argument intends to say, that inscrutable limitations exist in the divine power, which could never have been suspected until the broad facts proclaimed it; so that the deity had to submit necessarily, at least for a time, to a state of things contrary to his mind, as an essential prerequisite towards the attaining of a glorious end beyond.

A recent essayist, whose work has attracted more than usual notice, the Rev. Henry Woodward, has forced prominently forward the fact, that nearly all our reasonings concerning the Wisdom of God imply some limitation of his power. To a being, Omnipotent in the gross and popular sense, wisdom must be wholly useless, and in fact becomes in him an unintelligible quality. As policy is superfluous to a conqueror who can apply overwhelming force, so is wisdom superseded by omnipotence. We admire the adaptation of lungs to air, and of air to the lungs, on the supposition that a difficult problem has been proposed,how to free the blood from noxious particles? But if we are asked, "why might not the divine fiat have done it as well?" one reply alone is to be had,—that there are other objects to be gained by adhering to the general laws of matter, which objects could not have been so well gained by a direct exertion of divine power. If otherwise, there would be no intelligible wisdom in employing a circuitous, rather than a direct method of effecting the end. The like may be observed in every other case. Hence, wisdom and power are in one sense antagonistic qualities; the more you enlarge the sphere of the latter, the more you diminish that of the former; and every time we ascribe wisdom to the divine agent, we virtually imply some unknown limitation to his power, and deny the existence of almightiness in its vulgar sense.

To ignorant persons, who have imbibed with their devotional feelings the popular idea of omnipotence, it is apt to appear a profane thing to assert, that it is not within the power of the Almighty to recall the past; or, to construct a square which shall have the properties of a circle. But all thoughtful and philosophical minds have long been aware, that that which is self-contradictory does not lie within the sphere of power; and that it is no degradation to the Almighty that he cannot make the same thing both to be and not to be.

It being then certain, that limitations to the operations of his power may exist, and do exist, which the thoughtful of our race can discern, but of which the ignorant and unthinking are not aware; we may presume that other limitations possibly exist,

which no human mind would guess at à priori, and which may, as yet, be concealed from all. And it has appeared, that an analysis of every argument which ascribes wisdom to the deity, manifests that there is a secret conviction in all religious minds of the reality of that which has just been called a presumption. Applying such principles to the creation of intelligent and free beings like man, we presently fall upon the conception, that to be able to love God, man needed to be able to hate him; if free to go right, man is free also to go wrong. At present it is enough to assert, that it is at least a plausible opinion that the two sorts of ability are inseparable. It is not only unproved that to create a being capable of holiness without being liable to sin, is within the sphere of divine power; but the prima facie aspect of the case is the reverse, tending to convince us that the very idea is as selfcontradictory as that of a square circle. For when we try to analyse the notion of freedom, or indeed of holiness, we find it essentially implies a power of sin. For who would call a man honest, who had no natural power to be dishonest? or meek, who was physically unable to be angry? or humble, who could not help his humility? and so of all other moral excellences. Every one of them implies a #poaipeats or free choice; and they not only could not be praised, but could not even exist; for it would not be a soul if there were no freedom. A liability to go wrong is then essentially inseparable from a capacity to go right, as much as convexity from concavity. They are little more than the same thing viewed from opposite sides. We do not praise a stone image of Xenocrates for temperance, for it cannot be gluttonous; and we do not blame a hog for gluttony or a fox for theft, for they are incapable of the virtues of temperance and of honesty.

Now if this does not wholly satisfy any one, let it be at least allowed that the opinion is not wholly imaginary or absurd, but that it has a measure of probability. That probability appears

at once to be turned into practical certainty by the powerful testimony of matter of fact on the same side. We do find, to an amazing and appalling extent, moral disorder spread over the whole world as known to us; and the greatest difficulty is met in accounting for such a phenomenon within the realm of so beneficent and wise a ruler as we believe to superintend the earth. The fact forces on all pious contemplators the conviction, that, in some sense or other, he could not help it, consistently with the attaining of some paramount ends. If it is a physical difficulty which he could not overcome, that no doubt tends to degrade

our conception of divine power; but if it is a metaphysical diffi. culty, not at all. On the contrary, our own minds are in fault for having invented an absurdity, and then proposed it as a problem for his power to effect. The latter is at once both the alternative to which the case itself points us, and that which preserves the honour of the divine attributes. It does then appear to have as much proof as have any of the received propositions of natural theology, that to create a being capable of having a holy will, essentially implies the endowing him with a power to sin; and that even almighty power cannot separate the two, since the idea is selfcontradictory.

