and widows to starve. If the disciple of Jesus was to refuse obedience, then within what limits? Was it his duty to endure martyrdom rather than submit to conscription? It cannot be said that these questions are so answered in the New Testament that pious Christians, reading devoutly, discover the same answers. Indeed the reply was urgently needed under Roman violence not less than now.

That any precepts on this topic may be intelligible and instructive, the first thing needed is, a clear theory concerning the moral position of him who holds power. But on this the New Testament vacillates, and is very perplexing. In the thirteenth chapter of Paul to the Romans, the de facto holder of power is a sacred officer of God. He argues: "there is no Power but of God;" therefore its holder is "the minister of God for good," and he who resists Power, resists the ordinance of God, and shall receive damnation, that is, condemnation at the divine bar. It is distinctly added, that the subjection is to be given, as to God's officer, not only for wrath, but also for conscience' sake; i. e., not as to a robber through fear, but as to one who makes rightful demand. Unlimited tribute-paying is on the same ground prescribed; "for they are God's ministers." This Apostle goes so far as to assume, that the ruler is uniformly good and wise. He lays down absolutely: "Wilt thou not be afraid of the Power? do good, and thou shalt have praise of the same." Perhaps Claudius Cæsar was then on the throne; Nero certainly was not known as a tyrant to the provinces. Indeed the worst oppressions were imputed (and generally with truth) to subordinate officials. The Emperor and Senate were supposed to be the refuge of the oppressed. It was natural for Paul, as a Roman citizen, to take this view. But the fact remains, that the theory here set forth, if adopted as a moral rule, does not discriminate between a native government acting within established law, and an invader, a usurper, a mere upstart bandit: nor does it leave room for legitimate insurrection even in the cause of national law, treaties and compact, when there is breach of oath and flagrant tyranny on the part of the ruler. It simply assumes, that the more powerful is always right, and infers that he who resists is always wrong. Surely this is a very false and pernicious doctrine, ruinous to freedom and to law. That this was the doctrine of Jesus is not quite clear; since inference from parables is not safe. Yet perhaps the many will always gather from his parables, that kings are never wrong in a quarrel with their subjects. When citizens hate the pretender to a throne, and say:

We will not have this man to reign over us; their slaughter by the successful aspirant is regarded as a thing of course, and apparently is approved-Luke xix. 14-27. In the same absolute tone is the precept of Peter: "Fear God: honour the king; and Paul's to slaves: "Be obedient to your masters, as unto Christ.— Ephes. vi. 5. The hypothesis of an unrighteous command seems never to be admitted. At the same time, in Ephes. vi. 12, Paul holds with the book of Daniel, that the Gentile royalties are under diabolical, not divine patronage, therefore are usurpations of Christ's royal power. A little later in the Apocalypse the apostle John represents Roman royalty as a fierce beast fighting against God and his saints and about to be cast into a lake of fire. Even Jesus has some disparaging allusions to the kings of the Gentiles (Luke xxii. 25) and positively forbids his disciples to hold such power, for the chief among them is to be on a level with the rest. Nor is it to be forgotten that in Matthew and Luke Satan claims to be king of this world and offers dominion to Jesus on condition of allegiance. Jesus does not deny his dominion, but simply declares homage to him unlawful. Thus we alight on the very opposite theory to that before presented.

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Nevertheless to obey God rather than man," is made an Axiom (Acts iv. 19). If this be seriously and consistently accepted, and the individual conscience is to decide what things are God's command, then (since Justice is above all things God's command) the precept over-rules all unjust commands of rulers and justifies unlimited resistance to perceived injustice. It were well, if all Christians so accepted it. But in the context, "obedience to God" refers solely to preaching the gospel, and historically the Christian interpretation has limited resistance to ecclesiastical matters. If a king command his officers to rob and murder, they must obey, and not describe his commands in terms so rude: let them rather be called: "deeds necessary by reasons of state." But if he command them to touch dignitaries of the Church or its sacred property, then they entitle obedience to the king, disobedience to God. The English hierarchy under James II. seems to have held such logic. Nor did the Christians under Nero differ from it much. While Nero did but kill brother, wife, mother and Roman patricians, the Christian Church either did not know or did not care: but when he attacked Christians as such, they could not help knowing, and could not help caring. Resistance to the ruler, instead of incurring damnation, became their cardinal duty, and the Emperor was degraded from a minister of God to God's dire enemy.

No one can blame those Christians, that, like other men, they thus learned from experience. But the book which combines theories thus contradictory, cannot wisely be made our authoritative guide in morals.

III.-Connected with, but different from, this is the topic of Nationality. What is a Nation? Has a Nation, as such, any rights? a right of self-defence or of self-government, of hereditary laws? Are its treaties binding? Have its members any mutual special duties? Is Patriotism a duty ? or is love of country a weakness?

All these topics were of high interest in the centuries which preceded Christianity, as they are at this moment. But after Macedonia and Rome had subverted law and freedom, and had widely fused the civilized West into a hollow and nominal unity, Nationality was obliterated over the area for which alone Christian teachers write. Whether Dacians or Britons had any right of national existence, neither Paul nor John was at leisure to discuss. To those who were 66 waiting for the Son of God from heaven" such topics of morality were unpractical. While the high Executive of Rome were beyond the influence of Christian preaching, it was of no avail to reprove its ambition or define the conditions which alone justify war. We cannot complain that the apostles wrote for their own day; but since as a fact they have omitted to treat topics of cardinal importance in our day, they are to us essentially defective teachers.

