ligence to plan and goodness to point out the end, but He has wisdom, infinite wisdom, by which He can select the best means to accomplish the highest of ends. In all His works there can be no mistakes or oversights, no selection of inferior means to accomplish inferior ends. The end is the highest, the manifestation of Himself to intelligent creatures, a union of His own glory and their happiness; the means are the best, being devised by a wisdom. that comprehends every thing, without the possibility of error or mistake. His creation, therefore, must embody an exhibition of the best means applied to the highest of purposes; and such it is.

God is finally a God of justice. In the creation of the universe, He must have imposed upon it laws adapted to His own character and that of His work, laws calculated to subserve the ends of that creation. This attribute implies a government, and a system of laws to which the creation is subject, and a will to enforce these laws, to secure for them universal obedience on the part of His creatures. That government is just which impartially and strictly enforces all its laws, and holds in restraint all those who violate them. So God cannot abandon his creation; He must look to its welfare, protect its great interests, and hold in check all beings or powers which may seek to break up its harmony, or destroy its happiness by a violation of His and its laws. He must govern as well as create; otherwise discord and misery might spring up in a world designed for the dwelling place of order and happiness. He must be present in all His works, and all His works must be ever present to His own capacious mind; He must know all that is going on of thought and action, and be ready to enforce His laws at the first symptom of lawlessness. Those who obey must be protected from those who disobey, and from the consequences of that disobedience. His universe must be governed, the laws of that government be enforced, if order is to be preserved and happiness perpetuated within it. His justice binds Him to this, and He cannot divest Himself of this duty, if we may so call it, without hav

ing first changed His own character, and disregarded the laws of His own existence. His intelligent creatures could not rest in peace so long as they suspected the instability of God's law, and the perpetuity and ever present activity of His government. They are entitled to His protection against lawlessness in any part of His creation, to the free exercise of their intellectual and moral powers, to their free and full development, unimpeded and unobstructed by any other being or influence. Unless this is so, then God has so placed man that he may not be able to act freely in accordance with the divine law, the law of his own being, obedience to which is the sole condition of his happiness. God, therefore, cannot be just unless He watches over and governs His creation, and protects all His creatures in their right to perfect themselves and obtain happiness according to the laws of the Creator, which are also the laws of the creation.

In justice there is also implied punishment. Punishment is some restraint, or inconvenience, or pain, inflicted upon an intelligent being for having violated law. Should it so happen that there should occur in God's dominion rebellion against His government, and a violation of His laws, He must, if He is just, protect the obedient from the consequences of such a contingency, and so restrain the action of the rebellious that they cannot disturb the peace and happiness of those who continue in willing obedience. Otherwise the peace and happiness of the whole universe would be put in jeopardy, and the ends of the creation be defeated. God, then, must restrain and punish the rebel against his government and the breaker of His law. He must create the world and organize its government upon that plan, or He cannot be just towards His rational creatures, nor could they feel secure in the possession of their well being and their happiness.

God must not only be just, he must also be omniscient. His knowledge must extend to every possible event that can occur within the domain of His infinity in space, must extend as well to

the minutest incidents as to the greatest, to the fall of a sparrow as well as to the overthrow of a nation, or the revolution of a planet. Unless His knowledge should be thus minute and comprehensive, the possibility would exist that a wrong might be somewhere committed within infinite space, of which he should be ignorant; whereby crime and sin would, under a divine government, go unpunished, and anarchy be introduced into His dominions. The earth does not alone form his empire, nor can it limit the scope and extent of His supervision, He must comprehend not only what transpires on this dim spot which men call earth, but all which takes place on that star that lies hid in infinite space beyond the glance of the mightiest telescopic glass. His knowledge must be infinite. This attribute may not be necessary as a ground of morality, but is essential to His character as the moral governor of His universe.

In this divine personality, the Maker, the Creator of all things, endowed with omnipotence, infinite intelligence, goodness, wisdom and justice, we find a stand-point for a science of morality involving the idea of obligation. He has made this creation; we are the workmanship of His hands, over it and us He has thrown His laws, obedience to which in the material world is the source of all its wonderful order and harmony, and obedience to which, in Hist intellectual and moral world, would secure happiness to all His rational creatures. These laws constitute the very laws of our own moral and intellectual being, and a violation of them by us must introduce moral discord and woe throughout our souls.

These laws are above us and all humanity; they are obligatory on all, without a single exception; we are all bound to act in conformity to their requirements. Here is a bond of union for humanity. Man is no longer isolated, independent; all men are under the same laws, bound to obedience to the same authority; hence all men must have the same laws; each must obey the same, and all must act in unison and harmony so long as they do not

violate this law common to and over all. They have rights and duties toward each other as subjects of a common government; duties which all are bound to perform; rights which all are bound to respect. By this law we are bound together into families, societies, communities, and nations-bound together for our mutual protection and for our mutual improvement.

Here, too, we find a stand-point for obligation. We owe a common allegiance to the divine law, to the divine governor. He requires obedience from us, and we feel that we ought to yield it, even while refusing to do so. God holds us responsible for our conduct, and commands us to answer to Him for every thought and word and act of our lives. He has made our moral nature to meet the demands of His government. He has made us so that we feel the force of the obligation, the constraining influence toward good in our consciousness of duty.

Here, too, is stability. The laws we obey are founded in the very character of the Creator. The universe and its laws are but a transcript of Himself. So long, therefore, as God does not change, His laws must remain unchanged, and our true standard of right and wrong, objectively considered, is a single standard for all men and for all time, without a shadow of variation or change. All differences in our moral judgments must arise from a misconception and misunderstanding of God's legislation, whence is seen the origin of all those disputes, and conflicts, and debatings about moral judgments, which have marked the history and development of humanity.

Here, too, we find an objective morality, as we had before found subjective morals. The law, the standard, is without and above us, rooted and founded in the divine immutability, while reason forms an idea of it, and the faith adopts it, so that God's law becomes man's law, and to perfect himself in God's image, man has only to obey this law, and thus develop his moral nature in accordance with the law of its own being. Moral cul

ture consists in taking up this law into the reason, and working it out through the life, so that man's life shall reflect the divine life, begun in his heart by the implantation of the divine law. We see here the wonderful adaptation of man's subjective `moral nature to God's objective law. My words, says Christ, are life, and the truth of God, our Creator, taken up into the soul, is the life of the soul, by which it shall be perfected in every good work and duty. The laws of God are the truths of God.

While the laws of God are fixed and stable, and ever obligatory, what a wonderful adaptation is found in man's moral constitution to meet the errors and mistakes of man's moral judgments! If absolute truth was essential to meet the wants of man's moral consciousness, how miserable must he not be while his mind is filled with multiplied errors. God has made sincerity stand as a test of present obedience, while the truth alone is calculated fully to enlighten the mind, and harmoniously to develop the human soul. Comparative peace may be found in a sincere obedience to present beliefs, while perfect happiness can alone be attained by a full knowledge of God's laws, and a full and hearty obedience rendered to them. Human progress, whether in the individual or in society, is carried on by eradicating from the mind all erroneous beliefs, and substituting therefor the true laws of the divine government, so that man and society may be constantly approaching nearer and nearer to the divine prototype, without ever being able to attain it, since the finite can never pass into the infinite. There is then a progress, a development natural to the human soul; it is to be made by forgetting the things that are behind, the errors by which we have lived, and pressing forward to the things that are before, the new truths of God ever being unfolded to the eye of human reason, and making them the law of our life; and so long as there are old errors to be eradicated, and new truths to be revealed to the reason, so long will the human mind continue its progress and development; and as God's knowledge is infinite, there