every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that

doeth evil.'

Admitting, and to the fullest extent, the politically conservative elements of civil government as of divine institution, yet it must be conceded that its wholesome deterrents are, from their nature, subordinate to those of the moral law, which compel the conscience to look above and beyond the imposing solemnities of the criminal court, and the grim formalities of the gibbet, to the overwhelming glories of 'the judgment-seat of Christ.' And in the light of this universally felt fact we may safely rest not only the duty, but also the policy, of a national recognition of the religion of Christ, which holds forth the moral law as the rule of belief and practice. The perception and appreciation of this cardinal principle of political ethics led one of Britain's most sagacious statesmen to give it embodiment in his favourite and tersely expressed maxim, 'What is morally right, cannot be politically wrong.' Nor will it be easy to convince the observant part of society, that he

who ignores a nation's obligations to incorporate in its laws the law of the decalogue, and, in every legitimate way, countenance its most searching and solemn sanctions, is the best qualified to act the part of a wise statesman, an enlightened philanthropist, a practical patriot, or a sound and useful minister of the gospel of Christ.

We do not require to illustrate and confirm this position by referring to that well-known but largely calumniated era in the history of our own country, when the national adoption of the principle for which we are pleading was followed by a refinement and elevation of the tone of public morals which characterized the crown, the legislature, the bench, and especially the pulpit. And this is a fact so patent and valuable, that we feel confident none of the intelligent and politic of the abolitionists will challenge us to contrast it with the lax and sanguinary morality of our own times. Nor are we willingly oblivious of popular and ungracious attacks made upon the men and their system by degenerate witlings, whose flashy but demoralizing productions go a long way in explanation of that sensational morality which is meretricious in its attire, but murderous in its heart and hands.

It is no doubt a fact, and no doubt abolitionists are apprised of it, and fancy writers of the ultra-liberal type take an ungenerous and unfair

advantage of it, that even then scaffolds were erected. But it is disreputable to throw into the shade, and to caricature for lowest ribaldry, the characteristic fact of the reactionary triumph of the liberals of that time, that those who were subjected to torture and to death in its most revolting forms, were not malefactors and murderers, but those whose only crime was their enlightened and devoted attachment to solid piety, and the clearly defined cause of civil liberty. The murdered culprits were saints and patriots, but their executioners were the advocates of a licentiousness which called into a sturdy revolutionary action the long-suppressed principles of the men whose shed blood watered the tree of British liberty. If, then, the moral law, including of course its sixth precept, demands, with the sanction of its highest penalty, reverential obedience from its every subject, in his every station and relation, it does follow, that no other law, which must be of a subordinate character and of vastly inferior authority, can furnish society with a guaranty of the permanent safety of property, character, and life.

III. It is essential to any law which professes to be perfect, that it be expressed in intelligible terms, and within briefest compass. In the contrast, then, betwixt human and divine law, the

pre-eminence of the latter above the former is evidential of its divinity and universal utility. That the moral law of God infinitely excels every human law is what might necessarily have been expected, and is, in point of fact, true even to a proverb. Its brevity appears in its designation-the decalogue, or the law of ten words, while the designation also anticipates and exposes every attempt at mutilation of its entirety by Romish arts. How striking and instructive the brevity and comprehensiveness of the moral law when compared with the interminable longitude of the laws of the most civilised nations! The statutory laws of our own country occupy about sixty octavo volumes, while what is called the common law fills about eighty volumes of the same character. And this fact suggests reflections of a serious and vastly important and practical kind. This immense code of British law is the product of the wisdom and experience of successive ages; is the science of a life that extends far beyond the ordinary term allotted to man; cannot possibly be known by the great majority of those for whom they were enacted; is daily undergoing change, because of its inadequacy; and naturally becomes the fertile source of endless, ingenious, acrimonious, and ruinous litigation, which proves that nothing is more certain than 'the glorious uncertainty of the law!'

This merciful brevity of the moral law, or the law of the ten commandments, presents an equally striking and instructive contrast with the numberless and various minute details of the Mosaic ceremonial and judicial laws. These latter so taxed the most tenacious memory of the most obedient subject, that specific provision was made, by a separate offering, for the sin of ignorance. But what memory so weak or treacherous as to forget the ten brief precepts of the decalogue! On this point ignorance is an impossibility.

But the moral law is no less distinguishable from the Mosaic code, and from all human laws, by its combined comprehensiveness and brevity, than by the intelligible terms in which it is expressed. There are no hard to be understood technicalities; no equivocal phrases or terms, nothing circumlocutory; no sentence, phrase, or word, that indicates any occult meaning, that requires a subtilizing process for safe exposition. Its language is so plain, its meaning so transparent, and its teachings so direct, that 'he who runs may read.' What man of the commonest understanding, although a fool in other respects, can possibly misunderstand the moral law of God?

Without further prosecuting this train of remark, we may summarize for practical purposes