government

• celestial government › affairs of all worlds divinely supervised

3:2.1All the uni­verses know that “the Lord God om­nipo­tent reigns.” The af­fairs of this world and other worlds are di­vinely super­vised. “He does ac­cord­ing to his will in the army of heaven and among the in­hab­i­tants of the earth.” It is eter­nally true, “there is no power but of God.”

• celestial government › Father rules through his Sons

3:5.1In his con­tact with the post-Ha­vona cre­ations, the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther does not ex­er­cise his in­fi­nite power and fi­nal au­thor­ity by di­rect trans­mit­tal but rather through his Sons and their sub­or­di­nate per­son­al­i­ties. And God does all this of his own free will. Any and all pow­ers del­e­gated, if oc­ca­sion should arise, if it should be­come the choice of the di­vine mind, could be ex­er­cised di­rect; but, as a rule, such ac­tion only takes place as a re­sult of the fail­ure of the del­e­gated per­son­al­ity to ful­fill the di­vine trust. At such times and in the face of such de­fault and within the lim­its of the reser­va­tion of di­vine power and po­ten­tial, the Fa­ther does act in­de­pen­dently and in ac­cor­dance with the man­dates of his own choice; and that choice is al­ways one of un­fail­ing per­fec­tion and in­fi­nite wis­dom.

• Most Highs rule in kingdoms of men

3:5.2The Fa­ther rules through his Sons; on down through the uni­verse or­ga­ni­za­tion there is an un­bro­ken chain of rulers end­ing with the Plan­e­tary Princes, who di­rect the des­tinies of the evo­lu­tion­ary spheres of the Fa­ther’s vast do­mains. It is no mere po­etic ex­pres­sion that ex­claims: “The earth is the Lord’s and the full­ness thereof.” “He re­moves kings and sets up kings.” “The Most Highs rule in the king­doms of men.”

• celestial government › not always possible to distinguish administrations of Father and Son

6:8.3As per­sons you may con­ceive of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther and the Eter­nal Son as sep­a­rate in­di­vid­u­als, for they in­deed are; but in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the uni­verses they are so in­ter­twined and in­ter­re­lated that it is not al­ways pos­si­ble to dis­tin­guish be­tween them. When, in the af­fairs of the uni­verses, the Fa­ther and the Son are en­coun­tered in con­fus­ing in­teras­so­ci­a­tions, it is not al­ways prof­itable to at­tempt to seg­re­gate their op­er­a­tions; merely re­call that God is the ini­ti­at­ing thought and the Son is the ex­pres­sion­ful word. In each lo­cal uni­verse this in­sep­a­ra­bil­ity is per­son­al­ized in the di­vin­ity of the Cre­ator Son, who stands for both Fa­ther and Son to the crea­tures of ten mil­lion in­hab­ited worlds.

• celestial government › spiritual administration of Eternal Son in superuniverses not discernible by creatures

7:2.4The ad­min­is­tra­tion of the Eter­nal Son in the super­uni­verses, be­ing ex­clu­sively spir­i­tual and super­per­sonal, is not dis­cern­i­ble by crea­ture per­son­al­i­ties. Nonethe­less, the all-per­vad­ing spir­i­tual urge of the Son’s per­sonal in­flu­ence is en­coun­tered in ev­ery phase of the ac­tiv­i­ties of all sec­tors of the do­mains of the An­cients of Days. In the lo­cal uni­verses, how­ever, we ob­serve the Eter­nal Son per­son­ally pres­ent in the per­sons of the Par­a­dise Sons. Here the in­fi­nite Son spir­i­tu­ally and cre­atively func­tions in the per­sons of the ma­jes­tic corps of the co-or­di­nate Cre­ator Sons.

• celestial government › none in Havona

14:3.1Con­cern­ing the gov­ern­ment of the cen­tral uni­verse, there is none. Ha­vona is so ex­qui­sitely per­fect that no in­tel­lec­tual sys­tem of gov­ern­ment is re­quired. There are no reg­u­larly con­sti­tuted courts, nei­ther are there leg­isla­tive as­sem­blies; Ha­vona re­quires only ad­min­is­tra­tive di­rec­tion. Here may be ob­served the height of the ide­als of true self-gov­ern­ment.

14:3.2There is no need of gov­ern­ment among such per­fect and near-per­fect in­tel­li­gences. They stand in no need of reg­u­la­tion, for they are be­ings of na­tive per­fec­tion in­ter­spersed with evo­lu­tion­ary crea­tures who have long since passed the scrutiny of the su­preme tri­bu­nals of the super­uni­verses.

• celestial government › none in Havona

14:5.3The reg­u­la­tions of the cen­tral uni­verse are fit­tingly and in­her­ently nat­u­ral; the rules of con­duct are not ar­bi­trary. In ev­ery re­quire­ment of Ha­vona there is dis­closed the rea­son of righ­teous­ness and the rule of jus­tice. And these two fac­tors, com­bined, equal what on Uran­tia would be de­nom­i­nated fair­ness. When you ar­rive in Ha­vona, you will nat­u­rally en­joy do­ing things the way they should be done.

• principles of government › adjudication is highest function of g.

22:4.3Since Those with­out Name and Num­ber are the su­pe­rior spir­i­tual minds of the sur­vival races, they are es­pe­cially qual­i­fied to sit in judg­ment and to ren­der opin­ions when a spir­i­tual view­point is de­sir­able, and when ex­pe­ri­ence in the as­cen­dant ca­reer is es­sen­tial to an ad­e­quate com­pre­hen­sion of the ques­tions in­volved in the prob­lem to be ad­ju­di­cated. They are the su­preme ju­rors of Or­von­ton. A mal­ad­min­is­tered jury sys­tem may be more or less of a trav­esty of jus­tice on some worlds, but on Uversa and its ex­ten­sion tri­bu­nals we em­ploy the high­est type of evolved spir­i­tual men­tal­ity as ju­ror-judges. Ad­ju­di­ca­tion is the high­est func­tion of any gov­ern­ment, and those who are in­trusted with ver­dict ren­der­ing should be cho­sen from the high­est and most no­ble types of the most ex­pe­ri­enced and un­der­stand­ing in­di­vid­u­als.

• celestial government › levels of, assigned special domains of responsibility

33:6.3The var­i­ous sub­ad­min­is­tra­tions of the uni­verse have as­signed to them cer­tain spe­cial do­mains of re­spon­si­bil­ity. While, in gen­eral, a sys­tem gov­ern­ment looks af­ter the wel­fare of its plan­ets, it is more par­tic­u­larly con­cerned with the phys­i­cal sta­tus of liv­ing be­ings, with bi­o­logic prob­lems. In turn, the con­stel­la­tion rulers pay es­pe­cial at­ten­tion to the so­cial and gov­ern­men­tal con­di­tions pre­vail­ing on the dif­fer­ent plan­ets and sys­tems. A con­stel­la­tion gov­ern­ment is chiefly ex­er­cised over uni­fi­ca­tion and sta­bi­liza­tion. Still higher up, the uni­verse rulers are more oc­cu­pied with the spir­i­tual sta­tus of the realms.

• self-government › celestial orders in which their own members participated in own creation eligible for

35:1.3The Mel­chiz­e­deks of our uni­verse were all cre­ated within one mil­len­nial pe­riod of stan­dard time by the Cre­ator Son and the Cre­ative Spirit in li­ai­son with the Fa­ther Mel­chiz­e­dek. Be­ing an or­der of son­ship wherein one of their own num­ber func­tioned as co-or­di­nate cre­ator, Mel­chiz­e­deks are in con­sti­tu­tion partly of self-ori­gin and there­fore can­di­dates for the re­al­iza­tion of a su­per­nal type of self-gov­ern­ment. They pe­ri­od­i­cally elect their own ad­min­is­tra­tive chief for a term of seven years of stan­dard time and oth­er­wise func­tion as a self-reg­u­lat­ing or­der, though the orig­i­nal Mel­chiz­e­dek does ex­er­cise cer­tain in­her­ent co­parental pre­rog­a­tives. From time to time this Fa­ther Mel­chiz­e­dek des­ig­nates cer­tain in­di­vid­u­als of his or­der to func­tion as spe­cial Life Car­ri­ers to the mid­sonite worlds, a type of in­hab­ited planet not here­to­fore re­vealed on Uran­tia.

• principles of government › ethics is seed and secret of purposeful growth

39:3.74. Eth­i­cal Sen­si­tiz­ers. It is the mis­sion of these ser­a­phim to fos­ter and to pro­mote the growth of crea­ture ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the moral­ity of in­ter­per­sonal re­la­tion­ships, for such is the seed and se­cret of the con­tin­ued and pur­pose­ful growth of so­ci­ety and gov­ern­ment, hu­man or super­hu­man. These en­hancers of eth­i­cal ap­pre­ci­a­tion func­tion any­where and ev­ery­where they may be of ser­vice, as vol­un­teer coun­selors to the plan­e­tary rulers and as ex­change teach­ers on the sys­tem train­ing worlds. You will not, how­ever, come un­der their full guid­ance un­til you reach the broth­er­hood schools on Eden­tia, where they will quicken your ap­pre­ci­a­tion of those very truths of fra­ter­nity which you will even then be so earnestly ex­plor­ing by the ac­tual ex­pe­ri­ence of liv­ing with the uni­v­i­ta­tia in the so­cial lab­o­ra­to­ries of Eden­tia, the sev­enty satel­lites of the Nor­la­ti­adek cap­i­tal.

• believers’ relation to › responsibility and morality of cosmic citizenship

39:4.9The se­raphic in­ter­preters of cos­mic cit­i­zen­ship guide the new cit­i­zens of the sys­tem cap­i­tals and quicken their ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of uni­verse gov­ern­ment. These ser­a­phim are also closely as­so­ci­ated with the Ma­te­rial Sons in the sys­tem ad­min­is­tra­tion, while they por­tray the re­spon­si­bil­ity and moral­ity of cos­mic cit­i­zen­ship to the ma­te­rial mor­tals on the in­hab­ited worlds.

• Most Highs rule in kingdoms of men

43:3.4Down through the ages there has been great con­fu­sion on Uran­tia re­gard­ing the var­i­ous uni­verse rulers. Many later teach­ers con­fused their vague and in­def­i­nite tribal de­i­ties with the Most High Fa­thers. Still later, the He­brews merged all of these ce­les­tial rulers into a com­pos­ite De­ity. One teacher un­der­stood that the Most Highs were not the Su­preme Rulers, for he said, “He who dwells in the se­cret place of the Most High shall abide un­der the shadow of the Al­mighty.” In the Uran­tia rec­ords it is very dif­fi­cult at times to know ex­actly who is re­ferred to by the term “Most High.” But Daniel fully un­der­stood these mat­ters. He said, “The Most High rules in the king­dom of men and gives it to whom­so­ever he will.”

• Most Highs rule in kingdoms of men

43:9.4As­cend­ing mor­tals on Eden­tia are chiefly oc­cu­pied with the as­sign­ments on the sev­enty pro­gres­sive uni­v­i­ta­tia worlds. They also serve in var­ied ca­pac­i­ties on Eden­tia it­self, mainly in con­junc­tion with the con­stel­la­tion pro­gram con­cerned with group, racial, na­tional, and plan­e­tary wel­fare. The Most Highs are not so much en­gaged in fos­ter­ing in­di­vid­ual ad­vance­ment on the in­hab­ited worlds; they rule in the king­doms of men rather than in the hearts of in­di­vid­u­als.

• principles of government › representative g. is divine ideal of self-government

45:7.3The Mel­chiz­e­dek Sons con­duct up­ward of thirty dif­fer­ent ed­u­ca­tional cen­ters on Je­ru­sem. These train­ing schools be­gin with the col­lege of self-eval­u­a­tion and end with the schools of Je­ru­sem cit­i­zen­ship, wherein the Ma­te­rial Sons and Daugh­ters join with the Mel­chiz­e­deks and oth­ers in their su­preme ef­fort to qual­ify the mor­tal sur­vivors for the as­sump­tion of the high re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment. The en­tire uni­verse is or­ga­nized and ad­min­is­tered on the rep­re­sen­ta­tive plan. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment is the di­vine ideal of self-gov­ern­ment among non­per­fect be­ings.

• Most Highs rule in kingdoms of men

50:2.6The rov­ing com­mis­sions of con­cil­ia­tors serve and sup­ple­ment the plan­e­tary tri­bu­nals, and both spirit and phys­i­cal con­trol­lers are sub­ject to the find­ings of these con­cil­ia­tors. But no ar­bi­trary ex­e­cu­tion is ever car­ried out with­out the con­sent of the Con­stel­la­tion Fa­ther, for the “Most Highs rule in the king­doms of men.”

• Most Highs rule in kingdoms of men

52:3.11Dur­ing the clos­ing cen­turies of the post-Adamic age there de­vel­ops new in­ter­est in art, mu­sic, and lit­er­a­ture, and this world-wide awak­en­ing is the sig­nal for the ap­pear­ance of a Mag­is­te­rial Son. The crown­ing de­vel­op­ment of this era is the uni­ver­sal in­ter­est in in­tel­lec­tual re­al­i­ties, true phi­los­o­phy. Re­li­gion be­comes less na­tion­al­is­tic, be­comes more and more a plan­e­tary af­fair. New rev­e­la­tions of truth char­ac­ter­ize these ages, and the Most Highs of the con­stel­la­tions be­gin to rule in the af­fairs of men. Truth is re­vealed up to the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the con­stel­la­tions.

• principles of government › representative g. is divine ideal of self-government
• self-government › highest type of representative g.

52:4.6The po­lit­i­cal gov­ern­ment and so­cial ad­min­is­tra­tion of the races con­tinue to im­prove, self-gov­ern­ment be­ing fairly well es­tab­lished by the end of this age. By self-gov­ern­ment we re­fer to the high­est type of rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment. Such worlds ad­vance and honor only those lead­ers and rulers who are most fit to bear so­cial and po­lit­i­cal re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

• principles of government › g. disappears in light and life

52:7.5Life dur­ing this era is pleas­ant and prof­itable. De­gen­er­acy and the an­ti­so­cial end prod­ucts of the long evo­lu­tion­ary strug­gle have been vir­tu­ally oblit­er­ated. The length of life ap­proaches five hun­dred Uran­tia years, and the re­pro­duc­tive rate of racial in­crease is in­tel­li­gently con­trolled. An en­tirely new or­der of so­ci­ety has ar­rived. There are still great dif­fer­ences among mor­tals, but the state of so­ci­ety more nearly ap­proaches the ide­als of so­cial broth­er­hood and spir­i­tual equal­ity. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment is van­ish­ing, and the world is pass­ing un­der the rule of in­di­vid­ual self-con­trol. The func­tion of gov­ern­ment is chiefly di­rected to col­lec­tive tasks of so­cial ad­min­is­tra­tion and eco­nomic co-or­di­na­tion. The golden age is com­ing on apace; the tem­po­ral goal of the long and in­tense plan­e­tary evo­lu­tion­ary strug­gle is in sight. The re­ward of the ages is soon to be re­al­ized; the wis­dom of the Gods is about to be man­i­fested.

• principles of government › g. disappears in light and life

55:3.2Hu­man gov­ern­ment in the con­duct of ma­te­rial af­fairs con­tin­ues to func­tion through­out this age of rel­a­tive prog­ress and per­fec­tion. The pub­lic ac­tiv­i­ties of a world in the first stage of light and life which I re­cently vis­ited were fi­nanced by the tithing tech­nique. Ev­ery adult worker—and all able-bod­ied cit­i­zens worked at some­thing—paid ten per cent of his in­come or in­crease to the pub­lic trea­sury, and it was dis­bursed as fol­lows:

• principles of government › men and women hold posts jointly in light and life

55:3.9The ma­jor­ity of so­cial and ad­min­is­tra­tive posts were held jointly by men and women. Most of the teach­ing was also done jointly; like­wise all ju­di­cial trusts were dis­charged by sim­i­lar as­so­ci­ated cou­ples.

• mortal chief executives in light and life

55:4.15Dur­ing this or the fol­low­ing age a Teacher Son, as­sisted by the min­is­ter­ing-spirit quar­tet, be­comes at­tached to the elec­tive mor­tal chief ex­ec­u­tive, who now be­comes as­so­ci­ated with the Plan­e­tary Sov­er­eign as joint ad­min­is­tra­tor of world af­fairs. These mor­tal chief ex­ec­u­tives serve for twenty-five years of plan­e­tary time, and it is this new de­vel­op­ment that makes it easy for the Plan­e­tary Adam and Eve to se­cure re­lease from their world of long-time as­sign­ment dur­ing the fol­low­ing ages.

• principles of government › g. disappears in light and life

55:5.4War has be­come a mat­ter of his­tory, and there are no more armies or po­lice forces. Gov­ern­ment is grad­u­ally dis­ap­pear­ing. Self-con­trol is slowly ren­der­ing laws of hu­man en­act­ment ob­so­lete. The ex­tent of civil gov­ern­ment and statu­tory reg­u­la­tion, in an in­ter­me­di­ate state of ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tion, is in in­verse pro­por­tion to the moral­ity and spir­i­tu­al­ity of the cit­i­zen­ship.

• history of government › Onagar instituted efficient tribal

63:6.8On­a­gar was born 983,323 years ago (from A.D. 1934), and he lived to be sixty-nine years of age. The rec­ord of the achieve­ments of this mas­ter mind and spir­i­tual leader of the pre-Plan­e­tary Prince days is a thrilling recital of the or­ga­ni­za­tion of these prim­i­tive peo­ples into a real so­ci­ety. He in­sti­tuted an ef­fi­cient tribal gov­ern­ment, the like of which was not at­tained by suc­ceed­ing gen­er­a­tions in many mil­len­ni­ums. Never again, un­til the ar­rival of the Plan­e­tary Prince, was there such a high spir­i­tual civ­i­liza­tion on earth. These sim­ple peo­ple had a real though prim­i­tive re­li­gion, but it was sub­se­quently lost to their de­te­ri­o­rat­ing de­scen­dants.

• principles of government › warnings › subnormal man should be kept under society’s control

68:6.11From a world stand­point, over­pop­u­la­tion has never been a se­ri­ous prob­lem in the past, but if war is less­ened and sci­ence in­creas­ingly con­trols hu­man dis­eases, it may be­come a se­ri­ous prob­lem in the near fu­ture. At such a time the great test of the wis­dom of world lead­er­ship will pre­sent it­self. Will Uran­tia rulers have the in­sight and cour­age to fos­ter the mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of the av­er­age or sta­bi­lized hu­man be­ing in­stead of the ex­tremes of the super­nor­mal and the enor­mously in­creas­ing groups of the sub­nor­mal? The nor­mal man should be fos­tered; he is the back­bone of civ­i­liza­tion and the source of the mu­tant ge­niuses of the race. The sub­nor­mal man should be kept un­der so­ci­ety’s con­trol; no more should be pro­duced than are re­quired to ad­min­is­ter the lower lev­els of in­dus­try, those tasks re­quir­ing in­tel­li­gence above the an­i­mal level but mak­ing such low-grade de­mands as to prove ver­i­ta­ble slav­ery and bond­age for the higher types of man­kind.

