ililllif; 
 
 II tiijIiiiHiiJHiilliiHHHIHHtt H Plua 
 
LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 OF" 
 
 Mrs. SARAH P. WALSWORTH. 
 
 Received October, 1894. 
 
 Accessions No . J(f-L Class No. 
 
fill 
 
 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by 
 P E T E R . T A Y L P . 
 
 President of the Brooklyn Institute, 
 
 In the Clerk s Office of the District Court of the United States, for the 
 Southern District of New York. 
 
 STEK EOT V I ED BY 
 
 THOMAS 15. SMITH & SON, 
 
 82 & 84 Bookman-street, N. Y. 
 
 I R I N T K I) i; Y 
 K . O . i E X K. 1 S 8 , 
 
 Frankfort-street, N. Y 
 
GRAHAM LECTURES: 
 
 ON THE 
 
 POWER, WISDOM AND GOODNESS 
 OF GOD, 
 
 AS MANIFESTED IX HIS WORKS. 
 VOLUME II. 
 
 1 UHLISIIED BY 
 
 THE BROOKLYN INSTITUTE 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 For the sake of convenience and clearness in the 
 arrangement, what was prepared and delivered as 
 six Lectures, is here, with a few additions, distrib 
 uted into eight. 
 
 F. D. H. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE, May 1, 1859. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THE Directors of the Brooklyn Institute have 
 much pleasure in presenting to the Public, the 
 Graham Lectures, thus far published, on the POWER, 
 WISDOM, AND GOODNESS OF GOD, AS MANIFESTED IN 
 His WORKS. 
 
 This course, by Professor Huntington, was very 
 fully attended ; so much so, as to make it very 
 desirable that we should have a larger room than 
 the present one for the future lectures of the In 
 stitute. 
 
 These Lectures were intended by Mr. Graham to 
 treat of the works of God, separate and apart from 
 polemic theology, or the peculiar doctrines of the 
 sects into which the religious world is divided. 
 
 The whole of God s works may furnish the sub 
 jects of these discourses, whether in their greatest 
 or most minute forms ; their simple or their com 
 plex organizations ; their adaptations, their laws, their 
 skill, their wisdom, their harmonies, their divine char 
 acter. The lecturer, therefore, stands, as it were, in 
 
VI 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 the presence of the great Architect, to expound 
 that portion of the creation which he has chosen 
 for his theme, and thus to exhibit the " Power, 
 Wisdom, and Goodness" of the Creator, as teach 
 ing the sublime sentiments of justice and benev 
 olence to all His creatures, and of love and rev 
 erence for the Universal Father. 
 
 The Directors feel gratified with the success of 
 these Lectures, and shall continue, from time to 
 time, as funds arise from the noble endowment of 
 Mr. Graham, to endeavor to procure the requisite 
 talent and accomplishment for future courses of lec 
 tures ; such as shall gradually form a series of 
 publications of sterling character, eminently useful, 
 elevating to the public taste and morals, and hon 
 orable to our Institute. 
 
 PETER G. TAYLOR, President; 
 OLIVER HULL, Vice President; 
 JOHN W. PRAY, Secretary ; 
 THOMAS EOWE, Treasurer. 
 
 THOMAS WOODWARD, WILLIAM EVERDELL, JR., 
 AUSTIN MELVIN, DUNCAN LITTLEJOHN, 
 
 ELI AS LEWIS, JR., GEORGE KISSAM, 
 ALFRED M. WOOD, CHARLES H. BAXTER, 
 JESSE C. SMITH, 
 
 Directors. 
 
 BROOKLYN, October 1, 1859. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTE, 7 
 
 HUMAN SOCIETY, 
 
 A DIVINE APPOINTMENT, 1-38 
 
 A LIVING INSTRUMENT OF DIVINE THOUGHT, . . 39-74 
 
 A DISCIPLINE OF INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER, . . . 75-100 
 
 A SCHOOL OF MUTUAL HELP, 107-142 
 
 IN RELATION TO SOCIAL THEORIES, 143-19* 
 
 IN RELATION TO THE INTELLKCT, 191-228 
 
 SUBJECT TO A LAW OF ADVANCEMENT, .... 229-268 
 THE SPHERE OF THE KINGDOM OF CHRIST ON 
 
 EARTH, 269-307 
 
GRAHAM LECTURES. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 SOCIETY A DIVINE APPOINTMENT. 
 
 HERE, on the scene of his industrious and be 
 neficent life, among his fellow-citizens who knew his 
 virtues so well, who reap a daily advantage from 
 his liberal foresight, and who honor his memory 
 faithfully, it is not for me, a stranger, to eulogize 
 the man who laid the foundation of these Lec 
 tures. When he provided, in his last testament, that 
 their ever-recurring subject should be the Wisdom, 
 the Power, the Goodness of our God, he neither 
 over valued the inexhaustible richness of the theme, 
 nor mistook the first need of his age. Of all his 
 enterprise, his integrity, his success, that thought 
 for his Creator s honor was the crown. In that 
 provision, according to the terms of it, his laborious 
 career rose into the region of worship. 
 
 In the particular line of thought through which I 
 
2 SOCIETY A DIVINE APPOINTMENT. 
 
 am to attempt to aid in carrying out the noble 
 purpose of the Founder, it is among my satisfac 
 tions that my choice falls into an orderly connection 
 with what was so ably and brilliantly presented by 
 my only predecessor in the series.* 
 
 The Lecturer who went before me exhibited the 
 illustrations of those Divine Attributes as they lie 
 in the " Constitution of the Human Soul." From 
 that, what so natural as to proceed outward into 
 the attitude and offices of human beings toward 
 each other; to contemplate the wonderful texture, 
 the manifold elements, the living powers of the 
 Social Body; and to trace the marks of a Heavenly 
 Parentage and Providence in the universal associ 
 ation of man with man? Uniting the Founder s 
 general testamentary precept with my own special 
 selection, and giving my whole subject an express 
 statement, it is THE WISDOM, POWER, AND GOODNESS 
 OF GOD AS MANIFESTED IN THE STRUCTURE, THE OF- 
 PICES, AND THE RELATIONS OF HUMAN SOCIETY. 
 
 It will not be supposed that any formal attempt 
 
 * Rev. R. S. Storrs, Jr., D.D., of Brooklyn. The place he occupies in 
 that community will justify the personal reference, if I express the joy I 
 feel in adding to many earlier bonds of attachment between him and me, 
 this coincidence of studies in the common prosecution of one of the 
 most munificent public designs that any single American benefactor 
 has initiated. The Lectures of Dr. Storrs were published by the " In 
 stitute" in 1857. 
 
SOCIETY A DIVINE APPOINTMENT. 3 
 
 is to be made to demonstrate to a sceptical under 
 standing the fact that there is a God. Not only 
 that primary religious truth, which even Revelation 
 assumes in its first sentence, is supposed to be 
 granted, but many related and dependent truths 
 besides. The real infirmity of Christian faith is not 
 that the being and attributes of the Deity are denied, 
 but that they lie off from the living apprehension 
 of the spiritual nature. Much as we distrust the 
 religious competency of the intellect, the brain does 
 not play, by any means, the worst part in atheism : 
 its most frequent error in that respect is, that it 
 fancies itself an atheist when it is not, but is only 
 playing atheist, at the instigation of pride, or appe 
 tite, or disappointed ambition, or some other dema 
 gogue in the rabble of the passions. The grand 
 necessity of religion at present, I conceive, is not to 
 find out whether God is, but where he is : that is, 
 to apprehend his immediate activity and Lordship in 
 the world of our life, so joined with it as he could 
 only be through the incarnation. I take one of the 
 departments of that life, lying midway between the 
 individual consciousness or personality and outward 
 nature : Humanity in its social combinations ; and 
 with the twofold object of gaining a rational inter 
 pretation of society itself, by investigating it from 
 its only centre, or point of original power, and of 
 
4 SOCIETY A DIVINE APPOINTMENT. 
 
 showing how it lies perpetually within the conscious 
 presence, and subject to the instant control, of the 
 Infinite Spirit. So far as my inquiries have ex 
 tended, there is not, in any literature, anything like 
 a systematic or philosophical attempt to trace the 
 laws, or to unfold the significance of Human Soci 
 ety, under this, or indeed any other, very compre 
 hensive principle of analysis and combination. I do 
 not aspire to supply that deficiency. Neither the 
 original purpose of Mr. Graham, nor your own view 
 of what would be most useful, as it seems to me, 
 would lead us here to that more speculative method 
 of treatment, which would be natural if a pure phi 
 losophy of the subject were the object contemplated. 
 But you have come together to enter on a study in 
 that direction with me to-night. I cannot help tell 
 ing you how much it adds to my own interest, 
 beforehand, in the evenings we are to spend together, 
 that, by the continuity, regularity, and frequency 
 assigned to these exercises by the judgment of the 
 "Institute," our assembly takes on something of the 
 character of a domestic circle, where speaker and 
 hearers are constantly coming into a more direct and 
 simple relation with one another, illustrating, in fact, 
 much belonging to the very theme we have to 
 unfold. You will be patient with defects. You 
 will take pains to notice the distribution and mu- 
 
SOCIETY A DIVINE APPOINTMENT. 5 
 
 tual connection of the parts. And you will remem 
 ber how much, both from the necessary restrictions 
 of time, and from limitations more obstinate than 
 those, must be left out. 
 
 The lectures will be arranged in the following or 
 der of subjects. In the 1st, Society will be consid 
 ered as a Divine Appointment in itself; in the 2d, 
 as a Living Instrument of Divine Thought; in the 
 3d, as a Discipline of Individual Character; in the 
 4th, as a School of Mutual Assistance ; in the 5th, 
 as to Social Theories ; in the 6th, as a Motive 
 and Incentive to the Intellect; in the 7th, as hold 
 ing in itself Laws of its own Progression; and in 
 the 8th, as the Sphere of the earthly Kingdom of 
 Christ. 
 
 Taking Lord Bacon s division of human knowledge 
 into History, Philosophy, and Poetry, our subject 
 cannot be assigned exclusively to the province of 
 either one, but it touches them all. It opens into 
 History, for, as Dr. Arnold has so well said, " The 
 general idea of history seems to be that it is the 
 biography of a society having a common life." It 
 has to do with Philosophy, for we are to regard 
 this Social Life pre-eminently as under laws, laws 
 that condition and regulate its growth, laws whose 
 wonderful working, from Eden in the past to the 
 mysterious issues of the future, furnish to the phi- 
 
6 SOCIETY A DIVINE APPOINTMENT. 
 
 losophic mind its profoundest problem. It includes 
 the source of Poetry, because it is out of the rise 
 and conflict, the ecstacy and suffering, the joy and 
 agony, of those very passions which form the ele 
 ments of social change, that imagination builds its 
 most august and wondrous visions, and the poet, 
 tragic, lyric, or epic, sings his immortal song. 
 
 Remark that Society, as we are here to consider 
 it, is not a society formally organized, combined into 
 a commonwealth, constituted into a political unity. 
 Universal society has not as yet taken that shape. 
 Whether such a sublime consummation is ever to 
 be; whether the nations of the earth are yet to be 
 drawn under a single outward economy, not only 
 moral but civil, and the golden index of old pro 
 phecy be seen pointing to a Fold which shall be also 
 a State, the Law going forth from some central Je 
 rusalem, and all nations flowing into it, this may be 
 a question for faith, a dream for hope. The prin 
 ciples now to be discussed are independent of that 
 speculation. They stand even in society as it now 
 is, broken, of diverse races, of warring tribes, 
 a multitude, but not" a proper union : inasmuch as 
 beneath all its variety of polities, and all its diver 
 sity of culture, and all its hostility of interests, 
 there runs, deep down, a mighty bond of oneness 
 after all, best expressed by the simple word human, 
 
SOCIETY A DIVINE APPOINTMENT. 7 
 
 making each man, despite every difference, brother 
 to every other man; just as one comprehensive 
 principle encircles and pervades all varieties of veg 
 etable production, from hyssop to cedar, or one ar 
 tistic design winds into a profound harmony all the 
 unequal keys and notes and instruments of an 
 orchestra, and all the measures, themes, voices, and 
 even pauses, of an oratorio. For, as a scholar in 
 the oldest English university* has finely said: "Uni 
 versal history has enriched our language with a 
 word that never passed the lips of Plato, Socrates, 
 or Aristotle, the word mankind. Where the Greek 
 saw barbarians, we see brethren. Where he saw 
 heroes and demigods, we see parents and ancestors. 
 Where he saw nations, we see mankind many ways 
 severed, but moving to one destiny, and bearing 
 one image of God ; as where the ancient astronomic 
 observer saw separate spheres in the sky, we see 
 a single system, balanced in itself and harmonized 
 by one centralizing attraction." 
 
 At present, I ask you to contemplate society, 
 under a somewhat introductory and general aspect, 
 as a Divine appointment in itself. And this may 
 be set forth the more clearly, if we seek the proofs, 
 first, in the nature of the thing, Society ; secondly, 
 
 * A. P. Stanley, now " Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History" at 
 Oxford, in his Inaugural Address. 
 
8 SOCIETY A DIVINE APPOINTMENT. 
 
 in its origin; and thirdly, in its historical develop 
 ment. 
 
 I. To know society, either as to its composition 
 or its functions, doubtless we must first know man. 
 Man is the prime material of mankind. Society is 
 simply human nature existing in its natural combi 
 nations. It is all the faculties of man in one 
 mode of their exhibition, reason, will, conscience, 
 affection. Only, consider, the combination is such, 
 that the humanity itself could not be complete with 
 out it. There are capacities in man to which so 
 ciety is just as necessary as light to the eye or 
 food to the body. You cannot do your best, put 
 forth your strongest, live out your noblest, save in 
 a social state, where every other man is free to do 
 the same. In one sense, man is greater than so 
 ciety; as the simple personality is greater in itself 
 than in any one of its modes of being and acting. 
 Yet, society is a grander interest than the inter 
 est of any one man. If there must be a conflict 
 of rights or privileges, those of many are dearer 
 than those of one. But, when we come to duties, 
 or the right, the collision is an impossibility. No 
 public duty can be made up of any bundle where 
 of one stick is a broken conscience. So that no 
 social advantage can ever override one man s sacred 
 integrity. Private wrong can never be an ingredi- 
 
SOCIETY A DIVINE APPOINTMENT. 9 
 
 ent of public right. Privileges may be waived ; 
 conveniences sacrificed. This hurts nobody; it is 
 the glory of heroic hearts ; and society cannot live 
 richly without it. But duties are inalienable and 
 inviolable. Society, like all God s workmanship, ex 
 ists to preserve and to multiply them. 
 
 One writer defines Society as a system of mer 
 cantile exchanges, evidently on the same low con 
 ceptions of humanity, and the same materialistic 
 maxims of philosophy, that would limit the ends 
 of Government to the protection of property. The 
 fatal flaw of both notions is, that they ignore the 
 whole upper register of human sentiments, mistake 
 comfort for well-being, and degrade the lofty com 
 merce of spirit with spirit into the vulgar bargain 
 ing of political selfishness. 
 
 What, then, is our definition of Society ? It is 
 the co-existence of men, and families of men, on 
 terms of mutual intercourse, for certain common 
 ends, under the Providence of God. Other crea 
 tures are gregarious. Mankind, alone, are social. 
 There are herds of cattle, flocks of birds, shoals of 
 fishes ; but in none of these, society. If mankind 
 were associated only to eat, sleep, hunt, and secure 
 animal protection, those brute terms would apply. 
 As they forget their destiny, they do degenerate 
 into droves. But, for society, there must be some- 
 
10 SOCIETY A DIVINE APPOINTMENT. 
 
 thing more than an affinity for living together. The 
 object of the congregating must be the educating, 
 maturing, completing, of a human nature ; rational, 
 affectional, immortal. Go back to the beginning. 
 Given, the planet in a raw state, centuries of time, 
 and man undeveloped or apostatized; required, to 
 make the earth the abode of a civilized, Christian 
 brotherhood. These are the conditions of the prob 
 lem. Human society is ordained to give it a prac 
 tical solution. 
 
 To elucidate further the doctrine of society, as 
 we are here to consider it, refer to the nomencla 
 ture of science, and so disengage it from other 
 things with which it might possibly be confounded. 
 This doctrine of society is distinct from Anthropol 
 ogy: Anthropology deals with man simply in his 
 relation to other parts of the animal kingdom, as 
 a member of the zoological system, marks the 
 points of difference between him and the creatures 
 below him; a branch of natural history. It is dis 
 tinct, too, from Ethnology : Ethnology deals with the 
 races of men, marks their difference from one an 
 other, and notices individuals only as belonging to 
 one or another of these races. It is distinct from 
 Ethics : Ethics is the science of duties, the social 
 duties being considered, but not exclusively ; besides, 
 we have other things in society to notice here be- 
 
SOCIETY A DIVINE APPOINTMENT. 11 
 
 sides its morality. It is distinct from Theology, 
 of course : Theology deals with the nature and 
 methods of God, and thus of the relations of man 
 with the Divine Life above him; while our subject, 
 though immersed altogether in the truths of religion, 
 touches Theology proper only on one of its sides, 
 or one section of its circle. Finally, it is distinct 
 from Political Economy: Political Economy is the 
 science of those laws which regulate the produc 
 tion, distribution, and consumption of the things in 
 men s possession which have an exchangeable value; 
 in the view of Political Economy alone, the great 
 threefold object of social existence would be "secu 
 rity of property, freedom of industry, and modera 
 tion in public expenditure." These are actual social 
 interests, essentials of social welfare. But society 
 exists for something beyond its own possessions. 
 
 Let us not hesitate, then, to plant our feet 
 firmly, even by definition, on the broad position 
 that Society is a Divine Appointment. The Former 
 who made us, made us to be social. In the orig 
 inal plan of his constitution, man was not meant 
 to live alone. Though it were possible for every 
 individual of the species to reach the perfection of 
 his private nature in a solitary state, which it is 
 not, still, the purposes of God, in his creation, 
 would not be answered. Not so many isolated 
 
12 SOCIETY A DIVINE APPOINTMENT. 
 
 units, but a Social Body, was clearly the thought 
 that lay in the mind of God when he said, " Let 
 us make man in our own image." Association is 
 not an accident befalling man on his way. It is 
 an inherent promise, want, fact, put into his com 
 plex organization at the start. The social state is 
 not a circumstance, but a law : not an economy, 
 but a principle. 
 
 Accordingly, as we might expect, in a social state 
 forms of human energy and character come to light 
 which never could be found in the separate per 
 son. I have said that to know society, we must first 
 know man. Let it be now remembered, however, 
 that by knowing an isolated specimen of man, we 
 do not know all that belongs to the generic idea of 
 man, or man absolute. Put with that first truth 
 this also, that as we must study society through 
 man, so we must study man through society. Not 
 only his outward institutions, like Seats of Learning, 
 Institutes of Science, Houses of Mercy, Systems of 
 Commerce, which are themselves a positive good to 
 the individual, but inward traits of the soul, apper 
 tain to this social provision of his nature. It is 
 enough to name here affection, conscience, self-sacri 
 fice, sympathy, pity, the loftiest attributes of Hu 
 manity, most resembling man to his Maker, of which 
 more is to be said further on. Thus, while each per- 
 
SOCIETY A DIVINE APPOINTMENT. 13 
 
 son may be a specimen of the general capacities of 
 the whole, yet in the social union, which is a com 
 pound more complex than any mixed by science, 
 new and independent witnesses come forth to de 
 clare the glory of God ; just as in chemistry, it 
 has been beautifully shown, that while the combin 
 ing attraction is between particle and particle, there 
 are yet results, phenomena, colors, uses, and even 
 forces, in the combination, not found in the seve 
 ral atoms at all. What was latent in the ele 
 ments becomes apparent in the compound; and what 
 was dormant in the parts, is active in the whole. 
 
 II. Secondly, the social body bears the stamp 
 of its Maker on its origin. This has been denied. 
 On both sides, the question has been argued and 
 learnedly reasoned, by thinkers, however, whose con 
 clusions have been generally much influenced either 
 by their philosophical or political doctrines, instead 
 of being purely evolved from the elements, and de 
 termined by the merits, of the case. Indeed, the 
 origin of society has hardly been considered inde 
 pendently of the origin of political institutions. 
 
 One theory of society makes it to spring, not 
 from the Divine will, but out of a mutual league 
 between man and man, purely human in its scope, 
 purely conventional in its principles, purely acci 
 dental in its ultimate destination, God dethroned 
 
14 SOCIETY A DIVINE APPOINTMENT. 
 
 from its control, and all Divine signatures swept 
 away from its face. Of this theory the ablest ad 
 vocate is Thomas Hobbes,* "the philosopher of 
 Malmesbury," born 1588, and writing chiefly about 
 the middle of the seventeenth century. By his 
 system, man finds himself separate from his kind, 
 existing for his own pleasure, "a solitary, selfish 
 animal." As soon as he meets his fellow-man, there 
 springs up a conflict of interests ; and, as interest 
 is the only object, they fight. Hostility is the 
 first impulse, repulsion without attraction. Univer 
 sal and incessant war is the state of nature. This 
 notion Hobbes supports by such sophistical asser 
 tions as that men everywhere arm themselves when 
 they take journeys, which they do not; that they 
 lock their chests and bolt their doors at night, 
 which they do, only not against the community 
 generally, but against a few thieves and burglars 
 whom Law has not yet succeeded in overtaking 
 and getting arrested. This fighting savage, how 
 ever, says Hobbes, finds the universal combat in 
 convenient and unprofitable. He must eat when 
 he is hungry, and so prepare his food ; rest when 
 he is tired, and so prepare his shelter. Industry 
 
 * " Leviathan ; or the Matter, Form and Power of a Commonwealth." 
 See also Encyclopedia Britannica, Preliminary Dissertation I., by Dugald 
 Stewart ; Cousin s critique in his Cours de la Histoire de la Philo 
 sophic ; and Jouffroy s "Ethics." 
 
SOCIETY A DIVINE APPOINTMENT. 15 
 
 and comfort require a suspension of strife. All 
 parties bethink themselves of a mutual agreement 
 to let each other alone, and respect each other s 
 property, so far and so long as self-interest pre 
 scribes. Hence the restraints and bonds of social 
 and political being. The next step is to guard 
 against new confusions by committing the supreme 
 authority to a single head. An absolute sovereignty, 
 with indefeasible powers, is the result; for any dis 
 turbance of these would throw back the whole Body 
 into the primitive discord. The will of the ruler is 
 the standard of right and wrong. Despotism for 
 the State, Atheism for the Soul, Slavery for the 
 People ; legitimate results of a system that starts 
 with making a godless selfishness the fundamental 
 motive of Social Union. Personal traits often throw 
 light on intellectual conclusions. Hobbes w r as con 
 stitutionally a victim of fear, frightened all his life ; 
 the spirit of terror, he says, born with him.* 
 And his biographer says, as he lay dying, he re 
 marked to an attendant, " I shall be glad to find 
 a hole to creep out of the world at." To be sure, 
 his theory of the world was constructed as if it 
 were a place to be crept out of. 
 
 Rousseau, whose erratic genius was doubtless one 
 of the efficient causes of the French Revolution 
 
 * " Meque metumque simul," arc his words. 
 
16 SOCIETY A DIVINE APPOINTMENT. 
 
 and of modern individualism, a writer more pene 
 trating than comprehensive, and more brilliant than 
 profound, starts with much the same ideas as 
 Hobbes, but carries them out to totally opposite 
 consequences. With him, too, orderly society, though 
 nominally required by the pure reason, is little else 
 than the result of compromises of self-interest. In 
 his treatise* on the social compact, abounding both 
 in agitating truths, and specious fallacies, he main 
 tains that man voluntarily lays down his natural 
 liberty, or throws it into the common stock, to avail 
 himself of the protection, and more permanent free 
 dom, of a Social Body. But with him, as not 
 with Hobbes, the Body Politic must be a Demo 
 cracy. There is no sovereign but the people. In 
 all his theory, and with a heart by no means 
 barren of generous impulses, he misses that in 
 wrought law of a disinterested social action and 
 joy, which, a divine germ, planted by God, has 
 been perverted and depraved, but never annihilated. 
 He forgets the Heavenly Thought, out of which all 
 communities really grow. And, by his strange and 
 unhappy misconceptions of Christianity, partly attrib- 
 
 * Du Contrat Social, 1762. See also his "Discourse upon the 
 Origin and Foundation of the Inequality among Mankind," London, 
 1761. 
 
 For the argument in which Hume combats the theory of Locke, see 
 his essay on "The Original Contract." 
 
SOCIETY A DIVINE APPOINTMENT. 17 
 
 utable, no doubt, to a Church that misrepresented 
 it, he lost the very key to a complete social order. 
 On the other hand, it is maintained, as by Hugo 
 Grotius, the Dutch contemporary of Ilobbes, a states 
 man and a jurist, that though government is strictly 
 human in its origin, it is sanctioned by Providence ;* 
 that there are principles of social justice, which 
 would be binding on men living together in a state 
 of nature, even though there were no organized 
 government to enforce them; that neither for the 
 ideas nor the obligations of right does man depend 
 on positive institutions ; but, on the contrary, that 
 there is a "natural law, coeval with the human 
 constitution, from which positive institutions derive 
 all their force." Seventeen centuries before, the 
 great Roman Orator and Philosopher, Cicero, had 
 announced essentially the same doctrine in that no 
 ble passage : " Right reason is itself a law ; conge 
 nial to the feelings of nature ; diffused among all 
 men; uniform; eternal; calling us imperiously to our 
 duty. Nor does it speak one language at Rome 
 and another at Athens, varying from place to place, 
 or time to time ; but it addresses itself to all na 
 tions and to all ages, deriving its authority from 
 the Common Sovereign of the Universe and carry 
 ing home its sanctions to every breast."f 
 
 * De Jure Belli ac Pacis, lib. i., cap. iv. f Vid. Frag. De Repub., lib. iii. 
 
 2 
 
18 SOCIETY A DIVINE APPOINTMENT. 
 
 Montesquieu, the great Frenchman, sometimes call 
 ed, by a superb exaggeration, the Legislator of the 
 Human Family, grasps the subject with a stronger 
 hand, and brings to it a richer amplitude of learning. 
 He refutes the theory of Hobbes logically, proving 
 that the passion of fear, instead of causing society, 
 presupposes the existence of society. With a much 
 truer insight than his opponents, he makes the de 
 sire of living in society the fourth of the original 
 laws of nature, the other three being the desire of 
 peace, the desire of nourishment, and the mutual 
 inclination of the sexes.* 
 
 Coleridgef repeats the refutation of Montesquieu, 
 and adds to it the very important principle, that 
 "fear, in itself, is utterly incapable of producing 
 any regular, continuous, and calculable effect, even 
 on an individual," still less in organizing a commu 
 nity. He ascribes all social order to " the spirit 
 of law," as a natural, inborn, constraining power. 
 
 Now, if the object of the present argument were 
 to show the reasons for believing in the existence 
 of God, it would be pertinent to investigate these 
 theories, with reference to the indications actually 
 given, in the social state, that it sprang from the 
 mind of a designer. Assuming, as we do, the fact 
 of a Creator, and only seeking marks of his presence 
 * I? Esprit des Lois. \ In " The Friend." 
 
SOCIETY A DIVINE APPOINTMENT. 19 
 
 and character in this particular sphere, society, the 
 facts which these theories generally agree in recogniz 
 ing are sufficient for our purpose. For, they all go 
 to show, that the moment men began to be, they 
 began to be social ; that in their social combina 
 tions they found utility, welfare, happiness ; and 
 that, by the very uniformity of the attraction which 
 draws them together, they are under a common 
 principle of beneficence. Every Philosophy has to 
 assent to the scriptural declaration, that it was "not 
 good for man to be alone." Even the paradox of 
 Housseau, that a natural state is better than a civ 
 ilized, will not contradict this ; for it is in a natu 
 ral society, not a natural solitude, that he finds his 
 Arcadian bliss and his golden age. In the very 
 initiation, the origin, of society, therefore, we see 
 those signs of a Power, and Wisdom, and Goodness 
 Divine, which afterwards unroll and expand into 
 broader and brighter demonstrations. 
 
 This, however, we cannot fail to notice, in pass 
 ing; that, so far from all the conveniences of soci 
 ety existing by the express stipulation of human 
 beings themselves, another law starts into action at 
 the very outset, viz., that even when men are 
 promoting their own interests, pursuing their own 
 plans, bargaining for their own safety and aggran 
 dizement, all the while they are unconsciously serv- 
 
20 SOCIETY A DIVINE APPOINTMENT. 
 
 ing each other s weal. Each promotes inevitably the 
 good of his neighbor. The first step in search of 
 protection inures to the benefit of the whole. In 
 the rudest primitive condition, man does not move to 
 wards his fellow, without a benignant voice saying 
 from heaven, through him, " Let no man seek 
 his own, but every man his neighbor s wealth. For 
 no man liveth to himself." 
 
 III. Thirdly, let us advance from the origin of 
 society to its development, watching at each step for 
 the impress of the Maker. 
 
 Properly, this branch of the subject reaches back 
 not only to the first appearance of mankind on the 
 planet, but beyond that, to the preparation of the 
 globe itself, through vast cycles of time, to be the 
 theatre of that development. From that hour when 
 the earth, cradled in space, swung shapeless and 
 rayless in its swaddling-bands of vapor, it was 
 making ready for the family that now range its 
 continents, and conquer its wildernesses, and sail 
 its seas, and put a girdle about its circumference, 
 and rejoice in its fruits. Modern geology has left 
 this no longer the guess of a fanciful hypothesis ; it 
 is the splendid demonstration of science. Through 
 all the successive formations that have slowly built 
 up and fashioned the outer rind of the sphere, 
 primary, secondary, tertiary, plutonic, stratified, and 
 
SOCIETY A DIVINE APPOINTMENT. 21 
 
 alluvial, from Silurian to Pleistocene, not only was 
 the process steady and progressive in the inanimate 
 world towards just that state wherein the race 
 of men could subsist, but by a marvellous corres 
 pondence, and through direct successive acts of the 
 Almighty s creative will, the several divisions of 
 animals in their advancing, exhibit a corresponding 
 uniform ascent and approach to the physical appear 
 ance of man, invertebrates, fishes, reptiles, birds, 
 mammals, man. The most deep-sighted students of 
 nature to-day will tell you, and prove to you, that 
 in that inconceivably distant past, when God cre 
 ated the first zoophyte, man was distinctly in his 
 thought. Cuvier, the most philosophic of natural 
 ists up to his day, had just completed his theo 
 retic arrangement of what the exact scale of a 
 complete animal kingdom, in the order of creation, 
 should be; scarcely was it finished, when, by a 
 coincidence unmatched in wonder and beauty, per 
 haps, by anything in the realms of discovery, geol 
 ogy came, took up the solid volume of the rocks, 
 turned over its stony leaves, and spelling out pa 
 tiently the fossil characters, read off in the order 
 of time, zone by zone, page by page, the confir 
 mation of the great zoologist s conclusion.* " Fi 
 nally, last born of creation, man appears upon the 
 * Save at ll two special points," explained by Hugh Miller. 
 
22 SOCIETY A DIVINE APPOINTMENT. 
 
 scene, in his several races and varieties ; the sub 
 lime arch of animal being at length receives its 
 key-stone ; and the finished work stands up com 
 plete from foundation to pinnacle, at once an ad 
 mirably adjusted occupant of space, and a wondrous 
 monument of Divine classification as it exists in 
 time/ 
 
 " From harmony, from heavenly harmony, 
 This universal frame began ; 
 From harmony to harmony, 
 Through all the compass of the notes it ran 
 The diapason closing full in man." 
 
 And not only is the pre-Adainite creation thus pro 
 phetic of the individual man, all the old types of 
 life met and fulfilled in him ; not only is the sin 
 gle human brain so " built up as to assume, in 
 turn, the form of the brain of a fish, reptile, bird, 
 mammiferous quadruped, till it takes the unique 
 character of a brain that is human;" not only, as 
 Oken said, is the unit, man, thus "the sum total 
 of all the animals ;" but of man social, also, a simi 
 lar prediction is likewise shadowed forth. For, as 
 Coleridge so beautifully asks, " Who that watched 
 their ways with an understanding heart could con 
 template the filial and loyal bee, the home-building, 
 wedded, and divorceless swallow, and above all the 
 manifoldly intelligent ant tribes, with their common- 
 
SOCIETY A DIVINE APPOINTMENT. 23 
 
 wealths aud confederacies, their warriors and miners, 
 the husband folk that fold in their tiny flocks on the 
 honey leaf, and the virgin sister with the holy in 
 stincts of maternal love detached and in self-less 
 purity, and not say in himself, behold the shadow 
 of approaching humanity, the sun rising from be 
 hind in the kindling morn of creation?" 
 
 So it appears, when interpreters of sufficient in 
 sight have come to decipher them, that from the 
 very dawn of time, harbingers of human society 
 inhabited the scene of its manifestations ; that the 
 race itself, no less than the supreme fact of all its 
 history, the Redemption, began outwardly to be 
 set in order then, in the very frame of things ; 
 and that the inarticulate signs of nature echo the 
 supernatural Word, in preparing the way of the 
 "Lamb that is slain from the foundation of the 
 worldr 
 
 Pass next to the physical materials of this same 
 scene of social development, and see how, at the 
 hour of its beginning, these all afforded facilities 
 for the experiment. Social man, for instance, would 
 want shelter; and the wood and the stone and the 
 other architectural conditions were there. lie want 
 ed implements ; and Tubal Cain, smiter of brass and 
 iron, found metals and ores for his use, and Jubal 
 became "the father of all such as handle the harp 
 
24 SOCIETY A DIVINE APPOINTMENT. 
 
 and pipe/ instruments of social festivity. He 
 wanted clothing, and found fleeces, skins, and the 
 materials of vegetable fabrics. He wanted to trans 
 port his chattels from one settlement to another, and 
 beasts of burden knelt to take their load, and fol 
 lowed his call. His wandering flocks made him a 
 nomad ; he wanted temporary dwellings that he 
 could strike and bear forward ; and the hides of 
 beasts and platted and woven textures were his 
 tents. The whole material structure God had ar 
 ranged into facilities for giving, not the hermit a 
 cave, not the recluse a cell, not the anchorite a 
 den, but society a home. 
 
 Or, turn to the diversities of the surface of the 
 globe; its varieties of territorial form, inequalities of 
 elevation, of climate, of productions, intermixture of 
 water and land. " The Empire of Climate," says 
 Montesquieu, "is the first, the most powerful of all 
 empires." What plan has the Creator written there, 
 for society? Is it not a clear design of social stimu 
 lus and energy, of dispersion modified by local attach 
 ment, of constant migration and colonization balanced 
 by the tenacity of domestic habit, the very state 
 most favorable to the swiftest and widest social devel 
 opment ? " The continents are made for human so 
 cieties, as the body is made for the soul."* 
 
 * Professor Guyot. 
 
SOCIETY A DIVINE APPOINTMENT. 25 
 
 Take the earliest age for an example. As the 
 Patriarchal families, urged by necessity, swarmed 
 and spread, they would strike, even in the same 
 continent, upon new resources in the soil, new pro 
 vocatives to enterprise, new pursuits for wealth, 
 new motives to industrial competition. As a recent 
 writer* suggests, " If the physical geography of 
 Western Asia resembled then what we know it to 
 be now, almost every remove of the tribes would 
 exhibit fresh variety." Inland exchanges would 
 spring up. Healthy adventures would harden the 
 muscle, and expand the mind, and enrich the blood. 
 "The corn and timber of the terrace-regions would 
 be bartered for the products of the land of Havi- 
 lah, where there is gold, and bdellium, and the 
 onyx stone ; the delicious fruits and fragrant balms 
 of the lowlands for the rock-salt of Anatolia; and 
 horses from the house of Togarmahf for the herds 
 fed on the table lands of Iran." The twenty- 
 seventh chapter of Ezekiel s prophecy is a graphic 
 inventory of this oriental traffic as it had extended 
 in his day. 
 
 In later centuries, on broader regions, the same 
 geographic education of society went on. Provi 
 dence was still the Teacher. On the uplands north- 
 
 * Harris in " Patriarchy." 
 
 f Ezekiel s name for Armenia. 
 
26 SOCIETY A DIVINE APPOINTMENT. 
 
 ward, the hunter chased his game. From the plains 
 of Scythia, suited to pastoral emigration, the roving 
 pilgrims traversed the districts of the East, and de 
 nied through the isthmus of Suez. The alluvial 
 bottoms of the Nile installed a permanent agricul 
 ture. Then, as the expanding enterprise of society 
 required it, the Mediterranean offered its tranquil bo 
 som as a highway to the explorer and the merchant. 
 Indeed, perhaps no single instance of a geographic 
 adaptation is more striking, than that the nascent 
 skill and power of the Human Hace should have 
 struck, just as they did, on that water of magnificent 
 memories, witness of the solemn fate of empires, re 
 flecting in its placid face the loveliest scenery of 
 nature and the proudest monuments of art, washing 
 twenty-five hundred miles of classic coast, bewailing 
 with its storms such tragedies of nations and courts ! 
 Admitting its tideless waves by the pillars of Her 
 cules, for a rude and timorous, yet persistent, navi 
 gation, it exchanged camels for fleets, ships of the 
 desert for ships of the sea, till, in the days of 
 Aristotle, no less than two hundred and fifty mar 
 itime cities dotted its shores. Acting itself by the 
 same twofold law that evermore governs the true 
 growth of communities, like the centripetal and cen 
 trifugal forces in nature, it at once scattered* men 
 
 * " Oceano dissociabili." Hor., b. i., c. 3. 
 
SOCIETY A DIVINE APPOINTMENT. 27 
 
 abroad, and bound them together; scattered them 
 by its facilities of travel ; bound them by its facil 
 ities of trade. Then, as they pushed away from 
 the sea, rivers dispersed them along their winding 
 channels; hills proved and quickened their hardi 
 hood; forests invited and disciplined their strength. 
 A formidable rampart of European mountains kept 
 the brave sons of the North in their German woods 
 till Providence had ripened the time for their rough 
 wedlock with the softer sinews of the South. An 
 ocean held America in reserve till the old world 
 needed the new and commerce was equal to the 
 Atlantic. Throughout, the features of the earth 
 served the social tuition of men. And every moral 
 peculiarity thus developed, here or there, by visible 
 nature, would gradually modify, through mutual in 
 tercourse, all the members of the social family.* 
 
 Furthermore, and still keeping your place in the 
 material or physical world rather than the interior 
 or world of ideas, but yet coming in closer and 
 
 * See Niebuhr s Lectures on "Ancient Ethnography and Geogra- 
 
 Pl .v." 
 
 " Undoubtedly, the relation of man and nature is not a relation of 
 effect to cause, but man and nature are the great effects which, com 
 ing from the same cause, bear the same characters ; so that the earth 
 and he who inhabits it, man and nature, are in perfect harmony." 
 COUSIN S History of Philosophy, sect, viii., second series. 
 
 Napoleon deduced the whole history of Italy from the Italian terrri- 
 tory. 
 
28 SOCIETY A DIVINE APPOINTMENT. 
 
 closer to that, read the design of our social educa 
 tion and development in the Human Body. What 
 geography is to the spirit of history, this corpo 
 real organization, this fleshly microcosm, is to the 
 spirit of individual man. It is the link of a visi 
 ble connection between the individual soul and the 
 external world, between the personal solitude and 
 the great universe abroad. Notice, then, how ad 
 mirably the body is contrived for a medium of so 
 cial communication, a vehicle of commerce in thoughts 
 and feelings, between man and man. Indeed, to 
 such a degree is this destination written out on 
 our frame, that, but for the relationships and inter 
 changes of society, we could not guess why it is 
 fashioned and furnished as it is. To a large ex 
 tent, it would be a machine without a purpose, a 
 watch without a spring, an engine without the fire, 
 an exquisite electric apparatus without the glowing 
 current that runs and leaps and sparkles in its 
 appointed lines. Examine, in detail, its conforma 
 tion, its whole, its parts, its limbs and motor-forces, 
 its nerves and senses, its fibre and functions, its 
 sensitive receptiveness, its quickness to all impres 
 sion, its beautiful balance of passive and active capa 
 bilities, its forth-putting energy, its power of positive 
 achievement, and see how expressly it is designed 
 for both giving and taking, in a reciprocal, social 
 
SOCIETY A DIVINE APPOINTMENT. 29 
 
 existence. Its hands are the pliant, flexile agents 
 whereby, in ten thousand graceful, noble, helpful 
 offices, heart and will in one man minister to heart 
 and will in another, - - factors, scribes, executors, 
 porters, artizans ; their friendly grasp, at meeting, 
 the very symbol and firm pledge how each is 
 bound to each. Its feet are the obedient servants 
 and steady carriers by which kindred, neighbors, 
 pilgrims, maintain their mutual connections, sped by 
 friendship, made nimble by charity. Its eyes are 
 not only informers and mirrors for the heads they 
 shine in ; they are the subtle and swift conveyers 
 and publishers of every varying light and shade of 
 passion, their silent, unconscious, but effectual de 
 clarations revealing many a sad or mirthful, awful 
 or glorious secret, pleading, kindling, chilling, tempt 
 ing, subduing, inspiring. Nay, that throbbing cen 
 tral muscle, the heart itself, that which is the 
 essential, vital organ of each individual economy, 
 does not the common figure of language make it 
 the special seat and organ of those affections which 
 join individuals to one another, and thus, not an or 
 gan only, but the one great organizer of the world ? 
 Select from among the corporeal faculties only 
 two, for a more complete illustration of the social 
 significance interwoven in the body; the expression 
 of the human face, and the articulation of speech. 
 
30 SOCIETY A DIVINE APPOINTMENT. 
 
 More than we are apt to remember, the human 
 face implies society, because it is so facile and effi 
 cient as a means of inter-communication. It is a 
 proclamation of sentiments, which the shrewdest and 
 ablest facial dissimulators can never wholly manage. 
 Napoleon, having much to keep back from other 
 men, and knowing the danger of betraying his emo 
 tions, drilled his features as systematically as his 
 battalions, and they tell us of his power of instan 
 taneously discharging his countenance of all expres 
 sion. But this diplomacy of the face sometimes 
 failed him as disastrously as the tactics of his 
 troops at Waterloo. With all people, the counte 
 nance is a basis of confidence or suspicion, love or 
 hate, approach or reserve. If we were made for 
 Robinson Crusoes, every man to his solitary island, 
 the face would not have been made as it is. It 
 is the exhibition-room of the emotions. It is the 
 parade-ground of the mind s styles and uniforms. 
 It is the unguarded rendezvous of all the bodi 
 less couriers of brain and breast. Or, as has been 
 said, " The countenance is the painted stage and 
 natural robing-room of the soul. It is no single 
 dress, but wardrobes of costumes innumerable. Our 
 seven ages have their liveries there, of every dye 
 and cut, from the cradle to the bier ; ruddy cheeks, 
 merry dimples, and plump stuffing for youth ; line 
 
SOCIETY A DIVINE APPOINTMENT. 31 
 
 and furrow for many-thought ed age ; carnation for 
 the bridal morning, and heavenlier paleness for the 
 new-found mother. All the legions of desires and 
 hopes have badges there at hand. It is the loom 
 where the inner man weaves, on the instant, the 
 garment of his mood, to dissolve again into cur 
 rent life when the hour is past. There it is that 
 love puts on its celestial rosy red ; there lovely 
 shame blushes and mean shame looks earthy ; there 
 hatred contracts its wicked white ; there jealousy 
 picks from its own drawer its bodice of settled 
 green; there anger clothes itself in black, and de 
 spair in the grayness of the dead; there hypocrisy 
 plunders the rest, and takes all their dresses by 
 turns ; sorrow and penitence, too, have sackcloth 
 there ; and genius and inspiration, in immortal hours, 
 encinctured there with the unsought halo, stand forth 
 in the supremacy of light."* 
 
 The other great corporeal evidence that man is 
 made for society, as well as society for him, is 
 found in language, and especially language as uttered 
 through the voice. It is a striking symbol of the 
 socially reconciling character of our religion, that it 
 was inaugurated by a Gift of Tongues. f If the si- 
 
 * James Garth Wilkinson. 
 
 f " Poena linguarum dispersit homines, donum linguanim dispersos 
 in unum populum collegit." GROTIUS. 
 
32 SOCIETY A DIVINE APPOINTMENT. 
 
 lent face is expressive, much more is that one spe 
 cific organ of expression, speech. The first articu 
 late sound the infant breathes is a prophecy of 
 society, a promise of his own development into 
 social forms of life. In that complex and intricate 
 little trumpet, the human larynx, so delicately 
 wrought, so majestic in the compass and variations 
 of its resonance, with its minute ligaments and car- 
 tileges, its fine muscles and soft secretions, God has 
 seated a token that man was not intended for a her 
 mit, whether you regard the faint and early cry by 
 which the listening mother knows and rejoices that 
 her child is not born dumb, or the seraphic melody 
 when the Swedish singer and saint, blending the 
 words of immortal faith with the music of 
 
 " The lark at heaven s gate singing," 
 
 enchants two hemispheres, and gives new reality, in 
 every believing breast, to the everlasting assurance, 
 "I know that my Redeemer liveth." For, as another 
 has eloquently asked and answered,* " How does the 
 unseen and spiritual nature act upon surrounding 
 fellow-men, on kindred minds ? It manifests itself, 
 it enters into communion with kindred mind, chiefly 
 by the agency of articulate speech; by the twofold 
 interchangeable mystery of intelligible signs the 
 
 * Edward Everett. 
 
SOCIETY A DIVINE APPOINTMENT. 33 
 
 one a few black marks addressed to the eye, the 
 other delicate vocal undulations of the elastic air 
 addressed to the ear. To give the spoken word du 
 ration, I translate it into written character; to give 
 the written sign a vital emphasis, I translate it in 
 to vocal speech. By one divine art, the dead let 
 ter, charged with a living meaning, sounds through 
 echoing halls, and wins or storms its way to sym 
 pathetic hearts ; by another, the fleeting wavelets of 
 the air are crystallized into a most marvellous per 
 manence, and become imperishable gems of thought, 
 whose lustre no lapse of time can obscure ; while, 
 by the union of both, this incomprehensible being, 
 the mind, gently wooed from the vestal chambers 
 of our inmost nature, comes forth like a bride 
 adorned for her lordly spouse, the word ; clad in 
 the rich vesture of conversation, of argument, of 
 eloquence, of poetry, of song; to walk with him 
 the busy or secluded paths of life ; to instruct and 
 delight the living generations : ethereal essences as 
 they are, to outlive columns of brass and pyramids 
 of granite, and to descend, in eternal youth, the 
 unending highways of the ages." 
 
 I have spoken of the Divine preparation of the 
 world for the development upon it of man s social 
 propensities, of its geographical distributions as the 
 scene of that development, of the human body, as 
 
34 SOCIETY A DIVINE APPOINTMENT. 
 
 having, notwithstanding it is the peculiar property and 
 dwelling place of the individual, marvellous adapta 
 tions to the same end. To enter, here, into the sig 
 nal proofs of this purpose of God, as displayed in the 
 constitution of the interior nature, the intellect and 
 the heart, would be to anticipate topics distinctly 
 awaiting us at future occasions. Let us glance 
 briefly, however, at the traces of this appointment 
 discoverable in the obvious aspects and forms under 
 which the social spirit has been embodied. 
 
