03.12. LECTURE 12 - THE KINGLY OFFICE OF CHRIST
LECTURE XII THE KINGLY OFFICE OF CHRIST. That the office of Mediator between God and sinful men must include the function of kingly dominion and control is self-evident. Christ’s functions as Prophet and Priest would have been ineffective without it. That the promised Messiah of the Old Testament was to be a King, and that the historical incarnate God of the New Testament actually is a King in the highest sense, are witnessed to by almost every page of the whole Bible.
" There shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel" (Numbers 24:17); "His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace " (Isaiah 9:6); I have "set my King upon my holy hill of Zion. . . . Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel" (Psalms 2:6-9); "One like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, aud languages, should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed " (Daniel 7:13-14). The angel Gabriel, in the annunciation to the Virgin Mary, said, " Thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus.
He shall be great, and shall be called the Sou of the Highest; and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David : and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end" (Luke 1:31-33). The universality and pre-eminence and absoluteness of his kingly authority is expressed in the Revelation when it is declared that the Lamb is " King of kings and Lord of lords." The ancient Hebrews in reading substituted "Adonai" for "Jehovah." The Septuagint translates Adonai by
I. And all this is predicated of him not merely as God, but as God-man in his work as Mediator between God and man. As the second Person of the Trinity, equal in power and glory to the eternal Father, the Word of God possesses an absolute, inherent sovereign dominion as King over the whole universe. This authority is intrinsic, underived, inalienable, and is the same yesterday, to-day and for ever. During all the years of the earthly life of the God-man, alike while an unconscious babe in the manger and while hanging a dying victim on the cross, the eternal Son of God was exercising his sovereign dominion over the entire universe. But in his office as Mediator, and in his entire Person after the incarnation as God-man, he was constituted a King by the authority of the entire Godhead as represented in the Father. His mediatorial sovereignty is derived as contradistinguished from his essential divine sovereignty as intrinsic. It is given to him by the Father as the reward of his obedience and suffering. "He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross. Wherefore also God highly exalted him, and gave unto him the name which is above every name; that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things on earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father " (Php 2:7-11). This authority, thus bestowed upon him by the Father, is special, having particular reference to the salvation of his own people, and, to that end, to the administration of all the provisions of the covenant of grace, of which he is the gracious executive. It attaches not to his divine nature exclusively, but to his entire Person as the Godman. A max sits upon the mediatorial throne of the universe. He who stood insulted, despised, condemned at Pilate’s judgment-seat, now sitting at the right hand of God, rules all worlds, as he will hereafter, seated on the great white throne, judge all men. Our blood-brother according to the flesh has " all power in heaven and in earth," that he may " make all things work together for good to them who love God." The attributes of both the divine and the human natures are together exercised in the administration of this kingly reign. All his kingly acts are infinitely wise, righteous and powerful, because he is God. But they are at the same time the acts of a man. They possess a truly human quality, for in all his administration he has a feeling for our infirmities as well as an eye for our interests.
II. Christ is already a King upon his throne in the full sweep of his kingly administration. He has, of course, as the eternal Word, been Mediator between God and sinful man ever since the fall of Adam. Otherwise, the sentence of the law must have been unconditionally executed immediately upon the apostasy. Ever since, we have been living and human history has been evolved under a system of forbearance involving an arrest of judgment. This was of course possible only as the human family has existed under the protection of a divine and competent Mediator. All the functions of the mediatorial office mutually imply one another. If he were " the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world " (Revelation 13:8), he must have been a Prophet before Moses, a Priest before Aaron, and a King before David. He was in these respects their predecessor and the ground from which they sprang, as well as their successor and antitype. A close inspection shows that the Jehovah of the Old Testament, who is also called the Angel of, or the one sent by, Jehovah, is the second Person of the Trinity, as is declared by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews. (Compare Psalms 45:6-7 and Hebrews 1:8-9; Genesis 31:11; Genesis 31:13; Genesis 48:15-16, and Hosea 12:2-5, Exodus 4:14; Exodus 4:14 and Acts 7:30-35.) He reigned over all human affairs, as the biblical history relates. He gave the law from Sinai, including the entire ceremonial ritual, as well as the Ten Commandments. He brought Israel out of Egypt through the wilderness and established them in the Holy Land "with a mighty hand, and with an outstretched arm, and with great terribleness, and with signs, and with wonders " (Deuteronomy 26:8). He fought their battles with the Philistines, established his types and representatives, David and Solomon, upon their temporary symbolical thrones, and he directed the entire course of human history to the consummation of the fullness of times, in preparation for his own advent in the flesh.
