ganic body, which acts for, from, and upon the nation : it is a being free and moral by the law of its nature, in which the national life operates centrally, and without which it cannot be fed in individuals, nor their own individual nature effectually cultivated. But this national life is a threefold cord, physical, intellectual, and moral (for which term moral, in the case of Christianity, we should read spiritual); and if the State repudiated its higher life, and wilfully and deliberately contravened its moral laws, it would still remain a State, and must still be maintained and obeyed. The State, as such, is logically anterior to Revelation: it is a part of the law of nature; and, when the law of revelation has been renounced, the law of nature is still binding, and still, at least for a time, may remain.

62. I say, at least for a time. The State must be maintained, even without and against all determinate hope for it as a State, for the sake at least of the individuals who are within it, and whose peace is a sacred charge, for the heart of man is still the sanctuary of his God. But we stand in a probationary dispensation. Social organisation, like corporeal life, is a dúvaus, an instrumental power, not having in itself the nature of evil or of good, but both promoting and repressing the nature of evil or of good according to the manner of its use, and ultimately by habit growing into inseparable incorporation with that on which it has been fed. But this is the limit or final goal of its earthly career. As long as that career is in progress, these powers of human nature and society remain essentially neutral, though extrinsically most prolific of good or of evil :

and from this neutrality it follows that each of these powers may be detached from good and given to evil, or may again be detached from evil and applied to the production of good; even as the same arm of strength, in the days of chivalry, would plunder the wealthy and relieve the poor. It is for this contingent capacity, or potentiality, of good, that they are spared during their appointed time, like the fig-tree,* in the hope of a future fruitage. But the day must come "when the axe is laid unto the root of the trees; therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire." †

63. If, then, there be cases where the State has not yet a full moral life, but still tends and struggles towards its attainment, such a State has the promise of well-being. If there be cases where the State has once possessed that inestimable treasure, and has lost or is losing it, the condition of that State is indeed, and perhaps most of all, to be deplored: it has the double blame ascribed by Sthenelaidas‡ to the Athenian rule, that, from having been substantively a good, it had passed through zero and then had become substantively an evil. If there be cases where the State neither has nor seeks a moral life, and yet years seem to pass and retribution to linger, let it be inquired whether it be not the very abundance of God's bounty in the provision of animal sustenance, of soil, of climate, of rivers, of mechanical power, of mineral stores, which, satiating for the time the human appetites, lulls into repose the fiery elements of disorder. Let it * Thục. i. 86.

* Luke xiii. 6-9.

+ Matt. iii. 10.

then be seriously inquired, what will be the probable course of events, when the multiplication of numbers shall have overtaken the resources of Nature.

ἁμέραι δ ̓ ἐπίλοιποι

μάρτυρες σοφώτατοι.*

If there be growths of high excellence in countries so circumstanced, let it be examined whether they spring out of its prevailing institutions, or whether they owe their existence to some distinct and even antagonist influence; even as Athens was fertile of great and good men, who were almost invariably ill affected to her democratic polity. Let us now gradually contract our path until it tends to the single point which has been proposed for present inquiry, namely, political disqualification.

64. According to the foregoing principles, are the conditions of the spiritual element of national life, or any of them, to be maintained forcibly by a State? I do not mean against the fancies of this or that individual, but in cases that hazard its own social dissolution? So far as this question admits of a general answer, it must be in the negative. We may here again recur to the text-" My kingdom is not of this word; if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews; but now is my kingdom not from hence."† Was that, which our Saviour here, as it appears, disclaimed, the doctrine, that even the objective truth of religion should be defended by force against constituted * Pindar, Ol. i. 53.

St. John xviii. 36.

authority? Defended of course it may and must be by inobedience or moral resistance, by refusal to act upon unlawful commands. But when we come to questions such as this, we find ourselves entangled in a maze of considerations that seem scarcely to be threaded by any such general rules as human wisdom has been able to enunciate. Is an authority transgressing its legal limits a constituted authority? I suppose then a weak tyrant whom a breath will dethrone, an oppressor of religious truth, like James the Second, on the one hand; on the other, co-ordinately constituted though inferior authorities, holding by truth and by one another, and assured, humanly speaking, of their possession of the means to remove him. In such a case there seems no great difficulty in saying that it may be done. But if we suppose the latter weak, and, though certain of the tyrant's offences against the truth, yet not certain that the social forces are so set against him that they may be exercised without hazard of anarchy; here is a difficult case, a case for cool and masculine understandings, for reverent and tender hearts, for profound supplications to God when it may arise, and one to which I can only apply an indeterminate proposition. Although it has pleased God to supply both private and political life with a better ordinary criterion of duty than the calculation of results, yet there are undoubtedly painful and difficult passages in both, in which the lineaments of abstract right are so obscured by intermediate objects, that Faith herself must be content, conscious of the heaviest responsibility, to guide her steps by an estimate of consequences, never

indeed in contravention of right, yet as affording the

best clue to it.

65. Before entering further into this part of the discussion, I would remark that as responsible beings we are not wholly dependent on its issue. These occasions are rare, and need not dwell much upon the mind of the individual. It is not difficult to see that the general rule of private duty is simple obedience. If there be enactments which, as the private person thinks, make him instrumental in promoting evil, let him use the powers which the constitution allows him for their removal. Then he will have discharged his own conscience before God, and he may walk at peace with a quiet mind. He is only to use force against being made to sin; he sins not by suffering what the law requires. Therefore, if I be persuaded that a given war is unmanly, shameful, cruel, wicked, still I must not refuse the taxes that are demanded for its support. I am unable then to conceive the case, in which individuals may hazard social order for the purpose of relieving themselves from disabilities which demand from them no agency whether direct or indirect, and cannot, therefore, involve their consciences in sin. Thus the line of private duty is usually clear, although, when it has been transgressed, the deviations from it may raise questions for the State such as defy solution. 66. But now let us examine what is the legitimate canon of the action of the State. Christian maxims, which enjoin a sufferer to bear wrong, do not permit a superior in power to inflict it. The State must not therefore disqualify, simply for the reason that the