The state moreover is not derived from the sovereignty of a mere collection of men, since its origin is not in a reflective act. It is not the result simply of choice and design. It would be consistent with this to refer the existence of justice on the earth to the formal deliberation and conclusion of men. And historically, man does not exist apart from the organization of society, that is, the nation, and from that antecedent condition determine its being. The will of man is certainly a necessary element in it, but as it has not its inception in thought, it has not its origin in the individual nor in the collective will.

This proposition merges the nation into the conception of a bare sovereignty. It is the institution of a power which allows no limitation, and acknowledges no responsibility beyond itself. Its sole mandate is law, and in this alone the whole political order subsists. The merest caprice of the multitude is the only authority. In another form it is the foundation of society upon mere might. There is in it no recognition of the state as the institution of justice. It cannot comprehend the rights of the individual. As in the contractual theory, the assumption of the absolute sovereignty of the individual, by whose private act society was determined, could not arrive at the conception of public rights and public duties, so also the absolute sovereignty of the mass cannot consist with private rights, or the freedom of the individual. It is the assertion of unlimited power, the grasp from which it has been the effort of civilization to wrest the supremacy, and to substitute in its stead a moral force. It is not the tyranny of the one, but the tyranny of the multitude; and yet the latter passes indifferently into the former, and in the degradation of the individual through the subversion of individual freedom the way is open to imperialism; the domination over men in one form succeeds to another.

The sequence to the assumption of political power which this proposition involves, has been always the same in

every form. The inevitable result of political atheism has been a political absolutism. But the consciousness of the divine principle in political power cannot be wholly effaced, and there follows the apotheosis of the dominant authority. The Roman emperors are worshipped as divine. In the rejection of the moral obligation in political power, with the overthrow of all freedom, and the degradation of the individual, there invariably will come the apotheosis of the emperor or the apotheosis of the people. The sovereignty, as the freedom of man, neither in the individual nor in the people is absolute. It can consist only with the recognition of a divine relation and the consequent obligation to a divine law. The freedom of the people has its postulate only in the organic and moral being of the people, and this is the precedent of sovereignty. As the sequence to political atheism has been political absolutism, so also it is only as it has a divine origin, and is formed in a divine relation, that freedom exists. This has had the clearest expression in the crises of humanity. The voice of freedom, the mighty voice of nations, has not been "The ruler is absolute," "The people is absolute," but it has been "God and the people," and it has confessed its deliverer in Him. It has not been the shout in the host, but in the name of the Lord of hosts.

The truth which this proposition controverts is, that the origin of the nation is not in the will of the individual, nor in the will of the whole, but in the higher will without which the whole can have no being, and its continuity is not in the changing interest of men, but in the vocation. which in a widening purpose from the fathers to the children joins the generations of men, and its unity is not in the concurrent choice of a certain number of men, but in the divine purpose in history which brings to one end the unnumbered deeds of unnumbered men.

And yet the truth which underlies this proposition also comes into clearer light in the higher development of the

nation. The sovereignty of the nation is from God, and of the people. The representative of its sovereignty is therefore responsible to God and accountable to the people. The power is transmitted through no intermediate hands, the people is invested with it, in all its majesty, in the nation founded in the law of a moral person and derivative from God alone.1

1 The people holding their authority from God, hold it not as an inherent right but as a trust from Him, and are accountable to Him for it. It is not their own. - Brownson, The American Republic, p. 127.

CHAPTER IV.

THE ORIGIN OF THE NATION.

THE nation has a divine foundation, and has for its end the fulfillment of the divine end in history. It has its issue in the divine prevision, that is, in the moral nature of man. It is not the continuance of the family, nor the product of force, nor the working of instinct, nor the result of the social compact, nor the creation of the sovereignty of the people; while the truths which underlie these otherwise false assumptions, in the course of providence, illustrate in a greater or less degree the rise and growth and conservation of the nation.1

The origin and foundation of the nation has, in certain aspects, its illustration in its analogy with the family. The family is a divine institution, and so also is the nation; the family is the natural condition, and so also is the nation, and as natural it is not of human construction although a human development, its constituent elements are implanted in the nature of man, and as that nature is unfolded in the realization of the divine idea, there is the development of the state. The family also is rude and imperfect in its form in the early period of the race, and it slowly develops into the true and the normal, that is, the monogamic form; thus also the nation slowly develops into the more perfect type.

1 I assume in this argument, from the outset, the being of God and His connection with the world, and the origin and derivation of the personality of man from Him, that "in Him we live and move and have our being," — subjects which belong immediately to another province of thought; the statement however may be scarcely necessary, since the work would not perhaps have detained so long any reader who may deny these propositions.

The nation exists as an organic and moral being; its existence is a fact, and the apprehension of its existence in its beginning, is in the conscious life of man. There is therefore, outside of this consciousness, evidence which is only indicative of its origin, as of the origin of the individual and of the moral life of the individual.1

The evidence of the origin of the nation is in its necessary nature. The nation is an organic unity; it is not an artificial fabric nor an abstract system, but it has a life which is definite and disparate, and has a development; therefore it has not its origin in the individual nor the collective will of man, but must proceed from a power which can determine the origin of organic being. The nation is an organic whole; but the whole, in which there is the conception of the parts, cannot be determined by the parts, since there must be the predetermination of the whole to which the parts belong; but the whole cannot determine itself, and must therefore proceed from a power beyond itself.

The evidence of the origin of the nation is also in its being as a moral person. There is and can be for personality, as it transcends physical nature, only a divine origin, and its realization is in a divine relation. The subsistence of the human personality is in the divine personality, and its realization is in its divine relations, and as with the individual personality, so also with the moral personality of the nation, its origin and its consistence can be only in God.

The origin of the nation has its illustration in the various aspects in which the nation in its necessary conception may

1 Plutarch says, in a citation by Haller, "In my judgment, a city could be more easily built without ground, than a state could be founded or exist without faith in God."

Cicero says, with a singular and reverent beauty of language, "Nihil est illi principi Deo, qui omnem mundum regit, quod quidem in terris fiat, acceptius quam, concilia coetusque hominum jure sociati quæ civitates appellantur." Somn. Scipionis, ch. iii.