VII. Without God, No Commonwealth

(Contemporary Review.}

I WILL set down, as briefly as I can, the meaning and reasons for the proposition I here affirm — namely, " that the social and civil commonwealth of mankind had its origin, and still has its perpetuity, in the knowledge of God, and in obedience to Him springing from that knowledge," so that without God no commonwealth is possible. If this can be shown to be true, it follows that the theory now so easily and commonly accepted — namely, that religion and politics ought to be separated; that between Church and State there ought to be no union; that the State in its origin and action is secular, that it has neither religion nor religious duties; that religion must be left to individuals as a matter between each several man and God, or at most ought to be treated by Churches, or communions, or voluntary associations of such individuals; that the abolition of oaths, judicial and Parliamentary, has no bearing on religion; and that the effacing of the Name of God from the public acts of the State would even tend to the promotion of Christianity — that all this cannot stand. All this rests upon the theory that the State has no relation to God. Such is the teaching of such writers as Comte, Buckle, and Macaulay. But this theory is contrary to the belief of the Old World, and, until the last generations, to the faitb of the New. It is at variance with the experience of mankind, and in direct opposition to the order which God has constituted both by nature and by revelation.

I say by nature and by revelation, because, though I ani conscious that I am dealing with many who deny all revelation, I am dealing also with more who profoundly believe in it; because some who deny the facts of revelation will not, or cannot, deny the facts of nature; and, lastly, because I cannot consent to argue this question as if,God were already not only deposed from His Sovereignty but also outlawed from His own world, which He, and not our politicians and philoso phers, has made.

1. I will begin, then, by defining the terms of the proposition, that without God no commonwealth is possible. By commonwealth I mean a condition in which men are bound together, and protected by laws, for their common welfare. By civil life I mean the public life of men, as united in cities, or confederations of cities, or in nations. By social life I mean the private life of such cities or nations, in all their voluntary commerce and intercourse external to the civil law, as between families and families, or between the several members of the same family. By political I mean also civil, its Latin equivalent. When a cedar of Lebanon shall rise to its stature and spread its branches without a root, then such a commonwealth may arise and endure with out a root. The civil and social relations of men imply duties and obligations to each other, and these spring from, and are enforced by, law. But law must also spring from a root which is immutable, or there can be no common obligation; and this common obligation must have a sanction to enforce it higher than the halter of the hangman, and more imperative in conviction and persuasion than any Act of Parliament. What, then, is this root, and where is it planted?

2. The root of the commonwealth is in the homes of the people. The civil and social life springs from, and is controlled by, the domestic life of mankind. There are three imperishable relations in human life — authority, obedience, and brotherhood. When the first son of man was born into the world, authority and obedience, which were latent, unfolded themselves into vigour; when a second was born, brotherhood, with all its equities, was constituted for ever. And these three relations were not the result of original compact, or of enactments of men, but are inseparable from the order of human life, and intrinsically contained in the essence and structure of the human family. Authority, obedience, and brotherhood are the three ultimate and all-sufficing laws of the human commonwealth. Equality, liberty, and fraternity are the parody and perversion of this divine order. Authority is, therefore, founded not in the human will, but in the nature of man; obedience is an obligation not created by man for himself, but imposed upon him. Brotherhood is a natural law which binds all men to do to others as they would be done by; to render to every man his due; and in mutual benevolence, when needed, to go beyond it. If any man shall say that these relations, obligations, and duties are of human creation, or that they are enactments of the human will, I will not dispute with him, except by

14S "WITHOUT GOD, NO COMMONWEALTH saying that I could as soon believe the law of gravitation, or the ebb and flow of the tide, to be by human legislation. It is to be noted that they who deny to these primary laws a foundation in nature, are precisely those who maintain the parody of equality, liberty, and fraternity, which, as I hope to show, is a denial of all law except the license of the will of man.

