National Character | Page 3

far, O house of Israel." God of old sent his prophets to this nation and that; Elijah to Israel, Jeremiah to Judah, Jonah to Assyria.
Moreover, the Bible recognizes the importance of national relations in the position it assigns to nations in the historic and prophetic development of the plan for man's redemption. Before the advent of our Saviour, God was in covenant with a nation. To conserve the true religion amidst the corruptions which a second time were coming over the whole earth, God took Abraham and his family into special relations to himself. Yet God did not see fit to keep these special relations confined to a single family in successive generations. It entered directly into his plan, to make of this chosen family a nation, to set them in a land of their own, to give them a government of their own, to place them amidst the other nations of the earth. The influence of a nation was required to prepare the world for the coming of Messiah. So also in prophecy. Whatever may be thought of the beasts of the Revelation, with their heads and horns, the beasts of Daniel are distinctly stated to be "Kingdoms upon Earth." They are States and Empires. It is, moreover, a kingdom which the Lord God will set up upon earth, which, as a little stone cut out of the mountain, shall smite and break and crush the kingdoms of earth, and itself occupy their place. "The saints of the Most High shall take the kingdom, and possess the kingdom for ever."
With this consideration of the idea of a nation, and of the importance of national relations, let us now, turning and beholding the race of men dwelling together in a family of nations, ask more particularly after their duties and destinies.
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I. The State has a religious character. Nations derive their existence as such from God. The State is of divine institution. It enjoys and exercises divine prerogatives. It is hence under duty to God; it has herein a religious character.
I do not propose to argue the question of the nature of civil government. I will not undertake to show that the theory of a social compact--the theory that all just powers of government are derived from the people, who voluntarily yield them up and consent to their exercise--that this theory is false. Enough for me--enough for you, I presume,--that it is unscriptural and infidel. Enough for us that the Scriptures say, "The powers that be are ordained of God," and the civil ruler is "the minister of God." I do not deny,--the Scriptures do not deny--the distinction between things civil and things religious. The Christian does not demand that the State shall be a theocracy. The State and the Church has each its appropriate end and sphere. The prime end of the State is the dispensing of justice, the protecting of its citizens, and the securing by agriculture and commerce and the arts, and by the intelligence and virtue of its citizens, of the general welfare. The prime end of the Church, so far as man is concerned, is the promotion of his spiritual and eternal good, through the agency of the Scriptures of revealed truth. The sphere of the one is the affairs of this life,--that of the other, the affairs of the life to come. Yet the State and the Church are not wholly separated and absolutely independent; and neither is independent of God.
Again: Man in his entirety, is a religious being, and must carry his religion with him into all his relations. He is a religious citizen; so that not only is government instituted by God and to be administered in his name, and is therefore religious, but being administered by men and upon men, who themselves are under responsibility to God, it is therefore again religious.
And again: Although the prime end of the State be the promotion of man's temporal welfare, and that of the Church, the promotion of his spiritual welfare, and although the prime sphere of the State be the things of the present life, and that of the Church those of the life to come, yet things temporal and things spiritual, and the things of the present life and those of the life to come, have most intimate and important connections. The spiritual welfare tells upon the temporal, and the life to come is but the issue and result of the present life. Here, once more, is the State seen to have a religious character. All this admits of abundant proof and illustration.
The State, then, has a character directly religious, due to its origin and nature, as instituted by God for doing his ministry with men. Hence, its laws should be founded on the highest views of the divine