LOYALTY OF NORTHERN CHURCHES.

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upon the character and details of the "deliverances" and "resolutions" adopted. Some of them, in some branches of the Church, may have points of special faultiness. We now speak only of the one principle running through them all, of allegiance to the Government. To express that unequivocally, at such a time of civil war, was their manifest duty; for the same civil obligations rest upon the Church, in her corporate or organic capacity, as rest upon any other organizations of men, or upon the individual citizen, so far as they may apply to each respectively. These religious bodies, as such, are under civil protection, which the Government is bound to render; they enjoy immunities which the civil authorities grant and guard; they hold property under the laws of the land; their charters and franchises are from the State; they have the same rights and privileges at law and in equity which other corporations enjoy; and in other ways, in their organic character, do they stand related to the Government.

By virtue of their public organization, and of their relations to the civil power, these religious bodies wield a vast influence over society, and especially over its more influential classes. By virtue of these things, they owe, in their organic character, full allegiance to the civil authority. Every principle of the Word of God, of human law, of common sense, and every principle in any way entering into the welfare of society, shows this beyond dispute. It is, therefore, their manifest duty, in their organic character as public bodies, when the land is rent and torn by foul rebellion, striving to overthrow the Government, formally to express their allegiance to the Government before all men. If it be said that this is political action, we meet it with a denial. It is action which God enjoins as a duty of religion; and should be recognized among the demands of conscience.

DUTY OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH THE SAME.

On the other hand, it was equally the duty of the Church in the South to stand by the Government in opposition to rebellion. Had she done this, it is the testimony of Southern politicians that they could not have succeeded in initiating civil war. But be this as it may, it was equally her duty.

What right had the Presbyterian Church in the rebel States, for example, in defiance of her civil and religious obligations, to give in her adhesion, organically, to a rebellious Power styled the "Confederate States of America," at the earliest stage of the rebellion? A time might possibly come when it would be right for her to acknowledge such a Government de facto. But that time had not arrived when her leading men took their earliest step. They bounded into the arena at the very beginning of the civil strife. Some of them, in their public utterances, went ahead of the politicians around them; and some ecclesiastical bodies did the same.

Was this a proper spectacle to be presented by the Church of God? It is, rather, her decent mission to adhere to "the powers" which God has placed over her, an 1 when the issues of a bloody rebellion shall have been determined, then to acquiesce in the result. The case is not altered, even when, as in the South, the fires of revolution were burning around or even within her. She is still to stand to her civil as well as to her religious obligations, and abide the issue.

But this, it may be said, would have subjected her to persecution, and brought her ministers to the halter. Well-what of that? May we abandon duty for safety? Are we not to suffer, as well as do, the will of God? We do not suppose we should have been, personally, more

DUTY OF THE SOUTHERN CHURCH THE SAME. 205

ready for Southern martyrdom than other people, but that cannot in the least affect the vital principle here at stake. It is merely a question whether allegiance to the civil authority is a duty of the Church. If that be decided affirmatively, as it clearly must be, then it is as incumbent on the Church to discharge that duty as any other; and if God in His providence call her to suffer, it is as much her duty to suffer in defence of her civil rights and in the discharge of her civil obligations as for any others, for they are all founded on and enforced by the highest religious sanctions.

This path of duty is, too, after all, the only path of safety; for if it shall ever come to a practical question of halters, it may be found that they can be used by the lawful Government of the Union as well as by the abortive Government of the rebellion. And when the future Church historian shall record the sufferings for righteousness' sake endured in this war, he will give a high place in the niche of fame to those ministers of the South, though few in number, who have been incarcerated and hung because they would not bow their necks to treason; while the memory of those who have led the Church astray, and thus prepared an easier triumph for political demagogues, and a more ready altar for the sacrifice of thousands of their countrymen, will go down to posterity with an insupportable load of infamy.

If, for the sake of present safety and peace, the Church may even quietly acquiesce in all the horrid work of this rebellion, without raising her voice in remonstrance to even her own members who are giving all their energies to its support, then there is no duty of Scripture which she may not neglect, and no fact which gives glory to her past history which she may not ignore. Had the Southern Church taken and maintained a righteous and heroic stand,

and been subjected to persecution therefor, she would have come out of the furnace with no such odious smell upon her garments as must now attach to them, for leaping into the front rank of the hordes of treason, winning the earliest and highest honors in its apologetic literature, and leading on its armed legions to battle. We envy not the fame which these men will have in the opinion of mankind, nor the reward which will be meted out to them in the just judgment of God!

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CHAPTER VI.

CLERICAL DISLOYALTY IN LOYAL STATES.

It is a phase of the general subject in close alliance with that treated in the preceding chapter, that a similar opposition to the Government is seen in marked instances among clergymen in some of the loyal States.

The great body of the clergy of all denominations in the loyal States, have unquestionably been loyal to the General Government. But not a few, and among them men of ability and influence, have shown decided sympathy with the rebellion; sometimes in overt acts, often in speech and in their writings, and through other methods; and sometimes by a reticence which has been quite as significant as any open line of conduct. Some of this description have been required to take an oath of allegiance to the Government, which they have done reluctantly. Some would not take it, or their course was such that the alternative was not offered them; and they have voluntarily left, or have been sent out of the country. Others, whose acts have been deemed more highly criminal, have been imprisoned; while still another class have been sent South beyond the lines of the Union armies, as in several instances in Tennessee and other States.

The more numerous cases of disloyalty among clergymen in the loyal portion of the country, are to be found in the Border Slave States and in the District of Columbia. We give illustrations in a few examples, from which others will be readily called to mind by those who are familiar with current events. Similar instances may probably be found in all the Border States.