12.  The dignity and responsibilities growing out of the fundamental truth before partially unfolded, that God, under the gospel, having given us general principles and laws touching benevolence, has left the amount and frequency or our contributions to our own decision.  The position we occupy under the new dispensation is full of interest and solemnity.  As it is one of peculiar dignity, it is one of peculiar peril.  God has now raised us to the true platform of intelligent and moral beings; given our reason and consciences free scope to exercise their own energetic and controlling powers.  He has, indeed, always given man this prerogative, but in a higher sense under the Gospel than before; in other words, placed him in a position better fitted for the development of his whole being.  He has thrown him more entirely on his personal responsibility and the decisions of individual judgment, by laying down general principles from which he is to ascertain his every-day duties.  All the noble powers of the soul, directed by the Spirit’s influences, are to be brought into full operation and work in concert; the heart, without impediment, concurring with the reason; the purposes, with the affections.  This is “the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free.”

Paul has beautifully illustrated this subject by comparing the condition of a son before and after becoming of age.*[Gal. iv.] While a minor, he is kept in subordination to his father; “under tutors and governors,” his judgment in the management of affairs is under the control of another.  While a minor, he is kept in subordination to his father; “under tutors and governors,” his judgment in the management of affairs is under the control of another.  But when he comes of age, he is elevated to a new position, assumes new interests and new responsibilities.  He must then reason, judge, and act for himself.  So under the Jewish dispensation, God dealt with our race as minors; left them not to the direction of their own individual wisdom—­to form specific rules from general principles; but led them by definite precepts; not such always as rise out of the nature of things; but such as he saw best fitted, by a sort of foreshadowing, to prepare them for the more glorious state to which they were approaching.  Hence all those positive laws, rites, and solemn festivals—­appointed “days, and months, and times, and years,” tithes and double tithes to which they were in bondage.  But when Christ came, this bondage was broken.  We were emancipated from this system of tutelage; henceforth, breathing the spirit of adoption and enjoying the freedom of sons, we were to act according to the dictates of our sanctified hearts and enlightened judgments, like beatified spirits, who, swayed alone by reason, conscience, and love, in the highest sense free and intelligent, speed on their course in harmony with Jehovah.  So, under the dispensation of grace, every act must spring voluntarily from the mind, enlightened by comprehensive