Introductory
The Old Testament—Ancient Pagan History—History of Modern Europe—General Inferences
The question how the Old Testament dispensation is related to the New, has already come before us in several forms. But hitherto we have considered it only in reference to those signs which all Christians believe to have passed away; the Quaker merging them in certain spiritual ideas, we supposing them to have been exchanged for other signs betokening higher truths. When we speak of that which is commonly called the moral side of the Jewish economy, the controversy assumes another shape. One set of Christians strongly affirm that the precepts of this kind in the old Law are of permanent obligation and validity; others say that they have no authority except so far as they are re-enacted by, or involved in, the Gospel law of love.
The holders of the first opinion in general confine their assertions to the Ten Commandments. They do not positively affirm that the sacredness of the Divine Code may not extend to certain parts of the Jewish institutions—that point they are content to leave open; but these Commandments stand out in clear and awful distinctness; they were proclaimed amidst thunders and lightnings; the Jews looked upon them as written with the finger of God; the sense of mankind has received them as Divine. On the other hand, their opponents see no reason for separating these Commandments from the rest of the ritual, either for honour or dishonour. The historian declares that both proceeded from the Lord; it is not on the ground of a difference in their authority, then, that you can distinguish them. Neither can you distinguish them by their character. The Sabbath is as much a positive institution as the cities of refuge; if you admit the distinction between that which is moral and that which is positive, you must acknowledge both to be transitory; if you reject that distinction, neither.
indispensable one to those who would understand their own position. The early parts of it were necessary in this point of view, because they discovered part of the meaning which each sign embodies, enabling us gradually to attain to a perception of its full import, and to look upon it as connected with the life of man. When, therefore, we meet in these early records with customs, institutions, ordinances which God has not been pleased to preserve to us, we presume that they are to be contemplated historically, by the light of that which He has preserved to us. Or, if there be a question whether, perhaps, they might not be advantageously restored, we are in a condition to examine this point by the light which Scripture gives us respecting the whole dispensation. But supposing we find any signs which, amidst all changes of circumstances, have maintained their existence and have become identified with the life of modern society, we must desire an explanation of them, and must seek for it where it is to be had. If we belong to a different period of the world from that in which we first find these traces, it may be very important to know how the change has affected them, whether they exist under the same conditions now as heretofore: but the fact that they do exist is the first of all; this compels us to ask, whence they are derived, and on what ground they rest.
Now anyone who considers these Ten Commandments, must perceive that they are definitive and conservative, not creative or constitutive. They presume the existence of certain facts, principles, and institutions, and it is the violation or forgetfulness of these which they denounce. The first presumes that the Jews had been brought out of Egypt by an unseen Being. He is their deliverer and Lord; as such they are to acknowledge Him. The second presumes the existence of Worship, a tendency in men to create the objects of it for themselves out of the things which they see and handle; a relation between the worshippers and the Invisible Lord; a government exercised by Him from generation to generation. The third presumes the practice of appealing to the Name of God, of invoking Him as one who knows whether a man be guilty or innocent. The fourth assumes the institution of the Week; explains whereof it is the sign; gives warnings against the forgetfulness of the distinction between the six days and the seventh day. The fifth presumes the existence of the Paternal Relation, and treats the respect for it as the condition of abiding in the land given to the nation. The sixth presumes the existence of a community which is interested in the Life of each of its members. The seventh presumes the institution of Marriage. The eighth presumes the institution of Property. The ninth presumes the existence of Tribunals, before which one may give witness respecting another. The tenth affirms the existence of a bond of Neighbourhood—the same bond which is supposed in all the rest—and declares that even the coveting of that which is a neighbour’s is a violation of it.