 The great whole that we call Society has been 
 arranged, by the Creator, in a system of concentric 
 circles. The first and smallest social type is the 
 Family. Its primary constituents are a man and 
 a woman, then parents and children, sometimes 
 including, in a complete patriarchate, all the de 
 scendants of the same living progenitor. The second 
 and next larger is the Tribe, a group of families. 
 The third is the State, varying greatly in extent, 
 sometimes comprised in a single city, like the State 
 of Athens, which, with all its splendor, power and 
 fame, contained only four hundred thousand inhab 
 itants, about two-thirds as many as the city of 
 New York; like the modern Italian republics, Yen- 
 ice, Florence, Genoa; but sometimes also embracing 
 vast territories and populations. Fourth is the Na 
 tion, a larger collection, determined by a common 
 
SOCIETY A DIVINE APPOINTMENT. 35 
 
 origin, a common language, and contiguous lands, 
 often including several political organizations ; as 
 Athens, Sparta, Thebes, were all included in the 
 Greek or Hellenic nation. Fifth, and last, is the 
 Empire, a mightier power, a cluster of nations, a 
 ganglion of cities and provinces, and, as the case 
 may be, a heterogeneous combination of different 
 races even, under one civil sway, but growing out 
 of no one principle of life : artificially grappled to 
 gether by military conquest, by personal ambition, by 
 the intermarriage of royal families, rarely keeping 
 their bulky and unwieldy proportions very long, but 
 stretching out till they break asunder by their own 
 weight : as the Assyrian, the Roman, the Russian, 
 the British, Empires. 
 
 At the centre of any or all of these widening cir 
 cles stands an individual man, having his social na 
 ture, waiting for alliance with his kind; responsible, 
 affectional, but fragmentary and unfinished till he 
 finds his fellows, holding his place there directly 
 from God above him, as each member of the solar 
 system holds from the sun and yet balances the rest 
 of the members. It is not a single solar system, 
 but many, the whole also heliocentric, God the 
 central and supreme Sun of all, not only an at 
 tracting Law, not only an irradiating Light, but a 
 conscious Spirit of Life and a Personal Protector. 
 
36 SOCIETY A DIVINE APPOINTMENT. 
 
 Towards each of these groups he has a character 
 and a name, Father of the families of the earth, 
 Leader of the tribes, Lord of the states, King of 
 the nations, Sovereign of the empires. 
 
 Each of these social types has its own political 
 style, or form of government, the patriarchy, the 
 chieftainship ; the democratic, aristocratic, royal, im 
 perial. But society itself is, in a sense, indepen 
 dent of all these forms. It went before their begin 
 nings. It survives their revolutions. It sees them 
 dashed to pieces, and tossed together, reconstructed, 
 or buried, and yet itself lives on, for God is with 
 it, and has uses for it. Its polities may change, 
 and wither; but by principles God has wrought into 
 its being, its own steady growth goes on. 
 
 Throughout all the departments of knowledge, in 
 our day, a careful attention cannot fail to discover a 
 universal tendency to generalization and unity to 
 bring the various operations of matter and of mind 
 under a few grand and simple laws, to detect the 
 working of identical principles of growth or formation, 
 of development and action, in all kingdoms and prov 
 inces of nature. Where before seemed disconnected 
 phenomena, scholars now find interior relations and 
 correspondences, ever discovering new species, but 
 ever reducing also the number of primal forces. 
 
SOCIETY A DIVINE APPOINTMENT. 37 
 
 Where before was confusion, there is order. Where 
 before was complication, there is simplicity. Where 
 before was utter diversity, there is unity. So that 
 the question even arises, whether there may not be 
 reached, at last, one sublime and all-comprehending 
 unity, connecting all sciences themselves by some 
 single law, and in a concord of philosophy and 
 faith, making them all one, even as all must be 
 one in the mind of God. Very certainly, this 
 holds good of that part of the great creation now 
 before us. Society is one fact, springing from one 
 purpose, having one mighty, common life at its 
 heart. Glance over all its divisions and differences, of 
 race, tradition, custom, dress, tongue, color, culture. 
 No matter how unlike the phases, no matter how 
 many the functions, no matter how various the con 
 ditions. Underneath all these is one great Social 
 Law and Life, subsisting in the Father s Spirit. 
 We are told, in Natural History, of whole forests 
 springing from a single root. Humanity itself is 
 such a manifold growth in affiliated parts. The 
 old Northmen s fable of the universal Tree whose 
 divine sap is the creative energy, was not so far 
 from the true cosmogony, or doctrine of creation, as 
 those baptized creeds which locate their Deity afar 
 from his creatures in space, or before the Flood in 
 time. The throbbing hearts that warm the world 
 
38 SOCIETY A DIVINE APPOINTMENT. 
 
 are only pulses from one central Heart of Everlast 
 ing, Infinite Love. And whether modern students 
 should conclude that the scriptural ethnology is lit 
 eral, or only representative, that all mankind are 
 the descendants of a single pair in Eden, or that 
 the Sacred Record of the earlier age only traces 
 one of several local groups planted by the one God 
 in different climates of the globe, still it would re 
 main profoundly true, that "He hath made of ONE 
 BLOOD all the nations of the earth." 
 
LECTURE II. 
 
 SOCIETY A LIVING INSTRUMENT OP DIVINE THOUGHT. 
 
 LET us keep distinctly before us the main out 
 line of the argument. 1. To prove that anything 
 manifests the character of the Christian s God, we 
 have to prove that, by the free working of its own 
 nature, it tends to good, good as we apprehend 
 good by the threefold method of insight, revelation, 
 and experience or history. 2. In the sphere of hu 
 man life, the first good is character, character in its 
 best developement as respects quality, quantity, and 
 symmetry ; or, to take a classification that squares 
 more exactly with the terms of our general subject, 
 and yet answers to the others, term for term, as 
 respects mans goodness, power and wisdom. The 
 proposition will then stand thus : If Human Society 
 tends, on the whole, to unfold and multiply good 
 ness, power, and wisdom in man, who is God s 
 creature, then it may be held a Divine Workman 
 ship. Its structure, relations, functions, are so many 
 manifestations of power, and wisdom, and goodness 
 in God, the Creator. The first step toward such 
 
40 SOCIETY A LIVING INSTRUMENT 
 
 a demonstration will be, as was attempted in the 
 preceding lecture, to show that in its purpose, its 
 preparation and growth, and its principal normal 
 forms, Society exhibits traces of a plan, on such a 
 scale of magnificence and compass, that no mind, 
 short of the Almighty s, could conceive and exe 
 cute it. 
 
 The next step will be to represent the social 
 state as a practical embodiment, in active operation, 
 of certain ideas which, from all that we know of 
 God, from any source, may fairly be pronounced 
 ideas of God. One leading principle, the same that 
 reigns throughout all the departments of animated 
 nature known to science thus far, must be carefully 
 noted as pervading the whole process, and we may 
 call it the first of these Divine ideas ; this, viz., 
 that with the progress, or elevation of the spe 
 cies is ever associated a twofold result ; an in 
 creased variety of individual organization, with a 
 more visible unity of the whole. In other words, 
 Society tends constantly to produce a higher order 
 of men and women, exhibiting a larger variety of 
 persons, yet balanced and reconciled in a more 
 perfect mutual harmony. 
 
 It may be asked, however, just here, When you 
 claim that Society is a scene of Divine disclosures 
 and forces, what kind of society do you mean? 
 
OF DIVINE THOUGHT. 41 
 
 It is a compound of many sorts. Do you mean 
 savage society, or civilized, the Bushmen of South 
 Africa, or the polite circles of London, the fron 
 tier or the capital, pastoral tribes or centralizing 
 cities ? And especially, do you mean a society of 
 Pagans, or a society whose civilization is built on 
 the Faith, and walks in the light, of the Gospel 
 of Christ? 
 
 The reply is, we consider Society as to all its 
 capacities and powers, including the highest and 
 best. By all means, we must include, in our con 
 ception, those forms and conditions of its develope- 
 ment which appertain to its foremost advancements 
 thus far. Because these belong to the true social 
 type. It would be both an irreverent and an un 
 scientific treatment of the theme, to confine ourselves 
 to the lowest specimens. When the naturalist would 
 investigate the turtle, he does not stop with dis 
 secting the coarsest kinds, the marine varieties of 
 turtle, the loggerhead or the leatherback. Every 
 class must be regarded as embracing its finest 
 known individual. When philosophy contemplates 
 man, it does not mean the wild man of the woods, 
 the troglodyte, the barbarian ; it does not mean the 
 stupid Asiatic majority ; it does not mean Caspar 
 Hauser, nor the Aztec children; but man in his best 
 circumstances hitherto where all his powers have 
 
42 SOCIETY A LIVING INSTRUMENT 
 
 the freest play, his faculties their normal exercise, 
 and where he has shown the best that is in him : 
 simply because all the parts are necessary to the 
 whole, which whole is, in this case, the realized 
 idea of humanity. When we speak of Rome, even 
 if we credit the fable, we do not mean a wolf and a 
 pair of twins, but what Home became in the days 
 of Augustus. By New York, we do not understand 
 a Dutch settlement of a dozen cabins, but the New 
 York that has in it a University, Wall Street, Trin 
 ity Church, the Cooper Institute; and not only the 
 Five Points, but the Five Points Mission too. If 
 we say the American People, we must take in not 
 only the bloody and bruised bodies of prize-fighters, 
 and the brutalized rabble that with equal barbarity 
 look on to see these lumps of muscle battered and 
 borne off on beds from a scene which might have 
 been imported from the playgrounds of the infernals, 
 but we must go up also to the extreme of our gene 
 ration nearer heaven ; we must include our saints, 
 and heroes, and sages, our Judson, and Tuckerman, 
 and Dorothy Dix, our Kane, and Herndon, and 
 Tyng, our Bowditch, and Prescott, and Jay. 
 
 And so to analyze and exhibit Society as a 
 fruit of God s designs, our argument does not 
 merely go back to the men and women of caves 
 and dens, dressed in untanned skins of beasts, 
 
OF DIVINE THOUGHT. 43 
 
 and eating with their fingers, but embraces the best 
 culture and achievements of both hemispheres. 
 
 Again, and as a part of the same query, it is 
 asked, Do we not here attribute to Society, in its 
 own peculiar and self-contained elements, qualities 
 which it derives from a source beyond itself, viz., 
 from religion ? Are we not fallaciously finding in 
 a human institution, and as its own natural prop 
 erty, what it possesses only by virtue of the gifts 
 of Christian Revelation ? 
 
 I answer, Human Society is no less an illustra 
 tion of God s character and purposes, and therefore 
 no less legitimate and logical for my uses here, 
 because God himself has seen fit to inspire and 
 enlighten it with his own Spirit, through his own 
 Messiah. I say again, Society is presented as it 
 is, in its best manifestations, with all the influences 
 acting upon it, with all the educating forces and 
 ennobling ideas planted in it. Of these educating 
 forces and ennobling ideas we may regard Christian 
 ity as one, and the chief. Christianity is capable of 
 being considered either as a disclosure and commu 
 nication of God, or as a formative power in man. 
 In the latter character, a Religion is just as ne 
 cessary to any proper conception of man s social 
 state, as intelligence, or natural affection. For man, 
 and social man, is a religious creature. That is, he 
 
44 SOCIETY A LIVING INSTRUMENT 
 
 is created with susceptibilities to religious impres 
 sion, capacities for religious truths. He is intended 
 for worship and faith. He cannot fulfil his destiny, 
 cannot be the being his Maker designed him to be, 
 without religion. And Christianity is the perfect 
 form of religion, love of God, and love of man; 
 able, therefore, to produce the highest style of man, 
 i. e.y the Christian. It is in this shape only, that 
 it is lawful for my present argument to know 
 Christianity. But to attempt to discuss or examine 
 Society, as a fact, leaving out religion, would be 
 absurd in theory, and impossible in performance. I 
 remark, in addition, that the distinct topic of the 
 relation of Society to Christianity has already been 
 proposed for a future lecture. 
 
 Taking a wide observation of social life, not in 
 one spot or community, but in many, not in one 
 epoch, but in the whole historic period, we observe 
 a manifest and preponderating tendency, on the 
 whole, to a more complete and more general reali 
 zation of the ideas which Society is clearly meant 
 to embody, such, especially, as a fraternal senti 
 ment between man and man, intellectual activity, a 
 common distribution of the means of life, personal 
 liberty, industry, virtue, religion. Wherever Society 
 is most true to itself, most truly social, its com 
 munications and interchanges being most unrestricted 
 
OF DIVINE THOUGHT. 45 
 
 and most extensive, there those ideas are most 
 largely unfolded into actions and institutions. 
 
 If we find these positions capable of proof by 
 the facts, then we shall be justified in predicating 
 of Society an inwrought law of beneficent activity, 
 just as much as in affirming a law of growth in 
 the tree where the natural conditions of vegetation 
 are supplied, just as much as in affirming a law 
 of assimilation in chemistry where the requisite 
 substances are thrown together. 
 
 From the fact that the same social conditions yield 
 similar social effects, we infer, then, that there are 
 such things as laws of Society, as there are laws 
 of physiology, mechanics, morals, mathematics ; only 
 not so exact, not so definable, not yet classed or co 
 ordinated by generalizations so comprehensive.* To 
 
 * " In the last analysis, history is nothing less than the last counter- 
 stroke of Divine action. Its laws have for their last principle God 
 himself. It is because Providence is in humanity and in history, that 
 humanity and history have their necessary laws. The judgments of 
 history are the judgments of God himself." When Cousin proceeds, 
 from these undeniable maxims, to affirm, in support of his unqualified 
 historical optimism, that every incident in history is in its (providen 
 tial) place, and arrives for good, he only seems to complicate the 
 problem of moral agency in a sort of Christian fatalism, to ignore the 
 antagonistic quality of sin, and to confound the causative with the cor 
 rective Providence. Doubtless, " science suppresses every anomaly," 
 or aims to ; but it does not suppress facts. Sin is an enormous fact 
 in history. It is the malignant resistance of the evil in man to the 
 laws as well as the Law of God. It is as unscientific as it is irreligious, 
 therefore, to interpret history as altogether justified of Providence. 
 
46 SOCIETY A LIVING I N S T K U M E N T 
 
 trace these general principles has been the work 
 of the philosophical historian, in distinction from 
 the mere chronicler, annalist, or recorder. The of 
 fice of the latter is to report the facts as they 
 occur, discrete and literal, here or there ; of the 
 former to combine, to compare, to analyze them, so 
 as to bring out the hidden vinculum that joins 
 effect with cause, and, underneath the shifting, 
 motley play of events that look so much like a 
 dance of accidents, to detect the grand streams 
 of divine thought working sublimely to their desti 
 nation.* It was some such general principles, 
 
 The human phenomena there often contradict the heavenly law, which 
 prevails only by overruling, inflicting terrible penalties on the way. 
 
 * It is in the department of philosophical history that the mind of 
 Germany, within the last half century, has rendered, on the whole, its 
 grandest service both to Letters and to Truth. "The religions of the 
 world, the changes of government, the phases of civilization ; the 
 Germans," as has been said, " have not been content to describe these, 
 but have searched for the law under which they have appeared. The 
 history of mankind has not been handled as a congeries of events, 
 but as an organic developement. Contrast such a history as that of 
 Macaulay (of England) with such a history as that of Neander (of 
 the Church), both popular examples. The subject-matter of the 
 two works is, to be sure, totally different; but not more so than the 
 methods of the two authors. In Macaulay, you have a glowing de 
 scription of the progress of events, with brilliant biographical sketches, 
 and the comments of an acute, practical statesman. It is a stage where 
 the curtain rises, and the scenes shift, according to the most consum 
 mate art. But when all is over, what deep insight have you gained 
 into the Divine plan of the world ? Neander, on the contrary, in his 
 own words, shows us a process having its issue in eternity, but con- 
 
OF DIVINE THOUGHT. 47 
 
 though vaguely apprehended by him, that Aristotle 
 proposed to deduce and make practical for the 
 government of a State. In a more modern time, 
 in the early part of the eighteenth century, Gio 
 vanni Yico, a Neapolitan, " a great jurisconsult," and 
 one of the most original thinkers in this depart 
 ment, in a work called " The Principles of a New 
 Science," developed the same view by the method 
 of induction. His doctrine is, that by observing 
 the actual phenomena of social life in many differ 
 ent communities, we may arrive at a definite rule 
 for determining what any given community will be, 
 through the three necessary epochs, the divine, the 
 heroic, and the human, and even predict, with 
 accuracy, the length of its existence, and also the 
 date of its decline.* For Vico fell into the un 
 fortunate theory, since his day generally aban 
 doned, that the movements of mankind, instead of 
 being on the whole steadily onward, are in a se 
 ries of circles, or "recurrences," (ricorsi,) Society 
 perpetually coming round again, by this cyclical 
 process, to the point from which it started. Throw- 
 
 stantly following the same laws, so that in the past we may sec the 
 germ of the future, which is coming to meet us." Professor G. P. 
 Fisher. 
 
 * Cousin supposes Vico s work to have been " the model and per 
 haps the source" of Montesquieu s I, Esprit des Lois. 
 
48 SOCIETY A LIVING INSTRUMENT 
 
 ing out that fallacy, Herder, in his " liieas to 
 wards a Philosophy of History," published in 1774, 
 Montesquieu, and Kant, have written from the same 
 sure belief, that the conditions of social growth 
 may be systematized, the latter ably maintaining 
 that all the social movements on the planet are slow 
 preparations for one grand ultimate form of univer 
 sal social harmony, a kind of organized ecumenical 
 commonwealth, where all the parts shall be related 
 to one another, and a central principle of the or 
 ganism animate and attract the whole. It may 
 now be regarded as the settled conviction of the 
 wisest heads, that social developements are subject 
 to law. From that point, to the conclusion that 
 this law has its seat in the centre and source of 
 all law, in the bosom of God, is but a single step, 
 and that step we take in obedience to Christian 
 philosophy. " What are all our histories," well asked 
 Oliver Cromwell, "but God manifesting himself, 
 that he hath shaken, and tumbled down, and tram 
 pled under foot whatsoever he hath not planted ?"* 
 The laws of Society, then, are thoughts of God. 
 Here, as through the universe, the design has a 
 Designer. So we rise from the contemplation of a 
 social order to a Divine ordainer; from the aspects 
 of regular sequences to acquaintance with Provi- 
 
 * See Chevalier Bimsen s work, still in progress, Gott in der Geschichte. 
 
OF DIVINE THOUGHT. 49 
 
 dence ; from what is called the philosophy of his 
 tory to the fact of religion. The Family of men 
 has a Parent. Society becomes related to the 
 Creator; earth to heaven. Even ancient heathen 
 ism, in its own dark way, accepted this conclu 
 sion. Each Pagan people referred the direction of 
 its fortunes to a Deity. Whom they thus igno- 
 rantly worshipped Christianity declares to us. The 
 altar they blindly reared, in the midst of their 
 idolatries, to the " unknown God," has been in 
 scribed with the name of the Father of Christ. 
 The great procession of the ages is seen as the 
 majestic unfolding of the scheme of Him who is 
 without beginning of days, or end. 
 
 It may be objected that there is too much un 
 certainty, in the whole proceeding of social life, to 
 let us speak of laws; that it is a whirlpool of 
 happenings ; a carnival of impulses ; a dance of 
 chances. But look into the analogies of all busi 
 ness, and you see that in what we call chances 
 themselves there is a calculable regularity ; over 
 the wildest jumble of events, where every instance 
 seems out of all relation to the rest, presides the 
 firm, majestic sway of Law. Nothing so precarious, 
 nothing so random and whimsical, as not to be 
 rated. Only find out all the conditions, get the 
 data for a deduction, which certainly exist, and 
 
50 SOCIETY A LIVING INSTRUMENT 
 
 you might anticipate for a given community, how 
 many paupers and criminals there would be, how 
 many parties in a season, how many marriages, 
 how many -mobs, and how often some agony such 
 as can come only of the breaking of one heart by 
 another will open early graves, or plunge distracted 
 creatures into the drowning that is both death and 
 grave together. What is apparently more fortuitous, 
 or more likely to defy calculation, than self-destruc 
 tion? ~Xet in London the number of suicides for the 
 next year can be prognosticated with such accuracy, 
 that men best acquainted with the subject would 
 not hesitate to risk their property on the assurance 
 that in that vast metropolis, of eighteen hundred 
 thousand souls, they will not number less than two 
 hundred and thirteen, nor more than two hundred 
 and sixty-six. There is very little doubt that they 
 will be about two hundred and forty.* We call 
 the calamities of promiscuous travel accidents ; yet 
 in a series of years there is a well-known average 
 of such disasters. Even particular crimes, as has 
 been ascertained by most extensive observations, 
 bear a fixed ratio to certain determinable exigencies. 
 M. Quetelet, the ablest statistician in Europe, de 
 clares that not only the number of murders, but 
 
 * They went up to their highest mark in 1846, the year of the great 
 pecuniary panic caused by the bursting of railway speculations. 
 
OF DIVINE THOUGHT. 51 
 
 the weapons they will be perpetrated with, can be 
 ascertained in advance. All insurance tables are 
 based on this familiar principle. Only the state 
 of knowledge thus far restrains the assumption of 
 risks in those more volatile and fickle actions of 
 moral life where we are apt to expect nothing but 
 surprises and disconnections. We should say scarce 
 ly anything is more capricious than the freaks of 
 memory which lead people to drop into the post 
 office letters with a mistaken superscription or none 
 at all. But it would be an easy matter to pre 
 dict the average number of undirected or misdi 
 rected letters in any city post office for any con 
 siderable term of years. Of the female population 
 of a country it is found a certain proportion will 
 go about in men s clothing. The relative proportion 
 of the sexes is exact beyond all expectations that 
 would be raised by the conjectures that are ap 
 plied in anticipation to the individual specimen. 
 
 It is no new phenomenon for fallacious attempts 
 to be made to abuse facts by arraying them against 
 truth. Facts of the character here cited are no 
 more to be made a support for the notions of ma 
 terialists or fatalists, than are the traces of order 
 and law in the physical creation. The first aspect 
 of a newly discovered law often startles us into 
 an atheistic suspicion ; but a riper acquaintance with 
 
52 SOCIETY A LIVING INSTRUMENT 
 
 it deepens the confession of our faith.* It is true, 
 the liberty, the sudden self-determination, and the 
 wild inconsistency of the human mind, do greatly 
 aggravate the difficulty of detecting the laws, when 
 we pass from passive realms of matter into the 
 sphere of social humanity. But when they are 
 actually found, and thoughtfully studied, they afford 
 as clear signs of the living God, and as powerful 
 an aid to devotion, in the latter case as in the 
 former. Nor shall we find in the one, any more 
 than in the other, an occasion to question the 
 presence of a sovereign and gracious Disposer, be 
 cause we catch glimpses of the occult method and 
 the subtle regularities by which he limits the way 
 wardness, balances the individual caprices, and gives 
 uniformity to the mixed results, of the responsible 
 agents whom he forever controls. 
 
 It is an interesting incident in literary history, 
 and an evidence of the practical penetration of a 
 mind chiefly known to the world by its specula 
 tive excursions in the transcendental philosophy, but 
 before statistical science had attained its present 
 
 * The use or abuse made of this law of average statistics by Mr. 
 Buckle, in his recent " Introduction to a History of Civilization in 
 England," naturally throws some suspicion upon it. But its applica 
 tions, like those of the principle of free agency, or of cause and effect, 
 or of chemical reactions, are as capable of being reconciled with faith 
 as with " Positivism." 
 
OF DIVINE THOUGHT. 53 
 
 degree of maturity, so long ago as 1784, Emanuel 
 Kant, in an essay entitled " Idea of a Universal 
 History in a Cosmopolitical Point of View," wrote 
 as follows : " Whatever be the metaphysical concep 
 tion of the will, its phenomena, human actions, are 
 determined, like all other natural events, according 
 to universal laws of nature. It is to be hoped 
 that history, when it contemplates the pla} r of the 
 liberty of the will on a large scale, will discover 
 a regular course in it ; so that what seems irregu 
 lar and capricious in individual cases shall appear, 
 as regards the whole species, as a continually pro 
 gressive though slow unfolding of its original tenden 
 cies. Thus marriages, births, and deaths, as the 
 free will of man has so great an influence on 
 them, seem to be subject to no rule according to 
 which their number can be previously determined 
 by reckoning; and yet the yearly tables of them 
 in great nations evince that they happen just as 
 much according to constant laws of nature as the 
 equally inconstant rains whose happening cannot be 
 determined singly, but which on the whole do not 
 fail to maintain the growth of plants, the flow of 
 rivers, and other dispositions of nature, in a uni 
 form, uninterrupted succession." 
 
 I. The first fact in social science is the re 
 ciprocal relation between society and the individual : 
 
54 SOCIETY A LIVING INSTRUMENT 
 
 not now, observe, between one individual and an 
 other or a particular number of others, but between 
 each and that aggregate of influences, examples, 
 powers, persons, to which, as if it were a unit, 
 we give the one name, Society. A study of our 
 own interior composition is enough to show us that 
 by living alone man will finally become unfit to 
 live at all, dwarfing humanity, insulting nature, 
 and practically denying God. The absolute segre 
 gation of a single specimen from his kind gradually 
 shortens the scope and altitude of his capacities, 
 and distorts his symmetry. Occasional solitude has 
 an unspeakable moral value. Perhaps the loftiest 
 moods are fed from the fountains that spring in 
 its cool and shaded elevations. " Enter into thy 
 closet, and shut the door." The grandest spirits 
 of the world have girded themselves for their he 
 roic works by seasons of lonely retirement : Moses 
 at the mount, with the awful alternations of thun 
 der and silence ; Elijah in the cave of the desert, 
 with the wind, and the fire, and the stillness ; David 
 in the sheep-cote and the mountains; Paul, three 
 years in Arabia; Luther in his cell; Alfred in the 
 isle of marshes ; Columbus, Mohammed, Washing 
 ton, all ordained in solitude. Nay, of the Lord 
 and Head of the Race himself, the brief ministry 
 and the eternal redemption must begin with forty 
 
OF DIVINE THOUGHT. 55 
 
 days in the wilderness. But notice that in every 
 one of these cases, the solitude is the preparation, 
 not the life. Its very efficacy is in its solemn bap 
 tism for the human labor and sacrifice that come 
 after. Through that holy portal of meditation the 
 saints, the heroes, and the Lord passed straight on 
 into service for man. Just there, every species of 
 monasticisni fails fatally. It takes the exceptional 
 and makes it normal. It cuts off the uses which 
 mount and desert and closet were ordained ex 
 pressly to make ready, and renders the gracious hour 
 of prayer to Heaven an indolent and protracted false 
 hood against the world. He cannot be the true de 
 votee to God who is infidel to man, nor can he honor 
 the Saviour who denies society. In the morning 
 Christ came down from the mountain to the multitude. 
 Those hermits caverns that bored the mountains 
 of the East into rocky honey-combs, often became 
 tombs that buried the withered limbs of the Church, 
 not chambers nor oratories that refreshed its ener 
 gies. The lean jaws of asceticism gnawed out se 
 pulchres for truth, but no living home. Even the 
 social lusts and vices were not escaped; for, in 
 idleness and reverie, the morbid imagination threw 
 its doors wide open to their corrupting images, and 
 they who fled from the mammon of the market 
 place, were sometimes tormented by fiends more 
 
56 SOCIETY A LIVING INSTRUMENT 
 
 fiendish, and devils more devilish, in the clois 
 ter. 
 
 It has been said that only men s moral senti 
 ments unite them ; that the passions are divisive. 
 But this implies a superficial definition of the word 
 passions. The passions are not an army of aliens 
 or border ruffians, encamped on the territory of the 
 soul, to besiege it with eternal and irreconcileable 
 hostility. Human nature admits no absolute con 
 tradictions. What we call the passions in a bad 
 sense are the unprincipled excesses, the guilty 
 abuses, of propensities the Creator planted in us 
 for social safety, harmony, and utility. At the 
 Fall, man fell through his passions not into them. 
 Anarchy was provoked within him. The truth is, 
 every unperverted faculty in us either terminates 
 in or at least harmonizes with social tendencies. 
 You neither enjoy, nor want, very long, except in 
 connection with others. You must impart or dis 
 play what you have ; you must search out, and 
 earn, or borrow, or beg, from others, what you de 
 sire : social acts. 
 
 Now, in the animal economy, physiologists tell 
 us, it is an established principle that the eleva 
 tion of the type is attended by an increased va 
 riety in the specific organs ; i. ., the nobler the 
 kind of creature, the more complicated the specific 
 
OF DIVINE THOUGHT. 57 
 
 parts, yet all embraced under a greater unity and 
 simplicity of plan. Witness a polyp and man, 
 the extremes of the animal kingdom. A corre 
 sponding rule prevails in the kingdom of Society. 
 The more exactly fitted the members of a commu 
 nity are to fulfil the common ends, and to adorn 
 the commonwealth, the more diversified will be their 
 several private capabilities. That will be the no 
 blest people, not w r here there is the tamest unifor 
 mity, but where there is the most striking variety, 
 as to gifts, dispositions, occupations. Hence, as 
 Society approaches its perfection, there will be more 
 and more developed that " tendency to individua- 
 tion" which Mr. Coleridge pronounces the true idea 
 of human life. 
 
 So, a thoughtful and comprehensive writer on 
 civilization* makes it consist of two elements, and 
 live on two conditions ; viz., the melioration of the 
 social system ; and the expansion of the individual 
 mind. " Wherever the exterior condition of man 
 becomes enlarged, quickened, and improved, and 
 wherever the intellectual nature distinguishes itself 
 by its energy, brilliancy, and grandeur, wherever 
 these two signs concur, there man proclaims and 
 applauds civilization." Everything, as he goes on 
 to show, supports this remark, common sense, the 
 
 * M. Guizot. 
 
58 SOCIETY A LIVING INSTRUMENT 
 
 nature of both the elements in question, and his 
 tory. "What, at the origin of societies, have the 
 founders of religion, the sages, poets, and philoso 
 phers, who have labored to regulate and refine the 
 manners of mankind, promised themselves ? What, 
 but the melioration of the social condition; the 
 more equitable distribution of the blessings of life? 
 We know that if men were persuaded that the 
 melioration of the social condition would operate 
 against the individual mind, they would almost op 
 pose and cry out against the advancement of So 
 ciety. On the other hand, when we speak to 
 mankind of improving Society by improving its in 
 dividual members, we find them willing to believe 
 us. Hence we may affirm that it is the intuitive 
 belief of man that these two elements of civiliza 
 tion are intimately connected, and that they re 
 ciprocally produce one another." 
 
 Again, it is undoubtedly true, that individual 
 strength, purity, integrity, are all put in peril by 
 an excess, or by a corruption, of social mixtures. 
 And it is because man s lower nature can act 
 through the social spirit, as well as the higher. 
 Among its awful prerogatives, Society has it in its 
 power to make men worse instead of . better than 
 they are, to tempt, to mislead, to seduce, to de 
 grade. There are vices that get an easier access, 
 
OF DIVINE THOUGHT. 59 
 
 and take a more desperate hold, by social excite 
 ments. So, the dominant temper of a social class, 
 or clique, may tend to repress individual freedom, 
 to cripple personal force, to substitute fashion for 
 conscience and imitation for originality, to tone down 
 every heavenly aspiration, to criticise nature into a 
 conventional, Pharisaic propriety, and to razee every 
 fresh, spontaneous moral energy into a respectable, 
 polished stupidity. People ask then, not what is 
 right, true, beautiful; but, what will our set say? 
 This, however, is not the fault of Society, but an 
 outrage upon it. There, certain low-bred, vulgar 
 instincts have usurped the apparatus of social life, 
 meant to be a free vehicle for sincere feeling, and 
 turned it into a non-conductor. Society is indis 
 pensable ; these are its prostitutions. Society is 
 the appointed agent of joy; there are its infidelities 
 and sins. Society is meant to quicken men by its 
 demands, to nourish them by its sympathies, to 
 call them out to their several best achievements by 
 its opportunities ; but these are the perversions of 
 its power by souls too small to be expanded or too 
 stiff to be moulded to manliness and womanliness 
 by its plastic spirit. Where it is permitted to do 
 its unobstructed work, there it will always be seen 
 striking and preserving just this beautiful balance 
 between the popular and the personal welfare, be- 
 
60 SOCIETY A LIVING INSTRUMENT 
 
 tween public combination and individual peculiarity, 
 between the general and the private virtue. There 
 you will see it tempering each of the personal 
 vices with a social grace, self-love with compassion, 
 avarice with generosity, breaking up a morbid intro 
 spection by spreading out the broader scenery of 
 other men s experience, cheering gloom into laugh 
 ter, brightening despondency into humor, genializing 
 misanthropy into good nature, calling us off from 
 petting and nursing our own whims to relieving dis 
 tress and helping the neighborhood, goading sloth 
 to enterprise, bracing indecision to action, guiding 
 economy between prodigality and miserliness, train 
 ing insubordination and arrogance to obedience, pour 
 ing into the shrunk veins of prudence the fresh blood 
 of enthusiasm, giving to fidelity a grander field, and 
 lifting cowardice to heroism. All these are the 
 regular, gracious, yet half unconscious education that 
 Society is ever giving to our souls ; and they show 
 it to be an august Priesthood to man s personal 
 Humanity. And all this is a Law of Society, a 
 thought of God. 
 
 II. Again, Human Society is a grand theatre for 
 the operation of the principle of moral and spir 
 itual reactions ; another Divine idea. Moral pos 
 sessions increase by being given away. Accumula 
 tion proceeds by distribution. The more we give 
 
OF DIVINE THOUGHT. 61 
 
 out, for man s sake, the more we take back. 
 Every affectionate act amplifies the heart, and in 
 tensifies its power of loving. Without efforts to 
 bless and convert somebody besides yourself, your 
 own soul s convictions dwindle and its circulations 
 stagnate. Obviously, it is only a social nature that 
 makes this principle possible. 
 
 In the realms of physical being we meet no 
 traces of it, or, at best, but hints and approxima 
 tions. There is reciprocal benefit, in order and 
 beauty.* One thing is set over against another, 
 like the rhymes of song, each in its place and 
 season. Even the material creation protests against 
 injustice, against monopoly, against interference; 
 her every product has its use ; every particle its ser 
 vice; every form or fibre its task or its loveli 
 ness. But there she stops. Light emanates and 
 is reflected ; but neither sun nor star is brighter 
 for shining. Vegetation gives out and takes in, by 
 its generative and respirative processes, but its fine 
 equilibrium is never emancipated into voluntary and 
 at the same time self-fertilizing benevolence. The 
 rose is no sweeter for the fragrance with which it 
 perfumes the morning; nor the stream fuller for its 
 liquid gift, its " cup of cold water," - to the 
 meadows. Among animals, such dumb and sponta- 
 
 * See Lecture IV. 
 
62 SOCIETY A LIVING INSTRUMENT 
 
 neous attachments as unite tribes and families, the 
 likings of the mother bird and of the more com 
 panionable brutes, are bound fast by the old limits 
 of instinct 5 they rarely rise to the dignity of 
 sympathies, and they nowhere reveal the moral 
 grandeur of growing stronger by a conscious, prin 
 cipled exercise. 
 
 The moment we ascend, however, to social 
 man, the tokens of this noble law stand forth in 
 splendor. There light is made more lustrous by 
 scattering its beams, none growing wise so fast as 
 they that teach, every intellectual perception sharp 
 ened by imparting knowledge, every will fortified 
 by effort, every heart made better by beneficence. 
 They that do the most, are the most, the quan 
 tity of being ever multiplied by the uncalculating 
 generosity of its bestowment. That manhood, or 
 womanhood, is the richest, which spends most for 
 some un paying interest of humanity. Find out 
 that pair of eyes which look abroad with unobtru 
 sive mercy into the domestic distresses of the 
 brotherhood ; find out that pair of hands which are 
 ever busy working the thing that is good for some 
 needy or troubled neighbor, and you may be sure 
 they belong to some Good Samaritan or Sister of 
 Charity, w r ho, whether prosperous or unsuccessful as 
 the world judges, is affluent with more than the 
 
OF DIVINE THOUGHT. 63 
 
 wealth of " barbaric pearls and gold." Piety itself 
 often gets diseased for want of this energy in com 
 municating itself. Natures that incline more to 
 reverie than to work find their religious progress 
 unsatisfactory. Many believers, sincere enough in 
 their convictions, as sincere as any inactive believer 
 can be, are mischievously hindered in the true pro 
 gress by the mistake of supposing that Christian 
 duty terminates in self-improvement. Faith is soon 
 but a withered root, unless it bears flowers and 
 fruits. None of us are appointed to walk to 
 heaven alone ; and it is doubtful if any of us will 
 ever get there who do not, somehow, help some 
 other soul thither. The best nurture for personal 
 religion, after prayer, is an effort to spiritualize 
 some child, house-mate, acquaintance, or heathen. 
 If you draw back your hand, when it is invited 
 to a beneficent task, the spiritual muscles are 
 gradually paralyzed. If you tightly close the fin 
 gers over the mouth of your purse, when there is 
 a fair opening to give something to extend the 
 kingdom of heaven, by a book, a church, or a 
 missionary, then you pinch, at that moment, the di 
 mensions of your own soul. " Give, and it shall 
 be given unto you." 
 
 As this is a principle which has its purest ac 
 tivity in the highest, that is, in the spiritual part 
 
64 SOCIETY A LIVING INSTRUMENT 
 
 of man, we must naturally go, for instances and 
 illustrations of it, to the spiritual plane, and the 
 organization that specially represents that part, 
 which is the Church. All the revolutionary move 
 ments that have extended the kingdom of Christ, 
 disturbed formality, and dethroned dogmatic error, 
 sweeping across slumbering communities, have been 
 accompanied by intense missionary zeal, either do 
 mestic or foreign, by immense and willing sacrifices 
 of money and comfort for the Gospel s sake, by 
 earnest and enthusiastic aggressions on practical un 
 belief, sensuality, Paganism. Whatever sect pre 
 sumes to take a place as a member in Christ s 
 body without this activity does not " abide in the 
 Vine," and must expect to be cut off as a dead 
 branch. The Head of all these members has im 
 pressed it on the whole organization, that whatso 
 ever limb does not give, to that it shall not be 
 given. 
 
 Seek illustrations in the actual history of the 
 Church. "Whatever prevailing form Christian faith 
 has taken, activity from the centre outward has 
 been the uniform condition of success, and the in 
 variable sign of life. When the Church has been 
 doing most outside of itself, it has had most vigor 
 within itself. Its periods of self-sacrifice have been 
 its periods of glory. Such is the reactive force 
 
OF DIVINE THOUGHT. 65 
 
 of spiritual industry. In the apostolic age, the 
 brightest and most wonderful ecclesiastical era, al 
 most the entire work of the Church was of this 
 sort. The genius of Christianity then, having 
 planted and established a church in any place, 
 could hardly afford to stop to watch over it, 
 but flew on, from country to country, from island 
 to island, from city to city, eager to kindle 
 new fires in every seat of darkness. Those brave 
 and ardent men not only gave a part, they gave 
 everything, houses, property, reputation, comfort, 
 blood, they gave themselves. Thus, while they 
 gave without stint, " it was given to them with 
 out measure." Later, the mediaeval church, in the 
 midst of its errors, was strong at home, just in 
 proportion to its zeal abroad. Read the history of 
 Jesuit missions in South America, in Canada, in 
 India, and all the East. When Protestantism came, 
 it was as a missionary cause that it advanced and 
 triumphed. Since that time, there has always been 
 a most significant and providential coincidence be 
 tween the waking up of religion into practical power, 
 and its endeavors to extend itself to the destitute.* 
 It is unquestionable that when the spirit of mis 
 sions broke forth in Protestant England, the religion 
 of England was saved from impending extinction. 
 
 * See Examples in " The Great Commission. * 
 5 
 
66 SOCIETY A LIVING INSTRUMENT 
 
 There is even reason to believe that had a single 
 heathen never been converted, the impulse given to 
 Christianity at home by the movement, and all its 
 generous influences, would have justified the entire 
 expenditure, because no other expenditure of the 
 same means could have accomplished the result so 
 effectually. The dull monotony of preaching and 
 worship was at once broken up, all over the realm. 
 The slackening bonds of union and sympathy be 
 tween churches and ministers were forthwith tight 
 ened. Mutual suspicions and jealousies were scat 
 tered. Discords were healed. The whole religion 
 of the country became practical, pure, and substan 
 tial. Under the general invigoration, a cluster of 
 kindred philanthropies sprang into being; for it is 
 the nature of no real beneficence to live alone. 
 We may say what we will of charity beginning at 
 home, the historical fact is found to be that most 
 is done at their own doors, by those who stretch 
 their arms the widest, for the very palpable rea 
 son that a beneficent spirit, when kindled, works in 
 all directions. When we hear the celebrated An 
 drew Fuller telling of that period in his ministry 
 when he sought by every means to remove the 
 clouds of darkness and doubt that had settled down 
 on his parish, but sought in vain, till suddenly 
 the interest of the new movement for heathendom 
 
OF DIVINE THOUGHT. 67 
 
 seized on his people, and then how the women 
 began to collect money., and the men to take coun 
 sel, and all to work and pray, so that before they 
 were aware every complaint ceased, " the sad be 
 came cheerful, and the desponding calm," simply 
 because " God blessed them while they tried to be 
 a blessing ;" when we learn from the record of 
 the earliest British Baptist missions, how, when the 
 cause became popular, religious indifference gave 
 place to righteous living, backsliders were restored, 
 fears were dispelled, and peace and strength were 
 renewed, we begin to see how true it may be 
 that even Macedonia, Nestoria, and Labrador, by 
 only lifting up their supplication for help, may be 
 come apostles that reconvert a declining Christen 
 dom to Christ. 
 
 So in particular local bodies. There is no pro 
 moter of parish life, or peace, like liberal sacrifices 
 to extend the cause, and build up new parishes. 
 The social law comes in to bind, as well as to 
 build. The church that shuts itself up in its own 
 privileges, contents itself with occupying its own 
 pews on Sunday, lounges on its own cushions, and 
 takes an epicurean satisfaction in its own culture, 
 or choir, or opinions, or architecture, or preacher s 
 reputation and eloquence, is smitten and accursed, 
 in its violation of this law. The contribution-box 
 
DO SOCIETY A LIVING INSTRUMENT 
 
 becomes a kind of spiritual thermometer. If Prov 
 idence were to resuscitate one of our sleek, well- 
 fed, fashionably dressed, self-righteous congregations, 
 dying of ecclesiastical luxury and rhetorical surfeit, 
 he would turn it out into the lanes and homes 
 of the poor, invigorating its dyspeptic faith by 
 earnest works of charity. 
 
 In all the operations of this reactionary power 
 we see one of the most majestic proofs that in 
 the highest interests of man, his social nature plays 
 a leading part, and that this particular action of 
 that nature is a design of God. 
 
 III. There are, furthermore, certain great moral 
 ideas of God s own Being, which he has evidently 
 created Society to work out into visible shapes on 
 earth. They reside in his own perfect Life. They 
 are also the Divine glory of Humanity. They 
 form the essence of all we know of Morality. A 
 brief reference to these will serve our immediate 
 purpose. They are Eight, Truth, Love, Liberty. 
 We may take these either as principles for man, 
 or as attributes of God. Society is a means God 
 uses to set them forth, and put them into practical 
 power on earth. 
 
 1. The first, by its radical importance to the 
 very existence of Society, has always been repre 
 sented by an actual institution, viz., Government. 
 
OF DIVINE THOUGHT. 69 
 
 Logically, the basis of Government is the need of 
 Justice between man and man. But practically, 
 you say, the actual Government often turns out 
 the foe of justice. Nevertheless the Government 
 is still, and evermore, the struggling, aspiring, and 
 persevering endeavor of the people to realize Right. 
 From the beginning, Society has been working to 
 wards that end. Logically, the Ruler should be 
 the justest man of the nation. Practically, he may 
 be a military conqueror, like Nimrod, Tamerlane, 
 Bernadotte, Napoleon I. ; or he may be a petty 
 diplomatist and imitator, like modern Kings and 
 Presidents, too many to mention ; or he may be a 
 cruel and selfish tyrant, like the tyrants of Italy, 
 Spain, and the East; or he may be only the son 
 of his father, like Bourbons and Stuarts. Where 
 the governing power shall at any given time be 
 lodged, is a question of many answers. " In the 
 will of the Prince," say Hobbes, Machiavel, the 
 Austrian Catechism, and despotisms generally. " In 
 the will of the People," say Milton, Locke, Jef 
 ferson. " In some representation of the wisest 
 part of the People," say the Federal Republicans. 
 But through them all, and this is the thing of 
 impression and beauty and meaning, through them 
 all Law is vindicated, stern, kind mother of our 
 peace. The eternal distinction is kept alive. So- 
 
70 SOCIETY A LIVING INSTRUMENT 
 
 ciety repeats its claim for equity. Justice is ad 
 vanced, blessed guaranty of every social bond. 
 The powers that be are ordained of God. Right 
 is held up, and borne on, to her slow but patient 
 victory. 
 
 " Careless seems the Great Avenger ; History s pages but record 
 One death-grapple in the darkness twixt old systems and the Word ; 
 Truth forever on the Scaffold, Wrong forever on the Throne, 
 Yet that scaffold sways the Future, and, behind the dim Unknown, 
 Standeth God, within the shadow, keeping watch above his own." 
 
 2. So with Truth. Veracity is a social virtue. 
 Society nurtures it, tries it, manifests it. In soli 
 tude, it would miss its most generous action, even 
 if we can conceive of its existence. Falsehood 
 may sometimes bear Truth down. Cunning may 
 pervert it, self-interest may stifle it, hypocrisy may 
 betray it. Yet through all that conflict of long 
 ages, and by man s social nature, Truth is steadily 
 rising to her empire, building her eternal throne on 
 the ruins of Error. He reads the Past backwards 
 who does not see in all social clashings and con 
 flicts the inevitable process that is to make man 
 true with man, base institutions on probity, not on 
 cant, superstition, or heresy, and through ten thou 
 sand experiments and contests show how God him 
 self is True. 
 
OF DIVINE THOUGHT. 71 
 
 3. As to Love : to say that Love is a social 
 virtue is mere tautology. It has appeared that 
 the force which draws and cements Society, and 
 makes it to be Society, cannot be hate, can 
 not- be fear, cannot be sordid self-interest, nor any 
 of the repulsive passions : for the simple reason 
 that, in morals as in physics, repulsions never 
 attract. One principle constructs Society, as one 
 will marshals the stars. If He whose name is 
 Love had been seeking only a scheme to exhibit, 
 in free play, the first attribute of his own nature, 
 Human Society would be the result, with its mu 
 tual dependencies, its parental instincts, its gra 
 cious sympathies, its spontaneous charities, its brave 
 and loyal devotedness. These, too, must contend 
 with their opposites. Free will must find antipathy, 
 and jealousy, and revenge, and spite to be possible. 
 The two powers, Light and Darkness, Ormuzd and 
 Ahriman, must fight their battle out. We only 
 utter the general human instinct w r hen we pronounce 
 malice, with its great engine, war, malice in all 
 its shades, and war in all its shapes, to be anti 
 social. But malice dies ; the affections are immor 
 tal. And ever since the solitude of the unwedded 
 Adam w T as broken by the coming of his bride, 
 through lapse and recovery, through alienation and 
 redemption, the Race has been feeling its way 
 
72 SOCIETY A LIVING INSTRUMENT 
 
 forward to the fulfilment of the promise, " Peace 
 on earth ; good will to men." 
 