But, on the other hand, in the strictest sense we must date the actual and formal assumption of his kingly office, iu the full and visible exercise thereof, from the moment of his ascension into heaven from this earth aud his session at the right hand of the Father. He could not have actually entered upon his kingly office as the God-man before he had become both God and man in the one Person through his incarnation. His function as Priest in a sense precedes his function as a King, as well as acts together with it. His atonement is the foundation of his royal right to his people and his royal administration in their behalf. When he was announced it was " declared that the kingdom of heaven was at hand." He was received by his disciples and rejected by the Jews as one claiming to be a king. Pilate wrote the title of his kingship in three languages and attached it to his cross. "This man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God; from henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool" (Hebrews 10:12-13). His kingly office is essentially the royal dispensation of grace by him as a Saviour. In order that this may be universally and infallibly effectual and complete, he declares that now "all power is given to me in heaven and on earth," and he founds on this his great commission to his Church: " Go ye therefore, and disciple all nations." And Peter on the great day of Pentecost declared that when the prophet David recorded the sworn promise of God to raise up Christ to sit upon the throne, he spake of the resurrection of Christ: " This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses. Therefore, being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this. Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ" (Acts 2:32-36).
III. The present mediatorial kingdom of the God-man is absolutely universal, embracing the whole universe and every department of it. This principle evidently involves the most momentous consequences. It has been disastrously abused by the Papal Church, and just as disastrously ignored by the Protestants. It follows logically from the Papal principles that the Church is an external visible organization of which the pope, the vicegerent of Christ, is the head—that if Christ is absolute Sovereign over the universe and all its departments, then the pope, his vicar, is supreme governor at least over all bodies and affairs of mankind. But upon Protestant principles this atrocious consequence disappears. The Church is not a corporation or visible organization. Christ has no representative exercising vicariously his royal authority on earth. There is no question as to Church authority or union between Church and State involved. Protestants should shut out for ever all these dead issues and the prejudices which they excite, and open their minds to the scriptural evidence and to the stupendous and infinitely blessed practical consequences of the great principle I have stated—that the mediatorial kingdom of the God-man is absolutely universal, embracing in its rightful sway all God’s creatures and all their actions. This truth, nevertheless, is just as plainly and as certainly taught in the New Testament as any other article of our faith. In Psalms 8:1-9, God declares his purpose to put all things under the feet of man. This purpose Paul (Ephesians 1:20-23) declares was fulfilled in Christ when he raised him from the dead and set him at his own right hand in heavenly places, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world (aion); and hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be Head over all things to the Church. He declared to his disciples, as the ground of the commission he gave to them, " that all power had been given to him in heaven and on earth." In Php 2:9-10, Paul says: "God hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth." This absolutely and exhaustively includes the whole universe in all its categories of heaven, earth and hell, just as the passage in Ephesians includes all duration, the a ion, or world-age, which now is and that which is to come. And this is repeated and emphasized in the most forceful language in Hebrews 2:8 : " For in that he put all things in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him and in 1 Corinthians 15:27, He only " is excepted which did put all things under him." That is, absolutely all things but God the Father. And all this is spoken, not of his authority as eternal God, but of his mediatorial authority as God-man : because (1) it is given to him by the Father;
(2) it is given to him as the reward of his obedience and sufferings;
(3) when the purpose for which it is given is fully accomplished, " when he has subdued all things unto himself," he shall deliver up this "given" kingdom over the universe " to God even the Father," and become himself, as God-man, "subject unto Him that put all things under him, that God may be all and in all" (1 Corinthians 15:24-28).
