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Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).

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A 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