can it be regarded as other than a mark of the highest wisdom that the very means by which He testifies His displeasure at sin should eventually be the means of its destruction, and of restoring man to a higher and more perfect state than that from which he fell. It is as if a skilful physician, called in to prescribe for a patient suffering under the effects of a deadly poison, should employ an antidote of such a kind that its virtue depended upon the

"Believing that He (i.e., God) has in view an end infinitely and perfectly good, I must believe that all things which take place among his creatures are means proceeding in an undeviating line towards that end, and that in decreeing the end, he decreed also the means. As nothing can take place beyond the sphere of his power, nothing can take place against his will; therefore the evils, the wickedness of mankind, are not against his sovereign will. Nothing is contingent, all evils are foreseen by him, and he permits them; but he would not permit them if something else would better answer his final purposes, inasmuch as to suppose otherwise would be to suppose that the great work might have been done better. . . . He who fixed the first great moving causes appointed all their effects to the end of the world. . Thus, regarding God as strictly the cause of all things, I am led to consider all things as working his high will, and to believe that there is neither more or less evil in the world than he saw accurately necessary toward that ultimate happiness to which he is training in various manners all his creatures."-(JOHN FOSTER.) "If the Author and Governor of all things be infinitely perfect, then whatever is is right; of all possible systems, he hath chosen the best, and consequently there is no absolute evil in the universe. This being the case, all seeming imperfections or evils in it are such only in a partial view, and with respect to the whole system they are goods."-(TURNBULL: Moral Philosophy.)

1 "As sin brought suffering into the world, suffering must put an end to sin. So just is this law that it became the Author of all righteousness to act according to it. A work it was which magnifies the divine wisdom, in a manner more than we can express, that the disease should be converted into the remedy; that by the fatal consequence of sin, sin itself should be destroyed. How wonderful is this! . His purposes are brought to pass by means the most unlikely in the world. ... Suffering shall put an end to suffering; and by death itself shall death be overcome. These are the ways which become the Almighty, and do honour to his power and wisdom."-(Rev. W. JONES: Sermons.) "In the actual development of the consciousness of our species two distinct practical stages or articulations are to be noted: the first being an act of antagonism, put forth by man against his paradisaical or perfect nature, bringing along with it the fall (this is consciousness in its antagonism against good); the second being an act of antagonism put forth by man against his present or fallen nature, issuing in the redemption of the world through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and the restoration of man to the primitive condition of perfection which he had abjured (this is consciousness in its antagonism against evil)."-(Prof. FERRIER: Lectures.) "The conception of God as one that, instead of crushing it (sin) by the prompt application of penal law, heals it, making his own life the remedy, is glorious beyond conception."-(H. W. BEECHER.)

existence and the activity of the poison. It is the opposition that it meets with that constitutes its strength, turning the action of the poison against itself, and making its very activity a means of its expulsion from the system.1

This view receives further confirmation from the principles. that are observed to be at work in human society. All progress, all growth, as we have seen, springs out of action; and it is in encountering opposition, in overcoming difficulties, that action is called out 2 Man is so constituted that his powers are developed by opposition, that his progress is carried on by antagonism, and his surroundings are exactly suited for this end. With nature around he may

1 Thus, in nature one poison is sometimes found to act as an antidote to another poison; for "when two poisons of different or opposite properties are administered about the same time in poisonous doses, the effects of the one may overpower and prevent the action of the other."—(Dr. CHRISTISON: On Poisons.) "Genuine Christianity," says Vinet, never be grafted in any other stock than the apostasy of man."

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can

2 "Without strife springs no productiveness, and without contraries no strife.”—(ANON.) "In the mental as in the material world action and reaction are ever in proportion; and Plutarch well observes that as motion would cease were contention taken ont of the physical universe, so all human progress would cease were contention taken out of the moral."(Sir W. HAMILTON: Discussion.)

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All subsists by elemental strife,
And passions are the elements of life,

The general order since the world began

Is kept in nature and is kept in man.”—(POPE.)

