Huguenot or Lutheran, or whatever else he may, he must be joined in spirit to this "peculiar people." For the rest, Providence is saying, and he that hath ears to hear let him hear it, "Strangers shall stand and feed your flocks, and the sons of the alien shall be your plowmen and your vine-dressers; but ye shall be named the priests of the Lord-men shall call you the ministers of our God." Like Israel of old, that race shall possess "great and goodly cities which he builded not, houses full of all good things which he filled not, wells digged which he digged not, and olive trees which he planted not," and all that he enjoys, he, by virtue of his superior moral manhood, shall repay an hundredfold in the intelligence, freedom, and security, which he dispenses to all around him; and in that hallowed type of piety for which he so freely bled, which he alone knows how to appreci ate and to vindicate, and which it is his manifest destiny' to perpetuate, and to extend among men.

But it is by no private and personal right that he holds these privileges, and for no selfish and exclusive ends. If more than all others the Puritan is entrusted with command over the new elements of moral empire which are here developing, it is because he has some better adaptation than others for that work, in his love of freedom and of God. In faithfulness to his high position, he is to evangelize and elevate the humbler races which God is here gathering at his feet. He is to plant in each fertile valley, which the toil of others reclaims from the wilderness, the sanctua ries of his earnest piety. He is to sanctify by his simple, rational, and scriptural faith, the powerful mental development of what is to be the earth's greatest and freest people. Freely he has received, freely must he give, of all that can emancipate the soul from sin, and ally the earth to heaven and God. Accomplishing this work, his influence shall stream forth as wide through the earth, and as grateful to the nations, as the light of the morning.

Then shall each inferior race learn according to its measure, whatever is valuable in the freedom and piety which bless this land; and each shall become a minister of good to its 'kindred according to the flesh.' Missionaries of every nation, here instructed to know the truth, shall bear it back again to the lands they left; till Protestant Europe shall feel a new stimulus, and Catholic lands be traversed through all their extent by the heralds of a purer and more ancient Christianity. Africa's children shall return to her degraded soil with the means of dignity and emancipation for her; and the Asiatic shall find in the fresh civilization and the living piety of the present, the weapons with which to destroy those petrified systems that have been an incubus so long upon society there. Hence shall go forth each race that Providence leads hither, themselves here enlightened and made free, to bear freedom and light to older lands, till they shall become the heritage alike of all.

Nor is this the end of these beneficent reciprocations. Man, in his finest moral and social type, coming into conflict here with the grandest development of nature, engages in a struggle which will task his energies to the utmost. Of course he must renew his vigor by such sustained exertion. Called to adapt each beneficent institution of the past to the exigencies of a new condition, called to form fresh organizations for exertion, and devise new safeguards for liberty and happiness, he will produce by his efforts more efficient forms of law, of polity, and of faith. Institutions breathing more of the spirit of freedom and fraternity, will return to repay our debt to society in the old world. The church unfettered here by bondage to the state will claim there too her freedom. Governments will learn from our endeavor and our success, how much wiser and safer it is to govern the people for their own welfare than for the petty interests of a class. Institutions will spring up among us recognizing rights which the Magna Charta did not assert, nor the habeas corpus secure, to be propagated where these time honored safeguards of liberty had their birth. Constitutions that will secure coming generations from marauding ministers of finance, and demolish patents of monopoly against which never parliament protested, which will fill up abysses of debt, and remove mountains of taxation, will be among the births of our future; and, devised and tested amid. our freedom, they will become the securities of a better liberty in the world's older civilization.

But we must not prolong our remarks. We have wished chiefly to exhibit Prof. Guyot's labors to the public eye, and to contribute our influence to place him in his just position in public esteem. This volume promises a series of books of instruction from his pen, for which we shall look with much interest and hope. Meanwhile we perceive that the University Regents of the State of New York have secured his services temporarily for the arrangement of the very complete system of meteorological observations now organizing over that great state. A glance (which has been kindly permitted us in advance of its publication) at the Report of Prof. G. to that body, affords evidence of the thorough character and scientific value which through his agency those observations will be made to possess. We do not doubt that his future works will contribute greatly to the improvement of education and the dissemination of knowledge. through our land; and we feel assured that his future residence among us will afford just ground for gratification and pride that he is henceforth to be our countryman.

ART. IV. THE SUPREMACY OF GOD'S LAWMR. SEWARD'S SPEECH.

Speech of William H. Seward on the admission of California. Delivered in the Senate of the United States, March 11, 1850.

WE hold to the supremacy of the divine law. We believe that the authority of God's law is paramount to the authority of all human laws-that our obligation to obey God's law is superior to our obligation to obey any human law. We hold, in other words, that when any human law comes in conflict with, or is contrary to, the divine law, that human law loses all authority or binding force.

Let it not be thought that this position implies slight regard for human law. It results rather from a high estimate of all law; an estimate which justly appreciates all law, and gives the human and divine each its appropriate place. Human law is indeed sacred. But the divine law is more, infinitely more, sacred. Human law, as a general rule certainly, we are bound to obey. So God ordains. Human government is his ordinance; and he directs us to obey "the powers that be." But when "the powers that be" give a law which is contrary to God's law; when they command what God forbids, and forbid what he commands --what then? The answer is plain. We must obey God rather than man. The lower must yield to the higher. The human law becomes null and void, before the divine law with which it conflicts.

ment.

So.

It would seem that this proposition is too plain to need arguBut alas! evidence is daily pressing upon us that it is not The Hon. William H. Seward, whose speech in the Senate of the United States on the admission of California we have placed at the head of this article, uttered in that speech the following paragraphs.

