-shroud Adam's death with mysterious horrors of woeful anticipation, and make it a death which had not previously existed a death entering by sin (Rom. v. 12).

It is natural to wonder that one wail of sorrow should mingle with the wide chorus of thanksgiving to God; and when we contemplate the past horrors desolating every land, and the possible future unimaginable eternal anguish to be endured by rebels against the Almighty, our amazement becomes an awful dread of some dire reality and calamity which even Infinite Love, Divine Wisdom, Almightiness, may not be able to prevent without violating the purity of moral government. We can, however, conceive that Omniscience may have foreseen that the gift of freedom would render it impossible for the whole universe of spirits to be preserved. So far as man is concerned, we can also see that linking the inevitable danger with a type to show its reality and the unreasonable folly of transgression; and the giving a simple, earnest warning, joined with dread penalty, would be the best and only restrictions which purely moral rule could allow. Our feeble nature, moreover, can form a true conception of Omnipotence in Creation, of Wisdom in Providence, of Love in Redemption. By Creation, God calls into existence all the worlds-occupying them with manifold forms of beauty, and giving them for abodes to living creatures, small as a point of matter, grand as a seraph before the Throne. By Providence, the world of matter is subjected to the physical law of God, and the world of spirit or intelligence to the moral order of God, spreading the profusion of Divine bounty and executing Divine decrees. By Redemption is supplied guidance for the erring, strength for the weak, moral suasion, motives, spiritpower, pardon for the sinner; that every fallen being who wills it may be rescued from degradation and elevated to life and honour. Thus, in some degree, we realise that freedom of the creature involves the possibility and thereby an actuality of evil, which even the Supreme may not be able to prevent, except by departure from the principle of moral rule. "Te fecit liberum non nobilem ; quia impossibile est post libertatem."

Ludovicus Pius, Evil is so intense, that sometimes we would that it were

put an end to at once. We say "Let present misery and future anguish in no wise be permitted." We must not be rash in decision. The malignant influences, painfully felt by us, and our spiritual dangers, "as tenants of this haunted planet," we may be sure, tend to some good end. They are so wrought into the physical and moral plan of the universe that they cannot be regarded as a surprise on the Almighty, or as an unforeseen calamity. The mighty tempter of man, whom we believe to be a subtle fallen archangel, manifested by that temptation how great a degradation had come upon him by wickedness. That archangel chose evil for his good. The fact of choice proves freedom, brings in responsibility, casts out necessity. Freedom in its very essence includes power of choice, and thereby capacity to bring in evil. Man possesses powers of the same nature, but less in degree. If we set before us the essential contrast of light and darkness, of good and evil; that good becomes a higher good by trial, evil a greater evil by refusal of good; that truth must be manifested as separate from a lie, and righteousness must be displayed as opposed to unrighteousness; that through eternal ages the height and depth of truth and right may be seen; we shall begin to know that the mystery of iniquity is a necessary mystery; that a parenthesis of misery must, some time or other, be brought within the Divine rule. If you say -"But for sin I might be happy as a glorious seraph, enjoy an overflow of blessing, have deep insight of Divine goodness; and why should this good not be given at once instead of having to be wrought out by slow process and the misery of millions?" We reply-" The highest and best gift to created beings is freedom: freedom involves choice, responsibility, the possibility of transgression. Shall no free existences be created? nothing to love God? nothing able by choice to say—‘Lord, we are Thine and Thou art ours!' why, this would be sin's most awful triumph! fatal in the casting down of moral perfection and goodness! perverse in turning liberty, which is guided by motive and reason, into supremacy of blind and inevitable fate!" For God not to create because free beings must necessarily have power to abuse His bounty were folly indeed. "How can we conceive a more awful

triumph of evil, than that its dark and hateful spectre, while yet unborn, should tie up the hands of the Almighty from the noblest exercise of His creative wisdom, and imprison His infinite riches of goodness within His own bosom; so that matter should never exist, because it might issue in a soulless and infinite chaos; and no reasonable souls ever spring to life, to love and adore their Creator, lest the dark power of evil should seize upon them, in spite of all His perfection, and drag them down into an abyss of ruin. To deny life to infinite numbers of holy and happy beings, whom His power could create and His wisdom govern, and in whom His goodness might delight itself for ever, through the fear of the victory of evil, in the abuse of His own gifts-what were this but for the Supremely Good to play the coward and the murderer, and thus to deny His own being, and renounce His Godhead, lest the abusers of His free bounty should suffer the just punishment of their crimes ?" 1

There may be mercy even in the condemnation. Punishment may be Divine medicine, the alone effectual, for sin of the soul. Every stroke of God, as a rectifier, may not only be against hatred and all evil, but much more for the enlargement of love, wisdom, and joy. We may be sure that when we have attained that point whence we can view the Divine plan as a whole, we shall find the power of God has not gone beyond His wisdom, nor wisdom exceeded goodness.

