looking on with an idiot grin of triumph at its final success. "And this, then, is thy faith! this monstrous creed ! And Earth, and Heaven! And know ye not, That leagued against ye are the Just and Wise, Yea, your own Crimes, and Truth, and God in Heaven? THROUGHOUT a great part of the civilized world, men are restlessly craving for better forms of society and government; for a deliverance from evils which they feel themselves, and which they see crushing others. Many are in the temper of unreasoning patients, so diseased and suffering that they are ready to adopt the pretended remedies of any impostor who boldly promises relief. But the cure of long-continued evils in a nation is analogous to the cure of long-continued diseases in an individual. It must be gradual; it must be accomplished with great patience and care; or the attempt to relieve may only aggravate the suffering. The existence of a well-organized state of society is solely the result of the character of the individuals who compose it. Many seem to think that republican institutions are the grand spe cific for the evils which exist; but a republic, to escape the worst disorders, to escape the loss of its essential character, if not of its very form and name, must have for its foundation the religious and moral principles of those who constitute and control it. In the most favored portions of our own land it is to the influence of moral principle, to the strong action of the sense of right and wrong, to the sympathy of man with man, that we owe our protection and security; not to the immediate authority of government, nor to the exercise of civil or military force. Where this moral control does not exist, order can be preserved in a state only by substituting in its place human power, arbitrary power lodged in the hands of an individual or a class, whose self-interest it is to prevent lawless and disorganizing violence. The less there is of moral principle in a community, the more stringent and irresponsible must be the power by which it is controlled. The government of banditti or of pirates must be despotic; and when a republic of unprincipled men is sinking, as it will, into anarchy and the bloody strifes of faction, the only refuge is a dictator. The attempt to establish freedom among people unprepared to feel and act as freemen, has been often enough repeated in our time to satisfy one as to what must be its result. It is but four years since, that the oppressed and the reformers of Germany possessed themselves of the supreme power, but they were ignorant what to do with it. Even if they had had the wisest ends, they would have been unable to employ their power to any good purpose. The materials to be worked upon, the individuals to be governed, had not the strong sense of religion, and of the obligations of man to man, which are necessary to bind men together in a well-regulated society, - principles the want of which can be supplied by no human institutions, no written constitutions or laws. Whatever tends to weaken the authority of religion, the authority of God, tends equally to the destruction of human happiness, and, especially, in reference to the topic immediately before us, to the destruction of all hope of better forms of human society. These must rest on the laws of God. Of his laws all human laws of binding force are but declaratory; from them they derive all their intrinsic authority. They are obeyed because conscience enforces obedience, and this is perfect freedom. All other obedience to human laws must be only that which the direct or indirect dread of human power is able to compel. |