Page:Calvinism, an address delivered at St. Andrew's, March 17, 1871.djvu/12

 what ought in equity to be. The necessitarian falls back upon the experienced reality of facts. It is true, and no argument can gainsay it, that men are placed in the world unequally favoured, both in inward disposition and outward circumstances. Some children are born with temperaments which make a life of innocence and purity natural and easy to them; others are born with violent passions, or even with distinct tendencies to evil inherited from their ancestors, and seemingly unconquerable—some are constitutionally brave, others are constitutionally cowards—some are born in religious families, and are carefully educated and watched over; others draw their first breath in an atmosphere of crime, and cease to inhale it only when they pass into their graves. Only a fourth part of mankind are born Christians. The remainder never hear the name of Christ except as a reproach. The Chinese and the Japanese—we may almost say every weaker race with whom we have come in contact—connect it only with the forced intrusion of strangers whose behaviour among them has served ill to recommend their creed. These are facts which no casuistry can explain away. And if we believe at all that the world is governed by a conscious and intelligent Being, we must believe also, however we can reconcile it with our own ideas, that these anomalies have not arisen by accident, but have been ordered of purpose and design.

No less noticeable is it that the materialistic and the metaphysical philosophers deny as completely as Calvinism what is popularly called Free Will. Every