That these facts, institutions, and principles, had a very close connexion with the life and being of that nation which was brought out of Egypt, most readers will acknowledge: but if they turn to ancient history, they find that some of them had a very close connexion with the being and life of every nation which it speaks of. The Greeks and Romans were remarkably distinguished from each other. But they were both alike distinguished from the slaves and barbarians, of whose existence we become aware chiefly through them. Wherein lay the difference? Apart from all intellectual superiority, (though it is hardly right to say, apart, the one characteristic was so involved in the other,) it is quite evident that they had a clear sense of certain great landmarks and boundaries in human society, the violation of which was an evil; that they believed these landmarks to have been fixed by an awful Unseen Power, and to be preserved by that Power: that among the chief of these landmarks they reckoned the sacredness of life, of the paternal relation, of marriage, of property, of appeals to the Divine name, of tribunals for rectifying wrong; the law of neighbourhood as binding those who acknowledged a common ancestry, and were living in the same locality; the majesty of law as preserved by the majesty of worship.
But two of the Commandments have no counterparts in the legislation of Greece or Rome. There was, I have said, a distinct recognition of an unseen Majesty from which it proceeded, and by which it was upheld; there was not the prohibition of confounding the unseen Majesty with things visible. There was the recognition of different sacred seasons connected with the course of the sun and moon: there was not the recognition of a Week; a division of time depending upon some other law than the astronomical; defining human life, by its two great principles of action and rest; connecting these two principles with the life and being of God; teaching that His rest and action are the patterns of ours, and yet that He is ever at rest while we are working, and ever at work on our behalf while we are resting; incorporating the Divine with the common, and yet hallowing the distinction between them; signifying that the palace and the hut, nay, the master and his cattle, are subject to the same government; making each nightly slumber the image of the final repose of the spirit and soul and body, each in its proper and appointed object. Let anyone consider how the political life of these nations was affected by the sensual tendencies of their worship; let him meditate upon the difficulty which every philosopher experienced in his endeavour to reconcile the idea of a living, acting God, with one continually resting in his own beatitude, the still greater difficulty of finding any point of sympathy between his own thoughts and those of common men who felt that the God they feared must interfere in all their transactions, and then let him say whether the second or the fourth Commandments do not receive as much illustration and confirmation from the human feeling and conscience of the old world as the sixth or the seventh.
Be that as it may, not only some of these institutions, but all of them, exist among ourselves. The Jewish order of time, so far as the week is concerned, has become as much a part of the institutions of modern Europe as marriage or property. All three may be regarded in different places with more or less of reverence; but they are recognized by every nation of Christendom, and incorporated with their daily transactions.
But on what authority do these institutions rest? Here begins another difference of opinion. The ordinary statesman answers, ‘They are national provisions, of more or less importance, deriving their sanction from the legislation of each particular national society, invested with a factitious and useful sacredness in the eyes of the vulgar by the tradition that they had a mysterious origin.’ The ordinary religious man answers, ‘They have nothing to do with the mere political or national life of any society; they are religious ordinances, appointed by God Himself, binding upon all because He has appointed them.’ With the first I agree so far as this, that I do look upon these institutions as belonging especially and emphatically to particular nations as such, to England as England, to France as France, to Germany as Germany. I do not look upon them as universal institutions in the sense in which I have called Baptism and the Eucharist universal institutions; that is to say, as institutions which have nothing to do with the relations of space and time. And if the religious man objects to this distinction, I tell him that I must make it because the Scripture makes it. ‘I am the Lord thy God’—this is the sanction of the code: clearly a distinct, national sanction. But I differ with the statesman in this point. I do not think national society is a lie or stands upon a lie. If I did I should wish it to perish, and I should be sure it must perish. Now unfortunately he does think this, for he knows that he cannot maintain any of those institutions which he believes to be necessary for his nation, and for every nation, merely by his own rules and conventions. He is obliged to ask help from the faith which men everywhere have had that there is a Divine ruler, not only over men generally, but over their particular commonwealth; and this faith, he says, is a mere delusion. I believe that the imposition and dishonesty are in himself; that the conviction of mankind is a safe and an honest one; and that it will at last prevail against all the frauds which have endeavoured to support it, and have really made it weak.
