constitution would point to this difference, and in some way subserve it. And our examination, in a preceding volume, presented man to view as a being capable of enjoying and subserving the highest ends of the Divine government, and therefore as held accountable for it; leaving us to the conclusion that the conjugal union is not necessary as the moral complement of either sex, but that such accountable completeness is pre-supposed by marriage. But if every part of the individual man is thus found to be relative to his high spiritual destiny, there is still stronger ground to expect that the union which makes of two individuals one, will point to the same end; and stronger still is the ground for expecting it, when it is viewed as a union in which, by the birth of offspring, man becomes instrumentally an exponent of that life-giving, creative power by which he himself was made in the Divine image. Why can he have been invested subordinately with the prerogative of multiplying his own image, but in order that he might transform his offspring into the likeness of the Creator? Procreation itself is not an end; nor is his own character the standard of perfection. Education is only the continuation and complement of procreation, and the end of both is to assimilate the human to the Divine.

Its high purpose.

For this profound conception of the conjugal union, we are indebted exclusively to the Bible.* The derivation of the woman, and of only one woman, from the man-the domestic supremacy of the man -the entireness or oneness of the union-and its sacred indissolubility-all point to this high spiritual aim as the normal idea of marriage. Only on this ground have two beings, made for God, any right to give themselves up to

* Tholuck's Exposition of the Sermon on the Mount, p. 319.

each other in a union of love. But the fact that the union is one by which the Creator actually admits man into fellowship with Himself in the accomplishment of His highest ends, makes the mutual surrender, otherwise inexplicable, consistent with human dignity by consecrating it to the Divine glory. In the primal union, all the foreshadowings of nature on the subject were interpreted and fulfilled. The instinctive affections acquired the sacredness of moral principles. Animal appetites became the means of religious. improvement. The gregarious instinct was exchanged for a sociality whose tendency is to become perpetual. That which, in the lower creation, had been only sexual and transitory, now became sacramentally related to the spiritual and eternal. The paternal will found itself enthroned over other wills. Man was the representative of God. The family became the seat of moral government—the very image of the Divine. As its members multiplied, its relations became diffused and attenuated, till they even ceased to be specifically named; but still an indestructible network of affinity held them all in union, and from every relation sprang a corresponding obligation. To individual man, the first table of the law only would have been known; with the family, came the second table. Aspects of the Divine character, hitherto unknown, were now unvailed; and the family constitution, rightly understood, became a new volume of Divine Revelation.

The germ of so

In the bosom of this primal union lay the ciety. germ of the great genealogical tree of the human race. Individuals (says Howe)* are elements of families; families are elements of which both Churches and kingdoms or commonwealths are made up; and as the one *Vol. v. p. 511.

of these is purely civil, the other purely sacred, that which is elementary to both must be both." So that here we find ourselves looking in on the elements of all the forms of human society. And this constitution-unique as compared with all that had gone before it-will be found pre-eminently to characterize that stage of the Divine manifestation which stretches from the Fall to the Flood. We may call it, interchangeably, the Domestic Constitution, the Family Economy, or the Patriarchal Dispensation; the last name. being especially descriptive of the Domestic Constitution in its state of utmost development, and of its dispensational aspect as distinguished from the Mosaic economy and the Christian Church.

With the family

Finally, with the rise of the family, there came mediation. come into view a new aspect of the sacrificial institute that of mediation; for, if the offering up of the animal symbolized the idea of substitution, equally did the offerer, as the father of the family, express the idea of mediation. Even from the first, man stood not alone. Not one of all his progeny can be truly viewed as an isolated individual. He is a member of a race. His individual life is connected with the life of the collective race. In that collective capacity, worship is due from the race to God. How significantly would this great truth be embodied as often, and as long, as the father of the race himself continued to officiate at the altar in his representative capacity! For centuries, the unity of the race could not be doubted, for there, at the place of sacrifice, the first man was seen interceding for his human family. Having instrumentally originated their bodily existence, and having, by his fall, vitiated their normal condition, it was now his high office to represent them all at the altar of propitiation. They who from

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sex and age were incapacitated for offering, and they who, as heads of younger families, were entitled personally to sacrifice, were all alike present in the person of the officiating patriarch. The life-blood of the victim flowed for the one blood" of humanity. Thus early the human family was seen symbolically drawing near to God, as one living organic whole, through a mediator. And, in a similar manner, Abraham, and Noah, and every antediluvian patriarch, represented their offspring and dependents at the place of sacrifice, transacting with God on their behalf. And the idea which lay at the root of primeval mediation corresponded with that at the basis of sacrifice-a deep sense of guilt and of estrangement from God on the part of those represented-making it necessary that he who represented them should himself be a holy, accepted, consecrated worshiper, concerned alike for the honor of God and for the acceptance of those for whom he mediated. Surely it might have been said, the blood-relationship of the human family, thus represented and consecrated at the altar, will prove too strong for the exploding selfishness of sin! Love will triumph!

CHAPTER IV.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FAMILY CONSTITUTION AND OF THE MEANS OF MERCY DURING THE PATRIARCHAL ECONOMY.

Law of develop

We have seen that the threefold means of

ment. human education and of Divine manifestation enjoyed by paradisiacal men-namely, external nature, his own constitution and condition, and direct communications from the Creator-have all been brought forward into the family economy. The law of development leads us to expect that these means, "besides being brought forward, will be here Divinely expressed in higher forms, or applied to higher purposes, or else that it will be in the power of the human being so to express or apply them." It will be remarked that so far from favoring the popular error of human perfectibility as a fact of inherent necessity, we view man's progress as made possible only by the progress of the means Divinely supplied to him. All history is a protest against the notion of man's advance on any other condition. Since the world began, History might have written alternate. chapters on man's material perfectibility, and his moral corruptibility.

Its antediluvian

"Man (says Montesquieu) is born in sotheater. ciety, and there he remains." Even the firstman was made for the associate which the Creator provided.