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principal; and, as such, I am held responsible to the Author of my constitution. And all the agencies which approach me presuppose that I am thus in my own power; they seek to gain the consent of my will.

18. Thus, primitive man was brought into a constitution of things in which every object was calculated and designed to influence him, and each to influence him differently from all the rest. But then he himself was endowed with a constitution capable of classifying these objects according to their real importance, and of regulating their power over himself accordingly. Hence the spirit and design of the primal prohibition. It told him, in effect, that he possessed a fixed constitution, including the power of self-government, that he stood at the head of created things, and was capable of governing them; that he must not, therefore, allow himself to be governed by them; and that his security, happiness, duty, required that his will should harmonize with the Supreme Will; in a word, that his constitution was formed in harmony with the Divine constitution, and could find perfection only by voluntary conformity to it.

19. And here, again, we are reminded of the ideal perfection to which reference was made in the corresponding chapters of the preceding Treatise. In the present instance, however, the subject acquires indefinite interest. For if man have a moral constitution answering to the immutable constitution of the Divine Being, and if his character is to be the intermediate growth and filling up-the conscious and voluntary expansion of finite excellence yearning towards the infinite-it follows that he will ever have an idea of excellence present to his mind which he may be constantly approaching without ever being able fully to realize, and that to that ideal standard no two human beings will be ever found sustaining precisely the same measure of conformity. Even the flower has a type, that is, the human mind conceives of a type, or ideal standard, with which to compare it; but, according to which, no specimen is absolutely perfect, nor any two precisely equal. Every kind of animal has a type; and here, the chances, so to speak, that no animal has ever reached the standard of absolute animal perfection, and that no two of the same kind have ever stood in exactly the same relations to it, are still greater; for they are to be multiplied by all the additional laws, and all their possible combinations, which characterize the animal as compared with the vegetable economy. Man also has a type, but that type is Divine, not merely, as in the preceding instances, a supposed idea in the Divine

mind, but the very idea itself of the Divine character. For "God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness."

Not only can man conceive of that image; by the laws which his God-like constitution involves he can conceive of his own closer resemblance to it, and is impelled perpetually to approach it. In philosophy, he conceives of truths insusceptible of proof; themselves the foundation of all evidence. In science, he can conceive of forms incapable of taking sensible representation. The pure and absolute geometry of his mind is nowhere realized in space. In poetry, and in the fine arts generally, however much of beauty or perfection he may succeed in expressing, his pure idea of it remains unexpressed a vision which he cannot reveal to others. His conception even of the "human face divine" is more exalted than any known to have existed in nature.* What painter or sculptor, for example, has ever yet given a head of "the Man of Sorrows" with which we can rest satisfied? But all these conceptions of ideal excellence are only consequences of our being formed in that likeness which comprehends spiritual perfection. And the moral government under which man exists is but the ever-present requirement of the Infinite, calling, by its laws, on every part of the nature of the finite to come nearer to it. His other conceptions of excellence he may often feel as if he were close on the verge of realizing; but though he can never feel thus in relation to excellence of the highest kind-though the call of that spiritual government of which his nature makes him a subject, will be ever becoming louder and more urgent-this fact, so far from depressing, exhilarates and delights him. The conditions of his nature set limits to the rapidity of his progress. And so long as he does not voluntarily fall below these limits which would be sinhe leaves no occasion for sorrow behind him; while every onward step adds to his satisfaction, opens before him a wider prospect filled with incentives to advance, and inspires him with the ardor of ever-accelerating progress.

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Thus constantly approaching the standard of infinite Perfec tion, he would never sustain, for any measurable length of time, precisely the same relation to it. And, for the same reason—

*The facial angle is 80°. The ancient artists not only made it a right angle, the Romans went up to 96°, and the Greeks even to 100°; yet the latter is accounted the more beautiful and impressive. The forehead of their Jupiter Tonans overhung the face, denoting grandeur and sovereignty ɔf mind.

on the supposition that his race had remained in unsinning obedience and yet had multiplied — no two of them all would have borne, in every respect, the same degree of resemblance to it. Every one would come into existence, or would find himself placed, in circumstances somewhat differing from those of every other member of the human family. This difference, looking at the innumerable relations of man's nature, internal and external, and the inexhaustible combinations of which they are susceptible, admits of interminable variety. And as, from the first moment of responsible existence, the capacity of each would be put in stress up to the measure of his capacity for obedience, every such difference would continue to be exhibited in its relation to the standard of absolute perfection. Not one of them all would be insusceptible of being characterized. Each would be seen in his way to the goal, but in a different part of the course; and would feel that with a slight difference in his previous condition, a corresponding difference in his relative position would also have been apparent.

