But how obviously defective would be the constitution, if good and bad examples were equally sure to contribute to the happiness of children. Yet so far as we are able to discern, the rewards, both of virtue and vice, in the present life, are generally the natural effects of obedience and disobedience; and who knows that this will not be the case in the world to come? If it be so, then, in a sense truly impressive, it may be said, "The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him; and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him."

How can it be true that God rewards every man according to his works, if the rewards are the natural effects of obedience or disobedience? God is the author of the constitution which connects obedience with pleasure, and vice with pain. The bread procured by labor is the gift of God, as really so as was the manna from heaven, by which the Israelites were fed. dealeth with a slack diligent maketh rich." of divine providence.

He becometh
poor that
hand; but the hand of the

Such is the ordinary course
The rewards in these cases

are seen to be natural effects of sloth on the one hand, and of diligence on the other; yet they result according to a divine constitution; and the hand of the Lord is seen in this wise distribution of rewards according to the works of the different agents.

NO. XI.

Coleridge on Original Sin.

In the " Aids to Reflection," Mr. S. T. Coleridge has some views on the doctrine of original sin different from any I have before seen. If I have been successful in my inquiries to ascertain his meaning, the following are his ideas. The phrase original sin is a pleonasm. There is no such thing as derived or hereditary depravity, in the common acceptation of the terms. As Adam fell by his own act, so it has been with each of his posterity. Each man's own "evil will" is his original sin. But this original sin is "a mystery," not to be explained. Some extracts may justify the statement now given of his views.

"In this sense of the word original, and in the sense before given of sin, it is evident that the phrase original sin is a pleonasm, the epithet not adding to the thought, but enforcing it. For if it be sin it must be original; and a state or act that has not its origin in the will, may be a calamity, deformity, disease, or mischief; but sin it cannot be.' p. 164.

"A moral evil is an evil which has its origin in the will. An evil which is common to all must have a ground common to all. But the actual existence of moral evil we are bound in conscience to admit; and that there is an evil common to all is a fact; this evil, therefore, must have a common ground. Now this evil ground cannot originate in the Divine will; it must, therefore, be referred to the will of man. And this evil ground we call ori

ginal sin. It is a mystery, that, is a fact, which we see, but cannot explain; and the doctrine a truth, which we apprehend, but can neither comprehend nor communicate." p. 174.

"The corruption of my will may very warrantably be spoken of as a consequence of Adam's existence a consequence, a link in the historic chain of instances where that of Adam is the first. But that it was on account of Adam, or that this evil principle was, a priori, inserted or infused into my will by the will of another ed in scripture, explicitly or by implication. It belongs to the very essence of the doctrine, that, in respect to original sin, every man is the adequate representative of all men." p. 176.

this is no where assert

The phrase "the will of man," may mean either the faculty of willing, or its volitions. In some instances it may be uncertain which of these is intended by Mr. C.; but in general it is pretty obvious that he means the faculty of willing; and if 1 understand him, he supposes original sin to be an evil in this faculty, produced by a self-determining power. The following passages may render this meaning still more obvious.

In p. 170 he used the words "the corrupt and sinful nature of the human will as exegetical of "original sin." In page 172, having spoken of the divine law as " positively good," he says-"Whatever resists, and, as a positive force, opposes this in the will, is therefore evil. But an evil in the will is an evil will; and as all moral evil is of the will, this evil will must have its source in the will. And thus we might go back from act to act, from evil to evil, ad infinitum, without advancing a step." In the two paragraphs next following the last quo

ted words, we have ideas which deserve attention.

"We call an individual a bad man, not because an action is bad, but because it has led us to conclude from it some principle opposed to the law, some private maxim or by-law in the will, contrary to the universal law of right reason in the conscience, as the ground of the action. But this evil principle must be grounded on some other principle which has been made determinant of the will, by the will's own self-determination. For if not, it must have its ground in some necessity of nature, some instinct or propensity imputed, not acquired, another's work, not our own. Consequently, neither act nor principle could be imputed, and, relatively to the agent, not original, not sin.'

"Now let the ground on which the fact of an evil inherent in the will is affirmable in the instance of any one man, be supposed equally applicable in every instance and concerning all men, so that the fact is asserted of the individual, not because he has committed this or that crime, or because he has shown himself to be this or that man, but simply because he is a man -let the reader do this, and he will have before him the precise import of the scripture doctrine of original sin." p. 173.

Mr. Coleridge was aware that the popular view of man's liability to sin confounds the distinction between crime and calamity, and ascribes an evil nature in man to the anger of God on account of the sin of Adam. He seems also to have been embarrassed with the belief that sin can be accounted for on no other hypothesis than that of an evil cause. To avoid one of the difficulties and solve the other, he has ventured to assert an "evil inherent in the will of man," which constitutes it an

"evil will;" and he talks about the " corrupt and sinful nature of the human will." This "evil will " is what he calls " original sin," and "common to all;" so that it may be affirmed of any man, not on the ground of a sinful act, but " simply because he is a man,”—just as we should say of a particular wolf, he is carniverous, not because he has killed a sheep, but simply because he is a wolf. But with all the respect I feel for Mr. C., as a learned and good man, I cannot persuade myself that he has shunned the difficulty which he wished to avoid, or solved the difficulty of accounting for the first evil in man by an evil cause. His opinion appears to be, that there is universally a radical defect or evil in the faculty of willing, or the will itself, amounting to a corrupt and sinful nature of the human will;" and that this sinful nature of the will is the property of every man as a man, as truly as the carniverous appetite is the property of the tiger as a tiger. But did the tiger form his own carniverous appetite? Or did man form his own faculty of willing, with an "evil inherent." Mr. C. indeed supposes a self-determining power in the will; but if there be also in the will a radical evil, what can the self-determining power do more than to enable the will to choose according to its own "sinful nature?"

66

In page 169 Mr. C. discards the hypotheses. of "sin inflicted," or "a tendency to sin, implanted." Of "sin inflicted he says, "this would be calamity." Of a Of a "tendency to sin implanted," he says, "for which let the planter be responsible." But what better is a "corrupt and