adoption of the law of conscience and of God as the rule of life; in its progress, a successful struggle with whatever opposes this law; in its completion, the harmonious and joyful action of every power in its fulfilment. This is the only liberty known under the government of God. He who knows it not is the slave of sin. He who struggles not for it, is in a contented bondage of which physical slavery is but a feeble type. The perfection of this liberty is only another name for moral perfection, which, as I have said, is the great end of the individual; and as the direct motives and means for the attainment of this are furnished only by the government of God, it is evident that "We ought to obey God rather than men."

Having thus spoken of the effect of human government upon man in his individual character, I now proceed to inquire, whether it is equally limited and negative in its bearing upon him in his social condition.

And here I remark, that it is only incidentally that human government is necessary to man as a social being at all. Society was before government, and if man had retained his original state, it might, perhaps, have existed without it till the end of time. Man is constituted by his Creator a social being; he has faculties to the expansion and perfection of which society is requisite, but he has no faculties the necessities of which constitute him a political being. There must be politicians, just as there must be farmers, and merchants, and physicians, that they and others may enjoy social life; but social life is corrupted when politics enter largely into it. It is not sufficiently noticed, that it is through social institutions and habits far more than through political forms, that the happiness or misery of man is produced. It was not from the oppressions of the government, but from a corrupted social state, that the prophet of old wished to flee into the wilderness. It was because his people were all adulterers, an assembly of treacherous men, because every brother would supplant, and every neighbor would walk with slanders. Such a state of things may exist under any form of political organization. It may exist under ours. Men may be loud in their praise of republican forms, and yet be false, and unkind, and litigious; they may be indolent, and profane, and sabbath breakers, and gamblers, and licentious, and intemperate. Yes, and there may be neighborhoods of such men, and the place where they assemble nightly, hard by a banner that creaks in the wind, may be the liveliest image of hell that this earth can present. I certainly know, and my hearers are fortunate if they do not know, neighborhoods in this land of liberty and equality, where the only use made of liberty is to render families and society wretched, and where the only equality, is an equality in vice and social degradation, which no man is permitted even to attempt to rise above without constant annoyance. Better, far better, is family affection, and kind neighborhood under a regal, or even a despotic government, than such liberty as this.

Government then is not an end, but a means. Society is the end, and government should be the agent of society, to benefit man in his social condition. The extent to which it can do this will depend on its form, and the power with which it is entrusted. Absolute power, which should be used for this purpose, is generally abused. Considering itself as having interests distinct from those of the people, it too often seeks to keep them in a state of degradation, and to appropriate to itself the largest possible share of those blessings which ought to be equally diffused. "Get out of my sunlight," said Diogenes to Alexander the Great: "Get out of my sunlight"—cease to obstruct the free circulation of blessings intended for all, might the people say under any arbitrary form of government ever yet administered. Still, such a government, when under the direction of wisdom and benevolence, has power to produce great social and moral revolutions for the good of mankind. Such a revolution was commenced by Peter the Great, and his measures, though necessary, were such as none but an absolute monarch could have adopted. Aside from christianity, the judicious exercise of such a power is the only hope of a people debased beyond a certain point. The King of Prussia can maintain a better and more efficient system of schools, than any republican government. He can provide qualified teachers, and can compel the children to attend.

But when, as in this country, government is the direct agent of society, when it is so far controlled by the people as to secure the majority at least from oppression, being merely an expression of the will of that majority, it can have no power to produce moral and social reformations. Laws do not execute themselves, and in such a state of things they cannot be effectually executed if the violation of them is upheld by public sentiment. In such a case, when vices begin to creep in, and the tendency of things is downwards, we must have a force different from that of the government; we must have moral power. Here religion comes in, and must come in, or "the beginning of the end" has come. The intellect must be enlightened, and the conscience quickened, and moral life infused into the mass; the good and the evil must commingle in free conflict, and public sentiment must be changed. When this is done, when patriotism, and philanthropy, and religion, have caused an ebb-tide in the flood of evil that was coming up over the land, then government may come in, not to carry forward a moral reformation by force, but to erect a barrier against the return of that tide. It can secure what these agents have gained. It can put a shield into the hands of society, with which it can, if it pleases, protect itself against that selfishness and malignity which always lurk in its borders, and which moral influence cannot reach. If, for example, polygamy were established among us as it is among the Turks, a government like ours could do nothing for its removal. But religion could awaken a sense of obligation, and statistics could point out the number of poor women and uneducated children thrown by it for support mainly upon those who had pledged themselves to be the husband of one wife, and christian and philanthropic effort might show that it was injurious to individuals, and families, and the state; and then a law might be passed, as there has been, to defend society against this evil.

This inefficacy of our government to produce moral and social reformations should be well understood, because it throws the fearful responsibility of maintaining our institutions directly upon the people, where it must rest. A government originating in society, can have but slight ground to stand on in resisting its downward tendency. That there is in society such a tendency, all history shows. As nations have become older, they have invariably become more corrupt. They have never reached that point in general morality at which men cease to corrupt each other by associating together. Such a tendency, not counteracted, must be fatal to republican governments, for republican government is self-government, and as the internal law becomes feeble, external force must be increased; and accordingly we find that every people hitherto, have either been under regal power from the beginning, or have, in time, reached a point in corruption, when that power became necessary. Republican government then, is not so much the cause of a good social state, as its sign. It can never be borne up, with its stars and stripes floating, upon the surface of a society that is not strongly impregnated with virtue. Take this away, and it goes down by its own weight, and the beast of tyranny, with