Deuteronomy 30:15-20 See, I have set before you this day life and good, and death and evil;… Two orders of men are generally fatalists — the eminently successful and the supereminently unfortunate. The former regard themselves as the children of destiny, for whom a place in the temple of the ages has been prepared, and without whom its glory would be incomplete. To this class belong the Caesars, the Napoleons, and Mahomets, whose wonderful abilities were only equalled by their complacent confidence in their own guiding star. In the ranks of the second are to be found many of those unhappy ones who have failed in life's battle, with whom everything has fallen out badly, and who have steadily gone from loss to loss, or from crime to crime. Such people seem to derive comfort from the belief that they are the victims of fate; that they too would have succeeded if the Supreme Power had only been propitious; and that, consequently, circumstances or something else beyond their control, and not themselves, are to blame for the disasters attending their career. It is not to be denied that there is much in the philosophical speculations and the religious creeds of mankind to encourage such opinions. In India, in Greece, in Arabia, as well as among Western nations, the most ancient faiths affirmed the doctrine of necessity. Back of gods and men, and above them, in the Greek mythology reigned the unspeakable and unchangeable Fates, to whom the oppressed, like Prometheus, could appeal, and on whose final decisions everything from Olympus down to Hades absolutely depended. Buddha, also, and with him the wisest Eastern sages, regarded the race as practically in bondage to a Sovereign Soul, and as sweeping along a preordained course to its final goal. He had no logical place in his system for will-freedom, and was as far from doing justice to its phenomena as Spinoza or Mr. Buckle. This, however, is not the doctrine of the Scriptures. The Bible not only directly affirms the moral liberty of God's intelligent creatures, but its entire revelation proceeds on the assumption that they are free to choose. Eden's garden and the Fall lose their significance unless Adam was free. So when we come to study redemption the Bible does not hesitate to teach that its efficacy depends on the volition of the sinner, and that he is really able to accept or reject eternal life. On what other hypothesis can such passages as these be explained: "See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil." The material universe which He has made cannot but obey His law. From age to age, and through all dispensations, the sun rises and sets, the stars peep out at night, the seasons come and go in their order, and the tides of the sea throb and surge with an exactness and regularity which precludes the possibility of derangement. Not one of these ponderous orbs or these Titanic forces has chosen the service which it renders. Blind, unknowing, uncaring, winds and waves below, and planet and constellation above, apply themselves to their allotted work. No wonder that a heart like the heart of God, full of fatherhood and brotherhood, should yearn to develop, among these enthralled masses an order of service different from theirs — a service that should be freely offered and which should be preferred beyond all others. The guilty must choose to be saved, and must choose to be saved in the way acceptable to the Almighty. Doubtless this interpretation of the Bible will to some minds be regarded as incompatible with what it seems to teach concerning God's sovereignty. Unquestionably there is an appearance of contradiction; and yet I do not think it is as serious as many suppose. We know that even among men a great many wills come into play, and that frequently they coincide without infringing on each other; and why may not the same be possible on the part of the Creator and the creature? But when we meditate on this subject we should remember that we tread the borderland of two worlds — the natural and the supernatural — and that, like all other domains, it is next to impossible to tell how and where they flow into each other. Scientists find it difficult to trace the exact boundaries between the vegetable and animal kingdoms; they cannot tell exactly where the one ends and the other begins, and neither can they explain how and why they interpenetrate each other. Psychologists are equally perplexed. They are constrained to admit the relations between mind and brain to be inexplorable. No one can successfully deny the movement of history in which the Divine has been manifest in the human — as in the Incarnation, the founding of Christianity, and in those surprising providences which have vindicated right and confounded wrong — and yet no one can explain their harmony with the human, or prove that they in any way intrenched upon its freedom. The meeting place is veiled from us. Neither can we see in the application of redemption where these twain meet, how they interact on each other, and how they do so without limiting the power of the one or controlling the freedom of the other. Contact and interpenetration