ious hypocrisy,
as though to our sense they had been answered in some ineffable way, and
all the while our conduct, to speak strictly, lies outside all this, and
remains wholly uninfluenced by it).

These ideas of God have life only by their own inherent power: yet what
risk that Jews should lapse into supposing themselves separately a
favoured people? By this very error they committed the rebellion against
which they had been warned--in believing that they only were concerned
in receiving a supernatural aid of redemption: thus silently
substituting their own merits for the Divine purposes. All which did in
fact happen. But their errors were overruled, else how could the human
race be concerned in their offences, errors, or ministries? The Jews
forgot what we moderns forget, that they were no separate objects of
favour with God, but only a means of favour.

What occasion to 'argal-bargal' about why God did not sooner accomplish
the scheme of Christianity? For besides that, 1st, possibly the scheme
in its expansion upon earth required a corresponding expansion
elsewhere; 2ndly, it is evident even to our human sense that none but
the most childish eudamonist, whose notion of happiness is that of lazy
luxury, would think of cramming men, bidding them open their mouths, and
at once drugging them with a sensual opium (as all blessing must be
without previous and commensurate elevation to the level of that
blessing); 3rdly, the physical nature of the evil to be undone was such
as would not have _been_ (_objectively_ would not have been, but still
less could it _subjectively_ have been) for the conception of man that
dreadful mystery which it really is, had the awful introversion been
measured back by fewer steps; 4thly, and finally, it seems at first
sight shocking to say of God that He cannot do this and this, but it is
not so. Without adverting to the dark necessities that compass our
chaotic sense when we ascend by continual abstraction to the _absolute_,
without entangling ourselves vainly in those wildernesses that no
created intellect can range or measure--even one sole attribute of God,
His holiness, makes it as impossible for Him to proceed except by
certain steps as it would be impossible for a man, though a free agent,
and apparently master, as he feels and thinks, of his own life, to cut
his throat while in a state of pleasurable health both of mind and
body.

5.--Political, etc.

Sir Robert Walpole, as to p