Abijah recognized the perpetuity of the covenant. The kingdom was given to David for ever--if not in words, yet in spirit; if chapter and verse can not be quoted, yet the whole spirit of the divine communion with David meant eternity of election and honor. It is right to hold up the ideal covenant; it is right that even men who themselves have broken covenants should insist that covenants are right. We must never forget the ideal. Our prayers must express our better selves. A dying thief may pray. Again and again we have to fall back upon the holy doctrine that a man is not to be judged in his character by the prayers which he offers, inasmuch as his prayers represent what he would be if he could. Abijah, having to deal with a perpetual covenant, charges Jeroboam with breaking it: “Yet Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, the servant of Solomon, the son of David, is risen up, and hath rebelled against his Lord.” All rebellion is wrong, unless it arises from a sense of injustice, untruthfulness or dishonesty. No man has a right to dissent from the national Church unless his dissent be founded upon conscience, a right conception of the nature of the Kingdom of Christ upon the Earth, which leads him to say to certain men: “Stand off.” No part of the empire has a right to arise against the central authority, of which itself constitutes a part, merely for the sake of expressing political prejudice or selfish design. Every rebellion must be put down that can not justify itself by the very spirit and genius of justice. Separation becomes schism when it but expresses a whim, an aversion, of a superficial or technical kind; and every rebellion is wickedness, is born of the spirit of the pit, that can not justify itself by appeals to justice, nobleness, liberty and God. Yet our rebellions have made our history. We should have been in slavery but for rebellion. The rebels are the heretics that have created orthodoxy. We owe nothing to the indifferent, the languid, the selfish, the calculating, the let-alone people who simply want to eat and drink and sleep and die. That they were ever born is either an affront to nature or is the supreme mystery of human life. Abijah, therefore, is perfectly right when he insists upon mere rebellion being put down; but when rebellion expresses the spirit of justice and the spirit of progress--the new revelation, the new day--all the Abijahs that ever addressed the world can only keep back the issue for a measurable period. The accusation of Abijah was that Jeroboam had “gathered unto him vain men, the children of Belial.” For “vain men” read “sons of worthlessness”--empty fellows, who will join any mob that pays best; men who will cheer any speaker for a half-crown an hour, and put out anybody on any plea on any side for extra remuneration. Where do these men come from? Whose language do they speak? Whose image and superscription do they bear?