mind, but the very idea itself of the Divine character. For "God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness."

Not only can man conceive of that image; by the laws which his God-like constitution involves he can conceive of his own closer resemblance to it, and is impelled perpetually to approach it. In philosophy, he conceives of truths insusceptible of proof; themselves the foundation of all evidence. In science, he can conceive of forms incapable of taking sensible representation. The pure and absolute geometry of his mind is nowhere realized in space. In poetry, and in the fine arts generally, however much of beauty or perfection he may succeed in expressing, his pure idea of it remains unexpressed a vision which he cannot reveal to others. His conception even of the "human face divine" is more exalted than any known to have existed in nature.* What painter or sculptor, for example, has ever yet given a head of "the Man of Sorrows" with which we can rest satisfied? But all these conceptions of ideal excellence are only consequences of our being formed in that likeness which comprehends spiritual perfection. And the moral government under which man exists is but the ever-present requirement of the Infinite, calling, by its laws, on every part of the nature of the finite to come nearer to it. His other conceptions of excellence he may often feel as if he were close on the verge of realizing; but though he can never feel thus in relation to excellence of the highest kind-though the call of that spiritual government of which his nature makes him a subject, will be ever becoming louder and more urgent—this fact, so far from depressing, exhilarates and delights him. The conditions of his nature set limits to the rapidity of his progress. And so long as he does not voluntarily fall below these limits which would be sin— he leaves no occasion for sorrow behind him; while every onward step adds to his satisfaction, opens before him a wider prospect filled with incentives to advance, and inspires him with the ardor of ever-accelerating progress.

Thus constantly approaching the standard of infinite Perfection, he would never sustain, for any measurable length of time, precisely the same relation to it. And, for the same reason

*The facial angle is 80°. The ancient artists not only made it a right angle, the Romans went up to 96°, and the Greeks even to 100°; yet the latter is accounted the more beautiful and impressive. The forehead of their Jupiter Tonans overhung the face, denoting grandeur and sovereignty of mind.

on the supposition that his race had remained in unsinning obedience and yet had multiplied no two of them all would have borne, in every respect, the same degree of resemblance to it. Every one would come into existence, or would find himself placed, in circumstances somewhat differing from those of every other member of the human family. This difference, looking at the innumerable relations of man's nature, internal and external, and the inexhaustible combinations of which they are susceptible, admits of interminable variety. And as, from the first moment of responsible existence, the capacity of each would be put in stress up to the measure of his capacity for obedience, every such difference would continue to be exhibited in its relation to the standard of absolute perfection. Not one of them all would be insusceptible of being characterized. Each would be seen in his way to the goal, but in a different part of the course; and would feel that with a slight difference in his previous condition, a corresponding difference in his relative position would also have been apparent.

even the first step in it

20. But if by the laws of his nature unfallen man could conceive of an ever-growing resemblance to God, he could also conceive of an ever-diminishing resemblance to the Divine Image. Such a state of retrogression would be sin. And if even the holy nature of the race would have admitted of endless diversity, what number of ages, what procession of generations, could be supposed capable of exhausting the diversity of character made possible by sin? "When man had once fallen from virtue, no determinable limit could be assigned to his degradation, nor how far he might descend by degrees, and approximate even to the level of the brute; for as, from his origin, he was a being essentially free, he was, in consequence, capable of change, and even in his organic powers most flexible."* If even his likeness to the norma, or Divine original, allowed scope for unlimited variety of character, what but boundless enormity could be expected to appear when man had lost the very model of excellence, and copied only from the suggestions of his own mind. Spiritually, he will need to be "created anew," to be brought back again to the original type, to "the image of him that created him." And in this renewed condition, and in all the incalculable variety of stages of which it admits, it will be found that restoration to God, and self-restoration, are identical. Man's resemblance to the standard of all

*F. Schlegel's Phil. of History, i. p. 48.

excellence is in exact proportion to his conformity to the laws of his being; and this conformity is the measure of his real happiness.

CHAPTER XIV.

CONTINGENCE OR DEPENDENCE.