here is like contact and interpenetration in other departments of God's wonderful cosmos, an unsearchable mystery, a mist-covered ocean, where only wreck awaits us if we insist on braving its darkness. Were not the Scriptures as decisive as they are on this general subject, I should be inclined to the doctrine already set forth by considerations of the weightiest character. What these are I shall briefly set before you, that you may be delivered from the illusions of modern fatalism, if unhappily you have been caught in their wiles. I would first of all remind you that some of the profoundest philosophers, such as Kant, Jacobi, and Hamilton, contend that consciousness is the most reliable witness of what we are, and that it testifies to our moral freedom. Analyse your own nature, and see whether it does not confirm the report which these thinkers give of its dignity. Do you not find that it discriminates between the voluntary and the involuntary, and that it attaches responsibility to the one and irresponsibility to the other? Let any man look within himself, and he will hear many voices declaring that he is free. Conscience, as it reproves him for wrong-doing, says, or there is no meaning in its voice, "Thou art free"; Remorse, dogging his footsteps and driving him from place to place, thunders in his ear, or his terror is absurd, "Thou art free"; Deliberation, as it ponders two paths and balances the reasons in favour of each, whispers distinctly, or this care and forethought are superfluous, "Thou art free"; and Desire, as it sways him and develops in his soul fierce contests with convictions of right or of prudence, proclaims above the battle, "Thou art free!" Thus he has the witness in himself, and if he doubts its reliability he may easily satisfy it by appealing from within to without. What says society, what say its leaders, what its members? Hegel, having taken a comprehensive view of humanity as revealed in history, gives utterance to the profound sentiment: "Freedom is the essence of spirit, as gravitation is the essence of matter." That is, there could be no spirit without freedom, even as there could be no matter without gravitation. Society is organised on this principle. Its laws, its duties, its penalties, its censures and its praises, all centre in and derive their significance from the firm belief that whatever else man may or may not be, he is free. And the course of history, which influenced the thought of Hegel, confirms this judgment. It is seen that no mechanical theory, no doctrine of averages and of hard necessity, can be reconciled with its singular and eccentric movements, or its surprising and revolutionary changes. This Mr. Froude has clearly and admirably set forth in a paper reviewing Mr. Buckle. In opposition to that gentleman's so called "Science of History," Froude reminds us that the first result of real science is the power of foresight, that when knowledge on any subject is systematised we can as accurately speak of its future as of its past. Thus, because astronomy is a true science, we can calculate eclipses and anticipate the most striking occurrences. But, he argues, when we come to the field of human endeavour certainty disappears, and we cannot tell what man will do tomorrow. He insists that such phenomena as Buddhism and Mohammedanism could not have been foretold, and he adds: "Could Tacitus have looked forward nine centuries to the Rome of Gregory VII, could he have beheld the representative of the majesty of all the Caesars holding the stirrup of the Pontiff of that vile and execrated sect, the spectacle would scarcely have appeared to him the fulfilment of a rational expectation or an intelligible result of the causes in operation around him." We cannot anticipate the future of the world. Our soberest calculations may be deranged in a moment, and some unforeseen circumstances may frustrate all our expectations. Why? Why can we not as accurately predict the social convulsion that may be as the eclipse which cannot fail to be? Because in the domain of the stars there is no volition, while in that of history liberty of will is a controlling force. The freedom of man's will is vitally associated with the idea of morality. They are inseparable. Kant has exerted himself to show that they stand or fall together, and enters with so much zeal upon his task that he sometimes makes them appear synonymous. He says, "We have now reduced the Idea of Morality to that of Freedom of Will," and in another place he writes, "Autonomy of Will is the alone foundation of Morality." Hamilton likewise, following the sage of Koningsberg, declares that "virtue involves liberty"; "that the possibility of morality depends on the possibility of liberty; for if man be not a free agent he is not the author of his actions, and has therefore no responsibility - nor moral responsibility - at all." In opposition to this position we find Spencer ( (G. Lorimer, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil;WEB: Behold, I have set before you this day life and good, and death and evil; |
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