as a power in the soul, or what a power to will is. We are conscious of volition, or willing, as the act or working of this power; but we are not conscious of the power itself; just as we are not conscious of mind, and therefore cannot be strictly conscious of its energies and modes of acting. We are conscious only of the actings, or the workings out, or productions of the mind, such as thoughts, inclinations, affections, dispositions, &c. We can no more say how mind produces volition or will, than how mind produces thought and idea. Though aided by the rich discoveries thrown around us by unwearied researches in physiology, mental science, and chemical philosophy, we ingenuously avow that we cannot account how mind generates motion in an eyelid or a hand; yet, with a dogmatism as unphilosophical as it is rash, we presume to account how mind produces volitions and desires.

All we know is the fact that we are free agents. Every man who understands that whatever he does he does freely, that when he is coerced to act against or without his will, he does not blame himself; that he acts towards his neighbors as if they were free, and that he estimates their conduct towards him as the conduct of men free in their actions; and every man who occasionally feels that when he says he cannot, he really means he will not: every such man fully understands and fully possesses the agency which God requires him to exercise in receiving the gospel. Since we know experimentally and feelingly that we are free, why harass ourselves, in duty, about the theory of our liberty? To give up these experimental proofs for the unsubstantial deductions of à priori assumptions, is to deceive ourselves; but from such a process, to neglect duty, is heinous treason against God. Our minds are so constituted by our Maker that we cannot avoid blaming ourselves, when we voluntarily do what we know to be wrong. When we see others acting in the same way, we charge them with blame, and feel displeasure and disesteem towards them. These emotions can no more be avoided, than the sensation of hearing when we are amid the vibrations of sound.

Whether we are free agents or not, it is beyond all doubt, that in the scriptures God addresses, commands, blames, and threatens us as free agents, and calls upon us to exercise our agency in our duty. The commands of God are utterly unsuitable to the instrumentality of every other creature on earth, except man; and in relation to the agency of any other

creature, they are merely as sounding brass and tinkling cymbals. If man has no agency for them, they are sheer nullities, they oblige no one, and therefore law is no more law, and duty is no more duty. The Scriptures address man as a responsible agent, and warn him to prepare for the day of account. Man will not be judged for his birth, his stature, his color, or his age, for in these things he has no agency; but for the works done in the body, and for "idle words" and "hard speeches," he is accountable, because that in these he has an individual, personal, and voluntary agency. Religious duties are described by images taken from active, laborious, and arduous exertions, implying voluntary movement from an inward principle; such as walking, running, wrestling, and fighting. In "walking with God," for instance, our movements must be our own, none can perform them instead of us, none can perform them by us, and we can perform them by no others, they must be our own, and be done by ourselves. Every other duty is of the same character. It is absurd to say that God does these things in us, or by us; it is ascribing all things to one sole agent. It is to say that the Holy Spirit believes the gospel and repents of sin; that he is a believer and a penitent, and in fact the only believer, and the only penitent in the universe. It is man, and not the Holy Spirit, that God expects to be "a DOER of the word.”

In a preceding section,* it was remarked that the mind of man could not originate its own states, or that it could not spontaneously produce perceptions, emotions, and volitions. In each state there must be truths to be perceived, agencies to be felt, and objects to be preferred. This is far from representing man as a mere machine; for though the mind cannot originate its states, yet it can originate its action or conduct towards objects and motives. It can distort or exclude its perceptions: it can control its emotions, and even prevent them and it can originate its decision in the : presence of motives. If the mind has not this self-determining power, it has no free agency. If there be no self-determining power in the mind, there can be no such thing as CAPRICE. If man is not the originator of his own actions in the presence of motives, he is incapable of virtue or blame. The scriptures expressly declare that, even in instances where the passions are most dominant, 66 HE HATH POWER OVER HIS OWN WILL."

*Book 11. chap. iii. sect. 2,

(1 Cor. vii. 37.) With this scriptural authority I leave the agency of man in his own conversion to stand or fall.

Some readers may think, that since the subject of free agency has been introduced here at all, either more, or else less, ought to have been said upon it. The only apology is this:-Man is the subject on which the Holy Spirit and the church are to operate; and his free agency is an element in his character which the Holy Spirit regards in all his operations, and on which the church, in all her methods and means of well doing, ought to calculate. Without the agency of man, the Holy Spirit may possess energy, but he can exercise no saving influence. Suppose the gospel, or the written word, to be cast or left on an island uninhabited, it is at once perceived that there the Holy Spirit can exercise no influence until man is brought into contact with it. This would be equally the case, if the future inhabitants of that island, having found a copy of the word, would either burn it or reject its message. If the church overlook this element of the materials on which it has to work, or deny its existence, she can exercise no wisdom in the selection of her agents, or in the fitness of her means; and the result is that all her plans and measures are certain of defeat and discomfiture. All the agents commissioned by God have calculated on the agency of man being exercised in his own conversion, and have discharged their message accordingly. Isaiah said, "Hear, ye deaf." Ezekiel said, "Turn yourselves and ye shall live; make you a new heart and a new spirit." Christ said, "Repent ye and believe the gospel;" and the apostles were afraid of no hedge of thorny creeds when they said, "Save yourselves," "be converted," and "yield yourselves to God." I do not see why Saint Augustine, or any other saint, should make ministers afraid of addressing their hearers in this apostolic style. An apostolic ministry will speak to the world in apostolic tones, "BE CONVERTED.'

