Yet it is often taught that society, government, statutes, and officers are peculiarly and especially of divine appointment, in a very different sense from that mentioned just now; and therefore you and I are morally bound to respect all the four. We are told this by men who would be astonished if any one should claim divine appointment for farm-fences, rules of husbandry, for ploughmen and reapers.--This is sometimes done by persons who know no better. In conformity with that fourfold claim of divinity for things of human appointment, we are told that the great safeguard of man's social welfare is this,--Entire subordination of the individual to the community, subordination in mind and conscience, heart and soul; entire submission to the government; entire obedience to the statute; entire respect for the officer; in short, the surrender of the individual to the State, of his mind to the public opinion, of his conscience to the public statute, of his religion to some bench of attorneys, and his will to the magistrate. This fourfold subordination of the individual is demanded, no matter what the community, the government, the statutes, or the officers may be.--Let us look a little more narrowly into this matter, and see what is the purpose, the end, and aim of individual human life, and of social human life; then we may be the better able to determine what are the safeguards thereof. * * * * * What is man here on earth to accomplish? He is to unfold and perfect himself, as far as possible, in body and spirit; to attain the full measure of his corporeal and spiritual powders, his intellectual, moral, affectional, and religious powers; to develop the individual into a complete man. That, I take it, is the purpose, the end, the scope, and final cause of individual life on earth. Accordingly, that is the best form of individual life which does this most completely; that worst which does it least. He is the most fortunate man who gets the greatest development of his body and his spirit in all their several and appropriate functions: all else is means thereto, and this the end thereof. Ease, wealth, honor, fame, power, and all the outward things men wish for, and all such things as are valuable, are means to this end, no more. Wise men do not account him lucky who comes into the world born to riches, distinction, thrones of power; but him who goes out of it wise, just, good, and holy.