truth in the universe be, in like manner, divided in equal parts, so that these equal and opposing evidences would neutralize each other, leaving all truth void of any evidence? Then, whatever would prove the truth of each, would destroy the evidence of both; as whatever would be the neutralization of the one, would be the annulment of the other. Thus would all general principles be vitiated by utter invalidity.

But the advocates for motive-control are far from being self-consistent. Their incessant vacilations are indicative of the difficulty of their position. It would be facile to verify this charge by copious extracts from scores of that school. This our limits forbid, and restrict us to brief quotations from a few of them, as specimens of their fraternity. For this purpose let us collocate a few passages from M'Cosh on the Divine Government. This highly popular writer states that “it is with all philosophers, who have deeply studied the subject, a fundamental principle of our mental constitution, which leads us, upon the occurrence of any given event, to say it has a cause."

He proceeds to apply this principle to the thoughts, feelings, wishes, and volitions of the human mind: (p. 281:) "We see numerous proofs," he alleges, “of this law of cause and effect reigning in the human mind as it does in the external world, and reigning in the will as it does in every other department of the mind." (p. 236, 237.)

Could utterances be stronger, assuring us that the same law constituting the changeless mechanism of nature reigns in the human will, producing all its volitions? Now we appeal to those familiar with Crombie, Kames, Collins, Hobbes, or Spinoza, or with any other leader in the school of fatalists, whether more absolute necessity is by any of these imposed on our volitions than by this Christian divine. Is any of these atheists a sterner defender of this iron scheme of fatalism?

Now what could more surprise us than to find this same writer among the most staunch libertarians; such, however, is unequivocally his position. Hear his own words: “We rejoice to recognize such a being in man. We trust we are cherishing no presumptuous feeling, when we believe him to be as free as his Maker is free." "We believe him, morally speaking, as independent of external control as his Creator must ever be-as that Creator was, when, in a past eternity, there was no external existence to control."

What advocate of freedom, glowing in the intensest fervors, ever uttered mightier words than these? All the Clarkes, and Reids, and Coleridges, who have led the van of the advocates of free-will, may

be challenged in vain for terms of loftier expression. What, then, is that concealed nexus which binds in harmony these apparently warring positions? Professor Haven affirms, "both these to be facts, and therefore both true. M'Cosh says: "Should it be demanded of us to reconcile them, we answer we are not bound to offer positive reconciliation of them." We point to the two objects; but we are not bound to show what is the link which connects them." This we believe to be in harmony with the position of all Christian necessitarians. But is not this a startling position which teaches "that the will is self-active, and yet that all its acts are produced by causes operating out of itself; and that the advocate of these repugnancies is not bound to harmonize them? How, without some unexpected light, can we believe that the will is under the same law which governs mechanical nature, and yet is as free as the unmoved mover of the heavens and the earth, above and beyond whose Almighty power there is and can be no controling cause?" When we ask with emphasis, are those conflicting propositions consistent with the harmony which the Architect of the universe has taught to expect in every part of his administration, is the answer, "both are true," sufficient?

When we are compelled by the laws of thought to pronounce the two parts of the proposition utterly alien, in fierce and mortal conflict, involving the most irreconcilable conclusions, is it enough to allege that each depends on independent evidence, and therefore lies out of the range of mutual repugnancy? Such shifts can never harmonize the opposing elements which bristle in this fierce antagonism.

Its advocate asks, "Must the connection be pointed out which unites two truths, established on independent evidence, before the mind gives its assent to them? Must the connection be pointed out between mechanical and chemical combinations, before we believe in their existence?" "We require only the separate evidence of the existence of each." (p. 280.) Does he imagine the illustration to be apposite? Were there a palpable contradiction in the combination of the mechanical and chemical truths, the illustration would be fit, and then the two could not be received on the opposing evidence of each, but only in the light of the harmonizing tie. Now this is precisely what we demand for our faith in the two parts of the conflicting propositions before us. But while the idea of necessity is at open war with the idea of liberty, one must disprove the other until their opposition is proved unreal.

But the mode by which Professor Haven renders these opposites

credible, is the common expedient of his school. Let M'Cosh again speak for the fraternity. He says: "It is absurd to suppose the one doctrine sets aside the other." In this position there is no want of harmony among the scores we might quote. But we must be allowed to ask, why it is "not absurd" to suppose liberty does not set aside necessity, or that necessity does not set aside liberty? If both be true, the advocate for them finds nothing to refute in the libertarian. All the latter vindicates is conceded by him. But on what ground is the will's absolute control by motives deemed consistent with the will's freedom? Is the answer, on the ground that both are proved? But is not the proof found in their opposition equal to that which sustains either, so that their very opposition neutralizes their evidence? What can more triumphantly refute a proposition, than to show it in open conflict with acknowledged principle?. We here detect such conflict. For when the theory affirms that every volition is an effect of which the prevailing motive is the cause, is it not at open war with the principle which ascribes the volition to another cause? How can the sole cause of volition be in the mind and out of it; be both in the soul and in the motives out of the soul? How can volition be both a cause and an effect? both active and passive? both the producer and the produced?

