THE WILL NOT ALWAYS AS THE DICTATES OF THE INTELLIGENCE.

I. Is the Will then as the greatest apparent good in this sense, that all its determinations are in conformity to the dictates of the Intelligence. Does the Will never harmonize with the Sensibility in opposition to the Intelligence? Has no intelligent being, whether sinful or holy, ever done that which his Intellect affirmed at the time, that he ought not to do, and that it was best for him not to do? I answer,

1. Every man who has ever violated moral obligation knows, that he has followed the impulse of desire, in opposition to the dictates of his Intelligence. What individual that has ever perpetrated such deeds has not said, and cannot say with truth, “I know the good, and approve it; yet follow the bad?” Take a matter of fact. A Spanish nobleman during the early progress of the Reformation, became fully convinced, that the faith of the Reformers was true, and his own false, and that his salvation depended upon his embracing the one and rejecting the other. Yet martyrdom would be the result of such a change. While balancing this question, in the depths of his own mind, he trembled with the greatest agitation. His sovereign who was present, asked the cause. The reply was, “the martyr’s crown is before me, and I have not Christian fortitude enough to take it.” He died a few weeks subsequent, without confessing the truth. Did he obey his Intelligence, or Sensibility there? Was not the conflict between the two, and did not the latter prevail? In John 12: 42, 43, we have a fact revealed, in which men were convinced of the truth, and yet, because “they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God,” they did not confess, but denied the truth, a case therefore in which they followed the impulse of desire, in opposition to the dictates of the Intelligence. The Will then is not “always as the greatest apparent good,” in this sense, that its action is always in the direction of the dictates of the Intelligence.

2. If this is so, sin, in all instances, is a mere blunder, a necessary result of a necessary misjudgment of the Intelligence? Is it so? Can the Intelligence affirm that a state of moral impurity is better than a state of moral rectitude? How easy it would be, in every instance, to “convert a sinner from the error of his way,” if all that is requisite is to carry his Intellect in favor of truth and righteousness? Who does not know, that the great difficulty lies in the enslavement of the Will to a depraved Sensibility?

3. If the Will of all Intelligents is always in harmony with the Intellect, then I affirm that there is not, and never has been, any such thing as sin, or ill desert, in the universe. What more can be said of God, or of any being ever so pure, than that he has always done what his Intellect affirmed to be best? What if the devil, and all creatures called sinners, had always done the same thing? Where is the conceivable ground for the imputation of moral guilt to them?

4. If all acts of Will are always in perfect harmony with the Intelligence, and in this sense, “as the greatest apparent good,” then, when the Intellect affirms absolutely that there can be no ground of preference between two objects, there can be no choice between them. But we are, in fact, putting forth every day just such acts of Will, selecting one object in distinction from another, when the Intellect affirms their perfect equality, or affirms absolutely, that there is and can be no perceived ground of preference between them. I receive a letter, I will suppose, from a friend, informing me that he has just taken from a bank two notes, perfectly new and of the same value, that one now lies in the east and the other in the west corner of his drawer, that I may have one and only one of them, the one that I shall name by return of mail, and that I must designate one or the other, or have neither. Here are present to my Intelligence two objects absolutely equal. Their location is a matter of indifference, equally absolute. Now if as the proposition “the Will is always as the greatest apparent good,” affirms, I cannot select one object in distinction from another, without a perceived ground for such selection, I could not possibly, in the case supposed, say which bill I would have. Yet I make the selection without the least conceivable embarrassment. I might mention numberless cases, of daily occurrence, of a nature precisely similar. Every child that ever played at “odd or even,” knows perfectly the possibility of selecting between objects which are, to the Intelligence, absolutely equal.

I will now select a case about which there can possibly be no mistake. Space we know perfectly to be absolutely infinite. Space in itself is in all parts alike. So must it appear to the mind of God. Now when God determined to create the universe, he must have resolved to locate its centre in some one point of space in distinction from all others. At that moment, there was present to the Divine Intelligence an infinite number of points, all and each absolutely equally eligible. Neither point could have been selected, because it was better than any other: for all were equal. So they must have appeared to God. Now if the “Will is always as the greatest apparent good,” in the sense under consideration, God could not in this case make the selection, and consequently could not create the universe. He did make the selection, and did create. The Will, therefore, is not, in this sense, “always as the greatest apparent good.”