the right to control individual wills because the personification of legitimate sovereignty. At times the supreme power was raised high above the details of actual administration, and never interfered except on great and critical occasions. In the constitution of Brazil, it is said that this conception of sovereignty is made the very basis of the throne. What was it that men labored after, amid these various conceptions of the origin and purpose of the ruling power of the state? It was, without doubt, to find a power able to secure public order, a depositary of justice, and a protector of the common interest.'

Such a conception of government we affirm to be the centre and bond of society, under the most diverse circumstances, in all stages of its advance from the rudest to the most civilized condition, and to spring up, as it were, spontaneously, amid confusions and disorders of the most threatening kind; and hence we conclude that the conception is not accidental or artificial, but demanded by the very nature of man. We go on with confidence to what seems the most obvious conclusion from this, viz., that the true idea of government finds its proper explanation and defence, its only sure ground, in the teaching of religion; in the doctrine of Providence; in the presence among men of their Maker, as a ruler who takes account of their actions, whether as individuals or as nations, leading them to govern and judge themselves, supplying them with the principles of wisdom, of justice, or of righteousness, of which He alone is the Fountain and Author. A representative of Rome's imperial power once said to the Incarnate King, whose mission.

'The Church supplicates for nations as such the blessings of "unity, peace, and concord."

"Our whole nature leads us to ascribe all moral perfection to God, and to deny all imperfection of Him. And this will forever be a practical proof of His moral character, to such as will consider what a practical

proof is, because it is the voice of God speaking in us. And from hence we conclude that virtue must be the happiness, and vice the misery, o every creature; and that regularity, order, and right cannot but prevail finally, in a universe under His government."-Butler's Analogy, Introduction, § 5.

in this world, in His form of humiliation, was "to bear witness to the truth:""Knowest Thou not that I have power to crucify Thee, and have power to release Thee?" And he heard for answer: "Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above."1 Rome herself held the might in which she trusted, at the hands of Him whose patience is as great as His power. Her legions could do nothing against the truth. She vanished from the earth, and gave place to other powers, who still held their being from the same Author, whether they confessed Him or not. Their strength grew or waned, their place was brilliant or obscure, their record honorable among the nations, according as they witnessed to the truth, or denied its Author and sought to expel Him from His own creation. This testimony we believe the true religion has received from the states and governments of the world.

'S. John, xix. 10, II.

LECTURE IX.

INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY UPON

LAW.

My purpose at this time is to bring into view the evidence that comes to Christianity from the influence it has exerted upon law, or the rules by which human beings in society or in states and governments are regulated. The subject of the present lecture, therefore, differs from that of the last in being in one aspect more restricted, as referring to the methods of government, and in another as more abstract, since it is the study of a distinct and noble science, forming an important part of education.

Perhaps the best introduction to this subject will be to take notice of the various senses of the word "law, whose ambiguities are even celebrated. Its noblest sense without doubt, when applied, as is our present concern, to the control of beings endowed with reason, is as signifying a rule of action prescribed by a superior to an inferior. Law therefore contains always something of the nature of a command, and implies a person addressing the will, or voluntary principle, in another. This may be seen in the most abstract account of government, where its functions are exactly distributed. "Law is indeed a rule of action prescribed by a superior power;" but though the legislative branch make the law, and the judicial decide

'President Woolsey puts on the an aid in teaching and in historical title-page of his work on Interna- studies." New York, 1877. tional Law, that it is "designed as

upon its meaning when disputed, still to become a reality law must be enforced by an executive, who is usually one person. So, also, municipal or civil law is rightly defined by Blackstone' to be "the rule of civil conduct prescribed by the superior power in a state, commanding what is right, and prohibiting what is wrong." The latter part of this definition can be vindicated from the utilitarian criticism that it is pleonastic, for it asserts the personal element that is in law. A thing is not right because it is commanded, or wrong because it is forbidden; hence mere command and prohibition do not rise to the full conception of " a law." But as of the highest idea of law we say, in the words of a great divine, "The being of God is a kind of law to His working, for that perfection which God is giveth perfection to that He doth," so the laws of all less powers, whether of individuals, or of assemblies, become true laws only by enjoining the right, or the justice, through which all things, animate or inanimate, live and continue. The Creator of all being good, and willing what is just, nothing that He has made can presume to enjoin the opposite to these.

Before proceeding further to consider law in detail, it will be useful to notice its analogical sense in the domain of science, though we propose to consider the subject more fully in a separate lecture. Law is applied in science to an observed order of facts. This is its most general sense. The term increases in clearness if we connect the order of facts with some producing force. The law is still clearer if we can express the action of the force by some numerical measure. A good illustration of these three senses of "law" is presented by astronomy. Kepler's three laws were at first a series of facts which observed a wonderful order; the planets moved in elliptical orbits; the radius vector of each planet described equal spaces in equal times; the squares of the times of their revolutions. varied exactly as the cubes of their mean distances from

1 Introduction to Comm., § 2.

Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, Bk. I., Ch. II., I. 156.

the sun. This idea of the law was advanced to the second stage when it began to dawn upon the scientific mind that masses of matter attracted one another. The third stage was reached when Newton announced the law of gravitation, that these masses exerted on each other an attraction, "directly as the mass, inversely as the square of the distance." We ought not to forget that Newton held such action of bodies at a distance from each other, without material contact except "through the mediation of something else, which is not material," to be simply "inconceivable." There are two other conceptions of law familiar to science, besides the three already mentioned. When two or more forces are coördinated, so that they mutually control and modify one another, and thus produce some destined effect, the intelligence and will which bring about this combination give still a new sense to the word "law." All the forces of nature exist, in fact, in some such combination, never separately. The very motion of the planets is not determined by gravity alone, but by gravity combined with a centrifugal force, which tends to carry them away from the sun. The seasons, with their wonderful circle of life, are the result of the annual and diurnal motion of the planet combined with certain conditions of light, heat, moisture, the atmosphere, electricity, etc., any one of which being changed, the whole result would be different. A fifth sense of the word "law" is when it is used to denote an abstract conception, employed by the mind to explore or explain the facts of nature. The first law of motion is a good illustration of this sense of" law." There actually exists nowhere, nor can there be artificially produced, the condition of a body moving in a straight line with a uniform velocity, because nature presents us with no moving body abandoned to the control of a single force. Yet this conception is of great use in the elementary part of mechanics. I shall at present'

1 See Lect. III. (I., 225, etc.). Kepler's third law was made known in

1619; Newton's Principia was published in 1687.

2 See Lect. XI., "On Science."