infirmary and house of discipline, and one where the fatal cases exceed the happy cures,-have, surely, need to counteract the feeling which this situation prompts, by all the resources which the same revelation yields. It is probable, that superior and happy beings regard this abode into which evil has entered, and that abode where sin is punished, as we should regard a solitary hospital and prison in a vast and well-ordered and flourishing capital; though indeed, with this most joyful difference, that in the other countless mansions which they visit or behold, throughout the immeasurable "city of the living God," they witness, we trust, not a partial, but a total exclusion of moral evil.

The astronomy which has developed the incalculable magnitude of creation, is, in this view, auxiliary to our faith; for, in proportion as our knowledge is enlarged, as to the actual vastness of the divine works, a correspondence in facts (or in the existing universe) is discovered so far, with the inferences we would draw from the revelation of the divine character.

Had the stars been neither mentioned in Scripture, nor visible in nature, still, from the moral perfection of Deity, which is distinctly revealed, we should be led to believe in an immense pre

dominance of happiness somewhere ;-but, seeing a host of heavenly worlds, and learning that their number is beyond all computing, we make one grand advance towards our conclusion, on the ground of ocular and mathematical proof. Faith is relieved, as it were, from its work of creation. The mighty structure of innumerable worlds is before us. Divine wisdom and power have actually done what we otherwise should only have judged they would do; nay, the boldest conception of faith, or of fancy, would never have gone a ten thousandth part so far as the fact carries us. Here is ample room, then, in the actual works of the Deity, for a preponderance of happiness which may well be called, to our feeble apprehension, infinite. The Deity is "just" and "holy,”—

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good" and "gracious," yea,-" God is Love:" while we believe this, (and be it remembered, that when we cease to do so, all belief in revelation falls,) it is impossible not to believe that such an immense preponderance of happiness is both produced and secured.

This vastness of the works of God also evidently magnifies the love and condescension of their Author, in interposing, even by his providence, much more by the astonishing method of redemption, on behalf of our fallen world; which,

had it been annihilated in its state of moral ruin, might have been, to other beings, but as a meteor gliding into darkness, from amidst the multitudinous grandeur of the heavens. And when we consider the ultimate, and even the present efficacy of that marvellous interposition, towards the recovery and salvation of mankind, as far more extensive than some persons of an austere or excluding spirit can allow themselves to hope, we dissipate, in part, the gloom even of this world's prospect.

It is not, however, this world's state or prospect to which we should confine ourselves, or on which we have now sought to dwell. It is a scene immensely greater; and to that greater, that universal view, it is the proper tendency of every devotional engagement to exalt us. For whenever we pray we have always for the grand object of thought (if our thoughts be truly elevated and expanded towards the perfections of Him whom we worship,) an infinitely good and infinitely happy Creator;-why not also, as a concurring or proximate object of thought, that which is necessarily to be inferred from the idea of such a Creator, the utmost possible sum of goodness and felicity in his creation? We should be deeply grateful for that revelation which assures us of

the moral perfection of God:* without it, although our knowledge of sin and its deserts would have far less of painful distinctness, we should be left in a dreadful uncertainty as to the extent and duration of evil. We could not disprove that it prevails in all parts of the creation, and that it will every where and continually augment. We should, indeed, know much less of (what the human mind has so great a repugnance to admit) the malignant essence of evil, its contrariety to the divine nature and will; but therefore, (on that very account,) we could not know that its dominion must be limited, and that good must immensely preponderate.

Deists may offer strong arguments in proof of a certain kind of divine perfection; but there is no ground to believe that they who altogether reject revelation have real confidence in the moral attributes of Deity; and it follows that they must remain either in fearful doubt, or stupid thoughtlessness as to the ultimate issues of good and ill.

A Christian, on the contrary, may confidently regard all the evil, which is, or can be permitted by a God of holiness and love, as indispensably conducive to the production and maintenance of a good that will incomparably overbalance it. He *See Note E, at the end of the volume.

sees in the works of Christ, in his perfect rectitude, purity, and benevolence, an "image" of the perfections "of the invisible God;" he has been taught by the words of Christ, that the divine goodness so transcends that of all creatures, as to be in fact the only essential goodness; "None is good, save one, that is God."

From these assurances of Him, who is One with the Father, and who attested his words by miracles of goodness, the Christian may, I think, without presumption conclude, that if the universe, viewed by prescience in its whole extent and duration, had not been foreseen to contain an incomparable excess of good, the eternally good and blessed God would never have become a Creator.

We know that the follower of Christ cannot, in one sense, be too much occupied with the existence of moral evil; he cannot too strenuously oppose and conflict against it, in himself and others, nor can he have any spring of action so truly identical with that which reigned in the soul of his Saviour, as a pure desire of preventing or counteracting its diversified effects. Yet, in contemplation, it is his duty often to "turn aside," and see a far greater sight; to anticipate the period when evil shall not only be extinguished in himself, but shall for ever cease to be prominent, per