without moral evil, as better than the present with its permission, is, 1st, to deny "one or more of the essential attributes of God" 2d, "to exhibit the Governor of the universe as a disappointed Being. He desired and planned the best, but his counsel does not stand;" 3d, "to represent the divine Being as unhappy. How can He be perfectly happy, if He is constantly crossed in his designs?"

Bellamy portrayed the logical sequences of this view with a master's hand. "And doubtless, if God is disappointed and grieved, all the inhabitants of heaven are very sorry too, so that the grief and sorrow are universal in the world above. And if it is universal there, it may well be universal here. And this disappointment, sorrow and grief, are likely to be eternal. Thus hell will be full of the groans of the lost, and heaven full of disappointment and grief,-God and all holy beings heartily sorry that things have come to such an issue."*

From all these derogations of the divine glory, Dr. Tyler found logical and moral relief in what he regarded as the theopneustic optimism of the Apostle, which has been "enforced by the scientific genius of Leibnitz, the rhetorical opulence of Chalmers, and the logical energies of Jonathan Edwards." God permitted sin, because, in his sovereign power and wisdom and love, He purposed to bring out of it a greater good, than would otherwise have been gained. Between such a permission of sin, and submission to it as to a dire necessity, against which his administrative power and skill could bring no defense, there is the same difference as between God's universal sovereignty, and his subjection to a power that is his sovereign. And this sovereign power is just that, against which protection, in all good governments, is the grand desideratum-the power of evil.

But Dr. Tyler applied to this hypothesis the historical, as well as the Biblical and moral argument, "God has preserved the holy angels from apostasy. He has, in innumerable ways, imposed restraints upon the conduct of wicked men." p. 230. He has not only kept a part of his moral subjects from

Preface to "The Wisdom of God in the Permission of Sin."

defection, with no infringement of their freedom, but in perfect accordance with, and by means of that freedom. He has, in his loving sovereignty over their freedom, and by it, drawn from their debasement an innumerable multitude of the fallen,- —a multitude to be augmented by countless other myriads. And to the consummation of this ad-normal, redemptive process, sin always evil per se, by the wise sovereignty of the Supreme, is so ruled and check-mated as to bring a liberal contribution. This tributary relation of evil to good, is contra naturam, as the beneficent results of the crucifixion were contrary to the intent of the crucifiers. We cannot well see how the blessings of redemption could have come to the world, except through the permitted agency of those evil men. But it is perfectly manifest that this foreordained, non-prevention of evil, and its pre-arranged subserviency to good, neither abridged the moral freedom of the actors, nor abated an iota from the enormity of their evil acts. Thus, God is not only held at an infinite remove from the authorship of sin, but is placed in such antagonism to it, as to make it subserve, contrary to its nature, the very purposes which, but for his sover. eignty, it would have thwarted. The theory of divine impotency,―of an inability to do what God desires, in Dr. Tyler's view, perplexes the problem it assumes to solve. It comes nearer to the truth to say that, with sin's ever, and everywhere purely evil nature, and with God's ever, and everywhere intense hatred of it, He was unable not to have prevented it. But, the divine mastery over sin, which everywhere appears; the clear stamp it bears, not as a superior, or even co-ordinate, competing power in the moral system, but as a dependent, servile, constantly defeated element, failing of its ends, and ever compelled to promote the designs of the Supreme, a purely evil force, bent into the divine mechanics of wisdom and love for the production of the greatest good,this sufficiently justifies the ways of God in the permission of sin.

In this view, we believe the last discussions and renderings of the subject have well nigh harmonized the earlier and later New England divines. Edwards says it is God's "plea

sure so to order things, that, he permitting, sin will come to pass for the sake of the greater good, that, by his disposal, shall be the consequence." It was the view of Bellamy that God's wisdom in the permission of sin, consists, "not in bringing good out of good, but in bringing infinite good out of infinite evil." Dr. Tyler teaches that the present system is the very one "which God preferred to all others; and that, notwithstanding the sin and misery which it includes, it will result in a higher display of the divine glory, and in a greater amount of good, than any other system of which the divine mind could conceive." p. 222.

