pharisaical, priggish, and offensive. Submission to God implies only an habitual sense of his presence and of our dependence on and trust in him, not the continual utterance of it.

Men commonly refer events to God's sovereignty only when they are mysteries and they can assign no good reason for them. This is a survival of the error that God's sovereignty is the supremacy of his naked will. As church creeds have often said: "God of his mere good pleasure," meaning the will acting without reason, the will stripped of all rationality, the will naked and without reason, like the Gadarene among the tombs. But the will of God is never naked, but clothed with rationality and in its right mind. "When we do not know the reasons of God's doings we trust the reasonableness of the doer." But events for which we see the reasons are as really referable to the sovereignty of God. All God's acts are for wise reasons and for the accomplishment of wise ends, whether we know them or not.

5. It must be added, to prevent unwarranted objections, that submission to God's government does not imply that sin and its consequences are to be referred directly to God and submitted to as coming from his hand. God has created free agents, and they live together in the unity of a moral system. Therefore they act on each other for good or for evil. Wicked men are the responsible authors of their own sins and of the evil which they in their wickedness inflict on others. But God's universal government encompasses the whole moral system. In the face of all the powers of wickedness it insures that his is "a kingdom that cannot be shaken,"1 and that his purpose of wisdom and love cannot be frustrated.

6. It follows that submission to God is not putting one's self into God's hand. All beings are always in God's hand. Sinners are in God's hand not less than saints. Sinners are in God's hand while they fight against him. Submission to God is the consent of the will to being in God's hand, in the act of loving trust and confidence in him, and in willing obedience and service. It is the consent of the will to our actual condition as creatures of God and subjects of his law, thus coming into harmony with him, rejoicing in his reign, and working willingly and joyously with him in the accomplishment of his great designs of wisdom and love. Thus the Christian's peace and joy are as immovable as the throne and sovereignty of God on which they rest.

1 Heb. xii. 28.

CHAPTER XV.

GOD'S PROVIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT UNIVERSAL.

We have considered God's government in its generic meaning, including both providential and moral government. We are now to consider specifically God's providential government, that is, God's action on and in the universe considered as the condition, immediate or remote, of the actuality of events. The specific doctrine of this chapter is that God's providential government is universal, extending to all creatures and events. The actuality of every being and event throughout all time and space depends, immediately or remotely, on the action of God. We are to ascertain the true significance of this doctrine, remove misapprehensions and answer objections, and vindicate its truth.

In discussing God's government in its generic meaning it was shown that a recognition of the fact of creation, of the dependence of the universe on God for its being as well as for its ongoing, is essential to a right understanding of God's government. But in order to understand the universality of his providential government and see as clearly as we can in what sense the actuality of the universe, and of all beings and events in it, depends on the action of God, we must push our thought back of creation, to the eternal purpose of God which he is realizing in the creation and government of the universe.

Here we come upon a great question of the ages, how it is possible that God purposes all events consistently with the reality of the moral system and the free agency of man. Mystery, which the finite mind can never wholly clear away, is involved in the very fact that the absolute Being acts and reveals himself in a finite universe existing in the forms of space and time. We are on this side of the line which divides the finite from the absolute and can never pass beyond it to observe from that point of view and with

absolute intelligence how the transition of the absolute into the finite is made. But we know that it is made, that the finite universe exists, and God continuously is acting and revealing himself in it. We rest on the fact, though we cannot fully answer the question of Nicodemus, How can these facts be? an unscientific question, which our Lord rebuked ages before the Baconian philosophy, and which, as setting aside known facts, science now excludes. Therefore mystery is not peculiar to God's universal providence and purpose, but equally pertains to every revelation of himself which God makes in the finite universe. In the preceding chapters we have attained a position above the old controversies on the subject of God's universal providence and purpose and his sovereignty exercised therein, from which we look down on the positions occupied by each party and take up the truth and reject the error of each. It is commonly said that the system of thought on this subject known as the Augustinian or Calvinistic has been abandoned under the light of modern thought. This is not true. The essential truth which gave power to that system remains unchanged. The real change is that erroneous ways of expressing, explaining, and defending the truth have been abandoned, and the doctrine has been broadened by a full recognition of truth which these errors had obscured. Neither party has been vanquished, but a way has been opened for mutual understanding and coalescence. The fundamental truth of the Calvinistic system is the doctrine of God's absolute and universal sovereignty. It is said, "There are theologians who accept this fundamental fact of Calvin's theology and then repudiate its legitimate and inevitable consequences." But usually this repudiation is not of legitimate inferences from the true doctrine of God's sovereignty, but only of inferences from the medieval conception of the naked sovereignty of absolute and almighty will or from some other erroneous representation. We do not deny God's absolute and universal sovereignty, nor any legitimate inference from it, when we affirm that its exercise is regulated by the eternal truths and laws of reason and directed to the progressive realization in the finite of the archetypal ideals of perfection and well-being eternal in the absolute Reason, nor when we recognize the finite free will and the essential characteristics of a moral system in their full significance. God's plan of the universe is primarily in his Reason. His universal purpose is simply the eternal free deter

