the harp of praise, to turn his back upon the throne of light, and attempt to usurp a position of dignity assigned to some loftier seraph, to wrest the harp from some more skilful hand, and attune it to other notes than those of Jehovah's praise!—what horror would such conduct have inspired in the harmonious multitude! How atrocious would his attitude appear! Would he not have stood justly chargeable with rebellion the most arrogant, with ingratitude the most odious, and impiety most atrocious? A creature, each moment of whose existence, and each element of whose enjoyments, flows from the beneficence of his Maker,—to rebel against his authority, although exercised with perfect holiness, and infinite kindness to him! A creature, himself endowed with perfect happiness, and enriched with gifts bestowed from the treasures of God,-to despise those gifts and that happiness; and repine because his Creator still claimed his homage, and asserted and exercised his own most righteous sovereignty! A creature, whose existence is merely because it pleased God to give it, and whose annihilation would not cause one chord of the universal harmony to vibrate in less perfect unison to creation's mighty anthem of adoring praise,-impiously refusing to concur with the rest to the great and becoming end of all, the glory of the Maker, in the harmony, happiness and praise of his creatures; and, as far as in his power, madly striving to thrust aside the blessed and only Potentate, and to set his own will and pleasure, his own ease and honour, instead of the will and glory of Him by whom and for whom are all things, and whose infinite power and goodness are the sole pledges of the rebel's existence! Would not all holy intelligences demand immediate and overwhelming punishment to the author of such wickedness?

Suppose the Creator to permit this example, unpunished, to spread contagion. In the midst of such warring elements, where would be the Creator's glory? where the design of creation? Amid surrounding insubordination and conflict, where would be the happiness of those even who should remain loyal to their Sovereign, and faithful to the end of their being? Would not the return of "chaos and old night" be far better than such a scene? Were some wandering star to rush across

the track of our solar system, dashing the elements in ruin together, it would be a little matter, compared with a moral convulsion such as this.

The case supposed arouses in us emotions of indignation and horror. But, alas! it is no fancy sketch. In its most atrocious aspect, it is fully realized in the instance before us. What matters it that it was man tabernacling in clay, and not a seraph of altogether spiritual mould? What matters it that our transgressing parents did not at that moment see God with their natural eyes, nor behold the ineffable light in which he robes himself in the dwelling-place of his glory? Had they not as convincing evidence of his presence, power, holiness and goodness as the angels possess? Had they not as intelligible a revelation of his will as they can have? Yet did they stop their ears to his voice, close their eyes to the manifestation of his glory, contemn the rich gifts of his goodness, and refuse to render him that service and honour which were his due, and strive to exalt themselves to independence of his authority and to equality with his divinity and his throne.

Such, then, was the nature of the act by which man was separated from the favour of his God and exposed to his fearful displeasure; an act, insignificant in itself, but clothed with tremendous meaning, as it proclaimed, in unmistakable language, to the startled universe, rebellion consummated against God, and defiance hurled against the throne of omnipotent Holiness.

24. Depravation of the

race.

But the sin of our first parents was not only an act of atrocious wickedness; it was an apostasy or depravation of their nature,—a turning away of all their powers, and their whole being, from the love and service of the Holy One, to the embrace of corruption and the servitude of sin. Such is the order of the moral system, which God has seen good to establish among the intelligent creatures, that they cannot occupy a neutral position as toward him. Either will their affections, and the whole fulness of their being, tend in ardour of desire toward God, and in entireness of devotion to him as their centre and end; or those affections and that being will recoil from him, and realize aversion and

hostility. Between these two conditions, the Creator has left no alternative. Hence, the very act of apostasy-and that is the very essence of sin-is such a turning away from God as constitutes, in and of itself, the assumption of a hostile attitude, the embrace of aversion to him, and the submitting of all the powers to this hostile tendency. And, since all the powers are comprehended by this alien influence, it is evident that there is, in the apostate, nothing upon which can be predicated the possibility of his unaided return; but, on the contrary, the aversion will continually bear the being farther away from God, and widen, forever, the gulf between. To this purpose is the testimony of Paul:-"Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey, whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?" -Rom. vi. 16. Thus the sinner sells himself a slave to his own sins, and comes into bondage to his own apostasy.

