aoODNESS OF THE DEITY. SS9 



other principles, be accounted for tlian is generally supposed, 

 yet a future state alone rectifies all disorders ; and if it can 

 be shown that the appearance of disorder is consistent with 

 the uses of life as a lyrciiaratory state, or that in some re- 

 spects it promotes these uses, then, so far as this hypothe- 

 sis may be accepted, the ground of the difficulty is done 

 away. 



In the wide scale of human condition, there is not per* 

 haps one of its manifold diversities which does not bear 

 upon the design here suggested. Virtue is infinitely various. 

 There is no situation in which a rational being is placed, 

 from that of the best-instructed Christian down to the con- 

 dition of the rudest barbarian, which affords not' room for 

 moral agency, for the acquisition, exercise, and display of 

 voluntary qualities, good and bad. Health and sickness, 

 enjoyment and suffering, riches and poverty, knowledge and 

 ignorance, power and subjection, liberty and bondage, civil- 

 ization and barbarity, have all their offices and duties, all 

 serve for \hQ formation 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 gen- 

 erated also and formed by circumstances. The best dispo- 

 sitions may subsist under the most depressed, the most afflict- 

 ed fortunes. A West Indian slave, who, amid his wrongs, 

 retains his benevolence, I for my part look upon as among 

 the foremost of human candidates for the rewards of virtue. 

 The kind master of such a slave, that is, he who, in the 

 exercise of an inordinate authority, postpones in any degree 

 his own interest to his slave's comfort, is likewise a merito- 

 rious character ; but still he is inferior to his slave. All, 

 however, which I contend for, is, that these destinies, oppo- 

 gite 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 Avhole range of the scale, not except- 

 ing even its lowest extremity. Savages appear to us all 

 alike ; but it is owinjr to the distance at which we view 