 4. Finally, Freedom. Through what an august 
 succession of national tragedies has God led man 
 kind, that he might teach them the folly and the 
 wrong of oppression, the glory of that Liberty 
 with which Christ makes his people free ! What 
 experiments of sorrow ! What lessons of ruin ! 
 What baptisms of blood ! There you read, again 
 and again, how tyranny is anarchy, how the im 
 mortal spirit in chains thirsts insatiably for emanci 
 pation, how a man under the heel of his fellow is 
 ever a magazine of terror, how slavery is death. 
 See the conditions of the problem, and then the 
 demonstration. See a fertile, inexhaustible soil, a 
 lovely climate, open markets, stout, able-bodied ne 
 groes, just kidnapped, or fed and reared up to six 
 teen hours work in the twenty-four, with a present 
 cost of maintenance of only a pint or two of flour 
 and a salt herring a day. What should prevent un 
 bounded accumulations of wealth and every outward 
 advantage to the planter, then? Nothing, perhaps, 
 if man, the animal, were all. But there is a God 
 of Liberty and a God of Sabaoth, in heaven, who 
 has planted his social Family for other ends, into 
 whose ears the cry of the oppressed hath entered, 
 and will enter forever; and so, instead of durable 
 
OF DIVINE THOUGHT. 73 
 
 riches and honor, impoverishment, vice, degradation ! 
 On the one side a few proud, opulent, indolent 
 nabobs, whose children wither and corrupt by lazi 
 ness and sloth; on the other, a beggared, short 
 lived, terror-struck population, with mortgaged estates 
 of exhausted lands ! See, the tyrant and slave 
 owner is himself but " a slave turned inside out ;" 
 even as Gibbon says it was in the Byzantine 
 palace, where the emperor was the first captive of 
 the ceremonies he had imposed. See an East India 
 Company, by a career of cruel aggression on a coun 
 try full of the materials of wealth, acquiring a debt 
 of fifty millions sterling, and what besides of retri 
 butive carnage and horror, let the daily British 
 journals, and the wail, yet moaning in thousands 
 of British households, tell. See the splendor and 
 majesty of Rome rotted by slavery. See the taxa 
 tion of American colonists reacting into a Revolu 
 tion of independence, and taxing the mother country 
 herself for a hundred millions. See everywhere illus 
 trations of the true saying of Lamartine : " Man 
 never yet fastened one end of a chain round the 
 neck of his brother, that God s own hand did not 
 fasten the other end round the neck of the op 
 pressor." See, from first to last, what Napoleon 
 himself had finally to confess, that "without justice 
 there is no power." See, in a word, that over all 
 
74 SOCIETY A LIVING INSTRUMENT, ETC. 
 
 social communities and ranks, rules a Nemesis whose 
 name is the Lord of Love, Almighty. 
 
 " For He that looketh high, and wide, 
 
 Nor pauses in His plan, 
 Will take the sun out of the sky, 
 Ere freedom out of man." 
 
LECTURE III. 
 
 SOCIETY A DISCIPLINE OF INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER. 
 
 IT was attempted, in the two former lectures, af 
 ter defining Human Society, to show, first, that it is 
 a divine appointment in itself; and secondly, that its 
 Laws and its Principles are the Creator s thoughts 
 and purposes. In order not to anticipate subsequent 
 steps, the argument was there confined, for the most 
 part, to Society as a whole, without a detailed in 
 vestigation of its particulars. I spoke of the impress 
 of God s design to be seen on its origin, on the 
 scene and the manner of its external development, 
 and in the providential ideas which it represents 
 and tends more and more to embody. 
 
 Not that everything in social life is divine. Chris 
 tian philosophy admits no such loose, perverted opti 
 mism as that. Because we discover that God has 
 certain definite intentions in the social constitution, 
 we are not therefore at liberty to infer that the 
 whole operation of Society, and all its temporary or 
 local effects, will be what a God of justice and love 
 approves. The design is one thing; the hindrances, 
 
76 SOCIETY A DISCIPLINE 
 
 from man s evil, through which the design is worked 
 out, are another thing. The electric fluid does not 
 accomplish its passage by a straight path, but follows 
 the line of least resistance. Account for it by what 
 ever theory we may, depravity must be admitted as 
 a fact consequent upon moral trial. Doubtless the 
 disturbing influences, emanating from the passions of 
 mankind, which now are suffered to mix and confuse 
 the currents of history, might be borne down by Om 
 nipotence j the sea of human affairs might be swept 
 into a flat monotony by the irresistible wind of an 
 arbitrary will. But then the Almighty s government 
 would be another economy from the actual one, nor 
 would he be God. 
 
 It is necessary especially to remember this, as 
 we now come to treat of Society as a discipline of 
 individual character. God uses our social relations 
 to exercise us, and ripen us, in the qualities of per 
 sonal virtue and the strengths of a right life. He 
 sets us down on a social planet, surrounds us with 
 fellow-beings, implicates us in a promiscuous play of 
 passions, that through this intermixture, friction and 
 conflict, each and all might grow into ampler pro 
 portions, into stouter fibre, into a more flexible ac 
 tivity. Yet we must not expect to see this result 
 produced with a fatal uniformity. Moral freedom 
 remains. Heaven itself jealously guards forever the 
 
OF INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER. 77 
 
 sacred liberty of choice. It is like any other op 
 portunity of pupilage. You may learn and grow 
 wise if you will. If you will, you may slight 
 your lesson and be a fool. The social laws act 
 for us, but they will not compel us. 
 
 The main proposition is simple, and it is this : 
 In making man what man was meant to be, the 
 Creator first gave him a social nature, and then set 
 him down in social surroundings. How the former 
 is acted on by the latter, the soul by Society, is 
 what we have now to illustrate . In such a re 
 view, the resort must be to familiar scenery, sights 
 and sounds that are seen and heard of all men 
 and women. Here history will not serve us much, 
 because history, as it has been hitherto written, has 
 less to do with the secret life and real experience 
 of humanity than with its public exploits, its poli 
 cies, dynasties and battles ; less with its spirit than 
 its forms ; less with men and women, the people, 
 than with their captains and managers. Treatises 
 can here help us little, because, as we have said, 
 social laws are not reduced to a scientific system. 
 
 The argument must proceed by passing before 
 us some of the principal forms in which Society 
 exists, to discover in them influences which are 
 their own moral evidence, and a spiritual signifi 
 cance which is a manifest demonstration of God. 
 
78 SOCIETY A DISCIPLINE 
 
 These will be, chiefly, the seven social types pro 
 duced by kindred blood, by unequal strength, by 
 the instinct of sympathetic entertainment, by trade, 
 by local habitation, by congregational emotion, and 
 by public opinion. 
 
 Approach, then, these permanent and familiar 
 forms of social life, to observe how they are ever 
 carrying forward their educatory work, and vindi 
 cating their office as providential schoolmasters. 
 
 I. First, and simplest, is the Family. There the 
 sensitiveness of affection, the closeness and con 
 stancy of contact, the felt need of mutual trust 
 and boundless tolerance, the immense freight of 
 happiness staked on implicit confidence, render every 
 household a most critical and exacting test of gen 
 uine goodness. It is a superficial notion that in the 
 sacred enclosure of domestic habit, all virtue is par 
 ticularly natural and easy. On the contrary, the 
 very value of the love that ought to reign there, 
 the very beauty of the tenderness that ought to 
 soften all the asperities and adorn all the drudge 
 ries, the very charm that ought to invest the 
 homely routine of task-work, and dignify with fresh 
 enthusiasm the dullness of drooping spirits and 
 weary nerves, all this only doubles the bitterness 
 of disappointment when the ideal Paradise is lost, 
 or never found. There, as everywhere, in proportion 
 
OF INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER. 79 
 
 to the sacredness of the place, and the immensity 
 of hope, is the cruelty of the desecration and the 
 torture of sensibility, when the first disappointing 
 discord jars the air. We all know how hard for 
 pride it often is to take the frank fault-finding of 
 housemates, simply because conscience whispers they 
 know us best, and the blame must be real. Each 
 understands the other s weaknesses, and a censure 
 there is like the decree of doom. Besides, it is in 
 the eyes of those we love most that we long to be 
 most approved, and their dreadful discovery of our 
 infirmities is a wrench of pain. The truth is, there 
 is no spot on earth, no Delos of inevitable peace, 
 not even the blessed Eden of our home, where the 
 impulses of kindness can supersede the tuition of 
 experience, or the promptings of nature dispense 
 with the principles of religion. 
 
 And therefore God sets our childhood into the 
 Family, as into a solemn, cheerful, difficult school 
 for its faculties. Therefore he has appointed that the 
 human spirit shall first wake to consciousness, feel 
 its first ties, confront its first trials there, under 
 those tones of the mother s voice, which, it has 
 been beautifully said, no skill of vocal art could 
 ever imitate, and amid those expectant, encourag 
 ing affections, which tempt out into exercise every 
 nascent energy. Therefore he has ordained marriage, 
 
80 SOCIETY A DISCIPLINE 
 
 and immured it with care and love and modesty, 
 guarding its pure precincts as much by spiritual at 
 tractions as by terrible penalties, rebuking the vulgar 
 frivolity that trifles with its sanctities and degrades 
 its gates by jest and gossip, by levity and license ; 
 yes, trifles and degrades, as if the satire that once 
 called wedlock " going home by daylight after court 
 ship s masquerade," and the old Russian marriage 
 formula to the bridegroom, " Here, wolf, take thy 
 lamb," were the highest philosophy of the theme. 
 Therefore he has adjusted, since the first pair, the 
 proportion of the sexes, balancing the local prepon 
 derance of the one or the other over against some 
 special waste, and that of the males on the whole 
 against their greater liability to exposure and de 
 struction. Therefore he has accumulated, in kindred 
 blood, from generation to generation, the hereditary 
 seeds of peculiar dispositions, traits, temptations- 
 running the lines of succession down through all 
 the meshes of general diversity, making the Past as 
 well as the Present to shape us. Therefore he has 
 surrounded the dawning life of perception and rea 
 son with the marvellous patience of parental care, 
 yet writing on every new-born child the fearful 
 warning against parental folly or neglect. Therefore 
 he has reciprocated the parental and filial offices, 
 making the offspring not seldom a refiner and even 
 
OF INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER. 81 
 
 rescuer of the father and the mother, a "little child 
 leading them." Therefore he has blessed brothers 
 with sisters, and sisters with brothers, tempering 
 manliness with gentleness, inspiring the delicate soul 
 with courage, and, by a thousand reciprocities of 
 strength and weakness, of older and younger, of corn 
 ers in and goers out, joy and grief, decision and ami 
 ability, mirth and tears, and daily looks of faces and 
 tones of talk, has organized a curriculum of moral 
 study under domestic roofs, more complicated, and 
 yet more simple, than the oldest university ever saw. 
 The Family is the primary institution of all social 
 order and peace. It is that ordinance which Jeho 
 vah wrote in nature, and Christ reaffirmed in words, 
 making one woman the wife of one husband, and 
 their wedlock the bond of every social good. 
 
 II. A second method of the discipline of character 
 is afforded by the relation of the employer and the 
 employed. Every one of these relationships, we 
 shall find, however accidental or merely economical 
 it seems, engages a new part of our nature, and ex 
 ercises a new set of dispositions. What looked like 
 a mere expedient of domestic convenience as the 
 employment of servants, clerks, porters the God of 
 our life takes up and makes a portion of his great 
 social plan for maturing our souls. If we watch it 
 in this view, we shall see that in this peculiar in- 
 
82 SOCIETY A DISCIPLINE 
 
 tercourse there is exercised a kind of morality less 
 animated by the affections than that which acts in 
 the Family, less guarded by equality of position 
 and the mutual assertion of legal rights, or any 
 other intimidation, than in Society at large. Hon 
 esty of dealing, for instance, when the other party 
 to your bargain is your equal in knowledge and 
 position a shrewd, practised trader, competent to 
 the arts of traffic implies a different pitch of vir 
 tue from honesty with one who is weak, uninstruct- 
 ed, partly overawed and disabled with a sense of 
 social inferiority. Not that there are two kinds of 
 honesty : but the altered conditions test it in differ 
 ent ways and degrees. Then the very fact of par 
 tial dependence, obtaining not so much in actual 
 servitude, as in most proletary classes, elicits in 
 the conscientious master or employer a distinct order 
 of sentiments a considerateness, a feeling of protec 
 tion, a blending of parental vigilance with magisterial 
 authority conducive to a peculiar kind of righteous 
 ness. By the benignant compensations of a Provi 
 dence that nowhere leaves the worst badness without 
 its grain of good, it is in this quarter that we find, 
 in some forms of slavery, the ounce of benefit which 
 obstinately holds out against all the tremendous weight 
 and complication of wrong. Vassalage, serfdom itself, 
 in an age when Christianity has not yet created a 
 
OF INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER. 83 
 
 conscience against it, is a moral opportunity to the 
 lord of the soil. Feudalism, while it limited the 
 despotism of kings by keeping power and arms in 
 the hands of the baron and the noble, on the other 
 hand offered to these a generous culture in honor 
 and compassion. No domineering institution, what 
 ever its abuses, is suffered to break asunder the 
 connection of these divine compensatory rules. You 
 have not learned of your fellow-citizen whether he 
 is a tyrant or a republican, liberal or mean, nay, 
 a Christian or a knave, till you know how he 
 treats the laborers in his field, the operatives in 
 his factory, the clerks in his store, looking, too, 
 not only at wages or bodily comfort, but at their 
 human feeling, their families, their evenings, their 
 Sundays, their brain and heart. A housewife s 
 character is no more revealed, nor even tried, till 
 you follow her from the assembly and the church 
 to watch her temper, her tones, her manners, with 
 cook and seamstress and nursery-maid, than an 
 actor s private thrift can be inferred from the fine 
 speeches and glittering costumes of the stage. In 
 the one case her virtue was on exhibition, and was 
 performed ; in the other it was at home and itself. 
 III. Come, however, next, as the next wider 
 scene, to a company met for social entertainment. 
 " We receive/ says Montesquieu, " three different 
 
84 SOCIETY A DISCIPLINE 
 
 educations, of our parents, of our masters, and of 
 the world." Come, then, to that brilliant throng, 
 an evening party, that less professional but not 
 always less scenic theatre, that more promiscuous 
 enlargement of the household, that gay yet solemn 
 match-ground and Olympian competition of all the 
 passions and principles of men and of women, so 
 festive and yet so tragical, such bubbles and span 
 gles of air and light dancing on the surface, such 
 plots and counterplots, ambitions and artifices only 
 a little way beneath ; but, oh, sometimes such 
 mortal struggles of despair and peace, of love and 
 fear, of jealousy and candor, nay, such writhings 
 of immortal demons and angels, far down in the 
 deeper abysses of the unsounded soul beneath ! 
 
 It is a scene like this, indeed, which, just be 
 cause it is so lively and expressive a symbol or rep 
 resentative of what we are most apt to understand 
 by social life, has taken and appropriated to itself, 
 in many circles, as by exclusive application, that 
 undefined, uncertain name, Society : so that people 
 flippantly and narrowly say of their neighbors, ac 
 cording as they are or are not seen in such assem 
 blies, that they are, or not, in society. 
 
 Now, to realize the discipline such a gathering 
 carries on, only consider the actual emotions which 
 there jostle against each other ; get nutriment or 
 
OF INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER. 85 
 
 poison, get elbowed or courted, get sunny favors or 
 chilly neglect or frosty scorn, get the warm hand or 
 the cold shoulder, get smile or sneer, get equal honor 
 or insulting patronage. Is it possible to move on 
 such a spot call it battle-field or play-ground as you 
 will to stand among its flatteries, its criticisms, its 
 concealments, its confessions, its conversational tac 
 tics, its gymnasium of ready and nimble thoughts, 
 its phantasmagoria of complimentary nothings and 
 dreary emptiness, its supple turnings of expression, 
 its sentences begun in frankness but cunningly 
 shaped, before they are finished, by some pru 
 dent recollection is it possible to stand here, and 
 then go out from a tuition like this, without being 
 better or worse ? Many a young girl, that lays off 
 her ornaments after her first party, weary of the 
 polished insult that has offered her only a frivolous 
 flattery, as if her womanly soul could be content 
 with that, or else giddy with the first tones of the 
 silver-tongued sorcerers, has taken on her spirit that 
 night the influence that sways her forever, making 
 her yet the strong conqueror of herself and min 
 ister of light to others, or else the woman of 
 pleasure that is " dead while she liveth," and never 
 to live truly any more. See the strong there bear 
 ing the infirmities of the weak ; see genuine kind 
 ness seeking out the unknown, exploring the cor- 
 
86 SOCIETY A DISCIPLINE 
 
 ners of the room to entertain the timid, the ugly, 
 or the unsocial ; see the self-forgetful devices of the 
 simple desire to please ; see the graceful sacrifices, 
 each for each, of the loving and beloved ; see true 
 politeness waiving every unwelcome topic, hiding 
 the heart s unsightly spots, and catching, by trained 
 perceptions, the disguised signals of mortification or 
 painful memory, only to ward off the annoying al 
 lusion, while petty malice or weak pride pushes 
 the irritated sensibility, and exults in smiting the 
 bruised reed ; see ruinous prodigality, and over 
 against it as ruinous a parsimony; see the love of 
 admiration producing its mixed results, refinements, 
 adornments, amenities, all the way from the sav 
 age who tattooes his skin to the last fashionable 
 decoration of his most exquisite civilized cousin ; 
 see an honesty of speech valiant as that of mar 
 tyr ages or soldiers camps, yet courtly as that of 
 halls of state ; see sincerity like that of the little 
 child : I say, whatever else this motley company 
 may be, it is no mark for contempt, simply be 
 cause human creatures are so wrought and proved 
 there for the Judgment.* 
 
 * I have seen, in one of the bright books of the day, a sort of argu 
 ment coolly constructed against the reasonableness of broken hearts, or 
 rather of letting them ever be broken : and thus a protest against the 
 mutual dependencies of social affection. " Human beings," says this 
 easy author, delightfully disposing of all the deeper tragedies of the 
 
OF INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER 87 
 
 To discover this the more completely, distinguish 
 between this social intercourse as it is apt to be, 
 and as it ought to be, especially with reference 
 to those two strong pillars of a muscular morality, 
 veracity and courage. True social intercourse is not 
 a formal association of people, moving under artifi 
 cial prescriptions, yoked by domineering customs, 
 hoodwinked by traditional conventions, " presenting 
 their compliments" on handsome paper, when they 
 have really nothing to present but suspicion or 
 spite, " very much regretting" they cannot be pres 
 ent where they secretly rejoice with all their hearts 
 not to be, " requesting the honor and pleasure" of 
 company which they know will bo rather a visita- 
 
 human heart by a statement shot at the head, " human beings hang 
 not on one another in that blind way. We have each an individual soul. 
 On another soul may rest all its hopes and joys, but on God only rests 
 its worth, its duties, and its nobility." Hence there is no need, any 
 where, in all God s world, of what men mean by a " broken heart !" 
 O fluent and complacent philosopher, I thought ; how much deeper 
 lies the truth than this plummet sounded ! " On another rest all its 
 hopes and joys," and yet no possibility of breaking ! Yes : its worth, 
 its duties, and its nobility do rest on God. And so rests there, blessed 
 be his Pity ! the heart, that, just because of the infinite capacity he gave 
 it for love and hope, is broken here, never to be bound up but in the 
 healing air of heaven. Human beings do hang on one another, not 
 in any blind, but in that fearful, way. And so must they be judged, 
 and comforted, the breaker and the broken. The awfulness of our 
 natures is the trust they are to each other. The infinite ocean, joy. 
 misery, affection, despair, heaves and swings its tide in every breast ;. 
 but how would it all shrink to a drop, and even that drop dry up, but 
 for the breasts that heave and beat around it ! 
 
88 SOCIETY A DISCIPLINE 
 
 tion than a visit, and "renewing the assurance of 
 their distinguished consideration" for persons whom 
 nothing but self-interest keeps them from insulting 
 to their faces, or slandering behind their backs. 
 This is a Society of etiquette, hypocrisy, coward 
 ice, ceremony, and diplomacy, not the incarna 
 tion of divine ideas. The four preceptors of that 
 training are policy, pretence, imitation, appetite. 
 Nor is it properly human, seeing how many of its 
 elements it holds rather in common with the fox, 
 the crocodile, the ape, the peacock, or even with 
 the devil and his angels. 
 
 The social company that a divine education con 
 templates is a far nobler and far holier thing. It 
 is gathered by common sympathies, grouped by 
 real affinities, seeking a liberal and harmonious de 
 velopment of all the best powers of the race. It 
 is, as we saw, the beautiful balance of individual 
 peculiarity with a collective unity, carefully re 
 specting the liberty of the one while it guards the 
 order of the other, engaging a salient and racy 
 variety of persons while it binds together the whole 
 diversified Jcosmos by the centralizing gravity of 
 mutual good faith. In a word, it is a Christian 
 Society, rooted in Christian convictions, expanding 
 by a Christian culture, culminating in a Christian 
 commonwealth. The rectitude of the lowest born 
 
OF INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER. 89 
 
 or bred is of deeper significance than the pleasure 
 of the highest. Divine in its institution, it is hu 
 man in all its experience, having for its eternal 
 Head that wondrous soul who blends both these ele 
 ments in the august mystery of his mediation. It 
 is born of God, and inspired by Christ, for the per 
 fecting of mankind. It may exist in its essence 
 wherever the proffers of hospitality, the sacrament 
 of marriage, the emergencies of enterprise, the hopes 
 of learning, the instincts of neighborhood, the faith 
 of the church, gather two or three together. Dif 
 ferent lives touch. The germ of it is the Family. 
 The full, unfolded crown and completeness of the 
 growth, the living dome, encompassing flower and 
 fruit and leaf and bough, is the universal Family of 
 the Race. You find it realized partially in schools, 
 in literary clubs, in leagues, in legislatures, in na 
 tions. The same marvellous play of acting and re 
 acting influence pervades the sewing-circle and rus 
 tic husking-party as the senate or tournament, the 
 children s summer pic-nic as the royal reception. 
 The same angels of mercy stand waiting with faces 
 half unveiled. The same fiendish envyings, calum 
 nies, revenges, peer and scowl out of the shadows 
 behind : God s discipline forever. 
 
 We have all heard of the little girls that 
 " wished they could have company all the time," 
 
90 SOCIETY A DISCIPLINE 
 
 and when asked why, said, " Because then father 
 would be always good-natured." There is the reve 
 lation of a principle. To be sure you might say, 
 the company made this surly or petulant father a 
 hypocrite. Perhaps not; perhaps the temporary ele 
 vation was real, and the self-control sincere ; per 
 haps the company was only a Avholesome interven 
 tion between him and a contentious, impracticable 
 influence from the other side of the house, a re 
 lief like one of his public conversations to Socra 
 tes. But what if it did, in that case, occasion 
 hypocrisy, the tribute vice pays to virtue ? It 
 would only show that the company exacts a higher 
 style of behavior than privacy. The fact is, Soci 
 ety is a kind of judgment. Together, men are 
 more in awe of their own standards of right than 
 alone. There is a shamefacedness about contempti 
 ble foibles, and even sins. The law of duty, up 
 to the sense of the average recognition, and gene 
 rally a little higher, gathers a cumulative force 
 and awfulness. The suppression of overt evil is 
 exemplary. The restraint is a discipline. 
 
 I spoke of courage. The social company is a 
 school for that. Fashion is the imperial tyrant, of 
 which local opinion, unjust law, the privileges of 
 currency and popularity with your class, may be 
 only the too willing ministers of state, adding 
 
OF INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER. 91 
 
 specific chains and caprices of their own to the 
 ascendant cruelty of their liege. Resistance, by 
 principle, to that, will be a braver valor, very often, 
 than the facing of batteries or bayonets. I spoke 
 of veracity. When shall the prophet come, in cam 
 el s hair, and leathern girdle, that shall uncover the 
 abysses of our acted falsehoods, and pour adequate 
 shame on our systematic impostures ? Smiles on 
 our faces, with bitterness underneath; cordiality in 
 our grasp, with no nerve between the fingers and 
 the heart ; love, marriage, all holy trusts, made 
 merchandise, and auctioneered to the loudest bid ; 
 invitations of courtesy bringing the company together 
 by one lie ; greetings of indiscriminate and extrav 
 agant welcome receiving them with another ; com 
 posite illusions dressing and decorating them with 
 another ; ceremonies of elaborate make-believe, mock 
 ing reality with another; and insincere regrets at 
 the farewell dismissing them with another ; who 
 will dare to affirm these do not enter appallingly 
 into what we call elegant life ? Or who will venture 
 on the yet bolder and more faithless denial that the 
 final cause of these exposures is to hasten the advent 
 of that rugged, truth-speaking, Christian time, which 
 shall rend apart these guilty impositions, and restore 
 the social world to its upright simplicity ? 
 
 IV. Reference has been made to commerce. Trade 
 
92 SOCIETY A DISCIPLINE 
 
 is essentially a social institution. It is one of the 
 departments in this great unsystematized university 
 of social discipline., whether by its regular processes, 
 or its periodical dislocations, panics and convulsions. 
 I cite, therefore, as another illustration of my sub 
 ject, that vast and world-encompassing interest, whose 
 laws and fluctuations not only determine the mate 
 rial welfare of men, but strike clown also into moral 
 obligation and the springs of character ; commerce, 
 which one of the brilliant orators of Europe called 
 the " locomotive of principles ;" which always has in 
 it a profounder significance than the dumb merchan 
 dise it handles, packs, ships, and computes profits 
 on, involving, as it does, the eternal principles of 
 ethics in its exchanges, the occult laws of politi 
 cal economy and celestial charity in its distribution, 
 and binding the tribes of the earth together by 
 cords of mutual traffic first, that it may bind 
 them in Christian brotherhood afterwards. God s 
 strength has reared its warehouses in all open 
 ports, for character. God s bounty has freighted 
 its thousand holds ; his permission has loosened its 
 cables and slid its navies from so many opposite 
 harbors into the expanse of so many seas ; his 
 steadfastness has held its anchors fast ; his breath 
 has pressed its sails, and balanced its keels, and 
 hardened its masts, and pointed the needle of its 
 
OF INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER. 93 
 
 compass, and braced the sinews of its mariners ; his 
 care has made all elements further it, the winds 
 and the fire to speed it, and, from the hollow of 
 his own hand, has poured afresh forever the waters 
 that float it ; God s nourishment has grown the 
 forests that have been bent into its knees ; God s 
 eye has followed the track of its every vessel, on 
 all oceans and straits, in the chafings of Arctic 
 ice, where Humanity has searched the barren prom 
 ontories for signals of its lost explorers, or under 
 equatorial skies, where it opens the doors of both 
 the Indies to the enterprise of both the continents ; 
 and all this, not for mouths, or bodies, or tax- 
 bills, or banks, but for the soul of man, and be 
 cause he is a social being. 
 
 Very largely we are a commercial people, and 
 also an educated people. Need it be told, then, 
 how human equity, human forbearance, human jus 
 tice, human industry, human energy, get their daily 
 discipline in the bargainings, the partnerships, the 
 commissions, the exchanges of that business ? how 
 God would have men merchants, that they may 
 recognize the obligation of mercantile fidelity as 
 surely as their navigation does its magnet and 
 currents ; keep their credit as even as its tides ; 
 and open their charities as wide as its seas ? 
 
 Then, when commercial disaster comes, when men 
 
94 SOCIETY A DISCIPLINE 
 
 see the walls of their fortunes closing in, and high- 
 built estates tumble and crash till all confidence 
 shakes, and starving multitudes mourn the ruin, and 
 crime rushes in to snatch its guilty harvest by vio 
 lence, when stout hearts fail for fear, and friends 
 look into each other s faces only to read there suspi 
 cion and alarm, when strong men go home at night 
 to wake and weep, and when capitalists and bankers, 
 used to ease, and lovers of life, as they turn their 
 locks in the morning, say, " Would God it were 
 evening," and meanness fattens on distress, and 
 honor dreads loss of faith more than loss of millions, 
 shall I undertake to say, Who then speaks, and 
 who shall be still ? You have heard the voice for 
 yourselves. Time, and suffering, and thought, and 
 prayer, slowly offer the interpretation ; and this 
 they say plainly, that God s Providence is the 
 preceptor, and character the lesson. 
 
 V. There are local forms of Society. The most 
 imposing of these, a representative of all the rest, 
 the structure that commerce builds, is a great city. 
 Not more true is it that since the days of Nine 
 veh, Phoenicia, Tyre, Carthage, the wary eyes of 
 statesmen and political economists have always been 
 fixed on metropolitan peoples as the springs and 
 seats of political movement, than that the eye of 
 moral insight sees there the most vivid and thrill- 
 
OF INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER. 95 
 
 ing encounter of all the forces of humanity. Stretch 
 ing out the tentacula of its traffic, till, in coarser or 
 finer filaments, they encircle the globe ; fed, through 
 port and avenue, by every climate ; ornamented by 
 the ingenuity of every country s genius ; bearing no 
 blade of grass, yet piling wealth to the sky ; an 
 swering with quick, responsive sympathies to every 
 exciting breath that stirs anywhere the air of the 
 world, remember, that tumultuous mass of life, con 
 gregated, multitudinous, is yet made up of individ 
 ual units, souls that the whole is strengthening 
 or corrupting, sanctifying or cursing, for eternity. 
 What the curious gazer beholds, w r hen he places 
 himself by the street-side, and watches the chang 
 ing faces that pass, in strange exhibition, before 
 him, stamped each with some new expression, - 
 with sorrow or a smile, with anxiety or cheerful 
 ness, with thought or feeling, with listlessness or 
 eagerness, is but an emblem of all the city is and 
 represents. As there are light-hearted and laughing 
 companies following hard upon funeral processions ; 
 as disease walks arm in arm with health, and 
 wretchedness in rags marches in locked steps with 
 luxury, so in the deep reality of the spirit. By 
 contrasts and conflicts like these, in your palaces, 
 your decent dwellings, your dens, in your decorat 
 ed paganism and your impoverished glory, in the 
 
96 SOCIETY A DISCIPLINE 
 
 gorgeous temple of the Pharisee and the publican s 
 holier corner, God visits you every morning and 
 tries you every moment, besets you literally be 
 hind and before, and lays his hand upon you. 
 
 " Let me move slowly through the street, 
 
 Filled with an everlasting train, 
 Amid the sound of steps that beat 
 The murmuring walks, like autumn rain. 
 
 " Youth, with pale cheek and slender frame, 
 
 And dreams of greatness in thine eye, 
 Goest thou to build an early name, 
 Or early in thy tasks to die ? 
 
 u Keen son of trade, with eager brow, 
 
 Who is now fluttering in thy snare ? 
 
 Thy golden fortunes, tower they now, 
 
 Or melts the glittering shape in air ? 
 
 "Who of this crowd, to-night, shall tread 
 The dance till daylight gleams again? 
 Who sorrow o er the untimely dead ? 
 Who writhe, themselves, in mortal pain ? 
 
 " Each, where his tasks or pleasures call, 
 They pass and heed each other not. 
 There is Who heeds, who holds them all, 
 In his large love and boundless thought. 
 
 " These struggling tides of life that seem 
 
 In shifting, aimless course to tend, 
 Are eddies of the mighty stream 
 That rolls to its predestined end."* 
 
 * Bryant. 
 
OF INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER. 97 
 
 Yes ; that busy human hive is more than a 
 master-piece of superb mercantile mechanism ; more 
 than a facility of subsistence, show and gain ; more 
 than a vast hotel for the migrating trains that 
 people and till the hemispheres. It is a discipline 
 of human souls. For still, " at the entry of the 
 city, Wisdom cries, Unto you, man, I call. 
 
 The question, so much debated, between ihe 
 moral advantages or securities, on the whole, of 
 city and country, is capable of no conclusion, be 
 cause the two are not in the relations of an alter 
 native, but are needful parts of a complete variety. 
 For instance, refinement, which is best bred in met 
 ropolitan manners, because of the observation, oppor 
 tunity, and examples not possibly accumulated else 
 where, is an actual good. So is a certain reserved 
 individuality, held in a forcible and contemplative 
 equipoise, an actual good ; and that is best bred 
 off the pavements. Men s reasonings in this mat 
 ter are very apt to run according to their tastes, 
 and so their conclusions represent only their pref 
 erences. It is said, for example, that the rural 
 attachment and bond to the soil is a source of 
 the spirit of liberty : but, on the other hand, his 
 tory seems to show that independence of prescrip 
 tion and prerogative has often broken out, and held 
 
 sway, in commercial cities ; while we, as descend- 
 
 7 
 
98 SOCIETY A DISCIPLINE 
 
 ants from a British ancestry, know something of 
 the tenacity and arrogance of a landed aristocracy. 
 Considering the absence of interruption and mix 
 ture, it has been naturally alleged that country 
 life is favorable to profound reflection, and the 
 thorough assimilating of whatever knowledge is ac 
 quired. But then it is found that in order to 
 this effect the prior condition of mental activ 
 ity is necessary ; and a purely agricultural commu 
 nity almost always grows heavy and stolid in a 
 few generations unless it is quickened and stirred 
 by some contact with great centres. Then, it is 
 just as true, and indeed it is proverbial, how the 
 too imitative and too luxurious and too superficial 
 propensities of most cities require that the stock 
 of native vigor and moral earnestness should be 
 often replenished from the unworn energy of the 
 fields and the mountains. The inference is not 
 obscure. Each of these scenes has its own faults, 
 limitations, and depravities. And in the complete 
 structure of civilization, where producing, carrying, 
 modifying the raw material, or manufacturing and 
 exchanging, are the great modes of the public 
 economy, social wants and supplies spring up in 
 both, which are naturally adapted to each other. 
 
 VI. We might take, as another instance, the 
 popular assembly. Who that, in periods of public 
 
OF INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER. 99 
 
 emotion, has stood in a crowded congregation and 
 felt the enthusiasm kindle, mounting sometimes to 
 frenzy, as sympathies spring and react, glow and 
 rise, are reflected, reverberated, redoubled ; who 
 that has marked their effect not only on forensic 
 eloquence but on practical enterprises, from the 
 days of the Athenian agora to our modern plat 
 forms ; who that has watched their fearful ap 
 proaches to revolutionary terror and insurrection 
 ary demonism, as they degenerate from deliberative 
 counsel to the riot and the mob, needs be told 
 how often humanity in the individual is the ready 
 pupil of humanity in the mass ? 
 
 VII. Indeed, the whole of that power in commu 
 nities that is named public opinion, is one of the 
 most significant exhibitions of the social sentiment 
 in its action on the citizen. It is the accumulated 
 pressure of an aggregate, bearing down on each of 
 the constituents. What we call fashion, in all its 
 forms, is only a kind of dramatizing of public 
 opinion, - - the average preference dominating the 
 personal judgment, or giving a momentum to in 
 difference. Mighty for beneficence when it is in 
 the right, it is just as mighty for mischief when 
 perverted. It is a sifter of the stuff men are 
 made of. If it crooks the supple hinges of many 
 knees, it finds others whose sinews cannot be bent, 
 
100 SOCIETY A DISCIPLINE 
 
 only their bread withheld, or their blood spilt; and 
 then the next age crowns them as its heroes. If 
 it entices some to put their principles into the 
 market, so it meets others not saleable at any 
 price, who say to its seductions, " Get thee behind 
 me, Satan," and are lifted up thereby at once, and 
 have angels come and minister to them. Even 
 where there is no " divinity hedging about the 
 person of a king," there is the patronage of a ma 
 jority for the ambitious, the bait of popularity, the 
 charm of favoring winds, tests of positive man 
 hood. Then, when policy and self-interest have 
 stolen the livery of Justice and Patriotism, when 
 the sordid greed for place hath conceived and 
 brought forth every civil sin, when the rule of 
 political proceeding is to put certain labelled candi 
 dates in, right or wrong, and to keep certain 
 branded candidates out, wrong or right, then is 
 the time for individual virtue to prove its breed 
 ing, for good men to stand forth, for brave men 
 to breast the current ; then shall ye discern be 
 tween him that serveth God and him that serveth 
 him not. By the very pressure of its own perils. 
 Society reconstructs its own order. 
 
 We gather, now, the general tendency of these 
 several illustrations of our main proposition, that 
 
OF INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER. 101 
 
 Society is a Discipline of Individual Character, 
 and thus an agent of the Divine Disposition, 
 as we have noticed them in various forms of 
 Social Life, the family, the relation of employer 
 and employed, the general intercourse of company, 
 commerce, a city, a public assembly, and popular 
 opinion. In each of these fields we have sought 
 examples of two great laws, viz., a reciprocal re 
 lation and inter-dependence of all social and per 
 sonal life, with a reflex effect of all outward 
 moral action on the soul that produces it.* 
 
 It will naturally and practically conclude this 
 survey, if you will bring before you some single 
 soul s history, to witness how its career is wrought 
 out, and its moral elements are mingled, by its 
 immersion in the social atmosphere, and its giving 
 and taking with other persons. Start with it at 
 its starting-point. See how it gathered from pa 
 rents, from brothers and sisters, from playmates, 
 from school-companions, from neighbors, from all the 
 faces it met, from all the talk it heard, from all 
 the temperatures that burnt or chilled it. It is 
 
 * " Things have no society, or capacity of social relations. In 
 mere nature, considered as a mere scheme of cause and effect, there is 
 nothing social, any more than there is in the members of a steam en 
 gine. Love, benefit, sympathy, injury, hatred, thanks, blame, charac 
 ter, worship, faith, all that constitutes the reality of Society, l>elong to 
 the fact that we are consciously powers." BUSHNEUK.? * ;~_ 
 
 
102 SOCIETY A DISCIPLINE 
 
 often lamented, what a diffusive pestilence has 
 crept out upon our English literature, and into 
 thousands of private lives, from the looser pages 
 of one unprincipled genius. But few who deplore 
 Byron s terribly prostituted faculty, go behind his 
 own morbid, misanthropic sensuality, to watch the 
 moulding influence of the passionate, unscrupulous 
 mother who first woke the fury in his bosom. 
 The unfeeling taunts of her mortified vanity at 
 one physical deformity in his person, her bitter 
 sarcasms, her angry maledictions, dropped on his 
 susceptible childhood, in the retirements of their 
 home, like poison on a plant, and the corroded 
 germ shot into a baleful manhood, blighting the 
 world s purity far more than it beautified its po 
 etry. There is no exhausting the capacity of charac 
 ter to take the mould of every social type it meets. 
 Whatever human stuff we touch cleaves to our fin 
 gers. If it is the pitch of sin, we are defiled. If 
 it is the alabaster-box of precious virtues, we carry 
 the fragrant anointing to our burial. So we " build 
 each other up." Every living soul you ever met, 
 since your mother bent over your new-born life, has 
 wrought its effect, slight, unseen, imperceptible, very 
 often, yet blessing or blasting, on your being and 
 your destiny. 
 
 The shadows of apostles, passing by, shed their 
 
OF INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER. 103 
 
 silent virtue on the sick laid by the wayside. 
 Some nameless influence, be it inspiration, be it 
 temptation, has gone out from your least conscious 
 hours, and by word, by look, by tone, by gesture, 
 by repulsion or attraction, by stimulus or depression, 
 has altered and shaped in its little measure every 
 child, man, woman, you ever knew. Most terrible 
 trust ! " If thou knewest," exclaims Richter,* " that 
 every black thought of thine, or every glorious inde 
 pendent one, separated itself from thy soul, and 
 took root outside of thee, and for half a century," 
 oh, infinitely longer than that ! " pushed and 
 bore its poisonous or healing roots, oh how piously 
 wouldst thou choose and think !" 
 
 The ancients assigned to the banks of an imagin 
 ary lake, lying at the entrance of the veiled Here 
 after, a court of forty-two judges, to pass on the 
 fitness of the candidates for immortality. But our 
 God, who is One, and a Spirit, has set Society it 
 self, in all its countless members, for our perpetual 
 judgment, by those everlasting principles, Power, 
 Justice, Goodness, which he has appointed Society 
 to embody, teach, and spread. And when the veil 
 of things outward, which now partly obscures the 
 workings of these divine laws, shall finally be lifted, 
 then will rise up again the long train of spirits, 
 
 * " Doctrine of Education." 
 
104 SOCIETY A DISCIPLINE 
 
 tempters or helpers, with accusation, with benedic 
 tion. One will say, in tones of sadness and ag 
 ony which no dramatic art can prophesy, " It was 
 of you I learned my first oath, and because of 
 you oaths afterwards grew familiar to iny lips as 
 household words." Another, " Of you I learned to 
 defile my imagination with unclean shapes, till the 
 pollution grew thick on my heart as slime on 
 filthy pools." Another, " But for you, dishonesty 
 would have been a hateful mystery to me for 
 ever ; your cunning seduced my honor." Another, 
 " It was }^ou that, by the exasperating word, 
 spoken at the beginning of strife, and thence spin 
 ning its long trail of vexation down the walls of 
 my peace, fretted my natural petulance into ungov 
 ernable wrath and irretrievable crime." Another 
 still, " Your worldly levity quenched my holier 
 purposes, just when the striving Spirit was calling 
 me up to consecration and to Christ." Thus, by 
 the power of our social nature, working on with 
 rigorous consistency to the end, the very victims 
 of our thoughtless indulgence come to wield the 
 scourges of our retribution. Shall it not be that 
 some grateful soul, speaking out of the multitude 
 that no man can number, having the Father s name 
 in his forehead, and the new white stone in his 
 hand, with the new name that no man knoweth 
 
OF INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER. 105 
 
 saving he that receiveth it, shall say, " Praise be 
 to God ! not unto us : not, man, unto thee ! 
 But thy faithful counsel, thy frank word, thy 
 charitable deed, thy unpretending prayer, reached 
 after me, touched me, delivered me, inspired me, 
 saved me?" 
 
 There is bondage in the conspiracies of sin. 
 There is freedom in the fellowship of the good. 
 Out of the one the soul goes leprous, like Miriam, 
 pale with the ghastly disorder of guilt. From the 
 other it goes, as from the Mount of Transfiguration, 
 clothed with light falling from the saintly glory 
 of Moses and Elias. And if He who is greater 
 than Moses, and has more than the spirit and 
 power of Elias, has been found there, then, in the 
 homes and hospitalities of Society, God will have 
 made his tabernacles with men, and, disciplined by 
 their heavenly economy, individual man will render 
 back his noble contributions to the spiritual wealth 
 of the world. 
 
LECTURE IV. 
 
 SOCIETY A SCHOOL OF MUTUAL HELP. 
 
 IN treating Human Society as a method of di 
 vine discipline for individual character, we adverted, 
 among other bearings of that subject, to the energy 
 and diversity of action into which the social princi 
 ple unfolds the affections. Leading out of that line 
 of thought, yet distinct enough from it to justify a 
 separate discussion, is the doctrine of mutual assist 
 ance. The Father of men has so related the vari 
 ous parts and pursuits and interests of Society, that 
 they move forward to the best fulfilment of all their 
 several objects, and wind together into the most ma 
 jestic harmonies, in proportion as they act and react, 
 with reciprocal ministries of good, upon each other. 
 No aspect of our human kind yields ampler or 
 brighter proofs of God s intentions than this. 
 
 It is a matter of simple observation, and very fa 
 miliar, that wherever a number of people are thrown 
 together for a common object, even for a short pe 
 riod, in such conditions that the entertainment of 
 each depends directly upon the good-will of the 
 
108 SOCIETY A SCHOOL 
 
 whole, there acquaintance ripens fast, and friends for 
 life are made in a day. Parties of pleasure at the 
 sea-shore, companies of fellow-travellers on a long 
 journey, where the conventional forms are waived for 
 the sake of immediate enjoyment, put all our tedious 
 drawing-room etiquette, and our elaborate apparatus 
 of ceremonial intercourse, as a means, i. e., of get 
 ting human hearts together, into the shade, at once. 
 The same effect accrues wherever people are assem 
 bled, on the sudden outbreak of some peril or actual 
 calamity. An unexpected joy, or escape, if it were 
 only vivid enough to tear through the prevailing 
 crust of formality, would serve just as well. There 
 is, it is true, a tradition of a French master of man 
 ners, who apologized for letting another gentleman 
 drown before his eyes without offering the assistance 
 that would easily have saved him, because such an 
 interference would have been a breach of politeness, 
 as he had never had the pleasure of being introduced 
 to that gentleman s acquaintance, an instance of the 
 detriment man takes from his artificial conventions. 
 But, exceptions apart, those occurrences that act 
 powerfully on the strong emotions in us, break up 
 reserve and draw and bind people together. It 
 results from the law that a community of feeling 
 in the greater interest of Humanity, supersedes the 
 discrimination and separation in the less. And it is 
 
OF MUTUAL HELP. 109 
 
 only a more salient illustration of that underlying 
 bond of mutual dependency and assistance which 
 runs through the constitution of man, and links 
 into one all the members of the social body. 
 
 I say all the members. For, in considering So 
 ciety as we do now, it is the very beauty of the 
 truth before us that it takes up every individual 
 specimen of the race. It includes the least noticed, 
 the least active, the most obscure. It gathers in 
 the unreckoned and latent forces of humanity, 
 not merely a few conspicuous persons, or a privi 
 leged class. A French writer estimates that of the 
 thirty-six millions of that nation, only ten millions 
 really enter into the ideas that lie at the founda 
 tion of the government, the rest being indifferent. 
 The proportion will vary among the nations. But 
 these outlying masses are not omitted from the 
 contemplation of the principle of mutual assistance 
 before us. Politics may overlook them ; God never. 
 All are still members of Society, and are acting 
 and reacting on one another. More or less freely, 
 more or less blindly, more or less unconsciously, 
 they are working together for each other s relief 
 and furtherance, since God is working over and 
 within them all. Social perfection is not merely a 
 bending of others wills to our own. nor yet 
 merely a sacrifice of ours to theirs. It is a sub- 
 
110 SOCIETY A SCHOOL 
 
 ordination of all beside to the highest end of the 
 whole, not the greatest happiness but the great 
 est goodness of all. And it is towards that., only 
 by slow, stumbling, and often painful steps, not 
 without occasional retrogradations of tyranny and 
 hatred, that God has appointed Society to make 
 its way. 
 
 Notice that the principle continues to operate, 
 whether individual dispositions conform to it con 
 sciously, or consciously rebel at it. As was said 
 before, allowance must be made for the personal 
 liberty of choice. The original design may be 
 thwarted, but never baffled. Somebody resists, and 
 goes down. The eternal Thought moves on, undis 
 turbed and sublime. If then we see the social 
 design slowly and steadily fulfilled, in spite of the 
 selfish opposition, if the social laws hold out, over 
 bearing, in the long run, private plans, it is only 
 a more signal attestation of the ruling mind of the 
 Maker. 
 
 Without a very formal division, the fields from 
 which I shall seek my principal instances, in the 
 discussion and application of the great principle, 
 will be those of the benevolent sympathies, the 
 relations of sex, productive industry, the trades, 
 nations. 
 
 Let us ? at the outset, test the doctrine, in two 
 
OF MUTUAL HELP. Ill 
 
 extreme cases : one a social relation where the two 
 parties present the least that is mutual in appear 
 ance or in condition, which is casual, and may some 
 time pass away altogether ; the other a relation 
 which is as permanent as the race, essential to 
 the species, but where the very organic character 
 of the distinction creates a peculiar difficulty in 
 adjusting the rule of reciprocity. I mean, first, the 
 relation of helpless penury to property ; secondly, 
 the relation of woman to man. 
 
 If there is any class where the law fails, we 
 should probably say, at first thought, it must be 
 among the poor, who seem to have nothing to 
 give back for what they receive. Indeed, we have 
 a curious evidence of that fallacy in our use of 
 language ; for we call those who take the gift 
 beneficiaries, as if the only benefit were with them. 
 Arrayed in fashion s costume, out of fortune s ward 
 robe, wheeling our luxurious couches up to the 
 blazing grate of a winter s night, we discourse 
 complacently and self-righteously of the annoying 
 mendicants that will come beggared to our gates, 
 of their frauds, lies, impositions, forgetting that 
 as many frauds and lies and impositions went, 
 first and last, possibly, to the furnishing of our 
 handsome apartments, or may be seen and heard 
 by the Almighty inside of them ; forgetting, also. 
 
