When Aristotle remarked, that "no man alone is a whole man". (by which he means that no one is capable of contemplating a subject in all its aspects), he uttered a sentiment which the writer feels to be preeminently true in his own case. The subject is, however, of transcendent importance at the present time, when by mistaken friends, no less than by secret and open enemies, so many efforts are made to lessen our confidence in the statements of God's Word. And hoping that the attention of others may be called specifically to a consideration of the same, I shall proceed briefly to enumerate strange proceedings of the Almighty Governor in reference to our world, and which would seem, on a superficial view, to impair our confidence in his goodness, his wisdom or his power; and secondly show, that they furnish no grounds to justify the cavils of infidelity, or to impair our confidence in the God who has revealed himself to mankind in the Bible.

I. In enumerating the difficulties referred to, we shall endeavor to state them in their full strength.

1. Natural disorder and moral evil have obtained an entrance into the universe while under the government of a good, and righteous, and all-powerful God. Was he not bound by a regard to the happiness of his creatures to prevent this?

2. Another singularly mysterious arrangement of God is, his making one sin the corrective or punishment of another. A warrior, for example, is raised up-an Alexander, a Cæsar, or a Napoleon, and with the malevolence of a demon marches over the fairest portions of earth, desolating like the tornado, and utterly regardless of the misery and wretchedness he produces, he burns and destroys its cities, and prostrates its happiest institutions in the dust. Yet God has marked out his track; selected his every victim; and appointed the boundaries which he cannot pass. See a remarkable passage in Is. 10: 5-19.

Now why should a holy God employ such agents to accomplish his purposes? Or, if the ground be taken that they are not thus employed by him (which would be a preposterous supposition, as multitudes of cases mentioned in Judges, Samuel and Kings, abundantly testify), are we to believe that he has abandoned mankind to the fluctuations of events in which he is not concerned?

3. Another strange phenomenon in a moral government administered by a just and all-powerful being, is, the permission of sinners to live long, though they sin much and enormously; and though, like Paine and Voltaire, they corrupt and lead fatally astray thousands of souls.

4. Another mysterious arrangement is, the sufferings which children and other persons are called to endure for sins of which they personally are entirely innocent. This fact is stated throughout the Bible, and is no less clearly apparent in the volume of Providence.

5. Another mystery of this wonder-working providence, is, vice is often triumphant and virtue depressed. Yet God approves virtue, and detests vice. Still vice prevails.

Does not this, it is asked, impeach either the wisdom, the power, or the goodness of God? Why is it permitted that bad men should not only be tolerated, but even be exalted over the virtuous, and permitted sorely to oppress them in this world? Does not God know? Can he love iniquity, and hate virtue? Is he unable to vindicate the righteous? If not, why sleeps the thunder of his arm? Why not blast the oppressor to perdition, and exalt his virtuous, but down-trodden people? And why, on the contrary, permit the wicked not only to dwell on earth, but to pass life in affluence and ease, and even to grind his devoted followers in the dust, when at a single word he could shiver them to atoms? The perplexity of the Psalmist in view of this difficulty is stated in Ps. 73; and the use made of it by wicked men is also stated in Eccles. 8:11.

6. Another perplexing difficulty is, parents are often snatched away by death, from the helpless and dependent children.

7. Also, youth die just as they are beginning to be useful. How mysterious the removal of a Spencer, a Martyn, and a Summerfield; while, on the contrary, the vicious and supine are left to flourish.

8. Genius of the highest order is often left to languish ; and does not display the thousandth part of its gifts. It fades away unheeded and unknown; disappears, and is forgotten. Gray refers to this, in the exquisite stanza, "Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid."

9. Another perplexity arises from the fact that a small part only of mankind have been converted to God, though the Gospel which designs their conversion has so long been proclaimed. And of those who do profess the Christian faith, how few live in accordance therewith! How much jarring and contension exist between individuals, families, churches and nations, who are called by the name of Christ! The greater part of mankind appear to be no better than they would have been, says the objector, had Jesus never appeared on earth.

