gainst it, than the idea of the impossibility of God's interfering with the spontaneous workings of the minds of His weak and erring children; that the Author of being has endowed mankind with powers which can of themselves work out confusion to His plans, disappointment to His desires, and eternal frustration to His Will, while at the same time He has deliberately manacled His own right arm, that it should not interpose to reverse the evils which spring up, and avert impending ruin. Yet this is the character of that great doctrine of 'Free Agency' which is gravely and confidently urged against the faith of the salvation of all kindreds. But no matter. Let men, all who may, let the world, believe such doctrines. Yet the stupendous panorama of existence is still moving on in a sublime and unvarying order, to its appointed end, and the evidencesare plain and sufficient, that

"He feeds the sacred fire

By which the mighty process is maintain❜d,
Who sleeps not nor is weary; in whose sight,
Slow circling ages are as transient days;
Whose work is without labor, whose Designs,
No flaw defects, nor difficulty thwarts,

And whose Beneficence no change exhausts."

It is not true that man is possessed of the power of willing or choosing one thing as well as another. Man is the complete creature and unconscious subject of Circumstance, and Circumstance of God. He is possessed of a constitution, which has laws, and those laws, and the laws of external things work out their sure and undeviating effects. Every impulse of the soul and body is as much the production of surrounding causes, as the phenomena of nature. Not the most trivial motion or occurrence that can be imagined, no more than the grandest revolutions of being, could have by any possibility been ordered otherwise than they have been without destroying the universal harmony of things, without interfering with the very Purpose of the Divinity, as manifested in the eternal laws in which all things were fast tened in the beginning, and through which all things are perpetually sustained. Everything is thus not only as it

must be, but as it should be, and as God wills. Man then is not a 'free agent,' not a being whose thoughts, and doings, and feelings, and character, and destiny are entirely at his own command. What does he know of, or how can he control, the condition of his mind for a day, or even for an hour or minute of the future? It seems to us an indisputable truth, that every thought, every motive, every deed, and every motion that is wrought in the human constitution, arises from the operation of the hidden laws of the mental and physical economy which are unbending and inavertible Thus the infinite variety of character and condition in men, which the world exhibits. And it is a wise provision that things are so. All men could not be made alike, unless they were born and reared under identical circumstances, which were both utterly impossible and impracticable. But the Creator so moulds the character and the very actions of every individual through the instrumentality of exterior conditions and influences, that all men have their appointed personal sphere to fill, and so the world is full, and there are no two souls alike. If man is really the author and architect of his own character, when does that self-creation be- * gin? It cannot be defined, for the premise is not true.

I repeat, we have not the power within us of creating our own choice. Are we ourselves the author of our fixed and unwavering preference of pleasure to pain, of happiness to misery? May we choose if we will to love the paupers or vagabonds of the streets as well as our parents, family, and friends? Can we please to relish one kind of food to eat as well as another? or the fodder of cattle if we choose as well as the provisions which are usually considered appropriate to man? Accidents, and illness, and death, we need not be troubled about them, for we have only to command our potent wills, and they cannot harm us! How foolish are men for going to hell, when they have the ample power to prevent it, and may just as well go to heaven, if they will only please to turn about and travel the other way!

Now the fact is, we are not so the sovereigns of our own wills and choice. God makes every individual being for a certain destiny, and surrounds him with circumstances

which contribute to afford him those experiences which will be to his everlasting benefit; and in order that His purpose shall be exactly fulfilled, is it most reasonable to suppose that He abandons that frail man to himself and to Chance, so that His will may, or shall almost inevitably, be defeated; or that He, on the contrary, carefully attends to the means, 'directs all his ways,' fixes his instincts, guides and controls his impulses and actions, propels the workings of his mind, and superintends the effects of every outward influence, so that the complicated tissue of causes shall all conspire to hasten the accomplishment of His pleasure?

"We will, and act, and talk of liberty,

And all our wills, and all our doings, both,
Are limited within this little life.

Free-will is but Necessity in play,

The chattering of the golden reins which guides
The Purposes of Heaven to their goal."

PROPOSITION FOURTH.