112 SOCIETY A SCHOOL 
 
 that we owe gratitude and favor to these wretched 
 creatures who wait for our mercy, because they 
 call up a momentary thrill of pity in our world- 
 bound hearts, and so save us from the very bar 
 barism of prosperity. Yes : the rich have to thank 
 the poor, with just as much reason as the poor 
 the rich. Character is moulded into its best pro 
 portions as much by what is done for others, as 
 by what is taken from them. It is mutual help. 
 Indeed, this is the test that discriminates all alms 
 givings : do they benefit one party only, or both ? 
 do they only feed and clothe starvation s body, 
 or the giver s spirit as w r ell ? Is not your soul as 
 likely to starve from selfishness, as the beggar s 
 body for want of bread ? There are poorer men 
 than I am, to the end that I may make myself 
 freely poorer for their sake ; and that will be my 
 most godlike privilege. * Taking from me earthly 
 things, they pour back spiritual things. Taking 
 clothing or food, they give patience, cheerfulness, 
 love, faith, and a pow r er to bear my own crosses. 
 Every poor child, really in want, or ignorant, that 
 ever stretched out a hand to you for help, has 
 been a part of God s discipline with you. He has 
 exercised a divine ministry upon you. Before God 
 you can never be again as if that slender, suppli- 
 
 * 2 Corinthians, viii. 9. 
 
OF MUTUAL HELP. 113 
 
 eating arm had not once been lifted in your path. 
 It will come back, in the strange quickenings of 
 memory, in fever, or midnight, or the last judg 
 ment. A debt rose up upon you ; and better or 
 worse you will be better you were meant to be 
 for eternity. I think you all must have noticed 
 that persons who spent much time in really and 
 heartily helping others had their moral eyesight 
 purified and even their intellect brightened. Their 
 whole nature grows firm, and calm, and vigorous, 
 and wise. By the expansion their presence thus 
 gives to our moral horizon, a needy family, first 
 entangling our sympathies in their straitened lot, 
 set our feet finally in a larger place, and become 
 our richest creditors. Lazarus comes a prophet of 
 regeneration to Dives gate. Penury preaches sal 
 vation from its ragged pulpit, in the name of him 
 who had not where to lay his head, and who, 
 in his own blessed person, made poverty sacred 
 forever. Silver and gold these children of a new 
 apostleship have not, but none the less it may be 
 a gate called " Beautiful" where we meet them, for 
 they loosen and uplift our crippled affections, and 
 we too go healed, leaping and walking and prais 
 ing, to the temple. 
 
 Again, both the friendly design of nature, and the 
 gross contempt of it by false philanthropy, are pro- 
 
114 SOCIETY A SCHOOL 
 
 nounced with particular emphasis in the case of the 
 most permanent, marked and indispensable of all the 
 social distinctions of the Human Race that of the 
 two sexes. Here, again, see the social balance, in its 
 most striking shape, variety of constitution, with 
 unity of moral design, a mutuality. That woman 
 is not yet fulfilling her whole rightful work in the 
 social economy, is obvious to common sense. The 
 real relative rights of the two sexes will be set 
 tled, only when each enjoys the liberty of unfolding 
 and exercising its own peculiar character, whatever 
 it may be, suffering no obstruction or hindrance 
 from the other. Now, the whole group of human 
 faculties, intellectual, moral and spiritual make what 
 enumeration or classification of them you please 
 unquestionably belong to both these sexes. The dif 
 ference is in their relative proportions and adjust 
 ments. And the reason of that difference must have 
 been the balance and harmony of < unlike powers, pre 
 vailing throughout creation. Of course, you realize 
 nature s intention, not by approximating to mascu 
 line women, or feminine men, but by giving each 
 sex its own distinctive place, and developing each 
 to the greatest capacity in itself, and the greatest 
 help of the other. In that distinction of relative 
 proportions, the distinguishing faculty of the male sex 
 is mental concentration ; that of the female is moral 
 
OF MUTUAL HELP. 115 
 
 impulse. Woman, when she is truly tvomanly, car 
 ries her special strength in her heart; man, when 
 he is truly manly, carries his strength in his head. 
 Neither monopolizes the special department ; but, by 
 eminence, he is reason, she is love. Woman, how 
 ever powerfully she may think and in some in 
 stances she will think more powerfully than man 
 is the representative of affection. Man, however 
 ardently and constantly he may love and in some 
 instances he will love more ardently and more con 
 stantly than woman is the representative of thought. 
 If any of us think this discrimination gives any ad 
 vantage to man, it is only because we are not yet 
 Christian enough to acknowledge that spirit is grander 
 than intellect, holiness wiser than logic, the human 
 heart deeper and nobler than the head. 
 
 But the point here is, that each is really most 
 honored, most advanced, most benefitted, exactly 
 when the other is ; so that the whole debate about 
 their respective " rights," or, worse yet, their com 
 parative merits, becomes both unphilosophical and 
 vulgar. The simple constitution of their being, 
 the primitive record of God s creative act, "male and 
 female created he them, 1 ought to have foreclosed, 
 forever, that impertinent strife. Whichever way the 
 controversy should be decided, the decision would be 
 wrong. You might as well inquire which of any 
 
116 SOCIETY A SCHOOL 
 
 two of the great essential elements of existence, or 
 laws of matter, is most important. You might as 
 well ask, respecting any of those grand dualities, 
 between which the sublime order of nature is poised 
 and unity is held fast, which could best be spared. 
 You might as well discuss the comparative merits 
 of morning and evening, of the bones and the blood, 
 of the centrifugal and centripetal forces, of the sys 
 tole and diastole of the heart, of the negative and 
 positive electrical poles, of the green of the earth 
 and the blue of the sky. Each holds its title by 
 the ordaining of a divine plan ; and the displacement 
 of either from its sphere would be a resolution of 
 the system into chaos. The whole dispute is a mon 
 strous anomaly, conceived in an unnatural jealousy, 
 protracted by an insane insurrection against good 
 manners, and sure to end in nothing but a profane 
 putting asunder of what God hath joined together. 
 For wherever either sex is truly best, strongest, hap 
 piest, there the other must be.* 
 
 * " A family, than which there is no more genuine type of nature s 
 method of arrangement, is throughout a combination of opposites ; 
 the woman depending on the man, whose very strength, however, 
 exists only by her weakness 5 the child hanging on the parent, whose 
 power were no blessing, were it not compelled to stoop in gentleness ; 
 the brother protecting the sister, whose affections would have but half 
 their wealth, were they not brought to lean on him with trustful pride : 
 and even among seeming equals, the impetuous quieted by the thought- 
 
OF MUTUAL HELP. 117 
 
 Proceed now to observe some of the external 
 methods and instruments of the mutual social assist 
 ance. Perhaps the most common are the produc 
 tive pursuits and every-day labors of men. There 
 again, as in the case of the sexes, it is by the 
 law of social diversity, reciprocity, and balance, that 
 the grandest results are worked out. 
 
 ful, and the timid finding shelter with the brave. That there * are 
 diversities of gifts is the reason why there is one spirit : and it is 
 because one is reliable for knowledge, and another for resolve, and a 
 third for the graces of a balanced mind, that all are held in the bonds 
 of a pure aft ection. 
 
 " The same principle distinguishes natural society from artificial asso 
 ciation. The former, springing from the impulse of human feeling, 
 brings together elements that are unlike : the latter, directed to specific 
 ends, combines the like. The one, completing defect by redundance, 
 and compensating redundance by defect, produces a real and living 
 unity ; the other, multiplying a mere fraction of life by itself, retires 
 further and further from any integral good, and results only in exag 
 gerated partiality. I do not suppose that society arises, as some phi 
 losophers represent, from the sense of individual weakness, and the 
 desire for consolidated strength ; but, it must be owned, the instinctive 
 propensities of mankind create nearly the same natural classes as if it 
 were so. So long as personal qualities and spontaneous attractions 
 determine the sorting of mankind, they will dispose themselves in 
 classes, containing each, in rugged harmony, the elementary materials 
 of our humanity. And when discord arises, it is from the presence of 
 too many similar elements, which have no respect for one another, no 
 mutual want, no reciprocal helpfulness, and which cannot, therefore, 
 coexist without risk of dissension. Say what you will, nature is no 
 democrat, but filled throughout with ranks; and it is only in propor 
 tion as we recede from the natural affections, and enter upon the life 
 of isolated self-will, that dreams of social equality take place of the 
 reality of social obedience." REV. JAMES MARTIXEAU. 
 
118 SOCIETY A SCHOOL 
 
 The same principle holds of professions and trades 
 as of persons. These pursuits enter into their "holy 
 alliance" when they blend the two aims, to improve 
 themselves and help one another. " The carpenter 
 encourages the blacksmith, and he that smootheth 
 with the hammer him that smites the anvil." While 
 men and women are Good Samaritans, it never was 
 meant that their employments should be priests and 
 Levites, nor trippers and pirates. The common 
 wealth is not served, till the different branches of 
 industry merge their jealousies in good-will. 
 
 The very composition of the earth we walk over 
 offers a strong hint of this intention. You read it 
 in the beautiful balancings of clouds and tides, the 
 equations of astronomy, the adjustments of growths 
 and climate, all the musical accord by which the 
 Divine Spirit has attuned his creation to an ever 
 lasting anthem. Sky and water, vapor and vege 
 tation, earth and sun, are ever friendly and hos 
 pitable ; they are perpetually running on some 
 missionary errand in each other s behalf. Their 
 Bureau of Benevolence is older than the Holy 
 College. The gates of their hospitality, like the 
 Bukharian nobleman s, are "nailed open." They 
 preach the creed of Brotherhood in that temple 
 whose roof is fretted with the stars. 
 
 Indeed, it is most interesting to see how liber- 
 
OF MUTUAL HELP. 119 
 
 ally the Creator has given hints and illustrations 
 of this social principle, by his own arrangements, 
 even in what we call the humbler departments of 
 his creation. For Society does not stand apart from 
 Nature, but interlinks its laws with hers. Very won 
 derful it is, and very beautiful, to see how God 
 twines together, into a system of mutual benefits, 
 the operations that different creatures carry on for 
 their own advantage, thus revealing his intention 
 that they should be fellow-helpers, even these dumb 
 and soulless things. He scarcely lets any good end 
 with the being that produced it, but carries it over 
 into some wider usefulness. He pushes out the 
 doings of each animal and person into results that 
 help other animals and other persons. The silk 
 worm, with no thought of a charity, spins for him 
 self an elaborate and complicated coffin, to hold the 
 chrysalis, till its resurrection with wings. But the 
 strands of that delicate fabric, the ingenuity of man 
 winds off into the material of his costliest and most 
 durable vestures. Coral insects build their reefs with 
 the slow toil of ages, not certainly as philanthro 
 pists, but simply by the instinct that bids living 
 things provide a habitation. Yet they are all the 
 time laying the foundations of islands that men will 
 sometime inhabit, when overpopulated continents shall 
 send out their swarming colonies, and thus God 
 
120 SOCIETY A SCHOOL 
 
 "layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters." 
 The spider weaves a web, out in the air, for cer 
 tain economical purposes of his own. But God 
 bathes it overnight in drops of dew, and in the 
 morning sun it hangs like a silver shield, with 
 miniature rainbows for its quarterings, " a thing 
 of beauty" at which children clap their hands with 
 rapture, and which every beauty-loving passenger is 
 the better for. The spider had no thought of being 
 an artist; but the Creator made him one to shed 
 delight unconsciously. Or else Astronomy stretches 
 one of these slender fibres across the glass in her 
 telescope to mark the passage of a star, and the 
 little insect under a clover leaf gives a measuring 
 line to science to tell the august motions of the con 
 stellations of the sky. 
 
 So in another and higher grade of creation. 
 
 When men forget to help each other, God over 
 rules their plans, and makes them do it, to a certain 
 extent, in despite of themselves. He circumvents 
 the sharpest calculation, and outwits the shrewdest 
 diplomacy. He is forever defeating the plots of self 
 ishness. He suffers no immunities to be strictly per 
 sonal. It is the settled policy of Providence, so to 
 speak, to break up monopolies. He regards always 
 the good, not only of the greatest number, but of 
 the whole. He allows no mortal to live for himself 
 
OF MUTUAL HELP. 121 
 
 alone, however much disposed to. A capitalist, with 
 out the remotest intention of being a public bene 
 factor perhaps, founds a factory, to enlarge his private 
 fortune. But the enterprise calls into employment 
 an army of laborers, and the wages forestall their 
 starvation. A few men, in a corporation, as the case 
 may be, build a railway, for the sake of the divi 
 dends ; but it becomes an immeasurable facility of 
 travel and transportation, and while it enriches a few 
 is a convenience to millions. An insurance office is 
 established for the profit of the stockholders, or the 
 salary of the officers, but it turns out to be a 
 general help. Adventurers sail in search of foreign 
 gold, and dig it out of the mud for their own aggran 
 dizement. But nature, with no thought of that, uses 
 these precious ores to ease the tightened money 
 pressure and help the finances of the whole 
 trading world. A merchant may, if he will, hem 
 round his wealth by every possible barrier, shut it 
 up in investments, in banks, in loans of exorbitant 
 interest ; let him hold it with never so desperate a 
 grasp, some of it, less or more, will leak out and 
 run over and get into circulation for the general 
 good, lie must have clerks to keep his growing 
 accounts ; he must have draymen to handle his mer 
 chandise ; he must have factors and agents to man 
 age his great machine, or else it will clog and break, 
 
122 SOCIETY A SCHOOL 
 
 and they must have their share. He would do it all 
 and keep it all himself possibly, if he could, but 
 Providence has limited his capacity, given him but 
 one pair of hands, a fixed faculty of attention, and 
 only twenty-four hours to a day. He must employ 
 operatives ; he must help his fellows, though it be 
 against his will. If he loves display and indulgence, 
 then he must support upholsterers and the markets. 
 No credit to him; but it shows God s law. 
 
 He discovers the same law, historically. British 
 taxation was not meant to help the American colo 
 nies, only to relieve the English exchequer. But 
 the spirit it roused has sent civilization forward with 
 a mightier impulse than it had felt for ages before. 
 On the whole, the oppression proved a very consid 
 erable help, not only to America but to the world. 
 The march of Alexander s armies opened highways 
 across the East in which peaceful industries and 
 improvements both followed and obliterated the de 
 vastations of war. Heaven made even the fierce 
 Macedonian phalanx the pioneer of Humanity, and 
 used that bloody scourge, their leader, whose gluttony 
 hungered after more worlds than one to conquer, as 
 a helper to the oriental nations. Vespasian s Roman 
 cohorts, aflame with military lust, had no idea of 
 spreading the mild faith of Christ or of helping 
 men; they sought only to complete the dominion of 
 
OF MUTUAL HELP. 
 
 123 
 
 the empire, when they bore their victorious arms to 
 Palestine, and planted their standards about the holy 
 city. But that very ruin levelled the Temple wor 
 ship, spread one language for Truth to speak in, 
 and Christendom was helped. The downfall of the 
 Ritual was the inauguration of the Gospel. The 
 hoarse voice of havoc ended in the gentle breath 
 ing forth, all over the eastern world, of the Mes 
 siah s compassion. William of Normandy can hardly 
 be reckoned among the voluntary helpers of Hu 
 manity. He invaded England and conquered the 
 Saxon, for the love of pow r er. But he was made 
 an involuntary helper. For that invasion broke up 
 the old system of vassalage, introduced into English 
 society that stalwart middle class out of which has 
 come all that is noblest and brightest in the national 
 character, Magna Charta, Parliamentary Reform, 
 Shakespeare s tragedies, the Puritan Reformation, 
 Paradise Lost, and a commerce that belts the globe. 
 Help out of injury; this is everywhere the method 
 of God. 
 
 My next position is, that the same divine inten 
 tion is manifest, and the same lesson is taught, in 
 the fact that throughout creation this system of 
 mutual assistance is made necessary from the mu 
 tual dependence that obtains everywhere. Each de 
 pends on each, and each on the whole. The 
 
124 SOCIETY A SCHOOL 
 
 several kingdoms of nature depend on and there 
 fore help each other. The mineral is the solid 
 basis on which is spread out the vegetable, the 
 body that its vesture clothes. The vegetable di 
 rectly nourishes the animal. The tree does not 
 grow for itself; it cradles the birds, and feeds 
 animated races, and shades the traveller till he 
 blesses it. Of all the ninety thousand species of 
 plants that Botany has classified, not one, from 
 the vast oak to the weed that springs out of its 
 mould and the moss that clings to its bark, but 
 takes its appointed place in a related family. The 
 atmosphere would lose its salubrity but for the 
 salt and bitter sea. The ground would catch no 
 fertilizing streams if the clouds did not kindly 
 drop them from the sky. The flowers wait for 
 the falling light before they unveil their beauty. 
 All growing things are buttressed up by the vast 
 ribs of everlasting granite that sleep in sunless 
 caverns. Heat, electricity, magnetism, attraction, 
 send their subtle powers through nature, and play 
 through all its works, as unseen and silent as the 
 eternal spirit they bear witness of. Everything 
 helps. Everything is helped. 
 
 This dependence, too, is still more striking in 
 human life. The trades exemplify it. Precisely 
 because no one man can reach perfection in all 
 
OF MUTUAL HELP. 125 
 
 the arts, and be a proficient in every profession, 
 the progress of civilization requires the division of 
 labor ; not division in the sense of hostility, but a 
 division of works with a common will, many de 
 partments with one interest, " diversities of opera 
 tion with the same spirit." Not more completely 
 does the wheel of the engine depend upon the 
 boiler, or the rod upon the valve, than one indi 
 vidual upon another in the more intricate and 
 wondrous mechanism of Society. Every business 
 reaches its perfection by the concentrated devotion 
 of one mind ; and this man, meantime, must be 
 supported by other pursuits in other hands. The 
 hands divide, but they are still fellow-helpers. While 
 each toils at his own bench, he is really working 
 for all the rest, and all the rest for him. Society 
 is like a great manufacturing establishment I have 
 seen, where some hundreds of workmen are em 
 ployed, yet the results of the skill of all, in all 
 departments, are combined and blended together in 
 the product, which is a musical instrument. So 
 there may be moral harmony out of industrial dis 
 tribution. The old fable of the blind man and the 
 cripple is realized every day. Every man has some 
 gift or opportunity that another has not. Both the 
 blind and the lame are helpless alone. But once 
 establish a mutual relation of dependence and help 
 
126 SOCIETY A SCHOOL 
 
 between them, and then the blind man can take 
 up the cripple, and the cripple, borne on his com 
 panion s shoulders, is eyes to the blind. There is 
 a profound meaning in this simple parable. Every 
 person in the world is under some infirmity, 
 blind or lame, if alone. Would each man carry 
 his own power of usefulness to its highest pitch, 
 with a single will, but w r ith a generous breast, 
 then the royal law of Society would be fulfilled. 
 
 " Heaven forming each on other to depend, 
 A master, or a servant, or a friend, 
 Bids each on other for assistance call, 
 Till one man s weakness grows the strength of all." 
 
 We find another impressive illustration of this 
 social interdependence in the fact that, as fast as 
 any one productive pursuit is perfected, the rest 
 incline to share in the benefits of that complete 
 ness. Science helps art ; the arts help each other ; 
 machinery helps commerce, and commerce helps lit 
 erature. They all prepare each other s tools, refine 
 each other s materials, sharpen each other s wits, 
 raise each other s standards, and, in a thousand 
 ways, multiply mutual facilities. The surgeon can 
 practice more clean and skilful clinics, if the cut 
 ler was skilful before him. The chemist is in 
 debted to the glass-blower, and the glass-blower to 
 
OF MUTUAL HELP. 127 
 
 the coal-heaver, and the coal-heaver to the basket- 
 maker. What were your commerce without the 
 paper-maker and the ship-builder ? There is no 
 kind of manufacturing, and hardly a family, that 
 has not reaped as substantial profits from the mod 
 ern elaborations of mechanism, or of the elastic 
 gums, as the proprietors have. By better castings 
 in metals a whole cluster of arts is set forward. 
 Every calling reaches over to drop a blessing on 
 its relatives. One prepares instruments and acces 
 sories for another. Agriculture wants the college 
 for its analyses and scientific suggestions. What a 
 short-sighted envy, if the farmer tries to embarrass 
 and disendow the university ! The college wants 
 agriculture for its produce, its patronage, its pupils. 
 What a vulgar prejudice, if the collegian sneers at 
 the farmer ! How clearly God designs to press 
 forward and upward all the complicated interests 
 of mankind together ; making each the better for 
 the others, affording a splendid example of his 
 own unifying providence, and making all to crys 
 tallize into an orderly organization, and thus to 
 work out the gradual reconcilement of Society. 
 
 So, if one member suffer, all the members, not 
 only by voluntary sympathy, but by God s law 
 inwrought in them, suffer with it. It is said that 
 if a milch cow breaks her leg, her milk instantly 
 
128 SOCIETY A SCHOOL 
 
 loses its lime, which is taken off to cement the 
 fracture and restore the wounded limb. Bruise 
 or break one limb of the social body, and the 
 whole vital secretion grows thin and sour. At 
 the bottom all our business is one. Down at the 
 roots of the world our roots all interlace. It is 
 one wide subsoil of humanity that sends up so 
 many shapes and colors, and after all, with all its 
 shifting weather and varied climates, our planet 
 knows only the experience of one toiling, throb 
 bing, loving heart. 
 
 By bringing men together you reconcile them. 
 Even amidst the injustices and violences of slavery, 
 the body-slaves are observed to be privileged, and 
 tenderly treated, a certain power of the human 
 quality breaking down the temper of caste and the 
 barriers of pride. 
 
 You are shut up half an hour in a stage-coach, 
 or crowded into the corner of a drawing-room, 
 with the whig or democrat against whom you were 
 just ready to launch, the next morning, a bitter 
 political pamphlet ; and you go home and burn the 
 manuscript, or at least strike out the adjectives, 
 and, ennobled by your humanized manners, exult 
 in the determination never again to let party dif 
 ferences disturb social relations. The divine work 
 manship is nowhere self-contradictory. History is 
 
OF MUTUAL HELP. 129 
 
 God s discourse, as Society is his living illustration, 
 and the conclusion never contradicts the exordium. 
 The moment mankind truly understand one another, 
 they will be at peace. In order to this mutual 
 acquaintance, the social communications must be 
 multiplied, and the social sympathies quickened, 
 which is exactly the business of Society. We 
 never do truly know one another till we feel each 
 other s feelings, and aspire with one another s aspi 
 rations, as well as think each other s thoughts. So 
 with the great tribes of men. Let the Russian soul 
 actually appreciate the Turkish soul, and hostilities 
 must cease. But before that can be, both their 
 souls must be larger. At present their proportions 
 are too meagre to support a right manly life in 
 themselves ; how can you expect them to contain 
 one another s ? What you want, to end a quarrel, 
 is only to let the belligerents see each other s hu 
 man nature ; and, to that end, to get them a 
 human nature large enough to be seen, and to 
 take in something broader than a selfish interest. 
 In other words, there must be, in these repugnant 
 races, a more generous social culture, and a better 
 development of humanity ; a larger quantit} r of the 
 real human being. So the world over. The reason 
 the trades and sciences do not agree better, is 
 that they do not know each other s bearings and 
 
130 SOCIETY A SCHOOL 
 
 relations. Let them see that the perfecting of 
 each is the prosperity of all. Two of our great 
 American productive forces, our agriculture and 
 our manufactures, have not yet come into a good, 
 amicable, neighborly understanding. They are like 
 two suspicious and sharp-eyed housekeepers that 
 happen to move into adjoining houses. They sit at 
 their windows, watch each other s movements, criti 
 cise each other s housekeeping, and gossip with 
 their respective friends over each other s manage 
 ment, till they have matured a very satisfactory 
 hatred. But when they have been fairly introduced, 
 at some sudden emergency, like a fire, or a nativ 
 ity, and have sat down to talk matters over, they 
 are transformed into the most confidential of com 
 panions. The moment you bring the Factory and 
 the Farm to a thorough reciprocal intelligence, you 
 solve the whole problem of the tariff, because you 
 demonstrate to both parties that they are not two 
 interests but one. And either one grows by the 
 other.* 
 
 Blunders are constantly perpetrated in our so 
 cial economy, and our attempts at reform, by this 
 partial information, due to our one-sided develop- 
 
 * See an eloquent passage in Ruskin s " Political Economy of Art," 
 page 160, etc. See also Adam Ferguson s "Civil Society," Part iv., 
 section i. 
 
OF MUTUAL HELP. 131 
 
 ment, and sluggishness of thought. We try to 
 judge the wants of the world from our little post 
 of private observation. We apply help, but in the 
 wrong spot. We complicate, instead of relieving, 
 the difficulty. We offer to the poor what we 
 like, instead of what they need, and so feed their 
 wastefulness instead of their economy and their 
 moral courage. The poor must be fed ; in the 
 present state of social knowledge and attainment, 
 it is as much the dictate of self-preservation as of 
 benevolence to feed them outright. Rousseau was 
 right, " When the poor have nothing to eat, they 
 will eat the rich." It is terribly true. But after 
 a Christianized science has properly arranged the 
 whole social structure, aftd effected a just distribu 
 tion of industry and privilege, alms will more and 
 more give place to wages. Charity will find its 
 exercise, not in the gross supply of empty stom 
 achs, but in the higher and more beautiful offices 
 that minister moral sympathy and spiritual strength. 
 The different classes will really help and strengthen 
 one another, just as fast as they all contribute to 
 a science of universal growth. Carpenter and gold 
 smith, lawyer and shipwright, farmer and fisherman, 
 help every one his neighbor, only as they all join 
 to open and illustrate and publish the grand laws 
 of human effort and providential equity. 
 
132 SOCIETY A SCHOOL 
 
 We have next to observe the action of this law 
 of reconciliation in those great communities of men 
 called nations, or their governments. When we 
 have gone to the bottom of the matter,, whether 
 by the way of philosophy or Christianity, we shall 
 find that the fundamental idea of politics is mutual 
 protection and friendly intercourse. I do not say 
 this is the idea of feudal or aristocratic or impe 
 rial or partisan politics, but of the true, ultimate, 
 divine politics towards which all these are tenta 
 tive experiments. Not to hold each other back, 
 and pull each other down, and rob, arid stab, but 
 to confederate for the common good, and to com 
 plete, by means of equal labor and free energies, 
 an economy of universal production whereof all shall 
 take the benefit, this is the real and providential 
 office, whether of separate empires, or of the several 
 departments under the same administration. Hence, 
 you serve the cause of good government, both when 
 you perfect any legitimate business as one of the 
 great nutritious forces which feed and cover hu 
 manity, and also when you bring that business into 
 amity and reciprocity with other kinds of business. 
 Unless God fails to furnish a pattern for his chil 
 dren in his own love, the right political state for 
 mankind is the state of social help. 
 
 According to this higher view of international 
 
OF MUTUAL HELP. 133 
 
 connections, whatever forwards the growth of one 
 government is a service to all. England, in such 
 a state of things, suppose the moral conscience and 
 sensibility of both nations were educated up to 
 such a pitch, would have no cause to be jealous 
 of American territory, or French tactics, or Ger 
 man learning, or Cossack discipline. It seems to 
 me Napoleon uttered a great fallacy, instead of a 
 sage aphorism, and just such a fallac}^ as the pre 
 ponderance of the mere selfishly political over the 
 moral perceptions might have prepared us to ex 
 pect, when he said, " America is a fortunate 
 country, for she thrives by the follies of our Eu 
 ropean countries." No : folly in one nation does 
 not help another.* It may set the balance of com 
 mercial exchange in her favor ; it may pour into 
 her lap a doubtful population ; it may cast into 
 her hands some temporary advantage, or leave her 
 to a transient distinction. But it is the poor 
 distinction that comes from having no honorable 
 rivals. It is that sort of preeminence which is 
 
 * In 1642, the Earl of Bristol openly maintained, in the House of 
 Lords, that it was a great advantage to England for other countries to 
 be at war with each other, since by that means England would get 
 possession of their wealth, forgetting that in the long run wars are 
 the destruction of wealth. See " Parliamentary History," vol. ii., 
 page 1274. Since writing this passage, I have met with an able 
 defence of the same doctrine in Buckle s " History of Civilization 
 in England." 
 
134 SOCIETY A SCHOOL 
 
 enjoyed in a class of dunces and sluggards by a 
 boy who is only a little less a dunce and slug 
 gard than the rest. It is the eminence of the 
 stunted shrub on a sandy plain. Benefitted by 
 other men s follies ! Benefits have no such parent 
 age. Only wisdom yields them, as only truth 
 makes free. 
 
 We must acknowledge that the practical realiza 
 tion of these principles and these hopes in political 
 institutions is slow. It is already nearly two thou 
 sand years since Cicero, Pagan prophet as he was, 
 wrote these noble words : " There are those who deny 
 that any bond of law or of association for purposes 
 of common good exists among citizens. This opin 
 ion subverts all union in a State, There are those 
 who deny that any such bond exists between them 
 selves and strangers ; and this opinion destroys the 
 community of the human race." It is two centuries 
 and a half since Lord Bacon, poor menial of a throne 
 as his soaring and far-sighted intellect became, de 
 clared that there is in man s nature " a secret love 
 of others, which, if not contracted, would expand 
 and embrace all men." Yet how tardily does this 
 sentiment, this great "Law above all other laws, 
 and Hope for Humanity," as Guizot pronounces it, 
 get itself recognized in the senates and cabinets, 
 the overreaching diplomacy and the paltry palaces, 
 
OF MUTUAL HELP. 135 
 
 of actual States ! None the less is it every man s 
 private obligation in his own place, not less than 
 that of statesmen and ministers of state and em 
 perors, to avow it, and stand by it, and be its 
 consistent disciple. The day has broken into the 
 sky. The shadow on the golden dial grows daily 
 thinner, as the sun rises deliberately towards the 
 eternal noon. Take the law of nations as an exam 
 pie. Nothing deserving that name had existence till 
 these modern times. The barbarous tribes waited 
 for it so long. Yet already the modifications and 
 enlargements it has admitted indicate the progress 
 of this spirit. From laws between nations we are 
 evidently going on to duties between nations, and 
 then to sympathies and courtesies. At first, the 
 chief use was to secure treaties of traffic, and a 
 public highway. But now the bonds are widening, 
 and begin to embrace the great doctrine of Frater 
 nity. America is eager to protect a victim of op 
 pression, though he is hardly yet her own subject; 
 and so diplomacy has to stretch its ancient prece 
 dents to accommodate this broader feeling of the 
 age. It would be vain to expect any hasty com 
 pletion of these ameliorations. But it is wise to 
 mark their signals, and generous to hope for their 
 fulfilment. 
 
 There have been systems in the world which de- 
 
136 SOCIETY A SCHOOL 
 
 nied all this, systems specious and splendid, some 
 in ethics, some in political economy. But they have 
 vanished like morning mists that lose and scatter 
 themselves before the everlasting hills ; or if they 
 have lingered on, like those vapors they have had 
 to settle and brood only in the low and less pure 
 places where the mountain winds let decay alone. 
 Take the system of Hobbes, denying the disinter 
 ested affections. Certainly it did not fail for want 
 of gifts and powers in its defender. With a mind 
 so acute and so original, blending so remarkably 
 the usually separated capacities of discrimination and 
 combination, as to make him the admiration of wits, 
 the delight of scholars, and a model to philosophers, 
 declared by Leibnitz one of the only two men of 
 modern times capable of reducing morals and juris 
 prudence to a science, with a style which has been 
 pronounced " the very perfection of didactic lan 
 guage," " knowing so well how to steer between 
 pedantry and vulgarity that two centuries probably 
 have not superannuated more than a dozen of his 
 words," he has yet scarcely an avowed disciple to 
 honor his name, scarcely a reader whom shame does 
 not drive from his conclusions as from some crime 
 revolting to humanity, certainly not an institution 
 to extend or embody his principles. With him u a 
 deliberate regard to personal interest is the only 
 
OF MUTUAL HELP. 137 
 
 possible motive to human action. There is no sense 
 of duty, no compunction at our own offences, no 
 indignation against the crimes of others unless they 
 affect our own safety, no secret cheerfulness shed 
 over the heart by the practice of well-doing." 
 Hence, mankind, with all their impulsive selfishness, 
 must, in their cool and rational hours, reject and 
 disdain his doctrine. His moral and political system, 
 as another has well said, was "a palace of ice, 
 transparent, exactly proportioned, majestic ; but grad 
 ually undermined by the central warmth of human 
 feeling, before it was thawed into muddy water by 
 the sunshine of true philosophy." God, in his 
 Almighty love, made mankind to love, help, serve, 
 and bless one another. Thomas Hobbes, with his 
 prudential selfishness, could not succeed. 
 
 It follows that every monopoly which erects pri 
 vate advantage against the general advantage, 
 observe, I do not say private advantage in accord 
 ance with the general advantage, but against it, 
 has God s providence for an antagonist. The great 
 commercial schemes which propose to fatten and 
 feast on poor men s poverty are toppled over ; and 
 bury their builders, or their builders children under 
 them. 
 
 " The mills of God do slowly wind, 
 But they at last to powder grind." 
 
138 SOCIETY A SCHOOL 
 
 Servile insurrections, Sepoy mutinies, the years 
 89 and 48 in Paris, are only hints of this tre 
 mendous truth as really as the miraculous night 
 that killed the first-born of Egypt, and emancipated 
 Israel. When the whole land of Italy came to be 
 monopolized, as Gibbon says it was at one time, 
 by seventeen hundred and sixty families, only about 
 as many as make up the city of Cincinnati, no 
 wonder the curse of a blighted population began to 
 creep over the country. No class can put its inter 
 ests forward at the expense of the rest. The 
 selfish mob is just as false, just as inhuman, just 
 as much the enemy of man and of true society, 
 as the selfish monarch. " Open national workshops 
 for us, and pay us your money," screeched the 
 Parisian populace in 1848, "and we will down with 
 the barricades." They had their way. Socialism, 
 for the time, triumphed over Society. Suppose the 
 experiment had gone on. These unemployed classes 
 would have continued enriching themselves. They 
 would have drawn money from the regular channels 
 of trade, interrupted commerce, embarrassed capital, 
 till employment would have ceased again. Society 
 would have come round where it was before, to 
 inequality, oppression, hunger, with the plague of 
 anarchy and chaos thrown in. The empire super 
 vened, and proved, perhaps, quite as significant an 
 
OF MUTUAL HELP. 139 
 
 illustration of the principle, on less costly terms. 
 Self-interest carried out to unscrupulous conclusions, 
 and riding rough-shod over order, is, sooner or later, 
 self-destruction ; for it breaks up all those social ties 
 and obligations without which man cannot be truly 
 himself. No matter whether it appears in the genteel 
 and legalized forms of corporate gluttony and insatia 
 ble financial aggrandizement, or in the savage starva 
 tion riots that prowl the streets when these bubbles 
 burst, mocking and parodying the most pathetic ap 
 peals of human want villains growling for "work and 
 bread," who mean never to do a day s "work" if they 
 can live by theft, and to eat every day something 
 much spicier than " bread." The virtue of one class 
 is the economy of all. The grasping avarice of one is 
 the bankruptcy of all. Taxes direct or indirect for 
 war, prisons, bad debts, carry up prices. Everything 
 that sets man against his brother eats up the com 
 mon substance. It hinders the law of mutual help. 
 We call the axiom of Machiavelli, that the king 
 is to rule for his own advantage, a monstrous and 
 inhuman lie. But it is only one formal justification 
 of that grasping temper which instigates man any 
 where to live for himself alone a temper as sternly 
 reprobated by the inherent laws of the social nature 
 as by Paul s thirteenth chapter to the Corinthians on 
 charity. 
 
140 SOCIETY A SCHOOL 
 
 If we had the life-time of Methuselah, we should 
 all probably rejoice at last, not without a certain 
 solemnity of thanksgiving, to see the quarrels of 
 nations ending in their predestined reconciliations. 
 The bitterest political antagonisms will grow friend 
 ly. Tariff and internal improvements, fishing-smack 
 and mill-wheel, warehouse and market-garden, city 
 and village, will form symmetrical features in a 
 peaceful landscape. This heavenly estate on earth, 
 the last triumph of social economy in the great 
 family mansion of our life, the true golden age of 
 the Future, it is for Christianity alone to achieve ; 
 solving the hardest problems of our social state, 
 and covering the earth with righteous institutions. 
 Then national policy will be, not repulsion, but at 
 traction ; or rather policy will cease, and principle 
 be installed. The game called politics, that crafty 
 match of mutual hindrance, will give place to a 
 benignant science of mutual helps, where govern 
 ments are only branches in an associate moral or 
 ganism. The State will legislate order, justice, lib 
 erty. The school will teach truth. The church 
 will live and pray like the Christ. 
 
 To further the final inauguration of that royal 
 social age, every nation that has flourished under the 
 sun has been ordained by the Creator and Father of 
 them all. Each has brought in its hand, or its head, 
 
OF MUTUAL HELP. 141 
 
 or its heart, some necessary contribution. And then 
 the races shall meet together and dwell in peace ; 
 the strong heart of the Saxon, without his bloody 
 hand ; the graceful, courtly Norman, without his lev 
 ity and pride; the brave Celt, without his impudent 
 ferocity ; the vigorous, iron-willed " Senatus Populus- 
 que Romanus," without the audacity and cruelty of 
 its eagles ; Egypt, meditative, but cleared of its 
 mysticism ; Greece, ingenious, beautiful, aspiring, re 
 deemed from its idolatry of Beauty to the worship 
 of God; the Hebrew, with his reverent ritual, but 
 without his national hatred and suspicion ; Chaldea 
 and Shinar, forgetting even their lofty superstitions 
 and looking above the stars to Him that holdeth 
 them in his right hand ; and all adoring the invisi 
 ble Father acceptably, because they come to the 
 altar reconciled to the brother whom they have 
 seen. For, whether there be tongues, they shall 
 cease ; and, whether there be knowledge, it shall 
 vanish away. But faith and hope and charity 
 abide ; and the greatest, still, is charity. 
 
%v!?-- 
 
 LECTURE Y. 
 
 SOCIAL THEORIES. 
 
 WE had reached, towards the close of the last 
 lecture, a distinction between Social Science and So 
 cialism. Uneasy at the inequalities, the false distinc 
 tions, the miseries, which he sees prevailing in the 
 world around him, or perhaps feels pressing upon 
 him, the Socialist refers them to particular social 
 conditions and circumstances. Society, and human 
 nature in all states of Society, are confounded ; and 
 the evils that spring from the latter are ascribed 
 to the former. By a logical inversion, it is pro 
 posed to cure the disordered cause through the 
 effect, not the effect through the cause. 
 
 In order to strike the principle which must guide 
 our present discussion, we have to recall that great 
 twofold law of man s constitution which sets him in 
 equipoise between the claims and ministries of as 
 sociate life, on the one side, and his own individ 
 uality on the other. 
 
 Nature has two purposes with him first, to make 
 the most of him as a unit, by developing all the 
 
144 SOCIAL THEORIES. 
 
 personal quality and personal force peculiar to him 
 self; and second, to turn him to the best account, 
 in the way of reception and action, as an edu 
 cated and living influence among his fellows. There 
 is an error on two sides, and a loss from both, in 
 the violation of this design of the Creator. Society, 
 as a system of mutual dependencies and assistances, 
 may be sacrificed to the individual, as by Ilobbes. 
 The individual may be sacrificed to Society ; this is 
 Socialism, which stands in much the same relation 
 to Society, as conventionalism to good manners, ar 
 tifice to art, sciolism to science, or pietism to piety. 
 Each mistake may spring from a selfish spirit, 
 or not. Contemplating, as we have now to do, the 
 socialist theories, and seeing how often they have 
 had their origin in a sincere desire to benefit the 
 less favored classes, or in a reaction from real in 
 justice and frightful abuses of wealth and position, 
 we can well afford to treat them with respect. 
 Nay, as we would seek to displace them, we can 
 not afford to treat them otherwise, however popular 
 it may have been to attack them with ridicule or 
 contempt. I believe that a fair inquiry into their 
 purport, arguments, and operation, will result, by 
 contrast, in the confirmation of our principal prop 
 osition, that Society in itself is an illustration of 
 the Power, and Wisdom, and Goodness of God. 
 
SOCIAL THEORIES. 145 
 
 Socialism has frequently been assailed, on the 
 ground that its systems for arranging mankind are 
 artificial, while Nature is the only safe guide. With 
 suitable discriminations and definitions, there is va 
 lidity in this objection. But we must take care 
 what we mean by Nature, and w r hat others under 
 stand us to mean. For in our human nature there 
 are terrible forces of evil, as well as powers of 
 light and love. Besides, although the socialist the 
 ories look artificial to their opponents, w r e must 
 remember that it is claimed for them by their sev 
 eral advocates that they are a simple and happy 
 way of returning to Nature, and of giving the provi 
 dential laws a freer play. On the whole, it appears 
 to me, that W hen our reason, our political economy, 
 our philosophy, and our prejudices, have all uttered 
 their protest, and passed their criticism, the only 
 really effectual refutation of these errors, after all, 
 must be drawn from one of tw r o sources : the les 
 sons of historical experience, and the gospel of 
 Ch rist. Of these two, the first alone will not be 
 adequate : for new exigencies are liable to arise con 
 tinually, for which the precedents of the past pro 
 vide no perfect rule. The teachings of Christianity 
 alone are infallible and final. And so long as of 
 those a divine sacrifice is the central fact, the 
 
 cross is the universal symbol, and self-denial the 
 
 10 
 
146 SOCIAL THEORIES. 
 
 characteristic spirit and essential duty, so long the 
 systems that aim chiefly to make life easy and to 
 free it from care, and to accommodate it to self- 
 will, must be adjudged false and futile. It is, at 
 least, a conflict, in which one party or the other 
 must be utterly overthrown. 
 
 The grand aim of all those schemes known un 
 der both the names of Socialism and Communism, 
 has been to regulate, by external arrangement, the 
 three great interests, Labor, Property, and the Pas 
 sions, and especially the passion of sex. At the 
 root of all these schemes has been that idea of 
 human equality of which Rousseau was the leading 
 apostle. It is undoubtedly owing either to the in 
 fluence of that man on the modern French mind, 
 or else to a national characteristic of which he 
 was a remarkable exponent, that France has been 
 the principal theatre of these socialist experiments. 
 Strictly speaking, the attempt to secure the pro 
 posed equality by means of labor is Socialism ; the 
 attempt to secure it by means of the abolition of 
 property is Communism. 
 
 Without, at this moment, referring to all the 
 specific varieties of theory, we may say that with 
 respect to Labor, the object has been to produce a 
 greater equality, a smaller amount, relatively to 
 the production of value, and more willingness, or 
 
SOCIAL THEORIES. 147 
 
 agreeableness, in the performance. Under each of 
 these proposals we can detect its own distinct and 
 particular fallacy. First : the Socialist, instead of 
 producing equality of labor, is so to distribute the 
 work that every man and woman shall have just 
 that work to do which each can do best, and 
 which each will therefore choose. But it is by no 
 means a uniform rule that men choose to do the 
 work that they are best fitted for, nor that they 
 are capable of telling what their real adaptations 
 are, nor that anybody can tell without that sort 
 of experimenting and comparison which take place 
 in the ordinary social competition. 
 
 So of private Property : the allegation is that the 
 acquisition of it, by the existing competitory meth 
 ods, stimulates selfish and alienating propensities ; 
 that its inequalities lead to other moral evils and 
 abuses ; and that wealth produces a dangerous and 
 oppressive kind of power. To which it is replied, 
 1. That the stimulus of personal thrift develops en 
 ergies, also, which are a positive good. 2. That the 
 very temptations to fraud and to excess, in avarice, 
 covetousness and luxury, which attend the present 
 system of competition, form a necessary and provi 
 dential school for virtue, offering a discipline without 
 which it would never acquire its due robustness and 
 independence ; and 3. That, in the same way, over 
 
148 SOCIAL THEOKIES. 
 
 against the abuses of riches are set those possible 
 advantages of personal beneficence, public spirit, and 
 wise expenditure, which furnish a nobler exercise to 
 humanity than a monotonous, inevitable, involuntary 
 comfort : besides which is urged the impossibility of 
 equalizing the conditions of men, whose natural ca 
 pacities are made unequal by their Creator, however 
 often you throw into common stock and re-distribute 
 their goods. 
 
 Of the Passions, whereas it is affirmed by Social 
 ism that their evils spring from the resistances they 
 meet, philosophy answers, No ; but from their own 
 excesses. Whereas Socialism says they are to be 
 managed through outward circumstances, experience 
 says, No; but by an inward principle in every soul, 
 which is equal to their mastery; and whereas Social 
 ism teaches that the conflicts of the desires are to 
 cease by their indulgence, Christianity teaches that 
 they can be controlled only by their subjection to 
 conscience, and their submission to the law of GocL 
 " Without piety," says the terse and thoughtful au 
 thor of "Friends in Council," "there will be no 
 good government." 
 
 Observe here, that something of the socialist 
 spirit and sophistry attach to those measures of 
 special combination which, without collecting com 
 munities of people, and often with the kindest in- 
 
SOCIAL THEORIES. 149 
 
 tention, Jo virtually interfere with what may be 
 called, without begging the question, the regular 
 action of the social Family, and break in upon the 
 mutual understanding, and the implied good faith ot 
 different branches of industry in the hands of in 
 dividuals. 
 
 Leagues among working classes, for cheapening 
 provisions, disturb the common balance and broad 
 partnership of the employments, by a class privi 
 lege, and are just as contrary to a true social 
 spirit as the class privileges of aristocratic wealth. 
 The English Trades Unions, which proposed to do 
 away with the master mechanics, failed. So did 
 Mr. Babbage s proposed scheme of association, for 
 reducing the cost of the necessaries of life among 
 factory operatives. Sumptuary legislation, or legis 
 lation that undertakes to coerce private morality, 
 or to force the free relations of capital and labor, 
 comes to the same unfortunate end. By an act 
 of Parliament of 1773, a rule of minimum wages, 
 2. <?., a rule providing that wages should never go 
 below a certain point, was applied to the Spital- 
 fields weavers. It was intended to protect the in 
 terests of the operatives ; but in twenty years four 
 thousand looms were standing idle, and the hands 
 were out of work arid wages both. Strikes among 
 workmen illustrate the same suicidal policy of at- 
 
150 SOCIAL THEORIES. 
 
 tempting to compel one class to conform to the 
 will of another, and to take the course of demand 
 and supply in employment out of its natural chan 
 nels. Labor depends on capital. Strikes diminish 
 the capital by suspending the work. Of course 
 they diminish, the further they go, the means of 
 raising wages, and defeat their own object. It is 
 the industry of the working classes that increases 
 the prosperity of the employer, and thus the work 
 man s own wages. Each helps the other. In sea 
 sons of pressure, when the markets are dull, and 
 goods too plenty, the manufacturing company are 
 obliged to contract their operations. If the opera 
 tives will take up, temporarily, with reduced pay, 
 both survive, though both suffer. But if the opera 
 tives refuse, then the mills stop, arid all alike may 
 be crushed. 
 
