BREAKING THE LAW OF THE LAND.
By R. F. C.
Some two or three years since, a young man, a member of a certain church became convinced of his duty to keep the Sabbath, and accordingly obeyed. Some time afterwards, upon one first day of the week, he had occasion, as he was about his work, to pass along the road with his team, when he chanced to meet the elder of the church to which he had belonged. "What!" said the elder, "breaking the law of the land?" The young man checked his team and replied: "Which is worse, to break the law of the land, or to break the law of God?" The elder did not seem disposed to converse, but passed straight on. This incident called to mind the case of Daniel, at the time when a decree was made that whosoever should ask any petition of God or man for thirty days, except to king Darius, that he should be cast into the den of lions. And as Daniel, with his windows open toward Jerusalem, prayed to God three times a day as usual, and as those wicked men that sought his life,93assembled and found him praying and making his supplication, we imagine that we hear them exclaim, "What! breaking the law of the land?" But Daniel's God was found able to deliver him; and the same God still lives, and will deliver those that will soon be appointed to death by the image of the beast. It is true, Christians are taught to be subject to the government under which they live; but when men, in view of this, seek to compel them by penal statutes to violate their obligations to God, then it is that they will be found walking circumspectly before God, notwithstanding that the framers of these oppressive laws shall in their utter astonishment exclaim, "What! breaking the law of the land?!" R. F. C.