Government, which, in the Bible, is ascribed to God, is lodged in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, as the token of the higher Christian civilization to which nations should attain under the dispensation of the Gospel. As in the Religious aspect, so in the Christian aspect; national life is organic, and the Nation is an organic body. Jesus Christ is the Head, from whom the Body derives its life, its nourishment, and its growth. The Constitution of a nation makes it a unit, and organizes its members into a corporation. Man is developed therein to his fullest capacity; for it is society that developes man, and the Christian nation is the highest type of society ; for as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is the Nation ; and the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee; nor the hand to the feet, I have no need of you; but God has set the members, every one of them, in the body as it has pleased Him, that there should be no schism, nor, much less, “ secession,” in the body; but that the members should have the same care, one for another, and whether one membersuffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honored, all the members rejoice with it. (See l Cor., xii, 12-26.) This is the aspect of Society in the organic relations of National being. Individualism is recognized, but in its associations. Alone, man would perish, like a limb cut off. And as the individual man is the product of society in the family, so the true and natural development of man is in society, of which the Christian nation is the Divine organism and highest exponent, for man’s terrestrial life and happiness. In opposition to this Divine idea of the Nation, is the theory of the social compact. When the rulers in the Church, and the rulers in the State, perverted the Scripture by confounding the distinction between the “ powers ” and the persons in the Government, the Divine right of kings, in the line of hereditary descent, became a personal prerogative of absolute power. Nations were regarded as made for kings, and not kings for the nations. It was the saturnalia of royalty, amid the groanings of the populace. But when the imprisoned soul burst its shackles, and hurled them at its oppressor in the Vatican, proclaiming free
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