only deserve that name upon comparison: nothing is great or small, beautiful or ugly, pleasant or painful, good or evil, in fact, to our sensations and apprehensions, but by referring them in relation to other things. Let us take, for example, that of which our sensations are most keen, as bodily pain; now it is evident that the same degree of pain which, in a course of long-continued suffering, would be considered by the patient as a relaxation, and even hailed as a pleasure, would be felt as a severe infliction if perceived by a person in the full enjoyment of his health.

We may say, therefore, even that moral crime, if it appears in the great scheme of Providence only as the means of providing against worse irregularities in the order of things, certainly is not an evil in the sense in which the word here is used. It can only be evil by comparison, and the comparison is in its favour. We see enough to convince us that such an arrangement is in conformity with the general designs of the Deity; and if we cannot in all instances make an inference with equal success, it shows our blindness, not his imper

fection. It may be asserted, indeed, of the worst evil that we can possibly picture to our imagination, the state of eternal punishment, that even this, if it purifies the soul consigned to it, if it renders it better in itself than it would be without, is not and cannot be considered as a positive evil: as far as it is an amelioration, it is an eternal benefit.

But if there is no such thing as positive evil, the impious charge of malevolence against the Deity cannot be raised; and as for attempting to argue against the imperfections of his schemes, from the little which is exhibited to our view, it is too ridiculous an idea to be for an instant entertained by any one capable of exercising any degree of reason upon matters like these: so here ends the inquiry.

We may, however, even with the light afforded us, perhaps venture one step further in the favourite theme of D'Alembert, the justice or injustice of a Supreme Being. To say that the ways of God are not as our ways, is a phrase we often repeat, and we fancy that we feel its force: yet with what difficulty are

we sometimes brought to perceive fully what it is meant to express.

What then is evil and injustice with regard to things around us? God has, in the order of things, attached certain consequences to certain actions relatively to ourselves: it is from thence, and thence only, they derive their nature. The Supreme Being might, if he had so pleased, have reversed the order of things, and made those same actions productive of good which now produce evil; and this too with as much facility as he might have made darkness to take place of light, and light of darkness, with a reference to our organ of vision. We should have been differently constituted, our senses and our moral purposes, as it were, inverted; but the world might have been still the same, our obedience to the law still equally imperative, our destinies still the same. However we must remember, that consequences as to every thing, and in every thing, are entirely at the disposal of God.

Now, in any human action, it is the consequence attached to that action, and the motive

inducing it, which make it to be good or evil, not the action in itself, abstractedly considered. Suppose one man poisons another with a dose of arsenic, what constitutes this to be a crime? it is the motive from which it was done, &c. on the one hand, and the consequences attached to the act, on the other:-the malus animus, the rebellion against the command of God, or (if philosophers prefer it) the voice of nature; and the removing, by so doing, a man from society, from those who depended upon him, or who were attached to him; in short, the causes and consequences. The act in itself, abstractedly considered, is merely applying a certain material substance possessed of particular chemical affinities, to a certain animal substance,-nothing more: it is from the above circumstances that it derives its hue and colour of crime.

These consequences are, as we said, with regard to us, independent of ourselves; and we cannot prevent them from following the action: hence our offence against the general weal. The motives have a bias towards a principle injurious to man, (to take the question merely after the philosopher's fashion,) and

hence crime with regard to ourselves. But in the case of the Supreme Being, these motives, it is evident, are in his own power; nor can we deny the same to be the case as to the consequences. If he makes certain results to follow, it is not as the necessary consequences of the action, it is and must be, as it were, a fresh and independent exertion of his will; he might have ordered it otherwise, as we sometimes witness: and if he does permit the consequences, it is for a reason of his own, and to answer certain ulterior purposes.

Let us ask ourselves a question, whether, for instance, the Supreme Being does wrong when he inflicts sudden death upon any young man? It does not rid us of the difficulty to say, that life is taken away by the same Being who first gave it: for if a gift, it was the man's own, on certain conditions; that is, on the common and ordinary conditions on which it is given to mankind: and this instance of sudden death in youth, is not according to such ordinary conditions. But if we say that the Supreme Being does not do wrong, because the causes and consequences are both in his