and varied developments of the human mind in the different forms of Art, we need not hesitate to call man a creator. And this is the first aspect under which God is presented to us in Holy Scripture; "In the beginning God CREATED the heaven and the earth."

b. Then as to moral powers. The free-will of man, involving, as it does, a reason which is capable of balancing the grounds of a moral choice, a reason which can look into the future, and set an eternal recompence over against present pain, this will, which nothing can compel into obedience without destroying its nature; this will, which is capable of an intelligent, a princely, and a generous obedience, the grounds of which it understands, and the reasons of which it inwardly affirms; this will, which not only is capable of moving in accordance with the Law, but which, while it does so, echoes from its inmost depths that "the Law is holy, and just, and good;"-this free-will is unquestionably a strong feature of the mind of our Heavenly Father, communicated to us His rational children. For He, too, directs all His actions "according to the counsel of His own will,”—with a perfect and wise foresight of results. His will, indeed, most unlike ours, is ever in harmony with the eternal Rule of Right and Truth. Yet He is laid under no constraint, He is impelled by no necessity; but His will is ceaselessly influenced by the spontaneous, generous emotions of an Infinite Love.

And here a word may be usefully said, bearing upon our mode of acquitting ourselves in the hour of tempta

tion. Some divines, by way of exalting the grace of God, are apt to throw into the shade the free-will of man; and so long as the case of the obedient is alone contemplated, the teaching of such divines has, at all events, a specious appearance, and may defend itself by alleging a righteous horror of attributing too much to the efforts of man. But when we come to the case of the disobedient, what is the tendency of views which detract from the freedom of the human will? Is it not to make the sin excusable? to represent the force of passion as having been equivalent to compulsion, and our own unwillingness to make a stand as having been inability? And has no thought of this kind ever crossed us at the very moment, when it most behoved such thoughts to be absent,-in the balancings of the mind, before we have consciously yielded to a temptation? Have we never, at that time, gladly entertained the suspicion, "Well, I am hardly a free agent; for this strong current of corrupt desire virtually lays a necessity upon me"? And would it not have been better, and might it not have been blessed to our deliverance in that hour, if we had considered the original nobleness of our own nature, in virtue of the free, independent, self-determining will, with which the Creator has endowed us? Let us be assured, that in asserting the supremacy of this will against present enjoyment or immediate advantage lies our true dignity, and that the Image of God cannot otherwise be restored in us fallen creatures than by the will's recognizing its

own perfect freedom, and spurning away from it the allurements of sense and of the world.

Thus we have traced the resemblance of man to God in respect both of the constitution of his nature and of his natural faculties. This resemblance, as I have before remarked, is the effect of the filial relation in which man, as man, stands to God. I say man, as man; because it is quite obvious that the resemblances we have traced are to be found equally in every member of the human family, whether Christian or heathen, whether engrafted into the Church or beyond her pale. All have the threefold element-body, soul, and spiritin their nature; all have a mind which is potentially (if not actually) creative; all alike are endowed with free-will, and the power of moral choice. And here a difficulty may arise in some minds, which seems to lie in the way of what has been said. Are we not told, it may be asked, that ". we are the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus"? Do we not instruct our children that in Baptism "they are made members of Christ, children of God, and inheritors of the Kingdom of Heaven "? And how is this consistent with our being children originally, before the reception of Baptism, before the exercise of faith? The answer is very simple. Man, though a son of God in virtue of the original platform of his nature, has by sin turned his back upon his home, and thus moving His Father's holy indignation, has become "a child of wrath." This fall and forfeiture of

all domestic privilege having taken place, God in mercy proposes to reconstitute His family, alienated from Him by sin, on a new basis. His own Son takes flesh, that He may be the Head of this family, makes ample atonement for the sins of every man, and merits by a life of perfect righteousness the acceptance of all. Then it is announced to the world that all have, by the admission of evil into their nature, forfeited their original position in the family of God, but that this position through grace is now again thrown open to all. The children of men are exhorted by belief and by Baptism to unite themselves to Him, in whom the family is reconstituted, and united to Him to become sons and heirs of God-the destiny for which man had been created, but to which he proved untrue. But the very call implies, if you consider it closely, an affinity with God on the part of the persons called-an affinity overlaid (it may be) with sin, and ignorance, and error, but still substing in the groundwork of their nature. They are called to the fruition and enjoyment of God,— as the Scriptures express it, "to His kingdom and glory." Can any one be called to this enjoyment who has no capacity for it? Could a stone, or a vegetable, or an animal, be called to share God's kingdom? Then man must have a capacity for this high enjoyment. And what gives him this capacity? His having been made originally for the kingdom; his having been created for sonship. His nature, it is true, has become by the Fall a ruin, an unsightly heap of rubbish, in which

venomous reptiles lodge, and which is foul with the greenness of decay; but it is no less true that, when the rubbish is swept away, you may find in that nature the ground plan of the Divine Image. We are not now speaking of the moral or spiritual attainments of our Nature, but of its constitution and capabilities.

Reader, one of the earliest steps towards the love of God is to meditate often and deeply on His Fatherhood, and on the filial relation in which we stand to Him. This of itself is sufficient to stir in the heart an emotion of love towards Him, and a desire (oh, if we had but strength to bring it to good effect!) to return from our wanderings, and to find a home and a rest in His Bosom. But if such be the effect of thinking of the bare relationship which subsists between God and us, how powerfully must such an effect be seconded by taking into account the manner in which God has proved His strong paternal feeling for us. If He is simply announced to us as the Father of our spirits, our hearts respond. But when He is presented to us as the Gospel presents Him-when we are assured that His Love was so true, so clinging, that even when we were in the depths of our degradation and ruin, fighting against Him with all the force of our will, He gave His only begotten Son to be the propitiation for our sins, parted with Him for a time, that He might undergo for us a death of most cruel pain and shame; then indeed the sentiment of love to Him becomes something more than

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