3. There can only be conceived two fountains of law. It springs either from the will of God, or from the will of man; and this inevitable alternative we will examine, so far as we can in so narrow a space. If the primary laws of the human family be from nature, they are from God; and all human society — domestic, social, civil — springs from God, and has its coherence and perpetuity from God. The root of all commonwealth is, then, planted in the will of God. Therefore even the heathen world was nearer the truth when it venerated a Dea Roma, than they who deny the natural or Divine law as the foundation of human society. For if these primary laws be only from man, they have no sanction higher than human coercion to enforce them, and no intrinsic obligation over the conscience or will of man. They would be only penal laws, which men of their free choice might disobey and risk the penalty. Then there could exist no commonwealth, because no common law of higher authority than the will of man. Such an aggregate of men can be called a State only by courtesy. It is an inorganic and unsocial multitude.

4. Let us first take the hypothesis that the primary laws of the human family are not from man but from Nature — that is, from God.

WITHOUT GOD, NO COMMONWEALTH. 14(J

There does not exist, so far as I know, in the history of the world any commonwealth in which these laws of domestic life are not treated as Divine. Take the Hebrew Commonwealth simply as a secular history. Compare with it the domestic, social, civil life of the Greek or Roman world. With all the relaxations of divorce, and all the severities of its penal code, the Commonwealth of Israel was in justice, equity, mercy, moral purity, and rectitude as high above the highest civilisation of Athens or Rome, as it was below the Christian Society which has been grafted upon it. What, then, was the foundation of that Commonwealth but the recognition of the laws of nature as the laws of God, and of God as the Supreme Lawgiver and Judge of men?

But even the Greek and Roman world as distinctly and precisely recognised these primary laws of human society to be Divine. Every hearth in Greece was sacred to Hcstia, and the fire that burned upon it was the emblem of the purity of domestic life. Every hearth therefore was a domestic altar. Hestia was partaker in the honours paid at every shrine. In the Prytaneia of the cities, where the sacred fire was kept for ever burning* Hestia had a share — for a commonwealth is but an organic aggregate of homes; and as the order and relations of home were sacred, so were the order and relations of the commonwealth.

So also in the Roman world. The fire on the hearth was sacred. Hestia, or Vesta, the Divine Guardian of the sanctities and purities of home, was the lawgiver of domestic life. The sacred fire burned perpetually in the Regia, which was the hearthstone of the Common wealth. I refrain from saying, what everybody knows, that the recognition of Divine power and law and government in the old world was so profuse that the whole private and public life of man was enveloped in it. The pantheism of the educated, and the polytheism of the people, both alike prove all that I am contending for. The old world believed the primary laws of human society to be Divine; and that a supreme God, the Lawgiver and Judge, presided over all the private and public life of man. They recognised their responsibility to Him; they bound themselves to Him by vows and by promises; they also bound themselves to each other by oaths, of which He was the witness, and, if violated, the avenger. Dea Roma had a sanctuary, surrounded by four hundred and twenty temples; and in every city of the empire Dca Roma had a shrine. If any man shall say that the Hebrew Commonwealth would have been as just, equitable, merciful, and enduring without the knowledge of God and of His laws, and without a conscious relation to Him as their Lawgiver and Judge, I may be silent. Such words need no answer. If any man shall say that the Greek and Roman world would not have corrupted with greater speed and intensity if the sacredness of the home and of the State had not been recognised; or that Athens or Rome would have been no less pure and moral in its private life, and as upright and just in its public life of commerce and legislation, if it had recognised no divine laws, no divine presence, 110 divine Judge, no divine sanctions, no obligation in an oath — I can only point to the his tory of the world, and hold my peace.

