and called them The Everlasting
Judgments of God, to which a confused and hard-worked man was to look;
and take comfort, for all would be well at last. By fair induction (as I
believe) did man discover, more or less clearly, those eternal laws: by
repeated verifications of them in every age, man has been rising, and
will yet rise, to clearer insight into their essence, their limits, their
practical results. And if it be these, the old laws of right and wrong,
which this author and his school call invariable and immutable, we shall,
I trust, most heartily agree with them; only wondering why a moral
government of the world seems to them so very recent a discovery.

But we shall not agree with them, I trust, when they represent these
invariable and immutable laws as resulting in any inevitable sequence, or
irresistible growth. We shall not deny a sequence--Reason forbids that;
or again, a growth--Experience forbids that: but we shall be puzzled to
see why a law, because it is immutable itself, should produce inevitable
results; and if they quote the facts of material nature against us, we
shall be ready to meet them on that very ground, and ask:--You say that
as the laws of matter are inevitable, so probably are the laws of human
life? Be it so: but in what sense are the laws of matter inevitable?
Potentially, or actually? Even in the seemingly most uniform and
universal law, where do we find the inevitable or the irresistible? Is
there not in nature a perpetual competition of law against law, force
against force, producing the most endless and unexpected variety of
results? Cannot each law be interfered with at any moment by some other
law, so that the first law, though it may struggle for the mastery, shall
be for an indefinite time utterly defeated? The law of gravity is
immutable enough: but do all stones inevitably fall to the ground?
Certainly not, if I choose to catch one, and keep it in my hand. It
remains there by laws; and the law of gravity is there too, making it
feel heavy in my hand: but it has not fallen to the ground, and will not,
till I let it. So much for the inevitable action of the laws of gravity,
as of others. Potentially, it is immutable; but actually it can be
conquered by other laws.

I really beg your pardon for occupying you here with such truisms: but I
must put the students of this University in mind of them, as long as too
many modern thinkers shall choose to ignore them.

Even i