And but small choice there is between any kinds of fatalism, if only they be consistent to their own principles. Although we must always remark, that Human Nature in practice, to a greater or less degree, renders men inconsistent in evil principle; yet the evil may be seen by the ensuing passage: it is a citation from Denys Diderot, a physical and organical atheist; we take it from "Upham on the Will:*"

"Examine it as you will," says M. Diderot, "and you will see that the word liberty is a word devoid of meaning. That there are not, and there cannot be, free beings; that we are only what accords with the general order, with our organization, our education, and the chain of events. These dispose of us invincibly. We can no more conceive of a being acting without a motive, than we can of one of the arms of a balance acting without a weight. The motive is always exterior and foreign, fastened upon us by some cause distinct from ourselves. What deceives us is the prodigious variety of our actions, joined to the habit, which we catch at our birth, of confounding the voluntary and the free. We have been so often praised and blamed, and have so often praised and blamed others, that we contract an inveterate prejudice of believing that we and they will and act freely. But, if there is no liberty, there is no action that merits either praise or blame, neither vice nor virtue, nothing that ought to be either rewarded or punished," &c.

Here is physical Fatalism boldly and without subterfuge professed; founded and distinctly placed upon that "Cause and Effect" doctrine from which we have shown man's Spiritual Nature is free; urged upon that logical quibble of motive, external and irresistible, that we have exposed; and boldly then driven out to its natural consequences, that there is neither "vice nor virtue,' nothing that "ought to be rewarded or punished, praised or blamed."

And that these are the natural consequences of a physical fatalistic philosophy, every one can see who shall take the premises of Diderot, and go onward to his conclusions. The pre

two, cuts off personality,-makes all power and action mechanical,—makes all individuality vanish,—all persons become parts of the great All,—and all things to be parts of the one machine. So that, to escape Atheistic Pantheism, the reader must believe in a God of rigorous Destiny.

* Page 271.

mises once established, the conclusions follow as a matter of course. Only teach man that "motive externally and irresistibly determines the action and Will of man," and the morality of M. Diderot follows as a matter of course, his theoretic morality we will say, and his practical morality, both which were on a par;M. Diderot at least was consistent.

What then was his doctrine? This that we have rejected, that 'motive acts upon man necessarily and invincibly;" so that his Will is in every thing externally determined, and consequently that all power in him existing, and by him exerted, is not in him really, or by him actually exerted, but only apparently, in consequence of this "causal machinery of sufficient motive."

The axe splits wood, and were it intelligent, would say, "I split;" but yet it is only the agent of power, not itself originating, not itself exerting power: such is the man of the fatalist, a mere tool through whom power flows, and by means of whom it is exerted, but nothing more. And therefore, naturally the man that holds this doctrine comes to the doctrinal and practical morality of the celebrated Encyclopædist, M. Denys Diderot.

Now, in opposition to this, we shall say that man has these two qualities: first, that he originates power, and secondly, that he voluntarily exerts it and applies it. I say not, that all the power that he exerts and applies is originated in himself, for this would not be true; but some power unquestionably he does originate, and other power he applies, and both independently of the law of Causation.

Let one look at it, and seeing man "is made in the image of God," he shall find it no more difficult to believe that God has made man capable, voluntarily and freely, of originating power by his being and nature, than that he should have made plants capable of producing particular fruit. And everywhere this is the natural feeling and the natural persuasion of the race: they feel that it is a faculty belonging to their being, they feel it to be theirs, in their constitution, truly and really belonging to them. And why men should allow "this is your faculty of sight, this is your faculty of muscular action, this your faculty of thought," and then turn round and assert that the sum total of these, which they had allowed in separate items to be man's, was not his! is very hard to say, except that the mind is preoccupied with these three prejudices above mentioned, framed into a system. Why as to other parts

of our nature, men should acknowledge that this, because you feel it to be so, is a faculty of nature having such and such products, -you call them yours, and such they are, for you have had a life-long knowledge and consciousness of their possession, and your neighbours see and know the same; "but with regard to this one only, you are mistaken,-your Will that you count free is not free;-the Power that you exert, you only seem to exert;your will is bound; of that power you are only the agent,-you are a puppet, and although you feel no wires, yet they are there,—and you are a puppet, made of wood and leather, completely and entirely!" Why men should talk in this way, it is very hard

to see.

And by what means they have got it into their head that such notions, which make of man a mere machine, tend to exalt the character of God! is stranger still.

But the persuasion and knowledge of man that he can act by a power originating in his Will, is a sufficient refutation of all these specious paradoxes. The fact that to hold them does, if we are consistent, lead at once, as in the case of Diderot, to the denial of any responsibility and to the destruction of all moral distinctions,* this I think is sufficient to exclude them from being held by any who desire to think of man as a moral being.

