4. Dr. Burnap on the Rectitude of Human Nature,

. 556

5. Read's Hand of God in History,

. 558

6. Vinet's Montaigne and other Miscellanies,

. 559

7. Dr. Burns' Mothers of the Wise and Good,

. 560

15. Copland's Dictionary of Practical Medicine, 16. Carlyle's Latter-Day Pamphlets,

. 563

. 563

'We are reluctantly obliged to defer this notice.-EDITOR.

THE NATURE AND PROVINCE OF ECCLESIASTICAL
AUTHORITY.

BY PROF. H. N. DAY, of Western Reserve College, Ohio.

THERE are three permanent social organizations subsisting among men which are generally recognized to be of divine appointment, the Family, the State, and the Church. That there would be much in the nature and working of these institutions, founded as they are on the same social principle in man, and originating from the same divine source, common to them all, is nothing more than might rationally have been anticipated. And accustomed as we are to interpret things in the light of analogy, obtaining a great part of our knowledge, indeed, by comparison of properties. and relations, it will not appear strange if we should find, on examination, that a great part of our notions respecting any one of these institutions is derived, in fact, from the resemblances and analogies that are supposed to subsist between them. Nor will it be questioned that in this process, carried on gradually and imperceptibly during the whole development of our opinions under the continual influence of these institutions, there is a great liability to mistake and error,a liability to regard as common that which in fact is peculiar, or as peculiar that which is common, and also to confound and misplace distinctive characteristics.

If we turn now from these à priori probabilities to actual facts, we shall find our anticipations realized. We shall find ourselves perpetually reasoning from one of these institutions to another, explaining the functions and the workings of one from resemblances or analogies in the others. How much of the idea of government in a family, or a church, is derived from the civil constitution or administration? How much is

carried up into the interpretation and estimation of the influences of state measures from the experiences that have been silently gathered up in the family? How much of what is peculiar and characteristic in the civil polity of these United States can be traced directly to the ecclesiastial notions that were inculcated by the Puritans? Perhaps it would be safe to conclude that our chief concessions, and those which are most trustworthy respecting any one of these institutions, are given us, or at least are greatly modified, by this light of analogy. And as our theories here become, almost necessarily, practical principles with us, we may generally see, in the domestic training of a man, much of his type of an ecclesiastical and civil constitution and administration; so, on the other hand, it cannot be doubted that error and mistake have largely entered into the current notions and apprehensions respecting each of these institutions through the channel of mistaken analogies. This is sufficiently proved, perhaps, by the disagreements and controversies that prevail. There are some general forms of mistake and error, however, which may safely be specified as proofs of this observation. Not to anticipate too far the results of the discussion we now propose, we shall here only present some suggestions in the form of inquiry.

Is there not reason to suppose that very much of that reformatory movement, which would exclude from the state all physical violence in the administration of its authority, is to be traced back to false analogies derived from the church? That the gospel is characteristically reformatory and recov ering in its design and legitimate influence; that the church, in so far as it is a designed instrumentality to carry out the great ends of the gospel, is consequently a reformatory, recovering institution,-that it is, throughout its entire constitution and structure, an institution of grace, not of justice, intended to save the offender, not to try and condemn him, is generally admitted.

How natural and easy is the conclusion from this, that the other great social institution given from Heaven - should resemble this,that the state should only seek to reform and recover, never to try and judge except for this end of reform; that hence it should accept evidence of repentance as full satisfaction and atonement, and should never ordain sanctions which are incompatible with this principle,-should never, therefore, inflict capital punishment: how natural and easy such a conclusion, if the distinctions inherent in the respective designs and structures of the two institutions are not carefully kept in view. So, also, through these false analo

gies and mistaken resemblances, the family is made by some to be but a little church, into which mere suasion, mere counsel with affection, is to be admitted in its government; and by others, a little state, in which stern justice, with its code of rules and laws, is to preside alone at the hearth, dealing out impartial measures of reward and penalty; kindness, love, forgiveness, never to be admitted in the treatment of offenders.

Has not the church, misled by this influence of mistaken resemblances and analogies, introduced into its administration much that legitimately belongs only to the civil sphere? Has not its action, especially toward offenders, savored too often of the state spirit, and been little else than a proper legal, judicial administration, fitted only to try and pass awards upon offences, not to recover and save the offender? Has not its very organization, in too many particulars, been determined in its form and structure by inferences from mistaken state analogies?

These general remarks will suffice to show the importance and bearing of the discussion upon which we now enter. If we would correct those errors that now prevail to so great an extent in the practical administration of the church, the state, and the family, inasmuch as there is reason to suppose that they result from false analogies, we must at the outset settle in our minds the true distinctions between these institutions, that we may expose the grounds of the mistake. We can confute the advocate of reform in the state who would make all civil administration merely recovering and healing, so far, at least, as his error has proceeded from a misapplication of church characteristics, only by showing him that no such property belongs in common to the two institutions as that upon which he builds his theory; that he has mistaken a distinctive for a common attribute. And so of the family and the church: if, as we suppose, the errors have arisen from similar false analogies or mistaken resemblances, or are sustained by them, they are to be corrected only by exposing the source of the error.

In endeavoring, therefore, to set forth the true idea of ecclesiastical authority, we shall direct our attention first and chiefly to the fundamental distinctions between the three great social institutions, and especially between the two more extended of these organizations-the church and the state; -trusting that, if our labor prove successful here, the fortifying considerations from other sources to be advanced afterward, will appear the more weighty and conclusive.

What, then, are the specific characteristics which distinguish from one another the three great social institutions sub

sisting by divine ordinance among men,-the family, the church, and the state? We shall proceed with more safety if we first determine what is common to all.

In the first place, they are all alike societies; they are all founded on the social nature of man, and are forms in which that nature develops itself and acts. As societies, they all have their respective forms of polity; their forms of constitutive, organic, and functional or administrative law.

Each has its polity. This is implied in the very idea of a society. If the profound observation at the opening of the great work on the Spirit of Laws, that "Laws are the necessary relations resulting from the nature of things," be received as just, then the very existence of men in the relations of society implies laws. Out of these social relations there spring at once reciprocal obligations and rights, which involve by necessity laws or regulative principles. Whatever may be the stage of development toward a perfect declarative system or code which these laws may have reached, even if they be in their earliest embryo state, there is still a polity. As soon as the social relations exist, the rights and obligations are in being, and with them the laws which collectively constitute a polity. It is not, in our apprehension, a perfectly correct view which a late author' seems to advocate, that the state is founded distinctively on "the jural principle,"—on the principle of right. The jural principle lies at the foundation of every society as such; and polity is nothing more than the development of this principle in the form of laws. Just so far, therefore, as the church or the family has a polity, it involves and presupposes the jural principle as its basis and source. But, farther, each of these societies has a polity embracing all the three great departments of law as we have enumerated them, constitutive, organic, and functional or administrative. Each has its constitutive law founded on its intrinsic nature,-on that which constitutes it what it is, makes it a distinctive society, by which it is characterized and defined in relation to all other societies. Each has its organic law,-that law which determines the form of its existence, its particular limits and boundaries, its membership, its officers, and the like. And each has, also, its functional law, which regulates its operations as an organic body.

Inasmuch, therefore, as these three institutions are social in their essential nature, and alike have a polity complete in all the three great departments of a polity, they have much that is common to all. Rights, obligations, dependencies, 1 Dr. Lieber, in his Political Ethics.