they which find occasional manifestation in what is termed the universal sense of mankind, approved by the general conscience, and corroborated even by apparent exceptions. So that there is at all times an

inner region where Truth,

Weak Truth, aleaning on her crutch,*

exerts nevertheless her centripetal attraction, and rewards them that seek her, and retains in often unconscious connection with her those whom their individual or partial impulses are drawing off in this direction or in that, far from her, perhaps farther still from one another.

5. Now this universal sense of mankind exclaims against the crude and novel dogma, that the State is appointed to be conversant with material ends alone. It speaks to us in the voice of the best philosophies, and in the common rule of governments, amply recognised, though, like all other moral rules, always unfulfilled. It speaks to us in the praise of those monarchs who have fostered the inward and spiritual life of man; of Constantine, of Theodosius, of Charlemagne, of St. Louis, of our own Alfred and Elizabeth, and in the unwept departure of those who have had no care either for civilising arts or for the propagation of the Divine life; not least of all in the fact, that care for the material advantage of the subject has been generally commensurate on the part of rulers with their wise and effective concern for his higher welfare as an immaterial and an immortal being. I Tennyson's Poems, vol. i.

*

do not say that the most pious have uniformly been the most successful princes, more than that the best private persons have uniformly prospered; but that wise or devout sovereigns have been remarkable also for regarding the temporal, and able and sagacious princes for regarding the spiritual and intellectual welfare of the people. And the nature of a State itself reclaims, as we have seen, against the limitation of its functions to the negative ends of securing person and property; by its hold upon the heart and affections of man, by its innumerable and powerful influences upon his character and his destiny, by its dealing with moral subject-matter; attributes, all far too large to be included within such a definition.

6. Finally, to determine how this question is resolved for us as Christians, what says the Divine word? That the ruler "beareth the sword for the punishment of evil doers and for the praise of them that do well."* I do not cite this passage, as in former times it has been employed, in order to demonstrate that rulers have duties directly religious; but I contend that it describes them as appointed to maintain a moral law according to all their means and opportunities; and therefore, by the very force of the terms, a law not having exclusive reference to results which are not moral at all, but merely negative. "The punishment of evil doers" is a principle meaning something more than that the ruler must intercept those descriptions of evil deeds which are capable of being classified (for this is the point really at issue)

* Romans xiii. 4; and 1 Pet. iii. 14.

according to their directly injurious effects upon social order; although it of course does not imply his undertaking correction of all kinds independently of the degree of his competency to administer it, yet it surely must imply, that he is to look at the moral element in acts, and to use it as a criterion of their social consequences.

7. And so it has been interpreted: otherwise, why does law attach the very same penalty (for example) to the murder of a widowed pauper, a burden to the State, and having no friends or relations who might be excited to violate public order by avenging her death, and to the murder of the wealthiest and most beloved nobleman of the land? Or why is the provocation received allowed to be an element in the case of a person arraigned for taking away life, but because motives (when proved or fairly presumable) as well as acts are legitimately regarded by public law? If I am asked, on the other hand, why the life of a sovereign should be protected by severer penalties than that of a subject, I reply, not only because that life is more valuable and its violent extinction more injurious to society, but likewise because the sacredness of the person and the function of majesty positively enhance the guilt of the murderer in foro conscientiæ. So much for penal administration.

8. If we look to the other branch of the Scriptural definition, we shall find that the materialised theory of government leaves scarcely any space for the ruler's contemplating "the praise of them that do well." And practically it has been found, that in

proportion to its prevalence has grown up an extreme popular jealousy on the subject of pecuniary rewards, and a tendency to narrow in the same degree the discretion of the governing body; except, indeed, as to honorary distinctions, of which, as being upon the same hypothesis mere shadows void of all reality, it exacts little or no account.

9. After all that has been said, I propose that my last witness in favour of the comprehensive theory of the functions of government shall be the popular opinion of the day itself, by which that theory has been commonly resisted. Nay, there are dogmas even peculiarly inculcated by those who resist the principle of State religion, that can only be supported upon this theory. They who say that the State has only to do with the security of person and property and the like, must also, in consistency with the conclusions which they draw against the doctrine of religious establishments, be understood to mean that in the employment of means for that end, it is restricted to such as have a direct and palpable bearing upon it, and are in kindred subject-matter; otherwise they are not at liberty to urge their theory against national religion, inasmuch as its friends are ever ready to argue that nothing can more effectually, nay, that nothing can so effectively, give security to persons and property and stability to public order. But of the instances I am about to cite some have certainly no other than a very remote connection with external and material ends: inasmuch indeed as, in a comprehensive view, the higher instruments of

human cultivation are also ultimate guarantees of public order, it may be difficult to demonstrate in the negative, that they are not used simply in the view of their conduciveness to material ends; yet all reasonable presumptions are with us, as nothing can be more contrary to analogy than the supposition of a great mental and moral machinery provided exclusively to subserve purposes of a temporal, external, and material nature.

10. I allude, then, first, to the practice so familiar to the governments of civilised countries, and so commonly that we may well term it universally approved, by which the State lends its aid to the cultivation of the principles of art among the people, and to the diffusion and encouragement of learning. Among ourselves, for example, such institutions as great libraries have long been aided by the public funds, or contributions of the copies of all literary works, exacted by public authority. One of these, as well as a great museum of natural science, and galleries of statuary and pictures, dignifies the British metropolis. And all of these are, I apprehend, supported without exciting any discontent in any portion of the community. Take, for instance, the English National Gallery, an institution decidedly popular, yet one in which the State provides the building and the pictures, at the general cost, at the cost equally of those who enter the doors and of those who pass them by.

11. Although some of us may be of the belief, that Art was intended to cherish some of the faculties