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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, 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 concerned, the divine government considers man,
whether in solitude or in a crowd, solely as an individual, and
produces an isolation of each as complete as if he were the only
person in the universe. God knows nothing of divided responsibility,
and whether acting alone, or as a member of a corporation or of a
legislature, every man is responsible to him for just what he does as
a moral being, and for nothing more. The responsibility of each is
kept disentangled from that of all others, and lies as well defined in
the eye of God, as if that eye were fixed upon him alone. The kingdom
of God is within man, and there it is, in the secret soul of each,
that the contest between light and darkness, between God and Satan is
going on, and in the struggle, in the victory or the defeat, he who
walks the city is as much alone as the hermit in his cell. It is over
the thoughts of man, his affections, his passions, his purposes, which
mock at human control, that the government of God claims dominion; it
is with reference to these, and not to the artificial index of
appearances which we set to catch the eye of the world, that the
register of Heaven is kept. On the other hand, how very few of the
moral actions of man can human government reach, how imperfectly can
it reach even these! It is only of overt acts, those which it can
define, and which can be proved before a human tribunal, that it can
take cognizance; and its treatment even of these can never be adjusted
to the varying shades of guilt. It has no eye to reach the springs of
action. It may see the movements of the machinery above, perplexed,
and apparently contradictory; but it cannot uncover the great wheel,
and look in upon the simple principle which makes character, and sets
the whole in motion.

But I observe again, that human governments are not only thus limited,
but are also chiefly negative in their influence upon the formation of
individual character. There is, indeed, a positive and widely
pervading moral influence connected with the character, and station,
and acts, of those who are in authority. This cannot be too
prominently stated, the responsibility connected with it cannot be too
carefully regarded; still this influence is entirely incidental, and
is the same in kind with that exerted by any distinguished private
individual. Human governments have also positive power to furnish
_facilities_, as distinguished from _inducements_. They can authorise
and guard the issue of paper money, to give facilities to men of
business; they can lay down rail-roads, thus opening facilities to the
spirit of enterprise, and calling out the neglected resources of the
State; they can too, and our fathers did it, construct and keep in
repair the _rail-roads of the mind_, thus giving facilities to the
poorest boy in the glens of the mountains to come