Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

that it is not ours. The Constitution is, as we understand it, the constitution of distinct powers in the State, which powers are always to be represented in the administration of the several departments of government, and to serve as counterpoises one to another, whenever either seeks an undue preponderance. No constitution, in any intelligible sense, is possible where the State is founded on population alone: for, where population is the only element that enters into the calculation, no constitution of distinct powers is possible. Either, then, constitutionalism, and not democracy, or democracy, and not constitutionalism. You cannot, in the nature of things, have both together. For either population can override the Constitution, and then it is no Constitution; or, the Constitution can override population. and restrain it, and then it is no democracy.,

Now, the Constitution, if it mean any thing, and is to answer any purpose, must be such a constitution of the State, of governing powers in the State, whose concurrence is essential to the action of the government, as will effectually prevent any one from going beyond certain bounds, that will be of itself competent to say to the Money power, "Thus far, but no farther;" and by so doing, be always a shield interposed between the poorer and more numerous classes, and the wealthy, influential, and all-grasping minority. These constituted powers, unquestionably, are to be exercised by persons; but they do not represent persons alone, but possessions and pursuits. The people distributed, constituted according to their property, or their calling, or whatever you make, in addition to population, the foundation of your State, is the legal, the political people. This people, which has no existence outside of the Constitution, and, therefore, can act only through the forms of the Constitution, is the people that governs, that makes and administers the laws, and that may, when it pleases, alter or amend the Constitution.

The reviewer, founding the State, as all Democrats must do, on population alone, comprehends no distinction between the legal, political people, representing not

numbers only, but something in addition thereto, and population itself; and, therefore, he contends, that population is competent to make or unmake the Constitution. In this case, his Constitution rests for its support on the will of the very population it is to govern, and would resemble locking up the culprit in prison and intrusting him with the keys. Yet the reviewer talks pleasantly about the reductio ad absurdum. If numbers, as we have seen, are not sufficient, in practical legislation, to restrain within due bounds the minority that control the balance of property, how can they prevent that same minority from securing undue advantages in the Convention that makes the Constitution? Are the mass of the people necessarily stronger in the Convention, than in the Legislature? Did it never occur to our friend, that government and law are needed especially, not for the rich and powerful, but for the poor and defenceless?

The reviewer's doctrine as to the power to alter the Constitution is very easily comprehended. As one of the legal people, I have no existence out of the town of Chelsea, and my vote, in determining the majority to be represented in the Convention, can be counted. nowhere else; but as one of the population, my vote. may be counted anywhere. In selecting delegates for the Convention, then, the excess of numbers in one electoral district may be used to make up the deficiency in another. Might not, in this way, the composition of the Convention be somewhat different from what it would be if legally convened, and representing only the political people? The absurdity of the reviewer's doctrine may be seen at once, by applying it to the Constitution of the United States. According to his doctrine, seven of the large States would be competent at any time, and in any way, to alter the Federal Constitution, for they have the majority of the population. According to our doctrine, which makes it alterable only by the legal people, acting as the legal people, no alteration could be obtained so long as even the seven smallest States refused their assent.

[blocks in formation]

What

But we must bring our remarks to a close. should be the real foundation of the State, or what should be the basis of representation, we reserve for a future discussion. We will only add now, in justice to ourselves, that no Constitution, however admirably devised and wisely adapted to the genius and pursuits of a given people, will be alone sufficient. Its success will always demand the presence of a higher than human authority to fasten it on the minds, the hearts, and the consciences, of the people, and those they intrust with the management of their affairs. We can, in nothing, dispense with superhuman aid; and no constitution will work well, or accomplish its end, that has not its foundation and support in God.

In conclusion; we have aimed to treat the question calmly, fairly, and honestly. We have spoken freely of the reviewer, but, intentionally, with no disrespect. We sought no controversy with him; and it was far from our original wish to interfere at all with his discussion of his own notions in his own way. But he himself went out of his way, not merely to disclaim all responsibility for our doctrines, but to denounce us in his own Review, to which we were a regular and independent contributor at his own solicitation; and his first denunciation was of views which we thought we had some reason for believing he himself was "becoming more and more inclined to adopt." If aught unpleasant has entered into the tone of any of our remarks, it is owing to the fact, that we have not been able wholly to escape the echo of his own. Yet, we owe him no ill will; we esteem him for many noble and generous qualities, and take a deeper personal interest in his welfare than either he or the public will give us credit for. We believe him wrong on a great and vital question, and wrong because he has adopted his opinions without mature investigation. A fuller investigation, we are confident, will convince him that the great cause of individual and social well-being is not to be promoted by a further extension of the Democratic principle,

--

ART. V. Nature and Office of the Church. ter to the Editor.

