February, 1913. ANARCHY, THE DESTINY OF HIM WHO OBEYS A Sermon Delivered January 19, 1913 by REV. ALBERT C. DIEFFENBACH in The First Unitarian Congregational Society Of HARTFORD, CONN. Published By SERMONS BY MR. DIEFFENBACH Series of 1912-1913 October, 1912 OUR EYES SHALL SEE THINGS WHOLE November, 1912 EUCKEN AND THE SPIRITUAL NATURE December, 1912 SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY IN A FREE CHURCH January, 1913 THE FORGOTTEN MAN, JESUS February, 1913 ANARCHY, THE DESTINY OF HIM Copies of these discourses may be had on application to the Sermon Publication Committee. TEXT, I Timothy 1: 8, 9: We know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully; knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient.* It will not be a vain repetition for us to ponder our text again and again, for within it is contained a doctrine as sound as unwonted. Indeed, it may startle us somewhat to learn from the Book that the law is not the greatest thing in the world; that, as a matter of fact, there is no need of the law except for those who are lawless. Few of us decent, orderly people, given to good works, ever have recourse to the law, because we live outside the law, and above it. A policeman patroling his beat and an ordinance in our city books against some insanitary action, say the dumping of filth in the street, are alike in being remote from the habit of our lives. We have little interest in them. In most of our concerns, in sum, we have no need of the law, and therefore no need, insofar as our conduct is involved, of those appointed to enforce the law. We are, in the strict sense of the term, practical anarchists,-unconscious anarchists, if you please. For an anarchist is one who believes, and acts upon the belief, that he needs no ruler, that he is in very truth a sovereign, which is a most religious and ethical belief provided the man who holds it is capable of proving by the course of his career that he is not a disobedient or lawless person. It is not strange, however, that there should be in the minds of nearly all of us a feeling of grave. apprehension today in the presence of those who who give little or no evidence in their behavior, private and public, of fitness to rule even themselves, not to say of fitness to go up and down the land preaching to and inciting others, hardly prepared, in *The Scripture lesson for the day, I Timothy 1: 5-17. point of intelligence or integrity, to profit by such premature exhorting. On the contrary, if we shall judge by what we are continually witnessing, there are many men who are leading their hearers into such a state of hateful excitement that they commit the most lawless, violent, and even murderous offences, violating at every turn as many elemental rights as do those against whom their wrath is kindled and their action directed. It is my purpose this morning to proceed with great care in this difficult and delicate subject, for the time has come for us to learn not only the wisdom of the Scripture as we have read it, but the gross misconception and practice of a vast number of people in our common life, who think themselves to be in greater or less degree anarchists in the pure sense of that term, but who are really only ignorant, dangerous and lawless persons against whom we should be prepared to range ourselves in the name of a free Nation and in the name of that ideal condition where we shall live by the spirit and not by the letter, which is the true meaning of anarchy,a state to which, I believe, the world is now, as it has always been, tending; a state in the midst of which the choicest souls of this and of many preceding ages, live and move and have their being. I. Impatient, Unruly Pupils of a Great Schoolmaster. Let us freely admit that humanity has never been entirely wrong in its beliefs and practices. I say this deliberately. I say it even in the presence of horrific conditions which seem all wrong, without a redeeming quality. I say it even when I read in the public prints of the terrible hands which destroy property; at the unspeakable counsels which would tamper with food served to hotel guests; at the gross advocates of "no God, no country"; at the lawless |