the prospect before you. Reflect, that, if not beheld in a good light, existence herself may lose her most attractive smiles. Though the direst spirit of the storm may veil the earth for a time in the darkness of his course, be not impatient or desponding, but rest well assured that beneficence sits at the helm of creation. Wait

till the conflict of the elements be over, to breathe with delight a more vivifying atmosphere, renovated and purified by a collision of little more than momentary duration.

As to the moral condition of man, at a very early period it sadly experienced the deplorable consequences of setting up human arrogance in opposition to divine wisdom. The learned Faber observes, that "when the innocence of our first parents was forfeited, the evil propensities of a corrupt nature soon began to display themselves. A careless neglect of the divine ordinance, on the part of one of the sons of Adam, and a devout observance of them by the other, procured for Abel a mark of God's favour, which was denied to Cain. Jealousy and envy immediately occupied the soul of the rejected

sacrificer; hatred and malice followed close behind; and murder, even the murder of a brother, was the result of these baneful and diabolical passions."

Nor have the evils of disobedience ceased to overshadow the nations of the earth, from that time to the present; and the dissimilarity which exists between our globe and the regions of the blessed, may furnish an undeniable exemplification how far the abuse of free-agency has been, aud may be carried. So that if it were not for the supreme goodness of the mighty Lord of hosts, it is evident, that the frequency of human apostacy would carry its enormous evils to the very verge of general desolation. At the same time, then, that we cannot but admit the manifest and flagrant abuses of freeagency, which too generally exist, we learn how truly desirable it is that God should occasionally arrest the progress of those evils, which mankind are prone to draw on themselves. But in all his dispensations, He proceeds on the basis of unerring wisdom, leaving us in numerous in

* Horæ Mosaicæ, page 87, vol. i. second edition.

stances to the self-inflicted correction of our own unhallowed and disquieted career, or arresting with his paternal sceptre such tides of iniquity as call for his correcting influence in the moral government of his works. There are two ideas, in particular, which should never be absent from our meditations on this most interesting topic; the one relating to Omnipotence, and the other to the creation of man. the one, we behold that not any being whatever could place a single fetter on the arm of the Almighty; and in the other we discern, that our Creator hath not entailed on our nature any thing inconsistent with its very constitution, in which He was pleased originally to implant a spiritual similitude of his own unfettered mind.

In

If, therefore, in any of your conceptions, God may appear either chained or restricted himself, or chaining his creatures under some cruel fate; be confident that in you alone the delusion prevails, and that you cannot change the active benevolence of his essentially free and illimitable nature, by reason of the false or prejudiced medium, through which you may vainly presume to

arrive at the discernment of his sublime perfections.

Having advanced so much in the spirit of amicable admonition, let us now proceed to explore the happy standard of intellectual liberty in the regions of eternal light and truth: first, however, referring, to the following compendium.

A TREATISE

ON

FREE-AGENCY.

DEFINITION I.

Of the term Energy.

WHEN any being is said to be capable of exerting its power in different ways, the various ways in which that power may act, we designate its energies. Thus, for instance, when we speak of either the self-existent or omniscient energy of God, we contemplate an omnipotent being whose existence or omniscience is each sustained by a power inherent in himself. And so on, as to any other manner of exerting the given power.

Without entering into a disquisition, whether the term, as here applied, be abstract or concrete, &c.; it may be sufficient to observe that, whenever we institute any inquiry respecting a divine energy separately considered, we simply view the divine Being himself exerting, as if exclusively, that energy alone:-not that

B