The American Republic [43]
his works without idolatry. But he creates substantial existences capable of acting as second causes. Hence, in all living things there is in their life a divine element and a natural element; in what is called human life, there are the divine and the human, the divine as first and the human as second cause, precisely what the doctrine of the great Christian theologians assert to be the fact with all legitimate or real government. Government cannot exist without the efficacious presence of God any more than man himself, and men might as well attempt to build up a world as to attempt to found a state without 126 God. A government founded on atheistical principles were less than a castle in the air. It would have nothing to rest on, would not be even so much as "the baseless fabric of a vision," and they who imagine that they really do exclude God from their politics deceive themselves; for they accept and use principles which, though they know it not, are God. What they call abstract principles, or abstract forms of reason, without which there were no logic, are not abstract, but the real, living God himself. Hence government, like man himself, participates of the divine being, and, derived from God through the people, it at the same time participates of human reason and will, thus reconciling authority with freedom, and stability with progress.
The people, holding their authority from God, hold it not as an inherent right, but as a trust from Him, and are accountable to Him for it. It is not their own. If it were their own they might do with it as they pleased, and no one would have any right to call them to an account; but holding it as a trust from God, they are under his law, and bound to exercise it as that law prescribes. Civil rulers, holding their authority from God through the people, are accountable for it both to Him and to them. If 127 they abuse it they are justiciable by the people and punishable by God himself.
Here is the guaranty against tyranny, oppression, or bad government, or what in modern times is called the responsibility of power. At the same time the state is guarantied against sedition, insurrection, rebellion, revolution, by the elevation of the civic virtues to the rank of religious, virtues, and making loyalty a matter of conscience. Religion is brought to the aid of the state, not indeed as a foreign auxiliary, but as integral in the political order itself. Religion sustains the state, not because it externally commands us to obey the higher powers, or to be submissive to the powers that be, not because it trains the people to habits of obedience, and teaches them to be resigned and patient under the grossest abuses of power, but because it and the state are in the same order, and inseparable, though distinct, parts of one and the same whole. The church and the state, as corporations or external governing bodies, are indeed separate in their spheres, and the church does not absorb the state, nor does the state the church; but both are from God, and both work to the same end, and when each is rightly understood there is no antithesis or antagonism between them. Men serve God in serving the state as 128 directly as in serving the church. He who dies on the battle-field fighting for his country ranks with him who dies at the stake for his faith. Civic virtues are themselves religious virtues, or at least virtues without which there are no religious virtues, since no man who loves not his brother does or can love God.
The guaranties offered the state or authority are ample, because it has not only conscience, moral sentiment, interest, habit, and the via inertia of the mass, but the whole physical force of the nation, at its command. The individual has, indeed, only moral guaranties against the abuse of power by the sovereign people, which may no doubt sometimes prove insufficient. But moral guaranties are always better than none, and there are none where
The people, holding their authority from God, hold it not as an inherent right, but as a trust from Him, and are accountable to Him for it. It is not their own. If it were their own they might do with it as they pleased, and no one would have any right to call them to an account; but holding it as a trust from God, they are under his law, and bound to exercise it as that law prescribes. Civil rulers, holding their authority from God through the people, are accountable for it both to Him and to them. If 127 they abuse it they are justiciable by the people and punishable by God himself.
Here is the guaranty against tyranny, oppression, or bad government, or what in modern times is called the responsibility of power. At the same time the state is guarantied against sedition, insurrection, rebellion, revolution, by the elevation of the civic virtues to the rank of religious, virtues, and making loyalty a matter of conscience. Religion is brought to the aid of the state, not indeed as a foreign auxiliary, but as integral in the political order itself. Religion sustains the state, not because it externally commands us to obey the higher powers, or to be submissive to the powers that be, not because it trains the people to habits of obedience, and teaches them to be resigned and patient under the grossest abuses of power, but because it and the state are in the same order, and inseparable, though distinct, parts of one and the same whole. The church and the state, as corporations or external governing bodies, are indeed separate in their spheres, and the church does not absorb the state, nor does the state the church; but both are from God, and both work to the same end, and when each is rightly understood there is no antithesis or antagonism between them. Men serve God in serving the state as 128 directly as in serving the church. He who dies on the battle-field fighting for his country ranks with him who dies at the stake for his faith. Civic virtues are themselves religious virtues, or at least virtues without which there are no religious virtues, since no man who loves not his brother does or can love God.
The guaranties offered the state or authority are ample, because it has not only conscience, moral sentiment, interest, habit, and the via inertia of the mass, but the whole physical force of the nation, at its command. The individual has, indeed, only moral guaranties against the abuse of power by the sovereign people, which may no doubt sometimes prove insufficient. But moral guaranties are always better than none, and there are none where