In my conclusion, then, I agree with those who take the common religious view of this matter. But the difference in our premises is not a slight one, or one without the most practical consequences. I have partly explained wherein it consists, but I must endeavour to make my meaning more clear. We are first told that we must not look upon these Commandments merely as parts of a national institute. And yet they evidently are parts of a national institute. We are told that we must not receive them merely as of outward or formal obligation, for they contain the essence of morality. But they do seem to have a particularly outward and formal character. They refer, not one but all, to formal institutions; only the last even touches upon any internal habit of mind, and the exceeding definiteness of that one, ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass,’ shews that the habit is noticed for the sake of the act, not the act for the sake of the habit. So far from wishing to overlook this characteristic, I am most anxious to notice it and dwell upon it; for herein I believe consists the exceeding importance of these Commandments, and the proof that they are not superseded by the new dispensation. They set the Divine seal upon that which belongs to man as a creature of flesh and blood, inhabiting a particular place, having a definite circle of human relations and earthly associations; they declare these to be settled according to a Divine order, and to be taken under a Divine cognizance; they bring acts, outward ordinary acts, into judgment.
By adopting this view, we seem to escape from some serious confusions. We are able to enter into the peculiar character of the Jewish nation, without losing our sense of its connexion with all mankind. We are able, by help of it, to connect our own lives with the lives of those people in the old world, of whom we read, and with whom we feel that we have such close sympathies, in spite of all differences of race, of language, of religious faith and knowledge. Above all, we are able to rid ourselves of the Manichean notion (which it should be remembered has been always connected with a low notion of the Old Testament), that the outward and visible universe, and the ordinary social relations, are the creations of an evil spirit, to be esteemed lightly by all who have attained to the perception of a higher economy. That this last accursed doctrine, which cleaves most closely to the hearts of us all, and perhaps was never more threatening than at this day, will ever be fully exposed and scouted till we acknowledge the sanctity, the grandeur, the divinity of national life, I do not think that the history of mankind offers us the least excuse for believing. But, then, if we admit these positions, and have arrived at them by this method, other questions will necessarily force themselves upon us. We have seen that the objectors to the authority of the Ten Commandments found their most plausible argument upon the difficulty of separating them from the surrounding history. It has seemed to us that this difficulty is a very light one when we meet with records of that to which we have nothing answering among ourselves. Assume the fact of a nation, assume the Jews to be the specimen of a nation, and you assume, as a matter of course, the necessity of hundreds of regulations applicable to their condition, and therefore not applicable to ours. But if principles of national life have discovered themselves to us in the midst of these regulations, we must expect to find the history illustrating these principles, and thereby furnishing the key to facts which directly concern our own conduct. And this proves to be the case. We find it a part, not an accidental but an essential part, of the idea of a Jewish commonwealth, that Punishments should be inflicted upon transgressors, that in certain cases their lives should be taken away. The judicial Oath again belongs to the religion of the Jewish state; every Jew would have understood the third Commandment in reference to it. Still more obviously was the Jew instructed to look upon War, in certain cases, not as a permitted licence, but as a solemn duty, to be undertaken in the full confidence that it was God’s will he should engage in it, and that he should have God’s help in carrying it through. Now these feelings and convictions belonged in like manner to every great nation of antiquity; belonged to them as nations, formed part of their religion, were the means of exhibiting those qualities in them which we are most compelled to admire. Courage, self-discipline, order, faith, all these moral attributes were connected in them with the conviction, that national life is a more precious thing than individual life, and that hundreds of thousands of individuals are cheaply sacrificed for the sake of preserving it. If it be said that these moral qualities were mixed with others of the most opposite character, and that these too found their gratification in wars and in judicial severity, no man in his senses will dispute the assertion. What I contend for is, that they were opposite qualities, however they might be intermingled; and that therefore, if we hate the one we must love the other, or else all moral distinction will become effaced in our minds. And what I say further is, that if we attach any sacredness to the Jewish history, as containing the Divine specimen of a national life, we cannot refuse to believe that the other nations of antiquity were justified in their deep inward conviction, that God has not given swords to men in vain, but that there are occasions on which the magistrate is bound, by his allegiance to God, to cut off the offender against the majesty of the law; on which the ruler of the land must invite and command his subjects to chastise the removers of landmarks, the corrupters of the earth, and the oppressors of mankind.
