Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/530

516

Now, no one in the world, as far as we have heard, wishes to keep Mr. Tyng from preaching the gospel to every creature, or to any creature. He can preach down on the shore to-morrow in all the tongues with which he has been gifted, as certain fishermen once did; and there is no one to molest or make him afraid. But if he wishes to do so and retain his position as an officer of a certain religious society, he must first obtain the permission of that society. Cela va sans dire. Yet there are many people who seem to think that it is right for him to insist upon breaking the rules which that society has laid down for the government of its officers, and yet retain the privileges of his office. We do not say that he did break the rules, in which matter others, not we, must be his judges; but that this is the position taken with regard to his case by many people. Yet who needs to be told that if such a course can be pursued association for a specific object becomes impossible. If members of a society or a corporation, religious, commercial or political, can set at nought its constitution and its laws with impunity, that society or corporation will, in the very nature of things, either soon cease to exist, or be perverted and domineered over by lawless usurpers, which is practically the same thing. The disposition to cheer on any disregard of constitutional and legal obligation in favor of action which seems right in the abstract to the cheerers is one of the most dangerous signs of the times. It is right for every man to fight for the truth, if, being wiser than Pilate, he knows it, and to give himself up to the practice of philanthropy in the abstract; and although a statesman or a clergyman has voluntarily assumed certain duties and certain subordinate relations under a constitution as the condition of a certain position, if the truth, as he comes to see it, and philanthropy, as he comes to feel it, require him to labor outside that constitution and those laws, it is perfectly right for him to do so, provided, he will lay aside his office and step outside the corporation in question, be it religious or political, for the performance of such labors, which may then be both honest and effectual.