The law of nations consists of general principles of right and justice, equally suitable to the government of individuals in a state of natural equality and to the relations and conduct of nations; the conduct of nations should be governed by principles fairly to be deduced from the rights and duties of nations and the nature of moral obligation; and we have the authority of lawyers of antiquity, and of some of the first masters in the modern school of public law, for placing the moral obligations of nations and of individuals on similar grounds, and for considering individual and national morality as parts of one and the same science. The law of nations, as far as it is founded upon the principles of natural law, is equally binding in every age, and upon all mankind. The law of nature, by the obligations of which individuals and states are bound, is identical with the will of God, and that will is ascertained by consulting divine revelation, where that is declaratory, or by the application of human reason where revelation is silent. Christianity is an authoritative publication of natural religion, and it is from the sanction which revelation gives to natural law that we must expect respect to be paid to justice between nations. Christianity reveals to us a general system of morality, but the application to the details of practice is often left to be discovered by human reason. Justice is of perpetual obligation, and is essential to the well-being of every society. The great commonwealth of nations stands in need of law, and observance of faith, and the practice of justice. If the question was one to be decided by the civil courts according to the American rules concerning rights to property held by ecclesiastical bodies, the points involved might be presented as follows: 1. Where the property which is the subject of controversy is, by the express terms of the deed or will of the donor or other instrument under which it is held, devoted to the teaching, support, or spread of a specific form of religious doctrine and belief. 2. Where the property is held by a religious congregation, which by the nature of its organization is strictly independent of other ecclesiastical associations, and, so far as church government is concerned, owes no fealty or obligation to any higher authority. 3. The third is where the religious congregation or ecclesiastical body holding the property is but a subordinate member of some general church organization in which there are superior ecclesiastical tribunals with a general and ultimate power of control, more or less complete, in some supreme judicatory over the whole membership of that general organization.