is to be made to demonstrate to a sceptical understanding the fact that there is a God. Not only that primary religious truth, which even Revelation assumes in its first sentence, is supposed to be granted, but many related and dependent truths besides. The real infirmity of Christian faith is not that the being and attributes of the Deity are denied, but that they lie off from the living apprehension of the spiritual nature. Much as we distrust the religious competency of the intellect, the brain does not play, by any means, the worst part in atheism: its most frequent error in that respect is, that it fancies itself an atheist when it is not, but is only playing atheist, at the instigation of pride, or appetite, or disappointed ambition, or some other demagogue in the rabble of the passions. The grand necessity of religion at present, I conceive, is not to find out whether God is, but where he is: that is, to apprehend his immediate activity and Lordship in the world of our life, so joined with it as he could only be through the incarnation. I take one of the

departments of that life, lying midway between the individual consciousness or personality and outward nature:-Humanity in its social combinations; and with the twofold object of gaining a rational interpretation of society itself, by investigating it from its only centre, or point of original power, and of

showing how it lies perpetually within the conscious presence, and subject to the instant control, of the Infinite Spirit. So far as my inquiries have extended, there is not, in any literature, anything like a systematic or philosophical attempt to trace the laws, or to unfold the significance of Human Society, under this, or indeed any other, very comprehensive principle of analysis and combination. I do not aspire to supply that deficiency. Neither the original purpose of Mr. Graham, nor your own view of what would be most useful, as it seems to me, would lead us here to that more speculative method of treatment, which would be natural if a pure philosophy of the subject were the object contemplated. But you have come together to enter on a study in that direction with me to-night. I cannot help telling you how much it adds to my own interest, beforehand, in the evenings we are to spend together, that, by the continuity, regularity, and frequency assigned to these exercises by the judgment of the "Institute," our assembly takes on something of the character of a domestic circle, where speaker and hearers are constantly coming into a more direct and simple relation with one another, illustrating, in fact, much belonging to the very theme we have to unfold. You will be patient with defects. You will take pains to notice the distribution and mu

tual connection of the parts.

And you will remem

ber how much, both from the necessary restrictions of time, and from limitations more obstinate than those, must be left out.

The lectures will be arranged in the following order of subjects. In the 1st, Society will be considered as a Divine Appointment in itself; in the 2d, as a Living Instrument of Divine Thought; in the 3d, as a Discipline of Individual Character; in the 4th, as a School of Mutual Assistance; in the 5th, as to Social Theories; in the 6th, as a Motive and Incentive to the Intellect; in the 7th, as holding in itself Laws of its own Progression; and in the 8th, as the Sphere of the earthly Kingdom of Christ.

Taking Lord Bacon's division of human knowledge into History, Philosophy, and Poetry, our subject cannot be assigned exclusively to the province of either one, but it touches them all. It opens into History, for, as Dr. Arnold has so well said, "The general idea of history seems to be that it is the biography of a society having a common life." It has to do with Philosophy, for we are to regard this Social Life pre-eminently as under laws, laws that condition and regulate its growth, laws whose wonderful working, from Eden in the past to the mysterious issues of the future, furnish to the phi

losophic mind its profoundest problem. It includes the source of Poetry, because it is out of the rise and conflict, the ecstacy and suffering, the joy and agony, of those very passions which form the elements of social change, that imagination builds its most august and wondrous visions, and the poet, tragic, lyric, or epic, sings his immortal song.

Remark that Society, as we are here to consider it, is not a society formally organized, combined into a commonwealth, constituted into a political unity. Universal society has not as yet taken that shape. Whether such a sublime consummation is ever to be; whether the nations of the earth are yet to be drawn under a single outward economy, not only moral but civil, and the golden index of old prophecy be seen pointing to a Fold which shall be also a State, the Law going forth from some central Jerusalem, and all nations flowing into it,-this may be a question for faith, a dream for hope. The principles now to be discussed are independent of that speculation. They stand even in society as it now is, broken, of diverse races, of warring tribes,a multitude, but not a proper union: inasmuch as beneath all its variety of polities, and all its diversity of culture, and all its hostility of interests, there runs, deep down, a mighty bond of oneness after all, best expressed by the simple word human,

making each man, despite every difference, brother to every other man; just as one comprehensive principle encircles and pervades all varieties of vegetable production, from hyssop to cedar, or one artistic design winds into a profound harmony all the unequal keys and notes and instruments of an orchestra, and all the measures, themes, voices, and even pauses, of an oratorio. For, as a scholar in the oldest English university has finely said: "Universal history has enriched our language our language with a word that never passed the lips of Plato, Socrates, or Aristotle, the word mankind.

saw barbarians, we see brethren.

Where the Greek
Where he saw

heroes and demigods, we see parents and ancestors. Where he saw nations, we see mankind many ways severed, but moving to one destiny, and bearing one image of God; as where the ancient astronomic observer saw separate spheres in the sky, we see a single system, balanced in itself and harmonized by one centralizing attraction."

At present, I ask you to contemplate society, under a somewhat introductory and general aspect, as a Divine appointment in itself. And this may

be set forth the more clearly, if we seek the proofs, first, in the nature of the thing, Society; secondly,

*A. P. Stanley, now "Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History" at Oxford, in his Inaugural Address.