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child in these matters. At the same time we may get certain glimpses of the 
way in which it is possible for the Deity to act without any interference with 
the free agency of man, and men may operate in accomplishing the works of 
God without their being treated as if they were mere machines. I have no 
doubt we have all found ourselves acting on a certain impulse. We know 
not why, but some particular impulse, or some desire to do something, leads 
us to perform an action which we have no rational motive for entering into. 
Then comes the question whether it is conceivable that God, acting upon 
man, may possibly produce that result without any interference with or limit 
of his free agency. You must allow this, that it is possible for the Deity to 
suggest thought to man. I cannot conceive anything unphilosophical or 
illogical in that idea ; and if so, it would certainly not necessarily interfere with 
free agency, but it would take exactly the same position with regard to our re- 
sponsibility as the suggestion of an ordinary friend, who says, “ Will you not 
do this or that ?” In that there is no getting rid of free agency, or any 
interference with our moral responsibility. Apply it, for instance, to the 
case of Joseph. Joseph was sent by his father to look after his brethren, 
who put him in the pit, and had not the merchants come up at that 
juncture he would infallibly have been left to die. The whole of the 
events with which he was afterwards connected in Egypt turned on that 
fact, that the coming up of the merchants and the visit of Joseph and his 
brethren to the pit concurred together chronologically. The question is 
whether it is conceivable or whether it is possible that that should be 
viewed as an indistinct overruling of an accidental circumstance, or 
whether, by a more direct agency, God so acted by a species of impulse on 
Jacob’s mind, that at the right moment he said to his son, “ Go and look 
after your brothers.” Had it been a few hours earlier or later, Joseph might 
have died in the pit, but that precise moment having been chosen, all hap- 
pened rightly, and everything turned out according to the will and promise 
of God. I conceive that that is the foundation of one view in which God, 
as the Hearer and Answerer of prayer, may be contemplated as not inter- 
fering with the immutable laws of nature or with the free agency of man, 
while yet He brings about hidden and designed purposes of His own con- 
sistently with philosophy, reason, and religion. These remarks vindicate the 
paper, I think, in some respects ; and, though I agree with Mr. Reddie in 
relation to other parts of the paper, still I think its moral bearings are most 
important. 
The Chairman. — In speaking of this paper I must commend the exceed- 
ingly reverent tone in which the author has discussed the subject, and I 
should only like to see all such subjects discussed in a similar tone. The 
view which Mr. Henslow brings forward, however, does not appear to me to 
be a very original one. It was the first view which was ever brought forward 
on the subject of the doctrine of evolution ; and I was one of the first to 
point out that the whole doctrine of Darwin was one of a retrograde character. 
The whole tone and argument of this paper, except that which relates to 
the attributes ar.d moral government of God, is nothing more or less than 
