Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/247

Rh company of Jesuits from 1545 to 1854. They absorb talent enough, but they strangle it. Clipped oaks never growlarge. Prune the roots of a tree with a spade, trim the branches close to the bole, what becomes of the tree? The bole itself remains thin and scant and slender. Can a man be a conventional dwarf and a natural giant at the same time? Case your little boy^s limbs in metal, would they grow? Plant a chestnut in a tea-cup, do you get a tree? Not a shrub even. Put a priest, or a priest's creed, as the only soil for a man to grow in; he grows not. The great God provided the natural mode of operation:—do you suppose He will turn aside and mend or mar the universe at your or my request? I think God will do no such thing.

Now see the relation of the individual to the statutes of men. There is a natural duty to obey every statute which is just. It is so before the thing becomes a statute. The legislator makes a decree; it is a declaration that certain things must be done, or certain other things not done. If the things commanded are just, the statute does not make them just; does not make them any more morally obligatory than they were before. The legislator may make it very uncomfortable for me to disobey his command when that is wicked; he cannot make it right for me to keep it when wicked. All the moral obligation depends on the justice of the statute, not on its legality; not on its constitutionality; but on the fact that it is a part of the natural law of God, the natural mode of operation of man. The statute no more makes it a moral duty to love men and not hate them, than the multiplication table makes twice two four: the multiplication table declares this; it does not make it. If a statute announces, "Thou shalt hate thy neighbour, not love him," it does not change the natural moral duty, more than the multiplication table would alter the fact if it should declare that twice two is three. Geometry proves that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles: it does not make the equality between the two.

Now, then, as it is a moral duty to obey a just statute because it is just, so it is a moral duty to disobey any statute which is unjust. If the statute squares with the law of God, if the constitution of Morocco corresponds with the constitution of the universe, which God writ in my