A Let

WE have received the following letter without name or date, but post-marked "Philadelphia, January 10." It probably was not intended for publication, but we insert it, because it affords us an opportunity to offer a few additional remarks, not uncalled for, on certain points touched upon in the first number of our Journal, and because it is only in this way that we can acknowledge its reception. Should the writer address us again, we hope he will give us his name, for he wants not the capacity to render it honorable, be it what it may.

"SIR-I have been reading the first number of your Review with deep attention and admiring interest. You have the power of doing good or evil beyond most men of our age and country, and with it a fearful responsibility. God has blessed you with a fearless heart, and a tongue, as you rightly say, 'trumpet-toned,' and, what is better, true to your heart's convictions. With those convictions mine harmonize, in many of the great points to which you call attention. But in some, to me, of all-absorbing interest, I believe you wrong, and think I see why you are wrong.

"Most truly do you set forth the rights and powers of the living Body of the Son of God. Of its nature and office you have yet to learn.

"How can you, who so powerfully appeal to the "fact of eighteen hundred years," set aside the historical view, by which, alone, you get at that fact? History teaches you and the world, that the Church of God is, and has been, through eighteen centuries. To history I appeal, to show what it is, (in its external development — its shell, in which the meat must be, and without which there can be no meat) and where it has been. By the same evidence by which I know that God has ordained a man, in and by whom to redeem and judge the world, by that same evidence I know how this life has been perpetuated, and is to be, until his coming again. The inner life of the Church no history can touch it is a thing of experience and experience only. But the organized life of the one Body has been seen, heard, looked upon, and handled, from the day of the Apostles until now. Your own beautiful adaptation of the fable of the quest of Isis seems excellently to point out the groя Vidov of your present view of the Church you are so nobly disposed to serve. Why did not Isis succeed in revivifying the re-collected fragments of the torn body of "the good Osiris"? Because the reproductive organs had been lost. Typhon had whelmed them in the sea that symbol of

the storm-tossed, noisy multitude, who have no ear for history, no eye for the seal of God's own signet. Were you right - which you most certainly are not-in supposing the sects to be the fragments, yet instinct with life, of Christ's living body, some one of them must have, and develope, the reproductive power, before that Body can be revivified by reuniting. You long for the μià viris, and the iv Bárta. How is it you have not seen that the latter must precede the former, and that it is the result of the μιὰ κλῆσις (ἡ κλήσις οι Paul) which is a thing of history. Whom has God commissioned to baptize men into the Body of his Son? and how is that commission known? is the concerning question of our day. Settle that, and Church authority can show itself, ay, and develope itself, too.

"But your theory of development is wrong. Most truly you assert a continuous inspiration. But of what kind? of invention? of addition? No; but of living breath, of vocal utterance, of articulate expression of the ONE, unchangeable, changeless, Eternal Word. God changes not. Man changes not. The world changes not. Its phases are phases only; the one message which was from the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. With it the Church came into the world, and goes on her way through it. Her progress is a progress toward eternity, not in time.

"Go on, Sir, in your outspoken zeal; but beware of speaking without searching further. You are yet but a "forscher"; you have grappled a fragment of the truth, and a precious one, but not the whole. You have vibrated from your ultra Protestant position at the beginning of your course, to the other extreme of the are of oscillation. You have yet to find the centre. Believe all you do of the Church's life, and work; but neglect not her organization. You have but one half of the "mystery" which Paul saw symbolized in human marriage. You know the Church as the Body of Christ. You have yet to know her as His Bride, on whom he is ever begetting children, who are to her instead of fathers (Ps. 45.) the means of perpetuating Herself in time and for eternity. You know the being and the power of the Living Temple of the Almighty; do not, I entreat you, blind yourself and others to its mission."

Our anonymous friend and correspondent mistakes, entirely, the questions we were discussing, and the general bearing of our remarks. If he had paid more attention to the questions we ourselves raised, and less to those with which he himself is preoccupied, he would have spared us his objections. In what we said of the Church in our Review for January, we were not required to enter largely into the question of the Nature and Office of the Church. In our Introduction, we were addressing ourselves to our old friends, who are no great sticklers for Church authority, and our aim was to show them, that entire submission to the Church of God demands

« AnteriorContinuar »