CHAPTER XI.

MORAL GOVERNMENT.

II. ITS NATURE, CONDITIONS, METHOD, AND END.

"The times of this ignorance God overlooked, but now commandeth all

men every where to repent; because He hath appointed a day in the

which He will judge the world in righteousness."--ST. PAUL.

The relations existing between God and man, especially the correlations

of paternity and filiation, constitute the ultimate foundations of Moral

Government. This is the conclusion of the preceding discussion. If God

is intimately near to man--if He is immanent in man, and man is immanent

in God--if God is "the Father of the human spirit," and man "the

offspring of God," then man must bear some resemblance to God--he must

have a spiritual and immortal nature, must be a free personality, must

be capable of knowing and loving God, and therefore must be under solemn

responsibility to God, and within the sphere of the eternal and

immutable laws of moral life; in a word, he must be the subject of

_moral_ government.

We proceed now to consider, more especially, the _nature_, the

_conditions_, the _methods_, and the _ends_ of moral government.

I. _The nature of moral government._--Government, in general, is

control--control with a view to the maintenance of order. This may be

effected by direct coaction or forceful compulsion; or by the reaction

of natural consequences; or by the pervasive influence of moral

motives. The first is constraint, the second is restraint, the third is

authoritative direction. We must, therefore, distinguish between

physical, natural, and moral government.

The _physical_ government of God is the absolute control which He

exercises over the material creation. He is the Fountain-head of all the

forces, and the Author of all the laws according to which passive,

unconscious matter is resistlessly impelled; and because his power and

wisdom are infinite, and his purposes are immutable, therefore material

nature is uniform, and there is an all-pervading order in the physical

world.

The _natural_ government of God is that constitution of nature, and of

man in so far as he is a part of nature, by which the sensations of

pleasure and pain result directly and necessarily from the actions of

man; and inasmuch as he is able by an induction from experience to

foresee these consequences, and to determine his own conduct in view of

them, they are not improperly called rewards and punishments. Thus it is

found by experience that disease and suffering result from acts of

intemperance and licentiousness, and men are restrained from the

commission of these acts by the fear of their foreseen results. This is

control by the reaction of natural consequences in that intermediate

sphere which we may designate the physico-moral order of the world.

The _moral_ government of God is that kind of control which a wise and

virtuous parent exercises over his family, or a just and equitable

magistrate over his subjects.[508] It is a government by laws or rules

addressed to the reason, by moral motives which appeal to the

conscience, and by moral sanctions which appeal to the emotions. It is

a constitution in which God has declared his will to man, and taught

him, prior to the experience of retributive consequences, what is right

and what is wrong; a constitution under which man is endowed with the

capacity of perceiving the inherent righteousness of the Divine law, of

feeling the imperative claims of duty, and of apprehending a future

retribution, and also a real causative power of self-determination and

choice. Finally, it is an economy in which ample scope is afforded for

the development of responsible character. It is a probation in which

there are tests and temptations, in which forbearance is exercised and

consequences are delayed, in which remedial agencies are plied and

opportunities are afforded for repentance and reformation, and in the

final consummation of which virtuous character shall receive its meet

reward, and sinful character its merited punishment. This is the ideal

order of moral life.

This twofold distinction between the _physical_ and the _spiritual_, and

between the _natural_ and the _moral_, runs through the entire domain of

existence and action, of being and becoming.

The terms _physical_ and _spiritual_ are employed as collective terms to

connote the essential, changeless, and permanent attributes of certain

entities or realities which are regarded as ultimate, viz., matter and

spirit. The attributes of matter are extension, divisibility, absolute

incompressibility, and inertia; the attributes of spirit are

sensitivity, reason, power, spontaneity, and memory. The term physical

is further employed to denote certain "affections of matter"--that is,

mechanical effects which are the result of the action of force upon

matter. It is true we often speak of "physical forces," as though force

were an essential attribute of matter. But this is one of the many

ambiguities of language. All that we mean by physical force is a force

which acts upon matter, and produces in the motions and collocations of

matter its appropriate effects.[509] Spirit-force is the only force in

the universe; all that our physical science deals with is "forms of

energy which have their origin in force." "Mind," says Dr. Carpenter,

"is the one and only source of power."[510]

The terms _natural_ and _moral_ are employed to denote opposite modes of

action and classes of effects. In the one case the mode of action is

fixed and uniform, and the effect is necessary; in the other case the

mode of action is free and volitional, and the effect is contingent and

variable. The first is the order of nature where force reigns, the

second is the order of moral life where freedom prevails. "Whatever is

comprised in the chain and mechanism of cause and effect, of course

necessitated, and having its necessity in some other thing antecedent or

concurrent, this is said to be _natural_, and the aggregate and system

of all such things is nature."[511] While, on the contrary, that which

lies within the agent's power, and to which he determines himself by an

act of free choice; and especially that which the agent knows he _ought_

to do, and in choosing which he is conscious of power to put forth, in

the same unchanged circumstances, a different volition instead, is

called _moral_.

Thus does morality commence with "the sacred distinction" between

_thing_ and _person_. "On this distinction all legislation, human and

Divine, proceeds." That which fundamentally distinguishes a person from

a mere thing of nature is _free causality_--that is, "the power or

immunity to put forth in the same circumstances either of several

volitions." A thing is unconscious, involuntary, and powerless, and

consequently limited to one sole possible eventuation. A thing has no

responsibility for its movements, which it has not willed, and of the

nature and consequences of which it is ignorant. A person alone is

responsible, because he is intelligent and free; that is, he can foresee

the consequences of his action, and freely determines himself to its

performance. A thing has no dignity; dignity attaches only to

personality. Personality is inalienable, sacred, and inviolable; it can

not be abrogated, surrendered, or transferred, and it demands to be

respected. In a word, it has both duties and rights, while things have

neither.[512]

Thus do we find that all dignity, all sacredness, all responsibility,

all morality belong to and are predicable only of the personal being,

because intelligence and freedom are the essential moments of

personality.

Furthermore, the sphere of the _moral_ is to be determined by another

important limitation. Not all the actions of men are personal and

responsible acts. Sensation is not a voluntary operation. When the

external object is brought into proper relation with the animated

organism, perception necessarily occurs. The intuitive apperceptions of

the reason are impersonal; when a change transpires, the reason

necessarily affirms the existence of a cause. Reflex nervous action is

involuntary. Many muscular movements are spontaneous, but not

volitional. A responsible action is an _intentional_ action--that is, an

act performed to realize an end which lies within the agent's

contemplation. Spontaneity or self-determination only thereby becomes

_will_. A moral act is consequently a premeditated, intentional,

voluntary act, and the merit or demerit of an agent is as his actual

intention.

The last and most important limitation of the moral sphere is to those

voluntary actions which have relation to personality, human and Divine.

"The peculiar distinction of moral actions, moral character, moral

principles, moral habits, as contrasted with the intellectual and other

parts of man's nature, lies in this, that they always imply a relation

between two persons."[513] Morality is the relation of person to person.

We sum up what has been said in the preceding paragraphs in these words:

The moral government of God is a _legislation_ which has respect to

personality, especially the relations of person to person; and it is an

_administration_ under which the subjects have power to resist and

violate its requirements, but which is provided with ample means to

vindicate its authority, and maintain the moral order of the universe.

II. _The subjective conditions of moral government._--It will be

apparent from what has been already said that the following conditions

are essential to moral government:

(1.) The subject of moral government must be _intelligent_. He must be

able to understand the Divine requirements, to perceive their inherent

rightness, and to feel the sense of obligation to comply therewith. He

must also be susceptible of certain pleasurable or painful _emotions_

which follow as the direct consequences of his actions, and secure an

adequate retribution. In a word, he must have a moral consciousness, or,

briefly, a _conscience_.

(2.) The subject of moral government must be a _free power_. He must be

the efficient cause of his own action, and he must be conscious of this

power of self-determination--that is, he must be conscious of power to

put forth, in the same unchanged circumstances, either of several

volitions. In short, he must have a _free will_.

These, then, are the essential conditions of moral agency--the

possession of a _conscience_, and the _power to obey or disobey_ the

requirements of moral law. Both these conditions of accountability exist

in man. By virtue of his constitution as a spiritual being made in the

image of God, he is capable of perceiving what is inherently right,

just, and good. His reason intuitively apprehends the good, and affirms

the imperative obligation to choose the good. His judgment pronounces

upon the relation of human conduct to the law of right, affirming man

has or has not done right. And his emotive nature yields him complacence

and joy as the reward of well-doing, or inflicts pain and remorse as the

punishment of wrong-doing. In the words of Chalmers, "he is endowed with

a conscience which performs within his bosom all the offices of a

lawgiver and a judge."

The possession of this faculty necessarily supposes the existence of

power in the agent to comply or not to comply with its behests. A moral

law is designed only for the government of a free being, and nothing is

moral or immoral which is not voluntary. If there is no

self-determination, there is no proper personality to which the law of

reason can attach. Remorse, on the one hand, satisfaction on the other,

are emotions which are inconceivable and impossible in a being who is

not consciously free.

_The nature and authority of conscience_ is a question which is

earnestly discussed. Among philosophers and theologians there are

diverse and conflicting opinions. It has been variously characterized as

a _witness_ of our past actions; as a _judgment_ passed upon our

actions; or as a _feeling_ arising in view of our actions. By one,

conscience is regarded as an _appetite_--a craving for the right, but

not a faculty intuitively perceiving the right. Another defines it "as a

_capacity_ and a _tendency_ to inquire into duty, but not as supplying a

law of duty."[514] While a third regards it as a state of the

_sensibility_--"a simple feeling, emotion, or vivid sentiment which

arises immediately in the mind in presence of certain actions, and to

which we give the name of moral approbation."[515]

These definitions of conscience may all be regarded as containing some

truth. They are all defective, however, in this one respect--_they fail

to recognize an internal law which constitutes a subjective standard of

right_, and an intuitive perception of moral distinctions and qualities

in human action.

As an essay toward a clearer apprehension of the nature of conscience,

we present the following propositions:

1. _Conscience is not a distinct faculty of the mind._ Conscience

(_conscientia_ = joint or double knowledge) is the knowledge of self in

relation to a known law of right and wrong. Conscience and consciousness

may therefore be regarded as, in some respects, identical. The terms in

their etymology and their general import are synonymous. There is,

however, a technical distinction to be made. Consciousness expresses

self-knowledge in general. Conscience expresses self-knowledge relative

to responsibility. Consciousness is the recognition by the thinking

subject of its own states and affections. Conscience is the knowledge of

an act or an affection as having some moral quality--as being right or

wrong.

2. _Conscience is, like consciousness, a complex phenomenon_, the

result of the simultaneous action of the primary powers of the mind. The

simplest fact of consciousness is a synthesis of sensation and reason in

a primitive psychological judgment. Sensation alone is not knowledge,

and it becomes consciousness only as it is illuminated and informed by

the reason. And so a mere state of the sensibility--a mere feeling of

approbation or disapprobation--does not constitute conscience until it

is informed by the reason. Conscience is the unity of feeling and reason

in a judgment which has respect to voluntary action.

