and the place of righteousness, that iniquity was there. Then I said in mine heart, God shall judge the righteous and the wicked. It must be so. He will show men as they are, and put the wrong right. And the conclusion from the whole is solemnly summed up at the close, God will bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.

Now this is a grand demonstration, into which the very perplexities of Natural Theology force the mind. The inconsistencies presented are the very staple of the argument; they are to be employed, and not evaded. But the study of Natural Theology has been pursued too generally as if it were a science merely buffeting with difficulties and struggling for existence. The aspect of the argument has been timid; that of a man seeking not to be borne down, that of a man struggling in the great waters to avoid being drowned. There has almost always been betrayed a consciousness of weakness; the argument has seemed afraid to grapple with the question of evil; it has been seeking to demonstrate supreme goodness, and has set out with the assumption, and most justly, that infinite goodness could originate nothing evil, and that nothing but happiness ought to be found in a creation from the hand of a perfectly benevolent being. Every intervention and occurrence of evil has been a stone of stumbling, to be taken out of the way, or else covered deep in the soil, out of sight, before the reasoning could go forward; or else the reality of death itself, and all the unconcealable miseries of our mortal state, and the sufferings of the brute creation, have been disposed of, or evaded, as if they made no break in the argument. But a Natural Theology must have the digestion of an Anaconda, which can swallow and dispose of suffering in a creation not regarded as under the curse of sin. So it has labored on; and we have seen men ingeniously apologizing for pain and suffering in the creation, by showing that in no case can it be found that pain is the direct object of contrivance; as if the circumstance of direct or indirect made the least difference with the actual difficulty under consideration, unless sin were taken account of. Then indeed it makes a difference. But the fact is undeniable, that the existence of evil, in a creation not considered as sinful, is an insurmountable bar against any conclusion demonstrative of infinite goodness. It cannot be that an infinitely good being would create a suffering nature, or frame a suffering constitution, or take delight in pain. Suffering, therefore, without sin, destroys the argument in Natural Theology for the goodness of the Deity; but the moment you accept the true theory in regard to sin, the suffering which was before such an insurmountable difficulty, becomes now the triumphant sealing of your demonstration. It becomes necessary to the perfect proof of the benevolence of God.

Now then, the consideration of evil, instead of being a thing to

be avoided, becomes a main necessity in the argument. The paths, and essence, working of evil, in all its forms, are as important to be traced, as the evidences of design in the structure of the universe, or the adaptation of the structure of our physical and mental frame to activity and enjoyment. All that observation sees, or experience enforces, and all that history teaches, of sin and evil in our race, all of inward passion and conflict, all of external wrong and cruelty, all of the curses of despotism, poverty and labor, all of unhappiness and unrest, all the chaos of human nature, all the phenomena of the "troubled sea" of wickedness, and all the perpetual consequences of its restless tides, all this is part of our Natural Theology. Find the diary of a wicked man's existence, and that is natural theology. The diary of a good man's conflicts with evil is natural theology revealed in the evil, revealed theology made manifest in the good. The very fact that the way of holiness is a perpetual conflict, is a powerfully significant feature in our natural theology. Natural theology is a volume of depravity and suffering; depravity on the part of man, and suffering in consequence, under God's righteous arrangement, proving that God is good. If you had the depravity without the suffering, how could you prove that the author and governor of this constitution of things hates sin? How prove him to be a righteous God? Or if you had the suffering without the depravity, how then could you prove his righteousness? You could not do it. Nay, your Natural Theology, so far as it goes, would prove the direct contrary, or would prove your deity to be at best a divine Gallio, caring for none of these things.

