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the Christian or Social System, the moral power gains the ascendancy; for men, being no longer rivals in trade, rivals in interest, rivals in affection, require no longer the military power to rule them. It is in this second stage that the fruit of Christianity is revealed, and men "love one another."
This doctrine of the double system of society is beautifully taught in the history, or allegory, (it matters not which) of "the fall of man." The tree of knowledge, of good and evil, was placed in the midst of the garden. The serpent, the emblem of wisdom, said, "If ye eat thereof, ye shall become as gods." They did eat: the evil came first—for this is the order of progressive nature—and good is in reserve. The lawgiver himself confirmed the truth of the serpent's words.
The doctrine of "the Fall," is a doctrine of natural philosophy. Common sense will teach every man that, in order to obtain a knowledge of nature, and thus to perfect the education of mankind, man must go through the furnace of evil; physical, intellectual, and moral evil. Physical evil is pain, sickness, deformity, &c. Intellectual evil is ignorance and its consequences; and moral evil is the union of both, the unsocial system of individualism and competition.
The two great stages of progress naturally subdivide themselves into two great divisions of nature—the physical and the intellectual, the material and the spiritual. These two departments correspond to the law and the gospel. The law had a material object, with a purely spiritual Deity. The first Christianity has a spiritual object, with a material Deity. These two churches are the two extremes of nature, set in direct opposition to each other. The Social System is the union of these two in one, and is the third stage of revelation, but the second stage of Christianity, and also the second stage of the law, which it embraces. Hence Jesus Christ says, "The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of wheat until the whole was leavened."