3. _Conscience is the common field in which is revealed the result of

the operation of all our faculties in their especial relation to moral

law._ As consciousness is the common field in which the results of the

operation of all our faculties come to light, so conscience is that

department of the same field in which is revealed the action of the mind

in relation to the unchangeable principles of order and right which

dwell in the bosom of the Infinite. Conscience is pre-eminently the

Godward side of our mental being, which reflects the moral character of

God, and brings us into relationship with Him. It is that which carries

us _per saltum_ to the immediate recognition of a God, the Lawgiver and

the Judge who is over man, and which holds him in mysterious but

indissoluble bonds of obligation. Conscience is therefore,

(1.) The _reason_ intuitively apprehending universal moral ideas and

laws. It furnishes _the idea of the good_. It affirms that the good is

universally _obligatory_. It asserts that the good has _desert_,

worthiness, and dignity. And it demands for the good an appropriate

recognition and a just reward.

(2.) The _understanding_ apprehending the relations in which we stand to

God, to our fellow-beings, and to self as a moral personality endowed

with reason and freedom.

(3.) The _judgment_ comparing the acts of a voluntary agent existing in

certain relations with the immutable ideas and laws of the reason, and

affirming this is _right_ and worthy of praise and reward, or that is

_wrong_ and deserving of blame and punishment.

(4.) A particular state of the _sensibility_--the painful or pleasurable

emotions which spontaneously arise in presence of right or wrong in our

own actions or in the actions of our fellow-men.

Thus conscience is, as it were, the focal point at which are united and

blended the varied acts and states of the soul in its immediate relation

to the moral law. It is the synthesis of moral ideas, cognitions, and

feelings in a moral judgment.

The co-operation of these powers and susceptibilities of the soul in

their relation to the _good_ has a parallel and an illustration in their

operation in relation to the _beautiful_.

The ideas of order, proportion, harmony, fitness, and unity in variety

are unquestionably fundamental and necessary ideas of the _reason_. In

the Divine reason these ideas have always existed as the laws in

accordance with which He fashioned the material universe. And inasmuch

as the human reason is configured to the Divine, these ideas must also

exist in the human mind. Like statuary in the inner palaces of the soul,

they are the models by which we recognize and the standards according to

which we judge the forms of beauty in the external world. The

correspondence between these external forms and the inner ideals of the

reason is recognized by the _judgment_. And the delight we experience in

presence of the beautiful in nature and art is a particular direction

of the _sensibility_.

This is not, however, the chronological order in which the idea of the

beautiful is developed in the mind. The sense of beauty first reveals

itself in the spontaneous consciousness in presence of the order and

harmony and fitness which pervade the universe. We experience delight

without being able to specialize the precise causes of our pleasure. But

the reflective consciousness, which is pre-eminently analytic, brings

out into clear light the fundamental ideas of order, harmony, fitness,

and unity, which had a prior existence in the reason, and have now

recognized themselves as mirrored in the universe. The repeated

observation of the forms of beauty around us, and the comparison of

these with the standard ideas of the reason, will result in the

beau-ideal of a pure and correct taste--true αἰσθητικόν.

So in relation to the idea of the _good_. It does not stand forth to the

eye of consciousness, in the first instance, as an abstract conception.

The _moral sense_--the affection of the sensibility in presence of

voluntary and responsible action--is first revealed in the spontaneous

consciousness. When we behold an act of justice, of kindness, of

beneficence, we experience the fullest satisfaction. We admire and

esteem the actor. We feel that his conduct is praiseworthy, and that he

is deserving of honor and reward. These sentiments spring up

spontaneously and involuntarily in our bosoms long before we have

defined their reason and law. The reflective consciousness subsequently

elicits the rational ideas which underlie these emotions--the ideas of

the useful, the just, the beneficent, the noble, and the perfect, all

which are finally embraced in the idea of the _good_. And the repeated

comparison of the conduct of voluntary agents existing under certain

relations, with the fundamental ideas of the reason, these standards of

right erected in the soul, will result in an ideal of moral

excellence--a true ἐθικόν.

If this doctrine of conscience be the product of a true psychological

method, it will enable us to account for the apparent want of uniformity

in its suffrages in individual cases, and the varied phenomena presented

in different men.

Conscience, like consciousness, has its gradual development. Though

natural and necessary to every human soul whose powers are normally

developed, it is not exercised at the beginning of its existence, but

only after certain conditions of growth and stages of growth have been

attained. This development may be arrested or it may be perverted. The

absence of proper conditions, the lack of suitable discipline and

culture in any one of the faculties whose operation enters into the

concrete phenomena, will modify the general result. An excess of

_sensibility_ will give a morbid conscience; the lack of sensibility, a

slumbering conscience. A defective apprehension of the relations in

which we stand to God and to our fellow-men will prevent our seeing our

specific duties. Inattention to the character of our own motives, or

ignorance of the real intentions of other men, may mislead the

_judgment_ in discriminating between the quality of actions. There are

also natural differences in the soundness and accuracy of the judgments

of individual men. We meet those who with a limited acquaintance with

particular facts and abstract notions are nevertheless endowed with

sound practical judgment; while others, with a larger knowledge of facts

and general principles, are strangely defective in judgment. Finally,

unless men accustom themselves to reflection, to analysis, the ideas of

the just, the right, the good, do not come clearly into the light of

consciousness. Hence the different manifestations of conscience in

individual men.

We claim, however, that the moral ideas of the reason are in all men

_identical_; that they exist and operate, even though unconsciously, in

all minds, determining their moral judgments; and that _when the same

relations of personality are clearly before the mind the moral judgments

of men are uniform_.

In spite of all the topical moralities to which factitious circumstances

may have given birth, there is unquestionably _a universal and immutable

morality_. In every nation under heaven, veracity, justice, and

beneficence are separated by a clear, unmistakable line from falsehood,

injustice, and cruelty; nor can all the casuistry and sophistry in the

universe transpose or confound them. Custom, prescription, conventions

of human opinion, factitious circumstances, can never blur over and

obliterate these lines which separate right and wrong. Beneath all these

apparent differences, the conscience will make her voice heard in the

depth of the soul, in the common sentiments of mankind, and in the

statutes of universal jurisprudence. The great ideas of justice and

right were prominent and well defined among the nations of antiquity.

"Nemesis and Themis were not only their abstractions and deities--they

were embodied in their systems of jurisprudence. Law secured property

and sanctified life. Law guarded every relation and ordered every act.

Law was the theme of their philosophy and the burden of their song. We

are not unacquainted with the jealousies and disputes of their schools

of philosophy. They placed the good of man and the reason of morality in

the most incongruous things, but _they never differed concerning the

conduct which was right_. Epicurus and Zeno knew no divergence

here."[516] Indeed, they asserted the immutability of moral law for all

times and places--

"The unwritten laws of God that know not change;

They are not of to-day nor yesterday,

But live for ever."[517]

"There is," says Cicero, "one true and original law, conformable to

nature and reason, diffused over all, invariable, eternal, which calls

to the fulfillment of duty and to abstinence from injustice, and which

calls with that irresistible voice which is felt in all its authority

wherever it is heard. This law can not be curtailed or abolished, nor

affected in its sanctions by any law of man. A whole senate, a whole

people, can not dispense with its paramount obligation. It requires no

commentator to render it distinctly intelligible, nor is it different at

Rome, at Athens, now and in ages before and after, but in all ages and

all nations it is and has been and will be one and everlasting--one as

that God, its author and promulgator, who is the common Sovereign of all

mankind, is Himself one. Man is truly man as he yields himself to this

Divine influence. He can not resist it but by flying, as it were, from

his own bosom, and laying aside the general feelings of humanity, by

which very act he must already have inflicted on himself the severest of

punishments, even though he were to avoid what is usually accounted

punishment."[518]

Among the most savage tribes, as among the most refined and polished

nations, are also to be found the same common principles of morality.

Theft, murder, adultery are offenses condemned and punished by every

nation under heaven. The high qualities of virtue are the things which

win esteem and command respect in every country, however rude. Were

proof demanded, we might bring it at once from the darkest corners of

the earth. The savage Fijian regards theft, adultery, abduction,

incendiarism, and treason as serious crimes.[519] And Dr. Livingstone

tells us that, "On questioning intelligent men among the Backwains as to

their former knowledge of good and evil, of God, and of a future state,

they have scouted the idea of any of them ever having been without a

tolerably clear conception on all these subjects. Respecting their sense

of right and wrong, they profess that nothing we indicate as sin ever

appeared to them as otherwise, except the statement that it was wrong to

have more wives than one."[520]

We conclude that the universal consciousness of our race, as revealed in

human history, languages, legislations, and sentiments, bears testimony

to the fact that the ideas of right, duty, accountability, and moral

desert are native to the human mind; and consequently the existence of

the first condition of moral government--namely, the possession by its

subject of a _conscience_--is an unquestionable fact.

The _second_ condition of moral government is the existence, in the

subject, _of free self-determining power_: the agent must be the real

cause and the sole cause of his own actions; he must have freedom both

_to_ and _from_ the act.

Under a reign of necessity there can be no moral government and no just

retribution. It is, at best, a mere physical or natural government; for

moral government must be of beings who are free and self-determined, and

not of mere machines. To blame a necessitated thing is irrational, to

punish it is a cruelty and an injustice. The necessitarian himself is

unable to conceal his conscious embarrassment in presence of these

difficulties, and to save his theory he becomes reckless in assertions.

He affirms that "the whole system of morality--its duties and

responsibilities; the whole scheme of moral government, with its rewards

and punishments--remains, on his theory, as entire and stable as

ever."[521] This affirmation runs athwart all the dictates of

common-sense, and collides with the universal conviction of humanity. He

is the only consistent necessitarian who rejects the Christian doctrine

of sin, denies all accountability and retribution, and reduces the

government of God to mere physical impulsion and the management of a

universal mechanism. The necessitarian dogma can not be made to quadrate

with our primitive convictions; it is out of harmony with all our

instinctive beliefs. The innate idea of right, the native sense of duty

and accountability, the consciousness of sin, our faith in the justice

of God, our religious hopes and fears, all impel us onward to find a

rational and valid basis for human responsibility and moral government

in the freedom of the will.

That man does possess an alternative power of self-determination and

choice is evident:

1. _From the direct testimony of consciousness._ We _know_ that any

doing of ours might have been reserved--we _feel_, by that same direct

consciousness which certifies our existence and our reason, that we have

the fullest power of choice. No subtlety, no abstraction of argument,

can convince us that we are otherwise than free. "Men are not conscious

of compulsion of any kind, not conscious of certain mental states,

called choices, which are either wholly or partially independent of

their free agency; but they are perfectly and distinctly conscious of

entire liberty, and of complete inward power to choose."[522]

That we have a direct consciousness of freedom is the doctrine of most

of the writers on moral science. Cousin is emphatic in the assertion of

this doctrine: "I am conscious of this sovereign power of the will. I

feel in myself, before its determination, the force that can determine

itself in such a manner or in such another. At the same time that I will

this or that I am equally conscious of the power to will the opposite; I

am conscious of being master of my resolution, of the ability to arrest

it, continue it, repress it."[523] The distinguished Professor of Moral

Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, Dr. Calderwood, teaches the

same doctrine: "It is in our consciousness of self-control for the

determination of activity that we obtain our only knowledge of

causation. Every one knows himself as the cause of his own actions. In

the external world we continue ignorant of causes, and are able only to

trace uniform sequence, as Hume and Comte have insisted. But in

consciousness we distinguish between sequence and causality. We are

conscious of our own causal energy by knowing the origin of our activity

in self-determination."[524]

The direct consciousness of freedom is denied by Sir William Hamilton.