This in fact is the very argument of the infidel and scoffer, disregarding "the operation of God's hands," disregarding the manifestation of God's retributive providence, already intimated, against human guilt, and on the ground of such disregard and rejection, denying also the assurance of a further, future, perfect retribution as revealed in the Scriptures. They say of God, that he will not do evil, neither good. Where is the promise of his coming? How doth God know? What likelihood that he busies himself in the affairs of mortals? A Pagan theology is thus taken up by Christian infidels, and adopted as their theology. The stale, moral idiocy, the putrifying light of the sty of Epicurus, is adopted by men under the light of Christianity itself. But admit the premises of these blind fools, or practise their neglect and exclusion of the great facts of Natural Theology, namely, human guilt, and suffering on account of guilt, and the natural theologian himself takes part with the same pagan and infidel theolog The natural theologian himself, seeking to demonstrate a God o infinite goodness, but denying a present retributive providence, or neglecting the proof, the clear manifestation of it, in all human evil, and the prediction of a full and perfect manifestation and execution

of it in the world to come, demonstrates nothing but the God of infidels and heathens, namely, a God who cares neither for wrong nor right in the world, a God who will not punish sin, a divine omnipotent Gallio, that is, no God at all.

Here then, under such teachings, both Natural Theology and infidelity are at fault together, and strangely united in this one thing, there pulsion from their schemes in Theology of the acknowledgment and right consideration of moral evil and suffering in God's creation. Infidelity will not, and men accepting Christianity in the general, but afraid of its strict and exclusive teachings in regard to man's depravity and retribution, dare not look at, and acknowledge the plain demonstrations of Natural Theology in regard to this same depravity and suffering. And so here both the infidel and the Christian theologians, who reject God's views of man's depravity as shown in his Word, meet to fill Natural Theology with darkness, to make it contradict Divine, to demonstrate a God not hating iniquity, and neither just nor right, a god permitting the prosperity of the wicked, without any signifying of his determination to punish them hereafter; a God and a theology, which the Bible denies as the spawn of men's own corruption, and rather than accept which an intelligent and devout mind would almost take Atheism itself in preference. Indeed, it is hard to say which is the worst, the denial of the being of a God altogether, or the misrepresentation and perversion of his attributes. That the last tend directly to the first is a matter of direct observation and experience.

A correct view, then, both of the character of man, and the attributes of God is necessary in any theology, which would not lead the soul into infidelity or error. A correct view of the character of man is necessary, especially in regard to guilt, because the justice of the dealings of God with his intelligent creatures is to be judged by the character and doings of those creatures. And a correct view of the attributes of God is necessary, in order to judge rightly of the character of man as accountable to God, as a creature owing to him supreme allegiance and love. The holiness of the Creator must be taken as it is, and the sinfulness of the creature must be taken as it is.

Sin must be taken as a voluntary depravity, and depravity as a voluntary sin, in every part, connection, and succession, whether of space, time, or character, in mankind as a race, and in man as a personal being, whose personality and accountability consists in a never-ceasing personal will, co-present and co-active with every emotion and activity of an intelligent nature. Sin must be viewed as coming out of a man, not going into him; as growing out of the voluntary elements of his character, and not set from abroad as a plant among them; thrown up from the depths of his voluntary being, and not introduced by circumstances, although circum

stances may be laid hold upon by that being, as occasions for its sinful development.

Sin must be viewed as it appears in the light of God's attributes, and not as it appears merely in the darkness of a sinful, and therefore half-atheistic human mind. The evil of sin must be seen and acknowledged, as against God, and in contrast with his holiness. What sin deserves, must be judged by what God is, and not by what man wishes. Except there be a true conception and consciousness of the voluntariness and sinfulness of sin, there cannot be seen in Natural Theology any satisfactory demonstration of a perfect God, a God of infinite goodness. On the contrary, take any lower premises than those of man's entire sinfulness, with the blame of it entirely and solely on himself, by reason of his own voluntary nature in every part of it, and it is difficult to see how the ways of God to man can be justified, even as Natural Theology alone reveals them. And hence, those men who palliate and deny the actual wickedness of the wicked, do at one and the same time charge God (taking them on their own premises, and admitting sin to be the light thing they make of it) with injustice in all that he has already done to a wicked race; and also (taking men in their actual character, such as Natural Theology incontrovertibly teaches them to be, in their wickedness), they charge God, by denying the operation of his attributes for the just retribution of wicked men, with being a God indulgent to evil, indulgent to that which is the essence of suffering, indulgent to iniquity, in not punishing sin as it deserves. On the one side they would demonstrate a God not going far enough, on the other a God going too far in both cases, they involve the mind in inextricable darkness and confusion. This they do, by their low estimate of man's guilt, and their entire disregard of the nature and inevitable operation of the Divine holiness and justice.

