*

Advent to redeem, justify and save-of His second Advent to raise the dead, to change the living saints and "to judge the quick and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom." Hence St. Paul tells us, that the generation who came out of Egypt† "were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea-did all eat the same spiritual meat and did all drink the same spiritual drink (that is, meat and drink of a spiritual symbolical import)-that they drank of the spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ-and that some of them tempted Christ and were destroyed of serpents."

David, the man after God's own heart, and the sweet psalmist of Israel, has pourtrayed by Divine inspiration in the book of Psalms the entire scheme of man's redemption, the Incarnation, Passion, Resurrection and Ascension of Messiah, the partition of His garments, the casting lots upon His vesture, the preternatural darkness which characterized the crucifixion, His invocation of God from the cross, His intercession for His murderers, and the prayer wherewith He breathed out His soul into the bosom of the Father.

The Song of Solomon is a collection of sacred idyls adumbrating the mystical union which exists betwixt Christ and His Church.

In the Book of Ecclesiastes Solomon clearly exhibits the doctrine of the Trinity in Unity, attributing the creation of the Universe to each of the three Persons of the eternal Trinity, when he admonishes the young to remember their CREATORS, (God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost,) and not their CREATOR, as is expressed in our version, in the days of their youth.

And in the Book of Proverbs Solomon predicts Messiah under the name of ||WISDOM. Hence the signification of our text is: By Christ Kings reign and princes decree justice, by Christ princes rule and nobles, even all the judges of the earth. And this

* 2 Tim. iv. 1.
Ecclesiastes xii. 1.

† 1 Corinthians x. 1-9. Proverbs viii. chap. and ix. 1-5.

illustrates and verifies our Lord's command: * Search the Scriptures (that is the Old Testament Scriptures)— they are they which testify of ME."

From these words we purpose to show,

I. The necessity of Civil Government and Judicial Laws resulting from the fall of man, the consequent depravity of the human heart, and the usurpation of Satan over the souls of men.

II. The Divine sanction which the Word of God attributes to Civil Government and Judicial Laws.

III. Our duties resulting from these premises, adoration, prayer, payment of taxation, and submission to the powers that be.

I. The necessity of Civil Government and Judicial Laws.

God created man in the Divine image and similitude holy and happy. But man by transgression apostatized from God. His heart by the fall became +deceitful and desperately wicked, incurably diseased by sin, so that nothing but sovereign converting grace can regenerate change and sanctify it. The human heart by nature is universally, totally, and innately depraved. "Every imagination of the thoughts of man's heart is only evil continually." "From within out of the heart of men proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness, all these things come from within and defile the man."

Moreover Satan §"is the prince of the power of the air, the spirit which now worketh in the children of disobedience." He is called a "liar and murderer from the beginning," not merely because he devised the first lie enunciated in this world to deceive the primeval parents of mankind, and by temptation murdered the souls and bodies of all men, but because he instigated and impelled Cain to the crime of fratricide, "**who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother." This eating of the forbidden fruit was theft and robbery

* John v. 39.

Genesis vi. 5.

† Jeremiah xvii. 9.
|| Mark vii. 21; and Matthew xv. 19.
§ Ephesians ii. 2.
John viii. 44.
**1 John iii. 12.

against God. When Jehovah placed Adam and Eve in Paradise, He made a special reservation of the Tree of knowledge of good and evil. Tempted by that old serpent the Devil, they eat, they sinned, they died. Now what is theft but an appropriation to our own use of the property of another without the owner's consent. Hence the eating of the forbidden fruit was theft and robbery against God. If man, his own keeper, did not when in a state of innocence resist by his own strength so trivial a temptation, how can he now, fallen apostate and innately depraved, withstand, without Divine sovereign and restraining grace, the world, the flesh, and the devil?

Satan tempted Peter thrice to bear false witness and deny his Divine Master, but the intercession of our great High Priest, who ever prayeth not for the world but for them whom the Father hath given Him, availed to his restoration to the path of duty.-+" Simon, Simon, behold Satan hath desired to sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not."

Satan tempted Judas Iscariot to betray his Divine Master for thirty pieces of silver. "After the sop

Satan entered into Judas."

