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CHAPTER II.

IN THE OBJECT OF LIFE.

"For I came from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him that sent me.”— John vi. 38.

No reasonable being acts without a motive. The veriest animal capable of choosing, is determined in his choice by something. It cannot be that man should live without an object to which his actions tend, in which his purposes terminate, which determines his path, and impels him forward in it. Without this momentum communicated from without, the rational, deliberative spirit could no more choose a course and follow it, than the dead masses

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of the material universe could find themselves an orbit and maintain their motion in it, without the restraining force of gravitation. These inert bodies move as they are driven, and if some counter-influence supervene, they cannot choose but to leave their course and follow it. Man has a power of resistance, which these have not. He may choose, so to speak, the centre of his sphere: he may shun the influences which would withdraw him from it. He may strengthen by indulgence, or weaken by resistance, the motives that induce him to act, and determine his modes of acting. He may, by the deliberative will with which he is endowed, choose among the objects that are set before him, which he will pursue, for what he will live, to what he will direct his aims. I know this may be disputed, and may even be metaphysically disproved. It may be said, that man cannot choose in opposition to his nature, the will itself being under the influence of his passions, tastes, and feelings. He cannot choose a good object while a bad one seems

more desirable to him; he cannot prefer that which he does not love to that which possesses his affections;-he cannot, by mere volition, desire what he would not have, nor please himself with that which affords him no delight. This is true, and in this consists the moral inability of man, born in sin, and of his own nature loving it, to make a right choice between the good and evil that are set before him, to renounce the world he loves, and turn himself to the God he loves not. To do this would prove him wise, whereas he is by nature foolish: -to do this would evince a correct judgment, whereas his is blind and perverted :—to do this would be to do the greatest good, whereas he is pronounced incapable of any good. This is scripturally and philosophically true; and our nature must be changed, and our judgment must be enlightened, and the feelings and affections of our hearts reversed, before man will make God his choice.

It is impossible to reflect closely, and not be sensible of the difficulty into which this

position brings us—a difficulty from which human reason, as I think, is totally unable to extricate us. This moral incapacity, so plainly declared in Scripture, and deducible from the very nature of things, if our condition be such as the Scripture says it is, seems, by every process of reasoning to which it can be subjected, to disprove our moral responsibility-so much of it, at least, as is involved in that bad preference, by which we remain separated from God, when means of reconciliation are proposed to us. It is argued, that if a man cannot prefer that good which is uncongenial with his evil nature, and cannot of his own power change that nature, and leave the ways of death for the paths of everlasting life, why is he called upon to do so-why is he reproached for his resistance, and finally condemned for his refusal? At this issue human reasoning must arrive, and human wisdom has nothing to reply. St. Paul himself, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, had nothing to reply. When he had brought his argument

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to this point, he could only say, "Nay, but O man! who art thou that repliest against God?" Much disputation would be spared, if men would cease the argument where St. Paul declined it—if they were not ashamed to own they do not understand, what the Spirit, speaking by the mouth of St. Paul, forbore to explain. It would be well if we did not defer to do that which is required of us, namely, to believe what the word of God declares, till we can do that which is not required of us, namely, to reconcile its apparent inconsistencies. against this submissiveness the pride of intellect revolts. Unable to reconcile the sovereignty of divine grace with the responsibility of man, they who see the former too plainly to reject it, by a very consistent train of reasoning make that which is not written the necessary sequence of that which is written. In doing so, they make void the half of Scripture; that most abundant part of it which addresses man on his wilful rejection of the Gospel; and because they find it plainly written that "no man can

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