order and confusion, light and darkness, in each of the three kingdoms.

Look where you will in this world, you see a chequered scene. The eye of man never rests on a spot of unmixed good or unmixed ill. Not a creature exists within the whole range of our observation, that does not drink a cup of mingled sweet and bitter. What animal ever lived and died without experiencing both pleasure and pain? Man, does he receive good at the hand of Providence, and does he not also receive evil? Nor is there a just man on earth, that doeth good and sinneth not. Natural good and natural evil, providential good and providential evil, spiritual good and spiritual evil every where commingle. Like opposite polarities, the existence of the one always indicates the existence of the other.*

Are there "wars and fightings" in the spiritual world? So there are in society. So there are in the animal kingdom. There is war every where on earth-there was war in heaven once. Natural, civil and ecclesiastical history are severally histories of alternate war and peace, battles and truces, cruel oppressions and cruel sufferings. "The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together."

Does slavery exist in human society? So it does among the lower animals. White ants, like white men, capture their colored brethren, and doom them to involuntary, perpetual servitude. And slavery exists in the spiritual world too.‡

Are there earthquakes in nature? There are also moral and spiritual earthquakes-convulsions which shake society and

* Plato in his Phaedo, speaking of pleasure and pain, says, "If any person pursues and receives the one, he is almost always under a necessity of receiving the other, as if both of them depended from one summit." Phaedo. III.

See Nat. Hist. of Insects. Family Library, No. VIII. chap. 7. "The legionary ant is actually formed to be a slave-dealer, attacking the nests of other species, stealing their young, rearing them, and thus by shifting all the domestic labors of their republic on strangers, escaping from labor themselves. This curious fact, first discovered by Huber, has been confirmed by Latreille, and is admitted by all naturalists. The slave is distinguished from his master by being of a dark ash color, so as to be entitled to the name of negro. (Formica fusca.)"

Rom. 6: 16. "His servants (slaves, douloi) ye are, to whom ye obey." John 8: 34. 1 Pet. 5: 8. Eph. 2: 2

the church to their foundations, and threaten to destroy their very existence.

Some churches sometimes exhibit a most lovely spectacle of order and harmony and peace. Such was the state of the church at Jerusalem in its infancy, when no man claimed or sought any thing as his own, none gloried in wealth, and none suffered from poverty; "and they continued daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness, and singleness of heart, praising God, and having favor with all the people." But it was not always so with the church at Jerusalem or other apostolic churches. It was not long before Paul was under the necessity of rebuking the church at Corinth for such disorders as were "not even named among the Gentiles," and pronouncing the members "carnal" because of "envyings, strifes and divisions among them." There was envy and jealousy, cowardice and treachery in the chosen band of Christ's apostles. And none need be told, for every eye hath seen and every ear hath heard, how much there now is in the church of that strife, which is accompanied with "confusion and every evil work."

In like manner, there is here and there a regular and cheerful family, an orderly and quiet community, a peaceful and happy nation. But how often does confusion succeed order in these very families and communities and nations; or if not in the same, how does it prevail in others around them? Sometimes the good man prospers and the bad only suffers, but how often the tables are turned and the order reversed! And oftener still "one event happeneth to all.”

In like manner in the natural world, there are deserts amid tropical verdure, and oäses amid deserts. There is an Ætna in fertile Sicily, and a Vesuvius threatening the rich fields and blooming villages, and beautiful bay, of Naples. The tempest breaks in upon the sunshine, the earthquake succeeds the calm, and the blazing meteor, the streaming comet and the appearing and disappearing star seem to disturb the harmony of the higher heavens. Throughout the divine economy, strange disorder and confusion are set over against exquisite order and harmony.

It is a common complaint of deists that there is obscurity in the Bible, and mystery in the whole scheme of grace. But is there no obscurity in the deist's Bible, no mystery in the divine economy, which the deist acknowledges? Had the economy of grace been all light and brightness, it would have been too

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