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Nazareth, God hath presented to us simply in his inspired

humanity.

the true image of God, commissioned to show what no written doctrinal record could declare, the entire moral perfec

Him we accept, not indeed as very God, but as

tions of struggles but his

Deity.

We accept,-not indeed his body, not the

of his sensitive nature, not the travail of his soul,

Purity, his tenderness, his absolute devotion to the great idea of right, his patient and compassionate warfare

against misery and guilt, as the most distinct and beautiful expression of the Divine mind. The peculiar office of Christ is to supply a new moral image of Providence; and everything therefore except the moral complexion of his mind, we leave behind as human and historical merely, and apply to no religious use. I have already stated in what way nature and the gospel combine to bring before us the great object of our trust and worship. The universe gives us the scale of God, and Christ his Spirit. We climb to the Infinitude of his nature by the awful pathway of the stars, where whole forests of worlds silently quiver here and there, like a small leaf of ight. We dive into his Eternity, through the ocean waves of Time, that roll and solemnly break on the imagination, as we trace the wrecks of departed things upon our present globe. The scope of his Intellect, and the majesty of his Rule, are seen in the tranquil order and everlasting silence that reign through the fields of his volition. And the Spirit that animates the whole is like that of the Prophet of Nazareth; the thoughts that fly upon the swift light throughout creation, charged with fates unnumbered, are like the healing mercies of One that passed no sorrow by. The government of this world, its mysterious allotments of good and ill, its successions of birth and death, its hopes of progress and of peace, each life of individual or nation, is under the administration of One, of whose rectitude and benevolence, whose sympathy with all the holiest aspirations of our virtue and

our love, Christ is the appointed emblem. A faith that spreads around and within the mind a Deity thus sublime and holy, feeds the light of every pure affection, and presses with Omnipotent power on the conscience; and our only prayer is, that we may walk as children of such light.

NOTES.

A.

On Impossibility, Physical and Logical.

In order to break the force of all reasonings respecting the inherent incredibility of the Trinitarian doctrine, the principle has been frequently advanced, that a statement which would be contradictory, if made respecting an object within reach of our knowledge, cannot be affirmed to be so, if applied to an object beyond our knowledge; Since in the one case we have, in the other we have not, some experience to guide our judgment, and serve as a criterion of truth. Thus, it is said, to affirm of man, that his nature comprises more han one personality, might, without presumption, be pronounced a contradiction; because we are familiar with his constitution; but nowing nothing of the mode of God's existence, except what he is leased to reveal, we cannot prove the same statement to be conradictory, when made respecting his essence.

This rule, like all the Trinitarian reasonings on this subject, deves its plausibility from an ambiguous use of terms. It has one sense in which it is true, but inapplicable to this subject; and another, in which it is applicable, but false. The rule is sound or unsound, according to the meaning which we assign to the word contradiction; a word which, in other arguments besides this, has made dupes of men s understandings. There are obviously two kinds of contradiction-one relating to questions of fact, as when we say, it is contradictory to experience that ice should continue solid in the fire; thether, relating to questions of mere thought, as when we say, it is contradictory to affirm that force is inert, or that the diameters of a circle are unequal. The former of these suggests something at variance with the established order of causes and effects, and constitutes a natural or physical impossibility; the latter suggests a combination of irreconcileable ideas, constituting a logical or metaphysical impossibility, or more properly, a self-contradiction.

It is almost self-evident that, in order to pronounce upon a physical impossibility, we must possess experience, and have a knowledge of

the properties of objects and successions of events external to us; and that to pronounce on a metaphysical impossibility, we require only to have the ideas to which it refers; of the coincidence or incompatibility of which with each other, our own consciousness is the sole judge. When I deny that ice will remain frozen in the fire, I do so after frequent observation of the effect of heat in reducing bodies, especially water, from the solid to the liquid form; and in reliance on the intuitive expectation which all men entertain, of like results from like causes. Experience is the only justification of this denial; and a priori, no belief could be held on the subject; a person introduced for the first time to a piece of ice and to fire, could form no conjecture about the changes which would follow on their juxtaposition. And as our judgment in such cases has its origin, so does it find its limits, in experience; and should it be affirmed that, in a distant planet, ice did not melt on the application of fire, the right of denial would not extend to this statement, because our knowledge does not extend to the world to which the phenomenon is referred. The natural state of mind, on hearing such an announcement, might be expressed as follows; If what you affirm be true, either some new cause must be called into operation, counteracting the result which else would follow; or, some of the causes existing here are withheld: the sequence, I am compelled to believe, would be the same, unless the antecedents were somehow different. Were the fact even a miracle, this would still be true; for the introduction of a new or different divine volition would be in itself a change in the previous causes. But I am not authorized to pronounce the alleged fact impossible; its variance from all the analogies of experience, justifies me in demanding extraordinary evidence in its favour; but I do not say that, in the infinite receptacle of causes unknown to the human understanding, there cannot exist any from which such an effect might arise."

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There is then, I conceive, no physical impossibility, which might not be rendered credible by adequate evidence; there is nothing, in the constitution of our minds, to forbid its reception under certain conditions of proof sufficiently cogent. It simply violates an expectation which, though necessary and intuitive before the fact, is not incapable of correction by the fact; it presents two successive phenomena, dissimilar instead of similar; and between two occurrences, allocated on different points of time, however much analogy may fail, there can be no proper contradiction. The improbability that both should be true, may attain a force almost, but never altogether infinite; a

NOTES.

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force, therefore, surmountable by a greater. The thoughts can at least entertain the conception of them both; nor is it more difficult to form the mental image of a piece of ice unmelted on the fire, than of

the same

substance melting away.

It is quite otherwise with a metaphysical impossibility or proper

contradiction. phenomena,

meters of

ment, and

The variance is, in this case, not between successive but between synchronous ideas. We deny that the diacircle are unequal, without experience, without measurejust as confidently respecting a circle in the remotest space, As respecting one before our eyes. As soon as we have the ideas of "circle," "diameter," "equality," this judgment necessarily follows. Our own consciousness makes us aware of the incompatibility between the idea expressed by the word "circle," and that expressed by the phrase "unequal diameters ;" the former word being simply the name of a curve having equal diameters. The variance, in this case, as not between two external occurrences, but between two notions within our own minds; and simply to have the notions is to perceive heir disagreement. It would be vain to urge upon us that, possibly, in egions of knowledge beyond our reach, circles with unequal diameters might exist: we should reply, that the words employed were merely the symbols of ideas in our consciousness, between which we Felt agreement to be out of the question; that so long as the words meant what they now mean, this must continue to be the case; and

at if there were any one, to whom the same sound of speech suggested a truth instead of a falsehood, this would only show, that the terms did not stand for the same things with him as with us. It will be observed that, in this case, we cannot even attain any conception of the thing affirmed; no mental image can be formed of a circle with unequal diameters; make the diameters unequal, and it is a circle no more.

A further analysis might, I believe, reduce more nearly under the same class a physical and a metaphysical impossibility; and might show that some of the language in which I have endeavoured to contrast them, is not strictly correct. But the main difference, which the present argument requires, (viz., that no experience can reconcile the terms of a logical contradiction,) would only be brought out more clearly than ever. I am aware, for instance, that the distinction which I have drawn between my two examples,-that the latter deals with ideas within us, the former with facts without us,-does not penetrate to the roots of the question; that external phenomena are nothing to us,

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