propensity to sin, and complete the depravity of the species.

We err then as widely from the principles of reason or natural religion, as from the doctrines of the Gospel, if, in seeking to collect the disposition of the Deity towards us, we limit our attention to the actual sufferings of mankind; without inquiring whether they be favourable or otherwise in the influence which they are fitted to exert on our religious and moral principles, and our hopes of future happiness, whether they be remedial of our spiritual distempers, and salutary to our enduring life. It is this most reasonable inquiry which the Bible has anticipated; and when it assures us that affliction is the chastening of our heavenly Father, which though, " for the present, it seemeth to be not joyous, but grievous, nevertheless afterward yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them that are exercised thereby," it answers that inquiry in a manner conformable to the experience of all who are not studious to evade the lessons of Divine Providence, and obstinately averse to the practice of religion. The theologians referred to, however, though in no degree indifferent to the worth of the Gospel as a divine communication, but, on

the contrary, its firm believers and its powerful advocates, impelled, as it would seem, by that eager spirit of inquiry, or love of speculation, which often grows forgetful of familiar truths, and overlooks the clew to knowledge when it lies at our feet, have propounded a method of reasoning on the dealings of God with his creatures, which inevitably places them in opposition to the most explicit declarations of the Scripture. For if it be the preponderance of happiness over misery in the present state which properly and exclusively demonstrates the goodness of the Deity, we are compelled to regard the pains and sorrows of mankind, or the exceptions to their felicity, as the unavoidably accidental consequences of a system designed for the production of happiness-of happiness only: since it were palpably absurd to refer the causation of misery for its own sake, to a purely benevolent being; or to suppose that the Deity, if he be such a being, would permit the existence of an amount of evil which were unnecessary to the production of a greater good, and which he had the power to prevent or destroy. Accordingly, if we repine at that constitution of our senses, which renders them so many inlets to pain and uneasiness, as well

as avenues of pleasure-that structure of our frame which makes it an engine of torture, as well as an instrument of enjoyment, they would silence our murmurs by alleging the fact or probability, that the body's susceptibility of pain is a necessary concomitant of its capacity for pleasure that its sufferings are the price of its enjoyments, and inseparably pertain to its existence. With a similar explanation they would reconcile us to the constitution of our social affections; which, however fruitful of habitual complacency, exalted at times to delight and rapture, are so often found, in their tenacious hold upon the heart, to consume it with grief, or to rend it with agony.*

* Dr. Balguy, in his "Divine Benevolence Asserted," is so engrossed and captivated with this view of the constitution of our nature, that forgetting, as is manifest, the moral corruption of all human beings, he accounts even "the abuses of the passions" as "accidental," and regarding them as a whole, pronounces them to be in a state of optimism :- -“The general state of the passions is what it ought to be. The direction of each is usually right: and the degree of each is comparatively right.”. the force of the passions too great when taken all together." He concludes, that "the understanding, the will, and the passions, are each of them adapted to good ends, though accidentally indeed the occasion of evil.” (P. 104.) This, from a Christian divine, otherwise a sound expositor of the Scriptures, as we should conclude from a partial acquaintance with his writings, and an able defender of

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"Nor is

Now, passing the purely hypothetical character of such a conclusion, and the dissatisfaction which is left upon the mind in thus supposing limitations to the creative power of God, and the modes of displaying his benevolence, how can such a conclusion comport with the doctrine of Scripture, that our afflictions were ordained by the "Father of spirits" as a means of our religious improvement? How can we receive, on the one hand, the testimony of the Scriptures that man was made subject to sickness and mortality, and yet allow, on the other, that the pains of the body are but accidental to a structure designed to be exclusively a vehicle of enjoyment? How can we believe that the Creator inserted into our frame the elements of infirmity and disease, and notwithstanding account those derangements which take place in its organization, its oppressive languors, and its throbs of agony, as accidental to a system contrived for the production of pleasure? Is it reasonable to ascribe the seeming imperfections in a work to the will and intention of the artist-to a stroke from the

Christianity, is a striking example of that incongruity of opinions which suggested, and will fully justify, the tenour of the present discourse.

hand that made it, and, at the same time, to ascribe them to some flaw or untractableness in the materials of which it is composed ?—Is it without reason that we exhort Christians to entertain consistent views on this subject, and to adhere to the single testimony of the Scriptures on the purpose of God in the infliction of suffering, when we find them thus admitting conclusions which oppose and destroy each other?

There is no colour whatever in the word of God for the notion that the painful maladies incident to our frame have come into existence independently of the power and will of the Creator. On the contrary, it frequently declares them to be his own work. By the mouth of Moses, for example, the Almighty asserted his entire supremacy in destroying life, in wounding as well as in healing :-" See now that I, even I am he, and there is no god with me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand."* Moreover, the Apostle expressly affirms that "the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of Him who subjected the same.... .." And it should be added, that it is not very consistent to accept the doctrine of the Scriptures relative Deut. xxxii. 39. † Misery. Rom. viii. 20.