if there were not more in the operations of his nature than in the developments of his system. Perhaps no one ever more completely lost sight of the true characteristic of the manifestations of the will, by thrusting them behind the phenomena of the sensibility, than President Edwards; and hence the difficulty in question seemed to have no existence for him. So far from troubling himself about the line which separates the human agency from the divine, he calmly and quietly speaks as if such a line had no existence. According to his view, the divine agency encircles all, and man is merely the subject of its influence. It is true, he uses the terms active and actions, as appli cable to man and his exertions; but yet he regards his very acts, his volitions, as being produced by God. "In efficacious grace,' says he, "God does all, and we do all. God produces all, and we act all. For that is what he produces; namely, our own acts." Now I think Edwards could not have used such language, if he had attached any other idea to the term act, than what really belongs to it when it is applied, as it often is, to the passive states of the intelligence and the sensibility. An act of the intellect, or an act of the affections, may be produced by the power of God; but not an act of the will. For, as the Princeton Review well says, "a necessary volition is an absurdity, a thing inconceivable."

It is scarcely necessary to add, that in causing all real human agency to disappear before the divine sovereignty, Edwards merely reproduced the opinion of Calvin; which he endeavoured to establish, not by a fierce, unreasoning dogmatism, but upon the principles of reason and philosophy. "The apostle," says Calvin, "ascribes everything to the Lord's mercy, and leaves nothing to our wills or exertions." He even contends, that to "suppose man to be a coöperator with God, so that the validity of election depends on his consent," is to make the "will of man superior to the counsel of God;"+ as if there were no possible medium between nothing and omnipotence.

O Institutes, b. iii, ch. xxiv.

† Ibid.

SECTION V.

The danger of mistaking distorted for exalted views of the divine sovereignty.

There is no danger, it is true, that we shall ever form too exalted conceptions of the divine majesty. All notions must fall infinitely below the sublime reality. But we may proceed in the wrong direction, by making it our immediate aim and object to exalt the sovereignty of God. An object so vast and overwhelming as the divine omnipotence, cannot fail to transport the imagination, and to fill the soul with wonder. Hence, in our passionate, but always feeble, endeavours to grasp so wonderful an object, our vision may be disturbed by our emotions, and the glory of God badly reflected in our minds. Our utmost exertions may thus end, not in exalted, but in distorted views of the divine sovereignty. Is it not better, then, for feeble creatures like ourselves, to aim simply to acquire a knowledge of the truth, which, we may depend upon it, will not fail to exhibit the divine sovereignty in its most beautiful lights?

If such be our object, we shall find, we think, that God is the author of our spiritual views in religion, as well as those genuine feelings of reverence and love, without which obedience is impossible; and that man himself is the author of the volitions by which his obedience is consummated. This shows the precise point at which the divine agency ceases, and human agency begins; the precise point at which the sphere of human power comes into contact with the sphere of omnipotence, without intersecting it and without being annihilated by it. It shows at once the absolute dependence of man upon God, without a denial of his free and accountable agency; and it asserts the latter, without excluding the Divine Being from the affairs of the moral world. It renders unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's, and unto God the things which are God's. At the same time that it combines and harmonizes these truths, it shows the errors of the opposite extremes, and places the doctrines of human and divine agency upon a solid and enduring basis, by preventing each from excluding the other.

In all our inquiries, truth, and truth alone, should be our grand object. All by-ends and contracted purposes, all party

