Hence, too, the influence of the Eucharist upon the Heart, as nutriment of the Christ-like Affections. Hence the effect of the habitual use of this Holy Sacrament in producing to their perfection Faith and Works, hand in hand.

These are questions and resolutions of Morality and Ethics of the highest importance. And these I have thought myself bound to enter upon and examine at length,-for surely the questions, "What is that which most humanizes the Heart of man?" "What discipline in the Church is thereunto most efficient and most useful?" and "How shall Faith be perfected into Love, and true works of Love and Mercy be done spontaneously?" These are high and lofty questions of Christian Science.

And all spring from the one great fact of "God in our flesh and our blood," God, our brother, in this flesh forever, and thus as Man, eternally seated upon the throne of power.

And although in this age, plunged in selfish ambition and the pursuit of pleasure, these things may be thought strange deductions, yet the time shall come when universally it shall be a practice in the Church that all shall come weekly* to the Communion. And then it shall be visible and manifest, as it was of old, that the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, are, by their relation to the nature of man, peculiarly suited and adapted to work upon that portion of our spiritual being that we call the "Heart,” and to ripen Faith into Love, and cause true Works of Mercy and Benevolence to be done in Faith, through Love.

With this we end this Book, and in the next books we shall discuss the affections of the Home or Family, of the Nation and of the Church. The ensuing Book shall be occupied with those of the Family.

* While I am so much in favor of the practice, I must say that the adoption of it, on the part of the Clergy as well as of the laity, needs peculiar caution, lest we sin by haste or by presumption. I would, therefore, recommend the careful perusal of "the Tracts upon the Weekly Eucharist," by Dr. Muhlenburg, of the Church of the Holy Communion, New York.

BOOK V.

THE HOME AND ITS AFFECTIONS.

CHAPTER I.

Society. Of Divine institution.-Coeval with Man.-Man's nature answering to it, and it answering to Man's nature.-The fiction of a Social Contract examined and refuted.

WE have in the foregoing book examined the Affections as existing in the heart of the individual man. We have defined them as finding their ends in Persons, and these persons existing in Society. We have again and again expressed our opinion that Society is of a threefold organization, the Home, the Nation, the Church: that it is a divine institution, and coeval with man, an organization for fixed and determined purposes, and in set and determinate forms. These opinions of ours are familiar, as opinions, to our readers.

We have also, at different parts of this book, as it came up according to the subject, shown the uses of Society; that Society in itself is one grand school of teaching, divided into three, which teaches in the Family, Love; in the Nation, Justice and Equity; in the Church, Holiness. These uses we have, at various periods of our work, illustrated. The uses, however, manifestly are facts; they could exist as uses of Society, whatsoever its origin: the question now is of its origin. Our opinion that we have expressed is, that it is of Divine Institution, coeval and congenital with man; the organization, just as much as the individual, an existence made of God for set purposes, and in fixed, unchangeable forms.

This it must be, or else made of and by man; not of divine origin, but made by a multitude of men consenting thereunto, as men, after an unanimous plan, frame and build a house.

There is no alternative-either Society is by God intended for the purposes that we see it fulfil, and is of his building; or else it is made by man after his own will: one thing or the other must be true.

Now of this latter opinion there have been in modern times many advocates; their theory is called the "theory of the Social Contract." It is, we conceive, in its main features fairly represented thus:

"There was a time when there was no Society, but men were in a State of Nature. Then they came voluntarily together, and by contract they constituted Society. Hence that agreement

is called the Social Contract: and so doing they each renounced a portion of their individual rights, as the price to Society for the securing of the others." These three clauses will embrace, we believe, all the elements of this theory.

We shall examine these asseverations one by one.

Now with regard to the fact of contract, what evidence is there that this which we call Society was constituted by contract among individuals, who formerly not being in society contracted to make it, and after it was made were thenceforth in it? What evidence is there of the contract which the theory takes to be a fact?

Of such a fact there is in existence neither record, witnesses, registry, evidence of time, or place, or any one of those circumstances which are requisite to the proof of the fact of contract. Let us go back, and we shall see there is no evidence to the effect that the theory requires. We go back to our American Constitution, established at the Revolution. We do not see that this answers at all to the "Social Contract," for the theory says that by that contract, Society was constituted; that previously there was no Society, but men were in a State of Nature. Now before the American Revolution there was Society, there were families, churches, magistrates: the change then was from one form of Government to another, not from no-government to government; not from no-society to society. Men were not in a State of Nature before the Revolution, and after it stepped at once into the Social State. Whatsoever the Social Contract may be, and whensoever it may be imagined to have been made, it certainly was not made at the time of the establishment of our Government, and our Constitution does not answer to the description given of it.

