in the New Testament, that he is "meek and lowly in heart," on which account, to us, there appears an exceeding beauty and agreement with such a disposition of mind, shown in withholding from the angels a knowledge of his existence, till such time as he should propose himself to them; but in such a way and manner as should not astound them with the majesty of his glory, and at the same time give evidence in a degree of the right, of his claim, as being God over all; inviting, not compelling their love, obedience and adoration. To us it appears a material point in the divine government, that he should not astound his subjects on trial, with an overwhelming amount of evidence in relation to any thing he may, or has required their acknowledgment of; but rather to give that quantum of evidence to their consideration which shall exactly harmonise with their degree of intelligence, liberty and free agency. Otherwise than this, there could be no trial, no probation, no matter of choice, whether they would accede or not; free agency would be out of the question, as no room, under such circumstances, could be found for its exercise, as the whole influence of such a procedure would be absolute compulsion.

To illustrate this conclusion, we will suppose that at the time of our Saviour's advent among men, there had accompanied him at his birth myriads of the angels of heaven, who should have visibly encamped round about the city of Jerusalem, holding continual and intimate intercourse with all the citizens during the whole period of his sojourn among the Jews, who should have continually declared, this is your Messiah, this is he who was to come-the Messiah foretold by Moses and all the prophets -this is the seed of the woman who is to bruise the serpent's head-the Son of the Living God-the Messiah of your expectation. Under such a state of evidence in relation to the identity of the Messiah, it could not be said that they had believed freely, and of their own minds, by comparing Scripture with his works and claims, and thus arrive at the conclusion, and thus constitute true faith. Would not such a course have been in the highest degree compulsory; so that the free exercise of free agency, in its untramelled purity, on that subject, would have been impossible. Had our Lord coinpelled by such a course, as above described, or by any other irrisistible way, mankind to Lelieve in him, would it have been consistent with man's free agency? if so it would have been done. But as it was not consistent, it was not done. The mode of God's government, it seems, cannot admit of such a procedure, as it would at once neutralise the highest and most beautiful trait of the natures of Loth men and angels, which is their free agency, the very trait which distinguishes them from all the other works of Gcd, and furnishes intellectual moral existence with all its value. Without this, both men and angels would be but mental machines without mental liberty,

going round and round, exactly as acted upon, having no selfdetermining power; not choosing or refusing any thing of themselves, and would demonstrate that the Divine Being is the only free mental actor in the universe. If such were the case, however great the errors of any of his creatures might be, such errors could not be treated as sin; as their acts, their thoughts, and even their designs, and the spirit in which they performed them, would owe their origin, operations and strength to God, on account of the lack of free agency. On such a hypothesis the system of Christianity is not called for, as there can be nothing to be redeemed, unless we go about to show that He who acts upon. all actors irresistibly, has so acted upon our race, that the results are ruinous and need repair, which idea is monstrous and absurd.

But this is not the case; this cannot be; free agency does exist in the minds of men and angels, and is the most beautiful trait of the operations of the Divine Hand that we are acquainted with; which beautiful trait he regards with the most consummate delicacy, as he will not, and does not force it; which if he did would at once nullify and render void the operation of his own creative wisdom as shown in the constitution of the very representatives of his own intellectual image, that of men and angels. Here then the awful secret, if secret it may be called, is announced why men and some angels have fallen from their first estate; which indeed appears impossible even for the Divine Being to have prevented, without his having first taken away and destroyed this amazing power. If this had been done, it would have been the same as to uncreate in part, the most glorious of the operations of the hand of the Divine Being, and would have been confusion, which cannot be admitted. Here, in our estimation, turns the grand point of human or angelic accountability as it would appear to be beyond the consistent power, even of the Deity, to compel any of his intellectual creatures to the observance of himself or laws; as compulsion, in this department of his works, that of intellect, is not to be controlled by any cause whatever, whether by direct power, object, or any thing else; were it not so, sin among men, could not take place any more than among the cattle of the mountains. And because Universalists do not believe in man's absolute free agency, is their reason for denying the existence of absolute moral evil or sin, and contend that sin is merely a relative evil, existing only between man and man, and upon the whole is for the best.

May it not therefore be said, free agency is a dangerous quali fication; if so, we can only reply, that without it there can be neither mon nor angels, as this qualification is essential to their very being as rational creatures; without it there could be no divine moral government, adapted as now to the powers of free agents, the whole universe of rational conscious existences would be but a splendid machine, not a whit however, more splendid

or more to be admired than any and all the other grades of animated nature. Without it, the whole system of accountability, as taught by Christianity, falls to the ground; vice as vice, and virtue as virtue are extinct; even the idea of a God, as the governor of intellectual beings, seems not called for, and if not called for, goes far in support of the most horrid of all ideas, which is Atheism.

