For to understand the original question--Is it lawful to pay tribute to
Caesar or no? we must imagine to ourselves a state of things in Judea
utterly different, thank God, from anything which has been in these
realms for now eight hundred years. The Caesar, or Emperor of Rome, had
obtained by conquest an authority over the Jews very like that which we
have over the Hindoos in India. And what was working in the mind of the
Jews was very like that which was working in the minds of the Hindoos in
the Sepoy Rebellion--whether it was not a sacred and religious duty to
rise against their conquerors and drive them out. We know from the New
Testament that both our Lord and His apostles again and again warned them
not to rebel, warned them that they would not succeed: but ruin
themselves thereby; for that those who took the sword would perish by the
sword. And we know, too, that the Jews would not take our Lord's advice,
nor the apostles', but did rise again and again, both in Judea and
elsewhere, gallantly and desperately enough, poor creatures, in mad
useless rebellion, till the Romans all but destroyed them off the face of
the earth.
Pages:
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478
479
480
481
482
483
484
485
486