162 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



uses, then, so far as this hypothesis may be ac- 

 cepted, the ground of the difficuly is done away. 



In the wide scale of human condition there is 

 not, perhaps, 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 condi- 

 tion of the rudest barbarian, which affords not 

 room for moral agency ; for the acquisition, exer- 

 cise, and display of voluntary qualities, good and 

 bad. Health and sickness, enjoyment and suffer- 

 ing, riches and poverty, knowledge and ignorance, 

 power and subjection, hberty and bondage, civili- 

 zation and barbarity, have all their offices and 

 duties, all serve for \.\\q 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 generated 

 also, and formed by circumstances. The best 

 dispositions may subsist under the most depressed, 

 the most afflicted fortunes. A West-Indian slave, 

 who, amidst his wrongs, retains his benevolence, 

 1, for my part, look upon as amongst the fore- 

 most of human candidates for the rewards of vir- 

 tue. 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 meritorious charac- 

 ter; but still he is inferior to his slave. All, how- 

 vcr, which I contend for is, that these destinies, 



