NATIONAL BLESSINGS AND JUDGMENTS CONSIDERED

A DISCOURSE

DELIVERED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, BY RICHARD WHATELY, D.D.,

ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN.

WITH AN APPENDIX,

CONTAINING REMARKS ON THE PRESENT CRISIS..

PREFACE.

THE peculiar and alarming circumstances of the present times,-the awful calamities of various kinds which have befallen many nations, from which our own has not been wholly exempt, and of which the most frightful visitations are apprehended,-have induced me to republish the following Discourse, which was delivered several years ago, and on a different occasion, but which appears to me, in substance, hardly less adapted to the present.

I have thought it best to reprint it without any alteration, and to subjoin, in the form of an Appendix, such further remarks as appeared to be called for by the present aspect of affairs.

If the views which I have taken be as sound and scriptural, as I can pledge myself for their having been long and carefully considered, and deliberately adopted, I may hope that they will serve, through the divine blessing, both to point out the useful lesson which may be drawn from national calamities, and, still more, to guard against the mischievous consequences which may result from misconstruing that lesson.

"The Lord will again rejoice over thee for good, as he rejoiced over thy fathers: if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to keep his commandments."-Deut. xxx. 9, 10.

THAT right and wrong conduct are likely, on the whole, to lead to good and bad success, respectively, in the present life,— and that the general tendency of each particular virtue and vice is to produce corresponding worldly advantages and disadvantages,—is a doctrine which, in a speculative point of view at least, few would be disposed to controvert. And though this general rule admits of such numerous exceptions, that a rightminded and considerate man would not venture, in the case of any individual, to infer that his success in life had precisely corresponded with his deserts, or decidedly to promise, e. g. prosperity to the honest, frugal, and industrious, and denounce

certain ruin to the profligate, yet he would not feel the less convinced of the certainty of the general rule, that such conduct will, for the most part, be attended with such consequences.

Nor are states exempt from the influence of the same causes which, in the affairs of individuals, produce these results; national perfidy seldom fails in the end to occasion such a general distrust as must lead to national evils; unprincipled aggression will usually provoke, sooner or later,a formidable retaliation: and, on the other hand, moderation and good faith have manifestly a general tendency to promote peace and internal prosperity. It is also a point sufficiently acknowledged, that, to the Israelites these goods and evils were dispensed uniformly aud regularly; the Mosaic law being sanctioned by temporal rewards and punishments,* which were of course awarded by an extraordinary and especial Providence, according to their obedience or disobedience. But whether this system, which was confessedly peculiar to them, as far as regards individuals, was also peculiar to them, nationally considered or not, -whether, in short, states and individuals are both under the same plan of divine government, viz., that in both, good and ill conduct lead generally, but not constantly, to success or misfortune; or whether the two cases are distinguished, and the rule which holds good only for the most part, in the case of particular persons, is invariable in the case of nations,—is a question on which differences of opinion exist. And the discussion of it seems not unsuitable to the present occasion. To dwell on the advantages of the restoration of the kingly government, and on the evils from which it delivered us, might be deemed a superfluous task; but it may be interesting to inquire how far, and in what manner, those advantages and those evils are to be attributed to the public conduct of our ancestors ;whether they took place according to the same general rule only by which temperance and integrity and industry tend, in private life, to promote each man's health and reputation and prosperity, or according to some distinct and peculiar system of divine government, which dispenses to nations regular temporal retribution.

The inquiry is not unimportant, both because, if the latter doctrine be admitted, and not otherwise, it will be allowable, as well as natural, to reason back from political events to national

* That these were at least its principal sanction, is admitted even by those who will not allow that the doctrine of future retribution made no part of this revelation.

character and conduct; and regard the Deity as giving, in every instance of public success or calamity, his judgment on the cause at issue: and also, because if this opinion prove to be un"founded, every one who maintains it is so far laid open to the cavils of the irreligious scoffer; who will thence take occasion to deride the doctrine of divine Providence altogether. The question is, moreover, very intimately connected with the right understanding of the Old Testament; since we cannot be said thoroughly to comprehend the Jewish economy, unless we know, not only what belonged to it, but also what was and what was not peculiar to it.

The belief, then, that temporal rewards and punishments are constantly awarded to nations, according to their conduct and character as communities, is founded, partly, on the supposed necessity of this system, in order that divine justice should be in all cases administered; which, in respect of states, must be, it is urged, in the present world, if at all, since they have no existence in the world to come; and, partly, on those numerous passages of Scripture, especially in the books of Moses, which promise victory and national prosperity to the Israelites, on condition of their obeying God's laws,-denounce defeat and captivity as punishments for disobedience, and, again, hold out the hope of a restoration of national prosperity, when they shall repent of their transgressions, and return to the Lord their God.

