of feudal lords, and when priests punished by penances—­has been, step by step, becoming less close.  Though monarchs are still “defenders of the faith,” and ecclesiastical chiefs, they are but nominally such.  Though bishops still have civil power, it is not what they once had.  Protestantism shook loose the bonds of union; Dissent has long been busy in organising a mechanism for the exercise of religious control, wholly independent of law; in America, a separate organisation for that purpose already exists; and if anything is to be hoped from the Anti-State-Church Association—­or, as it has been newly named, “The Society for the Liberation of Religion from State Patronage and Control”—­we shall presently have a separate organisation here also.

Thus alike in authority, in essence, and in form, political and spiritual rule have been ever more widely diverging from the same root.  That increasing division of labour which marks the progress of society in other things, marks it also in this separation of government into civil and religious; and if we observe how the morality which forms the substance of religions in general, is beginning to be purified from the associated creeds, we may anticipate that this division will be ultimately carried much further.

Passing now to the third species of control—­that of Manners—­we shall find that this, too, while it had a common genesis with the others, has gradually come to have a distinct sphere and a special embodiment.  Among early aggregations of men before yet social observances existed, the sole forms of courtesy known were the signs of submission to the strong man; as the sole law was his will, and the sole religion the awe of his supposed supernaturalness.  Originally, ceremonies were modes of behaviour to the god-king.  Our commonest titles have been derived from his names.  And all salutations were primarily worship paid to him.  Let us trace out these truths in detail, beginning with titles.

The fact already noticed, that the names of early kings among divers races are formed by the addition of certain syllables to the names of their gods—­which certain syllables, like our Mac and Fitz, probably mean “son of,” or “descended from”—­at once gives meaning to the term Father as a divine title.  And when we read, in Selden, that “the composition out of these names of Deities was not only proper to Kings:  their Grandes and more honourable Subjects” (no doubt members of the royal race) “had sometimes the like;” we see how the term Father, properly used by these also, and by their multiplying descendants, came to be a title used by the people in general.  And it is significant as bearing on this point, that among the most barbarous nation in Europe, where belief in the divine nature of the ruler still lingers, Father in this higher sense is still a regal distinction.  When, again, we remember how the divinity at first ascribed to kings was not a complimentary fiction but a supposed