Having determined what is absolutely right, by the conscience of God, or at least relatively right, according to my conscience to-day, then it becomes my duty to keep it. I owe it to God to obey His law, or what I deem his law; that is my duty. It may be uncomfortable to keep it, unpopular, contrary to my present desires, to my passions, to my immediate interests; it may conflict with my plans in life; that makes no difference. I owe entire allegiance to my God. It is a duty to keep His law, a personal duty, my duty as a man. I owe it to myself, for I am to keep the integrity of my own consciousness; I owe it to my brother, and to my God. Nothing can absolve me from this duty, neither the fact that it is uncomfortable or unpopular, nor that it conflicts with my desires, my passions, my immediate interests, and my plans in life. Such is the place of conscience amongst other faculties of my nature.
I believe all this is perfectly plain, but now see what it leads to. In the complicated relations of human life, various rules for the moral conduct of men have been devised, some of them in the form of statute laws, some in the form of customs, and, in virtue of these rules, certain artificial demands are made of men, which have no foundation in the moral nature of man; these demands are thought to represent duties. We have the same word to describe what I ought to do as subject to the law of God, and what is demanded of me by custom, or the statute. We call each a duty. Hence comes no small confusion: the conventional and official obligation is thought to rest on the same foundation as the natural and personal duty. As the natural duty is at first sight a little vague, and not written out in the law-book, or defined by custom, while the conventional obligation is well understood, men think that in case of any collision between the two, the natural duty must give way to the official obligation.
For clearness' sake, the natural and personal obligation to keep the law of God as my conscience declares it, I will call Duty; the conventional and official obligation to comply with some custom, keep some statute, or serve some special interest, I will call Business. Here then are two things—my natural and personal duty, my conventional and official business. Which of the two shall give way to the other,—personal duty or official business? Let it be remembered that I am a man first of all, and all else that I am is but a modification of my manhood, which makes me a clergyman, a fisherman, or a statesman; but the clergy, the fish, and the State, are not to strip me of my manhood. They are valuable in so far as they serve my manhood, not as it serves them. My official business as clergyman, fisherman, or statesman, is always beneath my personal duty as man. In case of any conflict between the two, the natural duty ought to prevail and carry the day before the official business; for the natural duty represents the permanent law of God, the absolute right, justice, the balance-point of all interests; while the official business represents only the transient conventions of men, some partial interest; and besides the man who owes the personal duty, is immortal, while the officer who performs the official business, is but for a time. At death, the man is to be tried by the justice of God, for the deeds done, and character attained, for his natural duty, but he does not enter the next life as a clergyman, with his surplice and prayer-book, or a fisherman, with his angles and net, nor yet as a statesman, with his franking privilege, and title of honorable and member of Congress. The officer dies, of a vote or a fever. The man lives forever. From the relation between a man and his occupation, it is plain, in general, that all conventional and official business is to be overruled by natural personal duty. This is the great circle, drawn by God, and discovered by conscience, which girdles my sphere, including all the smaller circles, and itself included by none of them. The law of God has eminent domain everywhere, over the private passions of Oliver and Charles, the special interests of Carthage and of Rome, over all customs, all official business, all precedents, all human statutes, all treaties between Judas and Pilate, or England and France, over all the conventional affairs of one man or of mankind. My own conscience is to declare that law for me, yours for you, and is before all private passions, or public interests, the decision of majorities, and a world full of precedents. You may resign your office, and escape its obligations, forsake your country, and owe it no allegiance, but you cannot move out of the dominions of God, nor escape where conscience has not eminent domain.
See some examples of a conflict between the personal duty and the official business. A man may be a clergyman, and it may be his official business to expound and defend the creed which is set up for him by his employers, his bishop, his association, or his parish, to defend and hold it good against all comers; it may be, also, in a certain solemn sort, to please the audience, who come to be soothed, caressed, and comforted,—to represent the average of religion in his society, and so to bless popular virtues and ban unpopular vices, but never to shake off or even jostle with one of his fingers the load of sin, beloved and popular, which crushes his hearers down till they are bowed together and can in nowise lift themselves up; unpopular excellence he is to call fanaticism, if not infidelity. But his natural duty as a man, standing in this position, overrides his official business, and commands him to tell men of the false things in their creed, of great truths not in it; commands him to inform his audience with new virtue, to represent all of religion he can attain, to undo the heavy burdens of popular sin, private or national, and let the men oppressed therewith go free. Excellence, popular or odious, he is to commend by its own name, to stimulate men to all nobleness of character and life, whether it please or offend. This is his duty, however uncomfortable, unpopular, against his desires, and conflicting with his immediate interests and plans of life. Which shall he do? His official business, and pimp and pander to the public lust, with base compliance serving the popular idols, which here are Money and Respectability, or shall he serve his God? That is the question. If the man considers himself substantially a man, and accidentally a clergyman, he will perform his natural duty; if he counts the priesthood his substance, and manhood an accident of that, he will do only his official business.
