of the despots that hastened the fall of the Roman empire, from Tiberius to Domitian. An illustration is furnished now in the Turkish dominions, where the sceptre of a despot is swayed over what was once the fairest portion of the world, and where desolation now reigns, because the rights and securities of life and property, such as is furnished by an administration of law, are unknown. And the world has scarcely recovered from the horror which was produced by the reign of despotism in the bloody scenes of the French revolution.

(2.) The will of a mob.-This differs from the former only in the fact that there are many despots instead of one, and that the despotism is more intolerable. There are many capricious minds instead of one; there are many under the influence of passion instead of one; there is all the evil of a want of stability and of principle in a multitude instead of an individual. An individual, however lost to virtue he may be, feels some sense of responsibility to his fellow men, or has some desire to transmit his name to posterity, as not among the most abandoned of the race; a mob has none. An individual, however capricious he may be, has some stability of character, or something which may be the basis of a calculation. A mob has none. However perverted and wicked may be the principles of such men as Nero, or Danton, or Robespierre, it is possible to learn how they will act in given circumstances; but no one can determine on the future movement of a mob. An attack on gamblers, or on a convent, or a church, is no evidence that the abhorrence of gamblers, and convents, and churches will have any permanency, or that the fury of the mob will not spend itself on banks, or colleges, or private dwellings. It may be added, that when this spirit becomes prevalent in any community, it ends in single despotism. Some individual is found more bold and talented than the rest, that rises on the whirlwind of passion, and by terror and arms bows the multitudinous passions and caprices to his own. On all accounts such a single despotism is preferable; and God ordains that no community shall long remain without the operation of some established form of government and law.

(3.) The third mode of government is that of law. It matters not, so far as we are now concerned, whether the laws are made by a single sovereign hereditary or elective; or by a monarch in connection with a representative legislature; or by a hereditary aristocracy; or by representatives of the people; or by the people themselves in their assembled character. One form of administration is undoubtedly preferable to another in many respects, but all unite in this, that it is a government of law in contradistinction from the caprice of an individual, or of a multitude. The laws are known. They are formed deliberately, and are promulgated. They are settled by what is recognized as competent authority, and they are not changed suddenly or by caprice.

God intended that there should be such government over men;

and it is to laws so made-if not contravening his own-that he requires submission. The importance and advantages of this mode of government over the capricious will of a despot, or of a mob, may be seen by the following considerations:

First. This alone can give security and prosperity to a people. It matters not so much what the laws are, as that there are laws, and that they are known, and that they will be executed. All rights of property, and all improvements depend on this. No man will clear and improve a farm unless there is law that will protect him; and the want of this security is the cause of the desolation which reigns in the Turkish empire, in Arabia, in Africa, and in the regions of despotism generally. All public improvements require time, and the fixedness and the security which can be furnished by laws alone. The purposes connected with the endowment of a college, a school, a canal company, a banking institution, with manufactures and with commerce, can never be accomplished, rarely more than commenced, in a single generation. They stretch into future times, and demand the continued protection of the laws. They must reach on beyond the life of an individual, and beyond the capricious will of a mob, or a despot, or the purposes cannot be accomplished. They demand the permanency of laws that are known, and the plighted faith of a whole people that cannot soon change. The universities of Oxford and Cambridge have held on their way, diffusing the blessings of science and religion over England and the world more than a thousand years, because the law which protects them has not been at the control or caprice of the sovereigns, and because there has been the plighted faith of the whole nation to secure them. In Arabia, in Africa, in the Ottoman empire no such institutions have been founded, none could be maintained. The will of an individual-especially when the scimitar may create a change of despots in an hour-is too capricious to furnish any security for permanent investment. our own country there are more rights vested on the presumption of the stability and permanence of the laws than in any other on the face of the globe. All our agricultural improvements; our farms and plantations; our banks, colleges, churches, manufactories, railroad investments, religious seminaries, hospitals and asylums are founded on the presumption of the permanence and stability of the laws; and the announcement that the caprice of a mob or of a despot was to rule hereafter in this land, would cripple or destroy them all in a day.

Secondly. God's government is a government of law. Though he is an individual and an absolute Sovereign, and though no one can control him, yet such in his view is the importance of a government of law, that he has made his entirely such. There is no mere will. There is no caprice. There is no change from passion or whim. Men know what his law is, what to depend on, and they can act on it with the utmost certainty. They calculate with unerring

conviction on the laws of nature, and are assured that there will be no change from caprice. The earth "spinning, sleeps on her axle," without the slightest variation; the laws of light and motion in the heavenly bodies are the same always; and alike in the natural and the moral world, God observes unvarying rules. The position of the heavenly bodies can be calculated with certainty for ages yet to come; and such is the stability of his empire, that men always know what will meet his approbation, and what his frown; and in the most absolute and independent government of the universe, that depending on the will of an individual of infinite power, there is the most profound regard paid to law, and the utmost conceivable permanency of administration. What would the affairs of the universe be, if his government were like a capricious earthly despotism, or like the administration of a mob?

Thirdly. So important is the supremacy of the laws that God requires us to submit to them, even when better laws could be made, unless they violate the dictates of conscience. Thus in our text, he required submission to the laws of the Roman empire; though no one can doubt that a more desirable administration can be easily conceived than that of Caligula or Nero. That unequal laws may be changed in a proper way, no one can doubt, nor that it is the right and privilege of a people to bring about such changes in a peaceful and proper manner. But when the laws violate none of the dictates of conscience, and command nothing which God forbids, it would be attended with more evil to disregard and disobey them, to unsettle the stability of government and the permanent arrangement of things, than submission to them would be. The one would be a private evil; the other a public calamity; and an individual evil is to be submitted to rather than to disturb the public peace.