 The recognition of those laws of reciprocal har 
 mony and interdependence, which bind the several 
 trades and professions together, is a matter of pro 
 found importance, not only to our philosophy of 
 Reform, but to our personal conduct, especially in 
 periods of financial distress, and our general prac 
 tical applications of the principles of political econ 
 omy. It explodes if it does not silence much of 
 the fallacious and illogical exhortation which springs 
 to the lips of superficial moralists, in "Hard Times," 
 
SOCIAL THEORIES. 151 
 
 about retrenchment in expenditure. Precisely be 
 cause the different employments of Society do thus 
 depend on each other, the duty of wise men, when 
 any of them are embarrassed, is to keep the rate 
 of expenditure as nearly as possible at its usual 
 average amount. The disorder is a depressed state 
 of credit and currency. If now your classes that 
 are really able and competent to buy, suddenly 
 change their whole habit, hearken to this indis 
 criminate cry for retrenchment, and cut off all the 
 comforts and luxuries they can possibly spare, 
 what is the necessary effect? They stop the cur 
 rents of small trade, those rills that feed ten 
 thousand homes, disappoint the traders, throw an 
 unsaleable stock upon their hands, bring down ca 
 lamity from the great establishments and manufac 
 turing corporations into the retail department, and 
 turn these industrious tradesmen, mechanics, florists, 
 dress-makers, servants, into paupers. Could a pol 
 icy be devised more exactly calculated to aggra 
 vate the disease and increase the confusion? Some 
 branches of business deal wholly in those fanciful 
 and ornamental articles which, in moments of alarm, 
 or real loss, people first pronounce superfluous. 
 Doubtless, individual judgment must be applied to 
 particular cases. Men who have not money to 
 spend cannot spend it. There is a line between 
 
152 SOCIAL THEORIES. 
 
 liberality and extravagance. But nothing ought to 
 be plainer than that abrupt alterations in modes of 
 living are a wrong inflicted by one class on an 
 other, violating the gracious principle of their mu 
 tual dependence. To all persons whose means are 
 not actually stripped away, that law says, " Post 
 pone your reductions for the present ; economize by 
 and bye ; use discretion always ; go not beyond 
 your means ; incur no rash debts ; but, otherwise, 
 as to the comforts and even the luxuries in which 
 you have been accustomed to indulge, preserve as 
 nearly as possible the ordinary rule of outlay, and 
 so satisfy the commercial expectations which your 
 past habits have reasonably awakened. Shocks and 
 convulsions are the malady ; cure them, so far as 
 lies in your power, by a regular and uniform dis 
 bursement." 
 
 I pass on now to some description and some 
 criticism of different theories of Socialism. We 
 have to distinguish, at the outset, between the 
 more elaborate and ambitious forms of socialist 
 speculation, and certain local communities, gathered 
 on an exceptional basis, for particular objects. 
 Such as these latter are the various religious 
 communities that have been organized, in different 
 periods, by the spirit of asceticism, or charity, 
 or a separating enthusiasm, or a purity repelled 
 
SOCIAL THEORIES. 153 
 
 from surrounding falsehood and corruption. It can 
 scarcely be pretended that the monks, the Mo 
 ravians, the Jesuits of Paraguay, the Shakers, 
 even when their societies were most flourishing, 
 contemplated a complete social plan. They did not 
 profess to meet all social wants. Religious faith 
 and zeal commonly protected them from many of 
 the worst mischiefs, though we cannot help regard 
 ing even them as deviations from a true social 
 economy. The sexes were separated. Everything 
 bore the character of an exceptional and temporary 
 provision. This was emphatically true of the very 
 incidental and limited communistic element in the 
 Apostolic church. And though the Christian monas- 
 ticism of the following centuries was far more sys 
 tematic and presumptuous, yet, in its wildest fanati 
 cism, it never pretended to be a universal social 
 scheme. 
 
 Some of the elements of Communism were intro 
 duced into the ancient State of Lacedsemon. Plu 
 tarch, in his Life of Lycurgus, gives an account of 
 the attempts of that legislator to throw the landed 
 property of the nation into common stock, and 
 then to equalize it. The project originated, appar 
 ently, in a benevolent purpose ; but it resulted in 
 a miserable despotism. The Spartan had no house 
 hold, no home. If allowed to marry at all, his 
 
154 SOCIAL THEORIES. 
 
 married life was still subject to public supervision. 
 The State watched and controlled him; and what 
 the State wanted was to breed warriors. If the 
 sight of their children made fathers too tender 
 hearted for that, they must either not beget chil 
 dren, or not live with them, or even refuse to see 
 them. Among the free citizens there must be no 
 commerce, no dealings in money. All traffic and 
 artizanship were handed over to the helots. It 
 was a tremendous piece of coercion ; a strange mix 
 ture of Socialism and tyranny, a model not likely 
 to find copies. 
 
 Socialist reformers sometimes refer to the author 
 ity of Plato. Plato s political system was invented 
 as a kind of practical illustration of his whole 
 ethical and metaphysical philosophy. The Dialogue 
 on the Republic, where this system is unfolded, is 
 a summary, or rather a logical terminus, of all his 
 ideas of being, morality, general science, and civil 
 organization. It opens with an abstract discussion 
 of the nature of Justice, and passes out into an 
 ideal representation of the embodiment of Eight in 
 a city or a State. The State is considered as an 
 exhibition (napadeLy^a) of the individual. Yet " the 
 State takes its rise because none of us individually 
 happens to be self-sufficient." Plato divides the citi 
 zens of his ideal republic into three classes, the 
 
SOCIAL THEORIES. 155 
 
 deliberative, the auxiliary, and the money-making. 
 The administration of the government, for peace 
 and war, should be committed to the highest, that 
 is, the wisest, purest, best bred order of men and 
 women, whom he calls the philosophers. These 
 guardians should have their training at the public 
 cost and should be without property, so as to be 
 exempt from all the calculations, anxieties and 
 sordid overreachings which corrupt and distract a 
 ruler s mind. To release them more effectually 
 from domestic care and ambition, the family should 
 be abolished, and a community of wives and chil 
 dren take its place. The two grand departments 
 of education should be music and gymnastics, 
 which may perhaps better be rendered, the har 
 monious development and the vigorous discipline of 
 the powers. Poetry should be, for the most part, 
 excluded, partly because it tends to the enervation 
 and relaxing of the stronger forces of the soul, 
 and partly for the subtle reason that, as all things 
 may be said, in the Platonic scheme, to exist 
 originally in the idea, or invisible form, and sec 
 ondly, to be produced in a sensible shape, the 
 poet, who only pictures this sensible shape, really 
 gives us the thing at the third remove from the 
 original fact. Thus a common table exists first in 
 its archetypal idea; secondly, in the wooden shape 
 
156 SOCIAL THEORIES. 
 
 of legs and leaves formed by the cabinet-maker; 
 and thirdly, in the illusive representation or de 
 scription of a poet or an artist. The work of 
 this latter, being imitative in the second de 
 gree, is superfluous and useless. In every respect, 
 Plato aims at real advantages, the most complete 
 subjugation of the passions, and an elevated hea 
 then morality. 
 
 Of the different kinds of government he desig 
 nates five. The first is that which he recommends 
 as accordant with Right, the true welfare of a 
 commonwealth. This is an aristocracy ; only the 
 word is taken not in its present popular sense, 
 but literally, as denoting a government of those 
 persons from the people who are everyway best, 
 most competent, brave, patriotic, learned, and disin 
 terested. Contrasted with this are four faulty kinds 
 of rule : a timocracy, or government of ambition ; 
 an oligarchy ; a democracy ; and a despotism. 
 
 In its lofty requirement of self-denial, this Pla 
 tonic Socialism differs totally from the modern the 
 ories. Nor is the view carried out into all their 
 minuteness of detail. With its many defects and 
 mistakes, it is incapable of mischief, hanging there 
 in the cool, rare atmosphere of intellectual specu 
 lation, a city in the air. Plato s own language at 
 the outset is, "as if we were talking in the way 
 
SOCIAL THEORIES. 157 
 
 of fable."* Yet the Dialogue is one of the mas 
 terpieces of the most imperial mind of antiquity, 
 and is a sublime illustration of the great Platonic 
 idea, that Good is a social principle. In this it 
 exhibits that singular combination of dialectic force 
 with humane designs which has always struck 
 Plato s interpreters as wonderful, and which led 
 one of them to say, " Plato s great object was 
 man. He lived with man, felt as a man, held in 
 tercourse with kings, interested himself deeply in 
 the political revolutions of Sicily, was the pupil of 
 one whose boast it was to have brought down 
 philosophy from heaven to earth that it might raise 
 man up from earth to heaven ; and, above all, he 
 was a witness and an actor in the midst of that 
 ferment of humanity exhibited in the democracy 
 of Athens." 
 
 Of the Utopias, the two most remarkable, per 
 haps, are those of Sir Thomas More and James 
 Harrington. More wrote the work which gives a 
 name to the whole class, while he was receiving 
 the most dazzling attentions from his sovereign, 
 and was really the most signal person of his age 
 in England. It was about the year 1518 that it- 
 was published, in Latin, at Basle. From his early 
 youth, this great political genius and incorruptible 
 
 * Book ii., chapter 17. 
 
158 SOCIAL THEORIES. 
 
 patriot had been a student of civil institutions, 
 public law, and forensic eloquence. Neither the 
 court nor the times favored a virtue so rare. The 
 great thinker used to steal away from the festivi 
 ties and garden walks where the king fondled and 
 flattered him, to write out his dream of a happy 
 commonwealth. Imagining an island, of lovely scen 
 ery and delightful climate, in the western seas, he 
 peoples it with the virtuous, prosperous groups. 
 The name, Utopia, is taken from that of a sup 
 posed hero, or leader, Utopus. The work is an 
 extended description of the laws, customs, religion, 
 occupations, of this imaginary settlement, including 
 some communistic features. The mixture of what 
 is grotesque and frivolous with what is noble and 
 true, has puzzled many of the commentators. The 
 probable key to the plan is furnished by the 
 theory that More wished to publish views of gov 
 ernment and society very dear to himself, but 
 more liberal and enlightened than Henry VIII. or 
 his age would tolerate, if they were put forth in 
 a serious form and by a direct argument. Resort 
 ing to a device of fancy, therefore, and intermin 
 gling much which should carry its own explanation 
 as merely a fantastic or chimerical entertainment, 
 the sagacious statesman yet contrived to introduce 
 and to commend some of his noblest doctrines of 
 
SOCIAL THEORIES. 159 
 
 freedom, conscience, and a lofty standard of political 
 ethics. This comports with the spirit of the earnest 
 martyr to the simple conviction of Right, who 
 not long after gave his head to the axe rather 
 than connive at the domestic crimes of his king. 
 But there is nothing to indicate that More was 
 drawing out a definite pattern of any social sys 
 tem to be realized among men. 
 
 James Harrington was a contemporary of the 
 first settlers of New England. Though an Oxford 
 scholar, and an officer in the royal household of 
 Charles I., he was a stanch republican, and was 
 at last driven to side with the Roundheads. His 
 " Oceana," published in 1656, was a political ro 
 mance, its fictitious form being adopted as a con 
 venient vehicle for the author s passionate attach 
 ment to the principles of freedom. As the plan of 
 a State, it has exerted no force ; and with all its 
 literary merit, it has probably been much less read 
 than the "Utopia" of More. 
 
 The great name in modern Socialism is Charles 
 Fourier. Fourier is entitled to this preeminence on 
 several accounts : by the boldness and thoroughness 
 of his theory ; by the minute, systematic, and, we 
 may even say, the formally scientific arrangement 
 and distribution of all the parts of his plan ; by 
 the intellectual brilliancy and eloquent audacity with 
 
160 SOCIAL THEORIES. 
 
 which he thrust his stupendous absurdity upon the 
 incredulity, and yet conquered for it the admira 
 tion, of the thinking world ; and by the strange, 
 the almost whimsical contrast between the splendor 
 of the imaginary scenes he pictured for the future 
 of our race and the narrow and dingy accompani 
 ments of his own personal condition. 
 
 This French visionary, who might have been a 
 philosopher if philosophy were never subjected to 
 the test of practice, or who might have been a 
 poet if he had not indulged in imaginations meant 
 to be put into practical operation, was the son of 
 a cloth dealer, and was born eighty-six years ago, 
 at Besangon, in France. His entire life he spent 
 in subordinate situations in mercantile establish 
 ments, at Marseilles, Lyons and Paris, and most 
 of it in obscurity and poverty. Amidst this rou 
 tine of drudgery and this contracted scenery, there 
 passed before him the gorgeous spectacle of a ren 
 ovated earth, a reconstructed Humanity, a social 
 state glorious as any ideal conception of Paradise 
 itself. Nor was it in his conception, apparently, 
 altogether a cloudy, confused vision, all a dream 
 to him, and all rhetoric to his reader. Rigorous 
 and exact rules of the mathematics were applied 
 to it. It was a careful and complicated compound 
 of morals, fancies, principles and numbers. The 
 
SOCIAL THEORIES. 161 
 
 arithmetic proportion of his phalansteries was based 
 on the calculations of Newton. And there is 
 scarcely a department of human knowledge with 
 which the learning of his voluminous works does 
 not, in some way, intermeddle. 
 
 For the publication of his compositions, which he 
 commenced in 1808, he depended on the assistance 
 of some wealthy friends.* The first few disciples 
 that could be prevailed on to read these extrava 
 gant writings, and were credulous enough to yield 
 to them, w^ere not found till he was more than 
 fifty years old, about 1825. The French revolu 
 tion of five years later unsettled the old order, 
 and opened the ear of public fanaticism and dis 
 content to any imposing vagary that promised ease, 
 comfort, enjoyment, with little labor, less self-restraint 
 and no sacrifice. It proved, however, that, both 
 then and in the still more favorable disorganiza 
 tions of 1848, insuperable obstacles existed to the 
 popularizing of his works. Such as were published 
 found able expositors, defenders, and translators, in 
 his own country, in England, and even in America. 
 These digests and interpretations, however, no matter 
 
 * The most important of these to the student of his system nre enti 
 tled " Traite d 1 Association Domestique Agricole" " Theorie des Quatres 
 Mouvements et des Destinces Generates" and u Le Nouveau Monde In- 
 dustriel et Societaire" 
 
 11 
 
162 SOCIAL THEORIES. 
 
 how warm the spirit of championship in which 
 they were conceived, gave him little comfort. He 
 always maintained, even to the close of his disap 
 pointed life, and with pretty good reason, that no 
 body understood his ideas, and that no representa 
 tion whatever, but his own, could be fairly made 
 of his doctrines ; and to this day, his most im 
 partial and competent readers are left in doubt 
 whether it can be said that even his own repre 
 sentation is more successful than the rest. Some 
 slight but fatal defect, enough to mar the unity of 
 the whole, clung to the ardent attempts of his best 
 instructed advocates. Indeed, the greater part of 
 his immense mass of manuscript remains unpub 
 lished still, in the Phalansterian Academy at Paris. 
 Such a state of being as an indolent and pleasure- 
 loving community would delight in was certainly 
 promised by this prophet after their own heart. 
 Nothing could have prevented their hailing and 
 crowning him as the universal Deliverer, except 
 the serious inconvenience of being unable to be 
 lieve what he said. His golden age was to be 
 the fulfilment of every sensual desire, the com 
 plete, unhindered, if not inexhaustible gratification 
 of every passion of human nature ; and these grat 
 ifications were to be constantly, in every instance, 
 .as intense and ecstatic as the keenest relish of 
 
SOCIAL THEORIES. 163 
 
 our rarest bliss hitherto. * It must be added, that 
 the joys of the intellect and the heart were to 
 be in proportion, and also that he held the pas 
 sions to be sacred, as the gift of God. So per 
 fectly, in the new order, would mind and body and 
 affections be trained, balanced and preserved, so 
 marvellously would nature yield up her stores of 
 nutriment and energy, that humanity would be re 
 juvenated, all sweat and care and toil arid disap 
 pointment would cease, and the most necessary 
 offices, such as are now irksome and homely, 
 would be as fresh and inviting as the most ex 
 hilarating sports. If this grand carnival of unsa- 
 tiated appetites required so great an innovation on 
 the part of Nature as the production of a new 
 species of animals, Fourier would not stick at that. 
 Who was he, to stint her prodigality, or distrust 
 the accommodating possibilities of her bounty ? 
 What was a new natural element or two, in view 
 of a result so magnificent ? To accomplish a more 
 rapid transit to and fro, and convey the pleasant 
 
 * " M. Fourier boasts to have made the grand discovery that our varied 
 passions, if left to themselves, would so counteract, so supplement each 
 other, that the most complete harmony would result. If so, how hap 
 pens it that Society did not at once arrange itself into this perfect har 
 mony by the spontaneous passions of men ? Spontaneity comes before 
 reflection. How is it that human society was not at once complete, 
 like the society of bees and of ants ?" THORNDALE. 
 
164 SOCIAL THEORIES. 
 
 provisions of one climate to another, unprecedented 
 tame creatures, of the lion and the whale kind, swift 
 and capacious, were to make their appearance, as 
 transcendental beasts of burden. The planets them 
 selves were to procreate their own species, and to 
 furnish each other their respective types of exist 
 ence, in amicable interchange. The mineral, vegeta 
 ble and animal kingdoms of our globe receive con 
 tributions from all the moons and orbs of the solar 
 system ; the elephant, the oak, and the diamond 
 being created by the sun himself, the horse, the 
 lily and the ruby by Saturn, the cow, the jonquil 
 and the topaz by Jupiter, the dog, the violet and 
 opal stones by the Earth. 
 
 Starting with the complaint that Society in its 
 present competitive condition is a "universal state of 
 war," Fourier claimed to have discovered the secret 
 of its restoration to harmony. The key to the uni 
 verse is the "law of attraction." In the grand whole 
 of nature there are four " movements," in an ascend 
 ing scale, viz., the material, the organic, the ani 
 mal, the social. To these he afterward added a 
 fifth, the aromal, which is to be the consummation 
 of all perfect order and joy, corresponding to the 
 Christian millennium. Even previous to this aromal 
 stage, marvellous ameliorations and novelties are to 
 appear. So ecstatic and transcendant, in fact, will 
 
SOCIAL THEORIES. 165 
 
 be the felicities of that period, produced by the 
 new social organization, that great precaution is 
 necessary in announcing them to mankind, lest a 
 too sudden disclosure should bewitch the world 
 into a general delirium. The Prophet reveals only 
 a few features of that ineffable glory. The word 
 toil will lose its meaning. Work will be play, 
 and play will be more productive of solid use 
 than work was ever known to be. Slavery will 
 cease. Woman will be elevated out of all her dis 
 abilities. The duration of man s life will be a 
 hundred and forty years. His period of love will 
 be a hundred and twenty years. Changes in the 
 material world will correspond to those in the moral. 
 The Arctic climate will soften. The ocean will be 
 sweet. Four moons will accompany the earth, 
 which is the third planet. Death will introduce 
 man to the aromal life. And when the course of 
 the world itself is finished, the earth-life will be 
 handed over to the planet Mercury. 
 
 The chief agent of this social regeneration was 
 to be the phalange, or phalanstery ; or rather, the 
 perpetual society of man must exist in that form, 
 a series of groups. Each of these was to con 
 sist of four hundred families, averaging four and a 
 half persons each, making eighteen hundred in all. 
 The word family is not used here in the ordinary 
 
166 SOCIAL THEORIES. 
 
 sense ; the family founded in marriage, consisting of 
 parents and children, is an evil to be got rid of. 
 The financial value was to be held in eleven hun 
 dred and twenty-eight shares, determined by a 
 very nice mathematical computation ; and of these 
 shares five twelfths were to accrue to labor, four 
 twelfths to capital, and three twelfths to skill. 
 Ultimately the whole world was to be covered with 
 phalanges. All necessities were to be provided by 
 them, but commercial interchange was not recog 
 nized. The head of all the phalanges was to be 
 an omniarch, located at Constantinople. Each group 
 was to be composed according to passional attrac 
 tions and affinities. As there is harmony between 
 every passion and its object, so there is harmony 
 between the passions and all necessary labor. Some 
 kind of work is pleasant to all. Some children love 
 dirt; this shows that there are some people made 
 for dirty employment. All the passions of which 
 human nature is capable will be represented by 
 sixteen hundred and twenty persons, rightly chosen. 
 Consult the proper adaptations, and all the pro 
 ductive industries would be carried forward, while 
 mankind should not suspect they were doing any 
 thing but amuse themselves. Everybody should be 
 able to do only what he pleases, meet only peo 
 ple that are agreeable, eat only what he likes, obey 
 
SOCIAL THEORIES. 167 
 
 nothing but his propensities. No discord ; no of 
 fence ; no crosses ; no fatigue ; no unsatisfied want ; 
 no indigestion ; no plague, or pain, or fear, or 
 tediousness, from social collisions, or lack of sym 
 pathy. Of course morality is quite dissolved, or 
 superseded. Constancy is forgotten. The offset to 
 this is, that, in this higher condition, the passions 
 are purified ; they do not chafe nor surfeit ; the 
 appetites lose their grossness ; and there is no 
 sin. 
 
 Fourier held that his system of the social econ 
 omy would come, historically, next after Christi 
 anity, advancing beyond that, and would be the third 
 grand dispensation. Hitherto, he taught, man is in 
 a state only of civilization civilizee. Now, civiliza 
 tion is only the fifth of thirty-two possible states 
 of Society ; the rest are to come. Civilization is 
 for the rich, who are only a twentieth part of the 
 race. Its principle is the "war of all against all." 
 Competition is anarchy. Property is an evil. In 
 rejecting civilization the instincts of savages and 
 barbarians are right. The only relief to its greedi 
 ness is self-denial, which, after all, is another prin 
 cipal misery. From civilization the transition into 
 the harmonial society will not be less remarkable 
 than the metamorphosis of the worm into the but 
 terfly. " The passions and their gratifications will 
 
168 SOCIAL THEORIES. 
 
 be so multiplied by each other as to produce 
 square or cubical quantities of felicity, rational and 
 several, without frailty or reaction." In following 
 out this conception, Fourier was led into exposures 
 of unhealthy and unreasonable modes of living, the 
 neglect and filth and inconvenience of great cities 
 especially, and other errors in the economic and 
 industrial habits of different nations, which have a 
 real sanitary value, and are adapted to prepare the 
 way for reforms more practicable than he proposed. 
 Indeed, the term practicability can scarcely be 
 used in connection with his splendid ideal fabric, 
 except in irony. It has been justly said that the 
 one formidable enemy he had to meet was the put 
 ting of his own theory to experiment : though it 
 was curious that he, by a secret prognostication 
 wiser than his brain, expected it would fail. A 
 phalanx was started at Rambouillet, not far from 
 Paris. The cost of the fruitless trial was estimated 
 at 20,000. The fate of the little undertakings 
 suggested by him in our own neighborhood is too 
 well known to need remark. Notwithstanding, Fou 
 rier seems to have been a bigot for his own 
 notions, to the last. Six years before his death, 
 which happened in 1837, he wrote a severe and 
 bitter treatise against the follies and impostures of 
 two speculators everyway as sound as himself, and 
 
SOCIAL THEORIES. 169 
 
 called it, The Tricks and Charlatanry of two Sects, 
 St. Simon and Oiven* 
 
 Claude Henry, St. Simon, was twelve years older 
 than Fourier, and died just twelve years before 
 him. He was of a very different social position 
 from his fellow-countryman, was born of an aristo 
 cratic family, descended from noble blood, indeed 
 claiming descent from Charlemagne. The best ac 
 count of him is that he was properly a victim 
 of scientific ambition. Whether as the cause or 
 the effect of that ambition, he appears to have 
 fostered a foolish rumor that his royal ancestor ap 
 peared to him in a dream arid told him that their 
 house, having produced a great monarch, was des 
 tined to produce a great philosopher. Acting on 
 this nocturnal hint, the young scion of the old 
 noblesse united his resources as a gentleman and a 
 student to earn the reputation he coveted. He 
 took a residence near the Polytechnic School and 
 threw open his private hospitalities to a series of 
 brilliant meetings of the savans and forcible men 
 of his time, reserving to himself the high office 
 of generalizer and judge upon the results of their 
 investigations. When Napoleon proposed to the In 
 stitute to make a formal estimate of the achieve 
 ments of science, St. Simon undertook to conduct 
 
 * " Pieges et Charlatanisme des deux Scctes, St. Simon ct Owen." 
 
170 SOCIAL THEORIES. 
 
 the answer. His travels and extensive researches 
 were all made to bear on his philosophical fame. 
 Even when he was a youthful soldier in the cavalry 
 service, taking a hint from Philip, with a varia 
 tion, he kept up the flattery of a great destiny 
 by bidding his servant call him every morning : 
 " Awake, Sir Count, you have great things to do. * 
 lie impoverished himself in his ostentatious and 
 luxurious patronage of letters, and then made light 
 of his penury, as an interesting phase of human 
 experience, which it became a philosopher, like him, 
 to pass through. Carrying out this idea, he com 
 mitted himself, in succession, not only to all the 
 other situations of life, but to the unprincipled 
 practice of the whole catalogue of vices, as a 
 simple experiment in physics and ethics. Even 
 suicide was included in this list of amateur mani 
 pulations, though for some reason or other he car 
 ried that only so far as to blow out one of his 
 eyes. With extravagant and profane laudations his 
 admirers celebrated this escape. "His hour," they 
 said, " w r as not yet come. God raises him from 
 the abyss ; sheds over him a religious inspiration 
 which animates, sanctifies and renews his whole 
 being ; a hymn of love is poured forth from that 
 
 * " Levez-vous, Monsieur le Comte, vous avez de grandes choses a 
 faire." 
 
SOCIAL THEORIES. 171 
 
 mutilated body ; the divine man is manifested ; 
 the new Christianity is sent to the world ; the 
 kingdom of God is come upon earth." 
 
 The St. Simonian Socialism was an attempt to 
 carry out the definite and regular relations of 
 physical science into the government or rather the 
 arrangement of Society ; which it was believed, by 
 a false analogy, could be done with abstract cer 
 tainty, by rule. The author of the system called 
 it " Physico-political." Property, competition, mar 
 riage, were to be summarily abolished. Inclination 
 was to govern. Christianity was caricatured. The 
 system was a "carnal hierarchy," the proposed 
 leaders were a priesthood. The originator was him 
 self, during life, and after that his foremost disciple, 
 to be the great hierophant. In fact, he claimed 
 the character of divinity, profanely ranking him 
 self with Moses and the Saviour, saying that 
 " Moses had promised to men universal fraternity, 
 Jesus Christ had prepared it, St. Simon had real 
 ized it." 
 
 Mutual and natural human love is here made 
 the organizing principle. Industry is the working 
 power of life. " Sanctify yourselves by joy and 
 labor," says the new Christianism. This (" New 
 Christianism") is the title of his religious specula 
 tions. Other parts of his system were published un- 
 
172 SOCIAL THEORIES. 
 
 der the titles of " The Reorganization of European 
 Society," " The Industrial System/ " Catechism of 
 Industrial Methods," " Political, Moral, and Philo 
 sophical Discussions," and " Opinions." 
 
 According to this form of Socialism, the distri 
 bution of property was to be determined by the 
 relative capacity of men ; whereas, according to 
 Fourier, capacity had to divide with labor and 
 capital. At the death of an individual his prop 
 erty reverts to the Simonian community the secu 
 lar church. A general education was to be pro 
 vided for all children till they were old enough to 
 show their capacity, and then chacun a sa capacite. 
 
 About a quarter of a century since, there emerged 
 from the confused and motley people known as St. 
 Simonians three several parties, under as many 
 leaders Enfantin, Rodriguez, and Basard. Each at 
 tempted his own organizations, or families, but they 
 quarreled with each other. At last the two former 
 were brought to trial for misdemeanors, and under 
 went a temporary punishment. Enfantin appeared 
 in the streets of Paris, and pointing to his hand 
 some face, demanded homage on the score of his 
 persona] beauty. When some of the leaders ap 
 plied for exemption from military duty, on the 
 impudent pretence that they were ecclesiastics, the 
 courts ruled that they were not a religious order. 
 
SOCIAL THEORIES. 173 
 
 but otherwise let their extravagances and sensual 
 carousals pass unnoticed, till finally the whole 
 scheme fell to pieces, and disappeared. 
 
 These projects have not been confined to France. 
 They have struck root, for a short and sickly 
 growth, in practical Great Britain and America. 
 The same year that Fourier was born brought 
 also his English competitor, a Socialist whose 
 scheme was far less daring, less presumptuous, 
 and less visionary than that of the Frenchman 
 who so violently assailed it for its absurdity. Rob 
 ert Owen became a cotton-machinist at Manches 
 ter, and afterwards entered upon the manufacturing 
 experiment at New Lanark, on the Clyde, in 
 Scotland, which proved an interesting comment 
 upon his theories. Actuated by a sincere and 
 humane desire to better the condition of the de 
 pendent and laboring classes, especially in the pe 
 culiar exposures incident to British manufacturing 
 towns, he undertook so to arrange that whole com 
 munity, as to lighten their expenses and increase 
 their conveniences. Noticing how much the appli 
 cation of superior energy and intelligence, in im 
 proving the circumstances of a people, assists their 
 culture and development, he was fallaciously led to 
 suppose that all human reform must consist in 
 changing these external circumstances, and so, from 
 
174 SOCIAL THEORIES. 
 
 a peculiar instance, fell into a false generalization. 
 Because one shrewd and active manager like him 
 self, having capital to start with, in a special branch 
 of productive industry, already brought elsewhere to 
 great perfection, could organize a successful local 
 settlement, keeping up a constant commerce with 
 Society in its normal forms, and under a stable 
 government, he seems to have supposed that all 
 populations must contain in them the means of first 
 rising above and so ruling their own conditions, 
 with mixed employments, complicated interests, and 
 a thousand other specific modifying causes. A town 
 is laid out in the form of a parallelogram, with 
 buildings for two or three thousand souls, with 
 gardens and farms and agricultural edifices on each 
 side, land enough to furnish all the necessary pro 
 duce of that climate, the dwelling houses forming 
 one side of the oblong square, a general residence 
 and schools for the boys at one end, similar pro 
 visions for the girls at the other end, the children 
 being taken from their parents and boarded together 
 in their second year, a common eating-house or or 
 dinary in the centre, play grounds and gardens in 
 the area, laundry and bleaching grounds behind the 
 school houses. There is a suitable alternation of 
 labor and recreation. The working hours are from 
 six in the morning to seven in the evening. The 
 
SOCIAL THEORIES. 175 
 
 school is held from eight in the evening till ten. 
 Amusements are provided by system, as being fa 
 vorable to morality. The community of goods is 
 only partial, but the plan of industrial cooperation 
 is distinct. 
 
 Whatever Mr. Owen may have borrowed from 
 the Moravians, or United Brethren, it is very clear 
 what he left out, viz., their religion. With him a 
 happy and correct social state here is the ultimate 
 object of man s aspirations. All systems of faith 
 and worship he refers to prejudice, superstition and 
 ignorance. The sanctions of a future life are set 
 aside as not only chimerical but mischievous. Chris 
 tianity is superseded. 
 
 Carried away by the prosperity of his village at 
 New Lanark, which, after all, appears to have been 
 due about as much to the practical sagacity and 
 benevolence of his predecessor and father-in-law, 
 David Dale, as to his own theory, which ought 
 certainly to be tested by a trial of more than 
 one or two generations before a strong argument 
 can be built upon it, this amiable unbeliever sup 
 posed he had struck upon a universal cure for so 
 cial evils. To prove this on a larger scale, ho 
 began a parallelogram at Orbiston ; but the design 
 fell through for want of funds, after one angle of 
 the structure was erected. The inmates of this 
 
176 SOCIAL THEORIES. 
 
 angle, while they stayed, were not lovely and 
 pleasant in their lives ; the country people called 
 the place Babel, for reasons. In 1825 he pur 
 chased the place known as New Harmony, in In 
 diana, planted a colony of nearly a thousand peo 
 ple, turned the churches into workshops, substituted 
 singing and dancing for public prayer, proclaimed 
 marriage a temporary, dissoluble relation, removed 
 the obstacle to a separation of husband and wife 
 that exists in the children by putting them into a 
 common charge, published a Declaration of Mental 
 Independence, July 4th, 182G, but soon found he 
 had to manage discontent and disorder, was dis 
 gusted, and returned across the ocean, escaping 
 from a broken-down enterprise.* 
 
 The neighboring State of Illinois was to see, still 
 nearer to our own time, another of these abortive 
 undertakings, that conducted by Cabet, another 
 creature of the modern revolutionary spirit in 
 France. To carry out his preposterous project, a 
 compound of financial and political speculation, this 
 plausible adventurer, in whom it is difficult to draw 
 the line between honest self-delusion and villainous 
 imposture, gave out that he had bought a million 
 
 * See his " Observations on the Manufacturing System," " New 
 View of Society," and " Memorial to the Governments of England and 
 America." 
 
SOCIAL THEORIES. 177 
 
 acres of American land, at Icaria, on the Red 
 River. There he proposed to plant a community, 
 on the socialist plan, holding out the promise of 
 a luxuriant soil, delightful scenery, and everything 
 favorable to an easy mastery of the means of liv 
 ing. By a newspaper, called La Populaire, and 
 other devices, he succeeded in alluring some five 
 hundred emigrants to embark, in 1848, for this 
 gorgeous western Paradise, having first gained 
 assent to the incredible regulation that all their 
 individual property should be unconditionally commit 
 ted to their leader, himself, a stupendous stretch 
 of communistic confidence. Landing at New Or 
 leans, they met rather appalling accounts of the 
 Icarian Eden from some returning pioneers, but 
 still pressed hopefully up the Mississippi ; tra 
 versed a land route of two or three hundred miles, 
 many perishing by the way, some dropping out 
 of the party and going back, fleeced and dejected, 
 to their native country, the persevering survivors 
 arriving at last at the promised land, to find there, 
 in the expressive language of the record, " a des 
 ert, a few ruined huts, and an abundance of 
 graves." " There is no slavery," wrote one of 
 them, " so hard as Communism in action."* In a 
 
 * " Les Socialistes depuis Fourier" Par M. Jules Breynat. Paris, 
 1850. 
 
 12 
 
178 SOCIAL THEORIES. 
 
 short time, Cabet, gathering up as many of the frag 
 ments of resolution and baggage as he could find, 
 left, passed up to Nauvoo, then recently vacated by 
 the Mormons on their removal to Utah, and there 
 remained just long enough to fail utterly, and to 
 subject himself to a criminal prosecution, on the 
 charge of obtaining goods on false pretences. 
 
 In 1840, a petition was sent to the British House 
 of Lords, with forty thousand signers from the single 
 city of Birmingham, praying that measures might 
 be taken for the suppression of Socialism. Nothing 
 effectual was done by Parliament ; indeed, a brief 
 reaction took place in favor of the Socialists. But 
 it soon subsided ; the publications ceased ; and the 
 cause in all England died out. 
 
 These repeated miscarriages of Communism, re 
 garded in the light of the moral principles of So 
 ciety, are not surprising ; and yet, considering the 
 tact and ability of some of the projecters of 
 these systems, the credulous constitution of hu 
 man nature as respects schemes of pecuniary profit, 
 and the natural effect of glowing descriptions of a 
 leisurely and novel mode of subsistence, there is 
 room for some surprise that their victims should 
 have been so few, and their fate so uniform, so 
 prompt, and so decisive. In 1848 a flood of com 
 munistic literature broke loose over Europe, and for 
 
SOCIAL THEORIES. 179 
 
 a while was thirstily drunk up, especially in Ger 
 many and France. Now, there is scarcely such a 
 literature visible, outside of the libraries, on the 
 Continent. 
 
 Of the three contemporary authors who are best 
 known as Socialists in their philosophy, though 
 without heading any actual communities, the first, 
 in point of intellectual power, is Auguste Comte, 
 a writer who by his frigid temperament, his unsym 
 pathetic doctrines of man, and his atheism, not 
 less than by his arrogant erudition, is separated 
 from popular interests, and exerts but a feeble in 
 fluence on his own age. His system of Positive 
 Philosophy, so far as it can be defined in a sen 
 tence, teaches that every possible department of 
 thought and action is finally to be brought into 
 the domain of the exact and fixed sciences by 
 the domination of the understanding; that the cos- 
 mical order of creation forbids the supposition of 
 a Personal Creative Will, or a God; and that the 
 last of the sciences to be positively perfected will 
 be Sociology, under which all men will have their 
 positions of higher and lower, advantage and sub 
 ordination, absolutely determined as by a decree of 
 fate, under a rule, not to say a tyranny, of the 
 strongest heads. He expects entire acquiescence in 
 this arrangement. As this is to be the final 
 
180 SOCIAL THEORIES. 
 
 achievement of perfected science, of course the 
 realization of his ideal of social harmony is post 
 poned to an extremely distant future. 
 
 Proudhon and Louis Blanc both aim at the vir 
 tual destruction of property ; the former in the 
 spirit of a destructionist, the latter in that of po 
 litical ambition. Proudhon would level, at once, all 
 distinctions of wealth, throw the world s value into 
 a common fund, and let individuals draw out, not 
 indeed by a general scramble, but by the definite 
 proportion of each one s service. Accumulation 
 should never go beyond that point. These notions 
 are broached by their author with such sweeping 
 negations, such wanton and insulting contempt of 
 all existing rights, and such hostility to the pre 
 vailing convictions and institutions of mankind, both 
 religious and civil, that even their ample promise 
 to the depressed classes has never succeeded in 
 conciliating to them an extensive favor. 
 
 Louis Blanc has become known to the world, 
 not only by his theory on the organization of la 
 bor,* but by his appearance as a member of the 
 French Provisional Government of 1848. Indeed, the 
 persistency of his party, in attempting to carry 
 into that national administration socialistic opinions, 
 has been regarded as one of the efficient causes 
 
 * Organisation du Travail. 
 
SOCIAL THEORIES. 181 
 
 which divided and defeated the Republicans, re 
 stored the empire, and lifted Napoleon III. to the 
 throne. The enemy that Louis Blanc assails, with 
 a courage, cleverness and eloquence that have in 
 them something admirable, is Industrial Competition. 
 This, as it now operates, he holds to be the grand 
 parent of all disorders, miseries and vices, and the 
 curse of civilization. It is, he says, unfair, op 
 pressive, foolish, selfish, sordid, jealous, mean and 
 wicked. It is specially contrived to crush the 
 hard-working classes. This line of vituperative as 
 sault he pursues with such spirit through a brilliant 
 series of paradoxes and sophistries, outvying all the 
 political economists, as to entertain the unconcerned, 
 while his more than democratic expressions of love 
 for the people are plainly meant to inspire them 
 with enthusiasm. His objections overlook the law 
 of demand and supply in labor, the stimulus com 
 petition gives to exertion, and the regular counter 
 balance of human desires. Thus he thinks that 
 competition leads to the manufacture of several 
 times as many articles as will be used, only the 
 cheapest being bought; which does not turn out 
 to be the fact. He thinks the workman who un 
 derbids will always get the job; whereas the qual 
 ity of the work is found to have much to do with 
 that, and men will not bid below living wages. 
 
182 SOCIAL THEORIES. 
 
 He thinks the bachelor will of course get the work 
 away from the man with a wife, and still more 
 from the man with a wife and children ; whereas 
 it is found that a majority of men prefer a wife 
 and children with less profit to being bachelors 
 with more. 
 
 His favorite idea is that all men should labor 
 from impulses of honor ; that, to give them a 
 start, the government should undertake the whole 
 social economy, and raise a loan sufficient to sup 
 port the entire working community, in public shops, 
 till the system gets into operation. At the end of 
 the year, the profits are to be divided into four 
 parts, one part to go to a sinking fund to dis 
 charge the loan, another to provide a hospital for 
 the sick and infirm, another to be kept as a re 
 serve for special cases, and the fourth to supply 
 the actual wants of the healthy laborers. 
 
 The only opportunity afforded the author for the 
 proof of this plan, was in getting a large amount 
 of tailoring done for the uniforms of the Garde 
 Mobile, in the days of the republic. Fifteen hun 
 dred tailors were assembled and told that they 
 should have two francs a day while they worked ; 
 that for all the articles made the same price should 
 be paid as was paid to the army contractors, under 
 the monarchy ; that the total of this amount, after 
 
SOCIAL THEORIES. 183 
 
 deducting the advance-money of fifteen hundred 
 times two francs, should be distributed equally 
 among the tailors. On reckoning up, at the end of 
 the job, it was found that there were not uniforms 
 enough made to furnish even the tw r o francs a day. 
 Each man seemed to think that, as all his earn 
 ings, over and above that sum, were to be so dis 
 tributed that only a fifteen hundredth part of them 
 would reach himself, there was not much motive to 
 hurry his fingers. Louis Blanc declared, in some 
 vexation, that the experiment was not a fair one, 
 and was laughed at by Proudhon. 
 
 The Socialists never agree. Like Fourier, Louis 
 Blanc ridicules and lashes St. Simon ;* Proudhon 
 ridicules and lashes Louis Blanc.f The famous 
 double formula of Louis Blanc is this : From every 
 one according to Ms aptitudes. To every one accord* 
 ing to Ids needs. But Proudhon is acute enough to 
 see through this, and asks, in his saucy way, 
 " Please, Mr. Louis Blanc, who is to judge of the 
 capacity, and of the wants ? You say that my 
 capacity is one hundred : I maintain that it is 
 only ninety. You say that my need is ninety : I 
 maintain that it is one hundred. Here we are dif 
 fering by twenty, as to the need and the ca- 
 
 * Histoire de Dix Arts. Bruxelles, 1847. 
 
 f Idee Generate dc la Revolution au XIX. Siecle. Paris, 1851 
 
184 SOCIAL THEORIES. 
 
 pacity. Who is to be umpire between the society 
 and me ? If the society enforces its opinion, I 
 quit, and your association is broken. Or if I stay 
 and succumb, your principle is broken." 
 
 Still another instructive experiment was tried by 
 a French philosopher, a few years ago, in Algeria. 
 Marshal Bugeaud, actuated by an ardent desire to 
 destroy social inequalities, founded a colony for 
 that purpose, which proved signally unsuccessful. 
 He then wrote a candid and manly pamphlet, with 
 this explicit testimony : " Absolute equality does 
 not belong to this world. It is God himself that 
 has determined this. The Socialists believe they 
 have found equality in association ; they are de 
 ceived ; they will obtain only an equality of 
 misery.* 
 
 From three sources, Christianity, history, and 
 the observations of common sense, we have the 
 means of a judgment on every community taken 
 apart from those majestic currents of social move 
 ment, which, with their mysteriously mingled ele 
 ments of the divine and human will, sweep stead 
 ily along the field of the ages. These projects are 
 weighed in the balances; and, thus far, if not for 
 crime, for folly, are found wanting. As a tranquil 
 .retreat for eccentric, broken-hearted, or impracticable 
 
 * Les Socialises ct le Travail en Commun. Paris, 1848. 
 
SOCIAL THEORIES. 185 
 
 people, it would seem as if there were an occa 
 sional place, in our diversified social scenery, for 
 such establishments ; only then they are not what 
 the theorists propose. Besides, people of those 
 classes, when huddled together without the healing 
 and correcting influences of domestic life, are apt, 
 as we have seen in cases near by, to turn out 
 uncomfortable and irritating to each other, and soon 
 to scatter in mutual disgust.* 
 
 To sum up, then, the argument : it may be ob 
 jected to Communism, first, that so far as AVC can 
 see, from the designs and analogies of nature, man 
 was meant to be put in trust with personal pos 
 sessions, to have them, manage them, and be an 
 swerable for them. His passions and their respon 
 sibilities, certainly, are his own, and inalienable. 
 As Lieber has justly said, " Property is nothing 
 else than the application of man s individuality to 
 
 * And therefore, with another, who is neither afraid of the new nor 
 too confident of the old, " do I mistrust the theorist. He hath said in 
 his heart that God s world, till now, hath been but a rough draft on 
 slate, and saith that he hath a sponge. Nine times in ten doth he sit 
 perched upon an income which is a dead branch of the living tree of 
 industry, and spout generalities outside of the real needs of to-day. 
 Not so, brother ! This is a fight : come down and take thy side, and 
 do battle for the most right of the two combatants. Lock up thy 
 head, which would fain teach us that one man is more than all men ; 
 open thy heart, where there be treasures yet untold ; let thy hand do 
 with its might whatsoever it findeth to do, because idleness is the root 
 of much evil." 
 
186 SOCIAL THEORIES. 
 
 external things." And a higher authority than this, 
 while it bids us, in the Saviour s spirit of self- 
 sacrifice, bear one another s burdens, enjoins on 
 each of us the solemn obligation, " Every man 
 shall bear his own burden " and, " hast thou faith, 
 have it to thyself." 
 
 Secondly, if property is wrong in principle, if, 
 as Proudhon and other doctrinaires declare, " prop 
 erty is robbery," then the association, community, 
 barrack or phalanx, has no right to it; and until 
 you can get the whole human race to join the 
 community at once, you will have one society 
 holding property by title against the rest, and so 
 recognizing the principle of property. 
 
 Thirdly, Communism takes away one grand stim 
 ulus to industry, the actual necessity of exertion 
 in an honest, manly, independent struggle with the 
 reluctances and resistances of nature, and so thwarts 
 the ordained economy of Providence. 
 
 Fourthly, if Communism abates avarice and cov- 
 etousness, as it claims, the reply is twofold : so 
 do other and healthier forces, like Christian princi 
 ple, abate and curb them ; besides, it encourages 
 other sins just as contrary to God s law and man s 
 welfare, like sluggishness and license. 
 
 Fifthly, the ideas of Communism, by a contagion 
 of passions, a sympathy of ideas, and a force of 
 
SOCIAL THEORIES. 187 
 
 circumstances, too plain to require amplification of 
 statement, tend straightway to abolish home, marriage, 
 and purity, thus striking a blow, fatal and execrable, 
 at the principle of personal chastity which lies at 
 the basis of Christian civilization. Communism aims 
 not only to regulate property and employments, but 
 to reconstruct the domestic relations, and thus it 
 enters the domain of morals. And if, as has been 
 wittily but sophistically said, " the stoical scheme 
 of supplying our wants, by lopping off our desires, 
 is like cutting off our feet when w^e want shoes," 
 the communist scheme, of regulating our desires 
 by indulging them, is like checking a train that is 
 running too fast down a hill by taking off the 
 brakes. 
 
 Sixthly, the practice of the early Christians, in 
 the primitive church, makes nothing for the So 
 cialist s argument, since it was obviously local, 
 temporary, adopted to meet a special exigency, and 
 has no divine sanction. 
 
 The grand objection is, that the whole system 
 interrupts the natural action of the laws by which 
 God meant Society to work out the final harmony 
 of individual and general welfare. It unsettles the 
 balance between individual responsibility and social 
 influence. It introduces a mechanical estimate of 
 spiritual things. Owen betrays this materialism, 
 
188 SOCIAL THEORIES. 
 
 perhaps inadvertently, when, in advocating the sep 
 aration of children from their parents, on the 
 ground that parental fondness stands in the way of 
 the improvement of the offspring, he adds that pa 
 rents have not the requisite machinery for the 
 " manufacture of character." 
 
 Beyond question, the most comprehensive and 
 most fatal fallacy in all Socialism is its assumption 
 that man s highest glory is self-gratification, instead 
 of self-control and affectionate submission to God. 
 Here is its express denial of the central truth of 
 Christianity. Here is its inwrought necessity of de 
 feat. 
 