• history of government › development of industry and private property necessitated

69:9.17The right to prop­erty is not ab­so­lute; it is purely so­cial. But all gov­ern­ment, law, or­der, civil rights, so­cial lib­er­ties, con­ven­tions, peace, and hap­pi­ness, as they are en­joyed by mod­ern peo­ples, have grown up around the pri­vate own­er­ship of prop­erty.

• history of government › development of industry and private property necessitated

70:0.1No sooner had man par­tially solved the prob­lem of mak­ing a liv­ing than he was con­fronted with the task of reg­u­lat­ing hu­man con­tacts. The de­vel­op­ment of in­dus­try de­manded law, or­der, and so­cial ad­just­ment; pri­vate prop­erty ne­ces­si­tated gov­ern­ment.

• history of government › development; often unconscious

70:0.2On an evo­lu­tion­ary world, an­tag­o­nisms are nat­u­ral; peace is se­cured only by some sort of so­cial reg­u­la­tive sys­tem. So­cial reg­u­la­tion is in­sep­a­ra­ble from so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion; as­so­ci­a­tion im­plies some con­trol­ling au­thor­ity. Gov­ern­ment com­pels the co-or­di­na­tion of the an­tag­o­nisms of the tribes, clans, fam­i­lies, and in­di­vid­u­als.

70:0.3Gov­ern­ment is an un­con­scious de­vel­op­ment; it evolves by trial and er­ror. It does have sur­vival value; there­fore it be­comes tra­di­tional. An­ar­chy aug­mented mis­ery; there­fore gov­ern­ment, com­par­a­tive law and or­der, slowly emerged or is emerg­ing. The co­er­cive de­mands of the strug­gle for ex­is­tence lit­er­ally drove the hu­man race along the pro­gres­sive road to civ­i­liza­tion.

• principles of government › warnings › separate church and state

70:1.147. Re­li­gion—the de­sire to make con­verts to the cult. The prim­i­tive re­li­gions all sanc­tioned war. Only in re­cent times has re­li­gion be­gun to frown upon war. The early priest­hoods were, un­for­tu­nately, usu­ally al­lied with the mil­i­tary power. One of the great peace moves of the ages has been the at­tempt to sep­a­rate church and state.

70:5.1Ev­ery hu­man in­sti­tu­tion had a be­gin­ning, and civil gov­ern­ment is a prod­uct of pro­gres­sive evo­lu­tion just as much as are mar­riage, in­dus­try, and re­li­gion. From the early clans and prim­i­tive tribes there grad­u­ally de­vel­oped the suc­ces­sive or­ders of hu­man gov­ern­ment which have come and gone right on down to those forms of so­cial and civil reg­u­la­tion that char­ac­ter­ize the sec­ond third of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury.

• history of government › councils of elders

70:5.2With the grad­ual emer­gence of the fam­ily units the foun­da­tions of gov­ern­ment were es­tab­lished in the clan or­ga­ni­za­tion, the group­ing of con­san­guineous fam­i­lies. The first real gov­ern­men­tal body was the coun­cil of the el­ders. This reg­u­la­tive group was com­posed of old men who had dis­tin­guished them­selves in some ef­fi­cient man­ner. Wis­dom and ex­pe­ri­ence were early ap­pre­ci­ated even by bar­baric man, and there en­sued a long age of the dom­i­na­tion of the el­ders. This reign of the oli­garchy of age grad­u­ally grew into the pa­tri­ar­chal idea.

70:5.3In the early coun­cil of the el­ders there resided the po­ten­tial of all gov­ern­men­tal func­tions: ex­ec­u­tive, leg­isla­tive, and ju­di­cial. When the coun­cil in­ter­preted the cur­rent mores, it was a court; when es­tab­lish­ing new modes of so­cial us­age, it was a leg­is­la­ture; to the ex­tent that such de­crees and en­act­ments were en­forced, it was the ex­ec­u­tive. The chair­man of the coun­cil was one of the fore­run­ners of the later tribal chief.

70:5.4Some tribes had fe­male coun­cils, and from time to time many tribes had women rulers. Cer­tain tribes of the red man pre­served the teach­ing of Ona­mo­na­lon­ton in fol­low­ing the unan­i­mous rule of the “coun­cil of seven.”

• history of government › origin of executive branch
• principles of government › warnings › g. cannot be run by a debating society

70:5.5It has been hard for man­kind to learn that nei­ther peace nor war can be run by a de­bat­ing so­ci­ety. The prim­i­tive “palavers” were sel­dom use­ful. The race early learned that an army com­manded by a group of clan heads had no chance against a strong one-man army. War has al­ways been a king­maker.

70:5.6At first the war chiefs were cho­sen only for mil­i­tary ser­vice, and they would re­lin­quish some of their au­thor­ity dur­ing peace­times, when their du­ties were of a more so­cial na­ture. But grad­u­ally they be­gan to en­croach upon the peace in­ter­vals, tend­ing to con­tinue to rule from one war on through to the next. They of­ten saw to it that one war was not too long in fol­low­ing an­other. These early war lords were not fond of peace.

70:5.7In later times some chiefs were cho­sen for other than mil­i­tary ser­vice, be­ing se­lected be­cause of un­usual physique or out­stand­ing per­sonal abil­i­ties. The red men of­ten had two sets of chiefs—the sachems, or peace chiefs, and the hered­i­tary war chiefs. The peace rulers were also judges and teach­ers.

70:5.8Some early com­mu­ni­ties were ruled by med­i­cine men, who of­ten acted as chiefs. One man would act as priest, physi­cian, and chief ex­ec­u­tive. Quite of­ten the early royal in­signias had orig­i­nally been the sym­bols or em­blems of priestly dress.

70:5.9And it was by these steps that the ex­ec­u­tive branch of gov­ern­ment grad­u­ally came into ex­is­tence. The clan and tribal coun­cils con­tin­ued in an ad­vi­sory ca­pac­ity and as fore­run­ners of the later ap­pear­ing leg­isla­tive and ju­di­cial branches. In Africa, to­day, all these forms of prim­i­tive gov­ern­ment are in ac­tual ex­is­tence among the var­i­ous tribes.

• principles of government › effective only when power conferred on a person

70:6.1Ef­fec­tive state rule only came with the ar­rival of a chief with full ex­ec­u­tive au­thor­ity. Man found that ef­fec­tive gov­ern­ment could be had only by con­fer­ring power on a per­son­al­ity, not by en­dow­ing an idea.

70:6.2Ruler­ship grew out of the idea of fam­ily au­thor­ity or wealth. When a pa­tri­ar­chal kinglet be­came a real king, he was some­times called “fa­ther of his peo­ple.” Later on, kings were thought to have sprung from heroes. And still fur­ther on, ruler­ship be­came hered­i­tary, due to be­lief in the di­vine ori­gin of kings.

70:6.3Hered­i­tary king­ship avoided the an­ar­chy which had pre­vi­ously wrought such havoc be­tween the death of a king and the elec­tion of a suc­ces­sor. The fam­ily had a bi­o­logic head; the clan, a se­lected nat­u­ral leader; the tribe and later state had no nat­u­ral leader, and this was an ad­di­tional rea­son for mak­ing the chief-kings hered­i­tary. The idea of royal fam­i­lies and aris­toc­racy was also based on the mores of “name own­er­ship” in the clans.

70:6.4The suc­ces­sion of kings was even­tu­ally re­garded as super­nat­u­ral, the royal blood be­ing thought to ex­tend back to the times of the ma­te­ri­al­ized staff of Prince Cali­gas­tia. Thus kings be­came fe­tish per­son­al­i­ties and were in­or­di­nately feared, a spe­cial form of speech be­ing adopted for court us­age. Even in re­cent times it was be­lieved that the touch of kings would cure dis­ease, and some Uran­tia peo­ples still re­gard their rulers as hav­ing had a di­vine ori­gin.

70:6.5The early fe­tish king was of­ten kept in seclu­sion; he was re­garded as too sa­cred to be viewed ex­cept on feast days and holy days. Or­di­nar­ily a rep­re­sen­ta­tive was cho­sen to im­per­son­ate him, and this is the ori­gin of prime min­is­ters. The first cab­i­net of­fi­cer was a food ad­min­is­tra­tor; oth­ers shortly fol­lowed. Rulers soon ap­pointed rep­re­sen­ta­tives to be in charge of com­merce and re­li­gion; and the de­vel­op­ment of a cab­i­net was a di­rect step to­ward de­per­son­al­iza­tion of ex­ec­u­tive au­thor­ity. These as­sis­tants of the early kings be­came the ac­cepted no­bil­ity, and the king’s wife grad­u­ally rose to the dig­nity of queen as women came to be held in higher es­teem.

70:6.6Un­scrupu­lous rulers gained great power by the dis­cov­ery of poi­son. Early court magic was di­a­bol­i­cal; the king’s en­e­mies soon died. But even the most despotic tyrant was sub­ject to some re­stric­tions; he was at least re­strained by the ever-pres­ent fear of as­sas­si­na­tion. The med­i­cine men, witch doc­tors, and priests have al­ways been a pow­er­ful check on the kings. Sub­se­quently, the landown­ers, the aris­toc­racy, ex­erted a re­strain­ing in­flu­ence. And ever and anon the clans and tribes would sim­ply rise up and over­throw their despots and tyrants. De­posed rulers, when sen­tenced to death, were of­ten given the op­tion of com­mit­ting sui­cide, which gave ori­gin to the an­cient so­cial vogue of sui­cide in cer­tain cir­cum­stances.

• history of government › ancient administrations only changed by civil war
• history of government › originally strong vs. weak

70:7.17These so­ci­eties gave rise to the first po­lit­i­cal par­ties. The first party gov­ern­ment was “the strong” vs. “the weak.” In an­cient times a change of ad­min­is­tra­tion only fol­lowed civil war, abun­dant proof that the weak had be­come strong.

• history of government › weak and inferior always insist that the state compel others to supply their wants

70:9.16The weak and the in­fe­rior have al­ways con­tended for equal rights; they have al­ways in­sisted that the state com­pel the strong and su­pe­rior to sup­ply their wants and oth­er­wise make good those de­fi­cien­cies which all too of­ten are the nat­u­ral re­sult of their own in­dif­fer­ence and in­do­lence.

• principles of government › ideals of statehood
• principles of government › should provide fair, peaceful opportunities to all

70:9.17But this equal­ity ideal is the child of civ­i­liza­tion; it is not found in na­ture. Even cul­ture it­self demon­strates con­clu­sively the in­her­ent in­equal­ity of men by their very un­equal ca­pac­ity there­for. The sud­den and nonevo­lu­tion­ary re­al­iza­tion of sup­posed nat­u­ral equal­ity would quickly throw civ­i­lized man back to the crude us­ages of prim­i­tive ages. So­ci­ety can­not of­fer equal rights to all, but it can prom­ise to ad­min­is­ter the vary­ing rights of each with fair­ness and eq­uity. It is the busi­ness and duty of so­ci­ety to pro­vide the child of na­ture with a fair and peace­ful op­por­tu­nity to pur­sue self-main­te­nance, par­tic­i­pate in self-per­pet­u­a­tion, while at the same time en­joy­ing some mea­sure of self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion, the sum of all three con­sti­tut­ing hu­man hap­pi­ness.

• principles of government › best g. is balance of power between executive, legislative, and judicial branches
• principles of government › representative g. is divine ideal of self-government

70:12.1The great strug­gle in the evo­lu­tion of gov­ern­ment has con­cerned the con­cen­tra­tion of power. The uni­verse ad­min­is­tra­tors have learned from ex­pe­ri­ence that the evo­lu­tion­ary peo­ples on the in­hab­ited worlds are best reg­u­lated by the rep­re­sen­ta­tive type of civil gov­ern­ment when there is main­tained proper bal­ance of power be­tween the well-co-or­di­nated ex­ec­u­tive, leg­isla­tive, and ju­di­cial branches.

• history of government › dictators prevailed in primitive g.

70:12.2While prim­i­tive au­thor­ity was based on strength, phys­i­cal power, the ideal gov­ern­ment is the rep­re­sen­ta­tive sys­tem wherein lead­er­ship is based on abil­ity, but in the days of bar­barism there was en­tirely too much war to per­mit rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment to func­tion ef­fec­tively. In the long strug­gle be­tween di­vi­sion of au­thor­ity and unity of com­mand, the dic­ta­tor won. The early and dif­fuse pow­ers of the prim­i­tive coun­cil of el­ders were grad­u­ally con­cen­trated in the per­son of the ab­so­lute monarch. Af­ter the ar­rival of real kings the groups of el­ders per­sisted as quasi-leg­isla­tive-ju­di­cial ad­vi­sory bod­ies; later on, leg­is­la­tures of co-or­di­nate sta­tus made their ap­pear­ance, and even­tu­ally su­preme courts of ad­ju­di­ca­tion were es­tab­lished sep­a­rate from the leg­is­la­tures.

• principles of government › individual liberties

70:12.5Uran­tia mor­tals are en­ti­tled to lib­erty; they should cre­ate their sys­tems of gov­ern­ment; they should adopt their con­sti­tu­tions or other char­ters of civil au­thor­ity and ad­min­is­tra­tive pro­ce­dure. And hav­ing done this, they should se­lect their most com­pe­tent and wor­thy fel­lows as chief ex­ec­u­tives. For rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the leg­isla­tive branch they should elect only those who are qual­i­fied in­tel­lec­tu­ally and morally to ful­fill such sa­cred re­spon­si­bil­i­ties. As judges of their high and su­preme tri­bu­nals only those who are en­dowed with nat­u­ral abil­ity and who have been made wise by re­plete ex­pe­ri­ence should be cho­sen.

• principles of government › warnings › dangers to be avoided

70:12.6If men would main­tain their free­dom, they must, af­ter hav­ing cho­sen their char­ter of lib­erty, pro­vide for its wise, in­tel­li­gent, and fear­less in­ter­pre­ta­tion to the end that there may be pre­vented:

70:12.71. Usurpa­tion of un­war­ranted power by ei­ther the ex­ec­u­tive or leg­isla­tive branches.

70:12.82. Machi­na­tions of ig­no­rant and su­per­sti­tious ag­i­ta­tors.

70:12.93. Re­tar­da­tion of sci­en­tific prog­ress.

70:12.104. Stale­mate of the dom­i­nance of medi­ocrity.

• principles of government › warnings › avoid domination by vicious minorities

70:12.115. Dom­i­na­tion by vi­cious mi­nori­ties.

• principles of government › warnings › avoid control by dictators

70:12.126. Con­trol by am­bi­tious and clever would-be dic­ta­tors.

• principles of government › warnings › oppressive taxation and regulation interferes with individual liberties

70:12.159. Tax­a­tion en­slave­ment of the cit­i­zenry by the state.

• principles of government › warnings › separate church and state

70:12.1711. Union of church and state.

• principles of government › divine ideal for g. must be slowly discovered

70:12.20Man­kind’s strug­gle to per­fect gov­ern­ment on Uran­tia has to do with per­fect­ing chan­nels of ad­min­is­tra­tion, with adapt­ing them to ever-chang­ing cur­rent needs, with im­prov­ing power dis­tri­bu­tion within gov­ern­ment, and then with se­lect­ing such ad­min­is­tra­tive lead­ers as are truly wise. While there is a di­vine and ideal form of gov­ern­ment, such can­not be re­vealed but must be slowly and la­bo­ri­ously dis­cov­ered by the men and women of each planet through­out the uni­verses of time and space.

• principles of government › warnings › citizens not born for benefit of state

71:0.2The mod­ern state is the in­sti­tu­tion which sur­vived in the long strug­gle for group power. Su­pe­rior power even­tu­ally pre­vailed, and it pro­duced a crea­ture of fact—the state—to­gether with the moral myth of the ab­so­lute obli­ga­tion of the cit­i­zen to live and die for the state. But the state is not of di­vine gen­e­sis; it was not even pro­duced by vo­li­tion­ally in­tel­li­gent hu­man ac­tion; it is purely an evo­lu­tion­ary in­sti­tu­tion and was wholly au­to­matic in ori­gin.

• principles of government › strongest state has common language, mores, and institutions
• state is territorial social regulative organization

71:1.1The state is a ter­ri­to­rial so­cial reg­u­la­tive or­ga­ni­za­tion, and the strong­est, most ef­fi­cient, and en­dur­ing state is com­posed of a sin­gle na­tion whose peo­ple have a com­mon lan­guage, mores, and in­sti­tu­tions.

• history of government › early states were all result of conquest

71:1.2The early states were small and were all the re­sult of con­quest. They did not orig­i­nate in vol­un­tary as­so­ci­a­tions. Many were founded by con­quer­ing no­mads, who would swoop down on peace­ful herders or set­tled agri­cul­tur­ists to over­power and en­slave them. Such states, re­sult­ing from con­quest, were, per­force, strat­i­fied; classes were in­ev­i­ta­ble, and class strug­gles have ever been se­lec­tive.

• history of government › Iroquois lacked essentials of modern g.
• principles of government › essentials are liberty, security, education, social co-ordination

71:1.3The north­ern tribes of the Amer­i­can red men never at­tained real state­hood. They never pro­gressed be­yond a loose con­fed­er­a­tion of tribes, a very prim­i­tive form of state. Their near­est ap­proach was the Iro­quois fed­er­a­tion, but this group of six na­tions never quite func­tioned as a state and failed to sur­vive be­cause of the ab­sence of cer­tain es­sen­tials to mod­ern na­tional life, such as:

71:1.41. Ac­quire­ment and in­her­i­tance of pri­vate prop­erty.

71:1.52. Cities plus agri­cul­ture and in­dus­try.

71:1.63. Help­ful do­mes­tic an­i­mals.

71:1.74. Prac­ti­cal fam­ily or­ga­ni­za­tion. These red men clung to the mother-fam­ily and nephew in­her­i­tance.

71:1.85. Def­i­nite ter­ri­tory.

71:1.96. A strong ex­ec­u­tive head.

71:1.107. En­slave­ment of cap­tives—they ei­ther adopted or mas­sa­cred them.

71:1.118. De­ci­sive con­quests.

