structure of the world around us is nicely adapted. It is in no small degree a world of barrenness and thorns, a world of obscurity and mystery, a world of temptation and sin. We may and do perfect our natures by struggling with, and overcoming such obstacles. Physical strength is derived, not from the easy chair in the parlor, but from ploughing and hoeing the earth, swinging the axe or belaboring the anvil. Intellectual power and acumen are not received without effort in the nursery or the lecture room, but acquired by delving in the mines and separating the gold from the ore. Moral and religious principle becomes firm and decided, not in the select circle of virtue and piety, but in the wide world of temptation and sin. Thus the natural and spiritual worlds resemble, and conspire with, each other in the developement and formation of character in the only way adapted to our constitution and state of probation, viz. by such a mixture of good and evil as shall leave us at full liberty to choose a right or a wrong course and furnish us at once the means, which are necessary to aid our progress in the way of our choice, and the obstacles, the removal of which by continued effort is necessary to develope our powers and confirm our habits.

In the same manner and probably for the same end the sciences have exerted alternately good and bad influences on religious character. Like the three kingdoms of which they constitute the history and the philosophy, they are partly light and partly darkness, and they have shed upon religion, now light and now darkness. Now they have raised objections, and now they have removed those objections, and furnished contrary and corroborating evidence. Such has been the history of every science, theology not excepted. Accordingly different men have found in the same science, one nutriment for his faith and another support for his skepticism, one the means of perfecting his excellencies, another of deepening his depravity.**

Another way, in which good is brought out of evil in all the departments of the divine government, is by the increased value which good acquires or seems to acquire by contrast with evil. The fertile field never appears so rich as when contrasted with

* It is not denied, that true science has sometimes been perverted into an engine of irreligion and immorality. But it is more frequently the errors which are engrafted upon the science, that do the mis

the barren desert. How does the hungry and thirsty, weary and wayworn traveller through the interminable prairie or the boundless Sahara, revel in the shades and fountains and fruits and flowers of the wooded island or the verdant oäsis! None, but he who has suffered a long confinement in the narrow streets and infected atmosphere of a populous city, knows the luxury of life in the fresh green country.

It is so with providential good. If you are ever grateful for health, it is when you have visited a hospital and had your heart wrung with sympathy for the afflicted and distressed inmates; and if you ever enjoy the blessings of health with a keen, a peculiar relish, it is when you have yourself just risen from a bed of painful and protracted sickness. You set the highest value upon your knowledge, when you view it in contrast with the ignorance of others, or perhaps with your own former ignorance. It is so with spiritual good. When the Christian looks "at the rock whence he was hewn and the hole of the pit, whence he was digged," and sees others still cleaving to the hardness of impenitency and sinking in the mire of pollution, then it is that he sings the loudest, most enrapturing song of praise to his God and Redeemer. Heaven is the traveller's resting place and the prilgrim's home, the warrior's peace and the runner's goal, perpetual health to the diseased, and eternal life to the dying, confirmed holiness to the sinner, and perfected bliss to the miserable; and through eternity the joys of the redeemed will be enhanced and their notes of praise swelled immeasurably by looking back upon the sins and miseries of earth, and looking down upon the torments and blasphemies of hell.*

But evil is also made throughout the divine government the direct means of preventing a greater evil or accomplishing a greater good. The volcano is often a terrible scourge to its immediate vicinity, but it gives vent to those internal fires which would otherwise shake continents and lay waste nations. France

The songs of the redeemed in the Revelation are chiefly songs of deliverance in view of the dreadful and final overthrow of the wicked. In making such representations, the ministers of the Gospel and the sacred writers are often charged with a fiendish delight in the miseries of others. But it is nothing more, than that joy and gratitude, which we always and necessarily feel in contrasting our enjoyments with our deserts, our present happiness with our former misery, or our own weal with the wo of others.

in the last century was a political and moral volcano. Anarchy and infidelity broke out there in such frightful ravages and convulsions, as to put an effectual check upon the risings and heavings of other nations, and to furnish a safeguard to society and the church in every subsequent age of the world. And who can say, that our world is not the vent of sin for the moral universe, designed to exert a conservative influence over thousands of worlds and myriads of intelligent beings through endless ages.*

The lightning and the tempest often ravage the earth and destroy human life, but they also purify the atmosphere and prevent it from becoming fatal on a larger scale. So the judgments of heaven reform individuals, purify churches, correct social habits and improve national character.

