292 THE GOODNESS OP THE DEITY.' 



enjoyment and suffering, riches and poverty, knowledge 

 and ignorance, power and subjection, liberty and bondage, 

 civilization and barbarity, have all their offices and duties, 

 all serve for the formntion of character ; for, when we speak 

 of a state of trial, it must be remembered, that characters 

 are not only tried, or proved, or detected, but that they are 

 generated also, and formed, by circumstances. The fte-if 

 dispositions may subsist under the most depressed, the most 

 afflicted fortunes. A Wesr Indian slave, who, amidst his 

 wrongs, retains his benevolence, I for my part look upon, 

 as amongst the foremost of human candidates tor the re- 

 wards of virtue. The kind master of such a slave, that is, 

 he, who, in the exercise of an inordinate authority, post- 

 pones, in any degree his own interest to his slaves' comfort, 

 is likewise a meritorious character ; but stiil he is inferior 

 to his slave. All however which I contend for, is, that these 

 destinies, opposite as they may be in every other view, are 

 both trials, and equally such. The observation may be 

 applied to every other condition ; to the whole range of 

 the scale, not excepting even its lowest extremity. Sava- 

 ges appear to us all alike ; but it is owing to the distance 

 at which we view savage life, that we perceive in it no dis- 

 crimination of character. I make no doubt, but that moral 

 qualities, both good and bad, are called into action as much, 

 and that they subsist in as great a variety, in these inartificial 

 societies, as they are, or do. in polished life. Certain at least 

 it is,that the good or ill treatment which each individual meets 

 with, depends more upon the choice and voluntary conduct of 

 those about him, than it does, or ought to do, under regu- 

 lar civil institutions and the coercion of public laws. So 

 again, to turn our eyes to the other end of the scale, name- 

 ly, that part of it, which is occupied by mankind, enjoying 

 the benefits of learning, together with the lights of revela- 

 tion, there also, the advantage is all along probationary. 

 Christianity itself, I mean the revelation of Christianity, is 

 not only a blessing, but a trial. It is one of the diversified 

 means by which the character is exercised ; and they who 

 require of Christianity, that the revelation of it should be 

 universal, may possibly be found to require, that one spe- 

 cies of probation should be adopted, if not to the exclu- 

 sion of others, at least to the narrowing of that variety 

 which the wisdom of the Deity hath appointed to this part 

 of his moral economy.* 



-* The reader will observe, that I speak cf the revelation of Christian- 

 ity as distinct from Christianity itself. The dispensaiion may already 



