Every great and remarkable event which marks an epoch in the political history of nations and the world, may, perhaps, be regarded as a dispensation of justice. If, then, such an event, however partial and confined to a single people or empire, or at most extending to an entire age, may be looked upon as a sign of judgment already commencing, or at least of a retribution threatening, but mercifully suspended, the same mode of consideration may, with as good reason, be applied to every resolution of the political world on the grave questions of peace and war: for the power of making war and peace is, at all events, the peculiar and characteristic prerogative of the supreme authority in the state. Now, the simplest standard, perhaps, of judging of the justice of either is, if we may so speak, to ask, Is the proclamation of war or the treaty of peace so entirely founded on truth, so perfectly correspondent to the righteous and judicial character of God, that man need not fear to lay them before the Judge of the whole world for His ratification? If such be the case, then most assuredly are they right and righteous, whatever be their consequences, or whatever be the judgment that men may pass upon them. But, otherwise, if the manifesto of war contain nothing but shallow and specious pretexts painfully raked together, or of fine-colorable phrases which even the eye of the world can see through, if a light touch of truth be only thrown over it in the hope of concealing the conqueror’s lust of aggrandizement, or the equally destructive principle of an old national feud or jealousy—if, in the pacification, under ambiguous terms and cunningly-devised phrases, the seeds of a future war be carefully sown, and thus the worst disease of the political world be propagated and multiplied from generation to generation, then most assuredly the guardian eye of Eternal Justice has not watched over its completion, and bestowed on it His blessing, but another and a very different coadjutor has had his hand in the game—the spirit of untruth, viz., and of corruption, of strife and ruin, whom no name so exactly describes as that of a “liar from the beginning.”
Now, as not only the annihilation of the race of giants in the universal deluge, with which our sacred history opens, and to which the ancient traditions of almost every people allude, more or less directly, but also the partial overthrow of a single nation, the tragical closing catastrophe of particular ages, is, as it were, a prelude of the final judgment of all nations and peoples of the earth at the end of time; so, on the other hand, the original corruption of the primal lie is propagated as an hereditary evil from millennium to millennium, and from century to century. For even now, may many a fertile spot, the seat of a happy and united community in the midst of prosperous times, and of peace unbroken at home or abroad, be considered, if not a garden of innocence, still the blissful dwelling of peace and quiet. But into these happy precincts the evil spirit of untruth and discontent ever and anon steals, to repeat over again in the history of the human race the same scene of temptation which marked its commencement. Upward and downward, and in a twofold direction, does the lying spirit of strife ply his seductive arts. Now, on the one side, he whispers in the ear of the rising generation, “That is the true knowledge and the real science which men are most anxious to withhold from you; but seek first of all to be free—shake off this unworthy spirit of slavish obedience, then shall all that is noble and intellectually great be at once yours. In this way, and thus only, was it attained by the great and good in ancient times.” But, on the other hand, he directs himself to the individual invested with authority; and if the potentate be unrighteous, his ear is already more than half open—and even if he be upright, still, as a man, he is not always inaccessible to such whisperings. “Why,” he insidiously asks, “dost thou draw back so fearfully before that which the people call their rights? These are nothing but childish notions which the school-boy may do well to declaim about, but practically they are worthless and unreal; no one means them seriously—the whole world puts no faith in this comedy. Rule your subjects with an iron hand, that is all they know how to respect; nay, they even admire the bold spirit that defies them, and they will suppliantly reverence thy greatness of mind and strength of character if, betraying no infirmness of purpose, you boldly and sternly encroach upon or disregard all their pretended rights and privileges. If only your sovereignty be solidly established from within, and well rounded from without, then, besides a great name with posterity, you will also secure to yourself the present enjoyment of very great and solid advantages.”