• principles of government › warnings › why Roman Empire declined

71:1.22The great weak­ness in Ro­man civ­i­liza­tion, and a fac­tor in the ul­ti­mate col­lapse of the em­pire, was the sup­posed lib­eral and ad­vanced pro­vi­sion for the eman­ci­pa­tion of the boy at twenty-one and the un­con­di­tional re­lease of the girl so that she was at lib­erty to marry a man of her own choos­ing or to go abroad in the land to be­come im­moral. The harm to so­ci­ety con­sisted not in these re­forms them­selves but rather in the sud­den and ex­ten­sive man­ner of their adop­tion. The col­lapse of Rome in­di­cates what may be ex­pected when a state un­der­goes too rapid ex­ten­sion as­so­ci­ated with in­ter­nal de­gen­er­a­tion.

• sovereignty is characteristic of true state

71:1.23The em­bry­onic state was made pos­si­ble by the de­cline of the blood bond in fa­vor of the ter­ri­to­rial, and such tribal fed­er­a­tions were usu­ally firmly ce­mented by con­quest. While a sov­er­eignty that tran­scends all mi­nor strug­gles and group dif­fer­ences is the char­ac­ter­is­tic of the true state, still, many classes and castes per­sist in the later state or­ga­ni­za­tions as rem­nants of the clans and tribes of for­mer days. The later and larger ter­ri­to­rial states had a long and bit­ter strug­gle with these smaller con­san­guineous clan groups, the tribal gov­ern­ment prov­ing a valu­able tran­si­tion from fam­ily to state au­thor­ity. Dur­ing later times many clans grew out of trades and other in­dus­trial as­so­ci­a­tions.

• democracy › dangers of

71:2.1Democ­racy, while an ideal, is a prod­uct of civ­i­liza­tion, not of evo­lu­tion. Go slowly! se­lect care­fully! for the dan­gers of democ­racy are:

71:2.21. Glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of medi­ocrity.

71:2.32. Choice of base and ig­no­rant rulers.

71:2.43. Fail­ure to rec­og­nize the ba­sic facts of so­cial evo­lu­tion.

71:2.54. Dan­ger of uni­ver­sal suf­frage in the hands of un­e­d­u­cated and in­do­lent ma­jori­ties.

71:2.65. Slav­ery to pub­lic opin­ion; the ma­jor­ity is not al­ways right.

• democracy › elections are right way even to do wrong thing

71:2.8The mea­sure of the ad­vance of so­ci­ety is di­rectly de­ter­mined by the de­gree to which pub­lic opin­ion can con­trol per­sonal be­hav­ior and state reg­u­la­tion through non­vi­o­lent ex­pres­sion. The re­ally civ­i­lized gov­ern­ment had ar­rived when pub­lic opin­ion was clothed with the pow­ers of per­sonal fran­chise. Pop­u­lar elec­tions may not al­ways de­cide things rightly, but they rep­re­sent the right way even to do a wrong thing. Evo­lu­tion does not at once pro­duce su­perla­tive per­fec­tion but rather com­par­a­tive and ad­vanc­ing prac­ti­cal ad­just­ment.

• principles of government › stages to evolution of g.; freedoms required

71:2.9There are ten steps, or stages, to the evo­lu­tion of a prac­ti­cal and ef­fi­cient form of rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment, and these are:

• principles of government › abolition of slavery

71:2.101. Free­dom of the per­son. Slav­ery, serf­dom, and all forms of hu­man bond­age must dis­ap­pear.

• principles of government › education

71:2.112. Free­dom of the mind. Un­less a free peo­ple are ed­u­cated—taught to think in­tel­li­gently and plan wisely—free­dom usu­ally does more harm than good.

• principles of government › reign of law, not whim of rulers

71:2.123. The reign of law. Lib­erty can be en­joyed only when the will and whims of hu­man rulers are re­placed by leg­isla­tive en­act­ments in ac­cor­dance with ac­cepted fun­da­men­tal law.

• principles of government › freedom of speech

71:2.134. Free­dom of speech. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment is un­think­able with­out free­dom of all forms of ex­pres­sion for hu­man as­pi­ra­tions and opin­ions.

• principles of government › security of property
• principles of government › warnings › no g. can endure without protecting right to property

71:2.145. Se­cu­rity of prop­erty. No gov­ern­ment can long en­dure if it fails to pro­vide for the right to en­joy per­sonal prop­erty in some form. Man craves the right to use, con­trol, be­stow, sell, lease, and be­queath his per­sonal prop­erty.

• principles of government › right of petition

71:2.156. The right of pe­ti­tion. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment as­sumes the right of cit­i­zens to be heard. The priv­i­lege of pe­ti­tion is in­her­ent in free cit­i­zen­ship.

• principles of government › right to rule

71:2.167. The right to rule. It is not enough to be heard; the power of pe­ti­tion must pro­gress to the ac­tual man­age­ment of the gov­ern­ment.

• principles of government › universal suffrage

71:2.178. Uni­ver­sal suf­frage. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment pre­sup­poses an in­tel­li­gent, ef­fi­cient, and uni­ver­sal elec­torate. The char­ac­ter of such a gov­ern­ment will ever be de­ter­mined by the char­ac­ter and cal­iber of those who com­pose it. As civ­i­liza­tion pro­gresses, suf­frage, while re­main­ing uni­ver­sal for both sexes, will be ef­fec­tively mod­i­fied, re­grouped, and oth­er­wise dif­fer­en­ti­ated.

• principles of government › control of public servants

71:2.189. Con­trol of pub­lic ser­vants. No civil gov­ern­ment will be ser­vice­able and ef­fec­tive un­less the cit­i­zenry pos­sess and use wise tech­niques of guid­ing and con­trol­ling of­fice­hold­ers and pub­lic ser­vants.

• principles of government › intelligent, trained representation
• principles of government › of the people, by the people, and for the people

71:2.1910. In­tel­li­gent and trained rep­re­sen­ta­tion. The sur­vival of democ­racy is de­pen­dent on suc­cess­ful rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment; and that is con­di­tioned upon the prac­tice of elect­ing to pub­lic of­fices only those in­di­vid­u­als who are tech­ni­cally trained, in­tel­lec­tu­ally com­pe­tent, so­cially loyal, and morally fit. Only by such pro­vi­sions can gov­ern­ment of the peo­ple, by the peo­ple, and for the peo­ple be pre­served.

• principles of government › essentials are liberty, security, education, social co-ordination
• principles of government › not what g. is, but what g. does that matters
• principles of government › warnings › ignorance, selfishness insure downfall of any g.

71:3.1The po­lit­i­cal or ad­min­is­tra­tive form of a gov­ern­ment is of lit­tle con­se­quence pro­vided it af­fords the es­sen­tials of civil prog­ress—lib­erty, se­cu­rity, ed­u­ca­tion, and so­cial co-or­di­na­tion. It is not what a state is but what it does that de­ter­mines the course of so­cial evo­lu­tion. And af­ter all, no state can tran­scend the moral val­ues of its cit­i­zenry as ex­em­pli­fied in their cho­sen lead­ers. Ig­no­rance and self­ish­ness will in­sure the down­fall of even the high­est type of gov­ern­ment.

71:3.2Much as it is to be re­gret­ted, na­tional ego­tism has been es­sen­tial to so­cial sur­vival. The cho­sen peo­ple doc­trine has been a prime fac­tor in tribal weld­ing and na­tion build­ing right on down to mod­ern times. But no state can at­tain ideal lev­els of func­tion­ing un­til ev­ery form of in­tol­er­ance is mas­tered; it is ev­er­last­ingly in­im­i­cal to hu­man prog­ress. And in­tol­er­ance is best com­bated by the co-or­di­na­tion of sci­ence, com­merce, play, and re­li­gion.

71:3.3The ideal state func­tions un­der the im­pulse of three mighty and co-or­di­nated drives:

71:3.41. Love loy­alty de­rived from the re­al­iza­tion of hu­man broth­er­hood.

71:3.52. In­tel­li­gent pa­tri­o­tism based on wise ide­als.

71:3.63. Cos­mic in­sight in­ter­preted in terms of plan­e­tary facts, needs, and goals.

• principles of government › compulsory employment
• principles of government › ideal state has few laws

71:3.7The laws of the ideal state are few in num­ber, and they have passed out of the neg­a­tivis­tic taboo age into the era of the pos­i­tive prog­ress of in­di­vid­ual lib­erty con­se­quent upon en­hanced self-con­trol. The ex­alted state not only com­pels its cit­i­zens to work but also en­tices them into prof­itable and up­lift­ing uti­liza­tion of the in­creas­ing leisure which re­sults from toil lib­er­a­tion by the ad­vanc­ing ma­chine age. Leisure must pro­duce as well as con­sume.

• principles of government › warnings › idleness and poverty should not be tolerated

71:3.8No so­ci­ety has pro­gressed very far when it per­mits idle­ness or tol­er­ates pov­erty. But pov­erty and de­pen­dence can never be elim­i­nated if the de­fec­tive and de­gen­er­ate stocks are freely sup­ported and per­mit­ted to re­pro­duce with­out re­straint.

• principles of government › co-ordinate most while governing least

71:3.9A moral so­ci­ety should aim to pre­serve the self-re­spect of its cit­i­zenry and af­ford ev­ery nor­mal in­di­vid­ual ad­e­quate op­por­tu­nity for self-re­al­iza­tion. Such a plan of so­cial achieve­ment would yield a cul­tural so­ci­ety of the high­est or­der. So­cial evo­lu­tion should be en­cour­aged by gov­ern­men­tal super­vi­sion which ex­er­cises a min­i­mum of reg­u­la­tive con­trol. That state is best which co-or­di­nates most while gov­ern­ing least.

• status of civilization portrayed by caliber of citizens who accept responsibilities of

71:3.10The ide­als of state­hood must be at­tained by evo­lu­tion, by the slow growth of civic con­scious­ness, the rec­og­ni­tion of the obli­ga­tion and priv­i­lege of so­cial ser­vice. At first men as­sume the bur­dens of gov­ern­ment as a duty, fol­low­ing the end of the ad­min­is­tra­tion of po­lit­i­cal spoils­men, but later on they seek such min­istry as a priv­i­lege, as the great­est honor. The sta­tus of any level of civ­i­liza­tion is faith­fully por­trayed by the cal­iber of its cit­i­zens who vol­un­teer to ac­cept the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of state­hood.

71:3.11In a real com­mon­wealth the busi­ness of gov­ern­ing cities and prov­inces is con­ducted by ex­perts and is man­aged just as are all other forms of eco­nomic and com­mer­cial as­so­ci­a­tions of peo­ple.

• principles of government › bestowal of honors in ideal state

71:3.12In ad­vanced states, po­lit­i­cal ser­vice is es­teemed as the high­est de­vo­tion of the cit­i­zenry. The great­est am­bi­tion of the wis­est and no­blest of cit­i­zens is to gain civil rec­og­ni­tion, to be elected or ap­pointed to some po­si­tion of gov­ern­men­tal trust, and such gov­ern­ments con­fer their high­est hon­ors of rec­og­ni­tion for ser­vice upon their civil and so­cial ser­vants. Hon­ors are next be­stowed in the or­der named upon philoso­phers, ed­u­ca­tors, sci­en­tists, in­dus­tri­al­ists, and mil­i­tarists. Par­ents are duly re­warded by the ex­cel­lency of their chil­dren, and purely re­li­gious lead­ers, be­ing am­bas­sadors of a spir­i­tual king­dom, re­ceive their real re­wards in an­other world.

• principles of government › individual liberties

71:4.31. Preser­va­tion of in­di­vid­ual lib­er­ties.

• principles of government › protection of home

71:4.42. Pro­tec­tion of the home.

• principles of government › compulsory education

71:4.75. Com­pul­sory ed­u­ca­tion.

• principles of government › compulsory employment

71:4.86. Com­pul­sory em­ploy­ment.

• principles of government › care of the unfortunate

71:4.108. Care of the un­for­tu­nate.

• principles of government › race improvement

71:4.119. Race im­prove­ment.

• principles of government › promotion of science and art

71:4.1210. Pro­mo­tion of sci­ence and art.

• principles of government › national survival demands military preparedness

71:4.17Ide­al­ism can never sur­vive on an evolv­ing planet if the ide­al­ists in each gen­er­a­tion per­mit them­selves to be ex­ter­mi­nated by the baser or­ders of hu­man­ity. And here is the great test of ide­al­ism: Can an ad­vanced so­ci­ety main­tain that mil­i­tary pre­pared­ness which ren­ders it se­cure from all at­tack by its war-lov­ing neigh­bors with­out yield­ing to the temp­ta­tion to em­ploy this mil­i­tary strength in of­fen­sive op­er­a­tions against other peo­ples for pur­poses of self­ish gain or na­tional ag­gran­dize­ment? Na­tional sur­vival de­mands pre­pared­ness, and re­li­gious ide­al­ism alone can pre­vent the pros­ti­tu­tion of pre­pared­ness into ag­gres­sion. Only love, broth­er­hood, can pre­vent the strong from op­press­ing the weak.

• principles of government › co-ordinate most while governing least
• principles of government › prevent g. from becoming parasitical or tyrannical

71:5.2The ideal state un­der­takes to reg­u­late so­cial con­duct only enough to take vi­o­lence out of in­di­vid­ual com­pe­ti­tion and to pre­vent un­fair­ness in per­sonal ini­tia­tive. Here is a great prob­lem in state­hood: How can you guar­an­tee peace and quiet in in­dus­try, pay the taxes to sup­port state power, and at the same time pre­vent tax­a­tion from hand­i­cap­ping in­dus­try and keep the state from be­com­ing par­a­sit­i­cal or tyran­ni­cal?

• history of government › character of people reflected in statehood
• principles of government › best g. is balance of power between executive, legislative, and judicial branches
• principles of government › only sacred feature is division into executive, legislative, and judicial functions

71:8.1The only sa­cred fea­ture of any hu­man gov­ern­ment is the di­vi­sion of state­hood into the three do­mains of ex­ec­u­tive, leg­isla­tive, and ju­di­cial func­tions. The uni­verse is ad­min­is­tered in ac­cor­dance with such a plan of seg­re­ga­tion of func­tions and au­thor­ity. Aside from this di­vine con­cept of ef­fec­tive so­cial reg­u­la­tion or civil gov­ern­ment, it mat­ters lit­tle what form of state a peo­ple may elect to have pro­vided the cit­i­zenry is ever pro­gress­ing to­ward the goal of aug­mented self-con­trol and in­creased so­cial ser­vice. The in­tel­lec­tual keen­ness, eco­nomic wis­dom, so­cial clev­er­ness, and moral stam­ina of a peo­ple are all faith­fully re­flected in state­hood.

• principles of government › stages to evolution of g.; freedoms required

71:8.2The evo­lu­tion of state­hood en­tails prog­ress from level to level, as fol­lows:

• principles of government › only sacred feature is division into executive, legislative, and judicial functions

71:8.31. The cre­ation of a three­fold gov­ern­ment of ex­ec­u­tive, leg­isla­tive, and ju­di­cial branches.

• principles of government › individual liberties
• principles of government › warnings › separate church and state

71:8.42. The free­dom of so­cial, po­lit­i­cal, and re­li­gious ac­tiv­i­ties.

• history of government › abolition of slavery

71:8.53. The abo­li­tion of all forms of slav­ery and hu­man bond­age.

• principles of government › control of tax levying

71:8.64. The abil­ity of the cit­i­zenry to con­trol the levy­ing of taxes.

• principles of government › compulsory education

71:8.75. The es­tab­lish­ment of uni­ver­sal edu­ca­tion—learn­ing ex­tended from the cra­dle to the grave.

• principles of government › federalism

71:8.86. The proper ad­just­ment be­tween lo­cal and na­tional gov­ern­ments.

• principles of government › should foster science, vanquish disease

71:8.97. The fos­ter­ing of sci­ence and the con­quest of dis­ease.

• principles of government › sex equality

71:8.108. The due rec­og­ni­tion of sex equal­ity and the co-or­di­nated func­tion­ing of men and women in the home, school, and church, with spe­cial­ized ser­vice of women in in­dus­try and gov­ern­ment.

• principles of government › should foster science, vanquish disease

71:8.119. The elim­i­na­tion of toil­ing slav­ery by ma­chine in­ven­tion and the sub­se­quent mas­tery of the ma­chine age.

• principles of government › conquest of dialects

71:8.1210. The con­quest of di­alects—the tri­umph of a uni­ver­sal lan­guage.

• world government › creation

71:8.1311. The end­ing of war—in­ter­na­tional ad­ju­di­ca­tion of na­tional and racial dif­fer­ences by con­ti­nen­tal courts of na­tions pre­sided over by a su­preme plan­e­tary tri­bu­nal au­to­mat­i­cally re­cruited from the pe­ri­od­i­cally re­tir­ing heads of the con­ti­nen­tal courts. The con­ti­nen­tal courts are au­thor­i­ta­tive; the world court is ad­vi­sory—moral.

71:8.1412. The world-wide vogue of the pur­suit of wis­dom—the ex­al­ta­tion of phi­los­o­phy. The evo­lu­tion of a world re­li­gion, which will presage the en­trance of the planet upon the ear­lier phases of set­tle­ment in light and life.

71:8.15These are the pre­req­ui­sites of pro­gres­sive gov­ern­ment and the ear­marks of ideal state­hood. Uran­tia is far from the re­al­iza­tion of these ex­alted ide­als, but the civ­i­lized races have made a be­gin­ning—man­kind is on the march to­ward higher evo­lu­tion­ary des­tinies.

• principles of government › federalism

72:2.1This con­ti­nen­tal na­tion now has a rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment with a cen­trally lo­cated na­tional cap­i­tal. The cen­tral gov­ern­ment con­sists of a strong fed­er­a­tion of one hun­dred com­par­a­tively free states. These states elect their gov­er­nors and leg­is­la­tors for ten years, and none are el­i­gi­ble for re-elec­tion. State judges are ap­pointed for life by the gov­er­nors and con­firmed by their leg­is­la­tures, which con­sist of one rep­re­sen­ta­tive for each one hun­dred thou­sand cit­i­zens.

72:2.2There are five dif­fer­ent types of metropoli­tan gov­ern­ment, de­pend­ing on the size of the city, but no city is per­mit­ted to have more than one mil­lion in­hab­i­tants. On the whole, these mu­nic­i­pal gov­ern­ing schemes are very sim­ple, di­rect, and eco­nom­i­cal. The few of­fices of city ad­min­is­tra­tion are keenly sought by the high­est types of cit­i­zens.

72:2.3The fed­eral gov­ern­ment em­braces three co-or­di­nate di­vi­sions: ex­ec­u­tive, leg­isla­tive, and ju­di­cial. The fed­eral chief ex­ec­u­tive is elected ev­ery six years by uni­ver­sal ter­ri­to­rial suf­frage. He is not el­i­gi­ble for re-elec­tion ex­cept upon the pe­ti­tion of at least sev­enty-five state leg­is­la­tures con­curred in by the re­spec­tive state gov­er­nors, and then but for one term. He is ad­vised by a super­cab­i­net com­posed of all liv­ing ex-chief ex­ec­u­tives.