mination of his will to act always in accordance with the eternal principles of Reason and progressively to realize its archetypal ideal of all perfection and well-being possible in a finite universe and in a moral system of rational free agents in the process of development under the eternal moral law of love.

I. STATEMENT OF THE DOCTRINE. God knows eternally in his own reason the archetype of the universe, the progressive realization of which, in the forms of space and time, will be the expression of his wisdom and love and of all his perfections. It is the eternal purpose of his will to realize this archetype known in his reason. In this archetype he knows all events incidental to its realization on account of the finiteness inseparable from created being, and on account of the free will inseparable from a moral system. It is the eternal purpose of his will so to act in reference to these incidental events as to express his wisdom and love and all his perfections. In his action in time in reference to these incidental events after they have come to pass, he so acts as to make a perfect expression of his wisdom and love and all his perfections; he does not act otherwise than as he does, because to act otherwise would not be the expression of wisdom and love and divine perfection. The actuality of these incidental events depends, not immediately but remotely, on the action of God; for if God had not proceeded to realize his archetypal idea of the universe, these events would never have become actual. Thus they occur under God's providential government, and are included in his eternal purpose. In this sense God's providential government is universal, and whatsoever comes to pass is included in his providential purpose. Therefore we may say in short, that God's eternal and all-comprehending purpose is to give full realization to the thought of his reason in the action of his will; or, to give full realization to the thought of his wisdom in the action of his love.

The following are equivalent statements of the doctrine. It is God's eternal purpose so to constitute the universe and so to act on and in it in the exercise of his power, as to express in it his own perfections. Or, it is God's eternal purpose so to constitute the universe and so to act on, in, and through it in the exercise of his power, as to realize and express in it, in the forms of space and time, the archetype of all perfection and good accordant with

all rational principles and laws eternal in himself, the absolute Reason. Or, it is God's eternal purpose so to constitute the universe and so to act on, in, and through it in the exercise of his power, as to realize and express in it the thought of his perfect wisdom in the action of his perfect love.

1. God's government and his eternal purpose refer to the same reality in different aspects. The reality is God's relation to the universe, his action in it, and the ends which he is accomplishing therein. When from our point of view in the universe already existing we consider God's action in it, we call it God's government of the universe. When we think of God in his eternal being before the world was made, and try to define his relation to the universe from that point of view, we can think of it only as his eternal purpose which he is to realize progressively in the universe. And because God's government and his purpose are in this sense essentially the same, God's purpose is distinguished as providential and moral precisely as his government is distinguished as providential and moral. His generic purpose is to declare his own glory in the sense explained in a preceding chapter. It is to express and reveal in a finite universe his perfections, his wisdom, love, and power. His moral purpose has reference to personal beings in the moral system, to bring them into willing conformity with his eternal law of love and so to insure to them their highest development and well-being. His providential purpose is to create and develop the universe, to give actuality to the beings and events in it, in order to realize the moral ends eternal in his archetypal ideal. As we have already seen, personality is the only realm of ends and providential government is subordinate to moral. So God's providential purpose to give actuality to the universe is subordinate to his moral purpose to realize the reign of righteousness and good-will among moral beings. From this point of view God's purpose is one, the purpose to realize the archetypal idea of divine wisdom and love in the moral and spiritual system to which the existence of the universe and all God's action in it are subordinate. All which he does to insure the actuality of events is subordinate to this moral and spiritual end. God's purpose is one, through the subordination of his providential government or purpose to the moral and spiritual. Thus we exclude the old and misleading distinctions of God's purpose or will as secret and revealed, as decretive and preceptive, as efficacious and permissive.