These same men, putting human names as means of odium and prejudice upon Divine truths, have been fond of holding up Calvinism as a source of infidelity, when their own rejection of those Divine truths converts Natural Theology itself into infidelity, the system which they reject being the only safeguard of the human mind against blank contradiction and Atheism. Their own system, neglecting the fact of sin, or denying it, with its consequences, under the pretence of gentleness, liberality, the detestation of pain and suffering, and a delight in universal enjoyment, drives God out of the world, as the God of the Scriptures, and of right reason, and sets up a God of the human fancy no better than the idols of the heathen, building a system that must inevitably drive a reflecting mind, without firm anchorage in the Scriptures, to Skepticism. It is nothing but a refuge in God's Word, and in that very system there, which these men revolt against, and forge a denial of, in their Natural Theology, that can save such a mind from the uttermost desperation in the gloom of unbelief.

For, certainly, if you have the article of suffering, without the article of depravity, you have the absolute demonstration of a malevolent God. Or if you make the depravity something else than voluntary sin, something else than an absolute hostility and declaration of war against God; if you make it a mere pardonable mistake, or an inevitable frailty, consequent on the very nature of a creature made weak and erring, or consequent on the circumstances, by which the creature is surrounded, or consequent on the very relation between the body and the world which the creature is made to inhabit, again the suffering becomes unjust, and inconsistent with the demonstration of a God infinitely good. It is as wrong to inflict injury on an intelligent being for a mistake or an evil, which could not have been avoided, which, from the circumstances which that being did not make, was an absolute necessity, as it is to inflict suffering where there is no sin. You must, therefore, admit, in regard to sin, its true, positive, attributes, its infinitely detestable character. For if your infidelity or your theology makes sin to be anything but sin, it also makes suffering to be anything but righteous. If it makes sin a pardonable weakness, and not sin, it makes punishment an undue, unjust, inexorable cruelty, and represents the work of keeping up a world of suffering, as the consequence of such weakness, a frightful enormity of malevolence.

But if, again, your infidelity, or your theology, makes sin a necessity, though admitting it to be sin, yet a dire, unescapable necessity of creation and of existence, an attendant, yea, a penalty of existence itself from the hand of the Creator, then again you thrust upon the soul the idea of a malevolent malignant Creator; you demonstrate, so far as you demonstrate anything, no other than a supreme, omnipotent ingenuity of evil; since what could be conceived inore diabolical, than to invent a sensitive mechanism, exquisitely susceptible of suffering, inevitably producing sin, and as inevitably plunging itself into suffering because of sin! Why! the mind of the arch-fiend himself, the murderer and liar from the beginning, the accuser, hater, tempter, destroyer of mankind, the enemy of God and man, could imagine no refinement or hugeness of diabolism equal to this. And if from the monstrous, misshaping womb of your infidelity or theology you thrust this Medusa head, worse than all gorgons and hydras and chimeras dire, into the volume of Natural Theology, into the teachings by nature of the reality of things, no wonder that you scare the soul from the confines of such a system, or paralyse it so with horror as to give it over helpless into the power of the tempter. It seems to have been some such conception of theology inflicted upon him at an early period of life, and ever and anon thrusting out its grim form to glare upon his soul, that almost drove the great mind of John Foster into madness, and indeed did carry him upon the