5. Now I have confined my notice of the old world to the two centres of its life: the sacredness of the home, and the sacredness of the commonwealth. The notion of a home without a divine protector, or of a State without a divine lawgiver, is not to be found in the old world. Nor is it to be found in the modern world. The Greek and Eoman civilisation passed away by the law of its own corruption. It died a natural death, and was buried. The civilisation of the Christian world is not the continuity of an older civilisation patched up and purified. It is a new creation, springing from a new principle of life and order. The Christian world is the offspring of Christian homes; and Christian homes were created by the law and grace of Christian marriage. The laws and relations of the natural home, the authority of parents, the obedience of children, the brotherhood of sons, were confirmed by a higher sanction and invested with a deeper meaning. If there be anything sacred upon earth, it is a Christian home. The fire upon its hearth is holy. The first foundations of the Christian world were laid in households; and the social and civil life of Christendom is the expansion of its domestic life, as its domestic life is the collective life of men bound together by laws more perfect than the law of Nature. The Christian law says to children, " Obey your parents j"1 and to -subjects, " Let every soul be subject to the higher powers,2 for there is no power but from God." I still 1 Col. iii. 20. 2 Rom. xiii. 1.

confine the subject to the same two points, the home and the commonwealth; and I affirm that both, by the law and order of Nature, and by the law and order of the Christian world, are sacred. They have their origin, their order, and their perpetuity from God. It may be said of homes and commonwealths as of men one by one — in Him " we live, and move, and are."

6. For clearness' sake I have confined our thoughts thus far to these two points; but they contain the whole subject of the civil order of mankind.

Towards those who deny the existence of a Creator, I have no further duty until they have made up their mind to say whether mankind is created, uncreated, or self-created. Until they have written down their proposition, we may go on with those who honestly acknowledge that man has a Creator. In the creation of man, both the family and the State were virtually con tained; and in these the three relations of authority, obedience, and brotherhood are inherent. Authority, then, is not the creation of man or by the compact of men. It is antecedent to all social and civil states, and is itself of divine ordinance. In like manner, obedience-is not of human origin or of human choice. It springs from a relation of the natural order, but the natural order is divine, for its author is God. Brotherhood, the nearest approach to equality — though it is not equality, but in gradations of inequality in age and maturity — is also of the divine order. And as in the family, so in the Commonwealth. The whole structure of society is pervaded by the will and power of God.

Without authority, obedience, and brotherhood, no society can exist.

7. As to authority, the old world profusely believed that its origin was from a divine source. The changes of dynasties, and successions, and forms of government by kings, or consuls, or dictators, or emperors, did not create authority. They were no more than the designation or election of the persons who should be in vested with authority. But authority in itself was imperishable and independent of the will of men. Conquest does not create authority. It is only a sanguinary investiture of the person who shall bear the authority. God gives authority immediately to the society of men; and He gives it mediately through society to the person or persons whom society may select to wield it. The theory of compacts and conventions is of recent and revolutionary origin. It is a mutilation of the truth. It suppresses the formal authority of the ruler when once elected, and it exaggerates the power of society, which, though authority materially resides in it, is incapable of exercising it by any direct action beyond the act of designating the person of the Ruler.

8. And as with authority, so with obedience. The Potestas p atria was a sovereignty extending to the power of life and death. Will any man say that any human authority could bind men to obey such a power? The civil ruler, from the beginning of the world, as known in history, has wielded the undisputed power of life and death, and men have both obeyed and executed his decrees, or without denial of his authority have undergone his sentence. Now no men, except fathers and rulers, have authority to extort obedience from others. Slavery is defined in canon law as a violation of the law of nature. Except filial obedience and civil obedience — that is, in the home and the State — there is no obedience except by voluntary consent or contract between man and man. And this twofold obedience springs from one root, and has one and the same sanction, and is in its essence of divine ordination.

9. What is true of authority and of obedience is true also of brotherhood. Among the sons of a family there is equality and inequality. But the inequality is evanescent, and has in it no subjection of the younger to the elder. In all the liberties and rights of man the sons of a house are equal. In endowments of body and mind, and in the possessions and privileges of life, they may become unequal, and the younger may out strip the elder; but before the law, both natural and divine, they are equal. This equality of man has been outlawed from the beginning by fraud and by violence. It can exist only where obedience and authority are recognised as divine laws. Obedience and authority are the conditions of liberty, and liberty of equality.

