Page:The Responsibilities of the American Youth.pdf/5

Rh great moral Archimidean lever that is steadily moving, revolutionizing and transforming the world in its social, political and religious aspects. When this idea was first conceived, the more it was turned, pondered and thought upon, the more beautiful, true and tangible it became. And such an idea soon becomes an active principle. It becomes a giant, even when young, and before its club of truth no hydra-headed monster can stand. And soon it was so in this case. The divine rights of the people soon became too strong for the assumed divine rights of kings and priests. And the people, in their discovered rights and power, and with that boldness which truth inspires, said to their oppressors and tyrants, “My masters, you have rode long enough; dismount, and let your legitimate masters take the saddle and become what God, in his divine arrangement, ordained you to be—the servants of the people: this is the true divine right.” And upon a refusal to obey, the king was kicked into the ditch and the priest flung into the mire; and a new order of things commenced with the discovery of human rights and the dawn of human responsibility. The latter is inseparable from the former, and is coexistent and coequal with it. The former give birth to the latter—preside over it and control and direct it. Contract the sphere of the former, and you must, to the same extent, circumscribe the sphere of the latter; extent the sphere of the former, and you, to the same extent, extend the sphere of the latter. And between the two there must be a perfect adjustment and equality; the one must not transcend the other in point of numbers. For whenever this is done, the moral equilibrium is destroyed—and injustice and oppression is the result.

In the wise and benign constitution and administration of the moral government of God, he has uniformly equalized the rights, privileges and responsibilities of his moral subjects, graduating and determining the quantity as well as the quality of the responsibilities and duties of his subjects with their rights and privileges. And so it shall appear clear as his throne of justice and grace, at the last day, when the good are called home to their reward and the evil are doomed to their punishment. And upon no other ground than upon a perfectly equalized condition of rights and