ive and work. But a keystone
which, instead of securing the arch, threatens its stability, has no
Divine sanction longer than for the time during which it can be
successfully replaced or repaired. The Divine shield is cast, not around
the particular king, but around the society and the civilization of
which he is the head. It is only in the unity of the society that the
Lord's sanction upholds him; let him mar that unity or distract it, and
God passes to the side of those who are seeking to set up a new and real
keystone in his room. There is nothing like the duty of passive
obedience to tyrants implied in the text, or enjoined in the word of
God. "_Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's_," while Caesar is
the recognised lord. In those crises of history in which Caesar has to be
weighed in the balance, in which the question has to be tried, Who is
king and by what rule shall he reign? godly men have to keep clear
before the mind's eye what God means by human society, what He aims at,
and to help Him, yes, help Him to secure it. If no Caesar be worth
recognising, or Caesar be altogether too bad to be borne, then refuse his
tribute, resist his myrmidons, draw the sword of the Lord and of Gideon
to strike for deliverance. The Lord is the Caesar of such an hour; the
Captain of the Lord's host, His sword drawn in His hand as at Jericho,
is in these times of revolution busy among men. They best honour Caesar
and serve Christ in such hours, who have the clearest eye for the good
of the commonwealth, and who prepare the way for the reign of a Caesar
who, like David, shall rule according to the will of God. The sacred
sense of the obligations of a subject or a citizen which those cherish,
who have learnt from Christ "by whom kings reign and princes decree
judgment," and who know that obedience to the powers that he is a form
of obedience to God, makes them patient, beyond the measure of mere
political patience, of the weaknesses, follies, and sins of the men who
occupy the world's high places; while it makes them stern and firm as
death when God has pronounced the sentence of deposition, and has bared
the avenging sword and committed it to their hands. These are the men
who, like Cromwell, do their work with a terrible force and
completeness, and who read lessons in God's name to Caesars, which remain
doctrinal through all time.

3. Surely our Saviour intends us to understand how little money, or
anything with Caesar's