Show how the violation of the rights of relationship leads to the most dreadful misery in families,-how deeply those who are wronged suffer,-how they are deprived of their highest privilege--loving and esteeming those dear to them. Show how it introduces the utmost confusion into society, amid which all the purer feelings of love and home perish. Show the violent hatred and strife it engenders.

The indulgence of anger and an angry disposition is injurious to society, because it leads to the infliction of injuries, and generally to the making others unhappy. The indulgence of fear deprives us of the power and energy necessary to overcome the difficulties in the way of serving others; it prevents us even from gaining the ability to serve men. The indulgence of pride, or too much regard for ourselves, raises indignation and hatred in others, causes us to assume an offensive position towards them, and prevents us from having that sympathy with them which leads us to serve them.

Indulgence in vanity, or too sensitive a regard to the opinion of others, is apt-when we have to do, as most of us have, with the weak, inferior, ignorant, or wicked-to make us follow the conduct which will please them, and to shrink from following our own conviction of what is right; consequently, we then do not those things which benefit society, but the opposite. And in the same way you may trace the effects of all slavery to our lower principles; while you may show that all obedience to our higher principles-to the love of knowledge, to benevolence, to conscience, and to God-leads us to do those things which are beneficial to every one, and which promote the progress of the national life.

Thus the study of national life, like that of individual life, by laying open to us the consequences of actions and dispositions, reveals to us more and more the sinfulness of sin and the beauty of goodness. It raises in us hatred to the one and love to the other. Instructed by this knowledge, benevolence takes up a loftier and larger empire in our life, and commands us not only to be kind to those about us, but to pursue every virtue and abstain from every sin. With this knowledge, love becomes to us what St. Paul saw it, the "fulfilling of the law." We see that all sin works ill to our neighbour; and as love cannot work such ill, it requires the abstinence from sin and the obedience of the law of righteousness. We see now, too, why society punishes great criminals as its determined

enemies.

Yet we are all truly the enemies of society when we do any wrong, although it may not be always convenient for society to punish us. Finally, God evidently wishes the moral order and progress of society; therefore, when, by our wrong doing, we offend that moral order and prevent that progress, we set ourselves in opposition to God.

LESSON III.

POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY-RELIGIOUS INTERPRETATION.

In all this view of nations advancing in civilization, you have seen a large part of a whole people-of many peoplesimpressed with what we call moral or holy feelings, aiming after some sort of a moral life. You have had before your eyes, then, the spectacle of millions of human minds moved by this moral spirit. Now, if you ask yourself how this moral spirit comes to them, you have at once the spectacle of the supreme Mind brooding over the whole human world, and writing out, as it were, his wishes on every human mind. These are like so many millions of books to us, in which the Father repeats to us, again and again, the same holy lesson. What a testimony this to the depth of his earnestness in this lesson! What a solemn determination he maintains to teach it to us all! How he seems to feel it always as the chief thing! How awful, perfect, and intense, then, we ought from this to feel the holiness of God! How clear and mighty ought it not to seem to us, written out over so vast a book, with such countless repetitions! These contemplations raise in our mind emotions which we may express in words of Scripture similar to those which we used before in Biography. The study of political geography also presents to us the picture of millions of human beings, all realizing more or less of this wonderful five-fold life. Now, life in any of its forms is blessing, but it is blessing in proportion to its nobleness. What a flood of blessing, then, do we behold the Parent Spirit pouring into the spirits of his children! He is like an inexhaustible fountain, pouring streams of life into millions upon millions of thirsty spirits, and causing them to be rich and beautiful with verdure. What an idea this gives us of the love of God! We cannot imagine to ourselves the smallest

portion of the infinite good which he is thus pouring forth for ever. What is the sentiment that rises in our minds at this contemplation? (See Psalm cvii, 8; xxxvi, 7,8,9; ciii.) Another religious lesson which you may sometimes draw from political geography is suggested by the fact that it shows us all nations, who have risen above the lowest animal life, becoming touched by religious impressions; and therefore -you may urge—we ought to trust the religious tendencies in ourselves as being not mere peculiarities of our own, but universal tendencies of our race. Show, hence, that to be unreligious is to be indifferent and unfaithful to a high and universal persuasion in human nature. Unreligiousness is unnaturalness-that is, denial of our higher nature-just as want of regard to good and loving parents is unnaturalness. But the religious beliefs we see scattered over the world must not be taken by us as authorities for the form in which we are to think of God. They are proofs that the mind has a tendency to look up to God; but then we know that each mind must see him through the glass of its own nature; and when that nature, as it too often happens, is darkened by ignorance and error, the idea of God is clouded over with errors that deform his truth and beauty. We must trust in the general religious instinct, but must endeavour, by clearing our minds, to see God as he is. Our view of him will always be in proportion to the wisdom and excellence of our own minds.

