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of the Divine unckangeableness. If He is . regarded in His 
power over tlie material universe, that is imagined to have 
stamped on all matter such an impress, and to have so deter- 
mined every line of movement from the first, that they 
can never be altered. If He is regarded in His omni- 
science, He is imagined to have so foreseen and ordered 
all, that there is no possibility of change at any point of 
the world's history. If He is regarded in His wisdom, 
it is assumed that it would be an impeachment of that 
wisdom, to think that everything has not been unchangeably 
fixed from all eternity. If He is regarded in His goodness, it 
is imagined to be utterly inconsistent with the eternal perfec- 
tion of that goodness, to think that he will not do all which it 
is wise and right to do, without our asking him to do it. We are 
not in this case led into utter absurdity, such as we are brought 
to face in Mr. Mansel's contradictions ; but into a region of 
metaphysical thought as to God, in which all is made to appear 
stereotyped and unalterable. True prayer with such a view 
is rationally impossible. We may go through a sort of exercise 
which we call prayer, and imagine that we are benefited in 
some way by that exercise ; but the “ ask and ye shall receive 33 
of the Saviour's teaching disappears from our thoughts. 
Where lies the grand fallacy of this notion ? It is found, as 
in all or almost all other cases, in this — there has been an imper- 
fect induction. All the facts of the actual history have not been 
included. All classes of facts have not been taken into 
account. The Omnipotent has created at least one class 
of beings, one mode of whose existence is expressed by 
will. It is perfectly consistent with the highest idea of 
omnipotence to believe that He has done so. It would be 
inconsistent with such an idea to hold that He could not do 
so. In His omniscience He must have foreseen the perfectly 
free creature, whose mode of being would embrace this capa- 
bility of will, and He must also have foreseen this freedom as 
truly as any of the acts that would flow from it. His wisdom 
can never be charged with anything so unwise, as the creation 
of a free creature without scope of really free action. But 
this would be the very unwise thing which He would have 
done, if He had created man, and fixed the succession of every 
event in the history of the very world in which He placed 
him. Such a contradiction would be as inconsistent with 
goodness as with the attribute of wisdom. The divine 
unchangeableness is not that of absolute sameness in the 
details of development, but that found in the principles on 
which that development takes place. Therefore we are shut 
up to believe, that the notion of everything being stereotyped, 
