Romans xiii. 1. WHETHER IT BE RIGHT IN THE SIGHT OF GOD TO HEARKEN UNTO YOU MORE THAN Unto God, JUDGE YE. - Acts iv. 19,

THE Christian theory itself is able to solve this apparent contradiction in Christian teaching; and we shall find that it does this without damage to its reverence for human authority on the one hand, or for individual conscience on the other. Nothing can be plainer than the injunctions. which we find in the New Testament to render obedience to an existing government, and to the powers with which it clothes certain persons in the name of law and justice. These injunctions are laid down without exceptions, and we cannot avoid perceiving that they are meant to contain a universal rule that guides human conduct through all the various developments of human government. And yet nothing also can be plainer than that the Apostles themselves sometimes disobeyed human ordinances, whenever these conflicted with an overpowering sense of individual duty, and God seemed more clearly established in conscience than He did in law. They did not shrink from taking the consequences of this disobedience; they were content to suffer violence rather than to violate the religion

which clothed them with their great commission. Their doctrine supports the majesty and sufficiency of law, as the representative of Divine justice and the preserver of rights and order. Their conduct sometimes appeals from law to the divine fountain itself, and they excite within us a consciousness that an absolute principle of the Christian religion is a higher law, as many times as human authority contradicts it. The Apostles do not serve us with a table of exceptions to law; our knowledge that they ever thought it necessary to make exceptions is only implied in their doctrine, though sometimes expressed in their conduct. They proclaim the great principles of religious justice, and assume that human law shall labor to represent and embody them. Holding, therefore, themselves a Christian theory of law, they unqualifiedly teach obedience to authority.

And this is the principle which reduces the apparent contradiction between their doctrine and their conduct; this principle, that their idea of law was a thoroughly Christian one. It also explains, in a manner entirely consistent with our private sense of right, all the passages which counsel so strongly submission to the higher powers, that is, to existing modes of human authority. If you take those passages in their connection, you will be struck to see how they all contain the Apostles' idea that law itself is righteous, and a terror only to the evil-doer. If it had appeared to them that the general tendency of human development were to make the law itself an evil-doer, we should not find them teachers of loyalty. But as they take for granted that the human mind is making a providential effort to embody the Divine justice in governments and laws, notwithstanding the disturbances of human pas

sion, they proclaim that men cannot enjoy the blessings of safety and progress unless they heartily support this system of law, which seeks to develop and protect the natural and social rights of man.

Let us examine some of these passages, to show how clearly they contain this principle. "The powers that be are ordained of God: whosoever, therefore, resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God." But how does this appear to be the case? It appears, "for rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? Do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same. For he is the minister of God to thee for good." What a union of Christian authority and simplicity; how impressively it rebukes and admonishes human law, while it seems so innocently to confide in it! It is clear to us that Paul paid his loyalty to his private Christian conception of human authority as the minister of God. Do we not already see how he teaches, implicitly, the possibility that exceptions may arise? His very theory, to which he summons unconditional obedience, justifies his conduct when he refused such obedience. "Wherefore ye must needs be subject," he says, "not only for wrath," i. e. not merely out of fear, "but also for conscience' sake"; because authority, which is presumed to be a minister of God, cannot be supposed to conflict with private conscience. "For for this cause pay ye tribute also: for they are God's ministers, attending continually upon this very thing";—namely, to preserve peace and comfort, and to enforce justice against the evil. Here we come upon the local circumstance which suggested this doctrine of obedience. The new Roman converts felt that the truths

which had been awakened in their minds made them subjects of an invisible kingdom, and responsible only to the Spirit which was present in their hearts. And the same scruple which was started while the Saviour lived arose again,—whether they ought to pay taxes to a heathen government. The answer of the Saviour implied that disciples were to obey every ordinance of an existing government; but when he added the clause, "Render to God the things that are God's," he vindicated his own religion for having abolished Paganism by the opposition of his disciples to the ordinances of idolatry and superstition. They did resist the power and suffer the consequences, whenever the things of God became involved. By making a special case out of the tribute, Paul, following the doctrine of Jesus, instructs them to disobey no laws and regulations of a heathen government that do not involve their personal religion. Tribute may be an inconvenient and even an oppressive imposition; yet they cannot refuse to pay it, when levied by the regular authority for the purpose of maintaining the general system of the laws. Unless that system is maintained, Paul has no safety as a Roman citizen, and his appeal to Cæsar before Festus would have been an empty phrase. Mark the distinction which Paul and all the early Christians make between paying taxes, which went in part to support a public idolatrous worship, and refusing to recant by assisting in such worship when threatened by the terrors of martyrdom. So can a Christian support the general powers of any government, for the sake of its average of law and order, while he refuses homage and duty to its heathenism. All this is involved in Paul's doctrine that Law is the minister of God.

To be convinced of the unity of the apostolic doctrine upon this subject, let us examine some other passages that express it in the strongest manner, being careful not to wrench any single one from the natural connection in which they all lie imbedded. In the First Epistle of Peter we read, "Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake; whether it be to the king as supreme, or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evil-doers and for the praise of them that do well." Here again recurs the same assumption that the law is a righteous standard, judging vicious men and opposing their demoralizing tendencies: "for so is the will of God that with well-doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men," i. e. that by cheerfully obeying heathen ordinances you may refute those who ignorantly accuse you of acknowledging, as disciples of a new religion, no existing authority; "as free, and not using your liberty for a cloak of maliciousness." But supposing a heathen ordinance uses its legality for a cloak of maliciousness, — to persecute disciples and compel them to offer sacrifice to idols and to make their oaths to Jupiter,then we find the early Christians refusing their obedience, because they saw that the law was attempting something beyond the punishment of evil-doers and for the praise of them that do well. They had all been reared in the conscience of the Saviour, who performed a Christian deed at a time that was illegal: they refused to perform an unChristian deed that authority had rendered legal. And they suffered the consequences; "for this is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully." The conscience towards God thus exalts itself above the secular authority, and Christianity quali