their comprehension. However exalted their natures and attainments may be, the universe will still exhibit the infinite distinction of the One unlimited being, and of orders of limited beings entirely dependent on Him. Retired within the depths of his own immensity, they will never be able to approach and behold Him directly. For all they know of Him, they will ever feel that they are indebted to a medium of His own devising; and that, without that medium, the whole created universe including themselves, would only have constituted a living altar with this inscription, "To the unknown God."

10. Whatever excellence, natural or moral, the created universe may ever contain, was contained previously in the Divine Nature. Surely His impartation of it cannot give away his right in it! Rather, He will be laying the recipients under an obligation to love Him as its Giver, and to adore Him as its Source. However vast the amount of excellence may be, it will still be limited, so that they will have to remember at any given moment of their unending being, that they are still infinitely short of His excellence. However vast and various the displays of His glory may be, they will ever have to remember that the universe which displays it leaves more unevolved and undisplayed, by an infinite amount. However much they may be able to comprehend of what He is, from what He has done since they came into being, they will ever have to remember that all the eternity of His past glory remains unexplored. And unless they could exhaust the mystery of the Divine perfections during every moment since they came into being, they will ever have to remember that the mystery is every moment augmenting in their hands; that time is adding its mystery to the mystery of the past eternity; and that the mystery of both is to be carried forwards to the still greater account of the eternity to come. However various the orders of their intellect may be, here they will all find themselves on a level; here they will all and ever find that to reflect is to be lost; that the very choicest terms which they may employ to denote their knowledge of God, will be only so many tacit confessions of their ignorance, and escapes from difficulty; since to speak of Him as eternal, is only to say that His duration had not, like theirs, a beginning; and to speak of Him as infinite, that His nature is not, like theirs, bounded by limits.

11. Nor will they ever cease to be entirely dependent on Him. Suppose their creation had yet to commence, and we

may ask, How can they be ever otherwise than dependent? During the eternity past, that question has never by possibility been raised; for He has existed, and, as to anything ad extra, still remains alone. By what possibility, then, can it ever be raised in the eternity to come? The fact that God has been His own end in all the past determines the question for all the future. Whence could ever come the principle or the power which should invade, even in thought, this Divine prerogative, unquestioned and undisturbed as it has been from eternity? Surely not from any being of whom it is true that he has yet to be; and as to whom the question whether he shall ever be or not, depends entirely on the Divine pleasure; and who, even if it be the Divine pleasure that he shall be, will be as entirely dependent on the same pleasure for every successive moment of being, as he was for the first moment! The idea of such a being, or of any number of such beings, entering into, and taking possession of the place which for an eternity had been occupied by God, as constituting his own end, is revolting to reason. The necessity of their own nature will forbid it. The only relation which that necessity will sustain to Him is that of dependence more profound, universal, and absolute, than they will ever be able to comprehend; while the relation of His own nature to that end will always be, what it ever has been - that of self-sufficience.

12. And as His infinite self-sufficience necessitated that He should be His own end during the eternity past, the unchangeableness of His nature secures the same result during the eternity to come. What He was, He is, and what He was and is, He ever will be. However many worlds or systems He may create, they will never do more than display the nature of His perfection, they can never be the measure of its amount, much less limit that amount. Now, were He to make only a solitary being, that being could never think that God existed, and had existed from all eternity, for him - and why? because he would ever feel that God is infinitely above him. But no multiplication of mere finite beings will ever make an infinite being; and consequently can never affect the right of God to be the end of all things. On the contrary, the greater their multiplication, the more evident his claim, because they would feel the more vividly that the difference between them, the limited, and Him, the unlimited, is still infinite; and that after they shall have continued to advance through interminable ages from throne to throne, and shall have come nearer to

Him at every such advance, the distance between Him and that God is all in all.

them is still infinite

And thus we reach the conclusion, from the eternal selfsufficiency of God, that He must ever be His own End; or that His nature and glory form the Great Reason of the universe. For there was no reason why it should be, nor what it should be, but what existed in Himself.

CHAPTER II.

THE ULTIMATE PURPOSE; or, the manifestation of the Divine all-sufficiency the last end of creation.

THE preceding Chapter showed that for the great reason of His eternal self-sufficience, God will ever be, what He always has been, His own end. But if He be thus absolutely selfsufficient and infinitely perfect, it follows that He is all-sufficient. By which we mean, generally, that, from eternity, He has included in himself all that is or ever will be necessary to impart (consistently with infinite perfection) existence and ever-advancing excellence, and happiness, to a created uniAnd the object of the present Chapter is to show that the manifestation of this glory, by which we mean all-sufficiency, is the great purpose or ultimate end of creation.

verse.

