Government Power Source: Consent Versus Divine Law
Since 1898 there has been in this nation a systematic repudiation of the truth — the fundamental national principle — that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. For years before this was thus systematically begun, as well as since, we have called attention to the truth that it could not be done without the planting of a despotism; and that in this case it would certainly be a religious as well as a civil despotism. This, because for a generation there has been here the steadily growing National Reform combination, ever insisting that governments do not derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, but only from God. The Outlook has been one of the leading influences in the present national repudiation of the fundamental principle of the nation. And now the Outlook, being called upon by its readers to tell what then is the source of governmental power, answers thus, October 6:— “Just government rests neither upon the edict of a few strong men nor upon the consent of the many; it rests upon the law of God. No government is just that does not conform to the law of God.” “Just governments rest on conformity with the laws of God.” “Human governments are, or ought to be, attempts to ascertain what these laws are, and to adapt the life of the community to them.” “Righteous democracy is simply one way of ascertaining what are the laws of God, and of conforming the life of the community to them.” That defines and sanctions all that the papacy ever was. It is exactly what, from the beginning, the National Reform combination has proposed. This change in the fundamental principle of this nation is the very change that the National Reform Association has always advocated. Therefore nothing short of the direct enactment of a positive Sunday law, by this nation, could be more directly the making of the Image of the Beast than is this national repudiation of the fundamental principles of the nation as stated in the Declaration of Independence.