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as the French state, and answerable to God for the use it made of political power, or the conduct of its government. But be this as it may, there evidently can be no physical force in the nation to coerce the nation itself in case it goes wrong, for if the sovereignty vests in the nation, only the nation can rightly command or authorize the employment of force, and all commissions must run in its name. Written constitutions alone will avail little, for they emanate from the people, who can disregard them, if they choose, and alter or revoke them at will. The reliance for the wisdom and justice of the state must after all be on moral guaranties. In the very nature of the case there are and can be no other. But these, placed in a clear light, with an intelligent and religious people, will seldom be found insufficient. Hence the necessity for the protection, not of authority simply or chiefly, but of individual rights and the liberty of religion and intelligence in the nation, of the general understanding that the nation holds its power to govern as a trust from God, and that to God through the people all civil rulers are strictly responsible. Let the mass of the people in any nation lapse into the ignorance and barbarism of atheism, or lose themselves in that supreme sophism called pantheism, the grand error of ancient as well as of modern gentilism, and liberty, social or political, except that wild kind of liberty, and perhaps not even that should be excepted, which obtains among savages, would be lost and irrecoverable. But after all, this theory does not meet all the difficulties of the case. It derives sovereignty from God, and thus asserts the divine origin of government in the sense that the origin of nature is divine; it derives it from God through the people, collectively, or as society, and therefore concedes it a natural, human, and social element, which distinguishes it from pure theocracy. It, however, does not explain how authority comes from God to the people. The ruler, king, prince, or emperor, holds from God through the people, but how do the people themselves hold from God? Mediately or immediately? If mediately, what is the medium? Surely not the people themselves. The people can no more be the medium than the principle of their own sovereignty. If immediately, then God governs in them as he does in the church, and no man is free to think or act contrary to popular opinion, or in any case
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