72:2.4The leg­isla­tive di­vi­sion em­braces three houses:

72:2.51. The up­per house is elected by in­dus­trial, pro­fes­sional, ag­ri­cul­tural, and other groups of work­ers, bal­lot­ing in ac­cor­dance with eco­nomic func­tion.

72:2.62. The lower house is elected by cer­tain or­ga­ni­za­tions of so­ci­ety em­brac­ing the so­cial, po­lit­i­cal, and philo­sophic groups not in­cluded in in­dus­try or the pro­fes­sions. All cit­i­zens in good stand­ing par­tic­i­pate in the elec­tion of both classes of rep­re­sen­ta­tives, but they are dif­fer­ently grouped, de­pend­ing on whether the elec­tion per­tains to the up­per or lower house.

72:2.73. The third house—the el­der states­men—em­braces the vet­er­ans of civic ser­vice and in­cludes many dis­tin­guished per­sons nom­i­nated by the chief ex­ec­u­tive, by the re­gional (sub­fed­eral) ex­ec­u­tives, by the chief of the su­preme tri­bu­nal, and by the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cers of ei­ther of the other leg­isla­tive houses. This group is lim­ited to one hun­dred, and its mem­bers are elected by the ma­jor­ity ac­tion of the el­der states­men them­selves. Mem­ber­ship is for life, and when va­can­cies oc­cur, the per­son re­ceiv­ing the largest bal­lot among the list of nom­i­nees is thereby duly elected. The scope of this body is purely ad­vi­sory, but it is a mighty reg­u­la­tor of pub­lic opin­ion and ex­erts a pow­er­ful in­flu­ence upon all branches of the gov­ern­ment.

72:2.8Very much of the fed­eral ad­min­is­tra­tive work is car­ried on by the ten re­gional (sub­fed­eral) au­thor­i­ties, each con­sist­ing of the as­so­ci­a­tion of ten states. These re­gional di­vi­sions are wholly ex­ec­u­tive and ad­min­is­tra­tive, hav­ing nei­ther leg­isla­tive nor ju­di­cial func­tions. The ten re­gional ex­ec­u­tives are the per­sonal ap­pointees of the fed­eral chief ex­ec­u­tive, and their term of of­fice is con­cur­rent with his—six years. The fed­eral su­preme tri­bu­nal ap­proves the ap­point­ment of these ten re­gional ex­ec­u­tives, and while they may not be reap­pointed, the re­tir­ing ex­ec­u­tive au­to­mat­i­cally be­comes the as­so­ciate and ad­viser of his suc­ces­sor. Oth­er­wise, these re­gional chiefs choose their own cab­i­nets of ad­min­is­tra­tive of­fi­cials.

72:2.9This na­tion is ad­ju­di­cated by two ma­jor court sys­tems—the law courts and the so­cioe­co­nomic courts. The law courts func­tion on the fol­low­ing three lev­els:

72:2.101. Mi­nor courts of mu­nic­i­pal and lo­cal ju­ris­dic­tion, whose de­ci­sions may be ap­pealed to the high state tri­bu­nals.

72:2.112. State su­preme courts, whose de­ci­sions are fi­nal in all mat­ters not in­volv­ing the fed­eral gov­ern­ment or jeop­ardy of cit­i­zen­ship rights and lib­er­ties. The re­gional ex­ec­u­tives are em­pow­ered to bring any case at once to the bar of the fed­eral su­preme court.

72:2.123. Fed­eral su­preme court—the high tri­bu­nal for the ad­ju­di­ca­tion of na­tional con­tentions and the ap­pel­late cases com­ing up from the state courts. This su­preme tri­bu­nal con­sists of twelve men over forty and un­der sev­enty-five years of age who have served two or more years on some state tri­bu­nal, and who have been ap­pointed to this high po­si­tion by the chief ex­ec­u­tive with the ma­jor­ity ap­proval of the super­cab­i­net and the third house of the leg­isla­tive as­sem­bly. All de­ci­sions of this su­preme ju­di­cial body are by at least a two-thirds vote.

72:2.13The so­cioe­co­nomic courts func­tion in the fol­low­ing three di­vi­sions:

72:2.141. Pa­ren­tal courts, as­so­ci­ated with the leg­isla­tive and ex­ec­u­tive di­vi­sions of the home and so­cial sys­tem.

72:2.152. Ed­u­ca­tional courts—the ju­ridi­cal bod­ies con­nected with the state and re­gional school sys­tems and as­so­ci­ated with the ex­ec­u­tive and leg­isla­tive branches of the ed­u­ca­tional ad­min­is­tra­tive mech­a­nism.

72:2.163. In­dus­trial courts—the ju­ris­dic­tional tri­bu­nals vested with full au­thor­ity for the set­tle­ment of all eco­nomic mis­un­der­stand­ings.

72:2.17The fed­eral su­preme court does not pass upon so­cioe­co­nomic cases ex­cept upon the three-quar­ters vote of the third leg­isla­tive branch of the na­tional gov­ern­ment, the house of el­der states­men. Oth­er­wise, all de­ci­sions of the pa­ren­tal, ed­u­ca­tional, and in­dus­trial high courts are fi­nal.

• principles of government › warnings › separate church and state

72:3.6Un­til twenty years ago the spir­i­tual teach­ers (com­pa­ra­ble to Uran­tia pas­tors), who visit each fam­ily pe­ri­od­i­cally to ex­am­ine the chil­dren to as­cer­tain if they have been prop­erly in­structed by their par­ents, were un­der gov­ern­men­tal super­vi­sion. These spir­i­tual ad­vis­ers and ex­am­in­ers are now un­der the di­rec­tion of the newly cre­ated Foun­da­tion of Spir­i­tual Prog­ress, an in­sti­tu­tion sup­ported by vol­un­tary con­tri­bu­tions. Pos­si­bly this in­sti­tu­tion may not fur­ther evolve un­til af­ter the ar­rival of a Par­a­dise Mag­is­te­rial Son.

• principles of government › compulsory education

72:4.1The ed­u­ca­tional sys­tem of this na­tion is com­pul­sory and co­ed­u­ca­tional in the pre­col­lege schools that the stu­dent at­tends from the ages of five to eigh­teen. These schools are vastly dif­fer­ent from those of Uran­tia. There are no class­rooms, only one study is pur­sued at a time, and af­ter the first three years all pupils be­come as­sis­tant teach­ers, in­struct­ing those be­low them. Books are used only to se­cure in­for­ma­tion that will as­sist in solv­ing the prob­lems aris­ing in the school shops and on the school farms. Much of the fur­ni­ture used on the con­ti­nent and the many me­chan­i­cal con­trivances—this is a great age of in­ven­tion and mech­a­niza­tion—are pro­duced in these shops. Ad­ja­cent to each shop is a work­ing li­brary where the stu­dent may con­sult the nec­es­sary ref­er­ence books. Agri­cul­ture and hor­ti­cul­ture are also taught through­out the en­tire ed­u­ca­tional pe­riod on the ex­ten­sive farms ad­join­ing ev­ery lo­cal school.

• principles of government › compulsory employment

72:6.41. One day’s earn­ings each month are req­ui­si­tioned by the fed­eral gov­ern­ment for this pur­pose, and in this coun­try ev­ery­body works.

• principles of government › compulsory employment

72:6.63. The earn­ings of com­pul­sory la­bor in the state mines. Af­ter the con­script work­ers sup­port them­selves and set aside their own re­tire­ment con­tri­bu­tions, all ex­cess prof­its on their la­bor are turned over to this pen­sion fund.

• principles of government › g. employees disenfranchised in continental nation

72:9.43. All in­di­vid­u­als sen­tenced to com­pul­sory la­bor in the mines and all gov­ern­men­tal ser­vants sup­ported by tax funds are, for the pe­ri­ods of such ser­vices, dis­en­fran­chised. This does not ap­ply to aged per­sons who may be re­tired on pen­sions at sixty-five.

• principles of government › ideal g. is organic

72:9.7Thus, ex­cept in the elec­tion of the chief ex­ec­u­tive, suf­frage is ex­er­cised by eco­nomic, pro­fes­sional, in­tel­lec­tual, and so­cial group­ings of the cit­i­zenry. The ideal state is or­ganic, and ev­ery free and in­tel­li­gent group of cit­i­zens rep­re­sents a vi­tal and func­tion­ing or­gan within the larger gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­ism.

• principles of government › nation doomed if majority of voters are inferior

72:9.8The schools of states­man­ship have power to start pro­ceed­ings in the state courts look­ing to­ward the dis­en­fran­chise­ment of any de­fec­tive, idle, in­dif­fer­ent, or crim­i­nal in­di­vid­ual. These peo­ple rec­og­nize that, when fifty per cent of a na­tion is in­fe­rior or de­fec­tive and pos­sesses the bal­lot, such a na­tion is doomed. They be­lieve the dom­i­nance of medi­ocrity spells the down­fall of any na­tion. Vot­ing is com­pul­sory, heavy fines be­ing as­sessed against all who fail to cast their bal­lots.

• world government › peace cannot prevail until creation of

72:12.5The pour­ing out of the Spirit of Truth pro­vides the spir­i­tual foun­da­tion for the re­al­iza­tion of great achieve­ments in the in­ter­ests of the hu­man race of the be­stowal world. Uran­tia is there­fore far bet­ter pre­pared for the more im­me­di­ate re­al­iza­tion of a plan­e­tary gov­ern­ment with its laws, mech­a­nisms, sym­bols, con­ven­tions, and lan­guage—all of which could con­tribute so might­ily to the es­tab­lish­ment of world-wide peace un­der law and could lead to the some­time dawn­ing of a real age of spir­i­tual striv­ing; and such an age is the plan­e­tary thresh­old to the utopian ages of light and life.

• Adam failed to establish g. outside Eden
• world government › Adam tried to establish, but failed

74:5.5Adam made a heroic and de­ter­mined ef­fort to es­tab­lish a world gov­ern­ment, but he met with stub­born re­sis­tance at ev­ery turn. Adam had al­ready put in op­er­a­tion a sys­tem of group con­trol through­out Eden and had fed­er­ated all of these com­pa­nies into the Edenic league. But trou­ble, se­ri­ous trou­ble, en­sued when he went out­side the Gar­den and sought to ap­ply these ideas to the out­ly­ing tribes. The mo­ment Adam’s as­so­ciates be­gan to work out­side the Gar­den, they met the di­rect and well-planned re­sis­tance of Cali­gas­tia and Dali­gas­tia. The fallen Prince had been de­posed as world ruler, but he had not been re­moved from the planet. He was still pres­ent on earth and able, at least to some ex­tent, to re­sist all of Adam’s plans for the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of hu­man so­ci­ety. Adam tried to warn the races against Cali­gas­tia, but the task was made very dif­fi­cult be­cause his arch­en­emy was in­vis­i­ble to the eyes of mor­tals.

74:5.6Even among the Eden­ites there were those con­fused minds that leaned to­ward the Cali­gas­tia teach­ing of un­bri­dled per­sonal lib­erty; and they caused Adam no end of trou­ble; al­ways were they up­set­ting the best-laid plans for or­derly pro­gres­sion and sub­stan­tial de­vel­op­ment. He was fi­nally com­pelled to with­draw his pro­gram for im­me­di­ate so­cial­iza­tion; he fell back on Van’s method of or­ga­ni­za­tion, di­vid­ing the Eden­ites into com­pa­nies of one hun­dred with cap­tains over each and with lieu­tenants in charge of groups of ten.

74:5.7Adam and Eve had come to in­sti­tute rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment in the place of monar­chial, but they found no gov­ern­ment wor­thy of the name on the face of the whole earth. For the time be­ing Adam aban­doned all ef­fort to es­tab­lish rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment, and be­fore the col­lapse of the Edenic regime he suc­ceeded in es­tab­lish­ing al­most one hun­dred out­ly­ing trade and so­cial cen­ters where strong in­di­vid­u­als ruled in his name. Most of these cen­ters had been or­ga­nized afore­time by Van and Amadon.

• history of government › danger of external aggression stimulates development of state

79:8.1While the red man suf­fered from too much war­fare, it is not al­to­gether amiss to say that the de­vel­op­ment of state­hood among the Chi­nese was de­layed by the thor­ough­ness of their con­quest of Asia. They had a great po­ten­tial of racial sol­i­dar­ity, but it failed prop­erly to de­velop be­cause the con­tin­u­ous driv­ing stim­u­lus of the ever-pres­ent dan­ger of ex­ter­nal ag­gres­sion was lack­ing.

• principles of government › equality of opportunity under law

81:5.6Might does not make right, but it does en­force the com­monly rec­og­nized rights of each suc­ceed­ing gen­er­a­tion. The prime mis­sion of gov­ern­ment is the def­i­ni­tion of the right, the just and fair reg­u­la­tion of class dif­fer­ences, and the en­force­ment of equal­ity of op­por­tu­nity un­der the rules of law. Ev­ery hu­man right is as­so­ci­ated with a so­cial duty; group priv­i­lege is an in­sur­ance mech­a­nism which un­fail­ingly de­mands the full pay­ment of the ex­act­ing pre­mi­ums of group ser­vice. And group rights, as well as those of the in­di­vid­ual, must be pro­tected, in­clud­ing the reg­u­la­tion of the sex propen­sity.

• principles of government › warnings › wise nation knows when to cease growing

81:6.12You are some­times shocked at the rav­ages of war, but you should rec­og­nize the ne­ces­sity for pro­duc­ing large num­bers of mor­tals so as to af­ford am­ple op­por­tu­nity for so­cial and moral de­vel­op­ment; with such plan­e­tary fer­til­ity there soon oc­curs the se­ri­ous prob­lem of over­pop­u­la­tion. Most of the in­hab­ited worlds are small. Uran­tia is av­er­age, per­haps a tri­fle un­der­sized. The op­ti­mum sta­bi­liza­tion of na­tional pop­u­la­tion en­hances cul­ture and pre­vents war. And it is a wise na­tion which knows when to cease grow­ing.

• principles of government › warnings › no great social or economic change should be effected suddenly

81:6.40Man should be un­afraid to ex­per­i­ment with the mech­a­nisms of so­ci­ety. But al­ways should these ad­ven­tures in cul­tural ad­just­ment be con­trolled by those who are fully con­ver­sant with the his­tory of so­cial evo­lu­tion; and al­ways should these in­no­va­tors be coun­seled by the wis­dom of those who have had prac­ti­cal ex­pe­ri­ence in the do­mains of con­tem­plated so­cial or eco­nomic ex­per­i­ment. No great so­cial or eco­nomic change should be at­tempted sud­denly. Time is es­sen­tial to all types of hu­man ad­just­ment—phys­i­cal, so­cial, or eco­nomic. Only moral and spir­i­tual ad­just­ments can be made on the spur of the mo­ment, and even these re­quire the pass­ing of time for the full out­work­ing of their ma­te­rial and so­cial reper­cus­sions. The ide­als of the race are the chief sup­port and as­sur­ance dur­ing the crit­i­cal times when civ­i­liza­tion is in tran­sit from one level to an­other.

• democracy › fetish made of

88:3.4The in­signia of priestly and kingly of­fice were even­tu­ally re­garded as fe­tishes, and the fe­tish of the state su­preme has passed through many stages of de­vel­op­ment, from clans to tribes, from su­zer­ainty to sov­er­eignty, from totems to flags. Fe­tish kings have ruled by “di­vine right,” and many other forms of gov­ern­ment have ob­tained. Men have also made a fe­tish of democ­racy, the ex­al­ta­tion and ado­ra­tion of the com­mon man’s ideas when col­lec­tively called “pub­lic opin­ion.” One man’s opin­ion, when taken by it­self, is not re­garded as worth much, but when many men are col­lec­tively func­tion­ing as a democ­racy, this same mediocre judg­ment is held to be the ar­biter of jus­tice and the stan­dard of righ­teous­ness.

• Most Highs rule in kingdoms of men

97:8.5All mod­ern re­li­gions have se­ri­ously blun­dered in the at­tempt to put a mirac­u­lous in­ter­pre­ta­tion on cer­tain epochs of hu­man his­tory. While it is true that God has many times thrust a Fa­ther’s hand of prov­i­den­tial in­ter­ven­tion into the stream of hu­man af­fairs, it is a mis­take to re­gard the­o­logic dog­mas and re­li­gious su­per­sti­tion as a super­nat­u­ral sed­i­men­ta­tion ap­pear­ing by mirac­u­lous ac­tion in this stream of hu­man his­tory. The fact that the “Most Highs rule in the king­doms of men” does not con­vert sec­u­lar his­tory into so-called sa­cred his­tory.

• lower social orders no longer politically helpless

99:1.5A god­less hu­man­i­tar­i­an­ism is, hu­manly speak­ing, a no­ble ges­ture, but true re­li­gion is the only power which can last­ingly in­crease the re­spon­sive­ness of one so­cial group to the needs and suf­fer­ings of other groups. In the past, in­sti­tu­tional re­li­gion could re­main pas­sive while the up­per strata of so­ci­ety turned a deaf ear to the suf­fer­ings and op­pres­sion of the help­less lower strata, but in mod­ern times these lower so­cial or­ders are no longer so ab­jectly ig­no­rant nor so po­lit­i­cally help­less.

• believers’ relation to › Jesus forbade apostles to become embroiled in politics

120:3.4“3. In your re­la­tions to the so­cial or­der we ad­vise that you con­fine your ef­forts largely to spir­i­tual re­gen­er­a­tion and in­tel­lec­tual eman­ci­pa­tion. Avoid all en­tan­gle­ments with the eco­nomic struc­ture and the po­lit­i­cal com­mit­ments of your day. More es­pe­cially de­vote your­self to liv­ing the ideal re­li­gious life on Uran­tia.

• principles of government › founded on justice

132:4.8Meet­ing a poor man who had been falsely ac­cused, Je­sus went with him be­fore the mag­is­trate and, hav­ing been granted spe­cial per­mis­sion to ap­pear in his be­half, made that su­perb ad­dress in the course of which he said: “Jus­tice makes a na­tion great, and the greater a na­tion the more so­lic­i­tous will it be to see that in­jus­tice shall not be­fall even its most hum­ble cit­i­zen. Woe upon any na­tion when only those who pos­sess money and in­flu­ence can se­cure ready jus­tice be­fore its courts! It is the sa­cred duty of a mag­is­trate to ac­quit the in­no­cent as well as to pun­ish the guilty. Upon the im­par­tial­ity, fair­ness, and in­tegrity of its courts the en­durance of a na­tion de­pends. Civil gov­ern­ment is founded on jus­tice, even as true re­li­gion is founded on mercy.” The judge re­opened the case, and when the ev­i­dence had been sifted, he dis­charged the pris­oner. Of all Je­sus’ ac­tiv­i­ties dur­ing these days of per­sonal min­istry, this came the near­est to be­ing a pub­lic ap­pear­ance.

