HARMONY OF DETERMINISM AND FREEDOM 335 



science, quickened by the very experience of the 

 Christian spirit itself, firmly declares, having now- 

 apprehended that otherwise there is no justice in 

 human responsibility, and then no moral government, 

 but only government edictive and compulsory ; and 

 then — no personal God, no true God, at all ! 



But if under the moral view of universal being 

 creation by efficient causation is untenable, by what 

 mode of causation can it come about ? Or, if by no 

 mode, then does not creation cease to be an attribute 

 of Deity ? Have we indeed, then, in the course of 

 our religious consciousness, come to that point of 

 complete reversion which shows us that henceforth 

 God is to be worshipped as Redeemer alone, and no 

 more as Creator ? Was the Gnostic heresy, which 

 brought to Christianity its first great inward schism, 



— was Gnosticism right, then, after all ? 



Well, if so, if the "great category of Cause" is not 

 to hold of Divine relations, how are we to gain any 

 evidence that there is a God ? Is not the creation 

 the one witness to God ? — and if God be left without 

 a witness, what becomes of his reality as Redeemer, 

 as Regenerator ? Must we not, sorncJioiv, still affirm 

 the judgment of the early churches against the 

 Gnostic, and in the name of our faith once more 

 declare the identity of the good God with the God 

 of might, of the Redeemer with the Creator ? But 



— again /!<7wf When efficient causation is excluded, 



