Accordingly, throughout the sacred history of the old world, and in all times where religious sentiment is not quite dead, such calamities, and even an unfortunate, not to say a wicked reign, are looked upon as the deserved visitation of God’s wrath, and as a time of heavy trial. And the chastisement of Heaven will be borne, by all right-thinking persons, not out of fear of man, but as is fitting, in reverent submission to the divine will, with manly patience and resignation. On the other hand, innumerable instances of a contrary course might be produced from republican times and histories. How often, in such states, has a false step in government, trifling, indeed, in itself, but still in fact and in truth, a blunder in one party, been the occasion of an opposition and resistance of another, and of a general feeling of discontent and a violent reaction, which have proved a hundred times more fatal and pernicious than the first occasion of popular murmurs. How often has a merely human oversight, trivial enough in itself, and running counter to public opinion in some little trifle, led to the most fearful catastrophes, amid which the first exciting cause is lost sight of and entirely forgotten, and finally all is involved in one general ruin. In this respect, and in this degree, it may safely be affirmed that the Christian principle of the state is more favorable to an hereditary monarchy than to a republican constitution. But at this point the proposition must be left purposely indeterminate. For a rigorous exclusion of all republican states, as if, properly, they could never be right and legitimate, would most assuredly not be accordant with the Christian principle of a state and the fundamental religious conception of all political relations and events. On the contrary, it would, undoubtedly, go directly counter to all proper feelings and ideas on the subject. For the Christian principle of justice respects all that has an historical existence, and leaves even the imperfect in the undisturbed possession of its rights. In this respect it is entirely opposed to the revolutionary spirit. For the latter, in its inmost essence, is anti-historical; its first step being the refusal to recognize the value and the claims of all that comes down from, and has been established by, the past. And, moreover, the Christian idea of justice, with all its strict rigor, involves a principle of equity. For, in truth, every Christian sentiment embraces the whole of life, and its several relations, with a loving mildness, and pays a due regard to all really existent though subordinate circumstances. And it is this exactly that constitutes the very notion of equity. Lastly, the doctrine of Christianity, and the idea of human life which it gives rise to, is highly favorable to true liberty. But, then, it is liberty, in a large and exalted sense of the term, in which, first and before all, a spiritual and moral freedom is meant as necessary to be firmly