Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 8.djvu/72

68 is a judicial institution to help execute the statutes; universal suffrage is a democratic institution for ruling the State.

Constitutions are fundamental rules of conduct for the nation, made by the highest human authority in the land, and only changeable thereby, determining what institutions shall be allowed, how administered, by whom and in what manner statutes shall be made.

Statutes are particular rules of conduct to regulate the action of man with man, of individuals with the State, and of the State with individuals.

Statutes are amenable to the constitutions; the constitutions to the institutions; they to the people; all subjectively to the conscience of the individual, and objectively to the conscience of God.

Establishments are the machinery which a people contrives wherewith to carry out its ideas of the right or the expedient. In the present state of mankind they are indispensable to accomplish the purpose of individual life. There are indeed a few men who, for their good conduct, after they are mature, require no human laws whatever. They regulate themselves by their idea of right, by their love of truth, of justice, of man and God. They see the law of God so clear that they need no prohibitive statutes to restrain them from wrong. They will not lie nor steal, though no statutes forbid, and all other men both lie and steal; not if the statutes command falsehood and theft. These men are saints. The wealth of Athens could not make Aristides unjust. Were all men like Jesus of Nazareth, statutes forbidding wrong would be as needless as sails to a shark, a balloon to a swallow, or a railroad to the lightning of heaven. This is always a small class of men, but one that continually increases. We all look to the time when this will include all men. No man expects to find law books and courts in the kingdom of heaven.

Then there is a class who need these statutes as a well-known rule of conduct, to encourage them to do right, by the assurance that all other men will likewise be made to do so, even if not willing. They see the law of God less clear and strong, and need human helps to keep it. This class comprises the majority of mankind. The court-house helps them, though they never use it; the jail helps them,