affords him the most precious facilities for the attainment of this end. It seems impossible to conceive of a situation more favorable to the right development of that distinctive prerogative of humanity, the will, than that which the family affords. On the one hand, what temptation could there be to crush or oppress the individuality and free agency of the young human being, where affection itself administers law, and finds much of its happiness in the freedom of its subjects. On the other hand, if the preservation of parental authority is essential to the well-being of the family, the parent discovers that in training his children to piety, he is both best securing their love for himself, and is advancing his own conformity to the Divine will. How eminently calculated is the position of the parent to occasion gratitude for his domestic enjoyment and deep anxiety for the future and lasting welfare of the objects so dear to him; and how natural for him to appeal to the Being who alone can befriend him on the only scale commensurate with his wishes-to the Father "of all the families that call upon His name!" And in conducting the worship of the assembled family, he appears in the Divine presence with all his individual powers and social relations restored; and thus prepared to answer the ultimate end of his existence by appreciating and voluntarily subserving the advancement of the Divine manifestation. While each patriarch, by being placed at the head of a new generation, was afforded the opportunity of carrying the manifestation beyond all who had gone before, and of thus approaching a stage nearer to perfection.

The

explosive power of sin.

The explosive power of sin, as selfishness, indeed, prevailed. The first man was not content to derive from a source that lay out of himself, the

ultimate ground and reason, and the definite criterion of his acts. And the same repellent power appeared in every member of his antediluvian family. "It constituted as many new centers, as many rebellious and divided systems of action as there were human beings; atomic centers of limited and petty influence, but without subordination to Him from whom they had derived the power to rise in revolt against Him. Nay, even more. So long as man was obedient to God, the whole being of man was obedient to his controlling faculties; but when he ceased to be the servant of the Lord, he ceased also to be the master of himself. Thus, therefore, in the midst of God's fair creation was there planted, wherever there stood a man, a perpetually prolific principle of derangement, of separate, self-centered action, spent ineffectually upon objects that did not enter into the design of the universe, nor contribute, unless by opposition and revulsion, to the fulfillment of its appointed work. God, however, ordained certain conditions of human existence which, as intermediate expedients, and instruments of a secondary discipline, should both check the progress of selfishness by establishing a counteracting principle, and should likewise prepare men to recognize the higher truths taught in Divine revelation, and supply them with real, though partial, approximations to the true law of their being. These were various in shape; but their pervading character was the same; it was that of a xoɩrorío, a common life. A common life in the family, in the tribe, in the nation was, apart from direct manifestations of the Divine will, the grand counteractor of the disorganizing agency of the law of self-worship."*

* Gladstone, The State in relation to the Church, vol. i. pp. 46–50.

The family, God's natural or

During the whole antediluvian period, the dinance against family was God's great natural protest and selfishness. ordinance against the dissevering power of sin. "One blood" circulated through the veins of humanity. Each individual will stood in the midst of a number of related wills, whose separate ends could be best gained by the union of each with all. The only atmosphere proper to the community was love. The family should have been the "schoolmaster to lead" them to the altar; where one sacrifice would have availed them all, and one promise have addressed them all. But, in ceasing to love the blessed God, man lost the great unitive principle of the race. In arming himself against God, he becomes, more or less, a center of repulsion to the universe.*

The event, however, proved that at every step of the process the balance was maintained between man's freedom and his duty, between his condition and his destiny. That the means of answering the high end of the economy were adequately supplied, appears from this, that many adoringly recognized and employed them. They were "preachers of righteousness;" enforcing the laws and claims of the dispensation. They pointed to the preternatural events that occurred as warning angels sent from God. They received or assumed significant names, like medallions struck to save from oblivion the Divine clement and object of the dispensation. The altars which "by faith" they reared, were so many points of friendly contact with Heaven, and protests against the world's apostasy. While the great mass was moving in a contrary direction, they "walked with God," so as to reflect and radiate his presence. They pointed to His awful "coming" to vindicate the economy,

* Chapter xvii.

and to punish all who had resisted the faithful in their endeavors to answer its end. In a word, they were living moral manifestations of God. Even at last, the faith and practical obedience of Noah "condemned the world ;" convicting it of self-destruction under an economy which might have saved the race as well as an individual. On the other hand, that the means employed for attaining this end left man's moral freedom unimpaired is mournfully clear. The family, like the individual, fell through the abuse of that freedom, and continued falling. The altar was not a fort to compel submission; and Cain forsook the altar. The affections were not constrained; and "the sons of God took them wives of all which they chose;" and the great moral distinction of the economy between the obedient and the disobedient was confounded-the church was merged in the world. Right was not armed with the bolts of heaven, and might overcame it, "filling the earth with violence." The church was destroyed by the world. The high end of the family constitution could be attained only by moral means; and man, instead of being a manifestation of God, became a manifestation of selfishness. From first to last, the contest which he maintained was this-whether God's will should prevail for good, or his own will for evil; whether God should be the chief good and ultimate end of his own creation, or whether man should wrest it from Him, use it for his own selfish purposes, and so become his own end. This is the key to the entire economy. Was it strange that all human distinctions should be merged in that one which marked off the few who in any degree answered the end of the dispensation from the masses who spent life in the violation of its laws?

FOURTH PART.

THE ULTIMATE END OF THE FAMILY PROBATION AND ECONOMY AS A MEANS OF DIVINE MANIFESTATION.

CHAPTER XIX.

The economy a

Power.

SECTION I.-POWER.

THOUGH the patriarchal dispensation had display of Divine failed, as a voluntary manifestation of God by man, not the less did the wonderful constitution of the family contain, quite irrespectively of the human will, a manifestation of God to him; while his perversion of it was made the occasion of bringing to light new aspects of the Divine character, especially patience and long-suffering.

All the preceding manifestations of the tions of Power in Divine Power in the material world were

All the illustra

nature continued.

brought forward into the period of the family economy. Life, in its unnumbered forms, was continued. The seasons revolved. The earth silently and smoothly rolled on in space. All the laws of nature, animate and inanimate, were maintained in ceaseless activity, combined with undeviating uniformity. For about two thousand years, notwithstanding the elemental conflicts