Obedience and Liberty [pp. 65-86]

discipline, the secret and justification of it. It is losing a lower
for the sake of finding a higher good. It is consenting not to
exercise certain possible prerogatives that others of more value
may be securely held. It is flinging away an eye, or a hand, if
need be, that the whole body may not be plunged into hell.
Such, then, is the enormity, and, so far as appears, the whole
enormity of this policy of obedience, when viewed on ther
negative side. It restrains from ally self-degradation,.and from
all open crime. It retires into the background what is meanest,
and what is royalest in man it exalts into the seat of sovereignty.
It keeps the feet scrupulously out of those perilous paths of sin,
which, as all experience proves, lead to more and more of humiliating subjection until the whole moral nature is hopelessly
fettered and thralled. And could the multitudes of men, who
are now walking in their own proud ways, and working out their
own evil devices, be induced to break away, and follow God,
they would find such a freedom as they never yet have known
in giving themselves up to the guidance of unrestrained inclination, nor shall know, until it is made real to their souls through
dutiful and loving obedience. For, what would be so quickly
and thoroughly corrective of the abounding and astounding iniquities of our time as a general heeding of the solemn. "Thou
shalt nots" of God? And what, in the estimation of the world,
would advance us further and more effectually in the direction
of true liberty, than that all men should come at once under the
divine control, and simply withhold their hands from doing what
they ought not to do?
Pass, now, from the negative to the positive side, and contemplate some of the offices and ends to which obedience directly
calls. Incidentally much has already been said which has bearing and force here. But when it is boldly charged that this
doctrine of obedience is something which "smothers" "faculties"
and "starves" and "dwarfs" the soul, it is of special importance
that we see clearly just what, according to the scriptural plan
of life, is placed before us to occupy and draw out our energies.
The result, again, unless we gravely mnistake, will be to make it
manifest that there is no conflict, but strictest harmony between
the notions of true obedience and true liberty. For in no particular in which it is at all essential that there should be free
play for intellect, and free scope for choice, and free sphere for
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OBEDIENCE AND LIBERTY.