on assertions which have nothing in
them of theory or hypothesis; they are in immediate reference to three
ultimate facts--namely, the reality of the law of conscience; the
existence of a responsible will as the subject of the law; and lastly,
the existence of evil--of evil essentially such, not by accident of
circumstances, not derived from physical consequences, nor from any
cause out of itself. The first is a fact of consciousness, the second a
fact of reason necessarily concluded from the first, and the third a
fact of history interpreted by both.

I maintain that a will conceived separately from intelligence is a
non-entity, and that a will the state of which does in no sense
originate in its own act is a contradiction. It might be an instinct, an
impulse, and, if accompanied with consciousness, a desire; but a will it
could not be. And this every human being knows with equal clearness,
though different minds may reflect on it with different degrees of
distinctness; for who would not smile at the notion of a rose willing to
put forth its buds and expand them into flowers?

I deem it impious and absurd to hold that the Creator would have given
us the faculty of reason, or that the Redeemer would in so many varied
forms of argument and persuasion have appealed to it, if it had been
useless or impotent. I believe that the imperfect human understanding
can be effectually exerted only in subordination to, and in a dependent
alliance with, the means and aidances supplied by the supreme reason.

Christianity is not a theory, or a speculation, but a life. Not a
philosophy of life, but life, and a living process. It has been eighteen
hundred years in existence.

The practical inquirer has his foot on the rock when he knows that
whoever needs not a Redeemer is more than human. Remove from him the
difficulties that perplex his belief in a crucified Saviour, convince
him of the reality of sin, and then satisfy him as to the fact
historically, and as to the truth spiritually, of a redemption therefrom
by Christ. Do this for him, and there is little fear that he will let
either logical quirks or metaphysical puzzles contravene the plain
dictate of his commonsense, that the Sinless One that redeemed mankind
from sin must have been more than man, and that He who brought light and
immortality into the world could not in His own nature have been an
inheritor of death and darkness.

A moral evil is an evil that has its origin i