unlike the constitution and course of nature, to be referable to the same author. Now, where in God's works, is there not obscurity and mystery? I may find such a spot in another world, but I never have in this. There is light everywhere, but only enough to make the darkness visible; and the more light there is, the more we are sensible of the darkness, just as the larger the sphere illumined by a lamp in the open air at midnight, the more extensive is the concavity of darkness, by which it is enveloped. There never has been a day in this world, which did not answer in some respects the description of the prophet: "It shall come to pass in that day, that the light shall not be clear nor dark-not day nor night." There is light enough in nature, providence and grace severally, to guide us in all matters of praccal utility or necessity, but if you would explore further, you enter the region of darkness. If you look downwards, you can only penetrate the surface, only examine a few scratches in the rind of the earth. If you look around you, every mineral is a cabinet of wonders, every plant a natural labyrinth, every animal a microcosm of mysteries, and of every element, it may be said as of the wind, "thou canst not tell whence it cometh, nor whither it goeth." If you turn your eye upwards, the stars twinkle very far, but you know not how far above your head, their dimensions and velocities are very great, but how great in most cases none can tell, while as to the specific purposes, which they are made to subserve, you are left to mere conjecture.

And the deist's New Testament, the book of providence, is there less mystery in that, than in the New Testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ? Then why all those anxieties and perplexities and murmurings and repinings, of which the mouths of worldlings and the books of infidels are full?

It is this mixture of good and evil, order and confusion, light and darkness, which gives such a color of plausibility to the most opposite views of our world. Voltaire looks only at the dark side of the picture, and uses the following language of complaint. "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 and air and water.

"In man there is more wretchedness, than in all the other

animals put together. He loves life, and yet he knows that 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-all other animals have it not. He spends the transient moments of his existence in diffusing the miseries he suffers, in 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 a crowd of wretches equally criminal and unfortunate, and the globe contains rather carcasses than men. I tremble on the review of this dreadful picture to find that it contains a complaint against providence itself, and I wish I had never been born."

Paley looks chiefly at the bright side of the picture, and says; "It is a happy world, after all. The air, the earth, the water, teem with delighted existence. In a spring noon or a summer's eve, on whichever side I turn my eyes, myriads of happy beings crowd upon my view. Swarms of new-born flies are trying their pinions in the air. Their sportive motions, their wanton mazes, their gratuitous activity, their continual change of place without use or purpose testify their joy and the exultation which they feel in their newly discovered faculties. . . . If we look to what the waters produce, shoals of the fry of fish frequent the margins of rivers, of lakes, and of the sea itself. These are so happy that they know not what to do with themselves. . . . A child is delighted with speaking without knowing any thing to say, and with walking without knowing where to go. The young are happy in enjoying pleasure, the old are happy when free from pain." Halyburton in the midst of affliction and in full view of death looks on the same side and exclaims, “Oh, blessed be God that I was born. I have a father and mother and ten brothers and sisters in heaven, and I shall be the eleventh. Oh, there is a telling in this providence, and I shall be telling it forever. If there be such a glory in his conduct towards me now, what will it be to see the Lamb in the midst of the throne! Blessed be God, that ever I was born."

Now were not the present such a mixed state of things as I have described, different views might be taken of it, but not views diametrically opposite, yet both apparently just and true. And God makes use of this very mixture of good and evil to test and develope and form character. There is such a pre

ponderance of good in nature, as to furnish presumptive evidence of the goodness of its author, but such a mixture of evil as to give scope for the developement of a heart of unbelief and discontent. There is such a preponderance of order and justice in the providential government of this world as to create a presumption, that God is just, but such a mixture of disorder and injustice as to afford a strong argument for a future state. There is such a preponderance of light in the Bible, as to satisfy a reasonable mind of its truth and sacredness, but such a mixture of darkness as to let the perverse heart wander and cavil, and despise and perish. It would seem as if God intended in this universal analogy to present us everywhere with the most sensible and striking proof, that he reigns alike in the realms of nature, providence and grace, and that we are now living in a state of trial, the issue of which will be a state of unmixed good or unmixed ill in another world. But this leads me to a seventh analogy :

7. In nature, providence and grace alike, God brings good out of evil, order out of confusion, light out of darkness.

It has been already intimated, that character is better tested and developed in a mixed state. There can be no trial of faith, in a world of such effulgent light, as enforces belief. No trial of patience, where there are not ills to provoke impatience. And reason accords with revelation in pronouncing the trial of these virtues to be more precious than that of silver and gold.

