who approaches nearest to that fancied "State of Nature," so far from a "surrender of rights," the consequence of Society is an enlarging, developing, securing of rights,-and the man in a Social State has a thousand rights the savage cannot possess.

Never, in fact, did this fancied State of Nature exist; never did a "Social Contract" take place either between men to make Society, or between any Individual to enter into Society; never were any rights original to man surrendered. And the facts which they twist into proofs of a contract are proofs of this only, "that the Individual Man' is made for Society-suited and adapted by his nature to dwell therein always and for ever; and that Society is made for him, so that his nature responds to the organization and the organization to his nature:" and this, in accordance with the principle so often laid down in this book, and urged as a primary one in Morals, that all things are double, one against another, and God hath made nothing imperfect. In fact, the whole theory existed only in the brain of that man whom before we noticed as the most base and bad-hearted of all writers:

"The self-torturing sophist, vain Rousseau."

It was a fiction and a theory, for the time and for the place. When the tyranny of the king and aristocracy of France had become so oppressive as to shake the very grounds of all confidence; when faith had become a mockery to intellect; and the conduct of men of rank a base and filthy scandal; so that all things were preparing for downfall and ruin, then came forth this theory of the "Social Contract," as a banner to men who seemed to themselves to see no hope of justice or equity save in the destruction of all things.

And these men took this theory for granted, because thus they were enabled to say, "You are bound to us as we to you, by contract; do that duty, or we shall break our contract; we are entitled to do it, and if you compel us, why then we recur to our original rights, and one of them is the holy right of insurrection," a phrase ten thousand times employed in the French Revolution.

It was a theory for the times; it may be as well put aside now: we may as well found our duties and rights upon truth, and holiness, and equity, and the nature of Man, of God, and of Society, as upon Contract.

The theory of the "Social Contract" having thus been ex

amined and rejected, upon, we conceive, good grounds, we take it that "Society" is an Institution of God, coeval with man, adapted to his nature as his nature to it, and so fitted to it that it is not only merely the best, but the only condition for him to

exist in.

CHAPTER II.

The Family always existent.-The Home its realization in Space and Time.— Heathen notions of its institution.-The feeling that the Law makes it.Man's nature. Nature of Society, and the express Law of God.-These, not mere legislation cause it.-Pretty fables about marriage.—Natural feeling of unity.-Doctrine of the Roman Law.-Common-Law Doctrine.— Doctrine of the Scriptures.-Conclusions: 1st, Law does not make marriage; 2d, Marriage is no Sacrament, but a Mystery; 3d, All bound to marriage, except, first, it is wrong for them to marry-secondly, for a religious motive.

WHEREVER, as we have shown, Man appears, there Society appears, simultaneously as it were, and coeval with his existence. Man as made was one, it is true, at first, but afterwards, when "the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone," from his flesh and bones was made a partner for him. And since then, man as born has always come into Society-he has been born into it. And this society made up of a pair, a Man and a woman living together-a Husband* and a wife.† This pair, with their offspring, constitute the Family. Their dwelling is called the Home.

Hence result a multitude of relations of Persons-of Husband to Wife-of Wife to Husband-of Parents to Children-of Children to Parents-of Brothers to Sisters of Sisters to Brothers. All these manifestly are relations between Persons in Society, and that Society composed of these Persons is the Family.

And again, owing to the Nature of man, which is a nature in Space and Time, this Society, the Family, has a place of inhabitation, a dwelling to itself exclusive, in which only the one

"House-band"-the union of the house.

Wife from "weiben," to weave or unite.

Family dwells, or ought naturally to dwell, the Home: and the Society therein is, as it were, set apart from the rest of the world by visible and tangible limits; defined by them to be, although composed of many members and many relations naturally, still One only. One by exclusion of others from without; one by union of interests and feelings and mutual aid within; one by authority and by love. A oneness of organization with manifoldness of members and relations and affections. There is authority there, in the authority of the Father. And there also naturally exists the unity of love, represented in all its possible relations, and flowing, as it were, from one fountain, the Mother.

We come now to examine into the nature of this Society, and the Affections that are in-the heart towards it. "The Home," we have entitled this book, "and its Affections."

