o do
materially with the idea of a nation. This, indeed, makes all the
difference between a family and a nation, if only sovereign
prerogatives be conceded to the family, as was done in patriarchal
times. It is in the life of the State rather than that of the family,
that we have civilization. The very word civilization implies
this--_civis_, being a citizen, and _civitas_, a State.

The importance of national relations may be seen in the consideration
of the nature of history. What is history? Is it a collection of the
biographies of individual men? We do not, as a fact, give to such
collection the name of history. History has been called "the biography
of society." But of society founded upon what basis, working by what
agencies, involving what interests, proposing what ends? Not surely
voluntary associations, formed for the promotion of the arts, or
commerce, or philosophy, or benevolent undertakings. Such associations
are too limited in the numbers which belong to them, too narrow and
partial in the ends they propose and the means they use, to justify us
in calling their biography history. We must find a society which, as
nearly as possible, shall comprehend in its members the entire human
race, command in its workings all human energies, involve in its
consideration all human interests; the biography of such a society we
may call history. Such a society we find in the State. And it is
because the whole human race is gathered into nations; it is because
the State proposes as its true object the highest good of all its
citizens; and especially is it because the State as a sovereign power,
not only holds the persons and property of its citizens at its
disposal, but deals with its citizens and with all mankind as moral
beings, and as itself a moral person responsible to God,--being a
sovereign only as his minister;--it is because of all this, that we
give the name history to the biography of nations rather than to that
of any other society. And the idea of history generally accepted is
this,--it is a record of the changes which come over the aspect and
fortunes of nations, in their self-development and their mutual
intercourse.[A]

The highest truth of history is unquestionably the Providence of God.
Now, it gives us a most impressive view of the importance of national
relations, when we consider the Bible representation of nations as the
great agents of God's Providence. The Assyrian nation sent against the
people