8 The muscles". were made in their action to encounter and overcome resistance in every movement; and being created for this, their health and strength will be developed and sustained in proportion to the fidelity with which this their design is remembered and observed.”—(ARCH. MACLAREN : : Physical Education.) "The ruling part of man can make a material for itself out of that which opposes it, as fire lays hold of what falls into it, and rises higher by means of this very material."- -(MARCUS AURELIUS.) "He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. This amicable conflict with difficulty obliges us to an intimate acquaintance with our object, and compels us to consider it in all its relations. It will not suffer us to be superficial."-(EDMUND BURKE.) "If there were no difficulties, there would be no need of efforts; if there were no temptations, there would be no training in self-control, and but little merit in virtue; if there were no trial and suffering, there would be no education in patience and resignation." (S. SMILES.) "No one law, that is to say, no one force, determines anything that we see happening or done around us. It is always the result of different and opposing forces nicely balanced against each other." -(Duke of ARGYLE: Reign of Law.) "Progression produced by antagonism is a general law of the moral government of God."--(Lord

be said to be engaged in ceaseless strife.1 He has to protect himself from its fury and inclemency by shelter and clothing. The earth must be tilled and sown in order to furnish him with the means of subsistence; its bowels must be laboriously searched for those treasures that are so necessary to his progress. Most of these, again, stubbornly refuse their aid till they have undergone further processes of preparation. In like manner, it is opposition or self-defence that compels him to form himself into society, and to adopt those laws and institutions through which alone any progress in civilization is possible. It is by means of the opposition which his intellectual faculties find in nature, in the apparent multiplicity, dissimilarity, and want of order in the objects and operations of nature around him, that they are trained to observe, compare, analyse, combine; and in thus attempting to introduce order among other things he is introducing order into his own

LINDSAY: Progress by Antagonism.) "Das Mittel, dessen sich die Natur bedient, die Entwickelung aller ihrer Anlagen zu Stande zu bringen, ist der Antagonism derselben in der Gesellschaft; so fern dieser doch am Ende die Ursache einer Gesetzmäszigen Ordnung derselben wird.”—(KANT.)

1 "All work of man is as the swimmer's: a waste ocean threatens to devour him; if he front it not bravely it will keep its word. By incessant wise defiance of it, lusty rebuke and buffet of it, behold how it loyally supports him, bears him as its conqueror along. It is so,' says Goethe, with all things that man undertakes in this world." "-(T. CARLYLE.) "What is immethodic waste thou shalt make methodic, regulated, arable; obedient and productive to thee. Wheresoever thou findest disorder there is thy eternal enemy; attack him swiftly, subdue him; make order of him, the subject not of chaos, but of intelligence, divinity, and thee.' (Ditto.)

Every step of progress in the history of our race has been made in the face of opposition and difficulty, and been achieved and secured by men of intrepidity and valour." (SMILES: Character.) Speaking of certain leading principles of the British Constitution, Dr. J. H. Burton says: "These principles were not adjusted by the political skill of wise lawyers. They were the offspring of strife and bitter enmity. Every speciality in the constitution was either the fruit of some victory gained, or the result of a compromise and treaty between two hostile powers." (History of Scotland.) "God maintains the polity of nations by ambition, thirst of title, and power;. . . He preserves their liberty by licentiousness, impatience of control, and envy; He leads to a principle of honourthat noblest sentiment of the human breast, by the desire of excelling; He sharpens our faculties by the whetstone of perverseness and litigiousness, which drive us to clear conception by the pains taken to misunderstand us; . . . He awakens our vigilance by the self-partiality of all we have to deal with."-ANON.)

mind and thoughts. Nor is it different with our moral nature. It is from the existence of evil that we come to know the difference between good and evil-from knowing and having experience of the wrong that we are led to desire the right. It is from the consciousness of the evil

1"A man perfects himself by working-foul jungles are cleared away, fair seed fields rise instead, and stately cities; and withal the man himself first ceases to be a jungle, and foul unwholesome desert thereby."(T. CARLYLE.) "While originally acquiring his knowledge of the course of nature, he (i.e., man) is connecting in his mind ideas in the order in which nature herself presents them to him." (Dr. NEIL ARNOTT: Physics.)

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For the attendant mind,

By this all harmonious action on her powers,
Becomes herself harmonious: wont so long
In outward things to meditate, the charm
Of sacred order soon she seeks at home,
To find a kindred order.

Her tempered powers

Refine at length, and every passion wears

A chaster, milder, more attractive mien."-(MILTON.)

The labours of the true Christian for the perfecting of others are but efforts unconsciously directed to the perfecting of his own soul.”. (Prof. CHARTERIS.)

