We Ought to Obey God Rather Than Men
By H. Clay Trumbull
"We ought to obey God rather than men." That would seem to be an indisputable truth; but it is really a truth that is not even generally accepted as a basis of action in the world at large. What men insist on, rather than what God has commanded, is popularly binding. Fashion is more blindly followed than Bible teachings, by the average church-goer. Many a man or woman shrinks from standing out against public sentiment, while quietly defying God by conscious disobedience of his law. And there are multitudes who would hesitate to break a statute law, when they would not quiver at the thought of breaking some positive law of God. There are those who would not steal a dollar from the public treasury (there are those, I say, even if they are by no means the entire population), yet who would steal time and service from God, with hardly a thought of special iniquity. And the world generally judges men rather by their conformity to man's law than to God's law. A church-member can defraud God out of his dues without losing caste in church or community, when he would be a branded man if he openly defrauded one of his fellows to a far less extent. Yet, in spite of popular practice in such matters "we ought to"—whether we do or not, "we ought to obey God rather than men." The apostles were sound on this point. It is a pity that more of us are not as sound just here.—H. Clay Trumbull.