These three relations were created in man, and are not of men, nor by men, but of God, the author of all order, law, and liberty.

10. And now I am prepared to hear an objector say, " You are assuming the existence of law, and nature, and God." I do assume these truths. I assume the existence of law in the moral world, as I assume it in the material world. I find that the same soil, and the same rain, and the same sun, and the same air, from divers seeds will bring forth wheat and fruits, each in its kind differing in bulk, colour, texture, odour, and flavour. And I find the same phenomena uniform, universal, and perpetual. Every year the wheat in harvest is the same wheat, and the fruits in -vintage and fruitage are the same fruits. And every seed and grain has a law of its own. No man willed it, and no man can repeal it. The laws of nature are indestructible. Uniformity, universality, aud perpetuity are the sign and seal of a Lawgiver who is divine. Even the men of the old world could see this in the material universe, and they thought these laws to be deities. They could see it also in the moral world, and they recognised a law which man never made and man •can never rescind. " There is not one law at Rome, another at Athens — one now, and another hereafter; but one law, perpetual and immutable, will bind to gether all nations and all time, of which the common Teacher and universal Ruler is God."3

What Cicero could say by the light of reason, another •could more surely say by the light of faith. "Is it your will that we prove the existence of God from His own manifold and mighty works by which we are encompassed, sustained, and delighted, and also terri fied? or shall we prove it from the witness of the soul itself, which, though it is straitened in the prison of the body, circumscribed by bad teaching, weakened by lusts and passions, surrounded by false gods, yet when once it comes to itself, as out of a surfeit, or a sleep, or a

1 Cicero, de Repub. lib. iii.

sickness, and attains its health, it pronounces the name of God — by this name alone, because it is the proper name of the true God? ' Great God,' ' Good God,* ' May God grant it!' — this is the voice of all; and it calls on Him also as Judge, ' God sees,' ' To God I commend it.' * God will repay/ 0 witness of the soul, Christian by nature!"4 I will not believe that what Cicero could say to the pagans of Rome, and Tertulliau to the heathen of Africa, I may not say to the Christians of England without being told that I beg the question.

11. The conclusion, then, that I would draw from all that I have said is this, that the domestic, social, and civil life of mankind, in homes, and nations, and commonwealths, is, by its origin, nature, laws, and duties, of divine creation: or, in other words, that the political society of men or the State is not a creation of man but of God. Let no one say that I affirm any particular form of state or government to be of divine institution. Forms may vary, bat authority and obedience, and the relations and mutual duties of man with man, are of divine origin, imperishable and immutable.

Such was the political order of mankind shown in the history of the nations, before an event which has changed the face of the world, the foundation and expansion of the Christian Church and the creation of the Christian world. To this we must go on.

12. That the Christian Church claims, and is by the Christian world believed to be, the creation of a

• Tertulliau, Apolog. xviii.

Divine Author, and to be governed by divine laws, is a historical fact, undeniable even by those who deny its claims to be divine. That it arose from a source of belief and of authority, external to the political state and civilisation of the old world, and maintained its independence of all civil authority, except in things of <;ivil obligation, is undisputed by all, except those who have not read history. A. new society appeared in the world, claiming to be divine in a sense higher, ampler, more direct than the original society of mankind. And this new society, though independent of the political order of the world, was in perfect harmony with it. The two societies had one and the same author; all the primary laws of the first are also inscribed in the statute-book of the second. The second society was ordained to elevate, consolidate, and consecrate the first. Or in a word, the Church is ordained to fill up and to perfect the work of the State even in this world, and to guide man beyond this world to an eternal end.