We regard the language of an able writer in this Journal, on "Dr. Taylor and his System," as in felicitous agreement with this. "There is no dishonorable reflection upon the will of God, since his moral will or preference is always for good and not for evil. His choice does not lie between not creating and creating sin; but between not creating and creating a moral system, into which sin may enter, but in which it can be counteracted and overruled, and by which system, the highest possible good is achieved."*

And if we look beneath the alluvia of error respecting God's omnipotence as a mere force, and some other points of doctrine in Dr. Bushnell's eloquent and remarkable treatise on "Nature and the Supernatural," we come to a strata of the same old theology. "We mean by omnipotence," he says, "not power in the sense of influence or moral impression, but mere executive force." This force "can overturn mountains," but can no more control free agents-personal "powers"-than the force of an army can "compute an eclipse, or write an epic." We have never, in the history of accredited doctrines, met with this mode of conceiving of God's power as separated from his "influence and moral inpression." The omnipotence, or all-powerfulness of God, stands, we believe, in such history, not as a blind "army," "earthquake," or physical force, a corporeal, cyclopean, non-personal dynamic,—the weight of a huge, Vulcanic hammer, falling fitly on malleable, material

things, but beating the air when exerted in relation to moral and personal powers. It stands as the sum of all that potentiality which is actualized in the divine agency,-the totality of God's creative, sustaining and governmental ability,—the whole energy of a free, moral sovereign, over free, moral subjects, and unfree, material objects.

But, waving this, and the classing of man's will as a coördinate power with God's will, Dr. Bushnell solidly teaches a practical optimism, on the basis of a real, divine sovereignty, and the subserviency of evil to good, in essential harmony with the earlier and later New England Theology. "In selecting the best possible plan among the millions of possibles, open to his contemplation, and in deciding to set on foot, or actualize that particular universe, he also made certain, all the evils or mischiefs, seen to be connected with it. But they are not from him, because (although?) they are in this indirect manner, made certain, or foreordinated by him. It is hardly right to say they are permitted by him. They come in only as necessary evils that environ the best plan possible. And yet he is not disappointed or frustrated. Still he governs with a plan, a perfect and eternal plan, which comprehends in its exact date and place, everything which every wrong-doing, and revolting spirit will do, even to the end of the world." p. 107. The powers may and do break loose; but "the plan of God is made large enough to include such a breaking loose, and deep enough in council, from the beginning, to handle it in terms of sovereign order." p. 98. "The system will be one that systematizes the caprices and discords of innumerable wills, and works results of order, through endless complications of disorder, having in this fact, its real wisdom and magnificence.” p. 97. Upon this broad, catholic view, attested by science and reason, by Christian consciousness and revelation, Dr. Tyler based his doctrine of divine sovereignty.

It commended itself to him as not only rational, but as eminently practical and consolatory, for, it is the conclusion of common sense, and the best philosphy, that, if God be not the world's sovereign, it has none. And if it has no moral ruler, able to restrain evil and evolve good, its present conflicts are

aimless and interminable-an unending repetition of meaningless dynasties, in which good and evil, and all moral distinctions are swallowed up in the vortex of an eternally rotating, revolving materialism. Against such discomforting and gloomy apprehensions, just views of God as a sovereign are a sure defense.

This doctrine is sometimes counted as one of the unlovely, hard features of Calvinism, making God a reasonless and arbitrary tyrant. And uncareful and clumsy modes of presenting the subject, mere dead, dogmatic statements, may have given occasion for such misconceptions. In Dr. Tyler's ineulcations, the doctrine stands as harmonious and homocentric with all the other doctrines of the Christian system. It is a sovereignty of wisdom and love, as well as of law and justice. God is equally a sovereign Father and Judge. But the most exact and lifepresentations, will not secure from the carnal mind, delight in God's government. "From my childhood up," says Jonathan Edwards, "my mind had been full of objections against God's sovereignty. It used to appear like a horrible doctrine to me. But I remember the time very well, when I seemed to be convinced and fully satisfied as to this sovereignty of God. But I could never give an account how, or by what means, I was thus convinced, not in the least imagining, at the time, that there was any extraordinary influence of God's spirit in it. However, my mind rested in it, and it put an end to all those cavils and objections. But, I have often, since that first conviction, had quite another sense of God's sovereignty, not only a conviction, but a delightful conviction. Absolute sovereignty is what I love to ascribe to God." The doctrine ever after appeared to him exceedingly pleasant, bright, and sweet.

God's sovereignty an arbitary tyranny! It can seem so only to those who misconceive it, or are in rebellion against it. What is it? Infinite love, guided by infinite wisdom, seeking its ends of good by infinite power. It is genial, generous, and marvelously mellowing to the hard-hearted when it strikes inward. It nourishes in all devout minds those inexorable restraints of justice and that filial confidence in the divine administration, best suited to the tender, but exalted state, in which