sing them. God made us _citizens_.

ANSWER. This reminds me of an old story I have heard. When the
Legislature were asked to set off a portion of the town of
Dorchester and call it South Boston, the old minister of the town is
said to have objected, saying, "God made it Dorchester, and
Dorchester it ought to be."

God made us social beings, it is true, but _society_ is not
necessarily the Constitution of the United States! Because God meant
some form of government should exist, does not at all prove that we
are justified in supporting a wicked one. Man confers the rights and
regulates the duties of citizenship. God never made a _citizen_, and
no one will escape, as a man, from the sins he commits as a citizen.
This is the first time that it has ever been held an excuse for sin
that we "went with the multitude to do evil!"

Certainly we can be under no _such_ responsibility to become and
remain _citizens_, as will excuse us from the sinful acts which as
such citizens we are called to commit. Does God make obligatory on
his creature the support of institutions which require him to do
acts in themselves wrong? To suppose so, were to confound all the
rules of God's moral kingdom.

President Wayland has lately been illustrating, and giving his
testimony to the principle, that a combination of men cannot change
the moral character of an act, which is in itself sinful--that the
law of morals is binding the same on communities, corporations, &c.
as on individuals.

After describing slavery, and saying that to hold a man in such a
state is wrong--he goes on:

"I will offer but one more supposition. Suppose that any number, for
instance one half of the families in our neighborhood, should by law
enact that the weaker half should be slaves, that we would exercise
over them the authority of masters, prohibit by law their
instruction, and concert among ourselves means for holding them
permanently in their present situation. In what manner would this
alter the moral aspect of the case?"

A law in this case is merely a determination of one party, in which
all unite, to hold the other party in bondage; and a compact by
which the whole party bind themselves to assist every individual of
themselves to subdue all resistance from the other party, and
guaranteeing to each other that exercise of this power over the
weaker party which they now possess.

Now I cannot see that this in any respect changes t