But even this discovery would not give us more than an historical interest in this part of the Jewish records. They are brought directly home to ourselves by the fact that every nation of Christendom resorts to judicial Oaths, imposes Punishments, in some cases capital, and believes War, under certain circumstances, to be a duty. The question, then, becomes a very important one; is this meant to be so or not? Is this Old Testament, this book which we have found to be a key to the main problems of our national life, a justification of these convictions? It is in vain to say that Jewish precedent will only justify oaths administered, punishments fixed, or wars undertaken, under the express command of God. I have maintained that every nation ought to look upon itself as having the Lord for its King; that if we do not recognize that principle, the Commandments mean nothing to us, the institutions of which the Commandments speak have no authority but that which they derive from human convention. According to this doctrine, the question what acts a nation ought to perform and what it ought to omit, means, in other words, what acts are in conformity with the purpose for which God has appointed it, and what are not. These acts need not be the same as those which the Jews performed, because each nation has a purpose to fulfil different from that which the Jews were to fulfil. But these convictions which I speak of are common to all nations as nations. They have been guiding maxims assumed in the examination of particular cases. The conscience of men has said, Because oaths, punishments, and wars are in themselves authorised by God, and can be only justifiable in those cases and under the conditions which He approves, therefore ought we to consider earnestly what these cases and conditions are. The question is, whether this primary assumption is or is not warranted by the book which sets forth to us the Divine principles of national society. It is idle to say, But where do you find the authority for wars, oaths, or punishments in the New Testament? I do not find the authority for any of the distinct institutes of national life in the New Testament. The Manicheans and Anabaptists were quite right, when they said that there was no distinct precept respecting property in the New Testament; that the first sign of the existence of a Church was that of men not calling their goods their own, but counting all things common. Nor was there anything unnatural in their feeling, that since in the resurrection men neither marry nor are given in marriage, the kingdom of Christ, which is the kingdom of the risen life, must look with some contempt on the union of the sexes. Nor was it a surprising inference, from the continual allusions in the Gospels to our Lord’s controversies with the Pharisees respecting the Sabbath day, that under the new economy, the distinction of days had been abrogated. If their first maxim was true, that we are to look for the whole law of man’s life in the New Testament, all their conclusions, even though they might be contradicted by actual passages in it, were inevitable. If it can be shewn that these, or any portion of our national creed, are denounced in the New Testament, we, of course, must abandon them, even though by doing so we involve ourselves in the most painful perplexities respecting the nature and the permanence of moral principles. Whether they are so denounced, I shall have to consider presently. What I am maintaining now is, that the mere absence of the same kind of language, in reference to these subjects, which occurs in every page of the Jewish Scripture, is no more a proof that they do not concern us, than the omission of any direct allusion to the principles of moral philosophy by a writer on political economy is a proof that he disbelieves them.
But, it will be said, these two cases are not analogous, or, if they are analogous, it is because the writers on political economy ought to take cognizance of moral principles. If the universal society and the national society be both intended for man, any book which sets forth the character of either must touch upon the nature and laws of the other. Be it so: I am far from denying this assertion; it is one which I especially wish that the reader should feel the importance of. I do not expect to find the principles of the universal society developed in the Old Testament, nor the principles of the national society in the New. I do expect to find each illustrating and sustaining the other. I do expect that under one dispensation as much as the other, there should be signs that they are distinct but inseparable. Such signs force themselves upon me when I look into the Jewish records. We have seen how the germs of a universal society were planted in the heart of the Jewish commonwealth; how the existence of the priest, of the sacrifices, of the tabernacle, as much testified to the existence of that which is human and general, as the king, the judge, the law, testified to the existence of that which is peculiar and exclusive. The words at first sound paradoxical; to a Jew they would sound very paradoxical. He would say, ‘Why, our likeness consisted in those features which you set down as peculiar, our difference in those which you set down as common.’ Such a notion is plausible; I have already, I think, explained sufficiently why it is not true. The Hebrew was to be separate from all other people, in order that he might be the steward of a possession which was meant for all. He was cut off that he might witness of a Being who was not cognizable by the senses, not material, not therefore divided, not belonging to this or that locality. When the member of the nation forgot that He was the Lord God of the Hebrews, and sought to break the chain of this peculiar polity, he failed to perform his function, he failed to be witness for a God of the whole earth. When he refused to look upon his covenant as capable of expanding to comprehend all nations, he lost his peculiar position, he became the member of a sect, instead of the citizen of a kingdom. This is unquestionably a paradox, but is the paradox of Scripture, well worthy of our observation and study. I say, then, that there was a human element in the national society, and that the methods by which this element was incorporated with the national element, and yet shewn to be distinct from it, were very remarkable. The priestly tribe is one of the twelve tribes, but it is cut off from all the rest, placed under particular conditions, supported by a particular species of property. From the very commencement of the commonwealth, the offices of the priest and lawgiver are carefully separated. Both are equally Divine, but neither may intrude upon the functions of the other. And this is not because the office of the priest is limited to what are technically called religious services. He examines the leprous man, and pronounces whether he is or is not fit to go into the congregation of the Lord; he distinguishes between the meats which are clean and unclean. Whatever has to do with the direct oversight of that which is internal, whether in the physical or the moral life of man, this belongs to the sacerdotal part of the commonwealth; whatever has to do with the outward regulation of society, whether those regulations have reference to the bodily comfort or to the behaviour of men, this, it would seem, belongs to the legal part of it. Each presents the unseen Lord to the Israelites; the one as a Judge, taking cognizance of all their acts; the other, as one who spies out all their ways, knows what is passing within, deals not with crimes only, but with sins; who can take away the source of evil as well as its fruit. At the same time, as there is no division between the internal and the external life of man, no division in the character of God as the Lord of the outward and the Lord of the inward world, so neither is there in the Jewish economy between the offices which represent Him in these characters. The sacrifice of the priest is necessary to hallow the troops which the king is leading out to battle; the king takes part in every ecclesiastical reformation. We feel that the Jewish commonwealth is one society, not a national body plus an ecclesiastical, but a body which could not be national if it were not ecclesiastical, or ecclesiastical if it were not national.
Now the counterpart of these signs we discover in both the two great nations in the pagan world. The difference between them is remarkable and characteristic. In the heart of each Greek state, we may indeed observe a priesthood, exercising some important functions. But the far more striking object which presents itself to our notice is the sacred grounds of Elis, the common temple of Delphi. These were the signs and pledges of a fellowship between Greeks and Greeks, which the diversities of race, and the antipathies of democratical and aristocratical governments, could not sever. On the other hand, in Rome, the sacerdotal influence is incorporated with all the national institutions, the name of every conspicuous office in the republic reminds us of the union. And it was this union which imparted so much solidity to the Roman society, after the principles upon which it was founded had been set at naught, after the Roman emperor had become “the king of kings and lord of lords,” and his kingdom had been changed into one of those which are described in Scripture as Babylonian kingdoms, resting upon mere power, effacing national distinctions, exalting the visible above the invisible.
To this kingdom, we have considered the kingdom of Christ as the direct and formal opposite. The question, then, which we proposed before we entered upon the examination of its different signs, whether or no it resembled the Roman world in its hostility to national society, or whether it is meant to be, as it was in its embryo condition, the quickening spirit of national society, is one which we are bound to consider. We have seen that it had its cradle in a nation, that it appeared in that nation at a time when the old spirit had departed; when the Jews were calling themselves Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes; were striving to make their kingdom into a system or sect. We have seen that the disciples of Jesus at once went back to the old language of their countrymen, refused to be spoken of as a sect of Nazarenes or Christians, proclaimed their Master to be the heir of David’s throne, the King of Israel, declared themselves, and invited all men, to be his subjects.
Such a pretension was intelligible to the Jews; by them it was denounced and persecuted: to the Romans it seemed utterly ridiculous. The Christians were one, perhaps the most extravagant, but certainly the least rebellious, of the Jewish sects; the Proconsuls in the different provinces were willing to protect them against the fanaticism of their countrymen.
