domestic love. We are never forgotten or neglected amidst the immensity of his works. He keeps us as the apple of his eye, and the very hairs of our head are numbered. Under his government, all things, whether apparently prosperous or adverse; whether joyous or grievous, are continually working together for our good.

BUT above all things, God hath blest us with the well authenticated and glad tidings of his gospel. When we had rebelled against him, forfeited every claim to his favour, and subjected ourselves to misery and ruin, he did not inflict the merited punishment; but sent Jesus Christ into the world, to redeem us from all iniquity; to bring us back to the knowledge and practice of our duty to destroy the power of death, and open to us the gates of eternal life. • Herein is love, not that we loved God,

but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins !'-sent him to enlighten and purify our minds ; to absolve us from the sufferings of guilt, and lead us to the enjoyment of endless happiness. When I think of the blessed Jesus, thus humbling himself, becoming a

3

man of sorrows, suffering and dying on the cross for our sake, and rising again from the dead, to elevate us with the lively hope of a glorious immortality :—this convinces me ten thousand times more than all the metaphysics of the schools, or the speculations of philosophers, that God is good, and will with-hold no good thing from any of those who seek and serve him.

THE induction of these particulars affords a proof of this all-important truth, the most plain and convincing possible, to every rational and candid inquirer; for it has never been disputed, that the best method of reasoning upon subjects of this kind, is to argue from the effect to the cause, and to judge of the nature of the cause from the qualities which belong to the effect. Thus when we find a tree uniformly bringing forth bad fruit, we naturally conclude that it is a bad tree: on the contrary, when we find a tree uniformly bringing forth good fruit, we as naturally conclude that it is a good tree. And when we behold a man uniformly leading a bad life, we naturally conclude that he is a

bad man on the contrary, when we be hold a man leading a good life, we naturally conclude that he is a good man. Now, in like manner, when we contemplate the unparalleled excellence of the creation, the multiplied gifts of providence, and the unspeakable blessings of redemp tion, can we doubt, for a moment, that he, who is the glorious Author of the whole, is a Being who takes pleasure in the exercise of mercy and compassion, and rejoices to do every thing that is possible, for the improvement and felicity of his offspring? Can there be a more striking and perfect demonstration of the goodness of God!And if God is good at all, he must be infinitely good. If he were not so, then his goodness might be susceptible of improvement: it might have been greater that it is, and, consequently, must have had some limiting cause that restricted it to what it really is. But as God has no cause, and is self-existent, he can, therefore, have no limitation. All his attributes, and his goodness among the rest, must partake of the infinitude of his na

ture.

But here it may be said, is there not evil in the world as well as good? Whence come poverty and distress, disappointments and losses, sin and misery, discase and death? How can these exist under the government of a perfectly good God. *

The question concerning the origin of evil, has, from the earliest times, called the attention of speculative men. Accordingly, various theories have been proposed for the solution of it. The chief of these are the two following. 1. The doctrine of Pre-existence..

2. The doctrine of two original, independent, and opposite Principles.

The advocates for the first hypothesis (originally started in Greece by the chimerical Pythagoras), imagined that mankind had existed in a former state; that there they had been guilty of moral delinquencies; and that for these they had been appointed to suffer in the present world.—But this is, evidently, mere conjecture: it is unsupported by any thing like evidence. Besides, it only shifts the difficulty a farther back, instead of completely removing it, like the Indian philosophy, which, in accounting for the support of the earth, supposes that it rests upon a vast Elephant, the Elephant upon a Tortoise, and then prudently drops all further inquiry.

little

The advocates for the second hypothesis, imagining that there are two co-eternal and independent Principles, represent the one as directly opposite to the other: the one as the author of all the good, and the other as the author of all the evil in the universe.- -But this system, held by the ancient Persian philosophers, and by the Marcionites and Manicheans of later ages, is as palpably absurd, as it is grossly im

THIS objection has been often brought forward by the enemies of religion, with great confidence, and even vaunted of as insuperable. It is almost as old as the sun and the moon it has been made, and repeated over and over; and the weakness of the opposition which it has frequently met with, has given it the appearance of being truly formidable. I trust, however, that the joint force of the following observations will be found, by every rational and candid inquirer, fully sufficient to effect its complete removal.

LET us remember, first, that the goodness of God has been already proved, and that all the evil existing in the world must be perfectly consistent with it, whether we can perceive the consistency or

pious. Upon the hypothesis of two original and independ ent Principles, always acting in direct opposition, it is impossible to conceive how either good or evil could have existed at all, since there is just as much wisdom and power on the one hand, to prevent the effect, as there is on the other to produce it.—It is obvious, too, that this doctrine, (to mention no other objection), is totally irreconcilable with that great and glorious unity of design which is everywhere conspicuous in nature.