The question of the second chapter she thus answers:—
"The Moral Law is found in the Intuitions of the Human Mind. These Intuitions are natural; but they are also revealed. Our Creator wrought them into the texture of our souls to form the groundwork of our thoughts, and made it our duty first to examine and then to erect upon them by reflection a Science of Morals. But He also continually aids us in such study, and He increases this aid in the ratio of our obedience. Thus Moral Intuitions are both Human and Divine, and the paradoxes in their nature are thereby solved."—p. 136.
This statement may, perhaps, be received without cavil by most readers; but the reasoning on which it depends is the weakest part of the book, and we shall be surprised if some hard-headed divine, who fears that this doctrine of Intuition will pester his Church, does not find out the flaws in the argument. It will be urged, for instance, that, in confessing that the Science of Morals can never be as exact as that of Mathematics, because we have no terminology for Ethics so exact as for Geometry, she, in effect, yields the whole question, and leaves us in the old slough of doubt where Pyrrho and Pascal delighted to thrust us, and where the Church threatens to keep us, unless we will pay her tolls and pick our way along her turnpike. But though her major and minor premises may not be on the best terms with each other,—even though they may remind us of that preacher of whom Pierrepont Edwards said, "If his text had the smallpox, his sermon would not catch it,"—her conclusion is sound, and as inspiring now as when the poet said,—
"Est Deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo,"—
or when George Fox trudged hither and thither over Europe with the same noble tune sounding in his ears.
In the third chapter the old topics are treated, which, according to Milton, the fallen angels discussed before Adam settled the debate by sinning,—
"Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,"—
and it is concluded that the Moral Law can be obeyed:—
"1st. Because the Human Will is free. 2d. Because this freedom, though involving present sin and suffering, is foreseen by God to result eventually in the Virtue of every creature endowed therewith."
In this chapter the history of the common doctrine of Predestination is admirably sketched, (pp. 159-164, note.) and the grounds for our belief in Free Will more clearly stated than we remember to have seen elsewhere. Especially fine is her method of reducing Foreordination to simple Ordination, by directing attention to the fact that with God there is no Past and Future, but an Endless Now; as Tennyson sings in "In Memoriam,"—