152 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



and checked, would live without apprehension o^ 

 restraint. On the other hand, were sudden death 

 very frequent, the sense of constant jeopard; 

 would interfere too much with the degree of ease 

 and enjoyment intended for us ; and human life 

 be too precarious for the business and interests 

 which belong to it. There could not be depend- 

 ence either upon our own lives, or the Hves of 

 those with whom we were connected, sufficient 

 to carry on the regular offices of human society 

 Tiic manner, therefore, in which death is mad<^ 

 to occur, conduces to the purposes of admonition 

 without overthrowing the necessary stability of 

 human affairs.^^ 



Disease being the forerunner of death, there is 

 the same reason for its attacks coming upon us 

 under the appearance of chance, as there is for 

 uncertainty in the time of death itself. 



The seasons are a mixture of regularity and 

 chance. They are regular enough to authorize 

 expectation, whilst their being, in a considerable 

 degree, irregular, induces, on the part of the cul- 

 tivators of the soil, a necessity for personal at- 



36 It must never bo forgotten that, according to the scheme, 

 whether of Natural or of Revealed Rehgion, the doctrine of a 

 Future State removes one branch of the evil here treated of, and 

 answers the common skeptical objection grounded upon the de- 

 struction of one being made the means of benefit to another. In 

 the view of religion, the person removed by Providence is to be 

 considered as suffering no loss whatever, — he is at once taken 

 to a superior state. The survivors alone are to be considered a . 

 regards the question of evil. ' 



