demonstrated in respect to it.

Law in its true sense is not the work of mere will—not an act of intellectual caprice. It is a severe and necessary deduction from the relations of things. The Divine legislator sees and knows these relations perfectly. He can draw no wrong deduction from them. He can make no mistake. Whatever laws have certainly emanated from Him are certainly right. This is the sense in which it is true that "there is one Lawgiver:" all others but attempt the work; He alone is competent to perform it. There is no mathematical certainty in our reasoning on moral as there is on physical relations. We know that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles with an assurance we can never have in regard to any moral truth whatever. The Divine law is a deduction necessarily and mathematically certain as much so as any truth in geometry. Human law can aim only at such a probable deduction as results from a finite and imperfect knowledge.

The system of law delivered by Moses to the Jews deserves, therefore, the most careful study at the hands of all who believe him to have been a divinely commissioned lawgiver. These laws were not intended for any other people than the Israelites; they were adapted to their circumstances, climate, country, neighbors, to the period of the world when they were promulgated, and during which they were to prevail. They were certainly not meant as a model for any other form of government, for any other people, or for any other time. Many laws are to be found there which are unnecessary and superfluous if applied elsewhere. Many actions, innocent in themselves, are prohibited. All the mala prohibita are not mala in se. But one thing is as clear as a sunbeam, and that is a very important light to the student of Ethics; if God was the author of these laws, nothing morally wrong was commanded or allowed by them. When it was said of the Jews through the prophet, "I gave them statutes which were not good," it cannot mean not morally good; laws which it would be sinful in them to obey. The word in the original is not the word appropriated in that language to right, conformity to rule, but to goodness in its most general sense. Good statutes mean wise and expedient statutes. By no process can the logical mind be brought to the conclusion that the perfectly wise and good lawgiver, in framing a code of laws for any people, would impose as a punishment "for the hardness of their hearts," a penalty, submission to which would itself be punishable as a sin against the law of nature. He might command or allow as such punishment what in itself was inexpedient and injurious to them, and which upon the promulgation of a new law repealing the old and prohibiting what it allowed, would become by the sanction of the same lawgiver thenceforth universally malum prohibitum. The authority of God as a lawgiver is certainly not confined to a mere declaration of what is right or wrong by the law of Nature.

There can be no merely arbitrary laws. It is necessary to bear in mind that we are now considering the province of the legislator, who ought to enact no law without an end. "Civil legislative power," says Rutherforth (B. II, c. vi, s. 10), "is not in the strict sense of the word an absolute power of restraining or altering the rights of the subjects: it is limited in its own nature to its proper objects, to those rights only in which the common good of the society or of its several parts requires some restraint or alteration. So that whenever we call the civil legislative power, either of society in general or of a particular legislative body within any society, an absolute legislative power, we can only mean that it has no external check upon it in fact; for all civil legislative power is in its own nature under an internal check of right: it is a power of restraining or altering the rights of the subjects for the purpose of advancing or securing the general good, and not of restraining or altering them for any purpose whatever, and much less for no purpose at all." There are, therefore, no arbitrary laws which fulfil the end of law. Doubtless the true objects of society and government may be mistaken by him who sets up to be law-maker, or if those objects are properly appreciated, the means for advancing them may be mistaken. It is not wonderful that in a matter which demands the highest wisdom, many should try and fail.

It becomes important to inquire what are the true ends of society and government? Man is a gregarious animal—a social being. He may exist in solitude, but he cannot enjoy life: he cannot perfect his nature. Those who have watched and studied closely the habits of those irrational animals, who live in communities, as the ant, the bee, and the beaver, have observed not only a settled system and subordination, but the existence of some wonderful faculty, like articulate speech, by which communication takes place from one to another; a power essential to order. Man, the highest social animal in the scale of earthly being, has also the noblest faculty of communication.

The final cause—the reason why man was made a social being—is that society was necessary to the perfection of his physical, intellectual, and moral powers, in order to give the fullest return to the labor of his hands and to secure the greatest advances in knowledge and wisdom. It is for no vain national power or glory, for no experimental abstraction, that governments are instituted among men. It is for man as an individual. It is to promote his development; and in that consists his true happiness. The proposition would be still more accurate were it said, society is constituted that men may be free—free to develop themselves—free to seek their own happiness, following their own instincts or conclusions. Without society—and government, which of course results from it—men would not be free. An individual in a state of isolation might defend himself from savage beasts, and more savage men, as long as his strength lasted, but when sickness or age came on, the product of the labor of his hands, accumulated by a wise foresight to meet such a contingency, would become the prey of the stronger. The comparatively weak-minded and ignorant would be constantly subject to the frauds of the more cunning.

It is enough to look at the effects of the division of employments and the invention of labor-saving machinery, to recognize the invaluable results of society in the development of wealth and power. In a state of isolation a man's entire time and strength would be needed for the supply of his physical wants. As men advance in knowledge and wisdom the standard of their mere physical wants is elevated. They demand more spacious and comfortable dwellings, more delicate viands and finer clothing.

It is not true that men would be morally better or happier, if their style of living were reduced to the greatest plainness consistent with bare comfort. Our taste in this respect, as for the fine arts, as it becomes more refined, becomes more susceptible of high enjoyment. When large fortunes are suddenly made by gambling, or what is equivalent thereto, then it is that baleful luxury is introduced—a style of living beyond the means of those who adopt it, and spreading through all classes. Taste, cultivated and enjoyed at the expense of morals, degrades and debases instead of purifying and elevating character. Men, who have accumulated wealth slowly