5<D THE REIGN OF LAW. 



had to be — behoved to be — obeyed ; and that the 

 results to be obtained are brought about by the 

 adaptation of means to an ' end, or, as it were, 

 by way of natural consequence from the instru- 

 mentality employed. This, however, is an idea 

 which systematic theology generally regards with 

 intense suspicion, though, in fact, all theologies 

 involve it, and build upon it. But then they are 

 very apt to give explanations of that instrument- 

 ality which have no counterpart in the material 

 or in the moral world. Perhaps it is not too much 

 to say that the manifest decay which so many 

 creeds and confessions are now suffering, arises 

 mainly from the degree in which at least the 

 popular expositions of them dissociate the doc- 

 trines of Christianity from the analogy and course 

 of Nature. There is no such severance in Scrip- 

 ture — no shyness of illustrating Divine things by 

 reference to the Natural. On the contrary, we 

 are perpetually reminded that the laws of the 

 spiritual world are in the highest sense laws of 

 Nature, whose obligation, operation, and effect are 

 all in the constitution and course of things. Hence 

 it is that so much was capable of being conveyed 