"We deem the principle of the law for the recapture of fugitives, therefore, unjust, unconstitutional, and immoral; and thus while patriotism withholds its approbation, the consciences of our people condemn it.

"You will say that these convictions of ours are disloyal. Grant it for the sake of argument. They are, nevertheless, honest; and the law is to be executed among us, not among you; not by us, but by the Federal authority. Has any government ever succeeded in changing the moral convictions of its subjects by force? But these convictions imply no disloyalty. We reverence the Constitution, although we perceive this defect, just as we acknowledge the splendor and the power of the sun, although its surface is tarnished with here and there an opaque spot.

"Your Constitution and laws convert hospitality to the refugee from the most degrading oppression on earth into a crime, but all mankind except you esteem that hospitality a virtue. The right of extradition of a fugitive from justice is not admitted by the law of nature and of nations, but rests in voluntary compacts. I know of only two compacts found in diplomatic history that

admitted EXTRADITION OF SLAVES. Here is one of them. It is found in a treaty of peace made between Alexander Comnenus and Leontine, Greek Emperors at Constantinople, and Oleg, King of Russia, in the year 902, and is in these words:

"If a Russian slave take flight, or even if he is carried away by any one under pretence of having been bought, his master shall have the right and power to pursue him, and hunt for and capture him wherever he shall be found; and any person who shall oppose the master in the execution of this right shall be deemed guilty of violating this treaty, and be punished accordingly.'

"This was in the year of Grace 902, in the period called the Dark Ages,' and the contracting Powers were despotisms. And here is the other:

"No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor is due.'

"This is from the Constitution of the United States in 1787, and the parties were the republican States of this Union. The law of nations disavows such compacts; the law of nature, written on the hearts and consciences of freemen, repudiates them. Armed power could not enforce them, because there is no public conscience to sustain them. I know that there are laws of various sorts which regulate the conduct of men. There are constitutions and statutes, codes mercantile and codes civil; but when we are legislating for States, especially when we are founding States, all these laws must be brought to the standard of the laws of God, and must be tried by that standard, and must stand or fall by it."—pp. 5, 6.

"But there is yet another aspect in which this principle must be examined. It regards the domain only as a possession, to be enjoyed either in common or by partition by the citizens of the old States. It is true, indeed, that the national domain is ours. It is true it was acquired by the valor and with the wealth of the whole nation. But we hold, nevertheless, no arbitrary power over it. We hold no arbitrary authority over anything, whether acquired lawfully or seized by usurpation. The Constitution regulates our stewardship; the Constitution devotes the domain to union, to justice, to defense, to welfare, and to liberty. "But there is a higher law than the Constitution, which regulates our authority over the domain and devotes it to the same noble purposes. The territory is a part, no inconsiderable part, of the common heritage of mankind, bestowed upon them by the Creator of the Universe. We are his stewards, and must so discharge our trust as to secure in the highest attainable degree their happiness.” -p. 8.

These sentiments, the simple dictates of loyalty to God and to truth, manfully yet modestly expressed, seem to have been received by the Senate with general disapprobation, and by some members even with horror and contempt. Their author was at once numbered with dangerous fanatics. Some Senators went so far as to denounce those who would hold social intercourse with such a man. And not only the Hotspur advocates of human bondage, but men who rank themselves with the opponents of slavery, at least of its extension; not only the lesser lights of the Senate, but the ruling orbs of that intellectual firmamentsuch men as Daniel Webster and Henry Clay and Lewis Casshave repeatedly indulged in contemptuous flings and broad and bitter sneers at the New York Senator for propounding the idea that allegiance is due to a law higher than the constitution of the United States. And while the religious press of the North

has generally commended the Christian manliness of Mr. Seward, and maintained the justice of his position; the political press, with a few decided and honorable exceptions, has either sympathized with the sneering and contemptuous Senators, or has kept an ominous silence respecting the whole subject. Nor is this all. Some of those whose sacred office it is to propound and defend the divine law, have expressed their disapprobation of the idea that a citizen can have any higher rule of political duty than the constitution and laws of the land; while not a few among respectable laymen have declared the public utterance of such an idea to be treason.

With such facts before us, we can not doubt the importance and necessity of setting forth the sacred supremacy and the paramount obligation of God's law.

A satisfactory discussion of the subject must give an answer to two inquiries. First, ought human law to yield, is it null and void, when it comes in conflict with the divine law; and secondly, who is to judge when a human law becomes thus null and void.

On the first inquiry, let us come at once to the highest source of truth and wisdom-the Bible. What does God say about this matter in his word?

The apostles had received from their Lord the command, "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." They went forth to obey that command, beginning at Jerusalem. But very soon they found the law of the supreme civil authority of their nation laid across this path which their divine master had commanded them to tread. They went forward, nevertheless, and right over the law which was designed to stop their course. For this cause, they were taken, and cast into prison. "But the angel of the Lord, by night, opened the prison doors, and brought them forth, and said, Go, stand and speak, in the temple, all the words of this life." Accordingly they went, and preached, and thus in the most public of all places, and in the boldest manner, again transgressed the law. But, ere long, they were arrested by the captain of the temple and the officers, and arraigned before the Sanhedrim, or council of seventy-the chief civil authority of the Jewish nation. The Sanhedrim, as this was a case which created much public excitement, had called in to their assistance the senate or eldership; just as, in our times, a judge, in a case of great interest or difficulty, one for instance which involves the life of a fellow being, calls in another judge to sit with him during the trial. This senate, or eldership, consisted of the two other courts of the temple, composed of twenty three judges each; so that, if there was a full attendance, there were 116 judges. Before this most august tribunal in the Jewish nation, the three highest judicial