WHAT LOYALTY AND DISLOYALTY ARE. 253 many words have been wasted in an attempt to show that loyalty and disloyalty can have no application to the people in our civil war. It is of no manner of importance that "loyalty" was formerly used to express attachment to the sovereign and the reigning family in monarchical countries. It has become popularized in the United States, and at the present moment expresses attachment to the Government now imperilled and a desire for its maintenance against the rebellion seeking its subversion. WHAT LOYALTY AND DISLOYALTY ARE. Loyalty means faithfulness to the obligations of law; obedience to lawful authority. Men will differ as to whether a certain act or line of conduct is loyal or disloyal, according as they define these terms. The guilt or innocence of a person on trial for any crime, must be determined by the facts and circumstances of the particular case, and which may not belong to any other case; nor would full light be thrown upon the proper result by the most accurate verbal definition of the crime under which he were arraigned. It is of little practical avail, therefore, that men differ upon the meaning of the term "loyalty." It is of far more importance that they agree upon the duty of manifesting it in support of the Government, even though they differ as to the manner and degree in which such manifestation should be evinced. For ourselves, we deem it a citizen's duty to sustain the Government in putting down the rebellion by all the power he can command; by his personal influence, by word and deed, by his purse, his sword, and his prayers. By putting it down, we mean, destroying it root and branch, crushing the life out of it, and putting it forever past the faintest hope of resurrection; and we are free to say, that we value that citizen's loyalty at a very low figure which does not come up to that point. It is worth nothing, and may be worth infinitely less than nothing in such perils as are now upon the nation,-yea, may be counted upon the other side,-unless it be openly demonstrative, in all proper ways, times, and places, in sustaining the Government against its deadly foe. DISLOYALTY PUNISHABLE BY THE CHURCH. We have seen that disloyalty is punishable by the State. It is equally clear that it is punishable by the Church. Men have differed upon this point, and do still, as they do upon other matters that are plain. We cannot expect them to agree in those things in which their prejudices are deeply enlisted, until they are willing to lay them aside. It is perfectly demonstrable, however, that disloyalty is an offence of which the Church may take cogni zance. In saying this we wish not to be misunderstood. We have indicated what, personally, we deem to be genuine loyalty for every citizen of the United States in this time of civil peril. We do not, however, announce that as a standard for the Church, on which she should act in ecclesiastical discipline; nor do we lay it down as a standard for other men. To his own Master each one standeth or falleth. We give it, simply, as our own view of what duty demands. It is our opinion; nothing more. We allow other men to have theirs. But that disloyalty is an ecclesiastical offence which the Church may consider and judge, is something higher than mere opinion. It follows inevitably from the teachings of the word of God. What loyalty and disloyalty are, in any case that may come before the Church for adjudication, those who have to deal with it must determine; for, as before observed, each case must be settled by the facts REASONS FOUNDED ON REVELATION. 255 and circumstances which are peculiar to it. But that the principle of disloyalty is such that it may involve an ecclesiastical offence by the word of God, is beyond doubt; and it is only to the principle that we now give any consideration. REASONS FOUNDED ON REVELATION. The doctrine we maintain arises inevitably from the nature and duty of obedience to the civil authority. The nature of the obedience enjoined is religious. It has God's highest sanctions. To violate the injunction is sin. Sin is to be removed by inculcating truth; and when it breaks out in open acts of scandal, it may be met by ecclesiastical supervision, trial, and censure. This is the case with every grade and kind of offence which affects private or public morals, or the welfare of society, or the influence and good name of religion among men. Disloyalty is no exception to this. Open disobedience to rulers, when it manifests itself in disturbing or threatening the peace of society, or aims or connives at resistance to lawful authority, or subverting the Government, is a sin and a scandal by the word of God; and if committed by a member of the Church, he may be arraigned and punished for it as clearly as for any other scandal. If not, why not? Is it because this is a civil offence, and punishable by the State? So is arson, so is murder, so is fraud; and yet, will a man pretend that one may burn down his neighbor's house, or take his life in cold blood, or cheat him out of his property, and not be disturbed by the Church, because the State may take cognizance of these offences? This is in the highest degree preposterous. Nor is it enough that the State does actually punish for these crimes; the Church may also inflict censure for them, in the same case, in the person of the same indi vidual on whom the State has inflicted its highest sentence. It would be a singular spectacle to behold a man incarcerated justly as a civil penalty for forgery, and yet the Church take no action, and he, in consequence, remain in good standing, on the ground that he was already suffering punishment from the State. Nor, on the other hand, is the Church to be governed or limited by the State in such cases. The State is not infallible. A man may be punished unjustly. If the victim of tyranny, or prejudice, or ignorance, or incompetency, be a member of the Church, the whole case may be ecclesiastically considered and decided, notwithstanding the State may have acted upon it. The Church is not bound in such case by what the State has done, so far as to be debarred an adjudication; and if, in her judgment, her member is oppressed, she may so declare. She may consider the testimony, conduct the case by her own rules of proceeding, and come to a decision independent of the State and contrary to its judgment. She cannot release from prison, nor restore to life, but she may place the man in good standing within her pale, and show the most clear reasons, it may be, for her decision; and in nothing of this does she show the least insubordination or disrespect towards the civil authority, but may be entirely submissive to it. All this arises from the fact that the respective jurisdictions of the Church and the State, though embracing the same persons and covering the same offences, have different spheres to fill, and different ends to serve, in their cogniz ance of the same conduct. SPIRITUAL JURISDICTION BROADER THAN CIVIL. But the difference between these separate ruling powers does not stop here. The spiritual jurisdiction is both. deeper and broader than the civil. It embraces offences SPIRITUAL JURISDICTION BROADER THAN CIVIL. 257 which the latter does not touch; and in those which the civil power does consider, there are moral elements which the spiritual power alone deems important. There are a multitude of offences, any one of which, habitually committed, would destroy a man's standing in the Church, and upon trial would cast him out of it; and yet, though guilty of all of them, his good standing before the laws of the land would not be affected. And there are grades of the same radical offence which the Church holds to be stamped with guilt, but which the State overlooks. A man may be guilty of "perjury," and the State will punish him; but all false swearing, or false statements under oath, are not "legal perjury." But by the laws which regulate ecclesiastical discipline, lying, deception, falsehood, all which enter into the moral elements of perjury, -are themselves offences which the Church may consider, whether committed under oath or not. A variety of hearings and pleadings in almost any case before a Church court, which a civil court would not consider, or would rale out entirely, may be deemed important, and may be decisive of the result which is reached. The principle here involved is of the highest moment. The jurisdiction of the Church, as embracing a man's conduct, or as cognizant of any act of his life, reaches where the State cannot go, because its rule is spiritual, and deals primarily with the heart and conscience; and although in actual discipline the Church deals only with acts, there are classes of actions and elements of conduct which are deemed proper for its consideration which do not come within the civil statute. This may be illustrated in regard to the offence of disloyalty. Who will pretend to say, that, because a man may not have committed "treason" in the technical sense of the statute, he may not have been actually guilty of it before the law of God? or that, because there may not be |
