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SERMON.

EXODUS xviii. 21, 22.

Thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness, and place such over them,—and let them judge the people.

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Magistracy is one of the greatest trusts committed to human integrity and wisdom. Under forms of ernment which have generally prevailed, men's imaginations, excited by a sense of its importance, are not satisfied without seeing it invested in an external array, significant of its exaltation above the common offices of life. It must wear the purple or the ermine. It must dwell in a palace, and move abroad attended by a crowd. Under our simpler institutions, we dispense with its livery and its parade; and possibly, to the vulgar view, its essential dignity is thereby made less imposing. The plain man, who meets his neighbours on an equal footing in the common scenes of life, dazzling them with no show, repelling them by no arrogance, may be forgotten by them to be the same, who, day and night, is holding steadily over them and theirs the shield of the sovereign power. But the wise do not need the "pomp and circumstance" of authority, to remind them that he, who is

worthily clothed with it, is an object for their reverence. They only see cause to revere him the more, that he is able to reconcile such simplicity of private manners with the prerogatives of such a lofty walk of duty, and that he is willing to lend himself to the anxious cares of office, without those inducements of luxury and rank, which are held out to rulers of less privileged communities as fair indemnity for renouncing the ease and liberty of a private station.

There is, perhaps, room for the further remark, that, as far as there exists a fit apprehension among us of the importance of the trust of magistracy, it is chiefly in favor of those whose sphere of office is in the administration of the central government. They act on a larger theatre, and are most conspicuously before the whole community. Assuredly we can scarcely entertain too grateful a sense of faithful services employed in adjusting well our relations to foreign states, or, by the establishment and application of wholesome laws, protecting and enriching the sources of our internal prosperity. But we should neither be wisely attentive to our own welfare, nor just to those on the honest action of whose minds we are most continually dependent, if we should degrade into any secondary estimation the men, whom, in the administration of our own commonwealth, we have called to watch over our lives, our property, our reputation,-in short, over all our interests of the most intimate concern.

This important trust of magistracy the text briefly instructs us who they are who should be appointed to

discharge. First; thou shalt provide, out of all the people, able men.

They whose province is the execution of the laws, for the most part act in a subordinate capacity. Their discretion is overruled by legislation and judicial sentence, and the ability, which they chiefly need, is that of calm, and, at the same time, steadfast resolution. -Legislators need to be able men. They have many interests to consider, and to reconcile, or, at least, balance and adjust. The rules which they approve are thenceforward to be no abstract and dormant propositions, but are to modify, from that moment, the relations of all the citizens in a community. What they determine to be right, thenceforward commands the resources of a community to carry it into effect. It is a power which reaches every where, and is no where to find resistance. They need to be able men, who shall discern and determine the action of such a power, so that every where its action may be salutary.-Judges may well be required to be able men. On the whole, there is no trust reposed by men in one another so august as theirs. By nothing human am I awed, so much as by a tribunal of justice. It is not the show of sedate, but decisive power; it is not that the will, which is there announced, is one which there is no opposing nor escaping; it is not that there are resolved the great issues of liberty and property, of life and death. But it is, that the will, which is there announced, approaches the nearest that human infirmity can approach, to being a perfectly righteous

will. It is, that the voice of law is the clear and solemn voice of pure reason arbitrating among the concerns of men. It is that here is in action the most complete apparatus, which the experience of ages has been able to construct, for the manifestation of naked truth; that here is the closest application of the human mind to its discovery. "Of law,” says Richard Hooker*, in a passage not more brilliant with other beauties than with the leading one of truth, "of law there can be no less acknowledged, than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world. All things in heaven and earth do her homage; the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power; both angels and men, and creatures of what condition soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet each with uniform consent, admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy;"* and that understanding, which is an inspiration of the Almighty, is never in more admirable exercise, than when, aided by the mutually opposing views which other highly endowed and richly instructed minds propose and urge, and biassed itself to neither, raised by every possible security above the influence of favour or of fear, it moderates between them; traces the fair form of truth by its own lights through every path they open; separates the problem from its accidents, and the principle from erroneous applications which may have obscured it; and ascertains the absolute rule of right, not only for the deter

* Ecclesiastical Polity, Book I. ad fin.

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