And accordingly, numerous instances are recorded of the fulfilment of these promises and threatenings, both in the case of the nation of the Israelites, and of the individuals belonging 'to it for this system of temporal rewards and punishments extended, as was above remarked, to each single member of "God's chosen people, as well as to that people itself, considered collectively. That this regular distribution of worldly goods and evils to those individuals was an extraordinary dispensation of Providence, and is not to be looked for in the world at large, is admitted by all: but this, it is alleged, is because there is no longer any need for such an interference of Providence: a future life having been distinctly revealed in the Gospel; and the rewards and punishments of another world affording a sufficient sanction to its precepts. But there is no reason, it is surged, why the same system as that under which the Israelites lived should not be still continued with respect to nations, since for them there is no future state.

This doctrine is supported by the authority of several re

spectable names; and, among others, the acute and judicious Leslie seems to have favoured it. "Now let us consider," says he, "that at the day of judgment there is no representation of nations; but every man suffers for his own sin. National judgments are only in this world; and hence it is observable, that no wicked nation has ever yet escaped a national judgment in this world. Though God may bear long with them, yet if they do not repent, by a national sorrow and amendment, judgment overtakes them, even here. For nowhere else are there any national, either mercies or judgments. And as all nations have been wicked in their several degrees, so have they every one been severally punished, according to their demerits, even before the sons of men."

I. The arguments urged in favour of this opinion have certainly, at first sight, a plausible appearance; and I have endeavoured to set them forth as distinctly and fairly as possible: but they will be found, I apprehend, on an attentive examina*tion, to be less solid than specious. For, in the first place, when it is urged, that, in order to the vindication of the divine justice, nations must necessarily receive their due meed of reward and punishment in this world, because they will have no existence in the next, it may be answered, that neither have they any existence now, distinct from the individuals composing them. They are not moral agents; they are not persons; and, accordingly, they are not capable of reward or punishment. A nation, in short, or any other kind of community, considered as such, and apart from the individuals belonging to it, is a being which has no distinct existence, except in our minds; it is a notion framed by us for our convenience, in order that we may be enabled to designate with the greater precision a number of 'really existing individuals, who bear a certain relation to each other, when we would speak of them collectively, and with a view to that relation. There is no more common source of confusion of thought, than the tendency to mistake words for "things, and to entangle ourselves in a labyrinth formed by the language we employ: nor are men of the greatest ability exempt from the risk of being thus sensnared, whenever they are not carefully on their guard against this particular error. The case "before us is one instance out of many in which this seems to have taken place; in which, I mean, the notions framed by our own minds for the purposes of reasoning and conversing, come at length to be regarded by us as distinct beings, actually existing independent of our conceptions and expressions.

We are so familiarly accustomed to talk of nations as illustrious or degraded; as victorious or defeated, prosperous or depressed; we so commonly attribute to them, in ordinary discourse, virtue or injustice, happiness or misery, and, in short, every mode of action and of feeling, that it is not wonderful we should sometimes be insensibly led to forget that they are not persons, but merely conceptions of our own minds, having no agency nor capacity for suffering or enjoyment, distinct from that of the particular persons of whom they consist.

II. But it may be demanded how, if nations are thus, as such unfit objects of reward or punishment, God's dealings with the Jewish nation can be explained. The answer to this would be found, I apprehend, in a careful investigation of the design of the Mosaic dispensation.

It appears to have been part of that design to exhibit to mankind a sensible specimen, or rather representation, by way of proof, of that moral government of God, the system of which is but imperfectly displayed in the world at large; and which is to be completed, and fully realized, only in a future state. It would be inconsistent with the present occasion to enter into a full explanation and defence of this hypothesis: let it be allowed, however, to adopt for the present the supposition, merely as a supposition, that the Mosaic dispensation was, in part, designed for the purpose just mentioned; that we may examine how far the peculiar circumstances of that dispensation correspond with and are explained by it. 1. It would manifestly be necessary then, with a view to the object in question, that the Israelites should be exhibited as uniformly and regularly rewarded or punished, according to their obedience or disobedience to the divine commands. 2. And moreover, in order that the correspondence of their situation with their conduct might be more conspicuously displayed, it was necessary that they should be nationally, as well as individually, prosperous or unfortunate, in consequence of their good or ill conduct; since the fate of individuals would have been too obscure to engage general attention. 3. It was requisite, for the same reason, that the obedience required of them should not consist in moral rectitude alone, because, in that case, the correspondence of their circumstances to their behaviour would not have been sufficiently manifest; (since moral virtue consists, to so great a degree, in purity of motives, and propriety of inward feelings; concerning which other men cannot with any certainty form a judgment;) but in the practice of external rites, and in a con