458 • 



ON TI^E FACULTIES OF THE MINli. 



guish between one character and another ; or, in other words, how long 

 the same individual would maintain the same character. 



Now this kind of argufnent, if accurately examined, just as much in- 

 validates the doctrine it is intended to support as the preceding. There 

 is DO one who pretends to place the same degree of confidence in the 

 general course of human actions as in the experienced train of natural 

 events. Even where the circumstances to reason from are equally defi- 

 nite, moral dependence is in all instances less certain than physical, and 

 never amounts to more than a probability. The closest friendships may 

 fail, the purest virtue become tarnished ; and, in the words of Sopho- 

 cles, which I must beg leave to put into our own language — 



The power of all things cease ; e'en sacred oaths 

 At times be broke, and the determined mind 

 Forego its steady purpose. 



Material causes, on the contrary, are regular in their operations, and 

 uninterrupted in their effects. Nobody doubts that the sun will rise to 

 morrow ; that a cannon-ball will sink in water ; or that if the lamps over 

 our heads were to be extinguished, we should bem darkness. The power 

 of Buonaparte, when in the zenith of his success, was absolute and 

 ^flmost unbounded, but did even this ensure steadiness of conduct ? Quite 

 th« reverse. We behold the decrees of to-day overthrown by those of to- 

 morrow, and, in the blind and overwhelming career of his ambition, his 

 hosts of blood-hounds that have just plundered his enemies next sent 

 against his friends ; we behold every thing in nature, that is within his 

 reach, tottering and out of joint ; while every thing that is beyond and 

 above him continues steadfast and unchangeable ; the air is as vital as 

 ever, the seasons as regular in their courses, and, to adopt the beautiful 

 language of our poet laureate — 



The moon, 

 Regardless of the stir of this low world, 

 Holds on her heavenly way. 



But we are farther told, that unless there be the same fixed and de- 

 pendent chain estabhshed in the moral creation which unquestionably ex- 

 ists in the physical, the Deity himself could have no prescience or fore- 

 knowledge of human conduct. And so forcible has this argument 

 appeared to some men, and men too, of acknowledged worth and piety, 

 that in the dilemma into which they have felt themselves thrown, like the 

 Brahmins of the East, they have utterly abandoned the doctrine of divine 

 prescience in favour of that of moral liberty. 



Shallow and impotent conclusion ! Absurd admission of an hostility that 

 has no existence ! as though he who sees through infinite space, is inca- 

 pable of seeing through the brief duration of time ; or as though, like 

 Theseus in the Cretan labyrinth, the great author of nature stands in need 

 of a thread to guide him through the maze of his own creation, and de- 

 pends upon every preceding event as a direction-post to that which fol- 

 lows. There are contingencies in the natural as well as in the moral 

 world, though they are far less frequent because far less necessary. Mira- 

 cles are of this description ; they are direct and palpable deviations from 

 the common laws of nature, the common routine of causes and effects :: 

 and he who denies that the Deity can know any thing of contingencies, m 



