Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 045.djvu/434

420 automaton? Creation implies predetermination, and predetermination implies that all the springs and biases of the created being tend one way (the way predetermined,) and that it has no power of its own to turn them into any other than this one channel, whatever it may be. How, then, is it possible for such a being to do either good or evil freely, or to act otherwise than it was born and predetermined to act? In other words, the great problem to be worked out is, How is man to come to accomplish voluntarily the great end (of doing good—of well-doing) which he originally accomplished under compulsion, or in obedience to the springs of his natural constitution?

We undertake to show that the living demonstration of this great problem is to be found in the actual history of our race;—that the whole circuit of humanity, from the creation of the world until the day when man's final account shall be closed, revolves for no other purpose than to bring human nature to do freely the very same work which it originally performed without freedom;—and that this problem could not possibly have been worked out by any other steps than those actually taken to resolve it. This shall be made apparent, by our showing, that in the actual development of the consciousness of our species, two distinct practical stages or articulations are to be noted:—the first being an act of antagonism put forth by man against his paradisiacal or perfect nature, bringing along with it the Fall—(this is consciousness in its antagonism against good); the second being an act of antagonism put forth by man against his present or fallen nature, issuing in the Redemption of the world through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and the restoration of man to the primitive condition of perfection which he had abjured—(this is consciousness in its antagonism against evil). The practical solution of the problem of Human Liberty, will be seen to be given, in the development of these two grand epochs of consciousness.

In the first place, then, let us contemplate man in his paradisiacal state. Here we find him, created perfect by an all-perfect God, and living in the garden of Eden, surrounded by everything that can minister to his comfort and delight. Truly the lines are fallen to him in pleasant places; and, following his natural biases, his whole being runs along these lines in channels of pure happiness and unalloyed good—good nameless, indeed, and inconceivable, because as yet uncontrasted with evil, but therefore, on that very account, all the more perfect and complete. He lies absorbed and entranced in his own happiness and perfection; and no consciousness, be it observed, interferes to break up their blessed monopoly of him. He lives, indeed, under the strictest command that this jarring act be kept aloof. He has no personality; the personality of the paradisiacal man is in the bosom of his Creator.

Now, however enviable this state of things may have been, it is obvious that, so long as it continued, no conceivable advance could be made towards the realization of human liberty. Without a personality—without a self, to which his conduct might be referred, it is plain that man could not possess any real or intelligible freedom. All his doings must, in this case, fall to be refunded back out of him into the great Being who created him, and out of whom they really proceeded: and thus man must be left a mere machine, inspired and actuated throughout by the divine energies.

But, upon the slightest reflection, it is equally obvious that man could not possibly realize his own personality without being guilty of an evil act—an act not referable unto God, a Being out of whom no evil thing can come—an act in which the injunctions of the Creator must be disobeyed and set at naught:—He could not, we say, realize his own personality without sinning; because his personality is realized through the act of consciousness; and the act of consciousness is, as we have all along seen, an act of antagonism put forth against whatsoever state or modification of humanity it comes in contact with. Man's paradisiacal condition, therefore, being one of supreme goodness and perfection, could not but be deteriorated by the presence of consciousness. Consciousness, if it is to come into play here, must be an act of antagonism against this state of perfect holiness—an act displacing it, and breaking up its monopoly, in order to make room for the independent and rebellious "I." In other words, it must be an act