That the whole moral and natural universe of God, and his administration of law, or government over them, is but a great and multiform machine, which never has, nor never can move wrong, and that all and singular, from the greatest to the smallest transaction, whether it is the efforts of the most exalted mind, which God has made, or the accidental movement of the least particle of matter in creation; is comprehended in the move. ments of this machine: is believed and contended for by the most refined and best instructed Universalists of the age. If this were true, we do not wonder that they have come to the conclusion that there is not in existence, nor ever can be absolute moral evil, or sin. Hence they teach that sin, relatively so called, is not upon the whole, a moral evil, but a good: and was so intended by the Creator. On this view they deny the fall of manas held by the orthodox sects; and of necessity, they also deny an expiatory atonement, made toward God in the death of Jesus Christ, for the sins of the world; upon the heels of which, spiritual regeneration, by them is taught to be of no importance, or a matter of mere fancy. Were this the true state of the case, we cannot perceive how sin exists at all; as that which is best upon the whole, is also best in all its parts: and he who teaches that sin exists under such circumstances, publishes a libel on the operation of God's great machine-destroys the possibility of free agency, or of human responsibility, either to God, or to one another. For if whatever we do or think, is but the moving on of this great machine-as God has designed-then who is he that has erred since the world began, in thought, word, or deed. Though men behave never so absurdly, and abominably toward each other, yet this is known of God, as the very thing he wished should be effected by his machine, with a view to the good of the great whole; where then is there room to find fault, or for the existence of relative sin, or moral evil? we declare without fear of being refuted that there is none; as the whole operation of universal nature, both in physics and morals, is resolved into the horrid idea of fate: which destroys the idea of a God governing a universe of intellectual beings, according to character; and would be equally well governed, without any God at all; as fate cannot err, having in its nature no optional powers whatever. There is nothing in existence which has been created, that may not be said to be an agent: and is either a free agent, or a machine agent. All matter, belongs to the class which may be

denominated, machine agents;-all spirits, which are intellectual and rational, belong to the class of free agents. But it is impossible to constitute a free rational agent, so as to empower it to do morally right, without the accompanying qualification of a power to do morally wrong; and one is as free as the other; otherwise the thing itself cannot be. The idea of intellectual free agency, cannot be separated from the idea of reason and will; powers which agree together, in making out a free agent: but are not required in making out a machine agent.

To deny therefore, that there is any such qualification belonging to men or angels, as free agency-which is the power of choice between objects-is to say that the Divine Being cannot, or has not ascended in the exercise of his power and wisdom, above the production of mere brutes, which are not capable of moral good or evil, and shamefully retrenches the unlimited ability of God, in the consistent exercise of his power. It is well written by the Rev. Timothy Merritt, in his Strictures on Hosea Ballou's "Treatise on Atonement,"--that "mankind could not be accountable for their volitions and actions, if they were not free; for if their actions are not free, they are not their own, but His, whose will influences and determines them. Nor will that account of the freedom of the will, which Ballou, and some others give, mend the matter; who teach that all our liberty consists in being free to choose what is most agreeable to us.

But on this supposition, the unregenerated sinner would choose, that is, would be impelled on in a course of disobedience by his evil propensities, without having it in his power to make the least resistance, or to abstain from one sinful action. In this case therefore, he would have no liberty, he would be under an absolute necessity of choosing and acting as he does. Such an one might be the object of pity, as the most unfortunate creature in the world; but surely he could not be blamed in any sense. This would take away all the turpitude of sin, from the sinner, and fix it on Him whose will, however remotely, governs all the creature's volitions and actions.

The curious notion of Ballou, and of some others, on human moral liberty, which is, that men are free only to choose that which is most agreeable to them, may be illustrated by the following similie: a fish is free to swim in the water, as it cannot do so in any other way; it is free to stay in the water, because it cannot very well get out. A tree grows with its top towards the zenith, instead of its roots, because it is impossibte for it to grow in any other way. Now this is a wonderful picture of human liberty, as held by Universalists; yet it is a true picture, if men cannot do that only which is most agreeable to them.

But says the objector, I still contend that no human soul can choose that which it does not choose. Well suppose he cant

choose that which he does not choose, yet you cannot deny but he may do that which he does not choose to do, and that men do often, in virtue of this power, many things which are not according to their best interests, and of course contrary to their most rational choice. Now the whole course of a sinful world, is a course of mental perversion; in which all sinful actions are not according to man's best rational choice: yet they do many things contrary to their better reason, or better choice; but were they not free agents, men could never do this, as the highest reason for an act of any kind, would always preponderate in favor of its being done, and would inevitably secure its performance. But free agency secures the power of doing that which men do not choose, as well as that which they do: or free agency does not exist at all.

The notion of being only able to choose that which seems most agreeable as Universalists believe-puts the cause of such choice in the thing chosen; which thing, is therefore, the agent, the acting agent; while the person having the mind, is passively compelled to accept and destroys all idea of human liberty, or ability of choice, in the receiver; and is no more an agent in the matter, than a tree is an agent when it is the mark for the bullet of the shooter. There is a power in man, by which he can do that which he does not choose to do, both negatively and affirmatively. All that class of actions which men perform, that are contrary and disagreeable to the senses, are proofs that he does often act contrary to that which appears most agreeable. Self-murder, for instance, a crime the most abhorent to sensation and reason, is often committed; though the love of life is the strongest passion of animal existence: and can never be perpetrated from choice-based on the expectation of an immediate or remote benefit, except in one or two cases, and these are: when a person who is sick of life, and believes in the immediate annihilation of his mind, or in an immediate transition of that mind to a happy state with God in eternity, as do the Universalists; either of whom might commit in such cases even self-murder, as all reason why they should not, is taken away and the only reason why suicides do not prevail among that people, when in trouble, is because they do not in the most unbounded sense of the word trust to that belief, or else, because they are in no hurry to exchange the pleasures of sin and animal happiness for the company of God and the joys of heaven.

It is of no importance for the Universalists to resist this conclusion, from a pretended submission to evil, on account of its being probably the best on the great whole, according to their belief; as there is no man of such mighty moral patriotic feelings, who will sacrifice his own immediate happiness for such a reason, when he knows it is within his own power to relieve himself by