§ II.—The adaptation of Measures to the Laws of Thought and Emotion.

The Holy Spirit calls upon Christians to operate upon the world as they find it: they are not to spend themselves in holy wishes that it were in a different state, but they are to use means and adopt measures to put it into a better state. If

*Acts iii. 19- EлIOтQiyαTε, "convert yourselves."

Christians seriously wish to discharge towards man the duties, which the Holy Ghost has imposed upon them, they must take man as the Holy Spirit describes him, and adapt their means and operation to the position in which they find him. They whose work it is to till the ground, dig in mines, or navigate the seas, must choose implements and systems of measures adapted to the materials on which they have to operate. 1. In all measures for the conversion of the world there must be a distinct recognition of the elements of free agency in man, and of his mental liberty for spontaneous action. Every appearance of coercion, of force, and of persecution in any form, will prove fatal to our high purposes of conversion; they may compel men to be territorial or political Christians, but they will form no true believer. God, in all his operations on the heart of man, honors the laws of his free agency. For an illustration, the scriptures say, that God influences the heart as he influences and turns "streams of water." Every one allows that a river flows freely. All its hydrostatical principles are at work, and they all act freely. Its boundaries, and channels, and meanderings, and cascades, do not interfere with its principles and laws. Suppose the course of a stream is turned, as the Euphrates at the siege of Babylon, or a rill for the irrigation of our fields; in such a conversion, the free principles of the water are not infringed upon, for the change consists only in a new direction being given to their free operations. In the altered direction and new course, as well as in their former channel, the water acts on the same free principles as before; it still seeks its level, still flows downward, and its globules still cohere. Whatever agency ascribed to a river, it is, in either direction, in full and free activity. Now, God influences the streams of the human heart with the same nice and accurate attention to their laws; and one operation is quite as intelligible to us as the other.

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We ourselves act in the same manner when we attempt to persuade others to alter their minds, and to induce them to become of the same mind and sentiment with us. In this process we think too highly of our friend to use any compulsion, we believe him to be free in differing from us, and we feel that he would be perfectly free, in changing his mind, and in agreeing with us. If we plied him as a man who had no agency, no liberty, no individuality for action, we should not only totally fail, but he would revenge the insulted honors of his free agency, by voluntarily and resolutely rejecting and

spurning the proposals, that counted him for a slave, and treated him as dead to all spontaneous activity, and as having no agency of his own. Men must act in religious efforts as "the children of light," with the same knowledge of human nature, which in worldly business they put forth as "the children of this world."

2. The power of man over his attention must be consulted in all measures for his conversion. A church, which believes that man has no power to attend to its message, unless God will first miraculously impart an impulse to the mind to make it attend, will begin to work with a hopeless heart; will lament the sinner's inattention as his misfortune, rather than as his wickedness; and will assign non-conversion to God's sovereignly withholding this saving impulse; and, then, will sit at ease, as finding nothing in its own unskilfulness or defective effort to condemn, though in consequence of it an immortal spirit has been lost. Man, even as a sinner, totally and thoroughly depraved, has full command of his attention. It is as indisputable as day and night, that he has the same power to attend to truth, as he has to attend to error; and to weigh the claims of the gospel, as to weigh the claims of idolatry and sin. No man can neglect the gospel who does not possess full powers to attend to it. The scriptures, everywhere, address man as having this command of attention in full possession. Experience and consciousness prove that he can command attention, even to things which he dislikes and hates; not that he will do this spontaneously of himself, but he may be so circumstanced as to be induced to listen to the most unwelcome proposals. The Bible supposes him to be in full possession of this power, for it commands him to direct this power of attention to his duty, and condemns him, because he voluntarily applies it to what is wrong. Whatever a missionary's creed be, he as uniformly expects, when he reaches his destination, that the minds of his heathen audience can attend to the message which he delivers, as that their ears can hear it; and ministers at home find human nature possessed of the same capacities.

Unless our redeeming and converting measures are formed on the principle that without a previous miraculous impulse from God, man can command the same attention to the gospel, as he can to sin and idolatry, our plans of operation will not meet the reality and the extent of the case. Wherever the truth meets an attentive or ready mind, there it is always