• principles of government › g. may employ force; death penalty

133:1.5But Ga­nid was not fully sat­is­fied. Many times they talked over these mat­ters, and Je­sus told him some of his boy­hood ex­pe­ri­ences and also about Ja­cob the stone ma­son’s son. On learn­ing how Ja­cob ap­pointed him­self to de­fend Je­sus, Ga­nid said: “Oh, I be­gin to see! In the first place very sel­dom would any nor­mal hu­man be­ing want to at­tack such a kindly per­son as you, and even if any­one should be so un­think­ing as to do such a thing, there is pretty sure to be near at hand some other mor­tal who will fly to your as­sis­tance, even as you al­ways go to the res­cue of any per­son you ob­serve to be in dis­tress. In my heart, Teacher, I agree with you, but in my head I still think that if I had been Ja­cob, I would have en­joyed pun­ish­ing those rude fel­lows who pre­sumed to at­tack you just be­cause they thought you would not de­fend your­self. I pre­sume you are fairly safe in your jour­ney through life since you spend much of your time help­ing oth­ers and min­is­ter­ing to your fel­lows in dis­tress—well, most likely there’ll al­ways be some­one on hand to de­fend you.” And Je­sus replied: “That test has not yet come, Ga­nid, and when it does, we will have to abide by the Fa­ther’s will.” And that was about all the lad could get his teacher to say on this dif­fi­cult sub­ject of self-de­fense and non­re­sis­tance. On an­other oc­ca­sion he did draw from Je­sus the opin­ion that or­ga­nized so­ci­ety had ev­ery right to em­ploy force in the ex­e­cu­tion of its just man­dates.

• believers’ relation to › conflict when rulers require worship which belongs only to God

133:4.3To the Ro­man cen­tu­rion he said: “Ren­der unto Cae­sar the things which are Cae­sar’s and unto God the things which are God’s. The sin­cere ser­vice of God and the loyal ser­vice of Cae­sar do not con­flict un­less Cae­sar should pre­sume to ar­ro­gate to him­self that homage which alone can be claimed by De­ity. Loy­alty to God, if you should come to know him, would ren­der you all the more loyal and faith­ful in your de­vo­tion to a wor­thy em­peror.”

• principles of government › g. may employ force; death penalty

133:4.12To the con­demned crim­i­nal he said at the last hour: “My brother, you have fallen on evil times. You lost your way; you be­came en­tan­gled in the meshes of crime. From talk­ing to you, I well know you did not plan to do the thing which is about to cost you your tem­po­ral life. But you did do this evil, and your fel­lows have ad­judged you guilty; they have de­ter­mined that you shall die. You or I may not deny the state this right of self-de­fense in the man­ner of its own choos­ing. There seems to be no way of hu­manly es­cap­ing the penalty of your wrong­do­ing. Your fel­lows must judge you by what you did, but there is a Judge to whom you may ap­peal for for­give­ness, and who will judge you by your real mo­tives and bet­ter in­ten­tions. You need not fear to meet the judg­ment of God if your re­pen­tance is gen­uine and your faith sin­cere. The fact that your er­ror car­ries with it the death penalty im­posed by man does not prej­u­dice the chance of your soul to ob­tain jus­tice and en­joy mercy be­fore the heav­enly courts.”

134:5.1[While the Mas­ter’s teach­ing con­cern­ing the sov­er­eignty of God is a truth—only com­pli­cated by the sub­se­quent ap­pear­ance of the re­li­gion about him among the world’s re­li­gions—his pre­sen­ta­tions con­cern­ing po­lit­i­cal sov­er­eignty are vastly com­pli­cated by the po­lit­i­cal evo­lu­tion of na­tion life dur­ing the last nine­teen hun­dred years and more. In the times of Je­sus there were only two great world pow­ers—the Ro­man Em­pire in the West and the Han Em­pire in the East—and these were widely sep­a­rated by the Parthian king­dom and other in­ter­ven­ing lands of the Caspian and Tur­kes­tan re­gions. We have, there­fore, in the fol­low­ing pre­sen­ta­tion de­parted more widely from the sub­stance of the Mas­ter’s teach­ings at Ur­mia con­cern­ing po­lit­i­cal sov­er­eignty, at the same time at­tempt­ing to de­pict the im­port of such teach­ings as they are ap­pli­ca­ble to the pe­cu­liarly crit­i­cal stage of the evo­lu­tion of po­lit­i­cal sov­er­eignty in the twen­ti­eth cen­tury af­ter Christ.]

• principles of government › system is of value only if it enhances welfare of individual and mankind
• world government › sovereignty of mankind as a whole

134:5.2War on Uran­tia will never end so long as na­tions cling to the il­lu­sive no­tions of un­lim­ited na­tional sov­er­eignty. There are only two lev­els of rel­a­tive sov­er­eignty on an in­hab­ited world: the spir­i­tual free will of the in­di­vid­ual mor­tal and the col­lec­tive sov­er­eignty of man­kind as a whole. Be­tween the level of the in­di­vid­ual hu­man be­ing and the level of the to­tal of man­kind, all group­ings and as­so­ci­a­tions are rel­a­tive, tran­si­tory, and of value only in so far as they en­hance the wel­fare, well-be­ing, and prog­ress of the in­di­vid­ual and the plan­e­tary grand to­tal—man and man­kind.

• Most Highs rule in kingdoms of men

134:5.3Re­li­gious teach­ers must al­ways re­mem­ber that the spir­i­tual sov­er­eignty of God over­rides all in­ter­ven­ing and in­ter­me­di­ate spir­i­tual loy­al­ties. Some­day civil rulers will learn that the Most Highs rule in the king­doms of men.

134:5.4This rule of the Most Highs in the king­doms of men is not for the es­pe­cial ben­e­fit of any es­pe­cially fa­vored group of mor­tals. There is no such thing as a “cho­sen peo­ple.” The rule of the Most Highs, the over­con­trollers of po­lit­i­cal evo­lu­tion, is a rule de­signed to fos­ter the great­est good to the great­est num­ber of all men and for the great­est length of time.

• world government › sovereignty of mankind as a whole

134:5.5Sov­er­eignty is power and it grows by or­ga­ni­za­tion. This growth of the or­ga­ni­za­tion of po­lit­i­cal power is good and proper, for it tends to en­com­pass ever-widen­ing seg­ments of the to­tal of man­kind. But this same growth of po­lit­i­cal or­ga­ni­za­tions cre­ates a prob­lem at ev­ery in­ter­ven­ing stage be­tween the ini­tial and nat­u­ral or­ga­ni­za­tion of po­lit­i­cal power—the fam­ily—and the fi­nal con­sum­ma­tion of po­lit­i­cal growth—the gov­ern­ment of all man­kind, by all man­kind, and for all man­kind.

134:5.6Start­ing out with pa­ren­tal power in the fam­ily group, po­lit­i­cal sov­er­eignty evolves by or­ga­ni­za­tion as fam­i­lies over­lap into con­san­guineous clans which be­come united, for var­i­ous rea­sons, into tribal units—super­con­san­guineous po­lit­i­cal group­ings. And then, by trade, com­merce, and con­quest, tribes be­come uni­fied as a na­tion, while na­tions them­selves some­times be­come uni­fied by em­pire.

134:5.7As sov­er­eignty passes from smaller groups to larger groups, wars are less­ened. That is, mi­nor wars be­tween smaller na­tions are less­ened, but the po­ten­tial for greater wars is in­creased as the na­tions wield­ing sov­er­eignty be­come larger and larger. Pres­ently, when all the world has been ex­plored and oc­cu­pied, when na­tions are few, strong, and pow­er­ful, when these great and sup­pos­edly sov­er­eign na­tions come to touch bor­ders, when only oceans sep­a­rate them, then will the stage be set for ma­jor wars, world-wide con­flicts. So-called sov­er­eign na­tions can­not rub el­bows with­out gen­er­at­ing con­flicts and even­tu­at­ing wars.

134:5.8The dif­fi­culty in the evo­lu­tion of po­lit­i­cal sov­er­eignty from the fam­ily to all man­kind, lies in the in­er­tia-re­sis­tance ex­hib­ited on all in­ter­ven­ing lev­els. Fam­i­lies have, on oc­ca­sion, de­fied their clan, while clans and tribes have of­ten been sub­ver­sive of the sov­er­eignty of the ter­ri­to­rial state. Each new and for­ward evo­lu­tion of po­lit­i­cal sov­er­eignty is (and has al­ways been) em­bar­rassed and ham­pered by the “scaf­fold­ing stages” of the pre­vi­ous de­vel­op­ments in po­lit­i­cal or­ga­ni­za­tion. And this is true be­cause hu­man loy­al­ties, once mo­bi­lized, are hard to change. The same loy­alty which makes pos­si­ble the evo­lu­tion of the tribe, makes dif­fi­cult the evo­lu­tion of the super­tribe—the ter­ri­to­rial state. And the same loy­alty (pa­tri­o­tism) which makes pos­si­ble the evo­lu­tion of the ter­ri­to­rial state, vastly com­pli­cates the evo­lu­tion­ary de­vel­op­ment of the gov­ern­ment of all man­kind.

134:5.9Po­lit­i­cal sov­er­eignty is cre­ated out of the sur­ren­der of self-de­ter­min­ism, first by the in­di­vid­ual within the fam­ily and then by the fam­i­lies and clans in re­la­tion to the tribe and larger group­ings. This pro­gres­sive trans­fer of self-de­ter­mi­na­tion from the smaller to ever larger po­lit­i­cal or­ga­ni­za­tions has gen­er­ally pro­ceeded un­abated in the East since the es­tab­lish­ment of the Ming and the Mogul dy­nas­ties. In the West it ob­tained for more than a thou­sand years right on down to the end of the World War, when an un­for­tu­nate ret­ro­grade move­ment tem­porar­ily re­versed this nor­mal trend by re-es­tab­lish­ing the sub­merged po­lit­i­cal sov­er­eignty of nu­mer­ous small groups in Eu­rope.

134:5.10Uran­tia will not en­joy last­ing peace un­til the so-called sov­er­eign na­tions in­tel­li­gently and fully sur­ren­der their sov­er­eign pow­ers into the hands of the broth­er­hood of men—man­kind gov­ern­ment. In­ter­na­tion­al­ism—Leagues of Na­tions—can never bring per­ma­nent peace to man­kind. World-wide con­fed­er­a­tions of na­tions will ef­fec­tively pre­vent mi­nor wars and ac­cept­ably con­trol the smaller na­tions, but they will not pre­vent world wars nor con­trol the three, four, or five most pow­er­ful gov­ern­ments. In the face of real con­flicts, one of these world pow­ers will with­draw from the League and de­clare war. You can­not pre­vent na­tions go­ing to war as long as they re­main in­fected with the delu­sional virus of na­tional sov­er­eignty. In­ter­na­tion­al­ism is a step in the right di­rec­tion. An in­ter­na­tional po­lice force will pre­vent many mi­nor wars, but it will not be ef­fec­tive in pre­vent­ing ma­jor wars, con­flicts be­tween the great mil­i­tary gov­ern­ments of earth.

134:5.11As the num­ber of truly sov­er­eign na­tions (great pow­ers) de­creases, so do both op­por­tu­nity and need for man­kind gov­ern­ment in­crease. When there are only a few re­ally sov­er­eign (great) pow­ers, ei­ther they must em­bark on the life and death strug­gle for na­tional (im­pe­rial) su­prem­acy, or else, by vol­un­tary sur­ren­der of cer­tain pre­rog­a­tives of sov­er­eignty, they must cre­ate the es­sen­tial nu­cleus of super­na­tional power which will serve as the be­gin­ning of the real sov­er­eignty of all man­kind.

• world government › peace cannot prevail until creation of

134:5.12Peace will not come to Uran­tia un­til ev­ery so-called sov­er­eign na­tion sur­ren­ders its power to make war into the hands of a rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment of all man­kind. Po­lit­i­cal sov­er­eignty is in­nate with the peo­ples of the world. When all the peo­ples of Uran­tia cre­ate a world gov­ern­ment, they have the right and the power to make such a gov­ern­ment SOV­ER­EIGN; and when such a rep­re­sen­ta­tive or demo­cratic world power con­trols the world’s land, air, and naval forces, peace on earth and good will among men can pre­vail—but not un­til then.

• world government › national governments trustee sovereignty for international affairs into

134:5.13To use an im­por­tant nine­teenth- and twen­ti­eth-cen­tury il­lus­tra­tion: The forty-eight states of the Amer­i­can Fed­eral Union have long en­joyed peace. They have no more wars among them­selves. They have sur­ren­dered their sov­er­eignty to the fed­eral gov­ern­ment, and through the ar­bitra­ment of war, they have aban­doned all claims to the delu­sions of self-de­ter­mi­na­tion. While each state reg­u­lates its in­ter­nal af­fairs, it is not con­cerned with for­eign re­la­tions, tar­iffs, im­mi­gra­tion, mil­i­tary af­fairs, or in­ter­state com­merce. Nei­ther do the in­di­vid­ual states con­cern them­selves with mat­ters of cit­i­zen­ship. The forty-eight states suf­fer the rav­ages of war only when the fed­eral gov­ern­ment’s sov­er­eignty is in some way jeop­ar­dized.

134:5.14These forty-eight states, hav­ing aban­doned the twin soph­ist­ries of sov­er­eignty and self-de­ter­mi­na­tion, en­joy in­ter­state peace and tran­quil­lity. So will the na­tions of Uran­tia be­gin to en­joy peace when they freely sur­ren­der their re­spec­tive sovereign­ties into the hands of a global gov­ern­ment—the sov­er­eignty of the broth­er­hood of men. In this world state the small na­tions will be as pow­er­ful as the great, even as the small state of Rhode Is­land has its two sen­a­tors in the Amer­i­can Congress just the same as the pop­u­lous state of New York or the large state of Texas.

134:5.15The lim­ited (state) sov­er­eignty of these forty-eight states was cre­ated by men and for men. The super­state (na­tional) sov­er­eignty of the Amer­i­can Fed­eral Union was cre­ated by the orig­i­nal thir­teen of these states for their own ben­e­fit and for the ben­e­fit of men. Some­time the super­na­tional sov­er­eignty of the plan­e­tary gov­ern­ment of man­kind will be sim­i­larly cre­ated by na­tions for their own ben­e­fit and for the ben­e­fit of all men.

• principles of government › warnings › citizens not born for benefit of state

134:5.16Cit­i­zens are not born for the ben­e­fit of gov­ern­ments; gov­ern­ments are or­ga­ni­za­tions cre­ated and de­vised for the ben­e­fit of men. There can be no end to the evo­lu­tion of po­lit­i­cal sov­er­eignty short of the ap­pear­ance of the gov­ern­ment of the sov­er­eignty of all men. All other sovereign­ties are rel­a­tive in value, in­ter­me­di­ate in mean­ing, and sub­or­di­nate in sta­tus.

134:5.17With sci­en­tific prog­ress, wars are go­ing to be­come more and more dev­as­tat­ing un­til they be­come al­most racially sui­ci­dal. How many world wars must be fought and how many leagues of na­tions must fail be­fore men will be will­ing to es­tab­lish the gov­ern­ment of man­kind and be­gin to en­joy the bless­ings of per­ma­nent peace and thrive on the tran­quil­lity of good will—world-wide good will—among men?

134:6.1If one man craves free­dom—lib­erty—he must re­mem­ber that all other men long for the same free­dom. Groups of such lib­erty-lov­ing mor­tals can­not live to­gether in peace with­out be­com­ing sub­servient to such laws, rules, and reg­u­la­tions as will grant each per­son the same de­gree of free­dom while at the same time safe­guard­ing an equal de­gree of free­dom for all of his fel­low mor­tals. If one man is to be ab­so­lutely free, then an­other must be­come an ab­so­lute slave. And the rel­a­tive na­ture of free­dom is true so­cially, eco­nom­i­cally, and po­lit­i­cally. Free­dom is the gift of civ­i­liza­tion made pos­si­ble by the en­force­ment of LAW.

134:6.2Re­li­gion makes it spir­i­tu­ally pos­si­ble to re­al­ize the broth­er­hood of men, but it will re­quire man­kind gov­ern­ment to reg­u­late the so­cial, eco­nomic, and po­lit­i­cal prob­lems as­so­ci­ated with such a goal of hu­man hap­pi­ness and ef­fi­ciency.

134:6.3There shall be wars and ru­mors of wars—na­tion will rise against na­tion—just as long as the world’s po­lit­i­cal sov­er­eignty is di­vided up and un­justly held by a group of na­tion-states. Eng­land, Scot­land, and Wales were al­ways fight­ing each other un­til they gave up their re­spec­tive sovereign­ties, repos­ing them in the United King­dom.

134:6.4An­other world war will teach the so-called sov­er­eign na­tions to form some sort of fed­er­a­tion, thus cre­at­ing the ma­chin­ery for pre­vent­ing small wars, wars be­tween the lesser na­tions. But global wars will go on un­til the gov­ern­ment of man­kind is cre­ated. Global sov­er­eignty will pre­vent global wars—noth­ing else can.

134:6.5The forty-eight Amer­i­can free states live to­gether in peace. There are among the cit­i­zens of these forty-eight states all of the var­i­ous na­tion­al­i­ties and races that live in the ever-war­ring na­tions of Eu­rope. These Amer­i­cans rep­re­sent al­most all the re­li­gions and re­li­gious sects and cults of the whole wide world, and yet here in North Amer­ica they live to­gether in peace. And all this is made pos­si­ble be­cause these forty-eight states have sur­ren­dered their sov­er­eignty and have aban­doned all no­tions of the sup­posed rights of self-de­ter­mi­na­tion.

134:6.6It is not a ques­tion of ar­ma­ments or dis­ar­ma­ment. Nei­ther does the ques­tion of con­scrip­tion or vol­un­tary mil­i­tary ser­vice en­ter into these prob­lems of main­tain­ing world-wide peace. If you take ev­ery form of mod­ern me­chan­i­cal ar­ma­ments and all types of ex­plo­sives away from strong na­tions, they will fight with fists, stones, and clubs as long as they cling to their delu­sions of the di­vine right of na­tional sov­er­eignty.

134:6.7War is not man’s great and ter­ri­ble dis­ease; war is a symp­tom, a re­sult. The real dis­ease is the virus of na­tional sov­er­eignty.

