Upon the whole, though it would be the extreme of folly to maintain that any one can be happy who is totally destitute of all external comfort, yet, such is the pliancy of the human mind, that it adapts itself much sooner than could be expected to any tolerable state of external enjoyment. Few are the external ingredients which are essentially requisite to happiness; and hence arise the erroneous judgments which are so frequently passed upon the state and condition of man.

5. Men are very ignorant of the dispensations of Divine Providence; and the judgments of God are a great deep.

Of the divine government we see enough to satisfy the candid and inquisitive mind that the result of it is a great preponderance of good, and that the natural irresistible tendencies of things are to improvement, and to still higher degrees of virtue and happiness. This is the only satisfactory evidence which we have of the divine benevolence; for no metaphysical argument, be it ever so ingenious or refined,

can prove to the satisfaction of a sober and reflecting mind that God is good, if it were evident, that upon the whole, evil predominates in his works. We must, therefore, in all our reasonings, assume the principle that God is perfectly good, and, at the same time, that he is all wise and powerful: so that the Supreme Being is ever pursuing the best ends, the virtue and happiness of his creatures, by the best possible means: by those which are most efficacious and best adapted to the accomplishment of his purpose. But when we consider the divine dispensations in detail, we shall immediately discover that they are far beyond the reach of human sagacity; and that an insect might more easily judge of the parts and proportions of a vast and magnificent edifice, than that man, the offspring of the dust, should comprehend the infinite plan of Providence, the works and the dispensations of God.

That evil, natural and moral, is unavoidable in the works of God, is a problem of very difficult solution. If we see that, in

some cases, evil is productive of good; if affliction humbles, and softens, and purifies the heart; if injustice gives birth to meekness, to forbearance, to fortitude, to the sublime virtues of love to enemies, of requiting and overcoming evil with good, and to the generous resolution of resisting oppression, and of protecting and defending helpless, feeble, and injured innocence, and in this way becomes the means of perfecting the character, and elevating human nature to the most exalted height of virtue and piety: it may still be asked, might not an equal sum of virtue and happiness be produced in which there should be no mixture of evil? and, though we instantly and peremptorily answer, No, yet it must be owned that this confidence does not arise from any clear perception of the fact, but solely from a firm belief in the infinite benevolence, and power, and wisdom of God, which could never choose evil for its own sake, nor execute its purposes by means of evil, when good was equally in his view and in his power.

If God be just, he will not make existence a curse to any of his creatures. And yet, even among the brute creation, which are incapable of moral turpitude, we sometimes see cases of suffering, to all appearance preponderating over the enjoyments of their transitory existence.

That human beings, reasonable creatures, moral agents, who are placed in a state of mutual dependence, who are susceptible of kind and generous feelings, whose mutual good offices contribute in so great a degree to each other's happiness, whose chief felicity arises from doing good and making others happy, that beings so constituted, instead of following the high and generous impulses of their moral nature, should so frequently hate and injure each other, and should even place their glory in mutual destruction, is a phenomenon in the moral government of God which often occasions perplexity to the pious and thoughtful mind.

The prosperity of vice-the afflictions of virtue-the wide diffusion of error, super

stition, enthusiasm, and fanaticism-the limited prevalence of truth, the almost insurmountable obstruction to its progress, and the cruel persecutions of its advocatesthe universal dominion of death-the mortality of infants-the removal of the wise, the benevolent, and the useful, in the meridian of life, and the long protracted years of the infirm and useless, and still more of the wicked and injurious-the prevalence of tyranny and oppression-the wanton and outrageous clamours, and the frantic opposition which is often made to the efforts of those exalted patriots, of those generous benefactors of the human race, whose ardent ambition it is to enlighten the understanding and improve the condition of mankind: these, and many others are cases of inexplicable difficulty, under the divine government, which the wit and wisdom of man in vain attempts to unravel and explore. O God! verily thou art a God, who hidest thyself from us."

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6. We are ignorant of many things which are connected with divine revelation.