Theologians have accordingly made a distinction, designed to classify the different aspects and methods of this vast administration of royal power between Christ’s kingdoms of power, of grace and of glory. These, of course, are not absolutely different realms or spheres of government, since the kingdom of power includes the kingdom of grace, and the kingdom of grace precedes and prepares the way for the kingdom of glory. They are rather different methods of working and different special systems of administration, all comprehended in his universal reign as King.
I. Christ’s Kingdom of Power.—This is the providential reign of the God-man over the whole universe in the interests of his mediatorial work as Redeemer of his own people. The universe in all its provinces, material and spiritual, constitutes one system. The certain attainment of any end, the absolute control of any single department, necessarily involves the control and the co-ordinate administration of all the parts.
(1.) Hence Christ’s universal kingdom of power must include, in the first instance, his providential control of the whole physical universe. The physical universe is the necessary basis of the intellectual, moral and spiritual world. The higher cannot be adequately governed unless the lower is controlled. The laws of matter and the order of the material world remain the same as before, and no change takes place that can be discovered by science. Nevertheless, the glorious fact is that the God-man, as mediatorial King, has, during the present aion or world-age, brought the whole mechanism of the material universe into requisition as means to secure the establishment of his mediatorial kingdom. He guides the marshaled hosts of heaven to that supreme result. The great currents of all the world-forces are directed to that end. The sweet influences of the Pleiades obey his voice and the bands of Orion are in his hands. It is not the God absolute, but it is our kinsman Redeemer, the man who is also God, who orders the courses of the stars, " who covereth the heaven with clouds, who prepareth rain for the earth, who maketh grass to grow upon the mountains; who giveth to the beast his food, and to the young ravens when they cry;" who " numbereth all the hairs of our heads," and " will not allow any plague to come nigh our dwelling."
(2.) Christ’s mediatorial kingdom of power includes the universal moral government of God over all his intelligent creatures. The moral government of God over the human family constitutes only one province of the immeasurable empire. Angels and devils and whatever intelligent creatures may exist in other worlds must constitute one systematic moral whole with the human race. The entire moral empire of God must be governed on the same general principles of righteousness. The will of God must be the common rule of all, his love their common motive, his glory their common end, his fellowship their common goal. Christ in this widest sense is King of kings and Lord of lords. God hath appointed his Son " heir of all things." He is placed far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named." " All in heaven and all on earth, who are to bow at the name of Jesus," include all rational creatures. And all men and angels are to be gathered to his judgment-seat. The devils " are reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day " (Jude 1:6).
He exercises this universal moral government providentially in various ways, according to the various characters and conditions of his subjects, but always upon the same principles of essential righteousness. He era-ploys angels as ministering spirits for his people at present, and he will employ them as his executive agents in the siftings of the great judgment. He restrains and controls the action of the devil and his angels, the spirits of the power of the air. He controls all events for the good of his people. Especially, he directs events to the end of effecting their complete discipline and education, and consequent preparation for the enjoyment of his glory. The end is the complete redemption of his people. But in order to secure this all the members of the human family in their successive generations and in their various family and national groups must be dealt with as subjects of the same government. During the present world-age it is not God absolute, but our kinsman Redeemer, the God-man, who is the Lord, " the Governor among the nations." He speaks with authority to every conscience. He has a supreme right to control for his own ends the service of every life. He orders every political and social event and the entire evolution of civilization and associated human activity to the accomplishment of his supreme end. And at the close every tribe and people and tongue shall stand to be judged before his throne and to have its destiny fixed by his decree.
II. Christ’s Kingdom of Grace.—This spiritual kingdom, which is the special care of Christ, for the sake of which his government of the universe is undertaken, respects first, his own spiritual people individually, and second, his professed people collectively organized in the visible Church.