 Throwing out some unimportant schemes, like that 
 of Pierre Leroux, the sketch I have given em 
 braces, I believe, a notice of the principal features, 
 though with but little of the detail, of all the 
 more conspicuous forms that Socialist speculation 
 has assumed. This outline, with the added reasons 
 for distrusting them all, better exhibits both the 
 inherent weakness in their radical principle, and 
 the repugnance of Providence to them, than any 
 other method of treatment I could adopt. And 
 thus it best serves the purposes of my plan. 
 Those divine laws, to which your attention has be 
 fore been directed, as penetrating the structure of 
 the world s Society, presiding over its progress, 
 
SOCIAL THEORIES. 189 
 
 and determining its moral development, are ade 
 quate and immutable. By obedience to them, we 
 render our little contribution to the sacred designs 
 of God. All systems that fly in their face, or at 
 tempt to supersede them by mortal ingenuity, or 
 seek to hurry too much the sublime movement of 
 history, must perish. Room for Christian considera 
 tion of abuses, for cautious experiment, for con 
 scientious reform, stands ever open, and the call is 
 loud. Just where the line shall run between an 
 effectual service of those laws and a vain innova 
 tion, and so which of our attempts shall right 
 eously succeed, and which shall as righteously fail, 
 it is not for any antecedent opinion dogmatically 
 to predict. Poised still between the good of the 
 individual and the rights of the whole, the great 
 welfare of the world makes its gradual advance. 
 The religion of Christ is our absolute guide, in 
 trying to forward it. The Almighty Father is over 
 it, to correct our mistakes. His eternal Spirit is 
 within it, to bear it forever on. 
 
LECTURE VI. 
 
 SOCIETY IN RELATION TO THE INTELLECT. 
 
 IT has been maintained* that Society exercises a 
 direct formative influence, of remarkable power, on 
 individual character, the argument being that as 
 human character is that product, in all his creation, 
 on which God sets the supreme value, so the agent 
 which is expressly adapted to develope and mould 
 it must be one illustration of his designs. I also 
 placed before you evidences that not only is the 
 individual soul made receptive of this social educa 
 tion, but the whole social system is framed into a 
 living network of reciprocal advantage, where, both 
 consciously and unconsciously, but by the will of 
 the Creator, the members of the human family mu 
 tually act and react upon one another.f In these 
 two branches of the subject, those elements in 
 the constitution of human nature brought especially 
 into view, as the powers of character, were the 
 Conscience, the Affections and the Will. It is to 
 these interior and vital forces of man that we 
 
 * Lecture iii. f Lecture iv. 
 
192 SOCIETY IN RELATION 
 
 have hitherto seen Society ministering, as both 
 their servant and their preceptor. 
 
 But there is another part of man, not yet put 
 into particular prominence his intellect. If it 
 needed any affirmation of its dignity, we might 
 find it, sufficiently, in the very terms of our gen 
 eral subject, which refers us not only to the 
 Power and the Goodness, but the Wisdom of God. 
 For, if we adore the wisdom in him, that is the 
 best argument for esteeming that intellectual en 
 dowment of his creature and his child, by which 
 the wisdom that is human is both taken in and 
 given out. Society, in its manifold workings, and 
 its inexhaustible demands, is a mighty helper to 
 man s mind. It quickens and directs it. It fur 
 nishes both a stimulus and an object. The intellect 
 is in account with Society by credit and by debt. 
 
 It would not serve either the interest or the 
 accuracy of the treatment, to resort to the fa 
 miliar psychological distributions of the faculties. 
 What we want, rather, is to regard the mind very 
 much as it is met and accosted by Society itself, 
 as a vital unit, not a mental skeleton, but an 
 organ of life. One twofold division, however, I 
 must ask you carefully to observe. The mind 
 must be considered both as a recipient and as a 
 producer ; not as active and passive, that is a com- 
 
TO THE INTELLECT. 193 
 
 mon but here a false distinction. The inind is just 
 as active in acquiring, or properly receiving, as in 
 communicating. The old notion that the business 
 of education is to pour facts into the pupil s 
 memory, as oranges are dropped into a box ? or 
 merchandise is stowed in the hold of a ship, is 
 effectually exploded. The maxim of all education 
 that deserves the name is, Rouse the faculties, 
 sharpen the perceptions, then spread out the 
 orderly phenomena of nature and history, and let 
 the hungry and discriminating intellect take hold. 
 Knowledge is not properly acquired till it is as 
 similated, taken up into the soul s chyle and blood 
 and fibre, and made a part of the juice and sub 
 stance of the man. And this is no passive pro 
 cess. It tasks every energy ; it puts all the mus 
 cles of the mind at work; it sweats its brow. 
 Hearing a nutritious discourse, reading Plato, or 
 Bacon, or Humboldt, learning a new language or 
 science, should be like climbing Mount Washington, 
 without beast or machine, on your own feet. 
 Merely to be instructed, in any lawful sense of the 
 word, is a labor. 
 
 Both as a recipient and as a producer, then, we 
 consider the intellect to be indebted to Society. 
 As a recipient it has Society directly and indi 
 rectly for its teacher. It is Society that organizes 
 
 13 
 
194 SOCIETY IN RELATION 
 
 education, opening the school-room or lecture-room, 
 constructing the apparatus, providing and multiply 
 ing the materials, collecting the library. If we 
 look at the school, the college, the institute, the 
 lyceum, the university, the observatory? we shall 
 see at once how impossible any such institution 
 would be, but for that assemblage of human per 
 sons and purposes to which we have given this 
 name, Society. Besides, as we shall see, Society 
 becomes, by suggestions and experiences, a more 
 direct intellectual helper. 
 
 As a producer, the intellect finds in Society an 
 influence that at once stimulates and guides it. 
 The principal methods of intellectual production are 
 conversation, specific tuition, formal discourse, au 
 thorship, and the arts of design. In each of these 
 the mind is found in acts of expression, by signs, 
 by language, by writing, or by color, form and 
 sound, as in pictures, sculpture, architecture, land 
 scape gardening, music. There is, in these, a combi 
 nation of the forms of thought. There is a recon 
 struction of scientific facts. There is a statement 
 of natural phenomena. There is an interpretation 
 of laws. There is an imaginative representation 
 of ideal truth, under the types of things that are 
 seen and heard. These are the mind s creative op 
 erations. Often, to be sure, two processes go on 
 
TO THE INTELLECT. 195 
 
 together, teaching being found one of the surest 
 modes of learning, and the productive faculty en 
 larging the intuitive and receptive. Here also we 
 have to see how, in original combinations, the in 
 tellect is urged on, provoked, directed, by the 
 importunities and necessities of Society. 
 
 Lay the foundation of the argument, therefore, 
 with this first principle, that God sets a positive 
 value upon intellectual activity. I do not say, for 
 I do not see, that we are anywhere taught that 
 God values intellectual activity for itself alone, as 
 an end. He does not so value it that the might 
 iest mind can atone for the least moral or spirit 
 ual obliquity. He values it simply and exactly as 
 a power. And that power, so long as the human 
 will is free and the choice of evil is open, must 
 be a power that works two ways, depending on a 
 moral control. The momentum of the engine is 
 just as effectual for mischief and disorder as for 
 truth and right, for Beelzebub as for Christ. 
 Knowledge is not the world s Saviour. The king 
 dom of heaven is not built in the brain. Proba 
 bly the saving gospel of simplicity and humility, 
 of faith and love, hardly encounters a more un 
 promising or more desperate resistance than the 
 pride, the self-sufficiency, of a congregation of in 
 tellectual sinners. And therefore I come to this 
 
196 SOCIETY IN RELATION 
 
 topic the more gladly and eagerly, as one that 
 lies directly on the path of one of the perilous 
 tendencies of our times. The dogma is extant 
 that knowledge is an ultimate good in itself, irre 
 spective of its aims, irrespective of the question 
 whether it has any aims, and apart from the qual 
 ity of soul with which it is got and held. That 
 doctrine terminates in one of two sorts of heathen 
 ism, in intellectual idolatry, or else in scientific 
 materialism. Where genius is rare, and scholars 
 are few, there will grow up an admiring worship 
 of colossal mental attainments. In a period of 
 educational facilities, and the popularizing of let 
 ters, as with us, an exaggerated estimate and self- 
 conceit of crude information will mistake knowledge 
 for wisdom, accomplishments for virtue, till finally, 
 the loftiest, the heroic, the spiritual objects of 
 man are forgotten, in a sottish accumulation of 
 private mental property, and the heart s holy loy 
 alty is sacrificed to the arrogant aggressions of the 
 understanding. Genius is made a gorgeous glutton, 
 existing only for its own beatitude, and gloating 
 over its epicurean mess. Knowledge would then be 
 adorable for its divinity though all the heart-beats 
 of Society were silenced, or though the beauty of 
 the morning bloomed and brightened across a faith 
 less world. 
 
TO THE INTELLECT. 107 
 
 Nevertheless, as was said, our Creator clearly 
 sets honor and value on the intellect in its own 
 place,- a place high but not the highest, His de 
 signs contemplate its complete discipline and ma 
 turity. He would have every seed he has planted 
 in humanity grow; every energy he has lodged in 
 his children expand ; the understanding not less 
 than the rest. 
 
 Our second position will be, that, if the Creator 
 thus honors intellectual activity and strength, then 
 to show that man s social nature is a regular and 
 efficient agent for nourishing, educating, and enlarg 
 ing the intellect, will be only to detect another 
 evidence of the Almighty Presence and Design in 
 the creation. This is what is now before us. 
 Over against the perverted sentiment, just re 
 ferred to infidel in philosophy and idolatrous in 
 practice I set the conviction that the knowledge, 
 or mental action, which does not tend to some 
 fruitful service to men is out of harmony with 
 Providence. Till we learn the methods, and are 
 inspired with the passion, to reinforce and expe 
 dite our fellows, we are not truly educated, nor 
 wise. Our minds are not working lawfully, accord 
 ing to their true intention. Education, in the hu 
 man sense, never contemplates an isolated speci 
 men. Its purpose is not to rear, here and there, 
 
198 SOCIETY IN RELATION 
 
 an intellectual Peak of Teneriffe, nor to build a 
 feudal castle of selfish learning in a desert. It 
 groups, assimilates, fraternizes men. It achieves 
 its end only when it has reared well-furnished., 
 friendly laborers for the common weal. 
 
 Philosophy and fact alike justify us in pro 
 nouncing a law of reciprocal relation between the 
 social element in man and his intellectual energy. 
 I am aware of the liability to exaggeration of 
 facts on the one hand, and fanciful trains of sug 
 gestion on the other, in tracing particular illustra 
 tions of this law. I do not pretend that it acts 
 with uniform certainty or directness. I allow in 
 advance for mixtures and exceptions. There is 
 considerable difficulty in disentangling and tracing 
 out the threads of an actual, secret connection, 
 where a careless glance would see only a jumble 
 of fortuitous coincidence. But this much, I think, 
 can be demonstrated : Society acts on thought, as 
 well as thought on Society. Society challenges 
 genius, animates the understanding, fertilizes the 
 faculty of invention, fashions the scholar. On the 
 other hand, the disciplined and balanced mind, 
 when it accepts its noblest commission, and moves 
 to its divinely appointed office, becomes the helper 
 and renovater of the race. 
 
 Before advancing a step, we must disabuse our- 
 
TO THE INTELLECT! 199 
 
 selves of a pedantic fallacy ; the notion that all 
 intellectual force is confined to those special f<jfms 
 of expression which literature has exclusively ap 
 propriated, viz., Books and the Fine Arts. These 
 are convenient, impressive, powerful forms of men 
 tal action. But they by no means exhaust the 
 mind s resources, nor embody all its operations. 
 The world is stirred and carried forward by intel 
 lectual energies playing around it, which never 
 found their way into libraries or galleries. Litera 
 ture itself, properly speaking, is but a voice, not 
 an idea, nor is it the only voice ideas utter. 
 Ideas speak in institutions, in enterprises, in colo 
 nies, in local improvements, in governments, in com 
 merce, in farms, in mechanism, in manners, in 
 ceremonies and rituals of worship, in household 
 furniture and habits, no less than in treatises and 
 poems. Writing and the arts are but signs and 
 exponents of that inner world of the mind, of 
 which these other facts are signs and exponents 
 just as much, and quite as weighty. For example, 
 commerce is regarded, primarily, as an institution 
 of self-interest ; but the thinking merchant is a 
 student also, and has other books than those on 
 the shelves of his book-case. His calculations, his 
 combinations, his sweeping surveys of countries, 
 ports, harvests, financial causes and currents, have 
 
200 SOCIETY IN DELATION 
 
 to move under the captaincy of the brain. What 
 are those colossal structures, that architecture rears 
 at his bidding along your thoroughfares, but solid 
 treatises upon forethought and enterprise ? What 
 are those palatial vessels that glide new every 
 week from our ship-yards, and go out to battle 
 with elements fiercer than any veteran battalions, 
 but thick-ribbed creations of the mind, swimming 
 thoughts with rudders and sails, chapters of po 
 litical economy written in iron and oak, speeches 
 spoken round the globe to the oceans and conti 
 nents, volumes launched and gone to sea, the cir 
 culating library of the climates ? A deed is no 
 less an intellectual birth the product of thought 
 than a word. The brain goes into an heroic act 
 as well as into an oration or a sonnet. Indeed, 
 when the times grow earnest or revolutionary, and 
 ideas stir most bravely, the mere litterateur drops 
 out of concern. Busy hands and expanding emo 
 tions vote him an impertinence, and push him 
 into a corner, to wait for a softer air, when the 
 rugged emergency is over. No disparagement to 
 Letters and Libraries ; they are the text-books of 
 the generations ; they make mental treasures per 
 manent ; they hold fast what is got ; they correct 
 tradition ; and sooner or later the world s best 
 thought is reflected in that record. Only remem- 
 
TO THE INTELLECT. 201 
 
 her, intellectual activity and production begin before 
 literature, and achieve immense conquests and bene 
 factions outside of it. 
 
 As soon as Society begins to be, it begins to 
 solicit and tax the human brain. Every new so 
 cial want is a new spur to contrivance, to thought, 
 to intellectual exertion. Civilization has to be built, 
 slowly, and expensively ; and the social and intel 
 lectual forces are the contractors, in partnership. 
 The savage must get out of his cave, under a roof, 
 and the intellect must be a carpenter and build 
 the roof for him. As his social condition rises, it 
 must go on building, hut, and tent, and house, 
 and mansion, and palace, and assembly-room, and 
 custom house, and hall of legislation, and temple, 
 each in its turn and place. As primitive man lays 
 off the apron of fig-leaves, the girdle of bark, the 
 untanned hide of the beast, the intellect must turn 
 tailor and adjust the fabric, and fashion the cos 
 tume, of his dress. To substitute utensils for the 
 fingers in eating, or steel hatchets for a stone in 
 cutting, is an intellectual proceeding. So through 
 out. Civilization is a perpetual provocative to men 
 tal skill. Society is an unceasing beggar at the 
 gates of Wisdom. It turns the key of hnowledge. 
 It tugs and labors at the lid of Nature s chest. 
 It clamors for all light. It uncovers all secrets; 
 
202 SOCIETY IN RELATION 
 
 protests against all monopolies ; and forbids Na 
 ture s children to boast, "I know something that 
 you do not." The doctrine of intellectual reserve, 
 as Fontenelle s maxim had it, that " if a wise 
 man has his hand full of truths, he will open 
 only his little finger," Society indignantly repudi 
 ates. Not only will it insist on having all that 
 science and scholarship know published and dif 
 fused, but it goads the man of science and the 
 scholar to know more for its sake. 
 
 To appreciate this mental stimulus from social 
 wants, we have only to look round first upon the 
 furnishing and the walls of our own dwellings. 
 Here are the results of mechanical industry, guid 
 ed in every manufacture by intellectual faculty. 
 Here are fabrics that comfort the body, save 
 and measure time, light the rooms at nightfall, 
 set the windows that let the sunrise beckon to us 
 in the morning, pour the pond that mirrors the 
 mountains into our chambers, dig and forge the 
 metals that form the implements and the coin and 
 the plate that social necessity uses, bring the coal 
 mine and the forest to soften the winter, spread 
 carpets under our feet, or hang the pictured scen 
 ery of countries we never saw before our eyes. 
 
 Or else, for a more vivid and magnificent illustra 
 tion yet, enter one of our annual exhibition-rooms 
 
TO THE INTELLECT. 203 
 
 of industry and invention, a County Fair, or the 
 Crystal Palace of a continent. Every such collec 
 tion of workmen and their works is a social jubi 
 lee of mental victory. It is Society celebrating 
 the Brain s Independence. The whole scene is a 
 vital institute of intellectual instruction. It is an 
 educator. It is an argument. It is an encyclopae 
 dia. It is a poem. It is a manual of learning. 
 It is one of the people s quick-witted, extempo 
 rized universities. It is a school of design. It 
 puts new illumination into old task-work; it raises 
 the tone of life; it brightens the observer s senses. 
 It reaches back its quickening touch into all the 
 work-shops and factories of the land, and rouses 
 the mind there. It helps finish and edify Society. 
 For still the laborer is greater than the labor ; 
 the engineer is superior to the engine ; the opera 
 tive is of more significance than the loom ; the 
 woman is finer than her embroidery. There are 
 the trophies of peaceful battles, which the mind, 
 like a loyal general, having wrestled with the ob 
 stinacy of nature, brings home to its commonwealth 
 and sovereign, Society. 
 
 There too you see how the increasing social de 
 mand brings in the inventiveness of the mind to 
 make up for the lacking capacity of the body. 
 Cotton cloth was once manufactured by hand, prin- 
 
204 SOCIETY IN RELATION 
 
 cipally in the East Indies. But the widened So 
 ciety of the earth grew impatient ; two or three 
 strong heads were persuaded to take the matter 
 into their thought, and to-day a single loom-tender 
 in Lowell can spin as much cotton in an hour as 
 three thousand Hindoos together. There is a pyra 
 mid in Egypt which it took one hundred thousand 
 men twenty years to build. The machinery now 
 running in England would lift all those materials 
 to their place in the structure, in eighteen hours. 
 When Boulton, the engineer, went up to the pal 
 ace, and came into the presence of George III., to 
 explain to the royal dulness how that machinery 
 might be set going, and the contemptuous king 
 said to him, as he might to a common peddler, 
 " Well, sir, what have you got to sell ?" Boulton 
 stood up, and said, " What kings, sire, are all 
 fond of power." His intellect had responded to a 
 social want, and it made his head kinglier than 
 the one that wore the crown. 
 
 One of the characteristics of modern industry is 
 the division and subdivision of labor. It is an in 
 evitable incident to the advancement of civilized 
 Society.* At first sight, it might seem to narrow 
 the range of the laborer s thoughts, and so to be 
 unfavorable to the growth of the mind. Practi- 
 * See Plato s "Republic," Book ii., Chapter ii. 
 
TO THE INTELLECT. 205 
 
 cally, however, it is found that this distribution in 
 the departments of work is attended with increased 
 mental aptitude and activity. It is because thor 
 oughness and concentration are stronger intellectual 
 attributes than versatility, or breadth of surface. 
 The probability is that the man who should under 
 take to plan, frame, finish, and furnish his own 
 house, to be architect, mason, carpenter, blacksmith, 
 painter, glazier, locksmith, plumber, upholsterer, in 
 one, would really have a less accurate and forci 
 ble mind than he who should master only one of 
 those trades, and would have a much less com 
 fortable house besides. Take up the Directory of 
 a large city, and turn to the list of employments. 
 See how many hands it takes to achieve the work 
 once performed by one. Then see how much more 
 completely, rapidly, cheaply, each part is done ; 
 how the division condenses attention, perfects exe 
 cution, promotes discoveries in each line, and 
 widens the range of competition. Then compute 
 how many of these multiplied avocations have to 
 do, directly or indirectly, with your own daily en 
 joyment ; and it will become only plainer and 
 plainer that the whole social body has a vital in 
 terest in the activity of thought. 
 
 Thus the progress of invention goes on, intel 
 lectual energy accumulating, and reaching out on 
 
206 SOCIETY IN RELATION 
 
 every side, stimulated by the progress of Society. 
 But, presently, there springs up a popular alarm. 
 The instinct of self-preservation and self-interest ap 
 prehends a danger. Will not the contrivances and 
 mechanisms which are said to save labor, diminish 
 also the wages of labor ? Will not the machine 
 that does the work of a hundred pairs of hands, 
 supersede the hands, leave them idle, and the 
 mouths they used to feed starving ? A very per 
 tinent social question : for if the apprehension is 
 reasonable, it militates against our position, show 
 ing the intellect rather the enemy of Society than 
 its friend. 
 
 The cases of this apparent conflict of intellec 
 tual and social laws are abundant. I can myself 
 recall the amusing scene indeed it was scarcely 
 a dozen years ago when in one of the most 
 intelligent agricultural districts of New England, 
 the neighbors of the venturous farmer who first 
 bought a horse-rake refused to be convinced by 
 the plainest proofs of its economy, but looked 
 askance at it over the fence as an impertinent 
 piece of agricultural heresy. They saw with their 
 eyes that three loads of hay went into the 
 barn in the same time that it took to gather 
 one with the old rakes, yet prejudice was 
 stronger than sight, and the pupil of the eye 
 
TO THE INTELLECT. 207 
 
 was a pupil that would not go to school. The 
 old spirit is by no means dead, which has perse 
 cuted the prophets, and ridiculed the thinkers, and 
 starved the innovators ; which, in the old world, 
 has often collected a rabble to mob a new discov 
 ery that came to Society with healing on its wings ; 
 which forbade Watt to open his instrument shop in 
 Glasgow ; which sneered at " Fulton s folly," as the 
 first steamboat was nicknamed in Brown s ship 
 yard, at New York ; which actually broke the 
 heart of poor William Lee, in the time of James 
 I., driving him by English indifference to France, 
 and then by French bigotry from Rouen to Paris, 
 where he died in misery, because the world would 
 not let its stockings be made by his stocking- 
 machine ; which, in South America, according to 
 Huinboldt, instigated the citizens to petition the 
 government against the building of a road among 
 the Andes, lest it should damage the interests of 
 the carriers who had enjoyed the monopoly of car 
 rying travellers across the mountains in baskets 
 strapped on their backs ; which inflamed the Swiss 
 peasants, when they saw Rupp constructing the 
 superb slide of Alpnach for bringing down the 
 pine timber of Mount Pilatus into Lake Lucerne, 
 to accuse his trigonometry of being the instigation 
 of Satan ; which, only forty years ago, threw 
 
208 SOCIETY IN RELATION 
 
 brickbats at a collier in Philadelphia who brought 
 down nine wagon loads of mountain coal to sell, 
 hooting after him as an impostor that pretended to 
 sell stones for fuel ; which trembled, all the way 
 from Boston to Albany, when the Western railroad 
 was about to be laid, with the ludicrous fear that 
 horses would go out of fashion, and have to be 
 shot down in their shoes as a drug ; which drove 
 Hargreaves and his spinning-machine out of Lan 
 cashire for his life, and prompted Laurence Earn- 
 shaw to break up his own machine in a fit of 
 benevolent apprehension lest he should take bread 
 out of his neighbors mouths, although a bold im 
 provement on both their designs by Arkwright 
 afterwards gave wages and food to millions of 
 workmen, raised the commerce in cotton from two 
 million pounds a year to a thousand millions of 
 pounds, and poured wealth into the treasury of the 
 nation and the world. 
 
 That timid temper is not exterminated yet. And 
 therefore it is right to assert that the social wel 
 fare, and God s plans for it, really justify all man 
 ner of intellectual originality; to demonstrate the 
 absolute social justice of the industrial and intellec 
 tual laws. It is capable of demonstration, that the 
 multiplying of labor-saving machinery never dimin 
 ishes the means of living; in fact, that labor is 
 
TO THE INTELLECT. 209 
 
 not finally saved, but multiplies itself, by and in 
 the machine. The final cause of labor-saving con 
 trivances is to increase labor. This is the eternal 
 paradox of the world s growing civilization. The 
 several industries of mankind move forward under 
 one harmonious plan. Every legitimate development 
 or production in one favors the others. I know of 
 nothing in the whole history of men more beauti 
 ful or more majestic than the certainty of this rule. 
 The illustrations of it are the annals of all the arts. 
 Apart from its own fascinating interest, it is one of 
 the most splendid proofs of the Being and Providence 
 of God. The family of men are under one Father. 
 It is as sure as gravitation, that every fresh mech 
 anism he puts into the world through an ingenious 
 intellect, he takes up and makes a part of his un 
 impeachable Goodness toward our race. Its incon 
 veniences are local and temporary ; its beneficence 
 is cosmopolitan and permanent. It enriches, em 
 ploys, establishes, equalizes. It creates demands 
 only to satisfy them; it saves expenditure only to 
 scatter it with a wider sweep. A few copyists are 
 at first set adrift by the printing-press ; but what 
 an army of operatives that mighty engine nourishes 
 to-day ! a stupendous philanthropist of employment, 
 if that were its only function. The sewing-machine 
 
 may bring a brief embarrassment to the poor seam- 
 
 14 
 
210 SOCIETY IN RELATION 
 
 stress ; let thoughtful Charity consider it, and 
 soften the transition; but in the end she also 
 will be the stronger and better for it if she only 
 keeps her own mind up with the times. If she 
 sits sullenly down and complains, or persists in 
 making her fingers competitors of wheels and 
 spindles, she will be crushed. There is less 
 stitching to be done, that her faculties may be 
 liberated for larger enterprises, and her hands find 
 a more exalted ministry. It is futile to be jeal 
 ous of the necessities of progress. We must all 
 go where the Almighty points, and not ask to 
 have the orbs of celestial light stand still for our 
 private accommodation. We must be hospitable and 
 brave in our welcome of the new Future, as well 
 as thankful venerators of the old Past. 
 
 By such a course of reflection as this, that very 
 fact which we have seen cited as an objection to 
 our doctrine becomes, instead, an argument for it. 
 That feeling, that prejudice, which opposes the gen 
 erous and progressive application of science to the 
 arts and conveniences of human life is found to be, 
 not the friend but the foe of Society, not a social 
 but a selfish instinct. Private monopoly, class in 
 terests, sectional privilege, may well be jealous of 
 intellectual light and power; but when we rise to 
 consider the whole family of man, and look abroad 
 
TO THE INTELLECT. 211 
 
 on the wide wants of the world, we find the ex 
 act terms of our proposition reechoed everywhere. 
 Society is the providential nutriment, motive, thea 
 tre and rewarder of the intellect, hardly less than 
 of the heart. 
 
 Furthermore, it is because man in his social na 
 ture is actuated so largely by his heart, and be 
 cause it is a principle of our nature that the heart 
 warms and quickens the head, that this action of 
 Society on the intellect takes place. It was a 
 maxim of the great historian of the church, Nean- 
 der, that even of a theologian the heart is the 
 determining agent : Pectus theolognm fecit. Doubt 
 less it would have been better for the church 
 if this natural and beautiful intention had not 
 met so many obstacles from dogmatism and am 
 bition. But I believe there is no considerable 
 field of human life where we cannot gather testi 
 mony that both the acquisitive and the creative 
 faculties are set free and quickened through the 
 affections. And, for obvious reasons, the most fa 
 miliar instances will be the most effectual for our 
 purpose. 
 
 Take common conversation. We do not duly 
 consider the amount of real intellectual activity 
 and originality that are constantly brought into 
 play through talk, dialogue, rejoinder, repartee, 
 
212 SOCIETY IN RELATION 
 
 in households, on the street, in the encounters of 
 company. Probably more good things are said 
 every day, and vanish into air, than can be 
 found printed in any library in the world. Now 
 observe that this animation and brilliancy of con 
 versation are apt to be very much in proportion 
 as the social intercourse is free, untrammeled, sim 
 ple and cordial; very much as the feelings and 
 affections have an unobstructed and unembarrassed 
 play; very much, in other words, as Society is 
 most social. Conventionalism, fashion, ceremony, the 
 stiff drawing-room parades where people march out 
 like walking lay-figures, or clothes-horses only as 
 frames to exhibit dress, or to perform grimace and 
 mutual make-believe hospitality, these yield no 
 bright talk. They benumb the intellectual faculty, 
 or drive it out of the house. Even eloquent per 
 sons grow tedious, and the nimblest parts are 
 dumb. " Good society have I seen," said Goethe, 
 " good society they call it, though there is not 
 in it the material for the smallest of poems." But 
 on the other hand, where the company have the 
 most mutual confidence, the most mutual affinity, 
 the most love, which are the specific elements of 
 the social nature, there thought will strike out 
 its images of boldest character, and conversation 
 will weave its finest charm. 
 
TO THE INTELLECT. 213 
 
 Why is it, in respect of personal social success, 
 that with one man, or one woman, all your powers 
 of expression are locked up, as in frost, the mo 
 ment you approach ? There is no such thing as 
 communication ; every topic is barren ; every sen 
 tence comes " wrong end first ;" the air between 
 you seems to be a non-conductor; the interview is 
 desperately dull; while with another, all is lucid, 
 suggestive, and fruitful ; the very same topics are 
 radiant; your phrases come from you with un 
 wonted point and finish, and your own fluency 
 surprises you. Why is this, except that the emo 
 tional and sympathetic part of our nature, that on 
 which social life depends, is rich in one ca>se, and 
 in the other poor ? Where there is nothing in 
 common between people, there can be nothing com 
 municated. Where there is no oil of friendly joy 
 to anoint the metallic and rusty hinges of the 
 mind, every movement will creak, and stick, and 
 jar. 
 
 Popular oratory exhibits the same thing. It is 
 the assembly that animates the speaker, and 
 whether he writes for them, or thinks into speech 
 before them, stimulates his invention. Very often 
 it is the audience that makes the oration : the 
 brilliant and responsive throng that kindles the fire 
 of the speech. The parliament, the forum, the 
 
214 SOCIETY IN RELATION 
 
 hustings, are not only educators, but electric bat 
 teries. Even that resonant, reverberating eloquence 
 of Demosthenes himself, which 
 
 " Wielded at will that fierce democracy, 
 Shook th arsenal, and fulmined over Greece, 
 To Macedon, and Artaxerxes throne," 
 
 would not have sounded down the centuries, but 
 for the social passions of the tribunal and agora 
 of Athens. So of the whole inspired line of ora 
 tors that he heads. Eloquence is a social product. 
 Undoubtedly we must try these principles by 
 that which has come to be known in the world 
 as literary history. We must ask if the intellec 
 tual princes and giants have owed anything to So 
 ciety. Many people do not admit anybody to 
 belong to the kingdom of the intellect, except 
 technical authors and artists. The argument will 
 bear the strain put upon it even by that theory. 
 Doubtless there are exceptional instances, of men 
 whose natures were so solitary, or their brain so 
 dominant and overbearing, that their greatness would 
 appear with little social excitement. Yet, even 
 these, if you trace causes closely enough, will be 
 found indebted to the currents of human sympathy. 
 Mr. De Quincey divides intellects into two classes, 
 laborers of the mine and laborers of the mint. 
 
TO THE INTELLECT. 215 
 
 The one class dig truth up, or discover it ; the 
 other strike, cast, mould it into coin for current 
 use. Both are amenable to the state of Society 
 they live in, and are partly the creatures of its 
 past action. The powers of the greatest men are 
 heightened by their acting on people about them. 
 They see their gifts reflected in the popular en 
 thusiasm. They hear the acclaim of the popular 
 voice. They feel the responsive thrill of the pub 
 lic pulse. This reduplication of individual energy 
 by social sympathy is one of the first laws of in 
 tellectual life. Every mind gains force by seeing 
 the fruits of its force. Science, for the quickness, 
 decision, and systematic arrangement of its teachers, 
 stands under patent obligations to the mutual atti 
 tude of pupil and professor, reader and author, 
 hearer and speaker. In the strong metaphor of 
 that competent authority, Nicbuhr, they that are 
 taught become to him that teaches his wings, and 
 not only his wings but his feet, and his hands, 
 and his eyes. I am happy to cite to the same 
 conclusion the opinion of a writer who has reflected 
 so carefully and comprehensively on the subject of 
 civilization as M. Guizot. " If a man makes a 
 mental advance," says he, " if he acquires some 
 new idea, or some new faculty, what is the desire 
 that takes possession of him at the very moment 
 
216 SOCIETY IN RELATION 
 
 he makes it ? It is the desire to promulgate his 
 sentiment to the exterior world to publish and 
 realize his thought. He feels obliged, impelled, as 
 it were, by a secret interest, to extend, to cany 
 out of himself, the melioration which has been ac 
 complished within him. To what but this do we 
 owe the exertions of great reformers, those bene 
 factors of the human race who have changed the 
 face of the world ?" 
 
 Then, in point of fact, we see prodigious effects 
 wrought on both the views and the abilities of 
 eminent thinkers by the state of Society in which 
 they lived, or out of which they grew. Every 
 chapter of literary history, from Plutarch to the 
 American Encyclopaedia, from Hesiod to Words 
 worth, supports this statement. Signal epochs in 
 letters have commonly been inaugurated by some 
 invigorating revolution in the elements of human 
 life. Sometimes these movements have been made 
 the subjects of great literary works. Sometimes 
 they have only acted on susceptible organizations, 
 as by electrical excitement. The re-asserted in 
 stincts of liberty and equality re-appear in sublimer 
 statues and pictures and buildings, in wider and 
 deeper philosophies, in eloquence that commands 
 broader auditories, in poetry that burns with 
 more of the immortal fire. The revolutionary and 
 
TO THE INTELLECT. 217 
 
 the constitutional period each has its appropriate 
 and typical intellectual tone. If Patrick Henry, 
 then Webster. A grand history raises grand his 
 torians. Given Achilles and Hector, and sooner 
 or later a Homer must be. Herodotus comes of 
 Xerxes. The genuine hero will get his story told, 
 his acted music sung. On the pages of Thucyd- 
 ides the pathos and tragedy of civil war utter 
 their august grief, and the speeches of warrior- 
 statesmen find a fit setting in the stately narra 
 tive. The vast tides of the world s life, as if by 
 a wonderful instinct of self-preservation, cast up 
 their own painters and chroniclers. Every large in 
 terest or passion finds a voice. A conservative 
 aristocracy does not lack a fastidious Pindar, and 
 a courtly Sir Walter Scott, nor a discontented de 
 mocracy its Victor Hugo and Rienzi. The decline 
 of Athenian manners and the degeneration of 
 woman commission a comedian like Aristophanes. 
 When an artificial civilization in Greece or Great 
 Britain makes it possible for a sharp, cold, bril 
 liant banterer to be the great man, Menander or 
 Thackeray is there. Stern and calculating Rome 
 will have no comedy at all ; for it has neither 
 laughter nor leisure ; the grim fights of gladiators 
 are its unsmiling sport, and its nearest approach 
 to mirth is the sardonic savageness of satire. But, 
 
218 SOCIETY IN RELATION 
 
 nevertheless,, the greatness of all Roman writing is 
 the ever present idea of Rome, a Society of men. 
 The Augustan age there, and the Elizabethan in 
 England, were times of the growth of social em 
 pires. Men s minds heaved unconsciously with the 
 pulsations of youthful commonwealths. Periods of 
 ardent patriotism are almost always intellectual har 
 vests. A social energy is at work which liberal 
 izes and expands. It opens the self-occupied un 
 derstanding with ideas of a political Brotherhood, 
 and common sufferings and hopes. In one country, 
 and that not the one feeling the primary shock, 
 we see the French Revolution rousing such a sena 
 torial order as Herder and Goethe, Klopstock, 
 Kant, Schiller and Ilumboldt. 
 
 We speak much of the benefits brought to the 
 human intellect by the invention of Printing. It 
 flashed in a wave of light on the race, which 
 spreads forever, and brightens as it spreads. A 
 careful study of European history, however, during 
 the period immediately preceding that great epoch, 
 shows that even that vast engine would have been 
 powerless but for the mighty preparations of 
 change that had been slowly working in the bosom 
 of European society. The struggle between indi 
 vidual ambition and the overgrown estates of the 
 feudal aristocracy had not been in vain. The 
 
TO THE INTELLECT. 219 
 
 lower classes began to be lifted. The sense of 
 personal liberty had awaked. Mercantile wealth was 
 increased. Independence came with it. Trading 
 tow r ns became the seats of liberal ideas, and raised 
 a barrier of free competition against hereditary 
 privilege. And so, when Printing came, it found a 
 new order of Society ready to receive it. Doubt 
 less this new order had more to do than was ap 
 parent with the invention itself. At any rate, it 
 was the arm of strength that sent its benefits 
 abroad, and gave its impulse to the continent. 
 
 Could we only look far enough down into the 
 underlying causes of things, and read the world s 
 story with these in view, we should see how hu 
 man wants are thus the begetters of intellectual 
 power. Before a great man appears, there are 
 hidden causes, working in the bosom of God s so 
 cial family, that require him. He never comes 
 till he is wanted, though the world, stoning its 
 prophets still, often misinterprets its hunger, and 
 knows not what it wants. Every splendid discov 
 ery is wrung out of reluctant, inexhaustible na 
 ture at the cry of a mortal desire. Not more cer 
 tainly is the planet built for man, than every new 
 intellectual birth in it is a straight answer to his 
 solicitation. The religion of Judea and the Norse 
 manhood, Love and Strength, or Heart and Will, 
 
220 SOCIETY IN RELATION 
 
 met and married on the old Roman hearth-stone, to 
 generate a new line of ideas no less than of per 
 sons. Copernicus came to find the physical centre, 
 just when the dawning truths of science began 
 to require that the axle-point of the heliocentric 
 system should be fixed. The age of Raphael 
 opened just when the rough lineaments of western 
 civilization supplicated, inarticulately, the refining 
 graces of Christian art. Columbus was but the 
 finger of one crowded continent feeling after room 
 and rights in another, after an industrial America 
 to atone for military Europe, a missing hemisphere 
 to finish the globe. Lord Bacon was the answer 
 of tired scholasticism begging to get out of the 
 labryrinth into a simple path. A hurrying century 
 felt hindered in its restless emigration and enter 
 prise, and Fulton came up to help it along. Busy 
 and related, yet widely divided communities, ached 
 for instant communication, and Franklin found, and 
 Morse equipped the nimble medium that should set 
 them talking face to face. Luther was a pioneer 
 pushed on by the impatient hopes of stifled mill 
 ions, a wrestler with the hierarchy, borne for 
 ward by the consecrating prayers of an army of 
 " reformers before the Reformation." 
 
 Then, in all those emanations of thought where 
 the emotions play, the efficiency of humane causes 
 
TO THE INTELLECT. 221 
 
 is only the more palpable and characteristic. Mas 
 ters of poetry, romance, arts of design, have been 
 the spokesmen of social experience. In their mo 
 ments of free insight, liberated from the dullness of 
 gross outsides, and from the caprices of fashion, 
 they have gone down into the abiding deeps within, 
 and spoken out of them. That is to be a genius. 
 In that sense, all the eternal voices are de profundis. 
 Orators are only the pleaders of passions and con 
 victions, with passions and convictions just like them 
 selves. Musical composers sing the sorrow and joy 
 of the children of men. Tragedy is but the wail 
 of some spiritual pain. The soul s long warfare with 
 conventional restraints, with foes of circumstance, 
 with the tyranny of custom, with the baffling of 
 love or aspiration, with some slow Iliad of calami 
 ties, or grim Inferno of conscience, this is the 
 ever-living and ever-commanding theme of all in 
 spiring speech. 
 
 Indeed, we may treat the whole world of let 
 ters as a drama in itself. The unity, the postures, 
 the dialogue, the progress from a Chaldean exor 
 dium to a divine conclusion, all are there, or will 
 be. What we call history is but the marginal an 
 notation, the explanatory argument. Treatises, ora 
 tions, sermons, volumes, are the talk of the length 
 ened colloquy. The drama is the most perfect 
 
222 SOCIETY IN RELATION 
 
 form of writing, precisely because it is closest to 
 the actual and social life of men. In ^Eschylus 
 and Shakspeare the agents of power are not the 
 transient interests or qualities of class, rank or 
 age, but the royal emotions and passions of es 
 sential humanity. In the characters, situations, suf 
 ferings, it is not princes, nor generals, nor demi 
 gods, that arrest our breath, but men and women 
 like ourselves. If kings, lords, queens, dukes, car 
 dinals come before us, it is still as men and wo 
 men that they come, and concern us. Regality, 
 titles, sceptres, are only the means of operating the 
 human nature which they accidentally attend. The 
 emperor himself is but the " usher that doth go 
 before" that more imperial presence, the soul. Hence 
 these confidantes of nature tell us more than we 
 knew about our own economy, tell us " the secrets 
 of our own bosoms." 
 
 Turn now to the other side of this mutual 
 inter-action between Learning and Life, or Ideas and 
 Society. The proposition is that thinking and 
 studying men do not fulfil their final and pre 
 destined office, till they reach the vital springs of 
 action, and create an ampler and freer style of be 
 ing, till they ennoble Society, elevate its estate, 
 purify its relationships, and dignify its manners. 
 Kings, like Alfred sitting out his eight nightly 
 
TO THE INTELLECT. 223 
 
 hours, after harassing days, for classical study, to 
 rouse some ambition in his stupid people, when 
 not a priest south of the Thames could translate 
 the Latin prayers he repeated in public, priests 
 like Archbishop Bruno of Cologne, studying new 
 languages for the enlightening of his flocks, these 
 are patterns of the disinterested scholar, true 
 kings and priests, not reigning in the etiquette of 
 courts or the ceremonial of a hierarchy, but in 
 the grand commonwealth of man, in the living 
 church of God. The educated, scholarly, brotherly 
 man is the ordained hierophant and crowned law 
 giver of the race. 
 
 The course of literary progress from the first 
 has been towards a heartier recognition of the 
 worth and needs of the common people. In this, 
 the advance of thought has followed the Christian 
 gospel, preached first to the people. This tend 
 ency must have free, open way. Then, as has 
 been somewhere said, in the beautiful unfolding 
 and circuit of the perfect plan, Literature, which 
 began by bringing mistaken deities to earth, com 
 pleting its celestial mission, returns and lifts an 
 instructed Society to heaven. Wisdom is always 
 bending to ignorance, not in patronage but in re 
 spect, and beckoning it upward. As the poet 
 prays, " Bodies bright, and greater, serve the less 
 
224 SOCIETY IN RELATION 
 
 not bright/ which is but a paraphrase of the 
 apostolic charity ; " Ye that are strong ought to 
 bear the infirmities of the weak." We read the 
 destiny of our multiplied appliances of culture in 
 the best instincts of the acquiring mind. And 
 whether, with the elder generations, we interpret 
 that destiny in the light of a golden age, lying, 
 like an island of the blest, before us, or, with 
 Plato, " resolve the soul s purest thoughts into re 
 membrances of a brighter life, already passed in a 
 nobler society," we find the predicted issue to be 
 the same, a kingdom of heaven on the earth. 
 
 Knowledge, to become wisdom, needs to let the 
 heart beat in its breast, to be what humanity 
 asks of it, not a sallow monk dreaming in a 
 clammy cave, not a selfish sybarite gloating over 
 its dish of delicious reputation, not a paramour 
 dallying with the passions, not a respectable servant- 
 in-waiting keeping the door of pompous patrons, 
 not a mystic dervish gazing complacently on itself, 
 but the breathing, sympathizing, and whole-souled 
 benefactor of the people. 
 
 There is a glorious possibility, which has some 
 times haunted the dreams of thinkers, at whose 
 grandeur all common hopes of scholars kneel with 
 veneration. It is the unity of all sciences, arts, 
 labors, letters, under one all-embracing and connect- 
 
TO THE INTELLECT. 225 
 
 ing principle, or law. If that majestic idea shall 
 ever be realized, what shall be the one unifying 
 truth ? What girdle shall be elastic enough to en 
 circle all knowledge ? What principle shall be vast 
 enough to contain all systems, schools, discoveries, 
 conclusions, clasping with its starry belt all the 
 constellations of human thought ? I answer, it is 
 no other, it can be no other, than the Brotherhood 
 of social men, beneath the Fatherhood of God. 
 
 Here, then, is our conclusion : the world s think 
 ers and students are its natural menders and mov 
 ers, because they are the quickeners and guides of 
 its actors. New greatness awaits the human mind, 
 as it shall more and more practically confess this 
 truth and become the willing servant of the wants 
 and welfare of Society. Take Philosophy. Is it 
 not in the nature of things that her soul should 
 expand, for she, too, has a soul, when she turns 
 her discoveries into treasures of mercy, and then 
 scatters them by the waysides of common men, 
 and at the doors of the poor, dispelling supersti 
 tion, cheapening comforts, easing drudgery, making 
 herself the Guide of Life ?" The Arts : can they 
 help springing into more vigorous and graceful ac 
 tivity, when they feel themselves to be like minis 
 tering spirits, public pleaders for faith and love, 
 beckoning, with their elevating forms of beauty, to 
 
 15 
 
226 SOCIETY IN RELATION 
 
 the children of ignorance and crime, and calling 
 them up to visions of refinement, purity and truth ? 
 Poetry must ever gain most complete control of 
 men s hearts when it sings the tragic Miserere 
 over bruised and baffled affections, or strikes the 
 note of Exultemus and Gloria in excehis at the 
 righteous emancipation of the oppressed. Even the 
 mastery of old languages becomes a more living 
 and engaging thing, when we hearken to these 
 tongues of departed tribes, as to solemn, musical 
 monitors how the everlasting policy and true honor 
 of nations are not war but peace, not aggression 
 but service, not oppression but freedom. Then they 
 are not dead languages but alive again. Under a 
 scholarship broad and bountiful as this, publishing 
 glad tidings like the beautiful feet of Morning 
 upon the mountains, the real golden age, at once 
 classic and Christian, should be inaugurated by a 
 Pentecost of Thought, Labor, and Love. 
 
 Before these kindling prospects of enlightening 
 and redeeming Society, which ever appeals and 
 entreats for this intellectual ministry, how do all 
 other motives to mental toil sink down ! The 
 finest gold is dim. Ambition s most resplendent 
 crown is cheap, and the sound of Fame s silver 
 trumpet dies away. Educated men are invited to 
 unprecedented honor, the honor of creating a So- 
 
TO THE INTELLECT. 227 
 
 ciety where education shall be universal. Re 
 nouncing selfish emulation, forgetting the rivalries of 
 schools and the bigotries of sects, they enter into 
 a fraternity of hope and faith, " Brethren of the 
 Misericordia" to all the ignorance and shame that 
 still fringe our civilization, apostles of a new or 
 der, builders of a society for the Son of God. 
 With such consecrations of the human mind, there 
 is no destiny, dreamed or prophesied, too auspi 
 cious for the race. Learning would become the 
 preceptor of industry, the crown of enterprise, the 
 dignity of commerce, the ornament of the repub 
 lic. Art, handmaid of refinement, Science, inter 
 preter of nature, Literature, the voice of expe 
 rience, and Philosophy, the guide of life, would 
 combine their constructive offices for rearing the open 
 university, home, temple of the children of men. 
 And in building that tabernacle, Thought and Love, 
 Intellect and Faith, our prophet and our priest, 
 should do all things for Society after the pattern 
 shown them in the mount, the mount of the vis 
 ion, and adoration, of the Wisdom, and the Power, 
 and the Goodness of God. 
 
LECTURE VII. 
 
 SOCIETY SUBJECT TO A LAW OF ADVANCEMENT. 
 
 EVERYTHING indicates that the Creator has placed 
 his human family on the globe for their education 
 into a destiny which no member of that family is 
 able to conceive. " Man," says Michelet, " is a pil 
 grim by nature ; it is long since he set out, and 
 I know not when he will arrive." Of this edu 
 cation, all the voices, the instruments, and the 
 forces, must be found in three regions ; within 
 man himself, in the creation around him, or in the 
 spiritual world above him. These three exhaust 
 every possible resource for him : Humanity, Nature, 
 Heaven. 
 
 The first of these, including the powers that 
 reside within man himself, we must divide into 
 two parts, of those which pertain to man as an 
 individual, and those that belong to him as 
 social, or by virtue of the connection of one life 
 with another. Where all these educating agents 
 should have cooperated, in unbroken harmony, there 
 man would be, in the accommodated and human 
 sense of the term, perfect. For an expression of 
 
230 SOCIETY SUBJECT TO 
 
 that possibility, sufficiently guarded and yet suffi 
 ciently positive, we may borrow the language of 
 Robert Southey : " I am fully convinced that a 
 gradual improvement is going on in the world, has 
 been going on from its commencement, and will 
 continue till the human race shall attain all the 
 perfection of which it is capable in this mortal 
 state. This belief is a corollary deduced from the 
 whole history of mankind." 
 
