abstract: Setting forth the equality of all men as members of the same family, and endowed alike with immortality, the Word of Revelation at the same time demands respect and honor for government as the ordinance of God Himself.

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Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the Vol. 1, No. 10, January 15, 1868 issue of The Christian Statesman. The article was unsigned, and because of this it is my supposition that it was written by the original editors of The Christian Statesman, David McAllister and T. P. Stevenson.

The history of the world has been very largely a history of attempts to reconcile society and individual man. Personal rights on the one hand, on the other hand, civil law: these are the antagonists, the reconciliation of which has been the problem of ages. So diametrically, and almost invariably have these been opposed to each other, in the experience of the race, that many thoughtful minds have been led to believe that the antagonism between them is inherent and necessary, that social law is possible only at the expense of some measure of personal freedom, and that personal freedom is to be found in its perfection, only where the individual, released from all external obligation, is left to be a law unto himself. According to this belief, the difficult problem of society is to be solved by one of the two following methods: either, first, as has been urged on the side of autocracy and socialism, by making civil law absolute in its intrinsic authority as the will of the autocrat or the State, and constraining its subjects to yield up their liberties, and rights, and happiness to its behest; or, secondly, as individualism demands, by denuding social law of all authority, except in so far as it is made the variable expression of the people's varying desires and will, or, going a step further in the same direction, by casting away all law and government as the "last relics of barbarism."

No student of history needs to be informed that both these proposed solutions have been repeatedly tried, and in every instance with the same results in kind, though not in degree--autocratic tyranny or social despotism in the one case; in the other, anarchy. It may indeed be affirmed that neither socialism nor individualism has yet had full trial. No doubt their effects might be greatly modified by favoring circumstances. But the trials to which they have already been subjected, have clearly shown that the inevitable tendency of State absolutism, is to check the progress of free and enlightened civilization, and this always in proportion to the energy and activity of the government, and that the legitimate out-working of individualism, on the other hand, is the degeneration of freedom into licentiousness, and the transformation of society into an arena of clashing interests and contending passions.

Greece of old, and Rome as well, alternating between despotism and unrestrained personal freedom, groping after the union of national power and glory with individual welfare and happiness, but clutching now national disaster, then personal wrong and suffering, and again, both these together, might teach the world to look for some other solution of the problem of society, than either of these. If any stronger proof is called for, it is fully furnished in the annals of France, that modern nation, of boasted civilization, which revolting from despotism, "first mocked freedom with the mummeries of children, and then made its name a loathing over the world by the horror of bloody cruelty." Nor have these lessons of history been altogether unheeded. Civilized nations are at last beginning to understand that personal liberty and social law, so far from being inherently antagonistic, are correlated parts of a perfect whole. Each is only part of a truth, and therefore either one without the other is false and pernicious. The true solution of the social problem must be found, not in the separation, but in the harmonizing of liberty and law.

And now it remains to be asked, how can this reconciliation be effected? There is but one answer--by the application of the law of Christ to both the individual and society. The law of nature, insufficient for the instruction and guidance of the individual and the family in the fallen condition of our race, must be equally insufficient for society. Taking for granted that God has made a fuller written revelation of His will, we naturally expect it to contain what will meet the social as well as individual necessities of mankind. Says the philosophic Coleridge: "If our whole knowledge and information concerning the Bible had been confined to the one fact of its immediate derivation from God, we should still presume that it contained rules and assistances for all conditions of men under all circumstances; and therefore for communities no less than for individuals." Examining its pages, we are not disappointed.

The Bible proves itself to be a revelation of supernal light, streaming down upon our darkness. And now, at length before our illuminated vision stands out the solution of the heretofore unsolved and perplexing problem. Setting forth the equality of all men as members of the same family, and endowed alike with immortality, the Word of Revelation at the same time demands respect and honor for government as the ordinance of God Himself. It teaches what no other system of social philosophy ever taught, that the interests of the individual and society are one, because their highest end is the same--the glory of God. Government is clothed with a dignity which man never claimed for it, and its enactments are enforced by sanctions such as the human mind would never have conceived, while the citizen learns that subjection to righteous law is not slavery, but the duty and happiness of the Christian freeman.

Our duty today, then, as Christian patriots, is plain. Accepting God's Word as the tree of life, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations, let us seek to have the remedy applied to the social disorders of our own land. Let us labor to Christianize all the individual members of society, that they may be prepared to live, not in the license of immorality, but in the freedom of those whom the truth makes free--the freedom of cheerful, hearty obedience to the laws of the Bible. Let us labor to Christianize the government, that its enactments, based upon and harmonizing with the same divine laws, may be in discord with the rights and liberties of no man, and with the inclinations and desires of no true disciple of Christ. Thus liberty and law will rest in even balance; and over the adjustment great voices will be heard in heaven, taking up other strains of the same anthem, whose earlier strains were sung above the plains of Bethlehem, and saying, "The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ: and He shall reign for ever and ever."

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