But let us turn our eyes from the insignificant controversies, with its host of ephemeral publications, the interest of which seems little likely to outlive even that of a daily journal, and let us look to the greater and more historical phenomena amid them, which, in all probability, will mark an epoch in the development of mind. From these it is distinctly apparent that science is a real and actual power. In proof of this fact, we need only appeal to the great talents and abilities which, not only in recent years, but also throughout the last century, have exercised in the domain of science what, without exaggeration, we may well term a world-embracing influence. Only we must admit that in this period they have taken more or less a destructive tendency, and one that threatened in this scientific burrowing to undermine the foundations of everlasting truth. But if we will take a still wider survey, so as to embrace all the several periods of the world’s history, and the course of the human mind therein, then, undoubtedly, we may discern the higher might of divine truth, manifesting itself as an influence for good, as a pure and genuine spiritual theocracy of science, to whose domain above all others the idea of an immediate and higher supremacy of mind and divine power is peculiarly applicable. LECTURE XV. OF THE TRUE IDEA OF A THEOCRACY; OF THE MIGHT OF SCIENCE, AND OF THE FINAL RESTORATION AND PERFECTION OF THE HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS. The idea which the adverse party, or opposition, in the political domain, and in the scientific theory of politics, usually form of a theocracy, is for the most part incorrect. By the adverse party I mean all those who either openly assail, or privately call in question, the religious foundation, the higher sanction, and the divine authority of the state; in short, those in general who are hostile to the religious sentiment. The latter apply the idea of theocracy and employ the term to signify the rule of the spiritual power, such as the Egyptian priesthood may, perhaps, or, at least, such as they suppose them to have possessed--or a polity where the supreme temporal authority works in unison with the sacerdotal class. And even by the defenders of the good cause--by men of higher and better principles, the idea is frequently taken in too inaccurate and indefinite, not to say incorrect, a sense. They seem to understand by it nothing more than the divine authority of the state and of the Church, and their mutual support and dependence, and their co-operation. But nothing can be more erroneous than such a notion. For the kingly dignity, no less than the priestly, as respects the divine authority, which is inherent in both, is not immediate, but vicarious and representative.