we apprehend them both as necessary existences. In like manner we can apprehend the being of an absolute personal God, though we cannot comprehend the mode of his existence.

We have not an ultimate comprehension of anything finite; as, for example, the great law of gravity, the chemical affinity of atoms, the organizing power of life, the power of the will over the muscles of the body. But we apprehend these things as incomprehensible facts. Let us be reasonable enough to apply the same distinction to the question of a personal God.

The objection, moreover, is a two-edged sword, which cuts both ways alike. If I cannot comprehend how there can be an absolute personality, neither can I comprehend how such a personality may not be. How absurd to limit the possibility of being by my finite comprehension! And what shall we say of the pantheistic scheme which makes the universe an eternal self-development of the absolute, itself impersonal and unconscious, but first coming to consciousness in man? Is that comprehensible? It is not on the naked ground of incomprehensibility that we reject the pantheistic system, but because of its manifest contradictions.

NOTE V.

The proposition: Design implies a designer is, properly speaking, a truism; since the very idea of design is of that which has been designed by some one, who is of course the designer. It is desirable to ascertain by an analysis wherein lies the essence of design. Design, then, belongs only to those relations which may be called contingent, that is, which are not in and of themselves necessary, and which precisely for this reason need to be accounted for; and which, moreover, accomplish intelligible ends. To necessary relations, that is, relations which we cannot conceive of as separable, we never ascribe design. Let us take, for example, a molecule of matter. Waiving the question whether its existence is itself proof of a Creator, we remark that however small we choose to make it, it must still have, from the very idea of matter, the three dimensions of length, breadth, and thickness. We cannot conceive of either of these as separable or absent. Consequently in these three relations we have no evidence of design. If the molecule is to exist, it must exist as long, broad, and thick.; that is, it must exist in space. If there be in the molecule design, it must be back of this necessary relation to space in the idea of matter as a conception of the divine mind. Again, the molecule must exist somewhere in time, and in one of the two states of motion or rest. If, moreover, there be two molecules, they must have towards each other some relation of distance and direction. In such relations, which cannot be conceived of as absent, we do not find the marks of design. But now let us take a fount of type. Both the regularity and the diversity of form in the different VOL. XXIV. No. 96.

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letters give unmistakable marks of contrivance. But passing by the argument from this source, let us suppose that we see the different letters all regularly arranged in separate compartments. We know at once that this arrangement is neither necessary nor accidental; that is, we know that it is the product of intelligence. How much more when we see the letters put to actual use in a page of type ready for the press.

Precisely the same argument for an intelligent author is furnished by nature, only upon an immensely higher and grander scale. The ultimate atoms of matter — ultimate so far as analysis can go at present — like the letters of a fount of type, have different properties, and thus different offices. These properties are not necessarily inherent in matter; for if they were, all atoms of matter would have the same properties. They accomplish, moreover, by their combinations, intelligible ends without number. It is then an imperative demand of reason that they be referred to an intelligent author. Oxygen and hydrogen, for example, uniting in their atoms, form water; oxygen and calcium form quick-lime; oxygen and silicon, silex, which in its comminuted form is sand; ogygen and carbon, carbonic acid. Water and quick-lime, again, by their union form hydrate of lime, and this united with sand, by the help of more water, forms mortar; carbonic acid and quick-lime uniting form carbonate of lime, which in its compact form is marble; marble and lime together enter as materials into the structure of the stately edifice. And so we might go on without end. Under the formative power of life, the combinations among the primitive atoms are immensely more complicated and wonderful; and every new combination, in respect to either proportion or kind, gives new properties and new uses. Thus starch, by successive additions of oxygen, becomes first sugar, then alcohol, then vinegar. In this way material nature, in her ultimate elements, gives irrefragable proof of a designing Author who not only moulds matter, but who gave to matter originally its inmost essence. And if we rise from dead matter to the living orders of nature, we see everywhere immense systems of adaptation, which we instinctively refer to the same designing Author.

But if we rise to the free, uncreated, personal Author of nature, there is in his nature nothing that is contingent and separable; nothing, therefore, that bears the marks of adaptation from a source without himself. He is simply incomprehensible.

NOTE VI.

There are some definitions of human freedom given by men at the farthest possible remove from anything which they would have regarded as pantheistic in principle, which, nevertheless, we must hesitate to admit. Such is the following: The will is as the strongest motive. If this means the motive which actually prevails, it is a truism; if the motive which is intrinsically the strongest, it is false; for the strongest intrinsic motive is always

on the side of righteousness. If it be said that the strongest motive is that which appears the strongest, this brings us to another definition: The will is as the greatest apparent good. Here again we must ask how much is included in this good? Is it mere sensitive gratification in the widest sense, or does it comprehend also the high spiritual and moral good of doing righteousness? If so, this always appears to reason and conscience as something imperative; something which ought to be chosen before all sensitive gratification for the sake of its own supreme excellence. Moral choice always lies precisely here, being exercised between objects differing in kind, and not simply in degree. When we do a base and wicked act we feel at the time and afterwards a sense of self-degradation and guilt — remorse, which bites like a serpent in view of our having acted not simply imprudently and unfortunately, but wickedly. If it be said that when a man sins his mind is engrossed with the contemplation of the lower object to the exclusion of the high spiritual good of holiness, we answer: Granting this to be so, it is because he has voluntarily turned away his mind from the imperative claims of righteousness, and this is free sinful action. There is one other scheme which virtually makes God the only efficient agent in the universe, and all human exercises, holy and wicked alike, the product of his creative power. God himself produces right or wrong volitions in the human heart; and these, it is affirmed, are free, because God creates them free. But this is a contradiction in terms; as if one should affirm that a crooked line is straight because God creates it straight.