This denial is a necessary consequence of his doctrine of relativity. If

we are not conscious of self as a reality, but only of certain modes or

affections, then, of course, we can not be conscious of self as a free

power. But as Mansel has forcibly replied: "Does it not rather appear a

flat contradiction to maintain that I am not immediately conscious of

myself, but only of my sensations or volitions? Who, then, is the _I_

that is conscious; and how can _I_ be conscious of such states as

_mine_? In this case it would surely be more accurate to say, not that I

am conscious of my sensations, but that the sensation is conscious of

itself; but, thus worded, the glaring absurdity of the theory would

carry with it its own refutation.... Self-personality is revealed to us

with all the clearness of an original intuition."[525] With an

inconsistency which shows the fallacy of Sir William Hamilton's whole

theory of relativity, he admits that, "As clearly as I am conscious of

existing, so clearly am I conscious at every moment of my existence that

the conscious Ego is not itself a mere modification, nor a series of

modifications of any other subject, but that it is itself something

different from all its own modifications, and a _self-subsistent

entity_."[526]

If, then, we admit, as we must admit, the existence of an immediate

consciousness, not merely of the phenomena of mind, but of the personal

self as actively and passively related to them, we must also admit the

direct testimony of conscience to the fact of liberty. "I am conscious

not merely of the phenomenon of volition, _but of myself as producing

it, and as producing it by choice, with a power to choose the opposite

alternative_."

The necessitarians are all compelled to concede that the universal

conviction of our race is, and always has been, that man is free. They

have, however, asserted that this dictate of common-sense is not to be

accepted as philosophically true. Lord Kames admits the natural

conviction of freedom from necessity, though he declares it to be an

illusion:

"Man fondly dreams that he is free to act;

Naught is he but the powerless, worthless plaything

Of the blind force that in his will itself

Works out for him a dread necessity."

And Hommel, certainly one of the ablest and most decided of fatalists,

says, "I must believe that I have a feeling of liberty, at the very

moment I am writing against liberty, upon grounds which I regard as

incontestable. Zeno was a fatalist only in theory; he did not act in

conformity with his convictions."[527]

The possession of alternative power is a fact of consciousness as clear

and indubitable as the fact of personal existence. It is admitted by the

necessitarians that all men have "a natural conviction of freedom;" they

believe themselves to be free beings, and they act upon this belief in

all the relations of life. If this fact of consciousness is an illusion,

then our existence is also an illusion, for that same intuition which

certifies to me that I exist certifies also that I am free. If the

testimony of consciousness is invalidated, there is no criterion for

truth. If one of its deliverances is found to be false, how can we

vindicate the veracity of any? "Our faculties are bestowed upon us as

the instruments of deception; the root of our nature is a lie, and

universal skepticism is the only goal."

2. _The idea of moral obligation necessarily presupposes the freedom of

the will._ This is a principle so obvious that it needs no elucidation.

If man have duties, he must possess the power of fulfilling them. He

ought to be free if he ought to obey law, or human nature is in

contradiction with itself. The direct certainty of obligation implies

the corresponding certainty of freedom. Hence Kant's well-known canon,

"_I ought, therefore I can._" Though denying the direct consciousness of

freedom, Kant maintained with earnestness that the fact of liberty is

guaranteed by the existence of the moral law, whose categorical

imperative _thou shalt_ necessarily implies a corresponding _thou

canst_. To the same effect are the words of Sir William Hamilton: "The

fact that we are free is given to us in the consciousness of an

uncompromising law of duty.... Our consciousness of the moral law, which

without a moral liberty in man would be a mendacious imperative, gives a

decided preponderance to the doctrine of freedom over the doctrine of

fate."[528] Physical causation and moral obligation can not coexist side

by side. In proportion as we extend the domain of necessity we must

diminish that of duty.

3. _The sense of responsibility presupposes the freedom of the will._

This sense of responsibility is native to the human mind. Every man

feels himself to be accountable for his own conduct, not only at the bar

of his own conscience, but before the moral judgment-seat of his

fellow-men. Every where he recognizes the right of his fellow-men to

inquire into his character, to sit in judgment upon his conduct, and to

esteem and treat him accordingly. We necessarily impute blame when an

unjust action is performed by another; we feel conscious of guilt and

unworthiness when a wrong is done by ourselves. These are facts of

universal consciousness. But these sentiments are irrational and absurd

if man is a mere machine impelled by natural causes, and has no

self-determining power.[529] Whatever disasters may overtake us in the

course of nature, however we may suffer by the wild tornado or the

blighting mildew, how much soever of our property may be swallowed up by

the ocean tempest or the devouring flame, we impute no blame; and we

experience here emotions essentially different from those which we

experience when a wrong is intentionally inflicted upon us by our

fellow-men. "Suppose yourself to have been the victim of some act of

injustice and villainy by which you were reduced to penury, and your

family to want and indigence. By what philosophy can you eradicate the

sense of wrong or cease to impute blame to the man whose perfidy has

despoiled your life? You may forgive him, and follow him with your

prayers to the last hour of your life, but you will still pray for him

as a guilty man whose crime has been the burden of your life." Now what

is this radical and fundamental difference between the events of the

material universe and the actions of men? and what is the rational basis

for the different feelings we experience and the diverse judgments we

pass in regard to them?

There is only one answer to this question. The ultimate

ground-difference is found in the fact that one class of events is

_necessary_--there is no adequate power in the thing to be or do

otherwise; the other class of actions is _free_--they need not have been

performed, the actor had full power for a contrary choice. In the world

of nature _force_ reigns; in the world of moral life _liberty_ prevails.

The fundamental principle of difference is the _freedom of the will_.

This second condition of moral government--namely, the possession of

_free alternative power_ on the part of the subject to comply, or refuse

to comply, with the requirements of moral law--is thus established,

first, by the direct testimony of consciousness, from which there can be

no appeal, and, secondly, by necessary inference from collateral facts

of consciousness, which can not be invalidated by counter-proofs.

Unhappily, the restlessness of speculative minds, the necessities of

false theories in philosophy, or the unwarrantable assumptions of

dogmatic theologians, have led to the disregard of the affirmations of

universal consciousness. Men have asked, How can freedom be possible in

a dependent creature? How can it be consistent with our belief in the

principle of universal causation? How can it be harmonized with the fact

that man always acts under the influence of motives? How can it be

reconciled with the omnipotence and absolute prescience of God?

We shall now address ourselves to the consideration of the arguments

against the doctrine of the freedom of the will which are suggested by

these queries.

1. The first is the _Metaphysical or Causational Argument_. The rational

intuition that "every event must have a cause" is a universal and

necessary truth. It must therefore be rigorously applied to all mental

as well as to all physical phenomena. Every volition must have a cause,

and if caused it can not be _free_. This is the grand argument upon

which the necessitarian mainly relies, and it is urged with eloquence

and force by Edwards, Chalmers, and McCosh.

Now that "every event must have a cause" is an _à priori_ truth, which

is as readily accorded by the freedomist as it is vehemently insisted

upon by the necessitarian. No philosophic writers have more ably and

clearly enounced this law of causality than the freedomists Reid,

Stewart, and Cousin. They rely upon it as one of the main pillars of the

Theistic argument. And they apply it, in all its integrity, to mental as

well as to physical phenomena. They hesitate not to say that "_every

volition must have a cause_." That cause is the efficient creative power

which resides in a free, spiritual personality. And that power is not,

like a material or physical cause, shut up to one sole mode of

effectuation: it is an _alternative_ power, a pluri-efficient cause.

Where, then, is the discrepancy between the universal principle of

causality and the doctrine of alternative causation? Is the infinite

First Cause confined to one solely possible mode of effectuation? If so,

how will you account for the endlessly varied effects which appear in

the physical universe? God is the Eternal _One_; whence the plurality

and diversity of his creative acts if He be not an equipotent cause? And

yet, of all the events which have transpired in the universe, whether

natural or supernatural, we affirm "every event must have had a

cause."[530] The endless diversity of effects which originate in the

alternative causation of God is in perfect harmony with this universal

law of causality.

But on a closer examination it will be found that when the necessitarian

attempts to invalidate our consciousness of alternative power by the

application of the causational argument he adroitly shifts his ground.

He assumes another proposition, which is neither equivalent to the above

axiom, nor in itself axiomatic and self-evident, nor justifiably

assumed without proof. McCosh says "the doctrine of necessity is founded

on the intellectual intuitions of man's mind, which lead us, in mental

as in material phenomena, to anticipate the _same_ effects to follow the

_same_ causes"[531]--that is, every cause is inalternative or unipotent;

one effect, and only one can follow.

Now that a given phenomenon must have a cause is one assertion; that the

_same_ cause will again and forever produce the _same_ effect is

another. The first is an axiom, the second is an induction. That "every

event must have a cause" is a rational intuition. That "like causes will

produce always like effects" is a generalization from our limited

experience, and on a further analysis will be found to apply only to our

cognitions of the _material_ universe. It is grounded simply on what we

know empirically of the uniformity of nature. Now we have no _à priori_

intuitive conviction of the uniformity of nature. As the result of

maturer thought, McCosh admits this in his work on the "Intuitions of

the Mind:" "It is vain to speak of the belief in the uniformity of

nature as a self-evident, a necessary, or a universal truth" (page 276).

It is perfectly conceivable that the world might have been so

constituted that there should have been no regularity in the succession

of events. The causes of all the events in nature might have been

_supernatural_, and consisted in the immediate free volitions of the

Deity, or subordinate angelic agencies.[532] They might have been all

"miraculous," and yet the true law of causality would not have been

violated, or in any way invalidated. And so when man, in the exercise of

his free alternative power, produces a new succession of events in

physical nature, or moves disorder and ἀνομία into the moral sphere,

this is no way inconsistent with the axiom that "every event has a

cause."