And first, the question is, Whence comes it? How was it organized? Whence its Laws? This I conceive a question worth noting, but not worth examining. I see the man that was made by the hand of God, by him brought into Societybut all men that are born, born into a family. The Family, I see, by the most ancient of histories-the Bible-to have been instituted of God. I then, as a plain matter of fact, take it for granted that it was so that for one man and one woman to live together as Husband and Wife all their days, that this was the original institution. That those who lived otherwise were not they who lived as at first, but they who broke off and diverged from the original institution. Heathens* may say,

"First men crawled out from the earth, a brute and dumb class of animals, fighting with fists and nails for acorns and wild fruits, then with cudgels, and then with arms which necessity invented. Then their rude cries they gradually formed into

* Quum prorepserunt primis animalia terris,

Mutum ac turpe pecus, glandem atque cubilia propter,
Unguibus, et pugnis, dein fustibus, atque ita porro
Pugnabant armis, quæ post fabricaverat usus:
Donec verba, quibus voces sensusque notarent,
Nominaque invenêre: dehinc absistere bello,
Oppida cœperunt munire, et ponere leges,
Ne quis fur esset, neu latro, neu quis adulter.

HOR. Sat. lib. i. 3.

articulate language; and lawgivers came, who taught them marriage and instructed them in law."

This is the heathen view entirely. The Christian is, that marriage was the Original State, and Language a Divine gift,* and Lawf a thing natural to man from his own Reason and from the nature of Society and of God; and that if men were found in a state such as above described, it was because they had sunk voluntarily into it.

But to resume: Men, asked any questions with regard to the Family when they are possessed with this Heathen notion, will answer, the Law makes it so; taking it for granted unwittingly that the Law could make it otherwise.

But with regard to Marriage, does not the Law enact it? Does it not inflict penalties upon those who shall transgress this enactment? and thereby first cast the Family into a precise and definite shape, and then by its action so retain it?

Granting that it does all this-all this will not be to constitute it, but only to protect, guarantee, and define it, by the consent and legislative power of the nation. If the thing be "right,"‡ then legislation sanctioning it is good; but if it be not "right,' then no legislation can make it so.

The foundation, then, of the Family, and its Law, I seek in the Nature of Man and of Society, and in the express Law of God. These are they that make and constitute the Law of Marriage and the Law of the Family; and human legislation is good so far as it expresses and reflects these.

But when human legislation upon any point opposes these, and says that it shall not be so, but otherwise, then human legislation fails. Mohammed permitted and enacted polygamy-and Nature starts up and says, "Nay, it shall not be: polygamy, the allotment of many wives to one man, cannot be the Law of a Nation, for only one woman throughout a nation shall be born for one man." And thence throughout the nation that human law is wholly inoperative as a law, that is, as an universal rule

* See an essay on the Divine Origin of Language, in Magee on the Atone

ment.

† See Hooker, first book of the Ecclesiastical Polity.

Right—rectum, ruled—that is, by the inner law of man's moral being; and by the external law of God corresponding to it, wherever and however revealed.

of life; and the only effect is tolerated licentiousness among the rich and great, and a decay of principle among the poor, and a decrease of happiness and prosperity in the nation.*

If Law be according to the nature and being of Man and according to the Law of God, then it is Right, and sanctions that which is Right; but if it be not "right," "ruled," that is, according to the Eternal measure of immutable and unchangeable morality, then it is not so good. The will of God externally-the Nature of Man internally, as interpreted by the Universal Reason in Society,-these are the measure of all human legislation. And these always and for ever agree.

Having so digressed, we shall, for a while, leave the legal consideration of "Marriage," the "Family," and the "Home," and go to the Ethical consideration, that which examines not its Laws under Legislation, but its foundations in the nature of man, and in the Law of God.

Now with regard to nature, we find the feelings of the oneness and exclusiveness of the marriage so prevalent among men from the beginning, that it gave rise to many pretty and interesting fables. "The soul of man and woman," says one ancient Greek fable, "was originally one; it was then divided by Jove into two portions, half to one body, and half to the other; and hence the one soul, with instinctive patience, seeks its lost half, and will wander over the world for it, and, if united with it, shall be happy, if not, miserable."

Behold a theory which at one blow accounts for all travelling and emigration, as well as all happiness and unhappiness of the marriage tie, and yet expressing sufficiently the sense the author of it had of the Spiritual Harmony of Marriage.

"Behold," say the Cabalists-those Jewish retailers of absurd philosophy and foolish wisdom-"man was originally one, both soul and body, the 'Ish Kadmon,' or primitive created being, and then God separated them, and man fell!" a most absurd and ridiculous notion, and yet showing the sense these strange philosophers had of the intimate relation of unity which the Masculine character bears to the Feminine.

* It is, I believe, a well ascertained Statistical fact, that the population of Turkey-the exclusively Turkish population-has not increased during the last two or three centuries; and that this is owing exclusively to the legal toleration of Polygamy.