IV. Still worse is the defectiveness of their extant writings on the most essential questions of private and family right. These did immediately and vitally affect their contemporaries: yet such decisions or hints as they have left us are seeds of pernicious error. The rights of man, woman, child or slave are not alluded to in the New Testament though they must be implied wherever the words Just, Justice occur. Even then, we do not escape hurtful ambiguity. The same epithet confuses the idea of Just, Righteous and Merciful. Thus, when Joseph in Matthew is called a Just man, it means, not that he respected the rights of his bride, but that he was too merciful to bear hard on a guilty woman.* Reverence for Justice, as such, is very rarely pressed in the New Testament. Jesus forbids us to stand up for our own rights: we are to surrender them to the first violent claimant. Well !

The word which in classical Greek means Justice, in the Greek of the Septuagint may be rendered mercy and even an alms. The Arabic word corresponding to the Hebrew has the same ambiguity.

suppose that to be always permissible. He might nevertheless have urged his disciples to stand up bravely for the rights of others, but the topic nowhere appears. BRAVERY IN DEFENCE OF OTHERS' RIGHTS is a virtue unmentioned, and, it may seem, unimagined. Yet surely in all independent moralists, Justice and such Bravery are virtues of prime importance. In the modern view, the moral state of society primarily depends on fundamental Law being JUST. Of course, on that cardinal matter-just tenure of Land-no word is dropt in the New Testament, though through Roman violence and avarice all the provinces were suffering. But that Public Law is of any importance to Public Morals, is a principle which (naturally enough) cannot be learned from the apostolic epistles. In avowing the fact I fully recognize their unparalleled excellence in stimulating to generous and noble devotion to all practical virtue. Use them as an ennobling aid,—they are a mine of gold: deal with them as a sacred letter and an eternal law-they may even harden the heart to cruelty.

The most absolute and heartless violation of personal right is in the system of Slavery, which treats a man as a piece of property, robs him of everything, even of self, of wife, of children, denies to a mother any right in her child, and subserves licentiousness, cruelty and every form of crime. I do not admit the thought that any leading Christian justified the institution. Nevertheless, they have left no protest against it on record, unless James (v. 4) may be so understood; and as a fact, slaveholders have always found great strength to their cause in the apostolic precepts to slaves and masters: especially in the absence of any suggestion to a Christian master that men and women cannot be chattels, and ought to be set free. "The time is short (argues Paul): the Lord is at hand. Art thou a slave? care not for it thou art the Lord's freeman. May'st thou be made free? use it rather." But if the Lord was to return in three years, why was a Christian master to be unjust for those three years? Evidently the apostles did not discern the injustice. They cannot have seen (what old Homer saw) how hard is virtue to a slave. They were in this matter blinded by the moral atmosphere of the age; else they must have given other precepts to masters. They could not alter the political law, but the law did not forbid manumission. They might have at least urged payment of wages and back payment of arrears of wages, and encouragement to slaves to purchase their freedom, where the master thought he had a right to demand this. They might have denounced as

a crime the selling of a slave, and insisted (as perhaps James the Just, head of the despised "Judaizers," did insist) that to enforce men's service without paying wages is dishonesty. Certainly no such doctrines were heard in the Gentile or Pauline Churches. The omission has been deplorably pernicious in all these later times, in which State Policy has professed allegiance to the Christian books.

V. The rights of children are set aside as summarily as those of citizens and of men. A despotic power is conceded to the parent, children are commanded to obey in all things (Col. iii. 20) without exception, and without limitation of ages. Still more unreasonable is the precept to wives of unlimited submission. "Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands, as unto the Lord:" Ephes. v. 22. Peter adds, that they are to obey, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord: 1 Peter iii. 6. As among early barbarians, so by the apostles, an essential inferiority is attributed to the female sex, and appeal to early doctrines, texts and legends is frankly made in proof! "Adam (forsooth) was first created, then Eve; "-a decisive fact!

It is very strange that Christian advocates are fond of claiming high credit for the religion, as having elevated woman; whereas the precepts keep the whole sex down in the unjust depression in which that age found them. According to Paul, the man is the glory of God, but the woman is the glory of the man. Indeed he says, the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the Church. The sexes are thus made out to be separated by a vast and impassable chasm. On this scheme Milton formed his degrading estimate of woman :

"He for God only, she for God in him." On the legend concerning Eve being first deceived by the talking serpent we are (forsooth) to base this fancy fraught with endless injustice! The rights of women of late obtain more and more attention, and will at last be won; but only as Slavery has been overthrown, against hard resistance from Biblical traditions.

It is not possible to make out from the New Testament what rights against a husband a wife retains: equally obscure is the right of a maiden to reject a bridegroom pressed on her. In the only allusion to the subject (1 Cor. xvi. 36-38) Paul advises a man not to give "his virgin" into marriage (that is, it seems, his daughter, his sister or his ward) unless there be some necessity, (apparently meaning, some legal compulsion); yet adds, that there is no harm in it, if on the whole he sees fit to give her