These are only outbirths and correspondences of the inmost and Divine Law. Therefore they are not so real and essential. All the necessity which we see in material nature - in the movements of the planets, etc., is nothing compared to that primal and eternal necessity of the Divine Nature. It is all law, then, in one sense, whether we speak of God or Nature, distinguished only by internal and external, or inmost and outmost. How the internal laws assume the nature of personal effort, and overcome the external at particular times and places, we shall speak of presently. The Divine Will or Love, indeed, is not so properly law as the Divine Wisdom by which that Love acts: one is the force or motion, the other the rule by which that force acts. But with this sole distinction, and speaking of the Divinity in his own Eternal and Essential Wisdom, which is the external or Form of the Love, it is all law from beginning to end. And so there is a truly Divine Necessity a primal, absolute necessity, in and from God throughout the universe. And this, it will be perceived, in perfect consistency with the Divine Free-Will. For the freedom, as in man, is necessary freedom and free necessity. Two halves of one whole. A complete flowing of the Divine Spirit, in its own infinite voluntary, by its own infinite rule. For example, Love and Wisdom could not feel hatred, or act foolishly. Its very nature requires that it should necessarily act with the most perfect goodness and accuracy. It must, then, to a hair, control and work out the destinies of men, in all particulars, for time and eternity.

I am thus particular to speak of the necessity of the Divine Love and Wisdom, because it is so essential to the doing away of that secret and transient scepticism which results, perhaps, as often from an unphilosophical view of the whole matter, as from any evils with which the understanding may be blinded. The truth is, we are frequently expecting too much of the Divine Providence; we look to it for impossibilities; for things which are as inevitably excluded from the sphere of the Divine

action, as certain imaginary results are excluded from the operations of the laws of nature. The Divine necessity will not allow of them any more than the natural necessity. In fact, the one is included and involved in the other. And yet, because of a necessity in the Divine Nature and action, that is no reason for any heart-failings, or cheerless, inconsolable conclusions concerning the Divine Providence. This point may be illustrated by appealing to the very fixedness and necessity of Nature. Take the Pantheist's creed, or the Atheist's, and suppose there was nothing in existence but Nature,-no God, and no intelligent and living controller of human destinies. And yet things operate with a most wonderful exactness; Nature is ever true, ever the same, and her laws and forces are such as may be calculated on with the most unfailing precision. In fact, even the sheer naturalist may say with entire truth that every thing is for the best, and the best possibly that can be, up to every moment of time. Why? Because they can be no otherwise, - because of this very necessity that we are speaking of, by which the constitution of Nature embraces every thing in inevitable and mutual adaptation. Consider how much is included in this proposition. How vast is Nature! -how almost infinite! How good it all is, (if goodness may be predicated of unconscious nature,) and how well it operates! Far, far from earth, and all that meets our vision from this little point of the universe,-even to other systems circling other suns, - and if we consider them inhabited, as they undoubtedly are, what a field of mighty contemplation - I had almost said, for the devout mind, but I will only say the humane and natural mind! Who doubts? Where is the sceptic? Is not every thing for the best? Who would alter it, or change it in one of its least particulars? What nicety of balance, what admirable circulation, what almost miraculous exactness of organism and adaptation, through all the animated and unanimated parts of it, and what a tide of joy flowing through all its life and being! If evils, or what are called evils, happen

under such a system, they are not really evil, but good, or at least the best that can be. All natural evils, such as earthquakes, storms, and outbreaks in physical nature, our naturalist finds to be good and necessary; and as to all moral evils, social, political, etc., these are only a consequence of the same fixed and necessary system, and are held to be a part of it.

