§ 11: Proof From the Destiny of Nations and Divine Providence

We bring a final proof of the soul’s immortality from the apparent destiny of nations. The nations, as history teaches, work and act independently of each other; they walk the path their particular nature has traced; they develop a polity consistent with the character formed among them and establish laws consonant with their mores and customs. Worship follows the development and civilization of each, and the gods assume the form of the prevailing ideas; their moral principles shape hearts according to their form, and arts and sciences develop proportionately to their spiritual development; behold on the world’s stage various nations with various moral and political principles, with individual program working freely and independently of each other; each seeks only its own interest, desires its own progress, development, and prosperity; its fixed program is its own promotion and dominion; no care or thought for the outside; if at any time such existed, not for the benefit of the foreign, but for its own, to appropriate the foreign and undermine foreign happiness and existence. Nations have been likened to well-leaved trees whose shadow and roots cover the whole ground, spread, and annihilate every other plant growing on the same ground; and the saying is true, for the example lies before the eyes confirming the truth; but it is a conclusion of one-sided study; for more accurate study alters the conclusion. Accurate study of the history of nations leads us to wholly opposite conclusions; for the comparison does not prove true when applied to the whole breadth of the nation’s notion. Nations are not like trees absolutely monarchic and self-sustaining; they do not live like trees exclusively for themselves, nor when dying nourish only the soil that nourished them, nor provide benefit to distant lands. Though nations resemble trees in the result of their ramification, they differ greatly in their action on each other. Nations in the course of time meet at some point of coincidence; they meet on the common stage of the universal theatre on which each as an actor must present one character of one and the same drama, and must fulfill the role imposed by the artistic dramatist, which has been taught individually and privately in the long course of time wholly unknowingly and unconsciously.

Study of the history of nations reveals a superior purpose lying beyond the action and activity of nations, to which they appear submitting mysteriously to the commanding voice of God directing all things. Their activities appear directed to one calculated and intentional end, and around this end revolves all the political and spiritual life of humanity. This phenomenon was called by observers fate, and was considered as intervention of some god, whom they called fate. The spontaneous impulse of nations toward the same end would be wholly incomprehensible and unthinkable attributed to coincidence of wholly random unforeseen events and to the work of chance. The problem becomes less difficult and the solution more persuasive if the phenomenon is attributed to a higher power, to some all-wise intellect guiding humanity toward one calculated and intentional end. We are led to accept this idea from observation, that all things tend toward humanity’s progress, toward its elevation to the height of highest nobility, and toward its moral perfection. The works of chance cannot have a determined, fixed, and immutable purpose, much less one such as we find in the results of the activities of all nations; chance is unstable and irregular. Some higher and good providence therefore directs all things; for only almighty and good power is able through all the various irregularities, the endless overturnings and disruptions, the elevations and falls, the existence and annihilation, the freedom and servitude, the independence and dependence of all manner of peoples and nations, the greatness and degradation, the power and weakness, the wisdom and ignorance, the life and death, to direct humanity toward one good end fitting both human nature and the goodness of the divine creator. This good end is witnessed by the present period of humanity’s spiritual and moral perfection, in which humanity has truly risen to a height of exalted vision and works for the advancement of all humanity. Humanity without Christianity would never have reached the point it has reached today. Christianity was the work of God’s providence; God prepared its appearance, and for its propagation raised up nations, which though working independently and developing individually conspired together toward the work of divine providence—the regeneration of humanity, namely the Jewish, Greek, and Roman peoples. That divine providence directs the fortunes of nations we wish to demonstrate from history and events; passing by many things we wish to examine the history of the nations that collaborated in the work of the mystery of divine economy—the regeneration of humanity, namely the Jewish, Greek, and Roman peoples.