the requirements of his nature in proportion as he is advancing towards the perfection of his being.1

Perfection consists in living according to law, which in other words is the will of God; 2 and the more our nature is

ment of it. . . . Thus, when men most fly from God they still seek him. But they seek him in their worldly lusts: they blasphemously attribute all that God really is to something that is most unlike him."-(Rev. J. SMITH: Discourses.) "In the midst of its greatest wanderings, humanity never loses sight of the idea of its origin and destiny; a dim recollection of its ancient harmony pursues and agitates it; and, without renouncing its passions, without ceasing to love sin, it longs to reattach its being, full of darkness and misery, to something luminous and peaceful, and its fleeting life to something immovable and eternal."-(VINET.) "By the Fall man lost neither the desire, nor the means, nor the capacity of happiness: he lost the right direction of the desire-the fine moral taste, which alone could detect and appreciate the proper means of gratification." 1"The end of all beings is the perfection of their nature; the perfection of any nature is enjoying all the happiness it is capable of."—(Dr. J. ELLIS.) God has "joined our duty and happiness together, and prescribed that for our work, the performance whereof is a great reward."(H. SCOUGAL.) "Wickedness doth as naturally make us miserable as it makes us unlike to the most happy being. . . . As evil makes us miserable, so goodness makes us happy."--(Dr. WHICHCOTE.) "It would seem strange, perhaps, should I say that it is a sin to be miserable, and that it is a sin not to be happy; but yet, when narrowly examined, I believe it will appear to be no stranger than true; for the effect must needs partake of the cause, and misery must therefore be undoubtedly sinful, because it is acknowledged to be the offspring of sin."-(C. How: Meditations.) God "hath joined together in their ultimate elements, and by their very essence, both sin and suffering, and happiness and virtue. The same conscience that tells us that it is not the penalty that makes the sin tells us also that unhappiness is inseparable from sin, and should bear an exact proportion to it. Evil could not be evil if it did not engender unhappiness; and in giving up sin to sorrow, God does nothing but yield an object to its own nature. Everything constrains us to believe that the penalty of sin, both here and elsewhere, will be entirely drawn from sin itself."-(VINET.) Man's "chief good and chief evil... can be no other than the maintenance or the perfection of his being on the one hand, and its impairment or imperfection on the other hand." (Prof. FERRIER.) "Cæteris paribus, a man is happy even in this life in proportion to his virtue." (Archbishop WHATELY.) "So gracious hath God been to us, that he hath made those things to be our duty which naturally tend to our felicity; and we cannot glorify God more than by doing our duty, nor can we promote our own happiness more effectually than by the same way."-(TILLOTSON.)

2"The Creator having . . . created man for happiness, and having implanted in him an inseparable inclination to felicity... must have given him also... rules to point out the means of procuring and attaining it."-(BURLAMAQUI: Natural Law.) "The whole world around us and the whole world within us are ruled by law. Our very spirits are subject to it, those spirits which yet seem so spiritual, so subtile, so free." - (Duke of ARGYLL: Reign of Law.) "All created righteousness,

1

brought into conformity with law, the more perfect it is.1 It is when the actions and the will are in harmony with law that the man is free, being no longer subject to law, but a law unto

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whether of men or angels, hath respect to a law as its rule, and is a conformity thereunto." (Rev. T. BOSTON.) 'He from whom all laws take their rise and emanation is not himself without law, nor, in a sober sense, above it." (JEREMIAH WHITE.) "God has no superior to prescribe laws to Him, and yet is eternally bound by the rectitude of His own name— that is, the rules of right reason. These are so many laws to Him which He perpetually and inviolably observes. They strictly and formally oblige Him; nor can the obligation ever be dissolved." (Rev. J. BALGUY.) "God, from whom all law originates, is not himself without law; uor, in a sober sense, above it. The primitive rules of His government do not spring from His absolute will, but from the sacred decrees of reason and goodness."-(Rev. JAS. SMITH.) God's "moral government consists in subjecting rational creatures to law, and dealing with them according to the sanctions of that law."-(Dr. PYE SMITH.) Of law there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the bosom of God; her voice the harmony of the world; all things in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power; both angels and men, and creatures of what condition soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet all with uniform consent, admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy."-(HOOKER: Ecclesiastical Polity.) "If there be a superintending Providence, and if His will be manifested by general laws, operating both in the physical and moral world, then must a violation of these laws be a violation of His will, and be pregnant with inevitable misery."-(Prof. SEDGWICK.) “Est enim lex nihil aliud nisi recta et a numine deorum acta ratio, imperans honesta, prohibens contraria."―(CICERO.) "The rules of art are not the fetters of genius; they are fetters only to men of no genius." - (Sir J. REYNOLDS.)