• world government › national governments trustee sovereignty for international affairs into

134:6.8Uran­tia na­tions have not pos­sessed real sov­er­eignty; they never have had a sov­er­eignty which could pro­tect them from the rav­ages and dev­as­ta­tions of world wars. In the cre­ation of the global gov­ern­ment of man­kind, the na­tions are not giv­ing up sov­er­eignty so much as they are ac­tu­ally cre­at­ing a real, bona fide, and last­ing world sov­er­eignty which will hence­forth be fully able to pro­tect them from all war. Lo­cal af­fairs will be han­dled by lo­cal gov­ern­ments; na­tional af­fairs, by na­tional gov­ern­ments; in­ter­na­tional af­fairs will be ad­min­is­tered by global gov­ern­ment.

134:6.9World peace can­not be main­tained by treaties, diplo­macy, for­eign poli­cies, al­liances, bal­ances of power, or any other type of make­shift jug­gling with the sovereign­ties of na­tion­al­ism. World law must come into be­ing and must be en­forced by world gov­ern­ment—the sov­er­eignty of all man­kind.

• principles of government › warnings › oppressive taxation and regulation interferes with individual liberties
• world government › national governments trustee sovereignty for international affairs into

134:6.10The in­di­vid­ual will en­joy far more lib­erty un­der world gov­ern­ment. To­day, the cit­i­zens of the great pow­ers are taxed, reg­u­lated, and con­trolled al­most op­pres­sively, and much of this pres­ent in­ter­fer­ence with in­di­vid­ual lib­er­ties will van­ish when the na­tional gov­ern­ments are will­ing to trus­tee their sov­er­eignty as re­gards in­ter­na­tional af­fairs into the hands of global gov­ern­ment.

• world government › true democracy under

134:6.11Un­der global gov­ern­ment the na­tional groups will be af­forded a real op­por­tu­nity to re­al­ize and en­joy the per­sonal lib­er­ties of gen­uine democ­racy. The fal­lacy of self-de­ter­mi­na­tion will be ended. With global reg­u­la­tion of money and trade will come the new era of world-wide peace. Soon may a global lan­guage evolve, and there will be at least some hope of some­time hav­ing a global re­li­gion—or re­li­gions with a global view­point.

134:6.12Col­lec­tive se­cu­rity will never af­ford peace un­til the col­lec­tiv­ity in­cludes all man­kind.

134:6.13The po­lit­i­cal sov­er­eignty of rep­re­sen­ta­tive man­kind gov­ern­ment will bring last­ing peace on earth, and the spir­i­tual broth­er­hood of man will for­ever in­sure good will among all men. And there is no other way whereby peace on earth and good will among men can be re­al­ized.

134:6.14Af­ter the death of Cym­boy­ton, his sons en­coun­tered great dif­fi­cul­ties in main­tain­ing a peace­ful fac­ulty. The reper­cus­sions of Je­sus’ teach­ings would have been much greater if the later Chris­tian teach­ers who joined the Ur­mia fac­ulty had ex­hib­ited more wis­dom and ex­er­cised more tol­er­ance.

134:6.15Cym­boy­ton’s el­dest son had ap­pealed to Ab­ner at Phil­a­del­phia for help, but Ab­ner’s choice of teach­ers was most un­for­tu­nate in that they turned out to be un­yield­ing and un­com­pro­mis­ing. These teach­ers sought to make their re­li­gion dom­i­nant over the other be­liefs. They never sus­pected that the oft-re­ferred-to lec­tures of the car­a­van con­duc­tor had been de­liv­ered by Je­sus him­self.

134:6.16As con­fu­sion in­creased in the fac­ulty, the three broth­ers with­drew their fi­nan­cial sup­port, and af­ter five years the school closed. Later it was re­opened as a Mith­raic tem­ple and even­tu­ally burned down in con­nec­tion with one of their or­gias­tic cel­e­bra­tions.

• Most Highs rule in kingdoms of men

136:9.6Rome was mis­tress of the West­ern world. The Son of Man, now in iso­la­tion and achiev­ing these mo­men­tous de­ci­sions, with the hosts of heaven at his com­mand, rep­re­sented the last chance of the Jews to at­tain world do­min­ion; but this earth­born Jew, who pos­sessed such tremen­dous wis­dom and power, de­clined to use his uni­verse en­dow­ments ei­ther for the ag­gran­dize­ment of him­self or for the en­throne­ment of his peo­ple. He saw, as it were, “the king­doms of this world,” and he pos­sessed the power to take them. The Most Highs of Eden­tia had re­signed all these pow­ers into his hands, but he did not want them. The king­doms of earth were pal­try things to in­ter­est the Cre­ator and Ruler of a uni­verse. He had only one ob­jec­tive, the fur­ther rev­e­la­tion of God to man, the es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom, the rule of the heav­enly Fa­ther in the hearts of man­kind.

• believers’ relation to › Jesus forbade apostles to become embroiled in politics
• believers’ relation to › seek to win all parties; not be of any

137:7.5In this time of wait­ing Je­sus en­deav­ored to teach his as­so­ciates what their at­ti­tude should be to­ward the var­i­ous re­li­gious groups and the po­lit­i­cal par­ties of Pales­tine. Je­sus’ words al­ways were, “We are seek­ing to win all of them, but we are not of any of them.”

• believers’ relation to › Jesus forbade apostles to become embroiled in politics
• believers’ relation to › seek to win all parties; not be of any

137:7.12All of these par­ties and sects, in­clud­ing the smaller Nazarite broth­er­hood, be­lieved in the some­time com­ing of the Mes­siah. They all looked for a na­tional de­liv­erer. But Je­sus was very pos­i­tive in mak­ing it clear that he and his dis­ci­ples would not be­come al­lied to any of these schools of thought or prac­tice. The Son of Man was to be nei­ther a Nazarite nor an Es­sene.

• believers’ relation to › make no denunciations of g.

138:5.4Zeb­e­dee and Sa­lome had gone to live with their son David so that their large home could be turned over to Je­sus and his twelve apos­tles. Here Je­sus spent a quiet Sab­bath with his cho­sen mes­sen­gers; he care­fully out­lined the plans for pro­claim­ing the king­dom and fully ex­plained the im­por­tance of avoid­ing any clash with the civil au­thor­i­ties, say­ing: “If the civil rulers are to be re­buked, leave that task to me. See that you make no de­nun­ci­a­tions of Cae­sar or his ser­vants.” It was this same evening that Ju­das Is­car­iot took Je­sus aside to in­quire why noth­ing was done to get John out of prison. And Ju­das was not wholly sat­is­fied with Je­sus’ at­ti­tude.

• believers’ relation to › Jesus forbade apostles to become embroiled in politics

139:11.9The Mas­ter had many talks with Si­mon, but he never fully suc­ceeded in mak­ing an in­ter­na­tion­al­ist out of this ar­dent Jew­ish na­tion­al­ist. Je­sus of­ten told Si­mon that it was proper to want to see the so­cial, eco­nomic, and po­lit­i­cal or­ders im­proved, but he would al­ways add: “That is not the busi­ness of the king­dom of heaven. We must be ded­i­cated to the do­ing of the Fa­ther’s will. Our busi­ness is to be am­bas­sadors of a spir­i­tual gov­ern­ment on high, and we must not im­me­di­ately con­cern our­selves with aught but the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the will and char­ac­ter of the di­vine Fa­ther who stands at the head of the gov­ern­ment whose cre­den­tials we bear.” It was all dif­fi­cult for Si­mon to com­pre­hend, but grad­u­ally he be­gan to grasp some­thing of the mean­ing of the Mas­ter’s teach­ing.

• principles of government › Jesus did not teach rules of g.

140:6.6Je­sus was minded to go on dis­cussing the other com­mand­ments when James Zeb­e­dee in­ter­rupted him, ask­ing: “Mas­ter, what shall we teach the peo­ple re­gard­ing di­vorce­ment? Shall we al­low a man to di­vorce his wife as Moses has di­rected?” And when Je­sus heard this ques­tion, he said: “I have not come to leg­is­late but to en­lighten. I have come not to re­form the king­doms of this world but rather to es­tab­lish the king­dom of heaven. It is not the will of the Fa­ther that I should yield to the temp­ta­tion to teach you rules of gov­ern­ment, trade, or so­cial be­hav­ior, which, while they might be good for to­day, would be far from suit­able for the so­ci­ety of an­other age. I am on earth solely to com­fort the minds, lib­er­ate the spir­its, and save the souls of men. But I will say, con­cern­ing this ques­tion of di­vorce­ment, that, while Moses looked with fa­vor upon such things, it was not so in the days of Adam and in the Gar­den.”

• principles of government › g. may employ force; death penalty

140:8.4Je­sus had great dif­fi­culty in get­ting them to un­der­stand his per­sonal prac­tice of non­re­sis­tance. He ab­so­lutely re­fused to de­fend him­self, and it ap­peared to the apos­tles that he would be pleased if they would pur­sue the same pol­icy. He taught them not to re­sist evil, not to com­bat in­jus­tice or in­jury, but he did not teach pas­sive tol­er­ance of wrong­do­ing. And he made it plain on this af­ter­noon that he ap­proved of the so­cial pun­ish­ment of evil­do­ers and crim­i­nals, and that the civil gov­ern­ment must some­times em­ploy force for the main­te­nance of so­cial or­der and in the ex­e­cu­tion of jus­tice.

• believers’ relation to › be subject to g.; observe essentials of law
• believers’ relation to › Jesus forbade apostles to become embroiled in politics
• believers’ relation to › never identify Jesus’ teachings with any political system
• believers’ relation to › render to Caesar what is Caesar’s

140:8.92. Po­lit­i­cal at­ti­tude. He cau­tioned his apos­tles to be dis­creet in their re­marks con­cern­ing the strained re­la­tions then ex­ist­ing be­tween the Jew­ish peo­ple and the Ro­man gov­ern­ment; he for­bade them to be­come in any way em­broiled in these dif­fi­cul­ties. He was al­ways care­ful to avoid the po­lit­i­cal snares of his en­e­mies, ever mak­ing re­ply, “Ren­der to Cae­sar the things which are Cae­sar’s and to God the things which are God’s.” He re­fused to have his at­ten­tion di­verted from his mis­sion of es­tab­lish­ing a new way of sal­va­tion; he would not per­mit him­self to be con­cerned about any­thing else. In his per­sonal life he was al­ways duly ob­ser­vant of all civil laws and reg­u­la­tions; in all his pub­lic teach­ings he ig­nored the civic, so­cial, and eco­nomic realms. He told the three apos­tles that he was con­cerned only with the prin­ci­ples of man’s in­ner and per­sonal spir­i­tual life.

140:8.10Je­sus was not, there­fore, a po­lit­i­cal re­former. He did not come to re­or­ga­nize the world; even if he had done this, it would have been ap­pli­ca­ble only to that day and gen­er­a­tion. Nev­er­the­less, he did show man the best way of liv­ing, and no gen­er­a­tion is ex­empt from the la­bor of dis­cov­er­ing how best to adapt Je­sus’ life to its own prob­lems. But never make the mis­take of iden­ti­fy­ing Je­sus’ teach­ings with any po­lit­i­cal or eco­nomic the­ory, with any so­cial or in­dus­trial sys­tem.

140:8.113. So­cial at­ti­tude. The Jew­ish rab­bis had long de­bated the ques­tion: Who is my neigh­bor? Je­sus came pre­sent­ing the idea of ac­tive and spon­ta­neous kind­ness, a love of one’s fel­low men so gen­uine that it ex­panded the neigh­bor­hood to in­clude the whole world, thereby mak­ing all men one’s neigh­bors. But with all this, Je­sus was in­ter­ested only in the in­di­vid­ual, not the mass. Je­sus was not a so­ci­ol­o­gist, but he did la­bor to break down all forms of self­ish iso­la­tion. He taught pure sym­pa­thy, com­pas­sion. Mi­chael of Neb­a­don is a mercy-dom­i­nated Son; com­pas­sion is his very na­ture.

140:8.12The Mas­ter did not say that men should never en­ter­tain their friends at meat, but he did say that his fol­low­ers should make feasts for the poor and the un­for­tu­nate. Je­sus had a firm sense of jus­tice, but it was al­ways tem­pered with mercy. He did not teach his apos­tles that they were to be im­posed upon by so­cial par­a­sites or pro­fes­sional alms-seek­ers. The near­est he came to mak­ing so­ci­o­log­i­cal pro­nounce­ments was to say, “Judge not, that you be not judged.”

140:8.13He made it clear that in­dis­crim­i­nate kind­ness may be blamed for many so­cial evils. The fol­low­ing day Je­sus def­i­nitely in­structed Ju­das that no apos­tolic funds were to be given out as alms ex­cept upon his re­quest or upon the joint pe­ti­tion of two of the apos­tles. In all these mat­ters it was the prac­tice of Je­sus al­ways to say, “Be as wise as ser­pents but as harm­less as doves.” It seemed to be his pur­pose in all so­cial sit­u­a­tions to teach pa­tience, tol­er­ance, and for­give­ness.

140:8.14The fam­ily oc­cu­pied the very cen­ter of Je­sus’ phi­los­o­phy of life—here and here­after. He based his teach­ings about God on the fam­ily, while he sought to cor­rect the Jew­ish ten­dency to over­honor an­ces­tors. He ex­alted fam­ily life as the high­est hu­man duty but made it plain that fam­ily re­la­tion­ships must not in­ter­fere with re­li­gious obli­ga­tions. He called at­ten­tion to the fact that the fam­ily is a tem­po­ral in­sti­tu­tion; that it does not sur­vive death. Je­sus did not hes­i­tate to give up his fam­ily when the fam­ily ran counter to the Fa­ther’s will. He taught the new and larger broth­er­hood of man—the sons of God. In Je­sus’ time di­vorce prac­tices were lax in Pales­tine and through­out the Ro­man Em­pire. He re­peat­edly re­fused to lay down laws re­gard­ing mar­riage and di­vorce, but many of Je­sus’ early fol­low­ers had strong opin­ions on di­vorce and did not hes­i­tate to at­trib­ute them to him. All of the New Tes­ta­ment writ­ers held to these more strin­gent and ad­vanced ideas about di­vorce ex­cept John Mark.

140:8.154. Eco­nomic at­ti­tude. Je­sus worked, lived, and traded in the world as he found it. He was not an eco­nomic re­former, al­though he did fre­quently call at­ten­tion to the in­jus­tice of the un­equal dis­tri­bu­tion of wealth. But he did not of­fer any sug­ges­tions by way of rem­edy. He made it plain to the three that, while his apos­tles were not to hold prop­erty, he was not preach­ing against wealth and prop­erty, merely its un­equal and un­fair dis­tri­bu­tion. He rec­og­nized the need for so­cial jus­tice and in­dus­trial fair­ness, but he of­fered no rules for their at­tain­ment.

140:8.16He never taught his fol­low­ers to avoid earthly pos­ses­sions, only his twelve apos­tles. Luke, the physi­cian, was a strong be­liever in so­cial equal­ity, and he did much to in­ter­pret Je­sus’ say­ings in har­mony with his per­sonal be­liefs. Je­sus never per­son­ally di­rected his fol­low­ers to adopt a com­mu­nal mode of life; he made no pro­nounce­ment of any sort re­gard­ing such mat­ters.

140:8.17Je­sus fre­quently warned his lis­ten­ers against cov­etous­ness, declar­ing that “a man’s hap­pi­ness con­sists not in the abun­dance of his ma­te­rial pos­ses­sions.” He con­stantly re­it­er­ated, “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” He made no di­rect at­tack on the pos­ses­sion of prop­erty, but he did in­sist that it is eter­nally es­sen­tial that spir­i­tual val­ues come first. In his later teach­ings he sought to cor­rect many er­ro­neous Uran­tia views of life by nar­rat­ing nu­mer­ous para­bles which he pre­sented in the course of his pub­lic min­istry. Je­sus never in­tended to for­mu­late eco­nomic the­o­ries; he well knew that each age must evolve its own reme­dies for ex­ist­ing trou­bles. And if Je­sus were on earth to­day, liv­ing his life in the flesh, he would be a great dis­ap­point­ment to the ma­jor­ity of good men and women for the sim­ple rea­son that he would not take sides in pres­ent-day po­lit­i­cal, so­cial, or eco­nomic dis­putes. He would re­main grandly aloof while teach­ing you how to per­fect your in­ner spir­i­tual life so as to ren­der you many­fold more com­pe­tent to at­tack the so­lu­tion of your purely hu­man prob­lems.

140:8.18Je­sus would make all men God­like and then stand by sym­pa­thet­i­cally while these sons of God solve their own po­lit­i­cal, so­cial, and eco­nomic prob­lems. It was not wealth that he de­nounced, but what wealth does to the ma­jor­ity of its devo­tees. On this Thurs­day af­ter­noon Je­sus first told his as­so­ciates that “it is more blessed to give than to re­ceive.”

140:8.195. Per­sonal re­li­gion. You, as did his apos­tles, should the bet­ter un­der­stand Je­sus’ teach­ings by his life. He lived a per­fected life on Uran­tia, and his unique teach­ings can only be un­der­stood when that life is vi­su­al­ized in its im­me­di­ate back­ground. It is his life, and not his lessons to the twelve or his ser­mons to the mul­ti­tudes, that will as­sist most in re­veal­ing the Fa­ther’s di­vine char­ac­ter and lov­ing per­son­al­ity.

140:8.20Je­sus did not at­tack the teach­ings of the He­brew proph­ets or the Greek moral­ists. The Mas­ter rec­og­nized the many good things which these great teach­ers stood for, but he had come down to earth to teach some­thing ad­di­tional, “the vol­un­tary con­for­mity of man’s will to God’s will.” Je­sus did not want sim­ply to pro­duce a re­li­gious man, a mor­tal wholly oc­cu­pied with re­li­gious feel­ings and ac­tu­ated only by spir­i­tual im­pulses. Could you have had but one look at him, you would have known that Je­sus was a real man of great ex­pe­ri­ence in the things of this world. The teach­ings of Je­sus in this re­spect have been grossly per­verted and much mis­rep­re­sented all down through the cen­turies of the Chris­tian era; you have also held per­verted ideas about the Mas­ter’s meek­ness and hu­mil­ity. What he aimed at in his life ap­pears to have been a su­perb self-re­spect. He only ad­vised man to hum­ble him­self that he might be­come truly ex­alted; what he re­ally aimed at was true hu­mil­ity to­ward God. He placed great value upon sin­cer­ity—a pure heart. Fi­delity was a car­di­nal virtue in his es­ti­mate of char­ac­ter, while cour­age was the very heart of his teach­ings. “Fear not” was his watch­word, and pa­tient en­durance his ideal of strength of char­ac­ter. The teach­ings of Je­sus con­sti­tute a re­li­gion of valor, cour­age, and hero­ism. And this is just why he chose as his per­sonal rep­re­sen­ta­tives twelve com­mon­place men, the ma­jor­ity of whom were rugged, vir­ile, and manly fish­er­men.

