ation, which may not be
shown to be in accordance with the laws of our own higher nature. This
is one of the strongest collateral arguments in favor of the divine
origin of the Scriptures. In appealing therefore to the Bible in support
of the doctrine here advanced, we are not, on the one hand appealing to
an arbitrary standard, a mere statute book, a collection of laws which
create the obligations they enforce; nor, on the other hand, to "the
reason and nature of things" in the abstract, which after all is only
our own reason; but we are appealing to the infinite intelligence of a
personal God, whose will, because of his infinite excellence, is
necessarily the ultimate ground and rule of all moral obligation. This,
however, being the case, whatever the Bible declares to be right is
found to be in accordance with the constitution of nature and our own
reason. All that the Scriptures, for example, teach of the subordination
of children to their parents, of wives to their husbands, has not its
foundation, but its confirmation, in the very nature of the relation of
the parties. Any violation of the precepts of the Bible, on these
points, is found to be a violation of the laws of nature, and certainly
destructive. In like manner it is clear from the social nature of man,
from the dependence of men upon each other, from the impossibility of
attaining the end of our being in this world, otherwise than in society
and under an ordered government, that it is the will of God that such
society should exist. The design of God in this matter is as plain as in
the constitution of the universe. We might as well maintain that the
laws of nature are the result of chance, or that marriage and parental
authority have no other foundation than human law, as to assert that
civil government has no firmer foundation than the will of man or the
quicksands of expediency. By creating men social beings, and making it
necessary for them to live in society, God has made his will as thus
revealed the foundation of all civil government.

This doctrine is but one aspect of the comprehensive doctrine of Theism,
a doctrine which teaches the existence of a personal God, a Spirit
infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power,
justice, holiness, goodness, and truth; a God who is everywhere present
upholding and governing all his creatures and all their actions. The
universe is not a machine left to go of itself. God did not at first
creat