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CHAPTER V.

ON THE POWER AND DOMINION OF GOD.

WHAT is power? In answer to this question much has been written, and by men of the first talents. In general, it may be described as the efficient cause of any effect. All power is God's; and in him who is eternal and self-existing, and from whom whatever is has received its being, power must be unlimited. The power, which can call an insect from nothing into life, is really as incomprehensible to us as that which creates and suspends in space a thousand systems of revolving worlds. The effect in the one case, indeed, is more astonishing and magnificent; but in the other, it is not less referable to omnipotence. The will of the Creator is power. His will is the cause why any thing exists; and why it does not exist differently from what it is. His willing that to be accomplished which he knows best to be done is the sole cause of its performance. To say that God wills a world to be, is the same thing as to say, that God creates a world. He speaks, and it is done; he commands, and it stands fast. The Mosaic account of the creation of light is not more simple and sublime in description than it is conformable to unadorned truth. "God said, Let there be light; and there was light." He wills the creation of the universe, and the universe is created; he wills the preservation and continued existence of the universe, and the universe is preserved

and continued.

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"He removeth the mountains, and they know it not; he overturneth them in his anger. He commandeth the sun and it riseth not, and sealeth the stars. He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing. The pillars of heaven tremble, and are astonished at his reproof. So these are parts of his ways: but how little a portion is heard of him? But the thunder of his power who can understand?"

The almighty power of God is that attribute of the divine nature which is most obvious to reason, and which, therefore, has been always acknowledged. To admit that God is the creator of all things, and to deny him the possession of unlimited power is contradictory. To him that made all things, must of course belong all the power which anywhere exists. There is no activity in any agent, no influence in any cause, but what depends on the principal agent, but what has proceeded from the first of causes. Can there be any bounds to his power, who performs all that he wills, and whose will cannot be resisted? He doth according to his will, in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth, and none can stay his hand, or say unto him what doest thou. The Lord of hosts hath purposed, and who shall disannul it? His hand is stretched out, and who shall turn it back? We cannot conceive of such a power otherwise than as adequate to the creation of every possible existence. However splendid and magnificent are the effects which have already resulted from it, they are only as a drop of the bucket, or the small dust of the balance, in comparison of that which the Almighty can produce. His is a

mighty power, able to do above all that we can ask or think.

The infinity of the divine power may be argued from the infinity of the divine essence. Power in God is not any thing distinct from his nature, but is his nature or will acting in a certain way, doing whatever he pleases without difficulty and without resistance. It is only to aid our conceptions that revelation ascribes hands and arms to him; as we exert our power by such instruments; but his will is power; it executes without either matter to work upon, or means to work by; and his works stand forth when, and as, he wills them. Though the effect must be finite, the cause is infinite: it is co-eternal and extensive as the essence and being of God. As his power is not any thing different from himself, but is his own will acting according to the boundless perfection of his nature; and as he is everywhere, and always the same, his power is of course everywhere and always infinite.

If we only bear in mind, that power in God is power in a Being of infinite perfection, exercised in union with absolute wisdom and goodness, we shall feel no difficulty in deciding in what sense, and with what limitations, divine omnipotence is to be understood. It reaches to the limit of possibility; but it cannot go beyond it without involving a contradiction. What the measure of possibility is we know not. According to some, it is our power of conceivableness. But it may be asked, are there not many things possible and true, respecting which it may be said, that it never entered into the heart of man to conceive; and which, if proposed for our consideration, might seem

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inconceivable and incredible? Are there not many facts which the philosopher knows to be true, that are above the conceptions of a common mind, and which to such a mind must seem incredible and impossible? If we received the maxim as true, and as the rule of our belief, that conceivableness is the measure of possibility, ought we not to reject as absurd whatever is beyond our reason, and to believe that what we cannot comprehend must be incomprehensible and impossible. If some have gone too far in darkening the light of reason from a mistaken view of doing honour to revelation, we must beware of going to the opposite extreme: if we are not to admit what is obviously repugnant to the first principles of reason, we are not, therefore, to set up reason as an infallible standard of what is possible or impossible, of what is true and false.

But though our conceivableness cannot be the limit of the divine power, as it cannot be the limit of any of the other attributes of God, yet we are sure that this power cannot perform what is in itself contradictory; such as to make any thing to be, and not to be at the same time, and that a whole may be no greater than one of its parts;—we are sure it cannot do this, because the supposition is in itself, and inde pendently of our conceptions, absurd. It is equally impossible for God to do any thing unsuited or opposed to his moral perfections. He cannot lie,-he cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man,—he cannot act or conduct his government without a constant regard to the wisdom and righteousness of his nature. He who is infinitely perfect cannot do

any thing from caprice, cannot do any thing but what has reason and right for its support, cannot exercise his power but in harmony with the adorable perfections of his nature. While he is excellent in power, he is excellent also in judgment, and in plenty of justice.

It may be useful to consider, further, the displays which God has given of his power, that our convictions of its greatness may be deepened. And let us consider,

I. The wonderful manifestation of it in the creation of all things. How vast and incomprehensible must be the power that "made the heavens, and all the hosts of them, the earth and all things that are therein, the sea and all that therein is!" Let us look attentively to the innumerable things that are made, and we cannot fail to believe that God can do infinitely more than he hath done, or will do. "Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number: he calleth them all by names by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power; not one faileth." Some of the ancient philosophers, while they proposed to believe in the existence and eternity of one supreme God, contended, at the same time, that matter was also eternal;—and that the power of the Deity was shewn, not in calling into being that which formerly was not, but in arranging and beautifying the materials which were already in existence. But we, whose reason is enlightened by the light of revela tion, must at once see that this notion is irreconcilable with the full admission of the self-existence and infinite perfection of the divine nature. We know

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