13. These two societies, though distinct and designed for distinct ends, nevertheless reciprocally cooperate with each other. The primary end of the State is the material and moral welfare of men in this world, and it therefore in its moral action tends to the eternal welware which in itself it cannot bestow. The primary -end of the Church is to bring men to their eternal welfare, and in aiming at this end it promotes also the material and moral welfare of mankind ill this life. There can be no collision or opposition between these two societies, except so far as the members of the one or the other are untrue to the laws of their office and their obligation.

14. In the first period of the Church, the collision was persecution on one side and patience on the other. Nevertheless the Church was a standing violation of the imperial laws. It was a Socictas illicita, and if its existence had not been divine it ought not to have existed. It ^Yas a lleligio illicita, and if its religion had not been the revelation of truth it ought not to have been practised. But the fault was not in the Church; it was in the civil power, and the fault was amended by the Empire in the day when the Decree of Milan was affixed to the columns of the Forum— Christianam religionem profiteri liberum.

15. From that time the divine law began to penetrate and to elevate the imperial law, until the leaven in the meal assimilated all that was just and true; and created a Christian empire and a Christian world. This is neither the time nor place to trace out the second period of the history of Christendom, when the two societies, civil and spiritual, were in amity and co operation. I touch upon it only to affirm that the natural society of man, which existed outside of all revelation, Hebrew or Christian, in the Oriental, Greek, and Roman world, has ever been held to be, not the work and creation of human conventions or original contracts, but to be a divine order: for the order of nature is the work and creation of God. When, in the second period of Christian history, the political order was pervaded by the Christian law, it did not for the first time become religious. From the beginning of time it has always had God for its author and the religion of nature for its worship, and the laws of nature for the rule of its legislation. Christianity bestowed upon it a perfection; and with the unction of truth, set a crown upon its head. Dea Roma became the mother of kingdoms, and the " kingdoms of the world became the kingdom of God and of His Christ." 16. And this brings us at last — after, I fear, a wearisome journey, with wheels driving heavily, for which I must ask the patience and pardon of any per chance who may read what I am writing — to the conclusion I desire to prove. I have asserted that God is the author and sustainer, the foundation and the coherence of the commonwealth of man; and as a consequence that without God no human commonwealth is possible. Without foundation or coherence, no house can stand. The whole domestic and political order of the world is bound together by religion; for religion is the bond which binds men to God and to each other. The very word is equivalent to obligation; and the twofold obligation of the reason and of the will of man to God as his lawgiver and judge, and to men in all the manifold relations of private and public life, holds together the members of families and of states. The public solem nities of divine worship are the recognition of the religion or bond which binds us to God and to each other. The mutual service of free will springs from the bond of charity. The sacredness of contracts, and oaths, and promises, all rests upon the obligations of religion. Without mutual confidence society would perish by fraud and violence; without mutual trust in words and promises, no civil life could be knit to gether. The sanction of all morality, personal, domestic, political, is God, the present Witness and the future Judge, as the Roman law puts it, of false oaths, Deus Vindcjc. The last and only security a people can have for the justice of rulers and legislatures, is that they recognise a supreme law as their guide, and a supreme Lawgiver to whom they must give account. The issue of such a state of ordered legislation is the reign of law, the highest maturity of civilisation. But law can only reign over men whose conscience hears witness to the right of authority and the duty of obedience. Where law reigns coercion relaxes its hold, for the free will of the subject anticipates and asserts the just authority of rulers.

