278 PUKPOSE AND GENERAL CONDITION OF 



destine the vicious man to destruction and save the virtuous. 

 But the Great Kuler of Nature does not act on such principles. 

 He has established laws for the operation of inanimate matter, 

 which are quite unswerving, so that when we know them, we 

 have only to act in a certain way with respect to them, in order 

 to obtain all the benefits and avoid all the evils connected with 

 them. He has likewise established moral laws in our nature, 

 which are equally unswerving, (allowing for their wider range 

 of action,) and from obedience to which unfailing good is to 

 be derived. But the two sets of laws are independent of each 

 other. Obedience to each gives only its own proper advantage, 

 not the advantage proper to the other. Hence it is that virtue 

 forms no protection against the evils connected with the physical 

 laws, while, on the other hand, a man skilled in, and attentive 

 to these, but unrighteous, and disregardful of his neighbour, is 

 in like manner not protected by his attention to physical cir- 

 cumstances from the proper consequences of neglect or breach 

 of the moral laws. 



Thus it is that the innocence of the party suffering for the 

 faults of a parent, or of any other person or set of persons, is 

 evidently a consideration quite apart from that suffering. 



In short, the whole question of evil, a puzzle throughout all 

 ages, only becomes explicable when we receive and study the 

 system of a mundane government in the manner of law. There 

 is no need for considering it as a detraction from either the 

 power or the goodness of God. The dispensation under which 

 we live has been constituted by him on the principle of law ; 

 but this is not necessarily to imply that either his goodness or 

 his power is to stop at this point. That such, however, is the 

 character of the pageantry of worldly events now passing, is 

 the only idea we can arrive at when we approach the question 

 without prejudice. How else should it be that in any case the 

 guilty flourish and the innocent suffer ? How else should it be 

 that men often endure bitter woe and pain while prosecuting 

 the noblest objects ? How else should we ever see so simple 

 an event as the following, which meets my eyes in the journals, 

 while these sheets pass through the press : A multitude of 

 poor Irish emigrants are embarked in a canal boat, about to 

 leave their native district for a port whence they are to sail for 

 America. At the moment of parting, they crowd to one side, 

 to shake hands for the last time with their friends. The vessel 

 is overbalanced and turned upon its side. Of the multitude 

 thrown into the water, seven are taken up dead. Here an 



