HARMONY OF DETERMINISM AND FREEDOM 343 



of the modern liberalised Christian mind is just 

 that. Having accepted with fervour the moral 

 ideal as the Divine ideal, it still remains in bondage 

 to the old mechanical conception of the great Divine 

 operations called Regeneration and Creation. These 

 it still thinks, at bottom, under the category of ef- 

 ficient causality. It takes their names literally, in 

 accordance with the etymology, and thus the names 

 themselves help the evil cause of prolonging con- 

 ceptions that are hostile to the dearest insights of 

 the moral spirit quickened in the school of Christ. 

 Eminently is this true in the case of creation, into 

 the current conception of which, so far as I can see, 

 there as yet enters no gleam of the change that 

 must be made if our relations to God in the basis 

 of existence are to be stated consistently with the 

 independence we must have of him in the moral 

 world. This lack of a moral apprehension of crea- 

 tion is as characteristic, too, of historic philosophy 

 as it is of historic theology, or even of ordinary 

 opinion. 



The moral postulate of human self-activity stand- 

 ing, then, and so the coexistence of all souls in eter- 

 nity with God, — if we may speak here of God, before 

 his being has been made clear, — our question is, How 

 is the reality of God to be established, and how is 

 his so-called creative office to be stated, now that 