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The happiness of every creature is promoted when it obeys the law of its true nature; its happiness is thwarted when it disobeys that law." -(SOCRATES.) "By obedience to the laws of God, man may be as happy as his present state will allow."-(President WAYLAND.) Man is furnished with everything proper or necessary to his condition, and his glory must be to act according to the order and perfection of his being."—(Dr. J. ELLIS.) "The practical goodness of the "religious man really consists in his just living, according to nature or according to the laws of his whole being, the physical, moral, and social laws under which he is placed, to be in harmony with which is virtue."—(Rev. T. BINNEY: Both Worlds.) "It will readily be seen that for all his happiness in this life, man must depend on his obedience to the natural and moral laws of God." -(PAXTON HOOD.) "Sin is any want of conformity unto or transgression of any law of God, given as a rule to the reasonable creature.”—(Westminster Larger Catechism.) "The righteousness wherein man was created was the conformity of all the faculties and powers of his soul to the moral law."-(Rev. T. BOSTON.) "The soul can never recover its lapse from above, but by . . . a real performance of the duties of the law that fully represent the lawgiver's will and sovereignty." (Dr. Wì. BATES: Spiritual Perfection.) "Sin is a want of conformity to the will of God, and were a desire to do the will of God at all times the overruling principle of the heart and conduct, there would be no sin.”—-(Dr. CHAL

himself. In grace no less than in nature God works by law, in the conversion, building up, and perfecting of the human

MERS.) "If any of the human race could have been found capable of performing a perfect obedience to the law of God in all its minute requirements, doubtless such service would have been accepted, and the individual restored to the lost favour of his Maker."-(Rev. E. C. TOPHAM: Philosophy of the Fall.)

1 "Perfect harmony supposes two distinct beings, but so united that there is no longer any separation."-(VINET.) "In the original purity of a rational agent the uncorrupted will is identical with the law. Nay, inasmuch as a will perfectly identical with the law is one with the divine will, we may say that in the unfallen rational agent the will constitutes the law." "In irrational agents the law constitutes the will. In moral and rational agents the will constitutes, or ought to constitute the law. I speak of moral agents unfallen."-(COLERIDGE: Aids to Reflection.) "Before the fall there was no obedience properly so called, no obedience, at least, which was self-conscious; love absorbed all: the human soul moved in the communion of the divine. . . . The great aim of Christianity is to unite us once more to God, to transform duty into sentiment, to teach us to love what we ought to do, and to do what we ought to love."—(VINET.) "Liberum Arbitrium, which men so brag of, as it includes posse male agere, is an imperfection, for such liberty or power is not of God. To do amiss is not power, but deficiency and deformity, and infinite power includes not in it a possibility of evil." -(Dr. WHICHCOTE.) "The excellence of man is his dependence; his subjection displays two marvellous images, the infinite power of God and the dignity of our own soul. . . . Man independent would be an object of contempt, the feeling of his own imperfection his eternal torture." (VAUVENARGUES.) "We do most grossly mistake the nature of liberty if we promise it to ourselves in an evil, wicked cause. For, upon due search and trial, it will be found that perfect freedom is nowhere to be found but in the practice of virtue." (TILLOTSON: Sermons.) "Virtue is obedience. . . . He who only obeys himself does not obey; he who is only virtuous to please himself does not know what to be virtuous means."-(VINET.) Self-will is the source of envy, malice, impatience, and of all those black passions and inordinate lusts that reign in the hearts and lives of wicked men."-(Rev. J. SMITH.) A nature such as his could not think of law and obedience, save as restraint. He could not see that in yielding his own way, and taking God's lay the only freedom of which the human being made in the image of God is capable."-(GEORGE MACDONALD.) "The great controversy between God and man is whose will shall prevail-his or ours."(Dr. ISAAC BARROW.) "The essence of all religion, that was and that will be, is to make men free."-(T. CARLYLE.) "The Christian wills beforehand what his Master wills, and for him necessity is changed into liberty." (VINET.) "This is an admirable expression in the first collect in the Morning Prayer: "Thy service is perfect freedom."—(How: Meditations.) "The kingdom of heaven is not come, even when God's will is our law; it is come when God's will is our will."-(G. MACDONALD.) "The truth of obedience is to be of one will with God; and God hath but one will, and that is simply good."-(HENRY MORE.) "When I meet with a soul whose gratitude impels it to accomplish the divine will, a soul that acts because it loves, the law is not abolished for that soul. love all is freedom, joy. If we obey it is without feeling it, without willing,

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soul.1 Grace does not set us free from law, but, on the contrary, brings us more completely under subjection to it.2

or planning to do so, and, indeed, it is only obeying ourselves.”—(VINET.) "The free man is he who is loyal to the laws of this universe.

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The first symptom of such a man is not that he resists and rebels, but that he obeys.”—(T. CARLYLE.) Natura non nisi parendo vincitur."-(BACON.) "Non studemus ut natura nobis, sed contra, ut nos naturæ pareamus."(SPINOZA.) "Nur das Gesetz kann uns die Freiheit geben." (GOETHE.) Let your will go whither necessity would drive, and you will always preserve your liberty.”—(LOCKE.)