If this is conceded, the first great question pressing on us is; "whether the evils resulting from the creation of man, as a being capable of holiness, are so enormous, as to outweigh all the conceivable advantages." We cannot set aside this, by imagining some metaphysical necessity to have forced the deity to the creation of mankind; without falling into a system of mere fatalism. It would make out, that he is not our voluntary creator, but is himself a kind of tool or machine in the hands of destiny; and by breaking the moral connection between the creator and his creatures, would appear to subvert all intelligent piety. Nor indeed can the intellect approve such a conception, any more than does our devotional feeling; for what can be a more unmeaning phrase, than that God should create us by necessity, and without his own choice? Forced then to regard the act as chosen deliberately and voluntarily on his part, we cannot help urgently desiring some ground to believe, that the contingent evils thence resulting are slight in comparison with the good. To suppose either that he knew they would outweigh the good, or that his foresight was defective, and that he did not know how great they would prove, would grievously impair our conception either of the goodness or of the wisdom of God.

It is useless to deny that the doctrine of eternal misery, whether as popularly understood, or as philosophically explained, spreads an impenetrable cloud over the whole divine character. It matters not whether we conceive of God as exerting a direct act of judgment, to torture in everlasting flames the vast majority of the human race; or whether the wicked are to endure countless and never-ending agonies from accusing conscience and evil passions. The two doctrines possess in common the FACT of everlasting misery and everlasting sin, in appalling and ever increasing intensity; and this, to a vast majority of the children of Adam.

Even if the last point were omitted, yet if there be millions on whom this horrible lot would fall, the human heart seems incapable of conceiving how this awful evil can ever be a desirable purchase money for some greater good; but we are forced back on the inevitable persuasion, that it had been better that man had never been created. Nay, could we realize what eternal sin and eternal agony mean, perhaps we should conclude that such suffering and such moral evil to a single individual would be too great a price to pay for the everlasting blessedness and perfection of all the rest of our race. No generous mind,- or rather, no heart not harder than flint,-could desire to purchase for itself a heaven at the price of a hell to its brother; but would wish a thousand times over that not one of the family had ever come into existence. Such is the unconstrained utterance of ordinary human feeling; and if we are not to ascribe the like to the supreme creator, if we are to suppose his strength of mind such, that he does not flinch from bringing about the welfare of the few, by results so appalling to the many; devotion is crushed into superstition, and adoration ceases to be intelligent. No effort can be made to dispel the darkness resting on the character of the Most High, if the doctrine of eternal punishment, in the philosophical and exact sense of the term eternal, is true.

It is, however, certain, that one who is contemplating the facts of the world with the eye of a natural theologian, will not encumber himself with this doctrine. It is, if sanctioned by Christianity, a load to be supported by the credit of "revelation;' a new difficulty introduced, of which we know nothing from a contemplation of nature and in this case it must be allowed, that so far from bringing us "good news," and clearing up the difficulties which distressed faith and perplexed intellect, Christ has brought us the worst news we could possibly have had, worse than the wildest misanthrope could have imagined, and has intensely aggravated all pre-existing perplexities, In short, whatever is the amount of evidence testifying to the truth of the Christian revelation, it might seem an obvious axiom that it is the duty of every good man, as it must be the impulse of every humane man, earnestly to hope that Christianity may turn out to be a fiction, rather than that this doctrine should be true: and this circumstance loads it with so enormous an improbability, as would suffice to overturn all intelligent faith in the doctrine, were it even far better supported by Scriptural evidence than it

Supposing then that this doctrine is set aside, let us recur to the question, whether evil (physical and moral) may not ultimately prove a sort of evanescent quantity, in comparison to the good. The first step towards this will assuredly be taken, if it is believed that the evil is temporary, the good eternal. Now, to this, the general spirit of the Christian Scriptures strongly testifies; nor are there wanting special texts bearing on this result. All sin is regarded as of the nature of corruption; and is counted as "of this age; " while all righteousness and goodness is regarded as both coming down from God, and as partaking of his nature, which is incorruption and eternity. To the same conclusion both conscience and philosophy point. From the very necessity of the case, inexperience appears to draw after it errors; youth; we should think it inhuman to wish a man to be punished to his dying day for his early offences. Moreover, the punishment which they draw after them has a very perceptible tendency to correct and improve the man. It would be unwise to desire that sin should not tend to bring after it misery; for it would be to lose a wholesome instructor: but as we must wish the punishment to be only in due measure, and to cease after it has annihilated that of which it was the chastisement, so we have the testimony of experience, that this is ordinarily the case. Man being himself finite, his sin is not infinite in its effects on others, nor on himself; and if not always remediable, yet it tends to self-exhaustion. All virtue and goodness, being self-consistent, strengthen continually with growth: but vices in every shape are opposed to one another, and though occasionally they may strengthen each other, the contrary happens far oftener. Indeed, in different men, vices are in the long run obviously and surely opposed, and wear each other out in many ways. Now the fact is (however it may be explained) that man comes into this world with intellect and conscience wholly unformed, and he has to be built up into a moral and spiritual being. It would be more reasonable to expect a person to be able to swim before entering the water, than to expect a human being to learn to go right, without ever going wrong. But if in manhood we look back with a smile and without pain at the sorrows of childhood, so also do we look back without shame or remorse at the peevishness, greediness, impatience, or other follies incident to that age; nay, nor does any sound minded man feel humbled at the faults of youth, when they are merely the necessary defects

we make allowance for the indiscretions of