deed, so far as it is a visible and external organization, of men in the flesh, and, therefore, has a temporal side and temporal functions, but even in these respects it is controlled by spiritual relations and spiritual ends. The rule of government is different in these respective institutes. That of the State, on the one hand, although it may incorporate into itself elements of God's moral law, is still distinctively a political constitution and a civil and criminal code. On the other hand, the rule of government in the family and the church is the divine law as embodied in the Scriptures. The rulers are also different. In the State the ruler is the magistrate; in the family and the church, the father. They are, in fine, different kinds of government. The State is mainly an instance of retributive government, proceeding by rewards and penalties; the family and the church are specimens of disciplinary government operating by rewards and chastisements. In the one case penal justice is prominent; in the other it is excluded. The family, like the church, is a disciplinary and not a penal institute.

Having glanced at some of the most important differences between these organisms, let us briefly consider the relation in which the family stands to the state and the church, and the principles which originating in it ought to pass into and influence them.

These institutes, although in themselves distinct, are in a certain sense related. They all have a common origin in the will of God, are organs through which His manifold government of the world is mediately administered, are accountable to Him for the manner in which their subordinate rule is exercised, and are, in the discharge of their legitimate functions, supported by the sanction of His authority. One common

feature characterizes them all-they are ordinances of God. No association of personal beings in the universe has a right to be godless. In a future and more perfect condition of human society no organization, governmental or merely social, secular or sacred, will deny its relation to God or assume to act independently of religious sanctions. The more nearly society approaches to its original idea and its destined perfection, the farther will it recede from the atheistic claim to be irresponsible to God, and the more will it tend to that condition in which He will be confessed to be all in all, a condition in which His name will be impressed upon every corporation, company, and employment, when holiness to the Lord shall be written upon the bells of the horses. When? do you ask? When the star of the Millennial morn shall blaze on the dark and stormy horizon of human sin and strife. Sin has effected the monstrous schism betwixt man and God, and betwixt men and men. This fearful cleavage will be closed up, but closed up only so far as the predestinating purpose of God shall operate through the provisions of redemption. Neither at present is the scheme of optimism nor that of pessimism practically true. Heaven will realize the former, hell the latter. Human society is the preparation for one or the other, accordingly as it is or is not governed by the principles of the Bible. The acknowledgment of God will find its consummation in heaven, the denial of Him will reach its climax in hell. But whatever may be the actual facts in the development of our fallen race, the idea of human society was that it should conform to the divine will, and express the principles of the divine government. All men, whether regarded individually or collectively, are, by the conditions of their being, bound

to acknowledge, obey and glorify God. There is no logical medium between this doctrine and Atheism. The Family, the State, and the Church are correlated institutes in God's great plan of government-a plan by which He pleases ordinarily to administer rule, not immediately, but through the medium of human organisms, each intended to promote His glory and man's good in its own prescribed sphere, and all contributing together to the accomplishment of these ends.

It is, furthermore, obvious to remark that of these institutes, the family is fundamental, radical, germinal. It is the primary point of unity to the others. It is the origin and propagator of the race, and it is the first organism from which the others started and received their development. Had not sin occurred, the terms human family would have had a significance which they do not and cannot now possess. All mankind would have been one family, not only as having expanded from a common centre, developed from a common stock, but as being allied by feelings the most tender and affectionate. They would have spoken the same language, obeyed the same law and worshipped at the same altar. Society would have been a perfect brotherhood. Wherever one human being would have been met by another in all the wide world, although personally a stranger, he would have experienced the welcome of a brother's heart and the embrace of a brother's arms. If there could have been a heaven without Jesus, the earth would have been heaven. At least, it would have been a universal paradise.

But, conditioned disastrously by sin as it actually is, the human race is not a heterogeneous collection of individual units, but a great aggregation of families; and through whatever of conservative influence still

results from the laws impressed upon the family relation, that relation exercises a restraining and wholesome effect upon society. Were the population of the earth not thus composed of families, it would be a wild and ungovernable mob destitute of the first principles of law and order, of religion and morals, a promiscuous herd of human wild beasts,-nay, worse, for beasts of prey are not wont to rend their own species, and animals are controlled infallibly by the law of instinct beyond which they cannot pass. But when human beings transgress, as they do, the laws imposed upon their nature, the evil multiplies itself until the genius of license, misrule, and disorder riots in undisputed and unlimited sway, and sweeps its hapless victims, as if possessed of demons, onward to every social excess and agitation, communistic, socialistic, anarchistic, nihilistic to universal revolution, amidst the terrific explosions of which all legitimate, time-honored and venerable institutions are in danger of being whelmed in one common and fearful ruin. In illustration of this, one need only cite the recent attempt to destroy the British parliament house and the tower of London.

The time allotted to these remarks will not allow more than a few passing words upon a theme tempting in itself and meriting serious consideration. I allude to the principles which, imbedded in the family constitution, make it a propedeutic for every form of the social fabric; principles which were designed to be of far-reaching value, to diffuse themselves beyond the limits of the family, and to be incorporated into the State and the church. There is the principle of obedience to law and to divinely appointed authority, of veneration for age, wisdom and sanctity, of deference to all who have the right to be the superiors of others.

The family is precisely the school in which this fundamental virtue ought to be fostered. The neglect to cultivate it there must tell injuriously upon the other relations of life, while the failure of the State and the church to insist upon it would bode nothing but evil to the future. Without it government would be impotent, except as enforced by the bayonet and the cannon. Society would perish at the top.

There is the principle of scrupulous respect for the refinement and purity of woman which finds a peculiar field for expression in the family circle, in the relation of the child to his mother, of the brother to his sister, of the husband to his wife, and which is entitled to be regarded as the palladium of social life. There is the principle of the headship of man, which divinely ordained to operate in the family is also divinely enjoined upon the church. It is also implied that woman was not intended by her Maker to enter as a public factor into political contests and open crusades for the melioration of moral evils, to hurl herself into the fierce arena of gladiatorial strife. That would be to impair the beautiful quality of dependence and modesty which is the talisman of her power, as a rough touch of the hand irreparably brushes off the down from the petal of the flower. Were this to become the general custom—and may God preserve our Southern land from such an inversion of her traditions!-the cry of the ancient pagan persecutors of Christians would, with the change of a single word, be transmuted into the scarcely less cruel shout of modern society: Women to the lions! Their proper influence would be gone. But were general success to attend this ill-starred effort to clothe them with an improper influence, the result must be that the Graces would be transformed