God at all, must be looked upon as being to a great extent his appointment for each of us. They are largely out of our own control, and so, in a moral estimate of the relation between the Almighty and us, they must be reckoned his appointed conditions of trial. But if it be so, if he gives or withholds. outward opportunities of doing well, why should he not also make like differences in any inward dealings with the spirit of man? It is objected that he deals with man upon the principle of 'giving to him that hath.' Is this a wise charity? Before going further in the way of reply I would again observe that the same principle is continually acted upon in the dealings of God's outward providence. We see it also in that natural moral constitution with which he has endowed us, an appointment which very closely concerns the matter before us, viz. our power to do well or to do ill. St. John's 'grace for grace' (xápw (χάριν ȧvrì xáρiros), and Augustine's 'peccatum pœna peccati,' when regarded as appointments of God, involve no moral principle beyond that which is involved in a feature of human nature, the power of habit on the will. There may be an appearance in these last remarks of defending what seems arbitrary or partial in God's spiritual dealings with men, by analogies from his temporal providence. But I have no idea of resting on such a defence. I shall presently endeavour to point out the weakness of such

a mode of defending doctrines in religion. I would here say that I have only been calling attention to a certain resemblance between one class of God's present dealings with us, which we all know by actual experience, and another asserted by Christianity. I wish only that it be seen that they are alike. I should look for the reconciliation of all such appointments with our ideas of God's goodness in the future state which awaits man. There I would hope that some effectual provision will be found for the good of those who may seem here not to have found a place in their Heavenly Father's mercy. But when I say this, I by no means wish to imply that God can on any moral grounds be expected to deal out, even in the long run and upon the whole, an equal measure of happiness to all men, or, what may be the same thing, bring them all to an equal degree of goodness. There is no ground for such a claim of equality. Indeed, if the principles of these essays be right, such equalisation would not be right, as God is supposed to recognise differences in his creatures which originate with themselves.1 All I think that can be fairly urged is this, that if we speak of God as almighty, all-wise, and all-loving, and then attribute to him the creation of beings in whom there is to be a permanent preponderance of evil, there is to all appearance an inconsistency in what

1 See Essay I. on 'The Origin of Evil,' p. 108.

we say. I need not go over this point again, as I have already spoken upon it with reference to the origin of evil. What I am concerned now to point out is only that the doctrine which makes the good influences of the Divine Spirit not alike for all, may be cleared from the imputation of a harsh partiality, by the same religious hypothesis which we employ to reconcile other seeming inequalities in God's present appointments with his perfect goodness.

The same remarks apply to the moral difficulty in the doctrine of original sin. If we take the more qualified form of that doctrine, which does not speak of any actual imputation of Adam's guilt, but only of a fault or corruption of nature,' which comes to his descendants by inheritance, then the moral objection, I presume, would be that it is hard that any man should be placed at such a disadvantage for no fault of his own. This, I say, would be the moral objection, for the other objections arising from the alleged antiquity of man, or his descent from the lower animals, have their ground in natural, and not in moral, science. So far, however, as the moral difficulty goes, there is nothing which may not be answered by the religious hypothesis to which I have just alluded. And it is obvious that here also we have close analogies in nature. Such contamination by descent is only a form of that principle of heredity which Mr. Galton has illustrated. No doubt his idea

of the origin of moral evil is very different from that of St. Paul. But I do not think that the decision of the question between them lies within the scope of this essay. The question whether this disease of sin in man is imperfectly corrected savagery, or a taint inherited from an ancestor, who, when created innocent, voluntarily fell, cannot I believe be settled upon grounds of moral principle.

I go on now to two doctrines of Christianity which I purpose last to compare with our moral intuitions. They are predestination and everlasting punishment. I have spoken of this latter as a doctrine of Christianity, because it is popularly thought to be so. I purpose at first to consider the two doctrines together, because the difficulty of receiving predestination or election seems to me to arise out of this idea of the everlasting misery of the wicked. The arbitrary appointment of any creature to everlasting misery is plainly repulsive to our simplest and clearest moral feelings. It is utter misrepresentation to speak of such repulsion as the rebellion of man's proud reason. Nor is it an adequate defence to say that all men had a chance of salvation in Adam, a better chance than they would have had in their own persons, and that so by Adam's sin the human race justly became a mass of perdition out of which the Almighty was free to choose the objects of his mercy. For even upon For even upon this hypothesis, the question

still remains unanswered, Why did God create our race, knowing that such would be the issue of their existence with innumerable multitudes, whether the fault be in Adam or in them? And this is the question with which we have ultimately to deal if we are to justify the ways of God to man.'

We cannot, I contend, hold the doctrines of personal election and everlasting punishment in combination, if we admit the conclusion of these essays that religion should not teach anything which the moral feelings of the civilised and enlightened part of mankind clearly and distinctly condemn. Now for predestination or personal election, i.e. the referring of the difference which we see here between the bad and the good to the appointment of God, much may be said. It seems, indeed, to follow very directly from our notions of God's character and government. Some have thought that the idea was involved in the very notion of grace, when conjoined with that of God's foreknowledge.1 Certainly this

combination leads to the idea that God has from all eternity chosen the objects of his present mercy. But the doctrine of election as commonly understood involves more than this. It asserts that the selection of those objects of mercy was purely an act of God's will, an act whose motives were doubtless righteous,

'Augustinian Doctrine of Predestination,' by Professor Mozley, chap. i. pp. 9 and 12.