16. Let us reverse all that has been said. Let us suppose that the civil society of mankind is of human origin; that there is no sanction to enforce obedience to law but coercion and penalties; that there is no sanctity or obligation in oaths, no immutable law of right and wrong as the rule of legislation, no duties towards God, Who, perhaps, does not exist, or Who, if He exist, has no care or providence over men, and therefore of Whose existence the legislature and the State have no recognition, and need take no cognisance. By what moral obligation shall obedience be enforced to an authority which has no sanction above its own decrees, and no rule of right or wrong except either conventional usage or its own arbitary will? On what babis shall the credit, and commerce, and trust among men repose? and what motive is there to ensure fulfilment to an unprofitable bargain, or fidelity to an inconvenient promise? Without a higher sanction and the cohesion of a moral law, the whole political order would be disintegrated, the whole social order would be dis solved, the whole domestic life would be confusion. Every house would be divided against itself, every commonwealth would fall asunder. As the moral forces of law, and right, and conscience, and mutual trust grow weaker, the material forces of coercion become stronger, authority without law becomes tyranny — the tyranny of one head, or, worst of all, the tyranny of many heads — that is, lawless democracy: not the popular government of self-governed men, but the conflict and clashing of turbulent masses, goaded by rival demagogues, and led by rival parties bidding for place by outbidding one another. In such a civil state there is no law, for there is no recognition of a legislator, no judge above the will of the many, or the self-will, the liberum veto, of each man for himself. The outcome of this is chaos, and the end is political and national suicide.

I can foresee that all this will be treated as ex aggeration. It will be asked, " Do you believe all this will come out of such minor changes as the abolishing of a Parliamentary oath?" I believe that the starting of a bolt may sink a ship. I believe, too, that if the religious instincts of public men had not already long declined, the abolition of the Parliamentary oath would not for a moment be entertained. So many public recognitions of the Divine law have already been effaced, that the last remaining witness of a higher

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] C)2 WITHOUT GOD, NO COMMONWEALTH.

moral sense is all the more to be maintained. It is bad enough to have the laws of the land broken by men who do not believe in God. It is worst of all to have the laws of the land made by a Legislature that effaces the name of God from its solemn obligations.

18. We have been told by a writer on civilisation, who once had his day, that as the actions of individual men are determined by the ends for which they act, so also the collective action of society is determined; and that as if wo knew the ends for which men act we could foretell their actions, so in like manner we could fore tell the action and the course of society. If, that is, we could know the cumulus of ends for which a society of men would act, we could prophesy its history. This is, indeed, a philosophy rather undeniable than deep.

We may, however, say that if we knew the principles which govern a man we can approximately foretell how he will act. A merciful man will act mercifully, a just man will act justly, a truthful man will act openly. So it may be said of a society, a nation, or a State. Collective morals are, however, for the most part perverted by the avarice, ambition, or passion of the majority. Still, we can confide, and foretell, from the character of a people, what its laws will be. There are certain immoral and impious laws in force in other countries which we can foretell, at least at present, that our Legislature will not consent to enact. There are certain laws enacted by our Legislature which the Chambers and Parliaments of other countries at this day refuse to enact. The plain reason of this is that the people of

England are Christian, and they would not allow antiChristian legislation. So long, then, as a belief in God, in His law, in the immutable morality of right and wrong, in the sanctity of homes, in the obligation of oaths, in conscience, in responsibility, and in judgment to come, pervades and sustains the people of England, we can foretell the course of our Legislature, and we can confide in its acts.

