Let us sum up in three words the history so far as it has yet been recorded. The foundation of all is man coming forth by creation out of the hand of God. He comes forth as one family in Adam. Falling from his high estate by his Father's sin, he receives a religion guarded and expressed by a specific rite of worship, which records his fall, and prophesies his restoration. After this the family springs from parents united in a holy bond, which, as it carries on the natural race, is likewise the image of a future exaltation. As he increases and multiplies the divine authority is vicariously exercised in the government of the race as a society. That government is strictly allied with his religion. It is most remarkable that the last end of man dominates the whole history; that is, all the temporal goods of man from the beginning depend on his fidelity to God. Disregard of this works the Fall; the same disregard works the Deluge. It remains to show how that compact and complete society instituted under Noah depended, as to the maintenance in unimpaired co-operation of the great goods we have just enumerated, upon the free-will of man to preserve his fidelity to God; that is, to show how in the constant order of human things there is an inherent subordination of the temporal to the spiritual good, as for the individual so for the race.
2.—_The Divine and Human Society in the Dispersion._