belongs to God alone:—man is but a recipient of life, and that from moment to moment. For life is a thing not created, but only communicated; that is, there is no such thing as endowing a created being with life, any more than there is a possibility of endowing the eye with light: the endowment consists simply in giving a constitution or structure capable of receiving life or light respectively. Wisdom is mental light, and the understanding is the mind's eye. Thus have we endeavoured to demonstrate, from the wisdom visible in man, not only that God, who gives man all his wisdom, must be Himself wise, and most wise,—but, still farther, that the wisdom seen in any man and in all men, is not so properly the gift of God, as it is the presence of God, operating in and through man,—thus, in fact, that all wisdmn is God's alone.[1]
We proceed now to our second point, namely, to adduce evidences of the goodness of God, as manifested in His spiritual universe, and particularly in the mind, or rather in the heart and life, of man. And here, it
- ↑ We would here guard most expressly against the possibility of the above remarks being taken in any pantheistic sense,—and against any such conclusion being drawn, as that, because the wisdom seen in man is not properly his, but God's in him, therefore man's mind is Divine, or that man is God. Such a doctrine is as abhorrent to all sound philosophy, as to the teachings of Divine Revelation. It might as justly be argued, that because the light reflected from the earth is not the earth's light, but is caused by the presence of the sun, therefore the earth is the sun. Precisely the opposite conclusion is the true one, viz., that as the earth, having no light or heat of its own, is itself not in the least a sun,—so man, having no wisdom of his own, is not in the least degree God or Divine: and as the earth is perpetually dependent on the influence of the sun, so man is perpetually dependent on the bounty of God.
