p. 240, para. 1 | Untitled article

Untitled article

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · August 4, 1892

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 7, No. 30

ARE the civil laws of Tennessee the moral enactments of God, that men shall educate their consciences by them? Does God judge of the righteousness of the citizens of Tennessee by the measure of their subjection to Tennessee statutes, and that alone? If the Tennessee statutes are the educational standards for the consciences of the citizens of that State, who made the laws of Tennessee? The State, or the citizens of the State, or Jehovah? If the State made the laws, and the citizens are the State, then the citizens have established the standard for their own consciences, and are a law unto themselves,—their own God. If the State, which is a corporate body of their creation, can make laws to which their consciences must be educated, then the State is their God, and they are themselves above it, for they have made it.