orted to in order to get rid of a personal God. The
Hindu Sankhyans ascribed all things to the "Eternally Existing Essence."
The Greek Atomists called it an "Inconceivable Necessity;" Anaxagoras,
"The World-forming Intelligence;" Hegel, "Absolute Idea;" Spinoza,
"Absolute Substance;" Schopenhauer, "Unconscious Will." Spencer finds
only "The Unknowable;" Darwin's virtual Creator is "Natural Selection;"
Matthew Arnold recognize a "Stream of Tendency not our own which makes
for righteousness." Nothing can be more melancholy than this dreary
waste of human speculation, this weary and bootless search after the
secret of the universe. At the same time a deaf ear is turned to those
voices of nature and revelation which speak of a benevolent Creator. But
the point to which I call particular attention in this connection is,
that these vague terms, whatever else they may mean, imply in each case
some law of necessity which moulds the world. They are only the names of
the Fates whom all philosophies have set over us. If we have been
correct in tracing an element of fatalism through all the heathen
faiths, and all ancient and modern philosophies, how is it that the
whole army of unbelief concentrate their assailments against divine
sovereignty in the Word of God, and yet are ready to laud and approve
these systems which exhibit the same things in greater degree and
without mitigation?

That which differentiates Christianity is the fact that, while it does
represent God as the originator and controller of all things, it yet
respects the freedom of the human will, which Mohammedanism does not,
which Hinduism does not, which ancient or modern Buddhism does not,
which Materialism does not. Not only the Word of God but our own reason
tells us that the Creator of this world must have proceeded upon a
definite and all-embracing plan; and yet at the same time, not only the
Word of God, but our own consciousness, tells us that we are free to act
according to our own will. How these things are to be reconciled we know
not, simply because we are finite and God is infinite. I once stood
before the great snowy range of the Himalayas, whose lofty peaks rose
twenty-five thousand feet above the sea. None could see how those
gigantic masses stood related to each other, simply because no mortal
ever has explored, or ever can explore, their awful and unapproachable
recesses.

So with many great truths concerning the being, attributes, and works of