(1.) Christ reigns over his own individually, both from without and from within. From without he subdues his and their enemies, restraining Satan, his angels and wicked men. He strengthens them in weakness, defends them in danger, directs and co-operates with them in action, and gives them ultimately the victory in all their contests, and causes them always to persevere to the end, that they may receive the crown of life. He also, under the inspiration of his Spirit, brings his spiritual people into sympathy with one another, and stimulates and guides the great currents of sympathy and the large interdenominational movements of the catholic Church, and all the various functions in which is manifested the " communion of saints." From within, the God-man reigns supreme in every Christian heart. It is impossible to accept Christ as our Sacrifice and Priest without at the same time cordially accepting him as our Prophet, absolutely submitting our understanding to his teaching, and accepting him as our King, submitting implicitly our hearts and wills and lives to his sovereign control. Paul delights to call himself the
(2.) Christ’s kingdom of grace also embraces his visible Church. Although the true Church is constituted simply by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, and although no organization is essential to its being or coextensive with its existence, nevertheless Christ wills that his true Church shall, for great practical ends, tend always spontaneously to organize itself in some form. Its forms are very various, determined in their differences by providential conditions, and they are of very different excellence, and yet they are all, whether better or worse, forms of the true Church, and therefore co-ordinate phases of the one Church. And Christ alone is the legitimate Head of this visible Church in any of its forms whatsoever. He has appointed no vicegerent. He has forbidden his servants to be called rabbi or master.
He pronounces a curse upon those who lord it over his heritage, whether national sovereigns or universal patriarchs or popes. He has in his inspired Word and through his ever-indwelling Spirit provided for the government of this Church through all ages. He has therein ordained the conditions of membership, the laws and offices, and he by his gracious providence leads to the selection of the right incumbents. There is no doctrine we are bound to believe which he has not clearly revealed in his Word, nor any duty we are bound to fulfill. The disciples of Christ are the Lord’s freemen, discharged from all human bondage, because they are bound to render absolute obedience to him alone. It is to this principle that the Church of Scotland and her long line of martyrs, under Knox, Melville and Chalmers, have borne such a noble testimony. The Covenant bound Scotland and Puritan England to live or to die by Christ’s crown and covenant.
Christ declared that his kingdom is "not of this world"—that it is not one kingdom associated with the other kingdoms, with like organizations, laws, methods of administration and ends. But it is a spiritual kingdom, embracing and interpenetrating all others, so different in method and ends from them that it cannot, when loyal to its Head, interfere with any of them or enter into organic alliance with any of them. Its Head, members, laws, officers, methods, penalties and rewards and ends are not of this world, but are spiritual —i e. they are revealed and applied by the Holy Ghost, and they bring man into relation to the great world of spiritual realities which is revealed in the Scriptures. The kingdom of Christ therefore interpenetrates all the political commonwealths of this world, and all the political commonwealths of this world embrace the kingdom of Christ. Like different gases, the kingdom of Caesar and the kingdom of Christ are vacuums to each other. They interpenetrate each other in occupying the same territory, and yet each retains its own identity and properties unchanged. They necessarily affect each other on certain sides, but when properly administered they do not interfere with one another. Having the same subjects, they nevertheless have entirely different ends, different agencies, different laws and different methods.
III.Christ’s Kingdom of Glory.—During the present age Christ is set forth principally as a conquering Captain, reigning at the head of his militant host, the Captain of our salvation (Hebrews 2:10) and the conqueror of his and our enemies and the subduer of the world (Revelation 19:11 (1G). But hereafter the Scriptures reveal a final consummation, when Christ’s kingdom shall be complete in all its members and shall be developed to its perfect state—when all the redeemed shall he gathered, the crisis of judgment passed, the glorified bodies of the saints reunited to their perfected spirits: then " shall the Son of man sit in the throne of his glory," and "there shall be no more curse; but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him. And they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads" (Revelation 22:3-4).
IV.But if Christ’s mediatorial kingdom is, as asserted, absolutely universal—especially if his direct authority embraces without exception every human being on the face of the earth during all ages, in all their relations and in all their actions—then the question necessarily arises, If Christ’s kingdom embraces every human relation, how can there be any distinction between Church and State, between the things which belong unto Caesar and the things that belong unto Christ? This is a question which, however simple in itself, has continued to puzzle the minds of men from the beginning, and this confusion of thought has necessarily introduced confusion and conflict of action.