"In our very definition of freedom of will we assume in the volitional

sphere the inapplicability of the maxim that 'like causes ever and

always produce like effects.' We assume that _either_ one of several

effects is legitimate from the _same_ cause. And while we admit that in

non-volitional causation the law that 'every event must have a cause'

means that every event must have its own peculiar cause, adequate for

itself alone, in volitional causation an event may have a cause adequate

either for it or for other event; and whichever event exists, the

_demands of the laws of causation are completely satisfied_."[533]

Driven from this boasted stronghold, the necessitarian resorts to his

favorite dialectic strategy. He demands the explanation of equipotent

causation, how one cause can be adequate to several effects. He asks,

_What causes the will to put forth one particular volition rather than

another?_

Now when we have shown that, as a fact of consciousness and experience,

a personal, _spiritual_ cause is adequate to several results, we are

entitled in reason and justice to protest against any attempt to push

the inquiry a step farther. We have attained an ultimate fact, and we

have no right to cast doubt upon its authority by raising perplexing

questions as to the _how_ or _why_ of that which _is_. This is precisely

the method by which the atheist Holyoake would invalidate the argument

for the existence of the infinite First Cause. He subjects the Deity to

this universal law of causality, and asks, What caused the Creator to

create? "The atheist holds that the universe is an endless series of

causes and effects _ad infinitum_, and therefore the idea of a _first_

cause is an absurdity and a contradiction." The "infinite series" of

Edwards and of Holyoake are constructed on the same principle. They both

ask _a_ cause for _the_ cause.

When, therefore, it is asked, What causes the will to effect one

volition rather than another? our answer is, _Nothing whatever!_

"Of its own effect, WILL, in its proper conditions, is not a partial,

but a full and adequate cause. Put your finger upon any effect

(volition) and ask, What caused this result exclusively of the others?

and the reply is, The will, or the agent in willing. Ask then what

caused the will in its conditions to cause the volition, and the reply

is, NOTHING. Nay, you are a bad philosopher in asking; for for its own

effect will or the willing agent is a complete cause: as complete a

cause as any cause whatever; _and every complete cause produces its

effect_ UNCAUSEDLY. The volition, like every other effect, is completely

accounted for when a complete cause is assigned. To ask what caused the

complete cause to produce the effect is to ask the cause of

causation."[534]

But such an "alternative" power, the necessitarian affirms, is

incomprehensible and inexplicable. To which we need only reply in the

language of Hamilton, "The scheme of freedom is not more

incomprehensible than the scheme of necessity."[535] "_Omnia exeunt in

mysterium_"--there is nothing the absolute ground of which is not a

mystery. In saying so much, however, we by no means grant the

affirmation of Hamilton that "we are unable to conceive an absolute

commencement [of being or motion]; we can not therefore conceive a free

volition."[536] This is not admitted by Mansel, the disciple and

annotator of Hamilton, as flowing even from his mental "law of the

conditioned." "It may be true, as a fact, that no material atom has been

added to the world since the first creation; but the assertion, however

true, is certainly not _necessary_. The Power which created once must be

conceived as able to create again, whether that ability is actually

exercised or not. The same conclusion is still more evident when we

proceed from the consideration of matter to that of mind. Of matter we

maintain that the creation of new portions is perfectly conceivable as a

result, if not as a process. Every man who comes into the world comes

into it as a distinct individual, having a personality and consciousness

of his own; and that personality is a distinct accession to the number

of persons previously existing.... I believe that every new person that

comes into the world is, as a person, a new existence."[537] So a

volition is a _new_ existence, an absolute origination, "a beginning of

motion" which has its source in the primordial power of the human spirit

as spirit. The _fact_ is undeniable, the _mode_ is inexplicable. But the

inconceivability of the mode in which the will creates a volition no

more renders the fact doubtful than the impossibility of conceiving how

a new and distinct self-conscious personality comes into existence

invalidates the fact that "I exist, and know myself as a distinctly

existing being."

2. _The Psychological Argument._--This may be briefly stated in the

following terms:

It is a fact of observation and experience that _motives_ do stand to

the will in the relation of _causes_ which necessitate volition. They

have an exact mathematical commensurability, and their prevalence is in

the precise ratio of their antecedent intrinsic _strength_. If motives

are wanting, there can be no choice; but when the same motives are

presented to the same mind, it obeys them with such remarkable

_uniformity_ that human actions may be reduced to statistical tables as

reliable and as accurate as tables of mortality.

We might here at once, and with justice, enter our caveat against the

attempt to invalidate a primitive datum of consciousness by alleged

deductions from the exterior phenomena of human life and history. A

primitive datum of consciousness is unquestionable and infallible. A

process of induction is liable to the interpolations of error. The

latter is therefore a lesser authority than the former, and a merely

derivative assurance can not be argued against an ultimate fact. We must

regard it as a philosophic canon that an experience cognition can not

conflict with an intuitive belief. The exterior phenomena of life and

history, properly interpreted, must harmonize with the interior facts

and laws of the human mind, for what is _history_ but the development,

under the conditions and relations of time, of the primitive powers,

ideas, and laws of humanity? If, then, consciousness attests the

presence in man's spiritual nature of a power, in the same

circumstances, to choose either of several ways, we may confidently

expect that the phenomena of the moral world will not belie that

testimony. Now it is a palpable fact that an unbroken law of continuity

and uniformity pervades the material universe. It is locked up in an

unchangeable status. There is no deviation and no progression. All

things remain as they were since the beginning. The fundamental fact

lying at the basis of this undeviating uniformity of nature is that

material causes are unipotent, and shut up to one solely possible mode

of effectuation.[538] And it is equally palpable that the phenomena of

the moral world, the sphere of human life and history, reveal

contingency, diversity, alteriety, and progression. Humanity has not

revolved in cycles, neither has it run in the inflexible grooves of an

anterior causation, nor remained in the dead-lock of an unchangeable

status. History is not an inflexible frame-work in which all events have

been shaped by necessity; it is a development of the inherent powers and

capabilities of humanity, and it teaches us that new trains of causes

have been originated, and new conditions have been superinduced by man.

The ground-fact which underlies all the diversity, contingency, and

progress which appear in the moral world is that volitional causes are

equipotent and efficient for any one of the several results.[539] In

moral development the progressive principle is just the freedom of the

will. The facts of the inner and outer world are therefore in harmony.

The theory of the necessitarian assumes that the will is a mere

passivity, a simple conductor of the impulse which motive power exerts,

a mere transition-point where ideal force is transformed into physical

force, and desires, inclinations, moral convictions, divine influences

become necessary acts. Motives thus prevail by their antecedent

intrinsic power just as physical forces prevail in mechanical and vital

dynamics. And, proceeding upon this assumption, he labors to construct a

science of Ethology in which he would anticipate human action by

statistics, and show how individual character _must_ be in accordance

with physical and mental causation. Whereas consciousness asserts that

the will "is not a bleak mechanical thing." It is a free alternative

power. It is a full, complete, adequate cause. It is _spirit_, not

matter.

Now it is freely granted that the mind acts in view of motives, acts in

accordance with motives, acts in a certain qualified sense under the

influence of motives; _but the freedomist emphatically denies that the

will is necessitated to action by motives_. Motives may be reason _for_

action, conditions under which will acts, but they are not causes _of_

action. They may solicit, invite, urge to action, but they can not

constrain, compel, and force action.[540]

Motives have no fixed correlation to the will. They address themselves

to the feelings, the judgment, the conscience, and not directly and

immediately to the will. They may awaken desire, fear, inclination,

preference, a sense of obligation; but these are all states of the

intellect and sensibility, and may coexist in the same mind with a state

of indetermination and non-differentiation in the will. That which is

desirable may appeal to the feelings, that which is eligible to the

judgment, that which is obligatory to the conscience, and these may

excite the mind in different degrees of intensity; but none of them have

power to move the will. We may be able intellectually to perceive that

some motives are intrinsically "higher" than others, that some have a

prevolition power to excite all minds more intensely than others; but

they do not prevail and secure action in any ratio with their supposed

_à priori_ strength. They can only become real motives for the will by

its voluntary placing its interest in them and making them objects of

its choice.[541] All the actual strength which a motive has is derived

from the action of the will. On this subject we offer the following

propositions:

(1.) _The so-called strength of a motive is the degree of probability

that the will will act in accordance with or on account of it._ "And it

is most important to remark that the _result_ is not always, nor in most

cases, necessarily as the _highest probability_. The will may choose for

the higher or for the lower. And as the will may choose for a lower

rather than a higher probability, so the will may choose on account of

what is called antecedently a _weaker_ over a _stronger_ motive. And

hereby is once for all established the difference between mechanical

force and motive influence--that whereas in the former, by necessity,

the greater effect results from the greater force, in the latter the

less is possible from the greater, the greater from the less."[542] That

result is not as the highest probability Dr. Whedon has shown most

conclusively from the doctrine of Contingencies or Probabilities. And on

this he grounds his doctrine of _contingent motive probability_. "This

contingent character of motive influence is correspondent with the

alternative character of that which is its sole possible object--will.

An alternative will and a contingent motive influence are correlatives.

They mutually explain and sustain each other. To admit either is to

admit both. And so a unipotent will and a necessary motive influence are

correlatives. He who is compelled to admit one is compelled to admit the

other. It will be a mere controversy about a word to say that an

influence which does not produce effect is no influence. That may

legitimately be called an influence, it is important to add, which is

conceived as _possessing an intrinsic probability for result, though the

higher probability be a contingency_ for which there exists power of

_failure_. If so, then the doctrine of contingent motive influence is

established, and the doctrine of volitional necessity is at an end. The

relation between physical force and effect is _necessity_. The relation

between motive and volition is _contingency_."[543]

(2.) _The so-called strength of a motive is the comparative prevalence

which the will assigns to it by its own action._ It is impossible to

erect any standard by which the intrinsic "strength" of motives can be

determined previous to volition. "A cold intellection is not

intrinsically commensurable with a deep emotion, nor a sentiment of

taste with a feeling of obligation, nor a physical appetite with a sense

of honor." Now by what standard can the comparative force of these

influences be determined? There is no more commensurability between them

than between "the brightness of day and the force of magnetic

attractions." Or if we could possibly determine, by some rational _à

priori_ method, that a feeling of obligation is intrinsically stronger

than a physical appetite, or that the love of life is stronger _per se_

than a sense of duty, we can not affirm that the one or the other shall

therefore uniformly and necessarily prevail. These influences derive all

their prevalency, and consequently their comparative strength of motive,

_from the will alone_. The will places its interest in the one or the

other. It decides the mental position. "It settles the question of

preferences between alternatives, dismisses the counter-motive from

view, and closes the debate."[544]

The "strength" of a motive, in its relation to the will, can only be

known by the test of _prevalency_. This is unwittingly conceded by the

necessitarian. He says "the strongest motive prevails because that is

the strongest which the will chooses." This really concedes the

position assumed by Dr. Whedon, that "the strength of a motive is the

comparative prevalence which the will, in its own action, assigns to it,

or the nearness to which the will comes to acting on account of it." Men

do not always choose that which is most _desirable_, nor that which is

most _eligible_, nor that which appears most _obligatory_. But from

whatever motive men may choose to act, however base and unworthy, the

necessitarian affirms it was intrinsically the strongest motive

_because_ it was chosen; which simply amounts to this--the strongest

motive is always chosen because the motive chosen is always the

strongest motive.

The attempts of the necessitarian to fix upon some standard by which to

estimate the antecedent strength of motives have all signally failed.

The most plausible is that of Edwards. He asserts that the volition is

always as the greatest _apparent_ good. But by what standard is that

good estimated, by which faculty is it recognized and pronounced _good_?

by the reason, the conscience, the judgment, or the appetites? Can that

be pronounced _good_ which is chosen in obedience to passion and lust?