 And since that complete condition, or indeed any 
 tolerable approach to it, would unquestionably be a 
 society, we are right in seeking what those social 
 capabilities and operations are, which point to such 
 a state, and tend towards it. We shall find that 
 all the other forces which help and advance man, 
 in God, in nature, or in himself, presuppose him 
 to be a social creature, and act upon him as 
 such. We shall find, further, that wherever his 
 social conditions and faculties are most generously 
 unfolded, there he rises steadily towards the best 
 accomplishment of his being. These two proposi 
 tions signify what I mean by the statement that 
 Society holds in it the laws of its own progres 
 sion. In the last- Lecture, we saw Socialism, in all 
 its forms, trying to hasten this movement by arti 
 ficial arrangements, but blundering and failing. 
 Nevertheless, the movement proceeds. 
 
A LAW OF ADVANCEMENT. 231 
 
 Two facts, respecting the much abused subject 
 of human progress, must be frankly conceded at 
 once. The progress is not as yet universal, as to 
 the world s surface, nor uniform, as to its own rate 
 of speed. 
 
 It is not universal, as to space. Probably there 
 is as thorough degradation, attended with all the 
 crimes, sottishness and stupidity of the savage 
 state, on our globe to-day, as at any moment 
 since Adam. In some dreary districts, it is plain 
 enough, the course is steadily downward, and a 
 higher civilization sinks to a lower. Glance at 
 some of the great features and epochs of domes 
 tic existence. There are places, to-day as among 
 the Rajpoots in India where infant children, just 
 tasting of the life God gave to be a blessing and 
 a joy, are miserably slaughtered to dismiss them 
 from a more miserable lot. Sometimes, by the 
 most horrible of maternal profanities, the poor 
 mother spreads poison on her breast, and the babe 
 drinks death " where nature had planted the 
 streams of life." There are places, to-day as 
 among the Pawnees where womanhood is reckoned 
 a disgrace, and where she who receives, by her 
 nature, most of the divine spirit into hex heart, 
 is the abject, beaten, and incredibly burdened slave 
 of her pagan tyrant, man. In Australia, to-day, 
 
232 SOCIETY SUBJECT TO 
 
 when a lover selects the maiden he would marry, 
 this is the method of his courtship. He watches 
 till he finds her in some solitary place, rushes at 
 her unexpectedly, strikes her to the ground with a 
 club or wooden sword, beats her over the head 
 till she is senseless, drags her to his quarters, 
 and, with these impressive proofs of affection, pro 
 poses ; and, what is equally remarkable, is com 
 monly accepted ! The course of wedded love is 
 said to be much in keeping with the gallantry of 
 these advances. The Papuans of New Guinea sell 
 their own children into slavery. The demonstra 
 tions of hospitality and of emotion are ludi 
 crously inverted. When some of the New Zea- 
 landers meet their relations, after a separation, 
 they face each other, join their noses, and in that 
 position sob and howl half an hour. If there is 
 a large group of connections to one new-comer, all 
 but the nearest relative lay hold of the hands, 
 shoulders and feet, leaving to the " chief mourner" 
 in the solemnities the delicate monopoly of the 
 nose, the rest keeping time, in a chorus of whim 
 per, groan and yell, with him. There are places, 
 too, where, when the last act comes, which is sol 
 emn everywhere, the naked, crouching corpse is 
 bound with thongs of bark, crushed into a hole in 
 the ground, thinly covered, and forsaken. I need 
 
A LAW OF ADVANCEMENT. 233 
 
 not multiply examples of the savagery that lingers 
 yet in the world. Does it invalidate our position, 
 that Society is naturally progressive ? If it could 
 be known that in those regions, what we have 
 proclaimed as the social principles, were kept, it 
 w y ould unquestionably invalidate it. But since it is 
 in those places that these principles have been 
 persistently and grossly broken, the degradation, 
 and even the deterioration, only illustrates our doc 
 trine, and confirms it. Man has become unnatural. 
 It ought to be further remarked here that our 
 doctrine by no means involves the supposition that 
 the course of mankind has been progressive from 
 the beginning. On the contrary, though the point 
 is ably disputed, the facts seem rather to instruct 
 us that the race has suffered a vast degeneracy 
 from a primeval social state of comparative purity. 
 The most comprehensive students of this subject, 
 those that include the teachings of Scripture among 
 their data, agree in the opinion forcibly stated by 
 Chalmers and others, that civilization never arose 
 spontaneously from a state of barbarism, but was 
 olways imported, or created by contact with a peo 
 ple in whom the influence of an enlightened relig 
 ion, or early revelation, had not been lost. " Sav 
 age man is a degenerated animal." God did not 
 form man a savage. " There was an aboriginal civ- 
 
234 SOCIETY SUBJECT TO 
 
 ilization, coeval with the true knowledge of the 
 true God." 
 
 The other fact I allude to is that the progress 
 of the different branches of civilization is not uni 
 form, though it is progress on the whole. Their 
 growth is not simultaneous ; nor do they expand 
 by any law of definite proportions, like the 
 branches of a tree, where, if one twig is length 
 ened a foot, a smaller twig is sure to be length 
 ened by a fixed fraction of a foot. Energy and 
 taste, invention and veneration, machinery and 
 poetry, do not advance with equal step, nor, in 
 any particular period, is it possible to detect any 
 established ratio between their several rates. For 
 example, in the era of the Roman empire, the will 
 .was developed ; everything else bent to the iron 
 discipline of a military force. It was the age of 
 armies. The Greek mind labored after the perfect 
 in form. That was an age of ideality. For a long 
 time after the recognition of Christianity by the 
 civil power, from the fourth century forward, the 
 active mind of Europe was compacting a splendid 
 system of church unity, binding a network of ec 
 clesiastical dependencies, under a comprehensive 
 Christian hierarchy. For several centuries preced 
 ing and including the thirteenth, the chief business 
 of the foremost nations seems to have been to 
 
A LAW OF ADVANCEMENT. 235 
 
 bring out and cultivate, often in rude shapes, a 
 certain order of high sentiments, such as loyalty, 
 honor, class fidelity, and the enthusiasm of charity. 
 This was the age, therefore, of the crusades, 
 chivalry and religious houses. The sixteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries were memorable for the resist 
 ance of the human mind to overgrown authority, 
 and the emancipation of the individual from arbi 
 trary despotisms in the state and the church. 
 This, accordingly, was the age of Protestantism, 
 Puritanism, and the settlement of New England. 
 Afterwards, in the eighteenth century, Thought was 
 busy pushing its new ideas out into various prac 
 tical consequences, as well as into extreme specu 
 lations. And so it became an age at once of po 
 litical revolutions and of philosophical scepticism. 
 Perhaps it would be an unwarrantable presumption 
 to venture on a general designation of what the 
 special office of our own age is. To take a broad 
 view of its characteristics, we need to stand less 
 than is now quite possible under the confusing in 
 fluence of those passing interests which may be 
 transient in the eyes of Omniscience, or even 
 of posterity, while they look colossal in their rela 
 tion to our limited faculties. The errand of our 
 time appears to be, to push out into more exten 
 sive applications the tendencies of the two cen- 
 
236 SOCIETY SUBJECT TO 
 
 turies immediately preceding, especially into the 
 two directions of political reform, and the practical 
 machinery of life, under a diffused education. 
 Probably in a future not very distant, and possi 
 bly through unprecedented conflicts, a more settled 
 order of society, on a new basis, with institutions 
 incorporating the new ideas, the secrets extorted 
 by all these struggles, may appear, the ancient 
 stability enclosing the results of the modern agita 
 tion, the kingdom that was to come. These sev 
 eral ages that I have thus referred to are not 
 distinctly marked off, with an exact beginning and 
 end, in their events and spirit and character, as 
 they are in tables of chronology.* One period is 
 shaded into another, and the work of each laps 
 over upon those adjacent. 
 
 In the divine plan, each epoch has its task, 
 sometimes an original one, sometimes merely to 
 further, or to correct, one that has gone before. 
 We learn that the progress of the species is not 
 the simple motion of a single body, passing straight 
 forward, faster or slower, like a ball over a plane 
 
 * "There is no epoch in which one idea rules alone, to such an 
 extent that no other idea might seem to exist." 
 
 See COUSIN, in his "History of Modern Philosophy," Lecture 
 VII., second series, where he refers to his great Division of His 
 tory into the three epochs the epoch of the Finite, of the Infi 
 nite, and of the Relation of the Two. 
 
A LAW OF ADVANCEMENT. 237 
 
 surface, or a car on rails ; but it is a motion com 
 pound, broken, scattered. We must compare it, not 
 to an organized army drawn up in ranks, with 
 the drilled precision of officered regiments and brig 
 ades, with vanguard, main body, rear guard arid 
 wings, and marching on towards a definite station; 
 but rather to a loose company of adventuring emi 
 grants, exploring an unknown country, feeling their 
 way into a wilderness, made up of different 
 bodies, with light scouts to reconnoitre, but often 
 obliged to turn back, with slow escort and heavy 
 teams to bring on the baggage, some repelled by 
 the obstinacy of nature from positions they have 
 occupied to take more circuitous routes, others 
 waiting at advanced posts for the remainder to 
 come up, but all animated by one common purpose 
 urging them, at whatever hazards and through 
 whatever difficulties, as the law of their life, to 
 press on. Says the author of " Friends in Council," 
 " The progress of mankind is like the incoming of 
 the tide, which, for any given moment, is almost 
 as much of a retreat as of an advance ; but still 
 the tide moves on." 
 
 Of this Progress there are certain prominent in 
 struments, or agents, contained in the very struc 
 ture of Society, and parts of its vital system. 
 Some of these have been sufficiently exhibited al- 
 
238 SOCIETY SUBJECT TO 
 
 ready. At this point, however, others come into 
 view, and must be mentioned. 
 
 One of these is the perpetual system of variety 
 of personal abilities that nature keeps up in the 
 social world. Always there are some stronger to 
 help the infirmities of the weak; always there are 
 weak to be quickened and forwarded by the 
 strong. There are wise and ignorant; there are 
 needy and abounding; there are ugly and beauti 
 ful; there are impulsive and calculating, phlegmatic 
 and mercurial, practical and imaginative, logical and 
 intuitive, taciturn and talkative. Always, by the 
 benign and beautiful balancings of the Father s will, 
 the old and the young, full strength and little 
 children, grey locks and the soft hair of infancy, 
 are on the earth together. The more we explore 
 what is continually wrought and evoked, of human 
 power and goodness and wisdom, by these diversi 
 fied and unequal relations, the more we shall see 
 that they form one of the prolific generators of an 
 advancing spirit in the race. 
 
 Secondly, there is the characteristic of heredi 
 tary transmission. What one generation gains it can 
 hand over, in large part, to its successors, in knowl 
 edge, aptitude, skill. How broadly distinguished, in 
 this regard, is man from any of the inferior ani 
 mals ! We saw that there is no society among 
 
A LAW OF ADVANCEMENT. 230 
 
 them. They transmit nothing. With each individ 
 ual specimen, all that he did perishes. Even if 
 some slight material structure of his building-instinct 
 survives, the nidus of the offspring has to be fab 
 ricated anew. " There are no birds in last year s 
 nest." The instincts are resupplied to every indi 
 vidual of his kind, no more, no less. 13 at hu 
 manity holds by a longer title. Much as man 
 takes with him to the grave, he leaves much be 
 hind. In the matured records and accumulations of 
 his skill, in the raised and quickened capacity of 
 his nature, in physiological, intellectual, moral traits, 
 there is a solemn, a fearful, a precious hereditary 
 law. And the more it comes to be recognized and 
 revered, the more rapidly will mankind move and 
 mature. 
 
 " Be assured," says Ruskin, " that all the best 
 treasures of this world are not to be produced by 
 each generation for itself; but we are all intended, 
 not to cover our work in snow that will melt, but 
 each and all of us to be rolling a great gathering 
 snow-ball, higher and higher along the Alps of hu 
 man power. Thus the science of nations is to be 
 accumulative, from father to son ; each learning a 
 little more and a little more ; each receiving all 
 that was known and adding its own gain. The 
 history and poetry of nations are to be accumula- 
 
240 SOCIETY SUBJECT TO 
 
 tive, each generation treasuring the history and 
 the songs of its ancestors, and adding its own his 
 tory and its own songs. And the art of nations 
 is to be accumulative, just as science and history 
 are, the work of living men not superseding but 
 building itself upon the work of the Past. For 
 the intention of Providence concerning that art is 
 evidently that it should all grow together in one 
 mighty temple, the rough stones and the smooth 
 all finding their place, and rising, day by day, in 
 richer and higher pinnacles to heaven." 
 
 Another of the inwrought signs and means of 
 progression in the social nature is the obvious tend 
 ency of communities to store up and preserve what 
 they have gained, in institutions ; institutions of learn 
 ing, of traffic, of defence, of manufacture, of govern 
 ment, of charity, of worship. They make institu 
 tions for the intellect, institutions for the passions, 
 institutions for the interests, institutions for the 
 brain, the heart and the hand. They are al 
 ways funding their stock. Society has a mani 
 fest genius for organization. When it gets a 
 good thing it puts it into a shape where it will 
 keep, and be reproduced. These institutions, whether 
 educational, industrial, moral or religious, have a 
 wonderful working and creative energy. They re 
 duplicate human strength. Hence it is that most 
 
A LAW OF ADVANCEMENT. 241 
 
 men like to work in and with institutions. They 
 feel that they borrow, and expend, and are hacked 
 up by, a great invested ability beyond their own ; 
 and that their own is vastly multiplied by the ma 
 chine it goes into. Hence the man whose foresight 
 or benevolence founds a durable institution becomes 
 the greatest of benefactors. It goes on, in some 
 measure, of itself. Next after personal character it 
 is the most efficient of all agencies on earth ; and 
 very often it acts over a wider surface than per 
 sonal character can, and makes that also more 
 fruitful. I place, therefore, among the inherent 
 proofs of its natural progressiveness, this disposi 
 tion of Society to embody and perpetuate its ac 
 quisitions in instituted forms. 
 
 Put with this, however, a law equally clear, and 
 potent, and progressive. Society not only puts on 
 institutions when it wants them; it puts them off 
 when it has done with them, when they are only 
 crusts, dried shells, enclosing no life, or manacles 
 and fetters, cramping and distorting the life they 
 cannot contain. In some of its temporary stages, 
 the functions of Society, says Herbert Spencer, are 
 fulfilled " by appliances destined to disappear as 
 fast as the ultimate appliances become efficient. 
 Associated humanity has larval appendages, analo 
 gous to those of individual creatures. As in the 
 
 16 
 
242 SOCIETY SUBJECT TO 
 
 common Triton of the ponds the external lungs 
 dwindle away when the internal lungs have grown 
 to maturity ; and as, during the embryo state of 
 the higher vertebrata, temporary organs appear, serve 
 their purpose awhile, and then are reahsorbed, leav 
 ing only signs of their having been, so, in the 
 earlier forms of the body politic, do there exist in 
 stitutions, which, after answering their ends for a 
 time, are superseded and become extinct." The 
 new spirit pushes off the old form. 
 
 Another proof is the propensity to traffic, a 
 constant stimulus to invention, to skill, to enter 
 prise, to adventure. Doubtless the commerce in 
 merchandise is inferior to the commerce in ideas ; 
 yet we ought to remember how often the one has 
 been the carrier and mail-bag of the other ; how 
 the ships of the merchant have exported and im 
 ported knowledge and refinement. The individual 
 traders thought little of this ; they were looking 
 after their own fortunes, and driving their own 
 bargains; all the more it shows God s law above 
 them, making them its unconscious agents. Obey 
 ing that eager commercial passion, in oriental an 
 tiquity, the nations broke over their narrow bound 
 aries, learned each other s secrets, imbibed a more 
 catholic spirit. In the middle ages, the caravans 
 of transportation bore intellectual vitality from city 
 
A LAW OF ADVANCEMENT. 243 
 
 to city, and stirred the stagnant populations. In 
 modern times, the seats of commerce have been 
 proverbially the seats of liberty, and the sails of 
 fleets have been the wings of liberal thought. 
 
 Still another of these agents is travel. By vir 
 tue of his social constitution man is a travelling 
 animal, and, in turn, the more he travels the 
 more Society is advanced. It is plain enough why 
 nature set man on his legs, and lent to head and 
 heart, stomach and spine, a locomotive energy. And 
 yet it has come about, in the tremendous outward 
 aggressive pressure of his itinerant habits, that his 
 legs are now the least part of his locomotive ap 
 paratus. He makes all the elements of earth and 
 air and water move, pull, push, swing, float, gal 
 lop, propel him. People make roads, ferries, ships ; 
 and then roads, ferries, ships, make the people. 
 Every time a rustic countryman goes to the next 
 large town, every time an American goes to Eu 
 rope, unless there is an unwonted perverseness in 
 his stupidity, he comes back with a wider mind. 
 No wonder the Greeks put their highways under 
 the protection of their deities, for though their 
 gods did not succeed much better as superintend 
 ents of streets than as patterns of righteousness, 
 it indicated the popular estimation. When barba 
 rism first overran Italy, true to the destructive 
 
244 SOCIETY SUBJECT TO 
 
 instinct, the woodsmen demolished the highways ; 
 but they had to build them again. What if the 
 great Egyptian and Roman roads were first made 
 for the inarch of armies? After the armies, apos 
 tles. Mark the steps. First the pack-horse and the 
 mule ; then the two-wheeled sledge, dray, waggon, 
 which, clumsy as it was, was estimated to multi 
 ply power on the whole, in a tenfold ratio. The 
 first iron road for steam carriages was not opened 
 in England till thirty years ago, and in France 
 but five years earlier. You see already what a 
 civilizer it is. Motion is freedom, and science, and 
 wealth, and brotherly love. The engine and rail 
 are more effectual anti-slavery lectures than the 
 most eloquent of the Anti-Slavery Society s agents. 
 They call out great men, and make small men 
 greater. Up in the woods of northern New York 
 is a young boy whose brain is full of possible 
 mathematics. It would all perish in him, but 
 the railroad lays hold of him, draws him to Yale 
 or Harvard, and he carries forward the computa 
 tions of Bowditch and La Place. Not by direct 
 intention, but secretly in the plans of Providence, 
 every spade that the laborer, at the bidding of so 
 cial need, strikes into the bank to level it for the 
 engineer, every trowel that masonry plies on the 
 culvert and bridge, every hammer that welds the 
 
A LAW OF ADVANCEMENT. 245 
 
 machinery of the locomotive, every bolt that rivets 
 the ship-timber, bears its part in the carving and 
 the architecture of a better Future. Over these 
 iron paths God will roll in upon us an age of 
 greater toleration, helpfulness, love ; and, by the 
 simplest mechanism that art is perfecting, new dis 
 ciples and prophets, faithful as the old, shall run 
 and sail to give to Heathendom the heavenly learn 
 ing of the cross. 
 
 Another of the natural provisions for social pro 
 gress is language. If men are mutually to im 
 prove each other s condition, they must have a 
 power of expression ; if one generation is to gar 
 ner up its information, and bequeath its experience 
 to posterity, it must have the power of giving its 
 ideas not only a permanent but a communicable 
 form. Speech and writing are these powers. They 
 bespeak an intention that ideas should be conveyed 
 from man to man, from community to community, 
 from age to age. Thus wisdom is both portable 
 and accumulated. What is newly acquired is added 
 to an old and imperishable stock. Men die, but 
 their thoughts, their learning, will survive. The 
 whole race is quickened, and quickened ever freshly 
 and progressively, by the communicative brain and 
 heart of the surrounding and foregoing humanity. 
 The very existence of speech and writing thus be- 
 
246 SOCIETY SUBJECT TO 
 
 comes a demonstration of a progressive tendency in 
 Society. Furthermore, there is a constant advance 
 in language itself, as to its simplicity, compass, 
 exactness, and especially its uniformity. As civil 
 ization advances, the number of dialects decreases, 
 provincialisms are merged, and the same tongue be 
 comes common to all. Humboldt points out the 
 great diversity of dialects among American savages. 
 Sixty different vocabularies were found in Brazil 
 alone. In Australia, there is no classifying the 
 complexities. Among the cannibal population of 
 Borneo, an island only eight hundred miles long, 
 there are said to be hundreds of languages. Gen 
 erally, " the number of languages in any given dis 
 trict is in the inverse proportion of the intellec 
 tual culture of the inhabitants." And this rule itself 
 indicates a relation between the structure of Society 
 and its advance from a lower to a loftier state. 
 
 It is very remarkable with what significant pro 
 visions, with what sacred immunities, the Maker 
 of man has guarded the principle, that by social 
 intercommunications man shall gain his best further 
 ance, by social restriction, isolation, or artificial 
 protection, he shall wither away. Marriages of con 
 sanguinity depress or deform the vitality of the off 
 spring. Beyond the circle of kindred, a definite 
 localized population, that should keep on inter- 
 
A LAW OF ADVANCEMENT. 247 
 
 marrying, upon the same social grade, under the 
 same general influences, would inevitably deterio 
 rate. The generations need to change the air, arid 
 import unfamiliar elements. It is said that no pas 
 toral race, a class whose range of thought is 
 usually limited, has ever adopted a new mode of 
 life, uninfluenced by external alliances.* To the 
 want of renovation from without the best ethnolo 
 gists attribute the barbarism that has prevailed so 
 obstinately in Africa, in the South Sea Islands, in 
 southern Asia. Everybody knows how the jealousy 
 of foreign nations, as iu China and Japan, has aggra 
 vated the stupidity, arrested development, stunted 
 the national mind. To make the illustration more 
 pertinent, the men of that portion of the Chinese 
 people which is unquestionably the superior the 
 Mantchews received their impulse from the ene 
 mies they had subdued. On the opposite side ol 
 the planet, the aboriginal Indians of this continent 
 roamed at will, to be sure, through the forests; 
 but " as it were by one universal magic spell of 
 enchantment, they kept rigidly and strictly to their 
 respective tribes," oceans hemmed them in, no 
 people of higher civilization came in contact with 
 them, nor, when such a people came at last, would 
 they adopt its manners, and " by such isolation 
 * W. C. Taylor s "Natural History of Society," i. 197. 
 
248 SOCIETY SUBJECT TO 
 
 through a succession of ages they have dwindled 
 into intellectual pigmies, compared with those whose 
 races were renovated and refreshed by the grafting 
 of other varieties." 
 
 What goes with equal force to the same point, 
 is the fact that in those vast peoples where there 
 has most evidently been a decline and a deteriora 
 tion from a former civilization into barbarity, like 
 the Peruvians, like the Copts of Egypt, like the 
 early Greeks, like the Hindoos, there are almost 
 always found traditions, and sometimes relics, of 
 the former glory, the fables of the inhabitants 
 still referring that glory to visits of the gods, 
 some superior, celestial race. An examination of 
 these fables easily satisfies us that they generally 
 point to colonists from foreign countries, whom time 
 and superstition have apotheosized, and invested 
 with the attributes of divinity. 
 
 Now, if Mr. Buckle s monstrous theory were 
 sound, that civilization is owing entirely to intel 
 lectual causes, to the exclusion of the moral, then 
 there ought to be no such thing as a decline of 
 civilization known on the earth. We know that the 
 moral states of communities do vary, rising and 
 falling at their freewill; and these States, which 
 in our view are the grand determiners of social 
 welfare, carry the whole commonwealth up or down 
 
A LAW OF ADVANCEMENT. 249 
 
 with them. But leaving them out. as Mr. Buckle 
 
 o 
 
 does, what is there to bring an eclipse over a 
 nation s glory ? Nothing short of some anomalous 
 catastrophe, a swoon of the national understanding, 
 or a cataclysm in matter, obliterating at once all 
 the attainments of the past. Herculaneum and 
 Pompeii should be not only instances, but should 
 fix the rule of all the ruins of peoples. What 
 does, in fact, actually arrest social progress is 
 moral disorder. 
 
 If the spirit of Society has one adversary more 
 unyielding and powerful than others, it is the 
 spirit of caste, or a privileged class. Absolute in 
 dividual isolation is impossible. The simplest and 
 commonest wants of our nature require a certain 
 degree of association. The selfish principle, there 
 fore, does not go for the hermit s cave, for the 
 monk s cell, for Simeon s pillar. It does what is 
 equally selfish, more convenient, and more cunning. 
 It seeks a small and exclusive association, with a 
 monopoly of the good things of life, in material 
 comfort, in government, in religion; and, in that 
 narrow beat of supercilious manners, finds a favor 
 ing theatre for pride, luxury, ambition, or sloth. 
 This class-distinction, confined to no form of politi 
 cal sway, is essentially and radically anti-social. 
 Sometimes it has organized itself, and become the 
 
250 SOCIETY SUBJECT TO 
 
 accepted rule, the settled curse of the country. 
 Where that is the case, the blight on human na 
 ture is most frightful ; progress stops ; enterprise 
 is paralyzed; everything stands still perhaps for 
 centuries. Then the laws of social activity are 
 overborne, and held fast, in a mortmain too heavy 
 and tight to let humanity move. And no step for 
 ward is taken, till, by some convulsion initiated 
 from without, or brought in from above, the fatal 
 system is broken up. 
 
 We have two definite and instructive examples 
 in the society of Egypt and of India. 
 
 Nothing historical is better established than that 
 at a very ancient period, as early as the reign of 
 the Pharaohs and the age of Moses, there pre 
 vailed in Egypt a remarkably high form of civil 
 ization. Monumental inscriptions, recent explorations, 
 allusions in the Pentateuch, references in secular 
 chronicles, all prove that in arts and manufactures, 
 in legislation and learning, in acquaintance with the 
 secrets of nature and the control of her forces, the 
 Egyptians of that time occupied the front rank of 
 the world. This civilization afterwards declined 
 and was lost. The nation went steadily backward. 
 How did it happen ? Does not the fact contradict 
 our doctrine of the law of social progress ? On the 
 contrary, it signally confirms it. There grew up in 
 
A LAW OF ADVANCEMENT. 251 
 
 Egypt that enormous and powerful sacerdotal caste, 
 by which the law of Society was systematically 
 affronted. The priesthood, by craft and supersti 
 tion, gradually fastened on the nation a yoke that 
 smothered its life, infinitely more disastrous than 
 the slavery under which the Israelites groaned 
 when Moses, the emancipator, was born ; a plague 
 of slow effects, but finally working out social de 
 struction. To keep all safe, in this dead-lock of 
 the intellect and the will, foreigners were forbidden 
 to pass the frontiers ; all channels, by which new 
 ideas could pour in to shame the stupidity or to 
 compete with the monopoly of these self-constituted 
 dictators, were cut off; commerce was given up to 
 the Phoenicians, and after the days of Sesostris 
 no effort was made to expand the state. " In re 
 ligion, caste produces a tedious ceremonial and an 
 unmeaning ritual ; in politics, it creates a law fet 
 tered by usages and precedents, but destitute of the 
 vivifying power of jurisprudence to accommodate it 
 to times and circumstances ; and in the arts of 
 life, though it may increase the perfection of old 
 processes, it effectually prevents new discoveries. 
 Every one that visits a collection of Egyptian an 
 tiquities will be struck by the excellence of the 
 manipulation, and the poverty of invention displayed 
 in the patterns." In due time, retribution arrived. 
 
252 SOCIETY SUBJECT TO 
 
 Psammetichus, seeking assistance abroad, succeeded 
 in dissolving the priestly caste. But it was too 
 late ; the work of death on the national spirit was 
 too far done. His jealous warriors emigrated by 
 thousands to Ethiopia. The offended hierocracy for 
 sook him. The Babylonians, at Carchemish, con 
 quered Necho, his son. Neither he, nor Hophra, 
 his successor, could reanimate the prostrate soul of 
 Egypt. When Amasis, a child of the people, of 
 an inferior caste, put himself at the head of his 
 impatient countrymen, a brief shudder of returning 
 enterprise ran through the emasculate body of the 
 state. But Persia bore down with her irresisti 
 ble hosts ; as always happens, the stronger race 
 prevailed over the weaker ; Cambyses drove the 
 aristocratic corporation from their temples and en 
 trenchments ; " there was no room in the ancient 
 constitution for the new elements ;" " the boasted 
 wisdom of the Egyptians became henceforth nothing 
 more than a reminiscence and a name ;" " neither 
 the swords of the mercenaries nor the treasures of 
 the people could uphold the throne of the Pharaohs.* 
 Turn to India. The great majority of that peo- 
 pl e? according to " Ward s View of the Hindoos" 
 about three quarters, including all the laboring 
 classes, belong to the despised caste of Sudras ; 
 
 * Heeren and Taylor. 
 
A LAW OF ADVANCEMENT. 253 
 
 while the other quarter domineer and draw up 
 their phylacteries. Ages have not essentially altered 
 their degraded condition. Distinctions of personal 
 character are sunk in this flat subjection. Accord 
 ing to the Institutes of Menu, and the accounts of 
 Sir William Jones in his day, if a member of this 
 outcast class presumed to take a seat by the side 
 of his superiors, he was to be banished from the 
 country. If he spoke of them with contempt, his 
 mouth was to be burned ; if he insulted them, his 
 tongue was to be slit; if he sat on the same car 
 pet with a Brahmin, he was to be maimed for 
 life ; if he listened to the reading of the sacred 
 books, his invasion of that priestly privilege was to 
 be rewarded by having burning oil poured into his 
 ears ; if he committed them to memory, he was to 
 be killed; if he married his daughter to a Brah 
 min, no earthly vengeance was equal to the case, 
 and he must be dismissed to infernal torments ; 
 even if his master manumitted him, he would con 
 tinue a slave by nature, and never have the rights 
 of freedom ; and if murdered himself, the penalty 
 would be only the same as for killing a cow, a 
 dog, or a cat. 
 
 Such was the social structure of the Hindoos. 
 More precisely to sustain the position I have al 
 ready illustrated, their Brahmins adroitly forestalled 
 
254 SOCIETY SUBJECT TO 
 
 the liberalizing influence of foreign intercourse, by 
 denouncing loss of caste upon any one of their order 
 who should go on a long voyage. And so the 
 crippled Indian nation stands, or crawls, to-day, the 
 most striking and solemn monument on earth of 
 natural opportunities wasted, early advantages baf 
 fled, and a healthy growth of humanity arrested, 
 by a direct denial of the ordinances by which God 
 has appointed Society to go forward. 
 
 Just as the intellect of the individual man is 
 ordained to be both a producer and a receiver, 
 and to grow strong by both these activities ; just 
 as a reciprocal taking in and giving out, inhala 
 tion and expiration, is the law of organic life, 
 vegetable, animal, intellectual, moral, so it is with 
 the growth of Society ; so it is with any particu 
 lar local Society. The body must both receive 
 and impart ; it must eat and work ; there must 
 be respiration and perspiration. Pores and cells 
 and senses must be open to influence, inflowings 
 from abroad ; and, equally, sinews, limbs, powers, 
 must be ready for action outward, from within. 
 " So build we up our being." So, inch by inch, 
 and bud by bud, the tree builds up its tower 
 ing trunk, its pillared branches, its dome of living 
 green. So Society builds up its more wonderful, 
 complex organism, beneficent and beautiful. And 
 
A LAW OF ADVANCEMENT. 255 
 
 in each and all of them, it is God that is the 
 real Builder, the " wise master-builder," working 
 ever, through alternate regularity and variation, that 
 thing which is best, by his own divine and per 
 fect law. 
 
 The preparations for this mutual process are laid, 
 fast and fruitful, in our social nature. By both 
 propensities man is ever pushed toward his fellow- 
 man, by the desire to gain from him, by the 
 desire to impart to him. Hence intercourse, in 
 struction, commerce, travel, colonization. Thereby 
 different communities, as villages, cities, tribes, na 
 tions, extend and flourish. In proportion as the 
 social propensity has room to play itself out into 
 action, gets air and light, the people prospers. 
 Shut it up to itself, and it is starved and dwin 
 dled. As to all the grand objects of a noble 
 commonwealth, insulate it and it pines away, 
 gasping for the breath of life. 
 
 Surveying social history, to see how its strongest 
 movements have sprung up, where its most rapid 
 advancements have been achieved, where the seats 
 of its intensest energy have been planted, you 
 will see this law everywhere fulfilled. Where social 
 communications have been freest, civilization has 
 ripened fastest. Interchange has been inspiration. 
 Mixtures of bloods have been parents of pro- 
 
256 SOCIETY SUBJECT TO 
 
 gress and power. Contact of humanity with 
 humanity has been like the touch of the prophet s 
 bones ; it has made the dead start up alive. 
 It is the true Promethean fire, running from 
 country to country, leaping from heart to heart, 
 passed in lamps and torches from hand to hand 
 as they meet,* animating, brightening, gladdening 
 the world. It never poisons nor palsies those 
 that take it, nor binds them on a rock, nor 
 eats out their vitals. It emancipates them rather 
 from the bondage of their barbarism, and from 
 the vultures of ignorance, superstition and sloth. 
 
 It was when the eastern tribes began to stir 
 and intermix, that ideas began to take the place 
 of mere physical necessities, in controlling human 
 life. The shocks of nation against nation woke up 
 the intellect from its lethargy, and struck out 
 vastly more of discovery, of thought, of original 
 force, than would have come from a mere addition 
 of the several amounts. It was not a process of 
 addition but of multiplication. As, in certain chem 
 ical combinations, you get not only the aggregate 
 of the substances you throw* in, but new qualities, 
 finer forces, or fairer forms, b^ their chemical ac 
 tion, so in the great crucible of a continent, when 
 you pour the currents of national life together, by 
 
A LAW OF ADVANCEMENT. 257 
 
 certain secret forces of assimilation and repulsion 
 higher institutions, better forms of civilized society, 
 appear. In his eloquent and very instructive work 
 on " The Earth and Man," Professor Guyot has 
 so ably handled and exhausted the whole subject 
 of the divine adaptation and relation between the 
 physical and the moral creation, that if I were to 
 transfer to my argument his ninth and twelfth 
 lectures entire, I should only strengthen and adorn 
 it. There we see how the shapings of the conti 
 nents, the expanses of the ocean, the courses of 
 rivers and the configurations of hills are exactly 
 contrived to favor and to consummate just that 
 social result which we have all along found indi 
 cated as God s design in Society itself, viz., unity 
 in the midst of diversity, a common spirit widened 
 and deepened by individual peculiarity and liberty. 
 There we see Asia, Europe, North America, as the 
 three grand stages in the inarch of civilization. 
 There we see the great silent, swinging globe itself, 
 moving, stirring, impelling, shaking together, and 
 compacting again, into an ultimate order of incon 
 ceivable magnitude and glory, from the East and 
 from the West, from the North and from the 
 South, the children of God that walk, and work, 
 and suffer, and think, and weep, and pray, on its 
 
 breast. Hence it was, from this geographic prep- 
 
 17 
 
258 SOCIETY SUBJECT TO 
 
 aration, that the chief developments of human 
 enterprise and ingenuity so long took place about 
 the eastern extremity of the Mediterranean. There, 
 as Napoleon said, the human soul throbbed most 
 powerfully. There all the natural conditions of 
 prosperous life were best fulfilled and combined, 
 a soft climate, various lands, spontaneous and nu 
 tritious productions, so that, up to a certain point, 
 that point, viz., where a greater degree of hardi 
 hood becomes necessary to complete manhood, So 
 ciety was left free for its most favorable mani 
 festations, wiiile the rude navigation of those waters 
 was a constant stimulant to the communities around 
 it. Later, when this Mediterranean civilization had 
 done its best, and its several members, Phoenicia, 
 Egypt, Tyre, Greece, Italy, Spain, Carthage, had 
 done all for each other that they could do, how 
 was the next great step forward to be taken ? 
 Providence answered, by bringing down a new ele 
 ment from the North ; a rough bridegroom from 
 the forest for this southern bride. To be sure, it 
 was a wild wooing, and a fiercer wedlock ; but 
 nevertheless the marriage was pronounced ; the do 
 mestic doors of Europe were opened ; the nations 
 mixed ; God s designs went forward. With their 
 quick, bold faculties, Goths, Vandals, Franks, 
 adopted whatever was best in the life of the 
 
A LAW OF ADVANCEMENT. 259 
 
 countries they conquered. Then the scene of hu 
 man activity was shifted to another thenrtre, further 
 west. Germany, France, Great Britain, and Italy, 
 by their action and interaction, strife and treaty, 
 stimulus and competition, took up and bore forward 
 the ameliorations of the world. Arts, sciences, 
 printing, and a wider commerce, were finally born. 
 And by commerce, later yet, just when a larger 
 scope was wanted, the veil was lifted before a 
 more magnificent theatre still. Not now a union 
 of the nations of a continent, but of continents 
 themselves ! Columbus came. America was found. 
 The new career began of that admixture, on a 
 scale of unprecedented grandeur, of which the ulti 
 mate results, after three centuries and a half, lie 
 still unforeseen, unimagined, undreamed in the 
 future. 
 
 From one point in the interior of Asia, little more 
 than a dot on the rind of the globe, the waves 
 of advancing civilization steadily spread. They 
 crept slowly to the Mediterranean. The Persian 
 power gave the human tide a new impulse and 
 sent it to the ^gean. The Greeks bore it for 
 ward to the Adriatic. The Romans pressed it 
 on to the Atlantic. There it rested long, baf 
 fled by the waste sea, till, in the fulness of time, 
 God put the freight of an old world s hope into 
 
260 SOCIETY SUBJECT TO 
 
 the fragile fleet of a Genoese sailor and floated it 
 to the new. Two formidable ramparts of mount 
 ains, and as many thousands of miles, are con 
 quered in three centuries more. Then California 
 launches for China. The Pacific, name of prophecy 
 and promise, ocean of the world s final peace, is 
 crossed. The colonizing of the Pacific islands com 
 pletes the chain. Diffusion first, then assimilation. 
 First the genius of Progress peoples the earth. 
 Then she returns on her track, resets, in better sym 
 metry, the growths she had planted, and makes the 
 expanded household one. Dispersion is a civilizer; 
 and so is centralization ; each in turn ; each counter 
 poised by the other. " Give me the map of a coun 
 try," says Cousin, "its configuration, its climate, its 
 waters, its winds, its natural productions, its botany, 
 its zoology, and all its physical geography, and I 
 pledge myself to tell you what will be the man 
 of this country, and what place this country will 
 occupy in history." 
 
 If finer specimens of our kind, and loftier degrees 
 of civilization, are to be developed on this hemi 
 sphere than ever before, it will be because here 
 the people of all the nations on the earth meet 
 each other on more liberal terms, and enter into 
 less obstructed alliances ; because no narrow na 
 tional policy bars any out. and no oppression of 
 
A LAW OF ADVANCEMENT. 261 
 
 government enslaves any after they are in; be 
 cause all bring their gifts, their traditions, their fac 
 ulties, their blood, their hopes, their faiths, and fusing 
 them all together, doubtless through many a collision 
 uncomfortable to taste and awkward to prejudice, 
 yet under the benign and foreseeing Providence ot 
 the Father of them all, work out, and rear peace 
 fully together such a Christian commonwealth of 
 mind and heart and conscience and will, of beauty 
 and strength, of law and love, as the sun never 
 beheld* 
 
 Peacefully; you mark that word; and you say 
 it suggests a painful commentary. For, very often, 
 these mixtures of peoples have been effected only 
 through fire and sword, through campaigns, sieges, 
 slaughters. Can these be social agencies ? Are 
 they not anti-social rather, springing from hate, not 
 love ? Is war ever a civilizer ? 
 
 The answer to these questions cannot be put 
 into a single word. If men had been ready and 
 equal to the progressive plans of Providence, if 
 those plans took no resistance nor contravention 
 from mortal passions, mortal sluggishness, or selfish 
 ness, I suppose the social mixtures I have referred 
 to would be effected without hostile collisions. Our 
 
 * Hegel supposes the logical end of human history to be on the 
 continent of Europe, probably in Prussia. 
 
262 SOCIETY SUBJECT TO 
 
 presumptions, in such a field of speculation, ought, 
 of course, to be modest. But it seems at least 
 reasonable to suppose that in that case, the steady 
 march of improvement would be no march of 
 armed hosts, with bloody hands ; the horrible arts 
 and machinery of destruction would be displaced 
 by industry and friendly traffic ; countries would 
 open their gates to each other, learn war no more, 
 and thrive, as they ultimately will, surely as God 
 lives, on one another s prosperity. And yet, not 
 withstanding the obvious incongruity between blood 
 shed and a spirit of social progress, by looking 
 further down, we shall discover a certain philosoph 
 ical and real relation between them. Taking men 
 as they are, with all their deformities, and weak 
 nesses, and ignorances, wars have come about, in 
 the accomplishment of the same ends which would 
 have been accomplished otherwise had men been 
 what they ought to be. The social instinct has 
 pushed men on, to meet each other, and occupy 
 the globe. Encountering opposition, they have 
 fought. With what was natural and providential in 
 these instincts, self-interest and violence have pro 
 fusely mingled. Yet even then, how often has the 
 overruling hand of God come in to turn the war 
 rior and destroyer into servants of his will, to 
 make the wrath and the policy and the powder of 
 
A LAW OF ADVANCEMENT. 26 
 
 man to praise him, to gather from the field of 
 havoc some harvest of human welfare afterwards, 
 as the sweet, yellow grain waves every summer on 
 the acres of Waterloo. The military occupation of 
 the Scottish Highlands, after the battle of Cullo- 
 den, was an advantage to that rude region which 
 can be traced in all its subsequent condition. Fol 
 lowing almost every great war, there has been a 
 new impulse to human progress. Old conventions 
 and abuses were broken up ; old prejudices, super 
 stitions, dynasties were sundered ; old chains were 
 snapped to pieces. Nations burst through their for 
 mer boundaries ; they crossed their blood ; they 
 sharpened their brains ; they liberalized their judg 
 ments ; they enlarged their experience. A fresh 
 start, though often a short and interrupted one, 
 was given to the general advance. The actors in 
 the struggle may have been rapacious, cruel, infa 
 mous. They followed a horrid and accursed trade. 
 But if all the evil was man s, all the final good 
 was God s ; and the last and greatest victory is 
 always the victory of his love. 
 
 So, friends, the Almighty Providence, which never 
 sleeps, draws his children on. And where he 
 draws, it is no aimless movement. We see but the 
 surface, or only margins and glimpses of the 
 mighty plan. All the revolutions of our latest 
 
264 SOCIETY SUBJECT TO 
 
 times are only the breaking crests of a wave of 
 light that has been rolling on, ever since God di 
 vided the ocean from the land, the morning from 
 the night. The world is not a self-impelled caprice. 
 History is not a tangled skein. Civilization is not 
 scattered by chance, but grows by law. We call 
 single events, or lordly men, the causes of great 
 epochs. But the causes lie deeper and act further 
 than single events or the lordliest men. They are 
 bedded deep by the Creator in the bosom of Hu 
 manity. They act through long reaches of social 
 succession. Moses, inspired prophet as he was, did 
 not rear the Hebrew commonwealth, nor emanci 
 pate Israel ; but He who said to Moses, "The I 
 AM hath sent thee." " The Roman republic was 
 overthrown, not by Csesar and Pompey, but by 
 that condition of things which made Caesar and 
 Pompey possible." Luther, Calvin and Zuingle did 
 not reform Europe, and transform the Church, but 
 He, the Church s Head, their Lord and Master, 
 who said once, and says forever, " If the Truth 
 shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." 
 Washington and the immortal signers of the Dec 
 laration did not create American independence, nor 
 drive back the troops of the Crown, but that 
 Arm that overturns and delivers, that pulleth down 
 one, and setteth up another. 
 
A LAW OF ADVANCEMENT. 
 
 -(;-> 
 
 Down through all that mingled play of the evil 
 and the good that have made up the fortunes of 
 the world, there has run the adamantine chain of a 
 heavenly Design. Its first link is held by the 
 hand of a personal God ; and however dim our 
 eyes may be in tracing out its windings, yet, 
 when all shall be unfolded at last, faith tells us 
 that it will end where it began; that the last 
 link shall lie firmly, with the first, in the same 
 Father s hand, binding all in one, and all to Him. 
 
 As with construction, so with retribution. When 
 the crime and selfishness of empires stop the com 
 ing of the Son of Man too long, and humanity 
 falls helpless among thieves and robbers, and op 
 pression heaps its insults in the face of Heaven s 
 anointed, then the same law 7 that went forth once 
 from Jerusalem comes in justice again. Again you 
 see the hand-writing of the fingers on the walls of 
 tyranny, and hear the footsteps of the Avenger. 
 Then the awful Presence, from which nothing hides, 
 moves in among corrupted courts, or guilty senates, 
 or cabinets that sell man and truth for gold. 
 Then, by the direct and irresistible working of the 
 social laws, commercial robbery, the monopolies of 
 wealth, or Corinthian manners, prepare and inflict 
 for themselves Heaven s merciful revenge. Then 
 what conformity had disordered, reform, with a 
 
266 SOCIETY SUBJECT TO 
 
 face of terror, and hands of iron that break in 
 pieces, yet with a heart of compassion, comes to 
 purify and to heal. And though venerable and 
 beautiful forms are shattered, it is to liberate a 
 spirit imprisoned in them, more venerable, more 
 beautiful, because more useful still. 
 
 " Young Romance raised his dreamy eyes, 
 
 O erhung with dainty locks of gold ; 
 Why smite, he asked, in sad surprise, 
 The fair, the old ? 
 
 " Yet louder rang the strong one s stroke, 
 
 Yet nearer flashed his axe s gleam ; 
 Shuddering and sick at heart I woke, 
 As from a dream. 
 
 " I looked : aside the dust-cloud rolled ; 
 
 The waster seemed the builder too ; 
 Upspringing from the ruined Old 
 I saw the New. 
 
 " T was but the ruin of the bad, 
 
 The wasting of the wrong and ill ; 
 Whate er of good the old time had 
 Was living still. 
 
 " Calm grew the brow of him I feared ; 
 
 The frown which awed me passed away, 
 And left behind a smile that cheered 
 Like breaking day. 
 
A LAW OF ADVANCEMENT. 267 
 
 " The grass grew green on battle-plains, 
 
 O er swarded war-mounds grazed the cow ; 
 The slave stood forging, from his chains, 
 The spade and plough." 
 
 " Thus the gazers of the nations, and the watchers of the skies, 
 Looking through the coming ages, shall behold, with joyful eyes, 
 On the fiery track of Freedom fall the mild baptismal rain, 
 And the ashes of old evil feed the Future s golden grain." 
 
LECTURE VIII. 
 
 SOCIETY THE SPHERE OF THE KINGDOM OF CHRIST ON EARTH. 
 
 THE first announcement of Christianity to the 
 world contained in it a promise of a new order 
 of Society. When the Divine Person that embodied 
 and proclaimed this religion came forward, out of 
 the retirements of Nazareth, to his public minis 
 try, he came not only as the Regenerator and Re 
 deemer of the individual heart, but as a Recreator 
 of social institutions and the Saviour of states. 
 Earlier yet, the anticipations of prophecy had de 
 scribed him as the Author of a commonwealth 
 complete in compass, power, harmony, every civic 
 glory. The imagery that pictured that foreseen 
 splendor was drawn from social reconciliations, 
 swords beaten into ploughshares, Ethiopia stretching 
 out her hands, the wolf lying down with the 
 lamb, tyranny and hatred vanished from the family 
 of nations. In these generous predictions we hear 
 the mighty forechant of that universal anthem 
 which is to rise from all the round world, Chris 
 tianized and consecrated at last. The Messiah ex- 
 
270 SOCIETY THE SPHERE OF THE 
 
 pected was to be a Prince of unbroken peace, 
 and of his brotherly kingdom there should be no 
 end. 
 