19. But suppose a State or a Legislature composed of men who hold none of these principles of our moral nature, or who, if they hold them, hold them only as uncertainties, or opinions for their private life, not as governing laws of their public legislation; let us suppose an agnostic Parliament of unconscious, because uncultured, Epicureans, innocent of Lucretius, but believing in no Supreme Will or Law that guides the course of man and nations — who could foresee the ends for which they would deliberate? and who could fore tell what laws such men would make? What should restrain such a Legislature from abolishing the legal observance of Christmas, of Good Friday, and of the Sunday; of rescinding all restraint on the employment of women and children in mines, factories, and poisonous trades, thereby destroying what remains of home-life among the poor? What shall hinder the multiplication of causes justifying divorce by the adoption of foreign and Oriental codes? What shall prevent the abolition of the Tables of Consanguinity and Affinity, and the reversal of the profound legislation by which the Christian Church has created and fenced the sanctity of Christian homes, thereby creating and constructing the fabric of Christian civilisation and of Christian commonwealths? Why should not such a Legislature abolish all oaths of every kind, and in all judicial and legislative acts cease to remind men of a Divine Lawgiver Who is Witness of all their words and actions, and will be the Judge of their whole life at last? Why should it not recognise the inevitable presence and indulgence of all that is natural in man, and regulate its existence under protection of law? Why should it not revoke every gift which piety and charity has given for the service of God and the care of His poor — the oblationes fidelium, et patrimonia pauperum, as the Christian law of early days has it? Why not disestablish and disendow not the legal religion only, but the Free Churches which have inherited the gifts of their forefathers, and are handing them on with well-earned increment to their successors? Why should not a Parliament which has ceased to call God to witness to its fidelity, not only to an earthly Crown but to a Divine Lawgiver, abolish its chaplain, and cease to take its seat at prayers? Why not hold morning sittings on Sunday, and general elections on Sunday, and throw open not museums only, but theatres on Sunday? Why not legalise all labour and traffic, thereby adding a seventh of time and gain, as political economists have argued, to the national wealth? Why should it not abolish all laws against blasphemy? Has the Legislature any custody of the honour of God and His truth, when it has ceased to know Him as the source and sanction of its authority over men and the witness of its acts? Libel against men may be punished, but libel against God hurts nobody. How can it hurt Him if He does not, or probably does not, exist?

When the statues of Hermes were mutilated in the night at Athens, the city was struck with horror. When Socrates was accused of atheism, he was condemned to henbane. If any man in Kome had extinguished the fire of Vesta, or profaned the Sanctuary of the Rcgia, the pontiffs would have inflicted fine, or even death. Both the Greek and the Koman world, immersed as they were in superstition, polytheism, pantheism, which, all of them, are the parasites of belief in a Divine Lawgiver, Ruler, and Awarder, were profoundly and profusely religious. A commonwealth or state without a Divine Lawgiver, law, and worship, in its private and public life, was a conception which, not to the Hebrew only, but to the Greek and Roman, was impossible to thought, and beyond the stretch of imagination. It has been reserved for these latter times. It is the delirium of men who, having known God, have turned their faces from Him. The theory that the recognition of God can be removed from the public Acts and Legislature of the Commonwealth is to strip the political order of mankind of its Divine character. It is to relegate religion to the private life of men, and to desecrate the public life of the State. Such a desecration no Christian ever imagined to be possible till the Lawless One should come, who shall exalt himself above all that is called God or worshipped. Even the Emperor in the days of persecution was hominem a Deo secundum — solo Deo minor em. b

20. The Commonwealth of England has indeed 4 Tertullian, ad Scapulam, sect. 2.

1G6 WITHOUT GOD, NO COMMONWEALTH.

been robbed of its first unity and perfection; but it bas continued still to be profoundly Cbristian, and in admitting the theism of Israel within its precincts, it has in no way obscured its public recognition of God and its witness to His authority and laws. It rests not only on this Divine foundation, but upon another, which is also Divine; that is, upon the order and the religion, the lights and the laws of Nature, which also are the creation of God and the witness of his sovereignty.

In stripping the public life and action of our Commonwealth of the recognition of God, they who are doing it are not stripping off only the recognition of the God of the Old Testament and of the New, but of the God of Nature, and of His all-pervading presence in the public life of the empire. An empire without God cannot stand; for an empire which effaces God from its Legislature has no longer a principle of unity. It will, by a natural law of dissolution, return to the dust; it will sink lower than the old world; for an apostate world is lower than a superstitious world. It is better to have an altar to the Unknown God, than no altar and no God. Such a commonwealth has no foundation in the order either of Christian law or of natural law. It is lawless and descending— slowly, it may be imperceptibly, at first, but surely— and in another generation it will descend more swiftly and irresistibly into confusion. When the relations of authority, and obedience, and brotherhood, and the obligations which bind men to God and to each other, are stripped of their Divine sanction, the Commonwealth is death-struck; the vital warmth may linger for a while, but the life has fled.