We gain our truest idea of God from a conception of the true end of our own life. That which he has willed us most to aim after, that he loves and is himself. He wills us to aim after the intellectual, benevolent, holy, and religious life. He, then, is himself an intellectual, benevolent, and holy being; and though he cannot be properly religious, because there is no being above him, yet we may attribute to him one form of religion-he loves and reverences the noble more than the ignoble among his creatures.

Every religion in the world may be tested, then, by the ideas we before mentioned (p. 235), and we may consider it high or low in the scale according to the amount in which these prevail in it.

CHAPTER XVII.

BUILDING IN THE COURTS OF HUMANITY,

CONTINUED.

LESSON I.

HISTORY-INTELLECTUAL INTERPRETATION.

We have now laid the foundation of three compartments or sanctuaries of our temple of truth, and erected an altar to our God in each. Let us proceed to another. We have been, in imagination, over the surface of the earth,-looked down on many nations. tribes, and races, and marked their different forms and degrees of national life-but most especially of those who offer evidences of present, or relics of past, civilization. As we come home from our flight, we reflect on what we have seen; and the thought occurs to us— "We have only seen what is at the present day; but all these nations whom we have studied must have come to their present condition through many steps, many changes and experiences, which it would be interesting, by flying back into the past, to mark. So, too, it would be interesting to go back and gain some account of the civilized nations who have left relics of themselves to trace the steps by which they first advanced to civilization, and then lost it." And when this thought occurs to us, we try to look back into the past, and see what was there-but all is dark and impenetrable. We feel like a person sitting on some hill top, around whom there has gathered some vast mist: he can see a few yards around him; but when he tries to look forth on the plains below, all is hidden from him. So to us, the little of poliography or national life we know seems but as the few yards of surface around us; and the infinite plain of the past is veiled from our sight by the great mist of ignorance. But while we are looking with wistful eye upon that mist, the historian-the great seer of the past-appears before us and

says- -"I can satisfy your longing-I can show you the mystery of the past-I can so inform your imagination that before it the cloud of darkness shall roll back and disclose to you the events of time-the steps by which nations have become what they are, and what they have been. But, before I begin, form to yourself a clear idea of what it is you seek, that I should show you. In Political Geography (the poliography of the present), you wished to know to what degree of the fivefold national life or civilization each nation has attained. In History (the poliography of the past), you must seek to know through what forms and events of national life the nation has arrived to its present point of life. History is Tracing the progress of civilization. I would have you think of our present national life (or civilization) as a stream which passes along the great plain of time, and deepens and widens as it flows, receiving tributaries from various sources. It is evident that this national life of the present is a stream which has been formed from the waters of many forms of national life that have gone before it. With this idea in your minds, behold, at my command, the mist rolls back.

66

You look down on a vast plain. This is the plain of time. You cannot yet make out the objects distinctly, but I will, by and by, bring them into distinctness. You see a shadowy stream, like a faint blue mist, flowing across the field, becoming larger and larger as it approaches you. This is the stream of English civilization.-(See chart of civilization.) And yet the extent of the field of time and of the stream of civilization, which you can now behold, is but a small portion of the whole. You see back to the time called the time of the Reformation, and there we, for the present, must again rest. Let us contemplate this portion of the field and stream before we proceed. It may be called, compared to all other portions, the Period of rapid progress. It comprises about years, and may, for the present, be said to begin about the year 1500.

350

In

"The whole field which you will have to survey will contain 3850 years; that is, wanting 150 years to make 4000. order to enable you to embrace this field in your survey, I shall imagine it as really containing 4000 years, and then shall divide it into eight great equal portions of five centuries each, considering the last period as not yet completed. Each of these periods will be characterized by the civilization that