as they are, were susceptible of increase; and man himself might possibly have conjectured it. What (he might have said) if it should ever come to pass that man should violate his obligation, and need a special intervention of God to save him from self-inflicted ruin; and what if God should, in some way, graciously interpose for his rescue; here would be a new relation established between God and man, and a new obligation resulting of surpassing cogency. This possibility, we know, has become a reality. And penitence is the feeling which springs from the perception of violated obligation. And prayer now includes the new elements of deprecation, and gratitude for deliverance, and rests on obligations unknown to innocent man.

29. In relation to primitive man, then, the law of obligation is clear. Every created thing necessarily expresses something of the Divine Nature. It receives existence on the condition of manifesting that resemblance, and thus contributing towards the great end of creation. It is placed in a system of relation to other things and beings in order that such manifestation might be possible. So that every relation has its corresponding obligation; and, therefore, the first man, as well as each of all his posterity, exists under an obligation to promote the great end of creation commensurate with his means and relations.

If the question be still asked, Why is such obedience due? or, what is the ground of this obligation? I must refer to the answer implied in the preceding paragraph, and which is involved in the whole of our theory—namely, that, while the ground of moral obligation consists, proximately, of the purpose or will of God, it consists ultimately of that great Reason on which that will itself is based. For unless it be absurdly supposed that the will which determined the present condition of things acted without reason, then, the reason which led to it, and of which the Divine will itself is the expression, is the ultimate basis of the existing constitution of moral obligation. And, then, as the actual reason of that obligation must have been, an original and necessary difference in the actions and dispositions required, from their opposites, or an intrinsic propriety and excellence in them, it follows that the reason of the obligation is eternal and immutable. And if the reason be unchangeable, then the obligation which rests on it must be unchangeable also. That is, it is the necessary and unalterable duty of every accountable being to be perfectly conformed to all the relations in which he has been placed. So that virtue, or holiness, which is virtue in its highest and most comprehensive meaning, is, as it regards man,

the entire accordance of his affections and actions with all the relations in which he has been placed, of which accordance the perfect will of God is the rule, and the intrinsic excellence of holiness as summed up in the unlimited perfection of the Divine Nature, is the primary and ultimate ground or reason. Beautifully and truly has Hooker said,* "Of Law there can be no less acknowledged, than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world. All things in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power; both angels and men, and creatures of what condition soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet all, with uniform consent, admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy."

CHAPTER XII.

UNIFORMITY; OR, GENERAL LAWS.

1. THE subject of the preceding chapter-Obligation-presupposes the operation of general laws. For, apart from the uniformity arising from the existence and maintenance of even physical laws, there could be no happiness, no safety, to the creature; and, consequently, nothing could ever be known of the perfections of the Creator, nor could man be under obligation to obey Him.

2. Now we have seen that such laws have existed from the beginning. The plant had a constitution suited to the pre-established constitution of the material universe; and its growth depended on the harmonious co-operation of its own laws with the laws of that pre-existing economy. The animal had a constitution given to it suited to the laws of the pre-existing universe, including the vegetable kingdom; and its well-being depended on its constant conformity to these pre-existing laws. And in relation to the constitution of that universe into which it was introduced, its every motion was physically right or wrong; and, as a consequence, was beneficial or injurious to itself. If an animal, for example, ventured to the side of a cliff where its

* Eccles. Polity, B. I., § 10.

foot was not adapted to sustain it, and fell, it had placed itself in a wrong relation to the law of gravitation, and it suffered the consequence of violating that law. That is, there was a right kind of place for it in creation; and it was under physical obligation or necessity to remain there.

3. Let it not be supposed that I am claiming for the laws of the physical world the same necessary and immutable basis as for the laws of the moral constitution. The laws of nature are not to be confounded with causes. There can be no laws of a thing until the thing itself is caused, or made. They presuppose such causes, or volitions, of which they are the effects or manifestations. In other words, they are the rules by which God is pleased to regulate the phenomena of nature. The existing form of the physical constitution, therefore, is entirely dependent on the will of God. Every one of its laws, when creation is viewed on a comprehensive scale, is, for anything we know, as strictly provisional as any of the temporary enactments of the Jewish ritual. The regularity of nature, for unnumbered ages, is quite compatible with subsequent changes in its constitution. Its present uniformity is only conditional. Indeed, every destructive earthquake, though itself the result of general laws, is, in so far as it is destructive, a breach of that uniformity and stability of nature, for which the animal is made, and shows that such uniformity is not inviolable. While the successive appearance of races of animals, entirely unknown to pre-existing nature, shows that it is a uniformity as compatible with the addition of new creations as with the destruction of old ones. Still the order of sequence, which each law implies, being established, the animal is under physical obligation or necessity to respect it; and inevitably suffers if found in a wrong relation to it.

