all. By the goodness of God, we see his kindness to his creatures; and as the world, which we see now, could not have been constituted at first, either with an evil design, or without design at all, what other conclusion is left, but that our Creator intended and wished our happiness when he made us; and that the same will and wish continue, so long as the same creation and order of things is upheld by him; for any change in his councils and character, were it possible, would be immediately followed by a corresponding alteration in the laws and order of nature.

But after all is said, evil, and pain, and misery exist among us still; diseases, and sickness, and maladies, and misfortunes, are not done away by reasoning about them, or by any opinion we entertain of the divine goodness: how are these to be reconciled with the beneficence which we attribute to the divine character? Now I think there is one observation which will go a great way to take off the edge of the objection, namely, that evil is never the object of contrivance. We can never trace out a train of contrivances to bring about an evil purpose. The world abounds with contrivances of nature; and all the contrivances, we are acquainted with, will conduce to beneficial purposes. As this is a distinction of great consequence, I will endeavour to illustrate it.

If you had occasion to describe the instruments of husbandry, you would hardly say, this is to cut or wound the labourer's hand, this to bruise his limbs, this to break his bones; though, from the construction of several implements of husbandry, and the manner of using them, these misfortunes commonly happen: the mischief that it does, however, is not the object of the contrivance. Whereas, if it was necessary to describe

engines of torture, you would say of one, this is to extend the sinews, this to dislocate the joints, this to search the flesh. Here pain and misery is the very object of the contrivance, which is a different case from the former one, though the same result may actually follow it. Now nothing of this kind is to be found in the works of nature-nothing where there appears contrivance to bring about mischief. Of the beneficial faculties, the contrivance is often evident. Ask after our eyesight, the anatomist will show you the structure of the eye, its coats, humours, nerves, and muscles, all fabricated and put together for the purpose of vision, as plainly as a telescope or microscope for assisting it, and in the very same way. Ask after the hearing, the same skill will teach you how sound is propagated through the air, how the outward ear collects it, how the drum of the ear receives the stroke, how the auditory passage carries it to the brain. There can be no doubt either of the contrivance or object of it. The same of our smelling, tasting, speech, hands and feet, and all our beneficial faculties. But now ask after any disease, or pain, or infirmity, and I defy any man to show you the train of contrivance to bring about, or contribute to that end. Ask after the gout, the stone; no anatomy could ever show you a system of vessels or organization calculated to produce these. Can any say, this gland is to secrete the humour which forms the gout? this bag is to contain, this duct is to convey and disperse it round the body? And the like holds of any maladies of the human body. Teeth are contrived to eat, not to ache: their aching may be incidental to the contrivance, perhaps inseparable from it; or let it be called a defect in the contrivance, it is not the object of it. And this observation extends to many

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evils which are beside our subject: it is true of earthquakes, volcanos; they all show the effect of a visible train of contrivances. Now contrivance proves design, and the predominant tendency of the contrivance indicates the disposition of the designer. The disposition of the designer is to be judged of, not from the accidental effects of the contrivance, not from the inseparable consequences of the contrivance, nor from any other defect where it may be supposed liable to any, but from the end, aim, and object of the contrivance, which, in the works of nature, or, in other words, in the works of God, are always beneficial.

What I would add, by way of a concluding remark, is this that if there be other evils, which do not fall within the above observation, if there be the unmerited misery of the good and pious, and the still more unaccountable prosperity of the wicked, is it not more than probable that there will come a time when God will, as he certainly can, rectify the irregularity? Are not the thousand and ten thousand proofs of bounty and benevolence, which we see about us, enough to found a persuasion that the few examples which seem of a contrary cast will hereafter be cleared up, and contemplated so as to reduce the whole to one entire and uniform plan of love, and kindness, and good-will, to the work of his Almighty hand?

XXXVI.

THE GOODNESS OF GOD.

(PART II.)

PSALM XXXIII. 5.

The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord.

HAVING explained the argument by which the goodness of our Almighty Governor is proved from the light of nature; or, in other words, from those specimens of his intentions which we are able to observe, connect, and comprehend, in the world around us; I shall now proceed to state some of the many declarations of Revelation, in which the same divine attributes, though under various forms, names, and modifications, are repeated and described :-and these are material to be known and stated; for whatever intimation and reasonable evidence of God's goodness the order of the universe may furnish to a contemplative mind, it must be acknowledged that pointed proofs of the same kind are to found in the revealed word of God; and the fidelity and certainty of that word is, in return, also proved by the light of nature; for it is not conceivable, nor contended indeed by any, that a being who, in such remarkable instances, had testified his love to his rational creatures, and care for their happiness, should go about, by mysterious attempts, to mislead and deceive them in accounts of that which most nearly con

cerns them, and in which it is impossible for them to detect the deceit.

Now the divine goodness, as it is excited towards the human species, parts itself into six great branchesjustice, bounty, fidelity, patience, placability, mercy; these all spring from the same root, the divine desire and provision for the happiness of his creatures; in other words, the love of God. We will now see what the Scriptures have to tell us of each of them.

The justice of the deity is the foundation of all religion; yet this was a point in which the apprehensions of many in ancient times laboured under some uncertainty; many of the vulgar, and some of the wise men, conceived of the deity as not regulating the treatment of his creatures by any steady rules of justice, but as bestowing his favours capriciously, and actuated entirely by partial affections, such as we feel and conceive towards one another. The Scriptures, however, of the Old Testament strenuously combat this error, and describe him as a God of perfect righteousness, equity, and justice. The song of Moses, as recorded in the 32d chapter of Deuteronomy, and which some men have called the dying words of that illustrious lawgiver, begins with the subject: "I will publish the name of the Lord ascribe ye greatness unto our God. He is the rock, his work is perfect; for all his ways are judgement a God of truth, and without iniquity, just and righteous is he." The book of Job was written expressly to vindicate the justice of God in those trying circumstances in which the impatience and infirmity of human nature is most apt to question it-in the calamity and affliction with which he is pleased to visit us. Certain expressions of that book are full to our purpose: "For be it from God that he should do wickedness,