Spiritual bondage to sin, the bondage of sinful passion and habit, is an awful reality. That we may be delivered from it we need the help of divine grace. But we should never forget that God holds us responsible not only for being in this bondage, but also for continuing in it, because, as conscience testifies, we thus continue as the free, responsible subjects of his law. Let us beware of confounding motive in free, rational beings with motive force in nature. In nature the motive force does everything, and the effect follows of necessity. But in the moral world the man himself acts freely in view of the motives which are before him, making his election among them; and to anticipate the truth of revelation God holds him responsible under the high sanctions of heaven and hell, to make the election according to righteousness. If the songs of heaven and the wailings of hell be a fiction, then may we begin to raise the inquiry whether human freedom be not also a fiction- a thing of name and not of substance, as too many metaphysicians have made it. But if heaven and hell be realities, then must human freedom and responsibility be confessed to be realities also.

NOTE VII.

The essence of a miracle is the exercise of God's immediate power above nature, such as he employs in creation, although the result may not be the

production of new substance. How the waters of the Jordan were arrested in their course when the Israelites passed over we cannot tell. The scriptural narrative seems to indicate that they impinged against an invisible, immaterial wall, by which the waters that came down from above were brought to a stand," and rose up upon a heap very far from the city of Adam." But for anything that we can tell, this wall may have been the pure will of God, so that here was a counteracting of the laws of nature by power of the same quality as in creation, but not creation itself. When the Saviour fed vast multitudes with a few loaves and fishes there would seem to have been creation in the literal sense of the word. How he instantaneously healed maladies of all kinds, and raised the dead to life by the exercise of his divine power we cannot explain. It is sufficient for us to know that he did all that was in each case necessary. When we attempt to explain the particular mode of miraculous operation in a given case, we involve ourselves in inextricable difficulties. Take, for example, the miracle recorded in the Book of Joshua, by which the sun and moon stood still in the midst of heaven. Respecting the mode of this there has been much speculation. Some have affirmed that the earth was arrested in her diurnal revolution. Undoubtedly God could stop the earth on her axis, and with this all calamitous effects; for he could arrest and control every particle of her substance at the same instant. But it does not follow that this was the way which his divine wisdom chose. If the rays of the sun and moon were so deflected by his divine power as to reach the earth in a constant given direction, then to human vision and this is all that the end of the miracle required—the sun and moon would stand still in the midst of heaven. We have not the presumption to affirm that this was the way; but we simply set the hypothesis over against another, which appears to us less probable. A reverent spirit will receive the fact of a miracle upon sufficient testimony; but when the inquiry is concerning the mode of its operation, it will answer: "O Lord God, thou knowest."

NOTE VIII.

We do not perceive with the senses cause in nature, but only sequence. Hence the astounding error of materialism in confounding antecedent and consequent with cause and effect. Again, we do not perceive human veracity, but only human statements and their accordance with facts. Hence, in like manner, the denial of veracity as an original principle of human nature. But after all the materialist runs his ship on the very rock which he seeks to avoid. Whence that belief in the uniformity of the laws of nature on which he insists? It is not given by the senses, but by the understanding. It rests on a deeper belief in the reality, permanent being, and unchangeable properties of finite substances; all which ideas are gained through the understanding, and not through the senses.

ARTICLE II.

THE SECOND ADVENT AND THE CREEDS OF

CHRISTENDOM.

BY REV. J. A. BROWN, D.D., PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY, GETTYSBURGH, PA.

THE rule of faith with all genuine Protestants is the infallible word of God. In all matters, both of faith and practice, its authority is supreme. In every question of which it professes to treat, or upon which it distinctly touches, the decisive inquiry must be: What does the word of God say? Against all doctors and decrees, all councils and confessions, it stands, and must stand, as the only infallible authority and final arbiter.

But the creeds or confessions of the church are entitled to the greatest respect, and must have weight with all who do not prefer their own wisdom to the collected and tried wisdom of ages. Some creeds are the common inheritance, and express the common faith of all, or nearly all, who name the name of Christ. Others, though less generally received, yet embrace large portions of the church, and, on most points, teach what is recognized as "the faith once delivered to the saints." The creeds universally received, in ancient and modern times, by the Roman, Greek, and Protestant churches, as well as those portions of other creeds or confesssions, containing doctrines in harmony with them, and recognized by all orthodox denominations, must be presumed to accord with the divine word. Were it not so, the whole church of every age, and in every land, must have been allowed to fall into error, a supposition scarcely reconcilable with the care which Christ exercises over his church, or with the gracious promises he has given. The quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus must, if not absolutely authoritative and final, at least weigh much with all who do not despise authority.

It is proposed in this Article to submit the doctrine of the