We go back, then, to our English ancestors.

We have the

history of the nation for a thousand years at least. If a fact so remarkable as this, of a Social Contract, by which a whole nation. stepped from a State of Nature in which no Society existed, into. the Social state; if a fact so remarkable ever occurred in that people, we should have, in all reason and common sense, some record of its happening. But there is no record of time or place, nor of any thing that can prove this alleged 'fact of a Contract, in the history of the English nation.

But we may have evidence of it, perhaps, in the times anterior to the national existence of England: and lo! in the historical records of the whole world there is not the slightest evidence of such a transaction, such a Contract! The matter is a supposition, a theory, a fiction, so far as evidence or record of it is required or searched for-not a matter of fact.

Wherever, even in the fewest numbers, the Man is seen, there is he seen in Society; he enters into Society as member of a Family; where there are only two or three families, there is Government in the Tribe, which is the Nation in little; and there is Worship. Where there is, either from newness or from desolation by famine, pestilence, war, or emigration, only one family in the land, the three elements are seen coexisting in the one social organization, which is at once a Family, a Nation in little, and a Church; and the head at once is Father, and King or Chief Magistrate, and Priest. These relations are not made by any supposed compact, but are coeval with man, for as far back as we go we see them to exist, and we see no evidence of Contract constituting them.

But again, this theory supposes that there was in existence antecedent to the Social State, a State of Nature! This is a fact asserted, a thing of which we ought to have evidence. It is supposed to be a state opposite to that of Society, a state in which there was no society, but only individuals; in which, of course, there were no Families, no Nations, no Worships; in which therefore there were no husbands and no wives, no property, no magistrates, nothing, in short, but the individual man eating and drinking, and freely doing whatever his heart moved him to! Was there ever such a state as this?

As a matter of fact, there never was: because, as we have said, the very first sight we get of man in the records of our race,

sacred or profane, shows him in Society; shows all its three forms to exist; and shows his nature too, so framed and adapted for Society, that it is manifest that he was made and organized for it, and it was made and organized for him. So far with regard to the fancied State of Nature as supposed to exist before and in opposition to the Social State.

But again, the "Man," in acceding to the "Social Contract," and entering into the Social State, is supposed to have surrendered a portion of his "Original Rights." I confess I do not see that in Society any rights belonging to the individual are surrendered. Life and Liberty and Property are certainly secured against outrage, which, if the Nation did not exist, they would endure. Except, perhaps, that which society makes a crime, is a "right original;" except "rapine," and "theft," and "brutality," and contempt of the marriage bond, except these, which Society calls "Crimes," are "Original Rights."*

I cannot see how Man in Society "surrenders a portion of his rights." To secure life at the expense of contributing perhaps three days' labour in a whole year, instead of being perpetually in peril and constantly in arms; to secure property by a like expenditure of time, instead of being able only to possess that which with armed hand we can take and hold; this, so far from a "Surrender of Rights," seems to me an enlargement of them..

And looking steadfastly at the civilized man and at the man

* Here is the immoral element in this theory, the concealed premise, always held back yet always implied and insinuated in various forms, by Rousseau and his followers, the doctrine that the Law of Society only made those actions vicious, which, before that law, were not only not vicious, but rights of the individual man, at that period, the golden age of Rousseau, when

"Wild in woods the noble savage ran,

Ere arts and manners first corrupted man."

And so, it seems, murder, theft, rapine, promiscuous concubinage, all these are "original rights" of the individual man, which he surrenders to society by being under the Social Contract,-not wrong in themselves by any means! The evils of this theory are thus manifest to any mind; they were in fact and reality manifested in the corruption of manners that preceded the French Revolution. This vile theory had taken possession of the whole mind of the nation of France, and such was its result.

Such is the power unto evil of one base, “bad-hearted” man of Genius. In this has Rousseau a bad pre-eminence. He is the one, the only thoroughly bad-hearted man of true Genius the experience of the past reveals to us.