hither that sovereign intellect naturally betakes, and here that it unfolds itself; not only does it give scope and space to the highest energies of the human understanding it is also directly the parent, and the object, of some of the noblest feelings which belong to our nature, and these too such as operate on the most comprehensive scale. It lifts us by our affections out of the narrow sphere of individuality, yet without resolving them, through unlimited and objectless diffusion, into vague and unreal transports. It probably does far more to stimulate generous action, and to cherish that spirit of self-sacrifice which is so urgently required as a counteraction to our prevailing bias, than any other earthly cause, except the yet more sacred and more directly ordained influence of the domestic affections. It is still, I grant, subservient and instrumental only to the higher work of perfecting individual man, and is in the nature of means ordained to this end; yet it is a main instrument and an absolute condition of his culture, as it is also that comprehensive and overreaching form of the natural human life which includes and harmonises all its other forms, under which they must fall, and to which they must adjust themselves.

65. Still more remarkable is the State in that which it symbolises. Independent of the will of man alike in the origin and in the exercise of its power, it both precedes and survives the individual; and it perpetually presents to him the images and associations of duty, of permanency, of power, of something greater and better

than himself. It claims to represent to us, in that relative sense which alone the conditions of our earthly sojourning will admit, the principles of the Divine nature, inclusively of the power to assert them; to set before us, hand in hand with resistless power, unlimited duration, uniform right, unrespect of persons, the harmony of degree, the law of discipline and retribution. So far as respects the rewards and penalties of this world, it is the only general minister of Divine government, treading unequally in its steps, no more than a shadow of its glory, yet a shadow truly projected from the substance.

66. I have here, it is true, spoken of the State in its idea, rather than of a particular country or constitution. Yet these considerations have practical application to the historical forms of the State, which, in falling below its own standard, has merely resembled the individual; both are still bound to the pattern which they have never exemplified. However much particular actual States may fall short of the absolutely true, all that has ever been recorded of human society testifies to this at the least,-that in the State, considered both as an active and as a permissive power, we find the index both of the characters and of the conditions of the men within its pale; in its peculiar modifications we discover an effect, which is also the most fruitful of social causes, as estimated by its results upon individual being and well-being. Therefore it is that the civil history of man has ever been, under the sanction of that example which is afforded by the inspired

writings of the Old Testament, the history of States, from the time when first the family had expanded into this its larger development.

67. It is very easily seen, upon a review of what has now been propounded respecting the abstract idea of the State, that it fulfils the same grand conditions which have been enumerated as descriptive of the family. Like the family, it is of universal, or, at the least, of general application. Its agency is permanent and annexed to the whole of our life. It is natural, as opposed to what is spontaneous and conventional. There is no limit of quantity to the obligations of the individual towards it. It is moral, and not merely economical, inasmuch as its laws and institutions, and the acts done under them, are intimately connected with the formation of our moral habits, our modes of thought, and the state of the affections, and inasmuch as its influences pervade the whole scheme and system of our being, mingling with the first instincts of boyhood; it may be, even attracting the last lingering look of age on the threshold of its departure; inasmuch as that which we are individually, we have come to be, in a very considerable degree, through and by means of that which we are nationally.

68. Of all the qualities that have here been predicated of the State, there is but one on which I propose to dwell a little in detail; it is this, that the State is properly and according to its nature, moral. In a lower sense this is likely to be admitted on all hands. Every man will perceive that there must be such

things as public faith and justice, or that political so(ciety would become an universal and intolerable curse.

But the morality of the State means much more than this. It means that the general action of the State is under a moral law, is conversant with moral subjectmatter, is fruitful of moral influences. Now, as regards the second of these in particular, the lawgiver, proposing to himself as his idea the establishment of peace and order and the security of property, immediately finds that he impinges upon the subjectmatter of moral science; that the same acts which are favourable to politic designs are the acts that general morality approves; that the same acts which are hostile to these designs are the acts that general morality condemns, and that upon a scale which, though there are partial exceptions, ordinarily very much conforms to his. Thus his law and his subjectmatter are in relations of the closest proximity, although not identical, with those of moral science. He is to consider how far it may be in his power to encourage, and, on the other hand, by what means most effectually to repress, through prevention or punishment, classes of acts which he must estimate mainly by the standard of that science; although he may be compelled in certain particulars to qualify that criterion by regard to those lower purposes, without the regular attainment of which he cannot proceed to such as are higher. So that law travels over much of the same ground as ethics, and guides its course nearly according to their dictates.

69. If this be the case, then it is clear that (while we

may reserve for another place the consideration of the preventive function of civil rule) the lawgiver has the same need to be ethically instructed as the individual man. The philosophy which holds that the latter will do best to choose his actions by a consideration of their general consequences, and which maintains that presumed advantage is to the human mind the best and most available criterion of right, may propound the same doctrine for the lawgiver. But most men revolt from this position, and maintain that the intrinsic nature of acts is in itself generally accessible to the understanding, as well as the calculation of their results; that it is usually the easier and safer rule; above all, that, according to the Divinely ordained canon, right is intended to be employed as the criterion of advantage, much more than advantage as the test of right. They, therefore, will also hold that the deviser of public law, because it deals (in great part) with subject-matter of right and wrong, and deals with it for the public well-being, must, like the private person, read the guarantees of that well-being in the nature of the acts, and take this nature as a guide to their results, as well as measure his enactments by the results which he is thus enabled to estimate. The lawgiver then, that is, the legislativey mind of the nation, must be ethically instructed; which implies that it must be enlightened by religion, upon the basis of which alone it is, that moral science can be effectually reared.

70. And, indeed, the circumstance that the State has primary regard to certain external conditions of well-being, peace and order, so far from overthrowing,