Among the Jews the State and the Church were one identical organism, discharging both secular and ecclesiastical functions, in part through the same officers and in part and at times through distinct officers. The answer given by the Papists, while admitting the distinction touching Church and State, is that as Christ is King of all men and his authority is supreme in every sphere of human interest and action, the pope his vicar reigns in his name supreme over all earthly sovereigns; that the Catholic Church, an external organized body, is in every land supreme over the State, the State being, in truth, only a subordinate and changeable organ of the Church for the purpose of executing the functions of temporal government. The answer of the Erastians, of the State-Church systems, makes the State supreme over the Church, and the Church is practically regarded only as an organ of the State for the purpose of effecting the functions of religious institution and worship. But the true principle has in this last age become generally recognized, that State and Church, considered as organized societies with laws and officers, have entirely distinct spheres, methods and objects, and hence that they have no specific organic relation to one another whatever. They indeed embrace the same territory and the same personal constituents. The same men and women who in one relation constitute the State in another relation constitute the Church. The State deals with the persons and property of Church members and with the public property of ecclesiastical societies precisely as she deals with that of all other persons and voluntary societies, and the members of the Church and ecclesiastical societies owe precisely the same obedience to the State that is owed by all other citizens and associations.
All this is perfectly clear and true, but inferences have been drawn from these principles which absolutely divorce the State from all religion and emancipate it entirely from the mediatorial authority of Jesus Christ. It is absurdly argued that if the State is absolutely free from any entangling alliances with the Church, it must be free from all religious qualities and obligations; that if it is free from the authority of the Church as an organized society, it must be free from the authority of Jesus Christ, the Head of the Church, and of the Bible, which contains his code of laws. It is argued that as no man has any right to impose his own religious convictions on others, so no body of men can possess any such right, and therefore that no majority of citizens has the right to impose by State legislation upon a recalcitrant minority obligations having a religious origin. These inferences, however unwarrantable and preposterous, are exceedingly prevalent, and are admitted, if not proclaimed, by many true Christians who are unconscious of their absurdity and utter disloyalty to the Lord that bought them and whom they profess to serve as their King.
It is very evident that it does not follow because the organized bodies we call " churches" have no organic connection with the State, nor any right to pronounce judgment upon things purely within the jurisdiction of the State, that therefore the State has nothing to do with religious laws or obligations. There are three positions here of infinite importance to the Christian citizens of the United States:
1st. As a matter of fact, every State in the world must have, and has had, a religion of some kind. The State is an association of human beings for the purpose of promoting and protecting the interests of society within the limits of secular life. The State is the people themselves acting in their organic capacity through the machinery of law. It is self-evident, therefore, that the State or collective body must have all the qualities which belong to its constituent members. A house is a great deal more than the wood or brick or stone or iron of which it is built; nevertheless, every house has the quality of its material, whether wood or brick or stone or iron, and will necessarily act under given circumstances as determined severally by the nature of its material. So every State is vastly more than the persons of which it is composed; nevertheless, the character of the State must in every respect be determined by the character of the people which constitute it. If the people are rational the State will be rational; if moral, then moral; if rich or energetic, then it will possess those qualities; and, none the less, if the people be religious will the State they compose be religious.
It is simply absurd that a man can be thoroughly convinced that God exists and that he is a Moral Governor who will demand an account for all the deeds done in the body—that he can have his heart full of loyal affection and devotion to God as an individual while engaged in private business, and then be perfectly oblivious of the existence and of the claims of God as soon as he begins to act politically as a citizen of the State. If a man knows that God has forbidden theft, or incest, or divorce except on certain conditions, or the pursuit of worldly business on the weekly Sabbath, he cannot as a citizen do otherwise than make and execute laws in conformity to the known will of God. If a State in its public law acts atheistically, it can only be because a majority of its citizens are in heart atheists, no matter what religious professions they may make. Middle ground, a negative position, is absolutely impossible. God is either recognized or denied, he is either carefully obeyed or rebelliously disobeyed; and this impossibility of a negative position is just as true in political societies and in their conduct as in any other department of human life. Every nation has a religion or is positively, aggressively atheistic; indifference is antagonism.
