Page:Calvinism, an address delivered at St. Andrew's, March 17, 1871.djvu/19

 promote our welfare, or fail and bring confusion and disaster, according as the legislator's insight has detected the true principle, or has been distorted by ignorance or selfishness.

And these laws are absolute, inflexible, irreversible, the steady friends of the wise and good, the eternal enemies of the blockhead and the knave. No Pope can dispense with a statute enrolled in the Chancery of Heaven, or popular vote repeal it. The discipline is a stern one, and many a wild endeavour men have made to obtain less hard conditions, or imagine them other than they are. They have conceived the rule of the Almighty to be like the rule of one of themselves. They have fancied that they could bribe or appease Him—tempt Him by penance or pious offering to suspend or turn aside his displeasure. They are asking that his own eternal nature shall become other than it is. One thing only they can do. They for themselves, by changing their own courses, can make the law which they have broken thenceforward their friend. Their dispositions and nature will revive and become healthy again when they are no longer in opposition to the will of their Maker. This is the natural action of what we call repentance. But the penalties of the wrongs of the past remain unrepealed. As men have sown they must still reap. The profligate who has ruined his health or fortune may learn before he dies that he has lived as a fool, and may recover something of his peace of mind as he recovers his understanding; but no miracle takes away his paralysis, or gives back to his