We note this first, that no created will is perfectly free. God is self-determined in action; but every creature is bound by conditions; and first, by the limitation of his power. He cannot effectually will anything which is impossible for him. But further, we know our own will to be determined in part by many influences within us and without us-passion, prejudice, habit, the domination of another, allurements of pleasure, revulsion from pain, and the like. Some of these are bodily conditions; others would seem to affect spirit apart from body. To be set free from them, so as to act by deliberate choice according to the Will of God, is the hope of the gospel.

But how does created will consist with the infinity of God? There are two difficulties. In the first place, if all things be governed by God's providence, what room is there in creation for any will but his? Or conversely, if there be any freedom of will in the creature, how is the whole creation governed by God's providence? It is the question which St. Paul encountered: "Who withstandeth his Will?" And again, if the Knowledge of God be infinite, all things that shall be are already known to him; and they cannot be known if they are not already fixed and determined. How then is there room for determination by the choice of the creature?

1

To these two questions no explicit answer is possible. St. Paul could but say in reply that even if man had no freedom, even if he were passively subject to the Will of God as the clay to the hand of the potter, he would yet have no complaint against God. "Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why didst thou make me thus?" St. Paul was regarding the moral aspect of the question. It is equally unanswerable if looked at

1 Rom. ix. 19.

from the intellectual standpoint. There are two facts, each of which is known to us in part by nature, perfectly by revelation. The one fact is that we have the faculty of will, and a measure of freedom; the other fact is that the Knowledge and the Will of God are infinite. We have no means of correlating these apparently contradictory facts. Analogies may be found in the science of mathematics. We define parallel straight lines by saying that they never meet, however far produced. But the higher calculus shows that if produced to infinity they meet. In every science our experience is only of that which is limited; when we transcend our experience, reaching truths that lie beyond, we find contradictions to experience; and yet our experience is true within its limits. Within the range of our experience we know that we are in a measure free and self-determined.

In the order of creation, therefore, the Will of the Creator can be opposed by the will of the creature. Regarded in this relation, the Will of God assumes the character of Law, and opposition is lawlessness or sin. The result is disorder and evil in that which God made good. The possibility of this evil is involved in the creation of spirit. As soon as there comes into being a spirit which is not God, the opposition of will becomes possible. The objection sometimes raised that God is thus made the author of evil is merely superficial. To create a being capable of evil is not to be the author of evil, unless the created being is so formed as to be under the necessity of doing wrong when the opportunity Occurs. We are to think of the human spirit not as we now know it in ourselves, hampered and confined in will by acquired habits, but as originally created in a freedom bounded only by the limits of natural possibility, free to will the good as God wills.

A superficial objection may be thus easily answered, but the truth reaches beyond this reply. For the perfection of created spirit, the capacity of sinning is necessary. The perfection of every other creature is to fulfil God's purpose passively by being what he has said; the perfection of created spirit is to fulfil God's purpose actively by working together with him in knowledge and will. For the attainment of this end freedom is needed; and freedom is unreal if there be not a real choice; and choice is unreal if there be not a real alternative. The one alternative being concord with the will of God, the second is necessarily discord, lawlessness, or sin. The possibility of evil is therefore involved in the possibility of good for created spirit. The possibility of evil is a part of that work of creation which is wholly good.

Our knowledge of created spirit extends to the human spirit, and to those other spirits which are called angels or demons. All these alike were created with a capacity of good and evil; and this very capacity being their good, we may say that they were created good. Their actual good or evil depends upon the exercise of their free will. Of man we shall have more to say. Of angels and demons it is enough to say that some have chosen the good and continue in perfect obedience; others have chosen evil and continue in rebellion, their choice being apparently final. Of these we know by revelation that one great and malignant spirit, called by men Satan, the Devil, the Enemy, is peculiarly engaged in plotting against the spiritual welfare of man, and that by his envy man was first beguiled to evil. The demons are thought to be in some degree subject to him and doers of his work, but in many cases they would seem, from the little we know of their doings, to be not so

much malignant as mischievous and worthless spirits. St. Paul says very plainly that the objects of pagan worship were demons who intercepted the honour due to God, and this opinion was generally held during the first Christian ages. It may with all reserve be doubted whether he spoke by revelation, or was expressing only his own judgment of the particular cases before him. It is however certain that demon-worship, intended for such, prevails in some regions.1

Regarding the attributes of God in relation to created spirit, we have to observe that the immutability of God is, in respect to our understanding, the attribute of Truth. Truth is the conformity of expression to reality. God expressing himself to his creatures by his Word, in creation or in revelation, is "God who cannot lie." The Perfection of God, considered relatively to created spirits in rebellion, is the attribute of Holiness; by which attribute he was specially revealed in the Old Testament. Holiness signifies principally separation from everything that mars perfection, or, in the language of Scripture, defiles. God is "of purer eyes than to behold evil."3 The distinction of the Law between clean and unclean was intended to suggest this Holiness or unmingled Purity of God; and his chosen people were for the same reason to be separate from others, not mingled with the heathen. The Will of God, as we have seen, takes the form of Law for those creatures that have the power of free obedience. The Love of God becomes Goodness when regarded as ordering his dealings with men; contrasted in Our thought with his Holiness and Justice, it becomes the

I Cor. x. 20; cf. Rev. ix. 20. I do not know whether to include among forms of demon-worship the vagaries of latter-day Spiritualism. 3 Hab. i. 13.

2 Titus i. 2.

attribute of Mercy for those who have transgressed his Law.

SECT. VI.-The End of Man

We are not to ask why God made man, for we cannot think of his operation as determined by any motive external to himself. In their true nature, things are what they are purely because God wills them so to be. But since in the order of creation the human will is able to oppose the Divine Will, we may ask to what intent man was created. It is not enough to know what he now is. We have no certainty that he is what he was intended to be. On the contrary, we know by revelation that he is not now fulfilling the intention of God the Creator. But before we can profitably consider this failure, we must see what is the end which he fails to attain.

Since man is created a spiritual being, with the faculties of knowledge and will, the end of his being is found in the exercise of these faculties. The faculty of knowledge is to be exercised upon the highest of objects. Man is created to know God. In this knowledge, according to the word of the Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal life of man consists. The capacity of such knowledge is the principle of life; the exercise of it is actual living. The faculty of will is to be exercised in harmony with the Divine Will. It is obvious that man cannot fulfil the end of his being if he oppose the will of the Creator. But further, it is only by the voluntary subordination of his own will to the Divine Will that he can find perfect happiness or bliss, for only in this way can he hope to obtain the perfect realization of his desires. But our knowledge of