plied any virtuous principle, inasmuch as it could not rise to the love of Being in general, which is God. Even though the conscience approved things that are excellent, or condemned their opposites, this did not imply any spiritual sense or virtuous taste. The natural conscience, when well informed, will approve of true virtue, and condemn the want of it, without seeing the beauty of true virtue. Edwards was impressed with the fact which came under his vision, that there prevailed a striking analogy between the benevolent deeds of the natural man which have no true virtue in them, and the deeds of the virtuous man which are made valid and beautiful by consecration to the divine love. It was certainly incumbent on him to inquire into the analogy in order to detect its full signifiBut he waives the question, as if it had no special bearing on his theme. Why there should be such an analogy, he remarks, it is not needful to inquire. It is sufficient to observe that God is pleased to maintain such an analogy in all His works. Wherever we look, it may be seen that God has established inferior things in an analogy to superior things. Brutes are, in many instances, in analogy to the nature of mankind, and plants to animals. The external world is in analogy in numberless instances to things in the spiritual world. And so also it is with natural men, or the great majority of human kind, in their conduct and character, when compared with the few who are truly virtuous. All that can be said is, that

cance.

UNCONSCIOUS GROWTH.

325

God has been pleased to make this kind of consent and agreement as a beautiful and grateful vision to all intelligent beings,—an image, as it were, of the true spiritual, original beauty which is in God. While the action of the natural conscience does not rise into the sphere of virtue, it still serves a useful purpose in the divine economy. Gratitude, sympathy, pity, charity, the spirit of public benevolence, the love of country, the domestic affections, or conjugal or filial love, these do not have in them the nature of true virtue, and yet they are necessary to the order and happiness of social institutions. These qualities have in them also a certain negative goodness, implying in greater or less degree the absence of moral evil. For these reasons many mistake them for truly virtuous actions. But upon this point Edwards is uncompromising in the rigidity of his attitude. There is no virtue in them unless they are subordinated to the conscious love of Being in general, which is God.

It is difficult to treat Edwards' teaching on this subject with that impartial justice which it demands. One is in danger of spurning what is true and sublime in his thought, because of its close conjunction with what our moral nature condemns as false. A reaction has long been in process against his ruling conviction, which has not yet reached its limit. So far has the modern mind gone in the opposite direction, that to some the idea of God seems like a waste of energy in the presence of appeals to the moral nature. The

philosophy of the unconscious, if we may so call it, underlies to a great extent our modern theology and ethical systems. Upon it rests the larger hope for the myriads who have come and gone, doing their work apart from any conscious service of God. As if by tacit assent, the intellect or the conscious will is subordinated to the instincts. To live by the emotions, to grow by unconscious effort, has become the modern ideal. In all this there may be a justifiable protest against the narrowness of the conclusion that God is not where He is not consciously known or served. There are words of Christ Himself, spoken to those who have served Ilim in unconsciousness, as when He was in hunger or in thirst, in sickness or nakedness, or in prison, which seem to justify what Edwards labored to disprove. "Forasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." There is truth in Edwards' position if conscious knowledge be the goal toward which we are moving, which even here we struggle to attain. Ilis error lay in cherishing true virtue as the precious pearl, to the neglect of that other illustration to which Christ compares the life of God in the soul, —- the leaven slowly penetrating but destined to revolutionize the world. He neglected the small beginnings, the tedious process, in order to fasten his gaze upon the remote result when the course of ages should have done its work. He looked to the distant end when the kingdom should be delivered up to the Father, and God should be all in

MYSTERY OF THE CREATION.

327

all. So absorbed was he in the prospect that he counted humanity as nothing, so far as it still existed unconscious of its destiny, or as an obstacle in the way of the fulfilment of the beatific vision.

V.

GOD'S LAST END IN THE CREATION.

ONE more treatise remains to be considered, and Edwards' long controversy with the Arminians is over. The title which he gave to his work, The Last End of God in the Creation, is an interesting one. It suggests the profound and fascinating speculations of Gnostic theosophies. It recalls the mystic thinkers of the Middle Ages, an Erigena or an Eckart; the wonderful poetry or the vast reaches of thought in Schelling and the Hegelian philosophy. But Edwards comes to the subject afresh, as if it had never been broached before. One cannot help feeling that in this sphere of devout speculation on the hidden mystery and destiny of the creation, he might have been the peer of his predecessors or followers had he only been free to indulge the bent of his poetic-creative genius. But while Edwards is free, so far as the presumptions of traditional theology are concerned, yet the demands of a practical theology are always uppermost in his mind. If at times he appears to forget himself and soars in philosophie contemplation, or

seems as if he would lose himself ånd revel in the open mystery of God, he soon returns to his direct purpose, which is to give a final blow to the remotest cause of the Arminian heresy. Until he had done this, his work was not complete.

All other questions had been leading up to the determination of the final object for which God made the world. Back to this issue were to be traced the fundamental differences which divided the two religious schools. But in one respect these schools were agreed, dominated as they were by the spirit of the eighteenth century, in regarding happiness as the end of existence. Edwards defines God as a supremely happy Being, in the most absolute and highest sense possible, so that God is free from everything that is contrary to happiness, - so that in strict propriety of speech there is no such thing as pain, or grief, or trouble in Ilim.1 In all that God does, He has reference to His own happiness. The Arminians, on the other hand, made the happiness of the creation the ultimate end of God, representing Him even as if indifferent to His own interests or dignity in order to secure the happiness of the creature. This tendency to think of happiness as the primary issue lowers the tone of the discussion. Before theology could recover from the degradation into which it fell in the last century, an ethical purpose must be conceived as having supremest sway in the divine existence, and in consequence permeating the universe of created things.

1 Cf. Freedom of the Will, § 9, ch. 4.