the evil news of the sudden death of her only son, walking quietly
up the gravel path, and covering with his healthy hands the two withered
ones as he met her at the doorway, answering her searching inquiry,
"Father?" with an unmistakable inflection of the words, "My child!" That
also of the American Protestant Episcopal bishop, leaving his little
birthday gathering already interrupted for three successive years, and
foregoing a breath of country air, after weary months of toil in the hot
city, to comfort a simple family hovering piteously about a little white
casket:--these are attitudes far more impressive than the ceremonious
exercise of their loftiest ecclesiastical functions.

* * * * *

Many lines of evidence from the side of reason converge on the Biblical
teaching that civil government is a divine institution. Perhaps one of
the most striking features of our later American growth is the colossal
selfishness of our people. The habit of freedom from restraint is fast
hardening into a lawlessness of character.

* * * * *

Listen to some of the palliating expressions with which our legal
atmosphere is permeated: "indiscreet and untactful," "the unwritten
law," "swift justice," "murder a fine art," and remember that these are
the terms that play around that triangle of corrupt judge, dallying
lawyer, and bribed and illiterate jury--all conspiring to "shove by
justice" with technicalities. And what are those sinister figures,
flitting and stalking through the land--the law-maker with his spoils,
the rioter with his rock, the anarchist with his bomb, the assassin
thrusting out his black hand, the lyncher with his battering ram, his
rope and his rifle; these are some of the outside lawless who conspire
with the inside lawless to make a scarecrow of American law, making it
the perch and not the terror of the birds of prey. And who knows how
soon all of these lawless ones may stand up together and, with a
monarch's voice cry, Havoc in the confines of this Republic!

* * * * *

But we must be conscious of our Heavenly Father behind the earthly type.
This unmistakably is the significance of the Biblical words: "To obey
your parents in the Lord"; "To be obedient unto your masters as unto
Christ"; "To fear God in honoring the face of the old man"; "To be
subject unto rulers as the ministers of God." And this leads us to the
great levelling truth, that we are all equally accountable to our
Heavenly Father, that we are n