ides
toward absolutism. 'Every man for himself' is the first idea. In the
family, in church, in politics, in commerce, in all social and political
relations, every man striving, pushing, scrambling, straining every
nerve to advance himself, regardless of his neighbor or the public
interest--such everywhere is the confused and hideous picture of
American society. Selfishness predominates, and selfishness is
repellant. So it was before the ages were, when Lucifer, in the pride of
self, refused obedience to the Word. So it is even yet, and its
inevitable tendency is to hostile isolation and final dissolution. Its
logical consequence is anarchy. But anarchy is intolerable, and a
civilized people, yea, even barbarians, will submit to anything rather
than social and political chaos. Then comes the iron band of despotism
to hold together the antagonistic fragments.

'The supremacy of the people's will' is the second idea. _Vox Populi,
vox Dei!_ What the people decree is right, and nothing must stand
between their will and the subject or object upon which it operates!
Such is the political gospel according to democracy, and fifty years'
earnest proclamation thereof has wellnigh abolished all the barriers of
constitutionalism--barriers, which stood like faithful guardians, stern
but just, between the Individual and the State, which reconciled the
harmonious coexistence of private liberty and public power--an idea
wholly unknown in pagan or classic civilization--and which at once
prevented the anarchy of individualism and the tyranny of absolutism.
But true it is, whatever a people constantly assert they come to
believe, and whatever they believe will at last crystallize itself in
action. And thus, with the oft-repeated and ever-increasing assertion
that 'man is his own end,' and 'is sufficient unto himself,' and with
that other assertion that the will of the people is law and must act
directly upon its object, we have gradually lost out of mind the true
significance of the constitutional system. Those numberless intermediary
institutions--which logically _grew_ out of the Christian idea of
mediation, as the oak naturally grows out of the acorn, and which
wonderfully reconciled liberty with authority, freedom with order, the
finite with the infinite--have become more and more obsolete, and less
and less understood. They have crumbled away like the stately columns of
a magnificent but neglected cathedral. They have become dead bra