f their first condition,
but their very sufferings and fears re-Eden their mutual attachments
in the very thorns of their troubles and sorrows. Then another
being, of their own flesh, heir to their changed lot, and to these
attachments, is added to their companionship. The first child's
face that heaven or earth ever saw, opened its baby eyes on them and
smiled in the light of their parental love. The history goes on.
In process of time, there is a family of families, called a
community, embracing hundreds of individuals connected by ties of
blood so attenuated that they possess no binding influence. Common
interests, affinities, and sentiments supply the place of family
relationship, and make laws of amity and equity for them as a
population. Next we have a community of communities, or a
commonwealth of these individual populations, generally called a
nation. Here is a lesson for the moral nature. Here are thousands
and tens of thousands of men who never saw each others' faces. Will
this expanded orb of humanity revolve around the same centre as the
first family circle, or the first independent community? How can
you give it cohesion and harmony? Extend the radii of family
relationship and influence to its circumference in every direction.
Throne the sovereign in a parent's chair, to execute a father's
laws. He shall treat them as children, and they each other as
brethren. Here is a grand programme for human society. Here is a
vigorous discipline for the wayward will and temper of the human
heart. How is a man to feel and act in these new conditions? How
is he to regulate his hates and loves, his passions and appetites,
to comply properly with these extended and complicated
relationships?

About half way from Adam's day to ours, there came an utterance from
Mount Sinai that anticipated and answered these questions once for
all, and for one and all. In that august revelation of the Divine
Mind, every command of the Decalogue swung open upon the pivot of a
_not_, except one; and that one referred to man's duty to man, and
the promise attached to its fulfilment was only an earthly
enjoyment. All the rest were restrictive; to curb this appetite, to
bar that passion, to hedge this impulse, to check that disposition;
in a word, to hold back the hand from open and positive
transgression. Even the first, relating to His own Godhead and
requirements, was but the first of the series of negatives, a pure
and