It was a little different, when the professors of the new doctrine were brought face to face with the Caesars. An instinct seemed to tell Nero that there was something in their position which was incompatible with his; what it was, however, could not be clearly understood till the Jewish polity had been destroyed. Then this body was seen still to remain, still to be adopting that language which was apparently derived from the old Jewish dreams now so signally confuted. The Christians still speak of themselves as members of a kingdom. The exclusiveness which had made the Jewish pretensions comparatively harmless was not preserved in them; they addressed themselves to all people in all provinces of the empire; they bound their converts together in a corporation, held them in one by a strange freemasonry.
The most philosophical emperors were least able to look with indifference upon such a fellowship. They might from benignity or contempt deal kindly with individual cases, but the society was an anomaly incompatible with the safety of the government. As that government approached more and more nearly to the character of a military despotism, the contest between it and the spiritual society became more flagrant, the necessity that one or the other should fall more evident. When Rome became almost Asiatic under Diocletian, the Cross had attained a power which the mild emperor might be inclined to tolerate, but which the state could not endure. But the most vigorous of all the persecutions failed of its object; the new kingdom could not be put down; under Constantine, the eagle did homage to it. Then the organisation of the Church became connected with that of the empire; the civil dioceses became coincident with the jurisdictions of the Bishops, as well in Italy as in the provinces; the ecclesiastical officer acquired a civil position, the emperor exercised more or less of jurisdiction in spiritual affairs.
Here was the phenomenon of a superannuated despotism, based upon the acknowledgment of mere power, entering into union with a body based upon the acknowledgment of a King ruling in righteousness, whose strength both in himself and in his disciples had been made perfect in weakness. The alliance had not been sought by the Church; as a proof of her Master’s dominion it was to be received with thankfulness; as a part of God’s dispensations to mankind she was to enter into it, not as a state which could last, but as one which must hasten the coming of a new order of things. The change of the centre of government prepared the way for the approaching revolution. The Byzantine monarchy might be considered in some respects a new one, coming into existence at the very time Christianity was recognized, not necessarily established upon the old military maxims. But these maxims were implied in it; there was the same effort, however checked by other influences, after universal dominion. The dislocation of it by the Mahometan conquests proved that such a dominion is one which, in conjunction with Christianity, cannot exist. In the West the demonstration was still clearer. The century after Constantine saw the dissolution of a fabric which had stood for a thousand years. Charlemagne re-established it as a Christian empire; in the next generation it is again shivered into fragments. But meantime the Christian Church was at work upon the barbarian tribes. And what was the nature of the operation? Had the Bishops of the Church acted according to their own notions of what was best, they would, of course, have reduced Europe into one great society, having a common language, scarcely acknowledging any territorial or political distinctions. Such a dream would have seemed to be a most pious one, carrying out the idea of the Divine commonwealth. That they entertained it, and at different times strove to realise it, and that they found the old Roman jurisprudence a helpful aid in the experiment, the history of the Middle Ages abundantly testifies. But how was it defeated? I answer, By the influences which they themselves, when acting simply as Churchmen in their appointed vocation, and not as agents of a preconceived system, brought to bear upon the tribes. The ecclesiastical society was the main instrument in creating within each of these tribes a distinct national organisation, altogether different from the ecclesiastical organisation, though acting in concert with it; by the ecclesiastical or Catholic spirit, peculiarities in the character and intellect of each one of these tribes were developed. The Bishops called themselves an Order, said that they received their commission from an invisible King, that they were a link with generations past and generations to come. When the chieftain who came into the land previously subjected to Roman government found this order established and submitted himself to it, he began to think differently of his own office, to consider it less as conferred by individual powers or cunning, to connect it less with the sword and conquest, more with some claim of religion. If these first notions of a government resting upon ordinance perished in the bud, or were extinguished by the ruder feelings of power with which they were associated, the tribe remained barbarous, became divided, and was overcome by some other more capable of receiving cultivation. If they bore fruit, (and this was more quickly the case when Bishops were the invaders of a ground previously pagan than when they converted the pagan invaders of their own,) the military chief over some district, or the bretwalda over several, was changed into the king anointed with oil, doing homage for his authority to Christ, transmitting his kingdom