the dictates of common sense, it is alleged, harmonize with it.

But the inherent impotency of the hypothesis is, that it is a hybrid, and cannot perpetuate itself in the line of either parent. It cannot retain its greatest-happiness principle, and transmit its freedom; it cannot keep its free-agency and hold on to its paternity in benevolence. If God's highest principle of action is the gratification of a benevolent. susceptibility, then he must go on, communicating what he finds within himself as he is prompted by the wants of his own nature, and can never go back and judge this nature by any ethical principles, nor control its working by any considerations of "honor and right." Himself and the benevolent system he makes are both conditioned in a nature already given, and there is no alternative from the creating to the terminating act. There is only the sentient craving and the unerring judgment of what will satisfy it; and the unavoidable issue is that the agency must go out to get it. There is else perpetual wretchedness. God originates nothing; he only develops the nature he finds in himself.

But, on the other hand, if God be truly a free agent and the personal originator of a free system, then mus the have seen within himself a principle higher than his want of happiness in the gratification of a benevolent susceptibility, and which both prompted him to, and guided him in, his work, above all the impulses of nature. A higher light must have. been given in the insight of what was due to his own essential dignity and glory, and in which he might judge when the going forth of his benevolent impulses were consistent with "honor and right;" and in this only could there have been the free capacity to guide his search for benevolent. happiness, and make his benevolence in this way to be, not a constitutional sentiment, but a moral attribute, an ethical virtue. The attempt to stand here, on the nature of free agency, and yet holding that agency by the judgment of what is greatest happiness through the cravings of an inbred nature, will inevitably share the same fate as all the former hypotheses; the position, while taking a full-sighted observa

tion from it, will logically transmute itself to another, and, instead of the delusive freedom of a constitutional susceptibility, we shall go over to the true liberty of a rational spirit. We enter then entirely another sphere, and place ourselves completely within the Theory of Rectitude.

We contemplate God as an Absolute spirit. He is spontaneous activity; going out in action from an intrinsic capability of originating, and which does not need a nature already caused, that can only unroll and thus uncover what has been already committed to it. He is First Cause, in the sense of originating cause; putting out utterly new things without another causality causing him to do so. But he is not mere blind spontaneity; going out in actions that have no directory. He knows himself thoroughly, and comprehends himself completely. He sees within himself the archetypes of all possible consistent existences, and has thus the patterns or ideals of all possible being, and can thereby work as an architect from his own rules. He has also an exact and immediate insight of what is consistent with the excellency and dignity of his own being; what is due to himself, and in his own producing, what it will be fit for himself to accept and approve; and he is thus a moral Being, who finds his own ethical laws within himself. The spontaneous activity, thus, ever goes out in action, self-directed. He is a law to himself. Not, now, is our conception of God as of a being who has a kind and tender susceptibility which craves to gratify itself in acts of benevolent impartation to others; going out under the impulse of a pathological feeling which must satisfy itself in supplying its want, as an appetite, or be miserable; but much more elevated: a being with an intrinsic dignity, who acts from a knowledge of his own worthiness, and that he may fulfil the high behest of his own excellency and be holy; a rational, not a sentient being; whose motives for imparting good are reasons, not sensations; and whose acts are virtues, not instincts nor impulses. The Benevolence is no more a sentiment, but a rectitude. God, thus controlling his activity by a self-law, is spiritual, rational, and free.

Under the guidance of what is right, does God, therefore, go out to his work of creating and governing: he makes the material worlds; he superinduces, upon the forces of matter, vegetable life; upon the vegetable, animal life; and upon the animal, human life. He also creates spiritual beings, whose life is not blended in the material and animal being. All rational spirits, whether pure or incarnate, are in his image, rational and free. Each has the capacity to know himself, and what is becoming and due to himself, and each is thus a law to himself, having a conscience excusing or accusing. The material, vegetable, and animal creation is subsidiary to the rational being; and, having no end in itself, this creation finds its end only in ministering to the spiritual.

Holiness and sin can be attributes only of the rational and free, and in their first activity it may be assumed that all new-created intelligences will put forth their action in accordance with the law of right. How, now, shall sin enter? "God cannot be tempted of evil." He has no possible openings as occasions for sin. Pure and absolute reason can possibly find no inducement to act unreasonably. Deity incarnate can endure temptation, but Deity absolute cannot "deny himself." This is not from the want of free capacity, but from the necessary absence of all occasion. Sin cannot enter through God.