It is from considerations such as these, that the Bible every where enjoins submission to the laws of the land; and that the Apostles and the Redeemer himself were among the most obedient citizens of the Roman empire. "Render, therefore, unto Cesar," said the Saviour, "the things which are Cesar's; and unto God the things that are God's." Math. xxii. 21. We are free, said he on another occasion from paying the public tax, "notwithstanding, lest we should offend them, go thou" said he to Peter, "to the sea and cast a hook, and take up the fish that cometh first up; and when thou hast opened his mouth thou shall find a piece of money; that take and give unto them for thee and me." Math. xvii. 27. "Honor all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the king." 1st Pet. ii. 17.

To this view there stands opposed the one that has been recently acted on in this nation, and that is becoming so prevalent even in the better portions of the community. It is, that when there is a course of conduct that is supposed in any way to outrage or offend public sentiment; when there prevails an evil which the law does not de

scribe or which it cannot punish; when the regular operation of law would be too dilatory or too uncertain in its issue, it is the right of any portion of the community to take the matter into their own hands, and inflict summary vengeance on the offenders. This is done sometimes by the mere excited feelings of a populace and under cover of the night; sometimes by an impannelled mock jury or a mock court of men sustaining a fair standing in the community or even an office in the church; and sometimes by an armed mob prepared for burning, or murder. The plea, when a plea is attempted, is, that there are evils which the laws do not reach, and yet which endanger the welfare of the community. To this I reply:

1. If the laws do not reach the evil, then let laws be made that can do it. The power of making laws, resides in the community itself; and it is the fault of the community if they are not what they should be. But shall justice be defied, and all order and right set at naught, because a man has done that which no law forbids ?

2. There are other ways of removing folly, indiscretion, and offences against public taste and a sense of propriety than by this summary vengeance. If a thing is erroneous, argument may be opposed to it; if foolish, ridicule may be applied; if offensive to the public taste, the public should stand aloof from it. Follies soon wear themselves out, or change for others; and if left undisturbed, a correct public sentiment will soon remove them. If a man chooses to make himself ridiculous by his dress, the cut of his hair, his beard, or by his gait; or if he chooses to do it by the selection which he makes of his companions and associates; or if the female sex shall disregard the proprieties of their station, and the feelings of the community; who can deny the absolute right to do it? Who has a right to molest or disturb them? Such things can be put down without constables, or bailiffs, or courts, or mobs. The most potent laws in any community are the unwritten laws which are secretly and silently executed, and whose influence no one can long and safely resist.

3. Is it not known that the very way to propagate obnoxious sentiments is to excite the spirit of a mob, and to disregard the laws of the land? The whole community is at once excited in behalf of the persecuted, and in behalf of sentiments that are opposed in a form contrary to the laws. Such is human nature. The burning of a convent will do more than any thing else to turn the public favor towards the sentiments inculcated there. The murder of a man by a mob will do more than can be done in any other way to spread his sentiments through the community. The fire which is kindled to destroy an edifice professedly devoted to free discussion, does more to spread the sentiments to which it is devoted than the arguments of its friends; and the price which the edifice cost could in no way be employed to spread the sentiments so far as by its being made to shed a blaze abroad at night, under the control of a mob, over a great city.

The

sentiments in this community which are deemed obnoxious by so large a portion, have been diffused more by the disregard of the laws in resisting their propagation, and by the stripes, and execrations, and blood, and burning, which an attempt to propagate them has met with, than by all the itineracies of travelling agents, and all the books which a groaning press has sent forth, and all the newspapers and pamphlets which a burdened mail has carried to the extremities of the land.

4. On the principle contended for, to wit, that there are some offences which the laws cannot reach, and which are to be met in despite of the laws, who is safe? To-day it is held that gamblers shall be executed, and it is done. To-morrow, and with the same propriety, the fury of the mob shall be turned against those who have themselves thus set at defiance the laws. To-day the fury of the mob shall rage against a convent-to-morrow against an offensive press. One infuriated and excited mob shall maintain that a theatre is a nuisance, and shall destroy it; another shall make an assault on an abolition hall; another shall maintain that slavery is an evil, and pour the fury of an excited mob against the dwellings of those who hold others in bondage; another shall deem a church, a college, a bank a nuisance—and all with the same disregard of law. Who then is safe for a moment? What interest can be secure when such sentiments are avowed, or connived at, or treated with any thing but decided abhorrence by the intelligent and virtuous portion of the community?

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The world saw long since, a melancholy illustration of the tendency of the sentiment that there are evils which cannot be restrained by law, and that summary justice must be taken into the hands of the people. There was one arraigned on a charge of blasphemy. The forms of law had been gone through with. With all power in his hand, he had yet thrown himself on the protection of the laws of the land. "I find no fault at all in this man," was the deliberate sentence of the judge. The law was clearly in his favor, and the public officer declared his acquittal. But that law and its solemn decision were disregarded. Crucify him; crucify him," was the cry of the excited and infuriated mob. He had offended the nation. He had advanced sentiments which they disapproved; and though the law was clearly in his favor, and the sentence of acquittal unambiguous, yet the passions of a capricious and tumultuous people were excited, and nothing would appease them but his blood. God's everlasting and holy Son, acquitted by law, under the permission and by the connivance of a magistrate too weak and flexible to maintain the stern interests of justice, expired under the guidance of an infuriated mob, on a cross!

II. Our second inquiry is, in what way may the supremacy of the laws be secured and maintained? What is needful in this community in order that this great object may be obtained? We have no