(_a_) The divine efficiency interpenetrates that of man without destroying or absorbing it. The influx of God’s sustaining energy is such that men retain their natural faculties and powers. God does not work all, but all in all.
Preservation, then, is midway between the two errors of denying the first cause (deism or atheism) and denying the second causes (continuous creation or pantheism). _1 Cor. 12:6_—“_there are diversities of workings, but the same God, who worketh all things in all_”; _cf._ _Eph. 1:23_—the church, “_which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all_.” God’s action is no _actio in distans_, or action where he is not. It is rather action in and through free agents, in the case of intelligent and moral beings, while it is his own continuous willing in the case of nature. Men are second causes in a sense in which nature is not. God works through these human second causes, but he does not supersede them. We cannot see the line between the two—the action of the first cause and the action of second causes; yet both are real, and each is distinct from the other, though the method of God’s concurrence is inscrutable. As the pen and the hand together produce the writing, so God’s working causes natural powers to work with him. The natural growth indicated by the words “_wherein is the seed thereof_” (_Gen. 1:11_) has its counterpart in the spiritual growth described in the words “_his seed abideth in him_” (_1 John 3:9_). Paul considers himself a reproductive agency in the hands of God: he begets children in the gospel (_1 Cor. 4:15_); yet the New Testament speaks of this begetting as the work of God (_1 Pet. 1:3_). We are bidden to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, upon the very ground that it is God who works in us both to will and to work (_Phil. 2:12, 13_).
(_b_) Though God preserves mind and body in their working, we are ever to remember that God concurs with the evil acts of his creatures only as they are natural acts, and not as they are evil.
In holy action God gives the natural powers, and by his word and Spirit influences the soul to use these powers aright. But in evil action God gives only the natural powers; the evil direction of these powers is caused only by man. _Jer. 44:4_—“_Oh, do not this abominable thing that I hate_”; _Hab. 1:13_—“_Thou that art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and that canst not look on perverseness, wherefore lookest thou upon them that deal treacherously, and holdest thy peace when the wicked swalloweth up the man that is more righteous than he?_” _James 1:13, 14_—“_Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God; for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempteth no man: but each man is tempted, when he is drawn away by his own lust, and enticed._” Aaron excused himself for making an Egyptian idol by saying that the fire did it; he asked the people for gold; “_so they gave it me; and I cast it into the fire, and there came out this calf_” (_Ex. 32:24_). Aaron leaves out one important point—his own personal agency in it all. In like manner we lay the blame of our sins upon nature and upon God. Pym said of Strafford that God had given him great talents, of which the devil had given the application. But it is more true to say of the wicked man that he himself gives the application of his God-given powers. We are electric cars for which God furnishes the motive-power, but to which we the conductors give the direction. We are organs; the wind or breath of the organ is God’s; but the fingering of the keys is ours. Since the maker of the organ is also present at every moment as its preserver, the shameful abuse of his instrument and the dreadful music that is played are a continual grief and suffering to his soul. Since it is Christ who upholds all things by the word of his power, preservation involves the suffering of Christ, and this suffering is his atonement, of which the culmination and demonstration are seen in the cross of Calvary (_Heb. 1:3_). On the importance of the idea of preservation in Christian doctrine, see Calvin, Institutes, 1:182 (chapter 16).