It would be amusing, if it were not sad, to see what devices and what names have been resorted to in order to get rid of a personal God.  The Hindu Sankhyans ascribed all things to the “Eternally Existing Essence.”  The Greek Atomists called it an “Inconceivable Necessity;” Anaxagoras, “The World-forming Intelligence;” Hegel, “Absolute Idea;” Spinoza, “Absolute Substance;” Schopenhauer, “Unconscious Will.”  Spencer finds only “The Unknowable;” Darwin’s virtual Creator is “Natural Selection;” Matthew Arnold recognize a “Stream of Tendency not our own which makes for righteousness.”  Nothing can be more melancholy than this dreary waste of human speculation, this weary and bootless search after the secret of the universe.  At the same time a deaf ear is turned to those voices of nature and revelation which speak of a benevolent Creator.  But the point to which I call particular attention in this connection is, that these vague terms, whatever else they may mean, imply in each case some law of necessity which moulds the world.  They are only the names of the Fates whom all philosophies have set over us.  If we have been correct in tracing an element of fatalism through all the heathen faiths, and all ancient and modern philosophies, how is it that the whole army of unbelief concentrate their assailments against divine sovereignty in the Word of God, and yet are ready to laud and approve these systems which exhibit the same things in greater degree and without mitigation?

That which differentiates Christianity is the fact that, while it does represent God as the originator and controller of all things, it yet respects the freedom of the human will, which Mohammedanism does not, which Hinduism does not, which ancient or modern Buddhism does not, which Materialism does not.  Not only the Word of God but our own reason tells us that the Creator of this world must have proceeded upon a definite and all-embracing plan; and yet at the same time, not only the Word of God, but our own consciousness, tells us that we are free to act according to our own will.  How these things are to be reconciled we know not, simply because we are finite and God is infinite.  I once stood before the great snowy range of the Himalayas, whose lofty peaks rose twenty-five thousand feet above the sea.  None could see how those gigantic masses stood related to each other, simply because no mortal ever has explored, or ever can explore, their awful and unapproachable recesses.

So with many great truths concerning the being, attributes, and works of God.  One may say that God predetermined and then foresaw what He had ordained; another that He foresaw and then resolved to effect what he had foreseen.  Neither is correct, or at least neither can know that he is correct.  God is not subject to our conditions of time and space.  It is impossible that He, whose knowledge and will encompass all things, should be affected by our notions of order and sequence; there is with Him no before and after.  The whole