LECTURE II.

"YE BELIEVE IN GOD, BELIEVE ALSO IN ME."

JOHN xiv. 1.

WHILE We have offered but little direct proof of the existence of an Almighty Cause and Governor, at no stage of the argument could we treat it as a question, in no step of the discussion could we stoop to labor for its defence. We assume not only his being and moral government, but also the truth of the Christian revelation. We, indeed, are argumentatively working out our way to the results of this revelation,-not our way to its authority, but to its fitness and application. If there is but one being, he must be God: if there be a second, he must be a creature of that God. We are not indifferent to the outshining of the Divine glory which we behold in the material creation,—the firmament, with its hosts of luminaries,—the world we inhabit, with its oceans, mountains, vegetations. But we obtain more exquisite and worthy evidence in the intellectual features and exercises of man. There is the image of him who created us. And when we can, upon this, superinduce the moral capacities of

THE LAW AND GOVERNMENT OF RESPONSIBLE AGENTS. 87

man, we must infer that all which is cognate to both has its seat in the Divine mind,-and thus the demonstration that there is a God who is a Spirit, and that there is a God who is Lord over us, becomes perfect! And most impressive is the contrast between all that we discern of Divine and human ruling power. "The Lord is our Judge, the Lord is our Lawgiver, the Lord is our King." Society could not subsist without magistracy and legal restraint. surveying the operations of earthly government, we are struck with the complexity of its proceedings and the jealousy of its principles. On every side, there are its inquisitions and menaces. It clothes itself in

In

pomp. It is full of stir and ferment. There is parade and obtrusion. It loves ceremonial and emblem. It holds court and erects tribunal. It constantly publishes itself. Its sword is always naked. Its balance is always raised. It "bringeth the wheel over the wicked." It is palpable through all its workings and all its checks. It imposes itself with pageant and state. It cries aloud. Yet in all this apparatus, there is the effort of a conscious feebleness. It is display to make up the want of power. It rebounds to its own strokes. It bends under its own burdens. There is an unceasing confession of its impotence. There is perpetual sign of suspicion and self-distrust. Little can it punish. Little can it prevent. Its inefficiency is in a very close proportion to its external magnificence. But the dominion of the Most High moves in a far different course. "The law of the Lord is perfect." It seeks and needs no

badge and observance. It disdains ministry and instrument. Its sword is "bathed in heaven." Its balance is 'that in which the hills are weighed. It is noiseless and unseen in its mechanism. It has access to mind. Its power is in conscience. By inscrutable influences it enforces itself. There can be no partiality, no indecision, no resistance. It cannot be turned aside, warped by indulgence or intimidated by danger. Vain is every hope to elude and defeat it. It allows no difficulty. Silent as time, serene as star, it keeps its way. Obedience is attended by happiness, transgression by woe. So linked together are offence and suffering, that "the tormentors" are ever waiting and ever ready to exact the connexion. The blow may be long delayed which strikes down the oppressor, but his first act of injustice smote him. The punishment which appears slow, has already fallen. The dealing is summary. The punishment has begun. The wicked flee when no man pursueth. There are arrows which drink up the spirit. The transgressor may vaunt loudly, he may be the object of general envy, all may flatter him,-yet shall he be the drift of an inward tempest, the wreck of the soul's own sea. "All darkness is hid in his secret places." "In the fulness of his sufficiency, he is in straits." To cause the mind to punish itself, to work a retribution out of ourselves, to secure it by fixed nature, to inflict it by inflexible necessity, to convert the capacity of sin into the instrument of suffering, is the prerogative of Divine rule. It is unlike any other, though inferior jurisdictions may be helped by this its conduct.

The

feelings which it awakens may subserve far lower administrations. In the prison-houses of earth there may be mental anguish: but man there trembles under the original liability. He agonises in his troubled thoughts as a subject of God. There is, indeed, the sense of social guilt, unworthiness, and shame. But unless he had first felt that he was the subject of God, little had his mind suffered for anything he had done as the subject of man. It is in this infinite ease, and repose, and omnipresence, of the "kingdom which ruleth over all," that we learn its unparalleled and inimitable excellence. It is uniformly, and it is universally, administrative and executing. "There is no darkness where the workers of iniquity may hide themselves." Its design is direct, and its effect This is true majesty !

sure.

It

The irrespectiveness and universality of human law, which are its highest honor when they obtain, are the occasions of its frequent failure and injustice. being a human enactment and administration, its very generalization betrays its imperfectness. It cannot comprehend every case of claim or grievance. Another form is needed. Men call it equity. Its province is to provide for that which law could not reach, and did not contemplate. It is the control, and curb, and custody, of law.

We are wont to speak of certain laws as subsisting in physics. We tell of the laws of matter and mind: the laws of mechanism, electricity, and heat: the laws of relation, of suggestive thought, of reasoning judgement. Such a use of language is arbitrary and unjust. In

these instances we suppose and can conceive no proper rule. We understand these things, they being found in given states, conditions, successions. We know what are electrical affinities, and that they invariably act: we know when water will freeze or evaporate, and when metals will fuse or volatilize: when bodies will become precipitates, and atoms chrystals. Yet all these phænomena reveal no law: at most are they seen in obedience to one. They prove, in Aristotelian phrase, a universal. They lie within uninterrupted experience. Their sequence has never been known nor reported to fail. But when we speak of law in reference to a responsible agent, the application is strictly correct. It is the only use which is proper and true. At best is it, in any other employment, an accommodated term. In this, it stands up to the idea. It proclaims authority rather than power. It asserts its right over intelligent nature. It is a grand exhibition of moral principles. It binds all in justice, but that justice addresses all in inducements. A law, whatever it be, which moves matter, can never describe a law which operates upon the mind.

Any parallelism between material necessary effects and moral contingent actions must be, therefore, very remote and strained. They involve perfectly different subjects of influence. They oppose to each other the relations which are borne towards those subjects. They respectively present,-uninformed and irresponsible matter, impelled by a foreign and resistless will of pleasure, and rational and amenable mind governed by an independent but legislative will of right!