272 PURPOSE AND GENERAL CONDITION 



of which the elements can be taken cognizance of by science, 

 and that all the secular destinies of our race, from gene- 

 ration to generation, are but evolutions from a primal 

 arrangement in the counsels of Deity. To many, at first 

 sight, it is apt to appear as a dreary view of the divine 

 economy of our world, as if it placed God at an immeasur- 

 able distance from his creatures, and left them without refuge 

 or remedy from the numberless ills that " flesh is heir to," 

 and which no one can hope altogether to escape. But in 

 reality, God may be presumed to be revealed to us in every 

 one of the phenomena of the system, in the suspension of 

 globes in space, in the degradation of rocks and the upthrow- 

 ing of mountains, in the development of plants and animals, 

 in each movement of our minds, and in all that we enjoy and 

 suffer, seeing that, the system requiring a sustainer as well as 

 an originator, he must be continually present in every part of 

 it, albeit he does not permit a single law to swerve in any 

 case from its appointed course of operation. Thus, we may 

 still feel that He is the immediate breather of our life and 

 ruler of our spirits, that we may, by rightly directed thought, 

 come into communion with him, and feel that, even when his 

 penal ordinances are enforced upon us, his hand and arm are 

 closely about us. Nor is this all. It may be that, while we 

 are committed to take our chance in a natural system of un- 

 deviating operation, and are left, with apparent ruthlessness, 

 to endure the consequences of every collision into which we 

 knowingly or unknowingly come with each of its regulations, 

 there is a system of Mercy and Grace behind the screen of 

 nature, towards which we stand in a peculiar class of rela- 

 tions, which is capable of compensating for all casualties 

 endured here, and whose very largeness is what makes these 

 casualties a matter of indifference to God. For the existence 

 of such a system, the actual constitution of nature is indeed a 

 powerful argument. The reasoning- may proceed thus : the 

 system of nature assures us that benevolence is a leading 

 principle in the Divine Mind. But that system is at the 

 same time deficient in a means of making this benevolence of 

 invariable operation. To reconcile this to the character of 



