479 
applied to things capable of a quantitative measure. It may 
be sufficiently intelligible in popular language to speak of 
God's moral attributes as infinite ; but when we are treating of 
them philosophically, their correct designation is not infinite 
but perfect. It is impossible to conceive of truth or justice as 
admitting of a quantitative measure. I feel great difficulty in 
applying one to either His holiness or His benevolence. Dean 
Mans el, however, says that such attributes are the attributes 
of an infinite Being. This I admit ; and, consequently, that 
they will be affected in the mode of their operation by the 
infinity of His wisdom. While the Infinite Being must be 
inconceivable in His infinity, when I ascribe to Him justice, 
truth, holiness, or benevolence, I do not see how I change 
the essential conceptions of those qualities, or why they should 
differ as they exist in God from the conceptions of them as 
they exist in man. 
Mr. Mill declares, in language certainly not a little profane, 
his inability to worship and reverence a being of whose moral 
attributes he is unable to form a true conception, and which 
in their essential nature exhibit different results from the cor- 
responding moral attributes which exist in man. To Mr. Mill's 
conclusion, striking out its irreverence, I cannot help yielding 
my assent. Still it requires qualifications. One consideration 
he has omitted. Moral attributes, as they exist in man, 
qualify each other's action. On Mr. Mill's principles, we are 
certainly bound to assume that such a qualification extends to 
their action in Deity. 
It is evident that if I am to feel love, reverence, or adora- 
tion for God, these feelings can only be excited by the pre- 
sence of positive and not negative conceptions of qualities 
suited to produce them. I cannot feel those affections towards 
a being who may possess these qualities plus something 
which may entirely alter their nature or their mode of action. 
It is impossible to view that as lovely in God which in me 
would be utterly unlovely ; or that as true which in me would 
be false. Unless I get a positive conception of the moral attri- 
butes of God, I get no conception which can produce a moral 
result in me. It is incorrect and misleading to say that God 
is benevolent plus infinity. He is perfectly benevolent. Infi- 
nite wisdom directs the action of the attribute, and boundless 
power effectuates the purposes of His will. 
Agreeing, as I do, with many of the reasonings of Dean 
Mansel, it seems to me that he has taken an untenable posi- 
tion in representing our conceptions of the moral attributes of 
God as merely regulative, or that we can accept them by reve- 
lation, while we cannot embrace them by reason. It is irnpos- 
VOL. III. 2 L 
