search for the laws of this unknown God, in order, however, only to so shape his life and actions as to secure his own well being. Each mind would make this study for itself, and hence there would arise the same conflict of moral beliefs as under the former theory. They would have to do with a God, who had left Himself without a witness in His universe. Is it possible that a God who could create such a world of mind and matter as this is, would thus recklessly abandon it to chance and its own unenlightened guidance? Could such a God be possessed of intelligence and benevolence?

Morality is just as impossible on the pantheistic theory. On this theory all is God, and whatever is, is therefore right. It is not man that acts, it is God within him. Hence there can be no morality; man does simply what God, acting in him, compells him to do. On this theory all is God; the wild flower that simply blows, as well as the mightiest intellects that have guided Senates and taught the world, are equally God under different manifestations. Man and the tree alike become a part of the divine life and of the divine mind. If man is a portion of the divine mind, he cannot be the subject of morality any more than the divine mind itself. There is here no free will, no exercise of reason, no choice between right and wrong. Indeed wrong cannot exist without imputing it directly to divine agency, since all is God, acting alike in matter and in humanity. But, without pressing these views farther, it is enough to say that this view of the divine existence renders the idea of duty impossible, and is in open antagonism to all the teachings of human consciousness. Man is conscious of his own personality, of his own free action, and feels himself responsible for his actions, is incapable of throwing that responsibility over upon another, much less upon the Divine Being Himself. And yet, if God is in all, and acting wherever action is found, whether in the movements of matter or mind, man cannot be free, cannot be responsible, and hence the teachings of con

sciousness must be deceptive, must be false. To admit these to be false, is to involve humanity in inextricable doubt, in universal scepticism; for if man cannot believe in the truthfulness of his consciousness, he can believe in nothing. Indeed he is divested of all ability to escape from a scepticism as universal and as deep as the darkness which enveloped the earth ere the sunshine and the moonlight had birth.

A system, then, which degrades the Supreme Being into a mere cause, be it the first cause of all things, and contradicts all the teachings of human consciousness, cannot be the true system of morality, founded on a true explanation of the universe. God is something more than a CAUSE, than a first CAUSE, in an infinite series of causes, out of which man and the material world were produced, and in which they are still going on, and must go on in an endless succession of causes and effects; for matter under this theory, once brought into existence, is eternal in the line of the future. Within the domain of nature, wherever the law of cause and effects prevails, a free will, a responsible personality, and a morality, involving the idea of duty and obligation, are all alike an impossibility. There is no stand-point, no foundation for them in a universe constructed upon such a theory. God, on this assumption, is simply a power, a cause, greater, indeed, than any other, but still, simply a power, like the wind or the storm, which drives the vessel, or the water that moves machinery, or the powder which upheaves the solid rocks, or the lightning which shatters the century oak. God, the real maker of heaven, and earth, and man, must be more than all this, great as all this may be. Indeed this mere power must be the least of all His matchless perfections which shine out every where through this universe of matter and of mind; in the tall mountains, and humble valleys; in the vast ocean, the mighty rivers and the babbling brooks; in the whirlwinds that shake the mighty deep, and the gentle breezes; in the early and later rains, and the rising mists; in the rich verdure and beau

teous flowers of spring, the yellow harvests of summer, and the rich fruits of autumn; in the erect form and flashing eye, and speaking face, and teeming thoughts of man; in the state, with its mighty monarchies, its vast republics, its federations and its powers, growing on from more to more, with its populous cities, its world-encompassing commerce, its tall ships that walk old ocean like a thing of life, with its steam ships, and its railways, and the thoughts that shake mankind; and above all, in the humble soul that kneels in prayer, yearning for purer thoughts and a higher life than this soiled, and dim, and pent up spot, which men call earth, can give. All this is a mystery, obscure, and dark, and deep, and unexplainable, unless God, the Maker, is more than a mere power, a first cause, even if this power is endowed with the highest intelligence. Power and intelligence might create a world of matter and intelligence, but never a human soul, with its emotions, its love of the true, the beautiful, and the good, with its capacities for morality and religion, groaning to be disencumbered of this death-stricken body, and to be clothed upon by an immortality which shall know no taint or stain of earth, no harrowing thoughts and sleepless nights, no sobs and tears, but full of deep peace, glowing with boundless love, and gushing forth in sounding praises. This is to suppose the Creator to go out of and beyond Himself in endowing his intelligent creatures with capaci ties and powers not possessed by Himself, capacities and powers which lift the creature in the scale of existence above the Creator, and constitutes man the higher and nobler being. Such a God is no explanation of humanity, affords no stand-point for a science of morality with its binding obligations answering to the consciousness of duty in man. Such a God must be a false God, and cannot be the only true God, maker of heaven and earth, and all that in them is.

СНАРТЕER IX.

THE TRUE GOD THEORY.

THE present inquiry presents the question-what is the true character of the Supreme Being? We can make no progress in constructing a theory of morality until we have formed a clear idea of His character, since His creation and His relations to it must be fixed by His character. What, then, is the true character of the Great Fact; the fact of all facts, the author of all existences but His own, of the only true God?

All will admit His omnipotence, His power to create, and His power to uncreate. Nothing less than unlimited power, unlimited in intensity and in space, will or can account for this universe. While our ability is finite, or has its limits, His must be infinite, or without limitation. The things that are, proclaim His eternal power and Godhead. But this alone will not explain the entire creation, indeed not any part of it. It settles nothing as to the character of the creation, or as to its government. Mere power can move in any direction, develop itself in any form, work in any manner, and upon any plan, or upon no plan. It can create discord or harmony, conflict or peace, happiness or misery, adaptation or a want of it, life or death. In all this, there is an exhibition of force, of necessity, but of nothing beyond. The world is a manifestation of infinite power, but that is not all.

The creation is full of adaptation, of means to ends, of plans

conceived, and of plans accomplished. There is an exhibition of contrivance in this creation. God, then, must be possessed of intelligence. He must be a being capable of forming, in His own infinite mind, an idea, the idea of His creation that is to be, of the plan in its entirety and in its minutest details, and of the laws by which His work is to be carried out and afterwards governed. To do all this requires intelligence, and the material world is everywhere full of the evidence of this intelligence; while man, the creature, is intelligence itself, mysteriously united to matter. Few, who admit the existence of a God, will deny to Him the possession of this attribute of intelligence; hence it is not necessary to dwell upon its proofs. But this is not all. Power, guided by intelligence, may work for bad ends, for disorder as well as for order, for misery as well as for happiness.

The universe declares that it was made not for the purposes of disorder or misery. There is in it too much of harmony and happiness for the workings of a malevolent being in its creation. God, then, must be a God of infinite goodness. In this term is included His truth, His holiness, all that which leads Him to be faithful to His own character, and in all the outworkings of His power to develop Himself, to manifest truly Himself, so far as He can be manifested through His creation. Hence His material creation would contain evidences of order and harmony, of grandeur and beauty; and His intelligent and moral creation, an intelligence to look into and study all this order and harmony, and susceptibilities to be excited in view of this grandeur and beauty, and a capacity for knowing God, and his creation, and deriving happiness from the exercise of these powers, and from this knowledge. His goodness would compel Him to create intelligences capable of enjoyment and happiness, and of finding, in a study of the material world and of Himself, infinite sources of happiness never to be exhausted.

He is a being, also, of infinite wisdom. He has not only intel