nery of statesmanship. And thus the Christian sentiment of the world forces itself upon states, and diplomacies, and policies, and fixes the noble sentiment that a nation, even as the personal being, cannot hold itself back from the law of moral responsibility. For, as no individual man can draw himself off from his fellow-man, and proclaim, "I am distinct from the mass of humanity," so no nation can set itself off, unconcerned, from the rest of the race. "No man liveth to himself," is a truth as positive in its application to a nation as to a man; a truth recognized everywhere, and in all history; anticipated, long centuries before its sacred utterance, as truly veritable as on the day when the inspired penman wrote it. For the words of the heathen Terence—
"Homo sum; humani nihil a me aliennm puto"—
contain just the same spirit as the sentiment of Shakspeare—
"One touch of nature makes the whole world kin."
Once more, I would further add that, if related humanity and moral law teach beneficence as the duty of nations, so, likewise, the commerce of nations. For this seems the clear mandate of Heaven: "The nations that will not hold intercourse with other peoples, in trade and barterings, and thus bless the world, they shall suffer and shall die!"
A non-commercial spirit and practice has always stifled the life of nations, or laid them low in ruins. In the history of the "Decline and Fall" of nations, this will yet be shown to have been one of the most potent agencies of national decay; for among the ele-