in a hereditary line. He has, of course, his council of chieftains, the sharers with him of the soil which he has conquered. The Bishops, as possessing greater wisdom and a character of sacredness, are invited to take part in the deliberations of this council. Gradually the whole council begins to look upon itself as an Order, bound together by another tie of allegiance to their sovereign than that of mere fellowship in arms; holding their lands by another tenure than that of mere conquest, recognizing relations between themselves and their dependants. Here is the first form of a national society. If it merely stays in this form, it will be still only a feudal society: but it may gradually develop itself under the same moral influence, till one and another portion of the community shall have felt itself also to be an order, shall have become an integral part of the nation. But while this process is going forward, we find indications that the spiritual society itself has acquired a national position. It had established itself already when it was a missionary body first in some great city, which became the home of its Bishop or overseer; then it had sent forth its presbyters into different districts. The Bishops become permanently connected with the cities, the districts are parishes acknowledged by the civil body as connected with an ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The owners of the soil do homage to this arrangement; a part of its produce is appropriated to the teacher of the district in which it is found. The wealth of individuals is voluntarily contributed for the purpose of establishing permanent endowments in particular districts, or for the use of particular districts in certain diocesan centres. And it begins to be felt more and more that the spiritual officer is, as he was among the Jews, conversant with all that is internal, all that lies beyond the sphere of sense. This conviction gives rise to schools and universities; first, some enlightened ruler establishes them, then some noble or commoner, interested in the welfare of a certain neighbourhood, provides funds, which may enable the objects of his peculiar care to share in the general education of the land.
I am not aware that any of these statements are exclusively applicable to any one nation of modern Europe. Under different modifications, this is the history of the formation of modern society. The modifications are very interesting and very important, because they illustrate another point to which I have alluded; the way in which the characters and institutions of the nations received their distinct form, so that there should be vastly more difference between Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Germans now, than there ever can have been between Saxons, Franks, and Burgundians twelve hundred years ago. Still they were only in part the cause of these differences. A similar tillage, working upon different soils, will educe all their latent peculiarities, will make it manifest what each was meant to bring forth. This tillage has been carried on by the universal society. It has not, as we have seen, acted according to its own notion; it has not cast Christendom into the mould into which a Churchman would have naturally tried to cast it. There has been evidently a higher will, another power at work, crossing human calculations. But if we trace the history of modern Europe, we see, that by some means or other, a witness has been borne to that very constitution which Scripture makes known to us. The form of national society which the Old Testament invests with so much sacredness, is reproduced by that other New Testament society which seemed to have displaced it. As before, a spiritual element was proved to be necessary to uphold a legal society, so now, a legal element, a body expressing the sacredness and majesty of law, is shewn to be necessary in order to fulfil the objects for which the spiritual and universal society exists. In what way each is necessary to the other, what kind of duties each has to perform for the sake of the other, this has been the question which men have constantly asked themselves, and to which they have invented the most opposite answers. Those who have gone along with us in our earlier inquiries, will feel that this question, instead of being obsolete, never occupied men’s thoughts so much as at the present time. And they will feel too, perhaps, that though the speculations of men may have done comparatively little, the experience of the world has done much, in supplying an answer to it. The legal power can no longer help the spiritual power by persecuting and putting down its enemies; the spiritual power can no longer help the legal power, by throwing a fictitious sacredness around it. On the other hand, the spiritual power cannot make men feel that there is a Being who is the Judge and punisher of evil acts, unless it can shew that His authority is somewhere impersonated; the legal power tries in vain to convince those who are subject to it, that there is a Being who can renew and mould the will, unless it can shew how that mighty influence is exerted. The Church wishes to make men feel that they are subjects, but its own influence is one which especially aims at setting them free; the State wishes to have a free intelligent people, but it has itself only the power of keeping men servants. If any great work is to be done for man, if God’s gracious purposes to him are to be fulfilled, one would think that these two powers must be meant continually to act and react upon each other, and to learn better, by each new error they commit, their distinct functions, their perfect harmony.