Such was the case with Adam. Not only did he transgress the command of his Maker,—not only did he violate the rule of righteousness,-but, in so doing, he turned away from God, in a revolt which embraced his entire nature, pervaded his whole being, and possessed every power. In entering upon trial, he enjoyed a perfect moral freedom. He had power and liberty to choose holiness or sin, to embrace evil or good. By his apostasy, he submitted himself to an absolute tyranny of corruption, a most degrading servitude to sin. So that now, no longer able to choose the good or work righteousness, he was free only to evil, and led captive in chains of enmity to God, to work wickedness with greediness.

Not only so, but the apostasy, in which he thus plunged, attached to him, not merely as he was a distinct and individual person, but as he was the head and fountain of the race. Comprehending and involving his whole being and nature, it attached, at once, to all who were in that nature, his seed; binding them with him in the crime of the apostasy thus wrought, in the depravity thus embraced and the penalty thus incurred.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE PERMISSION OF MORAL EVIL.

HERE a difficulty is urged, respecting the power, goodness and holiness of God.. How can it be reconciled with these, that moral 1. Phases evil has a place under his government?

of Optimism. Plato represents Socrates as quoting from Anaxagoras the doctrine, that Nous, or Wisdom, was the originating cause of all things. Upon this, Socrates reasons that, if it be 80, the Wisdom by which all things are regulated will dispose each in such a way as will be best. If, therefore, it be the wish of any one to ascertain the reason of a thing, in what way it is originated, or perishes, or is, he must discover, in regard to it, in what way it is best for it either to be, to endure, or to do any thing.*

The doctrine thus hinted by Plato was, by Leibnitz, incorporated into his system of Christian philosophy, and constituted the fundamental principle in his great work, the Tentamina Theodicæ. In his controversy with Dr. Samuel Clarke, he says, "Not mathematical principles, (according to the usual sense of that word,) but metaphysical principles, ought to be opposed to those of the materialists. Pythagoras, Plato and Aristotle in some measure had the knowledge of these principles; but I pretend to have established them demonstratively in my Theodicea, though I have done it in a popular manner. The great foundation of mathematics is the principle of contradiction or identity; that is, that a proposition cannot be true and false at the same time, and, therefore, that a is a, and cannot be not a. This single principle is sufficient to demonstrate every part of

*Platonis Phaedon, xlvi.

arithmetic and geometry; that is, all mathematical principles. But, in order to proceed from mathematics to natural philosophy, another principle is requisite, as I have observed in my Theodicea: I mean the principle of a sufficient reason; viz., that nothing happens without a reason why it should be so rather than otherwise."* This principle of a sufficient reason, Leibnitz thus uses in the Theodicea :-"The infinite wisdom of God, joined to a no less infinite goodness, could not but choose that which is best. For, as a less evil has something of the nature of a good, so a less good has somewhat of the nature of evil, if it place an obstacle in the way of a greater good; and there might be something to be mended in the works of God, if there were room for doing better. And, as in mathematics, where there is neither maximum nor minimum, nor any thing distinctive, all are made equal, or, if that does not take place, nothing at all can be done, so also of perfect wisdom, which is regulated by rule, no less than the processes of mathematics, it may be said, that unless among all possible worlds there had been a best, God would have produced none. . . . And although all time and space were filled, yet will it always be possible for them to be filled in an infinite variety of ways; and an infinite variety of worlds would be possible, from which it behooved God to select the best, since he may do nothing except according to the rule of supreme reason.”† fact, the Tentamina Theodicæ is throughout designed as an illustration of this doctrine. Stapfer was a professed disciple of the Leibnitian philosophy. In his Institutes of Theology, he enters into an exposition and defence of the opinion in question. He thus states the standard of excellence to which the universe is referred, in pronouncing it the best:-"The divine intellect represents all things distinctly to itself, and therefore knows instantly what means are most fit to accomplishing his end.

*Correspondence between Leibnitz and Clarke, p. 19.

Leibnitii Tentamina Theodicææ, Pars Prima, 8.

In

"Capite tertio præcipua religionis Christianæ purioris dogmata in nexu suo exhibuimus. De capite autem hoc tenendum, quod in primis ejus sectionibus, quæ Theologiam naturalem spectant, Wolfiana secuti simus Principia, Theodicæamque Leibnitianam."-Stapfer's Preface.