Strict impartiality, for instance, is a primary requisition in the judge, but is it possible, nay, would it properly be just, to require this in every case of a father? The judicial character, however, is the predominant element of political government, and the supreme judicial function is its essential aspect, with which all the other distinctive characteristics or exclusive prerogatives of sovereign power are most intimately connected. And on this account, while the paternal authority rests primarily on that tie of souls which consists in the reciprocal affection of parents and children, and while the priestly power is limited to the sacerdotal and spiritual domain, the supreme judicial and sovereign power in the state, which is responsible to God alone, as the highest and paramount of these three sacred and venerated powers, embraces the complete whole, if I may so say, the bodily reality of man’s public life. And in this sphere of historical reality it will be my endeavor to trace the further development of these three ideas as they manifest themselves in the busy conflict of life and the age. And to this subject I propose to devote the three following Lectures. In concluding our present disquisition I will only add one remark. All these three powers, as founded on nature, on divine revelation, and on historical rights, are alike holy and sacred. The good, that is to say, the prudent and affectionate father, the pious priest, and the righteous king, are each and all, though in different ways and degrees, and with different powers and rights, visible and acting vicegerents on earth of the invisible God. The last, in truth, is not merely the representative but the unlimited dispenser of divine justice. And this divine foundation of these powers, which claim and present an inviolable character of sanctity, forms the practical part of that symbolical signification of life which in its highest phase has formed the theme of the present Lecture. LECTURE XIII. OF THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH AND LIFE IN ITS APPLICATION TO POLITICS, OR OF THE CHRISTIAN CONSTITUTION OF THE STATE AND THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF JURISPRUDENCE.