10. It is also remarked, that mankind are exceedingly alive to the subject of suffering. God has so constituted us, that the apprehension of being called to endure only a small amount of suffering or pain arouses all our anxieties. If there be but a bare probability that we shall suffer only a small degree of pain or agony, it makes us uncomfortable, if not unhappy. Our sympathies are also excited if we apprehend that our friend or neighbor will be called thus to suffer. God has made this natural to us. How can it be, then, that we look upon future and eternal misery with so much indifference; on the supposition that such a state of retribution exists? We are not alive to it; our fears are scarcely aroused by the

apprehension; and our sympathy for our impenitent friends is permitted to slumber. Is this reconcilable with the truth of that doctrine? Has God made us fully alive to all other pain, and sorrow, and agony; and not to this which is infinitely more important than all the rest?

11. Another subject calculated to astonish the reflecting mind, is the dreadful and inveterate corruption of the heart even after its renewal and regeneration. Surely the work of God is not imperfectly done, and yet what awful depravity still remains? How almost unconquerable the attachment to things of time and sense! What indolence in making advances in holiness! What hateful and unclean passions rise up, and rage in the heart, or haunt the soul! What can all this mean? "If I love, why am I thus ?"

12. It is often said, in general, that the course of events in this world has not been such as we should have expected to transpire under the Divine administration, from the knowledge we possess of the moral character of God. He is a God of order, of wisdom, and of mercy; yet we discover much disorder and confusion in the affairs of men, and in all sublunary things. We see the creatures of God oppressed with calamity, and environed with misery, sorrow and death:-"born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward."

These spectres have haunted the souls of men, ever since earth, became the abode of sinful beings; and from the use which Infidelity has made of them, they have often perplexed the minds of the friends of God and of the Bible. Let us then give them a calm consideration. Let us lay hold upon them and bring them to the light of day, and define their outlines; and we are persuaded it will be found that it is only the obscurity in which they have been suffered, through our timid apprehensions to abide, which has invested them with their terrors. We do not profess to be able to give a solution of problems which have puzzled the mightiest intellects in all ages; but we are persuaded that it is our duty fairly to meet these difficulties; and that they may be so met, as to show that they furnish the sceptic no justification of his scepticism; and afford the sincere Christian no ground whatever, either of apprehension or doubt, in relation to the goodness and equity of the providence of God.

II. The question then arises, How may we account for these phenomena, in consistency with the acknowledged merciful disposition and goodness of God? How are we to retain full confidence in the Divine administration? In other words, are these occurrences, with all the weight of reason that can possibly be demanded for them, sufficient to shake a believer's confidence in the goodness and promises of his Creator?

1. In relation to the whole subject, I would remark, that the most of these difficulties, as well as the weightiest of them, press

the unbeliever as severely as they do the Christian. The sceptic, if not an atheist, is as much bound as the believer, to tell how natural and moral evil entered the universe; why so much disorder prevails; why the innocent often suffer for the guilty; why genius is often bestowed, and then passes away without developing a tithe of its treasures, &c. The disciples of Paine and Jefferson, and other infidels who recognised the doctrine of a particular providence, are required, equally with us, to meet these difficulties.

Nor can those who deny a particular providence, obtain the least relief by so doing. They too must account for the seeming disorders in this world. Has God created the world in its present state of wretchedness and misery? Or was it originally created good, and then when it became sinfnl and wretched did he entirely abandon it? And are the innocent offspring of those who first offended, thus forsaken by their Creator, without the remotest possibility of their obtaining relief? Will the sceptic assert this, and then have the assurance to sneer at Christianity? Let him first reconcile these disorders with his own scheme, before he ventures to pretend that they afford ground of objection against the Bible, unless he would become the object of compassion to all reflecting minds. Nor will Atheism itself-the doctrine that chance or contingency rules the destinies of mankind,-afford its adherents even a momentary relief; for how can contingency be at the head of affairs, when, in relation to the very phenomena referred to, we behold such unvarying uniformity when we behold mankind without exception miserable, and invariably sinful, and death the invariable portion of all? If chance could give an existence of a century's duration, might it not sometimes at least, by "haphazard," give one of a hundred or a thousand centuries; or of unending duration? It is not the character of contingency to be thus uniform in its operations.

