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199 Horace Bushnell 23 Politics under the Law of God 0Horace Bushnell (1802–1876) was a Calvinist of Puritan background. A pastor in Hartford, Connecticut, he was both highly influential and highly controversial. In his speech, Politics under the Law of God, delivered in the North Congregational Church in Hartford in 1844, he argues that the ministry should provide moral guidance to government, a view that met with considerable opposition. His reference to the sin of slavery, however, became an important resource to the abolitionist movement, though Bushnell himself was disinclined to support the more aggressive steps toward change. We have taken up, in this country, almost universally, theories of government which totally forbid the entrance of moral considerations. Government, we think, is a social compact or agreement—a mere human creation, having as little connection with God, as little of a moral quality, as a ship of war or a public road. We do not say that government, when exerted and fashioned by man, in whatever manner, is forthwith taken by God to be his instrument and ordinance—that it is molded below and authorized or clothed with authority from above—giving thus to law a moral force, and to the civil constitution the prerogatives of a settled or established order. Rejecting such views of government, or never learning to conceive them, it results that law expresses nothing but human will, and that no one is morally bound by it. If he chooses to break it and take the penalty, or if he can shun the penalty by concealment, he is guilty of no moral wrong. It also results that a majority may at any time, and in any way, rise up to change the fundamental compact; for there is no such thing as an established order of the past, endued with a moral authority to bind their actions and determine their legitimate functions. . . . Holding such views of government, it would be wonderful if we did not separate its functions practically from God, as far as we separate them in theory. If our nature were not wiser than our philosophy, we could never feel one sentiment of moral obligation in regard to our duties as citizens. There would be no crevice left through which a sense of public virtue could leak into our minds. That the views of which I complain are atheistical in their origin, is a well know fact of history, and they show that fact in their face. That they have operated powerfully to effect the disastrous separation of politics from the constraints of duty and responsibility to God, is too evident. The neglect of the pulpit to assert the dominion of moral principles over what we do as citizens, has hastened and aggravated the evil I complain of. The false 200 # Part 7: Nineteenth-Century Voices notion has taken possession extensively of the public mind, and received the practical assent, too generally, of the ministers of religion themselves, that they must not meddle with politics. Nothing is made of the obvious distinction between the moral principles of politics and those questions of election and of State policy which are to be decided by no moral tests. It is the solemn duty of the ministers of religion to make their people feel the presence of God’s law everywhere—and especially here, where so many of the dearest interests of life—nay, the interests of virtue and religion are themselves at stake. This is the manner of the Bible. There is no one subject on which it is more full and abundant than it is in reference to the moral duty of rulers and citizens. Command, reproof, warning, denunciation—every instrument is applied to keep them under a sense of obligation to God. Some of the ministers of religion, I am afraid, want the courage to discharge their whole duty in this matter. Their position between two fiery and impetuous torrents of party feeling, is often one, I know, of great weakness, and they need to consider, when they put on their armor, whether they can meet one that cometh against them with twenty thousand. But it cannot be necessary that the duties of the ministry in the field, should be totally neglected, as they have been in many places hitherto, or if it be, we may well despair of our country. What then shall be done?—This is the great practical question to which we are brought—a question which every good citizen, every lover...

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