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origin like that from which we ourselves sprang, and a bearing as lasting as our own existence; then will it become sacred in our eyes, a somewhat set over us, our rule, our head. Authority will be seen written over its portal; and we shall take our shoes from off our feet as we enter in through its everlasting doors. Those, also, who wait at its altars, will, as its ministers, be held in respect, and, as announcers of its decrees, be listened to: they will, so to speak, stand out before the people as Law in visible presence. For it is not the man, in his short-lived, individual character, and with all the individual's infirmities, that we defer to, but the person abstracted from these, and representative of permanent Law. And subtile as this distinction may sound to the understanding, it is simple to our sentiment, and acts at one time or another upon all.

With this character of Permanency and Majesty before our eyes, submission to Law, and to those who represent it, will not beget servility, but rather that "proud humility" of which Burke speaks; for submission is servility, or right respect, as that to which we yield it is mean or venerable. And if we venerate the permanent and the majestic, even through such imperfect symbols, something of the permanent and majestic will penetrate our own souls.

To produce this sense of authority, permanency, and majesty, to give us a feeling of something which, though meant for us, is above us, it must not be a mere abstract principle, having form to us only as we ourselves give it form by administering it ourselves, or, at our own will, setting up from time to time those who shall administer it for us; but it must have self-life; and, in some parts of it, must be seen those who shall seem to have come out from its invisible self: it must

have, as it were, a creating power, producing offspring from itself, to take care that it be respected and obeyed,

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men who shall be impersonations of Law, having their birth and power, not from us, but from Law, men who, though dying individually, shall, as Orders, through an ordained succession, possess life as permanent as Law itself. These hereditary Orders, call them by what name we will, present something definite to the mind, and help us to realize our Idea of Law; while that power which we call Law, unseen by us in itself, yet acting upon our spirits, throws around these orders of men a mysterious authority, which our natures must for ever witness to, talk of it as we may, and even hate it as we may. That the mind does recognize such an influence is shown in the involuntary respect felt for an individual, when standing in this relation to Law, and the diminishing of this respect, when considered apart from this relation and regarded only in his character of a fellow-man. Let any one be honest with himself, and he will acknowledge this difference. He may call it the remnant of an old superstition, which the mind has not yet quite shaken off.

France called it so, and overturned her throne and drove her nobles from the land. But human nature soon felt the want of something, she knew not what. She tried to smooth down the surface of society to a level, but there were elements beneath, more restless than the centre fires, perpetually heaving it up into mountains and hills; and the earth tossed like the sea. Man, in his pride, had been trying after equality, that which should leave nothing higher than himself; he would fain form his own Law and appoint those who should administer it for him. Poor, finite, dependent creature! That which should have governed him was

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of his own making, and might at any moment be by him unmade; and, therefore, he could not reverence it. Conscious of his insignificance, yet with nothing visible around him greater than himself, nothing to look up to, and looking up to, from it to gather strength, no wonder that the unquieted craving of his soul made him throw himself headlong and set the oppressor's foot upon his neck. He thought to destroy the principle of obedience in his heart, and he became a slave, — he rose up against that eternal law which God had ordained to regulate his being, and which, doubtless, is now visibly carried out through the ranks of heaven, and will ever be a living Law, a Law without which on earth, man, who is linked in with eternity, can never be well with himself, nor with his fellow-men.

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Instead, therefore, of vainly striving against a principle inherent in our natures and in the order of things, instead of blinding our minds by a mere name, calling it superstition, it would be better to look calmly into ourselves a little, and to see whether, in these outward, distinctive forms and orders, there be not a kindly adaptation to our inward needs, whether, were we in our true state, we should not feel that there was something in us congenial with them, something to elevate thought and warm and make quick the affections. Law! What is it but an infinite abstraction, till it bodies itself forth in orders of men? Then it is as if the infinite, after which the mind had vainly stretched itself, gathered itself in, presenting some point at which we might come in contact with it, something where we might begin, something to which we might return. We have been looking over the day-sky; and all throughout its clear expanse the eye has found no resting-place. Presently, from out it, a feathery little

cloud puts forth; it enlarges, unrolling itself, fold upon fold; and there it lies, steady as the land, a mighty pile of dazzling splendour! Now, the eye is fixed, the soul filled, and our thoughts go up to it, like incense, to mingle with its glory. Yet, a little before, this cloud had been an infinitely rare, invisible vapour; our eyes saw nothing, our souls felt nothing. So Law, pervading, as it does, the universe of God, comes not upon us in its complete power till it takes hold upon our senses, and sits robed on its seat in human form. But suppose that, by some chemical process, we ourselves had gathered that cloud together and set it in the sky, would there have awaked in us an humble adoration as we gazed? As its piled heights flashed down splendour upon us, would not the spirit of self-complacency, rather, have moved in us? Then, it had been our cloud!- Alas! alas! there has been more than one mad Dennis, who has cried, That's my thunder! This land of liberty, this land of "all sovereigns," is filled with the cry!" Nothing but thunder!"

So, where all the representatives of Law are of our own election, they keep not our reverence; and through our want of this, Law itself becomes a mere thing of convenience, a somewhat upon which to make experiments, a caterer to the self-conceit of man, and thus Obedience, in time, dies, and Order, which holds all in place, is broken up. But if we learn to look upon these ministers as creations of the Law, and not as from ourselves, as servants of the Law, and not as servants of the people, a sanctity is thrown around them as its ministers, and Law itself is the more revered; and the effect of all this is a more willing Obedience, a feeling of fitness in gradations, a kindly reationship in Orders, a natural connection from the head to the foot.

Let this sense of patient and wise subjection to authority, this spirit of right Obedience, once possess a man, and its influence may be easily traced through his internal state, and through his character as it appears in its outward relations. It was Pride that rebelled against God; it is Humility that restores man to Obedience; and as the same spirit that prepares a man for heaven fits him for his duties and relations here, so humility, shown forth through obedience, brings out his good affections, and imparts a beauty and sentiment, and a wise calmness, to every station and relation of his life.

Gradations in society formed by Law and made permanent by it, and not- as where all is thrown open to every man-shifting and chance distinctions, rising and sinking like the waves, impress the mind with the sense of all-pervading, all-arranging, authoritative Law. Through Orders, its invisible spirit is made manifest everywhere in the connections of life; each one stands in his place, and there fulfils his duty in obedience to the command of the awful Power; man lives and acts under a wholesome reverence, whose cause and mode of working upon himself he may not comprehend, while yet it spiritualizes him and acts in him for good. The consciousness is thus kept up in him, that he is living under a power which he cannot overmaster, or change at will, and that he stands in certain relations not to be broken through for his mere pleasure and ease; and this makes him better comprehend the finite nature and the dependence of created man.

There being something of permanency and distinctness in his condition, the mind is unconsciously modified by it, and, in turn, acquires steadiness, and distinctness, and an apprehension of relations. Habit

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