as
the French state, and answerable to God for the use it made of
political power, or the conduct of its government.
But be this as it may, there evidently can be no physical force in the
nation to coerce the nation itself in case it goes wrong, for if the
sovereignty vests in the nation, only the nation can rightly command or
authorize the employment of force, and all commissions must run in its
name. Written constitutions alone will avail little, for they emanate
from the people, who can disregard them, if they choose, and alter or
revoke them at will. The reliance for the wisdom and justice of the
state must after all be on moral guaranties. In the very nature of the
case there are and can be no other. But these, placed in a clear
light, with an intelligent and religious people, will seldom be found
insufficient. Hence the necessity for the protection, not of authority
simply or chiefly, but of individual rights and the liberty of religion
and intelligence in the nation, of the general understanding that the
nation holds its power to govern as a trust from God, and that to God
through the people all civil rulers are strictly responsible. Let the
mass of the people in any nation lapse into the ignorance and barbarism
of atheism, or lose themselves in that supreme sophism called
pantheism, the grand error of ancient as well as of modern gentilism,
and liberty, social or political, except that wild kind of liberty, and
perhaps not even that should be excepted, which obtains among savages,
would be lost and irrecoverable.
But after all, this theory does not meet all the difficulties of the
case. It derives sovereignty from God, and thus asserts the divine
origin of government in the sense that the origin of nature is divine;
it derives it from God through the people, collectively, or as society,
and therefore concedes it a natural, human, and social element, which
distinguishes it from pure theocracy. It, however, does not explain
how authority comes from God to the people. The ruler, king, prince,
or emperor, holds from God through the people, but how do the people
themselves hold from God? Mediately or immediately? If mediately,
what is the medium? Surely not the people themselves. The people can
no more be the medium than the principle of their own sovereignty. If
immediately, then God governs in them as he does in the church, and no
man is free to think or act contrary to popular opinion, or in any case
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