984 REV. H. J. CLARKE 
diversified, but the process takes place in conjunction with 
the consciousness of an indivisible unity and simplicity of 
being, and, moreover, of a rank so exalted as to forbid the 
classification of the producer with the things produced, 
otherwise, of course, than relatively to a higher and a common 
origin. Absolute immutability, indeed, is by no means, as a 
matter of course, to be inferred from the indiscerptibility of 
a personal unit. Action, if it involves a new experience, may 
be admitted to imply a change in the condition of the agent ; 
only, however, in relation to that experience, and to its 
necessary subjective effects, if such there be. But to the 
source of all other things besides itself that have been, are, 
or shall be, nothing can at any time be new; for whatsoever 
it has within itself it must have always had. When, there- 
fore, lifting up our minds to a First Cause, we direct our 
attention to the process of origination, what we have to con- 
ceive is a modus operandi which, instead of being determined, 
whether by successive modifications of thought and feeling, 
or by any of the restrictions to which volitional action in 
created agents may be forced to submit, presupposes a pure, 
simple, and ideal ability to effect things that shall have their 
place in subjection to the conditions under which the existence 
of the finite is possible. How, then, is the immensely com- 
prehensive evolution exhibited in that system of interrelated 
and continuously developing forms of being which we call 
the universe to be accounted for? We have found, I believe, 
the answer to this question, having, as I now venture to 
assert, arrived at it by a synthesis of unmistakably trust- 
worthy intellectual intuitions ; for they authorise and neces- 
sitate the conclusion that AN IMMUTABLE SOVEREIGN WILL Is 
GIVING, IN ABSOLUTE FREEDOM OF ACTION, UNCEASINGLY PRO- 
GRESSIVE EXPRESSION TO AN ETERNALLY FIXED IDEA. 
13. This conclusion reached, it falls in my way to notice in 
passing two ancient notions respectively characteristic of 
rival systems of philosophy, but both profoundly suggestive, 
and historically important as regards the influence they have 
severally exercised in determining modern developments of 
philosophical thought. Hach, as it appears to me, betokens a 
certain philosophical kind of insight fundamentally sound, 
bearing witness, as it does, to an experience of the difficulty 
of firmly grasping those restlessly-shifting indications of 
being which are ever playing upon the senses, producing 
impressions that vary from moment to moment; and to a 
conviction that the interpretation of these impressions is not 
to be found otherwise than in stable intellectual perceptions. 
Plato, contemplating nature with the steady gaze of an 