In this wise, from the original source of the one lie, is the inheritance of the old evil transmitted from generation to generation in the political world, in the two opposite forms of popular anarchy, and the despotic lust of power and aggrandizement. These two forms of evil are more closely allied than at the first look they appear to be in reality; but history, the great teacher of truth, gives its sure witness to their affinity. Nothing is more common in great republics, than for the discord of the citizens to be put an end to by some victorious general, whom all parties, weary of their dissensions, hail as the benefactor of the whole community. But how seldom is the pacificator content with the glorious title of the restorer of domestic peace, and does not go a step farther, and become the scheming tyrant and the aggressive conqueror. The whole history of the world is, in short, little more than the continuous struggle between the purifying fire of the divine retribution and this spirit of political lying, which is ever renewing itself in these twofold forms of anarchy and despotism.
Moreover, while we acknowledge the divine authority invested in the supreme ruler of the state, we must take heed how we mix up with our conceptions on this head the notion, so highly dangerous and so pregnant with fatal errors, of the absolute and unconditional, which, as we have already remarked, can not be applied even to the Godhead without giving rise to misconceptions. If, therefore, in any country a party—for now-a-days even justice is made a party matter—if any where a party of otherwise well-disposed men call themselves “absolutists,” such a designation is of itself sufficient to excite our apprehension, lest, with so absolute a way of thinking, some spark of evil be slumbering beneath the ashes; inasmuch as one absolute, i.e., one unconditional element of destruction invariably calls forth another.
Absolute, if this pernicious term must be used, the supreme power of the legitimate sovereign of a state may indeed be called in so far as he is responsible to God alone. For were the supreme ruler responsible to man, then the only difference would be, that instead of one, the many to whom he is answerable would be absolute. But in another sense, it is impossible to call the supreme power, wherever lodged, absolute or unlimited; for it is limited in many ways. Its exercise is checked and controlled by the treaties subsisting between it and other powers—by the laws which it finds in existence from the times of his predecessors, and which are still in force by the family laws of succession, and all matters pertaining to or connected therewith. If he who is invested with the highest power in the state, is determined to interfere with all these institutions, and violently to subvert existing customs and compacts, then is there, in such a case, no one really justified or entitled either to make objections to his measures or to oppose them. By such arbitrary and violent proceedings, however, he is himself undermining the very foundation of his own power. And a regard to and consideration of the possible consequences of such injustice will in most instances furnish the necessary and salutary check. Lastly, if we look a moment from the right itself to its actual exercise and influence, how often and how greatly are the latter limited by adverse circumstances and evil times. Nothing, in short, is more at issue with and opposed to nature and to life, than the very notion of unlimited power, and generally all that is absolute or destructive.
But there is yet another side on which the supreme political power is essentially checked and controlled. It is bound to consider and pay respect to the principles of religious society, which rests no less than itself on a divine authority. For the church, although very different in its nature, and flowing from a wholly different origin from that of the state, is, nevertheless, equally inviolable. If, however, the civil and political ruler, not content with a co-ordinate jurisdiction and the revision of ecclesiastical affairs—with a joint authority and influence, should attempt to make the religious polity also entirely subject to his own arbitrary will, no one perhaps will be able to oppose force to force, and probably no one would be justified in so doing. But by such an attempt, as indeed by every act of religious oppression, the supreme civil power would most fatally undermine the very basis of its own authority. If, for instance, the ruler of a great nation places the third estate in the painful alternative of making, what in any case must be most pernicious, a choice between divine and human authority—or, rather, to speak more correctly, between two claims to its allegiance equally divine, he does but smooth the road which must lead at last to his own ruin.
And here, too, in the spiritual community of the faith, in the same way as in the political body, man’s patrimony of original evil branches out into two directions. In the one it turns longingly back toward the past, and in the other it tends restlessly forward into the indefinite future. Both of these aberrations are wholly independent of the outer form as well as of the subject-matter of belief. They are consequently to be found in the old covenant, as the first grade of divine revelation, no less than in the second. The first of these hereditary faults of man’s nature is deadness, or, in a somewhat different phase, lukewarmness—manifesting itself outwardly in a close and literal adherence to the old in its mere external forms. In a word, it is spiritual death. For though in the abundance of His love, God may have made a revelation of His will to man, and even died to make an atonement for him, still it is left to the free will of the individual to receive it or not; and its retention and observance is the trial of his goodness, and, consequently, in this point, as in others, his hereditary and inborn spiritual death strongly manifests itself. The second of these hereditary faults, or, rather, the same in a different form, is the spirit of innovation, or a false semblance of life, by which, in fact, this inner death is merely propagated.
