creation is a fact which man cannot explain. He finds in himself the relics of a Law impressed on him when he was created "in the image of God," which tells of duty and demands obedience; and this gives evidence that man was created to be governed by, and so was taken into a moral relation with, a personal God. He finds himself a dependent and yet a moral agent, responsible for his manner of acting towards Him from whom he received the power to act. This combination of freedom with derived and dependent agency, includes something beyond the limits of the human faculties. An anchor is needed, by which the understanding may be kept back, on the one hand, from a Pantheistic absorption of the moral creation in the Creator, and, on the other, from suffering the universe to be cast adrift on the dreary ocean of Atheism; and it is found in the faith which believes what it can neither question nor fully comprehend.
The evolution of the theological system is a further evolution of the mystery into which its first principle retires. As the understanding cannot embrace a reconciliation of the infinity of the divine attributes with the creation of beings free to act, and therefore responsible, neither can it devise a scheme for harmonizing with these attributes the dark history of a portion of that created agency. We find that each member of our own race is born into the world "alienated" from God, and we are told of another race that has fallen, without hope of recovery, into the same awful habit of ungodliness. The continued existence of moral creatures in the universe
