11 fanaticism, that these Puritan Abolition sentiments of the North, and the self-willed Secessionist doctrines of the South, arc practically one thing: grounded in the same vicious philosophy, producing the same fruits of sedition and rebellion, and shaking hands in an unholy alliance of hostility against the organic Constitution of the Nation. For the law of our Union represses the vagaries of selfishness. Whether it be the individual man or the individual State, the Word of God in Holy Scripture, and the teaching of the Episcopal Church in this land, unite in enjoining loyalty on every citizen, as the pious obligation on the conscience of the Christian. The people of these United States, under the Federal Constitution, are one nation, organic, corporate, divinely established, subject to government, and bound in conscience to obedience. Disloyalty to the Constitution, is, therefore, impiety toward God. Revolution is not justifiable, except in extreme oppression. Only where “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are positively hindered, does our American Declaration of Independence justify revolution. In no other emergency is subjection to the Constitution and obedience to the magistrate superseded by any higher law of obedience to God. To destroy this Union, therefore, is to commit a sin, which God will righteously punish by evils which no prescience can foresee, and no wisdom can repair. “ Lawfully to se- .cede” is a self-contradiction, a solecism. Secession is disunion, > and Disunion is Treason ; for, the Constitution abides as our “principality and power” “ordained of God,” securing Life, Liberty, and Happiness to the Nation. There is, therefore, but one thing to do in the exigency of the Republic, That thing is for the magistrate “ who beareth not the sword in vain’’ to execute the laws ; and for the citizen to obey, and be subject to “the powers that be.” But for the present distress there needs forbearance, with honest endeavor to redress real, or even fancied, grievances; to silence just complaints; and to reconstruct National intercourse into a more perfect harmony of confidence with patience and mutual love and prayer for one another, among the fellow-citizens of our Nation. By confessing and obeying Jesus Christ as our Sovereign, we shall be united
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