52 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 



jects not incompatible Trith morality and the public peace, 

 CUvil law has only one thing to do in this case : it has not to grant 

 the right, but to acknoAvledge it] 



When civil authority oversteps these limits it is guilty 

 of an abuse. It must be warned of it ; if need be, it 

 must be resisted. AVe are speaking, as it Avill be evi- 

 dent, not of insurrection, which is never " the holiest 

 of duties," but of moral resistance, a resistance respect- 

 ful toward the power, energetic against the abuses of 

 power — the only permissible resistance, and the only 

 effective. 



The holy Scriptures present to us many line examples 

 of this legitimate protest of conscience against arbitrary 

 and tyrannous government. 



AVe read the gospel, and we do well ; but we do not 

 read the Old Testament as much as we ought — the his- 

 tory of that people Israel, of whom Moses says, in lan- 

 guage full of mysterious significance, that it is the 

 measure and type after which the other nations have 

 been formed.* 



For my own part, in studying these incomparable 

 annals, from Judges to Maccabees, I have often been 

 struck with a charming touch of nature, full of house- 

 hold poetry, full of social instruction : it is, that the 

 peaceful tenure of the homestead is presented as the 

 sign of the kingdom of God on earth. '• Judali and 

 Israel dwelt safely, every man under his vine and under 

 his fig-tree."f The vine and the fig-tree ; that is to 

 sa}', the whole liomestead, with all the outward belong- 

 ings which constitute its comlorl and its charm, and 



* "When the Mos^t Hiyh divided to llie natiuns Ihoir inheritance, when hO 

 separated Uie eons of Adam, he set the hounds of the people according to tho 

 number of the children of Israel." Deuteronomy, xxxiii. 8. 



t 1 Kings, iv. 25. 