On both these faults and erroneous ways of thinking on religious matters, Revelation expresses itself equally in the tone of stern reprobation, though perhaps its language with regard to the former is even still more severe. As regards the spirit of innovation, all changes in this domain, which are merely human, and not visibly and manifestly of a divine spirit and origin, must simply on that account be opposed and condemned. Now, in both the parties into which the faith is unhappily divided, there are many who are captivated and led away by this spirit of change. For among those who were originally seduced by it not a few are now animated with a sincere and profound respect for whatever is old and sterling, while of the innovation-mongers of our days, many are to be found in the ranks of those who originally strove to stem the tide of alteration and change. Oh that all who are pervaded by this evil spirit, and are ever casting their views forward into the future, would only advance a little farther still in their thoughts, so as to take in the end and conclusion of all. In the knowledge of the final judgment of the world (and what is this philosophy of revelation but such a reminiscence of death and the end—in which light philosophy was even in olden times explained—not, indeed, in a narrow-minded limitation to ourselves, but in a far wider sense, embracing in its universal sympathy the final catastrophe of the whole human race), in the warnings and allusions to this last day of account, so long and so often given, men will find all the information that they seek, and will no longer need any human innovations, since by this key all that is old and eternal shall receive a trebly-exalted significance and a doubly-new life.
But besides the political body and the religious community, the world of letters forms a third society. Though numerically smaller, yet in its effects on the minds of men, whether it moves freely and diffuses itself without the rigid restraints of form, or is narrowly confined to the formalism of the school, it is, perhaps, as great as either. Spiritual in its matter and in its dissemination, it either renounces a divine sanction, and stands under the protection and supervision of the state—such, at least, is the predominant relation in recent times—or, as was formerly the case, it grows and flourishes beneath the shelter and through the fostering care of ecclesiastical institutions. Holding an intermediate place between the two other bodies of human society—in its subject-matter more akin to the one, but deriving from the other its external support—it is also of a mixed nature and partakes of both. But the inborn and original sin of science is exactly similar to that which infects political life. Manifesting itself in a twofold aberration, it either assumes, in the spirit of anarchy, an hostile position toward all that exists from without, or is given to men from above, or, perhaps, comes forward in a predominant love of system or scientific sectarianism, which not unfrequently is as fanatical as the political party-spirit with which, moreover, it is often very nearly and closely allied.
The nature of the divine order which rules the history of the world, and its stern, retributive law, must, in all essential points, be now apparent from the preceding remarks. It is an all-pervading alternation between the purifying fire of God’s punitive justice and the inheritance of the old evil, which breaks out, now in anarchy, now in despotism—at one time in spiritual deadness and lukewarmness of faith—at another in the pernicious lust of innovation and change. This purifying fire, it must also be clear, while, confining its immediate operation to single nations or to marked and distinct epochs of history, it gives them a new shape and form, invariably gains for itself a wider extension, so as, at last, to embrace the whole world. Moreover, every one must feel that, in investigating the fiery track of this judging spirit in its stern course through centuries, we must reverently follow at a respectful distance to learn from it what it is and how it manifests itself, and take good heed how we presume to confine it within any narrow law, or reduce it to any precise and rigorous definition. We can not be too carefully on our guard against ascribing to Providence in its guidance of mankind many and subtile designs, which, after all, perhaps, are nothing but the mere fancies and conceits of man. In general, however, it may safely be said that the subordinate views and higher ends which are visible in the leading catastrophes of nations and empires, or even of entire ages, have especial reference to that gradation in the divine revelation which I explained to you in the previous Lecture as having a regard to, and comprising the whole human race in, its comprehensive design. By way of exemplification, and as an instance of the right application of the ideas here advanced, I will now, in conclusion, add a few words on those events and catastrophes of universal history, which, in this respect, seem the most important.