leads to the keeping of a debt and credit account with heaven; and to
the saints is attributed the power of buying up a stock of works of
supererogation, by which they acquire a mediatory power in themselves.
Human reason has been likened to a drunken clown, who if you help him
up on one side of his horse, falls over on the other. To deter men
from the presumptuous sin of attributing merit to their actions, the
reformers, and also individuals and even orders in the church, have
labored to prove that man acts only in obedience to preordained
decree, and can of himself do nothing good; yet their logic charges
him freely with the _guilt_ of sinning by necessity. I cannot for the
life of me distinguish between fatalism and predestination. Either
binds us with the same chain of necessity, in thought, word and deed,
from the cradle to the grave. To escape this charge, fanaticism can
only add a few links to the chain of necessitating cause, and tell you
it is necessity no longer. Now, our most perfect conception of sin is
found in a will which sets itself in opposition to God's will. This is
the characteristic of the father of evil and his fallen hosts. Our
highest idea of virtue is found in the creature's conforming his will
to that of his Maker; this is the trait of the angels who were
steadfast in their faith. How can you here couple fatality and will?
If ours be a state of probation, it is only by a certain freedom of
action, an originating power of causation in ourselves, that we can
conceive of our being put to proof. Possibly, in fallen man, that
freedom is limited to the power of rejecting or yielding to the
influences of grace. Yet within that narrow range it may be still a
perfect freedom. God said, 'let us make man in our image and after our
likeness,' and this likeness between the 'cause of causes' and his
creature, may well consist in man's being endowed with a spark from
the Creator's nature, gifted with an originating will, and made a
source of causes in himself. To say that this may not be, were to