or punishment, happiness or suffering, glory or shame, that may be due to his good or ill deservings in the present life. This business is allotted to the Son, not as peculiarly his in his original Divine character, like the business of creation, but as proper to his assumed character of the incarnate God. "The Father judgeth no man, but he hath commited all judgment to the Son." And judgment is committed to him for this especial reason, that he is the Son of Man. "God hath appointed a day in which he will judge the world by the man whom he hath ordained, even the man Christ Jesus." To recite all the texts in which the general judgment is described as a business in which Christ, as the Christ, shall have the whole direction, would be an endless task. I shall produce only one more: "To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am sitten down with my Father in his throne." In these words our Saviour expressly claims that very power which he seems to disclaim in the words of my text.

Much of this difficulty arises from an inaccuracy in our English translation. The Greek words might be more exactly rendered thus: "To sit upon my right hand and my left is not mine to give, except to those for whom it hath been prepared of my Father." Our Saviour, therefore, in these words, disclaims not the authority which the Holy Scriptures constantly ascribe to him, and which, in the epistle to the church of Laodicea, in the book of Revelations, he claims for himself in the most peremptory terms. He disdains not the authority of making the final distribution of reward and punishment, and of appointing to situations of distinction in his future kingdom. But yet

he speaks as if in the management of this business he were tied down to certain rules prescribed by the Almighty Father, from which he would not be at liberty to depart. But in this manner of speaking there is nothing but what is conformable to the usual language of Holy Writ. The Son is everywhere spoken of as giving effect to the original purposes of the paternal mind, by his immediate action upon the external world, with which the Father, otherwise than through the agency of the Son, holds, as it were, no intercourse. Not that the purposes and counsels of the Father are not equally the purposes and counsels of the Son, or that the Son acts without original authority by a mere delegated power; but that this notion of the Father's purpose executed by the Son is the best idea that can be conveyed to the human mind of the manner in which God governs his creation. And beyond this it becomes us not to be curious to enquire. But upon another point we may be permitted to be more inquisitive, because it touches our interests more nearly. Our Saviour's words intimate, that the business of the future judgment is already settled; that the particular situations of the future life are allotted to particular persons; and that his office, when he shall come to execute judgment, will only be to see that each individual is put in possession of the office and the station, which, by the wise counsels of Providence, have been long ago set apart for him. "To sit upon my right hand and my left is not mine to give, except to those for whom it is prepared of my Father." It should seem, therefore, that the first stations in Christ's future kingdom are appropriated to particular persons, who must enjoy them. If the first, why not the second stations? If the sc

cond, why not the third? And thus it will follow, that every station in Christ's future kingdom, from the highest to the lowest, is appropriated; and, of consequence, that the condition of every individual is irresistibly determined by a decree, which was passed upon him ages before he was brought into existence.

St. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans has been thought to teach the same doctrine. And if this doctrine were to be found clearly asserted in the apostle's writings, this discouraging interpretation of our Lord's declaration would seem but too certain. The fact is, that St. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans represents the degeneracy of mankind as so great in consequence of the fall, that if God had been pleased to make an arbitrary selection of certain persons to be admitted to mercy upon their repentance, and had consigned the rest of the race to the natural punishment of their guilt, the proceeding could not have been taxed either with cruelty or injustice. But he affirms, that God hath actually dealt with mankind in a far milder and more equitable way, admitting all, without exception, who are willing to repent, to repentance, and all who do repent to the benefit of our Lord's atonement; inviting all men to accept the proffered mercy; bearing with repeated provocation and affront; and leaving none but the hardened and incorrigible exposed to final wrath and punishment. This being the true representation of God's dealings with mankind, the happiness of the future life being open to all men upon the condition of faith, repentance, and amendment, the degrees of that happiness will unquestionably be proportioned to the proficiency that each man shall have made in the emendation of his heart and his manners by the rules of the Gospel.

Those, therefore, for whom it is prepared to sit upon our Lord's right hand and his left cannot be any certain persons unconditionally predestined to situations of glory in the life to come.

I say they cannot be any certain persons unconditionally predestined after this manner: John the son of Zebedee to this office, James the son of Zebedee to that, Peter to a third; whatever the conduct of John, James, or Peter, in their apostolical ministry in the present life may have been. It is certain that God's foreknowledge hath from the beginning extended, not only to the minutest actions of the life of every man who ever was to live, but even to the most secret motives from which each man's actions were to spring; to his thoughts, his wishes, his fears, his likings, and aversions. God, therefore, had from all eternity as exact a knowledge of every man's character, as true an estimation of his good or ill deserts, as can be had when the man shall have lived to finish the career of virtue or of vice which God hath ever foreseen that he would run. This foreknowledge of every man's character cannot but be accompanied with a foreknowledge of the particular lot of happiness or misery which it will be fit he should receive. And since to perceive what is fit, and to resolve that what is fit shall be, must be one act, or if not absolutely one, they must be inseparable acts in the Divine mind, it should seem, indeed, that every man's final doom, in consequence of an exact view of his future life, must have been eternally determined. But this is only to say, that the world, with its whole consequence of events, has ever been present to the Creator's mind. And however difficult the thing may be for the human apprehension, this predetermination of all things, which

is implied in this idea of the Divine omniscience, leaves men no less morally free, and makes their future doom no less subject to the contingency of their own actions, than if nothing were foreseen, nothing decreed in consequence of foreknowledge. The foreknowledge of an action, and the purpose of reward or punishment arising from that foreknowledge, being no more a cause of the action to which reward or punishment will be due, than the knowledge of any past action, and the resolution of certain measures to be taken in

consequence of it, are causes of the action which give rise to the resolution; the knowledge of a fact, whether the thing known be past or future, being quite a distinct thing from the causes that produce it. Neither the foreknowledge, therefore, of the Deity, though perfect and infallible, nor any predestination of individuals to happiness or misery, which may necessarily result from that foreknowledge, however unaccountable the thing may seem, is any impediment to human liberty; nor is any man's doom decreed, unless it be upon a foresight of his life and character. Nor is it prepared for Peter and Paul to sit upon Christ's right hand and his left, in preference to John or James, who may be more deserving. It is no such arbitrary arrangement which our Lord disclaims any discretionary power to put by. The irreversible arrangement, which he alleges as a bar against any partial operation of his own particular affections, is an arrangement founded on the eternal maxims of justice, in favour, not of certain persons, but of persons of a certain character and description; of persons who will be found distinguished by particular attainments of holiness, by the fruits of a true and lively faith, by an extraordinary proficiency in the habits of