BENEVOLENCE OF THE DEITY. 



femes; though one unvaried scene of dull uni 

 formity had prevailed, and beauty and sublimity 

 had been swept from the face of nature ; though 

 the earth had been covered with a mantle of black, 

 and no radiant orbs had appeared in our nocturnal 

 sky. But what a miserable world should we then 

 have inhabited, compared with that which we 

 now possess! Life would have passed away 

 without enjoyment : and pain would have over 

 balanced the pleasure of existence. Whereas, in 

 the existing constitution of things, all the objects 

 around us, and every sense of which we are pos 

 sessed, when preserved in its natural vigour, have 

 . direct tendency to produce pleasing sensations, 

 and to contribute to our enjoyment: and it is 

 chiefly when we indulge in foolish and depraved 

 passions, and commit immoral actions, that the 

 benevolent intentions of the Deity are frustrated, 

 and pain and misery produced. 



If we consider, further, that the inexhaustible 

 bounty of the Creator, and the numerous pleasures 

 we enjoy, are bestowed upon a guilty race of men, 

 the benevolence of the Deity will appear in a 

 still more striking point of view. Man has dared 

 to rebel against his Maker ; he is a depraved and 

 ungrateful creature. The great majority of our 

 race have banished God from their thoughts, 

 trampled upon his laws, neglected to contemplate 

 his works, refused to pay him that tribute of 

 reverence and adoration which his perfections 

 demand, have been ungrateful for his favours, 

 have blasphemed his name, and have transferred 

 to &quot; four-footed beasts, and creeping things,&quot; that 

 nomage which is due to him alone. It has been 

 the chief part of their employment, in all ages, 

 to counteract the effects of his Beneficence, by 

 inflicting injustice, oppression, and torture, upon 

 each other ; by maiming the human frame, burn 

 ing cities and villages, turning fruitful fields into 

 a wilderness, and by every other act of violence, 

 carrying death and destruction through the world. 

 And if water, air, and the light of heaven, had 

 been placed within the limits of their control, it 

 is more than probable, that whole nations would 

 have been occasionally deprived of these elements, 

 so essential to human existence. Yet, notwith 

 standing the prevalence of such depraved dispo 

 sitions, the streams of Divine benevolence to 

 wards our apostate race have never yet been 

 interrupted. The earth has never stopped in its 

 career, and thrown nature into a scene of confu 

 sion ; the light of heaven has never ceased to 

 illume the world ; the springs of water have never 

 been dried up, nor has the fertile soil ceased to 

 enrich the plains with golden harvests. God 

 &quot; hath not left himself without a witness,&quot; to his 

 beneficence, in any age, in that he hath unceas 

 ingly bestowed on the inhabitants of the world 

 11 rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling 

 their hearts with food and gladness.&quot; This is 

 ene of the characters of Deity which forms the 



most perfect contrast to the selfish and revengefu* 

 dispositions of man, which as far transcends 

 human benevolence, as the heavens in extent 

 surpass the earth a character calculated to ox- 

 cite our highest love and admiration, and which 

 we are called upon, in the Sacred Oracles, to 

 imitate and revere. &quot; Be ye merciful, as your 

 Father who is in heaven is merciful : for he 

 inaketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the 

 good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the 

 unjust.&quot; &quot; O that men would praise the Lord for 

 his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the 

 children of men.&quot; 



From such considerations, we learn, even from 

 the system of nature, that mercy is an attribute 

 of the Deity ; for, if mercy consists in bestowing 

 favours on those who are unworthy, or who merit 

 punishment, the greatest sinners in all ages have 

 shared in it, and every individual of the human 

 race now existing enjoys a certain portion of 

 those comforts which flow from the benevolent 

 arrangements which the Creator has established. 

 &quot; He maketh the sun to rise on the evil and on the 

 good.&quot; Though the nations in ancient times, 

 as well as at present, &quot; walked in their own way, :) 

 indulging in impiety, falsehood, lewdness, war, 

 devastations, revenge, abominable idolatries, and 

 every other violation of his law, he still supported 

 the functions of their animal frames, and caused 

 the influence of the sun, the rains, and the dews, 

 to descend upon their fields, that they might be 

 refreshed with his bounty, and filled &quot; with food 

 and gladness.&quot; If mercy were not an essential 

 attribute of the Deity, he would have cut them 

 down in the midst of their first transgressions, 

 shattered to pieces the globe on which they dwelt, 

 and buried them in eternal oblivion. But whether 

 Divine mercy will extend to the final forgiveness 

 of sin, and the communication of eternal happi 

 ness to such beings, can be learned only from the 

 discoveries of revelation. 



In relation to the inferior animals the im 

 mense multitude of living creatures with which 

 the earth is replenished, is a striking evidence 

 of the vast profusion of Divine Beneficence. 

 More than a hundred thousand species of ani 

 mated beings are dispersed through the differ 

 ent regions of the air, the water, and the earth, 

 besides myriads which arc invisible to the un 

 assisted eye. To estimate the number of in 

 dividuals belonging to any one species is beyond 

 the power of man. What countless myriads 

 of herrings, for example, are contained in a single 

 shoal, which is frequently more than six miles 

 long and three miles broad. To estimate the 

 number of individuals in all the different species 

 would, therefore, be as impossible as to count the 

 grains of sand in the Arabian deserts. There 

 is not a single spot, in any region of the globe, 

 but what teems with animated beings. Yet, all 

 this vast assemblage of sensitive existence ig 