2d. Every Christian must believe that the State ought to be obedient to the revealed law of Christ. This is so because—
(1) the Word of God explicitly declares that " the powers that be are ordained of God;" that "rulers are ministers of God to us for good;" that "whoever resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God" (Romans 13:1-4).
(2) Because Christ himself explicitly declared that to him as Mediator all power (
(3) Because the Christian revelation expressed in the inspired Scriptures expresses the will of Christ upon many subjects in which it can be carried out only through the agency of the State and of her laws and officers. The State must pronounce her will as to the rest of the Sabbath day, as to marriage and divorce, as to the rights of property and the relations of capital and labor, as to capital punishment and as to the education of the young. The ground covered by these subjects the State cannot possibly avoid. And it is equally impossible for a Christian man, who knows the will of Christ as to the points in question, to ignore or disobey that will when acting in the capacity of a citizen of the State. If he does do so, he is consciously guilty of direct disloyalty to his Lord. All intelligent and honest Christians must seek to bring all the action of the political society to which they belong obedient to the revealed will of Christ the supreme King, the Ruler among the nations. The Church and the State are mutually, entirely independent. The officers and the laws of the one have no jurisdiction within the sphere of the other. Nevertheless, Christ is the common King of each, and his Bible is the common statute-book of each. The only difference is, that under the one and selfsame King, Christ, the light of nature is the primary, the word of Scripture the supplementary, law of the State; while the word of revelation is the primary and the light of nature the supplementary law of the Church. But Christ and conscience and the Bible rule equally in each sphere.
3d. These United States of North America are, and from the beginning were, of law, of right and of actual fact, a Christian nation. The original colonies were settled by bodies of men of conspicuous Christian character, who emigrated from their European homes for religious reasons. They were Puritans, Huguenots, Scotch, Scotch-Irish, Dutch and German Presbyterians, Quakers, Episcopalians and Roman Catholics, but all alike Christians. Beyond any other equally various and numerous set of men known in human history, they were earnest Christians, and they came here for the very purpose of crystallizing their faith in imperishable institutions. These men subdued the wilderness, founded the nation and laid all the foundation-stones of our constitutional law. The common law of England, the creature of Christianity, is the common law of nine-tenths of our States and Territories. Christian denominations, Episcopal or Independent, were established by law in almost all the early colonies.
Theism is recognized explicitly in almost all our State constitutions, and Christianity in many of them. Christianity has been recognized from the first by explicit action in the appointment of chaplains for Congress and for the army and navy of the United States and for the legislatures and prisons of the several States; by the appointment of fast-days and of thanksgiving-days by the supreme magistrates of the several States and of the nation ; and by the enactment of the Sabbath laws and of the laws for the suppression of blasphemy. What was true at the first has been becoming more and more true to the actual fact ever since. Nearly one-half of all the actual adult population of the country are communicants in the Christian churches. The ratio of the communicants in our evangelical churches to the whole population was in 1800 as 1 to every 14.50 of all ages; in 1850 it was as 1 to every 6.57; in 1870, as 1 to every 5.78; and in 1880, 1 to every 5 of the total inhabitants; while in the mean time between six and seven millions of our Roman Catholic fellow-Christians have come into existence. From 1800 to 1880 the whole population of the nation has increased 9.46 fold, while in the same time the communicants of our evangelical churches have increased 27.52 fold.
There are not two laws for individuals and for communities. The obligations which bind individuals necessarily bind all the communities which these individuals constitute. Every human being is bound to be Christian; therefore every community of human beings is bound to obey the law of Christ. The United States, as a matter of historic fact, have always professed to be a Christian State, and we are therefore doubly bound to this allegiance—
(1) by virtue of the common obligation which binds all men;
(2) by virtue of the special opportunities and covenants of our ancestors, which descend upon us by natural inheritance.
