THE ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT.
By C. P. Bollman
The necessity for government is inherent in the very nature of things. “Order is heaven’s first law.” These words are not Scripture, but the truth they express is scriptural, as all things testify. Order implies law—it is the result of law—and law implies government. Indeed, government is only law in operation. Nor do we distinguish wisely between moral and natural law. For instance, we speak of the “law of nature” and of the “law of God.” But the Scriptures teach that the law of nature is the law of God. “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth His handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out thru all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them hath He set a tabernacle for the sun, which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race. His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and His circuit unto the ends of it; and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof. The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul.” Ps. 19: 1-7. What started such a chain of thought in the mind of the psalmist? What was used by the Spirit of God to uplift the soul of the prophet, to indite his words, to “wake to ecstasy” his harp, ever attuned to the praises of the Creator? Was it not the matchless beauty of the star-gemmed sky, the glory of the sun shining in his strength, the evidence of divine wisdom and power everywhere?—Yea, verily, and, transported by these thoughts, “the sweet singer of Israel” exclaims, “The law of the Lord is perfect.” The psalmist was right, yea, is right; for there is but one law—“the law of the Lord.” Therefore, as government is the reign of law, it had its origin in the bosom of the Divine Being. “There is no power but of God; the powers that be are ordained of God.” Rom. 13:1. Sin Is Only Perverted Good.
Had man a single power, a single faculty, not derived from the Creator, had he anything not a gift from heaven, he might innocently use it as he would. But all man’s powers are God-given, and he is under sacred obligation to use them all to God’s glory. The Creator, being the God of life, of order, of justice, implanted in man a love of these things: of life, that he might retain and enjoy it; of order, that he might be in harmony with the laws of his own being and of the universe; of justice, that he might take pleasure in this attribute of the divine character and be himself just. In a state of innocency these attributes would make it a joy to man to live in harmony with the divine law. Separated from God, the same qualities,—love of life, of order, and of justice,—would lead men to organize themselves into civil society, the better to secure these ends,—self-preservation, order, and justice. In other words, God is never taken by surprise; He is never confronted by any emergency for which He has made no provision. As civil order would be essential to a race of sinners, man was given such a nature that, separated from God, he would be drawn naturally into civil society. (But civil society does not necessarily take the form of a state or nation.) It is in this sense—in the sense of being naturally drawn into civil society—that government is ordained of God, and not in the sense that any particular form of government is of divine origin, or that God makes choice of certain individuals, and commissions them to rule over their fellow-men. The Bible teaches, not the divine right of kings, but the divine rights of the individual. “It is not particular sovereigns whose power is ordained of God, nor any particular form of government; it is the genius of government itself.” In the very nature of things, the ideal government is self-government—self-control. This faculty was lost in large measure in the fall. It is restored in the Gospel. In Jesus Christ every man may, by the grace of God, do those things, and only those things, that his conscience, instructed by the law and Spirit of God, tells him are right. Out of Christ every man’s experience is expressed in Rom. 7:15: “For that which I do I allow not; for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I.” Well may the soul in such a condition of vassalage to sin cry out in anguish of heart, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” But there is deliverance—restoration of the power of self-government—in Jesus Christ. “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak thru the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh; that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” Rom. 8:2-4. Naturally, the first human government was family government; and in the Christian family—the Christian home—we still find the nearest approach to God’s ideal government—voluntary co-operation to secure the common good. In the Christian home love moves to obedience, and each act of filial affection jewels with a new joy the life both of the parent and of the child. What parents so happy as those who have obedient children? What children so blest as those who find their chief joy in willing service to loving parents? But this is a digression. Let us return to the development of human government. First was the family, then the tribe, and finally the nation, with its king. The world was getting farther and farther from God and from His ideal of government,—self-control, or, in other words, the reign of conscience. So far as history records, Nimrod was the first to assume the dignity and title of king. Prior to his time all the rulers of Babylon were merely viceroys. Their god, Nimridu, was king. “This,” says “Empires of the Bible,” “points clearly to a time when God was recognized as the only King and the only Ruler. And when false gods were put in the place of the true God, they were recognized as the real kings, and men in places of authority were but mere substitutes. This change was so recent, too, that rulers were not bold enough to take to themselves the title of king. It was not much longer, however, before this step was taken. One arose bold enough to do this and all that it involved.” This man was Nimrod, and his name, according to Gesenius, means “the extremely impious rebel.” In assuming to rule others3by his own right and in his own name, he put himself in the place of God. From henceforth men were expected not to ask, What is the will of God? but, What says the king? “With the setting up of Nimrod’s kingdom,” says the author of “Buried Cities of the East,” “the entire ancient world entered a new historical phase. The Oriental tradition which makes that warrior the first man who wore a kingly crown, points to a fact more significant than the assumption of a new ornament of dress, or even the conquest of a province. His reign introduced into the world a new system of relation between the governor and the governed. The authority of former rulers had rested upon the feeling of kindred, and the ascendancy of the chief was an image of parental control. Nimrod, on the contrary, was a sovereign of territory, and of men just so far as they were its inhabitants, and irrespective of personal ties. Hitherto there had been tribes—enlarged families—society; now there was a nation, a political community—the state.” And of that state Inspiration says, “The beginning of his kingdom was Babel”—confusion. kept the ruler close to the people. Being the father of the family, the patriarch of the tribe, he was one of the people. Their interests were his interests; their happiness, his joy. But fallen man, as we have seen, soon developed a widely different scheme, one that separated the ruler as widely as possible from his people. To the king, his subjects were no more than so many cattle. He esteemed them as of value only for the service they could render him, the tribute they could pay. They were known to him only in the mass. They were so many hundreds or so many thousands of men, women, and children, capable of contributing so much to the royal revenues. They had only such rights as he, their sovereign, saw fit to grant. To him their highest allegiance was due—in short, he was their god. The individual was merged into the state, and the state was embodied in the king, whose idea of right and wrong, of moral obligation and human duty, constituted the “national conscience,” by which all were to be governed. A sad condition surely! But why, it may be asked, did God permit this? Simply because He could not do otherwise without destroying man’s free agency. It is true that the scheme of government here described greatly restricted freedom of conscience, but only God could take away that freedom; and He could do it only by destroying man’s will-power. But without will-power moral character is impossible. Such character is formed by choosing the good and refusing the evil. And God never ordained any system of government calculated to weaken in man the power of choice. Self-government is so essential to character-building that Jesus Christ came into this world to restore to men this faculty; therefore it is written, “He hath sent Me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.” It is more than a coincidence that in those lands having the Gospel in its greatest purity the rights of conscience are most clearly seen and most fully guaranteed. The powers ordained of God are not wicked men, using their power to enslave the souls of their fellows, but the faculties or powers which they have perverted, which were originally given to enable each individual to govern himself to the glory of God. “He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” Micah 6:8.