and the steadfastness of others, without recourse to a view of the Divine Sovereignty, which brings the clouds of thick darkness once more over His awful countenance, and forbids us to see in it any longer the lineaments of a pure and perfect love? It can never be reconciled with the instincts of natural conscience, and still less with the tears of the Son of God, that the Almighty, because He is almighty, should use immortal spirits as mere counters, and, when He might glorify himself in their universal happiness and holiness, prefer to construct out of them a dark, tesselated Mosaic of alternate holiness and wickedness, happiness and misery. Yet if some were maintained against temptation, why might not all have been made to stand? If the delivering power were in the Divine will, why was it not vouchsafed to all equally? If in the Divine foresight alone, why were not those alone created of whom it was foreseen that temptation to evil would be overcome?

Here we do not indeed lose ourselves in deep mysteries, and need to tread softly, with holy reverence. We cannot err on the right hand or the left, without obscuring some Divine attribute, and either limiting presumptuously the Sovereign Power of the Holy One of Israel, or obscuring in our thoughts the pure brightness of His eternal bounty and love. Yet, perhaps, a little patient thought, with the help of those hints which the Scripture supplies, will enable us to find a path through this moral labyrinth.

The first truth which may serve to throw light on this obscure problem is the Scripture statement, that all the

hosts of angels were created by the Only-begotten Son of God. "Thrones and dominions, principalities and powers, all were created by Him, and for Him; and He is before all, and by Him they all consist." And since He appears in the Old Testament under the customary title of the Angel of God, we may reasonably infer that His manifestation, as the Head and Chief of all angels, is a truth of the spiritual world, from the very hour of their first creation.

But the same passage, and many others, reveal to us various orders and degrees among the spirits of heaven. Archangels, thrones, dominions, princedoms, powers, and virtues, are terms which must imply a real subordination, and an ascending scale of spiritual authority. We have also mention of "the seven angels that stand in the presence of God," and of "chief princes" among the armies of heaven.

Again, there are obscurer hints in Scripture which seem to imply that Satan, before his fall, was foremost and chief among the ruling angels of the celestial hierarchy. All the descriptions of his power, and the titles given to him, as the Adversary of God, and the God of this world, would lead to the conclusion, that in natural capacity he is truly the foremost of all created beings.

It is further evident, from the Scriptures, that the form of evil by which the First Apostate was tempted, was pride and ambition. There was no seduction from without, or from other creatures, but his own heart was

We have now to enter on the further inquiryWhat is the nature of temptation to evil? What is that mutability and defectibility of the creature which it has been supposed that Almighty Power might hinder from passing into reality, by a simple act of the Divine will?

And, first, it seems clear that the created spirit cannot be made participant of all knowledge by a direct act of power alone. For if the creature could be thus endued, by the mere volition of the Creator, it would follow that it might be at once invested with the Divine Omniscience. But an omniscient being, so far as our eyes can pierce into such mysteries, would be another God, equal to its Maker. Being infinitely wise, it must also be infinitely good, and have an infinite hatred of all evil, be infinitely happy in the knowledge of its own goodness, and infinitely remote from the possibility of being deceived, or tempted with evil. On the other hand, it must know itself to be a creature, dependent on the Creator, and debtor eternally to a goodness greater, earlier, deeper than its own. Now this appears to be

an essential contradiction.

God cannot create a second first cause of all things; and for the same reason He cannot erect a nothing, by creative power, into a second omniscience.

The communication of knowledge, then, to the rational creature, must have its laws and limits. And since God cannot be known as He is in himself, in His own unsearchableness, it seems to follow that He can be known by His words and acts exclusively-by acts of creation

and messages of Providence, all referred to the Great Unknown First Cause. These are the means by which His nature and perfections become partially known to His creatures. The Scriptures confirm this view. They tell us, that " no man hath seen God at any time: the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath revealed him." And the title under which the Son begins his revelation of the Father, is "the Word of God." The revelation implies a condescension in its very nature, towards angels and men. To the former the Son appears from the first to have been manifested, as the Angel of Jehovah; and to the latter, from the hour of creation, he revealed himself apparently in a human form.

The means of knowledge which created spirits would enjoy must be drawn from their own consciousness, from their intercourse with spirits like themselves, and from direct revelations of God, within the limits of their creature capacity, by the great Angel of the Covenant, and their own observation of the material universe. All these rays, converging to their centre, and referred to the Unknown First Cause, would constitute the earliest and primitive revelation of the Divine Being. Those moral obligations, also, which are inseparable from their nature, would be revealed to them in the shape of a Divine command, a "categorical imperative" of duty, streaming down upon them from the unknown Creator, and carrying along with it its own evidence of eternal truth. By this golden but invisible chain, while the great law of love is obeyed, their dependent nature

would remain linked with the great Source of all created being, and abide under the approving smile of the Eternal King.

The temptations to evil, in such a creature, must result from the essential limitations of its own being. It is limited alike in power, wisdom, and goodness. Its will has bounds which it cannot surpass; and whether placed lower or higher among its fellows, it can easily conceive a range of activity, or a degree of authority, larger and fuller than its own. Its intellect knows something of the Maker and His works; but still more remains unknown; and it is able to speculate far and wide among these conceivable possibilities of being. It may strive in its thoughts to reconcile things incompatible, which its ignorance may deem reconcilable, and thus revel amidst the seductive combinations of an ideal universe. Its goodness is limited and dependent. It continues only so long as the will abides in submission to that Divine command of love, which is its chief link of union with its Maker, and with the whole universe of being. In the observance of that law is its only safety. It is the path by which it may rise into higher and higher knowledge of the truth, and more intense activity and joy of will, in the service of the Most High, and maintain dominion over those lower creatures which He may have placed in subjection under it. But all the possibilities of good, which the intellect may conceive to lie in the undiscovered universe of being; and all the energy of the will, when it chafes, like an ocean on its shores, against the primary law of subjection