Does the man who inflicts a premeditated injury upon his neighbor choose

the greatest apparent good? Does the murderer believe that in taking

away the life of his fellow-man "the volition is as the greatest

apparent good?" Certainly not. "Never," says Bushnell, "was there a case

of wrong, a sinful choice, in which the agent believed he was choosing

for the strongest, weightiest, or most valuable motives." The great mass

of sinful men are conscious of choosing sinful indulgence against their

"highest good."

(3.) _Motives are the conditions, but not the causes of volition._ "Of

volition the cause, the sole cause, is will. Motives are collateral

conditions ... for the volition to be; with which there is adequate

power for the volition not to be.... The motive is only the _occasion_,

and all its acts of excitement amount to no more than this, that they

stand as _probable conditions_ opening the way toward which the will

thereby acquires opportunity to act with full adequate power of not

acting."[545] The relation between motive and volition is not a

necessary but a contingent relation. The will is the controlling

conscious self in the exercise of direct causative power in producing

volition.

Some modern writers of the necessitarian school, McCosh for example,

admit the existence of "self-activity" in the will. But what can be the

meaning of "self-activity" if the will have not the power of either

resisting or yielding to motives presented, and in the same unchanged

circumstances of choosing a different alternative? To be moved

absolutely by motives is not _self_-movement. A power to move in only

one given direction is a mere nature-force; it can not be self-activity.

The distinguished writer above named also admits that "_causation in the

will is entirely different from causation in other actions_."[546] If he

mean that motives act upon the will in a manner "entirely different"

from that by which physical causes secure action or change in the

material world, what right has he to call it _causation_ at all? And if

he mean that volitional causation is "alternative," and not, like

physical causation, "unipotent," then the controversy is at an end.

(4.) _We have no such experience of "uniformities of volition" as shall

enable us to generalize a universal law of volitional causation._ The

facts of uniformity which present themselves in the continuous life of

some men who were absorbed in one great life-purpose, as also in the

conduct of aggregate masses of men, are not denied. We affirm that the

correct definition of a free will supposes that it may choose in a

generally uniform manner. Much of the uniformity in the life of an

individual may be accounted for by corporeal nature--disposition,

standard purpose, and habit. "Upon a basis of corporeal, psychological,

and mental nature are overlaid a primary stratum of dispositions

blending the natural and the volitional, and a secondary formation of

generic purposes wholly volitional, and formed by repetition into a

tertiary of habits; and thus we have, in his mingled constitution of

necessitation and freedom, an agent prepared for daily free responsible

action."[547]

Now it may be readily granted that character forms a basis of reliable

_probability_ as to how in given circumstances a man will act. We may be

able to judge, with some degree of accuracy, how a man will work in his

freedom; but we can never calculate with absolute certainty, because we

have numberless examples of men acting strangely "out of character," and

disappointing our most confident expectations.

"There is often the action, great or small, which reverses the record of

a life or a protracted course of action. He who well watches his

neighbor, however blind he may be to his own practical

self-contradictions, is sure to find, even in the life most uniform in

its great outline, plenty of minor inconsistencies. Or as Müller, in his

'Doctrine of Sin,' well says, that both our observation and our

subject's temptation may occur just at the moment of one of his great

volitional turning-points. From the apostasy of the first angels and the

fall of man, through the whole course of human history, we have

innumerable instances of revolutionary volitions, not only _out of the

previous character_, but shaping a _new_ character. The one disastrous

sin of Moses, the one great complicated crime of David, the apostasy of

Solomon, the wisest of men, are all proofs how, not only in contrasted

traits, but in revolutionary acts, a man may be

'The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind.'"[548]

Statistics are cited by Buckle, in his "History of Civilization in

England," showing that crimes, suicides, marriages, etc., occur with

remarkable uniformity, as the result of general conditions of human

society; and he thence infers that all the actions of men are governed

by a uniform law of causation. This uniformity may, however, be as

easily accounted for on the doctrine of freedom as on the doctrine of

necessity. In the calculations of contingencies, while results of

compared large aggregates in the same conditions may approach equality,

the _contingency of each individual case remains still a contingency_.

The actuary of an insurance company can assert with accuracy the average

duration of human life in different countries; but were he to attempt to

predict the duration of any one individual life he had insured, he would

certainly fail. The insured may falsify his predictions by a voluntary

act of suicide. So though large aggregations of free volitions,

surrounded by the same motives, may approach equality, the _freedom of

the individual will remains_.[549]

And as Mansel very justly remarks, "it is precisely because individual

actions are not reducible to any fixed law, or capable of representation

by any numerical calculation, that the statistical averages acquire

their value as substitutes. No one dreams of applying statistical

averages to calculate the period of the earth's rotation by showing that

four-and-twenty hours is the exact medium of time, comparing one month's

or one year's revolution with another's. It is only when individual

movements are irregular that it is necessary to aim at a proximate

regularity by calculating in mass."[550]

3. _The Theological Argument._--The main points of the theological

argument may be thus presented: Freedom in a created being is

incompatible with the absolute sovereignty and prescience of God. To

suppose a being capable of acting either of several ways is to suppose a

being out of the control of God. And a free agent can not possess power

to do otherwise than God foreknows he will do.

In regard to the first of these supposed incompatibilities, we need only

remark that if the Deity, in order to the existence of an equitable

moral government, and the consequent possibility of free responsible

action by the creature, shall please to subject his omnipotence to

conditional limitations, the necessitarian has no business to

object.[551] We need feel no solicitude about the Divine sovereignty.

God will take care of his own honor and defend his own high and holy

prerogatives. Such self-limiting laws prescribed by Divine wisdom and

love do not place man beyond Divine control. The necessitarian will not

deny that such self-limitation is essential to the very existence of the

kingdom of nature. God has established an order in nature, a uniformity

of antecedence and sequence, with which Omnipotence shall not interfere.

"Such a Divine law of non-usance of power is still more necessary in the

kingdom of living agents, and most of all in the realm of responsible

agents; it being observable that the more close the Divine

self-restraint, and the larger the amount of powers in the agent left

untouched, the more the creative system rises in dignity, and the higher

God appears as a sovereign. Even in the system of living _necessitated_

agents, as necessitarians must admit, God forbids Himself to disturb the

agent's uniform and perpetual acting according to strongest motive."

The second of these incompatibilities is really predicated upon our

ignorance, and not upon our knowledge. We can not understand _how_ the

Divine Intelligence foreknows all future events. To enable us to

understand the exact manner in which an Infinite Intelligence

contemplates succession in time, it would be necessary that we should be

infinite also. The _fact_ that God foreknows all future events is all

that is revealed to us; the _manner_ of it He has left in darkness, and

we can throw no light upon it by our verbal speculations.

Of one thing we may rest assured, that as perception precedes volition

in the finite intelligence, so knowledge must precede determination in

the Divine Mind. God can not will or act in absolute darkness. Divine

predestination must be conditioned on Divine foreknowledge.[552] His

foreknowledge does not depend upon his will, or on the adjustment of

motives to make us will thus and thus; but He foreknows every thing

first conditionally, in the world of possibility, before He creates, or

determines any thing to be, in the world of fact. Otherwise, all his

purposes would be grounded in ignorance, not in wisdom, and his

knowledge would consist in following after his will, to learn what it

had blindly determined.[553]

Another important principle clearly and vigorously maintained by Dr.

Whedon is "that the freeness of an act is not affected by the

consideration of its being foreknown." First, because the Divine

knowledge must always correspond to the reality. A free action must be

known as _free_. "If there be in the free agent, ascertainable by

psychology, or required by intuition, or supposably seen by the Divine

eye, the power of putting forth the volition with full power of

alteriety, then God knows that power."[554] Secondly, the occurrence of

an event or act may be _certain_ to Divine foreknowledge, and yet

perfectly _contingent_ in itself. Foreknowledge renders nothing

_necessary_; _it is the consequence, not the cause of events_.

If there be a necessity at all in the case, "the necessity lies not upon

the free act, but upon the foreknowledge. The foreknowledge must see to

its own accuracy. Pure knowledge, temporal or eternal, must conform

itself to the fact, not the fact to the knowledge."[555] The real

difficulty is, not how an act can be a free act and yet be foreknown

(for the act of knowledge can not change the object of knowledge), but

how God can possibly know with certainty a future contingency which may

or may not happen.

It is a clear and immediate revelation of consciousness that man has a

free power of self-determination. No revelation can contradict this

revelation. This fact of consciousness can not be invalidated by any

conceptions of the logical understanding in regard to the omnipotence or

prescience of God, for these by their very nature transcend all human

comprehension.

III. _The method of moral government._--We have seen that government, in

general, is control exercised with a view to the maintenance of order.

In the material world, order is secured by the direct compulsion of

omnipotent force. The things of nature are inertly passive under the

hand of God. They can offer no resistance to the Divine control, and

consequently, in the sphere of nature, there can be no real disorder.

But in the realm of self-determining powers there is the possibility of

collision, because there is the power to resist the will of God. And, as

a matter of fact, we know there is opposition, lawlessness, and sin. In

that sphere, where above all others the demand of the reason is for

order, there is the presence of _disorder_--that is, there is

disconformity to law and consequent suffering.

And now the question arises, By what _method_ is order to be maintained

in the sphere of freedom? How are beings that have the power to

determine for themselves what they will choose and do, to be brought to

act in harmony with the eternal laws of righteousness and love?

There are inconsiderate souls who dream that this may be achieved by

force. God, say they, is omnipotent; if He will the non-extension of

evil, He is able to destroy it; if He desire the maintenance of moral

order, He can compel it. Such reckless declaimers know not what they

say.

Had it so pleased God, He could have made beings in human form without

any sense of moral right and wrong, and without any power to commit sin;

but they would not have been _rational_ beings, would not have been

_free_ beings, would not have been _moral_ beings; neither could they,

in any high and proper sense, be _happy_ beings, because they could

experience no sense of rectitude, no approval of conscience, no delight

in moral excellence, no blessedness in duty and sacrifice. God, indeed,

has made many such creatures that can not sin. The bee, the ant, the

swine, the ape--these can not sin; but they are mere things, not free

powers; they have no sense of dignity and moral worth, no approving

conscience, no joy of sacrifice, and no immortal hopes. Lived there ever

a sane man who would change his lot with one of these, even though in

being a man he has the fearful power to sin, and in sinning, the fearful

susceptibility to suffer--yea, to suffer eternally? Is there any thing

on earth whose value does not fade away when compared with the priceless

value of being capable of duty, of virtue, of devotion, and of

sacrifice? In the eyes of God, the humblest of moral beings is worth

more than all the firmament of stars, and all the teeming myriads of

brutal forms of sense that dwell upon the earth. Because God preferred

to rule over free powers, and not mere things--free powers that could be

governed by truth and reason and love; because He loves moral character,

and cares for it more than all the things "that can be piled in the

infinitude of space, even though they were diamonds," therefore He

bestowed on man this high capacity of character--the capacity to know,

to choose, to love, to enjoy, and in a conscious communion with God to

be blessed forever.