4. Suppose, then, that having suffered from a violation of one of these laws from ignorance of the sequence, for example, between contact with fire and the injury of the limb burntsuppose that, immediately on that injury, an animal had been endowed with intelligence and conscience, so as to recognize in that sequence a Divine appointment, forbidding it to repeat the act on pain of certainly repeating the injury, it would then be under a moral obligation to respect it; and its not doing so would be guilty as well as wrong. And then, besides the pain inevitably following the violation of a physical law, the violation of a moral law might be expected to be followed by an independent penalty of its own.

Now, man comes into a system of fixed relations and consequent obligations a system of which physical laws are only the exponents and means; and, unlike the instance of the animal which we have just supposed, he brings with him the elements of a moral as well as of a physical constitution. And there may be a right and a wrong in his every movement in respect to the constitution into which he comes, moral as well as physical; and he may enjoy or may suffer the consequences, quite apart from all considerations of innocence or guilt. Temperance, purity, and truth, are right, and the opposite qualities are wrong; but if he practise temperance without knowing it to be right, there is no merit, yet he enjoys the benefit of having thus acted in harmony with the constitution into which he has come; and if he practise impurity, without knowing, or the means of knowing, that it is wrong, though there is no demerit, he suffers the consequences of the act. "An action, by which any natural passion is gratified (says Butler) procures delight or advantage, abstracted from all consideration of the morality of such action; consequently the pleasure or advantage in this case is gained by the action itself, not by the morality of it.”* The same is true of cultivating right or wrong states of mind in relation to God or man. There is, as we have before remarked, a right state of mind towards every external object; and such is the nature of the constitution into which we come, that we cannot cultivate the right state of mind, even though ignorant that it is right, without advantage; nor indulge the wrong affections, even ignorantly, without disadvantage.

5. If, however, a man cherish a wrong state of mind, knowing it to be wrong, and, therefore, contrary to the will of God, he becomes guilty as well as wrong. Before, he was wrong only as to his condition, now he shows himself wrong as to his character. Before, he was wrong in reference to that constitution of relations and obligations into which he had come; now, he is wrong in respect to that Divine Being whose will that constitution is meant to embody and express; so that even if that constitution could be changed to suit the wrong state of his mind, unless the divine will could be changed also, he would still be subjectively wrong as to infinitely the greatest of all relations. Wrong, then, respects his objective relations; guilt, his subjective state, also. All guilt implies wrong, but all wrong does

* Analogy, Part I. c. iii.

not necessarily imply guilt. Right and wrong respect his happiness only; innocence and guilt respect his virtue also. The former contemplate him as an involuntary part of that constitution whose relations and consequent obligations are as immutable as the great reason on which they repose; while the latter contemplate him as that moral and accountable part of the constitution by and to whom the Divine manifestation is made, and who is capable of appreciating and voluntarily subserving it. Right and wrong respect his objective relations, and as such are fixed and unalterable; guilt and innocence are subjective, and vary according to the knowledge, powers, and opportunities of the subject himself.

6. Now, if mere wrong, or the ignorant violation of any of the laws of the constitution under which man has been formed, and which he is supposed never to have had the means of knowing, be attended with an evil in the uniform sequence of cause and effect, how much more may an additional evil be expected to follow, if he violate the law, knowing it to exist, and to exist as an expression of the Divine will! "The consequences of any action, then, are to be regarded in a twofold light: first, the consequences which follow the action as right or wrong, and which depend on the present constitution of things; and, secondly, those which follow the action as innocent or guilty, that is, as violating or not violating our obligations to our Creator." The former may be estimated, but, unless we could measure our obligations to God, the latter must exceed all our conceptions. Hence, it is of the highest possible importance that we should both know our duty, and be furnished with all suitable inducements to perform it.

7. What, then, are the means which the twofold exigence of the case requires? Evidently, the operation of laws of a twofold nature. First, that man should possess intelligence to perceive that the universe of which he forms a part has a constitution, or is governed by laws. Unless it possessed such a constitution, in vain would it be for man to be endowed with a capacity for recognizing it. And just as useless for man would it be for such a constitution to exist, unless he were endowed with the power of recognizing its laws.

(1.) If both these conditions, however, exist: if man finds, for instance, that he is created with certain capacities for enjoyment, and that certain objects are created and placed around him, precisely adapted to these capacities, it is an evident indication that the one should be exercised on the other, so as to render man happy.