To the search of unassisted reason, man is an enigma—his origin, a deep unfathomed mystery—his being, nothing but a sad and strange commingling of discordant elements—his destiny unknown! He comes forth as it were unbidden—mingles for a few short hours in earth’s sorrows and enjoyments,—hurries through the part assigned him in the mighty drama of existence, when the curtain closes and he vanishes forever. We tread over the “green roof of his dark mansion,”—and he lives but in remembrance. The works too of his hands are frail and fleeting. The proudest monument he rears, but scarce outlasts his memory—and the very dwelling which has sheltered him is hastening to destruction. “The ivy clings to the mouldering tower, the brier hangs out from the shattered window, and the wall-flower springs from the disjointed stones. The voices of merriment and of wailing, the steps of the busy and the idle, have ceased in the deserted courts, and the weeds choke the entrances, and the grass waves upon the hearthstones.”
And it is so with nations! Earth is little better than a splendid waste of ruins,—a vast unbroken solitude, garnished with the sepulchers of countless myriads, and crowded with the relics of departed grandeur! There is the tyranny of Desolation! There Change is ever busy, wandering amid the wasting forms of beauty, gathering the banquet of Decay!
Such to unassisted reason is the history of nations. They spring up into being, linger for a fleeting period,—are cut down and perish—their origin, their progress and their end, alike mysterious and inexplicable! Revelation has indeed assured us of the destiny of man. We know that the same grave which closes over his decaying body shrouds not the undying spirit—that earth is but the threshold to another state of being. Far beyond its earthly scene of trial, Affection follows her departed object, and pillowed on the bosom of immortal hope, casts down the burden of her sorrows. The unfettered soul purified from her pollutions, soars upward,—
“On a wing
That moving through eternity will ever
Be active and unwearied, and as bright
In its unruffled plumage after years
Have gathered into ages, and have gone
Beyond the eldest memory of time.”
It is thus that Revelation fathoms the deep mystery of death—that it brings before us man and the purpose of his being. Guided then by the clear light it radiates, we can walk amid the darkness which enshrouds the fate of nations, and gather even from their silent ruins the true cause of their extinction. More crowded is the catalogue of buried than of living generations! The records of departed States and Empires—the time-worn monuments of former strength and grandeur—the disjointed fragments of a once unbroken whole,—each, all, are eloquent around us! Why is it we can gaze on nothing permanent? Why is it that we stand the beings of a universe which Change is ever wasting? Why is it that innumerable nations of the earth, in the midst of all their beauty and magnificence, are stricken down for ever, and the place they occupied left desolate? Is their fate without an object? Is their influence unfelt? Is it chance that rules their destiny?
One of the earliest theories respecting the progress of society, has been the regular tendency of our race to decline and degradation. This theory, the result partly of tradition and partly of poetic fancy, carries back the mind to a golden age of primeval excellence, and represents the progress of mankind as a continual departure from a higher and a better state of being. Those occasional exhibitions of lofty virtue and of noble self-devotion which mark the establishment of new States and Empires,—the stern integrity of Regulus,—the high-souled magnanimity of Fabricius,—it regards only as the ineffectual struggles of exalted minds to check the downward tendency of our race, and as swept away by the resistless current of human corruption. This theory was transmitted even from remote antiquity,—interwoven with the superstitions of that early time, strengthened by the implicit confidence of each successive age, and destined to exist till that religion of which it was the offspring, should be crushed beneath the wider and the nobler system of Christianity. It was too a theory interesting and attractive,—well adapted to the age of its formation. It dealt much in the ideal. Its conceptions were those of poetry, mournful indeed, but beautiful and alluring. It spoke of an elevated state of being from which man had fallen,—of a grandeur, every trace of which was then effaced,—of a beauty which had long since faded. It told of nobler aspirations that had fired the soul,—of loftier communings of the spirit with the world above,—of thoughts unbounded in their range, whose center was the universe. It breathed of a quiet and a happy era,—of a peace beyond all trouble,—of an innocence without a stain. It hurried its votaries away from the earth that met their vision, to the brighter one of its creation—a land beautiful beyond conception—the Elysium of gods and the residence of heroes. It was all that the genius of Paganism could do to linger around the visions of departed greatness.
This theory is now surrendered,—or its advocates, if any such there be, are few in number. We, of the present age, regard it as a wild and brilliant error, poetically beautiful, but in practice incorrect,—as a rich and elegant production of a distant age,—as a flower that sprung up, bloomed and faded in the spring-time of the world.
There is a second theory, which numbers among its supporters a large part of the philosophers of modern time. We would call it without reproach the Atheistic scheme, for it seems to shut out a governing Providence from the successive evolutions of our race. It attributes the same principles of stability to the natural and moral world, considering them as both liable to the same law of physical necessity, which causes them to “alternate, between fixed and narrow limits of progress and decay.” States and Empires it regards as rising only like the waves of the ocean, to give way to those that follow them—an endless succession of events, without one indication of plan or aim, to remind us of a governing Intelligence!
Laying aside these theories, as equally unworthy of man and of Him who made him,—with history for our guide, the monument at once of the rise and fall of nations,—what theory shall we form? What shall we affirm of history itself? Is it nothing but the chronicle of unconnected facts—the assemblage of by-gone events, that have passed without an object? What too is the lesson that we read in the revolutions of the world? Are they mere isolated exhibitions of a vast and mighty energy expended for no purpose,—monuments reared along the track of ages as mementos of unmeaning greatness,—meteors that burst from the midst of clouds and darkness to reveal the wreck of nations, and then go out for ever? In the eloquent language of another: “Is the change in its generations the only change in society? Are the actors alone renewed, and the same drama of life for ever repeated? Or rather does each succeeding generation, standing on the graves of their forefathers, rise to a higher vantage ground, as the oaks of the wilderness in succession strike deeper roots, and grow more flourishing over the dust of their predecessors?”
The theory implied in these remarks, if properly stated and understood, is the true theory of the progress of society. It is a real progress. One after another of its empires may have risen, flourished for a time, and then crumbled into ruins. Some may have remained apparently unaltered, balanced by the action of opposing causes,—but the grand, the mighty Whole, has been progressive. The current that sustained and bore it onward, has increased in energy,—it has never lingered,—its apparent rest or retrocession, was but the reflux of the wave that is rising higher along the shore.