The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, February, 1880

The Christian Foundation,
Or,
Scientific and Religious Journal
Vol. 1. No 2.
February, 1880.

Civil government is a state of society in which men are reduced to order; it is a government in which every citizen has full power over his own rights, but is not at liberty to infringe upon the rights of others. The deepest thought in the word civil is the idea of being hedged around by restraints, so as to be shut in from all privilege, or right, of meddling with the rights of others. The Welsh use the word “cau,” to shut, inclose, fence, hedge.
The word civil also signifies courteous, complaisant, gentle and obliging, well-bred, affable, kind. From this it will be seen that civil government depends upon the intelligence and righteousness of the people. The absence of all legal demands and all legal restraints would be the absence of all government. It would be libertinism or lawlessness. The great majority of men, from the earliest ages of the world to the present time, have been under the control of tyrants, and have known little exemption from despotic rule. There is not a single Pagan, Mahomedan, or anti-Christian country to-day in which the spirit of liberty has an abiding place. She may have brooded over them at intervals, but, like Noah's bird, found no resting place.
Nimrod's kingdom was Babel, and he was a tyrant, instigating war and bloodshed everywhere, laying the nations under tribute and transmitting his tyrannical spirit and powers from son to son, until the Egyptians drove his descendants into Canaan and Joshua drove them into Greece. Ninus inherited the spirit of his father, and the history of his empire, until it was overthrown by the Babylonians and Medes, is a history of absolute Assyrian despotism.
The Babylonian Empire was no better from the revolt of Nebopolassar to its destruction by Cyrus. Egypt and Persia were also equally deprived of the blessings of civil liberty. Greece and Rome were in no better condition with the exceptions of a few restrictions consequent upon Greece being controlled by established customs and Rome by the Senate. These nations were comparatively free, but their freedom did not grow out of a comprehension of the rights of their citizens.