Obedience--Government a Divine Institution--The
Warrant of Government is not the consent of the
governed--Infidel Doctrines--Deductions from this
Doctrine--Decision of the Supreme
Court--Objections answered--Conscience and the
Law--Duty of Executive Officers--Duty of Private
Citizens--Objections answered--Right of
Revolution--Summary application of these
principles to the Fugitive Slave Law--Conclusion.

THERE is no more obvious duty, at the present time, resting on American
Christians, ministers and people, than to endeavor to promote kind
feelings between the South and the North. All fierce addresses to the
passions, on either side, are fratricidal. It is an offense against the
gospel, against our common country, and against God. Every one should
endeavor to diffuse right principles, and thus secure right feeling and
action, under the blessing of God in every part of the land. If the
South has no such grounds of complaint as would justify them before God
and the human race, whose trustees in one important sense they are, in
dissolving the Union, how is it with the North? Are they justifiable in
the violent resistance to the fugitive slave bill, which has been
threatened or attempted? This opposition in a great measure has been
confined to the abolitionists as a party, and as such they are a small
minority of the people. They have never included in their ranks either
the controlling intellect or moral feeling at the North. Their
fundamental principle is anti-scriptural and therefore irreligious.
They assume that slaveholding is sinful. This doctrine is the life of
the sect. It has no power over those who reject that principle, and
therefore it has not gained ascendency over those whose faith is
governed by the word of God.

We have ever maintained that the proper method of opposing this party,
and of counteracting its pernicious influence, was to exhibit clearly
the falsehood of its one idea, viz: that slaveholding is a sin against
God. The discussion has now taken a new turn. It is assumed that the
fugitiue slave law of the last Congress, (1850) is unconstitutional, or
if not contrary to the Constitution, contrary to the law of God. Under
this impression many who have never been regarded as abolitionists, have
entered their protest against the law, and some in their haste have
inferred from its supposed unconstitutionality o