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sequent time. The great truth, which they must have deduced from the appalling event, was, that they themselves were in danger of defection. And though the vivid apprehension of this danger would naturally exercise a salutary preventing influence, it proclaimed anew the fact of their dependence, and demonstrated that they could find security only in a Divine confirmation. The great moral of man's defection is but the repetition of a lesson already taught to an elder family of creation.

38. We may confidently look on it, therefore, as a leading principle of the Divine procedure, that all the successive dispensations of God to man will aim, in a manner consistent with man's free agency, to impress him with his obligations and dependence; to increase his motives to obedience; and, by taking occasion from his vain endeavors at independence, to enlarge the display of the Divine all-sufficiency. This, indeed, is only the legitimate extension and application of that law of the Divine manifestation which stands at the head of this "Part," and which we have called “The Reason of the Method." Besides which, and chiefly, the expectation that the principle described will be invariably pursued, is in harmony with the great end, and is essential to it. That end is the manifestation of God's all-sufficiency. But a spirit of autonomy and independence is a virtual protest against that end, and the hostile introduction of a separate end. And the triumph of that all-sufficiency is to appear in the restoration of harmony between the Supreme will and the subordinate, in a manner which shall accord with the freedom, and secure the blessedness of the creature, and redound to the glory of Him, for whom, and by whom, all things consist.

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THIRD PART.

THE ULTIMATE END OF THE METHOD.

CHAPTER XX.

SECT. I.- Power.

1. We now advance to the consideration of the great principle, that both the laws of the method, and the proximate reason of it, find their chief end, in this stage of the Divine procedure, in contributing to prove the all-sufficiency of the Holiness of God. In remarking on this subject, under the first law, we stated that we do not claim for this opening human dispensation a display of holiness exclusively, but pre-eminently. Having shown, also, that each preceding display of the Divine perfection may be expected to be brought forwards and enlarged through each successive stage of creation, and having assigned the grounds of this expectation, we have now to begin by remarking on its fulfilment in the continued exercise of the Divine Power.

2. From that point in duration, unimaginably remote, when the material of the universe first came into being, the argument for the power of God had gone on increasing during every moment of the period. At the coming of man, not only were all the pre-existing forces of nature continued in activity, but new displays of power were added to them. The inorganic, the organic, and the sentient worlds, felt anew the impress of the Creative will.

3. But here besides that the Creator still "upholdeth all things by the word of his power," and has more than ever to uphold here is a creature with a will, the very image of the Divine will, and therefore of the Divine power; for the will of God is the producing power, or cause, of the created universe. Here is a being who, in the exertion of his will, first obtains the conception of a cause, an agent, who, because he is not

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blindly and necessarily determined from without, but is conscious that he himself really produces an effect, finds, in that consciousness, the primitive idea of a cause. This being, armed with a muscular mechanism of most diversified application, is placed here in the midst of a wide theatre filled with a variety of objects to be laid hold of, and dealt with, and acted upon, as the energy of his will shall direct. Man, "the great power of God," has come into the creation as a new antecedent in the sphere of causation, to produce new consequents.

4. Some, indeed, have conjectured that unfallen man could command the laws of nature; that, to him, that which is now preternatural was natural and easy. Nor do we know of any valid objection to the view; for, fatal as such a prerogative would be to man in his fallen condition, we cannot conceive of his using it in the case supposed, except under the direction of the Supreme will. As an illustration of our present subject, however, the opinion, besides being conjectural, is quite unnecessary. Here are the kingdoms of nature, inorganic, vegetable, and animal, hitherto destitute of a free finite will; and man is brought, and set down in the midst of them, with a will, with the muscular means of exerting his will upon them all, and with authority to do so. The very first effort which his will makes to move his arm, awakens in him the idea of a causative power. He has, then, a will to act, a muscular apparatus to act with, and a world of objects to act upon; some of these he will appropriate and apply to uses which they never before served; others he will mould into new shapes; some he will destroy; others he will cultivate and develop; here, dividing unity into plurality; there, reducing plurality to unity; adding to his own muscular apparatus the force of the elements, and the muscular mechanism of the brute; and, by falling in with the laws of matter, arming himself with their unknown powers. For the charter from the Supreme will ran thus: "Replenish the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion over the whole." And in the very power with which man was endowed for subjecting the world, he became enabled to apprehend the power which had created it. By his will it is that the external creation becomes to him a manifestation of the Divine power; while that same will constitutes a manifestation of power immeasurably surpassing that creation itself.