V. The overwhelming importance of this principle and weight of this obligation appear in the clearest light the moment the nation claims to regulate the supreme function of education. It is insisted upon that the right of self-preservation is the highest law of States as well as of individuals; that if the suffrage is universal, all holders of that suffrage must be educated in order to secure the safety of the State; that in consequence of the heterogeneous character of our population and the divisions of the Christian Church there is no agency in existence competent to educate the whole body of the holders of the universal suffrage except the State herself. The situation, therefore, stands thus:
1st. The tendency of the entire system, in which already vast progress has been made, is to centralization. Each State governs her own system of common schools by a central agency, which brings them, for the sake of greater efficiency, into uniformity of method and rules. These schools are graded and supplemented by normal schools, high schools and crowned by the State university. The tendency is to unite all these school systems of the several States in one uniform national system, providing with all the abundant resources of the nation for the entire education of its citizens in every department of human knowledge, and in doing this to establish a uniform curriculum of study. uniform standards for the selection of teachers and a uniform school literary apparatus of textbooks, etc.
2d. The tendency is to hold that this system must be altogether secular. The atheistic doctrine is gaining currency, even among professed Christians and even among some bewildered Christian ministers, that an education provided by the common government for the children of diverse religious parties should be entirely emptied of all religious character. The Protestants object to the government schools being used for the purpose of inculcating the doctrines of the Catholic Church, and Romanists object to the use of the Protestant version of the Bible and to the inculcation of the peculiar doctrines of the Protestant churches. The Jews protest against the schools being used to inculcate Christianity in any form, and the atheists and agnostics protest against any teaching that implies the existence and moral government of God. It is capable of exact demonstration that if every party in the State has the right of excluding from the public schools whatever he does not believe to be true, then he that believes most must give way to him that believes least, and then he that believes least must give way to him that believes absolutely nothing, no matter in how small a minority the atheists or the agnostics may be. It is self-evident that on this scheme, if it is consistently and persistently carried out in all parts of the country, the United States system of national popular education will be the most efficient and wide instrument for the propagation of Atheism which the world has ever seen.
3d. The claim of impartiality between positions as directly contradictory as that of Jews, Mohammedans and Christians, and especially as that of theists and of atheists, is evidently absurd. And no less is the claim absurd and impossible that a system of education can be indifferency on these fundamental subjects. There is no possible branch of human knowledge which is not purely formal, like abstract logic or mathematics, which can be known or taught in a spirit of entire indifference between Theism and Atheism. Every department which deals with realities, either principles, objective things or substances, or with events, must be in reality one or the other; if it be not positively and confessedly theistic, it must be really and in full effect atheistic. The physical as well as the moral universe must be conceived either in a theistic or an atheistic light. It must originate in and develop through intelligent will—that is, in a person—or in atoms, force or chance.
Teleology must be acknowledged everywhere or be denied everywhere. Philosophy, ethics, jurisprudence, political and social science, can be conceived of and treated only from a theistic or from an atheistic point of view. The proposal to treat them from a neutral point of view is ignorant and absurd. English common law is unintelligible if not read in the light of that religion in which it had its genesis. The English language cannot be sympathetically understood or taught by a mind blind to the everywhere-present current of religious thought and life which expresses itself through its terms. The history of Christendom, especially the history of the English-speaking races, and the philosophy of history in general, will prove an utterly insoluble riddle to all who attempt to read it in any non-theistic, religiously-indifferent sense. It is certain that throughout the entire range of the higher education a position of entire indifferent ism is an absolute impossibility—that along the entire line the relation of man and of the universe to the ever-present God, the supreme Lord of the conscience and heart, the non-affirmation of the truth, is entirely equivalent to the affirmation at every point of its opposite. The prevalent superstition that men can be educated for good citizenship or for any other use under heaven without religion is as unscientific and unphilosophical as it is irreligious. It deliberately leaves out of view the most essential and controlling elements of human character: that man is constitutionally as religious (i, e. loyally or disloyally) as he is rational; that morals are impossible when dissociated from the religious basis out of which they grow; that, as a matter of fact, human liberty and stable republican institutions, and every practically