140:8.21Je­sus had lit­tle to say about the so­cial vices of his day; sel­dom did he make ref­er­ence to moral delin­quency. He was a pos­i­tive teacher of true virtue. He stu­diously avoided the neg­a­tive method of im­part­ing in­struc­tion; he re­fused to ad­ver­tise evil. He was not even a moral re­former. He well knew, and so taught his apos­tles, that the sen­sual urges of man­kind are not sup­pressed by ei­ther re­li­gious re­buke or le­gal pro­hi­bi­tions. His few de­nun­ci­a­tions were largely di­rected against pride, cru­elty, op­pres­sion, and hypocrisy.

140:8.22Je­sus did not ve­he­mently de­nounce even the Phar­isees, as did John. He knew many of the scribes and Phar­isees were hon­est of heart; he un­der­stood their en­slav­ing bond­age to re­li­gious tra­di­tions. Je­sus laid great em­pha­sis on “first mak­ing the tree good.” He im­pressed the three that he val­ued the whole life, not just a cer­tain few spe­cial virtues.

140:8.23The one thing which John gained from this day’s teach­ing was that the heart of Je­sus’ re­li­gion con­sisted in the ac­quire­ment of a com­pas­sion­ate char­ac­ter cou­pled with a per­son­al­ity mo­ti­vated to do the will of the Fa­ther in heaven.

140:8.24Pe­ter grasped the idea that the gospel they were about to pro­claim was re­ally a fresh be­gin­ning for the whole hu­man race. He con­veyed this im­pres­sion sub­se­quently to Paul, who for­mu­lated there­from his doc­trine of Christ as “the sec­ond Adam.”

140:8.25James grasped the thrilling truth that Je­sus wanted his chil­dren on earth to live as though they were al­ready cit­i­zens of the com­pleted heav­enly king­dom.

140:8.26Je­sus knew men were dif­fer­ent, and he so taught his apos­tles. He con­stantly ex­horted them to re­frain from try­ing to mold the dis­ci­ples and be­liev­ers ac­cord­ing to some set pat­tern. He sought to al­low each soul to de­velop in its own way, a per­fect­ing and sep­a­rate in­di­vid­ual be­fore God. In an­swer to one of Pe­ter’s many ques­tions, the Mas­ter said: “I want to set men free so that they can start out afresh as lit­tle chil­dren upon the new and bet­ter life.” Je­sus al­ways in­sisted that true good­ness must be un­con­scious, in be­stow­ing char­ity not al­low­ing the left hand to know what the right hand does.

140:8.27The three apos­tles were shocked this af­ter­noon when they re­al­ized that their Mas­ter’s re­li­gion made no pro­vi­sion for spir­i­tual self-ex­am­i­na­tion. All re­li­gions be­fore and af­ter the times of Je­sus, even Chris­tian­ity, care­fully pro­vide for con­sci­en­tious self-ex­am­i­na­tion. But not so with the re­li­gion of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth. Je­sus’ phi­los­o­phy of life is with­out re­li­gious in­tro­spec­tion. The car­pen­ter’s son never taught char­ac­ter build­ing; he taught char­ac­ter growth, declar­ing that the king­dom of heaven is like a mus­tard seed. But Je­sus said noth­ing which would pro­scribe self-anal­y­sis as a pre­ven­tion of con­ceited ego­tism.

140:8.28The right to en­ter the king­dom is con­di­tioned by faith, per­sonal be­lief. The cost of re­main­ing in the pro­gres­sive as­cent of the king­dom is the pearl of great price, in or­der to pos­sess which a man sells all that he has.

140:8.29The teach­ing of Je­sus is a re­li­gion for ev­ery­body, not alone for weak­lings and slaves. His re­li­gion never be­came crys­tal­lized (dur­ing his day) into creeds and the­o­log­i­cal laws; he left not a line of writ­ing be­hind him. His life and teach­ings were be­queathed the uni­verse as an in­spi­ra­tional and ide­al­is­tic in­her­i­tance suit­able for the spir­i­tual guid­ance and moral in­struc­tion of all ages on all worlds. And even to­day, Je­sus’ teach­ing stands apart from all re­li­gions, as such, al­beit it is the liv­ing hope of ev­ery one of them.

140:8.30Je­sus did not teach his apos­tles that re­li­gion is man’s only earthly pur­suit; that was the Jew­ish idea of serv­ing God. But he did in­sist that re­li­gion was the ex­clu­sive busi­ness of the twelve. Je­sus taught noth­ing to de­ter his be­liev­ers from the pur­suit of gen­uine cul­ture; he only de­tracted from the tra­di­tion-bound re­li­gious schools of Je­ru­sa­lem. He was lib­eral, big-hearted, learned, and tol­er­ant. Self-con­scious piety had no place in his phi­los­o­phy of righ­teous liv­ing.

140:8.31The Mas­ter of­fered no so­lu­tions for the non­re­li­gious prob­lems of his own age nor for any sub­se­quent age. Je­sus wished to de­velop spir­i­tual in­sight into eter­nal re­al­i­ties and to stim­u­late ini­tia­tive in the orig­i­nal­ity of liv­ing; he con­cerned him­self ex­clu­sively with the un­der­ly­ing and per­ma­nent spir­i­tual needs of the hu­man race. He re­vealed a good­ness equal to God. He ex­alted love—truth, beauty, and good­ness—as the di­vine ideal and the eter­nal re­al­ity.

• believers’ relation to › never identify Jesus’ teachings with any political system

140:10.6This new re­li­gion of Je­sus was not with­out its prac­ti­cal im­pli­ca­tions, but what­ever of prac­ti­cal po­lit­i­cal, so­cial, or eco­nomic value there is to be found in his teach­ing is the nat­u­ral out­work­ing of this in­ner ex­pe­ri­ence of the soul as it man­i­fests the fruits of the spirit in the spon­ta­neous daily min­istry of gen­uine per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence.

• believers’ relation to › never identify Jesus’ teachings with any political system

142:7.17Je­sus replied: “Thomas, Thomas, how long be­fore you will ac­quire the abil­ity to lis­ten with the ear of the spirit? How long will it be be­fore you dis­cern that this king­dom is a spir­i­tual king­dom, and that my Fa­ther is also a spir­i­tual be­ing? Do you not un­der­stand that I am teach­ing you as spir­i­tual chil­dren in the spirit fam­ily of heaven, of which the fa­ther­head is an in­fi­nite and eter­nal spirit? Will you not al­low me to use the earth fam­ily as an il­lus­tra­tion of di­vine re­la­tion­ships with­out so lit­er­ally ap­ply­ing my teach­ing to ma­te­rial af­fairs? In your minds can­not you sep­a­rate the spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties of the king­dom from the ma­te­rial, so­cial, eco­nomic, and po­lit­i­cal prob­lems of the age? When I speak the lan­guage of the spirit, why do you in­sist on trans­lat­ing my mean­ing into the lan­guage of the flesh just be­cause I pre­sume to em­ploy com­mon­place and lit­eral re­la­tion­ships for pur­poses of il­lus­tra­tion? My chil­dren, I im­plore that you cease to ap­ply the teach­ing of the king­dom of the spirit to the sor­did af­fairs of slav­ery, pov­erty, houses, and lands, and to the ma­te­rial prob­lems of hu­man eq­uity and jus­tice. These tem­po­ral mat­ters are the con­cern of the men of this world, and while in a way they af­fect all men, you have been called to rep­re­sent me in the world, even as I rep­re­sent my Fa­ther. You are spir­i­tual am­bas­sadors of a spir­i­tual king­dom, spe­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the spirit Fa­ther. By this time it should be pos­si­ble for me to in­struct you as full-grown men of the spirit king­dom. Must I ever ad­dress you only as chil­dren? Will you never grow up in spirit per­cep­tion? Nev­er­the­less, I love you and will bear with you, even to the very end of our as­so­ci­a­tion in the flesh. And even then shall my spirit go be­fore you into all the world.”

• principles of government › warnings › cannot establish righteousness by laws

152:6.2While Je­sus and the twelve were rest­ing at Gen­nesaret, the mul­ti­tudes dis­persed, some go­ing to their homes, oth­ers go­ing on up to Je­ru­sa­lem for the Pass­over. In less than one month’s time the en­thu­si­as­tic and open fol­low­ers of Je­sus, who num­bered more than fifty thou­sand in Gal­i­lee alone, shrank to less than five hun­dred. Je­sus de­sired to give his apos­tles such an ex­pe­ri­ence with the fick­le­ness of pop­u­lar ac­claim that they would not be tempted to rely on such man­i­fes­ta­tions of tran­sient re­li­gious hys­te­ria af­ter he should leave them alone in the work of the king­dom, but he was only par­tially suc­cess­ful in this ef­fort.

152:6.3The sec­ond night of their so­journ at Gen­nesaret the Mas­ter again told the apos­tles the para­ble of the sower and added these words: “You see, my chil­dren, the ap­peal to hu­man feel­ings is tran­si­tory and ut­terly dis­ap­point­ing; the ex­clu­sive ap­peal to the in­tel­lect of man is like­wise empty and bar­ren; it is only by mak­ing your ap­peal to the spirit which lives within the hu­man mind that you can hope to achieve last­ing suc­cess and ac­com­plish those mar­velous trans­for­ma­tions of hu­man char­ac­ter that are pres­ently shown in the abun­dant yield­ing of the gen­uine fruits of the spirit in the daily lives of all who are thus de­liv­ered from the dark­ness of doubt by the birth of the spirit into the light of faith—the king­dom of heaven.”

152:6.4Je­sus taught the ap­peal to the emo­tions as the tech­nique of ar­rest­ing and fo­cus­ing the in­tel­lec­tual at­ten­tion. He des­ig­nated the mind thus aroused and quick­ened as the gate­way to the soul, where there re­sides that spir­i­tual na­ture of man which must rec­og­nize truth and re­spond to the spir­i­tual ap­peal of the gospel in or­der to af­ford the per­ma­nent re­sults of true char­ac­ter trans­for­ma­tions.

• believers’ relation to › render to Caesar what is Caesar’s

156:5.16Are your ide­als suf­fi­ciently high to in­sure your eter­nal sal­va­tion while your ideas are so prac­ti­cal as to ren­der you a use­ful cit­i­zen to func­tion on earth in as­so­ci­a­tion with your mor­tal fel­lows? In the spirit, your cit­i­zen­ship is in heaven; in the flesh, you are still cit­i­zens of the earth king­doms. Ren­der to the Cae­sars the things which are ma­te­rial and to God those which are spir­i­tual.

• believers’ relation to › afford no stumbling block

157:1.2Now Pe­ter had spo­ken hastily. Ju­das car­ried their funds, and he was across the lake. Nei­ther he, his brother, nor Je­sus had brought along any money. And know­ing that the Phar­isees were look­ing for them, they could not well go to Beth­saida to ob­tain money. When Pe­ter told Je­sus about the col­lec­tor and that he had prom­ised him the money, Je­sus said: “If you have prom­ised, then should you pay. But where­with will you re­deem your prom­ise? Will you again be­come a fish­er­man that you may honor your word? Nev­er­the­less, Pe­ter, it is well in the cir­cum­stances that we pay the tax. Let us give these men no oc­ca­sion for of­fense at our at­ti­tude. We will wait here while you go with the boat and cast for the fish, and when you have sold them at yon­der mar­ket, pay the col­lec­tor for all three of us.”

• believers’ relation to › afford no stumbling block

157:1.4It is not strange that you have a rec­ord of Pe­ter’s catch­ing a fish with a shekel in its mouth. In those days there were cur­rent many sto­ries about find­ing trea­sures in the mouths of fishes; such tales of near mir­a­cles were com­mon­place. So, as Pe­ter left them to go to­ward the boat, Je­sus re­marked, half-hu­mor­ously: “Strange that the sons of the king must pay trib­ute; usu­ally it is the stranger who is taxed for the up­keep of the court, but it be­hooves us to af­ford no stum­bling block for the au­thor­i­ties. Go hence! maybe you will catch the fish with the shekel in its mouth.” Je­sus hav­ing thus spo­ken, and Pe­ter so soon ap­pear­ing with the tem­ple tax, it is not sur­pris­ing that the episode be­came later ex­panded into a mir­a­cle as re­corded by the writer of Mat­thew’s Gospel.

• principles of government › warnings › cannot establish righteousness by laws

159:3.2Al­ways re­spect the per­son­al­ity of man. Never should a righ­teous cause be pro­moted by force; spir­i­tual vic­to­ries can be won only by spir­i­tual power. This in­junc­tion against the em­ploy­ment of ma­te­rial in­flu­ences refers to psy­chic force as well as to phys­i­cal force. Over­pow­er­ing ar­gu­ments and men­tal su­pe­ri­or­ity are not to be em­ployed to co­erce men and women into the king­dom. Man’s mind is not to be crushed by the mere weight of logic or over­awed by shrewd elo­quence. While emo­tion as a fac­tor in hu­man de­ci­sions can­not be wholly elim­i­nated, it should not be di­rectly ap­pealed to in the teach­ings of those who would ad­vance the cause of the king­dom. Make your ap­peals di­rectly to the di­vine spirit that dwells within the minds of men. Do not ap­peal to fear, pity, or mere sen­ti­ment. In ap­peal­ing to men, be fair; ex­er­cise self-con­trol and ex­hibit due re­straint; show proper re­spect for the per­son­al­i­ties of your pupils. Re­mem­ber that I have said: “Be­hold, I stand at the door and knock, and if any man will open, I will come in.”

• believers’ relation to › Jesus forbade apostles to become embroiled in politics

167:5.6It was very dif­fi­cult for the apos­tles to un­der­stand the Mas­ter’s re­luc­tance to make pos­i­tive pro­nounce­ments rel­a­tive to sci­en­tific, so­cial, eco­nomic, and po­lit­i­cal prob­lems. They did not fully re­al­ize that his earth mis­sion was ex­clu­sively con­cerned with rev­e­la­tions of spir­i­tual and re­li­gious truths.

• believers’ relation to › render to Caesar what is Caesar’s

174:2.2Tues­day morn­ing, when Je­sus ar­rived in the tem­ple court and be­gan to teach, he had ut­tered but few words when a group of the younger stu­dents from the academies, who had been re­hearsed for this pur­pose, came for­ward and by their spokesman ad­dressed Je­sus: “Mas­ter, we know you are a righ­teous teacher, and we know that you pro­claim the ways of truth, and that you serve only God, for you fear no man, and that you are no re­specter of per­sons. We are only stu­dents, and we would know the truth about a mat­ter which trou­bles us; our dif­fi­culty is this: Is it law­ful for us to give trib­ute to Cae­sar? Shall we give or shall we not give?” Je­sus, per­ceiv­ing their hypocrisy and crafti­ness, said to them: “Why do you thus come to tempt me? Show me the trib­ute money, and I will an­swer you.” And when they handed him a denar­ius, he looked at it and said, “Whose im­age and super­scrip­tion does this coin bear?” And when they an­swered him, “Cae­sar’s,” Je­sus said, “Ren­der to Cae­sar the things that are Cae­sar’s and ren­der to God the things that are God’s.”

• believers’ relation to › be subject to g.; observe essentials of law
• Most Highs rule in kingdoms of men

175:1.8“This af­ter­noon my apos­tles stand here be­fore you in si­lence, but you shall soon hear their voices ring­ing out with the call to sal­va­tion and with the urge to unite with the heav­enly king­dom as the sons of the liv­ing God. And now I call to wit­ness these, my dis­ci­ples and be­liev­ers in the gospel of the king­dom, as well as the un­seen mes­sen­gers by their sides, that I have once more of­fered Is­rael and her rulers de­liv­er­ance and sal­va­tion. But you all be­hold how the Fa­ther’s mercy is slighted and how the mes­sen­gers of truth are re­jected. Nev­er­the­less, I ad­mon­ish you that these scribes and Phar­isees still sit in Moses’ seat, and there­fore, un­til the Most Highs who rule in the king­doms of men shall fi­nally over­throw this na­tion and de­stroy the place of these rulers, I bid you co-op­er­ate with these el­ders in Is­rael. You are not re­quired to unite with them in their plans to de­stroy the Son of Man, but in ev­ery­thing re­lated to the peace of Is­rael you are to be sub­ject to them. In all these mat­ters do what­so­ever they bid you and ob­serve the es­sen­tials of the law but do not pat­tern af­ter their evil works. Re­mem­ber, this is the sin of these rulers: They say that which is good, but they do it not. You well know how these lead­ers bind heavy bur­dens on your shoul­ders, bur­dens griev­ous to bear, and that they will not lift as much as one fin­ger to help you bear these weighty bur­dens. They have op­pressed you with cer­e­monies and en­slaved you by tra­di­tions.

• Most Highs rule in kingdoms of men

175:3.2From this time on the Jews were left to fin­ish their brief and short lease of na­tional life wholly in ac­cor­dance with their purely hu­man sta­tus among the na­tions of Uran­tia. Is­rael had re­pu­di­ated the Son of the God who made a covenant with Abra­ham, and the plan to make the chil­dren of Abra­ham the light-bear­ers of truth to the world had been shat­tered. The di­vine covenant had been ab­ro­gated, and the end of the He­brew na­tion drew on apace.

• believers’ relation to › spirit will teach believers how to answer judges

176:1.1In an­swer­ing Na­than­iel’s ques­tion, Je­sus said: “Yes, I will tell you about the times when this peo­ple shall have filled up the cup of their in­iq­uity; when jus­tice shall swiftly de­scend upon this city of our fa­thers. I am about to leave you; I go to the Fa­ther. Af­ter I leave you, take heed that no man de­ceive you, for many will come as de­liv­er­ers and will lead many astray. When you hear of wars and ru­mors of wars, be not trou­bled, for though all these things will hap­pen, the end of Je­ru­sa­lem is not yet at hand. You should not be per­turbed by famines or earth­quakes; nei­ther should you be con­cerned when you are de­liv­ered up to the civil au­thor­i­ties and are per­se­cuted for the sake of the gospel. You will be thrown out of the syn­a­gogue and put in prison for my sake, and some of you will be killed. When you are brought up be­fore gov­er­nors and rulers, it shall be for a tes­ti­mony of your faith and to show your stead­fast­ness in the gospel of the king­dom. And when you stand be­fore judges, be not anx­ious be­fore­hand as to what you should say, for the spirit will teach you in that very hour what you should an­swer your ad­ver­saries. In these days of tra­vail, even your own kins­folk, un­der the lead­er­ship of those who have re­jected the Son of Man, will de­liver you up to prison and death. For a time you may be hated by all men for my sake, but even in these per­se­cu­tions I will not for­sake you; my spirit will not desert you. Be pa­tient! doubt not that this gospel of the king­dom will tri­umph over all en­e­mies and, even­tu­ally, be pro­claimed to all na­tions.”

