Page:Fugitive slave law - the religious duty of obedience to law - a sermon preached in the Second Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn, Nov. 24, 1850 (IA fugitiveslavela00spen).pdf/6

 This classification of duties is not arbitrary. It is founded on truth and nature. Men have relations to God, as their Creator, Upholder, Governor, Redeemer, and rightful Judge; and they are bound to recognize those relations, and feel and act accordingly. Men hold relations to one another, as parents, children, citizens, rulers, and subjects; and they are bound to recognize these relations, and feel and act accordingly. Such is the will of God. Such is the law of God. There can be no holiness in man aside from conformity to the will of God in this thing.

This principle is carried out in all the teachings of the New Testament, with an emphasis and a plainness which no candid and unprejudiced mind can fail to understand. Jesus Christ has incorporated it into his sermon on the mount in many particulars, wherein he insists upon our social duties, while he teaches religion. He preached this principle when he said, "render unto Casar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's." He practised on this principle when he made the fish bring in bis mouth the tribute-money which, as a citizen, he owed to the government of the country,—a government a thousand- fold more oppressive than ours.

It would be a fundamental error, if we were to maintain, that religion has nothing to do with the regulation of our conduct towards one another,—as parents, as children, as magistrates, subjects and citizens; but that it has left all that field of duty to be regulated by the individual preferences of men. It has not done so. Social duties come as really within the field of religious obligation, as any other