schemes and sectarian zeal, will be almost sure to defeat their own objects, by seeking them with too direct and exclusive an aim. These, even when noble and praiseworthy, must be sought and reached, if reached at all, by seeking and finding the truth. Thus, for instance, would we exalt the sovereignty of God, then must we not directly seek to exalt that sovereignty, but put away from us all the forced contrivances and factitious lights which have been invented for that purpose. It is the light of truth alone, sought for its own sake, and therefore clearly seen, that can reveal the sublime proportions, and the intrinsic moral loveliness, of this awful attribute of the Divine Being. On the other hand, would we vindicate the freedom of man, and break into atoms the iron law of necessity, which is supposed to bind him to the dust, then again must we seek the truth without reference to this particular aim or object. We must study the great advocates of that law with as great earnestness and fairness as its adversaries. For it is by the light of truth alone, that the real position man occupies in the moral world, or the orbit his power moves in, can be clearly seen, free from the manifold illusions of error; and until it be thus seen, the liberty of the human mind can never be successfully and triumphantly vindicated. If we would understand these things, then, we must struggle to rise above the foggy atmosphere and the refracted lights of prejudice, into the bright region of eternal truth.

CHAPTER VI.

THE EXISTENCE OF MORAL EVIL, OR SIN, RECONCILED WITH THE
HOLINESS OF GOD.

The world, indeed, is even so forlorn

Of all good, as thou speakest it, and so swarms
With every evil. Yet, beseech thee, point
The cause out to me, that myself may see

And unto others show it: for in heaven

One places it, and one on earth below.-DANTE.

THEOLOGY teaches that God is a being of infinite perfections. Hence, it is concluded, that if he had so chosen, he might have secured the world against the possibility of evil; and this naturally gives rise to the inquiry, why he did not thus secure it? Why he did not preserve the moral universe, as he had created it, free from the least impress or overshadowing of evil? Why he permitted the beauty of the world to become disfigured, as it has been, by the dark invasion and ravages of sin? This great question has, in all ages, agitated and disturbed the human mind, and been a prolific source of atheistic doubts and scepticism. It has been, indeed, a dark and perplexing enigma to the eye of faith itself.

To solve this great difficulty, or at least to mitigate the stupendous darkness in which it seems enveloped, various theories have been employed. The most celebrated of these are the following: 1. The hypothesis of the soul's preëxistence; 2. The hypothesis of the Manicheans; and, 3. The hypothesis of opti inism. It may not be improper to bestow a few brief remarks on these different schemes.

SECTION I.

The hypothesis of the soul's preëxistence.

This was a favourite opinion with many of the ancient philosophers. In the Phædon of Plato, Socrates is introduced as maintaining it; and he ascribes it to Orpheus as its original

author. Leibnitz supposes that it was invented for the purpose of explaining the origin of evil;* but the truth seems to be, that it arose from the difficulty of conceiving how the soul could be created out of nothing, or out of a substance so differ ent from itself as matter. The hypothesis in question was also maintained by many great philosophers, because they imagined tl at if the past eternity of the soul were denied, this would shake the philosophical proof of its future eternity. There can be no doubt, however, that after the idea of the soul's preexistence had been conceived and entertained, it was very generally employed to account for the origin of evil.

But it must be conceded that this hypothesis merely draws a veil over the great difficulty it was designed to solve. The difficulty arises, not from the circumstance that evil exists in the present state of our being, but from the fact that it is found to exist anywhere, or in any state, under the moral administration of a perfect God. It is as difficult to conceive why such a being should have permitted the soul to sin in a former state of existence, even if such a state were an established reality, as it is to account for its rise in the present world. To remove the difficulty out of sight, by transferring the origin of evil beyond the sphere of visible things, is a poor substitute for a solid and satisfactory solution of it. The great problem of the moral world is not to be illuminated by any such fictions of the imagination; and we had better let it alone altogether, if we have nothing more rational and solid to advance.

SECTION II.

The hypothesis of the Manicheans.

Though this doctrine is ascribed to Manes, after whom it is called, it is of a far more early origin. It was taught, says Plutarch, by the Persian Magi, whose views are exhibited by him in his celebrated treatise of Isis and Osiris. "Zoroaster," says he, "thought that there are two gods, contrary to each other in their operations—a good and an evil principle. To the former he gave the name of Oromazes, and to the latter that of Arimanius. The one resembles light and truth, the other darkness and ignorance." We do not allude to this theory for † Cudworth's Intellectual System.

• Essais de Théodicée.