To this ancient idea of a Christian empire we shall again have occasion to revert in the further examination of the idea of a political state and its Christian community. We shall meet with it once more in that section of our inquiry which will be occupied with the ruling principle of right and polity in a system of states as a body, and also in the mutual relations of its several members. In this section we shall also show that this principle must be either absolute, that is, one where one or more of the several members of the union exercises a superior and preponderating influence, or one artificially constituted and dynamical, _i.e._, a system of the so-called balance of power. And here will naturally arise the question whether, for such a confederacy of moral and civilized societies and nations, a less imperfect and higher, but common principle of Christian justice might not be found and established? For any system of mutual confederation, whether absolute or founded on the artificial relations of the strength of its respective members, is in any case defective and imperfect, whatever may be the ground of union, whether founded on the internal constitution of the states, or derived from the physical consideration of their geographical position and neighborhood. According, then, to that divine principle and Christian foundation of the state which I have attempted to derive from the symbolical signification of life and the symbolical destiny of man in his relation to God, the highest authority of the state--the king, or generally the monarch, as well as the spiritual functionary, or the priest--are the vicegerents of a highest and divine power, whom they represent on earth. The only difference between them is, that the latter has chiefly to represent and to set forth God as teaching men, but at the same time as warning and commanding them in this revelation of His will, and as promising and as livingly dispensing to them His grace, while the former is the representative of the Omnipotent Lawgiver and Judge, who governs the world with justice, and will by no means clear the guilty. According, therefore, to the true Christian notion of these two powers, both of them--the civil no less than the spiritual--possess a representative character, which, however, deviates very widely from the ordinary notion of the representation and a representative constitution, or, rather, forms a decided contrast to them.