the glory he won on the field of discovery, than loved by all for the milder glories of his name—his being the modest the unpretending graces of a child-like nature-his being the pious simplicity of a cottage patriarch.1

1 It must be owned however, that with all the sound philosophy which he evinced in the general question of the Christian evidences-even as Bacon did in the general view which we gave of the methods of investigation-So, as the latter failed in his more special disquisitions on the particular phenomena and laws of Nature-did the former alike fail, there is good reason to believe, in his understanding both of particular texts in the Bible, and particular doctrines of Christianity.

384

LECTURE LXXII.

ROMANS, ix, 11, 13-24.

"For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works but of him that calleth."-"As it is written Jacob have I loved but Esau have I hated. What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid. For he saith to Moses I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then it is not of him. that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy. For the Scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might show my power in thee and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth. Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth. Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? for who hath resisted his will? Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour and another unto dishonour? What if God, willing to show his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction; and that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy which he had afore prepared unto glory, even us whom he hath called, not of the Jews only but also of the Gentiles?"

WE have read these verses at once and together, because of the one principle which runs through

them all—even the unexcepted sovereignty of God, in the exercise of which He is so absolute, and at the same time so incomprehensible. Many of you will recollect, that, in former parts of this epistle, the same doctrine met us on our way; and that we at the time bestowed very lengthened discussion upon it. To revive that argument in all its fulness, merely because months have elapsed since its delivery, would, in fact, be making a barrier of this passage through which we should never find our way, and compelling ourselves to be for ever stationary. I must therefore be content with as summary a recapitulation as possible, that we may be enabled, ere taking leave, to bring not merely this passage but also this chapter to a conclusion. My apology, as heretofore, for meddling at all with a topic that is deemed by many to be so stubborn and so hopeless, is, that we really are not at liberty to blink any of those informations which the Scripture sets before us; and if, on the one hand, we should not go out of our way to meet a theme that has been so burdened with controversy as this-neither ought we to go out of our way to shun this theme, whenever obtruded upon our notice as it is here in the record of the counsel of God. While I have already endeavoured to grapple with such difficulties as I hold to be conquerable in this high argumentI will frankly confess, what the other difficulties are which appear to me beyond the treatment of human strength or human sagacity to deal with; and before which we should bow in silence, till

VOL. III.

2 B

the mystery of God is finished and made known to us. We think that the passage now read, brings that line of demarcation into view, which marks off the one set of difficulties from the other; and it is our honest aim in the management of this question, instead of ministering to the gratification of an idle or speculative curiosity, so to shape our observations as that they shall recommend the gospel of Jesus Christ to the free acceptance of all, and have a bearing on the great interests of practical godli

ness.

The first point then which we have already laboured to impress is, that there is no such thing as chance or contingency in any department of nature —that this principle so readily admitted in regard to the world of matter, should also be extended to the world of mind-that if the one have its laws of motion and its regular successions and its unvarying processes, the other has its laws of thought and of feeling; and, in virtue of these, has all its processes alike regular and alike unvarying—that in neither is there ought so monstrous as an event uncaused, or coming forth of the womb of nonentity without having a progenitor in some event that went before it; and if not uncaused then necessary, having the same certain and precise dependence on something preceding itself which the posterior has on the prior term of any sequence-So that the phenomena of thinking and feeling and willing and doing in the spiritual department of Nature, do as surely result from the previous constitution which

has been given to it, as any of the varied phenomena in the material department result from its constitution. According to this view, the history of our species may be regarded as one vast progression, carried forward by definite footsteps; and with the state of each individual as surely fixed at every moment of time by the laws of mental nature, as is the situation of any planet above or of any particle of dust below by the physical laws which are established in the material world. This is that doctrine of philosophical necessity, whose ablest advocate is President Edwards of America-a clergyman of whom we might have feared that the depth of his philosophy would have spoiled him of the simplicity that is in Christ, did we not recollect that it is not against all philosophy that we are warned in the Bible, but only against vain philosophy; and of whom we might have feared that his transcendent ability for science would have hurt his sacredness, did we not recollect that it is not all science which the Bible denounces, but only the science that is falsely so called: And it does reconcile us to the efforts of highest scholarship in the defence and illustration of our faith, when, looking to Edwards, we behold the most philosophical of all theologians, at the same time the humblest and the holiest of men-the most powerful in controversy with the learned, and yet the most plain and powerful of address to the consciences of a plain unlettered congregation-the most successful in finding his way through the