Thoreau uses God as a symbol in two ways. First, he uses God as a symbol of morality and justice—things that he believes the American government lacks. He questions how government supporters can claim that their unjust laws are “the will of God,” when those laws go against Christian ideas of morality. Second, Thoreau also uses God as a symbol of an enlightened higher power. It is this higher power that he encourages his audience to serve, rather than the American government. To Thoreau, God’s moral teachings—that is, morality itself—must come before any government’s laws, especially the American government’s unjust ones. He pleads with his audience that it is better “[to] have God on their side,” rather than behaving immorally in service to the government. Thus, Thoreau uses God in a symbolic sense as a way of strengthening his call to the American people to abandon their desire to be dutiful citizens, and instead join him in rejecting the American government and its actions by practicing civil disobedience.
God Quotes in Civil Disobedience
They who know of no purer sources of truth, who have traced up its stream no higher, stand, and wisely stand, by the Bible and the Constitution, and drink at it there with reverence and humility; but they who behold where it comes trickling into this lake or that pool, gird up their loins once more, and continue their pilgrimage toward its fountain-head.
God Symbol Timeline in Civil Disobedience