But when God thus determines to create a rational and free being--to

make "man in his own image"--He determines to make a being who in acting

freely may act in opposition to the mind of God, and in violation of his

holy law. In creating a free self-determined being who shall be the

cause of his own action, God puts his own omnipotence under conditional

limitations, and renders it morally impossible for Him, by mere force,

to constrain the will of man. The notion of a free will, which is an

efficient cause, being governed by force, is a contradiction.

Omnipotence may, if it please, annihilate man, but it can not control

man in the sphere of his freedom. "Powers governed by the absolute force

or fiat of omnipotence would in that fact be uncreate and cease."[556]

The moral government of God must deal with man _as man_, must treat him

as intelligent and free, and must govern him solely by moral influences.

He must be controlled by the voice of reason and the sense of duty, by

persuasion and sympathy, by hope and fear; in short, by motives

addressed to the judgment, the conscience, and the heart. A

self-determined being can be brought into harmony with the Divine order

only by "the schooling of his consent." He can be perfected--that is,

fully established in harmony with the character and will of God--by the

discipline of the will. He must, therefore, be placed in such

circumstances as invite consent, and at the same time permit resistance.

He is to be trained, furnished, and perfected, and to this end he must

be carried through just such experiences, changes, and trials as will

best help the formation of a noble human character, and will best

prepare man for the plenitude and blessedness of that life for which the

present is a course of education and discipline.[557]

Furthermore, God's moral government of the world must deal with the

_actual man_--that is, with man as he exists in society with certain

hereditary taints that are not his fault, and under certain unfavorable

conditions in which he has been placed without his consent. With

reverence, we affirm that God Himself is under moral obligation to treat

man equitably, to take account of the weakness which he inherits, the

perverted education that has been given him, and the depraved

associations that surround him, and graduate his responsibility on the

scale of his available light. Finally, the moral government of God must

deal with _the man that will be_--with that fixed character which may be

formed by man in the exercise of his free power of self-determination,

amid the circumstances of his earthly probation. This character must

contain within itself the elements of a blessed or a wretched

futurition, and thus a retribution be secured by fixed nature, and

inflicted by an inflexible necessity.

That the moral government of God is a probationary economy, in which

ample scope is afforded for the development of character, and in which

we are in the act of being _proved_, is evident,

(1.) From the fact _that all our future interests are dependent upon our

present conduct_. God has endowed us with some degree of foresight, and

has thus made us provident beings. We have a native tendency to take

account of and forecast the future. By the aid of reason we can, in some

measure, foresee the tendencies of our actions; we can lay our plans for

the future, and anticipate events which are yet remote. We can also

bring to our aid the lessons of experience, and from this also we can

learn that our present action will have a powerful influence upon our

future condition. We know that the circumstances which surround us

to-day have been in a large degree created or moulded by ourselves, and

that many of our misadventures and our miseries may be easily traced

back to particular acts of imprudence and folly on our own part as the

cause. So that there is no truth we more certainly know than this, that

our future happiness of the next moment, and of every succeeding stage

of our living, is dependent upon our present conduct.

(2.) This is further evident from the fact _that the present scene is

filled with moral tests and temptations_. There is in the present life

an admixture of _good_ and _evil_. On the one hand there are numerous

solicitations to evil; on the other there are motives and inducements to

virtue, the plain intention of which is to prove us. In the words of

Bishop Butler, "We have here free scope and opportunity for that good or

evil conduct which God will reward or punish hereafter." This is

necessary to moral government, because moral government can not exist

without freedom of choice, and consequently the existence of those

circumstances in which that freedom can be exercised. That we have

freedom of choice we know; and our every-day experience of the

temptations to wrong-doing, and of the difficulties in the way of a

uniform adherence to virtue, teaches us that we are in a state of trial,

where our principles are being continually put to the test.

(3.) That our present life is a probation for a future life is evident

from the fact _that in the present life punishment is deferred,

consequences are delayed, to give play to the exercise of moral

motives_.

By "moral motives" we mean regard for what is right and just, _because

it is right and just_, respect for the voice of conscience, and

reverence for the will and requirements of God. If the consequences of

our moral conduct were to follow immediately on the heels of the act, if

reward or punishment were instantly to ensue, then moral motives could

have no exercise. If there were no delay--no interval between sin and

its punishment, moral government would cease, and a merely natural

government would remain, such as prevails over irrational creatures. Man

would then be influenced purely by motives of personal interest or

safety or enjoyment, and his obedience would not be the result of moral

motives, consequently neither virtuous nor vicious. God has, therefore,

put the consequences of much of our conduct into the future, that we may

have room for free deliberate choice, while just so much of consequence

is permitted to appear as will clearly indicate that we are under moral

government, and awaken the anticipation that _all_ our conduct will be

brought into judgment.

(4.) That our present life is a probation for a future life is more

fully proved by the fact _that as a moral economy the present life is

incomplete_. The present is a sphere too contracted for the equitable

administration of rewards and punishments, because some of the _last_

actions of men's lives, some of their _best_ actions or some of their

_basest_ actions, would come under neither. The blood of the martyrs who

died for the faith, or of the patriot who bled for his country, would

cry alike in vain for vengeance or reward. The man who first took away

his brother's life, and then his own, has evaded justice, and escaped

punishment. The hand of violence has robbed the virtuous man of his

present reward; and the suicide, by breaking in upon the sanctuary of

his own life, has defied and defeated the government of God, if there be

no future life.

In the present life retribution fails in uniformity. It is a proposition

which the reason of every man must approve--that the government of God

must be perfectly equitable, and that under it every man must receive

his just due. But men do not receive their requital in this life,

consequently we are bound to affirm that in the present life the Divine

administration is _incomplete_. We can not conceal from ourselves the

fact that events occur in the present life which we can not conceive as

benevolently or righteously consummated. These events lift the tyrant to

power, and trample down the patriot and the freeman. The orphan eats the

bitter bread of misery, while the man who has robbed him of the paternal

inheritance revels in luxury. The ungodly prosper in the world, "their

eyes stand out with fatness, they have more than heart could wish,"

while the righteous suffer affliction, and are in need. And if there is

no future life in which God will balance accounts with the universe, and

render to every man according to his works, then moral government is

incomplete, injustice has triumphed, wrong has prevailed. An imperfect

retribution and an unequal providence demand a future life for their

vindication--a future life both for the good and the bad, so that God

may reckon with all of them--and teach most convincingly that the

present life is a probation. The experiences, changes, conflicts, trials

of a probationary economy, are all intended to prove men, to test their

principles and make manifest their real character.

The government of God is a _moral discipline_ by which men are trained

in the practice and confirmed in the habits of virtue, and thus brought,

by the "schooling of their own consent," into harmony with the Divine

order.

It is a question which may be properly entertained, whether a free

self-determined being can be made perfect in moral character in any

other manner than by the discipline of the will. There certainly can be

no created moral desert. Responsible character must be the product of

free choice. A man can no more become virtuous without the discipline of

the will than he can become intelligent without the discipline of the

understanding. For wherein consists the virtue of a self-determined

being? Is it not in his free choice of what is right and good, his

resistance to temptation, his voluntary submission to the Divine will?

Is it not in his integrity, his patience, his fortitude, and his

resignation? But how can these virtues exist, how can they be exercised,

and how brought to maturity, except in the midst of difficulties and

hinderances? Where can patience and resignation and fortitude and

sympathy have a place, if there are no sufferings to be endured? How can

firmness and diligence and courage be developed, if there are no

difficulties and hinderances to the practice of virtue?

Therefore, in order that men may be trained and educated and perfected,

they are placed amid such scenes, experiences, and trials as shall draw

out the moral powers of the soul, shall strengthen and confirm the will

in goodness, and establish them in the law of their being, so that their

moral future is secure. "Life, thus ordered, is a magnificent scheme to

bring out the value of law, and teach the necessity of right as the only

conserving principle of order and happiness; teaching the more

powerfully, if so it must, by disorder and sorrow." Suffering is a

chastisement which is wholesome: it teaches the blessedness of purity

and the sinfulness of sin; and it may develop into "a godly sorrow"

which shall heal and purify the soul.

The moral government of God is an equitable administration, in which

responsibility is graduated on the scale of available light and

opportunity. "This is the condemnation that _light_ is come into the

world." Light is the symbol of knowledge, because it _reveals_ the right

and clearly manifests what duty is. Light is consequently the exact

measure of responsibility. Our knowledge of what we ought to do, or

ought not to do, determines the degree of our accountability. An

absolute and involuntary ignorance would be the most perfect plea of

innocence. The imputation of sin in such a case would be made void, but

thereby the completeness of human nature be destroyed. That which would

relegate man from the sphere of responsibility would also banish him

from the sphere of rationality.

St. Paul distinctly recognizes an alleviation of responsibility and

guilt in the "ignorance" of heathen life, and speaks of a Divine

"overlooking of the times of that ignorance"--a non-imputation of sins

committed in ignorance. But he does not by any means account the sinning

heathen as free from _all_ guilt. He shows that they were not in utter

ignorance, and that much of their ignorance was voluntary. He refers to

the original consciousness of God, and to the fact that this

consciousness is kept alive by the revelation of God in nature; and he

shows that the disorder of their religious and moral life resulted from

the voluntary suppression of this consciousness--"When they knew God,

they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in

their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened." He also

appeals to the no less definite power of conscience in the heart of the

heathen, "which shows the works required by the law to be written on

their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness to this law, and

their thoughts approving or condemning each other," and their civil laws

"adjudging their crimes as worthy of death." So far as their ignorance

was involuntary it was an alleviation of guilt, though not an excuse for

all sin. Whatever light they had, be it little or much, it was the

standard and measure of their accountability.

The Founder of Christianity distinctly recognized this principle of

moral government. "If I had not come and spoken unto them, _they had not

had sin_, but now they have no cloak for their sin"--clearly teaching

that ignorance would be a negation of guilt, and knowledge an

aggravation of guilt. Not that we are to suppose that the Jews, without

the light which Christ supplied, were absolutely guiltless; their

ignorance was a mitigation of their guilt. Christ lays it down as a

universal principle that knowledge of the Divine law or ignorance of the

Divine law by the person who violates it is the ground of a distinction

in the different degrees of culpability. "That servant which _knew_ his

lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his

will, shall be beaten with _many_ stripes. But he that _knew not_, and

did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with _few_

stripes."[558] This is the uniform rule of the Divine government among

all nations.

Increase of light and knowledge necessarily enhances human

responsibility. "To whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much

required." More is expected of the man than of the child. More is

demanded at the hands of the man who has been blessed with the

advantages of a Christian civilization than from the untutored savage.

The man who has been favored with a liberal education is held to a more

rigid account than the man who has been cradled in ignorance and

schooled in vice. And when the kingdom of God comes nigh to men, human

responsibility must be enlarged in commensuration with its blessings.

There is a holier, richer trust, and consequently a deeper obligation.

There is a greater light and a greater condemnation.

"Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty

works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would

have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I say unto you, It

shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment than

for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be

brought down to hell: for if the mighty works which have been done in

thee had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But

I say unto you, That it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in

the day of judgment than for thee."[559]

This aspect of the Divine government, which Dr. Whedon has felicitously

styled "the equation of probational advantages," relieves our sadness in

view of the moral condition of the world. "The Judge of all the earth

will do right" in the case of every human soul that has passed through

this probationary scene. His omniscient eye can take in at one view all

the influences and circumstances, favorable or unfavorable, which have

surrounded each individual, and fix the precise amount of

responsibility. He will "overlook" the "defect of doubt and taints of

blood," the faults of education and sins of ignorance, and He will make

a due allowance for the power of temptation, the trammels of evil

associations, and an enfeebled and perverted nature. "He is full of

compassion, and his tender mercies are over all his works." "He knows

our frame, and He remembers that we are dust." We may safely conjecture

that a negro hamlet in Central Africa, however inferior in its temporal

moral aspects, may, in its prospect for an eternal destiny, be superior

to many an American village. And in the dregs of our large cities there

are numbers who are excluded as effectually from the knowledge of the

truth as the heathen, and are scarcely developed to the level of

responsibility. These may be the least in the kingdom of heaven, but by

the law of moral equation they can not be excluded.[560] In every nation

under heaven, he that has feared God and wrought righteousness,

according to his knowledge and ability, will be "_accepted of God_."

The moral government of God secures an infallible and equitable

retribution by binding _character_ and _consequence_ in indissoluble

bonds, and evolving a reward or a punishment out of that permanent moral

state of the soul which has been induced by the free self-determination

of man.

"Character," says Novalis, "is a completely fashioned will (_vollkommen

gebildeter Wille_). It is that ultimate stress and determination of the

soul which results from the coherence and complexure of habits, and

habit is the result of repeated acts of voluntary choice. From the

persistence of habit a fixed disposition and cast of the inner man is

evolved which constitutes his _moral individuality_."

Even in this formative process we can discern the workings of the law of

retribution. One good deed handsels a second, and renders its

performance more easy and pleasurable. The man who obeys his conscience

feels that he can respect himself. He has a consciousness of growing

power; a sense of dignity and moral worth. The moral law is for him "a

law of liberty." On the other hand, one sinful deed involves a second,

and drags it after it. One lie demands another to maintain its

consistency. One act of injustice emboldens to the next. Self-respect is

broken down by license, and the path is prepared and cleared for further

iniquity. Thus, by the repetition of sinful deeds, restraints are

overborne, depraved habits are engendered, vice acquires a mastery over

the man, and he becomes a slave. There is a deep humiliation in this

sense of degradation and unworthiness. The sinner despises himself

because of his weakness, and blushes in secret places at the remembrance

of his own debasement.

The principal happiness or misery of man consists in the settled state

of his own heart, and not in the outward conditions of his daily life.

All human plaudits are as naught compared with the approval of one's own

conscience; and no penal inflictions can compare with the anguish of

remorse. The inward peace of the righteous soul, the disquietude and

misery of the sinful soul, are the blossom and the fruitage of the seed

which has been sown, and the stem and branches which have been nurtured

by the voluntary choices and acts of man. "He that soweth to his flesh

shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the spirit

shall of the spirit reap life everlasting." The connection between sin

and punishment is no arbitrary or accidental connection. It is just as

much a relation between cause and effect as the relation between sowing

and reaping in the physical world. "To cause the mind to punish itself,

to work a retribution out of ourselves, to secure it by fixed nature, to

inflict it by inflexible necessity, to convert the capacity of sin into

the instrument of suffering, is the prerogative of Divine rule."[561]

IV. _The end of moral government._--We have said that the end of

government, in general, is the maintenance of order. The end of moral

government is the maintenance of _moral order_ in the realm of free

self-determined powers. The moral order must consist in conformity to

the idea of the _absolute good_. The personality of God (the essential

momenta of which are reason and freedom, holiness and love) is _per se_,

in its totality, the absolute good. Infinite Personality is but another

name for Absolute Perfection.

The highest good for a created dependent personality is "to resemble

God" in all those attributes or perfections which constitute

personality. It is to be fully established in harmony with God's moral

character, unified with Him in will, glorified with Him in holiness, and

perfected with Him in the blessedness of love. The highest perfection of

personal being is moral order, and therefore human personality,

conceived in its purity and perfection, is the end of the Divine

government.[562]

This we have called "the ideal order of moral life," because it is not

yet realized in the world. We must believe, however, that the final

triumph of goodness is a part of the great world-plan. We must not only

believe, but know, that the great design of creation, the reason for

which the world exists at all, is that in it goodness may come to its

final realization. And this conviction is grounded on the fact that the

moral life of humanity has its source in the same Being who called the

world into existence, and who is conducting this present dispensation to

a glorious consummation, in which He shall "reconcile all things unto

Himself,... whether they be things in earth or things in heaven," and

"gather together in one all things in Christ," that "God may be all in

all."

Christianity bases all the obligations and sanctions of morality on the

great truths that God is near to man, that He sustains him every moment

in life, that He is the Father of the human spirit, and that He governs

man in order to perfect his nature and bring him into an everlasting

fellowship with Himself. Christianity knows nothing of "a science of

morals" which is not based upon the correlations between man and God,

nor of a morality which forgets God and disregards the most sacred and

fundamental of all duties, namely, the duties we owe to God. A morality

based solely upon the relations in which we stand to our fellow-men is

at best but secular and utilitarian. A morality which is grounded upon

the relation of volition to the state of the sensibility, and regards

"happiness as our being's end and aim," is egoistic and selfish. A

morality which rests upon our relation to God, the absolute good, and

which looks backward rather than forward for its motive, is unselfish

and Christian.

INDEX.

A.

Absolute creation, 62.

Absolute, Infinite, and Perfect, relation of these terms, 41, 42.

Action at a distance denied by Newton, 214;

by Leibnitz, Faraday, Helmholtz, Thomson, Tait, Maxwell, 214.

Agassiz on species, 164;

on the preparation of the earth for man, 254.

Attraction of gravitation not a primary force, 210-220;

not an essential attribute of matter, 211-213.

Attribute or related essence, 48-52.

Augustine, St., on the days of creation, 150, 151;

his conception of Divine conservation, 176, 177.

B.

Beale, Dr., on distinction between cell-life and soul-life, 163;

on life, 192, 240.

Being or essence, as reality, efficiency, and personality, 42-48.

Bioplasm, or cell-life, 162, 163.

Brooke, Prof., on conservation of energy, 205.

Büchner, Dr., asserts the eternity of matter and force, 24.

C.

Calderwood, Prof., on consciousness of freedom, 382.

Carpenter, Dr., on will as the type of all force, 39, 237;

on distinction between molecular and somatic life, 163, 236;

on the forces of nature as modes of the Divine action, 240.

Catastrophes, common belief in, 100;

sustained by science, 101, 102.

Categories, universal, 41.

Causative principle, the, must be real, efficient, and personal, 44.

Chalmers's, Dr., incautious concession as to the eternity of matter,

86.

Character, the formation of perfect, noble--the highest end, 306,

can only be attained under conditions of freedom, 308,

and through the inspiration of a higher life, 309, 310.

Christian civilization the age of philanthropy, 285-290.

Cicero on a universal and immutable moral law, 379.

Civilization, each epoch of, has had a different theatre, 275;

stages of development in, 277-290.

Clarke, Dr. Samuel, on immediate agency of God in conservation, 178.

Cohn, Dr., on nature, 333.

Coleridge on nature, 325;

on the natural, 369.

Comte on irregular variability in nature, 195, 329.

Conditions of moral government, 371, 372.

Conscience, its nature and authority, 372-377;

its gradual development, 377.

Consciousness, religions, 304, 305, 345;

natural order of its development, 346-349.

Conservation, Biblical doctrine of, 174, 175;

conceptions of the mode of conservation, 176.

Conservation by secondary causes or agencies, 181, 182;

(1) hypothesis of natural law, 187-201;

(2) hypothesis of active force inherent in matter, 202-222;

(3) hypothesis of plastic nature, 222-235.

Conservation of energy not an absolute law, 205, 206;

limited by the law of dissipation of energy, 207;

not fairly stated by Dr. Tyndall in his discussion on prayer, 331,

332;

no evidence that it holds in the realm of vital dynamics

and psycho-dynamics, 332;

is not absolute in the realm of physics, 332.

Continuity of the ether, 217.

Correlation between God and man, 344.

Creation, Biblical account of, not designed to teach science, 136-138;

poetic, symbolical, and unchronological, 138-151.

Creation by law, 196.

Creation _ex nihilo_, how understood by the Christian Fathers, 92;

not discredited by the progress of science, 93.

Creation, its history, 126-171;

a gradual process, 152-155;

cumulative, 156-166;

consecutive, 166-171;

harmonious, 169, 170;

final purpose of creation, 130-133.

Creation, the conception of, 56;

the Biblical conception of, can not be determined

on philological grounds, 56-58;

how to be determined, 58-61;

distinction between absolute and architectonic, 61;

an origination _de novo_, 60, 61;

a voluntary act of God, 63-68;

not determined by any inherent necessity, 64;

not conditioned _ab extra_, 66.

Cudworth on a plastic nature, 222-225.

D.

Days of the creative week, 145-151.

Defects in nature, supposed, not removed by hypothesis

of unconscious intelligence, 232, 233;

this supposition based upon our ignorance of nature

as a whole, 233-235.

Descartes, his conception of God, 29.

Dissipation of mechanical energy, 120, 121, 207-209.

Dualism, Oriental, 23.

Duration not identical with time, 77;

nor with eternity, 77;

a quality of dependent existence, 81;

a fact of consciousness, 82.

E.

Earth, secular cooling of the, 105-108;

indications of surface transformations of the, 108, 109.

Earth, the, a school-house for man, 258.

End of moral government, 417-419.

Energy, conservation, transformation, and dissipation of, 118, 119;

defined, 194;

distinction between force and energy, 203;

laws of conservation and transformation limited by

the law of dissipation, 207-209;

cases of transformation, 237;

all the forms of energy are transformations of one

Omnipresent force, 237.

Eternity an attribute of God, 77, 83, 84.

Ether, hypothesis of the, 113;

a resisting medium, 114, 115;

absolute continuity of the, 217, 218.

Experience can not attain to a universal truth, 190.

Extension a quality of matter, 81;

not a predicate of space, 79;

a percept of sense, 81.

F.

Faraday on the possible and the impossible, 195;

on action at a distance, 214.

Final purpose of creation revealed in Scriptures, 130-133;

not discoverable by science, 234, 245.

Force defined, 203, 236;

the ultimate of all ultimates, according to Spencer, 25;

theory that matter is a phenomenon of force, 123;

the power of God, 123;

distinct from energy, 203;

not inherent in matter, 219, 236;

tendency of modern scientists to hypostatize, 227;

spirit-force the only force, 236, 237, 341;

a metaphysical idea, 340;

the expression of will, 341.

Forces, primary, of nature, 209;

a perpetual stream of power from the Infinite Spirit, 221, 222.

Foreknowledge of God and human freedom, 402-405.

Formation implies origination, 97.

