Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/155

Rh make men mad." Shall I keep the commandment of men, or the law of my God?

A statute was once enacted by King Pharaoh for the destruction of the Israelites in Egypt; it was made the official business of all citizens to aid in their destruction: "Pharaoh charged all his people saying, Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river, and every daughter ye shall save alive." It was the official business of every Egyptian who found a Hebrew boy to throw him into the Nile,—if he refused, he offended against the peace and dignity of the kingdom of Egypt, and the form of law in such case made and provided. But if he obeyed, he murdered a man. Which should he obey, the Lord Pharaoh, or the Lord God? That was the question. I make no doubt that the priests of Osiris, Orus, Apis, Isis, and the judges, and the justices of the peace and quorum, and the members of Congress of that time, said, "Keep the king's commandment, ye that worship the crocodile and fear the cat, or ye shall not sleep in a whole skin any longer!" So said everything that loveth and maketh a lie.

King Charles II. made a statute some one hundred and ninety years ago, to punish with death the remnant of the nine-and-fifty judges who had brought his father's head to the block, teaching kings "that they also had a joint in their necks." He called on all his subjects to aid in the capture of these judges. It was made their official business as citizens to do so; a reward was offered for the apprehension of some of them "alive or dead;" punishment hung over the head of any who should harbour or conceal them. Three of these regicides, who had adjudged a king for his felony, came to New England. Many Americans knew where they were, and thought the condemnation of Charles I. was the best thing these judges ever did. With that conviction ought they to have delivered up these fugitives, or afforded them shelter? In time of peril, when officers of the English government were on the look-out for some of these men, a clergyman in the town where one of them was concealed, preached, it is said, on the text "Bewray not him that wandereth," an occasional sermon, and put the duty of a man far before the business of a citizen. When Sir Edmund Andros was at New Haven looking after one of