20. But if by the laws of his nature unfallen man could conceive of an ever-growing resemblance to God, he could also conceive of an ever-diminishing resemblance to the Divine Image. Such a state of retrogression even the first step in it would be sin. And if even the holy nature of the race would have admitted of endless diversity, what number of ages, what procession of generations, could be supposed capable of exhausting the diversity of character made possible by sin? "When man had once fallen from virtue, no determinable limit could be assigned to his degradation, nor how far he might descend by degrees, and approximate even to the level of the brute; for as, from his origin, he was a being essentially free, he was, in consequence, capable of change, and even in his organic powers most flexible."* If even his likeness to the norma, or Divine original, allowed scope for unlimited variety of character, what but boundless enormity could be expected to appear when man had lost the very model of excellence, and copied only from the suggestions of his own mind. Spiritually, he will need to be "created anew," to be brought back again to the original type, to "the image of him that created him." And in this renewed condition, and in all the incalculable variety of stages of which it admits, it will be found that restoration to God, and self-restoration, are identical. Man's resemblance to the standard of all

* F. Schlegel's Phil. of History, i. p. 48.

excellence is in exact proportion to his conformity to the laws of his being; and this conformity is the measure of his real happiness.

CHAPTER XIV.

66

CONTINGENCE OR DEPENDENCE.

1. WE have seen moral law in its obligation, stability, and essential conduciveness to well-being. Before proceeding to remark further on its immutableness, let us take a survey of the dependent character of the system to which we belong. For everything created will be found to involve the existence of contingent truth” — truth, that is, of which the existence is not necessary, but conditional; truth dependent on something prior. We are not the iron-bound victims of Fate. A free Being of infinite activity has chosen to create, and to make us at once the representatives and the sharers of His own activity. The wide realms of space confess His creating presence. He hath sown

it with worlds. Here, his energy hath expatiated at large, and hath called forth a measureless extent of rejoicing activity. The cosmical arrangements, in all their masses, distances, collocations, and motions; the terrestrial adaptations to these arrangements; and the physiological adjustments to these adaptations, all confess "the good pleasure of His will." And man, by his very power of interpreting this confession, receives an intimation that he, too, belongs to the same dependent system, and is invited to survey the particulars of his dependence. That he should be dependent, indeed, is not an optional, but a necessary condition of his existence; that he should be capable of knowing it, is his distinction and glory.

2. Why was man created when he was neither earlier nor later? According to the hypothesis of necessary development, life invariably follows its physical conditions. The connection is supposed to be fixed, for these natural conditions are regarded as causes, and the only causes necessary to the production of life, so that if the new form of life did not follow the new condition, this law of natural development would prove a fiction. Elsewhere, however, we have shown that such apparent irregu

larities abound both in the vegetable and the animal kingdoms. Neither did the physical conditions of the earth determine the moment of man's creation. The fact that his race has continued to exist for thousands of years, proves that, as far as physical conditions are concerned, he might have safely come into existence later; and there is every reason to conclude that the same conditions were sufficiently prepared for his earlier existence. True, there was a period prior to which he could not have been sustained. Geology shows that during the earlier formations, the physical conditions of the globe, and the nature of the animals which existed on it, would have been incompatible with the existence of the human race. But the same science demonstrates that between that period and the time of man's actual creation, there was an immeasurable interval, extending over, at least, the greater part of the tertiary periods, during which there were no such reasons why man might not have existed. Species existed then which are existing still; and the only reason which can be assigned why man's first appearance was not coeval with theirs, must be sought for in the mind of the Creator. One of the lessons taught by the time of his creation is, that it was dependent on more than physical conditions. His "times are in Thy hand."

3. The same is true also respecting man's earliest locality. He could not have selected it for himself. Nor is it to be supposed that the Being who prepared it for him was restricted in his choice. "It does not appear that Nature has everywhere called organized beings into existence, where the physical conditions requisite for their life and growth are to be found." Plants, for example, which would have had no existence in a country but for human agency, often find the new climate and conditions into which they are transported, so congenial to their nature, that they rapidly take possession of extensive regions, and may even supplant indigenous tribes. The trees of Paradise would doubtless have flourished in many other places besides ❝eastward in Eden." While experience shows that the human constitution has a world-wide adaptation. Indeed, what is the globe at large but an Eden prepared for the race? The relative distribution of land and water, and the figure of continents, have doubtless influenced the course of the great migrations of the human family, and the progress of civilization. But all that occasións change in the surface of the planet-the mountain

* Dr. Prichard's Researches, &c., p. 96.

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