The Lord has Repeatedly PROMISED, the Ultimate Salvation of All Men.

PROOFS.

1st. To Himself.

'And the Lord said, Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I will do? Abraham shall surely become a Great and Mighty Nation, and All the Nations of the Earth shall be Blessed in him.'—Gen. xxii. 17, 18.

2d. To the First Parents.

'I will put enmity between thee, [the Serpent,-Sin, personified, the evil principle, the carnal law of the members' that lurks in the body as a Tempter,-see Jas. i. 14.] and the Woman, [by appointing sorrow, suffering and moral death the inevitable and speedy effect of disobedience,] and between thy seed, [Suffering, Error, and Death,] and her seed, [CHRIST.] IT [the Redeemer,] SHALL BRUISE THY HEAD, [this is the ancient Promise of the ultimate

total Destruction of Evil,] and thou shalt [only] bruise his HEEL,' [a curable injury of the most inferior nature, showing that the damage of Sin is entirely remediable.-Gen. iii. 15. In this passage, there is an important point to be noticed, besides the glorious Promise it comprises of the salvation of all. It lies in that first clause in which the Lord declared that He would put enmity between the Serpent and the Woman. Now the Woman here is to be understood the representative of the whole race of man; and then we shall understand from those words, that God should affix a perpetual and irreconcilable enmity between mankind and the principle of evil. Universalists are peculiar in fully believing that the execution of this sentence has been completely fulfilled, that there does actually exist, that there ever has existed, in the hearts of all men, not only a natural, instinctive hatred of sin, and of whatever is corrupt and abominable, but that there is also in the constitution of every man, an innate admiration, love, and reverence for those things that are good, and beautiful and excellent. And this principle still holds good, if we admit that many nations and millions of men have not been possessed of correct ideas of what is good and what is evil; for confessedly, there does exist certain conceptions of right and wrong, of good and evil, in the minds of the most uncultivated of our species. So, we can

not think that such a thing has ever existed in the human bosom as a love of sin, for itself alone. But we would rather contend, in the light of all the world's experience, and the soundest deductions of moral philosophy, that the most depraved of men loathe their own iniquities, and are led into them, not for a love of the evil, but through the vain expectation of arriving at some imagined good which is hoped to be attained thereby. Thus, the very participation of evil is itself an evidence in one way of the universal aspiration of mankind to higher good. But as the way of transgression must eternally be found at enmity with the true interest of the soul as well as with its unperverted impulses and deepest yearnings, there is no danger but that, with the potent co-operation of the Spirit of Grace, all souls will sooner or later come to realize that 'it is an evil thing and a bitter,

to forsake the Lord their God,'so that they 'shall loathe themselves in their own sight,' 'their own wickedness shall correct them,' and they shall seek the pleasant ways and peaceful pathsof wisdom.

3d. To Abraham.

'And the Lord said unto Abram, In thee shall ALL THE FAMILIES OF THE EARTH be Blessed.'-Gen. xii. 3.

4th. To Isaac.

'And the Lord appeared unto Isaac and said, In thy Seed shall All Nations of the Earth be Blessed.'—Gen. xxvi. 4.

5th. To Jacob.

'And behold a Ladder [see John i. 51,] set up on the Earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold, the angels of God ascending and descending upon it. And behold, the Lord stood above it, and said, I am the Lord God of Abraham, thy father, and the God of Isaac; the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I Give it, and to thy seed. And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth; and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south, and in thy seed shall ALL THE FAMILIES OF THE EARTH be Blessed.' -Gen. xxviii. 12--14. This vision of Jacob concerning the 'land of promise,' and indeed all that is recorded respecting that beautiful country, is considered typical of the inheritance and beatitude of the great Promised Canaan of the spiritual world, which through the seed of this Patriarch, should be bestowed [mark, 'I will GIVE it,' not offer,] upon All the Families of the Earth.' If there was ever a human being who did not belong to any family of the earth, then we would grant that his immortal blessedness is not Promised here, at least. But, I tell you, dear reader, it takes nothing short of a Universalist to believe such testimonies as this. To all others, they are a mere 'dead letter.'

6th. To Moses.

And the Lord said, I have pardoned according to thy