so to display the Divine resources as shall still further illustrate the all-sufficiency of God, and the dependence of man, and aug. ment his motives to entire obedience. That this was the great end proposed, we say, is obvious, for this was the end actually gained; and we are not to suppose that any other end was aimed at than that which was attained. 36. But if such was the design of that primary dispensation, we know of no reason, we say, why it should be viewed as an isolated act, or as involving principles never to be illustrated again; and not rather as the first in a series of arrangements, the great principle of which it foreshadowed and embodied. On the contrary, we do see greater reason than ever, why these principles should now become permanent characteristics of the Divine procedure. For if, when man had as yet evinced no symptoms of autonomy, or self-will, the Supreme Governor saw fit, by a distinct enactment, to place his obligation in the strongest light, the necessity for impressing him with the fact of his obligation and dependence is not diminished by his exhibition of self-will, but immeasurably increased. If, as the event proved, there was reason for making this the first end which God aimed at with unfallen man, surely every act of disobedience strengthens the reason for continuing to aim at the same end even to the last. 37. And is not this conclusion further corroborated by all that we are warranted to infer respecting the probation of the angelic race? Whether sin had come into the universe before them, or was absolutely originated by them; where they spent their probation; what was made the test of their obedience; and what was the immediate occasion of the awful defection of some of them, are questions on which we stop not to speculate. It is enough for us to know that, with every suitable inducement to stand, they fell; that (judging from certain gleam-like hints) the defection commenced even with their chief; that the crown fell from the head of created beings. In him all creation was humbled. Nor does the fact, that the defection was numerically partial, neutralize the great lesson of created dependence. It only proves that each member of the race occupied (unlike man) a separate standing; that the sin of one did not necessitate the sin of another; that that which is temptation to one may not be the same to another; and that those who fell might have retained their ground of holy obedience like the rest of their race. But though many of them maintained their allegiance then, it did not follow that they would necessarily retain it through all sub 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 confirma tion. 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. 419 THIRD PART. THE ULTIMATE END OF THE METHOD. CHAPTER XX. SECT. I.- Power. 1 WE now advance to the consideration of the great princite, that both the laws of the method, and the proximate reason or 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 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 cansative 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 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. 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. |