If, on the other hand, we turn our thoughts from ourselves, to a study of the character of God, and of the nature and character of the government which He exercises over rational beings, all our apprehensions here, all our notions in respect to the nature and desert of sin and holiness, will, in many fundamental particulars, be determined by our notions in respect to the Will. In other words, our apprehensions of the nature and character of the Divine government, must be determined, in most important respects, by our conceptions of the nature and powers of the subjects of that government. I have no wish to conceal from the reader the true bearing of our present inquiries. I wish him distinctly to understand, that in fixing his notions in respect to the doctrine of the Will, he is determining a point of observation from which, and a medium through which, he shall contemplate his own character and deserts as a moral agent, and the nature and character of that Divine government, under which he must ever "live, and move, and have his being." TRUE AND FALSE METHODS OF INQUIRY. Such being the bearing of our present inquiries, an important question arises, to wit: What should be the influence of such considerations upon our investigations in this department of mental science It should not surely induce us, as appears to be true in the case of many divines and philosophers even, first to form our system of theology, and then, in the light of that, to determine our theory of the Will. The true science of the Will, as well as that of all ether departments of mental philosophy, "does not come by observation," but by internal reflection. Because our doctrine of the Will, whether true or false, will have a controlling influence in determining the character of our theology, and the meaning which we shall attach to large portions of the Bible, that doctrine does not, for that reason, lose its exclusively psychological character. Every legitimate question pertaining to it, still remains purely and exclusively a psychological question. The mind has but one eye by which it can see itself, and that is the eye of consciousness. This, then, is the organ of vision to be exclusively employed in all our inquiries in every department of mental science, and in none more exclusively than in that of the Will. We know very well, for example, that the science of optics has a fundamental bearing upon that of Astronomy. What if a philosopher, for that reason, should form his theory of optics by looking at the stars? This would be perfectly analogous to the conduct of a divine or philosopher who should determine his theory of the Will, not by psychological reflection, but by a system of theology formed without such reflection. Suppose again, that the science of Geometry had the same influence in theology, that that of the Will now has. This fact would not change at all the nature of that science, nor the mode proper in conducting our investigations in respect to it.