I have nothing to do with politics or party.  I am only insisting upon religious obedience to Law.  I am preaching the texts before me.  Such obedience is a religious duty.  It is the will of God.  I appeal to the texts.  They proclaim the Law of God.  Peaceful subjection to government is his law; and men are guilty of sophistry and falsehood, when, to excuse wicked evasion of Law or violent resistance, they pretend to appeal to what they call “the higher laws of God.” There are no such higher laws. The texts before me are his law.  If one man has a moral right, either cunningly to evade or openly to violate Law, under such pleading, then another man has the same right to violate another Law; and thus any villainy on earth may be perpetrated under the sacred names of “conscience,” and “the higher laws of God!” Nothing is safe in the hands of men of such principles.  These principles undermine the foundations of all society among men!  As I told you last Wednesday evening in my lecture, the question before the country is not, (as the deceivers pretend,) whether God’s laws are not higher than man’s, or whether God’s laws are to be obeyed.  Nobody disputes either of these things.  Nobody ever did.  But the question is, whether it is the will of God that men should submit to the laws of the land, or aim to paralyze law, cheat it, cripple it, resist it, and thus overthrow the government of the country—­a government at this moment more beneficial than any other that ever existed.

Nor is it true, that the fugitive slave is made an “outlaw,” and on that ground justifiable for bloody and murderous resistance of Law.  He is under the protection of Law; and if any man injures him or kills him, the Law will avenge him, just as soon as it would you or me.  He is not made an outlaw:  common sense knows better.

The matter before us is a very serious matter.  The wicked principles of which I have spoken, disguise it as you will, tend directly to anarchy, confusion, and civil war!  The question is not, whether slavery is right, or the Fugitive Slave Law right.  It draws deeper.  The question is, shall Law be put in force, and the government of the country stand; or shall Law be resisted, and the government of the country disobeyed, and the nation plunged into all the horrors of civil war?  If Law cannot be executed, it is time to write the epitaph of your country!

Suffer me to utter a few words of earnest counsel to you, my beloved people.

1.  Beware of the influence of mere feeling on this serious subject.  Your feelings may be with the slave,—­so are mine, so are those of most of the Southern people.  We all want men to be free; and no more do we want it now, than did the inhabitants of this country before we were born:  the extravagant fanaticism and noisy zeal of the Northern abolitionists have not increased the sentiment of the country in favour of freedom