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ces having operated on you, as if the Deity were but a poetical fiction, or an idol in some temple of Asia? Obviously, as the immediate cause, through want of thought concerning him.

And why did you not think of him? Did a most solemn thought of him never once penetrate your soul, while admitting the proposition that there is such a Being? If it never did, what is reason, what is mind, what is man? If it did once, how could its effects stop there? How could a deep thought, on so singular and momentuous a subject, fail to impose on the mind a permanent necessity of frequently recalling it: as some awful or magnificent spectacle will haunt you with a long recurrence of its image, even if the spectacle itself were seen no more ?

Why did you not think of him? How could you estimate so meanly your mind with all its capacities, as to feel no regret that an endless series of trifles should seize, and occupy as their right, all your thoughts, and deny them both the liberty and the ambition of going on to the greatest Object? How, while called to the contemplations which absorb the spirits of heaven, could you be so patient of the task of counting the flies of a summer's day.

Why did you not think of him? You knew yourself to be in the hands of some Being from whose power you could not be withdrawn; was it not an equal defect of curiosity and prudence, to indulge a careless confidence that sought no acquaintance with his nature and his dispositions, nor ever anxiously inquired what conduct should be observed toward him, and what expectations might be entertained from him? You would have been alarmed to have felt yourself in the power of a mysterious stranger of your own feeble species; but let the stranger be omnipotent, and you cared no more.

Why did you not think of him? One would suppose that the thought of him must, to a serious mind, come second to almost every thought. The thought of virtue would suggest the thought of both a law

giver and a rewarder; the thought of crime of an avenger; the thought of sorrow of a consoler; the thought of an inscrutable mystery, of an intelligence that understands it; the thought of that ever-moving activity which prevails in the system of the universe, of a supreme agent; the thought of the human family, of a great father; the thought of all being, of a creator; the thought of life, of a preserver; and the thought of death, of a solemn and uncontrollable disposer. By what dexterity therefore of irreligious caution, did you avoid precisely every track where the idea of him would have met you, or elude that idea if it came? And what must sound reason pronounce of a mind which in the train of millions of thoughts, has wandered to all things under the sun, to all the permanent objects or vanishing appearances in the creation, but never fixed its thoughts on the Supreme Reality; never approached, like Moses, "to see this great sight?"

It would be interesting to record, or to hear, the history of a character which has received its form, and reached its maturity, under the strongest operations of religion. We do not know that there is a more benificent or a more direct mode of the divine agency in any part of the creation than that which

apprehends" a man, as apostolic language expresses it, amidst the unthinking crowd, and leads him into serious reflection, into elevated devotion, into progressive virtue, and finally into a noble life after death. When he has long been commanded by this influence, he will be happy to look back to its first operations, whether they were mingled in early life almost insensibly with his feelings, or came on him with mighty force at some particular time, and in connexion with some assignable and memorable circumstance, which was apparently the instrumental cause. He will trace all the progress of this his bet ter life, with grateful acknowledgment to the sacred power which has advanced him to a decisiveness of religious habit which seems to stamp eternity on his

character. In the great majority of things, habit is a greater plague than ever afflicted Egypt; in religious character, it is a grand felicity, The devout man exults in the indications of his being fixed and irretrievable. He feels this confirmed habit as the grasp of the hand of God, which will never let him go. From this advanced state he looks with firmness and joy on futurity, and says, I carry the eternal mark upon me, that I belong to God; I am free of the universe; and I am ready to go to any world to which he shall please to transmit me, certain that every where, in height or depth, he will acknowledge me for ever.

Section VII.

THE LIBERTY OF MAN AND THE FOREKNOWLEDGE AND PROVIDENCE OF GOD.

The foreknowledge and providence of the Deity and that liberty which doth truly belong to man as a moral agent, are things perfectly consistent and naturally connected. The proof of our liberty is to every individual of the human race the very same, I am persuaded, with the proof of his existence. I feel that I exist, and I feel that I am free; and I may with reason turn a deaf ear upon every argu ment that can be alledged in either case to disprove my feelings. I feel that I have power to flee the danger that I dread-to pursue the good that I covet -to forego the most inviting pleasure, although it be actually within my grasp, if I apprehend that the present enjoyment may be the means of future mischief-to expose myself to present danger, to submit to present evils, in order to secure a future good

I feel that I have power to do the action I approve to abstain from another that my conscience would condemn-In a word, I feel that I act from

my own hopes, and my own fears; and whenever I act from other motives, I feel that I am misled by my own passions, my own appetites, my own mistaken views of things. A feeling always succeeds these unreasonable actions, that, had my mind exerted its natural powers, in considering the action I was about to do, the propriety of it in itself and its consequences, I might and I should have acted otherways.Having these feelings, I feel all that liberty which renders the morality of a man's actions properly his own, and makes him justly accountable for his conduct.

The liberty, therefore, of man, and the foreknowledge and providence of God, are equally certain, although the proof of each rest on different principles. Our feelings prove to every one of us that we are free reason and revelation teach us that the Deity knows and governs all things,-that even "the thoughts of man he understandeth long before," long before the thoughts arise-long before the man himself is born who is to think them. Now, when two distinct propositions are separately proved, each by its proper evidence, it is not a reason for denying either, that the human mind, upon the first hasty view, imagines a repugnance, and may perhaps find a difficulty in connecting them, even after the distinct proof of each is clearly perceived and undestood.

There is a wide difference between a paradox and a contradiction. Both, indeed, consist of two distinct propositions; and so far only are they alike: for of the two parts of a contradiction, the one or the other must necessarily be false.-of a paradox, both are often true, and yet when proved to be true, may continue paradoxical. This is the necessary consequence of our partial views of things. An intellect to which nothing should be paradoxical would be infinite. It may naturally be supposed that paradoxes must abound the most in metaphysics and divinity, for who can find out God unto perfection?" yet they occur in other subjects; and any one who

should universally refuse his assent to propositions separately proved, because when connected they may seem paradoxical, would, in many instances, be justly laughed to scorn by the masters of those sciences which make the highest pretensions to certainty and demonstration.

In all these cases, there is generally in the nature of things a limit to each of the two contrasted propositions, beyond which neither can be extended without implying the falsehood of the other, and changing the paradox into a contradiction: and the whole difficulty of perceiving the connection and agreement between such propositions arises from this circumstance, that, by some inattention of the mind, these limits are overlooked.

Thus, in the case before us, we must not imagine such an arbitrary exercise of God's power over the minds and wills of subordinate agents, as should convert rational beings into mere machines, and leave the Deity charged with the follies and the crimes of men,-nor must we, on the other hand, set up such a liberty of created beings, as, necessarily precluding the Divine foreknowledge of human actions, should take the government of the moral world out of the hands of God, and leave him nothing to do with the noblest part of his creation.

Section VIII.

ON THE CHARACTER AND GOVERNMENT OF GOD.

He is the unsearchable God, and his government must be like himself. Facts, concerning both, he has graciously revealed. These we must admit upon the credit of his own testimony; with these we must satisfy our wishes, and limit our inquiry. "To intrude into those things which he hath not seen" because

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