Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

134 THE SECOND MAN VERIFIED IN HISTORY.himself, in the union of soul and body, an image ofthat tie by which Christ and His Church are one.Secondly, because God has created man forsociety, He has implanted in him an irrepressibleinstinct of communion with his brother men. Thisinstinct it is which, under circumstances of everypossible variety, results in one end, the State. Thehuman commonwealth, whatever external shapeit wear, whatever division of its powers it make,springs from this. In virtue of this original formationof man, that he is made to live together,and gregariously, not separately, the supreme powerof government, the power of life and death, dwellsin the community, and obedience to it has a divinesanction. Thus, the commonwealt has a varietyof powers which the individual has not, and notonly so, but it also has powers which do not arisefrom the mere aggregation of individuals, ratherwhich belong to it as a community, as a whole,for instance, sovereignty in all the details of itsexercise. But now the very object for whichChrist became Incarnate was to constitute a divinecommonwealth. He is the King : it is thetenderness of a God Incarnate that He calls andmakes His Kingdom His Body. The powers, then,which belong to the earthly commonwealth belong,with the changes which the change of subjectcarries, to the Divine. They who have so greata reverence for human government, who respect inthe nation an ultimate irresponsible power, ought,