336 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY 



has not causation, as a principle of inference, lost all 

 its efificacy ? Nay, when that effectuating Power is 

 gone, is not the vital meaning gone out of causation 

 altogether ? All these difificulties we must somehow 

 dispose of. Nor are these the worst ; for if freedom 

 requires the seating of man in eternity, companion- 

 ing there a so-called God, what office has God as 

 Regenerator? — must not the new conception of 

 moral being place regeneration also within the scope 

 of man's self-active freedom ? Has not God, then, 

 become superfluous and supernumerary every way, in 

 this society of eternal free-agents ? 



We shall gain nothing by trying to evade the 

 difificulties in such questions, which are real diffi- 

 culties. We can easily imagine an Edwards rising 

 from his grave to put these questions as with the 

 voice of God himself, — questions which beyond 

 doubt still wake a large echo in the hearts of his 

 softened successors even; so softened — so demoral- 

 ised, //<7 would say — that he must disown them un- 

 less they speedily returned to the high and stern 

 doctrine of a Sovereign God who forms every crea- 

 ture to such destiny as He pleases. No, let us make 

 no evasion ; let us rather, at first, make the difficulty 

 greater, by reiterating the insuppressible demand for 

 justice and love, for justice and love universal, which 

 generations of further communion with the spirit of 

 Christ have at length awakened in us, and which 