We hold then that man is no mere agent and instrument of Power through whom it flows, as the lever is, physically; that he is no puppet made of wood and pulled by a wire or string, at the same time that he thinks he acts; that he is not a part of a piece of machinery, driven by the same force as the rest, and imagining that he is an individual being, when he is only a wheel or pinion of one machine; we believe not that he is the agent of an infinite doom, or a resistless physical law that actuates him unconquerably. This, man is not.

* I ask honestly and calmly of any thinking man, to take the premises of Diderot, and go over them, and he shall see that they absolutely infer Diderot's conclusion, that is, the denial of all morality, and the freedom unto all vice and wickedness. Fatalism, held consistently and acted upon, implies viciousness of life. I would also ask the same person to go over the ethical doctrines of Christianity, and to ask himself, Do not these doctrines encourage morality? Will not every husband and wife, every father and mother, every son and daughter, who attempts to go earnestly and consistently upon these principles, be more virtuous, more pure, more lovely in the eyes of God and of man? Surely it is and must be so.

But "made in the image of God," as God has of himself power, so is man given of himself to have power, to originate it, to apply it: it is a faculty of his being, a gift that God has given him; originating in himself freely, apart from the causal necessity of motive, save so far as he will permit himself to be ruled by the Animal Nature, which in him is conjoined with the Spiritual.

The first objection that will be made is,-Shall not this then give too much to man? is not man then made a God, and able to do precisely as he will? The answer to this I have given in the chapter upon Circumstance; and there it will be seen, that while man really and truly, by an inward force, exerts power, yet is there another personal force externally applied, that controls the result in a very remarkable way,-a power, to use the beautiful language of the poet:

"That shapes our ends,

Rough-hew them as we may."

Our reader, then, will see that strongly soever as we may act, there is, external to us, a personal Being, gracious, merciful, and holy, as well as omnipotent, who guides all our efforts and controls their results, not according to doom or a fatalistic decree, but with the all-seeing wisdom of a present and personal God.

So are there two forces that guide the course of man's life, of which two it is the resultant, his power and the power of God,and this gives, as the practical solution of the question of Freedom, this answer: "When the two powers coincide and are one completely and entirely, then is the man free: when his will, in the direction that he spontaneously gives it, coincides with the Will of God, then these two forces become one, and the man goes onward entirely and completely free as far as regards effect and power." Then his own power from himself arising, and the power and operation of external circumstance so unite, that the waves that ordinarily do oppose, bear him onward, the winds favour, and all things outward coincide with all things inward, in driving the man onward upon his course.

That such is the case often, the experience of all men can tell; that it is not exclusively the case with the good, but that for particular purposes, by the wisdom of the Almighty, such a power, and such a direction of Will, and such success are often given to

the evil, is the experience of all ages.* And the meditative wisdom of ancient Greece considered such invariable success in those that were evil, a proof of Divine wrath and jealousy, and prophetic of utter ruin. And, indeed, such it often is.

With regard to the Christian who lives in Faith fixed upon the Unseen, according to the law of grace, he shall find that in him, if he live under the law of God's grace, that his Will coinciding and agreeing with God's Will, he is free perfectly and completely, and he alone; Circumstances may not yield to his power, but may control it; success may be denied to his best efforts, prosperity may not be granted, yet let him bind his Will to that of God, and therein he shall find Freedom. And more than this, Providence protecting him, with the invisible foresight of omniscience, from perils which himself could not have avoided; sheltering him from accidents no power of his own could ward off, no subtlety escape; upholding him with the mind of a father, staying and guiding the steps of a feeble infant; and correcting and destroying, by the action of circumstance, faults that he himself could never become conscious of:-almighty power, omniscient wisdom, infinite mercy;—these thus wait upon and belong unto that man who, in covenant with God, rules and guides his Will according to the Will of the Eternal, the Law of Holiness and Grace!

He is free in thought and act, free in the power of Grace through Jesus Christ! and to him, thus perfect, and to him alone, his nature fulfils its intended purposes. To him the external world is that which to all men it should be. And Society, in reference to him, exerts its complete effect as a school of teaching. All things internal and all things external coincide; inward Nature and outward Circumstance are brought into that harmony of

* Often this stern energy of Will and the invariable success attending it are wondered at, and attributed to the man by all around him, and even by himself, when it is a truth, that the vessel is only in the current of Almighty power, sweeping onward to a certain point, as a vessel of deserved wrath, or laden with mercy. And succeeding ages begin to see, when the results have unfolded themselves in History, that behind the man lay the purpose of God, -behind his Will, the almighty Will of the omniscient God. The thought is gradually unfolding itself, especially in respect to the Emperor Napoleon; men are beginning to see how uses and ends in the policy of the world that he never intended, have come forth from his strong will set firmly toward selfish ends, and wholly unconscious of the power that lay behind him, and of the issues that were in the future.