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material universe. It necessarily implies power, will, and action. It is a universally admitted truth, that an efficient cause is nowhere discoverable in the world without us; we know what it is only from consciousness, and all our language respecting it is borrowed from mental phenomena. This doctrine places the material universe before us in a new light. The whole framework of what are called "secondary causes" falls to pieces. The laws of nature are only a figure of speech; the powers and active inherent properties of material atoms are mere fictions. Mind alone is active; matter is wholly passive and inert. Mind alone moves; matter is moved. There is no such thing as what we usually call the "course of nature "; it is nothing but the will of God producing certain effects in a constant and uniform manner; which mode of action, however, being arbitrary, or dependent upon will, is as easy to be altered as to be preserved. All events, all changes, in the external world, from the least even unto the greatest, are attributable directly to his will and power, which, being infinite, are always and necessarily adequate to the end proposed. The laws of motion, gravitation, affinity, and the like, are only expressions of the regularity and continuity of one infinite cause. The order of nature is the effect of Divine wisdom; its stability is the result of Divine beneficence.

12

LECTURE V.

FATALISM AND FREE-WILL.

THE question respecting the origin and validity of our idea of cause, which formed the topic of my last Lecture, has been greatly obscured and perplexed, because it involves several distinct inquiries, which are too frequently confounded with each other. I endeavoured to separate them, and to consider each one by itself in the natural order. First, the popular acceptation of the word cause was observed to be also its strict and metaphysical meaning; as efficiency is universally attributed to causation, and a necessary connection is believed to exist between cause and effect. But in opposition to the common belief, it was proved that we can nowhere detect such causes in the material universe; the observation of external nature never has led, and never can lead, to the discovery of any thing beyond the invariable succession of events, or the fixed relation of antecedence and consequence, a relation which differs as widely from that of cause and effect as any two distinct conceptions, which the mind is capable of forming, do from each other. But our inability to discover such causes in the world of matter is no proof that they are not to be found anywhere; for there is clear and indisputable evidence that they exist in the world of consciousness, every act, every volition, of a conscious agent being a true cause; this inability does not even prove that there are no such causes operating in external nature, as the limits of our faculty of investigation and discovery are not, surely, the limits of the possi

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bility of things, and the general proposition, that every change or event must have a cause, is one that we can no more doubt than we can disbelieve that two and two make four; and, for a still stronger reason, this inability does not prove that we have no idea of efficient cause, and therefore no knowledge of what the word power means, for the very existence of the problem, this very search after real causes, shows that we have a clear idea of some connection between two events which is fundamentally different from mere succession, or contiguity in time. The arguments and illustrations which I adduced went to disprove these three forms of skepticism, these three unfounded conclusions, or false inferences from the admitted fact, that our feeble powers of observation and analysis cannot discover any efficient cause whatever in the physical universe.

In arguing against these skeptical views, we were led incidentally to state and defend what I believe to be the true doctrine of causation ; — namely, that one particle of matter never acts on another particle; for nearly all philosophers admit that we have no proof of such action, and when we come to look closely into the subject, it appears even inconceivable that inert matter should thus act, or have any real power. In truth, action is never even attributed to matter except by a metaphor, or figure of speech, as is clearly shown by an examination of the language usually employed. The only real action of which we have any knowledge or distinct conception is that of mind or person; and the field of this activity is not only the mind itself, but the material structure, the congeries of bones, muscles, and nerves, which we inhabit, all the voluntary motions of which are produced and governed by the indwelling spirit, the kingly and indivisible will. Thus we came to the conclusion, that spirit alone moves, while matter is moved, and that this union, for a time, of a body with our personality shadows forth the connection between the material universe and the Infinite One. How else, indeed, can we attach any meaning to the attributes of omnipresence and omnipotence? The unity of action, the regularity of antecedence and consequence in outward events, which we commonly designate by the

lame metaphor of law, then become the fitting expression of the consistent doings of an all-wise Being, in whom there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. Our bodies, then, are kindred to organie nature, or the external universe, in a double sense; both are fashioned from the same materials, from particles of brute matter, and both are informed, actuated, and controlled by an indwelling person; every atom in this tenement of clay being really subject to his sovereign will, though, in the one case, that will or power (for the two expressions are synonymous) is infinite, and in the other it is finite, or limited, so that the whole result which was contemplated does not always follow. The Creator, then, is no longer banished from his creation, nor is the latter an orphan, or a deserted child. It is not a great machine, that was wound up at the beginning, and has continued to run on ever since, without aid or direction from its artificer. As well might we conceive of the body of a man moving about, and performing all its appropriate functions, without the principle of life, or the indwelling of an immortal soul. The universe is not lifeless or soulless. It is informed by God's spirit, pervaded by his power, moved by his wisdom, directed by his beneficence, controlled by his justice. The harmony of physical and moral laws is not a mere fancy, nor a forced analogy; they are both expressions of the same will, manifestations of the same spirit. The sublime language of the poet, then, becomes the simple expression of a philosophical and religious truth:

"I have felt

A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky;

A motion and a spirit, that impels

. . all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still

A lover of the meadows, and the woods,

And mountains; and of all that we behold

From this green earth;

well pleased to recognize

In nature and the language of the sense

The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being."

The admirer of Wordsworth will perceive that I have omitted portions of lines, which deform this sublime conception with the dark and mystical doctrine of pantheism, — a doctrine which no one will confound with the system here developed, who remembers that the complex structure, which is our outward integument for a season, is really foreign to the person, and distinct from the will, or power, by which it is moved and governed. Pantheism is to the Deity what materialism is to man, a mere denial of any spiritual existence, and the extinction of all idea of personality.

The objection to this theory of causation, that it is beneath the dignity of the Almighty to put his hand to every thing, is founded on a false analogy, as is seen by the form in which Aristotle states it." If it befit not the state and majesty of Xerxes, the great king of Persia, that he should stoop to do all the meanest offices himself, much less can this be thought suitable for God." The two cases do not correspond in the very feature essential to the argument. An earthly potentate, unable to execute with his own hand all the affairs of which he has control, is obliged to delegate the larger portion of them to his servants; selecting the lightest part for himself, he gratifies his pride by calling it also the noblest; though the distinction is factitious, there being no real difference, in point of honor or dignity, between them. But Omnipotence needs no minister, and is not exhausted or wearied by the care of a universe. Power in action is more truly sublime than power in repose; and surely it is not derogatory to Divine energy to sustain and continue that which it was certainly not beneath Divine wisdom to create and appoint. Rightly considered, to guide the falling of a leaf from a tree is an office as worthy of Omnipotence as the creation of a world. "Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father."

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