From the Consent of the Governed
By T.
THE Declaration of Independence speaks of certain “truths” that are “self-evident.” The two great truths that are thus mentioned are “that all men are created equal” and “that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” Following this utterance concerning “self-evident” “truths” is the brief but clear and comprehensive statement of the view held by the fathers of the Republic concerning the duties and powers of governments. They tell us “that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” When that wonderful declaration was made, saying that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed,” it was in the face of darkest difficulties. A few men in the Old World had begun to see some of the glimmerings of the light of this great truth; but they hardly dared to breathe it in a whisper. The doctrine that kings ruled by divine right, had been so stoutly taught that the people dared not express the thought that the powers of rulers must be prescribed by those over whom they rule. But the desire for liberty, so divinely planted, had become so strong in the breasts of the fathers of the Republic that they could no longer suppress the great principles that had set their souls on fire. They believed in their hearts that their Creator had endowed them with certain inalienable rights, and so they boldly proclaimed to the combined monarchies of the Old World that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.” They did not disavow the fact that “the powers that be are ordained of God;” but rather did they rise to the great demands of the time and affirm the “self-evident” truth that these powers are ordained to inhere in the people, and not to be held by a despot whose absolute powers fill him with all the evils of an unbridled tyranny. The foregoing statement that this new doctrine of independence—the doctrine that the governed are to give their consent to the governing power—was made advisedly. Not only among the people of England, but among the peoples of continental Europe as well, was the doctrine of freedom spreading. Men here and there for several generations, had stood in the face of death while they showed the bitter and distressing effects of tyranny, and the fallacy of the doctrine of the divine appointment of hereditary and aristocratic rulers. It is true that God has frequently wrought through kings who were despotic and even tyrannical. But it was on the principle expressed in His word, “Surely the wrath of man shall praise Thee; the remainder of wrath shalt Thou restrain.” Ps. 76:10. It has been eternally true that “He shall cut off the spirit of princes; He is terrible to the kings of the earth.” Verse 12. The tyranny that was in the state, and that called forth that immortal and splendidly glorious declaration of the fathers of the Republic on that never-to-be-forgotten Fourth of July in 1776, was built up and fostered by the crueler and more bigoted tyranny that was in the apostatized church. The ideas that God has ordained bishops and priests to lord it over the church, and kings and nobles, over the state, go hand in hand, and both owe their origin to the prince of the spirits of evil. The famous protest of the Reformation at Spires sounded the death-knell of this tyranny in the church, and the Declaration of Independence proclaimed its doom in the state. Protestantism laid the foundation for freedom, not only in the church, but also in the state. T.