2 According to Professor Ferrier, consciousness" is an act of antagonism put forth against whatsoever state or modification of humanity it comes in contact with;" and man in his paradisaical state lay unconsciously "absorbed and entranced in his own happiness and perfection." The fall was occasioned by "an act of antagonism put forth by man against his paradisaical or perfect nature," and his restoration to his primitive condition of perfection is to be brought about by acting in antagonism to his present evil or fallen nature. "Children are, by learned men, said to be long ignorant of the Ego-blessed in many respects in their ignorance! This same Ego, as it now exists, being perhaps part of the fruit of that forbidden tree; that mere knowledge of good as well as of evil which our great mother bought for us at such a price."-(Dr. JOHN BROWN: Hore Subsecive.) "The rational knowledge of good can take place only by the mental presence of the other premise, evil: and they (i.e., our first parents) were not as gods, knowing both good and evil till they misused the only voluntary election which was put into their power."-(B. H. SMART.) "Sin being impossible, virtue would be also. It is necessary, in order to man's existing as a moral being, that sin should be possible."-(VINET.) "We only know well what we have not always known; we only believe after having doubted; we are only conquerors, after having been conquered."-(Ditto.) "And this man--redeemed man-is advanced ultimately to a higher point in the scale of intelligent and moral being than unfallen man could ever have attained." "He has known evil as well as good, and through the very knowledge of evil he now knows good more." (Dr. CANDLISH: On Genesis.) "The fall of man was to Schiller the happiest of all events, because thereby men fell away from pure instinct into conscious freedom, and with this sense of freedom came the possibility of morality."-(LEWES: Life of Goethe.)

that exists in our nature that we are led to long and strive after a nobler and purer life.1

3

Thus it is that truth has ever made greatest progress when it has been most opposed by error. Human progress has never been in an undeviating straight line, but usually from one error or excess to another; and it is only after a long process of shaking and refining that pure and unmixed truth (if, indeed, such a thing be at all possible for us) is arrived at. Truth to us is relative-relative

"He who is moved to embrace the Gospel must be first sensible of the difference between good and evil, truth and falsehood, virtue and vice; must love the one and abhor the other; must repent of his former transgressions, and receive the sacred knowledge which is offered to him with gratitude, and a firm resolution of performing his duty.”—(Jortin: Discourses.) "We have reason to bless God for those sins which awaken us, lead us to repentance, make us to love much, because much has been forgiven." (Bishop WILSON.) "If so much depends on the soul's choices, it needs to be made wise that it may choose wisely, and possibly to choose unwisely in order that it may be wise. Thus it descends into selfishness and evil, . . . there to learn the wisdom of goodness in the contrasts of distaste, weariness, and hunger. And this, I suppose, is the solution of the various travail that is given to the sons of men to be exercised therewith." (HORACE BUSHNELL.) "Virtue flows from grief, from the consciousness of sin and of frailty, and is never of the best and most characteristic kind, but when this consciousness lies at the foundation of it."-(Manual of Conduct.) "The most useful channel experience runs in to reach the public mind is by general error and general calamity.” -(Dr. H. G. MACNAB: Analysis and Analogy.)

2 "Truth, like a torch, the more it's shook it shines." A "clearer perception and livelier impression of truth" is " produced by its collision with error." (J. S. MILL.) "Had there been no Hume, there would have been no Reid and no Kant." Every advance in science, every improvement in the command of the mechanical forces of nature, every step in political and social freedom has risen in the first instance from an act of scepticism." —(J. A. FROUDE.) "The opposing views in society do not, as might be supposed, nullify or destroy each other, but produce motion and powerful action, like the attractions and repulsions of electricity."—(Dr. McCosн.) 'Luther tells us that when he first began to turn his back upon Popery he intended no more than to withstand Popish pardons and selling indulgences: yet, neither would God nor his enemies let him alone till he resolved, with Moses, not to leave a hoof of Popery unopposed."—(Rev. T. BROOKS.)

"The general progress of the human race has been marked by strange fluctuations. It has not advanced steadily in one direction reaching its present stage of advancement by the shortest and straightest paths."(Rev. HUGH MACMILLAN.)

4 “To have a knowledge of truth is to perceive things such as they are in themselves, and to form ideas concerning them conformable to their nature."—(BURLAMAQUI: Natural Law.) "In revolutions of opinion, one part of the truth usually sets while another rises, improvement consisting chiefly in this, that the new fragment of truth is more wanted,