• believers’ relation to › be subject to g.; observe essentials of law

177:3.7While all of this was go­ing on at the camp, in Je­ru­sa­lem the chief priests and el­ders were amazed that Je­sus did not re­turn to ad­dress the mul­ti­tudes. True, the day be­fore, when he left the tem­ple, he had said, “I leave your house to you des­o­late.” But they could not un­der­stand why he would be will­ing to forgo the great ad­van­tage which he had built up in the friendly at­ti­tude of the crowds. While they feared he would stir up a tu­mult among the peo­ple, the Mas­ter’s last words to the mul­ti­tude had been an ex­hor­ta­tion to con­form in ev­ery rea­son­able man­ner with the au­thor­ity of those “who sit in Moses’ seat.” But it was a busy day in the city as they si­mul­ta­ne­ously pre­pared for the Pass­over and per­fected their plans for de­stroy­ing Je­sus.

178:1.1Je­sus talked to about fifty of his trusted fol­low­ers for al­most two hours and an­swered a score of ques­tions re­gard­ing the re­la­tion of the king­dom of heaven to the king­doms of this world, con­cern­ing the re­la­tion of son­ship with God to cit­i­zen­ship in earthly gov­ern­ments. This dis­course, to­gether with his an­swers to ques­tions, may be sum­ma­rized and re­stated in mod­ern lan­guage as fol­lows:

• principles of government › g. may employ force; death penalty

178:1.2The king­doms of this world, be­ing ma­te­rial, may of­ten find it nec­es­sary to em­ploy phys­i­cal force in the ex­e­cu­tion of their laws and for the main­te­nance of or­der. In the king­dom of heaven true be­liev­ers will not re­sort to the em­ploy­ment of phys­i­cal force. The king­dom of heaven, be­ing a spir­i­tual broth­er­hood of the spirit-born sons of God, may be pro­mul­gated only by the power of the spirit. This dis­tinc­tion of pro­ce­dure refers to the re­la­tions of the king­dom of be­liev­ers to the king­doms of sec­u­lar gov­ern­ment and does not nul­lify the right of so­cial groups of be­liev­ers to main­tain or­der in their ranks and ad­min­is­ter dis­ci­pline upon un­ruly and un­wor­thy mem­bers.

• believers’ relation to › conflict when rulers require worship which belongs only to God
• believers’ relation to › render to Caesar what is Caesar’s

178:1.3There is noth­ing in­com­pat­i­ble be­tween son­ship in the spir­i­tual king­dom and cit­i­zen­ship in the sec­u­lar or civil gov­ern­ment. It is the be­liever’s duty to ren­der to Cae­sar the things which are Cae­sar’s and to God the things which are God’s. There can­not be any dis­agree­ment be­tween these two re­quire­ments, the one be­ing ma­te­rial and the other spir­i­tual, un­less it should de­velop that a Cae­sar pre­sumes to usurp the pre­rog­a­tives of God and de­mand that spir­i­tual homage and su­preme wor­ship be ren­dered to him. In such a case you shall wor­ship only God while you seek to en­lighten such mis­guided earthly rulers and in this way lead them also to the rec­og­ni­tion of the Fa­ther in heaven. You shall not ren­der spir­i­tual wor­ship to earthly rulers; nei­ther should you em­ploy the phys­i­cal forces of earthly gov­ern­ments, whose rulers may some­time be­come be­liev­ers, in the work of fur­ther­ing the mis­sion of the spir­i­tual king­dom.

178:1.4Son­ship in the king­dom, from the stand­point of ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tion, should as­sist you in be­com­ing the ideal cit­i­zens of the king­doms of this world since broth­er­hood and ser­vice are the cor­ner­stones of the gospel of the king­dom. The love call of the spir­i­tual king­dom should prove to be the ef­fec­tive de­stroyer of the hate urge of the un­be­liev­ing and war-minded cit­i­zens of the earthly king­doms. But these ma­te­rial-minded sons in dark­ness will never know of your spir­i­tual light of truth un­less you draw very near them with that un­selfish so­cial ser­vice which is the nat­u­ral out­growth of the bear­ing of the fruits of the spirit in the life ex­pe­ri­ence of each in­di­vid­ual be­liever.

178:1.5As mor­tal and ma­te­rial men, you are in­deed cit­i­zens of the earthly king­doms, and you should be good cit­i­zens, all the bet­ter for hav­ing be­come re­born spirit sons of the heav­enly king­dom. As faith-en­light­ened and spirit-lib­er­ated sons of the king­dom of heaven, you face a dou­ble re­spon­si­bil­ity of duty to man and duty to God while you vol­un­tar­ily as­sume a third and sa­cred obli­ga­tion: ser­vice to the broth­er­hood of God-know­ing be­liev­ers.

178:1.6You may not wor­ship your tem­po­ral rulers, and you should not em­ploy tem­po­ral power in the fur­ther­ance of the spir­i­tual king­dom; but you should man­i­fest the righ­teous min­istry of lov­ing ser­vice to be­liev­ers and un­be­liev­ers alike. In the gospel of the king­dom there re­sides the mighty Spirit of Truth, and pres­ently I will pour out this same spirit upon all flesh. The fruits of the spirit, your sin­cere and lov­ing ser­vice, are the mighty so­cial lever to up­lift the races of dark­ness, and this Spirit of Truth will be­come your power-mul­ti­ply­ing ful­crum.

178:1.7Dis­play wis­dom and ex­hibit sagac­ity in your deal­ings with un­be­liev­ing civil rulers. By dis­cre­tion show your­selves to be ex­pert in iron­ing out mi­nor dis­agree­ments and in ad­just­ing tri­fling mis­un­der­stand­ings. In ev­ery pos­si­ble way—in ev­ery­thing short of your spir­i­tual al­le­giance to the rulers of the uni­verse—seek to live peace­ably with all men. Be you al­ways as wise as ser­pents but as harm­less as doves.

178:1.8You should be made all the bet­ter cit­i­zens of the sec­u­lar gov­ern­ment as a re­sult of be­com­ing en­light­ened sons of the king­dom; so should the rulers of earthly gov­ern­ments be­come all the bet­ter rulers in civil af­fairs as a re­sult of be­liev­ing this gospel of the heav­enly king­dom. The at­ti­tude of un­selfish ser­vice of man and in­tel­li­gent wor­ship of God should make all king­dom be­liev­ers bet­ter world cit­i­zens, while the at­ti­tude of hon­est cit­i­zen­ship and sin­cere de­vo­tion to one’s tem­po­ral duty should help to make such a cit­i­zen the more eas­ily reached by the spirit call to son­ship in the heav­enly king­dom.

• believers’ relation to › persecution by religious dictators
• principles of government › warnings › separate church and state

178:1.9So long as the rulers of earthly gov­ern­ments seek to ex­er­cise the au­thor­ity of re­li­gious dic­ta­tors, you who be­lieve this gospel can ex­pect only trou­ble, per­se­cu­tion, and even death. But the very light which you bear to the world, and even the very man­ner in which you will suf­fer and die for this gospel of the king­dom, will, in them­selves, even­tu­ally en­lighten the whole world and re­sult in the grad­ual di­vorce­ment of pol­i­tics and re­li­gion. The per­sis­tent preach­ing of this gospel of the king­dom will some day bring to all na­tions a new and un­be­liev­able lib­er­a­tion, in­tel­lec­tual free­dom, and re­li­gious lib­erty.

178:1.10Un­der the soon-com­ing per­se­cu­tions by those who hate this gospel of joy and lib­erty, you will thrive and the king­dom will pros­per. But you will stand in grave dan­ger in sub­se­quent times when most men will speak well of king­dom be­liev­ers and many in high places nom­i­nally ac­cept the gospel of the heav­enly king­dom. Learn to be faith­ful to the king­dom even in times of peace and pros­per­ity. Tempt not the an­gels of your super­vi­sion to lead you in trou­blous ways as a lov­ing dis­ci­pline de­signed to save your ease-drift­ing souls.

178:1.11Re­mem­ber that you are com­mis­sioned to preach this gospel of the king­dom—the su­preme de­sire to do the Fa­ther’s will cou­pled with the su­preme joy of the faith re­al­iza­tion of son­ship with God—and you must not al­low any­thing to di­vert your de­vo­tion to this one duty. Let all man­kind ben­e­fit from the over­flow of your lov­ing spir­i­tual min­istry, en­light­en­ing in­tel­lec­tual com­mu­nion, and up­lift­ing so­cial ser­vice; but none of these hu­man­i­tar­ian labors, nor all of them, should be per­mit­ted to take the place of pro­claim­ing the gospel. These mighty min­is­tra­tions are the so­cial by-prod­ucts of the still more mighty and sub­lime min­is­tra­tions and trans­for­ma­tions wrought in the heart of the king­dom be­liever by the liv­ing Spirit of Truth and by the per­sonal re­al­iza­tion that the faith of a spirit-born man con­fers the as­sur­ance of liv­ing fel­low­ship with the eter­nal God.

• principles of government › warnings › cannot establish righteousness by laws

178:1.12You must not seek to pro­mul­gate truth nor to es­tab­lish righ­teous­ness by the power of civil gov­ern­ments or by the en­ac­tion of sec­u­lar laws. You may al­ways la­bor to per­suade men’s minds, but you must never dare to com­pel them. You must not for­get the great law of hu­man fair­ness which I have taught you in pos­i­tive form: What­so­ever you would that men should do to you, do even so to them.

178:1.13When a king­dom be­liever is called upon to serve the civil gov­ern­ment, let him ren­der such ser­vice as a tem­po­ral cit­i­zen of such a gov­ern­ment, al­beit such a be­liever should dis­play in his civil ser­vice all of the or­di­nary traits of cit­i­zen­ship as these have been en­hanced by the spir­i­tual en­light­en­ment of the en­nobling as­so­ci­a­tion of the mind of mor­tal man with the in­dwelling spirit of the eter­nal God. If the un­be­liever can qual­ify as a su­pe­rior civil ser­vant, you should se­ri­ously ques­tion whether the roots of truth in your heart have not died from the lack of the liv­ing wa­ters of com­bined spir­i­tual com­mu­nion and so­cial ser­vice. The con­scious­ness of son­ship with God should quicken the en­tire life ser­vice of ev­ery man, woman, and child who has be­come the pos­ses­sor of such a mighty stim­u­lus to all the in­her­ent pow­ers of a hu­man per­son­al­ity.

178:1.14You are not to be pas­sive mys­tics or col­or­less as­cetics; you should not be­come dream­ers and drifters, supinely trust­ing in a fic­ti­tious Prov­i­dence to pro­vide even the ne­ces­si­ties of life. You are in­deed to be gen­tle in your deal­ings with erring mor­tals, pa­tient in your in­ter­course with ig­no­rant men, and for­bear­ing un­der provo­ca­tion; but you are also to be valiant in de­fense of righ­teous­ness, mighty in the pro­mul­ga­tion of truth, and ag­gres­sive in the preach­ing of this gospel of the king­dom, even to the ends of the earth.

178:1.15This gospel of the king­dom is a liv­ing truth. I have told you it is like the leaven in the dough, like the grain of mus­tard seed; and now I de­clare that it is like the seed of the liv­ing be­ing, which, from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion, while it re­mains the same liv­ing seed, un­fail­ingly un­folds it­self in new man­i­fes­ta­tions and grows ac­cept­ably in chan­nels of new adap­ta­tion to the pe­cu­liar needs and con­di­tions of each suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tion. The rev­e­la­tion I have made to you is a liv­ing rev­e­la­tion, and I de­sire that it shall bear ap­pro­pri­ate fruits in each in­di­vid­ual and in each gen­er­a­tion in ac­cor­dance with the laws of spir­i­tual growth, in­crease, and adap­ta­tive de­vel­op­ment. From gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion this gospel must show in­creas­ing vi­tal­ity and ex­hibit greater depth of spir­i­tual power. It must not be per­mit­ted to be­come merely a sa­cred mem­ory, a mere tra­di­tion about me and the times in which we now live.

• believers’ relation to › make no denunciations of g.

178:1.16And for­get not: We have made no di­rect at­tack upon the per­sons or upon the au­thor­ity of those who sit in Moses’ seat; we only of­fered them the new light, which they have so vig­or­ously re­jected. We have as­sailed them only by the de­nun­ci­a­tion of their spir­i­tual dis­loy­alty to the very truths which they pro­fess to teach and safe­guard. We clashed with these es­tab­lished lead­ers and rec­og­nized rulers only when they threw them­selves di­rectly in the way of the preach­ing of the gospel of the king­dom to the sons of men. And even now, it is not we who as­sail them, but they who seek our de­struc­tion. Do not for­get that you are com­mis­sioned to go forth preach­ing only the good news. You are not to at­tack the old ways; you are skill­fully to put the leaven of new truth in the midst of the old be­liefs. Let the Spirit of Truth do his own work. Let con­tro­versy come only when they who de­spise the truth force it upon you. But when the will­ful un­be­liever at­tacks you, do not hes­i­tate to stand in vig­or­ous de­fense of the truth which has saved and sanc­ti­fied you.

178:1.17Through­out the vi­cis­si­tudes of life, re­mem­ber al­ways to love one an­other. Do not strive with men, even with un­be­liev­ers. Show mercy even to those who de­spite­fully abuse you. Show your­selves to be loyal cit­i­zens, up­right ar­ti­sans, praise­wor­thy neigh­bors, de­voted kins­men, un­der­stand­ing par­ents, and sin­cere be­liev­ers in the broth­er­hood of the Fa­ther’s king­dom. And my spirit shall be upon you, now and even to the end of the world.

178:1.18When Je­sus had con­cluded his teach­ing, it was al­most one o’clock, and they im­me­di­ately went back to the camp, where David and his as­so­ciates had lunch ready for them.

• believers’ relation to › conflict when rulers require worship which belongs only to God
• believers’ relation to › render to Caesar what is Caesar’s

181:2.10Si­mon wanted to speak fur­ther, but Je­sus raised his hand and, stop­ping him, went on to say: “None of my apos­tles are more sin­cere and hon­est at heart than you, but not one of them will be so up­set and dis­heart­ened as you, af­ter my de­par­ture. In all of your dis­cour­age­ment my spirit shall abide with you, and these, your breth­ren, will not for­sake you. Do not for­get what I have taught you re­gard­ing the re­la­tion of cit­i­zen­ship on earth to son­ship in the Fa­ther’s spir­i­tual king­dom. Pon­der well all that I have said to you about ren­der­ing to Cae­sar the things which are Cae­sar’s and to God that which is God’s. Ded­i­cate your life, Si­mon, to show­ing how ac­cept­ably mor­tal man may ful­fill my in­junc­tion con­cern­ing the si­mul­ta­ne­ous rec­og­ni­tion of tem­po­ral duty to civil pow­ers and spir­i­tual ser­vice in the broth­er­hood of the king­dom. If you will be taught by the Spirit of Truth, never will there be con­flict be­tween the re­quire­ments of cit­i­zen­ship on earth and son­ship in heaven un­less the tem­po­ral rulers pre­sume to re­quire of you the homage and wor­ship which be­long only to God.

• believers’ relation to › never identify Jesus’ teachings with any political system

194:3.9The man­i­fes­ta­tions as­so­ci­ated with the be­stowal of the “new teacher,” and the re­cep­tion of the apos­tles’ preach­ing by the men of var­i­ous races and na­tions gath­ered to­gether at Je­ru­sa­lem, in­di­cate the uni­ver­sal­ity of the re­li­gion of Je­sus. The gospel of the king­dom was to be iden­ti­fied with no par­tic­u­lar race, cul­ture, or lan­guage. This day of Pen­te­cost wit­nessed the great ef­fort of the spirit to lib­er­ate the re­li­gion of Je­sus from its in­her­ited Jew­ish fet­ters. Even af­ter this dem­on­stra­tion of pour­ing out the spirit upon all flesh, the apos­tles at first en­deav­ored to im­pose the re­quire­ments of Ju­daism upon their con­verts. Even Paul had trou­ble with his Je­ru­sa­lem breth­ren be­cause he re­fused to sub­ject the gen­tiles to these Jew­ish prac­tices. No re­vealed re­li­gion can spread to all the world when it makes the se­ri­ous mis­take of be­com­ing per­me­ated with some na­tional cul­ture or as­so­ci­ated with es­tab­lished racial, so­cial, or eco­nomic prac­tices.

• principles of government › warnings › why Roman Empire declined

195:3.8The spir­i­tual im­pe­tus of nom­i­nally ac­cept­ing Hel­le­nized Chris­tian­ity came to Rome too late to pre­vent the well-started moral de­cline or to com­pen­sate for the al­ready well-es­tab­lished and in­creas­ing racial de­te­ri­o­ra­tion. This new re­li­gion was a cul­tural ne­ces­sity for im­pe­rial Rome, and it is ex­ceed­ingly un­for­tu­nate that it did not be­come a means of spir­i­tual sal­va­tion in a larger sense.

195:3.9Even a good re­li­gion could not save a great em­pire from the sure re­sults of lack of in­di­vid­ual par­tic­i­pa­tion in the af­fairs of gov­ern­ment, from over­much pa­ter­nal­ism, over­tax­a­tion and gross col­lec­tion abuses, un­bal­anced trade with the Lev­ant which drained away the gold, amuse­ment mad­ness, Ro­man stan­dard­iza­tion, the degra­da­tion of woman, slav­ery and race deca­dence, phys­i­cal plagues, and a state church which be­came in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized nearly to the point of spir­i­tual bar­ren­ness.

• principles of government › warnings › secularism sells man into bondage to totalitarianism

195:8.4It re­quired a great power, a mighty in­flu­ence, to free the think­ing and liv­ing of the West­ern peo­ples from the with­er­ing grasp of a to­tal­i­tar­ian ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal dom­i­na­tion. Sec­u­lar­ism did break the bonds of church con­trol, and now in turn it threat­ens to es­tab­lish a new and god­less type of mas­tery over the hearts and minds of mod­ern man. The tyran­ni­cal and dic­ta­to­rial po­lit­i­cal state is the di­rect off­spring of sci­en­tific ma­te­ri­al­ism and philo­sophic sec­u­lar­ism. Sec­u­lar­ism no sooner frees man from the dom­i­na­tion of the in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized church than it sells him into slav­ish bond­age to the to­tal­i­tar­ian state. Sec­u­lar­ism frees man from ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal slav­ery only to be­tray him into the tyranny of po­lit­i­cal and eco­nomic slav­ery.