THE VERY EEV. H. WAGE, D.D., ON AUTHORITY. 229 



are inconsistent with true morality and religion. Moreover, the 

 existence of the Christian Church within modern states has 

 established another authority to which the individual's deference 

 is still more urgently due ; and cases consequently arise, and 

 exist among us at this moment, in which the moral rules 

 enforced by the Church are in direct conflict with those enlbrced 

 by the State. It is a condition very injurious to the welfare of 

 Society, because such a visible and practical conflict between 

 two great authorities tends to shake, among people in general, 

 the sense of the stability of moral law. Turther than this, 

 cases have arisen in which both Church and State have agreed 

 in the moral and spiritual rules which they enforce, but in which 

 they are nevertheless wrong, and no occasion thus arise in whicii, 

 as at the time of the Eeformation, individuals are obliged to 

 stand by their own private comictions of religious and moral 

 truth, and to assert the moral authority of their private 

 consciences, with results which are of incalculable value to the 

 future life of mankind. 



The question, then, is — and it is a question which presses 

 urgently for solution at the present moment — how are such 

 conflicts of authority to be settled, and how are individuals to 

 act when they arise ? In the first place, if what has been said 

 of the Divine nature and origin of all human authority be true, 

 they cannot properly be decided by assuming that one of the 

 conflicting authorities can claim divine sanction, and that the 

 other cannot, and that the latter must therefore be overriden 

 by the former. AVe may, indeed, reasonably think, as a general 

 principle, that the Church which is, or ought to be, in special 

 and constant communion with the Lord who is tlie source of all 

 law and all authority, of all morality and religion, should be 

 specially qualified to Ibrm a true judgment on such questions, 

 for example, as those of the marriage law. But history proves 

 conclusively that this general principle cannot be treated as an 

 absolute one, and that the Church as well as the State is 

 capable of erroneous action on sucli matters. In short, the 

 two authorities are each Divine in origin, each may claim Divine 

 sanction, and yet each may be in error ; while the individual, 

 whose obedience is distracted between the two, is himself more 

 liable to error than either. 



If so, the second rule we may lay down for our guidance in 

 such difficulties is that the conflicting authorities should 

 maintain the most scrupulous respect for one another, and 

 should, before taking any action in such a conflict, do their 

 utmost to come to an understanding on the point at issue 