Satan tempted the Sanhedrim to suborn false witnesses to effectuate the condemnation of Christ. And in them was verified our Lord's awful declaration :|| "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When any one speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own, for his father (Satan) also is a liar."

Satan §"filled the hearts of Ananias and Sapphira to tempt the Spirit of the Lord, and to lie to the Holy Ghost.'

Satan, who tempted Adam and Eve in Paradise and Christ in the wilderness, now goeth through the world,

*John xvii. 9.

+ Luke xxii. 31, 32.

John xiii. 27.

|| John viii. 44. See Bishop Middleton and Professor Scholefield on this verse § Acts v. 3-9.

seeking whom he may seduce into sin and thereby destroy. *"We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against the spiritual powers of wickedness in the air."

Now whatever crimes against society are perpetrated in the world, result from the malignant influence of Satan and unclean spirits of Devils who kept not their first estate upon the depraved heart of apostate man. And if man's innate propensity to evil impelled by Satanic temptation were not restricted by good government and wholesome laws, as well as by the interpositions of Divine Providence, this world would be an Aceldama of false witness, perjury, rapine, violence and blood. Hence Civil Government and Judicial Laws for the repression of crime are a beneficent manifestation of God's love and compassion to sinful man. +"God is love." God is "merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin, and who will by no means make an utter end, though He visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and upon children's children unto the third and to the fourth generation." Because God is love§ "there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God: whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God." Because God is love, therefore by Christ "kings reign and princes decree justice: by Christ princes rule and nobles, yea all the judges of the earth."

II. The Divine sanction to Civil Government and Judicial Laws.

Civil Government and Judicial Laws derive neither their origin nor their sanction from an imaginary social * Ephesians vi. 12. See Professor Scholefield's Hints for an improved translation.

"Fire and water are not more necessary unto the conservation of this our mortal life, than the office of a magistrate is for the preservation and maintenance of good order in a commonweal.”—Dr. Thomas Becon, Chaplain to Archbishop Cranmer, page 330.

Exodus xxxiv. 6 and 7. See the able dissertation of Ludovicus de Dieu in his Critica Sacra, also Dathe and Rosenmuller on this passage.

1 John iv. 8.

§ Romans xiii. 1 and 2.

compact-a compact of the subsistence of which authentic History furnishes no memorials and contains no vestige-a compact, which if it ever had an existence, could not bind the posterity of those who formed it. Government derives its sanction from no decree or act of man, ephemeral, evanescent, mutable, but from the immutable wisdom and revealed will of Him, who hath enjoined man universally to fear God and honour the King. *Put them in mind, writes St. Paul to Titus, to be subject to prinicipalities, and powers, to obey magistrates." "Submit yourselves, writes St. Peter, to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake, whether it be to the King as supreme, or unto Governors, as unto them that are sent by Him for the punishment of evil-doers, and for the praise of them that do well."

Did

This Divine sanction may be inferred from the conduct of David, the man after God's own heart. Saul pursued him as a partridge upon the mountains. The special Providence of God alone rescued David from this relentless and cruel persecution. Twice did Providence place Saul in the power of David. David kill Saul? "The Lord forbid, says David, that I should do this thing unto my master, the Lord's anointed, to stretch forth mine hand against him, seeing he is the anointed of the Lord."-WHO CAN STRETCH FORTH HIS HAND AGAINST THE LORD'S ANOINTED AND BE GUILTLESS." Now if this conduct be recorded for our imitation, then it follows that no circumstance can justify the violent death of a monarch by the hands of his own subjects.

The Divine sanction which holy Scripture attributes to the HIGHER POWERS is self-evident from the appellation given thereto in lxxxiind Psalm, and triumphantly quoted by Christ in His controversy with the Jews. They are called GODS and CHILDREN OF THE MOST HIGH-not because strictly speaking they were GODS,S" for though there be what are called Gods whether in heaven or in earth, as indeed there are

*Titus iii. 1.

1 Samuel xxvi. 9.

† 1 Peter ii. 13.

1 Samuel xxiv. 6. § 1 Corinthians viii. 5, 6.