 At his actual coming, these animating and be 
 nignant promises were more than confirmed. The 
 first voice that declared his nativity, ringing 
 through the midnight sky over Bethlehem, the 
 celestial chorus startling the shepherds, was a song 
 of hope for social man, as well as a " Gloria in 
 Excelsis" to the Creator ; for, after its first sub 
 lime ascription to Heaven, comes instantly the 
 " Peace on earth, good will to men." Every su 
 pernatural sign spoke of human reformation. The 
 Advent was a coming of the Son of God to 
 weary, oppressed, sorrowing humanity. The Epiph 
 any was a manifestation of the Father to an 
 alienated, scattered household. The Passion was a 
 redemptive suffering for a bleeding social body, no 
 less than for lost solitary souls. Throughout all 
 his benign ministry, Christ planted virtues which 
 are the very binding and healing and building of 
 the social state. With the clearest emphasis he 
 affirmed that his mission was to rear a world-wide 
 home for the tribes of the earth, under one Father 
 and one law, " that they all might be one." To 
 this purified and Christian society he gave a social 
 name the Church. Its organizing principle was to 
 
KINGDOM OF CHRIST ON EARTH. 271 
 
 be the spirit of his own life and gospel, wrought 
 first into the convictions and thus into the whole 
 development and conformation of the race. 
 
 The reach of time it will require to work this 
 consummation out is never estimated. The uncer 
 tain and variable element is the freewill of man ; 
 the element fixed and sure is the decree of God. 
 All we know of the period of the plan is that it 
 is His with whom one day is as a thousand 
 years. Whenever the result is accomplished, it will 
 doubtless be through the voluntary consent of men 
 themselves, who are to be the material as well as 
 the architects of the structure. In my last Lec 
 ture I endeavored to show that though the rate 
 is not uniform, nor the progress equal as to place, 
 the causes that shall finally work that Christian 
 commonwealth into realization, act steadily and un 
 ceasingly, from age to age, with the constancy and 
 the power of law. 
 
 Now the means by which this grand, ultimate 
 destiny of mankind is to be achieved, we know. 
 It is by the ideas and affections, i. e., by 
 the spiritual forces, planted germinally by the 
 Creator in humanity, and manifested perfectly in 
 the one Divine Man. In history we know them 
 as Life ; in the gospel as Truth. What we name 
 Christianity is the clear and complete affirmation 
 
272 SOCIETY THE SPHERE OF THE 
 
 of them by that mediatorial Being, in his action, 
 in his speech, in his death, in his resurrection, in 
 the eternal intercessory and inspiring office of his 
 Lordship in the heavens. Thus the social constitu 
 tion of man, and the revelation in Christ, are the 
 two correlated, complemental forces, which bear for 
 ward the progress of the world. Together, they 
 prepare that renewed, just, free, merciful and holy 
 society which the New Testament repeatedly char 
 acterizes as the kingdom of heaven on earth, and 
 which is the symbol, the archetype, and the be 
 ginning of that final and everlasting kingdom 
 which shall be when there shall be new heavens 
 and a new earth. This, in as few terms as I am 
 able to present it, is the key to the Christian 
 philosophy of history. 
 
 It follows that when the great truths of Chris 
 tianity shall have become embodied in the actual 
 forms of government, education, trade, art, letters, 
 mercy, manners and worship, and shall have con 
 trolled Society by their living power, then the 
 kingdom of Christ will have come. Whether this 
 result is ever to be an historical fact on this 
 planet, i. e., whether the human race is literally 
 perfectible, or whether, in a state meant to be 
 disciplinary and preparatory, it shall be realized 
 only in approximate and ever-ascending degrees, is 
 
KINGDOM OF CHRIST ON EARTH. 273 
 
 not important to the integrity of our reasoning. It 
 is enough if all the currents of history stream 
 that way, and if both the tendencies and aspira 
 tions of men point and climb ever to the same 
 zenith of the future. It is the distinctively Chris 
 tian element of this view which distinguishes it 
 from an atheistic theory like that of Auguste 
 Comte, who would make the three great eras of 
 perfected humanity to be the Metaphysical, the 
 Theological and the Scientific, and would subordi 
 nate religion to " positive knowledge :" on the other 
 hand, it is its comprehensive character, as embrac 
 ing all of Christendom, which distinguishes it from 
 the limited conceptions of Christian writers like 
 Bossuet and Schlegel, who would confine all possi 
 ble progress to the Roman Catholic communion. 
 
 The position taken is this : It is through men s 
 social relations and affections, that Christ, the Head 
 of the race, proposes to construct his spiritual em 
 pire, his church. What we name history is only 
 the unrolling of the scenes of that construction. 
 Old Thomas Fuller is justified in saying that of 
 the four proper aims of the historian, the first is 
 the glory of God. For what this reverent scholar 
 would place first in the writing of history, God 
 himself has plainly put first in the history to 
 be written. Even Montesquieu, who in an earlier 
 
 18 
 
274 SOCIETY THE SPHERE OF THE 
 
 work* spoke lightly of Christianity, after experience 
 had matured his mind acknowledged that it was 
 not only the most perfect form of religion, but the 
 principal " support of the social system." 
 
 Men may dispute whether there was a golden 
 age in the Past, but there shall be a true golden 
 age before us : prophecy foretells it ; hope reaches 
 toward it ; experience opens her secret pledges of 
 it ; all the voices of heaven and earth promise 
 it ; and imagination has only to bring her pencil 
 of brilliant light to picture its scenery of majesty 
 and splendor : a period, in the slightly altered and 
 beautiful language of Coleridge, " when conscience 
 shall act in man with the ease and uniformity of 
 instinct ; when labor shall be a sweet name for 
 the activity of sane minds in healthful bodies, and 
 all enjoy in common the bounteous harvest pro 
 duced by common effort : when there shall exist 
 in the sexes, and in the individuals of each sex, 
 just variety enough to call forth the gentle rest 
 lessness and final union of chaste love and indi 
 vidual attainment, each seeking and finding the be 
 loved one by the natural affinity of their beings ; 
 when the Sovereign of the universe shall be 
 known only as the universal Parent, no altar but 
 
 * Lettres Persanes. 
 
KINGDOM OF CHRIST ON EARTH. 275 
 
 the pure heart, and thanksgiving and grateful love 
 the sole sacrifice." 
 
 " Then comes the statelier Eden back to men ; 
 Then reign the world s great bridals, chaste and calm ; 
 Then springs the crowning race of human kind." 
 
 Such a result can stand second to no other in 
 the purposes of God for mankind. If Society is 
 the proper and pre-adapted theatre for the embodi 
 ment and the free working out of the vital ideas 
 of Christianity, then no other proof can be brought 
 forward, so clear and so decisive, that Society is 
 a practical illustration of the Power, and the Wis 
 dom, and the Goodness of God. For these ideas 
 are the very hiding of his Power, and the Light 
 of his Wisdom ; the human souls they fill and ac 
 tuate are the very children of his Fatherhood, the 
 joy of his infinite heart of love. 
 
 As I shall arrange and mention them, these 
 ideas are seven : 1. The Historic Unity of Man 
 kind. 2. Dependent Trust, or Faith. 3. Moral Rec 
 titude. 4. Charity. 5. Obedience. 6. The Balance 
 of Conservatism and Reform. 7. Voluntary Sacri 
 fice. 
 
 I. Society is the appointed sphere of the spirit 
 ual kingdom of Christ, because a moral and or 
 ganic unity embraces its parts and links together 
 
276 SOCIETY THE SPHERE OF THE 
 
 its successive generations. Were there no such 
 law of transmission, no chain of connection between 
 age and age, no hereditary conveyance of moral 
 qualities, then it is evident Christianity could get 
 no leverage, and no grasp on the world s motives. 
 We could not speak of the building of a kingdom, 
 or the unfolding of a method of progression. Each 
 rank of souls must then begin at the same starting- 
 place, and drop at the same goal. The operation of 
 Christian Truth on the ages would be only a mo 
 notonous repetition of the same unfinished experi 
 ment, ever begun with the birth, ever broken off 
 with the death, of the individual. 
 
 It requires only a moderate study of the actual 
 operation of Christian truth around us every day 
 to see how the hereditary relations are taken up 
 and made use of as an effectual remedial agency 
 to recover men from their evils. If souls fall out 
 of the way by these connections when they are 
 vitiated, so are they manifestly restored by them 
 when they are sanctified. This line of thought has 
 been very ingeniously and eloquently pursued by a 
 writer of our own day,* who asks, " What intelli 
 gent person ever supposed that this original consti 
 tution, by which one generation derives its exist 
 ence and receives the bent of its character from 
 
 * Rev. Horace Bushnell, D.D., in "Christian Nurture*" 
 
KINGDOM OF CHKIST ON EARTH. 277 
 
 another, was designed of God to be the vehicle 
 only of depravity? The only supposition that 
 honors God is that the organic unity was ordained 
 originally for the nurture of holy virtue in the 
 beginning of each soul s history ; and that Chris 
 tianity, or redemption, must of necessity take pos 
 session of the abused vehicle, and sanctify it for 
 its own merciful uses." 
 
 In the language of another, " Philosophy ever 
 contemplates man as a concrete, humanity entire 
 in its unity. Experience, with its broadest induc 
 tions, confirms the existence of a law above that 
 which reigns in the individual, and which binds all 
 individuals in one community. The perpetuation of 
 the characteristic human form, and mental faculty, 
 and relative proportion of sex, and the one con 
 secutive stream of historic development for men, 
 all evince that there is a persistent causality, be 
 fore and above all individual peculiarity." It is 
 plain that only on such a law of unity in the 
 race, and out of its practical energy, could there 
 be planted and reared a social institution, ever ad 
 vancing to the realization of a heavenly ideal, 
 like the Christian church. " An unbroken and real 
 spiritual chain of instruction, example, influence, 
 fellowship, connects Abraham, the 6 father of the 
 faithful, with the lastest generation that shall walk 
 
278 SOCIETY THE SPHERE OF THE 
 
 in the footsteps of his faith, the cradle of the 
 Church in the tent of Mamre, and its school-days 
 in the temple at Jerusalem, with the widest and 
 most spiritual triumphs of its maturity." 
 
 Hence the secret current of transmitted and 
 generative life, in the order of successive spiritual 
 dispensations, each an outgrowth of the foregoing, 
 each prophesying and preparing its successor. 
 The biblical dispensations are three, types of three 
 great principles of moral action, three stages in 
 the religious discipline of Society : the Patriarchal, 
 the Mosaic, the Christian ; impulse, law, love ; 
 nature, government, grace ; instinct, obedience, faith ; 
 Mamre, Sinai, Calvary. This is the order. Natural 
 impulse, when the parental arm is not pressed 
 around it, runs wild, and needs the restraining 
 hand of law. Moses comes with his command 
 ments, ordinances, ritual, and manifold rules and 
 ceremonies, to yoke the wayward will in obedience, 
 an age of legality. Afterwards, in the fulness 
 of time, when the schoolmaster has done his work, 
 when man by obeying has grown to the liberty 
 of choice, when, by being a servant under the 
 commandment, he has learned the faith to which 
 grace can safely speak, then appears the Messiah : 
 the Desire of all nations, He that was to come, 
 the great Reality of all the symbols. Adam and 
 
KINGDOM OF CHRIST ON EARTH. 279 
 
 Christ are thus the two poles of history. " The 
 first Adain was made a living soul ; the second 
 Adam was the Lord from heaven." First, a nat 
 ural creation, and an outward culture. Then a 
 spiritual creation, and a regeneration from within, 
 Christ formed in the heart. This is for Society 
 just as truly as for the individual ; historical no 
 less than personal. It is the whole procession of 
 the centuries that strews the palm branches in the 
 way for the Saviour. The kingdom of the Son of 
 Man, in the future, is established on all the expe 
 rience of the humanity that has gone before. 
 And from the fair beginnings in the elder Eden, 
 we look to the sublime redemptive consummation 
 in that other Paradise that is to spring up on 
 the earth, yet so beautiful that it shall seem to 
 descend, like a bride, out of heaven. 
 
 Nay, if we take our stand with the Scotch phi 
 losopher, who joins faith with science,* we shall 
 descry the preparations of this final harmony of 
 the social and the evangelical systems far back 
 before the first man breathed, and catch the notes 
 of the august prelude among the inarticulate sounds 
 and motions of the pre-Adamic creation. " In the 
 history of the earth which we inhabit," he says, 
 " molluscs, fishes, reptiles, mammals, had, each in 
 
 * Hugh Miller. 
 
280 SOCIETY THE SPHERE OF THE 
 
 succession, their periods of vast duration, and then 
 the human period began, the period of a fellow- 
 worker with God, created in God s own image. 
 What is to be the next advance ? Is there to be 
 merely a repetition of the Past ? No. The geolo 
 gist, in those tables of stone which form his rec 
 ords, finds no example of epochs, once passed away, 
 again returning. There has been no repetition of 
 the dynasty of the fish, of the reptile, of the 
 mammal. The dynasty of the future is to have 
 glorified man for its inhabitant ; but it is to be 
 the dynasty, the kingdom, not any longer of 
 man made in the image of God, but of God him 
 self in the form of man. There we find the point 
 of elevation, never to be exceeded, meetly coinci 
 dent with the final period, never to be terminated, 
 the infinite in height harmoniously associated with 
 the eternal in duration. Creation and the Creator 
 meet at one point, and in one person. The long 
 ascending line from dead matter to man has been 
 a progress Godwards, not an asymptotical progress, 
 but destined, from the beginning, to furnish a point 
 of union of man with his Maker. Like the Patri 
 archal and Mosaic dispensations of grace, the Pa 
 laeozoic, the Secondary and the Tertiary dispensa 
 tions of creation were charged with the shadows 
 of better things to come. The advent of man, 
 
KINGDOM OF CHRIST ON EARTH. 281 
 
 simply as such, was the great event prefigured 
 during the old geologic ages. The advent of that 
 divine Man, who hath abolished death and brought 
 life and immortality to light, was the great event 
 prefigured during the historic ages. It is these two 
 grand events, equally portions of one sublime scheme, 
 that bind together Past, Present and Future, the 
 geologic with the Patriarchal, Mosaic and Christian 
 ages, and all together with the new heavens, the 
 last of many creations, when there shall be no 
 more death nor curse, but the throne of God and 
 the Lamb shall be in it, and his servants shall 
 serve him." 
 
 II. The second of these primary ideas of Chris 
 tianity is Dependence, with its correlative senti 
 ment, Faith. Sooner or later, man has to learn 
 that he is weak, and with a weakness that does 
 not necessarily degrade but is meant finally to 
 educate and exalt him. He has to learn that he 
 must lean upon the Power, and be guided by the 
 Wisdom, and be nourished by the Goodness, that 
 is far, far above him. He is but a child in the 
 temple, crying, " Lord, here am I ; speak, for thy 
 servant heareth." He is but a suppliant asking 
 alms at the temple-gate of the abundant Provi 
 dence. He is but the blind pilgrim of a wide sea, 
 tempest and darkness riding the waters with 
 
282 SOCIETY THE SPHERE OF THE 
 
 him, and only one unseen hand to make a safe 
 path over the deep. Pain and sickness, the swad 
 dling bands of the cradle and , the shroud with 
 which others hands gird him, calamity and death, 
 accident and the frailties of age, all these are the 
 stern preceptors and the sombre symbols of that 
 dependence. Till he feels it as a fact, till he con 
 fesses it as a blessing, till he rejoices gratefully in 
 it as a religious bond pressing him ever back 
 closer and closer to the Fatherly Breast where his 
 life is hid, he is only an exile from his country, 
 and an orphan in his house. 
 
 The whole frame of Society is a nursery for 
 that faith. It is a network of dependencies, of 
 weak upon strong, of poor upon affluent, and not 
 less of the slender rich upon the laboring poor, 
 of young upon old, of posterity upon ancestry, of 
 class upon class, of city and country on each 
 other, of subject upon ruler, of debtor upon cred 
 itor, of enterprise upon combination, of every mem 
 ber upon the social system he lives in. Helpless 
 we are born into parental arms, and lie dependent 
 there. Helpless, with our matures t strength and 
 readiest wit, we reach out our faculties towards 
 other persons, to hold by them, and live from 
 them. Helpless we grow old, and tremble toward 
 our graves, that some gentle reverence and love 
 
KINGDOM OF CHRIST ON EARTH. 283 
 
 may come, and uphold, and wait for, and forbear 
 with us. By these natural leanings we may learn 
 our heavenly lesson. They are the alphabet of 
 our immortal trust. Reposing in arms that shall 
 crumble one day to dust, we come to feel how an 
 Arm that is never shortened and never wastes is 
 under us. When the Master says, " Have faith in 
 God," or " Thy faith hath saved thee," our ten 
 der human relationships have interpreted the pre 
 cept and reecho the assurance ; and when his 
 apostle writes, " With the heart man believeth," or 
 " Faith is the evidence of things not seen," sweet 
 motherly faces, noble and manly foreheads, men we 
 have known, of unassailable truth and honor, or 
 women whose constancy finds no likeness in sun 
 or star yes, the motherhood we have nestled 
 under or the manhood we have clung to, throng 
 up for our witnesses that it is true ; till, turning 
 back from the dependencies of earth to that Arm 
 which never changes in the skies, we answer in 
 earnest, "Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief!" 
 The social system is thus a nursery for religious 
 dependence and faith. 
 
 III. Next, we must remember that Christianity 
 is a system not only of spiritual affections but of 
 moral duties; arid to these moral duties Society is 
 essential. Indeed, they could have exercise nowhere 
 
284 SOCIETY THE SPHERE OF THE 
 
 else but in its reciprocal relationships, of the 
 family, the neighborhood, traffic, politics, education, 
 charity. Morality is the right dealing of man with 
 man, necessarily a social obligation. So of all its 
 several branches, which we call virtues, but which 
 are in fact only so many shoots of one great 
 stock of virtue, the loyal love of the Right. 
 Take justice : where can it get such a discipline 
 as where social causes constantly create the tempta 
 tion indeed to defraud, to overreach, to injure, in 
 dealings, in competitions, in slanderous speech, yet 
 where the social welfare is ever clearly seen to 
 stand exactly accordant with the precept, " Render 
 to every man that which is just and equal?" 
 Take veracity : the social world, with its conflict 
 of selfish and generous passions, you say, is a 
 tremendous nursery of falsehood ; but precisely in 
 the -degree it is so, it reveals the glory, and 
 measures the value, of that simple and valiant 
 tongue of truth, without which all social peace 
 sinks in treachery and despair. Take purity : it is 
 only through the mixtures, solicitations and stimu 
 lants of social scenes that we learn the meaning 
 of that holy beatitude, falling forever from the 
 Mount : " Blessed are the pure in heart, for they 
 shall see God." Take patience : how should we 
 ever learn to forbear, and forgive, and conquer 
 
KINGDOM OF CHRIST ON EARTH. 285 
 
 petulance, and be still, if, all the way, life 
 through, child with child in the nursery, disease 
 with health, differing temperaments with each 
 other, partners in business, wedded pairs, unlike 
 tastes and habits and cultures and tempers all 
 tossed and huddled together, we did not find out 
 by vexing lessons how wonderful is the patience 
 of God ? I confess, the longer I live, no attribute 
 of his awes me so much. Take fortitude : and for 
 every hero that bravely adventures against nature, 
 and conquers polar ice, or vanquishes the omin 
 ous terrors of spectral fears, I will show you a 
 grander heroism, a loftier, mightier courage, in the 
 youth that dares to do right in the boarding- 
 school, in the young girl that dares to be simple 
 in the evening assembly, in the woman that dares 
 to be independent of the despotism and sin of 
 fashion, in the man that dares to be righteous, 
 against his party, his promotion, or his pocket. 
 Here are the trial-places of the Christian moralities. 
 It is a terrible ordeal. But except it were a trial, 
 a choice, and a battle, there would be no morals 
 that Christ would accept. And the same social 
 world that plies the discipline, presents also the 
 motive, and points ever to the animating reward, 
 in that purified social condition of which the 
 kingdom of Christ is the name. 
 
286 SOCIETY THE SPHERE OF THE 
 
 IV. Another of the cardinal ideas of the Chris 
 tian kingdom is disinterested charity. Christ came 
 into the world to move men to love, to help, to 
 serve each other. He came washing poor men s 
 feet, sitting down with outcasts, dropping his bene 
 diction with the widow s mite. So wherever his 
 religion has gone, mercy has been one of its fore 
 most offices, and has been a test of its sin 
 cerity. " If a man love not his brother whom he 
 hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath 
 not seen ?" The rude old European kings made 
 the high almoner the first ecclesiastical dignitary in 
 their dominions, and took the sacrament from his 
 hands. The offertory became as necessary a part 
 of the ritual as the eucharist. We call the poor 
 Christ s poor; and we know that to neglect them 
 is to deny him. 
 
 And evidently man is charitable because he is 
 first social. The sphere of this Christian love can 
 be no other than the sphere of man s social sym 
 pathies. The grand law of gospel charity was first 
 dimly written in the constitution of Society. But 
 what Society so deeply needs, only the motives of 
 Christian faith can sustain. Paganism, if it cared 
 for the poor at all, was prompted only by fickle 
 impulse or a calculating policy. Christianity en 
 courages the poor, lifts them out of their disabili- 
 
KINGDOM OF CHRIST ON EARTH. 287 
 
 ties, and reassures their better energies, first of 
 all because it sees in every one of them the germ 
 of a spiritual and immortal life. So alms-giving is 
 transfigured into beneficence. Wise help takes the 
 place of impulsive bounty. Paupers are made 
 workers. Christian self-sacrifice is too real and too 
 patient to scatter largesses, and go complacently on 
 its way. The love of man grows out of the same 
 root with the love of God ; Brotherhood here out 
 of the Fatherhood there. The only sustainer of 
 philanthropy is piety. In many and many a holy 
 enterprise of quiet compassion, throughout Christen 
 dom, we find just that to be true which is re 
 lated of a hospital of Sisters of Chanty, for the 
 most wretched and A T ile of bed-ridden paupers in 
 the Old World, where the religious women who 
 ministered to the miserable inmates confessed that 
 their only refuge from utter discouragement, in du 
 ties so revolting, even after being years in the 
 holy work, was, by a special exercise of united 
 prayer, every morning, to dedicate themselves anew 
 to their task, "for the love of God." So that 
 in all those deeds of benevolence which bless 
 degradation, and are ever redeeming the want 
 which still clings to the robes of the Church, 
 Society and Christianity are expressly fitted to 
 each other. 
 
288 SOCIETY THE SPHERE OF THE 
 
 Y. Another of the cardinal principles of Chris 
 tianity is obedience, or, more exactly, a balance of 
 personal liberty and law. That is but a soft and 
 sentimental moral system which excludes from its 
 circle of forces the awful energy of law. It is only 
 when we attribute to the lawgiver, or commander, 
 some touch of mortal imperfection, some taint of 
 caprice or selfishness, some despotic disposition, 
 some belittleing limitation, that we are obliged to 
 associate servility with obedience. Let the charac 
 ter of the master be faultless and spotless, nay, 
 gathering into itself all the energies of rectitude, 
 and all the graces of affection, and all the breadths 
 and depths of knowledge, in a word, let him be 
 God, and then obedience rises at once to moral 
 dignity, and we see that there are no grand, pro 
 portioned, enduring, sinewy souls without it. It is 
 only they who have been schooled somewhere to 
 obey, that are "fit to command." Obedience breeds 
 some of the noblest traits we ever see in the 
 loftiest spirits. Do not confound it with fear. 
 Obedience may spring from veneration, from thought- 
 fulness, from love, the highest of all sentiments. 
 God is the perfect Good, living. Obedience to him 
 is one form of gratitude, which is always the 
 brother of magnanimity. God is better to every 
 man than any man ever was to himself, There- 
 
KINGDOM OF CHRIST ON EARTH. 289 
 
 fore, says Christianity, thou shalt keep the com 
 mandments of the Lord thy God. 
 
 But now, Society stands with this principle of 
 obedience for one of its chief pillars. The doctrine 
 of "no master, no law, no command," is anarchy, 
 and has been, ever since time began. Human So 
 ciety is a tuition in law, very faulty because its 
 legislators are fallible, very fluctuating because all 
 its rulers are men. But, nevertheless, everywhere, 
 God honors it as the agent of order, and accepts 
 its honest attempt. Indeed, it may be said the 
 great object of social history is to find out what, 
 or who sought to be obeyed, and thus gradually to 
 transfer obedience from the undeserving to the 
 worthy. The writer who maintains* that the ob 
 jects of government are only temporary, and that 
 government itself is only a proof of remaining bar 
 barism, first confuses thought, and then abuses lan 
 guage. Our obedience begins with our first con 
 scious motives, except where parentage is faithless 
 and abnegates its trust ; it lasts on to the final 
 breath, except where rebel passions raise an insur 
 rectionary signal on the way. The nursery, the 
 house, the debating club, the shop, the office, the 
 school, the university, the army, the farm, the 
 professions, all are girt about by law, and subsist 
 
 * Herbert Spencer s " Social Statics." 
 19 
 
290 SOCIETY THE SPHERE OF THE 
 
 in obedience. Ofttimes this obedience is one of the 
 most voluntary and spontaneous acts of our souls, 
 and then it is nearest its perfection. Then you 
 have got for your commander, or master, the loved 
 and trusted man. That is the happy society. 
 Some human form, blending the honors of virtue 
 with the sanctities of years, looks upon you with 
 the benignant aspect of a wise, serene soul, and 
 commands- your instantaneous allegiance. Some ben 
 efactor, or lover, or hero of your private admira 
 tion, makes his choice known, and instantly friend 
 ship rears a throne of authority in the centre of 
 your heart, and you are constrained as effectually 
 as by any constable s staff, or cord about your 
 wrists. In all its sacred constitution, Society 
 preaches the sacredness of law, and so points, 
 with reverent finger, from human law to the di 
 vine, and to him in whose bosom both have their 
 seat at last. By being servants we become chil 
 dren and heirs. By law we gain liberty. By 
 waiting at the foot of Sinai, we are taken up 
 into Olivet and Tabor. The tables of stone lean 
 against the cross. Moses is followed by the Mes 
 siah. Beyond the valleys of Subjection rise the 
 eternal hills of Peace. The years of unquestioning 
 and obedient toil ended, there is proclaimed the 
 ;reat Sabbatic festival, where law is love, and or- 
 
KINGDOM OF CHRIST ON EARTH. 291 
 
 der is choice, and government is Fatherhood, and 
 the Ruler s will is the impulse of every heart. 
 
 Throughout these discussions of the constitution 
 of Society, we have seen one great principle run 
 ning through its activities, underlying all its forms, 
 reappearing in all its epochs, promoted by all its 
 development: this, viz., that the liberty and power 
 of the individual will are meant to be held in 
 even and perfect balance with the common good. 
 On the one side, individual man, his freedom and 
 his rights sacredly guarded from infringement : on 
 the other side, association of strength, and commu 
 nity of heart, never to be broken or invaded by 
 personal selfishness or interest. In the final adjust 
 ment of these two ideas will be the harmony of 
 the world. Over their ultimate reconciliation will 
 be lifted the sublimest anthem ever sung since 
 that chorus over the birth at Bethlehem. 
 
 Now it is precisely these two ideas, and pre 
 cisely the practical principle of their reconciliation, 
 that Christianity proposes, preaches and prepares. 
 In those poised and balanced doctrines of its apos 
 tle we find this compendiously given : " Every 
 man shall bear his own burden." "Bear ye one 
 another s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ." 
 Said the Master himself: "Except a man be born 
 again, he shall not enter into the kingdom of 
 
292 SOCIETY THE SPHERE OF THE 
 
 heaven/ and, " Behold, a new commandment I 
 give unto you, that ye love one another." The 
 individualizing principle ultimates in personal char 
 acter. Need I tell you that Christianity every 
 where insists on that, lahors for it, exhorts to it, 
 and brings the whole cluster of its energetic forces 
 and doctrines to achieve it, the regeneration, the 
 redemption, the growth, the edifying of individual 
 character, its whole body fitly framed together 
 by that which every joint supplieth. The social 
 principle, on the contrary, signalizes itself in some 
 form of civil law r . Not less does Christianity rec 
 ognize and sanction that. It honors government. 
 It prizes order. It loves instituted right. It bids 
 us obey the magistrate and respect the rule. And 
 it does each for each. It keeps law sacred for 
 the individual ; it nurtures the individual for the 
 brotherhood. Thus the laws of Society and the 
 kingdom of Christ exactly and beautifully agree. 
 
 Sometimes, however, there comes a crisis where 
 the strong individual conviction of Bight overrides 
 every form of human law. That is the period of 
 revolution and reformation. It comes because the 
 statutes of a people are only a proximate, and 
 never yet a perfect, expression of the highest con 
 science of Society. It comes because, in some 
 quick-sighted and half-inspired soul, the true sense 
 
KINGDOM OF CHRIST ON EARTH. 293 
 
 of what is really best and really right transcends 
 all the behests of mortal regulation and all the 
 penalties of the statute book. It comes because 
 deep down, in the inmost heart of his chosen 
 children, God has written a Law which such men 
 put higher than any law of man s making, and 
 because they know that it is only in obedience to 
 the Law higher than governments or states, that 
 the government of any state, or the welfare of 
 any people, is safe. It comes because Christ him 
 self comes, and the Holy Spirit has not forsaken 
 humanity. New sunrises of light and liberty come 
 with it. Then wrong is discrowned, and error is 
 beaten down, and the oppressed go free. Then 
 heroes of a heavenly commission put the clarion to 
 their lips, and the walls of a hierarchy, or of 
 slavery, or of tyranny, are shaken down. Those 
 are the solemn passovers of human history, turned 
 afterwards into jubilees, kept by grateful genera 
 tions whom the sacrifice set free. The martyr 
 dies, on his scaffold or his cross ; the letter of 
 the old law killeth him ; it has just energy 
 enough for that murder ; precedent, rule, routine, 
 law, crucify him. But the spirit of Society, when 
 the eternal Love breathes into it, buries his body 
 in peace, builds a monument to his brave, truthful 
 name, and, better yet, lives out his glorious thought. 
 
294 SOCIETY THE SPHERE OF THE 
 
 There is an incident in Italian history which so 
 exactly illustrates this sudden outburst of irrepress 
 ible individual inspiration, breaking over the best 
 meant law, in one single thrilling incident, that I 
 cannot help quoting it into the argument.* 
 
 When the great obelisk brought from Egypt was 
 erected by Fontana in the square of St. Peter s, 
 in 1586, it was determined to make that gigantic 
 undertaking an incarnation of the knowledge and 
 resources of Rome. They arranged their tackle, 
 and spotted their hands, for the delicate and peril 
 ous work. To make all safe, and prevent the 
 possibility of accident from some sudden cry, or 
 alarm, a papal edict was proclaimed by Sixtus V., 
 promising death to any man who should utter a 
 loud word till the engineer gave the signal that 
 all risk was past. As the majestic monolithe 
 moved up, the populace closed in ; the square was 
 crowded with admiring eyes and beating hearts. 
 Slowly that huge crystallization of Egyptian sweat, 
 fit emblem of the toil-wrought column of a civ 
 ilized state, rose on its basis ; five degrees, ten, 
 fifteen, twenty ; ah, there are signs of faltering. 
 No matter ; no voice ; silence ; it moves again ; 
 twenty-five, thirty, forty, forty-three ; it stops ; now 
 
 * The passage is taken in substance and much of the language 
 from a lecture l>y Horatio Greenough. 
 
KINGDOM OF CHRIST ON EARTH. 295 
 
 there is trouble. Lo, those hempen cables, that 
 like faithful servants have obeyed the mathemati 
 cian, have suddenly lugged out an order from God, 
 not to hold that base steady any longer on those 
 terms. The engineer, who knew the hand-writing 
 of that order, trembled. The obedient masons 
 looked at each other, silent, and then watched the 
 threatening, hanging mass of stone. The unspoken 
 question was, Which w r ay would it fall ? Among 
 the crowd, silence ; silence everywhere ; obedience 
 to the law ; and the sun poured down on the still 
 ness and the despair. Suddenly, from out that 
 breathless mass of men, rang a cry, clear as the 
 archangel s trumpet, " Wet the ropes T The crowd 
 turned to look. Tiptoe on a post, in a jacket of 
 homespun, his eyes full of prophetic fire, and his 
 whole figure wild and lost in his irresistible emo 
 tion, stood a workman of the people. His words 
 flashed like the lightning, and struck. From the 
 chief engineer, to his lowest servant, that lawless 
 cry had instant obedience. Water was dashed upon 
 the cables ; they bit fiercely into the granite ; the 
 windlasses were manned once more : the obelisk 
 rose to its place, and took its stand for centuries. 
 " It is well that there is order, and discipline, 
 and law; and even the pain of death, perhaps, for 
 their sake ; for the divine man, when God sends 
 
296 SOCIETY THE SPHERE OF THE 
 
 him, is not stopped by death, in that he bears 
 life eternal, and the feeling of it, in his breast." 
 By law, controlling individual caprice ; by individual 
 insight and sympathy and conscience spurning law 
 and self and penalty to the winds together; So 
 ciety moves by both to its completeness, the visi 
 ble temple of the Spirit. 
 
 VI. Again, Christianity holds the even balance 
 between the conservation of what is old and the 
 search after and the progress into what is new. It 
 would advance the world without destroying ; it 
 would reform constructively; and, only when there 
 is some excess or fatal obstinacy of evil, seize the 
 hammer and the sword, or grow radical enough to 
 lay the axe to the root of the social institutions. 
 Its chosen emblems are the sunlight, the leaven, 
 the mustard-seed, the wheat; where no angry vio 
 lence quarrels with the opposing element. It would 
 overturn and cast off, just as the up-pushing and 
 vital energy of the opening germ casts aside the 
 old shell that gives up its inner life to a nobler 
 and fairer form. What is good it keeps, and 
 never suffers to die. What is bad it would so 
 kill that the good shall take no damage from the 
 conflict. 
 
 And this, too, is exactly the law of reformation 
 that Society itself prescribes and emphasizes. By 
 
KINGDOM OF CHRIST ON EARTH. 207 
 
 the silent or louder exercise of its own inherent 
 forces, it is forever dropping off its worn-out 
 shapes, and dress, and institutions, and clothing 
 itself in a body better suited to the wants and 
 the work of its age. Thus the principles of its 
 steady progression are precisely the principles of 
 the New Testament. It is still the sphere of the 
 Christian ideas. Those ideas are, in fact, the 
 needed guide, safeguard, and steady impulse of its 
 headway. Reform without Christianity is wild, bit 
 ter, barren, and soon reactionary and retrogressive. 
 Christianity without reform is a corruption and a 
 falsehood. Accordingly, whenever any great hope 
 stirs in the breast of farsighted and aspiring be 
 lievers, for social redemption from any terrible and 
 flagrant wrong, you find their souls kindle and 
 burn with the anticipation of a speedy coming of 
 the Son of man. It was so in the apostolic age. 
 It has been so ever since. By a natural relation 
 of things, the emancipation of Society is identified 
 with a fresh enthronement of the Messiah. 
 
 So, in utterances resounding as a litany, prayed the 
 noble soul of John Milton, in the troubled times 
 of the English nation, when the freedom of the 
 Commonwealth loomed a little out of the despotism 
 of the Stuarts. "0 Thou, the ever-begotten light 
 and perfect image of the Father, intercede! Who 
 
298 SOCIETY THE SPHERE OF THE 
 
 is there that cannot trace thee now, in thy beamy 
 walk through the midst of thy sanctuary, amidst 
 those golden candlesticks which have long suffered 
 a dimness ? Come, therefore, Thou that hast the 
 seven stars in thy right hand, appoint thy chosen 
 priests to minister before thee, and duly to press 
 and pour out the consecrated oil into thy holy 
 and ever-burning lamps. And as thou didst dignify 
 our fathers days with many reA^elations above all 
 the foregoing ages, since thou tookest the flesh, so 
 the power of thy grace is not passed away with 
 the primitive times, but thy kingdom is now at hand, 
 and thou standing at the door. Come forth out of 
 the royal chambers, Prince of all the kings of 
 the earth ! Put on the visible robes of thy impe 
 rial majesty; for now the voice of thy bride calls 
 thee, and all creatures sigh to be redeemed !" 
 
 So, too, entreats the spirit of Charming, standing 
 on the confines between this life and the next, 
 the shadows already stealing down over the eyes 
 that had gazed forward for the emancipation of the 
 American slave, at the climax of his last appeal 
 for that Christian jubilee : " come, thou king 
 dom of heaven, for which we daily pray ! Come, 
 Friend and Saviour of the race, who didst shed 
 thy blood on the cross, to reconcile man to man, 
 and earth to heaven ! Come, ye predicted ages of 
 
KINGDOM OF CHRIST ON EARTH. 299 
 
 righteousness and love, for which the faithful have 
 so long yearned ! Come, Father Almighty, and 
 crown with thine Omnipotence the humble strivings 
 of thy children to subvert oppression and wrong, 
 to spread light and freedom, peace and joy, the 
 truth and spirit of thy Son, through the whole 
 earth !" 
 
 Society protests against the abuses and the in 
 juries and the bigotries that mortal passions try 
 to foist upon mankind, in the holy name of Naz 
 areth. It insists that religion is for man, as man 
 is for God ; that the Church is for Society, as 
 Society is for Christ ; that the body is always 
 for the spirit, and never the spirit for the body. 
 The question it ever asks is, Dost thou bless 
 the family of man ? If not, thou didst not come 
 from G od. 
 
 There are two churches in Christendom; one the 
 church of class-privilege, of a priestly caste, aristo 
 cratic, dogmatic, anti-social. The name of that is a 
 Hierarchy. The other is a church of common senti 
 ments, of popular benefaction, republican, charita 
 ble, social. The name of that is a Brotherhood. 
 
 VII. Finally, central to the life and power of 
 Christ s religion is the idea of voluntary suffering 
 to save others. Pain, sorrow, wrong and sin are 
 in the world, tragical and portentous shapes. Often 
 
300 SOCIETY THE SPHERE OF THE 
 
 solitary in their dark visitation, each soul tasting 
 of the bitter cup alone, no stranger intermeddling 
 with the grief, yet they are social shadows also ; 
 and by their wonderful working on the disinter 
 ested affections and the nobler sympathies these 
 terrible avengers put on the beauty of heaven, 
 and the phantoms of despair are changed into the 
 angels of deliverance. 
 
 " I know, is all the sufferer saith, 
 >X^ Knowledge by suffering entereth, 
 And Life is perfected by Death." 
 
 y 
 
 fne look into the homes of men will be 
 enough ; nor will it matter much what home you 
 choose, so faithful and so universal is that minis 
 try. Is it not the common-place of all domestic 
 speech, where sickness and strangerhood come to 
 gether, that we never know, till we are troubled, 
 how friendly the human heart is, and how kind 
 ness keeps its dwelling-place, firm and warm, even 
 among all the icebergs of selfishness and distrust 
 that chill and chafe the inner sea? Everywhere 
 sorrow melts away the frost ; everywhere pale 
 cheeks and aching limbs are apostles of mercy, 
 and regenerators of avarice ; everywhere affliction 
 and misery break through reserve, and turn the 
 
KINGDOM OF CHRIST ON EARTH. 301 
 
 colder side of human hearts to the sun ; every 
 where "orphanage is spiritual panoply," tears soften 
 pride, anguish unlocks timidity, the coffin is a 
 signal for compassion, and pain proclaims anew, 
 u Peace on earth, good will to men." Take away 
 suffering from humanity, and you bereave the 
 world of how much of its spiritual glory ! 
 
 More than this ; and diviner glory than this : it 
 is in the heart of humanity, the divinest thing 
 there, -that suffering should be freely and vicari 
 ously undertaken, to save some other from suffer 
 ing. Love is equal to that ; and only they who 
 never loved need to have it proved. Parents and 
 children, brothers and sisters, lovers and friends, 
 oh ! what burdens, how secret, how hard, how 
 bitter, they are bearing, in all these houses around 
 us, in many of these breasts among us here, to 
 save one another something ! It is a law that 
 touches every form of life with sacred splendor. 
 In millions of lesser Gethsemanes love prays, and 
 agonizes, and takes up its lighter crosses, for 
 love s clear sake. Frailty expends its remaining 
 strength to hide its kindred s shame. Mothers 
 watch the stars out for ungrateful children. The 
 friend begs to die for his friend. The missionary 
 leaves home, health, life, for the brother he longs 
 to rescue. The highest patriotism, heroism, martyr- 
 
302 SOCIETY THE SPHERE OF THE 
 
 dom, is vicarious sacrifice. Literature glows with 
 it ; eloquence is vocal with it ; music chants it ; 
 monuments commemorate it; the aspiring thoughts 
 of the world glory in it. 
 
 Nay, so manifestly would the Maker bind all 
 together in bonds of mutual care, and make sacri 
 fice and responsibility keep pace together, that 
 very often this social suffering is made involuntary 
 and inevitable. The crime of one casts gloom and 
 wretchedness upon an innocent household. Rash or 
 unprincipled men ruin their partners or employers 
 in business. The carelessness of a railway con 
 ductor plunges a hundred lives into destruction, 
 and scatters misery through a land. In countless 
 ways, we have to be hindered, baffled, sufferers 
 for other men s sins. It is the law of the social 
 constitution, gracious, beautiful in its awfulness. If 
 one member suffer, all the members suffer, not 
 only with it, but may suffer for it. 
 
 We approach the world s one holiest spot ; we 
 bow towards Calvary ; and this universal law of 
 the race finds at once its crowning example and 
 its complete interpretation. In its illustrative and 
 affecting light, we read again, and with a more 
 understanding heart, how our salvation does indeed 
 stand in him, " The Lamb that was slain from the 
 foundation of the world." There was One, great 
 
KINGDOM OF CHRIST ON EARTH. 303 
 
 enough, holy enough, disinterested enough, divine 
 enough to be a Sacrifice not for kindred, not for 
 neighbors, not for countrymen, but for all, of all 
 time, that will believe it. All the old imagery of 
 altars, and the emblems and types of Hebrew sac 
 rifice, grow simple and significant. Every hour of 
 our own sympathetic grief, so dark in itself, holds 
 a lamp of burning lustre over that mysterious 
 text, " Christ, our passover, is sacrificed for us." 
 The inmost fact of Society, the inmost fact of 
 Christianity, meet and are one. The cross redeems 
 humanity ; humanity cries out for the cross, till 
 the hour has come, and then raises its thanks 
 givings for it, till the latest hour of time. And 
 from all the tongues, and tribes, and generations, 
 and countries, and centuries, from " the multi 
 tude that no man can number," goes up the 
 anthem, " Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, 
 to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and 
 strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing." 
 
 My friends, who have patiently followed on with 
 me through these serious studies, we can ascend 
 no higher than this : we can catch no more heav 
 enly note. We can press no closer into the deep 
 heart of our theme. Here we must rest, and 
 part. We have found the answer to the world s 
 
304 SOCIETY THE SPHERE OF THE 
 
 profoundest want : the interpreter of all the mean 
 ing and the mystery of the whole historic drama 
 from the beginning to the end ; the law within 
 and above all other laws, for the final destiny of 
 Society, in the person of its Head and its Lord, 
 Emmanuel, God with us. 
 
 There the fallen, erring, stumbling race is recon 
 ciled again to its Father. There Society confesses 
 its faith. There law and love unite. There mercy 
 and justice embrace each other. There earth and 
 heaven meet. 
 
 How can I better or more briefly recall the 
 chief topics I have touched, than by simply nam 
 ing their bearing on this ultimate and worthy des 
 tination of them all ? Human Society manifests 
 the Power, the Wisdom, and the Goodness of our 
 God. 
 
 First, By its origin, its constitution, its growth, 
 it clearly stands the divine appointment, in itself, 
 of the Father of Christ. Secondly, By the ideas it 
 embodies, it is one visible expression of " the 
 Word that was in the beginning with God," " by 
 whom he made the worlds." Thirdly, It is, in its 
 whole structure, relations, and workings, a disci 
 pline of individual character, and character is the 
 immortal fruit of the Spirit. Fourthly, It is a 
 school of mutual help ; and service, out of a heart 
 
KINGDOM OF CHRIST ON EARTH. 305 
 
 of love, is the grand action of Christian faith. 
 Fifthly, It proceeds, by natural methods, which 
 artificial arrangements cannot permanently hurry noi 
 re tar d, in a sublime movement of Providence. 
 Sixthly, It is a motive and an incentive to the 
 human intellect ; and the consecrated mind is the 
 noblest workman of the truth. Seventhly, It is 
 ever progressive, in the sweep and the drift of 
 its moral forces : and so it is a fit body for that 
 inexhaustible and unresting spirit which reaches 
 forth unto the things that are before, and seeks 
 to be perfect as the Father in heaven is perfect. 
 Eighthly, It opens the appropriate sphere, and grad 
 ually takes the symmetrical and celestial form, of 
 the kingdom of Christ on earth. 
 
 What, then, though in its weakness and ignor 
 ance, its sensuality and shame, its superstition, 
 starvation and slavery, its selfish riches, and un 
 just power, and crawling meanness, and unbelieving 
 lust, and unhallowed toil, the social creation, in so 
 many fields and cities of the fair world, travail- 
 eth and grqaneth in pain together until now, wait 
 ing for the manifestation of the sons of God ? 
 The voice still crieth in that wilderness, " Prepare 
 ye the way of the Lord. Make straight in that 
 desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall 
 be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be 
 
 20 
 
306 SOCIETY THE SPHERE OF THE 
 
 brought low, and the crooked shall be made straight, 
 and the rough places plain ; and the glory of the 
 Lord shall be revealed." There is the consumma 
 tion ; not human, but divine. 
 
 Among the splendid visions of a Hebrew prophet, 
 was one vision of living creatures, moving on wheels 
 of fire, bearing up the eternal throne. Whither the 
 Spirit was to go, the winged creatures went ; and 
 they turned not when they went. When the liv 
 ing creatures were lifted up, the wheels were lifted 
 up ; and the noise of their wings was as the voice 
 of the Almighty. 
 
 The world is waiting for a realization of the 
 vision. Into the myriad wheels of the living 
 social system, wheels within wheels, is to come 
 the living Spirit from on high, flooding them with 
 the holy radiance of truth, overshadowing them 
 with its wings of peace, moving them when it 
 moves, lifting them up when it ascends, by its be 
 nignant and omnipotent will. Then they will bear 
 on, over the highways that Christian toil has cast 
 up, the church and cross of God s love, conquering 
 the deserts of suffering and sin with the gentle 
 ness and sunshine of the morning. 
 
 " I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, and I 
 heard a great voice out of heaven ; Behold, the 
 tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell 
 
KINGDOM OF CHRIST ON EARTH. 307 
 
 with them, and they shall be his people, and God 
 himself shall be with them." 
 
 " As wheeled by seeing spirits toward the East, 
 
 * * * * where faint and fair, 
 Along the tingling desert of the sky, 
 Beyond the circle of the conscious hills, 
 Were laid, in jasper-stone, as clear as glass, 
 The first foundations of that new, near Day 
 Which should be builded out of heaven to God ! 
 
 * * * * Jasper first, I said, 
 And second, sapphire; third, chalcedony; 
 The rest in order; last, an amethyst. " 
 
 THE END. 
 
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 BEBKELEY 
 
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 AUG 15 1942 
 
 REC D 
 
 DLU 2 6 1962 
 
 75rn-7, 30 
 
 > 
 
VC 07257 
 
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