And so you will be free, free to do what you
like, because you like, from the fear and love of God, to do those
right things which the law is set to make you do.
But some may say: "That is not what we mean by being free. We mean
having a share in choosing Members of Parliament, and so in making
the laws and governing the country. When people can do that the
country is a free country."
Well, my friends, and it is a strange thing, or rather not a strange
thing, if we will but study our Bibles, that a country cannot be free
in that way, unless the people of it do really believe that the
powers that be are ordained of God. Instead of that faith making the
old Romans slavish, or careless what laws were made, or how they were
governed, as some fancy it would make a people, they were as free a
people, and freer almost than we English now. They chose their own
magistrates, and they made their own laws, and prospered by so doing.
And why? Because they believed that laws came from God; and,
therefore, they not only obeyed the laws when they were made, but
they had heart and spirit to help to make them, because they trusted
that The Heavenly Father, who loved justice, would teach them to be
just, and that The God who protected laws and punished law-breakers,
would put into their minds how to make the laws well; and so they
were not afraid to govern themselves, because they believed that God
would enable them to govern themselves well, and therefore they were
free.
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