The modern Italian derives subsistence and pleasure from the surface of the lava, that entombed Herculaneum and Pompeii; Europe owed the revival of letters not a little to the destruction of Constantinople; and the Gentile world were indebted to the persecution of the church at Jerusalem for the general propagation of the Gospel. Indeed if there is any truth in natural, political and ecclesiastical history, convulsions have been a principal means of fertilizing and beautifying the surface of the earth; revolutions, of reforming and advancing society; and persecutions, of purifying and enlarging the church. Who is not struck with the peculiar wisdom, that originated this plan of operation, and the symmetry, that extended it to every department of the divine government?+

Slavery, that scourge of Africa and curse and disgrace of the nations that have sanctioned it, has it done no good? To say nothing of the conversion and salvation of thousands, that would otherwise have lived and died in heathenism, what else has pro

That the influence of the fall together with the scheme of recovery is not confined to our world, is clear from such passages as the following. Luke 15: 10. Col. 1: 20. 1 Cor. 4: 9. Eph. 3: 20. That it should affect all moral beings accords with all our ideas of moral influence, and to suppose that it does, gives new grandeur to the scheme of moral government and to the plan of redemption.

This feature of the divine government does not justify the radical reformer, any more than the cruel persecutor. The divine plan may be wise, and the divine purpose good, while yet there is neither wisdom nor goodness in the human agency.

duced or could have produced that unparalleled sympathy and excitement in behalf of Africa, which has led so many white missionaries to breathe her pestilential airs and lay their bones on her burning sands; and what else has sent back so many of her own sons, civilized, enlightened and redeemed to build up nations on her coasts and spread the blessings of knowledge, society and religion through the countless heathen tribes of the interior?

And the evil one himself,-has he not been the means of doing good? He too has occasioned a sympathy in behalf of his wretched victims through all the heavenly hosts, and "there is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth more than over ninety and nine just persons, that need no repentance." When he drove on his slaves to crucify the son of God, he helped to execute a scheme, which the angels desire to look into, and which all holy beings will study and contemplate with ineffable wonder, love and joy forever and ever.

The animal kingdom, which is sometimes represented as a mere scene of carnage and cruelty, is a scheme of comprehensive wisdom and goodness; and the existence of carnivorous and venomous animals, so far from a blemish, is the wisest and best and most wonderful part of the scheme. Venomous animals rarely attack other species except for purposes of defence or subsistence. Now what more effectual means of defence against the larger animals could be devised, than their venomous bite or sting; and what other way of destroying their smaller prey would be so sudden, so easy, and attended with so little pain!

The destruction of many animals is absolutely necessary to prevent such a multiplication of them, as would exhaust vegetation and subject not only the whole animal kingdom, but man himself to a lingering, torturing death by famine. Now how profound, how superhuman is the wisdom, which makes this necessary destruction, the means of subsistence and happiness to another class of animals, that execute it in a manner far less painful to the victims, than the slow tortures of famine, disease or old age! But for the comforts of society, the pleasures of intellect, and the hopes and fears of immortality, it would be better for man to die in the same way. As it is his reason which exempts him from the scheme of animal destruction, so it is his rational and immortal nature only, which renders it deVOL. XI. No. 30.

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sirable that he should be exempted. Thus without any loss on the whole, but rather the reverse, to the herbivorous tribes, the happiness of the carnivorous species is clear gain to the sum total of animal enjoyment.*

Now it is a doctrine of christian theology, that the sum total of moral as of natural good is enhanced by the existence of evil. We cannot see so clearly how this result is effected in the moral as in the natural world, hence there is some dispute as to the manner. But as to the fact, there can be no doubt. The Bible implies it, and we see enough of the process to satisfy a reasonable mind. The sins and temptations of a wicked world give occasion for the exercise of some virtues, which could not otherwise exist, and discipline other virtues to a degree of strength and perfection, which they could not otherwise attain. Earth with all its barrenness and thorns and briars, is the very soil for faith and patience and charity to bloom in and bear their precious harvest of golden fruit.

Without the existence of evil, there could not be the luxury, to us unequalled, of contemplating our deliverance and praising our Deliverer. The beauties of the Redeemer's character and the glories of redemption could have been exhibited only in a theatre of sin and misery. Other worlds may owe their continued allegiance to our apostacy, their further progress in knowledge and holiness to our folly and guilt; and the holy universe will understand the nature, perceive the beauty, and enjoy the pleasures of holiness far more than if sin and misery had never existed.

As in the natural world, destruction and pain afford the means of subsistence and pleasure, so in the spiritual world, sin and misery furnish nutriment to holiness and happiness; and as the happiness of carnivorous animals is clear gain without any loss to the herbivorous, so without doing the wicked any wrong, the Head of the church will by their means greatly enhance the holiness and happiness of his people, while he makes a matchless display of his own wisdom and goodness. Thus he causes all

*For authority and more extended discussion on this subject, the reader may refer to Paley's Nat. Theol. chap. 26. and Buckland's Bridg. Treat. chap. 13.

†Theologians of all parties agree, that evil is in some way, or for some reason, incidental to the best system.

Rom. 3: 5—7. 5: 20. 11: 11, 12, 32, 33, etc.