10 god’s VIEW OF EEBELLION. mine and have my name on them, that my two friends will let me go on with my work, and pull the house down about their ears ? Do you think they would do right to let me? nay, do you not see perfectly that it is their duty to stop me, and, if necessary, put me in a strait-jacket ? Is it hard to see that the abstract fact of my complete sovereignty over those bricks is vastly modified by my association wit^ my two friends ? So, then, I say, that all the proof of original State sovereignty (even if it were possible) goes for nothing, in view of the facts presented in our country’s condition. We are one people, under one Government, and armed resistance to that Government is rebellion, and rebellion is accursed of God. Having thus settled the question of the character of this war, that it is a rebellion, let me briefly note one or two other questions which naturally suggest themselves. The first is : “ Are there not such things as righteous rebellions ?” I reply : “ No ;* the Bible speaks all one way; it denounces rebellion even against a Nero. Paul wrote this very text to Christians living under the very shadow of that monster-tyrant’s palace. Paul was no admirer of that Nero, who ere long was to order Paul’s head to be struck off, and yet he reverenced government and law as the reflection of the divine order, and, under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, he * This does not, of course, touch the question of a peaceable change of either administration or government.
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