第35章

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 to question the wisdom or justice of any of the acts of the state, which is arriving at state absolutism by another process.Besides, this would theoretically exclude all human or natural activity, all human intelligence and free-will from the state, which were to fall into either pantheism or atheism.

VIII.The right of government to govern, or political authority, is derived by the collective people or society, from God through the law of nature.Rulers hold from God through the people or nation, and the people or nation hold from God through the natural law.How nations are founded or constituted, or a particular people becomes a sovereign political people, invested with the rights of society, will be considered in following chapters.Here it suffices to say that supposing a political people or nation, the sovereignty vests in the community, not supernaturally, or by an external supernatural appointment, as the clergy hold their authority, but by the natural law, or law by which God governs the whole moral creation.