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The Holy Ghost in conversion acts in a manner agreeable to our rational nature and to the established order of our faculties.”—(Dr. T. BROWN: Sermons.) The work of God in the conversion of souls is evidently constructed upon a plan; this plan itself must have been based upon the actual disposition of human nature. Consequently, conversion and salvation operate according to a system."-(VINET.) Conversion "is sometimes (not so often now as once) still accomplished speedily, and as by manifest supernatural force but even spiritual life in such cases comes by law."-(Dr. RALEIGH.) "Since God will govern his creation, I do not see how it can be otherwise than according to the present nature of the creature, unless God be pleased to alter that nature."-(CHARNOCK: Divine Providence.) "Nor does it alter the case that in regeneration a higher influence is exerted than that of mere moral suasion, since that influence operates in perfect conformity with the laws of moral action and the freedom of the will."—(ALBERT BARNES.) "The spiritual laws which surround and encompass us as creatures, as beings endowed with the religious capacity, and distinguished by the religious instinct, are just as natural in themselves, and as much belong to nature, as those of the physical and social systems."-(Rev. T. BINNEY.) "Modern science is a system of law. So is evangelical religion. There is through all

physical nature and through the intellectual world, as far as philosophical observation can descry, the calm steady reign of law. . . . Now, what I want to point out, in order that we may clearly note the analogy, is the existence and action of the same principle in its highest, divinest form within the sphere of evangelical religion. This too is a grand system of law." We have "within the sphere of practical religion, just as in the great realms of nature, truths that never change in their own substance, although they are endlessly modified in their effects on individual character, by the characteristics and by the existing circumstances of the individuals. We have forces that act steadily, of which wise and willing souls steadily avail themselves. There are tides of living influence that rise and fall in the Church and in the world, to superficial observation it may seem capriciously, as if the linked chain of cause and consequence were all broken, and the whole phenomena were resolvable into chance, or the despotic acts of a supreme and irresponsible will,—but to a more patient thought, and observation keener-eyed, by the normal action of the spiritual gravitations, which vary as little as do those of sun and moon upon the tides of the ocean.' -(Dr. RALEIGH: Religion and Modern Progress.)

2 Dr. Candlish, speaking of the two relations in which God stands to his people, as a father and as a ruler, says :-"The former relation, the paternal, cannot be allowed to supersede or even to modify the latter, the governmental. . . . The mere existence of intelligent creatures involves their subjection to rule by law and judgment. Their Creator, if his

announce.

The object of revelation is not to supplant, but to supplement and improve nature,1 which, rightly understood, can Sovereignty in his own creation and over it is to be, as it must be, absolute and inviolate, cannot but so govern them. And He must continue so to govern them, whatever other relation he may see fit to assume or The mixing up in any way, or in any measure," of these two “is apt to open a door for the notion, either of law, old strict law, being superseded, or of its being somehow modified. The idea of some sort of compromise between the paternal and judicial in God's treatment of us very readily suggests itself. And believers once justified by faith are either held to have nothing to do with law at all, it being their privilege to act, not from a sense of legal obligation, but from the spontaneous prompting of affection; or else they are held to be under some mysterious new form or fashion of law, partaking too often not a little of the character of licence."-(Fatherhood of God.) It is "an abuse, both of law and Gospel, to presume that its (i.e., the law's) accomplishment by Christ releases believers from any obligation to it as a rule. Such an assertion is not only wicked, but absurd and impossible in the highest degree, for the law is founded on the relation between the Creator and the creature, and must unavoidably remain in force as long as that relation subsists."(Rev. JOHN NEWTON.) Though the Gospel allays the severity and rigour of the law, yet it as strictly requires our sincere and earnest endeavours after perfection as the law required exact obedience."-(Dr. W. BATES.) "The primary and original law of God is the law of nature-that eternal and unchangeable law of morality, which necessarily arises from the nature of creatures, and from their relation to God, and to each other." -(Dr. S. CLARKE.) 'The law will eternally remain law, as truth will eternally remain truth. . . . Law must triumph, even in grace. The law is as eternal as our relations with God, and as God himself; it is truth in the moral order of things, and how can truth be abolished?" -(VINET.) Law is prior both to Conscience and the Bible; it is recognized as prior by both of them; both of them look up to it, and do it homage." The authority of Conscience "lies in the apprehension of the authority of law. To assert and vindicate the authority of law is its proper function. It is only in so far as it is competent to the discharge of that function that its own title of command is valid."-(Dr. CANDLISH: Reason and Revelation.) "Ignorance of the nature and design of the law is at the bottom of most religious mistakes. This is the root of all self-righteousness, the grand reason why the Gospel of Christ is no more regarded, and the cause of that uncertainty in many who, though they profess themselves teachers, understand not what they say, nor whereof they affirm."-(Rev. JOHN NEWTON: Letters.)

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"Christianity shows the sovereignty of its principle, not in destroying anything whatever, but in assimilating all things."-(VINET.) Christianity, entering into all that is human, strives to assimilate it to its own nature, and to imbue it with its own spirit."--(NEANDER.) Christianity is not contrary to the laws by which mankind had formerly been obliged, is not destructive of them; Christ now commands nothing that the natural or moral law had forbidden, and likewise forbids nothing that they had commanded.”—(Dr. HAMMOND.) "To propose the establishment or advancement of revelation by weakening the obligations of reason and morality appears to me just such an undertaking as it would be to undermine a fabric with a view to support and strengthen it."—(Rev. J. BALGUY.)