take the place natural to it in the life of mankind, and will become the chief basis of the relations between man and man.
That time is coming; it is at hand.
"We are living in the times predicted by Christ, wrote Lamennais.
"From one end of the earth to the other, everything is tottering. In all institutions, whatever they may be, in all the different systems on which the social life of men is founded, nothing stands firm. Everyone feels that soon it must all fall to ruins, and that in this temple too, not one stone will be left on another. But as the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple, from whence the living God had departed, foreboded and prepared the erection of a new city, and a new temple, whither the people of all races and of all nations would come together at their own free will—so on the ruins of the temples and towns of to-day, a new city and a new temple will be erected, predestined to become the universal temple and the common fatherland of the human race, disunited till now by teachings hostile to one another, that make brothers into strangers and sow godless hatred and revolting warfare among them. When that hour, known to God alone, arrives—the hour of union of the nations into one temple and one city—then indeed will the Kingdom of Christ come—the complete fulfilment of his divine mission. Did he not come with the one object of teaching men that they must be united by the law of love?"
Channing said the same:
"Mighty powers are at work in the world. Who can stay them? God's word has gone forth, and 'it cannot return to him void.' A new comprehension of the Christian spirit—a new reverence for humanity, a new feeling of brotherhood, and of all men’s relation to the common Father—this is among the signs of our times. We see it; do we not feel it? Before this, all oppressions are to fall. Society, silently pervaded by this, is to change its aspect of universal warfare for peace. The power of selfishness, all-grasping and seemingly invincible, is to yield to this diviner energy… 'On earth peace,' will not always sound as fiction."
XVI.
Why should we suppose that people, who are entirely in the power of God, will always remain under the strange delusion that only human laws—changeable, accidental, unjust and local as they are—are important and binding, and not the one, eternal, just law of God, common to all men? Why should we think that the teachers of mankind will always preach, as they they now do, that there is and can be, no such law, but that the only laws that exist are special