I. Such a manifestation appears to involve the following conditions:

1. That the manifestation be progressive. For surely a system which is always in progress both in its own development, and in the powers of the beings to whom it is made known and who form a part of it, must, by the endless combinations which it involves, furnish an inconceivably severer test of Divine all-sufficiency, than one which should be in every respect stationary from the beginning.

And this anticipates and answers the plausible but inconsiderate inquiry, "If the manifestation of the Divine all-sufficiency be infinitely desirable, would it not be equally desirable

that the greatest possible extent should be given to the creation, and be given at once; since, until that be done, how can it be known that God is all-sufficient?" In other words, an infinite cause should produce an infinite effect.

We reply, that an exercise of the Divine perfections properly infinite can only take place in the Divine nature itself; and possibly involves the mystery of a plurality of distinctions in the unity of the Godhead, to and by which that display is mutually made: that were such an infinite manifestation to be made, ad extra, unless the mind of the creature were adequate to its comprehension-i. e. were infinite the manifestation to the creature would be limited, limited to the measure of his understanding: and that hence, for aught we know, the manifestation of God made in an atom, while to us it is extremely limited, to Him who sees the end from the beginning may be virtually and potentially infinite. So that, (if the hypothesis may be allowed,) were it possible to present such a particle to Him from the hand of another maker, He could say, "The being from whom this came is infinite, eternal, selfexistent, and absolutely perfect. His titles are here all written out at full length, and his perfections embodied. He is all-sufficient. This atom-point is the type and promise of an ever-enlarging and unbounded universe. It contains potentially all that the material universe will ever exhibit actually. No additions to this atom-world could ever add to my knowledge of him. To me the manifestation is complete." We reply further; the inquirer is evidently thinking of an all-sufficiency of power only, whereas we are speaking of an allsufficiency of perfection, including wisdom, holiness, and benevolence, as well as power. As to the production of an unlimited effect, ad extra, the supposition of such a thing, as far as it can be understood, is an impossibility. For, first, it would involve the contradiction of two infinities the infinite cause and the infinite effect; in which case, the one must limit the other, so that neither would be unlimited; or, secondly, it would imply the contradiction of an unlimited something brought within limits, the limits of time; and, thirdly, it would involve the absurdity of an independent dependence of an effect not dependent on any cause - for if dependent, in that respect, the most vital of all, it would be limited.

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2. But to say what would be necessary to the full manifestation of all-sufficiency, is a task to which none but all-sufficiency itself can be competent; since it supposes a manifestation

continued through eternity. Here, then, is another condition of the manifestation, that it be unending. For if it should terminate at any given point in futurity, the proof of all-sufficiency for an eternal manifestation would terminate with it; and then the suspicion might be justly awakened, that if the manifestation had gone on, a crisis might have arrived for which the Deity might not have been sufficient. Besides which, all-sufficiency, from its very nature, requires infinity and eternity in which to be developed, for it implies sufficiency for nothing less than that. And it requires the same, from the very nature and constitution of those to whom the manifestation is to be made; for they are capable of interminable progression. To the objector then who should call for an unlimited effect in proof of Divine all-sufficiency, we would simply reply, that when he shall have existed for an unlimited duration, he may consistently expect to behold it.

Considering the constitution of the beings to whom the manifestation is to be made, in connection with the infinite perfection of the Being who is to make it, such a manifestation, then, would seem to require that it should be progressive and unending; in order that they might be able to go along step by step with the great development; to hang over the mighty process, and mark how the attainment of one end attains a number of inferior ones placed in a line with it; how part is linked to part; how the evolution of one part tends to the evolution of another part, contains the promise of it, leads to it, and predicts another and another yet; so that all-sufficiency is perpetually making fresh demands on itself, and illustrating itself by perpetually meeting those demands in a way demonstrative of all-sufficiency, constraining them to acknowledge that it has no limits.

The remark, then, that the manifestation, not being objectively completed at once, cannot be regarded as worthy of God, admits of the most satisfactory reply; for, to allege no other reason, it is a manifestation for a purpose to be understood; and its gradual development is that which especially adapts it to this end. The objection would hold only on the supposition that the manifestation was not made rapidly enough for the rapid mental and moral progress of the beings for whom it was made- did not keep pace with their advancing powers of comprehension and appreciation. For if it does meet those demands, to them, in effect, it will be always unlimited and virtually infinite. Had such a thing been possible, then, that