1. We have seen moral law in its obligation, stability, and essential conduciveness to well-being. Before proceeding to remark further on its immutableness, let us take a survey of the dependent character of the system to which we belong. For "everything created will be found to involve the existence of contingent truth" — truth, that is, of which the existence is not necessary, but conditional; truth dependent on something prior. We are not the iron-bound victims of Fate. A free Being of infinite activity has chosen to create, and to make us at once the representatives and the sharers of His own activity. The wide realms of space confess His creating presence. He hath sown it with worlds. Here, his energy hath expatiated at large, and hath called forth a measureless extent of rejoicing activity. The cosmical arrangements, in all their masses, distances, collocations, and motions; the terrestrial adaptations to these arrangements; and the physiological adjustments to these adaptations, all confess "the good pleasure of His will." And man, by his very power of interpreting this confession, receives an intimation that he, too, belongs to the same dependent system, and is invited to survey the particulars of his dependence. That he should be dependent, indeed, is not an optional, but a necessary condition of his existence; that he should be capable of knowing it, is his distinction and glory.

2. Why was man created when he was neither earlier nor later? According to the hypothesis of necessary development, life invariably follows its physical conditions. The connection is supposed to be fixed, for these natural conditions are regarded as causes, and the only causes necessary to the production of life, so that if the new form of life did not follow the new condition, this law of natural development would prove a fiction. Elsewhere, however, we have shown that such apparent irregu

larities abound both in the vegetable and the animal kingdoms. Neither did the physical conditions of the earth determine the moment of man's creation. The fact that his race has continued to exist for thousands of years, proves that, as far as physical conditions are concerned, he might have safely come into existence later; and there is every reason to conclude that the same conditions were sufficiently prepared for his earlier existence. True, there was a period prior to which he could not have been sustained. Geology shows that during the earlier formations, the physical conditions of the globe, and the nature of the animals which existed on it, would have been incompatible with the existence of the human race. But the same science demonstrates that between that period and the time of man's actual creation, there was an immeasurable interval, extending over, at least, the greater part of the tertiary periods, during which there were no such reasons why man might not have existed. Species existed then which are existing still; and the only reason which can be assigned why man's first appearance was not coeval with theirs, must be sought for in the mind of the Creator. One of the lessons taught by the time of his creation is, that it was dependent on more than physical conditions. His "times are in Thy hand."

3. The same is true also respecting man's earliest locality. He could not have selected it for himself. Nor is it to be supposed that the Being who prepared it for him was restricted in his choice. "It does not appear that Nature has everywhere called organized beings into existence, where the physical conditions requisite for their life and growth are to be found."* Plants, for example, which would have had no existence in a country but for human agency, often find the new climate and conditions into which they are transported, so congenial to their nature, that they rapidly take possession of extensive regions, and may even supplant indigenous tribes. The trees of Paradise would doubtless have flourished in many other places besides "eastward in Eden." While experience shows that the human constitution has a world-wide adaptation. Indeed, what is the globe at large but an Eden prepared for the race? The relative distribution of land and water, and the figure of continents, have doubtless influenced the course of the great migrations of the human family, and the progress of civilization. But all that occasions change in the surface of the planet - the mountain

* Dr. Prichard's Researches, &c., p. 96.

chains which divide climates, determine the course of rivers, and sustain vegetable worlds of their own; oceanic currents affecting the intercourse of nations and developing their intelligence; and volcanic forces changing the superficial aspect of the globe and strangely mingling its component parts - all these are selected and appointed agencies. For even if they are referred to a number of permanent causes which have been in operation from the beginning; we can give, scientifically speaking, no account of the origin of the permanent causes themselves. Why these particular natural agents existed originally and no others, or why they are commingled in such and such proportions, and distributed in such and such a manner throughout space, is a question we cannot answer. More than this: we can discover nothing regular in the distribution itself; we can reduce it to no uniformity, to no law. There are no means by which, from the distribution of these causes or agents in one part of space, we could conjecture whether a similar distribution prevails in another." This witness is true. As long as the present constitution and distribution of bodies remain, all their relations and sequences will remain. But both their origin and their continuance are alike resolvable into the will of Omnipotence. And He who selected the planet which should become the dwelling-place of the human family, selected also the particular spot which the newly-created parent of the race should occupy.

4. Proofs of contingency pervade the constitution of man. His bodily configuration is specific. No theory of development from pre-existing species accounts for it. That it should neither more nor less resemble any of the myriads of animal bodies by which it is surrounded than it does, is owing solely to the choice of the Creator. We say choice; for, doubtless, the Divine decision is regulated by reasons worthy of infinite wisdom; and, as such, equally removed from caprice on the one hand, and from a blind necessity on the other. The pleasures of appetite also have been the subject of the appointing will of God. Herbs and water might have been the only articles of human food, as they are of some of the animal tribes. But in appointing otherwise, what complicated foresight and invention were necessary in the construction of all those substances we use for food; and what exquisite workmanship, not merely in those parts of our body destined to receive pleasure from them, but in

* Mill's Logic, i. 417; ii. 45.