Be it an early revelation, be it an unbroken tradition,— not, as we regard it, an inference from the original bias of the mind, nor a construction upon an external administration of things, it is of no account to the argument. The faculty of estimating the idea is connatural and universal. The idea, itself, is, from the beginning, a law as old as man. Both faculty and idea form the ground of our accountability. Both are indispensable to establish against us the charge of guilt. Both must be presumed by every overture of restorative mercy. We bring the question to its humblest merits. We have confined it to what is. But for ourselves we are dissatisfied with its position. We should maintain that this could be the only law that it was not institutional but necessary: that it lies in perfect and eternal reason: that no proper intelligence could exist without perceiving and justifying it: that, though it affects many relations which of course are dependent and conditional, its principles are independent and unconditional: that its claims are imperial and its bonds everduring.

If, however, certain speculations which some have advanced concerning man be correct and well-founded, it would be vain to assert, it would be impossible to prove, that he was free, that he was responsible, that he was amenable to law. For though eternal rectitude fills the universe, man must be endued with a capacity for it to be its proper subject.

There is a theory of bodily conformation, of physical

organology, which seems to release our conduct from

approval or blame. Dispositions are supposed by it to be expressed according to outward, material, measures and proportions,-that these are developed by specific quantities of that which is assumed to be the seat and magazine of the mind, if not the mind itself, and that, though the primitive bent may be counteracted by setting prepossession against prepossession, this must be rather the task of others than of the immediate individual,—and that the original bent must always remain. In extenuation of the inconsistency of this theory with liberty and accountableness, it is pleaded that since all admit particular originalities of disposition, the difficulty is one, whether they subsist with or without material indications. But the difference is perfect between them who maintain that all such original dispositions, if evils, are things of fault, of disobedience, of depraved self-will, and them who see no more than an illdigested mass of qualities and propensions among which the creature is only left, if he have any volition at all, to choose. Beyond them he cannot pass. A peace and composition must be arranged by him of all these contraries as his only ground and germ of virtue. We are not to be deceived by quibbles and disclaimers. Specious ingenuities are the sure sign of untruth: flattering negociations the certain preliminaries of insincerity. The purport of these views cannot be mistaken. All, save those who will hoodwink themselves, must see to what they point and lead. But their apologists are sleeplessly wary. Their common artifice is, that their system knows no quarrel with

revelation. Believers are thrown off their guard. There never existed a deeper-plotted conspiracy against revealed truth. It is not honestly formal and declared. It marches to no assault and defiance. Its device is, to destroy every relation in which man can stand to true religion, to relegate him from its province and category, to mock all its claims upon him, to degrade him into soulless indecision, to abandon him a sport to the whirl of chance. It would blot out all religion from his nature. Its last design is to make it impossible that he should be religious. The real, the esoteric, doctrine of this school is, a gross limitation imposed upon the moral capacity and improveableness of our nature. It raises a resistless fence beyond which the human agent cannot pass. It is invincible restriction. It means nothing more nor less. We cannot make light of it as the fashion and plaything of the day. But in detestation of its lying words and pernicious consequence, we suffer ourselves to be betrayed into no extreme. We disparage not the wonderful fabric of the human body. We deprecate all descriptions of it as the coil and dungeon of the mind. The temple is worthy of its genius. It is entirely contrived and consecrated for it's service. Nor can we be driven, by fear of implication in inconsistency, from those conclusions which common consent draws as to the connexion between physiognomical development and mental inbeing. We can still read the eye as the mirror, and the brow as the throne, of the intellect!

Another opposition is raised to the accountability

of man from the circumstances in which he is placed. Their power is alleged to be so assimilating and formative, that his character must be shaped by them. He is supposed to be always within a sphere of attraction, within the sweep of a vortex, out of which he cannot escape. A process is affirmed to be always going on from without, changing to itself all the determinations of the mind. But this theory passes by unexplained the cause that circumstances exist. They do not exist independently of us. For by them are not intended the scenes and operations of material nature, but our social opinions and practices, in custom, in institution, in amusement, in expectation, in requirement, in law. They are made and moulded by us. The fashion of the world is its own tyrannous demand. Circumstances may be stamped with an evil character, and charged with an injurious influence, but they are shaped on our forge. And withal, circumstances are generally more on the part of virtue than individual taste would choose. They are often, in many of their forms and distributions, salutary and counteracting. They interpose difficulty and scandal between the tempted and the temptation. They are safeguards of morality, and have grown out of social reflection and experience. They are built upon the general conviction that "righteousness exalteth a nation." They offer resistance to appetite, and entrenchment against exaction. They are checks, producing shame and repressing selfishness. They are nearly always favourable to the general decency and order. Every man addicted to vice feels in them a restraint.

Therefore multitudinous life is so incomparably more regulated than insulated life. No community can be great and good without the force of opinion, and that opinion must be on the side of what is great and good. It is written of the wicked: "They will not frame their doings to turn unto their God." Their guilt is not in conforming to others, and in yielding to external arrangements it is their own circumstances, their Own doings," lying altogether in their power,which they will not "frame." "Their heart gathereth iniquity." Circumstances merely reflect ourselves.-— We are aware that a more fearful aspect of circumstances has been exhibited on every stage of the Pagan world. There is often a concentration of the worst vices of our nature. But what is this save the ascendancy of their depraved taste and temper? It is the "will of the Gentiles." Such a state is pronounced by revealed truth to be the result of unholy inclination. "They did not like to retain God in their knowledge." The consequence was: "God gave them over to a reprobate mind." The stricter sense, the closer reading, of the original is: "That since hey did not use their judgment" to retain God in their knowledge, he gave them up to a misjudging mind." A moral cause blinded them.

Only on this

"God's judg

account can it ever be true of man, that ments are far above out of his sight." Amidst the abominations of "the worst of the heathen,"-whatever the general example might indicate, however

• Ἐδοκίμασαν.

b

̓Αδόκιμον νοῦν.