SERMON

DELIVERED BEFORE
HIS EXCELLENCY EDWARD EVERETT,
GOVERNOR,
HIS HONOR GEORGE HULL,
LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR,
THE HONORABLE COUNCIL,
AND
THE LEGISLATURE OF MASSACHUSETTS,
ON THE
ANNIVERSARY ELECTION,
JANUARY 2, 1839.

BY MARK HOPKINS, D. D.

President of Williams College.

Boston:
DUTTON AND WENTWORTH, PRINTERS TO THE STATE.
1839.

Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

SENATE, JANUARY 3, 1839.

Ordered, That Messrs. Filley, Quincy, and Kimball, be a Committee to present the thanks of the Senate to the Rev. Mark Hopkins, D. D. for the discourse yesterday delivered by him, before the Government of the Commonwealth, and to request a copy thereof for publication.

Attest,

CHARLES CALHOUN, Clerk.

SERMON.

Acts v. 29.

WE OUGHT TO OBEY GOD RATHER THAN MAN.

Man was made for something higher and better, than either to make, or to obey, merely human laws. He is the creature of God, is subject to his laws, and can find his perfection, and consequent happiness, only in obeying those laws. As his moral perfection, the life of his life, is involved in this obedience, it is impossible that any power should lay him under obligation to disobey. The known will of God, if not the foundation of right, is its paramount rule, and it is because human governments are ordained by him, that we owe them obedience. We are bound to them, not by compact, but only as God's institutions for the good of the race. This is what the Bible, though sometimes referred to as supporting arbitrary power, really teaches. It does not support arbitrary power. Rightly understood, it is a perfect rule of duty, and as in every thing else, so in the relations of subjects and rulers. It lays down the true principles, it gives us the guiding light. When the general question is whether human governments are to be obeyed, the answer is, "He that resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God." "The powers that be are ordained of God." But when these powers overstep their appointed limits, and would lord it over the conscience, and come between man and his maker, then do we hear it uttered in the very face of power, and by the voice of inspiration, no less than of indignant humanity, "We ought to obey God rather than men."

It has been in connexion with the maintenance of this principle, first proclaimed by an Apostle of Christ eighteen hundred years ago, that all the civil liberty now in the world has sprung up. It is to the fearless assertion of this principle by our forefathers, that we owe it that the representatives of a free people are assembled here this day to worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences, to seek to Him for wisdom in their deliberations, and to acknowledge the subordination of all human governments to that which is divine.

Permit me then, as appropriate to the present occasion, to call the attention of this audience,

1st. To the grounds on which all men are bound to adhere to the principle stated in the text; and

2d. To the consequences of such adherence, on the part, both of subjects, and of rulers.

I observe, then, that we ought to obey God rather than men, because human governments are comparatively so limited and negative in their bearing upon the great purposes, first, of individual, and second, of social existence.

The purposes for which man was made, must evidently involve in their accomplishment, both his duty and his happiness; and nothing can be his duty which would contravene those purposes. Among them, as already intimated, the highest is the moral perfection of the individual; for as it is by his moral nature that man is distinguished from the inferior animals, so it is only in the perfection of that nature, that his perfection, as man, can consist. As absolute perfection can belong only to God, that of man must be relative, that is, it must consist in the proper adjustment of relations, and especially in the relation of his voluntary actions to the end for which God designed him. This is our idea of perfection, when we affirm it of the works of man. It involves, mainly, such a relation of parts as is necessary to the perfect accomplishment of the end in view. A watch is perfect when it is so constructed that its motions exactly correspond in their little revolutions with those of the sun in the heavens; and man is perfect when his will corresponds in its little circle of movement with the will of God in heaven. This correspondence, however, is not to be produced by the laws of an unconscious mechanism, but by a voluntary, a cheerful, a filial co-operation. It is this power of controlling his faculties with reference to an ultimate end, of accepting or rejecting the purpose of his being, as indicated by God in the very structure of his powers, and proclaimed in his word, that contradistinguishes man from every inferior being, and gives scope for what is properly termed, character. Inferior beings have qualities by which they are distinguished, they have characteristics, but not character, which always involves a moral element. A brute does not govern its own instincts, it is governed by them. A tree is the product of an agency which is put forth through it, but of which it is not conscious, and which it does not control. But God gives man to himself, and then sets before him, in the tendency of every thing that has unconscious life towards its own perfection, the great moral lesson that nature was intended to teach. He then causes every blade of grass, and every tree, to become a preacher and a model, calling upon him to put forth his faculties, not without law, but to accept the law of his being, and to work out a character and a happiness in conformity with that. It is, as I have said, the power which man has to accept or reject this law of his being, the great law of love, that renders him capable of character, and it is evidently as a theatre, on which this may be manifested, that the present scene of things is sustained. Not with more certainty do the processes of vegetation point to the blossoms and the fruit as the results to which they conspire, than does every thing in the nature and condition of man indicate the formation of a specific, voluntary, moral character, as the purpose for which God placed him here. But this purpose is not recognized at all by human governments, and we have only to observe the limited and negative agency which they incidentally bring to bear upon it, to see how insignificant must be their claims when they would come into conflict with those of the government of God.

I observe then, first, that human governments regard man solely as the member of a community; whereas it is chiefly as an individual, that the government of God regards him. Isolate a man from society, take him beyond the reach of human government, and his faculties are not changed. He is still the creature of God, a dweller in his universe, retaining every thing he ever possessed that was noble in reason, or grand in destiny, and in his solitude, where yet he would not be alone, the government of God would follow him, and would require of him such manifestations of goodness as he might there exercise—the adoration of his Creator, resignation to his will, and a temperate and prudent use of the blessings within his power. Indeed, so far as responsibility is