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.