In order to illustrate the power of 'sceptical philosophy to afford relief to those, who, having rejected the Bible, have fled to scepticism for relief, we shall furnish an instance or two.

David Hume, referring to some of the phenomena above named, says, "I am affrighted and confounded with that forlorn solitude in which I am placed by my philosophy. When I look abroad, I foresee on every side dispute, contradiction, and distraction. When I turn my eye inward, I find nothing but doubt and ignorance. Where am I, or what? From what causes do I derive my existence, and to what condition shall I return? I am confounded with these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, environed with the deepest darkness."1

1 Treatise on Human Nature, vol. i., p. 458. Poor Hume! the foregoing presents a true portrait of his state of mind, living and dying. He had rejected the Bible; and the great Achillean argument of Epicurus was too much for him. It is thus stated by Lactantius-Deus aut vult tollere mala, et non potest; aut potest, et non vult; aut neque vult, neque potest; aut et vult et potest. Si vult, et non potest, imbecillis

The case of Voltaire furnishes an equally striking instance. In a passage which has been often quoted from his works, he says; "Who can, without horror, consider the whole world as the empire of destruction? It abounds with wonders; it abounds also with victims. It is a vast field of carnage and contagion. Every species is, without pity, pursued, and torn to pieces through the earth, the air and the water. In man, there is more wretchedness than in all other animals put together. He loves life; and yet he knows he must die. If he enjoys a transient good, he suffers various evils, and is at last devoured by worms. This knowledge is his fatal prerogative: other animals have it not. He spends the transient moments of his existence in diffusing the miseries which he suffers-cutting the throats of his fellow-creatures for pay; in cheating and being cheated; in robbing and being robbed; in serving that he might command; and in repenting of all he does. The bulk of mankind are nothing more than a crowd of wretches, equally criminal and unfortunate; and the globe contains rather carcases than men. I tremble at the review of this dreadful picture, to find that it contains a complaint against Providence itself; and I wish I never had been born."

Scepticism, therefore, instead of affording its advocates any relief, only enhances the difficulty; and thus dolefully must the unbeliever contemplate the apparently cheerless prospect which surrounds him. He has wilfully closed the only avenue through which heaven's beams could penetrate his soul; and he complains of being shrouded in midnight darkness. The believer, as we shall see, can, in a manner entirely the reverse of this, survey the scene. In the very darkness that surrounds his path, he finds cause of gratitude, and increasing reason to love and obey God.

2. Without attempting to take up and explain the preceding summary of difficulties seriatim, we shall, in the next place, refer to a few known and admitted principles upon which many of them may be satisfactorily accounted for, without in the least implicating the divine wisdom or goodness. And though we cannot dispel the clouds and thick darkness which are round about the Almighty. Governor of the universe, nor can they be fully penetrated by the ken of creatures, yet by the light of revelation we can discern reasons for his marvellous doings sufficient to remove all desponding fears.

(1.) As to "the Gordian knot," as it has been called, of theology and philosophy, the introduction of moral evil into the universe, it makes no more against Christianity than it does against theism; and while scepticism, therefore, can furnish no relief est; quod in Deum non cadit. Si potest et non vult, invidus; quod æque alienum a Deo. Si neque vult neque potest, et invidus, et imbecillis est; ideoque neque Deus. Si et vult, et potest, quod solum Deo convenit; unde sunt mala? aut cur illa non tollit?" Vide Lib. de Tra. Dei, cap. 13. It is a singular fact that this argument embodies the sum total of what Hume calls "my philosophy." 11

THIRD SERIES, VOL. III.

NO. 2.