always paid tyrants and invaders. No. The only Caesar which we have to
fear--and he is a tyrant who seems ready, nowadays, to oppose and exalt
himself above all that is called God, or is worshipped,--patronizing, of
course, Religion, as a harmless sanction for order and respectability,
but dictating morality, while telling us all day long, with a thousand
voices and a thousand pens--"Right is not the eternal law of God.
Whatever profits me, whatever I like, whatever I vote--that and that
alone is right, and you must do it at your peril." Do you know who that
Caesar is, my friends? He is called Public Opinion--the huge anonymous
idol which we ourselves help to make, and then tremble before the
creation of our own cowardice; whereas, if we will but face him, in the
fear of God and the faith of Christ, determined to say the thing which is
true, and do the thing which is right, we shall find the modern Caesar
but a phantom of our own imagination; a tyrant, indeed, as long as he is
feared, but a coward as soon as he is defied.

To that Caesar let us never bow the knee. Render to him all that he
deserves--the homage of common courtesy, common respectability, common
charity--not in reverence for his wisdom and strength, but in pity for
his ignorance and weakness. But render always to God the things which
are God's. That duty, my good friends, lies on us, as on all mankind
still, from our cradle to our grave, and after that through all eternity.
Let us go back, or rather, let us go home to the eternal laws of God,
which were, ages before we were born, and will be, ages after we are
dead--to the everlasting Rock on which we all stand, which is the will
and mind of our Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God, to whom all power is
given (as He said Himself) in heaven and on earth. And we have need to
do so, for in such times of change as these are, there will always be too
many who fancy that changes in society and government change their duty
about religion, and are, some of them, sorely puzzled as to their duty to