It may enter through finite spirits; it must enter through some of them, if it come in at all. Sin is the spirit's activity turned away from the end of its true worthiness, and going out against conscience. As the true worthiness of the finite spirit is in obeying the absolute spirit, so "sin is any want of conformity to, or transgression of, the law of God." One such perversion sets the direction of the spirit, and this disposing the current of the spiritual activity perversely, becomes a permanent spiritual disposition, out of which come, perpetually, specific wrong acts. To pure finite spirits, there is occasion for strictly spiritual temptations. From their relative positions and subordinate stations, there may be jealousies, envyings, hatred, etc.; and so they may, "being lifted up of pride, fall into the condemnation of the devil." VOL. XIII. No. 49.

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In man, besides the opening to such entirely soul-sins, there are all the appetites of the flesh, to which the spirit may subject itself, and, in any of these directions, turn itself to a disposition of rebellion against God and right. So sin can enter any Paradise.

But how, it may be asked, when God is an omnipotent sovereign, can sin so come in and not implicate him, in either his participation or neglect? We answer, according to our theory of Rectitude, by this general hypothesis, and yet, when clearly apprehended we hardly deem that it can be held merely as hypothesis, but as exact truth: that sin, in some form and extent, will be a certain result of God's dealings with his creatures according to what is due to himself. In other words: If God always deal with finite spirits according to principles of "honor and right," there will be sin.

Finite moral beings, even beginning in holiness, must be disciplined to higher measures of virtue. If God act worthily by himself and them, as a Father, he will preside over his household, and propose high standards of attainment and excellency for his children. It is no part of parental dignity and honor to spare his child from the hardy discipline and rough exposures that are necessary to form a manly character. That fondness is ever a weakness, which withdraws its charge from all endurance, and perpetually interposes its own hand when times of trial come. Such neglect of all severe discipline can result in nothing but a weak and irresolute character. There must be times of stern and resolute holding of the child to the struggles and conflicts necessary to fit him for future duties, and give to him that firmness and decision which may be trusted in important enterprises. If the severity of this discipline be properly proportioned to the person and the occasion, the claims of honor and right are satisfied. Incidental to such strict but salutary and requisite discipline may be some disastrous failures; but neither the failing nor the enduring children can reproach the faithfulness of the father.

So God disciplined angels, righteously and honorably; and, while many endured the trial, and in their trial rose to

higher stations, some in their own supineness fell, and blasted the fruit of all this appropriate culture. So God also disciplined Adam, faithfully and fairly subjecting him to a trial every way adapted to his condition, and where manly valor might have earned its bright reward; but he ingloriously fell, and by his own perversion wrought his ruin. Yet in neither case can God be impeached as a cruel or a neglectful Parent. He should not have tried them less; he ought not to have helped them more. He did not love them the less in that he put them to this trial; he only loved the virtue they might and should have attained, the more. He did not desire their fall; he only would do what it behooved him to do for his own worthiness' sake, though they should fall and work their ruin. If he could, by any interpositions of his own power, have softened the rigor of the discipline, and at that time have saved their disastrous delinquency, it would have been at the dearer expense of withholding just that which the occasion demanded, and bringing into his own spirit the consciousness of an unworthy weakness. That stern trial must come again, if the raw recruit is ever to become the hardy veteran; and the confirmed point of unshrinking and unswerving manly valor cannot be reached without actually passing through and enduring the discipline; and the spirit that would cower and fail in one point, when just the right discipline only is applied, if then relieved by some misguided fondness, will doubtless more disgracefully fall in the next certain-coming and necessary exigency. If God do what his own dignity as a father and the highest virtue of his children demand, it may be a certainty, though it is no necessity, that some will basely fail and become sinfully and shamefully unworthy. And then, if God deal with the erring just as “honor and right" demand, it may further be, that the fallen will greatly aggravate their sin and sink in deeper degradation. The interposing power to stop this, had been a moral weakness, and was thus restrained in God by steadfast righteous principle. If sin so come in and spread, neither the holy nor the sinful can impeach Jehovah's power or goodness.