I may be a merchant, and my official business may be to buy, and sell, and get gain; I may see that the traffic in ardent spirits is the readiest way to accomplish this. So it becomes my official business to make rum, sell rum, and by all means to induce men to drink it. But presently I see that the common use of it makes the thriving unthrifty, the rich less wealthy, the poor miserable, the sound sick, and the sane mad; that it brings hundreds to the jail, thousands to the almshouse, and millions to poverty and shame, producing an amount of suffering, wretchedness, and sin, beyond the power of man to picture or conceive. Then my natural duty as man is very clear, very imperative. Shall I sacrifice my manhood to money?—the integrity of my consciousness to my gains by rum-selling? That is the question. And my answer will depend on the fact, whether I am more a man or more a rum-seller. Suppose I compromise the matter, and draw a line somewhere between my natural duty as man, and my official business as rum-seller, and for every three cents that I make by iniquity, give one cent to the American Tract Society, or the Board for Foreign Missions, or the Unitarian Association, or the excellent Society for promoting the Gospel among the Indians (and others) in North America. That does not help the matter; business is not satisfied, though I draw the line never so near to money; nor conscience, unless the line comes up to my duty.
I am a citizen, and the State says, "You must obey all the statutes made by the proper authorities; that is your official business!" Suppose there is a statute adverse to the natural law of God, and the convictions of my own conscience, and I plead that fact in abatement of my obligation to keep the statute, the State says, "Obey it, none the less, or we will hang you. Religion is an excellent thing in every matter except politics; there it seems to make men mad." Shall I keep the commandment of men, or the law of my God?
A statute was once enacted by King Pharaoh for the destruction of the Israelites in Egypt; it was made the official business of all citizens to aid in their destruction: "Pharaoh charged all his people saying, Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river, and every daughter ye shall save alive." It was the official business of every Egyptian who found a Hebrew boy to throw him into the Nile,—if he refused, he offended against the peace and dignity of the kingdom of Egypt, and the form of law in such case made and provided. But if he obeyed, he murdered a man. Which should he obey, the Lord Pharaoh, or the Lord God? That was the question. I make no doubt that the priests of Osiris, Orus, Apis, Isis, and the judges, and the justices of the peace and quorum, and the members of Congress of that time said, "Keep the king's commandment, oh ye that worship the crocodile and fear the cat, or ye shall not sleep in a whole skin any longer!" So said every thing that loveth and maketh a lie.
King Charles II. made a statute some one hundred and ninety years ago, to punish with death the remnant of the nine-and-fifty judges who had brought his father's head to the block, teaching kings "that they also had a joint in their necks." He called on all his subjects to aid in the capture of these judges. It was made their official business as citizens to do so; a reward was offered for the apprehension of some of them "alive or dead;" punishment hung over the head of any who should harbor or conceal them. Three of these regicides, who had adjudged a king for his felony, came to New England. Many Americans knew where they were, and thought the condemnation of Charles I. was the best thing these judges ever did. With that conviction ought they to have delivered up these fugitives, or afforded them shelter? In time of peril, when officers of the English government were on the lookout for some of these men, a clergyman in the town where one of them was concealed, preached, it is said, on the text "Bewray not him that wandereth," an occasional sermon, and put the duty of a man far before the business of a citizen. When Sir Edmund Andros was at New Haven looking after one of the judges, and attended public worship in the same meeting-house with the fugitive, the congregation sung an awful hymn in his very ears.[12]
Would the men of Connecticut have done right, bewraying him that wandered, and exposing the outcast, to give up the man who had defended the liberties of the world and the rights of mankind against a tyrant,—give him up because a wanton king, and his loose men and loose women, made such a commandment? One of the regicides dwelt in peace eight-and-twenty years in New England, a monument of the virtue of the people.