Here, then, even upon this low plane, is a ground for trust,— trust in an infinitude, as it were, of blind, unconscious, but systematic laws. But now behold the more wonderful and beau

tiful truth still. The truth is, this outward or material nature is but a correspondent and outbirth of the interior and Divine Nature. And the necessity that reigns in one is but the effect of the necessity that exists in the other. It operates in the same way-just as philosophically, only more interiorly. God and Nature are connected most intimately, and separated only by "discrete" degrees. We shall explain this term presently. Love and Wisdom, in their substance and form, are the internal; Matter, the external, of an absolute Unity of all existence. But inasmuch as Love and Wisdom are higher than mere laws and forces of matter, so is the trust higher, and every sentiment and feeling of the heart higher, for the simple reason that now there is recognized, discretely existing interior to Nature, yet substantially connected with it, an Intelligence-a Conscious Mind like our own, only infinite and perfect. And if Nature is exact, to a particular and to a hair, how much more must the God of Nature exercise a providence thus wonderfully particular! The Providence is necessary, and for that reason is to be believed in. It is the same exactness and regularity, only on an immensely higher plane, and to all eternity! Instead of being any reason for cheerlessness and discomfort, it is the reverse, if we will only view it aright. It is the not recognizing this element of necessity in the Divine Will, and the looking for things impossible to be performed, because not within the sphere of Divine Power, that causes the depression and gloom which are sometimes felt. It is a

scepticism which comes from an unenlightened understanding as frequently perhaps as from the evils of the heart. Only recognize the mentality of the Divine Being, his Love and Wisdom, in distinction from mere natural forces, and we may be in no doubt or gloom about the particularity of the Divine Providence; it must be particular, as Nature is particular; universal, as Nature is universal; necessary, as Nature is necessary. Only, it is a Divine necessity, instead of a mere natural necessity. It is Love and Wisdom instead of Gravitation, Chemical Affinity, etc. But the latter, be it most particularly observed, is but an effect, correspondent, and representative of the former. All attractions, affinities, and forces, of whatever kind, exist originally in the Divine Spirit, and thence in the ultimates of material nature. And when we speak of gravitation, chemical affinity, etc., in material nature, we must remember that there is a like and correspondent necessity in the Divine Will.

But it must not be concluded from this, that the Divine Necessity is such that it must rush right on, regardless of the varying states of man, and newly occurring exigencies in the universe, to immovable and inexorable destiny. This would be little better than the old Fate. Of course man's various states are consulted, with the utmost particularity and carefulness; and sometimes there are higher laws called into requisition, and operated by spiritual beings, which, for particular purposes, are brought to bear upon the lower, overcoming them for the time being and in particular localities, but not violating, or suspending them otherwheres, and thus producing effects which the ordinary flow of nature is incapable of causing. There are many wonderful events which have occurred and are still occurring, where the evidence is all-sufficient, that a high angelic agency, directed of course by the Divine, has intervened, to accomplish in mystery what the ordinary operation of nature could not accomplish. Even the spiritual phenomena of the present day are sufficient to prove a power over

matter itself, to cause it to move in opposition to gravitation, and every other known law of nature. And the miracles of the Lord are certainly sufficient to show that no such necessity as the Pantheist would imagine, be he ever so spiritual, can possibly limit the Divine Being. Indeed, it may be said that the Divine Being may even make some immediate applications of Himself, without the mediation of any angel or spirit, which are specific, and to the case existing. It must ever be recognized as a distinct truth, that influx is twofold, immediate from the Lord Himself, and mediate through the angelic world. But then it must be remembered that even these immediate applications do not exist without law, which law, as before said, is the veriest and most essential of all law, from which all other law, in the outmosts of nature, had its origin, by which it continually lives and acts, and which, in fact, is only the exterior and ultimate of what exists in God. Whatever immediate and specific influences, then, may proceed from the Divine Being in accommodation to man's varying states, or whatever mediate and angelic influences for a like specific end, it must be remembered that there is equally a law and a kind of necessity in them, and indeed, that from eternity all these varying states must have been known - must have been seen as certainties which would grow out of the existing constitution of things, and therefore, must have been eternally consulted and provided for. So that God the Infinite still remains immutable and unchangeable. Even the freedom of man all the freedom he has, by which these varying states were brought about, was also known and consulted, and thus these more immediate and specific providences, so far as they seem to vary from the common and general, are in fact nothing but appearances to our minds; they are as truly a part of the great and orderly whole as the most natural occurrence in the universe, and do not imply any more variation on the part of God. Still, as divine providences they are beautiful to contemplate, and are no less timely, opportune, and beneficial to man, than though they