5. In this way it is that man is enabled to reason from a limited effect to an unlimited cause - from a bounded creation to a Creator of boundless power. The method and the validity

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of such reasoning we have examined and illustrated already, and shall not here reconsider them.* As an intelligent being, man perceives that the necessity for a limited creation lies in the material itself, and that he cannot therefore justly infer from such inherent and necessary limitation any limitation of Creative power. As a being causative as well as intelligent, he interprets all that the Creator has done, not as the measure, but the sample, of what He can do. Conscious, himself, of a constant reserve of power, he instinctively looks on the creation as the shadowing forth of a power not exhausted, but simply exemplified. Lo, these are parts of His ways, but the thunder of His power who can understand!" As a being moral, or responsible, as well as voluntary and intelligent, he has to remember that even if a creation metaphysically infinite were possible, the evidence of the fact, as a proof of the infinite power of God, must not be such as to compel his belief; that it must and would be limited, if for no other reason than that of respect for his moral nature. And when he remembers that he stands in the midst of a universe which practically, and for him, has no limits; that it is perpetually diversified with changes innumerable, and with the play of forces unimaginable, as if for the purpose of putting all thought of a limited agency to flight; and that the whole is progressive-the "arm of God being still bare," still evolving and working out the immeasurable scheme, every new moment bringing with it an incalculable amount of new evidence of the Divine power to be added to all the accumulations of the past, and that of such increase there is no prospect of an end, he cannot but feel himself in the presence of a God all-sufficient.

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6. But man's profoundest conceptions of power arise from his own influence over mind. His sway over nature, indeed, is great, and is ultimately traceable to his intelligence. His discovery and application of the Mechanical Powers put back the limits of his power immeasurably. When he first announced the theoretic possibility that, with a point to stand on, he could lift the world, he seemed to lift higher the arched heavens above him, and indefinitely enlarged the horizon of his mental activity. Could the father of the race have foreseen the energy which the human will would put forth on the external world, generation after generation, his prophetic tongue would surely have hesitated to foretel a thousandth part of its vast and varied

Pre-Adamite Earth, pp. 130-146.

efforts. But the power which man was constituted to put forth in self-government was of a surpassing order. The volcano, the tempest, and all the great elements of nature in their most active form, are only emblems of energies enclosed in the human breast; and in keeping them tranquil, and even resolutely stilling them, in the presence of exciting causes, he is putting forth a godlike power, and governing a world. Still loftier does our conception of human power become, when the example of individual self-government is seen commanding the esteem, and silently swaying the movements of the multitude, and carrying all their diversified characters, like a single energy, in its own direction. The power which noisily proclaims itself in the storm is less than the silent power which pervades the calm. In proportion as immorality attains perfection, it labors with ever-deepening hostility to subvert every trace of virtue; but its utmost spasms of energy fall short of the quiet might appropriate to the self-governed spirit. Such a mind is in sympathy with Power in its fountain, and touches in its movements all the laws and outward expressions of that Power. But the sublimest of all its efforts is that in which it repairs to that Fountain goes into the presence of God—and there puts forth its highest energy in a direct appeal to the Divine will. By such an act, it has "power with God;" unites itself with His power, and becomes possessed of a subordinate omnipotence.

SECT. II.- Wisdom.

1. In the constitution of man, Power is adamite Earth, subservient to Wisdom.

seen, as in the PreHere, also, all the

But, here,

displays of wise design, or final causes, characteristic of organized and sentient existences, are again repeated. new and surpassing illustrations of wisdom appear.

2. The relations which met in the first human being are, to us, innumerable. As to his objective relations, what evidence of design appears merely in his means of knowledge! that his senses, overpassing the media of perception, should perceive only the objects themselves which it is useful for him to know: that the senses should be adjusted and adapted to their proper objects the eye, for instance, being neither microscopic nor telescopic and the ear placing us neither in a world of whispers, nor of perpetual thunders: that the senses should have been perfectly adapted to each other-sight and touch for ex

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