Free self-determining power of the will, 380, 387;

arguments against--(1) Metaphysical or causational, 387, 392;

(2) Psychological, 392-402;

(3) Theological, 402-405;

conceded by Dr. Tyndall, 335.

Freedom of God, absolute, 63.

G.

Galton on the efficacy of prayer, 313.

Geographical conditions, their influence on the character

of nations, 258-264.

Geology points back to a beginning, 104-110.

Geological changes indicate a preparation for man, 254-257.

God, omnipotence of, and human freedom, 355-359.

God the author and giver of life, 240.

God, the existence of, the fundamental postulate of all

philosophy and all religion, 291, 292.

God, the fatherhood of, 359-365.

God the first principle and unconditioned cause of all existence, 27;

the content of our conception of, 27;

the idea of, a phenomenon of the universal intelligence

of our race, 28;

idea and concept of, 350;

harmony of the Biblical and philosophic conception of, 46, 47;

distinction between the nature and essence of, 62, 63;

not necessarily but freely just and good, 63;

immanence of, in nature, 174, 175, 240, 241.

Government of God, distinction between physical, natural,

and moral, 367, 368.

Gravitation--attraction not a universal and necessary attribute

of matter, 191, 211-213;

must have a cause, 214;

transmitted by the ether, 215;

instantaneous, 215;

cause of, not material, 216;

a derivative force, 221.

Grecian civilization the youth of humanity, 280-282.

Grove on causation, 39;

on force, 340.

H.

Hamilton, Sir William, confounds space and extension, 72;

also space and immensity, 73;

confuses the concepts time, duration, and eternity, 76;

on the inconceivability of an absolute commencement, 93.

Harmony between the philosophic conception of force and the

religious conception of God, 338-343.

Hebrew civilization the childhood of humanity, 278-280.

Hedge, Dr., on the immanence of God in nature, 186.

Hegel on Thought as the supreme reality, 25.

Helmholtz denies direct action at a distance, 214.

Herschel, Sir John, his conception of matter, 95, 125, 237;

on force, 39, 341;

on universal gravitation, 191;

on law, 198;

on conservation of energy, 205, 206.

History a revelation of Divine providence, 246;

the goal of, is the perfection of humanity, 248;

the especial field of Divine providence, 253.

Human race commenced its history in the Temperate Zone, 264-268;

distribution of the, not governed by the same law as the distribution

of plants and animals, 272;

distribution of, indicates a Providential guidance, 273.

Human freedom and Divine omnipotence, 355-359;

and Divine prescience, 402-405.

Humanity, perfection of, in what does it consist? 248, 249.

I.

Immanence of God in nature, 174, 175, 240, 241;

the doctrine of, not pantheistic, 241, 242.

Immanent attributes of God, 50;

an eternal and necessary in being, 52.

Immensity an attribute of God, 75, 81, 83, 84.

Inertia of matter, 220, 235.

Infinite series a contradiction _in adjecto_, 90.

Interception of force by matter, 220.

L.

Laplace on the stability of the solar system, 113.

Laurent on Providence, 247.

Law, creation by, 196;

meaning of the term, 197-200.

Laycock, Dr., on the law of design, 129;

on life, 192;

on science, 195.

Life, distinction between molecular and individual, 163;

molecular, the result of the immediate presence and agency of God,

239;

the cause, not the consequence of organization, 240.

Love the highest, determining principle of the Divine

efficiency, 130, 131.

M.

Mahan, Dr. A., his fatal concession to Hume, 88;

on an infinite series, 88;

rejects the _à priori_ argument for the being of God, 88-91.

Mansel on the conceivability of a commencement of existence, 94.

Martineau asserts the coeval and coeternal existence of something

objective to God, 67;

if true, would invalidate every proof of the existence of God, 67,

68;

on the separate spheres of religion and science, 296.

Matter a created entity, 95, 125.

Matter, eternity of, affirmed by Martineau, 67;

a fatal admission, which imperils the Theistic argument, 85-92.

Matter, theory that, is a phenomenon or a function

of force, 123, 124, 228, 236;

a real entity, 235.

Maxwell, Prof., on the nature of matter, 124;

regards matter as a created entity, 125, 126;

rejects the doctrine of action at a distance, 214;

on the origin of motion, 219.

McCosh concedes that space and time are not independent of God, 68;

on proportions of infinite space, 74;

on causation in the will, 399.

Mechanical theory of the origin of things, 299, 300.

Method of the Divine government, 405-407;

a probationary economy, 408-411;

a moral discipline, 411, 412;

an equitable administration, in which responsibility is graduated

on the scale of available light and opportunity, 412-416;

secures an infallible and equitable retribution

by connecting character and consequence, 416, 417.

Mill, J. S., on Teleology, 128;

on uniformity of nature, 189.

Mind, stages of development of, in the individual, 276, 277.

Mind the primal source of all being, 38;

the first cause of motion, 236;

the one and only source of power, 237.

Mivart on unconscious intelligence, 226.

Montesquieu, his definition of law, 198.

Moral attributes or perfections of God, 51;

an everlasting voluntary becoming, 52, 63.

Moral government, its grounds, 351-365;

its nature, 366-371;

its subjective conditions, 371, 404;

its end, 417-419.

Moral ideas of the reason identical in all men, 378-380.

Motion, origin of, 219.

Motives, moral, do not act causally on the will, 393-396;

the so-called _strength_ of motives discussed, 397-402.

Müller on Divine love as the highest determining principle

of the Divine efficiency, 131.

Murphy, J. J., on unconscious intelligence, 225;

on matter and force, 227-229;

his doctrine involves Pantheism, 229, 230.

N.

Natural and moral distinguished, 369-371.

Nature, meaning of the term, 193, 325;

course of, 326;

constitution of, 326, 329;

controlled and modified by man, 335, 336;

therefore also controlled by God, 337.

Nebular hypothesis implies a beginning, 110, 111.

Necessitarians, theory of, 394, 395.

Newman, John Henry, his conception of God, 31.

Newton, Sir Isaac, his conception of God, 29;

teaches that God constitutes space and duration, 68;

denies action at a distance, 214;

denies that gravity is inherent in and essential to matter, 211, 213.

Niebuhr on Divine providence, 246.

Nitzsch teaches that God is the cause of space and time, 69.

Norton, Prof., on Atomic Forces, 209;

his doctrine that atomic repulsion is the primary force, 220;

teaches that the Infinite Spirit is the primal source

of all force, 221, 222.

O.

Omnipotence of God and human freedom, 355-359.

Order of nature, facts concerning the, which are

supposed to conflict with the efficacy of prayer, 310.

Order of the universe had a beginning, 98.

Oriental civilization the infancy of humanity, 275.

Origin of things, mechanical theory of the, 299, 300;

vito-dynamical theory of, 299.

Origination and formation, 97.

Owen, Prof. R., on the preparation of the earth for man, 255, 256.

P.

Pantheism, the doctrine of unconscious intelligence ends in, 229, 230.

Perfect personality of God, 51.

Permanence of substance, force, and law, 15.

Permanence of the universe, no _à priori_ ground for

belief in the, 100, 188, 189.

Phenomena of the universe in ceaseless change, 14.

Physical and spiritual distinguished, 368.

Physical geography indicates a preparation of the earth for man, 257.

Plastic nature, theory of a, 183, 222-235.

Plato taught that a perfect mind is the primal source

of all existence, 38.

Porter, Dr., regards space as an entity, 69.

Prayer--have our prayers any influence with the Supreme Power? 292;

importance of this question, 292, 293;

natural to man, 302-304;

an essential element of life, 304-310;

necessary to the formation of noble character, 306-308;

attacks on the efficacy of, from the stand-point

of experience, 313-321;

from the theoretic stand-point, 321-338.

Prayer-gauge, the, not presented in terms of experience, and therefore

not capable of experimental application, 317, 318.

Problem, the central, specifically stated, 21, 22.

Procter on Divine supervision and control, 176.

Providence, statement of the Christian doctrine of, 245, 246;

the course of human history a revelation of, 246, 247;

defined, 252;

in the physical universe, 254;

nature and history the two great factors of Divine providence, 258.

R.

Reality of the external world, 14.

Relation between God and man--(1) contiguity, 351-353;

(2) immanency, 353-359;

(3) paternity and filiation, 359-365.

Religion, the sphere of, 294-297;

inadequate definition of, by Spencer, 298;

true conception of, 295.

Religious consciousness, the content of, 304, 305;

order of development of, 346-349.

Religious feeling, the facts of, as incontestible as the

facts of Physics, 296;

statement of the facts of, 302-310.

Repulsion the primary force, 220.

Richter on the providence of God in history, 247.

Roman civilization the manhood of the race, 282-285.

S.

Schleiermacher on the cause of space and time, 69.

Science and Religion, the apparent antagonism between them, 297, 298.

Science, modern, its metaphysical tendency, 103;

the sphere of science, 294-297.

Self, the fundamental reality of, 13.

Solar heat, dissipation of, 116, 117;

must be finally exhausted, 118.

Space--what is space? 69-78;

is absolute vacuity, 69, 70;

is an entity, 69;

is a relation, 71-75;

confusion of thought in regard to, 71;

confounded with extension, 72

--by Hamilton, 72, 73

--by McCosh, 73

--by Cousin, 74;

confounded with immensity, 74;

the relation of coexistence among extended bodies, 82.

Special providence and the efficacy of prayer, the present

issue between science and religion, 291.

Species, the essential element of, a spiritual entity, 164.

Spencer asserts that force is the ultimate of all ultimates, 25;

his definition of law, 198;

admits that will-force symbolizes the cause of all change, 40, 341.

Spinoza, his assertion that all determination is negation, 43.

Spirit-force the only force in the universe, 236.

Stewart, Dugald, on the impossibility of annihilating space, 70;

answer thereto, 71.

Sufficient reason, the law of, 31.

Symbolical Hymn of Creation, 140-142.

T.

Tait, Prof., rejects direct action at a distance, 214.

Teleological idea the highest law of the universe, 128-130;

not invalidated by the doctrine of evolution, 171.

Temperate Zone, the human race commenced its history in the, 264-268;

purely zoological data would lend us to fix that starting-point in

the Torrid Zone, 268-272;

a providence here revealed, 273, 274.

Temporal character of the universe, 98;

the order of the universe had a beginning, 98;

this has been the common belief of all ages, 99;

all philosophers have recognized a beginning, 101;

modern science sustains this belief, 102, 103;

Geology points back to a beginning, 104-110;

astronomical paletiology confirms the law of finite duration,

110-118;

Physics especially sustains the belief, 118-121.

Thomas Aquinas, his notion of conservation, 177.

Thomson, Sir William, on secular cooling of the earth, 107, 108;

on dissipation of energy, 119, 120;

on the argument from design, 129;

rejects direct action at a distance, 214;

on life, 240.

Tidal friction dissipates mechanical energy, 115.

Time or Succession, what is it? 78;

confounded by most philosophers with duration, 75,

and with eternity, 75;

consequences of this confusion, 76;

answer of McCosh, 78;

of Dr. Porter, 80;

time the measure of finite duration, 83.

Transformation of energy, 208;

illustrations of, 237.