In speaking thus of the resistance of christian subjects to the government, perhaps I should guard against being misunderstood. In no case can it be a factious resistance. It cannot be stimulated by any of the ordinary motives to such resistance--by discontent, or passion, or ambition, or a love of gain. In no case can it show itself in the disorganizing, the aggressive, and in a free government, the suicidal spirit of mobs. Christians have in their eye a grand and a holy object, and all they wish is to go forward, without violating the rights of others, to its attainment. In so doing they set themselves in opposition to nobody, but merely exercise an inalienable right, and if others oppose them, they must still go forward and obey God, be the consequences what they may. * * * * * We will now consider, as was proposed, the effect of an adherence to the principle of the text on the part of rulers. This becomes appropriate from the peculiar form of our government, and the relation which the rulers hold to the people. Rulers have indeed, in all countries, need to be exhorted to obey God, but when their will is supreme, and their power is independent of the people, there can be no propriety in exhorting them to obey God rather than men. In this country, however, this principle needs to be enforced upon legislators and rulers quite as much as upon the people, perhaps even more. It is at this point, if I mistake not, that we are to look for the danger peculiar to our institutions through those in authority. In other countries the danger is from the accumulation and tyrannical use of power. With us, limited as is the tenure of office, there is little danger of direct oppression. The danger is that those who are in office, and those who wish for it, will, for the sake of immediate popularity, lend the sanction of their names to doctrines and practices, which, if carried into effect, must destroy all government. How is it else that mobs should often escape with so little rebuke? How is it else that we hear such extravagant and disorganizing doctrines maintained in regard to the rights of a majority respecting property, and their power to set aside any guaranties of former Legislatures? Certainly the people are the fountain of power. They establish the government, they have a right to alter it; but when it is established, the state becomes personified through it, and its acts are to be consistent. When it is established, it _is_ a government, it has authority, it becomes God's institution, and those who administer it are to obey God rather than men. Wo to this country, when the people shall become to those in place, the object of adulation and of an affected idolatry. Wo to this country, when the people shall cease to reverence the government as the institution of God because it is established through them; when they shall suppose that it is in such a sense theirs, that they can supersede its acts in any way except by