Allowing that wisdom permits the entrance of evil, and forbids the exercise of physical power in its destruction; that evil is the abuse of freedom granted to angels and men; evil is not an arbitrary thing on God's part. We are not to think that Divine Omnipotence means the power of dispensing with moral growth, the voluntary exercise of mental power and obedience, or of condensing into a single moment, without the free creature's intelligent and loving co-operation, the great results of the revealed plan of mercy. Granting that evil is a veiling to some, and a casting down to others, it is an unveiling to many more, and the disciplinary means to every creature of receiving power to ascend beyond the former height. Trials, which strand or sink the careless and ill-found, are as 1 "Difficulties of Belief," pp. 66, 67: Prof. Thomas Rawson Birks,

those tempests on the sea, which purify the whole earth, and make mariners skilfully bold. Men are not victims to "the ruffian violence of an impure reprobate ethereal race." The poet may write

and the saint exclaim-" The good that I would, I do not, but the evil which I would not, that I do;" nevertheless, God gives victory to the valiant; and the ruin of those that perish must be ascribed wholly to their own sin, not to the denial, on God's part, of grace. Moreover, who can tell what may happen "when their irremovable sorrow finds beneath it a still lower depth of Divine compassion, and the sinful creature, in its most forlorn estate, and in its utter shame, encounters the amazing vision of tender, condescending, infinite love?”1

It may be seen from such reflections that the origin of sin by abuse of freedom, in the fact of provision against its existence, and provision for its destruction, drives out chance and fate from the world. We men are highly endowed intelligent creatures, connected from the very beginning with transactions which concern many worlds. The living God has ordered that we shall have the power of life in ourselves, and be free. We are free: not a man lives but knows that his freedom counts for something in the world, and freedom includes the possibility of disorder, and the only thing able to banish it is knowledge of the direful consequences. Our state of painful probation appears to be a process to render evil impossible hereafter. Even the present physical struggle is not so much pitiless and embittered, as an adjustment of endless variety, and a display of power exercised with skill. Satan, circumstances, motives, may persuade: not compel. The body loaded with chains so that we move not; a seal on our lips, we speak not; yet, in our conscience, with every moral power, we resent the insult-not as by a new power of freedom, but by the gift that conveyed it of old to the first man. God, who made him free, foreseeing the peril of that freedom, not only rendered the peril conspicuous by "Difficulties of Belief," p. 239: Prof. Thomas Rawson Birks,

1

Return of the Banished.

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type, by warning, by threat, excluding sin on the one side and defining it on the other; but did also meet and rectify the inexcusable abuse of freedom by preparing celestial machinery, spiritual power to work repentance, to effect a moral change, and convert ungodliness into a righteousness that leads up to fulness of peace and joy. Thus, the transgression of the first man, transmitted to us by natural inheritance, is made the ground of advance into higher knowledge and life. The son dies not for the father's sin, but being warned, and sowing to the spirit, reaps life everlasting. Sin, however, and here no mistake must be made, is always sin, and the wages of sin is death; yet if a man say—“I have erred, but mean to err no more," the door is opened to that man. God Himself helps, comforts, saves. Jesus has greater power for moral good than the great archangel possesses for evil. Salvation does more than walk side by side with destruction. The second Adam outruns the old Adam to tell us that the malice of him who assailed our race, and the weakness of him who betrayed our race, are but the small dark cloud that specks the firmament. The miseries of time, the career of sin within a sphere of limited extent and duration, are as nothing in comparison with the infinite and eternal sway wherein, evil being overcome, holiness and bliss are supreme. Even now the tears of Nature glow with a beautiful bow of promise of powers unrevealed, of wisdom unfathomed, of love inexhaustible, by whose beneficent influence the Adamite and pre-Adamite fault will be made to display the wisdom of universal Providence, and establish the government of a righteous King.

"Lord, grant me grace to cling to Thee,

In this presumptuous time,

When reason, by distorting, mars

Thy mysteries sublime,

When none will creep along the ground,

But all must soar or climb."

Poor Man's Quarterly Review.

"Non est ad astra mollis a terris via."

"Afflictiones flores sunt, quibus nectitur tua corona cœlestis."