and to resolve problems of MAXIMA and MINIMA? We need not say that bees know none of these things. They work most geometrically, without any knowledge of geometry; somewhat like a child, who, by turning the handle of an organ, makes good music without any knowledge of music. The art is not in the child, but in him who made the organ. In like manner, when a bee makes its comb so geometrically, the geometry is not in the bee, but in that great Geometrician who made the bee, and made all things in number, weight and measure."

9. So we may add in regard to man's reason. Man's reason, in its true and unperverted state, does not so much exist in man, as in that great Architect of reason who made man. God, and God alone, gave it its powers of perception and comparison; he established its laws. of action; he adjusted the relation of its capacity and its results; and it is by his presence and guidance that it is sustained in all its just movements.

It is true there is a reason of which this cannot be said; that reason which is undirected, the reason of the fallen and the guilty. But of the reason of truly humble and holy men, the reason of angels and all holy beings, it can always be said with truth, it is God's reason, God is its life.

10. We are not ignorant that this view, like some others which have been and will be presented, involves the question of man's power and responsibility. It will be said, perhaps, that man was made independent, that his reason is his own, and that he alone is responsible for its exercise. We readily admit that there is an important sense in which these expressions are true. But is there any better exercise of man's independence, than by acknowledging him who gave it? Does he

while he is command

gine conve

UNION IN KNOWLEDGE.

67

alienate his responsibility by accepting aid from God? The fact of his moral responsibility is fully secured by leaving it to his choice whether he will live and act with God or without God. In making and acting upon that choice, a choice which is constantly placed before him, he fully sustains the rights of his moral position. But it should be remembered that the very fact of choice implies, where things are thus placed in opposition to each other, that, if one choice is wise, the other will be unwise; if one choice is right, the other will be wrong.

God made man, in order that, in the exercise of a free will, he might live in and from his Maker. This is the great truth of God and humanity. Accordingly, while man's free will gives him all that independence which is implied in the exercise of choice, it does not necessarily give or imply the least alienation from God. Undoubtedly he may undertake the management of his powers of perception and reasoning, if he chooses to do it, independently of God. But would it be a wise choice?-would it be a right choice?-would it be a successful choice? Does it follow, because God has said. to man, be independent if you choose to be so, that he will make a choice so utterly unwise, so utterly destructive and wrong?

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11. There is a difference between liberty and license. License is liberty licentious; that is to say, wrong, perverted. But liberty, in the true sense of the term, faithful to its divine instincts, always respects right and obligation. Accordingly, it claims, it asks, it receives, no exemption from God. It is very true that man, in the perverted exercise of his freedom, may choose to live without God. But will he, or can he, live a divine life when thus separated from him? Can he, in this state of alienation, possess what he ought always to possess,

an angelic nature, the spirit and life of Christ in his own
soul? In taking his powers of knowledge out of God's
control, he no longer has divine knowledge, and cannot
have. If it be true that moral freedom, considered
abstractly and with reference merely to possibilities of
action, will allow us to take this course, it is equally
certain that morality, the doing what is right and best to
be done, will not allow it. On the contrary, what
morality always requires us as moral agents to do in
this matter, is, to place our powers of knowledge in the
divine keeping. It is there that they are both rightly and
safely placed. It is impossible, in the nature of things,
that any being but God should entirely keep human
reason from error, and direct it aright. Man, without
God to aid him, is sure to injure its powers, or to prevent
its right application. So that God is, and of right ought
to be, the God of all true and right reason. +

12. We will only add, that any other view would
place man below the brutes. If they have not moral
freedom, it can at least be said of them that they do not
violate God's order. God feeds them; and they are
willing to be under his care.

God guides them, and they fulfil the ends of their being. A brute, under God's protection and guidance, is in a far better condition than

CHAPTER II.

HUMAN KNOWLEDGE BASED UPON THE DIVINE.

God the former and sustainer of the instruments of knowledge. Doctrine of Malebranche. - Explanations upon it. Necessity of divine guidance in the use of our cognitive powers. - Distinction between knowledge and the truth. Reference to the Scriptures.Concluding remarks.

ALL knowledge, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, is originally in God. We proceed now to remark, further, that human knowledge is based upon the divine. In the Infinite Mind is the original fountain; -a sea of knowledge, wide, deep, and forever full. And from it flow out the streams and rivulets of knowledge into all created minds.

The view which thus connects human with divine knowledge, as streams are connected with their original fountains, has already been anticipated in part. It has already been said that God formed, and that he sustains, the instruments of knowledge, the various perceptive or cognitive powers, which exist in the human soul. But the subject remains to be presented in some additional aspects.

2. It is a doctrine of Malebranche, a French philosopher of the seventeenth century, that we may "see all things in God." Undoubtedly expressions of this kind are liable to be perverted. But if they merely mean, — the more we know of God, the more we know what is in

him, and what comes from him, - they convey a great truth. Certain it is, however, that we cannot see all things in God, while we ourselves are out of God. Our own relations to God must first be properly adjusted. As perception depends not only upon the perceptive power, but partly upon the position in which it is placed, we must be placed right before we can see right. Undoubtedly, if we place ourselves in the divine centre, and let our minds run in the channel of the divine radiations, we shall see all things in the divine light. If God "glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees," he must have realized them in idea, before he realized them in creation. And if we see them in the outward manifestation, it is possible also to see them in the divine centre. The universe is nothing more, and can be nothing more, than the outward letter of the infinite thought; the fullblown beauty of the central conception. The stars and the flowers were in the divine bosom before they were planted in the earth and the sky.

And this truth is universal. It applies to everything which is created. It applies to outward nature. It applies to man. It applies to all the powers of man. They are all developments from God.

3. But admitting this to be the case, and admitting, especially, that the instruments of our knowledge are all of divine origin, the question still remains, in what way shall we rightly and successfully apply them? They come from God. Can they be sustained, and operate rightly, without him?

If it be said that we can properly and successfully guide them by means of our own knowledge, the inquiry still remains, what are the instruments, and what are the sources of knowledge back of them, by which such guidance is thus secured? Guidance implies a guiding