Over these unrecorded years of human life, which want their prophet and their bard, sounds yet the echo of perpetual strife. If mighty forms loom among their obscurity, and come out at length with fixed character and a strong and high civilisation, such as the Assyrian and Egyptian, the Indian and Chinese monarchies, and so many others of more or less extent and renown, we know
that states have suffered change after change in a series of wars. The patriarchal ruler has given [Pg 35] way to the conquering chief;
conquest has humiliated some and exalted others. What remains intact in each country, and after all changes, is government itself.
This carried on the human race.
But if we examine more closely this race which is thus scattered through all countries, which speaks innumerable tongues, has lost
the sense of its own brotherhood, worships a multitude of local gods, is divided, cut up, formed again, and torn again with innumerable wars, and has degraded a large part of itself into servitude, so as to lose as it would seem all semblance of its original unity, we yet find running through it, existing from the beginning as constituent principles which the hand of the Creator has set in it, four great goods.
1. For what hand but that of the Creator could have impressed ineffaceably upon a race, misusing as we have seen to such a degree the faculty of free-will, such an institution as marriage, in which the family, and all which descends from the family, is contained? The dedication of one man and one woman to each other for the term of their lives, for the nurture and education of the family which
is to spring from them, is indeed the basis of human society, but a basis which none but its Maker could lay. It exists in perpetual
contradiction to human passion and selfishness, for purposes which wisdom or the pure reason of man entirely approves, but which
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human frailty is at any time ready to break through and elude. If we could so entirely abstract ourselves from habit as to imagine a company of men and women thrown together, without connection with [Pg 36] each other, without any knowledge, any conception beforehand of such an institution, and left to form their society for themselves, we should not, I think, imagine them one and all choosing to engage themselves in such a union, resigning, respectively, their liberty, and binding themselves to continue, whatever
might happen to either party, however strength and vigour might decline on one side, or grace and attractiveness on the other, in this bondage for life. Yet this institution of marriage is found established, not, as was just imagined, in a single company of human be-ings thrown together, but in a thousand societies of men separated by place, by language, by religion, and by government. The most highly policied among them are the strictest in maintaining its purity; and the higher you are enabled by existing records to ascend in their history, the stronger and clearer appears the conception of the duties of the married state. It is surrounded with all the veneration which laws can give it, and the blessing of religion consecrates it. Take marriage among the Romans as an instance. Their commonwealth seems to be built upon the sanctity of marriage and the power of the father. The like is the case with China, the most ancient of existing politics. There is not one nation which has gained renown or advanced in civilisation but shows, as far back as you can trace its history, this institution honoured and supported. I leave to mathematicians the task of calculating what are the chances
of such an institution springing up in so great a multitude of nations according to an identical rule, guarded [Pg 37] in all of them
with whatever protection religion and law could afford, except by the fiat of a Creator in the manner described by Moses. The signet
of God impressed on Adam at his origin could alone create such a mark on his race; the Maker alone lay such a foundation for it.
We find this institution in the course of time and in various countries debased by polygamy, and corrupted by concubinage. These aberrations testify to the force of human passion, and the wantonness of power and wealth ever warring against it, but they only enhance thereby the force of the institution's universal existence from the point of view from which I have regarded it.
2. Take, secondly, the rite of bloody sacrifice. It would be hard to find anything more contrary to reason and feeling than the thought that taking away the life of innocent creatures by pouring out their blood could be not only acceptable to the Maker of those creatures, but could be accepted by Him in expiation of sin committed by man. Yet this is the conception of bloody sacrifice; this was expressed in the rites which accompanied it; and besides this particular notion of expiation, which is the correlative of sin, the most solemn duties of man, that is, Adoration, Thanksgiving, and Petition, the whole expression of his obedience to God, and dependence on God, were bound up with this rite, and formed part of it. And we find this rite of sacrifice existing from the earliest times
in these various nations; continued through the whole of their history, solemnised at first by their kings and chief men, and then
by an [Pg 38] order of men created for that special purpose, and in every nation themselves holding a high rank in virtue of their performing this function. What, again, are the chances of a rite so peculiar being chosen spontaneously by so many various nations, and chosen precisely to express their homage for their own creation and continuance in being, to make their prayers acceptable, and above all, to cover their sin, to serve as an expiation, and to turn away punishment. This is the testimony which Assyria and Egypt, which Greece and Rome, which India and China bear to their original unity. If God instituted this rite, at the fall itself, as a record and token of the promise then made, its existence through the many changes of the race becomes intelligible; on any other supposition it remains a contradiction both to reason and feeling, which is like nothing else in human history.
The institution of sacrifice comprehends with its accompaniments the whole of religion. It suffered the most grievous corruption
in that it was offered to false gods, to deified men, to powers of nature, to those who were not gods but demons. Again, its meaning was obscured, and the priests who offered it were not pure in their lives. But whatever abominations were at any time or in any place connected with it, its peculiarity, its testimony to the unity of the race, to the power which established it, remain without diminution.
3. Thirdly, let us take the great good of civil government. The human race is scattered over all countries, in divisions which range as to amount of population [Pg 39] from the smallest independent tribe to the largest empire. God suffered them to pursue their own course, to engage in numberless wars, and to pass through a succession of the most opposite circumstances, but He implanted in them from the beginning, and preserved in them throughout, the instinct of society, which develops in government. And He established that government in possession by the patriarchal constitution of life, which each portion of the race at its first start in independence took with it. By this He maintained order and peace, as a rule, in the bosom of each community; the smallest and the greatest alike possessed the commonwealth in the midst of them, which was thus, independent of walls and forts, a citadel of safety. Not even the most savage tribe in the most desolate northern wilderness, barren shore, or inland lake, was left in its self-wrought degradation without this support. In cultured nations, such as the Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians, Indians, Chinese, the State attained a high degree of perfection; while from the practice of the Hellenic cities Plato and Aristotle could draw principles of government which are of value for all time; and Rome, the queen-mother of cities, has been the teacher of state-wisdom to mankind. But what
I wish to note here is that civil government was everywhere throughout the dispersion of the nations a dam, constructed by Divine Providence, sufficiently strong to resist the inundation of evils brought about