dom; for human life is Divine life, with all its Divine elements, although finited and adapted to human reception. Hence man possesses, not the mere appearance of freedom, but most real, most actual freedom. God watches over and preserves this, by the very necessity of His perfect love. And therefore, while it is entirely true that our whole life and every affection and thought and faculty are from God's life in us, it is also true, that freedom also comes from God to us, and that He always and infinitely guards us from a coercion which would destroy our personality; and so tempers the dealings of His own providence as always to give us ability, and always to give us help, and yet always preserve to us our own unimpaired freedom, and our own real personality. Therefore, to return to the apostle's words, because God worketh within us of His own pleasure to preserve our freedom, the ability and duty and responsibility of using this freedom aright -rest upon us. And therefore again, unless we freely co-operate with God in the work of our salvation, that work can never be wrought. It is thus we reconcile man's freedom with the Omnipotence of God.

We are next to consider in what way man's freedom and the Divine foreknowledge of God can be reconciled. This question may be stated thus. How is it possible that a man can be in actual freedom to do or not to do a thing, if God has a certain and precise foreknowledge whether he will do that thing or not? It is upon this point, that logic, wielded by such powerful minds as those of Augustine, Calvin, and Ed

wards, has done the greatest mischief. And it has done this, because it has always proceeded from, and founded itself absolutely upon, an assumption which is perfectly false. The question is, how to reconcile the two elements of human freedom and Divine foreknowledge? The answer is, one of these elements has no existence. The foreknowledge of God implies that before and after apply to Him; and this implies, that He also is subject to the laws and incidents of time. If this be so, we have a prior question to answer, and one to which an answer is impossible. It is, how shall we reconcile this subjection to time with the infinity, and the eternity, or even the existence of God? Do we then deny that God has always a perfect knowledge of all events; of the past and of the future, as well as of the present? On the contrary, we do most emphatically declare this; do most strenuously hold to it; and hold this truth as one of the essential foundations of our whole doctrine of Divine Providence. But we assert also that this knowledge must always be in Him a present knowledge, wholly free from either recollection or anticipation. But can we understand such knowledge as this? Certainly not; certainly no more than we can understand how He can be in all space, and yet not be subject to space. The inexorable laws of time and space bind us. While here, we can scarcely escape from these laws at all; and even in the other world they exist for us still, although they are there subject to laws of a higher nature. In fewer words, of God's absolute knowledge, as a fact, we have

not the slightest doubt; of the manner of this knowledge we have not, and by no possibility can have, the first or slightest comprehension.

The question, therefore, how do we reconcile the freedom of man with the foreknowledge of God, we answer thus:-Of the free-agency and responsibility of man we are certain, on the testimony of universal consciousness, upon which all logic and all argument must at last fall back; and this consciousness asserts this free-agency just as firmly after logic has done its worst as before it began. Because this is a fact it must co-exist and harmonize with the other fact, of the infinite and universal knowledge of God. But of the manner or nature of this co-existence we know nothing and can know nothing, because we know nothing and can know nothing of the manner or nature of infinite and absolute knowledge.

Few things are more remarkable in the history of human thought, than the ability with which Edwards worked out a system that substituted moral necessity for natural necessity; and the relief which this view gave him, although the distinction was after all only one of words, because the necessity was left unimpaired and absolute. In a most touching passage, he speaks of the distress of mind with which he had formerly looked upon the dealings of God with men ; and then, after he had seen that this necessity was moral and not natural, of the happiness he enjoyed, in dwelling upon the fact, that God condemned some and saved others, of His own pleasure, and in conformity

with His eternal decrees of election and predestination.

Having thus considered the answer which the New Church makes to Orthodoxy, in relation to the doctrine of human life, and power, and duty, and salvation, let us now come to the answer which the New Church gives to Rationalism, in relation to the same doctrine. And by Rationalism, I say at once, that I mean that system, and every system, which rests on the sufficiency of human reason, human strength, and human goodness, to give to man all possible approach to perfection. Instead of Rationalism I might as well use the word Naturalism, which means substantially the same thing. By Rationalism I understand the belief in the absolute sufficiency of human reason to discover all needed truth, and supply all needed motive for good. Naturalism means a belief in the sufficiency of human nature, of itself, to discover and to do all that is needed, for its own utmost improvement, and its own highest happiness. But I shall continue to use the word Rationalism, meaning by it, however, all that would be meant by either of these words.

We propose to give this answer more fully, and at greater length than we have ventured upon in reference to other topics, because the subject, from its extent and from its importance, seems to require this. What we have indicated, and shall still mean, by the word

Rationalism, seems to us the most active poison which is now at work in men's minds. We regard it as tending strongly to extinguish the last sparks of religious and Christian truth lingering in the first Christian church.

This may seem to be strong and even offensive language. We would not write such words if any others would express honestly our meaning. It is not because Rationalism is now used by the unbelieving and irreligious as the disguise of their infidelity. If this were all, we should have little to say about it. We fear, however, that it exerts much power in persuading many who desire to be religious, and who certainly possess and value a religious sentiment, to cultivate a goodness which is not good; and to accept and trust to a means of salvation, which can do nothing else than prevent and defeat salvation.

Goodness which is not good. The phrase is certainly paradoxical, and demands explanation. And yet, in one way it expresses an obvious truth. He who gives freely from his abundance; who helps the poor, the sick, and suffering, and is just in all his dealings with his fellows, and abstains from all vice, is certainly a good man in his conduct. But when we know that any or all of these things are done from a merely selfish policy, only as a payment of the necessary price for purely selfish ends, all would admit that these acts are not intrinsically good; all would say that he is not a good man. His conduct is good in form, but not in essence. We mean, however, far more than this,