Is it alleged that the created agent is both? Certainly he is not. A created mind is an effect in one sphere, but an agent in another sphere. The cause which made the future agent an effect, is not what makes him a cause. His cause ceases to operate before he, as a cause, commences operating; that which produced him, and that which he produces, have two causes. So that, where his agency commences, God's ceases, and his caused character had no existence till after his character as an effect was finished. This leaves whatever is essential to a cause absolutely wanting in an effect, and whatever is essential to an effect, at an unapproachable distance from a cause. The agent's power was an effect, but its exercise is ineffably unlike an effect. Power is not a cause until it operates. Its operation is the agent's, not his author's. Its simple existence, as an effect, cannot modify its character as a cause. No antecedents of a causal exertion can transfer themselves to that exertion. The difference, therefore, between man as an effect, and man as a cause, is no less than between man and a rock of granite.

As an effect, the cause lay entirely out of himself; as an agent, the cause lay entirely within himself. In the one case the cause must operate when he was not, in the other he must operate in becoming a cause. No matter when or where created agent was

brought on the stage, the separating distance remains immeasurable between him as an effect, and him as a cause. They can no more exchange places than mind and matter-than something and nothing.

The passive and active can therefore never be each the cause of volition. Nor can the passive be the cause of anything. This brings us again to the conclusion, that placing the cause of volition out of the mind, is to destroy the possibility of volition originating in the mind.

We cannot forbear urgently demanding of these theorists, why they allow the principle they adopt but a partial application?

But we must hasten to consider that ground of necessitated volition found in the FOREKNOWLEDGE of God. What, then, is the relation which that knowledge sustains to man's actions? The fact that God's knowledge grasps all events, as its contents, we never doubted. Nor could we ever perceive the shadow of a demand for the withholding of that knowledge from events, that they might be contingent.

Such a demand supposes that God's knowledge of an occurrence either makes it unavoidable, or finds it so. The elaborate arguments employed to prove the absence of all that is causal in God's knowledge, we regard as a mere waste of words. We suppose that the felt difficulty in the Divine prescience lies not in what it caused, but in the necessity in the events which its certainty supposed. It was this logical necessity, involved in God's foreknowledge, which authorised Luther to pronounce it "a thunderbolt to dash free-will to atoms." We are not a little amazed to find such thinkers as Locke, Stewart, and Campbell expressing their utter incapacity to reconcile God's prescience with man's freedom! Now we earnestly demand what there is in these two things beyond the harmonizing power of evidence? Where do the ideas clash which are essential to the two? If the ideas appear in conflict, is it certain that they correspond respectively to this knowledge and that freedom? If we find the Divine knowledge related precisely in the same manner to what has occurred and to what is taking place, as to what shall in future transpire, then, if it neither causes necessity, or finds it, in all these classes of events, it does in none of them. That in past events it finds no causal necessity is plain, as their cause has ceased to operate. It, therefore does not in future events.

If God's knowledge of any events either make them necessary, or presuppose them necessary, it must bear the same relation to all events; it must comprehend all the acts of God, and all those of men; all achieved in time and in eternity; all the terrific rebellion of men

and demons; all the sublime devotions of heavenly natures; all these agents, with the Infinite One in the same category, God's knowledge loads with the everlasting fetters of necessity. If God's knowledge of his own acts supposes a necessity of his performing them, that necessity must be out of him, and thereby render it impossible that He should be the Supreme.

There is an axiomatical necessity of the existence of an event, in order that it may be known; that is, it cannot be out of being and in being at the same time. The Divine knowledge corresponds with its contents. This necessity, then, simply amounts to a certainty, but essentially differs from causal necessity. It cannot be uncertain whether what is, is. But this axiom has nothing to do with the necessity of the event coming into being. The invincible obstacle therefore to man's freedom, arising out of God's foreknowledge, is found in substituting causal necessity for absolute certainty. If volitions be the effect of which motives are the cause, then is the dominion of necessity UNIVERSAL.

The vo

The steps are few and direct to this fearful conclusion. lition cannot be produced by the motive without being preceded by it. The volition then lying entirely out of the sphere, its cause can exert on the motive no influence. The volition does not even come into existence till its producing motive has finished its operation. Thus it is impossible for the mind, which can only act by volition, to avoid its volitions. Indeed, no effect can modify its cause unless it acts before it exists. But if volition cannot influence its motive, it certainly cannot the antecedent to its motive. Trace retrospectively the entire series, and you only increase the distance between the volition and its antecedent. The necessity, therefore, of the volition is not diminished by multiplying the second causes lying between it and the first cause. It is certain, therefore, that there can be no room for freedom between the volition and the first cause. But may there not between the volition and its effect? If there be none here there can be none in the universe. Now we affirm that no certainty is more indubitable than that there is none here. How can there be? Both the volition and its sequence, by the theory, are effects. How then can the volition bear a causal relation to its sequence any more than this sequence can to what follows it? The volition being strictly an effect, how can it be causal of its sequence more than any other effect can act as a cause? If volition be necessary, all that precedes it up to the first cause must be so, and for equal reasons its sequences must be so. Is it then possible to assign volition any place but a link in the necessary chain of sequences?

But what makes this alleged fact a thousand times more startling