None could avoid admiring a state of perfect order. Voltaire, though he might have been of a discontented spirit, would not have vented his feelings in such loud and eloquent complaints, had no disorders or evils met his eye; and though Paley might have been benevolent and cheerful, and Halyburton pious at heart, yet they could have given comparatively little evidence of such a character, had they never seen any thing but goodness and happiness in the world around them. In such a world, the three men could never have seen so clearly themselves, or exhibited so conspicuously to others, the radical difference in their characters.

But more than this is true. A mixture of good and evil is essential to the formation of a highly excellent or deeply depraved character by beings constituted as we are. Our physical, intellectual and moral powers are all strengthened by severe trial and discipline, and to this feature of our own constitution, the

structure of the world around us is nicely adapted. It is in no small degree a world of barrenness and thorns, a world of obscurity and mystery, a world of temptation and sin. We may and do perfect our natures by struggling with, and overcoming such obstacles. Physical strength is derived, not from the easy chair in the parlor, but from ploughing and hoeing the earth, swinging the axe or belaboring the anvil. Intellectual power and acumen are not received without effort in the nursery or the lecture room, but acquired by delving in the mines and separating the gold from the ore. Moral and religious principle becomes firm and decided, not in the select circle of virtue and piety, but in the wide world of temptation and sin. Thus the natural and spiritual worlds resemble, and conspire with, each other in the developement and formation of character in the only way adapted to our constitution and state of probation, viz. by such a mixture of good and evil as shall leave us at full liberty to choose a right or a wrong course and furnish us at once the means, which are necessary to aid our progress in the way of our choice, and the obstacles, the removal of which by continued effort is necessary to developé our powers and confirm our habits.

In the same manner and probably for the same end the sciences have exerted alternately good and bad influences on religious character. Like the three kingdoms of which they constitute the history and the philosophy, they are partly light and partly darkness, and they have shed upon religion, now light and now darkness. Now they have raised objections, and now they have removed those objections, and furnished contrary and corroborating evidence. Such has been the history of every science, theology not excepted. Accordingly different men have found in the same science, one nutriment for his faith and another support for his skepticism, one the means of perfecting his excellencies, another of deepening his depravity.*

Another way, in which good is brought out of evil in all the departments of the divine government, is by the increased value which good acquires or seems to acquire by contrast with evil. The fertile field never appears so rich as when contrasted with

It is not denied, that true science has sometimes been perverted into an engine of irreligion and immorality. But it is more frequently the errors which are engrafted upon the science, that do the mis

the barren desert. How does the hungry and thirsty, weary and way worn traveller through the interminable prairie or the boundless Sahara, revel in the shades and fountains and fruits and flowers of the wooded island or the verdant oäsis! None, but he who has suffered a long confinement in the narrow streets and infected atmosphere of a populous city, knows the luxury of life in the fresh green country.

It is so with providential good. If you are ever grateful for health, it is when you have visited a hospital and had your heart wrung with sympathy for the afflicted and distressed inmates; and if you ever enjoy the blessings of health with a keen, a peculiar relish, it is when you have yourself just risen from a bed of painful and protracted sickness. You set the highest value upon your knowledge, when you view it in contrast with the ignorance of others, or perhaps with your own former ignorance. It is so with spiritual good. When the Christian looks "at the rock whence he was hewn and the hole of the pit, whence he was digged," and sees others still cleaving to the hardness of impenitency and sinking in the mire of pollution, then it is that he sings the loudest, most enrapturing song of praise to his God and Redeemer. Heaven is the traveller's resting place and the prilgrim's home, the warrior's peace and the runner's goal, perpetual health to the diseased, and eternal life to the dying, confirmed holiness to the sinner, and perfected bliss to the miserable; and through eternity the joys of the redeemed will be enhanced and their notes of praise swelled immeasurably by looking back upon the sins and miseries of earth, and looking down upon the torments and blasphemies of hell.*

But evil is also made throughout the divine government the direct means of preventing a greater evil or accomplishing a greater good. The volcano is often a terrible scourge to its immediate vicinity, but it gives vent to those internal fires which would otherwise shake continents and lay waste nations. France

*The songs of the redeemed in the Revelation are chiefly songs of deliverance in view of the dreadful and final overthrow of the wicked. In making such representations, the ministers of the Gospel and the sacred writers are often charged with a fiendish delight in the miseries of others. But it is nothing more, than that joy and gratitude, which we always and necessarily feel in contrasting our enjoyments with our deserts, our present happiness with our former misery, or our own weal with the wo of others.