LAWS. 



527 



growing complication of affairs. The instance is one showing 

 us that primitive sacred commands, originating as they do in 

 a comparatively undeveloped state of society, fail to cover 

 the cases which arise as institutions &quot;become involved. In 

 respect of these there consequently grow up rules having 

 a known human authority only. By accumulation of such 

 rules, is produced a hody of human laws distinct from the 

 divine laws ; and the offence of disobeying the one becomes 

 unlike the offence of disobeying the other. Though 



in Christianized Europe, throughout which the indigenous 

 religions were superseded by an introduced religion, the 

 differentiating process was interfered with; yet, on setting 

 out from the stage at which this introduced religion had 

 acquired that supreme authority proper to indigenous re 

 ligions, we see that the subsequent changes were of like 

 nature with those above described. Along with that mingling 

 of structures shown in the ecclesiasticism of kings and the 

 secularity of prelates, there went a mingling of political and 

 religious legislation. Gaining supreme power, the Church 

 interpreted sundry civil offences as offences against God; 

 and even those which were left to be dealt with by the 

 magistrate were considered as thus left by divine ordi 

 nance. But subsequent evolution brought about stages 

 in which various transgressions, held to be committed 

 against both sacred and secular law, were simultaneously 

 expiated by religious penance and civil punishment ; and there 

 followed a separation which, leaving but a small remnant of 

 ecclesiastical offences, brought the rest into the category of 

 offences against the State and against individuals. 



And this brings us to the differentiation of equal, if not 

 greater, significance, between those laws which derive their 

 obligation from the will of the governing agency, and those laws 

 which derive their obligation from the consensus of individual 

 interests between those laws which, having as their direct end 

 the maintenance of authority, only indirectly thereby conduce 

 to social welfare, and those which, directly and irrespective 



