is finite in every portion of it. We must, then, reject the assertion of Mansel, that an attribute, to be conceived as infinite, must be in actual exercise, and with this assertion reject all the contradictions derived from it. The exact opposite would seem to be true; the infinite always implies the potential not the actual, always pertains to the spiritual and not to its material manifestation.

In applying the adjective infinite to God, we affirm that an inexhaustible potency cradles the universe; but the universe itself, the partial expression of this power, remains what it always has been and must be, finite. Creation is a passage from the potential to the actual, from the infinite to the finite.

Infinite power and infinite wisdom and perfect love no more overlap and cover and so exclude each other than do infinite space and infinite time. Infinite power expresses itself as force and infinite wisdom as rational relations and perfect love as beneficent relations. Perfect love and wisdom are a law to infinite power, because they are all gathered up in one Being; but love is not a narrowing of power. To insist that the self-contained laws of rational life are a restriction of life, is to be misled by words; is to affirm that unreason is better than reason, unrighteousness than righteousness. The power of God is not reduced by his moral nature, it is guided by it. We may attach a very definite and a very sufficient meaning to the word infinite, in its application to God, and yet respect perfectly the inherent nature of the attributes that pertain to Him. The assertion seems childish that perfect love is in