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T H E K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S
July, 1936
GOD and the CONSTITUTION
4 U ,S , Hi S TO j t V .
Li D an G ilbert
I
U , S . C O f O S T i T U T l Q l O
San Diego, California
E verett D ean M a r t in , the well- known and ‘r .holarly apostle of “liberalism,” has always been most grudging and niggardly in conceding to Christianity the great contributions which it has made to civilization. In the conflict between religion and “science falsely so-called,” Mr. Martin invari ably sides with pseudo science. It is highly significant, then, to find in Mar tin’s study of Liberty the frank admis sion that Christianity gave to the world the very foundation stone of freedom:
wrong, is a pagan, antichristian theory. So also is the “modern” dogma that the crowd, the mob, the majority, can do no wrong-—the people as a whole, no more than the people individually, are above the moral law. It is true that governments, whether they embody and express the will of a dictator or the will of the people, us ually consider themselves a law unto themselves. Even under the English system of government, Parliament has the power to commit any moral outrage it wishes; and at various times during English history, Parliament has com mitted monstrous crimes against individuals in disfavor with capricious bureaucrats and officials. English lawyers say that even a law which violates “common right and rea son,” if duly passed by Parliament, would be “legal,” “con stitutional”—the supreme law of the land! Our Supreme Court, in one of its famous decisions, commented on this phase of the British system, and pointed out that our gov ernment is bound by certain moral principles; there are some patently unjust types of legislation which the elected representatives of the people cannot enact, under any cir cumstances. Hence, the Supreme Court said, our people have never been plagued with “bills of attainder, ex post facto laws, laws declaring forfeitures of estates, and other arbitrary acts of legislation which occur so frequently in English history.” The Constitution is in a very real sense the living con science of the people. It is the will of the people, a reflec tion of their moral standards. The men who adopted the Constitution believed it was wrong for them, individually, to commit murder or theft; therefore, they set up the Con stitutional standard that it is wrong and illegal for their government to take unjustly the life or property of any citizen. T h e R elation of L aw to L iberty It is true that there are men who are moral anarchists, who think they should be free to do anything they wish, without regard to moral considerations. In some nations, it seems that this type of man constitutes the majority; at least, this type of man has constituted himself the voice and will of the people. Hence, it has come to pass that, in the name of the people, governments have acted as veritable mass murderers and plunderers of certain groups of citi zens. It is, of course, within the power of the majority who constitute the government to adopt a policy of moral an archism and plunder defenseless minorities. But it is not right that they should. And because it is not right, it is also unconstitutional. The “modern” doctrine of the “divine right” of the majority is the basest form of paganism. The Constitutional fathers believed that the majority must and should be restrained by all the moral laws binding on the individual. No Christian can reasonably believe otherwise. Liberty under law is not tyranny. A democracy under Con stitutional law is not despotism. Without law there is no liberty. Without Constitutional limitations no people can be either free or democratic. Mob rule is not democracy. It is sometimes argued that Congress, and not the Supreme Court, should be the judge of whether the acts of Congress exceed Constitutional limitations. In reality, this
Dan Gilbert
the doctrine of the inviolability of the individual conscience, the doctrine that we have citizenship in heaven as well as on earth, and that when temporal powers obstruct the fulfill ment of our duties to deity we should, like Peter, “obey God rather than men.” Stated another way, this foundation principle of free dom means that there is a part of man beyond the power of the State to tamper with. Caesar—government—has no right to seize upon the things that are God’s. The Declara tion of Independence set forth this doctrine in immortal words. It stated that men are given by God “certain in alienable rights.” No government may take these rights from us. Rather, the primary purpose of government is to “secure” and protect these God-given rights of man. When any government fails to do this, when it tramples upon the divinely given rights of the citizen, it violates both natural and divine law. It forfeits its right to rule, and it becomes the right and duty of the citizenry to set up a new government which obey9 the laws of “nature’s God.” Hence, if we did not have a Constitution safeguarding in dividual rights, government violation of them would still be contrary to natural and divine law, contrary to the moral order and constitution of the universe—yes, “unconstitu tional” in the full meaning of the word ! T h e -P urpose of t h e C on stitution The Constitution does not “create” individual rights ; it simply safeguards those given to all men by God. The Con stitution does not create a standard of right and wrong, imposing it upon the government ; the Constitution merely affirms and enforces the moral law as it has been revealed to us. Before the War for Independence was even fought, the Colonial courts made a practice of declaring “uncon stitutional” all acts of the English Parliament which trans gressed the “laws of nature and of nature’s God.” James Otis, the great Revolutionary leader, said there are “bounds which by God and nature are fixed ; hitherto have they [government officials] a right to come, and no further . . . ” The Constitution is, primarily, a series of checks upon the government ; it operates to keep Caesar within his legiti mate sphere. Ours is a government of, by, and for the peo ple—the majority. But there are certain things which the majority cannot do without violating the Constitution ; and there are certain things which the majority cannot do with out violating the moral law of God. The doctrine of the “divine right” of kings, the idea that the king can do no
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